“There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear.” – Buffalo Springfield 1967
It’s not supposed to be clear, now or then. If you’re confused by the news you’re hearing, you should be. They want you to
be. They try to make you be. But you don’t have to be.
Who are “they”? They are the corporate mainstream media (MSM) that serve as mouthpieces for the power elites, who are connected
through an intricate system of institutions and associations, both obvious and shadowy. They run the show that the media produce
for the masses. To paraphrase the illustrious American propagandist, Edward Bernays: This is the engineering of
the consent of the ignorant herd by the intelligent few.
That this has been going on for a long time should be obvious. That such propaganda is surround-sound today is a fact. It is total
and non-stop. Even its critics are often seduced as they are horrified.
But I utter the obvious to explore the obscure. In particular, the ways the elites try to manage the public mind by confusing
contradictions, half-truths, multiple and conflicting narratives, and revelations proffered to conceal more fundamental facts.
The basic way people’s thinking is controlled today is by confusing them and creating a perpetual state of mental vertigo. Muddled
and disordered by double-speak, illogical reporting, and a kaleidoscopic merry-go-round of conflicting reports, the average person
is reduced to a mental mess.
“To the average man who tries to keep informed,” writes Jacques Ellul in Propaganda, “a world emerges that
is astonishingly incoherent, absurd, and irrational, which changes rapidly and constantly for reasons he can’t understand.”
Take Donald Trump. He is regularly castigated by the media for his endless stream of tweets and contradictory
statements. He is called a moron, mentally imbalanced, and a clown. But what these critics fail to grasp is that he is beating them
at their own game of sowing confusion. He is our modern mythic Johnny Appleseed, wildly spewing seeds of bedlam to incite and confound.
He is no anomaly. He has stepped out of our celebrity reality-TV screened world to carry on the media’s task of what Orwell said
was a necessary task for the rulers in a totalitarian society: “to dislocate the sense of reality.”
The mainstream media do this daily. Think of their reporting of some recent news and ask yourself what exactly have they said
– Russia-gate, the Iran agreement, the Las Vegas massacre, Catalonia, health insurance, etc. Gibberish piled upon gibberish, that’s
what they’ve said. A salmagundi of contradictory verbiage that leaves a half-way sentient person shaking one’s head in astonishment.
Or leaves one baffled, devoid of any sense of the truth.
While the gross Harvey Weinstein, buddy to Democrat politicians who took large sums from his deep pockets, dominates
the MSM’s spotlight, as if his exploits suddenly appeared out of nowhere, the U.S. war against Syria and so many other countries
“isn’t happening,” as Harold Pinter put it in his Nobel acceptance speech when he said the systematic crimes of
the United States have been disappeared behind “a highly successful act of hypnosis.” The nuclear threats to Russia and China aren’t
happening. It doesn’t matter right now anyway. We might get back to that next week or next month, if we are finished with Weinstein
by then or if Stephen Paddock’s autopsy report isn’t back from Stanford where they are studying his brain tissue
to find the cause and manner of his death – you know what deep secrets brain tissue can reveal. And yes, we will be exploring a question
a brilliant reporter asked the Las Vegas authorities:
“Do you think Paddock did it because he could?”
In 2003 the Bush administration blatantly lied about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction in
order to wage a barbaric and criminal war against Iraq. Then Obama glided in on the giddy fantasies of liberals, the same people
who supported Clinton’s savaging of Serbia in 1999. He smiled and smiled and spoke articulately about the need for war, drone assassinations,
the bailing out of Wall Street and the big banks, the need to confront Russia over his own administration’s engineered Ukrainian
coup, and a crackdown on whistleblowers. For decades the media echoed the blatant deceptions of these men. From slick to obvious
to slick went the propaganda. And then the shock and awe of Mr. Trump’s election. How to deal with one of their own, one spawned
from the entertainment-media-news complex? Trump accused them of creating fake news. He relentlessly attacked them, as if to say:
you hypocrites; you accuse me of what you do. Then he continued to tweet out his messages meant to confuse and inflame. He continued
to make statements that were then contradicted. What were the poor media to do except one-up him. This they have done.
We have now entered a new phase of propaganda where sowing mass confusion on every issue 24/7 is the method of choice.
But therein lies hope if we can grasp the meaning of Oscar Wilde’s paradoxical statement:
“When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound.”
"... A ten-year-old boy absolutely humiliated a school board in Florida as he spoke passionately in requesting the council to stop the unscientific and ridiculous mask mandate for the district at the school. ..."
A ten-year-old boy absolutely humiliated a
school board in Florida as he spoke passionately in requesting the council to stop the unscientific
and ridiculous mask mandate for the district at the school.
"... "Based on the lack of a rational explanation for the actions of the WHO, Merck, FDA and Unitaid, we conclude that they result from an active disinformation campaign ... " ..."
"... The document illustrates in a verifiable and succinct charge how the WHO has loaded the dice against the use of ivermectin as both a prophylactic and a treatment for COVID-19, in order to argue against its adoption - and this, in a world that is increasingly adopting its use because it quite simply works. ..."
"... This release from FLCCC explains why and describes the underlying, systemic rottenness in the western medical system, how it has been tainted for decades by corporations and large funding sources - and how the common doctors, fighting to do no harm and to save lives, are up against a wall of opposition during this pandemic that is breathtakingly huge. ..."
"... Big Pharma, Big Science, Big Media, Big Tech, Big Government, Big Foundations - all in collusion, all following the trail originally blazed by Big Tobacco. ..."
"... FLCCC Alliance Statement on the Irregular Actions of Public Health Agencies and the Widespread Disinformation Campaign Against Ivermectin ..."
"Based on the lack of a rational explanation for the actions of the WHO, Merck, FDA and Unitaid, we conclude that they
result from an active disinformation campaign ... "
Thank you for the latest release from FLCCC. When you find the time to comment, you always supply powerful material - I am
extraordinarily grateful for this.
I just spent the time to read the release, and I was absorbed from beginning to end. Of course, there's some unavoidable scientific
terminology, but very little, and most of the document stands as a revolutionary manifesto, a call to action, a call to resist
the misinformation and the disinformation permeating the COVID-19 pandemic.
The document illustrates in a verifiable and succinct charge how the WHO has loaded the dice against the use of ivermectin
as both a prophylactic and a treatment for COVID-19, in order to argue against its adoption - and this, in a world that is increasingly
adopting its use because it quite simply works.
It works, and the results from all over the world are recorded by doctors, showing that it works up to a 90% effectiveness
in the main and close to 100% in some cases, and it does this with negligible collateral harm demonstrated across billions of
doses and many decades - and the WHO, despite that in 2018 it formally lauded its safety, now says that it doesn't work and that
it may be dangerous.
~~
So what is the Why of the WHO?
This release from FLCCC explains why and describes the underlying, systemic rottenness in the western medical system, how
it has been tainted for decades by corporations and large funding sources - and how the common doctors, fighting to do no harm
and to save lives, are up against a wall of opposition during this pandemic that is breathtakingly huge.
The FLCCC press release goes beyond the medical science and explains also the corporate tactics that have demolished scientific
method. It presents a call to action, and sketches the only tools we have to resist. It says much that we already know - but these
are doctors and awarded researchers telling us all the things that are so obviously fishy in the institutional responses
to the pandemic.
Big Pharma, Big Science, Big Media, Big Tech, Big Government, Big Foundations - all in collusion, all following the trail
originally blazed by Big Tobacco.
See, we know how it works because we've watched it for decades. The FLCCC release does us the service of reminding us and enumerating
the instances when corporate venality (my word, not theirs) has destroyed the truth simply to make money.
What CDC knows what we do know to issue such draconian guidelines? This looks like is a
concentration camp not summer camp...
Notable quotes:
"... Two-layer masks should be worn at all times "" indoors and out ""except for eating, drinking and swimming ..."
"... Don't allow close-contact games and sports ..."
"... Avoid sharing of objects such as toys, games and art supplies ..."
"... Separate children on buses by skipping rows ..."
"... Divide children into "cohorts" and then keep them away from other cohorts ..."
"... Children should stay three feet away from kids in their cohort and six feet away from those outside their cohort; campers and staff should stay six feet from each other, as should fellow staff members ..."
"... While eating and drinking, stay six feet away from everybody, even your own cohort ..."
In April, the CDC published guidance
for operating youth camps that was the latest eye-rolling example of CDC maximalism that
conflicts with what we've learned about Covid-19.
Before we examine the CDC guidance, let's review some of the key things that we now know
about Covid-19 that we didn't in March 2020:
Covid-19 presents little risk at all to children. According to CDC data, only
295 children age 0-17 have died with Covid-19. Compare that to the CDC's estimation
that 600
died of the flu during the 2017-18 season.
Outdoor transmission pretty much never happens. An Irish
study of more than 232,000 Covid-19 cases found only 0.1% of cases were transmitted
outside.
Surface transmission isn't a material source of spread. The CDC has
declared the risk of contracting the virus by touching surfaces or objects is low, and
that rather than cleaning with disinfectant, "soap and water is enough to reduce risk"
(unless there's a known or suspected Covid-19 case in a community setting).
Vaccines are abundantly available. According to the CDC's vaccination data , 60.5% of U.S.
adults have have received at least one vaccine dose, and 48.4% are fully vaccinated. Gone
are the days when finding the vaccine was a challenge; today, anyone who wants the vaccine
can readily find it.
Covid-19 cases and deaths are in a free fall. The 7-day averages for cases and deaths
have respectively fallen 89% and 83% from
their peaks. On Sunday, the entire state of Texas
reported not a single death from the virus. Today, San Francisco General Hospital has
no Covid-19 patients for the first time
since March 2020.
With that knowledge in mind, here are some key ingredients in the CDC's recipe
for dystopian summer fun:
Two-layer masks should be worn at all times "" indoors and out ""except for eating,
drinking and swimming
Don't allow close-contact games and sports
Avoid sharing of objects such as toys, games and art supplies
Separate children on buses by skipping rows
Divide children into "cohorts" and then keep them away from other cohorts
Children should stay three feet away from kids in their cohort and six feet away
from those outside their cohort; campers and staff should stay six feet from each other, as
should fellow staff members
While eating and drinking, stay six feet away from everybody, even your own
cohort
Who exactly are these draconian, fun-killing guidelines meant to protect? The children
aren't in any meaningful danger"" the number of children who typically drown in a given
year is more than double the number of child Covid deaths we've observed in 15 months .
Meanwhile, against a backdrop of rapidly-vanishing Covid-19 infections across the country,
camp staff will have had more than ample opportunity to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19
before the first kids arrive.
We're told to "follow the science," but what is the CDC following? The agency's guidelines
read like they were written during the early dark ages of the Covid outbreak, when the peril
was still filled with overwhelming mystery, and "erring on the side of caution" still had a
trace of credibility.
As Columbia University pediatric immunologist Mark Gorelik told
New York Magazine , " We know that the risk of outdoor infection is very low. We know risks
of children becoming seriously ill or even ill at all is vanishingly small. And most of the
vulnerable population is already vaccinated. I am supportive of effective measures to restrain
the spread of illness. However, the CDC's recommendations cross the line into excess and are,
frankly, senseless. Children cannot be running around outside in 90-degree weather wearing a
mask. Period. "
Who cares what the CDC says? They have ZERO credibility and should be charged with fraud and
"Crimes Against Humanity"
UpTo11 4 hours ago remove link
Just went to a high school graduation ceremony in Texas. 1 student had a mask. No one else
in the stadium of 400. Not sure who wears masks anymore at all.
ChargingHandle 3 hours ago remove link
Come to oregon and you will see all species of sheeple wearing masks even when completely
by themselves.
GunnerySgtHartman 2 hours ago
I still see people wearing masks while driving their cars ... with nobody else in the cars
... talk about sheeple.
Snakerockhiker 3 hours ago
The CDC guidance has nothing to do with Covid-19 and everything to do with maintaining and
increasing fear, breaking down societal relationships, and ensuring people are following
operant conditioning protocols like Pavlov's dogs. A gang of criminals are running America's
medical heirarchy. We need to eliminate them.
"Ultimately, the point of life is not about avoiding diseases and meeting arbitrary
standards of health. Society has its necessary functions and its priorities that exist
regardless of the recommendation of public health experts. It's about time the CDC understood
that." ~ Ethan Yang
n May 16, 2021, the CDC updated its
guidance , stating that fully vaccinated people could resume their lives as normal,
including not wearing a mask. It goes without saying that not only was the CDC's initial
position that vaccinated people still have to practice all the same precautions as those that
are unvaccinated ridiculous, it's also way behind what some states have been doing. Citing the
success of places like Florida and Texas as completely open states flouting every overly
protectionist measure put out by the CDC would be beating a dead horse at this point. Of
course, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky clarified that in
regards to the new guidance on vaccinated persons not having to wear masks,
"Not everybody has to rip off their mask because our guidance changed," she said. "If you
are concerned, please do consult your physician before you take off your mask."
CNN also cited its own medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen, who criticized the CDC for being
overly cautious on mask-wearing for vaccinated individuals. This is of course the same CDC that
at the beginning of the pandemic lied to the public
about how people should not wear masks in an attempt to prevent a shortage. Eventually, of
course, the narrative changed to the current regime of masks being the one thing that will save
humanity. As we know this is also a ridiculous policy, as the overwhelming evidence points out
that masks are not the
silver bullet to stopping infectious disease and only help in specific contexts. Jenin
Younes writes on this subject when she notes ,
"On June 5, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a paper stating that "widespread
use of masks by healthy people in the community setting is not yet supported by high quality
or direct scientific evidence and there are other potential benefits and harms to
consider."
Throughout the entire pandemic, the CDC has been the arbiter of comically cautious guidance,
arbitrary and unethical recommendations, and it contradicted itself so many times that it would
be a decent question to ask if anyone really listens at this point. Perhaps this would be a
good thing in a way as states and communities chart their own course towards voluntary
solutions based on their own contexts. Although it is certainly great to see people taking
matters into their own hands and living their lives based on reason and responsible behavior,
if we are going to have a CDC it would be best that it does its job well and not act as a
detriment to society sowing confusion and fear.
The CDC's Less Than Stellar Track
Record
It is worth mentioning that the CDC is credited with leading the eradication of smallpox
and credit should be given where credit is due. However, we should not let that distract us
from the fact that the CDC has always had a track
record of being overly cautious to the point that their guidelines are unrealistic,
trigger-happy on issuing guidance that would later be retracted, and especially as of recently
being absolutely disconnected from society.
Let's go back to the very beginning of the pandemic before the lockdowns. The CDC was
already starting off on the wrong foot when it came to procuring test kits. Reason
Magazinewrites
,
"A far more consequential error also occurred in February, when the agency botched the
development of the first batch of test kits that states were supposed to use to begin the
testing process. The CDC had already declined to use a German test
backed by the World Health Organization, preferring to create its own, as is typical for the
agency. This cost several weeks during the time when the virus was just beginning to spread
in the U.S. And when the CDC did send out test kits to states, the
majority of those kits delivered faulty results."
This issue with test kits was only resolved once development was turned over to the private
sector. An article in The Atlantic points out that in May the CDC was conflating viral and antibody tests.
Viral tests detect active Covid cases while antibody tests detect past infections, and
conflating the two paints a very different picture for the severity of active caseloads.
Of course, nobody can forget that the CDC endorsed the use of lockdown policies as if it was
common sense science, which not only failed to stop the virus but proceeded to throw the entire
country into disarray. An article published by AIER back in June of 2020 recounts these absurd
policies by noting
,
"In particular, two unprecedented and massively destructive physical distancing policies
were implemented: (1) quarantining an entire population (i.e., "stay-at-home" orders), and
(2) shutting down entire industries and significantly altering the operations of other
industries that were "permitted" to continue to operate. This includes educational
establishments, such as day care facilities, primary and secondary schools, and religious
institutions, which provide important educational and recreational services for
children."
At one point Dr. Fauci stated in a CNN interview that he was confused on why
every single state in the country wasn't implementing a stay-at-home order. Despite mounting
evidence for the tremendous collateral damage lockdowns were causing with little benefit to
show, the CDC continued to advocate for the use of lockdown policies.
Finally, we should never forget the blatant
political pandering to the teachers' unions when it came to school closures. Keeping
schools open isn't even a controversial topic; in fact, closing schools is largely considered a
fringe position in the scientific community, and even President Biden was advocating for the
opening of schools. It is clear that closing schools are massively harmful not only to children
but to the parents who now have unexpected child care burdens. At the same time, children are
not a significant source of transmission and are not vulnerable to the virus.
If there wasn't already enough said, the CDC even issued an unconstitutional nationwide
moratorium on evictions as if it had not meddled enough with the economy and the constitutional
order. Fortunately, there is now a
class-action lawsuit against the CDC for this offense.
Key takeaway
The CDC has always been out of touch and overly cautious when it comes to advising the
country on issues of public health. In a way that is understandable, as one could argue they
are simply trying to present the safest and healthiest way to live. Even then, those
recommendations could be overturned by new developments as in the case of drinking while
pregnant , which we now know isn't an issue if done in moderation. Even then, there is
absolutely no excuse for advocating lockdown policies which go beyond an abundance of caution
into the realm of recklessness and neglect. Ultimately, the point of life is not about avoiding
diseases and meeting arbitrary standards of health. Society has its necessary functions and its
priorities that exist regardless of the recommendation of public health experts. It's about
time the CDC understood that.
In reaction to Covid-19, the CDC really took things to a whole new level of absurdity. The
amount of hubris, ignorance, and condescension exhibited by our public health leaders truly
soared to new heights. Not only that but it had real consequences not just for the people who
had to live under the CDC's recommendations but for its own credibility. It would be fair to
say the CDC needs a wakeup call because they truly have tested our patience for what's becoming
far too long.
This video provides one of the most erudite and
informative looks at Covid-19 and the consequences of lockdowns. It was remarkable this week to watch as it appeared on
YouTube and was forcibly taken down only 2 hours after posting. The copy below is hosted on LBRY, a blockchain video
application. In a year of fantastic educational content, this is one of the best we've seen.
Dr. Michael Yeadon is an Allergy & Respiratory
Therapeutic Area expert with 23 years in the pharmaceutical industry. He trained as a biochemist and pharmacologist,
obtaining his PhD from the University of Surrey (UK) in 1988.
Dr. Yeadon then worked at the Wellcome
Research Labs with Salvador Moncada with a research focus on airway hyper-responsiveness and effects of pollutants
including ozone and working in drug discovery of 5-LO, COX, PAF, NO and lung inflammation. With colleagues, he was the
first to detect exhaled NO in animals and later to induce NOS in lung via allergic triggers.
Joining Pfizer in 1995, he was responsible for
the growth and portfolio delivery of the Allergy & Respiratory pipeline within the company. He was responsible for
target selection and the progress into humans of new molecules, leading teams of up to 200 staff across all disciplines
and won an Achievement Award for productivity in 2008.
Under his leadership the research unit
invented oral and inhaled NCEs which delivered multiple positive clinical proofs of concept in asthma, allergic rhinitis
and COPD. He led productive collaborations such as with Rigel Pharmaceuticals (SYK inhibitors) and was involved in the
licensing of Spiriva and acquisition of the Meridica (inhaler device) company.
Dr. Yeadon has published over 40 original
research articles and now consults and partners with a number of biotechnology companies. Before working with Apellis,
Dr. Yeadon was VP and Chief Scientific Officer (Allergy & Respiratory Research) with Pfizer.
My original training was a first-class honours
degree in biochemistry and toxicology. Followed by a research-based PhD into respiratory pharmacology; and after that
I've worked my entire life, uh, on the research side of the pharmaceutical industry – both big pharma and also biotech.
My specific focus has been inflammation, immunology, allergy in the context of respiratory diseases (so the lung, but
also the skin). So I would say I'm a kind of a deeply experienced inflammation, immunology, pulmonology kind of research
person.
I initially became concerned about, the, our
response to the coronavirus pandemic towards the middle or back end of April as early as that. It had become clear that
if you look at the number of daily deaths versus the date the pandemic had turned. Really, pleasingly, already the wave
was fundamentally over, and we would just watch it fall for a number of months – which is what it did. And so I became
very perturbed about increasing restrictions on the behavior and movement of people in my country and I could see no
reason for it then and I still don't.
Government's response to emergencies is guided
by the scientific group who sit together under the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies or
SAGE
.
So they should provide scientific advice to the government about what's appropriate to do. SAGE has got several things
wrong, and that has led to advice that's inappropriate and – uh, not only has had horrible economic effects, but has had
continuing medical effects in that people are no longer being treated properly.
SAGE took the view that since SARS-CoV-2 was a
new virus that they believed there wouldn't be any immunity at all in the population. So, I think that's the first
thing. I remember hearing that and I puzzled, because I already knew – because I read the scientific literature that
SARS-CoV-2 was 80% similar to another virus you may have heard of called SARS that moved around the world a bit in 2003,
and more than that: it's quite similar, in pieces of it, to common cold-causing coronaviruses.
So, when I heard that there was this
coronavirus moving across the world I wasn't as worried as perhaps other people were, because I figured that since there
are four common cold-causing coronaviruses, I figured that quite a lot of the population we've been exposed to one of
those viruses, and would probably have a perhaps substantial protective immunity. And just to explain why I was so
confident everybody knows the story of Edward Jenner and vaccination, and the story of cowpox and smallpox. And that the
old story was that milkmaids had very, uh, clear complexions: they never suffered from things like smallpox, that if it
didn't kill you would leave your skin permanently scarred. And the reason that they had the protection was that they
were exposed to a more benign, related virus called cowpox.
Edward Jenner came up with the idea that if
it's cowpox that saves the fair maid – he reasoned that if he could give another person an exposure to the cowpox, he
would be able to protect them from smallpox. Now, he did an experiment that you can't do now – and he never should have
done it – but apocryphally, or really, or maybe you're ill, we're not sure. Edward Jenner acquired some of the liquid
from a person infected with cowpox. Relatively mild pustules that then go away. And he got some of this and he – he
scraped it into the skin of a small boy and a few weeks later, he obtained some liquid from some poor person that was
dying of smallpox and infected the boy. And, lo and behold, the boy did not get ill and that gave birth to the whole
field of what's called vaccination. And vax, the vaccine's "vac." It comes from "vaccus," the Latin name for cow. So, we
are really familiar with the principle of cross immunization.
I've thought quite a lot about, you know, the
vulnerable people in in care homes and there's an awareness that, even though people really careful using PPE and so on,
but that's only going to go so far in a kind of, hot house environment where people are pretty close together in a care
home. So the question I've had all year is: once one or two people, you know, got the virus in a care home, why wouldn't
almost everyone get infected? And of course the truth is, they didn't. And one interpretation of that distinction is
that a large proportion of people in the care homes had prior immunity.
At this time of year, about 1 in 30 people
have a cold, caused by one of these coronaviruses. And just like the protection against smallpox provided by previous
exposure to cowpox, so people exposed to having had a cold caused by one of these coronaviruses they're now immune to
SARS-CoV-2. So, 30% of the population was protected before the start. SAGE said it was
zero
–
and
I don't understand how they could possibly have justified that. There's a second, and equally
fatal
,
unaccountable error that they have made in their model. The percentage of the population that SAGE asserts have been
infected to date by the virus is about seven percent. I know that that's what they believe and you can see it in a
document they published in September called "Non-pharmaceutical interventions" and it says sadly more than 90% of the
population is still vulnerable.
It's unbelievably wrong. And I'm just going to
explain why: they've based their number on the percentage of people in the country who have antibodies in their blood.
And only the people who became most ill needed to actually develop and release antibodies around their body. So, it is
certainly true that the people who have lots of antibodies were infected. But a very large number of people had milder
symptoms, and even more people had none at all. And the best estimates that we can arrive at is that those people either
made no antibodies, or so low amounts that they will have faded from now.
A recent publication on the percentage of care
home residents who have antibodies to the virus very, very interesting. This time they were using high sensitivity tests
for antibodies and they carefully picked out residents that never were PCR-positive: these are people who never got
infected. And they found that 65% of them had antibodies to the virus; they never got infected. So I believe there was
high prevalence of immunity in that population prior to the virus arriving. Big story in the media, recently, was that
the percentage of people with antibodies against the virus in their blood was falling. Now, this was cast as a concern
that immunity to SARS-CoV-2 doesn't last very long. Well, you know, anyone with knowledge of immunity would – would just
simply reject that. It's not the way immunity to virus works – that would be T-cells. So, if the antibodies are falling
gradually over time – which they have – from spring to present, the only plausible explanation is that the prevalence of
the virus in the population is falling, and that's why the antibody production gradually subsides.
Less than 40% of the population are
susceptible. Even theoretical epidemiologists would tell you that that's too small a number to support a consolidated
and growing outbreak, community immunity, herd immunity. So, SAGE says that we're not even close, and I'm telling you
that the best science, by the best scientists in the world, published in the top peer-reviewed journals, says they're
wrong: that more than 60 of the population are now immune, and it's simply not possible to have a large and growing
pandemic.
Really good news, genuine good news, to hear
that there's data emerging from the vaccine clinical trials, and we are seeing vaccines that raise not just antibodies –
but they're also producing T-cell responses. This is great; back to proper science, proper immunology. That's how
immunity to viruses works. So, my surprise though, and it's just annoying that when we're talking about, uh, the
percentage of the population that's still susceptible we only talk about antibodies, like seven percent from SAGE. Why
are we not talking about the 50% that have got T-cell immunity?
And so you might be thinking if Mike – and Dr
Mike Yeadon is telling you these things – or how come the pandemic isn't over? Well, this may come as a surprise to
you, but I believe fundamentally it is over. The country has experienced almost a complete cycle now of the virus
sweeping through the land, and we are at the end of it. London was –was horribly affected in the spring, and somewhere
in early April they were experiencing several hundred deaths per day from people dying with similar symptoms in
respiratory failure and, uh, inflammation. And at the moment the number of people dying of SARS-CoV-2 in the capital is
less than 10. So it's down by 98, or something like that. And, the reason it's down, is because there are now too few
people in London susceptible to allow the virus to magnify, to amplify, to get an epidemic. And, and they would have
been hit by now, because they were the first place hit in the spring. And I think what we're seeing now in the Northeast
and the Northwest would be the dying embers of the spreading out of this virus. And I'm very sorry that it is still
true, that a small number of people are catching it, getting ill, and dying.
So why aren't the media telling us that the
pandemic is over? It's not over because SAGE says it's not. So SAGE consists of very many scientists, from a range of
disciplines – mathematicians and clinicians – and there are multiple committees. But I found to my surprise – and I'm
actually going to use the word –
horror
,
that
in the spring, all the way through the spring and summer, SAGE did not have on their committee someone who I would call
a card-carrying immunologist; a clinical immunologist. I have to say I think that in the spring and summer SAGE was
deficient in the expertise it had. They should have armed themselves, you know, with – around the table all the people
required to to understand what was happening, and they didn't do that. People asked me then, "Well Mike, if it's, you
know, if it's fundamentally over, why are we still getting hundreds of deaths a day from SARS-CoV-2?" And I've thought a
lot about this. There is a test that's performed where people have their noses and tonsils swabbed, and then a test
(called a PCR test) is performed on that. And what they're looking for isn't the virus – you might think it's looking
for the virus, but it's not. What they're looking for is a small piece of genetic sequence; it's called RNA.
Unfortunately, that bit of RNA will be found in people's tonsils and nose not if they've just caught the virus, and
they're about to get ill, or they're already ill. It's also going to be found if they were infected
previously
weeks
– or even, sometimes, a small number of months ago. Let me just explain why that is.
If you've been infected, and you've fought off
the virus (which most people do), you'll have broken, dead bits of virus. These are tiny things smaller than your cells,
perhaps spread all the way through your airway, embedded in bits of mucus, maybe inside an airway lining cell. And so
over a period of weeks or months you bring up cells that contain broken, dead pieces of the virus that you have
conquered and killed. However, the PCR test is not able to detect whether the viral RNA has come from a living virus or
a dead one (as I've just described). So I think a large proportion of the so-called positives are, in fact, what I call
"cold" positives: they're correctly identifying that there is some viral RNA in the sample – but it's from a dead virus.
It can't hurt them, they're not going to get ill, they can't transmit it to anybody else. So they're not infectious. So
that accounts for a large number of the so-called positive cases. These are people who've beaten the virus. Why are we
using this test that cannot distinguish between active infection and people who've conquered the virus?
This test has never been used in this way –
and I've worked in this field. It's not a suitable technique it's a – it's the kind of technique you would use for
forensic purposes, if you were trying to do a DNA test to establish whether or not a person was at the scene of a crime.
You would not be doing these tests by a windy, supermarket car parking; what looks like plastic marquee tents; on picnic
tables. It's not suitable at all – and it definitely shouldn't be done in the way it's been done. It's subject to many
mechanical errors, should we say, handling errors. If this was a test being used for legal purposes, for forensic
purposes like a DNA identity test, the judge would throw out this evidence; would say it's not admissible. It produces
positives even when there's no virus there at all. We call that a false positive.
As we've increased the number of tests done
per day, so we've had to recruit less and less experienced laboratory staff – and now we're using people who've never
worked professionally in this area. What that does is it increases the frequency of mistakes, and the effect of this is
that the false positive rate rises and rises. So, if you had a false positive rate of one percent – which Mr. Matt
Hancock [British Secretary of State for Health and Social Care] told us was roughly the number they had in the summer –
then if you tested a thousand people that had no virus ten of them would be positive, astonishingly. If the prevalence
of the virus was only one in a thousand, that's 0.1% – as the
Office
for National Statistics
told us it was through the summer – then if you use the PCR test only one of them will be
positive and genuinely so. But if the false positive rate is as low as one percent, you'll also get 10 positives that
are false.
Some people did say to me, "Well, there'll be
a higher percentage of people coming forward for testing in the community," so-called "Pillar 2" testing, because
they've been instructed only to come if they've got symptoms. But I call B.S. on that one. I don't think that's true. I
know lots of friends and relatives who've been told by an employer, "Well, you've sat near someone who's tested
positive, and I don't want you to come back to work until you've got a negative test." I've seen information from many
towns in the North – certainly Birmingham was one; Manchester was another; Bolton – where councils (and I really think
they were trying to be helpful) were out leafleting the people of their cities saying, "We're going to come round and
swab you all because we want to track down this virus." Now once you start testing people, more or less randomly,
instead of [those] having symptoms you get the same amount of virus in the population as the Office of National
Statistics found which is, at the time was, one in a thousand. And I've just told you Matt Hancock confirmed during the
summer they had a false positive rate of about one percent. So that means out of a thousand people 10 would test
positive, and it would be a false result, and only one would test positive and it was correct.
This test is monstrously unsuitable for
detecting who has live virus in their airway. It's subject to multiple distortions that are worsening as we get into the
winter. As the number of tests done per day increase[s], the number of errors made by these overworked, not very
experienced lab staff increase[s]. I think it's not unreasonable to say a best guess of the false positive rate at the
moment – what's called the operational false positive rate is about five percent. Five percent of 300,000 is 15,000
positives. I think some of those positives are real; I don't think it's very many. Now, the problem with this false
positive issue [is] it doesn't just stop it at "cases": it extends to people who are unwell and go to hospital. So
people who go to hospital having tested positive – and it could be a false positive, and I think most of them are at the
moment – if you go to hospital and you've tested positive previously, or you test positive in hospital, you'll be
counted now as a Covid admission.
Although there are more people in hospital now
than a month ago, this is normal for autumn. Regrettably, people catch respiratory viruses and become ill, and some will
die. I just don't believe it's got anything to do with Covid-19 anymore. There are more people in intensive care beds
now than there were a month or so ago. That's entirely normal as we move through late autumn into the early winter:
those beds become used. But there aren't more people than is normal for the time of year, and we're not about to run out
of capacity, certainly at a national level. But I think you know it is going now: if you should now die, you'll be
counted as a Covid death. But that's not correct; these are people who might have – have gone to hospital having had a
broken leg, for example, but they'll – three percent of them will still test positive, and they're not, they haven't got
the virus. It's a – it's a false positive, and if they die they'll be called a Covid death – and they are not. They've
died of something else.
One of the most troubling things I've heard
this year was Mr. Johnson telling us about the "Moonshot" testing everybody often, maybe every day, is the way out of
this problem. I'm telling you it's the way to keep us in this problem: that number of tests is orders of magnitude
higher than we're already testing now, and the false positive rate (however low it is) will be far too large to accept.
It will produce an enormous number of false positives.
What we should do is stop mass testing. Not
only is it an affront to your liberty, it will not help at all: it will be immensely expensive and it will be a
pathology all of its own. We'll be fighting off stupid people – mostly government ministers – I'm sorry to say, who are
not numerate, and do not understand statistics. If you test a million people a day with a test that produces one percent
false positives, 10 000 people a day will wrongly be told they've got the virus. If the prevalence of the virus was say
0.1%, like the Office of National Statistics said it was in summer, then only a tenth of that number, uh, 1,000 would
correctly be identified. But you can't distinguish amongst the 11,000 who have genuinely got the virus and who are false
positives. Moonshot, I think, will have a worse false positive rate. It's not fixable, and it's not necessary either.
The pandemic – having passed through the population not only of, of the UK, but of all of Europe – and probably all of
the world quite soon – it won't return. Why won't it return? Well, they've got T-cell immunity. We know this. It's been
studied by the best cellular immunologists in the world.
Sometimes people will say, "Well, it looks
like the immunity is starting to fade." You'll sometimes see [statements] like that, and when I saw the first headline
like this I remember being really quite confused, because that's not the way immunology works. Just think about it for a
moment. If that was how it worked it could kill you. When you had to fight it off, and if you had successfully done
that, it somehow didn't leave a mark in your body. Well, it does leave a mark on your body. The way you fought it off
involved certain pattern recognition receptors, and has left you with – as it were – memory cells that remember what it
was they fought off. And if they see that thing again it's very easy for them to get those cells to work again in
minutes or hours, and they will protect you. So the most likely explanation is it'll last a long time.
So I read a bit more about this so-called
tailing off of immunity – and I realized they were talking about antibodies. Just incorrect to – to think that
antibodies, and how long they stay up, is a measure of immune protection against viruses. I mean you can tell I'm – I
don't agree with this. It says there have been some classic experiments done on people who have inborn errors in parts
of their immune system, and some of them have inborn arrows that means they can't make antibodies, and guess what: they
– they are able to handle respiratory viruses the same as you and me. So, I don't think it's harmful to have antibodies,
although some people are worried about the potential for amplifying inflammation from antibodies, but – but my view is
that they're – they're probably neutral, and you definitely should not believe the story that because the antibody falls
away you've lost immunity. Again, that's just not the way the human immune system works.
The most likely duration of immunity to a
respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2 is multiple years. Why do I say that? We actually have the data for a virus that swept
through parts of the world 17 years ago called SARS, and remember SARS-CoV-2 is 80% similar to SARS, so I think that's
the best comparison that anyone can provide. The evidence is clear. These very clever cellular immunologists studied all
the people they could get hold of who had survived SARS 17 years ago. They took a blood sample, and they tested whether
they responded or not to the original SARS, and they all did. They all have perfectly normal, robust T-cell memory. They
are actually also protected against SARS-CoV-2 because it's so similar, it's cross-immunity. So, I would say the best
data that exists is that immunity should be robust for at least 17 years. I think it's entirely possible that it is
lifelong. The style of the responses of these people's T-cells were the same as if you've been vaccinated and then you
come back years later to see, has that immunity been retained? And so I think the evidence is really strong that the
duration of immunity will be multiple years, and possibly lifelong.
There have been but a tiny handful of people
who appear to have been infected twice – now they're very interesting, we need to know who they are and understand them
very well, they've probably got certain rare immune deficiency syndromes. So I'm not pretending no one ever gets
reinfected, but I am pointing out that it's literally five people (or maybe 50 people), but the World Health
Organization estimated some weeks ago that 750 million people have been infected so far by SARS-CoV-2. That means most
people are not being reinfected, and I can tell you why that is: it's normal. It's what happens with viruses,
respiratory viruses. Some people have – have called for "zero Covid" as if it's some political slogan. And there are
some people I've heard calling for it almost every day; they're completely unqualified to tell you anything.
Something that's really important to know is
that SARS-CoV-2 – it's an unpleasant virus. There's no question about it, but it's not what you were told in spring. We
were originally told that it would kill perhaps three percent of people it infected – which is horrifying. That's 30
times worse than flu. We always overestimate the lethality of new infectious diseases when we're in the eye of the
storm. I believe the true infection fatality ratio of Covid-19, the true threat to life is, the same as seasonal flu.
So there's no reason why you would want to try
and drive Covid to zero. It's a nonsense – that's just not how biology is. And all the means I have heard, uh, proposed,
as ways to get us there are much more damaging and pathological, I would say, than than the virus itself. It's simply
not possible to get rid of every single copy of the Covid-19 virus, and the means to get you there would destroy
society. Forget the cost – although it would be huge – it would destroy your liberty, you would need to not go out until
you've been tested and have your result back. And I have described how the false positive rate would just destroy it
from a statistical perspective. I don't believe it can be done: it's not scientifically realistic, it's not medically
realistic, and it's not what we have ever done.
As the virus swept towards the UK in the – in
the late winter and early spring I too was concerned, because at the time we were told perhaps three percent might die.
So when the Prime Minister called for a lockdown I wasn't pleased about it, but I understood that we should try this.
But it's important that you understand, that when we look at the profile of the pandemic as it passed through the
population, that it was clear that the number of infections every day was falling. We'd passed the peak quite a long
time before lockdown started. So we took all that pain, that locked down pain which was multiple weeks – I don't
remember exactly how many multiple weeks – we took it for nothing. If there was a really important effect of lockdown on
the number of people who died, or the rate of it, you should at least be able to order them. Like, these people had
locked down, and these didn't – and you cannot. All heavily infected countries' shapes are the same, whether they had
locked down or not. They don't work. I don't know why anyone is allowing you, know you, to be pushed into this corner.
I don't think we entirely know why it is that
some countries were hit harder than others, but I have to say I think scientifically the smart money is on a mixture of
forces. One would be this cross immunity. Although China had an awful time in Wuhan, in Hubei province, it didn't spread
elsewhere in the country, and I suspect that meant because a lot of them had this cross immunity. And I think nearby
countries, in the main, had lots of cross immunity. So that's one possibility. The other one, though, is in terms of the
severity of what did the virus do to a particular population. We've seen devastating effects in countries like UK and in
Belgium, uh, France, and maybe even in Sweden, and much smaller numbers of deaths in other countries like – like Greece
and in Germany. And you might think, "Well, was that was it something that they did?" And I wish it was true, because if
it was something we did we could learn from it and do it and it would work in the future. But there's no evidence
whatsoever that it was anything humans did. The passage of this virus through the human population is an entirely
natural process that completely ignored our puny efforts to control it.
So there is this theory – I don't like the
name very much – but it's called "dry tinder." If people in a country who are vulnerable for to dying in the winter
(usually of respiratory viruses), if you have a very mild winter season, like UK did – we had a very mild seasonal flu
last year and the year before and so did Sweden – then what happens is there are larger number of very vulnerable people
who are even older than usual, and – and I think that's why we suffered a rather large number of deaths. It was still
only 0.06% of the population, equivalent to about four weeks of normal mortality. But countries that had very severe
winters recently, and Greece and Germany certainly had very lethal winter flus in the last two years. I think then, they
had a smaller population of very vulnerable people, and that is the main reason why they lost fewer people. It's not to
do with locking down, it's not to do with testing, or tracking, or tracing. I personally don't think any of those
measures have made any difference at all. So Belgium and UK and Sweden were particularly vulnerable, whereas adjacent
Nordic countries – I – I get fed up with hearing about this, uh, idea that they locked down and that's why it saved them
and afraid the other Nordic countries had normal flu epidemics the last two or three years. Sweden, like UK, had very
mild epidemics: you can just go and look at the number of deaths, it's sub-normal for UK and Sweden. And now we've got a
supra-normal, a larger-than-normal, number of deaths from Covid.
Now there may be other reasons, I'm not saying
there are not but I think those two main forces – the amount of prior immunity and the so-called "dry tinder," what
vulnerable fraction of the population did you have as a result of seasonal flu being intense or not – I think that
accounts for most of it. And it's – it's just hubristic and kind of silly that our government and advisors tell you that
doing things that have never worked in the past, like lockdown are going to make any difference to the transfer of
respiratory viruses. I don't believe it for a moment. There's no scientific evidence behind it and there are much
stronger scientific hypotheses that do explain it. You might think that in terms of numbers of deaths – excess deaths –
that Covid has produced such a large number that this will be an awful year for excess deaths, but surprisingly not.
2020 is lining up to be about eighth in a list since 1993.
Roughly 620,000 people die every year in this
country (UK). They say in life we are also in death – and it's true, it's been awful for those who have been personally
affected by illness and death, but it's not particularly unusual in terms of the
number
of
people who've died. So one of the things I've noticed has happened in – in recent years is that we almost seem to be
moving, uh, you know post-science, post-fact as if – as if facts don't matter. For someone who's qualified and practiced
as a professional scientist for 35 years I think it's deeply distressing that, I don't think you should listen to me if
I talked about – I don't know, the design of motorways or something – like, I don't know anything about motorways or –
or how to grow trees better, I don't know anything about that. But I do know quite a lot about immunology, infection,
inflammation, and the way infectious organisms move through a population.
I've no other reason for giving this interview
other than I really care what happens to my country – and we have to pull ourselves out of this. And I personally
believe the way forward is twofold, it's not difficult. One, we should cease mass testing of the mostly-well in the
community
immediately –
it only provides misleading and grey information, and
yet we're driving policy almost completely based on it. It's definitely wrong, we should not do it. Use the tests in
hospital – I'm not saying don't test – don't continue mass testing, and for God's sake, don't increase the number of
tests. It is a pathology all of its own which must be stamped out by right thinking people. And I'm afraid the people on
SAGE, who have provided the modeling, the predictions, the – the measures that should be taken, that their work is so
badly, and obviously flawed – lethally incompetent, that you should have no more to do with these people. They should be
fired immediately. And the effect of that advice has been to – have cost lots of innocent people their lives from
non-Covid causes, they should be dismissed and reconstituted using an appropriate group of skilled individuals –
especially avoiding any who might even have the
suggestion
of a conflict of
interest. I think we're right at the edge of the precipice. I really hope that we can pull back.
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On Monday more than 30million Britons will be under Tier Two and Three restrictions.
We will then have days – a few weeks at best – until the inevitable total
lockdown.
While Boris Johnson will be the person announcing that catastrophic decision, the measures
are being dictated by a small group of scientists who, in my view, have repeatedly got things
terribly wrong.
The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has made three incorrect assumptions
which have had, and continue to have, disastrous consequences for people's lives and the
economy.
Firstly, Sage assumes that the vast majority of the population is vulnerable to infection;
second, that only 7 per cent of the population has been infected so far; and third, that the
virus causing Covid-19 has a mortality rate of about 1 per cent.
+5
Many individuals who've been infected by other coronaviruses have immunity to closely
related ones such as the Covid-19 virus, argues Dr Mike Yeardon PM Boris Johnson considering
placing England under national lockdown Loaded : 0% Progress : 0% 0:00 Previous Play Skip Mute
Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 0:53 Fullscreen Need Text
+5
According to Cambridge University the Covid-19 mortality rate is at 1.4% , followed by
Imperial College London with 1.2% and an Australian study with 0.75% Dr Yeardon cites the
Stanford study, saying: 'After extensive world wide surveys, pre-eminent scientists such as
John Ioannidis, professor of epidemiology at Stanford University in California, have concluded
that the mortality rate is closer to 0.2 per cent.'
In the absence of further action, Sage concludes that a very high number of deaths will
occur.
If these assumptions were based on fact, then I might have some sympathy with their
position.
After all, if 93 per cent of the country – as they claim – was still potentially
vulnerable to a virus that kills one in 100 people who are infected, I too would want to use
any means necessary to suppress infection until a vaccine comes along, no matter the cost.
The reality, though, is rather different.
Firstly, while the Covid-19 virus is new, other coronaviruses are not.
We have experience of SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012, while in the UK there are at least four
known strains of coronavirus which cause the common cold.
Many individuals who've been infected by other coronaviruses have immunity to closely
related ones such as the Covid-19 virus.
Multiple research groups in Europe and the US have shown that around 30 per cent of the
population was likely already immune to Covid-19 before the virus arrived – something
which Sage continues to ignore.
+5 +5
Sage has similarly failed to accurately revise down its estimated mortality rate for the
virus.
Early in the epidemic Sage modelled a mortality rate of around 1 per cent and, from what I
understand, they may now be working with a number closer to 0.7, which is still far too
high.
After extensive world wide surveys, pre-eminent scientists such as John Ioannidis, professor
of epidemiology at Stanford University in California, have concluded that the mortality rate is
closer to 0.2 per cent.
That figure means one in 500 people infected die.
When applied to the total number of Covid deaths in the UK (around 45,000), this would imply
that approximately 22.5million people have been infected.
That is 33.5 per cent of our population – not Sage's 7 per cent calculation.
Sage reached its conclusion by assessing the prevalence of Covid-19 antibodies in national
blood surveys.
Yet we know that not every infected individual produces antibodies.
Indeed, the immune systems of most healthy people bypass the complex and energy-intensive
process of making antibodies because the virus can be overcome by other means.
The human immune system has several lines of defence.
These include innate immunity which is comprised of the body's physical barriers to
infection and protective secretions (the skin and its oils, the cough reflex, tears etc); its
inflammatory response (to localise and minimise infection and injury), and the production of
non-specific cells (phagocytes) that target an invading virus/bacterium.
In addition, the immune system produces antibodies that protect against a specific virus or
bacterium (and confer immunity) and T-cells (a type of white blood cell) that are also
specific.
Covid-19 immunity may only last for a few months Loaded : 0% Progress : 0% 0:00
Previous Play Skip Mute Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 1:27 Fullscreen Need Text RELATED
ARTICLES
It is the T-cells that are crucial in our body's response to respiratory viruses such as
Covid-19.
Studies show that while not all individuals infected by the Covid-19 viruses have
antibodies, they do have T-cells that can respond to the virus and therefore have immunity.
I am persuaded of this because, of the 750million people the World Health Organisation says
have been infected by the virus to date, almost none have been reinfected.
Yes, there have been a handful of cases but they are anomalies, a tiny number among three
quarters of a billion people.
The fact is that people don't get reinfected. That is how the immune system works and if it
didn't, humanity would not have survived.
+5
Percentage change in coronavirus cases across London in the week to October 25. Dr Yeardon
writes:' Ministers and some parts of the media present the pandemic as the biggest public
health emergency in decades, when in fact mortality in 2020 so far ranks eighth out of the last
27 years.'
So, if some 33.5 per cent of our population have already been infected by the virus this
year (and are now immune) – and a further 30 per cent were already immune before we even
heard of Covid-19, then once you also factor in that a tenth of the UK population is aged ten
or under and therefore largely invulnerable (children are rarely made ill by the virus), that
leaves about 26.5 per cent of people who are actually susceptible to being infected.
That's a far cry from Sage's current prediction of 93 per cent.
It is also worth contextualising the UK death toll.
Ministers and some parts of the media present the pandemic as the biggest public health
emergency in decades, when in fact mortality in 2020 so far ranks eighth out of the last 27
years.
The death rate at present is also normal for the time of year – the number of
respiratory deaths is actually low for late October.
In other words, not only is the virus less dangerous than we are being led to believe, with
almost three quarters of the population at no risk of infection, we're actually very close to
achieving herd immunity.
Which is why I am convinced this so-called second wave of rising infections and, sadly,
deaths will fizzle out without overwhelming the NHS.
On that basis, the nation should immediately be allowed to resume normal life – at the
very least we should be avoiding a second national lockdown at all costs.
I believe that Sage has been appallingly negligent and its incompetence has cost the lives
of thousands of people from avoidable, non-coronavirus causes while simultaneously decimating
our economy and today I implore ministers to start listening to a broader scientific view.
My argument against the need for lockdown isn't too dissimilar to the Great Barrington
Declaration, co-authored by three professors from Oxford, Harvard and Stanford universities
– laughably dismissed as 'emphatically false' by Health Secretary Matt Hancock who has no
scientific qualifications – and signed by more then 44,000 scientists, public health
experts and clinicians so far, including Nobel Prize winner Dr Michael Levitt.
In my opinion, this government is ignoring a formidable collective of respected scientific
opinion and relying instead on its body of deified, yet incompetent advisers.
I have no confidence in Sage – and neither should you – and I fear that, yet
again, they're about to force further decisions that we will look back on with deep regret.
If we are to take one thing from 2020, it is that we should demand more honesty and
competence from those appointed to look after us. Share or comment on this article:DR MIKE YEADON:Three facts
Money quote: "I think the PCR test at present is throwing up so many false positives that in
fact we're misdiagnosing the cause of the deaths that are being reported. The number of deaths at
the moment is normal for the time of year. So if I'm right and the pandemic is fundamentally
over, what's going on? And I think quite simply it's not over because SAGE says it's not!"
Notable quotes:
"... You also don't set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn't been extensively tested on human subjects." ..."
Michael Yeadon has voiced [his concerns about government policies regarding COVID-19] and it
has left everyone shocked. As Pfizer pharmaceuticals breaks news for
bringing corona virus vaccine , a former vice president and chief scientists of the company
Michael Yeadon said that there is no need for any vaccine to end the ongoing pandemic.
According to a report published in the Lockdown Sceptics, Yeadon wrote: "There is absolutely
no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic. You do not vaccinate people who aren't at risk
from the disease. You also don't set about
planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn't been
extensively tested on human subjects." Yeadon made the comment on the vaccine development
while criticizing the role played by the Scientific Advisory
Group for Emergencies (SAGE), a government agency of the UK.
SAGE is tasked with a role to determine public lockdown policies; in the UK, as a response
to the COVID-19 virus. He added, "SAGE says everyone was susceptible and only 7 per cent have
been infected. They have ignored all precedent in the field of immunology memory against
respiratory viruses. They have either not seen or disregarded excellent quality work from
numerous world-leading clinical immunologists; which show that around 30 per cent of the
population had prior immunity."
Michael Yeadon wrote "They should also have excluded from 'susceptible' a large subset; of
the youngest children, who appear not to become infected biology; means their cells express
less of the spike protein receptor, called ACE2. I have not assumed all young children don't
participate in transmission, but believe a two-thirds value is very conservative. It's not
material anyway. So SAGE is demonstrably wrong in one really crucial variable, they assumed no
prior immunity, whereas the evidence clearly points; to a value of around 30 per cent (and
nearly 40 per cent if you include some young children, who technically are 'resistant' rather
than 'immune')."
He concluded that the pandemic is effectively over and; can easily be handled by a properly
functioning NHS (National Health Service).
They have total control of the narrative and if there is any push back by anybody they are
censored or scapegoated. The journey into Informational Dystopia took less than 18
months.
Dr. Samantha Bailey; Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown;
Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr. Peter Doshi; Dr. Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr.
Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff; Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph
Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits; Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr.
Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
Michael Yeadon, wasn't just any scientist. The 60-year-old is a former vice president of Pfizer, where he spent 16 years as an
allergy and respiratory researcher. He later co-founded a biotech firm that the Swiss drugmaker Novartis purchased for at least $325
million.
This is amazing interview for a scientist who really knows his staff... His warning is
essentially a very powerful warning against Lysenkoism in science.
I disagree with him on some minor points like wearing masks in closed spaces as well as the spectrum of applicability of
vaccines (I think that healthcare workers, teachers and other people who systematically interact with a lot of (possibly infected)
people might benefit from vaccination, which should in any case be strocly voluntary. But I agree that vaccinating people who
already have had COVID-19 and children s very questionable and probably indefensible practice -- flavor of Lysenkoism which is
called Fauchism. Also stress of vaccines and downgrading therapy is also Faucism, or worse.
I also disagree with his statement that vaccine should be effective against all strains. Now we know that htis not the case. For
exampe South afrecan mutation successfully infects people vaccinated wit the the first generation vaccines.
He is against medicines which are used with violation of safety protocols. He is anti unsafe
medicines, no matter what they are.
We never have such an absurd attribution of death to COVID, when that fact the diseased is
false positive serve as the key reason of death
Lockdowns were political hysteria. Witch hunt against witches which never arrived. They were
unscientific and fradulent. Lockdown were never used before because they are ineffective. Instead
in the past guaranteed the sick. Mass testing of people without symptoms is Lysenkoism and defies
common sense.
Non-symptomatic people will not infect you. That's faucism and new flavor of Lysenkoism.
Asymptomatic transmission is bunk. It can happen but this never exceed fraction of one
percent.
It is all about increasing of the level of fear and increasing political control as in famous
quote. The only open question to what end this control will used for.
PCR technology is similar to technology used in forensic investigation using genetic
material. They just ignore false positives. Nobody in the world releases the percentage of false
positive of PcR test and dependence of the number of false positive on the number of
amplification.
I never expected to be writing something like this. I am an ordinary person, recently semi-retired from a career in the
pharmaceutical industry and biotech, where I spent over 30 years trying to solve problems of disease understanding and seek new
treatments for allergic and inflammatory disorders of lung and skin. I've always been interested in problem solving, so when
anything biological comes along, my attention is drawn to it. Come 2020, came SARS-CoV-2. I've written
about the pandemic as objectively as I could. The scientific method never leaves a person who trained and worked as a
professional scientist. Please do read that piece. My co-authors & I will submit it to the normal rigours of peer review, but that
process is slow and many pieces of new science this year have come to attention through pre-print servers and other less
conventional outlets.
While paying close attention to data, we all initially focused on the sad matter of deaths. I found it remarkable that, in
discussing the COVID-19 related deaths, most people I spoke to had no idea of large numbers. Asked approximately how many people a
year die in the UK in the ordinary course of events, each a personal tragedy, They usually didn't know. I had to inform them it is
around 620,000, sometimes less if we had a mild winter, sometimes quite a bit higher if we had a severe 'flu season. I mention this
number because we know that around 42,000 people have died with or of COVID-19. While it's a huge number of people, its 'only' 0.06%
of the UK population. Its not a coincidence that this is almost the same proportion who have died with or of COVID-19 in each of the
heavily infected European countries – for example, Sweden. The annual all-causes mortality of 620,000 amounts to 1,700 per day,
lower in summer and higher in winter. That has always been the lot of humans in the temperate zones. So for context, 42,000 is about
~24 days worth of normal mortality. Please know I am not minimising it, just trying to get some perspective on it. Deaths of this
magnitude are not uncommon, and can occur in the more severe flu seasons. Flu vaccines help a little, but on only three occasions in
the last decade did vaccination reach 50% effectiveness. They're good, but they've never been magic bullets for respiratory viruses.
Instead, we have learned to live with such viruses, ranging from numerous common colds all the way to pneumonias which can kill.
Medicines and human caring do their best.
So, to this article. Its about the testing we do with something called PCR, an amplification technique, better known to biologists
as a research tool used in our labs, when trying to unpick mechanisms of disease. I was frankly astonished to realise they're
sometimes used in population screening for diseases – astonished because it is a very exacting technique, prone to invisible errors
and it's quite a tall order to get reliable information out of it, especially because of the prodigious amounts of amplification
involved in attempting to pick up a strand of viral genetic code. The test cannot distinguish between a living virus and a short
strand of RNA from a virus which broke into pieces weeks or months ago.
I believe I have identified a serious, really a fatal flaw in the PCR test used in what is called by the UK Government the Pillar 2
screening – that is, testing many people out in their communities. I'm going to go through this with care and in detail because I'm
a scientist and dislike where this investigation takes me. I'm not particularly political and my preference is for competent, honest
administration over the actual policies chosen. We're a reasonable lot in UK and not much given to extremes. What I'm particularly
reluctant about is that, by following the evidence, I have no choice but to show that the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, misled the
House of Commons and also made misleading statements in a radio interview. Those are serious accusations. I know that. I'm not a
ruthless person. But I'm writing this anyway, because what I have uncovered is of monumental importance to the health and wellbeing
of all the people living in the nation I have always called home.
Back to the story, and then to the evidence. When the first (and I think, only) wave of COVID-19 hit the UK, I was with almost
everyone else in being very afraid. I'm 60 and in reasonable health, but on learning that I had about a 1% additional risk of
perishing if I caught the virus, I discovered I was far from ready to go. So, I wasn't surprised or angry when the first lockdown
arrived. It must have been a very difficult thing to decide. However, before the first three-week period was over, I'd begun to
develop an understanding of what was happening. The rate of infection, which has been calculated to have infected well over 100,000
new people every day around the peak, began to fall, and was declining before lockdown. Infection continued to spread out, at an
ever-reducing rate and we saw this in the turning point of daily deaths, at a grim press conference each afternoon. We now know that
lockdown made no difference at all to the spread of the virus. We can tell this because the interval between catching the virus and,
in those who don't make it, their death is longer than the interval between lockdown and peak daily deaths. There isn't any
controversy about this fact, easily demonstrated, but I'm aware some people like to pretend it was lockdown that turned the
pandemic, perhaps to justify the extraordinary price we have all paid to do it. That price wasn't just economic. It involved
avoidable deaths from diseases other than COVID-19, as medical services were restricted, in order to focus on the virus. Some say
that lockdown, directly and indirectly, killed as many as the virus. I don't know. Its not something I've sought to learn. But I
mention because interventions in all our lives should not be made lightly. Its not only inconvenience, but real suffering, loss of
livelihoods, friendships, anchors of huge importance to us all, that are severed by such acts. We need to be certain that the prize
is worth the price. While it is uncertain it was, even for the first lockdown, I too supported it, because we did not know what we
faced, and frankly, almost everyone else did it, except Sweden. I am now resolutely against further interventions in what I have
become convinced is a fruitless attempt to 'control the virus'. We are, in my opinion – shared by others, some of whom are well
placed to assess the situation – closer to the end of the pandemic in terms of deaths, than we are to its middle. I believe we
should provide the best protection we can for any vulnerable people, and otherwise cautiously get on with our lives. I think we are
all going to get a little more Swedish over time.
In recent weeks, though, it cannot have escaped anyone's attention that there has been a drum beat which feels for all the world
like a prelude to yet more fruitless and damaging restrictions. Think back to mid-summer. We were newly out of lockdown and despite
concerns for crowded beaches, large demonstrations, opening of shops and pubs, the main item on the news in relation to COVID-19 was
the reassuring and relentless fall in daily deaths. I noticed that, as compared to the slopes of the declining death tolls in many
nearby countries, that our slope was too flat. I even mentioned to scientist friends that inferred the presence of some fixed signal
that was being mixed up with genuine COVID-19 deaths. Imagine how gratifying it was when the definition of a COVID-19 death was
changed to line up with that in other countries and in a heartbeat our declining death toll line became matched with that elsewhere.
I was sure it would: what we have experienced and witnessed is a terrible kind of equilibrium. A virus that kills few, then leaves
survivors who are almost certainly immune – a virus to which perhaps 30-50% were already immune because it has relatives and some of
us have already encountered them – accounts for the whole terrible but also fascinating biological process. There was a very interesting
piece in the BMJ in
recent days that offers potential support for this contention.
Now we have learned some of the unusual characteristics of the new virus, better treatments (anti-inflammatory steroids,
anti-coagulants and in particular, oxygen masks and not ventilators in the main) the 'case fatality rate' even for the most hard-hit
individuals is far lower now than it was six months ago.
As there is no foundational, medical or scientific literature which tells us to expect a 'second wave', I began to pay more
attention to the phrase as it appeared on TV, radio and print media – all on the same day – and has been relentlessly repeated ever
since. I was interviewed
recently by Julia Hartley-Brewer on her talkRADIO show and on that occasion I called on the Government to disclose to us the
evidence upon which they were relying to predict this second wave. Surely they have some evidence? I don't think they do. I searched
and am very qualified to do so, drawing on academic friends, and we were all surprised to find that there is nothing at all. The
last two novel coronaviruses, Sar (2003) and MERS (2012), were of one wave each. Even the WW1 flu 'waves' were almost certainly a
series of single waves involving more than one virus. I believe any second wave talk is pure speculation. Or perhaps it is in a
model somewhere, disconnected from the world of evidence to me? It would be reasonable to expect some limited 'resurgence' of a
virus given we don't mix like cordial in a glass of water, but in a more lumpy, human fashion. You're most in contact with family,
friends and workmates and they are the people with whom you generally exchange colds.
A long period of imposed restrictions, in addition to those of our ordinary lives did prevent the final few percent of virus mixing
with the population. With the movements of holidays, new jobs, visiting distant relatives, starting new terms at universities and
schools, that final mixing is under way. It should not be a terrifying process. It happens with every new virus, flu included. It's
just that we've never before in our history chased it around the countryside with a technique more suited to the biology lab than to
a supermarket car park.
A very long prelude, but necessary. Part of the 'project fear' that is rather too obvious, involving second waves, has been the
daily count of 'cases'. Its important to understand that, according to the infectious disease specialists I've spoken to, the word
'case' has to mean more than merely the presence of some foreign organism. It must present signs (things medics notice) and symptoms
(things you notice). And in most so-called cases, those testing positive had no signs or symptoms of illness at all. There was much
talk of asymptomatic spreading, and as a biologist this surprised me. In almost every case, a person is symptomatic because they
have a high viral load and either it is attacking their body or their immune system is fighting it, generally a mix. I don't doubt
there have been some cases of asymptomatic transmission, but I'm confident it is not important.
That all said, Government decided to call a person a 'case' if their swab sample was positive for viral RNA, which is what is
measured in PCR. A person's sample can be positive if they have the virus, and so it should. They can also be positive if they've
had the virus some weeks or months ago and recovered. It's faintly possible that high loads of related, but different coronaviruses,
which can cause some of the common colds we get, might also react in the PCR test, though it's unclear to me if it does.
But there's a final setting in which a person can be positive and that's a random process. This may have multiple causes, such as
the amplification technique not being perfect and so amplifying the 'bait' sequences placed in with the sample, with the aim of
marrying up with related SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA. There will be many other contributions to such positives. These are what are called
false positives.
Think of any diagnostic test a doctor might use on you. The ideal diagnostic test correctly confirms all who have the disease and
never wrongly indicates that healthy people have the disease. There is no such test. All tests have some degree of weakness in
generating false positives. The important thing is to know how often this happens, and this is called the false positive rate. If 1
in 100 disease-free samples are wrongly coming up positive, the disease is not present, we call that a 1% false positive rate. The
actual or operational false positive rate differs, sometimes substantially, under different settings, technical operators, detection
methods and equipment. I'm focusing solely on the false positive rate in Pillar 2, because most people do not have the virus
(recently around 1 in 1000 people and earlier in summer it was around 1 in 2000 people). It is when the amount of disease, its
so-called prevalence, is low that any amount of a false positive rate can be a major problem. This problem can be so severe that
unless changes are made, the test is hopelessly unsuitable to the job asked of it. In this case, the test in Pillar 2 was and
remains charged with the job of identifying people with the virus, yet as I will show, it is unable to do so.
Because of the high false positive rate and the low prevalence, almost every positive test, a so-called case, identified by Pillar 2
since May of this year has been a FALSE POSITIVE. Not just a few percent. Not a quarter or even a half of the positives are FALSE,
but around 90% of them. Put simply, the number of people Mr Hancock sombrely tells us about is an overestimate by a factor of about
ten-fold. Earlier in the summer, it was an overestimate by about 20-fold.
Let me take you through this, though if you're able to read Prof Carl Heneghan's clearly
written piece first, I'm more confident that I'll be successful in explaining this dramatic conclusion to you. (Here is a link to
the record of numbers of tests, combining Pillar 1 (hospital) and Pillar 2 (community).)
Imagine 10,000 people getting tested using those swabs you see on TV. We have a good estimate of the general prevalence of the virus
from the ONS, who are wholly independent (from Pillar 2 testing) and are testing only a few people a day, around one per cent of the
numbers recently tested in Pillar 2. It is reasonable to assume that most of the time, those being tested do not have symptoms.
People were asked to only seek a test if they have symptoms. However, we know from TV news and stories on social media from sampling
staff, from stern guidance from the Health Minister and the surprising fact that in numerous locations around the country, the local
council is leafleting people's houses, street by street to come and get tested.
The bottom line is that it is reasonable to expect the prevalence of the virus to be close to the number found by ONS, because they
sample randomly, and would pick up symptomatic and asymptomatic people in proportion to their presence in the community. As of the
most recent ONS survey, to a first approximation, the virus was found in 1 in every 1000 people. This can also be written as 0.1%.
So when all these 10,000 people are tested in Pillar 2, you'd expect 10 true positives to be found (false negatives can be an issue
when the virus is very common, but in this community setting, it is statistically unimportant and so I have chosen to ignore it,
better to focus only on false positives).
So, what is the false positive rate of testing in Pillar 2? For months, this has been a concern. It appears that it isn't known,
even though as I've mentioned, you absolutely need to know it in order to work out whether the diagnostic test has any value! What
do we know about the false positive rate? Well, we do know that the Government's own scientists were very concerned about it, and a report on
this problem was sent to SAGE dated June 3rd 2020. I quote: "Unless we understand the operational false positive rate of the UK's
RT-PCR testing system, we risk over-estimating the COVID-19 incidence, the demand on track and trace and the extent of asymptomatic
infection". In that same report, the authors helpfully listed the lowest to highest false positive rate of dozens of tests using the
same technology. The lowest value for false positive rate was 0.8%.
Allow me to explain the impact of a false positive rate of 0.8% on Pillar 2. We return to our 10,000 people who've volunteered to
get tested, and the expected ten with virus (0.1% prevalence or 1:1000) have been identified by the PCR test. But now we've to
calculate how many false positives are to accompanying them. The shocking answer is 80. 80 is 0.8% of 10,000. That's how many false
positives you'd get every time you were to use a Pillar 2 test on a group of that size.
The effect of this is, in this example, where 10,000 people have been tested in Pillar 2, could be summarised in a headline like
this: "90 new cases were identified today" (10 real positive cases and 80 false positives). But we know this is wildly incorrect.
Unknown to the poor technician, there were in this example, only 10 real cases. 80 did not even have a piece of viral RNA in their
sample. They are really false positives.
I'm going to explain how bad this is another way, back to diagnostics. If you'd submitted to a test and it was positive, you'd
expect the doctor to tell you that you had a disease, whatever it was testing for. Usually, though, they'll answer a slightly
different question: "If the patient is positive in this test, what is the probability they have the disease?" Typically, for a good
diagnostic test, the doctor will be able to say something like 95% and you and they can live with that. You might take a different,
confirmatory test, if the result was very serious, like cancer. But in our Pillar 2 example, what is the probability a person
testing positive in Pillar 2 actually has COVID-19? The awful answer is 11% (10 divided by 80 + 10). The test exaggerates the number
of covid-19 cases by almost ten-fold (90 divided by 10). Scared yet? That daily picture they show you, with the 'cases' climbing up
on the right-hand side? Its horribly exaggerated. Its not a mistake, as I shall show.
Earlier in the summer, the ONS showed the virus prevalence was a little lower, 1 in 2000 or 0.05%. That doesn't sound much of a
difference, but it is. Now the Pillar 2 test will find half as many real cases from our notional 10,000 volunteers, so 5 real cases.
But the flaw in the test means it will still find 80 false positives (0.8% of 10,000). So its even worse. The headline would be "85
new cases identified today". But now the probability a person testing positive has the virus is an absurdly low 6% (5 divided by 80
+ 5). Earlier in the summer, this same test exaggerated the number of COVID-19 cases by 17-fold (85 divided by 5). Its so easy to
generate an apparently large epidemic this way. Just ignore the problem of false positives. Pretend its zero. But it is never zero.
This test is fatally flawed and MUST immediately be withdrawn and never used again in this setting unless shown to be fixed. The
examples I gave are very close to what is actually happening every day as you read this.
I'm bound to ask, did Mr Hancock know of this fatal flaw? Did he know of the effect it would inevitably have, and is still having,
not only on the reported case load, but the nation's state of anxiety. I'd love to believe it is all an innocent mistake. If it was,
though, he'd have to resign over sheer incompetence. But is it? We know that internal scientists wrote to SAGE, in terms, and,
surely, this short but shocking warning document would have been drawn to the Health Secretary's attention? If that was the only bit
of evidence, you might be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the evidence grows more damning.
Recently, I published with my co-authors a short Position Paper. I don't think by then, a month ago or so, the penny had quite
dropped with me. And I'm an experienced biomedical research scientist, used to dealing with complex datasets and probabilities.
On September 11th 2020, I was a guest on Julia Hartley-Brewer's talkRADIO
show. Among other things, I called upon Mr Hancock to release the evidence underscoring his confidence in and planning for 'the
second wave'. This evidence has not yet been shown to the public by anyone. I also demanded he disclose the operational false
positive rate in Pillar 2 testing.
On September 16th, I was back on Julia's show and this time focused on the false positive rate issue (1m 45s – 2min 30s). I had read
Carl Heneghan's analysis showing that even if the false positive rate was as low as 0.1%, 8 times lower than any similar test, it
still yields a majority of false positives. So, my critique doesn't fall if the actual false positive rate is lower than my assumed
0.8%.
On September 18th, Mr Hancock again appeared, as often he does, on Julia Hartley-Brewer's show. Julia asked
him directly (1min 50s – on) what the false positive rate in Pillar 2 is. Mr Hancock said "It's under 1%". Julia again asked him
exactly what it was, and did he even know it? He didn't answer that, but then said "it means that, for all the positive cases, the
likelihood of one being a false positive is very small".
That is a seriously misleading statement as it is incorrect. The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is
between 89-94%, or near-certainty. Of note, even when ONS was recording its lowest-ever prevalence, the positive rate in Pillar 2
testing never fell below 0.8%.
It gets worse for the Health Secretary. On September the 17th, I believe, Mr Hancock took a question from
Sir Desmond Swayne about false positives. It is clear that Sir Desmond is asking about Pillar 2.
Mr Hancock replied: "I like my right honourable friend very much and I wish it were true. The reason we have surveillance testing,
done by ONS, is to ensure that we're constantly looking at a nationally representative sample at what the case rate is. The latest
ONS survey, published on Friday, does show a rise consummate (sic) with the increased number of tests that have come back positive."
He did not answer Sir Desmond's question, but instead answered a question of his choosing. Did the Health Secretary knowingly
mislead the House? By referring only to ONS and not even mentioning the false positive rate of the test in Pillar 2 he was, as it
were, stealing the garb of ONS's more careful work which has a lower false positive rate, in order to smuggle through the hidden and
very much higher, false positive rate in Pillar 2. The reader will have to decide for themselves.
Pillar 2 testing has been ongoing since May but it's only in recent weeks that it has reached several hundreds of thousands of tests
per day. The effect of the day by day climb in the number of people that are being described as 'cases' cannot be overstated. I know
it is inducing fear, anxiety and concern for the possibility of new and unjustified restrictions, including lockdowns. I have no
idea what Mr Hancock's motivations are. But he has and continues to use the hugely inflated output from a fatally flawed Pillar 2
test and appears often on media, gravely intoning the need for additional interventions (none of which, I repeat, are proven to be
effective).
You will be very familiar with the cases plot which is shown on most TV broadcasts at the moment. It purports to show the numbers of
cases which rose then fell in the spring, and the recent rise in cases. This graph is always accompanied by the headline that "so
many thousands of new cases were detected in the last 24 hours".
You should know that there are two major deceptions, in that picture, which combined are very likely both to mislead and to induce
anxiety. Its ubiquity indicates that it is a deliberate choice.
Firstly, it is very misleading in relation to the spring peak of cases. This is because we had no community screening capacity at
that time. A colleague has adjusted the plot to show the number of cases we would have detected, had there been a well-behaved
community test capability available. The effect is to greatly increase the size of the spring cases peak, because there are very
many cases for each hospitalisation and many hospitalisations for every death.
Secondly, as I hope I have shown and persuaded you, the cases in summer and at present, generated by seriously flawed Pillar 2
tests, should be corrected downwards by around ten-fold.
I do believe genuine cases are rising somewhat. This is, however, also true for flu, which we neither measure daily nor report on
every news bulletin. If we did, you would appreciate that, going forward, it is quite likely that flu is a greater risk to public
health than COVID-19. The corrected cases plot (above) does, I believe, put the recent rises in incidence of COVID-19 in a much more
reasonable context. I thought you should see that difference before arriving at your own verdict on this sorry tale.
There are very serious consequences arising from grotesque over-estimation of so-called cases in Pillar 2 community testing, which I
believe was put in place knowingly. Perhaps Mr Hancock believes his own copy about the level of risk now faced by the general
public? Its not for me to deduce. What this huge over-estimation has done is to have slowed the normalisation of the NHS. We are all
aware that access to medical services is, to varying degrees, restricted. Many specialities were greatly curtailed in spring and
after some recovery, some are still between a third and a half below their normal capacities. This has led both to continuing delays
and growth of waiting lists for numerous operations and treatments. I am not qualified to assess the damage to the nation's and
individuals' health as a direct consequence of this extended wait for a second wave. Going into winter with this configuration will,
on top of the already restricted access for six months, lead inevitably to a large number of avoidable, non-Covid deaths. That is
already a serious enough charge. Less obvious but, in aggregate, additional impacts arise from fear of the virus, inappropriately
heightened in my view, which include: damage to or even destruction of large numbers of businesses, especially small businesses,
with attendant loss of livelihoods, loss of educational opportunities, strains on family relationships, eating disorders, increasing
alcoholism and domestic abuse and even suicides, to name but a few.
In closing, I wish to note that in the last 40 years alone the UK has had seven official epidemics/pandemics; AIDS, Swine flu, CJD,
SARS, MERS, Bird flu as well as annual, seasonal flu. All were very worrying but schools remained open and the NHS treated everybody
and most of the population were unaffected. The country would rarely have been open if it had been shut down every time.
I have explained how a hopelessly-performing diagnostic test has been, and continues to be used, not for diagnosis of disease but,
it seems, solely to create fear.
This misuse of power must cease. All the above costs are on the ledger, too, when weighing up the residual risks to society from
COVID-19 and the appropriate actions to take, if any. Whatever else happens, the test used in Pillar 2 must be immediately withdrawn
as it provides no useful information. In the absence of vastly inflated case numbers arising from this test, the pandemic would be
seen and felt to be almost over.
Dr Mike Yeadon is the former CSO and VP, Allergy and Respiratory Research Head with Pfizer Global R&D and co-Founder of Ziarco
Pharma Ltd.
Its both...its fear porn and also shedding...according to researchers.
The National Vaccine Information Center published an important document relevant to this
topic titled "The Emerging Risks of Live Virus & Virus Vectored Vaccines: Vaccine Strain
Virus Infection, Shedding & Transmission." Pages 34-36 in the section on "Measles, Mumps,
Rubella Viruses and Live Attenuated Measles, Mumps, Rubella Viruses" discuss evidence that
the MMR vaccine can lead to measles infection and transmission.
New policies will artificially deflate "breakthrough infections" in the vaccinated, while
the old rules continue to inflate case numbers in the unvaccinated.
The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and
testing for "Covid19" in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy "vaccines" are
effective at preventing the alleged disease.
They made no secret of this, announcing the policy changes on their website in late
April/early May, (though naturally without admitting the fairly obvious motivation behind the
change).
The trick is in their reporting of what they call "breakthrough infections" – that is
people who are fully "vaccinated" against Sars-Cov-2 infection, but get infected anyway.
Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention –
to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:
Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition
of "Covid case", used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a
"Covid19 case", even if they never experienced any symptoms .
Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all , and
now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated
people.
Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected "breakthrough
infections".
From the CDC's instructions for state health authorities on handling "possible breakthrough
infections" (uploaded to their website in late April):
For cases with a known RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) value, submit only specimens with Ct
value ≤28 to CDC for sequencing. (Sequencing is not feasible with higher Ct values.)
Throughout the pandemic, CT values in excess of 35 have been the norm, with labs around the
world going into the 40s.
18 play_arrow
Just a Little Froth in the Market 15 hours ago
They are manipulating the numbers to make it look like only the unvaxxed get infected.
That is fraud, and this rogue agency needs to be stopped.
Enraged 1 hour ago remove link
The CDC is not an independent government agency, but is actually a subsidiary of Big
Pharma.
The CDC owns patents on at least 57 different vaccines, and profits $4.1 billion per year
in vaccination sales.
There are CDC patents applicable to vaccines for Flu, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, HIV,
Anthrax, Rabies, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, Group A Strep, Pneumococcal disease,
Meningococcal disease, RSV, Gastroenteritis, Japanese encephalitis, SARS, Rift Valley Fever,
and chlamydophila pneumoniae.
People might be starting to get the impression that the federal regime, which owns the
media, judiciary, academia, bureaucracy, and big tech, are attempting to manipulate
information to increase their power and wealth. The elites have confiscated almost ALL the
commoners wealth and now they want the rest of the money and complete and total control. Mao
or Stalin would be proud of these fascists.
LetThemEatRand 17 hours ago
Imagine living under the rule of a globalist oligarchy that controls the Press. That.
JakeIsNotFake 14 hours ago remove link
What is that if not an obvious and deliberate act of deception?
Well, before 3/20, this would have been a FELONY. Each time a lab provided a patient with
KNOWINGLY FALSE test results, the lab and the doctor would have been subject to a 16 month
term in the state penitentiary. For each instance.
Can you imagine getting a positive, terminal prognosis, committing a well deserved murder,
and then not dying?
Oopsie! My bad.
gregga777 14 hours ago
Government, and that especially includes the so-called "Scientists" in government service,
are Corrupt, Incompetent, Unaccountable and Untrustworthy. The Government's so-called
"Scientists," including those funded by Government contracts, are no more trustworthy than
politicians.
PeterLong 14 hours ago
Sometimes you have no choice. We had to undergo surgical procedures in a hospital and had
to get tested a few days before. Whether they use the same parameters for these type cases as
for others I don't know. Perhaps they are reluctant to turn away or delay surgical cases for
BS reasons and therefore possibly use more realistic standards , but my opinion of the entire
medical industry has become so low that I could believe anything. I still wonder about
hospital and other medical practices finances concenring this scam. Have they continued to
profit somehow despite being shut down in some ways?
Beebee 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
Same here, Peter. Hubby's mother broke her elbow last year. And we had to bring her to
tests to do surgery. She was negative. But, afterwards, suddenly, developed lymphoma. Now, I
wonder about these tests! The cancer chemo was delayed due to all this stuff. She had so many
Covid tests, all negative, and just now completed the chemo rounds. It's not necessary and
they do make a profit. She is the only reason we stay here, otherwise we would moved from NY.
She's a mess, and I resent the fact the hold-ups are due to testing.
fewer 36 minutes ago
Hospitals made tons of money on this. Uncle Sugar pays so much, and the administrators
always slice & dice the budget/reports so they seem on the edge of bankruptcy no matter
what. Naturally all of this is "debunked" by (((the usual sources))).
Here's one fact that the "debunkers" deliberately ignore: the feds pay for all the
treatment of uninsured C19 patients... including illegals . Normally if an illegal comes to
the ED and needs to be admitted, the hospital can't refuse to do that and instead has to eat
the cost (well, they pass the cost on to hardworking, insurance having people like you and
me, but bear with me).
If they admit the person for a reason *other* than C19, then the hospital still eats the
cost. Now, tell me, what's the incentive here if an illegal comes in with a bunch of
comorbidities and needs admission to manage those? What should be recorded as the admitting
diagnosis/problem if they can get swabbed for a high Ct PCR test (a meaningless positive
result)?
lasvegaspersona 7 hours ago
After more than 50 years in medicine, I tell friends and family, 'stay away from us if you
can'. Modern medicine is a rats nest of false positive testing and chasing trivial
abnormalities on imaging studies.
The sad part is patients feel relieved when they are told 'nothing was finally
found'....this after great expense of time and money.
spiff 54 minutes ago
Caught Red-Handed
Yes, define "Caught". I have a feeling life will continue without consequences for the
perpetrator of this fraud, or even your average person knowing about it.
_triplesix_ 14 hours ago
CDC, FBI, CIA, DHS, NIH, EPA, DOE...shall I go on?
Drater 6 hours ago
FAA, TSA, SEC, FCC, NHTSA, DOJ
JakeIsNotFake 13 hours ago
CDC is .gov. As an NGO, (funded by 99% .gov and 1% phony donations), the CDC can legally,
(not honestly), claim they are just an advisory body.
While noteing the distinction, please pay attention to the language: Mask mandate,
guidelines, advisories are NOT laws. Just like travel advisories, protocols, and best
practice. These are all weasel words. And totally unenforceable.
snatchpounder PREMIUM 9 hours ago
Everything is rigged, this plandemic, elections, markets you name it because when there's
currency to be made you'll always have someone more than willing to do it. Big pharma is
making a killing literally in this case and tax slaves paid for the gene therapy shots
creation. And all the rubes who took the shot will pay much more than just currency for their
naivety.
archipusz 11 hours ago
We can speculate all we want about what the agenda is of the CDC.
But what we know is that it has nothing to do with the truth or our health.
Enraged 1 hour ago remove link
The CDC is not an independent government agency, but is actually a subsidiary of Big
Pharma.
The CDC owns patents on at least 57 different vaccines, and profits $4.1 billion per year
in vaccination sales.
There are CDC patents applicable to vaccines for Flu, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, HIV,
Anthrax, Rabies, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, Group A Strep, Pneumococcal disease,
Meningococcal disease, RSV, Gastroenteritis, Japanese encephalitis, SARS, Rift Valley Fever,
and chlamydophila pneumoniae.
amazing they do not even try to hide the deception.
but reporting on such deception will have one labeled a "conspiracy theorist", and the FBI
classifies "conspiracy theorists" as "domestic terrorists".
That's right, re-stating publicly available comments and policies of government agencies
and officials will have you branded as a domestic terrorist.
And the "intellectuals" in the media, academia, and "think-tanks" have abandoned all logic
and common sense to serve their masters in the government and big pharma.
history will not forget.
smacker 12 hours ago
Very good article which rightly exposes the CDC and all those around it for being utterly
corrupt and are perpetrating a fake pandemic with sinister objectives.
crazzziecanuck 11 hours ago
You realize, it's Putin's fault. Putin can rig a presidential election, it's child's play
for him to manipulate the CDC to do his evil bidding.
Everything is Putin's fault: Trump, COVID, 737 Max crashes, slavery, crucifixion of
Christ, the end of the dinosaurs, and so on.
archipusz 13 hours ago
Notice how Rand Paul will argue with Fauci about policy over when we should wear a mask,
BUT WILL NOT DARE ASK THEM WHY THEY HAVE, AND ARE, COMMITTING CRIMINAL FRAUD WITH THE PCR
TESTING?
Demystified 2 hours ago
It's a rigged game, a scam. These people are so dishonest, and intent on falsifying Covid
test results by applying different standards for vaccinated and unvaccinated people? They are
perpetuating a fraud on the people.
You have to be brain dead to not see what they are doing.
Robert De Zero 3 hours ago remove link
This is so evil. Medicalized dictatorship, supported by propaganda media, is here.
Alien 851 4 hours ago
This is NEWS??? Are you kidding?
It was March 2020 when they changed the rules on reporting of Covid deaths to run the
count as high as possible. It is still used in fear headlines today! How about wildly
fluctuation "new cases" that seem to totally respect state borders...?
For God's sake, wake the hell up!!!!
In March, the CDC redefined what is to be reported by Medical Examiners in the US. One
of them gave examples of Covid Death cases reporting criteria:
"The case definition is very simplistic," Dr. Ngozi Ezike, director of Illinois
Department of Public Health, explains. "It means, at the time of death, it was a COVID
positive diagnosis. That means, that if you were in hospice and had already been given a
few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a
COVID death. It means, technically even if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had
COVID at the same time, it's still listed as a COVID death."
Wuhan
Where I keep a bio lab
Next to wet markets
That's how we do
But this time
Something just escaped
And I just wanted to
Just I thought you'd wanna know
Oops my bad
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant
Don't look at me that way
It was a Chinese mistake
Don't look at me that way
It was a Chinese mistake
An honest mistake
Sometimes
When I'm in the lab
I F up
And pathogens get away
Chinese flu
I swear I never meant for this
I never meant
Don't look at me that way
It was a Chinese mistake
Don't look at me that way
It was a Chinese mistake
An honest mistake
Don't look at me that way
It was a Chinese mistake
Don't look at me that way
It was a Chinese mistake
People who have been fully vaccinated should still follow precautions in doctor's
offices, airports, nursing homes, the agency recommends
Fully vaccinated people don't need to wear a mask or physically distance during outdoor or
indoor activities, large or small, federal health officials said, the broadest easing of
pandemic recommendations so far.
The fully vaccinated should continue to wear a mask while traveling by plane, bus or train,
and the guidance doesn't apply to certain places like hospitals, nursing homes and prisons, the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
The fully protected can, however, resume doing many of the things they had to give up due to
the pandemic, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.
"We have all longed for this moment, when we can get back to some sense of normalcy," Dr.
Walensky said. "That moment has come for those who are fully vaccinated."
The CDC considers people fully vaccinated either two weeks after receiving their second dose
of an mRNA vaccine, such as the one from Pfizer Inc. PFE 1.03% and partner BioNTech SE
or Moderna Inc.,
MRNA
-1.84% or two weeks after getting the single-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson .
The German Corona Investigative Committee has taken testimony from a large number of
international scientists and experts since July 10, 2020.
Scroll down for the Video and Full Transcript of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich 's presentation.
Their conclusions are the following:
The corona crisis must be renamed the "Corona Scandal"
It is:
The biggest tort case ever
The greatest crime against humanity ever committed
Those responsible must be:
Criminally prosecuted for crimes against humanity
Sued for civil damages
Deaths
There is no excess mortality in any country
Corona virus mortality equals seasonal flu
94% of deaths in Bergamo were caused by transferring sick patients to nursing homes
where they infected old people with weak immune systems
Doctors and hospitals worldwide were paid to declare deceased victims of
Covid-19
Autopsies showed:
Fatalities almost all caused by serious pre-existing conditions
Almost all deaths were very old people
Sweden (no lockdown) and Britain (strict lockdown) have comparable disease and
mortality statistics
US states with and without lockdowns have comparable disease and mortality
statistics
Health
Hospitals remain empty and some face bankruptcy
Populations have T-cell immunity from previous influenza waves
Herd immunity needs only 15-25% population infection and is already achieved
Only when a person has symptoms can an infection be contagious
Tests:
Many scientists call this a PCR-test pandemic, not a corona pandemic
Very healthy and non-infectious people may test positive
Likelihood of false-positives is 89-94% or near certainty
Prof. Drosten developed his PCR test from an old SARS virus without ever having seen
the real Wuhan virus from China
The PCR test is not based on scientific facts with respect to infections
PCR tests are useless for the detection of infections
A positive PCR test does not mean an infection is present or that an intact virus has
been found
Amplification of samples over 35 cycles is unreliable but WHO recommended 45
cycles
Illegality:
The German government locked down, imposed social-distancing/ mask-wearing on the
basis of a single opinion
The lockdown was imposed when the virus was already retreating
The lockdowns were based on non-existent infections
Former president of the German federal constitutional court doubted the
constitutionality of the corona measures
Former UK supreme court judge Lord Sumption concluded there was no factual basis for
panic and no legal basis for corona measures
German RKI (CDC equivalent) recommended no autopsies be performed
Corona measures have no sufficient factual or legal basis, are unconstitutional and
must be repealed immediately
No serious scientist gives any validity to the infamous Neil Ferguson's false
computer models warning of millions of deaths
Mainstream media completely failed to report the true facts of the so-called
pandemic
Democracy is in danger of being replaced by fascist totalitarian models
Drosten (of PCR test), Tedros of WHO, and others have committed crimes against
humanity as defined in the International Criminal Code
Politicians can avoid going down with the charlatans and criminals by starting the
long overdue public scientific discussion
Conspiracy:
Politicians and mainstream media deliberately drove populations to panic
Children were calculatedly made to feel responsible "for the painful tortured death
of their parents and grandparents if they do not follow Corona rules"
The hopeless PCR test is used to create fear and not to diagnose
There can be no talk of a second wave
Injury and damage:
Evidence of gigantic health and economic damage to populations
Anti-corona measures have:
Killed innumerable people
Destroyed countless companies and individuals worldwide
Children are being taken away from their parents
Children are traumatized en masse
Bankruptcies are expected in small- and medium-sized businesses
Redress:
A class action lawsuit must be filed in the USA or Canada, with all affected parties
worldwide having the opportunity to join
Companies and self-employed people must be compensated for damages
Full Transcript
Hello. I am Reiner Fuellmich and I have been admitted to the Bar in Germany and in
California for 26 years. I have been practicing law primarily as a trial lawyer against
fraudulent corporations such as Deutsche Bank, formerly one of the world's largest and most
respected banks, today one of the most toxic criminal organizations in the world; VW, one of
the world's largest and most respected car manufacturers, today notorious for its giant diesel
fraud; and Kuehne and Nagel, the world's largest shipping company. We're suing them in a
multi-million-dollar bribery case.
I'm also one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee. Since July 10,
2020, this Committee has been listening to a large number of international scientists' and
experts' testimony to find answers to questions about the corona crisis, which more and more
people worldwide are asking. All the above-mentioned cases of corruption and fraud committed by
the German corporations pale in comparison in view of the extent of the damage that the corona
crisis has caused and continues to cause.
This corona crisis, according to all we know today, must be renamed a "Corona Scandal" and
those responsible for it must be criminally prosecuted and sued for civil damages. On a
political level, everything must be done to make sure that no one will ever again be in a
position of such power as to be able to defraud humanity or to attempt to manipulate us with
their corrupt agendas. And for this reason I will now explain to you how and where an
international network of lawyers will argue this biggest tort case ever, the corona fraud
scandal, which has meanwhile unfolded into probably the greatest crime against humanity ever
committed.
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/lWSuvM5MjV2r/
Crimes against humanity were first defined in connection with the Nuremberg trials after
World War II, that is, when they dealt with the main war criminals of the Third Reich. Crimes
against humanity are today regulated in section 7 of the International Criminal Code. The three
major questions to be answered in the context of a judicial approach to the corona scandal
are:
Is there a corona pandemic or is there only a PCR-test pandemic? Specifically, does a
positive PCR-test result mean that the person tested is infected with Covid-19, or does it
mean absolutely nothing in connection with the Covid-19 infection?
Do the so-called anti-corona measures, such as the lockdown, mandatory face masks, social
distancing, and quarantine regulations, serve to protect the world's population from corona,
or do these measures serve only to make people panic so that they believe – without
asking any questions – that their lives are in danger, so that in the end the
pharmaceutical and tech industries can generate huge profits from the sale of PCR tests,
antigen and antibody tests and vaccines, as well as the harvesting of our genetic
fingerprints?
Is it true that the German government was massively lobbied, more so than any other
country, by the chief protagonists of this so-called corona pandemic, Mr. Drosten, virologist
at charity hospital in Berlin; Mr. Wieler, veterinarian and head of the German equivalent of
the CDC, the RKI; and Mr. Tedros, Head of the World Health Organization or WHO; because
Germany is known as a particularly disciplined country and was therefore to become a role
model for the rest of the world for its strict and, of course, successful adherence to the
corona measures?
Answers to these three questions are urgently needed because the allegedly new and highly
dangerous coronavirus has not caused any excess mortality anywhere in the world, and certainly
not here in Germany. But the anti-corona measures, whose only basis are the PCR-test results,
which are in turn all based on the German Drosten test, have, in the meantime, caused the loss
of innumerable human lives and have destroyed the economic existence of countless companies and
individuals worldwide. In Australia, for example, people are thrown into prison if they do not
wear a mask or do not wear it properly, as deemed by the authorities. In the Philippines,
people who do not wear a mask or do not wear it properly, in this sense, are getting shot in
the head.
Let me first give you a summary of the facts as they present themselves today. The most
important thing in a lawsuit is to establish the facts – that is, to find out what
actually happened. That is because the application of the law always depends on the facts at
issue. If I want to prosecute someone for fraud, I cannot do that by presenting the facts of a
car accident. So what happened here regarding the alleged corona pandemic?
The facts laid out below are, to a large extent, the result of the work of the Corona
Investigative Committee. This Committee was founded on July 10, 2020 by four lawyers in order
to determine, through hearing expert testimony of international scientists and other
experts:
How dangerous is the virus really?
What is the significance of a positive PCR test?
What collateral damage has been caused by the corona measures, both with respect to the
world population's health, and with respect to the world's economy?
Let me start with a little bit of background information. What happened in May 2019 and then
in early 2020? And what happened 12 years earlier with the swine flu, which many of you may
have forgotten about? In May 2019, the stronger of the two parties which govern Germany in a
grand coalition, the CDU, held a Congress on Global Health, apparently at the instigation of
important players from the pharmaceutical industry and the tech industry. At this Congress, the
usual suspects, you might say, gave their speeches. Angela Merkel was there, and the German
Secretary of Health, Jens Spahn. But, some other people, whom one would not necessarily expect
to be present at such a gathering, were also there: Professor Drosten, virologist from the
Charite hospital in Berlin; Professor Wieler, veterinarian and Head of the RKI, the German
equivalent of the CDC; as well as Mr. Tedros, philosopher and Head of the World Health
Organization (WHO). They all gave speeches there. Also present and giving speeches were the
chief lobbyists of the world's two largest health funds, namely the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. Less than a year later, these very people called the shots
in the proclamation of the worldwide corona pandemic, made sure that mass PCR tests were used
to prove mass infections with Covid-19 all over the world, and are now pushing for vaccines to
be invented and sold worldwide.
T hese infections, or rather the positive test results that the PCR tests delivered, in turn
became the justification for worldwide lockdowns, social distancing and mandatory face masks.
It is important to note at this point that the definition of a pandemic was changed 12 years
earlier. Until then, a pandemic was considered to be a disease that spread worldwide and which
led to many serious illnesses and deaths. Suddenly, and for reasons never explained, it was
supposed to be a worldwide disease only . Many serious illnesses and many deaths were
not required any more to announce a pandemic. Due to this change, the WHO, which is closely
intertwined with the global pharmaceutical industry, was able to declare the swine flu pandemic
in 2009, with the result that vaccines were produced and sold worldwide on the basis of
contracts that have been kept secret until today.
These vaccines proved to be completely unnecessary because the swine flu eventually turned
out to be a mild flu, and never became the horrific plague that the pharmaceutical industry and
its affiliated universities kept announcing it would turn into, with millions of deaths certain
to happen if people didn't get vaccinated. These vaccines also led to serious health problems.
About 700 children in Europe fell incurably ill with narcolepsy and are now forever severely
disabled. The vaccines bought with millions of taxpayers' money had to be destroyed with even
more taxpayers' money. Already then, during the swine flu, the German virologist Drosten was
one of those who stirred up panic in the population, repeating over and over again that the
swine flu would claim many hundreds of thousands, even millions of deaths all over the world.
In the end, it was mainly thanks to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg and his efforts as a member of the
German Bundestag, and also a member of the Council of Europe, that this hoax was brought to an
end before it would lead to even more serious consequences.
Fast forward to March of 2020, when the German Bundestag announced an Epidemic Situation of
National Importance, which is the German equivalent of a pandemic in March of 2020 and, based
on this, the lockdown with the suspension of all essential constitutional rights for an
unforeseeable time, there was only one single opinion on which the Federal Government in
Germany based its decision. In an outrageous violation of the universally accepted principle "
audiatur et altera pars ", which means that one must also hear the other side, the only
person they listened to was Mr. Drosten.
That is the very person whose horrific, panic-inducing prognoses had proved to be
catastrophically false 12 years earlier. We know this because a whistleblower named David
Sieber, a member of the Green Party, told us about it. He did so first on August 29, 2020 in
Berlin, in the context of an event at which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also took part, and at which
both men gave speeches. And he did so afterwards in one of the sessions of our Corona
Committee.
The reason he did this is that he had become increasingly sceptical about the official
narrative propagated by politicians and the mainstream media. He had therefore undertaken an
effort to find out about other scientists' opinions and had found them on the Internet. There,
he realized that there were a number of highly renowned scientists who held a completely
different opinion, which contradicted the horrific prognoses of Mr. Drosten. They assumed
– and still do assume – that there was no disease that went beyond the gravity of
the seasonal flu, that the population had already acquired cross- or T-cell immunity against
this allegedly new virus, and that there was therefore no reason for any special measures, and
certainly not for vaccinations.
These scientists include Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University in California, a
specialist in statistics and epidemiology, as well as public health, and at the same time the
most quoted scientist in the world; Professor Michael Levitt, Nobel prize-winner for chemistry
and also a biophysicist at Stanford University; the German professors Kary Mölling,
Sucharit Bhakti, Klud Wittkowski, as well as Stefan Homburg; and now many, many more scientists
and doctors worldwide, including Dr. Mike Yeadon. Dr. Mike Yeadon is the former Vice-President
and Scientific Director of Pfizer, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. I
will talk some more about him a little later.
At the end of March, beginning of April of 2020, Mr. Sieber turned to the leadership of his
Green Party with the knowledge he had accumulated, and suggested that they present these other
scientific opinions to the public and explain that, contrary to Mr. Drosten's doomsday
prophecies, there was no reason for the public to panic. Incidentally, Lord Sumption, who
served as a judge at the British supreme court from 2012 to 2018, had done the very same thing
at the very same time and had come to the very same conclusion: that there was no factual basis
for panic and no legal basis for the corona measures. Likewise, the former President of the
German federal constitutional court expressed – albeit more cautiously – serious
doubts that the corona measures were constitutional. But instead of taking note of these other
opinions and discussing them with David Sieber, the Green Party leadership declared that Mr.
Drosten's panic messages were good enough for the Green Party. Remember, they're not a member
of the ruling coalition; they're the opposition. Still, that was enough for them, just as it
had been good enough for the Federal Government as a basis for its lockdown decision, they
said. They subsequently, the Green Party leadership called David Sieber a conspiracy theorist,
without ever having considered the content of his information, and then stripped him of his
mandates.
Now let's take a look at the current actual situation regarding the virus's danger, the
complete uselessness of PCR tests for the detection of infections, and the lockdowns based on
non-existent infections. In the meantime, we know that the health care systems were never in
danger of becoming overwhelmed by Covid-19. On the contrary, many hospitals remain empty to
this day and some are now facing bankruptcy. The hospital ship Comfort , which anchored
in New York at the time, and could have accommodated a thousand patients, never accommodated
more than some 20 patients. Nowhere was there any excess mortality. Studies carried out by
Professor Ioannidis and others have shown that the mortality of corona is equivalent to that of
the seasonal flu. Even the pictures from Bergamo and New York that were used to demonstrate to
the world that panic was in order proved to be deliberately misleading.
Then, the so-called "Panic Paper" was leaked, which was written by the German Department of
the Interior. Its classified content shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in fact, the
population was deliberately driven to panic by politicians and mainstream media. The
accompanying irresponsible statements of the Head of the RKI – remember the [German] CDC
– Mr. Wieler, who repeatedly and excitedly announced that the corona measures must be
followed unconditionally by the population without them asking any question, shows that that he
followed the script verbatim. In his public statements, he kept announcing that the situation
was very grave and threatening, although the figures compiled by his own Institute proved the
exact opposite.
Among other things, the "Panic Paper" calls for children to be made to feel responsible
– and I quote – "for the painful tortured death of their parents and grandparents
if they do not follow the corona rules", that is, if they do not wash their hands constantly
and don't stay away from their grandparents. A word of clarification: in Bergamo, the vast
majority of deaths, 94% to be exact, turned out to be the result not of Covid-19, but rather
the consequence of the government deciding to transfer sick patients, sick with probably the
cold or seasonal flu, from hospitals to nursing homes in order to make room at the hospitals
for all the Covid patients, who ultimately never arrived. There, at the nursing homes, they
then infected old people with a severely weakened immune system, usually as a result of
pre-existing medical conditions. In addition, a flu vaccination, which had previously been
administered, had further weakened the immune systems of the people in the nursing homes. In
New York, only some, but by far not all hospitals were overwhelmed. Many people, most of whom
were again elderly and had serious pre-existing medical conditions, and most of whom, had it
not been for the panic-mongering, would have just stayed at home to recover, raced to the
hospitals. There, many of them fell victim to healthcare-associated infections (or nosocomial
infections) on the one hand, and incidents of malpractice on the other hand, for example, by
being put on a respirator rather than receiving oxygen through an oxygen mask. Again, to
clarify: Covid-19, this is the current state of affairs, is a dangerous disease, just like the
seasonal flu is a dangerous disease. And of course, Covid-19, just like the seasonal flu, may
sometimes take take a severe clinical course and will sometimes kill patients.
However, as autopsies have shown, which were carried out in Germany in particular, by the
forensic scientist Professor Klaus Püschel in Hamburg, the fatalities he examined had
almost all been caused by serious pre-existing conditions, and almost all of the people who had
died had died at the very at a very old age, just like in Italy, meaning they had lived beyond
their average life expectancy.
In this context, the following should also be mentioned: the German RKI – that is,
again the equivalent of the CDC – had initially, strangely enough, recommended that no
autopsies be performed. And there are numerous credible reports that doctors and hospitals
worldwide had been paid money for declaring a deceased person a victim of Covid-19 rather than
writing down the true cause of death on the death certificate, for example a heart attack or a
gunshot wound. Without the autopsies, we would never know that the overwhelming majority of the
alleged Covid-19 victims had died of completely different diseases, but not of Covid-19. The
assertion that the lockdown was necessary because there were so many different infections with
SARS-COV-2, and because the healthcare systems would be overwhelmed is wrong for three reasons,
as we have learned from the hearings we conducted with the Corona Committee, and from other
data that has become available in the meantime:
A. The lockdown was imposed when the virus was already retreating. By the time the lockdown
was imposed, the alleged infection rates were already dropping again.
B. There's already protection from the virus because of cross- or T-cell immunity. Apart
from the above mentioned lockdown being imposed when the infection rates were already dropping,
there is also cross- or T-cell immunity in the general population against the corona viruses
contained in every flu or influenza wave. This is true, even if this time around, a slightly
different strain of the coronavirus was at work. And that is because the body's own immune
system remembers every virus it has ever battled in the past, and from this experience, it also
recognizes a supposedly new, but still similar, strain of the virus from the corona family.
Incidentally, that's how the PCR test for the detection of an infection was invented by now
infamous Professor Drosten.
At the beginning of January of 2020, based on this very basic knowledge, Mr. Drosten
developed his PCR test, which supposedly detects an infection with SARS-COV-2, without ever
having seen the real Wuhan virus from China, only having learned from social media reports that
there was something going on in Wuhan, he started tinkering on his computer with what would
become his corona PCR test. For this, he used an old SARS virus, hoping it would be
sufficiently similar to the allegedly new strain of the coronavirus found in Wuhan. Then, he
sent the result of his computer tinkering to China to determine whether the victims of the
alleged new coronavirus tested positive. They did.
And that was enough for the World Health Organization to sound the pandemic alarm and to
recommend the worldwide use of the Drosten PCR test for the detection of infections with the
virus now called SARS-COV-2. Drosten's opinion and advice was – this must be emphasized
once again – the only source for the German government when it announced the lockdown as
well as the rules for social distancing and the mandatory wearing of masks. And – this
must also be emphasized once again – Germany apparently became the center of especially
massive lobbying by the pharmaceutical and tech industry because the world, with reference to
the allegedly disciplined Germans, should do as the Germans do in order to survive the
pandemic.
C. And this is the most important part of our fact-finding: the PCR test is being used on
the basis of false statements, NOT based on scientific facts with respect to infections .
In the meantime, we have learned that these PCR tests, contrary to the assertions of Messrs.
Drosten, Wieler and the WHO, do NOT give any indication of an infection with any virus, let
alone an infection with SARS-COV-2. Not only are PCR tests expressly not approved for
diagnostic purposes, as is correctly noted on leaflets coming with these tests, and as the
inventor of the PCR test, Kary Mullis, has repeatedly emphasized. Instead, they're simply
incapable of diagnosing any disease. That is: contrary to the assertions of Drosten, Wieler and
the WHO, which they have been making since the proclamation of the pandemic, a positive
PCR-test result does not mean that an infection is present. If someone tests positive, it does
NOT mean that they're infected with anything, let alone with the contagious SARS-COV-2
virus.
Even the United States CDC, even this institution agrees with this, and I quote directly
from page 38 of one of its publications on the coronavirus and the PCR tests, dated July 13,
2020. First bullet point says:
" Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019
nCOV [novel coronavirus ] is the causative agent for clinical symptoms ."
Second bullet point says:
" The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019
nCOV infection ." Third bullet point says: " This test cannot rule out diseases caused
by other bacterial or viral pathogens ."
It is still not clear whether there has ever been a scientifically correct isolation of the
Wuhan virus , so that nobody knows exactly what we're looking for when we test, especially
since this virus, just like the flu viruses, mutates quickly. The PCR swabs take one or two
sequences of a molecule that are invisible to the human eye and therefore need to be amplified
in many cycles to make it visible . Everything over 35 cycles is – as reported by the
New York Times and others – considered completely unreliable and scientifically
unjustifiable. However, the Drosten test, as well as the WHO-recommended tests that followed
his example, are set to 45 cycles. Can that be because of the desire to produce as many
positive results as possible and thereby provide the basis for the false assumption that a
large number of infections have been detected?
The test cannot distinguish inactive and reproductive matter. That means that a positive
result may happen because the test detects, for example, a piece of debris, a fragment of a
molecule, which may signal nothing else than that the immune system of the person tested won a
battle with a common cold in the past. Even Drosten himself declared in an interview with a
German business magazine in 2014, at that time concerning the alleged detection of an infection
with the MERS virus, allegedly with the help of the PCR test, that these PCR tests are so
highly sensitive that even very healthy and non-infectious people may test positive . At
that time, he also became very much aware of the powerful role of a panic and fear-mongering
media, as you'll see at the end of the following quote. He said then, in this interview: "
If, for example, such a pathogen scurries over the nasal mucosa of a nurse for a day or so
without her getting sick or noticing anything, then she's suddenly a MERS case. This could also
explain the explosion of case numbers in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the media there have made
this into an incredible sensation ."
Has he forgotten this? Or is he deliberately concealing this in the corona context because
corona is a very lucrative business opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry as a whole? And
for Mr. Alford Lund, his co-author in many studies and also a PCR-test producer. In my view, it
is completely implausible that he forgot in 2020 what he knew about the PCR tests and told the
business magazine in 2014.
In short, this test cannot detect any infection, contrary to all false claims stating that
it can. An infection, a so-called "hot" infection, requires that the virus, or rather a
fragment of a molecule which may be a virus, is not just found somewhere, for example, in the
throat of a person without causing any damage – that would be a "cold" infection. Rather,
a "hot" infection requires that the virus penetrates into the cells, replicates there and
causes symptoms such as headaches or a sore throat. Only then is a person really infected in
the sense of a "hot" infection, because only then is a person contagious, that is, able to
infect others. Until then, it is completely harmless for both the host and all other people
that the host comes into contact with.
Once again, this means that positive test results, contrary to all other claims by Drosten,
Wieler, or the WHO , mean nothing with respect to infections, as even the CDC knows, as quoted
above.
Meanwhile, a number of highly respected scientists worldwide assume that there has never
been a corona pandemic, but only a PCR-test pandemic . This is the conclusion reached by many
German scientists, such as professors Bhakti, Reiss, Mölling, Hockertz, Walach and many
others, including the above-mentioned Professor John Ioannidis, and the Nobel laureate,
Professor Michael Levitt from Stanford University.
The most recent such opinion is that of the aforementioned Dr. Mike Yeadon , a former
Vice-President and Chief Science Officer at Pfizer, who held this position for 16 years. He and
his co-authors, all well-known scientists, published a scientific paper in September of 2020
and he wrote a corresponding magazine article on September 20, 2020. Among other things, he and
they state – and I quote:
" We're basing our government policy, our economic policy, and the policy of restricting
fundamental rights, presumably on completely wrong data and assumptions about the coronavirus.
If it weren't for the test results that are constantly reported in the media, the pandemic
would be over because nothing really happened. Of course, there are some serious individual
cases of illness, but there are also some in every flu epidemic. There was a real wave of
disease in March and April, but since then, everything has gone back to normal. Only the
positive results rise and sink wildly again and again, depending on how many tests are carried
out. But the real cases of illnesses are over. There can be no talk of a second wave. The
allegedly new strain of the coronavirus is "
– Dr. Yeadon continues –
" only new in that it is a new type of the long-known corona virus. There are at least
four coronaviruses that are endemic and cause some of the common colds we experience,
especially in winter. They all have a striking sequence similarity to the coronavirus, and
because the human immune system recognizes the similarity to the virus that has now allegedly
been newly discovered, a T-cell immunity has long existed in this respect. 30 per cent of the
population had this before the allegedly new virus evenappeared. Therefore, it is
sufficient for the so-called herd immunity that 15 to 25 per cent of the population are
infected with the allegedly new coronavirus to stop the further spread of the virus. And this
has long been the case ."
" The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89 to
94 per cent, or near certainty ."
Dr. Yeadon, in agreement with the professors of immunology Kamera from Germany, Kappel from
the Netherlands, and Cahill from Ireland, as well as the microbiologist Dr. Arve from Austria,
all of whom testified before the German Corona Committee, explicitly points out that a positive
test does not mean that an intact virus has been found.
The authors explain that what the PCR test actually measures is – and I quote:
" Simply the presence of partial RNA sequences present in the intact virus, which could
be a piece of dead virus, which cannot make the subject sick, and cannot be transmitted, and
cannot make anyone else sick ."
Because of the complete unsuitability of the test for the detection of infectious diseases
– tested positive in goats, sheep, papayas and even chicken wings – Oxford
Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, writes that the
Covid virus would never disappear if this test practice were to be continued, but would always
be falsely detected in much of what is tested. Lockdowns, as Yeadon and his colleagues found
out, do not work. Sweden, with its laissez-faire approach, and Great Britain, with its strict
lockdown, for example, have completely comparable disease and mortality statistics. The same
was found by US scientists concerning the different US states. It makes no difference to the
incidence of disease whether a state implements a lockdown or not.
With regard to the now infamous Imperial College of London's Professor Neil Ferguson and his
completely false computer models warning of millions of deaths, he says that – and I
quote: " No serious scientist gives any validity to Ferguson's model." He points out
with thinly veiled contempt – again I quote:
" It's important that you know, most scientists don't accept that it " – that
is, Ferguson's model – " was even faintly right. But the government is still wedded to
the model ." Ferguson predicted 40 thousand corona deaths in Sweden by May and 100 thousand
by June, but it remained at 5,800 which, according to the Swedish authorities, is equivalent to
a mild flu. If the PCR tests had not been used as a diagnostic tool for corona infections,
there would not be a pandemic and there would be no lockdowns, but everything would have been
perceived as just a medium or light wave of influenza, these scientists conclude. Dr. Yeadon in
his piece, " Lies, Damned Lies and Health Statistics: The Deadly Danger of False
Positives, writes: " This test is fatally flawed and must immediately be withdrawn and
never used again in this setting, unless shown to be fixed ." And, towards the end of that
article, " I have explained how a hopelessly performing diagnostic test has been, and
continues to be used, not for diagnosis of disease, but it seems solely to create fear
".
Now let's take a look at the current actual situation regarding the severe damage caused by
the lockdowns and other measures. Another detailed paper, written by a German official in the
Department of the Interior, who is responsible for risk assessment and the protection of the
population against risks, was leaked recently. It is now called the "False Alarm" paper. This
paper comes to the conclusion that there was that there was and is no sufficient evidence for
serious health risks for the population as claimed by Drosten, Wieler and the WHO, but –
the author says – there's very much evidence of the corona measures causing gigantic
health and economic damage to the population, which he then describes in detail in this paper.
This, he concludes, will lead to very high claims for damages, which the government will be
held responsible for. This has now become reality, but the paper's author was suspended.
More and more scientists, but also lawyers, recognize that, as a result of the deliberate
panic-mongering, and the corona measures enabled by this panic, democracy is in great danger of
being replaced by fascist totalitarian models. As I already mentioned above, in Australia,
people who do not wear the masks, which more and more studies show, are hazardous to health, or
who allegedly do not wear them correctly, are arrested, handcuffed and thrown into jail. In the
Philippines, they run the risk of getting shot, but even in Germany and in other previously
civilized countries, children are taken away from their parents if they do not comply with
quarantine regulations, distance regulations, and mask-wearing regulations. According to
psychologists and psychotherapists who testified before the Corona Committee, children are
traumatized en masse, with the worst psychological consequences yet to be expected in the
medium- and long-term. In Germany alone, to bankruptcies are expected in the fall to strike
small- and medium-sized businesses, which form the backbone of the economy. This will result in
incalculable tax losses and incalculably high and long-term social security money transfers for
– among other things – unemployment benefits.
Since, in the meantime, pretty much everybody is beginning to understand the full
devastating impact of the completely unfounded corona measures, I will refrain from detailing
this any further.
Let me now give you a summary of the legal consequences. The most difficult part of a
lawyer's work is always to establish the true facts, not the application of the legal rules to
these facts. Unfortunately, a German lawyer does not learn this at law school but his
Anglo-American counterparts do get the necessary training for this at their law schools.
And probably for this reason, but also because of the much more pronounced independence of the
Anglo-American judiciary, the Anglo-American law of evidence is much more effective in practice
than the German one. A court of law can only decide a legal dispute correctly if it has
previously determined the facts correctly, which is not possible without looking at all the
evidence. And that's why the law of evidence is so important. On the basis of the facts
summarized above, in particular those established with the help of the work of the German
Corona Committee, the legal evaluation is actually simple. It is simple for all civilized legal
systems, regardless of whether these legal systems are based on civil law, which follows the
Roman law more closely, or whether they are based on Anglo-American common law, which is only
loosely connected to Roman law.
Let's first take a look at the unconstitutionality of the measures. A number of German law
professors, including professors Kingreen, Morswig, Jungbluth and Vosgerau have stated, either
in written expert opinions or in interviews, in line with the serious doubts expressed by the
former president of the federal constitutional court with respect to the constitutionality of
the corona measures, that these measures – the corona measures – are without a
sufficient factual basis, and also without a sufficient legal basis, and are therefore
unconstitutional and must be repealed immediately. Very recently, a judge, Thorsten Schleif is
his name, declared publicly that the German judiciary, just like the general public, has been
so panic-stricken that it was no longer able to administer justice properly. He says that the
courts of law – and I quote – "have all too quickly waved through coercive measures
which, for millions of people all over Germany, represent massive suspensions of their
constitutional rights. He points out that German citizens – again I quote – "are
currently experiencing the most serious encroachment on their constitutional rights since the
founding of the federal republic of Germany in 1949". In order to contain the corona pandemic,
federal and state governments have intervened, he says, massively, and in part threatening the
very existence of the country as it is guaranteed by the constitutional rights of the
people.
What about fraud, intentional infliction of damage and crimes against humanity?
Based on the rules of criminal law, asserting false facts concerning the PCR tests or
intentional misrepresentation , as it was committed by Messrs. Drosten, Wieler and WHO, as well
as the WHO, can only be assessed as fraud. Based on the rules of civil tort law, this
translates into intentional infliction of damage. The German professor of civil law, Martin
Schwab, supports this finding in public interviews. In a comprehensive legal opinion of around
180 pages, he has familiarized himself with the subject matter like no other legal scholar has
done thus far and, in particular, has provided a detailed account of the complete failure of
the mainstream media to report on the true facts of this so-called pandemic. Messrs. Drosten,
Wieler and Tedros of the WHO all knew, based on their own expertise or the expertise of their
institutions, that the PCR tests cannot provide any information about infections, but asserted
over and over again to the general public that they can, with their counterparts all over the
world repeating this. And they all knew and accepted that, on the basis of their
recommendations, the governments of the world would decide on lockdowns, the rules for social
distancing, and mandatory wearing of masks, the latter representing a very serious health
hazard, as more and more independent studies and expert statements show. Under the rules of
civil tort law, all those who have been harmed by these PCR-test-induced lockdowns are entitled
to receive full compensation for their losses. In particular, there is a duty to compensate
– that is, a duty to pay damages for the loss of profits suffered by companies and
self-employed employed persons as a result of the lockdown and other measures.
In the meantime, however, the anti-corona measures have caused, and continue to cause, such
devastating damage to the world population's health and economy that the crimes committed by
Messrs. Drosten, Wieler and the WHO must be legally qualified as actual crimes against
humanity , as defined in section 7 of the International Criminal Code.
How can we do something? What can we do? Well, the class action is the best route to
compensatory damages and to political consequences. The so-called class action lawsuit is based
on English law and exists today in the USA and in Canada. It enables a court of law to allow a
complaint for damages to be tried as a class action lawsuit at the request of a plaintiff
if:
As a result of a damage-inducing event
A large number of people suffer the same type of damage.
Phrased differently, a judge can allow a class-action lawsuit to go forward if common
questions of law and fact make up the vital component of the lawsuit. Here, the common
questions of law and fact revolve around the worldwide PCR-test-based lockdowns and its
consequences. Just like the VW diesel passenger cars were functioning products, but they were
defective due to a so-called defeat device because they didn't comply with the emissions
standards, so too the PCR tests – which are perfectly good products in other settings
– are defective products when it comes to the diagnosis of infections. Now, if an
American or Canadian company or an American or Canadian individual decides to sue these persons
in the United States or Canada for damages, then the court called upon to resolve this dispute
may, upon request, allow this complaint to be tried as a class action lawsuit.
If this happens, all affected parties worldwide will be informed about this through
publications in the mainstream media and will thus have the opportunity to join this class
action within a certain period of time, to be determined by the court. It should be emphasized
that nobody must join the class action, but every injured party can join the
class.
The advantage of the class action is that only one trial is needed , namely to try
the complaint of a representative plaintiff who is affected in a manner typical of everyone
else in the class. This is, firstly, cheaper, and secondly, faster than hundreds of thousands
or more individual lawsuits. And thirdly, it imposes less of a burden on the courts. Fourthly,
as a rule it allows a much more precise examination of the accusations than would be possible
in the context of hundreds of thousands, or more likely in this corona setting, even millions
of individual lawsuits.
In particular, the well-established and proven Anglo-American law of evidence, with its
pre-trial discovery, is applicable. This requires that all evidence relevant for the
determination of the lawsuit is put on the table. In contrast to the typical situation in
German lawsuits with structural imbalance, that is, lawsuits involving on the one hand a
consumer, and on the other hand a powerful corporation, the withholding or even destruction of
evidence is not without consequence; rather the party withholding or even destroying evidence
loses the case under these evidence rules.
Here in Germany, a group of tort lawyers have banded together to help their clients with
recovery of damages. They have provided all relevant information and forms for German
plaintiffs to both estimate how much damage they have suffered and join the group or class of
plaintiffs who will later join the class action when it goes forward either in Canada or the
US. Initially, this group of lawyers had considered to also collect and manage the claims for
damages of other, non-German plaintiffs, but this proved to be unmanageable.
However, through an international lawyers' network, which is growing larger by the day, the
German group of attorneys provides to all of their colleagues in all other countries, free of
charge, all relevant information, including expert opinions and testimonies of experts showing
that the PCR tests cannot detect infections. And they also provide them with all relevant
information as to how they can prepare and bundle the claims for damages of their clients so
that, they too, can assert their clients' claims for damages, either in their home country's
courts of law, or within the framework of the class action, as explained above.
These scandalous corona facts, gathered mostly by the Corona Committee and summarized above,
are the very same facts that will soon be proven to be true either in one court of law, or in
many courts of law all over the world.
These are the facts that will pull the masks off the faces of all those responsible for
these crimes. To the politicians who believe those corrupt people, these facts are hereby
offered as a lifeline that can help you readjust your course of action, and start the long
overdue public scientific discussion, and not go down with those charlatans and criminals.
Thank you.
*
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The German Corona Investigative Committee has taken testimony from a large number of
international scientists and experts since July 10, 2020.
Scroll down for the Video and Full Transcript of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich 's presentation.
Their conclusions are the following:
The corona crisis must be renamed the "Corona Scandal"
It is:
The biggest tort case ever
The greatest crime against humanity ever committed
Those responsible must be:
Criminally prosecuted for crimes against humanity
Sued for civil damages
Deaths
There is no excess mortality in any country
Corona virus mortality equals seasonal flu
94% of deaths in Bergamo were caused by transferring sick patients to nursing homes
where they infected old people with weak immune systems
Doctors and hospitals worldwide were paid to declare deceased victims of
Covid-19
Autopsies showed:
Fatalities almost all caused by serious pre-existing conditions
Almost all deaths were very old people
Sweden (no lockdown) and Britain (strict lockdown) have comparable disease and
mortality statistics
US states with and without lockdowns have comparable disease and mortality
statistics
Health
Hospitals remain empty and some face bankruptcy
Populations have T-cell immunity from previous influenza waves
Herd immunity needs only 15-25% population infection and is already achieved
Only when a person has symptoms can an infection be contagious
Tests:
Many scientists call this a PCR-test pandemic, not a corona pandemic
Very healthy and non-infectious people may test positive
Likelihood of false-positives is 89-94% or near certainty
Prof. Drosten developed his PCR test from an old SARS virus without ever having seen
the real Wuhan virus from China
The PCR test is not based on scientific facts with respect to infections
PCR tests are useless for the detection of infections
A positive PCR test does not mean an infection is present or that an intact virus has
been found
Amplification of samples over 35 cycles is unreliable but WHO recommended 45
cycles
Illegality:
The German government locked down, imposed social-distancing/ mask-wearing on the
basis of a single opinion
The lockdown was imposed when the virus was already retreating
The lockdowns were based on non-existent infections
Former president of the German federal constitutional court doubted the
constitutionality of the corona measures
Former UK supreme court judge Lord Sumption concluded there was no factual basis for
panic and no legal basis for corona measures
German RKI (CDC equivalent) recommended no autopsies be performed
Corona measures have no sufficient factual or legal basis, are unconstitutional and
must be repealed immediately
No serious scientist gives any validity to the infamous Neil Ferguson's false
computer models warning of millions of deaths
Mainstream media completely failed to report the true facts of the so-called
pandemic
Democracy is in danger of being replaced by fascist totalitarian models
Drosten (of PCR test), Tedros of WHO, and others have committed crimes against
humanity as defined in the International Criminal Code
Politicians can avoid going down with the charlatans and criminals by starting the
long overdue public scientific discussion
Conspiracy:
Politicians and mainstream media deliberately drove populations to panic
Children were calculatedly made to feel responsible "for the painful tortured death
of their parents and grandparents if they do not follow Corona rules"
The hopeless PCR test is used to create fear and not to diagnose
There can be no talk of a second wave
Injury and damage:
Evidence of gigantic health and economic damage to populations
Anti-corona measures have:
Killed innumerable people
Destroyed countless companies and individuals worldwide
Children are being taken away from their parents
Children are traumatized en masse
Bankruptcies are expected in small- and medium-sized businesses
Redress:
A class action lawsuit must be filed in the USA or Canada, with all affected parties
worldwide having the opportunity to join
Companies and self-employed people must be compensated for damages
Full Transcript
Hello. I am Reiner Fuellmich and I have been admitted to the Bar in Germany and in
California for 26 years. I have been practicing law primarily as a trial lawyer against
fraudulent corporations such as Deutsche Bank, formerly one of the world's largest and most
respected banks, today one of the most toxic criminal organizations in the world; VW, one of
the world's largest and most respected car manufacturers, today notorious for its giant diesel
fraud; and Kuehne and Nagel, the world's largest shipping company. We're suing them in a
multi-million-dollar bribery case.
I'm also one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee. Since July 10,
2020, this Committee has been listening to a large number of international scientists' and
experts' testimony to find answers to questions about the corona crisis, which more and more
people worldwide are asking. All the above-mentioned cases of corruption and fraud committed by
the German corporations pale in comparison in view of the extent of the damage that the corona
crisis has caused and continues to cause.
This corona crisis, according to all we know today, must be renamed a "Corona Scandal" and
those responsible for it must be criminally prosecuted and sued for civil damages. On a
political level, everything must be done to make sure that no one will ever again be in a
position of such power as to be able to defraud humanity or to attempt to manipulate us with
their corrupt agendas. And for this reason I will now explain to you how and where an
international network of lawyers will argue this biggest tort case ever, the corona fraud
scandal, which has meanwhile unfolded into probably the greatest crime against humanity ever
committed.
https://www.bitchute.com/embed/lWSuvM5MjV2r/
Crimes against humanity were first defined in connection with the Nuremberg trials after
World War II, that is, when they dealt with the main war criminals of the Third Reich. Crimes
against humanity are today regulated in section 7 of the International Criminal Code. The three
major questions to be answered in the context of a judicial approach to the corona scandal
are:
Is there a corona pandemic or is there only a PCR-test pandemic? Specifically, does a
positive PCR-test result mean that the person tested is infected with Covid-19, or does it
mean absolutely nothing in connection with the Covid-19 infection?
Do the so-called anti-corona measures, such as the lockdown, mandatory face masks, social
distancing, and quarantine regulations, serve to protect the world's population from corona,
or do these measures serve only to make people panic so that they believe – without
asking any questions – that their lives are in danger, so that in the end the
pharmaceutical and tech industries can generate huge profits from the sale of PCR tests,
antigen and antibody tests and vaccines, as well as the harvesting of our genetic
fingerprints?
Is it true that the German government was massively lobbied, more so than any other
country, by the chief protagonists of this so-called corona pandemic, Mr. Drosten, virologist
at charity hospital in Berlin; Mr. Wieler, veterinarian and head of the German equivalent of
the CDC, the RKI; and Mr. Tedros, Head of the World Health Organization or WHO; because
Germany is known as a particularly disciplined country and was therefore to become a role
model for the rest of the world for its strict and, of course, successful adherence to the
corona measures?
Answers to these three questions are urgently needed because the allegedly new and highly
dangerous coronavirus has not caused any excess mortality anywhere in the world, and certainly
not here in Germany. But the anti-corona measures, whose only basis are the PCR-test results,
which are in turn all based on the German Drosten test, have, in the meantime, caused the loss
of innumerable human lives and have destroyed the economic existence of countless companies and
individuals worldwide. In Australia, for example, people are thrown into prison if they do not
wear a mask or do not wear it properly, as deemed by the authorities. In the Philippines,
people who do not wear a mask or do not wear it properly, in this sense, are getting shot in
the head.
Let me first give you a summary of the facts as they present themselves today. The most
important thing in a lawsuit is to establish the facts – that is, to find out what
actually happened. That is because the application of the law always depends on the facts at
issue. If I want to prosecute someone for fraud, I cannot do that by presenting the facts of a
car accident. So what happened here regarding the alleged corona pandemic?
The facts laid out below are, to a large extent, the result of the work of the Corona
Investigative Committee. This Committee was founded on July 10, 2020 by four lawyers in order
to determine, through hearing expert testimony of international scientists and other
experts:
How dangerous is the virus really?
What is the significance of a positive PCR test?
What collateral damage has been caused by the corona measures, both with respect to the
world population's health, and with respect to the world's economy?
Let me start with a little bit of background information. What happened in May 2019 and then
in early 2020? And what happened 12 years earlier with the swine flu, which many of you may
have forgotten about? In May 2019, the stronger of the two parties which govern Germany in a
grand coalition, the CDU, held a Congress on Global Health, apparently at the instigation of
important players from the pharmaceutical industry and the tech industry. At this Congress, the
usual suspects, you might say, gave their speeches. Angela Merkel was there, and the German
Secretary of Health, Jens Spahn. But, some other people, whom one would not necessarily expect
to be present at such a gathering, were also there: Professor Drosten, virologist from the
Charite hospital in Berlin; Professor Wieler, veterinarian and Head of the RKI, the German
equivalent of the CDC; as well as Mr. Tedros, philosopher and Head of the World Health
Organization (WHO). They all gave speeches there. Also present and giving speeches were the
chief lobbyists of the world's two largest health funds, namely the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. Less than a year later, these very people called the shots
in the proclamation of the worldwide corona pandemic, made sure that mass PCR tests were used
to prove mass infections with Covid-19 all over the world, and are now pushing for vaccines to
be invented and sold worldwide.
T hese infections, or rather the positive test results that the PCR tests delivered, in turn
became the justification for worldwide lockdowns, social distancing and mandatory face masks.
It is important to note at this point that the definition of a pandemic was changed 12 years
earlier. Until then, a pandemic was considered to be a disease that spread worldwide and which
led to many serious illnesses and deaths. Suddenly, and for reasons never explained, it was
supposed to be a worldwide disease only . Many serious illnesses and many deaths were
not required any more to announce a pandemic. Due to this change, the WHO, which is closely
intertwined with the global pharmaceutical industry, was able to declare the swine flu pandemic
in 2009, with the result that vaccines were produced and sold worldwide on the basis of
contracts that have been kept secret until today.
These vaccines proved to be completely unnecessary because the swine flu eventually turned
out to be a mild flu, and never became the horrific plague that the pharmaceutical industry and
its affiliated universities kept announcing it would turn into, with millions of deaths certain
to happen if people didn't get vaccinated. These vaccines also led to serious health problems.
About 700 children in Europe fell incurably ill with narcolepsy and are now forever severely
disabled. The vaccines bought with millions of taxpayers' money had to be destroyed with even
more taxpayers' money. Already then, during the swine flu, the German virologist Drosten was
one of those who stirred up panic in the population, repeating over and over again that the
swine flu would claim many hundreds of thousands, even millions of deaths all over the world.
In the end, it was mainly thanks to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg and his efforts as a member of the
German Bundestag, and also a member of the Council of Europe, that this hoax was brought to an
end before it would lead to even more serious consequences.
Fast forward to March of 2020, when the German Bundestag announced an Epidemic Situation of
National Importance, which is the German equivalent of a pandemic in March of 2020 and, based
on this, the lockdown with the suspension of all essential constitutional rights for an
unforeseeable time, there was only one single opinion on which the Federal Government in
Germany based its decision. In an outrageous violation of the universally accepted principle "
audiatur et altera pars ", which means that one must also hear the other side, the only
person they listened to was Mr. Drosten.
That is the very person whose horrific, panic-inducing prognoses had proved to be
catastrophically false 12 years earlier. We know this because a whistleblower named David
Sieber, a member of the Green Party, told us about it. He did so first on August 29, 2020 in
Berlin, in the context of an event at which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also took part, and at which
both men gave speeches. And he did so afterwards in one of the sessions of our Corona
Committee.
The reason he did this is that he had become increasingly sceptical about the official
narrative propagated by politicians and the mainstream media. He had therefore undertaken an
effort to find out about other scientists' opinions and had found them on the Internet. There,
he realized that there were a number of highly renowned scientists who held a completely
different opinion, which contradicted the horrific prognoses of Mr. Drosten. They assumed
– and still do assume – that there was no disease that went beyond the gravity of
the seasonal flu, that the population had already acquired cross- or T-cell immunity against
this allegedly new virus, and that there was therefore no reason for any special measures, and
certainly not for vaccinations.
These scientists include Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University in California, a
specialist in statistics and epidemiology, as well as public health, and at the same time the
most quoted scientist in the world; Professor Michael Levitt, Nobel prize-winner for chemistry
and also a biophysicist at Stanford University; the German professors Kary Mölling,
Sucharit Bhakti, Klud Wittkowski, as well as Stefan Homburg; and now many, many more scientists
and doctors worldwide, including Dr. Mike Yeadon. Dr. Mike Yeadon is the former Vice-President
and Scientific Director of Pfizer, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. I
will talk some more about him a little later.
At the end of March, beginning of April of 2020, Mr. Sieber turned to the leadership of his
Green Party with the knowledge he had accumulated, and suggested that they present these other
scientific opinions to the public and explain that, contrary to Mr. Drosten's doomsday
prophecies, there was no reason for the public to panic. Incidentally, Lord Sumption, who
served as a judge at the British supreme court from 2012 to 2018, had done the very same thing
at the very same time and had come to the very same conclusion: that there was no factual basis
for panic and no legal basis for the corona measures. Likewise, the former President of the
German federal constitutional court expressed – albeit more cautiously – serious
doubts that the corona measures were constitutional. But instead of taking note of these other
opinions and discussing them with David Sieber, the Green Party leadership declared that Mr.
Drosten's panic messages were good enough for the Green Party. Remember, they're not a member
of the ruling coalition; they're the opposition. Still, that was enough for them, just as it
had been good enough for the Federal Government as a basis for its lockdown decision, they
said. They subsequently, the Green Party leadership called David Sieber a conspiracy theorist,
without ever having considered the content of his information, and then stripped him of his
mandates.
Now let's take a look at the current actual situation regarding the virus's danger, the
complete uselessness of PCR tests for the detection of infections, and the lockdowns based on
non-existent infections. In the meantime, we know that the health care systems were never in
danger of becoming overwhelmed by Covid-19. On the contrary, many hospitals remain empty to
this day and some are now facing bankruptcy. The hospital ship Comfort , which anchored
in New York at the time, and could have accommodated a thousand patients, never accommodated
more than some 20 patients. Nowhere was there any excess mortality. Studies carried out by
Professor Ioannidis and others have shown that the mortality of corona is equivalent to that of
the seasonal flu. Even the pictures from Bergamo and New York that were used to demonstrate to
the world that panic was in order proved to be deliberately misleading.
Then, the so-called "Panic Paper" was leaked, which was written by the German Department of
the Interior. Its classified content shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in fact, the
population was deliberately driven to panic by politicians and mainstream media. The
accompanying irresponsible statements of the Head of the RKI – remember the [German] CDC
– Mr. Wieler, who repeatedly and excitedly announced that the corona measures must be
followed unconditionally by the population without them asking any question, shows that that he
followed the script verbatim. In his public statements, he kept announcing that the situation
was very grave and threatening, although the figures compiled by his own Institute proved the
exact opposite.
Among other things, the "Panic Paper" calls for children to be made to feel responsible
– and I quote – "for the painful tortured death of their parents and grandparents
if they do not follow the corona rules", that is, if they do not wash their hands constantly
and don't stay away from their grandparents. A word of clarification: in Bergamo, the vast
majority of deaths, 94% to be exact, turned out to be the result not of Covid-19, but rather
the consequence of the government deciding to transfer sick patients, sick with probably the
cold or seasonal flu, from hospitals to nursing homes in order to make room at the hospitals
for all the Covid patients, who ultimately never arrived. There, at the nursing homes, they
then infected old people with a severely weakened immune system, usually as a result of
pre-existing medical conditions. In addition, a flu vaccination, which had previously been
administered, had further weakened the immune systems of the people in the nursing homes. In
New York, only some, but by far not all hospitals were overwhelmed. Many people, most of whom
were again elderly and had serious pre-existing medical conditions, and most of whom, had it
not been for the panic-mongering, would have just stayed at home to recover, raced to the
hospitals. There, many of them fell victim to healthcare-associated infections (or nosocomial
infections) on the one hand, and incidents of malpractice on the other hand, for example, by
being put on a respirator rather than receiving oxygen through an oxygen mask. Again, to
clarify: Covid-19, this is the current state of affairs, is a dangerous disease, just like the
seasonal flu is a dangerous disease. And of course, Covid-19, just like the seasonal flu, may
sometimes take take a severe clinical course and will sometimes kill patients.
However, as autopsies have shown, which were carried out in Germany in particular, by the
forensic scientist Professor Klaus Püschel in Hamburg, the fatalities he examined had
almost all been caused by serious pre-existing conditions, and almost all of the people who had
died had died at the very at a very old age, just like in Italy, meaning they had lived beyond
their average life expectancy.
In this context, the following should also be mentioned: the German RKI – that is,
again the equivalent of the CDC – had initially, strangely enough, recommended that no
autopsies be performed. And there are numerous credible reports that doctors and hospitals
worldwide had been paid money for declaring a deceased person a victim of Covid-19 rather than
writing down the true cause of death on the death certificate, for example a heart attack or a
gunshot wound. Without the autopsies, we would never know that the overwhelming majority of the
alleged Covid-19 victims had died of completely different diseases, but not of Covid-19. The
assertion that the lockdown was necessary because there were so many different infections with
SARS-COV-2, and because the healthcare systems would be overwhelmed is wrong for three reasons,
as we have learned from the hearings we conducted with the Corona Committee, and from other
data that has become available in the meantime:
A. The lockdown was imposed when the virus was already retreating. By the time the lockdown
was imposed, the alleged infection rates were already dropping again.
B. There's already protection from the virus because of cross- or T-cell immunity. Apart
from the above mentioned lockdown being imposed when the infection rates were already dropping,
there is also cross- or T-cell immunity in the general population against the corona viruses
contained in every flu or influenza wave. This is true, even if this time around, a slightly
different strain of the coronavirus was at work. And that is because the body's own immune
system remembers every virus it has ever battled in the past, and from this experience, it also
recognizes a supposedly new, but still similar, strain of the virus from the corona family.
Incidentally, that's how the PCR test for the detection of an infection was invented by now
infamous Professor Drosten.
At the beginning of January of 2020, based on this very basic knowledge, Mr. Drosten
developed his PCR test, which supposedly detects an infection with SARS-COV-2, without ever
having seen the real Wuhan virus from China, only having learned from social media reports that
there was something going on in Wuhan, he started tinkering on his computer with what would
become his corona PCR test. For this, he used an old SARS virus, hoping it would be
sufficiently similar to the allegedly new strain of the coronavirus found in Wuhan. Then, he
sent the result of his computer tinkering to China to determine whether the victims of the
alleged new coronavirus tested positive. They did.
And that was enough for the World Health Organization to sound the pandemic alarm and to
recommend the worldwide use of the Drosten PCR test for the detection of infections with the
virus now called SARS-COV-2. Drosten's opinion and advice was – this must be emphasized
once again – the only source for the German government when it announced the lockdown as
well as the rules for social distancing and the mandatory wearing of masks. And – this
must also be emphasized once again – Germany apparently became the center of especially
massive lobbying by the pharmaceutical and tech industry because the world, with reference to
the allegedly disciplined Germans, should do as the Germans do in order to survive the
pandemic.
C. And this is the most important part of our fact-finding: the PCR test is being used on
the basis of false statements, NOT based on scientific facts with respect to infections .
In the meantime, we have learned that these PCR tests, contrary to the assertions of Messrs.
Drosten, Wieler and the WHO, do NOT give any indication of an infection with any virus, let
alone an infection with SARS-COV-2. Not only are PCR tests expressly not approved for
diagnostic purposes, as is correctly noted on leaflets coming with these tests, and as the
inventor of the PCR test, Kary Mullis, has repeatedly emphasized. Instead, they're simply
incapable of diagnosing any disease. That is: contrary to the assertions of Drosten, Wieler and
the WHO, which they have been making since the proclamation of the pandemic, a positive
PCR-test result does not mean that an infection is present. If someone tests positive, it does
NOT mean that they're infected with anything, let alone with the contagious SARS-COV-2
virus.
Even the United States CDC, even this institution agrees with this, and I quote directly
from page 38 of one of its publications on the coronavirus and the PCR tests, dated July 13,
2020. First bullet point says:
" Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019
nCOV [novel coronavirus ] is the causative agent for clinical symptoms ."
Second bullet point says:
" The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019
nCOV infection ." Third bullet point says: " This test cannot rule out diseases caused
by other bacterial or viral pathogens ."
It is still not clear whether there has ever been a scientifically correct isolation of the
Wuhan virus , so that nobody knows exactly what we're looking for when we test, especially
since this virus, just like the flu viruses, mutates quickly. The PCR swabs take one or two
sequences of a molecule that are invisible to the human eye and therefore need to be amplified
in many cycles to make it visible . Everything over 35 cycles is – as reported by the
New York Times and others – considered completely unreliable and scientifically
unjustifiable. However, the Drosten test, as well as the WHO-recommended tests that followed
his example, are set to 45 cycles. Can that be because of the desire to produce as many
positive results as possible and thereby provide the basis for the false assumption that a
large number of infections have been detected?
The test cannot distinguish inactive and reproductive matter. That means that a positive
result may happen because the test detects, for example, a piece of debris, a fragment of a
molecule, which may signal nothing else than that the immune system of the person tested won a
battle with a common cold in the past. Even Drosten himself declared in an interview with a
German business magazine in 2014, at that time concerning the alleged detection of an infection
with the MERS virus, allegedly with the help of the PCR test, that these PCR tests are so
highly sensitive that even very healthy and non-infectious people may test positive . At
that time, he also became very much aware of the powerful role of a panic and fear-mongering
media, as you'll see at the end of the following quote. He said then, in this interview: "
If, for example, such a pathogen scurries over the nasal mucosa of a nurse for a day or so
without her getting sick or noticing anything, then she's suddenly a MERS case. This could also
explain the explosion of case numbers in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the media there have made
this into an incredible sensation ."
Has he forgotten this? Or is he deliberately concealing this in the corona context because
corona is a very lucrative business opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry as a whole? And
for Mr. Alford Lund, his co-author in many studies and also a PCR-test producer. In my view, it
is completely implausible that he forgot in 2020 what he knew about the PCR tests and told the
business magazine in 2014.
In short, this test cannot detect any infection, contrary to all false claims stating that
it can. An infection, a so-called "hot" infection, requires that the virus, or rather a
fragment of a molecule which may be a virus, is not just found somewhere, for example, in the
throat of a person without causing any damage – that would be a "cold" infection. Rather,
a "hot" infection requires that the virus penetrates into the cells, replicates there and
causes symptoms such as headaches or a sore throat. Only then is a person really infected in
the sense of a "hot" infection, because only then is a person contagious, that is, able to
infect others. Until then, it is completely harmless for both the host and all other people
that the host comes into contact with.
Once again, this means that positive test results, contrary to all other claims by Drosten,
Wieler, or the WHO , mean nothing with respect to infections, as even the CDC knows, as quoted
above.
Meanwhile, a number of highly respected scientists worldwide assume that there has never
been a corona pandemic, but only a PCR-test pandemic . This is the conclusion reached by many
German scientists, such as professors Bhakti, Reiss, Mölling, Hockertz, Walach and many
others, including the above-mentioned Professor John Ioannidis, and the Nobel laureate,
Professor Michael Levitt from Stanford University.
The most recent such opinion is that of the aforementioned Dr. Mike Yeadon , a former
Vice-President and Chief Science Officer at Pfizer, who held this position for 16 years. He and
his co-authors, all well-known scientists, published a scientific paper in September of 2020
and he wrote a corresponding magazine article on September 20, 2020. Among other things, he and
they state – and I quote:
" We're basing our government policy, our economic policy, and the policy of restricting
fundamental rights, presumably on completely wrong data and assumptions about the coronavirus.
If it weren't for the test results that are constantly reported in the media, the pandemic
would be over because nothing really happened. Of course, there are some serious individual
cases of illness, but there are also some in every flu epidemic. There was a real wave of
disease in March and April, but since then, everything has gone back to normal. Only the
positive results rise and sink wildly again and again, depending on how many tests are carried
out. But the real cases of illnesses are over. There can be no talk of a second wave. The
allegedly new strain of the coronavirus is "
– Dr. Yeadon continues –
" only new in that it is a new type of the long-known corona virus. There are at least
four coronaviruses that are endemic and cause some of the common colds we experience,
especially in winter. They all have a striking sequence similarity to the coronavirus, and
because the human immune system recognizes the similarity to the virus that has now allegedly
been newly discovered, a T-cell immunity has long existed in this respect. 30 per cent of the
population had this before the allegedly new virus evenappeared. Therefore, it is
sufficient for the so-called herd immunity that 15 to 25 per cent of the population are
infected with the allegedly new coronavirus to stop the further spread of the virus. And this
has long been the case ."
" The likelihood of an apparently positive case being a false positive is between 89 to
94 per cent, or near certainty ."
Dr. Yeadon, in agreement with the professors of immunology Kamera from Germany, Kappel from
the Netherlands, and Cahill from Ireland, as well as the microbiologist Dr. Arve from Austria,
all of whom testified before the German Corona Committee, explicitly points out that a positive
test does not mean that an intact virus has been found.
The authors explain that what the PCR test actually measures is – and I quote:
" Simply the presence of partial RNA sequences present in the intact virus, which could
be a piece of dead virus, which cannot make the subject sick, and cannot be transmitted, and
cannot make anyone else sick ."
Because of the complete unsuitability of the test for the detection of infectious diseases
– tested positive in goats, sheep, papayas and even chicken wings – Oxford
Professor Carl Heneghan, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, writes that the
Covid virus would never disappear if this test practice were to be continued, but would always
be falsely detected in much of what is tested. Lockdowns, as Yeadon and his colleagues found
out, do not work. Sweden, with its laissez-faire approach, and Great Britain, with its strict
lockdown, for example, have completely comparable disease and mortality statistics. The same
was found by US scientists concerning the different US states. It makes no difference to the
incidence of disease whether a state implements a lockdown or not.
With regard to the now infamous Imperial College of London's Professor Neil Ferguson and his
completely false computer models warning of millions of deaths, he says that – and I
quote: " No serious scientist gives any validity to Ferguson's model." He points out
with thinly veiled contempt – again I quote:
" It's important that you know, most scientists don't accept that it " – that
is, Ferguson's model – " was even faintly right. But the government is still wedded to
the model ." Ferguson predicted 40 thousand corona deaths in Sweden by May and 100 thousand
by June, but it remained at 5,800 which, according to the Swedish authorities, is equivalent to
a mild flu. If the PCR tests had not been used as a diagnostic tool for corona infections,
there would not be a pandemic and there would be no lockdowns, but everything would have been
perceived as just a medium or light wave of influenza, these scientists conclude. Dr. Yeadon in
his piece, " Lies, Damned Lies and Health Statistics: The Deadly Danger of False
Positives, writes: " This test is fatally flawed and must immediately be withdrawn and
never used again in this setting, unless shown to be fixed ." And, towards the end of that
article, " I have explained how a hopelessly performing diagnostic test has been, and
continues to be used, not for diagnosis of disease, but it seems solely to create fear
".
Now let's take a look at the current actual situation regarding the severe damage caused by
the lockdowns and other measures. Another detailed paper, written by a German official in the
Department of the Interior, who is responsible for risk assessment and the protection of the
population against risks, was leaked recently. It is now called the "False Alarm" paper. This
paper comes to the conclusion that there was that there was and is no sufficient evidence for
serious health risks for the population as claimed by Drosten, Wieler and the WHO, but –
the author says – there's very much evidence of the corona measures causing gigantic
health and economic damage to the population, which he then describes in detail in this paper.
This, he concludes, will lead to very high claims for damages, which the government will be
held responsible for. This has now become reality, but the paper's author was suspended.
More and more scientists, but also lawyers, recognize that, as a result of the deliberate
panic-mongering, and the corona measures enabled by this panic, democracy is in great danger of
being replaced by fascist totalitarian models. As I already mentioned above, in Australia,
people who do not wear the masks, which more and more studies show, are hazardous to health, or
who allegedly do not wear them correctly, are arrested, handcuffed and thrown into jail. In the
Philippines, they run the risk of getting shot, but even in Germany and in other previously
civilized countries, children are taken away from their parents if they do not comply with
quarantine regulations, distance regulations, and mask-wearing regulations. According to
psychologists and psychotherapists who testified before the Corona Committee, children are
traumatized en masse, with the worst psychological consequences yet to be expected in the
medium- and long-term. In Germany alone, to bankruptcies are expected in the fall to strike
small- and medium-sized businesses, which form the backbone of the economy. This will result in
incalculable tax losses and incalculably high and long-term social security money transfers for
– among other things – unemployment benefits.
Since, in the meantime, pretty much everybody is beginning to understand the full
devastating impact of the completely unfounded corona measures, I will refrain from detailing
this any further.
Let me now give you a summary of the legal consequences. The most difficult part of a
lawyer's work is always to establish the true facts, not the application of the legal rules to
these facts. Unfortunately, a German lawyer does not learn this at law school but his
Anglo-American counterparts do get the necessary training for this at their law schools.
And probably for this reason, but also because of the much more pronounced independence of the
Anglo-American judiciary, the Anglo-American law of evidence is much more effective in practice
than the German one. A court of law can only decide a legal dispute correctly if it has
previously determined the facts correctly, which is not possible without looking at all the
evidence. And that's why the law of evidence is so important. On the basis of the facts
summarized above, in particular those established with the help of the work of the German
Corona Committee, the legal evaluation is actually simple. It is simple for all civilized legal
systems, regardless of whether these legal systems are based on civil law, which follows the
Roman law more closely, or whether they are based on Anglo-American common law, which is only
loosely connected to Roman law.
Let's first take a look at the unconstitutionality of the measures. A number of German law
professors, including professors Kingreen, Morswig, Jungbluth and Vosgerau have stated, either
in written expert opinions or in interviews, in line with the serious doubts expressed by the
former president of the federal constitutional court with respect to the constitutionality of
the corona measures, that these measures – the corona measures – are without a
sufficient factual basis, and also without a sufficient legal basis, and are therefore
unconstitutional and must be repealed immediately. Very recently, a judge, Thorsten Schleif is
his name, declared publicly that the German judiciary, just like the general public, has been
so panic-stricken that it was no longer able to administer justice properly. He says that the
courts of law – and I quote – "have all too quickly waved through coercive measures
which, for millions of people all over Germany, represent massive suspensions of their
constitutional rights. He points out that German citizens – again I quote – "are
currently experiencing the most serious encroachment on their constitutional rights since the
founding of the federal republic of Germany in 1949". In order to contain the corona pandemic,
federal and state governments have intervened, he says, massively, and in part threatening the
very existence of the country as it is guaranteed by the constitutional rights of the
people.
What about fraud, intentional infliction of damage and crimes against humanity?
Based on the rules of criminal law, asserting false facts concerning the PCR tests or
intentional misrepresentation , as it was committed by Messrs. Drosten, Wieler and WHO, as well
as the WHO, can only be assessed as fraud. Based on the rules of civil tort law, this
translates into intentional infliction of damage. The German professor of civil law, Martin
Schwab, supports this finding in public interviews. In a comprehensive legal opinion of around
180 pages, he has familiarized himself with the subject matter like no other legal scholar has
done thus far and, in particular, has provided a detailed account of the complete failure of
the mainstream media to report on the true facts of this so-called pandemic. Messrs. Drosten,
Wieler and Tedros of the WHO all knew, based on their own expertise or the expertise of their
institutions, that the PCR tests cannot provide any information about infections, but asserted
over and over again to the general public that they can, with their counterparts all over the
world repeating this. And they all knew and accepted that, on the basis of their
recommendations, the governments of the world would decide on lockdowns, the rules for social
distancing, and mandatory wearing of masks, the latter representing a very serious health
hazard, as more and more independent studies and expert statements show. Under the rules of
civil tort law, all those who have been harmed by these PCR-test-induced lockdowns are entitled
to receive full compensation for their losses. In particular, there is a duty to compensate
– that is, a duty to pay damages for the loss of profits suffered by companies and
self-employed employed persons as a result of the lockdown and other measures.
In the meantime, however, the anti-corona measures have caused, and continue to cause, such
devastating damage to the world population's health and economy that the crimes committed by
Messrs. Drosten, Wieler and the WHO must be legally qualified as actual crimes against
humanity , as defined in section 7 of the International Criminal Code.
How can we do something? What can we do? Well, the class action is the best route to
compensatory damages and to political consequences. The so-called class action lawsuit is based
on English law and exists today in the USA and in Canada. It enables a court of law to allow a
complaint for damages to be tried as a class action lawsuit at the request of a plaintiff
if:
As a result of a damage-inducing event
A large number of people suffer the same type of damage.
Phrased differently, a judge can allow a class-action lawsuit to go forward if common
questions of law and fact make up the vital component of the lawsuit. Here, the common
questions of law and fact revolve around the worldwide PCR-test-based lockdowns and its
consequences. Just like the VW diesel passenger cars were functioning products, but they were
defective due to a so-called defeat device because they didn't comply with the emissions
standards, so too the PCR tests – which are perfectly good products in other settings
– are defective products when it comes to the diagnosis of infections. Now, if an
American or Canadian company or an American or Canadian individual decides to sue these persons
in the United States or Canada for damages, then the court called upon to resolve this dispute
may, upon request, allow this complaint to be tried as a class action lawsuit.
If this happens, all affected parties worldwide will be informed about this through
publications in the mainstream media and will thus have the opportunity to join this class
action within a certain period of time, to be determined by the court. It should be emphasized
that nobody must join the class action, but every injured party can join the
class.
The advantage of the class action is that only one trial is needed , namely to try
the complaint of a representative plaintiff who is affected in a manner typical of everyone
else in the class. This is, firstly, cheaper, and secondly, faster than hundreds of thousands
or more individual lawsuits. And thirdly, it imposes less of a burden on the courts. Fourthly,
as a rule it allows a much more precise examination of the accusations than would be possible
in the context of hundreds of thousands, or more likely in this corona setting, even millions
of individual lawsuits.
In particular, the well-established and proven Anglo-American law of evidence, with its
pre-trial discovery, is applicable. This requires that all evidence relevant for the
determination of the lawsuit is put on the table. In contrast to the typical situation in
German lawsuits with structural imbalance, that is, lawsuits involving on the one hand a
consumer, and on the other hand a powerful corporation, the withholding or even destruction of
evidence is not without consequence; rather the party withholding or even destroying evidence
loses the case under these evidence rules.
Here in Germany, a group of tort lawyers have banded together to help their clients with
recovery of damages. They have provided all relevant information and forms for German
plaintiffs to both estimate how much damage they have suffered and join the group or class of
plaintiffs who will later join the class action when it goes forward either in Canada or the
US. Initially, this group of lawyers had considered to also collect and manage the claims for
damages of other, non-German plaintiffs, but this proved to be unmanageable.
However, through an international lawyers' network, which is growing larger by the day, the
German group of attorneys provides to all of their colleagues in all other countries, free of
charge, all relevant information, including expert opinions and testimonies of experts showing
that the PCR tests cannot detect infections. And they also provide them with all relevant
information as to how they can prepare and bundle the claims for damages of their clients so
that, they too, can assert their clients' claims for damages, either in their home country's
courts of law, or within the framework of the class action, as explained above.
These scandalous corona facts, gathered mostly by the Corona Committee and summarized above,
are the very same facts that will soon be proven to be true either in one court of law, or in
many courts of law all over the world.
These are the facts that will pull the masks off the faces of all those responsible for
these crimes. To the politicians who believe those corrupt people, these facts are hereby
offered as a lifeline that can help you readjust your course of action, and start the long
overdue public scientific discussion, and not go down with those charlatans and criminals.
Thank you.
*
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"the group who is most likely to purposefully choose to #not #vaccinate are #highly
#educated. In speaking with them, these are people who have read the primary literature
themselves, & they're correctly interpreting it, so it's not a misunderstanding." ... "I like
the "Defying public health officials..." by reading and thinking for themselves? and these MIT
heads live in The Land of the Free? smh"..."It's terrifying because the conclusion is essentially
that the "anti maskers" have a better grip on the data, but surely they must be wrong because
they challenge orthodoxy."
"The lack of transparency within these data collection systems -- which many of these
users infer as a lack of honesty -- erodes these users' trust within both government
institutions and the datasets they release."
"In fact, there are multiple threads every week where users debate how representative the
data are of the population given the increased rate of testing across many states."
"These
groups argue that the conflation of asymptomatic and symptomatic cases therefore makes it
difficult for anyone to actually determine the severity of the pandemic."
"For these anti-mask users, their approach to the pandemic is grounded in more scientific
rigor, not less."
"These individuals as a whole are extremely willing to help others who
have trouble interpreting graphs with multiple forms of clarification: by helping people find
the original sources so that they can replicate the analysis themselves, by referencing other
reputable studies...
that come to the same conclusions, by reminding others to remain vigilant about the
limitations of the data, and by answering questions about the implications of a specific
graph."
"While these groups highly value scientific expertise, they also see collective
analysis of data as a way to bring communities together within a time of crisis, and being able
to transparently and dispassionately analyze the data is crucial for democratic governance."
"In fact, the explicit motivation for many of these followers is to find information so that
they can make the best decisions for their families -- and by extension, for the communities
around them."
"The message that runs through these threads is unequivocal: that data is the
only way to set fear-bound politicians straight, and using better data is a surefire way
towards creating a safer community."
"Data literacy is a quintessential criterion for membership within the community they have
created."
"Arguing anti-maskers need more scientific literacy is to characterize their
approach as uninformed & inexplicably extreme. This study shows the opposite: they are
deeply invested in forms of critique & knowledge production they recognize as markers of
scientific expertise"
"We argue that anti-maskers' deep story draws from similar wells of resentment, but adds a
particular emphasis on the usurpation of scientific knowledge by a paternalistic, condescending
elite that expects intellectual subservience rather than critical thinking from the
public."
And yet in the conclusion they lament "the skeptical impulse that the 'science
simply isn't settled,' prompting people to simply 'think for themselves" to horrifying ends."
They then compare it to the January 6 Capitol riot. Bizarre and fascinating document. Derrick S. @DuLouef ·
May 10
This paper reads as an appeal to eradicate skepticism and affix in its place, a strict
adherence to dogma, absent of critical thinking. Feels like they would just prefer people take
it on faith that the church of science is infallible, and stop questioning it.
MIT researchers 'infiltrated' a Covid skeptics community a few months ago and found that
skeptics place a high premium on data analysis and empiricism. "Most fundamentally, the groups
we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution."
This paper shows some crazy data about the complexity and stupidity of some people. They
know just enough to be "smart" and as a researcher I'll dispute a major premise - that these
people act in good faith. They do not. How do I know? Just go talk to them, read what they
wrote, and watch what they do. They don't analyze the data. They analyze some data and
dismiss a lot of good data that says the opposite. 6 Reply Share Report Save
We argue that anti-maskers' deep story draws from similar wells of resentment, but adds
a particular emphasis on the usurpation of scientific knowledge by a paternalistic,
condescending elite that expects intellectual subservience rather than critical thinking
from the public.
Damn they fucking nailed the libs. 18 Reply Share Report Save
In my experience, I've seen a lot of people who absolutely look at the data. However, they
do not have a science background, so therefore they often misinterpret things. They often see
things in the data that really aren't there, or that the data really can't prove. 48 Reply
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You can either try your best, put your ideas out for public scrutiny, and try to be
intellectually honest or you can completely outsource your thinking to people who (a) still
might have no clue what they're talking about, (b) might not have your best interest at
heart, (c) are possibly not using scientific processes so much as appeals to conformity. 19
Reply Share Report Save
This is the way I view it: If it is a singular government entity sharing information, then
I am generally skeptical. However, in the case of something like covid, you have independent
entities across the world with scientists agreeing on several key things. In that instance,
the chance of a conspiracy goes so far down that it is more prudent to lean on their
scientific expertise than my own analysis, which is probably so corrupted by my personal bias
as to not be very accurate. So I'm not sure I agree with the idea that I have to do something
- adding my own uneducated opinion in with the massive amount of other uneducated opinions is
not adding any value to the world. In fact, I would say it is an active detriment as it
muddies the waters, and at least here in the US, I think it is what has pushed us into more
anti-scientific thinking. 4 Reply Share Report Save
Why is a dispersed power structure more reliable? It's not like they don't all have
powerful incentives to conform.
adding my own uneducated opinion in with the massive amount of other uneducated opinions
is not adding any value to the world.
Your opinion on who is credible to follow blindly is equally as credible as your opinion
on covid.
Seriously though, just read source material. It's not that hard and when you do, you'll
notice it's not written in Latin and filled with PhD math. It's accessible to anyone and
it'll become intuitively obvious to you why you should be allowed to enter the discussion. 6
Reply Share Report Save
Your opinion on who is credible to follow blindly is equally as credible as your opinion
on covid.
Disagree completely. If you look at the worldwide community of scientists and they agree
on several key things, my opinion does not trump that. Now granted, there is a slight chance
that system fails. For example, in the US, the sugar lobby successfully placed health blames
on fat instead of sugar; however, those instances are in the minority, especially when there
are more institutions studying any given issue. As for my opinion, I could have an ego and
say that I could read the studies myself and form my own conclusion. I studied at a very
well-respected university and consider myself fairly mentally adept; however, my background
is not in the sciences and I would undoubtedly misconstrue something. Beyond that, half the
world's population is below average intelligence, and to think that they are going to draw
conclusions that are both correct and yet different from the scientific community at large is
simply laughable to me. But what they can do is misconstrue things, share it with
their equally uneducated friends, and build a swell of uninformed opinions that have the same
voting power as everyone else. And we are seeing this in action right now because people
think that their own opinions are better than someone who has studied the subject for
decades.
And again, to be clear, I'm not advocating for blind following. If something doesn't seem
right, then ask questions - that makes a ton of sense. But I think where people get messed up
is that they see something that doesn't seem to add up, but rather than ask questions of a
subject matter expert, they then try to answer it themselves, and they (laypeople) will
almost always be wrong in that situation. 1 Reply Share Report Save
If you don't read the literature then you have no idea if there is a "slight" chance of
the system failing. I've literally never met a half decent scientist who had any respect for
the institutions today. The system actually fails quite often due to a metric shit load of
problems with every aspect of scientific institutionalism from publication biases, to media
backlash and public backlash, to unqualified scientists with bad methods, bad research, and
bad results.
Know-nothing normie idiots treat scientists like some sort of intellectual super soldier
titans of knowledge, but most of them are midwits who lack passion and do the bare minimum to
get by. The only way to be informed is to be an actual part of the process by actually
reading the literature and taking an active role in your own thought processes. 1 Reply Share
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You think that someone who has advanced degrees in a specific niche is anywhere close to a
"midwit"? Sure, scientists are not infallible, but you are going the opposite extreme. 1
Reply Share Report Save
Degrees are more of a measure of how long you're willing to stay in college for than
anything else. It used to be 10% of society going, probably approximately the top 10%
intellectually, and now there's not only far more and far less impressive people, but their
grades are inflated. The private sector knows I'm right, which is why "Hey, I have a degree!"
will no longer just instantly land you a job.
What I'm saying is really not that extreme. Scientists are not excluded from the maxim
that 90% of everything is crap. Scientists are not the exception to the fact that most
employees phone it in day to day. Scientists are not excluded from social and political
pressures, and neither are the institutions that they work for.
You should not outsource your thinking based on the claims of institutions that those
institutions are wonderful. You should read the subject matter well enough to ask intelligent
questions and have a web of belief to fall back on that is based on actual information and
not based on a game of telephone. You should then put your thoughts up to public scrutiny,
ask questions as needed, and develop some working understanding of the world around you. This
statement is not extreme. 3 Reply Share Report Save
I have to admit that I'm getting so incredibly tired from people saying stuff like this:
"Degrees are more of a measure of how long you're willing to stay in college for than
anything else." That's just absurd. You have no idea what goes into a doctoral thesis, at
least from a reputable school.
I see a trend in your posts where there is a string of truth, but then takes a much more
extreme view of that situation. For example, yes, as more people are pushed into college
situations, it will be less that are potentially qualified, but that is a GIANT leap to what
you then say. And yes, surely there are well-educated but ultimately lazy scientists, but
again, you use that minority to make generalized statements over the entire scientific
community.
At the end, what you say has merit - if you ask questions directed to subject matter
experts and not your layperson peers , and continue to educate yourself, at some point
you will have an opinion that has validity. But we are talking about years of study to then
understand the issues well enough to dispute those who already have those years of experience
and study. If you want to go that route, that's completely fine, but that is not the average
person, nor anywhere close to it. It frankly is a lot more effective to simply get better at
being more discerning who to trust from that existing group of experts. Vote Reply Share
Report Save
I'm a covid skeptic in that I believe it's real, but don't trust my government to tell a)
the truth and (b) not sensationalise it for their benefit.
I like to see the data and evaluate things myself, I'm pretty smart with that and was in
the early day "close the borders or were screwed" camp back in December 2018 / January
2019
Empirical data is the only thing worth anything.
I do worry for people who don't have my background in science or know when to stop and say
"I don't know so let's just do the safe thing" though.
Am I the only one amused by the illusion of precision when it comes to defining outcomes
associated with "herd immunity". Inputs, for example, from our CDC, have consistently been
wrong, or manipulated to achieve a political end. Masks were necessary, then they weren't .
Six feet, became three feet, then back to six feet. We will get thru this, because we must.
Conventional wisdom holds this was worth it because lives were saved by shutting workplaces
and schools and telling people to stay home. But a new study by
University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows the opposite
Conventional wisdom holds this was worth it because lives were saved by shutting workplaces
and schools and telling people to stay home. But a new study by
University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows the opposite
J Domingo
The lockdowns were not supposed stop anything.
Love it when people unintentionally and accidentally tell the truth.
Conventional wisdom holds this was worth it because lives were saved by shutting workplaces
and schools and telling people to stay home. But a new study by
University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows the opposite
J Domingo
The lockdowns were not supposed stop anything.
Love it when people unintentionally and accidentally tell the truth.
Conventional wisdom holds this was worth it because lives were saved by shutting
workplaces and schools and telling people to stay home. But a new study by
University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows the opposite
J Domingo
The lockdowns were not supposed stop anything.
Love it when people unintentionally and accidentally tell the truth.
Conventional wisdom holds this was worth it because lives were saved by shutting
workplaces and schools and telling people to stay home. But a new study
by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows the opposite
J Domingo
The lockdowns were not supposed stop anything.
Love it when people unintentionally and accidentally tell the truth.
Conventional wisdom holds this was worth it because lives were saved by shutting
workplaces and schools and telling people to stay home. But a new study
by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows the opposite
J Domingo
The lockdowns were not supposed stop anything.
Love it when people unintentionally and accidentally tell
the truth.
Covid-19 lockdowns shaved 3.5% off U.S. GDP in 2020 even as the federal government spent
more than $2.6 trillion in relief measures. Millions of children fell behind in learning and
nearly 100,000 businesses closed for good.
Conventional wisdom holds this was worth it because lives were saved by shutting workplaces
and schools and telling people to stay home. But a new study by
University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows the opposite. After the first month of the
pandemic, organizations that adopted prevention protocols became safer places than the wider
community. Officials who didn't see that coming forgot that organizations are rational and look
for cooperative solutions that improve the welfare of the group, such as reducing the risks of
communicable disease.
In "The Backward Art of Slowing the Spread? Congregation Efficiencies during COVID-19," Mr.
Mulligan uses empirical data to test the presumption that the workplace was less safe than the
home. He recognizes that "absent costly prevention activities, larger groups naturally have
more infections per member."
Yet as he notes, people join firms "in part because they value the group's management of
local externalities and public goods." That's an economist's way of saying that the human
capital of a company is tied to its capacity to protect employees and serve customers.
There is little doubt that infection would spread faster in congregations than in smaller
groups if both engaged in similar practices. But since larger groups have an incentive to spend
on expensive methods of prevention, larger organizations might be better at prevention than
households with fewer people.
This is what happened. "Available data from schools, hospitals, nursing homes, food
processing plants, hair stylists, and airlines," Mr. Mulligan writes in the study, "show
employers adopting mitigation protocols in the spring of 2020." These were "physical barriers,"
like masking and air filtering, but also included distancing protocols, pods and screenings.
Households were less likely to implement similar precautions.
According to the study, "per-capita transmission rates on site fell dramatically, usually to
levels below household transmission."
In one example, "an hour worked in the Duke Health system went from being more dangerous
than an hour outside work to being more than three times safer." Overall, "both the spread data
and the prevalence data suggest that the prevention efforts worked, or at least that something
about the organization keeps infection rates below what they are outside the organization."
(scientificamerican.com) 306BeauHD on Thursday April
29, 2021 @11:30PM from the effective-public-health-measures dept. An anonymous reader quotes a
report from Scientific American: Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread,
influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization
have dropped to minuscule levels . The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public
health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading also stop the flu. Influenza
viruses are transmitted in much the same way as SARS-CoV-2, but they are less effective at
jumping from host to host. As Scientific American
reported last fall , the drop-off in flu numbers was both swift and universal. Since then,
cases have stayed remarkably low. "There's just no flu circulating," says Greg Poland, who has
studied the disease at the Mayo Clinic for decades. The U.S. saw about 600 deaths from
influenza during the 2020-2021 flu season. In comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention estimated there were roughly 22,000 deaths in the prior season and 34,000 two
seasons ago.
Because each year's flu vaccine is based on strains that have been circulating during the
past year, it is unclear how next year's vaccine will fare, should the typical patterns of the
disease return. [...] Public health experts are grateful for the reprieve. Some are also
worried about a lost immune response, however. If influenza subsides for several years, today's
toddlers could miss a chance to have an early-age response imprinted on their immune system.
That could be good or bad, depending on what strains circulate during the rest of their life.
For now, future flu transmission remains a roll of the dice.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: After a late-spring lull,
daily coronavirus cases in the United States have again
hit record highs , driven by resurgent outbreaks in states such as Florida, Arizona and
California. Hospitals in Houston are already on the brink of being overwhelmed, and public
health experts worry the pandemic's body count will soon again be climbing in tandem with the
daily case load. The dire situation has raised the specter of another round of state-level
stay-at-home orders to halt the pandemic's spread and caused a number of governors to pause or
reverse their ongoing reopening plans.
"A face mask mandate could potentially substitute for lockdowns that would otherwise
subtract nearly 5% from GDP," the team, led by the company's chief economist, Jan Hatzius,
writes. It's worth noting the authors of the report are economists and not public health
experts. Their primary motivation is to protect the economic interests of Goldman Sachs's
investors, which is why they're interested in the effects of federal policy on gross domestic
product. But their findings are in line with a number of other published studies on the
efficacy of masks.
The Goldman Sachs report notes the United States is a global outlier with respect to face
mask use, which is widespread in Asia and currently mandated in many European countries. Though
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "
recommends " the use of masks in public and 20 states plus the District of Columbia have
implemented their own mandates, there is no binding national policy, with
wide regional variations in mask use around the country. "
We estimate that statewide mask mandates gradually raise the percentage of people who
'always' or 'frequently' wear masks by around 25 [percentage points] in the 30+ days after
signing," the authors write. "Our numerical estimates are that cumulative cases grow 17.3% per
week without a mask mandate but only 7.3% with a mask mandate, and that cumulative fatalities
grow 29% per week without a mask mandate but only 16% with a mask mandate."
There is no or very little (depending of type of vaccine) immunity from South African mutation in the USA for people who
already were vaccinated.
From comments: "Herd Immunity or Heard on the Street immunity? COVID was way over-played in order to get Biden in the WH. Now
the shoes on the other foot and the Herd Concept is eroding pretty darn fast"... "Here in the US, it's undeniable that the quantity
of covid cases were intentionally over counted -- likely for political reasons."
"If the re-infection rate is near zero and those who are the most vulnerable are 95% inoculated why should the remaining
unvaccinated (mostly youth) be needed to reach herd immunity? Their reaction to COVID-19 is either undetectable or no worse than a
mild cold. Some people, journalists, just do not want to think and/or act logically."
Notable quotes:
"... For example, there is no herd immunity from South African mutation in the USA for those who were immunized with the Moderna vaccine and Johnson and Johnson vaccine ..."
"... And more mutations will follow this and the next year. So the concept of "herd immunity" when applied to coronaviruses looks to me fuzzy; in this sense this is the goal that the nation probably can't achieve. Remember the "flattering of the curve" fiasco in NYC. Quarantine measures were completely decimated by Floyd-gate riots and authorities were forced to swallow the bitter pill. Measures they advocated proved to be useless and economically damaging. ..."
"... Coronaviruses like C19 are a moving target. Moreover, there are large swats of the US population that have weakened immune system (including some seniors) who that does not respond to vaccination, creating no protection. In large cities like NYC they will serve as the reservoir of virus mutations vaccination, or no vaccination. ..."
"... We have Fauci making unfounded statements that confuse everyone and now economists are going to tell us when herd immunity will become operative. Can't do any worse than the 'media docs'. ..."
Some view herd immunity -- the point at which a critical mass of a population become immune to a disease-causing virus or bacteria -- as a
key factor in determining when Covid-19 will be conquered and economies will return to normal. Until herd immunity is reached, some
say, governments will restrict activities to prevent the disease's spread, resulting in fewer goods and services being produced and
consumed.
Other economists say businesses can reopen and economic activity can rebound without full herd immunity, and likely will.
Part of the challenge for economists is that it is hard to know exactly when a given place will achieve herd immunity, if ever.
For
Covid-19
, epidemiologists generally believe it will require having at least 60% to 80% of a population develop antibodies,
curbing the virus's ability to spread.
... ... ...
Economists at
Goldman
Sachs Group
Inc.
have
tried to incorporate immunity estimates into their forecasts by looking at daily vaccination progress around the world and take
account of estimates of how many people have already been infected.
According to their calculations, 60% of the population in the U.S. and U.K. are already immune to Covid-19; the biggest economies
of Europe will get there by August.
Serg Bezrukov
I agree with Umesh Patil.
For example, there is no herd immunity from South African mutation in the USA for those who were immunized with the Moderna
vaccine and Johnson and Johnson vaccine
.
And more mutations will follow this and the next year. So the concept of "herd immunity" when applied to coronaviruses looks
to me fuzzy; in this sense this is the goal that the nation probably can't achieve. Remember the "flattering of the curve"
fiasco in NYC. Quarantine measures were completely decimated by Floyd-gate riots and authorities were forced to swallow the
bitter pill. Measures they advocated proved to be useless and economically damaging.
Coronaviruses like C19 are a moving target. Moreover, there are large swats of the US population that have
weakened
immune system
(including
some seniors) who that does not respond to vaccination, creating no protection. In large cities like NYC they will serve as the
reservoir of virus mutations vaccination, or no vaccination.
Rick Schaler
SUBSCRIBER
3 hours ago
We have Fauci making unfounded statements that confuse everyone and now economists are going to tell us when herd
immunity will become operative. Can't do any worse than the 'media docs'.
"Only two things are infinite, human stupidity and the universe, and I'm not sure about
the universe." - Attributed to Einstein: The CDC repoted under 2,500 confirmed flu cases for
the US for the entire season. In the previous season, the CDC estimated there were 38 million
cases, or 99.99% fewer cases.
ReadyForHillary 1 hour ago (Edited)
No different from climate "science". Ferguson repeated the mistake made by the first
warming hysterics - making predictions that can be tested empirically. The latter learned to
push their predictions out to the year 2100 so they can never be tested.
JaxPavan 1 hour ago
"As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious
disease (HCID) in the UK. There are many diseases which can cause serious illness which are
not classified as HCIDs.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to
classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about
the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak.
Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the
most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined
that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about
mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and
sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19
should no longer be classified as an HCID.
The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to consider COVID-19 as a Public Health
Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), therefore the need to have a national,
coordinated response remains and this is being met by the government's COVID-19 response .
Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare
workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the
updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19 , which supersedes
all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions about different
personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical
scenarios."
The satirist Ambrose Bierce once defined prophecy as the "art and practice of selling one's
credibility for future delivery." Covid-19 has produced no shortage of doomsaying prophets
whose prognostications completely failed at future delivery, and yet in the eyes of the
scientific community their credibility remains peculiarly intact.
No greater example exists than the epidemiology modeling team at Imperial College-London
(ICL), led by the physicist Neil Ferguson . As I've documented at
length , the ICL modelers played a direct and primary role in selling the concept of
lockdowns to the world. The governments of the United States and United Kingdom explicitly
credited
Ferguson's forecasts on March 16, 2020 with the decision
to embrace the once-unthinkable response of ordering their populations to shelter in
place.
Ferguson openly boasted of his team's role in these decisions in a
December 2020 interview , and continues to implausibly claim credit for saving millions of
lives despite
the deficit of empirical evidence that his policies delivered on their promises. Quite the
opposite – the worst
outcomes in terms of Covid deaths per capita are almost entirely in countries that leaned
heavily on lockdowns and related nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in their unsuccessful
bid to turn the pandemic's tide.
Assessed looking backward from the one-year mark,
ICL's modeling exercises performed disastrously . They not only failed to accurately
forecast the course of the pandemic in the US and UK – they also failed to anticipate
Covid-19's course in almost every country in the world, irrespective of the policy responses
taken.
Time and time again, the Ferguson team's models dramatically overstated the death toll of
the disease, posting
the worst performance record of any major epidemiology model . After a year, some of the
ICL predictions reach farcical territory. Their forecast of 179,000 deaths in Taiwan, which
never locked down, was off by 1,798,000% (as of this writing, Taiwan has just 12 Covid-19
deaths). A similar story played out in other countries that eschewed the lockdown approach for
the first year of the pandemic. Imperial overstated the predicted mortality of Sweden (392%),
South Korea (17,461%), and Japan (11,670%) in the absence of heavier-handed NPIs than any of
these countries actually imposed.
But what about the rest of the world? Most other countries experimented with some form of
Neil Ferguson's prescriptive advice over the last year, although for different degrees of
severity and duration. Despite widely different mortality outcomes of their own, no other
country provides anything approaching a clear validation of the ICL model.
The table depicts three modeled scenarios that were published in
ICL's report from one year ago (ICL also included a fourth scenario attempting to
approximate focused protection of elderly populations; however this approach was not
meaningfully attempted in any country).
The first scenario shows an extreme "suppression" model, triggered when a country reached
1.6 deaths per 100,000 residents. This strategy envisioned a stunning 75% overall "uniform
reduction in contact rates" across the entire population. Even in the short term, this approach
is akin to the harsh measures first implemented in the Wuhan region of China as distinct from
the lesser lockdowns with "essential business" exemptions seen in most of the world. But ICL's
suppression strategy also assumed that this measure "will need to be maintained in some manner
until vaccines or effective treatments become available" – basically a full year or more
of uninterrupted lockdown.
No country on earth maintained a 75% suppression rate of all contacts for an entire year,
making ICL's first model an extreme hypothetical of what a "best case" aggressive policy
response could attain rather than a predictive reflection of reality. Despite its hypothetical
nature, ICL's suppression model still managed to overstate the number of Covid-19 deaths in all
but the 20 worst-afflicted countries – none of which used anything close to the
scenario's policy approach.
The second ICL strategy is closer to reality in most countries. This "mitigation" model
envisioned mandatory population-wide social distancing with a primary aim of preserving
hospital capacity to treat the disease – a "flattening of the curve" as the popular
slogan maintained. Using the most conservative replication rate that they modeled, R=2.4,
Imperial's "mitigation" forecasts managed to dramatically overstate the number of deaths in
every single country on earth. Using a higher R0 yields even more extreme overpredictions. But
sticking with the 2.4 scenario is sufficient to show the systemic problem in the ICL model.
Their "mitigation" numbers were too high by roughly 20-30% in hard-hit locations such as Peru,
Mexico, and the Czech Republic – all countries that used
stringent lockdown measures at several points in the last year . On the other extreme, ICL
overstated the "mitigation" scenario's predicted death toll by 100,000% or more in a dozen
countries. All but about 20 of the hardest-hit countries had "mitigation" forecasts that ran
high by 100% or more.
The third ICL strategy projected the results of an "unmitigated" pandemic in which
governments did nothing at all. This is the scenario that famously predicted 2.2 million deaths
in the United States, 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and similar catastrophic outcomes across
the world. Although Ferguson's team has a bad
habit of falsely claiming credit for saving millions of lives premised upon these
apocalyptic numbers, the truth is they all amounted to wild exaggerations from a fundamentally
flawed model. At the 1-year mark, no country on earth approached anywhere near ICL's
"unmitigated" projections, and certainly not any of the countries that avoided heavy-handed
lockdowns.
Although ICL did not release its full timeline of how the pandemic would play out under
these scenarios, its modeling enterprise was built upon the assumption that the peak daily
death toll for each country would hit approximately three months after the introduction of the
virus. For most countries, that means a predicted peak sometime in the summer of 2020, with the
overwhelming majority of forecast deaths to have occurred by the end of that wave. A year
later, most countries have not even remotely resembled the tolls predicted under most of the
ICL model scenarios.
Several questions remain.
Why is Ferguson, who has a long history of absurdly exaggerated modeling predictions, still
viewed as a leading authority on pandemic forecasting? And why is the ICL team still advising
governments around the world on how to deal with Covid-19 through its flawed modeling approach?
In March 2020 ICL sold its credibility for future delivery. That future has arrived, and the
results are not pretty.
asteroids 2 hours ago (Edited)
As a computer scientist familiar with statistical modelling I took a look at his code. It
made me want to puke. This joker should not be confused with Niall Ferguson, a top notch
historian.
gspanner PREMIUM 4 minutes ago
The article doesn't mention that he broke the lockdown he espoused to travel across london
to screw his partner. So one rule for me....
He also was responsible for the slaughter of millions of cows during a Foot and Mouth
outbreak (probably for no reason). His previous doom **** predictions for precious infectious
disease outbreaks have been wrong. His model has been discredited because the
code/methodology is fundamentally flawed, written in error ridden out of date language and
code.
Yet the BBC wheel him out whenever they need to justify the draconian regulations without
any questions of his idiocy which I am afraid seems likely because they need to maintain
/support the licence fee agreement with the government.
It all stinks.
Majorca PREMIUM 10 minutes ago
Dr. John Ioannides(Stanford University California): Much closer to the reality. Does not
fit the "script"
JaxPavan 1 hour ago
"As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious
disease (HCID) in the UK. There are many diseases which can cause serious illness which are
not classified as HCIDs.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to
classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about
the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak.
Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the
most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined
that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about
mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and
sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19
should no longer be classified as an HCID.
The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to consider COVID-19 as a Public Health
Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), therefore the need to have a national,
coordinated response remains and this is being met by the government's COVID-19 response .
Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare
workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the
updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19 , which supersedes
all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions about different
personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical
scenarios."
Janet_the_Gannet 3 hours ago
Why is Ferguson, who has a long history of absurdly exaggerated modeling predictions,
still viewed as a leading authority on pandemic forecasting?
I imagine because his predictions feed into a pre-existing agenda.
"Ferguson co-founded the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, based at
Imperial, in 2008. It is the leading body advising national governments on pathogen
outbreaks."
"It gets tens of millions of dollars in annual funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation"
Colour me not at all surprised
phoolish 3 hours ago
A couple videos where I explain my experience as a researcher in modeling ...
Because he's one of the stupid ones willing to do it. Any decent statistician will not use
models to predict outcomes like this, as it is problematic and error prone. Add in a lot of
unknowns to said model and any outcome prediction is going to be absolute crap. It's junk
science.
SDShack 3 hours ago
Why is Ferguson, who has a long history of absurdly exaggerated modeling predictions,
still viewed as a leading authority on pandemic forecasting?
Why is Michael Mann still a professor at Penn State after being exposed as the Globull
Warming Hockey Stick Faker? As the ClimateGate emails proved...it's all about money. Same as
it ever was. Follow the money!
Detective Miller 3 hours ago
You have answered your own question. That view serves a certain ideology, does it not?
They pay people like that to continue screaming FIRE! because it gives them POWER.
Taffer 2 hours ago
Taiwan had 12 Covid deaths. I wonder how many the US actually had, removing all the
government incentives to state almost every death as Covid related that is.
Gone 2 hours ago
And flu disappeared. But hey they got to try out their genetic crap on millions.
After testing 1,500 samples from people who tested positive for the CCP Virus [COVID-19],
these scientists found that ALL of the samples had evidence of Influenza A and Influenza B ,
something that had already been discovered in other cases, and none of COVID-19 .
El Chapo Read 2 hours ago
...and Neil Ferguson was caught, in the middle of the strongest UK lock downs,
criss-crossing London on several occasions to shag his mistress. The moment I heard that
fact, it confirmed we were being scammed.
JSG 2 hours ago
His married mistress which is even worse!
Kelley 50 minutes ago
It's simple : Ferguson is paid through Imperial College because he comes up with numbers
that match his paymaster's agenda.
smacker 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
"And why is the ICL team still advising governments around the world on how to deal with
Covid-19 through its flawed modeling approach?"
I suspect the answer to this question is that Neil Ferguson produced the overly dramatic
predictions that the political elites wanted, so they could impose authoritarian control over
their populations, like we have seen in the UK, Europe, US and elsewhere. Let's not forget
that Ferguson along with most governments are all now fully on-board with the so-called
Climate Change Crises. So they all had common motives.
MilwaukeeMark 2 hours ago (Edited)
They weren't interested in truth. Leaders fear the truth as the Wicked Witch feared water.
They were interested in peddling fear. Trauma based events like what we got with the MSM
nightly fear **** gets people to by-pass reason and go right into reaction mode. I'm still
seeing people out jogging with masks on. It worked.
BigJJ 1 hour ago (Edited)
During every "lockdown" in the UK people were still permitted by their gloriously
benevolent government to hop on the London underground so mixing with millions of people per
day, to go on buses all across the country so mixing with hundreds of people per day, to get
in taxis mixing with dozens of people per day, to go to supermarkets at any time mixing with
hundreds of people etc etc etc. This had nothing to do with stopping a virus and everything
to do with killing small independent businesses and any business such as pub chains where
people could sit and speak together about the upcoming trials of all Western politicians.
Progressive communities have been home to some of the fiercest battles over COVID-19 policies, and some liberal policy makers
have left scientific evidence behind.
EMMA GREEN
MAY 4, 2021
Teachers in Massachusetts protest a
school-reopening plan.
MEDIANEWS
GROUP / BOSTON HERALD / GETTY
L
urking
among the jubilant americans
venturing back out to bars and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different
group: liberals who aren't quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. For this subset, diligence against COVID-19
remains an expression of political identity -- even when that means overestimating the disease's risks or setting limits far
more strict than what public-health guidelines permit. In surveys, Democrats express more worry about the pandemic than
Republicans do. People who describe themselves as "very liberal" are distinctly anxious. This spring, after the vaccine
rollout had started, a third of very liberal people were "very concerned" about becoming seriously ill from COVID-19,
compared with a quarter of both liberals and moderates, according to a study conducted by the University of North Carolina
political scientist Marc Hetherington. And 43 percent of very liberal respondents believed that getting the coronavirus
would have a "very bad" effect on their life, compared with a third of liberals and moderates.
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Last year, when the pandemic was raging and
scientists and public-health officials were still trying to understand how the virus spread, extreme care was warranted.
People all over the country made enormous sacrifices -- rescheduling weddings, missing funerals, canceling graduations,
avoiding the family members they love -- to protect others. Some conservatives refused to wear masks or stay home, because of
skepticism about the severity of the disease or a refusal to give up their freedoms. But this is a different story, about
progressives who stressed the scientific evidence, and then veered away from it.
For many progressives, extreme vigilance was
in part about opposing Donald Trump. Some of this reaction was born of
deeply
felt frustration
with how he handled the pandemic. It could also be knee-jerk. "If he said, 'Keep schools open,' then,
well, we're going to do everything in our power to keep schools closed," Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at UC San
Francisco, told me. Gandhi describes herself as "left of left," but has alienated some of her ideological peers because she
has advocated for policies such as reopening schools and establishing a clear timeline for the end of mask mandates. "We
went the other way, in an extreme way, against Trump's politicization," Gandhi said. Geography and personality may have
also contributed to progressives' caution: Some of the most liberal parts of the country are places where the pandemic hit
especially
hard
, and Hetherington found that the very liberal participants in his survey tended to be the most neurotic.
The spring of 2021 is different from the
spring of 2020, though. Scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads -- and how it doesn't. Public-health advice is
shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information. And in their eagerness to
protect themselves and others, they may be underestimating other costs. Being extra careful about COVID-19 is (mostly)
harmless when it's limited to wiping down your groceries with Lysol wipes and wearing a mask in places where you're
unlikely to spread the coronavirus, such as on a hiking trail. But vigilance can have unintended consequences when it
imposes on other people's lives. Even as scientific knowledge of COVID-19 has increased, some progressives have continued
to embrace policies and behaviors that aren't supported by evidence, such as
banning
access
to playgrounds,
closing
beaches
, and
refusing
to reopen
schools for in-person learning.
"Those who are vaccinated on the left seem
to think overcaution now is the way to go, which is making people on the right question the effectiveness of the vaccines,"
Gandhi told me. Public figures and policy makers who try to dictate others' behavior without any scientific justification
for doing so erode trust in public health and make people less willing to take useful precautions. The marginal gains of
staying shut down might not justify the potential backlash.
E
ven
as the very effective covid-19 vaccines
have become widely accessible, many progressives continue to listen to
voices preaching caution over relaxation. Anthony Fauci recently
said
he
wouldn't travel or eat at restaurants even though he's fully vaccinated, despite CDC
guidance
that
these activities can be safe for vaccinated people who take precautions. California Governor Gavin Newsom
refused
in
April to guarantee that the state's schools would fully reopen in the fall, even though
studies
have demonstrated
for months that modified in-person instruction is safe. Leaders in Brookline, Massachusetts,
decided
this
week to keep a local outdoor mask mandate in place, even though the CDC recently relaxed its guidance for outdoor mask use.
And scolding is still a popular pastime. "At least in San Francisco, a lot of people are glaring at each other if they
don't wear masks outside," Gandhi said, even though the risk of outdoor transmission
is
very low
.
Scientists, academics, and writers who have
argued that some very low-risk activities are worth doing as vaccination rates rise -- even if the risk of exposure is not
zero -- have faced intense backlash. After Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University,
argued
in
The
Atlantic
in March that families should plan to take their kids on trips and see friends and relatives this summer, a
reader sent an email to her supervisors at the university suggesting that Oster be promoted to a leadership role in the
field of "genocide encouragement." "Far too many people are not dying in our current global pandemic, and far too many
children are not yet infected," the reader wrote. "With the upcoming consequences of global warming about to be felt by a
wholly unprepared worldwide community, I believe the time is right to get young scholars ready to follow in Dr. Oster's
footsteps and ensure the most comfortable place to be is white [and] upper-middle-class." ("That email was something,"
Oster told me.)
Sure, some mean people spend their time
chiding others online. But for many, remaining guarded even as the country opens back up is an earnest expression of civic
values. "I keep coming back to the same thing with the pandemic," Alex Goldstein, a progressive PR consultant who was a
senior adviser to Representative Ayanna Pressley's 2018 campaign, told me. "Either you believe that you have a
responsibility to take action to protect a person you don't know or you believe you have no responsibility to anybody who
isn't in your immediate family."
Goldstein and his wife decided early on in
the pandemic that they were going to take restrictions extremely seriously and adopt the most cautious interpretation of
when it was safe to do anything. He's been shaving his own head since the summer (with "bad consequences," he said).
Although rugby teams have been back on the fields in Boston, where he lives, his team still won't participate, for fear of
spreading germs when players pile on top of one another in a scrum. He spends his mornings and evenings sifting through
stories of people who have recently died from the coronavirus for
Faces
of COVID
, a Twitter feed he started to memorialize deaths during the pandemic. "My fear is that we will not learn the
lessons of the pandemic, because we will try to blow through the finish line as fast as we can and leave it in the rearview
mirror," he said.
Progressive politics focuses on fighting
against everyday disasters, such as climate change and poverty, struggles that may shape how some people see the pandemic.
"If you're deeply concerned that the real disaster that's happening here is that the social contract has been broken and
the vulnerable in society are once again being kicked while they're down, then you're going to be hypersensitive to every
detail, to every headline, to every infection rate," Scott Knowles, a professor at the South Korean university KAIST who
studies the history of disasters, told me. Some progressives believe that the pandemic has created an opening for ambitious
policy proposals. "Among progressive political leaders around here, there's a lot of talk around: We're not going back to
normal, because normal wasn't good enough," Goldstein said.
In practice, though,
progressives don't
always
agree on what prudent policy looks like. Consider the experience of Somerville, Massachusetts, the kind of community where
residents proudly display rainbow yard signs declaring
in
this house we believe science is real
. In the 2016 Democratic primary, 57 percent of voters there
supported
Bernie
Sanders, and this year the Democratic Socialists of America
have
a shot
at taking over the city council. As towns around Somerville began going back to in-person school in the fall,
Mayor Joseph Curtatone and other Somerville leaders delayed a return to in-person learning. A group of moms -- including
scientists, pediatricians, and doctors treating COVID-19 patients -- began to feel frustrated that Somerville schools weren't
welcoming back students. They considered themselves progressive and believed that they understood teachers' worries about
getting sick. But they saw the city's proposed safety measures as nonsensical and unscientific -- a sort of
hygiene
theater
that prioritized the appearance of protection over getting kids back to their classrooms.
With Somerville kids still at home,
contractors conducted in-depth assessments of the city's school buildings, leading to proposals that included extensive
HVAC-system overhauls and the installation of UV-sterilization units and even automatic toilet flushers -- renovations with a
proposed budget of $7.5 million. The mayor told me that supply-chain delays and protracted negotiations with the local
teachers' union slowed the reopening process. "No one wanted to get kids back to school more than me It's people needing
to feel safe," he said. "We want to make sure that we're eliminating any risk of transmission from person to person in
schools and carrying that risk over to the community."
Months slipped by, and evidence
mounted
that
schools could reopen safely. In Somerville, a local leader appeared to describe parents who wanted a faster return to
in-person instruction as "fucking white parents" in a virtual public meeting; a community member accused the group of
mothers advocating for schools to reopen of being motivated by white supremacy. "I spent four years fighting Trump because
he was so anti-science," Daniele Lantagne, a Somerville mom and engineering professor who works to promote equitable access
to clean water and sanitation during disease outbreaks, told me. "I spent the last year fighting people who I normally
would agree with desperately trying to inject science into school reopening, and completely failed."
In March, Erika Uyterhoeven, the
democratic-socialist state representative for Somerville, compared the plight of teachers to that of Amazon workers and
meatpackers, and described the return to in-person classes as part of a "push in a neoliberal society to ensure, over and
above the well-being of educators, that our kids are getting a competitive education compared to other suburban schools."
(She later asked the socialist blog that ran her comments to remove that quote, because so many parents found her
statements offensive.) In Somerville, "everyone wants to be actively anti-racist. Everyone believes Black lives matter.
Everyone wants the Green New Deal," Elizabeth Pinsky, a child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told me. "No
one wants to talk about how to actually get kindergartners onto the carpet of their teachers." Most elementary and middle
schoolers in Somerville finally started back in person this spring, with some of the proposed building renovations in
place. Somerville hasn't yet announced when high schoolers will go back full-time, and Curtatone wouldn't guarantee that
schools will be open for in-person instruction in the fall.
P
olicy
makers' decisions
about how to fight the pandemic are fraught because they have such an impact on people's lives.
But personal decisions during the coronavirus crisis are fraught because they seem symbolic of people's broader value
systems. When vaccinated adults refuse to see friends indoors, they're working through the trauma of the past year, in
which the brokenness of America's medical system was so evident. When they keep their kids out of playgrounds and urge
friends to stay distanced at small outdoor picnics, they are continuing the spirit of the past year, when civic duty has
been expressed through lonely asceticism. For many people, this kind of behavior is a form of good citizenship. That's a
hard idea to give up.
And so as the rest of vaccinated America
begins its summer of bacchanalia, rescheduling long-awaited dinner parties and medium-size weddings, the most hard-core
pandemic progressives are left, Cassandra-like, to preach their peers' folly. Every weekday, Zachary Loeb publishes four
"plague poems" on Twitter -- little missives about the headlines and how it feels to live through a pandemic. He is personally
progressive: He blogs about topics like Trump's calamitous presidency and the future of climate change. He also studies
disaster history. ("I jokingly tell my students that my reputation in the department is as Mr. Doom, but once I have earned
my Ph.D., I will officially be Dr. Doom," he told me.) His Twitter avatar is the plague doctor: a beaked, top-hat-wearing
figure who traveled across European towns treating victims of the bubonic plague. Last February, Loeb started stocking up
on cans of beans; last March, he left his office, and has not been back since. This April, as the country inched toward
half of the population getting a first dose of a vaccine and daily deaths dipped below 1,000, his poems became melancholy.
"When you were young, wise old Aesop tried to warn you about this moment," he wrote, "wherein the plague is the steady
tortoise, and we are the overconfident hare."
EMMA GREEN
is a staff writer at
The Atlantic
, where
she covers politics, policy, and religion.
This is starting to look really like staging of "Brave new world..." Today's society is
closer to Huxley's "Brave New World" than to Orwell's "1984". But there are clear elements of
both. If you will, the worst of both worlds has come true today.
In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four , Aldous
Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931), who was then living in California, wrote to
Orwell. Huxley had briefly taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.
Huxley generally praises Orwell's novel, which to many seemed very similar to Brave New
World in its dystopian view of a possible future. Huxley politely voices his opinion that his
own version of what might come to pass would be truer than Orwell's. Huxley observed that the
philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is sadism, whereas his own version is
more likely, that controlling an ignorant and unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less
wasteful by other means. Huxley's masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell's with
sadism and fear.
The most powerful quote In Huxley's letter to Orwell is this:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Aldous Huxley.
Could Huxley have more prescient? What do we see around us?
Masses of people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal. The majority of advertisements
that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs, some of them miraculous but most of
them unnecessary. Then comes COVID, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the
Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China. The powers that be tragically deferred
to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping for just such an opportunity. Suddenly, there
was an opportunity to test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty
years. They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still highly experimental.
These jabs are not really vaccines at all, but a form of gene therapy . There
are potential
disastrous consequences down the road. Government experiments on the public are
nothing new .
Since there have been no actual, long-term trials, no one who contributed to this massive
drug experiment knows what the long-term consequences might be. There have been countless
adverse injuries and deaths already for which the government-funded vaccine producers will
suffer no liability. With each passing day, new side-effects have begun to appear: blood clots,
seizures, heart failure.
As new adverse reactions become known despite the censorship employed by most media outlets,
the more the Biden administration is pushing the vaccine, urging private corporations to make
it mandatory for all employees. Colleges are making them mandatory for all students returning
to campus.
The leftmedia are advocating the "shunning" of the unvaccinated. The self-appointed
virtue-signaling Democrats are furious at anyone and everyone who declines the jab. Why? If
they are protected, why do they care? That is the question. Same goes for the ridiculous mask
requirements . They protect no one but for those in operating rooms with their insides
exposed, yet even the vaccinated are supposed to wear them!
Months ago, herd immunity was near. Now Fauci and the CDC say it will never be achieved? Now
the Pfizer shot will necessitate yearly booster shots. Pfizer
expects to make $21B this year from its COVID vaccine! Anyone who thinks this isn't about
money is a fool. It is all about money, which is why Fauci, Gates, et al. were so determined to
convince the public that HCQ and ivermectin, both of which are effective, prophylactically and
as treatment, were not only useless, but dangerous. Both of those drugs are tried, true, and
inexpensive. Many of those thousands of N.Y. nursing home fatalities might have been prevented
with the use of one or both of those drugs. Those deaths are on the hands of Cuomo and his
like-minded tyrants drunk on power.
Months ago, Fauci, et al. agreed that children were at little or no risk of getting COVID,
of transmitting it, least of all dying from it. Now Fauci is demanding that all teens be
vaccinated by the end of the year! Why? They are no more in danger of contracting it now than
they were a year ago. Why are parents around this country not standing up to prevent their kids
from being guinea pigs in this monstrous medical experiment? And now they are " experimenting
" on infants. Needless to say, some have died. There is no reason on Earth for teens, children,
and infants to be vaccinated. Not one.
Huxley also wrote this:
"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they
will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be
able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' -- this is the height
of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats ."
Perhaps this explains the left's hysterical impulse to force these untested shots on those
of us who have made the decision to go without it. If they've decided that it is the thing to
do, then all of us must submit to their whims. If we decide otherwise, it gives them the
righteous right to smear all of us whom they already deplore.
As C.J. Hopkins has
written , the left means to criminalize dissent. Those of us who are vaccine-resistant are
soon to be outcasts, deprived of jobs and entry into everyday businesses. This kind of
discrimination should remind everyone of ...oh, Germany three quarters of a century ago. Huxley
also wrote, "The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other
sets of people are human." That is precisely what the left is up to, what BLM is planning, what
Critical Race Theory is all about.
Tal Zaks, Moderna's chief medical officer, said these new vaccines are "hacking the
software of life." Vaccine-promoters claim he never said this, but he did. Bill Gates called
the vaccines " an operating
system " to the horror of those promoting it, a Kinsley gaffe. Whether it is or isn't
hardly matters at this point, but these statements by those behind the vaccines are a clue to
what they have in mind.
There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love
their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears , so to speak, producing a kind of
painless concentration camp for entire societies so that people will in fact have their
liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it.
This is exactly what the left is working so hard to effect: a pharmacologically compromised
population happy to be taken care of by a massive state machine. And while millions of people
around the world have surrendered to the vaccine and mask hysteria, millions more, about 1.3
billion, want no part of this government vaccine mania.
In his letter to Orwell, Huxley ended with the quote cited above and again here because it
is so profound:
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant
conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs
and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting
people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
Huxley nailed the left more than seventy years ago, perhaps because leftists have never
changed throughout the ages. 61,497 173
Fat Beaver 14 hours ago (Edited)
If i am to be treated as an outcast or an undesirable because i refuse the vax, i will
immediately become someone that has zero reverence for the law, and i can only imagine 10's
of millions will be right there with me.
strych10 14 hours ago
Welcome to the club.
We have coffee in the corner and occasional meetings at various bars.
Dr. Chihuahua-González 13 hours ago
I'm a doctor, you could contact me anytime and receive your injection.
Fat Beaver 13 hours ago (Edited)
I've gotta feeling the normie world you think you live in is about to change drastically
for the worse...
sparky139 PREMIUM 10 hours ago
You mean you'll sign papers that you injected us *wink *wink? And toss it away?
bothneither 2 hours ago
Oh geez how uncommon, another useless doctor with no Scruples who sold out to big Pharma.
Please have my Gates sponsored secret sauce.
Unknown 6 hours ago (Edited)
Both Huxley and Orwell are wrong. Neoliberalism (the use of once office for personal
gains) is by far the most powerful force that subjugates the inept population. Neoliberalism
demolished the mighty USSR, now destroying the USA, and will do the same to China. And this
poison dribbles from the top to bottom creating self-centered population that is unable to
unite, much less resist.
Deathrips 15 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Tylers.
You gonna cover Tucker Carlsons show earlier today on FOX news about vaxxx deaths? almost 4k
reported so far this year.
Is the population of india up in arms or is the MSM?
Nelbev 10 hours ago
Facebook just flagged/censored it, must sign into see vid, Tuck also failed to mention
mRNA and adenovirus vaxes were experimental and not FDA approved nor gone through stage III
trials. Beside deaths, have blood clot issues. Good he mentioned how naturally immune if get
covid and recovered, better than vaccine, but not covered for bogus passports. Me personally,
I would rather catch covid and get natural immunity than be vaccinated with an untested
experimental vaccine.
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya; Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche; Dr. Ron Brown; Dr. Ryan Cole; Dr.
Richard Fleming; Dr. Simone Gold; Dr. Sunetra Gupta; Dr. Carl Heneghan; Dr. Martin Kulldorff;
Dr. Paul Marik; Dr. Peter McCullough; Dr. Joseph Mercola; Dr. Lee Merritt; Dr. Judy Mikovits;
Dr. Dennis Modry; Dr. Hooman Noorchashm; Dr. Harvey Risch; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny; Dr. Richard
Urso; Dr. Michael Yeadon;
His making of the gamma and delta workforce was quite prescient. We are seeing it play out
now, we all know gammas and delta. There was a really good ABC tv movie made in 1980 Brave
New World. Excellent show, it shows the Alphas and names them Rothchild and so on. Shows what
these people specifically want to do to the world. I wonder if the ruling psychopaths
actually wait for science fiction authors to plan the future and then follow their
script.
Mineshaft Gap 10 hours ago
If Huxley were starting out today no major publisher would touch him.
They'd tell him Brave New World doesn't have a diverse enough of cast. Even the mostly
likable totalitarian guy named Mustapha turns out to be white! A white Mustapha. It's soooo
triggering. Also, what's wrong with a little electronic fun and drug taking, anyway? Lighten
up , Aldous.
Meanwhile his portrait of shrieking medieval Catholic nuns who think they're possessed in
The Devils of Loudun might remind the leftist editors too uncomfortably of their own recent
bleating performances at "White Fragility" struggle sessions.
"... I am still trying to figure out the SCIENCE of BLM mostly peaceful protests were just safe, fine and dandy while churches had to be shut down or grandma would die. ..."
This is probably the first time in the history of mankind that an illness that has been with
us our entire lives has magically disappeared only to be immediately replaced by another one
with exactly the same symptoms!
2banana 7 hours ago
I am still trying to figure out the SCIENCE of BLM mostly peaceful protests were just safe,
fine and dandy while churches had to be shut down or grandma would die.
In this day and age, we all need to do our own research and we all need to think for
ourselves, because the big pharmaceutical companies are more concerned with profits than
anything else.
If you are harmed by their experimental therapies, the big pharmaceutical companies
won’t be there to pick up the pieces for you if something goes horribly
wrong.
Quote "So there may be a new form of normalcy where masks don?t necessarily have to go
away.?
Dr. Leonard A. Mermel, medical director of epidemiology and infection control at Rhode
Island Hospital, who said making people wear masks all the time was worth it to stop the
spread of other viruses aside from COVID-19.
?Within the Lifespan system we are seeing far fewer of all the respiratory viruses than
we are used to seeing at this moment in the calendar year? So it?s impressive: the COVID
preventative strategies are having an impact on other respiratory viruses, which just makes
sense: they spread in a similar fashion,? said Mermel.
?It would not surprise me if that became a recommendation from the CDC,? he said. ?It?s
a pretty low price to pay to try to reduce the risk to oneself and to particularly
loved ones who may be at particular risk of these sorts of infections causing
harm,?
Of course "lockdowns" are being used in the same way, (ie in the UK) where they would love
to have a third wave. ( Wave goodbye as freedom flies ). This is not a question of
numbers but of policy that hides and tries to ignore .... rebellious attitudes. (The recent
massive march in London that you didn't see reported by the BBC (!) Or we can have Bill Gates
getting agitated about "patents" being used by anyone else (ie Russia and China) Who might
"learn their techniques". This is in spite of Russia offering help to the West with their own
research (Was that for the "Oxford" vaccine ?).
*******
"Many hands make light work", but with all of them trying to push the switch in their own
direction, we will be lucky if a fuse doesn't blow somewhere
IF vaccines worked it shouldn't matter to a vaccinated person whether you have a
vaccination or not.
The entire "what about the poor wretch that is so ill he cannot survive a vaccine" is just
virtue signaling tripe. FIRST no person has a claim on your life. Period, the only exception
being your own children. And even that has finite limits.
The more truthful complaint is "I KNOW it is a scientific fact that flu vaccines are at
BEST 70%, and often closer to 40% effective. So I am afraid of my own shadow." This exposes a
risk aversion that has long since crossed over into the mental illness of full on
uncontrollable paranoia.
Let the person that is so sick they cannot be around other people self isolate. Let the
person that is so terrified they cannot function in society self isolate too!
The fake outrage and virtue signaling sociopaths have well and truly outlived the patience
of everyone on the planet that doesn't require psychotropic drugs to make it through the
day.
Money quote: " Discarding pointless practices like outdoor masking and obsessive
“ hygiene theater
†would make the continuing necessary precautions, including indoor masking, easier
to accept."
That applies whether you’re vaccinated against Covid-19 or not,
regardless of your age, and despite the other qualifications in the Centers for Disease
Control’s latest guidance
, released Tuesday. The only exception is in a packed setting in which social distancing is
impossible, such as a political rally or a sports arena filled to capacity.
The three main Covid mitigation strategies
are distancing, masks and ventilation. Accumulating evidence indicates how difficult it is to
contract the virus outdoors, which is as ventilated as it gets. One modeling study
estimated that ventilation outside, even with only a gentle breeze, is well over 100 times as
effective as in an office, and more than 1,000-fold better than in most homes.
Documented cases of outdoor Covid-19 transmission are rare. A study in Wuhan, China, where the
virus originated, used careful contact tracing and found that only one of 7,324 infection
events was linked to outdoor transmission. An
analysis of more than 232,000 infections in Ireland found that only one case in 1,000 was
traced to outdoor transmission. An extensive
review from the University of Canterbury concluded that outdoor transmission is rare and
warned of “the potential impact on physical and mental health and
wellbeing†of discouraging people from congregating outdoors.
Coronavirus droplets are rapidly dissipated in the air and deactivated by ultraviolet
radiation, heat and humidity. That’s why the World Health Organization
concluded in
December that masks are unnecessary outside as long as physical distancingâ€"which
WHO defines as one meter, or around three feetâ€"can be maintained.
Mr. Halperin is an adjunct professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at
the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and author of “Facing Covid
Without Panic.†Dr. Gandhi is an infectious-disease physician and professor of
medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Yes just finished listening to my dose of bullshit on ABC. The amazing thing is they
actually telling you it's bullshit if people listen closely. The number of new infections in
India. Hundreds of thousands. Deaths a few hundred. In a country where the normal annual death
rate is 9.6 Million and 26,000 people die EVERY DAY. It's like a joke. Like they testing our
stupidity. And you can't say; No we not falling for it because there is no longer anywhere to
say it! I feel like I have permanent road rage over this crap.
It's the tone and emotive words like crisis, and other exaggerated terms they use that
triggers fear. The viewer remembers the number of cases, not deaths because the number is
larger. But the cases are based on testing.
Judith , Apr 27, 2021 4:28 PM Reply to
Moneycircus
Thanks, Moneycircus.
After watching that I searched for more interviews with him. He did a number of TED talks,
in the early 2000's. Also did an interview with "Google Tech" about his work on a medicine
for Anthrax.
Interestingly, he liked being able to work with computer models of bacteria and tht like.
It would be very interesting to know what he would have thought about Drosten's computer
model of sarscov2 which set the standard for the PCR testing.
Also, what he would have thought of the covid injections.
His final TED talk was very funny and very sweet. Called Sons of Sputnik.
"... " Pfizer and Moderna are both running clinical trials for their experimental mRNA shots on 11,000 children as young as six months old . Both trials began in mid-March. Moderna calls its study KidCOVE . Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are also using children as guinea pigs . These companies have no moral fiber and are driven solely by profits. That is a given. But the parents are something beyond surreal." ..."
No shit. Yesterday, as I was driving from my hideaway up on the hill in the woods, I
caught a glimpse of a group of preschoolers coming out of the forest. I thought that they had
facemasks on, which I found preposterous, so I stopped, checked the rear-view mirror and
waited for them to come closer. Sure enough, they did have the fucking things on. Mind you,
it was a nice sunny day, the air fresh, the perfect April weather.
I went full postal and yelled at the teachers with just about all my might. They didn't
seem to give a shit. Maybe they're too afraid, like of "losing their job". Damn, in
retrospect, I should have addressed the kids and told them to tell the teachers to wipe their
ass with the stupid masks.
This is truly horrible, and I know what I'm talking about. I started school in 1970, a
short while after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. At a time when all hope was
crushed, when the purges started. When people were afraid of "losing their job", if not
worse. The teachers took out their fear, or perhaps anger, on us kids. Save for some, they
came hard on us children and passed on us the oppression inflicted on them by the regime. I,
as other kids, saw them as enemies and fought against them throughout my younger years. I was
only able to come out of that in university (on the other side of the world).
What the teachers are doing today is much worse. It's not just mindfuck, it physical
terror. They're taking party in asphyxiating the kids.
Very interesting observation born from real experience Jacques – that the oppressed
adults took it out on the children, focused it through their own lens onto their helpless
captives in a mirror image of the larger version of the cruelty and dehumanising process.
Horrible. Undeniable based on current events.
" Pfizer and Moderna are both running clinical trials for their experimental mRNA
shots
on 11,000 children as young as six months old . Both trials began in mid-March. Moderna
calls its study KidCOVE . Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are also
using children as guinea pigs . These companies have no moral fiber and are driven solely
by profits. That is a given. But the parents are something beyond surreal."
" the children are not only endangered in their mental, physical and spiritual well-being
by the obligation to wear face masks during school hours and to keep their distance from each
other and from other persons, but, in addition, they are already being harmed. At the same
time, this violates numerous rights of the children and their parents under the law, the
constitution and international conventions. This applies in particular to the right to free
development of the personality and to physical integrity from Article 2 of the Basic Law as
well as to the right from Article 6 of the Basic Law to upbringing and care by the parents
(also with regard to measures for preventive health care and 'objects' to be carried by
children) "
As Reiner Fuellmich stated recently – 'They are coming after the children.'
Florida Gov. Ron
DeSantis issued a statewide stay-at-home order on April 1 last year locking down the Sunshine
State for 30 days amid a global panic about the
CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak. Sitting in his office exactly a year later,
he told The Epoch Times that the lockdowns were a “huge
mistake,†including in his own state.
“We wanted to mitigate the damage. Now, in hindsight, the 15 days to
slow the spread and the 30â€"it didn’t work,â€
DeSantis said.
“We shouldn’t have gone down that
road.â€
Florida’s lockdown order was
notably less strict than some of the stay-at-home measures imposed in other states.
Recreational activities like walking, biking, golf, and beachgoing were exempted while
essential businesses were broadly defined.
“Our economy kept going,†DeSantis said.
“It was much different than what you saw in some of those lockdown
states.â€
The governor nonetheless now regrets issuing the order at all and is convinced that states
that have carried on with lockdowns are perpetuating a destructive blunder.
After the 30 days of the initial lockdown in Florida lapsed, DeSantis commenced a phased
reopening. He faced fierce criticism at each stage from establishment media and his own
constituents beholden to the lockdown narrative.
The governor fully reopened Florida on Sept. 25 last year. When cases began to rise as part
of the winter surge he did not reimpose any restrictions. Lockdown proponents forecast doom and
gloom. DeSantis stood his ground.
The governor’s persistence wasn’t a leap of faith.
Less than two weeks after Florida’s full reopening in late September,
scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford went public with the Great Barrington
Declaration, which disavowed lockdowns as a destructive and futile mitigation measure. The
declaration, which has since been signed by 13,985 medical and public health scientists, calls
on public officials to adopt the focused protection approachâ€"the exact strategy
employed by DeSantis.
Despite dire predictions about the pandemic in Florida, DeSantis has been vindicated. On
April 1, 2021, Florida ranked 27th among all states in deaths per capita from the CCP virus,
commonly known as the coronavirus.
The ranking’s significance is amplified because the Sunshine
State’s population is the sixth oldest in the United States by median age.
Californiaâ€"the lockdown state often compared to Florida due to its lower
per-capita death rateâ€"is the sixth
youngest . The risk of dying from the CCP virus is highest for people over 55, with the
group accounting for 93
percent of the deaths nationwide.
While Florida is doing either better or relatively the same as the strict lockdown states in
terms of CCP virus mortalities, the state’s economy is booming compared to
the crippled economies in California and New York. Though less quantifiable, the human
suffering from the lockdown-related rise in suicides, mental health issues, postponed medical
treatments, and opioid deaths is undeniably immense.
“It’s been a huge, huge mistake in terms of
policy,†DeSantis said.
“All I had to do was follow the data and just be willing to go forward
into the teeth of the narrative and fight the media,†he added.
“As people were beating up on me, what I said was
I’d rather them beat up on me than have someone lose their job.
I’d rather have them beat up on me than have kids locked out of school.
I’m totally willing to take whatever heat comes our way because
we’re doing the right thing.â€
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives a thumbs up as he leaves a press conference where he spoke
about the cruise industry at Port Miami on April 08, 2021 in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty
Images)
‘Don’t Let Them Roll Over
Us’
The Epoch Times spent a day embedded with DeSantis as he crisscrossed the state on April 1,
jetting southeast from the seat of state government in Tallahassee to a press conference in
Titusville and then back north to the Clay County Fair on the outskirts of Jacksonville.
Across dozens of encounters with Floridians from all walks of life, one trend persisted.
People thanked DeSantis for his work and his policies. Business owners praised him for not
shutting them down.
Chris Allen, the owner of Java Jitters, opened a coffee shop in Orange Park Mall during the
pandemic.
“We could not have done that if it wasn’t for Ron
DeSantis,†Allen told The Epoch Times after personally thanking the governor during
an encounter at the Clay County Fair.
A staff member for Gov. Ron DeSantis holds a “DeSantis 2024, Make America
Florida†hat at the Clay County fair on April 1, 2021. The staff member said the
hat was handed to the governor by a fair attendee. (Ivan Pentchoukov/Epoch Times)
At the time of the interview, Florida’s unemployment rate was 4.7 percent
compared to 6.2 percent nationally. Lockdown states like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and California had some of the highest rates in the countryâ€"8.9 percent, 7.8
percent, 7.3 percent, and 8.5 percent respectively.
“I have a tough time paying for a meal in Florida just because I saved a
lot of these restaurants from oblivion,†DeSantis said. Hours after this claim, a
curly fries stand at the fair declined to charge the governor.
DeSantis said some people get emotional when they meet him. Several of the interactions with
the governor at the Clay County Fair resembled that description. An visibly moved elderly
veteran urged the governor to not “let them roll over us.â€
“If we hadn’t stood up, these people may not have
jobs, the businesses may have gone under, the kids wouldn’t be in school,
there’d be all these things,†DeSantis said.
“This really, really impacts people in a very personal way. And I
don’t think anything prior to COVID that I’ve seen in
politics can quite do it on this level. And it’s really unfortunate that
there were governors that had power [who did] the opposite. It really
shouldn’t depend on the governor.â€
Reopening the state wasn’t as easy as lifting his own stay-at-home
measures. When DeSantis issued the final reopening order in late September last year, he signed
a companion order prohibiting local Florida governments from restricting people from working or
operating a business. The order had far-reaching consequences across the state, especially in
densely-populated, liberal-leaning locales where the local authorities imposed their own strict
measures.
DeSantis adopted a hands-off approach to local regulations at first, thinking that voters
would ultimately hold local authorities responsible. It became obvious eventually that some
places would remain locked down despite the data showing that doing so would have no positive
impact on the spread of the virus.
“They weren’t going to open this stuff up unless I
pried it open,†DeSantis said.
“We had the data. We talked to some of the best scientists in the
country,†DeSantis said, referring to Martin Kulldorff from Harvard, Jayanta
Bhattacharya from Stanford, and Sunetra Gupta from Oxford.
“Every Floridian has a right to work. Every business has a right to
operate.â€
In areas that were forced to reopen as a result, the economies are now booming with new
hotels and restaurants opening, DeSantis said.
DeSantis received a law degree from Harvard and is a textualist when interpreting the
Constitution. He believes barring the local authorities from placing restrictions on the people
and businesses was squarely within his authority.
“You can’t have 67 different minimum wages, or 67
different regulations on hotels. We are one state economy, and we need to have certain rules of
the road,†DeSantis said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis delivers remarks at a press conference in Titusville, Florida, on April 1,
2021. (Screenshot via Epoch Times)
‘They Are Never Going to Admit They
Were Wrong’
Standing behind the desk in his office in Tallahassee, DeSantis leafed through a folder of
praise he’s received from around the nation and across the globe. Hanging on
the walls around the relatively small space was a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the
Constitution, and the Bill of Rights as well as the uniform the governor wore as the captain of
the Yale baseball team.
When asked why he chose Lincoln, DeSantis said the president is the best example of a leader
who had to make difficult decisions in a time of crisis. When asked why some of the leaders
today have continued with lockdowns even with ample evidence of their ineffectiveness, the
governor theorized that the people involved have committed too much to the narrative and have
made it impossible to change course.
“You have a situation where if you’re in this field,
the pandemic, that’s something that you kind of prepare for and
you’re ready for. And a lot of these people muffed it ,†he
said.
“When push came to shove, they advocated policies that have not worked
against the virus but have been very, very destructive. They are never going to admit they
were wrong about anything, unfortunately.â€
Elected leaders aren’t the only ones to blame, according to the governor.
The media and big tech companies played a major role in perpetuating fears about the virus
while selectively censoring one side of the mitigation debate. DeSantis said the media and tech
giants stood to benefit from the lockdown as people stayed home and consumed their
products.
“It was all just to generate the most clicks that they could. And so
that was always trying to do the stuff that would inspire the most fear,â€
DeSantis said.
Two weeks after the interview, an
undercover video recorded by Project Veritas showed a technical director at CNN talking
about the boost the network received due to its pandemic coverage.
“It’s fear. Fear really drives numbers,â€
CNN Technical Director Charlie Chester said. “Fear is the thing that keeps
you tuned in.â€
The fear-mongering worked, DeSantis said, pointing to CDC statistics showing that 4 out of 10 American
adults delayed or avoided getting urgent or routine medical treatment in June 2020. The
agency’s report said that the pattern may have contributed to the excess
deaths reported during that period, due to preventable illnesses and injuries going
untreated.
Emergency room doctors had reported that fewer people were coming in with cardiac-related
chest pains while more were coming in with late-stage appendicitis, something that is usually
caught much earlier. The pandemic has also led to a sharp decrease in cancer screenings and
detections.
“When you have people too scared to go to the emergency room when
they’re literally having a heart attack, that didn’t
happen in a vacuum,†DeSantis said.
“Corporate media played a role in that, by really whipping up people
into a frenzy.â€
The profit motive wasn’t the only factor potentially driving the
media’s slanted coverage, according to the governor. The pandemic hit the
United States in an election year, presenting an opportunity to heap the blame on President
Donald Trump.
“They viewed it as an opportunity to damage Trump. Obviously, they hated
Trump more than anything,†DeSantis said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his office in Tallahassee, Florida, on April 1, 2021.
(Screenshot via Epoch Times)
‘Council of
Censors’
In the April 1 interview, DeSantis criticized big tech companies for censoring critics of
lockdowns. Less than a week after the interview, the governor himself became the victim of
censorship. YouTube, without warning, scrubbed videos of a roundtable discussion between
DeSantis and prominent scientists from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford who assessed that
lockdowns are ineffective.
The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) was the first to
flag the video’s disappearance. The original clip is now hosted on a
different platform and appears along with a full transcript on the AIER
website .
“Google and YouTube have not been, throughout this pandemic,
repositories of truth and scientific inquiry, but instead have acted as enforcers of a
narrative, a big tech council of censors in service of the ruling elite†DeSantis
said in response to YouTube’s censorship during an April 12 video conference call with
three of the scientists from the banned video.
“When they took down the video … they were really
continuing what they’ve been doing for the past year: stifle debate,
short-circuit scientific inquiry, make sure that the narrative is not questioned. And I think
that we’ve seen already that that has had catastrophic consequences for
our society.â€
The takedown of the video suggests that Big Tech intends to keep exercising the awesome
power it directed against Trump in the closing days of the previous administration. Twitter and
Facebook banned the president, cutting off a direct line of communication between the
commander-in-chief and tens of millions of Americans.
DeSantis thinks that the power monopolies have now is far more extensive than what the
United States had witnessed at the turn of the century.
“What we’ve seen with the big tech and the censorship,
they are exercising more power than the monopolies at the beginning of the 20th century ever
could have exercised,†the governor said. “The type of power
that they’re exercising now in some respects is even more profound than the
type of power that government typically exercises.â€
No End In Sight
Desantis believes the lockdown states may never fully reopen because the leaders there have
invested so heavily in the narrative while the voters have grown fearful.
While restrictions are easing across the nation, only six states, including Florida, have
fully reopened, according to a tracker maintained by USA
Today . Eight states never issued a stay-at-home order.
“I think if your goal is no cases, then there may never be an end to
it, because you’re never gonna have zero COVID,†DeSantis
said, adding that a more pragmatic goal would be to aim towards a hospitalization rate
indicative of a respiratory virus endemic.
“But I don’t know that they’re
willing to accept that reality. I think they’re going to try to have no
cases at all, which would basically mean there would never be a full end to these policies,
which is scary.â€
Leftists reacted with fury after Fox News host Tucker Carlson said people who wear masks
outside should be mocked and that parents who made their kids wear them were engaging in "child
abuse."
Carlson noted that masks were "purely a sign of political obedience like Kim Il-Sung pins in
Pyongyang" and that the only people who voluntarily wear masks outside are "zealots and
neurotics."
He then asserted that the tables should be turned on Biden voters who have been harassing
conservatives for almost a year for not wearing a mask in public.
"The rest of us should be snorting at them first, they're the aggressors – it's our
job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in," said Carlson.
"So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not
hesitate. Ask politely but firmly, ' Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there
is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable, " he added.
"We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as
socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro on an elevator."
The Fox News host went on to call mask wearing "repulsive" while asserting that forcing
children to wear masks outside should be illegal.
"Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from
your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact
Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives," Carlson said.
"What you're looking at is abuse, it's child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt
to prevent it," he added.
As expected, Carlson immediately began trending on Twitter, with hysterical leftists
hyperventilating over Tucker once again challenging their cult. Many called for the Fox News
host to be fired while others ludicrously described him as a "national security threat."
As we
highlighted yesterday , even Dr. Fauci now admits that the risk of vaccinated people
spreading COVID outside is "minuscule," and yet some health professionals are pushing for the
mask mandates to be made permanent.
The transmission of COVID-19 outdoors is almost non-existent, making mask mandates merely a
political tool of population control.
In a recent open letter to the German government and state premiers, five leading members of
the Association for Aerosol Research (GAeF) wrote, "The transmission of SARS-CoV-2 viruses
takes place indoors almost without exception. Transmission outdoors is extremely rare and never
leads to cluster infections as can be observed indoors."
Why the us government did not fund this type of mask for all is telling what the overall
strategy is.
Controlling you, your neighbor, and others that think for themselves.
Its not about the virus
Robert Neville 7 hours ago
Actually, M95 masks filter out 95% of particles over 4 microns in diameter in perfect
conditions. In the real world it is much less effective than that. Viruses are generally less
than one micron in size so they are ineffective for most viruses. Also, the masks are so hard
to breath through that some version have an exhale valve so they do nothing to protect others
if you are infected. Most masks don't protect your eyes. The only thing that works is a space
suit that is decontaminated before you remove it. The rest is virtue siganling.
Properly fitted n95's do protect against virus and the science proves it.
Dickweed Wang 10 hours ago (Edited)
This is an excerpt from the "Stanford Study" from November 2020 (that's been making the
rounds in the alternative media and conservative media space recently) about the uselessness
of masks in preventing "the virus":
A meta -analysis among health care workers found that compared to no masks, surgical
mask and N95 respirators were not effective against transmission of viral infections or
influenza-like illness based on six RCTs [28] . Using
separate analysis of 23 observational studies, this meta -analysis found no protective
effect of medical mask or N95 respirators against SARS virus [28] . A recent
systematic review of 39 studies including 33,867 participants in community settings
(self-report illness), found no difference between N95 respirators versus surgical masks
and surgical mask versus no masks in the risk for developing influenza or influenza-like
illness, suggesting their ineffectiveness of blocking viral transmissions in community
settings [29] .
It's predictable that the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to "fact check" and
disparage the entire paper (do an internet search for 'Stanford Mask Paper' and you'll see
what I'm talking about). Their main criticism is 'that wasn't published by Stanford', while
they totally ignore the claims made in the paper. When you look at the people and
organizations doing the fact checking it really shows that the entire mask issue is a
political/control ploy. Here's the link to the entire paper if anyone is interested:
From comments: " Tucker is right on this one. If you wear a mask outside you truly are a
moron. You may as well add goggles and a butt plug." ... "Don't forget about those solo drivers
with masks on!", "Maskers are stupid scared virtue signalers"
As an anti-mask militant for quite a while now I've been going out of my way to ask people
with masks on outdoors why they're wearing one (I've really tried to be polite but it's
getting increasingly hard to do that). In literally hundreds of instances I haven't gotten a
straight answer yet. It's stunning that people are so gullible but it shows what the power of
propaganda really is. 99% of that is coming from teevee, which truly rots your brain.
Capt Tripps 10 hours ago remove link
They are signaling the submission to a tyrannical state. That submission makes us all less
free.
safelyG 10 hours ago
mister tucker is wrongeddy wrong wrong.
we must all wear multiple masks. indoors. outdoors. at work. at play. while we sleep.
while we bathe. while we eat. while we sing praises unto the most high.
and we must remain 8 feet apart, one from the other. at all times.
and report our whereabouts and our contacts and our body temperature. to the
authorities.
get your vacines!
lovingly,
bill n melinda
radical-extremist 10 hours ago
When Tucker Carlson says to tell people to take off their masks and call CPS on parents
who mask their children he's trolling the Left. And because the Left has no sense of humor or
irony or hypocrisy...they're of course OUTRAGED, which was his point.
Realism 10 hours ago remove link
I like it best when hiking outside, in 75 degree weather with a nice breeze, you see
people put up their mask as they walk by
Pure comedy, it's hard to understand the stupidity if you think you'll get any disease
much less Covid walking by someone
And importantly, would you really be hiking if you had Covid LOL
aztrader 10 hours ago
Mask wears see it as a badge of honor because they "care" about other people. In reality,
it's a badge of Stupidity and ignorance.
Prince Velveeta 10 hours ago (Edited) remove link
California is an open-air mental ward. I was just out there and the collective idiocy is
astounding. People jogging with masks on , exaggerating their breathing as they pass you in
some competitive virtue signaling event. I witnessed some idiot jogging up the hill past my
family member's house, with a bandana on his face, being sucked into his mouth as he's
gasping for air.....
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people will “likely†need a
third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated. His comments
were made public Thursday but were taped April 1.
Bourla said it’s possible people will need to get vaccinated against the
coronavirus annually.
From the very beginning of this crisis, I have been warning my readers that any immunity would
be very temporary.
Natural COVID immunity is very temporary, and immunity conferred by the vaccines is very
temporary too.
The CEO of Pfizer is comparing the COVID vaccines to flu shots. Every year millions of
Americans rush out to get their flu shots, and the CEO of Pfizer is admitting that it looks like
the COVID vaccines will be on a similar schedule
…
“There are vaccines that’s like polio that one dose is
enough, there are vaccines like pneumococcal vaccine that one dose is enough for adults and
there are vaccines like flu that you need every year,†Bourla said.
“The Covid virus looks more like the influenza virus than the polio
virus.â€
If people are going to need a new shot every year, that means that COVID will be with us for a
very long time to come.
This is essentially an admission that the COVID pandemic will not be ending any time soon.
Needless to say, Pfizer stands to make giant mountains of money if COVID vaccines become a
yearly thing, and we need to keep that in mind.
A lot of people that I know are going to be extremely upset when they finally realize that the
two shots that they got only provide temporary immunity.
And of course lots of people are still getting sick after being fully vaccinated. According to
the CDC, so far there have been almost 6,000 documented cases of people being infected after
getting two shots, and dozens of them
have died …
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that roughly 5,800 people who received a
coronavirus vaccine still ultimately came down with the disease anyway, according to CNN.
Of those 5,800, 396 of them (roughly 7 percent) were hospitalized; 74 of the vaccinated
people ultimately died. The report proves that the vaccines, though frequently touted by the
government and the media, are not guaranteed to prevent everyone from contracting the
virus.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
But it is happening.
Meanwhile, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the current vaccines will fare against
variants that have already developed and variants that will develop in the future.
At this point we just don’t know how effective the vaccines will be, but
the New York Times
is assuring us that we don’t have anything to be concerned
about…
“I use the term
‘scariants,’†said Dr. Eric Topol, professor
of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., referring to much of the media
coverage of the variants.
“Even my wife was saying, ‘What about this double
mutant?’ It drives me nuts. People are scared unnecessarily. If
you’re fully vaccinated, two weeks post dose, you
shouldn’t have to worry about variants at all.â€
Really?
I have a feeling that Dr. Eric Topol will end up eating those words.
The reason why a new flu vaccine comes out every year is because the flu is constantly
changing and mutating.
The same thing is happening to COVID, and there are already dozens of mutant variations
spreading around the globe.
To me, Dr. Eric Topol’s statement was exceedingly irresponsible, especially
considering some of the studies that have come out lately. Here is just one example
…
Two doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine were found to have only a 10.4% efficacy
against mild-to-moderate infections caused by the B.1.351 South Africa variant, according to a
phase 1b-2 clinical trial published
on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine . This is a cause for grave concern as the
South African variants share similar mutations to the other variants leaving those vaccinated
with the AstraZeneca vaccine potentially exposed to multiple variants.
In this article, I haven’t even discussed all of the side effects that we
have been witnessing. A few days ago, the FDA issued an unprecedented order regarding the Johnson
and Johnson vaccine because it was
causing blood clots in a number of cases…
This week, the Food and Drug Administration called for a halt in the administration of the
single dose vaccine for COVID-19 manufactured by Johnson and Johnson. The halt was ascribed to
the rare incidence of blood clots that could potentially be related to the vaccine.
I am glad that the FDA decided to step in, but the order came too late
for this guy …
When the news broke about the pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine Tuesday, one Coast
family was already living with a tragedy they believe was caused by the vaccine.
It started out as a normal day for 43-year-old Brad Malagarie of St. Martin. This busy
father of seven spent the morning at his D’Iberville office before heading
to get a Johnson & Johnson vaccine a little after noon.
He returned to work, and within three hours coworkers noticed he was unresponsive at his
desk.
It shouldn’t be controversial to say that rushing experimental vaccines
through the testing process was a really bad idea.
We should be putting the safety of the American people first, and nobody knows for sure what
the long-term effects of these experimental treatments will be.
In this day and age, we all need to do our own research and we all need to think for
ourselves, because the big pharmaceutical companies are more concerned with profits than anything
else.
If you are harmed by their experimental therapies, the big pharmaceutical companies
won’t be there to pick up the pieces for you if something goes horribly
wrong.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The
Future Of America†is now available in paperback and for the
Kindle on Amazon.
So...
Requiring Vaccine IDs or passports violates medical privacy - Right?
Unvaccinated are NOT a threat because the vaccinated are protected - Right?
Preventing unvaccinated from participating in society is discrimination - Right?
_arrow
The Antisoiler 5 hours ago remove link
It appears they are moving in the direction of mandating a vaccine subscription, where you
will pay monthly or yearly.
Trends indicate subscription based revenue generation is a win-win for both producer,
consumer, and eugenicist.
Remember, you will own nothing and be happy about it. You will be free from the burden of
asset management. And, you'll essentially be a slave, working till you drop into a grave or
incinerator.
Fed Supporter 6 hours ago remove link
Sorry Michael Snyder, you are flat out wrong about natural immunity not lasting very
long.
A corona virus from 17 years ago, every year those who were infected get tested for
immunity, and guess what every year for 17 year those previously infected individuals still
have immunity.
Further, the current corona virus , Covid, is 80% similiar to the one from 17 years ago.
Some virologits estimate that 30% of the world has cross immunity and can not get Covid.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but you need to do more research. You are parroting the MSM
outlets who were selling fear and citing quacks from stanford, etc that said "we just don't
know", No they do know they just wanted to ramp fear sky high. Memory T cells are a thing.
May 18, 2020 â€" Blood samples from the patient, who had SARS in 2003, contained
an ... Antibody that inhibits the new coronavirus discovered in patient who had SARS 17 years
ago ... Antibodies form part of the body's immune response to pathogens. ... But Vir
Biotechnology has fast-tracked the antibody for development ...
Here we studied T cell responses against the structural (nucleocapsid (N) protein) and
non-structural (NSP7 and NSP13 of ORF1 ) regions of SARS-CoV-2 in individuals convalescing from
coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) ( n = 36). In all of these individuals, we found CD4 and
CD8 T cells that recognized multiple regions of the N protein. Next, we showed that patients (
n = 23) who recovered from SARS (the disease associated with SARS-CoV infection) possess
long-lasting memory T cells that are reactive to the N protein of SARS-CoV 17 years after the
outbreak of SARS in 2003; these T cells displayed robust cross-reactivity to the N protein of
SARS-CoV-2. We also detected SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in individuals with no history of
SARS, COVID-19 or contact with individuals who had SARS and/or COVID-19 ( n = 37).
SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in uninfected donors exhibited a, etc.
Fed Supporter 6 hours ago
BTW natural immunity is way better than Mrna vaccines, which are narrowly tailored to target
proteins on the spike protein. Once it mutates, like the South Africa and UK mutations, the
pfizer vaccine will need modified to target the new mutations hence yearly boosters at $180 a
pop. We will be chasing this thing forever, always behind on catching the mutated viruses.
Invest in Pfizer their stock will go so high, they are going to make a ton of money off the
sheep.
Also, some doctors, said it is not wise to get vaccinated for corvid if you already had
it.
Also isn't peculiar the mutations all occurred in countries that ran human trials, Brazil,
UK, SA, Israel. These countries were the first to have humans vaccinated and they are the first
to have mutations.
Bacon's Rebellion 4 hours ago
"Just look at the number of medicines pulled from pharmacies in the last 20 years that the
FDC originally said were perfectly safe"
Think for yourself 4 hours ago (Edited) remove link
also, the mRNA vaccine 'targets' the s-proteins by genetically hijacking your cell to
construct biochemical factories to create these s-proteins. Not only is it a fixed overhead (no
off switch, it's in your genes now) but that overhead is spent building parts that are designed
to inflame your immune system. Even after so-called 'immunity' is acquired, those biochemical
factories will keep working to produce, the immune system will keep working against the
low-level inflammation, so the cells will not only be spending fuel on negative output, but the
spare viral proteins floating around it's creating are just begging to be assimilated into even
more mutant strains.
I am convinced that the mRNA 'vaccine' is exponentially increasing the mutation potential of
covid-19.
Libertarian777 5 hours ago
THIS GUY GETS IT. Lack of antibodies does not mean immunity disappears.
Pazuzu 4 hours ago
Upvoted for clever use of term 'virologits'. If ever there were a bunch of gits the virology
bunch fits the bill.
Josey Yahoo 6 hours ago remove link
Is anybody else stating to feel like they are being played?
For a year now I have been saying that this is a flu, just another flu, being blown into a
major issue to literally destroy our nation.
First the lockdowns, to destroy small business, as the large companies will gladly assist in
the elimination of cash. NOTE, the immediate calls for cash not to be used as it would transmit
the virus, then all of a sudden a coin shortage, when was the last time that happened, oh,
that's right, NEVER!
....
freedommusic 4 hours ago (Edited)
> Huh? Unvaccinated are a threat to other Unvaccinated people who want to get vaccinated
and don't want to die.
No problem that's what your double mask, self isolating, and social distancing is for. Since
it is SO EFFECTIVE , it will provide the necessary protection until all the smart people get
vaccinated.
Then all the unwashed, ignorant, unvaccinated fools will die off as a result of natural
selection.
Everyone wins here and nature wins.
RIGHT?
taketheredpill 6 hours ago
Or maybe the vaccine is 99.9925% Effective (6000 sick out of 80 Million with full dose) and
Pharma guys rounded up?
Bacon's Rebellion 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link
ummm.
Assuming 100% accuracy of the "cause of death" being Covid19:
Covid19 survival rates for all age groups:
563,000 dead / 329,000,000 total population = 99.829% survival.
Covid19 survival rates over the age of 75:
245,000 dead / 55,000,000 people = 99.555% survival rate.
Covid19 survival rates under the age of 55:
40,000 dead / 229,000,000 people = 99.983% survival rate.
Covid19 survival rates under the age of 25:
550 dead / 103,000,000 people = 99.9995% survival rate.
Explain to us why in the world we need to vaccinate the 16 to 25 folks? Vaccination DOES NOT
MEAN you can't catch it or spread it...
"" We don't know yet whether or not it prevents you from getting infected where you're not
with symptoms...but you have virus in your nasopharynx that you could then infect an
unvaccinated person who might be vulnerable, and you will inadvertently and innocently get them
sick," Fauci explained."
The whole vaccine jive talk is packed with "Could", "Maybe", "Possibly", "Likely",
"Unknown"...ect.
"UNLESS....you get people to lock down, wash hands, wear masks etc."
Yeah, we did that, and we have 31,000,000 confirmed cases.
How many people contracted Covid19 but were never tested?
Estimating the Fraction of Unreported COVID-19
"The results are striking: ...The range of results across model assumptions and time periods
utilized vary between 6 to 24 unreported cases."
So, at 6 unreported for every reported, more than half of the US population has been
exposed...your masks and lockdowns have been a huge failure....
186,000,000 infections and 563,000 dead = .3% death rate.
Bacon, don't confuse taketheredpill with facts, his mind is already made. I'll bet he is a
paid sock puppet or just some sick liberal trolling one of the few places post comments that
make sense, and that aren't a bunch of collectivist mindless sheep.
russellthetreeman PREMIUM 6 hours ago
It's not a vaccine. It doesn't even come close to halfway meeting the definition of a
vaccine.
It's not a pandemic. It doesn't even come close to halfway meeting the definition of a
pandemic.
The sars cov 2 virus has a known survival rate of WELL over 99+%.
sun tzu 6 hours ago remove link
The average sheep thinks over 30 million Americans died of covid-19 last year. Idiocy
rules
A Lunatic 6 hours ago (Edited)
That still pales in comparison to the 150 million gun deaths we had last year, according to
Joe.
Bacon's Rebellion 5 hours ago
"It's not a vaccine"...correct, it's a drug that forces your immune system to do something
it doesn't want to do.
The original mRNA researcher when it actually, sorta, worked "I felt like God!"
All BS. My wife and I are unvaccinated and have travelled half the country, always maskless,
over the past year. Not sick, haven’t been sick. Our dog is fine, too.
sun tzu 6 hours ago
Same here. I've been to Mexico 3 times too. Nobody around me, family and co-workers, has
gotten sick or died.
Lead Engineer PREMIUM 6 hours ago
And the CDC estimates that over 30% of the population has been infected. So if we assume
that another 20% had previous natural immunity and another 50% of the susceptible have been
vaccinated, then you can see that this pandemic is rapidly going extinct.
Captive1 6 hours ago (Edited) remove link
" From the very beginning of this crisis, I have been warning my readers that any immunity
would be very temporary. Natural COVID immunity is very temporary, and immunity conferred by
the vaccines is very temporary too."
Disqualifying statement. There is no data to support this statement. Antibody surveillance
studies have shown durability and case studies have demonstrated no reinfections to those who
had an initial antibody response on the first infection. Not to mention T Cell memory. He
doesn't know what he's talking about. Immune memory to COV2 is long lived and protective across
multiple strains. I would link the papers but I'm not helping people not be retarded anymore.
Big pharma wants you to believe that immunity is temporary to drive profit. It's not.
Huxley's Ghost 6 hours ago remove link
We know so little about the immune system (really the entire human body); basic concepts,
yes but effect of environment, innate experience, stressors, diet, etc..not a clue. Individual
immune systems because of all these factors are more like fingerprints--vastly unique to each
unit. The endocrine and immune systems are black boxes to the medical community but they act
like are doing more than spit-balling.
Huxley's Ghost 5 hours ago remove link
In theory, they (vaccine companies) annually analyze what strains are prevalent in the world
and predicted to have the greatest impact. Those strains get selected for production of the
annual flu shot; it could be the case that the same strain(s) prevailed. Or not. These days you
can't believe anything anymore.
Last time I had the flu shot was over 30 years ago. I had flu once since then and took
Tamiflu, which was miraculous in its speed (identify and dose early while viral load is low) of
effect, minimal/no side effects, and efficacy. I was back on my feet in about 36 hours--fully.
I have heard people report horrible abdominal/GI issues (temporary). I was lucky.
strych10 3 hours ago remove link
OK, I've said this before but I will repeat it, ultra basic here:
Natural immunity tends to be both "deeper" and "broader" than what one of these mRNA
(straight up or adeno vector, doesn't matter) can provide.
When a virus infects you there are a lot of different things that happen. The two that
matter the most for the purposes of this discussion are as follows:
1) Your body sees a wide array of viral surface proteins and gets a look at the actual
capsid and lipid envelope too. Particularly after you immune system shreds up some of the
buggers and looks at the pieces.
2) Your body gets to see millions of variations on this, including the most statistically
common variations in surface protein structure.
This means that your body develops a set of antibodies that is much wider than a single
introduced protein can provide.
With the vax you get one structure, lab controlled QC, a single "image" of the target if you
will. In the wild you get a bunch of various proteins and a ton of variation in their physical
shape, hundreds or thousands of images from various angles.
The result is that you get a relatively wide array of antibodies and a hugely wider picture
of what is "not self". This makes it easier for your body to recognize the same or similar
infectious agent/infection next time. You also now have a set of antibodies with variable
structure making it more likely that they can neutralize a mutant strain of the same virus (or
something substantially similar) or at least blunt the next virus' attack long enough to buy
time for your immune system to learn about it without you getting a serious illness.
duck_fur 2 hours ago
You seem to have a background in virology. What of the issue of coding errors - either
during or after manufacture - within the mRNA payload? What of the possibility of the expressed
protein exhibiting a fold due to the error(s)?
strych10 1 hour ago
I'm not a virologist. I'm a cell biologist.
So, trying not to make this a full on basic genetics class...
Yes, what you're asking is possible. It's also statistically rare. The root of misformed
proteins tends to be genetic code error or a mistake in copying that code into mRNA.
Ribosomes, which translate mRNA into a protein, tend to be very good at their job and if
they make an error can often detect it, back up and fix it and then begin sequencing again.
Errors do occur but they're rare. At this stage more common is an issue of improper folding of
the protein resulting in an improper tertiary structure and the inability to form a quaternary
structure due to this. (A quaternary structure is an overall structure formed by multiple
proteins folded to fit together into a larger unit which serves a purpose. For example,
hemoglobin is formed from four separate proteins that fold up and then can fit together to form
hemoglobin.)
So, assuming that the QC is good, which I have no reason to believe that it is not, coding
errors are not really a problem. It's the fact that the QC is too good.
But then you have to step back and ask if this matters. Yes and no, and I'll give you a
quick explanation of each.
An antibody is, essentially, like a Y of gum you're sticking on the key to a lock. The virus
has a key that unlocks the cell, the antibody prevents these two things from coming into
physical contact so the key can never open the lock. Once bound this antibody also marks
whatever it has bound to for destruction by other parts of the immune system. That in
mind...
Yes: If CoV-2 were to mutate to the point that the spike proteins in question changed enough
that an antibody couldn't bind to the virion then the virus could evade the antibodies that
neutralize the virion and mark it for destruction.
No: In order to do this, generally, you need quite a bit of mutation to change the physical
structure of the spike. In a lot of cases this would make the virion non-operational because
the same change that allows it to avoid the antibodies also means it can no longer fit that key
into the desired lock.
So, does it really matter? Again, yes and no. If the virus can "figure out" a key that still
opens the desired lock (or another one) and doesn't fit the antibody it will avoid the immune
system until the immune system figures out what's going on. This takes some time. Infected
cells have to signal that they're infected, inspection has to be done, antibodies synthesized
etc.
So, IMHO, and it's just my opinion: the fear of "breakthrough" is rather overblown. However,
it is still real. In a natural infection there is less chance of this kind of "breakthrough"
because your body has more data on the invader meaning that the invader usually needs to change
a lot more in order to evade the immune system hence "broader" and "deeper". That said, there
are viruses that are pretty good at this. Influenza A is one of them.
This is the root of what you may have heard last year about "T-cell immunity". People had
previously encountered a disease substantially similar to CoV-2 and it was similar enough that
they produced an antibody that neutralized CoV-2.
Quasimodo. 48 minutes ago remove link
If you have breakthrough, you have a new virus. A mutation, not just a variant. Most
variants have only slight changes in protein. A variant is more likely to spread and be more
virulant if it is less deadly since the host survives long enough to spread the virus further,
while a deadlier form (although could happen) will die out quickly as more hosts will die
strych10 15 minutes ago
I actually had to ask my wife about the technical definition about this.
For CoV-2 to change enough to be "not CoV-2" it would require significantly more alteration
than you're stating here.
The things that would change the classification are things like capsid shape, nucleic acid
type, mechanism of infiltration or exfiltration.
You need far more than simply the ability to evade current immune response. Hence why
Influenza A can jump species, come back and still be Influenza A.
Codery 1 hour ago
Ya but that’s just like science, can you explain how any of that helps
get rid of Trump?
strych10 1 hour ago remove link
Yes, in three letters. CNN.
sun tzu 6 hours ago remove link
Stay away from big hospitals. They are contract killers for big pharma
Sluggo315 3 hours ago
My older brother that has three or four co-morbidities (weight, BP, asthma, one more I
think) was rushed to the hospital for a bowel blockage. He spent the night in the emergency
room, and was admitted into the hospital for tests. They put him on the COVID floor. Tell me
these hospitals are not in on it too!!!?
TheTruthisSomewhere 5 hours ago remove link
The article unfortunately is going from the erroneous position that this is worse than the
flu. It is not the statistics are cooked and it is a testdemic. Variants are always less potent
and yes people have natural immunity to this. It is almost a Gaslighting article based on quasi
facts and hearsay.
Joe Rogan: "I think it's safe to get vaccinated, but if you're 21 years old ... if you're a
healthy person and you're exercising all of the time and you're young and you're eating well, I
don't think you need to worry about this." https://twitter.com/i/status/1387077145156063234
It is unclear how Fauci response correlates with the fact that existing vaccines are less
effective or (in case of Pfizer and South African strain) ineffective against new mutations. Does
he acts as Big Pharma lobbyist, or what ?
Also, you have to be skeptical of pharmaceutical companies and the fact that they cannot be
sued if something goes wrong with the vaccine.
White House
health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and communications director Kate Bedingfield have made a point
of belittling and attacking podcaster Joe Rogan for daring to have a mixed opinion on Covid-19
vaccines.
As Rogan has skyrocketed over the years to arguably the most influential and successful
podcaster around, he has also turned into an intensely controversial figure, mainly for
liberals who fear his willingness to give a platform to right-wing figures like Alex Jones and
his less-than-PC takes on everything from transgender athletes to Covid-19 vaccines.
The latter is what landed the former 'Fear Factor' host in the hot seat this week as a clip
from a recent episode of 'The Joe Rogan Experience' made its way across social media and
critics painted Rogan as an anti-vaxxer spreading disinformation.
The controversy stems from Rogan saying, during a conversation with fellow comic Dave
Smith, he would not recommend that a healthy person in their early 20s get a Covid-19 vaccine
as they are not as vulnerable to the virus as older generations (who account for the majority of Covid
deaths in the US) and people with preexisting medical conditions.
The Spotify podcaster also said pushing for kids to be vaccinated is "crazy," citing his
own childrens' history with getting Covid-19, as both recovered relatively quickly.
Critics painted Rogan's comments as an angry anti-vaxx rant, urging his millions of
listeners to avoid getting inoculated against Covid-19. However, they ignored the fact that
Rogan says in the clip (and has said in the past) that getting vaccinated seems mostly safe
and is indeed "important" for certain people.
Criticism of Rogan reached a bizarre new level on Wednesday when the White House appeared to
launch a coordinated effort to disparage and belittle the podcaster, completely dismissing his
opinions.
In multiple interviews, Fauci blasted Rogan for ignoring "societal responsibilities,"
arguing even young and healthy people should get vaccinated as asymptomatic individuals can
still spread the virus.
The infectious disease expert also believes "kids of all ages" will be vaccinated by the
end of the year – there are no vaccines on the market in the US approved for anyone under
16 – and everyone should "absolutely" get inoculated.
Bedingfield also dismissed Rogan's opinion in a CNN interview where she said Rogan not being
a doctor basically strips his words of any merit.
"I guess my first question would be, did Joe Rogan become a medical doctor while we
weren't looking?" she asked. "I'm not sure that taking scientific and medical advice
from Joe Rogan is perhaps the most productive way for people to get their information."
Initial social media criticism of Rogan is one thing, but the White House pitting themselves
against a private citizen having an open and frank discussion on a podcast is concerning. It's
alarming enough that White House officials busy with vaccination efforts and a still-fresh
administration would take the time to debate Rogan on the subject, but the responses to his
discussion also show that administration officials are fearful of open debate and conversations
about the vaccines. If one even strays from the belief that vaccines are 100% safe and every
single person, regardless of age or health, should take them, they are attacked, at least if
you have the following that Rogan has.
Rogan's discussions on Covid-19 vaccines do not boil down to a debate on whether getting
inoculated against the virus is good for everyone or not. The recent viral clip even opens with
the podcaster saying vaccines are safe, and he acknowledges that what he says about children
and young, healthy people is not true across the board. He merely expresses concerns as a
father and gives a personal opinion that in no way discourages everyone from getting a
vaccine.
Looking at Fauci and Bedingfield's responses, it appears they aren't even debating what
Rogan actually said.
Fauci, who has been a controversial figure himself and
accused of flip-flopping multiple positions during the pandemic, argues that it is the
potential transmission of the virus from one person to another that is the reason everyone
should be vaccinated. Rogan never talks about the risk of transmission though. He simply makes
the argument that a healthy individual who is younger may not need a vaccination to protect
themselves from the deadlier aspects of Covid.
Bedingfield's argument is even lamer as she says without a "Dr." title, Rogan simply
can't have concerns about vaccinations for children and others. She argues no one should take
"medical advice" from a podcaster, setting Rogan up as a man who presented himself as
some kind of expert on vaccines, dishing out advice to his listeners, who apparently aren't
intelligent enough to make up their own minds, according to these critics.
Fauci and Bedingfield and any other White House official who decides to paint Rogan as the
face of anti-vaxxers should be ashamed of themselves. Their personal attacks are an
opportunistic way to take a shot at someone who has somehow become a near-pariah on the left,
and to discourage open and frank discussions about vaccines. Their swift dismissal of a
comedian who is not quite waving the flag for every single person to be vaccinated shows that
they don't want discussion from citizens they want compliance and for people to keep nodding
their heads at their ever-changing talking points and guidelines.
It really doesn't matter who is right in the White House versus Joe Rogan debate because
there shouldn't be a White House versus Joe Rogan debate. Ironically, Fauci and Bedingfield
have probably made more people aware of Rogan's comments by addressing them. They and other
officials have taken questionable criticism of a fairly harmless conversation and used it to
create a false narrative about one man to strike fear into anyone who would dare consider what
he or anyone else would say above what they do.
A comprehensive analysis of adverse events during clinical trials and over the course of
mass vaccinations with the Sputnik V vaccine showed that there were no cases of cerebral venous
sinus thrombosis (CVST).
All vaccines based on adenoviral vector platform are different and not directly comparable.
In particular, AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1-S vaccine uses chimpanzee adenovirus to
deliver the antigen, consisting of S-protein combined with leader sequence of tissue-type
plasminogen activator. The vaccine from Johnson&Johnson uses human adenovirus serotype Ad26
and full-length S-protein stabilized by mutations. In addition, it is produced using the PER.C6
cell line (embryonic retinal cells), which is not widely represented among other registered
products.
Sputnik V is a two-component vaccine in which adenovirus serotypes 5 and 26 are used. A
fragment of tissue-type plasminogen activator is not used, and the antigen insert is an
unmodified full-length S-protein. Sputnik V vaccine is produced with the HEK293 cell line,
which has long been safely used for the production of biotechnological products.
Thus, all of the above vaccines based on adenoviral vectors have significant differences in
their structure and production technology. Therefore, there is no reason and no justification
to extrapolate safety data from one vaccine to safety data from other vaccines.
The quality and safety of Sputnik V are, among other things, assured by the fact that,
unlike other vaccines, it uses a 4-stage purification technology that includes two stages of
chromatography and two stages of tangential flow filtration. This purification technology helps
to obtain a highly purified product that goes through mandatory control including the analysis
of free DNA presence. In addition, the volume of nucleic acid is several dozen times lower in
adenoviral vectors compared to Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (1 to 2 mcg vs 50 to 100 mcg,
correspondingly).
A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine on April 9, 2021, discusses that
the cause of the thrombosis in some patients vaccinated with other vaccines could be
insufficient purification that leads to the emergence of significant quantities of free DNA.
Insufficient purification or use of very high doses of target DNA/RNA can result in adverse
interaction of a patient’s antibodies that activate thrombocytes with
elements of the vaccine itself and/or free DNA/RNA, which can form a complex with the PF4
factor.
The Gamaleya Center is ready to share its purification technology with other vaccine
producers in order to help them minimize the risk of adverse effects during
vaccination.
"... He had a total loss of his platelets -- the little blood cells that stop bleeding. In spite of being treated by a team of physicians, he died two weeks later from a brain hemorrhage, and was reported to have had zero platelets . ..."
"... What happened to this physician and the others seems to be a new previously unseen problem related to vaccination -- despite the manufacturers' claims. ..."
"... Increasingly, vaccine manufacturers and government officials are following the sarcastic maxim from Samuel Shem's novel of medical residency entitled The House of God that "if you don't take a temperature you can't find a fever." In other words, if we don't critically look at the actual recorded patient damage, we won't find our products to be defective. ..."
Many Americans have heard the news account of Dr. Gregory Michael, a 56-year-old Florida physician who, after receiving his first
dose of a Pfizer COVID vaccine on December 18 of last year, was hospitalized three days later. He had a total loss of his platelets
-- the little blood cells that stop bleeding. In spite of being treated by a team of physicians, he died two weeks later from a brain
hemorrhage, and was reported to have had zero platelets .
By February 10, 2021, 36 other similar cases were reported in the mainstream media. Pfizer, which along with its partner BioNTech
made the vaccine the doctor received, said in a statement that it was aware of the death. Typically, they concluded, "We are actively
investigating this case, but we don't believe at this time that there is any direct connection to the vaccine."
Pfizer made this "finding" despite several unusual circumstances of the case. First, low-platelet disorders, known as idiopathic
thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), most commonly affect children, and generally follow a viral illness. Only 10 percent of ITP cases
occur in adults, who usually present with a slow onset form of the disorder, referred to as chronic ITP. The disorder usually starts
by someone noticing easy bleeding, such as slow oozing from gums or the nose, or bruises showing up without trauma. Rarely do platelets
drop below 20,000, and generally treatment either reverses the disease or prolongs life for years in spite of the problem.
What happened to this physician and the others seems to be a new previously unseen problem related to vaccination -- despite
the manufacturers' claims.
Increasingly, vaccine manufacturers and government officials are following the sarcastic maxim from Samuel Shem's novel of
medical residency entitled The House of God that "if you don't take a temperature you can't find a fever." In other words,
if we don't critically look at the actual recorded patient damage, we won't find our products to be defective. Now, major media
are increasingly getting on board, condemning "vaccine hesitancy" and pushing everyone to get vaccinated for COVID, discounting any
dangers. But in the practice of medicine, we are supposed to employ the "precautionary principle" -- above all do no harm.
Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 "vaccines" are experimental, employing a genetic technology never before used on humans. Ironically,
many people who wouldn't purchase the first edition of a new car line are lining up to take an injection they know nothing about,
that has never successfully passed animal trials, that could never meet the required "safety level" for a "drug," and is unapproved
for the prevention of COVID except as an emergency experiment .
Legally, those who get the vaccine are unnamed participants in a Stage IV FDA trial.
Moreover, a vaccine is supposed to prevent disease. By that definition, these agents are not even vaccines. They are more
properly termed "experimental unapproved genetic agents." By admission of the manufacturers themselves, both the Pfizer and Moderna
products only lessen the symptoms of COVID; they don't prevent transmission.
Vaccination was first invented to treat smallpox, which had a a fatality rate of up to 60 percent. Then other diseases such as
typhoid and polio were similarly addressed. But vaccination is not used when effective safe treatment is available. Although censorship
has confused the public understanding, overwhelming evidence dating back to the 1970s shows that viruses can be treated with "lysosomotropic
agents." The truth is, hundreds of papers have shown that chloroquine, and its later version hydroxychloroquine, are very effective
in treating this virus if given early. A worldwide open architecture online review of COVID survival (hcqtrial.com) showed that death
rate was 78.7-percent lower in those countries where hydroxychloroquine was used early and often:
Multiple large studies done in outpatient settings show very excellent prevention and cure with these and other drugs such as
Ivermectin. In Mumbai, India, a study was done of the city police force of 10,000 officers. No deaths were recorded in the 4,600
officers taking a small dose of hydroxychloroquine each week. All the deaths were in the untreated group. Using Worldometer statistics,
COVID deaths per capita in New York State are 2,656 per million population; in New Jersey they are 2,821 per million population.
In India the rate is 126 per million and in Uganda it is only seven per million. Neither India nor Uganda used social distancing
in any real way. But they do use hydroxychloroquine. New York (except for Dr. Zev Zelenko and a few others) does not use the drug.
As to the claims of the efficacy of the drugs, the declaration of 95-percent effectiveness of the Pfizer product was shown to
be bunkum by Dr. Peter Doshi, the associate editor of the British Medical Journal , writing in that publication. After doing
an independent review of the data submitted to the FDA, Dr. Doshi reported that only 30 percent of test subjects, at best, experienced
even the slightest benefit (symptom reduction). Absolute risk reduction -- in other words stopping transmission -- he estimated at
less than one percent.
The limited benefit of taking the drugs is made worse by the relatively high death tolls from the new mRNA therapy. During the
first two months of the rollout of Pfizer and Moderna "vaccines" in 2021, 95 percent of deaths from vaccines recorded in the Vaccine
Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) were for those agents, meaning only five percent of reported deaths involved all the other
vaccines put together. Compared to 2019, deaths in VAERS are up 6,000 percent. Thirty-six deaths were recorded in the first quarter
of 2020 versus 1,754 in the first quarter of 2021.
In Israel, where the Pfizer mRNA product is being used exclusively and a major push is on to vaccinate the whole population, an
independent review of government data after two months of the vaccine program was done by the Aix-Marseille University Faculty of
Medicine Emerging Infectious and Tropical Diseases Unit's Dr. Hervé Seligmann and engineer Haim Yativ. They showed that when 12.5
percent of Israelis were vaccinated, 51 percent of the deaths from COVID were in the vaccinated group. Additionally, in the
over 65-year-olds, vaccination resulted in death from COVID 40 times more than in unvaccinated people. In other words, this
is not protecting people from COVID but increasing fatalities from the disease -- and this neglects the number of other side effects.
If the truth were known, most sane, thinking people would not likely take part in such an experiment. With the truth hidden and
with threats of travel bans and an unwarranted fear of COVID, and with pressure from employers and the politicization of COVID in
general, Americans have been throwing caution to the wind.
The Unknowns
To understand what is actually happening to people after receiving the mRNA agents, I reviewed data in VAERS -- an open-source
searchable database of possible vaccine side effects reported by both providers and patients. According to the CDC website:
VAERS is used to detect possible safety problems -- called "signals" -- that may be related to vaccination. If a vaccine safety
signal is identified through VAERS, scientists may conduct further studies to find out if the signal represents an actual risk.
The main goals of VAERS are to:
• Detect new, unusual, or rare adverse events that happen after vaccination.
• Monitor increases in known side effects, like arm soreness where a shot was given
• Identify potential patient risk factors for particular types of health problems related to vaccines
• Assess the safety of newly licensed vaccines
• Watch for unexpected or unusual patterns in adverse event reports
• Serve as a monitoring system in public health emergencies
The CDC acknowledges limitations of the system, including:
• Reports submitted to VAERS often lack details and sometimes contain errors.
◦ Serious adverse events are more likely to be reported than mild side effects.
◦ It is generally not possible to find out from VAERS data if a vaccine caused the adverse event.
I searched the VAERS database using keywords that would identify bleeding problems and thrombocytopenia (low or absent platelets).
Entries are defined by age groups and sex with a narrative account of the injury.
In a two-and-a-half-month period from December 15, 2020 to March 12, 2021, 358 cases of unusual clotting or bleeding were identified,
and it makes grim reading. There were 104 cases of frank thrombocytopenia (low platelets) -- some including young people. However,
the numbers alone do not adequately convey the problems. In one case about an 18-29 year-old female, the physician wrote this: "Patient
was seen in in my office on 1/19/21 with complaint of heavy vaginal bleeding. A CBC was obtained which revealed an H/H of 12.2/36.1
and a platelet count of 1 (not 1K, but 1 platelet!) This was confirmed on smear review." The surprise and horror the doctor experienced
upon seeing the absence of platelets is clear when reading the report.
But the platelet problem may just be the most severe expression of a physical derangement that is producing bleeding of all sorts.
As seen in the table below, there were 49 people with brain hemorrhages -- nine fatal at the time of reporting. A number of other
people arrived at Emergency Departments with bleeding from multiple sites, or internally, so massive that they could not be stabilized
even to clearly define the sources of the bleeding.
Severe Thrombocytopenia
94
Various Spontaneous Skin bleeding
10
Mild Thrombocytopenia
11
Vein bleeding from temple
1
Thrombocytopenic Petechial rash/bruising
5
Prolonged surgical site bleeding
3
Severe Pancytopenia
2
Severe multifocal bleeding
5
Unknown Hematologic Problem
1
Severe internal bleeding
5
Multifocal or "massive" brain hemorrhage
20
Severe uncharacterized bleeding
3
Focal brain hemorrhage
29
Bleeding from cancer site liver
1
GI Bleed
34
Renal dialysis shunt
1
Severe Vaginal Bleeding
7
Hematuria
2
Vaginal Bleeding
21
Renal bleed
1
Bleeding in Pregnancy
6
Tonsillar bleed
1
Bleeding with Miscarriage
12
Acute Uterine Fibroid hemorrhage
1
Irreg Menses
4
Nosebleed
32
Oral bleeding
8
Spontaneous Splenic hemorrhage
1
Subconjunctival Hemorrhage
11
Injection Site Bleeding
21
Intraocular bleed
4
Arm Bruising
1
Most cases of severe problems were in people over the age of 50 years. But there were many younger people involved, especially
in the less severe-but-unusual bleeding problems. Of the 36 reported nosebleeds, six were either unable to be stopped with usual
measures, were recurrent, or were recorded as having significant blood loss or dubbed "profuse." Many were associated with other
symptoms: photophobia (eye sensitivity to light), headache, hives, "sick in bed," brain fog, and face swelling. The youngest patient
with a nosebleed was, sadly, a toddler requiring emergency care. Unusual skin bleeding was also reported. Four 65-plus-year-old males
reported blood spontaneously oozing through the skin: one from the legs, one from the scalp, one from an old biopsy site, and one
from an old healed "boil" site. Frank bleeding at the time of the inoculation occurred 14 times. Some bleeding was momentary, but
often the bleeding was difficult to stop, recurrent, and/or persisted after the patient returned home. (How many times have you had
an injection and bled at all, let alone bled off and on for hours?)
Perhaps the saddest were the bleeding episodes that preceded spontaneous miscarriages. Here are some direct entries in VAERS:
40-49 y.o. Female: The evening of my vaccination I began to feel feverish, weak and achy. During the night I woke with heavy
bleeding and found out the following morning I had miscarried my otherwise healthy pregnancy.
39 y.o. Female: Internal brain bleeding 10 days after 1st dose Covid vaccine; brain damage, confused, suffering memory loss;
This is a spontaneous report from a contactable physician (patient).
30-39 y.o. Female: 48 hours after injection developed micro-hemorrhages in her right eye. Symptoms resolved and 12/29 recurrence
of bleeding to right eye slightly worse than before
65+ y.o. Male: Patient developed significant nose bleed after receiving vaccine. Required emergency department visits x 2 and
hospitalization.
65+ y.o. Female: Vaccine administered 02/02/2021. By Thursday 2/11/2021 patient almost nonverbal, by Monday 2/15/2021 patient
went to the hospital with bruising, sores on her stomach and clots reported as thrombocytopenia. Deceased by Friday, 2/19/20201.
40-49 y.o. Female: Bleeding, myalgia, tingling in the fingers of the right hand; fatigue immediately upon vaccination -- bleeding
at the injection site which the employee reports as filling the Band-Aid over the site. When she got home in the evening and took
it off blood ran.
65+ y.o. Female: Within 15 min of the injection, the individual became aphasic and stroke like symptoms. She was taken to the
ER where she was later diagnosed with a cerebral hemorrhage and passed away.
When such facts are presented, the standard retort from vaccine advocates is, "We have given millions of vaccines, so a few deaths
are to be expected." Besides the fact that a willingness to sacrifice individuals for the nebulous good of the masses represents
a bankrupt moral order, simply calculating the numbers of deaths is inadequate. "Experts" need to take the time to read the narrative
to open their eyes -- and their hearts -- to the suffering happening. There are over 25 pages of such stories printed from VAERS
entries, and we must consider, "How many of these people are now dead, and how many are going to die?"
A second-year medical student armed with the facts should recognize looming disaster -- where are the experts?
In truth, neither recipients nor their doctors know what is in these "vaccines." Only a few people at the top of the Moderna,
Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca research groups really understand them. These mRNA injections produce a potentially deadly
pathogen -- the spike protein -- in your cells.
The Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer product says that it contains "a nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (modRNA) encoding
the viral spike glycoprotein (S) of SARS-CoV-2." If your immune system is strong enough to withstand this onslaught and create some
immunity, you may survive the first onslaught. But even if you don't die in the short term, mRNA is an epigenetic controller of
DNA . Though this foreign synthetic mRNA doesn't actually become part of your DNA to make you a "GMO human," as some people have
been worrying about, it can control DNA in ways we have yet to completely understand . We literally have no idea whether this
bodily additive is going to have a side effect of expressing cancer genes, or of repressing cancer protective genes, or thousands
of other potentially deadly unknowns.
Additionally, the Pfizer vaccine includes all types of ingredients that may by themselves create ailments. The Pfizer shot
contains "lipids ((4-hydroxybutyl)azanediyl)bis(hexane-6,1-diyl)bis(2- hexyldecanoate), 2-[(polyethylene glycol)-2000]-N,N-ditetradecylacetamide,
1,2-distearoyl-snglycero-3-phosphocholine, and cholesterol), potassium chloride, monobasic potassium phosphate, sodium chloride,
dibasic sodium phosphate dihydrate, and sucrose."
I insert this list just for completeness -- don't expect to make sense of it. Your doctor can't either. I understand "sucrose"
(sugar) and sodium chloride (salt), but who doesn't get lost in the "hydroxybutyl" and "distearoyl" lipid list?
After doing some sleuthing and having some inside knowledge to start from, I discovered that this lipid particle is an adjuvant
called "Matrix M." As described in scientific literature, "Adjuvant Matrix-M™ is comprised of 40 nm nanoparticles composed of
Quillaja saponins , cholesterol and phospholipid."
Matrix-M essentially wraps the mRNA in a lipid coating that allows it to move through cell walls and to linger in your system.
Matrix-M is derived from plant chemicals called saponins, which have poorly understood properties in plant biology. They can be toxic
to humans in some cases, and have been traditionally used by aboriginal tribesmen to poison fish. Should we consider that comforting?
The pharmacology industry has a long history of removing bad drugs from the market. Thalidomide is perhaps the most famous example
of a pharmacologic disaster. The drug was released in 1957 for its sedative effects and was touted as being safe for everyone including
"pregnant women and children." In 1961, Dr. William McBride, an obstetrician, discovered that thalidomide was useful for "morning
sickness" in pregnant women. Later he began to see unusual and devastating birth defects in babies born to women for whom he had
prescribed the drug. Independently, Dr. Widuking Lenz, a pediatrician in Germany, also associated thalidomide with severe and unusual
birth defects, such as the absence of limbs or parts of limbs. Sometimes an infants' hands were attached at the shoulders, there
being no connecting long bones at all. By 1962 the drug was taken off the market.
But unlike with our new, experimental agents, recognition of the thalidomide problem was made relatively easy by several factors.
First among these was the uniqueness of the deformities. These were both profound and obvious, which stand in stark contrast to the
current bleeding problems, which appear on the surface to be normal problems in clinical medicine -- such as nosebleeds. Even now,
doctors continue to call the loss of platelets "ITP" -- even though what we are seeing is not the same as what we would expect to
see under that diagnosis. ITP simply does not kill adult males in a few days.
Second, with thalidomide, the physician who first began using the drug for nausea in pregnancy was also the doctor who delivered
the affected babies, so he could readily put two and two together. In the case of our COVID drugs, when your doctor tells you to
get a vaccine, he doesn't administer it, doesn't witness the injection, and usually doesn't follow up to see how you fared. And if
you were to suddenly develop a vision problem or bleeding from the bowel, you wouldn't be seen by your PCP; you would be in an Emergency
Department -- and they don't usually ask about your recent vaccine history.
Third, Dr. Lenz presciently recognized that, in the case of thalidomide, many less-severe deformities, when put into perspective,
revealed "gradations of the defect." Unfortunately in the present case, lesser degrees of clotting problems are indistinguishable
from bleeding issues frequently encountered in an Emergency Room or doctor's office. For example, if a 75-year-old hypertensive male
-- who has gotten a COVID shot -- suffers a brain hemorrhage and dies, it would not likely be deemed unusual, and the relationship
to vaccination may not even be explored.
Keeping that in mind, we should assume the worst when it comes to these new COVID shots. When any new drug problem starts, it
begins slowly and unrecognized -- like a snowball beginning to roll down a mountain. By the time the problem is generally acknowledged,
the avalanche is well on its way. In the case of thalidomide, over 100,000 children were severely damaged before the drug was removed
from use. Though VAERS has the potential to shorten recognition time of drug problems by trying to spot the "unusual patterns," this
requires that physicians be aware of the system, and take the time to enter any suspected side effects -- not just the worst
cases. It also requires that researchers care enough to look. This is not happening. A report previously submitted to the Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality revealed that fewer than one percent of adverse events get reported to VAERS.
In the past, testing done on mRNA technology revealed problems specifically involving the clotting system. Antibody-mediated platelet
damage has been suspected. Yet today when these exact problems arise, the researchers are mum. Do the experts not study or know their
own vaccine research history?
For those who are concerned about the risks, we need to advocate for ourselves, either through contacting legislators or simply
refusing to take the shots. It's obvious that the pharmaceutical industry is willing to release untried technology upon the entire
world population, and not be deterred by any inconvenience such as unexplained death.
We need to stop being a gullible population that forces our children to get vaccinated for trivial, non-fatal diseases such as
mumps. We need to stop believing in the god-like status of medical technocrats who claim to be making the world safer. We need to
reject the idea that vaccine deniers are anti-scientific troglodytes. We must reject the unspoken premise under which pharmaceutical
companies and doctors operate -- that all vaccines are always safe in all people all the time. It should not be considered unreasonable
to require scientific transparency, honesty by drug manufacturers, and safety from vaccines.
Vaccines are only indicated for diseases with a high risk of death or morbidity, and for which there is no cure. After
seeing the esteemed leaders in medicine denigrate hydroxychloroquine (even though it was a recognized treatment used successfully
elsewhere for SARS, and mentioned favorably by Dr. Fauci for MERS), after watching three plants used in the production of hydroxychloroquine
burn down in a year -- two on the same day -- after watching doctors lose their jobs and be censored for speaking truth and saving
lives with old safe drugs that work, and now, after seeing experimental genetic agents being rolled out for use globally that have
never passed animal testing and have only a few months human trials, perhaps it is time to address the 800-pound gorilla in the room
and ask, "Are they trying to kill us?"
Dr. Lee Merritt has been in the private practice of Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgery since 1995, has served on the Board of
the Arizona Medical Association, and is past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. She is a lifelong
advocate for a patient's right to choose their own medical care without government intervention.
//Describing the move as "theater," Paul said that it would harm efforts to get people
vaccinated if the public doesn't believe the shot has an impact in curbing the spread of the
virus. He was referring to an online meeting between world leaders, in which President Joe
Biden was the only official
wearing a mask .
Biden forgot that "this theater was so ridiculous that people would call him out on it," he
added. Last week, others had questioned why the president would wear a mask in such a setting.
All the other world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were not wearing masks.
"If I want to go visit the White House, Republicans, and Democrats who go visit, even though
they've all been vaccinated or had the disease, they're being tested with a deep sinus test,"
Paul told Fox News over the weekend,
"And they're being told that wear the N95 masks to go in the White House, even though
they've all been vaccinated," he added.
"So, there is no science behind any of this. It's fear-mongering. But it also has a
deleterious effect, in that it's discouraging people from getting the vaccine because they're
saying, well, if the vaccine doesn't mean anything, it doesn't seem to have any protective
benefit, you get no benefit. "
If people cannot "quit wearing the mask," some have asked why they should get vaccinated at
all, Paul said.
"I think that's the wrong attitude," the Kentucky Republican added.
"But this is what's coming from Biden and the so-called scientists that he's putting
forward."
It comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s director, Rochelle
Walenksy, said the agency is looking into revising its mask provision for people who are
outside.
"We'll be looking at the outdoor masking question, but also in the context of the fact that
we still have people who are dying of COVID-19," she told "Today" last week.
...The current CDC guidelines
say that "masks may not be necessary when you are outside by yourself away from others, or
with people who live in your household."
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.
Interesting that the CNN producer on the Veritas video said that global
warming will be the next big fear-inducing corporate greenwashing campaign.
Would love to know where all these "narratives" are coordinated from and
by whom.
and if we had an accurate count of how many died of this virus....we would see it was not
bad at all.....but the healtcare workers made more money if they said it was covid than if it
was just a heart attack.....and remember ....no one got the flu this year...
It is interesting presentation. He promotes ivermectin and points that CIVID-19 kill 90% of
virus in petri disk study. He point s the NIH is co-holder with Moderna of a parent for the
vaccine. The main points:
1. We are no longer in pandemic, we are in endemic. Wearing makes in open space is
idiotism.
2. Coronavirus are seasonal and they have
3. Average Covid19 age of death 78.6 yo. Average annual US age of death in the is the
same
4. Low vitamin D is the main reason of higher susceptibility.
Covid is a strange one. At a certain age and health spectrum (especially obesity) people
that caught covid had a 10% plus or minus chance of not surviving. For everyone else, a nothing
burger. The flu is/was more dangerous. play_arrow 3 play_arrow 4
sun tzu 2 hours ago
For people over 80, the survival rate is 95%. That's including tens of thousands murdered
by ventilators and hundreds of thousands who died of something else blamed on covid-19
LeftandRightareWrong 2 hours ago
A high % of elderly + co-morbidities did not survive.
I would not recommend licking the counter top as it does not taste very good. In any case,
the transmission of COVID-19 does not come from touching surfaces. And I am reiterating what I
had read approximately a year ago.
The Atlantic 's Staff Writer Derek Thompson reiterates what is pretty much known
since the advent of COVID and ignored by many.
"
Deep Cleaning Isn't a Victimless Crime" brings the point home in its content on surface
contamination.
Based on "epidemiological data and studies of environmental transmission factors; the CDC
determined surface transmission is not the main route by which SARS-CoV-2 spreads. The risk of
transmission is low in this instance."
Fomites are "objects or materials such as clothes, utensils, and furniture likely to carry
infection. The surface transmission of COVID is low risk in the spread of SARS-CoV-2."
Originally the thought was it to be a major contributor of spreading COVID.
Instead, COVID-19 is an airborne threat and spreads through tiny aerosol droplets lingering
in the air in unventilated spaces. Rhinovirus is a common virus and the predominant cause of a
common cold. It spreads
via aerosols .
The solution is ventilating areas which may not be so due to being closed in by walls,
etc.
And outspoken researchers such as Jose-Luis Jimenez, an aerosol scientist at the University
of Colorado Boulder, were insisting on needing focus on ventilation rather than surfaces and
windows rather than Windex. Instead, they were being loudly rebuffed or ignored.
"Watching people troll Aerosol Science reminds me of Creationists telling Evolutionary
Biologists there is no evidence for Evolution. My students in 1st semester Physics easily
follow the fluid dynamics of your presentation slides (drag F, Reynold's #, etc)." Clark
Vangilder, PhD
The 7 Day Positivity rate has gone from 5.4% in November to 3.2%. Yes, people are still
being infected with COVID and a very small percentage of those are hospitalized. And even
smaller number wind up in the ICU.
And what about the death rate? If you just read the Miami Herald headline you would assume
they are stacking bodies. Nope. The number of people who have died at Sarasota Memorial in the
last 86 days (17 November 2020 to 10 February 2021) is averaging 1 per day. (Yes, I know, two
died today but none died yesterday, so it averages out).
Stumbling Joe Biden, or should I say his handlers, are pissed that Ron DeSantis, our
Governor, is not playing the fear game. Florida is open for business and we have something
approaching a normal, pre-COVID life (except for the brainwashed who have been bamboozled into
improperly wearing masks).
Here is the major Covid hysteria turning point, used to seal Trump's political defeat so the
Democrat's could claim Trump murdered over 300,000 persons. This happened shortly after Nancy
Pelosi tore up Trump's SOTU address in Feb 2020, which was her declaration of war against
him. The real felony murder charge should fall on Dr. Deborah Birx, the infamous Scarf
Lady.
APRIL 2020: The federal government is classifying the deaths of patients infected with
the coronavirus as COVID-19 deaths, regardless of any underlying health issues that could
have contributed to the loss of someone's life.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force,
said the federal government is continuing to count the suspected COVID-19 deaths, despite
other nations doing the opposite.
"There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let's say the
virus caused you to go to the ICU [intensive care unit] and then have a heart or kidney
problem," she said during a Tuesday news briefing at the White House. "Some countries are
recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.
"The intent is ... if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that," she
added.
Larry,
You are spot on from where I'm sitting. What you see is not just true in Florida. It is true
across the country.
I have access to data pertaining to a sample of Americans from across the country - and
it's not a small sample (i.e. consists of many millions). Inpatient bed utilization per 1,000
in < 65 products is same as, or lower than, the previous years. Ditto ICU utilization.
We are not seeing a large volume of covid diagnosed people/people receiving treatment, nor
hospitalizations for covid, nor deaths due to it in < 65 products. The deaths are
minuscule in number/% and are almost exclusively among those with a history of serious
underlying conditions - the kind of underlying conditions that kill you sooner or later
anyhow.
In > 65 products, the figures are a little higher, but still tiny (just like a bad flu
season) and bed day utilization is flat compared to previous years. Deaths tend to be among
those at, or above, their actuarially expected year of death.
We are being to told to understand that what we see (or not see, more accurately) is
explained by covid damage being done primarily to the indigent elderly; people on Medicaid,in
low grade nursing homes, etc - and not to our people, who the type working or paying for
Medicare Advantage. The indigent are always effected worse because they don't take of
themselves. That is axiomatic in our business.
At any rate, it still appears to me - based on the data - that relatively healthy,
educated people have little to worry about from covid, beyond economic destruction caused by
reactionary policies and by associated loss of freedoms that America is supposed to
represent.
The
US excess deaths for 2020 show that approximately 300,000 more people died than were
predicted to die in 2020.
Even as U.S. deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 400,000 this week, some Americans dispute the
accuracy of the death toll, contending it is exaggerated.
Final figures aren't yet in, but preliminary numbers show 2020 is on track to become the
deadliest year in U.S. history, with more than 3.2 million total deaths – about
400,000 more than 2019 – a sharp increase that public health experts attribute to
COVID-19 and aligns with reported deaths from the disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 2,835,533 U.S. deaths in 2019.
Before the pandemic, models projected a slightly higher number, about 2.9 million deaths,
for 2020, said Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women's
Hospital.
It's not a coincidence, he said, that the 400,000 excess deaths closely resemble the
number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S., which reached 401,796 as of Wednesday, according
to Johns Hopkins data.
"That is not a seasonal change or just a random bad year," Faust said. "That is what
every person who can correctly attest to these numbers can plainly see is a historic
increase in excess mortality. If we put that together with the number of coronavirus
deaths, it's game, set, match."
Former President Trump's pandemic team addressed comorbidities at one time (well over 90%
comorbidity). The "Swiss Doctor" website notes average age of death (I think it was 78 in US
and 82 worldwide). These are clear signs that this additional information is being collected;
just not consistently and widely published.
I thought early on that consistent complete factual reporting by even a single local TV
station could collapse the pandemic in a pocket. I remember others said early on that active
resistance was needed for change (the covidians are "true believers", like religion, who will
not be put off).
The consistent, complete factual reporting has not taken place. This blog post may have
found the key. "More governors need to go on the offensive."
Ghost Ship,
What is the methodology used to arrive at the "excess deaths" number? Is it similar to
Cuomo's nursing home deaths counting, but in reverse? Why are raw numbers being used and not
rates (e.g. deaths per 100K)? Why is 2020 being compared to just one data point, 2019? Why
not compare an *age adjusted* rate per 100K for 2020 to each of the past 10 years (hint, I
know what that would show and it doesn't maximize covid hysteria)?
How many excess deaths, such that they may be, are actually attributable to the increases
in drug overdoses and suicides in 2020? To lack of screenings and early diagnosis due to
doctor office and hospital shut downs and restrictions? To people too scared of covid
exposure to continue treatment for chronic conditions even if they could see their doctor? To
illegal aliens and other recent third world immigrants (another hint moment)?
You're allowing yourself to be gaslighted under the guise of wanting to appear
informed.
Yes. There is a covid virus. Yes it will make some people with weak immune systems + a
heavy viral load, sick. No. It's not more deadly than the some of the flues that come around
from time to time, like every ten years +/-.
SO, there were reportedly 400,000 more US deaths in 2020 than in 2019. Considering that
the very eldest of the huge Baby Boom generation turned 74 in 2020, I wonder if such an
increase in deaths per year is something we're going to witness for the foreseeable
future?
What does our resident actuarial have to say about US death rates vis a vis aging Baby
Boomers???
Eric - I've got the picture, here in Europe and also in the States, that it's a race
between the new variants and mass vaccination.
B117 gave us quite a scare. The figures were going down nicely, as in the States, then
along came this new variant. In Ireland, Portugal (less certain because less genomic testing)
and the UK the same pattern: New variant. Cases, and later deaths, rising sharply. Control
measures (lockdown etc). Then an equally sharp drop.
So in those three countries I don't think there's any doubt that after the new variant
came along it was only lockdown that prevented the hospitals getting hopelessly overloaded.
Now it's a question of hoping that mass vaccination will have its effect before the new
variant gets further ahead.
There's some B117 in the States but not enough genomic testing is done to be quite sure
how much. The SA variant also, and the two Brazilian variants. The mysterious thing about the
Brazilian variants in Manaus is that they seem to be attacking people who by rights should
have immunity from previous exposure to Covid. I've just heard in Europe of yet another
variant (N439K "Romania variant") this one seemingly more resistant to treatment but I don't
know if it's more transmissible and don't know if it's reached the States.
As are you, I'm sceptical about the stats put out. They don't allow for the effects of
such lockdown as there has been. They don't allow for the fact that flu deaths have gone
right down. They don't allow for informal lockdown - that is, people who isolate whatever the
advice is. They don't allow for increased deaths from other conditions that didn't get
treated because of the pandemic. And the crude stats I'm seeing don't allow for different
cultural patterns, and different population densities, that increase transmission rates and
therefore death rates by up to four times.
So instead of rooting around in that thicket I believe it's safer to stick to the one
verifiable fact. That is that the new variants are more transmissible, possibly more
dangerous, and that if the race between them and vaccination is lost then all that will stop
the hospitals getting overloaded over your way will be control measures of the sort that were
successful in Ireland, Portugal and the UK.
Is this right, or are there factors that alter the picture in the States that don't alter
it here?
...................
I've gone off your man Fauci, by the way. Heard him bad mouthing Trump. Nothing about what
I reckon is going to be counted as one of the great achievements of the Trump Presidency,
Operation Warp Speed. Nothing about the fact that he himself lost the plot several times last
year. Just a sneaky little jibe. He could be Paracelsus come again for all I care but I put
him down as a rat.
And I'm not at all sure that William Barr shouldn't be placed in the same Hall of
Infamy.
I have one data point to offer from an unlikely area and that too from India. Make of it what
you will.
I invested in Pharma stocks specifically generics makers that export to USA and Europe
largely. I get copies of earnings conference calls posted and a typical is like this
This is the third time, I have seen a reference to the lowest-flu-shot sales in a
decade . This is from Lupin and I have seen similar lines from CFOs in the earnings calls
of Cipla, Aurobindo generics makers that have a large US generics presence.
from the linked pdf file...
Talking about sales - U.S. sales grew by 4% sequentially at US$188 million in
Q3 FY21, as compared to US$180 million in Q2 FY21, and grew by 1% as
compared to Q3 FY20. The sequential growth was driven by ramp up in
Albuterol as well as new products like Lapatinib, Tacrolimus etc. The demand
for seasonal products continues to be pretty weak on back of the weakest flu
season in the last decade, leading to a fall in quite a few of those products as
compared to the previous year. Other in-line products however. remain
stable.
For those of you who posted that there's something off about flu season, the above is a
good indicator; though it still does NOT explain why the deaths seem higher than normal at an
elevated 3000 deaths/week. Personally, I have no idea what's a "normal" weekly death rate is,
as macabre as it may sound to ask.
Everyone with some rudimentary smarts is fixated on "excess deaths", because it sounds,
well, smart - and would have merit if done right and with full transparency into methodology.
As I said, those figures, as thrown around today, have serious methodological flaws and who
knows how they are really calculated.
IMO, a more telling metric will be life expectancy in years, currently at 78.8 years (2019
figure). If covid is the existential scourge that Covidians want it to be, then life
expectancy should show a decline in 2020. On the other hand, if what I am saying is true,
that covid is merely killing those who were going to soon die anyhow, then life expectancy,
in years, will remain the same. That finding would also support what you say about anyone
testing positive and dying for any reason being chalked up to covid; an understanding that I
agree with more than not.
2020 figures are not yet available.
I also note that Google searches for age/sex adjusted mortality rates direct you away from
that and towards links about how terrible covid is and how many excess deaths there have
been. It is near impossible for the general public to find adjusted mortality rates for the
past 20 years. I'm sure that's done on purpose by the tech-Marxists. Of course the CDC site
is a scrambled mess still. No luck there either.
"Hospitals have never been in danger of collapsing..."
Now that there has been a change in administrations there's a change of tune of the
narrative. Why are states still ordering lockdowns and masks if there was never any danger of
hospitals being overwhelmed? That was the whole point of doing so. Well, actually, driving
Trump from office was the point. Mission accomplished.
A few months ago when the first "Johns Hopkins study" (French female epidemiologist study)
analyzing CDC data was squelched, it concluded from the official CDC morbidity data there
were NO excess deaths in 2020 when plotted against the prior 10 years of CDC data.
This CDC data "study" was immediately depublished by Johns Hopkins with the claim this
study conclusion would be confusing to the public.
However, it did serve the purpose to put CDC on notice and make sure any future CDC data
reports conformed to the prevailing Democrat narrative, or risk also getting "cancelled".
The latest official "gaslighting" narrative claims regular seasonal influenza morbidity is
close to ZERO because everyone is wearing masks and social distancing - which stopped regular
flu in its tracks according to this narrative.
Yet for some reason this exact same masks and social distancing that stopped seasonal
influenza cold, did nothing to stop "covid"?
2020: Influenza = 0; Covid = 350,000. C'mon, man.
When Democrats run both the media narrative and the deep state data gathering operations,
we will never know the truth.
Though I suspect many of actually do know the truth regardless of the massive Democrat
efforts to keep gas-lighting the public for their own political gain. Yes, they are that
venal. Look what they have accomplished for their own self-interests so far.
TL:DR Removing New York City, not the state, just the city, it was a bad flu season in the
U.S.
A better response would have been to educate the public with ways to boost their immune
systems so as to avoid hospitalization. Vitamin D and Zinc supplements among other
strategies.Depending on an EULA experimental "vaccine" as a magic bullet was flawed
thinking.
As others have noted we also have a boomer generation aging up and out.
A sane discussion: Medicine, law, covid, censorship and media. The Rubin report explores
covid tribal hysteria by those censored by new media algorithms with three popular media
personalities who are experts in their field.
Media censorship in medicine has translated to private censorship among medical
colleagues. No deviations allowed from the corporate medical orthodoxy - even conventional
medicine suffering now from the heavy hand of media censorship.
Where is this taking us - when will freedom finally leak out from under this heavy
non-science censorship hand?
The L.A. district considers students engaged merely for logging on to the online teaching
platform. Yet even by this low standard, the Great Public Schools Now report finds that "over
13,000 middle and high school students were consistently disengaged in fall 2020," and "an
additional 56,000 did not actively participate on a daily basis." In January and February, some
22,800 students missed three or more days of class a week.
During the 2020-2021 school year, 37% of Los Angeles kindergartners exhibited basic literacy
skills, compared to 57% a year before. A fall 2020 assessment showed that only one in three
middle- and high-school students displayed grade-level reading and math skills.
It really is sad what the Dems have done to kids, for what? Political gain? What a sick party
that puts their greed for power above their own children. They over-played their hands on
COVID-19 and Race relations to scare citizens to their party and to keep minorities on the
plantation. Now, we have kids about as confused about life, relationships and virtues as one
can get.
This week, the C.D.C. acknowledged what scientists have been saying for months: The risk of catching the coronavirus from surfaces
is low.
When the coronavirus began to spread in the United States last spring, many experts warned of the danger posed by surfaces.
Researchers
reported
that the virus could survive for days on plastic or stainless steel, and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention advised that if someone touched one of these contaminated surfaces -- and then touched their eyes, nose or mouth --
they could become infected.
Americans responded in kind, wiping down groceries, quarantining mail and clearing drugstore shelves of Clorox wipes. Facebook
closed two of its offices for a "
deep
cleaning
." New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority began
disinfecting
subway cars
every night.
"People can be affected with the virus that causes Covid-19 through contact with contaminated surfaces and objects," Dr.
Rochelle Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said at a White House briefing on Monday. "However, evidence has demonstrated
that the risk by this route of infection of transmission is actually low."
"Finally," said Linsey Marr, an expert on airborne viruses at Virginia Tech. "We've known this for a long time and yet people
are still focusing so much on surface cleaning." She added, "There's really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19
by touching a contaminated surface."
During the early days of the pandemic, many experts believed that the virus spread primarily through large respiratory
droplets. These droplets are too heavy to travel long distances through the air but can fall onto objects and surfaces.
In this context, a focus on scrubbing down every surface seemed to make sense. "Surface cleaning is more familiar," Dr. Marr
said. "We know how to do it. You can see people doing it, you see the clean surface. And so I think it makes people feel
safer."
Image
A "sanitization specialist" at an Applebee's Grill and Bar in Westbury, N.Y., wiping down a used pen last year. Restaurants
and other businesses have highlighted extra cleaning in their marketing since the pandemic began.
Credit...
Hiroko
Masuike/The New York Times
But over the last year, it has become increasingly clear that the virus spreads
primarily
through the air
-- in both large and small droplets, which can remain aloft longer -- and that scouring door handles and
subway seats does little to keep people safe.
ADVERTISEMENT
"The scientific basis for all this concern about surfaces is very slim -- slim to none," said Emanuel Goldman, a microbiologist at
Rutgers University,
who
wrote last summer
that the risk of surface transmission had been overblown. "This is a virus you get by breathing. It's not a
virus you get by touching."
The C.D.C.
has
previously acknowledged
that surfaces are not the primary way that the virus spreads. But the agency's statements this week
went further.
"The most important part of this update is that they're clearly communicating to the public the correct, low risk from surfaces,
which is not a message that has been clearly communicated for the past year," said Joseph Allen, a building safety expert at the
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Catching the virus from surfaces remains theoretically possible, he noted. But it requires many things to go wrong: a lot of
fresh, infectious viral particles to be deposited on a surface, and then for a relatively large quantity of them to be quickly
transferred to someone's hand and then to their face. "Presence on a surface does not equal risk," Dr. Allen said.
In most cases, cleaning with simple soap and water -- in addition to hand-washing and mask-wearing -- is enough to keep the odds of
surface transmission low, the C.D.C.'s updated cleaning guidelines say. In most everyday scenarios and environments, people do
not need to use chemical disinfectants, the agency notes.
"What this does very usefully, I think, is tell us what we don't need to do," said Donald Milton, an aerosol scientist at the
University of Maryland. "Doing a lot of spraying and misting of chemicals isn't helpful."
Still, the guidelines do suggest that if someone who has Covid-19 has been in a particular space within the last day, the area
should be both cleaned and disinfected.
Going to the grocery store in Massachusetts in 2020 guaranteed you would breathe heaps
of sanitizer.
A full-time employee scrubbed down shopping carts between customers. Conveyor belts at the checkout
counter were blasted and wiped between every sale. Glass surfaces were sprayed as often as possible. The plastic keypads on
credit machines were not only covered in plastic – why putting plastic on plastic stopped Covid was never clear – but also
sprayed between uses.
Employees would carefully watch your hands to see what you touched, and as you exited the space would cover the area with
cleaning spray.
It was the same at offices and schools. If a single person turned in a positive PCR test, the entire place had to be evacuated
for a 48-hour fumigation. Everything had to be wiped, sprayed, and scrubbed, to get rid of the Covid that surely must be
present in the bad place. The ritualistic cleaning took on a religious element, as if the temple must be purified of the devil
before God could or would come back.
All of this stemmed from the belief that the germ lived on surfaces and in spaces,
which in turn stemmed from a primitive intuition. You can't see the virus so it really could be anywhere. The human
imagination took over the rest.
I was in Hudson, New York, at a fancy breakfast house that had imposed random Covid protocols. It was cold outside but they
wouldn't let me sit inside, even though there were no government restrictions on doing so. I asked that masked-up
twenty-something why. She said "Covid."
"Do you really believe that there's Covid inside
that room?"
"Yes."
Subway cars were cleaned daily. Facebook routinely shut its offices for a full scrub. Mail was left to disinfect for days
before being opened. Things went crazy: playgrounds removed nets from basketball hoops for fear that they carried Covid.
During the whole pathetic episode of last year, people turned wildly against physical
things.
No sharing of pencils at the schools that would open. No salt and pepper shakers at tables because surely
that's where Covid lives. No more physical menus. They were replaced by QR codes. Your phone probably has Covid too but at
least only you touched it.
"Touchless"' became the new goal.
All physical things became the untouchables,
again reminiscent of ancient religions that considered the physical world to be a force of darkness while the
spiritual/digital world points to the light. The followers of the
Prophet
Mani
would be pleased.
The demonization of surfaces and rooms stemmed not just from active imaginations; it was also recommended and even mandated by
the CDC. It offered
a
huge page of instructions
on the need constantly to fear, scrub, and fumigate.
On April 5,
however, the CDC page was replaced by a much-simplified set of instructions, which includes now this discreet note: "In most
situations, the
risk
of infection from touching a surface is low
." Oh is that so?
The link goes to the following:
Quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) studies have been conducted to understand and characterize the relative risk
of SARS-CoV-2 fomite transmission and evaluate the need for and effectiveness of prevention measures to reduce risk.
Findings of these studies suggest that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection via the fomite transmission route is low, and
generally less than 1 in 10,000, which means that each
contact with a contaminated
surface has less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing an infection
.
Whoops.
So much for the many billions spent on cleaning products, the employees and the time, and hysteria and frenzy, the rise of
touchlessness, and gloves, the dousing of the whole world. The science apparently changed. Still it will be years before
people get the news and act on it. Once the myths of surface transmission of a respiratory virus are unleashed, it will be
hard to go back to normal.
Fortunately the
New York Times
did some
accurate
reporting
on the CDC update, quoting all kinds of experts who claim to have known this all along.
"Finally," said Linsey Marr, an expert on airborne viruses at Virginia Tech. "We've known this for a long time and yet
people are still focusing so much on surface cleaning." She added, "There's really
no
evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a contaminated surface
."
Still, I'm willing to bet that if right now I headed to a WalMart or some other large chain store, there will be several
employees dedicated to disinfecting everything they can, and there will be customers there who demand it to be so.
How many years
will it take before people can come to terms with the embarrassing and scandalous reality that much of what posed as Science
last year was made up on the fly and turns out to be wholly false?
JMRPete
4 hours ago
It was never about health, and never about sense. It's about OBEY!!!
Mile High Perv
2 hours ago
It's also about fear and controlling people's thoughts, emotions, and actions.
We have nothing to fear except fear itself.
Western medicine has never been about health, pandemic or not, and now the truth is out in the open for
those who want to see.
Frito
2 hours ago
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to
safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
The demonization of surfaces and rooms stemmed not just from active imaginations; it was
also recommended and even mandated by the CDC. It offered
a huge page of instructions on the need constantly to fear, scrub, and fumigate.
On April 5, however, the CDC page was replaced by a much-simplified set of instructions,
which includes now this discreet note: "In most situations, the
risk of infection from touching a surface is low ." Oh is that so?
The link goes to the following:
Quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) studies have been conducted to understand
and characterize the relative risk of SARS-CoV-2 fomite transmission and evaluate the need
for and effectiveness of prevention measures to reduce risk. Findings of these studies
suggest that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection via the fomite transmission route is low, and
generally less than 1 in 10,000, which means that each contact with a contaminated surface
has less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing an infection .
Whoops.
So much for the many billions spent on cleaning products, the employees and the time, and
hysteria and frenzy, the rise of touchlessness, and gloves, the dousing of the whole world. The
science apparently changed. Still it will be years before people get the news and act on it.
Once the myths of surface transmission of a respiratory virus are unleashed, it will be hard to
go back to normal.
Fortunately the New York Times did some
accurate reporting on the CDC update, quoting all kinds of experts who claim to have known
this all along.
"Finally," said Linsey Marr, an expert on airborne viruses at Virginia Tech. "We've known
this for a long time and yet people are still focusing so much on surface cleaning." She
added, "There's really no evidence that anyone has ever gotten Covid-19 by touching a
contaminated surface ."
Still, I'm willing to bet that if right now I headed to a WalMart or some other large chain
store, there will be several employees dedicated to disinfecting everything they can, and there
will be customers there who demand it to be so.
How many years will it take before people can come to terms with the embarrassing and
scandalous reality that much of what posed as Science last year was made up on the fly and
turns out to be wholly false?
JMRPete 4 hours ago
It was never about health, and never about sense. It's about OBEY!!!
Mile High Perv 2 hours ago
It's also about fear and controlling people's thoughts, emotions, and actions.
We have nothing to fear except fear itself.
Western medicine has never been about health, pandemic or not, and now the truth is out in
the open for those who want to see.
Frito 2 hours ago
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous
to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
imaginary.
"... Dr. Kaplan is a faculty member at the Stanford School of Medicine Clinical Excellence Research Center and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He has served as associate director of the National Institutes of Health and chief science officer at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. ..."
Distrust of the establishment plays a role in vaccine hesitancy, but it's probably time to
back off on the prevailing commentary suggesting that those avoiding vaccines are
irresponsible, uninformed or politically manipulated. Achieving herd immunity requires that
about 70% of Americans are vaccinated or contract Covid and develop natural immunity, which
official numbers place around 10% of the population. Polls consistently show that 21% say they
will definitely not get the vaccine and about a third rate their chances of taking the vaccine
as less than 50%. It's better to address common fears and concerns respectfully and
informatively than with hectoring and condescension.
Dr. Kaplan is a faculty member at the Stanford School of Medicine Clinical Excellence
Research Center and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He has served as associate
director of the National Institutes of Health and chief science officer at the U.S. Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality.
It turns out that children who attend schools with mask requirements are likely just as safe
from COVID-19 sitting just 3 feet from each other and not the 6 feet previously recommended by
the Centers for Disease and Prevention.
Those findings, which were used by
the CDC to update its guidance about schools in mid-March, stem from a study conducted over
the fall and winter examining transmission rates in K-12 schools in Massachusetts, where masks
are required for most public-school students and all staff.
Putting students closer
together in classrooms did not lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases, a group of medical
researchers and policy experts concluded in the accepted
manuscript published March 10 in the medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
One of the researchers is Dr. Elissa Schechter-Perkins, an emergency-room physician at
Boston Medical Center who has done infection control for the ER there during the COVID-19
pandemic.
" Back in spring of 2020, we didn't know a whole lot about COVID-19," she said in a March
23 interview with MarketWatch. "And based on what we have seen in influenza pandemics, it was
thought that closing schools would be essential and effective in preventing the spread of
COVID-19."
But now, as the pandemic has stretched into its second year and the science is still
evolving, it looks like the 6-foot rule, which was particularly onerous for classrooms, may not
be necessary.
--
MarketWatch: Has much of the research around distancing in schools so far been
anecdotal?
Dr. Elissa Schechter-Perkins: I would say it went beyond anecdotal evidence. There have been
multiple studies that are primarily epidemiologic in nature, from around the world and around
the U.S., in which students went back at closer distances. [Editor's note: The World Health
Organization recommends 1 meter -- about 3 feet -- in schools.] There haven't been large
amounts of in-school transmission, and there haven't been increased cases in school settings
compared to the surrounding communities. So there has been a slowly emerging body of
literature, saying that our schools are safe, even with fewer than 6 feet of distance between
the students.
MarketWatch: How do you think mitigation factors like masking, plexiglass dividers, or open
windows affect transmission in schools?
Schechter-Perkins: It's a really important point. Our study really was not able to tease out
which of the mitigation measures other than distancing was not important. I think it's
important to understand that every school in the districts in Massachusetts that were part of
our study had a 100% masking mandate for all staff and all students in Grade 2 and above, and
the majority of districts had either a masking requirement or masking was strongly encouraged
in the younger students as well. [Editor's note: The Massachusetts Department of Elementary
and Secondary Education requires noses and mouths to be covered at all times, except during
designated breaks, for staff and students in second grade or older. Kindergartners and first
graders were encouraged to wear masks or shields, but it's not required . ]
Many of the schools, but not all, had multiple other mitigation measures in place, including
daily symptom screening. Many of them had other mitigation measures in place, such as
ventilation checks and requirements for contact tracing and quarantining for exposed people.
Although we can't say which of the mitigation measures was the most important, our thought is
[that if] the bundle of mitigation measures taken in aggregate is sufficient in decreasing the
spread of COVID-19, then it becomes safe to decrease the distance between students. We
shouldn't extrapolate our findings to other less controlled environments where those other
factors are not in place.
MarketWatch: Now that we have the new CDC guidance for schools, are you planning any
follow-up studies?
Schechter-Perkins: It's going be really important to continue to follow the data, and it's
something that the country has really struggled with over the last year. As new studies come
out and new evidence comes out, the guidelines should change, and that's been a real struggle
for the United States population at large to come to terms with. We're not used to things
changing so rapidly, but I would say as schools do open for more in-person learning it is
really essential that we continue to see what happens, especially as we know that the new
variants are circulating but also vaccination is increasing.
MarketWatch: Do you think it's a possibility that one day we would see that spacing
requirement shrink even further?
Schechter-Perkins: I absolutely would be open to that. I'm very optimistic about where we
are right now. We are doing an excellent job vaccinating greater and greater numbers of the
population, and I am really hopeful that we can decrease the transmission of COVID-19 in our
country to the point that it becomes, instead of widespread, it becomes episodic in our
communities. [Editor's note: About 16% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, as
of March 31, according to the CDC .] At
that point, we can use other public health measures, such as rapid diagnostic testing, rapid
contact tracing, rapid surveillance testing and quarantines -- and really tamp down the
transmission of COVID-19.
When we start to get to that point, I do think we'll be able to open up a lot of things with
less distancing requirements, and life will look much more like normal. We're not there yet,
but I do you think that that is in the future.
The other opportunity to keep in mind is what was mentioned in the CDC guidelines, where
they talk about cohorting. This has worked really well in other countries, particularly in
Europe, where they have groups of students that don't require any distancing between them. So
if there's an outbreak, that particular cohort or bubble is at greater risk, but [the virus] is
not anticipated to spread outside of that cohort. That's another model that can be looked at,
as a way to get more students back in the classroom and try to get life more back to normal.
Our study did not evaluate that at all. That is more of an international phenomenon.
MarketWatch: Strictly from a vaccination point, how long do you see distancing being
necessary in schools?
Schechter-Perkins: It's a tough question to answer. Our study was conducted during a time
where virtually nobody was vaccinated. [Editor's note: It was conducted between Sept. 24 and
Jan. 27.] What our study and others have shown is that vaccination is not essential to
getting back into school safely, as long as the mitigation measures are in place. In order to
really start relaxing some of the other mitigation measures, you really have to have a large
portion of not just the teachers but the entire community vaccinated. We'll get there, but I
think it's still a long way away.
MarketWatch: One of my co-workers has talked about how there's a cycle of an exposure, kids
get tested or stay home, and then they resume school in person. Would cohorting be one way to
offset that type of cycle?
Schechter-Perkins: It would. The cycle that we have is really dependent on where in the
country you are. Certain places are very aggressively quarantining. I don't know if this has
changed in New York, but I know it at one point all it took was two cases in a school building,
and the entire school would shut down for quarantine. [Editor's note: New York Mayor Bill de
Blasio is reportedly re-evaluating that policy, as of March 14,
according to Gothamist .] That is incredibly conservative and a really damaging policy
that's not necessary. More schools across the country are going to more of a modified
quarantine, in which, as long as students are only exposed in school with masks on, they're not
being made to quarantine. There are many places that have recently gone to that sort of model,
and reportedly there hasn't been a lot of in-school transmission, even with that modified
limited quarantine. So I'm eagerly awaiting publication of that data.
Right now, if people are within 6 feet of each other for a cumulative 15 minutes, according to
the CDC guidelines , they should still be quarantining. But, hopefully, that's not entire
classrooms at a time. There's a lot of variation in how people are interpreting exposure in the
school setting. I do worry that the constant exposure–shut down–quarantine the
whole class for 10 days–then resume [cycle] may very well be too conservative and too
disruptive, and it may also not prevent more cases. If it's not preventing the cases, then I
don't think we want to pursue that strategy. But I think we still need more data.
MarketWatch: Do you think that's a leftover reaction from last spring?
Schechter-Perkins: It's been really hard to change. Way back when we set out these
guidelines, they were based on the best evidence at the time. It's really important for
guidelines to change as the evidence evolves. We need to keep doing the studies, providing the
science, so that the guidelines can then catch up to what the evidence actually shows.
MarketWatch: At what age are children in a K-12 school at higher risk for contracting the
virus?
Schechter-Perkins: It seems like about 12 years old, maybe about puberty, is about when
things start to change, when younger kids who seem more protected and less likely to transmit
start to behave more and more like adults, as far as their infection risk and their
transmission risk.
That said, in our study, and plenty of others, even high schools are still safe for students
and for staff with those mitigation measures in place. So even though you have older students
who may behave more like adults as far as the virus goes, they can still be safe in school
settings.
And they are at particular risk for some of the harms of not being in school. We see harms
to their mental health, with anxiety, depression, isolation, suicide, as well as tremendous
learning loss. So that risk-benefit analysis really needs to take place as far as keeping
schools closed. We've seen that, in a regulated school environment, they can still be safe in
school, and their teachers and their educators can also be safe in schools with them.
Schechter-Perkins later noted in email that "even though they may have a higher risk of
getting ill or transmitting the virus compared to younger students, I still think they can
belong in school, since the risk in school is not higher than it is outside of school."
there are essentially two countries inthe USA: one is the country of big cities with high
dencity of population were carantine probably makes some sense and aother countryside with low
density of population (let's say areas 100 miles or more from major metropolitan area, where
restriction were much less sensible. Also authorities behaviour during summer riots has shown
that this was about deposing Trump as much as about COVID-19.
boyplunger7777 48 minutes ago
Was COVID-19 quarantine worth it? In addition to $6 trillion in new debt. The ruined
businesses, the damage to school children, the psychological pain, depression, and anxiety as
well as substance/domestic abuse? The lingering damage to sporting events, concerts, and
outdoor entertainment? You tell me.
There are a lot of issues with vaccine rollout. One issue is that they do not check if a person has immunity to
the virus or not.
Another issue is how long vaccine will be effective is the next year we might face yet another strain of the virus.
Coronaviruses are mutating viruses and that's why previous attempts to create vaccine failed.
Are those people who demonstrate a severe reaction to the vaccine the same people who would get severe case of COVID-19 if
infected ?
Yes another issue is "emergency use". Long time effects are not known. We do not know why immunity for some people do not emerge
and they became ill even after being immunized. We do not know how long immunization status hold. Will it weaken in six months
to the level when infection became possible again or. and how effective it is against new strains.
So this rush with vaccine rollout is a large scale biological experiment with uncertain consequences.
For the past few weeks on Twitter, Berenson has mischaracterized just about every detail regarding the vaccines
to make the dubious case that most people would be better off avoiding them. As his conspiratorial nonsense accelerates
toward the pandemic's finish line, he has proved himself
the
Secretariat of being wrong
:
He has blamed the vaccines
for causing spikes
in
severe illness
, by pointing to data that actually demonstrate their safety and effectiveness.
He has suggested that
countries
such as Israel have suffered
from their early vaccine rollout, even though deaths and hospitalizations among
vaccinated groups in Israel have plummeted.
He has implied that for
most non-seniors, the side effects of the vaccines are worse than having COVID-19 itself -- even though, according to the
CDC, the pandemic has killed
tens
of thousands of people
under 50 and the vaccines
have
not conclusively killed anybody
.
Usually, I would refrain from lavishing attention on
someone so blatantly incorrect. But with vaccine resistance
hovering
around 30 percent of the general population, and with 40 percent
of Republicans saying they won't get a shot, debunking
vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death.
Berenson's TV appearances are more misdirection than
outright fiction, and his Twitter feed blends internet-y irony and scientific jargon in a way that may obscure what he's
actually saying. To pin him down, I emailed several questions to him last week. Below, I will lay out, as clearly and
fairly as I can, his claims about the vaccines and how dangerously, unflaggingly, and superlatively wrong they are.
Before I go point by point through his wrong
positions, let me be exquisitely clear about
what is true
. The vaccines work. They
worked in the clinical trials, and they're working around the world. The vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and
Johnson & Johnson seem to provide
stronger
and more lasting protection
against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants than natural infection. They are
excellent
at reducing symptomatic infection
. Even better, they are extraordinarily
successful
at
preventing severe illness from COVID-19. Countries that have vaccinated large percentages of their population quickly, such
as the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Israel, have all seen sharp and sustained declines in hospitalizations among the
elderly. Meanwhile, countries that have lagged in the vaccination effort -- including the U.K.'s neighbors France and Italy,
and Israel's neighbor Jordan -- have struggled to contain the virus. The authorized vaccines are marvels, and the case against
them relies on half-truths, untruths, and obfuscations.
Berenson's claim:
In country after country, "cases rise after vaccination campaigns begin," he wrote in an
email.
The reality:
In
country after country, cases decline after vaccination campaigns begin.
One of Berenson's themes is that the mRNA vaccines
are badly underperforming outside the clinical trials and are possibly even causing a spike in cases after the first shot.
But just this week, CDC researchers studying real-world conditions came to the opposite
conclusion
:
The mRNA vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer are 90 percent effective two weeks after the second dose, in line with the trial
data. "COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for all eligible persons," they concluded.
Still, Berenson pushes the argument that the vaccines
are causing suspicious illness and death. On
Twitter
and
in his email to me, Berenson claimed that
an
"excellent" Denmark study
showed a 40 percent rise in infections immediately after nursing-home residents received
their first vaccine shot.
I reached out to
that
study's lead author
, Ida Rask Moustsen-Helms at the Statens Serum Institut, who said that Berenson had mischaracterized
her findings. She explained to me that the Danish nursing homes in question were already experiencing a significant
COVID-19 outbreak when vaccinations began. Many people in the long-term-care facilities were likely already sick before
their vaccine was administered, and "these people would technically count as vaccinated with confirmed COVID-19, even if
the infection happened prior to the vaccination or its immune response," she said. With limited vaccines, countries ought
to give the first vaccines to the groups most likely to get COVID-19. That's exactly what seems to have happened here.
Berenson is scaremongering about the vaccines by essentially criticizing their wise distribution.
In our emails, Berenson further argued that many of
the perceived benefits of the vaccines are illusory. "It is very hard to distinguish the course of the epidemic this winter
in countries that have vaccinated heavily, such as Israel and the UK, and those that have not, such as Canada and Germany,"
he wrote.
This is hogwash. In the U.K. and Israel,
hospitalizations have fallen by at least 70 percent since mid-January, and they remain low. In
Canada
,
hospitalizations fell by significantly less, and in Germany, the seven-day average of COVID-19 cases has more than
doubled
since
mid-February; its government has
debated
a new lockdown
.
This stage of the pandemic is a race between the
variants and the vaccines. In many states, such as Michigan and New York, normalizing behavior combined with more
contagious strains of the virus are pushing up cases again. This is not evidence that America's vaccination campaign isn't
working. Quite the opposite: It highlights the urgency of moving faster to deliver vaccines, which are our best chance to
control the spread of contagious variants.
Berenson's claim:
Pfizer-BioNTech's clinical-trial data prove that the companies are being shady about vaccine
efficacy.
The reality:
His
"proof" is a total mischaracterization of trial data.
Berenson seems to enjoy spelunking through research to
find esoteric statistics that he then dresses up with spooky language to make confusing points that sow doubt about the
vaccines. Arguing that COVID-19 cases spike after the first dose, he
directs
people
to the
Pfizer-BioNTech
FDA briefing document
, which reports hundreds of "suspected but unconfirmed" COVID-19 cases in the trial's vaccine
group that aren't counted as positive cases in the final efficacy analysis.
But "suspected but unconfirmed" doesn't refer to
participants who were probably sick with COVID-19. On the contrary, it refers to participants who reported various
symptoms, such as a cough or a sore throat, and then took a PCR test --
and then that test
came back negative.
"His point is absolutely stupid, and I would know
because I enrolled participants in the Pfizer-BioNTech trial," Kawsar Talaat, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins
University, told me. "He's talking about people who call in and say, 'I have a runny nose.' So we mark them as 'suspected.'
Then we ask them to take a PCR test, and we test their swab, and if the test comes back negative, the FDA says it's
'unconfirmed.' That's what
suspected but unconfirmed
means."
When I emailed Pfizer and BioNTech representatives
about Berenson's claim, they struggled to even understand what I was talking about. Someone was taking a group of several
thousand people who had tested negative for COVID-19 and, from afar, diagnosing all of them with COVID-19? "Does not make
sense," a BioNTech spokesperson responded curtly.
If you were enrolled in Berenson's vaccine trial for
SARS-CoV-2 and never contracted the virus, but one day you told a clinician that you had a bit of a cough, Berenson would
mark you down as "infected with COVID-19" and blame the vaccine. That's the logic here, and, as you can tell, it's not
really logic; it just seems like an attempt to find something -- anything -- wrong with the vaccines.
Berenson's claim:
The mRNA vaccines dangerously suppress your immune system, possibly causing severe illness
and even death.
The reality:
His
claim is based on a total misunderstanding of how the immune system works.
Berenson wrote in an email that "the first dose of
the mRNA vaccine temporarily suppresses the immune system." He has claimed on
Twitter
that
the mRNA vaccines "transiently suppress lymphocytes," or our white blood cells, and suggested that this might lead to
"post-vaccination deaths."
Scientists tore this one to shreds. "The claim he is
making is simply fearmongering, connecting a simple physiological event with bogus claims of deaths," Shane Crotty, a
researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told me.
"The observation of lymphocyte numbers temporarily dropping in blood is actually a common phenomenon in immune responses."
A little background is useful here: White blood cells
are the immune system's scouts. After an effective vaccination, some of them leave the blood and go to the site of
inflammation, such as the arm that received the shot. "The cells are not gone," Crotty said. "They come back to the blood
in a few days. It is generally a good sign of an immune response, not the opposite." To demonstrate that the vaccines are
counterproductive, then, Berenson is pointing to the very biological mechanism that strongly suggests they're working just
as scientists expected.
Readers are surely familiar with other biological
events that sound bad in the short term but are part of a normal, healthy process. When you lift weights at the gym, your
muscles experience small tears that recover and then strengthen over time. Imagine if some loudmouth started screaming in
the middle of the weight room, "You all think you're building your muscles, but actually you're tearing them to shreds, and
it could kill you!" You would probably carry on calmly, assuming that this guy just got a little overexcited after finding
a Yahoo Answers article about muscle formation and stopped reading after the first paragraph. Berenson's claim is basically
a version of that, but for your immune system.
"Actually," Talaat said, "his argument is even worse
than your analogy. Muscles really do tear at the gym. But lymphocytes don't go away. They just move. What he's describing
as dangerous in these tweets is just the regular functioning of our immune system."
Berenson's claim:
In Israel, the shots are causing a scary number of deaths and hospitalizations.
The reality:
Israel
is a sensational vaccine success story: a nearly open economy where COVID-19 rates are plunging.
See
for yourself!
On February 11, Berenson
warned
his
followers that early data from Israel proved that vaccine advocates "need to start ratcheting down expectations." This was
a strange claim to make at the time: An Israeli health-care provider had
reported
no
deaths and four severe cases among its first 523,000 fully vaccinated people. But the claim seems even more ridiculous now,
in light of Israel's incredible success since then. New positive cases in Israel are down
roughly
95 percent
since January. Deaths have plunged, even though the economy is
almost
fully open
.
When I asked Berenson to explain his beef with
Israel's vaccine record, he sent
a
link to a news story in Hebrew
that, he said, reported "several hundred deaths and hospitalizations and thousands of
infections in people who have received both doses." I can't read Hebrew, so I reached out to someone who can, Eran Segal, a
computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel. He replied by email: "This link actually
shows that the vast majority of those who died were NOT vaccinated." By Segal's calculations, the vaccines have reduced the
risk of death by more than 90 percent in the Israeli population. Segal also said that "numbers of infections only went
down, and even more so among the age groups who were first to vaccinate."
Berenson is wrong about all sorts of little things
when it comes to Israel, but I want to emphasize how straightforward and obvious the big picture is here. Israel is
a
world leader in vaccinations
. Its COVID-19 cases have plunged, and its economy is roaring back to life.
Berenson's claim:
Healthy people under 70 shouldn't get a vaccine.
The reality:
Outside
of extremely rare cases, every adult should get a vaccine -- and if it's authorized for children, children should get it
too.
I wanted to know where Berenson stood on the most
important question: Who does he think should get a vaccine, and who does he think shouldn't? This was the core of his
answer:
For most healthy people under 50 -- and certainly under 35 -- the side effects
from the shots are likely to be worse than a case of Covid. Over 70, sure. The grey zone is somewhere in the middle and
probably depends on personal risk factors.
This response has two huge problems. First, although
the disease clearly gets more severe with age, drawing a line at 70 is nonsensical. Those in their 50s and early 60s are
three times more likely to die from this disease than a 40-something, and
400 times
more
likely to die than a teenager, according to the CDC.
Oh, surely not. "Professor" Neil Ferguson has never met an epidemic he couldn't portray as a
world-ending catastrophe. He has often been wrong by four orders of magnitude.
I'm not a Neil Ferguson fan, but AC below seems correct. https://theferret.scot/fact-ch...
[theferret.scot] In particular, Ferguson's doomsday prediction of 500k dead in the UK was based
on just letting the virus run its course. Almost a year later, with 120k dead, this seems like
it would be in the right ballpark.
Honestly though, I thought he was an economist moonlighting as an epidemiologist, but it
turns out that I had it backwards. So maybe "ballpark" isn't good enough.
The article has very important links that should probably be included in the summary because
those links given EXTREMELY important context.
Summary : Anthony Fauci was wrong about masks.
Article Link : Fauci said, "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 bit better and it
might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think
that it is..."
He wasn't wrong that masks are important and need to be worn. He was wrong about masks when
he made a comment before on March 8, 2020 . On March 8, 2020, the WHO counted 213 total cases
in the US to date. At the time it seemed unnecessary to wear a mask in public and,
furthermore, the concern was that there would be a mask shortage for medical workers... AND
THERE WAS. No one was mass-producing cloth masks yet. We all remember the "how to make a cloth
mask at home" tutorials right?
Summary : New York was wrong about the subways
Article Link : New York City is shutting down its subway system every night, for the first time
in its 116-year history, to blast the seats, walls, and poles with a variety of antiseptic
weaponry, including electrostatic disinfectant sprays.
Surface transmission has been shown to be low risk. This is a relatively new conclusion.
Transit systems have shown to be low-probability vectors for transmission, but that is likely
due to VASTLY reduced use, reduced occupancy, and and the ridiculous amount of cleaning they're
doing now. The precautions have prevented the need for knee-jerk closures of the transit
systems. That's not being wrong... that's being successful.
Summary : I was wrong about the necessary cost of pandemic relief.
Article Link : We Can Prevent a Great Depression. It'll Take $10 Trillion.
That still seems about right. It hasn't nor will it come as a single check being written,
but all the stimulus adding up will probably cost around that much-- especially if you factor
in the MASSIVE amounts of expenses (and lost revenue) taken on by major public institutions
with the blind hope of getting reimbursed by FEMA. That's right, a lot of the relief is being
debt-financed by organizations other than the Federal government and if we want to prevent
recession or depression, we're going to have to keep spending. Re:Right vs Wrong
( Score: 4 ,
Insightful) by Rob Y. ( 110975 )
on Thursday April 01, 2021 @01:01PM ( #61224708 )
And whoever wrote this article and included the phrase "Fauci was wrong about masks" is
making a political statement. Fauci pretty much winked at us at the time he said masks won't
make much difference. He was saying that because there was a run on them, and doctors weren't
able to find enough N95's. In that light, yes, it was more important for doctors to get them
than the general public - who were already being recommended to socially distance.
As the epidemic wore on, Fauci and almost anybody else acting responsibly recommended mask
wearing for everyone when out in public. But the talking points still include "...but Fauci
said masks don't work". It's out of date, irrelevant, and a political distraction tactic at
best... Re:Right vs Wrong
( Score: 2
) by l0n3s0m3phr34k (
2613107 ) on Thursday April 01, 2021 @03:14PM ( #61225414 )
Absolutely, it's like people saying "well, the Church said the Earth is the center of the solar
system!" in discussing modern astronomy. Or, a bit more modern, always trying to factor in the
affect of the aether on the propagation of light.
So, the New Normals are discussing the Unvaccinated Question. What is to be done with us?
No, not those who haven't been "vaccinated" yet. Us. The "Covidiots." The "Covid
deniers." The "science deniers." The "reality deniers." Those who refuse to get "vaccinated,"
ever.
There is no place for us in New Normal society. The New Normals know this and so do we. To
them, we are a suspicious, alien tribe of people. We do not share their ideological beliefs. We
do not perform their loyalty rituals, or we do so only grudgingly, because they force us to do
so. We traffic in arcane "conspiracy theories," like "pre-March-2020 science," "natural herd
immunity," "population-adjusted death rates," "Sweden," "Florida," and other heresies.
They do not trust us. We are strangers among them. They suspect we feel superior to them.
They believe we are conspiring against them, that we want to deceive them, confuse them, cheat
them, pervert their culture, abuse their children, contaminate their precious bodily fluids,
and perpetrate God knows what other horrors.
So they are discussing the need to segregate us, how to segregate us, when to segregate us,
in order to protect society from us. In their eyes, we are no more than
criminals , or, worse, a plague , an infestation. In the
words of someone (I can't quite recall who), "getting rid of the Unvaccinated is not a question
of ideology. It is a question of cleanliness," or something like that. (I'll have to hunt down
and fact-check that quote. I might have taken it out of context.)
Nice thoughts but the high priests of the new secular cult of scientism are playing a zero
sum game. It's an either/or for them; slavery or scalp. The rituals of the cult reinforce the
dogma. The continual washing of hands as an act of purification. The mask as an act of
penance for your defiling breath. Forced solitude to keep you in front of the 24 hour Cult
broadcasts on tv. Social distancing as a way to inculcate insular thinking. Any resistors to
the new rituals will be brought to a tribunal of neo torquemadas. Perhaps a better way to be
thinking of the resistance is in terms of knighthood.
TTSSYF: "Good point, but what drives the "experts" to push this? Would that not be a
conspiracy of sorts?"
Certainly there are factions among the so-called experts, and the members of factions can
"conspire" with each other to win out over other factions. I don't doubt that at all. Nor do
I doubt that anything that happens will advantage some groups and disadvantage others, and
that groups fight to advance their own interests. Yet, to claim that the whole pandemic was
planned in advance down to the last detail by a shadowy group of conspirators called
"Globocap", as CJ Hopkins often seems to do, I think is a bridge too far. Stupidity and
unintended consequences characterize human actions and interactions far more accurately than
malice aforethought and design. Some see conspiracy where in reality there is only chaos.
So the bulk of U.S. political "leaders" and media geniuses shriek in horror at the thought
of someone needing to present an ID in order to vote. This, we are endlessly told, is a crime
against humanity. But every pleb and prole will need to produce a government-issue "vaccine
passport;" without it, they will forfeit the right to leave their residence,
go to the park, or enter a grocery store.
I think even the normies may start to dimly discern something not quite right here.
CJ Hopkins: "This stuff is built into the structure of the system. It is a standard
feature of totalitarian societies, cults, churches, self-help groups, and well, human
society, generally."
Quite true, and why I tend to think the so-called pandemic isn't a result of a conspiracy
as such, but rather should just be seen as an expected outcome in a technological society
that increasingly and necessarily depends on the recommendations of "experts" to operate.
Take that necessary fact, and couple it with the built-in conformism of human nature (herd
mentality), and voilà, you get today's techno-totalitarianism. In short, never suspect
conspiracy when ordinary stupidity will serve perfectly well as an explanation.
TTSSYF: "Good point, but what drives the "experts" to push this? Would that not be a
conspiracy of sorts?"
Certainly there are factions among the so-called experts, and the members of factions can
"conspire" with each other to win out over other factions. I don't doubt that at all. Nor do
I doubt that anything that happens will advantage some groups and disadvantage others, and
that groups fight to advance their own interests. Yet, to claim that the whole pandemic was
planned in advance down to the last detail by a shadowy group of conspirators called
"Globocap", as CJ Hopkins often seems to do, I think is a bridge too far. Stupidity and
unintended consequences characterize human actions and interactions far more accurately than
malice aforethought and design. Some see conspiracy where in reality there is only chaos.
@Dr. Robert
Morgan fled on masks, so I'm willing to admit these might not have been part of the plan.
And the vaccines might also have been an opportunistic play by the pharmaceutical industry.
Heck, why not? They were given immunity from prosecution for their vaccines. Same with the
useless ventilators.
But the shutting down of economies all over the world, the faulty PCR tests producing
false positives, counting as many deaths as possible as Covid deaths, the lies and deceit,
the shutting down of dissenting opinions, the firing of doctors, the banning of alternative
medicines – this type of behavior cannot be put down to "stupidity".
Good tunes, better lyrics. I have never felt more disrespect, contempt and had such
complete lack of confidence in the authorities in the US. Until the last year I had complete
confidence in at least the science of the American medical establishment which maybe led me
even to have a little too much confidence in my own doctors. I always had good doctors but no
one is faultless and I realize if I had not had an unquestioning confidence in my doctors
some serious problems I had may have been solved much earlier. But the problem is not our
doctors. They are good, many excellent and they have spoken out against incompetents like
Fauci.
The comparisons of the New Normal to Nazi Germany have become thread bare if not
misleading in my opinion but the author hits all the key points. Perhaps the Hindu caste
system is a better analogy. The unvaccinated will become Dalit or "untouchable."
The level of corruption of science (and medicine is just a branch of science) in the USA is
really astounding. It is Lysenkoism, pure and simple. And vaccine debate, or absence of thereof
is just a tip of the iceberg, one manifestations of corrupt nature of neoliberalism in the USA
and the level of amorality and corruption of the neoliberal elite. After all the essence of
neoliberalism is "profits before people".
Notable quotes:
"... it's what it looks like to me too... pfizer must be laughing all the way to the bank, or blackrock - whatever.. i guess the johnston vaccine or whatever will have to be pushed harder too.. https://www.holdingschannel.com/13f/blackrock-inc-top-holdings/ ..."
Well these aren't vaccines as much as flu-shots. Indeed they're already buzzing about
combining the annual flu jab with the covid 'vaccine' for inoculation once or twice a year
depending on the severity of variant season. Vaccines are supposed to offer protection
against disease for long periods of time. The flu shot isn't a vaccine and neither are these
Covid jabs. And contrary to a comment above these 'vaccines' have proven very effective to
'cure' serious Covid patients, much like the gene-therapies being used to great effect.
I certainly wouldn't take the experimental mRNA 'vaccines' until much more data is in. Is
there a reason the mRNA rabies vaccine hasn't been approved after years of trying? And of
course folks are quick the forget the Moderna/Pfizer medicines have not been approved either
except for "emergency use."
And now finally there is out in the open debate about the origins of the 'novel' Corona
virus of which so many react as if it is not novel at all. Not to say we'll ever know the
truth - imagine the legal liability of setting off a global pandemic.
There is something rotten in the state of covid. Let's put on our gasmasks and get to the
bottom of it.
Most people are not grasping the serious wrong-headedness of this mass vaccination effort.
I transcribed a germane section of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche's interview so folks here can
please read it until they understand what he's saying. (I inserted punctuation and paragraphs
to make it more readable.)
"If you go to war, you better make sure you have the right weapon. The weapon in itself
can be an excellent weapon, and that is what I'm saying about the current vaccines, I mean
just brilliant people who have been making these vaccines in no time and with regulatory
approval and everything, so the weapon in itself is excellent. The question is, is this the
right weapon for the kind of war that is going on right now? And there, my answer is
definitely no. Because these are prophylactic vaccines, and prophylactic vaccines should
typically not be administered to people who are exposed to high infectious pressure. So don't
forget we are administering these vaccines in the heat of a pandemic.
"So in other words, while we are preparing our weapon, we are fully attacked by the virus
– the virus is everywhere – so that is a very different scenario from using such
vaccines in a setting where the vaccinee is barely or not exposed to the virus. And I'm
saying this because if you have a high infectious pressure, it's so easy for the virus to
jump from one person to the other. So, if you're immune response is just mounting, as we see
right now with a number of people who get their first dose – they get their first dose,
the antibodies are not fully mature, [inaudible] are not very high, so their immune response
is sub-optimal. But they are in the midst of this war. While they are mounting an immune
response they are fully attacked by the virus. And every single time – I mean, this is
textbook knowledge – every time you have an immune response that is sub-optimal in the
presence of an infection, in the presence of a virus that infects that person, you are at
risk for immune escape. So that means that the virus can escape from the immune response.
"So I'm saying that these vaccines – I mean, in their own right of course, are
excellent – but to use them in the midst of a pandemic and do mass vaccinations,
because then you provide within a very short period of time with high antibody [types ?]
[inaudible] I mean, that wouldn't matter if you could eradicate if you could prevent
infection. But these vaccines don't prevent infection – they protect against
disease.
"Because unfortunately, we look no further than the end of our nose, in the sense that
hospitalization, that's all that counts – you know, getting people away from the
hospital. But in the meantime, you're not realizing that we give, all the time during this
pandemic, by our interventions the opportunity to escape the immune system. And that is of
course a very, very dangerous thing, especially when we realize that these guys they only
need 10 hours to replicate.
"So we think that by making new vaccines – new vaccines against the new infectious
strains – we think we're going to catch up. It's impossible to catch up. The virus is
not going to wait until we have those vaccines ready. I mean, this thing continues. As I was
saying, the thing is, I mean, if you do this in the midst of a pandemic, that is an enormous
problem. These vaccines are excellent, but they are not made for administration to millions
of people in the midst, in the heat of a pandemic. So that is my point."
Mass vaccination apparently is accelerating the mutation of more dangerous variants. Do
the experts not understand that the antigen-specific antibodies the vaccinations are
eliciting, actually compromise people's innate broadly-based immune resistance to
variants?
@ defaultcitizen | Mar 30 2021 16:55 utc | 24 who wrote
"
.....Yet some persist in shouting "The King is NAKED!" in the land of the blind and deaf and
naked – their words quickly washed away by the next wave of crashing yaddayadda.
Inspiring. Admirable. I need a double shot, now and then, to keep my courage and anger up.
Graffiti on the cyber time-tunnel hearkens the occasional weary voyager.
"
Thanks for that and the sentiments about what b has to go through to keep churning out the
truth he finds within his bias like we all have.
We are an interesting species struggling to evolve or perish it seems and yet adding my
textual white noise to yours feels positive in some way and so I do it. I think it is a small
percentage that don't feel the impotent rage of our social system and that rage is causing it
to lose trust.
I have been waiting over 50 years for the failure tipping point in the private finance
based social system and I feel it is close. But I have to admit I felt more positive in the
middle of the Occupy movement because their were people in the streets and it was focused on
Wall Street....and it sure as heck isn't now.....sigh
AstraZeneca has been plagued with problems that get lots of media attention (production
problems, suspected health problems, etc.)
And the J&J vaccine is still hard to find. There are now dozens of places to get a
vaccine in NYC but I could only find 4 or 5 that give the J&J vaccine (along with one of
the mRNA shots) - at least two of which note that they are not giving "first dose" shots and
another says (in a FAQ on their site) that they are only receiving Moderna vaccines "at this
time".
IMO we are being herded into the mRNA vaccines.
But if you complain to others about that (as I have) you are treated as though you are
"anti-vaxx / anti-science.
karlof1 – The "anti-vaxxer – anti-science" smear is analogous to
"anti-American" if one criticizes U.S. foreign policy. Simplistic demonization is encouraged
by the mainstream media with news delivered in sound bites in order to dumb down the populace
and manufacture consent (or paranoia).
That's why I see getting vaccinated now as a waste of time and medicine. My lifestyle
hasn't changed much at all with the pandemic, although my employment of precautions has
soared. That will change with our cross-country road trip during the month of April as we
interact with many more people and visit their homes. Yes, aside from lodgings, they'll be
kin--but--unprotected interactions with kin are often the source of infection. As we see
cases soar once again, it's clear that the vaccine was seen as some sort of panacea when it's
not that at all. People ought to wonder why they're prompted to get a new flu shot annually;
it's because it mutates and a different formula's required. I've never had a flu shot and
don't get the flu, mainly because of my lifestyle. What's most important for me is my
preferred vaccine--Sputnik V--isn't available in my nation and may never be approved for use
here. For me, the AIDS experience is my reference--Sex wasn't deadly until it suddenly was
(All STDs were never considered in the same league) which prompted a change in behavior. Same
with COVID, although flu is clearly a deadly virus for many.
What we're seeing is the most extravagant Madison Avenue "product launch" in America's
245-year history, and it's coming at us full-throttle from all sides. It's virtually
impossible to turn on the TV or radio without being deluged by one emotive vignette after
the other all of which are aimed at promoting vaccination.
Good job, Mike Whitney. In a free society, normal, healthy life is possible without TV and
MSM. But our Western world may have already reached the point where real life may become
impossible with those two cynical propaganda purveyors.
Any veteran newsman like yourself must have recognized the traditional hallmarks of an
overblown, concerted, government-corporate media campaign when this 24/7 Corona hysteria
first cranked up more than a year ago. Alas, the great majority who have never set foot in a
newsroom are still taking this nonsense at face value. Trusting souls -- that's what
corporate-government aims for.
JB@37
Does anyone doubt that proper medical attention, including drugs, nursing care and hospital
access would have greatly reduced the number of deaths in the pandemic? The problem of the
pandemic is firstly that it was allowed to rage out of control, providing the perfect
conditions for increasingly dangerous variants to evolve and secondly that it imposes on
societies the need to provide public health systems to ensure that the ability to pay
doctors, rent beds and buy drugs is not needed to ensure treatment.
Capitalism is about making profits out of the desperation of humanity. It is already being
reported that the drug companies intend to use their patents to make enormous profits, while
refusing to make their formulae available so that generic vaccines can be supplied to the
billions who cannot afford to buy them.
The irony that life has in store for capitalism's cheerleaders being the inevitability of
future waves of Covid which will slay hundreds of millions- the direct result of a systemic
choice.
The Deputy Director of the State Influenza Institute Dr Daria Danilenko
wryly commented: "For the first time in the history of scientific observation, the world faced
an epidemic season without influenza".
The Masters of Covid are too powerful to be challenged openly. This week, they disposed of the
Tanzanian President, John Magufuli . A cheeky man, he tested papaya, goat and engine oil
for covid using WHO-supplied tests, and they all turned out to be positive. He rejected testing
and declared Tanzania free of covid. Then, the London Guardian newspaper (in a section
funded by Bill Gates)
called for him to be removed.
... ... ...
President Lukashenko also refused the WHO diktat, and was almost deposed, but he fought back
– after all, Belarus is not in Africa. The Swedes, as you know, also gave ground under
pressure. Perhaps President Putin acted wisely when he did not contradict the Masters of Covid.
They are, apparently, an irresistible force in the current world. They removed Trump, they
locked Europe down. Putin would also have been destroyed – and Russians would end in an
endless lockdown, like Israel or France.
I cannot answer the question of how the Masters of Covid were able to do it. Neither Schwab,
a second-rate professor in Zurich, nor Gates, the owner of a large data company – could
have achieved such a result by any known means. Will we ever know who is behind them? Or is
that very question to be condemned as a conspiracy theory?
By the way, Magufuli, the late president of Tanzania, was an outstanding personality. A
Russian newspaper wrote:
Magufuli looked everywhere to cut unnecessary expenses, and the saved money was used for
the construction of roads and for free education (with him, not only primary, but secondary
schools became free, as well). He reduced the cabinet from 30 to 19 people, and fired about
150 high-ranking officials as unnecessary or corrupt. An audit revealed that 10,000 salaried
civil servants existed on paper only. Magufuli cancelled two deals with China, which had
already been signed by his predecessor, President Kikwete: the construction of the country's
first electrified railway and the largest port in East Africa in Bagamoyo. Only a madman
could agree to the conditions proposed by the Chinese. Magufuli was indignant. The railway
was eventually built by a Turkish company; the Tanzanian authorities still cannot agree on
the port with Chinese investors. Magufuli believed that the scale of the pandemic is greatly
exaggerated and some forces use it to sabotage the economy, wrote Associated Press. He did
not want to introduce quarantine fearing that the level of poverty would rise.
In short, a wonderful person! But he undertook to chop down a tree that was beyond his
strength.
The Masters of Covid played on our fear of death. I wonder how they will overcome it while
instigating a world war? Perhaps they will do it by trying to make our life so miserable that
we will accept mass annihilation, if not gladly, at least placidly.
The great hack will be the next move after covid, a true false flag. Blamed on Russia. A
hack that will impact businesses and more importantly end-users. Create havoc for the
everyday man. Deleted accounts and intermittent comnection. Make it real (who cares some NSA
server got hacked But people will care when they can't get their porn).
If even half of this SolarWinds hack is true
The great hack scenario has to be timed just right so that Russia (or China) are actually
in the middle of some kind of minor cyber attack/operation. Make it look like it was TOO
successful. For years the people have been primed for 'Russian hackers'.
All you have to do is use Obamas internet killswitch to disconnect the people from
facebook and gay porn for 48 hours and have an NSA spokesman blame Russia on radio and TV
(that will scare the kids having to use such antiquated tech) and watch it work itself.
Biden don't BS me pretending to be senile. I want my cheque!
"That's how they spoke of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gadhafi; both were killed and their
'rogue states' devastated."
Note also how the images of Hussein, unwashed and unshaved hiding somewhere in a wild
place, Gaddafi in the gutter, and the narrative of Bin Laden executed while wearing pyjamas
where distributed by the Western media. Narratives of crude humiliation, evil barbarians done
away with, they end up as loosing suckers. A culture which cannot at least show some respect,
this is not typically Western though
I'll preface my comments by saying I have great respect for you as a writer. Apart from CJ
Hopkins and Pepe Escobar, I think you're one of the best actual literary stylists here, even
with imperfect English. And you have been against the hoax from day one. Unfortunately, I
think you're impressionistic style is getting in the way of finer analysis and leading you to
absurd conclusions.
I cannot answer the question of how the Masters of Covid were able to do it. Neither
Schwab, a second-rate professor in Zurich, nor Gates, the owner of a large data company
– could have achieved such a result by any known means. Will we ever know who is
behind them? Or is that very question to be condemned as a conspiracy theory?
This is you not doing your homework. Gates is not merely the "owner of a large data
company", which you'd understand if you troubled to "google" this for approximately one
minute.
It is irritating to have to point out, again, that the Gates Foundation is the largest
"individual" contributor to the WHO – the same WHO you just accused of assassinating
two African presidents who resisted its agenda:
But even that is deceptive. Note in the chart at that link two other large donors, Rotary
Club and National Philanthropic Trust. No surprise that the Gates Foundation donates to and
works closely with both:
So, Gates money is flowing into the WHO, alone, constantly and from several places. It
would take too long to list all the personnel in all the various organizations and
institutions with ties to the Foundation or any of its many, many "sister" orgs, but it's
symbolic that the current Director-General, Tedros, is Ethiopian, and the Foundation opened
an office in Addis back in 2012, and has been dumping money into the country. Tedros got in
with GAVI (another Foundation front) and the Aspen Institute (also partly funded by the
Foundation) around that time.
The more you look into this, the more you'll find Foundation money and players at every
level, in every project and "initiative" and study, big or small.
Of course, Gates has been explicitly criticized for controlling the WHO's narrative:
He got a huge boost after Trump briefly pulled out of funding it. One could call it
suspicious timing, but it was more probably just Trump doing something he couldn't follow
through with, in this case because of his term-limit.
There is no one "behind" Gates precisely because there is no one with greater wealth
except Bezos, who does not have even a tenth of Gates' vision, connections, or influence; and
because Gates' power is tangential to traditional power – i.e. the specter of "health",
which traditional power centers have lined up to enforce. $182 billion (Gates' assets
plus Foundation assets, a total which no one ever mentions) goes a long way in buying
local politicians pretty much everywhere.
The simple fact is that Gates represents something unique in the history of power, in the
Foucauldian sense, and this must be understood to get a clear picture of what is happening to
global civilization, apart from the overshoot effects of civilization itself.
Through his vast "philanthropic" network and investments, Gates has made himself
the Panopticon, the supreme surveyor of "bodies", under the guise of "medicine" and
"philanthropy".
Don't believe me? All right. Just know that the Foundation is very up-front about their
donations; you can see them all here, on a rather annoying spreadsheet:
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/committed-grants – see if you can sort through
all the names and reasons for the donation without getting a headache.
Not only are these means known, they are more than enough to buy off literally anyone but
Bezos, Musk, two Africans and Lukashenko, while Putin wisely played ball for a while to avoid
censure.
You have to get on the ball about this. We all have to.
But I suspect what's going on here is:
– "Fringe" right intellectuals have for so long wanted to name the Jew behind
everything, they can't accept that the supervillain we got is not Jewish
– "Fringe" right intellectuals have a psychological habit / heuristic bias of expecting
a still bigger villain behind whatever else they perceive
The only good news here is that Gates is out front declaring his plans. You don't need a
smoking gun when it's firing at you almost daily.
As cononavisus are seasonal spring reduction will be interpreted as the sucess of
vaccinaions, while authom jump as the next wave requreing another round of vccinations.
The unprecedented pandemic, as defined by the timeous WHO (heavily diluted) definition of
the term, has been addressed in the unprecedented locking down of entire populations manner.
No consideration was apparently given to the prospective consequences of an array of this and
related directives that withdrew normal health care from entire populations and rendered
another prospectively fatal blow to global economies. The new flu has been repeatedly
verified as creating no more deaths than its annually experienced (influenza)
predecessors.
The main-stream indoctrination propaganda narrative would have everyone believe that
the flawed but purposeful use of the loudly ill-advised testing methods are proclaimimg an
endless resurgence of the pandemic.
The flawed tests produce false positive results in surges that rhyme with the surges of
totally unnecessary testing which are ingeniously generated from easily abused track and
trace amongst many other scams.
The absurd claims of the WHO that it has now pontificated is that natural herd immunity no
longer exists and that immunity can only be obtained via mass and totally inclusive
vaccination. Their infantile script appears to be the doctrine of their major self-appointed
sponsor, being none other than the repeatedly discredited, unqualified and lifelong
self-enrichment expert Mr Gates, who appears as a busybody manipu;ator at every turn.
It is now ascertained by a core of genuinely qualified, erudite, concerned and political
immune knowledge that any attempt to achieve herd immunity via vaccinations will inevitably
create endless leaks of virulent variants. The logic is not obvious to the lay person, but it
is to those that know what they are talking about.
For me it is the initial approach as adopted by the UK govnmnt of aimiing for natural herd
immunity that rings in my ears. The message from the original medical authority was clear and
stated that any pandemic cannot be stopped, it can only be slowed down. As with all viral
infections it must generate an overwhelming immune system response in the population which
needs to be enabled as quickly as possible in order to defend against and counter the virus
and the propensity for the generation of variants. Only the genuinely and highly vulnerable
should be identified for protective isolation.
If people strengthen their immune systems with things like Vitamin D, that will provide
protection against all strains of all infections. But governments are quite uninterested in
encouraging this.
What studies exist that show mask wearing to have made any difference? Seems like a easy
question for Fauci to answer plainly and simply. He has had a year to find one. Fauci is a
master sociopath who uses 'gaslighting' in his narrative. For example when he is accused of
mask theatre he says 'here we go again with the theatre, lets get down with the facts.' But
mask theatre is a fact because science does not support people with immunity to be needing to
wear a mask.
Dee Wilson 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 09:09 PM
Anthony Fauci is a fraud.. the super dumbed downed Americans which are becoming slowly less
stupid....are ( way behind the rest of the world ) in knowing WHO runs your government as a
dictator entity... Trump got rid of it .. Biden brought this evil back to the US.. WHY
????..... read and learn what this rot means.... it is not good.
Fauci is a drug dealer. He has been a drug dealer since he was a teenager, and he started it
at his dad's pharmacy. Pfizer/Moderna/OxAsZ syrup doesn't give any protection, so why let
them inject their syrup into you with the risk of dying from blood clots and allergic
reaction?
picklenickel RussianSpy222 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 10:06 PM
Fauci is addicted to fame now, and will do anything to prolong his time in the spotlight.
Macanesewarrior 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 08:47 PM
Hopefully fraudci will wear a third or even a fourth mask. How about just a plastic bag over
his head tied at the throat?
Biff Shackleford 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 09:20 PM
the old good cop bad cop routine. Rand like the rest of the R's are only there to appear as
though they are fighting for you. Appear a threat never be one. Tough talk doesn't translate
into any real world results.
Dee Wilson 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 09:09 PM
Anthony Fauci is a fraud.. the super dumbed downed Americans which are becoming slowly less
stupid....are ( way behind the rest of the world ) in knowing WHO runs your government as a
dictator entity... Trump got rid of it .. Biden brought this evil back to the US.. WHY
????..... read and learn what this rot means.... it is not good.
The Kentucky senator demanded Fauci explain why Americans who'd already been sick with
Covid-19 and recovered, or received the vaccine should be "wearing masks well into 2022"
during a Senate hearing on Thursday. Insisting there "no scientific studies arguing or
proving that infection with Covid does not create immunity," Paul demanded the doctor cite
"specific studies" to bolster his claims that "everyone" should wear a mask (or
two masks, as Fauci's trend-setting television appearances have encouraged).
"If [recovered and vaccinated people are] not spreading the infection, isn't [wearing a
mask] just theatre?" the senator queried, arguing that as of last fall, just five of the 38
million confirmed cases of the virus were believed to be reinfections.
After an uneasy pause, Fauci dismissed the notion that vaccinated people double-masking was
just for show, arguing even vaccinated Americans would be helpless in the face of a South
African Covid-19 variant that has recently emerged. However, while the South African variant
has shown itself to be more resistant to the AstraZeneca vaccine, individuals vaccinated with
the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech jabs appear to retain whatever benefits they would
otherwise have received from the shots.
As Fauci attempted to talk up the ferocity of the South African variant, which has not been
shown to be any more infectious or harmful to the patient than any of the other viral variants,
Paul accused him of making policy based on conjecture – all but suggesting that new
strains would slip into the country and begin infecting helpless vaccinated Americans
willy-nilly, undoing all the hard work the government's vaccination campaign had accomplished
and returning Americans to square one if they didn't wear their masks.
You want people to get the vaccine? Give them a reward instead of telling 'em that the
nanny state's going to be there for three more years and you've got to wear a mask
forever!
"If you already have immunity, you're wearing a mask to give comfort to others. You're
not wearing a mask because of any science," the senator concluded. Fauci icily reiterated
that he "totally disagreed" after the Republican accused him of "parad[ing] around in
two masks for show."
Even though Fauci agreed it was unlikely someone would get infected with the original
strain, he once again argued that "we in our country now have variants."
When you talk about reinfection and you don't keep in the concept of variants, that's
an entirely different ballgame. That's a good reason for a mask.
While Fauci and his media cheerleaders have a habit of dismissing Paul's criticisms out of
hand as the meaningless opinions of a layperson, the Kentucky senator is also a doctor, though
a trained ophthalmologist rather than an immunologist.
Some watching the latest Fauci-vs-Paul battle on social media questioned the seriousness of
the latest viral "variant," implying that these new strains were little more than paper
tigers whose role was to enter epidemiological stage right just in time to keep the population
frightened for a few more months.
The Kentucky senator demanded Fauci explain why Americans who'd already been sick with
Covid-19 and recovered, or received the vaccine should be "wearing masks well into 2022"
during a Senate hearing on Thursday. Insisting there "no scientific studies arguing or
proving that infection with Covid does not create immunity," Paul demanded the doctor cite
"specific studies" to bolster his claims that "everyone" should wear a mask (or
two masks, as Fauci's trend-setting television appearances have encouraged).
"If [recovered and vaccinated people are] not spreading the infection, isn't [wearing a
mask] just theatre?" the senator queried, arguing that as of last fall, just five of the 38
million confirmed cases of the virus were believed to be reinfections.
After an uneasy pause, Fauci dismissed the notion that vaccinated people double-masking was
just for show, arguing even vaccinated Americans would be helpless in the face of a South
African Covid-19 variant that has recently emerged. However, while the South African variant
has shown itself to be more resistant to the AstraZeneca vaccine, individuals vaccinated with
the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech jabs appear to retain whatever benefits they would
otherwise have received from the shots.
As Fauci attempted to talk up the ferocity of the South African variant, which has not been
shown to be any more infectious or harmful to the patient than any of the other viral variants,
Paul accused him of making policy based on conjecture – all but suggesting that new
strains would slip into the country and begin infecting helpless vaccinated Americans
willy-nilly, undoing all the hard work the government's vaccination campaign had accomplished
and returning Americans to square one if they didn't wear their masks.
Such a claim would seem to run contrary to the US government line suggesting Americans
should get vaccinated as soon as humanly possible, an issue Paul took care to point out.
"You want to get rid of vaccine hesitancy? Tell them they can quit wearing their mask after
they get the vaccine!" he explained.
You want people to get the vaccine? Give them a reward instead of telling 'em that the
nanny state's going to be there for three more years and you've got to wear a mask
forever!
"If you already have immunity, you're wearing a mask to give comfort to others. You're
not wearing a mask because of any science," the senator concluded. Fauci icily reiterated
that he "totally disagreed" after the Republican accused him of "parad[ing] around in
two masks for show."
Even though Fauci agreed it was unlikely someone would get infected with the original
strain, he once again argued that "we in our country now have variants."
When you talk about reinfection and you don't keep in the concept of variants, that's
an entirely different ballgame. That's a good reason for a mask.
While Fauci and his media cheerleaders have a habit of dismissing Paul's criticisms out of
hand as the meaningless opinions of a layperson, the Kentucky senator is also a doctor, though
a trained ophthalmologist rather than an immunologist.
Some watching the latest Fauci-vs-Paul battle on social media questioned the seriousness of
the latest viral "variant," implying that these new strains were little more than paper
tigers whose role was to enter epidemiological stage right just in time to keep the population
frightened for a few more months.
Paul was infected with the virus a year ago and has argued he is now immune, pointing to the
almost nonexistent rate of reinfection among those recovered from the virus. Fauci received the
Moderna vaccine in January. While he has become a vehement defender of face coverings, the
Biden administration's top health advisor initially urged Americans not to wear them,
suggesting last February that the protection they offered was largely illusory and urging
ordinary people to leave them on the shelves so that they would be available for the healthcare
workers who needed them.
CyanTeepee 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 09:09 PM
Dr. Fauci talks out of both sides of his mouth and can't be trusted he changes the narrative
whenever they need to incite more fear and control into the public 'Biden administration's
top health advisor initially urged Americans not to wear them, suggesting last February that
the protection they offered was largely illusory and urging ordinary people to leave them on
the shelves so that they would be available for the healthcare workers who needed them."
Drifter275 CyanTeepee 22 hours ago 18 Mar, 2021 11:48 PM
Yes, and he is improperly wearing the inner mask. It is open at the top under his eyes. He is
inhaling and exhaling across his eyes. That dries his eyes and exposes his eyes to being
inoculated with virus either when inhaling or exhaling.
Reilly 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 09:05 PM
When science has become like a religion where if you go against the tide , you are labeled a
heretic by the scientific field your are dissenting against. Science is about investigating
and debating on the theories in "question". Its not about closing down and censoring apposing
views, which do not line up with this profit driven "dogmatic science" we have today.
CrabbyB 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 10:30 PM
So if you get the jab you are still in danger from other variants... how can someone have a
so-called vaccine passport then? If you've had the jab he's saying it counts for nothing and
you still need a mask. Note his confirmation they will be pushing for a new jab every six
months in that talk too
Reilly 1 day ago 18 Mar, 2021 09:16 PM
The doctors today are hypocrites, they are just salesmen for big pharma and do not have moral
fortitude anymore. They used to take the Hippocratic Oath, "Do No Harm" being the first tenet
of this Oath. They are now no different to a car salesmen trying to sell you a dodgy car for
cheap, just so they can make some quick money.
Laura Johnson Reilly 10 hours ago 19 Mar, 2021 11:59 AM
Hippocratic oath ends when money talks... but wait why do you expect something different from
the doctors, they are people just like you and me and if the society worships only one god
'money' how do you expect doctors to be different. Yeap, salesmen - some years ago I heard
USA is the united salesmen of America but now this culture is exported all over the world,
started with multilevel marketing, market economy and neoliberal thinking... so by now it
might be called hypocritic oath, lol...haha
FredMc Reilly 22 hours ago 19 Mar, 2021 12:19 AM
It has been replaced with the "hypocritical" oath.
1.If the PCR test works -- Why the false positives?
2.If the masks works -- Why the six feet?
3.If the six feet works -- Why the masks?
4.If all three works - Why the social distancing?
5.If all four work -- Why the Lockdown?
6.If all five work -- Why the vaccine?
7.If the vaccine works - Why do people care if I will get one or not? (They can't get it from
anyone if vaccine works)
8.If the vaccine is safe -- Why the no liability clause from BIG PHARMA side?
9.If the PCR test works - Why Kary Banks Mullis (creater of PCR method) said: "PCR tests
CAN'T be used to determine if someone is positive or negative in a matter of ANY virus."
10.If Kary Banks Mullis was not a threat to their agenda - Why he died in unexplained
circumstances few months before world heard about CONvid-1984?
11.If CONvid-1984 exists -- Why has it not been isolated according to CDC?
12.If there is no conspiracy - Why the media, governments and oligarchs of this world are
trying to vaccinate the WHOLE WORLD?
Unlike this charlatan Fauci thinking, measures should be gradated by density of population.
countryside does not need as severe restrictions as big cities with their high density of
population. Less populous state need different measured then the most populous.
The US even managed to fail to introduce temperature checks in airports in February 2020,
when the scenario unfolding was pretty clear. To say nothing about quarantine for those who came
form "hot zones".
The tragedy is how poorly we've adapted as we've learned more about the risks. Studies from
Europe showed nearly half of deaths were occurring in nursing homes, and children rarely
transmitted the illness or became severely ill. Treatments improved as doctors learned more,
but government prescriptions didn't change. As Philippe Lemoine argues
nearby , the accumulating evidence is that lockdowns don't reduce the virus spread in the
long run.
Lockdowns nonetheless became an ideological battle. The media became lockdown cheerleaders
as they sought to take down Mr. Trump, with tragic results for lost businesses, lost
livelihoods and health damage in late diagnoses, untreated conditions and mental illness that
will compound for years.
Children have lost a year of learning, which many will never make up. The lockdown recession
hurt low-income workers the most, while affluent Americans could work from home. While it's
impossible to quantify the social harm, last summer's riots and the deepening political discord
didn't happen in a vacuum.
There was an alternative. Tens of thousands of doctors signed the Great Barrington
Declaration, which recommended that government minimize deaths and economic harm by protecting
the vulnerable while letting most Americans return to normal life. Individuals and businesses
could adjust to the virus and socially distance as they saw fit. The media and progressive
elites dismissed these voices and refused to drop their lockdown dogmatism.
The Covid pandemic has seen the greatest loss of American liberty outside wartime.
Politicians closed houses of worship without regard for the First Amendment. They ordered
arbitrary shutdowns that favored some businesses but punished others. Politicians and
governments have used the pandemic to justify an enormous expansion of state power. Government
had to act in March to avoid economic catastrophe from the lockdowns it ordered. But the
politicians keep amassing power even as vaccines are rolling out.
Government spending and deficits have reached heights unseen since World War II as a share
of the economy, and taxes are likely to follow. The Federal Reserve has become a de facto arm
of the Treasury to finance deficits, with unknown future consequences.
C Chad Koepke SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago The forecasts from political pundits and "health
experts" stated there would be millions of US deaths if no lockdowns were instituted. Sweden
was much more laze fairer in the approach and the death rates are not all that different from
lockdown USA...
C Chad Koepke SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago The forecasts from political pundits and "health
experts" stated there would be millions of US deaths if no lockdowns were instituted. Sweden
was much more laze fairer in the approach and the death rates are not all that different from
lockdown USA...
C Christopher Hsu SUBSCRIBER 4 hours ago ... ".In total, in an unmitigated epidemic, we
would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB and 2.2 million in the US, not accounting for
the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on mortality."
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
P Paul Bremner SUBSCRIBER 4 hours ago Andrew Wachtel:
Wrong, Paul. That figure was even assuming a lockdown.
Incorrect.
The study assumed NO lockdown or any other mitigation for the 2.2 million
casualty number in the US.
The study looked at a variety of lockdown and distancing options ranging from least
selective to most comprehensive.
Then it presented findings in the "Results" section where it said the following:
Results In the (unlikely) absence of any control measure s or
spontaneous changes in individual behaviour, we would expect a peak in mortality (daily
deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months.....In total, in an unmitigated
epidemic , we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB and 2.2 million in the
US, not accounting for the potential negative effects of health systems being overwhelmed on
mortality.
Source: Imperial College
"Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare
demand." pp 6-7.
Date: 16 March, 2020
M Marc Antos SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago If you look at the developed countries with the highest
per capita deaths, its the UK, Italy, and the US in no particular order. Whatever we did, it
didn't work. We'll have to do an autopsy report on the US response when everyone is
vaccinated.
Letting the virus spread among healthier populations and isolating vulnerable populations
hasn't worked wherever they've tried it. You can't completely isolate the sick and elderly as
they have caregiving needs. What has worked best are intrusive methods that aren't compatible
with any system that values liberty and privacy. I'm not advocating for that, but I am saying
that viruses prey on the openness that free societies value. A long term pandemic could result
in a greater and greater amount of people willing to surrender their cherished freedoms.
T Tom Richard SUBSCRIBER 5 hours ago Suicides are up, overdose deaths are up, murders are
up considerably.
Because people either couldn't or wouldn't get to hospitals, logic states that deaths from
heart attacks, strokes, etc. are up.
Not to mention, sending infected patients into nursing homes front-loaded deaths into a
concentrated time frame.
As viruses cause deaths annually, the lock downs will be found to have increased deaths in 2020
more than the virus itself - and devastated our children in the process.
It was a monstrous decision.
L larry roberts SUBSCRIBER 5 hours ago Look at the excess deaths in 2020. Excess Deaths are
the number of deaths from all causes during a crisis above and beyond what we would have
expected to see under normal conditions. For 2020, the majority of excess deaths are reasonably
attributable to Covid19 either directly or indirectly. The data is available on the CDC
website. The number of excess deaths is > 500K. Andrew Wachtel SUBSCRIBER 5 hours ago The UK and Italy instituted
some of the longest and most draconian lockdowns in the world.
Whatever they did didn't work either.
B BILL GOSSETT SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago (Edited)
President Biden and Democrats blame Donald Trump for 530,000 American deaths
Yet in March when Trump wanted to shut down air travel and the borders, these same people
called him a racist and other derogatory names. That alone would have prevented 300,000 deaths.
I remember this clear as day, but I am sure the leftist will deflect with some other
nonsense. Like thumb_up 6 Reply reply Share link Report
flag
F Francis Grimes IV SUBSCRIBER 6 hours ago The secret to the lockdowns---which did not
happen unilaterally across the country--is uncovered in the below quote, dateline March 20,
2020
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) worked to scupper the phase-three coronavirus relief
package on Sunday after Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) told caucus members last week
that the bill was "a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision."
It was never about public health, public safety, or anything else related to the
virus.
D David Solak SUBSCRIBER 7 hours ago Eye covering is just as important as a mask in my
opinion. There was a story on NBC about this.
The passenger who is employed by NBC noted that people who have some sort of covering, even
glasses , have a lower rate of infection.
When someone sneezes or coughs the droplets can easily enter your eyes where your eyelids are a
mucus membrane.
We haven't had so much as a sniffle since 2019, when we caught some nasty virus and we all know
where it came from.
S Steve Gokorsch SUBSCRIBER 7 hours ago
The media became lockdown cheerleaders as they sought to take down Mr. Trump, with tragic
results for lost businesses, lost livelihoods and health damage in late diagnoses, untreated
conditions and mental illness that will compound for years.
Night after night we heard from the MSM how this pandemic was because of President
Trump's actions or inactions - it did not matter what he did; he was wrong and to blame. Their
contempt and hatred for him hurt us, all of us. They did not report facts but instead tailored
their broadcasts to paint him in a negative light...day after day after day.
Note they to this day do not blame President Xi. Hmm, wonder why?
a most disturbing review of the government response to pharma demands that the government
force those it governs to pay for and take the pharma offered vaccines. Basically I see it as
a declaration of war against human rights
Texas is fighting back, they have removed the requirement of a mask.. and where I live,
people have signs in heir front years which read "f**k the Vaccines".
On Friday afternoon, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (still called the CDC, even though they added a 'P')
released
a
heretical report
about mask-wearing and COVID-19.
The report, authored by at least a dozen medical doctors, PhD researchers, and, bizarrely, a handful of attorneys, examined
how mask mandates across the US affected COVID cases and death rates.
You'd think with all of the media propaganda about mask effectiveness and all the
virtue signaling, with politicians and reporters appearing on live TV wearing masks that the data would prove
incontrovertibly and overwhelmingly that masks have saved the world.
But that's not
what the report says.
According to the CDC's analysis, between March 1 and December 31 last year, statewide mask mandates were in effect in 2,313
of the 3,142 counties in the United States.
And, looking at the county-by-county data, the CDC concludes that
mask mandates were
associated with an average 1.32% decrease in the growth rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths during the first 100 days after
the mask policy was implemented
.
Wait, what? Only 1.32%?
You read that correctly, they didn't misplace the decimal:
according to the
federal government agency that is responsible for managing the COVID-1984 pandemic, the difference between mask mandates
and no mask mandate is literally just a 1.32% difference.
And bear in mind, it's entirely possible that the real figure is even lower than
that, given all the questionable COVID statistics.
For example, the CDC reports that influenza cases in the United States have dropped to almost zero in the 2020-2021 flu
season, down from 56 MILLION the previous year.
It's amazing they expect anyone to take this data seriously.
Are we honestly supposed to believe that the flu has been eradicated?
Or is it possible, that, maybe just maybe, at least
some
influenza cases have been
misdiagnosed as COVID?
If that's the case, then the real impact of masks on COVID growth rates is
potentially much lower than 1.32%.
Even the CDC seems to understand this, because at the end of its report, they inspidly conclude by stating that mask
mandates "
have the potential
to slow the spread of COVID-19. . ." [the bold
is mine, obviously]
Really? "
Potential
"?
That's HERESY! And an obvious contradiction to WHO guidance. It makes we wonder whether Google and Facebook are gearing up
to censor this report, given they have self-appointed themselves as the Ministry of Truth.
Frankly it's pretty incredible that the data was too weak for the CDC to make a
clear assertion about the benefits of mask mandates.
(though I did say there were a couple of lawyers who co-authored this paper and using
non-committal language like "potential" certainly sounds like typical weasel lawyer-speak.)
Now, please don't misunderstand the point of this letter. I'm not here to bash masks or say that they don't work, or go on
some anti-mask rant.
The point is that I'm pro-data. And pro-reason.
Public health policies come with consequences. There are always costs, and there are (hopefully) benefits.
The CDC has just published an official analysis of the benefits, quantified at
precisely 1.32%.
What are the costs of their decisions? Well there's plenty of data about that too.
For example,
a
recent study
published earlier this month in the premier scientific journal
Nature
shows
that Americans who wear masks are more likely engage in riskier activities, like, you know, leaving the house.
The study conclude that mask mandates "lead to risk compensation behavior" and mask wearers "spend 11-24 fewer minutes at
home on average and increase visits to some commercial locations– most notably restaurants, which are a high-risk
location."
Other consequences are more grim.
There have been
several studies which chronicle the alarming rise in severe mental
health issues,
including a spike in youth suicide, as a result of various public health policies, including mask
mandates and lockdowns.
For example, another study published in
Nature
from early January reported that,
in
late 2020, suicide rates among children in Japan jumped 49%.
And the US government's
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service (SAMHSA) reported
an incredible 890% increase in call volume
to its nationwide suicide hotline last April.
Then there are the economic consequences to consider: Do mask mandates boost the economy by giving people more confidence
to go out and spend? Or do mask mandates compel more people to stay home to avoid the hassle, and hence reduce economic
activity?
There's still no conclusive analysis on the subject. But you'd think that policymakers would want to know.
You'd think that they would look at all the data, all the pro's and con's, economic consequences, public health
consequences, etc., and make an informed, rational decision.
But that doesn't seem to happen anymore.
There can be no rational discourse on the topic. You're not allowed to ask any questions or express any intellectual
dissent, otherwise you'll be denounced as a conspiracy theorist.
You have one job: obey.
It's not even about 'trusting the science' anymore,
as we've been told to do over and over again during the pandemic.
Because now the
science tells us that mask mandates "have the potential" to reduce Covid growth rates by just 1.32%.
Not that you'll hear this in the media.
There actually was a bonanza of coverage over the weekend about the CDC's new report.
The
Washington Post
headline read "After state lift restrictions, CDC says mask
mandates can reduce deaths".
The
New York Times
reported that "Wearing masks, the [CDC] study reported, was
linked to fewer infections with the coronavirus and Covid-19 deaths."
NBC called the report "strong evidence that mask mandates can slow the spread of the coronavirus. . ."
But very little
of the media coverage bothered to mention the real data, i.e. the marginal 1.32% reduction in growth rates.
Just like the CDC's influenza data, it's incredible that the media expects to be taken seriously, or that they pass
themselves off as an objective, unbiased source of information.
News tonight announced one state <=governing Americans in the USA, think it was Alabama
passed a law, making statements about the possible risks, composition or adverse consequences
of the so called vaccine (RNA script) which c\n be supported (like if you don't shut up, we
will bankrupt you with an expensive trial) is to be made unlawful..
Could such a law be an infringement against the 1st amendment? "Congress shall make no law
..abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
What about applying the same logic to news outlets, that promote false flag ops, suppress
real news, promote lies, favor for access to mass media, those that speak the untruth, and
condone presenting testimony without support, as fact?
Resistance of the governed to nation state hegemony over mankind seems to be growing in
every nation state in the world. A possible logic for the lock down (conspiracy theory) is
that it was designed to keep the governed of the different nation states from talking with
each other. <=debate please. Those who govern are becoming concerned: conditions have
ripen for the bottom to change the balance of power at the top or even to reduce oligarchs
and political leadership to equivalent or less than deplorable level.
... ... ...
The beginning of the war between the non-conforming governed and those that wield the
power of the nation states seems to be marked by the nation state system's globally
coordinated declaration that the flu is a Pandemic; the propaganda allowed to be presented
over the privately owned media and viewed as prime time content by the mass audience projects
powerful media support for the nation state leaders and reals in billions of corporate tax
deductible advertising $s to support the media effort to make what the politicians want to
come true.
The response of the governed to support of private party products by the political
leadership of the various nation states in the name of a questionable pandemic has shown that
resistance by those who are the governed is not only possible but highly effective, much more
effective than ever I thought possible.
Judging from the flu is a pandemic scenario, I expect to see the bottom up resistance
worldwide to continue to grow..and as yet unknown dark underground networks to grow.
Interesting times seem to be ahead.
Judging from the flu is a pandemic scenario, I expect to see the bottom up resistance
worldwide to continue to grow..and as yet unknown dark underground networks to grow.
Interesting times seem to be ahead.
Thank you for this optimistic perspective, I believe you are right. It must be so.
US politicians usually justify their bloodlust wars with Thucydides Trap style rhetoric. "
Let's fight "X" there so that we don't have to fight them here ." Most of us are old
enough to remember Rice's ominous warning about the " smoking gun becoming a mushroom
cloud ". Granted, it's part of the consent manufacturing process but it's the public
perception of an imminent danger that matters.
Israel leads the world in corona vaccinations; vaccines are forced on people; the
unvaccinated aren't even allowed to shop for food. Airports are closed down; nobody can enter
or leave the Promised Land. But the virus is smart; it finds its way around the vaccine.
The old non-vaccinated virus could kill some old people well into their eighties or
nineties. The new virus attacks children.
Vaccinated people also can get Covid, as did my mother-in law, despite two jabs she duly
received.
Masks remain in force, schools remain shut, the new round of elections is due very soon,
probably leading to no better result than the previous three rounds.
... ... ...
Nature has its own ways. It is insistent and persistent. Coronavirus was successful (on its
own terms) where flu was eradicated. These two viruses occupy the same evolutionary cell.
Anti-flu vaccines saved many people from flu and prepared the ground for Covid. In Lombardy,
Italy Covid came down hard on the old people who were vaccinated against flu; ditto in Israel,
where flu vaccination was offered to all. I await with horror the next threat that will creep
out of the abyss if coronavirus is defeated. Meanwhile, in Israel, it fights back with great
vigour.
... ... ...
Our problem is not so much bad will (and here I disagree with my esteemed colleague
Mike
Whitney ) but the noble and quixotic desire to save mankind from some perceived peril. P.G.
Wodehouse tells us of four scouts who, in their quest for a good deed, helped an old lady to
cross the street, and reported to their guide. All four of you were needed for that, asked an
amazed guide. Well, she put up quite a strong resistance, they replied. Until recently, only
governments played God and that was bad enough. But now every Tom, Dick and Harry with an extra
billion dollars in his pocket wants to save mankind.
Besides being silly, this guy knows too much! In 2015, Gates gave a "prescient warning about
the threat of a pandemic", says a
reviewer . To what extent was it "prescient" if in the same 2015, Gates patented a coronavirus quite similar to
the one that attacked mankind in 2020? Perhaps he is prescient "for the same reason that
arsonists have the earliest knowledge of future fires", as Ron
Unz remarked .
Fine, so he had five years to bring his "weakened version" to full strength!
Now he promotes plans that would make our world uninhabitable. Blotting out the sun is one
of his great ideas. Gates wants to spread some metallic powder in the air so the world will
enter eternal darkness. No farting cows, no Covid-spreading beaches: a cold world, all too
similar to Texas at this moment is our future if we do not stop these bastards.
I have a simple clear-cut proof that Warmers do not even believe in the nonsense they utter.
(Some, like young Greta, do not understand what they say.) They speak of farting cows, but they
never mention the biggest farting cow: the US Military, which is bigger than all the armies and
fleets of the world put together and has the biggest carbon footprint on earth. Greta and Gates
never called for its cutting down to size, let alone dismantling, though in the prism of their
logic all Americans should be able to eat juicy steaks and drive gas-guzzlers for a hundred
years just by scrapping their Juggernaut.
Their ideas are bonkers. In order to switch to electric cars, we would need to destroy
Africa and Latin America, to get the rare earth elements (like lithium) for the batteries.
Africans and Latin Americans from devastated lands would be forced to move to Europe and the
US, a win-win for tycoons, but lose-lose for the people. The problem is with very rich folk, I
wrote in my recent piece . They want to reshape humans, planet
Earth, our future. Why? Because they can. Or they think they can.
Grandiose plans are a real danger, because now people can do more than they can calculate
the consequences of. Like Hecatoncheires, mankind has more brawn than brain. People want to act
like gods without having god's intelligence. The Soviets (inspired by Marx who preferred titans
to Olympic gods) made a lot of these mistakes. They dammed the rivers, destroying thousands of
villages with their rich culture, and created manmade shallow seas, a breeding ground for
mosquitos. The dams became obsolete quite fast; but there was no way to reverse the project:
the lands were already ruined. Some of the biggest Soviet projects achieved by huge efforts of
the people were handed over by Yeltsin to his pet oligarchs, and their huge yachts are the only
tangible results of these efforts. Until now, the Russians could only feel happy that the
greatest of all Soviet projects, turning Siberian rivers to flow southwards into Central Asia,
was mercifully derailed by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The mocking bit notwithstanding, how we move on from this shite is a good question.
Spreading information to get as many people on board as possible. Common sense, roots,
traditions should kick in sooner or later, at least in the case of some. Over here, in our
little Central European country, I see more and more of that. I mean how stupid is it to impose
a 9:00 p.m. curfew to stop the spread of a virus? Even educated people (see the comments above
about how educated people most susceptible to fall for this crap) should be able to understand
that.
Legal action.
Resistance of this or that kind 8 0 Reply Julia Nov 16, 2020 8:03 AM Reply to Jacques
Yeah, the nonsensical evening curfews on bars and restaurants (like ones which suppose a
virus only creeps in after 20.00) seem like a good starting point to get people on board with
anger and frustration, and later some action. As for legal action, protests are spreading
everywhere, but are not really covered in global media; maybe what is needed is some sort of
global underground network so people can communicate and organise from country to country.
Later, we will need some sort of underground transport network anyway, for people who have
refused to get the vaccine. 7 0 Reply
"However, many types of vaccine are likely to be needed to end the pandemic"
It is often suggested that the vaccine for this non-existent disease will contain some shite
that will eventually kill people, sterilize them, alter their genetic makeup, and so on, all of
which is possible, but let's say that it doesn't.
The vaccine, or the first in a series of vaccines for this one will establish a precedent,
will be another step toward harnessing humans to the sickness industry. I remember some f-head
from the WHO mention that something along the lines that "we've created a vaccine-dependent
population". No shit! The occidental population today is just about completely dependent on the
sickness industry. To begin with, humans are just about unable to bear offspring without a
sickcare attendant masking himself as a doctor. In many jurisdictions it might even be illegal
for humans to bear their kids on their own. And so on so forth, sickcare is behind people's
asses all their lives, a fact most people not only do not question, but readily embrace.
Whatever minuscule ailment they're suffering from, they run to the nearest white-coat dispenser
of pharmaceutical poison. Well, maybe not all doctors are like that, but all probably are to
some extent, not to mention that they have to follow lege artis protocols written by
scheisskopfs of Fauci's kind, which gives them little maneuvering space.
Now, the sickness industry is upping the ante and taking all that to another level. It might
well be that people will be dropping dead or turning into zombies after whatever crap is now
being concocted, but if not, there will be one vaccine after another, plus a permanent state of
emergency, and all sorts of hygienic phantasmagoria.
The natural ability of human beings to survive will deteriorate another quite a few notches.
Gezzah Potts Nov 16, 2020 6:25 AM
When one is stuck at home, in lockdown, and you avoid MSM News like the plague; you don't
really notice the covid propaganda except when you're out shopping and enter a supermarket or
shop.
Been back at work just over 2 weeks now, and the propaganda is everywhere, especially on the
train system. Both on the platform, and on the train itself, its like Orwell's 2 minutes of
hate!
I'm grateful that at least I know why it's being being pumped out relentlessly, and about the
scamdemic and the Great Reset and all the other nasties.
Met yet another covid sceptic today, and another very positive, maskless chat.
Turns out we're in a couple of the same groups. George Mc Nov 16, 2020 9:49 AM Reply to Jacques
The scare tactics by the MSM have been the single biggest giveaway in this whole farce. And
this is why I cannot understand these formerly intelligent Left-wing sites which have just
swallowed the bull without further ado. Indeed not only do they swallow but they're incredibly
belligerent about the deadly pandemic and get ferociously snooty about any doubters. The covid
crap has effectively neutered all political dissent.
Why can't these Left sites understand that the MSM is the voice of the ruling class?
It's a voice that comes from higher up than all those cartoon political clowns – whose
true job is to get pelted with rotten fruit before their next replacements arrive for further
pelting. And when the MSM drone on about the deadly plague that's what the ruling class want
us all to believe . The lockdowns are therefore not some kin of progressive action move.
Quite the reverse. Reply May Hem Nov 16, 2020 12:11 PM Reply to George
Mc
The other giveaway in the farce is the lack of any sort of debate or questioning on
mainstream media. Any sign of an intelligent question about the 'virus' is met with ridicule
and condemnation.
And the censorship on social media? Something strange going on here. That so many accept
what they're being told is the worst part of it. Jacques Nov 16, 2020 12:50 PM Reply to May
Hem
I grew up in a Second World country, where media were state owned and spewed out an endless
stream of complete bullshit. Safe for a handful of diehard communist idiots, nobody believed a
word of they were saying. And people were able to read between the lines.
We're pretty much in an analogical situation now, in the First World (BTW, I was expecting
that the First World wouldn't outlive its nemesis by more than a few decades – the
writing was on the wall. I would have never imagined that they'd pull something like this COVID
crap). The media are completely full of shit. Just about everything that's published is pushing
some hidden agenda.
Hopefully, people will realize that quickly and will turn to alternative sources. Then,
again, one might ask the question how long before those get corrupted too. Also, censorship,
including removal from the Internet, might make it impossible for outlets like that to operate.
So, people will just have to realize that those smartphones, Internet connections, and all this
crap serve for nothing but their indoctrination and stop using them. There still are books and
people are still able to speak – we have ways to pass information. George Mc Nov 16, 2020
2:05 PM Reply to Jacques
I'd say the "communist" appellation is irrelevant. Censorship is just as effective –
and indeed even more so – under capitalism.
Someone once noted the difference between East and West propaganda by saying that in the old
Soviet Union hardly anything was permitted but every tiny thing was important whereas in the
West everything is permitted and nothing is important.
State owned dictatorships have a massive disadvantage in that anyone with any brains living
under them knows they are being bullshitted. But under capitalism, everyone thinks they are
floating on wings of informational freedom without realising that the info is being managed by
clever associative methods e.g. corralling the sensitive stuff into "loony fringe" sites while
relaying the lies through sites normally trusted. Reply kevin Nov 16, 2020 5:21 PM Reply to George
Mc
It is trickier under capitalism, but I think the failure of the population to view the media
as disseminators of propaganda stems from the lack of understanding that we are ruled by an
organized oligarchy. Once that is understood, the role of oligarchic media becomes as obvious
as the role of state broadcasters in communist regimes.
However, we do have state broadcasters like BBC and CBC that are very similar to Pravda and
there is a direct comparison to be made. Reply George Mc Nov 16, 2020 6:39 PM Reply to kevin
Gore Vidal once cited amazement of a visiting Soviet official who was interested in seeing
the fabled free Western press and was astonished at the dreary uniformity of it. Vidal told him
there were far more effective ways of controlling minds than totalitarianism – indeed
there are effectively different forms of totalitarianism. Reply George Mc Nov 16, 2020 1:57 PM
Reply to May
Hem
This is precisely the power of the covid story. Under the guise of "protecting public
safety", the MSM can "legitimately" ban all alternative views. And it is no longer a matter of
"protecting national security" (which no-one believes in anyway). It is a matter of life and
death for people in real time . If you were to appear on TV and breathe even a word of
doubt, you would be ferociously condemned by the media – and even by a significant number
in the population. wardropper Nov 16, 2020 3:34 PM Reply to Julia
Is it possible that all we who frequent these pages are just wrong, and there is no great
reset, no larger plan, and that our governments have just become increasingly careful in the
face of what they perhaps *know* is a biological weapon?
I'd say, no, it isn't possible.
It doesn't even take advanced scientific knowledge to realize that the 'facts' we are
constantly presented with in the MSM are not facts at all.
My mother was a nurse, and I grew up with access to, and an interest in, all her reference
books, so perhaps I have an advantage there, but in any case virology had hardly got off the
ground in her day.
At least what I know from decades of familiarity with common knowledge about bacteria and
viruses bears out what most people here have discovered: That something much more pervasive and
sick is currently at work than any mere virus.
The science generally pushed out at us by the media is infantile in its wrongness, its
illogicality and its inconsistency – exactly in line with pretty much anything else you
care to name which ends up in modern media hands.
Checking out what real doctors are saying about all this is very reassuring – I
mean those doctors who are either retired and have little to lose by telling the truth or who
possess great courage and consider the truth to be more important than their own short-term
career prospects.
if CV was real, there would be thousands if not millions of biohazard containers set up
across the world for 'mask disposal'. Just like the hospitals. 12 0 Reply kevin Nov 16, 2020
5:27 PM Reply to dtoc
@Ron
Unz Actual death by COVID alone would be a fraction of that, with most being mortality
displacement by COVID acting on one or a combination of comorbidities that would have proven
fatal over some time in the not-so-distant future. Some of the "excess" deaths of 2020 will
also be attributable to the aging of the population as a whole, as well as by increases of
the population in general, not even taking into account the healthiness or not of new
arrivals. Some of the excess or premature deaths will include deaths of despair as well as
death for other causes where treatment of other illnesses or conditions was postponed out of
fear of COVID.
What the political reaction to COVID most certainly is is a catalyst for world leaders to
take steps they could only dream of a few years ago; they couldn't shut down world travel and
national economies to save a world they assured us will die in twelve years, but they found
they could sell that tough medicine if they convinced enough of us it could kill a lot of us
in three weeks within the next years.
I look forward to your American Pravda article on this subject when we have the benefit of
a couple more years of hindsight, assuming they still let you publish. I might even want to
write it myself.
Perhaps, but a better explanation is that some evil tycoon(s) played the part of Karl
Stromberg who intended to nuke both Moscow and New York causing war and world-wide devastation,
as in the James Bond movie. It could be somebody like Bill Gates, who is a major investor in
Wuhan Lab. A fact-checking site with its
weasel language admitted that the Lab "has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, but Bill Gates can hardly be called a "partner" in the laboratory." Sure, not a
partner. Just an investor, and that is more important than a partner. And he is not the only
one; other multi-billionaires also are involved in bioresearch, in vaccine manufacturing, in
Big Pharma. "Glaxo, BlackRock, and Bill Gates are all partners, but not owners of Pfizer", says
another
fact-checker . "In 2015, Anthony Fauci did issue a USD 3.7 million grant to the Wuhan
Institute of Virology, but not to "create the coronavirus" – the
fact-checking site adds. Well, you could not possibly expect Fauci to word the grant in
such a straightforward way, could you?
Perhaps it is too formidable a job even for an evil tycoon like Gates. A plot of several
evil tycoons is more likely. Together, they could try to change the world and mankind to suit
them.
The evil tycoons could poison China on their New Year holiday and take this uppity state
down a ring or two. They could import the virus into the US to undermine and remove Trump whom
they hated. (He was certain to win the elections but for Corona.) They could poison Europe to
weaken it and make it more docile and obedient to their demands – and to buy their assets
on the cheap. Corona and lockdown did not harm them for they are normally withdrawn from the
bustle of the common man's life.
The billionaires control the media; that much we know, and the part media has played in the
Corona crisis was enormous. The media coverage of the crisis has a huge hidden cost. Try to
publish information you consider important on the front page of a newspaper. It will cost you a
lot. Still, all newspapers belonging to the Billionaires' Media block beginning with the New
York Times and ending with Haaretz gave at least a third of its front page to Corona news each
day. The sheer cost of this advertising runs into billions. Will we ever know who paid for
it?
Steven Soderbergh's (2011) film Contagion predicted many features of the Covid-19, notably
the origin of the virus. In the film, the disease originates from bats in China and is spread
through markets where contaminated pork meat is sold. How could Soderbergh (or his script
writer Scott Z. Burns) possibly know eight years before the event that the contagion should
originate in the Chinese bats? Who told him? Wouldn't you expect he knew something? Burns was
instructed by WHO experts, the CNN
site explains. Isn't it interesting that the same Bill Gates is a major donor of WHO? Is it
entirely impossible that already in 2011 Gates' people began to leak some details of the future
virus through their own WHO to Hollywood?
The tycoons could force a weak state to follow their instructions. Scientists do obey
orders: otherwise, no grants, no positions. In April 2020, the German
scientists were ordered , "to instill the fear of Corona". And they did it, as we learned
this week, producing numbers of dead on demand.
It seems that tycoons gained most from the Corona Crisis. Their assets grew by trillions,
while the assets of the middle classes decreased by the same amount. More importantly, all
states suffered from the crisis; they took loans and credit, they were responsible for their
citizens' health, while billionaires just had fun and enjoyed it. For this reason, I tend to
dismiss the case against states, be it the US or China, while (some) billionaires appear the
only possible villains.
These billionaires are able to influence people much better that the state. Consider Pierre
Omidyar. Besides being the owner of eBay, he is the force behind hundreds of NGOs. His
organisations form the 'progressive' agenda and train the foot soldiers of the Green Deal.
Roslyn
Fuller of Spiked-online checked the plethora of NGOs he employs.
She says his NGOs and charities are "engaged in 'social engineering' – that is, using
their resources to artificially change the structure of society to how they think it should be.
If successful this would amount to an extreme circumvention of democracy, utilising money not
just to win elections, but to substitute paid or subsidised content for actual support, and
thereby flip an entire political culture on to a different track by amplifying some voices and
drowning out others."
He is just one of the Masters of Discourse, next to the infamous George Soros. Facebook,
Google, Twitter and Amazon are even more powerful. The billionaires have immense clout and they
decide what we can and can't say and write. Just last week Amazon banned my Cabbala of
Power , a book that was sold by them for some ten years. The estimable The Unz
Review is banned on Facebook and shadow-banned on Google. Twitter switched-off President
Trump, showing who is the real boss of the United States. Probably almost all movements
described as 'leftists' nowadays are engineered by the tycoons like Omidyar or Soros. True left
had been left for dead on the battlefield of ideas.
The tycoons are directly involved in the Corona Crisis, because its results are good for
them. And it means they have us where they want to have us, and they won't let us out. We are
cancelled until we regain the government and cancel them.
SAGE, as British Corona management team rather presumptuously named itself (it included the
ridiculous figure of Neil Ferguson, he of the millions of predicted deaths), already declared that
lockdowns will be a part of British life for years to come, vaccine or no vaccine. The
Guardian , the Voice of the Oligarchs, gently pooh-poohed them, for it is not good to
declare what must happen right away. Let people have some hope, so they run to vaccinate
themselves, and then only afterwards can we reveal that, sorry, it does not help, you still
have to don a mask and observe social distance and, yes, suffer lockdowns. "It's much easier to
follow the rules if we think of them as temporary."
The plotters' plans aren't secret; they were described by Klaus Schwab in his book
The Great Reset .
Schwab is not a great thinker, being merely a weak scientist with just a few publications, and
not a good or even decent writer. He had to collaborate with a journalist Thierry Malleret to
produce the book. He is just a voice for the tycoons. But the question is, will he/they get
what they want?
My preliminary answer is No. We recently had an important event, Davos-2021, the online
gathering of tycoons and their intellectual henchmen. For the first time in many years, they
invited Vladimir Putin. Chairman Xi gave the first talk. The idea was to demonstrate that
Russia and China agree to their plans. I was very worried, I must admit, and the Chinaman's
speech didn't calm me (as opposed to our friend Pepe Escobar
who celebrated his appearance). Yes, Xi said China will proceed at its own speed and by its
own route but towards the same goals. Sustainable, inclusive, all the dog-whistle words were
there. I expected an even worse talk by Putin. For years he has wanted to be invited and
co-opted by the Western decision-makers, and here was a great opportunity to jump on their
bandwagon.
Bravo! Israel Shamir. I enjoyed every syllable of that essay. It frames the shocking
reality that is nowhere treated so forcefully in print in the decadent West. These tycoons
not only purchasse their corrupted governments but are positioned to trade them in concert
like Monopoly board properties, all in plain sight of our blind mass media. Putin
courageously stepped up a notch when he said as much to the Davos crowd and then
demonstratively restored to his own countrymen many of the basic freedoms that have just been
erased in the locked-down EU. How long will it take for Europe's venal career politicians to
realize they are in danger of becoming just expendable hirelings in the new world order they
have so gleefully promoted? Probably nothing short of a revolution could now save the United
States from the new feudalism. But Putin's warning must have resonated among the European
politicians, whose status and relevance still derives from a long tradition of statism with a
strong social components. Will the national governments finally grasp that the gravest threat
is not the hated populism but relegation to irrelevance by corporations and plutocrats. The
stakes are clear; either governments will reassert their prerogatives or plutocrats will
govern.
The next strong man we elect must be an actual STRONG man. I salute Trump for his genius
in identifying the real majority in this country and for forcing the techno-oligarchs into
overdoing their election steal. Now we need someone who is willing to establish real
authority on behalf of the un-queer.
The New York Times continues Trump's anti-China campaign by claiming that China
hindered a WHO investigation into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and is withholding
data.
Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to
understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, independent investigators for the
W.H.O. said on Friday.
The investigators, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Chinese city
of Wuhan, said disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that
they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both
sides.
China's continued resistance to revealing information about the early days of the
coronavirus outbreak, the scientists say, makes it difficult for them to uncover
important clues that could help stop future outbreaks of such dangerous diseases.
"If you are data focused, and if you are a professional," said Thea Kølsen
Fischer , a Danish epidemiologist on the team, then obtaining data is "like for a
clinical doctor looking at the patient and seeing them by your own eyes."
...
Peter Daszak , a member of the W.H.O. team and the president of EcoHealth Alliance in New
York, said the trip was emotionally draining, as he and the team came to terms with the
trauma of the early days of the pandemic. The team interviewed some of the first people
to fall ill with Covid-19 in Wuhan, as well as medical workers.
"The world doesn't realize, you know, that they were the first to get this thing," Dr.
Daszak said, "and they didn't know how bad it was."
While the Times claims that the Chinese have more data than they provided (they
don't) and insinuates that they have something to hide, the researchers quoted in its piece
reject both as nonsense.
Linking the NYT propaganda piece Peter Daszak refuted its basic tone:
This was NOT my experience on @WHO mission. As lead of animal/environment working
group I found trust & openness w/ my China counterparts . We DID get access to
critical new data throughout. We DID increase our understanding of likely spillover
pathways.
New data included env. & animal carcass testing, names of suppliers to Huanan
Market, analyses of excess mortality in Hubei, range of covid-like symptoms for months
prior, sequence data linked to early cases & site visits w/ unvetted live Q&A
etc. All in report coming soon!
What a convenient distraction from an investigation into Fort Detrick. Or even just a
brief summary of the reason for its closure and its sorry tale of gross mismanagement. Gee
look over there...
What else would or could we expect from a gutter publication like "The New York Times"?
I've been to New York at several "Times" -- at ages six, eight, sixteen and fifty-six --
and have observed the continued desaccitation and delapitation of the times there. As "for
instance" the renevenation of such other places I've lived in like Tehran,
Shànghâi, Bêijing, Hángzhou or (stragely enough) even Oslo and
Hälsingfors/Helsinki.
I find it astonishing that WHO denies that Covid originated in the Wuhan outbreak. It
was there that Fauci's NIAID did bat coronavirus enhancement research without
doing vaccine research. They did that there because they were not allowed to do such
dangerous research in any lab in the US! Did WHO investigate that?
National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr.
Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for
work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7
million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program
followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat
coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.
Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating
viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a
risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.
SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated
in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred
naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the
Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it's possible -- but not likely -- that the
pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)
I have heard that the virus originated first in bats in a district not far from Wuhan.
But it certainly seems likely that even that resulted from the Wuhan lab work. If not, one
would need some strong reason that they just happened to be doing bat coronavirus
enhancement research there and nowhere else in the world!
but as far as just making stuff up...generally. Really, the mainstream media most likely
to simply make stuff up are still Fox News, Breitbart, the tabloids (you know, like the
Murdochs' Star.)
They all repeat lies such as that "The Russians poisoned Skripal and his daughter", that
"Russia shot down MH17", that "Russia invaded Georgia", that "Russia fixed the 2016
election for Trump" and I am sure there are many other statements which are repeated over
and over again, in the MSM, as though they were established facts, though most of them are
merely barely arguable assertions.
The MSM lies and serves as the main vector for imperial propaganda and misinformation.
It's also the main medium for preparing populations to accept narratives in the event of
conflicts. Given that WE all know that, would not our time be better spent analysing
current contexts rather than frittered away trying hold these media to some
truth-in-reporting accountancy long ago abandoned? My response when told the NYT is full of
shit, is... and? The more on the 'left' (rofl) these media claim to be (e.g. The Guardian)
the worse their mendacity because they masquerade as progressive outlets and soften up
readers to accept lashings of BS.
That said, my favourite posts by b, and comments by the community here, are analytical,
like the Russia-EU situation. Who cares what misinformation is circulated by commercial
purveyors of hype? On the subject of China, for example, what's happening in Taiwan? Are
they going ahead with their ultra-provocative 'independence' referendum?
Viruses are thoroughly studied all around the world – among other things for
creating new vaccines (see Sputnik V). They are efficient vectors and their capability to
bypass human immune system is rather useful.
Wuhan lab got its P4 security level some years ago in cooperation with Institute Pasteur
and French state. It is worthwhile to know that IP has patented coronaviruses in attempt to
create malaria vaccine (*).
At one moment "gain of function" research was banned in United States by Barack Obama.
It continued, but was moved overseas to China. Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak from
Ecohealth Alliance (and WHO) were both involved.
So blaming China is really a two-edged sword – once they through caution to the
wind the whole cardhouse could be crumbling down.
Lab leak is a real possibility – Alina Chan (@Ayjchan) with colleagues has written
extensively on this subject. It cannot be outruled.
Fourtillan gained widespread publicity when a recent film by Pierre Barnérias,
giving a voice to critics of the official narrative, became viral in France.
In Hold-Up, Professor #Fourtillan spoke of his concern that the COVID-19 crisis was
fabricated and is being used to impose a dangerous vaccine on the world population:
CLIP:
Extrait Holdup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z1-O-vsoU8&feature=youtu.be
Among the public documents Fourtillan has analyzed and made public are patents for
SARS-COV-1, which contains parts of the malaria virus, dating back to 2003. The patents
were used by various labs to develop vaccines.
2011 saw the Institut Pasteur filing a further patent application for "SARS-COV-2,"
identical to the previous one, according to Fourtillan, who says this was done because
commercial exploitation of the first patent started in 2003 and would expire 20 years
later, in 2023
The Wuhan P4 lab. was built following an agreement between France and China signed in
2004..in 2017, France's then–Interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, joined the
official opening ceremony of the Wuhan Institute of Virology's P4 lab
together with Yves Lévy, co-president of the steering committee. Lévy is
the husband of Agnès Buzyn, who was France's health minister when the COVID-19
crisis erupted. She was responsible for signing the decree that banned over-the-counter
sales of #hydroxychloroquine in France
Viruses are thoroughly studied all around the world – among other things for
creating new vaccines (see Sputnik V). They are efficient vectors and their capability to
bypass human immune system is rather useful.
Wuhan lab got its P4 security level some years ago in cooperation with Institute Pasteur
and French state. It is worthwhile to know that IP has patented coronaviruses in attempt to
create malaria vaccine (*).
At one moment "gain of function" research was banned in United States by Barack Obama.
It continued, but was moved overseas to China. Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak from
Ecohealth Alliance (and WHO) were both involved.
So blaming China is really a two-edged sword – once they through caution to the
wind the whole cardhouse could be crumbling down.
Lab leak is a real possibility – Alina Chan (@Ayjchan) with colleagues has written
extensively on this subject. It cannot be outruled.
Fourtillan gained widespread publicity when a recent film by Pierre Barnérias,
giving a voice to critics of the official narrative, became viral in France.
In Hold-Up, Professor #Fourtillan spoke of his concern that the COVID-19 crisis was
fabricated and is being used to impose a dangerous vaccine on the world population:
CLIP:
Extrait Holdup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z1-O-vsoU8&feature=youtu.be
Among the public documents Fourtillan has analyzed and made public are patents for
SARS-COV-1, which contains parts of the malaria virus, dating back to 2003. The patents
were used by various labs to develop vaccines.
2011 saw the Institut Pasteur filing a further patent application for "SARS-COV-2,"
identical to the previous one, according to Fourtillan, who says this was done because
commercial exploitation of the first patent started in 2003 and would expire 20 years
later, in 2023
The Wuhan P4 lab. was built following an agreement between France and China signed in
2004..in 2017, France's then–Interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, joined the
official opening ceremony of the Wuhan Institute of Virology's P4 lab
together with Yves Lévy, co-president of the steering committee. Lévy is
the husband of Agnès Buzyn, who was France's health minister when the COVID-19
crisis erupted. She was responsible for signing the decree that banned over-the-counter
sales of #hydroxychloroquine in France
Viruses are thoroughly studied all around the world – among other things for
creating new vaccines (see Sputnik V). They are efficient vectors and their capability to
bypass human immune system is rather useful.
Wuhan lab got its P4 security level some years ago in cooperation with Institute Pasteur
and French state. It is worthwhile to know that IP has patented coronaviruses in attempt to
create malaria vaccine (*).
At one moment "gain of function" research was banned in United States by Barack Obama.
It continued, but was moved overseas to China. Anthony Fauci and Peter Daszak from
Ecohealth Alliance (and WHO) were both involved.
So blaming China is really a two-edged sword – once they through caution to the
wind the whole cardhouse could be crumbling down.
Lab leak is a real possibility – Alina Chan (@Ayjchan) with colleagues has written
extensively on this subject. It cannot be outruled.
Fourtillan gained widespread publicity when a recent film by Pierre Barnérias,
giving a voice to critics of the official narrative, became viral in France.
In Hold-Up, Professor #Fourtillan spoke of his concern that the COVID-19 crisis was
fabricated and is being used to impose a dangerous vaccine on the world population:
CLIP:
Extrait Holdup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z1-O-vsoU8&feature=youtu.be
Among the public documents Fourtillan has analyzed and made public are patents for
SARS-COV-1, which contains parts of the malaria virus, dating back to 2003. The patents
were used by various labs to develop vaccines.
2011 saw the Institut Pasteur filing a further patent application for "SARS-COV-2,"
identical to the previous one, according to Fourtillan, who says this was done because
commercial exploitation of the first patent started in 2003 and would expire 20 years
later, in 2023
The Wuhan P4 lab. was built following an agreement between France and China signed in
2004..in 2017, France's then–Interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, joined the
official opening ceremony of the Wuhan Institute of Virology's P4 lab
together with Yves Lévy, co-president of the steering committee. Lévy is
the husband of Agnès Buzyn, who was France's health minister when the COVID-19
crisis erupted. She was responsible for signing the decree that banned over-the-counter
sales of #hydroxychloroquine in France
Peter AU1 @68: "The most likely source at the moment for the jump from bats to humans
appears to be mink. Farmed mink."
Yes. Farmed mink living in cages at Fort Detrick. You cannot get rapid generational
mutations in the virus in a homogeneous population as that population gets infected with
the same strain all at once. The population must be isolated into small groups that are
sequentially infected from one group to the next in order to force rapid adaptation of the
virus.
We are still talking several hundreds of years of mutation in the virus that somehow
occurred in just a couple years. Obviously the virus was edited from its natural state and
then cycled through dozens of generations of infection in caged mink. The intention of
those dozens of virus generations in mink was partially to obfuscate the genetic code and
hide the edits.
Posted by: A.L. | Feb 13 2021 18:04 utc | 8 -- "Now if only the NYT will focus on NY and
write about its own "exemplary" covid 19 response and totally "transparent" handling of
nursing home covid 19 deaths figures..."
Good riposte.
However, I have noticed that whenever the MSM chooses to call out a misdemeanour, they
would castigate a single individual (eg. they might report that Cuomo or Newsom has been
asked to go fly a kite), but they NEVER blame the entire US government.
On the other hand, they pin ALL wrongdoing in China on "the evil CCP regime", and not
the individual Chinese governor or bureaucrat at fault.
It was a possibility until the WHO investigation team visited the Wuhan lab and ruled it
out. The SARS-CoV-2 is not in the lab's "catalogue" (I don't know how you call that in
English) and there was no signs of any leaks of unprocessed samples.
The links you posted are from December 2020, when the speculation was still somewhat
valid (even if a long shot).
--//--
@ Posted by: jean | Feb 13 2021 20:37 utc | 31
Which makes him the ideal investigator. He knows which variations of the coronavirus are
from labs and which aren't.
Trust does not belong at all anywhere near science. Critical thinking in relation to
science is important in evaluating an existing hypothesis and the data that goes along
to support it , but critical thinking alone is not sufficient, if the data is missing
it is not science, because there is no way to falsify the often outrageous claims (That is
where we are with "global warming" and "covid").
Also required is imagination, without imagination you cannot formulate new laws from the
information available and then you will never progress.
It boils down to being able to verify and replicate a scientific hypothesis through data
and experiments, trust has no place in it. This also why "peer review" is fundamentally
unscientific since it mostly functions as a gate-keeping mechanism defending mainstream
views.
The Essence Of
Science In 60 Seconds (Richard Feynman) If it disagrees with experiment, its wrong. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess
is, it doesn't matter how smart who made the guess is, or what his name is. If it
disagrees with experiment, its wrong.
Transferred to journalism, a similar rule must apply. If a claim is made that cannot be
verified independently, it is not journalism.
Of course is SARS-CoV-2 not registered under that name at Wuhan in the records of 2019.
The designation "SARS-CoV-2" stems from the WHO and has been introduced only in Feb. 2020.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology did however work with RaTG13 - the bat virus from south
China - which is the closests known relative to SARS-CoV-2. In fact, it was Shi Zhengli
from the Wuhan Institute of Virology who had discovered RaTG13 in 2013.
I have never claimed that SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon. Gain-of-function research isn`t
about creating bioweapons. It is about modifying viruses that accure naturally in such a
manner that they mimic hypothetical viruses that could emerge naturally in the future and
might pose a serious epidemic threat. The rationale behind this is that by doing research
with such viruses before they emerge provides mankind with the knowledge to fight them when
a similar virus eventually does emerge naturally.
I have also never claimed that SARS-CoV-2 -emerged- at the wet market in Wuhan. I wrote
that it had been -detected- there first.
Global TimesEditorial today proves
conclusively that Jake Sullivan is merely continuing Pompeo's policy of lies and
distortions while misusing science in a failing attempt to politicize the pandemic and
concludes:
"While the new US administration claims that it is different from its predecessor, it
has hardly kept its distance from the previous policies on major issues involving China and
COVID-19. Such self-contradictive moves will only cripple the current administration's
abilities to make clear and resolute policies. The dominant authority of science and
rationality is fading in American society, and desire often goes ahead of facts. This is
the most significant sign that the US is declining."
How's that for a swift kick to the groin--BidenCo is no different from TrumpCo. Or maybe
this was the blow:
"The only goal of the US to attack China with COVID-19 is to cover its own ineptitude.
But the world will not always be fooled by the US."
Yes! China is now enjoying the Lunar New Year and welcoming the Year of the Ox with
extremely few pandemic issues while the Outlaw US Empire continues to record 100,000+ new
cases daily and a death toll that's not abating. In other words, its policy remains a
failure--one that it can't hide.
It has yet to dawn on the Neoliberalcons that every time they open their mouths to smear
Russia or China all they accomplish is digging the hole they're mired inside deeper, nor
have they figured out that it's a Credibility Hole that lies and such only serve to deepen
while Truth is what fills it in. But Truth is something they cannot abide since their
entire gambit is based on lies and falsehoods.
Typically simplistic American "mindset". To them, it is always either-or, black-white,
good guys-bad guys. False choices. False logic. I do not read vk's bombast, but this phrase
jumped out. Neither do I read those who "challenge" Gruffy. It is all about so little time
to read so much. And about sense and sensibility.
Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 14 2021 21:53 utc | 99 -- "SARS Mk.II was neither precise
nor intended to be very devastating.... just the closest that the CIA could find off the
shelf to a "Goldilocks virus".....
Highly plausible fit to the events as played out on the ground. We can also suggest that
Wuhan was a field test for a virus product undergoing continuing "improvement". I note that
China mounted a war-response, continue to maintain a war-footing (medically speaking), and
now counter-strike with suggestions for the US leadership to invite the WHO to inspect
their bio-labs.
I'm seeing a lot of people here are just East vs West cultural warriors nonsense. For
them, the West is bad, thus the East is now the "shining city in the hill".
I'd echo vk and Norwegian here, don't trust anyone without verifiable evidences, analyze
the contents (if it's good for your health, your livelihood, will it benefit your people?)
and judge them based on that.
The exact same person can be right about certain things but can be wrong about certain
things.
Don't be a contrarian who puts your position as the opposite position of your supposed
enemy (i.e. Putin is good because he's anti-USA, likewise for China and WHO/UN).
Many things could be done. How about a fully paid six week lockdown?
b doesn't provide the context for Biden's remark. Biden was walking back his initial
optimism about defeating the virus by inoculating 100 million people. And today Biden
surrogates even walked-back that goal by saying they want 100 million SHOTS to be given (the
current vaccines require TWO shots).
Furthermore, b is asking for trouble by advocating for a new lock-down. Yet, MAGICALLY,
there is no longer push-back from the astro-turf libertarian mob. LOL.
But it's unclear if lock-downs would work. Most of us already live in virtual "lockdown"
because everyone that's not essential works remotely; most activities are cancelled; and
testing is now ubiquitous. Plus almost everyone wears masks now in public and practice social
distancing.
Further complicating a call for more/more stringent lock-down is that there are a lot of
false positives and possibly some counting of influenza deaths as Covid-19 deaths. (Note:
Acknowledging that doesn't mean that I don't believe the pandemic isn't real and very
deadly.)
What do we NOT DO that successful countries have done?
Quarantine the sick
CDC only recently acknowledged that sick people infect others in their household.
The household-infected then spread the virus when while they are assymptomatic.
Effective contact tracing
Is there any western country that does this well? AFAICT USA sucks at it.
Lancet Study
Why would anyone trust what Lancet has to say after they completely discredited
themselves? oldhippie and Lurk explain how "the authorities" are still screwing around with
bogus studies.
Thank you, JR. Yes, the Lancet has comprehensively discredited itself. So has nearly all
of the medical firmament.
There is nothing to replace that medical firmament. Each of us pretends we are able to
discover which authority and which evidence we are ready to believe in. None of us has
particular ability to do that. For myself I will accept the current guidance from WHO that
lockdowns are ineffective and meaningless. I accept the older guidance from Johns Hopkins
that lockdowns are political, not medical.
And otherwise, for myself, consider WHO as largely a cats paw for Bill Gates and Hopkins
more like an arm of the intelligence community than a medical resource. Cue the WHOs on first
routine. All madness.
Anyone who tells me to be totally passive and obedient and to STFU while waiting for
inevitable doom is simply an enemy. That would be half of this bar? And why argue? "The
science" is any damn thing any advocate wants it to be. I didn't drag the science down to
that level. The scientists and doctors took the money and did it to themselves.
Can the hysterical little girls freaking out about tourists in the Capitol building do me
one little favor? I just want to see one video clip of rioting in DC back on the 6th.
All of these posts and we don't have a single link to evidence of rioting or mob-like
behavior. This is important because years from now people reading this thread may not clearly
remember what you imagined you saw and need some visual reminders of this imaginary rioting
that you are talking about. Please include some links or people of tomorrow will suspect that
what you little girls are wailing about didn't happen. In particular I want to see some
imagery of "baseball bats and metal pipes" on the scene in DC. Is this too much to ask
for?
Biden has previously said he plans to pass new legislation aimed at combating 'domestic
terrorism'
In the wake of pro-Trump demonstrators entering the US Capitol Building, Joe Biden made it
clear that he
views the incident as "terrorism" in comments on Thursday.
"Don't dare call them protesters," he said from Wilmington, Deleware. "They were a riotous
mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It's that basic. It's that simple."
As The Wall Street Journal reported in November , Biden has said he plans to
make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism. The Capitol incident will likely
speed up the process of crafting domestic terror-related legislation that could have grave
implications for the civil liberties of Americans.
Biden's transition team is also reportedly considering new "Red Flag" laws that would give
law enforcement more authority to confiscate firearms.
"I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing," he was quoted as saying by
the New Republic in 2001. "And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill," he said,
referring to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.
In a
2002 Senate hearing on FBI counterterrorism efforts, Biden again took credit for creating
the Patriot Act. "Civil libertarians were opposed to it," he said. "Right after 1994, and you
can ask the attorney general this, because I got a call when he introduced the Patriot Act.
He said, 'Joe, I'm introducing the act basically as you wrote it in 1994.'"
Democrats in Congress are also calling to prioritize domestic terrorism. Rep. Elissa
Slotkin (D-MI), a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official, made her priorities clear
in
an interview with MSNBC .
"The post 9/11 era is over. We are in a new era. We had a generational event with the
infiltration of the Capitol," Slotkin said. "The single greatest national security threat
right now is our internal division. It's the threat of domestic terrorism."
By allowing the protesters into the Capital Building, the chance to challenge the certification of the various states' electors
was lost. This was Trump's and his supporters' last chance. They have been played like a piano. Quite brilliant, in its way. Game over.
There was a curious
lack of resistance from the relevant authority. While Trump proved to be an incompetent and a coward, this looks like another Pelosi
dirty trick similar to Ukrainegate ? Russiagate and Ukrainegate taught him nothing.
That the incoming president declares a number of activist from the opposing party to be 'terrorists' demonstrates how unqualified
he is for that job.
Is this a terrorist? These were not terrorists but tourists who came from all over the states to Washington for fun and to register
their disagreement with the 'elites'.
Those rabbles were in no way terrorists. They were not even a mob. Most of them were out-of-town rednecks who felt that they had
been wronged. They wanted to express that. They were surprised when they found how easy it was to enter the Capitol and they apparently
took more time to take pictures than to rearrange the furniture.
[L]et's be clear about what did not take place at the Capitol Building last night. This was not a fascist coup, as so many shrill,
supposedly liberal commentators are claiming. Their flagrant use of the word 'fascist' to describe every political movement they
disapprove of is an insult to reason and history. This wasn't a coup full stop. The National Guard suppressed the morons, the
barricades were put back up, and even their hero Donald Trump told them to go home. A coup is a conscious effort to illegally
seize power from the government. These people couldn't even believe they made it into the Capitol Building. They were like children
finding a candy store unguarded.
A children's game. Indeed.
Yet Biden and others are furious about the stunt because it lifted the veil off their vaunted U.S. 'democracy' and its empty rituals:
Nicholas J. Fuentes @NickJFuentes - 21:01
UTC · Jan 7, 2021
The US Capitol is hardly a "sacred temple of democracy," it's the sleaziest brothel in the world, totally bought and controlled
by powerful interest groups and foreign governments. Who are they kidding?
Congressional processes are dirty fights about the distribution of the loot. There is nothing sacred about it. Just consider the
massive
bribes that were taken during the Georgia Senate races. Those hundreds of millions of 'donations' will have to be paid back in
kind.
The threat inflation, the wild claims about a fascist coup, are transparent efforts by the cosseted political and cultural elites
to endow their project with moral importance; to give their restoration of managerial, technocratic power after the four-year
populist experiment – which is fundamentally the project that Biden and his influential supporters are currently engaged in –
the gloss of historical urgency. It is mission creation.
Worse, this narrative-building will allow the elites to circumscribe even more forms of political thought and speech than they
already desire to do , on the basis that the latent fascism among the American rabble is likely to be stirred up by inflammatory
ideas and commentary. Indeed, we've already been given a chilling glimpse of this post-incursion clampdown on 'violent' speech
in Twitter's extraordinary decision to ban, outright, three of Trump's tweets last night and to lock him out of his account for
12 hours.
It strikes me that this unilateral use of corporate power by Silicon Valley to prevent the democratically elected president
of the United States from engaging with millions of his voters and supporters, to physically forbid him from partaking in online
discussion, is a grave assault on democracy, too. More grave, I would say, than the immoral and anti-democratic incursion of the
Capitol Building. Already, right away, we are seeing that the threat-inflating response to last night's events will likely have
longer-lasting negative consequences for open debate and democratic norms than the thing itself.
Biden is famous for mixing his words up. He meant to say that the protesters were "domestic tourists" . I'm sure he meant
to thank them for doing their part to revitalize America's service economy.
he World Health Organization has changed the definition of "herd immunity" on the Covid
section of their website, inserting the claim that it is a "concept used in vaccination", and
requires a vaccine to be achieved.
Both of these statements are total falsehoods, which is demonstrated by the WHO's own
website back in June, and every dictionary definition of "herd immunity" you can find.
To quote the WHO's own original definition:
Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a
population is immune either through vaccination or a natural immunity developed through
previous infection.
This definition was posted on the WHO's website on June 9th of this year, and conforms with
the general usage of the term for generations .
'Herd immunity', also known as 'population immunity', is a concept used for vaccination,
in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is
reached.
No explanation is offered for the change, in fact note of the change is made on the website
at all.
We're only aware of the change because screencaps of the original exist:
The new definition, aside from being inaccurate and off-handedly disposing of decades of
epidemiological research, is also contradictory. It includes the phrase:
Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to
it."
Which is newspeak doublethink nonsense. The entire point of vaccination IS "exposing" people
to the virus.
This revised, inaccurate and contradictory definition of "herd immunity" was first expressed
in a speech by WHO Director General Thedros Adhanom on October 12th. Within three days that
speech had been added, word for word, to the website. And within a month of the change, the UK
had approved the first commercial vaccine for Sars-Cov-2 infection.
We're truly in an Orwellian timeline, where the powers that be can simply change the meaning
of words and phrases to suit their purpose.
"... I'm still stunned that the paper did a study that confirmed what people have suspected, namely that a high cycle threshold used on PCR testing was creating the appearance of a pandemic that might have long receded. The testing mania was generating wild illusions of millions of "asymptomatic" carriers and spreaders. How severe was the problem? Read this and weep ..."
"... up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found. ..."
"... A major reason for the ongoing lockdowns are due to the pouring in of positive case numbers from massive testing. If 90% of these positive tests are false, we have a major problem. The whole basis of the panic disappears. All credit to the Times for running the article but why no follow up and why no change in its editorial stance? ..."
"... I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life -- schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned -- will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. ..."
"... During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely isolating them ..."
"... in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children's immune systems. ..."
"... The psychological effects of loneliness are a health risk comparable with risk obesity or smoking. Anxiety and depression have spiked since lockdown orders went into effect. ..."
The paper of record in 2020 shifted dramatically to the most illiberal stance possible on
the virus, pushing for full lockdowns, and ignoring or burying any information that might
contradict the case for this unprecedented experiment in social and economic control. This
article highlights the exceptions.
...
Even within the blatant and aggressive pro-lockdown bias, and consistent with the way the
New York Times does its work, the paper has not been entirely barren of truth about Covid and
lockdowns. Below I list five times that the news section of the paper, however inadvertently
and however buried deep within the paper, actually told the truth.
I'm still stunned that the paper did a study that confirmed what people have suspected,
namely that a high cycle threshold used on PCR testing was creating the appearance of a
pandemic that might have long receded. The testing mania was generating wild illusions of
millions of "asymptomatic" carriers and spreaders. How severe was the problem? Read this and
weep:
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in
Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried
barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a
database maintained by The Times . If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New
York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to
isolate and submit to contact tracing.
The implications of this revelation are incredible. A major reason for the ongoing lockdowns
are due to the pouring in of positive case numbers from massive testing. If 90% of these
positive tests are false, we have a major problem. The whole basis of the panic disappears. All
credit to the Times for running the article but why no follow up and why no change in its
editorial stance?
Gone missing this year in public commentary has been much at all about naturally acquired
immunities from the virus, even though the immune system deserves credit for why human kind has
lasted this long even in the presence of pathogens. That the Times ran this piece was another
exception in otherwise exceptionally bad coverage. It said in part:
Scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the virus are now starting to see
encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild
symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of new studies suggests. Disease-fighting antibodies, as well
as immune cells called B cells and T cells that are capable of recognizing the virus, appear
to persist months after infections have resolved -- an encouraging echo of the body's
enduring response to other viruses .
Researchers
have yet to
find unambiguous evidence that coronavirus reinfections are occurring, especially within
the few months that the virus has been rippling through the human population. The prospect of
immune memory "helps to explain that," Dr. Pepper said.
Data from monkeys suggests that even low levels of antibodies can prevent serious illness
from the virus, if not a re-infection. Even if circulating antibody levels are undetectable,
the body retains the memory of the pathogen. If it crosses paths with the virus again,
balloon-like cells that live in the bone marrow can mass-produce antibodies within hours.
It's still a shock that so many schools closed their doors this year, partly from disease
panic but also from compliance with orders from public health officials. Nothing like this has
happened, and the kids have been brutalized as a result, not to mention the families who found
themselves unable to cope at home. For millions of students, a whole year of schooling is gone.
And they have been taught to treat their fellow human beings as nothing more than disease
vectors. So it was amazing to read this story in the Times :
So far, schools do not seem to be stoking community transmission of the coronavirus,
according to data emerging from random testing in the United States and Britain. Elementary
schools especially seem to seed remarkably few infections.
Byline Karen Yourish, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Danielle Ivory and Mitch Smith
Another strangely missing part of mainstream coverage has been honesty about the risk
gradient in the population. It is admitted even by the World Health Organization that the case
fatality rate for Covid-19 from people under the age of 70 is 0.05%. The serious danger is for
people with low life expectancy and broken immune systems. Knowing that, as we have since
February, we should have expected the need for special protection for nursing homes. It was
incredibly obvious. Instead of doing that, some governors shoved Covid patients into nursing
homes. Astonishing. In any case, the above article (and
this one
too) was one of the few times this year that the Times actually spelled out the many thousands
times risk to the aged and sick as versus the young and healthy.
Notable Opinion
columns
The op-ed page of the paper mirrored the news coverage, with only a handful of exceptions.
Those are noted below.
I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this
near total meltdown of normal life -- schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned --
will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus
itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The
unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of
the first order.
Worse, I fear our efforts will do little to contain the virus, because we have a
resource-constrained, fragmented, perennially underfunded public health system. Distributing
such limited resources so widely, so shallowly and so haphazardly is a formula for failure.
How certain are you of the best ways to protect your most vulnerable loved ones? How readily
can you get tested?
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the
largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping
children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely
isolating them. In doing so, we have prevented large numbers of them from becoming infected
or transmitting the virus. But in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we
may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children's immune
systems.
Our mental health suffers, too. The psychological effects of loneliness are a health risk
comparable with risk obesity or smoking. Anxiety and depression have spiked since lockdown
orders went into effect. The weeks immediately following them saw nearly an 18 percent jump
in overdose deaths and, as of last month, more than 40 states had reported increases. One in
four young adults age 18 to 25 reported seriously considering suicide within the 30-day
window of a recent study. Experts fear that suicides may increase; for young Americans, these
concerns are even more acute. Calls to domestic violence hotlines have soared. America's
elderly are dying from the isolation that was meant to keep them safe.
This has been a year of astonishing policy failure. We are surrounded by devastation
conceived and cheered by intellectuals and their political handmaidens...
The errors number in the thousands, so please consider the following little more than a
first draft, a mere guide to what will surely be unearthed in the coming months and years. We
trusted these people with our lives and liberties and here is what they did with that
trust.
Anthony Fauci says lockdowns are not possible in the United States (January
24):
"That's something that I don't think we could possibly do in the United States, I can't
imagine shutting down New York or Los Angeles, but the judgement on the part of the Chinese
health authorities is that given the fact that it's spreading throughout the provinces it's
their judgement that this is something that in fact is going to help in containing it.
Whether or not it does or does not is really open to question because historically when you
shut things down it doesn't have a major effect."
US government and WHO officials advise against mask use (February and March)
When mask sales spiked due to widespread individual adoption in the early weeks of the
pandemic, numerous US government and WHO officials took to the airwaves to describe masks as
ineffective and discourage their use.
By mid-summer, all had reversed course and encouraged mask-wearing in the general public as
an essential tool for halting the pandemic. Fauci
essentially conceded that he lied to the public in order to prevent a shortage on masks,
whereas other health officials did an about-face on the scientific claims around masking.
While mainstream epidemiology literature stressed the ambiguous nature of evidence
surrounding masks
as recently as 2019 , these scientists were suddenly certain that masks were something of a
magic bullet for Covid. It turns out that both positions are likely wrong. Masks appear to have
marginal effects at diminishing spread, especially in highly infectious settings and around the
vulnerable. But their effectiveness at combating Covid has also been grossly exaggerated, as
illustrated by the fact that mask adoption reached
near-universal levels in the US by the summer with little discernible effect on the course
of the pandemic.
Anthony Fauci 's
decimal error in estimating Covid's fatality rates (March 11)
Fauci testified before Congress in early March where he was asked to estimate the severity
of the disease in comparison to influenza. His testimony that Covid was "10 times more lethal
than the seasonal flu" stoked widespread alarm and provided a major impetus for the decision to
go into lockdown.
The problem, as Ronald Brown documented in an
epidemiology journal article , is that Fauci based his estimates on a conflation of the
Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) and Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for influenza, leading him to
exaggerate the comparative danger of Covid by an order of magnitude. Fauci's error –
which he further compounded in a late February article for the New England Journal of
Medicine – helped to convince Congress of the need for drastic lockdown measures,
while also spreading panic in the media and general public. As of this writing Fauci has not
acknowledged the magnitude of his error, nor has the journal corrected his article.
"Two weeks to flatten the curve" (March 16)
The lockdowners settled on a catchy slogan in mid-March to justify their unprecedented
shuttering of economic and social life around the globe: two weeks to flatten the curve. The
White House
Covid task force aggressively promoted this line , as did the news media and much of the
epidemiology profession. The logic behind the slogan came from the
ubiquitous graph showing (1) a steep caseload that would overwhelm our hospital system, or
(2) a mitigated alternative that would spread the caseload out over several weeks, making it
manageable.
To get to graph #2, society would need to buckle up for two weeks of shelter-in-place orders
until the capacity issue could be managed. Indeed, we were told that if we did not accept this
solution the hospital system would enter into catastrophic failure in only 10 days, as former
DHS pandemic adviser Tom Bossert claimed in a widely-circulated interview and Washington
Post column on March 11.
Two weeks came and went, then the rationale on which they were sold to the public shifted.
Hospitals were no longer on the verge of being overwhelmed – indeed most hospitals
nationwide remained well under capacity, with only a tiny number of exceptions in the worst-hit
neighborhoods of New York City.
A US Navy hospital ship sent to relieve New York departed
a month later after serving only 182 patients , and a pop-up hospital in the city's Javits
Convention Center
sat mostly empty . But the lockdowns remained in place, as did the emergency orders
justifying them. Two weeks became a month, which became two months, which became almost a year.
We were no longer "flattening the curve" – a strategy premised on saving the hospital
system from a threat than never manifested – but instead refocused on using lockdowns as
a general suppression strategy against the disease itself. In short, the epidemiology
profession sold us a bill of goods.
Neil Ferguson predicts a "best case" US scenario of 1.1 million deaths (March
20)
The name Neil Ferguson, the lead modeler and chief spokesman for Imperial College London's
pandemic response team, has become synonymous with lockdown alarmism for good reason. Ferguson
has a long track record of making grossly exaggerated predictions of
catastrophic death tolls for almost every single disease that comes along, and urging
aggressive policy responses to the same including lockdowns.
Covid was no different, and Ferguson assumed center stage when he released a highly influential model
of the virus's death forecasts for the US and UK. Ferguson appeared with UK Prime Minister
Boris Johnson on March 16 to announce the shift toward lockdowns (with no small irony, he was
coming down with Covid himself at the time and may have been the
patient zero of a super-spreader event that ran through Downing Street and infected Johnson
himself).
Across the Atlantic, Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx cited Ferguson's model as a direct
justification for locking down the US. There was a problem though: Ferguson had a bad habit of
dramatically hyping his own predictions to political leaders and the press. The Imperial
College paper modeled a broad range of scenarios including death tolls that ranged from tens of
thousands to over 2 million, but Ferguson's public statements only stressed the latter –
even though the paper itself conceded that such an extreme "worst case" scenario was highly
unrealistic. A telling example came on March 20th when
the New York Times's Nicholas Kristof contacted the Imperial College modeler to ask about
the most likely scenario for the United States. As Kristof related to his readers, "I asked
Ferguson for his best case. "About 1.1 million deaths," he said."
Researchers in Sweden use the Imperial College model to predict 95,000 deaths (April
10)
After Neil Ferguson's shocking death toll predictions for the US and UK captivated
policymaker attention and drove both governments into lockdown, researchers in other countries
began adapting the Imperial College model to their own circumstances. Usually, these models
sought to reaffirm the decisions of each country to lock down. The government of Sweden,
however, had decided to buck the trend, setting the stage for a natural experiment to test the
Imperial model's performance.
In early April a team of researchers at Uppsala University adapted the Imperial model to
Sweden's population and demographics and ran its projections. Their result? If Sweden stayed
the course and did not lock down, it could expect a catastrophic 96,000 deaths by early summer.
The authors of the study recommended going into immediate lockdown, but since Sweden lagged
behind Europe in adopting such measures they also predicted that this "best case" option would
reduce deaths to "only" 30,000.
By early June when the 96,000 prediction was supposed to come true, Sweden had recorded
4,600 deaths. Six months later, Sweden has about 8,000 deaths – a severe pandemic to be
sure, but
an order of magnitude smaller than what the modelers predicted . Facing embarrassment from
these results, Ferguson and Imperial College attempted to distance
themselves from the Swedish adaptation of their model in early May. Yet the Uppsala team's
projections closely matched Imperial's own UK and US predictions when scaled to reflect their
population sizes. In short, the Imperial model catastrophically failed one of the few clear
natural experiment tests of its predictive ability.
Scientists suggest that ocean spray spreads Covid (April 2)
In the second week of the lockdowns several newspapers in California promoted a bizarre
theory: Covid could spread by ocean spray (although the paper later walked back the
headline-grabbing claim, it is outlined
here in the Los Angeles Times ). According to this theory – initially promoted by a
group of biologists who study bacterial infection connected to storm runoff – the Covid
virus washed down storm gutters and into the ocean, where the ocean breeze would kick it up
into the air and infect people on the nearby beaches. As silly as this theory now sounds, it
helped to inform California's initially draconian enforcement of lockdowns on its public
beaches.
The same week that this modern-day miasmic drift theory appeared, police in Malibu
even arrested a lone paddleboarder for going into the ocean during the lockdown – all
while citing the possibility that the ocean breeze carried Covid with it.
Neil Ferguson predicts catastrophic death tolls in US states that reopen (May
24)
Fresh off of their exaggerated predictions from March, the Imperial College team led by Neil
Ferguson doubled down on alarmist modeling. As several US states started to reopen in late
April and May, Ferguson and his colleagues published a new model predicting another
catastrophic wave of deaths by the mid-summer. Their model focused on 5 states with both
moderate and severe outbreaks during the first wave. If they reopened, according to the
Imperial team's model, New York could face up to 3,000 deaths per day by July.
Florida could hit as high as 4,000, and California could hit 5,000 daily deaths. Keeping in
mind that these projections were for each state alone, they exceed the daily death toll peaks
for the entire country in both the fall and spring. Showing just how bad the Imperial model
was, the actual death toll by mid-July in several of the examined states even fell below the
lower confidence boundary of its projected count . While Covid remains a threat in all 5
states, the post-reopening explosion of deaths predicted by Imperial College and used to argue
for keeping the lockdowns in place never happened.
Anthony Fauci credits lockdowns for beating the virus in Europe (July 31)
In late July
Anthony Fauci offered additional testimony to Congress. His message credited Europe's heavy
lockdowns with defeating the virus, whereas he blamed the United States for reopening too early
and for insufficient aggressiveness in the initial lockdowns. As Fauci stated at the time, "If
you look at what happened in Europe, when they shut down or locked down or went to shelter in
place -- however you want to describe it -- they really did it to the tune of about 95% plus of
the country did that."
The message was clear: the United States should have followed Europe, but failed to do so
and got a summer wave of Covid instead. Fauci's entire argument however was based on a string of falsehoods
and errors.
Mobility data from the US clearly showed that most Americans were staying home during the
spring outbreak, with a recorded decline that matched Germany, the Netherlands, and several
other European countries. Contrary to Fauci's claim, the US was actually slower than most of
Europe to reopen. Furthermore, his praise of Europe collapsed in the early fall when almost all
of the lockdown countries in Europe experienced severe second waves – just like the
locked down regions of the United States.
New Zealand and Australia declare themselves Covid-free (August-present)
New Zealand and Australia have thus far weathered the pandemic with extremely low case
counts, leading many epidemiologists and journalists to conflate these results with evidence of
their successful and replicable mitigation policies. In reality, New Zealand and Australia
opted for the medieval ' Prince Prospero' strategy of
attempting to wall themselves from the world until the pandemic passes – an approach that
is highly dependent on their unique geographies.
As island nations with comparatively lower international travel than North America and
Europe, both countries shut down their borders before the as-of-yet undetected virus became
widespread and have remained closed ever since. It's a costly strategy in terms of its economic
impact and personal displacement, but it kept the virus out – mostly.
The problem with New Zealand and Australia's Prince Prospero strategy is that it's
inherently fragile. All it takes to throw it into chaos is for the virus to slip past the
border – including by accident or human error. Then heavy-handed lockdowns ensue, imposed
with maximum disruption at the spur of the moment in a frantic attempt to contain the
breach.
The most famous example happened on August 9 when New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern declared that New Zealand had reached
100 days of being Covid-free . Then just two days later a
breach happened , sending Auckland into heavy lockdown. It's a pattern that has repeated
itself every few weeks in both countries.
In early December, we saw a similar flurry of stories from Australia announcing that the
country had beaten Covid .
Two weeks later, another breach occurred in the suburbs around Sydney,
prompting a regional lockdown . There have been embarrassing missteps as well. In November
the entire state of South Australia went into heavy lockdown over a single misreported case of
Covid that was mistakenly
attributed to a pizza purchase that did not exist. While both countries continue to
celebrate their low fatality rates, they've also incurred some of the harshest and most
disruptive restrictions in the world – all the result of premature declarations of being
"Covid-free" followed by an unexpected breach and another frantic lockdown.
"Renewed lockdowns are just a strawman" (October)
In early October a group of scientists met at AIER where they drafted and signed the
Great Barrington Declaration , a
statement calling attention to the severe social and economic harms of lockdowns and urging the
world to adopt alternative strategies for ensuring the protection of the most vulnerable.
Although the statement quickly gathered tens of thousands of co-signers from health science and
medical professionals, it also left the lockdown supporters incensed. They responded not by
scientific debate over the merits of their policies, but with a
vilification campaign .
They answered by
flooding the petition with hoax signatures and juvenile
name-calling, and by peddling wildly false conspiracy theories about AIER's funding (the primary
instigator of both tactics, ironically, was a UK blogger known for promoting
9/11 Truther conspiracies ). But the lockdowners also adopted another narrative: they began
to deny that lockdowns were even on the table.
Nobody was considering bringing back the lockdowns from the spring, they insisted. Arguing
against the politically unpopular shelter-in-place orders in the fall only served the purpose
of undermining public support for narrower and more temperate restrictions. The Great
Barrington authors, we were told, were arguing with a "strawman" from the past.
Over the next several weeks in October a dozen or more prominent epidemiologists, public
health experts, and journalists peddled the "lockdowns are a
strawman" line . The "strawman" claim saw promotion in top outlets including the New
York Times , and in an op-ed by two
principle co-signers of the John Snow Memorandum, a competing petition that lockdown
supporters drafted as a response to the Great Barrington Declaration.
The message was clear: the GBD was sounding a false alarm against policies from the past
that the lockdowners "reluctantly" supported in the spring as an emergency measure but had no
intention of reviving. By early November, the "strawman" of renewed lockdowns became a reality
in dozens of countries across the globe – often cheered on by the very same people who
used the "strawman" canard in October.
Several US states followed suit including California, which imposed severe restrictions on
private gatherings up to and including meeting your own family for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And a few weeks after that, some of the very same epidemiologists who used the "strawman" line
in October revised their own positions after the fact. They started claiming they had supported a
second lockdown all along, and began blaming the GBD for
impeding their efforts to impose them at an earlier date. In short, the entire "lockdowns are a
strawman" narrative was false. And it now appears that more than a few of the scientists who
used it were actively lying about their own intentions in October.
Anthony Fauci touts New York as a model for Covid containment (June-December)
By all indicators, New York state has suffered one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the
world. Its year-end mortality rate of almost 1,900 deaths per million residents
exceeds
every single country in the world. The state famously bungled its nursing home response
when Governor Andrew Cuomo forced these facilities to readmit Covid-positive patients as a way
to relieve strains on hospitals. The policy backfired as most hospitals never reached capacity,
but the readmissions introduced the virus into vulnerable nursing home populations resulting in
widespread fatalities (to this day
New York intentionally undercounts nursing home fatalities by excluding residents who are
moved to a hospital from its reported numbers, further obscuring the true toll of Cuomo's
order).
New York has also fared poorly during the fall "second wave" despite reimposing harsh
restrictions and regional lockdown measures. By mid-December, its death rate shot far above the
mostly-open state of Florida, which has the closest comparable population size to New York. All
things considered, New York's weathering of the pandemic is an exemplar of what not to do.
Cuomo's policies not only failed to contain the virus – they likely made it far more
deadly to vulnerable populations. Enter Anthony Fauci, who has been asked multiple times in the
press what a model Covid response policy would look like. He gave his
first answer on July 20th : "We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those
cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York."
Fauci was operating under the assumption that New York, despite its bad run in the spring,
had successfully brought the pandemic under control through its aggressive lockdowns and slow
reopening. One might think that the fall rebound in New York, despite locking down again, would
call this conclusion into question. Not so much for Dr. Fauci, who told the
Wall Street Journal on December 8 : "New York got hit really badly in the beginning" but
they did "a really good job of keeping things down, and still, their level is low compared to
the rest of the country."
By seeking answers to scientific questions no-one had asked, we find ourselves assigning
importance to discoveries which may have none...
I n justifying the move to a new national lockdown, the leaders of the UK briefly enjoyed
the political fortune of a headline-grabbing finding: a new strain of Covid-19, possibly more
virulent than the old.
This strain, despite the paucity of scientific data, has been described as "up to 70 per
cent more transmissible than the old variant," and it is this figure which has gripped the
media and policymakers. The tendency towards catastrophism is palpable.
Yet this new strain, VUI-202012/01, quickly transcended its role within national politics as
the justification for introducing Tier 4 lockdowns. The fear of a new, super-transmissible
mutant strain has spread to other nations, who are similarly eager to display the sort of
knee-jerk reactionary interventions being generously described as "decisive leadership." Over
30 countries have
banned entry by UK citizens over fears of the new strain, with
chaotic scenes at Dover exacerbating already tetchy Brexit negotiations.
Never mind that the Department of Health committee whose recommendations regarding the new
strain expressed
considerable uncertainty about the transmissibility and dangers posed. At present, the
precautionary principle completely dominates decision making in Westminster and the devolved
assemblies. "Better safe than sorry," we hear, as further lockdowns are announced without the
slightest hint of legislative oversight.
How has this happened so quickly? It seems that hardly had news of a mutant strain of
Covid-19 broken that we were promptly shepherded into Tier 4 and became a global pariah. To
understand how this panic has developed, we need to understand the nature of diagnostic
medicine, its relationship to the scientific method, and how both might be abused for political
ends.
In Britain, we have one of the most advanced scientific, medical and technological
infrastructures in the world. This infrastructure was greatly expanded during the early months
of the pandemic, with Covid-19 diagnostic testing capacity rapidly increased. The reasons for
this increase were largely political. By pushing to achieve 100,000 tests per day, the
government hoped it might reassure an anxious public.
Under normal circumstances, medical tests are generally not used with such political goals
in mind. They form part of a process of hypothesis testing and Bayesian reasoning to guide the
rational medical management of patients with diagnostic uncertainty. We begin by forming a
question, choosing a test to answer that question, and applying that test, bearing in mind the
limits of diagnostic certainty for a given investigation.
The key here is that a diagnostic test is used to answer a specific question. We do not, as
a matter of both economic feasibility and ethical restraint, apply scattergun testing to vast
swathes of the population without a good reason. In populations at risk of a disease but
otherwise asymptomatic, we might use screening to identify disease in an early stage and to
improve treatment outcomes. But never before have we attempted to apply such intensive
"screening" for such a poorly understood disease to guide such far reaching policies as the
infringements of civil liberties we are currently seeing.
At present, national testing programmes are being used as political vehicles to justify
pre-determined policy prescriptions, instead of as scientific instruments to answer
well-formulated diagnostic questions. Those policy makers who saw testing infrastructure as a
way to tally-up some quick political points have instead scored something of an own goal,
subjecting us to a torrent of data which, instead of reassuring us, only serves to give us more
questions. The perversion of the scientific method doesn't get much worse than this.
As an anxious patient who is subject to a battery of tests will only become more anxious as
incidental findings lead to further follow-up questions, so too do our policymakers find
themselves with more problems than answers through the indiscriminate application of the full
arsenal of testing methods at the disposal of the British state. And these problems have a
habit of producing even more problems through a cycle of positive feedback.
Since the early days of the pandemic, the UK's testing capacity has been aggressively
expanded. The original target of 100,000 tests per day was no sooner reached than it was
replaced by
a new target of 200,000 tests per day. The political thinking here is obvious: a big number
ought to reassure the public. But this is extraordinarily myopic.
More intensive testing leads to new justifications for even more intensive testing. The
cycle is as follows: we start with a moderate testing capacity which is primarily used to
detect cases among the sickest and most vulnerable patients, in order to guide further
treatment. Concerns are raised by those not able to access testing for themselves. The
government pledges to expand testing beyond its initial scope, and broadens the eligibility
criteria to include doctors, nurses, care home workers and others.
We start to include more and more asymptomatic carriers for whom a positive case has an
essentially negligible risk of serious harm. Yet the number which captures the public's
attention is the absolute number of positive cases. With a vastly increased number of tests, we
get a vastly increased number of positive cases. And the government, seeing a situation running
away from it and desperate to regain control by those limited means available to it, promises
to further increase testing capacity. The cycle continues.
More tests will naturally lead to more cases, particularly if those tests are used
indiscriminately and with no real strategy in mind. The problem compounds when we consider the
increase in the absolute number of false positives. The growth in false positives is linear
with increase in number of tests, but the negative consequences for society spread out as a
highly non-linear network, with isolation of contacts of (falsely) positive cases having
expansive and synergistic negative consequences for broader society. But even without this, and
assuming that all our positive results are true positives, by using testing as a form of
mass-surveillance we have set ourselves up for a never-ending cycle of lockdowns.
The same logic applies to the genetic testing which has unearthed this "new" strain,
although we may yet find that it has been in circulation globally for
a long time . By testing more, without knowing what we are testing for, we will find things
which, from a political perspective, necessitate further intervention.
The corpus of data which can be poured over to find new justifications for ongoing
restrictions continues to grow. With the added dimension of genomic studies, the potential for
the noise to smother the signal grows, particularly at a time when there is strong public and
political demand for a coherent narrative. There will always exist some metric sufficiently
intimidating that it might be used to justify a new lockdown. Yet we keep searching without
really knowing what we are searching for or why we are doing it.
There is essentially no logic upper limit to how intensively we can test and how many
different techniques we can apply to elucidate Covid-19 and its various strains. Some strains
will inevitably be more virulent, and will, by definition, have a greater tendency to spread.
This is not, in itself, a cause for alarm; it is simply Darwinism on a microscopic scale. And
whether these findings matter from a policymaking perspective is an altogether different
question.
The scientific method begins with a question and sets out to find an answer. If we decide to
seek answers without questions, then we end up with data which must be interpreted and given
significance post hoc, regardless of whether that significance really exists. Positive feedback
cycles are difficult to escape from. The various governments of the UK and its devolved
legislatures urgently need to rationalise the use of testing and clearly justify the
introduction of any new investigative methods. Otherwise, we will be trapped by a political
crisis of our own making.
Are not so called asymptomatic cases mostly a side effect of excessive amplifications in PcR
tests? So they are healthy people who were "false positives" in PcR test. If this is true they
present no danger.
Thanks in part to a massive investment in research by the British government, a lot of
interesting data has come out of the UK, including a study which supposedly found evidence that
immunity to
COVID 'degrades' in the months after infection . Now, other studies have come to
seemingly contradictory conclusions . It's just another reminder how fraught and
complicated the process of study and research can be during an unprecedented pandemic.
It should also be a reminder, particularly as all the world's top COVID-vaccine
manufacturers reassure the public that their vaccines will work against the more infectious
mutated strains allegedly discovered in the UK and South Africa, among other places, that the
leading scientific and public health authorities aren't always 100% certain when it comes to -
as they like to call it - "the science".
Some members of the public might remember all the way back in February and January when
public officials first speculated that mass mask-wearing might not be that helpful unless
individuals were actually sick. They famously back-tracked on that, and - for that, and other
reasons - decided that we should all wear masks, and that lockdowns were more or less the best
solution to the problem, even as millions of Americans continued to flout the new "rules"
daily.
But for those who don't, this paper makes one thing clear: For all the talk in the press
about asymptomatic people being infectious, which included a heavy-handed rebuke of a WHO
scientist who nonchalantly said a few months back that asymptomatic people don't spread the
virus as effectively, there haven't been many large-sample-size longer-term studies that study
how "asymptomatic" patients actually spread the virus vs. how "symptomatic" patients do, since
most public health agencies don't even collect data on whether people who test positive are
asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, or symptomatic (a specification which, as most people probably
know by now, can vary widely).
Since the pandemic has only been ongoing for less than a year now, researchers have instead
tried conducting "meta studies" - that is, comparing data collected in dozens of studies
examining some aspect of the virus's functionality. In the paper noted above which examined 54
separate studies with nearly 78K total participants, the authors claim that "The lack of
substantial transmission from observed asymptomatic index cases is notable...These findings are
consistent with other household studies reporting asymptomatic index cases as having limited
role in household transmission."
This is of course not the first time we have heard this. Aside from the WHO scientist
example cited above, two British scientists recently published an editorial in the BMJ
imploring scientists to rethink how the virus spreads "asymptomatically".
That's not to say that asymptomatic people can't spread the virus, it's just to say that
maybe there is a significant difference in risk levels in terms of exposure . Of course, public
health officials at this point seem to be afraid to acknowledge anything that questions the
notion that everybody is potentially a threat. To be clear, the WHO's current guidance on the
issue is that "while someone who never develops symptoms can also pass the virus to others, it
is still not clear to what extent this occurs, and more research is needed in this area" - but
at this point, they have changed their guidance and flip-flopped so many times, who even knows,
understands or cares what they say?
Anyway, it's just some more food for thought next time somebody tries to lecture you about
"the science".
adr 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
Asymptomatic people can not spread a viral infection.
This was considered fact until 2020.
valjoux7750 1 hour ago
Friend of mine passed away from non covid illness and the hospital offered to pay all his
medical bills if allowed to record as covid. His wife accepted.
Robespierre2020 23 minutes ago
They will never, ever admit that asymptomatic actually means false positive. They must
keep the case count up at all costs to keep stoking the fear.
Itchy and Scratchy 1 hour ago
The Big Lie is mutating quickly! Hide the women & children!
Newstarmistagain 1 hour ago
Anybody else get the feeling that this coronavirus nonsense is really nothing more than a
huge Pavlovian experiment being conducted on the entire population? You do realize that
Pavlov's dogs ended up catatonic, and in a state of perpetual fear, eh goiyim cattle?
PanGlossius 1 hour ago
Right on. This smells like the brute simplicity of Skinner or Pavlov programming. Crude,
careless, short time horizon. Like the practitioners are just running out the clock.
namrider 1 hour ago remove link
Conflicting reports and information because it = PSYOP
MrBoompi 33 minutes ago
What is a "covid patient"? Someone who tested positive? The pcr test doesn't detect live
viruses. Why would someone who is not sick, aka asymptomatic, be considered a patient?
The fact that Cr (number of amplification cycles) was not reported, creates some bad
thoughts. Especially about Fauci and his gang ;-) Can Fauci be sued for criminal negligence?
I lost my dad due to a drunk driver. Therefore, we should ban cars and alcohol. Maybe, we
should also ban bottles because the drunk driver drank out of a bottle. Oh, and maybe we
should ban humans too because ... You see the logic!
LEEPERMAX 3 hours ago
It's worth repeating
A POSITIVE PCR TEST IS NOT A "CASE"
Lansman 2 hours ago
They will continue to manipulate the test results to ensure the desired level of fear and
panic. It is the only way to get the public to accept their absurd lockdowns and mask
requirements.
Patrick Bateman Jr. 2 hours ago
99.9992% of the US population has survived.
ThePub'Lick_Hare 2 hours ago
Time for every state to follow Florida by class action suit. This farce has gone on too
long. Kudos to Florida for taking the initiative. Now at last people can ask relevant
questions and insist on proper protocol. The Portuguese High Court saw false COVID testing
for what it is, the spark and flame of a reign of terror. Time to douse the flames and the
douche-bags inflaming the scam-demic.
Lucky Guesst 3 hours ago
The test results weren't supposed to change until after they got Trump out and after the
vaccine release so the sheep could bow to the Democrats for "saving" them. The PCR cycle
threshold will change to 5 after our 100 days of penance.
Ajax_USB_Port_Repair_Service_ 2 hours ago (Edited)
" Whoever wins the presidency " Will get the credit.
Agree, covid hysteria is being controlled by some group more powerful than our
president.
If you are generally aware, the PCR test is used to amplify small amount of genetic
material so as to recognize patterns of DNA by "cycling." (Also, for RNA virus, the RNA is
converted to DNA in order to be detected, it's just the way the test works) This is how we
have been able to recognize the genomes in Egyptian mummies and Wooly Mammoths. It works
because if you amplify and cycle enough times to "grow" legitimate DNA fragments, you get
something with with a fair amount of specificity. W hat is becoming more and more apparent is
that the PCR test was not designed as a diagnostic tool for infection, and really cannot
function as one without having a huge amount of false positives, period.
When it comes to COVID, the presence of viral particles picked up by the PCR technique
does not and has not been quantitatively linked to an active "symptomatic" infection. It
simply cannot be so, because infection threshold as a result of viral load is different for
each patient. It turns out, if you "cycle" over around 25 times, the false positivity of
COVID infection starts getting very high.
I and others have explained in blogs how people can be exposed to virus, and mount a
simple innate immune response and never know any differently. When you test these people with
very low viral loads, who are not sick, you can find the viral RNA code that is used to
"diagnose" if you cycle enough times. The last I read, Labcorp cycles at least 40 times to
detect viral genome fragments. The PCR test was never intended for diagnosis of infection but
as a qualitative test for presence of parts of a virus genome. I know there has been some
confusion circulating the net about what the inventor Kary Mullis had said about that. But we
walk daily with people who have any number of parts of killer virus or bacterial genomes
which one could pick up with a PCR test if one had the specific test for it. Would we claim
that that individual was an infected patient? No!
So given all that, PeakProsperity's Chris
Martenson explains below , in great details, the answer to the most important question you
should ask if you or a loved one gets a positive PCR test result .
"What's the Cycle Threshold (CT) value for that test?"
Sounds wonky but it's actually really important to understand. A low CT value means someone
is loaded with virus. A high value, oppositely, means less of a viral load.
Beyond a certain level the load is insufficient to either infect someone else or be of any
clinical or epidemiological relevance whatsoever.
The problem? Governments all over the country and world are basing their decisions on CT
values that are very high. Too high.
Jon Rappoport (excellent blog) nails it in some of his recent posts.
.
"July 16, 2020, podcast, 'This Week in Virology': Tony Fauci makes a point of saying the
PCR Covid test is useless and misleading when the test is run at '35 cycles or higher.' A
positive result, indicating infection, cannot be accepted or believed.
"Here, in techno-speak, is an excerpt from Fauci's key quote: ' If you get [perform the
test at] a cycle threshold of 35 or more the chances of it being replication-competent [aka
accurate] are miniscule you almost never can culture virus [detect a true positive result]
from a 37 threshold cycle even 36 '
"Too many cycles, and the test will turn up all sorts of irrelevant material that will be
wrongly interpreted as relevant.
"That's called a false positive.
"What Fauci failed to say on the video is: the FDA, which authorizes the test for public
use, recommends the test should be run up to 40 cycles. Not 35.
"Therefore, all labs in the US that follow the FDA guideline are knowingly or unknowingly
participating in fraud. Fraud on a monstrous level, because millions of Americans are being
told they are infected with the virus on the basis of a false positive result, and
"The total number of Covid cases in America -- which is based on the test -- is a gross
falsity.
"The lockdowns and other restraining measures are based on these fraudulent case
numbers.
play_arrow
GenuineAmerican 3 hours ago
Fauci has lied again the PCR maximum cycle for a accurate test results is 25 NOT 35. PCR
is run, or should be run at 21-25 cycles everything else will give a false positive. Had a
friend in Scottsdale MAYO. I had to go to this god-forsaken place to get him out. They were
running the PCR at 42 cycles to keep him in the hospital because he had very, very good UNION
insurance!! The health industries are all crooks, lying to people to get more money being
paid to the orgainizations by the feds.
BaNNeD oN THe RuN 7 hours ago
IQ tests were always seriously flawed, just like the PCR test
U.S TOTAL DEATHS
2015: 2,602,000
2016: 2,744,248
2017: 2,649,000
2018: 2,839,205
2019: 2,909,000
According to usalivestats(dot)com, there are 2,486,700 so far this year. There could be a lag
in reports, but I doubt enough to fulfill their doomsday claims. The CDC still admits only 6%
of these "COVID" are without 2 or more comorbidities, so that's about 25,000 or so. This is a
mild flu season. Here are the recent flu numbers:
FLU DEATHS 2010's
2010: 36,656
2011: 12,447
2012: 42,570
2013: 37,930
2014: 51,376
2015: 22,705
2016: 38,230
2017: 61,099
2018: 34,157
choctaw charley 5 hours ago remove link
so what's the purpose behind the bogus plandemic. In order to institute a one world
plantation several things have to happen. Foremost is the sense of "nationhood". a nation can
be thought of as modeled on the family unit. We look similar, we share religious beliefs,
economic and political views and we have a common history which we take pride in. We trust
rely on and help another. If you have half a brain you don't need me to describe how all
these are under attack. So how does the plandemic play into this? Yesterday you neighbor was
your neighbor. Today he is behind a mask because the government tells you that he is a threat
to you and your family and you to his! The plandemic was used to to hugely expand the mail-in
ballot fraud further driving in the wedge suspicion. Then there is this: when you get your
covid test there will be a permanent file created with your name on it. It will contain your
genetic code and the test result. this will become the social register that is all over
Europe. Get a traffic ticket; late in making a payment; engage in disapproved political
activity as I am doing at this moment? All these will find their way into your file and will
in the future determine the rate you pay on your home mortgage whether you can be employed in
a government job, what you have to endure to board a commercial aircraft etc. There is also a
great likelihood that contained in the vaccine will be a tracking component. Consider also
population segment most vulnerable to covid: older retired people drawing on an already
bankrupt social security ponzi scheme. Hitler referred to these as "Useless Eaters". He had a
system in place to rid society of these. Later these faciliries were expanded to include the
Jewish population.
flyonmywall 9 hours ago
I've done lots of PCR in my life. If you have to do over 35 cycles to detect or amplify
something, you're probably barking up the wrong tree or there is something wrong with your
assay.
Once you ramp up the cycles to past 35-40 cycles, you're just amplifying non-specific
competing amplification products, of which there are always some.
You could have the best designed primers in the world, there is always some random ****
that happens to get amplified at high cycle counts.
Zero-Hegemon 4 hours ago
False positives are beneficial for obtaining COVID money and creating hysteria.
KimAsa 9 hours ago (Edited)
these psychopaths have redesignated the normal course of annual deaths from heart disease,
and other common ailments that old people die from, to Covid 19, to create the illusion of a
deadly pandemic. they claim to have isolated this virus out of one side of their mouth, out
the the other side they claim it has mutated (how many times?) so can't produce proof that
this virus even exists. and out of their ******* they claim to have developed a vaccine?
this is and always has been about the vaccinating the public for free moral agency
prevention.
Ride_the_kali_yuga 9 hours ago
Covid "tests" are an efficient way to feed the false pandemic narrative with nonsensical
numbers of "contaminations". Masks are a mark of submission.
africoman 9 hours ago
Re-posting someone's comment from this article
Here
If the masks work -- Why the six feet?
If the six feet works -- Why the masks?
If both of the above work -- Why the lockdowns?
If all three of the above work -- Why the vaccine?
If the vaccine is safe -- Why protect it with a no liability clause?
If the vaccine is safe---Why not test it on animals first before using it on
humans?
If SARS-CoV-2 exists -- Why has it never been isolated?
If SARS-CoV-2 has never been isolated -- How can an effective vaccine be
developed?
If the RT-PCR test works -- Why so many false positives?
If Kary Mullis, the inventor of the RT-PCR test who conveniently died in August 2019,
says his test shouldn't be used to diagnose infectious diseases -- Why use it to detect
SARS-CoV-2?
If there is an epidemic---Why so many empty hospitals?
If large numbers of people are dying from SARS-CoV-2---Why so many fake causes of death
on death certificates?
If SARS-CoV-2 exists -- Why give doctors financial incentives to diagnose
SARS-CoV-2?
If the official COVID-19 narrative is defensible -- Why censor people who dispute this
narrative?
by John Wear, (retired) lawyer, accountant, and author.
Excellent points, now let's threw a monkey wrench in it to the Operation Warp Speed
play_arrow
Schooey 6 hours ago
Its all BS
KimAsa 9 hours ago (Edited)
these psychopaths have redesignated the normal course of annual deaths from heart disease,
and other common ailments that old people die from, to Covid 19, to create the illusion of a
deadly pandemic. they claim to have isolated this virus out of one side of their mouth, out
the the other side they claim it has mutated (how many times?) so can't produce proof that
this virus even exists. and out of their ******* they claim to have developed a vaccine?
this is and always has been about the vaccinating the public for free moral agency
prevention.
Ms No 8 hours ago
They actually murdered people with the lockdown too though. Knowingly and
premeditated...certainly some of those were also declared covid.
smacker 8 hours ago
" this is and always has been about the vaccinating the public "
Correct.
That has become clear. What we are only now slowing learning is what the sinister motive
is.
kellys_eye 9 hours ago
Is the test for Covid or Covid-19. Can it tell the difference? The 'normal' flu and
influenza are both corona viruses and this is the 'high season' for such cases in the
Northern hemisphere.
Strangely (or not) the incidence of actual flu and influenza are suspiciously MUCH lower
than they should be.
Ergo - tests that prove 'positive' for Covid are likely either false OR reporting on the
flu/influenza.
The LIES keep mounting and mounting.
Harry Tools 5 hours ago
there is no pandemic
RedNeckMother 3 hours ago
I will add another: FDA: 40 recommendation for testing
And let's not forget the comments by Fauci that if they're testing at 35 they're going to
get a lot of false positives.
There's an attorney in Ohio who has filed a FOI to obtain all the ct levels used by the
labs testing in Ohio. It will be very interesting once that is revealed - I'm sure our
governor already knows the answer. If I recall, the NYT itself did an article on this very
topic awhile back and estimated that 90% of the positive results in CT and NY were bogus. And
going from 40 to 35 I believe reduces positives by 63%.
We're being played.
MoreFreedom 5 hours ago remove link
Dr. Martenson's videos are very good. He's clear.
As for "the science" and scientists, we all make mistakes. If we didn't make mistakes, we
wouldn't have scientists pointing out other scientist's mistakes. But it's not a question of
whose science is correct, it's that science is no excuse for taking away peoples'
liberty.
SRV 7 hours ago
The inventor of the test (Dr Kary Mullis) was very outspoken that it was NOT developed for
human virus confirmation...he died of cancer just weeks before the first Covid cases
(hmmmm).
The test procedure was developed as a screening tool in lab research, and he won a Nobel
Prize for it!
It's in your face proof of the scam we're all being subjected to that almost no one ever
questioned (brilliant move really)... ONE cycle above 35 (each cycle doubles the
amplification) will explode the the false positives.
And... if you have no symptoms you DO NOT have the virus (remember how much play the
"asymptomatic" BS story got early on... another psyop). Notice how none of the athletes never
get sick and are back in two weeks... yet it's never questioned by a soul paid to look the
other way!
smacker 9 hours ago
" What is becoming more and more apparent is that the PCR test was not designed
as a diagnostic tool for infection, and really cannot function as one without having
a huge amount of false positives, period. "
This is not knew and didn't need to become "more and more apparent".
The inventor of the PCR test Kary Mullis is on video record stating it. Sadly his
expert
knowledge has been wilfully ignored by the political elites and countless talking heads
and "experts" because it doesn't suit them and didn't fit their agenda.
It's time to prepare the gallows and stock up with rope.
smacker 7 hours ago remove link
The PCR test is used precisely because it can be manipulated to produce as many "cases" as
wanted.
Just turn the dial up on "amplification cycles" and hey presto, you get as many positives
as you want.
The cases are not genuine cases but simply PCR positive tests, but are reported as "cases"
and then
"infections" by MSM who are "In On It".
The idea is "FEAR Management" which allows draconian CovID rules like lockdowns and tiers
and
social distancing to be introduced which accustoms people to being managed and
controlled.
It then ramps up demand for vaccines which is the ultimate objective. Initially (or soon
after), the
vaccines will contain nano-technology - dust-chips - which will be used for surveillance and
control.
Some say they will also contain ingredients to render people infertile (ie population
control).
We are seeing in plain sight the biggest coup ever against mankind.
It must be stopped.
smacker 7 hours ago remove link
The PCR test is used precisely because it can be manipulated to produce as many "cases" as
wanted.
Just turn the dial up on "amplification cycles" and hey presto, you get as many positives
as you want.
The cases are not genuine cases but simply PCR positive tests, but are reported as "cases"
and then
"infections" by MSM who are "In On It".
The idea is "FEAR Management" which allows draconian CovID rules like lockdowns and tiers
and
social distancing to be introduced which accustoms people to being managed and
controlled.
It then ramps up demand for vaccines which is the ultimate objective. Initially (or soon
after), the
vaccines will contain nano-technology - dust-chips - which will be used for surveillance and
control.
Some say they will also contain ingredients to render people infertile (ie population
control).
We are seeing in plain sight the biggest coup ever against mankind.
Fauci has lied again the PCR maximum cycle for a accurate test results is 25 NOT 35. PCR
is run, or should be run at 21-25 cycles everything else will give a false positive. Had a
friend in Scottsdale MAYO. I had to go to this god-forsaken place to get him out. They were
running the PCR at 42 cycles to keep him in the hospital because he had very, very good UNION
insurance!! The health industries are all crooks, lying to people to get more money being
paid to the orgainizations by the feds.
U.S TOTAL DEATHS
2015: 2,602,000
2016: 2,744,248
2017: 2,649,000
2018: 2,839,205
2019: 2,909,000
According to usalivestats(dot)com, there are 2,486,700 so far this year. There could be a lag
in reports, but I doubt enough to fulfill their doomsday claims. The CDC still admits only 6%
of these "COVID" are without 2 or more comorbidities, so that's about 25,000 or so. This is a
mild flu season. Here are the recent flu numbers:
FLU DEATHS 2010's
2010: 36,656
2011: 12,447
2012: 42,570
2013: 37,930
2014: 51,376
2015: 22,705
2016: 38,230
2017: 61,099
2018: 34,157
africoman 9 hours ago
How dare you granny killer /sarc
Frito 4 hours ago
The past was erased, the erasure forgotten, the lie became truth.
There are no excess deaths. People may be dying with Covid 19(using a faulty test how can
anyone know?) but they are not dying of Covid 19.
So why are the hospitals filling up?
As to mask use: a mask will catch some virus particles (and some bacteria and fungal
spores), therefore it protects your health and that of people around you. If everyone wears a
mask there will be less diseases spread. (Less 'flu, fewer colds, less spread of TB.) Mask
wearing is not lethal and not for ever. Stop the stupid bitching and wear one for the sake of
other people if not for yourself!
The idea that opposing mask-wearing is somehow promoting "Freedom" is ridiculous. The Chinese
with their epidemic under control are vastly more free than we in the UK with our raging
disease. E.g. the Chinese are free to not wear a mask if they feel like it.
dearth of hospital capacity is being touted as the driver for lockdown. This is another
great example of fear mongering by withholding the context. At 6:27 minutes in this interview
of Dr. Margaret Flowers by Chris Hedge, Dr. Flower points out that from 1975 to today, the
population of USA has increased from 215 million to 331 million. Yet at the same time, the
total number of hospital beds has decreased from 1,500,000 t0 925,000!!! https://www.rt.com/shows/on-contact/507334-covid19-america-health-crisis/
When the population increased by 53% the hospital capacity decreased by 38%.
Without this contextual information, no wonder that the population is so very afraid of the
dangerous corona virus, that they are willing to allow the government to inject them with a
concoction made by a new technology, whose long term effects are unknown, and even whose
efficacy is questionable at best. It is questionable on multiple fronts. If I understand it
correct, Pfizer measures efficacy by quantifying any reduction in symptoms (rather than
immunity). Besides, the occurrence of covid-19 is being measured with an ill-defined test
method (see here https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/).
It is so easy to fool people who cannot think critically.
(Disclaimer: I have nothing against traditional vaccines, which I take. I am also not
saying that COvid-19 is harmless. Rather its dangers are being overblown. Especially
overblown is the inherent virulence of the virus in comparison to other related parameters
that ultimately cause death)
Like the flu, the common cold and the other corona viruses, we simply have to manage it,
and hope it evolves into something a little less contagious over time.
well said Blue Dotterel (38, Dec 3)
@foolisholdman, 54
Hospitals are always fill up during the winter respiratory virus season. SARS-CoV-2 is not
the only respiratory virus in circulation at present.
The yellow band is incomplete data, so still rising somewaht probably. Nevertheless, EU is
coming out of it looking like the current flare up is about half as bad as the initial wave
in the spring. This is WITH many weeks of reimposed restrictions.
"... Lockdowns as being inherently against the working class is a capitalist (liberal)
falsification: if you pay them while they're kept safe in their homes, you'll have the best
of the two worlds for the working class (being paid without working). This option is only
an anathema for the middle class and the capitalist class - who can't imagine a world
without the proletarians serving them ..."
We all live in an interconnected world and middle class, capitalist class (whatever that's
supposed to mean) and proletarians alike supply goods and services to one another. Money is
the medium that facilitates such exchanges. It follows then that proletarians also serve one
another and ditto for the other classes.
If working classes are paid to stay in their homes, who then supplies their needs? In
spite of Jeff Bozo's efforts and those of Elon Musk, not all transport is self-automating and
robots in Amazon warehouses still need some human inputs to operate quickly and without
hitches.
One could also argue that working fulfils other, non-monetary needs. Karl Marx actually
foresaw this when he wrote about anomie in capitalist systems of production, in which workers
are denied control over their lives and the work they do by being denied any say in what they
produce, how they produce it, the resources and environment needed to produce outputs, and
maybe even whether they can be allowed to work at all.
Lockdowns can be viewed as another method in which to deny people control over their work
and work environments. People socialise at work and lockdowns may be a way to deny workers a
place or a means to connect with others (and maybe to form unions). Is it any wonder then,
that during lockdowns people's mental health has become an issue and public health experts
became concerned at the possibility that such phenomena as suicide and domestic violence
could increase?
You can understand this from this quotation. It is the internal contradictions of the wesern
capitalist system that is driving the changes we observe, not "pressure applied by China",
which I would say is a myth.
"The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal: it lies
in the contradictionariness within the thing. This internal contradiction exists in every
single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictionariness within a thing is the
fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other
things are secondary causes."
"It (Materialist dialectics) holds that external causes are the conditions of change and
internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through
internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature
can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis."
Mao Zedong. "On Contradiction" August 1937. Selected Works, Vol.1, p.315.
Lockdowns are a medical protection to eradicate a contagious virus.
The lock downs we have had are fake and we're designed to fail. For political reasons.
The very people who complained 10 months ago, were responsible for them not working,
10 months later those people are still complaining. They are the ones who have prolonged the
contagion.
They are to blame. That includes the polatians and duped public.
It's deliberate !
As we were driving to the park, I noticed a few bike riders on the side of the road wearing
masks while biking. I thought to myself – WTF. That is completely idiotic. Then we began
walking along the miles of trails. The park was moderately busy, but you passed someone every
few minutes.
Sadly, I would estimate that 80% of the people we passed on the trails were masked and
fearful of us unmasked hooligans. I can only imagine their thoughts as they wondered why we
were risking their lives by being so careless.
I was disgusted by the lack of critical thought exhibited by these people. I might have
understood if it was only people over 70 years old wearing the masks, but most of these people
were young. They have virtually a zero risk of dying from this flu. They have virtually a zero
risk of catching it on a walking trail at a State park. But, they obediently and silently do as
they are told by their overlords.
I am saddened by how easily the totalitarians have been able to use fear, propaganda, lies
and misinformation to turn the vast majority of Americans into compliant sheep. It is so clear
to me that this engineered flu panic is nothing more than another chapter in the scheme to
enslave global populations under the thumb of global elitist billionaires who want to control
us and enrich themselves.
NotMyCircus 5 hours ago
Everyday I see people alone in their cars wearing masks - there are very few people in the
world who can think critically and use reasoning to understand the actual risks for
COVID-19.
99.63% of the people don't get it...
StubbleJumper 4 hours ago
Putting on a mask to drive in the car alone is like putting on a condom to go to bed alone
and fall asleep.
DamnSheeple 1 hour ago
I just stare at them, honk and laugh.
Omega Point 4 hours ago
I agree, it really pisses me off seeing kids with masks. It is child abuse. Not only is it
physically harming, it is doing psychological damage too. These kids will be afraid of their
own shadow.
Anyway, I'm getting a new t-shirt made that displays two children with masks on and the
title "child abuse". I should get some interesting comments.
diana_in_spain 4 hours ago remove link
Parents telling their children to wear masks outside , it's beyond belief. We are truly
doomed
trailer park boys 4 hours ago
Masks don't prevent. Masks don't minimize spread. Masks are unhealthy for the wearer.
The whitecoat bureaucrats know this. It is not about science or health. It IS all about
control.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H.L.
Mencken ay_arrow
JUST THE FACTS 4 hours ago
I dip my face diaper in cheap Vodka so its all wet looking
before entering the supermarket.
People get out of my way without being asked.
fnfcst 1 hour ago (Edited)
Right! If social distancing works, stay way the F* far away from me.
sentido kumon 4 hours ago
People have always been like this. They can not grasp philosophy, history, science or any
other subject beyond eating and f'king. This whole covid hysteria has made that much obvious.
Its likely that humans devolve and relinquish their brains since they have no use for it
(other than eating and f'cking) and are just content being told.
Omega Point 4 hours ago
Perhaps the "elites" have a point. Too many useless eaters, breeders, and breathers.
Threat inflation is like Apple pie among Washington swamp national security parasites
Notable quotes:
"... The US security state, with its huge military forces and techno-industrial base, and no diplomatic need nor capability, REQUIRES (fake) "security threats" in order to exist. ..."
"... Those appointed "threats" are currently, probably not changing soon, in some order of "threat-size" . . . ..."
Applying any logic to the "threats" against the US "national security" AKA world hegemony
becomes much simpler with recognizing two simple facts:
1. The US security state, with its huge military forces and techno-industrial base, and no
diplomatic need nor capability, REQUIRES (fake) "security threats" in order to exist.
2. Those appointed "threats" are currently, probably not changing soon, in some order of
"threat-size" . . .
China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, & African
"terrorists" -- did I miss anyone?
"Afraid of corona? Fuck off! By the way, I think I've already had it. I am never sick, but
last February I had a good few days. My wife too. Not that I was sick in bed or anything,
because I'm too busy for that. In nature you don't have time to be sick either. There you
rely on your immune system. That's your best friend. If you take good care of it, it will
take good care of you. You really don't need a vaccine for that. That's why this is so
important. This book, the movie, everything. Everyone should know this! "
Your method would also work wonders for your immune system. Does it also help against
corona?
"Sure. And they aren't miracles, are they? We already scientifically demonstrated this in
2014. Back then it was about the E. coli bacteria, but the damage it causes to humans is
basically the same as that of coronaviruses. It causes chronic inflammation in the lungs.
Look, you shouldn't wait until you're on a stretcher on your way to intensive care, then it's
too late. A house that is ablaze cannot be saved. But at an earlier stage, the Wim Hof
Method is much stronger than the corona virus. In fact, if everyone were to
apply the method, such a lockdown would be totally unnecessary. And masks, and five feet
away, and all that other nonsense. Stop it anyway. Vaccines, money, power, that's the
disease! The answer is just in yourself. "
DENMARK: 9 days of protests over a new law that "would be able to define groups of people
who must be vaccinated. People who refuse the above can be coerced through physical
detainment, with police allowed to assist."
Covid accounts for less than half of last month's excess deaths
Covid-19 justifies less than half of last month's excess deaths compared to the average of
the last five years, the National Statistics Institute (INE) revealed on 13 November in its
latest analysis of mortality in Portugal.
The preliminary data revealed, indicate that "46.5 percent of the increase in deaths
between 5 October and 1 November compared to the average of the last five years was due to
deaths by Covid-19": of the 1,132 above-average deaths in that period, 526 were attributed to
Covid-19.
The disease caused by the new coronavirus caused less than a third (29.3 percent) of the
8,686 deaths that are above the average of the last five years, between 2 March and 1
November.
MRNA technology is untested and its inoculation and immunogenicity model unproven so far.
The mechanism of immuno-response to mRNA vaccine itself as well as side effects of cell
development largely unknown, possibly facilitating enhanced autoimmune response. And that are
general questions about technology not specific to COVID.
Regarding SC2/COVID vaccine: They published nothing but headlies to blatantly bump the
stock prices and dump their own shares. I checked everywhere no details. I will wait for
paper in NEJM or BJM about phase 3 results as they published in July about result of phase 2
with 50% of severe to moderate side effects after second inoculation.
Pfizer and Moderna have already been paid. So they have to hype junk they vomit.
Moneycircus , Nov 16, 2020 5:37 PM
UK Column News – 16th November 2020
PART ONE
"When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die."
THE BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL TAKES STAND ON POLITICIZED SCIENCE Covid-19: politicisation, "corruption," and suppression of science , BMJ, Nov 13,
2020.
"Politicisation of science was enthusiastically deployed by some of history's worst
autocrats and dictators, and it is now regrettably commonplace in democracies.20 The
medical-political complex tends towards suppression of science to aggrandise and enrich
those in power. And, as the powerful become more successful, richer, and further
intoxicated with power, the inconvenient truths of science are suppressed. When good
science is suppressed, people die."
CENSORSHIP AND THE SECURITY OF THE PEOPLE
Kier Starmer, Chief Tory Whip on the Labour Bench:
"The challenge is how we get ready for the vaccine a logistical operation probably larger
than we've seen since WW2." He then launches into military language: "The government must be
quick, decisive and effective so we can give the British people the security that they
need."
Labour's culture secretary Jo Stevens complains gov does not censor online platforms
enough. She says Labour has been warning the gov for years against vaccine skeptics.
THE RECENT HISTORY OF UK CENSORSHIP
In reality the "disinformation" strategy does not come from Labour:
In 2014 David Cameron,
then PM, called at UN for regulation of the Internet. In 2017 Amber Rudd, then Home
Secretary, interviewed Big Tech about counterterrorism and "hate". Google News Lab, Poynter
Inst, and George Soros-backed fact checkers began to delist sites from search, including UKC
and 21st Century Wire. 2018 Theresa May, then PM, formed Rapid Response "fake news units" in
Cabinet Office, Foreign Office, Culture Dept, "using cutting edge software to work round the
clock to monitor online breaking news stories and social media discussion." The Rapid
Response Unit's chief, Alex Aiken,in 2018 gave examples of "concern" regarding social media
posts on chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and the NHS and crime. 2019 Online Harms White
Paper consultation completed by July. No overt action but covert activity has blossomed
through 77th Brigade, 13th Signals Reg, etc. Sep 2019 BoJo spoke the the UN, with great
foresight choosing to focus on vaccine "disinformation". Center for Countering Digital Hate
(UK site, US spelling) identifies anti-vac as a worry.
HOSPITAL IGNORES GOV ADVICE ON MASK
Axminster Hospital, Northern Devon Healthcare Trust, makes up rules against 93 y/o man.
Nephew refused entry with his 93-y/o uncle because he was not wearing mask, for which nephew
had an exception. Hospital demanded he wear a lanyard and complete tracing forms. Pressure
alarmed his uncle, causing unnecessary risk to health. Bus driver had previously refused to let 93 y/o aboard bus because he forgot mask.
UKC: Beliefs have become law. We don't have laws. We don't have evidence and facts.
Instead people are being turned against each other.
ADVERSE DRUG REACTIONS (ADR) TO COVID-19 VACCINE – MHRA PROCURES ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE SOFTWARE
Further information: this is not a tender, it's a done deal.
UKC viewer points out this is a contract award notice, agreed in advance, with the notice
published to satisfy public procurement regulations.
GBP 1.5 million contract awarded to Genpact UK
Genpact UK
slogan: Adapt and rise: building resilience for communities, people and businesses.
It says its activities include: supply chain, leasing, mortgages and loans, on boarding,
property, claims and underwriting, trade shows, credit risk management.
UKC: looks like an enforcement agency.
MHRA told UKC that EU tenders are visible in UK, thus not advertised locally. What is
meant by expected high volume of adverse reactions to the Covid vaccine? MHRA replied:
"A number of previous vaccination campaigns have been considered in order to derive
estimates of ADR volumes in a forthcoming vaccination campaign Actual numbers of reports
will be dependent on the number of doses administered and the use of concurrent treatments
(for instance to manage fevers). Our past experience with other new immunization campaigns
is that we tend to receive around one yellow card per 1,000 doses. Most ADRs are short term
It is important to not that a report of a suspected side effect is not poof that the
vaccine cause it, but a suspicion by the reporter that the vaccine may have caused the side
effect."
At the time of its tender award MHRA said its legacy systems could not handle the
anticipated volume of Adverse Drug Reactions.
UKC: MHRA's answer is not consistent with earlier statements.
Mike Robinson: If as MHRA says the adverse reactions are 1 in 1,000 why would you need
artificial intelligence. A simple database would suffice.
David Scott : the level of adverse reaction must be enormous. The government must be asking
how many casualties there will be.
Brian Gerrish: People should know they can sue the Pharma companies. The government says
they are not liable but under common law the people within those companies who knowingly
implement mistakes are liable for their actions. The individual carries guilt for the
crime.
BBC Radio Four: "We don't know which vaccine will work. There are at least three vaccines.
People may have to take more than one vaccine at different times to build up immunity."
REMINDER: CHILD VACCINATIONS COULD BECOME COMPULSORY
Metro: Sep 2019: Children could be forced to have compulsory vaccination under Government
plans
Health Secretary Matt Hancock says children could be forced to have compulsory vaccinations.
Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, in Sep 2019,
he said parents must 'take responsibility' over the issue.
"We need a massive drive to get these vaccination rates back up I said before that we
should be open minded and frank, what I'd say is that when we – the state –
provide services to people, then it's a two-way street, you have got to take your
responsibilities too.
So I think there is a very strong argument for having compulsory vaccinations for
children when they go to school because otherwise they are putting other children at
risk.'
Now, you have got to make sure the system would work, because some children can't be
vaccinated and some may hold very strong religious convictions that you would want to take
into account.
But, frankly, the proportion of people in either of those two categories is tiny
compared to the 7 per cent or 8 per cent now who don't get vaccinated.'"
UKC: Do you see what he is omitting: free will and rational judgement. You can have a
religious or medical exception or you have to comply. Or no education for you.
"Although tyranny may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if
it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people."
-- Hannah Arendt
The virus continues to evolve. The vaccine needs approval from regulators - and they, supposedly, will only grant that
if they're sure that the jab is safe and works well. Meanwhile, concerns have been raised that mutated forms of the virus
might hamper the effectiveness of future vaccines.
It comes after 12 people were found with a mink-related strain of the virus following an outbreak in Denmark.
Notable quotes:
"... When someone tests positive we say they tested positive for Covid-19, but that is [different from what is ] the disease, not the virus, which is Sars-CoV-2. That's the first problem. Secondly, it was termed new, when neither the disease nor the virus is new because coronaviruses have been with us forever. ..."
"... When the number of cases falls below a certain level, you must stop testing . Because if you keep testing people who are not infected, you are going to get more false positives than positives. ..."
"... Many labs in Germany were creating artifacts in the lab through poor procedures. They created a cluster of 60 people in Bavaria. On retesting it turned out 58 were clear. ..."
"... The whole idea of an immunity passport is stupid. Even if vaccinated and you have antibodies, you can only be protected if the number of viruses is low. ..."
"... Vaccines against coronaviruses are unlikely to work and could be dangerous -- especially if you put the gene of the virus into the body , supposedly to make your cells produce the characteristics of the virus against which the antibodies are supposed to act. ..."
"... These vaccines will create waste products and now the killer lymphocytes may start attacking healthy cells. I cannot prove this has happened but so many vaccines trials have had such serious side effects, pains, swelling, fever, muscle ache. The Astra Zeneca trial had to change its protocols before continuing which is not allowed. ..."
"... Then transverse myelitis emerged. There are reasons to suspect that the killer lymphocytes may have been triggered into an autoimmune attack. ..."
"... How are they going to prove a virus is effective? If you are under 70 your chance of dying from this virus is minuscule. If you are losing 5 out of 10,000 lives how are you going to show that a vaccine saves lives? It's not statistically significant. ..."
"... As for lockdown, they are killing people who are not diagnosed for cancer, heart disease, from depression, from suicide, and economic depression that causes poverty. They are killing far more than they save. ..."
"... If I was a "Conspiracy Theorist" I would wonder: is the mRNA vaccine is intended to weaken the immunity response? Because that is clearly a risk. ..."
"... "a country where loneliness is widespread .. Americans prefer myths that induce them to act out of habit so they can lose themselves in the group." ..."
"... The author here might be breaking the neoliberal convention of not describing people who live alone in terms other than 'Independent', 'Confident' and 'Emotionally Intelligent' ..."
"... I commute for 3 hrs a day for work, at rush hour in a total of 6 busses full packed with the masked herd. Mine lets my nose uncovered 6 months of this got tested for work last week.. tested NEGATIVE there you go with your highly contagious deadly disease. ..."
Back in medieval times, the folk believed in Satan and witchcraft. It wouldn't have taken
much to start off a panic about a demonic force threatening a community and plenty of people
would be willing to vouch for sinister sightings.
All of this could go on till the local priest
decided it was alright to return to normal. Since he was in direct communion with God, he was
the one with the credentials to determine when things were safe again. Now we have this:
The impact of a new Covid vaccine will kick in significantly over summer and life should be
back to normal by next winter, one of its creators has said."
Prof Ugur Sahin, BioNTech co-founder, says,
"I'm very confident that transmission between
people will be reduced by such a highly effective vaccine – maybe not 90% but maybe 50%
– but we should not forget that even that could result in a dramatic reduction of the
pandemic spread"
Just tell us when it's safe, Professor. We'll believe you!
"The time has come for homo sapiens to stand up and start becoming human again. This scare
has led man to lose reason as he follows the pied piper's call and we are being led to the
downfall of civilization.
Stand up, take those masks off your face, grasp each other's hands
again -- no more social distancing, what utter nonsense because of a virus that has been with
us since the beginning of mankind -- and start singing. The sound of the human voice is the
only thing which is going to halt this pied piper's madness."
When someone tests positive we say they tested positive for Covid-19, but that is [different from what is ] the
disease, not the virus, which is Sars-CoV-2. That's the first problem. Secondly, it was
termed new, when neither the disease nor the virus is new because coronaviruses have been
with us forever.
These viruses co-exist with us . Every few months they mutate so that my immune system
will accept them, otherwise they would be recognized on the second visit and be shut out. So
it is completely normal that the most successful viruses in the world, which keep the host
alive, which don't want to kill us, change a little all the time.
When the number of cases falls below a certain level, you must stop testing . Because if
you keep testing people who are not infected, you are going to get more false positives than
positives.
Many labs in Germany were creating artifacts in the lab through poor procedures.
They created a cluster of 60 people in Bavaria. On retesting it turned out 58 were clear.
Scenario two is immunity. The science is very fuzzy. One arm is the antibody that catches
the virus before it attaches to the cell but this antibody fights one-to-one. It is a matter
of numbers. The number of antibodies can become exhausted before more virus comes along.
The whole idea of an immunity passport is stupid. Even if vaccinated and you have
antibodies, you can only be protected if the number of viruses is low.
Also antibodies peak after you are immunized but with time they decline. Your immune
system does not do work unless there is a purpose. After two or three months, even with the
passport, you are not immune.
Our old antibodies are partially effective against new coronaviruses . Once the new virus
enters our cells, waste products of the virus sit on the outside of the cell. The immune
system's second arm, the killer lymphocytes emerge.
Lymphocytes spot the similarity of the new virus to the old and attack the cell. One
killer lymphocyte can kill many viruses-infected cells.
This is the body's natural defenses. This is why more than 90% of people who are infected
already have background immunity. Several recent reports have suggested people do have these
lymphocytes and even those who don't display them may have them 'waiting in the wings' in the
lymph nodes.
Vaccines against coronaviruses are unlikely to work and could be dangerous -- especially
if you put the gene of the virus into the body , supposedly to make your cells produce the
characteristics of the virus against which the antibodies are supposed to act.
These vaccines will create waste products and now the killer lymphocytes may start
attacking healthy cells. I cannot prove this has happened but so many vaccines trials have
had such serious side effects, pains, swelling, fever, muscle ache. The Astra Zeneca trial
had to change its protocols before continuing which is not allowed.
Then transverse myelitis emerged. There are reasons to suspect that the killer lymphocytes
may have been triggered into an autoimmune attack.
Secondly, suppose you have successfully generated antibodies but you have also reawakened
those killer lymphocytes , like a boxer, you are stronger and ready for the next fight. Now
when the real virus comes along, and overcomes the few antibodies that exist, you have so
many killer lymphocytes ready for battle that they overdo it.
This would be immune response dependent enhancement which ends in an over-strong immune
response.
How are they going to prove a virus is effective? If you are under 70 your chance of dying
from this virus is minuscule. If you are losing 5 out of 10,000 lives how are you going to
show that a vaccine saves lives? It's not statistically significant.
As for lockdown, they are killing people who are not diagnosed for cancer, heart disease,
from depression, from suicide, and economic depression that causes poverty. They are killing
far more than they save.
Lawyers around the world are going to bring those people to justice. The first cases are
currently being filed in Germany. I hope the right ones will be taken to court because what
they are doing is criminal. It is not a matter of belief. We know people are dying around the
world because of these lockdown measures. Millions of people are starving to death in India
and other places.
We should be taking about why and how has our society allowed these things to happen. How
and why and we must get answer so this will never happen again.
Moneycircus , Nov 16, 2020 1:59 PM Reply to Moneycircus
If I was a "Conspiracy Theorist" I would wonder: is the mRNA vaccine is intended to
weaken the immunity response? Because that is clearly a risk.
Vaccine trials suggest it affects quite a few people's immune systems negatively. So if
another virulent disease were to come along in the near future, those people weakened by the
vaccine would be very vulnerable to a different virus . (see Francis Boyle). If Covid were a
deadly threat the risk might be worth it. That does not seem to be the case.
Even if not deliberate conspiracy -- Let's use Bill Gates' own logic: Pandemics are
the greatest threat facing humanity , or the second after "climate" -- according to Gates
himself.
Why would you mess with the immune system of hundreds of millions of people?
The proposal from Bill and Melinda is to give it to healthcare workers and the elderly
first. Again, examine the logic. If the vaccine produces casualties, you would have just
created a crisis in the state health system -- perhaps bringing it to its knees, while
accelerating the cull of elderly.
Isn't one of the proposals of the Big Tech mafia to end traditional healthcare and replace
it with
"digital health" via a screen ?
Myall , Nov 16, 2020 11:49 AM
"a country where loneliness is widespread .. Americans prefer myths that induce them to
act out of habit so they can lose themselves in the group."
The author here might be breaking the neoliberal convention of not describing people who live
alone in terms other than 'Independent', 'Confident' and 'Emotionally Intelligent'
George Mc , Nov 16, 2020 10:52 AM
You will be pleased to hear that your commender in chief is providing such excellent
guidance on the requisite behaviour:
"It doesn't matter that we were all doing social distancing, it doesn't matter that I'm
fit as a butcher's dog, feel great. And actually, it doesn't matter that I've had the disease
and I'm bursting with antibodies. We've got to interrupt the spread of the disease and one of
the ways we can do that now is by self-isolating for 14 days when contacted by Test and
Trace."
So, things that DON'T matter: doing social distancing being as fit as a butcher's dog
feeling great having had the desease and bursting with antibodies
You must still follow the rules for track and trace and you should still be scared
shitless!
wardropper , Nov 16, 2020 2:38 PM Reply to George
Mc
These are people whose brains don't work, and who like having brains that don't work.
People to be avoided at all costs – and certainly not allowed to become Prime
Ministers.
I_left_the_left , Nov 18, 2020 1:54 PM Reply to wardropper
Comrade Carrie appears to control Boris's brain. Greens won 2.7% of the popular vote, but
she found a better way to get her fantasy policies adopted than respecting what the stupid
plebs want.
Arsebiscuits , Nov 16, 2020 3:22 PM Reply to George
Mc
Being as fit as a butchers dog doesn't make any sense.
He's got the Biden dementia going on
Theobalt , Nov 16, 2020 7:00 PM Reply to Arsebiscuits
They have to be fitter than the chocolate maker's dog though
Theobalt , Nov 16, 2020 6:57 PM Reply to George
Mc
I commute for 3 hrs a day for work, at rush hour in a total of 6 busses full packed with
the masked herd. Mine lets my nose uncovered 6 months of this got tested for work last week..
tested NEGATIVE there you go with your highly contagious deadly disease.
This whole coronavirus thingy is becoming ridiculous. I don't think it's a complete fake ;
yes, there is coronavirus named COVID-19, yes it is highly contagious, yes it's a health
hazard.
But to sum it up, we have here a new coronavirus which is slightly more dangerous than the
flu, which kills practically only very old people with comorbidities, with 99,98% chances
(ok, 99,95% if you like) of surviving it. given these odds, I'll pass on the vaccine, thank
you.
From the beginning, the whole treatment of this thing stank to high heaven. I'm sorry, but
the only meaningful explanation I can give is this one : big pharma and its various shills
(politicians or doctors) recognized the opportunity such a virus would mean ; they then set
out to systematically downplay or kill any possibility of cheap and effective treatments, and
cleverly directed the firehose of dollars which was poured onto the laboratories developing a
vaccine.
Some facts :
- in France, we had two large-scale studies, Discovery and Hycovid, which were started (very
reluctantly) and were pratically forced to include HCQ+AZ in their panel.
- In the weekend following publication of the fraudulent Lancet newspaper, our health
minister ordered a full stop.
- Since then, months have gone by; NOT ONE JOURNALIST has either 1) investigated who were the
accomplices of the Lancet fraud 2) questioned why all national and international authorities
reacted in lockstep 3) and most importantly WHY THE DECISIONS TO STOP THE STUDIES WERE NOT
REVERSED following the Lancet's retractation.
-In October, we learn that the EU Commission gave a cool 1 billion to buy remdesivir. ONE
WEEK before the WHO study concluding on the ineffectiviness of remdesivir came out.
I'm sorry, but this is becoming a little too much. One coincidence OK, but here we are
talking about a string of improbable events, with NO ONE analyzing with a cool head what
happened or reversing decisions that were taken based on obvious frauds.
Three weeks ago, our president solemnly declared that our OR would be saturated in
mid-November with 9000 people under respiratory assistance, no matter what we do. Well here
were are, and the tally is 4.800. Not a good situation, but still only half ; and with nobody
pointing out that every winter, our OR are saturated anyway due to the flu and the
influenza.
I think we should all grow up and do a more level-headed analysis of the pros and cons.
The most ridiculous thing perhaps is to see all those politicos sanctimoniously declare the
sanctity of life ; in a world where you can abort babies at your convenience, practices
eugenics, and where euthanasy is aggressively pushed into the mainstream, this is perhaps the
most hypocritical bullshit I have ever heard.
@Posted by: Avid Lurker | Nov 17 2020 13:53 utc | 117
Meh...Fauci is a political creature who has talked on both sides of his mouth on many
$ubject$, and goes with the (money)flow as long as he can get away with it without reducing
his credibility too much.
I wonder if Fauci is *still* singing the praises of Gilead's remdesivir, that $3K per
treatment apparent snake oil, according to critics:
Dr. Eric Topol, vice president for research at Scripps Research sez:
Most likely a game changer:
Portugiese court rule against PCR-test
Sorry, guys, this is a link to one of the best real-left Corona blogs, but in German
language. In Portugal a court decided that a PCR-test cannot be accepted as a proof of a
viral infection. Now think about its consequences!
Almost 500 medics and academics have penned a letter to U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson -
just hours after the U.S. election has been "decided" - informing him that official Covid data
is being "exaggerated" and that talk of a second wave of Covid is "misleading".
The letter was critical of the government's handling of the virus and said that the response
to the pandemic has been "disproportionate" relative to the risk, according to the
Daily Mail .
The group claims that mass testing has "distorted the risk of the virus" , that the high
numbers of tests are likely to be producing false positives, and that the infection and death
rates need to be put into the context of normal seasonal rates.
The group of scientists, medics and academics have also claimed that the U.K.'s second wave
"has already peaked":
Professor Tim Spector, who leads the Covid Symptom Study app aiming to track the spread of
Covid-19 in the UK, confirmed that there were 'positive signs' the country has 'passed the
peak of the second wave'.
The letter is titled "First Do No Harm". It comes one day after the U.K. confirmed 24,957
positive tests, up 13.9% from the week prior's total. Immunologist Dr. Charlotte R Bell,
pediatrician Dr. Rosamond Jones, and Keith Willison, Professor of Chemical Biology at Imperial
College are among those who signed the letter.
"The management of the crisis has become disproportionate and is now causing more harm than
good," it says. "We urge policy-makers to remember that this pandemic, like all pandemics, will
eventually pass but the social and psychological damage that it is causing risks becoming
permanent."
"After the initial justifiable response to Covid-19, the evidence base now shows a different
picture," it continues.
"The problem of functional false positive rates has still not been addressed and
particularly in the context of low prevalence of disease whereby false positives are likely to
exceed true positives substantially and moreover correlate poorly with the person being
infectious. Alongside this we have the issue that it is normal to see an increase in illness
and deaths during the winter months," the letter continues.
Then, the group points out that the "second wave" may not be any different from a normal
U.K. November: "It is notable that [the] UK death rate is currently sitting around average for
this time of year. The use of the term 'second wave' is therefore misleading . We have the
knowledge to enable a policy that protects the elderly and vulnerable without increasing all
other health and economic harms and which is not at the expense our whole way of life and
particularly that of the nation's children."
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST
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"The R rate of the coronavirus dropped in five regions of England this week - except London
and the South East, where it did not change - and stayed stable at between 1.1 and 1.3 in
England and the UK as a whole. Last week marked a drop from 1.2 to 1.4 the week before," the
Daily Mail concluded.
The letter was organized by a group called UsForThem, which opposes strong coronavirus
restrictions.
It won't make any difference. They KNOW it is inconsistent with facts and makes no sense,
which is precisely why they are doing it. It's part of the intended psychological grooming
exercise. And it's simply what they are being instructed to do by the Puppet Masters. This
David Icke video explains the process:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brazilian City Ravaged
by Coronavirus
Reached Herd Immunity
in Just Months, Study Finds
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>Blood donations suggest that up to half of Manaus was infected at the epidemic's
peak
>coronavirus...swept through with little to no measures in place to stop
infection
>No lockdown was implemented and no major steps were taken to limit the spread of the
virus.
Manaus Brazil
>Population 2,182,763
Ravaged By Corona-virus?
>4.5 times as many deaths as expected for that time of year!
Wow! Ok, how many people died?
""The researchers estimate close to 4,000 people died from COVID-19 in Manaus"
WTH? Are you kidding me!
4.5X = 4,000
x = 888
4,000 – 888 = 3,112
So an extra 3,112 people, OUT OF 2,182,763, died AND YOU CALL THAT "RAVAGED"?
HALF of the population infected and 99.86% of population survived....THAT'S RAVAGED!?
Let me guess, half of the dead were at the end of their lives health wise, 70% were over 65
and the medical care for everyone in the people's Socialist Utopia of Manaus is chit?
Note the source is freaking Newsweek...do they realize what they're printing. And Science
News is big on "Climate Change" killing us all.
Even the UK MSM has started to realise it's a politicalized issue now, they've screwed up
the economy so much that if they unlock, everything will collapse, they have no choice but to
continue furlough (UBI) and faux lockdowns until the whole thing implodes, alternatively they
could admit it and take responsibility, but when do politicians do that...
kleptomistic , 38 minutes ago
Covid-19 in California
November 8, 2020
24 people died from Covid-19
7 of them lived in a care facility.
74% of California deaths are over age 65
27% of deaths are in care facilities
Population of 36,560,000
...in other news
76 people died yesterday, in California, from "medical errors".
These politicians will just keep locking everything down until there's a vaccine and you
can't reason with them about it; it doesn't matter that lockdowns kill more people than the
virus and it doesn't matter how effective it is for people to build up active immunity. It
doesn't matter that masks cause serious health problems and weaken immunity despite being
evidently ineffective at slowing the spread of Covid and influenza.
The vaccine is coming and for many people it won't be voluntary. In America we have guns
and so the task of trying to forcibly inoculate everyone is a bit more daunting.
BStreetMan , 5 hours ago
It's an RNA virus. Forget vaccines.
Aloha_Snackbar , 4 hours ago
There's gonna be a vaccine regardless even if it's ineffective at providing passive
immunity. There's too much money involved for them not to create one for mass
distribution.
strych10 , 4 hours ago
It's not just money.
Politicians have a pathogical inability to admit they've ever been wrong. So much so that
they'll knowing lie on video and then contradict that lie, again on video, the very next day.
When asked about the contradiction they'll deny saying whichever thing is convenient to deny
in the moment.
They do it on the news literally every day.
Chain Man , 3 hours ago
The Globalist are out to destroy "Free Speech", not so hard for them to do on line but,
the street is another thing. Covid- 19 is just the tool they need. Pubs and restaurants where
locals come together has always been a area of cross communication. They want to keep people
from organizing.
I worry about them (Biden and Globalist) trying to use Covid-19 (low Death rate) as a Line
of acceptable conditions for a lock down in the name of safety of life. Then they will lock
us down for the flue if needed. It's all about keeping people from organizing (Free
Speech.)
Neocon Eliot Cohen says a Trump reelection would amount to a moral collapse. He clearly
hasn't learned a thing. Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins
University's School of Advanced International Studies, speaks during a discussion hosted by the
Hudson Institute titled "Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump" in Washington, USA on February 21,
2017. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
One of the more troubling features of America's current political culture is its inability
to cashier politicians, policymakers, military leaders, and other establishment figures who
have been proven not only wrong but wildly wrong. Those who led the nation into the unmitigated
disaster that was the Iraq War, for example, should have been quietly ushered off the nation's
public stage and, if not prosecuted, at least stigmatized for the horrors that they inflicted
upon the Iraqi people and our brave American troops. Members of Congress who supported the war
should have been defeated, public policy "intellectuals" who argued for it should have been
whisked off to private life, and generals who promised that victory was "around the corner"
should have been retired. There must be public accountability in the res publica .
But rather than being stigmatized, these establishment figures have been feted by the
establishment institutions that promoted their disastrous policies. Iraq hawk John McCain
assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee years after it was apparent
that the war was a fiasco. Paul Wolfowitz, another Iraq War architect, became president of the
World Bank. Many American military leaders who urged us into Iraq, and then urged us to stay
there for many long years, were given book deals, lobbying contracts, and think tank
appointments. Even today, the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs is providing prime
real
estate to the intellectual godfather of the Iraq War, Eliot A. Cohen.
Cohen not only argued that the invasion of Iraq would be effortless, a mere mopping up after
the "cakewalk" that was the first Gulf War, he also went "all in" on the presence of WMDs and
the Baghdadian origins of the 9/11 attacks. He wrote boldly in the Wall Street Journal
in late 2001 that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would lead to a "far, far better life for the
Iraqi people." In short, he was not only wrong, he was wildly wrong.
Yet here he is again, in October of 2020, with the lead article in Foreign Affairs,
arguing with the same clichés he employed to lead us into Iraq, this time to attack
Trump. If reelected, Cohen says, Trump will destroy America's "moral purpose on the
international stage." With the Trump presidency, he declares, "the shining city on a hill has
grown dim." Trump has made it clear that he has "no intention of engaging in projects to expand
liberty." And of course, the unending string of clichés would not be complete without
multiple references to "isolationism" and a "world akin to the chaotic 1920s and 1930s," i.e.
the Nazis will have a huge renaissance if we reelect Trump.
This is nothing short of astonishing. That these hackneyed banalities, which were used to
launch a war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents in the Middle East,
could be resurrected and published by one of the leading journals on American foreign policy
simply boggles the mind.
Yet if one is to critique Cohen, one finds oneself in the unenviable position of defending
Trump. With this Hobson's choice, one can only keep in mind Burke's admonition that
"circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and
discriminating effect." In other words, when critiquing Trump's foreign policy, one is obliged
to ask: compared to what?
Trump's foreign policy is one of profound strategic incoherence yet instinctual political
acumen. What many foreign policy realists and restrainers cannot seem to understand is that
Trump's policy is full of contradictions yet very much aligned with the views of his voters.
Populism is always full of contradictions.
For example, there is clear
evidence that, in 2016, Trump carried key Midwestern states because people in working-class
counties were sick and tired of seeing casualties return home from our endless wars in the
Middle East. Politically, Trump's desire to bring the troops home makes great sense. But to the
chagrin of libertarians, so does his desire to spend big money on the military. We probably
can't afford it, and the military-industrial complex is the primary beneficiary of profligate
military spending -- yet Trump's base loves fighter planes and aircraft carriers, so they are
enthusiastic about robust American power.
Keep going down the list. Are barbs directed at "Euroweenies" who freeload in NATO popular?
You bet they are. Is belligerence toward China, which hollowed out America's Midwestern
industrial base, popular? Check. Is Trump's unwise and unremitting hostility towards the
mullahs in Iran popular? Since those are the guys who took American hostages in 1979, yes, his
base chooses Trump over the mullahs. None of these foreign policy positions are driven by
strategic thought, but they are driven by an uncanny political sense.
If one believes that the U.S. needs to adopt a more restrained and coherent foreign policy,
then Trump's record is certainly a mixed bag. His political reticence to avoid new wars has
been the most attractive feature and his occasional bombastic and militaristic threats has been
the least attractive feature.
But in politics, one can only choose the options that are available, and what one gets with
Eliot Cohen's foreign policy is both politically unpopular and strategically disastrous. We
know, for example, what Cohen means when he says the United States should engage in "projects
to expand liberty." He means we need to act in Syria in 2020 as we did in Iraq in 2003: another
regime change quagmire with boots on the ground. America would become again, in Robespierre's
words, a nation of "armed missionaries."
The most ominous theme of the Cohen essay, however, reflects the sentiment now so common --
and so dangerous -- in the national security establishment: a Trump reelection would be
illegitimate. This would signal, Cohen says, that our American republic is "fundamentally
flawed" and that the United States had "undergone some kind of moral collapse."
Cohen's position reflects the establishment's absolute refusal to come to terms with their
2016 loss. There is no self-reflection, no sense that, with terrible errors such as the Iraq
War and the Wall Street bailouts, our elites may have themselves unleashed this Trumpian
populism. While the Framers of the American Constitution certainly feared populism, the one
thing they may have feared more is an intemperate, arrogant, and unaccountable elite.
William S. Smith is a senior research fellow and managing director of the Center for
the Study of Statesmanship at The Catholic University of America. His recent book Democracy
and Imperialism is from the University of Michigan Press.
"Far from settling into a 'new normal', we should expect a Covid19 domino effect,
triggering further disruptions – positive as well as negative – over the decade
ahead. "
There's a clue to the mass psychology of the Covid Death Cult. The rhetoric is very
familiar from forecasts of rising climate chaos, but with "Covid19" substituted for
"climate".
In spite of all the rhetoric about a "green economy" and a "Green New Deal", deep down
everyone except the most idiotic right-believers in the climate-industrial movement know that
the climate crisis cannot be solved within the framework of the economic civilization.
Since no one wants to face the implications of this, the global technocratic elites waging
the terror-lockdown assault which uses Covid as a pretext had the idea to include among their
propaganda a substitution of "Covid", which everyone (wrongly) believes can be controlled and
suppressed by system institutions (just as they wrongly believe it needs special control),
for the uncontrollable Earth.
In that way they hope to exorcise the demon of mass fear-itself over unsolvable resource
limits and uncontrollable ecological blowback and collapse by redirecting this
mass-psychological energy into belief in the Covid cult and enthusiastic faith in the
governments and globalist entities struggling to preserve their power. It's a call to throw
away all uncertainty, doubt, rational thought and immerse oneself in the terminal mass
know-nothingism.
Maskochism and hex spacing are designed to be constant day-to-day rituals reinforcing this
brain-dead obedience and propitiatory mindset.
... A recent survey by research firm Datassentials, for instance, found that 58% of those
surveyed described themselves as "uncomfortable" with dining indoors, and 36% described
themselves as "very uncomfortable." Not surprisingly, then, no matter how creative
restaurants get, traffic is still down sharply in most places, and 2.5 million restaurant
workers who lost their jobs in April remain unemployed. Similarly, gyms have been open in
most states for months now. But a recent survey of 5,000 gym-goers by RunRepeat found that
70% haven't returned and 43% said they had no plans to go back. Half a dozen gym chains have
filed for bankruptcy in recent months, including 24 Hour Fitness, the owner of New York
Sports Club, and Gold's Gym, with many of them permanently shuttering a majority of their
locations...
The point is that lifting stay-at-home orders and opening restaurants isn't enough: Until
consumers feel safe, they're going to stay away.
ptb @23
Thanks for responding. That's a good falsifiable hypothesis - I'll try and investigate the
data to see if it explains the fact that people are dying in the US at a significantly lower
rate than normal. If I can find the data, I'll report back.
When I look at the charts, I see an epidemic that's over, but I'm willing to be convinced
there is something else going on.
Thanks for looking that up, was curious about that actually.
The 5-10% dip below the baseline is certainly a tantalizing clue to something ... Maybe
the extreme precautions taken around hospitals and nursing homes simply mean the elderly are
getting other infectious diseases less often.
As for epidemic being over in the US, the serious-symptomatic hospitalization stats say
otherwise. I'd take the baseline mortality level as a sign that treatment has drastically
improved, combined with the 70+ age group now being much more isolated and thus protected, if
often miserable.
I.e. mask use is common enough in urban areas that it is working for those at risk of
dying who take it super seriously, but not enough to stop the infections for everyone
else.
Traffic fatalities down 2% despite miles travelled being down by 16%. So a 2% reduction in
traffic deaths, which itself is only 2% of deaths from all causes.
There must be something else driving the total mortality down lower than normal.
A statistical projection of traffic fatalities for the first half of 2020 shows that an
estimated 16,650 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. This represents a decrease
of 2 percent as compared to the 16,988 fatalities reported to have occurred in the first
half of 2019
Preliminary data reported by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) shows that vehicle
miles traveled (VMT) in the first 6 months of 2020 decreased by about 264.2 billion miles,
or about a 16.6-percent decrease.
..they have always been the reason for the industrial-military complex....but now, who
needs them.....we got china to point the finger at. so having 2 useful idiot countries...will
keep the weapons boys going for quite some time....
Snaffew , 7 hours ago
...he boogeyman has never been Russia, it resides right here in the US under the guise of
government, military, mainstream media, propaganda and sanctions, sanctions, sanctions
against anyone that rightfully takes our slice of entitled pie because they built a far
better and far cheaper mousetrap.
Oh the horrors of claiming to be a democracy and a capitalist nation when you just can't
seem to play by the rules. **** America---we have let the elites take us down the road to
ruins. We are as much at fault as they are for believing their nonsensical bs the whole while
all the evidence was smoking right in front of our face. Who's more stupid...them or us? I'd
tell everyone to take a good long look in the mirror if you are looking for an answer to that
question---
While we have previously reported
- and by now it is common knowledge - that Covid-19 usually kills only the very old with
virtually no deaths in the 45 and under category and most deaths in the 75 and over
category.
Indeed, as Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid noted when discussing the average age of fatalities from
Covid, "it is remarkably consistent around the 80-82 year old mark."
Then overnight, Bloomberg's John Authers pointed out how startling this mortality rate
varies from country to country, when referencing another chart from Jim Reid:
As Authers writes, "The U.S. is a remarkable outlier. How can that possibly be?"
According to Reid, a small part of this might be down to many of the other countries having
an older population. For example, Italy's median age is 45 (43 in Europe), whereas it is 38 for
the US.
However, another explanation offered by the Bloomberg commentator, which feeds into the
political debate of the moment, "is that all the other developed countries on this chart have
some form of universal state-provided healthcare." But rather than get embroiled in that
debate, Authers instead looks at the normal average age of people when they die. The following
is a chart of life expectancy (in years) at birth for all the members of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development:
As shown in the chart above, the U.S. - which as we discussed last week is turning
into a banana republic with just a 50% share of the population in middle-income households,
roughly the same category as Turkey, China and, drumroll, Russia - has lower life expectancy
than the Czech Republic or Chile, and is lagged only by countries that are significantly
poorer. It trails the other major economies by several years, in many cases roughly equal to
the gap in the age at which Covid-19 victims die.
According to Authers, instead of focusing on Covid, "it might make sense for the U.S.
healthcare debate to revolve around treating this as a national disgrace and trying to make
common cause over fixing it, rather than having an arid political argument, but I digress."
Which brings us to the topic at hand, namely does America have a covid problem, or is it
just an extension of America's far more serious problem of obesity. To wit, tne of its greatest
life-shortening effects is diabetes. Here are the most recent OECD numbers on diabetes
prevalence:
As Authers observes, "the U.S. lags behind only the much poorer nations of Turkey and Mexico
in this dismal category, and has more than double the diabetes prevalence of the main developed
economies of Europe", and summarizes:
Once the country has finished tearing itself apart over the pandemic, which will probably
only happen once the virus has finally gone away, a new debate over diabetes and obesity will
be necessary. Let's hope it can be more constructive than the current one.
The numbers also shed light on why the US has had a relatively difficult time containing the
pandemic according to the Bloomberg author, and also suggests that a "Swedish" model of
"focused protection" for those most vulnerable could be harder to apply to the US, because a
far higher proportion of obese Americans are at risk. In other words,"allowing most of the
population to return to life as normal is going to require confining a lot of people to their
homes for the duration -- judging by the diabetes numbers, maybe twice as many as in Sweden, as
a proportion of the population. As Authers puts it " that isn't feasible. "
Of course, concerns about the obesity epidemic - and not just in the U.S. - are nothing new,
and we have covered them for much of the past
decade . Additionally, the attempt by investors to profit from obesity is also not new.
Back in 2012, Bank of America published a report on "Globesity" which it described as one of
three global mega-trends. As Authers reminds us, "it offered a list of 50 stocks that it
thought would benefit from a global fight on obesity, including some counterintuitive names
such as Pepsico Inc. and Nestle SA, both of which it thought were better positioned to move
toward less fattening products -- but which produce plenty of products, such as sugary drinks,
that contribute to obesity."
One year earlier, Solactive started an obesity index of smaller companies working in drugs
and diagnostics connected to the issue -- primarily diabetes. Soon after, Janus Henderson
launched an exchange-traded fund to track it, with the appropriate ticker symbol "SLIM." Then,
in January of this year, the announcement was made that the ETF would be liquidated, an event
that finally took place on March 12. As Authers writes, "that represented a missed opportunity"
because this is how the obesity index has performed relative to the S&P 500 since
inception
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And here a remarkable statistic: the SLIMmers have done even better than the FANGs since the
market bottom, meaning that bets on America getting fatter are even more profitable than
betting on the giga-caps.
That said, as Authers notes judging by the valuations of the obesity index at present, the
short-term opportunity may have passed. It trades at an insane P/E ratio of 94.66x, (which
"drops" to 30.4 if one excludes the non-profitable companies). For the longer term, however,
the lesson according to Authers that all countries should learn from the dreadful experience of
the U.S. over the last eight months is that any given health emergency grows that much worse if
you are overweight.
In summary, " it's too late to help in the battle against Covid-19, and it's too late to
profit from the smallest companies working in the fight against diabetes, but the world will
have to combat obesity. In due course, capital will flow toward financing that fight. "
One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official
narrative. Not a regular official narrative, like the "Cold War" or the "War on Terror"
narratives. A totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality
and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts.
Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in
cults and other sub-cultural societal groups. Numerous examples will spring to mind: the Manson
family, Jim Jones' People's Temple, the Church of Scientology, Heavens Gate, etc., each with
its own psychotic official narrative: Helter Skelter, Christian Communism, Xenu and the
Galactic Confederacy, and so on.
Looking in from the dominant culture (or back through time in the case of the Nazis), the
delusional nature of these official narratives is glaringly obvious to most rational people.
What many people fail to understand is that to those who fall prey to them (whether individual
cult members or entire totalitarian societies) such narratives do not register as psychotic. On
the contrary, they feel entirely normal. Everything in their social "reality" reifies and
reaffirms the narrative, and anything that challenges or contradicts it is perceived as an
existential threat.
These narratives are invariably paranoid, portraying the cult as threatened or persecuted by
an evil enemy or antagonistic force which only unquestioning conformity to the cult's ideology
can save its members from. It makes little difference whether this antagonist is mainstream
culture, body thetans, counter-revolutionaries, Jews, or a virus. The point is not the identity
of the enemy. The point is the atmosphere of paranoia and hysteria the official narrative
generates, which keeps the cult members (or the society) compliant.
In addition to being paranoid, these narratives are often internally inconsistent,
illogical, and well, just completely ridiculous. This does not weaken them, as one might
suspect. Actually, it increases their power, as it forces their adherents to attempt to
reconcile their inconsistency and irrationality, and in many cases utter absurdity, in order to
remain in good standing with the cult. Such reconciliation is of course impossible, and causes
the cult members' minds to short circuit and abandon any semblance of critical thinking, which
is precisely what the cult leader wants.
Moreover, cult leaders will often radically change these narratives for no apparent reason,
forcing their cult members to abruptly forswear (and often even denounce as "heresy") the
beliefs they had previously been forced to profess, and behave as if they had never believed
them, which causes their minds to further short circuit, until they eventually give up even
trying to think rationally, and just mindlessly parrot whatever nonsensical gibberish the cult
leader fills their heads with.
Also, the cult leader's nonsensical gibberish is not as nonsensical as it may seem at first.
Most of us, upon encountering such gibberish, assume that the cult leader is trying to
communicate, and that something is very wrong with his brain. The cult leader isn't trying to
communicate. He is trying to disorient and control the listener's mind. Listen to Charlie Manson "rapping." Not
just to what he says, but how he says it . Note how he sprinkles bits of truth into his
stream of free-associated nonsense, and his repetitive use of thought-terminating
clichés, described by Robert J. Lifton as follows:
"The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating
cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief,
highly selective, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. They
become the start and finish of any ideological analysis." -- Thought Reform and the
Psychology of Totalism: : A Study of "Brainwashing" in China , 1961
If all this sounds familiar, good. Because the same techniques that most cult leaders use to
control the minds of the members of their cults are used by totalitarian systems to control the
minds of entire societies: Milieu Control, Loaded Language, Sacred Science, Demand for Purity,
and other standard mind-control techniques. It can happen to pretty much any society, just as
anyone can fall prey to a cult, given the right set of circumstances.
It is happening to most of our societies right now. An official narrative is being
implemented. A totalitarian official narrative. A totally psychotic official narrative, no less
delusional than that of the Nazis, or the Manson family, or any other cult.
Most people cannot see that it is happening, for the simple reason that it is happening to
them. They are literally unable to recognize it. The human mind is extremely resilient and
inventive when it is pushed past its limits. Ask anyone who has struggled with psychosis or has
taken too much LSD. We do not recognize when we are going insane. When reality falls apart
completely, the mind will create a delusional narrative, which appears just as "real" as our
normal reality, because even a delusion is better than the stark raving terror of utter
chaos.
This is what totalitarians and cult leaders count on, and exploit to implant their
narratives in our minds, and why actual initiation rituals (as opposed to purely symbolic
rituals) begin by attacking the subject's mind with terror, pain, physical exhaustion,
psychedelic drugs, or some other means of obliterating the subject's perception of reality.
Once that is achieved, and the subject's mind starts desperately trying to construct a new
narrative to make sense out of the cognitive chaos and psychological trauma it is undergoing,
it is relatively easy to "guide" that process and implant whatever narrative you want, assuming
you have done your homework.
And this is why so many people -- people who are able to easily recognize totalitarianism in
cults and foreign countries -- cannot perceive the totalitarianism that is taking shape now,
right in front of their faces (or, rather, right inside their minds). Nor can they perceive the
delusional nature of the official "Covid-19" narrative, no more than those in Nazi Germany were
able to perceive how completely delusional their official "master race" narrative was. Such
people are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have been successfully initiated into a cult,
which is essentially what totalitarianism is, albeit on a societal scale.
Their initiation into the Covidian Cult began in January, when the medical authorities and
corporate media turned on The Fear with
projections of hundreds of millions of deaths and
fake photos of people dropping dead in the streets . The psychological conditioning has
continued for months. The global masses have been subjected to a constant stream of propaganda,
manufactured hysteria, wild speculation, conflicting directives, exaggerations, lies, and
tawdry theatrical effects. Lockdowns. Emergency field hospitals and morgues. The
singing-dancing NHS staff. Death trucks. Overflowing ICUs. Dead Covid babies. Manipulated
statistics. Goon squads. Masks. And all the rest of it.
Eight months later, here we are. The Head of the Health Emergencies Program at the WHO has
basically confirmed
an IFR of 0.14% , approximately the same as the seasonal flu. And here are the
latest survival rate estimates from the Center for Disease Control:
The "science" argument is officially over. An increasing number of doctors and medical
experts are breaking ranks and explaining how the current mass hysteria over "cases" (which now
includes perfectly healthy people) is essentially meaningless propaganda, for example,
in this segment on
ARD , one of the big mainstream German TV channels.
And then there is the existence of Sweden, and other countries which are not playing ball
with the official Covid-19 narrative, which makes a mockery of the ongoing hysteria.
I'm not going to go on debunking the narrative. The point is, the facts are all available.
Not from "conspiracy theorist" websites. From mainstream outlets and medical experts. From the
Center for Fucking Disease Control.
Which does not matter in the least, not to the members of the Covidian Cult. Facts do not
matter to totalitarians and cult members. What matters is loyalty to the cult or the party.
Which means we have a serious problem, those of us to whom facts still matter, and who have
been trying to use them to convince the Covidian cultists that they are wrong about the virus
for going on eight months at this point.
While it is crucial to continue reporting the facts and sharing them with as many people as
possible -- which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the censorship of alternative and
social media -- it is important to accept what we are up against. What we are up against is not
a misunderstanding or a rational argument over scientific facts. It is a fanatical ideological
movement. A global totalitarian movement the first of its kind in human history.
It isn't national totalitarianism, because we're living in a global capitalist empire, which
isn't ruled by nation-states, but rather, by supranational entities and the global capitalist
system itself. And thus, the cult/culture paradigm has been inverted. Instead of the cult
existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant
culture , and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands
within it.
I wish I could be more optimistic, and maybe offer some sort of plan of action, but the only
historical parallel I can think of is how Christianity "converted" the pagan world which
doesn't really bode so well for us. While you're sitting at home during the "second wave"
lockdowns, you might want to brush up on that history.
Maybe CJ deserves the benefit of the doubt as to whether this piece is intended to be a
satirical exposé of "regular official narrative[s], like the "Cold War" or the "War on
Terror" narratives" which normal people feel are "entirely normal. Everything in their social
"reality" reifies and reaffirms the narrative, and anything that challenges or contradicts it
is perceived as an existential threat."
I smell the coming of Covid Museums any-every-where to "bear witness" to the dangers of
pandemics so that "never again" can we allow another catastrophic Pandemic to happen. Glory
be to "safe and effective" Vaccines for ever and ever; Amen!
What a breath of fresh air is that German TV documentary linked to by CJ – a very
thorough and rational and honest and succinct summary of the Covid Pandemic.
C.J. Hopkins: " the only historical parallel I can think of is how Christianity
"converted" the pagan world which doesn't really bode so well for us."
Yes, that's it. The death cult known as Christianity enveloped the Western world long ago.
We've all been living in it all our lives, particularly Americans. Corpses come back to life?
Of course they do. That's what everyone thinks. LOL. Jesus made things appear out of thin
air? It must be true. And of course, it's necessary to die to attain eternal life. Jesus
himself said so, and it's so plainly true the point hardly needs to be emphasized.
But rather than attributing all of this to a totalitarian conspiracy, I attribute it to
human nature. The truth is, the vast majority of people are unreasoning conformist assholes
who enjoy inflicting their petty tyrannies on each other. The more nonsensical they are, the
greater their pleasure. As Sartre so aptly put it, "L'enfer c'est les autres" -- Hell is
other people. This death cult includes the innovation of mind control, which at the time was
unique to Christianity.
My current theory, admittedly speculative, is that the group mind of the West, as it
careens to an apocalypse of world-ending proportions, is still deeply in the thrall of the
Christian death cult. It wants to die, and is doing what it can to bring this about,
because only when the world dies can the crucified rabbi return. Owing to the culture
Christianity has spawned, even the so-called atheists have this expectation buried deep in
their subconscious.
Notice how our genius who is so smart he doesn't have to be a scientist to explain
scientific data to us in a condescending manner doesn't mention permanent internal organ
damage.
What the statistics on permanent internal organ damage, guy with initials instead of a
name?
What, can't find the data? How could that be? I thought you were an epidemiological
genius.
When the narrative is oversold people became cynical. That's the classic "Crying
Wolf!" situation, repeated again and again. Excessive deaths stats does not support "COVID-19
as a new Black Death" narrative and that provide some funny situations alike with this
shirt.
While infection was dangerous and some suspect that it was result of "gain of
function" experiments, the level of response was disproportional to the threat. It's like they
stages "Covid-revolution" -- a drastic social change in the society, which affects the way we
work, the way we communicate with each and the way we entertain each other in a very profound
fashion.
I've been wearing a hand painted [by me] , in large bright red letters:" COVID -19 IS A
SCAM" , black tee-shirt and matching hand-painted mask, on a more or less daily basis for the
last 8 weeks. [The mask I only wear when I have to enter a store with an idiotic "masks are
mandatory" policy.]
To date, much to my surprise, 38 people have stopped me and said " I agree" or similar,
and only 4 have said "you're wrong" or similar, [one large Australian male halfwit has been
the only person threatening me with violence to date – he got really mad- I just gave
him the finger and didn't argue- eventually he fucked off.
Of the agreers, perhaps the most notable was a cop who was driving by me on a main road as
I waited for a bus. He slowed to a stop and I thought "Oh-oh, what's he going to book me for,
no mask?", then he lowered his passenger side window [he wasn't wearing a mask, as required
locally], and said "I agree". I said "Huh?". He said "your shirt, I agree with the message".
I was shocked and happy at the same time.
My conclusion: there are many out there , [perhaps a majority?]who know that the whole
thing is a scam, they just don't let everyone know. It's the silent majority phenomena all
over again, perhaps.
I was in Baghdad
in 1998 during US airstrikes, watching missiles explode in great flashes of light as they hit their targets. There was
some ineffectual anti-aircraft fire , the only result of which was pieces of
shrapnel falling from the sky and making it dangerous to step outside the
building we were in.
To my surprise I saw a reporter, a friend of mine with long experience of war, crawling into
the open to use a satellite phone that would not work inside. When he returned, I said to him
that it must have been a very important phone call for him to take such a risk. He laughed
bitterly, explaining that the reason for his call was that his paper in the US had demanded
that he contact some distinguished "expert" in a think tank in Washington to ask him about the
air attacks.
Despite my friend being a highly informed eyewitness to the events he was describing, his
editors insisted that he access the supposed expertise of the think tanker thousands of miles
away. A more covert motive was probably to spread the blame if the reporter on the spot
expressed criticism of the airstrikes.
I recalled this story when watching Boris Johnson and his ministers interact with his
medical and scientific experts, Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, sometimes deferential,
sometimes dismissive. Naivety and calculation are at work here. Politicians grappling with
crises,
be it a war or a pandemic , are frequently over-impressed by experts with the right bedside
manner and a command of the technical jargon. They are less good, and the same applies to the
media, in knowing if this apparent expertise has real practical value in averting some pressing
danger. Often it does not. A doctor or an academic specialist may know a lot about how the
virus operates inside the body, but have no idea and no experience of how to stop it spreading
from person to person in an epidemic. This is quite a different skill.
Politicians are feckless in choosing the right experts, in part because they may be out of
their depth in a crisis. There is nothing wrong with this, so long as they plug into the
expertise of somebody who really does know what to do and how to do it. Governments often pick
the wrong expert out of simple ignorance and because he or she is there primarily to beef up
the government's credibility and provide a scapegoat in case things go wrong.
This strategy worked well enough from the government's point of view during the first
lockdown in Britain, but it is now crashing in flames as the scientists refuse to provide
political cover for failed policies.
The manifesto of the mutiny is the Sage memo of 23 September, published this week, which
recommended a circuit-breaking lockdown to prevent "a very large epidemic with catastrophic
consequences". Rejection of this recommendation by the government understandably got all the
headlines, but towards the end of the memo there is an extraordinary admission that is surely
more important than the row about circuit-breaking measures and the different regional
lockdowns. Watch more
The justification for both is that they provide a pause button, which temporarily holds
back the epidemic until a vaccine is discovered – which may be a long time coming.
More immediately, closing down all or part of the country is supposed to win time so that
an effective Test, Trace and Isolate (TTI) system can be put in place to prevent a
resurgence of the virus.
Instead of relying on experienced public health experts with a successful record in
finding, containing and isolating people infected with HIV and TB, the government handed
the project over to the private sector, pouring great sums of money into the creation of a
new but, in Sage's judgement, dysfunctional system. Documents released by the Department of
Health and Social Care after a Freedom of Information Act request from Sky News, explains
why so much was spent for such small returns. No less than 1,114 consultants from Deloitte,
few of whom are likely to be public health experts, are now employed by the government to
organise Test, Trace and Isolate with each of them earning a daily fee of up to
£2,360. Other consultants, such as those working for the Boston Consulting Group, are
even more munificently rewarded, earning as much as £7,000 a day or £1.5m a
year.
The failure of NHS Test and Trace to cope with the second wave of the epidemic, as
predicted by Sage, is already with us with only 62.6 per cent of those testing positive for
coronavirus being contacted so that they can be told to isolate.Not that it would do much
good if the call centres reached more people according to a King's College London survey
showing that only 18 per cent of those infected are isolating.
The moment when Britain might have successfully contained the coronavirus has probably
passed. This would have been very difficult but not impossible, and it could only have been
carried out successfully by a government of real competence, energy and expertise. There
was no chance of this being done with Boris Johnson and his crew zig-zagging and blundering
so spectacularly that their antics would provide rich material for a Gilbert and Sullivan
comic opera, except that there is nothing funny about the unnecessary deaths of so many
people. Nor is there any sign that they have learned from their mistakes. As one German
statesman asked despairingly of a general during the First World War who wanted to press on
with some calamitous offensive: "Where does the incompetence end and the crime begin?"
PeteSW 1 day ago
It is not incompetence
The Tories and their chums are hoovering up billions of tax payers money
They give the illusion of being incompetent
But how much of the billions being squirrelled away has landed in YOUR pocket
It is the most brilliant of con tricks
The rich and powerful are more richer and powerful than ever before
This crisis has been the biggest cash cow in history
They are gobbling up tax payers money quicker than it can be printed
The last thing they want is for this to end
Reply 4 0 Larkspur 16 hours ago
They are certainly competent at selling the poor down the river, overwhelming hospitals
and funnelling large amounts of public money into their cronies&#x27; pockets. But
still 44 per cent of the public back Johnson.
Reply 0 0 DynSaesneg 2 days ago
Clearly the Thatcherite ideology of *public bad, private good* has prevailed over the
pragmatic reality that local public health teams know way more about this sort of thing -
after all, they*ve been doing it for almost two centuries - than do the likes of
Deloittes.
Reply 2 0 DynSaesneg 2 days ago
Clearly the Thatcherite ideology of *public bad, private good* has prevailed over the
pragmatic reality that local public health teams know way more about this sort of thing -
after all, they*ve been doing it for almost two centuries - than do the likes of
Deloittes.
Reply 1 1 DBlenkinsop 2 days ago
Incompetence is not a crime.
Be it in Government or Journalism.
Reply 0 1 Liarsbane 2 days ago
criminally negligent of you to say so
Reply 1 0 DBlenkinsop 2 days ago
Liarsbane .Negligence is not incompetence .One is not knowing the other not
doing
Reply 1 0 nonprobiker 3 days ago
Bunter is incapable of learning the lessons. Nothing will improve until he is out of the
way, and Gollum with him.
Reply 3 0 nonprobiker 3 days ago
Bunter is incapable of learning the lessons. Nothing will improve until he is out of the
way, and Gollum with him.
Reply 0 0 MichaelWME 3 days ago
Another good column. The English-speaking countries have two successes in the Antipodes,
and two much less successful responses. If only the US and UK had paid more attention to
the Antipodes.
Since March, the coronavirus has been treated as if it is a danger categorically different
from other dangers , including other viruses. But this treatment is deeply mistaken. The
coronavirus is not a categorically different danger. It occupies a location on the same
spectrum that features other viruses. Reasonable people can and do debate just where this
location is – that is, how much more dangerous is the coronavirus than are ordinary flu
viruses and other 'novel' viruses that plagued us in the past. But the coronavirus is well
within the same category as other viruses.
Yet humanity has reacted – and continues to react – to the coronavirus as if it
is a beast that differs from other health risks categorically. The hysterical overreaction by
the press, public-health officials, and politicians – an overreaction undoubtedly
supercharged by social media – has convinced many people that humanity is today being
stalked by a venomous monster wholly unlike anything to which we are accustomed.
Only by assuming that this virus differs fundamentally from other risks can governments
continue to get away with unprecedented and arbitrary restrictions on peaceful human activities
– restrictions on activities such as working at the factory or office, on dining out, on
attending religious services, on going to school, and even on seeking medical treatments for
non-Covid-related ailments. Only by being convinced that the coronavirus poses a threat
categorically unique are ordinary men and women led to change their ways of living and
interacting as fundamentally as many have done, and to tolerate the categorical change in
governments' responses to epidemics.
Quaking with fear that the angel of death lurks as never before in every stranger's breath,
on every person's fingertips, and around every corner, people today treat each other
categorically differently from how they treated each other until this past March. They leap
frantically away from approaching strangers on sidewalks. They "meet" their co-workers only
online. Neighbors no longer visit each other's homes, while those who still dare to chat
outside stand far apart, as if each is about to morph any moment from a Dr. Jekyll into a Mr.
Hyde. When they stage athletic events, the stands are filled not with human beings but with
eerie cardboard cutouts.
Other human beings are no longer treated as potential partners in productive social
cooperation, whether for work or pleasure. Now regarded as meaty and mobile vials of
unprecedented poison, other human beings are treated by so many of us in a way that differs
categorically from how we treated them for centuries up until just a few months ago. "Social
distancing" is undermining social cooperation – which means that it's undermining
civilization itself.
Is there any evidence to justify this categorical change in behavior?
My always wise friend and sometime co-author Lyle
Albaugh has from the start understood that Covid, while certainly no nothingburger, is not
remotely close to being the extraordinary monster that it has become in the popular mind . And
so he's having the following information printed on business-card-sized notices:
COVID-19 INFECTION SURVIVAL RATES (per CDC)
Ages 0-19: 99.997%
Ages 20-49: 99.98%
Ages 50-69: 99.5%
Ages 70+: 94.6%
Seasonal Flu Infection Survival Rate (for population as a whole): 99.90%
This single slice of information should be sufficient to put Covid-19 in proper perspective.
It makes plain that the risk that this disease poses to humanity as a whole does not differ
categorically from the risk of seasonal flu – or, for that matter, from any of the many
other perils that we humans routinely encounter. And because these figures show the estimated
chances of survival of those who are infected with Covid, even for persons 70 years of age or
older Covid obviously is not a categorically unique threat.
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT
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And yet, again, humanity has reacted to Covid in a manner categorically unique. It's as if a
hornet rather than a honeybee found its way into our home, and so to protect ourselves from the
somewhat-more-threatening invader we commenced to frantically scour every room of our home with
a flamethrower.
But I despair that the information shared by Lyle – or even
the more extensive information shared by my courageous colleagues at AIER – will have
any noticeable impact. Very many people today seem almost eager to be misled about the danger
posed by Covid. Much of humanity today appears to perversely enjoy being duped into the
irrational fear that any one of us, regardless of age or health, is at the mercy of a brutal
beast categorically more lethal than is any other danger that we've ever confronted. I hope
that my despair proves misguided.
Locker up , 2 hours ago
Does anybody remember the original plan? "Flatten the curve" so not to overwhelm the care
facilities? This should be the only reason to take away people's regular routine and also to
"Protect the most vulnerable". Most of the extra lock down crap was to destroy Trump's great
economy so the Democratic Party would have one issue to vote for them. Shysters.
adr , 2 hours ago
There is no such thing as asymptomatic spread of a virus. A virus can not replicate by
itself, since it is just a strand of errant RNA. It requires a host cell to replicate.
If cells are not being actively infected, there can be no increase in viral load, so there
is a complete and total impossibility of becoming infectious.
If you aren't sick, you can't infect others.
Eric Post , 2 hours ago
Yes, you can. Look up Typhoid Mary and see. After her death her autopsy showed she was
full of Typhoid but it did not harm her in anyway, yet she was able to spread it.
zardov , 1 hour ago
Typhoid is a bacterial infection, not a virus.
Mtnrunnr , 2 hours ago
Lockdown made sense for 2 weeks in NYC. This crap we are doing now is insane.
househonky , 2 hours ago
Wrong. Thousands died in NYC because doctors destroyed people's lungs with ventilators. It
was murderous medical malpractice.
I Write Code , 1 hour ago
The original quite reasonable fear was that this was a weaponized or at least
gain-of-function experiment that might have mortality far beyond the strength of mortal men.
It turns out that, whatever the truth of its origin, in practice, by all the current
evidence, it's a nasty bugger but does not kill any unprecedented number of people.
This is quite an interesting experimental result, actually.
The problem is Fauci, who actually sponsored this hideously dangerous work, never
explained it that way to the public. Instead he repeatedly said, "WE HAVE NO IMMUNITY!", but
he's also a moron, hasn't read a biology book in forty years, and had no idea what he was
even talking about.
So now, it sure seems that it's a nasty bugger but no more, but Our Elite Scientific
Leaders cannot bring themselves to say it.
pearlsbeforepigs , 1 hour ago
The author is not comparing apples to apples. The ignorance is staggering, especially
coming from ZeroHedge commentors who are normally pretty smart but regarding covid-19 they
have let themselves be unscientifically influenced by politics. In actuality EVERYONE is
guessing when it comes to covid-19 because we simply don't know what percentage of people
have been infected. If we don't know that number then everything else that we postulate is
just guessing based pretty much on nothing. It has turned into a ridiculous political debate
instead of a health science discussion.
Aetherwizard , 2 hours ago
This article demonstrates a total lack of mathematical skills. Yes, the virus has been
kept in check for the most part and the death rate is presently falling. Everyone who has
worked on mitigation deserves credit for the success to date.
Here we are in year number two. Flu season is just starting and the rapid spread of
COVID-19 is ramping up. Last year, the virus started from just one person in China; this year
the virus will be starting from millions of people all around the planet. The virus is not
only being carried by humans, but it is literally spread all over the surface of the
globe.
Despite lockdowns and harsh measures, the virus still managed to infect over 38 million
people from a single case, and killed over 1 million. And now this article is making it sound
like the virus is benign and nothing to worry about.
COVID-19 is highly contagious. It spreads even when people do not show symptoms of having
the disease. We are going into the time of year when flu viruses easily spread; imagine how
much easier it is for COVID-19 to spread. Even if the death rate remains low, the numbers of
infected people will reach incredibly high numbers in the next six months. Nothing we can do
will stop this disease right now.
Hopefully, the medicines and equipment needed to treat people have been stocked up. But we
also need uninfected health care workers to apply the medicine. Even if there is not a single
lockdown anywhere, people will be getting sick in huge numbers and will not be able to pump
our gas, sell us groceries, transport goods to stores, harvest the crops, process our food,
and on and on. The magnitude of disease spread, deaths, and economic hardships will exceed
anything we saw last Spring.
And here we read Pollyanish articles telling the world that COVID-19 is a hoax and that
there is nothing to worry about. The ignorance is staggering.
dustinwind , 2 hours ago
In the words of government covid is a "tremendous opportunity" created by a "crisis that
shouldn't be wasted".
Zeusky Babarusky , 28 minutes ago
Seems as though Governor Chris Christie had a change of thinking relative to Covid-19. He
did not get the easy pass Donald Trump got, if Trump did indeed have the virus. Christie says
he did not take the proper precautions regarding the virus, and he paid a pretty big price
for it. Why is it that those who have not contracted Covid-19 and experienced a bad ordeal
with it, are the ones constantly parading out these articles downplaying the virus? My guess
is they are idiots. Here's a link. You can read about Christie's change of mind regarding
Covid-19.
"... COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact (within about 6 feet) for a prolonged period. ..."
"... "Current data do not support long range aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, such as seen with measles or tuberculosis. Short-range inhalation of aerosols is a possibility for COVID-19, as with many respiratory pathogens. However, this cannot easily be distinguished from 'droplet' transmission based on epidemiologic patterns. Short-range transmission is a possibility particularly in crowded medical wards and inadequately ventilated spaces ." ..."
"... Kimberly A. Prather, PhD, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. ..."
"... Linsey C Marr, PhD, Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech. ..."
"... Donald K Milton, MD, DrPH, Professor of Environment Health at The University of Maryland School of Public Health. ..."
Right now, the CDC website does not acknowledge that aerosols typically spread SARS-CoV-2
beyond 6 feet, instead
saying :
" COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact (within about 6 feet)
for a prolonged period. Spread happens when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks,
and droplets from their mouth or nose are launched into the air and land in the mouths or
noses of people nearby. The droplets can also be inhaled into the lungs."
The site says that respiratory droplets can land on various surfaces, and people can become
infected from
touching those surfaces and then touching their eyes, nose or mouth. It goes on to say,
"Current data do not support long range aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, such as
seen with measles or tuberculosis. Short-range inhalation of aerosols is a possibility for
COVID-19, as with many respiratory pathogens. However, this cannot easily be distinguished
from 'droplet' transmission based on epidemiologic patterns. Short-range transmission is a
possibility particularly in crowded medical wards and inadequately ventilated
spaces ."
Confusion has surrounded the use of words like "aerosols" and "droplets" because they have
not been consistently defined. And the word "airborne" takes on special meaning for infectious
disease experts and public health officials because of the question of whether infection can be
readily spread by "airborne transmission." If SARS-CoV-2 is readily spread by airborne
transmission, then more stringent infection control measures would need to be adopted, as is
done with airborne diseases such as measles and tuberculosis. But the CDC has told CBS News
chief medical correspondent Dr. Jonathan LaPook that even if airborne spread is playing a role
with SARS-CoV-2, the role does not appear to be nearly as important as with airborne infections
like measles and tuberculosis.
All this may sound like wonky scientific discussion that is deep in the weeds -- and it is
-- but it has big implications as people try to figure out how to stay safe during the
pandemic. Some pieces of advice are intuitively obvious: wear a mask, wash your hands, avoid
crowds, keep your distance from others, outdoors is safer than indoors. But what about that "6
foot" rule for maintaining social distance? If the virus can travel indoors for distances
greater than 6 feet, isn't it logical to wear a mask
indoors whenever you are with people who are not part of your "pod" or "bubble?"
Understanding the basic science behind how SARS-CoV-2 travels through the air should help
give us strategies for staying safe. Unfortunately, there are still many open questions. For
example, even if aerosols produced by an infected person can float across a room, and even if
the aerosols contain some viable virus, how do we know how significant a role that possible
mode of transmission is playing in the pandemic?
Aerosols can be thought of as cigarette smoke. While they are most concentrated close to
someone who has the infection, they can travel farther than 6 feet, linger, build up in the air
and remain infectious for hours. As a consequence, to lessen the chance of inhaling this virus,
it is vital to take all of the following steps:
Indoors:
Practice physical distancing -- the farther the better.
Wear a face mask when you are with others, even when you can maintain physical
distancing. Face masks not only lessen the amount of virus coming from people who have the
infection, but also lessen the chance of you inhaling the virus.
Improve ventilation by opening windows. Learn how to clean the air effectively with
methods such as filtration.
Outdoors:
Wear a face mask if you cannot physically distance by at least 6 feet or, ideally,
more.
Whenever possible, move group activities outside.
Whether you are indoors or outdoors, remember that your risk increases with the duration of
your exposure to others.
With the question of transmission, it's not just the public that has been confused. There's
also been confusion among scientists, medical professionals and public health officials, in
part because they have often used the words "droplets" and "aerosols" differently. To address
the confusion, participants in an August workshop on airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 at the
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggested these definitions for
respiratory droplets and aerosols::
Droplets are larger than 100 microns and fall to the ground within 6 feet,
traveling like tiny cannonballs.
Aerosols are smaller than 100 microns, are highly concentrated close to a
person, can travel farther than 6 feet and can linger and build up in the air, especially
in rooms with poor ventilation.
All respiratory activities, including breathing, talking and singing, produce far more
aerosols than droplets. A person is far more likely to inhale aerosols than to be sprayed by a
droplet, even at short range. The exact percentage of transmission by droplets versus aerosols
is still to be determined. But we know from epidemiologic and other data, especially superspreading
events , that infection does occur through inhalation of aerosols.
In short, how are we getting infected by SARS-CoV-2? The answer is: In the air. Once we
acknowledge this, we can use tools we already have to help end this pandemic.
Kimberly A. Prather, PhD, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry, Scripps
Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
Linsey C Marr, PhD, Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, Virginia Tech.
Donald K Milton, MD, DrPH, Professor of Environment Health at The University of Maryland
School of Public Health.
Coronavirus can survive on certain surfaces, including banknotes and mobile phone screens,
for nearly a month in cooler climates, new research by Australian scientists suggests.
Covid-19 is able to survive in the open for a significantly longer length of time than was
previously thought, according to a study by the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) published by the
Virology Journal.
"Establishing how long the virus really remains viable on surfaces enables us to more
accurately predict and mitigate its spread, and do a better job of protecting our people,"
said CSIRO's chief executive, Dr. Larry Marshall.
According to the research, the virus has proven to be "extremely stable" and able to
thrive on smooth, non-porous surfaces, including paper and plastic banknotes, glass, and steel.
Kept at around room temperature – 20C (68F) – Covid-19 stayed alive for a whopping
28 days, which is some 10 days longer than the survival time of the regular flu virus. It
should be noted that the experiment was carried out in the dark, as UV light is very effective
in killing the coronavirus.
Higher temperatures are significantly less comfortable for the virus. At 40C (104F), it was
able to survive for less than 24 hours. At 30C (86F) Covid-19 demonstrated quite mixed results,
staying alive for some seven days on stainless steel, plastic notes and glass, but only three
days on vinyl and cotton cloth. On paper cash, the contagious virus was still detected after 21
days under those conditions.
By Malcolm Kendrick , doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service
in England. His blog can be read here and his book, 'Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out
Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,' is available here . Yes, coronavirus is a serious infection for
the elderly and vulnerable. But, for just about everyone else, it's a relatively mild condition
with a very low fatality rate. The only thing to fear is our overreaction to it.
In this piece, I intend to establish a reasonably accurate estimate for the risk of dying of
Covid-19 for the average healthy person under the age of sixty-five.
If we go back to the start of the pandemic, most of the world locked down based on a
prediction that the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of Covid-19 would be in the region of one per
cent.
In the UK, the pandemic modellers at Imperial College London, the group with the greatest
influence on Government policy,
estimated the IFR at 0.9 percent. In short, they predicted that approximately one in a
hundred people infected with the Sars-Cov2 virus would die.
Has this estimate proven accurate? If so, within a world population of between seven and
eight billion, we would expect to suffer up to 76 million deaths. So far, there have been just
over one million .
Having said this, no-one predicted that everyone could become infected. The Imperial College
model suggested that about 80 percent of people would need to be infected before we reached
'herd immunity.' I prefer to call it community-wide immunity. We are not cattle.
Which means that we were not going to reach that figure of 76 million. Under this 80 percent
model, we might expect to reach 61 million deaths (7.5bn x 0.8 x 0.1). Even with this reduced
number, we are a long way short. How long might it take to get to 61 million?
At present, worldwide deaths are running at around 5,000 per day. At this rate, it would
take 33 years to reach sixty million deaths. I am not certain what the time limitation is
before a pandemic could be considered to have ended. I would imagine that 33 years might be
stretching things a little far.
Perhaps a more important point to consider is this. Do we know how many people have been
infected up to this point? If so, we can make a better guess at the likely IFR, and your risk
of dying.
Dr Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization's health emergencies
programme, recently stated the WHO has estimated that 750 million people have been
infected worldwide .
If this is the case, calculating the current, rather than the estimated, IFR is pretty
straightforward. You simply divide the one million deaths [1,034,068, to be fully accurate], by
750m.
So, an IFR of 0.138 percent. Which is significantly lower than the initially predicted one
per cent. Or, to turn this figure around, according to the WHO figures, if you become infected
with Covid-19, there is a one-in-750 chance you will die.
Of course, figures will vary from country to country. In Kenya, for example, the most recent
attempt to estimate the IFR showed an exceptionally low rate. A study was done where antibodies
for Sars-Cov2 were taken between April and June 2020. It was found that seroprevalence, the
number of people showing antibodies, was 5.2 percent. (This will be an underestimate of true
infection numbers, as many people do not create antibodies).
This represents an 'infected' population of just under three million (2,796,107), and there
had been 71 deaths. Which provides an Infection Fatality Ratio of 0.00254 percent. This
extremely low rate is, currently, unexplained .
On the other hand, the country with the highest overall death
rate based on mortality per million is Peru. The total population of Peru is 32 million,
and there have been just over 32,000 deaths. Which is a population fatality rate of almost
exactly 0.1 percent. How many people have been infected in Peru in total? Uncertain. However,
their IFR is going to end up in excess of 0.1 percent. Not everybody has yet been
infected.
Why is there so much variation? This is currently unknown. Some people think that the
indigenous population in Peru is at much higher risk than the surrounding 'European'
population, due to genetic factors. However, let's leave aside country-to-country and genetic
variability for now. Overall, if you get infected, it looks as though the chance of dying
currently stands at one in seventy hundred and fifty.
However, there is another enormously important factor at play here. Which is that, in almost
all countries, Covid-19 is far more serious and deadly in the elderly population. Therefore,
the average IFR doesn't tell you much about your real risk. You need to factor in age.
For example, across most of Western Europe, if we look at excess mortality rates since the
start of the epidemic, there have been just over two thousand more deaths than normal in those
under the age of 45. These figures come from EuroMOMO, which gathers data from 24 European
countries, with a combined population of 240 million (The UK is treated as four separate
countries).
EuroMOMO describes its mission thus: 'The overall
objective of the original European Mortality Monitoring Project was to design a routine public
health mortality monitoring system aimed at detecting and measuring, on a real-time basis,
excess number of deaths related to influenza and other possible public health threats across
participating European Countries.'
In those aged over 45, there have been more than 200,000 excess deaths. The figures from
EuroMOMO in more detail are:
1-14 years = -15 deaths (minus 15)
15-44 years = 2,075
45 – 64 years = 17,826
65 – 74 years = 25,674
75 – 84 years = 65,982
85 + years = 98.069
So in all, for people aged 65-plus, there were 190,857 excess deaths.
Below is the EuroMOMO graph of all deaths across Europe on a week-by-week basis in 2020. As
you can see there is a big rise in excess deaths, that started in late March and was finished
by the middle of May. There was a further small blip in early September, which has now
gone.
Essentially, if you are under 45 the risk of death (so far) has been 0.00158 percent or
about one in 70,000. Over the age of 65 it is 0.17 percent. What is it for those with no
significant underlying medical conditions? Much lower.
Leaving that issue aside, for those in the lower age range, even in those up to 65, the risk
of death remains extremely low. The following statement comes from a paper written by three Stanford
University doctors, entitled 'Population-level COVID-19 mortality risk for non-elderly
individuals overall and for non-elderly individuals without underlying diseases in pandemic
epicenters':
"People <65 years old have very small risks of COVID-19 death even in pandemic
epicenters and deaths for people <65 years without underlying predisposing conditions are
remarkably uncommon."
As this paper went on to say, looking at Europe, and various US States:
"The COVID-19 mortality rate in people <65 years old during the period of fatalities
from the epidemic was equivalent to the mortality rate from driving between 4 and 82 miles per
day for 13 countries and 5 states."
To put this another way, for healthy individuals under the age of 65, even during the peak
weeks of the pandemic, a forty-mile commute was more likely to kill you than Covid-19 in most
European countries and several US States.
Yes, for the elderly and vulnerable, Covid-19 is a serious infection, with an Infection
Fatality Ratio significantly higher than most influenza epidemics. With the possible exceptions
of 1957 and 1968, and leaving aside the flu pandemic of 1918-19
– which dwarfs everything else.
However, for the rest of the population, Covid-19 has proven to be a relatively mild
condition with a very low fatality rate.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
A new paper by
researchers at Edinburgh University suggests that lockdowns do not help to reduce the death
toll from Covid-19, but may simply postpone those deaths. It's another piece of evidence that
suggests that a different strategy to combat the pandemic - one that doesn't impose blanket
restrictions across society - is needed.
The research was done by a team from Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy. If that
sounds odd, Professor Graeme Ackland, one of the authors, has a good explanation. He told me:
"From March, every serious epidemiologist has been seconded to SPI-M (the Scientific
Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling) and SAGE (the main Scientific Advisory Group for
Emergencies), producing new research on a timescale of days. There simply aren't enough of them
to also do replication or even careful peer review. But there were thousands of people who
could do data-cleaning, code checking, validation and replication."
Ackland and his colleagues were, he says, "tasked by SPI-M and SAGE with exploring any
'reservations'. SPI-M understood very well the problem of groupthink in a closed community, and
asked us to 'kick the tyres' on everything. Another thing real epidemiologists would do
themselves given enough time."
Their paper is not really a criticism of the original modelling done before lockdown. In
fact, it uses the model used by Imperial College to assess a wider range of scenarios than was
done at the time. "My overall opinion" , says Ackland, "is that the government's
experts have reliably produced better predictions than the 'newspaper experts'."
One sentence in the new paper is particularly striking in regards to the original Imperial
College work: "Contrary to popular perception, the lockdown, which was then implemented, was
not specifically modelled in this work." Given that lockdown carried on for months, and
schools remained shut until the autumn, the failure to go back to see what the model says about
the effects of lockdown is remarkable.
The aim of the paper is to "replicate and analyse the information available to UK
policymakers when the lockdown decision was taken in March 2020" . The paper concludes that
the original model would have provided a good forecast if based on a reproduction number for
the virus of 3.5. (The
Imperial report on 16 March was based on the 'R' being between 2.2 and 2.4.) The
counter-intuitive outcome of the model is that it suggests that "school closures and
isolation of younger people would increase the total number of deaths, albeit postponed to a
second and subsequent waves" .
The model suggests that prompt interventions were effective in reducing peak demand for
intensive care beds, but would also prolong the epidemic. In some scenarios, this could lead to
more deaths in the long term. Why? Because, as the paper notes, "Covid-19 related
mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination
programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted
total number of deaths below 200,000."
It's wise to be cautious about any particular numbers. When researchers applied a
similar model to Sweden, for example, the numbers were far in excess of the real outcomes.
Nonetheless, the thing that really caused alarm back in March wasn't the much-quoted half a
million deaths from a 'do nothing' policy. It was the Imperial team's assertion that the 'most
effective mitigation strategy' they examined - case isolation, household quarantine and social
distancing of the elderly - would lead to around 250,000 deaths.
This was the reason, we were told, that nothing short of lockdown would do. If the
government had asked Ferguson to model lockdown, and the result was 200,000 deaths - in other
words, in the same ballpark - would we have gone into lockdown, given the damage it has
done?
Specifically, for Covid-19, closing schools and universities was a serious mistake, it would
seem (contrary to comments
in April by Professor Neil Ferguson, who led the original modelling). Keeping them open
would have meant lots of younger people getting the virus, with relatively little harm, but
would have speeded up the process of achieving 'herd' immunity.
In conclusion, the authors write: "The optimal strategy for saving lives in a Covid-19
epidemic is different from that anticipated for an influenza epidemic with a different
mortality age profile." At the very least, says Ackland, schools could have remained open
while doing everything possible to protect the most vulnerable groups. The absolute priority
was to keep the disease out of hospitals and care homes.
Unsurprisingly, this is exactly the message coming from SAGE before the Imperial College
modelling results were published on 16 March. For example, Professor Graham Medley - the chair
of SPI-M and a member of SAGE, told BBCNewsnight on 13 March: "This virus is
going to be with us for a long time, we're going to have an epidemic and then it will become
endemic and join in with all the other coronaviruses that we all have all the time, but don't
notice. We're going to have to generate what we call herd immunity. So that's a situation where
the majority of the population are immune to the infection. And the only way of developing that
in the absence of a vaccine is for the majority of the population to become infected."
The trick is to ensure that the people who are worst affected by the disease are protected
from it - which, despite the lockdown, the UK government failed to do.
Postponing an avalanche of cases is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, it has allowed
us to find some specific treatments, particularly showing that the steroid dexamethasone can
save the lives of some of the most ill patients. We've learned that ventilators, which were
such a huge focus at the start of the crisis, are less useful than first thought. On the other
hand, we've learned that kidney dialysis machines could be vital. If a vaccine could be rolled
out soon, that could be very important, too, but that looks unlikely before next spring.
However, the fact remains that this epidemic will only end when either enough people have
been infected with it to end widespread transmission or until an effective vaccine becomes
available. It would be much better, given the modelling, if the people who get it are young and
healthy, rather than old or with a pre-existing illness.
Instead of holding its nerve, as Sweden did, the UK government panicked and imposed
unprecedented restrictions on our freedom. This has done enormous damage to the economy, mental
health, children's education and much more. Worse, if the modellers are correct, lockdown won't
really have much impact on saving lives. And having committed to this course, the government
doesn't seem to have double checked if this made sense using the very models they relied on in
the first place.
The fact that cases have been rising across Europe - particularly in countries like France
and Spain that imposed the strictest lockdowns - should give us cause for concern, but not
alarm. There are indications that the rate of spread has slowed down, possibly reflecting the
impact of some population immunity, although case numbers are still rising. However, the
numbers dying from it are low, and currently make up only around 2% of
all deaths in England and Wales.
We could end up in the worst of all scenarios: ever more restrictions, more and more older
people getting the virus, and heading into winter with the usual seasonal rise in other
illnesses like influenza on top of Covid - with all that means for pressure on healthcare.
There is still time to change course, open up society for younger people, protect and
support the vulnerable and allow the epidemic to take its course. There is no scenario where
nobody dies and everything is fine and dandy. We have been hit by a deadly new virus. That's no
excuse for bad policies that risk turning a crisis into a disaster.
Rob Lyons is a UK journalist
specialising in science, environmental and health issues. He is the author of ' Panic on a
Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder'.
I cannot get around the fact that the number of deaths per month increased to double the
normal rate for a couple of months and then went back to normal by June or so. It varies by
country. Spain had double the normal death rate for a month or so, now back to normal. USA
had one and half times normal for longer. Germany never exceeded 20% above average.
Some people track "covid deaths" but there are intrinsic difficulties with such statistics
(co-morbidity) even if you are striving for objectivity, and every region has different
definitions.
The media seems to be talking a lot about "cases" and not talking about "deaths" - is that
because deaths are back to normal?
Looking at excess deaths, it looks like the Covid pandemic is basically over.
If anyone can provide some insight into why excess death statistics do not say what I
think they are saying, I'd be delighted to learn more.
@eD
t care about diseases. They just care about control. They are evil psychopathic narcissists.
Sad thing is, most people are dumb as rocks and fall every time for the tales of these snake
oil salesmen.
These days in Montreal there was a protest for "climate action", "protection of migrants"
and "BLM" – and of course with all the people wearing masks against "Covid". A March of
Zombies if there ever was one.
Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people
Henry Kissinger
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay
The overlords, that the bulk of the population vote into positions of power, are now
implementing a system to turn the average person into a feudal serf. Your democracy and voting
and cheering for one dirtbag versus the other doesn't matter. The end game has been determined
and by playing their game YOU are helping make it happen.
The Covid rules already have destroyed huge amounts of food by limiting harvesting (see Ice
Age Farmer) and destroying the existing food supply chains. The result will be food scarcity
for the poorer nations and high food prices for the richer ones. Better stock up while there's
still time and before hoarding laws are initiated.
All you defenders of 'government' should be ashamed of yourselves for helping cause the
destruction already unleashed by your trusted representatives and a future that's looking ever
more likely to be dystopian.
History? You mean like Michael Mann's facile and fraudulent 'hockey-stick'? When history is
deemed either 'official' or 'conspiracy-theorist' one knows that the entire subject (along
with, it must be added, most of 'science') has been shoe-horned into a very narrow box marked
'officially approved'. Why, then, might the rational and objective person have the slightest
confidence in the various strands of 'history' that remain, once all that is regarded by
officialdom as 'inconvenient' has been sent into the 'memory hole'?
Excellent article. I believe the treachery of the so-called elites have no boundaries. Evil
is their master and control of the populace is their aim. I also believe we need mass arrests
of those that are using this virus as a cover for their agenda for the world.
The video is rubbish. Nine months of economic slowdown and this idiot thinks it proves the
planet will cool down. He couldn't possibly know that. He says no-one knew what he knows, but
the (temporary) cooling effect of air pollution has been recognised since 9/11, since Pinatubo,
since Krakatoa.
Yes, it is. So, the Great Lab Experiment of 2020 (Covid) has alot to do with population
control; thinning the herd so our exalted Davos Overlords can ensure their blue-blooded
offspring will have mild temps when they winter-over on their private islands in the
Caribbean.
Thanks again for another interesting article Mr. Whitney.
I dislike Bill Gates as much or more than the next guy, primarily because I have known
individuals screwed over by his rapacious business practices and theft of others IP, and I
dislike his public persona as some sort of brilliant scientist or doctor instead of a rapacious
business geek who made a fortune stealing the work of better men.
Be that as it may, I think Bill Gates is quite right that human overpopulation is a very
dangerous problem for our species and the health of the planet. This is particularly true given
the willingness of our elites to import the excess population of the Third World into
previously stable Western Civilization nations such as much of Europe, United States, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand.
Unless the West has a zero tolerance policy towards immigration from the unassimilable and
fertile parts of the Third World, it will be destroyed given the continued reproductive
practices of these irresponsible people once imported into the West.
So what is the solution? Tie any aid to the Third World with strict and mandatory birth
control. Prevent children from dying of starvation but prevent further reproduction of the
irresponsible mother of the starving child. We cannot continue to think that people should have
a right to have as many children as they want and at the same time support their irresponsible
behavior. This behavior affects us all and leads to great suffering. They have to grow up and
so do we.
Gates is right about the problems of human overpopulation, but he cannot be trusted to solve
the problem in an ethical manner.
Anyhow most of the Earth's CO2 got locked up in Limestone rock (coral like) rock formations
and petroleum and coal deposits since Cambrian epoch. The latter are all related to
photosynthesi (solar energy) that is now locked up in hydrocarbons. Photosynthesis is the key
life driver on the Earth's surface.
So actually humans should find increased levels of CO2, still far below the Earth history
norm, to be a blessing. Maybe the real motive for ridding a hydrocarbon based energy
sources, is the scarcity issue, which is a provable scam, but the drive to depopulate the earth
of the useless eaters as Darth Kissinger seeks.
Analysts disagree about how much emissions will go down this year, but the International
Energy Agency puts the reduction around 8 percent. In real terms, that means we will release
the equivalent of around 47 billion tons of carbon, instead of 51 billion.
Reductions around 8 percent, and quite amazingly, not a hint of any effect on atmospheric
CO2 in the data from the celebrated Keeling monitoring station at Mauna Loa. It's the data from
stations like this around the world that led us to believe that industrial emissions of CO2
were going to send the world into a runaway greenhouse effect and lead us all to burn to death
in 800 degree temperatures as are found on Venus. Or at least drown Mr. Obama's newly purchased
$14 million mansion on Martha's Vineyard. But researchers have been looking for an effect for
months now, and as I say, not even a hint of any effect.
The Michael Manns and Al Gores of the world would have us believe the shutdown just hasn't
gone on long enough -- that we have to extend it another 16 gazillion quarters or so before we
will see the effect they have been predicting. It's at least just as likely, however, that
industrial emissions are not the prime driver of rising CO2 levels. As some commenters have
noted here, it could just be the 800 year lag from warming temperatures in the Medieval Warm
Period. Or it could be other human activities such as burning tropical rainforests and
oxidizing soils through intensive farming practices. Certainly the OCO-2 satellite (Orbiting
Carbon Observatory), launched in 2014, seemed to show that the biggest emissions were coming
from the tropics and not from the big industrial centers of Europe and North America. At least
it did before they stopped giving us the results from it, and not of course because they
conflicted with the narrative./s
Meanwhile the Earth is greening substantially from all the additional CO2. We seem to have
added pretty much an entire continent's worth of growing area in the past 60 years or so. It's
also becoming clear that the earth's oceans that make us a water world are the cause of
emergent effects like thunderstorms that increase our albedo when things start to warm up, and
by negative feedback make that runaway greenhouse effect most unlikely.
The major Achilles heel of the powers-that-be is that they don't have enough cops and
soldiers to enforce their desires upon us. Sure, they may try to kill and jail as many of us as
they can to enforce their dictates, but there are limits to this, as they may end up killing or
incarcerating most of the slaves they depend on for their power and wealth. And if history
shows anything, it is that murderous dictatorships never last very long.
As proof, I give you the examples of Mussolini, Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Hitler and
Stalin, all of whom met rather unfortunate ends, and whose reigns were rather short-lived.
While Mike Whitney is on the right track, I think he is incorrect when he echoes other
internet commentators that the end game of Operation COVID is population reduction.
Since World War II, global population has increased by 80 million each and every year. Of
course, as the world population grew, from just over 2 billion at the end of World War 2 to
almost 8 billion today, the annual percentage increase decreased since the annual 80 million
was coming off of a bigger base population. Until this year, the annual increase in absolute
numbers has always been 80 million.
Rich people often go to conferences and talk about wanting to control population, but that
has never come close to happening. Only the Chinese and Japanese governments implemented
effective population control programs. If the goal of the Bilderburg and Davos groups was to
control or reduce world population, they have been startling ineffective in doing so. If
COVID was about population control, they could have genetically engineered and release a
virus that actually killed more than really unhealthy people, instead of restricting people's
freedoms over an overhyped (to be polite) virus.
The obvious conclusion is that this crowd has no interest in population control
whatsoever. But they are concerned with reducing industrial activity and greenhouse gas
emissions. And that is to be accomplished by keeping up population growth, but reducing the
standard of living of everyone but the Davos crowd to medieval peasant levels. They want to
keep their slaves, thank you very much. The plan is to get to a global population of 11
billion people but everyone but a few families has a diet of rice and beans.
The victims of this scheme, which is flat out evil, can enjoy one irony. While the
lockdowns may have curbed greenhouse gas emissions, the worldwide temperature drop this year
was only o.o1 degree Celsius (0.02 to 0.03 Farenheit). Yeah, it would have been more without
the lockdowns, but all thisfor 0.01 degrees.
One issue is that greenhouse gas emissions are primarily caused by population growth
itself, so turning everyone into third world peasants but having lots and lots of them won't
work. Poor people in India contribute a lot by just cutting down trees for cooking fires. The
bigger issue is that since 2018, methane released from tundra and the Artic Ocean has started
overtaking carbon as the main greenhouse gas. Which means the game is already over in terms
of controlling greenhouse gasses. Its a matter of adjusting now, though granted a decrease in
worldwide population would make the adjustment easier.
By the way, even with the old fashioned carbon emissions, closing all the mom and pop
businesses and churches and forcing everyone to buy everything online and have it shipped to
them is counter-productive.
@eD
t care about diseases. They just care about control. They are evil psychopathic narcissists.
Sad thing is, most people are dumb as rocks and fall every time for the tales of these
snake oil salesmen.
These days in Montreal there was a protest for "climate action", "protection of migrants"
and "BLM" – and of course with all the people wearing masks against "Covid". A March of
Zombies if there ever was one.
Excellent article. I believe the treachery of the so-called elites have no boundaries.
Evil is their master and control of the populace is their aim. I also believe we need mass
arrests of those that are using this virus as a cover for their agenda for the world.
So how many times have the criminal psycho elites tried their "time to take over the
world" shtick for the past thousands of years and for some strange reason they never could?
Because they are criminals. Because they are psychopaths. Because they are elites but only in
their own minds as they think they are gods. And speaking of God .ever hear of the Bible?
There's a passage in Ecclesiastes that pretty much sums it up: from Ecclesiastes
1:9–"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is
that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (KJV) And what is the
definition of insanity (for psychopaths are insane, right?)–doing the same thing
(nothing new under the sun) over and over (that which is done is that which shall be done)
expecting different results . when the result is always the same. And I don't give a crap how
wealthy Gates is he and his god Satan are not in control .God controls Satan (see Job Chapter
Two) doncha know .and so does Christ (see Matthew Chapter Four). Dystopian future? Only if
you want it that way and believe the nonsense that the elites are in control. With freedom
comes responsibility which most folks these days couldn't handle with a ten foot pole; hence
they'll accept whatever slavery the elites think they'll cajole the people to accept. Have
fun with that. Turning oneself into a "wear a mask or else" Karen bully has consequences .do
these idiots know how much their hatred will destroy them? When idiots become psychopaths
..
@RoatanBill
argill, DuPont, John Deere, and others have either bribed their way into securing certain
countries farmland, or have used regime change tactics in order to secure even more farmlands
{ Ukraine's, Syria's breadbasket etc. }. In Ukraine, Monsanto's gmo corn is called
AmeriKanski Kookarooza – and it's easy to see the difference between the gmo vs the
locally grown corn. Shall we talk about the takeover, of the world's fresh water aquifers? =
Same corporate game. Or the sabotage of the independent farms in all of the Americas. Russia
and China has been watching for years, and are developing their plans to be fairly
independent – time is running out. Thanks
You're probably right about the sociopath tag. Certainly, they're completely deluded.
Creating conditions for war when you have so much to lose is incredibly stupid, as Rasputin
never said to Tsar Nicholas.
Rasputin worked to bring about peace. He got the Tsar to sack ministers who were
pro-British. Rasputin was shot by a British Agent. There was previously another attempt on
his life – also by the British.
I'm a conservative who wants non-interventionism, less globalization and less immigration
(preferably zero), and I see things very differently.
For the life of me I can't understand why self-proclaimed conservatives are so keen on
getting things back to where they were, which they complained often as a world run by
liberals. As far as I'm concern, a lot more good will come from this than bad. The most
important is the decentralization of work and with it, the decongestion of cities. Remote
work lessens the need for immigration. Less air travel lessens globalization. More parents
will begin to embrace homeschooling thus lessening the power of our education establishment.
More universities will go bankrupt as they lose students in particular full fee paying
foreign students.
Our cities are bastions of liberalism. As more people move away from them to return closer
to their kin in the center of the country, the power of cities will decline. All the protests
esp. in (D) run cities in the West coast and NE will only hasten their own demise, which will
be good for America.
Our current economy relies far too much on the service sector. Cities have become centers
of excessive drinking, eating, gambling, night-clubbing, drug addiction, prostitution and all
sorts of unseemly activities that led to our moral decline. The decline of these
establishments and cities will lead to stronger families and a return to moral values.
If the goal of the Bilderburg and Davos groups was to control or reduce world
population, they have been startling ineffective in doing so.
What if their goal wasn't to reduce the entire population, but only certain segments?
Replacement Migration isn't a term that conspiracy theorists made up. How close do you
suppose the correlation is between the decline in white birth rates and things like"straight
white male" and "whiteness" becoming pejoratives in modern context?
imho by inserting HIV in Corona by "Gain Of Function" research they were looking just to
make a serious bioweapon. And the giveaway is the reaction out of any proportion in lockdowns
and hysteria, that is, they are still following the plot even if their bioweapon was a
pathetic dud.
"... The second type of Covid-19, is Covid "The Political Contrivance" or, rather, C ODENAME: O peration V irus Id entification 20 19. This iteration of the Covid phenom relates to the manner in which a modestly-lethal respiratory pathogen has been inflated into a perennial public health crisis in order to implement economic and societal changes that would otherwise be impossible. This is the political side of Covid, which is much more difficult to define since it relates to the ambiguous agenda of powerful elites who are using the infection to conceal their real intentions. ..."
"... hospitals were given a financial incentive to label each and every death as "covid." $13,000 a pop. ..."
"... Note also that the media claims that rioting and looting doesn't spread covid, funerals for dead negroes do not spread covid, abortion clinics do not spread covid, but going to church DEFINITELY spreads covid and Trump rallies are the most super-spreader events of all... ..."
"... Since gov't is making hydroxychloroquine and other treatments near impossible to use, gov't is essentially murdering sick people. Does murder count towards the virus death statistics? ..."
"... The virus is real enough, but the hype surrounding it and the mendacity involved in every report means no one KNOWS what the actual truth is. It should be obvious, however, that it's not the equal to the Spanish Flu or the Black Death. The reaction to the virus is infinitely worse than the virus itself, thanks to the swine in gov't. ..."
"... The CDC's own figures of several weeks ago make clear that only 6% of the 200 000 US deaths from Covid were actually directly because of Covid. ..."
"... The other 94% were said to have been either very elderly or to have at least 2 underlying serious medical conditions. ..."
"... I suspect many people would die when contracting the "ordinary" flu under the same circumstances. ..."
"... "... Of course people go to the hospital, moving into the autumn flu season but there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen." ..."
"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." George Orwell
Can we agree that there are two types of Covid-19?
The first type, is Covid-19 ,"The Virus", which is a fairly mild infection that most people don't even realize they've contracted.
They remain either asymptomatic or have slight flu-like symptoms that go away after a week or so. A tiny sliver of the population–
that are mainly-older, vulnerable people with underlying health conditions– can develop complications, become seriously ill and die.
But, according to most analysis, the chances of dying from Covid are roughly between 1 in every 200 to 1 in every 1,000 people. (CDC-IFR-
0.26%)
In other words, Covid is not the Spanish Flu, not the Black Plague and the Genocidal Planetary Killer Virus it was cracked
up to be. It kills more people than the annual influenza, but not significantly more.
The second type of Covid-19, is Covid "The Political Contrivance" or, rather, C ODENAME: O peration V irus
Id entification 20 19. This iteration of the Covid phenom relates to the manner in which a modestly-lethal respiratory
pathogen has been inflated into a perennial public health crisis in order to implement economic and societal changes that would otherwise
be impossible. This is the political side of Covid, which is much more difficult to define since it relates to the ambiguous
agenda of powerful elites who are using the infection to conceal their real intentions.
hospitals
were given a financial incentive to label each and every death as "covid." $13,000 a pop.
The most revealing number is the number of total deaths year to year has NOT increased this year, which makes it obvious that
covid really hasn't had much of a real impact at all.
Note also that the media claims that rioting and looting doesn't spread covid, funerals for dead negroes do not spread covid,
abortion clinics do not spread covid, but going to church DEFINITELY spreads covid and Trump rallies are the most super-spreader
events of all...
@vot tak
ely inappropriate in the way it's being used according to the man who invented it, so all the positives and negatives are bullshit.
Since gov't is making hydroxychloroquine and other treatments near impossible to use, gov't is essentially murdering sick people.
Does murder count towards the virus death statistics?
The virus is real enough, but the hype surrounding it and the mendacity involved in every report means no one KNOWS what the
actual truth is. It should be obvious, however, that it's not the equal to the Spanish Flu or the Black Death. The reaction to
the virus is infinitely worse than the virus itself, thanks to the swine in gov't.
From all I have read, it looks as if the CDC is settling on an Infection Fatality Rate
(IFR) for COVID-19 of about 0.65%. That fluctuates a bit, and sometimes is presented as low
as 0.1%. But consensus in the field seems to be that the infection rate as a whole is grossly
underestimated, and may be 25 times as high – this seems to be supported by the 'new
cases' phenomenon, whereby the more they test, the more cases they discover, which in turn
seems to suggest more cases await discovery than current testing can keep up with. At the
same time, though, even fiddling with the death rate by incorporating all deaths of tested
people regardless whether COVID actually killed them cannot conceal that the fatality rate of
confirmed cases is quite low. COVID-19 is extremely contagious but chance of recovery for
those infected is in the order of 98% even by conservative estimate, and the demographic for
whom it is most dangerous is well-established as elderly, perhaps above age 75, and the
immune-compromised.
Against that backdrop, SARS CoV (2003) and MERS (2012) were considerably less contagious,
but significantly more dangerous – SARS CoV was 16 times more deadly at 9.6% IFR, and
MERS 57 times more deadly at 34.3 %. Both are coronaviruses. In both cases the at-risk group
included the elderly, although MERS seemed mostly to affect men, and the immune-compromised.
In neither case is a vaccine available to this day. In neither case was a lockdown
employed.
What can we deduce from this? I'm going to suggest governments fell hook, line and sinker
for the Imperial College model and its grossly-flawed projections of huge numbers of deaths.
Lockdowns, in their turn, were desperate efforts to stave off those mass deaths. But entirely
the wrong lessons were learned, and governments still seem to believe – or pretend to,
for their own purposes – that going back into lockdown is an efficacious way to deal
with an apparent 'surge' in cases. But this has already been shown to not prevent such deaths
as occur from Coronavirus, and it looks to me like safeguarding facilities for the elderly
and weak, such as care homes, would suffice. There is a totally-unsupported linkage of large
numbers of infections with large numbers of deaths. And for so long as we commit to wiping
out an airborne viral infection by suppressing it, we can never open our international
borders until the last case has been eradicated worldwide. Every country will have a large
pool of uninfected potential victims with no herd immunity. Astra-Zeneca/Oxford's vaccine
trials have been suspended because of unanticipated deleterious effects on test subjects.
Well, a 1% or .65% death rate is a huge number of deaths if everybody necessary for herd
immunity gets infected (~60-80% of all people based on the contagiousness). And apparently
it's not familiar to humans so everyone gets infected with it, unlike the flu or cold to
which many already have some antibodies. And you're still likely not to notice it that much
in your circle, but all of a sudden you end up with 2 million dead in the US where so many
are obese, and COVID is known for playing with the heart rate in addition to causing
breathing difficulties.
There is actually a MERS vaccine that finished Phase II. It was made by the same Russian
institute responsible for the coronavirus vaccine and they've been testing it for the last
few years. This explains why they had such a head start in vaccine development. They
basically took their MERS system and replaces it with the COVID specific antibody and felt so
certain about it that they injected themselves with it already back in the spring.
There is an interview there with the developer. I know it's Kevin Rothrock's outfit, but
the interview was actually very good and professionally done from a science angle. I'm not
sure they translated it from Russian entirely as I read it a while ago.
That's interesting. According to the source I cited, both SARS CoV and MERS are also
zoonotic, meaning they originate in animals and are not familiar to humans – SARS CoV's
natural reservoir was horseshoe bats and MERS from contact with Dromedary camels. I have seen
suggestions, which seem to be supported by the rapid decline in deaths relative to the rise
in infections, that herd immunity for COVID 19 may be a much lower threshold than previous
viral infections, possibly as low as 20%.
Mathematically, it does not make any sense that herd immunity for any disease to which you
need to develop immunity would be less than 50%, because until that threshold, each infected
person has on average a greater chance of coming in contact with someone who does not have
immunity, than with someone who has immunity. Now as you get to 50%, then the reproduction
rate of the virus across population starts to matter. If it's low, just above 1, then you
might become healthy and non infectious before you can infect someone else so herd immunity
can be just above 50%. However if it's really high, like the 20 of measles, then even 99%
will not be enough to kill it as it will always find someone who is a good host for it and
that's why measles is so hard to wipe out, even though almost everyone has a vaccination.
Interesting; I did not think about it from a mathematical point of view. I wonder where
the figure of 20% came from? Now I could challenge them and look smart.
Oh, hey – what do you know? I was just browsing for something interesting to read
while I ate my Instant Pot Peach Cobbler (delicious with French Vanilla ice cream, and I used
way less sugar than the recipe called for), and I found an article claiming a low (although
not quite 20% low) herd immunity is possible because of pre-existing immunity in T-cells, and
that a significant number of people worldwide already had some level of resistance to
COVID-19 before it even arrived on-scene.
Dr. Michael Yeadon, Chief Science Officer for Pharma giant Pfizer for 16 years, is the
source for some of the material, although I have not watched the video and do not know how
much of what is claimed he is responsible for. A lot of jaw-dropping inferences that at least
half the COVID test results might be false-positives, and maybe many more. If the numbers
claimed have any solid backing and are accurate, then the survival rate for COVID-19 is only
marginally less than the flu – 99.8% versus 99.9% for flu.
I forgot to mention that it's possible for the disease to end before reaching 50% if the
transmission rate goes below 1, but this is due to other factors such as quarantines, people
taking precautions, it's summer and it doesn't transmit well, etc But that means it ended
before herd immunity has been reached. If the transmission rate was always less than 1, then
there would have been no big outbreak at all and it would have died out by itself after
infecting a few dozen people. If the conditions revert to the original where the transmission
rate was more than 1, and the disease is still around and less than 50% of people have
immunity, it will start spreading again.
Herd immunity is ultimately a mathematical concept so it has to be above 50%. If people
already have pre-immunity, either from a previous disease that looked similar or from a
vaccine, then that counts as well as part of those 50%. But I thought the deal with the
coronavirus was that all humans did not have any pre-immunity to it since it was so different
and that's why everyone got scared at the beginning. Because if that is the case, then it
will infect ~60% of the entire human population in the best case herd immunity scenario.
"If the conditions revert to the original where the transmission rate was more than 1,
and the disease is still around and less than 50% of people have immunity, it will start
spreading again."
Hence my main point that even if we managed to wrestle it to submission using suppressive
techniques such as lockdown and quarantine, we would never be able to allow travelers from or
to other countries until it was extinct everywhere. Suppression was always a bad idea.
Well the point was that you could slow it down long enough for a to find some better
treatment techniques or for vaccine to be ready. I admit that I didn't think it likely, but
since a vaccine is coming out in January, it seems like it was quite an achievable goal, even
if the economic damage was not worth it. Now that there is no appetite for lockdowns since
the mortality rate is too low and it mostly kills people not in 'your' (i.e. most)
demographic, it still might not be enough time to prevent a second wave, but it'll take care
of a third one I guess. And they did find a cheap steroid that shuts down the overly strong
immune response in the bad cases. It's been credited for lower mortality lately in the US and
the low mortality in Russia. So that was the reasoning behind fighting it. Everyone being
vaccinated is a more palatable herd immunity strategy for politicians and a huge number of
other people, as opposed to the alternative. The economic damage and the bravery of citizens
in the face of something that kills only 1% of infected (and mostly old people) was
underestimated.
Well, some Canadian provinces – the only ones that matter, I guess, Quebec and
Ontario – spent much of today's news cycle declaring that the dreaded Second Wave is
already upon us. Cases, naturally, not deaths; they cite 'new infections' with the terrified
wonder that implies this was not the expected result of accelerated testing, at all. What
we's gonna do? I submit it is a shot across the bow of the 20% or so who are not convinced
that this is the Great Scourge childhood Bible tales warned us about; wear a fucking mask and
start looking like you like it, bucko, or we'll be back in Lockdown City before you can say
"droplets'. It looks more and more like no progress against the virus is going to be measured
until the entire population is so cowed that it will accept any withdrawal of its freedoms,
while congratulating itself for being so noble and community-minded. Hint – stop
thinking 'Rights', and start thinking 'Privileges'.
But I did hear a sort-of rebuttal to my usual charge that we will never be able to open
national borders until every single 'case' has been eradicated worldwide – No, they
said; as this situation evolves, we will have quicker and more reliable testing, and we can
test, test, test everyone who is entering the country until we are satisfied all travelers
from other lands are COVID-free. And we'll have a vaccine, as well, the magic potion that
will prevent those who have never had it from ever having it.
Perhaps. But to me, it's a little like death-penalty cases. If you only once send an
innocent plaintiff to his death, it's once too often. If only once a COVID test is inaccurate
and a single case carrying a live virus is permitted to enter, it will maul a population rich
in uninfected victims in less time than it takes to say it. Herd immunity is a far better
concept, and there is absolutely no requirement to risk the lives of the elderly to achieve
it. Let it rage among the healthy and younger population until it runs out of steam, and it's
beaten. But they're too busy trying to suppress it, then wailing and gnashing their teeth and
demanding more sacrifice until the unworkable somehow works.
The 20% figure may be from NYC's experience. Covid-19 spread in that city has largely been
eliminated yet with only about 20% (IIRC 22%) immunity of the general population. Those
numbers were mentioned in a Congressional hearing involving Rand Paul and the good Dr.
Faulucci whatever.
The 50% requirement likely assumes a completely homogeneous population that is randomly
interacting. Yet, children apparently have a lower likelihood of catching and transmitting
the disease and may not be counted in the 20-22% figure. Moreover, it's the health impact of
the spread that matters. A reasonably health adult has little chance of a severe reaction to
an infection. Indeed, getting infected seems to be a free and effective form of vaccination
contributing to the decline of further spread.
My suspicion is that masks and social distancing have only a minor contribution toward
reducing the spread. Only a complete lock down would guarantee a reduction in the rate of
transmission.
My inexpert but nevertheless fact-based assessment is that the most effective and least
damaging strategy is to protect those groups with a high likelihood of an adverse effect from
an infection while allowing the 90%+ of the population to go about their business.
The above strategy may not be PC as young but overweight people would be singled-out
thereby countering the body positivity message that fat is beautiful. Often mentioned by
non-MSM sources is that the US's poor Covid track record can be partially explained by the
very high rates of obesity with its related health problems. Such inconvenient facts to not
play well for an exceptional nation populated by heroes.
Yes, it's funny you should say that, because I just got off the phone with my Mom. We were
setting up lunch today; she mentioned that Coronavirus has killed almost 200,000 people in
the USA, and I told her that was way off, that's the number worldwide and the media routinely
confuses it to scare people. So I immediately looked it up after putting down the phone, and
indeed it is over 199,000 deaths in the USA. It is indeed deadlier than the flu; but still,
it is not the plague and the number of deaths has tapered off dramatically, hence the need to
refer to 'cases' now rather than 'deaths', although obviously if you are a 'case' it is still
very unlikely you will be a 'death'.
I would argue over the 'hidden deaths' unless you do not mean that such deaths should be
attributed to coronavirus, since there seems to have been a deliberate effort on the part of
the western health-care system to attribute any peripherally-related death to coronavirus and
if anything, the number is probably lower than stated. But it has certainly taken off more
than I thought.
relates to the ongoing mayhem generated by violence using firearms in Chicago.
Scroll down through the dismal stats on drive-by shooting incidents and the like and there
are a couple of sections dealing with Coronavirus demographics and, especially interesting,
listed comorbidities for deaths in Cook County cases. The footnotes detail the sources and
remind us to distinguish between cases of death WITH Cv19 and FROM Cv19. The blurring of
causes of death benefits only the fearmongers, I believe.
The Scottish death certificates I used to see regularly listed several causes of death, in
descending order of importance. The few English ones I saw had far fewer details, and perhaps
the US system followed the English example.
Gee; humour is to be found in a variety of odd places these days. The comparison between
COVID fatalities and being shot offered a Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of 3.68% for the former,
while a much higher rate of 17% was attributed to 'Hi-Speed Lead'. And the CFR for COVID is
likely exaggerated as well, due to linking of deaths owing to comorbidities as you mentioned.
I think the global average COVID CFR is about 2%.
Let's hope that the boutique niche specialists can avoid being crushed by the
conglomerates. And who knows, perhaps one day one of the western facing foodies will acquire
a taste?
That was a singularly interesting post; I always enjoy Helmer's work because it is
impeccably sourced, but in this instance the pie charts offered persuasive evidence as to why
Belarus was almost immediately selected as the underground railroad for European cheeses
masquerading as originating within the customs union. Belarus had 25% of the Russian cheese
import market in 2013, and its share ballooned to 86% this year. Added to that would be
Lukashenko's fence-sitting and flirtation with the EU, said tacit alliance and cooperation
having gone into the toilet bowl with the EU's complicity in trying to overthrow and replace
him, whipped on by Uncle Sam. Another nice own goal, you failures.
As an aside, I greatly appreciate Putin's earthy and impromptu sense of humour; in
response to cheesemaker Sirota's assurances that in the next two to three years, Russian
cheese exports would make established European cheese producers tremble, he inquired "Will it
make them tremble because it is delicious, or because of something else?"
I don't know if I mentioned it here, but I went to my wife's hometown in the summer of
2019 (I was there earlier as well), and one of the free days I went to the supermarket and
bought six to eight different cheeses that said "made in Russia" to try. I left the rest of
the blocks to her sister after trying. It wasn't bad actually. Not as good as stuff I can get
in Germany but close enough to it, but much better than typical American or Canadian made
cheeses. I know it's not a high bar, but still.
I guess I'm comparing it to Russian chesses from 2015. It was edible but not much
different than the cheap cheeses I could get at the ubiquitous Russian supermarkets in
Israel. There almost all the stuff was imported from Poland or Russia, and there were a few
of homemade varieties that had different names from the official Western version, like
Tal-Emek instead of Emmental, where it was slightly inferior but really depended on the
month. The Russian cheeses were often different in taste and were different kinds, but were
nothing extraordinary. They just didn't copy the Western famous types and concentrated on
their own thing. Which I guess is not allowed under the EU rules. Now they copy and call it
by the original name too and the taste is great.
I wish I could get more stuff from Europe and Russia here, but I think my current country
has some sort of import mafia where they don't want to compete with outside products too
much. The problem is that unlike Russia, they often just don't make that type of cheese so
the import substitution amounts to: "Just eat something else. Who needs all these stupid
cheeses anyways. We survived many centuries without Emmental. Why don't you just eat our
traditional food and be happy; there are pseudo-scientific studies showing that it's
healthy!"
I did not try a great variety of cheese in Russia when I was there, so my palate is quite
limited; we had a medium-hard ripened cheese that was whitish-yellow, sort of creamy in
colour and mild in flavour that we liked and pretty consistently bought to eat with rulka and
bread as a light meal. But that was in, what, 2006 or so. So the Russian cheese market might
have really taken off. And that was in the Primorskye region, which is pretty rural compared
with the great cities like St Petersburg and Moscow, where I imagine the variety to be quite
cosmopolitan, although back then most of it would likely have been international rather than
domestic. We did shop at a few supermarkets, but most of our food purchases came from
open-air markets with small shops or the ubiquitous stalls made by cutting one side out of an
old shipping container.
Overall I am encouraged by the Russian response to sanctions, because it seems to me very
positive to use it as an opportunity to infuse the domestic industry – rather than
being bitter and indulging in recriminations, which would only give the enemy satisfaction,
Russia reorients its markets and uses gentle mockery, which makes the enemy feel cheated,
balked and ineffective.
"95% of the people in Finland or the United States or Germany believe that Russian
state poisoned Navalny. The facts don't matter as much as what people believe in."
Bonus question – if that's true, how can such a reality coincide with this one?
"But it is far from clear that Ms Merkel is ready to pull the plug on Nord Stream 2.
The chancellor's messaging on the pipeline has been remarkably consistent and the Navalny
affair has, so far, barely impinged on it. Moreover, she is backed by most of the German
political establishment.
The opposition Greens tabled a motion in the Bundestag last week calling on the
government to stop the project, which will bring gas directly from Russia to Germany across
the Baltic Sea. Green party leader Annalena Baerbock said Nord Stream 2 was "splitting
Europe".
Yet Ms Baerbock and her party found themselves almost entirely isolated. Erstwhile
enemies from across the political spectrum ganged up to savage their motion. It was one of
the few occasions on which Ms Merkel's CDU/CSU, the Social Democrats, the hard-left Die Linke
and the hard-right Alternative for Germany had ever agreed on anything
At the same time, Berlin has continued to insist that political issues -- specifically,
the Navalny affair and the need for a robust European response -- must be kept apart from
economic ones, notably infrastructure projects that are seen as essential for Europe's energy
security.
Ms Merkel was asked in late August, shortly after Mr Navalny had arrived in Berlin for
treatment, if Germany should quit Nord Stream 2. Her response was clear: the two issues
should, she said, be "decoupled". Nord Stream 2 should be completed, she added, since it
would be operated by economic actors in both Russia and Europe. There is no reason to believe
her view has changed since then -- novichok or no novichok."
How sad – the Germans just do not seem to care about Navalny! Unless it is the 95%
of Germans who are outside the government (apart from the Greens) and the business community.
Ich weiß, welche Seite meines Brotes gebuttert ist.
President Duterte is said to have ordered police and the military to shoot dead anyone who
defied or protested COVID-19 lockdown orders on the island of Luzon – the largest
island and the most populous in the Philippines – back in March / April 2020. The
sources for this news are nearly all MSM sources and Amnesty International.
Duterte is the first Filipino President to have come from outside the political elite
based in Manila. This in itself makes him an easy target for Washington who would rather get
rid of someone they don't know or can't control instead of try to understand where he is
coming from and work with him.
As mayor of Davao City in Mindanao, in the southern part of the country, Duterte had
promoted policies to help disadvantaged women in areas of reproductive rights education and
fighting domestic violence. As any fule knows from following the MSM, Duterte is supposedly a
misogynist who makes crude fun of women. In addition, Duterte has expressed interest in
working with China and establishing better relations with Beijing, and this in itself, coming
from a leader of a former US colony, makes him a potential target for regime change
tactics.
I'd be very careful of anything reported about what Duterte says or doesn't say by the
mainstream press and groups like Amnesty International: it is very likely that Duterte's
utterances are taken out of context and twisted into something that conforms to a stereotype
depicting him as crude, violent and Stone Age, and consequently encourages the Western public
to accept his forced removal if and when the opportunity presents itself.
"I'd be very careful of anything reported about what Duterte says or doesn't say by the
mainstream press and groups like Amnesty International "
I totally concur.
I have been a long time admirer of President Duterte (as has a niece-in-law of mine).
I have a great dossier of his speeches and interviews. For example:
• Interview with Maria Finoshina on RT – a true investigative journalist.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHjlCmdyesY
But then I started seeing him parading around with his full cabinet in those ridiculous
masks and wondered if 'they' had got to him.
Well it is a paraphrase but basically yes.but it was aimed at drug dealers. I had not
heard about the Covid-19 orders that Jen mentioned but it sounds a bit like something he
would say.
Apparently a lot of people have been shot but I cannot remember the figures. Possibly in
the 1,000s?
Jen, also, has a good point that he is not from the elite and the MSM media.
And he has incurred the wrath of the USA by evicting the American military presence.
Adding insult to injury by punctuating it with "I can always go to China".
Yes, indeedy, the Mayor of Nashville was caught red-handed discussing via email how to
hush up the relatively-small numbers of cases that were linked to restaurants and bars,
because putting restaurants and bars back into lockdown was the decided-upon action that
would be taken to show the eejits in the electorate that their elected officials are looking
out for public health.
One more time – COVID-19 is real. It's not fabricated, but the way it is being
ridden to political Nirvana is unprecedented, and if it does not destroy the global economy
altogether, putting us back to the barter system and working for food, it will be a fucking
miracle.
You forgot the extensive fires in California and Oregon
The media are telling us the fires are due to climate change. A closer analysis, however,
finds that the fires this year followed an intense cold front coming down from Canada that even
dropped snow in some of the adjacent states like Idaho. This generated a strong and dry
easterly gale that roared down the mountain slopes and created the conditions needed for fire
propagation.
The same cold front was responsible for the huge bird kill that was also claimed as proof of
climate change. The early cold stressed birds in the course of migration whilst also killing
the insects that the birds needed to eat to recover from the stress.
Meanwhile the climate alarmists attribute the current hurricane season to the developing La
Niña without mentioning that they have never been able to link either that effect or its
opposite, El Niño, to global warming. In truth they haven't the slightest idea what
causes either one.
Just as an example, about five years ago we suffered a really bitter winter here in North
America. Cold fronts coming through every few days. All of a sudden we were "informed" by the
PTB that this was the feared "polar vortex" but that it was an expected feature of global
warming. It didn't seem to matter the slightest that the term, as used in the sense of a
suddenly wavy jet stream, was first used back in 1975 in the context of a research paper
discussing the then current trend of global cooling.
"... You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. ..."
James C.
Collins related a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during
his period in the Vietnamese POW camp. [21] [
non-primary source needed ] When Collins asked which prisoners didn't make it out
of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out
by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're
going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then
Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This
is a very important lesson.
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end
-- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal
facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.[22]
Thousands of Britons who suffer heart attacks and strokes are dying at home instead of
seeking medical treatment, a new study has found, as new government figures show 75,000 are
projected to die as a result of lockdown measures.
Stay-at-home orders prompted countless people suffering from serious medical conditions to
avoid hospitals, according to the study's findings, which were published in the Heart medical
journal and first reported by the Daily Mail. The paper noted that deaths from heart disease in
private homes surged by 35 percent from March to July, resulting in 2,279 more fatalities on
average over the past six years. However, heart and stroke deaths in hospitals dropped by
around 1,400 during the same period, suggesting that some who chose to stay home would have
died anyway even if they had been hospitalized. The researchers calculated that in total, there
were 2,085 excess deaths in England and Wales that could be linked to heart attack and stroke
sufferers who refused to seek out medical treatment. This means that between March 2 and June
30, every day 17 people died needlessly from heart attacks.
Nice take on imbecilization of important and complex topics by the US MSM and politicians.
Money quote about neoliberal Dems like Obama and Biden "
But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept.
Self-interest is all they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They
see human suffering as a means to increase their power."
Another money quote: "in the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but it's everywhere and
it's deadly."
Notable quotes:
"... But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept. Self-interest is all they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They see human suffering as a means to increase their power. ..."
"... Joe Biden's closest friend in the world, a prominent Martha's Vineyard kite-surfer called Barack Obama, echoed that message with his trademark restraint. Obama declawed that your "life" depends on voting for Joe Biden. ..."
"... One of the few Republicans who still hold elected office in California, state Assemblyman Heath Flora, last year called on using the state's $22 billion budget surplus to implement vegetation management. ..."
"... Fires don't spread as well without huge connected forests functioning as kindling. It's obvious, which is why it's unthinkable to mention it in some Democratic circles." ..."
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Massive wildfires continue to sweep across huge portions of the Pacific Northwest.
In Oregon, half a million residents have been forced to evacuate -- one out of every ten people in the state.
Dozens are dead tonight, including small children. But the fires still aren't close to contained. Watch this report from Fox's
Jeff Paul:
Video report
And it continues as we speak, walls of flame consuming everything in their path: homes, animals, human beings. Tragedy on a
massive scale.
When something this awful happens, decent people pause. They put aside their own interests for a moment. They consider how they
can help. We've seen that kind of selflessness before.
This is, remember, the anniversary of 9-11.
But there are others for whom altruism is an alien concept. Self-interest is all
they know. These people never pause. They relentlessly press for any advantage, under any circumstances. They see human suffering
as a means to increase their power.
These are the people who turn funerals into political rallies and feel no shame for doing it.
As Americans burned to death, people like this swung into action immediately. They went on television with a partisan talking
point: Climate change caused these fires, they said. They didn't explain how that happened. They just kept saying it.
In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: you can't see it, but it's everywhere,
and it's deadly. And, like systemic racism, it's your fault: The American middle class did it. They ate too many hamburgers,
drove too many SUVs, had too many children.
A lot of them wear T-shirts to work and didn't finish college. That causes climate change too. And, worst of all, some of them
may vote for Donald Trump in November.
If there's anything that absolutely, definitively causes climate change -- and literally over a hundred percent of scientists
agree with this established fact -- it's voting for Donald Trump. You might as well start a tire fire. You're destroying the ozone
layer.
Joe Biden has checked the science, and he agrees. Yesterday, the people on Biden's staff who understand the internet tweeted out
an image of the wildfires, along with the message, "Climate change is already here -- and we're witnessing its devastating effects
every single day. We have to get President Trump out of the White House."
Again, by voting for Donald Trump, you've made hundreds of thousands of Oregonians homeless tonight. You've killed people.
Joe Biden's closest friend in the world, a prominent Martha's Vineyard kite-surfer called Barack Obama, echoed that message
with his trademark restraint. Obama declawed that your "life" depends on voting for Joe Biden.
At a time when sea levels are rising and we're about to see killer whales in the Rockies? Honestly, it doesn't seem like Obama is
overly concerned about climate change? And by the way, didn't he go to law school? When he did become a climate expert?
Those seem like good questions. But lawyers pretending to be scientists are now everywhere in the Democratic Party.
Here's the governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, a proud graduate of Willamette University law school, explaining that he's already
figured out the "cause" of the fires. Watch:
INSLEE: Fires are proof we need a stronger liberal agenda Sept 8 TRT: 18 Inslee: And these are conditions that are exacerbated
by the changing climate that we are suffering. And I do not believe that we should surrender these subdivisions or these houses
to climate change-exacerbated fires. We should fight the cause of these fires.
This is a crock. In fact, there is not a single scientist on earth who knows whether, or by how much, these fires may have been
"exacerbated" by warmer temperatures caused by "climate change," whatever that means anymore.
All we have is conjecture from a handful of scientists, none of whom have reached any definitive conclusions.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, for example, has admitted that it's, quote, "hard to determine whether climate change
played a role in sparking the fires."
Meanwhile, investigators have determined that the massive El Dorado fire in California, which has torched nearly 14,000 acres,
was caused by morons setting off some kind of fireworks. And then on Wednesday, police announced that a criminal investigation is
underway into the massive Almeda fire in Ashland, Oregon.
The sheriff there said it's too early to say what caused the fire, but he's said human remains were found at the suspected origin
point. Nothing is being ruled out, including arson.
The more you know, the more complicated it is, like everything. Serious people are just beginning to gather evidence to determine
what happened to cause this disaster.
But at the same time, unserious people are now everywhere on the media right now, drowning out nuance. Don't worry about the
facts, they say. Just trust us -- the sky orange is orange over San Francisco because households making $40,000 a year made the
mistake of voting for a Republican.
Therefore you must hand us total control of the nation's economy. Watch amateur arson detective Nancy Pelosi explain:
PELOSI: Mother Earth is angry. She's telling us, whether she's telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the
west, whatever it is, the climate crisis is real and has an impact.
Mother Nature is angry. Please. When was the last time Nancy Pelosi went outside? No one asked her. All we know is what she said:
climate change caused this. Of course.
No matter the natural disaster -- hurricanes, tornadoes, whatever -- climate change did it. Keep in mind, Nancy Pelosi owns two
sub-zero freezers. They cost $10,000 apiece.
We know because she showed them off on national television. Those use a lot of energy. Like Barack Obama, she constantly flies
private between her multi-million dollar estates all over the country.
Obviously, she doesn't care about climate change. And neither do her supporters -- otherwise, they'd be trying to destroy the
mansions she owns, not the hair salons that expose her hypocrisy.
For the left, this is really about blaming and ritually humiliating the middle-class for the election of Donald Trump. Joe Biden
knows that the Pennsylvanians who would be financially ruined by his
fracking
ban
are the same Pennsylvanians who flipped the state red in 2016 for the first time in a generation.
That's the whole point. One of the reasons Joe Biden is barely allowed outside is that he has no problem showing his contempt for
the middle-class he supposedly cares so much about.
In 2019, he openly
mocked
coal miners
and suggested they just get programming jobs once they're all fired. Watch:
BIDEN: I come from a family, an area where's coal mining – in Scranton. Anybody, that can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine,
sure as hell can learn how to program as well.
Learn to code! Hilarious. Joe Biden should try it. But there isn't time. The world is ending. Last summer, Sandy Cortez [AOC] did
the math and calculated we only have
12
years left to live
.
If that sounds bad, consider this -- Just four months after that warning, Sandy Cortez tweeted that we only have 10 years to "cut
carbon emissions in half."
Think about the math here. We lost two years in just four months. At that rate, we could literally all die unless Joe Biden wins
in November. Which is of course what they're saying.
On Tuesday, California Gavin Newsom pretty much said it Newsom abandoned science long ago. Science is too stringent, too western,
too patriarchal.
Newsom is a man of faith now. He's decided
climate
change caused all of this
, and that's final. He's not listening to any other arguments. Watch:
NEWSOM: I have no patience. And I say this lovingly, not as an ideologue, but as someone who prides himself on being open to
argument, interested in evidence. But I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers. It simply follows completely
inconsistent, that point of view, with the reality on the ground.
People like Gavin Newsom don't want to listen to any "climate change deniers." What's a "climate change denier?" Anyone who
thinks our ruling class has no idea how to run their states or protect their citizens.
Are we "climate change deniers" if we point out that California has failed to implement meaningful deforestation measures that
would have dramatically slowed the spread of these wildfires?
In 2018, a state oversight agency in California found that years of poor or nonexistent
forest
management policies
in the Sierra Nevada forests had contributed to wildfires.
One of the few Republicans who still hold elected office in California, state Assemblyman Heath Flora, last year called on
using the state's $22 billion budget surplus to implement vegetation management.
Fires don't spread as well without huge connected forests functioning as kindling. It's obvious, which is why it's
unthinkable to mention it in some Democratic circles."
Presumably, you're also a climate-change denier if you point out that six of the Oregon National Guard's wildfire-fighting
helicopters are currently in Afghanistan.
Instead of dropping water to suppress blazes, the Chinook aircraft are busy supplying a war effort that's been going on for
nearly 20 years. That seems significant. Has anyone asked Gavin Newsom or Jay Inslee about that? Do any of the Democrats who
control these states even care?
The answer, of course, is probably not. It was just last week that Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti admitted on-the-record that
his city has become completely third-world.
Of course, Garcetti didn't blame himself for this turn of events. He blamed you. Quote: "It's almost 3 p.m," Garcetti tweeted.
"Time to turn off major appliances, set the thermostat to 78 degrees (or use a fan instead, turn off excess lights and unplug any
appliances you're not using. We need every Californian to help conserve energy. Please do your part."
"Please do your part." Garcetti wants his constituents to suffer to try to solve a problem that Democrats in his state created.
Even now, as residents in Northern California are facing sweeping power outages in addition to wildfires.
In the meantime, Gavin Newsom has vowed that 50 percent of California's energy grid will be based on quote "renewable" energy
sources within a decade.
That means sources like wind and solar power -- which can't be dialed up to meet periods of extreme demand, like California is
seeing right now during its heatwave.
Newsom was asked last month whether he would consider revising this stance given the blackouts that have left millions of
Californians without power.
Newsom responded, quote, "We are going to radically change the way we produce and consume energy." In other words, The blackouts
will continue until morale improves. So will the wildfires. Get used to it.
Fox News
6.2M subscribers
SUBSCRIBE
In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky: You can't see it, but it's
everywhere and it's deadly.
#FoxNews
#Tucker
This is a direct result of Gavin Newsom eliminating forestation controls. Jerry Brown kept them in place, the only thing he
did correctly. Democrats are to blame for all of this.
When environmentalists pushed through their "leave forests alone, allow nature to be undisturbed" bs, California and other
states stopped clearing underbrush, also known as fire fuel and now we see a perfect example of cause and effect.
Don't get me wrong I am a conservatist , but with common sense , we can't conserve unless we protect and nurture nature to
thrive. In fact extremism in environmentalism destroys as we see. People dead, animals dead, homes destroyed, forest destroyed
because of extremism.
The narrative to leave forests alone happened long before Trump, believing otherwise makes you a useful idiot.
Congratulations.
You could Google this old narrative but will you find it, well it's Google, you have to find the people who heard and lived
the so called natural environmental push narrative, we remember and we remember the warnings. Congratulations, your ignorance
has caused harm.
Protests potentially nullified all potential positive effects from lookdown in large cities
like NYC, if such exist. So all economic damage was in vain and lockdown was just a capricious
and arbitrary move by ambitious and power hungry Dem politicians. And that fact alone make the
major on NYC and the governor on NY state look like completely politicized idiots.
If the crowd is dense, as often is the case in riots at places of confrontation with the
police cordon, it does not matter much if people are indoor or outdoor, what matters if the
length of the contact. Add to this that looting happens indoors.
...On Wednesday, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh called out CNN's
hypocrisy on this matter, noting that "if people can protest in the streets by the tens of
thousands, if people can riot, if people can gamble in casinos, then certainly they can gather
peaceably under the First Amendment to hear from the president of the United States."
Butthurt from this exchange, CNN Newsroom drafted in "medical analyst" Leana Wen , who
happens to be a former Planned Parenthood president, to explain why science means COVID doesn't
affect BLM protests as much as Trump rallies.
"It does not care why it is that people are gathering but it does care about the conditions
under which they're gathering," Wen argued, adding "outdoors much safer than indoors and
wearing masks obviously much safer than not wearing masks."
"I would also in this case would distinguish between the behavior of the participants while
at protests versus rallies," she continued, arguing that BLM protesters are more "aware" of the
risks than Trump supporters.
"At protests many people are aware of the risks and doing everything they can to reduce that
risk versus at many of the rallies we are seeing people going in defiance," Wen claimed.
American Thinker has run several articles like
this one about Dr. Anthony Fauci's political bias (which is his right). But the Miami
Herald published an article that was aimed at undermining President Trump , which actually
contains compelling evidence that Fauci's bias or ignorance is affecting what he is telling the
American people about Covid-19. In the article,
Dr. Fauci: 'I have to disagree' with Trump on coronavirus , the author writes:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, disagreed on Friday with
President Donald Trump's assertion that the country is "rounding the corner" on the
coronavirus pandemic.
"I really do believe we're rounding the corner," Trump said
during a White House briefing on Thursday. He added that newweekly cases have gone down
by 44% since July.
"I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with that because if you look at the thing that you
just mentioned, the statistics, Andrea, they're disturbing,"
Fauci told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Friday.
"We're plateauing at around 40,000 cases a day and the deaths are around 1,000.
From his interview with Andrea Mitchell Friday, the Herald quotes Fauci as stating, "We're
plateauing at around 40,000 cases a day and the deaths are around 1,000."
In fact, he is very wrong : the average daily new cases for the past two weeks have been
31,411, dramatically less than Fauci's 40,000 number; and the average daily deaths for the past
two-weeks have been 697, a full 30% less than Fauci's 1,000.
More significant, do these graphs of weekly average new cases (blue graph) and deaths (red
graph) from Bloomberg look like we're "plateauing?"
Source: Bloomberg
Fauci has a right and obligation to express his views about the current situation and the
future risks, but he should not mislead the public about the facts.
"We've been through this before," he said. "Don't ever, ever underestimate the potential
of the pandemic. And don't try and look at the rosy side of things."
"I keep looking at that curve, and I get more depressed and more depressed about the fact
that we never really get down to the baseline that I'd like," he said.
EmmittFitzhume , 59 minutes ago
Deep State Fauci has to go. Perhaps to prison
GoldenDebt , 58 minutes ago
Dr FRAUDci is non stop lying and flip-flopping
SMSpiff , 42 minutes ago
It's safe to come out of your basement now, Joe.
Pope Innocent III , 37 minutes ago
The nature of the Fauci scam is the total intentional destruction of induction and
deduction.
Jerky Miester , 32 minutes ago
You've been ****ting up this board for 3 years 7 months, you little phaqqot. Time to get
out of the basement and earn an honest living....unless you make your bread and beer money
being a pro troll. KYS now.
NotAGenius , 39 minutes ago
This is the legal argument to indict Fauci on mass murder charges, justified but justice
no longer exists in the USA, written by a legal writer. These comments and Fauci's crimes
would convict Fauci of mass murder and sentence him to prison for life:
Zeroes want Fauci's head on a stick...but decry liberals who interfere with the free
speech rights of conservatives on college campuses.
Free speech or no free speech - which is it, Zeroes?
knopperz , 55 minutes ago
The flu vaccination is now 78 years around.
The flu is still there.
Next Stop --> 78 Years wearing a diaper in your face.
Get used to it suckers.
All those people pushing the Corona Narrative should be hanged by the Balls.
CheapBastard , 53 minutes ago
We are obviously rounding the corner with fewer cases and fewer deaths. Most businesses
trying to reopen. Fauci is political hack and was from the start. he's also totally
incompetent or a liar giving Americans completely wrong advice from the start. The MSM loves
him because he's anti-Trump.
2hangmen , 54 minutes ago
Fauci has been wrong since day 1 on Covid. He's done multiple 180s on policies, and the
fact this is NOT a deadly virus in comparison to all other virus outbreaks. He's still
playing politics and he's still making millions from Big Pharma and the Deep State. Fauci,
please say good bye, and ride off into the sunset with your ill gotten gains.
NotAGenius , 44 minutes ago
Trump can't fire Fauci. He is a career government employee. Trump gave him a platform in
the beginning. Trump has been right about Fauci now and mostly about this cold virus too,
advocating the best medicine possible for it - hcq - while Fauci prevented Americans from
getting this cheap commercial safe and effective medical treatment. Fauci has committed mass
murder by withholding a life-saving medicine from Americans. The FDA is criminal too, same
reason. FDA has also been paying hospitals $39,000 for every patient they kill with the fatal
ventilators, killing more than saving according to records. But the government wants more
deaths for bigger numbers. The American medical system is actually a genocidal organization
now, trying to kill as many Americans as possible in many different ways, many associated
with this medical fraud. Fauci should be imprisoned for life were any justice to exist in
America. At best, Trump can minimize and ignore him and arrange for him to have no venue to
spout b.s. and lies publicly. That's what we basically need: Fauci minimized if not
disappeared.
blueapples Staff , 33 minutes ago
Why would he ever fire the fall guy? If he fired him, you'd still have the push for
lockdowns, the policies based on flawed statistical models, and all the other nonsense.
Except then without a guy like Fauci to place blame on, the administrations role in this
becomes much more apparent.
It makes more sense to have a guy like Fauci on board to deflect to, especially given his
career as a government employee, so that it looks like there's some nefarious underlying
force that is working against the administration when the reality is that that nefarious
underlying force is working in tandem with it.
JaWS , 49 minutes ago
Damn the cases. I know about 10 people that have tested positive for covid19. Most cases
are not much more than a cold. Some not even that bad. Look at the deaths. That's where the
narrative should go. They are significantly down from the peak.
"Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert ..."
I have to disagree with this.
SummerSausage , 36 minutes ago
If they left off the word "expert" it would be an accurate statement.
Bollixed , 6 minutes ago
Fauci is an expert. An 'ex' is a has-been and a 'spert' is a drip under pressure. He fits
the bill perfectly.
curtisw , 9 minutes ago
"Because I have a vaccine to peddle."
-- A. Fauci
scottyji , 19 minutes ago
FAUCI BELONGS IN PRISON.
Fauci's narcissisticly obsessed with his "expert image" and his lucrative role as pimp for
Big Pharma = total Napoleon Complex, two-faced, stinkin' bureaucrat of the Deep State.
Ergo I.C. , 28 minutes ago
Because Fauci and his buddy Bill Gates are trying peddle vaccines worth billions of
dollars.
adr , 39 minutes ago
Since Fauchi is supposedly an expert, maybe he can tell us why people suffering from hay
fever are being told they have Covid.
In our systematic review, we identified 10 RCTs that reported estimates of the
effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in
the community from literature published during 1946–July 27, 2018. In pooled analysis,
we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks (RR
0.78, 95% CI 0.51–1.20; I 2 = 30%, p = 0.25)
Of the 29 studies analyzed by the Lancet meta-study, seven studies are unpublished and
non-peer-reviewed observational studies that should not be used to guide clinical practice
according to the medRxiv disclaimer (references 3, 4, 31, 36, 37, 40 and 70; see table
above).
Of the 29 studies considered by the meta-study, only four are about the SARS-CoV-2
virus ; the other 25 studies are about the SARS-1 virus or the MERS virus, both of which
have very different transmission characteristics: they were transmitted almost exclusively
by severely ill hospitalized patients and not by community transmission.
Of the four studies relating to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, two were misinterpreted by the
Lancet meta-study authors ( refs. 44 and 70 ), one is
inconclusive ( ref. 37 ),
and one is about N95 (FFP2) respirators and not about medical masks or cloth masks (see
detailed analysis below).
The Lancet meta-study is used to guide global facemask policy for the general
population. However, of the 29 studies considered by the meta-study, only three are
classified as relating to a non-health-care (i.e. community) setting . Of these three
studies, one is misclassified ( ref. 50 , relating to a
hospital environment), one showed no benefit of facemasks (
ref. 69 ), and one is a poorly designed retrospective study about SARS-1 in Beijing
based on telephone interviews ( ref. 74 ). None of these
studies refer to SARS-CoV-2.
The authors of the Lancet meta-study acknowledge that the certainty of the evidence
regarding facemasks is "low" as all of the studies are observational and none is a
randomized controlled trial (RCT). The WHO itself admitted that its updated facemask policy
guidelines were based not on new evidence but on "political lobbying" .
In view of these shortcomings, University of Toronto epidemiology professor Peter Jueni
called
the WHO study "methodologically flawed" and "essentially useless".
In the US state of Kansas , the 90 counties without mask mandates had lower coronavirus
infection rates than the 15 counties with mask mandates. To hide this fact, the Kansas
health department tried to
manipulate the official statistics and data presentation.
Consuelo , 36 minutes ago
Fauci has been torpedoed here --- even without his lying numbers (of cases & deaths).
With the actual non-LYING numbers, he should be stripped of his medical license and
prosecuted for gross negligence, even gross-er Incompetence, and for potential Criminal $Gain
off his rather cozy relationship with Big Pharma and Bill Gates...
This whole thing was a $SCAM of the highest order.
aelfheld , 34 minutes ago
Fauci's a bureaucrat.
Bureaucrats have unqualified immunity.
Everybodys All American , 43 minutes ago
During the Spanish Flu of 1918 no one as I can tell was advocating for everyone to be
vaccinated either for or against their will. That tells you everything about this Dr. Fauci
imo. He should be removed from the planet.
drstrangelove73 , 6 minutes ago
I've posted about Tony several times this year.I spent an academic quarter as a medical
student on his service at the NIH,then saw him again many times in the 80's when I returned
as a fellow.He is a lifelong democrat,and card carrying member of the deep state who has
played politics with the management of viral infections for 40 years.Let that sink in.He has
been the director of the same NIH institute for 40 years.No one else in the history of the institute has been a director
for half that long.You think he doesn't know
how to play the game? _arrow
asteroids , 14 minutes ago
How does Fauci explane Sweden? The number of new cases is very low. Their death rate is
almost zero. Sweden now has herd immunity without a vaccine.
Hyzer , 9 minutes ago
He pretends it doesn't exist, just like the MSM.
TannyDanner , 3 minutes ago
He's trusting the plebs won't do their own research. I'm looking at the data almost daily
and am beyond thankful that Sweden had the balls to go about it the way they did and not bow
down to the bullies.
legalize , 18 minutes ago
Fauci himself has said that asymptomatic cases are "not the driver of infection"
We keep measuring "cases" instead of symptomatic cases
Therefore, I could give **** all about "case numbers"; I want to know about number of
people who are infectious/symptomatic
Useful_Idiot714 , 35 minutes ago
700 mostly old people with other diseases are dying from this each day in a country of
325,000,000. Sounds like we need mail in voting so that the frightened commies can vote early
and often to save us by electing a senile racist rapist pedophile.
SummerSausage , 46 minutes ago
Panic is Fauci's objective.
Democrats love big government which means more power for Fauci, more taxes and less
freedom for you.
Robert Paulson , 30 minutes ago
Panic is too unpredictable, and disruptive.
The "hope" is for respectful, solemn acceptance that Big Brother/Sister can save "us" from
ill health, poverty and international "enemies."
I mean **** was broken across most institutions throughout Western Civilization before the
flu was weaponized into a means of control. But the whole theater has become absurd.
The casedemic is pure and blatant FUD targeted towards Trump and Americans.
JamcaicanMeAfraid , 27 minutes ago
I predict on November 4th and if Dementia Joe is elected Fauci and his super ego will
stand before any microphone put in fromt of him and say "Joe Biden has put a stop to covid,
he has conquered the virus."
aelfheld , 44 minutes ago
Fauci sees the statistics as disturbing because they indicate an endpoint to his
prominence.
JaWS , 51 minutes ago
There are 4 men in my county that were tested positive within about 3 days of each other
and they had to quarantine for 14 days. About a week into it they started meeting everyday
down at the local fishing hole to fish while no one else was around. One of these men is 80
years old. The other 3 are in their 70s. Does this sound like something to shut the entire
country down?
GoldenDebt , 1 hour ago
Dont be a moron
Dr Fraudci is all politics and he's LYING. Dr FRAUDci also never condemned the protests as
being potential SUPER-SPREADER events
He's a criminal
moneybots , 13 minutes ago
"I really do believe we're rounding the corner," Trump said
during a White House briefing on Thursday. He added that newweekly cases have gone down
by 44% since July.
"I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with that because if you look at the thing that you
just mentioned, the statistics, Andrea, they're disturbing," Fauci told Andrea Mitchell on
Friday.
The statistics say Trump is right, according to the chart. Why is Fauci lying to the
American people?
Thalamus , 45 minutes ago
Fauci's worst case prediction of 1.7 million deaths from Covid-19 kind of came up short at
only 10K; but at least he didn't yell fire in a crowded theater .
Zerogenous_Zone , 48 minutes ago
which statistics?
to quote the great Mark Twain (now classified by the leftists as a rassiss)...
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics ."
the one statistic that is relevant, is the decrease in mortality...
and I for one, would like to know how they created a Covid-19 specific test...wait...what
was that?
THEY HAVEN'T?! it is an antigen test...that is, if you have any residual from your LAST
flu shot (they inject you with lysed virus to build up your antibody count...antigens!) you
could test positive...
and probably a majority of the tests are at issue since the test is highly
inaccurate...
but who cares? the virus is out of the box and here to stay...so you have either already
been exposed, or you will soon be exposed...and NO vaccine will be sufficient (since viral
strains mutate almost immediately)...especially the comment cold (news flash!! the 'common
cold' is a CORONAVIRUS!!)
For anyone old enough to have been alive and aware of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and
of so-called COVID-19 in 2020, memory may serve to remind one of an eerie parallel between the
two operations.
However, if memory has been expunged by the work of one's forgettery or deleted by the
corporate media's flushing it down the memory hole, or if knowledge is lacking, or maybe fear
or cognitive dissonance is blocking awareness , I would like to point out some similarities
that might perk one up to consider some parallels and connections between these two
operations.
The fundamental tie that binds them is that both events aroused the human fear of death.
Underlying all fears is the fear of death. A fear that has both biological and cultural
roots. On the biological level, we all react to death threats in a fight or flight manner.
Culturally, there are multiple ways that fear can be allayed or exacerbated, purposely or not.
Usually, culture serves to ease the fear of death, which can traumatize people, through its
symbols and myths. Religion has for a long time served that purpose, but when religion loses
its hold on people's imaginations, especially in regard to the belief in immortality, as Orwell
pointed out in the mid-1940s, a huge void is left. Without that consolation, fear is usually
tranquilized by trivial pursuits.
In the cases of the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the current corona virus operation,
the fear of death has been used by the power elites in order to control populations and
institute long-planned agendas. There is a red thread that connects the two events.
Both events were clearly anticipated and planned.
In the case of September 11, 2001, as I have argued before
, linguistic mind-control was carefully crafted in advance to conjure fear at the deepest
levels with the use of such repeated terms as Pearl Harbor, Homeland, Ground Zero, the
Unthinkable, and 9/11. Each in its turns served to raise the fear level dramatically. Each drew
on past meetings, documents, events, speeches, and deep associations of dread. This language
was conjured from the chief sorcerer's playbook, not from that of an apprentice out of
control.
And as David Ray Griffin, the seminal 9/11 researcher (and others), has pointed out in a
dozen meticulously argued and documented
books , the events of that day had to be carefully planned in advance, and the post hoc
official explanations can only be described as scientific miracles, not scientific
explanations. These miracles include: massive steel-framed high-rise buildings for the first
time in history coming down without explosives or incendiaries in free fall speed; one of them
being WTC-7 that was not even hit by a plane; an alleged hijacker pilot, Hani Hanjour, who
could barely fly a Piper Cub, flying a massive Boeing 757 in a most difficult maneuver into the
Pentagon; airport security at four airports failing at the same moment on the same day; all
sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies failing; air traffic control failing, etc. The list goes on
and on. And all this controlled by Osama bin Laden. It's a fairy tale.
Then we had the crucially important anthrax attacks that are linked to 9/11. Graeme
MacQueen, in
The 2001 Anthrax Deception , brilliantly shows that these too were a domestic
conspiracy.
These planned events led to the invasion of Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the U.S.
withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the invasion of Iraq , the ongoing war on terror, etc.
Let us not forget years of those fraudulent color-coded warnings of the terrorist levels and
the government admonition to use duct tape around your windows to protect against a massive
chemical and biological attack.
Jump to 2020 .
Let me start in reverse while color-coded designs are fresh in our minds. As the COVID-19
lockdowns were under way, a funny thing happened as people were wishing that life could return
to normal and they could be let out of their cages. Similar color-coded designs popped up
everywhere at the same time. They showed the step-by-step schedule of possible loosening of
government controls if things went according to plan. Red to yellow to green. Eye catching. Red
orange yellow blue green. As with the terrorist warnings following September 11, 2001. In
Massachusetts, a so-called blue state where I live, it's color chart ends in blue, not green,
with Phase 4 blue termed "the new normal: Development of vaccines and/or treatments enable the
resumption of 'the new normal.'" Interesting wording. A resumption that takes us back to the
future.
As with the duct tape admonitions after 9/11, now everyone is advised to wear a mask. It's
interesting to note that the 3 M Company, a major seller of duct tape, is also one of the
world's major sellers of face masks. The company was expected to be producing 50
million N95 respirator masks per month by June 2020 and 2 billion globally within the coming
year. Then there is 3 M's masking tape but this is a sticky topic.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, we were told repeatedly that the world was changed
forever. Now we are told that after COVID 19, life will never be the same. This is the "new
normal," while the post-9/11-pre-Covid-19 world must have been the old new normal. So
everything is different but normal also. So as the Massachusetts government website puts it, in
the days to come we may be enabled to enact "the resumption of 'the new normal.'" This new old
normal will no doubt be a form of techno-fascist transhumanism enacted for our own good.
As with 9/11, there is ample evidence that the corona virus outbreak was expected and
planned; that people have been the victims of a propaganda campaign to use an invisible virus
to scare us into submission and shut down the world's economy for the global elites. It is a
clear case, as Peter Koenig tells Michel Chossudovsky in this must-see interview
, that is not a conspiracy theory but a blatant factual plan spelled out in the 2010
Rockefeller Report , the October 18, 2019 Event 201 , and Agenda
21 , among other places.
Like amorphous terrorists and a war against "terrorism," which is a tactic and therefore not
something you can fight, a virus is invisible except when the media presents it as a pale,
orange-spiked bunch of floating weird balls that are everywhere and nowhere. Watch your back,
watch your face, mask up, wash your hands, keep your distance – you never know when those
orange spiked balls may get you.
As with 9/11, whenever anyone questions the official narrative of Covid-19, the official
statistics, the validity of the tests,
the effectiveness of masks , the powers behind the heralded vaccine to come, and the
horrible consequences of the lockdowns that are destroying economies, killing people, forcing
people to despair and to commit suicide, creating traumatized children, bankrupting small and
middle-sized businesses for the sake of enriching the richest, etc., the corporate media mock
the dissidents as conspiracy nuts, aiding the viral enemy.
This is so even when the dissenters are highly respected doctors, scientists, intellectuals,
et al., who are regularly disappeared from the internet. With September 11, there were
initially far fewer dissenters than now, and so the censorship of opposing viewpoints didn't
need the blatant censorship that is now growing daily.
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This censorship happens all across the internet now, quickly and stealthily, the same
internet that is being forced on everyone as the new normal as presented in the Great
Global Reset , the digital lie, where, as Anthony Fauci put it, no one should ever shake
hands again.
A world of abstract images and beings in which, as Arthur Jensen tells Howard Beal in the
film, Network , "All necessities [will be] provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom
amused." A digital dystopia that is fast approaching as perhaps the end of that red thread that
runs from 9/11 to today.
Heidi Evens and Thomas Hackett write in the New York Daily News :
With the nation's illusion of safety and security in ruins, Americans begin the slow and
fitful process of healing from a trauma that feels deeply, cruelly personal leaving citizens
throughout the country with the frightening knowledge of their vulnerability.
Be it Resolved, the scientific community has overreacted to the threat of COVID-19 and the
data prove it...
Six months into a global pandemic and 63,000 scientific papers later, scientists and
medical researchers continue to be perplexed by COVID-19. There are many unknowns with the
virus, and one of the most controversial is how deadly it really is. Since the beginning of
the pandemic, leading health institutions such as the World Health Organization and the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have warned that COVID-19 is much more
dangerous than the seasonal flu and that, without expansive public health measures, millions
of people around the world could die from the virus.
But there are some in the scientific community who disagree. And they say they have the
data to prove it. Antibody testing of large population groups indicates that we could be
grossly underestimating the number of people who have been infected by the virus –
which means we are dramatically overestimating the death rate. Given these findings, they
question whether sweeping public health controls are the way to approach a possible second
wave of COVID-19 this autumn.
GUESTS
To understand the true prevalence of COVID-19 infections in the United States, Jay
Bhattacharya has recently undertaken several seroprevalence studies (the study of antibodies in
a population). You can read about his study of Santa Clara County in California
here and his study of 5,600 Major League Baseball employees
here .
Sten Vermund has published numerous scholarly studies on infectious diseases, which you can
view here
.
During the debate both Jay and Sten speak about COVID-19's "infection fatality rate" (IFR).
IFR is one of the most important characteristics of an infectious disease in determining its
severity. It is basically the ultimate measure of a disease's ability to cause death. You can
learn more about IFR and how it is estimated here
. In the debate, both Jay and Sten agree that the current estimates of the COVID-19 infection
fatality rates are overestimated and therefore misleading. To learn more, read Jay's Wall Street
Journal op ed.
During the debate, Sten points out that between March and May of 2020 there was a 19 per
cent excess death rate in the United States. Excess death rates refer to
the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time period and expected
number of deaths in the same time period. According to Sten, the excess rates are probably 28
per cent higher than the official deaths tally of COVID-19 because so many cases are not
reported. This
Nature.com article supports this view.
Jay argues that part of the science community's overreaction to COVID-19 has been censorship
of unpopular scientific views . Jay refers to an op ed in the New York Times by
Michael Eisen that expresses concern about how scientific study pre-prints are being
released before they are peer reviewed, and calling for the establishment of a scientific
"rapid review" service for pre-prints.
One of the scientists Jay identifies as having an unorthodox view on COVID-19 is Gabriela
Gomez, She speaks about her research on herd immunity occurring when as little as ten percent
of the population has been infected with the virus here
and you can read her research article
here .
Sten and Jay disagree with each other about the feasibility of isolating the most vulnerable
members of society, particularly the elderly, while letting the rest of the population continue
to live normally . Sten refers to a
New York Times article by David Katz which supports the strategy of "vertical
interdiction", where those over 60 are "preferentially protected."
Jay refers to the recent release of findings from a
Public Health England study that found negligible spread among one million students who
returned to school in June.
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From bomb drills to COVID lockdowns, protective rituals based on irrational fear are a
mainstay of American culture. A masked TSA agent at Bradley International Airport, CT.
(By Eric K. Warncke/Shutterstock)
With the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks looming like a hangover it is worth asking the
price we pay for fear itself. Barack Obama said at his convention you must vote Democrat out of
fear for our democracy. Don Jr. said pretty much the same a week later, just reversing the
names and the politics. Everyone wants you to be afraid of anarchy, either the white or black
version. The message from all sides is fear. It sounds so 2020 but it is as old as the modern
era.
America's fear in my childhood was that we were going to die at school when the Russians
nuked America. We hid under our desks during drills, we huddled away from the windows with our
coats over our heads and waited to die. For an elementary student raised to believe what he was
taught, it was a nightmare. My third grade teacher even identified Ground Zero as the cinder
parking lot next to the school, and for some reason told us it would happen in the morning.
Americans were taught to be afraid even as we were the apex predator on the planet with the
world's only atomic bomb. We dutifully rewarded president after president for maintaining the
most massive national security state ever known, but we never felt safe. We spent the best
years of the American Century huddled like shelter dogs. We never saw that it was all a trick,
like conjuring a pandemic out of a virus which doesn't even cause symptoms in many of its hosts
and unlike almost anything else, like cancer or heart attacks, has a fatality rate well below a
single percent (so we count cases, not fatalities -- to generate fear). As with terrorism,
diabetes and ladder falls harm more American lives than the Russians.
In the face of COVID, living in daily fear of terrorism seems almost nostalgic. For me, our
first family plane trip after 9/11 started at a Japanese airport where security seemed about
the same as before. But when we transferred to a U.S. domestic flight the world changed.
The newly-erect TSA tore into us. After shouting at my lack of preparedness to present
various documents quickly enough, they pulled my pre-teen daughter away and impounded a nail
clipper and some sort of medieval-looking eyebrow curling device. She started to cry, and when
I tried to go to her I was held back. A security incident was underway I was told. The TSA
agent said harshly to her "I'm trying to keep you from dying on that airplane!" My little one
started to say something, but I shouted to her to be quiet. I'd learned at some eastern
European border checkpoint long ago the only answer. Submit and board the plane. Submit and we
can see grandma tonight at our destination.
Later, as a federal whistleblower,
I was placed on some sort of list. I could fly, but my trips through the airport would be met
with a firm "Sir, I need you to step over here." The protocols created to protect me from
terrorists had been twisted to turn me into one. Every time I was told I had been randomly
selected, wonderfully Orwellian in how the TSA workers at least seemed to believe it.
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I of course could refuse to hand over my electronics, but TSA would just confiscate them, so
why resist? Of course I could speak to a supervisor, but I'd miss my flight. My old computer
took minutes to cold boot and that angered the TSA agents and prolonged my searches. So I
bought a fast Chromebook to make my surveillance more convenient.
In a perfect melding of fears the 9/11 Memorial Museum showed us how much of this is farce.
After being closed since March to protect us from COVID they will reopen to the general public
on September 12. A symbolic day for sure but one with no science behind it. Why not September 3
or 24? Because it doesn't matter, the danger was never very real. And the museum, with its
cavernous interiors (it is built into the basements of the old Twin Towers) is allowed to host
only 25 percent of its capacity. Same for every other museum in NYC, 25 percent whether they
have state-of-the-art HVAC systems and thousands of square feet or are contained within early
19th century parlors. It doesn't matter because it doesn't matter; there's no science behind it
because there is no serious threat behind it.
In New York we are told it will be the death of us to reopen restaurants for a quick meal,
but from day one of the virus we have been welcome to sit in poorly ventilated subway cars. We
can't have more than a handful of customers inside a store, but we can spend six hours inside
an airplane cabin. Ten people gathered for a party is a death trap but 300 massed for a BLM
protest isn't. The less it makes sense the more it makes sense to just submit and go along,
because thinking is hard.
So it is no surprise I wear a mask outside. I alone seem to remember enough from biology
class to question how a soggy piece of cloth, or a dust mask with an air escape valve on the
side (i.e., your virus-laden exhaled breath goes out) is unlikely to do much, like hanging
garlic to ward off vampires. But I am allowed to buy milk at the store with a mask. I am
allowed to be part of society. I can avoid being scolded by the self-appointed mask
Jugend . I can have a socially distanced conversation with my Democrat neighbor who
believes she will literally risk her life to vote in-person, saving democracy itself after
Trump supposedly gutted the post office. Like many, she has an Old Testament view of the virus;
it is both punishment for electing Trump and the way of delivering us from him.
Those irrational fears from the Cold War and post-9/11 are nothing compared to today;
imagine the McCarthy Red Scare powered by social media. Every week it has been something new
that will destroy us -- war with North Korea and Iran, Boogaloo Bois, Trump the
Manchurian Candidate, not enough beds, and not enough ventilators. We're worried a fascist
government is taking away free speech and we're worried the government isn't doing enough to
suppress free speech to stop hate. There are too many guns for us to be safe and not enough
guns to protect us.
After a decade of terrorists everywhere (when they were actually nowhere) we transition to
live in terror of the virus. People not only support the restrictions and lockdowns, they want
more to feel safer, much like Americans demanded more nukes thinking they'd sleep better
during the Cold War. The enemy is those who oppose more retrictions.
It's not to say people do not die from the virus or there aren't reasons to take prudent
action. It's to say what we are doing in response does not keep many more alive for the price
we are paying. Same story as with terrorism, the Cold War, whatever noise makes you jump in the
dark. The bark outweighed the bite.
Fear as a policy has yielded a nuclear arms race which nearly destroyed the world, the lost
decade of freedoms sacrificed to protection from terrorism, and the hundreds of thousands dead
in pointless revenge wars. Now comes the wasted spring, summer, and autumns of COVID
overreaction, destroying the economy and breaking the spirit of people. The goal of
conditioning through fear is always the same.
Because submission scales. Decades-long nuclear arms race? OK. Support a war in Afghanistan
and Iraq and Syria and Libya and Yemen and Somalia? Patriot Act, torture, prison camps, drone
assassinations? Yes is always the easiest way to imagine you can allay fear forever until the
next scary thing is revealed. Yale welcomes students back to campus with all sorts of
restrictions then warns them they will see death in their dorms.
So in 2020, already conditioned to accept being humiliated barefoot before every flight, it is
easy to accept losing jobs, or to lock down whole cities, or close off state borders. It was
easy for people to accept being denied saying goodbye to a terminally ill loved one, or to be
blocked from attending church or their child's birth, by the government.
Fear is very powerful, and learned helplessness a dangerous thing. So forgive my dry heart
when I am not sure I should fear for our democracy even as I fear for our sanity. And don't be
surprised at how quickly the virus clears away once the election is over. And don't be
surprised when it is replaced by a new thing to fear.
Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well:
How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper's War: A
Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.
Basic human behavior here in my home state of Michigan is being indelibly modified by
fear. I see it in people driving alone wearing a mask in their car. There was the guy
yesterday at the outdoor golf range hitting balls - not very well - 50 feet away from
everyone else wearing his mask the entire time. It's not required. It's not even
suggested.
There's the look of pure terror in people's eyes when you inadvertently stray within their
physical distancing radius while shopping at the local store. The kid in my younger son's Boy
Scout troop who flipped out at my son for coming too close to him without a mask while they
were on a Scout-sanctioned outdoor hike. Then there's the whole school fiasco.
I respectfully disagree with Mr. Van Buren on one point. This isn't going away any time
soon regardless of the election. The behavior will not be "unlearned." The residual fear will
remain. Masks will be a "thing" just as they are in China. Masks are now fashion accessories
and you can buy them with your favorite team's logo on them.
Too much effort has been invested in the narrative and making the "new normal" acceptable.
Too many otherwise marginal people like our beloved Governor Whitmer have been empowered for
all of this simply to evaporate.
I'm not in Michigan, but Los Angeles has similar restrictions, and I don't see the
irrational fear going away any time soon. It broke 100 degrees yesterday, and people were
jogging outdoors in masks. I make a point of not wearing one except when required by law.
Every day, I walk to the supermarket, and the number of people who jump into the street
(without looking! One man nearly got hit by the bus!) upon seeing a human face is startling.
I fear for our future. The mass hysteria boggles my mind.
Well, it isn't much, but living in nyc I mostly walk wherever I am going. I carry a mask
in my pocket and put it on to enter stores because I won't be allowed in without it. But I
walk without a mask on.
Some stores, and it's very clear which, you can go in without a mask. Like my regular bodega.
Either way, it's the small acts of defiance that count in such an environment. Or at least
that's what I tell myself.
It goes back well before the Cold War. Remember the First Red Scare, and the fear of
anarchists lurking around every corner? Or for that matter, Solid Citizens of the day quaking
at the thought that William Jennings Bryan might win the presidency and institute Free
Silver, which was practically bomb-throwing anarchy.
Before that, Southerners shook at the thought of slave uprisings, and Northerners at
Indian raids.
"The less it makes sense the more it makes sense to just submit and go along, because
thinking is hard. So it is no surprise I wear a mask outside"
Precisely the kind of thinking and abject submission that will ensure that this insanity
continues indefinitely (or until the election, depending on the outcome). I've never yet worn
a mask and will not. If that means that only place I can go outside home is the park, so be
it. I'll be leaving this worthless world soon enough. But, I will not wear a useless placebo
face muzzle in order to humor others in their irrational fears and paranoia.
"My third grade teacher even identified Ground Zero as the cinder parking lot next to the
school, and for some reason told us it would happen in the morning."
That was some world-class phycological torture.
I reflect back to my own childhood, in a household of Calvinist-like obsessions and guilt.
Faith as both identity and torture. Habits that even having left that behind, I can't quite
shake.
"Sinners in the hands of an angry God"
Secondly, I think some level of fear and neuroticism is inevitable in a super complex
system like industrial civilization. There seems to be a pervasive yearning to escape from it
that I too have felt. Minimalism, environmentalism, modern readaptations of Buddhism and
Stoicism, etc all are facets of this in my view. Perhaps human nature is simply telling us
that this 200 year old development needs quite a bit more refining before we're happy with it
for the long term. We've lost too much of our freedom and we want it back, but generally not
at the cost of much material comfort. A split like that will take
a long time to reconcile.
You wrote, "a virus which doesn't even cause symptoms in many of
its hosts and unlike almost anything else, like cancer or heart attacks,
has a fatality rate well below a single percent (so we count cases, not
fatalities -- to generate fear)."
By "a single percent" did you mean 1%? In Ohio, where I live, the death rate has been
consistently between 3 and 4%. Not the black plague, certainly, but serious enough. Much more
than the seasonal flu, where the death rate is less than 1%
From comments: "Article is poorly written by someone who does not know medical science. There
are no viral "cells" so the headline is a put off right away. The comment about "sensitivity" is
misplaced as PCR tests are too sensitive: ergo false positives. I believe "specificity" is the
word the author was searching for. If a test lumps true positives with false positives, then it
lacks specificity."
That's because new research from the University of Oxford's Center for Evidence-Based
Medicine and the University of the West of England has found that the swab-based technique used
for most COVID-19 testing is at risk of returning "false positives" since copies of the virus's
RNA detected by the tests might simply be dead, inactive material from a weeks-old infection.
Although patients infected with COVID-19 are typically only infectious for a week or less,
tests can be triggered by virus genetic material left over from a weeks-old infection.
The team's research involved analyzing 25 studies on the widely used polymerase chain
reaction test. PCR tests use material collected with a swab - the most common type of test
around the world, and especially in the US - then utilize a "genetic photocopying" technique
that allows scientists to magnify the small sample of genetic material collected, which they
can then analyze for signs of viral RNA.
What the researchers here have effectively found is that these PCR tests just aren't
sensitive enough to distinguish if the viral material is active and infectious, or dead and
inert.
For those who desire a more comprehensive understanding of how these tests work, the chart
below can be helpful.
Professor Carl Heneghan, one of the authors of the study, said there was a risk that a surge
in testing across the UK was increasing the risk of this sample contamination occurring and it
may explain why the number of Covid-19 cases is rising but the number of deaths is static.
"Evidence is mounting that a good proportion of 'new' mild cases and people re-testing
positives after quarantine or discharge from hospital are not infectious, but are simply
clearing harmless virus particles which their immune system has efficiently dealt with," he
told the Spectator.
Professor Heneghan added that international scrutiny might be required to avoid "the dangers
of isolating non-infectious people or whole communities." ZKnight 14 minutes ago
Fake science. How about purify the virus first and establish a gold standard for testing
first. No, of course not because the CDC has a patent for Covid-19 and nobody is allowed to try
find it to see if it exists. play_arrow LogicFusion 27 minutes ago
Everybody is a Covid-19 / Coronavirus expert now!
Read about the failed coin dealer and convicted felon's performance. It's hilarious!
Covid -19 has been so politicized that I don't believe a word of any publication for or
against testing, existence of the Virus, or anything that provokes testing or issues opinions
about locking down communities. Just like the riots, Covid news is just plain boring.
play_arrow ominous 3 hours ago
"Give me control of a nation's money, and I care not who makes the laws" - Mayer Amschel
Rothschild. play_arrow play_arrow tangent 4 hours ago remove link
People who recommend a vaccine for an entirely cured virus should lose their license to
practice medicine. 99.9% cure rate applying to people who take it before being hospitalized is
one of the biggest success stories in the history of medicine for HCQ. Not only that, but there
are multiple other likely cures that simply have not been studied well. You'd think people
would appreciate the fact that the common cold has been cured, but instead they just whine that
big pharma isn't getting those bucko bucks.
I honestly expected a ticker tape parade like in the movies when that first cure study came
out. But instead they took a massive **** on the study and on the doctor... ****ty world we
live in. ay_arrow Pair Of Dimes Shift 2 hours ago
An exec (55+) at my company is gung ho about the vaccine.
Unfortunately, I just had to give him a "wait and see" response although I know vaccines for
coronaviruses are impossible. play_arrow 2 play_arrow ThanksIwillHaveAnother 4 hours ago
(Edited)
Viruses are not full cells. They are DNA/RNA wrapped with a protein the clings to a cell
then the cell imports the DNA/RNA to start making its proteins. So what is inactive? If that
person sneezes on another person depending on immune system status that other person could get
a bad infection. y_arrow 4 CrabbyR 3 hours ago
viruses utilizes CELL structures and host DNA to replicate dna or rna according to the
viruses genetic code, the protein jacket is the final product to
disguise the virus from detection and to bind on another cell after the compromised cell
RUPTURES, there's more to it but if it cannot copy itself effectively it can become nonviable
and unable to infect another cell. It replicates DNA inside a host cell, It is not a complete
organism and cannot replicate unless it can inject its DNA into a host cell. Antibodies cling
to viruses and destroy this ability to bind to a target cell. A non viable virus has a damaged
coat or DNA RNA that has to many Dimers (damage or code breaks) Bacteria is more in line with
what you think a virus is y_arrow onewayticket2 4 hours ago (Edited) remove link
they lost me when they changed the definition of "death" to include "presumed, untested"
cases (while bI@#$% ing at me that we needed to "follow the science")....and even got busted
for the laughable motorcycle accident being classified as a covid death and the Labs that were
sending in 100% positive results. (until they were caught) play_arrow OutaTime43 4 hours ago
remove link
The test detects RNA. Not necessarily viable virus. Also, it will detect RNA presence in an
individual who may already have antibodies and may be immune. We are bombarded daily by viruses
of which we already have immunity. play_arrow sun tzu 10 hours ago
Shocking news that the South Koreans already discovered and published back in May. Western
big pharma driven medicine is garbage 😂😂😂
Interesting play_arrow play_arrow Jack Mehoff 1 more time 9 hours ago
Business as usual play_arrow play_arrow Argon1 7 hours ago
Preparation for agenda 2021 in 2017. play_arrow 1 play_arrow CrabbyR 4 hours ago
WOW.......ties a few strands from other sources together into a real ugly picture play_arrow
play_arrow Welsh Bard 10 hours ago
The professor who won the Nobel prize for work in this field, said that the way this test is
being operated with over forty cycles, means that any results are entirely meaningless.
In Britain, having spent over £15 billion setting up PCR testing systems and a shaky
test and trace apparatus on top of that, it appears that 90% of positive results now appear to
be false. This is compounded by the fact that when a hot spot develops, more testing is done to
show a rapid increase in more false positive results, meaning further new lockdowns and even
more testing to prove yet more false positive results ad infinitum.
Now whether this is by design or ineptitude, people must decide for themselves but the
outcome is utter chaos.
For those countries who have not followed the Swedish model especially countries like
Australia and New Zealand who have set up complete isolation, now face a future perpetually cut
off from the rest of the world.
Okay, new techniques will and are coming along to treat the disease like HCQ when used
correctly maybe as a prophylactic and a vaccine that will need to be constantly upgraded like
the Flu vaccine, means that the whole world has painted itself into a corner unless drastic
revision is now made to the whole sorry mess.
In the meantime, we will now be stuck with digital currency and the introduction of ID
Health Cards that will limit people in how they travel where they work and access to a whole
heap of things like government services.
Welcome to the new world order! play_arrow 1 KuriousKat 11 hours ago (Edited) remove
link
Don't tell the Shameless Aussie gov that after arresting hundreds for simply voicing doubt
on need to lockdown entire city...Next time it will be thousands and not a damn thing they can
do to stop it..These people are trickling us the truth how worthless the tests are when pretty
much everyone knows. play_arrow espirit 12 hours ago remove link
Lessee.
WHO
Imperial College
John Hopkins
CDC
Line all those peeps up against the wall, and the first one to rat gets to live.
I'll provide my own ammo... ay_arrow Sick Monkey 6 hours ago
Not everyone working in these agencies are dishonest but like you and I we have to work and
eat.
Most of them are trapped in this mess with bills to pay threatened by NDA.
play_arrow 1 Urban Roman 12 hours ago
Not particularly new news. Been talked about since April at least -- it's an RNA virus, it
has its own polymerase, and it leaves lots of RNA fragments in its wake.
The Corona family of viruses make 5 or 6 strands with partial copies of their RNA molecule.
negative copies are made first, and then copied again into positive copies. Finally the one big
RNA is made with the entire genome on it.
So about a dozen RNA molecules are made for each finished virus particle that is produced.
And finally, a variety of different primers are used for the PCR tests, some are matched to the
small partial RNA copies and others are matched to various features on the large whole-virus
RNA. They can give different results for the same sample.
So, someone who registers on a PCR test has probably been exposed to the virus, but the test
gives no clue as to whether it is an active infection, or the person is contagious, or they are
just coming down with it, or they got over it six months ago. play_arrow 4 play_arrow 1
10 play_arrow gordo 12 hours ago remove link
Sweden, no masks, no lock downs, ALL SCHOOLS OPEN, herd immunity, no second wave.
Still think your masks and lock downs are working muppets?
1 play_arrow The 3rd Dimentia 13 hours ago
https://youtu.be/sjYvitCeMPc
SARS-CoV2 and the Rise of Medical Technocracy. Lee Merritt, M.D. play_arrow 3 play_arrow
hugin-o-munin 13 hours ago
I'm glad to see that many are starting to counter the official narrative.
We've been asleep for too long and allowed these agendas to fester to the point we're at now
where a college dropout software salesman and a former 3rd world communist terrorist (neither
of whom have any medical degree) are dictating to the world how everyone needs to get a DNA
altering vaccine and a medical ID. It's completely nuts and bonkers yet more or less the entire
planet's governments follow in 'lockstep' with ever more draconian laws and regulations
incarcerating people in their own homes, making them wear masks causing oxygen deprivation and
shutting down the entire world economy.
lay_arrow Warthog777 , 13 hours ago
Article is poorly written by someone who does not know medical science. There are no viral
"cells" so the headline is a put off right away. The comment about "sensitivity" is misplaced
as PCR tests are too sensitive: ergo false positives. I believe "specificity" is the word the
author was searching for. If a test lumps true positives with false positives, then it lacks
specificity.
Anyone who would use the term "virus cells", has no clue what they're talking about and
should be completely disregarded. Viruses are not cells. PCR tests are searching for
something your body produces in response to a virus as well. They are not produced
specifically for a singular virus either. The entire concept of PCR testing is garbage. This
**** was a scam from the get-go.
hugin-o-munin , 13 hours ago
Yes it is evident now that this entire pandemic is false and political. The goal seems to
be to vaccinate entire populations and the question people need to ask is - why? what for?
Aside from the obvious economic motives there are some more sinister plans that most people
will have a hard time accepting but these need to be looked at. Several years ago there were
a group of doctors and researchers that died of suspicious suicides who were collaborating
and studying vaccines and the link to autism.
The effort was led by Dr.Jeffrey Bradstreet who was researching the natural substance
GcMAF and how this could boost the immune system. What he discovered was that many vaccines
had a compound/substance called Nagalase in them that is unnatural and has a detrimental
effect on the immune system and function of GcMAF (which is produced by our own bodies) and
has no business at all being in vaccines. Just before he was able to blow the whistle on this
he also died of a suspicious 'suicide' and today most of the clinics and research groups
working on GcMAF have been destroyed and ruined. Draw your own conclusions.
snblitz , 14 hours ago
Dr. Kary Mullis invented the PCR test. He said it was ineffective for this purpose.
Though he was addressing its use in a prior virus hoax unleashed upon the world.
I bet you didn't know this scam has been used before.
That is why I was able to call out the scam right from the start. The second I saw them
using the PCR again, I knew it was from the same playbook.
snblitz , 14 hours ago
So many lies.
Viruses are not alive. They have no metabolic functions. They cannot move.
Don't believe me? Get a degree is virology or microbiology or just a read a book on the
subject. Or capture a wuhan-virus yourself and watch it under a microscope. It won't move. It
won't consume anything. It will just sit there inert.
The problem is that you are being lied to at a scale you cannot imagine.
I know, off to the fema re-education camp for me for spreading false information about the
wuhan-virus.
Though I am not the one spreading fear and hysteria.
aldousd , 13 hours ago
There article is confused, but the work of the doctor is not. Viruses use your cells to
reproduce. When your immune system targets the virus it actually kills your own cell which
has become host to the virus. The virus particles and markers, and the DNA of the virus can
be detected in these dead cells, but dead cells cannot serve as a factory for more viruses.
So it's effectively a dead virus infected cell. Not a dead virus cell.
So while the transcription of the idea here was done by an idiot, it's not an idiotic
idea. The tests cannot tell if the virus came in a living cell that is actively producing
more viruses or a dead host cell that has been assassinated by your immune system. That's
what they're talking about here.
mstyle , 11 hours ago
what about the chromosome 8 stuff that has been mentioned lately?
(since you appear to be rather intelligent)
hugin-o-munin , 11 hours ago
Thanks. Well the chromosome 8 discovery in the PCR test specifications/details is strange
and worrying because it makes you wonder why it's part of this at all. Some believe it's to
get more false positive results while others believe it is what the mRNA vaccines are
intended to target and if that's right then it's really sinister. What exactly is the plan?
To make all of us get Downs Syndrome? I don't know but judging by all their other lies and
schemes it wouldn't surprise me.
IRC162 , 14 hours ago
Fuggin progressives and their pandemic political prop. But really this reaction is the
same as their reaction to 'racial injustice'. They focus on feelings before the facts are
known in order to achieve their end, and then do their best to bury/ignore the facts when
they are gathered later.
94% COVID deaths with multiple comorbidities.
10 unarmed blacks killed by police in 2019 (6 were in self-defense).
adr , 15 hours ago
Why didn't you mention that nearly all labs are running 35-40 cycles which guarantees a
positive test, simply from noise.
The inventor of the test said if you don't find anything after 15 cycles, it probably
isn't there. After 20 cycles the noise starts to be greater than any real information. By 30,
the test is mostly noise. More than 35, the test is completely worthless.
Of course I've been saying this for five months, but most people didn't listen. After the
NYT article came out, people I know started saying, "How did you know?"
I said, "Because I have critical thinking skills. Why didn't you believe me? Name a time
I've steered you wrong."
Antiduck , 14 hours ago
333 labs in florida had 100% positivity. (stupid word.)
ZenStick , 12 hours ago
Exactly correct.
Nobody will touch this line of reasoning in public or on media.
Bastages.
Identify as Ferengi , 15 hours ago
See above, Born2Bwired.
The PCR test is not useful for what they are using it for apparently. This has been
known since the beginning. Here is quote regarding AIDS:
"Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in Science for inventing the PCR, is thoroughly
convinced that HIV is not the cause of "AIDS". With regard to the viral load tests, which
attempt to use PCR for counting viruses, Mullis has stated: "Quantitative PCR is an
oxymoron." PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is
unsuited for estimating numbers. Although there is a common misimpression that the viral
load tests actually count the number of viruses in the blood, these tests cannot detect
free, infectious viruses at all; they can only detect proteins that are believed, in some
cases wrongly, to be unique to HIV. The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but
not viruses themselves.
What PCR does is to select a genetic sequence and then amplify it enormously. It can
accomplish the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack; it can amplify that needle
into a haystack. Like an electronically amplified antenna, PCR greatly amplifies the
signal, but it also greatly amplifies the noise. Since the amplification is exponential,
the slightest error in measurement, the slightest contamination, can result in errors of
many orders of magnitude."
"... It's time to stop fetishizing scientific methods. We have to accept that there are many elements of Covid-19 that science may never understand and if we wait for it to do so, we will never again be able to live a normal life. ..."
"... Science, if it is working properly, will not come to a conclusion that is wholly wrong. But not everything that is true can be established by a randomized control trial followed by peer review. Take the theory, popularized by Dr John Lee's work in the Spectator , that Covid has become less deadly as it spreads, and is now basically inert. ..."
"... People need to accept this about Covid (and hopefully later, much else) and stop fetishizing the scientific method at times when a bit of common sense would do the job. ..."
"... Consider this article , written by three scientific minds. It is a measured and 'data driven' analysis of whether Covid is becoming less deadly. But is blinkered by an assumption that only official data, no matter how muddled, can be relied upon. All you really need to do is ask doctors whether they are seeing people come in with Covid, or if they are dying of Covid when they do. Instead it focuses on case numbers, which are not worth the paper they are written on. ..."
"... So many people have been so frightened – understandably – by exaggerated accounts of the threat posed by Covid-19, and it will take a lot to persuade them that they have been sold a pup. But they need to be persuaded, so that can get their old lives back. The present regime will never take on this responsibility because it would center on an admission of massive guilt on their part. ..."
"... What is needed now from all sensible people is calm but insistent argument, with friends, relations and authorities alike, for the total abolition of all coronavirus-related restrictions. We saw some of that in London and Berlin over the weekend, and it was fantastic to see such well organized and clear minded dissent against the sinister 'new normal'. ..."
By Peter Andrews , Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a
background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in
genetics
It's time to stop fetishizing scientific methods. We have to accept that there are
many elements of Covid-19 that science may never understand and if we wait for it to do so, we
will never again be able to live a normal life.
The Covid-19 outbreak is largely over, and man's attempts to slow, stop or understand the
virus have failed. Science will eventually discover more about the pandemic but it is a slow
process.
Science, if it is working properly, will not come to a conclusion that is wholly wrong. But
not everything that is true can be established by a randomized control trial followed by peer
review. Take the theory, popularized by Dr John Lee's work in the
Spectator , that Covid has become less deadly as it spreads, and is now basically
inert.
This would perfectly explain why so many people died of Covid-19 in a short period of time,
and why deaths have basically flat-lined since April. It fits with many Covid studies
confirming fast
evolution , different strains and reinfection .
Furthermore, a change to the virus itself could explain why the same patterns in deaths have
been seen everywhere, irrespective of lockdowns, demographics, contact tracing or any other
scheme.
In fact, with each passing day it is increasingly probable that the virus has mutated to a
milder form. The trouble is it would be nigh on impossible to establish this with the
instruments of science, now or any time soon. The vagaries of individual human bodies and
microscopic particles are just beyond the scope of exact science.
People need to accept this about Covid (and hopefully later, much else) and stop fetishizing
the scientific method at times when a bit of common sense would do the job. We are paralysed by
a need for the World Health Organization or Public Health England to conjure up some
peer-reviewed study or other confirming to 99.9 percent likelihood that we can go back to
normal now. That will never happen, but we have to get back to normal.
Consider this
article , written by three scientific minds. It is a measured and 'data driven' analysis of
whether Covid is becoming less deadly. But is blinkered by an assumption that only official
data, no matter how muddled, can be relied upon. All you really need to do is ask doctors
whether they are seeing people come in with Covid, or if they are dying of Covid when they do.
Instead it focuses on case numbers, which are not worth the paper they are written on.
Here is another paper ,
co-authored by the brilliant Professor Carl Heneghan of the University of Oxford's Center for
Evidence-Based Medicine. He has been tireless in his questioning of the government's
interpretation of coronavirus statistics, although it has taken far too long for him to be
given any kind of
platform from which to address the public.
The study, while no doubt accurate and valuable for establishing fine points of detail,
seeks to answer whether the infection fatality ratio has been falling in the UK. A
comprehensive review of the limited data suggests that it has, but so what? What does that mean
to the average Joe, confused as to whether they should send their child to school in the
morning, or whether it would be irresponsible to give their elderly parents a
hug?
So many people have been so frightened – understandably – by exaggerated
accounts of the threat posed by Covid-19, and it will take a lot to persuade them that they
have been sold a pup. But they need to be persuaded, so that can get their old lives back. The
present regime will never take on this responsibility because it would center on an admission
of massive guilt on their part.
What is needed now from all sensible people is calm but insistent argument, with friends,
relations and authorities alike, for the total abolition of all coronavirus-related
restrictions. We saw some of that in London and Berlin over
the weekend, and it was fantastic to see such well organized and clear minded dissent against
the sinister 'new normal'.
Like this story? Share it with a friend!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
On August 2, lockdown measures were implemented in Melbourne, Australia, that were so
draconian that Australian news commentator Alan Jones said on Sky News : "People are
entitled to think there is an 'agenda to destroy western society.'"
The gist of an August 13 th article on the Melbourne lockdown is captured in the
title: "
Australian Police Go FULL NAZI , Smashing in Windows of Civilian Cars Just Because
Passengers Wouldn't Give Details About Where They Were Going."
Another article with an arresting title was by Guy Burchell in the August 7 thAustralian National Review : "
Melbourne Cops May Now Enter Homes Without a Warrant , After 11 People Die of COVID --
Australia, This Is Madness, Not Democracy." Burchell wrote that only 147 people had lost their
lives to coronavirus in Victoria (the Australian state of which Melbourne is the capital), a
very low death rate compared to other countries. The ramped up lockdown measures were triggered
by an uptick in cases due to ramped up testing and 11 additional deaths, all of them in nursing
homes (where lockdown measures would actually have little effect). The new rules include a six
week curfew from 8 PM to 5 AM, with residents allowed to leave home outside those curfew hours
only to shop for food and essential items (one household member only), and for caregiving, work
and exercise (limited to one hour).
"But the piece de resistance ," writes Burchell, "has to be that now police officers
can enter homes with neither a warrant nor permission. This is an astonishing violation of
civil liberties . Deaths of this kind are not normally cause for government action, let alone
the effective house arrest of an entire city." He quoted Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews, who
told Victorians, "there is literally no reason for you to leave your home and if you were to
leave your home and not be found there, you will have a very difficult time convincing Victoria
police that you have a lawful reason." Burchell commented:
[U]nder this new regime you can't even remain in your house unmolested by the cops, they
can just pop 'round anytime to make sure you haven't had Bruce and Sheila from next door
round for a couple of drinks. All over a disease that is simply not that fatal .
Last year more than 310,000 Australians were hospitalised with flu and over 900 died. By
all metrics that makes flu a worse threat than COVID-19 but police weren't granted Stasi-like
powers during the flu season. Millions of people weren't confined to their homes and
threatened with AUS$5,000 fines for not having a good reason for being out of their
homes.
At an August 19 th press conference , Australia's second most senior medical
officer said the government would be discussing measures such as banning restaurants,
international travel, public transport, and withholding government programs through "No Jab No
Pay" in order to coerce vaccine resisters.
An
August 13 article on LifeSiteNews quoted Father Glen Tattersall, a Catholic parish
priest in Melbourne, who said the draconian provisions "simply cannot be justified on a
scientific basis":
We have a curfew from 8 pm to 5 am, rigorously enforced including by the use of police
helicopters and search lights. Is the virus a vampire that just comes out at night? Or the
wearing of masks: they must be worn everywhere outside, even in a park where you are nowhere
near any other person. Why? Does the virus leap hundreds of metres through the air? This is
all about inducing mass fear, and humiliating the populace by demanding external
compliance.
Why the strict curfew? Curfews have been implemented recently in the US to deter violence
during protests, but no violence of that sort was reported in Melbourne. What was reported, at
least on social media , were
planes landing in the night
from the Chinese province of Guandong carrying equipment related to 5G and the Chinese
biometric social credit system, which was reportedly being installed under a blanket of
secrecy.
Angelo Codevilla, professor emeritus at Boston University,
concluded in an August 13 th article, "We are living through a coup
d'état based on the oldest of ploys: declaring emergencies, suspending law and
rights, and issuing arbitrary rules of behavior to excuse taking 'full powers'."
Questioning the Narrative
Melbourne has gone to extremes with its lockdown measures, but it could portend things to
come globally. Lockdowns were originally sold to the public as being necessary just for a
couple of weeks to "flatten the curve," to prevent hospital overcrowding from COVID-19 cases.
It has now been over five months, with self-appointed vaccine czar Bill Gates intoning that we will not be able
to return to "normal" until the entire global population of 7 billion people has been
vaccinated. He has since backed off on the numbers, but commentators everywhere are reiterating
that lockdowns are the "new normal," which could last for years.
All this is such a radical curtailment of our civil liberties that we need to look closely
at the evidence justifying it; and when we do, that evidence is weak. The isolation policies
were triggered by
estimates from the Imperial College London of 510,000 UK deaths and 2.2 million US deaths,
more than 10 times the actual death rate from COVID-19. A Stanford University
antibody study estimated that the fatality rate if infected was only about 0.1 to 0.2
percent; and in
an August 4 th blog post , Bill Gates himself acknowledged that the death rate
was only 0.14 percent, not much higher than for the flu. But restrictive measures have gotten
more onerous rather than less as the mortality figures have been revised downward.
A July 2020 UK study from Loughborough and Sheffield Universities found that government
policy over the lockdown period has actually increased mortality rather than reducing it, after
factoring in collateral damage including deaths from cancers and other serious diseases that
are being left untreated, a dramatic increase in suicides and drug overdose, and poverty and
malnourishment due to unemployment. Globally, according to UNICEF, 1.2 million child deaths are
expected as a direct result of the lockdowns. A data analyst in South Africa asserts that
the
consequences of the country's lockdown will lead to 29 times more deaths than from the
coronavirus itself .
Countries and states that did very little to restrict their populations, including Sweden
and South Dakota, have fared as well as or better overall than locked down US states. In an
August 12 th article in The UK Telegraph titled "
Sweden's Success Shows the True Cost of Our Arrogant, Failed Establishment ," Allister
Heath writes:
Sweden got it largely right, and the British establishment catastrophically wrong. Anders
Tegnell, Stockholm's epidemiologist-king, has pulled off a remarkable triple whammy:
far fewer deaths per capita than Britain, a maintenance of basic freedoms and opportunities,
including schooling, and, most strikingly, a recession less than half as severe as our
own.
Not restraining the populace has allowed Sweden's curve to taper off naturally through "herd
immunity," with daily deaths down to single digits for the last month. (See
chart .)
The Pandemic That Wasn't?
Also bringing the official narrative into question is the unreliability of the tests on
which the lockdowns have been based. In a
Wired interview , even Bill Gates acknowledged that most US test results are
"garbage." The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology used in the nasal swab test is
considered the "gold standard" for COVID-19 detection; yet the PCR test was regarded by its own
inventor, Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis, as
inappropriate to detect viral infection . In a detailed June 27 th analysis
titled "
COVID-19 PCR Tests Are Scientifically Meaningless ," Torsten Engelbrecht and Konstantin
Demeter conclude:
Without doubt eventual excess mortality rates are caused by the therapy and by the lockdown
measures, while the "COVID-19" death statistics comprise also patients who died of a variety of
diseases, redefined as COVID-19 only because of a "positive" test result whose value could not
be more doubtful.
The authors discussed a January 2007 New York Times article titled " Faith in Quick Test
Leads to Epidemic That Wasn't ," describing an apparent whooping cough epidemic in a New
Hampshire hospital. The epidemic was verified by preliminary PCR tests given to nearly 1,000
healthcare workers, who were subsequently furloughed. Eight months later, the "epidemic" was
found to be a false alarm. Not a single case of whooping cough was confirmed by the
"gold standard" test – growing pertussis bacteria in the laboratory. All of the
cases found through the PCR test were false positives.
Yet "test, test, test" was the message proclaimed for all countries by WHO Director General
Tedros Adhanom at a media briefing on
March 16, 2020 , five days after WHO officially declared COVID-19; and the test recommended
as the gold standard was the PCR. Why, when it had already been demonstrated to be unreliable,
creating false positives that gave the appearance of an epidemic when there was none? Or was
that the goal – to create the appearance of a pandemic, one so vast that the
global economy had to be brought to a standstill until a vaccine could be found? Recall Prof.
Codevilla's conclusion: "We are living through a coup d'état based on the oldest
of ploys: declaring emergencies, suspending law and rights, and issuing arbitrary rules of
behavior to excuse taking 'full powers'."
People desperate to get back to work will not only submit to a largely untested vaccine but
will agree to surveillance measures that would have been considered a flagrant violation of
their civil rights if those rights had not been overridden by a "national emergency" justifying
preemption by the police powers of the state. They will agree to get "immunity passports" in
order to travel and participate in group activities, and they will submit to quarantines,
curfews, contact tracings, social credit scores and informing on the neighbors. The emergency
must be kept going to justify these unprecedented violations of their liberties, in which
decision-making is removed from elected representatives and handed to unelected bureaucrats and
technocrats.
A national health crisis also a necessary prerequisite for relief from liability for
personal injuries from the drugs and other products deployed in response to the crisis. Under
the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREPA), in the event of a declared
public health emergency, manufacturers are shielded from tort liability for injuries both from
the vaccines and from invalid or invasive tests. Compensation for personal injuries is a
massive expense for drug companies, and the potential profits from a product free of that
downside are a gold mine for pharmaceutical companies and investors. The liabilities will be
borne by the taxpayers and the victims.
All this, however, presupposes both an existing public health emergency and no effective
treatment to defuse it. That helps explain the otherwise inexplicable
war on hydroxychloroquine , a safe drug that has been in use and available over the counter
for 65 years and has been
shown to be effective in multiple studies when used early in combination with zinc and an
antibiotic. A table prepared by the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (
below ) found that the US has nearly 30 times as many deaths per capita as countries making
early and prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine.
The latest international testing of
hydroxychloroquine treatment of coronavirus shows countries that had early use of the drug had
a 79% lower mortality rate than countries that banned the use of the safe malaria drug.
Lowering the US mortality rate by 79% could have saved over 100,000 lives. But an effective,
inexpensive COVID-19 treatment would mean the end of the alleged pandemic and the vaccine
bonanza it purports to justify.
The need to maintain the appearance of a pandemic also explains the inflated reports of
cases and deaths. Hospitals have been rewarded with increased fees for reclassifying cases as
COVID-19. As deaths declined in the US, the numbers of cases reported by the Centers for
Disease Control were also
gamed to make it appear that America was in a "second wave" of a pandemic. The reporting
criterion was changed on May 18 from people who tested positive for the virus only to people
who tested positive for either the virus or its antibodies. The exploding numbers thus include
people who have recovered from COVID-19 as well as false positives. The Loughborough and
Sheffield researchers found that when controlling for other factors affecting mortality, actual
deaths due to COVID-19 are 54% to 63% lower than implied by the standard excess deaths
measure.
Ushering in "The Great Reset"
Forcing compliance with global vaccine mandates is one obvious motive for maintaining the
appearance of an ongoing pandemic, but what would be the motive for destroying the global
economy with forced lockdowns? What is behind the "agenda to destroy Western society" suspected
by Australian commentator Alan Jones?
Evidently it is this: destroying the old is necessary to usher in the new. Global economic
destruction paves the way for the "Great Reset" now being promoted by the World Economic Forum,
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Monetary Fund and other big global
players.
Although cast as arising from the pandemic,
the "global economic reset" is a concept that was floated as early as 2014 by Christine
Lagarde, then head of the IMF, and is said to be a recharacterization of the "New World Order"
discussed long before that. It was promoted as a solution to the ongoing economic crisis
triggered in 2008.
The World Economic Forum – that elite group of businessmen, politicians and academics
that meets in Davos, Switzerland, every January – announced in June that the Great Reset
would be the theme of its 2021 Summit. Klaus Schwab,
founder of the Forum, admonished:
The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and
economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the
United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must
be transformed.
No country will be allowed to opt out because it would be endangering the rest, just as no
person will be allowed to escape the COVID-19 vaccine for the same reason.
Who is behind the Great Reset and what it really entails are major questions that need their
own article, but suffice it to say here that to escape the trap of the globalist agenda, we
need a mass awakening to what is really going on and collective resistance to it while there is
still time. There are hopeful signs that this is happening, including massive protests against
economic shutdowns and restrictions, particularly in Europe; a rash of lawsuits challenging the
constitutionality of the lockdowns and of police power overreach; and a flood of alternative
media exposés despite widespread censorship.
Life as we know it will change. We need to ensure that it changes in ways that serve the
people and the productive economy, while preserving our national sovereignty and hard-won
personal freedoms.
@Brás Cubas ite the contrary. What he said is that its severity has been
intentionally and systematically exaggerated, and that is clearly correct and provable.
Here are experienced medical doctors providing well-documented detailed criticism of the
covid-19 death stats and the wide ranging dishonesty in their inflation. They note that thus
far, more accurate and honest stats suggest that this virus has been not as lethal as recent
flu strains in some countries, about the same in some, and slightly worse in some. Not
imaginary, but badly exaggerated as well as ineptly treated.
I'm a business owner. There's no point in me opening up because the customer base is
stupid enough to believe the lie. All I would be doing is running up my expenses.
This scam is a stroke of evil genius. What will stop it is economic collapse, nothing
else.
What I don't understand is why there hasn't been an investigation into the mysterious
upper respiratory virus that broke out at the Greenspring Retirement Community in Fairfax
County, Virginia last summer. 63 people became ill and three died. Very unusual for something
like that to break out in the summer months. Is there a connection to Covid-19? Fort Detrick
Lab in Maryland is about an hour away from the breakout.
Curb your enthusiasm for the WSJ. Western media and get away with portraying China's
government as 'opaque' because so few of their writers read Chinese. In fact, self-criticism
is built into Chinese governance as these comments by Shao Yiming, virologist and chief
HIV/AIDS expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC), and the head
of the CCDC, Dr. George Gao, illustrate.
Like most such Western 'revelations,' the story appeared in Chinese newspapers last April
and in the Japanese news in May:
[Hide MORE]
Caixin: Many people compare China's CDC with the U.S. counterpart and call for the
agency to have greater authority. What's your thought?
Dr. George Gao: We must understand the technical nature of the work at CDCs. They use
scientific methods to carry out surveillance of infectious diseases, assess risks and send
timely alerts. They also carry out intervention based on the nature of the epidemic and set
up national standards and guidance to deal with diseases. But it is almost impossible for
China's CDC system to complete such tasks with their current resources and coordination
capacity. The Covid-19 outbreak proves the problems and the urgent need for CDC reforms.
There are about 20,000 people working in the American CDC system, compared with only
2,000 in China, and they cover almost four times the population of the U.S. The U.S. CDC
has more than 500 people focusing on research, warning, intervention, public education and
emergency response related to flu virus, but the team in China is only 2 0.
There should be dedicated teams to track and conduct long-term studies of seasonal flu,
novel influenza and respiratory infections. They need to carry out massive surveillance,
sample collection, testing and analysis to study the virus and response measures. Such
tasks can't be completed with only 10 to 20 people.
China has identified 36 infectious diseases in the Law on the Prevention and Control of
Infectious Diseases, but fewer than half of the diseases are under study by dedicated
teams. Although the China CDC has strived to hire high-end talent over the past 10 years,
it has difficulties retaining them. Institution-building should be enhanced in the disease
control system. We should eliminate certain institutional barriers such as limiting CDC's
responsibility to human disease control while assigning animal disease surveillance to
agricultural departments. In the U.S., the CDC regularly monitors risks from animals. The
frequent outbreak of zoonotic diseases (those transmitted from animals) reminds us of the
importance of cross-department cooperation.
On the other hand, the national CDC should not only function in Beijing. In countries
like the U.S. and Russia, the national CDC often has branches and dispatches teams to
states and cities to collect first-hand information. I think in China, while strengthening
the power of the national CDC, it is also important to combine disease control departments
at the provincial level with the CDC for better coordination.
It is a great pity that the direct reporting system to monitor infectious disease
set up after the SARS outbreak didn't play its due role during this epidem ic.
Under the rules, the cases should be submitted to the system whenever there are more
than three unknown pneumonia cases. The system is in place with a network covering more
than 70,000 reporting points across the country, and doctors can do it with a simple click.
The reports will be simultaneously submitted to the national and local level of the Disease
Control and Prevention Center (CDC). The idea of the direct reporting system is to reduce
administrative intervention and save time in the face of an epidemic.
But after 15 years of operation of this costly system, all the efforts
unbelievably turned out to be in vain, and hierarchical review and administrative
intervention were back in place. Why were there such actions, which violate the Law on the
Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases, could happen in government and law
enforcement departments? Why didn't local experts fulfill their duty according to the
infectious disease reporting rules? And why did the National Health Commission and its
experts fail to collect important information in a timely w ay? Whether we can find
true and adequate answers to these questions will be important to future work.
And as to
An entirely new disease that spreads in silent, asymptomatic fashion can easily escape
initial detection, and we should not be surprised that no one in China noticed the Wuhan
outbreak when it first began in October or November.
Obviously, it was spreading in silent, asymptomatic fashion in the USA much earlier, as
lab tests and image analyses have shown. The difference between China's and our CDCs was that
that they were looking for it and we issued restraining orders to anyone who attempted to
test for it.
_________________________________________________
Why 'Smart' Covid-19 Virus May Be Here to Stay. By Yang Rui, Denise Jia and Han Wei. Caixin,
Mar 19, 2020
While the virus is perfectly real, its severity has been intentionally and systematically
exaggerated, and that is clearly is provable. So the working hypoethisi is that somebody badly
needed Coronavirus reset, iether for political or financial purposes or both.
23 AUGUST 2020"COVID hysteria kills." The Telegraph
" ... Research commissioned that July by the firm Kekst CNC showed how far public
perceptions about the pandemic had been skewed, finding they were inclined to believe the
spread and fatality was more than a hundred times worse than the reality.
For example, the average Briton was found last month to estimate that the disease had wiped
out as much as 7 per cent of the United Kingdom, which would equate to around 4.6 million
people, rather than the actual rate in the tens of thousands. They estimate just over 22 per
cent of the population have had Covid-19, which at just over 14.6 million people would be well
over the current confirmed case tally of 322,000.
"
When people estimate risk, they overestimate it massively ," says King College London's
Professor Neil Greenberg, who works with Public Health England as part of the Health Protection
Research Unit for Emergency Preparedness and Response. "We are very poor as a public at
estimating what risk really means."
That does not mean the threat posed by Covid-19 can be summarily dismissed, but experts are
keen for a sense of proportion.
Prof Udi Qimron, the incoming head of clinical microbiology and immunology at Tel Aviv
University, recently highlighted that 99.9 per cent of the world's population has so far
survived the virus, as the total number of coronavirus deaths does not exceed 0.1 per cent of
the total population anywhere around the world. (See the table below for the latest data on
European deaths)
---------------
Nervousness? Apprehension? Nah! Not in the US. Here it is just plain old gutlessness. We are
not the people our ancestors were. pl
Col. Lang is correct. "We are not the people our ancestors were." We are an afraid people.
We wouldn't otherwise trade our liberty for the false security of mass surveillance,
government propaganda, and this lockdown that continues. Sad!
As Albert Camus wrote in The Plague: potentially deadly events like this give some people
their sole reason for living. And the cure, for them, becomes fatal.
Shows the Houthis wiping out the main IS bastion in Yemen earlier in the week. Prisoners
treated well, they wouldn't be treated like this in Syria/Iraq or in any country where
franchises exist.
The risk is relative. It is nil if you are not exposed to a coronavirus shedding person.
If you must work with the public to get paid, live in a multi-generational household, or are
over 70 the risks of getting ill and dying are greater. Coronavirus has killed 180,558
Americans to date which is almost five times more than the 36,750 who died in automobile
accidents last year. The virus is the third leading cause of death in America after heart
disease and cancer. The is no national coordination and funding to test every American daily
to see who is ill and who is not. Without universal testing there is absolutely no way to
know the risk of going out the door. With testing and agreement by the American public to
isolate if the daily antigen test positive and receive government healthcare, the pandemic
can be ended without needing a vaccine. This would require healthcare for all and a working
government which the ruling elite are absolutely against. Although the costs of the national
testing program are less than the amount already lost in economic activity from the Pandemic
Depression.
The basic problem is the US public health system was dismantled so for-profit hospitals
and professional managers could extract wealth from the ill. Money is earned by treating the
patients not curing them. Employee based health insurance by design does not cover everyone
leaving a hodge-podge of government programs; the VA, Medicare, Medicaid and local programs
for the left-overs. The current US system is simply incapable of containing the pandemic.
Only a functional government like New Zealand or South Korea can.
The US federal government decided to do nothing and wait for a for-profit vaccine next
year. 300,000 Americans are projected to die this year. If there is no vaccine or treatment,
the death toll from coronavirus could reach 675,000 - the number who died of the Spanish flu
in the USA in 1918 and 1919 (but with a 1/3 fewer people). No big deal for Wall Street who
got 4 trillion dollars to keep charging upwards; unless, the unrest continues and
expands.
What I read in Swedish media does not correspond well with what I see reported by others,
usually from outside of the country. Sweden has done worse than its close neighbors Norway
and Finland and they are paying a rather steep economic price for their inaction. Regarding
Florida, where I live, the infections are not receding yet and we have yet to see what will
happen with opening the schools. I suspect the misinformation has a political purpose. There
are more people in Florida wearing masks now, mainly due to local municipalities requiring
them and that is positive. Some think that is a political issue, failing to realize it is an
IQ test.
You see what you want to see in the press depending on what you choose to read. Yes,
lefties like you always want to talk down to people. You are typical. Why are you darkening
my door again?
Judy Miller the journo queen used to tell me that I am a gloomy gus, but I am nothing
compared to you. When did you last have a positive thought? Was it painful?
Your information seems to be out of date or terribly localized. The discontent with the
face burka mandate is increasing, though there's nothing stopping you from wearing one
24/7.
"Florida reported 4,300 new cases Saturday, continuing a downward trend that has seen the
number drop from above 10,000 new cases per day a month ago."
"Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 have also been declining. "
Science now is a highly politicized science and that's a huge problem. Ask USSR scientists
about possible consequences. Is Kapitsa noted long ago in his obitiary on Ernest Rutherford death
as soon as science become rich it lost its freedom. "
"The year that Rutherford died (1938) there
disappeared forever the happy days of free scientific work which gave us such delight in our
youth. Science has lost her freedom. Science has become a productive force. She has become rich
but she has become enslaved and part of her is veiled in secrecy. I do not know whether
Rutherford
would continue to joke and laugh as he used to.
Lysenkoism in Stalins's USSR was the first robin of this process. Now it became commonplace.
That's why we see so many pseudo-scientists -- politicians who pretend to be scientists like
Fauci. and so much corruption like among Professors of economics (all those neoclassical economic
scoundrels)
"...a permanent modern scenario: apocalypse looms and it doesn't occur."
- Susan Sontag, AIDs and its Metaphors
"I should not misuse this opportunity to give you a lecture about, say, logic. I call
this a misuse, for to explain a scientific matter to you it would need a course of lectures
and not an hour's paper. Another alternative would have been to give you what's called a
popular scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that you
understand a thing which actually you don't understand, and to gratify what I believe to be
one of the lowest desires of modern people, namely the superficial curiosity about the
latest discoveries of science. I rejected these alternatives."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Lecture on Ethics
If you're reading this, then you've probably been called a conspiracy theorist. Also
you've been derided and shamed for questioning the "science" of the Covid debacle.
The idea of science is now a badly corrupted idea. In a nation, today, (the USA) which in
educational terms ranks 25th globally in science skills and reading, and well below that in
math; all one hears is a clarion call to science. In reading skills the US placed below
Malta, Portugal, and right about the same as Kazakhstan.
But in a nation that no longer reads, and *can* no longer read, it is not surprising that
knowledge is absorbed via the new hieroglyphics of gifs (interestingly the creator of gifs
wanted it pronounced with a soft g the more to sound like a peanut butter brand) and
memes.
So-called 'response memes' are the new version of conversation, and most register and
communicate (sic) confusion. As beer ad marketers know, the state of your brain after
consuming a six pack is pretty much the standard target ideal for advertising. And it relays
a message that six pack confusion is actually a good and perhaps even sexy state in which to
find oneself.
Education is for those with money, those who can afford the proper foundational skills to
get into Harvard, MIT, Cal Tech and the Stanford. For everyone else science is Star Trek.
But I digress. The point is that most Americans imagine that they revere science, and they
ridicule anyone they think of as unscientific. But they think of it in cult terms, really.
Its a religion of sorts. The only people who don't are those 'real' religious zealots,
Dominionist and Charismatic Christians (like Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos
et al) who hold positions of enormous power in the US government under the least scientific
president in history.
The Christian right doesn't like any science, ANY science. But for most of that target
demographic (the educated mostly white 30%), the cry is to "trust the science" even the great
Greta says to "trust the science".
The problem is, science is not neutral, its as politicized as media and news and the
pronouncements of celebrities.
In May 2020, The Lancet published an article revisiting the 1957 and 1968 Influenza
pandemics.
The 1957 outbreak was not caused by a coronavirus -- the first human coronavirus would
not be discovered until 1965 -- but by an influenza virus. However, in 1957, no one could
be sure that the virus that had been isolated in Hong Kong was a new pandemic strain or
simply a descendant of the previous 1918–19 pandemic influenza virus.
The result was that as the UK's weekly death count mounted, peaking at about 600 in the
week ending Oct 17, 1957, there were few hysterical tabloid newspaper headlines and no
calls for social distancing. Instead, the news cycle was dominated by the Soviet Union's
launch of Sputnik and the aftermath of the fire at the Windscale nuclear reactor in the
UK.
By the time this influenza pandemic -- known colloquially at the time as "Asian flu" --
had concluded the following April, an estimated 20 000 people in the UK and
80 000 citizens in the USA were dead. Worldwide, the pandemic, sparked by a new H2N2
influenza subtype, would result in more than 1 million deaths.
To date, Covid 19 has not reached the million death marker in the US, and yet we are
seeing the most draconian lockdowns in modern history, the total suspension of democratic
process and a level of hysteria (especially in the U.S. and UK) unprecedented. I wrote about
some aspects of this on my blog here , mostly touching on the
cultural effects
Allow me to quote The Lancet again.
The subsequent 1968 influenza pandemic -- or "Hong Kong flu" or "Mao flu" as some
western tabloids dubbed it -- would have an even more dramatic impact, killing more than
30 000 individuals in the UK and 100 000 people in the USA, with half the
deaths among individuals younger than 65 years -- the reverse of COVID-19 deaths in the
current pandemic.
Yet, while at the height of the outbreak in December, 1968, The New York Times described
the pandemic as "one of the worst in the nation's history", there were few school closures
and businesses, for the most, continued to operate as normal.
I remember the 68 Hong Kong flu. I was in my last year of high school. The summer after
was Woodstock, the 'summer of love'. Not a lot of social distancing going on. But we are past
numbers and statistics having any real meaning. The Covid narrative is now in the realm of
allegory.
The media perspective is utterly predictable. Liberal outlets that have the inside track
to government are seen to be reinforcing the mainstream story (VOX, Slate, Huff Post, The
Guardian and Washington Post). In a recent VOX article the message was only a sociopath would
NOT wear a mask and that the 'science' was unanimous.
Of course its no such thing. But the message of sites like VOX, or Daily Beast, or Wa Po
or the truly reprehensible Guardian, are always going to be to hammer away 'on message'. The
same is true for what passes for moderate news organs like the NY Times, ABC News, The Hill,
and BBC. There has been virtually no dissenting opinions expressed in these rags.
All these news outlets are given clear messages by the spin doctors in government, by the
White House, and by contacts within the State Department and Pentagon. And by the advertising
firms employed by the state (such as Ruder Finn).
"Ad agencies are not in the business of doing science."
- Dr. Arnold S. Relman (Madison Ave. Has Growing Role In the Business of Drug
Research, NY Times 2002)
The WHO, the CDC, and most every other NGO or government agency of any size hires
advertising firms. The WHO, which is tied to the United Nations, is a reasonably sinister
organization, actually.
Just picking up a random publication from the WHO, on what they call 'the tobacco
epidemic' and you find on page 33 the following chapter heading "Objective: Effective
surveillance, monitoring and evaluation systems in place to monitor tobacco use."
Reading further and all this is really saying is that the populace of any country is best
put under surveillance. It's for their own good, you see.
Institutions of medicine, global and national possess
no more integrity than your average NGO (Amnesty International, Médecins Sans
Frontières, Oxfam et al). And that means not very much.
To understand the nature of institutional corruption one must understand Imperialism. The
institutions of Imperialist nations are going to further Imperialist ideology. (see Antonio
Gramsci, ideological hegemony). The US is not
in the business of helping Americans .
Modern monopoly forms better reflect that scientific knowledge, and its advanced
application to production, are concentrated, ultimately, not in physical objects but in
human beings and human interaction with those objects. It is monopoly of the labour power
of the most highly educated workers, by both imperialist states and Multi National
Corporations, that forms the ultimate and most stable base of imperialist reproduction.
– Sam King (Lenin's theory of imperialism: a defence of its relevance in the
21st century, MLR)
The idea of super-exploitation needs to be conceptually generalised at the necessary
level of abstraction and incorporated in the theory of imperialism. Super-exploitation is a
specific condition within the capitalist mode of production [ ] the hidden common essence
defining imperialism.
he working class of the oppressed nations/Third World/Global South is systematically
paid below the value of labour power of the working class of the oppressor nations/First
World/Global North. This is not because the Southern working class produces less value, but
because it is more oppressed and more exploited.
– Andy Higginbottom (Structure and Essence in Capital 1, quoted by John
Smith Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century)
The US jobless rate just hit 2.1 million. Officially. Making the total something over
forty million. Its much higher in reality. Nobody has work. There is no work and we are at
the start of a period of massive evictions, foreclosures, and delinquencies - and the
homeless population will soon reach Biblical proportions (in some cities, such as Los
Angeles, its already Biblical). Will be simply of a magnitude never before seen.
Hence the authoritarian policing of lockdowns in, for example, New Zealand, suggests
something like a practice run. The ruling class in western nations knows full well this is
coming. And one wonders if it's not, in fact, a part of the plan (oh here is where someone
says conspiracy theory probably Louis Proyect).
Yes it's a fucking conspiracy theory. It is a theory based on evidence, however.
Why are the US and UK and a host of other countries deliberately ensuring a massive
depression? Because they care about your health? They are worried we all might catch the flu?
Has the US ever demonstrated a concern with your health and well being before?
Remember how many discretionary tax dollars go to health care and how much to defense.
Conspiracies do occur. The denial of that fact seems to be a hallmark of the pseudo or false
left. Does the suspension of democratic process not cause this soft left any problems at all?
Look at Sweden, at Belarus no lockdown and no problem.
It should be noted that there are a great many terrific doctors in the US. Dedicated and
brilliant, often. But they are not the system. The system is run for profit.
With about three-fourths of Americans under lockdown, the unintended consequences will
be vast. There has been a notable decrease in the number of heart attack and stroke
patients arriving at hospitals, presumably because they are afraid of catching the
coronavirus or of not finding a hospital bed.
As the economy spirals downward, we can also expect an increase in mental health crises,
domestic violence and suicides. While lockdown supporters say that to have a functioning
economy, we must have good public health, the reverse is also true: To have good public
health, we must have a functioning economy.
– Alex Berezow PhD (Geopolitical Futures, 2020)
Alfred Willener wrote an interesting book in 1970, analysing May 68 in France. He analyses
the answers students gave to various questionnaires they responded to. The section regarding
science is worth quoting.
'The scandalous fact is that, for all the means that science has put at our disposal,
most people live not much better than in the Middle Ages'. The system benefits from science
in the following way: through the atom bomb, through 'the power of statistical research',
through computers, through the chemical industry being 'in the hands of the state', through
space research.
'In the end, you realize', concludes one reasonably logical reply, 'that technological
progress, which makes economic growth possible, does not satisfy the fundamental needs of
man and is used above all to maintain and strengthen the system'.
Lastly, I should like to quote one quite unexpected reply, which forms the extreme point
of pessimism: ' Everyone is oppressed by science.'
– Alfred Willener (The Action-Image of Society on Cultural
Politicization)
I doubt seriously one would get such responses today in any European or North American
country. The contemporary indoctrination regards science is acute. And the media abounds in
junk science. Click bait science. And this is where most people have their opinions formed
for them.
There is a paper put out by one of the founders of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab,
called The Great Reset. The conclusion of the book reads
...at a global level, if viewed in terms of the global population affected, the corona
crisis is (so far) one of the least deadly pandemics the world has experienced over the
last 2000 years."
In other words, a mortality of .06% is simply not commensurate with the extreme measures
the governments of the world (the West in particular) are taking.
There is no question, none, that those measures, the lockdown, the masks, the distancing,
and the attending *diseases of despair*, will kill more people by a factor of ten than the
virus itself.
This is not even to begin discussing the psychological harm done, in particular to
children. And not just harm to children, but severe
harm to the most vulnerable .
What is being internalized by children is three fold. One, there is something inherently
sick and contagious about ME. Two, everyone MIGHT be a threat to my health. And three, obey
authority, because you don't want to end up like those smelly homeless people were are trying
to hard to avoid.
Children take things personally. They tend to blame themselves. Even in the comparative
sanity of Norway, where I reside, children are increasingly anxious about the world. How
could they not be? All this for a health risk of .06%.
But it is more than just the decimation of the economy in the US and UK. It is a
dismantling of the culture. One in three museums closed because of Covid will not re-open.
Ever. Where does all that art go?
Just a guess but probably very wealthy collectors will gobble it up at wholesale
prices.
The predictable outcome of these lockdowns, certainly in the US, is a guaranteed minimum
income. Very minimum. Restrictions on travel, all freedom of movement in fact, will not soon
return to normal. Various forms of surveillance and tracking, as well as health
certifications, are the goal of the state.
Also, if this pandemic succeeded so well, with so little resistance, why not have another?
And there is another aspect to the SWAT mask police, and that is that western society is
becoming alarmingly hypochondriacal. Children are kept out of school for runny noses. If all
kids with snotty noses were kept out of class, nobody would get an education.
There is a dire future of two or three generations now developing and maturing with very
weak immune systems. So that if a natural mutation takes place one day, from a Corona virus
or any other, a genuinely serious pandemic could kill tens of millions.
It is not a speculation that there are people who prosper and even benefit during an
economic crisis -- as smaller business owners struggle, large corporations and banks
benefit from huge government subsidies, giving them more power to buy failing small
businesses, for example. And it is a fact that many of those people have enormous economic
power to shape the policies that can benefit themselves.
It is not a speculation that they would appreciate having strict measures of control
against the people by limiting their freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom to
travel, or by installing means of surveillance, check points and official certifications
for activities that might give freedom to the people beyond the capitalist framework.
It is not a speculation that they would benefit from moving our social interactions to
the digital realm, which can commodify our activities as marketable data for the
advertising industry, insurance industry and any other moneyed social institutions
Including education, political institution, legal institution, and financial
institution.
Such matters should be seen within the context of the western history being shaped by
unelected capitalists with their enormous networks of social institutions.
– Hiroyuki Hamada (Wrong Kind of Green, April 2020)
The collapse of retail is accelerating. This is emerging as a monopolization of retail.
Few shops will remain, in fact, except luxury stores in select gated areas. The rest will be
online and probably rudimentary. The culture and the economy are being strip-mined and
recreated for a select clientele. The collapse of the economy means the collapse of the
bottom 90% or so.
The very richest men and corporations on the planet are making huge profits.
And yet, there are precious few voices of dissent to the master narrative in the US. In
Norway, the lockdown was about five weeks. But its a sparsely populated country and one
hardly noticed it save for the kids being home and not in school. But schools reopened and
the Prime Minister actually made a speech apologizing, in effect, for an *unnecessary*
lockdown. She had been frightened.
But now, with a mild uptick in positive cases the country is considering stricter
limitations on travel. Why?
There is no uptick in deaths, only in positive test results. The fact remains the virus
attacks the aged and the already sick. But this is very telling, I think. The Norwegian
government doesn't want to be seen as disobedient. They don't want to not follow the grand
plan provided by western agencies and experts. Even if they seemingly don't really believe
it.
(The saddest aspect is the voice of Dr. Mads Gilbert, a known advocate for Palestinian
rights, who has weighed in on the side of fear. Why? I have no idea. But it is worth noting
his predictions
from March 2020 were staggeringly wrong.)
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But clearly the groupthink pressure is powerful and small nations do not want to be
singled out for bucking the *science* . There are economic coercions threatened, tacitly, as
well. The pressure to conform is huge and it takes a Herculean effort -- both individually
and as a nation, to resist. And *experts* seem to have a hard time admitting they were
wrong.
The science has been consistently wrong from day one.
As I say, this is now allegory. Or fable. There is nothing reasonable or rational in the
lockdown measures of the US and UK and NZ. Or anywhere. And this is not even to touch upon
the criminality of the Gates Foundation and Bill Gates buying public influence and
visibility. Not trained in any medical discipline, Gates has somehow made himself one of the
faces of the pandemic.
And to deconstruct Gates' language is to find a disturbing quality of authoritarian
hubris. Gates utters declarations as if he were God speaking to his flock. All from a man who
has done little save steal from his partners and exploit the poor of India and Africa. One of
the most striking aspects of this whole last few months has been the enormous and coordinated
effort the Gates machine has put into rehabilitating his image.
If you google "Crimes of the Gates Foundation" for example, you will get ten different
fact-checkers officially denying any crimes and another half dozen articles ridiculing those
who question Gates motives, his profit from vaccines, or even his alignment with eugenicists
(depopulation adherents)– all are derided as, yes, conspiracy theorists.
If you dare to question the rushing of an untested vaccine you are called an
anti-vaxxer.
My children are vaccinated. I just don't like the idea of a hurried untested vaccine
produced for a virus that needs no vaccine. And one promoted by a creepy millionaire.
But clearly the Gates charm offensive is in overdrive. The pastel cardigan is everywhere.
And yet, his favorable rating in recent surveys is around 56%. That is actually not very high
given the amount of self-promotion involved. It's better than Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Biden,
though. Gates is not likeable. No amount of spin can change that.
The final factor to note is the Trump effect. Many liberals would literally rather see
dead in the street if it meant discrediting Trump. It is no longer quite a zero sum game,
though. But overall the hatred of Trump is now at a religious level, too.
And behold, the opposition is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. If you want a window in the
black heart of Biden, watch and/or listen to his testimony around the Waco inferno. The
inherent sadism and lack of humanity is glaringly apparent.
As for Kamala Harris:
As a San Francisco social worker, I sat on the school district committee that met with
families of chronically truant students. Once, when we asked a student why he didn't go to
school, he said there was too much police tape and shootings at his school bus stop.
Harris, as CA Attorney General, was putting parents/caregivers in jail if their child
was chronically truant. Also as Attorney General, she denied a DNA test to Kevin Cooper, a
very likely innocent man who came within hours of execution in 2004.
– Riva Enteen (Counterpunch Aug. 2020)
These are the servants of capital.
The left should be emphasising the economic aspect of lockdown because it is the working
class who are the principal victims of lockdown."
- Phil Shannon (Lockdown Skeptics, June 2020)
A Downing street tweet today:
We're putting tougher measures in place to target serious breaches of coronavirus
restrictions. Fines for not wearing a face-covering will double for repeat offences, up to
£3,200."
This is a class-based assault. The wealthy will not be fined for not wearing a
face-covering on their private beaches, or dinner parties at the yacht club.
Democrat politicians will keep their knee on the throat of small businesses for as long as
they possibly can for the sole purpose of crippling the economy to defeat Trump in November.
They don't care about the damage this causes. Keeping schools closed in the fall will result
in single parents staying home from work to care for their kids. At very least it stifles the
economy.
Send kids back to school, the majority wants this.
Vote in person November 3rd, make your vote count.
kaiserhoffredux , 3 hours ago
Exactly. There is no logic, reason, or precedent for quarantining healthy people.
To stop a virus, of all things? Ridiculous.
Ignatius , 2 hours ago
They've perverted the language as regards "cases."
A person could test positive and it might well be the most healthy situation: his body
encountered the virus, fought it off, and now though asymptomatic, retains antibodies from a
successful body response. The irony is that what I've described is the very response the vaxx
pushers expect from their vaccines.
Shameless political posturing.
coletrickle45 , 2 hours ago
So if you have 99 - 99.8% chance of surviving this faux virus
But a 100% chance of destroying lives through poverty, bankruptcy, small business
collapse, job losses, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, fear.
What would you choose? Cost benefit analysis seems pretty obvious.
Gold Banit , 2 hours ago
Most people just regurgitate things they hear, they have lost the ability of creative and
free thought.They have been deliberately dumbed down. The entire system has created a mutant
society which is easy to control and manipulate.
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent
guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of
the masses." ― Malcolm X ay_arrow
sensibility , 2 hours ago
The COVID-19 Hoax has "Nothing" to do with "Real" Science, It's 100% about "Political"
Science.
Therefore, No Matter What, Politicians will Bend and Manipulate this for "Political"
Gain.
Who Stirred and Exposed the Swamp?
The Swamp Inhabitants Desperately Want & Intend to do Whatever it Takes to Return to
the Old Pre Trump Days of Operating Above the Law Without Exposure and Impunity.
Consequently, Those who Support the COVID-19 Hoax are Swamp Members & Supporters.
Know your Adversary!
monty42 , 2 hours ago
Trump didn't drain, stir, or expose the swamp, sorry that dog don't hunt. He has appointed
recycled establishment swamp creatures his entire term. He appointed Fauci to the Covidian
Taskforce. He says wearing masks is patriotic.
The promises he made his followers did not manifest. Another 4 years after being lied to
is just the same old routine, nothing new.
Until you people are honest about the reality of the situation, you'll never stop the
cycle of D/R destruction.
Politicians speak about following the science to set COVID-19 policy, but their decisions
are more about political objectives than they are about medical efficacy.
Why else did California Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down retail businesses in March when the
state had under 300 cases per day but allow them to be open in July when the state clocked in
at over 10,000 cases per day?
But as badly as our lockdowns have damaged local businesses, a potentially even bigger
problem is created by the physical closure of schools. One of the most important functions of a
civil society is to protect and educate its children, and the cancellation of in-person
education stands to become one of the most detrimental acts of collateral damage during this
pandemic.
California currently expects its 5-year-olds to complete kindergarten exclusively through
online distance learning. For this dubious undertaking, the politicians are given passionate
political cover. The Los Angeles Teachers Union maintains that "the only people guaranteed to
benefit from the premature reopening of schools amidst a rapidly accelerating pandemic are
billionaires and the politicians they've purchased" -- as if billionaires typically send their
kids to L.A. public schools. The wealthy will send their children to in-person private schools
or hire additional tutors, while most American families will suffer from a widening education
gap that could set their kids back years. Worst of all, none of this is medically
substantiated.
Children Are Safe
There is a great deal of fear generated in the media about risk to children, but the truth
is that children are incredibly resistant to coronavirus. So much so that children are far
more likely to die from the flu , or even just from driving to school, than from
COVID-19.
The CDC has recorded a total of 20
COVID-19 deaths in children ages 5-14 compared to almost 2,000 deaths from non-COVID causes
in the same time period for the same age group. It means children have been 100 times more
likely to die from non-COVID causes during the pandemic than from COVID. This puts the risk of
COVID death for children 5 to 14 in the same ballpark as deaths by lightning .
Claims of long-term damage or mystery illnesses have not been backed by any definitive
evidence and they therefore serve more as a scare and intimidation tactic than as a medical
guide. The truth is that children so far have had around a 1
in 20,000 rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations, according to the CDC. While controversial to
some, Sweden's policy of keeping primary schools open even at the height of the pandemic serves
as an excellent counterpoint. With over 1 million children,
Sweden did not have a single death of a school-aged child despite full attendance and no
masks.
Sweden is not alone in sending kids to school. Denmark opened its schools back up in April.
Finland kept normal class sizes when it reopened. Parts of Montana opened schools back in May,
as did parts of Canada and Germany. The Netherlands announced that
Dutch students didn't even need to socially distance anymore as they experienced very low
transmission rates. Schools all across Europe have reopened successfully, both with and without
masks. The risk to the children themselves therefore cannot be used as a justification for the
massive damage created by ceasing in-person education. But what about the
teachers?
A study in Switzerland, including a review of World Health Organization contact tracing,
failed to find evidence of a single case of a child passing coronavirus to an adult . A
comprehensive study in Iceland isolated SARS-CoV-2 samples from every positive case, sequenced
the virus genome, and tracked the mutation patterns. This analysis, along with contact tracing,
allowed researchers to identify definitively who passed the virus to whom. The study
concluded "[E]ven if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease
to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents." A
study of schools in Ireland found " no evidence
of secondary transmission of COVID-19 from children attending school. "
New Zealand conducted a study across 15 schools in which 18 individuals with COVID-19 were
in close contact with 735 other students and 128 staff members, yet
no teacher or staff member contacted COVID-19 from any of the initial 18 cases and only two
students out of the 735 would later test positive. The New Zealand study concluded: "Our
investigation found no evidence of children infecting teachers."
Cases and close contacts among teachers and students in 10 New Zealand high schools showing
one secondary case in a student. Source: "COVID-19 in Schools – the Experience in
NSW"
Since there could still be a rare school outbreak, such as experienced in Israel, students
with high-risk household members should be given a distance education option, and teachers who
believe themselves or their households to be at high risk should be allowed to teach remotely,
balancing the risk for all parties. This way healthy students can be be educated by healthy
teachers. With science overwhelmingly pointing to reopening schools, why do so many schools
intend to remain closed?
The Politics of Teaching
If children are at minimal risk, transmission to adults is rare, and both can be
accommodated with optional distance learning, why are some schools suspending all in-person
education? It's certainly not because of the parents, who would be the last people to send
their children into a dangerous situation. The vast majority of parents support
reopening schools with modifications, perhaps because they best understand the cost-benefit
of depriving their children of a full education.
The reason many schools won't open, just like why so many places originally locked down,
comes back to fear and politics. The Los Angeles' teachers union, for example, recently came
out with a list of demands before returning to teach in person. These included defunding the
police, ending charter schools, "Medicare for All," and a new wealth tax . It was not until
the union came out with these demands that Newsom announced closure of nearly all schools in
California -- overriding individual school districts that had planned to open.
In a brazen announcement, the union put in bold words the conclusion of their argument:
"Normal wasn't working for us before. We can't go back" – openly conveying that this
negotiation was more about changing what they didn't like about American education and society
before the pandemic, and certainly not about what is best for children. Despite overwhelming
scientific evidence pointing to the safety of school reopenings, union President Cecily
Myart-Cruz labeled doing so " anti-science ."
Yet, it's also no wonder that so many teachers have concern for their safety now, as media
outlets like CNN continue to run sensationalized stories building up school reopenings as
dangerous while
downplaying the actual science and evidence.
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Day
Care at School Gives the Game Away
Cities left with little choice due to their political environment are trying to mitigate the
situation for parents. New York City will offer
day care for 100,000 students attending schools that are only partially reopening, though
this largely defeats the point of keeping children from being at school in the first place. If
school closing advocates are correct, this would only expose children to a broader cohort of
peers and would make teachers, children, and their caretakers less safe.
Some districts in California are offering day care right on school campus
for half and full day programs , at a cost. So parents can pay to send their kids to school
to be watched but not to be taught. Ironically, a student might be physically at a school under
the watch of paid day care while simultaneously "attending" the very same school online.
It is clear that science is not the driving principle behind any of these policies, which
helps explain why both the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics have
advocated for opening on-campus education .
Teachers Are Essential Workers
There are few functions in society more essential than educating our children. "Education of
our children is an essential Texas value," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently
wrote in a letter directing that health officials cannot completely close schools, and they
certainly cannot preemptively close schools with no evidence of local school spread.
The
CDC recently concluded that "in-person schooling is in the best interest of students,
particularly in the context of appropriate mitigation measures similar to those implemented at
essential workplaces."
The education of our children is too essential to be used as a political bargaining
chip.
If nurses can come to work every day and treat the sick and infected, then certainly
teachers can be expected to come to work and teach the young and healthy. _arrow 3 Macho
Latte , 2 hours ago
WuFlu Hysteria Ends Nov. 4
More than 55.3 million tests confirm:
✓ Deaths from WuFlu = Flat Line
✓ Hospitalization from WuFlu = Flat Line
DemonRats = an Existential Threat to America & Humanity
WuFlu Lies Matter
Question_Mark , 47 minutes ago
"The Virology Journal" - the official publication of Dr. Fauci's National Institutes of
Health - published what is now a blockbuster article on August 22, 2005, under the heading -
get ready for this - "Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and
spread." Write the researchers, "We report...that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on
SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are
treated with the drug either before of after exposure to the virus, suggesting both
prophylactic and therapeutic advantage."
This means, of course, that Dr. Fauci has known for 15 years that chloroquine and its even
milder derivative hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) will not only treat a current case of coronavirus
("therapeutic") but prevent future cases ("prophylactic"). So HCQ functions as both a cure
and a vaccine. In other worlds, it's a wonder drug for coronavirus. Said Dr. Fauci's NIH in
2005, "concentrations of 10 um completely abolished SARS-CoV infection." Fauci's researchers
add, "chloroquine can effectively reduce the establishment of infection and spread of
SARS-CoV.
When one thinks of all the destruction brought about by the so-called lockdown, it hurts
to know we are being defrauded. Ouch.
Indelible Scars , 3 hours ago
Wife taught for 32 years. She is a badass teacher and the kids obviously loved her. I
urged her to get out while the getting was good and now she's happy she did. Her district is
a complete mess and almost all of the good teachers have retired or moved to another
district. She hates what has happened to education.
hllnwlz , 1 hour ago
Teacher here. Agree 100%. The sooner this butch is dead, the freeer we all will be.
The complete and abject failure of public education is is 100% at the Feds door.
1) The poor academic performers who become ed/liberal arts majors never could've gone to
college without the printed loan money.
2) the system could not support a 9 month work year, insurance, and pensions not to
mention support staff and admin pay and bennies without the fed bc schooling doesnt add
enough value to the economy; very few kids leave school able to move directly into a role in
the economy productive enough to offset the insane cost of their education.
3) inflation made moms have to go to work. No one to support the kud and hold them
accountable table but, MORE IMPORTANTLY, theres no one to call the school to account when
Johnny cant read.
The Fed is the root of all evil.
(Okay, I'm oversimplifying, but I'm pissed off.)
Vince Clortho , 3 hours ago
The longer students are away from the cultural marxist "education" system the better.
Schools are now Bolshevik programming mills and the teachers are the willing puppets
spreading marxism.
Defund the schools. Defund the universities, Defund the student loan program.
Local communities with limited dollars can do a far better job of providing real
education.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Old White Guy , 3 hours ago
Democrat politicians will keep their knee on the throat of small businesses for as long as
they possibly can for the sole purpose of crippling the economy to defeat Trump in November.
They don't care about the damage this causes. Keeping schools closed in the fall will result
in single parents staying home from work to care for their kids. At very least it stifles the
economy.
Send kids back to school, the majority wants this.
Vote in person November 3rd, make your vote count.
If this is indeed the "Fort Detrick flu", as many people here (including me) have
speculated upon, do you really believe that "western governments might be persuaded to
seek and/or spread truthful data."
I would rather expect these governments (and the lackey media) to cover up all traces of
the initial outbreak, classify all high level government briefings about the subject and
drown any rational and fact-based discourse in a swamp of hysterical projections and divisive
diversions.
"persuaded" is more rhetorical than realistic, certainly. But it doesn't hurt to
try. In the case of the tobacco industry and cancer, for example, it took decades, but
eventually when 90%+ of the general public saw the link, even the industry had to admit it.
And governments, corporations and the powerful spend an awful lot of money to keep the truths
of many of their horrible actions from the media... yet some of that information seeps
through. We must hope and do what we can.
U.S. Officials Disseminate Disinformation About 'Virus Disinformation'Getald
, Jul 29 2020 17:44 utc |
1
In another round of their anti-Russian disinformation campaign 'U.S. government officials'
claim that some websites loosely connected to Russia are spreading 'virus
disinformation'.
However, no 'virus disinformation' can be found on those sites.
The Associated Press as well as the New York Times were briefed by the
'officials' and provided write ups.
Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service known as
the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to reach
American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly.
The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been
downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to
sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link
between the sites and Russian intelligence.
Between late May and early July, one of the officials said, the websites singled out
Tuesday published about 150 articles about the pandemic response, including coverage aimed
either at propping up Russia or denigrating the U.S.
Among the headlines that caught the attention of U.S. officials were "Russia's Counter
COVID-19 Aid to America Advances Case for Détente," which suggested that Russia had
given urgent and substantial aid to the U.S. to fight the pandemic, and "Beijing Believes
COVID-19 is a Biological Weapon," which amplified statements by the Chinese.
There is zero 'virus disinformation' in the Korybko piece. The aid flight did happen and
was widely reported. In a response to the allegations the proprietors of O neWorldpoint out that
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a recent Q&A also alluded to a new détente with
Russia. Was that also 'virus disinformation'?
The second piece the 'officials' pointed out, Beijing believes COVID-19 is a biological weapon , was
written In March by Lucas Leiroz, a "research fellow in international law at the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro". It is an exaggerating analysis of the comments and questions a
spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry had made about the possible sources of the
Coronavirus.
The original spokesperson quote is in the piece. Referring to additional sources the
author's interpretation may go a bit beyond the quote's meaning. But it is certainly not
'virus disinformation' to raise the same speculative question about the potential sources of
the virus which at that time many others were also asking.
The piece was published by InfoBRICS.org, a "BRICS information portal" which
publishes in the languages of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South
Africa). It is presumably financed by some or all of those countries.
Another website the 'U.S. officials' have pointed out is InfoRos.ru which publishes in Russian and English. The
AP notes of it:
A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling American cities read "Chaos in
the Blue Cities," accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up under the
tough-on-crime approach of former Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg "and have zero
street smarts" must now "adapt to life in high-crime urban areas."
Another story carried the headline of "Ukrainian Trap for Biden," and claimed that
"Ukrainegate" -- a reference to stories surrounding Biden's son Hunter's former ties to a
Ukraine gas company -- "keeps unfolding with renewed vigor."
U.S. officials have identified two of the people believed to be behind the sites'
operations. The men, Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have
previously held leadership roles at InfoRos but have also served in a GRU unit specializing
in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials
said.
InfoRos calls itself a 'news agency' and has some rather boring general interest
stuff on its site. But how is its writing in FOX News style about unrest in U.S.
cities and about Biden's escapades in the Ukraine 'virus disinformation'? I fail to find any
on that site.
In 2018 some "western intelligence agency"
told the Washington Post , without providing any evidence, that InfoRos
is related to the Russian military intelligence service GU (formerly GRU):
Unit 54777 has several front organizations that are financed through government grants as
public diplomacy organizations but are covertly run by the GRU and aimed at Russian
expatriates, the intelligence officer said. Two of the most significant are InfoRos and the
Institute of the Russian Diaspora.
So InfoRos is getting some public grants and was allegedly previously run by two
people who before that worked for the GU. What does that say about the current state and the
content it provides? Nothing.
The NYTadds
that hardly anyone is reading the websites the 'U.S. officials' pointed out but that their
content is at times copied by more prominent aggregator sites:
"What we have seen from G.R.U. operations is oftentimes the social media component is a
flop, but the narrative content that they write is shared more broadly through the niche
media ecosystem," said Renee DiResta, a research manager at the Stanford Internet
Observatory, who has studied the G.R.U. and InfoRos ties and propaganda work.
There are plenty of sites who copy content from various outlets and reproduce it under
their name. But that does not turn whatever they publish into disinformation.
All the pieces mentioned by AP and NYT and attributed to the 'Russian'
sites are basically factual and carry no 'virus disinformation'. That makes the
'U.S.officials' claims that they do such the real disinformation campaign.
And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.
People being
prepared for Russia having the worlds first covid19 vaccine, the US will of course say it was
stolen from them. Infantile politicians create infantile press to feed infantile articles to
adult children. Critical thinking skills do not exist in the US population.
The development of propagation of information/disinformation through the internet eroded
the power of the old newspapers/news agencies. It's not that this or that particular website
is getting more views, but that the web of communications - the the imperialistic blunders +
decline of capitalism post-2008 -, as a whole, weakened what seemed to be an unshakeable
trust on the MSM (the very fact that this term exists already is historical evidence of their
loss of power).
And this process manifests itself not only in loss of power, but also loss of money: this
is particularly evident in the social media, where Facebook (Whatsapp + Facebook proper) and
Google are beginning to siphon advertisement money from both TV and the traditional
newspapers (printed press). When those traditional printed newspapers went digital, they
behaved badly, by using paywalls - this marketing blunder only accelerated their decline in
readership and thus further advertisement money, generating a vicious cycle for them.
The loss of influence of public opinion for the MSM also inaugurated another very
important societal shift: the middle class' loss of monopoly over opinion and formation of
opinion. Historically, it was the role of the middle class to be highly educated, to go to
academia (college) and, most importantly, to daily read the newspapers while eating the
breakfast. The middle class was the class of the intellectuals by definition, thus served as
the clerical class of the capitalist class, the priests of capitalism. With the
popularization of the internet, the smartphone and social media, this sanctity was broken or,
at least, begun to deteriorate. We can attest this class conflict phenomenon by studying the
rise of the term "expert" as a pejorative one. In the West's case, this shift begun through
the far-right side of the political spectrum, but the shift is there.
The popularization of what was once a privilege is nothing new in capitalism. The problem
here is that capitalism depends on infinite growth to merely exist (i.e. it can't survive on
zero growth, it is mathematically impossible), so it has to "monetize" what still isn't
monetize in order to find/create more vital space (Lebensraum - a term coined by the
hyper-capitalist Nazis) for its expansion and thus survival. Hence the popularization of
college education in the USA (then in Europe). Hence the popularization of daily news through
the internet/social media. This process, of course, has its positives and negatives (as is
the case with every dialectical process) - the fall of the MSM is one of the positives.
So, in fact, when the likes of AP, Reuters, NYT, WaPo, Guardian, Fox, CNN spread
disinformation against "alt-media", they are really just protecting their market share - the
fact that it implies in suppression of freedom of speech and to mass disinformation and,
ultimately, to war and destruction, is merely collateral damage of the business they operate
in. They are, after all, capitalist enterprises above all.
Excellent analysis, as always, by b. And vk's points are very pertinent too. One tiny
quibble: I doubt that the Nazis coined, though they certainly popularised, the term
lebensraum.
There is an air of desperation about these campaigns against "Russian" "disinformation"
massive changes are occurring, and, because they are so vast, they are moving relatively
slowly.
The old media model, now totally outdated, was the first thing to fall. Now capitalism itself
is collapsing as a result of the primary contradiction that, left to itself, the marketplace
will solve all problems.
As Washington, where magical thinking is sovereign, is demonstrating, left to itself the
hidden hand will bring only misery, famine, death and the Apocalypse. This was once very well
understood, as a brief look at the history of the founding of the UN will show, now it is the
subject of frantic denial by capitalism's priesthood who have grown to enjoy the glitter and
sensuality of life in a brothel. It is a sign of their mental decay that they can do no
better than to blame Russians.
One should presume the anonymous officials responsible for this ground-breaking report (sarc)
are close to the various "combatting Russian disinformation" NGOs. They are merely living up
to the mission statements of their benefactors. AP and NYTimes are being unprofessional and
spreading fake news by failing to reveal their sources. It's mind-numbing - the BS one must
wade through.
Good point however with one glaring contradiction in your thinking.
You make valid a very criticism of capitalism yet you tend to applaud Chinese capitalist
growth (although you tend to deny Chinese capitalist growth is capitalist, a feat of
breathtaking magical thinking).
The great Chinese wealth is fully 75% invested in bubblicious real estate valuations of
non-commercial real estate built on a mountain of construction debt. Sound familiar?
The irony is Chinese growth since 2008 has been goosed along entirely by the very same
financialized hyper capitalist traits as US: great gobs of debt creating supply-side
"growth", huge amounts of middle wealth tied to asset inflated bubbles, and of course the
resulting income and wealth inequality that rivals US inequality and continues to increase
over time.
I snorted coffee out my nose when Gruff tried to totally excuse Chinese income inequality
for being only slightly less than US level....how about the truth? Chinese inequality is
heinous, only slightly less than the also heinous US level.
The diseased working class in China only has an an arm and two legs hacked off while the
diseased US working class is fully quadriplegic. Much, much better to be a fucked over by
globalization Chinese citizen! Lmao
@ b who ended his posting with
"
And the AP and NYT are willingly falling for it.
"
Sorry b, but AP and NYT are active participants in the disinformation campaign of failing
empire and are not falling for anything
The folks that are falling for it are the American public that has lost its ability to
discriminate with the fire hose volume of lies told to them on a daily basis.
Empire is in the process of defeating itself which is the only safe way of ending the
tyranny of global private finance. I commend China and Russia for having the patience and
fortitude to hold the safe space for the dysfunctional social contract having private control
of the lifeblood of human commerce to self destruct.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when
most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC,
which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!
Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information when
most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the CDC,
which spent months discrediting the effectiveness of face masks!!!
Theses propagandists need to get real jobs dealing with real world problems.
there has been no national response to coronavirus but there must be a national acceptance
that this national non-response is China's fault. and any sources reporting truthfully about
the US or disseminating statements easily found elsewhere, as long as they are Russian,
Chinese, Venezuelan, Cuban, Iranian, etc., is pure disinformation. How brittle and weak the
US is. Where's the Pericles to say to the Spartans, "enter our city and inspect our
defenses"? The US is a nation of heavily-armed mice and sheep.
btw, the China love on display around here is pretty funny. in that the Chinese government
has mounted a national response to a very serious threat, China is a nation in a way that the
US is not. There is no US or we would not have 50 states doing different things in response
to the corona outbreak. the US is already dead. But China is a thoroughly authoritarian
capitalist state. they are who they are in a dialectic competition with the US and other
capitalist powers, not because of some Maoist-Confucian amalgam that inspires such wisdom in
their brilliant leaders, who are just as quick to destroy their environment for capitalist
gain as anyone on this planet is. The decline of the US will not make China or Russia or any
"emerging" power less authoritarian or violent. au quite the contraire. They are Shylocks who
will try to better instruction.
However, none of this is of concern to people in the US, whose only concern is the Nazi
spawn who've been running "the West" for much longer than the last 75 years. but it's time to
kill the bitch, not let it keep screwing us and breeding.
As others already said, this is a bit rich, considering that virus disinformation comes from
Trump himself, both live and on Twitter, quoting genuine hacks and megalomaniac doctors,
depending on the week.
Reality check: Russians will be able to travel across the world way before Americans, for
obvious healthcare reasons.
Bevin, I agree, I once had a short exchange on Mondoweiss about the term Lebensraum, it
had been used in some type of marketing by my favorite Swizz supermarket. Which then,
apparently caused an uproar. The term Lebensraum on its own is rather innocent. Leben (life)
Raum (space), a noun compound. Context matters. And I am sure I checked it, and Micros
definitively did not use it in any type of world conquering settler context. I haven't
stumbled yet across a Micros supermarket anywhere outside Switzerland, ;)
I'm under the impression that Info Ros is a Russian government-funded, supported, backed,
site, it certainly looks like it and its reportage is decidedly 'neutral'.
This is SO hilarious! The propagandists are worried about Russian virus dis-information
when most dis-information has come from the US government in the person of Trump and from the
CDC, which spent months discrediting ...
Posted by: JohnH | Jul 29 2020 19:21 utc | 8
This is close to my overall take on matters. But I wouldn't put so much emphasis on
face masks but on something along the lines of Covid is notthing but a flu. Face masks were
initially discussed quite controversially everywhere.
Were it gets interesting is here:
A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU
DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence.
The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some
financial connections between InfoRos and the government.
They have a competitor which seems Bruxelles based too, Patrick Armstrong alerted me to
a while ago: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/
EUvsDisinfo is the flagship project of the European External Action Service's East StratCom
Task Force
************
But yes, on first sight InfoRos seems to be neatly aligned with US alt-Right-Media in
basic outlook. More than with the US MSM.
And now I first have to read what has been on Andrew Korybko's mind lately. ;)
Many Americans of all walks of life do not trust their own government, yet most people here
seem to have faith that their media outlets are telling the truth. How do you break through
to the public that has utter faith in whatever newspaper or television channel they prefer
and highlight the lies in a way which gains real traction?
I believe it takes leadership, which, for Americans, mean celebrities have to endorse the
idea or it likely won't be taken seriously. This cult of celebrity is mirrored on social
media platforms, where millions flock to be a part of some beautiful person's beautiful
photograph or some known personalities acceptable opinion du jour.
There is a great bond gripping the minds of American media consumers. They have trained
their entire lives to worship at the cult of celebrity and this is the key to breaking the
entire media landscape down for them.
This also is the key to unlocking the voices of those who know better with regards to
media lies, but keep silent out of fear.
Will a Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson be able to break the spell? I think it will never
happen based on how Hollywood gatekeeps celebrity and based on how hopelessly apathetic most
are to Julian Assange.
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told what
to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their policy of
backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes anybody tow any
specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in Yemen because I
didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be critical of Russia.
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told
what to write.
...
Posted by: Ben Barbour | Jul 29 2020 22:36 utc | 23
Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too
lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before
using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your
own :-)
"... Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow's military intelligence service
known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort meant to
reach American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The
Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
publicly ..."
Of course GRU agents always work in pairs, guided only by the mysterious telepathic powers
of the Russian President and no-one or nothing else, as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov
did in Salisbury in March 2018 when they supposedly tried to assassinate or send a warning to
Sergei Skripal, and as Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy did in London in November 2006 when
they apparently put polonium in a pot of tea served to Alexander Litvinenko in full view of
patrons and staff at a hotel restaurant. It's as if each agent carries only half a brain and
each half is connected to its complement by the corpus callosum that is Lord Vlademort
Putin's thoughts beaming oing-yoing-yoing-like through the atmosphere until they find their
targets.
And of course US government officials always speak on condition of anonymity.
As Agence Presse News puts it:
"... The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been
downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to
sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link
between the sites and Russian intelligence ..."
So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist
on being anonymous? This would be the sort of news announced at a US national press club
meeting with Matt Lee in the front row asking awkward and discomfiting questions.
The malicious cultivation (including Gain of Function research) and implantation of this
biowarfare agent (and other ones such as Swine Fever) by the U.S. Intelligence services in
various places around the world (especially in China and Iran), the intentional faulty
responses and deceptive statistics administered by the monopoly-controlled medical
establishment, the feigned inability to provide adequate testing, care, and treatment, along
with planned economic destruction as a means of restoring investor losses and control of
populations through stifling of dissent, are at the heart of the deflection and projection of
blame. That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally
obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme
malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as 9/11
and the '08 financial crisis.
...
So if US government officials can now freely discuss declassified news, why do they insist on
being anonymous?
...
Posted by: Jen | Jul 29 2020 23:29 utc | 25
Precisely.
My guess is that they don't know when to quit.
and/or
They embrace the Mythbusters motto...
"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing."
"Is it possible that you're just the in-house joke at OW?
If they don't care that you'd write "tow" instead of "toe" or that you're too
lazy/thoughtless to reproduce the full name of the entity for which STC is an acronym, before
using the acronym, then it suggests that One World's Editorial Standards are as lax as your
own :-)"
Fair point on tow vs toe. That's why editing exists when writing articles. As for the STC
part, that is common knowledge if you follow basic geopolitics. When making a post in a
comment thread, should I write out "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" before using the acronym
ISIS? If I am posting in a comment thread about Iran, do I need to write out "Mujahedin-e
Khalq" instead of just using MEK?
It just displays a massive level of ignorance on your part. Nice try though.
Global media moguls are blaming the 1,000 American deaths per day from the Wuhan coronavirus
on Donald Trump to finally get him out of the way. But they are silent on their and the
Democrats complicity in the death toll due to the lack of a national public health system or
the funding to pay for it.
The USA is going to hell. A scapegoat is needed. For the media and Democrats, Russia is to
blame. Anybody else rather than themselves, the true culprits. Donald Trump blames China for
the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are
made. Blaming China is globalist heresy.
I think there's a reasonable case to be made that this is what has occurred.
And, if true, it is covered up by sly suggestions that nCov-19 was man-made with hints or
a smug attitude that convey the message that China created the virus. As well as a
virtual black-out in Western media of Chinese suggestions that the virus may have started in
USA or been planted in Wuhan.
But then, I already stand accused of attributing magical powers of self-interested
foresight and boldness to US Deep-State due to my belief that Trump was their choice to lead
USA in 2016. And so I expect you're theory will receive the same derision. Yet Empires have
not been shy about killing millions when it was in their interest to do so.
In any case, I've written many times that USA/West's unwillingness to fight the virus has
been dressed up as innocent mistakes. Even if the West wasn't the source of the virus they
have much to answer for. Yet very few have taken note of the way that USA/West have played
the pandemic to advance their interests - from lining the pockets of Big Pharma to blaming
China for their own "incompetence" (a misnomer: the power-elite are very competent at
advancing their interests!).
It seems disinformation has been redefined to mean information that counters someone else's
(yours) belief. We pretend to be in an Age of Reason but really, we have just replaced
religious beliefs with secular beliefs. Science has been taken over by pseudoscientists that
have replaced priests. The conflict of interest by the science/priests who profit from their
deceptions is beyond criminal.
To know what is the truth you just have to look at whats being censored. Nobody being
censored for supporting mask mandates, claiming vaccines are safe, and not questioning the
blatant data manipulation of COVID cases that anyone with an open mind and IQ of 100 , and
who reads the data, definitions and studies can see through.
It seems people on both sides of the fence have replaced their brains with their chosen
ideology. Its like watching a Christian, Jew and Muslim arguing which is the best or true
religion. No point in it.
so, lets say GRU agents are feeding russian propaganda sites... how does that compare to
all the CIA-FBI agents and has been hacks working for the western msm?? seems a bit rich for
the pot to be calling a kettle black, even if they are lying thru their teeth! i am sure if
someone did a story on how many CIA - m16 people are presently working with the western msm,
they would have a story with some legs... this shite from anonymous usa gov't officials is
just that - shite..
@ Ben, or Benson Barbour .. thanks for your comments!
Lol I write for One World. I'm an American who has never had a piece edited or been told
what to write. I was allowed to write a piece about Russia where I was critical of their
policy of backing the STC in Yemen (I thought it was bad to divide Yemen). No one makes
anybody tow any specific line. I decided not to publish my piece on Russia and the STC in
Yemen because I didn't find the topic interesting enough, but I was 100% allowed to be
critical of Russia.
There's such a thing as self-censorship. Mainstream US news has effectively brought up
folks to be this way: stay in line or become unemployed- doesn't need to be stated. Not aimed
at you, but it needs to be said (und understood).
@35 That's a very good point. I completely agree. Self-censorship and group think are two of
the biggest problems in modern journalism/analysis. One World consistently publishes
pro-Pakistan and pro-China articles. When I was first sending them submissions, I did a piece
on US vs China in Sudan and South Sudan. I considered omitting China's culpability in
escalating the conflicts, and instead focus on laying the blame squarely at the feet of the
US. In the end I told the truth about both countries' imperialist escalations (to the best of
my ability).
There is a lot of incentive to self-censor at just about any outlet. It's more comfortable
to fit in with a site's brand.
In the case of the Russia-STC article, I really just found the subject matter to be thin.
Russia's support of the STC is mostly just diplomatic. Not a lot to write about.
The Americans are increasingly unhinged in their spittle-flecked accusations against not only
Russia, but also China, Iran, Venezuela, etc.
It's so pathetic as to be humorous.
Underlying the USA's Two Minutes of Hate campaigns, however, is a deeper disease that
defines Americans as a nation and as a people.
Namely, Americans have an inbred fundamentalist belief in their own Moral Superiority as
the Beacon of Liberty, Land of the Free, blah, blah, blah--no matter how many nations they
have bombed back to the Stone Age, invaded, colonized, regime changed, sanctioned, or
economically raped in the name of Freedom and Democracy™.
Donald Trump is half correct.
The United States of America is truly a great nation alright--but great only in terms of
its deceit, great in terms of its delusions, and great in terms of the horrors that it has
inflicted on much of the world.
Comparing America to the Nazis would be a high insult ... to Nazi Germany, as the Third
Reich only lasted about 12 years, while the American Reich has unfortunately lasted well over
200 years and gotten away with its crimes against humanity by possessing what are likely the
greatest propaganda machine and political deception in human history: the American Free Press
and the world historic lie called "American Freedom."
Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Literature Prize speech briefly but powerfully exposes
this heart of American darkness:
"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless,
but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has
exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for
universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road.
Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a
salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a
winner."
"Top US immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci is now saying citizens are not "complete" in
protecting themselves from the Covid-19 pandemic unless they go beyond wearing a mask and add
in eye protection like goggles, too."
More provocation from the oligarchy. Now, that masks are becoming less controversial, time
to step up the provocation, division and control.
Fauci is also behind the anti-hydroxychloroquine propaganda, as well, that even b has
swallowed. This, despite it being used effectively in other countries. All of this simply
because Trump supports it (ergo, it must be bad) and Big Pharma (who control Fauci,
CDC abd WHO) can't profit significantly from its use.
"During the course of the debate, Kennedy also talked about the regular vaccines most
people take, from Hepatitis B to the flu shot, emphasizing that no proper testing had ever
been done, which is mandatory for any other medication. Vaccines "are the only medical
product that does not have to be safety-tested against a placebo," he explained."
Kennedy said
"it's not hypothetical that vaccines cause injury, and that injuries are not rare. The
vaccine courts have paid out four billion dollars" over the past three decades, "and the
threshold for getting back into a vaccine court and getting a judgment – [the
Department of Health and Human Services] admits that fewer than one percent of people who are
injured ever even get to court."
So, how well has the Russian vaccine been tested? Does anyone know?
It is interesting how USAians are being played by the oligarchy.
On foreign policy, the dems and reps are in basic agreement and the propaganda is to bring
the masses together to hate Russia, Chaina and anyone else who the Western (US) oligarchy has
targeted.
Domestically, unity is the enemy of the oligarchy. The masses must be controlled through
division and diversion, so the dems and reps play good cop, bad cop (bad and good being
relative to the supporter) to ensure the masses are diverted from important oligarch issues
to issues of irrelevance to the oligarchs, but easily manipulated emotionnally by the
oligarchs for the beast.
"[...]Donald Trump blames China for the pandemic if he acknowledges it at all but that is
where all of Tim Cook's iPhones are made. Blaming China is globalist heresy."
Then why do you phrase it the "Wuhan coronavius" yourself?
For those interested in corona virus truth,
I am interested in the question -- - was it spread by negligence or deliberately?
That question must be relivant to this debate on MOA.
I ask this now becouse -- --
Tonight on bbc 'panorama' there investigating the spread of the virus from Hospital to care
homes !! I'm told there is some pretty shocking information exposed.
Some may wish to catch that prog. Heads up.
I just add an obversation. -- western psychopathic disinformation and projection has led
to a confused public. A public deciding to disengage with politics. To the gain of the
psychopaths.
A new candidate to the demonization and disinfo operations has been added...Germany...which
has been labeled "delinquent" by the POTUS...in a clear exercise of projection...
Of course, to not be insulted or labeled delinquent, you must act as these other countries
enumerated by Southcom commander, to work for the US ( not your country...) and moreover pay
for it....Typical mafia extortion, isn´t it?
That broadly-based subject is barely discussed in alternative media and is totally
obfuscated in MSM, because the "denier-debunkers" dispute the possibility of such extreme
malice existing in our institutions, in spite of previous experience with events such as
9/11 and the '08 financial crisis.
YES to that and thank you for that post. That the institutions of state and private
sectors are the incubators and propagators of extreme malice is axiomatic in the UKUSAI and
its five eyed running dogs is beyond doubt. They attack and scorn any critic or unbeliever.
They assault and pillory truth speakers and those who might question 'their narrative'.
Then if all that fails the hunt them down and make preposterous claims about them being
anti semitic of anti religion or anti their nation.
Mendacity is the currency of the permanent state and its minions and they need to be outed
and shamed and challenged at every opportunity.
Fort Detrick coronavirus would be on the mark and as you most likely know, you cannot
trust the USA lying eyes once you have served them in their killing fields.
Even that right wing ex special forces advocate Steve Pieczenic testifies to the fact of a
deadly virus in USA in November/December plus his beloved bloggers say way earlier than that
around Maryland etc. Then there is the small problem of the 'vaping' illness that generated
lots of pneumonia like fatalities in June/July. And then the instant closure of Fort Detrick
due to its leaking all over the place through a totally inadequate waste water treatment
plant that couldn't scrub a turd let alone a virus.
The problem with presstitutes, possibly including Ben Barbour , (disclaimer: I've
never read any media products that particular individual generated) goes beyond the point
made by Seer @35 . To be sure, there is no chance that a presstitute would bite the
hand that feeds it, but there is more depth to the problem of why they all suck so
badly, at least the ones in the US. While journalism degrees are the university equivalent of
Special Education (nowadays referred to as "Exceptional Student Education" , which is
very fitting for students from such an "exceptional" nation), they still prepare the
future presstitute to understand that their capitalist employers have interests beyond their
immediately apparent ones. That is, more important to a capitalist employer than tomorrow's
sales and profits is the preservation of capitalism itself.
But the problem is deeper still. The presstitute that is successfully employed by a
capitalist enterprise will invariably be one that knows not to criticize the employer's
business, the capitalist system it depends upon, and the empire that improves that employer's
profitability. More importantly, that successful hireling will additionally have been
brainwashed from infancy that all of these things are good and necessary aspects of the
modern world that need to be ideologically defended. The prospective presstitute will be one
that not only voluntarily, but eagerly serves its capitalist masters varied interests. After
all, when there are plenty of whores to choose from, would you hire one that requires
explicit instructions on every last thing you expect from them and just follows those
instructions mechanically or the the one that puts effort into figuring out what would please
you and delivers that with enthusiasm? Keeping this dynamic in mind will allow one to better
understand the capitalist mass media's products.
The contempt at which the American ruling class hold their citizens is galling. The US
corporate media operates as if their targeted audience are all morons.
Mark2 @45: "...was it [ novel coronavirus] spread by negligence or
deliberately?"
Most likely both.
There is evidence to suggest that the virus was circulating in the US prior to it being
discovered in China. While it is possible this could have been the results of testing the
transmissibility of the virus, it seems more probable that it was an accidental release from
Fort Detrick. This would explain the facility being shut down last year. Military facilities
are never shut down simply for breaking a few rules but because those rule violations led to
something unpleasant.
An accidental release, coupled with the fact that the synthetic origin of the virus would
become apparent to scientists worldwide, resulted in a need to quickly establish an alternate
explanation for the virus. Since the US was losing its trade war with China, and use of a
bioweapon to turn the tide was already gamed out and on the table anyway, the virus (or
possibly a very similar strain that had been pre-selected for the attack) was deliberately
sprayed around a market in Wuhan.
The CDC and CIA probably thought that the virus was contained in the West and that since
it was a surprise to the Chinese it would run rampant there and result in their economy
shutting down and their borders being closed, decoupling China from the world. With the
Chinese treating the virus as a bio attack and defeating its spread, followed by the virus
rampaging through the West, the dynamic changed. Now in order for the virus to decouple China
it must become endemic in the West. The Chinese must be made to close their borders in fear
of becoming infected from the rest of the world. To make this backup plan a reality, and to
get the economies moving again as fast as possible, some western leaders have decided to
accelerate the spread in the hopes of quickly developing "herd immunity" . Taking out
some retirees whom the capitalists view as a burden on the economy is just some nice icing on
the cake.
@ 51 & @ 52
I'd say not ! I'm confided Vietnam Vet is doing 'balenced' Reporting ! The subject of this
post. Take another look at both this post and his comment. A lesson in how to be unbiased but
truthfull.
Soooo any one got a definition of fake news.
Mine would be Truth before personal agenda.
William Gruff @ 53
I think yours is just about the most clear and concise summary of this whole virus
catastrophe that I have seen so far. And that's a hell of a statement !
Unrelated I wonder what would have happened if the Chinese whistle blower had not blown the
whistle ? Now that's one to ponder ? As bad as this all is world wide, where would be right
now ? Dose not bare thinking about.
What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in
China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is
some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the
WHO?
There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump
or his relevant admin was informed early enough.
We've been acquainted with this virus about 7 months or so and it is difficult to separate
reliable information from disinformation. We know very little about it, eg, we don't know
whether those who recover can be reinfected. Is it like the common cold, against which there
is no immunity? We just have to assume that the Trump virus has infected every level of the
administration so that there is ignorance and unadulterated stupidity from the lowest level
in the ministry of propaganda to the secretary of state and, of course, the president himself
currently celebrating the wisdom of an animist/Christian hybrid doctor from Africa spewing
the foulest disinformation one can imagine.
Big @ 57 What ?
Posted by: Mark2 | Jul 30 2020 12:27 utc | 58
babbling: look if this is the good old VV from SST, I wouldn't want to nail him on the
usage of Wuhan virus. But on the larger content of his comment, I am wondering.
Full discovery: I entered the US conspiracy universe shortly after 9/11. I'll probably
never forget there was this one commenter that completely out of then current preoccupations
within the diverse theories, you recall?, suggested that the Chinese were approaching via the
Southern borders.
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia
There surely should be a way how the US and Russia repartition their claims. After all
historically the Russian had some type of partly real Yellow threat too ... :)
Except the "whistle blower" was not a whistle blower since local, provincial, and nations
institutions were already advised or in the process of being advised. Dr Wenliang posted his
information in a private chatroom with other medical professionals on December 30th. Timeline
of events:
Dec 27 -- Dr. Zhang Jixian, director of the respiratory and critical care medicine
department of Hubei Provincial Hospital, files a report to the hospital stating that an
unknown pneumonia has developed in three patients and they are not responding to influenza
treatment.
Dec 29 -- Hubei Provincial Hospital convened a panel of 10 experts to discuss the now
seven cases. Their conclusion that the situation was extraordinary, plus information of two
similar cases in other hospitals, prompted the hospital to report directly to the municipal
and provincial health authorities.
Dec 30 -- The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued an urgent notification to medical
institutions under its jurisdiction, ordering efforts to appropriately treat patients with
pneumonia of unknown cause.
Dec 31 -- The National Health Commission (NHC) made arrangements in the wee hours, sending
a working group and an expert team to Wuhan to guide epidemic response and conduct on-site
investigations. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a briefing on its website
about the pneumonia outbreak in the city, confirming 27 cases and telling the public not to
go to enclosed public places or gather. It suggested wearing face masks when going out. The
Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released briefings on the pneumonia outbreak in accordance
with the law. WHO's Country Office in the PRC relayed the information to the WHO Western
Pacific Regional Office, then to the international level headquarters.
Jan 1 -- The NHC set up a leading group to determine the emergency response to the
epidemic. The group convened meetings on a daily basis since then.
Jan 2 -- The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) and the Chinese
Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) received the first batch of samples of four patients from
Hubei Province and began pathogen identification. The NHC came up with a set of guidelines on
early discovery, early diagnosis and early quarantine for the prevention and control of the
viral pneumonia of unknown cause.
Jan 3 -- Dr. Wenliang signs a statement not to post unsubstantiated rumors.
There's no "whistle blowing" as the information of the cases were already going up the
chain of command. These are facts that can be sourced by multiple media outlets. I can't
believe this fallacy keeps floating and doesn't flush.
In retrospective analyses, SARS-COV-2 was found in routinely collected samples of European
sewage water dating back to at least december 2019. A french doctor reviewed archived medical
samples and imagery from patients who had fallen mysteriously ill in the latter half of 2019
and also found that some had been early cases of COVID-19.
The real coronavirus whistle-blower is a doctor in Washington state USA who tested for the
virus in Januari 2020 and was silenced by USA medical and federal authorities.
I am afraid that there will never be a sincere investigation into the real cause of the
"vaping disease" that caused many deaths from sudden respiratory failure in the USA in the
summer of 2019. Tell me again when Ft. Detrick labs was shut down exactly?
What are you trying to tell me? Anyone that does not acknowledge the virus originated in
China and that China didn't respond as fast as it could have? And more polemically: there is
some kind of African Marxist heading WHO who obfuscated China's late information to the WHO?
There is a dot of truth in everything. There is also a dot of truth in the fact that Trump
or his relevant admin was informed early enough.
Posted by: vig | Jul 30 2020 12:21 utc | 57
vig repeats widely spread arguments, basically, the "official propaganda" from offices
related to an orange-American (excessive time spend on golf courses changes skin color,
perhaps in combination with sunscreen, without sunscreen you would get a "redneck look").
1. Origin: somewhat debatable, but any virus has to originate somewhere. Every country was
on receiving end of pathogens from other countries.
2. China did not respond as fast as it could have. Now, how fast and effective was USA?
One has to note that clusters of fatal lung infections happen regularly, but this is because
of mutations that increase impact on health, while separate mutations increase (or decrease)
the transmission. Draconian measures are necessary if you get both, but you do not lock
cities, provinces, introduce massive quarantine programs until you know that they are
necessary. For the same reasons, the response in Western Europe and USA was not as fast as it
could have.
3. "African Marxist heading WHO mislead poor naive Americans". What is the budget of
American intelligence, and American disease control? Do they collect information, do they
have experts? In particular, American authorities knew pretty much what Chinese authorities
knew, and they had benefit of several weeks of extra time to devise wise strategy. Giving
this benefit to people with limited mental capacities has a limited value. Perhaps China is
at fault here too, Pompeo reported about pernicious impact of Chinese Communist Party on PPT
meeting in USA, that could have deleterious impact on education and thus on mental
capacities.
Pompeo himself may be a victim. He excelled as a West Point student, but if the content of
education was crappy, diligence impacted his brain deeper and not for the better. But nobody
attempts to blame CCP for that.
For starters, the "whistleblower" wasn't a whistleblower at all: he thought he had found a
resurgence of SARS, not a new pandemic. Secondly, the head of respiratory diseases at the
region already was investigating some cases of a "mysterious pneumonia" since end of November
or mid-December - so the investigation already was well under way.
Discovering a new disease is not magic: a doctor cannot simply go the market, see a random
person, and claim he/she discovered a new virus. Doctors are not gods: they can only diagnose
the patients under their care.
The point of discord that the Western MSM capitalized upon was the fact that some random
officer from the local police intercepted his private social media and made him sign a letter
of reprimand. No Law is ever perfect, and these episodes of false triggers do happen even in
Western Democracies.
Little known fact (one which the Western MSM censored) is that the so-called
"whistleblower" was a member of the CCP. After knowing the details of the situation
(including that the disease was already being investigated), he quickly realized the
state-of-the-art and went to the frontlines to fight the pandemic - as any member of the CCP
would've done. Revolutionary communist parties have this tradition that comes since the
Bolshevik Party, where the leadership always leads by example. The Bolsheviks themselves lost
the vast majority of their elite in the Civil War, as they always led in the front
(vanguard). Fidel Castro himself led his army in the front when the invasion of the Bay of
Pigs begun. So, it is not surprising this doctor, once having the facts on the field, quickly
shut up and went to the frontline as a vanguard soldier.
After the whole truth came to the forefront, the Western MSM quickly begun to meltdown
over the fake story they fantasized, and the Taiwanese MSM invented a story of some another
whistleblower who had discovered the virus "at the end of November". That one never truly
gained traction, and silently died out.
But all of this is moot point for the West, because Trump and the other European liberal
powers refused to believe either that the virus was real or that it could reach them until
February the next year.
I think it is OK that b nails the US makes yet another display of stupidity.... on the other
hand I presume that b also has other things to care about, I mean exposing the US as a "fake"
nation is a full time job!
Americans have at least the last 50 years been known for fails, even Churchill commented
something like "the Americans will fail numerous times, but eventually they will get it
right" well that was back then! Today it is fail upon fail. I know that there must be bright
people over there, but it is my sincere impression, that they are a very small minority.
Maybe their schooling system has all gone bonkers ?
"3% of all Americans believe the Earth is flat! WTF!!!
America is on a steep slope downward.
I am personally not worried much about Covid 19, although I am 63 and live in Sweden, the
"black Sheep" in Europe because of our rather lax restrictions, the Swedes themselves are
rather good at keeping distance and using common sense.
I am much more worried that the American culture of ignorance, brain farts, stupidity and low
IQ media will infest my country further and maybe completely ruin it.
Especially by the junk that comes out of Hollywood, pure Sh*t served nice and hot!
I am happy I know, I have not got to endure further 30 years of this.
A few months ago, b posted a link to a Canadian vlogger who lives in Nanning, China. The
vlogger took us on a tour of a so called Wet Market. Here, the vlogger takes us to another
Wet Market tour. He does a good job dispelling racist stereotypes and showing real life in
China.
One to many @ 64
Thanks ! So there was a group of whistle blowers then. It's down to definitions again.
Perhaps mine is a little more loose. But it's of no concern.
For the sake of this excellent thread, perhaps we could all be a little less pedantic. VK ?
Also relevant - Crimson Contagion - the pandemic simulation run by the US government from
January to August 2019 and was based on an infectious coronavirus coming from a food market
in China
Everywhere u go in this world you'll find some version or an "murican" in every country.
Even a country like modern first world Switzerland has its "mountain folk".
In my personal experience with Americans I'm most often pleasantly surprised at their levels
of sophistication and introspection over their American experiences. An enjoyable and as
pleasant a people as anywhere. This may be clouded by mostly meeting these people outside of
the US where unless tourists are well educated and travelled and by default more aware of a
negative view of their homeland that exists outside of the US. For some reason most of these
Americans I've met abroad are decidedly non republican in nature and are mostly
from California and North and North Eastern States. Fellow future Canadians I would call
them.
The other side of the coin is when I've travelled to the states. Texas, Florida, Arizona.
Whew! What a difference. I've learned that talking politics is impossible and the natives are
almost entirely ignorant of anything outside their bubble. Outside of talking points there is
no information behind their arguments. Their knowledge of the outside world is incredibly
lacking and the view of the US in it is overwhelmingly positive.
It isn't Americans its America and its leadership, its influences, systems and all the other
shit that make the US the salad it is. The people r redeemable.
Calling the professionals doing their jobs in China "whistleblowers" is inaccurate.
"Whistleblower" implies revealing information that others are trying to hide. In this
case the suggestion is that the Chinese government was trying to hide the outbreak. This is
nonsense as the Chinese government was unaware of an outbreak until after the relevant
professionals had determined that there was an outbreak. There is no way the Chinese
government could have known about an outbreak before the outbreak was identified by the
professionals tasked with identifying outbreaks. The only ones who knew about the outbreak
before the outbreak occurred were the US "intelligence community" .
"... Some of the neoliberal countries may be at the stage of the collusion; some of them may find themselves at the stage of oligarchy; some of them may be at the stage of corruption culture. ..."
"... In Japan, since 1957, there were twenty-one prime ministers of whom 75% were one-year or two-year prime ministers despite the four-year term of prime ministers. The short life span of Japanese prime ministers is essentially due to the short term interest pursued by the corrupted golden triangle composed of big business, bureaucrats and politicians. Unless, Japan uproots the corruption culture, it will be difficult to save the Japanese economy from perpetual stagnation. ..."
"... In the U.S. the big companies are spending a year no less than $2.6 billion lobbying money for the promotion of their interests, while the Congress spends $ 2.9 billion and the Senate, $860 million for their respective annual operation. Some of the big companies deploy as many as 100 lobbyists. ..."
"... It is unbelievable that the amount of lobbying is as much as 70% of the annual budget of the whole legislative of the U.S. ..."
"... Under such lobbying system, each group should deploy lobbyists to promote their interests. The immigrants, the native Indians, the Afro Americans, the alienated white people and other marginal groups cannot afford lobbyists and they are often excluded from fair treatment in the process of making laws and policies ..."
"... In the case of the U.S. its rank increased from 18 in 2016 to 22 in 2019. Thus in three years, the degree of corruption increase by 22.2% ..."
"... The U.S. is the richest country in the world, but it is also a country where income inequality is the most pronounced. I will come back to this issue in the next section. In relation to the corona virus crisis, income inequality means an army of those who are most likely to be infected and who are unable to follow CDC guidelines of testing, self quarantine and social distancing. Finally, the privatization of public health services has made the whole country unprepared for the onslaught of the virus. ..."
"... The experience of Japan shows how this can happen. The economic depression after the bubble burst of 1989, Japan had to endure 30-year deflation. The government of Japan has flooded the country with money to restore the economy, but the money was used for the bail-out of big corporations neglecting the healthy development of the SMEs and impoverishing the ordinary Japanese people. South Korea could have experienced the Japanese-type economic stagnation, if the conservative government ruled the country ten more years. ..."
"... The neoliberal pro-big company policy of Washington has greatly depleted consumer demand and SMEs even before the onslaught of the coronavirus. ..."
"... Fourth, the U.S. economy is shaken up so much that the neoliberal regime will not able to recover the economy. Thus, the survival of neo-liberalism looks uncertain. But, if the coronavirus crisis continues and destroys SMEs and if only the big corporations survive owing to bailout money, neo-liberalism may survive and we may end up with authoritarian governance ruled by the business-politics oligarchy. ..."
For the last forty years, neo-liberalism has dominated economic thinking and the formulation of economic policies Worldwide.
But the corona virus crisis has exposed, in a dramatic way, its internal contradictions, its incapacity to deal with the corona
crisis and its incompetence to restore the real economy ruined by the crisis.
In this article, we will focus on the relationship between Neoliberalism and the Corona Crisis:
Neoliberalism has prevented the governments from controlling effectively the initial outbreak of the corona virus.
Neoliberalism has made the wave of virus propagation higher and wider, especially in the U.S.
Neoliberalism can shake the foundations of the U.S. economy.
Neoliberalism may not survive the corona virus crisis in the U.S.
To save democracy and the global economy, We need a new economic model which supports the future of humanity, which sustains human
livelihood Worldwide.
1. Neoliberalism and the initial Outbreak of the Corona Virus
The most important part of neoliberalism is the relation -often of a corrupt nature- between the government and large corporations.
By corruption, we mean illegal or immoral human activities designed to maximize profit at the expense of people's welfare. In this
relation, the government may not be able to control and govern the large corporations. In fact, in the present context, the corporations
govern and oversee national governments.
Hence, when the corona virus broke out, it was difficult for the government to take immediate actions to control the virus break-out
to save human lives; It was quite possible that the price of stocks and large corporations' profit had the priority.
The theory known as neoliberalism distinguishes itself from the old liberalism prevailing before the Great Depression.
It became widely accepted mainly because of its adoption, in the 1970s and 1980s, by Ronald Reagan , president of the U.S. and
Margaret Thatcher , prime minister of Great Britain as an economic policy agenda applied nationally and internationally.
The justification of neoliberalism is the belief that the best way to ensure economic growth is to encourage "supply activities"
of private sector enterprises.
Now, the proponents of neoliberalism argue that public goods (including health and education) can be produced with greater efficiency
by private companies than by the State. Therefore, "it is better" to let the private enterprises produce public goods.
In other words, the production of public goods should be "privatized". Neoliberals put profit as the best measure of efficiency
and success. And profit can be sustained with government support. In turn, the private companies' policy is that of reducing the
labour costs of production.
Government assistance includes reduction of corporate taxes, subsidies and anti-labour policies such as the prohibition of labour
unionization and the abolition of the minimum wage.
Reduction of labour cost can be obtained by the automation of the production of goods
Under such circumstances, close cooperation between the government and the private corporations is inevitable; even it may be
necessary.
But, such cooperation is bound to lead to government-business collusion in which the business receives legal and illegal government
support in exchange of illicit money such as kick-backs and bribes given to influential politicians and the people close to the power.
As the collusion becomes wider and deeper, an oligarchy is formed; it is composed of corporations, politicians and civil servants.
This oligarchy's raison d'être is to make money even at the expense of the interests of the people.
Now, in order to protect its vested interests, the oligarchy expands its network and creates tight-knit political community which
shares the wealth and privileges obtained.
In this way, the government-business cooperation can be evolved by stage to give birth to the corruption culture.
Some of the neoliberal countries may be at the stage of the collusion; some of them may find themselves at the stage of oligarchy;
some of them may be at the stage of corruption culture.
South Korea
When the progressive government of Moon Jae-in took over power in 2017, South Korea under the 60-year neo-liberal rule by the
conservatives was at the stage of corruption culture.
The progressive government of Moon Jae-in has declared a total war against the corruption culture, but it is a very long way to
go before eliminating corruption.
In South Korea, of six presidents of the conservative government, four presidents were or are in prison for corruption and abuse
of power. This shows how deeply the corruption has penetrated into the fabrics of the Korea society
In Japan, since 1957, there were twenty-one prime ministers of whom 75% were one-year or two-year prime ministers despite the
four-year term of prime ministers. The short life span of Japanese prime ministers is essentially due to the short term interest
pursued by the corrupted golden triangle composed of big business, bureaucrats and politicians. Unless, Japan uproots the corruption
culture, it will be difficult to save the Japanese economy from perpetual stagnation.
Lobbying and "Corruption Culture"
Many of the developed countries in the West are also the victims of corruption culture. In the U.K. the City (London's Wall Street)
is the global center of money laundry.
In the U.S. the big companies are spending a year no less than $2.6 billion lobbying money for the promotion of their interests,
while the Congress spends $ 2.9 billion and the Senate, $860 million for their respective annual operation. Some of the big companies
deploy as many as 100 lobbyists.
It is unbelievable that the amount of lobbying is as much as 70% of the annual budget of the whole legislative of the U.S.
True, in the U.S., lobbying is not illegal, but it may not be morally justified. It is a system where the law makers give privileges
to those who spend more money, which can be considered as bribes
Under such lobbying system, each group should deploy lobbyists to promote their interests. The immigrants, the native Indians,
the Afro Americans, the alienated white people and other marginal groups cannot afford lobbyists and they are often excluded from
fair treatment in the process of making laws and policies
Some of the developed European countries are also very corrupted. The international Transparency Index rank, in 2019, was 23 for
France, 30 for Spain and 51 for Italy.
In the case of the U.S. its rank increased from 18 in 2016 to 22 in 2019. Thus in three years, the degree of corruption increase
by 22.2%
What is alarming is that, in the corruption culture, national policies are liable to be dictated by big businesses.
In South Korea, under the conservative government, it was suspected that the national policies were determined by the Chaebols
(large industrial conglomerates), not by the government.
As matter of fact, during the MERS crisis in 2015, the anti-virus policy was dictated by the Samsung Group. In order to save its
profit, Samsung Hospital in Seoul hid the infected so that the number of non-MERS patients would not decrease.
In Japan, the Abe government made the declaration of public health emergency as late as April 6, 2020 despite the fact that the
infections were detected as early as January, 2020.
This decision was, most likely, dictated by Keiretsu members (grouping of large enterprises) in order to save investments in the
July Olympics. Nobody knows how many Japanese had been infected for more than three months.
Similarly, Trump was well aware of the sure propagation of the virus right form January, but he waited until March 13, 2020 before
he declared the state of effective public health emergency. The obvious reason was the possible fear of free fall of stock price
and the possible loss of big companies' profits.
The interesting question is: "The delayed declaration of public health emergency, was it Trump's decision or that of his corporate
friends?" It doesn't matter whose decision it was, because the government under neoliberal system is controlled the big businesses.
So, as in Japan, Italy, Spain, France and especially, the U.K, Trump lost the golden time to save human lives to keep profit of
enterprises.
God knows how many American lives were sacrificed to save stock price and company profit!
Thus, the neoliberal governments have lost the golden chance to prevent the initial outbreak of the dreadful virus.
2. Neo-liberalism and the Propagation of Corona-Virus
We saw that the initial outbreak of the virus was not properly controlled leading to the loss to golden time of saving human lives,
most likely because of the priority given to business and political interests.
The initial outbreak of the virus was transformed into never-ending propagation and, even now, in many states in the U.S. the
wave of the virus is getting higher and wider.
This tragic reality can be explained by four factors:
people's mistrust in the government,
unbounded competition,
inequitable income distribution,
the absence of public health system.
These four factors (above) are all the legacies of neoliberalism.
The people know well that the corrupted neoliberal government's concern is not the welfare of the people but the interest of a
few powerful and the rich. The inevitable outcome is the loss of people's trust in the unreliable government.
This is demonstrated by Trump's indecision, his efforts of ignoring the warning of the professionals, his fabricates stories and
above all, his perception of who should be given the right to receive life-saving medical care at the hospital.
Under such circumstances, Americans do not trust the government directives and guidelines, allegedly implemented to protect people
from the virus.
The guideline of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) for self quarantine, social distancing and wearing face masks has little
effect. There is another product of neoliberalism which is troublesome. I mean its credo of unbounded competition.
It is true that competition promotes efficiency and better quality of products. However, as competition continues, the number
of winners decreases, while that of losers rises. The economy ends up being ruled by a handful of powerful winners. This leads to
the segregation of losers and leads to the discrimination of people by income level, religion, race and colour of skin.
In the present context, largely as a result of government policy, there is little to no social solidarity; each individual has
to solve his or her own problems. I was sad when I saw on TV a young lady in California saying:
"To be killed by the COVID-19 or starve to death is the same to me. I open my shop to eat!"
This shows how American citizens are left alone to fight the coronavirus. Furthermore, neoliberalism has another unhappy legacy;
it is the widening and deepening income inequality.
The U.S. is the richest country in the world, but it is also a country where income inequality is the most pronounced. I will
come back to this issue in the next section. In relation to the corona virus crisis, income inequality means an army of those who
are most likely to be infected and who are unable to follow CDC guidelines of testing, self quarantine and social distancing. Finally,
the privatization of public health services has made the whole country unprepared for the onslaught of the virus.
In fact, in the U.S. there is no public health system. For three months after the first breakout of the virus, the country lacked
everything needed to fight the virus.
There was shortage of testing kits and PPE (personal protective equipment);
there were not enough rooms to accommodate the infected;
there was shortage of qualified medical staff;
there was lack of face masks.
Thus, neoliberalism has made the U.S not only to lose the golden time to prevent the initial breakout but also it has let the
wave of virus to continue. Nobody knows when it will calm down. As a matter of fact, on July 4, there were 2.9 million infected and
132,000 deaths; this gives a death rate of 4.6%. Given U.S. population of 328 million, we have 402.44 deaths per million inhabitants
which is one of highest among the developed countries. The trouble is that the wave of virus is still going higher and wider. On
July 4, the confirmed cases increased by 50% in two weeks in 12 states and increased 10% to 50% in 22 states.
3. Neo-liberalism and the very Foundation of the U.S. Economy
The message of this section is this. The foundation of the American economy is the purchasing power of the consumers and the job
creation by small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The consumer demand is 70% of the GDP, the SMEs create 66% of jobs. Unfortunately,
because of neoliberalism, the consumers have become very poorer and the SMEs have been neglected in the pro-big-company government
policies. The COVID-19 has destroyed the SMEs and impoverished the consumers. Nobody would deny the contribution of neo-liberalism
to globalization of finance, the creation of the global value chain and, especially the free trade agreement.
All these activities have allowed GDP to grow in developed countries and some of new industrial countries. However, the wealth
created by the growth of GDP has gone to countries already developed, some developing countries and a small number of multinational
enterprises (MNE). The rich produced by GDP growth has led to the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few privileged. What
is more serious is this. If the skewed income distribution in favour of a decreasing number of people continues for long, the GDP
will stop growing and decades-long deflation is quite possible, as it has happened in Japan.
According to the OECD data, in the period, 1975-2011, the GDP share of labour income in OECD countries fell by 13.8% from 65%
to 56%. In the case of the U.S., in the same period, 1970-2014, it fell by 11%. The falling labour-income share is necessarily translated
into unequal household income distribution. There are two popular ways of measuring income distribution: the decile ratio and the
Gini coefficient.
The decile ratio is obtained by dividing the income earned by the top 10% income earners by the income earned by the bottom 10%
income earners . The decile ratio in 2019 was 18.5 in the U.S. as compared to 5.6 in Finland. The decile ratio of the U.S. was the
highest among the developed countries. Thus, in the U.S. the top 10 % has an income 19 times more than the bottom 10%, while, in
Finland, the corresponding ratio is only 6 times. This shows how serious the income gap is in the country of Uncle Sam.
The Gini coefficient varies from zero to 100. As the value of the Gini increases, the income distribution becomes favourable to
the high-income households. Conversely, as the value of the Gini decreases, the income distribution becomes favourable to low-income
households. There are two types of Gini: the gross Gini and the net Gini. The former refers to Gini before taxes and transfer payment,
while the latter refers to Gini after taxes and transfer payment. The difference between the gross and the net Gini shows the government
efforts to improve the equality and fairness of income distribution The gross U.S.- Gini coefficient in 2019 was 48.6, one of the
highest among the developed countries.
Its net Gini was 38.0 so that the difference between the gross and the net Gini was 12.3%. In other words, the U.S. income distribution
improved only by 12.3% by government efforts as against, for example, an improvement of 42.9% in the case of Germany, where the gross
Gini was 49.9 while the net Gini was 28.5 The net Gini of the U.S. was the highest among the developed countries. The implication
is clear. The income distribution in the U.S. was the most unequal. To make the matter worse, the government's effort to improve
the unequal income distribution was the poorest among the developed countries. There are countless signs of unfortunate impacts of
the inequitable income distribution in the country called the U.S. which Koreans used to admire describing it as "mi-gook- 美國미국 –
Beautiful Country". Now, one wonders if it is still a "mi-gook".
The following data indicates the seriousness of poverty in the U.S. (data below prior to the Coronavirus crisis).
In the U.S. the richest 1% of the population has 40% of all household wealth. (2017 data)
More than 20% of the population cannot pay monthly bills.
About 40% do not have savings.
31% of private sector worker do not have medical benefits.
57% of the workers in the service sector have no medical benefits.
These data give us an idea on how so many people have to suffer from poverty in a country where per capita GDP is $65,000 (2019
estimate), the richest country in the world. Most of the Americans work for small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs). In the U.S.,
there are 30 million SMEs. They create 66% of jobs in the private sector. The SMEs are more severely hit than big companies by the
coronavirus.
In fact, 66% of SMEs are adversely affected by the virus against 40% for big firms. As much as 20% of SMEs may be shut down for
good within three months, because of the virus. Under the forty years of neoliberal pro-big corporation policies, available financial
resources and the best human resources have been allocated to big firms at the expense of the development of SMEs.
The most damaging by-product of neoliberalism is no doubt the widening and deepening unequal income distribution for the benefit
of the big corporations and the uprooting of SMEs. This trend means the shrinking domestic demand and the disappearance of jobs for
ordinary people.
The destruction of the domestic market caused by the shrinking consumer demand and the disappearance of SMEs can mean the uprooting
of the very foundation of the economy.
The experience of Japan shows how this can happen. The economic depression after the bubble burst of 1989, Japan had to endure
30-year deflation. The government of Japan has flooded the country with money to restore the economy, but the money was used for
the bail-out of big corporations neglecting the healthy development of the SMEs and impoverishing the ordinary Japanese people. South
Korea could have experienced the Japanese-type economic stagnation, if the conservative government ruled the country ten more years.
The neoliberal pro-big company policy of Washington has greatly depleted consumer demand and SMEs even before the onslaught of
the coronavirus. But, the COVID-19 has given a coup de grâce to consumer demand and SMEs To better understand the issue, let us go
back to the ABC of economics. Looking at the national economy from the demand side, the economy consists of private consumer demand
(C), the private investment demand (I), the government demand (G) and Foreign demand represented by exports of domestic products
(X) minus domestic demand for imported foreign products (M).
GDP=C + I + G + (X-M)
In 2019, the consumer expenditure (C) in the U.S. was 70% of GDP, whereas the government's spending (G) was 17%. The investments
demand (I) was 18%. The net exports demand (X-M) was -5%.
In 2019 the composition of Canadian GDP was: C=57%; I=23 %; G=21 %; X-M=-1%.
Thus, we see that the U.S. economy heavily depends on the private domestic consumption, which represents as much as 70% of GDP
compared to 57% in Canada. The government's contribution to the national demand is 17% as against 21% in Canada. In the U.S. a small
government is a virtue according to neoliberals. In the U.S. the private investments account for only 18% of GDP as compared to as
much as 23% in Canada. In the U.S., off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and the global value chain under neo-liberalism have decreased
the need for business investments at home. It is obvious then that to save the American economy, we have to boost the consumers'
income. But, the consumer income comes mainly from SMEs. We must remember that the SMEs create 66% of all jobs in the U.S. Therefore,
if consumer demand falls and if SMEs do not create jobs, the US economy may have to face the same destiny as the Japanese economy.
This is happening in the U.S. The corona virus crisis is destroying SMEs and taking away the income of the people.
The coronavirus crisis is about to demolish the very foundation of the American economy.
4. Corona Virus Crisis and the Survival of Neoliberalism
The interesting question is this. Will neo-liberalism as economic system survive the corona virus crisis in the U.S.?
There are at least four indications suggesting that it will not survive.
First, to overcome major crisis such as the corona virus invasion, we need strong central government and people-loving leader.
One of the reasons for the successful anti-virus policy in South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore was the strong central government's
role of determining and coordinating the anti-virus policies. As we saw, the gospel of neo-liberalism is the minimization of the
central government's role. Having little role in economic policies, the U.S. federal government has proved itself as the most incompetent
entity to fight the crisis. It is more than possible that the U.S. and all the neoliberal countries will try to get away from the
traditional neoliberal governance in which the government is almost a simple errand boy of big business.
Second, the people's trust in the neoliberal leaders has fallen on the ground. It will be difficult for the neoliberal leaders
to be able to lead the country in the post-corona virus era.
Third, the corona virus crisis has made the people aware of the abuse of power by the big companies; the people now know that
these companies are interested only in making money. So, it may be more difficult for them to exploit the people in the era of post-COVID-19.
Fourth, the U.S. economy is shaken up so much that the neoliberal regime will not able to recover the economy. Thus, the survival
of neo-liberalism looks uncertain. But, if the coronavirus crisis continues and destroys SMEs and if only the big corporations survive
owing to bailout money, neo-liberalism may survive and we may end up with authoritarian governance ruled by the business-politics
oligarchy.
5. Search for a New Economic Regime: Just-Liberalism
One thing which the corona-virus crisis has demonstrated is the fact that the American neo-liberalism has failed as sustainable
regime capable of stopping the virus crisis, restore the economy and save the democracy. Hence, we have to look for a new regime
capable of saving the U.S. economy and democracy. We would call this new regime as "Just-liberalism " mission of which is the sustainable
economic development and, at the same time, the just distribution of the benefits of economic development. Before we get into the
discussion of the main feature of the new regime, there is one thing we should discuss. It is the popular perception of large corporation.
Many believe that they make GDP grow and create jobs. It is also the popular view that the success of these large corporations is
due to the innovative managing skills of their founders or their CEOs. Therefore, they deserve annual salary of millions of dollars.
This is the popular perception of Chaebols in South Korea.
But, a great part of Chaebols income is attributable to the public goods such as national defence, police protection, social infrastructures,
the education system, enormous sacrifice of workers and, especially tax allowances, subsidies and privileges. In other words, a great
part of the Chaebols' income belongs to the society, not the Chaebols. Many believe that the Chaebols create jobs, but, in reality,
they crate less than 10% of jobs in Korea. We may say the same thing about large corporations in the U.S. In other words, much of
the company's income is due to public goods. Hence, the company should equitably share its income with the rest of the society. But
do they?
The high ranking managers get astronomical salaries; some of them are hiding billions of dollars in tax haven islands.
We ask. Are large corporations sharing equitably their income with the society? Are the corporate tax allowances they get too
much? Is the wage they pay too low? Is CEO's income is too high?
It is difficult to answer these questions.
But we should throw away the mysticism surrounding the merits of large corporations; we should closely watch them so that they
do not misuse their power and wealth to dictate national policies for their own benefit at the expense of the welfare of the people.
The new regime, just-liberalism, should have the following eight features.
First, we need a strong government which is autonomous from big businesses; there should be no business-politics collusion; there
should be no self-interest oligarchy of corruption.
Second, it is the time we should reconsider the notion of human right violation. There are several types of human right violation
in developed countries including the U.S. For example, the racial discrimination, the inequality before the law, the violation of
the right of social security and the violation of the right of social service are some cases of violation of human rights defined
by the U.N. The Western media have been criticizing human right violation in "non-democratic countries", but, in the future, they
should pay more attention to human right violation in "democratic countries."
Third, the criterion of successful economy should not be limited to the GDP growth; the equitable distribution of the benefits
of GDP growth should also be a criterion; proper balance between the growth and the distribution of growth fruits should be maintained.
Fourth, market should not be governed by "efficiency" alone; it must be also "equitable". Efficiency may lead to the concentration
of resources and power in the hands of the few at the expense of social benefit; it must be also equitable. As an example, we may
refer to the Chaebols (big Korean industrial conglomerates) which kill the traditional village markets which provide livelihood to
a great number of poor people. The Chaebols may make the market efficient but not equitable. The Korean government has limited Chaebols'
penetration into these markets to make them more equitable.
Fifth, we need a partial direct democracy. The legislative translates people's wish into laws and the executive makes policies
on the basis of laws. But, in reality, the legislative and the executive may pass laws and policies for the benefit of big companies
or specific group of individuals and institutions close to the power. Therefore, it is important to provide a mechanism through which
the people – the real master of the country – should be allowed to intervene all times. In South Korea, if more than 200,000 people
send a request to the Blue house (Korean White House) to intervene in matters judged unfair or unjust, the government must intervene.
Sixth, those goods and services which are essential for every citizen must be nationalized. For example, social infrastructure
such as parks, roads, railways, harbours, supply of electricity should not be privatized. Education including higher education should
be made public goods so that low income people should get higher education as do high income group.
This is the best way to maximize the mass of innovative minds and creative energy to develop the society. Above all, the health
service should be nationalized. It is just unbelievable to see that, in a country where the per capita GDP is $63,000, more than
30 million citizens have no medical insurance, just because it is too expensive. Politicians know quite well that big companies related
to insurance, pharmaceutical products and medical professions are preventing the nationalization of medical service in the U.S. But,
the politicians don't seem to dare go over these vested interests groups and nationalize the public health system. Remember this.
There are countries which are much poorer than the U.S. But, they have accessible universal health care insurance system.
Seventh, the economy should allow the system of multi- generational technologies in which not only high-level technologies but
also mid-level technologies should be promoted in such a way that both high- tech large corporations and middle-tech SMEs can grow.
This is perhaps only way to insure GDP growth and create jobs.
Eighth, in the area of international relations, it is about the time to stop wasteful ideological conflict. The difference among
ideologies is narrowing; the number of countries which have abandoned the U.S. imposed democracy has been rising; the ideological
basis of socialism is weakening. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 48% of countries are democratic, while 52% are not.
According to Freedom House, in 2005, 83 countries had net gain in democracy, while 52 countries had net loss in democracy.
But in 2019, only 37 countries had net gain while 64 countries had net loss. Between 2005 and 2018, the number of countries which
were not free increased by 26%, while those which were free fell by 44%. On the other hand, it is becoming more and more difficult
to find authentic socialism. For example, Chinese regime has lost its pure socialism long time ago. Thus, the world is becoming non-ideological;
the world is embracing ideology-neutral pragmatism.
To conclude, the corona virus pandemic has given us the opportunity to look at ourselves; it has given us the opportunity to realize
how vulnerable we are in front of the corona virus attack.
Many more pandemics will come and challenge us. We need a world better prepared to fight the coming pandemics. It is high time
that we slow down our greedy pursuit for GDP growth; it is about the time to stop a wasteful international ideological conflict in
support of multibillion dollar interests behind Big Money and the Military industrial complex.
It is therefore timely to find a system where we care for each other and where we share what we have .
***
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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co- director of the Observatoire de l'Asie de l'Est (ODAE) of the Centre
d'Études de l'Intégration et la Mondialisation (CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Center
of Research on Globalization (CRG).
Growing Social and
Wealth Inequality in America
What? "Complications: Any life-threatening infection requires time to fully recover from
and can lead to long-term sequelae. This is true for influenza and #COVID19, which have both
been linked to a wide spectrum of long-term adverse consequences." The flu has long-term
adverse consequences??
What? What? "Vaccines: Vaccination against influenza began in the 1930s. The efficacy of
flu vaccines is generally good." Is he talking about these flu vaccines that are frequently
extremely ineffective, and prone to greater adverse reactions than other vaccines? Do they
get some other flu vaccine at UCL?
Wha... "Summary: #SARSCoV2 behaves in most ways like a pandemic influenza strain. The only
major epidemiological difference between #COVID19 and flu pandemics is the age risk
distribution, with influenza being highly dangerous to young children in addition to the
elderly." This UCL that he's part of, is that some UCL that's located elsewhere in the galaxy
other than the UCL in London?
And he works at the Genetics Institute. Just to reassure everyone.
Motorcycle accidents ruled Covid deaths? In the rush to paint Florida as the epicenter of
the "second wave" of the coronavirus outbreak, government officials and their allies in the
mainstream media have stooped to ridiculous depths to maximize the death count. A television
station this weekend looked into two highly unusual Covid deaths among victims in their 20s,
and when they asked about co-morbidities they were told one victim had none, because his Covid
death came in the form of a fatal motorcycle accident.
Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. In fact the "spike" that has dominated the
mainstream for the last couple of weeks is full of examples of such trickery.
Washington state last week revised its Covid death numbers downward when it was revealed
that anyone who passed away for any reason whatsoever who also had coronavirus was listed as a
"Covid-19 death" even if the cause of death had nothing to do with Covid-19.
In South Carolina, the state health agency admitted that the "spike" in Covid deaths was
only the result of delayed reporting of suspected Covid deaths.
An analysis of reported daily Covid deaths last week compared to actual day-of-death in
Houston revealed that the recent "spike" consisted largely of deaths that occurred in April
through June. Why delay reporting until now?
We do know that based on this "spike" the Democrat mayor of Houston cancelled the convention
of the Texas Republican Party. Mission accomplished?
Doesn't it seem suspicious that so many states have experienced "delayed" reporting of
deaths until Fauci and his gang of "experts" announced that we are in a new nightmare
scenario?
Last week in Florida – which is perhaps not coincidentally the location of the
Republican Party's national convention – another scandal emerged when hundreds of Covid
test centers reported 100 percent positive results. Obviously this would paint a far grimmer
picture of the resurgence of the virus. Orlando Health, for example, reported a positivity rate
of 98 percent – a shocking level – but a further investigation revealed a true
positivity rate of only 9.4 percent. Those "anomalies" were repeated throughout the state.
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.
"Cases" once meant individuals who displayed sufficient symptoms to be treated in medical
facilities. But when the scaremongers needed a "second wave" they began reporting any positive
test result as a "Covid case." No wonder we have a "spike."
Politics demands that politicians be seen doing "something" rather than nothing, even if
that something is more harmful than doing nothing at all. That is why Washington is so addicted
to sanctions.
The same has been true especially in Republican-controlled states in the US in response to
the coronavirus. Faced with a virus that has killed about one-third as many people as the
normal, seasonal flu virus in 2018, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has endorsed a partial shutdown
of the economy resulting in millions tossed into the despair of unemployment. Then he
arbitrarily shut down bars because massively increased testing showed more people have been
exposed to the virus. And he mandated that people wear face masks. Neither shutting down bars
(instead of restaurants or Walmarts) nor forcing people to wear masks will have any effect on
the progression of the virus through society. But at least he looks like he's doing
"something."
We are facing the greatest assault on our civil liberties in our lifetimes. The virus is
real, but the government reaction is political and totalitarian. As it falls apart, will more
Americans start fighting for their liberty?
High numbers of asymptomatic are a feel good propaganda thing. Most have no symptoms when
they first become contagious, but the numbers that never develop symptoms are relatively
low.
Plenty of genuine people here that have developed their thoughts away from herd mentality.
And most are different in some aspects.
My thought is all free thinkers begin with a baseline or foundation and then expand from
there in relation to their experiences. Baseline starting points differ, as does life
experiences.
For me, I guess being able to raise a family and see them able to go out in the world and
start their own family is my baseline. This is overlapped with the historical saying - 'a
good leader brings peace and prosperity to his people'.
Goering though had a good understanding of the modern western world ...
Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm
want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his
farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in
England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all,
it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to
drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or
a Communist dictatorship.
For most here, democracy is still the sacred cow, but even that is something I no longer
worship. Democracy is controlled by whoever controls the media.
For me, the baseline is family, as in father mother and children, and, a leadership capable
of, or who's main interest is bringing peace and prosperity for the people..
This Paul
Krugman column helped crystallize the weirdness of the ongoing economists versus
epidemiologists spat, perhaps more accurately described as the 'some economists, especially
those with libertarian politics, versus epidemiologists spat.' Different theories, in turn
below the fold.
steven t johnson 07.20.20 at 2:37 pm
"1) The theory that economists actually are superior Certainly, epidemiologists' workhorse
models have had mixed predictive success " The predictive power of the economists' models, or
their guidance of government policies that have ended business cycles (for an example) by
contrast has had presumably unmixed success? I believe it is misleading to phrase the point
this way: The theory is that the laws of economics as expounded in the academy are laws of
nature, a description of the anatomy of the final society, the endpoint of human history, if
not human evolution. Thus, any unwelcome conclusions from epidemiological models must be
rejected.
"(2) The theory that economists' superiority is a sociological construct that economists
desire to maintain." The word "sociological" may be written here, but the discussion seems to
indicate that it actually means, psychological trait. In plain terms, it means the vanity of
economists. Insofar as it is a sociological construct, it refers to things like the status
ascribed to economists by those who employ them, who fund their institutions, who make sure the
right kind of economic education is started in elementary schools and beyond, etc. In this
view, critiquing the competence of epidemiologists is merely a tactic in servicing the
constitutency that desires a different policy.
The OP has vehemently asserted however such a view of the academy is criminal. And that it
is the first priority of all decent people to fight such imitations of thought. The OP is as
one with Jason Brennan on this, despite a trifling disagreement over manners or the lack of.
Nonetheless I suggest the variation in economists in their distaste for epidemiologists roughly
coincides with the variation in what kind of service they're selling and in the constituency
they sell too. A Hanson who sells a radical critique of humanity will tack a different tack
than another economist.
"(3) The theory that economists and epidemiologists have different motivations or values
both disciplines have likely systematic biases towards one notion of the broader welfare rather
than another." This says that the economists are driven solely by disinterested commitments to
independently chosen values and that particular interests have no role whatsoever. This says it
is not even conceivable some aggressive economists are attacking epidemologists' competence to
help sell the pre-determined policy -- predetermined by those who will benefit monetarily by it
and who have the power to rule not formally guaranteed (and strenuously denied) to make policy
independent from mere elections -- of reopening the economy no matter what.
"(4) The theory that epidemiology challenges the basic ideological presuppositions of (some)
economists The externalities of people's actions during coronavirus are extremely high, and the
prospect of decentralized solutions for those externalities extremely low." This is a plea for
the golden mean, maybe? The assumption that sophisticated von Hayek should be taken seriously
strikes me as doubtful. (And, no, I'm not too sure about Coase either.)
So it seems to me the problem of why some economists and fellow travelers like Brennan are
aggressively impugning the competence of epidemiologists is because it helps promote favored
policies of inaction. That is, that it's not much of a problem. The problem is why such
transparent nonsense isn't dismissed for what it is. The OP's herculean diplomacy seems to me
to deny this is a problem at all.
I never thought I'd see the day when publicly wearing a muzzle would constitute a proof of
virtue in the same country whose government, less than twenty years ago, rationalized the
bloody invasion of Afghanistan as a way of saving
women from
veiling their faces .
But then, I never thought I'd hear American liberals proudly denounce supporters of the US
Constitution as a "death cult,"
nor that I'd actually start to find Donald Trump sounding almost reasonable.
But at least there's one thing we can all be sure about: "mainstream" news media, busily
cheerleading for the death of freedom, will continue to gush with absurdities,
self-contradictions and victim-shaming memes in their propaganda war to Keep America Gagged.
The Bill of Rights (in case you haven't noticed) is history; today, we demonstrate our
patriotism by creeping around hiding our faces. Dissenters need not apply.
If you think I'm exaggerating, I suspect you haven't been paying attention. 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.
I could have saved myself the trouble. During the hour in question, I learned nothing at all
about the presidential election campaign (now in its final months), nothing about the
tens of millions of my fellow citizens whose jobs have been snatched away by government
fiat, nothing about climate change, nuclear arms buildups, international refugees or growing
worldwide poverty – nothing even about the intensification
of air and water pollution authorized by recent federal regulation, although pollution
kills an estimated
100,000 Americans every year .
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; that this "deadly" virus (the word "deadly" was repeated obsessively, even though
the disease is fatal in a tiny percentage of cases) has been empowered by a conspiracy of
Republican politicians serving the arch-demon Donald Trump; that recent data showing the rapid
decline in deaths attributable to the virus may have been faked, because the numbers aren't
what the "experts" want them to be; and that a massive increase in COVID19 tests –
primarily among people between 20 and 40 years of age who are subjected to swabbing because
their employers demand it, not because they're in any danger – cannot possibly have
anything to do with a rise in the number of reported infections, and that anyone who dares to
suggest otherwise is "putting lives at risk."
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.
I waited in vain for some mention of the fact that every single order requiring the wearing
of muzzles in the US is
probably unconstitutional , a matter that National Public Radio – which once prided
itself on its legal affairs reporting – might have been expected to care about.
No, facts would only have complicated matters. After all, we already knew what good little
boys and girls were expected to do with those muzzles. At the close of each weather forecast,
just in case anyone had missed the point, the reporter said cheerily, "And when you go out
– put on a mask." "And drink milk with every meal," I half expected him to add, but I
guess self-conscious condescension would have spoiled the effect.
Put on a mask.
In well over half a century, I cannot remember a weather report that ended with a brisk
piece of non-meteorological advice, let alone a patently silly one – after all, if these
magical masks were to make any difference, their greatest usefulness would have been at the
beginning of the outbreak, not on its heels.
Yet throughout March, while police-state fever prompted the suspension of democracy in
some 40 states and most of the US population was being hustled into virtual house arrest,
the pro-incarceration crowd's loudest voices unanimously insisted that masks were of no
practical value.
[t]here'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."
That was how things stood when the epidemic was new and all stops were out. And now?
Contemplating the lockdown-lovers' belated fetish for surgical gear, one can only imagine the
US Navy ceremoniously issuing an air-raid warning at Pearl Harbor a hundred days or so after
the Japanese attack had wiped out much of the fleet.
But you've got to hand it to the mask-maniacs. No matter how many of their excuses for
muzzling the population go the way of the Great Auk, they keep the new ones tumbling out so
fast you can hardly keep track.
Here's one peddled on
July 14 in the Los Angeles Times : even though the masks won't really prevent infection,
they may reduce the amount of the virus you breathe in – that is, just in case you happen
to come across an infected person who somehow manages to breathe into your (masked) face from a
very short distance and for an extended period. (No one cited in the article bothers to discuss
how often such a scenario is likely to occur.) According to a Dr. Monica Gandhi:
[t]here is this theory that facial masking reduces disease severity."
In other words, you'll get COVID19 with or without a mask, but the effects will probably be
milder if you muffle your face.
But wait a minute – even if "this theory" is correct (note that it contradicts
everything the propagandists have been telling us about masks for the last three months),
wasn't it always the case that the overwhelming majority of those who catch COVID19 have very
mild symptoms, or no symptoms at all?
So what's the big advantage of the mask? The article is silent on that point – and Dr.
Gandhi herself ultimately admits that her "theory" remains unproven. But that doesn't stop the
Times from lambasting a few local California officials who have raised inconvenient questions
about mandatory muzzling.
"This anti-mask rhetoric is mind-blowing, dangerous, deadly and polarizing," the article
quotes Dr. Peter Chin-Hong as responding. Why? Because masks prevent infection? No. Because
they save lives? No. Criticizing the muzzle mandate is "deadly" because – wait for it
– because:
[t]here is no evidence that [wearing a mask] is dangerous."
Well, actually, there is such evidence; Anthony Fauci admitted as much to 60 Minutes in
March.
But the main problem with this retort is that it misses the point: people are being forced
to mask their faces in public without any evidence that it's dangerous not to.
Dr. Chin-Hong's implicit confession that this is so knocks the stuffing out of the mandate
– and the Times' rationale. But to say so openly is "dangerous, deadly [there's that
favorite adjective again] and polarizing." It's no accident that the symbol of submission
currently in vogue is one that covers the mouth. The real message of the mask-maniacs is that
we have no right to say what we think.
And speaking of "polarizing," what about the personal viciousness to which mask-mania so
frequently descends? I have lost track of the number of videos circulated by so-called news
outlets that depict frustrated shoppers losing their cool over being forced to dress like
mummies.
Apparently this is supposed to be cute – as in, "Get a load of that stupid,
Trump-supporting bitch having a public meltdown." Myself, I feel sorry for these people; I
share their exasperation, and I empathize with them over the invasion of their privacy.
As for the propagandists who peddle Schadenfreude in support of governors-turned-dictators
– I indict them as heartless hypocrites, who claim to value our collective welfare and
prove it by publicly humiliating their victims. Would they take similar pleasure, I wonder, in
mocking the reaction of a black shopper who'd just been called "nigger"?
And it gets worse. In the upside-down world of COVID19 media values, even death is no
protection from victim-shaming. Recently, American news organizations "reported" the death of an
Ohio man who had the misfortune to die on July 4 of what they gleefully called
"complications of COVID-19."
More than two months earlier, the victim had posted a comment on social media saying he
wasn't going to "buy a mask." The articles – which even named the deceased (a combat
veteran) – practically salivated over the fact that he had had the audacity to go to a
swimming pool in mid-June, where he may have contracted the virus. You see? screamed the
reporters' moralizing subtext. The maskless, self-indulgent right-wing bastard got what he
deserved!
Just for the record, let me note that there are a number of things we don't know. We don't
know whether the poor man actually wore a mask or not. (He wrote in late April that he didn't
intend to buy one, but that's really not the same thing.) We don't know how he actually caught
the virus. We don't know whether he could have been saved with better treatment; it's even
possible he waited too long to seek medical help.
Given his youth and the apparently lightning pace of his descent into serious illness, his
death from COVID19 is so highly unusual that its medical significance amounts to another thing
we don't know.
Most important, we don't know whether wearing or not wearing a mask had anything at all to
do with his death. (If he was infected while at a swimming pool, I doubt even the mask-maniacs
would insist that he should have worn it in the water.)
What we do know is that he was targeted for savage personal attacks after he died, first on
social media and now in the press.
"[P]eople have come out of the woodworks, posting nasty, hateful comments about a man they
knew nothing about," one of his friends has said. "Most of it crossed the line into harassment.
When reported to Facebook, nothing was taken down nor was there ANY action taken," he added,
while "[t]hose that defended [him] faced consequences from Facebook in way of bans."
Well, at least the pattern of the propaganda makes sense, in a way: slander the
nonconformist and you can get away with murder; defend him, you're silenced.
Even the New York Times' resident faux progressive, Michelle Goldberg, has taken up the cry.
Another "Trump fan," she sniffed on July
14 , has become a "macabre cliché" by dying of a disease she blames him for
contracting.
I wonder whether Ms. Goldberg would be smirking about a woman who was raped some two months
after posting a comment to the effect that "I'll go wherever I want and dress however I like."
My guess is that the analogy hasn't occurred to her; she knows her job, and it's about
propaganda, not consistency.
And the propaganda's bottom line is as clear as it is grim. Forget about your personal
liberties. Forget about the democracy you thought you were living in. The mask – the
symbol of fear, of arbitrary rule, of the abolition of normal social life, of voiceless
submission – isn't going away any time soon.
It's clear that we are having a significant resurgence of cases in the summer, and they'll
get bigger. And it'll keep going until we lock things down again. "
And how long before the cycle of incarceration really ends? "[S]everal years," Toner says
blandly, adding the sinister afterthought that people who resist being muzzled "will get over
it. It's just a question of how many people get sick and die before they get over it."
Makes you feel kind of warm and protected, doesn't it? Thank heaven people like Toner know
our needs so much better than we do.
The media ubiquity of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security is another ominous
feature of the current wave of propaganda.
Last October, the Center ran a coronavirus pandemic "simulation"
in New York City – cosponsored by the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation – for an assembly of powerful people in business and government, after which
its members
openly speculated about the possible need for "censoring social media content" on the
theory that "[m]isinformation and disinformation are likely to be serious threats during a
public health emergency."
These facts obviously bear on the organization's motives and credibility, at the very least.
But you won't hear them mentioned when the Center's data are repeated as fact in mainstream
media, nor when its members assure us that if we don't wear masks for the next two years we'll
all drop dead.
Is it unreasonable to hope that reporters might want to explore why "health security" is
presumed to entail censorship? Or whether the huge investment of the Gates Foundation in
vaccine development has any influence on its partner organization's bleak predictions for
escaping the coronavirus without a new vaccine? Or whether, having insisted first on
devastating lockdowns and now on worthless face masks, the Center will use its political
leverage to demand mandatory vaccination when the time comes?
Professor Lawrence Gostin is another worrisome presence in the media, including Michelle
Goldberg's recent sanctimonious outburst in the New York Times – where, pretending to
describe the consequences of the virus, she catalogs the devastation of the lockdowns
instead:
[A] record 5.4
million people lost their health insurance between February and May. A generation of
American kids will have their educations derailed, and many parents who don't lose their jobs
due to the economic crisis will see their
careers ruined by the demands of child care
[ ]
The psychological consequences alone will be incalculable. Even before the coronavirus,
researchers spoke of loneliness as its own epidemic in America. A
March article in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry attributed 162,000 deaths a year to
the fallout of social isolation. Now people are being told that they can socialize only under
the most stringent conditions. Much of what makes life sweet is lost to us, not for days or
weeks, but months or years.
As I said, this is a chillingly accurate summary of the consequences of the mass
incarceration foisted on us by more than 40 state governors, most of them Democrats, beginning
in early March – when each one, with a unilateral declaration of a "health emergency,"
seized quasi-dictatorial powers, shunted aside the Constitution and bankrupted the citizenry.
Those "emergency" powers have not been relinquished to this day.
But neither Goldberg nor her hero, Professor Gostin, offers a single word of criticism for
any of those governors, and certainly not for the Democratic Party leadership that has backed
this democracy-destroying, economy-wrecking madness at every step. For them, everything is the
exclusive fault of one man: Donald Trump.
Coming from Goldberg, that might be just another election-year screed against an incumbent
the Times dislikes. But what about Gostin? Well, although Goldberg never mentions it, Professor
Gostin just happens to be the author of the model version of the Emergency Health Powers
Act , the adoption of which in all fifty states (if in somewhat different versions) made
possible the coup the governors pulled off by claiming "emergencies" several months ago.
It's worth remembering that Gostin's proposed bill was sharply criticized by the American
Civil Liberties Union back in 2001 as "replete with civil liberties problems" and "a throwback
to a time before the legal system recognized basic protections for fairness."
In fact, some of its specific objections to the EHPA deserve quoting at length, in light of
where the Act's reckless application has brought us today:
It fails to include basic checks and balances. The Act would grant extraordinary
emergency powers, but that kind of authority should never go unchecked. Public health
authorities make mistakes, and politicians abuse their powers The lack of checks and
balances could have serious consequences for individuals' freedom, privacy, and equality.
The Act lets a governor declare a state of emergency unilaterally and without judicial
oversight, fails to provide modern due process procedures for quarantine and other
emergency powers and contains no checks on the power to order forced treatment and
vaccination.
It goes well beyond bioterrorism. The act includes an overbroad definition of "public
health emergency" that clearly do[es] not justify quarantine, forced treatment, or any of
the other broad emergency authorities that would be granted under the Act.
It lacks privacy protections. The Act requires the disclosure of massive amounts of
personally identifiable health information to public health authorities, without requiring
basic privacy protections and fair information practices . That not only threatens to
violate individuals' medical privacy but undermines public trust in government
activities.
It's not hard to see why Ms. Goldberg is reluctant to give us the accurate back story for
her star witness. The ACLU's list of warnings about the potential abuses of the law Gostin
drafted is a near-perfect précis of what has actually happened: unilateral declarations
of an "emergency," state by state, where none really existed; the seizure by each governor of
almost unlimited power to order quarantines and forced vaccinations; the elimination of "due
process" restrictions on mass confinement; the dismantling of privacy protections along with
basic rights.
I don't intend to sing the praises of the ACLU, which – like so many other liberal
institutions in the US – has been missing in action since the actual coup began last
March. But no one can deny the prescience of its critique. And Goldberg knows her readers
aren't stupid: once they are aware of the role Gostin played in orchestrating the overthrow of
their freedoms, they're not likely to grant him the pied piper status Goldberg wants him to
have.
Why does she cite Gostin? First, to "prove" – like Eric Toner in another context
– that the COVID19 outbreak, the current excuse for the denial of our liberties, will
last another two years; amazingly, Goldberg claims this while insisting simultaneously that the
same outbreak is practically over in New Zealand, Taiwan and Italy after just a few months.
But she also needs him to explain, albeit in somewhat indirect language, why democracy isn't
good for us.
According to Gostin, the coronavirus has proved that "health system capacity alone is almost
useless unless you have a government that can unleash that capacity promptly and consistently."
Obviously, we can't do that if we have to bother with pesky constraints like representative
government or the public will. And from Gostin's perspective, we've been dabbling in the
utopianism of democracy for too long as it is: "It's going to take several years for us to be
able to come out of all of the trauma that we've had," he warns.
And I think that suggests the real message Goldberg and the other propagandists are keen on
peddling. They didn't do this to us. It's not that we've been lied to and illegally confined.
It's not that our state executives have defied their oaths of office. It's not that their media
mouthpieces have offered us one swindle after another: lockdowns, business closings, job
losses, muzzling, scare-mongering, the destruction (as Goldberg herself admits) of "much of
what makes life sweet" – theater, cinema, public discussion, time shared with
friends.
The problem is us. We've been clinging to dreams of freedom – and that will cost us.
The lockdown-lovers are going to punish us for our wrongheaded attachment to notions of
individual rights, and they will punish us still more for continuing recalcitrance. But note
this: they can only get away with it by selling us one more lie – namely, that what
they're doing to us is really the work of a disease beyond anyone's control.
"The coronavirus is a natural disaster," Goldberg writes.
No, it isn't.
The coronavirus is just another flu. The real disaster has been the work of human beings.
Resisting it must be, too.
I once thought the whole thing was a Big-Pharma scam to grab a shitload of cash. But Big
Pharma – I don't think – would have engineered it to start in China, and it's not
made-up;
"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.
"errors in Florida virus positivity report: ... actual rate much lower" Wash
Examiner
"The investigation into data from the Florida Department of Health, conducted by Fox 35 News , showed labs reporting a 100% positivity rate in testing,
meaning that every single person who was tested was positive for the coronavirus. Several other
labs had high positivity rates upward of 80%.
One hospital, Orlando Health, responded to the investigation and confirmed that the report
is inaccurate, saying that its positivity rate was 9.4% and not 98% as the report stated.
Another hospital, Orlando Veteran's Medical Center, is listed in the report with a
positivity rate of 76%, but the hospital says the actual number was 6%." Washington
Examiner
------------
Evidently there are over 300 facilities in Florida that have been reporting wildly
exaggerated positivity rates on COVID-19 testing. This seems to have occurred because of
guidance given by the state medical department that was just blindly, madly ignorant as to how
to do arithmetic, not calculus - arithmetic. Hey, Florida medical bureaucrats, how about the
idea of having a few other people check your work product for accuracy before you issue
guidance?
The Democrats, devoid of conscience when power is at stake, are having a wonderful time
using worthless numbers from all over the country in their propaganda. In fact the only numbers
that matter are the death and the hospitalization rates. Even these must be looked at carefully
to know if deaths are falsely being attributed to COVID-19 and if people are being hospitalized
with mild illnesses. pl
The elderly account for the majority of COVID-19 deaths. It was reported in USA
Today a few months ago that Medicare reimbursement for pneumonia, a major cause of death,
is $5,000. IF COVID-19 is claimed as the cause of death, Medicare reimburses $13,000. I
wonder how many hospital administrators are opting for more than 2.5X the Medicare
reimbursement by stating the official causes of death are the virus, especially when a
positive COVID test result apparently isn't required and/or if COVID isn't the primary cause
of death?
If these medical math idiots keep this up here in Florida I hope they are ready to cook
their own meals 24/7 cause they are wrecking havoc on our restaurants, not to mention the
lost incomes these hard working restaurant folks are experiencing.
At least our county, Charlotte, voted yesterday to no mandatory mask wearing.
This is woke war, just like with little miss SJW who sabatagued Florida's Covid-19
dashboard. Some folks should go to jail for fraud, but we only fine and jail people for going
to the beach now.
I don't think this is a DNC conspiracy. This is a S. Florida thing.
Medical fraud is crazy high there. Scammers have used the cover of Florida's older
demographic to bill state/federal authorities for services/products neither requested nor
rendered for years, perhaps decades. My mother received a call from someone to confirm she
would be receiving a medical machine in the 90s. Recently my father told me about two friends
who waited over two hours to get tested. They got fed up and left, but not before they signed
a form with their information. They received a call about a week later informing them they
tested positive. Apparently testers are getting a nice government refund for their
services.
I don't think Japan shut down their economy and they have had minimal cases/deaths due to
their habit of wearing masks. The Colorado governor is right if you don't have a medical
reason to not wear a mask.
From BBC 2018: it was sent to me by another friend and is interesting. Most probably, that
epidemic completely passed you by. And yet: There were around 50,100 excess winter deaths in
England and Wales in 2017-18 -- the highest since the winter of 1975-76, figures from the
Office for National Statistics show.
Thank goodness NY,NJ,MI and all the other states are fraud free. The Japanese did not
start wearing masks because of corona viruses. Try tuberculous and its history in the
islands.
AkaPatience has it right. There are financial incentives to hospitals to include even a
presumed diagnosis of CV-19. There are also financial incentives to cities and states to
maximize case and death counts. CDC guidelines are wide open for a loose "interpretation" of
what constitutes a CV-19 death. Those of us who actually look at the real data with the
mission of understanding big insurance bottom lines (vents, ICU, etc. are very expensive
encounters) see that a substantial proportion of CV-19 attributed hospitalizations and deaths
are actually due to other causes and the CV-19 was either "presumed" or was present, but not
the primary cause (e.g heart attack in a person with a history of cardiac issues).
When we look at the so called "excess deaths" across the country we are not seeing a CV-19
driven phenomenon. Looking at CV-19 in isolated geographies, such as New York City, there was
a small effect, but that has stopped. More importantly, when we look at years of life lost,
we are not seeing anything of note, even in NYC; meaning that the deceased are people that
were expected to be deceased within 12 months CV-19 or no CV-19 - though, admittedly, that
picture won't be 100% clear until a retrospective assessment next year.
An iconoclastic take on the pandemic, and the measures taken to contain it
Some of the statements may be disputed today (this article was published about 4 weeks
ago: see below), but many of the points made still stand. The author is scathing about the
data and the science, and their misuse. He makes a number of obvious points about the use of
[faulty] masks, among other things. Regarding children, I am not sure it is as clear-cut as
he presents the facts to be.
No doubt this will be debated for many years to come, as it takes 10 to 15 years --
perhaps longer -- to get over the economic shock suffered since March 2020!
Out of curiosity, I have compiled a few figures, below, with countries that did not take
drastic lockdown measures (eg: Sweden), and those that did, but a bit late (eg: France), and
finally those that took them early on (eg: Vietnam). If you look at Sweden, the ratio with
France is about 1 to 6, which mirrors the population figures (10m Swedes Vs 67m French
people, and 5,500 dead in Sweden Vs 30,000 dead in France). In other words, the French had a
complete lockdown and the Swedes did not, but the figures are comparable: on that basis, the
Swedes were right and the French were wrong. But if you look at Vietnam -- an extreme case
(of success) -- you have close to 100m people and zero deaths.
My conclusion would be that draconian measures early on work, but they may not be a
complete and general lockdown of the entire population (as done in the UK for 4 months or
so); it may be the quarantine of sick people (or suspected cases) with systematic contact
tracing. But what is for sure is that a complete lockdown introduced too late (eg: UK and to
a lesser extent France, Italy and Spain) is of little benefit.
The UK, thus, had the worst outcome: a complete lockdown that was introduced 10 to 20 days
too late at least, and a huge shock to the economy, with 50,000 dead, which is a sad record
in Europe.
Germany is a mixed model up to a point, and has done far better than France or the UK,
maybe because measures were taken earlier, and also the health-care system is better
resourced and more resilient (c.9,000 dead out of >80 m people).
___________________________
Sweden
Coronavirus Cases:
75,826
Deaths:
5,536
Population 10.25 m
Israel
Coronavirus Cases:
41,235
Deaths:
368
Recovered:
19,474
Pop.: 8.9 m
There was a report of COVID-19 in Barcelona back in March of 2019.
This would mean the number of infected people is far, far higher, hence the relative death
rate must be far, far lower.
Furthermore, we could be encountering different variants of the virus at different time
periods and places.
It could be that the variant in Vietnam was different than the one in Wuhan or in
Italy.
Furthermore, different races could have, collectively, different responses to the same
pathogen; measles is not as deadly among Near Eastern children as among the Nordic children -
for example.
Lesly,
You are absolutely correct. Florida is a fraud outlier. There was so much fraud on ACA
insurance that at least one major insurance company will no longer offer ACA products in some
of the more populous zip codes. A lot of the fraud was involving narcotics prescriptions and
drug rehab centers (massive), but there was a wide variety of other forms of fraud as well. I
hear the same from the Medicare Advantage teams.
Losing around forty thousand men killed and wounded in a single day, many of whom would
succumb to their wounds or freeze to death shortly was not uncommon during WWI or WWII.
They tried to defend their country, the economy, etc.
There too many despicable cowards now. Especially among jingoistic US politicians.
Jun 22, 2020 CELEBRATED SCIENTIST: '80% NOT SUSCEPTIBLE TO COVID"
Named the "most influential" brain scientist of our time, Dr. Karl Friston, made waves
when he published his study mapping the real susceptibility of contracting Coronavirus. His
results are staggering and challenge the rationale for a lockdown like no other.
Jun 15, 2020 The Collapse of the COVID-1984 Narrative
Now that the major institutions pushing the COVID panic are now admitting that the virus
is not an existential threat and the lockdowns were not necessary, what does this mean for
the future of the COVID-1984 police state and the ushering in of the new "biosecurity"
paradigm?
"... Several nurses, e.g. in New York City, described an oftentimes fatal medical mismanagement of Covid patients due to questionable financial incentives or inappropriate medical protocols. ..."
"From an alleged media research and review organization: Trust, but verify. COVID-19 - what
we now know today Overview According to the latest immunological and serological studies, the
overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) is about 0.1% and thus in the range of a strong seasonal
influenza (flu). In countries like the US, the UK, and also Sweden (without a lockdown),
overall mortality since the beginning of the year is in the range of a strong influenza season;
in countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, overall mortality is in the range of a mild
influenza season. Even in global "hotspots", the risk of death for the general population of
school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was
initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into
account. Up to 80% of all test-positive persons remain symptom-free.
Even among 70-79 year
olds, about 60% remain symptom-free. Over 95% of all persons develop at most moderate symptoms.
Up to 60% of all persons may already have a certain cellular background immunity to Covid19 due
to contact with previous coronaviruses (i.e. common cold viruses).
The median or average age of
the deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years and only about 4% of the
deceased had no serious preconditions. The age and risk profile of deaths thus essentially
corresponds to normal mortality. In many countries, up to two thirds of all extra deaths
occurred in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general lockdown. Moreover, in many
cases it is not clear whether these people really died from Covid19 or from weeks of extreme
stress and isolation. Up to 30% of all additional deaths may have been caused not by Covid19,
but by the effects of the lockdown, panic and fear. For example, the treatment of heart attacks
and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients no longer dared to go to hospital.
Even in so-called "Covid19 deaths" it is often not clear whether they died from or with
coronavirus (i.e. from underlying diseases) or if they were counted as "presumed cases" and not
tested at all. However, official figures usually do not reflect this distinction. Many media
reports of young and healthy people dying from Covid19 turned out to be false: many of these
young people either did not die from Covid19, they had already been seriously ill (e.g. from
undiagnosed leukaemia), or they were in fact 109 instead of 9 years old. T
he claimed increase
in Kawasaki disease in children also turned out to be false. Strong increases in regional
mortality can occur if there is a collapse in the care of the elderly and sick as a result of
infection or panic, or if there are additional risk factors such as severe air pollution.
Questionable regulations for dealing with the deceased sometimes led to additional bottlenecks
in funeral or cremation services. In countries such as Italy and Spain, and to some extent the
UK and the US, hospital overloads due to strong flu waves are not unusual.
Moreover, this year
up to 15% of health care workers were put into quarantine, even if they developed no symptoms.
The often shown exponential curves of "corona cases" are misleading, as the number of tests
also increased exponentially. In most countries, the ratio of positive tests to tests overall
(i.e. the positive rate) remained constant at 5% to 25% or increased only slightly. In many
countries, the peak of the spread was already reached well before the lockdown.
Countries
without curfews and contact bans, such as Japan, South Korea, Belarus or Sweden, have not
experienced a more negative course of events than other countries. Sweden was even praised by
the WHO and now benefits from higher immunity compared to lockdown countries.
The fear of a
shortage of ventilators was unjustified. According to lung specialists, the invasive
ventilation (intubation) of Covid19 patients, which is partly done out of fear of spreading the
virus, is in fact often counterproductive and damaging to the lungs.
Contrary to original
assumptions, various studies have shown that there is no evidence of the virus spreading
through aerosols (i.e. tiny particles floating in the air) or through smear infections (e.g. on
door handles or smartphones). The main modes of transmission are direct contact and droplets
produced when coughing or sneezing.
There is also no scientific evidence for the effectiveness
of face masks in healthy or asymptomatic individuals. On the contrary, experts warn that such
masks interfere with normal breathing and may become "germ carriers". Leading doctors called
them a "media hype" and "ridiculous". Many clinics in Europe and the US remained strongly
underutilized or almost empty during the Covid19 peak and in some cases had to send staff home.
Millions of surgeries and therapies were cancelled, including many cancer screenings and organ
transplants. Several media were caught trying to dramatize the situation in hospitals,
sometimes even with manipulative images and videos. In general, the unprofessional reporting of
many media maximized fear and panic in the population. The virus test kits used internationally
are prone to errors and can produce false positive and false negative results. Moreover, the
official virus test was not clinically validated due to time pressure and may sometimes react
positive to other coronaviruses.
Numerous internationally renowned experts in the fields of
virology, immunology and epidemiology consider the measures taken to be counterproductive and
recommend rapid natural immunisation of the general population and protection of risk groups.
At no time was there a medical reason for the closure of schools, as the risk of disease and
transmission in children is extremely low.
There is also no medical reason for small classes,
masks or 'social distancing' rules in schools. The claim that only (severe) Covid-19 but not
influenza may cause venous thrombosis and pulmonary (lung) embolism is not true, as it has been
known for 50 years that severe influenza greatly increases the risk of thrombosis and embolism,
too. Several medical experts described express coronavirus vaccines as unnecessary or even
dangerous. Indeed, the vaccine against the so-called swine flu of 2009, for example, led to
sometimes severe neurological damage and lawsuits in the millions. In the testing of new
coronavirus vaccines, too, serious complications and failures have already occurred.
A global
influenza or corona pandemic can indeed extend over several seasons, but many studies of a
"second wave" are based on very unrealistic assumptions, such as a constant risk of illness and
death across all age groups. Several nurses, e.g. in New York City, described an oftentimes
fatal medical mismanagement of Covid patients due to questionable financial
incentives or inappropriate medical protocols.
The number of people suffering from
unemployment, depressions and domestic violence as a result of the measures has reached
historic record values. Several experts predict that the measures will claim far more lives
than the virus itself. According to the UN 1.6 billion people around the world are at immediate
risk of losing their livelihood.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that the "corona
crisis" will be used for the permanent expansion of global surveillance. Renowned virologist
Pablo Goldschmidt spoke of a "global media terror" and "totalitarian measures".
Leading British
virologist Professor John Oxford spoke of a "media epidemic". More than 600 scientists have
warned of an "unprecedented surveillance of society" through problematic apps for "contact
tracing". In some countries, such "contact tracing" is already carried out directly by the
secret service. In several parts of the world, the population is already being monitored by
drones and facing serious police overreach. A 2019 WHO study on public health measures against
pandemic influenza found that from a medical perspective, "contact tracing" is "not recommended
in any circumstances". Nevertheless, contact tracing apps have already become partially
mandatory in several countries." Deap
"an alleged media research and review organization" Who? I have been doing fatality % for
Virginia and Alexandria on a daily basis, the number is consistently .02% on a developing
cumulative basis. Hey, folks, suck it up! Move on!
If this is "alleged" then why should I trust it? Anybody can write anything on the Internet
and make it sound official.
This item sounds suspect, for example:
"Several medical experts described express coronavirus vaccines as unnecessary or even
dangerous. Indeed, the vaccine against the so-called swine flu of 2009, for example, led to
sometimes severe neurological damage and lawsuits in the millions. In the testing of new
coronavirus vaccines, too, serious complications and failures have already occurred."
I thought we were eagerly awaiting a good vaccine. Just because developing and using a
vaccine is not without risk and disappointment is no reason to jump to the conclusion that we
should stop attempting to get an effective vaccine. If the swine flu vaccine of 2009 had been
that prolematic the damage suits would have amounted in the multi-billions, not the
millions.
As for your post, it completely misses the main point, even if you are correct about the
mildness of the infection; that is the logistical consequences of millions of sick people :
(a) not turning up for work, and (b) swamping and breaking the medical infrastructure.
You need to understand that we have only 8.5 million cases and 400,000 deaths according to
WHO. World population is over 5 billion. You fail to understand the potential scale of this
thing.
To put it another way; we are dealing with a small grassfire at present. The forest is as
yet unbutton and unprotected.
There is a lot wrong with this article. A lot of vague, unsupported, and false statements, no
links or anything. "Experts", "Leading doctors", etc., again, who are the people saying these
things and what are their credentials? I won't go into all of it since that would be too
long, but I'll address one thing.
Regarding mortality rate, the statement "latest immunological and serological studies, the
overall lethality of Covid-19 (IFR) is about 0.1%" is utter nonsense. Immunological and
serological studies are not used to determine lethality, they look at antibody formation and
corresponding viral load.
0.1% number is just made up, current US death rate is 0.035% vs. overall population (so
120,000 deaths over 340 million people), Europe is slightly higher at 0.045%. For comparison,
typical flu season is much less severe, it's 0.01% vs. overall population, bad flu season is
0.02%. So, this is already twice as bad as the worst flu seasons, and it still has ways to
go.
And yes, there is a discussion to be had on how deaths are attributed (COVID-caused vs.
COVID-incidental), but that cuts both ways. Many people likely died before they were tested,
especially amongst the older population.
There is considerable information presented, much of which I have not seen before. Key
statements should have footnotes directing us to source material. Without references this is
mostly hearsay.
The content of this article is a cut and paste from a disreputable "swiss policy research
institute" that has no credentials. While the original article has links, they lead to more
hearsay.
What is different now: cause of death as COVID-19 are affixed to death certificates when
there is no actual medical confirmation.
The CDC sent out a letter to the "medical community" months ago, to record deaths with
COVID-19 when it might be, or could be, or someone feels it was, etc., along with when it is
actually verified as the primary cause, and of course when it was present but not necessarily
a cause of the cause of death.
It will take a while to sort this out, if it ever is sorted out. Until then, death rates
are inaccurate for this disease, period.
The CDC's action/recommendation was and is very controversial, yet media hyenas rarely
discuss it as their agenda is what it is.
For those wo are interested, the IFR (the mortality rate for those who have antibodies) has
been measured or calculated in 60+ papers. They are listed here below with links to the
original papers
a mortality of 0.3% is a very strong flu, like 1957 or 1968. However, we will never know
the "true" mortality since so many states forced nursing homes to take in covid patients,
creating artificially high mortality compared to other years.
Also please see Ref. 25 in the following link, a letter sent to Merkel by two german
doctors. No one with good vitamin D dies.
Deap,
Ioannidis, who has long been the most skeptical of Covid-19's seriousness, just published an
analysis of IFR from a large number of countries.
However, it's already killed .16% of all the residents of New York State. So the IFR there
is at least .16% and that would require all of NY had been infected. Serologic studies show
less than 20% have been infected. Most in the City with much fewer in outlying areas.
IFR varies considerably between countries and regions. For instance it's lower in Calif
(0.2% ish). than New York (> .6% ish). Ioannidis lists the median (not mean which is
higher) IFR as .26%.
This is indeed evidence that something, aside from the well known age and co-morbidities,
strongly affects the lethality of Covid-19. It may be vitamin D deficiency, or partial
cross-immunity from corona virus that cause a portion of common colds. And that likely means
places like NY have higher IFRs than most other places.
On the other hand lots of places like Fla. are opening up. Young people are crowding the
bars and the positive test numbers are spiking to record levels. Since they are young they
are very unlikely to die or even get seriously ill. And deaths are not increasing. At least
for now. And I don't expect deaths in Fla. to be anywhere near NY.
I keep having this nagging thought at the back of my mind, and it is elegent in its
simplicity: those nations which insisted in taking this seriously from the very beginning
have done very well, with few deaths, and are now resuming "normal services" while keeping
the rest of the world at arms length.
While those countries that essentially shrugged their shoulders and took half-measures are
still struggling with no end in sight.
How odd, hey?
Yet I read this article and it reads for all the world like Deap has concluded that the
latter group erred by being too harsh, not in being too slack.
I live in a country with roughly 1/10th of the USA's population, and it has had less than
1/100th the number of deaths. And it is coming out of lockdown with nary an uptick in new
infections.
There would be very, very few people here who would conclude that Deap has the faintest
idea what he is talking about.
"The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is the ratio between confirmed deaths and confirmed cases.
During an outbreak of a pandemic the CFR is a poor measure of the mortality risk of the
disease. We explain this in detail at OurWorldInData.org/Coronavirus." *
CFR for the US on June 22nd was 5.26%. The global CFR on June 22nd was 5.25%
*Case fatality rate of COVID-19 (%) (Only observations with ≥100 cases)
Variable time span Jan 19, 2020 – Jun 22, 2020
Data published by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC)
Link https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data
Raw data on confirmed cases and deaths for all countries is sourced from the European
Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
Our complete COVID-19 dataset is a collection of the COVID-19 data maintained by Our World
in Data. It is updated daily and includes data on confirmed cases, deaths, and testing.
We have created a new description of all our data sources. You find it at our GitHub
repository here. There you can download all of our data.
The Mercury News: NB: non-peer reviewed study at time of publication
".....The risk study by Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, clinical assistant professor of primary care and
population health at Stanford, and Dr. Jeffrey Klauser, adjunct professor of epidemiology at
UCLA, looked at publicly available case incidence data for the week ending May 30 in the 100
largest U.S. counties as states began to reopen.
"The thing we are looking for is to start a discussion of risk," Bhatia said. "We're
bombarded with data on death and cases."
The study found a person in a typical medium to large U.S. county who has a single random
contact with another person has, on average, a 1 in 3,836 chance of being infected without
social distancing, hand-washing or mask-wearing.
If that sounds like a tolerable risk, consider the odds of being hospitalized. The study
found a 50-to-64-year-old person who has a single random contact has, on average, a 1 in
852,000 chance of being hospitalized or a 1 in 19.1 million chance of dying based on rates as
of the last week of May.
"We were surprised how low the relative risk was," Klausner said....."
There is an old saying I heard many years ago - I think it was from Bob Frodle, my first
boss. Don't recall the actual context of the conversation. Here it is: "Figures don't lie but
liars can figure". It is even more relevant today.
I was curious about the origin of this quotation. It's been around since at least 1854. I
particularly enjoyed this one from a little later in an 1888 article on free trade from a
Sacramento newspaper:
"It was a highly protective measure. The cry of free trade was a false one, and was
maliciously put forth by "the uncrowned king" and other Republican leaders. Figures would not
lie, but liars will figure, and were doing so in this campaign. She said that not a mill
would shut down or a hammer stop from the passage of the Mills bill. Too much money was being
made by them."
Wikipedia (I know it's easily manipulated) but you can verify this for yourself:
"Mercola's medical claims have been criticized by the medical, scientific, regulatory and
business communities. A 2006 BusinessWeek editorial stated his marketing practices relied on
"slick promotion, clever use of information, and scare tactics."[4] In 2005, 2006, and 2011,
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned Mercola and his company that they were making
illegal claims of their products' ability to detect, prevent, and treat disease.[8] The
medical watchdog site Quackwatch has criticized Mercola for making "unsubstantiated claims
[that] clash with those of leading medical and public health organizations and many
unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements."[9] Of Mercola's marketing
techniques, oncology surgeon David Gorski says it "mixes the boring, sensible health advice
with pseudoscientific advice in such a way that it's hard for someone without a medical
background to figure out which is which."[10]
The article appears to be designed to get things back to normal so the stock market doesn't
crash and portfolios of debt assets don't need to be written down from coming defaults.
I think it should be considered that we won't get the economy back unless people feel
safe.
For anyone who says it's not real and you don't need to wear a mask, I say; "you go first,
I'll hold your beer"!
Dear,
I agree with a lot of what the article says.
Regarding the increases in new cases in some states;
1. Primarily due to more testing. Most of the new cases are asymptomatic and are in people
under 40 years old. Very little threat.
2. The increase in hospitalizations in some states is a small number and is due to people who
are in the hospital for elective surgeries (big backlog after three months of no elective
surgeries permitted) and for labor and delivery. They are tested now upon being admitted.
Yes, they are in the hospital and, yes, they tested positive, but they are in the hospital
for reasons unrelated to C-19 and are asymptomatic.
The people pushing this latter statistic as evidence of a "second wave" are real scum.
IMO, they want to have the people too scared to go to the ballots so there can be vote
tampering with mail-in ballots. I have no evidence for this particular claim. It's just my
sense. Points 1 and 2 are from data.
I dunno man.i dunno.this whole thing is off.what if a second new virus,not covid 19,but uses
covid 19 antibodies as a pathway to do serious damage.a 1-2 knockout blow
Weigh that up against over population.Yes,I do believe we are all living it right now.It has
been spoken about and now 2020 it has started.
Just imagine.Todays teens living in a future world where all the whales are dead.Just bones
left in a museum.Too many people.
The Chinese and Indians went hand to hand.That will become future combat.MAD is
bad.unsustainable.Bring all the troops home,scrap the weapons.Change the rules of
engagement.knives and hand to hand combat only
Deap - I also am disappointed in the way the pandemic's been handled by most Western
countries. Walrus tells us that by late last year virologists knew something nasty was
brewing. Yet as late as mid-February of this year the responsible authority in Europe was
assuring us that there was "low risk" to the general population. I assume the Health
Authorities were asleep at the wheel in the US as well, because apart from Trump's limited
ban on China travel - and that decision, I believe, taken in defiance of the then general
consensus - the US also seems to have been late responding.
The stats tell us little when it comes to national comparisons. Sweden's sometimes
compared to other Scandinavian countries with lower death rates and this is instanced as
showing failure of the Swedish approach. But this ignores the fact that Swedish care homes
are larger than in the neighbouring countries and poorly run, so they were due for higher
death rates in any case.
In the UK there seems to be a policy of reporting cause of death as Covid when, say, that
patient was due to die of an unrelated comorbidity. I think this is correct reporting because
if I were due to die of cancer in a couple of years it'd still be Covid that killed me today,
but it means that countries that don't report deaths in the same way seem to be doing better
when they're not.
Also in the UK we worsened the death rate by sending infected patients back to care homes.
So UK comparisons don't help much in that respect either when it comes to looking at what the
best policy is.
For what they're worth the stats so far show the US not doing too badly when it comes to
deaths per million. You ought to be doing a lot worse, given the high level of international
travel and given that the conditions in the inner cities are ideal conditions for
transmission. Perhaps, therefore, there's worse to come. My uninformed guess is that there
probably is. In any case the US national stats tell us very little when it comes to making
comparisons between this or that national policy. One cannot lump an entire continent
together like that.
But the stats are going to be argued about for ever. Away from all that there are two
aspects I think are not sufficiently considered.
1. I don't accept the "let it rip because they're due to die anyway" approach. That goes
against normal principles of public health, particularly so in this case because we still
know little about the virus.
2. I don't think we've got our heads around the economic effects if no vaccine or
effective treatment turns up.
Whatever governments do the vulnerable are going to isolate anyway. I met a young woman
recently who has a condition that means if she gets Covid she dies, no question. Of course
she's going to take what precautions she can, and does.
Millions of the vulnerable are in the same boat. The UK Prime Minister is in his fifties
and nearly died of Covid. You can be quite sure that there are now plenty of the economically
active of that age and older who saw that and who will now tend to keep away from gatherings
where they might catch the disease too. The resultant changes in our patterns of consumption
and our patterns of work will be profoundly disruptive to the already tottering economies of
many Western countries.
For those two reasons I believe there's a strong argument for going all out to eradicate
the disease or to severely limit its spread. I think your view is that the crude national or
State-wide lockdowns aren't the best way to tackle the problem and that I agree with
wholeheartedly. But we should still be looking to be doing much more than we are to tackle it
and, if possible, to prevent the disease entirely
A feature of Sweden is that the politicians have very little to say in how a pandemic is
handled.
According to Swedish constitutional tradition since ca 1632 political leaders cannot
interfere with the decisions of government agencies.
So no matter what urges/fears a Swedish politician may have (in order to curry favour with
the voters). It's a technocratic decision by experts on how the situation is to be
handled.
Such a practice could very well lead to better decisions than what we have seen in many
other European countries.
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The 122,000 deaths in the US so far is conclusive evidence that COVID-19 is no ordinary flu,
which kills about 40,000 a year. And the toll will be much higher, since cases in many states
are spiking.
International Man : The Lancet recently retracted an anti-hydroxychloroquine study, which
the media had used to attack Trump.
Trump had admitted to taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against the
coronavirus. The media then went into a frenzy. The talking heads often cited The Lancet study
as proof hydroxychloroquine was dangerous.
The bottom line is that bogus research made its way -- likely deliberately -- into one of
the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. People then used this
"science" as a political weapon.
What is your take on this?
Doug Casey : I'd say the whole charade is tragic, except that "tragic" has become the most
overused word in the language today. It bears a short discussion.
Look at the recent death of a small-time career criminal, George Floyd. It's as if "tragic"
were part of his name. It's as if people no longer understand the meaning of the word. A
tragedy used to mean that a heroic protagonist succumbed to a cosmic force. There are no heroes
in the degraded melodrama, just villains, where a costumed thug murdered a street thug under
the color of law.
Sorry to go off on a tangent. But it's a timely instance of another word whose meaning has
been twisted. It's Orwellian, like so many other things in our devolving society.
Let's talk about something that's actually tragic: the corruption of science over the last
couple of generations.
I've subscribed to Scientific American , Discover, and New Scientist for many years. During
this time, I've noticed a distinct change in their respective editorial policies. They've all
been politicized, captured by the PC left. These popular magazines are nowhere near the quality
they once were. But this is just symptomatic of a bigger problem.
You might recall the 2018 hoax where three academics, disgusted with widespread incompetence
and dishonesty in research, submitted absurd "spoof" papers to twenty leading journals. They
were written in gobbledygook, full of made-up facts and flawed reasoning. But most, as I
recall, were peer-reviewed and published.
If you research the subject a bit, you come to the conclusion half the peer-reviewed papers
-- absolutely in "soft" fields like psychology, sociology, political science, race and gender
studies, etc. -- are unreadable, dishonest, useless, and pointless.
Why might this be? If an academic wants to advance in today's university system, he has to
publish research. It's Pareto's Law in action, the 80–20 rule. It's pretty reliable, 80%
of this sort of thing is crap because it's written mainly to fabricate credentials, not advance
knowledge.
This is a bad thing.
It's causing the average guy, who may not know anything about science but still has some
respect for it, to lose that respect. That's because science has become politicized.
You can see it with the conflicting information about COVID-19. Is it deadly or just another
seasonal flu? Does it affect everyone, like the black death, or mainly the old and sick? Does
almost everyone who contracts the virus get very sick or die or only a tiny percentage? Should
you quarantine or live normally?
So far, as near as I can tell, the great virus hysteria has gone from being the next black
plague to basically a big nothing. It's not nearly as bad as the Asian Flu from the 50s or the
Hong Kong Flu from the 60s. Forget about the Spanish Flu -- there's no comparison whatsoever.
The main effect of COVID isn't medical; it's the hysteria that's destroyed the economy. And
political actions are even more insane than those after 9/11.
Politics thrives on hysteria. The politicization of everything is the real problem. And it's
not just about the total disruption of society and multitrillion-dollar deficits. For instance,
I've played poker with a bunch of guys in Aspen every Monday night for years. Now, even though
the lockdown in town is easing, the group is breaking up because most of them insist that
everyone wear a mask. I won't, nor will a couple of other guys. So, between that and a few guys
who are now scared to socialize no matter what game over. It may also mean the end of a larger
Friday business lunch group I belong to that's been around for decades.
There are millions of similar small rips in the social fabric taking place everywhere now.
And they're largely justified by "the science."
The real problem is that the knock-on effects of the virus will last much, much longer than
the trivial virus itself -- which will soon burn out and be forgotten. The political, economic,
and social changes, however, will linger for years, as will attitudes toward "science."
International Man : What are the implications of people corrupting the scientific process to
launder their political propaganda to shape mainstream opinions?
Doug Casey : You might think this is a new thing, but the left, in particular -- who have
always been advocates of social engineering -- love using "science" to further their political
agenda.
The first important instance of this was Karl Marx and his notion of "scientific socialism"
-- a totally bogus idea.
Since he first promoted it over 150 years ago, the concept has become ingrained in the
culture, especially academia. People have been taught to believe there's such a thing as
"scientific socialism," and that it's not just inevitable, but desirable. In fact, it's
pseudoscience. But that's just the first example of corruption of science in modern times.
Keynesianism is another example. Keynesians believe that they can manipulate the economy as
if it were a machine.
A machine is a horrible analogy for the economy, however. It's not a machine or a factory
where you can pull levers to make magic happen -- which is precisely what the Keynesians (who
run the economic world today) think they can do.
The economy is more like a rainforest, which is very complex. It can't be manipulated from
outside by apparatchiks enforcing rules. And if you do try to manipulate a rainforest from
outside, you're likely to destroy it.
Keynesianism is a perfect example of scientism (that's the use of the vocabulary and
trappings of science for inappropriate subjects). You can see scientism used everywhere in the
humanities and "soft" sciences. This is usually to legitimize some type of state
intervention.
Sociology and psychology are basically about social engineering. They're not generally
scientific so much as scientistic. They often try to put a scientific patina on forcing people
to interact with each other in prescribed ways.
But it goes way beyond just sociology and psychology. English departments are notorious for
using leftist literary works to insinuate certain ideas in students. Economics departments use
arcane math formulas to describe human action -- pure scientism, with lots of ideological
baggage. Marx himself was primarily a historian. Many college degrees today are completely
bogus and worthless. An example? There are degrees in gender studies.
The trend is way out of control. Ridiculous scientific concepts that started with Marx are
everywhere.
The same people -- by that, I mean those with Marxist, socialist, and Keynesian outlooks --
are behind the global warming frenzy, which is full of pseudoscience, fudged numbers, and bogus
statistics.
The latest manifestation of all this, of course, is the COVID hysteria.
But behind it all is state funding of science -- Big Science. It started in earnest after
World War II.
Government funding is authorized by politicians. They make decisions for political reasons.
In order to qualify, you have to come up with results that are politically acceptable, which
itself is the best reason for not having any government funding.
But some might ask: Without the government, where would Big Science get the billions needed
for giant projects?
In fact, most of the capital that goes into scientific research from the state would still
go into science; knowledge has value. But money would be allocated economically, not
politically, thereby creating more wealth -- much more than today, when much is wasted on
politically caused boondoggles. Most government science spending is necessarily
misallocated.
The increasingly political nature of science funding has served to discredit the idea of
science itself.
International Man : The Democrats liken themselves as the so-called "Party of Science." What
do you think?
Doug Casey : It's nonsense, but it's very clever marketing on their part.
They get away with it because the Republicans are basically the party of business. And more
importantly, the people who vote Republican tend to be traditionalist and
religion-oriented.
That's a problem because scientific thinkers tend to see religion as irrelevant, dangerous,
or even laughable -- at best, as an inaccurate or bogus way to describe the world.
Democrats, on the other hand, are notoriously secular and non-religious. Coincidentally, so
are most scientists. That's resulted in some unfortunate confusion. Democrats, illogically,
seem to believe that just because they're secular, they must be scientific.
The fact is, however, that the Democrats are not the party of science.
In fact, they're the party of pseudoscience, bogus science, and scientism. Science doesn't
mix well with politics -- or religion.
But Democrats are clever marketers, linking themselves with science to differentiate
themselves from Republicans, the party of tradition and religion.
When you think about tradition and religion, it can bring to mind flat earth theories,
geocentric astronomy, Torquemada, the persecution of Galileo, and witch trials. Democrats love
to paint themselves as rational advanced thinkers and Republicans as superstitious
atavists.
Of course, religion and science have been at each other's throats forever. Another reason
I've always said the Dems are more the evil party and the Reps more the stupid party. But a pox
on both their houses
International Man : Events like this seem to be a prime reason why a growing number of
people are losing confidence in previously credible institutions and the self-anointed
"experts."
What does this mean?
Doug Casey : Tens of millions now have college degrees that they think mean something. In
fact, they're worth less than a high school diploma was before World War 2. People go on to get
PhDs, which, it's always been said, stands for "piled higher and deeper."
Especially since World War 2, government has gotten vastly bigger and involved in
everything. Huge mistake
The government's role is simple -- to protect people from coercion: protection from domestic
coercion, which implies the police force; protection from transnational coercion, which implies
an army; and providing justice within the country, which implies a judicial system.
The government shouldn't do anything else.
But since it's now involved in absolutely everything, you need "experts" to decide what's to
be done.
We see this today with people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who's nothing more than a lifelong
bureaucrat. He's lived in the swamp his entire life, and he's a typical technocrat. He believes
he knows what's best for you.
People like Fauci have assumed tremendous power over other people and the way society works.
He's a clever politician and has been effective at backslapping and backstabbing. And wheedling
his way into a high bureaucratic position. The government is full of people like him.
Another important thing about COVID is that they call it a "health crisis."
That's untrue for several reasons. First, health is something that you take care of
yourself. It's personal, not public. As wonderful and as advanced as medicine has become, it's
of little use for maintaining your health.
You maintain your health through proper diet, exercise, and good habits. Medicine is about
repairing damage if you have a serious injury or illness. It overlaps, obviously, but is
essentially very different from health care.
Anyway, COVID has been dressed up as an excuse to not just destroy the economy, but in many
ways, destroy society itself. Similar to global warming, Keynesianism, Marxism, and other forms
of scientism.
It's one of many signs of how society is degrading at an accelerating rate.
I don't know what the next massive boondoggle is going to be after this is over. You might
recall the police state pictured in the excellent movie "V for Vendetta" was brought into being
because of a fake virus epidemic. Talk about life imitating art! If things keep going in this
direction, the US will start looking like the old USSR.
International Man : Society is degrading at an accelerating pace. What can people do to
protect themselves?
Doug Casey : Unfortunately, the whole world seems to worship democracy. Democracy, however,
is really just mob rule dressed in a coat and tie. Worse, that trend is not only still in
motion, but it's accelerating.
I've always been a fan of gold -- always for savings and often as a speculation. It's been
great, and gold bugs have done very well. It's gone from $35 to over $1,700. And it's going
much higher.
It's a great way to save money and build capital over time. At the moment, I'm speculating in
gold mining stocks , which are extremely cheap. I expect the next mania to be in them.
But I don't have any political solutions for people, except to stop looking to politics as
the solution to problems. And stop acting like a bunch of chimpanzees looking for a leader.
Politics is the problem, the cause of most of today's problems. It's not the solution.
* * *
Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path
that's not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country but accelerating
quickly toward boundless decay. It's contributing to a growing wave of misguided socialist
ideas. That is precisely why NY Times best selling author, Doug Casey just released this urgent
new video titled The Most Dangerous Event of the
21st Century which outlines what comes next and what you need to do to be ready.
We do still need to worry about the coronavirus's spread. But how can we when the experts
have completely forsaken our trust? Dr. Anthony Fauci (L), director of the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases speaks next to Response coordinator for White House
Coronavirus Task Force Deborah Birx, during a meeting with US President Donald Trump and
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards D-LA in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington,
DC on April 29, 2020. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Since the pandemic began, I've been described as a so-called "COVID warrior," which makes
some sense. After all, I've defended the shutdowns of large gatherings. I've insisted that it's
wise to temporarily close churches and postpone funerals and other ceremonies. I've argued that
extreme caution is necessary -- that to do anything else would be to blatantly and selfishly
ignore the
scientific information at our disposal. I've held the opinion that, although it has caused
irrevocable harm to the economy and caused millions of people to suffer, business owners
who close up shop for fear of spreading contagion are in the right.
Now I feel like a fool.
By no means am I a coronavirus denier -- more than 100,000
and counting have died from the COVID. But with conflicting reports about everything from
wearing masks to the
spread of the virus through surfaces coming out of the World Health Organization and the
CDC almost weekly, my head is spinning. Nothing seems to make sense anymore.
For fear of spreading the virus, health experts have consistently recommended shutting down
and avoiding public spaces, including
schools ,
playgrounds ,
public pools , and
public transportation . They've also advocated for
limiting large gatherings and closing anything that might draw crowds. It's advice that's
been repeated for months -- to the point that those ignoring it have been
reviled and accused of experimenting with "
human sacrifice ."
That's because asymptomatic carriers of the virus, though they may feel all right
themselves, can become
mass spreaders of the deadly contagion, especially in large groups. This is why Michigan
residents
protesting their state's lockdown in Lansing were deserving of shame -- they likely
caused mass immiseration and sickness, right?
Wrong. Turns out, health officials didn't really believe any of that.
Just last week, the WHO
announced that it's extremely rare for asymptomatic spreading of the coronavirus to occur.
If you feel fine, then you're probably not a grave threat to anyone, especially if you're
wearing a mask and gloves. Then the WHO backtracked on that statement, ultimately arriving at
the completely unhelpful determination that "
this is a major unknown ." Health experts simply don't know to what extent the disease is
transmitted by asymptomatic carriers -- yet they
still feel confident that the risks of the coronavirus shouldn't impact our protesting of
police brutality.
One rightly wonders how, within a span of weeks, we went from shaming people for being out
in the streets to shaming those who won't join the
crowd .
What's more,
contact with infected animals and surfaces is
unlikely to cause COVID-19 to spread, and
chlorine kills the virus upon contact, so clean pools are also safe. But of course, many
schools, playgrounds, pools, and businesses were forced to close.
Livelihoods have been destroyed, children are paying a
high price through a loss of time and key social-educational development, and mental health
across the country is on
the decline .
And now some journalists from prominent publications -- the same ones that have been
demanding oh-so-extreme caution -- are performing breathtaking gymnastics in an effort to
backtrack,
explaining that there's no evidence of outdoor coronavirus spread. Now, it's "prolonged
indoor close contact" that we have to worry about.
They may be right. Maybe protesters really shouldn't worry (though they probably
should ). But that doesn't excuse what seems to be a disgusting hypocrisy that trampled on
the livelihoods of more than
30 million Americans. Understandably, many are outraged and have
lost all faith in the experts.
Health advice can't shift with politics -- COVID-19, cancer, and the flu don't know party
lines. The virus is either unmanageable or manageable. That's it.
Now, with Trump
aiming to restart his so-called "MAGA rallies," we'll inevitably have -- and
already have had -- another round of tut-tutting from the media about how horribly
irresponsible it is to gather in crowds. But who can possibly blame those who shrug these
warnings off? MAGA rallies very well could spread COVID-19, but in the event they do, the
George Floyd protests will be equally culpable. Expert credibility has been lost.
Maybe we should, as many of my more classically liberal friends have been saying all along,
allow people to make their own choices, take their own risks, open their own businesses back
up, hold their own protests against injustice.
Whatever the case, given the whiplash the public has experienced over these past few weeks,
we certainly won't be running to health experts as readily as before. Certainly, social
distancing practices have
helped flatten the curve, but living your life based on the inconsistent messaging of the
WHO and the CDC is a recipe for disaster. If a second wave does appear, it will be cautious
individuals and community innovation that provides the solutions -- not those who have done
nothing to earn our trust.
Anthony DiMauro is a freelance writer based in New York City. His work has appeared
in The National Interest , Real Clear Media, and elsewhere. You can follow him on
Twitter @AnthonyMDiMauro.
It's become a farce of historic proportions. As a general rule, the government has resisted
any demands by businesses to reduce the government's arbitrary limit from 2 metres to 1 metre .
This would have greatly helped businesses to avoid expensive health and safety compliance and
reopen this summer.
While the government and its science team dither back and forth, the economy continues to
crater, and unemployment is spiralling.
Meanwhile, scientists from the vaunted committee of experts known as 'SAGE' (Scientific
Advisory Group for Emergencies), are busy issuing warnings to ministers that the public will
need to wear masks and also 'minimise their time together' if they sit closer than 2 metres
apart.
It's already well-known by now according to real data and the experience of European
countries – that the virus was seasonal and has already 'left the building,' and that the
only demographic who were ever at any serious risk were elderly persons with chronic
comorbidities, and more specifically, those residing in care homes.
Why are UK government officials still resisting relaxing social distancing measures? Has
this become some sort of elaborate political face-saving exercise now, or is there a larger
social engineering agenda in motion?
The
two-metre rule has no basis in science, leading scientists have said as the Government
comes under increasing pressure to drop the measure.
Writing for The Telegraph , Professors Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson, from the
University of Oxford, said there is little evidence to support the restriction and called for
an end to the "formalised rules".
The University of Dundee also said there was no indication that distancing at two metres
is safer than one metre.
The intervention comes as two Government ministers suggested on Monday that the rule is
likely to be relaxed following a review commissioned by Boris Johnson, the Prime
Minister.
Examining the current evidence for the two-metre rule, Prof Heneghan and Prof Jefferson
looked at 172 studies cited in a recent review in The Lancet and found just five had dealt
explicitly with coronavirus infection in relation to distance. Only one mentioned coming
within six feet of a patient, and that paper showed proximity had no impact.
"Queueing outside shops, dodging each other once inside, and not getting too close to
other people anywhere: social-distancing has become the norm," they wrote.
"The two-metre rule, however, is also seriously impacting schools,
pubs, restaurants and our ability to go about our daily lives.
"Much of the evidence in this current outbreak informing policy is poor quality.
Encouragement and hand-washing are what we need, not formalised rules."
A University of Dundee study suggested that 78 per cent of the risk of infection happens
below one metre and there is just an 11 per cent chance of any increased distance making a
difference.
Dr Mike Lonergan, a senior statistician and epidemiologist who reviewed 25 papers compiled
for the World Health Organisation (WHO) said:
"Our conclusion is that avoiding contact is very important and that a one-metre distance
might be slightly better than just avoiding contact, but the difference is unlikely to be
much. These data give no indication that two metres is better than one metre."
The hope remains that more real science and sober analysis will continue emerging which can
hopefully influence the government to return to reality, and put the incredible COVID lockdown
debacle behind it. But can they?
"... This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible by becoming a member on our Patreon page . ..."
Since April, he has uncovered how COVID-19
came
to be a boon for the ultra-wealthy , reporting that America's billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet,
Michael Bloomberg and others, accrued more wealth in the first three weeks of the lockdown than they made in total prior to 1980.
Billionaire wealth surged by $484 billion in just three months, while a record 40 million Americans filed for unemployment.
This economic phenomenon, the largest radical transfer of wealth out of the hands of taxpayers and into the hands of billionaires,
was the largest taxpayer bailout of the wealthy in American history.
As MacLeod reported,
In the last 30 years, U.S. billionaire wealth soared by over 1100 percent while median household wealth increased by barely
five percent. In 1990, the total wealth held by America's billionaire class was $240 billion; today that number stands at $2.95
trillion. Thus, America's billionaires accrued more wealth in just the past three weeks than they made in total prior to 1980."
While the pandemic and subsequent lockdown turned the world upside down for working-class people, forcing upon them school closures,
long lines at the grocery store, empty shelves, panic buying, record unemployment, and miles-long bread lines, little media attention
was given to the Billionaires buying islands and land where they could enjoy life in first-class bunkers built to withstand a nuclear
war.
If anything, the coronavirus has lifted the veil to expose the growing inequality in the United States, an unfortunate reality
in the world's richest country.
Macleod leaves us with a salient statistic, explaining that while Amazon owner Jeff Bezos makes $1 million every three minutes,
"Amazon staff, directly employed by Bezos, also
risk
their lives for measly pay.
One-third of all Amazon
workers in Arizona, for example, are enrolled in the food stamps program, their wages so low that they cannot afford to pay for food."
Alan MacLeod joins MintCast to explain all of this and how the coming economic crash that is expected to contract the economy
by 40 percent will only advance the interests of America's ultra-wealthy and increase their wealth even further.
America already faces a reality in which less than one thousand billionaires influence policies that ensure more tax obligations
for the working class to the benefit of ultra-wealthy oligarchs. Corporate media ensures this reality by presenting billionaires
in a positive light, often as philanthropists who run charitable organizations. Yet, in reality, they are little more than big fish
eating off of the hard work of the working class.
This program is 100 percent listener supported! You can join the hundreds of financial sponsors who make this show possible
by becoming a member on our Patreon page .
Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes
, Spotify and
SoundCloud . Please leave us a review and share this segmen t.
Mnar Muhawesh is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News, and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism,
sexism, neoconservativism within the media and journalism start-ups.
MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
"... The V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced on August 7, 1948 that thenceforth Lysenkoism would be taught as the only correct theory. All Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenkoism. Ultimately, Soviet geneticists resisting Lysenkoism were imprisoned and even executed. Lysenkoism was abandoned for the correct modern science of Mendelian genetics only as late as 1964. ..."
Trofim Lysenko became the Director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union
Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the 1930s under Josef Stalin. He was an advocate of the theory that characteristics acquired
by plants during their lives could be inherited by later generations stemming from the changed plants, which sharply contradicted
Mendelian genetics. As a result, Lysenko became a fierce critic of theories of the then rising modern genetics.
Under Lysenko's view, for example, grafting branches of one plant species onto another could create new plant hybrids that would
be perpetuated by the descendants of the grafted plant. Or modifications made to seeds would be inherited by later generations stemming
from that seed. Or that plucking all the leaves off of a plant would cause descendants of the plant to be leafless.
Lysenkoism was "politically correct" (a term invented by Lenin) because it was consistent with certain broader Marxist doctrines.
Marxists wanted to believe that heredity had a limited role even among humans, and that human characteristics changed by living under
socialism would be inherited by subsequent generations of humans. Thus would be created the selfless new Soviet man.
Also Lysenko himself arose from a peasant background and developed his theories from practical applications rather than controlled
scientific experiments. This fit the Marxist propaganda of the time holding that brilliant industrial innovations would arise from
the working classes through practical applications. Lysenko's theories also seemed to address in a quick and timely manner the widespread
Soviet famines of the time arising from the forced collectivization of agriculture, rather than the much slower changes from scientific
experimentation and genetic heredity.
Lysenko was consequently embraced and lionized by the Soviet media propaganda machine. Scientists who promoted Lysenkoism with
faked data and destroyed counterevidence were favored with government funding and official recognition and award. Lysenko and his
followers and media acolytes responded to critics by impugning their motives, and denouncing them as bourgeois fascists resisting
the advance of the new modern Marxism.
The V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced on August 7, 1948 that thenceforth Lysenkoism would be taught as
the only correct theory. All Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenkoism. Ultimately, Soviet
geneticists resisting Lysenkoism were imprisoned and even executed. Lysenkoism was abandoned for the correct modern science of Mendelian
genetics only as late as 1964.
The Theory of Man Caused Catastrophic Global Warming
This same practice of Lysenkoism has long been under way in western science in regard to the politically correct theory of man
caused, catastrophic, global warming. That theory serves the political fashions of the day in promoting vastly increased government
powers and control over the private economy. Advocates of the theory are lionized in the dominant Democrat party controlled media
in the U.S., and in leftist controlled media in other countries. Critics of the theory are denounced as "deniers," and even still
bourgeois fascists, with their motives impugned.
Those who promote the theory are favored with billions from government grants and neo-Marxist environmentalist largesse, and official
recognition and award. Faked and tampered data and evidence has arisen in favor of the politically correct theory. Is not man-caused,
catastrophic global warming now the only theory allowed to be taught in schools in the West?
Those in positions of scientific authority in the West who have collaborated with this new Lysenkoism because they felt they must
be politically correct, and/or because of the money, publicity, and recognition to be gained, have disgraced themselves and the integrity
of their institutions, organizations and publications.
The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is supposed to represent the best science of the U.S. government on
the issue of global warming. In January, the USGCRP released the draft of its Third National Climate Assessment Report. The first
duty of the government scientists at the USGCRP is to produce a complete picture of the science of the issue of global warming, which
is what the taxpayers are paying them for. But it didn't take long for the Cato Institute to do the job of the USGCRP with a devastating
line by line rebuttal, The Missing Science from the Draft National Assessment on Climate Change, Center for the Study of Science,
Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2012, by Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. Knappenberger, Robert C. Balling, Mary J. Hutzler & Craig D.
Idso.
Check it out for yourself if you dare. Both publications are written to be accessible by intelligent laymen. See which one involves
climate science and which one involves political science.
All the climate alarmist organizations simply rubber stamp the irregular Assessment Reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). None of them do any original science on the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming.
But the United Nations is a proven, corrupt, power grabbing institution. The science of their Assessment Reports has been thoroughly
rebutted by the hundreds of pages of science in Climate Change Reconsidered , and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim
Report , both written by dozens of scientists with the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, and published by
the Heartland Institute, the international headquarters of the skeptics of the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming.
Again, check it out for yourself. You don't have to read every one of the well over a thousand pages of careful science in both
volumes to see at least that there is a real scientific debate.
The editors of the once respected journals of Science and Nature have abandoned science for Lysenkoism on this issue
as well. They have become as political as the editorial pages of the New York Times . They claim their published papers are
peer reviewed, but those reviews are conducted on the friends and family plan when it comes to the subject of anthropogenic catastrophic
global warming. There can be no peer review at all when authors refuse to release their data and computer codes for public inspection
and attempted reconstruction of reported results by other scientists. They have been forced to backtrack on recent publications relying
on novel, dubious, statistical methodologies not in accordance with established methodologies of complex statistical analysis.
Formerly respected scientific bodies in the U.S. and other western countries have been commandeered by political activist Lysenkoists
seizing leadership positions. They then proceed with politically correct pronouncements on the issue of anthropogenic catastrophic
global warming heedless of the views of the membership of actual scientists. Most of what you see and hear from alarmists regarding
global warming can be most accurately described as play acting on the meme of settled science. The above noted publications demonstrate
beyond the point where reasonable people can differ that no actual scientist can claim that the science of anthropogenic catastrophic
global warming has been settled or that there is a settled "consensus" that rules out reasonable dissent.
Indeed, 31,487 U.S. scientists (including 9,000 Ph.Ds) with degrees in atmospheric Earth sciences, physics, chemistry, biology
and computer science have signed a statement that reads: "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon
dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's
atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." See here . Some
consensus.
Real science, of course, is not a matter of "consensus," but of reason, with skepticism at its core.
The Decline and Fall of the Theory of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming
The alarmist claims of the UN's IPCC are ultimately based not on scientific observations, but on unvalidated climate models and
their projections of future global temperatures on assumptions of continued increases in carbon dioxide emissions resulting from
the burning and use of fossil fuels. The alarmists are increasingly in panic because the past projections of the models are increasingly
divergent from the accumulating actual temperature records. Those models are not real science, but made up science. And no way we
are abandoning the industrial revolution as the Sierra Club is hoping based on model fantasies and fairy tales.
The Economist magazine, formerly in lockstep with the Lysenkoists, shocked them with a skeptical article in March that
began with this lede:
"OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth's surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued
to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter
of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
observes, 'the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade. . . .'"
Reality is not complying with the alarmism of the UN's global warming models, just as it refused to do for Trofim Lysenko. Remember
all that hysteria about melting polar ice caps and the disappearing ice floes for the cute polar bears? As of the end of March, the
Antarctic ice cap was nearly one fourth larger than the average for the last 30 years. The Arctic ice cap had grown back to within
3% of its 30 year average. (The formerly declining Arctic ice was due to cyclically warm ocean currents). Global sea ice was greater
than in March, 1980, more than 30 years ago, and also above the average since then.
Remember the alarm about the rising sea level? Yeah, that has been rising, as it has been since the end of the last ice age more
than 10,000 years ago. Just exactly as it has been, at the same rate. And anyone you know that has been scared by this alarmist propaganda
has been successfully played by whatever media the fool has been relying on.
Murderous recent winters in Europe are killing as well belief in alarmist global warming on the continent. University of Oklahoma
Professor and geophysicist David Deming reported in a recent column,
"The United Kingdom had the coldest March weather in 50 years, and there were more than a thousand record low temperatures
in the United States. The Irish meteorological office reported that March "temperatures were the lowest on record nearly everywhere."
Spring snowfall in Europe was also high. In Moscow, the snow depth was the highest in 134 years of observation. In Kiev, authorities
had to bring in military vehicles to clear snow from the streets."
In the Northern Hemisphere, Deming adds, "Snow cover last December was the greatest since satellite monitoring began in 1966."
That reflects similarly bitter cold winters in North America as well. Despite claims by global warming Lysenkoists that soon children
"won't know what snow is," on February 6, 2010, a blizzard covered the northeastern U.S. with 20 to 35 inches of snow. Three days
later another 10 to 20 inches were added.
These developments should have been expected from known indisputable facts. Carbon dioxide is a natural substance essential to
the survival of all life on the planet. It is effectively oxygen for plants, and without plants there would be no food for animals
to survive. Because of the increased atmospheric CO2 agricultural output is already increasing.
CO2 is also a trace gas in the atmosphere, representing only 0.038% of the total atmosphere, up only 0.008% since 1945. That tiny
proportion of the atmosphere is supposed to produce catastrophic global warming that will end all life on the planet? The historical
proxy record shows CO2 concentrations in the distant history of the earth much, much greater than today. Yet life survived, and flourished.
Moreover, the basic science of global warming is that the temperature increasing effect of increased CO2 concentrations declines
as those concentrations increase. So stop worrying and enjoy the agricultural abundance in your grocery store.
A tip off regarding reality should have been apparent from the dodgy propaganda involved in changing the labeling of the problem
from "global warming" to "climate change." Of course, Earth has been experiencing climate change since the first sunrise on the planet.
We are not going to abandon the workers' paradise of capitalism because climate change will continue.
Another tip off should have been the effective admission by global warming alarmists that they cannot defend their position in
public debate. The day the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming died can be dated from the time that one leading alarmist
was foolish enough to debate James Taylor of the Heartland Institute, a video of which can be found on the Heartland website at
Heartland.org .
Still another tip off should have been the practice of the alarmist new Lysenkoists to respond to dissenting science with ad
hominem attacks. That apparently reflects poor public schooling that never taught that an ad hominem attack is a logical
fallacy, as Aristotle taught more than 2,000 years ago. My how western science has fallen.
The basic science shows that global temperatures are just not very sensitive to CO2 itself. Even alarmists will concede that.
Where they get their alarm is with the modeling assumption that the CO2 induced temperature increases will produce positive feedbacks
that will sharply increase the overall resulting warming. The better recent science indicates, however, that instead of positive
feedbacks, the naturally stable Earth would enjoy negative feedbacks restoring long term equilibrium and stability to global temperatures.
Then there is the man caused, global warming, fingerprint that the U.N.'s models all showed would result in a hot spot of particularly
large temperature increases in the upper troposphere above the tropics. But the incorruptible, satellite monitored, atmospheric temperature
record shows no hot spot. That is further confirmed by modern weather balloons measuring atmospheric temperatures above the tropics.
No hotspot. No fingerprint. No catastrophic, man caused global warming. QED.
The revival of western science requires that the new Lysenkoism be discredited. That is going to require quite some work, given
the extent of the infestation.
Peter Ferrara I am Director of Entitlement and
Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, Senior Advisor for Entitlement Reform and Budget Policy at the National Tax Limitation
Foundation, General Counsel for the American Civil Rights Union, and Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. I
served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United
States under President George H.W. Bush. I am a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and the author most recently
of America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb (New York: Harper Collins, 2011). I write about new, cutting edge ideas regarding public policy,
particularly concerning economics.
Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Lady are not the only Virus Patrol miscreants spreading the Covid
Hysteria and thereby empowering the authorities to keep suffocating everyday economic life and
personal liberty in America.
In fact, there is a whole camarilla of current and former health officials, purported
disease experts, all-purpose talking heads and other Washington apparatchiks who continue to
appear on mainstream media, peddling the hoary tale that coronavirus is some kind of horror
flick monster: It purportedly just keeps springing from its Lockdown grave – whack-a-mole
fashion – the instant officialdom relaxes its quarantine edicts.
Call these people the "groomers" of Big Pharma, and their job is to keep public fears on the
boil so that the demand for high-priced treatments, cures and preventative vaccines becomes
overwhelming. And given that the Covid is now rapidly succumbing to the exhaustion of its
infection cycle and the summertime sun, their exact current mission is one of bridging the
gap.
That is, finding and publicizing local outbreaks and "hot spots" during the months just
ahead so that the Virus Patrol will remain in full control of policy and the narrative until
the Covid makes its forecasted second wave rebound during next fall's flu season.
After all, they desperately need these hot spots to keep the aggregate narrative alive
because it is visibly collapsing by the day.
Back in early May, for instance, the NYT breathlessly carried a leaked study from the Trump
Administration that projected a massive surge of new infections and a near doubling of daily
death rates by early June relative to levels than extant:
As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is
privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the
next several weeks. The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1, according to an
internal document obtained by The New York Times , a 70 percent increase from the current
number of about 1,750 .
The projections, based on government modeling pulled together by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from
about 25,000 cases a day currently.
The numbers underscore a sobering reality: The United States has been hunkered down for
the past seven weeks to try slowing the spread of the virus, but reopening the economy will
make matters worse.
Needless to say, that one went down the memory hole ages ago (i.e. around Memorial Day). As
of June 10, in fact, actual daily averages for the month to date were:
827 deaths per day, representing a 53% decline , not a 70% increase;
20,694 new cases per day, representing a 17% decline , not an 8X increase;
In other words, these Washington modelers (this one was prepared by FEMA) couldn't hit the
broadside of a barn with the antiaircraft guns Chairman Kim uses to dispatch his adversaries.
So to keep the Covid-Hysteria alive, they send out the hot spot "groomers".
On of the most mendacious of these groomers is Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was the Donald's
first FDA commissioner and is an alleged pedigreed "conservative" with a berth at the American
Enterprise Institute to burnish his numerous sinecures with Big Pharma.
Gottlieb is also a CNBC regular, and yesterday, sitting astride a screen crawler which read
"Texas reports second day of record hospitalizations", he was busy promulgating the "hot spot"
news about two red states, whose merely semi-craven GOP governors have belatedly attempted to
get their economies back in business:
When you look at hotspot regions like Arizona and Texas , they have to be concerned,
particularly areas around Houston right now. They could lose control of this very quickly,"
says @ScottGottliebMD on
balancing re-opening with public health.
We call bullshit!
Gottlieb was peddling a pimple on the elephant's ass because, apparently, cable TV audiences
generally and bubble vision's especially, were born yesterday. That is, they are infantile
victims of recency and confirmation biases and will apparently believe anything served up in a
context-free modality.
The truth is, there is nothing worrisome whatsoever going on in Arizona and Texas beyond the
fact that the coronavirus started its inexorable spread in these interior states later than on
the East and Left coasts, and is therefore cresting slightly later, as well.
But as of June 8, the count of infected cases and WITH Covid deaths in Arizona stood at
27,678 and 1,047, respectively. Those figures a hot spot do not make, nor do they offer any
reason for not getting the state's boot-heel off the economy ASAP.
Relative to the USA as a whole and the New York epicenter, Arizona's figures per 100,000
population compare as follows as of June 8:
Infected cases Arizona : 375;
Infected cases USA : 596;
Infected cases New York : 1,963
WITH Covid deaths Arizona : 14.2;
WITH-Covid deaths USA : 32.3;
WITH-Covid deaths New York : 126.0;
In other words, Arizona's mortality rate is less than half of the US average and only 11% of
that for New York. So why is it a worrisome "hot spot" by the lights of Virus Patrol shills
like Gottlieb?
Indeed, the WITH-Covid mortality rate in Arizona stands at nearly rock bottom, clocking in
at at just one-fifth to one-half of the mortality rates in much as European Christendom. To
wit, current rates per 100,000 include:
Belgium: 83.1;
United Kingdom: 60.2;
Spain: 58.0;
Italy: 56.3;
Sweden: 47.5;
France: 44.9;
Netherlands: 35.3;
Arizona: 14.2;
But when context doesn't matter, of course, any pimple can be depicted as a large boulder.
Thus, the number of new cases in Arizona is allegedly soaring, suggesting that the state has
jumped the gun letting its citizens out of house arrest too soon.
In fact, during the first 8 days of June, Arizona reported 7,742 new cases – a figure
which is sharply higher than the 2,189 new cases reported for the last eight days of April, for
example.
But that gain is entirely a function of the testing rate and then some. Thus, during the
June 1 to June 8 span, the state reported 62,825 new tests, implying an infection rate of 12.3%
.
By contrast, during April 22 to April 30 the state reported only 15,185 new tests
(one-fourth of the June figure), implying an infection rate of 14.4% .
So the state is testing a lot more, as it has been instructed to do by Washington, and such
accelerated testing is generating a falling infection rate!
And that's not the half of it. By now there are more than enough antibody tests of different
US populations to be reasonably certain that in a state like Arizona with a population of 7.38
million that there have been far more infected cases than the 27,678 cases reported through
June 8.
Generally, antibody tests show infection rates of 5-20% in the general population, which
would imply total cases – most of which remained asymptomatic or resulted in mild
illnesses – of between 370,000 and 1.5 million for Arizona.
So, actually, higher reported cases daily may mean nothing at all as to the current status
of the virus among the population. More likely, it actually means that what is already there is
being slowly discovered after the fact ; it's stale, irrelevant old news, not an alarming new
development, to say nothing of evidence of a hot spot.
Indeed, the latter is a meaningless but loaded term, honed for TV talking points, but is
incapable of conveying any meaningful information about context at all. That is, the real test
is how does what's happening with the coronavirus now compare with year-in-and-year-out
illness, hospitalization, disease and mortality trends?
Self-evidently, you do not empower the state to put its citizens under house arrest and
destroy the livelihoods of millions of workers and tens of thousands of small businesses on
account of a bad run of seasonal illnesses that leaves more people than usual home in bed or
even heading to the hospital for treatment.
To the contrary, this whole Lockdown Nation thing is about the modern equivalent of the
Black Death – the presence of a virulent killer that can takedown the young, the old, the
healthy, the sick and all categories between with equal alacrity.
But, again, there is nothing to support that Grim Reaper notion in the data, and most
especially not the "hot spot" flavor of the week in Texas and Arizona.
The mortality rate from all causes for Arizona for the four months from January through the
end of April (latest available) is shown below.
Naturally, the total mortality rate surmounts the cause of death attribution and coding
issues; and it means that unless these total death rates are significantly elevated from the
norm, then nothing unusual – or at least worthy of drastic quarantine policies–is
actually going on.
On a per 100,000 basis, the Arizona's total mortality rates for the first four months of the
year have been as follows:
2016: 293;
2017: 277:
2018: 297;
2019: 285:
2020: 301;
The above does not indicate the Black Plague at loose. The tiny elevation in 2020 relative
to the previous four years is just statistical noise!
Moreover, there is no new signal coming out of this "noise" owing to the higher testing and
infection rates being reported in recent days. Again, the evidence for that is in the state's
own published data on hospitalization rates, among others.
Between March 23 and June 1, Arizona consistently reported new WITH-Covid hospitalization
cases of between 40 and 60 per day on a statewide basis.
During June 3 through June 8, however, the number of new hospitalizations daily has dwindled
to 34, 19, 17, 10, 4 and 5 , respectively.
The last few days, in fact, have had the lowest new hospitalizations since before the
Donald's malpracting doctors triggered the Covid Hysteria on March 13.
So, hot spot my eye!
In this connection, they also keep trotting out the hoary old claim that the hospitals are
in danger of being overrun with new cases – per the crawler on the screen yesterday
during Gottleib's appearance on bubble vision.
Alas, it never happened previously in Arizona and is not remotely in danger of happening
now. Even during the peak of new hospitalizations between April 20 and May 8, the utilization
rate of hospital intensive care beds rose from 72% to 78% and has remained at that level ever
since.
Finally, it is worth noting that Arizona's WITH-Covid mortality data show the same dramatic
skew toward the elderly, as is true with the rest of the country. Fully 77% of the Covid deaths
in Arizona have been among the 65 and older population, which comprises just 17% of the state's
overall population.
That fact alone, of course, militates strongly against the across-the-board stay-at-home and
general quarantine orders in the first place.
The Arizona WITH-Covid mortality rate through June 9 breaks out as follows by age cohorts.
That is to say, anyone under 55 years old driving to the Scottsdale Fashion Mall would have had
a greater chance of being killed in an auto accident than being felled by the Covid:
Deaths Per 100,000 population:
<20 years: 0.1;
20-44 years: 2.1;
45-54 years: 7.5;
55-64 years: 14.9;
65+ years: 66.3;
With respect to Texas, it's the same story. There is no "hot spot", period.
Its reported cases and deaths through June 8 are actually far lower than those for Arizona
and in the sub-basement relative to the overall USA figures, to say nothing of the nursing-home
based disaster-data reported for New York and New Jersey.
That is, the number of infected cases in Texas amounts to 256 per 100,000 or 68% of the
Arizona rate, 42% of the overall USA rate and just 13% of the rate of infected cases among the
New York state population.
Likewise, the WITH-Covid mortality rate through June 8 in Texas was 6.2 per 100,000. That's
just 43% of the Arizona rate, 19% of the USA average and only 5% of the New York state rate
.
So Texas isn't remotely a "hot spot" or some kind of warning about reopening too soon, and
is actually a thundering rebuke of the entire Lockdown Nation narrative.
That is, Texas was late and tepid about the lockdown, and among the first to begin
"reopening" in early May.
Yet its reported infected case rate of 256 per 100,000 is just 10% of the real "hot spot"
rate of 2,477 per 100,000 in the five boroughs of New York City; and its mortality rate of 6.2
per 100,000 population is just 3% of New York City's 196 per 100,000 rate.
So for crying out loud, with that kind of yawning gap and rock bottom absolute level, what
is this clown, Scott Gottlieb, doing on bubble vision warning about Covid dangers in Texas?
Answer: He's grooming the sheeples in order to keep the Killer Covid narrative alive and the
money and legal immunities flowing to the drug companies chasing cures and vaccines.
It goes without saying, course, that the alleged surge in new cases reported in Texas during
recent days is just as bogus as the claims about Arizona.
Yes, new cases reported during June 1 to June 8 averaged 1,416 per day or about 61% higher
than the rate of 877 per day reported for April 22 to April 30. Except, the number of new tests
also rose by about 60% from 113,500 to 168,500, leaving the infected rate virtually unchanged
at a very low 6.7% .
Again, if you want to talk "hot spots", try New York City. The the infected rate per test
has run north of 20% in the Bronx, for example.
So the question recurs. Why are people like Scott Gottlieb out pimping the Killer Covid
story in the face overwhelming evidence that it it nothing of the kind.
Perhaps, it might be noted that Gottlieb went straight from medical school to various jobs
at the FDA before becoming commissioner in 2017, and then heading out the revolving door to
Pfizer's Board of Directors in May 2019.
And, yes, here's the list of the top five firms being supported by billions from Washington
in the race for a Covid vaccine, which may or may not happen, but whether safe or not will be
of no never-mind to Big Pharma.
After all, Washington has already indemnified them against lawsuits; pretty much guaranteed
that they can name their charge per dose; and will be doing all it can to make getting a tap on
the arm from one or more of the Big Pharma competitors a mandatory duty of citizenship.
Call it what you will, but don't call it honest capitalism. And chalk it up as still another
blow to the idea of limited government and personal liberty.
The five companies are Moderna, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm, which Dr. Fauci
said he expected would enter into the final phase of clinical trials next month; the
combination of Oxford University and AstraZeneca, on a similar schedule; and three large
pharmaceutical companies: Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer . Each is taking a somewhat
different approach.
On Thursday, a Republican lawmaker introduced legislation, dubbed "Murphy's Law," that would
nullify any executive order the governor himself violates. Assemblyman Jay Webber noted that
Murphy attended the rallies on Sunday, when outside gatherings were limited to no more than 25
people to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Two days later, Murphy raised the limit to 100
people and exempted political protests.
"Executive orders should end for everyone when governors break their own rules for
themselves," Webber said in a statement. The legislation, of course, has virtually no chance of
being signed by Murphy, a Democrat who stood by his decision to demonstrate and on Thursday
urged the like-minded to continue to do so peacefully, using masks and other virus
precautions.
But business owners and others are expressing their own frustration with the governor, with
unsanctioned startups of indoor dining and other activities in a state whose death toll,
12,443, is second only to New York's. As Murphy, 62, in recent days has relaxed some
restrictions put in place to slow the virus' spread, he has warned that cases will jump when
more people come in contact with one another.
A second U.S. coronavirus wave is emerging in states including Texas, Florida and California
while New Jersey's cases have slowed. But throughout the Garden State, some say they're willing
to risk a swifter return to typical operations -- albeit with some precautions.
Millions of Americans remain subjected to unprecedented restrictions on their personal
lives, their daily lives, their family's lives.
The coronavirus
lockdowns continue in many places. You may not know that because it gets no publicity, but it's
true. And if you're living under it, you definitely know.
As a result of this, tens of millions of people are now unemployed. A huge number of them
have no prospects of working again. Many thousands of small businesses are closed and will
never reopen. More Americans have become dependent on drugs and alcohol, seeing their marriages
dissolve, and become clinically depressed.
Some of them delayed their weddings. Others were banned by the government from burying their
loved ones in funerals. Some Americans will die of cancer because they couldn't get cancer
screenings, some unknown number have taken their own lives in despair. Others have flooded the
streets to riot because bottled up rage and frustration take many forms.
The cost of shutting down the United States and denying our citizens desperately needed
contact with one another is hard to calculate. But the cost has been staggering.
The people responsible for doing all of this,say they have no regrets about it. We faced a
global calamity, they say. COVID-19 was the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu. That flu
killed 50 million people.
We had no choice. We did the right thing. That's what they're telling us. Is it true?
The answer to that question matters, not just because the truth always matters, but because
the credibility of our leaders is at stake here. This is the biggest decision they have made in
our lifetimes. They were able to make it. They rule because we let them. Their power comes from
us.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not
necessary.
So the question, now and always is, are they worthy of that power? That's not a conversation
they want to have. And right now, they don't have to have that conversation because all of us
are distracted and mesmerized by the woke revolution underway outside.
They just created a separate country in Seattle. Huh? We'll bring you the latest on that.
But we do think it's worth four minutes taking a pause to assess whether or not they were in
fact lying to us about the coronavirus and our response to it.
And the short answer is this: Yes, they were definitely lying.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not necessary. In
fact, we can prove that. And here's the most powerful evidence: States that never locked down
at all -- states where people were allowed to live like Americans and not cower indoors alone
-- in the end turned out no worse than states that had mandatory quarantines. The state you
probably live in.
The states that locked down at first but were quick to reopen have not seen explosions of
coronavirus cases. All of this is the opposite of what they said would happen with great
confidence.
The media predicted mass death at places like Lake of the Ozarks and Ocean City, Md. --
places where the middle class dares to vacation. But those deaths never happened. In the end,
the Wuhan coronavirus turned out to be a dangerous disease, but a manageable disease, like so
many others. Far more dangerous were the lockdowns themselves.
For example, in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, panicked and
incompetent governors forced nursing homes to accept infected coronavirus patients, and as a
result, many thousands died, and they died needlessly.
This is all a remarkable story, but it's going almost entirely uncovered. The media would
rather tell you why you need to hate your neighbor for the color of his skin. The media
definitely don't want to revisit what they were saying just a few weeks ago, when they were
acting as press agents for power-drunk Democratic politicians.
We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
Back then, news anchors were ordering you to stop asking questions and obey.
Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor: All right, so while most Americans are staying inside -- or
should be, right, if they're not out protesting like fools -- they're not happy about being
told to stay home. Staying home saves lives.
And the rest of us should be staying at home for our mothers and the people that we love,
and to keep us farther apart, will ultimately bring us closer together in this cause.
Oh, if you love your mother, you will do what I say. It turns out cable news anchors don't
make very subtle propagandists.
And then Memorial Day arrived in May, and some states started to reopen. Millions of
grateful Americans headed outdoors for the first time in months, and the media attacked them
for doing that. They called them killers.
Swimming with your kids, they told us, was tantamount to mass murder.
Claire McCaskill, MSNBC political analyst: Frankly, a lot of the people in those crowds
-- they thought they were, you know, standing up for what the president believes in and that is
not to care about the public safety part of this.
Robyn Curnow, CNN host: Look at this. I mean, this is kind of crazy, considering we're in
the middle of a global pandemic.
I mean, as one person quipped, you know, that's curving the curve. That's not flattening
it.
Don Lemon, CNN anchor: Massive crowd of people crammed together, as if it were just an
ordinary holiday weekend despite the risks of a virus that has killed more than 98,000
people.
Boy that montage was the opposite of a MENSA meeting. Has that much dumbness been captured
on tape ever?
The last clip you saw was from May 25th. That was just over two weeks ago. "Ninety eight
thousand people are dead. How dare you leave your house? You don't work in the media. You're
not essential."
But it didn't take long for that message to change completely. In fact, it took precisely
five days.
Here's the same brain dead news anchor you just saw less than a week later. He is no longer
angry, you'll notice, about Americans going outside. As long as they are rioting and burning
and not doing something sinful, like swimming with their children, he is delighted by it.
Lemon: And let's not forget, if anyone is judging this -- I'm not judging this, I'm just
wondering what is going on. Because we were supposed to figure out this experiment a long time
ago. Our country was started because -- this is how: the Boston Tea Party. Rioting.
So don't -- do not get it twisted and think that, oh, this is something that has never
happened before. And then this is so terrible, and where are we in these savages and all of
that. This is how this country was started.
Yes, don't judge. This is how this country was started -- by looting CVS and setting fire to
Wendy's. Of course, you took American History. You knew that.
Andrew
Cuomo 's brother must have been in the same history class because he had the same
reaction.
Chris Cuomo: America's major cities are filled with people demanding this country be more
fair, more just.
And please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
Because I can show you that outraged citizens are the ones who have made America what she is
and led to any major milestones.
They are here to yell, criticize, blame, and shame.
Citizens have no duty to check their outrage.
Wow. So, one minute they were mass murderers for going outside. Now, they're Sam Adams.
They're patriots. They're American heroes.
If all of this seems like a pretty abrupt pivot, fret not. Rioting is not a health risk as
long as it helps the Democratic Party's prospects in the November election .
Rioting will not spread the coronavirus.
Sounds implausible, but we can be certain of that, because last week, hundreds of
self-described public health officials signed a letter saying so. They announced that the Black
Lives Matter riots are a vital contribution to public health. In effect, they're an essential
medical procedure.
But that doesn't mean you get to go outside. You don't. Thanks to coronavirus, you do not
have the right to resume your life, and if you complain about that, it's "white nationalism."
That was their professional conclusion.
Does a single American believe any of that? No, of course not. It is too stupid even for CNN
to repeat, so they mostly ignored it. That's an ominous sign if you think about it. It means
these people are done trying to convince you, even to fool you.
They're not making arguments, they're issuing decrees. They think they can. They no longer
believe they need your consent to make big decisions to run the country. Once the authority
stops trying to change your mind, even by deceit, it means they've decided to use force -- and
they have.
During the lockdowns, people whose loved ones died were not allowed to have funerals for
them. Think about that. It's hard to think of anything crueler, but it happened to a lot of
people. They claimed it was necessary. It was not necessary. And we know that because now that
a man has died
whose death is politically useful to the Democratic Party , the authorities have given him
three funerals and not a word about a health risk.
Or consider King County, Wash -- that's where Seattle is. Restaurants in King County are
operating at just 25 percent capacity. That's the law now. Nonessential businesses are allowed
just 15 percent capacity. The effect of that is economic disaster. Most small businesses run on
very small margins. They can't survive for long, and in fact, many have failed.
What should they do? They should join Antifa, obviously, because in King County, Wash.,
Antifa can do whatever Antifa wants to do. They have taken over an entire six-block section of
downtown Seattle, and that's fine with health authorities. There is no social distancing
required. They're essential.
Are you getting the picture? Is it adding up to a message? Yes, the message is we were
played. We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
In other words, they used a public health emergency to subvert democracy and install
themselves as monarchs. How were they able to do this? The sad truth is, they did it because we
let them do it. We believed them, therefore, we obeyed them.
If there's anything good to come out of this disaster, it's that none of us will ever make
that mistake again.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 10,
2020.
Millions of Americans remain subjected to unprecedented restrictions on their personal
lives, their daily lives, their family's lives.
The coronavirus
lockdowns continue in many places. You may not know that because it gets no publicity, but it's
true. And if you're living under it, you definitely know.
As a result of this, tens of millions of people are now unemployed. A huge number of them
have no prospects of working again. Many thousands of small businesses are closed and will
never reopen. More Americans have become dependent on drugs and alcohol, seeing their marriages
dissolve, and become clinically depressed.
Some of them delayed their weddings. Others were banned by the government from burying their
loved ones in funerals. Some Americans will die of cancer because they couldn't get cancer
screenings, some unknown number have taken their own lives in despair. Others have flooded the
streets to riot because bottled up rage and frustration take many forms.
The cost of shutting down the United States and denying our citizens desperately needed
contact with one another is hard to calculate. But the cost has been staggering.
The people responsible for doing all of this,say they have no regrets about it. We faced a
global calamity, they say. COVID-19 was the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu. That flu
killed 50 million people.
We had no choice. We did the right thing. That's what they're telling us. Is it true?
The answer to that question matters, not just because the truth always matters, but because
the credibility of our leaders is at stake here. This is the biggest decision they have made in
our lifetimes. They were able to make it. They rule because we let them. Their power comes from
us.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not
necessary.
So the question, now and always is, are they worthy of that power? That's not a conversation
they want to have. And right now, they don't have to have that conversation because all of us
are distracted and mesmerized by the woke revolution underway outside.
They just created a separate country in Seattle. Huh? We'll bring you the latest on that.
But we do think it's worth four minutes taking a pause to assess whether or not they were in
fact lying to us about the coronavirus and our response to it.
And the short answer is this: Yes, they were definitely lying.
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not necessary. In
fact, we can prove that. And here's the most powerful evidence: States that never locked down
at all -- states where people were allowed to live like Americans and not cower indoors alone
-- in the end turned out no worse than states that had mandatory quarantines. The state you
probably live in.
The states that locked down at first but were quick to reopen have not seen explosions of
coronavirus cases. All of this is the opposite of what they said would happen with great
confidence.
The media predicted mass death at places like Lake of the Ozarks and Ocean City, Md. --
places where the middle class dares to vacation. But those deaths never happened. In the end,
the Wuhan coronavirus turned out to be a dangerous disease, but a manageable disease, like so
many others. Far more dangerous were the lockdowns themselves.
For example, in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, panicked and
incompetent governors forced nursing homes to accept infected coronavirus patients, and as a
result, many thousands died, and they died needlessly.
This is all a remarkable story, but it's going almost entirely uncovered. The media would
rather tell you why you need to hate your neighbor for the color of his skin. The media
definitely don't want to revisit what they were saying just a few weeks ago, when they were
acting as press agents for power-drunk Democratic politicians.
We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
Back then, news anchors were ordering you to stop asking questions and obey.
Chris Cuomo, CNN anchor: All right, so while most Americans are staying inside -- or
should be, right, if they're not out protesting like fools -- they're not happy about being
told to stay home. Staying home saves lives.
And the rest of us should be staying at home for our mothers and the people that we love,
and to keep us farther apart, will ultimately bring us closer together in this cause.
Oh, if you love your mother, you will do what I say. It turns out cable news anchors don't
make very subtle propagandists.
And then Memorial Day arrived in May, and some states started to reopen. Millions of
grateful Americans headed outdoors for the first time in months, and the media attacked them
for doing that. They called them killers.
Swimming with your kids, they told us, was tantamount to mass murder.
Claire McCaskill, MSNBC political analyst: Frankly, a lot of the people in those crowds
-- they thought they were, you know, standing up for what the president believes in and that is
not to care about the public safety part of this.
Robyn Curnow, CNN host: Look at this. I mean, this is kind of crazy, considering we're in
the middle of a global pandemic.
I mean, as one person quipped, you know, that's curving the curve. That's not flattening
it.
Don Lemon, CNN anchor: Massive crowd of people crammed together, as if it were just an
ordinary holiday weekend despite the risks of a virus that has killed more than 98,000
people.
Boy that montage was the opposite of a MENSA meeting. Has that much dumbness been captured
on tape ever?
The last clip you saw was from May 25th. That was just over two weeks ago. "Ninety eight
thousand people are dead. How dare you leave your house? You don't work in the media. You're
not essential."
But it didn't take long for that message to change completely. In fact, it took precisely
five days.
Here's the same brain dead news anchor you just saw less than a week later. He is no longer
angry, you'll notice, about Americans going outside. As long as they are rioting and burning
and not doing something sinful, like swimming with their children, he is delighted by it.
Lemon: And let's not forget, if anyone is judging this -- I'm not judging this, I'm just
wondering what is going on. Because we were supposed to figure out this experiment a long time
ago. Our country was started because -- this is how: the Boston Tea Party. Rioting.
So don't -- do not get it twisted and think that, oh, this is something that has never
happened before. And then this is so terrible, and where are we in these savages and all of
that. This is how this country was started.
Yes, don't judge. This is how this country was started -- by looting CVS and setting fire to
Wendy's. Of course, you took American History. You knew that.
Andrew
Cuomo 's brother must have been in the same history class because he had the same
reaction.
Chris Cuomo: America's major cities are filled with people demanding this country be more
fair, more just.
And please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.
Because I can show you that outraged citizens are the ones who have made America what she is
and led to any major milestones.
They are here to yell, criticize, blame, and shame.
Citizens have no duty to check their outrage.
Wow. So, one minute they were mass murderers for going outside. Now, they're Sam Adams.
They're patriots. They're American heroes.
If all of this seems like a pretty abrupt pivot, fret not. Rioting is not a health risk as
long as it helps the Democratic Party's prospects in the November election .
Rioting will not spread the coronavirus.
Sounds implausible, but we can be certain of that, because last week, hundreds of
self-described public health officials signed a letter saying so. They announced that the Black
Lives Matter riots are a vital contribution to public health. In effect, they're an essential
medical procedure.
But that doesn't mean you get to go outside. You don't. Thanks to coronavirus, you do not
have the right to resume your life, and if you complain about that, it's "white nationalism."
That was their professional conclusion.
Does a single American believe any of that? No, of course not. It is too stupid even for CNN
to repeat, so they mostly ignored it. That's an ominous sign if you think about it. It means
these people are done trying to convince you, even to fool you.
They're not making arguments, they're issuing decrees. They think they can. They no longer
believe they need your consent to make big decisions to run the country. Once the authority
stops trying to change your mind, even by deceit, it means they've decided to use force -- and
they have.
During the lockdowns, people whose loved ones died were not allowed to have funerals for
them. Think about that. It's hard to think of anything crueler, but it happened to a lot of
people. They claimed it was necessary. It was not necessary. And we know that because now that
a man has died
whose death is politically useful to the Democratic Party , the authorities have given him
three funerals and not a word about a health risk.
Or consider King County, Wash -- that's where Seattle is. Restaurants in King County are
operating at just 25 percent capacity. That's the law now. Nonessential businesses are allowed
just 15 percent capacity. The effect of that is economic disaster. Most small businesses run on
very small margins. They can't survive for long, and in fact, many have failed.
What should they do? They should join Antifa, obviously, because in King County, Wash.,
Antifa can do whatever Antifa wants to do. They have taken over an entire six-block section of
downtown Seattle, and that's fine with health authorities. There is no social distancing
required. They're essential.
Are you getting the picture? Is it adding up to a message? Yes, the message is we were
played. We were all played. Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most
basic questions in our lives. At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient
followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
In other words, they used a public health emergency to subvert democracy and install
themselves as monarchs. How were they able to do this? The sad truth is, they did it because we
let them do it. We believed them, therefore, we obeyed them.
If there's anything good to come out of this disaster, it's that none of us will ever make
that mistake again.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from " Tucker Carlson Tonight " on June 10,
2020.
CLICK HERE TO READ
MORE FROM TUCKER CARLSON Tucker Carlson currently serves as the host of FOX News Channel's
(FNC) Tucker Carlson Tonight (weekdays 8PM/ET). He joined the network in 2009 as a
contributor.
Covid threat reactions which remain deeply embedded in many people's psyche was another
example of rampant hysteria trumping facts. (No pun intended, it is just a good serviceable
word)
Common denominator: one's personal confrontation with mortality and existential fears.
Existential fears can never be taken away by outside forces, words, promises or even external
changes. They are embedded deeply within us and each of us has to confront them solely on our
own.
At one time religious played a dominant role in responding and ameliorating existential
fears. No longer. And this is what is now getting acted out in the covid hysteria and the BLM
hysteria. There are too many lies and too many things avoided in this present blame scenario
to be healing or functional at this time.
But as long as the Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer types bow, kneel and "put on African
garb" in appeasement - the need to make peace with one's own existential fears and one's own
mortality is momentarily circumvented by their inauthentic side show. Black intellectuals
laugh at this white preening. Black radicals just up the price for submission.
We have let craziness lead to hot wars in the past, even within our own living memories.
Because of existential fears tagging along with external fears. "Stopping communism which
will destroy our way of life" - was that the only argument and was it ever valid?
Maybe Marianne Williamson was more prescient that given credit in the DNC debates. She
sensed a deep darkness in the US soul. Too bad she demanded it carry a partisan label. She
failed her own better instincts when she did that.
overnments have used psychological warfare throughout history to manipulate public opinion,
gain political advantage, and generate profits. Western governments have engaged in such
tactics in the war on terrorism as well as in its predecessor, the war on communism.
In both cases, state-sponsored
terrorism and propaganda were used to distort the public's perception of the threats,
leading to increased governmental control of society and huge financial benefits for
corporations.
It appears that the same kinds of effects are being seen as a result of the COVID-19
pandemic.
Many of the features and outcomes seen in the war on terrorism and the war on communism are
evident in this new "war on death."
Therefore, it's reasonable to wonder if the extreme response to COVID-19, and its associated
virus SARS-COV-2, could be another psychological operation against the public.
Considering facts
about the disease and the disproportionate response emphasizes the possibility.
If COVID-19 has been co-opted for manipulation of the public, through hyping the threat and
pushing exploitive solutions, who is behind it and who benefits?
Let's first review what features and outcomes the "coronavirus scare' shares in common with
the "red scare" that drove the perceived threat of communism and the "Muslim scare" behind the
perceived threat of terrorism. Here are a dozen characteristics that these perceived threats
share.
Fear-based and globally directed Media saturation with bias toward fear Data
manipulation and propaganda
Censorship of opposing views Intelligence agency
control of information Preceded by exercises mimicking the threat Series
of claims made that are later proven false
Response threatens democracy Large
increase in wealth and power for a few; increase in social inequality Increased government
control of the public and reduced individual freedoms Response kills far more than the
original threat Evidence for manufactured events (see below)
There are also differences between the COVID-19 pandemic response and the "wars" on
communism and terrorism. One difference is that, for the virus, agencies dedicated to public
health have taken the lead. Although the central characters that hyped the communism threat and
the terrorism threat were sometimes the same people , they tended to represent
military, diplomatic, or intelligence agencies.
The primary actors driving the coronavirus lockdowns and associated control mechanisms are
political leaders. However, the
directives being acted upon come from the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the
United Nations ostensibly responsible for international public health.
Others controlling the coronavirus scare are national health agencies, most notably the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United Kingdom's National Health
Service (NHS).
Are these agencies acting solely in the interest of public health?
The WHO
The common impression is that the entire matter began in reaction to events in China but
even that is not clear. For example, the virus is said to have originated in the city of Wuhan
and the first, limited, lockdown occurred in that area from January to March.
China has since said that it warned the WHO about the virus during the first week of
January. However, it is known that U.S. intelligence
agencies were aware of the potential outbreak even before that, in November 2019. A Chinese
spokesman later suggested that the U.S. military might have
brought the virus to Wuhan during the military games held there in October.
The first instance of an entire country being locked down for the coronavirus was in Italy.
This occurred on March 9 th based on advice from the Italian government's
coronavirus adviser Walter
Ricciardi , who said, "The situation risks going out of control and these measures are
necessary to keep the spread at bay. "
Ricciardi, a WHO committee member, later admitted that
Italy had inflated the death counts from the virus, stating:
"The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the
people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the
coronavirus."
Many have noted the inordinate influence of billionaire Bill Gates on the activities and
direction of the WHO. As of 2017, this influence was seen as troubling, with health advocates
fearing that:
because the Gates Foundation's money comes from investments in big business, it could
serve as a Trojan horse for corporate interests to undermine WHO's role in setting standards
and shaping health policies."
Gates has been called a ruthless schemer by his Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Allen is
not alone in that assessment.
Despite engaging in a costly "public charm offensive," Gates is seen by many as a predatory and
monopolistic opportunist hiding behind a false front of philanthropy. With regard to the
coronavirus scare and Gates' stated goal of vaccinating the entire world population, however,
people should be most concerned that he has worked diligently on mechanisms of population control .
Of course, no one person controls the world yet so who is supposed to be running WHO, apart
from Bill Gates? The face of the WHO is Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the
organization. Tedros has a poor history of ethics in leadership, with many accusations having
been made against him including that he covered-up epidemics in the past.
Alarms about Tedros began to go off immediately after his appointment in 2017, when he named
Robert Mugabe, the former dictator of Zimbabwe, as a goodwill ambassador to the WHO. Mugabe's
rule over Zimbabwe was dominated by "
murder, bloodshed, torture , persecution of political opponents, intimidation and
vote-rigging on a grand scale." This appointment indicated that Tedros' judgment of goodwill
was dubious at best.
A letter from a group of American doctors that same year described why Tedros has become
known as " Dr. Cover Up ."
They wrote:
"Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan daily becomes more
reprehensible. The inevitable history that will be written of this cholera epidemic will
surely cast you in an unforgiving light."
They added that Tedros was "fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that
continues to spread in East Africa."
Problems at WHO didn't start with Tedros, however.
After the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, evidence came to light that the WHO had exaggerated the
danger and had spread fear and confusion rather than helpful information. It was later learned
that "Italy, Germany, France and the U.K.
made secret agreements with pharmaceutical companies" that "obliged the countries to
buy vaccinations only if the WHO raised the pandemic to a level 6."
The WHO then proceeded to change its guidelines for defining a pandemic in order to
accommodate those contracts, thereby increasing the public's fear despite the fact that the
pandemic never became a serious threat.
Although WHO has been praised for its work to reduce some illnesses like polio, it has also
been found that drugs and vaccines recommended by WHO have been " found to be
harmful and without significant clinical effect."
A comprehensive view suggests that the WHO is more of a corporate interest agency than an
organization committed to preserving public health. That's not surprising due to the fact that
80% of WHO's funding comes from "voluntary contributions" provided by private donors including
pharmaceutical companies and industry groups like Bill Gates' Global Alliance for Vaccines and
Immunization (GAVI).
nd since the worldwide response to COVID-19 has been directed and coordinated by an
organization that works on behalf of multi-national corporations that stand to benefit, the
idea that the coronavirus scare could be a psychological operation seems plausible.
The
CDC
In the US, the CDC is also heavily influenced by corporate and political interests. This
became clear when, in 2016, a group of senior scientists within the CDC filed an ethics
complaint against the agency making that exact claim. They wrote:
The scientists noted that, in order to pursue political objectives, "definitions were
changed and data cooked" at CDC, even to the point of misrepresenting data to Congress.
Like the WHO, the CDC has a history of pushing harmful vaccines. An example was covered in a
60 Minutes episode
exposing the harm done by the Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 and CDC's urging that all Americans be
injected with that harmful vaccine. The report revealed that the illness was hyped based on
very questionable data and the vaccine caused neurological damage.
The current Director of CDC is retired US Army doctor Robert Redfield, who is known for
having led the Pentagon's disastrous response to HIV-AIDS in the 1980s.
A devout catholic, Redfield saw AIDS as the product of an immoral society. For many years,
he championed a much-hyped remedy that was discredited in tests. That debacle led to his
removal from the job in 1994."
Public health reporter Laurie Garrett remarked:
"Redfield is about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time.
He lets his prejudices interfere with the science, which you cannot afford during a
pandemic."
The CDC is an agency within the department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Alex Azar, a
lawyer and former pharmaceutical company executive, was appointed as Secretary of HHS in 2017.
Azar has deep connections to the pharmaceutical industry and is known for having engaged in
price gouging with his former employer.
Azar is also known for leading the HHS response to the anthrax scare of 2001, the first
known bioterrorism attack on the United States. The anthrax attacks were targeted against
members of Congress and the media that were dissenting voices in the national discussion about
the Patriot Act, the oppressive legislation introduced immediately after the 9/11 attacks.
Although Muslims were first blamed through highly questionable evidence, it was ultimately
found that the weaponized anthrax came from
U.S. military laboratories .
Azar was instrumental in defining the National Biodefense Strategy in 2018, working
closely with John Bolton , Trump's National Security Advisor. Bolton, a neocon and member
of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), has a long history of pushing authoritarian
policies and war.
In the US the person most visibly in charge of the COVID-19 response is Anthony Fauci, who
is the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Like Redfield, Dr. Fauci is a Catholic and has said that values he learned in his Jesuit
education continue to guide him.
After weeks of Fauci having led the coronavirus response in the US, it was learned that his
NIAID had funded
"gain of function" research at the Wuhan laboratory where the SARS-COV-2 virus is suspected
of having originated.
Fauci's response to questions about that inexplicable coincidence was simply to denounce
"conspiracy theories" rather than addressing the questions directly, much as others did when
questioned about 9/11 foreknowledge.
Whether SARS-COV-2 was genetically engineered in a laboratory, like the NIAID-funded Wuhan
lab, is a subject that has become of
interest to many scientists.
The Wuhan laboratory is not the only place the US supports work like this, however, as the
Pentagon funds such labs in 25 countries across the world. Located in places such as Eastern
Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia, and Africa, these labs isolate and manipulate viruses
like the bat coronaviruses from which SARS-COV-2 originated.
This bat-research program is further coordinated by a group called EcoHealth Alliance.
The manipulation of viruses for gain of function at US funded labs is, like the origin of
the weaponized anthrax at US labs, evidence that bioterrorism and pandemics can be manufactured
events. This is another way in which the coronavirus scare could reflect the war on terrorism
and war on communism, both of which were driven by manufactured terrorist events .
It is remarkable that Fauci funded work to manipulate coronaviruses then became the voice of
the coronavirus pandemic response while also working closely with Bill Gates' GAVI initiative.
Fauci has boasted that NIAID and GAVI work together to push vaccines with "outright
collaboration between us in setting the standard
of what is needed."
This makes it easier to see that a new pattern of hyped pandemics resulting in increased
population control and global vaccinations is not only possible but would be a very lucrative
business model.
The NHS and Corporate Nations
By now it's well known that the initial projections for deaths due to COVID-19 were
massively overestimated and one academic paper was responsible for the panic. The lead author
of that paper, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, has since resigned in disgrace from his
government advisory position. Much like the US government's explanation for destruction of the
World Trade Center buildings, his estimates were based on computer models that cannot be shared
with the public.
As in the US, UK intelligence agencies have taken a leading role in managing the coronavirus
scare. The terrorism expert who is expected to be the next chief of MI6 was selected to lead a
new " biosecurity centre " to
evaluate the coronavirus threat and "enable rapid intervention."
Additionally, the UK intelligence agency known as Government Communication Headquarters
(GCHQ) was granted powers over the
NHS's computer systems . GCHQ is known for engaging in illegal activities related to
population control mechanisms such as mass
surveillance .
Totalitarian outcomes are further enabled with billionaire Peter Thiel's CIA-initiated
company Palantir managing the databases used by
both the CDC and UK's NHS that drive COVID-19 decision making.
For perspective, in 2009, Thiel said, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are
compatible," providing another clue that public health and awareness are not the main
priorities behind the coronavirus scare.
The data behind the COVID-19 pandemic was never reliable, with test kits being inaccurate , government
policies
inflating the death counts , and the media focusing solely on fear-based predictions that
are repeatedly proven false.
Recently, scientists and government leaders from other countries, including Russia,
Germany and Denmark , have begun speaking out about how the coronavirus threat has been
exaggerated.
The outcomes of the coronavirus scare have included huge windfalls for billionaires,
financial institutions , and corporations. Legislation being passed in response to COVID-19
is largely beneficial
to corporate interests. The outcomes for everyone else have been fear, unemployment,
poverty, loss of freedoms, grave risks to democracy, and death.
How this is possible is related to the fact that governments, and the nations they
represent, are no longer what they were. In many ways, corporations have replaced
governments as the drivers of public policy and, as with Peter Thiel's Palantir, the
public's interest is not their concern. Meanwhile, over two dozen companies have become
larger and more powerful than many national governments.
As a result, governments are now false fronts for corporations and the decisions they make,
for example to lockdown citizens and remake their economies, are driven by profit-based
strategies indifferent to public interests.
In summary, the features and outcomes of the coronavirus scare reflect those of previous
psychological operations including the war on terrorism and its predecessor, the war on
communism.
The people and agencies driving the coronavirus scare have a history of unethical behaviors,
including hyping pandemics to push vaccines, and appear to seek long-term profits through
implementation of a highly controlled society. Therefore, the response to COVID-19, if not the
virus itself, can be seen as a psychological operation used to drive those outcomes.
Don't laugh derisively, as people do these days, but I've always admired the New York Times
. First draft of history. Talent everywhere. Best production values. Even with its ideological
spin, it can be scrupulous about facts. You can usually extract the truth with a decoder ring.
Its outsized influence over the rest of the press makes it essential. I've relied on it for
years. Even given everything, and I mean everything.
Until now. It's just too much. Too much unreality, manipulation, propaganda, and flat out
untruths that are immediately recognizable to anyone. I can't believe they think they can get
away with this with credibility intact. I'm not speaking of the many great reporters,
technicians, editors, production specialists, and the tens of thousands who make it all
possible. I'm speaking of a very small coterie of people who stand guard over the paper's
editorial mission of the moment and enforce it on the whole company, with no dissent
allowed.
Let's get right to the offending passage. It's not from the news or opinion section but the
official editorial section and hence the official voice of the paper. The paragraph from June
2, 2020, reads
as follows.
Healing the wounds ripped open in recent days and months will not be easy. The pandemic
has made Americans fearful of their neighbors, cut them off from their communities of faith,
shut their outlets for exercise and recreation and culture and learning. Worst of all, it has
separated Americans from their own livelihoods.
Can you imagine? The pandemic is the cause!
I would otherwise feel silly to have to point this out but for the utter absurdity of the
claim. The pandemic didn't do this. It caused a temporary and mostly media-fueled panic that
distracted officials from doing what they should have done, which is protect the vulnerable and
otherwise let society function and medical workers deal with disease.
Instead, the CDC and governors around the country, at the urging of bad computer-science
models uninformed by any experience in viruses, shut down schools, churches, events,
restaurants, gyms, theaters, sports, and further instructed people to stay in their homes,
enforced sometimes even by SWAT teams. Jewish funerals were broken up by the police.
It was brutal and egregious and it threw 40 million people out of work and bankrupted
countless businesses. Nothing this terrible was attempted even during the Black Death.
Maximum
economic damage; minimum health advantages . It's not even possible to find evidence that
the lockdowns saved lives at all .
But to hear the New York Times tell the story, it was not the lockdown but the pandemic that
did this. That's a level of ideological subterfuge that is almost impossible for a sane person
to conjure up, simply because it is so obviously unbelievable.
It's lockdown denialism.
Why? From February 2020 and following, the New York Times had a story and they are
continuing to stick to it. The story is that we are all going to die from this pandemic unless
government shuts down society. It was a drum this paper beat every day.
Consider what the top virus reporter Donald J. McNeil (B.A. Rhetoric, University of
California, Berkeley) wrote on
February 28, 2020, weeks before there was any talk of shutdowns in the U.S.:
There are two ways to fight epidemics: the medieval and the modern.
The modern way is to surrender to the power of the pathogens: Acknowledge that they are
unstoppable and to try to soften the blow with 20th-century inventions, including new
vaccines, antibiotics, hospital ventilators and thermal cameras searching for people with
fevers.
The medieval way, inherited from the era of the Black Death, is brutal: Close the borders,
quarantine the ships, pen terrified citizens up inside their poisoned cities.
For the first time in more than a century, the world has chosen to confront a new and
terrifying virus with the iron fist instead of the latex glove.
And yes, he recommends the medieval way. The article continues on to praise China's response
and Cuba's to AIDS and says that this approach is natural to Trump and should be done in the
United States. ( AIER
called him out on this alarming column on March 4, 20202.)
McNeil then went on to greater fame with a series of shocking podcasts for the NYT that put
a voice and even more panic to the failed modeling of Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College
London.
This first
appeared the day before his op-ed calling for global lockdown. The transcript
includes this:
I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I'm being too alarmist or whether I'm being
not alarmist enough. And this is alarmist, but I think right now, it's justified. This one
reminds me of what I have read about the 1918 Spanish influenza.
Reminder: 675,000 Americans died in that pandemic. There were only 103 million people living
in the U.S. at the time.
He continues:
I'm trying to bring a sense that if things don't change, a lot of us might die. If you
have 300 relatively close friends and acquaintances, six of them would die in a 2.5 percent
mortality situation.
That's an astonishing claim that seems to forecast 8.25 million Americans will die. So far
as I know, that is the most extreme claim made by anyone, four times as high as the Imperial
College model.
What should we do to prevent this?
You can't leave. You can't see your families. All the flights are canceled. All the trains
are canceled. All the highways are closed. You're going to stay in there. And you're locked
in with a deadly disease. We can do it.
So because this coronavirus "reminds" him of one he read about, he can say on the air that
four million people could soon die, and therefore life itself should be cancelled. Because a
reporter is "reminded" of something.
This is the same newspaper that in 1957 urged people to stay calm during the Asian flu and
trust medical providers – running all of one editorial on the topic. What a change! This
was an amazing podcast -- amazingly irresponsible.
McNeil was not finished yet. He was
at it again on March 12, 2020, demanding that we not just close big events and schools but
shut down everything and everyone "for months." He went back on the podcast twice more, then
started riding the media circuit, including
NPR . It was also the same. China did it right. We need to lock down or people you know, if
you are one of the lucky survivors, will die.
To say that the New York Times was invested in the scenario of "lock down or we die" is an
understatement. It was as invested in this narrative as it was in the Russia-collaboration
story or the Ukrainian-phone call impeachment, tales to which they dedicated hundreds of
stories and many dozens of reporters. The virus was the third pitch to achieve their
objective.
Once in, there was no turning back, even after it became obvious that for the vast numbers
of people this was hardly a disease at all, and that most of the deaths came from one city and
mostly from nursing homes that were forced by law to take in COVID-19 patients.
That the newspaper, a once venerable institution, has something to answer for is apparent.
But instead of accepting moral culpability for having created a panic to fuel the overthrow of
the American way of life, they turn on a dime to celebrate people who are not socially
distancing in the streets to protest police brutality.
To me, the protests on the streets were a welcome relief from the vicious lockdowns. To the
New York Times , it seems like the lockdowns never happened. Down the Orwellian memory
hole.
In this paper's consistent editorializing, nothing is the fault of the lockdowns.
Everything instead is the fault of Trump, who "tends to see only political opportunity in
public fear and anger, as in his customary manner of contributing heat rather than light to the
confrontations between protesters and authority."
True about Trump but let us remember that the McNeil's first pro-lockdown article praised
Trump as perfectly suited to bring about the lockdown, and the paper urged him to do just that,
while only three months later washing their hands of the whole thing, as if had nothing to do
with current sufferings much less the rage on the streets.
And the rapid turnaround of this paper on street protests was stunning to behold. A month
ago, people protesting lockdowns were written about as vicious disease spreaders who were
denying good science. In the blink of an eye, the protesters against police brutality (the same
police who enforced the lockdown) were transmogrified into bold embracers of First Amendment
rights who posed no threat to public health.
Not even the scary warnings about the coming "second wave" were enough to stop the paper
from throwing out all its concern over "targeted layered containment" and "social distancing"
in order to celebrate protests in the streets that they like.
And they ask themselves why people are incredulous toward mainstream media today.
The lockdowns wrecked the fundamentals of life in America. The New York Times today wants to
pretend they either didn't happen, happened only in a limited way, or were just minor public
health measures that worked beautifully to mitigate disease. And instead of having an editorial
meltdown over these absurdities, preposterous forecasts, and extreme panic mongering that
contributed to vast carnage, we seen an internal
revolt over the publishing of a Tom Cotton editorial, a dispute over politics not
facts.
The record is there: this paper went all in back in February to demand the most
authoritarian possible response to a virus about which we already knew enough back then to
observe that this was nothing like the Spanish flu of 1918. They pretended otherwise, probably
for ideological reasons, most likely.
It was not the pandemic that blew up our lives, commercial networks, and health systems. It
was the response to the virus that did that. The Times needs to learn that it cannot construct
a fake version of reality just to avoid responsibility for what they've done. Are we really
supposed to believe what they write now and in the future? This time, I hope, people will be
smart and learn to consider the source.
In the period leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration and its
media accomplices waged a relentless propaganda campaign to win political support for what
turned out to be one of the most disastrous foreign policy mistakes in American history.
Nearly two decades later, with
perhaps a million dead Iraqis and thousands of dead American soldiers, we are still paying
for that mistake.
Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General John
Yoo, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were key players behind the propaganda -- which we
can define as purposeful use of information and misinformation to manipulate public opinion in
favor of state action. Iraq and its president Saddam Hussein were the ostensible focus, but
their greater goal was to make the case for a broader and open-ended "War on Terror."
So they created a narrative using a mélange of half-truths, faintly plausible
fabrications, and outright lies:
Iraq and the nefarious Saddam Hussein were "behind," i.e., backing, the Saudi terrorists
responsible for 9-11 attacks on the US;
Hussein and his government were stockpiling yellowcake uranium in an effort to develop
nuclear capability;
Hussein was connected with al-Qaeda
Iran was lurking in the background as a state sponsor of terrorism, coordinating and
facilitating attacks against the US in coordination with Hamas;
Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and other terror groups were working against the US across the
Middle East in some kind of murky but coordinated effort;
We have to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here";
The Iraqis would welcome our troops as liberators.
And so forth.
But the propaganda "worked" in the most meaningful sense: Congress voted nearly 3–1 in
favor of military action against Iraq, and Gallup showed 72 percent of Americans supporting the
invasion as it commenced in 2003. Media outlets across the spectrum such as the Washington Post
cheered the war . National Review dutifully did its part, labeling Pat
Buchanan, Ron Paul, Justin Raimondo, Lew Rockwell, and other outspoken opponents of the
invasion as "unpatriotic conservatives."
Tragically, the American people never placed the burden of proof squarely with the war
cheerleaders to justify their absolutely crazed effort to remake the Middle East. In hindsight,
this is obvious, but at the time propaganda did its job. Disinformation is part and parcel of
the fog of war.
What will hindsight make clear about our reaction to COVID-19 propaganda? Will we regret
shutting down the economy as much as we ought to regret invading Iraq?
The cast of characters is different, of course: Trump, desperately seeking "wartime
president" status; Dr. Anthony Fauci; epidemiologist Neil Ferguson; state governors such as
Cuomo, Whitmer, and Newsom; and a host of media acolytes just itching to force a new normal
down our throats. Like the Iraq War architects, they use COVID-19 as justification to advance a
preexisting agenda, namely, greater state control over our lives and our economy. Yet because
too many Americans remain stubbornly attached to the old normal, a propaganda campaign is
required.
So we are faced with a blizzard of new "facts" almost every day, most of which turn out to
be only mildly true, extremely dubious, or plainly false:
The virus aerosolizes and floats around, so we all need to be six feet apart (But why not
twenty feet? Why not one mile?);
The virus lives on surfaces everywhere, for days;
Asymptomatic people can spread it unknowingly;
Antibodies may or may not develop naturally;
People may become infected more than once;
Young healthy people are at great risk not only themselves, but also pose a risk to their
elderly family members;
Thin, permeable paper masks somehow prevent microscopic viral spores from being inhaled
or exhaled toward others;
People are safer inside;
The rate of new infected "cases" in the first few weeks of the virus reaching America
would continue or even grow exponentially;
Social distancing and quarantines do indeed "save" lives;
Testing is key (But what if an individual visits a crowded grocery an hour after testing
negative?);
A second wave of infections is nigh; and
Our personal and work lives cannot continue without a vaccine, which, by the way, may be
two years away.
Again, much of this is not true and not even intended to be true -- but rather to influence
public behavior and opinions. And again, the overwhelming burden of proof should lie squarely
with those advocating a lockdown of society, who would risk a modern Great Depression in
response to a simple virus.
How much damage will the lockdown cause? Economics aside, the sheer toll of this
self-inflicted wound will be a matter for historians to document. That toll includes all the
things Americans would have done without the shutdown in their personal and professional lives,
representing a diminution of life itself. Can that be measured, or distilled into numerical
terms? Probably not, but this group of researchers and academics
argues that we have already suffered more than one million "lost years of life" due to the
ravages of unemployment, missed healthcare, and general malaise.
By the same token, how do we measure the blood and treasure lost in Iraq? How much PTSD will
soldiers suffer? How many billions of dollars in future VA medical care will be required? How
many children will grow up without fathers? And how many millions of lives are forever
shattered in that cobbled-together political artifice in the Middle East?
Propaganda kills, but it also works. Politicians of all stripes will benefit from the
coronavirus; the American people will suffer. Perversely, one of the worst COVID propagandists
-- the aforementioned Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York -- yesterday rang the bell as the New
York Stock Exchange reopened to floor trading. He now admits that the models were wrong and
that his lockdown did nothing to prevent the Empire State from suffering the highest
per capita deaths from COVID. Like the architects of the Iraq War, he belongs on a criminal
docket. But thanks to propaganda, he is hailed as presidential.
I'm not sure it is the 14th amendment that is the proximate cause. I would argue that the
17th amendment did more for centralization which IMO inevitably has led to the symbiotic
relationship between big business and big government. A veritable oligarchy.
I'm also not certain that it has to do with ideology either as there's not been any
opposition to this centralization by either the left or right. While I get that "socialism"
is the boogeyman for the right, the reality is that the biggest socialists are the ostensibly
"capitalist" Wall St financiers who have socialized their speculative losses at every turn.
Why are the "right" so silent to this when the scale is so gargantuan?
IMO, the problem is much more deep rooted. It is societal. The attitudes and proclivities
of our society began a dramatic and steady shift over the last 50 years and it has only
accelerated. Values have changed and we see it across the board from our politics to our
economy.
Over the last 50 years, for example, the majority of food production, processing and
distribution became consolidated into a handful of large corporations. All aspects of it from
agricultural inputs to processing and distribution. This consolidation along with close
financial relationships between these corporations and the political system has enabled
massive corporate welfare and cartelization. Trump for example, has pushed massive taxpayer
payments to the large multinational agribusinesses to the tune of hundreds of billions. So
this is not an ideological divide. Both the left and right have enabled this under the rubric
of supporting the "small family farm".
Market consolidation has taken place in practically every segment with one of the most
insidious being the consolidation in media. Couple that with Citizens United and the
financialization of economy where financial speculation is where the biggest "wealth"
creation takes place and we can see the erosion in our societal value system. From business
to politics it's all about immediate personal gain.
Where in history can we find a dominant power that voluntarily dismantled it's
productive capacity to ship it to an enemy state? All so that the financial and political
elite could personally gain in the short term. This can all be traced back to the trend of
centralization, IMO.
The wars we have fought in the past decades as well as our large garrisons around the
world at tremendous cost both financially and in lives have brought what national benefit?
We've been in Afghanistan for 19 years to what end? Military spending continues to rise not
because there's a strategy but because of the huge benefits to the vested class. The massive
expenditures on various boondoggles engendered by the financial gains for the few in the
revolving door.
As blue peacock noted in another thread and I agree wholeheartedly is that our society is
now easily propagandized with fear. Both 9/11 and the Wuhan virus exemplifies how easily
Americans will voluntarily support increased authoritarianism. Take for example the Patriot
Act, where with the exception of one senator, everyone voted for it without any qualms on its
implications for constitutionally protected civil liberties. And that senator, Russ Feingold
was a Democrat. The authoritarians are counting on this partisan and faux ideological divide
among the citizenry.
Where does this lead? IMO, more authoritarianism. The constitution cannot be a bulwark
when citizens no longer have the will to sacrifice and defend its precepts.
Someone described the current situation as the Inner (Democrat) and Outer (Republican)
Parties coming to parity, with identity politics (IDPOL) being pushed so hard because its not
really giving up any of the real power...
As a general rule, the more that hawks harp on the need to preserve U.S. "credibility," the
weaker their argument for armed aggression.
We will fight them over there so we do not have
to face them in the United States of America," George W. Bush said in a 2007 speech to the
American Legion, in a labored defense of his disastrous foreign policy record.
This is one of the better-known and more ridiculous rationalizations for both the endless
"war on terror" and for the Iraq war. The Bush administration conflated these two very
different conflicts and pretended that an aggressive, illegal invasion of Iraq had something to
do with defending the United States. There is absolutely no reason to think that having U.S.
forces fighting in Iraq in 2003 or 2007 or 2020 has made Americans the least bit more secure,
but this is the official line that we are still being fed today. Many of us could see long ago
that this was false, but the toxic legacy of the myth that aggression brings security remains
with us even now.
This myth that aggression brings security is certainly not unique to the U.S., but over the
last several decades our government has been one of its most prominent promoters. It is the
myth that has distorted our counterterrorism and counterproliferation policies for most of my
lifetime, and it continues to provide fodder to advocates of preventive war against Iran, North
Korea, and any other adversary that they think might possibly pose a threat in the distant
future.
The practical consequences of believing this myth are overexpansion and overreach. Once
you accept that your security is contingent on going on the offensive against potential
threats, you begin to lose the ability to calculate costs and benefits rationally. Instead, you
begin to see every nuisance as an intolerable menace. That encourages increasingly reckless and
destructive policies as you lash out against anything and everything that you think might be a
danger to you. As a result, you exhaust yourself, alienate your allies, and drive other states
to band together to protect themselves from you. The U.S. has not quite reached that last
stage, but it is heading in that direction.
Great powers fall into the trap of overexpansion again and again. These states make this
costly error because they embrace myths that encourage them to fight in places that don't
matter and to make commitments that they don't have to make. Even though expansion inflicts
significant damage on the state that engages in it, advocates of aggressive policies never stop
insisting that expansion brings security. The U.S. has been going through a period of
overexpansion for almost twenty years, and the costs of continue to mount. At the same time,
there is tremendous resistance in Washington to anything even resembling retrenchment.
Jack Snyder wrote the classic study of the myths behind great power overexpansion,
Myths of
Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition , thirty years ago. When he
concluded his book, the Soviet Union still existed and he had some reason to believe that the
United States had learned from its disastrous intervention in Vietnam. Snyder's work is
arguably more relevant now than it was then. However, the last thirty years of U.S. foreign
policy show that he was far too optimistic about the U.S. government's ability to learn from
its past excesses and failures.
Snyder argued that "American intervention in the Vietnam War was a clear case of strategic
overextension." He added that it is "difficult to explain in terms of any Realist criteria,
judging either from hindsight or from information available at the time."
U.S. intervention in Vietnam was fueled by ideology and the misguided belief that U.S.
"credibility" elsewhere would be jeopardized if the U.S. did not keep fighting there. This
argument made no sense when it was made, and our allies at the time rejected it. As Snyder puts
it, "American allies denied that American credibility was at stake in Vietnam, but American
decision makers insisted that it was." As usual, the people invoking "credibility" then were
just looking for an excuse to legitimize their reckless policy. It is a common claim put
forward by promoters of empire, and it usually doesn't have the slightest connection to the
real world.
That is why it is discouraging but also very revealing that a new study of Henry Kissinger
by Barry Gewen essentially endorses Kissinger's preposterous rationalizations for continued
U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the escalation of the war into neighboring Cambodia. According
to John Farrell's
review of The Inevitability of Tragedy , Gewen accepts the standard Cold War-era
arguments for some of the worst policies of the Nixon administration:
He takes on the "war crimes" arraignments in chapters on Chile and Southeast Asia,
concluding that the threat posed by Chilean socialism to hemispheric tranquillity generally
absolved the United States for helping to foster a bloody coup, and that the Cold War
necessity of preserving U.S. "credibility" and "prestige" justified Nixon's callous choice of
four more years of war in Southeast Asia.
As a general rule, the more that hawks harp on the "need" to preserve "credibility," the
weaker the argument for U.S. involvement in a conflict is. It is only when there are no obvious
vital interests at stake that hawks are reduced to summoning the mystical spirits of reputation
and resolve in a séance, and they do this because they have no other arguments left. The
sad thing is that this mumbo-jumbo continues to hold sway in our foreign policy debates. It is
used to override correct assessments of costs and benefits by pretending that the U.S. risks
suffering an enormous loss if it "fails" to intervene in some strategic backwater. Yesterday,
it was Vietnam, and today we hear much the same thing about Afghanistan.
There is no worse reason to fight a war than the preservation of supposed "credibility." For
one thing, fighting an unnecessary war always does more damage to a nation's reputation and
strength than avoiding it. Even if the U.S. managed to "win" such a war in a limited fashion,
it would not be worth the losses incurred. There is virtually nothing more debilitating to a
great power than an inability to extricate itself from a mistaken commitment. There is nothing
more foolish than persisting in such a commitment when there is an opportunity to get out.
One of the themes of the new study of Kissinger is that tragedy is unavoidable in this
world. That may be true as a general observation, but the terrible thing about continued U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam War was that it was entirely avoidable. Unfortunately, because of
the ideological blinders of our leaders and the flaws of our political culture the war
continued and expanded even further for many more years under Nixon. The U.S. was merely
prolonging the inevitable by refusing to leave a war that it had no business fighting, and
there was nothing realistic or wise about this.
When Snyder wrote Myths of Empire , he could plausibly argue that "America's
'imperial overstretch' has been moderate and self-correcting," but after almost two decades of
continuous desultory warfare in Afghanistan and almost three decades of being engaged in
hostilities in Iraq that verdict is no longer credible. Snyder was interested to explain both
"America's Cold War penchant for limited overexpansion and also its ability to learn from its
mistakes," but thirty years on there is no need to explain America's ability to learn from
mistakes because it has almost completely atrophied.
If we were to update Myths of Empire today, we would have to say that the elements of
democratic government that were supposed to protect the United States against the failings of
other systems have been waning. The "more open debate on foreign policy issues" that Snyder
found in the post-Vietnam era turned out to be narrower and more closed than he supposed. He
concluded that "the use of myths of empire to justify the Gulf War shows that democratic
scrutiny of strategic assertions is still needed."
What we have learned over the last thirty years is that Congress has mostly functioned as a
willing rubber stamp for whatever the executive wants to do, and its scrutiny of presidential
assertions about foreign threats is woefully lacking. It turns out that Snyder's judgment that
"there was no overexpansion, no disproportion between strategic costs and benefits" after the
Gulf War was premature. It was not evident in 1991, but we can see now that the costs of that
intervention were much higher than they seemed at the time. The U.S. embarked then on what
would prove to be a three-decade entanglement in the affairs of Iraq, and each time that there
was a chance of extricating ourselves from it one president after another used the myths of
empire to keep our forces there indefinitely.
I can think of no better way of building credibility than fighting embarrassingly long wars
that leave the nations we fight in worse off and our actual enemies stronger, can't you?
Maybe I am wrong but this is my opinion. The strongest warmongerers have been the neocons
and the neoliberals (which in the case of foreign military intervention are
interchangeable) who are closely linked with AIPAC and Isael. If the US has an existential
threat then its usually plain for all to see but I will concede that the media has been
politicized and does not present objective factual news to the public. As an example,
Breitbart, Trump and others have been warning about China for decades but many politicians
have major business dealings ( bribes, payoffs, business dealings for their son and
relatives, etc) with China so they deflected to Russia whenever military or economic
concerns about China could not be hushed up. It was reported long before BushII went into
Iraq that the US and Israel had a plan for regime change in 7 middle eastern countries
which has always led me to believe that our military interventionism in the middle east is
not based on the US interest but in fact are proxy wars for US allies Israel / Saudi (and
other middle east allies) intentions at regime change in Iran. This is where Kissinger
should not be missed nor his supporters. It took a long time to switch the American
consciousness away from Russia toward China. Identifying foreign lobbyists or lobbyists for
a foreign country are easy because they must be disclosed to the Federal Govt. However, the
US needs to take a close look at its domestic lobbies, its internal corruption, its
internal conflicts of interest and its internal loyalties of those who are employees of the
federal govt or have capabilities to influence decision making of the federal govt. It
appears that we will never be able to extricate ourselves (ie USA) from foreign military
intervention in the middle east as long as we have powerful and wealthy middle eastern
allies using their influence to engage the US in proxy wars on its behalf.
The polls, where the desires of hoi poloi are captured, consistently show that US
"citizens" do not want military engagements and do not feel their security threatened all
the time. Enjoy your oligarchical run Republic.
Nothing Dan writes is without value, but I think he fails to recognize the extent to which
policymakers are worried about, not the credibility of the U.S., but that of the
"Establishment", of their own "right" to be in charge, to be important and to have vast
resources at their disposal. Ever since the end of the Cold War, the "military-intellectual
complex"--the Pentagon, the military suppliers, the intelligence community and its myriad
of contractors, the various think tanks, etc.--have all been seeking an excuse for their
continued existence. The real purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to create a ground for a
massive US overseas military commitment to replace NATO as a source for funding and
promotions. This enterprise has sadly dovetailed with the desires of the "Wilsonians" of
the Democratic Party. The domestic scene, after all, is clotted and congested. There's so
much more room to do good overseas! The strength of the Peace movement was significantly
vitiated first by the end of the draft (shrewd move, Mr. Nixon!) and then by the end of the
Cold War, for which Ronald Reagan deserved significant credit. Democrats proved sadly
susceptible to treating the Defense budget as an unlimited pork barrel. Since the
Republicans were buying, why not dig in? And, of course, pressure from AIPAC made voting
for a "firm" policy in the Middle East a political no-brainer.
"... On April 21st the Washington Post savaged Georgia governor Brian Kemp's decision to begin opening his state after locking down for weeks. "Georgia leads the race to become America's No. 1 Death Destination," sneered the headline. ..."
"... Milbank, who is obviously still getting paid while millions are out of work, sees his job as pushing the mainstream narrative that we must remain in fear and never question what "experts" like Dr. Fauci tell us. ..."
"... in places that are opening, we're not seeing this spike in cases. ..."
"... Shutting down the entire United States over a virus that looks to be less deadly than an average flu virus – particularly among those under 80 who are not already sick – has resulted in mass unemployment and economic destruction. More Americans may die from the wrong-headed efforts to fight the virus than from the virus itself. ..."
"... Americans should pause and reflect on the lies they are being sold. Masks are just a form of psychological manipulation. Many reputable physicians and scientists have said they are worthless and potentially harmful. Lockdowns are meant to condition people to obey without question. ..."
On April 21st the Washington Post savaged Georgia governor Brian Kemp's decision to begin
opening his state after locking down for weeks. "Georgia leads the race to become America's No.
1 Death Destination," sneered the headline.
The author, liberal pundit Dana Milbank, actually found the possibility of Georgians dying
to be hilarious, suggesting that, "as a promotion, Georgia could offer ventilators to the first
100 hotel guests to register."
Milbank, who is obviously still getting paid while millions are out of work, sees his job as
pushing the mainstream narrative that we must remain in fear and never question what "experts"
like Dr. Fauci tell us.
Well it's been three weeks since Milbank's attack on Georgia and its governor, predicting
widespread death which he found humorous. His predictions are about as worthless as his
character. Not only has Georgia not seen "coronavirus burn through Georgia like nothing has
since William Tecumseh Sherman," as Milbank laughed, but Covid cases, hospitalizations, and
deaths have seen a steep decline since the governor began opening the state.
Maybe getting
out in the fresh air and sunshine should not have been prohibited in the first place!
In fact, as we now have much more data, it is becoming increasingly clear that the US states
and the countries that locked down the tightest also suffered the highest death rates. Ultra
locked-down Italy suffered 495 Covid deaths per million while relatively non-locked down South
Korea suffered only five deaths per million. The same is true in the US, where non lockdown
states like South Dakota were relatively untouched by the virus while authoritarian-led
Michigan, New York, and California have been hardest hit.
In those hardest hit states, we are now seeing that most of the deaths occurred in senior
care facilities – after the governors ordered patients sick with Covid to leave the
hospitals and return to their facilities. There, they infected their fellow residents who were
most likely to have the multiple co-morbidities and advanced age that turned the virus into a
death sentence. Will these governors be made to answer for this callous disregard for life?
Yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar admitted the obvious:
" We are seeing that in places that are opening, we're not seeing this spike in
cases."
So why not open everything? Because these petty tyrants cannot stand the idea of losing the
ability to push people around.
Shutting down the entire United States over a virus that looks to be less deadly than an
average flu virus – particularly among those under 80 who are not already sick –
has resulted in mass unemployment and economic destruction. More Americans may die from the
wrong-headed efforts to fight the virus than from the virus itself.
Americans should pause and reflect on the lies they are being sold. Masks are just a form of
psychological manipulation. Many reputable physicians and scientists have said they are
worthless and potentially harmful. Lockdowns are meant to condition people to obey without
question.
A nation of people who just do what they are told by the "experts" without question is a
nation ripe for a descent into total tyranny.
This is no empty warning – it's backed up by history. Time to stand up to all the
petty tyrants from our hometowns to Washington DC. It is time to reclaim our freedom.
The Trump administration's efforts to blame China for COVID-19's rising death toll in the
U.S. have not been backed up by intelligence assessments, but it has not stopped Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo from making the baseless assertion that the virus originated in a Chinese lab
or the Trump campaign from attacking the presumptive Democratic nominee, former vice president
Joe Biden, as too weak on China. But there may be more than political opportunism at play.
Weapons manufacturers stand to reap huge profits if they can stoke a new cold war between the
U.S. and China.
Those overlapping interests were on display last week when The Wall Street Journal published
an op-ed by
two former Trump administration officials claiming, "The Covid-19 pandemic has convinced many
that the U.S. must fundamentally change its policy toward China. Shifting course is necessary,
but it won't be achieved with a few policy tweaks."
"That's because," they added, "the pandemic's political and economic effects are bringing
about a more assertive Chinese grand strategy."
There are at least two big problems with this op-ed.
First, there's no actual evidence or explanation provided about COVID-19 "bringing about a
more assertive Chinese grand strategy" but the authors plow forward with their theory that
"Beijing was cruising to global domination" unchallenged.
Second, both of the op-ed's authors have undisclosed conflicts of interest that might
motivate their prescription for a new U.S. grand strategy centered on, among other things,
"maritime and aerospace power."
The authors, Elbridge Colby (who served as assistant secretary of defense for strategy and
force development from 2017-2018) and A. Wess Mitchell (who served as assistant secretary of
state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2017-2019), are both employed by institutions that
receive considerable funding from weapons manufacturers.
The Wall Street Journal describes Colby and Mitchell as "principals of the Marathon
Initiative," an entity that has no website and about which there is little public information
other than that it was formed on May 7, 2020 according to the Washington, DC Department of
Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
The Marathon Initiative shares an address with the Center for European Policy Analysis
(CEPA) where Mitchell serves as vice chairman and received $227,500 in compensation in
2017 . Donors to CEPA include a
defense industry who's who: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Bell Helicopter, and BAE Systems.
Mitchell's co-author, Colby, also appears to have benefited financially from funding
originating from arms manufacturers.
Colby is a senior adviser at WestExec Advisors, which does not disclose its client list. But
one of the company's co-founders, Obama Defense Department appointee Michèle Flournoy,
told The
Intercept back in 2018 that "we help tech firms who are trying to figure out how to sell in
the public sector space, to navigate the DOD, the intel community, law enforcement ."
And from 2014 to 2017 and 2018 to 2019 Colby worked at the Center for a New American
Security (CNAS) which counts Northrop Grumman as one of its biggest donors (contributing more than
$500,000 between October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2019) as well as contributions from Lockheed
Martin, Raytheon, Bell Helicopter, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Boeing and DynCorp.
None of this is to say that Colby and Mitchell don't genuinely believe that COVID-19's
spread and China's lack of transparency about the virus's initial outbreak justifies the
military-heavy strategies they propose.
But when the op-ed concludes, "The West must recognize that it will either pay now or pay
later to contain China. Paying now is likely to produce a more tolerable bill," it's worth
noting that weapons manufacturers and defense contractors, who have helped finance the authors'
careers in the Beltway, will be the ones sending that bill to taxpayers.
"... > How about we follow WHO's rule zero: test, test and test? ..."
"... Why the USA did not implemented entry/exist temperature checks (even at airports) I do not understand. The richest nation in the world has the government which is probably the most inept and disfunctional ..."
"... It looks like this is mainly the disease of megacities and industries with closely packed people (ships, meatpacking plants, Amazon warepuses) . And a large part of large cities infrastructure such as subways and air-conditioned building, hotels and shops are ideal environment for spreading of the virus. ..."
"... Another interesting feature of this virus is that it simply revealed how unhealthy the USA population generally is. For example, the epidemic of obesity now is tightly intermixed with the epidemic of COVID-19. Within the limits of the neoliberal social system very little can be done about it: for profit medicine makes is more fragile and create multiple avenue of abusing people. ..."
Do you understand that the current polymerase tests have 20-30% of false positives?
So if everybody in the USA is tested around 60-80 million people in the USA would be
deemed infected. I suspect that a very large percentage of "asymptomatics" are in reality
false positives.
We need to distinguish between the necessary measures and fearmongering. I suspect that in
the case of polymerase test the mantra "test, test, test" is close to the latter. This is s
rather expensive test and money probably can be better spend distributing masks to the
population. That would instantly give a larger effect. The simple measure that in the USA was
not done. Just for that Fauci should be fired and probably tried, IMHO.
The same is probably true with the distribution of oxymeters too: people with lows reading
need oxygen. As simple as that. That probably will cut hospitalizations in half.
My impression is that temperature and oxymeter testing might be a proxy for polymerase
testing and much cheaper: if oxygen saturation is less then 90% the person need to be
isolated/treated with oxygen
Why the USA did not implemented entry/exist temperature checks (even at airports) I do
not understand. The richest nation in the world has the government which is probably the most
inept and disfunctional
It looks like this is mainly the disease of megacities and industries with closely
packed people (ships, meatpacking plants, Amazon warepuses) . And a large part of large
cities infrastructure such as subways and air-conditioned building, hotels and shops are
ideal environment for spreading of the virus.
Even reasonable prophylactic measures do not work that well in large cities. Slums and
homeless are and will be hotspots.
Even at work enforcing prophylactic measures is non trivial. You need to change mask each
2 hours when you are working inside. How many people will do that ?
I think there is not way out other then clench your teeth and go forward adapting the
behavior as new information about the virus emerge.
For example individual supply of air in planes, trains and buses (which existed in old
planes and some buses ) might be an important psychological (and with better filters medical)
measure required.
Also Cruise ships "experiments" suggest that only around 20% of population is susceptible
to the virus. Even among Wuhan medics who started working with coronavirus patients without
wearing protective equipment only around half got the disease. The simplistic assumption that
100% of people is susceptible is just a myth propagated by fearmongers for fun and
profit.
Another interesting feature of this virus is that it simply revealed how unhealthy the USA
population generally is. For example, the epidemic of obesity now is tightly intermixed with
the epidemic of COVID-19. Within the limits of the neoliberal social system very little can
be done about it: for profit medicine makes is more fragile and create multiple avenue of
abusing people.
she is
truly sorry for the error, and the ensuing public furor she accidentally unleashed.
... ... ...
As KABC's John Phillips shared on his radio show Wednesday, the good doctor's
educational resume, according to a bio published at USC, where she was recently a panelist at a
"Safe Schools" symposium, reveals she received her Ph.D. in Social Welfare from Brandeis
University, a Master of Arts in Public Health from Boston University, a Master of Arts in
Education from the University of Massachusetts, and a Bachelor of Arts in Community Studies
from UC Santa Cruz.
None of these disciplines are rooted in the sciences - rather, it appears the good doctor's
"public health" background doesn't include any specialization in actual medical care, or
epidemiology. This woman probably knows about as much as the discipline as the average
Californian who has spent the last couple of months on Wikipedia.
However, as the LA Times reports, Ferrer has somehow found her way into a role where she is
the top public health officer in a county of 10 million people. Keep in mind, she has no actual
medical background, but despite this, she's found herself in the middle of "every tough
conversation about which businesses and institutions have to shut down, whether public and
private hospitals are equipped and prepared to handle a possible surge" and what precautions
individuals can take to protect their health.
Her role for the county is essentially equivalent to that of Dr. Fauci at the White house.
Except Dr. Ferrer isn't a doctor, she's a professional social justice warrior. However, as the
LA Times reports, Ferrer has somehow found her way into a role where she is the top public
health officer in a county of 10 million people. Keep in mind, she has no actual medical
background, but despite this, she's found herself in the middle of "every tough conversation
about which businesses and institutions have to shut down, whether public and private hospitals
are equipped and prepared to handle a possible surge" and what precautions individuals can take
to protect their health.
Her role for the county is essentially equivalent to that of Dr. Fauci at the White house.
Except Dr. Ferrer isn't a doctor, she's a professional social justice warrior.
As Red State points out, when Dr. Ferrer was put in charge of solving the homelessness
epidemic in LA County, her game plan 100% focused on "community outreach". "We need to start
this work by speaking directly with those experiencing homelessness to better understand how to
align our support," she said.
That's right: Dr. Ferrer's one-size-fits-all plan for solving homelessness started with
talking to a demographic group where those with severe mental health disorders and
substance-abuse problems represent an overwhelming share of the population. Dr. Ferrer's
approach to help improve the lives of the homeless was to talk to a bunch of schizophrenics and
drug addicts about government policy,
as Red State pointed out.
Does this woman sound qualified to be one of a handful of people in the room making
decisions that will impact the livelihoods and health of millions of people? If we lived in LA
County, we certainly wouldn't be comfortable with that.
Yes, Ken Garoo @26, the fearmongers have blood on their hands, not just in the UK, and this
is a massive life-and-death crisis. More evidence, from another unimpeachable source various
MoA stalwarts will now have to claim is a hack:
"...According to a stark report published in Lancet Global Health journal on Wednesday,
almost 1.2 million children could die in the next six months due to the disruption to health
services and food supplies caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
"The modelling, by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and
Unicef, found that child mortality rates could rise by as much as 45 per cent due to
coronavirus-related disruptions, while maternal deaths could increase by almost 39 per
cent.
"Dr [Stefan Peterson, chief of health at UNICEF] said these figures were in part a
reflection of stringent restrictions in much of the world that prevent people leaving their
homes without documentation, preventing them from accessing essential health care services.
...
"...Covid is not a children's disease. Yes there are rare instances and we see them
publicised across the media. But pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, death in childbirth, these
are the reasons we will see deaths rise."
From the beginning of this crisis we have been pointing out that there are two mutually
contradictory messages at the heart of the covid19 rollout , and, just as Orwell describes in
1984, a major point of the exercise seems to be to get people to believe both at the same time
.
1. 'BE AFRAID '
The first message is that covid19 is terrifying, unique, an existential threat to the human
race.
This message is never sourced to much fact, because the facts about the virus don't really
support it. If it cites anything solid it's the appallingly sloppy and discredited Imperial
computer model, or some generic research into the pathology of severe infections or rare viral
syndromes, which it tries to spin as being unique to covid19, even though it is not. But mostly
it doesn't cite anything at all. Or really claim anything at all.
It just tells people to be afraid. Very afraid. Of death, of uncertainty, of the 'virus', of
other people, of 'fake news'.
The fear being encouraged is not rooted in facts, and is therefore impervious to
them.
2. 'THERE IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF '
The second message is that covid19 is actually pretty harmless and no big deal.
This message is rooted in a great deal of fact, because, as we have been pointing out since
day one, pretty much all the data coming out about this virus supports exactly this
conclusion.
No official body has ever denied this, and most of them readily admit it. Regularly and
unambiguously.
Here and here
and here and here .
Chris Whitty above is only one of many and this is not even his first go (see here ) at
explaining clearly that covid19 is only dangerous to a very very small minority of people, and
that most who get it will be just fine.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/adj8MCsZKlg
Here's a slide from his talk on April 30th:
Now, let's look at what he is saying in the above video, on May 11th [our emphasis]:
[T]he great majority of people will not die from this and I'll just repeat something I
said right at the beginning because I think it's worth reinforcing :
Most people, a significant proportion of people, will not get this virus at all, at any
point of the epidemic which is going to go on for a long period of time.
Of those who do, some of them will get the virus without even knowing it, they will have
the virus with no symptoms at all, asymptomatic carriage, and we know that happens.
Of those who get symptoms, the great majority, probably 80%, will have a mild or moderate
disease. Might be bad enough for them to have to go to bed for a few days, not bad enough for
them to have to go to the doctor.
An unfortunate minority will have to go as far as hospital, but the majority of those will
just need oxygen and will then leave hospital.
And then a minority of those will end up having to go to severe end critical care and some
of those sadly will die.
But that's a minority, it's 1% or possibly even less than 1% overall.
And even in the highest risk group this is significantly less than 20%, ie. the great
majority of people, even the very highest groups, if they catch this virus, will not die.
And I really wanted to make that point really clearly
It seems all the officials want 'to make that point really clearly', even while they behave
as if it was not true.
Why?
There's plenty of room for speculation there, and we leave it to readers to get into that
BTL.
The motives, though, are less important than the basic and undeniable fact – the fear
currently gripping the public mind is being simultaneously encouraged and acknowledged as
unnecessary by the bodies overseeing the 'response'.
And if enough people would wake up to the pea-and-thimble trick being pulled on them, then
the most dangerous and far-reaching coup against human liberty we have ever seen would
essentially be stopped in its tracks.
With politics (the November election), scapegoating, the economic depression and the fall of
the Western Empire very much involved, finding impartial scientific COVID-19 information is
near impossible. This site is the best you'll find but, no doubt, it and the comments are
colored by our human biases.
A factor never mentioned in corporate press is that healthcare in the USA is privatized.
All that matters is profits. The only thing that would get any attention at all is a
significant cluster of deaths. Three were reported in mid-2019 in a nursing home in Northern
Virginia. The 68 Vaping deaths came and went when vitamin E acetate was identified as a
possible culprit. With both, there was no exponential growth of illness and death like the
coronavirus outbreak. In fact, clusters of deaths don't matter to the corporate elite. Boeing
killed 346 people. The around 0.1% fatality rate of COVID-19 with a functional healthcare
system is touted as justification for ending the lockdown. That will kill about a million and
half Americans without mitigation. This is of no matter to the White House, Republicans and
apparently corporate Democrats. Without spending the money and instituting national public
health measures to test everyone, trace contacts and quarantine the infected in safe secure
facilities; the pandemic will wax and wane and spread to every corner of North America.
Lockdowns will keep popping up to prevent local hospitals from being overwhelmed by all the
sick; rich, middle-class and mostly poor. America will be a very ill society for the
foreseeable future.
I wouldn't be surprised that a contagious former bat coronavirus made it into a human
population earlier in 2019. A virulent form appeared in Wuhan China that swamped the city's
hospitals and a third even more deadly mutation occurred in Lombardy, Italy. Any study that
hinders the out of China propaganda will likely ignored by politicians and the media. They
really want to hide the truth. To try keep things as they were.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. "
- Voltaire
I once read a definition of psychological depression as a result of anger and fatigue. That
seems about right. Personally, I'm sick of COVID-19 dominating the headlines and I definitely
have inner rage at the magic spell that's been cast over society. And it is a magic spell. Or
an ill wind, if you prefer. Except tracking the source of a voodoo curse, or determining where
a breeze began, might be easier than identifying the many variables of this planned-demic .
Truly, the overwhelming information is difficult to process on any given day.
Last week, I read
an article describing how COVID-19 is a hoax propagandized by the media and, a few minutes
later, I watched a video
of a survival expert (whom I very much respect) chastise those who are not taking COVID-19
seriously as a genuine health threat.
Then, I was informed of an acquaintance dying from coronavirus. I knew the man personally
and the last time we spoke he was telling me about his new girlfriend. His death was deemed
notable enough to have a write-up included into the COVID-19 series of a national newspaper;
and that's how I learned he died – when someone sent me the link. I'll also say he was in
his seventies and his blood pressure was so high his eyes were constantly bloodshot.
So did he die with COVID-19 or from COVID-19? Yes, he did.
Indeed, lots of variables to consider. And it's tricky because health policies are a matter
of public concern AND private responsibility. It's why considering the variables requires
balance and common sense. Yet, unsurprisingly, it's become obvious COVID-19 has been
politicized by some and even commandeered by others for purposes of power consolidation and
achieving authoritarian goals.
Certainly, the virus doesn't need to be devastatingly lethal in order to accomplish the
objectives of the globalists. At any given time, the ship of state progresses via (what I have
designated as) the
"Bulbous Bow of Confusion" , or, rather, competing narratives.
Two physicians who own five urgent care locations in Kern County California recently posted
a viral YouTube video citing their own COVID-19 data and calling for an end to the draconian
lockdowns. Their names are Dr. Dan
Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi and the data they compiled acted as a "resistance wave" to
countermand the official narrative put forth by ( as I've identified
in past articles ) the likes of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), World Health
Organization (WHO), The Gates Foundation, John Hopkins University, and UK's The Guardian.
Yet, today, if you click on any previous articles where the doctors'
viral videos were once posted you will see they've been taken down; and even their other
videos queued in the threads of the articles have been transitioned into dead links by our
benefactors at YouTube.
Truly, censorship is the validation of ideas as the most powerful force on earth; because if
you now search for the two doctors by name on YouTube, you will find a video stamped with the
Washington Post logo describing "What Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi get wrong
about coronavirus" .
To be sure, the billionaires are committed. They can't go back now and this is why they are
on full offense in the narrative war. It means no expense will be spared in the media onslaught
until every person in the world fears COVID-19 being spread from cats and
farts . It's
also why various
treatments are claimed to be ineffective and only the
five innovations proposed by the New American King should be considered:
[Bill Gates] said the innovations needed to come in five areas: treatments, vaccines,
testing, contact tracing, and policies for reopening the economy.
But what about Trump? He is still the U.S. President, right?
In past postings, I've exhaustively considered Trump as a possible "movie" or "reality TV
show". My article entitled
"Personal Politics, Public Impeachment, Persuasion and Post-Apocalyptic Planning" also
discussed how the Military Industrial Complex has NOT grown weaker in the decades since
Eisenhower and Kennedy – and, in fact, cited the trend of its growing strength from Abe
Lincoln through the creation of the Federal Reserve, and Woodrow Wilson, onward.
I've additionally speculated in previous writings President Trump as one of the
following:
1.) The Real Deal – fighting the Dark Lords out of love of country
2.) Being used by the Dark Powers unwittingly
3.) A Judas Goat
At this point in time, it appears the possibility of # 1 is fading, if not having been
completely debunked as of this writing.
So, given #'s 2 & 3 above, I've previously questioned if Trump was elected as a "
bleeding of the brake lines " prior to the " big stop " (i.e. end of America).
Therefore, what if the Trump Reality TV Show® was meant to demonstrate the sheer power
of "The Controllers" and their ability to convert the globe into One World under Communism?
And, furthermore, what if the 2016 Presidential Election was staged to illustrate to all
nations the futility of resistance?
Consider the waves that have crashed upon Trump's shores over the past four years:
Russiagate/Mueller, Ukrainian Impeachment, and, now, COVID-19. Each of these consecutive waves
were increasingly consequential from a historical perspective.
Is the war to "drain-the-swamp" real? Because, if not, the battle lines have been made clear
and the tech gods have cataloged our IP addresses.
Since the United States recently suspended its payments to the WHO, the organization's
biggest contributor is now the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Another major contributor
to the WHO is the GAVI Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation).
Both of these organizations are also part of ID2020, an organization that is advocating for
the use of vaccines to implement a global digital ID system using tattoos or microchips.
Or was it planned? And for those who would say it was planned, would you call them
"conspiracy theorists"? But, seriously, is it really conspiracy if it's all been published
?
Because, over the decades, it has become quite evident that wealthy individuals, influential
families, and powerful organizations and corporations have coopted nation-states in order to
unite the globe. World War I delivered the League of Nations and World War II brought about the
United Nations. Since then, the billionaire round-table groups have only grown more
interconnected as Davos Men planned and the Bilderberg's conspired .
The modern era has progressed by committee; and to the giant sucking sounds as predicted by
former presidential candidate Ross Perot.
In 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Business Network drafted a document
entitled " Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development " which
outlined the following potential plans schemes through 2030: " Lock Step ", " Clever Together
", " Hack Attack ", and " Smart Scramble ".
The first link below is a 54-page (2.29 MB sized) PDF file. Even if the Bill Gates' inspired
MS Windows gives you a virus warning, just know the file can be viewed (or downloaded) with no
issues. Or, if you would rather watch a one-hour, forty-two-minute video presentation, just
click on link # 2 below:
Note that on page 18 of the PDF (#1 above), the "Lock Step" scenario describes a 2012
pandemic leading to a global economic collapse followed by oppressive authoritarian
controls:
In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike
2009's H1N1, this new influenza strain -- originating from wild geese -- was extremely
virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when
the virus streaked around the world The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies:
international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries
like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and
office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.
. The United States' initial policy of "strongly discouraging" citizens from flying proved
deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the U.S. but
across borders. However, a few countries did fare better -- China in particular. The Chinese
government's quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as
well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives,
stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter
post-pandemic recovery.
China's government was not the only one that took extreme measures to protect its citizens
from risk and exposure. During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their
authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face
masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and
supermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of
citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from
the spread of increasingly global problems -- from pandemics and transnational terrorism to
environmental crises and rising poverty -- leaders around the world took a firmer grip on
power.
At first, the notion of a more controlled world gained wide acceptance and approval.
Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty -- and their privacy -- to more
paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability. Citizens were more
tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more
latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit. In developed countries, this heightened
oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter
regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests.
Sound familiar? Because this was the dialectic with which we were presented: " Herd
Immunity® " (an Orwellian term befitting cattle) or " Continuous" COVID-19®. And what
did American's chose? They picked " continuous ", Alex, for $1,200 per U.S. citizen. And as we
Flattened the Curve ®, the CDC broadcasted
concerns regarding second waves of coronaviruses as telescreens the world over warned of
mutant strains of
coronaviruses more contagious than the original .
Yes. Both Coronavirus®, and Big Brother, Incorporated have marched forward
unencumbered.
But as people sheltered in their homes they saw "conservative" Never-Trumpers weaponize the
ghost of Ronald Reagan against the Bad Orange Man® with a video entitled "Mourning in America" . It was too cute
by half. Then, fortunately, as the world remained mystified by
"covid toes" , the president
tweeted back at the Never-Trump "losers" in the most ingenious and gratifying ways.
And Trump is just getting warmed up. No doubt his Zoom® debates with Biden are bound to
be hilarious. Unless Whistleblowergate
Part Deux is the silver-bullet that will stop the Bad Orange Man® once and for all?
(CNN) Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted director of the office involved in developing a
coronavirus vaccine, formally filed an extensive whistleblower complaint Tuesday alleging his
early warnings about the coronavirus were ignored and that his caution at a treatment favored
by President Donald Trump led to his removal.
What I found interesting in that article is how it identified "opposing sides" (i.e.
opposites) as "capstones" on the bottom of the "pyramid" – with the top capstone (eye) as
representative of the final action:
The chess board is a well-known Masonic or Hegelian symbol, the black and white squares
symbolize control through duality in the grand game of life in all aspects. Left or right,
white or black people, conservative or liberal, democrat or republican, Christian or Muslim
and so on. Through two opposing parties control is gained as both parties reach the same
destination, which is order through guided conflict or chaos.
Left (thesis) versus right (antithesis) equals middle ground or control (synthesis). The
triangle and all seeing eye we see so often symbolizes the completion of the great work
The pyramid is supported by the bottom opposing sides. The capstone at the top is
established through controlled solution or middle ground.
In my piece entitled "On
Channel Surfing, Circus Acts, and Time Passages" , I discussed the 1927 movie "Metropolis"
as a favorite of the occult. The words that appear on the screen at the end of that film are
these:
THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!
A
2010 article posted on TheVigilantCitizen.com speculated on the "mediator" as the
electronic media which manipulates the plebes (workers) on behalf of the head
(controllers).
To be sure, the Modern Centralizers craft their new realities by means of the Orwellian
Media. It's why they call it programming . And what better way to manipulate the emotions
(hearts) of people than by fiction and fear?
With that in mind, I now call your attention to the below video link of the opening
ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics:
If one cares to click that link and view the segment shown between the 45 and 55 minute
marks, they will see what appears to be a staged viral pandemic. The drama takes place beneath
black pyramids malevolently towering over the stadium (and the crowd) and ends with the
appearance of a giant, creepy-looking baby; or maybe a still-birth – it's hard to
tell.
At the 45 to 47 minute mark, we see kids in hospital beds surrounded by dancing nurses and
doctors. At around the 47:30 mark, the medical staff/dancers put the kids to bed and with
fingers over their months, urging silence. What appears to be a giant virus then appears
center-stage at the around the 48 minute mark.
Then, around the 49 minute mark, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling reads from Peter Pan and
says: "But in the two minutes before you go to sleep, it is real ". Next, shadowy virus-looking
demons take the stage to chase the children, and dark horses towing a magician and a steel cage
glide behind an oriental woman who is looking elsewhere as the pandemic commences.
The 49:50 mark shows what appears to be a giant (British Prime Minister) Boris Johnson sick
in bed.
Finally, as the dark magicians cast their spells and the viruses dance, the nurses and
doctors appear paralyzed and robotic – like puppets (50:45 to 51:45 mark) before Mary
Poppins figures descend from the sky.
In my research, I found another article by the
Vigilant Citizen dated August 17, 2012 , and it had this to say back then regarding the
opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics:
The next important sequence of the ceremony paid tribute to the National Health Service
(NHS) and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). The set combined sick kids on hospital beds
with characters from English children's literature and had a very strange and dark undertone
from the start, when it began with the theme from The Exorcist, which is, in case you don't
know, a movie about a child possessed by the Devil. Odd choice.
The sequence begins with children on hospital beds who get put to sleep by nurses. Then
J.K. Rowling appears and reads a quote from Peter Pan alluding to Neverland, which becomes
real in the "two minutes before you go to sleep". I couldn't say if that was done on purpose,
but many elements of this set, mostly the mix of vulnerable children in a hospital with fairy
tales and the concept of blurring the lines between reality and fiction, are all associated
with mind control programming. Like the Wizard of Oz and Alice of Wonderland, the story of
Peter Pan is heavily used in mind control programming as victims are told to escape to
"Neverland" while inducing dissociation from reality.
The same article also addressed the 2012 Olympic closing ceremonie s (video at this link) and showing a new
world order rising like a phoenix; while referencing The Who, no less.
At midnight, the Olympic cauldron and the petals representing each country are slowly
extinguished, but the phoenix, representing the occult elite and the New World Order, stays
lit above it. In other words, as the nations of the world slowly disappear, a New World Order
will emerge. On that note, let's listen to The Who!
Of course, listen to The Who rock band? Or the World Health Organization (WHO)? Coincidence
or conspiracy? You're probably right.
So, to summarize: 2012 was the same year the Rockefeller Foundation predicted the "Lock
Step" pandemic scenario as the Olympic ceremonies that year showed opposing sides battling over
children during the opening ceremonies and followed by the resolution in the closing
ceremonies: A new phoenix rising from the ashes – like a new world order.
Order out of chaos.
Therefore, if COVID-19 was, indeed, a PLANdemic perpetrated by dark forces, was my
aforementioned friend murdered by those who now want us to self-quarantine and wear masks for
the safety of those being murdered? Most likely; because observing luciferian pedophiles
through their symbols is like identifying hidden planets via the observed effects of
gravitation, or studying game theory when the game is rigged.
It's how we can identify who "they" are, but only for people willing to first acknowledge
that "they" exist. Unfortunately, it's a wasted effort on most. One might as well don a tinfoil
hat and chase shadows on a magic pony.
Proponents of mandatory vaccines and enhanced surveillance are trying to blackmail the
American people by arguing that the lockdown cannot end unless we create a healthcare
surveillance state and make vaccination mandatory. The growing number of Americans who are
tired of not being able to go to work, school, or church, or even to take their children to a
park because of government mandates should reject this "deal." Instead, they should demand an
immediate end to the lockdowns and the restoration of individual responsibility for deciding
how best to protect their health.
Regrettably, it was supposed to be a season of graduation parties, weddings, and Fourth of
July celebrations. But these have been displaced by lockdowns, social distancing, bodies in
refrigerated trucks, fear, magic spells, and propaganda.
Big companies partnering with the government to spy on you without your knowledge.
Americans locked in their homes, banned from going to church, placated with sedatives like
beer and weed. Anyone who speaks up is silenced. Political demonstrations are illegal.
Organizers are arrested. Only opinions approved by unelected leaders are allowed on
information platforms. Sound familiar? It sounds a lot like China. Of all the many ironies of
this moment, so many of them bitter, the hardest to swallow is this: as we fight this virus,
we are becoming far more like the country that spawned it. We're becoming more like China.
It's horrifying.
Those in power are the ones the our professional class seeks to protect, not the country.
Freedom of conscience never endangers the public. It only threatens the powerful. It
endangers their control. It hinders their ability to dictate election results, to loot the
economy, to make policies based on whim for their own gain. No wonder our leaders have done
such a poor job protecting us from China. They're on the same team.
– Tucker Carlson Tonight: Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Sadly, it appears Trump may be a crisis actor, like
Anthony Fauci , and part of the plan from the start. The final details were solidified
years ago – including the bioengineered PLANdemic.
China is quite likely part of the plan, too, since One World Under Communism has become the
desired destination of the billionaires; with millions dying along the way. For those who do
survive, they'll be allowed to work , consume , and obey . Of course, many Americans will not
cooperate with their planned demise and this is why The Central Planners will need a great big
war.
Most recently, in an Oval Office Press conference on May 6, 2020, Trump actually blamed
China for Coronavirus while claiming it is the "worst attack we've ever had" :
"This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never
been an attack like this.
– President Donald Trump – May 6, 2020
It means events could potentially occur as follows: As soon as rock-solid proof is revealed
that China released the virus to take out Trump because our great president was winning the
trade wars, then, the Orange-Haired Wonder will rally national support via sorrowful
lamentations while standing tall on reality TV amidst the economic ruins.
A bumbling first strike by the U.S. could allow a Sino-Russian alliance to seal America's
fate once and for all; and most likely by nuclear means.
Then any surviving sheeple will eagerly line up for the Bill Gates of Hell special: A free
digital tattoo along with a bonus vaccination and bowl of soup.
Welcome to the end of the rainbow. Orwell was right: we've always been at war with Eastasia
and jackboots will stomp on human faces forever. Unless, that is, the digital drip-drops from
Q-anon and our online commentaries change the future.
Conclusion
Those gathering at the round tables have been tremendously successful in our societal
programming . Yet most of them are mere puppets to the inner rings of concentric power. The
monsters that once lurked under our beds were set loose years ago and, today, they dress in
drag and read to kids in libraries while others wear blue uniforms and arrest mothers for
taking kids to playgrounds.
And where are the men of action? Where are the lovers of liberty? In my area, they've been
fishing. And grilling. And why not? Trump is in the White House while Nancy Pelosi is locked in
her gourmet kitchen eating fancy ice cream. The stimulus checks are in the bank, the grocery
stores are still open, and if the fish aren't biting, those who would stand up to tyranny can
always grab a bucket of chicken through the KFC drive-thru on the way home. At least for
now.
As far as national lockdowns go, this has been the best one ever. So far.
For obvious reasons, I've been thinking of the autistic livestock guru Temple Grandin and how she pioneered
more humane methods of leading animals to slaughter. One of the methods was to have cattle
march to their demise single file via tall shutes. That sort of isolation seems reminiscent of
what's occurring in America now – with people staring at walls, muzzled by masks, and
numbly following orders while remaining six-feet apart.
How can people resist when they've been fooled? How can they fight back when they're
frightened? And why have they placed their hope in safety instead of liberty ?
Good questions.
Real hope remains in the smart choices, right actions, and the prepping and survival
decisions made every day by those awake and aware. But no matter what the future holds, may all
reading this be surrounded by friends and loved ones who know Epstein didn't kill himself.
The real blame China has is not "coverup" but that the opposite: Overreaction When China ordered a province-wide Lockdown, it
persuaded enough people that this was uniquely terrifying a virus as to merit extreme measures, setting stage for worldwide panic.
What if they were wrong?
We now know large declines in the transmission rate occurred BEFORE the lockdowns, meaning simple voluntary measures under
a Swedish-style Stay Open scenario were enough:
The other finding is that, one way or another, this flu-epidemic passes as all others have. It's actually good news, because
it means the worst fears were wrong and we can re-open.
"The basis of reassuring the public about re-entry is repeating the facts about the threat
and who it targets . By now, studies from Europe
and the U.S
. all suggest that the overall fatality rate is far lower than early estimates. And we know who
to protect, because this disease – by the evidence – is not equally dangerous
across the population. In Michigan's Oakland County , 75 percent of deaths were in
those over 70 years old; 91 percent were in people over 60, similar to what was noted in
New York . And younger, healthier people have virtually zero risk of death and little
risk of serious disease; as I have noted before, under one percent of New York City's
hospitalizations have
been patients under 18 years of age, and less than one percent of deaths at any age
are in the absence of
underlying conditions.
Here are specific and logical steps to end the lockdown and safely restore normal life:
First , let's finally focus on protection for the most vulnerable -- that means nursing home
patients, who are already living under controlled access. This would include strictly
regulating all who enter and care for nursing home members by requiring testing and protective
masks for all who interact with these highly vulnerable people. Specifically, nursing home
workers should be tested for COVID-19 antibodies, and if negative, for virus to exclude
infection, to ensure safety of senior residents. No COVID-19-positive patient can resume
residence until definitively cleared by testing.
We should continue to inform the public about what they have already successfully learned
regarding the at-risk group. That means issuing rational guidelines advising the highest
standards of hygiene and appropriate social distancing while interacting with elderly friends
and family members at risk, including those with diabetes, obesity and other chronic
conditions.
Second , those with mild symptoms of the illness should strictly self-isolate for two weeks.
It's not urgent to test them -- simply assume they have the infection. That includes
confinement at home, having the highest concern for sanitization and wearing protective masks
when others in their homes enter the same room." Dr. Scott Atlas in The Hill
---------------
It should be mentioned that Dr. John Ioannides, a leading epidemiologist at Stanford agrees
with Dr. Atlas.
I saw Atlas on a news program a day or so ago. The anchor looked frightened by what Atlas
was saying. This is understandable. The COVID panic is now so deeply embedded and pervasive
that to question the rationale for the shut-down of the economy is equivalent to heresy in a
theocratic state.
IMO the road back economically is going to be slow and difficult. I hope I am wrong. pl
I hope you are wrong, too. I am tired of the drama and hysteria.
Still, I do want the investigations into China's culpability for the
result of their "accident" or of their planned upheaval of the rest of the world.
I just want to trust some designated "expert" to tell us when when we can put away the
masks and can take up hugging our friends and shaking hands while smiling and meeting new
acquaintances. What is a church service without that and all the stories of Christs care and
concern for the "untouchables" of the world?
Seems the CCP's MSS's think-tank CICR compiled an Intelligence Report of their own warning
of possible armed conflict with U.S..
IMO it's hoped that our IC will realize that this virus doesn't jump ship into the human
sphere on its own naturally without 'human tweaking in a lab' which then provides a bridge
from which the virus could go from bats to the human sphere. And why would the CCP/MSS play
such a dangerous game? -- Bio-weapons R&D.
There can be little doubt that the fascist/socialist/anti-Trump elements in this country have
seized upon the presence of the virus to attempt to destroy Trump's chances in November and
to bring about greater state control of citizens. This immediately after the lame impeachment
plot failed to remove Trump; which was right after the lame Russian collusion plot failed to
remove Trump.
I don't think it's paranoid to consider that China released the virus on the US at a time
when President Trump is engaging in a major trade war with the Chinese, as a tactic in
fighting that war.
The Ionides/Atlas clinical perspective has been known to be correct - based on data -
since March, yet the Democrat controlled states continue to double down on state control of
their populations and destruction of their economies.
The Left has become a collection of kamikazes. The elites can ride this out. They have
money. They are hoping that when the economy is in ashes, all of the starving little people
will come into their open arms.
In 1968 another Asian virus, known as the Hong Kong flu, arrived in the US. It began
killing Americans noticeably in 1969. As this was occurring, the Woodstock music festival was
planned. The festival went off with now famous record crowd numbers during the peak of the
virus. No one seemed to care. That virus ultimately killed 100,000 Americans (not Woodstock
attendees); more than covid, even if you believe the artificially inflated covid figures.
That was at a time when the population of the US was far less. So a far greater % died than
covid.
We've been here before folks. It's the reaction that is different this time. The reaction
is driven by internal and external political objectives of massive importance for our future
as a free society.
Free people need to be able to make these decisions on their own. Give them clear
information and let them decide their next move. Keep the government "experts" out of the
decision making process. I believe that as the weather improves and the economic hardship
increases, Americans will turn on the fascist/socialist elites and take their lives back. The
vulnerable and the cowards will self-isolate. I further believe Americans will do what they
need to to get the economy going again, buying American made only, patronizing small
businesses beyond what they normally would and voting for pro-American candidates (i.e. the
Democrats lose big time).
What have we done every flu season that has resulted in very similar numbers and
population groups affected. How, in fact, is this one materially different.
Mnuchin said today that it is too early to say whether international travel will open back up
before the end of the year . Coincidentally, I also came across a Twitter poll of
15,000 people with the the following question & results:
"Hypothetically, if everything opens up tomorrow when would you fly again?"
- Immediately 25%
- 2-3 months 20%
- 3-6 months 26%
- 1 year or more 29%
Hardly scientific and I've no idea of the demographic or geographic spread of respondents,
but it seems pretty clear many people remain fearful.
The Democrat-media hysteria HAS been deeply ingrained.
The mass of people have - not surprisingly - turned out to be lambs (baby sheep).
Each person is responsible for managing their own life - which includes risk.
Unfortunately, the population of lambs has been trained over the years to look for mommy
government to manage their risk - mandatory seat belt laws come to mind.
Ben Franklin said it succinctly:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve
neither Liberty nor Safety."
There is widespread criticism of Ioannides two Covid studies, including the use of an
unapproved antibody tests which is known to give false positives; statistical flaws, and
recruiting volunteers for the sampling via Facebook, as well as the wife of a study co-author
to call and recruit parents from her kids school.
Here is an excerpt from an article on the controversy.
""My quick take is that something really odd is going on with Ioannidis," wrote Alexander
Rubinsteyn, a geneticist and computational biologist at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, in an email to Undark. Rubinsteyn suggested that Ioannidis may simply be "so
attached to being the iconoclast that defies conventional wisdom that he's unintentionally
doing horrible science."
He added: "Pretty much no one with statistical acumen believes these
studies.""https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/coronavirus-antibody-studies-california-stanford
In areas where the health system is not under stress this makes perfect sense. I would give
the hugging, handshaking and church services a miss and maintain the social distancing at
work and when out of the house as far as is practical. It needs to be done with lots of
testing, contact tracing and case isolation. Knowledge and common sense on everyone's part
will work. Limited local shutdown may be needed if cases start climbing in some areas.
Our restaurants open today in most of Florida. In spite of needing our hair attended to, we
will eat out both lunch and dinner. Sadly, some of our restaurants are closing for good. My
wife tells me that local Facebook is about evenly divided about going out now. I don't get it
as these folks have been gathering in the supermarkets the whole time.
"I just want to trust some designated 'expert' to tell us when when we can put away the
masks and can take up hugging our friends and shaking hands while smiling and meeting new
acquaintances. What is a church service without that and all the stories of Christs care and
concern for the 'untouchables' of the world?"
I think that "expert" you seek is going to have to be the person you see in the mirror
every morning. The "designated experts" have no interest in encouraging you to go back to
living a life you love. As Eric Newhill stated, it's going to be up to free-thinking adults
to make those decisions for themselves. If you expect or hope for "experts" to protect you
from yourself, then you have too much faith in "experts" and in government. Take sensible
precautions as they relate to your own risk demographic and respect other people making those
choices for themselves. Otherwise let's all get on living like Americans.
Even in blissful 'pre rona' December the Fed's repo market had been sounding the alarms that
a serious bubble recession was coming. Nothing apparently was fixed from the last wall street
megadooshbaggery meltdown. See:
This means that even those who built up real estate equity will have a difficult time
short term liquifying that equity, which means that Chase, Wells Fargo, et al have a lot of
pessimism about the US real estate market, the thing they have made so much money on last few
years, and which they were supposed to have fixed.
well pilgrims ;) not only is the economy enduring sudden searing pandemic pain, it is also
feeling the beginning of a big bubble popping recession, which everybody in the financial
world was already freaking about well before the rona arrived. Perhaps endless Fed QE can
prop up equities markets through November, perhaps, but then it's all bets off into 2021 as
numerous wall street debts scams will have to be deleveraged.
Sir,
In the spirit of fairness, anti-body testing would allow scientists to identify who has the
anti-bodies and then track them to see if they become re-infected and, if so, at what level
of severity. That would shed light on the "herd immunity" theory (i.e. is there such a thing
and, if so, to what extent?).
Otherwise, calls for "universal testing" are just sound bites born of confusion and panic,
at best; another means of violating the rights of Americans at worst (e.g. making people wear
yellow stars, carrying papers that allow them to enjoy full or truncated societal
"privelges").
Widespread antibody testing will show covid-19 is more contagious than a lot of diseases,
but not not near as deadly as most people think. People will see they had it, didn't even
know it and are now immune to it at least in the near term. Fear will be deflated. We will
then have a known large segment of the population known to not capable of further spreading
the virus and a ready supply of antibody serum as an effective treatment for those who do get
infected. That will also diminish fear.
Covid-19 and our response to it is as much a political issue as it is a public health
issue. Trump was going to run on a booming economy. If he wants to get back to that strategy,
he has to banish the fear of the virus. That will get everyone back to work so they can eat
and pay rent, as well as continue to piss away their money on crap they don't need. Our
economy depends on all that. If Trump is smart, he best get to stepping and institute a
nationwide antibody testing program.
And Fauci has already been awarded the dunce cap with his 1980s assertion that HIV was going
kill us all. So I guess for his most recent action he gets the dunce cap with slide rule
cluster.
A cruise passenger interests website offered another informal poll - are you willing to
cruise again: 64% said as much as in the past; 10% said they would cruise even more to help
get the industry back on its feet. Therefore, in this obviously interested sample, 75% want
the cruise industry to start up again. Yesterday. 25% will choose to wait or not cruise
again.
The cruise industry passenger base remains willing and loyal. In fact they are probably
better trained in personal hygiene habits than most having had to deal with noro (aka
tourista ) in the past and a typical URI complaint commonly called" cruise crud" that
was most likely picked up on the air flight to get to the cruise port. The real numbers of
disease and mortality overall within this industry do not support the screaming head llnes
and lurid reporting.
It remains to be seen if one infection makes an individual immune for some time. IMO we
should follow the Atlas/Ioannides formula. I noticed in re-reading "Sharpsburg," that Hunter
McGuire appears therein.
What does an anti-body test do? I just had one last week and awaiting the results - was a
cruise passenger and international air passenger during the month of January in a later
suspected area. (not Asia).
Here is why I did the anti-body test: (Quest Labs - fee service, no RX- 99% accuracy -
drawn blood vial test)
1. Helps substantiate dates and areas of transmission that may not yet be in the data
pool.
2. Tracks the rates of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases occurring among the
"elderly", in order to see if there is an enhanced risk of not in this age group, if there
are no underlying co-morbidities.
3. Adds demographic data specific for the travel industry.
4. Allows possible donation of anti-body serum for research and perhaps mitigation of
those who are affected.
5. Personal peace of mind -been there and done that. Freedom to move about.
6. Provides baseline for duration of immunity; resilience of immunity or data showing
re-infection can be possible.
Primarily it is for data gathering to help stop the hysteria. That was worth the time,
money and blood donation for me. We will never know the true extent of this virus, its
impacts, its initial modeling accuracy until we start plugging facts into the "expert"
hypotheticals.
Taking one for the team is the way I see it. Will I now become a local Typhoid Mary and
our house burned down if this data becomes known? Or will people stop walking out into the
roadway in faux deference to my advanced age as I pass by, from our deliciously virtue
signaling "progressive" population in blue state California.
Am I right or wrong in thinking that when the injected liquidity plus existing cash
exceeds the amount of money that would haven been in the economy at this point then the
currency will begin to inflate?
"Provides baseline for duration of immunity; resilience of immunity or data showing
re-infection can be possible. Primarily it is for data gathering to help stop the hysteria."
Yes
Colonel, you are NOT wrong. The oil business in America is going to take a very long time to
recover. There are complete shutterings of businesses, bankruptcies and more - all while we
were in the middle of a downturn. Personally, I just folded up my tent because my my active
client list went from 21 to zero over this last month (and that includes intl clients).
As the number one buyer of US steel, the oilpatch represents much more than people
realize. We have also been the number one buyer of many other items - where sales have
disappeared as company quietly and reluctantly face the reality of the current induced
glut.
I'm being forced to change livelihoods - interesting for me, as I am short of the age to
get my SS check and too old to employ by most corporate masters....
Yes, I noticed Hunter Holmes when I reread Chancellorsville this time. I knew nothing
about him until you mentioned him a while back. He also founded what is now the VCU Medical
Center and was president of the AMA for a time. There is a statue of him on the State Capitol
grounds, but i haven't seen it yet.
"... during such catastrophes, a large number of people find themselves in a state where they realize that they cannot control their lives. They don't know what will happen in the near future. The state of complete uncertainty makes people much more susceptible to conspiracy theories, and also makes them repost information that they doubt is true. People think: "What if it's true" - and try to warn others about the "impending danger". ..."
"... Fake information is mostly launched because of a sense of concern. During a period of turmoil and uncertainty, the need to exchange texts increases at times ..."
"During such disasters, a large number of people find themselves in a state where they
realize that they cannot control their lives. They don't know what will happen in the near
future. The state of complete uncertainty makes people much more susceptible to conspiracy
theories," social anthropologist Anna Kirzyuk told VZGLYAD newspaper. She explained why the
Internet is flooded with the most unthinkable fakes dedicated to COVID-19.
This week, the Supreme court of Russia clarified the use of articles of the criminal code
for spreading fake news and rumors about coronavirus. Criminal liability starts when
dissemination of information create circumstances which pose a threat to the life and health of
people. It occurs if the author knew about the falsity of the reports, but gave them
credibility.
A wave of false reports about coronavirus in Russia appeared in mid-March, and this flow
continues to this day. On Thursday, the Prosecutor General's office recognized fake and
demanded to block access to reports that the new coronavirus was allegedly created in the
Novosibirsk scientific center "Vector" and later brought to China. Earlier, the prosecutors
discovered the websites that sell fake medicines and remedies. Another vicious rumor that
should entail criminal responsibility is that the patients was forced to pay for treatment. And
the Moscow health Department recently denied information that patients with suspected
coronavirus are allegedly forced to pay for treatment themselves if they were not hospitalized
by an ambulance.
On Tuesday, the Chairman of the Media Commission of the Public Chamber, Alexander Malkevich,
launched the website CoronaFake to combat false information about COVID-19. Also, the
"encyclopedia of coronavirus rumors and fakes" has been created and updated on the Internet,
which is being developed by professional folklorists and anthropologists. Which might help to
fight the rumors. But in a way number of rumors are inverse indicator of the trust to the
government.
About the nature of the appearance of fakes and their impact on daily life newspaper LOOK
told one of the authors of the encyclopedia, social anthropologist, PhD, research fellow,
school of modern Humanities research, Ranepa Anna Kiresuk.
VIEW: Anna Andreyevna, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were many fakes about the
coronavirus. Now the flow of these fakes is decreasing?
Anna Kiresuk: The number of fake news about coronavirus probably is not becoming larger or
smaller. small number of rumors always exist locally and surface spontaneously nationwide: the
appeared periodically in the past and will appear periodically in the future. This probably
will continue until the end of the pandemic, or at least the the and of the regime of
self-isolation.
VIEW: Why does the flow of fake news and rumors increase during various social
disasters?
A. K.: during such catastrophes, a large number of people find themselves in a state
where they realize that they cannot control their lives. They don't know what will happen in
the near future. The state of complete uncertainty makes people much more susceptible to
conspiracy theories, and also makes them repost information that they doubt is true. People
think: "What if it's true" - and try to warn others about the "impending danger".
VIEW: Who is the main source of fakes?
AK: There is no center, no malicious group of people who compose and launch fakes in social
networks. It is also impossible to say that a specific person is to blame for the appearance of
a fake. Let's say a person leaves a text or a post on a social network. Then this text can be
transformed in the process of transmission, become overgrown with new details, and lose its
authorship. For example, a person heard two women talking at a bus stop about hundreds of dead
people in the local regional hospital, and the authorities allegedly hushed it up. Then he
writes about it in some social network message, it begins to "walk" and acquire new details.
Who is the author of this message? Women who spoke at the bus stop, the author of the first
post in the social network, or those people who repost fake and add comments? It is impossible
to talk about authorship here.
VIEW: in other words, it is common for people, especially in crisis conditions, to
exchange unreliable information?
AK: Of course. There are no people who RUB their hands and think: "But I'm going to start a
panic." Fake information is mostly launched because of a sense of concern. During a period
of turmoil and uncertainty, the need to exchange texts increases at times .
When there is a sense of the presence of an indefinite danger outside, whether it is a virus
or possible harsh measures by the state, people have an urgent need to be a member of some
circle of people who think in the same way, the cicle which provide some kind of mutual cocial
support. Fake news are just perverted way to create such a circle.
OPINION: But how fake rumors help to create such a circle?
A. K.: Texts that circulate in groups of acquaintances, friends, and relatives somewhat
strengthen the feeling that "we are together", "I am not alone", and "others think the same as
me". This is a very important function of fake rumors and folklore in General. Launching a text
in the public, a person virtually create a check of the correlation of his underanding of the
situation and feelings with the understadnng and feelings of the group.
For example, a person who calls on all citizens to lock their windows at night, because
government helicopters will start spraying the virus disinfectant in Moscow. This rumor was
popular in mid-March. The author of the message may doubt the reality of this news, but he
wants to to get confirmation that he is wrong from his social circle (is somewhat perverted
way), to make sure of his suspicions and understanding is right or wrong. He is interested in
what his friends in Vkontakte or his colleagues from the work chat in WhatsApp will say about
the rumor that he/she spreads. If other people swallow the fake line hook and thinker, he begin
to believe that this news is real and his suspicions were not in vain.
VIEW: In Addition to the "disinfection of the city using helicopters" are are any there
other prominent. widespread rumors?
A. K.: Yes there are. One example, is the rumor about bananas infected with coronavirus. In
some regions of Russia, thanks to this rumor, the sales of bananas were reduced. Because many
people believed in the validity of such a path infection with the coronavirus.
There are also a lot of widely circulating rumors with pseudo-medical advice about the
usefulness of drinking hot water, applying ginger or eating alkaline foods – there is a
market for fake prophylactic methods and fake cures for the coronavirus becuase the danger of
infection is real. So some believe that particular stupid actions can be a means of treating
and preventing coronavirus. Thanks to the popularity of such pseudo-medical advice, the price
of ginger in many cities has soared at times. People rushed to buy ginger, thinking that it
protects against the coronavirus by boosting one's immune system.
The distribution of such texts performs several very important psychological functions at
once.
First, it gives people the illusion of control: I know where the danger is coming from,
and I can warn others.
Secondly, the distribution of such texts allows a person to feel that he is not alone in
feeling anxiety and anxiety. And, third, by distributing such texts, a person can increase
their status in this group. The one who warned about the danger, the one-well done. He shares
with others the knowledge that is available only to him, but vital for all.
VIEW: Can we disitinushe beweem fake news about coronavirus and rumors? What is the
difference, if any?
AK: Rumors and fake news or "imporvized news" are identical social phenomena. For example,
in some cities there are rumors about the imminent introduction of internal troops and the
announcement of a curfew. People tell this rumor to each other in stores, at bus stops, and to
their neighbors. At some point, one of the "carriers" infected with this rumor creates and
posts a fake document that troops are being drawn to Moscow. He/she may do it as a joke, but at
this point, the rumor becomes fake news and the person should face legal responsibility.
VIEW: What is meant by a fake document? The this a post itself in the social
network?
AK: No. Fake document is a document printed on official letterhead with seals, signatures
and other formal attributes, information about the imminent introduction of a curfew is set
out. Links to the Ministry of internal Affairs and the mayor's office may be provided. This
text may be drawn up on behalf of the Moscow government. Forged seal, signature, outgoing
number, coat of arms of the Russian Federation. This is a fake news based on a rumor.
VIEW: Which category of people are more susceptible to fake information?
AK: Generally this is difficult to predict. We don't have the tools to predict how different
social and educational strata would react. But there rumors and fake news which contains
references to scientific and medical authorities or authorities make the text more reliable
even for an educated audience.
In the late 80's, French folklorist Jean-Noel Kapferer investigated the distribution of
so-called Villejuif leaflets, which warned that a certain set of food additives (they were
designated by numeric letter codes such as E221) is life-threatening and causes cancer. The
document was allegedly drawn up on behalf of a clinic in the city of Villejuif, which
specialized in the treatment of cancer. These leaflets were dropped into mailboxes and
scattered in stores.
Kapferer found out that thanks to the link to the Villejuif clinic, these leaflets were
distributed even by educated people-doctors, teachers. A reference to authority makes the text
more reliable.
"... There's a concerted effort on the part of influential people at the network that we at All In call Trump TV right now to peddle dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus Call it coronavirus trutherism. ..."
"... Who needs to win elections when you can personally reestablish the social order every day on Twitter and Facebook? When you can scold, and scold, and scold. That's their future, and it's a satisfying one: a finger wagging in some vulgar proletarian's face, forever. ..."
"... Get a Grippe, America: The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now : Washington Post ..."
"... Coronavirus is scary, but the flu is deadlier, more widespread : USA Today ..."
"... Want to Protect Yourself From Coronavirus? Do the Same Things You Do Every Winter : Time ..."
"... We should de-escalate the war on coronavirus ..."
"... "Good hand-washing helps. Staying healthy and eating healthy will also help," says Dr. Sharon Nachman, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at New York's Stony Brook Children's Hospital. "The things we take for granted actually do work. It doesn't matter what the virus is. The routine things work ." ..."
The offenders were Drs. Dan Erickson and Artin Massahi, co-owners of an "Urgent Care" clinic
in Bakersfield, California. They'd held a presentation in which they argued that widespread
lockdowns were perhaps not necessary, according to data they were collecting and analyzing.
"Millions of cases, small amounts of deaths," said Erickson , a vigorous, cheery-looking
Norwegian-American who argued the numbers showed Covid-19 was similar to flu in mortality rate.
"Does [that] necessitate shutdown, loss of jobs, destruction of oil companies, furloughing
doctors ? I think the answer is going to be increasingly clear."
The reaction of the medical community was severe. It was pointed out that the two men owned
a clinic that was losing business thanks to the lockdown. The message boards of real E.R.
doctors lit up with angry comments, scoffing at the doctors' dubious data collection methods
and even their somewhat dramatic choice to dress in scrubs for their video presentation.
The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) and American College of Emergency
Physicians (ACEP) scrambled to
issue a joint statement to "emphatically condemn" the two doctors, who "do not speak for
medical society" and had released "biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal
financial interests."
As is now almost automatically the case in the media treatment of any controversy, the story
was immediately packaged for "left" and "right" audiences by TV networks. Tucker Carlson on
Fox backed up the doctors' claims, saying "these are serious people who've done this
for a living for decades," and YouTube and Google have " officially
banned dissent ."
Meanwhile, over on Carlson's opposite-number channel, MSNBC, anchor Chris Hayes of the
All In program reacted with fury to Carlson's monologue:
There's a concerted effort on the part of influential people at the network that we at
All In call Trump TV right now to peddle dangerous misinformation about the coronavirus Call
it coronavirus trutherism.
Hayes, an old acquaintance of mine, seethed at what he characterized as the gross
indifference of Trump Republicans to the dangers of coronavirus. "At the beginning of this
horrible period, the president, along with his lackeys, and propagandists, they all minimized
what was coming," he said, sneering. "They said it was just like a cold or the flu."
He angrily demanded that if Fox acolytes like Carlson believed so strongly that society
should be reopened, they should go work in a meat processing plant. "Get in there if you think
it's that bad. Go chop up some pork."
The tone of the many media reactions to Erickson, Carlson, Trump, Georgia governor Brian
Kemp, and others who've suggested lockdowns and strict shelter-in-place laws are either
unnecessary or do more harm than good, fits with what writer Thomas Frank describes as a new "
Utopia of Scolding ":
Who needs to win elections when you can personally reestablish the social order every
day on Twitter and Facebook? When you can scold, and scold, and scold. That's their future, and
it's a satisfying one: a finger wagging in some vulgar proletarian's face, forever.
In the Trump years the sector of society we used to describe as liberal America became a
giant finger-wagging machine. The news media, academia, the Democratic Party, show-business
celebrities and masses of blue-checked Twitter virtuosos became a kind of umbrella agreement
society, united by loathing of Trump and fury toward anyone who dissented with their
preoccupations.
Because this Conventional Wisdom viewed itself as being solely concerned with the Only
Important Thing, i.e. removing Trump, there was no longer any legitimate excuse for disagreeing
with its takes on Russia, Julian Assange, Jill Stein, Joe Rogan, the 25th amendment, Ukraine,
the use of the word "treason," the removal of Alex Jones, the movie Joker, or whatever
else happened to be the #Resistance fixation of the day.
When the Covid-19 crisis struck, the scolding utopia was no longer abstraction. The dream
was reality! Pure communism had arrived! Failure to take elite advice was no longer just a
deplorable faux pas . Not heeding experts was now murder. It could not be tolerated.
Media coverage quickly became a single, floridly-written tirade against "
expertise-deniers ." For instance, the Atlantic headline on Kemp's decision to end
some shutdowns was, " Georgia's
Experiment in Human Sacrifice ."
At the outset of the crisis, America's biggest internet platforms – Facebook, Twitter,
Google, LinkedIn, and Reddit – took an unprecedented step to
combat "fraud and misinformation " by promising extensive cooperation in elevating
"authoritative" news over less reputable sources.
H.L. Mencken once said that in America, "the general average of intelligence, of knowledge,
of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his
trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies
stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head."
We have a lot of dumb people in this country. But the difference between the stupidities
cherished by the Idiocracy set ingesting fish cleaner, and the ones pushed in places
like the Atlantic, is that the jackasses among the "expert" class compound their
wrongness by being so sure of themselves that they force others to go along. In other words, to
combat "ignorance," the scolders create a new and more virulent species of it: exclusive
ignorance, forced ignorance, ignorance with staying power.
The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and
more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who
tells people to inject disinfectant . It's astonishing that they don't see this.
Journalists are professional test-crammers. Our job is to get an assignment on Monday
morning and by Tuesday evening act like we're authorities on intellectual piracy, the civil war
in Yemen, Iowa caucus procedure, the coronavirus, whatever. We actually know jack: we
speed-read, make a few phone calls, and in a snap people are inviting us on television to tell
millions of people what to think about the complex issues of the world.
When we come to a subject cold, the job is about consulting as many people who really know
their stuff as quickly as possible and sussing out – often based on nothing more than
hunches or impressions of the personalities involved – which set of explanations is most
believable. Sportswriters who covered the Deflategate football scandal had to do this in order
to explain the Ideal Gas Law , I
had to do it to cover the subprime mortgage scandal, and reporters this past January and
February had to do it when assigned to assess the coming coronavirus threat.
It does not take that much work to go back and find that a significant portion of the
medical and epidemiological establishment called this disaster wrong when they were polled by
reporters back in the beginning of the year. Right-wingers are having a blast collecting the
headlines , and they should, given the chest-pounding at places like MSNBC about others who
"minimized the risk." Here's a brief sample:
There are dozens of these stories and they nearly all contain the same elements, including
an inevitable quote or series of quotes from experts telling us to calm the hell down. This is
from the Time piece:
"Good hand-washing helps. Staying healthy and eating healthy will also help," says Dr.
Sharon Nachman, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at New York's Stony Brook Children's
Hospital. "The things we take for granted actually do work. It doesn't matter what the virus
is. The routine things work ."
There's a reason why journalists should always keep their distance from priesthoods in any
field. It's particularly in the nature of insular communities of subject matter experts to
coalesce around orthodoxies that blind the very people in the loop who should be the most
knowledgeable.
"Experts" get things wrong for reasons that are innocent (they've all been taught the same
incorrect thing in school) and less so (they have a financial or professional interest in
denying the truth).
On the less nefarious side, the entire community of pollsters in 2016 denounced as infamous
the idea that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination, let alone the general election.
They believed that because they weren't paying attention to voters (their ostensible jobs), but
also because they'd never seen anything similar. In a more suspicious example, if you asked a
hundred Wall Street analysts in September 2008 what caused the financial crisis, probably no
more than a handful would have mentioned fraud or malfeasance.
Both of the above examples point out a central problem with trying to automate the
fact-checking process the way the Internet platforms have of late, with their emphasis on
"authoritative" opinions.
"Authorities " by their nature are untrustworthy. Sometimes they have an interest
in denying truths, and sometimes they actually try to define truth as being whatever they say
it is. "
Elevating authoritative content " over independent or less well-known sources is an
algorithmic take on the journalistic obsession with credentialing that has been slowly
destroying our business for decades.
The WMD fiasco happened because journalists listened to people with military ranks and
titles instead of demanding evidence and listening to their own instincts. The same thing
happened with Russiagate, a story fueled by intelligence "experts" with grand titles who are
now proven to have been
wrong to a spectacular
degree , if not actually criminally liable in pushing a fraud.
We've become incapable of talking calmly about possible solutions because we've lost the
ability to decouple scientific or policy discussions, or simple issues of fact, from a
political argument. Reporting on the Covid-19 crisis has become the latest in a line of moral
manias with Donald Trump in the middle.
Instead of asking calmly if hydroxychloroquine works, or if the less restrictive Swedish
crisis response has merit, or questioning why certain statistical assumptions about the
seriousness of the crisis might have been off, we're denouncing the questions themselves as
infamous. Or we're politicizing the framing of stories in a way that signals to readers what
their take should be before they even digest the material. " Conservative
Americans see coronavirus hope in Progressive Sweden ," reads a Politico headline,
as if only conservatives should feel optimism in the possibility that a non-lockdown approach
might have merit! Are we rooting for such an approach to not work?
From everything I've heard, talking to doctors and reading the background material, the
Bakersfield doctors are probably not the best sources. But the functional impact of removing
their videos (in addition to giving them press they wouldn't otherwise have had) is to stamp
out discussion of things that do actually need to be discussed, like when the damage to the
economy and the effects of other crisis-related problems – domestic abuse, substance
abuse, suicide, stroke, abuse of children, etc. – become as significant a threat to the
public as the pandemic. We do actually have to talk about this. We can't not talk about it out
of fear of being censored, or because we're confusing real harm with political harm.
Turning ourselves into China for any reason is the definition of a cure being worse than the
disease. The scolders who are being seduced by such thinking have to wake up, before we end up
adding another disaster on top of the terrible one we're already facing.
Patrick Lovell Apr 30 Like always, I agree and am moved
deeply by most of your positions. I do however find the argument not entirely convincing.
I've seen you down on Russiagate from the beginning and I've never felt like I understood
why. I get the barrage without the evidence and what that means for the broader context
but seriously, Washington's entire currency is lying. So too is Wall Street. But Putin's
isn't? Trump's? Is it really that complicated?
Trump was laundering real estate for bad guys for decades. It's his business model.
Deutsche Bank was involved with fraud in every dimension and direction and Trump was a
relatively small play all things considered, but the SOB knew what he was involved with
and doing. He went so far as to claim the "Act of God" defense based on deuschbag
Greenspan's insane lie that no one saw 2008 coming.
Trump went so far as to sue DM for being a victim of predatory lending. Trump? Victim
of Predatory Lending??!?!?! WTF?!?!? Given all of that and then some (Mercers, Bannon,
etc.) are we to pretend it wasn't exactly what it looks like? Why wouldn't we? Because
Clinton was on the other side? I really don't get that part at all.
Matt Taibbi Apr 30 I'm sorry, but Russiagate wasn't about
whether or not Trump or Putin were liars or bad people. It was a very specific set of
allegations that have been proven now to be false: that Trump was being blackmailed by
the Russian state, that the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign in an election
interference plot, that the Trump campaign traded sanctions for election aid, that Trump
himself committed treason and was a compromised foreign agent, etc. This has all been
investigated and discounted. In fact it appears now, from the investigation of IG Michael
Horowitz, that the FBI knew relatively early on -- by late 2016 -- that there was no
coordination or collusion going on between Russia and the Trump campaign. Yet smears and
innuendo flowed for years from intelligence sources anyway. You don't have to be a Trump
fan to be pissed that there was such an elaborate effort at spreading this false tale.
Larry May 1 Matt, I disagree, perhaps, with your
reference to Kemp and the other governors who opened their states. Don't you agree that
their effort seems to be an attempt to prevent workers from claiming unemployment benefit
and that, as such, their efforts should not be seen as motivated by a simple, freely
determined skepticism about the merits of the science or even the biased journalism?
I do applaud your general thesis, and would add for my part that one of the most
interesting phenomena regarding the media response to coronavirus and scientific material
in general is a seeming mass desire to settle matters once and for all rather than
fostering an attitude that scientific activity is more than anything else a manifestly
long-drawn out, labor intensive pursuit, that requires much time, almost always, before
actionable insights can be formulated, much less acted upon.
It is odd that, as you have noted so many times, a media so addicted to manufacturing
themes that must be continually resuscitated, like Russia, do the exact opposite with
science: as you note, pundits and reporters, when confronted with science, tend to cram
and swot maniacally (under deadline, assuredly) in order to get as close to a definitive
statement as possible as fast as possible, when the entire process is designed (though
increasingly commercialized and siloed privatized science mitigates against this in
important ways, whilst reinforcing it in others) only to provide "answers" of any sort
extremely tentatively.
This is perhaps one of the most annoying things about many Americans' expectations of
scientific activity, which you see in medicine (and weather forecasting!) perhaps most of
all: people frustrated with the underlying uncertainty of medical prognoses seem to
expect cookie-cutter specific formulations virtually on the spot, and are angered when
these are not forthcoming.
I even know people who have taught philosophy of science who have never stepped foot
in a lab or have the vaguest notion of how "knowledge" is produced there. This sort of
thing adds fertile ground for themes development of potential misunderstandings amongst
lay-people that raises the deleterious effects to another level. But I am digressing.
My main question is about Kemp and the others, but if you could speak a little to
flesh out your interesting comments on reporters and scientific subject matter, I would
be most grateful. I love your work, Matt, keep up the good job!
. The work of two research groups was crucial in shaping the decision of the UK and US
governments to implement wide-ranging lockdowns, and, in turn, governments around the world.
The first group, the Imperial College Covid-19 Research Team,
issued a report on March 16th that predicted up to 500,000 deaths in the UK and 2.2 million
deaths in the US unless strict government measures were put in place.
The second group, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Bill Gates' home state
of Washington, helped
provide data that corroborated the White House's initial estimates of the virus'
effects, estimates that have been
repeatedly downgraded as the situation has progressed.
Unsurprisingly, the Gates Foundation has injected substantial sums of money into both
groups. This year alone, the Gates Foundation has already given
$79 million to Imperial College, and in 2017 the Foundation announced a $279 million investment into the IHME
to expand its work collecting health data and creating models.
Anthony Fauci, meanwhile, has
become the face of the US government's coronavirus response, echoing Bill Gates' assertion
that the country will not "get back to normal" until "a good vaccine" can be found to insure
the public's safety.
ANTHONY FAUCI : If you want to get to pre-coronavirus . . . You know, that might not ever
happen, in the sense of the fact that the threat is there. But I believe with the therapies
that will be coming online, and with the fact that I feel confident that over a period of
time we will get a good vaccine, that we will never have to get back to where we are right
back now.
Against the Corona Panic, Pt. VI: Where has the regular flu gone? The CDC reports
unprecedented crash in non-COVID flu-positives, raising questions
...
As the story of COVID 19 unfolds and demands every ounce of our attention another unique
health event, anomalous and perhaps connected goes ignored. An event unprecedented in at
least the last 20 years since these things have been detailed by the CDC, coinciding with the
C19 event, the CDC quietly informed any who were paying attention that the common flu- both
scourge and money-maker – has been disappeared from the United States.
As the trend towards the usual gradual tapering began all of a sudden by Week 12 (March
21st) the 'flu positive' numbers dropped off a cliff. When one looks at the numbers from Week
10, 21.5%, to Week 12, 6.9%, we see an incredible drop off of 14.6% occurred. By Week 14
the 'flu positives' dropped to nearly non-existent – 0.8%. A quick glance to Week
9, 24.3%, and then down to Week 14's all time record low of 0.8% shows a drop off of
23.5%.
It's important to note that while the 22,324 tests done in Week 14 represent a significant
drop in tests done compared to earlier weeks in 2020 those numbers still represented the 2nd
highest overall Week 14 test numbers done in the history of the CDC. Yet only 0.8% 'flu
positives' this season when the average for the preceding 7 years was 12.5% for Week 14. Even
given the circumstances this is a statistical anomaly that begs many questions.
Questions that demand answers:
How did such a terrible flu season suddenly disappear?
In what column have those 'flu positives' been placed?
What happened to all the other seasonal virii that afflict humans this time of the
year?
Where did they all go?
After a 20 year run the CDC has stated that Flu View, it's flagship offering, will no
longer be offering such meticulous reports as they shift their focus to Covid. It would seem
that the CDC has decided after all these years the flu has finally run its course
Exactly! Anyone who announces Covid deaths should also have to announce an adjacent column
called normal flu/influenza/pneumonia, to see how these two columns flow together and to
compare total figures.
Otherwise, at best, they are disingenuous, and more probably, fraudsters and liars!
"... The US behaves this way because increasingly its the military that forms the primary lever of US power. They need to create a sense of fear to justify the $1T that the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex consumes every year with zero real-world benefit for the poor tax-payers who are given no choice but to fund it. ..."
"... Oh no... imagine a nation-state exerting regional control over a regional issue without us being involved! The horror! The HORROR! ..."
"... Neocons never saw a country they didn't want to invade, nor any event beyond our national borders which was not a threat, nor any thing happening within our borders that did not justify a military escalation. Sadly, instead of remaining ex- Trotskyites on the fringe, they have become the mainstream in certain circles, mostly centering on the Pentagon and Congress. ..."
"... Unfortunately the US has forgotten that it was once a weak military power and that only through lengthy diplomatic negotiations would they have any real chance of achieving its commercial and political goals. Now that the US has massive military power successive administrations have been blindly seduced in to thinking that using military power is a rational substitute for diplomacy. ..."
"... Imagine all the nice things America could have if its defense budget were only, say, $300 billion dollars, i.e. still larger than any other country's . The $400 billion saved would buy a lot of ventilators and PPE, among other things. ..."
here have been news reports in the last few days that have portrayed fairly routine behavior
by other states as an attempt to "take advantage" of the U.S. during the pandemic. The
incidents in question are consistent with how these states were behaving before the outbreak.
For example, The Wall Street Journal
reported on Monday that China continues increasing its control in the Spratly and Paracel
islands. This is something that the Chinese government has been doing for decades before now,
but this is how it was described in the article:
In recent weeks, Beijing has conducted operations to gain more of a foothold in the
Spratly and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea, emblematic of China's attempts to
assert its influence around the world.
In other words, China continued a policy in its own backyard that it has been pursuing since
before the turn of the century, but because it is happening at the same time as the pandemic it
is treated as somehow more menacing than before. How asserting territorial claims on their
doorstep is "emblematic" of asserting influence "around the world" is left to the reader's
imagination. This is not just a problem of strange framing in media reports. U.S. officials are
promoting the idea that other states are "taking advantage" by simply doing the same things
they have done many times in the past:
While some of the operations might have been planned before the pandemic swept the globe,
U.S. officials said American rivals like China are capitalizing on the Trump administration's
diverted attention and the strains on its military.
"Beijing is a net beneficiary of global attention diverted towards the pandemic rather
than military activities in the South China Sea," said Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for
Indo-Pacific Command, Honolulu.
Claims like this raise an obvious question: what would the U.S. have been doing to
discourage this behavior if there were no pandemic? As far as I can tell, there is nothing that
the U.S. could or should be doing that would make China less likely to pursue its claims in the
South China Sea. The U.S. conducts so-called "freedom of navigation" operations (FONOPs) all
the time, but this has had no effect on anything China does. If the U.S. is not able to conduct
these operations right now, that doesn't invite more aggressive behavior from China because the
FONOPs weren't deterring anything in the first place. That strongly suggests that the U.S. is
wasting its time and resources on operations that serve no purpose.
The claim here that adversaries are using the coronavirus timeout to test US will is
silly; they're calling military activity that would've occurred anyway a test. What we're
really seeing is that presence patrols said to be vital to deterrence are an expensive waste
of time. pic.twitter.com/RzNBpHUm16
Similarly, recent "harassment" of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf by Iranian boats is more
proof that the U.S. did not "restore deterrence" with Iran when it assassinated Soleimani at
the start of the year. That shows that the administration's Iran policy continues to backfire.
If adversaries are supposed to be taking advantage of a distracted U.S., the Iranian example
doesn't support that because the administration remains obsessively focused on Iran even now.
The Pentagon started drawing up plans for massive escalation last month
:
Last month, the Pentagon began drafting plans for a major escalation against the
Iran-backed factions -- namely the hardline Kataeb Hezbollah -- blamed for the rockets.
"Washington told us they'd simultaneously hit 122 targets in Iraq if more Americans died,"
a top Iraqi official said.
If tensions between the U.S. and Iran remain high, that is a consequence of earlier American
escalation. It is not happening because the U.S. is preoccupied by the pandemic.
All of the incidents cited in these reports pose no
serious threat to the U.S. or our military, and were it not for the pandemic they would be seen
as fairly typical and predictable behavior from all of these governments. The only reason that
these activities are being portrayed as "tests" of U.S. "resolve" is that our interests have
been inflated so absurdly over the decades that anything these governments do in their own
immediate neighborhood is viewed as a challenge. As we rightly focus on the threat from the
pandemic here at home, we should expect to hear more exaggerated warnings about minor foreign
nuisances as supporters of a bloated military budget seek to justify unnecessary missions and
deployments.
""Beijing is a net beneficiary of global attention diverted towards the
pandemic rather than military activities in the South China Sea," said
Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, a spokesman for Indo-Pacific Command, Honolulu."
Capt. Kafka (his real name, I assume) is too polite to add that Beijing has also been a
net beneficiary of global attention having been diverted by twenty years of pointless,
botched Middle East wars that only benefited Saudi Arabia and Israel , and that that
is, oh I don't known, maybe a hundred times more important factor in causing our
neglect of real American national security issues than the past few months of coronavirus
botches.
Yes funny thing we an actual threat right here in river city and we are being told to
ignore it and get out and go to ball games and go shopping. Meanwhile 10,000 miles from our
shores some souped up Chris Crafts got a little to near to our ships.
The 'Iranian harassment' is especially foolish theater of the absurd.
1. It took place in 'international waters in the north Arabian Gulf', you mean the Persian
Gulf, that would be very close to Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran. You could say near the Iranian
coastline.
2. The video they released showed the IRGC speedboat running parallel to the ship going
about 15 mph with its machine gun pointing safely straight into the air.
... I doubt these communist billionaires will risk losing everything on a war with the U.S.and its allies.
The Middle East is an unstable cauldron largely of our own making as
directed by insatiable Bibi and his gallant crew who are courageously prepared to fight to
the last American.
Biden will likely be even more subservient to this group. If he picks
their darling Kamala Harris - even more so. Wash your hands and carefully avoid contact
with the NYT. & MSM in general. .
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like nail.
The US behaves this way because increasingly its the military that forms the primary
lever of US power. They need to create a sense of fear to justify the $1T that the
military-industrial-security-intelligence complex consumes every year with zero real-world
benefit for the poor tax-payers who are given no choice but to fund it.
That is well said, Gary. And the stakes for that justification get higher as the
military must get more and more money in an economy and zeitgeist that has less and less of
it to spare...until we get this kind of farce.
A quote I never thought I would post...but it's making more and more sense: "It will be a
great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a
bake-sale to buy a bomber."
Apparently, the so somebody must think Trump administration is easily distracted.
C'mon....the impeachment, the pandemic, hostile news coverage...you can only expect so much
from these folks.
Neocons never saw a country they didn't want to invade, nor any event beyond our national
borders which was not a threat, nor any thing happening within our borders that did not
justify a military escalation. Sadly, instead of remaining ex- Trotskyites on the
fringe, they have become the mainstream in certain circles, mostly centering on the
Pentagon and Congress.
But, hey, what would all those Generals do if they didn't have any Military-Industrial
Complex corporation board of directors to sit on after they "retire".
Unfortunately the US has forgotten that it was once a weak military power and that only
through lengthy diplomatic negotiations would they have any real chance of achieving its
commercial and political goals. Now that the US has massive military power successive
administrations have been blindly seduced in to thinking that using military power is a
rational substitute for diplomacy. The current Trump administration approach to foreign
policy is a total failure as it seems to be based on nothing more than bravado and pathetic
threats of using military force to attempt to influence international outcomes.
If the US
wants international approval and support, it is only going to be able to be rebuilt if the
US stops pretending that every treaty, international organization and agreement is biased
against the US and should be withdrawn from and instead return to the more proactive
approach of diplomacy.
I've thought all along, if we're expecting a manufacturing renaissance in this country and
a big increase in exports, and China wants to secure some of the shipping lanes we'll need
on their own dime, why not just let them?
Imagine all the nice things America could have if its defense budget were only, say, $300
billion dollars, i.e. still larger than any other country's . The $400 billion saved
would buy a lot of ventilators and PPE, among other things.
"The $400 billion saved would buy a lot of ventilators and PPE"
No go. If we cut back to $300 billion we couldn't keep sacrificing American lives and
money for Saudi Arabia and Israel. The ventilators and PPE you mention would only benefit
Americans. What we do for Saudi Arabia and Israel is far more important than that. Indeed,
cutting our defense budget necessarily entails bigotry and antisemitism because its
practical effect would be to deny the Jewish and Muslim heartlands full access to American
money and blood.
Cutting the defense budget and husbanding resources for our own use would also undermine
American credibility, because geopolitical competitors are invariably impressed and
deterred when a Great Power fritters away its resources on client states rather than
defending the lives and wealth of its own people.
"... First of all, because Stoics believe that our true good resides in our own character and actions, they would frequently remind themselves to distinguish between what's "up to us" and what isn't. Modern Stoics tend to call this "the dichotomy of control" and many people find this distinction alone helpful in alleviating stress. What happens to me is never directly under my control, never completely ..."
"... Marcus likes to ask himself, "What virtue has nature given me to deal with this situation?" That naturally leads to the question: "How do other people cope with similar challenges?" Stoics reflect on character strengths such as wisdom, patience and self-discipline, which potentially make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They try to exemplify these virtues and bring them to bear on the challenges they face in daily life, during a crisis like the pandemic. They learn from how other people cope. Even historical figures or fictional characters can serve as role models. ..."
"... fear does us more harm than the things of which we're afraid. ..."
"... Finally, during a pandemic, you may have to confront the risk, the possibility, of your own death. Since the day you were born, that's always been on the cards. Most of us find it easier to bury our heads in the sand. Avoidance is the No1 most popular coping strategy in the world. We live in denial of the self-evident fact that we all die eventually. ..."
"... "All that comes to pass", he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as "familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn". Marcus Aurelius, through decades of training in Stoicism, in other words, had taught himself to face death with the steady calm of someone who has done so countless times already in the past. ..."
T he Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the last famous
Stoic philosopher of antiquity. During the last 14 years of his life he faced one of the worst
plagues in European history. The Antonine Plague, named after him, was probably caused by a
strain of the smallpox virus. It's estimated to have killed up to 5 million people, possibly
including Marcus himself.
="rich-link__link u-faux-block-link__overlay" aria-label="'What it means to be an American':
Abraham Lincoln and a nation divided"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/11/abraham-lincoln-verge-book-ted-widmer-interview">
From AD166 to around AD180, repeated outbreaks occurred throughout the known world. Roman
historians describe the legions being devastated, and entire towns and villages being
depopulated and going to ruin. Rome itself was particularly badly affected, carts leaving the
city each day piled high with dead bodies.
In the middle of this plague, Marcus wrote a book, known as The Meditations, which records
the moral and psychological advice he gave himself at this time. He frequently applies Stoic
philosophy to the challenges of coping with pain, illness, anxiety and loss. It's no stretch of
the imagination to view The Meditations as a manual for developing precisely the mental
resilience skills required to cope with a pandemic.
First of all, because Stoics believe that our true good resides in our own character and
actions, they would frequently remind themselves to distinguish between what's "up to us" and
what isn't. Modern Stoics tend to call this "the dichotomy of control" and many people find
this distinction alone helpful in alleviating stress. What happens to me is never directly
under my control, never completely up to me, but my own thoughts and actions are
– at least the voluntary ones. The pandemic isn't really under my control but
the way I behave in response to it is.
Much, if not all, of our thinking is also up to us. Hence, "It's not events that upset us
but rather our opinions about them." More specifically, our judgment that something is really
bad, awful or even catastrophic, causes our distress.
This is one of the basic psychological principles of Stoicism. It's also the basic
premise of modern cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based form of
psychotherapy. The pioneers of CBT, Albert Ellis and Aaron T Beck, both describe Stoicism as
the philosophical inspiration for their approach. It's not the virus that makes us afraid but
rather our opinions about it. Nor is it the inconsiderate actions of others, those ignoring
social distancing recommendations, that make us angry so much as our opinions about them.
Many people are struck, on reading The Meditations, by the fact that it opens with a chapter
in which Marcus lists the qualities he most admires in other individuals, about 17 friends,
members of his family and teachers. This is an extended example of one of the central practices
of Stoicism.
Marcus likes to ask himself, "What virtue has nature given me to deal with this
situation?" That naturally leads to the question: "How do other people cope with similar
challenges?" Stoics reflect on character strengths such as wisdom, patience and
self-discipline, which potentially make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They try
to exemplify these virtues and bring them to bear on the challenges they face in daily life,
during a crisis like the pandemic. They learn from how other people cope. Even historical
figures or fictional characters can serve as role models.
With all of this in mind, it's easier to understand another common slogan of Stoicism:
fear does us more harm than the things of which we're afraid. This applies to
unhealthy emotions in general, which the Stoics term "passions" – from pathos ,
the source of our word "pathological". It's true, first of all, in a superficial sense. Even if
you have a 99% chance, or more, of surviving the pandemic, worry and anxiety may be ruining
your life and driving you crazy. In extreme cases some people may even take their own
lives.
In that respect, it's easy to see how fear can do us more harm than the things of which
we're afraid because it can impinge on our physical health and quality of life. However, this
saying also has a deeper meaning for Stoics. The virus can only harm your body – the
worst it can do is kill you. However, fear penetrates into the moral core of our being. It can
destroy your humanity if you let it. For the Stoics that's a fate worse than death.
Finally, during a pandemic, you may have to confront the risk, the possibility, of your
own death. Since the day you were born, that's always been on the cards. Most of us find it
easier to bury our heads in the sand. Avoidance is the No1 most popular coping strategy in the
world. We live in denial of the self-evident fact that we all die eventually. The
Stoics believed that when we're confronted with our own mortality, and grasp its implications,
that can change our perspective on life quite dramatically. Any one of us could die at any
moment. Life doesn't go on forever.
We're told this was what Marcus was thinking about on his deathbed. According to one
historian, his circle of friends were distraught. Marcus calmly asked why they were weeping for
him when, in fact, they should accept both sickness and death as inevitable, part of nature and
the common lot of mankind. He returns to this theme many times throughout The Meditations.
"All that comes to pass", he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as
"familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn". Marcus Aurelius, through decades of
training in Stoicism, in other words, had taught himself to face death with the steady calm of
someone who has done so countless times already in the past.
Donald Robertson is cognitive behavioural therapist and the author of several books on
philosophy and psychotherapy, including Stoicism and the Art of Happiness and How to Think Like
a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
Some conclusions from those two doctors: Do we need "shelter in place" the answer is emphatical NO. Do no need business shut down --
the answer is emphatical NO.
The virus has been proved to be significantly similar to seasonal
flue epidemic of which we experience each year. Quarantining the sick is what should be done. Not
healthy people.
These journalists are arguing with them! The so called "reporters" don't want to report the
truth, they WANT to spread fear and chaos and drama. The media is complicit in the coup! The
media IS the deep state coup!
Finally light in the middle of pandemic darkness! High spread and low
fatality. Thank you for paying attention to the SCIENTIFIC DATA Dr. Erickson and speaking the
truth. Someone needed to say this in light of the twilight zone that is now our government
leadership AND MEDIA HYPE! Dr. Faulci flat out ignored the biology of herd immunity in his
recommendations to Donald Trump. He also ignored the fact that more than 97% recover from Covid
without medical assistance let alone need a ventilator! He is culpable for a bankrupt America.
We were never at risk for overwhelming our hospitals because most people recovered on their own
at home. Thousands got Covid and recovered that the media never talked about. They are corrupt
and complicit in a bankrupt America. Instead of saying 'better safe than sorry' and driving our
country into bankruptcy how about saying 'better to have money than not' because now 26 million
people have lost their jobs and have filed for unemployment. The ignorant ill informed fear
mongers have damaged America which we will be feeling for a long time to come. Remember this---
and don't ever let them ever do that to you again. Karen Marshall RN BSN
The hospitals and ICUs are not full of people sick with COVID, although the models that
predicted the healthcare system would be overwhelmed by now. The doctors don't feel the
shutdown is justified by what they are seeing.
The problem with Luc Montagnier is that he's possibly lost his shit.
This isn't based on speculation - he published a paper which drove all the homeopath advocates into a tizzy, then most recently
started talking about electromagnetic waves from DNA - which is possibly where the Iranian radio detectors for coronavirus
came from.
What is certain is that he's gone far, far afield and that none of his work from the last 2 decades is either notable or
even possibly sane. The Nobel prize was for work done in the 80s and 90s...
I'd particularly note the irony of relying on a person who is known for his work in the 1990s - well before any modern gene-typing
techniques either biological or computer - for analysis of how nCOV is engineered.
Has Montagnier ever engineered anything using CRISPR or older techniques?
If he hasn't - then why again is he credible?
"All patients with Lupus (an autoimmune illness) get hydroxychloroquine as a preventive
medical treatment and take it all the time. There is no single case known yet that such a
person got covid-19."
Only some 0.05% of people have Lupus. There is NO statistic available that shows that
Lupus cases do not acquire Covid-19. None!
"HCQ has to be given as early as possible. And it works in different and important
ways:
prevents the virus from replicating (in conjunction with Zinc); and
protects hemoglobin."
None of those alleged protections has a scientifically explained causation chain nor have
there been any serious studies that prove what you claim.
May I suggest you try drinking bleach to defeat the virus?
The "CoronaPanic" marches on. It consists of, is driven by,
and/or is propped up by a combination of: Fiasco, farce, fascism, failure, fantasy, fanaticism,
and a ferocious fit of feeling-over-thinking.
While there is a flu pandemic going on, we now know it is a minor and rather unremarkable
one. (Opinions differ on just how unremarkable; Dr. Knut Wittkowski, a hero of the hour,
has recently
suggested it looks a lot like the Swine Flu pandemic strain of 2009-10 in its true 'hit'
potential.) The virus' impact is dwarfed by a parallel force which I will capitalize for
effect. Think of it as: the flu pandemic vs. The Hysteria Pandemic. An abbreviated way to refer
to the latter is "the CoronaPanic."
The CoronaPanic is as a demonic entity that has forced its way into our reality. In this
post, I want to show the difference of the immediate effects of the flu pandemic vs. The
Hysteria Pandemic, as observable in New York City (
jump to the section on New York ).
____________
A brief word on why I am writing this series of posts .
Preceding this post in the series "Against the Corona Panic," are: Pt. I , and
Pt. II , and
Part III , all dealing with something a little different. There will be more.
I believe the fight against the CoronaPanic is a duty for "those of us who can see." There
remain cynics who continue to
believe that the best thing to do is "beg the demonic force of the CoronaPanic for table
scraps as it feasts on our national soul." I deal with this in
Part II ("Say 'No' to jockeying for political advantage on the coattails of Corona
Hysteria").
The evidence we have continues to be against the pro-CoronaPanic side's alarmist predictions
and apocalyptic views, as is observed reality everywhere, including/especially
in the case of Sweden , the greatest hero of the hour we have. The continuous stream of
good news never seems to actually make its way into discourse, which is well and truly surreal
to observe.
As one of the editors of OffGuardian , Kit Knightly, recently
said :
"The most peculiar thing about COVID19 so far has been that they are not hiding the data [
] The data is right there, and yet it is separate from the narrative, which never references
the data; the data never references the narrative. What you have to do is basically ignore
everything the media says, and just look at the numbers, and where the numbers come
from."
Many of us realized this at about the height of the Panic, but the initiative had totally
been lost to the Corona-extremists, who were enabled, if not led outright, by the media.
Why is the media ignoring the data and pushing a largely-data-detached narrative of
cherry-picked, "
scary-looking, big, contexless numbers "? Maybe it's out of garden-variety ignorance; maybe
it's that they know better but have caved into the group-hysteria and group-think; maybe it's
out of a very cynical desire for the crisis to be as bad as possible so that they look
good, even heroic, for reporting on it. I believe all of the above are true, and they partly
explain the media's disgraceful role in promoting CoronaPanic, which is nicely depicted in this
image:
One way or another, to entrust the media with your Corona news is to entrust the henhouse to
a team of foxes.
If the media "throws a number at you," the simple act of asking basic, critical questions is
often enough for the narrative to unravel in front of you. Which is what follows about New York
City.
The surprise . In the search for answers, you can/will find hidden stories, such as
the one I am going to try to tell below, in which we can tentatively quantify the impact of the
Panic vs. the impact of the virus. The surprise is that even in terms of immediate-term body
count, the Panic is much worse than the virus, the cure much worse than the disease for the
body-politic; the net-losers, almost everyone.
_____________
The Coronavirus in New York: Piercing the Numbers-Fog
[W]hat do you make of the New York news release claiming 24000 deaths since March 1, which
supposedly is 4 times normal. Is this true?
(–
MattinLA )
Good question. Given the sensationalist way the media has covered the US hotspot of New York
City, there is no better opportunity to look for context, to practice the art of critical
inquiry, to ask basic questions.
In an
introductory section to the "Just the Flu Vindicated" post, I wrote about the media and the
pro-CoronaPanic side (but I repeat myself!)'s " Scary-looking, Big, Contextless Numbers "
tactic. The alarming-seeming numbers out of New York City are a good case study of this
phenomenon. Twenty-four thousand!
MattinLA asks whether it is "true" that there were 24,000 deaths up to April 22. I don't
doubt that the 24,000 coronavirus-positive-deaths figure is true, in the sense that they have
counted 24,000 bodies since March 1 which were positive for the virus. But this is not the same
as 24,000 coronavirus- caused deaths, and in any case the number 24,000 itself needs
context to have any real meaning.
What does the "24,000 deaths" figure mean?
As a first-off, bird's-eye-view, one-line response, I'd offer this:
What a number like that (24,000) more likely shows is that the virus was/is widespread in
the population at a given time that those 'positives' were logged on the death rolls.
In statistics we run what is called a Null Hypothesis test. If we assume the virus has a
<0.15% fatality rate in New York, can we use the data we have to definitely reject that
"null hypothesis"? It looks unlikely. (cf.: Austrian researchers have found
that in their country's case, the null-hypothesis that coronavirus-positives have been dying at
the same rate as coronavirus-negatives in Austria could not be rejected; in other words, at the
time of that study there was no firm statistical evidence for the virus being uniquely
dangerous at all, in Austria at least.)
Put another way: Given that we have data out of a lot of places now that all suggests a
fatality-rate between 0.02% and 0.2% (which is, embarrassingly for the Panic-pushers, within
the normal range for flu viruses), which of the following is more likely on why
we have seen a high number of deaths in New York City (although a fairly counted true toll is
not 24,000; see below). Is it:
(a) that the virus in highly urban New York City spread more fully and sooner
than it did in other places, and therefore has yielded more virus-positive deaths in roughly
proportional terms to its spread, or
(b) that the virus is much more deadly in New York City than the same strain of flu virus is
in other places, including neighboring localities, or
(c) that the data in NYC is right and the data most everywhere else is wrong; that
only New York's (seeming, at-first-glance) death figures are "true." Most other countries,
regions, cities, and testing authorities have either bungled their data, or are covering it
up.
One of those three must be true. To immediately assume (c), to run with (c), brooking no
dissent on (c), is the mark of the true "Doomer," or CoronaCultist. The latter is someone so
obsessed with the Panic that that they have effectively converted to a religion centered around
it.
I believe the media's default position is effectively a soft version of (c). They don't say
this directly. It is implied.
Few of the assumers of (c) stop to ask whether they have made a reasonable assumption. They
start to love Corona in a perverse way. They start to their chains. Maybe it's useful to think
of it in terms of a "Corona Stockholm Syndrome" (ironically, the Stockholmers themselves proved
'immune' from this syndrome; see also
Sweden Vindicated ).
________________
Now on to analyzing the "24,000 deaths" number itself. First we should establish the base
population. Reports are that it applies to the NYC metro area, not to NYC proper. I assume they
are using the NYC Metropolitan Statistical Area measure, population 20.3 million.
The first question to ask is:
How many deaths are normal for the same time period?
This is to say, how many deaths are statistically expected for the period March 1 to April
22, for the NYC metro area, in a regular year (53 days of late winter, into early spring),
absent a peak-flu-event? (and what about with a peak flu event?)
The number of normal-expected deaths for the NYC-MSA is probably in the vicinity of 25,000
to 27,000 , if their death rate is in line with the national average. (If someone has the exact
numbers of deaths for the same period in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, those would be
useful. I can't imagine it will be far off 26,000.)
If, in February and March, this flu virus achieved the level of penetration in NYC that it
appears to have done, a lot of the normal/expected deaths in March and April would have been
"corona-positive" at death. They would have died imminently anyway, in many cases on exactly
the same day and the presence of the flu virus is coincidental and did not contribute to
death.
In other words, there is going to be overlap between the categories "normal deaths" and
"coronavirus-positive deaths." How much overlap is hard to say, but we know from elsewhere that
it is high. It could easily be half (as it
was in Hamburg, Germany, when they started dividing between "deaths with" and "deaths from"
this much-hyped virus), plausibly even more than half (as seen in early reports in Sweden,
which estimated up to two-thirds were "deaths with"). For simplicity of calculation, let's say
half.
Deaths could, therefore, not have risen 4x above normal because of the virus. If
total deaths did rise 4x above normal, putting total deaths for the period at 100,000+,
something else caused most of the excess deaths, because there aren't nearly enough
coronavirus-positive deaths to account for it . Epecially not when measuring deaths fairly (see
paragraph above). This is the first hint that something dark may be going on here, the big
surprise we find when we tug on the numbers: That the Panic has killed more people already than
the virus.
I haven't yet seen any official, all-cause-mortality data for NYC metro area for the
CoronaPanic period. The New York Timespublished some graphs that
appear to have been made by their staffers, manually adding all reported corona-positive deaths
as marginal deaths onto a graph plotting a supposed historical-running-average; if so, that is
dishonest but alas unsurprising for the way Corona discourse goes.
_________________
Conceptual categories for deaths during a peak-flu-event (and a Panic)
Useful would be thinking in terms of four categories of deaths , conceptually, all of which
we can theoretically calculate when the smoke clears, and as for now make estimates:
Corona-positive Normal Deaths;
Corona-negative Normal Deaths;
Corona-positive Excess Deaths .sub-dividable into: (3a.) those dying of a respiratory
disease (some very large share of which may be attributed to "COVID19" during the epidemic);
(3b.) those dying of, or primarily of, other causes, with the virus playing an ambiguous role
at most;
Corona-negative Excess Deaths.
The "24,000 corona-positive deaths" figure is distributed between categories (1) and (3).
(1)+(2) must add to 26,000 (or whatever the exact number is of normal deaths absent a
peak-flu-event temporary spike in deaths).
The deaths in "(3a.)" are true victims of the viral flu epidemic. In this case, because
there was a Panic, the theoretically fully calculable figure of (3) must be treated with
caution. The less-calculable figure (3a.) is what we are really after.
The deaths in "(4)" are unambiguous victims of the Panic. Reports are that hospitals in NYC
have had record-low intakes, especially heart attack victims have dropped off. These deaths
would not have occurred had a Panic been averted in mid-March. The Panic-pushers are
responsible for these deaths.
The weeks-long, pro-CoronaPanic stranglehold on the media (looking set to last months more),
and the successful pushing of the hysteria (
see image above for an artistic reproduction) made many tens of thousands too scared to
seek treatment when they needed urgent care.
Some thousands of these unlucky, frightened people will have died of (treatable) ailments
like heart attacks. These are clear cases of "4."
[ Update (April 24):] Here is a graphical representation, found online, of the rise
in "at-home deaths" in New York City. We know from much data elsewhere that
coronavirus-attributable deaths very seldom occur at home, but are slow onset and victims are
hospitalized first. It's likely that the entirety of this excess is to people in category "4,"
running hundreds a day for over a month:
The funny thing is, if someone dies in such circumstances -- the heart attack victim who
doesn't seek help -- and ends up positive for the virus at death, he still goes up onto the
bloodthirsty media's "Big Board of Corona Deaths." This is a kind of 'scam' and bogus data that
led some on the anti-CoronaPanic side to use the the term "Scamdemic."
The practice of over-counting corona victims is satirically shown here, a jab at the
pro-CoronaPanic side, circulating by early-mid April:
Some nursing homes have also been abandoned
by cowardly, panicking staff (ultimately driven to the Panic by the media), and in such places
there have been cases of elderly residents dying from lack of care. These deaths, at least some
of them, are attributable to the Panic, not the Virus, mostly sortable into category 3b or
4.
What are best-guesses for the number of deaths in each category? If we have a known figure
of 24,000 total Corona-Positive Deaths, and a figure of 26,000 Normal Deaths (recalling that
these are overlapping), and if we have significant virus penetration/spread in the population
which especially hit places like nursing homes where many are close to death in any case, the
split may look something close to this:
Total Deaths in New York City metro area for the period (est.) (proposed):
Corona-positive Normal Deaths: 12,000
Corona-negative Normal Deaths: 14,000
Corona-positive Excess Deaths: 12,000 (some unnecessary and caused by the Panic;
5,000-10,000 true coronavirus-induced deaths?)
Corona-negative Excess Deaths: ? (all unnecessary, collateral victims of the Panic)
The (1)+(2) figure is 26,000 (the normal death rate), and here it is proposed 45% of
normal-deaths were positive at death during the height of the epidemic, which may or may not
run slightly ahead of the total-population penetration rate. It is reasonable to assume it runs
ahead of the full-population rate because of spread within hospitals and other long-term care
facilities with terminal patients whose time had come in March/April and would have come absent
a flu-virus epidemic.
As for (3) and (4). If a Panic is ongoing, or there is some other non-virus-related
mechanism causing excess deaths (in other words, if "(4)" is above zero), "(3)" must be
subdivided. The force driving "(4)" will also be spilling over into "(3)," hence the proposed
(3a.) and (3b.), which are harder to calculate. Just because you are positive does not mean you
get a serious disease; very few do. But you might well still die of something else (like
those heart attack victims who stay hunkered down at home) while incidentally positive and be
an excess death.
To get a better handle on this problem, death certificate information would be useful. How
many deaths were classified as "primary cause: respiratory disease"?
[
MAJOR UPDATE (April 25):
See a comment below . The numbers now released for deaths occurring through April 18,
including average age for corona-positive vs. corona-negative deaths, place of death for
corona-positive deaths, and deaths in New York City through April 18, corona-positive vs.
corona-negative) offer strong corroboration for the contents of this post.]
______________
New York City at the cusp of Herd Immunity
If the number I propose there for "(1)" is correct, and such a large portion of
corona-positive NYC metro area deaths have been in "people who were dying anyway" (suggested
by, e.g., the report that half of corona-positive deaths have been to nursing home patients),
this would mean the virus has reached a large share of the total population, something like 30%
to 40% population penetration this writing. (= 6 to 8 million people in the metro area having
had current or past contact with the virus), with terminal patients running ahead of that rate.
If this is the case, we are once again down to the 0.1% fatality rate range for the virus
itself.
Here is the calculation derived from the above:
<10,000 deaths in the NYC metro area fairly attributable to the direct effect of the
virus
divided by
7 million people in the region whose bodies have had contact with the virus (@ 35% of metro
area population of 20.3 million being either a past- or present-positive)
_______________
= ca. 0.1% fatality rate
which is in line with the numbers out of just about every other large-area study since early
April), and we are back to
Just The Flu .
If the virus penetration rate is that high, it is good news, as it means New York City's
epidemic is already over , or very soon over, as they are at the cusp of Herd Immunity. It
also suggests that the lockdowns were unnecessary and created a Panic that killed more than the
virus ever could. A complete failure of policy, driven by a hostile media and cowardly or
demagogic political leaders. If there are any responsible people left in charge, they need to
take action to end the deadly and destructive Panic.
______________
Just how deadly might the Great Hysteria Pandemic (as against the lesser virus pandemic)
have been?
On non-coronavirus-attributableexcess deaths
Recalling the four categories of deaths again:
Corona-positive Normal Deaths;
Corona-negative Normal Deaths;
Corona-positive Excess Deaths sub-dividable into: (3a.) those dying of a respiratory
disease (some very large share of which may be attributed to "COVID19" during the epidemic);
(3b.) those dying of, or primarily of, other causes, with the virus playing an ambiguous role
at most;
Corona-negative Excess Deaths.
What might be the totals for (4), corona-negative excess deaths, and (3b.), corona-positive
excess deaths not caused by a respiratory disease? Put more directly: How many people have the
lockdowns already killed in NYC?
When we get final and confirmed total-mortality data for the NYC metro area, which may not
be soon ( if someone has this, please
leave a comment ), we can calculate (4) as follows:
[Total Reported Deaths] minus (1) minus (2) minus (3) = (4).
[ Update (April 24):] Recall this graph from above:
[ Update (April 24), cont.:] We see that excess deaths at home may have pushed up to
7,500, cumulative, by April 22, for NYC proper alone; this may need to be up to doubled for the
NYC metro as a whole. Therefore 15,000 may be a ballpark-estimate for for "(4)," plus thousands
more in (3b.), adding up to Panic-caused deaths at twice or three times the number of true,
coronavirus-attributable deaths (or "3a" above). The lesson here is: It turns out that when a
Panic is created, people take it seriously, and the outcomes can cause increased mortality in
the immediate term .
[ Update (April 25): See also how the above estimates all compare to
the latest CDC data for all deaths through April 18. The latest data corroborates each of
the findings of this post.
______________
The same phenomenon of Panic-caused excess deaths, documented in the UK
Figures
out of the UK suggest "(4)+(3b.)" are at least as high as "(3a.)" in a high-panic place
like New York City, and potentially pushing three times as high.
Health authorities in the UK
estimate there have been more than 2,500 excess heart attack deaths in London so far,
"excess" meaning those that would normally be treatable and make full recoveries but have
instead died. (That is, since the bizarre about-face by the UK government, in which the
government caved in totally to the Doomers and pro-'Lockdown' extremists [see also: UK Imperial
College study
shown to be laughably wrong ]. In the words of anti-CoronaPanic expert Knut Wittkowski, the
UK's cave-in was based on " one person's
guesstimate " as other experts were sidelined or not consulted; a surreal episode and a
disgrace to the Western tradition.)
London's spike in total mortality, which drives the UK's excess-mortality spike, is
therefore largely explained by people too afraid to to the hospital when they needed to and
dying easily preventable deaths, a fact now
admitted in the Guardian (a sign that the pro-Panic coalition is fraying at the
seams?).
The same holds true in New York.
Possible demographic factors in non-coronavirus-attributable excess deaths
A higher figure for "(4)" could partly indicate a low-trust population in the given area
affected, one much less able to withstand any kind of stressor, less able to "come together,"
one that may have little in common with each other, perhaps mutually suspicious of one
another.
This general description certainly fits today's metro NYC. A large portion of New York,
especially in the outer boroughs, is all but completely devoid of Americans; it was here that
the Panic may have struck hard and the people least ready for how to deal with the e social
stressor thereof, and hunkered down, distrusting all and easy victims of the media-driven
Panic. This produced bodies for the media in their bid to appease their new god; an evil
self-fulfilling prophecy.
We also hear that as much as half of Stockholm's
corona-positive deaths at one point were to Somali immigrants, and a fair portion to other
immigrants, putting ethnic Swedes' total-fatality rate in Stockholm during the current flu
epidemic at a very low level indeed, with deaths probably rounding to 0.0%
based on the latest studies there. There may be something of an international pattern
here.
The No-Lockdown Swedes have avoided much of a "(4)," as have other populations of higher
social trust and regimes that blunted the impact of the evil-beast of CoronaPanic.
______________
The non-corona-attributableexcess deaths: Whose fault?
What causes a man to refuse to go to the hospital when he has a heart attack? What causes an
immediate-term death of despair?
It is no cosmic mystery that the cause here is the Panic itself, and so we must ask: Who
caused the Panic?
The CoronaPanic-pushers, large and small, in the media and elsewhere. The Corona
opportunists, large and small, especially what I call the the Corona Coup d'Etat faction, which
is to say many political leaders. (A great case has been made in OffGuardian today
for
the Corona Coup d'Etat Hypothesis ).
The surprising finding that has emerged, in clear view by mid-April, and clear in the New
York City data, is that the Panic-pushers have already killed more people than the
unremarkable flu virus ever will, at least in certain hotspots . This is humbling, and enough
to make the anti-CoronaPanic side redouble its efforts that we may be liberated from this "mind
virus," as each day it does more damage.
The hard times for us the living are yet to come, and will tower over the short-term hit in
Panic-caused deaths (The Mass Hysteria Pandemic) that was a focus of this post. More and more
are seeing this as among the most extreme cases of "burning down the village in order to save
it" in our times. Aggregate life-years and life-year-equivalents lost due to the the effects of
the Panic will exceed those lost to the virus
by hundreds fold , and plausibly even thousands fold. A complete defeat for
the pro-CoronaPanic holdouts. May they see the light.
None of this needed to be. May the guilty be disempowered and live out their days in shame;
may the rest of us learn the right lessons that this never happen again.
The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be entering the containment phase. Tens of
thousands of Americans have died , and Americans are now
desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts.
Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep
emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental
principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to
function.
Five key facts are being ignored by those calling for continuing the near-total
lockdown.
Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of
dying from COVID-19.
The recent Stanford
University antibody study now estimates that the fatality rate if infected is likely 0.1 to 0.2
percent, a risk far lower than previous World Health Organization estimates that
were 20 to 30 times higher and that motivated isolation policies.
In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths,
the rate of death for people 18 to 45
years old is 0.01 percent, or 11 per 100,000 in the population. On the other hand, people aged
75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death
is zero per 100,000.
Of all fatal cases in New York
state , two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50
years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570
confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or
99.2 percent , had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic
condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in
normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.
Fact 2:
Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.
We can learn about hospital utilization from data from New York City ,
the hotbed of COVID-19 with more than 34,600 hospitalizations to date. For those under 18 years
of age, hospitalization from the virus is 0.01 percent per 100,000 people; for those 18 to 44
years old, hospitalization is 0.1 percent per 100,000. Even for people ages 65 to 74, only 1.7
percent were hospitalized. Of 4,103 confirmed COVID-19 patients with
symptoms bad enough to seek medical care, Dr.
Leora Horwitz of NYU Medical Center concluded "age is far and away the strongest risk
factor for hospitalization." Even early
WHO reports noted that 80 percent of all cases were mild, and more recent studies show a
far more widespread rate of infection and lower rate of serious illness. Half of all people
testing positive for infection have no symptoms at all. The vast majority of younger, otherwise
healthy people do not need significant medical care if they catch this infection.
Fact 3:
Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.
We know from decades of medical science that infection itself allows people to generate an
immune response -- antibodies -- so that the infection is controlled throughout the population
by " herd
immunity ." Indeed, that is the main purpose of widespread immunization in other viral
diseases -- to assist with population immunity. In this virus, we know that medical care is not
even necessary for the vast majority of people who
are infected. It is so mild that half of infected people are asymptomatic, shown in early data
from the Diamond
Princess ship, and then in
Iceland and
Italy . That has been falsely portrayed as a problem requiring mass isolation. In fact,
infected people without severe illness are the immediately available vehicle for establishing
widespread immunity. By transmitting the virus to others in the low-risk group who then
generate antibodies, they block the network of pathways toward the most vulnerable people,
ultimately ending the threat. Extending whole-population isolation would directly prevent that
widespread immunity from developing.
Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care
is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.
Critical health care for millions of Americans is being ignored and people are dying to
accommodate "potential" COVID-19 patients and for fear of spreading the disease. Most
states and many hospitals abruptly stopped "nonessential" procedures and surgery
. That prevented diagnoses of life-threatening diseases, like cancer screening, biopsies of
tumors now undiscovered and potentially deadly brain aneurysms. Treatments, including emergency
care, for the most serious illnesses were also missed. Cancer patients deferred chemotherapy
. An estimated 80 percent of brain surgery cases were skipped. Acute stroke and heart attack
patients missed their only chances for treatment, some dying and many now facing permanent
disability.
Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected
with targeted measures.
The overwhelming evidence all over the world consistently shows that a clearly defined group
-- older people and others with underlying conditions -- is more likely to have a serious
illness requiring hospitalization and more likely to die from COVID-19. Knowing that, it is a
commonsense, achievable goal to target isolation policy to that group, including strictly
monitoring those who interact with them. Nursing home residents, the highest risk, should be
the most straightforward to systematically protect from infected people, given that they
already live in confined places with highly restricted entry.
The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to
institute a more focused
strategy like some outlined in the first place:
Strictly protect the known vulnerable,
self-isolate the mildly sick, and
open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions.
This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal
risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and
limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let's stop
underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts
matter.
* * *
Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the David and Joan Traitel Senior Fellow at Stanford University's
Hoover Institution and the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical
Center.
xxx
You can lift the lockdown, but the psychological damage has already been done and it is
irreversible. Our economy will never return to the free-wheeling, go for broke mentality of 4
months ago. That spirit is gone with the wind.
xxx
With all due respect to the MD author......answer this question.
How many would be dead/dying WITHOUT any isolation at all?
The Herd immunity concept is a cop out.......it was called Euthanasia back in the NAZI
Germany day.
Comparing Spanish Flu statistics to today is asinine. Your average MD in 1918 new nothing
about virology and or public health....I will say it again....nothing.
In orders of magnitude;
We have better hygiene
We have better nutrition
We have better public health
We have better educated medical personnel across all disciplines
We have better diagnostics technology
Reinstate levels of all of the above to 1918 levels and Covid-19 would be absolutely
savaging the world population.
**** off back to the bar diner if that is your wish but dont come crying down the road
because your alveoli are full of puss and you cant breathe just find a dark corner somewhere
and die quietly in it.
xxx
Status of COVID-19
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence
infectious disease (HCID) in the UK:
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence
infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to
classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about
the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the
outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have
reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They
have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is
available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness
and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to
increase.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that
COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.
The need to have a national, coordinated response remains, but this is being met by the
government's COVID-19 response
.
Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare
workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the
updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19 , which
supersedes all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions
about different personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for
different clinical scenarios.
Definition of HCID
In the UK, a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) is defined according to the
following criteria:
acute infectious disease
typically has a high case-fatality rate
may not have effective prophylaxis or treatment
often difficult to recognise and detect rapidly
ability to spread in the community and within healthcare settings
requires an enhanced individual, population and system response to ensure it is
managed effectively, efficiently and safely
Classification of HCIDs
HCIDs are further divided into contact and airborne groups:
contact HCIDs are usually spread by direct contact with an infected patient or
infected fluids, tissues and other materials, or by indirect contact with contaminated
materials and fomites
airborne HCIDs are spread by respiratory droplets or aerosol transmission, in
addition to contact routes of transmission
List of high consequence infectious diseases
A list of HCIDs has been agreed by a joint Public Health England (PHE) and NHS England
HCID Programme:
Contact HCID
Airborne HCID
Argentine haemorrhagic fever (Junin virus)
Andes virus infection (hantavirus)
Bolivian haemorrhagic fever (Machupo virus)
Avian influenza A H7N9 and H5N1
Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF)
Avian influenza A H5N6 and H7N7
Ebola virus disease (EVD)
Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)
Severe fever with thrombocytopaenia syndrome (SFTS)
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)*
*No cases reported since 2004, but SARS remains a notifiable disease under the
International Health Regulations (2005), hence its inclusion here
**Human to human transmission has not been described to date for avian influenza
A(H5N6). Human to human transmission has been described for avian influenza A(H5N1),
although this was not apparent until more than 30 human cases had been reported. Both
A(H5N6) and A(H5N1) often cause severe illness and fatalities. Therefore, A(H5N6) has been
included in the airborne HCID list despite not meeting all of the HCID criteria.
The list of HCIDs will be kept under review and updated by PHE if new HCIDs emerge that
are of relevance to the UK.
HCIDs in the UK
HCIDs, including viral haemorrhagic fevers (VHFs), are rare in the UK. When cases do
occur, they tend to be sporadic and are typically associated with recent travel to an area
where the infection is known to be endemic or where an outbreak is occurring. None of the
HCIDs listed above are endemic in the UK, and the known animal reservoirs are not found in
the UK.
As of February 2020, 2019, the UK has experience of managing confirmed cases of Lassa
fever, EVD, CCHF, MERS and monkeypox. The vast majority of these patients acquired their
infections overseas, but rare incidents of secondary transmission of MERS and monkeypox
have occurred in the UK.
xxx
Dumbest comment in the history of ZH, and that's saying a lot.
In 1918, people weren't flying all over the world 24 hours a day, going to work on crowded
trains, riding to their offices in crowded elevators, etc. Also, doctors were not as dumb as you suppose.
Also, if hygiene is such a big factor, why is Bangladesh largely unaffected? Why is
Belarus not dying en masse even though they've taken a "don't give a ****" stance since Day
1?
The Flu of 1918 was far more deadly than this little cold. It had killed 10 million four
months in.
So go hide in your closet. I'll be outside playing and building up my immune system.
xxx
How many would be dead/dying WITHOUT any isolation at all?
Much much less.
Death numbers are over inflated (i work in the field).
people dying from the economic shock and medical negligence from other disease will be
worse than the total number of covid death
virus has already been around the world at least since December, even before. Number of
non symptomatic people is probably around the 20-30%, and would have been more it or weren't
for that idiotic isolation. More non vulnerable people getting immunity from the virus = less
spreading and contagion.
you are prioritizing very old people, and endangering the live of younger workers. Next
time you're in the Titanic, make sure to save the older people first, and the children
last.
Btw covid isn't the Spanish flu, get it out of your head.
xxx
What do you call ravaging? 2 million? Do we destroy the planet for 2 million?
9 million
died of hunger last year and we find that completely acceptable even though it's the most
preventable cause of death out there.
if we were truly concerned about people not dying we
could fix that for less money and lively hoods than we have spent this year already and we're
just getting started.
I don't think you see what's coming in the form of global unrest, wars,
famine, complete marshal law, ect. I reply to you respectfully and will listen to anything
you have to say with an open mind.
My bank now has traffic pylons outside the door. They ask the following questions if you
want to enter:
-Have you been out of the country ? Answer; How am I going to be out of the country when the
airport is closed?
-Do you have any symptoms ? Answer: If I had I would be at the hospital
-Have you associated with anyone who has the symptoms? Answer: If I thought they did I would
ask them to go to the hospital and so would I.
-Sir! There is no need to be rude. Answer: Far from it. You are asking questions parrot
fashion. Questions that do not make any sense.
After getting MY money out of THEIR pockets I proceeded to the auto mechanic for front
brakes.
Joker: Am I allowed to come inside ?
70 Year old Mechanic Unmasked : Sure, you are the only customer today. You can keep me
company while I do the work. I cannot afford to lose customers.
On 14 April, US President Donald Trump announced that he would withhold US funds from WHO,
accusing the organization of poor management in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and
of conspiring with China to hide crucial information about the spread of the virus during the
early stages of the outbreak. A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang,
said during a Friday press conference
that Beijing hopes the administration of US President Donald
Trump will not stand "on the wrong side of the track from the international community", as
nations join efforts to curb the spread of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
"The US assumes that WHO [World Health Organization] should do its bidding because it is the
largest contributor. This
is typical hegemonic mentality ," Shuang said. "At present, by supporting WHO, we will be
able to contain the further spread of the virus. It is literally a matter of life and death.
This is a consensus shared by the majority of countries and a sure choice anyone with
conscience would make".
The spokesperson acknowledged that the Trump administration had been "smearing and
attacking" the international health organisation without proof, pointing out that Washington's
"tactics of pressure and coercion" only
lead to "greater" dissatisfaction with the US by the international community.
Shuang noted that WHO has been "actively fulfilling its duties" since the early stages of
the outbreak, adding that the body is now playing a significant role in harmonizing
international efforts to slow the spread of the deadly disease in an "objective, fair and
science-based" way.
"WHO's leadership
is also endorsed in the UNGA resolution and statements by the Non-Aligned Movement and
the Group of 77 and China. In the statement of the recent G20 extraordinary summit, member
states stressed that they fully support and commit to further strengthen the WHO's mandate in
coordinating the international fight against the pandemic," the Chinese spokesperson
observed.
The spokesperson also noted that Trumps decision would affect all countries, including the
US itself, "and particularly those with vulnerable health systems".
Last week, Trump
added on to his China accusations over the coronavirus outbreak, announcing that his
administration would open an investigation into whether the pandemic was a result of a leak by
a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan. US State Secretary Mike Pompeo, a Trump appointee, called on
Beijing to "come clean" about the outbreak, without elaboration.
On 14 April, Trump announced that the US had halted funding WHO, and was set to conduct what
the president regarded would be a "very thorough" investigation for a period that would last 60
to 90 days.
The public panic that abounds is not of natural origin. It is manufactured by the media and
the deep state. The question arises, for what purpose. I suspect that that the US economy is
undergoing a designed, controlled demolition in order to produce an uncontrolled demolition
of the Chinese economy and thus forestall Chinese ascendancy.
The little people in the US, as Leona Helmsly would have dubbed them, purchase mountains
of Chinese manufactured goods and are really the cornerstone of the Chinese economy.
The little people in the US will no longer be purchasing anything but absolute necessities
like food as the engineered depression will leave them with pockets too empty for anything
else.
@Astuteobservor II US knew by mid Nov 2019 from
Spy satellite , internet t , evedropping , and Human intelligence that a potential pandemic
was breaking out It informed NATO and Israel . Both and USA itself ignored. These cases arose
in Wuhan and were Covid-19.
If the Inner Mongolia cases of 3 Nov were viral and Covid , then the origin of the virus
is uncertain . If they are not , then it's China problem to find out what caused those
illnesses.
America might deny that it had prior information and didn't act and did not emphasize to
those deceased in UK Italy Iran USA how serious and grave the threat were , But that is par
for the course . Through -lines in the US press releases and in bombastic threats have always
been denial and blame – nothing new . But Chins is not Iraq or Syria . Only countries
that believe US are India and Germany .
Germany should help Iran sue America for preventing access to medicine , masks, PEP and
imposing more sanctions at this time when a crisis is raging across the globe and when that
crisis itself is not causing any discrimination.
Remedy itself in that case shall not be discriminatory .
If Israel can use its Mossad and steal from abroad , then anybody at least should have the
opportunity of buying it making those gears and the money should be made available.
Its repeated endlessly the the virus was mishandled in the West. Nobody has a crystal ball
and this situation is new and novel. Issuing sweeping edicts isn't the style of most
countries outside of Asia. Different countries have their own way of doing things.
It'll be part of the US election rhetoric, that the response wasn't perfect, that Trump is
responsible for thousands of deaths and yada yada. This isn't the plague or even the
so-called Spanish Flu which was censored so the masses weren't stampeded hysterically over
the cliff. Of course this is being politicized. What isn't these days? China bashing is a
regular sport even as a significant portion of the US citizenry profit from being middlemen
or consumers in the trade between the countries.
@anon 1. Nor does it rule out escaping from any other Level 4 laboratory. The fact that
it was first identified in China, does not equate to its inception. The "Spanish" Flu was
first identified in Spain, although it was rampant in the trenches of WWI and the earliest
know symptoms reported in Fort Riley, Kansas.
2. While the Lab in Wuhan is reported to be in several places, the closest is 300 yards
and the furthest 20 miles. Neither is spitting distance. I've never been there, but somehow
300 yards sounds too close. Not that it would matter, as it would take a Fort Detrick level
of safety violations for any pathogen to escape. Gross negligence, not an accident.
3. Is it a coincidence that African Swine Flu, which was eradicated on the Iberian
Peninsula decades ago, jumped from Africa into Ukraine, Russia, and China after the US
military opened "research" labs in Georgia and half a dozen countries close to, or bordering
China?
By the way, the PRC is number 80 in population density. About 1/3 of Europe is more
densely populated, including the Switzerland, Italy, UK, Belgium and Holland. The UK, Belgium
and Italy have never been noted for great hygiene.
4. Trump has good instincts. Unfortunately he has surrounded himself with neo-cons.
5. The Iranian response to the US act of war was measured. Notice was given of the time
and targets to minimize casualties. Iran demonstrated its missiles were accurate. Both Iraq
and Afghanistan, which border Iran, have US military "research" labs.
• The initial rapid viral spread occurred in the Chinese city of Wuhan;
• A Wuhan bio-lab had the expertise to engineer such enhanced viruses;
• Authorities allowed viral carriers to fly to other regions of the world.
In distant 1995 the US journalist Lorrie Garrett published an excellent
book called " The Coming
Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance " in which she explained why
and even how a global pandemic would naturally emerge due to the very nature of our modern
society. I highly recommend this book in spite of the fact that it is now a quarter of a
century old: it is very well written, easy to read, and it makes a very strong case that such
pandemics were inevitable (and with no need to appeal to unsubstantiated biowarfare
theories).
History will show that we all, our entire planet, did not take this and many other warnings
seriously. Ask yourself, what is easier for a politician: to accept that our entire
socio-political order is unsustainable and outright dangerous (or "out of balance" to use
Garrett's expression), or to blame it all on the Chinese commies and their "secret biowarfare
program"?
I tend to think both B and some opponents of the lockdown are massively oversimplifying.
It's dangerous to a small demographic and we mostly know who that is. The binary lockdown
vs not lockdown mindset ignores the enormous specificity of the disease and variables in
actions taken. A lockdown that poor people can't follow won't be effective and a lockdown
that fails to protect elderly and especiallly nursing homes will see high deaths. An open
approach that does these things might be more efficaous.
The premise that the anti lockdown position is a bunch of ignorant, right wings nuts is
readily dispelled by the large number of scientists who have spoken out against it.
Again, the problem here is the various shades of grey and large number of variables. Some
containment acts might not work and do more harm than good. Different places will have
different results based on weather, density (spread rate), demographics, etc
Then there is the changing narrative. Flatten the curve was about reducing strain on
hospitals with only modest (at best) gains in lives. Now we compare Sweden and Norway say on
deaths and not strain on hospital resources.
The lockdown is doing a lot of economic, social, psychological harm especially in the US
where we have no safety net, no healthcare and many poor. Closing schools will seriously hurt
children. EG: 50% of NYC kids get assistance for breakfast and 72% get it for lunch. Those
schools fulfill important social and care functions beyond schooling.
There are many variables in this equation. Stop pretending otherwise.
Cheers, b, for standing up to the libertarian nonsense.
I would still note that - at least in the US - the federal and state plan for nCOV
management is unquestionably very poorly thought out.
A few questions:
1) While lockdowns in breakout areas like New York, New Jersey, Louisiana make sense -
what is the plan for the rest of the country?
In particular - Singapore has demonstrated that controlling initial nCOV penetration
(travellers from Wuhan) - even subsequent secondary infection from other countries (Students
returning home from Europe) is still not enough to prevent resurgence. Singapore is now
headed for the worst results in Asia due to its 200K cheap offshore laborers in barracks.
The same (actually, probably worse) conditions exist for fruit and produce harvesters and
meat workers in the US, as well as Amazon and other delivery warehouses. Dark kitchens are
likely to add to the mix.
So - is the solution to lock down until there is a vaccine? For at least 7 months from
now? Is it to have flareups and more lockdowns later? The uncertainty causes as much economic
damage as anything else.
2) The mortality data is also quite clear: the vast majority of affected are the 65+. What
about having state and federal government planning - via say, Medicare - to provide food and
support services and to quarantine/protect via isolation those vulnerable demographics?
They're already widely financially supported via their Social Security paychecks; they're the
least vulnerable to needing paychecks to eat - unlike a huge percentage of the rest of the
population.
3) The economic disruption is ginormous. Unemployment helps some - but it maxes out at 30
weeks.
There are still huge numbers of business owners and others who are not eligible for
unemployment.
Are those people just having to lump it for the duration of nCOV protective measures? Which,
as I noted above, is likely to be many months - not just 1 or 2?
4) Testing. Why is testing not being heavily subsidized and/or price controlled? Both PCR
for active and antibody?
Lastly, even if the lockdowns were to magically end tomorrow - entire sectors are still
going to be severely disrupted.
The entire travel sector is toast for 2020.
The sports and concert scene is also toast for 2020.
Bars and nightclubs? Highly problematic.
Restaurants? Also very problematic.
Schools? We're going into summer now, but nCOV will still be a problem in September - and we
won't have a vaccine then. The entire commercial/restaurant/school supply chain is hosed - how is that situation
going to get resolved?
The real problem the libertarians have isn't just that their rabid aversion to government
is wrong headed - it is that the only way to try and get out of this nCOV situation without
maximum economic and public health impact is via smart government policy.
But at the same time, there is very little evidence of smart government policies - at any
level - in the US.
There is one size fits all measure. Quarantine is necessary in some places like NYC (and many
other large cities). As well as for people over 65, and other who continue the high risk group
(extremely obese, diabetics, with immune system problems, with cardiovascular problems, etc) It
is less nessesary and justified in area will low population density. In those places mass
gathering (say more then 10 people) can be prohibited and obligatory wearing of masks inside
buildings and transports as well as places with high density outside like lines, but life can
continue as usual
Yesterday James Corbett of The
Corbett Report interviewed Kit Knightly of Off-Guardian about the corona crisis. At 18:30 minutes in
Corbett finds it "disturbing" that some of the blogs who usually criticize governments, like
Moon of Alabama, support the measures governments have taken to lower the speed of the novel
coronavirus epidemic.
Corbett then highlights a discussion on
Twitter between me and the Off-Guardian account.
#BillGates funded World Health Organisation advocate forced removal of family members fm
homes if "tested" positive for #COVID19 even tho test is not proven reliable. So, govts hve
corralled us in homes & will now unlawfully raid & extract citizens under poss.
false pretext.
China did this in phase 2 of the Wuhan quarantine because it was the only way to protect
the families from their infected members. Without that policy Wuhan would not have ended
the epidemic.
Current test reliability is relativ high if test is immediate used when symptoms appear.
OffGuardian retweeted my tweet and launched the discussion:
... ... ...
Now back to the Off-Guardian and Corbett critique. My view on the epidemic
was always based on science. You can follow how it developed through the list of posts
attached to this one. As I watched how China defeated its outbreak I had hoped that other
governments would take similar measures. With globally concerted action we could have
completely erased this disease!
But one slips into a pandemic with the governments one
has, not with the ones one wishes for.
Will our 'elites' use the crisis to further enrich themselves. Sure .
Will they abuse some of the control measures? That is practically guaranteed. And it does not
change a damned thing with regards to the pandemic.
It is now too late to defeat it by eradicating its source. Social distancing measures like
lock-downs are needed to keep the epidemic under control and to not overload our health care
systems. Should the next outbreak wave be worse than the current one we will need even
harsher measures than we currently have. I will support those because I know that they will
save lives.
If that makes me an 'authoritarian' in the view of some then let it be so.
I for one find it more useful to tell people
to make and wear masks than to post
'expert opinions' (scroll down) from PR-company sites which disagree with the scientific
mainstream while their estimates of the total death toll have already been exceeded.
--- It is entirely erroneous and risible to view any action of the state as
"authoritarian."
This infantile disorder is derivative of all liberal thought, which rests on a
methodological individualism, the idea that society is nothing beyond the individuals which
allegedly constitute it. Incidentally, left-wing anarchism shares the same theory of
the state, regardless of its ostensibly social objectives. The state in both views is just an
exogenous, evil "thing," which interferes unjustifiably in civil society and markets. Of
course, this theory has no connection to reality at all if you are sane enough to accept the
merits of public libraries, roads, water treatment, schools, healthcare, environmental
protections, etc.
The Marxist theory of the state is the correct one. The state emerges from class
relationships, and enforces them through a variety of means. But, it is also a terrain of
class struggle and a resume of the balance of class forces in society.
The historical evolution of the state clearly expresses these realities, and working-class
movements and left-wing parties have shaped the state and its institutions in important ways.
Public health care systems are inextricable from the success of working-class struggles. The
power of the coercive branches of the state are an expression of the weakness of the left.
And so on.
It follows that a working-class demand for stronger lockdown and quarantine measures in
the interest of protecting lives and the very public institutions we need has nothing in
common with "authoritarianism."
Only an asshole capitalist who truly thinks, as the Governor of Texas put it, that "there
are more important things than life," would say so.
Let's be clear: the call for more meaningful and stronger directives and rules in the
present is only coming from the left because it alone cares for the health and well being of
fellow human beings. It is the right-wing assholes and capitalists who want to "return to
normal" as soon as possible.
Those warning of the authoritarianism of any lockdown measures are regurgitating the heart
and soul of reactionary right-wing thought and capitalist interests.
This whole charade exposes how many in the so called Alternative Media are unable to
differentiate, to base their thinking on scientific methods, and just live and think in a
bi-polar borderline black and white world.
I applaud you for your stace, even more seeing the onslaught of hysterics you face.
Most of the Alternative media are just as bad as MSM. Only mirrored.
Only a differentiated, scientific, and neutral analytic stance like yours can be a solution.
Neither the likes of Off-Guardian, nor CNN.
IMO this divide stems from this:
Our European (and German) stance of social democracy of freedom for the individual, as
long as it does not harm others or the society as a whole
vs.
the anglo ideology of total freedom for the individual, not matter the costs for others.
Many so called "progressives" from the likes of Off-Guardian are foreigners to the
concept, that individual liberty has limits, when the well being of higher values (like the
society as a whole, harm to others) is at risk.
They are libertarians who put themselves over all others, but claim to be "progressive".
In the context of an aglo-american society they well be "progressive" But only compared to
the likes of Trump or Biden or Clinton.
Mostly the protests are being instigated by the usual anti-government oligarchs who are
terrorized that people might actually conclude that government has an important role to play
in addressing problems.
As far as public opposition to the police state lockdown coming almost only from MAGA
types, this is yet another example of the complete abdication and worthlessness of "the left"
which leaves a vacuum that's filled by right-populism.
Just like with Brexit, just like with the American opportunity for a populist movement
truly against Wall Street, corporate rule, the Pentagon, the police state.
As we saw with Brexit, erstwhile "anti-globalists" ran home to globalist mama the moment
the chips were down. Today we see the vastly more profound phenomenon of almost all
self-alleged "anti-authoritarians" running home to police state mama.
When everyone who ever claimed to hold human principles and who filled most of the
ideological leadership space among the "alternative" set then not only abdicates but flips
180 degrees to embrace the very system they'd always claimed to oppose, that can do nothing
but throw the whole space wide open to fascism.
And if the people do embrace classical fascism, a major cause will be this revelation of
the fraudulence of almost all who ever claimed to fight for an alternative.
IMO we should just label them the pro-COVID crowd in any discussion of the
matter.
You're the one exulting in how the bug allegedly promises total apocalypse. The pro-COVID
crowd are those propagating this mass terror campaign and those like you who have joyously
embraced it.
This whole charade exposes how many in the so called Alternative Media are unable to
differentiate, to base their thinking on scientific methods, and just live and think in a
bi-polar borderline black and white world.
I applaud you for your stace, even more seeing the onslaught of hysterics you face.
Most of the Alternative media are just as bad as MSM. Only mirrored.
Only a differentiated, scientific, and neutral analytic stance like yours can be a solution.
Neither the likes of Off-Guardian, nor CNN.
IMO this divide stems from this:
Our European (and German) stance of social democracy of freedom for the individual, as
long as it does not harm others or the society as a whole
vs.
the anglo ideology of total freedom for the individual, not matter the costs for others.
Many so called "progressives" from the likes of Off-Guardian are foreigners to the
concept, that individual liberty has limits, when the well being of higher values (like the
society as a whole, harm to others) is at risk.
They are libertarians who put themselves over all others, but claim to be "progressive".
In the context of an aglo-american society they well be "progressive" But only compared to
the likes of Trump or Biden or Clinton.
With respect to your statement "Will they abuse some of the control measures? That is
practically guaranteed", I feel I must point out when Bush brought in targeted killings he
insisted that it would only be done against selected individuals and now, 18 years later the
US has a committee of unelected military and intelligence officials rubber stamping secret
kill lists that have resulted in at least 100,000 deaths, 80% of which were "collateral
damage" of bystanders, no legal defense against inclusion on the list, no appeal, not even a
public declaration of who is being pursued. I simply can not imagine a more irrespirable
group to grant the power to seize and hold individuals, especially since the US is in the
middle of a political/economic crisis before the pandemic. My specific concerns are.
1. how long can an individual be held, what is the process for being released (do Doctor's
have the power to release the patient? do Judges, military officers?) - I suspect it will be
a long drawn out process taking at least 6-10 weeks requiring several different doctors and
multiple tests, since the US has NO infrastructure setup for this process currently it will
be subject to overloading and delays and rather than balancing the safety of society vs the
rights of the individual it will simply crush the individual
2. What facilities does the government even have for the internment of seized individuals?
- The government has none, meaning it will be forced to construct WW-2 Japanese-style
internment camps in isolated areas with minimum health care services and probably outbreaks
of other diseases
3. What treatment for the disease will individuals receive? (will they receive any?) - The
US public doesn't have universal health care or even enough medical supplies for the public
at large, the detainees will in all likelihood receive only nominal healthcare services,
making them at high risk of other diseases. I suspect any camp setup by the US government to
specifically treat sick individuals will have excessively high death rates
4. What support will be provided for the family members or dependants of the detainees? -
I think we all know the answer is zero, the US has gone to war against social services in the
US for last 30 years and unlike all of the other wars the US has launched they've been hugely
successful in destroying the safety net of society. What do you think will happened when
previously detained individuals are released back into society to discover that their family
lost their house or apartment or their children were taken into foster care
You may claim that giving the government this power is the only way to defeat the Pandemic,
but the simply truth is the government will not use it to defeat the Pandemic , rather
they will use that power to enrich themselves and create only the barest façade of an
effort to fight the pandemic and it will be so weak, so incompetently designed and
ineffectively managed that it will make the Pandemic worse. Why should I believe that a
government that has a bipartisan history of corruption, incompetency and failure going back
30 years will now unexpectedly succeed. They will fail.
Unfortunately, the science says there is not a vaccine for this corona virus or any other
corona virus or even the common cold virus. The science says there are not even any perfectly
effective vaccines for the flu. Developing one every year is something of a crap shoot.
However, the science also says that this virus is unusually highly infective, even if the
death toll is low relative to infected persons - possibly 0.1%. This is why I suggest an
effective vaccine is highly unlikely to ever be developed for this virus
There is really no evidence that the virus will ever be eradicated, unless mother nature
helps us as it had done with the first SARS virus and the MERS virus. The way Sars Cov2
infects us suggests this will not be the case.
So the argument between OFF Guard and Moon is moot. People are going suffer and
occasionally die from the virus' infections if and until we develop a balanced "relationship"
with it similar to the other four human corona viruses. The difference between the two
arguments is the OG set up will kill more now, and b approach will kill more later. The
advantage to b's point of view is that evolution might tame the virus into a less virulent
strain through mutation of the virus and/or built up immunity in humans.
The best approach is a holding pattern, not a complete futile lockdown, but not a do
nothing herd immunity approach. Testing, learning more of the virus' nature, social
distancing, wearing masks, developing/discovering drugs to mitigate the effects of the virus,
research possible vaccines, open the economy in a measured manner, and develop
politcal-economic policies that will equalize the distribution of wealth to defend against
the high death toll and missery that mass unemployment will produce.
Russia detected 5,236 new coronavirus carriers yesterday. That is substantially less than
yesterday. But this is not the story. It really should not matter that much how many new
cases the Russians are able to dig up, because the big story is that according to Russia's
own statistics upwards of 60% of those infected don't get sick and are asymptomatic:
The 60% asymptomatic figure is pretty consistent with the Diamond Princess (46% I think) and
Roosevelt numbers (something around 60%). The Stanford study of a 50 to 1 ratio of
asymptomatic (98%) doesn't jibe with this. I believe the study was very flawed. Either the
testing and/or the sample group.
The case of a mother in Meridian, Idaho, who was arrested after police say she violated a
city order by letting her children play in a playground has sparked a furious backlash and
protests against Covid-19 restrictions. Sara Brady was arrested and charged with one count of
misdemeanor trespassing, following the incident at Kleiner Park in Meridian on Tuesday.
Video footage shows Brady being led away from the scene in handcuffs as several other women
with young children plead with the police officers for an explanation for the arrest.
"As a person, does this make sense to you? As a person, not as a police officer," one
can be heard asking as the mother is perp-walked out of the park on the sunny afternoon.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨 Mother arrested in Meridian, Idaho for letting kids play in
parkThis has gotten out of controlStop arresting free Americans for being outside with their
familiesRT!! pic.twitter.com/TUsbgat0D2
Meridian police say they made several attempts to encourage Brady to adhere to the rules and
she did not comply with their requests. She was part of a group of families that was taking
part in a "playdate protest" over Idaho's stay-at-home orders. She is now facing up to
six months in jail and/or a US$1,000 fine.
The arrest prompted a protest outside Meridian City Hall on Tuesday evening, where
demonstrators voiced their concerns about how the incident was handled by the police and
expressed their opposition to Idaho's Covid-19 measures.
Restrictive lockdown measures limiting people's freedom of movement and sending unemployment
rates to record highs have created tensions in many US states.
Footage of Brady's arrest went viral on Twitter on Wednesday, with one video of the incident
racking up more than one million views in two hours.
"This has gotten out of control," activist Rogan O'Handley writes in one viral message.
"Stop arresting free Americans for being outside with their families."
"... The actual history of this crisis, beginning with the first reports from China, make it very clear that the neo-liberals running the 'west' have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into the pursuit of policies which have involved not only isolation and quarantine, but testing, the acquisition of masks and other protective equipment, the pursuit of sources of infection and the search for a vaccine which, according to Mike Davis in the New Left Review, would have been fabricated years ago had the State rather than profit hungry Pharmaceutical companies been given the job. ..."
...What strikes me as the most important aspect of the situation is that most western
governments were very reluctant to introduce quarantines and are now obviously eager to scrap
them. This is something that the Off Guardian school tend to downplay for the obvious reason
that it makes little sense for governments, if they really do seek to use the crisis to
introduce draconian new measures to curtail out liberties, to resist public pressure to
enforce quarantines regardless of its effects on the economy.
The actual history of this crisis, beginning with the first reports from China, make it
very clear that the neo-liberals running the 'west' have had to be dragged, kicking and
screaming into the pursuit of policies which have involved not only isolation and quarantine,
but testing, the acquisition of masks and other protective equipment, the pursuit of sources
of infection and the search for a vaccine which, according to Mike Davis in the New Left
Review, would have been fabricated years ago had the State rather than profit hungry
Pharmaceutical companies been given the job.
It has been public opinion, popular pressure, not ruling class insistence that has been
behind the current restrictions. This is not because the people are inclined to
authoritarianism or eager to give up what remains of their freedoms but because they are
concerned at the threat that this virus presents to their families and themselves. And these,
rational fears, are the best guarantee that we can have that the people will not allow
society to be bamboozled either into sacrificing our old and frail people or our rights.
"... ... Sometimes, those actions can have unintended consequences: for instance, ProPublica reported that one scientist – who had lived in the United States for decades and left the country after being investigated for ties to China – is now developing a rapid coronavirus test in China. Whether it's scientists sharing research to find a vaccine or companies partnering to produce necessary equipment, we must ensure all the doors to cooperation on the pandemic are open right now. The Trump administration's move to lift tariffs on Chinese medical products like masks and sanitization products is a good step. ..."
This blame game is undermining diplomacy between the countries. Instead of calling his
counterpart to coordinate responses to the global pandemic, the US secretary of state, Mike
Pompeo,
called China's senior foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, instead to object to "PRC
efforts to shift blame for Covid-19 to the United States". And the Trump administration has
reportedly attempted to stop the
UN security council and the G7 from
taking action against the pandemic unless the groups singled out China for blame.
... ... ...
First, the United States must stop scapegoating China. Leaders need to stop referring to
Covid-19 as the "Chinese virus", trying to blame China for the outbreak and feeding conspiracy
theories about China launching the disease on purpose. Halting this kind of rhetoric can help
reduce some of the
discrimination against Asian Americans that has been sparked by racist comments surrounding
the virus. And while China will continue trying to spin this crisis to its advantage to win
headlines, at the very least the United States can play the role of responsible leader rather
than infantile finger-pointer.
... ... ....
... Sometimes, those actions can have unintended consequences: for instance,
ProPublica reported that one scientist – who had lived in the United States for
decades and left the country after being investigated for ties to China – is now
developing a rapid coronavirus test in China. Whether it's scientists sharing research to find
a vaccine or companies partnering to produce necessary equipment, we must ensure all the doors
to cooperation on the pandemic are open right now. The Trump administration's
move to lift tariffs on Chinese medical products like masks and sanitization products is a
good step.
Third, the US and Chinese governments must work together to stem the tide of the pandemic.
As tensions have risen in recent years there are fewer and fewer areas on which the two
countries have pursued robust cooperation. But combating the pandemic is exactly the kind of
challenge that requires the two nations to come together, from sharing lessons learned in their
respective responses to searching for medical treatments to working together in multilateral
organizations like the World Health Organization and the G20. And it means being open to
support from one another: while China initially refused US help,
reports
now suggest the United States is declining China's offers of sending personal protective
equipment.
Fourth, don't worry for the moment about China's attempts to win public relations victories
by sending aid to US allies. The United States must focus on actually helping US allies –
such as coordinating travel restrictions to avoid the disaster when the Europe travel ban was
announced – and being supportive of allies getting desperately needed help from anywhere
it can, whether the United States, China or anyone else. Even if the United States has
relatively little to offer and China is sending small amounts of aid as a public relations
move, responding by trying to remind everyone that China is the cause of the outbreak will only
make America look petty (and some countries are already finding out on their own that part of
China's aid is faulty ).
If the United States and China are successful in fighting this pandemic – and doing so
together – perhaps, at the end of all of this, the two countries just might end up
building bridges that could be useful in tempering the more dangerous aspects of their
competition.
One could say there are generally 2 honest standpoints on what is happening (ignoring the
dishonest ones). On the surface these 2 groups appear to have diverging opinions based on
essentially the same fear: What happens to the economy.
One group fears the extreme actions taken by governments and institutions are causing far
more damage to society and individuals in terms of economic damage, unemployment, eradication of
democratic and personal rights and ultimately also deaths. These actions are seen as real and
deliberate attacks on individuals and modern society.
The other group senses the same fear, but the fear is so strong that cognitive dissonance
kicks in to deny reality. One is simply not able to accept the implication of governments and
institutions willingly crushing society. So the official virus doomsday line is internalized as
the truth, instead of causing a revision of one's world view, even though the numbers show that
it is an irrational standpoint.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Now, AG Barr has taken Trump's embrace of the 'reopen now' movement to the next level by
claiming the DoJ might join lawsuits filed by businesses and citizens against various states
over the shutdown orders.
"We have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that's reasonably safe," Barr
said. "To the extent that governors don't and impinge on either civil rights or on the
national commerce - our common market that we have here - then we'll have to address
that."
The move comes as more conservative groups reportedly heap pressure on the administration to
do more to stop governors like Gavin Newsom from keeping their states closed until the summer,
according to BBG.
But the last thing states need right now is another reason to blame the White House for
meddling in their reopening planning...
One way the Justice Department might act against state or local officials is by joining
lawsuits brought by citizens or businesses over restrictions, Barr said. He acknowledged that
state governments are at "a sensitive stage," as they try to balance health and safety
against pressure to reopen.But he said that "as lawsuits develop, as specific cases emerge in
the states, we'll take a look at them."
"We're looking carefully at a number of these rules that are being put into place," Barr
said. "And if we think one goes too far, we initially try to jawbone the governors into
rolling them back or adjusting them. And if they're not and people bring lawsuits, we file
statement of interest and side with the plaintiffs."
...and Barr just gave it to them on a silver platter.
There's a descent into hysteria and anger here. You all _really_ need to read that John
Ioannidis article I posted above. He's not an "Off-Guardian nut job." He's a professor of
epidemiology at Stanford University. He and other experts reviewed all the currently
available data (with some common-sense restrictions) and made a report I've also linked to.
The report indicates that Covid-19 is not very dangerous to under-65s in good health, with
possible exception of people in a horrible health care situation.
As for dying 'from' rather than 'with', that's also not some wacky theory pushed by some
"Off-Guardian nut job." No, it's promoted by Oxford University, _that_ Oxford University, and
I've cited their report repeatedly. Global Covid-19 Case
Fatality Rates , is from the The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of
Oxford. The report states, emphasis in original:
"Recording the numbers of those who die with Coronavirus will inflate the CFR as
opposed to those that died from Coronavirus, which will deflate the CFR."
The report later adds: "It is now essential to understand whether individuals are dying
with or from the disease. Understanding this issue is critical. If, for instance, 80% of
those over 80 die with the disease then the CFR would be near 3% in this age group as opposed
to 15%. Cause of death information from death certificates is often inaccurate and
incomplete, particularly for conditions such as pneumonia. These factors would act to lower
the IFR."
Now, these Stanford and Oxford University epidemiologists might be wrong. Or they might be
right. Still much uncertainty. But treating the people you disagree with in _this_ context as
conspiracy-addled nut cases tells me that you have an excessive commitment to 'winning' and
not to getting this thing right.
What do you mean by "minimizing"? It's simply a fact, based on the increasingly strong
statistical data, that Covid-19 is not very dangerous for under-65s in good health. But no
one should deny (I'm not) that the US disaster capitalism health care system puts millions in
danger. This is clear in the stats. There's a huge difference in Covid mortality rates in the
US and Western Europe:
"Individuals with age <65 account for 5%-9% of all COVID-19 deaths in the 8 European
epicenters, and approach 30% in three US hotbed locations. People <65 years old had 34- to
73-fold lower risk than those ≥65 years old in the European countries and 13- to 15-fold
lower risk in New York City, Louisiana and Michigan. The absolute risk of COVID-19 death
ranged from 1.7 per million for people <65 years old in Germany to 79 per million in New
York City. The absolute risk of COVID-19 death for people ≥80 years old ranged from
approximately 1/6,000 in Germany to 1/420 in Spain."
And, compared to Europe, there are (many?) more Americans with poor diets and health,
greatly raising the % of vulnerable in the under-65s. But the world is not the US. Maybe the
Covid-19 response should be nuanced. One size probably does not fit all.
I read the link. I think his information is a little dated.
It was written april 10th, there were 100,000 deaths at that time, 9 days later there are
165,000 deaths.
His selection of areas to study seems odd at best.
(Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), three
states (Louisiana, Michigan, and Washington), and one city (New York)
"Flattening the curve to avoid overwhelming the health system is conceptually sound -- in
theory," he wrote in a paper in March."
Again, a paper he wrote in march, before shit hit the fan.
He seems pretty dismissive of anything that doesn't align with his perception. All in all
not very convincing.
Posted by: fairleft | Apr 20 2020 0:46 utc | 144 Read Ioannidis, everyone, and calm down:
As I said before, he needs to get out of his office and talk to the doctors on the front
lines. If he doesn't, he's an idiot talking from an ivory tower - or he has an agenda. Do
you know what his agenda is?
But then maybe not. Ioannidis could be a fine scientist with a clear comprehension of the
trajectory of viral outbreaks. Perhaps there is room for the meeting of minds of the risk
assessment science and the epidemiologists but I believe they have been in collaboration for
many decades and have a sense of each others methodologies.
There is always the possibility that the political sense of risk management is
dramatically different from the sense that Risk scientists and Epidemiological scientists
possess.
I note this is a Presidential election year where the choice might be driven by any one of
the following each with a weighting that a political machine might attribute:
Get the deaths over with asap
Get the economy up and running asap
Blame the 'other' country (it worked for the dems and Clinton)
Blame Fauci / epidemiology / WHO / DHHS / Bill Gates
Reinstate TR Captain who 'saved' his crew in defiance of the Navy Brass (as metaphore for
self)
What could Biden do or say that would be of any comprehensible value to anyone but Trump
Smash the DNC as they already look like imbeciles
Go for a majority in both houses and to hell with the human cost
Do nothing and keep up the shutdown gives the democrazies more scope to attack
Supposedly someone in the DNC machinery has a strategy but I see it isn't Bernie
Sanders.
Decent news from Poland: government "relaxed" lockdown, entry to forests and parks is allowed
again. Covering of mouth and nose in public is obligatory, except for those working in
agriculture. At least there will be no collapse there. No word if fishing is allowed again...
that was very messy -- local police could fine people sitting with fishing rods on lake/river
banks at their discretion. Presidential elections scheduled for May are not rescheduled, but
it seems that it will be a postal vote. Will they microwave the ballots or cook the results?
It is becoming clearer with each passing day that the death toll from the Wuhan virus is not
rising exponentially as the "experts" predicted but only modestly in some places while
levelling off or even declining almost everywhere else in the country --
as well as the world . The incidence of infection borders on nil in the hot and humid
countries, where the number of deaths remains in the double or very low triple digits
four months after the virus emerged from the Wuhan province of China.
Common sense alone indicates that the number of deaths will ultimately be nowhere near the 2
million without "mitigation" or a best case 100,000 to 240,000 with "mitigation" as predicted
by "Tony and Deborah" at the White House press briefings that have fueled nationwide panic.
Tony and Deb have
since revised their "models" downward to predict 40,000 to 178,000 deaths. And that
prediction has already been lowered again as the IMHE model Tony and Deb have been touting
during the briefings now "predicts" 81,766 deaths by August 4. That prediction
would require some 18,000 people to die every month between now and then, even though at 10,000
deaths
since February 29 -- a number consistent with a heavy flu season -- we appear to have
reached the peak and a decline is already evident .
At some point, Tony and Deb will be "predicting" precisely what has already happened, as we
saw with the "models" that first predicted Hillary Clinton was certain to win the Presidency.
And when the final death toll fails even to approach what they first predicted in order to
panic the whole country into a nationwide lockdown never before seen in human history, they
will make the unprovable, non-falsifiable, junk science claim that "mitigation worked."
But it is becoming increasingly clear that "mitigation" has done nothing but cause a
pointless, catastrophic disruption of social and economic life. This seems to delight the lying
media and their Democrat partners, who are striving to keep fear alive, avoid or minimize any
good news about the numbers, overstate the burden on local hospitals (without any unedited
video or other reliable evidence), argue against curative treatment by hydroxychloroquine or
otherwise, get everybody into masks after months of "expert" advice that masks are ineffective,
and generally prolong the economic damage and loss of civil liberties for months to come.
As the actual numbers belie the pseudo-scientific prophecies of doom, however, the lockdown
of America that began with Democrat governors and mayors now exhibits a curious and hardly
coincidental fissure along party lines. As of today, nine states, all headed by Republican
governors, refuse to join the lockdown regime and now provide embarrassing counterfactuals
demonstrating that officially mandated lockdowns were never necessary and have probably made
the situation worse by preventing the development of "herd immunity" to this virus, like all
the others, from the normal interaction of large populations.
The following are the nine states that have refused to impose lockdowns. All of them have
minimal death tolls from the Wuhan virus, including the populous South Carolina, and five of
them have not enacted even local lockdowns:
Arkansas – 14 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Iowa – 14 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Nebraska – 8 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
North Dakota – 3 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Oklahoma – 42 deaths.
South Carolina – 40 deaths.
South Dakota – 2 deaths. No statewide or local lockdowns.
Utah – 8 deaths.
Wyoming – 0 deaths.
[Data as of this writing on April 6 at 9 p.m.]
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas told the Fake News
New York Times what we have been saying on these pages since the stupid lockdowns began:
"the typical stay-at-home order was a misleading 'illusion' because it includes so many
exemptions allowing people to go out in public, such as for groceries or exercise ordering
people to stay at home would simply leave thousands jobless."
The Times demands to
know why these nine states have seceded from the United States of Mitigation: "Holdout
States Resist Calls for Stay-at-Home Orders: 'What Are You Waiting For?' screams the indignant
headline. Editorial desperation leaps from the page, for the Fake News combine as a whole knows
that these nine Republican-led holdout states are all counterfactual to the panic narrative,
and that what they are waiting for is the rest of the country to discover that they have been
had by the cheerleaders of "mitigation," who live in luxury and job security while the masses
suffer. First and foremost, Deb and Tony, intimate associates of Bill Gates, whose "models"
keep lowering predictions to catch up with the growing embarrassment of the real numbers.
Another embarrassing counterfactual is the Commonwealth of Virginia, now being suffocated by
Democrat Governor Ralph ("Infanticide") Northam's absurd executive orders, which have ruined
the state's economy while attempting to place its entire population under a fake quarantine
that does nothing but create instant unemployment and bankruptcy. The Northam lockdown will
remain in effect until June 10 unless Northam calculates he cannot get away with prolonging his
virus-themed dictatorship past Trump's new control date of April 30. Yet, as of the week of
March 28, the
Virginia Department of Health "has received report of 1,352 pneumonia and
influenza-associated deaths," including five pediatric deaths, during the 2019-20 flu season,
while purported deaths from the Wuhan virus and related pneumonia stand at 54 as of today at 9
p.m., with no pediatric deaths.
Based on the example of Virginia alone, which provides an all-but-irrefutable
counterfactual, it is time to call this fiasco what it is: Coronagate. In my view, Coronagate
will go down as the single biggest fraud in the fraud-ridden history of American politics --
outside of the fraudulent inducement of America's belated entry into World War I, which
sacrificed
116,000 American lives to an epochal disaster that destroyed the last remnants of
Christendom, guaranteed World War II, and led to the rise of the Third Reich and the Soviet
Union.
Meanwhile, the White House press briefings have devolved into a black comedy with the same
script every day: Trump recites a litany of statistics on the number of COVID-19 tests
performed, the mass production and distribution of ventilators and N95 respirators, surgical
masks, surgical gowns and surgical gloves; praises the captains of industry for pitching in
with massive contributions of product; and lauds the branches of the military for their massive
logistical operations, including the building of entire hospitals that remain almost empty.
Pence then delivers another sermon on how to "slow the spread in 30 days." Then Deb drones
on about her ever-evolving models, followed by a very hoarse Tony, who croaks the same
statements he made the day before about "the curve" and "mitigation, mitigation, mitigation"
while assiduously avoiding any suggestion that the "pandemic" could be over any time soon or
that there could be any proven effective treatment.
Then it's the media jackals' turn. Day after day these morons jabber at Trump with
accusations disguised as questions: Why has governor so-and-so or such-and-such hospital not
received enough test kits/ventilators/masks/gowns/gloves/breath mints?
... ... ...
At today's briefing, one reporter attempted to elicit from Fauci a declaration that, no
matter what Trump might think, America cannot "return to normal" without a vaccine whose
development is, conveniently enough for the media-DNC complex, at least a year away. Fauci's
meandering response was a dog whistle that, if he has anything to say about it, the country
will remain under some level of lockdown until there is a largely ineffective or even harmful
vaccine, like the one he advocated
for the swine flu of 2009.
The Fake News media are laboring to elevate Fauci, a star in the Leftist galaxy whose center
is Bill Gates, to the status of Recovery Czar whose "medical opinion" will determine the fate
of the nation
The shutdown of the American economy should end as soon as possible. We have reached the
point where fear and panic have precluded logic and facts. The damage from our overreaction to
the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to prove greater than the death toll from the disease itself.
The virus is not containable, and our attempt to achieve the unachievable grows more costly
every day.
Covid-19 is not proving as deadly as first imagined. Last March 16, a group of researchers
at Imperial College in London predicted 510,000 deaths in the UK and
2.2 million in the US. Within ten days, these early estimates were revised downward by more
than an order of magnitude. As I write, the best estimate of ultimate deaths from
Covid-19 in the US is about 60,000, the same as the 61,000 people who died from influenza during the winter
of 2017-2018. Yet we continue to suffer from a shutdown whose imposition was justified by a
fallacious model prediction.
The spread of the coronavirus is both inevitable and necessary. It is necessary because, in
the absence of a vaccine, the only way to counteract the disease is to build immunity in the
population. A person who contracts the infection and recovers is immune. They can no longer
become ill or spread the disease. Infection and recovery is the most effective vaccination
possible.
Last March 3, the World Health Organization estimated the mortality
rate from Covid-19 to be 3.4 percent. We now know that this early estimate was much too high
because testing was limited to individuals exhibiting severe symptoms. Subsequently, more
extensive testing has
found that half the infected population is entirely asymptomatic, and that the
corresponding mortality rate is in the neighborhood of 0.1 percent. Thus 99.9 percent of the
people who get the disease further the goal of building immunity in the population. Although
this is an inconvenience for those who are affected, these infections accomplish an ultimate
good.
The whole idea behind shutdowns and quarantines is not to reduce cumulative mortality, but
to "flatten the curve" so that our health care facilities are not overwhelmed. Individuals who
need intensive care may be saved by this strategy but the net mortality reduction is likely to
be small. Shutdowns and quarantines will prolong the course of the pandemic. When social
distancing ends, as it must eventually, the disease will simply resume its inevitable course
through the population. Flattening the curve does not reduce the area under the curve.
Where did we get the idea that some businesses and occupations are "non-essential?"
In a market economy, every job is essential. And every job is certainly essential to the
person who depends on it for their livelihood. In the midst of a pandemic it's sensible to ban
mass gatherings of hundreds and thousands of people. But local governments are now imposing
restrictions that make little sense. Parks and golf courses have been closed. The imposition of
evening curfews is baffling. Every government official with totalitarian instincts now has the
moral justification to impose arbitrary and senseless curtailments on freedom of movement and
association.
Ironically, in the midst of a supposed epidemic, hospitals all over the nation are
closing down for a lack of patients. Why? Because government officials ordered them to
cancel all elective medical procedures so they could be prepared to receive a crush of Covid-19
patients that never arrived. In the last four weeks, we've lost
22 million jobs . In our panic over the Covid-19 pandemic, we seem to have forgotten that a
robust economy supports health care, education, fire and police protection, and the
construction and maintenance of critical infrastructure that maintains human civilization. The
toll from the artificial induction of poverty may ultimately exceed lives lost to the
disease.
In 2011, researchers at Columbia University
found that poverty contributes to 133,000 premature deaths annually in the US. Our stop-gap
solution, massive government spending, is no panacea. Prosperity comes from production, not
spending, borrowing, and taxing. If we don't reverse course in a matter of days, we're on our
way to national suicide.
Two important results in Switzerland and Germany show that it is the elimination of large
gatherings together with mask wearing and social distancing that have had the main impact on
reducing the infectivity of covid-19, not the lockdowns (which appear to have had relatively
minor effects so far, according to these two results). Any measures have a built-in delay of
8 to 10 days before their effects, due to the incubation periods of successive infections.
The accumulating death toll from Covid-19 can be seen minute-by-minute on cable news
channels. But there's another death toll few seem to care much about: the number of
poverty-related deaths being set in motion by deliberately plunging millions of Americans into
poverty and despair.
In the first three weeks since governors began shutting down commerce in their states, 17
million Americans filed for unemployment, and according to
one survey , one quarter of Americans have lost their jobs or watched their paychecks cut.
Goldman Sachs
predicts that the economy will shrink 34 percent in the second quarter, with unemployment
leaping to 15 percent.
Until the Covid-19 economic shut-down, the poverty rate in the United States had dropped to
its lowest in 17 years. What does that mean for public health? A 2011 Columbia University
study funded by the National Institutes of Health estimated that 4.5 percent of all deaths
in the United States are related to poverty. Over the last four
years, 2.47 million Americans had been lifted out of that condition, meaning 7,700 fewer
poverty-related deaths each year.
It's a good bet these gains have been completely wiped out, and it's anyone's guess how many
tens of millions of Americans will have been pushed below the poverty line as governments
destroy their livelihoods. It's also a good bet the resulting deaths won't get the same
attention.
And that doesn't count an unknown number of Americans whose medical appointments have been
postponed indefinitely while hospitals keep beds open for Covid-19 patients. How many of the
1.8 million new
cancers each year in the United States will go undetected for months because routine
screenings and appointments have been postponed? How many heart, kidney, liver, and pulmonary
illnesses will fester while people's lives are on hold? How many suicides or domestic homicides
will occur as families watch their livelihoods evaporate before their eyes? How many drug and
alcohol deaths can we expect as Americans stew in their homes under police-enforced indefinite
home detention orders? How many new cases of obesity-related diabetes and heart disease will
emerge as Americans are banished from outdoor recreation and instead spend their idle days
within a few steps of the refrigerator?
I have participated in many discussions among top policymakers in Congress and the
Administration over the last few weeks. Such considerations are rarely raised and always
ignored. Instead, policymakers fixate on epidemiological models that have already been
dramatically disproven by actual data.
On March 30, Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci gave their
best-case projection that between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans will perish of Covid-19 "if
we do things almost perfectly." As appalling as their prediction seems, it is a far cry from
the 200,000 to 1.7 million deaths the
CDC projected in the United States just a few weeks before. And even their down-sized
predictions look increasingly exaggerated as we see actual data.
Sometimes the experts are just wrong. In 2014, the CDC
projected up to 1.4 million infections from African Ebola. There were
28,000 .
Life is precious and every death is a tragedy. Yet last year, 38,800 Americans died in
automobile accidents and no one has suggested saving all those lives by forbidding people from
driving – though surely we could.
In 1957, the Asian flu pandemic
killed 116,000 Americans, the equivalent of 220,000 in today's population. The Eisenhower
generation didn't strip grocery shelves of toilet paper, confine the entire population to their
homes or lay waste to the economy. They coped and got through. Today we remember Sputnik
– but not the Asian flu.
It's fair to ask how many of those lives might have been saved then by the extreme measures
taken today. The fact that the Covid-19 mortality curves show little difference
between the governments that have ravaged their economies and those that haven't, suggests not
many.
The medical experts who are advising us are doing their jobs – to warn us of possible
dangers and what actions we can take to mitigate and manage them. The job of policymakers is to
weigh those recommendations against the costs and benefits they impose. Medicine's highest
maxim offers good advice to policymakers: Primum non nocere -- first, do no harm.
Goldman Sachs
predicts that the economy will shrink 34 percent in the second quarter, with unemployment
leaping to 15 percent.
Notable quotes:
"... Across the US, millions of businesses have been shut down by "executive order" and the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression. ..."
"... What if the "cure" is worse than the disease? ..."
From California to New Jersey, Americans are protesting in the streets. They are demanding
an end to house arrest orders given by government officials over a virus outbreak that even
according to the latest US government numbers will claim fewer lives than the seasonal flu
outbreak of 2017-2018.
Across the US, millions of businesses have been shut down by "executive order" and the
unemployment rate has skyrocketed to levels not seen since the Great Depression.
Americans, who have seen their real wages decline thanks to Federal Reserve monetary
malpractice, are finding themselves thrust into poverty and standing in breadlines. It is like
a horror movie, but it's real.
Last week the UN Secretary General warned that a global recession resulting from the
worldwide coronavirus lockdown could cause "hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths
per year." As of this writing, less than 170,000 have been reported to have died from the
coronavirus worldwide.
Many Americans have also died this past month because they were not able to get the medical
care they needed. Cancer treatments have been indefinitely postponed. Life-saving surgeries
have been put off to make room for coronavirus cases. Meanwhile hospitals are laying off
thousands because the expected coronavirus cases have not come and the hospitals are partially
empty.
My concept of a pandemic is smallpox when it reached the Indian tribes on Vancouver Island
and had a death rate of about 92%, including all ages and all states of health.
I have never heard of a pandemic which leaves the children untouched, most infected with
no symptoms, and kills mainly those above eighty years of age. I call that a virulent
'flu'!
In Western Australia we have had six deaths, with an average age of probably 75 years. I
have seen more people, in the local park, on a Saturday afternoon, choking to death on
cucumber sandwiches!
I smell a '9-11' rat. I smell the contrived Banking panic of 1907, the dark footsteps of J
P Morgan and Jacob Schiff, leading to the setup of the US Fed and six months later the start
of WW1, leading to the decapitation of half a dozen empires.
Now that we have destroyed our economies, allowing the debt bankers to swoop in and buy
the ruins of the small businesses, for 'pennies' in the pound, beware of the dark footsteps
and the webs of dark design!
"... Many Americans believe their government is using this crisis to preempt restlessness, riots or even revolution, for the American economic house of cards is overdue for collapse anyway, thanks to decades of mismanagement. With a rising China making Uncle Sam increasingly irrelevant and annoying, the US has to unleash this bioweapon to zap its nemesis and decouple from it. So what if a few shiploads of its own citizens keel over. They're just useless eaters anyway. ..."
"... The self-image of Americans as freedom-loving renegades is a long way from reality. There's a reason those guys were allowed to run around Richmond, Virginia armed to the teeth a couple of months back: everyone – including the gun lovers themselves – knew it was all for show. ..."
After China, South Korea was hit hardest by the coronavirus, yet it never locked itself
down. By comprehensively testing people, regularly disinfecting places, contact tracing and
having nearly everyone wear a face mask while in public, it has managed to suffer only 211
deaths in 11 weeks. On just April 8th, 799 people died from it in New York State.
Why hasn't the Korean model been emulated worldwide, instead of China's much more
restrictive measures? If you want to explore your totalitarian playbook, however, this is the
perfect window.
Many Americans believe their government is using this crisis to preempt restlessness, riots
or even revolution, for the American economic house of cards is overdue for collapse anyway,
thanks to decades of mismanagement. With a rising China making Uncle Sam increasingly
irrelevant and annoying, the US has to unleash this bioweapon to zap its nemesis and decouple
from it. So what if a few shiploads of its own citizens keel over. They're just useless eaters
anyway.
I think you'll find that the 1981 edition of Koontz's novel called the bioweapon "Gorki-400,"
and this was changed to "Wuhan-400" in an edition published in 2008.
The self-image of Americans as freedom-loving renegades is a long way from reality.
There's a reason those guys were allowed to run around Richmond, Virginia armed to the teeth
a couple of months back: everyone – including the gun lovers themselves – knew it
was all for show.
Linh Dinh asked: " don't you sometimes get the feeling we're just being toyed with?"
Answer: Absolutely, yes, Linh!
Linked below is some evidence. Event 201, a weird global pandemic exercise which included
"players," for example, global business, government, & public health leaders.
To date, Event 201's implemented Psy-Op plan works, & the fearful & divided
"Sheeple" are obediently performing their part. * Almost all Americans welcome protection
& free money from The Blue & White House occupant, The Big Bad Orange Wolf..
"... We also know that various Chinese officials and press said the Americans had brought the virus with them when they came to Wuhan to participate in the military games. The Chinese did not mean on purpose, but that someone among the US team was infected without having symptoms, often a feature of the virus. There was some discussion in which US health officials seemed to acknowledge that the virus might have been active in the US before it broke lose in a mass way. ..."
First, is the virus a bioweapon? Second who is responsible?
Two sources concluded that the virus was a bioweapon. One is Francis Boyle, who drafted the
US implementing legislation for the Biowarfare Convention that became US law in, I believe,
1989. Boyle says the US government violates the law and has 13,000 scientists working on
biowarfare research. Boyle said in February that the gainer function of the virus was done at a
UNC lab at which a Wuhan scientist was present, and the HIV features were done in Australia
where a Wuhan scientist was present. He says the scientists took the work back with them and
the result was Covid-19. Also in February or March a scientific paper by scientists in India
concluded that the virus was man-made. Their paper was taken down without explanation.
A top virologist, whose statements to the Belgium government concerning the inadequacy of
the government's response to the virus I have posted on my website, tells me that the Indian
scientists were mistaken, and that the virus is naturally evolved. As he is not involved in
bioweapons work, I do not think he is covering up illegal activity by US and Chinese
governments. He shows in his public concern every indication of being a highly principled
person of unquestioned ability and character. Moreover, his position seems to be widely shared
among experts.
As for responsibility, it seems both China and the US are responsible. It is clear from news
reports that the US contributed millions of dollars to the Wuhan level 4 lab for research
having to do with bats and coronavirus. What this research was, we don't know. We only know
what they say. But the US government was aware of the bat coronavirus research and helped to
fund it. There was also a report that after the virus outbreak the president of China suddenly
removed the top people at the Wuhan facility and put in charge a woman who was an expert
virologist. The Chinese president XI thought something had gone wrong at the lab and said it
was the duty of the government to protect the people.
We also know that various Chinese officials and press said the Americans had brought the
virus with them when they came to Wuhan to participate in the military games. The Chinese did
not mean on purpose, but that someone among the US team was infected without having symptoms,
often a feature of the virus. There was some discussion in which US health officials seemed to
acknowledge that the virus might have been active in the US before it broke lose in a mass
way.
We also know that Trump and now the neoconservative warmongers are blaming China for keeping
quiet too long about the virus. This claim as far as I can tell is false. It seems to be mainly
propaganda against China.
We also have had reports that a US military lab in Texas was suddenly closed out of pathogen
concerns by the Obama regime.
How all this fits together or doesn't I don't know.
As the Democrats are blaming Trump for the virus, Trump blames China as that aligns the
Democrats with the "enemy" China and is a way of showing that the Democrats are covering up for
"Communist China" by shifting the blame to the president of the US.
The politics of the virus will make it difficult for the truth to emerge.
To deflect his growing anger and frustration, you must hype up some bogeymen, which at the
moment include China, the Chinese, Trump, the Democratic Party, Russians or even Mother Nature
herself.
Better yet, just let many of them think it's the Second Coming, so the lockdown and
discontinued paychecks are just bits of discomfort before the greatest rejoicing!
Though Jesus won't show up for weeks, months, years, centuries, your serfs will at least
have gotten conditioned to their increasingly strangled lives.
Texans flocked to the state's Capitol in Austin to protest Covid-19 lockdown measures,
refusing to practice social distancing and cheering for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be fired by
President Donald Trump. In attendance at Saturday's 'You Can't Close America' Rally were
InfoWars founder Alex Jones and host Owen Shroyer, who led the crowd of some 200 people in
chants against the mainstream media and officials like Fauci.
Shroyer, who referred to the doctor as "fascist Fauci," asked the crowd: "Do
you think Anthony Fauci should be fired?" , before leading them in chants of "Fire
Fauci."
Sometimes, the best thing to do, is to do nothing at all. Take Sweden, for example, where
the government decided not to shut down the economy, but to take a more thoughtful and balanced
approach. Sweden has kept its primary schools, restaurants, shops and gyms open for business
even though fewer people are out in public or carrying on as they normally would. At the same
time, the government has kept the Swedish people well-informed so they understand the risks the
virus poses to their health and the health of others. This is how the Swedes have minimized
their chances of getting the infection while avoiding more extreme measures like
shelter-in-place which is de facto house arrest.
What the Swedish experiment demonstrates, is that there's a way to navigate these
unprecedented public health challenges without recklessly imposing police state policies and
without doing irreparable harm to the economy. And, yes, the results of this experiment are not
yet known, but what we do know is that most nations cannot simply print-up trillions of dollars
to counter the knock-on effects of bringing the economy to a screeching halt. These countries
must dip into their reserves or take out loans from the IMF in order to recover from the lack
of production and activity. That means they're going to face years of slow growth and high
unemployment to dig out from the mess their leaders created for them.
And that rule applies to the US too, even though the government has been recklessly printing
money to pay the bills. The unforeseen cost to the US will come in the form of long-term
unemployment triggered by millions of failed small and mid-sized businesses. That grim scenario
is all but certain now. And just as the USG "disappeared" millions of workers from the
unemployment rolls following the 2008 Financial Crisis– forcing them to find low-paying,
part-time, no-benefits work in the "gig" economy– so too, millions of more working people
will fall through the cracks and wind up homeless, jobless and destitute following this crisis.
One $1,200 check from Uncle Sam and a few weeks of unemployment compensation is not going to
not be enough to prevent the fundamental restructuring of the US labor force that will be
impossible to avoid if the economy isn't restarted pronto.
That's why we should look to countries like Sweden that have taken a more measured approach
that allow parts of the economy to continue to function during the epidemic, so other parts can
gear-up quickly and return to full capacity with minimal disruption. This should not be a
"liberal vs conservative" issue as it's become in the United States. One should not oppose
restarting the economy just because Trump is 'for it', but because millions of working people
are facing an uncertain future in an economy which– most economists believe– is
headed for a severe and protracted recession. Liberals should be looking for ways to avoid that
dismal outcome instead of wasting all their time criticizing Trump. (Of course, now that the
idiot Trump has appointed Ivanka, Jared, Kudlow and Wilbur Ross to lead his Council to Re-Open
America" it will be impossible to extricate the issue from partisan politics.) This is a clip
from an article by Donald Jeffries at Lew Rockwell:
"The shutdown of businesses now has been going on for more than a month. How many of the
dwindling small businesses left in our casino economy have already closed down forever? How
many mid-sized ones will ever be able to reopen? How many millions will be furloughed, laid
off, fired- however they word it- because of this draconian reaction? How can an economy
based on commerce exist without commerce?" ("The Locked Down World", Donald Jeffries, Lew
Rockwell)
Indeed. This isn't a question of putting profits before people. The economy IS our life. Try
to make a living without an economy. Try to feed your family or pay the rent or buy a car or do
anything without an economy. We need the economy. Working people need the economy, and we need
to find a way to do two things at the same time: Keep the economy running and save as many
lives as possible. The idea that we can just do one of these things and not the other, is not
only blatantly false, it is destructive to our own best interests. We have to do both, there is
no other way. Here's more background on Sweden from an article at Haaretz:
"The truth is that we have a policy similar to that of other countries," says Anders
Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, "Like everyone, we are trying to slow down the rate
of infection The differences derive from a different tradition and from a different culture
that prevail in Sweden. We prefer voluntary measures, and there is a high level of trust here
between the population and the authorities, so we are able to avoid coercive
restrictions"
It's still too early to say whether Stockholm's policy will turn out to be a success story
or a blueprint for disaster. But, when the microbes settle, following the global crisis,
Sweden may be able to constitute a kind of control group: Did other countries go too far in
the restrictions they have been imposing on their populations? Was the economic catastrophe
spawned globally by the crisis really unavoidable? Or will the Swedish case turn out to be an
example of governmental complacency that cost human lives unnecessarily?" ("Why Sweden Isn't
Forcing Its Citizens to Stay Home Due to the Coronaviru", Haaretz)
Tegnell, is no long-haired, fist-waving radical, he's Sweden's chief epidemiologist and has
worked for mainstream organizations like the WHO and the European Commission. Where he differs
from so many of his peers is simply in his approach, which empowers ordinary people to use
their own common sense regarding their health, their safety and the safety of others. It's
simple, if you develop symptoms, stay home. Tegnell believes that its easier to get people to
do the right thing by trusting their judgement then by ordering them to do so.
That said, Sweden's objectives are the same as every other country impacted by the pandemic.
The emphasis is on "flattening the curve", slowing the rate of infection, testing as many
people as possible, and protecting the vulnerable and older populations. It's just their
methods are different. They've taken a more nuanced approach that relies on level-headed people
conforming to the guidelines that help to minimize contagion until some better remedy is found.
"Social distancing" is practiced in Sweden, but the population has not had their civil
liberties suspended nor have they been put under house arrest until the threat has passed.
Sweden has not compromised its core values in a frenzied attempt to stave off sickness or
death. Can the U.S. say the same? Here's more from an article at the Washington Times:
"As government leaders in the UK and the United States are grappling with how to revive
dormant economies, Dr. Tegnell said the Swedish approach will allow the country to maintain
social distancing measures in the long term without putting the economic system at risk. Dr.
Tegnell said he believes certain regions in Sweden are already very close to a state where so
many in the population have built up resistance to the virus that it is no longer a pandemic
threat
"We do believe the main difference between our policies and many other countries' policies
is that we could easily keep these kinds of policies in place for months, maybe even years,
without any real damage to society or our economy," Dr. Tegnell said. Although the government
has not issued a stay-at-home order, many Swedes have decided to quarantine and practice
social distancing on their own volition, Dr. Tegnell said." ("Top Swedish official: Virus
rates easing up despite loose rules", The Washington Times)
The threat of pandemic is new to most countries, so it's not entirely fair to criticize
their response. But, at this point, reasonable people should be able agree that implementing
sweeping policies that inflict incalculable damage to the economy and on people's personal
liberties is a gross overreaction that poses as big a threat as the pandemic itself. Leaders
must be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. That's all we should expect of them: Just
restart the damn economy while minimizing the risks of infection as much as possible. Is that
too much to ask? Here's an excerpt from an article at MedicineNet:
"The financial ruin this pandemic has caused for many will almost certainly lead to
increased suicide, mental illness, and physical health problems exacerbated by a loss of
health insurance in countries without socialized medicine, according to the World Economic
Forum. That's partly why both Sweden and Singapore have tried to keep life in their countries
as normal as possible for as long as possible during the response. It does not explain the
drastically different death tolls between the two countries, however .
Anders Tengall, the country's chief epidemiologist, is making a grim wager. The hypothesis
is there will not be significantly more Swedes dead at the end of the pandemic than if the
country had initiated stricter distancing protocols, but the looser approach will keep the
number of cases from spiking when lockdowns are lifted.
Tengall's and the rest of the Swedish government's bet is this approach is more
sustainable, and can help prevent some of those other bad health outcomes that accompany
economic depression." ("Sweden and Singapore: The COVID-19 'Soft' Approach vs.
Techno-Surveillance", MedicineNet)
So, yes, the number of deaths per thousand in Sweden do not compare favorably to nearby
Denmark, but the final results of the experiment might not be known for years. With a
population of 5.8 million, Denmark's death-toll is currently 336, while Sweden's is 1,400 for a
population of 10.2 million. (as of 4-17-20) So, as a practical matter, the Swedish method looks
vastly inferior. (Interestingly, Sweden's population is similar to NY City's 8.4 million, but
coronavirus deaths in NYC have now reached a horrific 12,822.)
at the end of the day it does not matter where or how the virus originated and first became
public. that's all in the rear view mirror. throwing stones or getting lawyers solve nothing.
the crime against humanity is not the virus but the response to what hindsight will
demonstrate to be no more worrisome than seasonal flu.
only a nation bent on suicide shuts down their entire economy for a virus with a death
rate in the 1% range and even that is predicated largely on age and pre existing
conditions.
in other words the old and the already quite sick.
i am 71 and so have no axe to grind against us old folks.
The ventilator shortages of which we were all gravely warned have not yet come to pass.
I n March, one of the most feared aspects of the pandemic was the widely reported coming
shortage of ventilators. One well-publicized estimate, repeated by the New York Times , the New
Yorker and CNN, was that the U.S. would need roughly one million ventilators, or more than five
times as many as we had. Gulp. Ventilators are expensive, they're complex machines, and they
can't be churned out in the thousands overnight.
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In the state that (as of today) has one-third of the country's confirmed COVID-19 cases, New
York governor Andrew Cuomo sounded the alarm for ventilators repeatedly. On March 27, he
acknowledged "I don't have a crystal ball" but said his state desperately needed 30,000
ventilators, maybe 40,000, but had only 12,000. When President Trump noted that Cuomo's state
had thousands of unused ventilators it hadn't even placed yet, Cuomo admitted this was true but
said he still needed more: "Yes, they're in a stockpile because that's where they're supposed
to be because we don't need them yet. We need them for the apex," Cuomo said at the time. On
April 2, Cuomo predicted the state would run out of ventilators in six days "at the current
burn rate." But on April 6, Cuomo noted, "We're ok, and we have some in reserve."
Rockland County, NY has more than 2700 infections per 100000 residents.
In my little portion of Appalachia, we have less than 20 infections per 100000 residents.
When it comes to COVID-19 suppression policies, one size doesn't fit all.
States are clearly not equal in the scope of epidemic and density of population. And even in
composition of population, including the number of elderly and homeless: it is difficult to
survive for homeless in Northern states. What is good from NY or NJ is not good for Ohio.
"Ohio Senate candidate attacks DeWine's 'tyranny' in coronavirus response" [
Columbus Dispatch ]. "Republican Melissa Ackison was among about 100 protesters outside the
Statehouse during DeWine's appearance inside on Monday . "'The original model, along with the
president's condemnation of the World Health Organization's handling this pandemic
inappropriately, is all that the public needs to know," she said. 'We have children to feed,
businesses to run, employees to pay, and Ohio must end this shutdown now. Those with high-risk
categories and compromised immune systems can shelter safely at home while the rest of us can
exercise our constitutional liberties to work and take care of our businesses and
children.'"
UPDATE "The very American conflict between liberty and lockdown" [ The Week
]. "To recap: Demonstrators have hit the streets this week in
Ohio , Kentucky , and
North
Carolina . On Wednesday, a protest in Michigan was dubbed " Operation
Gridlock. " Despite the firearms and Confederate battle flags, the protesters' demands
might seem familiar, even sympathetic to most Americans. They want freedom -- freedom to go
shopping, freedom to open up their businesses, freedom to go sit in a restaurant and have
dinner with friends, freedom merely to do what they were doing unencumbered two months ago.
Don't we all? 'Quarantine is when you restrict movement of sick people,' one of the Michigan
organizers told Fox News. 'Tyranny is when you restrict the movement of healthy people.'"
• Wrong on the merits. Federalist 47 : "The accumulation of
all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or
many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very
definition of tyranny." That said, this gentleman doesn't seem to understand that the
sick/healthy binary breaks down in the absence of testing and with asymptomatic transmission.
And that's before we get to the "Not us, me" mentality. Naturally, the press is treating these
putatively spontaneous demonstrations as very serious and important, much as they treated
Santelli's rant against
foreclosure relief in 2009.
It's not that the American people cannot discern reality from propaganda. They can.
The problem is that the USA is an empire, and, for an empire, it is politically useful to
project its inner contradictions on an external enemy which can be readily exterminated. We
know that because that was exactly the case with the ancient Roman Empire: every time it
plunged into another cycle of civil wars, the new (soon to be assassinated) emperor always
tried to organize and widely propagandize a campaign to conquer Parthia (Persia). Would the
Roman Empire survive it Severus Alexander invasion of Parthia (which burned whatever was left
of the Roman money) was successful? We'll never know. But the logic was there, and it
persisted until the Islamic Conquests ended all the imperial ambitions of the Roman Empire in
the East ("Byzantine Empire").
Deep down, the American people really believe that a big hot war against either Russia or
China (or both at the same time) will really solve all of its economic and social
problems.
Parts of that Wired.com story read like a stenographed PR release so I am not sure really what to make of it. The story seems
to make light of the safety breaches that were occurring at the Fort Detrick lab. While it is likely that most breaches (apart
from the waste disposal issue and the use of chemical rather than thermal treatment of waste) appeared to be minor OHS-type breaches
and appropriate staff training was all that was required, I did get an impression while reading the article that the CDC had its
arms twisted to grant re-accreditation to the facility due to pressure from the White House to get a vaccine ready in time before
November this year.
"... By every measure, New York is the aberrant epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak. So what you find in the New York stats has got to be definitive, but what they're conclusive about is the very opposite of the hysteria being propagated by the Cuomos & friends. ..."
"... The New York data, in fact, show that Covid-19 almost pinpointedly attacks the old, the frail, and the medically vulnerable, not the general population. ..."
We are getting sick and tired of the CNN/Cuomo Brothers inquisition and the Coviddeath
Cavalcade. Their relentless, morose, partisan coverage of the coronavirus pandemic is the
single greatest campaign of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, scaremongering and
elitist prattle we can recall in our entire lifetime.
Indeed, Joe McCarthy's Red Scare was a Sunday School picnic compared to CovidGate. And just
as there were no commies secretly subverting America 66 years ago, there is no deathly
contagion stalking the American people today and no public health emergency that remotely
justifies the Lockdown Nation regime that the CNN/Cuomo Brothers and infectious disease lobby
have foisted on the country with virtually no public debate or democratic accountability.
By every measure, New York is the aberrant epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak. So what you
find in the New York stats has got to be definitive, but what they're conclusive about is the
very opposite of the hysteria being propagated by the Cuomos & friends.
The New York data, in fact, show that Covid-19 almost pinpointedly attacks the old, the
frail, and the medically vulnerable, not the general population.
In turn, that means that public health measures should be focused on identifying, isolating,
protecting, treating and supporting the very small sub-population that is bearing the brunt of
the illness and deaths, while allowing the vast bulk of the population to get back to normal
social and economic life forthwith.
As we document below, the peak of new cases and deaths is now in the rear-view mirror. So
what we can glean from the New York stats through April 13th reporting is definitive and will
only get even more definitive in the weeks ahead.
As of 1PM today, the nationwide death count "WITH" Covid-19 was 23,529. And we go full monte
with CAPs, quotes, bolds and italics for the reason that it is self-evident the virus per
se didn't kill many or most of these people: It triggered organ and function failures that
were already embedded in pre-existing morbidities. And that truth is validated in spades by the
New York data. As of this afternoon, New York had reported 10,834 corona deaths or 45% of the
national total.
But when you look at the break-out by age categories and rates relative to population, the
numbers are simply stunning:
· Under 50 years: 642 deaths or 4.9 per 100,000;
· 50-69 years: 3,174 deaths or 65 per 100,00;
· 70-79 years: 2,888 deaths or 272 per 100,000;
· 80 years+: 4,130 deaths or 1,086 per 100,000.
In short, 18% of all the Covid-19 nationwide deaths crawling across the CNN screen today
have been among New Yorkers 80 years and older; and 7,018 or 30% of national deaths and 65% of
New York Covid-19 deaths have been among those 70 years and older.
To be sure, as a member of the 70+ class of New York residents, we don't begrudge anyone the
longest and happiest life possible. But we are here talking about the appropriate public policy
response to a bad winter flu and suggest that when the mortality ratio for the over 80
population is 222 times higher than for those under 50 years old, then one size surely does not
fit all.
Indeed, when it comes to quarantines and contact tracing, the Cuomo brigade has it
assbackwards. To wit, leave the general population alone where quarantine is unnecessary and
contact tracing is a ridiculous needle-in-the-haystack waste of time, and target protection
measures on the vulnerable, instead.
After all, in the entire state of New York there are only 382,000 souls age 80 or over.
Would it not have been far more rational for Governor Cuomo's health department minions to
track down these 382,000 vulnerable elderly rather than to shutdown the entire economy of the
state in order protect 13.05 million folks under 50 years from a death risk which amounts to a
minuscule 4.9 per 100,000?
In all honesty, that latter figure is a rounding error in the scheme of things. Every year
in New York state, 11,760 persons under 50 years or 91.3 per 100,000 suffer an untimely death
-- including 3,428 from auto and other accidents and 917 from suicides.
Since the infection wave, hospitalizations and death numbers have now clearly peaked and
will be falling sharply in the weeks ahead (see above), we can say with some considerable
confidence that when the Covid is gone, it is doubtful whether more than 917 New Yorkers under
50 -- the normal year suicide population -- will have died WITH the coronavirus.
That's 7.0 souls per 100,000 -- and its just plain insane to got into plenary Lockdown on
their account -- especially because the predominant share of under 50 year-olds who have
succumbed WITH the coronavirus were also suffering from one or more morbidities, especially
hypertension, diabetes and COPD (see below).
Indeed, that gets us to the even more damning stats in the New York data. To wit, only 1,242
or 11% of New York's 10,834 Covid-deaths (as of April 13) were not accompanied by at least one
of the top 10 co-morbidities.
By contrast, of the 9,592 cases with these conditions, the total co-morbidities were 19,280.
That means the New Yorkers among this group died with an average of 2.01 comorbidities, and
some with three or four.
Again, when you stratify by age, the injunction to identify, trace, isolate and treat by
indicated vulnerability could not be more dispositive. Among the 4,130 persons aged 80 or older
who have died in New York,
· 2,489 or 60% had hypertension;
· 1,264 or 31% had diabetes;
· 845 had hyperlipidemia (blood disorder);
· 605 had coronary artery disease;
· 819 had dementia;
· 425 had renal disease;
· 534 had COPD;
· 366 had cancer;
· 386 had congestive heart failure.
So Governor Cuomo, riddle us this. In lieu of your daily reality TV show and presidential
campaign audition, way didn't you mobilize the doctors and health authorities to identify these
10,834 medically imperiled among the thousands more with like and similar conditions among the
382,000 octogenarians in your state in order that every possible precaution could have been
taken weeks ago?
Compared to the needle-in-the-haystack idiocy of contact tracing among the general
population, the state's doctors and health agencies do actually know the names, addresses and
social security number of nearly every one of these medically vulnerable cases. That's where
the resources should have gone -- not into a mindless Lockdown of the entire economy.
Indeed, when you look at the next most vulnerable category, the 1.26 million state residents
aged 70-79, the story becomes even more compelling. In this age bracket, there have been 2,888
deaths WITH Covid reported as of April 13th, which, as indicated above, represents 272 per
100,000.
But, not surprisingly, 62%, 45%, 23% and 14% also had hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia
and coronary artery disease, respectively. In all, this group had 5,695 comorbidities among the
to 10 diseases, which amounts to 2.0 per deceased.
In sum, 7,018 or 65% of the WITH Covid deaths in New York were 70 years and older and
suffered from 13,800 instances of these major underlying illnesses that could have been readily
identified by the doctors and health care professionals who treat them.
Likewise, even the 3,174 deaths among aged 50-69 overwhelmingly involved 4,848
comorbidities, including 2,930 cases of hypertension and diabetes alone.
Finally, among the 642 deaths under 50 years, there were fully 634 cases of the top 10
morbidities.
That is to say, there have been virtually no deaths among the disease free population under
50. Yet hundreds of thousands have been infected and tens of thousands have become symptomatic
or sick, but recovered from this novel flu in the normal fashion.
Here's the thing. The US economy was so weakened by 30 years of debt, speculation and
money-printing that its own economic "immune" system was at ultra low ebb.
So the Lockdown Folly will prove to be far more destructive than would have otherwise been
the case. So now is the time for the Donald to do something constructive for once, and
face-down the CNN/Cuomo Brothers and infectious disease lobby and stop cold the economic
bleeding cure they have foisted on the US economy in the name of public health.
And now is the moment. During the last few days, the death rates have plunged in most of the
nation, and clearly even New York has turned the corner as this chart makes abundantly
clear.
But for want of doubt, here is the the nationwide gain in new cases WITH Covid-19. It is now
down nearly 26% from its Good Friday peak, after accelerating in early April:
So let us repeat: The New York Covid epicenter has provided the pretext for the present
nationwide hysteria and insensible acts of economic suicide.
But its actual data show why the Lockdown should be ended now. To wit, the 1.64 million
residents of New York over 69 years old account for just 0.5% of the US population, but have
suffered 30% of the nation's deaths WITH Covid.
It is therefore time to tell the economy-wreaking Cuomo Brothers and their political cohorts
and media megaphones to stand down and let America get back to work, and the doctors and health
professionals refocused on the real victims of this nasty virus.
'Ambassador says coronavirus imported to China, points to genetic sequence as proof'
"Five reputable scientific organizations, including the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical
Garden and the Central Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have collected
data on 93 genome specimens of COVID-19, published in a global database covering 12
countries on four continents," the diplomat specified. "The research revealed that the
earliest 'ancestor' of the virus is mv1, which evolved into haplotypes H13 and H38, and
they, in turn, led to emergence of the second-generation haplotype -- H3, which evolved
into H1."...
...The previous gene sequences, H13 and H38, were never discovered in Wuhan.
"This suggests that the H1 specimen was brought to the seafood market by some infected
person, which sparked the epidemic. The gene sequence cannot lie," Zhang Hanhui
asserted.
"We cannot rule out that the Americans use such reference laboratories in third countries
to develop and modify various pathogenic agents, including in military purposes," she
commented.
The diplomat recalled that the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research in
Tbilisi, a Georgia-based US biological laboratory, is an official part of the US military
system of global infectious diseases control. "Moreover, according to recent reports,
top-ranking Pentagon officials have recently visited it to offer the Georgian authorities
to expand the range of research," she noted.
Looks like the death rate has substantially decreased during recent weeks, as many more
people have had the virus but didn't show any symptoms than was previously known. 80% without
symptoms really makes you wonder. Also up to 60% of all deaths in nursing homes. Sad we
coulnd't protect these places any better?!
The USA has transcended the post-truth stage; it is now at the post-lie stage.
In the wake of the deteriorating COVID-19 pandemic situation outside China, a number of
foreign politicians and media outlets have been pointing the finger at China, blaming it for
the outbreak, as well as stigmatising its efforts to control and prevent the spread of the
lethal virus. In response to such unfair and biased comments, the South China Morning Post
columnist Alex Lo published an article on April 12 titled 'How US media dish out their own
propaganda on China and Covid-19', unveiling the truth behind the stereotypical framing of
China's actions against the pandemic. The author noted that such accusations are despicable,
portraying even innocent and uncontroversial measures in the most insidious light possible.
Here is a screenshot of the article:
China can do nothing right. It's either incompetent or evil. As observed by Passage, a
Canadian online publication, this is how mainstream American news media have generally been
reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic and China,
When the death tolls and cases were rising, Beijing was accused of doing nothing and
letting people die. When they started to decline, it was lying. Before Wuhan was put under
an unprecedented lockdown. China was trying to "save face" by downplaying the health
crisis. When tire lockdown was imposed, it was a massive violation of human rights and a
power gTab.
When Chinese citizens and overseas Chinese criticised Beijing, it was proof the central
government had lost all legitimacy and trust. But when they celebrated the epidemic being
put under control, they were stage actors or brainwashed.
bast week, the White House and Republican politicians rounded on US government- funded
Voice of America for spreading "Beijing's propaganda" by quoting official Chinese
coronavirus figures and showing footage of people celebrating the end of Wuhan's
lockdown.
White House accuses US broadcaster of promoting 'Beijing's propaganda 1
In a study by the non-profit FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), when ordinary
Chinese volunteered to help in the fight against the disease, they were described as
"neighbourhood busybodies" in "Мао-style mass crusades" (The New York
limes, February 15). When Hubei government officials were sacked for withholding
information about the coronavirus, CNN (February 13) and Business Insider (February 11)
reported they were "purged".
When foreign governments and global organisations were critical of Beijing's anti •
pandemic efforts, it was proof of Chinese incompetence or maleficence. But when they
offered praise, they were either bought off or secretly "communist" sympathisers.
While fighting the epidemic, Beijing was accused of hoarding medical gear. When it
offered medical aid to other countries, it was propaganda. Outside China, few people have
heard of Dr Zhang Jixian. who treated several patients with similar symptoms in early
December at a Hubei provincial hospital and correctly deduced it was a novel coronavirus.
She was officially recognised as the first to alert the authorities, thereby triggering the
nationwide epidemic surveillance and saving countless lives.
However, everyone knows about Dr Li Wenhang, who was reprimanded by public security, but
was never arrested (as claimed by USA 7'oday, The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles
Times) or otherwise punished, for inadvertently leaking information based on Dr Zhang's
findings online. He tragically died from the disease at a young age. The "whistle-blower"
became a martyr; he was neither. "Fair and balanced" reporting? Fox News' srvle.
perhaps.
America possesses a devastating weapon more fearsome than nukes: lawyers. Attorneys are
lining up to sue the People's Republic of China for having mishandled the COVID-19 virus and
mislead the rest of the world as to the danger.
Beijing's negligence and deceit cost other peoples greatly. But the Trump administration
should be careful what it wishes for. What if lawyers around the world sued the U.S. for the
carnage and casualties caused by its misbehavior? The damages would be incalculable.
The idea of holding the PRC government liable for the costs born by the rest of us from the
coronavirus pandemic is obviously attractive. Proposals to unleash the lawyers have even been
picked up by Washington's right-wing chattering class, including Marc Thiessen, who penned
speeches for President George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld -- the chief actors in the "Mission
Accomplished" debacle a few years back.
Thiessen explained: "No one can blame Beijing for a viral outbreak beyond its control. But
the Chinese communist regime should be blamed -- and held legally liable -- for intentionally
lying to the world about the danger of the virus, and proactively impeding a global response
that might have prevented a worldwide contagion." The obvious question is how?
Multiple private lawsuits already have been filed against the PRC. They will go nowhere
because of the doctrine of sovereign immunity: governments typically must agree to be sued. The
denizens of Zhongnanhai are unlikely to show up in American trial courts to answer for their
crimes.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) urged the State and Justice Departments to file suit against the PRC
before the United Nations International Court of Justice. The London-based Henry Jackson
Society issued a report advocating that "the world take legal action against the PRC for the
breaches of international law and their consequences." HJS offered a long list of potential
legal forums.
Alas, while filing before international tribunals might offer emotional satisfaction, and
perhaps even serve an educative purpose, they typically have no means of enforcement. And
attempting to apply commercial treaties, also suggested by HJS, would stretch them past the
breaking point. International litigation is another dead-end.
However, Thiessen suggested a simple fix. Remember the problem of sovereign immunity? No
worries. Congress should just end China's legal protection and enable private lawsuits. Then
Chinese assets worldwide could be seized to satisfy the resulting judgments (one early U.S.
case is demanding a modest $20 trillion ). Other proposals with similar results would
have Washington sua sponte seize Chinese assets or repudiate U.S. debt held by
Beijing.
Any of these would be the equivalent of declaring global economic war. No one should imagine
the PRC supinely allowing Americans to grab Chinese property and cash around the globe. "Sure,
take our money," responds a chastened President Xi Jinping, who dons a hairshirt and begs for
forgiveness as U.S. litigants gain recompense.
Not likely.
Imagine implementing the Thiessen Plan. The Chinese courts, subordinate to the Chinese
Communist Party, would immediately open their doors for all sorts of imagined offenses.
Lawsuits already have been filed there charging America with creating and spreading COVID-19;
they could result in their own $20 trillion verdicts. U.S. investments in the PRC would be
first to be taken, with Chinese assiduously scouring foreign lands for American assets. Friends
and foes alike would be caught between the world's two greatest economies and traders. What
could possibly go wrong?
The bigger problem, however, would be the lightbulb going off in other countries. If
Americans can sue foreigners for the devastation wreaked by the latter's actions, why can't
foreigners sue Washington for the destruction that it has caused -- and continues to cause --
around the world? Where to begin?
Perhaps with the disastrous invasion of Iraq promoted by Thiessen's earlier work. The
relatives of thousands of American dead and the tens of thousands of U.S. wounded would be out
of luck, since Congress isn't likely to allow them to sue. However, the Iraqi parliament could
recognize the financial windfall within reach and open the courtroom doors to families of the
estimated 400,000 (some estimates reach a million) Iraqis killed in the sectarian conflict
triggered by Bush's disastrous misadventure. Award, say, a million dollars per. That comes to a
nice round $400 billion.
Millions were driven from their homes, many of them from their country. Religious minorities
proved uniquely vulnerable. Even those not killed, kidnapped, ousted, or otherwise displaced
likely suffered significant economic damage from years of conflict and terrorism. Iraq's
population in 2003 was about 25.6 million. Let's go cheap here. "Only" $20,000 each, on the
theory with a freer economy and legal oil sales they should eventually make up some of the
losses. That would come to $512 billion.
Added to that would be the cost of the Islamic State's depredations. Many Iraqis suffered
through a second round of violence as ISIS evolved from Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which existed only
because of the invasion. There now are around 40 million Iraqis. How much are they due for
their nation being ravaged anew? The second round of fighting was shorter, so give everyone
another $10,000. That's an additional $400 billion.
So, in total Iraqis are due $1.3 trillion plus change.
How much should Washington pay for having destroyed Iran's democracy in 1953? That delivered
Iranians successively into the not-so-tender mercies of the Shah and then to the Ayatollah
Khomeini and his successors. How much to compensate the victims and their families? Tens of
thousands were murdered, imprisoned, tortured, mistreated, and/or impoverished.
The U.S. also should pay for its support to Saddam Hussein after he invaded Iran. Some
300,000 Iranians died (estimates of Iraqi casualties range up to 240,000). The economic damage
also was immense. As well as the costs imposed by the Islamic Republic on the people of Iran,
which continue today. And the cost of Washington's economic war against the Tehran government,
highlighted by immiserating sanctions. Any estimate is arbitrary, but surely creative Iranian
lawyers in Iranian courts could win at least a trillion dollars in damages for the Iranian
people's 67 years of suffering at Uncle Sam's hands.
Libya is another American debacle. The Obama administration helped destroy the country,
which remains at war almost a decade later. The Islamic State took advantage of the chaos to
enter. At least Washington can argue that blame should be shared. After all, the Europeans were
not only co-conspirators but key architects, pushing the U.S. to join in the bombing of Muammar
Gaddafi's forces. And some deaths -- actually a surprisingly small percentage of the total --
occurred in the fighting that preceded America's involvement.
Estimates of total dead run up to 30,000. Cut the latter in half for a compromise number.
Knock a couple thousand off for deaths before the U.S. entered. That's 13,000. At a million
dollars each the bill is $13 billion. Cut that in half, to $6.5 billion, for Washington's
share. The country's current population is about 6.8 million. How much are they owed for a
decade of chaos and conflict? Give them the same $30,000 received by Iraqis: that comes to $204
billion. Washington's responsibility: $102 billion.
Alas, this is just the start. Bahrainis, Egyptians, and Saudis continue to suffer under
U.S.-backed and -subsidized tyrannies. Generous American support for Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko
created untold suffering that continues today in the dictatorial and war-torn Democratic
Republic of Congo. Washington blundered through a complicated series of Balkan civil wars,
largely ignoring Bosnian, Croatian, and Kosovar atrocities against Serbs. U.S. backing for
Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza Debayle encouraged a revolution ultimately dominated by
communists, leading to more repression and war.
Around the world Washington has interfered in elections, sponsored coups, bombed nations,
intervened in civil wars, invaded countries, supported dictators, sanctioned societies, funded
killers, and endorsed repression. And, shockingly, lied to, misled, and abandoned friends as
well as foes for its own advantage. Imagine the accumulated damages if everyone harmed by the
U.S. government sued Americans.
Of course, not everything touched by Uncle Sam turns into a debacle. The defeat of Nazi
Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II were major positives for hundreds of millions of
people. Alas, that was counterbalanced by earlier intervention in World War I, a conflict with
no clean hands. Doing so unbalanced Europe and released the political viruses of fascism,
Nazism, and communism -- and led to World War II. Intervention in South Korea saved tens of
millions of people from Kim Il-sung's Dark Ages in the North. However, America's involvement in
Vietnam expanded and lengthened a hideous conflict, consuming millions of lives.
Moreover, many of Washington's choices were not intentionally malign. Still, the U.S.
routinely carelessly and callously subordinated the lives, welfare, and futures of others to
advance its own interests. Americans never have proved forgiving when others treated them the
same way.
Sue Beijing? Americans should be careful what they wish for. Having established the
precedent, they might become the next target of lawyers around the globe. The result could
prove far more costly than their worst nightmare.
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to
President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire .
He also is a graduate of Stanford Law School and a member of the California and D.C. bars.leave a comment
And by the way who on this earth – with a sound and thinking brain – would
believe in anything claimed by the USA aka whatever president or state-related ministry or
organization. They all got exposed as LIARs again and again.
From the Korean-War to Vietnam, to public assassination of highest political figures, to
Katrina's aftermath & FAILED prevention, to housmade water crises to 9/11 including air
safety in NYC, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Ukraine, Russia"Gate" and Libya ( the latest where a
British parliamentary committee came to the conclusion all was based on fraud, wrong or
manipulated intelligence, fake news and utter willingness to go to war !!!)
Go to Wikileaks and pick up whatever topic you like and then read those emails or sources
and take a look at public statements and mass-corporate-media so callled articles –
some even use the word "Investigative" – they are mostly a parade of distortions,
omissions, whitewashing, lies, imputations of others, doctored statistical numbers, faked
sources & intelligence and so on, and on and on .
Go to ShadowStatistics ( shadowstats.com ) and take a look at official economical released
data & stats.!!??
The Kremlin has rejected criticism of Russia's handling of the coronavirus outbreak after
China said its largest source of imported cases had come from transmissions in the far
northeast, bordering Russia. "We hear that there is now an exchange of criticism over
coronavirus between different countries, which is played like ping pong. We consider this to be
a thankless exercise," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
Beijing's Global Times newspaper said in an editorial on April 13: "The Chinese people
have watched Russia become a severely affected country from one that did a great job. This
should sound the alarm: China must strictly prevent the inflow of cases and avoid a second
outbreak." The newspaper is run by the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily.
China reported 46 new confirmed cases on Tuesday compared with 89 cases a day earlier,
according to the National Health Commission. Of the new cases, 36 involved travelers arriving
in the country from overseas, compared with 86 a day earlier.
"China is on guard against imported cases," the state-owned Global Times wrote in its
editorial on Tuesday, saying that the US and Europe are "not ready to restart [their]
economy." It warned that "once the epidemic is repeated in Europe and the US, or spreads
around the epicenters worldwide, it will disastrously continue."
William Gruff
Boris was taught a lesson. He's far from winning. Trump's number one enemy has always been
China. Decoupling US and its vassals from China was a problem and I did not see how he could
accomplish that as the US west would go through a lot of pain in the decoupling.
Now the US west is blaming its decoupling pain on China.
Background: During respiratory viral infection, face masks are thought to prevent
transmission (1). Whether face masks worn by patients with coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) prevent contamination of the environment is uncertain (2, 3). A previous study
reported that surgical masks and N95 masks were equally effective in preventing the
dissemination of influenza virus (4), so surgical masks might help prevent transmission of
severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS–CoV-2). However, the
SARS–CoV-2 pandemic has contributed to shortages of both N95 and surgical masks, and
cotton masks have gained interest as a substitute.
Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of surgical and cotton masks in filtering
SARS–CoV-2.
...
Discussion: Neither surgical nor cotton masks effectively filtered SARS–CoV-2 during
coughs by infected patients. Prior evidence that surgical masks effectively filtered
influenza virus (1) informed recommendations that patients with confirmed or suspected
COVID-19 should wear face masks to prevent transmission (2). However, the size and
concentrations of SARS–CoV-2 in aerosols generated during coughing are unknown.
Oberg and Brousseau (3) demonstrated that surgical masks did not exhibit adequate filter
performance against aerosols measuring 0.9, 2.0, and 3.1 μm in diameter.
Lee and colleagues (4) showed that particles 0.04 to 0.2 μm can penetrate surgical
masks. The size of the SARS–CoV particle from the 2002–2004 outbreak was
estimated as 0.08 to 0.14 μm (5); assuming that SARS-CoV-2 has a similar size, surgical
masks are unlikely to effectively filter this virus.
Of note, we found greater contamination on the outer than the inner mask surfaces.
Although it is possible that virus particles may cross from the inner to the outer surface
because of the physical pressure of swabbing, we swabbed the outer surface before the inner
surface. The consistent finding of virus on the outer mask surface is unlikely to have been
caused by experimental error or artifact. The mask's aerodynamic features may explain this
finding. A turbulent jet due to air leakage around the mask edge could contaminate the
outer surface. Alternatively, the small aerosols of SARS–CoV-2 generated during a
high-velocity cough might penetrate the masks. However, this hypothesis may only be valid
if the coughing patients did not exhale any large-sized particles, which would be expected
to be deposited on the inner surface despite high velocity. These observations support
the importance of hand hygiene after touching the outer surface of masks.
This experiment did not include N95 masks and does not reflect the actual transmission
of infection from patients with COVID-19 wearing different types of masks. We do not know
whether masks shorten the travel distance of droplets during coughing. Further study is
needed to recommend whether face masks decrease transmission of virus from asymptomatic
individuals or those with suspected COVID-19 who are not coughing.
In conclusion, both surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the
dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the
environment and external mask surface.
Do I believe that Iraq had weapons of mass distruction -- no
Do I beleave that Russia used novachoc on the Skripals -- - no
Do I beleave the Syrian army used chlorine on the rebels -- -- no
Do I beleave Trump and U.K. Tory's would press the bio- button -- -yes
Do I beleave that US @UK lie about Russia, Iran, China and the Middle East -- - yes
Do I beleave the US @ U.K. want to reduce the world population by 50% -- -yes
Ditto their own populations -- -- -yes
We're dealing with three viruses here -- - coronavirus, internet/MSM misinformation and worse
of all psychological denial.
The last of those is what is destroying society.
Two things spread this virus -- -- -- -
(1) How dense the population is.
And
(2) How dense the population is.
Premising that most people understand that the virus is real, something is, nonetheless, up.
In a first instance.
We have Sweden. You will notice that the curve in Sweden pretty much mimics the curve in
countries that instead opted for economic suicide. Econonmic suicide I remind you, that not
only brings a whole constellation of social and medical issues that will be longer lasting
than this pandemic ever could, but that will also mean a much slower immunisation of society
thereby virtually guaranteeing a relapse.
Too, Corona virus vaccines have been in the works for the past 40 years with little
success to show for it. So now Bill Gates is magically going to produce a vaccine in 18
months?
We then have the models that have been peddled by the great and the good that are showing
to be wildly off reality in terms of hospital bed occupancy or ICU use.
Finally, we have the ships. Oh the ships!
Today we have the following:
Diamond Princess 3000 passengers and crew
Grand Princess 3000 passengers and crew
Zaandam 3000 passengers and crew
Ruby Princess 4000 passengers and crew
Now we also have the Theodore Roosevelt nuclear powered war ship carrying 4000+ crew
So now we have a closed sample of in excess of 15000 individuals that have been exposed to
Covid19 good and hard over entire days.
Yet, we have fewer than 2000 infections and fewer than 20 fatalities.
Of 2 things therefore, 1 must be true.
1 The Covid19 numbers being thrown out by various state, regional and city authorities are
skewed (and there is plenty evidence they are)
or
2 ships offer a peculiar environment that somehow inhibits the infection and mortality
rate of this virus.
Now, if 2 should turn out to be true (and data from all ships combined as well as Sweden
says it is) then what we are doing is, at best, counterproductive.
Also, if 2 is true, then the US$1T that is being bandied about in the US to somehow
compensate business and society for their losses, would be better spent buying every single
man, woman and child a cruise. This would come to a fraction of the cost of the entire
boondoggle.
With regards to the idea repeatedly suggested, that the graphs and other data from
governmental and other bodies constitute some form of propaganda, it is certainly possible to
willfully present a fake world with such data, if one has a very refined mathematical (random
variables on say Papoulis and Pillai level, that much and more for epidemic growth etc.)
understanding of the evolution of e.g. (in this instance) epidemics. Instead one sees little
shit lies and occasionally embarrassing mathematical inadequacy in propagandistic media. It
is orders of magnitude more difficult to fake that, and doing so to undermine oneself, as the
propagandistic media is doing from time to time suggests actual inadequacy rather than
feigned inadequacy. It is orders of magnitude more probable that the propagandists believe
their own idiotic propaganda (successful propagandists need to convince themselves of their
own lies) and mix in such data that they can find, with a gloss to somehow in their minds
have the data fit their propaganda narratives, than to make a much broader fake. The actual
results from statistics makes it often quite easy (for the mathematically adequate) to
discover when data is implausible.
If the people who want to claim that any data from propagandistic media should
automatically be discarded want to become mathematically adequate, they should at least have
a grasp equivalent to chapter 6 of Papoulis and Pillai to make the necessary arguments.
Prerequisite to such study is a solid background in math (multivariable calculus including
some partial differential equations) and natural science---what kind of fluctuations may one
expect in a given process? As the people who tend to make such broad claims tend not to have
the requisite background, I shall specify---one should be able to solve the problems at the
end of the chapter using the methods in the chapter.
"... "For this, we scared the hell out of the American people, we lost 17 million jobs, we put a major dent in the economy, we closed down the schools... shut down the churches," ..."
"... "You know, this was not, and is not a pandemic. But we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this." ..."
"... "aggressively stupid" ..."
"... "Bill Bennett may be a self-proclaimed ethics expert, but he obviously knows very little about logic and cause-and-effect," ..."
"... "It is deeply irresponsible to air this view on national television," ..."
"... "the hell out of the American people." ..."
"... " crucial" ..."
"... "no need to change anything you're doing on a day-to-day basis." ..."
Former education secretary Bill Bennett has been savaged online for suggesting that the
coronavirus is "not a pandemic," calling for the lifting of lockdown measures, as the debate
rages over reopening the shuttered US economy. More than half a million Americans have caught
the coronavirus, with just over 22,000 deaths. While the numbers are dire, the University of
Washington's forecasters revised their total predicted Covid-19 deaths down to 60,000 last
week, a number comparable to deaths from influenza in 2017-2018, and
significantly lower than the six-figure death toll floated by
President Donald Trump's top medical adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, last month.
"For this, we scared the hell out of the American people, we lost 17 million jobs, we
put a major dent in the economy, we closed down the schools... shut down the churches,"
Bennett said on Monday's edition of Fox and Friends. "You know, this was not, and is not a
pandemic. But we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this."
Fox News contributor Bill Bennett compares coronavirus to the flu, claiming that "this was
not and is not a pandemic." pic.twitter.com/Q4oBcXKISV
The World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic on March 11 and it has
been reported in almost every country around the world. Bennett was flayed online for his
"aggressively stupid" statement.
"Bill Bennett may be a self-proclaimed ethics expert, but he obviously knows very little
about logic and cause-and-effect," wrote author Ward Carroll.
Aggressively stupid Bill Bennett may be a self-professed ethics expert, but he obviously
knows little about logic or cause-and-effect.Hey, Billy Boy, do you think there's any
relationship between actions taken and the number of #COVID19
fatalities?And get a haircut, old man.
"It is deeply irresponsible to air this view on national television,"tweeted CNN's
Chris Cillizza, while neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol suggested the low death toll was a
direct result of the government scaring "the hell out of the American people."
Needless to say, if we have "only" 60,000 deaths, it's BECAUSE "we scared the hell out of
the American people," and they radically changed behavior. Or rather: "We" didn't scare
anyone. People were alarmed by the facts and adjusted -- despite dangerous happy talk from
our president. https://t.co/yTeivjA82F
My doctor told me he presumes I had #COVID19 and then
related #coronavirus
pneumonia. I can assure Bill Bennett that even though I exercised and ate well, covid kicked
my ass. It was terrifying. I couldn't breathe and thought I was dying.It was nothing like the
flu, fool. https://t.co/9BjQvC2yyU
Bill Bennett doesn't understand that the only reason my "only" 60,000 people will die is
because we're all stuck at home.I've said before. If the GOP thinks this is a hoax then go
throw a huge party and invite yours entire family and Trump, and see how it goes. https://t.co/6TR3I0MyXC
Modeling the spread of infectious diseases is an imprecise science. While the University of
Washington's researchers attribute their revised predictions to "
crucial" social distancing measures and recommend they remain in place until the end
of May, many initial predictions about the virus were wrong. When it first entered the US in
January, media outlets urged Americans not to panic, warning them that the flu was a more
imminent threat. These same outlets now tell a
different story .
Likewise, Fauci himself said in February that there was "no need to change anything
you're doing on a day-to-day basis." On Sunday, he told CNN's Jake Tapper that the
government "could have saved lives" if social distancing started earlier.
With commentators on the right demanding a relaxation of lockdown rules, and Trump's
advisers telling the president – to quote Fauci – that "the virus decides"
when things return to normal, no clear path forward is obvious.
SST has fully jumped the shark, it seems, going full in with the "Chinese poisoned us/this is
war" concept, which will be the new "Putin stole the election". Racist troglodytes are
already flooding the comment board calling for the summary execution of anyone involved with
Chinese students or academic institutions. The empty wheel blog went full in with the
Russiagate nonsense and became virtually unreadable. SST is next.
Americans are wigged out, in general. They will believe what they want to believe, and
shout anyone else down while insisting they must be Russian or Chinese agents.
@3
Agreed, I have been following SST for about 5 years now, but that was enough time to realize
that while they know the truth about RussiaGate, the origins of the war on Syria and the
advent of a new Cold War, there was a enough there to see that they were completely down with
Trump's domestic agenda. At this point I consider them the new Brown Shirts and petit
bourgeois reactionaries. I've had to stop looking at their site!
@ jayc #3 The Chinese war against the US is like Russia's war against the US: self
defense. It's not difficult to see who the aggressor is - and has been since 1945. That these
two countries have been driven into alliance by a shared adversary is deliciously ironic, or
would be if it did not have the overwhelming potential to be globally catastrophic.
The inability of the Colonel to recognize (voice?) that reveals his true allegiance.
Whether it is to a continued income stream from media consultancy or ties to the intelligence
cartel or both makes no difference.
That's too extreme and it looks like Colonel Lang jumped into "China did it" bandwagon, but this point does make sense: "they used their money to infiltrate
American and Canadian research facilities to enhance the capabilities of their own research
facilities. Some Americans in their worship of money above all aided that infiltration."
Notable quotes:
"... SST will continue to press the china War story. pl ..."
"... Some of us have long suspected that the CCP have been exploiting the vulnerability of the contemporary American elite mindset of personal gain at any cost. What happens when the fifth column are the political, financial and corporate leadership of a nation? ..."
"... If the China CCP is actively engaging in a bio-weapon attack against us, then why not infecting a few Americans at some airport such as Bejing before they fly home? that would make the epicenter somewhere in the US, no need to sacrify many thoudsands in Wuhan. ..."
"... So the PRC sought to bring down America with ... the flu? Or did they have advance intelligence that the US media and government were going to go full retard over this and lockdown the entire country? Is Bill Gates a Chinese agent? ..."
"... It is no question that relations between China and USA has deteriorated even further with this COVID 19 pandemic. I am however, wondering how did China nurture CoVID virus? They literally got "nuked" by it themselves. ..."
"... From the sidelines, it looks to me that they've responded to it more efficiently than US, where CoVID 19 pandemic is a catalyst for a crysis accumulated in US prior to pandemic onset. ..."
It is apparent that the CCP has sought to nurture the creation and/or development of the
COVID-19 virus. To that end they used their money to infiltrate American and Canadian research
facilities to enhance the capabilities of their own research facilities. Some Americans in
their worship of money above all aided that infiltration.
We now receive a lot of obvious troll attacks from "friends" of China. Some of them are from
Europeans. That is sad because for the CCP the Europeans are merely an inconvenience whose
interests are "collateral damage."
SST will continue to press the china War story. pl
"I now consider the CCP and the Chinese government to be enemies of the US that are engaged
in an undeclared war against the Unites States."
Thank you, Col. Lang! Coming from a long time warrior deeply knowledgeable about the "dark
arts" it means a lot for us civilians.
Some of us have long suspected that the CCP have been exploiting the vulnerability of
the contemporary American elite mindset of personal gain at any cost. What happens when the
fifth column are the political, financial and corporate leadership of a nation? Congresses and president's from George H.W. Bush to Obama and the leadership of both
political parties have been instrumental in the voluntary dismantlement of our industrial
base.
I'm not convinced with your statement "The present pandemic is merely one theater of that
war".
If the China CCP is actively engaging in a bio-weapon attack against us, then why not
infecting a few Americans at some airport such as Bejing before they fly home? that would
make the epicenter somewhere in the US, no need to sacrify many thoudsands in Wuhan.
So the PRC sought to bring down America with ... the flu? Or did they have advance intelligence that the US media and
government were going to go full retard over this and lockdown the entire country? Is Bill Gates a Chinese agent? Will
his vaccine make us all start craving bat soup?
I am long time lurker at this board and found this topic to be an interesting one. It is no question that relations between China and USA has deteriorated even further with
this COVID 19 pandemic. I am however, wondering how did China nurture CoVID virus? They
literally got "nuked" by it themselves.
From the sidelines, it looks to me that they've responded to it more efficiently than US,
where CoVID 19 pandemic is a catalyst for a crysis accumulated in US prior to pandemic
onset.
China likely under reported the number of cases and the fatalities from the new Chinese
Virus. China also likely knew about the virus for sometime before reporting it to the WHO. China initially either failed to realized or did not report that the virus can be spread from
human to human.
But also fact is that there is nothing sinister or unusual about this Corona Virus to make
any scientist in the West or even US military intelligence claim that it could be a biological
weapon altered in a military facility.
Fact: China's economy was the first to suffer, with almost total shut down of its economy,
promoting talk in the West of moving manufacturing out of China.
Fact: That shut down was visible to all of us and widely reported.
Fact: China's economy is an export economy, so shutting down the American or other importing
markets is counter productive from a Chinese point of view.
Fact: China sequenced the virus and released all the information to the world including the
CDC on January 10. which would have given ample time for the West to prepare its very advanced
lab, healthcare system and pharmaceutical industry to confront any potential spread.
You obviously have many contacts in the security and intelligence community. Do they share
your outlook? Could you give us a summary of how they are leaning? Thanks.
"When cuttlefish is in danger, it spits its ink to blacken the water and took the
opportunity to take flight. It is a well known tactic of some political elites and western
cultural. "They wanted to simply be attributed to China the responsibility for their own
inability to cope with the epidemic and the multiple tragedies that followed, and so," to
whiten completely. "
By the time I finished my text, I discovered a report on the Net. On 8 April, the
academic journal world-renowned, PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) has
published an article co-written by academics in British and German entitled network
Analysis the phylogenetic genomes of SARS-CoV-2.
The first author of the article is Dr. Peter Forster of the University of Cambridge.
According to the study, the researchers classified the new coronavirus in three types (A,
B, and C) according to their development.
The type A is the closest of the virus extracts of the bat and pangolin. It is the one
most frequently identified among hiv-infected patients in the United States and Australia.
That is, what researchers call " the root of the epidemic ".
The strains of type B are variants of the type A and are mainly present in China. Those
that are spreading on a large scale in Europe are those of the type C. Unfortunately, it
appears that the results of the research of Dr Peter Forster are not interested in the
western mainstream media.
The graphs show the normal mortality rates in the England and Wales and in New York City
and the current deviations from it. The flu does not create such graphs. Nor do the
lock-downs.
I've got a nice bridge for sale, B, 2000 miles long and entirely made of NYT articles and
twitter tweets.
The Twitter chart leaves the impression that the number of deaths suddenly soared up
almost vertically by around 5500 just in the last few days ...
Good panic porn stuff that. Also take note of what sort of people appear in that thread -
it is not a list of nobodies!
But wait - look more closely! That upturn is for week 14 - the week ending 3rd April,
already 12 days ago. You can see the release of the data by the Office for National
Statistics
here (there is no more recent data released by ONS)
As soon as you see the real data released by the ONS you will immediately see that the
cited twitter is blatant fake news!
That chart is specifically constructed to deceive. No actual cited figures, no actual
dates, no links to the real data - just pure panic porn. Why not cite the specific dates
covered? Because that would raise immediate suspicion with that sudden spurt, because it does
not correspond to previously available figures. Why not cite the specific figures in the
tweet? Because then it would be immediately obvious that this is fake news. Why not explain
the cause of the strange shape of the graph? Because that would give the whole game away.
So what do you see when you look at the real data released by ONS, instead of the
fake news in that twitter?
1) Total deaths registered in week 14 16387
2) Increase over week 13 5246
3) Increase over 5-year average for week 14 6082
*** BUT ***
4) Note that these figures are not the deaths which occurred in week 14, they are the deaths
which were registered in week 14, irrespective of when the deaths actually occurred
(registration is often delayed)
5) Note the warning given on that page: "Please note, where Easter falls in previous years
will have an impact on the five-year average used for comparison"
6) 3475 deaths in week 14 " mentioned novel coronavirus (COVID-19)" on the death
certificate - NOTE - this is not the cause of death specified on the death certificate!!!
7) 539 deaths in week 13 " mentioned novel coronavirus (COVID-19)" on the death
certificate
8) But wait - 3475 is only about half the alleged excess deaths, and these
are not even the deaths caused by covid-19 (see below) these are only the deaths where
covid-19 "happens" to have been tested positive (car accident, for example!)
Look further!
9) Look at the row "Deaths where the underlying cause was respiratory disease (ICD-10
J00-J99)" under official WHO standards, that is the broad category under which the covid-19
deaths are to be listed, if it is considered by the doctor to be the cause of death.
The row gives figures for each week of 2020 as follows (from weeks 1 to 14 in sequence):
2141 2477 2188 1893 1746 1572 1602 1619 1546 1581 1492 1515 1534 2106
VOILA!
This category - which is the actual recorded cause of death - includes covid-19
deaths, but it is a broad category of respiratory-related deaths which also includes many
deaths which have nothing whatsoever to do with covid-19. Those 2141, 2477 and 2188 deaths
registered in each of the first 3 weeks of 2020 were before there was even a single death
from covid-19 in the UK! The average of the first 13 weeks is 1762, and the value for week 14
(2106) is only 344 more than that!
Also note that the deaths which "mention" covid-19 are 1369 greater (including car
accidents, unrelated illness, etc) than the number of deaths caused by respiratory
illnesses (including Covid-19), which already includes another 1500 to 1700 deaths not
caused by covid-19!
This spurt of extra deaths registered in week 14 most certainly does not represent a
sudden spurt of genuine covid-19 deaths - that is conclusively proven by the row of figures
giving the underlying cause of death for each week's registrations.
If anything, the data may show a sudden spurt of deaths from other causes such as
stress caused by the lockdown, food shortages, money shortages, unexpected homelessness,
non-covid-19 illnesses not treated because the hospitals cancelled appointments and
operations, stress, fear etc.
Such causes probably underlie at least a few of the unaccounted for excess deaths
(conceaveably even most, perhaps), but it is also possible it is simply a statistical
aberration and/or related to delays in registering deaths, including the unspecified effect
of the Easter holidays on death registration. The aberration may also have been deliberate,
to cover up government mishandling of the crisis, or it may result from staff shortages, or
perhaps completely irrelevant reasons - we cannot know without detailed investigation of how
the data were prepared and the patterns of death registration.
What is absolutely certain is that that twitter chart is unmitigated fake news
deliberately designed to deceive .
The NYT is no better - completely non-sensical presentation of the data with no
explanation of the meaning of the non-sensical presentation, deliberately designed to
misrepresent.
Comments, B? Time to reconsider what you are doing?
I've been urging people to look more closely at what is happening, because the magicians
have been very successful with their acts, recently. Things are not as they seem on the
surface - you need to look more carefully at the small print.
That includes the details of lockdowns. Lockdowns kill, when they are done in the
irresponsible and brutal and dishonest way they have been done in the UK and the USA.
China did NOT rely on lockdowns - they relied on an integrated combination of
social distancing (including, where necessary, lockdowns, but mostly not , except in
Hubei Province), tracing, and isolation of those infected or at risk.
Lockdowns as imposed by the UK and the USA are just suicide pacts, as described by
Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, and are ineffective in dealing with covid-19.
"... But it's especially outdoor behavior which gives psychological insight on the pandemic of panic. Yesterday I saw people walking alone on the sidewalk, for example a woman alone walking her dog, wearing masks. Evidently such people have regressed from the germ theory of infection to the miasma theory. They think the very air itself is the source of the bug. ..."
Wearing masks indoors in close quarters seems prudent, even though there's so much
conflicting evidence and it's just as likely they're a stifling version of a rabbit's foot as
that they confer any real protection.
But it's especially outdoor behavior which gives psychological insight on the pandemic
of panic. Yesterday I saw people walking alone on the sidewalk, for example a woman alone
walking her dog, wearing masks. Evidently such people have regressed from the germ theory of
infection to the miasma theory. They think the very air itself is the source of the
bug.
But the guy who instantly became my favorite representative of the whole hysteria (I wish
I had a picture of him) was the idiot I saw perform an act of extremely dangerous jaywalking,
dashing across a busy road with fast oncoming traffic both ways - wearing a mask.
Everyone seems fixated on the virus and how to protect against it. I remind you all of the
famous proverb
"Le microbe c'est rien, le milieu c'est tout" = the microbe is nothing, the
environment is everything.
Environment means the local conditions in the affected body, a combination of immune
system and pre-existing illness.
We are facing a microbe that appears very dangerous in some places with case mortality
10..20% (heavily featured in the media and also in this blog), while in other places it does
no more than a seasonal flu with overall mortality < 0.5%. This leads to two equally
distorted biases: some people see the whole world as disaster area, some say there is no
problem at all. One could question whether it is really the exact same virus, but I'm not
going there.
Actually, with the proverb in mind we should be asking: what are the local conditions in
the hotspots, what has weakened people's immune system in these places, and what kind of
precondition exists there but does not exist in general. In simple words: why here and not
there?
Not asking this question and focusing only on an alleged "killer virus" means you see a
distorted picture and you would tend to roll out the same drastic protection lockdown
measures everywhere, which suffocates the economy and culture unnecessarily and creates
massive collateral. I'm in favor of a proportional response focusing on the hotspots, and
otherwise teach people how to strengthen their immune system and protect themselves
(voluntarily) if they see the need - of course they must have the means made available.
Known factors weakening the immune system and/or lungs:
1) Poor diet – the junk food (fast food, canned food, microwaved food) so typical of
US and GB city dwellers. Without the necessary high-quality nutrition the immune system can
only be weak. Natural vitamins and essential nutrients go very far in terms of virus
protection.
2) Air pollution – Lombardia (Bergamo in particular) and NYC for example both suffer
from high air pollution, and particularly in Manhattan the 9/11 event released a huge
cloud of finest
asbestos dust which caused a wave of lung cancer in the region and a lung precondition
for everyone who was exposed at the time.
3) Negative emotions – intense anger and fear can reduce immune activity by 50% for
several hours, as measured by IgA in the saliva. Likewise, positive emotions strengten it.
Media have been feeding us shock and awe and disaster 24/7 for weeks now, you think that has
no effect, think again. Check the amazing research done by HeartMath institute . Also, forced isolation and contact
deprevation is wreaking havoc with people who love company or have psychic preconditions.
4) Radiation – there are hundreds of scientific papers on the non-thermal effect of
low-energy microwave radiation on our physiology at cellular level, usually this medical
research is ignored. An extensive linked collection is available by
diagnose:funk (a German self-help society involving many M.D.s). Immune suppression is
one of the effects. Where the COVID19 death toll is very high you have a dense WiFi and 4G
coverage and yes, typically 5G pilot installations also exist. Most young people who died
from COVID19 were working in IT companies and thus had very high exposure.
5) Vaccination – a vaccine protects from one specific virus but is known to weaken
the immune system otherwise. North Italy is among the regions with the highest vaccination
rate on this globe.
The dotted line on the above map indicates the current trend of beds needed for COVID-19 in
New York.
At present, only 18,279 are in use.
The professional forecasters all projected that beds would be a multiple of the beds
actually needed.
Notice not one model came in under the actual number. These are all professional fearmongers
who alarmed the country about a virus that appears to be in line with a severe flu season.
Two coffee filters
Two to three feet of craft ribbon or string
Tape
Keep the coffee filters nested. Place them with the cup side down.
Fold the bottom edges of the mask up about an inch (approximately 2-3 cm). Fold the top edge
about a half inch (or about 1 cm).
Then fold the top over another half inch. This will make the top part of the mask slightly
stiffer so it will hold the bend over your nose better.
Place the ribbon in the top and bottom troughs formed by the folded edges of the coffee
filters. Tape the folded edges of the filters down to hold the ribbon in place.
Loop the ribbon over one ear and tie the free ends of the ribbon over the other ear to hold
the mask in place over your face. Use a vertical piece of tape on the mask over each cheek to
fit the mask to your face once you have put it on.
This mask will not stop lone viruses from getting through because the coffee filter is too
porous. It will tend to block large droplets from coughing or sneezing. Droplets can contain
huge numbers of viruses and be very infectious.
This mask is not nearly as good as a surgical mask, but better than nothing. It is much
easier to wear a mask like this than to walk around holding a tissue in front of your face.
I found that I am sensitive to the odor of cheap masking tape but the cellophane tape was OK
for me. Masks should be tested at home for comfort and allergens before trying to use them.
The coffee filters should be thrown away after the mask in used. Washing hands with soap and
warm water will destroy the virus, so it is important to wash your hands after handling used
masks. The roll of ribbon was 47 cents so this is not too expensive, but I plan on removing the
ribbons and washing them in hot, soapy water to use again.
These coffee filter masks are easy to make, fit fairly comfortably and do not require sewing
skills. Paper towels could probably be used to make masks but I do not use paper towels and am
not about to brave the stores to wrestle other customers for the last roll. This virus can be
destroyed by soap and water, acid and/or heat. It generally only survives a day or two on
paper. If you cannot get enough coffee filters, leaving the mask in a hot car for a day should
kill this virus. The hot-car treatment would not necessarily kill other germs that might be on
the mask though.
Philosopher Larken Rose, in his ''manual'' on ''How to be a Successful Tyrant'', written 15
years ago: "Chapter 2 Exploiting fear. Almost all oppression via propaganda is based upon
scaring people, and then presenting a false choice, where the people can choose either to do
what you want them to do, or face some unknown, often purely fictional horror. This is not
the method of the common thug, which can be summarized as ''do this or I will hurt you''. A
successful modern tyrant never presents himself as the thing to be afraid of, as doing so
would obviously create resentment and hatred in the peasantry, and that leads to resistance.
Every ''thing to be feared'', with which you terrorize your peasants, must be presented as
some separate, outside evil, that only you can save them from.
You must present the simple choice between obedience to you, and the threat of some
unpleasant happening, which does not appear to be of your doing, and which you pretend to
lament the existence of. In short, you must deceive and scare the citizens into voluntarily
giving up their freedom. ''The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion.''
- Edmund Burke
A simple example would be making up a plague of some sort ;) , assuring people that
millions are doomed to die, and then claiming that giving you a lot of money and control is
the only hope of averting disaster. Or perhaps, instead of making up a disease, you can pick
a real disease, grossly exaggerate the risk it poses to the peasants ;) , whip them into a
frenzy, and then present yourself as their only hope for salvation. Which, of course, will
require you to be given much wealth and power. Even the common flu ;) , can be used to spread
alarm and panic in the peasantry.'' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4LtEciQUF8
Covid-19 Research Updates: Chinese Study Reveals That Hypokalemia Present In Almost All
Covid-19 Patients Source: Covid-19 Research Mar 09, 2020 1 month ago Covid-19 Research : A new research study by researchers
from Wenzhou Medical University in Zhejiang province lead by Dr Don Chen revealed that almost
all Covid-19 patients exhibited hypokalemia and that supplementation with potassium ions was
one of the many factors that assisted in their recovery.
Hypokalemia is best described as low level of potassium (K+) ions in the blood serum. Mild
low potassium does not typically cause symptoms. Symptoms may include feeling tired, leg
cramps, weakness, and constipation. Low potassium also increases the risk of an abnormal heart
rhythm, which is often too slow and can cause cardiac arrest.
It was found that as the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus attacks human cells via the ACE2
(Angiotensin- converting enzyme-2) receptors, it also attacks the renin–angiotensin
system (RAS), causing low electrolyte levels in particularly potassium ions.
The study involving 175 patients in collaboration with Wenzhou Hospital found that almost
all patients exhibited hypokalemia and for those who already had hypokalemia, the situation
even drastically worsened as the disease progressed.
However, it was found from the study that patients responded well to potassium ion
supplements and had a better chance of recovery.
The researchers noted that the end of urine K+ loss indicates a good prognosis and may be a
reliable as a sensitive biomarker directly reflecting the end of adverse effect on RAS
system.
However, doctors at various hospitals in Wuhan, Shanghai and Guangdong have witnessed
similar occurrences and also found that potassium ion supplementation helped patients towards
recovery.
For the latest on Covid-19 research developments, keep checking at: Thailand Medical
News
DIY Isopod with Negative Pressure and Air Scrubber
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How to make rooms negative pressure by using construction scrubbers with HEPA filters, and a DIY isopod using
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The ruins of Mary McClellan Hospital stand on hill overlooking the village of Cambridge, New
York, in what was a "flyover" corner of the country until the planes stopped flying. The
hospital cornerstone was laid July 4 1917. The USA had entered the war against Germany a few
months earlier. The "Spanish" flu pandemic kicked off in January, 1918. The hospital opened in
January 1919. The flu burned out a year later. The hospital shut down for good in 2003.
I've lived around here for decades and never actually got a look at the place until I went
up there on a blustery spring Saturday before Easter to look around. I like to read landscapes
and the human imprint upon them. This one is a ghost story, not just of the bygone souls who
came and went here, but of an entire society, the nation that we used to be and stopped being
not so long ago.
This is the old main building today. It's astounding how quickly buildings begin to rot when
the human life within them is gone. The style was Beaux Arts Institutional, seen everywhere
across America in that period in schools, libraries, museums, and hospitals, an austere
neoclassicism that radiated decorum in a confident and well-run society – because
that is what we were then. Note especially, the entrance and the beautiful bronze marquee above
it. The message is this: You enter through a portal of beauty to a place of hope and trust.
This is Mary McClellan Hospital not long after it opened.
The site itself, on its hill, with views east across the state line to the Green Mountains,
speaks of authority and command.
The America of 1919 was a deeply hierarchical society. Today we regard hierarchy as a bane
and a curse. The truth is, it is absolutely required if you expect to live in a well-run
society, and proof of that is the disordered mess of bureaucratic irresponsibility we live in
today, with virtually every institution failing – well before the Covid-19 virus arrived
on the scene - and nobody called to account for anything anymore.
Hierarchy must be fit to scale to function successfully. In small institutions like this,
everybody knows who is responsible for what. That's what makes authority credible.
These are the ruins of the nursing school associated with the hospital (and also associated
with Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, 25 miles west).
The nurses lived here, in Florence Nightingale Hall.
In the early 20th century, the profession favored young, unmarried women whose allegiance
and attention to the patients would not be distracted by the needs of a family.
Was that exploitation? Or was it simply an intelligent way to organize a hospital
subculture? The nurses lived here very comfortably. The institution cared for them,
literally.
There's no record available of what exactly these buildings were for. The one in the
foreground has a cut stone sign that says "The Junior" on it. I infer that this may have been
where a couple of young, staff, resident physicians lived, young men probably, just out of
their internships, close at hand and on-call for emergencies. The building in the background is
a rather grand country cottage, possibly the residence of the chief surgeon or the hospital
director. The hospital was, after all, a community unto itself, and it was important that
authority have a visible presence there all the time. Both buildings display architectural
grace-notes that humanized and dignify that resident authority. We no longer believe in
grace-notes for the things we build, so is it surprising that we live in a graceless
society?
This is the power plant for the whole operation, on the premises, ensuring that the
electricity would stay on at all times. In the early 20th century, electric power was the new
sine qua non of advanced civilization. America's rural electrification program really didn't
get underway until the 1930s, so it's likely that many of the farms outside the village were
not hooked up to a grid. The hospital generators must have been driven by coal, or perhaps oil.
Somebody had to attend to all that machinery. The laundry – hospitals produce a lot
of that – was also on-premises, as was all the meal preparation. The hospital maintained
a large garden to furnish some of the food. All these tasks required crews of people working
purposefully and getting paid. The hospital was a complex organism, a world within a nation
within a world.
Things rise and self-organize beautifully into fully-formed systems and after while they run
down, even while they over-grow; authority starts working more and more for its own sake and
its own benefit; hierarchy breaks down into disrespect, lack of trust, fear; and then society
loses its vital institutions, which is exactly what happened at Mary McClellan Hospital in
little Cambridge, New York.
It dwindled and then quickly collapsed. The town lost a part of itself, the part that
welcomed people in a particular kind of trouble and cared for them, as it cared for those who
did the caring. By the way, in 1919, a private room was $7-a-day (a bed on a ward was $3).
Imagine that! The town also lost a vital component of its economy. And that was all of-a-piece
with its decline into the flyover place it became in our time.
American health care, as we call it today, and for all its high-tech miracles, has evolved
into one of the most atrocious rackets the world has ever seen. By racket, I mean an enterprise
organized explicitly to make money dishonestly. This is what we've become, and the fact that we
seem to be okay with that tells you more about what we have become. The advent of Covid-19,
along with the extreme economic disorders it has triggered, will probably be the beginning of
the end of that racket. We have no idea how medicine will re-organize itself, but I'd guess
that it will happen at a much more primitive scale – because that's usually what
happens when human societies overshoot badly. Alas, history is not exactly symmetrical.
But read these photos and meditate on what we were once capable of putting together in this
land, and maybe you will find some clues about what was truly admirable about the American
condition before we stopped caring.
Beijing had shut down a branch of its closely watched global remdesivir that was studying
patients in 'severe' condition in Wuhan. After showing early promise, the study was allegedly
shuttered by the government because there weren't enough patients who qualified.
For the sickest patients,
infection with the new coronavirus
is proving to be a full-body assault, causing damage well
beyond the lungs. And
even after patients who become severely ill have recovered and
cleared the virus, physicians have begun seeing evidence of the infection's lingering effects
.
In a
study
posted this week, scientists in China examined the blood test results of 34 COVID-19
patients over the course of their hospitalization.
In those who survived mild and severe
disease alike, the researchers found that many of the biological measures had "failed to return
to normal."
-
Los
Angeles Times
One alarming observation have been test results indicating that
recovered patients
continue to have impaired liver function
after patients had been cleared for discharge.
Another concern from cardiologists
are the immediate effects of COVID-19 on the heart
,
raising questions over how long the damage may last. As the
Times
notes, "In an
early study
of COVID-19 patients in
China,
heart failure was seen in nearly 12% of those who survived, including in some who
had shown no signs of respiratory distress.
"
Heart damage can easily occur when the lungs cannot deliver sufficient oxygen to the body,
however
when this happens without respiratory distress, "doctors have to wonder whether
they have underestimated COVID-19's ability to wreak lasting havoc,"
according to the
report.
"COVID-19 is not just a respiratory disorder," according to Yale cardiologist Dr. Harlan
Krumholtz, who added "It can affect the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the brain, the endocrine
system and the blood system."
Of course,
there are no long-term survivors
of the disease - which was unknown
to mainstream science less than five months ago. Even its first victims in China are just over
three months removed from their ordeal, while physicians swamped with the ongoing pandemic have
been too busy treating critical patients to closely monitor the some 370,000 patients classified as
'recovered.'
Still,
doctors are worried that in its wake, some organs whose function has been
knocked off kilter will not recover quickly, or completely
. That could leave patients
more vulnerable for months or years to come.
"
I think there will be long-term
sequelae
," said Yale cardiologist
Dr.
Joseph Brennan
, using the medical term for a disease's downstream effects.
"I don't know that for real," he cautioned. "But
this disease is so overwhelming"
that some of the recovered are likely to face ongoing health concerns
, he said. -
Los
Angeles Times
Meanwhile,
questions have emerged over whether COVID-19 actually leaves the body
- possibly lying dormant for years only to re-emerge later in a different form.
Several viruses already do this such as chicken pox - which can come back as shingles, and
hepatitis B, which can cause liver cancer years after the primary infection clears up. Ebola is
another example - hiding in the vitreous fluid of victims' eyeballs in some cases, causing
blindness or impaired vision in 40% of survivors.
Of course, then there's
the lungs
- which the novel coronavirus tends to target
first. In another closely related coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS),
around 1/3 of recovered patients had impaired lung function after three years
- though
they largely resolved over the next 15 years. And, 1/3 of those who survived Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) had permanent scarring of the lungs known as fibrosis.
According to a mid-March publication which tracked a dozen COVID-19 patients discharged from a
Hong Kong hospital, two or three reported having difficulties with activities they had no problem
performing in the past.
Dr. Owen Tsang Tak-yin, director of infectious diseases at Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong
Kong, told reporters that some patients
"might have around a drop of 20 to 30% in lung
function" after their recovery.
Citing the history of lasting lung damage in SARS and MERS patients, a team led by UCLA
radiologist Melina Hosseiny is recommending that
patients who have recovered from
COVID-19 get follow-up lung scans "to evaluate long-term or permanent lung damage including
fibrosis."
As doctors try to assess organ damage after COVID-19 recovery, there's a key complication:
Patients with disorders that affect the heart, liver, blood and lungs face a higher risk
of becoming very sick with COVID-19 in the first place
. That makes it difficult to
distinguish COVID-19 after-effects from the problems that made patients vulnerable to begin with
-- especially so early in the game. -
Los
Angeles Times
And while doctors and researchers are still discovering COVID-19's secrets, what they do know is
that when patients show signs of infection,
several organ systems are affected
-
and that when one begins to fail, others often follow. This is all wrapped in an inflammatory
response, which can pry "plaques and clots from the walls of blood vessels and causing strokes,
heart attacks and venous embolisms," according to the report.
Dr. Krumholtz, the cardiologist, says the infection can cause damage to the heart and the sac
which encases it, causing heart failure and arrhythmias in some patients during the acute phase.
This means that former COVID-19 patients can become
lifelong cardiology patients
after they 'recover' from the primary illness.
What's worse, blood abnormalities that can make clots more likely can persist as well.
In a
case report
published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine,
Chinese
doctors described a patient with severe COVID-19, clots evident in several parts of his body,
and immune proteins called
antiphospholipid antibodies
.
A hallmark of an autoimmune disease called
antiphospholipid syndrome
, these antibodies sometimes occur as a passing response to an
infection. But sometimes they linger, causing dangerous blood clots in the legs, kidneys, lungs
and brain. In pregnant women, antiphospholipid syndrome also can result in miscarriage and
stillbirth. -
Los
Angeles Times
Yale's Dr. Brennan says that at the end of the day, we just don't have enough data to make a
long term prognosis for coronavirus patients.
The text message from Ai Fen (艾芬), the director of the emergency department of
Wuhan Central Hospital, agreeing to be interviewed, was sent at 5 am on March 1. About half an
hour later, at 5.32 am on March 1, her colleague and director of thyroid and breast surgery
Jiang Xueqing, who was infected with new coronavirus pneumonia, died. Two days later, Mei
Zhongming, deputy director of ophthalmology at the hospital, died. He and Li Wenliang were in
the same department.
As of March 9, 2020, 4 members of the medical staff of Wuhan Central Hospital have died of
new coronavirus pneumonia infection. Since the outbreak, this hospital, located just a few
kilometers away from the Huanan Seafood Market, has become one of the hospitals in Wuhan with
the largest number of employees that are infected. According to media reports, more than 200
employees in the hospital were infected, including three deputy deans and multiple working
department directors. Multiple department directors are currently being maintained with ECMO
[extracorporeal membrane oxygenation].
The shadow of death hangs over this, Wuhan's largest tertiary hospital. A doctor told People
[a news site – EB] that in the social media group of hospital staff, almost no one spoke
publicly; they mourned and discussed in private.
This tragedy could have been prevented. On December 30, 2019, Ai Fen received a virus test
report for a patient with an unknown pneumonia. She circled the word "SARS coronavirus" in red.
When asked by a college classmate who is also a doctor, she took a picture of the report and
circulated it. That night, the report spread in doctor circles in Wuhan, and those who
forwarded the report included the eight doctors who were disciplined by the police.
This caused trouble for Ai Fen. As the original source of the information, she was
interviewed by the hospital disciplinary committee and suffered an "unprecedented and severe
reprimand"; it was said that she was acting unprofessionally by creating false rumors
(谣).
In the afternoon of March 2nd, Ai Fen did an interview with People in the Nanjing Road
location of Wuhan Central Hospital. She was sitting alone in the emergency room office. The
emergency department, which had been admitting more than 1,500 patients a day, had returned to
quiet. There was only one tramp lying in the emergency hall.
Some previous reports called Ai Fen "another severely reprimanded female doctor who has
emerged" and some people called her a "whistleblower". Ai Fen corrected this; she said she was
not a whistleblower, but the one who distributed the "whistles".
During the interview, Ai Fen mentioned the word "regret" several times, and said she deeply
regretted that she hadn't continued to whistle resoundingly after she was reprimanded at a
disciplinary review meeting. She has especial regrets when it comes to her deceased coworkers.
"If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't care about the pressure (from my leader), and I
would [expletive] speak everywhere, all right?"
What have Wuhan Central Hospital and Ai Fen experienced in the past two months or so? The
following is what Ai Fen told us:
An unprecedented reprimand
On December 16, last year, we received a patient at the Nanjing Road emergency department.
They had an inexplicably high fever, and they weren't responding to standard medications, their
body temperature wasn't going down at all. On the 22nd, the patient was transferred to the
respiratory department, a bronchoscopy was done, and bronchoalveolar fluid taken and sent out
for high-throughput genetic sequencing. Afterwards, the coronavirus result was relayed
verbally. At that time, the colleague who was responsible for the patient told me clearly:
"Director [主任] Ai, that person's diagnosis is coronavirus". Later we learned that
the patient worked in the Huanan Seafood Market.
Immediately afterwards, December 27th, another patient arrived at Nanjing Road. He was the
nephew of a doctor in our department. He was in his 40s, without any preexisting conditions.
His lungs were in a terrible state, and his blood oxygen saturation was only 90%. He was under
hospital care for almost 10 days without any improvement, and was admitted to the respiratory
department. A flexible bronchoscopy was also done, and the alveolar lavage fluid sent for
testing.
At noon on December 30th, an old classmate at Tongji (同济) Hospital sent me a
screenshot of a WeChat conversation, which said: "You don't want to go to Huanan [Market] just
now, there are lots of people with high fever " He asked if it was true. At the time, I was
watching a CT [scan] of a typical patient with pulmonary infection on the computer. I sent him
a 11-second video of the CT and told him it was a patient who had come to our emergency
department in the morning, a Huanan Seafood Market case.
Just after 4 pm that day, a colleague showed me a diagnostic report that said: "SARS
coronavirus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 46 strains of bacteria [菌, bacteria and/or fungi]
which colonize the oral cavity and/or respiratory tract". I read the report very carefully many
times, and the supplementary information read: "SARS coronavirus is a single-stranded
positive-strand RNA virus. The main mode of transmission of the virus is close-range droplet
transmission or contact with respiratory secretions of patients, which can cause an unusual
pneumonia that is highly contagious and can affect multiple organ systems, also known as
atypical pneumonia."
At the time, the diagnostic report scared me, I broke into a cold sweat, this was a
terrifying thing. The patient was admitted to the respiratory department, the situation needed
to be reported to the respiratory department, but to ensure attention, I immediately phoned and
reported it to the hospital's public health division and infectious disease [?院感]
division. At that moment, the director of the respiratory department of our hospital happened
to be passing my office door, someone who had been involved with SARS. I grabbed the director
and said, "We found this in one of the patients in your department." The director took one look
and said it was worrying. I knew the matter was worrying.
After calling the hospital, I also circulated this report to my fellow-learners
(同学[; student or former classmate]). I purposely drew a red circle around the
words "SARS coronavirus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 46 strains of bacteria [菌, bacteria
and/or fungi] which colonize the oral cavity and/or respiratory tract" to bring the warning to
their attention. I also sent the report to the doctors in the department to warn everyone to
take precautions.
That evening, the message was spread widely; the screenshots of the transmission show the
photos of the report I'd marked with a red circle, including the ones that I later learned that
Li Wenliang passed on to the [chat] group. At the time, I was thinking it might be bad. At
10:20, the hospital passed on a message [reportedly on the Central Hospital WeChat group]. It
was a relayed notification from the city Health Protection Committee
(市卫健委). Their main point was that information on the pneumonia of
unknown cause should not be arbitrarily released, to avoid causing panic among the public; if
panic was caused by information leakage, there would be a thorough investigation
(要追责).
I was very scared at the time and immediately passed this information on to my
fellow-learners. About an hour later, the hospital sent another notice, again stressing that
information the group had on this subject could not be leaked. One day later, at 11:46 pm on
January 1st, the head of the hospital's disciplinary inspection committee sent me a message to
come [for an employee review] the next morning.
I didn't fall asleep that night, I was worried and thought things through over and over
again, but I felt that there are always two sides to everything; even if it had caused adverse
effects, it was not necessarily a bad thing to remind medical staff in Wuhan to take
precautions. At 8 o'clock the next morning, before I finished the shift, I was called in for
the disciplinary review.
In that disciplinary review, I suffered an unprecedented and very severe reprimand.
At that time, the leader of the discussion said, "We can't afford to raise our heads when we
go out for a meeting. The director of XX criticizes our hospital. As the director of the
emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital, you are a professional, how can there be this
lack of principle, this lack of organizational discipline, this creating and spreading of false
rumours (谣)?" This is the original sentence. So I should go back to the 200-odd people
in the department to convey the news to them verbally, one by one; we can't send information by
WeChat or SMS, we can only talk face-to-face or call, we can't say anything about this
pneumonia, "you can't even tell your own husband", they said
I was utterly stunned. I hadn't been criticized for not working hard, but made to feel that
what I'd done had ruined Wuhan's prospects and its future. I felt strong depair. I am a serious
and hard-working person. I felt that everything I had done was in accordance with the rules and
well-founded. What did I do wrong? After I read the lab result, I had also reported it to the
hospital. My students and my colleagues had communicated among ourselves about how to handle
the condition of a patient, we hadn't given out any of the patient's personal information; this
is equivalent to discussing a medical case among medical students. As a clinical doctor, I
already knew that a very important virus had been found in patients. When other doctors asked,
how could you not say so? This is your instinct as a doctor, right? What did I do wrong? I have
done what a doctor and a person should normally do. I think anyone would do the same.
I was very emotional at the time, saying that I had done this, and it had nothing to do with
the rest of the people; you can just arrest me and jail me. I said that I was not suitable to
continue to work in this position, and I wanted to take a break. The leader did not agree,
saying that this was the time to test me.
I went home that night, I remember it quite clearly, I told my husband just after I walked
in the door, if something goes wrong, you must care for and raise the child -- because my
second treasure is still very young, only just over 1 year old. At the time, my husband was
perplexed by this. I didn't explain.
On January 20th, after Zhong Nanshan [prominent Chinese epidemiologist] told people [about
the epidemic], I told my husband what had happened that day. In the interim, I just warned my
family not to go to crowded places, and to wear surgical face masks when going out.
Peripheral departments
Many people worried that I was among the eight people who were admonished [by police]. In
fact, I wasn't warned by the Public Security Bureau. Later, a good friend asked me, are you a
whistleblower? I said that I am not a whistleblower, I am the one who sent the whistle.
But that disciplinary review hit me hard, it affected me very severely. When I came back, I
could see that everyone's morale had collapsed. We had been working with such drive and
dedication, and doing our jobs conscientiously. Everyone kept asking me questions, and I
couldn't answer.
All I could do was get the emergency department to focus on protection. We have over 200
people in the emergency department. From January 1st, I asked everyone to strengthen their
protection. Everyone must wear masks, hats, and use gloves (用手快消).
I remember one day, there was a nurse who did not wear a mask during the shift; I scolded him
then and there, saying "Don't come to work without a mask in the future".
On January 9th, while off-shift, I saw a patient coughing on the pre-examination table. From
that day on, I asked everyone to put a mask on both the patient and on anyone seeing the
patient, one for each person; I said, don't try to save money at this time. At the time, they
were still telling us that there was no human-to-human transmission, and I want to emphasize
here that wearing a mask to strengthen protection was a big issue.
That time was really depressing and very painful. Some doctors proposed wearing and out
layer of isolation clothing. The hospital's internal operations committee
(医院里开会) said they wouldn't allow it; they said that wearing
isolation clothing would cause panic. I asked the people in the department to wear an isolation
gown inside a white coat. This was out-of-specification and ridiculous.
We watched more and more patients arrive, as the radius of the infection area became larger
and larger. At first, they might be connected to the Huanan Seafood Market; then it spread, and
the radius became larger and larger. Many of the cases were family-transmitted. Among the first
seven people, there was a case of infection in which the mother had given the son food. The
clinic [dispensary? 诊所] boss got sick, infected by the patients who came for
injections. It was very serious, whether they got infected or not. I knew there must be
human-to-human transmission. If there was no human-to-human transmission, well, the Huanan
Seafood Market had been closed on January 1, so why were there more and more patients?
I often thought, if only they hadn't reprimanded me like that, if they'd asked for details
calmly, and then asked other respiratory experts to communicate with them, maybe the situation
would be better, and I could at least communicate a bit more in the hospital. If everyone had
been as alert on January 1, there would not be so many tragedies.
On the afternoon of January 3, in the Nanjing Road Hospital, doctors of urology gathered to
review the work of the senior director, 43-year-old Dr. Hu Weifeng (胡卫峰),
who is now in emergency care; on the afternoon of January 8, the Nanjing Road Hospital Director
[of thyroid and breast surgery] Jiang Xueqing (江学庆) also organized the
first Wuhan City breast disease patient recovery get-together
(武汉市甲乳患者康复联欢会),
on the 22nd floor. On the morning of January 11, the department reported to me that Hu Ziwei
(胡紫薇), a nurse in the emergency room of the emergency department, was
infected. She'd be the first infected nurse in the central hospital. First-off, I called the
Chief of the Medical Department to report it, and then the hospital held an emergency meeting.
At the meeting we were instructed to change the report of "double lung infection, viral
pneumonia?" to "scattered infection of both lungs"
("两下肺感染，病毒性肺炎？"
to "两肺散在感染"). At the weekly meeting of January 16th,
a deputy dean was still saying, "Everyone must have a little medical common sense, and certain
senior doctors should not go about scaring people." Another leader spoke, and continued,
"Human-to-human transmission is not possible; it can be prevented, treated and controlled." One
day later, on January 17, Jiang Xueqing was hospitalized, and 10 days later he was intubated
and put on ECMO.
The toll at the central hospital is so large, and it's connected to the lack of transparency
for our medical staff. If you look at the people who fell ill, the emergency department and the
respiratory department suffered less heavily, because we had a sense of the need for
protection, and we knew we should quickly rest and get treatment as soon as we got sick. The
worst cases are in the peripheral departments; Li Wenliang was an ophthalmologist, and Jiang
Xueqing is a nail specialist.
Jiang Xueqing was really a very good person, with excellent medical skills. He held one of
the two Chinese Physician Awards in the hospital. And yet we were neighbors, we were a unit;
I'm located on the 40th floor, he was on the 30th floor, our working relationship was very
good, but because I am too busy at work, I only met him during meetings and hospital
activities. He was a workaholic, always either in the operating room or at the clinic. No one
would go to tell him specifically, "Director Jiang, you have to pay attention and wear a mask".
He didn't have the time and energy to inquire about these things, and he must have brushed it
off with: "What's the matter? It's pneumonia." This was what people in that department told
me.
If these doctors had been warned in time, perhaps this day wouldn't have come. So that's
why, as one closely involved, I regret what I did. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't
have cared about the reprimand, I would have [expletive] spoken of it everywhere, to everyone,
wouldn't I?
Although I worked in the same hospital as Li Wenliang (李文亮) did before
he died, I didn't know him, because the hospital had over 4,000 people on staff and was usually
busy. The night before his death, the director of the ICU called me to borrow a cardiac press
(心脏按压器; CPR device?) from the emergency department, and said
it was Li Wenliang who was going to be resuscitated. The news shocked me. I do not understand
everything that happened to Li Wenliang, but could his condition have been affected by his
emotional state after being reprimanded? I have to ask, with my experience; I felt it
myself.
Later, when things got to this point, it proved that Li Wenliang was right. I can understand
his state of mind very easily. It could be my own. I don't feel excitement or happiness, but
regret. Regret that I didn't continue to shout out loudly at the beginning, when people
intervened and scolded us. I often find myself thinking, if only we could turn back time, and
do it right.
Just surviving is good
On the night before the city was shut down on January 23, a friend from the relevant
department called to ask me about the true situation of emergency patients in Wuhan. I said,
are you asking in a private or public capacity? He said, private. [I said,] I will tell you the
truth when I speak on my behalf: On January 21, our emergency department saw 1,523 patients,
three times as many as usual, of which 655 had fever.
The situation in the emergency department during that time will never be forgotten by those
who experienced it, it completely changes your outlook on life.
If this is a war, the emergency department is the front line. But at the time, the inpatient
wards were saturated, and basically none of the patients were accepted, and the ICU was
resolutely refused to accept them. They said that there were uninfected patients in them, and
they became contaminated as soon as they entered. More patients kept rushing in to the
emergency department, and the inpatient beds were not open, so they all piled up in the
emergency department. Patients queued for a few hours to see a doctor. We couldn't take any
time off work at all. There was no distinction between the fever clinic and the emergency
department. The hall was full of patients. The emergency room, the IV room, everywhere was
filled with patients.
Another patient's family came in, wanting a bed for their dad, who couldn't make it in from
the car, because the underground garage was closed at the time, and the car couldn't get in. I
couldn't do anything about that, but I ran to the car with people and equipment. I saw
immediately that he was already dead. What can you say, it's very difficult to bear. The man
died in the car, he didn't even get out of the car.
There was also an old man, his wife had just died at Jinyintan Hospital, her son and
daughter were infected, and she was given an IV, her son-in-law was caring for her. As soon as
I saw that she was very ill, I contacted the respiratory department to admit her to the
hospital. Her son-in-law was obviously a cultured person. He came over and wished to thank the
doctor and so on. As a result, she died. It only took a few seconds, but it was a delay of a
few seconds. That quick "thank you" weighs heavily on me.
And yet there were many people who sent their families to the ward
(监护室[; guardianship room]? in the sense of trustee), and that's the last
time you'l see them, you'll never see them again.
I remember when I came to work on the morning of the Chinese New Year [Friday, January 24,
2020]. I said that we'd take a picture to commemorate the New Year. I also sent it to a circle
of friends. No one wished anyone a happy new year that day. At the time, just surviving was
good.
In the past, if you made a small mistake, for example, if you didn't give an injection in
time, the patient might still be in trouble. Now there's no one, no one is to raise it with
you, no-one is going to take issue with it. Everyone's overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, we
work blindly.
The patients died, and it was rare to see family members weeping and grieving, because there
were too many, too many. Some family members didn't say "Doctor, please save my family", but
said to the doctor, "Right, let's do this quickly"; it came to that. Everyone was afraid of
being infected.
The queue at the fever clinic was 5 hours long, every day. A woman waiting in line
collapsed, a woman in a leather coat, with a purse and high heels, very carefully dressed. A
middle-aged woman; no one dared to step forward to help her, and she lay on the ground for a
long time. I had to call the nurse and doctor to help her.
On the morning of January 30, I came to work. The son of a white-haired old man had died at
the age of 32. He stared blankly at the doctor giving him the death certificate. There are no
tears at all, how can one cry? There's no way to cry. From the style of his clothing, the old
man might be a rural migrant worker, there's no way to be sure. Without a diagnosis, his son
became a death certificate.
This is what I want to call for. The patients who died in the emergency department were all
undiagnosed, and their causes of death could not be confirmed. After this epidemic has passed,
I hope to give an explanation and give their families some comfort. Our patients wake
compassion, a great deal of compassion.
"Lucky"
Having been a doctor for so many years, I always felt that no difficulty could overwhelm me,
not with my experience and personality.
When I was nine, my father died of gastric cancer. At that time, I thought of growing up to
be a doctor, to save the lives of others. Later, when I did my the college entrance
examination, all my preferences were in medicine, and I finally got to go to Tongji Medical
College. After graduating from medical college in 1997, I went to the Central Hospital. I
previously worked in cardiovascular medicine, and I became the director of the emergency
department in 2010.
I feel the emergency department is one of my children. I built it up, I nurtured a
tight-knit group, which really doesn't make this situation easier, but it's what makes this
group such a treasure; I really cherish this team.
A few days ago, one of my nurses sent a message to a friends group saying "I really miss the
old big busy emergency department"; that kind of busy and this kind of busy are totally
different concepts.
Before this epidemic hit, our emergency department dealt with myocardial infarctions,
cerebral infarctions, gastrointestinal bleeding, trauma and so on. That kind of busy gives a
sense of accomplishment, it has a clear purpose, there's a smooth flow of procedures for all
the various types of patients. There are very mature procedures, there's not a single wasted
step, what to do next is not a problem. But in this time there were so many critically ill
patients whom we had no way to deal with and who couldn't be admitted to hospital, and our
medical staff was still at risk. This kind of busyness is desperate, it's deeply
distressing.
One day at 8 in the morning, a young doctor in our department sent me a WeChat, and it was
quite personal, saying they wouldn't come to work that day, not well. Since what we do here, if
someone is not well, they need to tell me about it in advance; if they tell me at 8 o'clock,
where do I go to find someone? The doctor lost their temper with me in WeChat, and said that a
large number of highly suspect cases were put back into the community by the emergency
department I led. We understand that this is sin! I understand this person, because this is a
doctor's professional ethics, but I was also anxious, and I said you can denounce me, but tell
me, what would you do if you were the director of the emergency department?
Later, the doctor came back to work after a few days of rest. The doctor didn't say that
they feared death or feared harm; no, they were affected the conditions; suddenly having to
deal with so many patients at once, they felt utterly overwhelmed.
And the work of the medics, especially for the many medics who came to support us, it was
psychologically unbearable. There were doctors and nurses in tears. Some were crying for
others, others were crying for themselves, because no-one knows when it will be their turn to
become infected.
Around mid-to-late January, the hospital's leaders also became ill, one after another,
including our director of the office and three vice-presidents. The daughter of the Chief of
Medical Services was also ill and resting at home. So basically there was no administration or
management; you just had to fight there, that was the feeling.
The people around me also started to come down with it one by one. On January 18, at 8:30 in
the morning, our first doctor collapsed, saying "I caught it just like the director did", no
fever, did a CT first off, and the lungs had a lump of ground-glass opacification
(坨磨玻璃). Not long after, the duty nurse in charge of the isolation
ward told me they'd fallen ill. That night, our head nurse fell ill. My very real first feeling
at that time was -- good luck, because falling ill early, you could get off the battlefield for
a little bit.
I've been in close contact with these three people. I just work every day with the belief
that I must fall ill. Everyone in the hospital thought I was a miracle. I've thought about it
myself, perhaps it's because I have asthma and I'm using some inhaled hormones, perhaps it
inhibits the deposition of these viruses in the lungs.
I've always felt that the people who work in the emergency department have feelings, too. In
Chinese hospitals, the status of the emergency department is relatively low among the
departments, because everyone thinks that the emergency department is nothing more than a route
into the hospital, it just needs to admit patients. During this epidemic, this sort of neglect
has always been present.
In the early days, they're weren't enough supplies. Sometimes the quality of the protective
clothing assigned to the emergency department was very poor. I was angry when I saw that our
nurses wore such clothes to work and spoke up about it in Zhouhui Qun [a WeChat group for MDs
in that hospital]. After that, many directors gave me all the protective clothing they kept in
their departments.
There were also problems with food. When there are many patients, the management gets
confused. They simply can't think that the emergency department still has to have something to
eat. Many departments had food and drink after shift changeover, they had a big spread, and
here, we had nothing. In the fever clinic's WeChat group, doctors complained: "Our emergency
department has only disposable diapers " We were the front-line response, and we had to deal
with that sort of thing, sometimes it made me really angry.
Our team is really good. Everyone held the line, they were only off work when they were
sick. More than 40 people in our emergency department were infected. I built a group of all the
sick people, originally called the "Emergency Department Sick
Group"(急诊生病群); the head nurse said that was unlucky, and
changed it to "Emergency Department Re-energizing Group"
(急诊加油群). Even the people who are sick weren't thinking in
terms of despair or blame. They were all very positive, that is, everyone had the attitude that
we needed to help one another to get thorough the crisis together.
These kids, these young people are very good, it's just that they, like me, have to live
with feeling slighted. I hope that after this epidemic, the country will also increase its
investment in emergency departments. In many countries' medical systems, the emergency
department is highly valued.
Unattainable happiness
On February 17th, I received a WeChat message from the old classmate at Tongji Hospital. He
said "Sorry" to me. I said: it's fortunate that you passed the message on and warned some
people in time. If he hadn't passed it on, they might not have Li Wenliang and the eight
others, but people would probably know less.
This time, we had the entire families of three female doctors get infected. Two female
doctors had their father-in-law and mother-in-law infected, and their husbands, and another had
her father, mother, sister, and husband infected, and five close relatives. Everyone thinks
that the virus was discovered so early on, and yet this is the result, it caused us such great
loss, took such a terrible toll.
It took this toll in many different ways, too. In addition to those who died, those who were
sick also suffered.
In our "Emergency Department Re-energizing group", people often exchange physical
conditions. Some people ask: a heart rate that's always 120 beats per minute, does it matter?
Surely it matters, they panic as soon as they move. This will affect them for life, and is
heart failure likely? It's hard to say. In the future, others will be able to go hiking and
traveling, and they might not be able to, all that is possible.
And Wuhan. You said that our Wuhan is a lively place; now it's very, very quiet on the
streets. Many things can't be bought and we have to support the whole country. A few days ago,
a nurse of a medical team in Guangxi suddenly fell into a coma while at work, and was
resucitated. Her heart restarted, but she is still in a coma. If she hadn't come to work, she
could have had a good time at home, and this kind of thing wouldn't have happened. So, I think
we owe everyone, really.
Having been through this epidemic, many people in the hospital have been hit hard. Several
medical staff below me have thoughts of resignation, including some backbones of the
department. Everyone's previous ideas, all the things everyone knows about this profession,
they're are inevitably a little shaken -- it's that you work so hard, isn't it? Just like Jiang
Xueqing, he worked too hard, he was too good to the patients, he was doing surgery every year
during [Chinese] New Year. Today, someone sent a WeChat written by Jiang Xueqing's daughter,
saying that her father's time was all given to his patients.
Myself, I've had countless thoughts of going back home to be a housewife. After the epidemic
began, I basically didn't go home, I lived separately from my husband. My sister helped take
care of my children at home. My second treasure didn't recognize me, didn't react to me when he
saw me on video. I felt very lost. It wasn't easy for me to give birth to this second child. He
was 10 kg at birth. I had to wean him abruptly -- when I made that decision, that was hard for
me to do. My husband told me that these things happen in life, and you're not only a
participant, you're also choosing to lead the team to fight this epidemic; that's also a very
meaningful act, and when everything returns to normal for everyone, then you'll remember; it's
a valuable experience to have had.
The leader (领导) talked to me on the morning of February 21st. Actually, I
would have liked to ask a few questions, such as, do you think that that criticism was wrong
that day? I hoped to be given an apology. But I dared not ask. No one said sorry to me on any
occasion. I still feel that these events are an even clearer demonstation of why each person
should stick to their own independent ideas, regardless, because if someone wants to stand up
and tell the truth, there must be someone, and the world must hear a dissenting voice,
right?
I'm Wuhanese, who doesn't love their own city? Now we remember what extravagant happiness we
enjoyed in the most ordinary life. I now feel that holding the baby, going out to play with him
on a slide, or going out to watch a movie with my husband, even things we never did all that
often in the past, they are now all a kind of happiness, an unattainable happiness.
Complete disinfecting protocol includes four steps: Pre-cleaning, disinfecting (dwell time),
wiping clean and rinsing with water. "But we're lucky if we get two," meaning dwell time and
wipe-up, said Mark Warner, education manager at the Cleaning Management Institute, a provider
of training and certification for professional cleaning services. Pre-cleaning is most
important on heavily soiled surfaces, because dirt can shield pathogens underneath; it's fine
to use soap and water or a household cleaner. Disinfecting for the proper dwell time, of
course, is nonnegotiable. Wiping afterward is essential because disinfectants can leave a
sticky residue where pathogens can quickly resettle. And rinsing finishes the process.
.... ... ...
Multiple sources give different bleach-to-water ratios for use with regular bleach. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that "unexpired bleach will be effective
against coronaviruses" in a 1:48 solution (⅓ cup of bleach per gallon of water, or 4
teaspoons per quart).
Clorox recommends a slightly stronger 1:32 ratio (½ cup per gallon or 2 tablespoons
per quart). Mark Warner recommends a much stronger 1:10 ratio (about 1½ cups per gallon
of water, or about ⅓ cup per quart). Some medical disinfectants are basically the same
solution.
Whichever ratio you use, let it sit on the surface for 10 minutes: Warner told us that this
is the Environmental Protection Agency's guideline for any new or unknown pathogen, and it is
also the dwell time listed for the regular household bleaches on the E.P.A.'s
List N, which means it is approved to eliminate the coronavirus when properly used.
Don't mix up more than you will use within a day or two. Bleach degrades fairly rapidly once
taken from its original storage container, becoming less effective each day
via Gates Expert jacob levitch's twit account:
April 09, 2020 , Gates' Globalist Vaccine Agenda: A Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory
Vaccination , RFK, Jr, Chairman, Children's Health Defense
[hope you won't mind if i paste it all in, CB.]
'Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many
vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft's ambition to control a global vaccination
ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.
Gates' obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with
technology.
Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took
control of India's National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated
up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to
children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating
non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond
expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates'
vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates
dropped precipitously.
In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global
explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. [?] The most frightening epidemics in
Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70%
of global polio cases were vaccine strain.
In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by
Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces.
Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility
disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded
researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls
into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the
injured girls. The case is now in the country's Supreme Court.
In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK's experimental malaria
vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including
paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.
During Gates' 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates' operatives forcibly
vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500
children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, "We are
guinea pigs for the drug makers." Nelson Mandela's former Senior Economist, Professor
Patrick Bond, describes Gates' philanthropic practices as "ruthless and immoral."
... ... ...
In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates
funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is
donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a
coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the
Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs
on American children.'
Two months ago 2 out of every 100 YouTube users were actual medical professionals. Today,
we have 97 pseudo medical professionals for every 100 users... especially the wacko group
that thinks 5G causes COVID-19.
"If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered
to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God,
stop a moment, cease your work, look around you." Leo Tolstoy
That's the message in a blistering April 11 letter sent by the New York State
Nurses Association's director to Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, obtained by The Post.
The letter contradicts comments made by Melissa de Rosa, secretary to Gov. Cuomo, at a press briefing
last week, in which she said that hospitals were receiving
stockpiled PPE equipment
and that no health care facilities in the state would have to resort to
"crisis conservation."
That means the reusing of masks, hospital gowns and other equipment meant to guard against the spread
of COVID-19.
"At this point most hospitals and nursing homes in the New York City metropolitan area, which is the
national epicenter of the pandemic, continue to operate under 'crisis conservation' standards because
they do not have enough PPE to distribute to our desperate staff," wrote Patricia Kane, the executive
director of the Nurses Association, the union which represents 42,000 frontline nurses in the state.
Enlarge Image
Nurses
at Mount Sinai West wearing garbage bags as PPEs.
Criselle Cruz Bermas
In the letter, Kane went on to describe "widespread" crisis protocols for re-using scarce protective
equipment.
She described how N95 masks are only being used by nurses and other staff in ICUs and the masks,
designed for one-time use, must be recycled for up to five days before being discarded.
She described how the delay of delivery of PPEs to many hospitals have forced health care workers to
collect and re-sterilize used PPE equipment which would be discarded under normal circumstances.
"If the state is in possession of stockpiles of PPE, they should be immediately distributed to our
facilities so that our nurses and other staff can provide can provide care for patients under safe
conditions," Kane said.
"We urge you to treat this matter with the urgency that the situation warrants and act to protect the
safety and lives of the nurses and other direct care workers on the front lines of this fight.
"Our nurses do not need expressions of appreciation and promises. They need to see ample supplies of
PPE on their units."
Question: Why the hell do all of you in the comments assume this guy is right, and
literally every SINGLE other doctor and physician is wrong? Just because he's contradicting
the consensus? He hasn't presented a shred of evidence apart from his "theories". How likely
is it that literally nobody else agrees with him? Essentially zero. Why are you all jumping
on this? Cause of some insane conspiracy that every physician in the world is part of some
conspiracy to lie to you?
="article"> RT here. I'd consider using an esophageal balloon catheter and adjusting
vent settings according to transpulmonary pressures. A lot of places are using ARDSnet
protocol and this is a great start, but transpulmonary pressure monitoring is really the next
step up to achieving optimal and safe ventilator settings. I have a high suspicion that if
you place a balloon in a patient on ARDSnet setting, their PEEP would be suboptimal and their
transpulmonary pressure will be negative, suggesting alveolar collapse with every breath,
leading to atelectrauma and lung injury. I've had patients in APRV, placed a balloon and
switched back to conventional ventilation with balloon guided settings, and have drastic
improvements in both oxygenation and ventilation. Increasing PEEP to achieve PtpExp 0-5 to
avoid alveolar collapse and adjusting tidal volumes/inspiratory pressures to maintain
PtpInsp(Driving Pressure) <15 to avoid overdistention.
div>I tentatively suggest it may be worth researching Viagra as a possible treatment -
Viagra causes the blood to flow more freely and more oxygen flow in the body - Viagra is
commonly used by high altitude climbers to help them combat the severe lack of oxygen at high
altitude - see my previous comments. Maybe Viagra could help get desperately needed oxygen in
to the blood of Covid 19 patients and help save lives. It's definitely worth considering - as
it is an existing approved drug that could easily be re-appropriated without lengthy clinical
trials. At this point we have nothing to loose - if Viagra could possibly help, then it is
tentatively worth looking in to. (Possibly Coca leaves too - as they are also used to help
the body uptake oxygen at high altitude where there is very little oxygen - but I suppose
Coca leaves would never get official approval) I would be very interested to hear peoples
thoughts. Please read my previous comment for more info. Thank you for taking the time to
read this.
iv>Looks like the Covid19 has at least 3 stages of progression: Stage 1: fever, cough,
diarrhea, headache, within 7-10 days of infection Stage 2: as disease gets deeper into the
lungs, shortness of breath, low levels of oxygen by approximately day 11-15 days. At this
point the Respirators helps patients Stage 3: at about 3 weeks. The patients are very sick,
acute respiratory distress, shock, cardiac failure and death. Most probable, they are
experiencing the effects of the 'Cytokine storm' due to the viral overload, and a massive
release of cytokines, causing serious damage to the lungs, loss of lung function and fatal
outcome.
renderer-text-content expanded">Thank you, doctor. I'm a recently retired PhD veteran
of respiratory research out of pharma & biotech. I'm so relieved someone with credibility
has finally called it correctly. I have friends in Italy I've known for decades through the
medical/ research community. They've told me EXACTLY what you've found. Further, in some
Italian case series, 97% died on ventilators. A similar case series given high oxygen CPAP
often survived. Now imagine hundreds of elderly people, ill & having a positive covid19
PCR test, being put on transport ventilators attended by physicians inexperienced in ITU. I
would not expect many to survive, but this is our "surge capacity" we've set up in UK.
omment-renderer-text-content expanded">This is exactly what I have been suspecting.
This was recently published in Nature. "The results showed the ORF8 and surface glycoprotein
could bind to the porphyrin, respectively. At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a
proteins could coordinate attack the heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to dissociate the
iron to form the porphyrin. The attack will cause less and less hemoglobin that can carry
oxygen and carbon dioxide. The lung cells have extremely intense poisoning and inflammatory
due to the inability to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen frequently, which eventually
results in ground-glass-like lung images." 1. The virus attaches to the hemoglobin via ORF8
(a protein) and glycoprotein. Hemoglobin is an iron rich protein that that allows red blood
cells to carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. 2. This allows it to cut off
the iron 3. This reduces the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide available to the lung cells.
(it is well known that anemia causes shortness of breathe, for example, because your body
does not get enough oxygen rich blood). 4. This results in intense poisoning and
inflammation, which results in lung damage, the ground glass like lung images, and sometimes
death. Sickle cell disease is caused by a mutation in the hemoglobin-Beta gene found on
chromosome 11. Hemoglobin transports oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body. Red
blood cells with normal hemoglobin (hemoglobin-A) are smooth and round and glide through
blood vessels. This may be why an anti-malaria drug like Plaquenil might be effective against
this virus. Sickle cell anemia mutates the hemoglobin-Beta gene, which then provides
protection from malaria. COVID-19 attacks the beta-hemoglobin. Doctor, I came to the same
conclusion myself. Please pass this along to your colleagues.
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173/5?fbclid=IwAR1K50u0wRWhOCv0_rxS2_bYk7p3mT-OWX08GXaa0Tm13bzT8Wl8MYfTAI8
There seems to be some evidence that hemoglobin is being disrupted and Iron ions are being
released and the Free iron ions are poisoning the lung cell. this needs to be researched.
Mitigated by providing O2 may be needed.
In Italy some (few) hospitals started using ozone therapy and the very first experiences
are rather promising. I really hope that they can find an effective treatment of
Covid-19.
iv> TY-I posted this on my FB and am sharing with all the pulmonologists I know. You
are spot on. Many of us nurses have had similar questions. Why is Vent to death rate nearly
2x faster with this than pneumonia? This is what I posted on my FB w your video. Please
please keep talking - everyone please keep talking and being public. Doctors and nurses are
the ones who will raise public awareness and create change and save lives. Nobody else.
Seriously we are on our own. Our union nurses have been making the news daily. We need to
continue to take over Social media and the news and use the public trust to advance care of
our patients and protection for us (need PPE) and our families. "This is NOT pneumonia. I
100% agree with him. There's no other answer to the poor response and rapid decline with
"traditional" treatment regimens. Please get this video out to all providers-especially
ICU-Critical Care Providers-Pulmonologists- Infection Disease doctors. There has to be a
different paradigm. Steroid use must be questioned. Suppression of febrile state must be
questioned? Why not allow the immune response to run its course up to 40C? Pay attention to
ACE2 receptor and microbiology of it's actions and role. Check out Med Cram or John Campbell
on Youtube as well. They speak to the same questions. We are all learning and this is
something totally new."
Malaria is also linked to hypoxia because the malaria parasite uses hemoglobin as a
nutrient source. HCQ is effective in protecting the hemoglobin in the blood which is why it
is showing success against COVID-19 as well.
" role="article"> There are four types of hypoxia: hypoxic, stagnant, anaemic and
cytotoxic - as I am sure you know. If your theory is correct this would equate to anaemic
hypoxia, but instead of lack of haemoglobin it would be dysfunctional. Similar, in a way, to
CO poisoning: HB doesn't unload oxygen, so there is a tissue hypoxia without cyanosis. What
you would see is normal or high pa02 (partial pressure of oxygen in arterial blood) and
discordantly low arterial haemoglobin saturation. On the other hand, if pa02 is low it
indicates that the primary problem is pulmonary, that is oxygen does not diffuse across the
alveolar membrane. If haemoglobin is the primary problem then blood transfusion would indeed
improve the outcome. What is the typical blood gas like in these patients? I am in Australia,
and we don't have many severe cases, luckily. From what get to the Internet I gather these
patients are also hypercarbic. Which is the opposite of the altitude sickness, where a
patients hyperventilates, causing hypocarbia and respiratory alkalosis, with consequent
symptoms. Hence acetazolamide treatment. So, what's the typical arterial blood gas like in
COVID patients? High pa02 and low Sa02? Both low? What's paCO2 like?
Thank you for covering this doctor. I am sharing. I noticed that they have not rushed to
put Boris Johnson on a ventilator and Dr. Oz brought up the ventilator issues on a recent
broadcast. There are not enough qualified personnel running these machines throughout the
States and that is a cause for concern because as you have noted they need to be monitored
and adjusted accordingly. Stay safe. We have your back.
="article"> Video: Ari Whitten speaks with Scott Antoine, MD -- a board-certified
emergency physician and a functional and integrative medicine doctor about the latest
findings on COVID-19: A potential breakthrough on COVID-19 treatment." Show Notes: The
difference between ARDS and COVID-19 ( 0:59 ) The danger of the cytokine
storm ( 8:28 ) How COVID-19 may not be a
respiratory condition ( 16:20 ) The pros and cons of
ventilators ( 25:13 ) Why Methylene blue
shows promise for treating COVID-19 ( 31:00 ) Other potential factors
that could help COVID-19 treatment ( 47:33 ) How Vitamin C works in
COVID-19 treatment ( 55:09 )
https://www.theenergyblueprint.com/blue/?inf_contact_key=7c7cb8a0e1a3404449b49e79b5046d61d18a532c4142cb79caf2b269de1401fa
rticle"> Fantastic analysis, backed by a prospective explanation. I'm a physician in
upstate NY and confirm Dr. Kyle-Sidell's observations. HFNC (high-flow nasal cannula) appears
to be a good intermediary between typical face-mask O2 and traditional ventilators .. but
these machines are not in widespread use. Optiflow by Fisher & Paykal
https://www.fphcare.com/us/hospital/adult-respiratory/optiflow/ and Hi-VNI Precision Flow
by Vapotherm
https://vapotherm.com/hi-vni-technology/ are two companies that make these units. I have
no financial interests in either of these companies.
"article"> The symptoms of individuals presenting with suspected "CoVid 19" are similar
to individuals with radiation sickness. What is your experience with treating radiation
sickness? Have you attempted to utilize radiation sickness treatment protocol to address the
symptoms you are witnessing in individuals presenting with suspected "CoVid 19"? You feedback
is appreciated, thank you in advance.
https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/radiation-sickness
lass="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> You are right. My hospital has a 0%
success rate using ventilators on covid patients. These patients can be sitting comfortably
talking to you on a non-rebreather with no use of accessory muscles and have a pulse ox of
75%. They appear to have no issue moving air into and out of the lungs like you would see if
it were ARDS. They all have horribly high ferritin levels and go into kidney failure long
before their respiratory system crashes.
This virus destroys the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood through the iron binding
sites of the red blood cells. So what then is the solution?
iv> This is from CDC web site (description of malaria): Severe malaria occurs when
infections are complicated by serious organ failures or abnormalities in the patient's blood
or metabolism. The manifestations of severe malaria include the following: Cerebral malaria,
with abnormal behavior, impairment of consciousness, seizures, coma, or other neurologic
abnormalities Severe anemia due to hemolysis (destruction of the red blood cells)
Hemoglobinuria (hemoglobin in the urine) due to hemolysis Acute respiratory distress syndrome
(ARDS), an inflammatory reaction in the lungs that inhibits oxygen exchange, which may occur
even after the parasite counts have decreased in response to treatment Abnormalities in blood
coagulation Low blood pressure caused by cardiovascular collapse Acute kidney injury
Hyperparasitemia, where more than 5% of the red blood cells are infected by malaria parasites
Metabolic acidosis (excessive acidity in the blood and tissue fluids), often in association
with hypoglycemia Hypoglycemia (low blood glucose). Hypoglycemia may also occur in pregnant
women with uncomplicated malaria, or after treatment with quinine. Severe malaria is a
medical emergency and should be treated urgently and aggressively. Now, what we have at hand
is viral malaria type disease. Same symptoms. Now, BIll Gates was working on the cure for
malaria, right? Maybe he found something else. Malaria and COVID 19 both respond well to HCQ.
You guys make your own conclusions.
Did you ever wonder if the disease itself gets a foothold because of the oxygen saturation
level of the patients involved? Could it be that the most severely compromised already have
lowered oxygen levels? Certainly exacerbated by COVID-19 but perhaps initiated by initial
lowered oxygen levels?
Dr Bill Deagle of Nutrimedical Report recently said in his broadcast that COVID-19 is like
a high altitude sickness - just as you've concluded Dr Kyle-Sidell. Dr. Bill Deagle (a bit
rough around the edges yet brilliant) claims to have treatment solutions that are effective.
Perhaps you should contact him immediately and have a conversation. It may steer the course
to brighter outcomes for us all. God speed! 🇺🇸
Good, but so few doctors have the nuts to speak out as this physician did. Treating Lungs,
when the lungs ARE WORKING FINE and only get damaged by the ventilator. It's blood disease,
where hemoglobin is destroyed and cannot deliver oxygen to the organs. We need
Hydroxychloroquine widely distributed as a preventative AND CURE, and open up our society
again!! FIRE FAUCI!
e"> You must clear out the phlegm in both lungs first. This virus consumes & breaks
down lung cells to replicate itself. As more cells are consumed more pinkish phlegm will
continue to form inside both lungs and blocking the air. Eventually the lungs will be
liquefied. Put down that American pride and start working with the Chinese experts to SAVE
LIVES. Enough time has been wasted on playing the blame game
https://covid-19.alibabacloud.com/
le"> ARDS, oxidative stress, PAP.( Pulmonary Alveolar Proteinosis), " It has been
proposed that lower iron saturation of Tf decreases iron-mediated oxidative stress and
rescues respiratory failure [89,90]. Secondary PAP can accompany infection, particle exposure
and malignancies [38], most of which are associated with altered iron homeostasis. Together,
a remarkable relationship between PAP and iron metabolism exists" " it has been proposed that
the presence of pro-oxidant iron in lung epithelial fluid may contribute to susceptibility to
oxidative damage [28]. Lavage fluid of ARDS patients has elevated levels of total and nonheme
iron as well as cellular content of Tf, ferritin and Lf [86]. This indicates impaired
pulmonary homeostasis of iron in ARDS, although it is unclear whether this is due to general
increase in membrane permeability or altered iron metabolism." ARDSAcute Respiratory Distress
SyndromeBALBronchoalveolar LavageDcytbDuodenal cytochrome bDMT1Divalent Metal Transporter
1FPNFerroportinLfLactoferrinLfRLactoferrin ReceptorNramp1Natural Resistance-associated
Macrophage Protein 1PAPPulmonary Alveolar ProteinosisRBCRed Blood
CellsTfTransferrinTfRTransferrin Receptor I copied and pasted exerpts from the study.
Interesting Read between correlation of Iron Homeostasis / Regulation and ARDS, Lung
Inflammation etc
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5718378/
> Cameron - I'm a retired scientist and former climber who got this disease back in
January (classic symptoms, including shortness of breath - now permanent), and what you are
describing is EXACTLY what I thought. I have been telling people that "I'm permanently stuck
at 7000 feet in the Colorado Rockies". I sleep worse just like when I was in the mountains.
Very lucky I'm not at 11,000 feet - that would not have been long-term survivable for me. I
can likely live 10-20 more years with this, if it doesn't progress, but I have a feeling that
it DOES PROGRESS. I don't think the virus is gone. It seems like it's still there. Quinine
and zinc helped me AFTER recovery, but the side effects of quinine are nasty, so I'm taking a
break. I had to get MacGyver and self-treat because I'm supposedly cured and can't get
HCQ/AZM/Zn and my doc is not a specialist, etc. Nobody knows how to deal with this, so my
fellow online researchers are working constantly on understanding (wqth.wordpress.com). We
think a lot of us got it - two of us had intermediate cases like mine (no hospitals). Would
love to get into a study.
You are the first colleague that also seems to have discovered that COVID-19 is not an
ordinary viral pneumonia. I think I may know how to prevent respiatoy failure in an early
phase and therefore no need for mechanical ventilation.
"article"> Hi Doctor. My experience of COVID-19 over the last 4 weeks precisely as you
are describing. I instinctively felt when I got it that it was not what the experts
described. I could feel through my knowledge with my body that the problem with my system as
it started to breakdown was in the drop in the oxygen levels being the main source of my
distress. The way I got COVID-19 the symptoms of fever, dry cough, aches and pains were such
that they did not distract from the main problem itself which was my system not taking in
oxygen, I have been trying to puzzle this out during my recovery and I definitely think that
as your explain it here it is the case with how the COVID-19 virus takes down the individual.
You must forge ahead with this. Let me offer an example in my own treatment of this ... I
deliberately removed certain remedies I was using like Vit C for a period of time to see what
the effect would be then I returned to a regime of taking it and the oxygen in-take into my
system returned and my system improved with the simple increase of Vit C I felt my oxygen
intake improve and I felt immediately less stressed. Also, a constriction in the back of my
throat alongside my swallowing action indicated to me when my system was struggling with
oxygen intake levels moving up and down. I definitely do agree with your findings here from
my experience of being a victim of this Virus in a significant way.
cle"> Email from another doctor in New York City to a colleague: "We have zero success
story for patients who were intubated. Our thinking is changing to postpone intubation to as
long as possible, to prevent mechanical injury from the vent. "Those patients tolerate
arterial hypoxia surprisingly well. Natural course seems to be the best. Yesterday did not
intubate patient with 86% [blood oxygen saturation percentage] on non re breather ( gave the
best sat, desated on CPAP). Today he is sating 96%. If he would have been intubated, he will
be dead in three days."
le"> Doctor Ming Lin an emergency room doctor with 17 years of experience was fired for
going public about poor hospital room safety and shortage of medical supplies and PPE. He was
employed by a physician staffing firm at Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham,Washington. A
third of hospital emergency rooms are staffed by 2 physician staffing companies TeamHealth
and Envision Healthcare, owned by Wall Street investment firms. Patients and insurance
companies then can be overcharged for needed emergency care. Blackstone's owner of Teamhealth
CEO, Stephan Schwarzman a part of the president's circle would not want an employee to
express information contrary to the political rhetoric of the current administration. The
navy relieved Captain Brett Cozier for also sounding the alarm about lack of medical supplies
and supplies. Do not be naive enough to believe money and power trumps the wellbeing of the
citizens of this country.
Could it not be an IHA reaction, also associated with the vulnerabilities to Covid?
Suppress that response and allow more time to overcome viral replication.
Tracey Continelli1 day ago This is exactly what I have been suspecting. This was recently
published in Nature. "The results showed the ORF8 and surface glycoprotein could bind to the
porphyrin, respectively. At the same time, orf1ab, ORF10, and ORF3a proteins could coordinate
attack the heme on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin to dissociate the iron to form the
porphyrin. The attack will cause less and less hemoglobin that can carry oxygen and carbon
dioxide. The lung cells have extremely intense poisoning and inflammatory due to the
inability to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen frequently, which eventually results in
ground-glass-like lung images." 1. The virus attaches to the hemoglobin via ORF8 (a protein)
and glycoprotein. Hemoglobin is an iron rich protein that that allows red blood cells to
carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. 2. This allows it to cut off the iron 3.
This reduces the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide available to the lung cells. (it is well
known that anemia causes shortness of breathe, for example, because your body does not get
enough oxygen rich blood). 4. This results in intense poisoning and inflammation, which
results in lung damage, the ground glass like lung images, and sometimes death. Sickle cell
disease is caused by a mutation in the hemoglobin-Beta gene found on chromosome 11.
Hemoglobin transports oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body. Red blood cells with
normal hemoglobin (hemoglobin-A) are smooth and round and glide through blood vessels. This
may be why an anti-malaria drug like Plaquenil might be effective against this virus. Sickle
cell anemia mutates the hemoglobin-Beta gene, which then provides protection from malaria.
COVID-19 attacks the beta-hemoglobin. Doctor, I came to the same conclusion myself. Please
pass this along to your colleagues.
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173/5?fbclid=IwAR1K50u0wRWhOCv0_rxS2_bYk7p3mT-OWX08GXaa0Tm13bzT8Wl8MYfTAI8
Bob Sapp20 hours ago Tracey Continelli I'm trying to understand why the anti-malaria drug
would work. Are you saying the drug will mutate our hemoglobin and then the virus wouldn't be
able to attach itself to our red blood cell? Tracey Continelli11 hours ago (edited) @Bob Sapp
YES. Before the Nature article came out, multiple studies have been done showing that the
anti-malaria drug Plaquenil alters the intracellular structure. One article I found stated
that it had the ability to alter the protein structure. If this is true - and based on the
article in Nature, the virus attaches itself to the PROTEIN on the outside of the red blood
cells - then it is effectively PREVENTING the virus from attaching itself to the proteins and
glycoproteins on the red blood cells, where it then "kicks out" the iron ion, which then
prevents the lung cells from getting the necessary oxygen, which then causes the respiratory
distress and damaged lungs that clinicians are seeing. Tracey Continelli10 hours ago (edited)
I'm a health researcher and college professor. Hydroxychloroquine is hypothesized to be
exerting a multi-pronged effect on this virus. One, by altering the cellular structure, it
can make it difficult to replicate and reproduce itself. Two, it can make it difficult to
attach to the red blood cell wall and kicking out the iron ion, causing the deprivation of
oxygen to the lungs and patients becoming hypoxemic. Three, as someone noted, because it
dampens down the immune system (it is given to patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis,
both of whom have hyperactive immune system) it should lower the risk of a cytokine storm.
Sermo just conducted a study of over 6000 physicians around the world, asking them what
treatments for COVID-19 they had used, and which they considered to be the most promising.
Sermo regularly surveys physicians around the world, it is an established organization. As a
professor/researcher I was able to access the data myself and ran the numbers. Excluding
already approved treatments, such as Tylenol, antibiotics, etc, I isolated ONLY the four
experimental treatments and computed the percentages. Here they are: Hydroxychloroquine - 49%
Anti-HIV retrivirals - 30% Plasma - 8% Remdesivir - 13% Sermo computed the percentages
differently by including other drug treatments, but still found that hydroxychloroquine was
rated as most effective.
https://www.sermo.com/press-releases/largest-statistically-significant-study-by-6200-multi-country-physicians-on-covid-19-uncovers-treatment-patterns-and-puts-pandemic-in-context/?fbclid=IwAR36GA79oiUF5cuCjuweV2pqys0Eneu6AAbqoOfikK1PgYepVvLP1tKC5cc
e"> Thoughts on COVID-19 Pathophysiology and Therapeutic Intervention Posted on Quora
on 5/10 in response to the video. Quora: Does Covid-19 really cause ARDS? Dr. Cameron
Kyle-Sidell questions treating COVID-19 with the present medical paradigm of ARDS. ........
"We should consider that part of the pathophysiological mechanism of COVID-19 is resulting
from an acquired hemoglobinopathy or dyshemoglobinemia" .
I think this may answer some of your questions about oxygenation vs ventilation.
https://archive.is/ONUmi#selection-183.0-183.75 Says that CV causes the iron to
dissociate from the heme groups, causing dysfunctional hemoglobin. And the Fe+++ causes
massive oxidative damage. That is why intravenous Vitamin C has been so effective at avoiding
the cytokine storm. Even explains chloroquine effect. Highly recommended.
There is no doubt that corporate media distributes fake news. Before the pandemic, it was to
line the owner's pockets and get rid of the nationalist oligarch, Donald Trump. Now the world
is turned upside down and the pandemic is out of their control.
Markets rule, profits first, dying empire reluctantly and haphazardly sheltered its
population in place crashing the economy. Donald Trump was a useless bystander. 15% to 20% of
the coronavirus infected must be hospitalized. This would crash the healthcare system for the
wealthy not just everyone else. The super-rich's Hamptons on Long Island are just as
adversely impacted as NY City.
The nations that conduct contact tracing and quarantine the infected have lower numbers of
dead than nations like the USA that don't. The riff-raff still don't matter. The Oligarchs
will open up the USA on May 1st if they see no risk dying themselves. The basic problem is
that with the stupid inept national governments left over from the fall of the Western
Empire; the outcome, opened up or not, will be a continued economic depression and new waves
of coronavirus breakouts and more lockdowns until a vaccine is developed or civil society is
restored.
Ventilator-associated lung
injury - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Ventilator-associated_lung_injury Ventilator-associated lung injury (VALI) is an acute lung injury that develops
during mechanical ventilation and is termed ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) if it can be proven that the mechanical
ventilation caused the acute lung injury. In contrast, ventilator-associated lung injury (VALI) exists if the cause
cannot be proven.
Here is that view: "if funds are not limitless – then we should focus on doing things
whereby we can do the most good (save the most lives) for the least possible amount of
money. Or use the money we have, to save the most lives." Health economics measures the
cost per QALY. A QALY is a Quality Adjusted Life Year. One added year of the highest
quality life would be one QALY. "How much are we willing to pay for one QALY? The current
answer, in the UK, is that the NHS will recommend funding medical interventions if they
cost less than £30,000/QALY. Anything more than this is considered too expensive and
yet the UK's virus package is £350bn, almost three times the current yearly budget
for the entire NHS. Is this a price worth paying?" This expert reckoned that "the cost of
saving a COVID victim was more than eleven times the maximum cost that the NHS will
approve." At the same time cancer patients are not being treated, hip replacements are
being postponed, heart and diabetes sufferers are not being dealt with.
Tim Harford in the FT took a different view. He points out that the US Environmental
Protection Agency values a statistical life at $10m in today's money, or $10 per micromort
(one in a million risk of death) averted. "If we presume that 1 per cent of infections are
fatal, then it is a 10,000 micromort condition. On that measure, being infected is 100
times more dangerous than giving birth, or as perilous as travelling two and a half times
around the world on a motorbike. For an elderly or vulnerable person, it is much more risky
than that. At the EPA's $10 per micromort, it would be worth spending $100,000 to prevent a
single infection with Covid-19. You don't need a complex epidemiological model to predict
that if we take no serious steps to halt the spread of the virus, more than half the world
is likely to contract it. That suggests 2m US deaths and 500,000 in Britain -- assuming,
again, a 1 per cent fatality rate. If an economic lockdown in the US saves most of these
lives, and costs less than $20tn, then it would seem to be value for money." The key point
for me here is that this dilemma of 'costing' a life would be reduced if there had been
proper funding of health systems, sufficient to provide 'spare capacity' in case of
crises.
It is also a myth that lockdowns lower life expectancy. This is pure money fetishism.
Besides the fact that almost nobody dies of hunger in one month, you have to take into
account that mortality by violent causes (car accidents, workplace accidents in dangerous
jobs, etc.) also fall:
But the Bristol study is just a risk assessment. Proper health studies show that recessions
do not increase mortality at all. A recession – a short-term, temporary fall in GDP
– need not, and indeed normally does not, reduce life expectancy. Indeed,
counterintuitively, the weight of the evidence is that recessions actually lead to people
living longer. Suicides do indeed go up, but other causes of death, such as road accidents
and alcohol-related disease, fall.
Marxist health economist Dr Jose Tapia (also an author of one of the chapters in our
book World in Crisis) has done several studies on the impact of recessions on health. He
found that mortality rates in industrial countries tend to rise in economic expansions and
fall in economic recessions. Deaths attributed to heart disease, pneumonia, accidents,
liver disease, and senility -- making up about 41% of total mortality -- tend to fluctuate
procyclically, increasing in expansions. Suicides, as well as deaths attributable to
diabetes and hypertensive disease, make up about 4% of total mortality and fluctuate
countercyclically, increasing in recessions. Deaths attributed to other causes, making up
about half of total deaths, don't show a clearly defined relationship with the fluctuations
of the economy. "All these effects of economic expansions or recessions on mortality that
can be seen, e.g., during the Great Depression or the Great Recession, are tiny if compared
with the mortality effects of a pandemic," said Tapia in an interview.
The food problem (for those who can't afford, because production was never the problem)
can be easily solved by a simple scheme of food banks.
They key, thus, is to avoid healthcare systems collapses. As long as the healthcare system
stands, mortality in general should lower - but that's obviously not the case in many
countries, as decades of neoliberalism had a deteriorating effect on them.
The economic impact (fall in GDPs) has a merely geopolitical effect: yes, the West will
emerge smaller from this pandemic. But then, it was already degenerating since 2008.
"... New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has launched a fund to support sick healthcare workers and their families, but some blame him for the dire working conditions facing the state's caregivers after nine years of hospital budget cuts. Cuomo announced the state is working on a "Covid-19 Heroes Compensation Fund" to support healthcare workers and their families who have been diagnosed with the coronavirus during his daily briefing on Friday. It was heralded by his growing Democratic fan club as a generous, thoughtful move from a politician who cares about the "frontline workers." ..."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has launched a fund to support sick healthcare workers
and their families, but some blame him for the dire working conditions facing the state's
caregivers after nine years of hospital budget cuts. Cuomo announced the state is working on a
"Covid-19 Heroes Compensation Fund" to support healthcare workers and their families who
have been diagnosed with the coronavirus during his daily briefing on Friday. It was heralded
by his growing Democratic fan club as a generous, thoughtful move from a politician who cares
about the "frontline workers."
Absent from the lovefest was any mention of how the governor had - just the previous day -
deferred 2 percent pay raises to some 80,000 state workers for 90 days, and potentially for
longer. Many of those affected are healthcare workers in the state's prisons and mental health
facilities.
Union leaders were outraged. "It's inexcusable to require our workers to literally face
death to ensure the state keeps running and then turn around and deny those very workers their
much-deserved raise in this time of crisis, " Civil Service Employees Association president
Mary Sullivan told the Times Union, while NY Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent
Association chief Michael Powers called the postponement a "slap in the face" to workers
facing "some of the most dangerous conditions in the state."
While Cuomo is being praised for his leadership amid the coronavirus outbreak, the problems
he is scrambling to solve are largely of his own making. Although aware of a 2015 report
highlighting the desperately-depleted state stockpile of ventilators, he didn't take any
actions on it, and has spent his tenure shuttering and downsizing hospitals across the state,
mostly those serving low-income clients. The state has eliminated 20,000 hospital beds in the
last two decades, at least half under his leadership.
The New York state budget passed at the beginning of the month included deep cuts to
Medicaid and may have rendered the state ineligible for $6 billion in federal aid, infuriating
liberal lawmakers who were less enchanted with the new #Resistance hero. State Senator Gustavo
Rivera (D-Bronx) told the New York Daily News that Cuomo's latest budget "only offered harsh
austerity for the poorest and most vulnerable" New Yorkers.
The state's Democrat-controlled senate called on Cuomo to tax the wealthy - New York has the
highest economic inequality in the country, and a tax on the richest .01 percent has upwards of
90 percent approval among voters - only to be turned down by the politician who has earned the
nickname "Governor One Percent."
The latest cost-cutting moves resulted in New York City deprived on $200 million in sales
tax revenue when the big apple is at the epicenter of the US coronavirus outbreak.
The pandemic has hospitals so understaffed that NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation has
apparently been reduced to contracting dodgy medical-temp agencies - one, Kansas-based
disaster-staffing group Krucial Staffing, was sued earlier this week for luring out-of-state
medical professionals to work in city hospitals under false pretenses, promising them cushy
posts with ample protective equipment and no Covid-19 exposure - to fill vacancies. The suit
alleges Krucial's misrepresentation of working conditions placed healthcare workers' medical
licenses and lives in danger.
It's unclear how many medical workers have contracted and died of the disease in the state,
as New York, along with several other states, does not tract infections among medical staff.
According to a BuzzFeed News review of the reports by 12 states, which made their data public,
at least 5,400 nurses and doctors tested positive nationwide, while dozens have succumbed to
the lethal illness. Among them, Kious Kelly, an assistant nurse manager at Mount Sinai West,
whose death from the coronavirus on March 24 sparked protests among the personnel and led to
the hospital eventually allowing workers to receive tests – but only those already
showing symptoms.
Some 7,887 New Yorkers have died with coronavirus since the beginning of the outbreak, the
majority of them - 5,820 - in New York City.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
In Italy, two similar regions, Lombardy and Veneto, took different approaches to the
community spread of the epidemic. Both mandated social distancing, but only Veneto
undertook massive contact tracing and testing early on. Despite starting from very similar
points, Lombardy is now tragically overrun with the disease, having experienced roughly
7,000 deaths and counting, while Veneto has managed to mostly contain the epidemic to a few
hundred fatalities.
"Wet markets really are just farmers' markets that also happen to sell fresh fish (thus
the "wet" part of their label) and poultry and sometimes beef and pork."
"Readers can display how susceptible they are to mass media driven hysteria and jingoism
and perhaps also reveal unacknowledged racism by insisting that there is something
fundamentally different about Asian farmers markets from the local ones they themselves shop
at for the freshest foods. "
I would respond that the fact that our local farmers markets don't generally sell the
"wet" stuff is in and of itself a "fundamental difference." If there are disease-vector
issues with wetmarkets, the issue will likely have originated in the "wet" part of the
market.
PS re the wet market bs. Let's all grow up. Nearly every coastal town I've ever visited on
four continents has a "wet market" i.e. tanks full of shell fish or crayfish or lobsters.
There are plenty of places you can buy a live chicken and have it cut up. In souther murka
they do love their trotters - i.e. pig's feet (gross in my opinion.) sea urchins any one? How
about sea slugs? There's a tasty meal. I know, let's just call it a "fresh food" market.
Hmmm?
With the deepest respect for your inner beauty. Cheers.
The U.S. surgeon general on Sunday trumpeted the administration's new recommendation that
all Americans wear cloth masks in public, a reversal of its previous advice as the country
braces for a dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases and potential fatalities this week.
"The next week is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment. It's going to be our 9/11 moment.
It's going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives," Vice Admiral
Jerome Adams warned on NBC's "Meet the Press," as he made rounds of political talk shows.
The push to wear masks follows updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. It is not mandatory but masks offer added protection against spreading the
coronavirus, especially when people cannot practice 6-foot social distancing.
Re: Effective home-made mask insert/liner material: Two brands of cheap widely available blue
shop towels are found to work great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNDE12HymYc
(starts at minute 31:20).
Re: bubonic plague in Mongolia. Sporadic human Yersinia pestis infections have been
endemic in American Southwest for many years.
Being "connected" is a huge part of the cause of this mess, before internet propaganda was
limited to newspapers and magazines, it was much slower and manageable.
I do find it funny how wealthy folks spread the "don't worry WE will all be fine" garbage.
WE....no, tell that to someone who has lost their business and has dependents.
I hate the "We're going to be ok. We're all in this together" ads. All of them
celebrities, pro athletes, and actors. Not one has to worry about whether they'll be able to
buy food next week. Elites telling the little people everything's ok.
It's really sad when Tucker Carlson is the only person who ever admitted he was wrong on
Fox News. Hannity still claims he never called the virus a hoax even though he did it on
TV.
Hydroxchloroquinine is toxic if combined with metformin. Diabetics who take it beware.
source
Note the link above also lists all of the known drug interactions of HCH with other drugs -
there are 332 total of which 59 are considered "major".
Fauci had previously supported the use of Hydroquinone for similar virus. What changed?
However, to the matter of Israel and the virus:
I thought they were having strangely little impact from virus.
Anyway, this is all very revealing.
You know how people always question:
Why did that woman remain in that abusive relationship?
@jared #26
I don't consider anything coming out of ZH to be credible until verified.
Fauci has been very consistent: he is cautious about whether hydroxychloroquinine is a
efficacious treatment for nCOV/COVID-19.
Note there are multiple levels of potential use:
1) The drug doesn't hurt/kill you. At normal levels, HCH passes this test but the levels it
has been used at to treat nCOV - they're much higher than existing anti-malaria/malaria
preventative/rheumatoid arthritis use.
At these higher levels, it isn't clear how safe HCH is - particularly for really old people
who are the primary nCOV at risk group.
2) Does the drug decrease negative outcomes? i.e. maybe it doesn't cure (which it shouldn't)
but it makes it less likely that nCOV infected get pneumonia or worse. This would be
fantastic but it is 100% unproven.
3) Does the drug cure? By itself or with other things like the antibiotic azithromycin? There
have been studies saying yes - but I look at a couple - and they're frankly poor studies. To
me, it is very unclear.
Hydroxychloroquinine/chloroquinine phosphate shows promise as a way to treat nCOV in its
early stages, but this is so far completely unverified. Nor do we know what the optimal
dosage might be to balance between known risks and side effects induced by HCH use vs.
optimal nCOV impact.
I've gotten a prescription sufficient for a couple of courses, but am not taking it as a
preventative (nor is there any proof it actually works this way).
Lots of people taking HCH as a preventative when it doesn't work or as treatment when
dosages/outcomes aren't known *will* increase the likelihood that nCOV will evolve resistance
against it, so it isn't like side effects are the only bad outcome to uninformed use.
The Trump regime's goal is only ever to enrich themselves through the Presidency. Reportedly,
Kushner's National Stockpile has been, uh, stockpiling Hydroxychloroquine as the President
has been snake-oiling it. As the USA is become completely privatized it is not hard to
arrange government contracts to middle-man the stockpile to its needy 'customers.'
And I can't believe all the raging antisemites here. Surely the Israelis have procured all
those masks to help out those poor Palestinians for whom they care so deeply.
Finally; can we see the endgame? Whip up a worse-case scenario of fear mongering that our
leaders miraculously save us from, yet institute a 'new normal' ripped from the pages of
Orwell to protect us from the 'next time' which they promise is a matter of when not if.
@38 - Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine are not sufficient by themselves for treating
COVID-19. CQ and HCQ create a pathway for zinc ions to get inside the cells to disrupt the
coronavirus replication. It's the zinc that actually is the medicine. See this study for
details - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21079686/
Even as hospitals and governors raise the alarm about a shortage of ventilators, some
critical care physicians are questioning the widespread use of the breathing machines for
Covid-19 patients, saying that large numbers of patients could instead be treated with less
intensive respiratory support.
If the iconoclasts are right, putting coronavirus patients on ventilators could be of
little benefit to many and even harmful to some.
What's driving this reassessment is a baffling observation about Covid-19: Many patients
have blood oxygen levels so low they should be dead. But they're not gasping for air, their
hearts aren't racing, and their brains show no signs of blinking off from lack of
oxygen.
The more I read about ventilators, the more sure I am that I do not want one if I get sick
from the evil virus.
My understanding is that currently the UK has a 50% mortality rate of Covid sufferers
who've been put on ventilators. They started using CPAP masks several weeks ago according to
Dr. John D. Campbell UK. Much less invasive.
Interesting link you share -- it mentions acute symptoms are more like altitude sickness,
with low 02 but CO2 still being cleared
This guy is really a fearmonger who after sleeting for two months greatly contributed with
his idiotic interviews to the botched reaction of the US government to this crisis. He should
go
Notable quotes:
"... And now, after the Trump Administration scrambled to ramp up testing capacity and the states worked with the Feds, private entities, and others (including in some cases foreign nations) to distribute ventilators as Gov. Andrew Cuomo painted a horrifying portrait of sickened New Yorkers suffocating to death in hospital hallways because there were no ventilators available. ..."
"... Well, yesterday, NYC Mayor de Blasio said that, after a few days of near capacity numbers, hospitalizations have dropped by such a steep degree that the city believes it has enough ventilators on hand, and won't need any more. ..."
And now, after the Trump Administration scrambled to ramp up testing capacity and the states
worked with the Feds, private entities, and others (including in some cases foreign nations) to
distribute ventilators as Gov. Andrew Cuomo painted a horrifying portrait of sickened New
Yorkers suffocating to death in hospital hallways because there were no ventilators
available.
Well, yesterday, NYC Mayor de Blasio said that, after a few days of near capacity numbers,
hospitalizations have dropped by such a steep degree that the city believes it has enough
ventilators on hand, and won't need any more.
Now on Thursday, Dr. Fauci is taking to cable news to spread the message of optimism that
has lifted US stocks over the past few days: Instead of the 240k figure used by President Trump
as recently as two weeks ago, Dr. Fauci told NBC News that if the public continued to stick to
the "mitigation efforts", that the death toll might be as low as 60k.
My daughter who is a hospital worker showed me her mask, made by her sister. And b has posted
previously directions for making masks.
While homemade or even professional surgical mask do not protect the wearer from all
particles they do protect one much better from them than when one wears no mask at all.
A person rarely gets infected by just one virus particle. They come in millions attached
to tiny droplets. We do not know yet how the dose of the novel coronavirus that infects a
person affects the intensity of the disease. But we do know from other viruses that the
dose matters. People who catch a higher dose of viruses will usually have a more intense
disease. A mask can lower the virus load the wearer may receive.
One can
improvise a mask from simple household objects. One can sew a mask like a surgeon
does in this video .
This is my preferred model which is officially recommended by German fire departments.
(The pdf is in German but the pictures tell the story). This is the mask I made by
following those instructions.
It is made of a folded sheet cut from a triangular arm-sling out of an old first-aid
kit. A HEPA microfilter (as used in a vacuum cleaners) is in between the folded sheet. A
piece cut from a clean bag for vacuum cleaners will do as well. Do not use a sheet or
insert that is too tight to breathe through. If one does that the air will come in from the
sides of the mask and the total protection effect will be less. It can be arduous to
breathe through such a mask. If you have breathing problems leave the insert out. The
sheets alone are already good protection. There is a piece of wire from a big paper clip
fixed inside the middle of the upper seam to fit the mask tightly around the upper nose.
The lower part goes under the chin. I shaved my beard to make it a tighter fit. As I had no
sewing equipment I used a stapler to fix the seams and the ribbons.
The HEPA filter catches
particles down to 0.3 micrometer. Viruses are some 125 nanometer in diameter so they are
smaller and could slip through. But the viruses are attached to some droplet that are
bigger. HEPA filter are essentially labyrinths of small fiber and the viruses would have to
bounce multiple times to get through. Finally the dose also matters.
To clean the mask of potential viruses I put it into the oven for 30 minutes at 70C
(158F).
The science says that masks work. Everyone should use one. #MaskUp!
The advantage is you can throw them in the washing machine to clean, or even hand wash as
they are small items.
The masks in question here, surgical ones, being only meant to protect the patient from
the practitioner, seem somewhat flawed in any case.
Better to make better ones; let the Israelis have those not so good ones. A great gift
from a family member to their hardworking sibling.
There ought to be an industrial production plant producing the cloth masks with disposable
inserts - how about taking over a diaper factory - a lot of folk still use the cloth ones -
have such been totally outsourced? (I'd make 'em deluxe, organic cotton only! But for us home
bodies, an old sheet well washed, suitably patterned is better than nothing at all.)
Dr Beckmann spokeswoman Susan Fermor revealed a wash at 60C is enough.
She said: "There's a common misconception that people should wash clothes on the hottest
possible setting to kill bacteria, but it's unnecessary.
"Tests have proven that washing your clothes at 60C, with a good detergent, is perfectly
adequate to kill bacteria.
"Just make sure that you check all garments are suitable to be washed at this temperature
before putting them in the washing machine and take care not to ruin your clothes by boil
washing."
... ... ...
The NHS said people should keep these items separately from those bearing the
virus.
They released the following advice:
Keep and wash heavily soiled clothes separately from other items
"... Read more about what evidence exists for the idea that spices can affect your health , and how hot drinks will not protect you from Covid-19 ). ..."
"... Unfortunately, the idea that pills, trendy superfoods or wellness habits can provide a shortcut to a healthy immune system is a myth. In fact, the concept of "boosting" your immune system doesn't hold any scientific meaning whatsoever. ..."
"... In this case, the mucus helps to flush out the pathogen, the fever helps to make your body an uncomfortably hot environment in which it's harder for it to replicate, and the aches and general malaise are by-products of the inflammatory chemicals that course through your veins, telling immune cells what to do and where to go. (These symptoms also help signal to your brain that it's time to slow down and let your body recover). ..."
"... There is no evidence that vitamin supplements will protect you from infections, unless you are deficient (Credit: Reuters) Making the other aspect of immunity – the adaptive immune system – generally more active could also be extremely unpleasant. For example, allergies occur when overzealous immune cells learn to treat innocuous foreign bodies, such as pollen, as though they are harmful. Each time they find the offending substance, they switch on the innate immune response too – cue lots of sneezing, itchy eyes and general fatigue. Again, this is probably not what the people championing these remedies have in mind. ..."
"... If you're healthy, forget supplements – except vitamin D ..."
"... Many multivitamins claim to provide "immune support" or to help "maintain healthy immune function". But as BBC Future reported in 2016, vitamin supplements generally don't work in already healthy people – and some may even be harmful. ..."
"... there is little evidence to support vitamin C's mighty reputation for helping us to fight off colds and other respiratory infections. A 2013 review by Cochrane – an organisation renowned for its unbiased research – found that in adults "trials of high doses of vitamin C administered therapeutically, starting after the onset of symptoms, showed no consistent effect on the duration or severity of common cold symptoms". ..."
"... high doses of this vitamin can lead to kidney stones . ..."
"... Brightly coloured fruits and vegetables tend to contain the most antioxidants, because the compounds are often pigmented (Credit: Getty Images) In the developed world, most people get enough vitamins from their diets (unless they are restricted – vegans, for example, are more likely to have certain deficiencies ). However, there is one exception – vitamin D. Iwasaki explains that taking this supplement wouldn't be a bad idea. ..."
"... In fact, many immune cells can actively recognise vitamin D, and it's thought to play an important role in both the innate and acquired immune response – though exactly how remains a mystery. ..."
"... (Read more about who needs to take vitamin D and why ). ..."
"... And we get some of our reserves of these compounds from our diets. Brightly coloured fruits, vegetables and spices tend to contain the most, because antioxidants are often pigmented: they give carrots, blueberries, aubergines, red kale, turmeric, and strawberries their hues. ..."
"... Wellness products aside, there are some approaches you can ..."
Forget kombucha and trendy vitamin supplements – they are nothing more than magic
potions for the modern age. "Spanish Influenza – what it is and how it should be
treated," read the reassuringly factual headline to an advert for Vick's VapoRub
back in 1918 . The text beneath included nuggets of wisdom such as "stay quiet" and "take a
laxative". Oh, and to apply their ointment liberally, of course.
The 1918 flu pandemic was the
most lethal in recorded history , infecting up to 500 million people (a quarter of the
world's population at the time) and killing tens of millions worldwide.
But with crisis comes opportunity, and the – sometimes literal – snake oil
salesmen were out in force. Vick's VapoRub had stiff competition from a panoply of crackpot
remedies, including Miller's Antiseptic Snake Oil , Dr Bell's
Pine Tar Honey, Schenck's Mandrake Pills, Dr Jones's Liniment, Hill's Cascara Quinine
Bromide , and A. Wulfing & Co's famous mint lozenges. Their adverts made regular
appearances in the newspapers, where they starred alongside increasingly alarming
headlines.
Fast-forward to 2020, and not much has changed. Though the Covid-19 pandemic is separated
from the Spanish flu by over a century of scientific discoveries, there are still plenty of
questionable medicinal concoctions and folk remedies floating around. This time, the theme is
"boosting" the immune system.
Of the rumours currently circulating on social media, one of the more bizarre is the idea
that you can raise your white blood cell count by masturbating more. And as always, nutritional
advice abounds. This time, we're being encouraged to seek out foods rich in antioxidants and
vitamin C (back in 1918, the public were told to eat more onions), while pseudoscientists are
peddling trendy products such as
kombucha and probiotics
.
Unfortunately, the idea that pills, trendy superfoods or wellness habits can provide a
shortcut to a healthy immune system is a myth. In fact, the concept of "boosting" your immune
system doesn't hold any scientific meaning whatsoever.
"There are three different components to immunity," says Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at
Yale University. "There's things like skin, the airways and the mucus membranes that are there
to begin with, and they provide a barrier to infection. But once the virus gets past these
defences, then you have to induce the 'innate' immune response." This consists of chemicals and
cells which can rapidly raise the alert and begin fighting off any intruder.
The 1918 flu pandemic was an opportunity for snake oil salesmen to market their useless -
and sometimes harmful - products (Credit: Getty Images)
"When that is not enough, then we kick
in the adaptive immune system," she says. This involves cells and proteins – antibodies
– which take a few days or weeks to emerge. Importantly, the adaptive immune system can
only target particular pathogens. "So, for example, a T-cell specific to Covid-19 will not
respond to influenza or bacterial pathogens."
Most infections will trigger adaptive immunity eventually. But there's another way to get it
going, and that's vaccination: exposing the body to live or dead microbes, or parts of them,
can help the body to identify the real deal when it comes along.
The concept of "boosting" a person's immune system would, presumably, involve making these
responses more active, or stronger.
In actuality, you wouldn't want to do this.
Take the symptoms of a cold – body aches, a fever, brain fog, copious amounts of snot
and phlegm. Most of these problems aren't actually caused by the virus itself. Instead, they're
triggered by your own body, on purpose: they're part of the innate immune response.
Many "immunity-boosting" products claim to reduce inflammation
In this case, the mucus helps to flush out the pathogen, the fever helps to make
your body an uncomfortably hot environment in which it's harder for it to replicate, and the
aches and general
malaise are by-products of the inflammatory chemicals that course through your veins,
telling immune cells what to do and where to go. (These symptoms also help signal to your brain
that it's time to slow down and let your body recover).
The mucus and chemical signals are part of inflammation, which is the bedrock of a healthy immune
response . But the process is exhausting, so you wouldn't want to have it turned up to 11
all the time. And most viruses, including Covid-19, will trigger it anyway. If kombucha, green
tea or any of the various "immune-boosting" concoctions on the market really had any impact,
they wouldn't give you a healthful glow: they'd give you a runny nose.
Ironically, many "immunity-boosting" products claim to reduce inflammation.
There is no evidence that vitamin supplements will protect you from infections, unless you
are deficient (Credit: Reuters) Making the other aspect of immunity – the adaptive immune
system – generally more active could also be extremely unpleasant. For example, allergies
occur when overzealous immune cells learn to treat innocuous foreign bodies, such as pollen, as
though they are harmful. Each time they find the offending substance, they switch on the innate
immune response too – cue lots of sneezing, itchy eyes and general fatigue. Again, this
is probably not what the people championing these remedies have in mind.
But let's give those saying you can "boost" your immune system the benefit of the doubt and
assume they mean that certain products can improve the immune response in a useful way –
rather than literally "boost" it.
"The problem is that many of these claims have no grounding in evidence," Iwasaki says. So
what are they based on – and is there anything that can help?
If you're healthy, forget supplements – except vitamin D
Many multivitamins claim to provide "immune support" or to help "maintain healthy immune
function". But as BBC Future reported in 2016, vitamin
supplements generally don't work in already healthy people – and some may even be
harmful.
Take vitamin C. The health effects of this antioxidant have been steeped in mythology ever
since the two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling became obsessed with its ability to fight
the common cold. After studying the vitamin for years, eventually he started taking 18,000 mg
per day – around 300 times the current recommended daily amount.
Vitamin supplements aren't beneficial to your immune system unless you are deficient
However, there is little evidence to support vitamin C's mighty reputation for
helping us to fight off colds and other respiratory infections. A 2013
review by Cochrane – an organisation renowned for its unbiased research – found
that in adults "trials of high doses of vitamin C administered therapeutically, starting after
the onset of symptoms, showed no consistent effect on the duration or severity of common cold
symptoms".
In fact, many experts consider the vitamin C market to be a bit of a racket , as
most people in the developed world get enough from their diets already. Though scurvy is
thought to have killed two million sailors and pirates between the 15th and 18th Centuries, the
numbers now are far lower. For example, just 128
people in England were hospitalised with the disease between 2016 and 2017. On the other
hand, high doses of this vitamin can lead to kidney
stones .
"Vitamin supplements aren't beneficial to your immune system unless you are deficient," says
Iwasaki.
Brightly coloured fruits and vegetables tend to contain the most antioxidants, because the
compounds are often pigmented (Credit: Getty Images) In the developed world, most people get
enough vitamins from their diets (unless they are restricted – vegans,
for example, are more likely to have certain deficiencies ). However, there is one
exception – vitamin D. Iwasaki explains that taking this supplement wouldn't be a bad
idea.
But crucially – and unusually – vitamin D deficiencies are endemic in many
countries, even wealthy ones. As of 2012, it was estimated that about a billion people worldwide weren't
getting enough. And with more and more people urged to stay indoors, it's easy to see how even
less sunlight exposure could lead to more deficiencies. (Read more about who needs to
take vitamin D and why ).
No, masturbation won't help either
Historically, this form of sexual activity was held in deep suspicion by Western medicine.
After an 18th Century doctor claimed that the loss of one ounce of semen (28 millilitres) had
the same effect on the body as losing 40 ounces (1.18 litres) of blood, masturbation was blamed
for all kinds of health problems for hundreds of years, from blindness to neurosis.
Now the tables have turned, and recent research has shown that it can come with some
surprising health benefits. In men, for example, it's thought to help keep sperm healthy and
may reduce a person's risk
of developing prostate cancer .
The question of whether antioxidants can help is slightly more complicated
Alas, any claims that masturbation can improve your immunity or protect you from
Covid-19 are overblown. It's true that one study found that men had higher white blood cell counts when
they were sexually aroused, and during orgasm. However, there is no evidence that this
translates into protection from infections.
There is one way that the practice might protect you – by keeping away from other
people. On Twitter, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recently reminded
their followers that, in the age of Covid-19, "
you are your safest sex partner ".
There's no need to stock up on antioxidant pills
The question of whether antioxidants can help is slightly more complicated.
As part of the inflammatory response, white blood cells release toxic oxygen compounds.
These are something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can kill bacteria and
viruses and stop them from being able to make more copies of themselves. On the other, they can
damage healthy cells, leading to cancer and ageing – and wearing out the immune
system.
To stop this from happening, the body relies on antioxidants. These help to control those
unruly oxygen compounds and keep our cells safe.
And we get some of our reserves of these compounds from our diets. Brightly coloured fruits,
vegetables and spices tend to contain the most, because antioxidants are often pigmented: they
give carrots, blueberries, aubergines, red kale, turmeric, and strawberries their hues.
Wellness experts like to promote kombucha as more than just a drink - but there's no
evidence that it can treat or prevent any illnesses, including Covid-19 (Credit: Getty Images)
There's currently a trial in the works to test if giving people with Covid-19 antioxidant
supplements might help their recovery.
However, the trial is just one of hundreds looking into potential treatments for Covid-19.
And despite decades of research, not a single placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed study on humans
has ever shown that high doses of antioxidants can "boost" the immune system, or treat or
prevent viral infections in humans.
Probiotics may help or they may not
If you believe the wellness experts and homeopaths, kombucha is much more than a sweet,
fizzy drink made from fermented tea. The internet is teeming with outrageous claims about the
product, including that it can
treat cancer and even Aids (it can't).
Like probiotics, kombucha contains live microorganisms. However, no studies have ever
confirmed whether the drink has these in high enough concentrations to be considered one
– and there is currently no evidence that kombucha specifically can treat or prevent any
illnesses whatsoever.
The picture is less clear for probiotics in general.
There is currently no evidence that any kind of probiotic can protect you from
Covid-19
One 2015 review found that probiotics – beneficial microorganisms which are
concentrated in foods, drinks, or pills – significantly reduced the
number of upper respiratory tract infections that people got and made them less severe.
They also slightly reduced the use of antibiotics and led to fewer school absences. The authors
concluded that they might be better than placebo treatments, but pointed out that the quality
of the available evidence was low.
(You can find out more about what we
do and don't know about gut health , as well as how to eat
your way to a healthy gut by checking out BBC Future's series on gut bacteria from last
year. We found that it's true that gut bacteria are important – but that taking
probiotics is unlikely to help you much, and that the best way forward is to simply eat a
varied diet.)
Importantly, there is currently no evidence that any kind of probiotic can protect you from
Covid-19.
So what has been proven to work?
Iwasaki says most of these myths are relatively innocuous – but the danger is that
falling for them will give you a false sense of security. "One thing I do warn against is when
people feel like they're protected. They shouldn't feel empowered to go out there and, you
know, start having parties," she says.
Wellness products aside, there are some approaches you can take to help support
your immune system. They aren't especially sexy, and you won't see many wellness influencers
selling them in a bottle. They are, however, proven to work – and they don't require
shelling out your hard-earned cash: get enough sleep, exercise, eat a balanced diet, and try
not to be stressed.
Failing that, there is one sure-fire way to improve your immunity to certain pathogens:
vaccination.
Growing numbers of fake medicines linked to coronavirus are on sale in developing countries,
the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
A BBC News investigation found fake drugs for sale in Africa, with counterfeiters exploiting
growing gaps in the market.
The WHO said taking these drugs could have "serious side effects".
One expert warned of "a parallel pandemic, of substandard and falsified products".
Around the world, people are stockpiling basic medicines. However, with the world's two
largest producers of medical supplies - China and India - in lockdown, demand now outstrips the
supply and the circulation of dangerous counterfeit drugs is soaring.
In the same week the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a pandemic last
month, Operation Pangea, Interpol's global pharmaceutical crime fighting unit, made 121 arrests
across 90 countries in just seven days, resulting in the seizure of dangerous pharmaceuticals
worth over $14m (£11m).
From Malaysia to Mozambique, police officers confiscated tens of thousands of counterfeit
face masks and fake medicines, many of which claimed to be able to cure coronavirus. "The
illicit trade in such counterfeit medical items during a public health crisis, shows a total
disregard for people's lives," said Interpol's Secretary General Jurgen Stock.
According to the WHO, the broader falsified medicines trade, which includes medicines which
may be contaminated, contain the wrong or no active ingredient, or may be out-of-date, is worth
more than $30bn in low and middle-income countries.
"Best case scenario they [fake medicines] probably won't treat the disease for which they
were intended", said Pernette Bourdillion Esteve, from the WHO team dealing with falsified
medical products.
"But worst-case scenario they'll actively cause harm, because they might be contaminated
with something toxic."
The supply chain
The global pharmaceutical industry is worth more than $1 trillion. Vast supply chains
stretch all the way from key manufacturers in places such as China and India, to packaging
warehouses in Europe, South America or Asia, to distributors sending medicines to every country
in the world.
There is "probably nothing more globalised than medicine" said Esteve. However, as the world
goes into lockdown, the supply chain has already begun to uncouple.
Several pharmaceutical companies in India told the BBC they are now operating at 50-60% of
their normal capacity. As Indian companies supply 20% of all basic medicines to Africa, nations
there are being disproportionately affected. Fake medicine
Speaking to pharmacists and drug companies around the world, the global supply of
antimalarials is now under threat.
Ever since US President Donald Trump began referring to the potential of chloroquine and a
related derivative, hydroxychloroquine, in White House briefings, there has been a global surge
in the demand for these drugs, which are normally used to tackle malaria.
The WHO has repeatedly said there is no definitive evidence that chloroquine or
hydroxychloroquine can be used against the virus that causes Covid-19. However, at a recent
news conference, whilst referring to these antimalarials, President Trump said: "What do you
have to lose? Take it."
As the demand has soared, the BBC has discovered large quantities of fake chloroquine in
circulation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon. The WHO has also found the fake
medicines for sale in Niger.
The antimalarial chloroquine is normally sold for about $40 for a pot of 1,000 tablets. But
pharmacists in the DRC were found to be selling them for up to $250.
The medicine being sold was allegedly manufactured in Belgium, by "Brown and Burk
Pharmaceutical limited". However, Brown and Burk, a pharmaceutical company registered in the
UK, said they had "nothing to do with this medicine. We don't manufacture this drug, it's
fake." As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Professor Paul Newton, an expert in fake
medicines at the University of Oxford, warned the circulation of fake and dangerous medicines
would only increase unless governments around the world present a united front.
"We risk a parallel pandemic, of substandard and falsified products unless we all ensure
that there is a global co-ordinated plan for co-ordinated production, equitable distribution
and the surveillance of the quality of the tests, medicines and vaccines. Otherwise the
benefits of modern medicine... will be lost."
"... " T he operational dilemmas faced by Indo-Pacific Command demand urgent attention. In order to make American investments in advanced fighters, attack submarines, or breakthroughs in military technology meaningful (in other words, to deter or win a conflict), there must be urgent investment in runways, fuel and munitions storage, theater missile defenses, and command and control architecture to enable U.S. forces in a fight across the Pacific's vast exterior lines. " ..."
'Number one priority' is a $1.5 billion, 360-degree persistent and integrated air defense
ring around Guam.
... ... ...
Arguing in favor of the PDI i n a recent
op-ed , former Pacific policy official for the DoD Randall Schriver
and Eric Sayers, former special assistant to the commander of INDOPACOM,
wrote:
" T he operational dilemmas faced by Indo-Pacific Command demand urgent
attention. In order to make American investments in advanced fighters, attack submarines, or
breakthroughs in military technology meaningful (in other words, to deter or win a conflict),
there must be urgent investment in runways, fuel and munitions storage, theater missile
defenses, and command and control architecture to enable U.S. forces in a fight across the
Pacific's vast exterior lines. "
Well the Pentagon sees that the checkbooks are open, Look if those pencil necked doctors
can get 2trillion for a case of the sniffles, we ought to be able to get 2 billion to face
down the Chicoms!
When Zen teacher Issan Dorsey was asked to describe the essence of Zen art, he answered, "Nothing extra."
"Nothing extra" is also of course the essence of Zen living itself: perceiving life as it
actually is, as opposed to perceiving it through a bunch of believed narrative filters about
yourself, about others, about reality, and so on. These narrative filters are an extra pile of
layers that are added on top of the actual experience of life, and they give a distorted view
which causes a lot of confusion and suffering. Relinquishing belief in them brings clarity and
peace.
This is also the essence of clearly understanding what's really going on in the world. Like
so much else, the approach to the large is the same as the approach to the small, which is to
say the approach to seeing clearly in the big picture is the same as the approach to seeing
clearly as an individual: you need to learn to look at it without the extra narrative
overlay.
Because the news media are
controlled by plutocrats who have a vested interest in
protecting the status quo upon which their kingdoms are built, almost everything in the
news is useless narrative fluff. It doesn't tell you what's really going on, it rather tries to
influence what's going on by manipulating the perceptions of the audience. It does this by
either (A) distracting from what really matters by focusing on what doesn't matter, or (B)
actively working to manipulate how the audience thinks about a given issue.
When you strip away all the empty fluff and manipulative spin, there are basically only four
often-overlapping pieces of information that really matter in the big picture: (1) where the
money is going, (2) where the resources are going, (3) where the weapons are going, and (4)
where the people are going. When it comes to understanding world dynamics, accurate information
about these four things is the only real news you'll ever encounter. Everything else is empty
narrative spin meant to justify, distort, or distract from information about these things.
If you ignore everything else and only focus on finding the most accurate information
possible about these four items, you will have an infinitely clearer understanding of what's
really going on in the world than someone who trusts news reporters to walk them through
it.
Watch where the money is going because you can trust the raw numbers of financial
transactions a lot more than you can trust the stories people are telling. A massive percentage
of daily news coverage goes toward analyzing the latest foam-brained gibberish that came out of
Donald Trump's mouth even though we all know he's going to contradict himself two days later,
but the fact that he's been
heavily funded by an oligarch who happens to have been a longtime proponent of the Iran
policies this administration has been advancing is much more solid.
Zoom out and watch where the money is going in the big picture and you'll see that a grossly
disproportionate amount of it is moving away from the general public and toward a very small
group of people, which we just saw illustrated in the historically unprecedented multitrillion-dollar wealth transfer in
the US corporate bailout. If you watch this small group and pay attention to the projects,
candidates, think tanks and media outlets they pour their wealth into, you will notice that
they exert an incredible amount of influence on all four crucial factors: where the money goes,
where the resources go, where the weapons go, and where the people go.
Watching where the resources are going gives you an even clearer image of what's going on
because resources, unlike money, are completely independent of narrative. There is no such
thing as "money" without the thoughts that humans agree to collectively think about it, but oil
would still be oil even if all humans were wiped off the face of the earth. When you see the US
ramping up escalations against Venezuela , ignore the narratives about "drug trafficking"
and what a bad, bad man Nicolás Maduro is, and look at
what resources lie beneath the ground in that nation to find out what this is really about.
Mentally "mute" the soundtracks the political/media class spout about who's doing what to whom
and just watch where the resources are going, and who's controlling them. That way you'll be
able to discern the powerful from the disempowered and the takers from their victims.
Watch where the weapons are going because those are another non-narrative factor which
exerts a huge influence on the world; a bullet will stop a beating heart regardless of what the
mind thinks about it. Ignore the irrelevant narrative fluff about where the coronavirus
originated and whether or not it's racist to say "Wuhan virus", and look at
the ring of US military bases encircling China and the way the Marine Corps
is shifting its attention onto that nation . Ignore Trump's gibberish about ending wars and
note that
he's been expanding them and
increasing foreign troop presence . Ignore the Democratic Party's nonsense about Trump
having loyalties to Russia and watch his administration's many dangerous
nuclear escalations against that nation . Ignore international finger-wagging at
humanitarian abuses by Israel and Saudi Arabia and look at who's still selling them weapons and
supporting them militarily.
Watch where the people are going for another important piece of real information that isn't
dependent on narrative. Where are the prisoners? Where are the refugees, where are they going,
and what are they fleeing? Where are people moving to, and what do they want?
With each of these four items you can simply watch raw data and ignore all the stories the
establishment spinmeisters tell about that data. As long as you make sure you're getting the
most accurate data possible, it's like you're looking at a globe and watching lines in four
different colors moving around in it from place to place and person to person. And without
anyone's stories tainting your view.
You will notice that there's a heavy degree of overlap between these four items. You see the
weapons moving toward China and you notice that's the nation with the US hegemony-threatening
Belt and Road
Initiative (where the resources are moving) and the key player in the
US dollar-threatening Shanghai Cooperation Organization (where the money is moving). You
see Julian Assange locked in prison (where the people are going) for exposing US war crimes
(where the weapons are going). You see US troops illegally
occupying Syrian oil fields (where the weapons and resources are going) to prevent the Syrian
government from using it to rebuild the nation (where the money is going). And so on.
Nearly everything that makes it to the top of the daily news churn is either propaganda
distortion or distracting drivel, and either way you can safely ignore it. Just watch where the
money is going, where the resources are going, where the weapons are going and where the people
are going, and ignore all the narrative chatter.
Instead of a public health system, we have a private for-profit system for individuals lucky
enough to afford it and a rickety social insurance system for people fortunate enough to have a
full-time job.
At their best, both systems respond to the needs of individuals rather than the needs of the
public as a whole. In America, the word "public" – as in public health, public education
or public welfare – means a sum total of individual needs, not the common good.
Contrast this with America's financial system. The Federal Reserve concerns itself with the
health of financial markets as a whole. Late last week the Fed made $1.5 trillion available to
banks at the slightest hint of difficulties making trades. No one batted an eye.
When it comes to the health of the nation as a whole, money like this isn't available. And
there are no institutions analogous to the Fed with responsibility for overseeing and managing
the public's health – able to whip out a giant checkbook at a moment's notice to prevent
human, rather than financial, devastation.
Even if a test for the Covid-19 virus had been developed and approved in time, no
institutions are in place to administer it to tens of millions of Americans free of charge.
Local and state health departments are already barebones, having lost nearly a quarter of their
workforce since 2008, according to the National Association of County and City Health
Officials.
Healthcare in America is delivered mainly by private for-profit corporations which, unlike
financial institutions, are not required to maintain reserve capacity. As a result, the
nation's supply of ventilators isn't nearly large enough to care for projected numbers of
critically ill coronavirus victims unable to breathe for themselves. Its 45,000 intensive care
unit beds fall woefully short of the
2.9 million that are likely to be needed.
The Fed can close banks to quarantine financial crises but the US can't close workplaces
because the nation's social insurance system depends on people going to work.
Almost 30% of American workers have no paid sick leave from their employers, including 70%
of low-income workers earning less than $10.49 an hour. Vast numbers of self-employed workers
cannot afford sick leave. Friday's deal between House Democrats and the White House won't have
much effect because it exempts large employers and offers waivers to smaller ones.
Most jobless Americans don't qualify for unemployment insurance because they haven't worked
long enough in a steady job, and the ad-hoc deal doesn't alter this. Meanwhile, more than 30
million Americans have no health insurance. Eligibility for Medicaid, food stamps and other
public assistance is now linked to having or actively looking for work.
It's hard to close public schools because most working parents cannot afford childcare. Many
poor children rely on school lunches for their only square meal a day. In Los Angeles, about
80% of students qualify for free or reduced lunches and just under 20,000 are homeless at some
point during the school year.
There is no public health system in the US, in short, because the richest nation in the
world has no capacity to protect the public as a whole, apart from national defense. Ad-hoc
remedies such as House Democrats and the White House fashioned on Friday are better than
nothing, but they don't come close to filling this void.
The requirement will commence midnight as Thursday turns to Friday. Starting then, all
customers entering the necessary businesses that have been allowed to stay open despite the
quarantine must be wearing some kind of cloth mask. These businesses include grocery stores,
pharmacies, hotels, and any kind of taxi or ride-sharing service. These locations are permitted
to refuse service to anyone not covering their mouth and nose.
All employees of these businesses must wear masks as well, and employers must reimburse the
cost of such items. Included in the new rule are regulations on essential businesses mandating
that they ensure every worker has access to a clean restroom and has an opportunity to wash
their hands at a minimum of thirty-minute intervals. While Los Angeles public health officials
have recommended implementing the use of plexiglass doors between employees and customers where
possible, this was not included in the order
Similarities between the COVID-19 pandemic and 9/11 Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological
Operations (psyops).
Two main streams of propaganda:
One aimed at the masses
One aimed at the skeptics
Stream aimed at skeptics
9/11
-- Focus everyone on the cause of the building collapses and the science involved , maintain
ambivalence with regard to the science of the plane crashes – all to distract from the
pivotal truth: staged death and injury and thus that the event is a complete psyop.
-- Some scientists involved in the psyop are pushing out fake stuff, eg, molten metal at
Ground Zero. There may well be other fake stuff that could rear its head in whatever results
from the sham Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry (similar to the sham 9/11 Commission).
COVID-19 pandemic
-- Focus everyone on the anomalies in the figures and the science of viruses and pandemics ,
all to distract from the simple fact that there is no virus, that this is a complete psyop
and perhaps to keep us distracted from the implications of this psyop until it's too late. As
some scientists will be involved in the psyop they will no doubt push out stuff that is fake
and/or confuses.
It's all about distraction and confusion folks. This is so very clearly a psyop and the
science and numbers are a deliberate distraction leading us absolutely nowhere. We
have right now all the science and numbers we need to know that this is a psyop – as
well as, of course, all the deliberate nonsense they push at us, just as we had all the
science we needed of controlled demolition and the fakery of the planes yonks and yonks
ago.
Both the COVID-19 pandemic and 9/11 are psychological operations and need to be called out
as such . Do not let them lead you along the neverending science and numbers path and keep
you tied up with all the other distractions.
This event can be called out right here right now. No further evidence is required.
There is no doubt whatsoever that it is a Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological
Operation.
Petra, I like your style. Really. You are rigorously deconstructive, peeling away each layer
of the onion. That approach of course is what is required for all these Moriarty-esque
psyops, where they are piled high with distractions as involved as some ancient mystery
religion, only to disguise a simple objective: $$$. Or Power (to wit, more money).
Why wage the war to "win the hearts and minds" when it's oh so easy to simply control
them, with techniques and "high" tech of "coercive hypnotism": all new versions of Dr.
Mengele's Mind Control thru trauma-based assaults upon the media-managed world public, now
linked everywhere by this gadget we engage here: the sticky and sneaky WorldWideWeb patrolled
by their very own WorldWideSpiders?
I don't know if you ever saw "Young Sherlock Holmes" – a movie out about 30 years
ago. It seems at the end roll of the credits that the wily Moriarty escaped yet again, and
these current psyops seem as though his current incarnation.
What's interesting about the film is the use of many ploys that are still in use in these
days, age old stage magic and sleight of hand and other standard tricks of deception that are
constants in spycraft and go back seemingly to the dawn of society.
The key difference in our age, is that they have a whole Novelty Shoppe of new gadgetry to
daze and confuse.
I'm grateful that I began to study it more in earnest about 15 years ago, and digging
deeper, like discovering my own father was attorney to the client one old military character
told me in 2016 was the director of one of the main mind control projects (I get the vibe
that it's fraught with just too much trouble to get too specific, for now. His name pops up
in CIA ROGUES by Patrick Nolan, the chapters about Sirhan.)
I had no idea, no connection of those dots, though I'd got my first hints about 30 years
ago, and bought Norman Mailer's "Harlot's Ghost: a Novel of the CIA". I was intrigued to have
read he had been writing it for over 20 years and people said he talked about nothing else at
parties in NYC. He had promised a finale, "Harlot's Grave" but died in a fall before that
"and so on."
Also "Bobby" de Niro made a film, "The Good Shepherd" about Angleton, loosely based, but
that promised sequel seems also now to be a mirage.
In short, all these studies have only served to illuminate the landscape of my life like a
bolt, and gave me a schemata visibly to see incursions into my own life, just for starters.
They do it to various degrees to everybody.
I'm a bit of an extreme case, I would suspect, but I try to suggest to thoughtful people
all the time, to study these things. We are all in their sites now.
Every time we are being diverted from who we really are, you may bet a lot of what you
got, on that "component" of Intel being not too far in the "background,".
I respect the fact that they have a job to do, of sorts, every nation that's ever been has
had ops, but not with such criminal abandon, and we are venturing into crazier and crazier
territory that every Prez since Truman, at the dawn of the CIA, has totally despised, or at
least stated so.
Truman: "I would have never agreed to the formulation of CIA, back in '47, if I had known
then it would become the American Gestapo."
Too little too late, Harry!
Eisenhower: "I have nothing to offer the incoming President but a legacy of ashes." -His
last big meeting with Intel officials, January '61.
JFK: "I want to break CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds." And then
shortly after CIA scattered his life to the winds of history.
Since then, other presidents have been more choosy in their language.
CIA deformations and their deforming of US society, and the world, has been the greatest
tragedy of our times, which they cannot disavow.
But I digress. I simply meant to thank you for presenting your results of your strict
deconstruction of their psyops. It speaks volumes that so few in the field take that rigorous
approach.
Did ANY of it really happen? You certainly raise real doubts, and that is a real service
to readers, how you do that. Perhaps some if it did happen, but that is the wrong starting
point. Yours seems to be the correct one, from what I know.
Meanwhile I'm preparing my screenplay sequel, 65 years after, to the classic Terry
Southern script "Dr. Strangelove: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb" update
2020
"Dr. StrangeCoVid: or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Virus"
I think there will be seen many benefits in hindsight, after all the fallout.
You know, they delayed the release of the original because it was set tight at the time of
JFK Dallas.
Meanwhile, "the game is afoot, Watson.". Lol
-- -- -- -
Have you studied the work of the late Steve Kangas? He seems remarkably rigorous. If you
look up "Timeline of CIA Atrocities" it leads you to all his work. I read many of the links.
Revelatory. That's the feel I get.
He seems to be an avatar, to the best of my knowledge. Inspiring anyway, and that's plenty
these days
My goodness can they distract us with the science and the figures.
But there is a simpler approach – the checklist test for Trauma-based Mind
Control Psychological Operation (psyop) in the form of a "live exercise".
As the Donald says of the coronavirus:
It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear.
It's amazing the words of truth that can come out of that man's mouth – admittedly,
sometimes they're delivered cryptically such as for the crash of PS-752 where he says the
following nonsensical words in relation to a plane while the man standing next to him
ostentatiously hides a smile:
We know it will disappear as the Donald says because because the virus – let alone
any pandemic – never appeared in the first place and they will only test our patience
for so long before they "make" it disappear.
1. Pre-pandemic indications including exercises. TICK.
-- Event 201, a tabletop pandemic exercise, held in October 2019, partnered by the Johns
Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation
-- Positions advertised by the CDC for Quarantine Advisors as early as November 15 2019
and
-- Netflix docuseries on preventing pandemics
-- The film, Contagion
-- The Simpsons, S22 E6, The Fool Monty, which speaks of a phoney-baloney crisis of a public
health scare
2. As psyop rules state we will be told nonsense, check Wikipedia, media and other
sources. TICK.
Wikipedia told us (all changed now) about Chinese cobras and many-banded kraits being
reservoirs and then we see people falling flat on their faces, laid out on the pavement,
nonsense about empty buildings being converted into hospitals within 48 hours with extremely
unconvincing visual evidence provided of this amazing feat and so much more nonsense.
3. As psyop rules state that nothing should be faked so well it can be used to support
their story, check that no patients show symptoms. TICK.
Yep! All alleged patients interviewed in hospitals do not show symptoms or there are
anomalies in that they are filmed in an ICU and say strange things such as, "They had to sew
that into my artery."
4. As a typical hallmark of psyops (where applicable) is ludicrous "miracle survivors"
stories, check for those stories. TICK.
Yep! Yes, we have the 90 year-old looking fit as a fiddle being pulled back from the brink of
death with potato soup, and the 82 year-old who miraculously recovered with a course of
antibiotics and the 52 year-old who was "gaspin'" and thought "his days were done" who, at
the suggestion of a friend, took anti-malarials and hey presto!
Thus we know – nonsense pushed at us without a single skerrick of evidence of the
presence of this virus.
In psyops the ONLY things they do for real are the things they want for real. They don't
want or need a virus or a pandemic for their psyop and a real virus would never behave
remotely the way they want it to for their story in any case, just as they didn't want real
planes for 9/11 and they wouldn't have worked anyway, nor did they want people to die or be
injured – that wouldn't have gone down at all well with the loved ones of the 3,000
dead and 6,000 injured (not to mention the 6,000 injured themselves) and nor would it have
been accepted very readily by the numerous agency, media, government, corporation and other
people necessarily involved in the operation. 9/11 was a Trauma-based Mind Control
Psychological Operation just like this one.
The alleged COVID-19 pandemic is, in reality, a Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological
Operation in the form of a "live pandemic exercise" and there is no novel virus.
Yes, that's SOP: distraction by a hyperabundance of mirrors: it was really first given its
rollout with JFK DALLAS. Endless deadends or deadweights are integral to all the psyops, but
especially that one. I'm of the opinion JFK was hit there, but that may be force of long
habit. Why 1000 books about it? Probably 937 are red herrings, right?
Here's a fascinating thing though, you will admit: I had a friend at work in 1982 at
Reunion Tower, Dealey Plaza. It overlooked the Grassy Knoll, believe it or not. The day after
my 30th birthday, they told me that that friend, John (Sullivan) had been shot coming out of
a bar around midnight 4.14.82 in Downtown Dallas, clean through the chest, and was in stable
condition. I went to the hospital where he was recovering, next evening, with flowers, and
left them on his nightstand. He was sedated and asleep with all kinds of bandages and tubes
coming out of his chest, no shirt. I offered a few words up, and had to be at our job in the
600 ft. Tower, and left. On the way out of the seedy parking lot, I saw the Marquee sign and
ran it back and forth on my tongue. "Parkland Hospital, why do I feel like I'm missing
something, here?"
It wasn't till I got on the freeway and had to go soon to punch a clock that it hit me
like a shot, "Holy good night, that is THE Parkland Hospital!" I would have turned back but I
was late.
Two nights later I get the call at home, from my sister, that my father had just been
found a few hours earlier, dead, in a locked Lincoln, gun in his hand and hole in his
head.
I'm not making this up, all the papers for all of that can be verified, across the board.
The question is, did it all actually happen, or was I the center of their own little
mob-generated psyop?
They have littered the landscape with so many doppelgangers and "simulacra' that can be
proven, also, so we know that much.
If JFK and/or LHO actually DID die at Parkland, I was standing within a few feet of their
bays.
But you do cast some serious doubts.
And one other thing, they ran an actual staged psyop on me a few years ago, it was all
choreographed with actors. It seemed real, but "after further review" it was staged. They
were amazed I could put it all together, but they staged a rather involved skit, to see if
I'd bite. I took some deep breaths and realized it was ALL rigged. And they knew I'd seen the
moving parts of their metaphorical"magician's box" such as in magic shows. It was quite
elaborate. The proof it was real is that once I figured it out, they suddenly discontinued it
a week later.
Here's one clue: for about 15 years every so often, one of their mob crosses my path and
tries to suggest we're being run from afar by space aliens and they keep steering me to a
video at YouTube. Or other trumped up info.
This is a favorite ploy. I tell them, no thanks, but I have enough on my plate just here
on Earth.
It's seemingly just a huge diversion, and I studiously ignore it.
They haven't done much lately. About a year and a half ago an Armenian guy named Apollo
(sounds like a stage magician, eh?) ran some crafty things past me, very sleight of hand. I
caught enough wind of it, I found a way to dodge it. It could have killed me, or worse.
Anyway, might seem off topic, but it's all just to add context and color to your
comments.
I am confirming that I have seen with my own eyes some of their psyops hocus pocus and it
IS real.
Two of the people in contact with SIRHAN were listed at bios at Wikipedia (which did not
mention Sirhan) as two of the most prominent hypnotists in US History. The Harvard hypnotist
who has been treating and shrinking for 10 years, Dr. Daniel Brown seems off, to me, when I
see him in "The Real Manchurian Candidate."
Sirhan DOES, categorically, strike me as a *real* trauma based mind control victim, not an
actor. He had a history of PTSD as a boy, all the way back in Palestine, when he watched as
his brother was run over by a Jeep.
I knew a woman who taught at USC (where my old man taught at the law school) who swore to
me in an email in 2006 that one of the hypnotists, my father's client, could put a whole
class "under", simultaneously, when she went to his Sunday lectures. Gives me the creeps. I
don't mention his name, no free publicity for a "brujo" of his ilk.
This all may sound too colorful to not be scripted, but this IS Hollywood we're talking
here. The Client used to hypnotize Bela Lugosi before he did coffin scenes, because the
eponymous (there's that word again) Dracula had claustrophia!
But it is significant here, in Anglo-American exchanges, that The Client founded in '30s
Hollywood the "Philosophical Research Society". I mention that, because it is a curious echo,
fifty years after the founding in London of the Society for Psychical Research, where both
Conan Doyle and Mark Twain were early members. (I think Twain was an intel agent. He bonded
with Tesla for many years, #1 early U.S. Intel target.)
PRS and SPR. (I can remember my fabulous late mother, even when I was 2 or 3, calling it
invariably "Pew" RS, pew being American slang for "stinks".)
One of the hypnotists who knew Sirhan (who grew up in Taybeh, Ephraim in Gospels, the last
stop of Jesus before Jerusalem and Golgotha) was technical advisor to the first version of
Manchurian Candidate, with Sinatra. William Joseph Bryant. He died several years after RFK,
in Las Vegas, rather young. My father's client, subject of the book, "Master of the
Mysteries" was murdered on his ranch in Fallbrook, about an hour's drive from here. So they
SAY: I've come across several versions of the forensics over the last 30 years, since he
purportedly died there in '90.
My sister told me his corpse was found with worms crawling out of every orifice of his
body, like Herod in the New Testament, "Acts of the Apostles".
But more authoritative sources say black ants. And I read another version too.
All which tends to argue your premise: ops.
And I told you, the Unabomber storyline seems silly with staged events.
One fact I can vouch, though: many a time I have found myself in the penumbra of these
events, if not closer! But still in the dark. Duped? Not entirely .
Mme. Blavatsky was a key figure in SPR in late 1800s London. Gandhi visited her there. She
was exposed as at least semi-fraudulent: she was not above using early audio technology at
her seances, for audible spookinesses! Wooooo . Hahaha
They called "The Client" of my dad's, "the American Blavatsky". Even Ronald Reagan
consulted him. Huxley knew him. I had dinner with Huxkey's wife once, when I was a callow 15
year old, but I never was introduced to The Client. Thank God! The old man insulated me from
some things, for some reason.
Angleton used a phrase from "Gerontion" about "mirrors".
We're seeing a helluva lot of mirrors, this month!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The CIA doesn't care what you do, as long as it's something they want you to do."
That is, something irrelevant & unmeaningful.
(Some of the above might sound rambling, but it is all unbelievably pertinent. Believe
it!)
I'm sure you've lived an interesting life, but does any of your rhetoric inform readers as to
practical solutions?
"Modern" society is now living under the boot of a militarized police state. Yet no one is
married to such persons, no one is related to such persons, no niece or nephew, aunt, uncle,
or cousin. No one knows them as a neighbor or as a person who is seen at the local bar. Hmmmm
Strange
The sleaze balls you allude to have names and addresses, and need to be hunted down and
culled. Jus' sayin'
Petra: I was on radio at Goddard College in VT 15 years ago, 7.15.05, reporting and analyzing
with the host, Jim HOGUE, the 7.7 London Tube and bus bombings. So very clearly a "terrorist
training exercise." Peter Power, formerly of Scotland Yard, spoke later that evening how they
had been doing a training exercise at the very moment for Visor, a private company, when he
said, on BBC Channel 4, "You can imagine how the hair stood up on our necks when we realized
the drill had suddenly gone 'live'".
There were many other stories like that.
I found out around then in a nice "find" of my own that a CIA agent, Art Riley, I believe
had been in charge of Port of NYC during 9/11, and was also head of London Transport during
7.7.
C'mon. Serious? So obvious.
This was the idea crystallizing in my mind the last few days, that the whole flu op was
just a new training exercise like those, for a variety of Intel purposes.
A to Z.
Great minds think alike!
But no fooling, it's got all those same fingerprints.
Hear, hear.
But garishly, tastelessly, wide in scope. If it's not "class war", I wonder how we
categorize it.
The 7/7 9/11 connection is interesting, John. And they're so brazen, no? "Hair stood up on
our necks." Yes, where their nature is applicable, psyops are "live" drills of themselves and
are preceded by at least one other drill, sometimes more and sometimes other drills run
concurrently. The greatest number of drills and exercises ever to occur on US soil probably
occurred on 9/11 which was, in effect, a massive Full-Scale Anti-Terrorist Exercise pushed
out as a real event.
The way I have come to see it, after ten years of having sporadic "chance," (yeah, right?)
interactions with Intel agents out in the field (they – a few retired one's have-
almost never identify themselves as such, but you get a workable certainty, and though the
working ones are saturated with sheepdip as being regular folk with regular jobs) is that
they see the world strictly as insiders versus outsiders. Us v. Them. They don't say that,
it's just so manifest.
Anyone who is not in the loop is essentially an adversary, and should mind their own
business if they're smart: "pay no attention to the wizard behind the curtain!" Etc.
Their own business: According to pretty dammed strict fish bowl like rules.
Oh, they don't mind if you act up or "carry on" but as the tagline of the Denzel remake of
Manchurian Candidate was given us by the late great Jonathan Demme: "Everything is under
control."
Pretty sick, but what now can they do. It is a bestial dialectic of the beast, that has
broken it's chains, really, and a roving rogue everywhere in the world. At least in its most
dangerous aspects.
Which are not few!
Only God and our own very good judgement, itself a gift, can save US.
Two have told me, "Be careful, it's NOT a free country."
That can put quite a nasty cramp in good judgement, but that comes with the territory
.
Might as well really reconnoiter that territory, eh, because we ALL share it now.
The Age of SPOOKOCRACY.
Exhibit A: all the many lockdowned nations. Switzerland, characteristically, is proud of
it's neutrality and one of the lightest loads now. That speaks volumes about what's really
going on?
Like Jews during WW II, I'm scanning their borders. I'm pricing jet tickets.
No, after all, I'll share this grief
wardropper ,
They can't make it last too long, however, otherwise we'll all go nuts. As the Donald
says, it will disappear like magic.
One has to consider, however, the possibility that they would rather like us all to go
nuts
Then we get the great civil military confrontation which some in Washington are just dying to
see, because their new devices for crowd control desperately need a thorough try-out.
If that seems far-fetched, we might consider that little Iceland, a country which had no
crime to speak of thirty years ago, ordered, after the banking crash of 2008, a crapload of
AK-74s for its police force (it has no army)
Doctortrinate ,
Latest figures Gov uk. Deaths registered in the year-to-date, Week 1 to 13. Looking at the
year-to-date (using refreshed data to get the most accurate estimates), the number of deaths
is currently lower than the five-year average. The current number of deaths is 150,047, which
is 3,350 fewer than the five-year average. Of the deaths registered by 27 March 2020, 647
mentioned the coronavirus (COVID-19) on the death certificate; this is 0.4% of all deaths.
U.K Lockdown – evening of the 23'rd March – Deaths, of 'or' with Covid ?
Tests, false positive / incorrect diagnosis = ? ? %
Gordo ,
Excellent article. It is apparent that the 'bone-pointers' generating individual panic and
general hysteria are first the MSM. Thus, this article should be sent to every editor and
every journalist involved making it clear that they are potential murderers.
Ben ,
If no one knew what Corona Virus was and it wasn't on the news no one would know or care
about it. Unlike Spanish flu. You would know and care very quickly. With or without MSM
bullshit.
That should tell you something.
All of it demonstrates our underlying quandary: we have a very real practical problem in
establishing the truth or validity of ALL the info we get, let alone really challenging
Intel.
The only confidence I can have personally in doing thar, over years of these things, is by
a process of triangulation.
THAT IS: Comparing, and contrasting, certain alleged facts with other alleged facts.
One of those clear facts is that they flood the field with psyops from actors and fakes to
try to erode our knowledge base and disorient and isolate us from real knowledge, and
allies.
And simply distract us. (Franz Kafka: "Evil is distraction." So, if their shoe fits
Lol)
Triangulation . is the reason I included some of my own stories. I was raised in various
circles around some of these people, and at least I know thus that certain things really
happen. So I set them down here, and elsewhere, to 1) document them as such, and 2) as
reference for people, later, since they can connect with some very important stories. Later.
Archived here.
Obviously we are too busy with the tasks at hand and this mess, to do "legwork" with them
now, but they will register at a later date, or even now, if they interconnect with some of
these other facts. There are patterns embedded in my testimony that parallel patterns in
these other psyops. Some times that can give unimaginable weight to a clue or two, from
personal storylines. Especially ones such as those I gave some details.
Which is why I give them. Granted, there are tonnages of facts involved, but there is a
peculiar phenomenon here of many similar patterns, and when they connect it can be quite
illuminating.
But proof? I loved first reading the opening of GK Chesterton's Autobiography almost a
half century ago, so much that I learned some sections of it by heart.
He calls the first chapter, opening pages, "Hearsay Evidence" about his own birth, "Bowing
down in blind credulity before tradition and the testimony of my elders, I confess that I was
born May 29, 1872 . etc. etc."
I got the point, that it's hard to say exactly what's true.
Later on he says, "For all the evidence, there still exists the real possibility that I
could have been the lost heir of the Holy Roman Empire, or some infant left on my parent's
back doorstep by ruffians from Soho, later to develop traits of a hideous criminal
heredity."
In a word, he was showing us some of the pitfalls of personal revelations, or just
acquired knowledge in general. That book is available online at the Project Gutenberg
Archives, as well as most, if not all of his 100+ titles oeuvre.
Certainly America today, and its viral infections of knowledge bases everywhere, speaks
volumes about these "epistemological problems".
(GKC had a really big advantage that so very few have: many of his works were dictated
without reference to notes. He said offhand, shortly before he died unexpectedly of heart
failure at 62, that he could remember the plot details of all 10,000 books he had reviewed
for the London press! Wow: most Franciscan and Thomist scholars say that the small books he
dictated on their saints were the best single volumes about them.
Just think of what he could do today toward conspiracy crime solutions. Probably why he
died in 1936. Things were heating up and they had to get him out of the way!
Sometimes I find, though, just knowing and practicing some of the intellectual tools he
developed, and mastered, are of great use in our epistemological pursuits of
TRIANGULATION.
I listen a lot to Alan Watts broadcasts and he mentions in one that his training as an
Anglican priest and his parallel wide studies in Eastern religions and practices was very
useful in "triangulating his true position."
The Trappist Thomas Merton – also most likely a anti-war 2968 martyr through the
handiwork of the CIA, whose more roguish members are the real fly in our global ointment, as
current events indicate – was one of the most "devout" of Catholics (Pope Francis
singled him out for special mention when he came here 5 years ago, along with Dorothy Day,
who was a good friend).
And Merton said, interestingly, "By the time I die, I want to have become the best
Buddhist I can possibly be."
He clearly had a good grasp of the blessings of triangulation.
Not that it is not without it's pitfalls, and I still am learning it's fascinating ways,
how to use it, hopefully, more correctly.
Meanwhile, we carry on with tasks close at hand. I am not trying to distract but inform
that process.
My own "way" that I preach. State Intel will do all they can to recruit and assimilate us.
The one Golden Rule I know is to do all I can to remain independent, separate, and a complete
ABSOLUTE non-collaborator.
Basically, they only want to control, totally contain, or kill you. And/or your
message.
We are under their virtual house arrest now, facts seem to show.
When Zen teacher Issan Dorsey was asked to describe the essence of Zen art, he answered, "Nothing extra."
"Nothing extra" is also of course the essence of Zen living itself: perceiving life as it
actually is, as opposed to perceiving it through a bunch of believed narrative filters about
yourself, about others, about reality, and so on. These narrative filters are an extra pile of
layers that are added on top of the actual experience of life, and they give a distorted view
which causes a lot of confusion and suffering. Relinquishing belief in them brings clarity and
peace.
This is also the essence of clearly understanding what's really going on in the world. Like
so much else, the approach to the large is the same as the approach to the small, which is to
say the approach to seeing clearly in the big picture is the same as the approach to seeing
clearly as an individual: you need to learn to look at it without the extra narrative
overlay.
Because the news media are
controlled by plutocrats who have a vested interest in
protecting the status quo upon which their kingdoms are built, almost everything in the
news is useless narrative fluff. It doesn't tell you what's really going on, it rather tries to
influence what's going on by manipulating the perceptions of the audience. It does this by
either (A) distracting from what really matters by focusing on what doesn't matter, or (B)
actively working to manipulate how the audience thinks about a given issue.
When you strip away all the empty fluff and manipulative spin, there are basically only four
often-overlapping pieces of information that really matter in the big picture: (1) where the
money is going, (2) where the resources are going, (3) where the weapons are going, and (4)
where the people are going. When it comes to understanding world dynamics, accurate information
about these four things is the only real news you'll ever encounter. Everything else is empty
narrative spin meant to justify, distort, or distract from information about these things.
If you ignore everything else and only focus on finding the most accurate information
possible about these four items, you will have an infinitely clearer understanding of what's
really going on in the world than someone who trusts news reporters to walk them through
it.
Watch where the money is going because you can trust the raw numbers of financial
transactions a lot more than you can trust the stories people are telling. A massive percentage
of daily news coverage goes toward analyzing the latest foam-brained gibberish that came out of
Donald Trump's mouth even though we all know he's going to contradict himself two days later,
but the fact that he's been
heavily funded by an oligarch who happens to have been a longtime proponent of the Iran
policies this administration has been advancing is much more solid.
Zoom out and watch where the money is going in the big picture and you'll see that a grossly
disproportionate amount of it is moving away from the general public and toward a very small
group of people, which we just saw illustrated in the historically unprecedented multitrillion-dollar wealth transfer in
the US corporate bailout. If you watch this small group and pay attention to the projects,
candidates, think tanks and media outlets they pour their wealth into, you will notice that
they exert an incredible amount of influence on all four crucial factors: where the money goes,
where the resources go, where the weapons go, and where the people go.
Watching where the resources are going gives you an even clearer image of what's going on
because resources, unlike money, are completely independent of narrative. There is no such
thing as "money" without the thoughts that humans agree to collectively think about it, but oil
would still be oil even if all humans were wiped off the face of the earth. When you see the US
ramping up escalations against Venezuela , ignore the narratives about "drug trafficking"
and what a bad, bad man Nicolás Maduro is, and look at
what resources lie beneath the ground in that nation to find out what this is really about.
Mentally "mute" the soundtracks the political/media class spout about who's doing what to whom
and just watch where the resources are going, and who's controlling them. That way you'll be
able to discern the powerful from the disempowered and the takers from their victims.
Watch where the weapons are going because those are another non-narrative factor which
exerts a huge influence on the world; a bullet will stop a beating heart regardless of what the
mind thinks about it. Ignore the irrelevant narrative fluff about where the coronavirus
originated and whether or not it's racist to say "Wuhan virus", and look at
the ring of US military bases encircling China and the way the Marine Corps
is shifting its attention onto that nation . Ignore Trump's gibberish about ending wars and
note that
he's been expanding them and
increasing foreign troop presence . Ignore the Democratic Party's nonsense about Trump
having loyalties to Russia and watch his administration's many dangerous
nuclear escalations against that nation . Ignore international finger-wagging at
humanitarian abuses by Israel and Saudi Arabia and look at who's still selling them weapons and
supporting them militarily.
Watch where the people are going for another important piece of real information that isn't
dependent on narrative. Where are the prisoners? Where are the refugees, where are they going,
and what are they fleeing? Where are people moving to, and what do they want?
With each of these four items you can simply watch raw data and ignore all the stories the
establishment spinmeisters tell about that data. As long as you make sure you're getting the
most accurate data possible, it's like you're looking at a globe and watching lines in four
different colors moving around in it from place to place and person to person. And without
anyone's stories tainting your view.
You will notice that there's a heavy degree of overlap between these four items. You see the
weapons moving toward China and you notice that's the nation with the US hegemony-threatening
Belt and Road
Initiative (where the resources are moving) and the key player in the
US dollar-threatening Shanghai Cooperation Organization (where the money is moving). You
see Julian Assange locked in prison (where the people are going) for exposing US war crimes
(where the weapons are going). You see US troops illegally
occupying Syrian oil fields (where the weapons and resources are going) to prevent the Syrian
government from using it to rebuild the nation (where the money is going). And so on.
Nearly everything that makes it to the top of the daily news churn is either propaganda
distortion or distracting drivel, and either way you can safely ignore it. Just watch where the
money is going, where the resources are going, where the weapons are going and where the people
are going, and ignore all the narrative chatter.
"... A dominant characteristic of fear is to always favor informations that maintain or amplify it and repress the ones which do not. Could it be the reason why the Scandinavian experience is rarely mentioned and if yes, qualified as being nonethical, without discussion of the pros and cons and the risk/benefit ratio of the confinement approach (see below). Fear does not allow good science to be performed, and we badly need good science, now and tomorrow. ..."
"... Lockdown and isolation practices have been taken by many with an amazing amount of ethics, patience, courage, adaptability, inventiveness and humor. As they block the young and active part of society, they may produce along time significant psychosocial and economic harm, risking to destabilize society in a worldwide manner. Rather sooner than later, they will have to be cancelled by governments. ..."
A few considerations on the corona crisisThe monumental importance of the measures taken around the world in the fight for control of the
current COVID-19 pandemic during the past few weeks motivated us to express through this text a few considerations
and comments on this hugely important topic.
Dr. Joel Kettner [
1
],
professor of Community Health Science at Manitoba University and Medical Director of the International Centre for
Infectious Diseases declared recently:
I have never seen anything like this I am not talking about the pandemic, because I have seen 30 of them, one
every year But I have never seen this reaction, and I am trying to understand why "
We do too, and wish to share our thoughts through these lines. Dr. David Jones[
2
]
declared recently, concerning the corona crisis, in the New England Journal of Medicine:
History suggests that we are actually at much greater risk of exaggerated fears and misplaced priorities"
Corona and other common Cold viruses
The common cold, as its name indicates, is the most common human infectious disease and affects people all over
the globe. Adults have typically two to three infections per year, and children even more. Rates of symptomatic
infections increase in the elderly due to reduced defense mechanisms. Over 200 virus types are implicated, the main
ones being rhino-, corona-, adeno- and enteroviruses as well as influenza, parainfluenza, human respiratory syncytial
and metapneumoviruses.
Studies out of different countries were reviewed by Wodarg[
3
]
(see among others Nicholson et al.[
4
]),
showing that coronaviruses are present year after year in 7-15% of winter respiratory tract infections (RTI). Every
year indeed, these common cold viruses invade the planet in wintertime of the northern hemisphere and mutate to get
entry into our organisms, and reproduction inside our cells.
We are thus dealing with a cyclic viral planetary invasion with high contagious capacity, in this sense a
pandemic, which, because it is so well known and most of the time benign, activates no significant fears in the
population and most of the time low interest from microbiologists.
Like the SARS-CoV-1 of 2002-2003 and the MERS virus of 2012, the SARS-CoV-2 is a corona virus which is thought to
have mutated from an animal. The next essential characteristic of a virus, after its contagiousness, is its lethality
for the human population. Roussel et al.[
5
]
have just published that common (i.e. pre-SARS-CoV-2 mutation) coronaviruses had in France an estimated mortality of
0.8% in 2016.
They analyzed, in addition, 4 common coronavirus strains between 2013 and 2020, which had mortalities between 0.36
and 2.7% (381 other corona strains diagnosed before 2017 were not assigned to this study). Data from the OECD and
from France (Roussel et al.[
5
])
show a SARS-CoV-2 mortality of 1.3% and 1.6%, respectively.
These data are fundamental to demonstrate the following: SARS-CoV-2 displays no higher mortality than its older
companions. It must be realized, however, that viral RTIs can be threatening to old, sick and weakened human beings.
The mortality rate of the common cold can go indeed as high as 8% in elderly nursing homes (Ioannidis[
6
]).
Diagnostic tests
We have at the time no idea of the presence (prevalence) of the SARS-CoV-2 in the human population. The journal
Le Monde
[
7
]
published a detailed review of 26 countries showing an average 10% of tests being positive, and Capek[
8
]
cites values staying between 10 and 15%. Interestingly, the presence of common cold coronaviruses in yearly RTIs
worldwide is 7-15% (see above).
These data speak for a usual presence of the SARS-CoV-2 this year as compared with the one, each year, of older
corona strains. They contradict the existence of a progression of the SARS-CoV-2 infections beyond the usual yearly
rate.
Common cold viruses display a high contagiousness level, due among other factors to the fact that a large majority
of their infections, estimated between 80 and 99.5%, are non or mildly symptomatic.
As around 20-40% of the population get an RTI in winter, we are led to the conclusion that a very large proportion
of the population must harbor common cold viruses including the SARS-CoV-2 corona strain. Confirming this line of
thought, Gupta et al.[
9
]
from Oxford University have drafted a model suggesting that a large part of the population has already been infected
by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, going through a mild or an asymptomatic infection.
Testing its presence in the population just confirms this reality, and the (obviously!) growing number of positive
tests should in no way be interpreted as a sign of an unusual propagation of the virus. This interpretation is one of
the two main panic activation factors at the source of the current worldwide panic wave. The only useful side of a
progressively larger testing of the whole population would be to bring the mortality rate down by including more mild
(rhinitis, coughing, no fever) or asymptomatic infection forms.
Mortality
The World Health Organization and numerous experts have communicated to the world a crude mortality rate for
COVID-19 of 3.4%, causing panic: this indicates (erroneously) a danger for the population around 30 times higher than
with the influenza virus, which is estimated at 0.1%.
In addition to the idea (not the evidence, as discussed above) of an exceptional pandemic, this statement
represents the second essential panic activation factor. The approach here is to count the number of deaths over the
number of positive tests performed.
As tests are in general not performed on persons affected mildly or without symptoms, this approach ignores their
high presence, estimations for it, going for COVID-19 from 82-90% in China (Li et al.[
10
])
up to 99.5% in Germany (Bhakdi[
11
]).
Such a crude mortality rate is thus inadequately high, not providing the centrally relevant information: the
number of deaths calculated over the total of infections by a given virus, including all clinical forms, from
asymptomatic to fatal ones. This mortality rate is the one representing the real danger the human population is
exposed to when getting infected: it is the infection mortality rate.
It is to be noted that the type of calculation followed by Roussel et al. ([[
5
]]
mentioned above) was considering the death percentage on the positive tests performed, with high crude mortality
values. The usefulness of this study resides however, as discussed above, in the comparison between the mortality of
the older and the current SARS-CoV-2 corona strains.
Ioannidis[
6
]
estimates an infection mortality rate for COVID-19 between 0.05 and 1%. Assuming a mid-range mortality value of 0.3%
and a 1% infection rate, it would correspond to 10'000 deaths for the USA. This surely is an impressive number, it
would however stay buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from usual seasonal RTIs.
The European Monitoring of Excess Mortality for Public Health Action[
12
]
reveals that, till year week 13, no global European excess mortality can be seen as compared with earlier years, the
death toll trend for 2019-2020 is in fact slightly lower than for earlier years.
Confirming this, the German Robert Koch Institute[
13
]
documented end of March a nationwide decrease in the activity of acute RTIs, with the number of hospital stays caused
by them being below the level of previous years and currently continuing to decline.
Roussel et al.5 remind us that every year around the world 2.6 million people die of RTIs. Today, at the end of
March and of the RTI season, we may really hope that the SARS-CoV-2 strain will not be the "killer virus" which was
profiled and which produced such an intense and worldwide reaction. A revealing comparison can be made with the
yearly mortality of influenza infections, estimated between 0.5 and 1 million worldwide.
In Switzerland where the death toll of the flu is estimated at an average of 2'000 deaths per season, we live,
like all other countries around the world, with this cyclic reality, and have integrated it fully in our personal,
social and national lives (Osterloh and Frey[
14
]).
With the COVID-19, Switzerland remains, end of March, with a lower death toll.
As of today, we have not yet a final estimation of the infection mortality rate of the COVID-19. The data
described above indicate a value at or below the one of the flu. Bendavid and Bhattacharya[
15
]
proposed indeed estimations of the infection mortality rate of the COVID-19 between 0.01 for the US and 0.06% for
Italy (based on the testing of the whole population of the town of Vò), values close to the ones proposed by
Ioannidis[
6
],
and below the 0.1% rate of the flu.
If the monitoring of the global (e.g. European) death toll does not show any excess mortality during the 2019-2020
season, it is nevertheless true that a local increase is present in northern Italy. In the city of Bergamo for
example, 652 deaths (all causes of death included) were reported between January 1st and March 21st of this year
versus 386 in the same period of 2017, during the last bigger flu wave.
An interesting fact is that in the same period the city of Milano has recorded 3,283 deaths this year versus 3,792
in 2017[
16
].
Obviously, further analysis of the demographic data and of local factors will be needed.
The detailed Italian official data[
17
]
demonstrate a very high relevance for mortality of pre-existing morbidities: the average age of deceased patients was
78.5 years old. On a study on 481 deaths, 6 patients (1.2%) had no pre-existing morbidities, 23.5 % had one, 26.6%
two and 48.6% three or more pre-morbidities. Nine patients were younger than 40 years old, but at least seven of them
had serious pre-existing pathologies. In 84% of Italian therapeutic programs, antibiotics were applied, indicating a
high rate of bacterial co-infections.
It must also be kept in mind that the SARS-CoV-2 is often accompanied, in an average of 24% of infections
according to Shah et al.[
18
],
by other common cold viruses, so that it cannot always be held primarily responsible for the disease and its
consequences.
Following these lines and according to Prof. Ricciardi[
19
],
an analysis of Italian death certificates showed that only 12% of them displayed a direct causality from the COVID-19
virus. This leads to a most significant reduction of the deaths attributable to it. One ends up with a few dozen
deaths per day, compared to 20'000 flu deaths per year in Italy.
The Italian Civil Protection Service underline in this context the necessity to differentiate between death with
and death from corona virus[
20
].
This analysis is absolutely essential, should be considered by all countries counting their deaths, and will
contribute to get a final correct estimation of the COVID-19 death toll worldwide.
Finally, two additional factors add to the Italian mortality rate: the high average age of the population (with
633'133 deaths[
21
]
for all reasons in 2018, estimated 2,000 deaths per day in wintertime) and high air pollution levels. One gets hence
the addition of 3 factors reducing strongly the death causality of COVID-19:
other viruses because they often come together
bacterial secondary infections
pre-existing morbidities
In conclusion, a very invasive virus with a high death toll is the basis for the development of fear and panic in
the human population. The statistical considerations above allow us to hope that the SARS-CoV-2 will not be the
"killer virus" that we expected. Local factors, like in Italy, may play a significant role. That fear and panic may
in themselves cause and increase locally human losses is discussed below.
The alveolar and interstitial pneumopathy (AIP) and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
The AIP[
22
]
affects around 2 million people worldwide and is due to the triggering of an ill-understood abnormal healing
response. This response is delayed over around a week in the case of the SARS.
Two-thirds of AIP are idiopathic, i.e. have no known cause. For the ones with a known etiology, the causes are
autoimmune, allergic or infectious. Infectious agents are the coronavirus, but also the respiratory syncytial virus
and tuberculosis. There is evidence that the autoimmune and allergic dynamics point to the relevance of
psycho-neuro-immunological mechanisms, which, in the presence of an associated genetic predisposition, may trigger
overactive deleterious inflammatory responses.
Thus, in the AIP, the virus is only the environmental trigger of a process which needs other factors, genetic and
psycho-emotional, to develop.
In accordance with the presence of an autoimmune response in SARS, Chinese and Italian doctors have applied with
success to serious SARS patients a treatment of Tocilizumab[
23
],
a medication useful in the treatment of the rheumatoid arthritis, a well-known auto-immune disorder. We thus propose
that emotional factors play a role through the development of the SARS and AIP, in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.
Everybody's life experiences and growing scientific evidence speak for a direct influence of our emotional state
on immunity and inflammation processes.
This will determine, at the moment of viral invasion, the activation level of our defense mechanisms, closing, or
in stress alas opening up a breach allowing a full-blown respiratory infection (including lungs). In the case of an
AIP, an overactivation of the organism's immune and inflammation responses can also be induced (named "cytokine storm
or release syndrome"[
23
]).
The role of stress and panic
Stress has been shown to be at the source of cell losses in the limbic (behavioral) brain of animals. It is in
position to activate excitotoxic, oxidative, immunological, inflammatory, endocrine and vegetative mechanisms, and to
cause in certain conditions the potentially fatal failure of multiple organs.
One such situation has been described by ethnologists in the context of a ritual performed by the kurdaitcha man,
or shaman of the aborigenic society. It is called "pointing the bone" and causes the so-called "self-willed death",
or "bone-pointing syndrome"[
24
][
25
].
It consists in the pointing onto a victim of a ritual bone which activates the effect of a "spear of thought" and
kills the cursed person over days to weeks, without great suffering.
This ritual may have served kurdaitcha men along the millennia when a member of their community would become
dangerous. The power of an idea and its related emotion, i.e. fear, is exemplified here in a most impressive and
definitive way.
We propose to consider the possibility, in the context of the corona crisis, that a planetary "spear of thought"
loaded with fear and capable to kill is active now and threatens the whole of mankind, inducing among other things
the development of the AIP and provoking fear-based chain reactions all over the world.
Pre-existing and facilitating factors may be the threat of human extinction by a killer virus as shown
impressively in disaster movies, and a current feeling of doomed and dismal planetary state due to pollution.
Images have been displayed all over the world of bad science fiction scenes, with human silhouettes installed in
beds surrounded by alien-looking fully masked and dressed-up doctors and nurses, dead streets swept with gross
disinfectant systems, the close-up picture of the initiating Chinese doctor with panicky eyes over a ventilation
device, "state of war" declarations to the virus by politicians, faked Italian messages as the one from a mother
wanting to convince her child to stay home, emergency military tents filled with persons waiting for the verdict of
their test, etc
In addition, it is interesting to consider that both the SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 and the MERS-CoV in 2012 were
coronaviruses: they may have paved the way toward a sensitivity of the human environment to a respiratory threat.
They were rated as dangerous because they had a high mortality, although their propagation was very limited with a
death toll of 770 (SARS-CoV-1) and 850 (MERS-CoV) patients worldwide[
26
].
The elements for panic generation were in place: death by a killer virus, economic failure and chaos, loss of
familial and social support, loss of freedom and isolation due to lockdown measures, helplessness, uncertain future
for the human civilization, and the overwhelming fear of losing a loved one without being able to say goodbye.
Like the man cursed by the pointing of the bone of the kurdaitcha, the current corona "spear of thought" seems
well to be able to hit different body targets and induce multiple organ failure: for example, cardiomyopathy is
described in the high percentage of 33% of Italian patients[
27
].
Fear and anxiety are felt indeed typically at the cardio-respiratory level, with dyspnea (choking feeling) and heart
palpitations.
Let us imagine a person, for example in the north of Italy in February 2020, coughing and unwell from an RTI. An
immediate fear of getting infected by the COVID-19 virus arises and dominates his mind (I take here the example of a
man, as the infection risk is higher for males!).
He heard, announced the day before by the WHO, that this virus kills more than the flu (against which he is
vaccinated, being 70 years old). He knows that policemen closed the village where he lives, forbidding entry and
exit. Being a good citizen, he announces that he suspects a corona infection and is taken in an emergency to the
local hospital.
By arrival, he is placed in a probably uncomfortable and cold tent, in the middle of other fearful citizens, and
his SARS-CoV-2 test is performed. Other people cough around him, and he waits for the sentence. His heart beats hard
and it seems that he cannot breathe well.
His test being positive, he is taken into the hospital by an efficient but stressed medical team, and gets
surrounded by masked nurses. He realizes that he is now no longer free to leave this whole nightmare, to get back
home. Panic raises its dreadful head, and his defense mechanisms fall down, opening the way to a full-blown, at his
age threatening viral infection. In this state, our patient may experience one of the three following scenarios:
At best: he keeps an upper RTI, with a bit of fever, a solid cough through bronchitis, some difficulty to
swallow and a full nose. He is kept isolated in the hospital, the staff remains efficient but stressed, very busy
and distant, and he stays alone with his fears to get full-blown choking feelings leading so many to the intensive
care unit and ventilator. He cannot get the visit of his family and he stays sick with a solid RTI for the next
two weeks. Most probably, this experience will stay imprinted for ever in his emotional brain.
At worst, first scenario: his age, his long standing suboptimal pulmonary function, his significant overweight
precipitate a bronchopneumonia, with combined viral development and bacterial secondary infection by nosocomial
germs, leading to death in a few days. He dies without a last contact with his wife and children.
At worst again, second scenario: the viral attack on his pulmonary system is moderate and the tissues there
begin to recover in proper manner over a week. He keeps a deep feeling of fear and doom, dyspnea arises, a scan is
performed showing the presence of an AIP, and he is taken to the intensive care unit. Over the next few days, the
"spear of thought" proceeds flying, his pre-existing suboptimal health state limits his resources to overcome the
reanimation phase, secondary infections arise, heart failure and failure of other organs develop and he dies,
again far away from his family
Around him and at home, other patients suffering from other health problems are treated suboptimally, all energy,
material and staff being concentrated on the corona crisis.
It is easy to understand how hospital staffs will be submitted to a huge overload:
worried people flow into hospitals, increasing the workload of the medical and nursing teams,
teams are reduced by the absence of burned-out collaborators, by the quarantine of others and in some
situations by the ones kept away by the closing of borders. Again stress and panic develop and create the pervasive
impression of exceptional and uncontrollable chaos
The existence of the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV corona episodes in 2003 and 2012 could point to the possibility of
mutations of the coronavirus toward a particular pulmonary affinity.
Three same or similar, allegedly random mutations are however not likely, and we favor in this context the
hypothesis mentioned above of sensitivity of the human environment to a respiratory threat, a "spear of thought"
loaded with fear and threatening the whole human planet
There are, currently end of March, very significant differences of mortality rates between countries. The
respective crude mortality rates (deaths on the number of positive tests performed) are around 0.3% for Germany, 3.6%
for France and 7.8% for Italy.
For the same countries, the number of deaths per million inhabitants is respectively 7, 40 and 178. We propose
that the three following factors, in addition to local factors (see discussion above about Italy), co-influence the
amount of critical cases and deaths:
the baseline level of anxiety in a given human population,
the suppression of basic human social interactions through isolation, and
the suppression of democratic freedom by limitation of civil rights.
The difference is fundamental between a recommendation to the people in the name of the safety for all or an order
enforced by state-given punishments (including emprisonment).
The Swiss government, for example, has managed in such tensed times to pass measures mainly as recommendations and
not as orders, counting on the goodwill and adequation of the Swiss people. Concerning point 2), it is to be noted
that the disruption of social bonds is indeed a severe issue for all primate societies, and in non-human primates,
isolation can lead to death.
A surely premature review of some national mortality rates worldwide may provide insights favoring this
proposition: as an example, Scandinavian countries have mostly respected the freedom of the people, and classical
safety measures have been recommended as usually against the flu, without confinement of the whole population. They
have among the lowest mortality rates in Europe.
A dominant characteristic of fear is to always favor informations that maintain or amplify it and repress the ones
which do not. Could it be the reason why the Scandinavian experience is rarely mentioned and if yes, qualified as
being nonethical, without discussion of the pros and cons and the risk/benefit ratio of the confinement approach (see
below). Fear does not allow good science to be performed, and we badly need good science, now and tomorrow.
Confinement and isolation measures
The rapid adoption in most countries of the strategy to control viral spread with confinement measures has
developed, as far as we are aware, without an in-depth, open and balanced analysis of all pros and cons concerning
this approach.
As cited by Ioannidis and other experts, there exists only a weak evidence for the efficiency of confinement
measures (see Cochrane Database). Evident however are their negative psychosocial effects we have discussed above,
and deleterious effects on the world economy are already present and cannot be underrated.
Of course, classical measures of decontamination/isolation to reduce viral transmission between individuals are to
be recommended, but can be limited around the sensitive members of the population, that is old, sick and weakened
individuals. This has been the approach of Scandinavian countries. A general lockdown approach does not seem to make
sense from many aspects.
Firstly, the rapidity with which European countries lost track of the chain from patients 1 onward underlines a
well-known extreme contagiousness, questioning even the possibility to stop the propagation by tracking the virus and
its carriers in the whole human population.
This happened in Italy in a matter of a day or two, and in spite of very fast and extensive isolation measures.
Common cold viruses have probably developed a great experience through their yearly planetary invasions, and tracking
them as well as establishing lockdown measures does not seem to be the proper thing to do when one realizes that, as
discussed above, they distribute themselves worldwide over millions of individuals (see the Oxford model above)
during the whole winter season.
The next argument is centered on the regularly proposed necessity to flatten the epidemy distribution curve to
reduce the death toll. This approach does not consider the existence and relevance of the "herd or population
immunity". With it, the larger the amount of immunized people in the human population, the less dangerous the viral
epidemy can be.
The application of general distancing and confinement measures leads unavoidably to all sorts of questionable
decisions. Even worse, different measures, which make minimal or even no sense, may be imposed by states and
implemented/increased by fearful individuals.
In any case, in the name of the safety of all, states appeal to the duty of all individuals to accept limitations
of their civil rights and freedom. This move should be limited to recommendations, and not orders accompanied by
punishment: the readiness of the people must remain the dominant factor, and the people should not be threatened by a
government they have themselves chosen.
The subject of the adoption of more or less strict measures creates unavoidably fractures inside the social group.
Movements come up proposing different ways, mainly through electronic media, to increase the penetration into the
private sphere of individuals in the name of epidemic control, notwithstanding the fact that any population control
is a danger to democracy.
When a discussion arises on this theme, anybody demanding for a maintenance of her/his private sphere is opposed
by the arguments 1) that the fact that one has nothing to hide should bring no problem, and 2) that in the case of
epidemic prevention, one surely does not mean to limit safety measures to protect everybody.
In the case of our country, the Swiss federal council has shown a most solid position and insisted to maintain as
low as possible the temporary limitation of the Swiss people's freedom and civil rights, resisting firmly
journalistic pressures.
As examples of questionable lockdown measures, let us mention first the school stop, which backfires onto
grandparents induced to provide child care. This measure is not evidence-based, i.e. there is no available scientific
study demonstrating its efficiency, it has been introduced from country to country because another country had done
it before. Population immunity mentioned above has to be addressed here.
Leaving children to interact at school and playground and leaving the young (below 65) adult group work and also
interact can be seen as the best way to advance herd immunity and thus protect the whole population, knowing in
addition that these two age groups have an absolutely minimal risk to be endangered by the SARS-CoV-2. There are thus
sound reasons to doubt the usefulness of the introduction of this measure, and we may even envisage that it could be
counterproductive.
The closing of public and natural spaces, particularly parks in cities, makes no sense: if people are demanded or
obliged to keep distance in the streets, are they going not to do so in parks, whereby the way more place is there
for them to keep distance?
The contact with nature and fresh air, as mentioned by the Danish government, will be of utmost importance for the
well-being of inhabitants of large cities, before or after they go out for food, work or other primordial activities.
With this measure, they are unjustly limited in comparison with people living in the country.
Among other highly questionable measures, the suppression/limitation of the access to the medical and spiritual
domains is fully inappropriate, deleterious and inhumane. Not only COVID-19 patients but also all the other patients
hospitalized for other reasons cannot get their visits.
In general, but particularly now in the middle of the crisis, the support by dear ones is part of social and
spiritual functions which should never be touched or withdrawn, taking the risk to alienate human beings from their
vital psychosocial and spiritual environment. Why couldn't a close visiting family member apply the same safety
precautions in the hospital as the medical staff do? And religious services could be performed with the same distance
recommendations as for other civil sessions, which have been maintained because they are considered indispensable.
Lockdown and isolation practices have been taken by many with an amazing amount of ethics, patience, courage,
adaptability, inventiveness and humor. As they block the young and active part of society, they may produce along
time significant psychosocial and economic harm, risking to destabilize society in a worldwide manner. Rather sooner
than later, they will have to be cancelled by governments.
Experts, politicians and media
In the domain of biology, and particularly studies of large biological structures and dynamics, detailed analyses
considering all sides of a phenomenon are essential, to avoid biased views and inappropriate conclusions and
decisions. Biology is not mathematics, physics or chemistry, its complexity requires the integration of multiple
dimensions and the adoption of a hopefully well-based interpretation. In the intensive and extensive, worldwide field
of the corona crisis, an open, deep, careful, multidimensional and thus unbiased study of the whole situation with
presentation of pros and cons and risk/benefit balance analyses is fundamental. Medical experts, mainly
microbiologists and epidemiologists, are the ones to provide these informations to politicians. They have to realize
that they hold in their hands the power to modulate the state of mind of the whole human planet, and that they have
to carefully avoid to activate a worldwide powerful chain reaction of fear and panic. In the aftermath of the corona
crisis, an open, deep and constructive analysis will have to be performed, with the goal to avoid the future
repetition of current errors.
Politicians represent their people and, in this function, have the difficult role to protect them when necessary.
They have the right and the duty to ask from their experts the open, detailed and unbiased analysis just mentioned.
Governments should make at best propositions which are the product of their sound and balanced analysis. These
propositions will often be compromises between extremes (a tradition in our country!), and being thus moderate, they
will be more readily accepted by the people. And, as discussed above, this approach may take away one of the three
panic activation factors we propose, i.e. the reduction/suppression of democratic freedom. The public must be
informed in an open and reassuring way, and negative informations should be balanced by positive ones, maintaining
hope in the population. There is nothing questionable to provide hope in a balanced information context. In addition,
a government would make something deeply constructive by congratulating its people for its courage and adequacy
Media have a role to relay informations from all possible environments and tendencies. As exemplified particularly
clearly in the current situation, they should avoid to exert pressures on politicians, and be deeply aware that they
can contribute to the worldwide activation of powerful anxiogenic mechanisms if they do not provide balanced
informations from controlled sources.
The very fast and overwhelming distribution of the current panic has as one facilitating factor the spreading
efficiency of social media, which have been instrumental in profiling, through biased and even fake news, a situation
in Italy as more chaotic than it really is. Of course, positive news are also distributed by social media, but an
anxious environment tends, as discussed above, to maintain itself by the relay of dominantly anxiogenic informations.
Conclusion
As of today (end of March 2020), a death toll of around 35'000 worldwide is being attributed to COVID-19. This is
of course a high number but still much less than the flu, which kills every season between half a million and a
million people. There are 2.6 million deaths worldwide every year due to RTIs.
The world is, in the middle of the corona crisis, mesmerized by one mutated corona virus like hundreds of other
ones spreading over the whole world every year. It presents no evidence of higher mortality than its earlier yearly
mutations. Diagnostic testing is being interpreted as a way to follow the epidemic propagation, whereas it only
reveals (partially) the ubiquitous and collaborative presence of common cold viruses worldwide.
The mortality rate of COVID-19 has been calculated as the percentage of performed tests coming out positive, not
integrating the strong mortality reduction allowed by the presence of a high percentage of mild or asymptomatic
disease forms. Fear and panic were kindled by these two inaccurate scientific communications and spread over the
whole planet like a bushfire, causing the chaos we observe every day on the News.
Scientific experts, politicians and media people will have to deeply realize the importance of providing
well-based unbiased information and recommendations. The corona crisis has brought to light that the human planet has
currently a high anxiety level and must be treated gently, just like a human patient in a sensitive phase of her
life!
There is no way for us to conceive life without viruses. They are everywhere, around 50% of our own genome is of
viral origin, and the virologist Prof. Moelling brought documented arguments in her book that viruses are "more
friends than foes"[
28
].
Our main foe is fear activated by a biased and heartless science. We are with most viruses in a win/win and
need/need interaction: we cannot live without each other. No party has advantage to eradicate the other. Older
pandemics, which are at the source of deep atavic plague memories, were in most cases due to bacterias and related
closely to precarious human life conditions.
The only catastrophic viral pandemic was the 1918 H1N1 flu, which killed millions, but developed in the chaotic
and unhealthy aftermath of the first world war. Panic seems to be no appropriate, even no feasible way to integrate
our interaction with viruses, it would guarantee us a future filled with fear for the next pandemic and repeated
panic states and destabilizations of the worldwide human environment.
A bleak future, indeed not desirable at all. Avoidable though if we apply this: to think deep, to do good science,
and not to panic
Daniel Jeanmonod MD
, Professor Emeritus of Neurosurgery at Zürich University and
Physiology & Neuroscience at New York University.
Roxanne Jeanmonod
, Physical Therapist.
Francis Neirynck
, Civil Engineer
References:-
[1] Dr Joel Kettner on CBC Radio – Cross Country Checkup,
March 15, 2020.
[2] Jones D. History in a Crisis – Lessons for Covid-19. New England Journal of
Medicine (2020).
[3] Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg. Review on https://www.wodarg.com.
[4] Nicholson K.G. et al. Respiratory viruses and exacerbations of asthma in adults.
British Medical Journal 307 (1993).
[5] Roussel Y. et al. SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data, International Journal of
Antimicrobial Agents (2020).
[6] Dr. Ioannidis J.P.A. A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes
hold, we are making decisions without reliable data. www.statnews.com, March 17, 2020.
[7] Dagorn G. Coronavirus : la France pratique-t-elle assez de tests ? Le Monde. March
20, 2020.
[8] Kapek R. https://coronadaten.wordpress.com.
[9] Gupta S. Fundamental principles of epidemic spread highlight the immediate need
for large-scale serological surveys to assess the stage of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Link to download the draft in
the following article: Cookson C. Coronavirus may have infected half of UK population -- Oxford study. Financial
Times, March 24, 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/5ff6469a-6dd8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b
[10] Li R. et al. Substancial undocumented infection facilitates the rapid
dissemination of novel coronavirus (SARS-Co2). Science (2020).
[11] Bhakdi S. Corona-Krise: Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi erklärt warum die Maßnahmen
sinnlos und selbstzerstörerisch sind. YouTube Video. March 24, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBB9bA-gXL4&feature=emb_logo
[12] European Monitoring of Excess Mortality for Public Health Action
https://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/number.html
[13] Buda s. et al. Influenza Wochenbericht Kalenderwoche 13/2020. Robert Koch
Institut. March 27, 2020.
[14] Osterloh M. and Frey B. Coronavirus: Vergleiche sind wichtig. Gastkommentar Neue
Zürcher Zeitung, March 12, 2020.
[15] Bendavid E. and Bhattacharya J. Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say? Wall
Street Journal Editorial, March 24, 2020.
[16] Istituto Nazionale di Statistica. Dataset sintetico con i decessi per settimana.
https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/240401
[17] EpiCentro. Characteristics of COVID-19 patients dying in Italy Report based on
available data on March 20th, 2020. Istituto Superiore di Sanità.
[18] Shah N. Higher co-infection rates in COVID19. Data shared at the request of the
California Department of Public Health. Medium. March 18, 2020.
[19] Newey S. Why have so many coronavirus patients died in Italy? The Telegraph,
March 23, 2020.
[20] Borrelli A. Dipartimento Protezione Civile. Conferenza stampa 20 marzo 2020 ore
18.00 – Coronavirus. YouTube Video (at 3.30 minutes), March 20, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M4kbPDHGR0&feature=youtu.be&t=210
[21] Istituto Nazionale di Statistica. I.Stat. Popolazione e famiglie – Mortalità –
Decessi – Morti. http://dati.istat.it/Index.aspx?QueryId=19670
[22] Synthesis on Interstitial lung disease on Wikipedia including detailed
references. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstitial_lung_disease
[23] Zhang C. et al. The cytokine release syndrome (CRS) of severe COVID-19 and
Interleukin-6 receptor (IL-6R) antagonist Tocilizumab may be the key to reduce the mortality. International
Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (2020).
[24] Cannon W.B. „Voodoo" Death. American Anthropologist (1942)
[25] Milton G.W. Self-willed death or the bone-pointing syndrome. The Lancet (1973)
[26] Synthesis on Coronavirus on Wikipedia including detailed references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus
[27] Arentz M. Characteristics and outcomes of 21 critically ill patients with
COVID-19 in Washington State. Journal of the American Medical Association (2020).
[28] Moelling K. Viruses, more friends than foes. World Scientific Publishing, New
Jersey London Singapore (2017).
Rhisiart Gwilym
,
Take a look at this cry from frontline medical staff at a Bergamo hospital. Does this sound like a psyop
to you? Something pretty desperate seems to be happening in Lombardy, whatever the ultimate explanation
may be. Can't just discount testimony like this:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5CCVUc5ZMZo?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
film done by 2 americans called Quarantiranny
re : Imperial College of Medicine
re : who or whats behind it
The counties where I work or live most of the time, Orange and San
Diego, contiguous and 120 miles of coastline, with a combined GDP of almost exactly a half trillion
dollars, and each with almost identical populations, 3 million each, each of which is larger than over 20
U. S. States out of 50, released this fearsome figure of DEATH counts from (?) this killer flu:
15 in Orange County
31 in San Diego.
(They think.)
STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!!
Find the Mega-Font for the global headlines.
Would it be "QUARANTINES WORKING!!!"
We should be so lucky.
I have been quizzing a lot of people in my travels, and roughly 4 out of 5, or higher, think this
whole thing is just a tragi-musical. A Soap Opera Psyop. A very police- styled security guard kicked me
out of a parking lot at my high school yesterday. I told him I was parked under the solar panels to get
shelter so I could use my portable stair stepper, as it was raining everywhere and I had no other access
to exercise. He said, "District Orders, sorry. But I agree with you completely." Given that opening, I
gave him a short paragraph pitch that this was an international Ponzi Scheme to crash the global economy,
precisely like ENRON 2000, only worldwide. Suddenly the rain kicked up with a driving wind and he was
getting drenched, but fascinated, not going anywhere. I took pity on him after 30 seconds of torrent, he
said he was only 24 when I asked, but knew some about Enron. He wanted to keep listening, we were alone
at my deserted HS of 1970 class, but he was standing outside my car getting soaked, so I overruled him,
and he said, "Let me open the gate for you." It had been locked after I entered!
A dyed-in-the-wool future Police Aademy graduate, if we last that long.
It may be the wake-up call that's needed, or at least more advantageous. Only the born germaphobes
seem to be holdouts to a California statewide citizen quorum .
And even the faces that strike me as born ijjits are spouting a lot of sense ?!?!! What, The Flock?
And *hearing* sense, like, for one featured example of mine: "Governmental Psyops".
That SUDDENLY,
SUDDENLY, I SAY
Is not tinfoil hat public pity.
Waking up, World?
Now, just hoping we all don't wake up dead .
San Francisco County was the first to totally shut down almost a month ago, or less. Or at least it
enacted the first draconians of rules .
9 deaths now, 25 days in . Scary. It's almost like death is becoming a regular terrorist event, some
kind of serial killing.
9 people were murdered here at a beauty salon ten years ago. It ruled the headlines for months, Worst
crime in Seal Beach history".
And now this! FIFTEEN KILLER FLU DEATHS.
I was shouting (not very loudly) at the gerrymandered line at Walmart yesterday, "HOAX, HOAX". This
petite debutante comes alongside saying "You are SO sick. People are DYING."
I burst out laughing uncontrollably, and spluttered, "Wait! That just doesn't happen! You're trying to
tell me that people DIE! I tell you the real problem here. The millions of your crowd are the biggest
part of our problem. Silence of the SHEEPLE! Baaaasasahhh."
She continued to glare at me steely-eyed like my Commanding Officer, and I said, "Call the cops! I'd
rather die or be tortured than this! Call the cops! Turn me in!"
She was still on her high horse, or cart, pushing into the store, but I saw her getting wipes later,
and she looked seriously conflicted. But chastened.
I felt bad, but like maybe she was at least searching for that other brain cell to rub together!
We can use all of them, now.
Meanwhile, we can't attend Holy Thursday tomorrow, at any church, for the first time in my lifetime.
Days of Obligation, cancelled.
Maybe that's one big prong of their multi-pronged global attack .
Worldwide denial of the Eucharist
That thought struck me Day 1.
Pawel
,
The authors don't know the difference between Mortality Rate and Case Fatality Rate (CFR) and on top of
that seem to think that 'C' in CFR stands for crude and the words like 'mortality' and 'fatality' are
exchangeable :). Maybe in everyday language but not in statistics and serious medical literature. The
piece is overall ok, but their lack of understanding these basic differences makes the entire article
look very amateurish.
In general they should switch from Mortality Rate to Fatality Rate throughout the entire article but
not everywhere! Yes, they got that confused.
The editor or whoever allowed this piece to be published here should familiarize himself with those
terms.
This well-argued article is such a breath of fresh air. Here in Spain the results of the lockdown are
awful – fearful, isolated people, violence against those who go outside, and completely bewildering
official figures which, if true, only show how useless it is to lock people indoors, often in tiny flats.
And where is the quantification of the suffering that the complete destruction of our economies will
produce? Not to mention the horrendous treatment of old people who, when they are dying, should have
kind, palliative care, not be scared witless with Star Wars-type masks and intubation.
Shaking My Head
,
Have you seen any doctors/scientists/etc. publicly dissenting?
I'm a little dubious about various aspects of this article including the authors.
While Daniel
Jeanmonod is a highly-esteemed neurosurgeon, coronaviruses would not seem to be in his field.
According to her staff bio on Polarstern, a communication agency supporting companies and
organisations committed to ecological, social and economic sustainability, Roxanne Jeanmonod, presumably
Daniel's daughter, was a physiotherapist and is now in charge of administration at Polarstern and
Coworking Space Loreto. She's also listed on the company site of her father as a Financial Consultant.
Francis Neirynck is a Civil Engineer so it is difficult to see any reason at all he would be a
contributor to this article.
A feature of psychological operations is "controlled opposition" often in the form of experts and
another feature is conflicting information. Two seeming experts who comment on this site, Tony and
VirusGuy, say that a specific coronavirus cannot be isolated while this article speaks of SARS-CoV-2 as
if it can be isolated and tested for.
It's a psyop folks. In psyops, they don't do things for real unless they want them for real. They
don't want or need a virus and couldn't make it behave in the way they wanted it to anyway. There is no
virus out of the ordinary and there is certainly no pandemic.
Best guess is that all they can test for is "coronavirus" and they are presumptively labelling
anything "coronavirus" as COVID-19. I very much doubt the existence of SARS-CoV-1 (the SARS pandemic) or
SARS-CoV-2 – I'd say just like this alleged pandemic the SARS pandemic was a psyop too, as were MERS,
Zika and Ebola.
wardropper
,
On the other hand, the common cold is not in the specialist field of most of us, yet we know a heck of
a lot about it, simply through personal experience. Similarly, the fact that I don't know a single
person who has CoVid19 – (nor does my wife) tells its own story, and it puts a lot of what we hear
into perspective.
Portonchok
,
While Daniel Jeanmonod is a highly-esteemed neurosurgeon, coronaviruses would not seem to be in
his field.
I'd prefer this version:
While Petra Liverani is allegedly a highly-esteemed PSYOPS disinfo agent,
coronaviruses would not seem to be in her field.
Voz ZeroBel
,
Hello Unfortunately to me, your article doesn't offer nothing new!
I've been writing and saying that
for months now. I wrote to the politicians to the president (of Portugal!) but FEAR and PANIC fueled by
IGNORANCE is very difficult to fight especially for someone like me that doesn't carry a college title.
Even you guys are probably in the same situation, because they don't care about what you write and
say, even though you guys carry a college title!
All politician's wages should be reduced by 75%. The "health experts" who are advising them should follow
a similar fate whether "working from home" or not. They are the ringleaders of this fear campaign of
misinformation over a virus which is being publicised as something similar to the Black Death.
wardropper
,
Needless to say, nobody has the courage to reduce any politician's wages, and the most corrupt of them
will continue to receive the highest wages.
I know, Petra, but
Here we are, "calling out" this event, as you encourage us to do.
The response: Silence.
We need an effective outlet, however much OffG cheers us up with real information.
There is a very seminal documentary at YouTube which rocked my world and reconfigured my entire
perspective about 9 years ago, PSYWAR, by Zeitgeist Films, with the tagline: "The Real Battlefield
is the Mind."
It has must-know info for everyone who knows a bit about the Age of the Mind Virus.
As I shall now call it.
(The co-producer of the film is a real keeper name: "I Am the Mob")
John
,
Population of the USA 332,000,000
Annual normal death rate 2,712,000
Monthly death rate 226,000
Daily rate 7,500
"America's major medical society specializing in the treatment of respiratory diseases has
endorsed using hydroxychloroquine for seriously ill hospitalized coronavirus patients.
The American Thoracic Society issued guidelines Monday that suggest COVID-19 patients with
pneumonia get doses of the anti-malaria drug.
"To prescribe hydroxychloroquine (or chloroquine) to hospitalized patients with COVID-19
pneumonia if all of the following apply: a) shared decision-making is possible, b) data can be
collected for interim comparisons of patients who received hydroxychloroquine (or chloroquine)
versus those who did not, c) the illness is sufficiently severe to warrant investigational
therapy, and d) the drug is not in short supply," the Thoracic Society said." NY Post
--------------
So, the Thoracic Society says 1- Hydrochloroquin is only rarely dangerous 2. It is widely
available and 3 - Why not give it a shot if the patient is in bad shape.
I could have bought some of this an Z-pac before the madness started. Like a lot of old SF
men I had quite a lot of medical instruction in training and assisted my team medical sergeants
in the their work among the unfortunate. IOW I self treat a lot and have a stash of
antibiotics, etc.
Fauci says we should never shake hands again and should expect the economy to be shut down
for 18 months. IMO if we accept the 18 month thing that cat won't bounce. pl
In the previous post about the use of chloroquine for treating Covid-19 I posted a link to a
research paper which concluded that there was no clinical benefit to its use for those
severely ill. As far as i know this was the first actual research performed on this subset of
the issue.
Below is another one I found this morning from the Pasteur Hospital in Nice. In this
instance they are using the hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin drug suggestion on more mildy ill
patients. This is the drug combination which so many have placed their hopes in a miracle on.
The result is that it has turned out to be so toxic that it had to be discontinued. This is
not the final answer as there are more variations to check out - but don't get your hopes too
high.
Thus we have no seen so far that this drug idea has either no effect or is too toxic.
Anecdotally, I and the teams I worked with when I was younger had to take choloroquine for
long periods of time. The frequency and unpleasantness of side effects were such that many
eventually refused to take the drug and took their chances with getting malaria - and we were
seeing malaria all the time so this was not an uniformed choice. I have questioned this idea
from the get go - but that is, of course, just a gut reaction and not valid or
scientific.
I think it fair to say the stress of the situation is driving us to grasp at straws and
hope for miracles. No one wants to wait the time it normally takes to work our way to a
scientific solution. But that is almost certainly what we are going to end up doing anyway as
the alternative has only worked on the rarest of occasions. A very interesting discussion can
also take place regarding the likelihood of developing a successful vaccine as after near 20
years of working on SARS and MERS there are still no vaccines for them approved.
1. The hysteria about a "health ID card" or whatever people call it is overblown.
International travelers used to carry exactly that - a yellow health certificate that listed
all your immunizations - which used (circa 1956) to be compulsory for international travel
(typhoid, cholera, smallpox and perhaps yellow fever). We carried them with our passports.
They are nothing new. We could easily roll out an App, like China has, that indicates your
health status and use it to control the winding back of the lockdown.
2. The use of social distancing is 500 years old. The idea that it's something dreamed by
leftist globalists is BS.
3. The rules and practices for ship quarantine are also at least 200 years old and the
word itself comes from the fourteenth century Venetian word for forty days - the quarantine
period they observed back then. So the hoohaa we are getting from the likes of Carnival lines
(who could have known, etc.) is BS.
4. Vaccines don't make money for anyone. That is because they are cheap to produce and
most doses will be administered for free by public health agencies to poor people in third
world countries for diseases such as typhoid, Cholera, TB, etc. The result of that situation
is that worldwide there are relatively few manufacturers. It's not a sexy, high margin
business at all. From memory, tests are similarly not a high margin business. The bulk of
pharmaceutical investment goes into treatments for diseases and conditions of rich western
lifestyles. That is where the money is. That is also why you suddenly find yourself dependent
on Chinese and Indian suppliers for stuff such as Chloroquine.
My conclusion is that the idea that Bill Gates or anyone else would see vaccine
development as an attractive investment is ludicrous.
Agents outside our control with their own vested interests – politicians, the media,
business – construct reality, much as a film-maker designs a movie, says Jonathan
Cook.
Is it possible that only a few weeks ago our priorities were just a little divorced from a
bigger reality? That what appeared to be the big picture was not actually big enough? That
maybe we should have been thinking about even more important, pressing matters – systemic
ones like the threat of a pandemic of the very kind we are currently enduring?
Because while we were all thinking about Russiagate or Trump or Brexit, there were lots of
experts – even the Pentagon ,
it seems – warning of just such a terrible calamity and urging that preparations be made
to avoid it. We are in the current mess precisely because those warnings were ignored or given
no attention – not because the science was doubted, but because there was no will to do
something to avert the threat.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/E3URhJx0NSw
If we reflect, it is possible to get a sense of two things. First, that our attention rarely
belongs to us; it is the plaything of others. And second, that the "real world", as it is
presented to us, rarely reflects anything we might usefully be able to label as objective
reality. It is a set of political, economic and social priorities that have been manufactured
for us.
Agents outside our control with their own vested interests – politicians, the media,
business – construct reality, much as a film-maker designs a movie. They guide our gaze
in certain directions and not others.
A Critical Perspective
At a moment like this of real crisis, one that overshadows all else, we have a chance
– though only a chance – to recognize this truth and develop our own critical
perspective. A perspective that truly belongs to us, and not to others.
Think back to the old you, the pre-coronavirus you. Were your priorities the same as your
current ones?
This is not to say that the things you prioritize now – in this crisis – are
necessarily any more "yours" than the old set of priorities.
If you're watching the TV or reading newspapers – and who isn't – you're
probably feeling scared, either for yourself or for your loved ones. All you can think about is
the coronavirus. Nothing else really seems that important by comparison. And all you can hope
for is the moment when the lockdowns are over and life returns to normal.
"Paradoxically, a craving for the old-normal may mean we are prepared to submit to a
new-normal that could permanently deny us any chance of returning to the old-normal."
But that's not objectively the "real world" either. Terrible as the coronavirus is, and as
right as anyone is to be afraid of the threat it poses, those "agents of authority" are again
directing and controlling our gaze, though at least this time those in authority include
doctors and scientists. And they are guiding our attention in ways that serve their
interests – for good or bad.
Endless tallies of infections and deaths, rocketing graphs, stories of young people, along
with the elderly, battling for survival serve a purpose: to make sure we stick to the lockdown,
that we maintain social distancing, that we don't get complacent and spread the disease.
Here our interests – survival, preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed –
coincide with those of the establishment, the "agents of authority." We want to live and
prosper, and they need to maintain order, to demonstrate their competence, to prevent
dissatisfaction bubbling up into anger or open revolt.
Crowded Out By Detail
But again the object of our attention is not as much ours as we may believe. While we focus
on graphs, while we twitch the curtains to see if neighbors are going for a second run or
whether families are out in the garden
celebrating a birthday distant from an elderly parent, we are much less likely to be
thinking about how well the crisis is being handled. The detail, the mundane is again crowding
out the important, the big picture.
Our current fear is an enemy to our developing and maintaining a critical perspective. The
more we are frightened by graphs, by deaths, the more we are likely to submit to whatever we
are told will keep us safe.
Under cover of the public's fear, and of justified concerns about the state of the economy
and future employment, countries like the U.S. are transferring huge sums of public money to
the biggest corporations. Politicians controlled by big business and media owned by big
business are pushing through this
corporate robbery without scrutiny – and for reasons that should be self-explanatory.
They know our attention is too overwhelmed by the virus for us to assess intentionally
mystifying arguments about the supposed economic benefits, about yet more illusory
trickle-down.
Paradoxically, a craving for the old-normal may mean we are prepared to submit to a
new-normal that could permanently deny us any chance of returning to the old-normal.
The point is not just that things are far more provisional than most of us are ready to
contemplate; it's that our window on what we think of as "the real world", as "normal", is
almost entirely manufactured for us.
Distracted By the Virus
Strange as this may sound right now, in the midst of our fear and suffering, the pandemic is
not really the big picture either. Our attention is consumed by the virus, but it is, in a
truly awful sense, a distraction too.
In a few more years, maybe sooner than we imagine, we will look back on the virus –
with the benefit of distance and hindsight – and feel the same way about it we do now
about Putin, or Trump, or Brexit.
It will feel part of our old selves, our old priorities, a small part of a much bigger
picture, a clue to where we were heading, a portent we did not pay attention to when it
mattered most.
The virus is one small warning – one among many – that we have been living out
of sync with the natural world we share with other life. Our need to control and dominate, our
need to acquire, our need for security, our need to conquer death – they have crowded out
all else. We have followed those who promised quick, easy solutions, those who refused to
compromise, those who conveyed authority, those who spread fear, those who hated.
If only we could redirect our gaze, if we could seize back control of our attention for a
moment, we might understand that we are being plagued not just by a virus but by our fear, our
hate, our hunger, our selfishness. The evidence is there in the fires, the floods and the
disease, in the insects that have disappeared, in the polluted seas, in the stripping of the
planet's ancient lungs, its forests, in the melting ice-caps.
The big picture is hiding in plain sight, no longer obscured by issues like Russia and
Brexit but now only by the most microscopic germ, marking the thin boundary between life and
death.
Jonathan Cook is a freelance journalist based in Nazareth.
Here as long thread of U.S.
hospitals firing people because their usual business no longer makes money:
U.S. healthcare system is so overwhelmed by COVID-19 that hospitals are laying off staff.
Yes, you read that right. Due to coronavirus lockdown and fears, no one's going except
in absolute emergencies. Hospitals are getting slammed--by lack of business.
...
No, we can't blame Trump for the entire privatized US healthcare system. However, he owns
part of this, as recently published information clearly shows. Having said that, his
shamelessness has, along with the Fed, and Congress, and the Supreme Court, and state
governments all over the country, have also clarified the state of play very well indeed.
This is a shithole kleptocracy merged with a kakistocracy. Voting has lost all of its
meaning. The only thing left to us is an active boycott in November, assuming the farce isn't
called off by a presidential decree. The ruling of the Supreme Court on the Wisconsin
election on Monday would seem to make the Court's approval of such a thing unlikely. However,
it's not exactly the same question, and the Federalists are nothing if not both inventive and
supine when it comes to the exercise of corporate-backed executive power. My guess is that it
won't happen, if only because Trump will be crushing the Dems in the polls.
AnneR , April 7, 2020 at 07:32
Indeed, Mr Cook, indeed.
The US (its ruling, plutocratic elites and their fellow traveling political hench-folks)
has never wanted to expend taxpayer (i.e. the hoi polloi's taxes, the rich-ultra rich not
paying any or very little of their "earnings" to the IRS) monies (however much cheaper, in
reality, such a medical system would have been and be) on a single payer,
free-at-point-of-service medical care system for all of its citizens. Such a system is
"communist," "socialist." The fact that the remainder of the western world has some such
construct without apparently being communist or even truly socialist escapes the US ruling
elite consciousness. Deliberately.
Indeed, the attitude among many of those elite 20%ers would seem to be along the lines of
an Arizonan politico who expressed this worldview on Obamacare (hardly single payer, not free
at point of service or anything close to, nor does it cover every American – the
poorest are beyond its scope): in answer to some question about the ACA, this politico
(doubtless with medical coverage paid for by taxpayers) said that some people could afford
Mercs, others Fords, some could only afford umpteenth-hand vehicles and then there were those
who couldn't afford any vehicle. Access to medical care falls along the same lines –
and that's the way things naturally are.
She was a Reprat – but Mr Biden thinks along the same lines, it would seem.
Yes, the US populace – the hoi polloi, vox populi, the bewildered herd, us –
want M4A and as a single payer non-profiteering system. Or most do. But the profiteering
companies – pharma, hospitals, clinics, med insurance companies, doctors, medical
staffing (for Emergency Depts etc.,) companies – do NOT want anything to do with such a
system. And they are among the election funders of those DC politicos (many themselves among
the rich) who balk at the very notion of M4A. The medical and the political system here is
corrupt. Not only does Power corrupt, but profiteering also corrupts and does so as
absolutely as absolute power.
And this system, this political, medical system isn't likely to change without some
drastic overhaul – and is that likely?
Other changes – increasing surveillance e.g. – may well take place. But profit
before life? One only has to consider the eagerness with which the US Congress – both
sides of the Janus party – signed onto the Strumpet's obscenely enormous MIC funding
last year, continuing the Profit before People (at home and in the countries devastated by
us) construct that is DC.
New new study found the reason for the effectiveness of chloroquine:
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173
In short, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has three protein configurations on its outside which attack
hemoglobine, dissolving the iron ion from the molecule. The hemoglobin looses the ability to
bind oxygen and CO2 without the iron, thus cannot transport it anymore (the effect of
hydocyanic acid or carbonmonoxide, but both block the binding location, they do not destroy
it).
As a consequence, the O2 load in the blood decreases dangerously even if the lungs still
are working. Chloroquine seems to cover the hemoglobine binding location, so the virus cannot
attack it anymore. Against the malaria parasite, the coverage by chloroquine seems to block
the parasite from consuming proteins from the blood cells which it needs for
reproduction.
Strange collection of features: The unique furine cleavage site (known from other,
completely different highly contagious flu viruses), the CD147 docking site (known only from
the dangerous Coxsakie virus and expressed strongly by cancer cells), the GRP78 docking site
(expressed by cells under stress) and the attack on hemoglobine, five distinctive pathways to
attack cells and cause damage. All not found in any other corona virus genome...
I note that the link posted by CK is not actual results of research into whether chloroquine
is effective regarding its use against covid-19 but rather an analysis of physical functions
which 'suggests' that it might be. Actual research is required to prove the point.
Conversely there is a new research report on the effectiveness of chloroquine on treating
those with severe symptoms from covid-19 just published and the conclusion for that set of
patients is that it has 'No Evidence of Rapid Antiviral Clearance or Clinical Benefit
..."
I have read articles from Dr's and PhD experts who postulate both ways on this issue.
Actual testing will be required to answer this and this first result is not optimistic at
least in the case of severe symptoms.
Turkey has ordered all citizens to wear masks when shopping or visiting crowded public
places and announced it will start to deliver masks to every family, free of charge, as
infections sharply increase in the country of 80 million.
Turkey has over 30,000 confirmed cases of the virus and has registered 649 deaths. More than
1,300 patients are in intensive care units and at least 600 medical workers have been infected,
according to figures released by the Health Ministry.
The number of cases places Turkey among the top 10 worst
affected countries , a sharp rise since its first confirmed death from the disease on March
17.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, however, said on Monday that the increase in confirmed cases
was low when compared with the increase in testing, which has been ramped up to more than
20,000 per day.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has introduced measures to contain the spread of the virus,
asking people to stay at home and imposing a curfew on those over 65 and under 20, but
resisting a nationwide lockdown.
New York has lost a staggering 20,000 hospital beds over the last two decades to budget cuts
and insurance overhauls, complicating local and state efforts to battle the coronavirus,
according to records and experts.
The Empire State had 73,931 licensed hospital beds in 2000 before years of cuts and closures
shrank the number to just 53,000 in 2020, according to records obtained by the New York State
Nurses Association from the state Health Department and stats provided by officials.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday the health officials believe they will need anywhere from
55,000 to 110,000 hospital beds to treat the expected wave of coronavirus victims.
"New York has closed too many beds. They went too far," said Judy Wessler, former head of
the NY Commission on the Public's Health System, about the 28 percent drop in beds.
Those cutbacks mean the state is in a significantly deeper deficit as it searches for ways
to expand its capacity to treat COVID-19 victims.
"This is going to crash the health care system," Cuomo warned, as he again reiterated his
request to President Trump that the
Army Corps of Engineers be dispatched to help New York state build emergency hospital
capacity.
But now, after evidence that asymptomatic people can spread the disease, the CDC is
recommending that all Americans wear masks when out in public to help prevent the spread of the
coronavirus. And while the CDC now recommends Americans wear masks, they recommend only cloth
coverings, or homemade masks, and ask that medical-grade masks still be reserved for health
care professionals.
The move is a win for those who have been publicly questioning the government's guidance and
edges the U.S. closer to the practices of East Asian countries where masks are commonplace.
But the U.S. is not alone in its reluctance to recommend the widespread use of masks. The
WHO is standing its ground in saying that masks won't help prevent the spread of disease.
Though, notably, it said that countries where cleaning and physical distancing are difficult
could consider widespread mask wearing.
The science of infection hasn't changed, but experts point to a better understanding of how
the coronavirus spreads as the reason for the shift. Since some people are asymptomatic and
could still be infecting others without knowing they have the disease, experts say it is
prudent for everyone to wear a mask.
"... In a clip aired on Sunday but filmed a week earlier, nurse Imaris Vera bursts into tears and describes how she quit her job after "none of the nurses" ..."
"... "America is not prepared," she sobbed, "and nurses are not being protected." ..."
"... But dig a little deeper and the story begins to collapse. Vera admitted in a tweet on Saturday that she had actually been assigned an N95 respirator to wear, despite claiming in the video that "none of the nurses" ..."
"... Furthermore, the nurse didn't quit her job after a long and tireless struggle against the coronavirus. Her social media posts revealed that she quit on her first day on the job. According to her Facebook page, the woman had taken a year off, during which time she had built a career as a blogger and Instagram model. Since the virus hit US shores, she's used her Instagram page to promote boutique hand sanitizer and designer nurse's scrubs. ..."
Stories
of human tragedy abound during the Covid-19 pandemic, but in its hunger for tearjerking
moments, CBS has thrown the rulebook out the window and spread some viral "fake news." In a
clip aired on Sunday but filmed a week earlier, nurse Imaris Vera bursts into tears and
describes how she quit her job after "none of the nurses" in a dedicated coronavirus
unit were wearing masks. Furthermore, she called out her Chicago hospital for banning nurses
from using their own protective equipment in the facility.
"America is not prepared," she sobbed, "and nurses are not being protected."
In tears, a nurse says she quit her job after she was asked to work in a coronavirus ICU
without a face mask: "America is not prepared, and nurses are not being protected" https://t.co/ywoSuLOPYP
pic.twitter.com/S5BsnlO5nt
On its surface, the video is a damning indictment of the US government's response to the
pandemic. Indeed, the media have frequently lambasted President Donald Trump for failing to act
quick enough to contain the spread of the virus.
But dig a little deeper and the story begins to collapse. Vera admitted in a tweet on
Saturday that she had actually been assigned an N95 respirator to wear, despite claiming in the
video that "none of the nurses" in her ICU unit were wearing masks. Whether her
hospital banned the wearing of masks in hallways and corridors to preserve supplies is still
unclear.
Furthermore, the nurse didn't quit her job after a long and tireless struggle against
the coronavirus. Her social media posts revealed that she quit on her first day on the job.
According to her Facebook page, the woman had taken a year off, during which time she had built
a career as a blogger and Instagram model. Since the virus hit US shores, she's used her
Instagram page to promote boutique hand sanitizer and designer nurse's
scrubs.
... ... ...
Whether its aim is to mislead viewers or to tug on heartstrings, the media hasn't missed an
opportunity to rush dodgy footage in front of viewers. Such videos may generate clicks, but
they also lend credence to President Trump's oft-repeated assertion that the "fake news
media" doesn't care about the truth.
"COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease
caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death."
White House economic adviser got into a massive argument with the
coronavirus task force's Anthony Fauci over the doctor's ongoing resistance to the use of
hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, despite reports of the drug's widespread efficacy.
Numerous government officials were at the table, including Fauci, coronavirus response
coordinator Deborah Birx, Jared Kushner, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, and
Commissioner of Food and Drugs Stephen Hahn.
Behind them sat staff, including Peter Navarro, tapped by Trump to compel private
companies to meet the government's coronavirus needs under the Defense Production Act.
According to the report, towards the end of the meeting Hahn began a discussion of the
commonly used malaria drug hydroxychloroquine - which was recently rated the '
most effective therapy ' for coronavirus according to a global survey of more than 6,000
doctors .
After Hahn gave an update on various trials and real-world use of the drug, Navarro got up
and dropped a stack of folders on the table to pass around .
According to Axios 's source, " the first words out of his [Navarro's] mouth are
that the studies that he's seen, I believe they're mostly overseas, show 'clear therapeutic
efficacy,' " adding "Those are the exact words out of his mouth.
Fauci - who's not got his own Twitter hashtag, #FireFauci - began pushing back against
Navarro, repeating his oft-repeated contention that 'there's only anecdotal evidence' that the
drug works against COVID-19.
Navarro exploded - after Fauci's mention of anecdotal evidence "just set Peter off." The
economic adviser shot back "That's the science, not anecdote," while pointing to the stack of
folders on the desk, which included the results of studies from around the world showing its
efficacy.
Here's what unfolded next, via Axios :
Navarro started raising his voice, and at one point accused Fauci of objecting to Trump's
travel restrictions, saying, "You were the one who early on objected to the travel
restrictions with China," saying that travel restrictions don't work. (Navarro was one of the
earliest to push the China travel ban.)
Fauci looked confused, according to a source in the room. After Trump imposed the
travel restrictions, Fauci has publicly praised the president's restriction on travel from
China.
Pence was trying to moderate the heated discussion. "It was pretty clear that everyone
was just trying to get Peter to sit down and stop being so confrontational," said one of
the sources.
Eventually, Kushner turned to Navarro and said, "Peter, take yes for an answer,"
because most everyone agreed, by that time, it was important to surge the supply of the
drug to hot zones.
The principals agreed that the administration's public stance should be that the
decision to use the drug is between doctors and patients.
Trump ended up announcing at his press conference that he had 29 million doses of
hydroxychloroquine in the Strategic National Stockpile.
According to a source familiar with the coronavirus task force, "There has never been a
confrontation in the task force meetings like the one yesterday," adding "People speak up and
there's robust debate, but there's never been a confrontation. Yesterday was the first
confrontation."
Meanwhile, 37% of 6,227 doctors across 30 countries felt the drug was the "most effective
therapy" out of 15 options in treating coronavirus,
according to a poll reported by the Washington Times .
The drug has been prescribed in 72% of cases in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in
Mexico, 28% in France, and 23% in the USA . Overall, 19% of physicians have prescribed the drug
for high-risk patients, and 8% for low-risk patients.
More from the Sermo poll (via the Washington Times )
***
Sermo CEO Peter Kirk called the polling results a "treasure trove of global insights for
policy makers."
"Physicians should have more of a voice in how we deal with this pandemic and be able to
quickly share information with one another and the world," he said. "With censorship of the
media and the medical community in some countries, along with biased and poorly designed
studies, solutions to the pandemic are being delayed."
The survey also found that 63% of U.S. physicians believe restrictions should be lifted in
six weeks or more, and that the epidemic's peak is at least 3-4 weeks away.
The survey also found that 83% of global physicians anticipate a second global outbreak,
including 90% of U.S. doctors but only 50% of physicians in China.
On average, U.S. coronavirus testing takes 4-5 days, while 10% of cases take longer than
seven days. In China, 73% of doctors reported getting rest results back in 24 hours.
In cases of ventilator shortages, all countries but China said the top criteria should be
patients with the best chance of recovery (47%), followed by patients with the highest risk of
death (21%), and then first responders (15%) .
@Philip Owen
The most important thing is to have a cheap way to lower the R0.
Herd immunity is one, but it is expensive to get there.
Masks, widespread use of masks, is another, and it is relatively cheap. The virus lives
mainly in lungs, after all. Accidental touching of mask's dirty side etc. can be a problem,
but the virus would have to cross one mask to reach out, then go into air to touch another
surface, then wait for some accidents to happen to go through your mask to reach your
lungs.
Social distancing, widespread use of masks, and contact tracing, and 14 days wait period
for people suspected of infection. The pandemic can be controlled, and normal life can
largely resume when we wait for vaccine and cure.
It says there, black on white – " Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the
presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical
symptoms. "
It make sense to wear mask only for a limited time (no more then 2 hours for a single mask)
and only in public places. Should always be combined with strict hand hygiene. Without hand
hygiene wearing of masks can be counterproductive.
Notable quotes:
"... Given the potential loss of effectiveness with incorrect usage, general advice should be to only use masks/ respirators under very particular, specified circumstances, and in combination with other personal protective practices. ..."
Conclusions: Despite a further review of all the available evidence up to 30 November
2012 there is still limited evidence to suggest that use of face masks and/or respirators in
health care setting can provide significant protection against infection with influenza when in
close contact with infected patients. Some evidence suggests that mask use is best undertaken
as part of a package or 'bundle' of personal protection especially including hand hygiene, the
new evidence provides some support to this argument particularly within the community or
household setting. Early initiation and regular wearing of masks/respirators may improve their
effectiveness in healthcare and household settings, again an argument marginally strengthened
by the updated evidence.
The effectiveness of masks and respirators is likely to be linked to consistent, correct
usage and compliance; this remains a major challenge – both in the context of a formal
study and in everyday practice.
Given the potential loss of effectiveness with incorrect usage, general advice should be
to only use masks/ respirators under very particular, specified circumstances, and in
combination with other personal protective practices.
... ... ...
None of the trials found, in the main analyses, a significant difference between
non-intervention and mask-only arms (surgical masks or N95/P2 respirators) in either clinically
diagnosed (influenza-like-illness/ILI) or laboratory-confirmed influenza. However in four of
the household trials, sub-analyses of the datasets revealed some evidence of protection.
One trial observed that household contacts who wore a P2 respirator 'all/most' of the time
were less likely to develop an influenza-like illness compared to less frequent users.
A second trial found a significant reduction in laboratory-confirmed influenza among
household contacts that began hand hygiene or hand hygiene plus a face mask within 36 hours of
the index case's illness.
... ... ...
One of these studies found that there was a significantly lower frequency of H1N1 pdm09
infection in healthcare workers wearing a mask when compared to those not wearing a mask.
Furthermore, a sub-analysis of nurses and nurse assistants in a seroprevalence study identified
an increased risk of acquiring H1N1 pdm09 infection when not wearing a mask, however while the
authors described this result as significant (p-value significant), the confidence interval was
not significant
... ... ...
There is some weak evidence to suggest that facemasks may be protective when they are used
early (after recognition of an index case in a household setting); if better compliance (using
the masks for longer periods of time) is achieved, and when combined with hand-washing
practicing.
Background
Minimising transmission of influenza requires a range of personal and public health measures
taken by individuals and communities such as respiratory etiquette and hand hygiene and
possibly proactive school closures (and other measures sometimes called social distancing). Use
of personal protective equipment is generally advised according to the risk of exposure to the
influenza virus and the degree of infectivity and human pathogenicity of the virus. A
particularly vexing issue for policy makers has been the paucity of scientific evidence upon
which to base guidance for use of masks and respirators in healthcare and community settings to
prevent transmission of seasonal, pandemic and animal influenzas.
... ... ...
Participants were allocated to wear either a fit-tested N95 or a surgical face mask when
providing care (including aerosol generating procedures) to patients with a febrile respiratory
illness during the influenza season. No difference in influenza infection was detected in the
two groups. The final hospital based study stratified 1441 health care workers across 15
Beijing hospitals to analyse the effectiveness of surgical masks compared to both fit-tested
and non-fit tested N95 respirators (6). The wearers of N95 respirators had lower, but
non-significant attack rates, compared to those wearing surgical masks. However the intention
to treat analysis (when adjusting for clustering of hospitals) identified that non-fit-tested
N95s had a statistically significant protective effect against clinical respiratory illness
when compared to surgical masks in healthcare workers. Additionally a multivariate analysis (
post hoc ) found that wearing any N95 mask type protected against clinical respiratory
illness
... ... ...
A cluster randomized controlled trial in Australia compared household contacts of paediatric
index cases (0-15 years) with a febrile respiratory illness that were randomised to control,
surgical mask or non-fit-tested P2 respirator intervention groups (9). No differences in rates
of influenza-like infection or rates of respiratory virus isolation were observed in an
intention-to-treat analysis. In a survival analysis that evaluated risk factors for
influenza-like illness, use of P2 respirators or surgical masks grouped together was found to
significantly reduce the risk for illness in those household contacts who reported wearing the
device 'all' or 'most' of the time for the first five days; however, the study was underpowered
to detect a difference in efficacy between P2 and surgical masks.
... ... ...
A study in Berlin, conducted across two influenza seasons (2009/10 and 2010/11), randomised
households to three groups; control, face mask or face mask and hand-hygiene with the analyses
stratified by influenza type (seasonal or pandemic cases), season, and early implementation of
interventions (12). This was the only example of a trail that analyzed specific H1N1 pdm09
secondary household attack rates. In the intention-to-treat multivariable analysis, pooling of
both intervention groups resulted in a significant reduction in lab-confirmed influenza when
stratified for either early intervention or pandemic-only cases; however there was no
statistically significant effect of intervention groups on secondary household attack rates.
When a per-protocol analysis was applied the odds ratios in both the mask-only and
mask/hand-hygiene 24 groups were between 0.2 and 0.3 suggesting a strong protective effect.
Although a statistically significant reduction was found in the mask-only groups.
... ... ...
Larson and colleagues examined hand-sanitiser and hand-sanitiser/mask use (both with
education) effectiveness amongst crowded households in upper Manhattan (15). In this study,
both household caretakers and symptomatic individuals were asked to wear masks. The study found
that mask wearing coupled with hand-sanitiser use significantly reduced secondary transmission
of aggregated upper respiratory infection/ ILI and lab-confirmed influenza outcome compared
with control households (education but no intervention) in the final logistic regression model.
Unfortunately there was not a mask-only group, but the observation that hand sanitizer alone
resulted in no reduction in the aggregated outcome suggests that mask use, in combination with
hand-sanitiser had an impact on transmission. There was also limited power to detect
differences amongst the three groups and there was also observed cross-contamination with use
of hand-sanitizer in the control group
... ... ...
It was observed that there was a statistically significant difference in H1N1 pdm09
infection between individuals wearing masks at any point and those not wearing masks (0%
seropositive individuals when using either surgical masks or N95 respirators in comparison to
14% individuals in the no mask/respirator group). The study however lacked power to detect
significant differences between those wearing N95 respirators against those wearing surgical
masks. In addition to this the study suffered for a large number of other limitations such as
potential measurement and recall bias.
most people who dies form Spanish flue also have lungs full of liquid
BM @ 10
Interesting, I had a Chinese coworker show me some videos of autopsies from China on Covid
patients. The lungs were full of mucus. He translated for me and they were saying that
drinking very hot liquids helps to keep things in check if you are sick. Coffee, tea and the
like.
What we would call anecdotal reports from experts.
A comment on Peter Hitchens' article in today's Mail on Sunday (5th April) provided a link to
an interview with Italian nano-pathologist Dr Stefano Montanari. Since he doesn't appear in
OffG among the first twelve or subsequent ten scientists questioning the official Covid-19
narrative I am providing the link here in case anyone is interested. The site itself seems to
have a save white identity bias, but in these strange times, politics makes strange
bedfellows.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/04/04/the-coronavirus-and-galileo-an-interview-with-a-italian-nano-pathologist-dr-stefano-montanari/
George Mc ,
Interesting interview. This bit especially:
There is one point we did not touch -- the economic, which is not part of my competence.
We are now blocking the world and, as for Italy, the economy was already at a low point.
What do they do? They freeze all activities but keep the stock exchange open. Stocks reach
a low bottom. What does it mean? The ultra billionaire can easily purchase companies that
are now worth pennies.
When eventually it will be decided that the (coronavirus) farce is ended -- and nothing
will end because this virus will continue undaunted to do what it's doing now (or its
evolving strains will do), the ultra-billionaires will own everything. The rich (a degree
below the billionaires) will have bought, say, 3–4 restaurants and/or 10 stores that
had to close. In summary, all who were rich will be infinitely richer, But we will also
have a flood-tide of people who will always be poorer. This will be another consequence of
this fake epidemic, perhaps, who knows, created on purpose.
French caregivers battling Covid-19 are appallingly underequipped and overloaded with fresh
cases, a local nurse said, explaining a recent action which saw medics posing naked to show
their vulnerability to the deadly contagion. The unorthodox demonstration kicked off earlier
this week, with dozens of nurses undressing in a silent protest against the government
"sending us naked to face this pandemic," as Melina Dufraigne-Laflechelle, one of the
nurses behind the flashmob, put it on RT France.
Using the hashtag #apoilcontrelecovid (naked against the Covid), the silent protest featured
medics of all ages posing with small signs concealing their private parts.
"As you all know, to be able to treat patients with dignity and not take risks for
ourselves and our patients, we need a set of equipment which we don't have," said
Dufraigne-Laflechelle.
Old-fashioned masks are the only protective gear local medical staff have received from the
government, she claimed.
...37% of 6,227 doctors across 30 countries felt the drug was the "most effective therapy"
out of 15 options in treating coronavirus,
according to a poll reported by the
Washington Times .
The drug has been prescribed in 72% of cases in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in
Mexico, 28% in France, and 23% in the USA. Overall, 19% of physicians have prescribed the drug
for high-risk patients, and 8% for low-risk patients.
Overall
(2171)
US (580)
NY (112)
Europe (827)
Italy & Spain
(671)
China (109)
Rest of world
(543)
Hydroxychloroquine or
Chloroquine
37%
23%
25%
37%
62%
44%
55%
Azithromycin or similar
antibiotics
32%
18%
25%
32%
45%
33%
48%
Nothing
32%
51%
42%
29%
16%
4%
18%
Analgesics (e.g.,
Paracetamol/Acetaminophen)
31%
21%
29%
34%
37%
20%
39%
Anti-HIV drugs (e.g.
Lopinavir plus Ritonavir)
16%
5%
6%
15%
28%
42%
25%
Cough medications
13%
13%
15%
12%
8%
22%
11%
Compassionate use of
experimental drugs
13%
10%
8%
12%
20%
35%
14%
(e.g. Remdisivir)
Drugs used to treat flu (e.g.,
Oseltamivir)
12%
4%
11%
9%
10%
39%
19%
Expectorants (e.g.,
Mucinex
10%
10%
9%
8%
8%
28%
10%
Interferon-beta
7%
1%
3%
3%
11%
41%
15%
Antihistamines/Decongestants
7%
7%
6%
5%
5%
17%
8%
Plasma from patients who have
recovered from COVID-19
Enough OK. How healthy and strong your respiratory system has a lot to do with fending off
the scourge of viruses. Governments generally do very poor record in tackling Pollution(s).
There is a ' Great ' gift from the US to countries around the world: Please welcome
Petroleum Coke, or ' petcoke '. This is the bottom-of-the-barrel leftover from refining .. tar
sands crude and other heavy oils, is cheaper and burns hotter than coal. But it also contains
.. far more heart- and lung-damaging sulfur."
American companies don't like to use it, and "are sending it around the world. Laboratory tests
on imported petcoke used near New Delhi found it contained 17 times more sulfur than the limit
set for coal, and a staggering 1,380 times more than for diesel."
Big Corporations are literally pooping all over the planet, and virtually pooping inside
our lungs , with impunity; we have to live in such conditions. Can this situation be
stopped and reveresed?
Science has tried to interview George Gao, director-general of the Chinese
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for 2 months. Last week he responded.
Q : What mistakes are other countries making?
A: The big mistake in the U.S. and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren't wearing
masks. This virus is transmitted by droplets and close contact. Droplets play a very important
role -- you've got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are always droplets coming out
of your mouth. Many people have asymptomatic or presymptomatic infections. If they are wearing
face masks, it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others. Q:
People who tested positive in Wuhan but only had mild disease were sent into isolation in large
facilities and were not allowed to have visits from family. Is this something other countries
should consider?
A: Infected people must be isolated. That should happen everywhere. You can only control
COVID-19 if you can remove the source of the infection. This is why we built module hospitals
and transformed stadiums into hospitals.
You wrote, " The difference between this virus and most previous viruses is that they
required one to have a fever, i.e., symptoms, before being contagious. This one does not for
at least one to two days before symptoms appear. So we know it's possible to be asymptomatic
for at least one to two days and still be contagious."
Asymptomatic means no symptoms i.e., no sneezing, coughing or postnasal drip.
As far as transmission by sputum (spitting) or other secretions, I think that is a such a
rare occurrence that it is too infinitesimal to statistically count. I mean come on, how many
times have you touched someone's spit? Kissing is not known to spread the disease from an
asymptomatic carrier either.
The other observations that suggest presymptomatic transmission of infection (meaning no
symptoms) cannot be confirmed because it is unknown if the disease was present and active on
surfaces before the subjects came in contact with it and with each other.
The disease is spread by sending a plume into the air as a result of a cough, sneeze or
postnasal drip. A person comes in contact with the virus by being in the vicinity of the
plume or when the virus falls on a surface and a person touches it and then somewhere on
their body that allows entry (eyes, nasal passages or mouth.)
Please provide a reference that says an asymptomatic person is contagious. If you are
referring to the article published in the NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine), that
turned out to be flawed as the women did display symptoms when she returned to Germany.
There is still confusion between what is a mask & what is a respirator -basically a mask
will protect others from your sputum & a respirator protects yourself from others.
I discovered a site N95 vs
FFP3 & FFP2 masks – what's the difference? which explains the different masks
& respirators and most importantly what the standards are. eg n95 amerika = KN95 China.
As well as explaining the problems of valved devices versus unvalved etc.
It is clear layman style stuff free of dense bullshit, read it if you want to understand this
stuff.
I haven't seen this specifically mentioned so I'll offer it. My local newspaper of all
things, published an editorial today calling for more people in our community to "mask up".
It included this wonderful phrase that captures the true social dynamic and the logic of the
situation:
"I'll wear a mask to protect you, and you wear a mask to protect me."
What's nice about this social compact is that it costs almost nothing, is in plentiful,
makeshift supply (we're including bandanas and scarves - anything), and surely must do more
good than harm, no matter how real or unreal the danger is, nor how prone to mishap or not
the wearing of a mask is.
Such a compact surely must be a social good. If only there had been masks in the US - or
leadership willing to plunge humble and naked into the realities of the situation and learn
from Asia so we could all start making our own masks - then perhaps the US would not have had
to do the most stupid thing possible to its lean productive economy, namely, shutting down
the entire entrepreneur class of the country and throwing their employees into hazard and
poverty.
Given that there was no safety net, and never was going to be despite the talk of the
first few days, it could have saved countless deaths from poverty if the people if the US had
learned the new social rules, including mask and physical distance etiquette immediately, and
kept many of the businesses open instead of driving them to bankruptcy.
So the US is very late to the party, and will pay the price, but now the people who
survive must learn how to live in the new normal. Masking-up in public seems the least
impactful of all responses.
re b's comment : "The HEPA filter catches particles down to 0.3 micrometer. Viruses are
some 125 nanometer in diameter so they are smaller and could slip through. " .
That isn't strictly correct, there is a solid reason for the 0.3 micrometer limit related to
Brownian motion,as I learned after reading a piece from the link I posted above - to wit:
The reason for the focus on 0.3 microns is because it is the "most penetrating particle
size" (MPPS). Particles above this size move in ways we might anticipate, and will get
trapped in a filter with gaps smaller than the particle size. Particles smaller than 0.3
microns exhibit what's called brownian motion – which makes them easier to filter.
Brownian motion refers to a phenomenon whereby the particle's mass is small enough that it
no longer travels unimpeded through the air. Instead it interacts with the molecules in the
air (nitrogen, oxygen, etc), causing it to pinball between them, moving in an erratic
pattern.
According to researchers this point between "normal" motion and brownian motion is the
hardest particle size for filters to capture.
What we can take away from this, is that high filter efficiency at 0.3 micron size will
generally translate to high filter efficiency below this size also.
Immunity can also be obtained naturally rather than by "vaccine".
You can ask your doctor for a strong Vitamin D supplement and probably buy them elswhere. The
simplest is to go out in the same beautiful sunshine as we are now having in Europe.
vitamin D deficiency is common in the winter, and activated vitamin D, a steroid
hormone, has profound effects on human immunity. D acts as an immune system modulator,
preventing excessive expression of inflammatory cytokines and increasing the
'oxidative burst' potential of macrophages. Perhaps most importantly, it dramatically
stimulates the expression of potent anti-microbial peptides, which exist in neutrophils,
monocytes, natural killer cells, and in epithelial cells lining the respiratory tract where
they play a major role in protecting the lung from infection.
For information; one group that suffered from Vitamin D deficiency was Saudi Arabian
women. Their Abbayas (full head covering with no eyes visible, right down to the toes. Maybe
not the correct spelling of abbaya) did not let in the sun. So .....
Even face "masks" were not very efficient at "letting the sun shine in". However, the abbayas
had one advantage; that was women suffered less from trachoma, an illness that is provoked by
rubbing the eyes regularly (irritated because of the sand). The eye flips inward permanently,
leaving only the white of the eye showing. ie. Blindness.
Personally my doctor prescribes a 200'000 UI D dose (drinkable) to be taken twice a year
in November/December and February. Which I naturally took just before the Coronavirus hit
around here.
Surgical masks are pretty good at stopping bacteria and larger droplets, but not aerosols
(small particles). They also have lower quality fit, just like ordinary masks too.
Surgical masks are very good for blocking you own droplet emissions.
Simply use N99 respitator or FFP 3 respirator (EU standard).
Blocks 99 % of small particles, including virus transporting ones. It is used by medical
personnel who handle corona and other viruses.
Use 30 minutes at 70 C in oven with the respirator put in a paper bag over put over
something wooden in the oven. This method can be used for up to 20 times with minimal damage
to the respirator filtration capacity, according to several studies. Another good method is
putting it in commercial steam bag used for sterilisation of baby items for 3 minutes in a
microwave oven, metal presence should not be a problem according to the study because the
metal gets coated by the steam. This method can be used up to 10 times with minimal loss to
the quality of the respirator. It is good for surgical masks too. Also use eye protection and
gloves. These simple methods are good and some hospitals started using them.
Another way is 7 to 10 days keeping the mask in dry bag with acces to air, that
significantly decreases viral load for most viruses. During this time use another
respirator.
For homemade masks these methods should be good too.
Methods that decrease respirator quality are spirt based solutions, bleach based
solutions, and longer exposure to steam. UVGI light and Hydrogen peroxide bath are also are
relatively good methods for disinfection of masks.
Importantly do not touch the respirator's main surface with your fingers, secure a good
fit, and always clean hands before and after handling the respirator.
Combine respirator mask with eye protection, raincoat and gloves. Put the raincoat and any
new item you bring into the home for 3 days quarantine in some special room.
Stay away from people at minimum 7 meters, especially from those who don't have masks.
Use ethanol to clean your gloves before and after you visited a store.
For disinfection purposes ethanol is good, it kills 100 % of viruses and bacteria. Ethanol
is used by russian Covid 19 disinfection teams in Italy for surface disinfection.
Simply use N99 respitator or FFP 3 respirator (EU standard).
Blocks 99 % of small particles, including virus transporting ones. It is used by medical
personnel who handle corona and other viruses.
1. None of such mask are currently available.
2. Even for hospital staff N95 aka FFP2 is sufficient to protect against SARS-CoV-19.
3. It is already very hard to wear and breathe through a N95 mask for a longer time. N99
masks are even worse!
4. The N99 masks have exhalatation valves which let the air from the person who wears it flow
out freely. That defeats the current purpose of #MaskUp which is to protect from unknown
spreaders.
I have trained for chemical warfare in the military. Wearing a tight mask with a filter
(FFP3) system while moving around is physically very tiring after even an hour or so. You
don't select a mask that is more difficult to breathe with than actually required.
"... Infections from asymptomatic cases have an R 0 of 0.1 or 4% of all new infections. ..."
"... More new infections are created during the three pre-symptomatic days the virus carrier runs around then during the symptomatic one. ..."
"... Washing ones hands helps but environmental infections happen only in 10% of all new infections. The pre-symptomatic carriers are, without knowing it, the biggest spreader of the disease. Millions of the many billions of viruses that get created in their throat can attach to tiny water droplets or aerosols while a person breathes, speaks or coughs. ..."
The virus starts to
replicate in significant numbers (billions per mililiter) on day 2 after the infection. The
virus first replicates in the upper throat and the infected person starts to spread it to
others simply by breathing, talking or coughing. Only on day 5 the infected person starts to
develop first symptoms. The virus migrates into the lower lung and replicates there. The
virus load in the upper throat will then start to decline. The immune system intervenes and
defeats the virus but also causes additional lung damage which can kill people who have
already other preexisting conditions .
(Interestingly smokers seem not to develop a cytokine storms during a Covid
infection and are thereby less prone to end up in the ICU.) On day 10 only few viruses will
be found in the upper throat and the person will generally no longer be infectious.
The typical hospitalization point in China was only on day 9 to 12 after the onset of
symptoms. At that point a test by swabs is nearly useless as the infected person will
normally no longer have significant numbers of the virus in the upper throat. Reports of
"defective tests from China" were likely caused by a lack of knowledge about this phenomenon.
The diagnose in these later cases should be done by a CT scan which will show the lung
damage.
We do know
since late January that people can transmit the virus even when they have not yet
developed symptoms. An open question was how many of new infections happen during this
phase.
The new Science study investigated how many infections were created by each of four
infection phases or types:
pre-symptomatic - new infections come from an infected person who has not yet developed
symptoms but will do so later
symptomatic - new infections come from an infected person who has already developed
symptoms
environmental - new infections comes from some environmental contact with the
virus
asymptomatic - new infections come from a person that will never develop any
symptoms.
The study says that R 0 for pre-symptomatic infections is 0.9 or 46% of all new
infections. Infections from a symptomatic persons happen with an R 0 of 0.8 which
is equal to 40% of all new infections. Environmental infections have an R 0 of 0.2
or 10% of all new infections. Infections from asymptomatic cases have an R 0
of 0.1 or 4% of all new infections.
More new infections are created during the three pre-symptomatic days the virus
carrier runs around then during the symptomatic one.
Washing ones hands helps but environmental infections happen only in 10% of all new
infections. The pre-symptomatic carriers are, without knowing it, the biggest spreader of the
disease. Millions of the many billions of viruses that get created in their throat can attach
to tiny water droplets or aerosols while a person breathes, speaks or coughs.
Such spreading can be prevented when everyone wears a mask. A different new study shows
that masks are very effective. Published in Nature the study is titled:
If the carrier of a virus wears a mask the spreading of viruses due to speaking, coughing
or even breathing goes basically down to zero.
But a mask does not only protect the carrier of the viruses. While homemade or even
professional surgical mask do not protect the wearer from all particles they do protect one
much better from them than when one wears no mask at all.
A person rarely gets infected by just one virus particle. They come in millions attached
to tiny droplets. We do not know yet how the dose of the novel coronavirus that infects a
person affects the intensity of the disease. But we do know from other viruses that the dose
matters. People who catch a higher dose of viruses will usually have a more intense disease.
A mask can lower the virus load the wearer may receive.
One can
improvise a mask from simple household objects. One can sew a mask like a surgeon
does in this video .
This is my preferred model which is officially recommended by German fire departments.
(The pdf is in German but the pictures tell the story). This is the mask I made by following
those instructions.
It is made of a folded sheet cut from a triangular arm-sling out of an old first-aid kit.
A HEPA microfilter (as used in a vacuum cleaners) is in between the folded sheet. A piece cut
from a clean bag for vacuum cleaners will do as well. Do not use a sheet or insert that is
too tight to breathe through. If one does that the air will come in from the sides of the
mask and the total protection effect will be less. It can be arduous to breathe through such
a mask. If you have breathing problems leave the insert out. The sheets alone are already
good protection. There is a piece of wire from a big paper clip fixed inside the middle of
the upper seam to fit the mask tightly around the upper nose. The lower part goes under the
chin. I shaved my beard to make it a tighter fit. As I had no sewing equipment I used a
stapler to fix the seams and the ribbons.
The HEPA filter catches
particles down to 0.3 micrometer. Viruses are some 125 nanometer in diameter so they are
smaller and could slip through. But the viruses are attached to some droplet that are bigger.
HEPA filter are essentially labyrinths of small fiber and the viruses would have to bounce
multiple times to get through. Finally the dose also matters.
To clean the mask of potential viruses I put it into the oven for 30 minutes at 70C
(158F).
The science says that masks work. Everyone should use one. #MaskUp!
---
Here some additional links which might be of interest.
So far, to the frustration of both the White House and the intelligence community, the
agencies have been unable to glean more accurate numbers through their collection efforts.
Since none of us is an expert or eminently knowledgeable on
this topic, for the sake of sharing information to develop our views here is data that
suggests otherwise...
Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, Volume 26, Number 6—June 2020
Research Letter : Serial Interval of COVID-19 among Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases
Abstract. We estimate the distribution of serial intervals for 468 confirmed cases of 2019
novel coronavirus disease reported in China as of February 8, 2020. The mean interval was
3.96 days (95% CI 3.53–4.39 days), SD 4.75 days (95% CI 4.46–5.07 days);
12.6% of case reports indicated presymptomatic transmission .
There was another study suggesting that many infection do not go beyond mild common cold,
with a conjecture that with small initial number of viruses the organism, T-cells in the mouth
and throat etc. learn to eliminate viruses in time to prevent severe lung infection. Thus gives
value to masks that are not 100% effective.
You can will mark my mask for each day of the week and rely on the fact that after paper or
fabric is completely dry ythe virus fdies in 72 hours.
The World Health Organization released a study on how China responded to COVID-19. Currently,
this study is one of the most exhaustive pieces published on how the virus spreads.
The results of their research show that COVID-19 doesn't spread as easily as first
thought.
The majority of viral infections come from prolonged exposures in confined spaces with
other infected individuals. Person-to-person and surface contact is by far the most common
cause. From the WHO report, "When a cluster of several infected people occurred in China, it
was most often (78-85%) caused by an infection within the family by droplets and other
carriers of infection in close contact with an infected person.
Routes of transmission
COVID-19 is transmitted via droplets and fomites during close unprotected contact
between an infector and infectee. Airborne spread has not been reported for COVID-19 and it
is not believed to be a major driver of transmission based on available evidence; however, it
can be envisaged if certain aerosol-generating procedures are conducted in health care
facilities.
Household transmission
In China, human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus is largely occurring in
families. The Joint Mission received detailed information from the investigation of clusters
and some household transmission studies, which are ongoing in a number of Provinces. Among
344 clusters involving 1308 cases (out of a total 1836 cases reported) in Guangdong Province
and Sichuan Province, most clusters (78%-85%) have occurred in families. Household
transmission studies are currently underway, but preliminary studies ongoing in Guangdong
estimate the secondary attack rate in households ranges from 3-10%.
The coefficient from the simulation are selected to match observed infections and they are
not "facts" but useful guidelines. The bottom line is that the infection happen in some
proportion, a large part from asymptomatic people. There was another study suggesting that
many infection do not go beyond mild common cold, with a conjecture that with small initial
number of viruses the organism, T-cells in the mouth and throat etc. learn to eliminate
viruses in time to prevent severe lung infection. Thus gives value to masks that are not 100%
effective.
Surely, the actual infection rate depends on the customs in a particular area. Oriental
people are not in habit of kissing, embracing, clasping hands etc., plus they are quick to
wear masks. Mediterranean people, which may include Iran, embrace, clasp hands and even kiss
(I assume that Muslim would greet only people of the same gender in that way). Masks are not
a habit. Crowded subway, buses etc. involve a lot of very close contacts, which may be OK if
EVERYONE has a decent mask.
I guess I will mark my mask for each day of the week and rely on the fact that after paper
or fabric is completely dry, viruses die (cease to become viable) within hours, so one does
not have to rush the drying process by special heating. On the other hand, one could try to
gently dry in the cloth drier in a bag for female underwear. We do not damage viruses by heat
but by the lack of moisture. Masks seems to be limited.
These are the reuse recommendations I'll be following, from Dr. Peter Tsai, the inventor
of the filtration fabric in the N95 mask:
N95 Re-Use Instructions (Updated as of April 3, 2020) https://www.sages.org/n-95-re-use-instructions/
I intend to follow the advice of rotating masks - once I have masks. It's likely that four
days would be sufficient to dry out any droplets or aerosols and inactivate any virus.
However, longer obviously would be better.
I'm going to order some masks from China today, if I can. Also perhaps some impermeable
food surface plastic gloves to deal with contact infections.
As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to skyrocket, healthcare researchers
around the world are working tirelessly to discover new life-saving medical innovations.
Diagnostics: Quickly and effectively detecting the disease in the first place
Treatments: Alleviating symptoms so people who have disease experience milder symptoms,
and lowering the overall mortality rate
Vaccines: Preventing transmission by making the population immune to COVID-19
Today's graphics provide an in-depth look at who's in the innovation race to defeat the
virus, and they come to us courtesy of Artis
Ventures , a venture capital firm focused on life sciences and tech investments.
Editor's note: R&D is moving fast on COVID-19, and the situation is quite fluid. While
today's post is believed to be an accurate snapshot of all innovations and developments listed
by WHO and FDA as of March 30, 2020, it is possible that more data will become
available.
Knowledge is Power
Testing rates during this pandemic have been a point of contention. Without widespread
testing, it has been tough to accurately track the spread of the virus, as well as pin down
important metrics such as infectiousness and mortality
rates . Inexpensive test kits that offer quick results will be key to curbing the
outbreak.
Here are the companies and institutions developing new tests for COVID-19:
The ultimate aim of companies like Abbott and BioFire Defense is to create a test that can
produce accurate results in as little as a few minutes.
In the Trenches With
Coronavirus
While the majority of people infected with COVID-19 only experience minor symptoms, the
disease can cause severe issues in some cases – even resulting in death. Most of the
forms of treatment being pursued fall into one of two categories:
Treating respiratory symptoms – especially the inflammation that occurs in severe
cases
Antiviral growth – essentially stopping viruses from multiplying inside the human
body
Here are the companies and institutions developing new treatment options for COVID-19:
A wide range of players are in the race to develop treatments related to COVID-19. Pharma
and healthcare companies are in the mix, as well as universities and institutes.
One surprising name on the list is Fujifilm . The Japanese company's stock recently shot up
on the news that Avigan, a decades-old flu drug developed through Fujifilm's healthcare
subsidiary, might be effective at helping coronavirus patients recover. The Japanese
government's stockpile of the drug is
reportedly enough to treat two million people.
Vaccine
The progress that is perhaps being watched the closest by the general public is the
development of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Creating a safe vaccine for a new illness is no easy feat. Thankfully, rapid progress is
being made for a variety of reasons, including China's efforts to sequence the genetic material
of Sars-CoV-2 and to share that information with research groups around the world.
Another factor contributing to the unprecedented speed of development is the fact that
coronaviruses were already on the radar of health science researchers. Both SARS and MERS were
caused by coronaviruses, and even though vaccines were shelved once those outbreaks were
contained, learnings can still be applied to defeating COVID-19.
One of the most promising leads on a COVID-19 vaccine is mRNA-1273. This vaccine, developed
by Moderna Therapeutics , is being developed with extreme urgency, skipping straight into human
trials before it was even tested in animals. If all goes well with the trials currently
underway in Washington State, the company hopes to have an early version of the vaccine ready
by fall 2020. The earliest versions of the vaccine would be made available to at-risk groups
such as healthcare workers.
Further down the pipeline are 15 types of subunit vaccines. This method of vaccination uses
a fragment of a pathogen, typically a surface protein, to trigger an immune response, teaching
the body's immune system how to fight off the disease without actually introducing live
pathogens.
No Clear Finish Line
Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet for solving this pandemic.
A likely scenario is that teams of researchers around the world will come up with solutions
that will incrementally help stop the spread of the virus, mitigate symptoms for those
infected, and help lower the overall death toll. As well, early solutions rushed to market will
need to be refined over the coming months.
We can only hope that the hard lessons learned from fighting COVID-19 will help stop a
future outbreak in its tracks before it becomes a pandemic. For now, those of us on the
sideline can only do our best to flatten
the curve .
"... The number of advertisements for short-time work has skyrocketed to an unprecedented level, and the number of unemployed is also increasing: The Federal Employment Agency expects an increase of up to 200,000 unemployed in April. ..."
"... The virologists had not succeeded in breeding Sars-Cov-2 in initial tests after swabbing various objects in apartments of highly infectious residents, sinks, doorknobs, but also pets such as cats. "For me it looks like the first results that a door handle can only be infectious if someone has coughed in the hand beforehand and then grabs the handle immediately." This suggests that there is no smear infection. Keeping a distance and washing hands is therefore a very effective tool. ..."
"... "We talk a lot about speculation and model calculations. With these, however, only one factor has to be wrong and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. "That is why facts are so important to make effective decisions. He was therefore surprised that the Robert Koch Institute, as the highest federal authority for infectious diseases, had not previously carried out such an investigation. He sees such tests as a duty for virologists "to find answers for the citizens." ..."
The Corona crisis hits the global economy with great violence: In Germany, too,
restaurants and companies have to pause for weeks, tourism stands still, nothing works in
public life anymore.
The number of advertisements for short-time work has skyrocketed to an unprecedented
level, and the number of unemployed is also increasing: The Federal Employment Agency expects
an increase of up to 200,000 unemployed in April.
And despite the government's aid measures, one thing is certain: the German economy will
not be the same for the foreseeable future once the crisis is over. The existence of many
citizens is under threat.
Hardly anyone had questioned these tough government measures, as it is about saving lives.
But on Tuesday evening a well-known virologist for the first time openly raised doubts about
the need for the shutdown at "Markus Lanz" (ZDF). Did our entrepreneurs have to shut down
unnecessarily?
The virologist Hendrik Streeck from the University Hospital Bonn is currently carrying out
a unique examination in the district of Heinsberg - the epicenter of the coronavirus. There,
the expert collects both the number of infected people and the infection routes in a
representative sample. The study is intended to provide answers to questions such as where
the greatest sources of danger are. How exactly the virus is transmitted. How high the
unreported number of infected people is. The research group around Streeck wants to publish
the first results as early as next week.
The virologists had not succeeded in breeding Sars-Cov-2 in initial tests after swabbing
various objects in apartments of highly infectious residents, sinks, doorknobs, but also pets
such as cats. "For me it looks like the first results that a door handle can only be
infectious if someone has coughed in the hand beforehand and then grabs the handle
immediately." This suggests that there is no smear infection. Keeping a distance and washing
hands is therefore a very effective tool.
However, the risk of infecting someone else while shopping is considered to be low. "We
see how the infections took place. That was not in the supermarket or in the restaurant or at
the butcher's. That was at the parties at the après ski in Ischgl, in the Berlin club,
trumpet ', at the carnival in Gangelt and at the exuberant football games in Bergamo.
In the current discussion about the "shutdown" and the "exit" strategies, which lead again
from a standstill, such reliable facts are important. So that public life doesn't stand still
for too long.
"We talk a lot about speculation and model calculations. With these, however, only one
factor has to be wrong and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. "That is why
facts are so important to make effective decisions. He was therefore surprised that the
Robert Koch Institute, as the highest federal authority for infectious diseases, had not
previously carried out such an investigation. He sees such tests as a duty for virologists
"to find answers for the citizens."
Did the shutdown come too quickly?
Streeck looks back at the various measures taken by the federal government, which have
gradually restricted life: Larger events have been canceled, schools have been closed down to
exit restrictions. "But I had already said in advance: We want to wait and see what happens.
The virus doesn't obey any politician. "
Measures that are now decided would only be visible in the statistics in two weeks at the
earliest. "You have to give this virus time so that we can see and classify the results of
the measures in the long term."
He had never heard of infections in hairdressing salons, said Streeck. But now they are
closed. It is the same with supermarkets or the like. "We just don't know that infections
have taken place there. I think it's important that we focus on what we really know - and
what we don't. "You have to find the nuances of when exactly an infection occurs. And this
must also be the guideline for reducing certain measures.
A very good way to contain the virus effectively: do a lot of tests like South Korea did.
"If they tested people positively and found a cluster, then they contained the area there,"
says Streeck. A nationwide curfew was not necessary there. "In my eyes, this is a very good
strategy and also a strategy that is feasible in Germany. Because we have the options. "
The virus is really dangerous for the risk groups, so "when it comes to the hospital,
nursing home and old people's home," said the doctor. It is therefore very important to
effectively protect particularly vulnerable people, with weekly corona tests for medical and
nursing staff, for example. Such pool procedures are already used in transfusion medicine to
test blood. So you are not new.
"It is therefore important to develop exactly such ideas. However, many experts are
involved in this development, and not just individual ones. "It is a shame that the
government approached the crisis" rather monothematically ". Unfortunately, there is no round
table with a large number of virologists, in which China is also involved.
Streeck criticizes the lack of objectives in the fight against Corona
"I see what such a curfew does to people," explains the virologist. He himself has friends
who wonder if they still have a job after the crisis. "In relation to other epidemics and
viruses, I find these restrictions to be very drastic." Before taking such measures, Streeck
would have liked to think carefully: "Where do we actually want to go?" He would lack the
precise definition of the objective.
"Our limit is the capacity of the hospitals. Not the number of people infected. But we
never heard where our guideline was. What is our goal? Are 1000 infections a day too much? Or
100? We have to listen to the intensive care physicians who tell us where their limits are.
"They could best assess which measures are the right ones.
Marcel Fratzscher: "A good health system needs a functioning economy"
Streeck therefore supports the fastest possible discussion about an exit strategy. Marcel
Fratzscher, President of the German Institute for Economic Research, explains how great the
danger for the economy is at "Lanz". He speaks of a "catastrophe" with a "rat tail of
problems". Small businesses and the self-employed could only last a few weeks despite
government aid.
Anyone who receives a salary of 60 or 70 percent in short-time work can hardly stay afloat
in the long term. At the same time, the economist feels uncomfortable weighing human lives
against the financial damage - as many in the discussion about an exit strategy do. "Because
a good health system also needs a functioning economy."
One should not play both sides against each other, but rather find a solution that is
acceptable to everyone. After six to eight weeks, the loss caused by the shutdown would
become critical. And that must be avoided.
Add this to the list of American disinformation campaigns like mythical Iraqi Weapons of
Mass Destruction; Kuwaiti Incubator babies; Muammar Qaddafi's "Viagra rape squads"; Syrian
"chemical weapons" use in Douma; Russia hacking America's faux democracy; USA-armed moderate
jihadists in Syria; and the fraudulent War on Terror.
The more people die in America because of the Coronavirus pandemic, the more America
points the finger at China ... as if this somehow makes the Land of the Free's criminal
negligence in this pandemic more "tolerable."
1. does it stop you from catching the bug 100%? No, including N95, P100, whatever. there's
leakage and also many other infection vectors.
2. do most people know how to don, adjust and handle used masks properly? No
3. does it help? yes, every little bit is better than nothing
4. dirty little secret - for most of Asia with exception of probably Japan, people wear
mask not because they are trying to protect others if they are asymptomatic carriers. They do
it out of good old self preservation. it DOES, however, have the useful side effect that the
end result is the same - asymptomatic carriers are also covered.
Currently the total hospital admissions in the USA are less then 30K and the virus
considerably slowed down (from 32$ a day to 24% a day and this percentage will go down further)
.
the United States New
York Governor Cuomo Daily Briefing :
Everything we do now (procure ventilators etc) is in preparation for possible apex (when
curve hits the highest point) Apex in New York is estimated in 14-21 days from now We'll
keep COVID-19 patients separated from the other patients in hospitals We can now test for
antibodies to determine whether a person had COVID-19. This is a blood test 172 new ICU
admission in the last day, vs. 374 in the preceding day, may indicate a decline in the
growth rate 155,934 people tested in New York State We need a faster testing process.
Can't wait 5 days as it is now. Other countries now also have home tests. We should do
the same
An additional 37,000 ICU beds are
needed Will use college dormitories , hotels , nursing homes, and all possible space by
converting it to hospitals if needed in April 138,376 people have been tested Schools will
stay closed for an additional 2 weeks after April 1, to then reassess the situation and
extend again if needed. 180 days requirement has been waived "This is not going to be a
short deployment [...] This is going to be weeks, and weeks, and weeks [...] This is a
rescue mission you are on, to save lives. [...] You are living a moment in history that
will change and forge character"
Serious question: Has America's misnamed "intelligence community" leaked anything
truthful to the mass media since the run-up to America attacking Iraq?
I have been trying to remember an instance when they have not lied and am having trouble
with that so if anyone else knows I would appreciate a quick reminder.
Narrative management seeking a scapegoat. US intelligence argues that China officially knew
of pandemic in November, and implies that an alleged failure to sound the alarm until end of
December created the conditions resulting in US and other countries to be unprepared. This is
nonsense. All countries outside of China had more than enough time to prepare. The failing of
US leaders and bureaucracy has been exemplified by first allowing identified infected persons
to freely wander through NYC, for example, since February, followed by allowing outbreaks
within their own military forces.
Deliberate state-sponsored campaigns to create/identify scapegoats has numerous awful
precedents historically.
Exact numbers are not important, but the policies are. The Chinese policy has been very clear
right from the beginning: eradicate the virus. It seems to be working. The US policy has been
murky from the start, but appears to be : don't eradicate the virus; let it become endemic.
The latest evidence for this is a sign next to Trump: "30 Days To Slow The Spread". These two
policies are fundamentally incompatible. I am still thinking that Uncle Sam wants to surround
China and friends with endemic corona virus.
The US police state which has been evolving for decades has now ripped away the facade of
freedom overnight. Where I live the state governor has issued an "executive order" placing us
all under house arrest unless we meet certain exceptions, to be decided by ham-fisted
bureaucrats and police.
The Governor's order which effectively seizes every resident without a warrant or probable
cause or due process of any kind is patently offensive and unconstitutional. Meanwhile there
will be no statewide moratorium on rent, mortgages, utilities, so landlords are free to evict
tenants who are prohibited from earning a living.
During a press conference she was asked about this. She said talked to a few landlords
(who no doubt contribute to her election campaigns) who informed her that a
"one-size-fits-all" approach was not acceptable to them.
There are no defined endpoints to these restrictions. Now that the racetracks are closed,
instead of betting on dogs and ponies we should start a pool on how long until the whole
place explodes like a super volcano. My bet is for the third day of a 90F plus heat wave in
Washington DC - probably by mid-June.
TJ: Why the fuck did any country let in anyone coming from China is the real question one
should ask. Of course, China should've closed down its own borders to protect others, but the
other governments who willingly did nothing, endangering their very own populations, are even
more guilty.
Besides, one can make the same accusation against most countries, to begin with Italy: Why
did Italy not close its borders when the virus spread there? The bulk of European infections
can be traced back the Northern Italy after all. So, there again, the biggest crime lies with
other European governments who failed to fully isolate Italy as soon as it was obvious the
infections appeared there.
B: I made the same reasoning, Hubei is big and has plenty of deaths all around. If there
were no funerals for more than 2 months, that's a lot of urns lying around.
As for the current "China lied about the numbers", these idiots should've guessed it was
serious shit when China put under lockdown a 60-mio people province that was nowhere near
rebellion Hong-Kong style. As far as I can see, it's mostly Western asshole leaders
deflecting attention and trying to make their people believe they did a good job and no one
could've done better, since after all China had a horrendous death rate as well - though I
hope most people won't fall for such an obvious lie.
We could invert your question: if the West is so superior than China, then why didn't its
intelligence system didn't see through China's alleged lies and immediately blocked flights
from China to their respective countries?
Either you are superior or you're not. You can't be both at the same time.
Even in this op-ed, the Global Times contained. It didn't mention capitalism's
degeneration since 2008, which left it in a very frail state (that's probably why they hired
a British analyst to write it).
There were people who were infectious who left China before the Chinese authorities had even
identified the COVID-19. The only way to stop an infection entering a country would be to
insist that every single visitor to that country remained in quarantine for thirty days after
entry. Just imagine the impact on tourism and business. To visit for a one hour business
meeting requires two months in quarantine, one month upon entry to the destination country
and another month on return to the home country as all countries would be entitled to demand
similar quarantine terms.
As for Italy
:
He says it looks unlikely that Italy could have done anything to completely prevent the
virus from entering. "The only thing we could have done is introducing the current lockdown
on 30 January, a decision that was impossible and unthinkable at the time," he says. Even
stopping flights from China might have had no influence at all, he says – new,
provisional research suggests that the coronavirus reached Italy from Germany.
Every country in the EU closing its borders to residents of every other country in the EU
without good cause couldn't happen. And the UK, which was leaving the EU did nothing at its
borders - I read tweets through February and March from air passengers travelling to the UK
that were amazed at the lack of testing and quarantine even when fellow passengers clearly
displayed the symptoms of COVID-19.
Rats appear to be scurrying to deflect attention from the ratlines.
Bhadrakumar had an interesting piece up suggesting some truth telling is likely going on
in certain circles.
In an exclusive remark, a "source in the Russian Foreign Ministry" told the state news
agency Tass:
"In order to unambiguously answer the question about the origin, about where the first
case emerged, major research needs to be carried out. So, Washington's accusing tone in
comments against China arouses blatant bewilderment."
The source then went on to touch on the allegation made in China -- namely, that a team
of American military personnel had visited Wuhan, China, previously before the outbreak.
The Russian Foreign Ministry source said:
"As for "US trace" in the COVID-19 outbreak, we don't have this data today. However, for
a long time we have been watching with concerns the US military and biological activity
carried out in direct proximity with our borders. In other words, there are indeed
questions for the US."
Now, a few things must be said right at the outset. Any longtime observer of the Russian
state system, media culture and Russian diplomacy would know that Tass, which functions
under the supervision of the Kremlin is not in the business of lapping up stray remarks by
a moonlighting Russian source.
....Suffice to say, one plausible explanation for the Tass report today is that Moscow
has alerted Trump to something that he may not yet be aware of. "
William Gruff @14: One hardly needs to leak if one is manning the news desks!
Red Ryder , Apr 1 2020 20:51 utc |
39 For all the Monday morning quarterbacks, factor this in your criticisms: the Chinese,
the WHO, the world's experts did not know how infectious this virus was until it was in South
Korea. That Korean cult religious group and the spread from there was the first clear sign.
China had its infectious impact in its Wuhan hospitals, when they began losing doctors and
nurses to the virus. It was six weeks into the breakout before the scientists understood that
the danger was the spread, not the deadliness.
The fear then woke everyone that modern hospitals could not handle the spiral spread, the
logarithmic growth potential of COVID-19.
Now, we know that the virus began outside China many months before Wuhan. Probably,
summertime 2019. There are a lot of "flu" deaths in the USA which were symptomatic but
untested that match COVID-19. Many deaths were caused by that virus in 2019. And there are
many survivors who describe the experience identical to those who survive it now.
Dispersing the herd, social distancing, is the most effective tool to mitigate the
epidemic potential of this virus. Where that was done, it slowed and died. It needs crowds of
people to keep growing and keep going.
Watch it wipe out the crew on the Teddy Roosevelt.
Did Johns Hopkins issue the following guidelines (I don't think they did)?
1. The virus is not a living organism, but a protein molecule (DNA) covered by a
protective layer of lipid (fat), which, when absorbed by the cells of the ocular, nasal or
buccal mucosa, changes their genetic code. (mutation) and convert them into aggressor and
multiplier cells.
2. Since the virus is not a living organism but a protein molecule, it is not killed, but
decays on its own. The disintegration time depends on the temperature, humidity and type of
material where it lies.
3. The virus is very fragile; the only thing that protects it is a thin outer layer of
fat. That is why any soap or detergent is the best remedy, because the foam CUTS the FAT
(that is why you have to rub so much: for 20 seconds or more, to make a lot of foam). By
dissolving the fat layer, the protein molecule disperses and breaks down on its own.
4. HEAT melts fat; this is why it is so good to use water above 25 degrees Celsius for
washing hands, clothes and everything. In addition, hot water makes more foam and that makes
it even more useful.
5. Alcohol or any mixture with alcohol over 65% DISSOLVES ANY FAT, especially the external
lipid layer of the virus.
6. Any mix with 1 part bleach and 5 parts water directly dissolves the protein, breaks it
down from the inside.
7. Oxygenated water helps long after soap, alcohol and chlorine, because peroxide
dissolves the virus protein, but you have to use it pure and it hurts your skin.
8. NO BACTERICIDE SERVES. The virus is not a living organism like bacteria; they cannot
kill what is not alive with anthobiotics, but quickly disintegrate its structure with
everything said.
9. NEVER shake used or unused clothing, sheets or cloth. While it is glued to a porous
surface, it is very inert and disintegrates only between 3 hours (fabric and porous), 4 hours
(copper, because it is naturally antiseptic; and wood, because it removes all the moisture
and does not let it peel off and disintegrates). ), 24 hours (cardboard), 42 hours (metal)
and 72 hours (plastic). But if you shake it or use a feather duster, the virus molecules
float in the air for up to 3 hours, and can lodge in your nose.
10. The virus molecules remain very stable in external cold, or artificial as air
conditioners in houses and cars. They also need moisture to stay stable, and especially
darkness. Therefore, dehumidified, dry, warm and bright environments will degrade it
faster.
11. UV LIGHT on any object that may contain it breaks down the virus protein. For example,
to disinfect and reuse a mask is perfect. Be careful, it also breaks down collagen (which is
protein) in the skin, eventually causing wrinkles and skin cancer.
12. The virus CANNOT go through healthy skin.
13. Vinegar is NOT useful because it does not break down the protective layer of fat.
14. NO SPIRITS, NOR VODKA, serve. The strongest vodka is 40% alcohol, and you need
65%.
15. LISTERINE IF IT SERVES! It is 65% alcohol.
16. The more confined the space, the more concentration of the virus there can be. The
more open or naturally ventilated, the less.
17. This is super said, but you have to wash your hands before and after touching mucosa,
food, locks, knobs, switches, remote control, cell phone, watches, computers, desks, TV, etc.
And when using the bathroom.
18. You have to HUMIDIFY HANDS DRY from so much washing them, because the molecules can
hide in the micro cracks. The thicker the moisturizer, the better.
19. Also keep your NAILS SHORT so that the virus does not hide there.
IMHO only 20% of the note shows some imprecise or wrongly interpreted examples (like f i
Listerine) , but when 80% looks correct, we ABSOLUTELY need to find the source and
disseminate it in order to help people understand and , why not, start thinking on why and
how apply the recommendations AFTER having understood the logic behind the detailed and
practical recommendations which do make sense but which we need to justify and assess before
we carry them further as full "truth"
On March 14, French health minister Olivier Véran made a blunt statement on Twitter
– warning that people should stay away from using ibuprofen to treat coronavirus
symptoms. Some patients in France had experienced adverse affects using non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory drugs to treat the disease. The tweet has sparked rampant disinformation on
WhatsApp and social media, but there is currently no strong evidence that ibuprofen can make
coronavirus worse. Even so, the NHS is still advising that – until we have further
evidence – people should avoid using ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms and take
paracetamol instead. If you can't take paracetamol, or are taking ibuprofen on the advice of a
doctor, make sure you check with a doctor before you make any changes to your medication.
Updated 04.03.20, 11:05 GMT: The article has been updated to clarify that some alcohol
gels are effective against norovirus.
Matt Reynolds is WIRED's science editor. He tweets from
We need to look into why the most active countries that do not practice self isolation,
while wearing face masks, have very lowest death rates compared to case numbers. I.e.,
Singapore, South Korea, Russia, Japan, etc...
There is difference among people born and raised in different countries with different
vaccinations given at birth and afterwards. There is also difference of many local diseases
very common; like malaria and others in Asian courtiers, which are almost non-existent here
in USA. It gives us some directions to fight Covid-19 employing mass spectrometry and many
other tools.
I am over 70 and last year in the UK I had a vaccine for pneumonia, which I understand is
of one of the stages in the desease's cycle. Might it be possible that a pneumonia vaccine
would provide some kind of immunity for Covid-19?
The vaccine for pneumonia may have a limited scope compared to Covid-19 attack on immune
system, but studies of the blood samples looking for anti-bodies after vaccine for pneumonia
may provide us further insight. The best practice would be to try staying away from Covid-19
exposure and try to boost our immune system.
I would like to share some information I happen to find coming out from Chinese Social
Media South China Morning Post: "People with blood type A may be more vulnerable to
coronavirus, China study finds".
A claim from scientists from Chinese study at Zhognan University Hospital in Wuhan and
Shenzhen city. They screen 2000 medical record of patients infected with the SARS CAVID19 to
find a higher proportion of patients belonging to the Blood group A, as well as greater
proportion of them suffering from more severe disease. As we know most scientific papers from
China are written in Chinese language and their scientific perspective may not be as ours, we
cannot confirm that is a reflecting a true fact. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be so difficult
nor expensive to have a look into the matter. If it turns out to reflect a confirmed fact, it
will change our perception about the susceptibility to this germ. We already know that there
is a very wide spectrum of severity of symptoms in our population and in part that might be
due to factors as those mentioned above. My only recommendation is please take it easy we do
not want another problem as we did with toilet paper or Chloroquine.
Be safe, keep yourself at home.
Per the CDC, hand sanitizer needs to contain at least 60% alcohol. Tito's Handmade Vodka is
40% alcohol, and therefore does not meet the current recommendation of the CDC. Please see attached for more
information.
pic.twitter.com/plYf54HPLn
You can certainly bet on that the virus can spread in hot seasons. In these days, in
Argentina, we have temperatures about 35 Celsius (almost 100 Fahrenheit), and the virus still
gained momentum in such environments. The strict social isolation has been proven to be our
best option so far. In economics terms, and even in social mood, it seems to be a very high
price to pay. But relaxing or terminating this forced quarantine may led us to the worst case
scenario.
Here in Brazil we have high temperatures right now. And the daily contagion rate is much
lower than in countries or places where the climate is much colder. I believe that the virus
will not spread as well in hot climates.
I'm currently in mid-Florida there it has been in the upper 80's to mid 90's every day for
the last several weeks. The infection is increasing here as far as in Michigan. Also, it's
hotter down towards Miami and the infection levels are even higher down there. I wouldn't put
any faith and hot days killing it
"those countries are poor and have no testing" - but what about their death rate then? As
of right now, the ENTIRE CONTINENT of Africa has just a few dozen deaths TOTAL..
Extreme heat/cold are known to be formidable environments to most viruses. Odds are that
this one is too, but only time will tell I guess.
Australia is not poor and absolutely does have testing!!! We have over 3000 infected (that
has been identified) and 13 deaths. Do not count on weather conditions offering some form of
protection.
Temperature isn't the only parameter, air-conditioning and the related irritation of
mucous membranes are favouring coughs and sneezing and by consequence the spread of
viruses.
According to Steven W. Mosher, a China specialist with the Population Research Institute,
this research could be especially harmful to humans. "China claims that the deadly virus did not
escape from its biolab," Mr. Mosher said. "Fine. Prove it by releasing the research records of
the Wuhan lab."
Chinese government researchers
isolated more than 2,000 new viruses, including deadly bat coronaviruses, and carried out
scientific work on them just three miles from a wild animal market identified as the epicenter
of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several Chinese state media outlets in recent months touted the virus research and lionized
in particular a key researcher in Wuhan , Tian Junhua , as a leader in bat
virus work.
The coronavirus strain now infecting hundreds of thousands of people globally mutated from
bats believed to have infected animals and people at a wild animal market in Wuhan . The exact origin of the virus,
however, remains a mystery.
Reports of the extensive Chinese research on bat viruses likely will fuel more calls for
Beijing to make public what it knows about such work.
"This is one of the worst cover-ups in human history, and now the world is facing a global
pandemic," Rep. Michael T. McCaul, Texas Republican and ranking member of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, said last week. Mr. McCaul has said China should be held accountable for the
pandemic.
A video posted online in December and funded by the Chinese government shows Mr.
Tian inside
caves in Hubei province taking samples from captured bats and storing them in vials.
"I am not a doctor, but I work to cure and save people," Mr. Tian says in the video. "I am not a
soldier, but I work to safeguard an invisible national defense line."
Chinese officials have said the virus likely spread from wild animals to people at
Wuhan 's Huanan
Seafood Wholesale Market, not far from the Wuhan
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC
), the national center for China 's bat virus research.
Wuhan is finally
stirring back to life after a harsh crackdown on travel and street activity was imposed in late
January. The city's bus, subway and train systems started to run again over the weekend. Shops
downtown were operating with some restrictions Monday, although customers were scarce.
But British news accounts also reported over the weekend that some of the stalls at
China 's so-called
"wet" wild animal markets, as they reopen, have begun once again selling bats and scorpions and
resumed questionable practices such as slaughtering small animals right at the site.
Chinese officials refused to provide samples of its coronavirus strains to U.S. researchers
shortly after
Our mainstream media was equally oblivious, and even if they had sounded the alarm, they
had hysterically cried wolf so many times about so many ridiculous things that nobody would
have taken them seriously.
100% Correct -- Media is the problem. Globalist Media firms hate Trump, the Constitution,
and America.
Trump stated true fact. There are promising results from chloroquine, but it may or may
not work. The dishonest Globalist Media such as CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo . tried (and failed) to
blame Trump for the death of someone who ingested an aquarium cleaner with a similar name.
(1)
Trump stated an optimistic hope. He hoped that it would be possible to begin lifting
restrictions by Easter. That hope has not come to pass, and the Trump administration has
extended restrictions. Optimism is an unwritten part of the President's duties, keeping and
building hope among U.S. Citizens.
The Globalist Media propaganda machine repudiates the concepts of hope, optimism,
integrity, and honesty. The *Media Lied* , when they intentionally changed "Trump's hope" to
"would" and further on to "must". Then with the bogus straw man set, the Globalist hoax about
a non-existent "restrictions must end" policy was launched. Again, the Globalist Media tried
(and failed) to undermine the Constitution with their hoax.
When will the Media start telling the truth instead of pushing the DNC's anti-American,
Globalist, Elite 1% agenda?
https://covidtracking.com/us-daily/ I use this page
as I find the one from John Hopkins suspect. I think some numbers should be looked at and
people should decide just how serious the Coronavirus is:
% US Population tested as of 29 March 2020 – .25% (831,351)
% tested who test positive – 16.73%
% tested who test negative – 83.27%
% tested who get Hospitalized – 2.37%
% Infected who get Hospitalized – 14.19%
% Infected who die – 1.75%
Percentage of those Tested who dies – .288%
Worst case sceanario as of 3/29/20 is 957,374 people could die from this virus if the % of
3/29/20 remain constant, but our death rate has dropped from a high of 2.73% (occured on
3/12/20).
Per the CDC webpage the N1H1 (swine flu) Pandemic infected 61 million Americans of which
12,469 died in 09. President Obama declared it an emergency in Oct 09 (7 months into the
Pandemic's season 04/09 – 04/10)
8,234 had died before he declared.
Bear in mind the H1N1 DR for 09-10 was .021% substantially lower than the DR rate of
Coronavirus, we are only in week 13 of the Coronavirus discovery (January through March)
Remember, from 03/12 to 03/28 the death rate has dropped 35.9% (2.73 to 1.75)
@anastasia The normies, i.e. the uninformed masses who follow received opinion, have been
well-trained to 'trust' the word of their masters, who want them panicking while the final
looting of the treasury by the banksters takes place right in front of their noses.
But, once it becomes evident that the economic collapse has occurred and society has been
looted, even the normies will begin to understand that the finance capitalists running their
world were not doing so in the best interests of the people.
What are they NOT hearing: We are not hearing any statistics about flus, how many are
hospitalized each year, and how many die from flu each year. This basis of comparison is not
pertinent, is not newsworthy? The public has no interest in these things?
We are not hearing how many corona victims have been hospitalized in each area, in each
hospital in NYC, how many are in regular rooms; how many are on ventilators or receiving
oxygen. They are not filming in hospitals where the patients are. We are not seeing full
emergency rooms.. We are not seeing people in those tents they are putting up everywhere. We
are not seeing any people in the make-shift hospitals. We are not seeing any victims of this
disease on ventilators in any hospitals. (unlike China that had every reporter in the middle
of that contagion of the hospitals).
Instead, whenever they talk about a hospital in New York, they show the same line at
Elmhurst Hospital, which is the hospital where all Riker's Island prisoners go, where they
ORDINARILY treat 200 patients per day, where they may have afree clinic, where they may be
dispensing "methodone".
We are not being told how many people over 80 die every few seconds in this country, as a
basis for comparison. They are not giving us anything to compare these deaths they are
posting every day, like stock market statistics, on every media station.
German pulmonologist Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg favors the latter explanation, describing the
epidemic as "hype" (his word in German) which has taken on a life of its own in spite of the
facts and therefore merits further consideration:
Every year we have new types of virus in the world. When tests were done in Glasgow
coronaviruses were always present. In each year, coronaviruses were always part of the mix at
a rate of 7 to 15 percent. In Wuhan they discovered a new strain of virus. Is this virus
dangerous. . . .
How can we know? It's important to compare the current data with data from previous years.
But even if we look at the 7 to 15 percent who have the virus, we can't say that they died
from it. The big question about mortality rates in Italy is where were the tests taken? If
they were administered to severely ill people in hospitals, the death rate would naturally
increase. The normal mortality rate for the seasonal flu is 0.1 percent. That means that one
person out of a thousand dies every winter.
It's obvious that the virologists have created something very sensational here which
impressed the Chinese government. The Chinese government made a big deal out of it. It was
suddenly very important politically in a way that had nothing to do with virology, prompting
face recognition in airports, spot temperature checks to see if people had fever.
And those measures had international consequences. Politicians suddenly had to take a
stand. Something was fabricated. A network of information and opinions developed in these
groups of experts, and the politicians turned to these groups of experts and they
internalized their information network and began operation within its parameters.
The politicians have instrumentalized this network of information in order to determine
what measures need to be taken. All of these decisions have been derived from these
arguments. That means it's going to be very difficult for a critic to say, "Stop, there's
nothing going on."
It reminds me of the fairy tale about the emperor's new clothes. Only a small child was
able to say he was naked. The politicians are playing along with the scientists who want to
seem important because they need money to support their operations. We want to be important;
we want to earn money. Didn't the same thing happen last year? Is anything new going on here?
[23]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_AyuhbnPOI&fea...utu.be My translation from the
German.
Reports from Italy confirmed Wodarg's suspicions. On March 18, Italy's national health
authority released a statement which showed that more than 99 percent of Italy's coronavirus
fatalities have been people who suffered from previous medical conditions. The overwhelming
majority of those who died while infected with the coronavirus were either old or had
pre-existing conditions which made the virus worse. The average age of patients who succumbed
to COVID-2019 was 81 years of age, about 20 years higher than the age of all patients who
contracted the infection. The average age of women who died was 28 years higher. The greatest
percentage of deaths (or 42.2 percent) occurred in the age group between 80 and 89 years, while
32.4 percent were between 70 and 79, 8.4 percent between 60 and 69, 2.8 percent between 50 and
59 and 14.1 percent over 90 years. Women who died after contracting COVI_D-2019 infection are
older than men (median age women 83.4 – median age men 79.9). The average number of
pathologies observed in this population is 3.4 (median 3, Standard Deviation 2.1). Overall,
15.5 percent of the sample had 0 or 1 pathologies, 18.3 percent had 2 pathologies and 67.2
percent had 3 or more pathologies. The most represented comorbidity is hypertension (present in
74.6 percent of the sample), followed by ischemic heart disease (70.4 percent) and diabetes
mellitus (33.8 percent). [24]
http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/news/p3_2_1_1_1.js...d=4163 My translation from the
Italian. Silvio Brusaferro, head of the Italian health service confirmed the fact that
senior citizens and those with pre-existing conditions are more at risk. "We are talking about
people who are very fragile and who live in close contact with others and the need to protect
them as much as possible." [25]
http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/news/p3_2_1_1_1.js...d=4163 My translation from the
Italian.
Seems like government meddling often just makes things worse. In response to the disease
airports shut down and thousands of people were herded into cramped, crowded areas of the
airport. That's a good way of dealing with a highly communicable disease, get frightened and
cram thousands of people together so they really will get it. This to prevent it, you see.
I wish we could shut down all Billionaires foundations and phony charities, fire all their
employees and sieze the trust-funds that pay into them to pay down the national debt.
Its giving inherited gazillionaires too much money to play with. Honestly, piddling around
with weaponized viruses via private foundation grant money thrown at foreign scientists with
dual loyalties and dual passports. When one of them decides he resents one country or the
other, what is to stop him from releasing the viruses he has been researching?
Coronavirus and COVID-19 won't stop globalism; in fact, the global war on this virus makes
globalism essential. Locking us down and force-feeding us the Left's Holy Trinity (Drugs,
Porn, and Abortion) while depriving us any alternative viewpoints and sanity checks with
other living, breathing human beings in an environment that fosters trust, e.g. in person and
face to face, is how they'll grind us down to willing mind-numbed robots serving the New
World Order in petty fiefdoms with imaginary borders designed to make it easier for the
Criminal Elite to divvy up the loot they are at this very moment picking from our pockets in
this Holy War against the pandemic.
Power and self-interest are as old as pestilence. They are the cause of continued war; they
are the cause of the coming nuclear Armageddon. It is not the coronavirus that will destroy
us – we will. https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Just learned that Andrew Cuomo of all people is saying the same thing E. Michael Jones said
about the error of quarantining sick old people with fit young people!
Below is today's complete speech of PM of Pakistan. It is 17:13 minutes long and it is in
Urdu addressed to his nation and people. What I understand he is saying due to extreme
poverty in Pakistan, they cannot have complete lock down as they don't have the resources,
and people will die of extreme hunger. Think about it how will it effect the entire world. I
believe extreme poverty is the biggest disease and virus of the world. God has given us so
many resources and only Israel is destroying these resources.
We could ask our resident Pakistani Talha to probably help translate the speech of
Pakistani PM!
I was watching a video from Dr. Stephen Greer MD. He said that nearly everyone will
eventually get this virus, it will float around for years. The current effort is to spread
out the infection rate over a year so hospitals can treat sickly people who contract the
disease. Otherwise they may be overwhelmed and lack the needed ventilators to save lives. He
does say this is one of the most deadly stains so those vulnerable must be careful.
I say why not "lock down" those age 70 and older, like no airline or bus travel? Let
younger get back to work at places like restaurants, but use the posted fire code capacity
and say only half as many people can come inside and chairs must be six feet from other
tables. Reopen the schools, except for sickly children and teachers, and with no recess but
staggered lunch times.
How will you know if the decision to lock down was wrong? What would you accept as evidence?
Sweden has not chosen the lockdown. They have restricted large public gatherings, but kept
schools open. If Sweden does not suffer a disaster, does that invalidate the lockdown? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52076293
The early days of the outbreak have been reminiscent of SARS and MERS, and indeed, the
discovery that the causative agent was a closely-related, never-before-described coronavirus
predicted potential for nosocomial transmission and so-called "super-spreader" events (
8 ). Unfortunately, 2019-nCoV did
indeed infect health workers in China via nosocomial transmission. Here we offer a first
description of the 1,716 confirmed cases among health workers.
Overall, they also display a likely mixed outbreak pattern -- perhaps the data are
characterized by a point source curve beginning in late December 2019, which was eclipsed by a
higher magnitude continuous source curve beginning on January 20, 2020. To date, there is no
evidence of a super-spreader event occurring in any of the Chinese health facilities serving
COVID-19 patients. However, we do not know whether this is due to the nature of the virus
itself or whether these events have been successfully prevented.
You misunderstood something about Chinese measures to fight this virus.
We did not just simply lock down cities and everybody stay home to wait for the good
ending.
It's far from enough.
We check check and check.
Find out those infected, took them into hospitals. Find them as much as we can. DO NOT leave
them goof around/stay home to infect the whole family.
Find out those who are close to the infected, took them into isolation to observe if they
will catch the virus. Find them as much as we can.
Track those who were close to the infected, check out the asymptomatic one who is out of the
radar and secretly give the virus to the infected. Isolate this asymptomatic person who may
continue to spread the virus to others. Yes, you need to find out who infected whom, and how.
You need to build the detective teams on infection. You find them out, learn from it, publish
it, avoid it.
It's a mission impossible, but still, you do it, with enough endeavor, it's mission
possible.
check, check, check track, track, track isolate, isolate, isolate
In the same time, you do all you capacity to guarantee the medic, the logistic, the supply,
it's a whole system. Not simply lock down, not just stay at home.
China has more than 70% family cases because social cases are effectively avoided by lock
down and stay at home, while those family cases at early stage in Wuhan especially can not be
avoided since we don't have this system at the time. Things happened in Wuhan too fast!
You need to react fast! You need to do lot of things at the same time. You need to find them,
all of them, really fast. Take them into hospital, into isolation, into observation, under
your radar.
Lock down and stay at home works! But that's not all about it. That's just a start of
it.
There are cases that people go out for grocery, without masks, get infected by another buyer,
within seconds!
If you guys don't wear mask, don't follow stay at home and social distance strictly,
whatever your government doing is in waste.
But if your government don't respond fast and find out all of them for treatment and
isolations, still the same: this virus thing will just goes on and on and on and on and
on
At the end of the day, you may reach herd immunity (if this virus is that friendly: once
cured, never infected again, we are not sure about that since somebody already has two
strains of this virus in the body at the same time, which suggest something quite
different)
In that case, there will be herd immunity gap between you strong survival guys who passed the
virus test and we the untested weaker ones who avoided the test by all means.
Who knows, you might win by lost the burden of the old the sick the weak the poor the
idiot.
We may also win by guard our value and our people as an unity.
Win-Win
As for fundamental changes of life style and governing method. We didn't think much about
it before as we sincerely believed this would be a short term thing. We believed in ourselves
and expected everything back to normal in Apr. until you guys join this virus thing.
Now everything changed. Things become really complicated.
Furthermore, I tried to communicate the importance of recycling FFP2 masks, without any
success. It is a matter of life and death. These masks are considered for single use and staffs
throw them away too quickly. This is not the place to be technical, but I have proposed four
methods to recycle them and they must be implemented according to the sterilization equipment
available in hospitals, information that I have still not been able to obtain. We must educate
medical staff on how to extend the life of these masks and recycle them, today, the urgency is
immense.
The army, firefighters and probably the police have gas masks, which should not be left in
the barracks, they are even more effective than the FFP2. We do not care if it looks crazy to
see doctors with gas masks, I prefer to see them stay alive and able to care for patients, and
also it would prevent them from becoming vectors of spread themselves. How many gas masks,
which are cleanable and reusable, are available?
FFP2 masks for the population, a simple solution for returning to work.
To finish with the masks, let us understand that what will get us out of confinement,
lockdown, and will allow the population to resume almost normal work, is the massive production
of FFP2 masks for the entire population, small (children) and adults (adults). The faster the
necessary production tools are put in place, the faster Belgium can get back to work, it's
really that simple.
During the minimum 4 weeks of lockdown, massive screening is needed, and the establishment
of the task force is a step in the right direction. We cannot lift the lockdown until our
ability to track down infected individuals has been greatly increased.
At Vo'Euganeo in Italy, all the confined residents (3,300) were tested a month ago. Result:
out of 89 positive cases, there are only handful contaminations, reports La Voix du Nord. The
approach I propose works when you can combine lockdown and massive screening.
It was true yesterday, it is true today, it is enough to see how Taiwan, Hong Kong, and
Singapore handled the crisis from the start, and how China and South Korea recovered.
CountLess life could have been saved if white people just didn't have an illogical
aversion to masks.
Everyone wear masks in asia. Ironically, It is not the Chinese who is spreading it In
Asia. The people who are spreading the disease where I live are the white people returning
from overseas and refuse to wear masks. They should go back to wherever they come from.
these people should be physically assaulted for NOT wearing a mask in Asia like Asians are
assaulted in the West for wearing one.
"... Ming Lin, an emergency room physician in Washington state, lost his job last week after he spoke to a local media outlet about the lack of protective gear for staff at Puget Sound area hospitals. ..."
US Health care systems have warned emergency room doctors and nurses that if they speak out about working conditions inside a
hospital, they will be fired, reported
Bloomberg .
Ming Lin, an emergency room physician in Washington state, lost his job last week after he spoke to a local media outlet about
the lack of protective gear for staff at Puget Sound area hospitals.
Hospital staff at the NYU Langone Health system were recently warned that if they spoke to the media without authorization, they
would be terminated.
"Hospitals are muzzling nurses and other health-care workers in an attempt to preserve their image," said Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman
for the Washington State Nurses Association. "It is outrageous."
Doctors and nurses "must have the ability to tell the public what is really going on inside the facilities where they are caring
for Covid-19 patients," Schubert said.
As we noted in January, a hospital doctor in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of COVID-19,
tried to inform the world about a fast-spreading disease. However, he was quickly silenced by the Chinese government, and since,
more than 800,000 people around the globe have been infected, with 39,000 deaths.
One reason that nurses and doctors must be informative about evolving conditions inside hospitals is that public donations of
medical equipment or gear could help out a local facility.
"It is good and appropriate for health-care workers to be able to express their own fears and concerns, especially when expressing
that might get them better protection," said Glenn Cohen, faculty director of Harvard Law School's bioethics center. Hospitals
are likely trying to limit reputational damage because "when health-care workers say they are not being protected, the public
gets very upset at the hospital system."
NYU Langone Health employees received notification last week that if they spoke with media, they would be "subject to disciplinary
action, including termination."
New York's Montefiore Health System requires doctors and nurses to get permission from superiors before speaking to the media.
"Associates are not authorized to interact with reporters or speak on behalf of the institution in any capacity, without pre-approval,"
according to the policy, which was seen by Bloomberg News.
Lauri Mazurkiewicz, a Chicago nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, was fired after she told the hospital staff to wear more
protective equipment:
"A lot of hospitals are lying to their workers and saying that simple masks are sufficient and nurses are getting sick and
they are dying," Mazurkiewicz said.
Doctors and nurses have also tweeted their frustrations with hospital systems – this has also led to some systems tightening the
noose on what employees can and cannot say on social media:
My babies are too young to read this now. And they'd barely recognize me in my gear. But if they lose me to COVID I want them
to know Mommy tried really hard to do her job.
#GetMePPE #NYC pic.twitter.com/OMew5G7mjK
Nisha Mehta, a radiologist from Charlotte, North Carolina, runs several Facebook groups for physicians. She says members in her
groups have reached out to her and want their stories told about working conditions:
"I'm hearing widespread stories from physicians across the country and they are all saying: 'We have these stories that we
think are important to get out, but we are being told by our hospital systems that we are not allowed to speak to the press, and
if we do so there will be extreme consequences," Mehta said.
America's hospital system could be cracking , like what happened in China and Italy. If everything were fine, doctors and nurses
wouldn't be flooding media outlets and social media platforms, warning the public about hospital conditions and or about how deadly
the virus is.
Now, just imagine if Western governments invested a (sizeable) fraction of their warfare
budgets into planning and prepping for civil emergencies, along with discussing and gaining
the social buy-in to prepare their populations to respond positively in a non-military
emergency.
I'm certainly struggling to my core to believe any of the official channels and MSM around
Covid. The virologists may be right this time, but the last 20 years of BS from 9/11 through
Russiagate, the Skripals, the MH17 shootdown etc etc ad nauseum makes my intellectual immune
system automatically reject the mainstream "truth" (hence looking to non-MSM sites for
alternate perspectives).
I realised today that my personal social compact with the (NZ) government was basically
dead – I no longer trust them to represent my best interests. A vast change in
perspective over a few short years.
Regardless of how Covid turns out, I suspect the next few months may be the nail in the
Western political coffin. Some relationships are so broken they can't be repaired..
Austria says anyone shopping will
have to wear face masks, bringing it in line with the neighbouring Czech Republic which, on March
18, ordered face masks be worn in public.
Masks will be supplied to supermarket retail chains
which will distribute them to shoppers as they enter stores.
The government cautioned that the masks do not protect wearers but are meant to prevent them
from spreading infectious cough droplets.
An excellent resource for the coronavirus panic is https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/#latest
compiled by Swiss Propaganda Research. "According to the latest data published by the Italian
Ministry of Health, overall mortality is now significantly higher in all age groups over 65
years of age, after having been below average due to the mild winter. Until March 14, overall
mortality was still below the flu season of 2016/2017, but may have already exceeded it in
the meantime. Most of this excess mortality currently comes from northern Italy. However, the
exact role of Covid19, compared to other factors such as panic, healthcare collapse and the
lockdown itself, is not yet clear." These points were also made by Dr John Ionnadis in a
recent interview. It should be mentioned that the statistics for deaths from flu and
pneumonia are usually lumped together. So for example, the US had 80,463 deaths from "flu and
pneumonia" in 2017; the UK 32,120. Pneumonia does a lot of killing, even in a year that
doesn't put the whole world on lockdown. https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/united-kingdom-influenza-pneumonia
The matching half of what is happening in Italy for starters. What those on the front
lines are saying. Only trying to save those under sixty or sixty five due to lack of
ventilators and so forth would have the effect of pushing the average age of the deceased
up.
There is much about large numbers of undiagnosed cases. This requires pulling numbers out
of arses.
Part the reason for the thinking on large numbers of undiagnosed cases is the belief that
everyone will catch this disease. Spanish flue only hit about 20 - 25% of the population.
Coronavirus cruise ships showing similar percentage. Possibly only 20 - 25% of the
population will contract the virus resulting in various levels of illness.
If this is the case, then deaths as a percentage of the population will be less, but
mortality amongst those susceptible to the disease is higher.
There is also percent damage amongst survivors to consider. Many critical cases that
survive will suffer permanent lung damage. It will be some time before we have a good idea of
how much permanent damage has been done to how many people, but this needs to be right up
alongside deaths when looking at the human cost of the virus.
So there are a lot of wacky theories out there. Here's mine and warning: I'm pissed at what
I'm witnessing.
1. The way health industry workers including maintenance support personnel are carrying
the load on the front lines of this pandemic is UNSUSTAINABLE and inhumane both for staff and
patients. This story must be EXPOSED in every global hot spot.
2. This pandemic is a WAR, so let's attack it and behave like we are in the midst of a
World War.
3. All gloved hands must be on deck for this. Healthcare workers should not be burdened
and risking everything in the manner that we are starting to become aware of now in the West.
Why should they be subjected to such stress and burden and all the risk while millions of
ABLE-BODIED PEOPLE languish at home collecting a check for doing nothing. Where is the
government on balancing this chaotic, unjust situation?
4. There are many, many service jobs associated with healthcare and needs brought out by
this pandemic that don't involve close contact. The need is great.
5. Governments think the military can help in this crisis? Use it! Better to use them for
healing than killing.
6. Need more help? Then recruit college and university students without underlying health
conditions between the ages of 17 to 35. Hell, recruit from all healthy, able people under 50
collecting UI.
7. No one should be languishing at home collecting free money while everyone working in
the healthcare service industry, and senior residences suffer 24/7 with crazy shifts getting
sick!
I know what I'm bitching about. Both my parents were afflicted with cancer a few years
apart. I practically lived my life in the hospital and witnessed need wherever I turned in
normal times and helped in whatever way I could through the entire ordeal. There is an aging
population crisis happening around us and everyone's acting like this is la-la land and who
cares!
8. This pandemic is emphasizing deficiencies everywhere in the system, especially moral
deficiencies.
9. This pandemic is war, and many are needed on deck to end it! If able bodies want a free
ride, to collect a check and languish while others suffer...damn it...draft them or cut off
the funds!
10. It's time to go above and beyond the clapping, already! Everyone should be
shouldering the need wherever they can.
It's time to organize and share in the work and responsibility involved.
During the "War on Death" (see at Off-Guardian), the first two casualties, entirely wiped out
the media, were actually the two actors that occupied most of it in the preceding weeks:
migrants and demonstrators. no need to ask cui bono?
America's fake political system has been highlighted as the Democratic Party's presumptive
nominee completely
vanished for a week and then returned to deliver an embarrassing string of befuddled interviews
upon his return, reminding the nation once again that the Democrats are running an
actual, literal dementia patient for the most powerful elected office in the world. Biden
will of course be running against an incoherent reality TV star who
only last week decided that the virus is indeed a real problem which needs to be seriously
addressed, and who now already wants to begin
rolling back the inadequate measures his administration implemented far too late. The
debates between two men who don't understand what they're doing and can't string a sentence
together between them will soon be broadcast around the world for all of civilization to
behold.
America's lying mass media are being highlighted with propagandistic lines that would make
Kim Jong Un blush, like The New York
Times describing the American medical system as "unsurpassed." We can safely expect
U.S. media to get even more demented as they expand their hysteria-inducing new cold war
propaganda campaign against Russia to China as well.
America's murderous sanctions machine has been highlighted as the U.S. continues ramping up
its economic warfare against Iranian civilians, with
thousands already dead and
potentially millions to follow due to Tehran's inability to access necessary equipment,
medicine and resources during the pandemic. The Trump administration has not eased the
sanctions during the outbreak, and
has in fact added to them , because killing Iranian civilians has always been the goal.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has gone on record to say that the
objective is to make Iranian civilians so miserable and desperate that they overthrow their own
government.
So basically everything crazy about America is being amplified to absurd caricatures of its
own insanity and highlighted for everyone to see. There's a lot of ugliness coming out into the
light as a result of this virus, which may end up being one of its few perks for everyone. As
they say of both viruses and governments, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The ongoing and unfolding reactions to the Coronavirus look set to
have
wide-ranging and long-lasting effect on politics, society and economics.
The
drive to close down all activities is extraordinary as are the measures being promoted to isolate
people from each other.
The deep-rooted fear of contagious disease, hardwired into the collective consciousness by
historical events such as the 'Black/Bubonic Plague' and maintained through popular culture (e.g. the
Hollywood movies
Outbreak
and
Contagion
), means that people are without question
highly susceptible to accepting extreme emergency measures whether or not such measures are rational
or justified.
The New York Times
called for America to be
put
on a war footing
in order to deal with Corona whilst
former
Army General Stanley McChrystal
has been invoking his 9/11 experience in order to prescribe
lessons for today's leaders.
At the same time, political actors are fully aware that these conditions of fear and panic
provide a critical opportunity that can be exploited in order to pursue political, economic and
societal objectives.
It is very likely, however, that the dangers posed by the potential
exploitation of Corona for broader political, economic and societal objectives latter far outweigh the
immediate threat to life and health from the virus. A lesson from recent history is instructive here.
9/11 AND THE GLOBAL 'WAR ON TERROR'
The events of September 11 2001 represent a key moment in contemporary history. The destruction of
three skyscrapers in New York after the impact of two airliners and an attack on the Pentagon, killing
around 3000 civilians, shocked both American and global publics. The horror of seeing aircraft being
flown into buildings, followed by the total destruction of three high rise buildings within a matter
of seconds, and the spectre of a shadowy band of Islamic fundamentalists (Al Qaeda) having pulled off
such devastating attacks, gripped the imagination of many in the Western world.
It was in this climate of paranoia and fear that extraordinary policies were implemented. The USA
Patriot Act led to significant
civil
liberty restrictions
whilst the mass surveillance of the digital environment became normalized.
In the United States torture was authorized in the name of preventing terrorism whilst the
Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba became a site in which accused individuals have been held without any
adequate legal protection or due process.
Remarkably, the individual accused of leading the alleged 9/11 plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who
'confessed' to CIA interrogators after being 'waterboarded' 183 times, has
recently
received his trial date
, set for January 11 2021 and 20 years after 9/11. Civil liberty
restrictions, mass surveillance and torture were only a sub-strand of the major war-fighting-policy
that was enabled by 9/11.
Presented at the time as America's 'New Pearl Harbour', 9/11 provided the conditions for a series
of major regime-change wars which persist until today.
Critically, these wars have not been primarily about combatting 'Islamic fundamentalist
terrorism'/Al Qaeda, but rather attacking 'enemy' states. Indeed, the evidence that the 9/11 event and
the alleged threat of 'Islamic fundamentalist' was then exploited in order to pursue a geo-politically
motivated set of regime-change wars which had little connection to the purported Al Qaeda threat is
well established.
Former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Wesley Clark,
famously
went public in 2006/7
stating that immediately after 9/11 he had been informed that the US was
intending to attack seven countries within five years including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan
and Iran. Clark stated:
He [the Joint Staff officer] picked up a piece of paper, he said I just got this down from
upstairs, from the Secretary of Defence's office today, and he said this is a memo that describes
how we are gonna take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria,
Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran.
Clark's claims have recently been corroborated by retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (chief of
staff to Colin Powell and Iraq War planner) who stated that
he
had actually seen the same plans
Clark was referring to many months prior to 9/11:
My first briefing in the Pentagon from an Air Force three-star general in February of 2001 I
almost fell of my chair because their briefing included on the one hand the Air Force's ability to
take out 80 to 90% of the targets in North Korea in the first few hours of an aerial strike on that
country to hey when we do Iraq we're gonna do Syria and Lebanon and we're going to do Iran and
maybe Egypt but this was more than that [just contingency planning] Wes Clark is right they had
these plans they were going to go right through all these countries that they felt threatened
Israel all through those countries that they felt threatened 25-30% of the world's oil passing
through the Strait of Hormuz.
Documentary evidence for these claims
has come by way of the UK Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 Iraq
War. For example, a report quoted a British embassy cable, dated 15 September 2001, explained that
'[t]he "regime-change hawks" in Washington are arguing that a coalition put together for one purpose
[against international terrorism] could be used to clear up other problems in the region.' Another
document released by Chilcot shows British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush
discussing phases one and two of the 'war on terror' and when to hit particular countries. Blair
writes:
If toppling Saddam is a prime objective, it is far easier to do it with Syria and Iran in favour
or acquiescing rather than hitting all three at once.
The regime-change wars that have flowed directly and indirectly from 9/11 continue to this day. War
and conflict continues in Afghanistan and Iraq whilst the nine-year-long war in Syria has borne
witness to
extensive and illegal policies
pursued
by Western governments including the funding and arming of extremist groups coupled with support for
groups
actually aligned with Al Qaeda
. Iran
continues to be subjected to US hybrid warfare tactics including sanctions and covert operations
whilst the threat of military action is very clear and present.
The human cost of these wars, built upon the ruthless exploitation of public fear of terrorism in
order to pursue multiple 'regime-change' wars, has been huge. According to the Brown University 'Costs
of War Project', the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have killed a
combined
480,000 to 507,000 civilians
, coalition military members, and foreign fighters, with an untold
number having been maimed and disfigured.
IPPNW
estimated that the first ten years
of the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan killed
1.3 million people.
Since 2011, in Syria alone, over 400,000 people have died as a result of war. The
numbers
of people displaced
as a result of these conflicts are also extremely high; wars in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria have wrought a combined 9.39 million refugees, 10.78 million internally
displaced peoples, and 830,000 asylum seekers. In addition, there are persisting and very serious
concerns with respect to the possible involvement of state actors with the event of 9/11.
Overall, the 9/11 global 'war on terror' is
increasingly
coming to be understood
particularly across the world as, first and foremost, a remarkable
propaganda campaign designed to enable violent conflict in the international system and with its
effects and objectives being far wider and deeper than had been suggested by official narratives
regarding the need to combat Al Qaeda.
CORONA VIRUS: A NEW 9/11?
The lesson of 9/11 is that major events can become what scholar Peter Dale Scott describes as deep
events which are exploited by political actors in order to precipitate and manage major political,
economic and social shifts. 9/11 became, in effect, the deep event that enabled 20 years of unfettered
Western warfare abroad and severe civil liberty restrictions and extensive surveillance at home.
At the time of 9/11 many people in the West were terrified of terrorism. Public opposition to the
invasion of Afghanistan (the first regime war to flow within months of 9/11) was almost impossible
without being accused of being reckless in the 'fight against terrorism' or of being an 'Al Qaeda'
sympathizer. Muslims throughout the West were widely despised. US President George Bush declared that
'you are either with us or against us'. The parallels with what is happening today are obvious.
Is the Coronavirus a new 9/11, a new deep event?
We cannot yet be
sure, as of this writing. Perhaps the current strategy of suspending basic liberties will work to
effectively eliminate all threats posed by the virus. Governments will then restore the civil
liberties currently being suspended and all will fairly quickly return to the way things were before.
Perhaps the economy will confidently weather the fallout from the 'lockdowns' and everything will
return to business as usual.
And perhaps a sober 'lessons learned' review will lead to public health officials developing
reasonable and balanced plans, such as developing sufficient capacity for rapid testing and tracing,
which can be deployed the next time a sufficiently dangerous virus starts to spread thus avoiding
terrifying publics and implementing draconian measures that inflict significant damage to the social
and economic fabric of society.
Or perhaps not. It may be that, as
British
journalist Peter Hitchens has been warning
, the loss of liberty and basic rights will continue
indefinitely as governments greedily hold on to their increased powers of control over their
citizenry.
Similarly, Italian journalist
Stefania
Maurizi has warned about the risks
in Italy of state authorities, hostile to open societies and
the political left, exploiting Corona in order to increase their control.
An obvious concern here is whether there will be a permanent impact on mass gatherings and
protests. James Corbett warns of a permanent state of
'medical
martial law'
and there is certainly the very real possibility of the normalization of
government-imposed quarantine and other freedom of movement restrictions.
Margaret Kimberley of the US-based Black Agenda Report warns that Corona may be used as a way of
covering up
both
economic crisis and collapse
. She notes that the Federal Reserve 'recently threw Wall Street a
$1.5 trillion lifeline which only kicked the can down the road. The can has been kicked ever since the
Great Recession of 2008'. The likely destruction of small businesses might allow for ever greater
corporate choke-hold on the economy with more people forced into the corporate workforce.
There is certainly the danger that COVID-19 will be exploited in order to distract from severe
economic problems whilst also enabling the pursuit of new economic strategies which worsen rather than
mitigate the social inequalities that already tarnish Western countries.
And, of course those actors behind the regime-change wars that flowed from 9/11 may use the
Coronavirus to increase pressure on the countries they have been targeting for the last 20 years and
those they wish to target in the future.
ABC news report that, despite the Coronavirus,
US
and UAE troops have held a major military exercise
'that saw forces seize a sprawling model
Mideast city'. It is also worth nothing here the recent US assassination of Iranian General Solemeni
and the on-going proxy battles between US forces and Iranian-backed groups in Iraq. The possibility of
Corona being exploited in order to further the regime change wars we have seen over the last 20 years
is extremely likely and it would be naïve in the extreme to think otherwise.
Whatever the COVID-19 event may or may not be, the fundamental lesson of the last 20 years is that
governments can and do exploit, even manipulate, events in order to pursue political, social, military
and economic objectives. Fearful populations are frequently irrational ones, vulnerable and malleable.
Now is not the time for deference to authority and reluctance to speak out.
It is time for publics to get informed, think calmly and rationally, and to robustly
scrutinize and challenge what their governments are doing. The dangers of failing to do this likely
far surpass the immediate threat posed by the Coronavirus.
@niteranger
"For example, New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof on Sunday reported the disheartening analysis of Dr. Neil Ferguson of
Britain, one of the world's leading epidemiologists."
Nicholas Kristoff has the bad habit of falling for falling for frauds and making them famous. "Three cups of tea" for starters.
He's got a long track record of peddling fake stuff.
To clarify: chloroquine and like agents are antimalarials which also have immunosuppressive
properties. They are used in COVID19 to dampen the acute respiratory distress syndrome
[ARDS], the pathologic exaggerated immune response which is the cause of most COVID19
fatalities.
It is not without significant side effects (eg retinopathy).
Nevertheless, any suspicions about big pharma's motives in this context are warranted.
It has been suggested that a profitable class of antihypertensives (ACE inhibitors) is linked
with worse COVID19 outcomes.
No one of normal intelligence can avoid being a skeptic. We are all skeptics these days.
The MSM is nothing but a lie-box, the blaring loudspeakers on every corner pouring out
disinformation 24/7. So if the story is that this is a killer virus many people assume just
the opposite. It's clearly a golden opportunity for a massive power grab as well as tapping
into the public till. Can't blame people for having become reflexive cynics. When the music
stops we'll see who ends up with the chairs.
It is irresponsible to spread panic in such cases.
From what I see the spread of the virus is slightly slowing in the USA starting from
March 21.
It is still exponential but with lower base. So Trump assertion that in the second half
of April the epidemic might subside is not completely out of touch with reality.
Also effects from the measures which were put in place since March 11 only now start
coming into play.
I notices more and more people are wearing masks in public places.
In some countries (Czech Republic is one example) appearance without a mask in public
places now is a punishable offence.
In Russia breaking mandatory 14 day quarantine for those who arrives from abroad is a
punishable offence.
Human societies are highly adaptable. Also losses so far did not lead to increased
morality. Actually it is the first pandemic in history in which average weekly morality in
certain countries either stayed the same or dropped. GB in February is one example.
To provide you a proper perspective, the number of victims from COVID-19 for three month
of the epidemic existence is slightly less than the number of births in three hours
The UNICEF estimates that an average of 353,000 babies are born each day around the
world.
Hydroxyxhloroquine is antimalarial,works on the DNA , and accumulates in white blood cells .
Corona virus is RNA. Possible other mechanism includes suppression of T lymphocytes ,
decreased white blood cell migration to the injured area ,stabilization of lysosomal enzymes
which means the enzymes that can attack pathogen and also human normal cells are being
prevented from release from inside the immune cells and suppression of DNA and RNA synthesis.
I am not aware that has ever been to be effective against any virus in the past. It
doesn't work on the Angiotensin receptor or signal transduction down stream .
Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquione are used for Rheumatoid arthritis but they don't alter
the bone damages They are not very effective DMARDs ( disease modifying anti rheumatic drugs
) .It is also used against Graft versus Host rejection . Not effective enough.
Any antiviral medicine has to work on one of these sites or on combination of these
sites- attachment of virus to cells, f penetration ( nucleus) , uncoating, protien synthesis
, nucleic acid synthesis, packaging , and assembly of new virus , then the last part -viral
release from cell to attack new cells. Hydroxychloroquine is not known to attack any of these
processes .
Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine are known to work differently in rheumatoid and graft
vs host disease or in some patients with SLE.
I am not sure if these 2 can be considered as an orphan drug and approved by FDA
I am not sure how French jumped to the idea that this medication would work ( usually a
possible mechanism of action or anecdotal data have to be furnished before trying or have two
have animal data )
So let's not celebrate French microbiologist or IHU and jump to some theories on the
behaviors of French ministers or pharmaceuticals.
Since March 17th the pin on my twitter profile promotes the preventive use of chloroquine to
treat the Novel Coronovirus. I've been following the debate about this anti-malarial (polio
and yellow fever) drug closely. I like Escobar's article, but there are several problems with
it, that even I, as a proponent of chloroquine cannot ignore.
First, the claim that Agnes Buzyn (mispelled twice in the article as "Buzy"), classified
the drug as a poison, thus requiring prescription.
this is false. Chloroquine, in its market French form known as Nivaquine, was never over
the counter. Never. In fact very few Western countries ever sold it over the counter. In most
US states, it was prescription based. It is lethal when used inappropriately.
Second, with all due respect to Dr. Raoult, he is absolutely wrong about viral load in
terminal stages of Covid-19. Corona virus is anything but low or nearly absent. In fact, its
viral load is extremely high and a good measure of patient outcome at admission, and no
amount of antiviral treatment can reduce it on its own at this point. Raoult was either
trying to say that corona is not the cause of mortality, which is technically true, or like
99% of doctors fighting Corona, has no grasp of what the virus actually does.
The gist of the Escobar article is problematic. Nothing concrete about how Sanofi or Big
Pharma is planning on cashing in by delaying chloroquine production. Last week Sanofi donated
300,000 "dosses" of chloroquine to the United States. The drug has been around for 60 years
and is listed by the WHO as a required drug in all medical systems with required
possibilities of local production. The criteria of which are known only to experts.
As for the theory that chloroquine supplies have been pilfered my French sources told me
supplies had been seized. Macron may be pursuing a policy of herd immunity, but
doesn't have the political luxury of being public about it, and a little less literalism is a
helpful corrective for wild speculation. Herd immunity strategies cannot be pursued openly,
being political (reelection) liabilities.
Far far more important to the coronovirus debate is how one is supposed to cure with
vaccines, if the jury is still out on acquired immunity. One cannot work without the other,
suggesting that the MSM acceptance of possible vaccine treatment ipso facto means
acquired immunity is a given, but that's not the way the MSM and governments are presenting
this, suggesting that either vaccines cannot possibly work, or that immunity is being aquired
as we speak, while the facade of a fight is kept up.
Since this decree, the hydroxychloroquine molecule marketed under the name of Plaquenil
is therefore no longer available over the counter. A prescription from a doctor is now
mandatory. But this new classification, which came into effect in January, contrary to what
some conspiratorial publications suggest, predates the appearance of the new coronavirus.
Its cousin, chloroquine, appears on this list "in injectable and oral form", since a decree
taken in 1999.
As LCI explains, the National Health Security Agency (ANSES) had been asked for an
opinion on a proposal for an order to include hydroxychloroquine in List II of poisonous
substances in October 2019, "in order to ensure appropriate patient care ". Two months
before the appearance of the new coronavirus in China.
ANSES had given the green light on November 12, 2019. It is therefore false and dishonest
to claim that the former Minister of Health, Ms. Buzyn, would have made this decision
herself during the Covid-19 epidemic.
@onebornfree The Quinism Foundation is a nonprofit charitable organization established to
support education and research on chronic quinoline encephalopathy and other medical
conditions caused by poisoning, or intoxication, by mefloquine, tafenoquine, chloroquine, and
related quinoline drugs.
Executive Director Dr. Remington Dr. Nevin noted his concern that members of the public
may even attempt to obtain therapeutic quantities of quinine through questionable channels.
"Tonic water, whose bitter taste is produced by the addition of quinine or related
naturally-occurring quinolines, is limited by U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations
to 83 mg per liter of quinine and related cinchona alkaloids," said Dr. Nevin. "However,
drinking several bottles of tonic water will result in consuming pharmaceutical quantities,
and therefore potentially harmful, amounts of these drugs", said Dr. Nevin. "Tonic water is a
prescription medication masquerading as a cocktail mixer."
A single, non-randomized observational trial is close to the bottom of the list in terms of
meaningful medical research, down there with anecdotal reports, particularly in a novel viral
disease with highly variable clinical manifestations and outcomes.
There are also significant potential cardiac risks caused by the Q-T lengthening on one's
EKG caused by both azithromycin and chloroquine. Don't grasp at straws.
@KA You seem quite a knowledge so I hope to obtain your insights, I am not medical.
I heard that the likelihood of ARDS (cytokine storm?) can be detected by a Serum Ferritin
test. If it levels are high, the patient should be given Anakinra, the rheumatoid arthritis
medication, which will prevent ARDS. Neither the test, nor the treatment are being given
because the average Doc who does not specialize in this field, does not know to test for
this.
I understand that Hydroxychloroquin will reduce virulent symptoms in high risk patients
but should be given cautiously.
KA,
I am commenting here first time but have been reading the site for years.
I have two decades of biotech research experience.
I just finished a literature survey about effects of these active pharmaceutical ingredients
or APIs (chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, hydroxychloroquine phosphate).
The APIs have been in human application for very long time and their side effect profile
might be broad but it is not widespread. The most serious problems arise from eventual eye
degenerative effects but those are very-very rare.
These APIs do act on several steps of what you mentioned, starting with receptor binding
interference (ACE2 glycosylation changes), viral entry (impairment of endosome formation),
then viral DNA offloading (interference with virus-containing endosomes fusing with
lysosomes), through viral "work" (impairment of protein synthesis and virion assembly through
stopping of Golgi- and endoplasmatic reticular budding and traffic).
The most interesting part of their actions might however be the inhibition of the viral
RNA-dependent RNA polymerase enzyme. This is done through increasing Zn++ concentration in
the cytoplasm because all of these APIs are ionophores and bring Zn++ ions into the cytosol
through the lipid membrane. High Zn++ "levels" inside the cell block the "xerox machine"of
the viral RNA. So indeed these have at least theoretical effects and in vitro proof is
abundant.
On the contrary, if one looks at the now not too worthwile treatment compilation from
Alipay and Zhezhiang University the use of different antiviral drugs is quite dangerous to
the liver. Many patients on anti-retrovirals developed liver problems. I think the Shanghai
Protocol is much more adequate but to each his own.
With regards to the origins of the virus someone earlier wrote about haplotypes. There are
58 haplotypes (called as such in peer-reviewed publications) and 5 haplogroups of the virus
in two clades (L and S). According to a non peer-reviewed publication at ChinaXiv, 5
haplogroups have only been reported from the US so far. Mainland Chinese enjoyed the society
of only 4 haplogroups while the fifth could be found in Taiwan.
Here is one published Abstract, specific to COVID-19 warns of the toxicity.
Department of Forensic Medicine, Tongji Medical College, Huanzhong University of Science
and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China. LINK
The Trial of Chloroquine in the Treatment of Corona Virus Disease 2019
（COVID-19） and Its Research Progress in Forensic Toxicology.
[.]Since December 2019, COVID-19 （corona virus disease 2019） outbreaks caused
by SARS-CoV-2 （severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2） has occurred
in China and many countries around the world. Due to the lack of drugs against COVID-19,
the disease spreads rapidly and the mortality rate is relatively high. Therefore, specific
drugs against SARS-CoV-2 need to be quickly screened. The antimalarial drug Chloroquine
phosphate which has already been approved is confirmed to have an anti-SARS-CoV-2 effect
and has been included in diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines. However, awareness of the
risk of chloroquine phosphate causing acute poisoning or even death should be strengthened.
The dosage used according to current clinical recommended dosage and course of treatment
are larger than that of previous treatment of malaria. Many provinces have required
close clinical monitoring of adverse reactions. This paper reviews the pharmacological
effects, poisoning;[.]
This is the antiviral treatment recommended in the hand I linked above.
Antiviral Treatment
At FAHZU, lopinavir/ritonavir (2 capsules, po q12h) combined with arbidol (200 mg po q12h)
were applied as the basic regimen. From the treatment experience of 49 patients in our
hospital, the average time to achieve negative viral nucleic acid test for the first time
was 12 days (95% CI: 8-15 days). The duration of negative nucleic acid test result
(negative for more than 2 times consecutively with interval ≥ 24h) was 13.5 days (95%
CI: 9.5 - 17.5 days).If the basic regimen is not effective, chloroquine phosphate can be
used on adults between 18-65 years old (weight ≥ 50 kg: 500 mg bid; weight ≤50 kg:
500 mg bid for first two days, 500 mg qd for following five days).Interferon nebulization
is recommended in Protocols for Diagnosis and Treatment of COVID-19. We recommend that it
should be performed in negative-pressure wards rather than general wards due to the
possibility of aerosol transmission.Darunavir/cobicistat has some degree of antiviral
activity in viral suppression test in vitro, based on the treatment experience of AIDS
patients, and the adverse events are relatively mild. For patients who are intolerant to
lopinavir/ritonavir, darunavir/ cobici-stat (1 tablet qd) or favipiravir (starting dose of
1600 mg followed by 600 mg tid) is an alternative option after the ethical review.
Simultaneous use of three or more antiviral drugs is not recommended.
Course of Treatment
The treatment course of chloroquine phosphate should be no more than 7 days. The treatment
course of other regimens has not been determined and are usually around 2 weeks. Antiviral
drugs should be stopped if nucleic acid test results from sputum specimens remain negative
for more than 3 times
It appears that Oz himself is backtracking a bit on the severity of COVID:
On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently
reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et
al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these
patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity.
If one assumes that the number of
asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of
reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests
that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a
severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a
pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS
or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK....They have
determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall),
and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues
to increase.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an
HCID.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance...
there are shortages of masks and gloves for the frontline so joe and jane may not be allowed.
Governments are partnering with manufacturing companies. How bad is it?
"Physicians are being warned not to speak or post publicly about their COVID-19
experiences, including PPE shortages, case specifics, and the percentage of full hospital
beds,[.]
Hospitals on the front lines of the pandemic are engaged in a heated private debate over a
calculation few have encountered in their lifetimes - how to weigh the "save at all costs"
approach to resuscitating a dying patient against the real danger of exposing doctors and
nurses to the contagion of coronavirus.
The conversations are driven by the realization that the risk to staff amid dwindling
stores of protective equipment - such as masks, gowns and gloves - may be too great to
justify the conventional response when a patient "codes," and their heart or breathing
stops.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago has been discussing a universal
do-not-resuscitate policy for infected patients, regardless of the wishes of the patient or
their family members - a wrenching decision to prioritize the lives of the many over the
one.[.]
Canada and U.S. were in discussions? U.S. considers putting troops at Canadian border.
The masks are useful even if they aren't 100% useful in blocking water droplets, insofar as
wearing a mask makes it much less likely that you will touch your mouth with your hands or
stick your finger in your nose.
If you also get into the habit of vigorously washing your hands before and after eating,
well, you have done most of the hard yards in avoiding infection.
Some important details on the France ibuprofen yes or no debate: Source
The trouble over ibuprofen began March 11, when researchers at University Hospital Basel,
in Switzerland, and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Greece, published a letter in
The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The letter reviewed three early sets of case reports from
China, covering almost 1,300 patients gravely ill with Covid-19. The letter's authors
observed that significant numbers of those patients had high blood pressure and diabetes,
from 12 percent to 30 percent depending on the study, and theorized that higher rates of
expression of a particular enzyme, known for short as ACE2, might be raising the risk of
coronavirus infection.
ACE2 provides a place on cell surfaces for the coronavirus to attach and enter in order
to replicate. High blood pressure and diabetes are treated with drugs that suppress
inflammation, called ACE inhibitors; the inhibitors, paradoxically, cause ACE2 to rise.
That interaction is where the authors spotted a possible connection between patients
experiencing chronic diseases and then becoming infected with Covid-19.
And that's where ibuprofen entered the unfolding story, too. The over-the-counter drug
doesn't only knock down fever. It also reduces inflammation (the class of drugs it belongs
to are known as NSAIDs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs). That effect, as with the
anti-inflammatory drugs given to chronic disease patients, can cause ACE2 to rise.
So any anti-inflammatory - whether ibuprofen or actual anti-inflammatory drugs - *can*
(not will) cause ACE2 to rise. And ACE2 is what nCOV latches on to.
So the acetominophen/paracetamol vs. ibuprofen has nothing to do with the fever reduction
side but the potential increase of ACE2, which *might* increase susceptibility to
nCOV.
On the protection issue, use FFP 3 respirator masks (EU), or N99 (US) or KN 99 (China) and
scarf over it. These masks filter 98 % of micro particles, including viruses. In case of mask
shortages steam can be used to decontaminate masks. Also use gloves, eye protection and
raincoat when in risky areas. Everything new taken in your home must be under 3 - 4 days
quarantine in separate room. The raincoat too. After this quarantine items can be further
cleaned with steam, ethanol, bleach + water, and groceries via soap and water.
Virus can stay for 3 hours in mid air (room) and 3 days on some surfaces. And it is
possible that can even survive for up to 17 days on some surfaces, which would be pretty bad
news. At least 5 meters distance between people outside is needed.
1. do not steam your masks. they are made of polyester and will shrink into a blob. people
have tried and failed. you can wash with soap and dry or low temp bake as B suggested. they
will eventually fail from delaminating or the elastic band snapping.
2. stop behaving like you don't want to catch it, behave like you have it and you don't
want others to catch it. we'll all be better off.
3. going on 2 - wearing masks with exhaust valves will just spray virus straight out of
you're infected. if you're not sure you're infected (and you don't) wearing a valves N95 is
just a dick act.
4. when PPE were in short supply in China, what they did was to wear N95 with surgical
mask over the top. it's definitely off-label use but at least you can then reuse your
precious N95 as it's shielded from external pathogens, at the same time your own exhaust
valve (see 3) is also shielded from others.
Malaria is a single cell bug called a protozoa. My understanding that is a class of bugs like
bacteria and viruses are classes of bugs.
Mosquitoes carry or host the bug and pass it onto people. The quinine type drugs block the
bug and prevent it from attaching or entering cells. That is how the drug also works against
the corona viruses. Various strains of the malaria bug have developed resistance to various
drugs.
Because SARS-CoV-2 is a new bug, it should not have developed a resistance to any
drug.
Human immunity is directed at pathogens and seems very specific even to strains as can be
seen with influenza vaccines, and the malaria protozoa is a very different animal to the
SARS-CoV-2 virus.
That's the basics as I know it. Others here may be able to explain it a little
better.
Armstrong interpets:
"Ferguson now says both that the U.K. should have enough ICU beds and that the coronavirus
will probably kill under 20,000 people in the U.K. and interestingly he now admits that more
than half of whom would have died by the end of the year in any case because they were so old
and sick. Ferguson now predicts that the epidemic in the U.K. will peak and subside within
"two to three weeks" after advocating 18+ months of quarantine would be necessary."
Imperial College (Ferguson's Employer) Twitter a/c says it differntly:
He told the committee current predictions were that the NHS would be able to cope if strict
measures continued to be followed.
Professor Ferguson, who is also Director of MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease
Analysis, added: "There will be some areas that are extremely stressed but we are reasonably
confident – which is all we can be at the current time – that at the national
level we will be within capacity."
Exactly, a containment strategy with universal testing and quarantine of the infected (ill
and asymptomatic) at home or safe facilities is required keep western society from collapsing
from this and future waves of the novel coronavirus until a treatment or vaccine is
developed.
The problem in the USA is that this will require the reconstruction of the government and
a national public health system to run the monitoring and quarantine system. Instead, the
corrupt oligarchy will use government money to rescue themselves rather than saving the lives
of Americans.
The neoliberal wrecking of our hospital system has been widely cited as a cause of the
crisis. Among other things, hospitals reduced the number of beds, sold ventilators, and ran
down supplies of masks and protective clothing in order to increase profitability.
On the way to this crisis, the private hospital industry gave the American public the
actions and the rhetoric of the Milo Minderbinder character from Catch-22:
What's good for M & M Enterprises will be good for the country.
Milo stripped out and sold all kinds of life-saving kit: morphine vials, parachutes, CO2
inflator cartridges for life vests. Milo epitomizes the neoliberal short-term, bottom-line,
zero-redundancy world view that has looted America and corrupted its democracy over the last
40 years.
Just like the hapless flightcrew in Catch-22, Americans are discovering the true meaning
behind the private hospitals' claim that what was good for their corporations was good for
the "crew" as they survey the looted and privatized corpse of their healthcare system.
What was satire 50 years ago, is reality today. We had a preview of this when Rumsfeld ran
the DoD.
Was Donald Rumsfeld channeling Milo (and laughing up his sleeve) when he said:
It is clearly cost-effective to have contractors for a variety of things that military
people need not do, and that, for whatever reason, other civilians, government people,
cannot be deployed to do...
But I personally am of the view that there are a lot of things that can be done on a
short-time basis by contractors that advantage the United States and advantage other
countries who also hire contractors. And that any idea that we shouldn't have them, I
think, would be unwise.
- D. Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's Speech on the Future of Iraq (2005)
This is an hour with experts who ran the Singapore response. It answers many of our questions
and also those which cannot yet be answered. I resisted listening because it's an hour, but
it was worthwhile. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3w8gu9S3lo
Tests and care for Covid-19 must be for free. We need hospitals to care for only the
critical cases. We need quarantine centers to isolate the milder cases from the wider
population. Many hotels, sport arenas and exhibition halls are currently empty. They can be
converted into quarantine stations within a day or two. People will have to stay for only two
weeks. They would be fed and would have medical attention. That is a small restriction of the
freedom of a few for a large benefit for our societies.
A number of studies have reported that a significant portion of people are even spreading the
virus while presymptomatic -- in the day or two before they start to feel ill. Presymptomatic
spreaders are, well, gonna spread. It's not their fault.
How much this type of transmission is driving the pandemic is unclear but it could be
significant. Gabriel Leung, dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, has estimated
about 40% of cases transmit before symptoms develop. A recent preprint -- a study that has
not yet been peer-reviewed -- from China pooled data from seven countries and estimated a
very similar 43%.
The novel coronavirus is spread to a large part by people who stay asymptomatic and by
people who do not yet feel sick but will later show symptoms. When they talk, sneeze or cough
they release small droplets that carry viruses. The droplets can stay in the air for some time.
If a person coming along inhales those droplets the viruses will likely infect that person.
Those who have have the virus or might spread it should wear a mask because it prevents
their droplets from flying out. Those who do not have the virus should wear a mask to prevent
droplets from entering their body.
We were told that 'masks don't work' because they are not a 100% protection. The very tiny
viruses can pass behind the mask at its sides or they can slip through its webbing. But the
virus is not traveling alone but as part of a droplet. Even a relatively wide webbing may hold
it up. If it is doubled with a sheet of cosmetic paper towel in between the protection will be
even better. Microfilter bags for vacuum cleaners and so called HEPA filters are also effective materials that are
readily available and easy to turn into masks.
The development of the epidemic will depend on how many people will start to regularly wear
masks when they are not at home. Even if the protection masks prevent only 50% of new
infections the speed with which the epidemic will unfold will be significantly lower.
Consider that the societies in the blue circle are all ones where people regularly wear
masks while the other countries (except China which was surprised by the outbreak) are
societies were wearing a mask is seen as unusual. These 'blue' countries, which also gained
experience during the SARS and MERS epidemics, show significant flatter trajectories.
Graphs similar to the above for all U.S. states and territories can be found here .
Meanwhile U.S. media continue to spread anti-China propaganda:
Medical personnel in Spain and the Czech Republic have reported that the coronavirus rapid
tests their respective countries have received from China are faulty and have a high error
rate.
Several labs in Spanish hospitals have reported that the test kits they purchased,
manufactured by Chinese company Bioeasy and based in Shenzhen, have a sensitivity of 30% when
the sensitivity should be above 80%, Spanish newspaper El País reported Thursday. Due
to the test's lack of reliability, medical personnel in Spain have switched back to the PCR
test, which takes up to four hours for a diagnosis, while rapid tests take between 10 to 15
minutes
The Spanish government purchased 340,000 tests from the Chinese company, a similar
quantity to the tests ordered by the Czech Republic, where medical personnel also report an
80% failure rate.
When one checks the original reports
from Spain and from the
Czech Republic one learns that these countries bought anti-body tests which only react when
a person has had the virus for some time and developed anti-bodies against it. These tests can
obviously not be used to find persons who are infected but have not yet developed
anti-bodies.
China's ambassador in Spain also pointed out that these tests
have yet to be verified by the regulator and were imported without the help or knowledge of the
Chinese government.
The anti-body tests are valuable to identify people who have developed current immunity
against the virus. These people can then care for those who are most endangered by the disease.
Anti-body tests are quick. They can be used anywhere.
The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests which are currently necessary to find if someone
has the virus take at least four hours and specialized laboratories to process them. We will
need a much quicker reliable test if we want to put our economies back to work. Luckily several
companies and academic groups are already working on these and a 45 minute test is now
ready to be marketed .
When we have a quick test for the virus and a quick test for anti-bodies available in mass
we can restart the economy by 'filtering' through the population on a large scale. Movement
restrictions would then only be needed for those who show virus-positive and anti-body negative
results. All others could go back to work.
There would certainly still be outbreaks from people who escaped the 'filtering' process but
with easy testing and care in place those clusters can be locally contained.
It may take another two month or so to get to that point. Until then there is little we can
do but to stay apart as much as possible and to wear our masks.
Have seen no data on how many viral particles it takes to cause a serious effect. Likely,
such data would be in terms of probability at X [number of viral particles]. Such is known
for many infective agents in surface and aerosol form, but CV19 may be very different.
Can CV19 vapor aerosol from mouth/breath in still air, exclusive of explosive discharge
via cough/sneeze, cause full-blown case beyond 6 feet? I'd like to know.
Also, have not seen any data re time duration of infective after it enters throat passage
on journey to lungs. I posit that there are anti-viral liquids that might be effective if
small amount were trickled down throat 2x per day; surely just before bedtime to discourage
the next 7-hs of undisturbed incubation. I do take something that I am guessing may be
effective. [E.g., I also
"heard" OliveOilExtract as anti-viral but I have no experience with it.]
Another thought: Re different strains of CV19 having very different outcomes...Anyone
suggestion that US forms collectively having, say, milder outcomes relative to
China/Iran/LombardyItaly, etc? Seems to be an aversion to testing the general population, or
even publishing all results of the small amount of tests with time+place data. Where are the
lists of 1st observations of "unusual flu" in US? that would NORMALLY, provoke tracking +
names/places of sequential contacts?
Routine discovery and mapping of communication lines is very likely to uncover a lot of
truth. That is what rational folks desire.
I'm 26. Coronavirus Sent Me to the Hospital.
I'm 26. I don't have any prior autoimmune or respiratory conditions. I work out six times a
week, and abstain from cigarettes. I thought my role in the current health crisis would be
as an ally to the elderly and compromised. Then, I was hospitalized for Covid-19.
That night I woke up in the middle of the night with chills, vomiting, and shortness of
breath. By Monday, I could barely speak more than a few words without feeling like I was
gasping for air. I couldn't walk to the bathroom without panting as if I'd run a mile. On
Monday evening, I tried to eat, but found I couldn't get enough oxygen while doing so. Any
task that was at all anxiety-producing -- even resetting my MyChart password to communicate
with my doctor -- left me desperate for oxygen.
While I was shocked at the development of my symptoms and my ultimate hospitalization,
the doctors and nurses were not at all surprised. After I was admitted, I was told that
there was a 30-year-old in the next room who was also otherwise healthy, but who had also
experienced serious trouble breathing. The hospital staff told me that more and more
patients my age were showing up at the E.R. I am thankful to my partner for calling the
hospital when my breathing worsened, and to the doctor who insisted we come in. As soon as
I received an oxygen tube, I began to feel slight relief. I was lucky to get to the
hospital early in the crisis, and receive very attentive care.
@NPleezeThe reason younger Americans are dying is because Americans are extremely unhealthy. I
wager all the very sick younger Americans are obese, probably with diabetes, don't exercise,
and eat unhealthy foods, leading to heart and other weaknesses.
Precisely. We have received several reports recently of young people being hospitalised
and some even dying. However, the reports do not specify the condition of those young people.
In places like the US, the youth are very unhealthy so it would not surprising to discover
the youth requiring hospitalisation are obese or drug takers.
Fiona Lowenstein is a writer, producer, and yoga teacher and the founder of the queer
feminist wellness collective, Body Politic.
From her selfie, she also appears to be an Orthodox Jew, though apparently one of those
classic New York breakaway (sorta) types.
Now, did anyone from the Times validate her story? Of course they didn't. They are
desperate for stories like this. My guess is the entire thing is made up. She looks perfectly
well in her few other hospital selfies on her Instagram. You think people like this wouldn't
rig those photos?
PS -- Her Instagram has a number of bikini shots. Guess what that means.
I'm 26. I don't have any prior autoimmune or respiratory conditions. I work out six
times a week, and abstain from cigarettes.
The highly specific listing of non-symptoms suggests that the patient did have other
co-morbidities, such as obesity, diabetes etc. Did he/she smoke weed? Smoke cigarettes in
the past ?
If he/she had been entirely healthy prior to the infection, he could simply have said
so.
Stop the $6 Trillion Coronavirus Corporate Coup!
Matt Stoller
What Is In This Bill?
Congress is going to pass a bill with a lot of important stuff for workers, hospitals,
cities and small business, and to address the pandemic. That's inevitable. And the bill on
the table includes some of this. The question though is what else the bill includes, and
that's where we get into trouble. Because while we have to deal with the pandemic and crisis,
we do not have to fundamentally eliminate the economic rights of all of us in the
process.
Now, first I should say I don't have the final deal in hand because it's not public. I
have only seen versions of the negotiating text. But I'm fairly sure most of these provisions
haven't changed, because the final sticking points were over various direct pandemic spending
pieces. If I get that wrong, I'll tell you in an update.
On Saturday, I went over the Christmas wish list of corporate lobbyists in this process,
everything from Adidas letting people deduct gym costs to candymakers seeking a $500 million
loan to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk seeking $5B in loans for their space corporations. Of course
what Wall Street sought, and got, dwarfed all of these requests.
Here's how you can tell. A lot of reporters have been talking about how this is a $2
trillion deal, with a bunch of spending for hospitals and whatnot. But last night White House
advisor Larry Kudlow announced it is actually a $6 trillion deal. And business reporter
Charlie Gasparino said he's hearing chatter that the total will be $10 trillion! Say
what?!?
Charles Gasparino
@CGasparino
i hear its $10 trillion or higher when all is said and done
Matt Stoller @matthewstoller
People are not internalizing what is happening. A $6 trillion credit allocation to Wall
Street isn't a corporate handout, it's a coup. These numbers are a thorough restructuring of
America.
March 24th 2020
How does this work? How can Wall Street have one impression of the amount of money, and
everyone else have a different impression? Easy. Confusion, lying and bad reporting. If
important people don't talk about the boring sounding big stuff, then us non-important people
sound crazy or nerdy mentioning it. It's a giant game of social climbing, and the goal is to
make all of us afraid to point out what's going on. (Incidentally I hope Rep. Brad Sherman,
who is an accountant and a key anti-bailout leader, really delves into this.)
So let's talk about the big stuff that McConnell, Schumer and Pelosi are hiding.
The bill establishes a series of boring-sounding slush funds, and these will be given strange
alphabet soup names by the Federal Reserve and Treasury, names like 'special purpose vehicle'
and 'ABS' and 'TALF' and FDIC bank guarantees. That's where the real money is. Here are some
of these slush funds, starting with the ones that are more understandable:
$50 billion in loans and loan guarantees to airlines
$8 billion in loans and loan guarantees to air cargo carriers
$17 billion in loans and loan guarantees to "businesses critical to national security"
A $425 billion fund for loans and investments to be used at the discretion of the
Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin. He can use it to loan money, buy stock, buy bonds,
whatever.
Obviously helping certain enterprises is important, so I'm not opposed to industry
aid.
But the terms and conditions matter, and based on what I'm seeing, I don't believe there will
be meaningful restrictions on this aid. Executives and financiers are going to profit off of
taxpayer money.
So that's the stuff that's been reported. Here's what hasn't, and why the bill goes up in
value to $6-10 trillion.
An additional $4 trillion from the Federal Reserve in lending power to be lent to big
corporations and banks.
Authorization to bail out money market funds, multi-trillion dollar unregulated bank-like
deposits for the superrich.
Authorization for the the government through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to
guarantee trillions of dollars of risky bank debt.
"We can fight this bill. Remember, Congress is going to pass a bill with a lot of
important stuff for workers, hospitals, cities and small business, and to address the
pandemic. That's inevitable. If we do stop it, Congress will simply pass the same bill, strip
out all the slush funds, and take that stuff on in a few weeks. This is a crisis, they are
getting sick, and they know we have to act.
"Even if this bill passes, we can keep fighting against the misuse of such a giant
corporate slush fund, and continue to build a left-right coalition against cronyism. The one
thing I have learned in politics is that we are not powerless, if we are honest about the
moral terms .
"A lot of people are likely to die in the next few months, and it is going to be awful.
And this is largely because of the same reckless leadership class that is now using this
moment to hand political power over to financiers. But all of us are learning lessons about
what it means to build a more resilient, free and democratic society and business community.
My hope is that we can put those lessons to work, sooner rather than later." [My
Emphasis]
IMO, the ideological basis for the coming conflict within the Outlaw US Empire are now set
with more people becoming aware daily--The Moral High Ground of caring for people first
versus the immoral gutter of catering to Wall Street's parasites to continue to feed of the
body politic which will outweigh any benefits provided for the public.
This hoax has been such a bonus for some bad actors. Bibi is one, but someone at Wall Street
got gifted 1.5 Trillions while the stimulus package is a few billions.
How do I know it is an hoax? Total mortality has been declining for 5 weeks in Europe, as it
does every winter. The site is produced by a collaboration of 40+
european academic institutions
I wonder if history will record that this Coronavirus was like a Global Reichstag Fire? Wall
Street is the Matchmaker to this marriage of globalization and Big Brother. If Netanyahu can
have a coup like this, who's to say that the template can not be made to order for other
nations in the West? The disruption of assembles is the key to this. "Shelter-in-Place"
isolation, and the restriction of movement, are the novel constructions that could help push
this catastrophe forward.
I'm not worried about the guy coughing next to me. I'm worried about the ones who seem to be
looking for Jim Jones.
Jones was the charismatic founder of the cult-like People's Temple. Through fear-based
control, he took his followers' money and ran their lives. He isolated them in Guyana where he
convinced over 900 of them to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced grape Kool Aid.
Frightened people can be made to do anything. They just need a Jim Jones.
So it is more than a little scary that media zampolit Rick Wilson
wrote to his 753,000 Twitter followers: "People who sank into their fear of Trump, who
defended every outrage, who put him before what they knew was right, and pretended this chaos
and corruption was a glorious new age will pay a terrible price. They deserve it." The tweet
was liked over 82,000 times.
The New York Timesclaims
that "the specter of death speeds across the globe, 'Appointment in Samara'-style, ever faster,
culling the most vulnerable." Others are claiming Trump will
cancel the election to rule as a Jim Jones. "Every viewer who trusts the words of Earhardt
or Hannity or Regan could well become a walking, breathing, droplet-spewing threat to the
public," opined
the Washington Post . Drink the damn Kool Aid and join in the panic en route to
Guyana.
The grocery store in Manhattan, just after the announcement of the national state of
emergency, was pure panic. I saw a fight break out after an employee brought out paper towels
to restock the shelf and someone grabbed the whole carton for himself. The police were called.
One cop had to stay behind to oversee the lines at the registers and maintain order. To their
credit, the NYPD were cool about it. I heard them talk down one of the fighters, saying, "You
wanna go to jail over Fruit Loops? Get a hold of yourself." Outside New York, sales of weapons
and ammunition
spiked .
Panic seems to be something we turn on and off, or moderate in different ways. Understanding
that helps reveal what is really going on.
No need for history. Right now, in real time, behind the backs of the coronavirus, is the
every-year, plain-old influenza. Some 12,000
people have died, with over
13 million infected from influenza just between October 2019 and February 2020. The death
toll is screamingly higher (as of this writing, coronavirus has infected 60,653 and killed
819 Americans).
Bluntly: more people have
already died of influenza in the U.S. than from the coronavirus in China, Iran, and Italy combined. Double in
fact. To be even blunter, no one really cares, even though a large number of bodies are piling
up. Why?
The first cases of the swine flu, H1N1, appeared in April 2009. By the time
Obama finally declared a national emergency seven months later, the CDC was reporting that
50 million Americans, one in six people, had been infected, and 10,000 Americans had died. In
the early months, Obama had no HHS secretary or appointees to the department's 19 key posts, as
well as no commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, no surgeon general, no CDC
director. The vacancy at the CDC was especially important because in the early days of the
crisis, only they could test for the virus (sound familiar?). Yet some 66
percent of Americans thought the president was protecting them. There was no panic. Why?
Of course, Trump isn't Obama. But if you really think it is that black and white, that one
man makes that much difference in the multi-leveled response of the vast federal government,
you don't know much about bureaucracy. Most of the people who handled the swine flu are now
working the coronavirus, from the rank and file at CDC, HHS, and DHS to headliners like Drs.
Andrew Fauci (in government since 1968, worked ebola) and Deborah Brix (in government since
1985, prior to corona was an Obama AIDS appointee).
Maybe the most salient example is 9/11. Those who lived through it remember it well, the
color threat alerts, the jihadi cells around every corner, the sense of learned/taught
helplessness. The enemy could be anywhere, everywhere, and we had no way to fight back. But
because the Dems and Repubs were saying the same thing, there was a patina of camaraderie to it
(led by Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, where are they now?), not discord. But the panic was
still very real.
Why? We panicked when people took steps to ensure we would. We were kept calm when there was
nothing to gain by spurring us to panic (the swine flu struck in the midst of the housing
crisis; there was enough to worry about). After 9/11, a fearful populace not only supported
everything the government wanted to do, they demanded more. Nearly everyone cheered the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and not believing the government meant you were on their side. The
Patriot Act, which did away with whole swaths of the Bill of Rights, was overwhelmingly
supported. There was no debate over torture, offshore penal colonies, assassinations,
kidnappings, and all the little horrors. The American people counted that as competent
leadership and re-elected George W. Bush. Fear was political currency.
Need a 2020 example of how to manipulate panic? Following fears of a liquid bomb, the TSA
limited carry-on liquids to four ounces for years. Can't be too careful! Yet because of corona,
they just changed the limit for hand sanitizer only (which, with its alcohol content, is
actually flammable, as opposed to say, shampoo) to
12 ounces. Security theater closed down alongside Broadway tonight.
False metrics are also manipulative because they make fear seem scientific. We ignore the
low death rate and focus on the number of tests done. But whatever we do will never be enough,
never can be enough, the same way any post-disaster aid is never delivered quick enough because
the testing is not (just) about discovering the extent of the virus. For those with naughty
motives, it is about creating a race we can't win, so testing becomes proof of failure. Think
about the reality of "everyone who wants one should get a test." The U.S. has 331 million
people. Testing 10 percent of them in seven days means 4,714,285 individuals a day while the
other 90 percent hold their breath. Testing on demand is not realistic at this scale. Selective
decision-based testing is what will work.
South Korea, held up as the master of mass testing, conducted at its peak about 20,000 a day. Only 4 percent
were positive, a lot of effort for a little reassurance. Tests are valuable to pinpoint the
need for social distancing, but blunt tools like mass social distancing (see China) also work.
Tests do not cure the virus. You can hide the number of infections by not testing (or claim so
to spur fear), but very sick people make themselves known at hospitals and actual dead bodies
are hard to ignore. Tests get the press, but actual morbidity is the clearest data point.
There will be time for after-action reviews and arguments over responsibility. That time is
never in the midst of things, and one should question the motives of journalists who use rare
access to the president to ask questions meant largely to undermine confidence. If they
succeed, we will soon turn on each other. You voted for him; that's why we're here now. Vote
for Bernie and Trump wins and we all literally die. You bought the last toilet paper. You can
afford treatment I can't. You're safe working from home while I have to go out. Just wait until
the long-standing concept of medical triage is repackaged by the media as "privilege" and hell
breaks loose in the ERs. We could end up killing each other even as the virus fades.
At the very least, we will have been conditioned to new precedents of
control over personal decisions, civil life, freedom of movement and assembly, whole city
lockdowns, education, and an increasing role for government and the
military in health care. Teachers, don't be surprised if less of you, and fewer classrooms,
are needed in the virus-free future, in favor of more classes online. It's almost as if someone
is taking advantage of our fears for their own profits and self-interest.
There are many reasons to take prudent action. There are no good reasons for fear and panic.
The fear being promoted has no rational basis compared to regular influenza and the swine flu
of 2009. We have a terrifying example in 9/11 of how easily manipulated fearful people are.
Remaining calm and helping others do so is a big part of what your contribution to the disaster
relief could be.
That's one way to see this. Too many right now, however, seem to be looking for Jim
Jones.
You are right. While corona in my view is absolutely bonkers, and as my conviction mounts
with every half witted calculation that I come across, it gains its own dimension in reality.
The cause is non-existent but the consequences are real:
People die in overwhelmed hospitals in run down health systems. The world economy is breaking
down, as it was going to anyhow. The convenient scapegoat has been found and the interest for
the PTB to allow the truth to come out is zero.
Will we get laws that make Corona-denial illegal? Because it dishonors the dead and
traumatizes their families?
I am praying to Saint Ron to fearlessly tell the truth, but he goes corona full steam.
I have written this before. My Damaskus moment was Kiew in february 2014. Since then I
have known that the same people who were behind that thing would set my country and the world
on fire in time.
I marvel at their inventiveness.
Similarly, once government lockdowns or other similar measures are taken, the
doubling-period of the infection becomes much longer.
I'm pretty certain that there's no doubling once a country, (province, city, whatever)
enacts a relatively comprehensive lockdown and people themselves take it seriously. I'm in
one of those countries and if I look around it's clear that the R0 ratio is way below 1.
Probably less than 0.1 to be honest.
If I remember correctly, COVID-19 R0 ratio in China was somewhere around 3.5 when the
country was still figuring it out. That's a horrible number but it's easy to see how it can
be brought down to a tiny fraction when 95% of risky contacts get removed and the remaining
5% approached with protective gear and caution. The virus doesn't stand a chance in that kind
of environment.
So, the numbers in my neck of the woods will almost certainly start decreasing rapidly in
the coming weeks but the problem of international travel will remain for many months
(years?).
I also remember some of early estimates of Mad Cow disease in humans in UK and they
turned out to be very exaggerated.
When the political class was trying to de-gay HIV/AIDS in 1987, they had Oprah tell
everyone that 20% of heterosexual people would be dead before 1990.
The first I learned of Oprah's jaw-droppingly sensationalist remarks, was in a piece a
couple of days ago on AmericanThinker (which sounds like a rare bird indeed, if not an
outright oxymoron – but it has good stuff from time to time).
Anyhow, it was an interesting piece – entitled
" Reflections on a Century of Junk Science " by the author of " Hoodwinked: How
Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture ", which I will acquire today. (The
book's 11 years old, but sounds like it will be along the same lines as Kendrick's "
Doctoring Data: How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense ", which was
excellent).
@UncommonGround ,,,As of March 19th there were 93 Corona deaths in Bergamo and counting.
As of March 19th five Italian doctors and 13 medics have lost their lives with 2,629 health
workers infected, or 8,3 per cent.
I will keep this comment as brief as possible.
I welcome refutation of these theses, which I believe are crucial to any analysis of the
response to the pandemic:
1. Current screening tests for COVID19 (a PCR test, not an antibody test) have a high rate of
false positives (see excellent contributions on this topic from Kratoklastes).
2. Draconian public health responses are allegedly aimed at minimizing serious COVID19
disease (severe respiratory distress, up to and including ARDS). "Positive" testing
individuals overwhelming do not fall into this category.
3. At this juncture, our best single metric is death from COVID19. Unfortunately the
definition of a COVID19 fatality varies between jurisdictions. To be counted as such a
fatality, the current best definition would be: novel coronovirus IgM (+/- IgG) positive
(proof of recent infection) plus ARDS (radiologically, if not pathologically, confirmed).
4. Alleged COVID19 fatalities are overwhelming patients >70 having 3 or more serious
comorbidities.
5. There is an association between ACE-inhibitor or AT-receptor antagonist use and likelihood
of death from infection by novel coronavirus.
To the last point: nearly 40% of the Italian fatalities were using ACE inhibitors (and
this may be an underestimate as pre-admission medication charts were lacking). The virus
binds to the pulmonary ACE2 receptor.
Conceivably the use of ACE-inhibitors (or the related AT-receptor antagonists) induces
upregulation of this receptor, but this is purely conjecture on my part.
Anecdotally, use of this medication class is lower in Germany, which has been proffered among
reasons for its lower fatality rates.
@Realist I have two family members in UK who have already recovered after testing
positive and I, myself, suffered ten days with an unpleasant dry cough, malaise and low grade
fever late in February – which has since cleared uneventfully. I was never tested and,
following my GP, discounted being infected with COVID-19 at that time.
An antibody test for COVID-19 virus exposure is near to becoming commercially available
and this is likely to be widely used in order to identify people who can safely volunteer to
help with the pandemic – it may provide some interesting statistics and a different
management perspective.
"So far we know:
-tests have large error margin
-positive tests only associated with small chance of being sick
-vast majority of COVID-19 cases have other serious diseases
-We have 80x more pneumonia cases than COVID-19
Are these good reasons to suspend the lives of billions?"
the Coronavirus death statistics are certainly far more solid and reliable
But still quite unreliable. Nobody knows what tests are being performed or how accurate
those tests are. For all we know they are calling flu/pneumonia deaths as COVID-19 deaths,
whether deliberately/recklessly (pressured) or because the tests are simply faulty.
If we assume a mortality rate of 1%
Based on what? As noted, the best case of a general population exposure is the Diamond
Princess – where all passengers were exposed fully for 2 weeks and then under terrible
quarantine conditions for 4 weeks. Of the 3,177 passengers and crew, some 677 (20%) took ill,
and 7 (0.2% of the population, and 1% of the ill) died, all of them in their 70s and older
(and indeed the data released by the Japanese health ministry indicates the ship had twice
the number of people in each age category 60-79, 70-79, and 80+ than does the US).
Conveniently, everyone repeating the hysteria line completely omits to look at the best
data available.
Number of infected = Number of Deaths / Mortality_Rate *
2^(Mortality_Period/Doubling_Period)
Nothing in nature is exponential as everything runs up against some barrier, usually
sooner than later. I can make the argument about rabbit reproduction: each female rabbit can
produce 60 rabbits per year in three litters. This would indicate that each male/female pair
increases 10-fold every 3 months – a far faster growth rate than your virus. And under
certain conditions, they can, for a time, accomplish that before they hit the proverbial
brick wall.
Let's look at Italy. The first recorded death (FWIW) was Feb. 21. Now using your
assumptions, there had been 100 new infections three weeks earlier (on Jan. 31). Next, as you
assume a doubling-period of 6 days, those 100 infections would have increased to 100 x
2^(37/6) = 7,183 infections by the time of March 8, when the emergency orders went into
effect. However, on March 8 there had already been 366 deaths. Since the disease, according
to your model, takes 3 weeks to kill, this means we need to look at the number of infections
on Feb. 21, which, in your model, equals 100 x 2^(21/6) = 1,131.
In other words, on Feb. 21 there were 1,131 persons infected, and of those, 366 had died
by March 8. For a mortality rate of 32.3%.
But let's work backwards from another date. By Mar. 24, there had been 6,820 deaths. To
arrive at that, using your assumed death rate, that means by Mar. 3, 682,000 people had to be
infected (since 1% of them would die within 3 weeks). Which means, according to your model,
that 341,000 were infected on Feb. 26, 170,500 on Feb. 20. But your model already showed that
only 1,131 were infected on Feb. 21.
In other words, this "model" is utter bunk.
What we do know is as follows: the death rate on the Diamond Princess, under terrible
conditions, was 0.2%, all over 70.
The global death rate is about 18,000 dead out of 7 billion. The annual tuberculosis death
number is between 1 and 2 million.
That people who are very old (and thus have compromised immune systems) or people who have
various chronic diseases are the ones who die from this disease. This is because the virus
can attack numerous receptors, including those in the kidney, liver, heart, white blood
cells, and pancreas (a sort of "frankenstein" bio-engineered virus). Thus anyone with a weak
pancreas (diabetes), kidney, liver, heart (hypertension, etc.), or lungs (smokers, etc.) are
susceptible to having an organ fail.
The death rate will grow only among this segment of the population. It is enough to
isolate them (or, better yet, have them self-isolate).
The reason younger Americans are dying is because Americans are extremely unhealthy. I
wager all the very sick younger Americans are obese, probably with diabetes, don't exercise,
and eat unhealthy foods, leading to heart and other weaknesses.
All of this apart from the issue, of how long this virus has been in the wild. It seems my
mother caught this disease in early February, in a small Midwestern isolated community
– she had what are given at the symptoms, but nobody was looking for it at the time, so
there is no diagnosis of her illness.
Isn't the real issue this (numerically and culturally): we have a health care system,
which is obviously not made to provide services to every single American whenever they
need it, all at the same time , and this pandemic is likely to kill say, a million old
people (given how large our overall population is), and since no one "gets" to just die (ala
Soylent Green) but instead gets sick at 70, 80, etc and has to be preserved forever so
anything that "burns" through what would be an otherwise healthy population, as with all
animals (including humans) historically, instead becomes such a serious risk (if not somewhat
random) to the old or infirm, that we shut everything down, potentially causing all sorts of
other human catastrophes so that some old folks get to choose another death (maybe the flu?)
over a Covid-19 death?
Long run on sentence, but isn't that really what this is all about now ?
Bmac
says: Show Comment March
25, 2020 at 12:28 pm GMT 100 Words Neill Ferguson of Imperial College London argues that
every fatality represents an infected population one thousand strong.
"... The state governments prefer that all schools be closed while Canberra is receiving advice from Dr Brendan Murphy, Chief Health Officer of Australia, that schools not be closed because children would be at more risk of picking up COVID-19 from adults at home, and from congregating in areas where they are not being supervised by adults if they decide not to stay at home for various reasons (because among other things they would also be at risk from domestic violence). ..."
"... Please don't feel brainwashed into taking totally unnecessary extra precautions beyond normal levels of hygiene in order to protect yourself from a common coronavirus. ..."
"... The behavior of elites across the globe suggest a level of collective anxiety not seen in before in my lifetime. Certainly endless decades of oligarchic control maintained through keeping Western populations mystified by means of coordinated mass propaganda – has seen rather significant cracks develop through the emergence of progressive independent journalism shared across the world via the web. One would think those ever widening cracks in the indoctrination system have perhaps clarified for our betters that their fairy tales are falling upon ever greater numbers of deaf ears around the globe. ..."
"... Given currently unfolding events one is tempted to think that elites – perhaps rather than being left to respond to events completely out of their control – like a system-crashing spontaneous economic collapse – are collectively choosing to instead to – "control what they can" – through this supposed 'pandemic' response operation. ..."
"... That this over the top elite led pandemic response appears an effort to lead the credulous masses into whatever straightjacket has been prepared for us is simply impossible to ignore. ..."
Below is our list of twelve medical experts whose opinions on the Coronavirus outbreak contradict the official
narratives of the MSM, and the memes so prevalent on social media.
* * *
Dr
Sucharit Bhakdi
is a specialist in microbiology. He was a professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University
in Mainz and head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene and one of the most cited research scientists
in German history.
What he says:
We are afraid that 1 million infections with the new virus will lead to 30 deaths per day over the next 100 days.
But we do not realise that 20, 30, 40 or 100 patients positive for normal coronaviruses are already dying every
day.
[The government's anti-COVID19 measures] are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous [ ] The life expectancy
of millions is being shortened. The horrifying impact on the world economy threatens the existence of countless
people. The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients in need are reduced,
operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling. All this will impact profoundly on our whole
society.
All these measures are leading to self-destruction and collective suicide based on nothing but a spook.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JBB9bA-gXL4
*
Dr
Wolfgang Wodarg
is a German physician specialising in Pulmonology, politician and former chairman of the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In 2009 he called for an inquiry into alleged conflicts of interest
surrounding the EU response to the Swine Flu pandemic.
What he says:
Politicians are being courted by scientists scientists who want to be important to get money for their
institutions. Scientists who just swim along in the mainstream and want their part of it [ ] And what is missing
right now is a rational way of looking at things.
We should be asking questions like "How did you find out this
virus was dangerous?", "How was it before?", "Didn't we have the same thing last year?", "Is it even something
new?"
That's missing.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/p_AyuhbnPOI
*
Dr Joel Kettner
s professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former
Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious
Diseases.
I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I'm not talking about the pandemic,
because I've seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we
don't always know what they are. But I've never seen this reaction, and I'm trying to understand why.
[ ]
I worry about the message to the public, about the fear of coming into contact with people, being in the same
space as people, shaking their hands, having meetings with people. I worry about many, many consequences related
to that.
[ ]
In Hubei, in the province of Hubei, where there has been the most cases and deaths by far, the actual number of
cases reported is 1 per 1000 people and the actual rate of deaths reported is 1 per 20,000. So maybe that would
help to put things into perspective.
Dr John
Ioannidis
Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at
Stanford University School of Medicine and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and
Sciences. He is director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation
Center at Stanford (METRICS).
He is also the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. He was chairman at the
Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine as well as adjunct professor at
Tufts University School of Medicine.
As a physician, scientist and author he has made contributions to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, data
science and clinical research. In addition, he pioneered the field of meta-research. He has shown that much of the
published research does not meet good scientific standards of evidence.
Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes.
As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.
The one
situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine
passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death
rate from Covid-19 is much higher.
[ ]
Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people.
However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case
fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes.
[ ]
If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of
total deaths due to "influenza-like illness" would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually
noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average.
– "A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without
reliable data",
Stat News
, 17th March 2020
*
Dr Yoram Lass
is an Israeli physician,
politician and former Director General of the Health Ministry. He also worked as Associate Dean of the Tel Aviv
University Medical School and during the 1980s presented the science-based television show Tatzpit.
Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European
country. In the US about 40,000 people die in a regular flu season and so far 40-50 people have died of the
coronavirus, most of them in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington.
[ ]
In every country, more people die from regular flu compared with those who die from the coronavirus.
[ ]
there is a very good example that we all forget: the swine flu in 2009. That was a virus that reached the
world from Mexico and until today there is no vaccination against it. But what? At that time there was no Facebook
or there maybe was but it was still in its infancy. The coronavirus, in contrast, is a virus with public
relations.
Whoever thinks that governments end viruses is wrong.
– Interview in
Globes
, March 22nd 2020
*
Dr Pietro
Vernazza
is a Swiss physician specialising Infectious Diseases at the Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen and
Professor of Health Policy.
What he says:
We have reliable figures from Italy and a work by epidemiologists, which has been published in the renowned
science journal ‹Science›, which examined the spread in China. This makes it clear that around 85 percent of all
infections have occurred without anyone noticing the infection. 90 percent of the deceased patients are verifiably
over 70 years old, 50 percent over 80 years.
[ ]
In Italy, one in ten people diagnosed die, according to the findings of the
Science
publication, that
is statistically one of every 1,000 people infected. Each individual case is tragic, but often – similar to the
flu season – it affects people who are at the end of their lives.
[ ]
If we close the schools, we will prevent the children from quickly becoming immune.
[ ]
We should better integrate the scientific facts into the political decisions.
– Interview in
St. Galler Tagblatt
, 22nd March 2020
*
Frank Ulrich Montgomery
is German radiologist,
former President of the German Medical Association and Deputy Chairman of the World Medical Association.
I'm not a fan of lockdown. Anyone who imposes something like this must also say when and how to pick it up again.
Since we have to assume that the virus will be with us for a long time, I wonder when we will return to normal?
You can't keep schools and daycare centers closed until the end of the year. Because it will take at least that
long until we have a vaccine. Italy has imposed a lockdown and has the opposite effect. They quickly reached their
capacity limits, but did not slow down the virus spread within the lockdown.
– Interview in
General
Anzeiger
, 18th March 2020
*
Prof.
Hendrik Streeck
is a German HIV researcher, epidemiologist and clinical trialist. He is professor of
virology, and the director of the Institute of Virology and HIV Research, at Bonn University.
The new pathogen is not that dangerous, it is even less dangerous than Sars-1. The special thing is that
Sars-CoV-2 replicates in the upper throat area and is therefore much more infectious because the virus jumps from
throat to throat, so to speak. But that is also an advantage: Because Sars-1 replicates in the deep lungs, it is
not so infectious, but it definitely gets on the lungs, which makes it more dangerous.
[ ]
You also have to take into account that the Sars-CoV-2 deaths in Germany were exclusively old people. In
Heinsberg, for example, a 78-year-old man with previous illnesses died of heart failure, and that without Sars-2
lung involvement. Since he was infected, he naturally appears in the Covid 19 statistics. But the question is
whether he would not have died anyway, even without Sars-2.
– Interview in
Frankfurter Allgemeine
, 16th March 2020
*
Dr Yanis Roussel
et. al.
– A team of researchers from the Institut Hospitalo-universitaire Méditerranée Infection, Marseille
and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille, conducting a
peer-reviewed study on Coronavirus mortality for the government of France under the 'Investments for the Future'
programme.
The problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year
compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing.
[ ]
This study compared the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries (1.3%) with the mortality rate of common
coronaviruses identified in AP-HM patients (0.8%) from 1 January 2013 to 2 March 2020. Chi-squared test was
performed, and the P-value was 0.11 (not significant).
[ ]
it should be noted that systematic studies of other coronaviruses (but not yet for SARS-CoV-2) have found that
the percentage of asymptomatic carriers is equal to or even higher than the percentage of symptomatic patients.
The same data for SARS-CoV-2 may soon be available, which will further reduce the relative risk associated with
this specific pathology.
– "SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data",
International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents
, 19th March 2020
*
Dr. David
Katz
is an American physician and founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center
I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near-total meltdown of
normal life -- schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned -- will be long-lasting and calamitous, possibly
graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses
never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the
first order.
– "Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?",
New York Times
20th
March 2020
*
Michael T. Osterholm
is regents professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and
Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Consider the effect of shutting down offices, schools, transportation systems, restaurants, hotels, stores,
theaters, concert halls, sporting events and other venues indefinitely and leaving all of their workers unemployed
and on the public dole. The likely result would be not just a depression but a complete economic breakdown, with
countless permanently lost jobs, long before a vaccine is ready or natural immunity takes hold.
[ ]
[T]he best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk for serious disease continue to work,
keep business and manufacturing operating, and "run" society, while at the same time advising higher-risk
individuals to protect themselves through physical distancing and ramping up our health-care capacity as
aggressively as possible. With this battle plan, we could gradually build up immunity without destroying the
financial structure on which our lives are based.
– "Facing covid-19 reality: A national lockdown is no cure",
Washington Post
21st March 2020
*
Dr
Peter Goetzsche
is Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen
and founder of the Cochrane Medical Collaboration. He has written several books on corruption in the field of
medicine and the power of big pharmaceutical companies.
Our main problem is that no one will ever get in trouble for measures that are too draconian. They will only get
in trouble if they do too little. So, our politicians and those working with public health do much more than they
should do.
No such draconian measures were applied during the 2009 influenza pandemic, and they obviously cannot
be applied every winter, which is all year round, as it is always winter somewhere. We cannot close down the whole
world permanently.
Should it turn out that the epidemic wanes before long, there will be a queue of people wanting to take credit
for this. And we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time. But remember the joke
about tigers. "Why do you blow the horn?" "To keep the tigers away." "But there are no tigers here." "There you
see!"
– "Corona: an epidemic of mass panic", blog post on
Deadly Medicines
21st March 2020
Gary Wilson
,
What happened in Wuhan will eventually happen everywhere. Any new pathogen will rapidly spread in the
susceptible population (those with some degree of a compromised immune system). After a period there
will be no more susceptible people left to infect and the disease will disappear. Government
regulations to prevent the spread is of no use if someone infected with the pathogen can infect others
before they get the symptoms that they have the disease. Lots of money is spent fighting the virus
(there is money to be made!) while no money is spent to improve the immune system of those people with
weakened immune systems.
fred
,
Btw, the only major sporting event still going on right now is the
Chess Candidates Tournament
(which is a qualification for the World Championship) taking place in
Yekaterinburg, Russia. (Which has freezing temperatures right now and is covered in snow.)
Players get
a health check up twice daily, but are not tested for the coronavirus specifically. This means that if
any one of the players gets a cold or mild temperature: coronavirus!
Therefore I expect the tournament
to be halted mid-way any day now. (Also if one of the players feels like the tournament is not going
well, or that his preparation is not working, they might pretend to be sick to get the tournament
postponed.)
You may be well aware that the Australian Federal government is at loggerheads
with New South Wales and Victorian state governments over the issue of closing all schools.
The state
governments prefer that all schools be closed while Canberra is receiving advice from Dr Brendan
Murphy, Chief Health Officer of Australia, that schools not be closed because children would be at
more risk of picking up COVID-19 from adults at home, and from congregating in areas where they are
not being supervised by adults if they decide not to stay at home for various reasons (because among
other things they would also be at risk from domestic violence).
Please find at this link
an article which among other things gives the opinions of various medical
and health experts who oppose the closure of schools during the current lock-downs here in Australia.
An example of such advice from the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee:
The AHPPC met on Tuesday 17 March to consider the issue of school closures in relation to the
community transmission of COVID‑19. The Committee's advice is that pre-emptive closures are not
proportionate or effective as a public health intervention to prevent community transmission of
COVID-19 at this time Previous studies suggest that the potential reduction in community
transmission from pre‑emptive school closures may be offset by the care arrangements that are in
place for children who are not at school. Children may require care from older carers who are more
vulnerable to severe disease, or may continue to associate (and transmit infection) outside of
school settings. Broadly, the health evidence on school closures from previous respiratory
epidemics shows the costs are often underestimated and the benefits are overestimated. This may be
even more so in relation to COVID-19 as, unlike influenza, the impact on otherwise healthy children
has been minimal to date. School closure is associated with considerable costs. Studies have
estimated that around 15% of the total workforce and 30% of the healthcare workforce may need to
take time off work to care for children. This burden will be significant and will fall
disproportionately on those in casual or tenuous work circumstances. At this stage, the spread of
COVID-19 in the community is at quite low levels. It may be many months before the level of
Australian community infection is again as low as it is at the moment
More than 70 countries around the world have implemented either
nationwide or localised school closures, at different times in the evolution of the local COVID-19
epidemic, however it should be noted the majority of these have not been successful in controlling
the outbreak.
Some of these countries are now considering their position in relation to
re-opening schools. Singapore has had success in limiting the transmission of COVID-19 in the
community without closing schools" [however the successful period in Singapore coincided with
school holidays and when students returned they were temperature-tested ]
Antonym
,
This
cure is worse than the disease, true.
Governments made lock downs in haste, erring on the heavy handed side just to be "sure". Who can
prove them wrong afterwards? The voters.
Airplanes have been the worse spreaders.
Some religious preachers have shown to be immune to public self isolate calls in Asia.
Maybe a good Global practice run for when a
really
deadly
virus breaks loose?
Let East Asian and central African wildlife wet markets be forbidden and enforced with long jail
and financial sentences.
Virus Guy
,
Nonsense. It was not in haste or error. No government is going to hastily shut down its economy out
of too much tender concern for its citizens, and we have teams of analysts and advisors on
infectious disease working for governments who would never have advised this insane level of
'precautions ' for a moderate coronavirus showing no evidence of extreme infectivity or fatality.
As in China the reaction has anticipated a non-existent problem and then gone beyond any
accepted protocol to 'respond.' This has all the hallmarks of an entirely manufactured crisis.
Virus Guy
,
Please don't feel brainwashed into taking totally unnecessary extra precautions beyond normal
levels of hygiene in order to protect yourself from a common coronavirus.
Results: When the infection rate of the close contacts and the sensitivity and specificity of reported
results were taken as the point estimates, the positive predictive value of the active screening was
only 19.67%, in contrast, the false-positive rate of positive results was 80.33%. The
multivariate-probabilistic sensitivity analysis results supported the base-case findings, with a 75%
probability for the false-positive rate of positive results over 47%. Conclusions: In the close
contacts of COVID-19 patients, nearly half or even more of the 'asymptomatic infected individuals'
reported in the active nucleic acid test screening might be false positives.
Gary Weglarz
,
The behavior of elites across the globe suggest a level of collective anxiety not seen in before in my
lifetime. Certainly endless decades of oligarchic control maintained through keeping Western
populations mystified by means of coordinated mass propaganda – has seen rather significant cracks
develop through the emergence of progressive independent journalism shared across the world via the
web. One would think those ever widening cracks in the indoctrination system have perhaps clarified
for our betters that their fairy tales are falling upon ever greater numbers of deaf ears around the
globe.
Given currently unfolding events one is tempted to think that elites – perhaps rather than being
left to respond to events completely out of their control – like a system-crashing spontaneous
economic collapse – are collectively choosing to instead to – "control what they can" – through this
supposed 'pandemic' response operation.
That is to initiate a prefabricated "response" – proactively
to a projected impending system catastrophe that is only a matter of time. Or perhaps this is simply a
"testing operation," a "dry run" so to speak for when the uncontrollable event that crashes the system
does take place. A chance to gauge public reactions and further fine tune future response options?
That this over the top elite led pandemic response appears an effort to lead the credulous masses
into whatever straightjacket has been prepared for us is simply impossible to ignore.
Gary Weglarz
,
On the breathtaking clairvoyance of our wealthiest elites:
Slight uptick in overall registered deaths although still below average for this time of year.
But they've omitted the figures for deaths where the underlying cause was respiratory illness.
I can think of no legitimate reason why they would do so.
These are registered deaths, everybody knows they don't represent the true current number of
deaths.
There is no legitimate rationale for 'waiting for more accurate data' or any such excuse. Even if
the data is incomplete it's published. It's a registry of deaths not an adjusted death rate.
I really can't keep a sense of humour about this.
Or take any satisfaction from 'knowing better' or 'I told you so'. I thought what was happening now would be a process of years.
I don't expect sites like this will survive very long, regardless of how fringe or maligned they
are.
I'd like to say invest in printing presses.
But it's probably too late for that now.
The cat is slowly being let out of the bag Recently leaked (or unofficially released) Norwegian
government papers says the Corona measures are expected to be in place for 12 to 18 months, not just
for a few weeks. Presumably it will be the same in as good as every (NATO)-country.
The emergency
laws introduced in Norway are conspicuously similar to a highly unusual law proposal for increased
government powers in case of a civil emergency from September 2019, now they have been rushed through
parliament.
paul
,
Don't worry, folks, pandemics are profitable.
Bezos dumped $3 billion of stock just before the crash.
Makes Feinstein's paltry $6 million look like chump change.
Boeing want $60 billion, the airlines
want $50 billion (for starters), $150 billion for hotels, a trillion or so for shopping malls. A few
billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon you're talking serious oney.
$3 trillion to date, but have patience, it's early days yet.
We can all rest easy.
The billionaires will emerge with their wealth more than doubled, just like last time.
Certainly puts my mind at rest.
Savorywill
,
We can rest easy because the government will just print more money. Plenty to go around! Every one
gets $3000 plus insurance covers their absent paychecks, so everything is back to normal, money
wise, and no one has to do anything. This can probably go on forever, until trucking companies also
go out of business, so no food or supplies can be transported into NYC, and then the shit will well
and truly hit the fan. I don't think AOC's green new deal will be of much use in such a situation
But, hopefully, it won't come to that.
xdream
,
Somewhere further down this thread somebody used the word:
Plandemic.
Could I suggest another variant on this theme a mutant perhaps:
AaronInMVD says: Website Show Comment March
24, 2020 at 12:01 am GMT 100 Words @Anon
For reasons of math and historic examples of how viral pandemics work in mammals, the fastest
way out would be to do nothing and ignore the virus so that it burns through quickly. This
happens with surprising frequency when the folks picking strain for the year's flu vaccine
guess wrong. And, no business is non-essential to the people depending on it for their
livelihood. So far Most people getting sick with the COVID-19 get unpleasantly sick or don't
realize they were sick. 99% of the fatalities are in the morbidly old or morbidly ill.
Now that the panic's been hyped up, there's no way out. For reasons of how democracy works,
the panic will be appeased. Expensively. Very Expensively.
More will suffer and experience pre-mature mortality due to the economic consequences of the
panic than than virus itself, because the economic damage here is going to last far longer.
I was reading an article in a specialist medical newspaper at the doctor's surgery this
morning while waiting to pick up my blood test results. The article was written by a doctor
who was part of an Australian medical delegation visiting China recently. Among other things
the doctor mentioned was that government services personnel had been redeployed into other
areas away from their usual ranges of expertise. He saw a woman giving instructions to
medical personnel on how to wear medical gowns. He assumed she herself was a doctor; she
turned out to be a receptionist.
" The second thing that's good about it is the sun. Ultraviolet light kills viruses."
The disease is spreading in the southern hemisphere which is in summer with much higher UV
just as rapidly as the northern hemisphere which is in winter with much less UV. So the data
at least in this case says no. BTW she retired in 2008, and she seems to have done some
impressive work in the past, though as they say in the small print of adverts for
investments, past performance is no predictor of future performance.
@AaronInMVDYes, being sick sucks. Just would many of these people who are sick and suffering have
gone to the hospital if it wasn't for the damned panic.
In Italy the hospitals are completely overwhelmed and it has nothing to do with panic.
They are doing military triaging and medical workers are about to collapse. They have more
hospital beds per capita than the US so we definitely don't want to end up like them.
In the US there are probably people showing up at hospitals for tests but that is the
fault of the government (including Democrats) for not getting enough tests ready. Even today
there aren't enough tests and it is unlikely they will meet demand within weeks if not
months.
Democrats are blaming Trump but they were the ones calling travel bans racist and they
didn't have anything to say about tests when it was starting to spread two months ago. They
were focused on the primary and getting rid of Bernie.
'' want it or not the rest of the population is gonna get the Coronavirus''...wow !!! you
are are sooo sure about it ...i bet you know thinks that we don't , probably you knew this
since last year
Very informative .. Thank you and I agree almost totally.. only thing that I find is an
error is immunity to virus. Immunity will be there with young and active people. The virus
can still be transmitted. Older generation will continue to be susceptible to the virus
unless we have a medicine for corona virus.
FFS can we stop with the endless debate about who did what to whom in the early days of this
virus' existence?
Not only are such debates entirely pointless because it is out among us now, it is pointless
because whether they want it or not a full investigation including non-fiction backtrace is
inevitable if we the people who look past the lies, play our cards right.
It has been said that like 911 the coronavirus pandemic will be a game-changer, that is
the world will be different after the lockdowns, lies and beat ups than it was before.
There is however one major difference. Most humans were busy working and looking to keep
their families going to do more than lap up what network TV & the fishwraps told them
about 911. The far from reality attitudes too many still hold, date from that intensive
tabloid indoctrination.
This time is pretty much opposite, people are stuck at home with too much time to think,
but not enough they believe they can do.
If ever there was a time when it was possible to assist our fellow humans to see the world
as it is rather than how the media tells them it is, that time is right now.
Many humans are already pissed about this; plans they had made for their 2020 are
kyboshed, no one really trusts politicians anymore so everyone is asking themselves if
this enforced income cut is really as essential as the pols claim it is(sure some nations
have trickled a little down for the durationbut even there no one is gonna be better off,
everyone normal is going to be copping an income cut).
That means most people are going to be somewhat resistant to the usual bland pol
platitudes.
Have no fear the neolibs see the danger and will be pumping out the bulldust 24/7, the
difference this time is Jo/Joe Blow finally has the time to consider other points of view,
especially those which are expressed entertainingly rather than didactically, so WTF are
people wasting time and energy arguing the toss about matters of interest to so few other
humans?
I'm germinating a notion of what I am going to try to combat the tosh being pumped out by
the elite it would be great if other humans considered the same as I'm certain most will come
up with far better means to help others see than what I dream up.
Allen , Mar 24 2020 1:29 utc | 127
(Coronavirus is a fake emergency))
I've also pondered the question of whether the 'cure' is worse than the 'disease' in
net/overall effect. However, it's important to remember that the reason the pandemic has been
declared an emergency IN EVERY COUNTRY, whether Commie or Fake Democracy, is that it's making
people sick enough to require hospital treatment. And these patients are ADDITIONAL patients
which the health system hadn't planned for. When the flood of COVID-19 patients eases, then
hospitals will return to normal levels of bed vacancy - nationwide.
For your preferred theory to be true, it would be necessary to prove that many, or most, of
these extra patients are faking the seriousness of their illness AND the medics are too
uneducated/inexperienced to tell the difference. You'd probably also have to prove that there
are lots of people would rather be in hospital, pretending to be sick, than anywhere but
hospital...
Italy had an excess number of deaths attributed to influenza of 25,000 in the
2016/17 season, the last year numbers are available, what we are seeing at present is not an
aberration from recent years as that 16/17 season was representative of recent trends. This
is directly as a result of the severely degraded environment in which they live. As
others have pointed out both the air and water quality in that region is horrendous- as it
has become in recent years in Wuhan, Madrid and Tehran. One has to be beyond obstinate not to
understand this and connect the dots.
At present there is great uncertainty as to deaths from Covid versus deaths
with Covid. In some reporting Covid deaths were identified using a case definition
that included pulmonary disease e.g
This distinction is crucial as it points to causal factors that allowed the virus to
replicate, to flourish- and disputes the narrative that the corona virus (which BTW is
decidedly not novel only this mutation is which brings us to another discussion) is the
causal factor. The causal factors are the specific modes of production that created
horrendous living conditions in these areas to begin with (most of the planet by now) which
have destroyed people's abilities (immune system e.g.) to ward off disease.
By focusing solely on the corona virus and considering it to be the causal factor this
allows the capitalist class off the hook for being the very ones who have created the
conditions for all sorts of diseases to proliferate. Further by keeping the focus solely on
corona history tells us that the capitalists will not only use this for any draconian
measures they deem "essential" but also a means to explore all manner of profiteering- the
"next magic cure" (for the disease they created) being the most obvious pot of gold.
If you want to pursue a more analytical line of inquiry start by examining the severely
degraded air quality in Madrid, Wuhan, Tehran and the Po River Valley and the accompanying
health problems in those areas and start connecting some dots.
In the flu season 2015/2016, Italy reported 20,259 deaths attributable to influenza (just as
now, these were almost all in the 65+ age group). (Source: Journal of Infectious
Diseases)...and nobody proposed shutting down the world then. If it's now being suggested the
virus has been around since November then the numbers don't add up even more (i.e. Italy's
Covid-19 deaths so far are around the 6,000 mark which would make the virus far less deadly
than the 2015/16 flu).
Is there not an argument to be made (as says John P.A. Ioannidis -- professor of medicine
and professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University) that we are
destroying economies and lives (and possibly killing far more people than Covid-19) in an
hysterical over-reaction based on flawed modelling and sparse and unreliable data?...
"The number of idiots everywhere on the Internet proclaiming the following:
1) The virus won't prove to be any more dangerous than ordinary flu..."
Yeah sure, we should have just shut up and believed...
Russia interfered in the election
Russia invaded Crimea
Russia invaded Georgia
Iran is making nuclear bombs
The Skripals were poisoned by Russian agents
Assad is using chemical weapons
Saddam has weapons of mass destruction
"etc, etc., ad nauseum.
I could go on and on. The number of people who just *have to have an opinion* is staggering.
And they'll argue that they're right until the cows come home."
@99 Michael Weddington
"The virus deniers here remind me of the global warming deniers."
Why not holocaust deniers? In fact, since you didn't say holocaust deniers you must be an
antisemite holocaust denier nazi, right? It's not like you two are at CNN's website, you're
in the alternative media, where we actually questions things instead of just having blind
faith.
Talking to my daughter this morning. Husband and wife returns from overseas. No testing an
quarantine for people coming . They go home do whatever, husband feels a bit crook, tests
positive for coronavirus. Hospitalized, on a ventilated and will soon die. She is at a
private hospital and this is at the public hospital. no medical staff working with this
patient wore protective gear.
I had thought we where following China closely on dealing with this but man was I wrong.
Total fuckwits collecting seashells on the seashore as the tsunami approaches.
Sent my daughter links to the pdf handbook put out by the Chinese doctors who worked on the
frontlines. Covers PPE and much else. She is now passing it around to the other nurses.
Doctors in Australia had started using chloroquine if they could not obtain other antivirals.
Apparently the government has now stopped them from doing this.
"... Instead the French authorities are now trying to prepare people for work by saying that people should not go out at all because when they do they touch the left button, the doors etc. ..."
"... They can just wear gloves and clean up whatever they touch with alcohol, no? Why aren't such cheap things not distributed widely, household by household? ..."
Another interesting feature of the shock strategy currently applied is that until planes and
trains and stadiums were not plugged off, one can imagine that the virus was spreading on a
much bigger scale than without these going on as usual.
So why should people who already see a max of 5 persons a week (close enough) be under
house arrest? masks are evidently a solution.
Instead the French authorities are now trying to prepare people for work by saying that
people should not go out at all because when they do they touch the left button, the doors
etc.
But what of asking people for responsibility?
They can just wear gloves and clean up
whatever they touch with alcohol, no? Why aren't such cheap things not distributed widely,
household by household?
The French are doing worse because they have no community planning, unlike Belgium, the
Netherlands, the UK and other northern countries. I haven't heard anyone on French media say
that the municipalities or district social centres could play a role in better mapping the
needs.
It seems to be entirely on the shoulders of our super-centralized gov and the
hospitals! With the results we see (and we are actually doing not so bad: 5 % of the positive
seem to die, vs 10% in Spain and Italy -using the figures given here
There's growing concern among health officials about so called silent spreaders, people who
are infected with the coronavirus, but aren't sick. Now some UK doctors say there may be a clue
to who's carrying it and they want the loss of smell and taste added to the list of
symptoms.
A mother who was infected with the coronavirus couldn't smell her baby's full diaper.
Cooks who can usually name every spice in a restaurant dish can't smell curry or garlic, and
food tastes bland. Others say they can't pick up the sweet scent of shampoo or the foul odor
of kitty litter.
Anosmia, the loss of sense of smell, and ageusia, an accompanying diminished sense of
taste, have emerged as peculiar telltale signs of Covid-19, the disease caused by the
coronavirus, and possible markers of infection.
On Friday, British ear, nose and throat doctors, citing reports from colleagues around the
world, called on adults who lose their senses of smell to isolate themselves for seven days,
even if they have no other symptoms, to slow the disease's spread. The published data is
limited, but doctors are concerned enough to raise warnings.
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"... "We showed that it was precisely the patients with the most acute symptoms who are the most infectious, both because of the high viral load [meaning, the amount of a virus in one's body] and also because of the increase in the number of encounters between people: The acute patients were dying, so everyone came to take their leave from them," Yamin says. "I was pleased that Liberia adopted our recommendations and isolated those who were seriously ill. In retrospect, we know that that new policy helped curb the epidemic." ..."
"... the coronavirus can be expected to disappear from this region with the same dizzying speed with which it entered our lives ..."
"... But in practice, the most rapid mutations occur in animals, and they only infect us then, and obviously it's less probable that we will be infected again by a bat in the near future. ..."
"... "The actual number of people who are sick with the virus in South Korea is at least double what's being reported, so the chance of dying is at least twice as low, standing at about 0.45 percent – very far from the World Health Organization's [global mortality] figure of 3.4 percent. And that's already a reason for cautious optimism." ..."
"... "And Netanyahu talked about a mortality rate of between 2 percent and 4 percent. And do you know what's most absurd? That in the final analysis [U.S. President Donald] Trump was right . Not that the coronavirus is just plain flu – it absolutely isn't – but as he put it: 'This is just my hunch – way under 1 percent' [will die].' ..."
"... At some stage, we will have to resume a regular routine, and then the R0 will stabilize at 2 again. Effectively, we are delaying the inevitable. I have no criticism of the decisions made until now. On the contrary: With such a large area of uncertainty, Israel's decision makers are considering not only a reasonable scenario but also a margin of safety. ..."
"... "It's not only a function of hygiene, it's mainly a function of contact between people. Picture the average old person. How many different people does he encounter in a day? And what is the nature of those encounters? The older we get, the less we caress and kiss others. Also, children constitute the only age group that comes into contact with all other age groups – not just theirs. That's why it is the key population in spreading respiratory diseases." ..."
Dr. Yamin is an engineer, not a physician. But in 2008, when he was a graduate student at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva,
a certain research study caught his eye.
"It was an analysis of a dynamic model for the spread of smallpox," Yamin, 38, says. "The researchers used tools from game theory.
It was so interesting that I decided to conduct a similar study on influenza – which turned into a doctoral thesis on disease-spread
models.
"If, 40 or 50 years ago, epidemiology researchers came exclusively from the field of medicine, today we understand that in order
to predict the spread of diseases, it's also necessary to understand how humans behave as a collective, to be able to analyze big
data and to have the ability to create models and perform mathematical simulations – and for that you need engineers."
Yamin encountered his first real epidemiological crisis while doing postdoctoral work at the the Center of Infectious Disease
Modeling and Analysis at Yale University's school of public health.
"At Yale we worked for three weeks, with almost no sleep, to create models based on engineering tools for the spread of Ebola.
The dilemma of the Liberian health ministry regarded whom to prioritize, given a serious shortage of isolation facilities. The Liberians
assumed that it would make more sense to quarantine those who were ill with less serious symptoms, because the others could not be
saved in any case.
"We showed that it was precisely the patients with the most acute symptoms who are the most infectious, both because of the high
viral load [meaning, the amount of a virus in one's body] and also because of the increase in the number of encounters between people:
The acute patients were dying, so everyone came to take their leave from them," Yamin says. "I was pleased that Liberia adopted our
recommendations and isolated those who were seriously ill. In retrospect, we know that that new policy helped curb the epidemic."
Yamin currently heads the Laboratory for Epidemic Modeling and Analysis in TAU's engineering faculty. His primary field of work
is development of models for the spread of infectious diseases, with an emphasis on viruses responsible for respiratory ailments,
such as flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), which causes bronchitis. He is actually somewhat optimistic about the models he
has developed for the
spread of the coronavirus , which is also a respiratory disease.
"The big, open question is what the chance is of dying from the virus," Yamin explains.
"When you ask epidemiologists what the most important datum is concerning a virus, they will say it's the rate of the basic reproductive
ratio, or R0 [often called "R nought"] – the average number of people a sick person will infect. That's an interesting question,
but a theoretical one.
"The R0 of measles is 12, meaning that each person who is ill with measles infects 12 people on average. However, only 5 percent
of the population can actually be infected, because most of us have been immunized or had measles in the past. So that is the upper
limit of its spread."
But we know that the R0 of the coronavirus is 2, and we still don't know whether anyone is naturally immune to the disease.
Yamin: "The overwhelming majority of people are apparently not immune, because it's not a common disease. After all, there is
no precedent for such an infectious and violent type of virus from the corona family, so it's safe to assume that the majority has
not been exposed to the virus before this and that they can be infected. However, that's not to say that the majority of the population
will actually contract the disease.
"The basic principle is that a virus with an R0 of 2 in a non-immune population can be expected to infect 50 percent of the population.
After that the R0 will reach a value of 1 or less, and the disease will be contained. By the way, it will recede in a converging
exponential; in other words, the coronavirus can be expected to disappear from this region with the same dizzying speed with which
it entered our lives."
But we don't know for certain whether a person can be infected twice.
"No, but with the majority of viruses, if you're infected and you have recovered, you won't be re-infected, because of immunological
memory. And if you are infected again, the symptoms will be less acute the second time. The exception to the rule is influenza: Its
mutation frequency is so high that you can be infected by it year after year. Last year alone, the flu underwent 17 mutations. Whereas
the last time we heard about corona was 17 years ago, with SARS. In other words, the coronavirus did not undergo mutations at the
same frequency as the flu. Of course, the mutations themselves are a function of the number of infections: The more infections there
are, the greater the likelihood that mutations will occur. But in practice, the most rapid mutations occur in animals, and they only
infect us then, and obviously it's less probable that we will be infected again by a bat in the near future.
"By the way, viral mutations are more frequent in bats, whose immune system is astonishingly weak, while their social network
is extensive and characterized by a lot of interaction."
So we're talking about maximum rate of infection – that is, of becoming a carrier – of 50 percent. That's still a lot of patients,
a lot of hospitalizations and mainly a lot of deaths.
"Again, the most interesting issue for decision makers is the mortality rate. When we look at the dry data, we see a very high
mortality rate, of 4 to 7 percent, in countries like
Italy
and Spain, alongside far lower numbers in countries like Germany and South Korea.
"And then there's China, though it's very difficult to believe the numbers coming out of there – and in any event no country in
the West can allow itself to adopt the measures that China adopted to contain the spread. Now ask yourself: How do you check the
mortality rate in all those countries? You take the total number of deaths and divide it by the total of reported patients."
So the research is biased.
"Very biased. If I can only carry out few tests, I will test those who have the highest chance of becoming ill, and then, when
I check the mortality rate among them, I will get very high numbers. But there is one country we can learn from: South Korea. South
Korea has been coping with corona for a long time, more than most Western countries, and they lead in the number of tests per capita.
Therefore, the official mortality rate there is 0.9 percent. But even in South Korea, not all the infected were tested – most have
very mild symptoms.
"The actual number of people who are sick with the virus in South Korea is at least double what's being reported, so the chance
of dying is at least twice as low, standing at about 0.45 percent – very far from the World Health Organization's [global mortality]
figure of 3.4 percent. And that's already a reason for cautious optimism."
'Worst-case scenario'
Let's move from percents to people.
"Just a minute. Although we're both Westernized countries, we are absolutely not South Korea. South Korea has one of the highest
proportions of elderly people in the world, whereas Israel tops the graph in fertility, and we have a very young population. So,
if we use the upper limit [of mortality] of South Korea and normalize the mortality rate for the population in Israel, we are talking
about the probability of a mortality rate of 0.3 percent among those who have been infected.
"Now we'll go to a severe scenario in which no one is immune and every second person is sick, so that the disease is incapable
of spreading further – namely, a situation where there's a maximum infection rate of 50 percent.
"We are a country of nine million citizens. So in the worst-case scenario, we are talking about 4.5 million Israelis who will
become ill with the coronavirus. Multiply 4.5 million by 0.3 percent and you get 13,500 Israelis who are liable to die from the disease.
By comparison, 700 to 2,500 Israelis die every year of complications from other respiratory ailments."
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel talked about a rate of infection of 70 percent in Germany.
"And Netanyahu talked about a mortality rate of between 2 percent and 4 percent. And do you know what's most absurd? That in the
final analysis [U.S. President Donald]
Trump was right . Not that the coronavirus is just plain flu – it absolutely isn't – but as he put it: 'This is just my hunch
– way under 1 percent' [will die].'
"We must be cautious, of course, but at the moment a high probability is emerging that the risks are far lower than what the World
Health Organization presented. Under two assumptions – that the health system doesn't collapse and that life continues as usual –
we are not likely to see more than 13,500 victims of the coronavirus in Israel." (About 45,000 people die in Israel in a normal year,
which would make for a rise of approximately one-third.)
But, social distancing should lead to fewer cases of infection and death, no?
"No, because we won't be able to isolate ourselves completely or forever. At some stage, we will have to resume a regular routine,
and then the R0 will stabilize at 2 again. Effectively, we are delaying the inevitable. I have no criticism of the decisions made
until now. On the contrary: With such a large area of uncertainty, Israel's decision makers are considering not only a reasonable
scenario but also a margin of safety.
"In my opinion, the Health Ministry deserves tremendous credit for being ahead of the world by having instituted so few measures.
In the same breath, the public needs to understand that these measures of social distancing mean that we will find ourselves with
corona for a longer period, even to 2023."
A quarantine ward being set up at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan. Tomer Appelbaum
That long?
"Take the swine flu, from 2009. Reliable models show clearly that it was contained in Israel because its appearance coincided
with the Jewish holidays in the fall [when people weren't out much in public]. From the virus' point of view, the timing wasn't good
for it in Israel. By contrast, in the United States there was significant infection in 2009-2010. But in the end, it balances out.
So we saw swine flu in Israel both in 2009-10 and in 2010-11, whereas in the United States it just came and went. The American population
as a whole was exposed to the virus at high rates, so those who fell ill and recovered served as a 'human shield' for those who did
not get sick."
So what you're saying is to tear the bandage off in one fell swoop, and explose everyone at once, the way they tried to do
in Britain.
"We need to make decisions based on the most precise models possible. What should be done? Of course, we must significantly increase
testing, using the rapid PCR test, and that is what is actually being done. In parallel, serologic tests should be conducted. These
differ from regular tests in that they examines an individual's immunological reaction to exposure. That's the only way we will be
able to get an accurate picture of the distribution of the virus in Israel, and thereby also of the mortality rates."
What will that test be able to tell us?
"It will solve the riddle of the young people: It's still not clear whether young people are infected by the coronavirus but don't
develop symptoms, or are simply immune and thus don't become infected. This is different from most respiratory ailments. With those
illnesses, like RSV or flu, this is a key population: The 5-to-19 age group is not at risk but they are responsible for infecting
others."
Because children don't wash their hands, and they drool on themselves?
"It's not only a function of hygiene, it's mainly a function of contact between people. Picture the average old person. How many
different people does he encounter in a day? And what is the nature of those encounters? The older we get, the less we caress and
kiss others. Also, children constitute the only age group that comes into contact with all other age groups – not just theirs. That's
why it is the key population in spreading respiratory diseases."
"... A drug like chloroquine doesn't have to be extremely effective in order to have a huge benefit on our ICU density. A small effect could have a big impact. And if chloroquine turns out not to work, there are other promising drugs such as Remdesivir, though chloroquine has the advantage of being cheap and easy to produce. ..."
Rod, I was one of those screaming at our public officials to shut stuff down. I was
extremely frustrated by President Trump's brushing off of our problem for a long time. I
asked my Facebook friends if anyone wanted to help with a recall petition of Governor
Edwards, after he took very mild steps against COVID-19 instead of the necessary firmer ones.
I bristled with a mixture of horror and astonishment as New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell
allowed bars to pack people in last weekend to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. I argued with
friends on Facebook who insisted to me that "this is just a cold" and told me that I was
irrational and needlessly spreading fear and panic.
So I have consistently supported strong steps to contain this virus, but I have now become
very optimistic that the tide is about to turn, and I want to share why.
Testing is about to expand exponentially.
We've been steadily growing
our testing ability since the outbreak began. America tested 44,176 people today, and
every day sees a big increase. Yesterday, we tested 34,654 and it was 27,372 the day before
that. A week ago, it was 4,124.
But these increases are small compared to what's in the pipeline. This week we saw FDA
approval of new testing systems from
Roche and from
Abbott labs that run tests ten times faster than current methods. To give you an idea of
what this means, Roche brags that their Cobas 8800 machine can process over 3000 tests per
day. Until today, Louisiana hadn't had a total of 3000 people tested. Roche is now making and
shipping 400,000 test kits per week in the US, while Abbott is making a million of their test
kits each week. Those systems will be coming online this coming week.
Today, we got even more good news, with
Cepheid getting FDA approval for their new test, which will detect the virus in 45
minutes and can be used in over 5000 Cepheid machines already in US hospitals. This will
allow hospitals to test all their staff and every incoming patient on a consistent basis, so
that we can keep our doctors and nurses safe and our hospitals don't spread the disease.
Those testing kits are getting shipped out this coming week.
And there are more companies in the process of getting approval. In two weeks, we should
be able to test 150,000 – 200,000 Americans daily, and that means that we don't all
need to stay home anymore.
Let me explain how this works.
Suppose that Boudreaux, who works for the state of Louisiana, wakes up and has a fever.
Right now, it's not easy for him to get tested – and if he could get tested, he
wouldn't get his results for days. Let's say that Boudreaux is a good citizen and stays home
at this point. That's great, except that Boudreaux went to work yesterday and exposed his
coworker Pierre, and he also got his hair cut and exposed his barber, T-Boy. His wife Marie
doesn't isolate from him, because she thinks that Boudreaux is just lazy and doesn't want to
work, so she is also exposed. Unless Boudreaux gets sick enough that he needs to go to the
hospital, he's not going to be tested, and Pierre, T-Boy, and Marie might all get the virus
and – and this is key – then spread it themselves.
That's been our situation, and the only solution that we've had was to keep Boudreaux at
home in the first place. That's why the state is keeping non-essential workers at home.
That's why many places are forcing barbershops to close. So, now, our governmental
restrictions keep T-Boy and Pierre from getting infected, though Marie is still at risk.
Now, imagine our original situation with easy, high-speed testing. Boudreaux wakes up with
a fever, he goes to the drive-thru testing site and is notified about four hours later that
he is positive. Now, everyone in his family and workplace immediately gets tested, as does
T-Boy – and the virus does not spread beyond them.
The ability to test everyone who needs to be tested is how South Korea and Singapore have
been able to control their outbreaks without significant societal restrictions. Their
schools, restaurants, etc. are all open. And their economies are not wrecked. Again, we'll be
at that point in less than two weeks.
Evidence strongly suggests that COVID-19 is seasonal.
A recent Chinese study
compared transmission rates for all 100 Chinese cities outside of Wuhan that had at least 40
cases before their national lockdown, to see if the virus spread more slowly in warmer, more
humid parts of China. Their conclusion:
"High temperature and high relative humidity significantly reduce the transmission of
COVID-19, respectively, even after controlling for population density and GDP per capita of
cities This result is consistent with the fact that the high temperature and high humidity
significantly reduce the transmission of influenza. It indicates that the arrival of summer
and rainy season in the northern hemisphere can effectively reduce the transmission of the
COVID-19."
That study, as an example, predicted a R value of 1.3 in Tokyo for the Olympics -- with
zero intervention! (For those of you who don't know what that means, it means that instead of
spreading the disease to about 2.6 people, which is what happens now, the average person
would only infect half as many people.) If this study were correct, it would mean that, with
some control measures, it would be easy to keep COVID-19 from spreading during the
Olympics.
Besides this study, we have the basic observation that the world's serious outbreaks have
occurred in cold, dry weather. Jakarta and Milan both had nonstop flights to Wuhan during
Wuhan's outbreak, but Italy has suffered a horrific crisis and Indonesia has not. Scientists
believe that this is because COVID-19 is mainly
transmitted by coughing , and the microdroplets emitted when someone coughs travel about
twice as far in cold, dry air. Additionally, the water vapor present in humid air interacts
with those microdroplets to stop them.
If COVID-19 is indeed a seasonal disease, then we should be able to almost eliminate it
this summer, to the point that there will be zero restrictions on ordinary life. Sports
leagues can fill stadiums with fans and political conventions can meet, and we won't have to
worry that we're fanning a new outbreak.
Improved treatment will improve COVID-19 patient outcomes.
If you have watched President Trump on TV or follow him on twitter, then you know that
he
is hopeful about the promise of chloroquine (and its close relative
hydroxychloroquine).
President Trump has perhaps overpromised what chloroquine can do, as the evidence of its
benefit is still rather thin. But, if it has any benefit at all, it's a game-changer in terms
of our ICUs. If chloroquine works, it works by lowering the amount of virus in the body. When
you combine this with earlier testing, there's a tremendous advantage. The people who end up
in the ICU don't get there until they've been sick for a week or so, as the virus grows in
their body and then inflames the alveoli in the lungs, leading to shortness of breath. If
chloroquine works, an at-risk patient would be given it right after testing positive, and
hopefully, the viral load in their body never gets high enough for the patient to develop
severe shortness of breath, and he stays out of the ICU.
A drug like chloroquine doesn't have to be extremely effective in order to have a huge
benefit on our ICU density. A small effect could have a big impact. And if chloroquine turns
out not to work, there are other promising drugs such as Remdesivir, though chloroquine has
the advantage of being cheap and easy to produce.
Is the situation going to get worse in the US? Yes. Is the end in sight? I believe that it
is. I write this to encourage each of you to hold on. If we can stay and home, enduring the
claustrophobia, the family bickering, and the often severe economic consequences, we can beat
this virus.
I miss my church. A streamed service tomorrow is not a true substitute for the
togetherness in Christ that I need more than ever at this time. And my business is suffering.
I think that I can make it another month, but I don't know about longer than that. I expect
that our nation's psychiatrists and therapists are swamped right now, as stress and
depression skyrocket.
I think b has not been very good with this corona virus reporting. He thinks he was wrong on
his initial reporting and changed as new facts emerged. however he basically repeats the
mainstream line. I certainly am no expert, But then again it seems thee is a wide divergence
of views from the "experts" but there is a mainstream conclusion which b agrees with. And the
mainstream media is pushing the fear full stop.
I still think this is not a specially dangerous virus. almost entirely it is old people
dying. almost entirely most of them have pre-existing conditions. My initial take was people
who would die fairly soon or might die if they got a bad flu are dying but sooner. I know my
wife went to the hospital and acquired a very bad pneumonia. She was on a respirator for over
a week and afterwards was diagnosed with COPD. How many of these deaths are people who are
sick with corona virus and go to the hospital and get a hospital acquired infection but are
counted as dying from COV-18? Virologist have been heavily researching corona viruses since
the SARS and MERS outbreaks that didn't kill very many people
I do agree that this virus seems exceptionally communicable. That nature article b cited
seemed as if it was written to dismiss the idea that the virus was made in some biolab. I
have read an article debunking this Nature article - the writer was trying to make a case
that it came from a Chinese lab He agreed it wasn't manufactured by gene editing but was
created by passing a corona virus through ferrets who do have the same ACE receptor that
humans have and COV-19 uses to infect cells.
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research ...
the announcement by Ralph Baric and co-workers at the University of North Carolina that
they had created a chimeric SARS-like virus, which expresses the spike (attachment protein)
of a bat coronavirus in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone (4). As in the cases of the
genetically modified H5N1 avian influenza viruses, the newly generated SARS-like virus is
potentially an extremely dangerous, possibly pandemic pathogen... That was 5 years ago.
I agree with the uselessness of bioweapons as a military operation. The economic blowback
we are now seeing is proof
But But what if this global crisis is exactly what those who want to totally control us
would want to happen. It is precipitating the roll out of medical martial law.
There are laws on the books that give extraordinary powers in the event of a global
epidemic or even a pandemic.
Not to mention in the US the Continuity of Government provisions strengthened massively
after 9/11. Every year the state of emergency triggered by 9/11 has been renewed. Mandatory
vaccinations for everyone. Quarantine powers granted The initiation of martial law. Now you
don't have to be a terrorist but just said to be infected and away you go.
I don't think COV-19 is the one to justify the full implementation but it is another giant
step for setting up the population for the full implementation.
US authorities are working to combat the spread of misinformation that has blossomed since the start of the coronavirus
pandemic
The US
Department of Justice announced Sunday it had shut down a website claiming to sell a
coronavirus vaccine, in its first act of federal enforcement against fraud in connection with
the pandemic.
Lawsuits had been filed against the site coronavirusmedicalkit.com, which claimed to sell
vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, when in fact there is no
such vaccine, the Justice Department said in a statement.
A Texas federal judge on Saturday ordered the site to shut down, according to the statement.
Its homepage, however, was still accessible as of Sunday evening.
"Due to the recent outbreak for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) the World Health Organization is
giving away vaccine kits. Just pay $4.95 for shipping," read a statement on the homepage.
It was followed by a place to leave bank account information to pay shipping fees.
The Justice Department did not specify how many people fell victim to the scam, but the
investigation is ongoing to identify who is behind the fraud and how much money was stolen.
The intervention by the federal judiciary system is part of ongoing efforts by US
authorities to combat the spread of misinformation that has blossomed since the start of the
pandemic.
Attorney General Bill Barr last week urged federal prosecutors to make stopping
misinformation a priority and called US civilians to report all such abuses to the National
Center for Disaster Fraud.
He also warned citizens against a variety of scams including selling fake treatments online,
imitating emails from the WHO or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) intended
to collect personal data, and asking for donations for imaginary organizations.
Simultaneously, the US judicial system is on the warpath to combat price gouging of products
such as hand sanitizer or hygienic masks.
More than 33,000 people have been infected by the coronavirus in the US, and 416 have died,
according to a tracker managed by Johns Hopkins University.
@prime
noticer What if–as seems to be happening in Italy–the journalists simply
pretend that bodies are piling up, perhaps by attributing other deaths to Corona?
Beware: whenever these people decide on a narrative, they are loath to back down once they
are proven wrong. They don't want to lose face.
There is a bit more encouraging news tonight. the numbers for Italy have come down just a
little bit more. Restrictions on the other hand have got even tighter, now only people who do
essential work are allowed out of their homes.
As I mentioned yesterday in a post that got swallowed by the ether, Italy is going through
some hard times financially.
Some self inflicted by governments spending more than the took in to stay in power and
some because the banks refused to take a haircut.
Many small businesses are just barely survive and a couple of months without income is
going to really hurt.
Michael Osterholm -
Wikipedia (born March 10, 1953) is an American infectious disease epidemiologist, regents
professor, and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the
University of Minnesota.
Scientific establishment want money, want importance, wants political influence. That create
difficult dilemma and force some people play the role of fear mongers.
BUMP 00:10 Intro 0:40 How bad is Coronavirus
4:00 Is
the virus an "old persons" disease 5:18 Incubation period
7:50
What can be done to prevent infection 13:45 Drug shortages 15:20 Sauna use
effect on infections 18:00 Was Coronavirus man-made
22:00
American Wild Deer diseases and Prions 32:00 Is Corona seasonal
35:00
Corona could be 10 times worse than the flu 35:25 Corona will stay around
for months 36:10 Coronavirus vs Spanish
flu 38:30 How can we prepare our
immune system 43:20 Do hand sanitizers and
masks work 50:00 We stockpile weapons more
than medical goods 54:30 Will people panic if they
are told the truth 56:00 Vaccines 1:02:00 Why a
virus would originate from China 1:11:30 What to do if you get
the flu 1:15:45 Lime disease and ticks
1:23:00
Effects of fire suppression on ecosystem 1:30:00 Vaccine for
Coronavirus
Sick nurses working, I have experienced that in every nursing home I have worked in in the
US. In California and NV. Luckily, I found the trick, If I have a headache that won't be
resolved with hydration, I figure it's a flu, I take 4 grams of C and 20,000 IU of D, and
usually that takes care of it, no more symptoms. In the case that it persists, I keep taking
4 grams of C ever few hours and high dose D until the symptoms subside. Usually doesn't take
too long, and ( a few hours) symptoms don't get bad.
Beware of any expert that promotes fearfulness and helplessness and tells us to just wait
for a "miracle" vaccine. Why didn't he tell us the truth about the success of vitamin C
therapy? Why didn't he tell us that some common medications like ibuprofen and heart
medications can impede healing of the virus.
div> It´s funny and very predictable how programmed into fear people have become
when it´s never the virus that kills you, but a weak immune system´s panick
reaction. If you believe the MSM is not aligned with certain agendas, the WHO is not
inherently corrupt, the pharmaceutical vaccine pushing industries have your best interests at
heart and doctors really know what they are talking about when they always look at the parts
as seperated and never the whole living system, then you will be shocked to learn the truth.
https://www.youtube.com/user/drvashiva/videos
I really look forward to a time, probably thanks to this crisis it will be in the not so
distant future, where people will begin to wake up, see through the BS we are being bombarded
with from the parasitical class of "rulers" or "elites". Then a paradigm shift in so many
ways will begin to take place... Greetings from a tireless truth seeker!
lass="comment-renderer-text-content expanded"> the difference between COVID 19 and the
spanish flu and the fear rampant about this comparison is that our health care system is a
little more advanced than what was available back in 1919 AND we are also so much more
informed regarding hygiene practices.........not discounting the seriousness of this
unprecendented occurrence.........but still great to focus on the "little" advantages we can
monopolise on. in order to tackle this global crisis head on and rationally
> @PowerfulJRE - Joe PLEASE have Michael Osterholm back on asap and please ask Michael
the following questions...
1) Are highly infectious airborne cold viruses killed by ozone from ozone/ion
generators(?) and
2) Why do medical facilities and schools no longer install or utilize UV disinfection
lighting like they use to utilize/install in entranceways, hallways, and rooms of hospitals
and school classrooms like they use to do 50-75 years ago(?)
N95 masks....remember kids its a one way valve on the front of those things....breath in,
and it filters the air....breath out, valve opens and the air goes out, " unfiltered". If
you're sick, these masks will not prevent you from spreading it around.
> Osterholm is a catalog of infectious disease info that is beyond valuable . . he's in
his 60s . . maybe the planet has others who could fill his shoes in my home state of
Minnesota; of course, I hope so! He also has a good sense of humor, managing a little chuckle
when Joe suggested if any president could get around the informed consent issue of testing
vaccines on prisoners, such as nasty rapists, it would be Trump. I'm glad to receive all the
helpful info without a steady dose of politics and conspiracy chitchat. Now I know that my
prebiotic and probiotic pills are only good for temporary relief and that my natural flora
and fauna in the gut will take over...
51:46 "We spend about 0.001% on
public health compared to our defense department and yet look how vulnerable...it's the
bugs...it's not a war...it's not a missile...is bringing the world economy down right
now....it's a darn virus."
Can you imagine if even half the US defence budget was redirected into health care and
research!! We (the world) spend trillions on arms and now we are fighting an enemy that
bullets can't kill!! Infuriating!! 😡😡😠😠
> How do you draw the conclusion that such viruses would always come from China? MERS
was first discovered in the middle east, the 2009 flu originated in mexico, the Spanish flu
originated in Kansas. I mean like if you search China on the pandemic wikipedia page there's
only SARS and several flu outbreaks.
Also Wild life is not part of the cuisine in most of China, and it's really more of a
status symbol for rich people to be able to find exotic food
"article"> There is another nasty virus going around here in Victoria BC Canada that is
a bit like CORVID-19.. I got it in mid-December and I am just getting over it. My friends
recovered in two to three weeks. The symptoms include a cough that goes on and on leaving you
breathless, extremely sore throat, runny nose, extreme weakness. Even the emergency room
doctor said she had it. Have you heard of it? I think I got it travelling in a Handi-dart van
with some elderly, sneezing Chinese speaking males.
51:40 Good reminder of war
against missiles vs virus. Budgets... 53:00 his talk to
banking/finance people. Scary. Like children, whereas Michael is more analytical, like
engineers/scientists, see it all as problem-solution.
Unfortunately, we in the US are way behind the curve in finding and locking down clusters.
In fact super-spreaders - mostly young fools ignoring social distancing on beaches, in parks,
restaurants etc - are now popping up, most recently returning from Florida spring break to
Utah. Testing rates remain abysmal.
Idaho cases just went exponential, doubling about every 3 days. Republic Governor there is
pretty much a copy of Trump, as in a dangerous idiot, giving press conferences with multiple
staff hovering around, downplaying the risks, lying about test availability, talking about
protecting businesses, etc.
A very interesting discussion by Dr.
Wolfgang Wodarg. He compare this epidemic hype with famous Andersen tale about the Naked King.
He points out on the fact that test for the virus was developed in a hurry and it is unclear how many false
positive it allow.
All-in-all a very interesting, educational discussion by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg even you do not agree with him.
Two issues continue to be misrepresented which systematicly allow "corona" to take on the spectre of the Zombie Apocalypse:
1. Social distancing keeps people out of the sneeze-cough zone for droplet contamination by air. Yet social shunning of those
who continue to cough and sneeze in public in fact is what needs to be made the primary line of defense. Not the crowds of people
stocking up on toilet paper but virtuously standing 6 feet apart, clueless about their own role fostering the Zombie Apocalypse
imagery.
2. Self-inoculation is the second source of infection, and way under-emphasizied while again disguised by virtuous but meaningless
ritual behavior.
All the talk is about hand washing, surface decontamination and hand sanitizers which ultimately are a fools errand since this
additional new, and critical ritual behavior often fails to emphasize the absolutely important disease connection that comes from
sticking your very own (presumed) dirty fingers into one's own nose, mouth and/or eyes.
Few are 100% observant about how many surfaces they actually touch before the stick their "washed or sanitized hands" back
into their own mouth, nose or eyes.
Washing your hands remains #1 in importance, but so does WATCHING your hands.
"Don't touch your face" misses the point too - another message fail - one must vividly make the connection between their own
fingers and their own body orifices leading to the upper respiratory tract. And continue to be aware of this connection 24/7 -
no exceptions.
Organic homemake hand sanitizers are as good as the last thing you touched or the next person who cough next to your clorox-wiped
surfaces.
The media goes out of its way to instill the Zombie Apocalypse vision of this "flu" - it is everywhere, you must fear everything
and nothing can protect you. If you touch it, you will die. If it is in the air, you will die. You never know who has it. You
are a victim. And it is someone else's fault.
So one can pretend to do useless and ritual activities but ignore one's own role and one's own personal responsibility for
its contact and spread.
1. Socially shun anyone who fails to protect their coughs or sneezes, until they learn new habits - how does staying 6 feet
away from everyone teach the offenders new habits?
2. Wash your hands and watch what you touch. 100% of the time.
TSA is now with us 100% of the time after 911- regardless of the numerical threat. Proper self-hygiene needs to be with us
100% of the time too - and never should have left us.
Here in the UK either our management are incompetent of they know something we don't is my take.
Apart from summary figures broken down by Health district for 'got it' or 'dead from it' there is nothing. Testing apart from
in hospitals is unknown unless you are famous so no-one has any idea what the viruses progress is in the community. What is happening
at individual hospitals is probably a state secret now.
Even though, between themselves, they knew it was coming at the latest in mid January, they did nothing. No extra orders for
masks, ventilators etc.
Yet they are allowing fear and panic to rip through the community and huge economic damage.
I haven't yet properly worked out cui bono but I have my suspicions. But they are passing some draconian laws.
The actual mortality rate may be closer to 1% or less with most of it concentrated in the over 70s. The reasonable thing to do
would have been to protect seniors while letting everyone else go about their business. Nuking the economy with lockdowns is the
politicians' way of competing with each other to show they're "doing something." It's craven behavior not leadership.
Thank you Larry for the sobering analysis of Corvid-19.
I only disagree with your emphasis that the social distancing is the main cause of economic collapse.
Methinks that the everything bubble in coordination of unrepayable debt fiasco has arrived, and the ELITES/media are distracting
from refinancing the Wall Street gamblers, Share-buyback artists, Private equity leveraged asset strippers and the offshore artist
looser.
We are replaying the 2008 modus operandi get the elites saved financially and let the poor people try to survive on their own
as they assume all the obligation of the
elite rescue
Larry Johnson - I'm afraid I'm rather more of JJ Jackson's view as to the potential seriousness of this disease.
But the economic effects are already pretty devastating. 10% of world trade is tourism and related. Entertainment is a big
industry. Both hard hit and other sectors too. Pensioners spend a fair bit and many are no longer doing so.
So whether we panic or not that's the reality. A reality superimposed on a weak and vulnerable economy. Also on a financial
system already on life support.
That's more the case in my country than yours, by quite a long chalk. Even so, though I believe the US is in a better position
to recover, the hit's coming our way wherever we live. You can't take that amount of economic activity out and expect there to
be only a few bumps in the road.
Theoretically the best approach is yours. Business as usual, tuck the vulnerable away, take such casualties as come along among
the less vulnerable. Could even be an opportunity for economic regeneration along Trump 2016 lines.
This hasn't happened and I doubt it would have even had the strategy been agreed on and adopted early on. And there's too much
disconnect between the rulers and ruled for anything constructive much to happen now, certainly in UK politics though it would
be presumptuous in me to venture an opinion here about yours. This is already a big deal and should be treated as such.
I've been following your analyses on Russiagate and they're on the money every time. I hope the pandemic isn't used as an opportunity
to bury that disgraceful affair. But there'll be plenty hoping it's just that.
@Dd I
don't know, but I have a lot of questions about things I have been reading, from the data,
demonstrating the weakness of the virus, and non-lethality, to a New York Times opinion
piece, authored by a "writer, producer and yoga teacher" who apparently contracted the virus,
and had to be hospitalized noting that it did not keep her (Fiona Lowenstein) from taking a
"selfie", apparently with a non-sterile, yet-somehow-permitted-in-the-hospital room cell
phone? You normally have all that stuff bagged up. I dunno. Check out the article and her
pic, judge for yourself.
It isn't that I don't think it is possible, or true, about this or other similar stories,
or that the data is fake or false .there's just so much to digest and some of it seems
incredulous and/or contradictory.
From comments: "They had three months to prepare. Their attitude: "They need us more than we
need them. Get ready for brexit." That is all they care about. Their criminal neglect and insane
obsession has consigned tens of thousands to death. "
Notable quotes:
"... nearly 4,000 NHS workers appealed to the prime minister to "protect the lives of the life-savers" and resolve the "unacceptable" shortage of protective equipment. ..."
"... Dr Parmar told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "We have had doctors tell us they feel like lambs to the slaughter, that they feel like cannon fodder. GPs tell us that they feel absolutely abandoned. ..."
"... In an open letter to The Sunday Times, some 3,963 doctors said staff were "putting their lives on the line every day" by treating coronavirus patients without appropriate protection. ..."
"... The letter said: "Frontline doctors have been telling us for weeks that they do not feel safe at work. ..."
Coronavirus: NHS doctors feel like 'lambs to slaughter' without protective kit, warns senior
medic. 'We must really stress to the prime minister that we need to protect the front line
here'
Doctors battling the coronavirus outbreak feel like "lambs to the slaughter" without
adequate protection equipment, a senior medic has said.
Dr Rinesh Parmar, chair of the Doctors' Association, said frontline NHS staff were being
treated as "cannon fodder" as he launched a desperate appeal to Boris Johnson for more
resources to keep medics safe.
Dr Parmar, a consultant anaesthetist who is working on a Covid-19 intensive care ward, said
it was the "calm before the storm" and NHS staff were braced for a surge in cases.
His warning came as nearly 4,000 NHS workers appealed to the prime minister to "protect
the lives of the life-savers" and resolve the "unacceptable" shortage of protective
equipment.
Dr Parmar told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "We have had doctors tell us they feel like
lambs to the slaughter, that they feel like cannon fodder. GPs tell us that they feel
absolutely abandoned.
... ... ...
In an open letter to The Sunday Times, some 3,963 doctors said staff were "putting their
lives on the line every day" by treating coronavirus patients without appropriate
protection.
The letter said: "Frontline doctors have been telling us for weeks that they do not feel
safe at work.
"Intensive care doctors and anaesthetists have told us they have been carrying out the
highest-risk procedure, putting a patient on a ventilator, with masks that expired in
2015."
Microware can be used for cleaning if you make the mask slightly wet. In this case they will
heat to over 60 0 C. Other then using alcohol this is probably the fastest method of
disinfection
Chronology of the death of a French doctor today. Came back from a trip to Madagascar a month
ago in good shape. Was working at Compiegnes, which because a cluster in mid-February when it
received a taxi driver who was positive and treated him without special precautions. Got sick
and was quarantined 3 weeks ago, i.e. early March, two weeks after exposition.
Died today. That is to say that most of the dead we see now might have been affected since
mid-Feb.
Dr. Dan Lee Dinke: All Corona-viruses have a common weakness:heat kills them. Specifically
relative short exposure to 56°C. Breathing hot air in a sauna for 20 minutes will mostly
clean the upper respiratory tract of corona-viruses, but a hair dryer can also help if no
sauna available.
The video is worth to watch and could save lives through such a simple method.
@LP #52
Wrong. The lower respiratory tract - the temperature is stable via mixing outside air with
inside. Otherwise people could not survive in extreme cold or extreme heat situations.
The hot air might kill the virus outside; it won't kill the virus in the lower respiratory
tract.
In Wuhan, ground zero for the virus, four healthcare workers -- including doctors -- have
told CNN of the difficulties facing medical crews on the ground. They have asked to remain
anonymous to avoid repercussions.
Through telephone conversations with CNN and posts on Chinese social media, they told of low
hospital resources. In private groups online, those identified as hospital staff are
coordinating with members of the public to import protective equipment as they treat an
increasing number of infected patients.
"In terms of resources, the whole of Wuhan is lacking," one Wuhan-based healthcare worker
told CNN by phone. This person said they were looking for more protective clothing,
protective goggles and masks.
"It's really like we're going into battle stripped to the waist," one healthcare worker
added, using a Chinese idiom that equates to "going into battle without armor".
One hospital staff member claims healthcare workers have resorted to wearing diapers to work
so as to avoid having to remove their HAZMAT suits, which they say are in short supply. A
doctor on her Chinese social media Weibo page described similar accounts at another Wuhan
hospital.
"My family members are definitely worried about me, but I still have to work," another
doctor told. But she said that she is hopeful they will ultimately get the gear they need. "Our
bosses, our hospital suppliers will definitely find a way to get these stocks to us," she
added.
It's not clear if these accounts are anecdotal or whether there are widespread shortages
across Wuhan.
Chinese state media has also shared posts from multiple Wuhan hospitals in which they ask
for public donations of medical supplies. They report that one hospital staff member said the
current supplies "are only able to sustain three or four days".
The Wuhan Health Commission has requisitioned over 10,000 beds from 24 hospitals to be used
in the treatment of confirmed and suspected cases.
On Friday, Wuhan officials acknowledged that local hospitals were struggling to accommodate
people seeking medical attention and said measures were being put into place to alleviate the
situation.
State media also reported that the city aims to build a 25,000 square meter (269,100 square
foot) new facility within a week, increasing hospital capacity by 1,000 beds, and that several
medical centers in Hubei province are asking for medical gear donations.
I read of the new tool scanning online messages. Checking in: late afternoon my two comments,
in reply, failed to appear in the "Western Governments failures" thread.
[.] Gates Foundation monies via CEPI are financing development of a radical new vaccine
method known as messengerRNA or mRNA.
They are co-funding the Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech company, Moderna Inc., to
develop a vaccine against the Wuhan novel coronavirus, now called SARS-CoV-2. Moderna's
other partner is the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a
part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Head of NIAID is Dr Anthony Fauci, the
person at the center of the Trump Administration virus emergency response. Notable about
the Fauci-Gates Moderna coronavirus vaccine, mRNA-1273, is that it has been rolled out in a
matter of weeks, not years, and on February 24 went directly to Fauci's NIH for tests on
human guinea pigs, not on mice as normal. Moderna's chief medical adviser, Tal Zaks,
argued, "I don't think proving this in an animal model is on the critical path to getting
this to a clinical trial."
Another notable admission by Moderna on its website is the legal disclaimer, "Special
Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: These risks, uncertainties, and other factors
include, among others: the fact that there has never been a commercial product utilizing
mRNA technology approved for use." In other words, completely unproven for human health and
safety.
Another biotech company working with unproven mRNA technology to develop a vaccine for
the COVID-19 is a German company, CureVac. Since 2015 CureVac has received money from the
Gates Foundation to develop its own mRNA technology. In January the Gates-backed CEPI
granted more than $8 million to develop a mRNA vaccine for the novel coronavirus.[.]
======
early fall the CDC planning and forgot to order test kits and ventilators:---{hapstance}
---the recruitment of
Public Health Advisors (Quarantine Program) country wide major cities, every state
Open Period:2019-11-15 to 2020-05-15 Salary $511440. to $93077.
Job summary: - responsible for preventing the importation and spread of communicable diseases
from abroad and spread of these diseases domestically.[.]
Duties:
[Provide technical assistance, consultation and guidance to national, state and / or local
agencies; health organizations; federal, state and local law enforcement agencies [.] and
quarantine activities [.] ]
"... Financialisation operates through three different conduits: changes in the structure and operation of financial markets, changes in the behaviour of nonfinancial corporations, and changes in economic policy. ..."
"... Yes, the contrived-virus (convid19) is most certainly a smoke screen for global financial collapse ..."
"... The media and the Government are in lockstep. They are quarantining areas and locking down, not to contain the virus but to contain the ensuing violence when people finally and hopefully figure out that they are getting royally screwed. ..."
"... The oil markets are playing a role in the market turmoil. And its not the Corona virus, but the radical state overreaction aided by the cynical shameless hype mongering media that has crashed the markets. ..."
"... Corona as an economic instrument ? Can't argue that medical claims are just as inflated as the amount of money that has been printed. As a companion piece to Frank's excellent article take a look at Renegade Inc's film explaining why a Fiat economy is bound to end in tears. ..."
The years since the 1970s are unprecedented in terms of their volatility in the price of commodities, currencies, real estate
and stocks. There have been 4 waves of financial crises: a large number of banks in three, four or more countries collapsed at
about the same time. Each wave was followed by a recession, and the economic slowdown which began in 2008 was the most severe
and most global since the great depression of the 1930s."
Manias, Crashes and Panics – Kindelberger and Aliber
Interestingly enough 1971 was the year when Nixon took the world off the gold standard, which had been in effect since 1944. Fiat-bugs
please note.
More to the point, however. Booms and busts have always been normal in a capitalist economy. But in recent years this has been
a feature which has been exacerbated by and involves that part of the economy indicated by the acronym FIRE (Finance, Insurance and
Real Estate) and its growing importance in the economy in both qualitative and quantitative terms.
Financialisation is a process whereby financial markets, financial institutions, and financial elites gain greater influence over
economic policy and economic outcomes. Financialisation transforms the functioning of economic systems at both the macro and micro
levels. Its principal impacts are to:
elevate the significance of the financial rent-seeking sector relative to the real value-producing sector
transfer income from the
real value-producing sector to the financial sector
increase income inequality and contribute to wage stagnation
Since 1970 this part of the economy has grown from almost nothing to 8% of US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This means that one
dollar in every ten is associated with finance. In terms of corporate profits finance's contribution now represents around 40% of
all corporate profits in the US. This is a significant figure and, moreover it does not include those overseas earnings of companies
whose profits are repatriated to their countries of origin.
Thus, the increasing presence and role of finance in overall economic activity and the increase of profits channelled to the financial
sector represent the salient indicators as to what has been termed financialization. It is argued by some that financialization may
put the economy at risk of debt deflation and prolonged recession.
Financialisation operates through three different conduits: changes in the structure and operation of financial markets, changes
in the behaviour of nonfinancial corporations, and changes in economic policy. Countering financialisation calls for a multifaceted
agenda that:
restores policy control over financial markets
challenges the neoliberal economic policy paradigm encouraged by financialisation
makes corporations responsive to interests of stakeholders other than just financial markets
reforms the political process so as
to diminish the influence of corporations and wealthy elites
The rent-seeking nature of finance is common to all forms of insurance, banking, monopolistic pricing, and property. This has
not always been the case, or at least wasn't as pronounced as it is at present. There was a time when the banking system was junior
partner in the relationship between banks and industry. Banks provided industry with loans for investment with a view to maximising
profit for both. This is patently not the case today.
Generally speaking, banks will lend for property purchases, stock buy-backs, and perhaps loans for dubious mergers and acquisitions.
Moreover, when we speak of 'profits' this has now assumed a rather obscure meaning. Profits were generally understood as a realization
of surplus value.
Firms made stuff – goods and services – which had a value, which was then sold on the market at a profit. Given the competitive
nature of the system, firms invested in increased capital formation and output which increased productivity, surplus value and ultimately
profit.
With regard to Investment banks like Goldman Sachs and the commercial banks they do not create value; they are purely rent-extractive.
For example, commercial banks make a loan out of thin air, debit this loan to the would-be mortgagee who then becomes a source of
permanent income flow to the bank for the next 25 years.
Goldman Sachs makes year-on-year 'profits' by doing – what exactly? Nothing particularly useful. But then Goldman Sachs is part
of the cabal of central banks and Treasury departments around the world. It is not unusual to see the interchange of the movers and
shakers of the financial world who oscillate between these institutions. Hank Paulson, Mario Draghi, Steve Mnuchin, Robert Rubin
on and on it goes.
This financialised system now moves in ever-increasing levels of instability. But what did we expect when the whole institutional
structure – its rules, regulations and practises – were deregulated and finance was let off the leash.
Thatcher, Reagan, the 'Big Bang' had set the scene and there was no going back: neoliberalism and globalization had become the
norm. From this point on, however, there followed a litany of crises mostly in the developing world but these disturbances were in
due course to move into the developed world. Serial bubbles began to appear.
US stock prices [which of course would only ever go up] began to decline in the Spring of 2000, and fell by 40% in the next
three years. Whilst the prices of NASDAQ stocks decline by 80%."
Manias, Panics and Crashe s – Kindleberger and Aliber
Chastened monies moved out of this market and into property speculation. It is common knowledge what happened next. The run-up
to 2008 was floated on a sea of cheap credit. The price of stocks pushed property prices to vertiginous heights until – pop, went
the weasel.
The reason was quite simple. Any boom and bust has an inflexion point where boom turns to bust. This is when buyers incomes, and
borrowers inability to extend their loans could no longer support the rise in the price level. Euphoria turned to panic as borrowers
who once clamoured to buy were now desperate to sell. 2008 had arrived.
The strange thing, however, regarding the property price boom-and-bust was that it was based upon pure speculation. Prices went
up, prices went down. Some – a few – made money, quite a few lost money. Investors were wondering what had happened to their gains
which they had made during the up phase. Where had all that money gone?
The short answer is – nowhere. It was never there in the first place. It was fictitious capital. Gains which had appeared and
then disappeared like a will 'o' the wisp. As opposed to physical capital – machinery, labour and raw materials, and money capital
which enabled through purchase the production of value to take place, we have fictitious capital which is a claim on future production.
If my house goes up by 10% that is a capital gain, if everybody's house goes up by 10% that is asset-price inflation
Fictitious capital is a by-product of capitalist accumulation. It is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political
economy. It is introduced in chapter 25 of the third volume of Capital. Fictitious capital contrasts with what Marx calls "real capital",
which is capital actually invested in physical means of production and workers, and "money capital", which is actual funds being
held.
The market value of fictitious capital assets (such as stocks and securities) varies according to the expected return or yield
of those assets in the future, which Marx felt was only indirectly related to the growth of real production. Effectively, fictitious
capital represents "accumulated claims, legal titles, to future production'' and more specifically claims to the income generated
by that production.
The moral of the story is that it is not possible to print wealth or value. Money in its paper representation of the real thing,
e.g., gold, is not wealth it is a claim on wealth.
Of course, this would be lost on establishment economists, bankers, and financial journalists, whose view is that the policy should
be QE, liquidity injections, and so forth. A one-trick pony.
And what has all of this to do with Coronavirus? Well, everything actually.
I take it that we all knew that the grotesquely overleveraged world economy was heading for a 'correction' but that's a rather
a soothing description. "Massive correction" would be a better description. That is the nature of the beast. The world was a bubble
of paper money looking for a pin. It found one.
Have a nice day all.
John ,
The "gold" backed currency is just another myth of stability, gold is controlled by central banks and hoarded by the owners of
such, the syndicate in pc terms for delicate ears. Meaning the syndicate can adjust it as they please and decide what gold is
worth as they've done in the past on a weekly basis. Inflation and deflation are used to rob the vast majority of people and expect
there to be deflation coming up as that is the worst of the two. Price stability is much more desirable across the staples that
people actually need, not what backs the man made tool called currency. The goal of responsible civil government should be full
employment of its citizens (and price stability of essential for living), especially in productive industries, not useless luxury
industries which do not benefit in any way. Now QE is just another form of inflation on a massive scale, good if you have say
a house that will go up, but the more currency you have the less it's worth and the central banksters are using it.
Prices rise
but wages and salaries do not rise anywhere near inflation, it's a slow sinking into poverty and vassalage of which mortgages
are just a form of debt slavery. You can own nothing, you're just a renter of all things to be molded and caged if necessary by
the syndicate owners and their God-State.
At some point no one will be able to afford houses and the crash will come. They DO
NOT CARE if you payoff the debt, what's important is that you pay to service the debt thus keeping you in line. If you go out
of line they can just demand the money now, thus putting you in the streets. When the time comes the God-State will take possession
of all housing, all industry etc and the slavery will be complete. Just like the Soviet Union there will be an elite that are
immune "gods" to all this, there is actually already this today, the "olympians" kingpins etc whatever you want to call them.
Biff ,
Yes, the contrived-virus (convid19) is most certainly a smoke screen for global financial collapse. Another day down
under and another super tanker full of media hype and horseshit arrives. But then it struck me. Most of us know that Convid19
is about as deadly as the common cold.
In fact the Government even tells you this if you listen carefully to press conferences. This to me can only mean one obvious
thing.
The media and the Government are in lockstep. They are quarantining areas and locking down, not to contain the virus but
to contain the ensuing violence when people finally and hopefully figure out that they are getting royally screwed. The warning
flag will be shutdown of social media services or the internet in your area. Then watch out. They have created a world where our
only means of communication is the internet. You can't even make a phone call in Aus without the internet. Imagine it's not there.
Robbobbobin ,
"Yes, the contrived-virus (convid19) is most certainly a smoke screen for global financial collapse."
Are you saying that if COVID-19 were not contrived but a genuine public health problem then it could (so would) not
be used as a smokescreen, i.e. that the contrivance of a virus of some sort (in this case COVID-19) is an essential aspect
of your narrative; that if there were no pathogen engendering a pandemic problem then a serviceable smokescreen could (so would)
not be contrived based on some factor other than a biological one, or are you saying something else altogether?
simply put ,
Money exists to facilitate trade.
So if the economy grows you need to put more money into circulation, if it shrinks you need to take money out of circulation.
That's why a gold standard does not work very well in a modern world, it cannot adapt to the changing environment, you cannot
increase or decrease the amount of gold in the world (not as needed anyway) so you end up with not enough "money" available (or
too much), both disastrous for the economy.
The banking system is corrupt, but not because of fiat money.
Ken Kenn ,
Lenin talked about making Statues out of Gold post a Communist Society so its' inherent worth is in the eye of the shareholder
in its price or it's perceived future price.
Money ( fiat or otherwise ) is only an agreed exchange of labour to price of goods between a group of swindler Capitalists
who ideally would wish that all the other Capitalists to pay their workers more so that they can buy the other Capitalists goods
who don't pay their workers more.
The state of play at the moment is a bit Rooseveltian.
Is it better to be a poorer capitalist temporarily than not a future capitalist at all?
the UK Neo – Liberal position says yes only because there is a tiny chance that the masses will twig what's going on and why
it's going on in this way.
80% of wages is better than 0% of wages/income.
This is predicted to last just 3 months.
If it lasts a year watch it all change.
Fact is- in the end the Middle Classes and down will pick up the tab.
And if the 'We ' are picking up the tab anyway ' We ' may as well demand and get 100% of wages/income.
As Thatcher said – It's our money – not the State's.
Theoretically of course in a democracy.
Toby Russell ,
I don't believe this or that form of money can ever be the be-all-and-end-all form. Fiat has its place, a gold standard
has its place, shells have their place, gift exchanges, IOUs, etc. There are reasonable arguments to be made for each, but each
reasonable argument, to be reasonable, would have to include historical context / societal conditions as a very large part of
its logic.
Far more important than 'money as wealth' is how we culturally understand the nature of wealth that money can only ever
be a claim on (an important function, an important component of wealth). As Rhys points out below, wealth is a slippery thing
– it's subjective to a considerable degree after all – but if one thing unites all 'instances' of it, that would be its networked
nature. There is no wealth at all without some sort of complex, living and healthy ecosystem to generate it, continually,
dynamically. So another feature of wealth would be its dynamic and ever evolving nature. Another would be that there is thus no
final guarantee of Always Having So Much Wealth I Never Have To Work Again. (Whatever work is.
Bullshit jobs, anyone ?)
And as for productivity, well, what's that? Is productivity only productive when wealth is produced? On what definition of
wealth? Good sleep produces health, assuming good exercise, good diet, healthy soil, richly biodiverse ecosystems, etc. The same
is true of friendships, community, trust, fun All things that cannot be manufactured. Not that there's anything wrong with manufacture,
which etymologically comes from manual , the hand, thus skill, craftsmanship, etc. All that good stuff.
So it's slippery, nuanced, open to discussion. What kills wealth, on the other hand – and is killing wealth right in front
of our eyes – is narrow, dogmatic assertions about what it is. One's thing's for sure: it's not money (he asserts dogmatically).
Money needs a thorough demotion, in my view, and things like sleep, community and trust need a great big cultural promotion.
Yet again, we are at a strange and mighty inflection point historically. They're popping up now with alarming regularity! Something
is obviously in the offing.
Will our imaginations and courage fail us this time around?
Here in France last weekend was Acte 70, with a huge number of gilets jaunes out on the streets for the 70th consecutive
week, protesting against 'austerity' and neoliberalism. This weekend, Acte 71, thus far there's been no street protests. I guess
the gilets jaunes will know that it will bring bad publicity for them at the moment. What they are doing instead is issuing
a massive call for everyone to open windows on their home this evening at 9pm, and bash pots and pans as loudly as possible. It'll
be interesting to see how many people will do this.
No singing on balconys baloney here.
Alan Tench ,
Please speculate: why is the number of deaths compared to infections very much lower in all the Scandinavian countries than elsewhere
in Europe? Let's just assume the figures might be reasonably accurate for this one. Also, looking at all the figures (sorry, I
used Wikipedia for this), am I right in suspecting that the number of recoveries is being blatantly unreported in just about every
country?
Ted ,
The oil markets are playing a role in the market turmoil. And its not the Corona virus, but the radical state overreaction
aided by the cynical shameless hype mongering media that has crashed the markets. As the evidence rolls in, the actual Corona
virus, and not whatever it is that is going on in Italy (a radical statistical outlier among all world nations), is rather boring.
Much more boring than the normal flu virus. And let's not forget the possibility of an epidemic of false positives in a radical
increase in PCR testing for Corona virus. Here in the West of the US, only 7% or so of tests yield positive results what if 100%
of those are false positives during the normal tail end of flu season? see for example:
'I have a five pound note, issued by the Bank of England. It clearly states: "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of five
pounds on demand." It is signed by the Chief Cashier on behalf of the Governor of the Bank of England. However, if I were to
take this bank note to the Bank of England and demand my five pounds, I would be swiftly escorted from the building.'
Unlikely. If they could not oblige you there they would certainly refer you to a nearby commercial bank who would be happy
to pay you five one-pound coins, or the equivalent in any lesser denomination, on their behalf, as promised. Of course, that would
not counter your point, but it would keep their promise.
Seamus Padraig ,
OT: If anyone here wants a good laugh, read the comments on this ridiculous tweet.
Very amusing Seamus (but not funny for the victims) however, having read through all the tweets I didn't see one advocating "Spend
many happy hours building your own Lego model of Netanyahu's bulldozers"
Jen ,
CIA must be desperate to recruit kiddies to spy on their parents through online games.
Mike Ellwood ,
Quite. As Minsky said, anyone can create money. The trick is to get it accepted.
Governments who issue currency give it value simply by insisting that their citizens pay them tax in it. And how do the citizens
get the currency in the first place? Governments spend it into the economy.
If you had a closed, autarkic (no imports or exports) economy, government could control the value of its currency pretty closely
if it chose to. It gets more complicated in the real world, where you need to import real resources, and your currency is being
traded in the Foreign Exchange market. It helps if you have something that other countries want, that you can export.
At the end of the day, what matters are real resources (people, as well as things). As we see with the toilet roll panic (and
other, more serious shortages).
Toby Russell ,
Your comment gets my vote, though I would argue that this discussion, and the point you make, needs much more airing. As such,
the argument is not academic, but vital. And this new Bizzaro World we just burst into is the right place for it. And loudly.
Seamus Padraig ,
By the way, Ben Swann did a great show the other night analyzing the media hype surrounding Corona Virus data. Enjoy
The Japan numbers have puzzled me for a while, since they are no slouches when it comes to managing epidemics. Where are the
exploding numbers for this modern plague in Japan?
At some point, folks gotta say that the WHO needs to be reformed or closed down.
John Pretty ,
Ted, there has been no coronavirus epidemic in Japan and no panic:
Japan may have a healthier elderly population compared to the same age demographic in China and other parts of the world due to
diet (less Western junk food consumption over past decades) and rates of smoking probably lower as well. Air pollution levels
in Japan probably much lower due to greater use of public transport and Shinkansen bullet trains in particular since 1960s. No
wonder Japan still wants to go ahead with Tokyo Olympics.
Seamus Padraig ,
Another ringer from Frank Lee!
But then Goldman Sachs is part of the cabal of central banks and Treasury departments around the world. It is not unusual
to see the interchange of the movers and shakers of the financial world who oscillate between these institutions. Hank Paulson,
Mario Draghi, Steve Mnuchin, Robert Rubin
They don't call it Government Sachs for nothing.
#CoronaHoax
DunGroanin ,
Let's play them at their own game.
I want to see McDonnell put out a clear simple response of what measures are actually needed – i listed them a few posts ago
in haste but they still hold:
1. All self employed / free lancers etc ought to be paid at least 60% of their last years submitted accounts on a monthly basis
directly by HMRC – they have their bank details and these figures at hand a simple database query can be constructed and tested
within hours – There can be a max limit to that based on numbers of children.
2. All others without such records ought to be allowed the full and increased benefit amount.
3. The 80% for employees is smoke and mirrors – that also should be 60% and no charges or NI / pensions/ student loans etc
to complicate matters.
4. All rent private and social to be suspended. All interest on mortgages, creditcards, loans and overdrafts to be cancelled
permanently until normal service is resumed (not accumulated aa debt).
5. All capital payments to be suspended.
6. All council tax collections suspended.
7. BBC licence fee cancelled and direct funding by the HMRC introduced to provide pybluc service broadcasting only.
8. All credit ratings and any such nonsense to be suspended on individuals records – nothing should be added for failing to
keep up payments since beginning of March.
9. Any government funds into banks, corporations, pfi's to be accompanied by equity stakes in these and retained until all
such balance sheet investment has been returned.
BigB ,
I see your bubble has yet to pop, DG?
The "massive correction" – that is value destruction – has to happen before any return to "real, productive" values can occur.
Financialisation distorted productive values so much that any "normalisation" would destroy the value of money. Normal service
cannot just be resumed.
Put simply: there is more money than productive goods and services that can be claimed on now, and in the future. A lot more
a lot, lot more. At least 75 times more.
As I've said time after time: the economy has to expand exponentially or it collapses. As it stands: there is no pause or reset
button without massive value destruction. Which could be done responsibly – a la the heterodox economists "jubilee" – or irresponsibly
by keep blowing the everything bubbles with QE 5.
If you understand which mechanism is being employed: you will understand home isolation and draconian lockdowns. If debt deflation
becomes hyperinflation you might wake up in Rhodesia or the Weimar Republic and you know what came next? 🙁
DunGroanin ,
Have you missed the 40% drop in stocks BB?
And the wiping out of business Goodwill value of many a small business?
Its a major scalping. Which we are letting happen as they say 'hide' from each other. The banks are laughing all the way to
the bank.
BigB ,
No: collapse of financial assets is just the prelude. The real contagion is corporate bond market: full of over-leveraged Zombie
corporations. Particularly stressed are BBB bond junkies of the shale market but the whole market is junked out on a decade of
cheap money. When they cannot pay their way – that is, service their debt – then the defaults, layoffs, and delinquencies start
probably in the second quarter.
In other words: it hasn't even started yet. Problem: excessive debt. Solution: create more debt (and buy up the most toxic
bonds). Any rebound makes matters worse in the longer term.
One scenario to watch is when Saudi oil hits the market in April. That will put deflationary pressure on oil which is already
at $23. That could cause things to cascade (all asset classes are proxies for each other – Dr Jack Rasmus check out his blog for
explainers).
The thing is DG: this has sweet FA to do with any virus. The knock-on effect of which would have been containable I guess.
But to start an oil price war? MbS was either recklessly irresponsible, or quite deliberate. My feeling is the latter. It was
coming anyway. What better than to blame *force majeure* of a virus? And have populations on lockdown as the effects wind through
to Main St.
DunGroanin ,
I agree on the whole BB.
The thing about debt is that it can be cancelled! If that means these 'investments' will also be wiped out.
BigB ,
As Michael Hudson says "debts that cannot be paid, will not be paid". We cancel the debts, or we cancel the future. No choice
to be made really, is there?
Mike Ellwood ,
Not sure if this what you meant above, but in case not, NIC should be suspended indefinitely, both for employers and employed,
and self-employed.
Harry Stotle ,
Corona as an economic instrument ?
Can't argue that medical claims are just as inflated as the amount of money that has been printed. As a companion piece to Frank's excellent article take a look at Renegade Inc's film explaining why a Fiat economy is bound
to end in tears.
Welcome to corona capitalism or the corona casino! 😀
nottheonly1 ,
Roughly translated:
The masses owe, what the billionaires own.
What the masses still own, is now taken away.
Those who understand, see that a most generous unconditional guaranteed basic income/compensation for damages suffered on life
and property by those who run the present system, will not suffice.
A system that is sold to the masses as the gold standard of governance and distribution, has driven the collective of the species
closer to extinction. Maybe extinction is the goal after all? If that is not the case, then the UBI accounts to be like a glimpse
into a world without money in any form. A world in which everything is indeed free. Mother Earth has never been compensated for
the damages and destruction done to her and her more connected life forms.
For various reasons, corona-whatever has the potential – and it was created to do/utilize that potential – to virtually/spiritually
grow a mushroom out of homo sapiens' head. Due to the constant absorption of aerosolized air, having glyphosate in the bloodstream
down into the bone marrow, being exposed to wireless **radiation** constantly and occupied with social media 24/7 has rendered
the human immune system a sick joke compared to what it was before the commodification of everything and everything that will
come.
The bucket must stop here. And I am more than willing to go. Just don't make Soylent Green from me. But to allow a human being
to leave, when they decide to be "I'm good! I'm ready!" would also mean to allow fellow humans to leave at their choosing. Before
they are forcefully removed from the pension/social security/Renten system.
Now is the time to end social networking. No more facebook, twitter, or whatever. The addiction of the masses to panic is wholly
abused right now. And the u.s. has a president who thought he could weather it all out alone. And so did many more – doing everything
they can to maintain their grip on power and wealth.
But the gallows are coming. For all of them. And that is not the result of the rulings of corrupt courts. They will join the
only waiting line the rich ever have to experience. The call for the closure of all u.s./il/nato biological weapons laboratories
has echoed yesterday. It will be followed by the end of militarism and killing for profit. Religions are failing human beings,
because they, themselves are untruthful. And Julian Assange? Will he be given a corona?
As it goes with self-dynamical events, this one too, has long taken on a life of its own. The Universe allows for all crimes
to happen, but it does not promote them. It does not judge them. Karma means 'action' and nobody cannot not act. Things need to
be done constantly – if not to barely survive, then surely for the sake of the addiction to the virtual glass pearl that shine
so bright.
And yes, by all means. Remember that traditional Chinese medicine offers a variety of herbal mixtures against practically everything.
People need to boost their immune systems. All wifi must go. Towers must all be dismantled immediately and replaced with fiber
optics. Planned obsolescence must be prohibited. It must all start here, now.
In Argentina, they were sounding the sirens yesterday – because corona is coming. It oddly reminded me of "Incoming ballistic
millie alert! Not a Drill!". I know it's the people in the cities who are hit the hardest. Out on the countryside, one can at
least be outdoors with plants and animals. Animals also suffer from this artificially induced madness. But it would have come
anyway. Now getting back to what's really important.
BigB ,
If the economy really tanks – and it must, but not necessarily this time – they will have to totally restructure society without
work or not enough of it. There is a deeply sinister side to what they are doing. Which is establishing a precedent for further
doings. Imagine what they would do if there was a real economic crisis?
It is going to take a massive and concerted shift in the social conscience to turn it around now. It is the People's own alienated
creative cultural powers that are being enacted by the market state system against the People. It is only the People who can enact
a different system if they get another chance.
nottheonly1 ,
Exactly. Moving forward at this point means also to evolve. One time I was wondering what would happen if everyone would be told
"Don't worry about it. It has already been taken care of."
When society acknowledges its nature to be more organic than bureaucratic. For Life to be much more alive, than following the
needs of the very few.
There is a Mel Brooks classic worth watching: "Life Stinks". It applies as much to the owner class, as does 'Trading Places'
– whereas I am afraid that the owner class was making fun of the working class/poor part of society.
Organic Food security has to be our priority. Ridding ourselves from what is making us really sick to be profited from by the
owner class. Instead of giving ownership of corporations that are bailed out to the 'government' responsible for this mess, ownership
must be transferred to the workers that run the business.
"These officials "failed us" in the same way that our media "fails us": they serve the
interests of the EMPIRE-FIRST Deep State."
Yuppp. Our error is to assume all 17 intelligence agencies; the presstitudes; and US
"leadership" exist to serve the American people. And so, yes, they "fail" the people. But, from the point of view of the controllers of those agencies and of those "leaders",
they hardly ever fail !!!
While the people argue over virulent minutae, they are once again helping themselves to
the US Treasury.... Trillions of USDs.... LOL
".... was then told to STOP TESTING...... A medical person would not try to suppress testing.
That would be a "management decision" and its the Nation Security Council that was running
the show (and which had classified all discussions related to virus preparations)...."
Thanks for reminding us of Dr Chu's story. What if the US leadership:
Knew the coronavirus was already out in the wild in the US by Sep 2019;
Decided to set up China to be the "origin" to be blamed;
Realized that a "pandemic" can be the cover for kicking the table over to do the Great
Financial Reset;
Another reason for the curves in chaotic Fr/It/Sp is a point underlined by Campbell on 19/3
about
the fact the soccer team Manchester United has opened up its hotel free of charge for
medical
staff, so that they can return from work to a neutral place rather than to their families and
spread
the bug further. Such measures have been applied in Asia and they should have been on the
mind of
the EU gov, but apparently they were too busy thinking about their luxury holidays or their
shares
in the stocks.
Huge
jumps in
COVID-19 deaths and cases have been reported in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France
this weekend. Hospital systems in many of these countries are running out of supplies, staff,
hospital beds, and ICU-level treatments.
The shortage of protective gear for medical staff at many European hospitals has forced some
to tape trash bags to their bodies as makeshift biohazard suits.
Bloomberg interviewed Samantha Gonzalez,52, who works at the Txagorritxu hospital in
Vitoria-Gasteiz, Alava, Spain. She warned: "This is not the first world anymore -- it's a war"
amid surging virus cases in the country.
Across Europe on Saturday, deaths accorded to the fast-spreading virus soared, with Italy
reporting a record 793 deaths on Friday, and Spain reporting another 300 cases, bringing their
totals to 4,825 and 1,326.
The UK also reported another string of deaths, as millions await a
lockdown order on London , while hospitals and intensive care units in Italy and Spain are
struggling to cope, despite some Madrid hotels being temporarily converted and of the Fair of
Madrid, the capital's main exhibition space.
One of the leading hospitals in Bergamo, northern Italy, the current epicenter of the virus
outbreak in Europe, has run out of hospital beds, and ICU-level treatment, as an influx in
patients, has
overwhelmed the facility . The sick are being transferred to offsite locations, equipped
with oxygen machines.
From Italy to Spain to other regions in Europe, hospital systems are at full capacity,
canceling non-urgent surgeries, and appointments to handle the influx of virus patients. In a
couple of weeks, countrywide shutdowns like what's happening in Italy could be the norm across
many European countries.
Giovanni Rezza, head of the infectious diseases department at Rome's Superior Health
Institute, said, "Italy wasn't completely prepared for the coronavirus:"
"It's only in some two weeks that Italy will find out whether the government's nationwide
lockdown and social distancing rules have had an impact," said Rezza.
"The lockdown is only delaying the spread of the epidemic, we expect that there will be
new outbreaks in future. But in the meantime we have to equip hospitals with more intensive
care beds, even in Lombardy which is one of the best-equipped regions in Europe."
The biggest challenge for European hospital systems is having enough protective gear for
medical staff.
In Spain, 3,500 Spanish doctors have contracted the virus, which is 12% of the total number
of cases detected. With the lack of gear, doctors and nurses are more susceptible to
contracting the virus, which could cause medical staff shortages that would undoubtedly lead to
high mortality rates.
"Just in the nephrology department, three out of 13 colleagues have fallen ill, one of them
seriously," said Giuseppe Remuzzi, a former head of the department of medicine at the Papa
Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, Italy, who has joined efforts to contain the pandemic.
"This is a scary, terrible situation."
Medical staff have been instructed to swap out old protective gear every four hours, which
includes changing face masks, splash guard googles, and biohazard suits. Since supplies are
limited, doctors and nurses are making their own bio hazmat suits with taping garbage bags on
their body.
"This thing blew up on us," said Pelayo Pedrero, the head of labor risk prevention at
doctors' union AMYTS in Madrid, Spain. "No one was ready for this. They didn't buy the
supplies, they didn't prepare the hospitals to receive and treat all these patients. Not just
in Madrid or Spain, but all over Europe."
To sum up, the evolution of the virus crisis is that medical gear shortages could lead to
labor shortages at hospitals across Europe because medical staff aren't adequately protected
against the virus. Europe has become the new China. And in the weeks ahead, parts of the
US could transform into Italy .
Surgical masks are currently in short supply in China and elsewhere. They were worn 100
years ago, during the great pandemic, to try and stop the influenza virus spreading. While
surgical masks may offer some protection from infection they do not seal around the face. So
they don't filter out small airborne particles. In 1918, anyone at the emergency hospital in
Boston who had contact with patients had to wear an improvised face mask. This comprised five
layers of gauze fitted to a wire frame which covered the nose and mouth. The frame was shaped
to fit the face of the wearer and prevent the gauze filter touching the mouth and nostrils. The
masks were replaced every two hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were
a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in hospitals today to protect medical staff against
airborne infection.
... ... ...
Putting infected patients out in the sun may have helped because it inactivates the
influenza virus.[7] It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other infections in
hospitals.[8] During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal
infected wounds.[9] They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn't know is that one
advantage of placing patients outside in the sun is they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin
if sunlight is strong enough. This was not discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are
now linked to respiratory infections and may increase susceptibility to influenza.[10] Also,
our body's biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist infections.[11] New research
suggests they can alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus.[12] As with vitamin D, at
the time of the 1918 pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these
rhythms was not known.
"... The masks were replaced every two hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in hospitals today to protect medical staff against airborne infection. ..."
Fresh air, sunlight and improvised face
masks seemed to work a century ago; and they might help us now.
by
Richard Hobday
When new, virulent diseases emerge, such
SARS and Covid-19, the race begins to find new vaccines and treatments for those affected. As the current crisis
unfolds, governments are enforcing quarantine and isolation, and public gatherings are being discouraged. Health
officials took the same approach 100 years ago, when influenza was spreading around the world. The results were
mixed. But records from the 1918 pandemic suggest one technique for dealing with influenza -- little-known today --
was effective. Some hard-won experience from the greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks
and months ahead.
<img src="https://miro.medium.com/max/2400/1*7pNa3EQCs1VsWXRWL8_Uig.jpeg" width="1200" height="892" role="presentation"/>
Influenza patients getting sunlight at the Camp Brooks
emergency open-air hospital in Boston. Medical staff were not supposed to remove their masks. (National Archives)
Put simply, medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated
indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients; and infections
among medical staff.[1] There is scientific support for this. Research shows that outdoor air is a natural
disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there
is now evidence it can kill the flu virus.
`Open-Air'
Treatment in 1918
During the great pandemic, two of the
worst places to be were military barracks and troop-ships. Overcrowding and bad ventilation put soldiers and
sailors at high risk of catching influenza and the other infections that often followed it.[2,3] As with the
current Covid-19 outbreak, most of the victims of so-called `Spanish flu' did not die from influenza: they died of
pneumonia and other complications.
When the influenza pandemic reached the
East coast of the United States in 1918, the city of Boston was particularly badly hit. So the State Guard set up
an emergency hospital. They took in the worst cases among sailors on ships in Boston harbour. The hospital's
medical officer had noticed the most seriously ill sailors had been in badly-ventilated spaces. So he gave them as
much fresh air as possible by putting them in tents. And in good weather they were taken out of their tents and
put in the sun. At this time, it was common practice to put sick soldiers outdoors. Open-air therapy, as it was
known, was widely used on casualties from the Western Front. And it became the treatment of choice for another
common and often deadly respiratory infection of the time; tuberculosis. Patients were put outside in their beds
to breathe fresh outdoor air. Or they were nursed in cross-ventilated wards with the windows open day and night.
The open-air regimen remained popular until antibiotics replaced it in the 1950s.
Doctors who had first-hand experience of
open-air therapy at the hospital in Boston were convinced the regimen was effective. It was adopted elsewhere. If
one report is correct, it reduced deaths among hospital patients from 40 per cent to about 13 per cent.[4]
According to the Surgeon General of the Massachusetts State Guard:
`The efficacy of open air
treatment has been absolutely proven, and one has only to try it to discover its value.'
Fresh Air is a
Disinfectant
Patients treated outdoors were less
likely to be exposed to the infectious germs that are often present in conventional hospital wards. They were
breathing clean air in what must have been a largely sterile environment. We know this because, in the 1960s,
Ministry of Defence scientists proved that fresh air is a natural disinfectant.[5] Something in it, which they
called the Open Air Factor, is far more harmful to airborne bacteria -- and the influenza virus -- than indoor air.
They couldn't identify exactly what the Open Air Factor is. But they found it was effective both at night and
during the daytime.
Their research also revealed that the
Open Air Factor's disinfecting powers can be preserved in enclosures -- if ventilation rates are kept high enough.
Significantly, the rates they identified are the same ones that cross-ventilated hospital wards, with high
ceilings and big windows, were designed for.[6] But by the time the scientists made their discoveries, antibiotic
therapy had replaced open-air treatment. Since then the germicidal effects of fresh air have not featured in
infection control, or hospital design. Yet harmful bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
Sunlight and
Influenza Infection
Putting infected patients out in the sun
may have helped because it inactivates the influenza virus.[7] It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other
infections in hospitals.[8] During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal infected
wounds.[9] They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn't know is that one advantage of placing patients
outside in the sun is they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin if sunlight is strong enough. This was not
discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are now linked to respiratory infections and may increase
susceptibility to influenza.[10] Also, our body's biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist
infections.[11] New research suggests they can alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus.[12] As with
vitamin D, at the time of the 1918 pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these rhythms
was not known.
Face Masks
Coronavirus and Flu
Surgical masks are currently in short
supply in China and elsewhere. They were worn 100 years ago, during the great pandemic, to try and stop the
influenza virus spreading.
While surgical masks may offer some protection from
infection they do not seal around the face. So they don't filter out small airborne particles.
In 1918, anyone at
the emergency hospital in Boston who had contact with patients had to wear an improvised face mask. This comprised
five layers of gauze fitted to a wire frame which covered the nose and mouth. The frame was shaped to fit the face
of the wearer and prevent the gauze filter touching the mouth and nostrils.
The masks were replaced every two
hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in
hospitals today to protect medical staff against airborne infection.
Temporary
Hospitals
Staff at the hospital kept up high
standards of personal and environmental hygiene. No doubt this played a big part in the relatively low rates of
infection and deaths reported there. The speed with which their hospital and other temporary open-air facilities
were erected to cope with the surge in pneumonia patients was another factor. Today, many countries are not
prepared for a severe influenza pandemic.[13] Their health services will be overwhelmed if there is one. Vaccines
and antiviral drugs might help. Antibiotics may be effective for pneumonia and other complications. But much of
the world's population will not have access to them. If another 1918 comes, or the Covid-19 crisis gets worse,
history suggests it might be prudent to have tents and pre-fabricated wards ready to deal with large numbers of
seriously ill cases. Plenty of fresh air and a little sunlight might help too.
Dr. Richard Hobday is an independent
researcher working in the fields of infection control, public health and building design. He is the author of `The
Healing Sun'.
References
Hobday RA and Cason JW. The
open-air treatment of pandemic influenza. Am J Public Health 2009;99 Suppl 2:S236–42.
doi:10.2105/AJPH.2008.134627.
Aligne CA. Overcrowding and
mortality during the influenza pandemic of 1918. Am J Public Health 2016 Apr;106(4):642–4.
doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.303018.
Summers JA, Wilson N, Baker
MG, Shanks GD. Mortality risk factors for pandemic influenza on New Zealand troop ship, 1918. Emerg Infect Dis
2010 Dec;16(12):1931–7. doi:10.3201/eid1612.100429.
Anon. Weapons against
influenza. Am J Public Health 1918 Oct;8(10):787–8. doi: 10.2105/ajph.8.10.787.
May KP, Druett HA. A
micro-thread technique for studying the viability of microbes in a simulated airborne state. J Gen Micro-biol
1968;51:353e66. Doi: 10.1099/00221287–51–3–353.
Hobday RA. The open-air factor
and infection control. J Hosp Infect 2019;103:e23-e24 doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2019.04.003.
Schuit M, Gardner S, Wood S et
al. The influence of simulated sunlight on the inactivation of influenza virus in aerosols. J Infect Dis 2020
Jan 14;221(3):372–378. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiz582.
Hobday RA, Dancer SJ. Roles of
sunlight and natural ventilation for controlling infection: historical and current perspectives. J Hosp Infect
2013;84:271–282. doi: 10.1016/j.jhin.2013.04.011.
Hobday RA. Sunlight therapy
and solar architecture. Med Hist 1997 Oct;41(4):455–72. doi:10.1017/s0025727300063043.
Gruber-Bzura BM. Vitamin D and
influenza-prevention or therapy? Int J Mol Sci 2018 Aug 16;19(8). pii: E2419. doi: 10.3390/ijms19082419.
Costantini C, Renga G,
Sellitto F, et al. Microbes in the era of circadian medicine. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2020 Feb 5;10:30.
doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2020.00030.
Sengupta S, Tang SY, Devine JC
et al. Circadian control of lung inflammation in influenza infection. Nat Commun 2019 Sep 11;10(1):4107. doi:
10.1038/s41467–019–11400–9.
Jester BJ, Uyeki TM, Patel A,
Koonin L, Jernigan DB. 100 Years of medical countermeasures and pandemic influenza preparedness. Am J Public
Health. 2018 Nov;108(11):1469–1472. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2018.304586.
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Dr. Richard Hobday is an internationally recognized authority on health
in the built environment.
I see nothing wrong with testing Hyrodroxychloroquine together with azithromycin as long as
its done safely and ethically to gain additional data. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
A lot of people are going to reject it just because it came from Trump's mouth. Drug
companies will fight against it because they'd rather sell more expensive drugs.
Anti malaria drugs are part of the primary or secondary treatment recommendations in China
and Korea. I'm pretty sure they were used in Japan as well so the first half of it
(hydroxychloroquine) seems pretty legit though maybe not effective enough. Lets see what
happens. I'd agree we lack sufficient data to make an adequate evaluation. Hydroxychloroquine
is also being used with other things in trials. We'll see what happens there too.
** A dutch professor has announced an aerosol version of i believe hydroxycholoquine but
it might just be chloroquine that is able to penetrate the lungs they claim. They also claim
it can be manufactured immediately.
We should all certainly be skeptical of such a small study (HCQ and azithromycin) but do keep
in mind that you really can't trust industry and their legion of paid doctors and experts
either.
For example:
The CEO of Ericsson once said "CDMA will never work." Maybe that was because Ericsson
didn't have it working for cellular systems at the time. I worked in the cell phone industry
as an analyst for some time. People say anything to sell their stuff. I'm sure pharma is
equally bad.
ted01 "No money for big pharma therefore no interest. They would rather let people die."
That is about it. A dirt cheap generic drug can't possibly be any good. A pity so many
here prefer to believe big pharma rather than the frontline doctors using it.
Chinese doctors Chloroquine or Chloroquine Phosphate - Formula C18H26ClN3
Trump Hydroxychloroquine - Formula C18H26ClN3O
Two different chemicals but I take it their mode of action is similar.
Hydroxychloroquine
"The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$4.65 per month as of 2015, when
used for rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.[7] In the United States the wholesale cost of a month
of treatment is about US$25 as of 2020" (wikipedia)
Chloroquine Phosphate
"The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$0.04.[9] In the United States, it
costs about US$5.30 per dose." (wikipedia)
Easy to see why Trump and big phama don't like Chloroquine.
This from link @ Richard Steven Hack | Mar 22 2020 8:55 utc | 114
"chloroquine was highly effective in reducing viral replication, with an Effective
Concentration (EC)90 of 6.90 μM that can be easily achievable with standard dosing,
due to its favourable penetration in tissues, including in the lung"
>>>
Brasco_Aad
@Brasco_Aad
Israeli Pharmaceutical Company Teva to send 10 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to the
United states, free of charge. | The Times of Israel
Quote Tweet
Brasco_Aad
@Brasco_Aad
· Mar 20
-significant-
Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis to donate 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine
to the United States.
50 million doses now and another 80 million doses by the end of may.
Chloroquine I have noticed is also called chloroquine phosphate. Phosphate I believe is the
binder that holds the chloroquine powder in tablet form. According to the paper linked by RSH
@114 there is 300mg of chloroquine in a 500mg chloroquine phosphate tablet.
Here's a pretty good overview on the major avenues to attack nCOV/COVID-19 from a treatment
perspective: Ars
Technica overview
In particular, this article talks about targeting different aspects of the nCOV life cycle
and how these are targeted by treatments to attack nCOV:
1) Reproduction: remdesivir and others
2) [viral] protein processing: protease inhibitors such as HIV drugs
3) [viral] packaging: attack the final protein packaging of the virus such as a Hep B
treatment - but very few such examples exist, of any kind
4) viral shell: plasma distilled from existing recovered victims used to prime immune system
of ongoing infected. Vaccines will eventually enable this via manufacturing processes.
5) new infection capability: chloroquines. In particular
One of these targets is the drop in pH. This is the step that's targeted by chloroquine,
the antimalarial drug. Chloroquine can cross membranes and so can enter the sac containing
the virus. Once there, it can neutralize the pH.
That's significant, because many proteases are only active at lower pH. If the pH inside
the sac doesn't change, it's possible that the coronavirus spike protein won't be cut and
thus won't be activated. This appears to be the case in cultured cells infected by the
virus, and there are anecdotal case reports of chloroquine helping COVID-19 patients.
It is also clear - from this description - why evolutionary pressures could create defenses
against this type of attack (chloroquine pH change)
Again, a theoretical operation, even the clinical test tube trials, doesn't equate to
effective therapy.
However, IMO, the cost and risk factor for chloroquines makes for a far better gambit than
anything else at this moment in time. And note that because of the way chloroquines are
supposed to affect nCOV - if chloroquines work, they have to be taken when symptoms
first appear or potentially even as a preventative.
I would discourage the preventative use though - that will likely accelerate the nCOV
evolution around the chloroquine pH attack.
Another reason: it appears the US only has 160,000 ventilators available
Johns Hopkins estimate
of which a bit under 30K are being used for neonatal/pediatric care.
Yow.
hydroxycloroquine overdose, the boffins say, can destroy the retina of the eyes.
Not a trivial side effect. Nothing to play with. Fer what it worth, better read up on the
drug and pay attention. Eyes are nice to have.
Overdose of Q is Bad.
Wally read 60 years ago in Rome newspaper story that British air-line pilots, who drank
their Gin an' Tonics, had been discovered to have very poor glare recovery. That, they said,
was from the quinine in the tonic water. Henceforth, they were forbidden the tonic water,
alas!
But Wally never drives at night and his airplane days ended back in the mists...
Last night watched CGTN TV with Huawei Honor smartphone.
"....team from SW China's Sichuan Province leaves Wuhan today...brings you this
bittersweet goodbye."
- Worked 8-12hrs shift.... 100 plus medical workers, 57 days ago leaving spouse, children and
parents behinds
- Initially none or limited N95 masks - wore double for protection..
- In capitalist USA.... Fxxk the company or country, Strike, protests...
- 16 makeshift hospitals disbanded but two 16,000 beds still in operations.
Equivalent respirator standards by country
. N95 (United States NIOSH-42CFR84)
• FFP2 (Europe EN 149-2001)
• KN95 (China GB2626-2006)
• P2 (Australia/New Zealand AS/NZA 1716:2012)
• Korea 1st class (Korea KMOEL - 2017-64)
• DS (Japan JMHLW-Notification 214, 2018)
I just received an email from a contact in China offering to help get FFP2 respirators if
I needed or wanted any. She said KN95 were virtually non existent in China but there are
limited supplies of the FFP2 respirators.
If you or anyone else is interested in masks / respirators I would recommend watching the
videos by weaponsandstuff93 on YouTube. I am no expert on the subject but on his
recommendation I got myself a mask that takes 40mm NATO filters ( the mask is a Belgium BEM4
) and some P3 level filters ( mine are Scott Pros ) this is different to 40MM GOST filters
which were the Soviet standard.
Make your own face masks? Pfff...it appears the Japanese found a better idea from the
Philippines government...
panties . OR, you could order a custom one from Pantsu Mask . ROFL
Returning to the Covid-19 epidemic and the way governments are reacting to it, Thierry
Meyssan stresses that the authoritarian decisions of Italy and France have no medical
justification. They contradict the observations of the best infectiologists and the instructions
of the World Health Organization.
In all of its messages, the WHO stressed : the low demographic impact of the epidemic; the
futility of border closures; the ineffectiveness of wearing gloves, masks (except for health
care workers) and certain "barrier measures" (for example, the distance of one metre only makes
sense with infected people, but not with healthy people); the need to raise the level of
hygiene, including hand washing, water disinfection and increased ventilation of confined
spaces. Finally, use disposable tissues or, failing that, sneeze into your elbow.
However, the WHO is not a medical organization, but a United Nations agency dealing with
health issues. Its officials, even if they are doctors, are also and above all politicians. It
cannot therefore denounce the abuses of certain states. Furthermore, since the controversy over
the H1N1 epidemic, the WHO must publicly justify all its recommendations. In 2009, it was
accused of having let itself be swayed by the interests of big pharmaceutical companies and of
having hastily sounded the alarm in a disproportionate manner [ 4 ]. This time it used the word
"pandemic" only as a last resort, on March 12th, four months later.
"... the Iranian population is the world's most lung-weakest. Almost all men over the age of sixty suffer from the after-effects of the US combat gases used by the Iraqi army during the First Gulf War (1980-88), as did the Germans and the French after the First World War. Any traveller to Iran has been struck by the number of serious lung ailments. ..."
"... The Diamond Princess is an Israeli-American ship, owned by Micky Arison, brother of Shari Arison, the richest woman in Israel. The Arisons are turning this incident into a public relations operation. The Trump administration and several other countries airlifted their nationals to be quarantined at home. The international press devoted its headlines to this story. Referring to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919, it asserts that the epidemic could spread throughout the world and potentially threaten the human species with extinction [ 2 ]. This apocalyptic hypothesis, not based on any facts, will nevertheless become the word of the Gospel. ..."
"... It is not known at this time whether tycoons deliberately spread panic about Covid-19, making this vulgar epidemic seem like the "end of the world". However, one distortion after another, governments have become involved. Of course, it is no longer a question of selling advertising screens by frightening people, but of dominating populations by exploiting this fear. ..."
"... Let us remember that never in history has the confinement of a healthy population been used to fight a disease. Above all, let us remember that this epidemic will have no significant consequences in terms of mortality. ..."
"... The two governments panic their populations by distributing unnecessary instructions disavowed by infectious diseases doctors: they encourage people to wear gloves and masks in all circumstances and to keep at least one metre away from any other human being. ..."
"... It is too early to say what real goal the Conte and Macron governments are pursuing. The only thing that is certain is that it is not a question of fighting Covid-19. ..."
Returning to the Covid-19 epidemic and the way governments are reacting to it, Thierry
Meyssan stresses that the authoritarian decisions of Italy and France have no medical
justification. They contradict the observations of the best infectiologists and the
instructions of the World Health Organization.
The Chinese Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, came to lead the operations in Wuhan and restore
the "celestial mandate" on January 27, 2020.
On November 17, 2019, the first case of a person infected with Covid-19 was diagnosed in
Hubei Province, China. Initially, doctors tried to communicate the seriousness of the disease,
but clashed with regional authorities. It was only when the number of cases increased and the
population saw the seriousness of the disease that the central government intervened.
This epidemic is not statistically significant. It kills very few people, although those it
does kill experience terrible respiratory distress.
Since ancient times, in Chinese culture, Heaven has given a mandate to the Emperor to govern
his subjects [ 1 ]. When he withdraws it, a disaster
strikes the country: epidemic, earthquake, etc. Although we are in modern times, President XI
felt threatened by the mismanagement of the Hubei regional government. The Council of State
therefore took matters into its own hands. It forced the population of Hubei's capital, Wuhan,
to remain confined to their homes. Within days, it built hospitals; sent teams to each house to
take the temperature of each inhabitant; took all potentially infected people to hospitals for
testing; treated those infected with chloroquine phosphate and sent others home; and treated
the critically ill with recombinant interferon Alfa 2B (IFNrec) for resuscitation. This vast
operation had no public health necessity, other than to prove that the Communist Party still
has the heavenly mandate.
During a press conference on Covid-19, the Iranian Deputy Minister of Health, Iraj
Harirchi, appeared contaminated.
Propagation in Iran
The epidemic spreads from China to Iran in mid-February 2020. These two countries have been
closely linked since ancient times. They share many common cultural elements. However, the
Iranian population is the world's most lung-weakest. Almost all men over the age of sixty
suffer from the after-effects of the US combat gases used by the Iraqi army during the First
Gulf War (1980-88), as did the Germans and the French after the First World War. Any traveller
to Iran has been struck by the number of serious lung ailments.
When air pollution in Tehran increased beyond what they could bear, schools and government
offices were closed and half of the families moved to the countryside with their grandparents.
This has been happening several times a year for thirty-five years and seems normal.
The government and parliament are almost exclusively composed of veterans of the Iraq-Iran
war, that is, people who are extremely fragile in relation to Covid-19. So when these groups
were infected, many personalities developed the disease.
In view of the US sanctions, no Western bank covers the transport of medicines. Iran found
itself unable to treat the infected and care for the sick until the UAE broke the embargo and
sent two planes of medical equipment.
People who would not suffer in the other country died from the first coughs due to the
wounds in their lungs. As usual, the government closed schools. In addition, it deprogrammed
several cultural and sporting events, but did not ban pilgrimages. Some areas have closed
hotels to prevent the movement of sick people who can no longer find hospitals close to their
homes.
Quarantine in Japan
On February 4, 2020, a passenger on the US cruise ship Diamond Princess was diagnosed ill
from the Covid-19 and ten passengers were infected. The Japanese Minister of Health, Katsunobu
Kato, then imposed a two-week quarantine on the ship in Yokohama in order to prevent the
contagion from spreading to his country. In the end, out of the 3,711 people on board, the vast
majority of whom are over 70 years old, there would be 7 deaths.
The Diamond Princess is an Israeli-American ship, owned by Micky Arison, brother of Shari
Arison, the richest woman in Israel. The Arisons are turning this incident into a public
relations operation. The Trump administration and several other countries airlifted their
nationals to be quarantined at home. The international press devoted its headlines to this
story. Referring to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919, it asserts that the epidemic could
spread throughout the world and potentially threaten the human species with extinction [
2 ]. This
apocalyptic hypothesis, not based on any facts, will nevertheless become the word of the
Gospel.
We remember that in 1898, William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, in order to increase the sales
of their daily newspapers, published false information in order to deliberately provoke a war
between the United States and the Spanish colony of Cuba. This was the beginning of "yellow
journalism" (publishing anything to make money). Today it is called "fake news".
It is not known at this time whether tycoons deliberately spread panic about Covid-19,
making this vulgar epidemic seem like the "end of the world". However, one distortion after
another, governments have become involved. Of course, it is no longer a question of selling
advertising screens by frightening people, but of dominating populations by exploiting this
fear.
For the WHO Director, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, China and South Korea have set an
example by generalising screening tests; a way of saying that the Italian and French methods
are medical nonsense.
WHO intervention
The World Health Organization (WHO), which monitored the entire operation, noted the spread
of the disease outside China. On February 11th and 12th, it organized a global forum on
research and innovation on the epidemic in Geneva. At the forum, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus called in very measured terms for global collaboration [ 3 ].
In all of its messages, the WHO stressed : the low demographic impact of the epidemic; the
futility of border closures; the ineffectiveness of wearing gloves, masks (except for health
care workers) and certain "barrier measures" (for example, the distance of one metre only makes
sense with infected people, but not with healthy people); the need to raise the level of
hygiene, including hand washing, water disinfection and increased ventilation of confined
spaces. Finally, use disposable tissues or, failing that, sneeze into your elbow.
However, the WHO is not a medical organization, but a United Nations agency dealing with
health issues. Its officials, even if they are doctors, are also and above all politicians. It
cannot therefore denounce the abuses of certain states. Furthermore, since the controversy over
the H1N1 epidemic, the WHO must publicly justify all its recommendations. In 2009, it was
accused of having let itself be swayed by the interests of big pharmaceutical companies and of
having hastily sounded the alarm in a disproportionate manner [ 4 ]. This time it used the word
"pandemic" only as a last resort, on March 12th, four months later.
At the Franco-Italian summit in Naples on February 27, the French and Italian presidents,
Giuseppe Conte and Emmanuel Macron, announced that they would react together to the
pandemic.
Instrumentation in Italy and France
Modern propaganda should not be limited to the publication of false news as the United
Kingdom did to convince its people to enter the First World War, but should also be used in the
same way as Germany did to convince its people to fight in the Second World War. The recipe is
always the same: to exert psychological pressure to induce subjects to voluntarily practice
acts that they know are useless, but which will lead them to lie [ 5 ]. For example, in 2001, it was
common knowledge that those accused of hijacking planes on 9/11 were not on the passenger
boarding lists. Yet, in shock, most accepted without question the inane accusations made by FBI
Director Robert Muller against "19 hijackers". Or, as is well known, President Hussein's Iraq
had only old Soviet Scud launchers with a range of up to 700 kilometers, but many Americans
caulked the windows and doors of their homes to protect themselves from the deadly gases with
which the evil dictator was going to attack America. This time, in the case of the Covid-19, it
is the voluntary confinement in the home that forces the person who accepts it to convince
himself of the veracity of the threat.
Let us remember that never in history has the confinement of a healthy population been
used to fight a disease. Above all, let us remember that this epidemic will have no significant
consequences in terms of mortality.
In Italy, the first step was to isolate the contaminated regions according to the principle
of quarantine, and then to isolate all citizens from each other, which follows a different
logic.
According to the President of the Italian Council, Giuseppe Conte, and the French President,
Emmanuel Macron, the aim of confining the entire population at home is not to overcome the
epidemic, but to spread it out over time so that the sick do not arrive at the same time in
hospitals and saturate them. In other words, it is not a medical measure, but an exclusively
administrative one. It will not reduce the number of infected people, but will postpone it in
time.
In order to convince the Italians and the French of the merits of their decision, Presidents
Conte and Macron first enlisted the support of committees of scientific experts. While these
committees had no objection to people staying at home, they had no objection to people going
about their business. Then Chairs Conte and Macron made it mandatory to have an official form
to go for a walk. This document on the letterheads of the respective ministries of the interior
is drawn up on honour and is not subject to any checks or sanctions.
The two governments panic their populations by distributing unnecessary instructions
disavowed by infectious diseases doctors: they encourage people to wear gloves and masks in all
circumstances and to keep at least one metre away from any other human being.
The French "reference daily" (sic) Le Monde, Facebook France and the French Ministry of
Health undertook to censor a video of Professor Didier Raoult, one of the world's most renowned
infectiologists, because by announcing the existence of a proven drug in China against
Covid-19, he highlighted the lack of a medical basis for the measures taken by President Macron
[ 6 ].
It is too early to say what real goal the Conte and Macron governments are pursuing. The
only thing that is certain is that it is not a question of fighting
Covid-19.
I urge everyone to read the first article that is linked. What is happening this year is
decidedly NOT a unique phenomenon for Italy or elsewhere that has been cited below. You might
call it an acceleration or culmination or "perfect storm" but this is not a unique situation.
I wish to stress the following:
Estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza
epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17 seasons in Italy.
Anyone remember a global outcry about these excess deaths during any of these years?
Pollution; The Po river contains some of the worst waste from industrial pig farms
upriver. The air quality in the Po River Valley is some of the worst only behind an area in
Poland where they still use coal fired power plants in overall poor quality.
The people in N Italy have been subjected to constant bombardment of this pollution which
destroys their respiratory functions and weakens their immune systems- a perfect milieu for
viruses to proliferate. The same is true for those in N China and Tehran. Tehran's air
quality has deteriorated dramatically since the US sanctions as they have gone to using a
cheaper gas, laced with sulfur, to provide fuel for their people.
Northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe,
which has already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past
and is likely an additional risk factor in the current epidemic.
According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS, the average age
of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased
are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased are over 70 years old.
The Italian Institute of Health moreover distinguishes between those who died from the
coronavirus and those who died with the coronavirus. In many cases it is not yet clear
whether the persons died from the virus or from their pre-existing chronic diseases or from a
combination of both.
This is not a coincidence that these environmental factors have created a milieu in which
all sorts of diseases can proliferate. Now capitalism will come up with the magic bullet like
a vaccine or a pill to "fix" the problem- rinse and repeat if the current social order/forms
of production aren't radically changed.
A virus which impacts upper respiratory functions attacking those who are vulnerable due
to years of having their upper respiratory systems assaulted non-stop by heavy doses of
pollutants of all varieties- that's what we are seeing. None of this is new except to the
degree. In all the areas listed below, N Italy, N China, Madrid, Tehran they have been
experiencing a dramatic increase in upper respiratory disease for years now.
And please don't tell me the solution is some vaccination or some great new cure that will
be discovered (and profited from) by the miraculous men of modern medicine. The solution is
to clean up the environment so that we are not vulnerable in the first place. Without that
prepare for COVID-20 the sequel or whatever name the thoroughly bought off WHO and CDC
and...wish to place upon this next "pandemic."
Investigating the impact of influenza on excess mortality in all ages in Italy during
recent seasons (2013/14–2016/17 seasons)
In recent years, Italy has been registering peaks in death rates, particularly among the
elderly during the winter season. Influenza epidemics have been indicated as one of the
potential determinants of such an excess.
We estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza
epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, respectively, using the Goldstein
index. The average annual mortality excess rate per 100,000 ranged from 11.6 to 41.2 with
most of the influenza-associated deaths per year registered among the elderly.
The new study argues that smogs in China contain more ingredients than those found either
in the legendary "pea-soupers" of 19th- and 20th-century Europe and North America or in
modern rich-world, vehicle-generated smogs. Something new is happening: The unprecedented
speed of industrialization and urbanization has combined two eras of pollution.
Investigating air quality status and air pollutant trends over the Metropolitan Area of
Tehran, Iran over the past decade between 2005 and 2014
Overall, trends have been progressed to worsening, the number of healthy days has been
declined and the number of unhealthy days has been increased in recent years.
Tehran is rated as one of the world's most polluted cities. Parts of the city are often
covered by smog, making breathing difficult and causing widespread pulmonary illnesses. ...
According to local officials, 3,600 people died in a single month due to the hazardous air
quality.
Air Pollution, a Silent Form of Death for Tehran Citizens
You don't have to step into the street for Madrid's roads to pose a hazard to your health:
air pollution from cars in the city might just knock you over. Scientists are finding links
between the gases and disease.
......
According to studies by Julio Diaz, a researcher at the Carlos III Health Institute in
Madrid, even small increases in air pollution can cause the number of people admitted to
hospitals with circulatory and respiratory illnesses to rise.
There's much attention being given to how China and South Korea have reacted to the virus,
but amazingly little to the response in Vietnam. The first cases in Vietnam arrived with the
new lunar year, via Wuhan; quite quickly the number of cases rose to sixteen, and for several
weeks stayed at that number. The Vietnamese government acted quickly, strongly and
effectively, until all sixteen recovered (and the district near Hanoi which had been
placed under lockdown had completed their isolation.
On March 2nd a flight from London, carrying a woman who was returning from the Milan fashion
week:
"The country's 17th case, imported on a flight from London, kicked off a new wave of cases,
[now nearing 100].
Even with a new wave of cases, the numbers are far from those witnessed in the western
world. The issue has been taken seriously, with all suffering symptoms put in quarantine and
tested, while their places of residence are locked down and sanitised. Việt Nam was one
of the first nations to declare an epidemic and has been quick in its response, both in
handling current cases and ensuring the spread of the virus is as limited as possible. "
- taken from
https://vietnamnews.vn/life-style/expat-corner/653815/keeping-calm-and-carrying-on-viet-nam-sets-a-coronavirus-example.html
It is notable that almost all cases of infection have been brought into the country, or at
one-person distance from the person bringing it into the country.
Today there has been the announcement of the seventeenth reported recovery in Vietnam. So
far there has been not one death.
Points in the reaction:
Public gatherings were stopped right away - even local community Women's Day lunches.
All citizens and all foreigners are now required to report on health, on recent travel,
etc.
Everyone is now required to wear masks in public places.
Covid-19! H1N1! Names of guns on Call of Duty! Scary! I call it a Cold. The Flu killed many
more than this will 2 years ago. I propose to change the name of the Flu to "Putin Plague".
That will do it.
Russia has 1 death, few cases, a massive border with China, huge numbers of Chinese
tourists, officials, students, etc. India has 4 deaths, a border with China, and many
Chinese. How are any of you buying that?
If this was the end of the world would Putin be almost disinterested in his demeanor?
Would Kadyrov laugh it off on national tv? Are the Russians that stupid or do they know
something?
If this was big, Kadyrov would be in full-action. Special Corona uniform, big guns, lots
of hitting the pads, plenty of screams of Akhmat Sila! Instead, he is complaining that he is
bored because there are no fights to watch.
Let me tell you something that is not being discussed. Millions, yes millions, died from
the Flu a few seasons back. It was horrible. Hospitals could not handle it. Yet, the media
was dead silent. Zero concerns. No mention. It was just a bad Flu season and life went on for
you. Maybe you buried Grandma. Maybe you were dog sick (I was and I had a Flu shot!). What
you did not have was 24/7 hysteria. Hysteria is NEVER good. NEVER.
At the beginning of this year, I suddenly started getting these horrible videos from China
of healthy-looking men falling face down on the street. What the ? Healthy men walking down
the street and then – BAM! Straight down. They went viral. Freaked the Western world
out. Millions and millions of views. We now know that IS NOT the virus. Whoever created those
videos knows more than we do.
–Steps Russia Seems To Be Taking–
If a patient dies make sure to list the cause of death as whatever they were suffering
from (healthy people RARELY die from this) prior to the illness.
Use regional heads (Ramzan!) to dampen any hysteria. Chechens have been told that they
will die eventually why worry about a cold. Go drink some tea. Don't be a wimp. This kind of
talk is dangerous to soft Europeans/Americans, but is part of the Caucasian spirit.
Get the FSB to run EVERYTHING. Rumor is it that the guy in charge of tests has been in
charge of security for Putin. I promise you that the FSB is in total control of all results.
If the numbers look bad – Lie. Slowly add a death here and there. Make sure that it
appears that you did not let anyone die from this because of lack of equipment. This is not a
health issue. This is an actual war. Yes, war. You do what you can medically, you just don't
create mass hysteria. Make sense? Many countries are doing this and will be better off for
this. More lives will be saved because healthy people will not be taking up space that
belongs to the very sick. Hysteria is the last thing you want.
*NOTE* Have you noticed how Russians are furious with Italy while the West cries for them?
The West is furious with China while Russia is happy for them. Topsy turvy world.
There is NO REASON to destroy your country because of this. NONE. Something else is in
play. I can promise you that millions of Americans have it or have had it. The CDC has said
this! There were no testing kits. If there are no testing kits you cannot officially die from
a Call of Duty weapon.
FWIW, Dr. Fauci pretty much threw cold water on the Chloroquine option at today's Trump press
conference, saying that no clinical trials have been conducted and leaving the impression
that he was highly dubious. Again, FWIW.
P.S. I wonder how long Fauci will be welcomed onto that podium.
The Great Panic of 2020 is already one for the history books. Yet the damage has only just
begun. We suspect the stock market crash, economic destruction, and forfeiture of freedoms will
persist long after the coronavirus hobgoblin has been put to bed.
With respect to the stock market, the modus operandi of the last 11 years is being stood on
its head. Rather than 'buy the dip.' The new divine mantra is 'sell the rip.' Here's why
If you recall, the U.S. stock market commenced a multi-year swan dive in autumn of 1929.
About that time, the economy also commenced a decade long Great Depression. Given the rapid and
relentless stock market carnage over the last month, and the prospect of a lengthy depression,
a closer look is in order.
From September 3, 1929 to November 13, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) lost
48.9 percent. Then, as rarely noted, it rallied 48.1 percent through April 17, 1930. This had
the adverse effect of luring the buy the dip crowd back into the stock market just in time for
the next massacre.
The 1929 through 1932 bear market, as noted by Pater Tenebrarum , was like a rubber ball bouncing down
stairs. With each bounce, even the most savvy of investors were given another chance to lose
their money. Taken in sequence, the repeated bounces provided many opportunities to lose money
over and over again.
In the end, the bounce up between November 13, 1929 and April 30, 1930, turned out to be the
ultimate sucker's rally. The DJIA subsequently crashed 89.2 percent from its initial peak,
along with the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of an entire generation.
Such a colossal collapse could never, ever happen again, right?
Well, if it happened before, by definition, it could happen again. Hence, if an interim
bottom is put in over the next several weeks, and the DJIA attempts to retrace towards its
February 12 all-time closing high, take this as a gift. An opportunity to sell the
rip.
Bend the Curve
The economy's being fundamentally pummeled by coronavirus containment. Long term damage will
be sustained. The type of damage that takes a decade – or more – to recover from.
Fake money won't fix it. But, nonetheless, there's no shortage of solutions being offered to
save us from ourselves.
Coronavirus, according to scientific prophecy, spreads exponentially. The only way to
contain it is to "flatten the curve" through "social distancing." The world must "hunker down"
in unison; if not voluntarily, by government decree.
Bars, restaurants, gyms, schools, and many employers are shutting down. San Francisco has
ordered all residents to "shelter in place." The Maltese Falcon can only screech to itself from
within a vacant John's Grill.
The former Mayor of San Francisco, and now California Governor, Gavin Newsom, has ordered all residents to stay at
home until further notice. According to
Newsom , "We need to bend the curve in the state of California."
Perhaps these solutions have merit. But they're disastrous for the economy. Cash flows are
running dry. Credit markets are freezing up. People are losing their jobs. Full mobilization is
needed, we're told, in the war on coronavirus.
For example, Fed Chairman Jay Powell's pulling out all the monetary stops – zero
interest rate policies, quantitative easing, repo madness – to pump liquidity into credit
markets. But that's not all
The Fed's now accepting
stocks as collateral in exchange for liquidity. The Fed also established a Money Market
Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility ( MMLF ). The
sole intent of the MMLF is to keep short-term credit markets from frosting over like the
Alaskan tundra, and breaking the buck.
On the fiscal side, the Treasury Department's angling with Congress to send out $1,000
checks – possibly, two of them – to struggling Americans. Mitt Romney, a man of
discretion, is onboard with $1,000 checks. Chuck Schumer says it won't be enough. Cory Booker
wants to send out
$4,500 checks .
But why stop there? Why not send out $45,000 checks? If a little helicopter money's good,
isn't more always better?
Is the Panic Worse than the Virus?
If only the world was as simple as potato brains Booker believes. Remember, when the U.S.
Treasury borrows money created out of thin air from the Fed to send out checks, it's executing
a program of mass currency debasement.
A check may arrive in your mailbox. But its face value constitutes a fraud. Moreover, this
fraud constitutes a down payment on tomorrow's disorder.
Yet, by the doom being proffered on the matter, mass currency debasement and systematic
hunkering is needed to win the war on coronavirus and save the economy. Or is it?
For perspective, we'll draw from words first scribbled in 1841 by Charles MacKay. Here's a
brief excerpt from MacKay's timeless classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness
of Crowds
"During seasons of great pestilence men have often believed the prophecies of crazed
fanatics, that the end of the world was come. Credulity is always greatest in times of
calamity. Prophecies of all sorts are rife on such occasions, and are readily believed,
whether for good or evil.
"During the great plague, which ravaged all Europe, between the years 1345 and 1350, it
was generally considered that the end of the world was at hand. Pretended prophets were to be
found in all the principal cities of Germany, France, and Italy, predicting that within ten
years the trump of the Archangel would sound, and the Saviour appear in the clouds to call
the earth to judgment."
As far as we can tell, the coronavirus has attracted prophets of all stripes like bees to a
honey pot. Mass coronavirus hysteria has led to public and pretend prophetic histrionics.
Maybe so. Or maybe the mass panic has been slightly overblown. By this, is the panic worse
than the virus? Who knows?
What we do know, is the spring equinox has arrived marking the earliest coming of spring in
124 years. After the last several weeks of winter, we'll take it.
Whether this virus jumped species or was made in a bath tub, I can't say. What I can do is
count. in 2019 there were 30,000 deaths in the USA attributed to the Flu. Now, here we are in
2020 with the first quarter of the year nearing coming on, and there are less than 75 deaths
traced to ncov19. So, in my estimation maybe we may record 2,000 dead this year.
Is it rational that we're watching our hard earned 401k's tank, self quarantining,
suffering food shortages, told to distance, avoid our neighbors, and panic over what is
little more than the common cold?
Why must the President address the nation every morning with the Dow Jones numbers
flashing in sync? Why are people in hazmat suits poking around our cities spreading fear, and
asking inane questions such as: do you have a cough, have you recently been to Iran, China,
N. Korea or Iran? I was screened at my local VA hospital on the March 13th, and those were
the questions asked of me. After saying negative a purple wrist ban was put on me and I was
allowed access.
This all reminds me of the movie 'Citizen Kane'. For those old enough to remember it Orson
Welles played the owner of a major newspaper. One day his headline read "WAR DECLARED IN
(some fictitious country)" Consequently, the President of said fictitious country called the
editor by phone, and complained that the paper had it wrong, and there wasn't any war going
on in his country, and how could he. However, Orson responded quite cavalierly with something
on the order of; "Why of course there is a war, because I said there is"
This theatre has gone far enough.
1918 Spanish Flu. WWI ongoing. 675 , 000 deaths in US (300K excess deaths based on
mortality stats published at the time) , 15 million estimated worldwide deaths in 7 months.
No significant impact on GDP due to war
1950-1952 Polio peak panic-Korean War. No significant economic impact. 16,000 paralysis
cases, 3000 deaths annually (mostly children)
1957 -58 influenza pandemic- over 100 K deaths in half the population. Significant
recession in 1958 following Eisenhower's cutting DOD spending. Cold War ramped up to boost
spending. Business as usual for most people during the pandemic
1968 influenza pandemic, over 100k dead, peak Vietnam War, no significant economic
impact
1976 Swine Flu- minimal deaths (dozens) Public health induced hype led to 45 million
rushed to market vaccines. 450 people got Guillain-Barré syndrome from vaccines
causing paralysis . No serious economic impact, business as usual except for vaccination
2003 SARS outbreak. Panic in China/Asia, 800 deaths. Significant economic disruption to
Greater China region due to travel bans and quarantine measures. Iraq war began at same time.
No economic impact in US
2009 H1N1 Pandemic. 12,000 estimated deaths in US. CDC recommended against testing in
July. Not much panic. Country already in recession due to subprime crash. Obamacare passed in
December. Arab spring followed. US government bought 229 million doses of vaccine mostly
unused. Former CDC director hired by Merck probably got a nice bonus. Total cost 4 billion.
About 2 billion went for vaccines,
2019- virus starts to spread in China starting from November 17. A month after Event 201 .
This was attended by Dr Gao of China CDC. China covers up initially then began limited
testing reporting few cases until January 18 when they expanded testing and cases spiked. .
Did not quarantine Wuhan until Jan 23 allowing millions to leave city for other locations due
to up upcoming Lunar New Year Holidays when everything shuts down fir 1-2 weeks anyways.
Significant economic disruption and depression follow as West inflates panic among citizens
with the help of MSM and altmedia to gain support for adopting Chinas draconian measures and
curtailment of freedoms, with censorship sure to follow. Can another war to lift the West out
of depression be far behind, or will that war be fought against the bottom 90% after
lightbulbs go off and they realize they got played.
Experimental DNA changing vaccines being rushed to market. Total cost for everything will
be tens of trillions. Thats a lot of pork. Helicopter money coming soon. Freedom and
Democracy will be a pipe dream. That was Trumps role all along, to put the finishing touches
on a 120 year program to destroy Democracy and replace it with an Elitist Dictatorship ruled
by Philosopher Kings and Corporate Technocrats and enforced by the Military.
... that USA and the West were unprepared because China withheld information about the
virus.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Mar 19 2020 18:20 utc | 106
The "Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on COVID-19" states that China transparently
reported the identification of virus to the WHO and the international community on January
3rd, and a WHO investigative team was invited to Wuhan a week after that.
From January 3rd, 2020, information on COVID-19 cases has been reported to WHO daily.
On January 7th, full genome sequences of the new virus were shared with WHO and the
international community immediately after the pathogen was identified.
On January 10th, an expert group involving Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwanese technical
experts and a World Health Organization team was invited to visit Wuhan.
To make a just evaluation of the health danger of Covid-19 it could be useful to make a
computerized simulation model based on the data from an influenza virus seasonal outbreak
some years ago,but with the actual medical extended reaction to it like testing on a bigger
scale then normally.(I don't even know how it is ,in normal wintertime flu.
I guess the numbers tested equal those who seek medical help,or maybe they test all
citizens taking part in the free government proposed vaccination,that pretty soon follows the
outbreak(how do they find the vaccin so quickly?)) improvising hospitals and other medical
stuff.And also take in account the appreciation of the illness by the general public.The high
number of medical staff that went ill after weeks of treating patients with it seems not to
be an annual affair.The outcome should make clear the real danger ratio of Covid-19.
Still pondering over those Italian deaths. Average said to be 81 years.10% over 90 years
old.90 % over 70 years old.Nobody died from it under seventy years old?
The governments's reactions to CV are another chapter.
Nowadays governments are mainly made up of incompetent empire-compatibles. In the same way
the empire gets away with bombing away poor people, those incompetents get away with every
single stupidity they commit. They rarely step down. When they do they are sure to find an
even better con-job;(Cf.Christine Lagarde,van der Leyen and so many others)
The general public accepts incompetence, so the politicians know they can do anything
their overlord wants them to. They are shouted at some times, made fun of in accomplice
media, ridiculized by the workers, they don't care.
In the evening they have their ration of high quality cocaine and they are feeling very
special when they look down upon you common plebs next morning. Incompetence is the excuse of
the century, but not a reason to loose the job.
A third question that I want to raise.
So it was in Wuhan in September 2019 that the World Military Games were held. I never
heard of before, but yeah its just a sportive meeting between army personal from all over the
world, in an olympic spirit I wager.
Then it seems there was on the same day the opening of something called Event 201 said to
be a simulation (Real time?computer game,Viral!?) of a virus outbreak.OK. So what?
I don't want to look myself into this, because I've never liked Bill Gates, who did this,
but I like to know from more inquisitive barflies ,if such a thing has really taken place.
How long did it last? What was the outcome? And has this study been taken in account by
government officials, be it in the USA or abroad?
Because what if there was really nothing, just the announcement?
I vaguely recall the polio era. There was a fair amount of panic. I remember lining up in the
school gymnasium with everyone else in town to get a dose of oral vaccine. My father had a
friend with a leg damaged by polio. He played slide guitar in a Country & Western band.
I don't remember lockdowns or anything like that. Other than polio and tuberculosis, maybe
epidemics were more accepted 60 years ago? Everyone got measles, mumps, chicken pox. That's
just the way it was. I don't think most people thought about it much; too busy trying to make
a living, just like nowadays.
Here's a
report on the current war against the unseen enemy . The question about polio is relevant
IMO, but for a vastly different reason than what the OP likely had in mind. At the time, the
ongoing war against the unseen enemy was taken very seriously as it affected all
classes and especially city dwellers.
Recall for centuries the Miasma Theory of Disease and related piety and fear of god were
the primary explanations for the unexplainable. That dogma was challenged by a Persian
scholar in the mid 1000s when the Arab world was where genuine science was being pursued
while the West went looking for Devils, witches and heretics, but even the Arab world
couldn't accept what we now know to be the truth of the matter.
We needed to await the arrival of microscopes and Bacteriology to establish the Germ
Theory of Disease in 1870. Death was everywhere and quite powerful.
I recall the average life expectancy for Philadelphia in 1740 to be 20--lots of early
childhood and child bearing deaths--with little differentiation between the slowly growing
urban regions within the Colonies.
Charlestown was the worst with its residents abandoning the city during Summer.
FDR was the first genuinely handicapped POTUS, but he tried his best to conceal his
disability. My Maternal Grandfather was kept stateside in 1918 thanks to the flu epidemic,
while his cousin wasn't so lucky and died in the trenches, his mother never forgave my
Maternal Grandmother for Fate's result.
While dated (2010)
this graphic illustrates the top 15 Communicable Diseases. Some will find this essay on the use
of quarantine helpful by providing some historical context to the ongoing war against the
unseen world.
There was no quarantine. They closed beaches. Told people to no go into the water. That
was for a summer or two at most.
I don't recall anything else. A kid up the street got it. He was a hell of an athlete but
wound up with a brace on one leg. He was away fro some time and his return was the only sign
that polio was really bad.
People were deathly afraid of the first vaccine, injected. Dr. Salk invented that first
vaccine.
The Oral Vaccine really changed everything. Dr. Sabin changed the paradigm and saved several
generations.
@FB I, too, have been disappointed in Tucker Carlson's China bashing. I have thought that
he was the best on FOX News, but now he is getting to be as bad as Sean Hannity.
We may never know the origin of the coronavirus. It is foolish to try and assign blame at
this point.
@follyofwar Well, as the Cheyenne used to say, "It's a good day to die". If the ones who
think they can rule over others push it too far," then the the sun will shine upon a good day
to die". I remember that line from the novel "Little Big Man".
It used to be part of the American ethos, the idea that it's better to die on your feet
than to live on your knees. Levon Helm wrote a line in a song in the '80s: "You give your
life to live your life". Some of us still see it that way.
There are so many scenarios. I haven't read all of the comments, so what I'm about to say
may already have been touched on.
1. The virus happened naturall y, transferred from a bat and eventually to
humans.
2. The virus accidentally escaped the Wuhan lab.
3. The globalists did it. The globalists (the Chinese elite in concert with the
U.S. multinational corporate elite) don't want things to change as both groups of elites are
getting filthy rich off of the offshoring of jobs to China.
Trump is a nationalist. He is upsetting their apple cart as he's placing tariffs on the
goods manufactured in China by the U.S. multinational corporations, trying to force the U.S.
multinationals to come back home. They don't want to, so they manufactured the virus thinking
it would bring down the economy/stock market, thereby bringing down Trump.
China plays along, feigns ignorance, and accuses the U.S. of trying to infect their
citizens, Xi wears a mask. A few thousand old people dying is a small price to pay, in their
minds.
4. The U.S. multinational corporate elite did it alone, without China's knowledge ,
for the same reasons as stated in #3, to throw a wrench in the works, purposely sink the
economy. With Trump gone, globalism could continue.
5. The U.S. did it alone, without China's knowledge. The U.S. globalists realize
globalism is ending and they have acquiesced to the U.S. nationalists. They are angry that
China has not followed through with their part of the original deal, which is that China gets
the offshored jobs, their elite get rich, and they get money to modernize, but she must open
up more to the U.S. corporations and financial firms, which she has been reluctant to do.
6. The nationalists did it in order to bring down globalism, put an end to it once and
for all . Once people realize that supply lines (especially pharmaceuticals) thousands of
miles away is a recipe for disaster, they'll scream for things to be changed. Trump has said
he likes President Xi and the Chinese people, this is nothing personal, but he wants the jobs
to return.
7. China did it alone . The Chinese elite realize that globalism is ending, and
they know the Chinese citizens will blame them for the loss of their jobs. The Chinese elite
worry that the citizens will wonder why they've become filthy rich and they haven't. The
Chinese elite plant the virus, but blame it on the U.S.
8. The world elites, in collusion with the central banks, have blown massive financial
bubbles. They realize they can't continue blowing the bubbles any bigger, but they don't see
any way out without being blamed. They plant the virus in order to bring down the world
economy, deflate the bubble. The virus takes the blame, not them. China blames the U.S.,
the U.S. blames China, some old people are sacrificed, and they raise a glass to the
devil.
... I don't know whether you realise how the rest of the world is feeling at the moment:
people are stunned as if the Apocalypse has come. They are worried about their very survival,
and things are only going to get worse because the containment, lockdown, military special
powers will likely extend for weeks and months ahead, as it will take months to gain control
over the epidemic.
The Chinese have officially accused the US to have, at a minimum, covered up early
Covid-19 infections that took place in America several weeks before the epidemic broke out in
Wuhan.
Separate Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists have previously determined that only
the US had the five strains of Coronavirus that could have generated the Covid-19:
@Ron Unz Too many Americans are stuck on Pax Americana la la land and will never admit
something so grave to American status. We saw exactly this during 9/11.
Well, I think there's a certain amount of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the
Coronavirus outbreak may have been an American bioweapon attack against China (and Iran).
But if so, I'm *extremely* skeptical that the perpetrators ever intended or imagined that
it would leak back into the US and inflict the horrific economic and social damage that now
seems unavoidable. How to explain this lack lack of foresight?
The most obvious answer is that they were stupid and incompetent, but here's another
point to consider
In late 2002 there was the outbreak of SARS in China, a related virus but that was far
more deadly and somewhat different in other characteristics. The virus killed hundreds of
Chinese and spread into a few other countries before it was controlled and stamped out. The
impact on the US and Europe was negligible, with just a small scattering of cases and only
a death or two.
So if American biowarfare analysts were considering a Coronavirus attack against China,
isn't it quite possible they would have said to themselves that since SARS never
significantly leaked back into the US or Europe, we'd similarly remain insulated from the
Coronavirus?
Obviously, such an analysis was foolish and mistaken, but would it have seemed so
implausible at the time?
Well, I have only recently heard of a guy named Francis Boyle,a law professor out of the
Univ. Of Illinois. He is apparently an expert on bio-warfare treaties. He claims covid-19 is
manmade,period.
That is a very scary notion,from which most people will flee.
As I have accepted that 9/11 was "the usual suspects," I guess it is definitely possible.
@Ron Unz Maybe, but my take is an engineered market crash. This looks to me like a Nathan
Rothschild sort of trick (according to legend) – propagating fake news about Napoleon's
victory at Waterloo, crashing the markets, then snapping up the whole LSE for a penny to the
pound. If so, you have to admire it, the sheer genius, the psychopathic beauty of it all.
As a bonus, the Reichstag Fire also is an extremely efficient delivery system for the
eugenics payload – a very virulent strain that almost exclusively targets the social
burden (pensioners and already ill) while leaving alone the tax-farm base! Never in the
history of tax-farming have the sheeple been stampeded and fleeced so thoroughly! Bravo!
The US is the customer, with the enormous trade deficit. Trump has been hugely effective
with his tariff's policy in rehoming manufacturing to the US – a process that will
vastly accelerate thanks to the Corona virus outbreak.
I agree that 9-11 stink to high heaven and that PNAC are unmitigated bastards, but this
capitulation to China is balls.
@Ron Unz Stupidity is certainly an American Military essential behavior for promotion and
success in the current US Armed Forces.
But you can't have someone clever enough to create a Recombinant Designer Pathogen and be
in the US Military.
However, the psyops fucks would likely be ready to game the system should a natural
outbreak occur which would be called a Pandemic even when its not and make everyone of our
low quality leaders $hit their pants and go totally crazy. A mild fart with the claim its
poison gas would make the Stock Markets Collapse.
But if so, I'm *extremely* skeptical that the perpetrators ever intended or imagined
that it would leak back into the US and inflict the horrific economic and social damage
that now seems unavoidable. How to explain this lack lack of foresight?
This is the same issue with cyberwar viruses. One can infect computers in Iran, but with
the internet they may be passed onto the entire world, just like rap music.
But if so, I'm *extremely* skeptical that the perpetrators ever intended or imagined
that it would leak back into the US and inflict the horrific economic and social damage
that now seems unavoidable. How to explain this lack lack of foresight?
One word: Trump. Because he could very well lose his reelection bid if the pandemic causes
an economic recession which now seems highly likely given the stock market collapse.
Cui Bono ? The people OPPOSED to Trump, variously referred to as the "Deep State"
or the "National Security State" as described by Gore Vidal in his book which by the way
Julian Assange was holding while being hauled away from the Ecuadorian Embassy.
After Russiagate and Ukrainegate, THEY finally hit the bullseye with Coronagate.
This is a pretty good article. I'll probably link to it.
Some people think this is coming from City of London types. The US pursued a "strategy of
tension" with China that may have allowed third party actors to intervene and get them
fighting each other.
There has been some Bad Blood between British elites and China for awhile now. It's
not clear why.
In this scheme, the US is the patsy, the Oswald to take the blame.
The real gem in the whole article are the observations made by Yang himself:
YANG: That's what freaks me out about the whole thing. What we're doing is saying things
like, "Keep your social distance," and trying to stop the spread that way, which is fine.
But we have shit for data. Like, we don't know what the infection rate is. And so,
there's no reason we would ever be able to give the 'all-clear.' If you don't have any
data, this whole thing is a nightmare that doesn't end. When you close schools, what gives
you the all-clear to say, "OK, open them again"? Nothing. There's no data to compare it to.
This whole thing is a fear-based approach with no end in sight. There's no catalyst to ever
sound the all-clear. This whole thing is so fucked up.
YANG: I think the nature of that guidance has to be different, personally. I think they
need to be transparent about what kind of data we're relying on, to give people a sense of
the timeline. Right now, our sense of the future is so cloudy. And you get the sense the
president went from not taking this seriously to suddenly realizing its seriousness, and now
we're reacting in various ways to slow the spread of the virus. But then what? I would be
clearer as to what the timeline looks like, what data we're going to rely upon, how we're
going to get that data, what steps we're taking to increase testing capacity and just give
people a sense of the future.
We need to know now what the future can look like under different scenarios and then be
presented with what scenario we're in when that time comes. We've been on lockdown
for half a week. Right now, the American people don't have any visibility into whether it's
going to be four more weeks or four more months, and we don't know how those judgments are
going to determined. As president, I would say, "Look, here's the information, here's the
dashboard, here's what we're lining up, here's what we're hoping for, here's how
circumstances could change, and thank you for doing your part -- if you proceed with like
the rest of the country in flattening the curve and keeping things under this level, then
we can look forward to this. " You know, so we could actually have a sense of
accomplishment and purpose.
So here we have it, replicated throughout the whole of the Western world. An open-ended
clamp-down based on fear, with no timeline or road map, and no conditions set on when (or IF)
things will get back to normal.
For now, smells really fishy. Even if DS (Deep State) did not intentionally engineer this
circumstance, they are decisively and very swiftly exploiting it to exert extreme control
over everything .
@antibeast On the contrary, for the deep state Trump is the ideal puppet. Those
who are against Trump belong to the surface state , i.e. Democrats, Leftists in
general and the equally Leftist main stream media. Real policy in the US is only made by the
deep state .
"The East Asian populations have much higher AFs in the eQTL variants associated with
higher ACE2 expression in tissues (Fig. 1c), which may suggest different susceptibility or
response to 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 from different populations under the similar
conditions."
This is a "we do not know yet", not a "we can exclude".
No lab-generated strain?
The Furin docking cleavage site has not been found yet in any other beta-CoV strain, it is
only known from other completely different viruses and seem to be related there with being
highly contagious. In adition, a recent study found a third docking option via GRP78
expressions on the cell surface (usually by cells experiencing stress), https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-15157/v1
. This is already two strange features more compared to SARS and MERS.
There is only a "there is no proof, neither a direct hint found yet", not a "we can
exclude", but a mere belief.
Most irritating is that there is are not intermediate or other similar strains found yet,
and that there is a strange pattern of first occurences in the early phase in Wuhan (and
probably also in the US). We still have no sound explanation how it came into existence, not
even some plausible facts suggesting a pathway. Given the technical capabilities since 15
years, the multitude of stakeholders working on gene editing, for vaccine research also on
dangerous stains, and some irritating cui bono issues, it is too early to discard some
suspicions already. The scope of potential perpetrators (by accident or intentionally with a
not expected outcome) is broad and - given the very intransparent transnational companies -
quite opaque. In issues of global security and extreme relevance for humanity, transparency
should be enforced and secrecy for corporate interests should not be tolerated in such
cases.
Anyway, most important now is to mitigate the ongoing desaster, we should only not forget
some issues for later investigation.
The argument that cov19 isn't engineered because biowar researchers & the empire that
incubates them are 1. Sane and 2. Indequately funded
Nope, not buying it on either count.
The hegemony has military labs all around the globe (though the Fort Detrick closure is
suspicious).
Even if it weren't engineered, a virus doesn't need to be vat-grown to be politically
useful - anthrax, smallpox and bubonic plague - all natural & deadly pathogens - exist
within bioweapon labs, for research purposes of course.
I am a little doubtful about the wuhan games being the vector - think of the timing, right
before CNY.
Surely a "Diplomat" with a diplomatic bag could have a far wider range of opportunities (via
proxies) for more precise delivery.
An interesting story at Common Dreams
"A look at financial records reveal that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard
Burr last month -- just as he was big-dollar donors, but not the general public about the
looming threat of the coronavirus -- personal stock holdings worth hundreds of thousands of
dollars, many of them in industries now seriously impacted by the outbreak..."
".....In an audio recording obtained by NPR, the North Carolina Republican was heard
telling donors at a luncheon on Feb. 27 that the coronavirus, officially called COVID-19,
would likely spread through the population aggressively -- and suggested it could kill
hundreds of thousands of people.
"It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent
history," Burr said.
"It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic," he added, referring to the flu pandemic
which killed more than 600,000 Americans...."
There is audio here
Really, it is hard stop thinking this was a preplanned event...
Wall Street is pressuring key healthcare firms to hike prices over the coronavirus crisis.
Audio here of bankers asking drug companies, firms supplying N95 masks & ventilators, to
figure out how to profit from the Covid-19 emergency.
Today's Keiser Report declares petrodollar and fiat dollar dead and announces the
world will need to have a confab to arrange a new commercial currency or currency basket.
Other interesting food for thought's discussed. The 2nd half interview is with a metals
broker who says we must demand physical delivery instead of paper because the derivatives
aren't properly reflecting physical price. An item from Shadowstats's Daily Update, "the
February 2020 Cass Freight Index® Continued in Annual Decline for the 15th Straight
Month, Down by 7.5% (-7.5%)," further ongoing confirmation that we've actually been in a
recession for at least that long.
In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, investors who bought "pandemic bonds" from the World
Bank in 2017 are set to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
It seems people here don't understand the concept of "burden of proof".
Burden of proof arives from a logical necessity. If you treat every hypothesis existent in
the universe for which there are no scientific evidence as a priori true, the it would mean
they are all true at the same time. The same if you treat them as all false.
That, of course, would be a logical fallacy, since contradictory hypotheses would be true
or false at the same time.
That's why the absence of evidence the SARS CoV-2 isn't a bioweapon doesn't make it a
bioweapon. Since we don't know that, that would make, by the same logic, it a bioweapon and a
not-bioweapon at the same time. It is the same fallacy of religion: you can't prove God
doesn't exist (and you really can't, since God is a metaphysical concept, not a physical
one), therefore it must exist in the eyes of the religious.
Except that, in the case here, there is strong evidence the SARS CoV-2 is fruit of
evolution, so I don't even know why people are bringing the opposite hypothesis here without
even a hint of evidence.
"Some Indian researchers found four genome sequences in the novel coronavirus that can also
be found in the HIV virus. They self published their findings in a paper that was not peer
reviewed. We discussed that paper in detail on February 1 in our second post on the virus and
we strongly expressed our doubt about its veracity. A few days later the paper was retracted
by its authors after other scientists had pointed out that the lengths of each of the four
sequences they had compared were way too small to be of statistical significance."
The authors retracted the study temporarily to allow it to be peer reviewed. They did not
concede their results were insignificant. The stated reason for retracting the study from one
of the authors is because the study was being used to promote conspiracy theories that the
virus was intentionally released as weapon since they made no such contention
"Asian people are not more genetically receptive for the novel coronavirus."
Yet the study you linked to states "The East Asian populations have much higher AFs in the
eQTL variants associated with higher ACE2 expression in tissues (Fig. 1c), which may suggest
different susceptibility or response to 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 from different populations under
the similar conditions."
There is zero evidence that the virus is from a Chinese or U.S. or other (weapon) laboratory
and the claim actually makes no sense. The genome of the virus consists of more then 23,000
'letters'. It is significantly different than the genome of other known viruses."
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Actually, its pretty similar to the bat
virus found in 2013 as reported by Shi Zheng Li in January , 2020. And the key word is
"known". How stupid would you have you have to be to publish the sequence data in public
papers of the exact virus that will be used as a weapon before unleashing the virus. Shi
Zhengli was involved in gain of function research for over a decade working with Ralph Baric
at UNC on some research.
If you look at the research thats been done on corona viruses gain of function and corona
virus/ebola/zika virus vaccines you run into the same names a lot, Chinese scientists like
Shi Zhengli, American scientists like Ralph Baric of UNC, Wuhan institute of Virology/BSL-4
lab, ,Duke University and USAMRIID, both of which has ties with Wuhan University-Institute of
Medical Virology all funded by USAMRIID, DARPA, NIAD, BARDA, NIH , chinese military, chinese
CDC, Bill Gates (WHO, Event 201, AMC, CEPI) , and various vaccine makers such as Innovio,
Moderna, NanoViricides, etc, often in collaboration with each other. George Gao of China CDC
attended Event 201.
Look close at Project Bioshield-The Department of Homeland Security uses intelligence
reports to decide which diseases and biological threats are considered "material," or
realistic threats to US security. It then refers these findings to Health and Human Services
(HHS), which determines whether it's necessary for the government to order new drugs from
pharmaceutical companies to combat the threats.
A funding agency within HHS called the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development
Authority (BARDA) hands out lucrative contracts for research, parts of which can be paid up
front.
The parent agency (HHS) in charge of funding drugs and vaccines for the national
stockpile, is also the one that is separately funding research into new diseases that could
result in a bioterror or accidental infection, which would in turn demand a response from the
national stockpile. Sounds like a racket
More on Ralph Baric- also known as the Godfather of Corona Virus due in part to a corona
virus vaccine patent in 2002 as well as his subsequent research. But Dr. Ralph Baric's
lab
is designed to develop drugs against new emerging pathogens focuses on coronaviruses. Baric
and his 30-person team partnered with Gilead Sciences, Inc. six years ago to test antiviral
drugs such as Remdesivir to curb emerging viral diseases that were then largely overlooked by
big pharmaceutical companies.
Gilead Science as you recall struck gold with Tamiflu thanks to Bird Flu scares that
followed after SARS. Also known for its association with Donald Rumsfeld.
Also there is no proof that COVID-19 is "more contagious" either by laboratory analysis or
in fielded studies than influenza. If you know of such a paper, I would appreciate a link
so that I can examine it for myself.
There have been articles posted online about high levels of air pollution in Italy's Po
River valley region, where Lombardia province is located. Do a search on Google or DuckDuckGo
and they appear.
Much of that pollution probably occurs at particular times of the year. Milan is said to
be notorious for temperature inversions, as is Tehran in Iran. These occur in winter-time in
Tehran nearly every year. Cold air sinks under warm air in river valleys or inter-mountain
valleys and plateaux so air is trapped and cannot circulate, trapping pollutants. Milan,
Tehran and probably Wuhan beside the Jiangzi River sit in these kinds of physical
environments.
Italy does seem to have a history of industrial accidents. I have a double CD set of urban
folk by Alessandro Monti, "Unfolk + Live Book", which is partly inspired by an industrial
poisoning incident that occurred somewhere in northern Italy in the 1970s. Can't remember any
details and can't look up now, being on smartphone, but it was a major incident, large
numbers in the vicinity were poisoned, many died and others still struggling with long-term
effects. May have been some form of dioxide poisoning.
The fixation on bats distracts from the important fact, which is that China primarily has one
haplotype (with instances of three others in small counts, including those brought in from
from abroad). The China haplotype is distinct from the Iran one, and the Italy one. Therefore
none of these locations can be the origin, because where the 'parent' of the virus comes from
would also be a place that would have multiple 'children' or haplotypes of the virus. The
only place place that has all five haplotypes is the US. You can talk all day about bats but
that is to ignore the scientific data about haplotypes and the parent-child relationship it
implies.
On the ideological level, I see many comments saying its not racist to talk about Asians
and weird foods. Let me point out that racism is not just discrimination, but discrimination
from a position of power. A black slave cannot be racist against his plantation master no
matter how much he hates him, because his individual 'prejudice' against the master does not
alter the world and its system of prejudice. Racism issues from power, so viruses that
originate from the US or western countries are NOT stigmatized as linked to white people or
white culture, but viruses that originate from Africa or Asia are racially stigmatized. In
any place, there are some people who eat 'weird' food, whether it be gator meat in Florida or
bats in Palau. But only non-white countries get branded as places of 'disease'. That's
because racism is the perpetuation of structures of power.
Black slaves were prized in southern plantations because they were resistant to diseases
like malaria. That is a fact, but it is also a historical reality that how people talk about
diseases is part of racial and racist discourse.
"... ...The notion of panic is best studied in the context of war. Subjected to fire, explosion etc. a military unit can be reduced to an unthinking mass, fleeing, dropping weapons and massacred by the advancing opponent. This is called panic, and it is never advisable, unlike a retreat performed in a controlled manner, minimizing the losses of the material, life and territory. ..."
...The notion of panic is best studied in the context of war. Subjected to fire, explosion
etc. a military unit can be reduced to an unthinking mass, fleeing, dropping weapons and
massacred by the advancing opponent. This is called panic, and it is never advisable,
unlike a retreat performed in a controlled manner, minimizing the losses of the material,
life and territory.
On personal level, I think I witnessed a trace of panic when I visited supermarket
today. There is a wide aisle with paper goods on one side and frozen goods on the
other. Toilet paper seems 95% gone, and so are frozen vegetables on the other side. Frozen
stuff from other aisles seem untouched. Personally, I had to substitute canned peas for
frozen peas I planned to buy. In any case, few reasons to expect major shortages.
On a larger level, a number of governments in Europe reacts with panic, doing things
that can seriously make things worse. When small countries close borders, there can be
serious havoc. Tens of thousands of people, thousands of trucks are stuck.
At least in USA, states have no authority to close borders. A smallish country like
Slovakia can have severe shortages if hysterical neighbors (Poland and Hungary, I am not
sure about Czechia) close borders. As supply chains cross borders to a large degree in EU,
interrupting the border traffic can create unpredictable shortages.
Additionally, creating big crowds (of stranded people) is very, very stupid under the
circumstances.
Rational policies would be to create the balance of needs and resources, take
measures to increase critical supplies including test kits, medical equipment and
medicines, find ways of humane and rational handling of travelers and so on.
Propublica has published a model showing hospital bed availability vs. nCOV infection rates,
nationwide: bed vs. infection rate
It actually isn't bad: there are spots where 20% infection in 12 months is bad, but overall
the US seems in decent shape. 20% in 6 months - significant red coverage.
But interestingly - my Eyeball Mark I shows the negative effects mostly in the liberal
zones = cities.
Chloroquine/hydrochloroquinine was determined to be effective for the treatment of the
coronavirus by Chinese clinicians early in February, and the Chinese government announced
this on February 17 this year. Today (March 19) Trump and his staff amazingly announced that
medical personnel in American health agencies have discovered, developed and were testing
these drugs without any mention of the considerable Chinese, as well as Korean, published
experience and success using these closely-related and relatively safe malarial drugs.
Shameful and highly deceitful, to say the least. This deceit should be revealed again and
again without letup.
"... Now moving on to the COVID-19 virus and the reactions. At present it is without question, based on the statistical evidence, an overreaction of historical proportions. ..."
"... The three areas, so far, where the virus has been the worst, N Italy, N China and Iran each have one thing in common - some of the worst air pollution on the planet which has been widely cited and as much as a decade ago it was noted that the results would be compromised immune systems, diminished lung functions and outbreaks of related health issues. So what we have essentially is an environment which was ripe for such viruses to proliferate and population that is vulnerable to such things. ..."
"... BTW Russ is correct on his note about bio-weapons and the funding for such things is always there even as the accounting methods serve to hide where these funds go. ..."
People have completely lost their minds here and that is due to decades of social engineering
which has created a culture devoid of critical thinking skills and a frighteningly docile
populace. Accepting the narrative of so-called (and ideologically and often financially)
experts is demanded of everyone lest you be cited as a "conspiracy monger." We could cite
literally all day the number of "whacked out" conspiracies that ended up being factual but
that's for another time.
Having said that it is the case that at present all of what b is saying in this
post is almost certainly the case- excepting the bio weapons narrative which is virtually
impossible to prove and if this is the case it was a very poor job of utilizing those
bio-weapons. And there is most definitely a racist element to this amongst the right-wingers
which will be played up.
Now moving on to the COVID-19 virus and the reactions. At present it is without
question, based on the statistical evidence, an overreaction of historical proportions.
The only option that changes this is if there is something further that we do not know and
for this we are to place our faith in governments and institutions that have consistently
lied to us and manipulated the public for decades. Someone tell me that we are actually
suppose to hold our noses and this time believe the "official narrative." It would
actually go against the proven evidence, that these entities are proven liars, for us to do
so.
The virus itself is just that - a virus even if it is particularly virulent which is still
up for debate. The notions of how to address this, at least the ones peddled to us, are
simply wrongheaded and fit a certain model of the medical establishment that BTW is part and
parcel of the same system that has brought us to the point of massive ecological collapse.
Let's not separate that out.
The three areas, so far, where the virus has been the worst, N Italy, N China and Iran
each have one thing in common - some of the worst air pollution on the planet which has been
widely cited and as much as a decade ago it was noted that the results would be compromised
immune systems, diminished lung functions and outbreaks of related health issues. So what we
have essentially is an environment which was ripe for such viruses to proliferate and
population that is vulnerable to such things.
Keep in mind that viruses constantly mutate and there are myriad viruses that are unknown
and never to be known until something like this occurs. So all talk of some "silver bullet"-
be it vaccine or other medical discovery- is at best short-term if not a Trojan Horse.
The solution is to have an economic social order that creates environments where the
external environment is such that the inhabitants are less likely to be impacted by such
contagions. Right now we have the exact opposite. So say what you want about COVID and
pretend that you can find a "fix" but once this passes if we are forced to return to the same
omnicidal economic system we will be right back here a few years from now.
BTW Russ is correct on his note about bio-weapons and the funding for such things is
always there even as the accounting methods serve to hide where these funds go.
I will unfortunately have to go against the grain here and say that I still fail to see the
immense danger of the virus.
The argument this article makes - particularly in its third paragraph - that drastic
measures taken by governments and private institutions means that the virus is a huge threat
doesn't logically follow. No matter how drastic the measures, how large the public's panic or
how rabid the panic buying, my chance of dying from the virus even if contracting it is, as a
sub-60 year old, healthy person still at roughly 1%, not much higher than viruses that gain
little to no media or political attention.
The fact that it affects old people, but unlike many other viruses not babies is another
factor that should lessen fear, rather than increase it.
This article summarizes the poll but mentions no reasons why those who do not believe the
mainstream narrative should change their opinions other than empty polemic statements (such
as "It would require deliberately ignoring these developments or accepting a completely false
narrative about them to conclude that the threat has been overblown at this point.")
In lieu of proper counter-arguments, it is false to assume that only those willfully
ignorant or believing in false narratives would not be as concerned about this virus as those
in the media and others blowing it out proportion.
A thought. I have often heard the regime in Beijing described as evil, but not stupid. Why on
earth would they have shut down an entire province and partially shut down their whole
country with all the attendant societal disruption and economic devastation if they didn't
think COV is a lot more than flu? Remember, the Chinese are famously fatalistic about life
and death (that is a polite way of saying that they care less about individual human lives
than we do). And what about the Italians. Were they just nervous nellies who had an
irrational panic attack over nothing? OBVIOUSLY they, and many other countries, think this is
a lot more serious than influenza.
my chance of dying from the virus even if contracting it is, as a sub-60 year old, healthy
person still at roughly 1%, not much higher than viruses that gain little to no media or
political attention. The fact that it affects old people, but unlike many other viruses not
babies is another factor that should lessen fear, rather than increase it
Nobody really has *any* solid idea of the epidemiology of this yet, so your blithe 1% is a
kind of wish-thinking. In the States, thanks to the lack of testing (i.e., the failure to
ramp up basic precautionary public health responses), **any** confident assertions of rates
and chances really just serve to flag the speaker as somebody who doesn't know how much he
doesn't know. Nassim Yaleb has some interesting thoughts about the real logic of our
situation:
First of all, you assume that I don't give a damn. I do. I don't think the virus is
unimportant. No virus is.
Second, the lack of certainty plays in favor of my argument rather than yours: We do
already have numbers on the amount of people infected, the amount of people who recovered and
the amount of people who died. From the latter two, we can surmise the percentage chance of a
person surviving an infection. Combining this with the percentage of people who died who were
over the age of 60 (80%) and the number of those people who had pre-existing, severe
conditions (75%) gives us a good idea.
Those who became infected with the virus but either didn't know that it was more than a
common fever or who became infected and had symptoms mild or even non-existent won't figure
into the number of people infected. Hence, the actual percentage chance of dying from the
virus is even lower, since only those who had symptoms severe enough and got tested will
figure into it. The reverse doesn't apply.
Hence, the actual risk of dying is even lower than the numbers suggest.
We don't even know if reinfection is a possibility. As I said, at this point *all*
serene predictions of the disease's likely course are fatuous. What the hell are you, The
Hobby Epidemiologist?
Funny how you specify that "serene" predictions in particular are fatuous while excluding
pessimistic ones. Perhaps it's you who is driven not by data but something else, rather than
me?
You are right. We are flying blind as long as we are not testing widely. However, there is
a lot of data available from other places and using that data we can actually extrapolate
quite a bit. Check this out:
Chloroquine was proposed as an efficient anti-viral for Cov-19 (short for the virus and
disease) by Dr. Raoult in France, right from the start. He is supposedly the no.1 expert
*World* on Communicable diseases. See list of names in the > right column.
This type of grading - ranking - endorsing, certifying, etc. some 'experts', does NOT per
se correlate with their knowledge, honesty, ingenuity, insight (which may be random), etc. It
is very much a social acceptance by the PTB scene based on no. of publications,
contacts, financial awards, contacts with pols, getting more funding, being able to run a
team, etc.
Yet, Dr. Raoult (Marseilles) is not in F considered a great expert at all, as he is not
part of the Paris-Nexus.
This short clip 4 mins on Jan. 21, he is questioned about the coronaviruses (well before
huge alarm in F) shows the personage. In F no subs, but have a look-see for 30 secs.
@ Posted by: donkeytale | Mar 18 2020 18:49 utc | 61
Did you see my link? Japan has a daily test capacity of only some 7,000 (South Korea, for
example, is testing 20,000 per day). To make things worse, it is using just one sixth of this
capacity. My source is the Japan Times, so you cannot invoke propaganda.
The Chinese doctors are using at least 22 different broad-spectrum antivirals to try to
treat the infected. Not surprised one of them is Japanese, but that's irrelevant information
(one of them, for example, is Cuban).
As I've posted in the previous thread, in moments of pandemic crisis against a disease
without cure, doctors on the field have the poetic license to try whatever they want to. So
they threw practically everything in Wuhan (shots in the dark after shots in the dark). It's
acceptable medical practice in these extraordinary cases.
But none of the 22 antivirals are cures. Not even close. Best case scenario, they gain
some time for some patients. Do not fall for the barrage of fake news in the Western MSM
about "promising cures, treatments and vaccines" coming from some alleged geniuses at some
unicorn in some First World country:
Zhong made the remarks at a press conference in Guangzhou on Wednesday, stressing that so
far there is no targeted therapeutic COVID-19 drug and international cooperation is still
needed for new experiments.
The fight against the COVID-19 should not be reliant on "herd immunity," Zhong added,
saying that the production of an effective COVID-19 vaccine is at present the top priority,
and the development requires international cooperation.
Zhong also made very clear the laissez-faire tactic won't work:
"There is no evidence of immunity for life after one infection of the virus," Zhong added.
Iran (especially Tehran), northern Italy (Po River valley region) and Wuhan are also areas
of high levels of air pollution. Populations in these regions are located in river valleys or
plateaux in mountainous areas where temperature inversions leading to thick smog are common.
I've read that Tehran experiences annual temperature inversions once a year, in the past
occurring in December but in recent times starting earlier in November. Qom, where Iran's
COVID-19 outbreak started, is not far from Tehran and itself is becoming more
industrialised.
Northern Italy is reputed to have the worst air quality of any region in Europe.
Interesting that there was a flood of comments yesterday - here, at Off Guardian, and other
similar sites - all pushing the concept that the virus is a mild flu and that best practices,
particularly social distancing, were in fact a scam designed to initiate the new world
order/global police state, or something. Rational responses were met with all-caps freak outs
and down-voting.
In my area, vehicle traffic has been down by at least 50%. The skies are noticeably
clearer. A colleague pointed out that satellite imagery over northern Italy has shown that
the air quality there has visibly improved.
People should take a closer look at the stats coming out of Germany and S. Korea, both
countries known for extensive testing. There are over 8,100 cases in Germany, yet death
remains at 12, which makes the death rate <0.15%, almost on par with the flu. SK's death
rate is around 0.65%.
SK doctors have been using the malaria/arthritis drug hydrochloroquine to treat patients
with much success, now a doctor in France has found that a combination of that drug and a
common antibiotic azithromycin has cured up to 70% of patients after 3 to 6 days: https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/18/hydroxychloroquine-coronavirus-covid19-cure-study/
Hopefully this is the cure we've been waiting for.
I'm agnostic on the subject of COVID-19: its origin, how it first infected humans, its
epidemiological spread
Perhaps agnostic is not the best choice of words, but overall, I agree.
It is not impossible that the virus did not "escape" from the Wuhan Lab, but it is
unlikely.
That the Chinese have sequenced a virus to do something unexpected, then published it, is
unremarkable. That others may have done the same or similar and not published it,
would be remarkable. I would consider the "Five Eyes" and Israel entirely capable – and
likely to do that, given they operate as one.
I look to the narrative we get in North America, irrespective of the topic, and the
pattern is the same:
1- "report" the topic;
2- announce "breaking news" to establish the narrative;
3- repeat the narrative endlessly saturating the media;
4- ignore contrary evidence;
5- if #4 becomes too difficult, discredit it by a bait and switch;
6- pronounce the narrative is still solid and alternative information false;
7- rinse and repeat.
(I suppose, if all else fails, blame Russia/Putin could be added.)
In context of the above, I am leaning toward that it wasn't an accident and in all
likelihood it wasn't China.
The corona hype is not based on any extraordinary public health danger. However, it
causes considerable damage to our freedom and personal rights through frivolous and
unjustified quarantine measures and restrictions. The images in the media are frightening
and the traffic in China's cities seems to be regulated by the clinical thermometer.
Evidence based epidemiological assessment is drowning in the mainstream of fear mongers
in labs, media and ministries.
The carnival in Venice was cancelled after an elderly dying hospital patient was tested
positive. When a handful of people in Northern Italy also were tested positive, Austria
immediately closed the Brenner Pass temporarily.
Due to a suspected case of coronavirus, more than 1000 people were not allowed to leave
their hotel in Tenerife. On the cruise ship Diamond Princess 3700 passengers could not
disembark., Congresses and touristic events are cancelled, economies suffer and schools in
Italy have an extra [holiday].
At the beginning of February, 126 people from Wuhan were brought to Germany by plane and
remained there in quarantine two weeks in perfect health. Corona viruses were detected in
two of the healthy individuals.
We have experienced similar alarmist actions by virologists in the last two decades.
WHO's "swine flu pandemic" was in fact one of the mildest flu waves in history and it is
not only migratory birds that are still waiting for "birds flu". Many institutions that are
now again alerting us to the need for caution have let us down and failed us on several
occasions. Far too often, they are institutionally corrupted by secondary interests from
business and/or politics.
If we do not want to chase frivolous panic messages, but rather to responsibly assess
the risk of a spreading infection, we must use solid epidemiological methodology. This
includes looking at the "normal", the baseline, before you can speak of anything
exceptional.
Until now, hardly anyone has paid attention to corona viruses. For example, in the
annual reports of the Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) they are only marginally mentioned
because there was SARS in China in 2002 and because since 2012 some transmissions from
dromedaries to humans have been observed in Arabia (MERS). There is nothing about a
regularly recurring presence of corona viruses in dogs, cats, pigs, mice, bats and in
humans, even in Germany.
However, children's hospitals are usually well aware, that a considerable proportion of
the often severe viral pneumonia is also regularly caused or accompanied by corona viruses
worldwide.
In view of the well-known fact that in every "flu wave" 7-15% of acute respiratory
illnesses (ARI) are coming along with coronaviruses, the case numbers that are now
continuously added up are still completely within the normal range.
About one per thousand infected are expected to die during flu seasons. By selective
application of PCR-tests – for example, only in clinics and medical outpatient
clinics – this rate can easily be pushed up to frightening levels, because those, who
need help there are usually worse off than those, who are recovering at home. The role of
such s selection bias seems to be neglected in China and elsewhere.
Since the turn of the year, the focus of the public, of science and of health
authorities has suddenly narrowed to some kind of blindness. Some doctors in Wuhan (12
million inhabitants) succeeded in attracting worldwide attention with initially less than
50 cases and some deaths in their clinic, in which they had identified corona viruses as
the pathogen.
The colourful maps that are now being shown to us on paper or screens are impressive,
but they usually have less to do with disease than with the activity of skilled virologists
and crowds of sensationalist reporters.
We are currently not measuring the incidence of coronavirus diseases, but the activity
of the specialists searching for them.
Wherever such the new tests are carried out – there about 9000 tests per week
available in 38 laboratories throughout Europe on 13 February 2020 – there are at
least single cases detected and every case becomes a self-sustaining media event. The fact
alone that the discovery of a coronavirus infection is accompanied by a particularly
intensive search in its vicinity explains many regional [clusters].
The horror reports from Wuhan were something, that virologists all over the world are
waiting for. Immediately, the virus strains present in the refrigerators were scanned and
compared feverishly with the reported newcomers from Wuhan. A laboratory at the
Charité won the race at the WHO and was the first to be allowed to market its
in-house tests worldwide. Prof C. Drosten was interviewed on 23rd of january 2020 and
described how the Test was established. He said, that he cooperated with a Partner from
China, who confirmed the specific sensitivity of the Charitè-Test for the Wuhan
coronavirus. Other Tests from different Places followed soon and found their market.
However, it is better not to be tested for corona viruses. Even with a slight "flu-like"
infection the risk of coronavirus detection would be 7% – 15% . This is, what a
prospective monitoring in Scotland (from 2005 to 2013) may teach us. The scope, the
possible hits and the significance of the new tests are not [yet] validated. It would be
[interesting] to have [some] tests not only on airports and cruising ships but on [German]
or [Italian] cats, mice or even bats.
If you find some new virus RNA in a Thai cave ore a Wuhan hospital, it takes a long time
to map its prevalence in different hosts worldwide.
But if you want to give evidence to a spreading pandemic by using PCR-Tests only, this
is what should have been done after a prospective cross sectional [protocol].
So beware of side effects. Nowadays positive PCR tests have tremendous consequences for
the everyday life of the patient and his wider environment, as can be seen in all media
without effort.
However, the finding itself has no clinical significance. It is just another name for
acute respiratory illnesses (ARI), which as every year put 30% to 70% of all people in our
countries more or less out of action for a week or two every winter.
According to a prospective ARI-virus monitoring in Scotland from 2005 to 2013, the most
common pathogens of acute respiratory diseases were: 1. rhinoviruses, 2. influenza A
viruses, 3. influenza B viruses, 4. RS viruses and 5. coronaviruses.
This order changed slightly from year to year. Even with viruses competing for our
mucous membrane cells, there is apparently a changing quorum, as we know it from our
intestines in the case of microorganisms and from the Bundestag in the case of political
groups.
So if there is now to be an increasing number of "proven" coronavirus infections. in
China or in Italy: Can anyone say how often such examinations were carried out in previous
winters, by whom, for what reason and with which results? When someone claims that
something is increasing, he must surely refer to something, that has been observed
before.
It can be stunning, when an experienced disease control officer looks at the current
turmoil, the panic and the suffering it causes. I'm sure many of those responsible public
health officers would probably risk their jobs today, as they did with the "swine flu" back
then, if they would follow their experience and oppose the mainstream.
Every winter we have a virus epidemic with thousands of deaths and with millions of
infected people even in Germany. And coronaviruses always have their share.
So if the Federal Government wants to do something good, it could learn from
epidemiologists in Glasgow and have all clever minds at the RKI observe prospectively (!!!)
and watch how the virom of the German population changes from year to year.
Some questions for the evaluation of the current findings:
1) Which prospective, standardised monitoring of acute respiratory diseases with or
without fever (ILI, ARI) is used for the epidemiological risk assessment of coronavirus
infections observed in Wuhan Italy, South Korea, Iran and elsewhere (baseline).
2) How do the comparable (!) results of earlier observations differ from those now
reported by the WHO? (in China, in Europe, in Italy, in Germany, etc.)
3) What would we observe this ARI-season if we would ignore the new PCR-testing?
4) How valid and how comparable are the detection methods used with regard to
sensitivity, specificity and pathogenetic or prognostic relevance?
5) What is the evidence or probability that the observed corona viruses 2019/2020 are
more dangerous to public health than previous variants?
6) If you find them now, how can you [prove], they were not there (e.g. in animals)
before.
What considerations have been made or taken into account to exclude or minimise sources of
bias (sources of error)?
Note: the original source of this quote contains embedded links not here apparent.
Finally, a great perspective on this fiasco. I agree, we
cannot make such important decisions with so little data to back it up. I would also add that
we do have some data that suggests that it's not an extinction level event as it's being
portrayed.
Look at the numbers in the countries that have been through it already, number of
cases are exponential for about 2 weeks and then they begin to decrease. That's happened in
China, South Korea, and is happening in Italy and Iran right now.
If China has 3,200 deaths
(plus 2600 critical condition patients) and Italy has 2500 deaths (plus 2000 critical
condition cases), why would we expect much more in the US?
According to the CDC MMWR, during
week 9 of 2020, pneumonia killed 2280 people and the flu another 384; during week 8 of 2020,
2911 died of pneumonia and the flu killed another 415.
That's more deaths in 2 weeks in the
US than all of China's deaths due to covid-19 since the epidemic started.
Why are we not
talking about this? I know that we have a pretty good idea of what the flu does every year
and I agree that we had no idea what covid-19 was going to do in a country in January, but
it's March and we have seen what it's done in a couple of countries and it's not any worse
than any other disease that we encounter every year.
I also agree that when this is all done
and we finally get more data, the fatality rate for covid-19 will certainly be less than 1%.
Then what? After the extensive damage to every part of our society? For what? What about the
people that rely on a weekly paycheck? The small business that rely on heavy customer
traffic? Will we hold someone responsible? Will it be the news media trying to sell
newspapers with negative headlines?
Scientists that arrive to a conclusion with no evidence
to support it? Are we going to freak out every year because bad things can possibly happen?
Maybe if we work really hard this year we can come up with something for next year that will
really kill us all but it won't be a virus this time, it will be our own stupidity and lack
of common sense.
"... "The staff is exhausted. I saw the tiredness on faces that didn't know what it was despite the already exhausting workloads they had. I saw a solidarity of all of us, who never failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask, 'What can I do for you now?' ..."
"... "Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we can't save everyone, and the vital parameters of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny. ..."
"... "There are no more shifts, no more hours. Social life is suspended for us. We no longer see our families for fear of infecting them. Some of us have already become infected despite the protocols. ..."
What is happening now in Italy explained by one of the doctors fighting the pandemic in
Bergamo, this was on 9 March, today the situation in Bergamo and all Italy is much worse with
this "normal flu" (sarc):
Dr Daniele Macchini's post, translated by Dr Silvia Stringhini
"After much thought about whether and what to write about what is happening to us, I felt
that silence was not responsible.
"I will therefore try to convey to people far from our reality what we are living in
Bergamo in these days of Covid-19 pandemic. I understand the need not to create panic, but
when the message of the dangerousness of what is happening does not reach people I
shudder.
"I myself watched with some amazement the reorganization of the entire hospital in the
past week, when our current enemy was still in the shadows: the wards slowly 'emptied',
elective activities were interrupted, intensive care were freed up to create as many beds as
possible.
"All this rapid transformation brought an atmosphere of silence and surreal emptiness to
the corridors of the hospital that we did not yet understand, waiting for a war that was yet
to begin and that many (including me) were not so sure would ever come with such
ferocity.
"I still remember my night call a week ago when I was waiting for the results of a swab.
When I think about it, my anxiety over one possible case seems almost ridiculous and
unjustified, now that I've seen what's happening. Well, the situation now is dramatic to say
the least.
"The war has literally exploded and battles are uninterrupted day and night. But now that
need for beds has arrived in all its drama. One after the other the departments that had been
emptied fill up at an impressive pace.
"The boards with the names of the patients, of different colours depending on the
operating unit, are now all red and instead of surgery you see the diagnosis, which is always
the damned same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.
"Now, explain to me which flu virus causes such a rapid drama. [post continues comparing
Covid19 to flu, link here]. And while there are still people who boast of not being afraid by
ignoring directions, protesting because their normal routine is 'temporarily' put in crisis,
the epidemiological disaster is taking place. And there are no more surgeons, urologists,
orthopedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this
tsunami that has overwhelmed us.
"Cases are multiplying, we arrive at a rate of 15-20 admissions per day all for the same
reason. The results of the swabs now come one after the other: positive, positive, positive.
Suddenly the E.R. is collapsing.
"Reasons for the access always the same: fever and breathing difficulties, fever and
cough, respiratory failure. Radiology reports always the same: bilateral interstitial
pneumonia, bilateral interstitial pneumonia, bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All to be
hospitalized.
"Someone already to be intubated and go to intensive care. For others it's too late...
Every ventilator becomes like gold: those in operating theatres that have now suspended their
non-urgent activity become intensive care places that did not exist before.
"The staff is exhausted. I saw the tiredness on faces that didn't know what it was
despite the already exhausting workloads they had. I saw a solidarity of all of us, who never
failed to go to our internist colleagues to ask, 'What can I do for you now?'
"Doctors who move beds and transfer patients, who administer therapies instead of
nurses. Nurses with tears in their eyes because we can't save everyone, and the vital
parameters of several patients at the same time reveal an already marked destiny.
"There are no more shifts, no more hours. Social life is suspended for us. We no
longer see our families for fear of infecting them. Some of us have already become infected
despite the protocols.
"Some of our colleagues who are infected also have infected relatives and some of their
relatives are already struggling between life and death. So be patient, you can't go to the
theatre, museums or the gym. Try to have pity on the myriad of old people you could
exterminate.
"We just try to make ourselves useful. You should do the same: we influence the life and
death of a few dozen people. You with yours, many more. Please share this message. We must
spread the word to prevent what is happening here from happening all over Italy.
"I finish by saying that I really don't understand this war on panic. The only reason I
see is mask shortages, but there's no mask on sale anymore. We don't have a lot of studies,
but is it panic really worse than neglect and carelessness during an epidemic of this
sort?"
And now let the people make "normal life" and acquire "herd immunity", BoJo and a good
part of the western governments (if not all) are criminals
...Express.co.uk has compiled advice to show which objects to sanitise to avoid
spreading the deadly disease. Trending
Mobile phones
Research has found mobile phones can be 10 times dirtier than toilet seats.
Your own hands can be the biggest culprit when it comes to adding germs and bacteria onto your phone.
Assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Emily Martin, said mobile
telephones are particularly dirty because people do not necessarily wash their hands before touching them.
She told Time.com: "Because people are always carrying their cell phones even in situations where they would normally
wash their hands before doing anything, cell phones do tend to get pretty gross."
ATMs or ticket machines
Ticket machines and ATMs will be touched by many people which means it poses a risk to spreading coronavirus.
Coronavirus warning: Coronavirus has killed more than 94,000 people around the world
(Image: GETTY)
Telephones
Your mobile phone can pose a risk, but additionally so can shared office telephones.
Office kitchens
Coffee machines or kettles will be handled by multiple people, so it's a good idea to use hand sanitiser after doing the
tea round.
Lift buttons
Lift buttons can be touched by potentially hundreds or thousands of people depending on how many people use the lift
regularly.
This means it can pose a threat to spreading coronavirus.
Handrails
Escalators, tube handrails, bannisters will all be touched constantly, potentially by thousands of people a day.
Dr Tait-Burkard told the Guardian: "If you're on public transport, there's no way not to touch the handrails.
"So when you get off, disinfect your hands."
Coronavirus warning: More than 75 countries have reported cases of coronavirus
(Image: GETTY)
Communal bathrooms
Communal bathrooms can pose a threat as they are enclosed spaces which will be accessed by several people.
The door handles, soap dispensers, hand dryers, bins and other objects could be touched by many people.
Additionally, people often blow their noses in the bathroom which can help spread the virus.
Hospitals
Hospitals can be hotbeds for disease, so it is advisable to wash your hands thoroughly before and after visiting a
hospital.
Professor Haas told the Guardian: "Shaking hands is a frequent transmission route for disease in hospitals.
"It's why health personnel are supposed to regularly disinfect their hands."
There is only limited evidence to suggest it actually helps. However, saltwater rinses have not been shown to prevent
respiratory infections in the past. The NHS said: “There is no evidence that regularly rinsing the nose with salt water protects
you from coronavirus”. The real question is how long it take the virus to get inside the cell: is this hours or
minutes?
BTW Research has found mobile phones can be 10 times dirtier than toilet seats.
The use of saline (salt water) irrigations for the nose and sinuses has been shown to be highly effective in improving allergy
symptoms and shortening the duration of a sinus infection. Typically, for
allergy
sufferers, doctors recommend irrigating the sinuses once every day to every other day with 8 ounces of salt water.
Make your own saline rinse Combat sinus infections
As an Asthmatic I found this information interesting. You might need to scroll down - as
simple solutions (mainly before you really get it !) are near the end.
Quotes; A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of all, take a good
care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.
Q: To wash it with saltwater?
A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus
cleaners to stop running nose and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free
unobstructed breath should come after all. The second thing is the oropharyngeal area behind
the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of the oropharyngeal
region.
Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down
your throat?
A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good
airways. Of all the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can
afford to buy a nebulizer or
Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?
A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good
state. When a cough starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe
for patients with bronchial asthma. This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol.
Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance, relieve spasm.
Q: You mean expectorant?" Mucolytic ACC?
A: Yes, ACC and Fluimucil. And what you can't do is use glucocorticosteroids. This
virus replication is rapidly increasing by them.
Q: What does that mean?
A: Corticosteroids is prednisone, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, betamethasone.
Q: So you don't need to inject hormones, relatively speaking, if you have a viral
infection?
A: There are inhaled steroids. But there are patients with asthma who are ill and are on this
therapy. But this has to be a tailor-made solutions.
------------
b's and most western Government's change of heart, makes sense if the re-infection rate is
much higher and more lethal than the first onset of the virus. I don't know the truth
about this but there was a small, quickly suppressed, report from *researchers* in
Hubei that this is the case. The second time round we are talking about an attack on the
"vital" organs (heart etc) in a relatively short period of days.
What will happen is a societal collapse, or a total financial scam where the billionaires
come out of hiding and take everything for a few shekels. Remember that debts can be
"claimed" decades after they are made. So ordinary people will have to pay back all these
massive "aids" later, through taxes.
I keep seeing people recommending this salt water lavage. So I looked it up on the
Internet. No, it does *not* kill the virus. It might ease the symptoms, but does nothing to
eliminate the virus.
As far as I know from reading so far, there are *no* "home remedies" that can deal with
this virus.
I have seen suggestions to boost your vitamin intake in hopes of boosting your immune
system. I've upped my C to 3 grams a day instead of my usual 1 and my D-3 to 6,000 units
instead of my usual 4,000.
As an Asthmatic I found this information interesting. You might need to scroll down - as
simple solutions (mainly before you really get it !) are near the end.
Quotes; A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of all, take a good
care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.
Q: To wash it with saltwater?
A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus
cleaners to stop running nose and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free
unobstructed breath should come after all. The second thing is the oropharyngeal area behind
the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of the oropharyngeal
region.
Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down
your throat?
A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good
airways. Of all the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can
afford to buy a nebulizer or
Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?
A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good
state. When a cough starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe
for patients with bronchial asthma. This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol.
Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance, relieve spasm.
Q: You mean expectorant?" Mucolytic ACC?
A: Yes, ACC and Fluimucil. And what you can't do is use glucocorticosteroids. This
virus replication is rapidly increasing by them.
Q: What does that mean?
A: Corticosteroids is prednisone, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, betamethasone.
Q: So you don't need to inject hormones, relatively speaking, if you have a viral
infection?
A: There are inhaled steroids. But there are patients with asthma who are ill and are on this
therapy. But this has to be a tailor-made solutions.
------------
b's and most western Government's change of heart, makes sense if the re-infection rate is
much higher and more lethal than the first onset of the virus. I don't know the truth
about this but there was a small, quickly suppressed, report from *researchers* in
Hubei that this is the case. The second time round we are talking about an attack on the
"vital" organs (heart etc) in a relatively short period of days.
What will happen is a societal collapse, or a total financial scam where the billionaires
come out of hiding and take everything for a few shekels. Remember that debts can be
"claimed" decades after they are made. So ordinary people will have to pay back all these
massive "aids" later, through taxes.
I keep seeing people recommending this salt water lavage. So I looked it up on the
Internet. No, it does *not* kill the virus. It might ease the symptoms, but does nothing to
eliminate the virus.
As far as I know from reading so far, there are *no* "home remedies" that can deal with
this virus.
I have seen suggestions to boost your vitamin intake in hopes of boosting your immune
system. I've upped my C to 3 grams a day instead of my usual 1 and my D-3 to 6,000 units
instead of my usual 4,000.
The more the fear porn ramps up, the less certain I become of any aspect of the narrative
surrounding it. We are definitely all being discouraged from questioning its virulence,
discouraged from referring to its official fatality and case numbers, which do not correlate
with the level of fear we are being told is appropriate. There is certainly a massive and
multifaceted attempt to fudge and inflate those numbers to bring them in line with the
'response'.
This brings us back to our revelation that good old
Wikipedia have been downgrading the CFR of the Spanish Flu. It's hard not to see this as
part of the same process.
The actual death rates just aren't high enough. So talk them up, play pea and thimble
games with the stats, and do some Memory-Holing so that the 1918 pandemic suddenly has a very
similar CFR, allowing your tame media to make all the right comparisons in their op eds and
editorials, pointing out how many millions died back then despite it only having a fatality
ratio of 2.5%.
They seem aware of the discrepancy, and are making efforts to prevent people researching
it. The WHO are warning people not to read "too much" about the disease in order to protect
their mental health. In a write up on the reccomendations, the BBC says this :
There is a lot of misinformation swirling around – stay informed by sticking to
trusted sources of information such as government and NHS websites
Whether this virus is as imaginary as some are saying, or entirely real, it's being hyped
to a point beyond any connection with reality, and not just in the media. It's a
multi-pronged assault on our minds right now. Allegedly reliable and authoritative medical
professionals are just as likely to talk propaganda at you as some government minister or
media halfwit.
Gary Weglarz ,
Veterans Today describes itself as follows at its website: ("VeteransToday.com (VT) is an
independent alternative journal for the clandestine services focused on U.S. Foreign Policy
and Military Issues.")
A rather interesting report from VT to say the least.
RT has a headline "21 year old Spanish football coach dies of corona virus" Click on the
story. He had leukemia.
Dungroanin ,
Will just sticking to actual facts make a blind bit of difference to the panicked? I fear
not.
97% of all infected in the whole world seem to have recovered.
Of the 3% who didn't the AVERAGE age is above 70.
There is a trade off between a shorter period and more cases at the same time and the
same total number but not so many at the same time over a longer period by trying to
isloate people who do get it.
A safe vaccine must be ar least a year away for the NEXT return of the virus.
Is there any objection to these facts?
-- --
Facts?
Apparently italians are so far advanced in their doom they are letting a body remain in a
house without collecting it .
Apparently the 'young man' in his 50's was killed by the virus in the UK.
Are These 'facts' true? Can anyone post any links to them?
Thom ,
It's fairly clear the coronavirus is both a cover and an excuse for a) temporary financial
collapse; b) a vicious trade war with China and c) gaslighting the peoples of western
'democracies' into accepting semi-fascist government. As soon as the markets are at rock
bottom and China, Iran and the eurozone damaged as much as possible, a vaccine will most
probably be 'found', the markets will 'soar' and the majority will thank their political
leaders for pulling them back from the abyss – forgetting that many of the control
measures will still be in place and their pensions, investments and, quite likely, bank
accounts will have been quietly ransacked.
aspnaz ,
Totally agree. Here in HK we have had 4 deaths from Covid-19 over the past three months.
Here is a link to the HK covid-19 website that even gives you details of every case
https://wars.vote4.hk/en/ .
Initially the HK people paniced and most improved their personal hygiene: hand washing,
masks etc. All public gathering facilities were closed, such as all the public sports
facilities, but now they are all opening again and things are returning to normal as the
predictions of massive death prove to be false. I don't know what is happening in other
countries, but here in HK (and the same according to relatives in Taiwan) it has turned out
to be a bit of a nothing burger. Strangely, I have posted this comment on a number of fear
porn alt websites and had it removed.
Bryan ,
The modelling suggests that people over 60 are particularly vulnerable (for obvious age
related issues) and that the sheer numbers from this group will quickly overwhelm health
provision – so few will be priority treated and many will die from avoidable
complications. This is not hype and requires a serious intetventionalist response. I do not
doubt however that such measures may be come a permanent part of our slide towards the
authoritarian Right.
Jen ,
There is now news of a 21-year-old Spanish football coach,
a guy called Francisco Garcia , dying from COVID-19. He had an underlying condition
(leukaemia) which he did not know of until he had symptoms of COVID-19 infection and went
to hospital.
Garcia is likely to be the tip of the proverbial iceberg of young people who do not know
that they have dormant health issues until their immune systems become stressed or
infection with COVID-19 stirs up the dormant health problems.
During their late teenage / young adult years, people often pick up diseases or
pathogens – the various herpes viruses and the Epstein-Barr virus that causes
glandular fever come to mind – and for the most these issues resolve or their
symptoms go away but the viruses that cause them continue to stay in the body and create
problems later when the immune system is stressed by another pathogen.
How many young people these days might have dormant conditions, viruses or bacteria
causing no problems at all until they come into situations where their immune systems are
stressed, such as but not limited to situations like working two or more jobs in insecure
or dangerous conditions, living in share arrangements with strangers whose medical
histories are unknown, and being unsure of future prospects? They may also be vulnerable to
COVID-19 more than we realise.
Mucho ,
"If you ever doubted that corruption is now endemic and all our institutions –
political, legal, medical – are stacked with yes-men and jobsworths or fools prepared
to put their names to any junk proclamation that might get them a raise or save their
professional skins, just think of this article."
Not forgetting the enormous army of dependable chaps from "The Lodge", who can always be
relied upon to grit their teeth and say whatever is required to "retain order."
George Mc ,
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Attributed to Mark Twain.
Dave Hansell ,
Presumably that would also include statistics on previous years flu cases, suicide
statistics, deaths from car accidents statistics, deaths from knife crime, or Ben
population statistics?
Or are some statistics more valid than others depending on their utility in arguing a
particular case or agenda?
George Mc ,
Twain – or whoever- was drawing attention to the easiness of manipulating statistics
– which is why we should scrutinise them as Catte has done above.
George Mc ,
By a coincidence this wondrous Lancet article is one I accessed myself just a few days back
and I noted that arresting statement:
We re-estimated mortality rates by dividing the number of deaths on a given day by the
number of patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection 14 days before. On this basis, using
WHO data on the cumulative number of deaths to March 1, 2020, mortality rates would be
5·6% (95% CI 5·4–5·8) for China and 15·2%
(12·5–17·9) outside of China.
i.e. mortality rates outside China are three times greater than inside. Scary stuff. I
presume that the number of deaths mentioned are from within the confirmed infected sample?
Surely it would be too cynical to assume that they added in deaths from outside? But, as
with the UK deaths so far, the dead may have had other illnesses too.
... ... ...
Willem ,
Here is a report from Northern Italy of an Italian dr that I consider to be true.
He says that the origen of the virus is the media who created a panic instead of a
pandemic and much more. Tempting to quote but better read for yourself.
Hat tip to Milosovic who previously added this link
I'd be very cautious about anything that 'authority' tells you. I'm in a part of south west
France that geographically is not far from northern Italy.
Just about everyone where I am is saying that the covid 19 stuff is complete and utter
bullshit.
Remember, covid 19 is brought to you by exactly the same people who brought to you 9/11,
and the invasion of Iraq, etc, etc, etc.
Ivan ,
In Italy today there were 345 deaths from coronavirus, 368 yesterday. There is an endless
flood of patients in the hospitals, hospitals are being divided into hospitals trating
coronavirus cases and hospitals for non infected people. An emergency call for which the
medics arrived before in 10 minutes, now takes 50 minutes (Lombardia).
You don't know what you are talking about. Go take a look at the Italian news sites
(google translate).
Hmmm . Well I'm almost 75 with a heart condition and don't want to die gasping for breath.
So yes, for most, it's no big deal but anyone over 40 is at risk, so even if 'only' 1% die
in the UK, that's a lot of people. But most important of all, is the threat (potentially)
it poses to capitalism. Things will never be the same again.
Ieuan Einion ,
As I understand it, 30,000 people have died of this winter's particular strain of influenza
in the USA, which is par for the course, around 0.01% of those infected. If the Italian and
Iranian experiences to date are anything to go by, the infection/mortality ratio is much
greater for CorviD-19.
In line with the vitally important reference in the article to WHO estimates that 290 000-650
000 respiratory deaths occur each year associated with seasonal flu, the following cannot be
repeated often enough.
The ONS reported that in the 2017 to 2018 winter period, there were an estimated 50,100
excess winter deaths in England and Wales alone. The report attributed these deaths to "the
predominant strain of flu, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine and below-average
winter temperatures".
So far, nCov has killed fewer than 50 people in the entire UK.
And yet, two years ago, not a single person wore a face mask, no flights were cancelled,
nobody refused to shake hands, not a single academic institution switched to distance
learning, no football was postponed, the England cricket team was not called home from a
sunlit corner of the former empire and no damn fools ran out to Tesco to clear the shelves of
toilet rolls and pasta.
And while we are talking about infectious respiratory diseases, the following are WHO
statistics for 2018. The name of the disease (see if you can guess) comes at the end.
• A total of 1.5 million people died from this disease in 2018.
• An estimated 10 million people fell ill with this disease worldwide.
• In 2018, 1.1 million children fell ill with it globally, and there were 205 000 child
deaths due to it.
• There were cases in all countries and age groups.
But this disease is curable and preventable.
The fact is though that the western media, governments and the ignorant population do not
give a shit about it because eight countries account for two thirds of the total, namely
India followed by China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and South
Africa.
There are three most helpful and competent sources "How to treat Coronavirus infection
COVID-19"
1. An advice from a pathologist who's been tracking the virus since 1970: United Nursing
Services "Good luck for all of us"
2. The RT-Interview with the member of the Russian Academy of Science Alexander Chuchalin
Translated by Scott Humor
3. Das Coronavirus-Update mit Christian Drosten | NDR.de ...
 https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html
The German Virologie-Professor gives a lot of informations in a podcast everyday for half an
hour, today was the 14th. If anybody knews the German language, it is a must to hear. He does
not speak only about the medical but all the sociological problems, the media and the
scientistic "fakes".
The Coronavirus Conundrum as interpreted by Average Joe.
Reporter: "Excuse me sir, have you been tested for coronavirus yet?"
Average Joe: "No, I haven't."
Reporter: "Aren't you worried?"
Average Joe: "No."
Reporter: "Why not?"
Average Joe: "I don't have any symptoms."
Reporter: "But you could be a carrier and not know it."
Average Joe: "Uh huh. Say, can I ask you a question?"
Reporter: "Sure, go ahead."
Average Joe: "What are the symptoms of coronavirus?"
Reporter: "Well, that would be coughing, sneezing, chills, intestinal disorder and
fever."
Average Joe: "And what are the symptoms of influenza?"
Reporter: " I think they are the same."
Average Joe: "Aren't there millions of cases of influenza compared to coronavirus?"
Reporter: "Well yes, that's true."
Average Joe: "And people could have influenza and not know it and spread it, too?"
Reporter: "Yes, I guess so."
Average Joe: "So why aren't you asking me if I should be tested for influenza, instead?"
Reporter: "Because coronavirus has killed about 50 people in the U.S. so far"
Average Joe: "Influenza has killed over 4,500 Americans so far."
Here we witness Average Joe thinks logically. Since there are more people infected with
influenza than coronavirus and the symptoms are the same and more people have died, he should
be tested for influenza before coronavirus. But the media isn't focused on influenza, they
want people to be afraid of coronavirus because of the huge amount of attention it is getting
in the press around the world. And that's the truth.
The Saker has a good article - How to treat Coronavirus infection COVID-19 - by an
international recognized virologist, Dr Chuchalain.
Contrary to what I have read in other articles, he says the virus does cause runny nose
and sore throat along with mild fever.
The best way to deal with this is salt water gargling and nasal rinses with the same.
A method to reduce getting infected is to wear gloves when out. Handwashing is more
effective than masks.
If you are infected masks do help you not infecting others. It is when the virus bypasses
your immune system and infects the lower lungs that danger appears.
Then other opportunist pathogens -- pneumonia causing bacteria and fungi take up residence
in the lower lungs often leading to death or lasting damage by fibrosis. Obviously it is much
better to stop it before this with then no lasting effects.
If dry cough and shortness of breath appear seek medical help immediately.
Analyzing the swab in a lab is simple and cheap, but getting the swab to the lab is
expensive. Normal testing procedures assume that the tested person is already infected.
Therefore the health worker doing the swabbing will have to wear full protective clothing.
Moreover, before testing the next patient he will have to disinfect and change protective
clothing. One estimate put the price of a COVID-19 test in the US at $1200. Of the sum $1000
was charged for the biohazard.
In most countries testing is done only where there is a strong suspicion the person is
infected with the new coronavirus. Therefore the measures against biohazards may be called
for.
Testing for coronavirus must be separated from health care. People who have symptoms but
do not need medical care should stay as far away from hospitals as possible. The safest and
most effective way to do high-throughput testing is drive-up or drive-in testing. The patient
or suspect stays inside the car and only opens a window. This way he or she does not infect
others. The testing team wears full protective clothing, including a gas mask.
This video by NBC News shows how it is done. A tent is set up on a huge parking
lot. Hundreds of cars wait in line. The testers wear disposable aprons which they change
after each suspect.
I watched VP Pence's press conference yesterday. I was actually impressed! The US will be
offering free drive-up testing to practically everyone. I now believe the United States now
has a better change at containing the pandemic than Europe.
The problem here and especially in countries other that the USA is that the patient needs
a car. Walk-in testing is more difficult to organize as the patients need to be isolated from
each other. The simplest test would be one were the test subject swabs his own mouth, puts
the swab in a plastic tube and seals it in an envelope.
In the mean time Sweden has stopped testing all together, except for hospital patients.
Britain and Finland have followed suit. People with symptoms are simple told to lock
themselves up in their homes and not come out for two weeks. The Chinese edition of the
Global Times has called the Swedes out for the
surrender monkeys they are.
Containing an epidemic and avoiding a pandemic requires testing large parts of the
population to locate any unknown cluster of infections. Once a case is found, the anti-corona
task force must locate all contacts, test them and place them under quarantine even if they
do not show symptoms.
In most countries COVID-19 is regional with one province (and within this province one large city) as the epicenter.
Jim Bianco's model is too primitive and as such unnecessary alarmist.
The early stages of any flu epidemic are always exponential. But from some point propagation slows down considerably as the
virus has difficulties to find new vulnerable people either because number of people with immunity increases (COVID-19 on average
lasts less then a month; often just two weeks and around 90% of cases are mild ), or the measures were taken to "flatten the curve",
or the weather or other conditions became unfavorable to the virus.
Current exponential growth can also be explained by the fact that CDC completely botched testing. So a better availability
of tests with time produces a false exponential increase in cases.
In a sense the first half of March in the USA corresponds to the first half of Jan in Wuhan when the authorities did not yet
resort to drastic actions (especially true for NYC, which looks like a giant cruise ship to me with all corresponding problems
with AC, high density of population, frequent interaction with sick people via public transport including subway as infection
points, etc ).
This is also the period when the medical personnel became the most prominent victim of the authorities incompetence.
I am no so much concerned with number of infection among "commoners" as with the number of infections of medical personnel.
Depletion of medical personnel will greatly complicate the picture.
Working in hazmat suits exhaust people, especially women, very quickly and thus make them more susceptible to the infection.
In many cases you also need to wear adult pampers. It might well be that this is an overkill for this particular infection and
less drastic measures like surgical scrubs can be as effective to protect medical workers.
Research published in Feb had found that out of 138 patients studied at one Wuhan hospital, 29% were healthcare workers. Over
3K medical workers in China were infected and at least 18 died with ~ half of them under 40. Looks like heavy contact with infected
patients make medical workers prognosis worse than for "commoners"
Retired people over 70 now should self-quarantine and outside of senior facilities they are by-and-large responsible for their
own health. When I see them on cruse ships in late Feb and March I just think how many reckless persons are among older folk.
Most of them are also wealthy enough to order food via home delivery, not to drive to the store.
Still on recent visit to department store there were a lot of grannies in the lines (and completely depleted shelves ;-). Looks
like they are braving possible infection with the regular flu, if not coronavirus as typically several people cough within the
large store.
There should be some level of individual responsibility here , especially among seniors who are retired.
But, at the same time, "Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad"
likbez , March 16, 2020 12:34 am
Terry, March 15, 2020 7:25 pm
Thanks for your last comment Run. You saved me the trouble.
Famous quote “They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing” is applicable to the current situation in the USA. Looks like
the US authorities learned nothing from SARC epidemics, which BTW hit Toronto.
Let me clarify my previous post (which does suffers from wordiness as run75441 correctly pointed out).
There are two diseases bunged into one in COVID-19: one is flu-like and is no threat (just a nuisance and Bert Schlitz is absolutely
correct about this part) and the second is the SARC-like destructive virus pneumonia which is an extremely serious threat that
has long time health consequences for survivors (lung fibrosis of various degrees similar to those which is the consequence of
pneumonia caused by electronic cigarettes.)
Those curves above do not distinguish between them and as such have no value.
IMHO the curves that matter are “serious and critical cases” and the “medical workers who are in serious or critical conditions.”
Fresh air, sunlight and improvised face masks seemed to work a century ago; and they might
help us now.
When new, virulent diseases emerge, such SARS and Covid-19, the race begins to find new
vaccines and treatments for those affected. As the current crisis unfolds, governments are
enforcing quarantine and isolation, and public gatherings are being discouraged. Health
officials took the same approach 100 years ago, when influenza was spreading around the world.
The results were mixed. But records from the 1918 pandemic suggest one technique for dealing
with influenza -- little-known today -- was effective. Some hard-won experience from the
greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks and months ahead.
Influenza patients getting sunlight at the Camp Brooks emergency open-air hospital in
Boston. Medical staff were not supposed to remove their masks. (National Archives)
Put simply, medics found that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better
than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented
deaths among patients; and infections among medical staff. There is scientific support for
this. Research shows that outdoor air is a natural disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu
virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there is now evidence it can
kill the flu virus .
`Open-Air' Treatment in 1918
During the great pandemic, two of the worst places to be were military barracks and
troop-ships. Overcrowding and bad ventilation put soldiers and sailors at high risk of catching
influenza and the other infections that often followed it. As with the current Covid-19
outbreak, most of the victims of so-called `Spanish flu' did not die from influenza: they died
of pneumonia and other complications.
When the influenza pandemic reached the East coast of the United States in 1918, the city of
Boston was particularly badly hit. So the State Guard set up an emergency hospital. They took
in the worst cases among sailors on ships in Boston harbour. The hospital's medical officer had
noticed the most seriously ill sailors had been in badly-ventilated spaces. So he gave them as
much fresh air as possible by putting them in tents. And in good weather they were taken out of
their tents and put in the sun. At this time, it was common practice to put sick soldiers
outdoors. Open-air therapy, as it was known, was widely used on casualties from the Western
Front. And it became the treatment of choice for another common and often deadly respiratory
infection of the time; tuberculosis. Patients were put outside in their beds to breathe fresh
outdoor air. Or they were nursed in cross-ventilated wards with the windows open day and night.
The open-air regimen remained popular until antibiotics replaced it in the 1950s.
Doctors who had first-hand experience of open-air therapy at the hospital in Boston were
convinced the regimen was effective. It was adopted elsewhere. If one report is correct, it
reduced deaths among hospital patients from 40 per cent to about 13 per cent. According to the
Surgeon General of the Massachusetts State Guard:
`The efficacy of open air treatment has been absolutely proven, and one has only to try it
to discover its value.'
Fresh Air is a Disinfectant
Patients treated outdoors were less likely to be exposed to the infectious germs that are
often present in conventional hospital wards. They were breathing clean air in what must have
been a largely sterile environment. We know this because, in the 1960s, Ministry of Defence
scientists proved that fresh air is a natural disinfectant. Something in it, which they called
the Open Air Factor, is far more harmful to airborne bacteria -- and the influenza virus --
than indoor air. They couldn't identify exactly what the Open Air Factor is. But they found it
was effective both at night and during the daytime.
Their research also revealed that the Open Air Factor's disinfecting powers can be preserved
in enclosures -- if ventilation rates are kept high enough. Significantly, the rates they
identified are the same ones that cross-ventilated hospital wards, with high ceilings and big
windows, were designed for. But by the time the scientists made their discoveries, antibiotic
therapy had replaced open-air treatment. Since then the germicidal effects of fresh air have
not featured in infection control, or hospital design. Yet harmful bacteria have become
increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
Sunlight and Influenza Infection
Putting infected patients out in the sun may have helped because it inactivates the
influenza virus. It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other infections in hospitals.
During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal infected wounds.
They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn't know is that one advantage of placing
patients outside in the sun is they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin if sunlight is
strong enough. This was not discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are now linked to
respiratory infections and may increase susceptibility to influenza . Also, our body's
biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist infections. New research suggests they can
alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus. As with vitamin D, at the time of the 1918
pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these rhythms was not
known.
Face Masks Coronavirus and Flu
Surgical masks are currently in short supply in China and elsewhere. They were worn 100
years ago, during the great pandemic, to try and stop the influenza virus spreading. While
surgical masks may offer some protection from infection they do not seal around the face. So
they don't filter out small airborne particles. In 1918, anyone at the emergency hospital in
Boston who had contact with patients had to wear an improvised face mask. This comprised five
layers of gauze fitted to a wire frame which covered the nose and mouth. The frame was shaped
to fit the face of the wearer and prevent the gauze filter touching the mouth and nostrils. The
masks were replaced every two hours; properly sterilized and with fresh gauze put on. They were
a forerunner of the N95 respirators in use in hospitals today to protect medical staff against
airborne infection.
Temporary Hospitals
Staff at the hospital kept up high standards of personal and environmental hygiene. No doubt
this played a big part in the relatively low rates of infection and deaths reported there. The
speed with which their hospital and other temporary open-air facilities were erected to cope
with the surge in pneumonia patients was another factor. Today, many countries are not prepared
for a severe influenza pandemic. Their health services will be overwhelmed if there is one.
Vaccines and antiviral drugs might help. Antibiotics may be effective for pneumonia and other
complications. But much of the world's population will not have access to them. If another 1918
comes, or the Covid-19 crisis gets worse, history suggests it might be prudent to have tents
and pre-fabricated wards ready to deal with large numbers of seriously ill cases. Plenty of
fresh air and a little sunlight might help too.
Not a very pretty read. Those who get the virus bad, and survive the pneumonia, are likely
to have pretty scarred up lungs once they recover, if we can call it that. Let's hope not.
But with the Han Chinese supposedly having a vastly larger ACE-2 presence in their lungs than
other races, it would seem this virus is uniquely able (designed?) to cripple the Chinese
long-term, via creating a vast population of people with significant pulmonary problems
(pulmonary fibrosis) for the remainder of their lives, and perhaps more likely to have
terrible problems requiring extensive medical care should they ever become re-infected in the
future. All of which would be significant burdens on the PRC's future.
Hopefully, the Chinese government's overwhelming response to the virus will minimize this
possibility.
Let's also hope this nasty bug doesn't decimate the seniors in the USA. If it does, one
can already hear the MSM whipping the proles into an anti-China frenzy with, "Them damn
Chinese killed your grandma and grandpa!"
And if the virus was engineered, maybe that was some pre-planned fortuitous blow-back that
cuts down on the aging boomer "useless eaters" (as the supreme useless eater Dick Cheney
called them), and which thereby offers enormous opportunities for world-wide anti-China
propagandizing (and perhaps even a possible casus belli for the next president to mull over
after the 2020 election .. )
If a situation with the CAVID-19 coronavirus infection follows the same scenario as the SARS
epidemic, then by April- May the problem will be less acute. In his interview to the RT the academic Alexander
Chuchalin, the Head of Department of Hospital therapy of the Russian National Research Medical Pirogov University. In
his opinion, the Russian healthcare system has done its best to protect the country from coronavirus. The doctor also
says that, contrary to popular belief, infection with CAVID-19 can be accompanied by a runny nose.
Q: Not only are you one of the best pulmonologists in Europe, you are also in the main risk
group now for coronavirus. Could you, please, give some recommendations for people of your generation and those who
are younger, those who, as we see, are really susceptible to high mortality -- especially in China, Italy, and Iran.
A: In order to understand the risk groups for this disease: first of all, these are people who
come into contact with animals that represent a biological reservoir. For example, in 2002 it was African cats, in
2012 it was camels, and now the science is a little confused, it has not been fully established. There is more
evidence that this is a certain kind of bat -- the one that the Chinese eat.
This bat spreads the coronavirus through its bowel movements. After that a seeding process
takes place. Let's say, it's a seafood market or some other products, and so on. But, right now we're talking about
an epidemic, we are talking about people infecting people. Therefore, this phase has already arrived. The infection
spreads person to person.
Coronaviruses are a very, very common viral infections, and people encounter them many, many
times in their lives. Within a year a child carries diseases that we call acute colds up to ten times. And behind
this acute cold are certain viruses.
And the second place in its prevalence is occupied by the coronavirus. The problem is that
these seemingly harmless pathogens were dismissed, and they could never understand the cause-and-effect relationship
between a common cold and a virus. If, say, a child has a cold, he has a runny nose, what will follow? And so on. For
about two weeks, a child or an adult gets sick -- and all this disappears without a trace.
But in 2002, 2012, and now in 2020, the situation has changed qualitatively. Because the
serotypes that have started to circulate they affect the epithelial cells.
Epithelial cells are cells that line the respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract, and urinary
system. Therefore, a person infected has pulmonary symptoms and intestinal symptoms. And in the study of urine tests,
too, allocate with such a viral load.
But these new strains, which we are now talking about, they have these properties -- to come
into contact with the second type of receptor, the angiotensin-converting enzyme. And this receptor is associated
with such a serious manifestation as cough.
Therefore, a patient who has symptoms of damage to the lower respiratory tract, a
characteristic sign is a cough. This affects the epithelial cells of the most distal parts of the respiratory tract.
These breathing tubes are very small.
Q: Distal, is it distant?
A: It's far and small in diameter.
Q: So this is what we have next to the bronchi?
A: This is bronchi, then we have bronchioles, respiratory bronchioles. And when the air, the
diffusion of gases goes on the surface of the alveoli, they pass just this section of the respiratory tract.
Q: That is, the primary symptom is a cough
A: No, the first is a runny nose, and a sore throat.
Q: They say that there is no runny nose.
A: No, these are big data issues. 74 thousand medical records were processed, and all of them
have rhinorrhea (runny nose. – RT). When you are told this -- there are really some nuances. Biology is like this. The
biological target of the virus is epithelial cells. The nose, oropharyngeal region, trachea, and then small
bronchioles, targeting these regions are especially dangerous to humans. And it turned out that, having this
mechanism, the virus leads to a sharp breakdown of the immune system.
Q:Why?
A: An explanation that science gives today is that a protein called interferoninduced
protein-10 is involved in the process. It is with this protein that the regulation of innate immunity and acquired
immunity is associated. How should we see this? As a very deep damage to lymphocytes.
Q: So you can see lymphocytes falling immediately on the general test?
A: Yes. And if there are white blood cells increase, platelets will increase, and it is more
stable lymphopenia, that is, the lymphotoxic effect of the viruses themselves. Therefore,
the disease itself has at least four outlined stages.
The first stage is virusemia. A harmless cold,
nothing special. Seven days, nine-approximately in this interval.
But starting from the ninth day to the 14th,
the
situation changes qualitatively, because
it is during this period that viral and bacterial
pneumonia is formed.
After damage to epithelial cells in the anatomical space of the respiratory
tract, colonization of microorganisms occurs, primarily those that inhabit the human oropharyngeal region.
Q: Do you mean bacteria that is already there?
A: Bacteria, Yes. Therefore, these pneumonias are always viral and bacterial.
Q: So the virus, so to speak, fills the alveoli, where some bacteria live all the time? And
they live somewhere by themselves, in some quantity?
A: In general, we believe that the lower respiratory tract is sterile. This is how the defense
mechanism works for the lower respiratory tract.
Q: There's nothing there?
A: It's not inhabited. When the virus has entered and it has broken this barrier, where there
was a sterile environment in the lungs, microorganisms begin to colonize and multiply.
Q: So it's not a virus that causes pneumonia? Still, pneumonia is caused by bacteria, of
course.
A: It's the association of virus-bacteria.
This is the window where the doctor must show his skill. Because often the virusemic period is
like a mild disease, like a slight cold, malaise, runny nose, a slight temperature is small, subfebrile. But the
period when the cough increased and when there is a shortness of breath -- these are two signs that say: stop, this is
a qualitatively different patient.
If this situation is not controlled and the disease progresses, then more serious complications
occur. We call it respiratory distress syndrome, shock. A person cannot breathe on their own.
Q: Pulmonary edema?
A: You see, there are a lot of different edemas of a lung. In fact, it depends on how it
happens. To be precise, we call this non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema. If, say, cardiogenic pulmonary edema can be
treated with certain medications, then this pulmonary edema can only be treated with a mechanical ventilation machine
or advanced methods such as extracorporeal hemoxygenation.
If a person transfers to this phase, the immunosuppression caused by the defeat of the acquired
and innate immunity becomes fatal and the patient is joined by such aggressive pathogens as Pseudomonas aeruginosa,
fungi. And the cases of death that occurred -- 50% of those who were on artificial ventilation for a long time, the
alveoli are all filled with fungi.
Fungi appear during the stage of deep immunosuppression. What is the fate of the man who
endured all this? That is, he suffered virusemic period, he suffered viral-bacterial pneumonia, he suffered
respiratory distress syndrome, non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema, and he suffered septic pneumonia. Will he be healthy
or not? And, in fact, today the world is concerned about this: what is the fate of those 90 thousand Chinese who have
suffered a coronavirus infection?
Q: But those 90 thousand -- they recovered by themselves, they weren't kept on on a ventilator,
they did not get fungi. ARI or acute respiratory infection, that's it?
A: But the problem itself is very important. Because practical medicine is faced with the fact
of a sharp increase in the so-called pulmonary fibrosis. And this group of people who have had a corona virus
infection develops fibrosis of the lung within a year.
Q: That is, when the lung tissue thickens?
A: Yes. A lung becomes like burnt rubber, if the analogy is to be made.
Q: Say, you get an elderly person who has been accurately diagnosed with a coronavirus. And he
is not yet on the ninth day, that is, he does not need to be put on a ventilator yet. How will you treat him?
A: You know what the problem is: we do not treat such patients yet, because there are no
medications, medicines that should be used in this phase. There is no panacea. Because a drug that would act on
virusemia, on the viral-bacterial phase, on non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema, on sepsis -- is a panacea, this drug
doesn't exist.
Because if we go back to the experience of 2002, when we saw the vulnerability of medical
personnel, doctors and nurses were recommended to use Tamiflu and oseltamivir -- an anti-influenza drug. And with
certain serotypes of the coronavirus, indeed, the mechanism of introduction into the cell is the same as with
influenza viruses. Therefore, it has been shown that these drugs can protect individuals who are at high risk of
developing this disease.
Or, he is identified as a carrier of the virus, he is given these drugs and so on. But this, I
want to say again, has no serious evidence base. The situation that is most threatening, because it determines the
fate of a person. A cold is one thing. And another thing a viral-bacterial pneumonia, it is a fundamentally different
thing.
And here it is very important to emphasize that it is problematic to help such a patient only
with antibiotics. There must be a combination therapy, which includes means that stimulate the immune system. This is
a very important point.
Q: What do you mean? So, relatively speaking, you will prescribe him Amoxiclav with some kind
of immunomodulator?
A: Yes, we would usually prescribe fourth-generation cephalosporins, not Amoxiclav, in
combination with vancomycin. This combination is broad, because very quickly there is a process of a change of
gram-positive and gram-negative flora. But what immunomodulatory drug to prescribe is a question for scientific
research.
So, we understand that the immune system will suffer dramatically. We understand the high
vulnerability of a person to the infection that begins to colonize the respiratory tract. So, unfortunately, we don't
have a clear line. But what really can help such patients in this situation is immunoglobulins. Because this is
substitution therapy.
And therefore, such patients are prescribed high immunoglobulins so that they do not develop
sepsis, at least they do not enter the sepsis phase. American doctors used this drug in their Ebola patient. This is
a group drug, an analog of nucleosides. This is a group of drugs that are used for herpes, cytomegalovirus, and so
on.
Q: So this is antiviral or antiviral-supporting therapy, right?
A: No, this is a drug that still acts on the mechanisms in the cell that resist virus
replication. Here in my hands (photo of US President Donald trump. – RT). He gathered all the top people who could
speak out on promising drugs. Two questions that he raised, he was preparing for this conference. The first question
is: how ready are scientists in the United States of America to introduce the vaccine?
Q: Eighteen months.
A: Yes, absolutely. That's two years. He asked what in this case? Does the country have drugs
that could protect? And, as a matter of fact, they said: Yes, there is such a drug.
Q: What?
A:What kind of drug is this? It's called Remdesivir
Q: Let's look at it.
A: That's what scientists said, given the experience that we have, and discussions and so on.
Although, of course, there are other drugs that are being actively studied. In general, this direction is very
interesting: in fact, it is considered promising. The use of mesenchymal stem cells is considered promising. But at
what stage?
Q: As a person who has been doing this for many years, treating everything from asthma to
pneumonia, can you somehow try to predict the development of this epidemic, for example, in Russia?
A: I want to say that if we compare Russia with the surrounding world in case of the
coronavirus of 2002. We didn't have a single patient here.
Q: Maybe we just didn't diagnose them?
A: As you know, there are strong aspects of Russian healthcare in this situation, and I would
like to stress this. This is the work of our sanitary and epidemiologic services. They really did their best to
protect our country. This is on one side, as if punitive measures. And on the second side is the work of the Vector
Research Institute, which made diagnostics for the coronavirus in a very short time, and they did everything
absolutely. And it was tested at the CDC, and they got a certificate indicating high specificity and sensitivity.
Q: The Vector diagnostic kit is the only certified
A: Yes.
Q: The virus is already in Russia, no matter how much the sanitary service tries. How do you
think it will develop? Will it end in the spring, for example, with the arrival of summer?
A: You know, I think the picture repeats what it was then with the SARS. If you remember
Q: Then? Do you mean in 2002? When it was SARS?
A: Yes, that's the one. If we follow this scenario, we should say that somewhere in April or
May this problem will become less acute.
Q: Just because of the seasonal cessation of respiratory infections?
A: Yeah. The climate factor and a number of other factors. Now, the trouble, of course, comes
to us not from China, but from Europe. Those who return from these countries, primarily from Italy, today, remember:
Carlo Urbani
. He accomplished a lot of things. I think this is just a hero of a doctor who
has done so much. He was a virologist from Milan.
Q: Back in 2002?
A: He was a WHO expert. I met with him through the World Health Organization. He was on the
list as an expert on coronaviruses. And then he was sent to Hanoi. They were dispatching doctors, and he got to go to
Vietnam. And in Vietnam, when he arrived, there was a panic. Their doctors stopped coming to work. Their medical
staff, also. There had patients, but there wasn't any medical personnel and no doctors.
He assessed the situation. With difficulty, he managed to break it, to remove this panic
situation that was then in the hospital. But most importantly, he began to communicate with the government and said:
close the country to quarantine. That's where it all came from. It came from Urbani. They started to fight back.
Q: The Vietnamese?
A: Yes, the government of Vietnam. That this would affect the economy, tourism, and so on. But,
he found these words, he convinced them. And Vietnam was the first country to come out of this. And he thought his
work was done. He collected material for a virological examination and boarded a plane to Bangkok.
He was supposed to meet with the American virologists there. During the flight, he realized
that he got ill. He got sick, just like those poor Vietnamese in that hospital. And he began to write everything down
and describing it. This is this exact time, and this is how I feel.
Q: The flight was about three hours?
A: Yes, about three hours. And during these three hours, he became an invalid who couldn't get
up and move on his own. Here we see how the window itself works, and we understand when pneumonia joins -- this window
can be extremely, extremely short in duration. And when he was barely able to get down the aircraft ladder, he left
the last entry: "I'm waving to them so they don't come near me."
That is, American virologists wanted to meet Urbani, but he said: let's not contact. He died in
an intensive care unit. And there was an autopsy. And from his lung tissue was isolated a strain that was named after
him – "Urban I-2". Here is a very story that I am telling you. A tragedy, of course.
Q: What would you recommend to a person who finds himself Well, we have already agreed that
the virus is in the general population. We can't really control it anymore.
A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of all, take a good care for the nasal
mucosa and oropharyngeal area.
Q: To wash it with saltwater?
A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus cleaners to
stop running nose and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free unobstructed breath should come after
all. The second thing is the oropharyngeal area behind the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of
the oropharyngeal region.
Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down your
throat?
A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good
airways. Of all the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can afford to buy a nebulizer
or
Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?
A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good state.
When a cough starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe for patients with bronchial
asthma. This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol. Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance,
relieve spasm.
Q: You mean expectorant?" Mucolytic ACC?
A: Yes, ACC and Fluimucil. And what you can't do is use glucocorticosteroids. This virus
replication is rapidly increasing by them.
Q: What does that mean?
A: Corticosteroids is prednisone, methylprednisolone, dexamethasone, betamethasone.
Q: So you don't need to inject hormones, relatively speaking, if you have a viral infection?
A: There are inhaled steroids. But there are patients with asthma who are ill and are on this
therapy. But this has to be a tailor-made solutions. Of course, 2020 will go down in medical history as a year of a
new disease. We must admit that we have understood this new disease. Two new pneumonias have arrived. First is
pneumonia, which is caused by e-cigarettes, vapes, and now in the United States, people have died from this
Q: several thousand teenagers. Yes, this is a well-known fact, and how to treat it is unclear.
You put them on a ventilator -- they die immediately.
A: Yes. Do you understand what the problem is? Here they develop those changes in the lungs
that occur during this process. They seem to be similar (to the changes from the coronavirus). This is respiratory
distress syndrome, which we are talking about. The literature raises very serious questions: the role of
coronaviruses in transplantation. One of the problems is obliterating bronchiolitis, which occurs especially during
transplantation.
Q: A lung transplant?
A: Yes, lungs and bone marrow. Stem cell. As a matter of fact, everything is well done,
everything is normal, the person has responded to this therapy, and the problem of respiratory failure is beginning
to grow. And the cause of these bronchiolitis was caught -- it is a coronavirus That is, new knowledge has come.
How to treat Coronavirus
infection COVID-19 in
Russian
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I had SARS back then. My regular dentist called sick, and his partner just came from Vietnam.
I was ill bedridden for 6 weeks with a viral pneumonia. Refused to be hospitalized, though.
Socializing was the last thing on my mind.
I can attest from experience that a mixture of salt and warm water is the number one remedie in the arsenal
against these types of infections.
Use it aggressively !
Two to three teaspoons of salt in a glass mixed with warm water. Try to gargle it in small to medium sips
for about 5 minutes. You might not finish the entire glass in 1 sitting. Save the glass.
Repeat this process every 2 to 3 hours. It is one of God's miracles ;-) .
Besides viral infections, you can even cleanse your teeth and gums regularly with salt water.
Another important remedie for soar throats is squeezing half a lemon and mixing it with the highest
quality honey available to you, without diluting the mix in water. Let it burn your throat, if it does, it
will eventually have a soothing feeling after repeated sips and repeating sittings.
I CAN TESTIFY TO THE GREAT EFFECTIVENESS OF NASAL RINSES
If I start nasal rinses as soon as I feel the
throat tickle of a cold coming on, I don't get the cold.
I haven't had one in years.
This year, though, I mustn't had started the rinses soon enough as I did get the cold.
BUT, instead of stopping the rinses, I upped them to every 2hrs & I never had to blow my nose ONCE all
through the two week cold!
AND it wasn't miserable, like usual, at all.
I gradually decreased the frequency of the rinses as the cold got better.
I was continuing the rinses, preventatively, every day, but now with the added risk of COVID-19, I will
increase that to AM & PM, as recommended &, of course, will increase that if I become symptomatic.
As a former yoga teacher I can also recommend Alternate Nostril breathing.
To clean the sinus, clear
the head and calm the mind and spirit. Super essential now to supercharge our bodies with positive energy
and clear the lungs.
I have the advantage of living near a beach and this is part of my daily walk and deep breathing
ritual. I have not had a cold or sniffle for a many years, nor do I ever have the flu injection.
I recently learned of this too Babushka. It's helpful for learning how blocked – often from internal
swelling due to inflammation – they can be. Breathing with both, we learn to interpret the
compensation, so we can easily think "Oh I dont have a problem. This can be wrong, as I discovered I
was.. When I tried to alternate nasal breathe, I was shocked at how I almost couldnt. Breathe, that
is. It was an eye opener for me.
I had been suffering from internal nasal swelling due to my reaction to Salicylates – which I'm
among those people intolerant of. I've had it since childhood but just let it go, eating the fruits I
love so much. But on realising how bad the nasal results were, I got checked for polyps and then just
cut the food out.
I also learned the saline nasal washes from the Indian nurses and Doctors I made friends with years
ago in UK. You dont need a machine – as I'm sure you know. They just pour normal saline** into a
cupped palm of hand, close off the opposite side nasal with opposite hand, and slowly inhale it to
reach the back of the nasal passage, then repeat changing sides.
** N/Saline is roughly 1 tsp salt in 1L water!!
Glad to see you are staying well. Are you as glad as I you dont live in UK, now that we'd be
condemned to isolation for
4 months
And then some wonder why I keep saying – the reaction is out of all proportion to the infection!!
Yes, keeping as well as possible as the insanity descends on this great land.
My husband is a great believer in cold water swimming to keep the immune system in good tune –
does it all year round – every day ritual. Not my thing, but turning the shower to cold for the
last few bursts will also close the pores and boost immunity.
Btw – I am a different person to Babuška, who also lives in Aussie and shares her wonderful
wisdom in the cafe.
"A: Are you asking for some simple recommendations? First of
all, take a good care for the nasal mucosa and oropharyngeal area.
Q: To wash it with saltwater?
A: Yes, wash it thoroughly. But "lors" – non-prescription medications and sinus cleaners to stop running nose
and for an effective lavage. That is, the feeling of free unobstructed breath should come after all. The second
thing is the oropharyngeal area behind the uvula. And there, too, you need to make a good lavage of the
oropharyngeal region.
Q: So you don't just have to squirt it up your nose, you have to gargle it deep down your throat?
A: Yes, and rinse it out. And don't be lazy. Do do it until you get a feeling of clean, good airways. Of all
the ways, this is the most effective. I would advise those people who can afford to buy a nebulizer or
Q: Do you mean, it's aerosol, right? With ultrasound?
A: Yes. And it allows the hygiene of the upper respiratory tract to be brought to a good state. When a cough
starts, it is desirable to still apply the medications that we prescribe for patients with bronchial asthma.
This is either Berodual, or Ventolin, or Salbutamol. Because these drugs improve mucociliary clearance, relieve
spasm."
1. Okay, the "washing with sea water" I associate with the sea water nasal sprays -- is this roughly correct?
2. But what is meant with "lavage"? Gurgling with salt water, say?
3. And then the aerosol thing, what is that? Is this related to the good old method of putting hot water with
something into a bowl, your head over it, and cover with a towel?
WASHING WITH SEA WATER – he is talking about what is called "nasal rinses" also called "nasal washes" or
"nasal lavages" look online for videos how to do it.
LAVAGE – is French for "wash", here he means "nasal
washes" not gurgling.
BOTH nasal washes & gurgling (back of throat) should be done for regular/usual nose & mouth hygiene, to
prevent colds/flu & to relieve cold/flu symptoms.
AEROSOL – no, not putting head over hot water, that's "steam inhalation" aerosol is a fine mist, either
sprayed or inhaled from a device, like for asthma.
Thanks.
I understand now the "nasal washes" part: found
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_irrigation
Wikipedia Nasal irrigation
and also found (simple) devices which one can purchase. That solves that.
But the "gurgling" is still
unclear to me. The text sound as if it weren't just ordinary gurgling, but part of the nasal irrigation,
somehow.
Concerning the mist to be inhaled: in recent weeks I was searching for information and devices about
that, but couldn't find much solid information for the simple uses related to colds. So I opted for
buying a simple small device which boils water, and one puts some essential oils in it. This steam
inhalation is traditional, easy to understand, and one feels the effect.
Found
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebulizer
Wikipedia Nebulizer
but that also doesn't speak about the non-medical use. One can buy devices, but information is always
about the medical cases. So for now I stay away from that.
Indeed, I meant "gargling".
For some time I used in the UK the word "gurgling" when I mean "gargling" -- people would then
always "gurgle", but never say something (I guess they thought I wanted to be funny ;-)).
Hi, you can also use a "nebulizer" to nebulize essential oils without water as a carrier: the essential
oils will have an easy way to go deep into the respiratory system. (I would use all kind of soft
essential oils and in some case add a little bit of strong oils).
I made some French and Dutch pages about this, here is a link to an avi, showing the working of such a
nebulizer. Not to confound with the fancy products that use water as a carrier!
No spam intended as I have not enough to sell here anyway I'm in France and we are almost in complete
lockdown anyway now: to moderators)
You also have ventillators that "diffuse" essential oils through a pad, less effective than the "real
nebulizers", but still effectif in hospitals:
Voir aussi :
Voici deux liens (anciens), de l'utilisation de diffuseurs dans l'hôpital de Manchester au Royaume-Uni:
The Russian Academic is a smart fellow, but I think following the money can yield results quicker
and easier. Covid-19 may be a new virus, but the script is old and worn out from overuse. I personally got
acquainted with this bloody script during the aids pandemic. The script albeit macabre, is simple and makes
good business sense. Recurring expenditure by patients makes for guaranteed income for big "Pharma". Hence the
cure for almost all diseases is permanent medication for the patient. This is called "Corporate Interests" and
Doctors, Academics, politicians, me and you are under its complete domination. Summer is coming to the Northern
hemisphere and with it come the reprieve from the pandemic, but please keep your focus on the money for that's
were they will reveal themselves.
I was a bit confused by the Russian academician's assertion that
the lower respiratory tract (lungs etc.) are not inhabited by bacteria. This is not true
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6297685/
Therefore, some of the assertions by the good
physician might be incorrect to some degree.
What is known for sure is that a huge scare campaign is going on among the world's media, and governments
are forced to do things that may not be in the states' best interests. Accompanying this is a distinct lack
of objective information related to the disease and the virus responsible for it.
I hope the discourse turns sane soon; in a large sense, the impact of the virus has been negligible
considering that it has been out there at least for 3 months at the end of the winter season.
I too look forward to understand who will profit from this scare.
Yes Daniel, yes Saji, I happily agree with you. Let's not succumb to fear. Thanks Harry for the salt water
reminder. Thanks translators for this informative Interview.
I must say that I am quite disappointed with both Russia and China in that they are more or less following or
copying the Western model of conventional medicine and it seems either the medical professional there are
either just looking at how to make as much money as possible from human suffering or it's just more "modern" to
adopt the Western way of doing things. The Chinese themselves are abandoning 5000 years of proven traditional
medicine that has shown effectiveness in dealing with almost all disease as well as successfully fighting
various plagues that have attacked their country over the centuries. As is the case, Chinese now want to look
modern and use Western pharmaceuticals. It's a massive shame that Russia and China don't get together and
create a new model of medicine incorporating both traditional and modern scientific means. They both have the
resources, knowledge and ability to do so. People don't even realize the miraculous innovations that Soviet
doctors accomplished but have been lost along with other feats of that era. Western medicine or Big Pharma
preys on people's suffering for the sake of profit. Even Goldman Sachs admitted there is no profit in the cure
of cancer.
Anyway, in regard to the current situation, what I do is follow Dr Andrew Saul's protocol to fight the virus.
It involves cheap and effective vitamins including vitamins C and D3, selenium, zinc and magnesium. Vitamin C
is so so important. Even Chinese doctors are now using it in their fight against the virus. Also I take
elderberry, medicinal mushrooms, olive leaf and other antiviral supplements. I urge you to do an internet
search on these and in particular Andrew Saul's protocol. Additionally, I do a lot of things to strengthen my
immune system like taking infra-red saunas. And if I needed treatment I would consider ozone therapy and
hyperthermia to kill the virus. Listen to podcasts by Gary Null, Mike Adams of Natural News, Dr Ronald Hoffman
of Intelligent Medicine, and a great interviewer on
http://www.extremehealthradio.com
. These guys are a treasure trove of information and who I consider the
real American heroes.
I write this because it's not intended to replace professional medical advice but is only what I do and what I
would do regarding both the coronavirus and good health in general.
But in the end, the current medical system based on greed and profit must be replaced or we will forever see
loved ones needlessly suffer and die.
The conclusion is one that I would advocate based on my life experience:
"We also need to be looking for new approaches for fighting COVID-19. One approach that is not being used
significantly to date is trying to strengthen people's own immune systems. Such an approach might help people's
own immune system to fight off the disease, thereby lowering death rates. Nutrition experts recommend
supplementing diets with Vitamins A, C, E, antioxidants and selenium. Other experts say zinc, Vitamin D and
elderberry may be helpful. Staying away from cold temperatures also seems to be important. Drinking plenty of
water after coming down with the disease may be beneficial as well. If we can help people's own bodies fight
the disease, the burden on the medical system will be lower."
I have rarely suffered from the "flu", maybe 3 or 4 times in my 60+ years, and rarely suffer from colds
(usually ending within 3-4 days). When I do suffer from the latter, it is usually as a result of improper dress
for inclement weather, or a week of inadequate eating; that is, not usually eating a well balanced diet, as I
usually strive to do.
So instead of accentuating the negative, maybe, we should consider strengthening the positive things we can
do. Of course, the aged and infirm need to be dealt with otherwise. But the key for the rest of us is
strengthening our immune systems.
In my experience, the best preventative is an alkaline diet as viruses need a human blood environment that is
slightly more acidic than the normal 7.35 to 7.45 range in order to propagate. I have been 5 years cold/flu
free.
If you start to experience symptoms, one trick to quickly elevate blood pH is to sleep with a piece of
sliced onion (yellow are best) in your socks. The sulfides in the onions will elevate blood pH and by morning
the symptoms are gone.
Following the Scientific way to understand an economic stunt like Covid-19 is time wasting. Big "Pharma" will
come with a solution and it is called lifetime medication (jokingly called 'three times a day). During the Aids
epidemic, I did a lot of research on Virology and Toxicology in order to understand certain logic defying
things regarding the epidemic progression. All I could come up with is that medicine has long parted ways with
objective scientific practice under immense pressure from Big Pharma. People it doesn't pay to cure a disease
but it is highly profitable to come with a so called "life prolonging substance" (aka Patenting)..
Unfortunately during this phase of instilling mortal terror in the masses, a lot of innocent lives will be lost
during the winter season. Things will clear up in summer and by then more information will be available and
patterns would be clearly discernible.
I wonder if the Covid-19 pandemic will subside when the MSM ratings begin to decline because people will be
getting tired of the regurgitated news, and a new news story will come up?
By the way, Russian Doctor
gives very sensible advice. This is the kind of information we should be getting on the MSM, but are not.
I'm not a doctor, but I thought this information was so important, I immediately alerted my doctor. I encourage
everyone else to do so, also. Most of it, we can't actualize, directly. However, the information about lavage
could be life saving, and I haven't heard that ANYWHERE else, certainly not in official pronouncements or
mainstream media. (With one exception, viz. Dr. Oz, I haven't even heard about people boosting their Vitamin D
levels. This, in spite of research showing that going from Vitamin D deficiency to sufficient supplementation
can cut your risk of upper respiratory infection in half.)
I am wondering why this doctor did not mention
Vitamin D, either. Yes, it's of limited usefulness after an infection already sets in, but, at least in the US,
we are looking at the medical system getting overwhelmed. Some people put Vitamin D deficiency levels in the US
at 40%. If we can cut the risk of needing a ventilator in half, for 40% of the population, that might flatten
the curve enough to avoid forcing doctors to cut off treatment to people over a certain age. (I have read that
this is being done in Italy, though I don't know, for sure.)
Note to commentator: moderation policy is no use of caps .. caps have been
removed mod
put in an essential oil diffuser or a deep lung nebulizer
3% hydrogen peroxide ( phew! is really strong, go easy)
2 drops of iodine
colloidal silver ( my little generator makes 12ppm)
Probably the total liquid amount will be 50cc or 1/8 cup? depending on the capacity of your device. Usually
respiratory treatments are from 10-15 minutes. My guess would be to mix the colloidal silver 2:1 as a liquid
base. Colloidal silver is touted to interfere with viral wall and its replication abilities.
Thank you so much Scott for translating this important information – I am going to email to family and friends.
Also going to stock up on more salt. Already do the Vit D.
Funnily enough my mother said to me back in early
February that gargling and cleansing with salt water was the best thing to use to avoid the Covid 19
virus she was so right!
Why aren't our governments, health services and media telling us to do this? Such a simple thing that
everyone can afford to do ..I think we all know .
Well, this is not 'just a cold'. It is much worse. This finally would explain the extraordinary measures taken
worldwide to try and contain it.
And I'm 66.
Birdseed. The Russians seem to have left a clue. One should ask what the number is of this useful protein. If
it is Nsp15 it is in my exotic birds' mix. I ordered 8 pounds of the specific seed which were delivered last
Thursday and will order another batch when possible. If the virus doesn't get me, my husband will. I am no
scientist but there are some coincidences here.
I knew researchers were homing in on Nsp15 and this is what gets interesting. Virology gives the role of
Nsp15 in coronavirus replication as enigmatic. When I read virology I thought-weird- Nsp15 is acting like two
different proteins. Then I saw Favorov's explanation, the real protein and an imposter protein.
"EndoU-deficient coronaviruses were viable and replicated to near wild-type virus levels in fibroblast cells."
This would explain why the elderly are hit hardest.
Tuesday, March 3, 2020 2:19PM
RIVERSIDE (KABC) -- A team that includes UC Riverside researchers has identified a protein in a virus from the
previous decade that might prove beneficial in developing a vaccine to combat novel coronavirus, according to
the university.
Researchers isolated a protein designated, designated as "Nsp15," from the severe acute respiratory syndrome
– SARS – outbreak of 2003 that could be useful in testing for vaccines intended to prevent or reduce the threat
of coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. The protein found in coronavirus is 89% identical to a protein
discovered in SARS, suggesting that drugs developed to treat that disease could work for the current outbreak
plaguing countries around the world.
Virology. 2018 Apr;517:157-163. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2017.12.024.
EpuCoronavirus EndoU is encoded within the sequence of nonstructural
protein (nsp) 15, which was initially identified as a component of the
viral replication complex. Biochemical and structural studies revealed
the enzymatic nature of nsp15/EndoU, which was postulated to be
essential for the unique replication cycle of viruses in the order
Nidovirales. However, the role of nsp15 in coronavirus replication was
enigmatic as EndoU-deficient coronaviruses were viable and replicated
to near wild-type virus levels in fibroblast cells. A breakthrough in
our understanding of the role of EndoU was revealed in recent studies,
which showed that EndoU mediates the evasion of viral double-stranded
RNA recognition by host sensors in macrophages. This new discovery of
nsp15/EndoU function leads to new opportunities for investigating how
a viral EndoU contributes to pathogenesis and exploiting this enzyme
for therapeutics and vaccine design against pathogenic coronaviruses.
PLANdemic is a new word that is becoming very popular. Here is a nice overview of the medical marshal law, and
how it all came about. Very detailed and superbly researched.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2oHhN3heo
Saw lots of military today in my area, and yet I feel like
there is something isn't working for the insects who self-elected themselves to rule over humanity. The theater
curtains are full of holes, and too many people can see the genocidal actors and their pathetic scripts.
Assuming that I French kiss a person who has covid, how much time from the moment that kiss is ended, if any,
do I have to wash away "all traces" of that kiss from my mouth in order to prevent being infected with covid?
A. Impossible to prevent infection. B. Mere seconds. C. A few minutes. D. An hour. E. 24 hours.
Assuming that I "catch" covid from an infected person TODAY, in exactly how much time will the most
sensitive test available report/confirm that I am indeed infected with covid? A. An hour. B. 24 hours. C. 48
hours. D. 72 hours. E. 7 days. F. 14 days. G. 30 days? What is the market name for the most sensitive test
available for earliest possible detection? How do the 15-minute, Chinese-developed blood tests stack up against
the most sensitive?
Assuming that I "catch" the covid infection today, in exactly how much time will/can the covid in ME be
transmitted to others? For example, if I sneeze into the air
tomorrow
and someone inhales some of those
droplets, will those droplets "infect" that person with covid? If not tomorrow, how many days down the road?
Money, Money, Money Trump language yet another example of obscene unveiled greed it will not go down well with
the Germans.
A quote from the below link
"According to an anonymous source quoted in the newspaper, Trump was doing
everything to secure a vaccine against the coronavirus for the US, "but for the US only".
The German government was reportedly offering its own financial incentives for the vaccine to stay in the
country.
The German health minister Jens Spahn said that a takeover of the CureVac company by the Trump
administration was "off the table". CureVac would only develop vaccine "for the whole world", Spahn said, "not
for individual countries".
Excellent article, thank you Saker and Scott for the translation. I have five questions.
1. Can a person be
infected with influenza and coronavirus at the same time? I ask because there is an epidemic of influenza in
the U.S. with 29,000,000 (29 million) so far and the symptoms are nearly the same between them (e.g., coughing,
sneezing, body chill, muscle ache, intestinal disorder, fever.)
2. We read of the horrific numbers coming out of Italy. Are there different strains of coronavirus active,
some being more virulent than others? Can those different strains be identified by microscopic examination?
3. Did Dr. Chuchalin have an opinion as to whether this epidemic of coronavirus was developed in a
laboratory as oppose to in nature?
4. Did Dr. Chuchalin have an opinion about more than one "patient zero" originating from geographic
locations other than from Wuhan, China?
5. Vaccines such as for influenza introduce antigens to stimulate the immune system and create antibodies to
neutralize that particular strain of the virus. Every year a vaccine is created to address new strains of the
flu. However if a person does not receive the yearly vaccine (like me), the body will fight off the infection
and once an antibody has been produced, a copy remains in the body so that if the same antigen appears again,
it can be dealt with more quickly.
My question: If a person contracts cononavirus and successfully recovers through normal palliative care,
does he/she now have immunity to that strain of coronavirus like what happens with influenza?
Warning here about nasal rinses. My Doctor was adamant never ever use regular water it is extremely dangerous.
The water has to be sterile which means buy distilled water otherwise you are playing a very dangerous game one
that will kill you.
The question was posed can one have two viral infections at the same time? Since in the USA the medical
incompetents did not test, no one knows what they have when they exhibit symptoms unless the person becomes
critical.
The first testing in the USA took 24-72 hours because the Feds forbade the state labs from testing
so samples had to be sent to the CDC in Atlanta. Lab testing takes awhile.
Now in the above article Mr.Chuchalin mentions Vector diagnostic kits–with this one can get a result in 10
minutes and the amount of training necessary to administer and read it is minimal. 10 freaking minutes!!!!
So all I can tell you is my experience here at ground zero in Roseville, CA which hosted the first fatality
( at least the first diagnosed one). I had the usual flu which I contained after 10 days. Then I had to have
some very needed dental surgery ( two hours worth) after which strangely enough I contracted an unusual
rhinitis–watery flow from my nose and into the back of my throat. I never get this. Then there came a dry cough
and an ache in my upper chest. ( no temperature and no shortness of breath). I am on antibiotics for the dental
surgery so that actually is good. ( old school ampicillin). So now I have a stint of staying in, gargling to
prevent migration deep into the lungs. , giving myself breathing treatments with colloidal silver, taking all
sorts of anti viral herbal medicines to cut viral reproduction etc. Thanks to the above article I was able to
focus in on what was possibly going on and rather than continue to be puzzled by it or ignore it, I am on it!!!
So, in my opinion,,,yes, one can have two viral infections at once or one after another.
Scary stuff yet surely a vital statistic is missing. These people must have a clear understanding of the
mortality rate associated with this infection. They are locking down the entire world so it seems likely they
would have looked into this a little bit.
The number of celebrities contracting the disease seems to be flatlining possibly because this phenomenon
strongly advertisers a widespread contamination. If such large scale contamination exists in the populace it
follows that the mortality rate is far lower than stated.
Anyway stock markets have crashed but only so far. They are predicting the end of the economic system as we
know it. Someone somewhere does not believe them.
Life saver: Stabilized allicin extracted from garlic (Allimax/AllicinMax). This is such strong medicin to all
kinds of infections that first time users should be aware of the possibility of herxheimer reactions if more
than the recommended amount of capsules are taken.
My brother-in-law suffered from Lyme disease in the brain where it is very hard to get rid of because of the
blood-brain barrier. No medication did him any good until he started taking AllicinMax capsules that cured him
completely.
In case of infection of the lungs allicin in a sterile solution can be inhaled with the help of a nebulizer.
No kidding, 100% corona proof!
French Health Minister Olivier Veran, a qualified doctor and neurologist, on Saturday warned
of certain types of anti-inflammatory drugs that may
worsen the infection and the spread of the coronavirus.
"The taking of anti-inflammatories (ibuprofen, cortisone ) could be a factor in aggravating
the infection. In case of fever, take paracetamol. If you are already taking
anti-inflammatory drugs, ask your doctor's advice," Veran tweeted.
⚠️ #COVIDー19
| La prise d'anti-inflammatoires (ibuprofène, cortisone, ...) pourrait être un
facteur d'aggravation de l'infection. En cas de fièvre, prenez du
paracétamol.
Si vous êtes déjà sous anti-inflammatoires ou en cas de doute, demandez
conseil à votre médecin.
French heath officials also warned of
using anti-inflammatories as they are known to pose a risk to people with infectious
diseases because they tend to reduce the body's immune system response, according to
The Guardian .
They rather recommend taking paracetamol because "it will reduce the fever without
counterattacking the inflammation".
"Anti-inflammatory
drugs increase the risk of complications when there is a fever or infection," warned
Jean-Louis Montastruc, the head of pharmacology at Toulouse Hospital, according to The
Guardian.
The French Health Ministry has reportedly been advising patients since mid-January to
consult pharmacies when purchasing common pain relievers such as ibuprofen, paracetamol and
aspirin, to be reminded of the risks.
France is one of the worst-affected countries in Europe, which has been declared a new virus
hotspot after infections on the continent rose dramatically this month, while those in China
have been reported to be leveling off.
On Saturday, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe
announced that the number of infection cases in France jumped 4,499, among which 154 are in
critical condition, whereas the death toll had risen to 91 people.
Philippe has also announced that the country would shut most shops, restaurants and
entertainment facilities beginning midnight on Saturday and people should stay home as long as
possible as the spread of coronavirus accelerates.
As part of the country's response to the pandemic, a number of iconic monuments in Paris
have been closed, including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, the Versailles Palace, Louvre,
Orsay Museum and Centre Pompidou.
That same year, another scientists named Dana Willner led a virus-hunting expedition of her
own. Instead of a cave, she dove into the human body. Willner had people cough up sputum into a
cup, and out of that fluid she and her colleagues fished out frag- ments of DNA. They compared
the DNA fragments to millions of sequences stored in online databases. Much of the DNA was hu-
man, but many fragments came from viruses. Before Willner's ex- pedition, scientists had
assumed the lungs of healthy people were sterile. Yet Willner discovered that, on average,
people have 174 species of viruses in the lungs. Only 10 percent of the species Will- ner found
bore any close kinship to any virus ever found before.
This is a really brilliant satire !!! Another outstanding work. "Spread the message, not the virus" and "...when they threaten the
Stock Market." Priceless
What makes a nation civilized is not how it acts in times of peace but how it chooses to conduct itself in moments of crisis. Hoarding
stuff for months selfishly and fighting people in markets like animals is not how civilized societies deal with crisis.
Notable quotes:
"... Toilet paper is such a weird thing to be panic-buying... ..."
"... "Global emergencies- when they threaten the stock market" So sad but true ..."
"... "When they threaten the stock market." Boom. ..."
"... I love the term "local government franchise". sounds pretty synonymous to a government run by crooks and impotent political dynasties. ..."
"... I like how this started off completely taking the mick, but then turned, depressingly, into one of the most sensible summaries of our current situation. (I mean it's depressing that comedians seem to be better at communicating than our glorious leaders). ..."
"... "Italians are freaking out the Chinese are hiding out" That was just so freaking hilarious oh my God I love this channel ..."
I like how this started off completely taking the mick, but then turned, depressingly, into one of the most sensible summaries
of our current situation. (I mean it's depressing that comedians seem to be better at communicating than our glorious leaders).
Lucy's heavenly voice and impeccable pronunciation – which transform the coarse language into music to our ears – perfectly
convey the urgent educational message.
Thank you for the "flatten the curve" message. To be honest, I had wondered whether delaying the inevitable was the way to
go - especially in view of the fact that there are going to be, indeed, already have been deaths that are due to knock-on effects
from the corona virus.
Johnthan Pie as expected sharp insightful with a wicked cutting edge, but most importantly
so on point with home truths. Well done good man, please keep them coming we need you more
than ever 😁
-text" role="article"> Well done JP, a brilliant summation as always :) Particularly
poignant: "The only people we can look to for help are our leaders, who we would hope, are
looking to scientists & experts to guide them."
In another article, Foreign Policy also suggests the pandemic should be a reason to
suspend the presidential election campaigning in the US. Opening the article with the
foreboding line:
It's time to ask, during a time of plague, whether -- and if so, in what form -- democracy
can continue as usual.
Which means no big crowds chanting Bernie's name, no televised debates where Biden forgets
where he is, and no lines of voters being turned away from the democrat primaries over
"misunderstandings".
The article even dances around the idea of postponing the vote itself. Voting "during a
time of plague" can have an impact on the turnout and result, Laurie Garrett argues. She
stops short of that, but only because "Orange Man Bad". If it was Hillary in the White House,
not Trump, the media would already have vociferously called for a postponement of the election
altogether.
As it is, they make do with this:
Actual voting can, and should, proceed with heavy emphasis on mailed ballots .
Total tested: 37,746
Total tested positive: 1,140
Infected as a percentage: 3%
Total deaths: 21
Mortality rate: 1.8%
Deaths as a percentage of all tested: 0.06%
Is this a catastrophe? Well I did a bit of extrapolating and found that, projected onto
the UK population (given as 66.44 million), the total number of deaths we could expect would
be just under 40,000. Sounds impressive – until you look at the 21 victims and consider
the age groupings:
CCTV footage has captured the moment toilet paper-hungry Australians caused unrest at an
Aldi store where a crowd of shoppers can be seen rushing down an aisle to claim the scarce
commodity before it was all taken.
I honestly never thought this would happen in my own country and I feel disgusted by this
behavior. 3 people over the ages of 70 have died in the entire nation or 30 million people.
Stop being selfish and ridiculous. This is not they end of the world and if citizens went
about their shopping as per normal there would be plenty for all. I have 4 rolls in my
cupboard at home and no idea where to buy more but I'll do the best with what I've got. its
worrying me that people in a 1st world nation have fallen to these lows.
The only reason there is a shortage here in America is because of the media. They have
everyone so panicked that if one person sneezes 9 others shit their pants in fear.
Sorry. Hysteria. China which was ground zero for this particular flavor of a respiratory
virus only had about 81,000 cases (so far) out of a population of how many billions? These
projections that posit that half the US population will become infected are wildly excessive.
And, yes, the fatality rate for COVID 19 is larger than the seasonal flu, it's larger than a
small number which is, itself, a small number. You guys have been watching too much disaster
porn.
Siotu
Testing for coronavirus in an autopsy or living person is as easy as looking through a
microscope and positively identifying the virus. Just a bit slow or labour-electron
microscope intensive for wholesale testing of populations.
I would like someone to explain why there have been so few infections and even fewer
fatalities on board the cruise ships.
We have 9000 (nine thousand) people, the majority of whom are well over the age of 50,
aboard 3 ships that have lived at very close quarters, in a confined environment where
Covid19 had been detected.
Where are the infections and where are the dead? By my last count, 6 elderly passengers
from the Diamond Princess passed away of complications related to Covid19. It is now over 6
weeks since that incident has taken place. In California, so far, 1 former passenger from the
Grand Princess has succumbed and there seems to be 29 infected people that are now under
observation or in care.
"... The "worst case scenario" doesn't look very credible. If less than 20% of the people on a cruise ship - trapped for multiple weeks - contracted nCOV, the notion that 2/3rds of Americans will seems far too high. ..."
"... And just for extra fun: The number of hospital beds in the US declined 5% from 2005 to 2017 ..."
"... The explosion of hate and blame and fear flying around online with regard to this pandemic is more than alarming and ultimately useless and damaging. In a way it scares me more than the flu itself at the moment because of the implications of how it will hinder our ability to cooperate and deal with this. ..."
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to
be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Why are you stoking this irrational panic? Quoting the New York Times. What's the matter with
you? I find it reassuring that high profile figures here and there have caught the COVID-19
flu. Madamm Trudeau, President Bolsinaro, etc. When they're back at their regular public
duties in a week or so maybe it will sink into peoples thick skulls what a bunch of scardey
cat ninnies the politicians are. The panic is doing more damage than the virus. IMHO. Time
will tell.
The "worst case scenario" doesn't look very credible. If less than 20% of the people on a
cruise ship - trapped for multiple weeks - contracted nCOV, the notion that 2/3rds of
Americans will seems far too high.
However, a lockdown has its own issues:
Reportedly 100,000 children in New York will starve if they can't go to school and get
fed. Is this going to be a lot different elsewhere?
What about the salaries, vs. the debts, for the hourly workers that won't be able to
work in a lockdown situation? A large percentage of Americans are extremely financially
precarious.
Then there's the US health care system. Even disregarding the secondary economic/social
effects noted above - how will $500-$3000 nCOV testing impact people? Much less the cost of
hospitalizations?
And just for extra fun: The number of hospital beds in the US declined 5% from 2005 to
2017: source
The number of hospital beds is rising in prosperous zip codes and falling everywhere else.
The amount of hospital beds fell by five percent nationally between 2006 and 2017. Over the
same time period, the number of beds increased by 10 percent in prosperous zip codes, which
were the only group to see an increase. Prosperous zip codes tend to be growing quickly:
The number of residents of prosperous zip codes increased by an estimated 20 percent over
the study period, faster than the population of any other quintile. Combined with their
initially low bed-counts, the rise in hospital beds in prosperous communities may reflect a
rebalancing in the landscape of beds towards the locations where more and more Americans
live.
So while richer areas got more hospital beds, the number don't reflect the
population increase. The other areas are just SOL.
The explosion of hate and blame and fear flying around online with regard to this pandemic is
more than alarming and ultimately useless and damaging. In a way it scares me more than the
flu itself at the moment because of the implications of how it will hinder our ability to
cooperate and deal with this.
The panic has set in, to some extent, but people are adjusting. There is a hyper focus on
the federal government and opportunistic political attacks with the goal of ruining the
current administration in the lead up to 2020 elections (an administration already paranoid
from 3+ years of being targeted to an extent I've never seen in my life). That much is really
obvious if you can look at things rationally, even if, like me, you're opposed to this
administration ideologically, politically and in almost every other way. I think that's
beyond reckless and extremely dangerous at a time like this, but my opinion won't change much
in a political environment that has been so carefully manipulated to a level of toxicity that
is maybe unprecedented. Maybe people will get their priorities straight when/if things get
really rough. Remains to be seen.
What the media and others aren't paying attention to at all to local and state authorities
who have been mobilizing. We don't rely on the federal government for everything. We have
extensive town, city, county and state infrastructures that handle most things in daily life.
The states themselves vary but every one has an extensive infrastructure.
The testing issue is clearly a major league failure. How important is it compared to
mobilizing? It's important because information is important for supply networks and decision
making. But is it more important in the short term than getting the population to prepare at
home, isolate to varying extents, to be informed about symptoms etc and be able to ride this
out as well as possible until the bigger, higher level infrastructure catches up?
And that is happening here in the US, at least in my state of NJ (bumped up
against/integrated with 2 of the biggest cities in the country). There is massive
mobilization. Colleges going into spring break right now and switching to online instruction
after spring break, large events canceled, people working from home when possible, state
government hotlines and online reporting in place, and tons of other things. This is
anecdotal but my son told me today that friends who work in electronics stores, restaurants
will be paid for furloughs, which surprised me. He's a student with a part time restaurant
job and no shut down or word of furlough pay as yet.
At a recent small biz related gathering - people already adopted modified non-handshakes
on their own. Maybe seems a little silly but shows how quickly people adapt in real world
regardless of the hate and panic flying around in MSM and social media. That doesn't get us
more hospital beds and respirators but it's important at the prevention end of things. As for
possible need for rapid expansion of medical facilities, I guess we'll find out soon if the
trillions we spend on military/national guard can benefit people at home if we hit that
crisis point. Supposedly, this type of logistics is one of their strengths.
Fun fact: the European Union actually has no authority over health issues whatsoever. This
is a strict Member State prerogative. The countries can coordinate voluntarily (which is what
is currently arranged by the European Commission, but since there is no precedence it takes
time) - but there was no way to make any decision about that in Brussels.
Greetings from Europe. In these hard times I'd like to thank Trump for providing such gold
comedy material from just being a moron and reminding us all that it could always be
worse.
Dr. Brian Monahan, attending physician of Congress, told a closed-door meeting of Senate
staffers this week that 70 million to 150 million Americans -- a third of the nation -- could
contract the coronavirus. Dr. Anthony Fauci testified that the mortality rate for COVID-19 will
likely run near 1 percent.
Translation: between 750,000 and 1.1 million Americans may die of this disease before it
runs its course. The latter figure is equal to all the U.S. dead in World War II and on both
sides in the Civil War.
Chancellor Angela Merkel warns that 70 percent of Germany's population -- 58 million people
-- could contract the coronavirus. If she is right, and Fauci's mortality rate holds for her
country, that could mean more than half a million dead Germans.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis called Merkel's remark "unhelpful" and said it could cause
panic. But Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch seemed to support Merkel, saying between 40
percent and 70 percent of the world's population could become infected.
Again, if Fauci's 1 percent mortality rate and Lipsitch's estimate prove on target, between
3 billion and 5 billion people on earth will be infected, and 30 million to 50 million will
die, a death toll greater than that of the Spanish Flu of 1918.
There is, however, some contradictory news.
China, with 81,000 cases, has noted a deceleration in new cases and South Korea appears to
be gradually containing the spread of the virus.
Yet Italy, with its large elderly population, may be a harbinger of what is to come in the
West. As of Thursday, Italy had reported 12,000 cases and 827 deaths, a mortality rate of
nearly 7 percent. This suggests that the unreported and undetected infections in Italy are far
more numerous.
In the U.S., the death toll at this writing is 40, a tiny fraction of the annual toll of the
tens of thousands who die of the flu.
But the problem is this: COVID-19 has not nearly run its course in the United States, while
the reaction in society and the economy approaches what we might expect from a boiling national
disaster.
The stock market has plunged further and faster than it did in the Great Crash of 1929.
Trillions of dollars in wealth have vanished. If Senator Bernie Sanders does not like
"millionaires and billionaires," he should be pleased. There are fewer of them today than there
were when he won the New Hampshire primary.
@Carlton
Meyer I've been following a few doctors on Youtube, for about a month now (dispassionate,
evidence-based docs), and their opinions vary on how serious this is.
What I don't is, if this is as contagious as they say (and it does seem to be) and as
life-threatening as they say, then given that there are several cases in NYC, why are we not
already seeing thousands of deaths there- a city where millions are crammed together daily,
many without good hygiene, many who have been for several weeks now, using public
transportation. I don't get it. It would seem the effects of any virus that were as bad as
they're saying, would already be reaching peak zombie level conditions in places like NYC,
Chicago, Boston, SF and DC.
Like the man on viriculture.com used
to say, healthy life =/= long life. We work towards extending one's lifespan, yet we don't
extend their "health span". We just extend the period when one is already falling apart. The
older you are, the more meds you need, the more healthcare you need etc etc.
So the longer the lifespan the bigger the load on healthcare and pension funds.
The main problem is, that our economic and cultural systems are at this point, 90%
biologically incompatible with us. A good chunk of our lives we study (especially so when you
study something like medicine, i believe at this point it's for genuine masochists). By the
time you get to a nice position in your career you're probably going to be older than 35. For
good birth rates etc that's unnaceptable.
So, the solution is to extend the "health-span". Preferably, you need to slow aging down at
least by 10, maybe even 15 years, while keeping the overall lifespan the same. The current way
is simply unsustainable
@Kratoklastes ...Like all the
other viruses that have floated around over the years be this one is being hyped up.
The hype works precisely because of your remark #3 but it will die a natural death after
everyone makes their money and the public gets bored.
I mean if just 1B people get a shot costing $50 that is a whole lot of Yuan. Store owners
also appear to be sneaking that extra markup on soaps and disinfectants and toilet paper. Y2K
also comes to mind and I am sure that Aids /HIV continues to kill more people annually than
this virus ever will. In the meantime I caution all nose pickers to leave those buggers alone
and not report any unusually large specimens. It will only skew the statistics and increase
the panic.
60,000 people die every month in Italy. Many of them old. Now we have 1,000 reported dead
due to the Covid-19. Most of them old. Many of them would have died anyway from some cold
or flu that would further aggravate their poor state of health. This year Covid-19 got
there first.
You request that opinions should be limited to fact based
but in the next sentence you state "The truth is that NONE OF US really knows for a fact what
this virus can do, we are all guessing."
well .whether fact based or speculative here are two alternate views>
"My own view on the Coronavirus situation, is that I trust the Chinese Government to be
doing all it can possibly do, to contain the epidemic.
There are a lot of people there, living in close proximity
In that context, Steve Bannon is just using inflammatory language throughout, to diss the
CCP
I can well understand why the CCP will not allow any US personel anywhere near the
patients, nor allow them to have access to any of the medical data.
If Bannon is implying that the CCP has something to hide, then the CCP also has its own
suspicions as to how this virus suddenly appeared
A lot of stuff has in the past come out of Livermore Labs and in the UK from Porton Down,
which "should not" be released I know of southern coastal cities in the UK being sprayed with
viruses from the air in the 1950s – a deliberate programme supported by the UK
government
The CCP will also be fully aware of British activities within Syria and then there is the
Skripal incident, a home-grown Boris the Buffoon manufactured crisis
If one looks at UK and US official government behaviour towards Hong Kong, then one can
easily surmise that there are attempts to find other means to destabilise China
Just saying "
Another view >
"There was an interesting item on Facebook a few days back, claiming to be written by a
Chinese military official, a staunch supporter of the communist party and the government, but
a man 'with a conscience.'
He claimed the virus was manufactured with a view to causing reduction of higher brain
functions (i.e. lowering the IQ) and inducing docility into those who are protesting in Hong
Kong.
It was first tested, according to his narrative, more discreetly on rounded-up Uighurs in
the prison camps, well away from anywhere likely to be observed, and everyone who was
exposed, died. There was a massive clean-up and cover-up operation
Realising it needed more work if it was to be deployed in HK, they did some further
modifications and had intended to do a new test in Hubei, but this was pre-empted by a
shoot-out near the meat market that has been mooted as the source of the outbreak. Someone,
I'm not sure now who he reckoned it was, attempted to 'kidnap the bio weapon in order to grab
the technology it represented, but the consignment was hit by a bullet and the virus escaped.
Those in charge ensured there were no survivors as witnesses in that area.
He further claimed that the mortality rate is actually 100% but that it has been put about
that it is only 2% – this underplaying being with the complicity of the USA, Russia and
the UK and presumably the EU, in order to forestall mass panic. He claimed only those wearing
hazmat suits stand any chance, and that the pandemic will claim the lives of all but top
officials who have recourse to protective measures. He said that the actual symptoms in the
final stages are up to five days of agonising pain with internal organs haemorrhaging in a
similar way to Ebola.
Of course, the article was anonymously written, as he said his life and that of his family
would be forfeit if he were to be identified. Which makes it a narrative that is easy to fake
but impossible to completely refute. "
Like the Saker, I do not think the corona virus outbreak was deliberate. The first thing that
people crafty enough to unleash this sort of thing would think of is blowback.
Perhaps the depopulationists–but this is a really ineffective way of going about
it.
I do think, however, that it arose in a "laboratory" of tens of millions of human subjects
all undergoing an enormous experiment. Please humor me a moment.
If there were a deliberate element in all of this, it would be the hype and rush be the
first to implement an untested technology about which dire warnings were already being
sounded.
Virologists and epidemiologists have yet to discount that the coronavirus was a bio attack.
This does NOT mean that it was an attack, merely that the possibility of a bio attack cannot
be discounted. While there remains a lot of circumstantial and anecdotal "evidence" that this
was an economic attack perpetrated by America against China, this does NOT prove conclusively
that such an attack took place, nor does it prove that such an attack did not take place.
There is an abstract submitted to ChinaXIV (a research website) that, although not yet peer
reviewed, suggests that the virus dd NOT originate at the Wuhan Seafood Market and that it
was introduced:
Any reference as to who introduced the coronavirus to the market is pure speculation at
this juncture, although the circumstantial and anecdotal evidence could be construed as
overwhelming against the US considering the timing, geographic location and proximity to the
Wuhan Seafood Market of the US soldiers present for the International Military Games.
I am not a virologist or epidemiologist (I am an engineer), however it is not completely
out of the realms of possibility for a virus to make the transition from animal to human
host; and the conditions in which animals are kept in Wuhan and surrounding areas is
certainly not of the same standard as the West – both from the perspective of hygiene
and humanitarian considerations. Another abstract that does looks into the origins of the
virus states:
"The genomic features described here may in part explain the infectiousness and
transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. Although genomic evidence does not support the
idea that SARS-CoV-2 is a laboratory construct, it is currently impossible to prove or
disprove the other theories of its origin described here, and it is unclear whether future
data will help resolve this issue. Identifying the immediate non-human animal source and
obtaining virus sequences from it would be the most definitive way of revealing virus
origins."
Much mention has been made of the corona-virus in question (COVID-19) binding to the ACE-2
receptors found in the lungs and heart – most particularly in those of Asian heritage.
It would not be outside the realms of science for this to be a logical target for the virus,
given its geographic location, but the hypothesis of it being engineered to target a specific
racial genotype is also not outside the realms of possibility.
"Our findings indicated that no direct evidence was identified genetically supporting
the existence of coronavirus S-protein binding-resistant ACE2 mutants in different
populations (Fig. 1a). The data of variant distribution and AFs may contribute to the
further investigations of ACE2, including its roles in acute lung injury and lung
function12. The East Asian populations have much higher AFs in the eQTL variants associated
with higher ACE2 expression in tissues (Fig. 1c), which may suggest different
susceptibility or response to 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 from different populations under the
similar conditions."
I agree with Andrei's analysis that a bio-weapon is both unwieldy and difficult to control
when used in a purely military application, but when used as an economic weapon, the
possibility is mentioned in the odious The Project for a New American Century's (PNAC) report
titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century."
"advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform
biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
This does not prove that the tragedy unfolding out of Wuhan was a bio-weapon, but
certainly demonstrates the possibility of intent. At this juncture, neither side of the
argument can provide any proof, so the the hypothesis remains pure speculation. The Chinese
government is not directly accusing the US of a bio attack, but it is extremely worrying that
both the Russian and Chinese governments remain highly suspicious.
"CORONAVIRUSES HAVE ALWAYS INFECTED HUMANS, PANIC IS UNWARRANTED"
Posted by agencycyta | Mar 9, 2020 | Science , Featured , Health | 0 |
"Coronaviruses have always infected humans, panic is unwarranted"
According to an Argentine virologist in France, Pablo Goldschmidt, there is no evidence to
indicate that the fatality or morbidity of COVID-19 is superior to that caused by influenza
viruses or the common cold.
(CyTA-Leloir Foundation Agency) -. For the virologist and infectious disease specialist
Pablo Goldschmidt, the panic surrounding the strain of coronavirus identified in China
(COVID-19) is as unwarranted as the one created in 2003 with severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS). ) or in 2009 with the influenza A (H1N1) virus.
"The ill-founded opinions expressed by international experts, replicated by the media and
social networks repeat the unnecessary panic that we have previously experienced. The
coronavirus identified in China in 2019 causes neither more nor less than a strong cold or
flu, with no difference until today with the cold or flu as we know it, "says Professor
Goldschmidt, also a biochemist, pharmacist and psychologist graduated from the UBA, volunteer
for the World Health Organization (WHO), former praticien hospitalier of the public hospitals
in Paris and author of the book "People and microbes, invisible beings with whom we live and
make us sick" (2019).
The Argentine specialist lives more than four decades in Europe. At the Faculty of
Medicine of the hospital center de la Pitié-Salpetrière in Paris, he obtained
diplomas in pharmacokinetics, clinical pharmacology, neuro-psychopharmacology and
pharmacology of antimicrobials. At the Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris VI he
received a doctorate in molecular pharmacology. The theoretical and practical training of the
Paris Curie and Pasteur Institutes also concluded with degrees in fundamental virology and
molecular biology. As a volunteer at the WHO, he integrates humanitarian missions in Guinea
Conakry, Bissau, Pakistan, Ukraine, Cameroon, Mali and the Chad border with Nigeria. And it
aspires to obtain from the Argentine State a mandate to exercise the right to speak before
the international organization.
In dialogue with the CyTA-Leloir Agency, Goldschmidt expresses its tension in the face of
the global terror generated by the quality of information that is disseminated about the new
coronavirus and considers it necessary that the data that is propagated be placed in the
geographical and social context. "You can't create hysteria on the entire planet," he
says.
-Which viruses are considered responsible for respiratory diseases?
Viral respiratory conditions are numerous and are caused by several viral families and
species, among which the respiratory syncytial virus (especially in infants), influenza
(influenza), human metapneumoviruses, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, and several coronaviruses,
already described years ago. It is striking that earlier this year global health alerts have
been triggered as a result of infections by a coronavirus detected in China, COVID-19,
knowing that each year there are 3 million newborns who die in the world of pneumonia and
50,000 adults in the United States for the same cause, without alarms being issued.
– The fact that it is transmitted by saliva or by cough increased the fear of the
population?
Many microorganisms are transmitted by this route in humans. The cold, transmitted by
saliva and cough, is caused by more than 150 rhinoviruses. Ten million people were infected
by saliva and cough with the tuberculosis agent in 2018, of which 1 million were children and
205 thousand died. The same happened with bacterial meningitis, transmitted by saliva, which
affected more than a million people in a year. Measles is also transmitted by saliva, hence
the urgency to protect the population with vaccines.
-You. Do you consider the international alerts launched due to the coronavirus to be
exaggerated?
Our planet is the victim of a new sociological phenomenon, scientific-media harassment,
triggered by experts only on the basis of laboratory molecular diagnostic analysis results.
Communiqués issued from China and Geneva were replicated, without being confronted
from a critical point of view and, above all, without stressing that coronaviruses have
always infected humans and always caused diarrhea and what people call a banal cold or common
cold. Absurd forecasts were extrapolated, as in 2009 with the H1N1 influenza virus.
And the risk of complications?
A cold can present as a benign, self-limiting disease; but it is known that all
respiratory diseases, however banal they may be considered, can severely affect the frailized
people, people with cardiocirculatory problems over 65 years, people with metabolic
disorders, immunosuppressed, transplanted and, above all , to poorly fed people without
shelter, and to those who do not have access to competent health teams that provide them with
effective medicines. This situation, clearly revealed for so many other diseases, is repeated
in all infections and COVID-19 is no exception.
Why does each individual become infected and react differently to viral infections?
The first step for a virus to infect a person depends on the virus's ability to recognize
"locks" or proteins on the surface of cells in certain organs, not all. Once it attaches to
its lock, it can penetrate the cell and put all the cellular machinery of the infected
subject at its service to replicate itself. It has been determined that there are individuals
with many "locks", others with few and others with easier "locks" to open, which is
determined by the genes. On the other hand, there is a defensive apparatus of proteins
encoded in DNA that is known by the name of "reactoma". In short, all humans are unique
living beings against microbial aggression and against the malignant transformations of our
tissues. Therefore, in certain individuals,
Is the coronavirus detected in China a new agent?
Those who launched the international alerts did not take into account data that shows
whether this virus or other similar viruses circulated in previous years. Or if people who
were already exposed to other coronavirus variants have partial or total protection against
the 2019 strain.
-Why do you not accept the extrapolation from one country to the other of the forecasts
issued by international agencies?
First, it is appropriate to compare the mortality and morbidity data with the number of
positive cases (those confirmed by the laboratory in relation to the number of severe cases
or the number of deceased persons). The first thing that emerges from the data, beyond the
biological criteria referring to the individual capacity to get sick and defend against viral
aggression, are doubts regarding the figures, if it is not considered that the affected
people did or did not have access to competent and equipped health, and if they received
timely treatments with adequate and bioequivalent drugs.
– Would these factors contribute to explain the differences in mortality and
morbidity between countries?
If there is no biological justification for individual predisposition, the difference
could be due to the quality of the medical institutions, the reasons that caused the time to
pass before the affected people go to health centers, or the quality of the training of
medical centers and the availability of resources to treat acute respiratory diseases. We
must impose moderation and use concrete data. There is no evidence to show that the 2019
coronavirus is more lethal than respiratory adenoviruses, influenza viruses, coronaviruses
from previous years, or rhinoviruses responsible for the common cold.
I'd rather take my chances with the virus than consume an Israeli vaccine
Don't blame you at all, but you don't have to make that choice!
A Canadian company says that it has produced a COVID-19 vaccine just 20 days after
receiving the coronavirus's genetic sequence, using a unique technology that they soon hope
to submit for FDA approval.
Medicago CEO Bruce Clark said his company could produce as many as 10 million doses a
month. If regulatory hurdles can be cleared, he said in a Thursday interview, the vaccine
could start to become available in November 2021.
An Israeli research lab has also claimed to have created a vaccine. But Clark says his
company's technique, which has already been proven effective in producing vaccines for
seasonal flu, is more reliable and easier to scale.
"There are a couple of others who are claiming that they have -- well, we will call them
vaccine[s]" for COVID-19, he said. "But they're different technologies. Some are RNA- or
DNA-based vaccines that have not yet been proven in any indication yet, let alone this one.
Hopefully, they'll be successful."
In 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, put together a $100
million program dubbed Blue Angel to look into new forms of vaccine discovery and
production. A big chunk of that money went to Medicago to build a facility in North
Carolina, where they showed that they could find a vaccine in just 20 days, then rapidly
scale up production.
But it won't be ready for actual people for 18 months.
Healthcare Hot Topics This is coming from
MEDPAGE TODAY , "Track the U.S. COVID-19 Outbreak in Real Time," Comments Section (3
comments), March 11, 2020 with regard to COVID-19
"The mechanism of seasonal effect for seasonal respiratory virus spread is believed to be
humidity, not temperature. In New York state which has 220 cases, fomites lose moisture where
indoor humidity is low, allowing the lighter particles to stay longer in the aerosol. In
Florida and Arizona, with 38 cases, fomites gain moisture and weight from the humid air and
fall to the floor faster. Northern Italy, where people wear winter coats in the media reports
has dry, heated indoor air, while Southern Italy has humid indoor air.
Humidifying indoor air in schools, stores, churches, etc. may reduce seasonal influenza,
respiratory syncytial virus, coronoviruses which produce the common cold, rhinoviruses and
Covid-19, Airports, airliners, airport shuttles should be the highest priority. The goal should
be humidifying to the level seen in summer without transmitting Legionella."
"The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong have warmer, more humid air and
much less Covid-19. Southern Italy has warmer, more humid indoor air than Northern Italy where
indoor air is dry. The photographs in the media from places with the highest rate of Covid-19
spread show people wearing winter jackets."
"In warm humid climates, fomites absorb water from indoor air and sink to the floor. There
is a fine layer of dust everywhere indoors and viral particles attach to charged dust
particles.
The mechanism for seasonal respiratory virus transmission is: fomite size in dry heated
indoor air promotes viral spread. Larger fomites in humid air fall to the floor and react with
charged dust particles."
fomite definition: objects or materials which are likely to carry infection, such as
clothes, utensils, and furniture.
microbiology definition: A fomes (pronounced /ˈfoʊmiːz/) or fomite
(/ˈfoʊmaɪt/) is any inanimate object that, when contaminated with or exposed to
infectious agents (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses or fungi), can transfer disease to a
new host.
This would include counter tops, etc.
likbez , March 12, 2020 4:10 pm
I think incompetent politicians who want to be seen to be acting but do not implement the
necessary for containing the epidemics steps or take them too late are more important danger
in this coronavirus outbreak then the disease itself.
Humidity about 50% is a double edge sword: it greatly stimulates growth of various
bacteria and fungus. And Legionnaires disease is more dangerous type of virus pneumonia than
COVID-19.
Legionnaires' disease is the cause of an estimated 2–9% of pneumonia cases that
are acquired outside of a hospital.[1] An estimated 8,000–18,000 cases a year in the
United States require hospitalization
Respiratory-care devices such as humidifiers and nebulizers used with contaminated tap
water may contain Legionella species, so using sterile water is very important.[29]
It is also not clear if 50% humidity is enough to adversely affect the coronavirus
virus.
•Excess moisture promotes the growth and spread of mold, mildew, fungi, bacteria,
and viruses. These contaminants diminish indoor air quality, causing illness, and can also
cause damage to your home.
•When indoor humidity levels are too high, asthma and allergy sufferers may
experience worse or more frequent symptoms.
•High humidity indoors causes the home to feel muggy. You may notice visible
condensation on windows and walls.
At 80% or higher humility your sheets feel wet. This for example is the case in Dominican
republic.
In general, this temperature guide will show you where to keep your indoor relative
humidity levels to ensure comfort.
•Outdoor temperature over 50˚F, indoor humidity levels shouldn't exceed
50%
•Outdoor temperature over 20˚F, indoor humidity levels shouldn't exceed
40%
Over 50% humility can probably be maintained for prolong time only along with ultraviolet
lamp disinfection of the room and daily change of bed sheets and weekly washing of
pillows.
It is also not clear if the coronavirus can survive after drying of aerosol saliva
particles that carry them. Probably not.
At the same time places with a very high humidity such as Hong Kong and Taiwan were less
affected by the coronavirus.
The NYT now has a section of free coronavirus coverage, including our live briefing, maps of
confirmed cases and advice on how to prepare for the outbreak
Quote: "If you begin to have a high fever, shortness of breath or any other more serious
symptom, the best thing to do is to call your doctor to let them know and inquire about next
steps. (Testing for coronavirus is inconsistent right now -- there are not enough testing kits,
and it's dangerous for people with coronavirus to go into a doctor's office and risk infecting
others. So please follow your doctor's instructions.) Check the C.D.C. website and
your local health department for advice about how and where to be tested"
Sorry to say but... social distancing is one thing but how do you get some food? are you
ready to wash up everything you bought at supermarket and change your clothes each time you
go out and your bedsheets every morning?
Korean model is that grocery are ordered (online or phone?) and delivered to the door,
increasingly, people pick the grocery without physical contact with delivery people. Korean
cities are quite dense from what I understand. Initially, shoppers abandoned big
supermarket for neighborhood stores, neighborhood stores usually belong to big chains, like
in Germany, so there are website for ordering groceries, but they are delivered over short
distances.
Because having food delivered was already popular, a massive increase could be easy to
handle. E.g. with more orders to the same address (high rise living is the norm), it takes
less time for an individual delivery.
I was thinking that "no contact shopping" in USA could be more practical with people
arriving at their big supermarket (or local store in a rural area) and picking up pre-paid
boxes (could be just open boxes that could be left empty).
interview with Michael Osterholm, internationally recognized expert in infectious disease
epidemiology. He is Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health,
the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), Distinguished
Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health,
a professor in the Technological Leadership Institute, College of Science and Engineering,
and an adjunct professor in the Medical School, all at the University of Minnesota.
... 191 patients (135 from Jinyintan Hospital and 56 from Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital) were
included in this study, of whom 137 were discharged and 54 died in hospital. 91 (48%) patients
had a comorbidity, with hypertension being the most common (58 [30%] patients), followed by
diabetes (36 [19%] patients) and coronary heart disease (15 [8%] patients). Multivariable
regression showed increasing odds of in-hospital death associated with older age
...Cardiac complications, including new or worsening heart failure, new or worsening
arrhythmia, or myocardial infarction are common in patients with pneumonia. Cardiac arrest
occurs in about 3% of inpatients with pneumonia.21
Risk factors of cardiac events after pneumonia include older age, pre-existing
cardiovascular diseases, and greater severity of pneumonia at presentation.22
Coronary heart disease has also been found to be associated with acute cardiac events and
poor outcomes in influenza and other respiratory viral infections
... For survivors, the median duration of viral shedding was 20 days (IQR
17·0–24·0) from illness onset, but the virus was continuously detectable
until death in non-survivors ( table
2 ; figure
1 ).
I just got a call yesterday from close friends who must still think this is a joke and
they wanted me to come out to a restaurant with them in about a weeks time. Six weeks ago, I
would have gone.
I just told them the truth, thanking them very much for being so thoughtful,
and also suggesting that this was more serious than people might realize, but I didn't go
into too much detail as I've learned it's counter productive. I did, however, point out that
due to our for profit health care system, we will get a much greater and faster spread of
covid-19 due to prohibitive costs of any health care visit.
Couldn't resist that one; talk about res ipsa loquitur.
For a couple of weeks now, I have been quite up front with close friends, slightly less so
with others, but refuse to go out unless I have to and can somewhat control how many people
will be around (as in going to the super market very early am during the week).
I have no illusion this behavior will guarantee anything, but que faire?
Registered nurses are outraged to learn that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on
Tuesday further weakened its guidance on measures to contain COVID-19. These changes include,
among other things, rolling back personal protective equipment (PPE) standards from N-95
respirators to allow simple surgical masks; not requiring suspected or confirmed COVID-19
patients to be placed in negative pressure isolation rooms at all times; and weakening
protections for health care workers collecting diagnostic respiratory specimens. These are
moves that National Nurses United nurses say will gravely endanger nurses, health care workers,
patients, and our communities
"If nurses and health care workers aren't protected, that means patients and the public are
not protected," said Bonnie Castillo, RN and CNA/NNOC and NNU executive director. "This is a
major public health crisis of unknown proportions. Now is not the time to be weakening our
standards and protections, or cutting corners. Now is the time we should be stepping up our
efforts."..
In addition to lobbying almost every federal health agency, the presidential administration,
and members of Congress, and California health agencies to step up protections, NNU recently
surveyed RNs nationwide, finding that the vast majority of the nation's health care facilities
are unprepared for COVID-19, with only 29 percent of nurses reporting that their hospitals have
a plan in place to isolate a coronavirus patient, and only 30 percent saying their employer has
enough personal protective equipment if there is a rapid surge in patients with possible
COVID-19 infections.
Many hospitals and healthcare facilities have failed to provide adequate personal protective
equipment to nurses working with COVID-19 patients. Some facilities are telling nurses to
continue to work while asymptomatic, even though they've been exposed to the virus and might be
contagious. Testing at hospitals has been sporadic.
I found this very interesting personal report on flutrackers:
Something else to share, here (reproduced exactly as I received it):
3/8/2020
Notes from the front lines:
I attended the Infectious Disease Association of California (IDAC) Northern California
Winter Symposium on Saturday 3/7. In attendance were physicians from Santa Clara, San
Francisco and Orange Counties who had all seen and cared for COVID-19 patients, both
returning travelers and community-acquired cases. Also present was the Chief of ID for
Providence hospitals, who has 2 affected Seattle hospitals under his jurisdiction. Erin
Epson, CDPH director of Hospital Acquired Infections, was also there to give updates on how
CDPH and CDC are handling exposed health care workers, among other things. Below are some
of the key take-aways from their experiences.
1. The most common presentation was one week prodrome of myaglias, malaise, cough, low
grade fevers gradually leading to more severe trouble breathing in the second week of
illness. It is an average of 8 days to development of dyspnea and average 9 days to onset
of pneumonia/pneumonitis. It is not like Influenza, which has a classically sudden onset.
Fever was not very prominent in several cases. The most consistently present lab finding
was lymphopenia (with either leukocytosis or leukopenia). The most consistent radiographic
finding was bilateral interstitial/ground glass infiltrates. Aside from that, the other
markers (CRP, PCT) were not as consistent.
2. Co-infection rate with other respiratory viruses like Influenza or RSV is 24 hours
apart.
... ... ...
10. All suggested ramping up alternatives to face-to-face visits, tetemedicine, "car
visits", telephone consultation hotlines.
11. Sutter and other larger hospital systems are using a variety of alternative
respiratory triage at the Emergency Departments.
12. Health Departments (CDPH and OCHD) state the Airborne Infection Isolation Room
(AIIR) is the least important of all the suggested measures to reduce exposure. Contact and
droplet isolation in a regular room is likely to be just as effective. One heavily affected
hospital in San Jose area is placing all "undifferentiated pneumonia" patients not meeting
criteria for COVID testing in contact+droplet isolation for 2-3 days while seeing how they
respond to empiric treatment and awaiting additional results.
Feel free to share. All PUIs in Monterey Country so far have been negative.
Consequences of widespread denialism. At home, the virologist was not taken seriously until
last Monday. I advised my wife last week not to assist to some meeting in closed doors, my son
not to go to a concert, a friend of mine not to travel to Switzerland. They finally conceded I
was right this week. The runners chat was complaining about cancellation of events until
yesterday and I have received in chats lots of hyperventilating noises. Not helpful. We are now
in Madrid replicating quite exactly events occurring in Italy 7-10 days before. Expect the same
elsewhere.
I’m thinking of making up some lame excuse to not go skiing next week, a phantom
injury or some other malady of my imagination.
Why not just admit to my friends that i’m afraid of mixing with a large group of
people, especially so @ lunch, where we are in close proximity to a lot of other folks all
milling around?
We are still in heavy denial-myself included, in that I feel my friends will think less of
me if I was to give them the real reason, in that I don’t want to die, just yet.
An e-mail to my family regarding how bad the crisis is and will be here soon, was similar to
my frantic e-mails & calls in the summer of 2008 regarding how shaky things are financially
on Wall*Street, please be ready! They did nothing.
When I related that ‘Dr Drew’ (a sister sent me a video of his-after I sent out
the Bergamo doctor’s account) who claimed Covid-19 was a press engineered fantasy, was
just an addiction specialist and judging from where he hangs his hat (Breitbart, Washington
Examiner, erc) everything he does is politically motivated hard right, one of my sisters asked
me not to politicize the matter.
We took our daughter from school even before they closed them, because we suspected
(rightly, as it turned out), that some parents coming from midterm sky trips to Italy will
ignore the quarantine.
A friend of mine sent half of his staff WFH, and some of his business contacts see him as
mad now.
That said, majority of people here support the drastic reaction, and would be happy to
support even more dramatic ones. For example, a CEO of a major movie theater chain got quite a
bit of kudos today when he said that while they could keep smaller theatres open, he
doesn’t see how it’s better to keep 50 people bunched together than 100, so they
close it all until further notice.
You might have fears today: What if I overreact? Will people laugh at me? Will they be
angry at me? Will I look stupid? Won’t it be better to wait for others to take steps
first? Will I hurt the economy too much?
But in 2–4 weeks, when the entire world is in lockdown, when the few precious days
of social distancing you will have enabled will have saved lives, people won’t
criticize you anymore: They will thank you for making the right decision.
Your browser indicates if
you've visited this link https://vuuzletvph.com
/favilavir-first-covid-19-drug-approved/ The government of Taizhou in Zhejiang province
declared Sunday that Favilavir, formerly known as Fapilavir, an antiviral that has shown
efficacy in the treatment of the novel coronavirus (), has been approved to be sold in the
market.It is the first antiviral drug approved by the National Medical Products Administration
for marketing since the outbreak happened.
Can the virus freeze to death at low temperatures? Will it disappear as the temperature
rises? With the outbreak of a new coronavirus in Wuhan and across China, there have been more
and more recent statements about the virus and temperature.
These judgments lead to different conclusions no matter true or false, but they are widely
circulating.
<img alt="Does the sun kill the new coronavirus? Expert
explains-cnTechPost" src="https://img.cntechpost.com/images/2020/01/28/071.jpg" />
How resistant is the new coronavirus to temperature? Is it suitable for outdoor activities
after fine weather? Ma Ke, deputy chief physician of the Department of Infectious Diseases of
Tongji Hospital, answers these questions.
1. Is the new coronavirus more afraid of heat or cold?
Coronavirus is more sensitive to heat.
The virus is moderately stable in a suitable maintenance solution at 4 °C and can be
stored for several years at -60 ° C.
However, as the temperature increases, the virus's resistance decreases, but it must reach a
certain temperature for a certain time to inactivate the virus.
2. Does the ambient temperature affect the infectivity of the virus? Is there a
difference in transmission in different regions (such as Northeast and Hainan)? Will the
infectivity of the virus decrease as the temperature rises?
It can survive in different body fluids and even the surface of the object at room
temperature for 2-10 days. Temperature mainly affects the survival time of the virus and does
not affect its infectious capacity.
Because coronaviruses can be transmitted through respiratory aerosols, inactivating the
virus in various ways and adopting multifaceted protective measures can minimize the
possibility of infection.
3. How much and how long does the high temperature have a killing effect on the virus?
High-temperature environment disinfection? Does turning on air conditioning and heating
work?
The virus is sensitive to heat and can effectively inactivate the virus when it reaches a
temperature of 56 ° C for 30 minutes. However, it is impossible to achieve the effect of
inactivating the virus by raising the ambient temperature by heating with an air conditioner,
and the effect of the virus cannot be achieved by heating the temperature.
4. In addition to fear of heat, what is the virus afraid of? (Disinfectant, ethanol,
chlorine-containing disinfectant, etc., correct use)
In addition to killing the virus at high temperatures, lipid solvents such as ether, 75%
ethanol, chlorine-containing disinfectants, peracetic acid, and chloroform can effectively
inactivate the virus.
Air disinfection method:
1. Some people open the window twice a day for 30 minutes each time.
2. When there is an ultraviolet lamp, irradiate the ultraviolet lamp once a day in an
unmanned room for more than 1 hour each time.
3. Disinfection method for the surface and ground of environmental objects: use 1000mg / L
chlorine-containing disinfectant or peroxyacetic acid and hydrogen peroxide paper towels to
wipe and disinfect thoroughly, twice a day.
Experts remind:
First, the sun's irradiation temperature cannot reach 56 degrees, and the intensity of
ultraviolet rays in sunlight can not reach the intensity of ultraviolet lamps.
Second, it needs a duration of 56 degrees and 30 minutes, and the ultraviolet lamp is
irradiated for 60 minutes. The conditions must be met at the same time, which is difficult to
achieve in the ordinary outside environment.
Excellent video. Well done. I can't tell you how many updates I've seen on this pandemic
that have increased my paranoia over the situation. This is genuinely the first that
comforted me. Thank you for that
The number of videos that talk about the coronavirus spreads faster than the coronavirus
itself. Better to increase awareness to control it sooner rather than later. RIP to all lives
lost to this fight. ❤️
As a fellow healthcare professional, you have my greatest respect for dedicating your
video to Dr. Li Wenliang... brought tears to my eyes to see that. Keep up the good work.
Older doctor's assessment of the new Coronavirus. His many years of experience and his
opinion of this new "chest flu". They talk about the terrible flu of 1918 when 50 million
died.
We have had just as bad "pandemics" since then but we now have antibiotics for the bacterial
pneumonia and better hospital care. Few people went into hospitals back then.
The first president to be born in a hospital was Jimmy Carter. Many people still die from
world wide infections (called pandemics). HIV and HPV are pandemics also.
The new coronavirus is estimated to spread at a similar rate to the flu. It is important to
take steps to prevent getting sick, like frequent hand-washing and avoiding people who are
sick.
In the U.S., flu activity is still high. According to CDC estimates, the flu may have
infected as many as 49 million people this season, and as many as 52,000 may have died. If you
get sick, it is more likely it is the flu unless you live in an coronavirus outbreak area.
Note: Because this is a constantly changing situation, this data may not represent the
most up-to-date numbers as state health departments and the CDC independently confirm
infections and deaths. We will update this blog when possible.
The 2019 new coronavirus (also known as COVID-19 or 2019-nCoV) is a hot topic in the news. Now
that it has spread to the U.S., you may wonder if you should be concerned. It is a
respiratory virus , meaning it affects the lungs, so what do people with asthma need to
know?
COVID-19 Cases in the U.S. (according to the CDC as of 3/10/2020)
Travel-related (confirmed)
83
Person-to-person spread (confirmed)
36
Being investigated
528
Total cases
647
What Is Coronavirus (COVID-19)?
A coronavirus is a type of virus that often occurs in animals. Sometimes, it can spread to
humans. This is rare.
In December 2019, a new coronavirus started spreading.
Experts think people first caught the virus at a fish and live animal market. Now it is
spreading from person to person.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), coronavirus symptoms can
include:
Fever
Cough
Shortness of breath
The CDC believes symptoms may appear two to 14 days after coming in contact with the
virus.
The virus is spread through coughing and sneezing. The virus will be in droplets that are
coughed or sneezed out into the air. These are heavy droplets and they quickly fall to the
ground/surface below.
People who are within 1 to 2 meters (3 to 6 feet) of someone who is ill with coronavirus may
be within the zone that droplets can reach. If someone who is sick coughs or sneezes on your
face, you may get infected. This is why it is recommended that people who are sick should
cough/sneeze into their elbows or a tissue and throw it away and wash their hands. People who
are sick should also wear a mask to help stop the spread of illness.
The coronavirus may also live on surfaces that people have coughed and sneezed on. If you
touch a surface with the virus on it and then touch your mouth, nose or eyes, you may get
sick.
Who Is at Risk From the Coronavirus?
Most Americans are still at a low risk of getting coronavirus, says the CDC.
At this time, little is known about how the coronavirus affects people with asthma . One
study of 140 cases showed no link to asthma. 1 According to the WHO and the CDC, the
highest risk groups include:
People caring for someone who is ill with coronavirus
People over age 60
People with chronic medical conditions such as:
High blood pressure
Heart disease
Diabetes
Asthma
People with asthma should take precautions when any type of respiratory illness is
spreading in their community.
I think vk is right about what could cause a belief in the narrative of a biological weapon
because the narrative itself is utterly pointless; the people claiming it is a weapon don't
seem to understand that it makes no positive or meaningful difference whether or not they
should turn out to be right.
Not only that but it doesn't help with anything and only makes things worse in that it
potentially obstructs from for example the continued search for the intermediary hosts and
potential original animal host population which -- if/when identified -- can help avoid
future outbreaks. In addition to that they stress and scare people unnecessarily which makes
it easier for them to become infected.
Think before spreading narratives based on outlier views from a few people, try to
question yourself as to whether all you're doing is chasing your own confirmation bias, try
to find and understand valid reasons why most knowledgeable people are not jumping to the
same conclusions.
However, it has been learned when a "name" gets attached to the regular flu season, panic
increases exponentially. Particularly when that name gets extended to "Trump's Katrina" or
the latest "Trump's Chernobyl".
The real infection is Democrat hysteria, so desperate to get their hands back on the
taxpayer's check book.
Coronavirus is not a new virus. There are several strains in circulation every year. This is
a new strain. Like other cold viruses, it mutates, so nobody ever has full immunity. Thats
why flu vaccines have low effectiveness. Thats why people get the flu and colds repeatedly
through their lifetimes.
People seem to have little understanding of how our immune system works. Most of us don't
need antibodies to fight off a cold or flu virus. Our innate immune system is the first line
of defense and for most people sufficient to defeat the virus. Antibodies take up to 2 weeks
to be produced in sufficient quantities after infection. While antibodies can help minimize
symptoms after reinfection, if the new virus is sufficiently different, something called the
original antigenic sin comes into play and can actually cause worse symptoms.
In older people, which are more severely affected by covid-19, an over reaction by the
complement system of the innate system is responsible. Due to chronic inflammation due to
aging the elderly have more active complement molecules than younger people. When antibodies
are produced after a couple of weeks this actually amplifies the complement response and
symptoms worsen, followed by death in some cases. Younger people who have no more humoral
immunity than older people are not severely affected as they have less inflammation and
complement molecules. Indeed young children's immune systems respond differently than adults
as their innate immune system works to minimize inflammation.
Now, people like to recite the CFR. Unfortunately, the mortality rate must be calculated
by deaths divided by total infections. Confirmed cases are not total infections. Total
infections are an order of magnitude higher because mild cases afe not tested and confirmed.
The flu mortality figures reported by cdc are not based on testing and confirmed cases, its
based on models. If they reported data based on actual testing. There would be far fewer
deaths and mortality rate would be higher.
Measles is a good example. In 1963 before vaccines, 400 deaths and 400,000 reported cases.
A fatality rate of 1000. However, doctors know that every child got measles during childhood,
although most were mild and not reported. So measles infections had to be 4 million a year.
This brings the mortality rate to 1/10,000. Big difference.
Outside of hubei, italy and iran, mortality rate based on confirmed cased is under 1%. For
those under 50 its less than 0.2%. The actual mortality rate is likely 10 times lower.
So, hate to say it, but Trump is right.
Lots of money to be made by hyping this though. When the market carnage is done with lots
of buying opportunities for the rich. Former CDC director working at Merck sold off half her
shares in January for millions. Going to be sone choice scraps to buy when markets hit
bottom.
@Pft #59
It is interesting that you keep leaving out the numbers of hospitalizations associated with
the measles data point you keep repeating.
nCOV isn't extremely dangerous from a guaranteed decimation of the population perspective, it
is dangerous because 20% of infected require hospitalization.
If the 20% don't get the respirator support, then decimation can occur (10% dead or more). In
the US, there's the extra bonus of the respirator/ICU support being a life-changing financial
event for a lot of people.
Close to 500,000 cases were reported annually to CDC, resulting in:
-48,000 hospitalizations
-1,000 cases with encephalitis (brain swelling)
-400 to 500 deaths
So your deaths number is somewhat accurate, if downplayed, but 500K cases of measles, 48,000
hospitalizations and 1000 cases of brain swelling = damage, if not death?
Well, that's certainly nothing to worry about.../sarc
At the risk of incurring Gretas wrath, turn up the heat.
From WHO's latest situation report
Outside Hubei in China/HK/Taiwan, with a population over 1.3 billion people, after over 2
months there were only 13, 000 cases, 116 deaths. CFR 1%. Assuming actual cases
underreported, which is likely, CFR is not more than flu. Only 9 new confirmed cases and 2
deaths in last 24 hrs.
In Western Pacific, 8100 cases, 62 deaths, only 2 new deaths last 24 hrs. CFR 0.7% based
on confirmed cases
Southeast Asia (warm places)
109 cases, 1 death. 16 new cases 1 death in last 24 hrs.
Americas , 362 cases, 12 deaths (10 from nursing home). CFR may be an outlier as explained
below
Europe (ex Italy) 4600 cases, 36 deaths, 0.8%. Last 24 hrs 1300 cases, 11 deaths.
For whatever reason, Iran, Italy, US and Hubei have more cases and higher mortality rates.
I'm not sure what they have in common with each other. Hubei has extraordinary pollution and
an aging population (as does China as a whole). Irans medical system is probably messed up
due to sanctions.
Italy has an aging population.
From the wsj
"In Italy, which has the oldest population in the world after Japan, 58% of Covid-19 patients
who died so far were over 80 years old, and a further 31% were in their 70s, according to the
National Institute of Health, Italy's disease-control agency.
"If we break it down by age group, our death rates are similar, or even lower, than those
reported in China," Giovanni Rezza, the institute's chief epidemiologist, told reporters on
Monday. "For better or for worse, we have a very old population."
Also, "Italy's testing policy also contributes to a higher ratio of deaths compared with
known infections, said Mr. Rezza. Italy has so far tested around 54,000 people, but is
focusing tests on those with clear symptoms and known contacts with high-risk areas. That
means many people who carry the virus but have mild or no symptoms aren't being tested."
And in US (Washington) most of deaths were from a nursing home. Like Italy the high
fatality rate in US is probably related to under testing. This is probably true in Iran and
Hubei as well.
Take home is to be cautious about CFR. Deaths are probably accurate and should be the best
indicator. Globally we have 3800 deaths among 8 billion people, the vast majority of whom are
older. Obviously, there will be more but still. Not much reason to panic.
But people are easy to scare, and there is money to be made and power to be seized, so
they scare people .
They have an untested vaccine, something they were working on for animals for 4 years.
There are at least 20 companies beginning testing of vaccines they have developed. None will
be ready in the near future, and tests on SARS vaccines in animals suggest those vaccinated
might be more susceptible to subsequent infection (flu vaccines are only about 50% effective
so vaccinated people get flu), so you would be in worse shape if it was not effective and you
get infected
The virus has an extremely high R0
value , calculated to be between 4.7 and 6.6, which makes it as infectious as smallpox and
polio.
Coronavirus is
spread via aerosols that can travel much further than droplets (several meters at least).
This type of spread can allow one infected person sitting in a bus to infect many of the
other passengers, even those sitting quite far away. The virus also remains infectious for
days on surfaces touched by an infected person.
This means that unless very drastic measures are taken to quarantine and restrict
transmission, it will multiply exponentially and will likely overwhelm any healthcare system,
including the US healthcare system.
See this video by Chris Martenson The US is in Deep
Trouble that explains the exponential spread of the virus. Estimating that there were
about 2000 case in the US on March 6, there will likely be 1 million cases in the US by the
end of April, and 2 million by the end of the first week May. Because there are only only
about 330,000 hospital beds that are open in the US (there are less than 1 million total and
less than 100,000 ICU beds), it means that by sometime in May-- at the latest -- all the
hospital beds in the US will likely be filled.
The situation will be made much worse because of shortages of masks and medications, which
will also cause the infection of many healthcare workers. The US gets 97% of all its
medications from China .
"... 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. ..."
"... Since I read this, when I come home, I just grab a plain ordinary bar of soap, and lather up my hands real well, and leave the soap on my hands for 10 or 15 seconds or so. I now believe that ordinary soap is very effective at neutralizing this particular virus. ..."
"... So I will not go out and fight the crowds to buy some 'sanitizer'. At least not for CVD-19. ..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
American Association for the Advancement of Science
By Derek Lowe 4 March, 2020 ScienceMag -
Pipeline
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.
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This involves just a bar of soap.
This fellow is a real hot-shot big-time microbiologist. Since I read this, when I come
home, I just grab a plain ordinary bar of soap, and lather up my hands real well, and leave
the soap on my hands for 10 or 15 seconds or so. I now believe that ordinary soap is very
effective at neutralizing this particular virus.
So I will not go out and fight the crowds to buy some 'sanitizer'. At least not for
CVD-19.
I am now also taking:
~6,000IU Vitamin D3
30mg Zinc Gluconate
500mg Vitamin C (this is a low amount)
1,000mcg Vitamin K2
250mg Niacinamide (not just 'niacin')
1 'One-A-Day' high quality vitamin combo
So I will not go out and fight the crowds to buy some 'sanitizer'. At least not for CVD-19.
There won't be any sanitiser soon.
Recipe for sanitiser:
Ingredients
• 3 TB aloe vera
• 2 TB witch hazel or rubbing alcohol, if using alcohol reduce to 1 TB
• 1/2 tsp vitamin E oil or olive or whatever
• 20 drops tea tree essential oil
• 10 drops lavender essential oil
Instructions
1. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. Mix well and squeeze through muslin cloth into
another bow and store in a small jar or a squeeze tube.
Remedy for toilet paper madness:
install bidet spray and a drying cloth.
Wash cloth daily or whatever.
Good start on enhancing your immune system. Perhaps the following daily additions may
help:
(1) increase vitamin C to 1 g and use the liposomal form.
(2) Consider quercitin at 1-2 g per day as it is useful as an anti-viral and supports many
metabolic functions (common component in fruits and vegetables). https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-made-in-canada-solution-to-the-coronavirus-outbreak/
(3)n-acetyl glutathione or the glutathione precurser N acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) 600-1200 mg as
it supports mitrochondrial function and reduces pulmonary fibrosis.
(4)Selenium at 200 mcg to improve thyroid health. Careful as selenium at much higher
levels
(5)curcumin as it provides protection from cytokine storms due to viral infections.
(6) omega-3 oils (1-2 g) and avoiding of omega-6 fats which cause inflammation.
"... I have graphs from 2009 flu, 1918 flu, Ebola and they all went through the 'Hockey stick' growth phase visible in the daily confirmed case counts in Europe. Humans can mess with this natural pattern with containment measures making artificial problems for the pathogen in finding its next target. ..."
A friend who was a known cellular and structural biologist explained that washing with
soap and water is just about the best thing a person can do externally about viruses, as it
kills just about everything. In the case of viruses, the soap basically dissolves or
penetrates the outside boundary of the virus and it collapses. Unfortunately, my friend
passed away not long ago, or he could provide a lot of insight into numerous issues and
unanswered questions about this "coronavirus".
One question is whether a virus has a life span or "shelf life", such that after some
period of months or time, it ceases to be active, or is mutated out of effective existence.
We talked about that once in general terms, but I do not remember clearly what was said, and
so I do not want to repeat it here.
Encapsulated viruses normally have a protein shell structure, like a geodesic dome, but
the overlay this with some of the of the animal cell membrane as it exits the host cell. This
is a phospholipid by-layer, so basically fatty. Hence hot water and and washing up liquid do
exactly what they do on your greasy plates.
akaPatients NO! I am sorry to be so blunt but what you are saying is dangerous. Seasonal
flu has a CFR of 0.02 ish for COVID we do not know yet but I guess about 1% (i.e. your are 50
times more likely to die of it) IF you get a reasonable level of care and hospitalisation if
you need it. The 1918 flu pandemic had a CFR of about 2% and killed 25 million people in
about as many weeks and 50 million plus overall. The population at the time was under 2
billion and is now 7.8 so these numbers need to be multiplied by 4. The very severe age
related CFR curve means this does not fall evenly by age groups and the China data gives the
CFR for the over 80s as 20%+ and the over 60s at 8%. I will link the WHO fact finding post
which has graphs for age distribution and the Chinese case growth curves.
ulenspiegel is on the money and I will try and explain why below because the point raised
is important in the next epidemic phase - which we have not yet entered.
Population dynamics and Epidemiology are mature sciences with well defined rules. If you
infect a yeast cell with virus and let it grow in a vat of yeast cells its growth curve looks
just like one from an ebola, flu or CoV outbreak. It starts as exponential growth until it
meets a problem e.g. most of the cells are dead or the hosts are immune from previous
infection at which point it levels off and then declines.
I have graphs from 2009 flu, 1918
flu, Ebola and they all went through the 'Hockey stick' growth phase visible in the daily
confirmed case counts in Europe. Humans can mess with this natural pattern with containment
measures making artificial problems for the pathogen in finding its next target.
We can also change the CFR through good patient care and the 1% CFR based on Chinese,
Korean and the Diamond Princess data are based on this. What ulenspiegel is talking about is
what occurs when the patient numbers are such that those who need a bed and oxygen or a
ventilator can not get them. Then the fatalities rise very sharply giving a much higher CFR.
COVID puts immense strain on some very specific hospital kit for which their is very little
surge capacity. PPE is the first item to cause a problem as very few people in a hospital
normally need the level of PPE that COVID does and consequently demand is outstripping supply
and if not rectified soon HCWs are going to be faced with the dilemma of treating patients,
or not, with no protection. If too many get ill polling data shows they will not work and put
their families at risk until adequate PPE is available. After PPE the next item that is going
to run out is ventilators. As severe double pneumonia is the common symptom for the severe
cases the standard treatment is induced coma and mechanical ventilation to oxygenate the
blood until the immune system can clear the infection to the point the lungs can take over
again. This requires an ICU bed and highly trained staff. England has about 4000 CCs
(critical care beds - one level down from ICU but these will include the ICUs) for 50 million
population of which 75% are normally in use. In bad flu seasons this capacity will max
out.
Which brings us to testing as a containment measure. The aim is stop, or at least slow,
spread. If we follow the typical outbreak scenario then patient 0 comes in from outside, he
breezes through airport security as he has no temp or symptoms. After a day or two he gets
mild general symptoms as the virus begins replicating and may start shedding after another
day or two he definitely does not feel well and has a temp then dry cough (normally not a
runny nose or much sputum) and suspects COVID and gets tested. It is those 2 or 3 days where
he is infecting others that seed the next generation of cases. The trick with contact tracing
is finding those contacts and isolating them before they have their turn in spreading the
virus. Get to the testing fast and the contact tracing very fast and you can break the
transmission chain and end the cluster. Do it repeatedly and you put the epidemic in reverse
which frees up more contact tracers so it gets progressively easier to end the epidemic. This
is a proven technique that works for most diseases but not flu. China and Korea have used it
fairly successfully to bring numbers down to manageable levels but not to stop all
transmission. Assuming China can maintain its current case burden they will ONLY have had
100,000 cases in 1.4 billion or 0.1% of the population. If the disease gets out of control
this could grow to 20% or more so we are in the very early stages of a full blown pandemic if
we can not control it the daily case counts could reach the 100s of thousands. This is not
something any of our health systems could cope with and most severe cases would die without
ever getting near a hospital. Even if we can not stop it making sure bad city clusters come
one after the other - where help can come in from outside - and not in parallel will help
spread the load over time so the surge limit is not badly overrun for any length of time.
Brewster #30 writes : "But, viruses do not have lipid coats."
Absolutely incorrect. Many viruses do NOT have lipid coats but many other do. And those
that do have such coverings are rendered non-infectious when exposed to detergents (i.e.
soaps) especially in warm water.
The article states the peer-reviewed study was withdrawn by the journal, no other
explanation given:
Note: The study at the centre of this article on the transmission of the coronavirus was
retracted on Tuesday by the journal Practical Preventive Medicine without giving a reason.
The South China Morning Post has reached out to the paper's authors and will update the
article.
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can linger in the air for at least 30 minutes and
travel up to 4.5 metres – further than the "safe distance" advised by health
authorities around the world, according to a study by a team of Chinese government
epidemiologists.
The researchers also found that it can last for days on a surface where respiratory
droplets land, raising the risk of transmission if unsuspecting people touch it and then
rub their face.
On surfaces SARS CoV 1 has shown to retain infectivity for longer when these are dry.
Then, you cannot separate easily the effects of humidity and temperature but usually the
higher the temperature, the higher the absolute humidity, and this means our epithelial
mucosae are better hydrated and less susceptible to infection, in part probably because
protective microflora in good shape helps to protect us.
So, in order to become infected in warm/hot weather a higher virus load is necessary and
the possibility for a mild or very mild infection is higher.
I personally think that passing a mild cough these summer would be preferable to something
more serious next winter, though I am not sure if a mild infection would trigger a protective
immune response.
This article gives a very
cogent identification of the factors leading to a fatal lung infection. To distill it in few
words : it is either because the immune response is slow, and let the virus multiply too much
in the lungs, or there are several infections occurring at the same time, and even if the
immune system reaction time is normal, there are too much virus in the lungs after that
time.
In both cases, the immune system response to too much virus triggers an irreversible
necrosis of lung tissues.
Young and healthy fatalities clearly belong to the second group, and explain why young
Doctors and Nurses are impacted.
Therefore the strategy must be self isolation of fragile people (old is not equivalent to
fragile, both way, and yes, being immuno-depressed by chemo sucks, it is really being thrown
between a rock and a hard place), and frequent rotation of healthcare workers. Ideally, one
should have them work one day, then send them home three days, test and send back to work is
negative.
Another way is too have 2 health systems, one for the virus, one for the rest. This is
what one of the main hospital in Paris did : they installed their reception and triage area
in a tent separate from the rest of the hospital
For others, lowering the absolute quantity of virus to which they are exposed when they
contract the virus is essential : open these windows if you can !
Clive, as an almost-80 year old myself, I appreciate your care for your mother-in-law. I
have been touched by the daily concern of my son and daughter-in-law, as they check in with
me a couple of times a day, offer to do grocery shopping, drop off little bags of herbal tea
and chocolate cookies. It means a lot.
Last night, I had read the 'testimony' of the hospital physician in Bergamo, whom Yves
quotes above. One thing to watch for is the speed at which this virus results in respiratory
distress (and this was mentioned by the Seattle-area care home staff recently; a patient was
symptomatic but not distressed, then, boom, they can't breathe, and they die.)
The Bergamo doctor explains the difference between the 'normal' seasonal flu and this
virus: " in classical flu, besides that it infects much less population over several months,
cases are complicated less frequently: only when the virus has destroyed the protective
barriers of our airways and as such it allows bacteria (which normally resident in the upper
airways) to invade the bronchi and lungs, causing a more serious disease. Covid 19 causes a
banal flu in many young people, but in many elderly people (and not only) a real SARS because
it invades the alveoli of the lungs directly, and it infects them making them unable to
perform their function. The resulting respiratory failure is often serious and after a few
days of hospitalization, the simple oxygen that can be administered in a ward may not be
enough. "
The real story is how over a billion people fully believe the official narrative of the
virus growth and how this huge portion of the population can now be coaxed to move in any
direction by closely-knit groups controlling political and institutional power. Who owns the
broadcast and publishing rights? Who dictates what is being transmitted over the
airwaves?
What kind of emotional footprint and controlling mechanism has been placed on the
underdeveloped minds of the youth throughout the world? Who has the power to manipulate these
kids in the future by using a fabricated fear of acquiring a mysterious virus?
Cautionary note: before getting too excited about the claims of Francis Boyle, one should be
aware that during the Bosnian War (1992–1995), Boyle took at face value all the wildly
exaggerated disinformation put out by the Bosnian Muslim government side. Ask the Saker about
how truthful that stuff was; he was in a position to know.
As such, I question Boyle's judgement. Though perhaps this coronavirus issue is closer to
his area of expertise.
This essay is interesting for the contextual background information it provides but should
have been presented earlier since it is no longer completely up-to-date. For instance, there
are no references to the recent viral outbreaks in Iran and Italy, which have become
comparatively severe. Also, though Prof. Boyle is mentioned more than a dozen times, it does
not cite the live interview he gave nearly three weeks ago*, in which he stated that he was
revising his prior suspicion that the Wuhan coronavirus could have come from stolen material
from the Winnipeg lab and was instead almost certain that a key component came from a
university lab in North Carolina, which was then enhanced ("gain of function", another key
term not in this essay) in Wuhan to be more "effective" (deadly).
It would be nice to read a follow-up report that provides revelations pertaining to more
recent developments regarding this topic. Surely the hundreds of deaths in Europe in the past
weeks could not possibly have been primarily of eastern Asiatic victims, so if this is
basically still the same virus that initially emerged in Wuhan, it was likely not designed to
be race-specific. This is yet another indication that would tend to invalidate the conjecture
about an intentional release by American operatives during the time of the Wuhan military
games. (See link below regarding this debate in the comments.)
* See my comments in a parallel thread for the interview links (video and transcript)
provided:
Those most at risk for severe influenza infection are children, pregnant women,
elderly, those with underlying chronic medical conditions and those who are
immunosuppressed. For COVID-19, our current understanding is that older age and underlying
conditions increase the risk for severe infection.
On Friday, Macron urged the French to limit visits to elderly people, who are most
vulnerable to a coronavirus infection.
Macron admitted this could prove "heartbreaking" at times but said the measure was
simply one of common sense.
He emphasised that young people should not be visiting the old because "as we know,
they (the young) transmit the virus a lot".
Those who died in France so far have been old with pre-existing conditions.
The French president shook up his agenda last week to include a visit to an old age
home, where he stressed his government's commitment to helping those most vulnerable to the
disease.
"Our absolute priority is to protect the people who are the most fragile in the face
of this virus," Macron said. "The nation is behind our old people."
They could all be lying or misleading by omission or selectivity, of course.
Same in the U.K. and on the Diamond Princess -- deaths were in the older cohort.
That isn't to say that some young people won't get sick and some won't get serious
illnesses and some won't die. But so far, the reliable (i.e. non-China) data does continue to
support the age-indicator for the likelihood of morbidity.
What is -- and continues to be -- a big mystery is the lack of deaths in Germany.
As COVID-19 begins its inevitable "community transmission" phase around the United States,
the purveyors of the conventional wisdom are largely focused on President Trump's (and by
extension,
prayerful Vice President Pence's) incompetence and his self-serving, empathy-free approach
to the coronavirus. And it is true that, as with all things Trump, it seems that all he really
cares about is the stock market and its effect on his reelection bid. But Trump's narcissism
obscures something both far more pernicious and far more permanent than his oft-televised
obsession with himself and that's the fact that he's been busily making Milton Friedman's
"Supply Side/The Bottom Line Is The Only Line" dream an intractable reality.
It was a dream that first took flight when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. The dream was
often made manifest by the neoliberal lurch and deregulatory impulses of President Bill
Clinton. But it is Trump who's come closest to fully realizing the dream of ending responsive
government. It should come as no surprise, though. Trump lifted, among other things ,
his " Make America
Great Again " slogan from the Gipper. He's also taken Reagan's anti-FDR pitch about the
dangers of government (see "The Deep State") and, with the help of a motley crew of Tea
Partiers, Evangelicals and corporate Republicans, transformed it into, as Steve Bannon calls
it, a "
War on the Administrative State ."
Since taking office and taking complete control of the news-cycle, Trump has been
systematically starving Federal agencies of resources, personnel and attention. He has, through
the sycophants
and
lobbyists he's installed around the Executive Branch, been pushing out career professionals
and barely replacing them with also-rans. And he is dismantling every aspect of government
he cannot
use to reward his corporate clients or punish political apostates.
The idea is to cripple the Federal government from within instead of doing the hard
legislative work of changing the laws that legally compel government action. As a result, many
of the regulations on the books are becoming
functionally irrelevant . Some laws are being rewritten by the lobbyists who used to lobby
against 'em, but mostly the Executive Branch is being systematically emaciated by the political
equivalent of chronic wasting disease.
It's an approach first pioneered by Reagan devotee Grover Norquist, who advocated "
starving the beast
" of government down to a manageable size before "drowning it" in a bathtub. It's an idea
currently being implemented with wide-ranging effect by Trump, who, like Reagan before
him , is
accelerating the bankrupting of the already debt-laden treasury with a combo of tax cuts
and massive spending on a world-dwarfing defense industry. Eventually, the theory goes, the
"safety net," a.k.a. "entitlements," and other "common good" spending will collapse under the
weight of the financial limitations generated by profuse borrowing to fund market-distorting
tax cuts and to dole out subsidies and tax gifts to cronies and key corporations. All the
while, the ever-less regulated chemical, oil, defense, agricultural and (most importantly of
all) financial industries will continue to hoard assets through the rinsing and repeating of
the supply side boom-and-bust scheme, a.k.a. the business cycle.
Frankly, this all looks like the endgame of a long plan to undo the demand side economy
created by the New Deal. Along with the seemingly (but not) contradictory spike in Unitary
Executive power (which is about protecting rackets, shielding enforcers from prosecution
and about enforcing political compliance), this is a transformation decades in the making and
Trump is the perfect salesman for this final episode even better than Reagan or Clinton because
his "flood the zone" narcissism is the ultimate, 24/7 distraction for a people addicted to
binge watching, inured to scripted reality shows and motivated by belligerent infotainment.
Reagan was the first actor to hit his marks on a stage set for him by the interlocking
forces of Big Oil, Big Defense and Wall Street. Not coincidentally, this same Venn Diagram of
power has profited mightily from Trump's Presidency. Rather than an actor, though, Trump is the
barking emcee of the final season of the American Dream Gameshow a program that was initially
cancelled in 1980, but somehow kept running in syndication on one of the two crappy channels a
"free" people have been given to chose from. But now, the final credits are closer to rolling
that ever before.
As such, Trump is the omega to Reagan's alpha. And any coronavirus-related "incompetence"
you see being reported is a feature, not a bug, of this Re-Great'd America. And that's because
Trump is not an outlier. He is a culmination.
JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, published historian, radio co-host and
documentary filmmaker (The Warning, 2008). His credits include a stint on the Newshour news
desk, C-SPAN, and as newsmagazine producer for ABC affiliate WJLA in Washington. His weekly
show, Inside the Headlines w/ The Newsvandal, co-hosted by James Moore, airs every Friday on
KRUU-FM in Fairfield, Iowa. He blogs under the pseudonym " the Newsvandal ".
"The coronavirus seems to be more deadly than seasonal flu and almost as contagious"
Fever and dry cough are the most reliable symptoms: "The World Health Organization believes that only about 1
percent of cases never develop a fever or any other symptoms."
Symptoms of this infection include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or
shortness of breath. The illness causes lung lesions and pneumonia. Some of these symptoms
overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses
are not normally among the first symptoms.
Patients may also exhibit gastrointestinal problems or diarrhea. Most people fall ill five
to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days
or as
many as 14 days .
The new coronavirus
seems to
spread very easily , especially in confined spaces like homes, hospitals, churches and
cruise ships. It appears to spread through droplets in the air and on surfaces from a cough or
sneeze.
A study of other coronaviruses found that they remained on metal, glass and plastic for two
hours to nine
days . But there is good news: The virus is relatively easy to destroy using any simple
disinfectant or bleach.
Droplets can sit on the surfaces of latex gloves. Some experts suggest wearing cloth or
leather gloves that absorb droplets and are bulky enough to discourage you from
touching your face .
Will the virus disappear in the summer?
That is still unknown. This is a new virus, and everyone is believed to be susceptible.
Flu transmission decreases in hot weather every year, and the SARS coronavirus emerged in winter and was eliminated by the
following June. But SARS was beaten by aggressive containment measures, not by the weather. The four mild coronaviruses that
cause common colds still circulate in warm weather and cause “summer colds.”
In the 1918 and 2009 flu pandemics, there was a second wave in the fall.
Patients with hypertension appear to be at a higher risk of dying from the coronavirus, said
a top Chinese intensive care doctor who's been treating critically ill patients since
mid-January.
While there's been no published research yet explaining why, Chinese doctors working in
Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus first emerged, have noticed that infected
patients with that underlying illness are more likely to slip into severe distress and die.
Of a group of 170 patients who died in January in Wuhan -- the first wave of casualties
caused by a pathogen that's now raced around the world -- nearly half had hypertension.
"That's a very high ratio," said Du Bin, director of the intensive care unit at Peking Union
Medical College Hospital, in an interview with Bloomberg over the phone from Wuhan. He was
among a team of top doctors sent to the devastated city two months ago to help treat patients
there.
A. The first known patients in the U.S. contracted the virus while traveling in other
countries or after exposure to someone who had been to China or one of the other affected
areas. But now, a few cases here cannot be traced to these risk factors. This is
concerning because it suggests the illness may be spreading across communities for which the
source of infection is unknown, which we call community spread/transmission. We don't
know how severe this will be, but it may cause significant disruptions in our daily
lives.
Investigative journalist Jon Rappoport stated that death by itself does not equal
coronavirus, and that the word 'death' is being matched with the virus to make people
believe in lethal outbreaks. He analyzed the nine deaths in Washington state and revealed
that the body count included "presumed" coronavirus deaths that could have other causes. It
is unknown whether the people who died were treated with toxic anti-viral drugs or whether
they had preexisting lung conditions.
"Virality of C19 is overstated due to conflating diagnosis date with contraction date &
over-extrapolating exponential growth, which is never what happens in reality," he said in a tweet
Sunday, noting that people
mistakenly believe the rate of spread will continue exponentially.
Musk added : "Fatality rate also greatly
overstated. Because there are so few test kits, those who die with respiratory symptoms are
tested for C19, but those with minor symptoms are usually not. Prevalence of coronaviruses
& other colds in general population is very high!"
U.S. officials are taking the matter
seriously , telling people to prepare for the worst if the virus spreads.
California, for one, is monitoring at least 8,400 people who might have come into contact
with the virus, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said
during a news conference Thursday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Americans on Tuesday to prepare for
the "expectation that this might be bad," with Italy emerging as the focal point of the virus
in Europe, while Iran and China seeks ways of fighting the spread as confirmed cases grow.
The relationship of this pandemic to internal disagreements within China has been put on
full display in Steve Bannon's coverage of the crisis entitled War Room: Pandemic. A
prominent member of US President Donald Trump's inner circle, Steve Bannon is often
accompanied on the daily show by Chinese billionaire dissident , Miles Guo (aka Guo
Wengui, Miles Haoyun, Miles Kwok)
.
You mean Chinese billionaire fugitive , wanted in China for fraud, embezzlement and
rape
Guo is an outspoken Chinese refugee . He is a persistent critic of virtually
every facet of the policies and actions of the Chinese Communist Party.
I'd presume that 'political exiles' like Guo's well being in the [[[Washington cesspool]]]
depends on his performance as an 'outspoken former insider' ?
I think a lot of people here are leaning towards USrael -- developed in Fort Derrick and
Haifa.
Sorry, Fort Detrick (autocorrect).
Since the death toll* has not been commensurate with the scare propaganda -- completely
disproportionate -- something else seems to be behind the propaganda. Either it was seized
upon for political and/or geostrategic purposes or it is a bio-weapon and its source let it
be known through back channels that this is DEFCON-1 level serious.
*The worldwide death toll from 3 years of the Coronavirus-SARS in the early to mid-2000's
was equivalent to the number of death in 3 days of the flu in the U.S. As someone else posted
here, on the worst day for coronavirus (02/10/20) there were 108 deaths from Coronavirus in
China. Meanwhile on that same day there where 450 deaths from the flu in the U.S. On that day
there were more deaths from snakebites than Coronavirus.
@Thomasina I've asked my Chinese friends to look into Dr. Li's death and will get back to
you if they turn up anything.
There have been at least 18 reported deaths of medical workers involved in the COVID-19
response as of Monday, including nurses and doctors who died–not because of infection
but because of cardiac arrest or other ailments due to overwork and fatigue. One was hit by a
car while taking temperatures on a highway.
The most recent were three doctors who died in one day, all infected with COVID-19. One of
them, Xia Sisi, a gastroenterologist in Wuhan, was 29. Another physician, Peng Yinhua, also
29, died in Wuhan of infection on Feb. 20. He had delayed his Feb. 1 wedding, promising his
pregnant fiancee they'd have the ceremony after the outbreak had passed.
Most of the infected medical workers are in Hubei, many of them part of the initial
response in Wuhan, when shortages of protective gear, understaffed hospitals and
transportation shutdowns collided with an overwhelming number of patients. The stories of
doctors and nurses tell of clever improvisation and quiet perseverance in a war against a
mysterious virus.
A doctor in Wuhan told The Times in a phone interview Jan. 29 that 12 out of 59 doctors in
his hospital were showing symptoms of the virus, including lung infections -- but continued
to treat patients while wearing insufficient protective gear.
@Godfree Roberts My wife is Chinese and keeping daily tabs on what is going on there.
Bottom line: these doctors in China are heroes, working their asses off nearly round the
clock. They are in the front lines, severely over-worked and ultra stressed out trying to
save the lives of their fellow countrymen. If there is a recipe for a young person with no
other risk factors to become susceptible to the virus, this is it.
Although I hope so, I wonder if our doctors here in America would be so fearless and
patriotic to undergo the rigors and risks these Chinese doctors are doing, especially if it
was without substantial 'hazard pay' above their already very generous remunerations.
Dr. Shoham [the Israeli academic] notes that the government of China became a signatory
in 1984 to UN's Biological Weapons Convention of 1972.
Too bad that the author did not mention that Israel is not a signatory to UN's Biological
Weapons Convention.
The heart of the essay introducing readers to the genesis of China's biological warfare
capacities highlights a speech given in 2005 by Chi Hoatian, an important General in the
People's Liberation Army.
Wasn't the author alarmed by the audacity of content of the alleged speech? Who actually
made available the speech in 2005? Wasn't it The Epoch Times, the press organ of Falun Gong?
Imo, the speech does not pass the smell test to be authentic. It is a psyop.
Zero Hedge was permanently deplatformed by the corporate censors at Twitter
I get an impression that for the author the fact of deplatforming alone somehow
legitimizes Zero Hedge and by extension Senator Cotton, Indian propaganda outfit
GreatGameIndia, Steve Bannon and ultimately the busybody Israeli operative Dr. Dany Shoham.
Is it possible that this deplatforming was intentional to make the conspiracy theory pushed
by Zero Hedge that China did it more appealing than the other conspiracy theory that China
was attacked by the external enemy?
The initial findings of the researchers have been published on line in a paper entitled,
"Uncanny Similarity of Unique Inserts in the 2019-nCoV Spike Protein to HIV-1 gp120 and
Gag." At the time of writing this essay, the University of Delhi's much-smeared
contribution to COVID-19 research continues to be available on the line even though it is
still making its way through the process of peer review with possible future revisions.
Before going down himself in the line of duty, Dr. Li faced a harsh reprimand from
representatives of the Chinese Communist Party. Dr. Li was accused of spreading rumors and
illegally threatening the social order with his tweets and posts and personal
interventions. Nevertheless, Dr. Li was soon vindicated in calling attention to the coming
plague .
Not really. Li was a junior ophthalmologist at a Wuhan hospital who overheard a rumor that
SARS had broken out again. Li did not inform China's CDC, which was already investigating it.
Instead, Li used social media to repeat the rumor to family and friends and they told their
friends .
Li was wrong professionally: it was not SARS, as he asserted in his tweets. Li was wrong
legally: it is illegal to spread rumors likely to cause panic. Li was neither harshly
questioned nor convicted of anything. After an hour of questioning the police concluded that
he had merely acted irresponsibly and he was allowed to return to work.
The Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic of 2020 is causing the once-firm ground beneath many
established institutions to shake uncontrollably. One of those institutions, the Chinese
communist government, is encountering its Chernobyl moment .
Every multilateral public health body that has studied the outbreak has praised the
timeliness, thoroughness, and effectiveness of China's response. Don't be fooled by our
media's selective use of outbursts on Chinese social media. This may be seen as much a
triumph for China as a failure for its principal critic, the US. China's government was, and
remains, the most trusted on earth.
The fact that ground zero of the Novel Coronavirus is Wuhan, home of China's newest
and most sophisticated microbiology laboratory, naturally casts a shadow of doubt over
narratives minimizing the role of human agency in creating the new strain of
Coronavirus .
Ron Unz's comments, above, cast a much darker shadow, given America's track record of
waging biological warfare on China, Cuba, et al.
Clearly the Party initially failed the people by not intervening early and decisively
enough after the first cases of Coronavirus illness began to show up .
The Chinese Communist Party took half the time to intervene in this outbreak that the
American Capitalist Party took to intervene in the its home-brewed H1N1 outbreak. See the two
timelines here: https://youtu.be/rJiKxV4rTCQ
Dr Li Wenliang was NOT a whistleblower. He wrote to his private chat group about the
re-emergence of SARS at 5:35pm on Dec 30 2019.
However the health authority of Wuhan received the genetic report of the virus earlier the
day, and released two official announcements the same day afternoon to thousands of medical
personnel. Dr Li was an eye doctor and probably saw the memo, and wrote to his private chat
group saying that it was SARS. He was reprimanded because the disease was still unknown at
that time.
Two emergency notices issued on Dec 30:
–
《关于做好不明原因肺炎救治工作的紧急通知》– Emergency notice to all medical units about the emergence of a kind of penumonia of
unkwown origin, get organized to deal with it, administer aid immediately without passing on
responsibility to other units with focus on strengthening breathing, infection control, and
other relevant medical disciplines. Report cases without delay.
–
《市卫生健康委关于报送不明原因肺炎救治情况的紧急通知》– Emergency notice to all medical units to tabulate and report to us the cases of
pneumonia of unknown origin that you encountered this past week.
" Dr. Li who was reprimanded for refusing to go along with the CCP denial of the Novel
Coronavirus's existence."
What a dumb author who still can manage to make two mistakes in half a sentence, even
after so many rounds of clarifications by so many people.
CCP did not deny the existence of COVID-19, they were investigating it at that time. And
Dr Li was not reprimand for refusing to go along, but was reprimanded because he was shouting
fire in a crowded cinema, a type of speech that US Supreme Court won't allow too.
"Nathan Rich might try explaining not only the block on Facebook in China but the nature
of the larger Internet firewall."
Nathan Rich did explain about the blocking on Facebook in China:
Just to smash on the head of those ignorant clowns: China didn't block Facebook, Google or
others. These companies refuse to obey Chinese laws. That is the reason they can't operate in
China. For example, Facebook refuses to remove hundreds of hate-China groups (7:50 of the
video), including some that advocate using violence to destroy China. It is a flagrant
violation of Chinese laws. If Facebook dare to allow violent hate-US groups, you think it
won't be banned in US too?
This, of course, is in contrast to Huawei, who agrees to obey every single US law but yet
is still banned to operate in US.
I look at the treatment of Dr. Li who was reprimanded for refusing to go along with the
CCP denial of the Novel Coronavirus's existence. The attack on Dr. Li as a Chinese version
of a "conspiracy theorist," when he was in fact a whistle blower, speaks to me of similar
patterns I perceive in the West. Dr. Li is a symbol of the assault on free expression on
both China and the so-called West.
You took no notice of Godfree Roberts clarification about Li's involvement, namely the
fact that he was spreading a rumour about which he had no authority or expertise to speak
about when the medical competent bodies were still studying the nature of the viral
infections. He was wrong on both counts anyway: by spreading a rumour and that it was a false
rumour. Besides, as far as I remember the sequence of events, by the time the rumour started
the medical authorities were about to, or in the cusp of, making a public announcement about
the virus.
It was a minor issue anyway – the fellow was reprimanded, not shot. Why bloviating
it out of all proportions?!!! Because the capitalist mass media did it, the Chinese
billionaire dit it, and Tony Hall must also do it?
I also note the tendentious lean of your comment by the crude reference to the Chinese
Communist Party as if this issue is a political contest. China has a properly constituted
government like any country and a functioning department of health to deal with health
issues. The Communist Party has no function to perform here or anywhere in the public
administration.
Your comment suggests only an ignorant or malevolent intention, probably both. Perhaps
these are harsh words, possibly meant to impress on you the importance of using language
appropriately and properly to be credible.
I've never trusted this Dr.Li story to be honest, it made my internal fake meter go off big
time. In fact this whole corona virus issue seems like badly done deep state propaganda. All
of the evidence that we have so far, both from the main stream sources like Governments and
from the alternative sources like social media is fishy at best. Of course you have some
videos where you see people who are genuinely worried and in some cases terrified. But how do
we know these people are not simply fooled by the propaganda themselves, or are perhaps deep
state actors? We all know how easily people are fooled.
I'll be the first to admit that my suspicions are wrong if and when I witness real proof
of a pandemic, but as of now, I don't buy any of it, none, ziltch.
Now that being said, there is zero doubt that something big is afoot! And that whatever
the case may be, it is all being done with extreme intention. That is obvious.
Whether this op is sinister or not? Well as good book teaches us to do, I'll judge by the
fruits that spring forth once the dust settles.
Almost every day the BBC's One-minute World News provides
the latest death tally from coronavirus. The short news wrap-up typically covers about three
news items only, meaning that for the BBC, the virus has been among the top three most
important issues for the world, daily for the last two months.
All the other mainstream media outlets are likewise reporting on every single angle to this
story they can, including regular updates of the global tally and a country-by-country
breakdown.
The impact of such intense coverage of the virus is widespread fear, even though pedestrians
are still 13 times more likely to be killed by a car than by this virus.
Further, media-based concern about irreversible climate change and the ubiquitous sexual
abuse of women seems to have died down. Those issues have become less of an emergency, and the
sense that governments and businesses need to rectify straight away, has diminished.
While
3,000 people have unfortunately died from coronavirus over the past two months (50 people
per day), here are some stats on some comparatively atrocious epidemics that we should also be
informed about every single hour, in lurid detail, until something changes:
–
87,000 women a year, or 238 a day, are murdered.
– 36,000 people a
day are forced to flee their homes, with a total of 70.8 million people currently forcibly
displaced.
– 24,600 people die every day
from starvation, and
820 million people don't have enough food to eat.
–
10,000
people die daily because they lack access to healthcare.
–
6,000 people die daily from work-related accidents or illnesses, for 2.3 million people
per year. There are 340 million occupational accidents every year.
– 2,191 people
die to suicide every day, for 800,000 per year.
– 1,643 people
die every day due to second-hand smoking.
– An estimated 560,000 people were killed in Syria by December
2018.
– Almost half of humanity is living on less than
US$5.50
per day.
... ... ...
And the mainstream media will not talk much about these things. That isn't just because rich
people can't catch poverty, it's because the mainstream media is capitalist and it does not
recognize systemic issues, and certainly not the causes and solutions to them. The media
pretends not to, but it does have an agenda, and that agenda is in fact counter to the one that
us serious journalists commit to – to revealing the bruises of the world and the
screaming injustices and holding those in power accountable.
Panic and fomenting fear are well-tried methods of control, distraction, and of shifting
popular support towards the rightwing. On the other hand, raising awareness of the sickening
global inequality and the daily pain so many are subject to develops critical thought, and
would be empowering and disrupting, and so the mainstream media does not do that.
"Perhaps this will finally burst the out-of-control asset price bubble and drop-kick the
Outlaw US Empire's economy into the sewer as the much lower price will rapidly slow the
recycling of what remains of the petrodollar. Looks like Trump's reelection push just fell
into a massive sinkhole as the economy will tank."
Posted by: karlof1 | Mar 9 2020 1:29 utc | 49
....
Call me crazy- but this Virus provides great cover as to why the economy plummets, the
Murikan sheeple will eat it up. Prepare for the double media blitz on the virus AND the
economy tanking as its result.
Don't worry...just continue to go shopping and take those selfies.
It will be hard for the American people to swallow that one. From day 1 I've read a lot of
"articles" and "papers" from know-it-all Western doctors and researchers from commenters here
in this blog, all of them claiming to have very precise and definitive data on what was
happening. A lot of bombastic conclusions I've read here (including one that claimed R0 was
through the roof - it's funny how the R0 is being played down after it begun to infect the
West; suddenly, it's all just a stronger cold...).
And that's just here, in MoA's comment section. Imagine what was being published in the
Western MSM. I wouldn't be surprised there was a lot of rednecks popping their beers
celebrating the fall of China already.
Since China allegedly had a lot of idle industrial capacity - that is, if we take the
Western MSM theories seriously (including the fabled "ghost towns" stories) - then boosting
production wouldn't be a problem to China.
Disclaimer: it's normal for any kind of economy - socialist or capitalist - to have a
certain percentage of idle capacity. That's necessary in order to insure the economy against
unexpected oscillations in demand and to give space of maneuvre for future technological
progress. Indeed, that was one of the USSR's mistakes with its economy: they instinctly
thought unemployment should be zero, and waste should also be zero, so they planned in a way
all the factories always sought to operate at 100% capacity. That became a problem when
better machines and better methods were invented, since the factory manager wouldn't want to
stop production so that his factory would fall behind the other factories in the five-year
plan's goals. So, yes, China indeed has idle capacity - but it is mainly proposital, not a
failure of its socialist planning.
By the latest count, in addition to yuan loans worth 113 billion U.S. dollars granted by
financial institutions and more than 70 billion U.S. dollars paid out by insurance companies,
the Chinese government has allocated about 13 billion U.S. dollars to counter fallout from
the outbreak.
The numbers could look abstract. However, breaking the data down reveals how the money is
being carefully targeted. The government is allocating the money based on a thorough
evaluation of the system's strengths.
...
Local governments are equipped with more local knowledge that allows them to surgically
support key manufacturers or producers that are struggling.
Together, they have borne the bulk of the financial responsibility with an allocation of
equivalently more than nine billion U.S. dollars. It is carefully targeted, divided into
hundreds of thousands of individual grants that are tailor-made by and for each county, town,
city and business.
This is the mark of a socialist system.
The affected capitalist countries will simply use monetary devices (so the private sector
can offset the losses) and burn their own reserves with non-profitable palliatives such as
masks, tests, other quarantine infrastructure etc.
Sounds like US socialism. Basically corporate socialism. Loans are just dollars created out
of thin air, same as in US. Insurance payouts come from premiums, nothing socialist about
that, pure capitalism. Government hand outs to provinces, cities, state owned
corporations,well all of these are run by the party elite, its called pork. US handed out a
lot of pork during the last financial crisis. None of it trickled down to the little people.
I doubt it does in China either.
All crisis are opportunities for the elite to get richer. Those Biolake firms in Wuhan
will make out like bandits. Chinese firms will double the price of API's sold to India and
US. China will knock out the small farmer in the wake of concurrent chicken and swine flu so
the big enterprises take over, a mimicry of the US practice over the last century. China tech
firms will double up on surveillance apps, censoring tools, surveillance and toughen up
social credit restrictions. 5G will allow China to experiment with nanobots to monitor
citizens health from afar (thanks to Harvards Dr Leiber).
Oh yes, socialism with Chinese characteristics is a technocratic capitalists dream. Thats
why the West has never imposed sanctions on China since welcoming them to the global elites
club. Sanctions are reserved for those with true socialism, especially those who preach
equality and god forbid, democracy.
Call me crazy- but this Virus provides great cover as to why the economy plummets, the
Murikan sheeple will eat it up. Prepare for the double media blitz on the virus AND the
economy tanking as its result.
Don't forget the Russians.. They have to be to blame. See they just kept the price of oil low
so now the rest of the world gets gas cheaper than the USA. The USA motorist now has to bail
out the dopey frackers and shale oil ponzis.
Global envy will eat murica. Maybe they will just pull out all their troops and go home.
;)
A hitherto unknown cause of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak [1–3] is reported
here – a bacteria from the Prevotella genus.
The number of Wuhan coronavirus deaths in mainland China has overtaken the SARS
epidemic in the country. The high mortality is being caused by targeting only the virus
(which is also present).
This is a two pronged attack, as previously noted in 'infection with human
coronavirus NL63 enhances streptococcal adherence to epithelial cells' [6]. Prevotella is
a well known pathogen, and can induce 'Severe Bacteremic Pneumococcal Pneumonia in Mice
with Upregulated Platelet-Activating Factor Receptor Expression' [7].
The RNA-seq data from Wuhan, China (PRJNA603194) has millions of reads of
Prevotella proteins, and a few thousands from 2019-nCoV (Table 1).
Similarly, the DNA sequences (PRJNA601630) of 6 patients from the same family in Hong
Kong [3] shows significant presence of this bacteria.
These sequences can be found at SI:China.RNA-seq/SampleSequences.fa(n=480K) and
SI:HongKong/ALLsequences.fa(n=50k).Finally, the expression levels (Table 2) shows that
the elongation factor Tu is the most expressed.
'Elongation factor Tu (Tuf) is a new virulence factor of Streptococcus pneumoniae
that binds human complement factors, aids in immune evasion and host tissue invasion'
[8].
These are the only two studies I could find. Detection of the Prevotella in other
samples will add more credence to this theory.
Detection of the nCoV can be made very specific by looking for a 500bp in the spike
protein [4], which would be a good candidate for vaccine development, protein-inhibition
and diagnosis (which was non-specific for SARS in many cases, including the CDC test
[5]).
Anti-virals need to be supplemented with anti-bacterial agents to treat this
disease.
For retired person taking it serious means self-isolation and restricting external contacts
to minimum. Of course this makes sense only if there are active cases in the community and/or the
state. Otherwise the risk is too low to overreact.
"We're getting a better sense as the days go by" of the scope of the outbreak in the U.S.,
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on NBC's
"Meet the Press." "Unfortunately, that better sense is not encouraging, because we're seeing
community spread."
"If you're a vulnerable person, take it seriously, because particularly when you have
community spread, you may not know at any given time that there are people who are infected,"
Fauci said of the idea of social distancing, or actions that include avoiding large gatherings.
"It's common-sense stuff."
Gottlieb, who departed as Trump's FDA commissioner in April, said Sunday on CBS's "Face
the Nation" that ... "We'll get through this, but it's going to be a hard period. We're looking
at two months, probably, of difficulty."
"... But there was no massive panic, no second by second media hysteria, over Hong Kong flu. Let me start being unpopular. "Man in his 80's already not very well from previous conditions, dies of flu" is not and should not be a news headline. The coverage is prurient, intrusive, unbalanced and designed to cause hysteria. ..."
"... It is also worthy of comment and I'm sure great relief to parents, that of the thousands of deaths, not one has been below the age of 10. ..."
The Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968/9 was the last really serious flu pandemic to sweep the
UK. They do seem extraordinarily regular – 1919, 1969 and 2020. Flu epidemics have much
better punctuality than the trains (though I cheated a bit there and left out the 1958 "Asian
flu"). Nowadays "Hong Kong flu" is known as H3N2. Estimates for deaths it caused worldwide vary
from 1 to 4 million. In the UK it killed an estimated 80,000 people.
If the current coronavirus had appeared in 1968, it would simply have been called "flu",
probably "Wuhan flu". COVID-19 may not be nowadays classified as such, but in my youth flu is
definitely what we would have called it. The Hong Kong flu was very similar to the current
outbreak in being extremely contagious but with a fairly low mortality rate. 30% of the UK
population is estimated to have been infected in the Hong Kong flu pandemic. The death rate was
about 0.5%, mostly elderly or with underlying health conditions.
But there was no massive panic, no second by second media hysteria, over Hong Kong flu.
Let me start being unpopular. "Man in his 80's already not very well from previous conditions,
dies of flu" is not and should not be a news headline. The coverage is prurient, intrusive,
unbalanced and designed to cause hysteria.
Consider this: 100% of those who contract coronavirus are going to die. 100% of those who do
not contract coronavirus are also going to die. The difference in average life expectancy
between the two groups will prove to be only very marginal. That is because the large majority
of those who die of COVID-19 will already be nearing the end of life or have other health
problems.
... ... ...
What worries me about the current reaction to coronavirus, is that it seems to reflect a
belief that death is an aberration, rather than a part of the natural order of things. As the
human species continues to expand massively in numbers, and as it continues casually to make
other species extinct, it is inevitable that the excessive and crowded human population will
become susceptible to disease.
... ... ...
Yes wash your hands, bin your tissues, keep things clean. Don't hang around someone who has
the flu. Take advantage of everything modern medicine can do to help you. But don't be too
shocked at the idea that some sick people die, especially if they are old. We are not Gods, we
are mortal. We need to reconnect to that idea.
It is also worthy of comment and I'm sure great relief to parents, that of the
thousands of deaths, not one has been below the age of 10.
It is unusually age selective. Whereas in many past epidemics both the elderly and very
young have been the most susceptible groups in this instance, 80% of deaths have been in the
over 60s.
Another excellent article, thank you Craig Murray. Some thoughts
When this story initially broke I was somewhat dismissive of it. I remember avian flu, and
particularly swine flu, when hysteria was purposefully whipped up in order to boost the
profits of big pharma, and of course to keep the population in it's usual state of paralyzed
anxiety. I am not qualified to comment on the suggestions other's have made relating to this
being a bio-weapon, deployed either by accident or design. As far as I can see it's too early
to tell, speculation and rumor abound, the dust has yet to settle.
I agree that it is normal and desirable for old people to die, and while I have no wish to
hasten the death of individuals within any demographic group, it seems that the current
fashion of prolonging the lives of the aged at the expense (financially and environmentally)
of subsequent generations is questionable. Perhaps it is emblematic of the mechanistic,
materialistic, individualistic and narcissistic agenda so aggressively promoted to justify
the consumerism currently infecting the world. I was taught that the debt we owe to our
parents we repay to our children, that is is better to subsist on crusts if it means our
children may have jam. Some would rather eat jam today than leave crusts for their progeny
tomorrow, maybe because as a society we see individual gratification as the meaning of
life
Beautiful thoughts, Craig With respect to the Corona Virus: The Patriot Act had been
prepared prior to the catastrophic event on 9/11 and was ready to be immediately enacted. One
did not see the shape of things to come while the event was unfolding.
... ... ...
Medicine opens new frontiers for exploitation because ill health is a regular earner.
There is nothing left to sell in the capitalist system but business services, Intellectual
Property and 'Apps' perhaps. The Smart Phone market is saturated. The Russians, and other
nations like Iran have still got endless supplies of gas, oil, etc.
With all respect Craig I think you may be wandering into areas you are not qualified to
judge. Mea culpa also, I am not a medic either. But I regularly see very senior medical
experts saying that they are very concerned about this virus and they must have good reason
because these people are clinicians not politicians.
As for the deaths from ordinary flu: how on earth do we know? I have had flu several times
in my life and never bothered notifying my GP. I stayed home, isolated myself, and
self-medicated. I suspect most people are the same. So the mortality of flu is limited to
serious cases which comes to GPs' attention and is therefore an underestimate and more like
0.1% or even 0.01% than the claimed 1% as most people will not report it.
This might put things in perspective:
The Covid-19 . does not compare with seasonal flu, which is not new but harmful no less.
According to the CDC's weekly U.S. flu report of February 22, 2020, "So far this season there
have been at least 32 million flu illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 deaths from
flu."
Worldwide, up to 650,000 individuals die from complications of seasonal flu each year.
Take a moment to think about that. We can compare this number with other causes of death
around the globe, like 470,000 people who lose their lives to homicide and many more who do
to suicide. Nearly 1.35 million individuals die each year as a result of car accidents (an
additional 20 to 50 million suffer injuries) ..
Covid-19 is a viral disease and appears to have a fatality rate of roughly 1 percent or less.
It is dangerous, but it is not so dangerous we should put our lives on hold. Remember, we all
take risks every single day and are exposed to hundreds of potential threats. The goal is to
live our lives while also doing what is necessary to reduce the likelihood of being seriously
harmed (and harming others). Do not increase your anxiety by staying home and constantly
watching the news about the spread of the virus around the globe.
Thanks for a levelled coherent comparison. The hoovering up response of the media is an
obvious news management issue.
... ... ...
There are only two important happenings in all our lives, our birth and our death
everything inbetween is merely filling in time with chaws, multiplying and breathing.
In August '68 I caught H3N2 while stationed in Hong Kong. I was brought unconscious to the
Gurkha military field hospital in Shek Kong and was kept there until my temperature returned
to normal after a week. There was no attempt at quarantine or to trace victims or any follow
up by the authorities. The HK Police and military were too busy dealing with communists and
illegals crossing from China. Hong Kong Flu then spread to Vietnam via US sailors and other
military who used HK for shore leave from the Vietnam War.
So naturally after that experience and being a 24/7 carer I am taking precautions. No not
bulk buying but plenty of hand washing with soap, minimising people contact and trying not to
cough or sneeze near anyone.
Another brilliant post by Craig Murray You survived all that, well even a couple of weeks
ago, queuing to get into jail for Julian Assange's trial. You are quite obviously as tough as
old boots. Even the CIA have given up trying to kill you. The Coronavirus, if you get it is
unlikely to have any effect on you.
Read Linh Dinh's too, check out his photography, and buy his book in Hardback – it
has High Definition photos too "Postcards from the End of America". He was born in Vietnam,
about the same age as Craig Murray, and travels around a lot, mostly by bus.
"Memento Mori – Unpopular Thoughts on Corona Virus" (Corrected by Wikispooks)
Consider this: 100% of those who contract coronavirus are going to die. 100% of those who
do not contract coronavirus are also going to die. The difference in average life expectancy
between the two groups will prove to be only very marginal. That is because the large
majority of those who die of COVID-19 will already be nearing the end of life or have other
health problems.
It is reasonable to be sceptical and phlegmatic (no pun intended), given past pandemics.
The problem with the coronavirus is that:
– we have no partial immunity from previous strains
– it results in a much greater hospitalisation rate and cases take weeks to resolve
– it is explosively more infectious than any flu since the second wave of Spanish flu,
which peaked in three weeks in some places. It has R0 of 3.5 according to latest Chinese
paper.
What that means is that entire healthcare systems will become saturated and people who
might have been expected to live will die from lack of care, not old age. It will be luck of
the draw who lives and diss, unless we agree turn off ventilation on older people in favour
of the young when they have equal survival chances if ventilated . It also means that
noncoronavirus healthcare is overwhelmed and people die indirectly.
With vigorous countermeasures, the peak of infection can be reduced, ideally below
healthcare capacity. 40% peak reduction and 20% mortality reduction was possible in 1918
where implemented. Wuhan measures reduced R0 to 0.3, I.e. Killing transmission in three
serial intervals of infection.
It is a public health and moral imperative not to be fatalistic here, Craig, and your
normal humanism is lacking here.
I for one have not given up, and see plenty of life to experience ahead unlike this bloke.
If it takes me out, at least I can go knowing that I have done everything possible to prevent
it. That will bring comfort. Dying for no good reason does not seem like something good to
dwell on during those last moments. The very fact that this old guy has been able to pen a
coherent and interesting article without the effects of dementia or other old age related
maladies demonstrates that even he has something left to contribute. Although in this case, I
do not agree with his message.
The American CDC rejected the notion of replicating the WHO approved Coronavirus test, in
favour of developing its own test (resulting in a delayed launch date and continued lag in
delivery). The CDC test is being billed at $1,200 (for those lucky enough to have sufficient
insurance). In S. Korea testing is free if a prospective patient is running a temperature. If
the subject is not running a temperature the test is billed at $120 (presumably this is an
approximation of cost price). Some folks in America are going to make a whole pile of money
out of the situation.
Reliable figures for infection and mortality rates should arrive before the Presidential
election. It will be interesting if there is an appreciable differential between mortality
rates in countries where healthcare is allocated according to medical need and countries
where healthcare is allocated according to private insurance cover.
If America does experience heightened mortality rates to other industrialised countries, will
this impact on the outcome of the election? I suspect not.
"The mass hysteria around the current coronavirus is being driven by a societal rejection
of the notion that the human species is part of the wider ecology, and that death and disease
are unavoidable facts, with which it ought to be part of the human condition to come to
terms".
Well Crag that's one theory, buy what about all the other stuff that's going on, reaction
to globalism, extinction, and all the other concerns. This corona virus is a seed falling on
to fertile soil in more ways than one,
The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began or The Swerve: How the World Became Modern: Stephan
Greenblatt tells the story of how Poggio Bracciolini, a 15th-century papal emissary and
obsessive book hunter, saved the last copy of the Roman poet Lucretius's On the Nature of
Things from near-terminal neglect in a German monastery.
I am with you Craig .. Reading Lucretius's On the Nature of Things will set you free!
With all the (politically motivated ?) hype, I had a look at the official mortality
figures for our annual common flu.
Over the last five years the average death rate is 17,000 per year in England, with a high of
28,000 and low of 1,600 !!!
Apparently, we happily live with these large death rates without the "The worlds going to
end" hyperbole. People go about their business, going to work, travelling and all the normal
trappings of daily life.
What is it with this Corona virus tosh ? What's going on, who's benefiting ? Is it part of
the China propaganda ?
Utter madness.
Very sensible – and thoughtful – commentary on the latest flu episode Craig.
Thanks.
Your ruminations on the desire for, and even a belief in, the possibility of achieving
immortality (or at least a very long life) are also timely, as these drive pivotal sections
of the policy making and system creating sectors. Julian Assange has spoken about the belief
– prevalent in Silicon Valley – that a world will soon be created where we can
'upload our brains' to the cloud, and so live on forever in whatever fantasy world
appeals.
In the meantime, we live in bodies increasingly beset by toxic pollutants from chemical
additives in water, BigAg food, polluted air, over prescribed drugs, radiation from our
proliferating cellphones & wifi devices, and by stress generated by our loud, over-lit
environment and mean, abusive work environments / economic system.Despite this, many people
would rather panic over a virus than question the factors making us (and our children and
seniors) so susceptible to such viruses.
I too have a lung condition, and have also experienced several very close brushes with
death due to other factors (such as a recent, brutal home invasion). I also have experienced
the deaths of many of the people close to me – people of all ages, from a range of
factors. I suspect that those experiences make people much less afraid of death, and so much
less likely to share the current panic, or to share the very common illusion that we can live
forever – if we just spend enough on "research" and have enough superfoods, expensive
drugs (and vax).
In my view we would all be better off concentrating on making our lives MEAN something
while we have them (as Julian has done) than on obsessing over the latest media-driven
"threat to security" propaganda – be that about a virus or something else.
This is a vey well written and thought provoking opinion piece. However, in this case, I
do believ death and getting in infected, are both avoidable. And because few humans chose to
be irresponsible with their choices, we now have a pandemic. People all around the world are
on edge. Its not ok that millions of people died in the past pandemics, and if there was
enough information back then, those numbers would have been small. Young parents with little
children ear death a lot more than older parents, for obvious reasons. So, it's great if one
doesn't buy into the hysteria, but it's the opposite if such a person becomes the cause for
say, spreading the virus in a school!
"chose to be irresponsible with their choices, we now have a pandemic."
And:
"great if one doesn't buy into the hysteria, but it's the opposite if such a person becomes
the cause for say, spreading the virus"
Rely on newspaper, radio and TV warnings; buy into the hysteria; buy masks, wear them at
all times in public, wash hands when entering the shops to buy your food, use cards not cash
to pay, remain indoors until told otherwise, etc. OR ELSE! – Welcome to the new world
of the 'virus police.'
Thank you Craig, for being a voice of reason. I was just asking if this was any worse than
other flu epidemic or if, for some reason, it was being made to seem so. I've also been
wondering why they gave it another name rather than "flu". Is it just to make it sound more
"scary" because most people don't understand that flu is more than just a bad cold? As far as
I know I am healthy and have very little to fear from this latest flu. I do look after a
relative with COPD and I'm concerned for him – in the same way that I'm concerned for
him every winter as I know flu could kill him. The hysteria is driving me up the wall so it's
good to see that some are remaining calm. The best of health to you, sir.
I sincerely hope the virus outbreak isn't as dire as predicted, but like you, peccavi,
peccabo, *as we see the catastrophic effects of human beings on the environment, including on
other species and the climate*, it makes one wonder if it really is a catastrophe if
predictions are accurate or underestimated..
Nature's schadenfreude – our comeuppance. If it were to be a natural evolutionary
pathogen – but even if proves the stuff of nightmares and the deliberate release of an
engineered virus – would it be a "bad thing" if 99% of humanity was culled?
This feels like the final scenes in "On the Beach" with Gregory Peck. At least they still
had loo paper at the end
We in the Western imperialist nations don't like the idea of death but have no qualms
about delivering death and disease to weaker nations we sanction, bomb, invade, occupy
especially when modern warfare means there is very little risk to ourselves. Millions have
died and continue to die across MENA, many of them children in our never ending wars for
resources and geopolitical advantage sold as 'humanitarian intervention.'
The common cold may kill too if the virus finds a suitable host.
Wuhan is a heavily polluted city region. https://www.numbeo.com/pollution/in/Wuhan
Respiratory complications caused by that environment may be significant.
Have you been to Delhi? Try it! Not pleasant even for those who consider themselves young and
healthy.
I know what i'm talking about, doubt you do.
The point is, that until it IS confirmed, it could be anything: pollution, lung infection,
'regular flu'.. well anything, but the media plaster it all over the world as if it HAS been
confirmed. This surely, is irresponsible.
"Air pollution is a huge problem in Italy. A report in 2018 showed that air quality levels
were a red alert for Italy. Way back in early 2011, officials reported that pollution in
Italy was reaching crisis levels. What's particularly troublesome is particle pollution that
pervades Italy, and accounts for breathing and heart problems, causing a whopping 9% of
deaths of Italians over the age of 30.
"When you visit Italy, you will see why there is so much smog and fog: heavy traffic in
tiny areas. Officials sometimes order drivers to leave the car at home on alternate days to
avoid too much pollution in the air.
"In Northern Italy, including big cities like Milan and Turin, has some of the worst
pollution in all of Europe. In December 2017, both cities introduced traffic restrictions to
try and reduce the impact of smog and air pollution".
"... Without duplicating your detailed survey, here in the US the news has become "all coronavirus all the time", although of course the political equivalent of the professional-wrestling elimination tour, aka the 2020 presidential campaign, is still featured when hysteria permits. ..."
"... I appreciate that much of the news coverage is presented as altruistic public service. In the US, local mass-media "news" venues thickly lay on this altruistic, parental mode; there is considerable "news you, the consumer, can use" creep. Thus, one sees articles such as "Ten Tips for Not Touching Your Face", or even "How to make your own 'hand sanitizer' at home"– the latter because panic buying have exhausted the supply of manufactured hand sanitizers. ..."
"... Over 3400 Americans died (out of > 27,000 hospitalized from >115,000 cases) in the 2009 flu outbreak that began in Mexico/Texas. I do not remember the same level of hysteria and opprobium heaped on the US as the western MSM has heaped on China. ..."
The coverage is prurient, intrusive, unbalanced and designed to cause hysteria.
Just so. Thanks for this eminently sane perspective.
Without duplicating your detailed survey, here in the US the news has become "all
coronavirus all the time", although of course the political equivalent of the
professional-wrestling elimination tour, aka the 2020 presidential campaign, is still
featured when hysteria permits.
I've even gotten unsolicited e-mails from healthcare providers touting their responses to
the ostensible crisis. I don't know what the responses are, because I haven't read them and
feel no compelling need to do so. I realize that Normals, as I call them, are
distressed and panicky, and may cling to such dross as if they are life preservers.
I appreciate that much of the news coverage is presented as altruistic public service. In
the US, local mass-media "news" venues thickly lay on this altruistic, parental mode; there
is considerable "news you, the consumer, can use" creep. Thus, one sees articles such as "Ten
Tips for Not Touching Your Face", or even "How to make your own 'hand sanitizer' at
home"– the latter because panic buying have exhausted the supply of manufactured hand
sanitizers.
Perhaps the would-be "cure" isn't really worse than the disease, but as you note the
mass-media publicity is pernicious and debilitating. Thanks again.
Over 3400 Americans died (out of > 27,000 hospitalized from >115,000 cases) in the
2009 flu outbreak that began in Mexico/Texas. I do not remember the same level of hysteria
and opprobium heaped on the US as the western MSM has heaped on China.
Every year (with infrequent exceptions) over 20 million people catch flu in the USA alone.
That's more than 1,000 times the number of Coronavirus cases worldwide so far.
Every year (with infrequent exceptions), over 20,000 people die from flu in the USA alone.
That's 60 times the number of deaths from Coronavirus worldwide so far.
The hysteria over this is absolutely ridiculous. My son is worried about it but what can
you do? The laughable 'advice' we're getting makes no sense to him. We live in France where
kissing on the cheek and shaking hands is their default setting and yet, the 'advice' is not
to do that. It simply can't be avoided here plus he goes to school, so he's mixing with
crowds, something else which we're advised not to do so despite my attempts at reassurance,
is it any wonder he's up to 90 about it? I suspect this is the same as the majority of the
population just now too. It's shameful behaviour from the media and health 'experts'. They're
actively inducing panic rather than calming things down.
On a more personal note, what I dislike is that I'm being dragged into a situation about
which I'm deeply skeptical and can't take the hysteria seriously. My family need food, same
as everyone else but what about all these people panic buying and stocking up on food?
What can you do? If all these people are panic buying and stocking up on food, then there's
going to be nothing left for us to buy normally, so we might struggle for food. I object to
the fact that we're being dragged into even considering buying and stocking up too, even
though we don't want to, but we might have to.
I could go on but to spare any readers patience I won't, except to say that the whole
thing is ridiculous. It'll all be forgotten about by the time summer arrives.
Northern Italy under lockdown - Lombardy region (entire region, all provinces)
- Piedmont (provinces of Alessandria , Asti , Novara , Verbano Cusio Ossola , and Vercelli
)
- Veneto (provinces of Padua , Treviso , and Venice)
- Emilia Romagna (provinces of Modena , Parma , Piacenza , Reggio Emilia , and Rimini )
- Marche (province of Pesaro Urbino ) In the above areas:
Travel in and out of the area, as well as within the area, will only be possible in
response to "duly verified professional requirements, emergency situations, or for health
reasons"
People with symptoms of respiratory disease and fever of 37.5 Celsius or above are
strongly encouraged to stay at home and limit social contact as much as possible, and contact
their doctor
Avoid gathering
All schools and universities must be closed
All museums and places of culture will be closed
All cultural, religious or festive events are suspended
Cinemas, pubs, theaters, dance schools, game rooms, casinos, nightclubs and other similar
places shall remain closed
All sporting events and competitions are suspended
Ski resorts are closed until further notice
Swimming pools, sports halls, thermal baths, cultural centers and wellness centers must
suspend their activities
Bars and restaurants can remain open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. provided they respect the
safety distance of at least 1 meter between customers - this provision also concerns other
commercial activities
Shopping centers and department stores must remain closed on public holidays and the days
preceding them
Places of worship remain open, provided that the safety distance of at least 1 meter is
respected, but religious ceremonies (marriage, baptism) are prohibited until further
notice
National restrictions
As in the north of the country, cinemas, theaters, museums, pubs, game rooms, dance
schools, discos and other similar places will be closed
Sports competitions are suspended with some exceptions
Biden and Sanders are both campaigning actively and meeting voters in many different states.
Plenty of hugs/handshakes. I am wondering what precautions they have taken against the
coronavirus. Note they are both in their late 70's.
... As the Hubei cases have fallen from 2000+ per day to 1 or 2 hundred they have had
capacity to widen their testing to contacts and very mild suspect cases. Sadly they are not
seeing the hoped for asymptomatic population. Serology tests will give a more accurate
answer, and are underway, but are not performed until a month or more post infection to allow
time for antibody build up.
According to this professional paper by Chinese researchers, there could be also
neuroinvasion by SARS-COV-2, with some patients showing headache, nausea, and vomiting, in
absence of other observed symptoms..but in the end deriving in inhability to breath
spontaneusly...
Masks seem to be in fact an effective way to protect against the entry of the virus via
intranasal through the CNS..
..
Also it seems that the use of corticosteroids that would be beneficial for classical lung
edema, and are of common use at ICUs, would accelerate the replication of the virus in the
neural tissue...leading to breath failure... by failure of brain functions...What it is still
unknown is how the virus reach the neural tissue...
Some interesting excerpts:
...In light of the high similarity between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2, it is quite likely that
the potential neuroinvason of SARS-CoV-2 plays an important role in the acute respiratory
failure of COVID-19 patients. According to the complaints of a survivor, the medical
graduate student (24 years old) from Wuhan University, she must stay awake and breathe
consciously and actively during the intensive care. She said that if she fell asleep, she
might die because she had lost her natural breath.
...The exact route by which SARS-CoV or MERS-COV enters the CNS is still not reported.
However, hematogenous or lymphatic route seems impossible, especially in the early stage of
infection, since almost no virus particle was detected in the non-neuronal cells in the
infected brain areas.
...Of interest, viral antigens have been detected in the brainstem, where the infected
regions included the nucleus of the solitary tract and nucleus ambiguus. The nucleus of the
solitary tract receives sensory information from the mechano- and chemoreceptors in the
lung and respiratory tracts 40-42, while the efferent fibers from the nucleus ambiguus and
the nucleus of the solitary tract provide innervation to airway smooth muscle, glands, and
blood vessels. Such neuroanatomic interconnections indicate that the death of infected
animals or patients may be due to the dysfunction of the cardiorespiratory center in the
brainstem.
...Based on an e pidemiological survey on COVID-19, the median time from the first
symptom to dyspnea was 5.0 days, to hospital admission was 7.0 days, and to the intensive
care was 8.0 days. Therefore, the latency period is enough for the virus to enter and
destroy the medullary neurons. As a matter of fact, it has been reported that some
patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 did show neurologic signs such as headache (about 8%),
nausea and vomiting (1%).
.... If the neuroinvasion of SARS-CoV-2 does take a part in the development of
respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients, the precaution with masks will absolutely be the
most effective measure to protect against the possible entry of the virus into the CNS.
It may also be expected that the symptoms of the patients infected via facal-oral or
conjunctival route will be lighter than those infected intranasally.
.... It is also urgent to find effective antiviral drugs that can cross the blood-brain
barrier. Moreover, corticosteroids, which are used frequently for severe patients, may
have no treatment effect, but rather accelerate the replication of the virus within the
neurons. Since SARS-CoV2 may conceal itself in the neurons from the immune recognition,
complete clearance of the virus may not be guaranteed even the patients have recovered from
the acute infection.
In support of this, there is evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is still detectable in some
patients during the convalescent period 43. Therefore, given the probable neuroinvasion the
risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection may be currently underestimated.
Thus, it seems that, in the end, behaves like a neuro-chemical agent, isn´t it...?
Too much for a simple flu...and pangolins´ stories... What the hell is happening
here?
A Jewish lawyer in New York City and nine members of his family have tested positive for SARS
CoV-2. His family is prominent and may have infected people at a large Bar Mitzva, a Jewish
university, a place of worship, and commuters on the subway to and from his law office.
Many of these exposed Jews attended the recent 2020 AIPAC jamboree. About 70% of the US
Congress also attended this AIPAC mass event, potentially making Washington DC a super
spreader locale. AIPAC issued a warning to all attendees to self quarantine. The state of
Israel has imposed mandatory quarantines for all returning attendees of the AIPAC conference.
Israel is mirroring the aggressive steps that China is taking to quell the epidemic as
currently 100,000 Israeli citizens are under quarantine.
https://www.trunews.com/stream/aipac-super-spreader-did-israeli-lobbyists-infect-u-s-congress-with-coronavirus
Failure to impose quarantines will likely result in to proliferation of the "L" form of
the "C" haplotype of SARS CoV-2. Countries where government medical officials must clear
their statements with uninformed political hacks face a more pronounced impact from this
outbreak. The proper approach is for politicians to have to clear their blather with health
professionals
In California, where thousands are being monitored for the virus, only 516 tests had been
conducted by the state as of Thursday. Washington health officials have more cases than
they can currently process. And in New York, where cases have quadrupled this week, a New
York City official pleaded for more test kits from the C.D.C.
"The slow federal action on this matter has impeded our ability to beat back this
epidemic," the official said in a letter Friday.
California already has 300 confirmed cases, with 14 deaths. And they've just managed to
test 516 people. That's a 58% rate of infection.
So, which numbers are you willing to trust more, barflies? China's or USA's (or the rest
of the west)?
Everybody and his mother knows from at least two and half months ago, that seeing the news
from China (so many millions people quarantined) that this disease will be an epidemic, and
for sure it will hit USA, and now we learn the CDC and the Trump administration have only few
thousands tests available and they are convinced they are managing the situation very well...
Well we are going to see a good experiment: the result of the private health care system
scam in front of a dangerous pandemic, it will be a Darwinian experiment we can call "The
Survival of the Richest".
For sure we will never know the number of cases and fatalities for Corona in the USA,
because they won´t allow to make a significant number of tests, but in two years we
will see how the life expectancy in USA will be compare with the others developed countries
with socialize health care
As for the virus, there are five strains, we now know (or rather, we have so far
determined). China's strain is different from Korea's and different again from Iran's.
Interestingly, Iran's shows the greatest lethal nature. And yet the numbers shown up-thread
@64, if correct, suggest a greater ability of Iran to neutralize the mortality of the virus
than of Italy, which has one of the lesser strains.
Interestingly also, as karlof1 alludes to above, the virus having five identified strains
so far leads us to the most basic logic in virology, which is to ask, where did these strains
mutate from? Where is "patient zero"? And the only country so far with all five strains
identified as present is the United States.
Usually the US has about 55,000 deaths from flu each year. Last year it had 80,000 deaths.
One wonders how much of that was undiagnosed Covid-19.
One wonders how much of that came from Fort Detrick.
I could link and document all this but I have been unable to read all the threads here
lately so I must assume the readership is au fait with the latest evidence on these
virus matters.
Usually the US has about 55,000 deaths from flu each year.
"In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12000 to -- in the worst year
-- 56000, according to the CDC."
(2018 had even more)
The reason for this wide variation: Deaths peak when the H3N2 strain of influenza A
dominates. When it's H1N1 or influenza B, the toll is quite a bit lower. Scientists can guess
which strain may predominate in a given year, but it's only a guess. That's why the flu
vaccine doesn't work in some years. But it usually does.
You can see that the Fatality Rate is 4,25%, higher than in China and globally, but YOU
HAVE ONLY 11,3% OF PEOPLE RECOVERED , that means you do not have an outcome yet for the
rest.
If you consider the ratio deaths compare with the cases that have an outcome (recovered +
dead), we have a fatality rate of 27,36%, in the case of China is 6% (but this could be
false).
When we now analyze the fatality rate of the 1918 Spanish Flu we analyze with all the
people or recovered or dead, all have an outcome, and that is the only way to know the REAL
fatality rate of an epidemic.
So I do not know the total fatality ratio of this epidemic, but seems is quite high, and
it seems it affects the white people (in North Italy) in similar ways as in Asia.
This is NOT a "normal flu", and this virus has many new and fantastic features, it affects
strongly the CNS (Central Nervous System):
My methodology (and I was one of the commenters who got it right from the beginning) was
very simple: I assumed the CCP is honest about this epidemic and really has the welfare of
its own people in mind; I assumed the CCP has the means to contain this epidemic to the best
of today's technology and; I assumed China's numbers are the holotype because of those two
previous reasons.
So, taking China's numbers as the true numbers, we can easily come to the conclusion the
numbers in the the rest of the world are clearly underreported - both in infected rates and
death rates.
I never trusted the opinion of those western famous infectologists/virologists for one
simple reason: they came up with a conclusive diagnosis with almost no data in hands. They
all made absurd extrapolations from the numbers that came out from the Chinese media. There's
a reason many countries forbid medical consults from distance (telephone or internet):
medicine is an art that requires eye-to-eye contact between doctor and patient. It is heavily
reliant on lots and lots of empirical evidence. It is more an art than a science: a doctor
must always assume every patient is unique, and apply statistics to this unique case. To put
it simply, doctors are not good theoreticians.
That's also why any study that is not coming out of China or is not using Chinese papers,
or was not written in direct collaboration with the Chinese on COVID-19 is useless right
now.
Virology is a very complex and test-heavy science: even basic comprehension over a common
virus takes decades and hundreds of doctors to produce.
Those bombastic articles and papers coming out from outside China must be treated mainly
as Western propaganda - and I'm not necessarily blaming the doctors involved for this, it may
be a case where the journalist induced the doctor and distorted what he/she said.
Our China bashing (which flew in the face of scientific advice) may come back to haunt us.
It appears that, since the 2009 outbreak of Swine Flu (300,000 dead) we've gotten much
better at tracing viral outbreaks to patient zero. We're even going back and revising our
understanding of past epidemics. The first cases of H1N1 swine flu were reported in
California and Texas in late March, 2009 but subsequent genetic analysis suggests that it may
have started circulating in humans in January*.
Just so, China's top respiratory specialist, Zhong Nanshan said, "Though the COVID-19 was
first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China.
To me, that means China has cracked the case. They're pretty damn sure that it had a
foreign origin. Japanese journalists think so, too. Asahi TV reported that some of the 14,000
Americans who have died of influenza in the past 120 days may have unwittingly contracted the
coronavirus went viral on Chinese social media and that the US government may have failed to
grasp how rampant the virus is in the US.
Then Taiwanese** TV presented flow charts suggesting the coronavirus originated in the US.
Apparently, when viruses mutate they do so linearly and researchers can tell the order in
which mutations occur and where they are detected.
Says Larry Romanoff, "One of his main points is that the type infecting Taiwan exists only
in Australia and the US and, since Taiwan was not infected by Australians, the infection in
Taiwan could have come only from the US. The basic logic is that the geographical location
with the greatest diversity of virus strains must be the original source because a single
strain cannot emerge from nothing. He demonstrated that only the US has all the five known
strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most of China have only one, as do Taiwan and South
Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, Singapore, and England, Belgium and Germany), constituting a
thesis that the haplotypes in other nations may have originated in the US."
This stoked speculation in China that the coronavirus may have originated in the US. The
PRC, which normally clamps down on such speculation, instead told citizens, "Discuss the
matter rationally."
The People's Daily lent its considerable weight by publishing a SinaWeibo post, "Perhaps
the US [military] delegates brought the coronavirus to Wuhan in October, and some mutation
occurred to the virus, making it more deadly and contagious, and causing a widespread
outbreak this year." (February 23)
Shen Yi, professor of international relations at Fudan University, noted that global
virologists and intelligence agencies are working to track the origin of the virus, "The
symptoms and the contagiosity of the COVID-19 are evident to all. It is impossible to conceal
the origins of the disease," Shen said, urging the public to seek truth from facts.
more scapegoating. The WSJ blames the virus and effects on global economy on the Chinese
government. (prep regime-change music)
Wall Street Journal:
How It All Started: China's Early Coronavirus Missteps
China's errors, dating back to the very first patients, were compounded by political
leaders who dragged their feet to inform the public of the risks and to take decisive
control measures. The result is an epidemic that has gripped the global economy.
No China Bashing? Really. See my link @ 6. The slants by AP and Reuters dutifully repeated
by their subscribers. And a reminder; Zerohedge lost its Twitter account.
Only today, once again, the Globaltimes, CN editorial asks, "Show us some compassion."
Grab this: Fox host hits new low on politicizing disease LINK
Fox News host Jesse Watters blatantly asked the Chinese for "a formal apology" because
"this coronavirus originated in China." His cohost asked, "What if the outbreak had started
here [the US]?" Watters asserted that the epidemic started in China. He even stated in his
show, "They are very hungry people. The Chinese communist government cannot feed the
people, and they are desperate. This food is uncooked. It's unsafe, and that is why
scientists believe that's where it originated." These remarks make him look like a
hooligan.
The Communist Party of China "cannot feed the people" so that Chinese have no choice but
to eat "raw bats and snakes." Is this how a popular American host sees China? Watters'
complete and utter nonsense on the TV show makes people wonder how distorted US public
opinion is against China. It seems that if one scolds China, he does not need to beat his
brains or use common sense at all; he can talk as tough as he wants of China without being
held accountable.
Imagine that a Chinese host demanded a formal apology from the US people on a TV show
after the 2009 H1N1 flu spread to the world from the US, or after AIDS, a disease
reportedly first tracked in North America, became a global epidemic. Let alone how the US
and the international community would respond, could the Chinese public accept his
performance? [.]
Its a big money grab. Billions and billions have already been handed out. Big Pharma
stands to make a killing with a new vaccine down the road.
H1N1 fizzled out. Came nowhere near the doomsday predictions. As did SARS, MERS, Zika,
Ebola which led to billions and billion spent on research not just for vaccines but to modify
these viruses to be more deadly in order to understand them so as to make better vaccines.
You can see the danger, those who create these viruses , or tests confirming them, stand to
benefit from them
Lets take a closer look at H1N1. In July 2009 the WHO Director General predicted that: "as
many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years -- nearly one-third of
the world population." It was a multibillion bonanza for Big Pharma. Margaret Chan reported
"Vaccine makers could produce 4.9 billion pandemic flu shots per year in the best-case
scenario"
The media went into high gear . Obama jumps on board saying
"Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as
several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren't
successful." The U.S. expected to have 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available
sometime in October"
Some of the tricks used will probably be repeated. In 2009 on July 24, following the WHO
decision to shift from quantitative to qualitative assessments and not to require governments
to ascertain the data through lab testing, the CDC announced that it had discontinued the
process of data collection by testing . From April 15, 2009 to July 24, 2009, states reported
a total of 43,771 confirmed and probable cases of novel influenza A (H1N1) infection. Of
these cases reported, 5,011 people were hospitalized and 302 people died. During this period
7,500 people per day from all causes died. In a regular flu season over 30,000 die from flu
(CDC model estimates). On July 24, 2009, confirmed and probable case counts were
discontinued. CDC announced that it had developed a model "to to determine the true number of
novel H1N1 flu cases in the United States".
To counter the underwhelming numbers obtained by testing. CDC claimed that the data sent
to them by the states was "underestimated". Its new model then hiked up these figures of
"unconfirmed" cases, many of which are cases of seasonal influenza and then pronounced more
than one million people became ill with novel H1N1 flu between April and June 2009 in the
United States. The model was then used to predict the spread of swine flu and to justify a
national health emergency. "
This is a process of statistical manipulation (fraud), and no doubt we are seeing some of
that now and will no doubt see a replay of 2009.
As we know now, the pandemic never happened. Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had
been ordered by national governments from Big Pharma. Millions of vaccine doses were
subsequently destroyed. Lots of profits made though. For those who did get shots there were
many adverse effects which were underreported, but Big Pharma has no liability for
vaccines.
Back to the present. Fortunately they are smart enough not to unleash anything too deadly.
After all,the elites dont want to get sick and are smart enough not to trust rushed to market
vaccines. Something that accelerates the demise of rapidly aging populations is just the
thing. Death rates in the under 50 crowd are only 0.3% and that is likely overstated by a
factor of 10 since most mild cases are not tested. In the elderly and sick, we see rates in
the double digits, similar to ordinary flu
The US and China have 7500 and 25000 deaths per day, for COVID-19 in 3 months there are
fewer than 3000 deaths. Yet its panic. You ask me there is a dumb virus going around and its
been around for at least 40 years. Picking up steam though.
"... If what my brother died of was the novel coronavirus, as I now strongly suspect, that means it was already spreading on Manhattan in late December. ..."
Larry Romanoff's latest article, whose footnotes I have not yet checked, is perhaps the
most interesting of all, in that it points to a US coverup of a domestic outbreak prior to
China's
Well, I just lightly skimmed through the piece, but the notion that the US itself had a
major Coronavirus outbreak back in 2019 seems pretty implausible to me.
By all accounts, the virus is extremely contagious. So any such American outbreak would
surely have resulted in many hundreds of thousands if not millions of cases. Enough people,
at least the elderly, would have become gravely ill or died that we would have noticed
it.
@Ron Unz A brother of mine aged 84 died of pneumonia on or about Feb. 10 in New Jersey.
From what I heard about his condition and medical developments, it sure sounded like what we
later learned about Wuhan coronavirus. He had been being treated for cancer for 14 years, so
his immune system was severely compromised.
Shortly before Christmas, he went to Sloan Kettering in Manhattan for consultations, and a
few days later he collapsed and had to be sent to a hospital. He never really recovered and
weeks later died. His fortyish son, who had spent a lot of time with him in hospital, came
down with a severe cold that incapacitated him for a week.
If what my brother died of was the novel coronavirus, as I now strongly suspect, that
means it was already spreading on Manhattan in late December.
The first human trials of a coronavirus vaccine are expected
to begin next month at a university in London and pharmaceutical company in
the US.
Scientists at Imperial College in the English capital have been trialling their attempt at a
vaccine on animals since mid-February.
And they could move onto human trials – the last phase of development before a drug
can be used – as soon as April.
Meanwhile, US pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Inovio have also said they plan to start
their own human trials next month.
The coronavirus, which causes a disease called COVID-19 and has infected more than 94,000
people around the world, cannot currently be cured or prevented.
Day 12: I’ve had a relapse. Just as I thought the flu was getting better, it has come back with a vengeance. My breathing is
laboured. Just getting up and going to the bathroom leaves me panting and exhausted. I’m sweating, burning up, dizzy and
shivering. The television is on but I can’t make sense of it. This is a nightmare.
By the afternoon, I feel like I am suffocating. I have never been this ill in my life. I can’t take more than sips of air
and, when I breathe out, my lungs sound like a paper bag being crumpled up. This isn’t right. I need to see a doctor. But if I
call the emergency services, I’ll have to pay for the ambulance call-out myself. That’s going to cost a fortune. I’m ill, but I
don’t think I’m dying — am I?
Surely I can survive a taxi journey. I decide to go to Zhongnan University Hospital because there are plenty of foreign
doctors there, studying. It isn’t rational but, in my feverish state, I want to see a British doctor. My Mandarin is pretty
good, so I have no language problem when I call the taxi. It’s a 20-minute ride. As soon as I get there, a doctor diagnoses
pneumonia. So that’s why my lungs are making that noise. I am sent for a battery of tests lasting six hours.
... ... ...
Day 24: Hallelujah! I think I’m better. Who knew flu could be as horrible as that, though?
Peter Daszak is a zoologist who works in China and runs the EcoHealth Alliance, an
organization that studies the connections between human and wildlife health. So coronaviruses,
like the new one that's spreading right now, are one of his areas of expertise.
... ... ...
Mary Harris: Tens of thousands of people have been diagnosed with this disease worldwide,
with more than 3,000 deaths. Yet there have been few deaths in the U.S. so far. Do we actually
know how many cases are stateside? It's been reported that we're not testing that much, but
that might change soon.
"I would say we are the cause of almost all emerging diseases." -- Peter
Daszak
Peter Daszak: In most outbreaks, you never really know when it begins, what the true
caseload is, what the environment is. All you can see are the people who come to the hospital
and get tested and diagnosed. You don't see people with mild infections, or people who are
pretty sick in poor communities and just don't make it, or people in communities that have
trouble traveling.
When people start rolling out those test kits, we're going to find a lot of cases in the
U.S. and it's going to look like this is spreading out of control. The truth is: It's probably
already been there, probably, and we're now finding that out.
You know how this story goes. First there's the panic, the search for something or someone
to blame. In the case of the novel coronavirus, there was the story that the outbreak got its
start at a local food market in Wuhan. But stories like that can get in the way of the bigger
picture: More and more people are also living and working closer to wildlife. It isn't about
one or two individuals putting people at risk. The risk also comes from clear-cutting
rainforests, remote mining, and even widespread suburbanization.
I would say we are the cause of almost all emerging diseases.
... ... ...
There are over a million viruses like the novel coronavirus out there. You've found 500
different coronaviruses in bats alone, but it took you 10 years to do that work.
We need to do that on this scale so that we discover all the rest of those viruses. We need
many more groups in many more regions doing this work. We then need to get those sequences we
find into the hands of vaccine designers, because what's the point in spending billions of
dollars designing a vaccine to SARS if the virus that emerges this year is 20 percent
different, and the vaccine doesn't work? Let's have vaccines across the whole group. We've
heard about the universal flu vaccine. Let's have a universal coronavirus vaccine. Let's have a
universal Ebola virus vaccine. I think that's common sense.
Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as
outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate
workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger.
We can view "Creepy Joe" and Trump as representatives of "neoliberal plague" The slogan
should be " No Pasaran "
( Dolores Ibárruri's famous battlecry appeal for the defense of the Second Spanish
Republic)
Notable quotes:
"... For those who aren't familiar with Albert Camus' The Plague , disparate lives are brought together during a plague that sweeps through an Algerian city. ..."
"... Through the virus, a new light is being shone on four decades of neoliberal reorganization of political economy. The combination of widespread economic marginalization and a lack of paid time off means that sick and highly contagious workers will have little economic choice but to spread the virus. And the insurance company pricing mechanism intended to dissuade people from overusing health care ('skin in the game') means that only very sick people will 'buy' health care they can't afford. ..."
"... If this last part reads like (Ayn) Randian social theory as interpreted by a budding sociopath in the basement of his dead parent's crumbling tract home, it is basic neoliberal ideology applied to circumstances that we can see playing out in real time. ..."
"... While the American response to the Coronavirus threat seems to be less than robust, there was a near instantaneous response from the Federal Reserve to a 10% decline in stock prices. ..."
"... If priorities seem misplaced, you haven't been paying attention. The statistics on suicides, divorces, drug addiction and self-destructive behavior that result from the loss of employment were understood and widely published by the early 1990s, at the peak of that era's round of mass layoffs. Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger. ..."
"... But how likely is it that people will 'demand' too much healthcare? The starting position of Obamacare was that the American healthcare system provided half the benefit at twice the price of comparable systems. ..."
"... Milton Friedman, one of the founders of neoliberalism through the Mont Pelerin Society, produced a long career's worth of half-baked garbage economics. On the rare occasions when he wasn't helping Chilean fascists toss students out of airplanes in flight, he was pawning his infantile theories off on future Chamber of Commerce and ALEC predators. His positivism was already known to be a farce when he took it up. Here is a primer that explains why it is, and always will be, a farce. ..."
For those who aren't familiar with Albert Camus' The Plague ,
disparate lives are brought together during a plague that sweeps through an Algerian city.
Today, by way of the emergence of a lethal and highly communicable virus (Coronavirus), we --
the people of the West, have an opportunity to reconsider what we mean to one another. The
existential lesson is that through dread and angst we can choose to live, with the
responsibilities that the choice entails, or just fade away.
Through the virus, a new light is being shone on four decades of neoliberal
reorganization of political economy. The combination of widespread economic marginalization and
a lack of paid time off means that sick and highly contagious workers will have little economic
choice but to spread the virus. And the insurance company pricing mechanism intended to
dissuade people from overusing health care ('skin in the game') means that only very sick
people will 'buy' health care they can't afford.
Market provision of virus test kits, vaccines and basic sanitary aids will, in the absence
of government coercion, follow the monopolist's model of under-provision at prices that are
unaffordable for most people. The most fiscally responsible route, in the sense of assuring
that the rich don't pay taxes, is to let those who can't afford health care die. If this means
that tens of millions of people die unnecessarily, markets are a harsh taskmaster. (
3.4% mortality rate @
2X – 3X the contagion rate of the Spanish Flu @ 4 X 1918 population).
If this last part reads like (Ayn) Randian social theory as interpreted by a budding
sociopath in the basement of his dead parent's crumbling tract home, it is basic neoliberal
ideology applied to circumstances that we can see playing out in real time. According to
Ryan Grim of The Intercept, Bill Clinton eliminated the ' reasonable
pricing ' requirement for drugs made by companies that receive government funding. This has
bearing on both commercially developed Coronavirus test kits and vaccines.
Leaving aside technical difficulties that either will or won't be resolved, how would any
substantial portion of the 80% of the population that lives hand-to-mouth be effectively
quarantined when losing an income creates a cascade effect of evictions, foreclosures,
starvation, repossessions, shut-off utilities, etc.? The current system conceived and organized
to make desperate and near desperate workers labor with the minimum of pay and benefits is a
public health disaster by design.
While the American response to the Coronavirus threat seems to be less than robust,
there was a near instantaneous response from the Federal Reserve to a 10% decline in stock
prices. The same Federal Reserve that has been engineering a non-stop rise in stock prices
since Wall Street was bailed out in 2009 knows perfectly well how narrowly stock ownership is
concentrated amongst the rich -- it publishes the data. It quickly lowered the cost of
financial speculation as the cost of Coronavirus tests and a vaccine -- and the question of who
will bear them, remain indeterminate.
If priorities seem misplaced, you haven't been paying attention. The statistics on
suicides, divorces, drug addiction and self-destructive behavior that result from the loss of
employment were understood and widely published by the early 1990s, at the peak of that era's
round of mass layoffs. Creating employment insecurity was the entire point of neoliberal
reforms such as outsourcing, de-skilling and contingent employment. Neoliberal theory had it
that desperate workers work both longer and harder. And they die younger.
The brutality of the logic used by the Obama administration in constructing the ACA,
Obamacare, is worthy of exploration. The premise behind the 'skin in the game' idea is
neoliberalism 101, developed by a founder of neoliberalism, economist Milton Friedman, to
ration health care. The basic idea is that without a price attached to it, people will 'demand'
more health care than they need. That from a public health perspective, oversupplying health
care is better than undersupplying it, is ignored under the premise that public health concerns
are communistic. (Read Friedman).
But how likely is it that people will 'demand' too much healthcare? The starting
position of Obamacare was that the American healthcare system provided half the benefit at
twice the price of comparable systems. Through the 'market' pricing mechanism that
existed, the incentive was for people to avoid purchasing healthcare because it was / is wildly
overpriced. Not considered was that through geographical and specialist 'natural monopolies,'
health care providers had an incentive to undersupply health care by providing high-margin
services to the rich.
Furthermore, why would a healthcare system be considered from the perspective of
individual users? In contrast to the temporal sleight-of-hand where Obamacare 'customers' are
expected to anticipate their illnesses and buy insurance plans that cover them, the entire
premise of health insurance is that illnesses are unpredictable. Isn't the Coronavirus evidence
of this unpredictable nature? And through the nature of pandemics, it is known that some people
will get sick and other people won't. Not known is precisely who will get sick and who
won't.
While there are public health emergency provisions in Obamacare that may or may not be
invoked, why does it make sense in any case to require that people anticipate future illnesses?
Such a program isn't health care and it isn't even health insurance. It is gambling. Guess
right and you live. Guess wrong and you die. Why should we be guessing at all? Prior to
Obamacare, health insurance companies gamed the system with life and death decisions. In true
neoliberal fashion, Obamacare randomized the process as health insurers continue to game the
system.
As I understand it, the public health emergency provision in Obamacare might cover virus
testing and the cost of a vaccine if one is ever found. Great. What about care? How many
readers chose a plan that covers Coronavirus? How many days can you go without a paycheck if
you get sick or are quarantined? Who will take care of your children and for how long? How will
you pay your rent or mortgage? Who will deliver groceries to your house and how will you pay
for them? How will you make the car payment before they repossess it and how will you get to
work without it if you recover?
The rank idiocy -- and the political content, of the frame of individual 'consumers'
overusing health care quickly devolves to the fact that some large portion of the American
people can't afford to go to the doctor when they need to. Even if they can afford the direct
costs, they can't afford the indirect costs. When Obamacare was passed, the U.S. had the worst
health care outcomes among rich countries. Ten years later, the U.S. has the
worst healthcare outcomes among rich countries . And medical bankruptcies are virtually
unchanged since Obamacare was passed.
The reason for focusing on Obamacare is it is the system through which we encounter the
Coronavirus. In the narrow political sense of getting a health care bill passed, Obamacare may
or may not have been 'pragmatic.' In a public health care sense, it is a disaster decades in
the making. The problem wasn't / isn't Mr. Obama per se. It is the radical ideology behind it
that was posed as pragmatism. Mr. Obama's success was to get a bill passed -- a political
accomplishment. It wasn't to create a functioning healthcare system.
The otherworldly nature of neoliberal theory has led to a most brutal of social
philosophies. Mr. Obama later put his energy into lengthening drug company
patents to give drug companies an economic advantage provided by the government. Economist
Dean Baker has made a career out of hammering this general point home. Michael Bloomberg
benefited from government support for both technology and finance. His fortune of $16 billion
in 2009 followed stock prices higher to land him at $64.2 billion in 2020.
Donald Trump inherited a large fortune that likewise followed stock and Manhattan real
estate prices higher. Both he and Mr. Bloomberg could have put their early fortunes into
passive portfolios and received the returns that they claim to be the product of superior
intelligence and hard work. Analytically, if the variability of these fortunes tracks systemic,
rather than personal, factors, then systemic factors explain them. The same is true of most of
the great fortunes of the epoch of finance capitalism that began around 1978.
The point of merging these issues is that they represent flip sides of the neoliberal coin.
In a broad sense, neoliberalism is premised on economic Darwinism, the quasi-religious (it
isn't Darwin) idea that people land where they deserve to land in the social order. This same
idea, that systemic differences in economic outcomes are evidence of systemic causes, applies
here. However, differences in intelligence, initiative and talent don't map to systemic outcomes , meaning that
concentrated wealth isn't a reward for these.
The ignorant brutality of this system appears to be on its way to getting a reality check
through a tiny virus. Unless the Federal government figures this out really fast, most of the
bodies will be carried out of poor and working class neighborhoods like mine. Few here have
health insurance and most health care providers in the area don't take the insurance they do
have. More than a day away from work and many of my neighbors will no longer have jobs.
Evictions are a regular state of affairs in good times. There are no resources to facilitate a
larger-picture response.
Liberalism, of which neoliberalism is a cranky cousin, lives through a patina of pragmatism
until the nukes start flying or a virus hits. Getting healthcare 'consumers' to consider their
market choices follows a narrow logic up to the point where none of the choices are relevant to
a public health emergency. One I plus another I plus another I doesn't equal us. The
fundamental premise of neoliberalism, the Robinsonade I, has
always been a cynical dodge to let rich people keep their loot.
The mortality rate and contagion factor recently reported for Coronavirus (links at top)
place it above the modern benchmark of the Spanish Flu of 1918 in terms of potential lethality.
What should make people angry is how the reconfiguration of political economy intended to make
a few people really rich has put the rest of us at increased risk. These are real people's
lives and they matter.
Finally, for students of neoliberalism: there is no conflation of neoliberalism with
neoclassical economics here. Milton Friedman, one of the founders of neoliberalism through
the Mont Pelerin Society, produced a long career's worth of half-baked garbage economics. On
the rare occasions when he wasn't helping Chilean fascists toss students out of airplanes in
flight, he was pawning his infantile theories off on future Chamber of Commerce and ALEC
predators. His positivism was already known to be a farce when he took it up. Here is a primer that
explains why it is, and always will be, a farce.
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book Zen Economics is
published by CounterPunch Books.
After a community transmitted case of coronavirus was reported in California,
Dr. Drew Pinsky talks about the coronavirus:
PINSKY: I don't know what they're talking about. We used to point at the way Indiana
responded to the opiate and the HIV epidemic as the model for the country. I don't know what
they're talking about. The only reason I felt comfortable with Pence as Vice President was I
was aware of his track record in Indiana in handling these serious problems, and they handled
them better than most states did, almost any other state. So, I don't know what the hell
people are talking about. That is fake news...
We have in the United States 24 million cases of flu-like illness, 180,000
hospitalizations, 16,000 dead from influenza. We have zero deaths from coronavirus. We have
almost no cases. There are people walking around out there with the virus that don't even
know they have it, it's so mild.
So it's going to be much more widespread than we knew. It's
going to be much milder than we knew. The 1.7% fatality rate is going to fall. Where was the
press during the Mediterranean Corona outbreak, where the fatality rate was 41%? Why didn't
they get crazed about MERS or SARS?
This is an overblown press-created hysteria. This thing
is well in hand. President Trump is absolutely correct.
".....when Trump said sick people go to work, he was talking about telecommuting."
In his defense, Trump's idea of "going to work" is sitting for long hours in
self-quarantine watching Fox and tweeting about it. So maybe he thought most other people's
jobs are like that too.
Local long term care facility in a local upscale neighborhood. Sixty-nine residents. Currently, eleven dead from Covid-19.
Sure, almost all of them were over 60 and had health issues. That also describes me, my wife, and most of my close friends and
family. The arguments over death rates are absurd. On average, this is just the flu by another name! If you're 16, hey, no big
deal.
Why all the hysteria?
Too many old folks around anyway! But for quite a few of us, getting this thing with no chance to
vaccinate against it seems tantamount to a death sentence.
The city administration has recommended that anyone over 60 should
consider avoiding public places, particularly crowded ones. This isn't hysteria. In the face of the facts at the Life Care Center
it's simple prudence.
There are between 20 and 70 thousand deaths from the flu in the US every year. Equivalent
numbers in China would be something like 80 and 300 thousand for China. They have reported
3000 to date. Even if they have underestimated by a factor of 10, this virus is still way
less of a problem than the annual flu.
And what if Covid-19 has been around for years and we just now became aware of it
because of better testing? We do know of other corona viruses; some cause the common
cold.
I agree with Trump, and I live in Lombardy, the Italian region most hit by coronavirus.
Maybe closing schools and other public and private places saves some life. Why, then, don't
we abolish cars? roughly 1.3 millions lives are lost every years in car accidents.
There's a price to be paid shutting down public life for an infection. As usual, Trump
is criticized as if he were an imbecile - even by Dreher - while his stance is as
reasonable as others.
I see this hysteric trend as another exemplification of a dangerous and noxious approach
to life, according to which: adverse events not only are to be avoided, but are an
infringement on my absolute right to be happy, and all the world must stop to protect
me.
Among other things my background includes some game theory and scenario planning--skills that were extremely useful in some of
the various projects I was involved with in my past. There were two obvious ways Trump could have handled this
(1) Minimize the potential for a crisis; nothing to see here, it's all a plot, move along now. Potential outcomes:
A. It turns out to be nothing. He looks good for keeping his cool while everyone about him is losing their head. MAGA!
B. It turns out to be really serious. He's recognized as an incompetent, ignorant doofus and is reviled for generations
as the President who fiddled while Rome burned.
(2) Play it serious, energize the federal government and work closely with state and local governments to deal with the
potentiality for a massive medical, economic, and social crisis. Potential outcomes:
A. It turns out to be nothing. He saved the country! A hero!
B. Despite the best efforts of all involved, despite all the resources and energy thrown into the fight, there's still a massive
problem . We did all we could, everything we know how to do, and still were unsuccessful. You can't defeat Mother Nature,
fight the tide, sometimes even wearing your lucky rocketship underpants isn't enough. But no one could have done more.
He chose path (1). The wrong choice--viruses, like weather, don't respond to insults, tweets, bullying, lawsuits, and happytalk
in front of supporters. Right now it appears that we're going down the (1)B path of the decision tree. I do expect his Cult
of Personality defenders to invoke (2)B in his defense, though--it wouldn't have mattered what he did, so it was all good.
Trump's on Twitter (because it's not like he has any work to do) bragging about his travel ban and how we only have a few cases,
and we're keeping the number as low as possible. Gee, I wonder why they haven't banned travelers from Italy yet. Anyone?
The US health care system is a rent seeking profit machine. We do not have a robust public health system. No kidding they're
going to miss their target of a million tests. We're not going to do anything beyond talk about paid sick leave either. We're
just going to sit back and let this spread. Maybe if we don't test for it, we can pretend we don't have any cases?
The Emperor Has No Clothes.
I don't have much faith in the US learning anything from this debacle. Never was a nation so convinced of its superiority as
the USA. Well.....maybe the Roman Empire.
Rome was utterly dominant for a thousand years, we barely made 75 before utter and complete incompetence derailed us. We ain't
Rome. We ain't Byzantium. Hell we ain't even imperial Spain.
Look, I am not a fan of Trump, and everything you've said here about his having bungled the response to COVID is correct.
Nevertheless, for two months Our Moral Superiors were whinging about the dangers of "racism" and how it would be "xenophobic"
to close the borders, which would have been the correct response at the time. Even now, the SJWs who somehow managed to wrangle
control of the CDC are more concerned with policing people's language than with giving them solid advice on how to prepare for
the coming outbreak.
My point is: had Trump taken the correct, necessary, broadly authoritarian measures--close the borders, institute mandatory
military quarantine, etc.--they'd be calling him Hitler (I mean, more than they normally do), and federal judges would be issuing
nationwide injunctions claiming mandatory quarantine is a violation of Civil Rights law. So I have a hard time blaming him entirely
for this, and an even harder time taking the critics seriously.
"...had Trump taken the correct, necessary, broadly authoritarian
measures--close the borders, institute mandatory military quarantine,
etc.--they'd be calling him Hitler (I mean, more than they normally do),
and federal judges would be issuing nationwide injunctions claiming
mandatory quarantine is a violation of Civil Rights law."
Jeez freakin' Louise. He needs to grow a pair and just do the right thing NO MATTER what he is called or how many lies are
told about him.
I would be able to forgive bungling the balance between civil liberties and quarantine in this situation. You are correct on the
difficulties Trump faces with that.
I have a more difficult time forgiving Trump's downplaying of the disease and the overall unpreparedness of our country. Yes,
we need to control panic. That can be done without trivializing the potential seriousness of what we face. Yes, we had a short
time to prepare. However, we could have had clear and well articulated plans in place to get better testing developed and into
the hands of medical professionals.
I understand that Trump's opponents are politicizing this. That is unconscionable. But, it is not an excuse for Trump's handling
of the situation.
We cannot stop the spread of COVID-19, but we can have more or less effective responses. If my family member is suffering from
this, it is meaningless to me whether to blame Trump or his opponents. I expect them all to step up and start acting like adults.
Well, I won't belabor you with a long post, researched citations and such, because I expect them to fall on blind eyes. You are
wrong, factually and demonstrably, on every point you try to make.
The one potential exception is your what-if. If Trump had the moral integrity of a 10-year-old caught red-handed, hand in cookie
jar, he would have done the authoritative things and stood up against the over-reactions. You are wrong about the court injunctions
in your what-if, with very long precedent to show for it.
The virus was in the US by the time Wuhan fell. Closing the borders and imposing martial law and 24/7 mandatory curfews would
not have changed that fact.
We needed to be preparing a pandemic response, but the group responsible for that had been cut. We needed to get sound information
out, but we opted for spin. We needed to prepare our hospitals and doctors and nurses to care for the infected, and we *still
have not done that*.
Walls did not stop the black death, they can't stop this, either.
Walls and quarantines slow down the rate of infection, giving hospitals more ability to help people who get sick. Not overwhelming
the hospital system is maybe the single most important thing.
That's something that a lot of the "what, me worry?" crowd is missing: the death rate might -- might -- be relatively low, but
all those hospital beds will be taken up with coronavirus patients, and not them, with their other problems. Seattle doc on the
radio tonight said they're now postponing elective surgeries to keep beds open. Another doc said today that his clinic is overwhelmed
by people with coronavirus symptoms (they don't know if they have the virus because they can't get tested), but the phones are
ringing with people with other problems bitching about where's their cholesterol test result, dammit? These people have no freaking
clue about what's actually happening in the world of medicine. They want service, and they want it NOW!
They aren't. By how it sounds both the 2-3% and 1% are estimates of the CFR.
The story that's creating the mixed numbers is based on what happened in China. Accordingly, the CFR started at about 3-4%
when the virus first started, but now the CFR is sitting at .7% due to better treatments, the hospitals being better prepared,
and tests now finding more cases (including milder cases that aren't resulting in death). The key takeaway is that we're basing
all of this on the results of China which isn't exactly the most known for open communication of their issues. Europe and the
US are too new in their outbreaks to really give us a clear picture on CFR.
We also have a good few people who are REALLY trying to push a certain narrative, from the Trump administration wanting a low
number to make the disease look weak to his opponents who want this to be proof that ends his career. It's making finding accurate
information VERY annoying.
It also doesn't help that the coronavirus has VERY different effects depending on the person. For healthy people, it's very
much possible for them to have mild symptoms they mistake for an annoying cold or, a least 'not enough to risk losing your job
by trying to stay home.' For people who are vulnerable to respiratory infections or have immune issues, it turns into a nightmare
fast.
Best I can gather is that the disease, at first, looks like an easier form of a dangerous disease with lots of people getting
it and 3-4% of them dying. But then you realize it's MUCH more common than it looks as it 'stealth' infects most of the population
with most not really realizing it. Thus while we watch a Nursing Home struggling to fight it off entire cities suffer from 'mild
sneezing' until a hospital a few states off suddenly swells with a swarm of bad cases.
I'm betting that .7% is probably close to accurate for the CFR and that 60% infection might be underestimating.
Even 73 percent of Republicans polled agree that Trump is "self-centered." Pew notes that
even though most Republicans don't like the way he conducts himself, they still approve of the
job he's done. That's sustainable when things are going well for the country. But we are at the
beginning of a pandemic that, public health considerations aside, is going to have
massive social and economic impact. The markets are diving not because the media are
telling them to, but because investors can see clearly the long-term significance of this
crisis. I remind you that China has all but shut down its economy to fight this thing. That
doesn't happen over nothing.
Think of it: Boeing enters this crisis in serious trouble over its self-inflicted 737 Max
problem. Now it is facing an airline industry that expects catastrophic losses. This will have
obvious impact on Boeing's orders. What will it mean to the American economy, and to the
economy in Washington state, if Boeing goes under?
No president has the power to prevent this pandemic from reaching our shores, and it would
be unfair to blame Trump for it. But it is perfectly fair to give him credit or blame for the
way he handles the crisis. Trump has enormous political liabilities in the best of times and
suddenly, these are not the best of times, and they are not going to be good for the
foreseeable future. The idea that the President of the United States is sitting in the White
House thinking only about himself, sending out childish tweets about his political enemies, and
blaming the media for hyping the coronavirus threat -- well, the political idiocy of this
response could easily be the thing that not only gives the White House to the Democrats, but
also costs the GOP the Senate. Trump has no cushion here.
So it goes. I cannot for the life of me understand why, leaving aside the public health
aspects of the president's response, people cannot see what a political disaster he's
making for himself and the GOP. He doesn't have to act like the zombie apocalypse is upon us.
He only has to behave like Rudy Giuliani did as Mayor of New York City in the fall of 2001. But
then, as we know, Donald Trump saw the Twin Towers fall, and thought about himself:
My notes trom a Morgan btanley hosted event with John
Hopkins Chief Epidemiologist. JH is forecasting a
widespread outbreak, they est 40-60% of the world pop will
be infected over 1-2 years. They est true death rate will be
.1% -.5%. They expect it to peak in the spring...
ITS NOT THAT BAD- many no symptoms, to cold, to flu-like
Dangerous for elderly and immunocompromised, as reported
No incentive right no to test mild cases, so the death rate will be massively
overstated
They expect there to be school closures, but that they will not be particularly
effective
They believe this will be a circulating annual virus like the flu that will peak in
the
spring
They believe this has been circulating for some time, most cases are very mild,
under-tested
He stated "i will likely get the virus, as I will be treating these patients"
"I will not wear a mask because it will be useless"
The biggest risk to travel is flying to an international destination and then having
the govt cancel travel
Hospitals are likely to be overwhelmed, ICUs will be stressed and undersupplied
Social distancing unlikely to be effective, basically just wash your hands and don't
touch your face
By 2022 we will likely have vaccines and ultimately we will have routine childhood
immunizations
He emphasized that this is a fluid situation and this information can quickly become
stale, but this is their best guess at this time #COVlDi9 #coronavirus
"... On the surface it does sound reasonable but I think about the numbers here. So an infected kid goes to school and infects several dozen kids (and teachers) who infect their families when they go home. When they go for medical treatment, then several dozen nurses and the like are infected who have to be taken out of the fight for a fortnight. ..."
"... In short, this approach actually floods the hospitals with patients all at the same time whereas if that kid had stayed home, he could only infect his own family. It seems that with Coronavirus, it is mostly a numbers game. ..."
Macron was asked about this yesterday by the French media and made, for him, a sensible
point. He said that although France would soon have to declare an actual epidemic (423 cases
as of last night and a significant increase over the previous day) the government had decided
that there was no point in closing all schools now, or soon.
His argument was that many of the health workers who would be needed to fight the epidemic
themselves have children, and would be obliged to stay home and look after them, thus
potentially bringing the services themselves to a halt after a time. (France's extensive
nursery system would have to be closed as well).
This strikes me as a reasonable argument, and one with wider implications. What are the
second- and third-order effects of school closures on societies where it's now taken for
granted that in the majority of families with children of school age, both parents work?
On the surface it does sound reasonable but I think about the numbers here. So an infected
kid goes to school and infects several dozen kids (and teachers) who infect their families
when they go home. When they go for medical treatment, then several dozen nurses and the like
are infected who have to be taken out of the fight for a fortnight.
In short, this approach actually floods the hospitals with patients all at the same time
whereas if that kid had stayed home, he could only infect his own family. It seems that with
Coronavirus, it is mostly a numbers game.
"... I agree with you about Trump. This reminds me of George W. Bush telling America their most patriotic duty after 9/11 was to go shopping and spend money. ..."
"... Western institutions may at some level be corrupted but at least you've got institutions! Most countries don't have effective ones. Secondly, despite the degradation of them (partly thanks to market fundamentalists) I wouldn't wholly endorse Rod's pessimistic hype..there's hope yet. Er..they're running out of hand sanitizer here..maybe you're right after all! ..."
He's his own worst enemy. He could have let the actual medical experts deal with the
response and if he wanted to reassure the nation read out a teleprompter speech written by
said experts. Neither underplay nor overplay the situation,just the facts. Unfortunately he
wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. Self absorbed and
vainglorious don't begin to cover it. No, he's not responsible for COVID19 but he's
responsible for the scattershot response and lack of message discipline.
It's even better than that. Trump, the guy who ran on building a wall because of dangers
from abroad and who ran on China bashing, could be taken down because when an actual threat
from abroad came, he downplayed the threat even though that threat came from China. You
couldn't make this stuff up.
Greek tragedy requires the protagonist to be a noble man, so it isn't quite that.
You know what it reminds me of? President Merkin Muffley in "Dr Strangelove," trying to
babytalk Premier Kissoff about "the bomb ( pause ) the nuclear bomb, Dmitri," and General
Buck Turgidson, in the same movie, making the argument to Muffley that the Air Force should
go all in: "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, Mr President. 70, 80 million
casualties, tops."
I agree with you about Trump. This reminds me of George W. Bush telling America their most
patriotic duty after 9/11 was to go shopping and spend money. Concern with the stock market
over all else. The power that the DOW and the Line Going Up Up Forever has over Republicans
is really something else, and it continues.
That said, the World Health Organization and various "public health" authority figures
have consistently been telling us that we have more to fear from "stigma" and "racism" and
"victim-blaming" in relation to the coronavirus than we do from the virus itself. It's far
from clear to me that our "public health" authorities have been all that much better.
More or less. There was a strong bipartisan motivation to ignore COVID19 in February, with
the right worried about market disruption and the left worried about stoking the fires of
xenophobia.
No one likes George W. Bush anymore - and for good reason! - but the actual quotation was
about fear, and the paraphrase really distorts the meaning. This is one my pet peeves.
Actual remark: "When they struck, they wanted to create an atmosphere of fear. And one
of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline
industry. It's to tell the traveling public: Get on board. Do your business around the
country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in
Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed."
"Consistently". Is that really true, Matt? I somehow doubt it. Of all the statements made
by public health authorities I'd be surprised if more than a very small proportion focus on
racism!
I raise this point reluctantly since you're one of the most perceptive commenters here.
But could it be that you're reading this through an ideological lens? From what I've been
reading the experts have consistently been saying that this * could* develop into a
pandemic and been consistently trying to outline practical measures that might slow down
the spread of it. Calm heads are what are needed now. That's not to deny scepticism toward
experts but at this stage I think we need to carefully listen to what is being said by
them.
Here are 24 different articles published before February 27 about the coronavirus. This is
by no means all of them.
"WHO Call on World Leaders to Stop Stigma and Hate Surrounding Coronavirus Outbreak", CNBC,
Feb. 15
"What's Spreading Faster Than Coronavirus in the US? Racist Assaults and Ignorant Attacks
Against Asians", CNN, Feb. 21
"In Europe, Fear Spreads Faster than the Coronavirus Itself: People and Places Associated
with the Virus Face Stigmatization," NYT Feb 19
"The New Coronavirus and Racist Tropes" Columbia Journalism Review Feb 25
"Far Right Trolls Use Coronavirus Meme to Spread Subtle Anti-Chinese Racism," Daily Dot,
Jan 30
"Xenophobia and Racism Related to the 2019-2020 Coronavirus Outbreak," Dedicated wikipedia
article established in Jan 2020 at a time when there was still no dedicated article on
wikipedia on symptoms of coronavirus or practical steps for preventing the spread of
coronavirus
"The latest targets of racist rumors about coronavirus," Washington Post Feb 25
"No Chinese Allowed: Racism and Fear are Now Spreading along with the Coronavirus",
MarketWatch Feb 3
"Let's Call It Trumpvirus," Feb. 27 NYT
"Coronavirus Is Prompting Alarm on American College Campuses. Asian-American Discrimination
Could Do More Harm," Chronicle of Higher Ed, Feb 5
"Coronavirus Task Force Another Example of Trump Administration's Lack of Diversity," CNN
Jan 30
"Doctors and Nurses at Melbourne Hospital Racially Abused over Coronavirus Panic," The
Guardian Feb 26 (in the article there is only one single confirmed incident in which a rude
comment was made to a single medical professional, although the title of the article refers
to plural incidents)
"Asian caucus urges fellow lawmakers not to perpetuate racist stereotypes amid coronavirus
fears," The Hill, Feb 26
"How Covid-19 Coronavirus is Uncovering American Racism," Forbes Feb 18
"Chinese People in The UK Targeted with Abuse over Coronavirus", Guardian Feb 18
"The Pathogen of Prejudice: Coronavirus Spreads Racism Against Ethnic Chinese," The
Economist Feb 17
"The World in Grips of Epidemic More Dangerous than Coronavirus," -- Racism, of course! Al
Jazeera, Feb 20
"Australia Condemns Coronavirus Racism," Voice of America, feb 14
"Fear of Coronavirus Fuels Racist Sentiment Targeting Asians," LA Times, Feb 3
"The coronavirus exposes the history of racism and 'cleanliness,'" Vox Feb 7
"How to contain the virus of racism during coronavirus outbreak," San Francisco Chronicle
Feb 12
"The new coronavirus is not an excuse to be racist," The Verge Feb 4
"Xenophobia is a Pre-Existing Condition. How Harmful Stereotypes and Racism are Spreading
Around the Coronavirus" Time Magazine Feb 3
"The Coronavirus and the Long History of Using Diseases to Justify Xenophobia," Washington
POst Feb 13
"the Panic Over Chinese People Doesn't Come from Coronavirus: Casual acts of racism against
Asians were spreading more quickly than the virus itself." Slate, Feb 4
"On Social Media, Racist Responses to Coronavirus Can Have Their Own Contagion," NPR Feb
2
"Covid-19 Coronavirus racism: viral videos" [ongoing series] The Star Feb 14
"Coronavirus: UK Sees rise in racism targeting Asian people" Sky News Feb 6
"The Ugly History of Blaming Ethnic Groups for Outbreaks," Bloomberg News, Feb 16
In the face of a pandemic which is already killing thousands of people and causing
widespread economic disruption, the main response from media was to portray this as
fundamentally a problem of bigotry. Those were the only terms in which they could
understand what was happening.
Why would you bet against me here, Khalid? You're smarter than this. I think you know,
on some level, that vast amounts of the West's institutions and "thought leaders" and the
people with megaphones have a single hammer -- megacorporate-compatible
wokeness/anti-racism/mandatory idpol -- and they treat everything they come across as a
nail. It's never failed them yet.
I think there are different things going on here. I'm not sure if one can lump together
'thought leaders' , the media, politicians and scientific experts. Furthermore, to talk
about 'the media' doesn't make much sense to me: where, when? Most of the news that I
follow (UK news) has very little about "racism" etc.
To say that it's been "the main response" really does sound -and pardon me for saying
this- slightly unhinged. To say that there are some concerns about racism is one thing, to
say it's the *main* story is a rather remarkable claim (to me, at least).
I think your broader point about institutions and hammers obviously has some validity.
Maybe we could discuss that sometime (you have on previous occasions-and with great
eloquence)?
Come on Matt, it's not about betting against you or anything like that. Nothing
personal, my friend. I simply don't agree with you!
Western institutions may at some level be corrupted but at least you've got
institutions! Most countries don't have effective ones. Secondly, despite the degradation
of them (partly thanks to market fundamentalists) I wouldn't wholly endorse Rod's
pessimistic hype..there's hope yet. Er..they're running out of hand sanitizer here..maybe
you're right after all!
1. The need to get R 0 below 1.0 requires Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions or
tight containment and isolation actions (quarantine).
2. The need to keep the economy going (or risk a crash).
3. The need to keep the infection level below that which would swamp hospitals.
While young people may be minimally affected by the virus, they can certainly be disease
vectors for us not so young people.
These are among some of the leverage points/ point of conflict to watch.
Then, do the numbers based on the statistics from Korea if you don't like the ones from
China, extrapolating on to the world population. It's going to simply be too pervasive not to
be economically devastating unless the R0 is driven down.
That R2+ in China may reflect their culture; in the US there's simply less touching and
crowding, at least outside a handful of big cities. State/local public health is capable of
educating at those levels, and at this point they represent the only hope I can imagine.
The vulnerability of the US in the current political environment comes because this
regime, versus that of the Chinese, doesn't realize it's better to take their economic lumps
at the front-end, stopping this thing before it goes wild. That is certainly what Trump etal
are allowing to happen under the radar. (Scratch that: having deliberately turned the radar
OFF!)
What I foresee is a lag of some time in the US before it hits, and hits hard. Until then,
individual cases will be effectively shrugged off as one-offs, lumped in with
flu/pneumonia.
Was also interested in noting the revised incubation time noted, of 4.8 days. That would
make strangling this thing immediately quite the strategy to take, before it breaks-out into
the exponential and overwhelming growth that's now just a matter of time.
Huh? You need to stay 6 feet away from people to be sure of not being infected by
coughing. Are you telling me Americans don't stand in lines at grocery stores? Sit near each
other waiting to see doctors or in the waiting areas of service firms or government offices?
How about elevators?
But the bigger infection vector seems to be surfaces and the virus can live on them for up
to 9 days. So shopping cart handles, any ATM or payment device, parking meters, the valet who
handles tons of cars handling your steering wheel and key fob .
Hmmm . that is interesting. About 10 years ago, I worked in the Canadian health care
sector, for the feds delivering a project that involved identifying best practices for
emergency response plans for hospitals. The long and short, most hospital emergency response
plans already included responses to support staff by providing childcare options during
crises, to account for schools being closed. It was already rather widely embedded, something
we did not initially expect. For those who may be interested, two BPs we did identify that
were surprising in different way – local sourcing of food supply because in Ontario,
for example, the food was often prepped in Toronto and shipped around the province, as well
updating/standardizing generators and other emergency power systems.
This is one of those technically important issues I'd want to have real expertise comment
on.
I just read a credible summary of the 1918 flu, and there were a series of waves, or
possibly mutations, with it. Much of this history has been reconstructed forensically, given
the lack of science at the time. HOWEVER, there were definitely waves. It may have been a
case, in my reading, of the bug working its way through virgin hosts who somehow ducked it
the first time around. But there were several of these "waves".
Towns like Crested Butte in Colorado and a small handful of other towns, had some smart
doctors who knew what was up and were largely able to manage it through closing access to
their town until it finally "ran its course," whatever that actually means.
It does have the same genetic structure as flu, so seasonal vaccines would presumably be
possible. But, the mutations you mention, two of which were documented in China, make me want
to be educated. Modest genetic variations allow scientists to track the bug, as has happened
in Washington State. But ..someone really needs to provide more resolution to this
picture.
Best to be careful with the language here; The WHO declared nothing.
The joint WHO/Chinese CDC report OBSERVED a 3.4 death rate. There were plenty of
qualifiers on that figure, mainly due to potential asymptomatic cases. However, their search
for cases to test has been as robust as an authoritarian state can make it, and they worked
hard to factor all the variables in, so the report minimized how much lower it could be.
What may be more pertinent for the US is the South Korean experience, with their true
western healthcare system. I think there was a link to the figures on NC. Both experiences
have something to contribute to our understanding: consider them together.
With 5300+ cases there were 32 fatalities, making for a overall .6 mortality rate.
Assuming any number of infected that weren't screened would only drive that % down, while
fatalities you could pretty reliably expect to should up in the dead column.
No, you have this wrong. Don't get authoritative your supposed facts when you don't have
them right. So stop misleading readers. It's called agnotology, or informally, "making shit
up" and is a violation of our written site Policies, which I strongly suggest you read before
commenting again.
The China CDC's study released mid February found a case fatality rate of 2.3%.
The WHO most assuredly DID say the fatality rate was 3.4% based on global data.
The dispute began March 3 when the head of the WHO announced that the mortality rate for
the new coronavirus was 3.4%, which was higher than previously believed and made it far
more deadly than the seasonal flu.
"Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 (the disease spread by the virus) cases have
died," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a briefing. "By comparison,
seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected."
Moreover, the study, as we indicated, says it takes ~30 days for the coronavirus to run
its course. Fatalities will usually occur late in this time frame, since the coronavirus
typically acts like a normal flu for 5-7 days, then generates viral pneumonia in severe
cases.
With a rapidly rising infection rate, the number of infections mainly includes people at
early phases in the infection process, and hence naive computation of mortality rates
(deaths/reported cases) are misleading on the low side.
Dr. Tedros, Director General of the World Health Organisation, said that 3.4% of all
reported cases have died. This is a CFR (case fatality rate) of 3.4% The British Chief
Medical officer claims that approximately 1% of reported cases are fatal.
Both of those
statements are covered in the first minute or two of Dr. John Campbell's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HpU_x9OgQ4
I leave to the those who watch the first 100 seconds of the video to decide for themselves
which estimate Dr. Campbell finds more realistic.
A Russian in Wuhan, Hubei YouTube (below)- 1,209,416 views, 31:29 minutes
Must watch real autocratic LOCKDOWN . CGTN reported Hubei should be free from Covid-19
by end of April, maybe not 100% but at least close.
Pompeo Blames China For US Outbreak, Says Lack Of Transparency "Left Us Behind The
Curve"
Before I address supply chain disruptions and other societal impacts, I want to address how
the government and the Center For Disease Control have totally failed and endangered the
medical professionals and law enforcement officers of the United States.
They failed in the following ways:
Did not provide timely and accurate information to police, medics, doctors, nurses, and
other professionals. They did not tell these fine folks how contagious COVID-19 actually is.
They never expressed that this disease is aerosolized.
Provided no way for medical professionals to test. The long delay in testing supplies
combined with delivering dirty and unusable test kits has made a bad situation much worse
than it had to be.
The CDC has stopped reporting testing after complaints about how few they were doing.
This is irresponsible and not how an agency that is supposed to be working in the best
interest of the health of America should act.
Refusing to acknowledge that the incubation period of COVID-19 is likely longer than 14
days. The result is an inadequate quarantine period.
The people that work hard to provide medical and emergency services for us are being let
down and we will all pay for this in the future. What happens when the people trained to take
care of us when we are sick and keep communities safe cannot because they are sick too?
5 Dallas police officers were sent home after it was discovered they were potentially
exposed to COVID-19 due to interaction during the arrest and processing of a man.
Population genetic analyses of 103 SARS-CoV-2 genomes indicated that these viruses evolved
into two major types (designated L and S), that are well defined by two different SNPs that
show nearly complete linkage across the viral strains sequenced to date. Although the L
type (∼70%) is more prevalent than the S type (∼30%), the S type was found to be
the ancestral version.
Whereas the L type was more prevalent in the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan, the
frequency of the L type decreased after early January 2020.
Human intervention may have placed more severe selective pressure on the L type, which
might be more aggressive and spread more quickly.
On the other hand, the S type, which is evolutionarily older and less aggressive, might
have increased in relative frequency due to relatively weaker selective pressure.
"... Researchers have discovered that smooth (non-porous) surfaces like door knobs transmit bacteria and viruses better than porous materials like paper money because porous, especially fibrous, materials absorb and trap the contagion, making it harder to contract through simple touch. ..."
"... A majority of respiratory viruses are enveloped (parainfluenza virus, influenza virus, RSV, and coronavirus) and survive on surfaces from hours to days . ..."
"... Studies have demonstrated that viral transfer from hands to surrounding surfaces is possible in 7 out of 10 viruses reviewed. Generally, research evidence suggests that a large portion of enteric and respiratory illnesses can be prevented through improved environmental hygiene, with an emphasis on better hand and surface cleaning practices. ..."
"... "Our structural analyses confidently predict that the Wuhan coronavirus uses ACE2 as its host receptor," the investigators wrote. That and several other structural details of the new virus are consistent with the ability of the Wuhan coronavirus to infect humans and with some capability to transmit among humans. ..."
"... Imagine trying to quarantine the Chicago metro area. That's the enormity of the task we're talking about. ..."
"... People who travel to and from China generally will be on the wealthier side and are likely to be covered in a US healthcare system. If the virus gets into the US uninsured population, then it is much less likely that they will seek medical help quickly, which should also aid in transmission, especially in the US as many other developed countries will be much better prepared to address a population-wide challenge. ..."
"... IF it gets out of control here, I foresee a nationwide Super Dome after Katrina situation. Tent cities full of sick folks ..."
"... I was there on 9/11 and there is a calm and sense of cohesion that happens during calamities ..."
"... 10,000 people died of the flu in the US in 2019, ..."
"... How many people can even tell the difference between a cold and flu? The pressure to go to work even when we have sick leave or vacation days can be intense. And the lack of information . ..."
"... the people who actually need hospitalization for the disease need mechanical ventilation, and this is a highly specialized resource that's in much shorter supply than mere hospital beds. ..."
First, there is the possibility that the virus may be transmitted by touching surfaces.
MedPage Today :
[Maria Van Kerkhove, of WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis division] said that evidence indicates the virus can be transmitted
through the respiratory route, via droplets, and physical contact between people, but also from fomites, as the virus can live
on surfaces for a short period of times
Any inanimate object, that when contaminated with or exposed to infectious agents, such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses or
fungi, can transfer disease to a new host. In addition to objects in hospital settings, other common fomites for humans are door
knobs, light switches, handrails, elevator buttons, television remote controls, pens, and other items that are frequently touched
by different people and that may be infrequently cleaned.
Researchers have discovered that smooth (non-porous) surfaces like door knobs transmit bacteria and viruses better than
porous materials like paper money because porous, especially fibrous, materials absorb and trap the contagion, making it harder
to contract through simple touch.
So far as I know, there is no case of #2019-nCoV with a history of fomite transmission, so we will have to look to other viruses
for indications. End sidebar.
There is now growing evidence that contaminated fomites or surfaces play a key role in the spread of viral infections.
Virus spread by person-to-person contact can be interrupted with isolation of the viral carrier. Yet, isolation may prove to
be impractical or difficult if there are many people or if the source of infection is unknown (69). Consequently, interrupting
disease spread via indoor fomites is one of the more practical methods for limiting or preventing enteric and respiratory viral
infections.
A majority of respiratory viruses are enveloped (parainfluenza virus, influenza virus, RSV, and coronavirus) and survive
on surfaces from hours to days .
Studies have demonstrated that viral transfer from hands to surrounding surfaces is possible in 7 out of 10 viruses reviewed.
Generally, research evidence suggests that a large portion of enteric and respiratory illnesses can be prevented through improved
environmental hygiene, with an emphasis on better hand and surface cleaning practices.
(So clean your keyboards, light switches, etc. besides washing your hands!) For a corona virus, although not #2019-nCoV specifically,
from the American Society for Microbiology, "Effects of Air Temperature and Relative Humidity on Coronavirus Survival on Surfaces"
(2010):
The potential reemergence of SARS or the emergence of new strains of pandemic influenza virus, including avian and swine influenza
viruses, could pose serious risks for nosocomial disease spread via contaminated surfaces. However, this risk is still poorly
understood, and more work is needed to quantify the risk of exposure and possible transmission associated with surfaces.
Animal coronaviruses that "host jump" to humans result in severe infections with high mortality, such as severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) and, more recently, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). We show here that a closely related human coronavirus,
229E, which causes upper respiratory tract infection in healthy individuals and serious disease in patients with comorbidities,
remained infectious on surface materials common to public and domestic areas for several days. The low infectious dose means that
this is a significant infection risk to anyone touching a contaminated surface.
Again, however, we don't have any kind of case data whatever, so for now I'm putting this into the category of things one might
worry about (as opposed to things one should absolutely not do, like standing next to a coughing person from Wuhan for any period
of time). Fascinatingly, the article concludes:
However, rapid inactivation, irreversible destruction of viral RNA, and massive structural damage were observed in coronavirus
exposed to copper and copper alloy surfaces.
So if your bathroom fixtures are made out of copper, you're good. Alternatively, one could visit the local home and garden store
and experiment . (Kidding! Copper sprays are poisonous!)
The novel coronavirus was detected in the loose stool of the first U.S. case -- a finding that hasn't featured among case reports
from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak. However, that doesn't surprise scientists who have studied coronaviruses, nor
doctors familiar with the bug that caused SARS.
Squat latrines, common in China, lacking covers and hands that aren't washed thoroughly with soap and water after visiting
the bathroom could be a source of virus transmission, said [John Nicholls, a clinical professor of pathology at the University
of Hong Kong], who was part of the research team that isolated and characterized the SARS virus.
A virus-laden aerosol plume emanating from a SARS patient with diarrhea was implicated in possibly hundreds of cases at Hong
Kong's Amoy Gardens housing complex in 2003. That led the city's researchers to understand the importance of the virus's spread
through the gastrointestinal tract, and to recognize both the limitation of face masks and importance of cleanliness and hygiene,
Nicholls said.
I wouldn't classify face masks as virtue signaling, exactly, but the more I read, the more 19th-Century basic hygiene measures
assume salience. (I'm not sure whether fecal matter as such would be considered a fomite, as opposed, say, to the metal handle of
a flush toilet.)
Travel and trade restrictions can lead to dire economic consequences for countries involved, creating a disincentive for them
to quickly disclose potential outbreaks to the WHO or other nations. They can hinder the sharing of information, make it harder
to track cases and their contacts, and disrupt the medical supply chain, potentially fueling shortages of drugs and medical supplies
in the areas hit hardest by the outbreak. They also send a punitive message, which could contribute to discrimination and stigmatization
against Chinese nationals, experts warned.
Any effort and money spent crafting and enforcing travel and trade restrictions also take away already-stretched resources
from public health measures that have been proven to be far more effective, experts said. Those measures include providing assistance
to countries with weaker health systems, accelerating the development of a vaccine or rapid diagnostic test, and clearly communicating
with the public about when and how to seek care.
I've gotta say I'm of two minds about this. I accept the argument that a travel ban will only slow, and not stop, the acceleration
of a virus (since original propagators will have already been in-country). And apparently the Chinese interpreted Trump's punitive
message all too clearly. Still, if increased social distance is a good method to stop an epidemic, what social distance is easier
to increase than that between countries? (Perhaps an exception could be made for scientists and medical personnel.)
For example :
[T]ravel has made the world far more interconnected than in 2003, accelerating the rate of infection. China -- the starting
point for both viruses -- has become the world's largest outbound tourism market and one of the engines driving the global economy.
In the intervening years since the SARS outbreak, global airline capacity into China is 3.8 times larger than it was in 2005.
China flights now account for 12 percent of total worldwide available seat kilometers versus only five percent 15 years ago, according
to PlaneStats.com, Oliver Wyman's aviation data portal.
Decade-long structural studies by Fang Li of the University of Minnesota, et al. have shown how the SARS virus (SARS-CoV) interacts
with animal and human hosts in order to infect them. The mechanics of infection by the Wuhan coronavirus appear to be similar.
These investigators used the knowledge they gleaned from multiple SARS-CoV strains -- isolated from different hosts in different
years -- and angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) receptors from different animal species to model predictions for the novel
Wuhan coronavirus. (Both viruses use ACE2 to gain entry into the cell, but it serves normally as a regulator for heart function.)
"Our structural analyses confidently predict that the Wuhan coronavirus uses ACE2 as its host receptor," the investigators
wrote. That and several other structural details of the new virus are consistent with the ability of the Wuhan coronavirus to
infect humans and with some capability to transmit among humans.
"Alarmingly, our data predict that a single mutation [at a specific spot in the genome] could significantly enhance [the
Wuhan coronavirus's] ability to bind with human ACE2 ," the investigators write. For this reason, Wuhan coronavirus evolution
in patients should be closely monitored for the emergence of novel mutations at the 501 position in its genome, and to a lesser
extent, the 494 position, in order to predict the possibility of a more serious outbreak than has been seen so far.
Ulp. Great work on the science, though!
No, #2019-nCoV Is Not a Bioweapon
At least one finance-adjacent blog (not this one) promoted a bioRxiv pre-print entitled "Uncanny similarity of unique inserts
in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag", containing the inflammatory passage "The finding of 4 unique inserts in the
2019-nCoV, all of which have identity/similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous
in nature." That paper has now been withdrawn. From Richard Sever, Assistant Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Editor
of CSH Perspectives, bioRxiv Co-Founder:
Authors of disputed "uncanny" 2019-nCoV preprint to voluntarily withdraw preprint:
"It was not our intention to feed into the conspiracy theories we appreciate the criticisms and will get back with a revised version"
https://t.co/zGcT1440D0
The 2019-nCoV genome does not contain remarkable genomic properties which need explaining, and for which we'd look to some
kind of bioengineering as a cause.
The virus has a close 96% sequence overlap to a naturally occurring bat coronavirus, and coronaviruses have been known to jump
from bats to humans by way of intermediates before, like the SARS coronavirus. The differences between the genome sequences, including
the ones identified by the Indian study, are in variable regions of the genome that we'd expect to differ, and the 4% difference
in the genomes is hard to call as "high" or "low," given that we don't know exactly which bats the 2019-nCoV strain came from
or when it diverged from its closest known ancestor.
Nor is it surprising that the known 2019-nCoV sequences all contain the same genomic changes relative to a known relative.
They all came from the same outbreak from the same animal reservoir, i.e. they only diverged from each other a few months ago
at most. It's not surprising that they haven't evolved very much away from each other.
Nor does the clinical presentation of 2019-nCoV have novel features which need explaining. Its symptom profile, degree of transmissibility,
severity, mortality rate, duration, incubation and latent period, ability to jump from animals to humans, and ability to transmit
asymptomatically and by skin contact are all within the precedents established by other human coronaviruses.
That is, the 2019-nCoV genome and the way it affects humans have, by themselves, no special anomaly which needs explaining.
The levels of genetic similarity between the 2019-nCoV and [BatCoV] RaTG13 suggest that the latter does not provide the exact
variant that caused the outbreak in humans, but the hypothesis that 2019-nCoV has originated from bats is very likely. We show
evidence that the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) is not-mosaic consisting in almost half of its genome of a distinct lineage within
the betacoronavirus.
Conclusion
There's been a good deal of dunking on how China's government and health care system has handled the #2019-nCoV epidemic (or pandemic).
For example, from the China Media Project, a really interesting media critique, "
As an Epidemic Raged, What Kept Party
Media Busy? ". It concludes:
On January 25, there were at last two reports about the epidemic on the right-hand side of the People's Daily front page. Either
of these stories would have merited top billing on the page, but this was not the case. Priority was given instead to a report
in the anti-poverty propaganda series, "The General Secretary Visited Hour Home."
During this key period, from January 21 to 25, many party members, cadres and ordinary people were full of suspicions. They
wondered how it was that no member of the CCP Standing Committee had yet managed to visit the scene of the epidemic in Wuhan,
something that had happened in the case of both the SARS epidemic and the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. When people felt fearful and
at a loss, why was there all this focus on peace and happiness?
The blame certainly does not fall on the shoulders of the top editors of these Party papers. Since the start of the year, the
pages of China's Party newspapers have been given their "assigned seats." The activities in which leaders would take part had
already been fixed, and the themes to be emphasized had been more or less carved in stone. Inspections, greetings, expressions
of condolence, banquet speeches – everything had already been planned. There would be no detracting from the prestige of the "leader."
The system of the CCP is like a great big elephant. It is difficult for the sudden and unexpected to force any change
to its huge and lumbering gait .
All of the deception and miscalculation that has happened in the wake of the revealing of the epidemic has been a source of
immense public anger.
However, NC readers have are familiar with and have expressed a rather robust critique of the health care system in the United
States. Can we -- a country that until last year was experiencing dropping life expectancy -- say we would do better than China?
The fecal route is interesting. Most public restrooms don't have lids and modern water efficient toilets are designed to be
energetic, so they send sprays up into the air where the little droplets can contaminate many surfaces in a bathroom. This should
be a particularly efficient transmission route in airports. https://www.today.com/home/it-necessary-close-toilet-lid-when-you-flush-t143776
People who travel to and from China generally will be on the wealthier side and are likely to be covered in a US healthcare
system. If the virus gets into the US uninsured population, then it is much less likely that they will seek medical help quickly,
which should also aid in transmission, especially in the US as many other developed countries will be much better prepared to
address a population-wide challenge.
IF it gets out of control here, I foresee a nationwide Super Dome after Katrina situation. Tent cities full of sick folks
who are left to die and not allowed to leave. Chinese people getting gunned down for sneezing in Walmart. Every man for himself.
Empty supermarket shelves. No sign of the brave police who will refuse to go to work / get out of their cruisers. Doctors taking
a long vacation en masse. Gas shortages. Mass layoffs. Widespread starvation.
I think 8 across the country is making people worried. If this moves even into the hundreds, people will start to get scared
But I'm not sure about complete mayhem and pandemonium. I was there on 9/11 and there is a calm and sense of cohesion that
happens during calamities. But that was different than this.
I do think there will be a market crash and probably a global "something" (retraction, recession, not sure).
What's the Chinese saying – may you live in interesting times? LOL. The next 2-4 weeks will be very interesting indeed.
Of course there will be problems, but people have an uncanny ability to come together during disasters. This was written about
in A PARADISE BUILT IN HELL, by Rebecca Solnit. She talks about different disasters and the lack of looting and other shenaningans.
How many people can even tell the difference between a cold and flu? The pressure to go to work even when we have sick
leave or vacation days can be intense. And the lack of information . Does going to doctor help? What if a person gets stuck
in an isolation ward for observation who pays for that? Or do doctors send people home with a list of instructions?
And if we have thousands being held in hospitals -- Who pays. Will hospitals hold uninsured?
If people don't have insurance when then they won't go to the doctor if they think it is JUST a cold or flu. Even having insurance
I had a couple of bronchitis events where I didn't go to the doctor until I was crazy sick. Hardly able to draw a breath without
horrific cough.
I was reading that Chinese men who were taking an ACE inhibitor were suffering fewer severe complications from CV. I can't
find the report though. Anyone know of this?
"[ ] We report the first case of 2019-nCoV infection confirmed in the United States and describe the identification, diagnosis,
clinical course, and management of the case, including the patient's initial mild symptoms at presentation with progression to
pneumonia on day 9 of illness. [ ]"
Being that this is only a single case, any conclusions drawn should be considered tentative at best. However, the information
is still useful. My big take-away from this and other sources is that this coronavirus disease may be like a common cold on steroids.
In fact, it may be symptomatically indistinguishable from a cold until it enters its more severe phase where it turns into a nasty
pneumonia. The pneumonia may occur many days after initial symptoms appear, so many suffers may assume they merely have a cold
until it takes a turn for the worse, right about the time they expect to be feeling better.
If you ask me, this is close to a worst case scenario for a pandemic disease. Not only are the periods of incubation and asymptomatic
transmission likely long, but the early symptoms may not be distinctive enough for people to stay home from work, much less admit
themselves to a hospital where they might get tested and quarantined.
Also, I want to note that so far it seems that the people who actually need hospitalization for the disease need mechanical
ventilation, and this is a highly specialized resource that's in much shorter supply than mere hospital beds. Even a relatively
contained outbreak, could cripple the ICU services in any affected city. This has the potential to directly and severely impact
essentially everyone except a handful of elites with exclusive concierge service, whose price may be about to go up a lot. Maybe
all those bunkers in New Zealand will be seeing some warm bodies soon?
"I wouldn't classify face masks as virtue signaling, exactly". Agree, but here's a link to how to properly put on and test
a face mask that may add protection: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2010-133/pdfs/2010-133.pdf
Note, N95 masks are also useful for those of us in wildfire prone areas, as they protect against smoke. Also, for exposed eyes
there are several options, wrap around glasses or sunglasses, paintball protection plastic glasses, swimmer goggles, ski goggles,
etc.
All the above will increase survival odds if it comes to that. Lets hope we never need to use them.
51 new cases and 1 new death in the United States. 11 in New York State: 3 are in serious
condition and are treated in intensive care units. New cases include a man in his 40s and a woman
in her 80s. 1st case in Nevada, Tennessee, New Jersey
Hail
says: Website Show Comment
February 26, 2020 at 12:27 am GMT 300 Words
@unit472 What we know so far suggests more the World War Z narrative (hitting wealthy,
jet-set countries hard) than your proposed narrative of China's BRI buddies getting hit hard.
At least in terms of the virology, not the soft-power hit, on which I would more agree.
But, then, we do not have perfect information. There may be many cases in certain countries
we have heard nothing of. As Anatoly says:
Meanwhile, carriers need not be symptomatic to transmit. At such early stages, you are
only going to identify these clusters by intensive testing, which as I understand nobody
apart from Italy and South Korea is really doing yet. One might make a comparison to a
tsunami. Undetectable when it's out in the deep ocean, unless you're specifically looking for
it
The latest I have seen is that South Korea's testing situation was as follows (this is about
as of 24 hours ago):
37,000 persons tested, mainly cases stemming from the Shinchonji cult
– 22,550 found not infected
– 13,250 results pending
– 900 confirmed infected , of which 9 dead.
Among the current pool of testees, it will presumably to rise to 25 to 35 deaths , if
the S.Korea deaths follow the same death rate as observed elsewhere and including the likely
infected among the results-pending group.
Of those with results known (22,550 negative + 900 positive = 23,450), the infection rate
of contactees was therefore 3.5% to 4% . They only use the limited testing resources on
people who came into contact with a known infected person, so this suggests that if you had
at-least-moderate close-quarter dealings with a COVID19-infectee, your odds (actually an East
Asian's odds) of getting it could well be less than 1 in 30. Obviously this would rise with
very close-quarter-, long-term contact.
The odds of death, in turn, are known to be less than 1 in 200 (<0.5%) for most people
without preexisting health problems, and as low as 1 in 500 (0.2%) for healthy,
core-working-age people. The chance of dying from a single case of close contact with a
COVID19-infectee are therefore no higher for most of us than 1-in-1500, at least the way I read
the data.
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, according
to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or
urban areas. From a report:
As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates
that a worldwide planting programme could
remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities , a figure the scientists
describe as "mind-blowing." The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings
would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical
areas could have 100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on average about half the area
would be under tree canopy. The scientists specifically excluded all fields used to grow crops and urban areas from their analysis.
But they did include grazing land, on which the researchers say a few trees can also benefit sheep and cattle.
Instead of stopping the development of poor countries, why not convert the midwest to forests. Noone actually needs the corn.
Its exported or fed to pigs. As a plus we wont have to pay farming subsidies to grow useless corn anymore.
I am seeing references of "upwards of 80k daily", but in reference to all tropical rainforests. However, I'm not finding any
dates in that article.. just references to comparison between then levels in the 90's. If I had to guess based on other numbers
I can find, it's outdated as I do see a marked drop between 2000's and the last decade. Early 2000's was seeing the Amazon alone
at around 15-16k daily, compared to 5300 acres in 2018.
The only BS number I've seen in this thread is where you claimed that Google told you there was only 75 million acres of rainforest
left, because it seems obvious you read this:
Out of the 6 million square miles (15 million square kilometers) of tropical rainforest that once existed worldwide, only
2.4 million square miles (6 million square km) remain, and only 50 percent, or 75 million square acres (30 million hectares),
of temperate rainforests still exists, according to The Nature ...Jul 28, 2018
Live Science 63196-rainforest-facts
Which shows you missed the key phrase of "temperate" and didn't realize you weren't even talking about that in reference to
the Amazon. A tropical rainforest.
100k acres per day? Google just told me there are 75 million acres of rainforest left so you're saying they'll all be gone
in about 2.5 years? This is why no one takes the Left seriously.
What Google are you using? My Google (query: world rainforest coverage -- top two links) tells me there are 1.3 billion to
2.4 billion hectares
of tropical forest (depending on the definition of forest). That is something like 4 billion acres, not 75
million.
You should have realized immediately that 75 million acres (a bit over 100,000 square miles) is ridiculously low.
So 100k acres a day would be 40,000 days worth, or about 1% a year.
Yeah "the Left" has credibility problems (facepalm).
Open up Google Earth sometimes and have a look at Amazon rainfforest, especially southern end of it. And you are right, it's
not hard to spot by any means.
11% of the worlds land is not a small thing. Is there that much land with sufficient water that is not already used for agriculture?
They may have studied this in detail, but a lot of grazing land is pretty dry and trees won't grow quickly there.
Clearly it makes sense to first stop cutting down trees - but that is generally done to expand agricultural land in poor countries.
Is there a viable solution that provides jobs and food for people in those countries?
Trees of course are only a medium term solution - over hundreds to thousands of years they die or burn down and release the
carbon again. Needs to be investigated as part of a long term plan.
In some areas forests go through a regular, and not all that long term fire cycle, and a lot of the biomass gets returned to
the atmosphere.
Lots of things eat seedlings, one of the approaches I saw was from an effort to increase the number of trees somewhere in Africa
- they toss seed pods all over the place, wrapped up in charcoal balls. This keeps animals away from them in the early stages
of growth and also acts as a booster fertilizer.
This is this sort of thing that matters. Sometimes what sounds like a good idea may have issues that aren't at all obvious
to people who don't have detailed knowledge. sometimes the problems can be fixed but that might or might not make the whole idea
impractical.
11% of the worlds land is not a small thing. Is there that much land with sufficient water that is not already used for
agriculture?
More and more as time goes by. Global warming is extending the growing season in northern latitudes. It happens that there
is a lot tundra that will support such growth as it becomes warmer.
Trees of course are only a medium term solution - over hundreds to thousands of years they die or burn down and release
the carbon again. Needs to be investigated as part of a long term plan.
Cut them down before they burn or fall and rot. Use the lumber for building stuff. Plant more trees.
Not just that, the tree planting should be done in places where pollution is the greatest. Places like China, India, etc. Planting
trees in North America or Europe wouldn't do much to offset the pollution in factories in Bangalore or Suzhou
It is likely that forested land, under a shaded canopy, with organic soils that build up, will retain moisture better. Trees
actually also store some water in their structure. In many areas trees can also capture moisture from the air through condensation
and fog capture.
I live in the desert (Las Vegas). We were surprised at just how much difference lawn by the bedroom window made on the indoor temperature in that room. Eventually much of my lawn will go, but not before establishing an alternate green band around the house . . .
Other recent studies have found things such as that additional trees in an area as small as a few blocks lowers temperature
by a noticeable amount.
Trees of course are only a medium term solution - over hundreds to thousands of years they die or burn down and release
the carbon again. Needs to be investigated as part of a long term plan.
No. Even when trees burn down, a portion of the tree is retained as biochar, some of it becomes ash and washes into the soil,
and some of it (about 20%) is root mass which is also in the ground. It's tiresome to see people continually repeating the falsehood
that the entire tree simply up and vanishes into the atmosphere when it burns.
Now, off to other points along the thread...
Hold on (Score:1)
by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) (#58874972)
Unless they are going to eventually bury the trees in a deep mine and fill it with concrete, trees are carbon neutral. They
sequester Carbon until they die, then release it back into the atmosphere as they rot.
They release a percentage of their carbon back as they rot, and a portion is retained in the soil. They also have lifespans
measured in tens to hundreds of years.
Re:Not much good... by ShanghaiBill (#58875062)
Rainforests are shrinking, but temperate and subarctic forests are expanding.
Global tree cover has increased 7% since 1982
When we talk about floating sea ice, we care about the extent more than the mass, because the floating ice won't increase sea
level much at all -- but the change in albedo affects heating from insolation. But when we talk about trees specifically from
the standpoint of carbon sequestration, we care about the mass more than the area, because large mature trees fix carbon more
quickly than young ones. That's partly because trees only grow from a small layer under the bark called the cambium, and partly
because the rate of growth is also limited by the rate of photosynthesis. The larger the diameter of the tree, the larger the
cambium; the larger the tree, the more sunlight it can make use of, and the more photosynthesis.
We both need to plant fast-growing species, and also more importantly stop cutting large trees . Tree farming may
be a sustainable and carbon-negative process where access is very convenient and the energy costs are low, and should probably
continue to be a part of the overall solution, but it is imperative that we promote and protect large trees.
TL;DR (for the whole comment): Large trees really do sequester carbon.
To me the best type of solution is one that is self-maintaining. For example if non CO2 generating energy technology is developed
which is cheaper (including capital cost) than the economics "genie" will largely do this for you. No need for regulations or
complex giant programs
We don't have that yet (though some things are promising), so in the medium term we need other solutions. Planting trees *might*
be such a solution. I wouldn't want to rely on humans continuing to do it for hundreds of years thou
Oh, I'm fully in agreement with you on the value of planting trees. I'm just looking for clarity on the scope of the benefit. Whatever you do, everyone existing today will be dead in those "hundreds to thousands" of years. Whoever is alive then will
be dead in another hundreds to thousands of years.
People have a persistent tendency to imply in argument that people are immortal while simultaneously denying that they are.
The set of humans that will benefit in the described timeframes, regardless of what we d
It's not thorny at all. The choices are two. Either we
- actually prioritize people's lives, recognize that western humanism is by far the best system for the individual, and work to
aggressively replace governments who do not care for their populations, or
- we recognize that national self interest is primary, and stop worrying about people in other countries. If it's bad enough,
they need to revolt and fix their own shit.
We just can't keep doing neither/both simultaneously, complaining that "things should
Yes, but here's the problem: In the developed world, many countries are already below the replacement rate.
It's the poor countries where humans breed like rabits, and you can't tell a person who already has nothing in life to also
give up on the one thing that might make them have a life when they are old, because family structure support is a thing.
The world fertility rate is already getting towards the steady state level of 2.2. The continued increase in population is
mostly due to people living longer.
There are also economic problems that come with a falling population. If there is a fall it needs to be slow to avoid causing
problems.
Which is all fine as long as we make the effort to become carbon neutral fairly quickly.
It sounds a little too easy, but I do like that it's a suggestion that addresses the issue without utopian (dystopian?) visions
of planet-wide de-industrialization and radical decrease in standard of living.
Might even create jobs for all the people who will supposedly be unemployed because of automation and artificial intelligence.
70% of the planet has been deforested by us pesky humans in the past 400 years, much of it in the tropics so we can grow our
bananas, avocados, soy beans, palm oil, and coffee plants-to name a few. Obviously replacing a rich diverse forest that contains
hundreds or thousands of different plants with an agricultural mono culture will have a big impact at the regional level (flooding,
landslides, erosion, loss of biodiversity) and global level (temperature moderation, rainfall, loss of biodiversity).
Up until the late 70s, coffee was grown in the shade of existing mature trees in order to retain some habitat for birds, insects,
and other animals, but they stopped doing that and cut down the mature trees so they can use 100% of the land, at the expense
of the wildlife, and an increased usage of fertilizer and water. We have to stop doing stuff like that just to squeeze out an
extra 10% of revenue. So ya, planting trees and farming practices that include some old stock plants could/will make a big difference
if incorporated on a large scale.
BTW, I didn't know this until today, but the largest coffee producer is Brazil at 30% of the total. That's an enormous amount
of rain-forest in one country that was clear-cut to produce just one product.
This article was on the brink of covering some really important topics that could simultaneously resolve our climate issues
and reform our agricultural system to bring it into better harmony with the land and its natural cycles.
For example, it suggested that two or three trees in every cow pasture would help. Project Drawdown (https://www.drawdown.org)
goes further, and describes silvopasture, mixing sparse forest with grazing animals, as an old practice ripe for revival that,
for an estimated $41.59 billion USD net implementation cost worldwide, would yield $699.37 billion USD in savings. This is one
of many approaches that make sense when one draws on ecosystems for inspiration for designing systems that can support human life,
without wrecking the planet.
Drawdown's write-ups are significant because they represent a lot of research and solid estimates of what the costs and benefits
are of many approaches that, in unison, could resolve the climate crisis.
Other significant write-ups:
https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org]
(Basic forest-planting as most people think of it) https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org]
(Restoring tropical rainforests) https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org]
(Biochar, which if you research leads into a fascinating revival of the creation of carbonaceous soils which better retain water
and nutrients, while sequestering CO2 more rapidly than forests and is immediately applicable to our grasslands and plains)
https://www.drawdown.org/solut...
[drawdown.org] (Multistrata agroforestry...) https://www.drawdown.org/solut... [drawdown.org]
(Tree polyculture which conveys benefits for resilience, resistance to pests, soil health, and multiple yields from the same land)
Towards the end of that list you might notice a theme of pursuing polycultures in agriculture, which 20th century industrial
agriculture eschewed for obvious reasons. Might we not revisit that? A combination of ancient polycultural techniques which allowed
complementary plant species to maintain long-term yields and new levels of AI-guided farming may well finally unite our ancient
and current knowledge and help solve this crisis.
This is a repost. It's all well and good for researchers to think about climate change. To me, it's pretty clear that climate
science has the general picture right, even if individual models are all imperfect.
However, I doubt anything serious will be done until it becomes a *real* and *immediate* problem that's undeniable to *most*
of the planet. In the past, humanity was able to do things proactively, like agree to limit fluorocarbons to fix the hole we punched
in our ozone layer. Unfortunately, forward-thinking and cooperation is mostly dead, at least for the time being. Humanity is currently
engaged in a full-blown session of head-up-ass (on multiple issues, not just climate change) and the bar for action in this area
is very, very high.
A slight rise in temperature isn't real enough.
A slight increase in storm severity isn't enough.
The loss of one or two major breadbasket regions isn't enough. Food production will just shift around.
Anything that happens in a poor country isn't enough, including starvation. Poor people simply don't count enough to those with
power and wealth.
Any effect that is limited to the coasts isn't enough. People will just move.
Any extinctions short of country-scale ecological collapse isn't enough. Most people don't care about plants and critters beyond
eating them.
Anything that is limited to the arctic isn't enough. Nobody lives there.
Mass migrations from poor countries won't be enough. Rich countries will just put up barriers and allow populations to die.
Actually, humanity is starting to de-carbonize, but incrementally and not for ecological reasons. Renewables are slowly becoming
more economically competitive than carbon-based energy. Will it happen before we change the planet in ways that impede our progress
as a species? The jury is still out on that one.
As far as I can see, There are the only things that will force humanity to deal with the problem at a faster pace: One: environmental-related
destruction that renders entire cities in the rich world uninhabitable. That level of economic damage won't be deniable. Two:
loss of enough major food-producing regions to affect the dinner tables of people in the rich world. When steak becomes unavailable,
it'll be serious.
Beyond that, it's business as usual. Let's hope that geo-engineering is a viable option, because I suspect that we're going
to need it.
>Humanity is currently engaged in a full-blown session of head-up-ass
Not on climate change. In the past 10 years, Western countries practically stopped increasing production of CO2. In the same
period, India and China dramatically increased production of CO2.
..they'll beat a path to your door.
I'm serious. Find a way to make planting more and more trees more profitable than other things that destroy forests and people
and businesses will fight each other for a chance to get in on it.
Here's an idea: make more 'durable' things out of wood. Not just houses and other buildings. Promote the use of wood as a construction
material for any number of things, instead of plastics or metals. Yes, I'm advocating going backwards a bit technologically-speaking
-- or am I? Wh
Me and my wife bought and planted six trees in the elementary (K through 6) school yard near our house to provide a place where
kids could sit in a shaded place. That was forty years ago. I've planted some trees in my yard that died because it's too hot
for them to survive, even when I watered them every day. I have two bonsai trees and a succulent plant in my home office (the
gas chamber) that I put outside for a few hours per day. Trees help. Politicians don't. People can.
Grazing isn't the only thing. Our farms are optimized for big machines. Medieval farm lands did have trees around and inside
the fields. They provided shadow, kept the soil from eroding and gave workers a nice resting place during harvest.
Roads with trees get less hot, due to shadow. Cities with trees get less hot and have cleaner air.
You can't exaggerate the benefits of trees.
So yes, plant more trees. There's no reason not to.
While I'm dubious about this plan doing much of anything about CO2 concentrations, you can't really go wrong with planting
trees in otherwise unused spaces. Especially in cities, nothing like a little greenery to improve the general look and feel of
a place. Plus you get more shade, it cleans the air a bit, improves water retention, there is really no downside. And if you eventually
do need the land under the tree for something else, well no problem, we are pretty good at cutting down trees.
Tree planting is the one that can be implemented immediately.
There are other forms of carbon capture out there as well.
What we do NOT need, is another 40 years of wrangling about picking "the best" way.
Implement (to greater or lesser extent), ALL of them. Or at least a mix of the most promising ones.
It seems that filling up the areas which could support trees (and I love trees so I like the idea) would eventually absorb
10 years' worth of human emissions of CO2. Some of that is already absorbed, so it might be more of net emissions. Trees might
take 30 years to get to maturity so if they could absorb 30 years of net emissions that would be a great breathing space, but
it would still mean a lot of work on power generation etc would need to be done too. And how fast could they be planted?
They should calculate a number of trees to be planted per country and allow countries to trade up/down based on a credit system.
It is quite straight forward really. What I would be curious to see is the timeline under which it would make an impact. Is
this something that takes 20 years once planted or takes a year? Does it result in a steady state system or is it a once off measure
to capture the output?
Unless they are going to eventually bury the trees in a deep mine and fill it with concrete, trees are carbon neutral. They
sequester Carbon until they die, then release it back into the atmosphere as they rot.
<sigh> If you'd ever worked with trees, firewood, or even wood construction materials, you'd know that chunks of wood take
a long time to rot. Some tree varieties, like redwood or cedar, naturally repel rotting and can last a VERY long time.
So yeah, plant more trees! Eat more apples, apricots, peaches, plums, etc and throw those seeds around outdoors!
A dozen years is still a long time. During that time period, I could have had another new tree growing in that same spot to
completely replace the one you chopped down and rotted away.
In my back yard, I have shade trees that grow way too big for my comfort. Every fall, I chop them down to just over my head
height-wise. I wood chip the small branches for ground mulch, while selling the bigger chunks for firewood. Firewood is net carbon
neutral by itself, but when you consider it is replacing the use of fossil fuels that would have been employed to heat people's
houses, it's actually much better than net neutral. Much of the firewood releases CO2 back into the atmosphere, but there is always
some charcoal left behind when people no longer need heat. That charcoal will likely never rot away.
Every year, my shade trees grow back, just as big or bigger than the year before. The main trunks that don't get chopped down
continue gaining girth and thus sequesters CO2. The unburned wood chips slowly compost and turn into rich black soil -- that's
sequestered carbon there too.
I don't understand what is going through the minds of these naysayers... They yell and scream about global warming, yet always
deny that solutions exist or try to downplay the effectiveness of good solutions. In a way, THEY are the bigger problem. They
don't want to solve global warming, they want to keep the narrative alive so they can profit from it somehow!
During that time period, I could have had another new tree growing in that same spot to completely replace the one you chopped
down and rotted away.
For a net carbon balance of nothing, and a large increase in global warming potential, as some of the Carbon released from
the rotting tree is released as Methane.
Firewood is net carbon neutral by itself, but when you consider it is replacing the use of fossil fuels that would have
been employed to heat people's houses, it's actually much better than net neutral.
Lets call it a carbon neutral fuel ... so long as you use renewable energy to cut down the trees, and deliver them to
the people's houses. There are non-carbon neutral ways to heat a house, but that doesn't make wood use remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Much of the firewood releases CO2 back into the atmosphere, but there is always some charcoal left behind when people no
longer need heat. That charcoal will likely never rot away
Yeah, burying charcoal or biochar probably sequesters carbon. It's got a lot of impacts on the ch
That if we use the "plant a tree solution" we may actually lose the political will to do something against fosile fuel consumption,
or heck worst case people pretend the problem is solved and consume even more than before. Planting tree is IMO only a band aid
even if we remove a lot of carbon, because of that: This is only a short term solution, and maybe by the time the 100 to 200 year
are over, we'll be even more screwed over instead.
How is this a short term solution? Go take a walk through a forest. Note that you will see trees in various stages of growth,
death and decay, Note also the ground you are walking on. It's not bare rock but built up layers and layers of dropped leaves,
needles, branches and dead trees and living and dead root systems. All that soil is full of sequestered carbon. If any of those
trees happen to get harvested for lumber that carbon is sequestered as well, possibly for centuries. Planting trees is not a short
term solution. It's also not the total solution, but it's a far better step forward than doing nothing.
The global population problem is already solved. Yes, population is still climbing, and will continue for 30 years or so, but
this isn't because we're having more children. The number of children born every year has been stable for some time, and is beginning
to decline. The reason population is increasing is because the number of children born every year was exploding until a few decades
ago, resulting in a global population that is skewed young.
Basically, we've reached a point where each new generation is about two billion people. Human lifespan is such that there are
basically five generations alive at any given time. This means that, barring a significant increase in lifespan, we should expect
a steady-state population of roughly 10B, which as you pointed out, we expect to reach in about 30 years. But that's where it
will stop... and then it will begin to decline.
The seeds of that decline are already visible in the declining global birthrates. Most of the developed world's birthrates
have already fallen below the replacement rate. The developing world is still above replacement rate, but falling rapidly. If
you wish to encourage the decline, support (a) the deployment of medical services that reduce infant and child mortality and (b)
the education of women. These two factors have enormous impact on birthrate.
So, yes, even if trees are only a short-term solution (and only a partial solution at that), short-term solutions are good,
because the long-term solution -- fewer people -- is already in the works.
I live in central NY state and hike through forested areas most days. From what I've observed, after falling down most large
trees take considerably longer than ten years to rot. I'm still stepping over some dead trees twenty-five years after they first
fell. Not saying trees don't eventually rot, but around here, in their natural environment, they seem quite resistant to rot.
Even after trees decay it's not like their wood just evaporates and returns to the atmosphere as CO2. A great deal of their material
sticks around decades longer as soil, which can sequester a great deal of carbon and nurture the next generation of trees.
The Fort McMurray fire accounted for 5% of all Canada's CO2 emission for that year. Unless you've discovered a way to both
reverse the trend to longer drier summers and figured out how to make trees fireproof, planting trees is just a panacea, an excuse
of to make the changes we need to make, including leaving fossil fuels in the ground
That especially includes the tar sands around Fort McMurray - the dirtiest oil on the planet. Makes most coal look clean by
comparison.
Anonymous Coward writes: on Thursday July 04, 2019 @08:40PM (
#58875290 )
>_ Sure, but if we pretend a tree absorbs carbon over 100 years, then rots over another 100-years we're still back to where
we are now. So unless we also massively cut our emissions the planet is still in trouble.
Not quite.
You owe me 10,000 dollars, due tonight -- or you owe me the same, payable in 10 years from now. Which do you prefer?
We lost precious time because some idio^W folks:
- would not believe there was a climate change;
- were in fear of having to pay for damages or
- wanted to troll about everything, including Earth destruction.
If we get the 200 hundred years slack you mention, we might find a better solution.
We could even not have the problem anymore because the world population might rise and then decline to more manageable levels...
who knows?
Also, new energy sources might help us sidestep entirely the current crisis.
There's zero slack to be had. You cannot get trees planted in sufficient volume to even keep up with current increases in CO2
emissions, never mind reversing them.
Sorry but this is dumb. If more trees reduce the rate, they reduce the rate. Keeping up or full reversal don't have to be achieved
to make the situation better than it is now.
You cannot get trees planted in sufficient volume to even keep up with current increases in CO2 emissions, never mind reversing
them.
I've already had a hamburger in my life; no point eating healthy now, I might as well eat hamburgers every single day, I've
already consumed some saturated fats.
I've already aged 40 years, might as well not quit smoking because even though it prematurely ages me, I've already aged some.
The toilet stopped up and overflowed- might as well keep flushing, I've already spilled toilet water on the floor.
Just because some damage has been done, and you may or may not be able to fix it all, doesn't mean you should d
There's zero slack to be had. You cannot get trees planted in sufficient volume to even keep up with current increases in
CO2 emissions, never mind reversing them.
Yes, this is the standard that we should use. It either solves everything or it's useless. There's clearly no middle ground
where something may help but not be a complete solution.
Trees make more trees. You think the forests that we still have only existed because man planted saplings? I also don't think
anyone ever said "plant some trees this year, then stop planting because the job is done!"
No, but in the case of the aforementioned farmers they cut the trees down so they could farm. Do you think forests exist behind
a magical barrier that protects them?
Sure, but if we pretend a tree absorbs carbon over 100 years, then rots over another 100-years we're still back to where
we are now.
No we are not because in the long term we will have greater electrification and greater renewable base power. Assuming we can
figure out renewables and storage to 100% satisfy an increasing global demand for electricity is unrealistic in a 20 year time
frame, but in a 100 year time frame much more realistic. So we would not be in the same place, we would be at a stable place not
the still changing place we have today.
So unless we also massively cut our emissions the planet is still in trouble.
And over a century that will happen through normal economic processes. We are literally run
Burning biomass and replanting to the same level is carbon neutral (in the long run). Planting new areas of forest (away from
lakes) locks carbon into those trees and the soil beneath it. You're basically creating new carbon stores.
Until new saplings growing from seeds in the mulch around them around them start absorbing the CO2. With the number of seeds
that trees drop, we may start running out of it! I, for one, welcome our new arboreal overlords.
Someone always posts this and it is completely irrelevant, not to mention painfully stupid. For a few reasons:
1. One tree is carbon neutral during its life span, but a forest (which is self renewing) isn't because it doesn't have an
end-of-life. Trees replace themselves and grow more trees, but the forest remains a constant practically forever on our time scale.
2. The life span of a tree is often measured in centuries. By the time a tree dies and decomposes it'll be so far in the future
than we'll likely be facing entirely different challenges. So even if the trees were all sterile and didn't self-maintain their
forests, this solution would still work for the short-to-medium term.
Planting large forests now will fix a lot of problems, not only now, but for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
Typically a forest is not cleared for firewood. You want the trees that are already dead and have fallen. You also want to
encourage sustainability to ensure future survival.
It may LOOK like a forest. But what's being planted is, essentially, a tree farm.
One that needs to be maintained to prevent fires, which immediately release all that carbon back, plus shitloads of particulate
pollution.
As such, a planted area can't simply be allowed to "grow wild" with new trees equaling or outstripping old growth death.
Trees drop leaves (containing carbon) every year. Building deeper and deeper carbon rich soil. Even when the trees die, much
of the carbon remains in the soil.
Don't need to bury the trees. One idea that might be worthwhile is to build things with these trees , like furniture, boats,
homes, and more. Just a thought.
That argument only works when people talk about growing carbon capturing annual crops. Forested areas hold a lot of carbon
permanently in their structure. Sure trees dies and rot, but in forests new trees grow to take their place so the amount of carbon
locked up remains constant.
Not quite constant though - forest soils also hold more carbon, so as the soil builds up (from decay) more carbon will be accumulate.
We had a dramatic demonstration of this by the way in the 16th Century. Between 1550 and 1610 the carbon content of Earth's
atmosphere dropped sharply, not fully recovering until the Industrial Revolution. This caused sharp cooling and contributed greatly
to the Little Ice Age (which is a term used for a complex cooling period in the middle part of the last millenium, not due to
one single cause). The apparent reason for this CO2 drop is the regrowth of forests in North America after Hernando de Soto's
expedition across the southern part of that continent introduced a number of pandemic diseases and wiped out the cultures that
practiced burning land-clearing (for pasture and hunting), and large scale agriculture.
Trees make seeds, seeds make more trees. It's self sustaining, unless the trees are cut down and not replanted. For instance
one of the biggest causes of an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the cutting down of trees to make new farmland.
Thats really the key to it all. Plant shitloads of trees, do something about deforestation (Im looking at you Brazil and Australia)
and we stand a decent chance of delaying the worst of it in time to build technological solutions (Nuclear reactors) or at least
transition out of the carbon fuel game.
But we shouldn't just take that to mean we can go on building new coal fired stations. We shouldn't fight to a standoff, we
actually need to roll back emissions.
The trees buy time and put bandages over the wounds. Using that time to expand carbon would be suicidal
Trees are not a permanent solution, but they may help us buy time
So let's say we plant all the trees over the next ten years, the trees live their expected life and by-and-large all die during
a similar 10 year period. That will buy us an amount of time roughly equal to average life of those trees - great! Except, unless
we seriously curtail CO2 production within that time frame we will find CO2 being released into the atmosphere at an increasing
rate as the trees die and release their trapped CO2...
Personally, my 9th grade Earth Sciences understanding of the process tha
You plant a load of trees. They suck x tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere. When they die, they release x tonnes (actually
x - a bit because some carbon is sequestered in the ground, but let's stick with x to keep it simple) back into the atmosphere.
So what have you gained? Well, for a few years the trees sequestered x tonnes of CO2. If you make sure you plant more trees to
replace the ones that died, you can keep those x tonnes sequestered more or less permanently.
In addition, you don't have to just let the dead trees rot, you can use them for fuel, replacing some of the fossil fuels we
are digging out of the ground. Plus, there are more trees in the World. That seems like a win-win situation.
Every forest eventually burns, releasing CO2 that you want sequestered. How are you going to stop lightning strikes ?
Every forest that burns is immediately replaced by a new forest. Wild fires / Forest fires are carbon neutral. You know all
those thousand and thousand of years before man made climate change, where things were at a lower "stable" CO2 level. Those many
millennia had forest fires.
The underlying assumption is that all the currently treeless regions are in fact capable of supporting trees. There might
very well be a reason these regions are currently treeless.
There is. We keep cutting them down faster than they can grow back. That's why we need to be more aggressive about re-planting.
Forestry management is an established branch of academic study and environmental practice. Many countries do it well already.
But the effort needs to be more global.
More trees is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but just assuming we can carpet the planet with trees Willy-nilly
Seems quite childish.
Of course we can't. Nobody said otherwise. For one thing, certain kinds of trees can grow only in certain areas. But we should
plant them where we can. As many as we can.
Maybe actually read the study [sciencemag.org],
or at least the abstract, before long-jumping to gold in the Assumption Olympics:
We mapped the global potential tree coverage to show that 4.4 billion hectares of canopy cover could exist under the current
climate. Excluding existing trees and agricultural and urban areas, we found that there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares
of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests.
The underlying assumption is that all the currently treeless regions are in fact capable of supporting trees. There might
very well be a reason these regions are currently treeless.
More trees is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but just assuming we can carpet the planet with trees Willy-nilly
Seems quite childish.
In some cases you need trees in an area before you can make more trees in the area. Sometimes they need the shade produced
by other trees. Sometimes, like in swamps they need fallen trees to help them take root themselves by growing in their decomposing
ancestor. Sometimes the air is too dry and the trees need more humidity, or rain.
You clearcut an entire area and new trees can't grow there again, not enough rain or humidity. Plant enough trees again and
it encourages rain and traps moisture in the air
What a narrow minded ignorant comment.
The messenger is irrelevant partisan shithead.
I can't stand Trump, but a good ideas a good idea, if he started a mass tree planting program I'd be behind him 100%.
ALL excess carbon gets eaten up by plankton, which falls into the deep ocean where it will stay for millions of years.
Planting trees is a good thing for many other reasons, but for "climate change" it is just jacking off.
Abbott's Direct Action Plan was a con job designed to give money to polluters whilst doing nothing to combat climate change.
Paying corporations to be decent does not work. Look at Australia's emissions when they had a carbon price compared to what happened
immediately after it was repealed.
Dyson did some investigations in climate change early on (and kept track of it later) and wrote an article about how much effort
was needed http://redd-monitor.org/wp-con...
[redd-monitor.org]
The carbon intake/output of trees varies a lot depending on climate and lifecycle and actual implementation is not easy. Equatorial
forests trap far more carbon than Canadian forests do. Dyson focused on getting the carbon into the top soil which is where it
is retained best. There are a lot of ways the carbon avoids getting trapped into
While I agree about the whole corn thing (it's a useless vegetable for the most part and HFCS is garbage) the rest of your
comment makes you come off as kind of an asshole. Fix that, please?
They included all grazing lands and deserts in the land where trees need to be planted, that land generally does not support
the kind of trees they are thinking of. They can do it but it will require lots of irrigation, until sufficient growth, alters
localised climates.
In the mean time, the stupidest will breed the most, the problems increased by those least able to treat the problem.
Now the expect the most problematic areas to be alleviated by ignorant people moving from those areas to less problematic ar
BeauHD on Tuesday April 02,
2019 @10:30PM from the it's-not-a-competition dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from
The Wall Street Journal: So far this year there have been 387 confirmed U.S. measles cases,
more than 2018's
full-year total and the second-largest number since the disease was declared eliminated in
2000(Warning: source paywalled; alternative
source ), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease has
spread to 15 states in 2019, with six continuing outbreaks of three or more cases each in
Washington, New York, New Jersey and California. The development has sparked new policies aimed
at boosting inoculation and curbing misinformation about the measles vaccine.
Measles cases have has risen since 2000 as infected travelers bring the disease to the
U.S. Those travelers -- unvaccinated foreign nationals or Americans who become infected abroad
-- have spread the highly contagious disease to others in the U.S. who aren't vaccinated or
hadn't previously had measles. These cases have fueled outbreaks in communities where large
numbers of people haven't been inoculated because of personal or religious exemptions to the
measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The largest growth in infections since measles was
eliminated totaled 23 outbreaks and 667 cases in 2014. Last year there were 17 outbreaks and
372 confirmed cases. The number of cases in 2019 could increase in the coming months. Measles
is a seasonal disease, with cases rising in late winter and early spring in temperate climates,
according to the World Health Organization.
Is that really true? Country kids are much more likely to be vaccinated than city
kids?
I can't speak for the US, but in Canada it's around 93% rural vaccinated vs 61% urban. Got
a bit different a few years ago when the laws got changed that if you have a kid in public
school they must be vaccinated here in Ontario. There was a huge outbreak of measles and
chickenpox in the Ottawa/Hull area a few years ago, basically one year after the other. Only
13% of the kids were vaccinated, all of their parents worked in government, or education, or
were in various specialty areas relating to government work(NGO's and such). And all of those
kids attended private schools. You can dig up the articles on it from the globe and mail, or
ottawa times if you're really interested in it.
Personally having had chickenpox during the big outbreak back in the 1980's, I sure as
hell wished that the vaccine was covered by OHIP at the time instead of being $400/pop(about
$850 today). Something my parents couldn't afford. Seeing the reactivation of it in shingles
with my grandparents was pretty bad, my one grandmothers reaction was bad enough it put her
into the hospital.
Part of the problem is that vaccines were too successful. Most parents nowadays have no
first hand knowledge of how bad these diseases were. This is a good thing, of course, but it
also means parents can easily assume that a low severity for measles ("you just get a rash
for a week and then you're fine") and other diseases (Whooping cough: "you just cough for a
bit"). Combine this with Internet misinformation inflating the risk of vaccines ("They've got
toxins... TOXINS!!!") and you have a recipe for a bad risk calculation. Sadly, it might take
a few more outbreaks before some parents really get the message that the vaccination risk is
much lower than the disease risk.
Speaking of a sense of proportion.... in the United States you're three times as likely
to die from a shark attack (1 death per year on average) as you are from from the measles
(1 death every 3 years on average from 387 reported measles cases per year).
To put that into further perspective, the U.S. averages
[ufl.edu] 11 deaths from fireworks and 24 from train crashes per year. Death from a literal
lightning strike is 141 times as common than dying from the measles in the United
States.
So let's not overreact quite yet.
Yes, there are things that kill you other than measles. The difference is that measles is
pretty easily preventable - people just have to get vaccinated.
The other issue with measles - and most of the "childhood diseases" - is that they have
other complications besides death.
"About one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of
the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual
disability."
"Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a very rare, but fatal disease of the
central nervous system that results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life.
SSPE generally develops 7 to 10 years after a person has measles, even though the person
seems to have fully recovered from the illness. Since measles was eliminated in 2000, SSPE is
rarely reported in the United States."
In the USA vaccine makers have blanket immunity from lawsuit. You can not sue them due
to harm, vaccine makers have no accountability. If you were a profit making corporation
with no liability for harm, would you maybe give less of a crap sometimes and maybe use the
old familiar trick of adding mercury to boost the vaccine production in some batches?
Maybe, who cares if you did? No one can sue you for damages!
This system was created to insure vaccine makers would continue creating vaccines. It is
fallout from the incident at Cutter labs where their polio vaccine was produced according to
government guidelines but still gave some people polio. The company was sued for negligence
even though they hadn't actually been negligent.
In the USA vaccine makers have blanket immunity from lawsuit.
You misunderstand the law. It's not that they are immune to lawsuits. The government has
assumed the liability.
So you can indeed sue due to vaccine injury. You'll just be suing the government instead
of a corporation.
And you don't actually have to sue. The government set up a vaccine injury program where
you can file a claim and get paid without a lawsuit. You are still free to sue if you'd
like.
Also, the FDA stops a whole lot more vaccines than lawsuits ever could. It's not like
there's nothing between the corporation coming up with something and the free market, as you
imply. And if you want to claim regulatory capture, you'd have to show some vaccines that
would not pass trials yet got released.
use the old familiar trick of adding mercury to boost the vaccine production in some
batches?
:faceplam:
Thiomersal is a preservative. It has nothing do do with boosting production rates. It was
introduced into vaccines in order to let doctors use one vial to treat multiple patients.
Pull out a new, empty syringe, fill it with a dose of vaccine from a vial, give the patient
the shot, toss the syringe. The alternative is syringes pre-loaded with vaccine, which
cost you a lot more money .
Thiomersal is also ethyl-mercury, which you pee out. Not methyl-mercury that stays in your
system. If you want to say something stupid like "it's got mercury so it's all the same!!!"
consider ethanol vs methanol. One will get you drunk. One will kill you very quickly. They're
almost identical. Ethyl-mercury vs methyl-mercury is similar.
So, congrats on making vaccines cost more. Also at a higher profit to "big pharma". Also,
Thiomersal was removed from childhood vaccines in 2000, with no reduction in autism rates, so
you did all this for nothing.
Before you go off half cocked, don't forget, migrants carry disease
Only if the vaccination rate in their country is lower than the vaccination rate in the
US.
And since you're making a very obvious dogwhistle, the vaccination rate in Central and
South American countries is higher than the US.
migrants expose themselves and their new host community to new strains of pathogens
This doesn't matter for the MMR vaccine. The different strains on the planet are still
covered by the vaccine. You need a high-mutation-rate disease like influenza for strains to
be relevant
This shit just makes me shake my head....all the work and effort and time and money that
went into developing vaccines, and these ninnies won't use them.
And it's all because discredited former British doctor (Andrew Wakefield) published a
bullshit medical paper claiming that vaccines were unsafe. That's all it took- the morons and
dumbshits ate it up and stopped vaccinating their children.
The only infectious human disease we have ever eradicated is smallpox, which was
eradicated way back in the 1970s. From an eradication point of view, measles and smallpox are
very similar: they are viruses, they are highly infectious, they do not mutate super-fast,
they infect only humans, it is obvious when someone has the disease, there is a very
effective vaccine. From a technical point of view, eradicating measles is a very similar task
to eradicating smallpox.
However, there is one significant difference: measles is a fairly worrying disease,
whereas smallpox is absolutely terrifying. This means there hasn't been the social and
political will to push an eradication program. If the will did exist, we could wrap it up in
about 10 years (wild guess on my part), and then nobody would ever need a measles vaccination
ever again. Don't like vaccinations? Push for eradication. Your kids will get the jab, but
your grandkids, great-grandkids, etc. forever, will not.
The list of diseases considered eradicable (as of 2008) is quite short. For example,
influenza is not - it readily jumps species (so eradication from humans would require
vaccinating wild ducks, for example) and it mutates rapidly, so new vaccines are constantly
needed.
The list:
[wikipedia.org]
Smallpox (eradicated)
Polio (on the verge of eradication, probably 5 to 10 years off)
Dracunculiasis/Guinea worm (on the verge of eradication)
Yaws (on the verge of eradication)
Malaria (eradication still decades away)
Hookworm
Lymphatic filariasis
Measles
Mumps
Rubella
Lymphatic filariasis
Cysticercosis
A quick check of Clark County, WA, indicates that of 73 cases reported at the time of the
article, 63 were NOT vaccinated, three had had only one vaccination (as opposed to the two
that are standard), and the remaining seven were "vaccination status unknown".
So, I repeat, where is the evidence that "EVERYONE who got the measles had been
vaccinated"? Evidence seems to support at least 90% NOT vaccinated....
There is nothing special in lack of preparedness to a serious epidemic. But it looks like
this epidemics is not that serious.
They were not provided training in safety protocols until five days later, the person
said. That's a classic bureaucratic incompetence. nothing new here. move on.
Posted by msmash on Thursday February 27, 2020 @06:54PM from the
Breaking-news dept. Federal health employees interacted with Americans quarantined for possible
exposure to the coronavirus without
proper medical training or protective gear then scattered into the general population, The
New York Times reported Thursday, citing a government whistle-blower. From the report: In a
portion of a complaint filing obtained by The New York Times that has been submitted to the
Office of the Special Counsel, the whistle-blower, described as a senior leader at the
Department of Health and Human Services, said the team was "improperly deployed" to two
military bases in California to assist the processing of Americans who had been evacuated from
coronavirus hot zones in China and elsewhere.
The staff members were sent to Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base and were
ordered to enter quarantined areas, including a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being
received.
They were not provided training in safety protocols until five days later, the person
said.
Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely
around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving
California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperature
three times a dayROTFLMAO (
Score: 2 ) by sit1963nz (
934837 ) on Thursday February 27, 2020 @07:01PM ( #59775768 ) Please
tell the world again how great the USA is, because from the outside you look like fucking
morons.
A new study by Chinese researchers indicates the novel coronavirus may have begun
human-to-human transmission in late November from a place other than the Huanan seafood
market in Wuhan.
The study published on ChinaXiv, a Chinese open repository for scientific researchers,
reveals t he new coronavirus was introduced to the seafood market from another location(s),
and then spread rapidly from the market due to the large number of close contacts. The
findings were the result of analyses of the genome data, sources of infection, and the route
of spread of variations of the novel coronavirus collected throughout China.
The study believes that patient(s) zero transmitted the virus to workers or sellers at the
Huanan seafood market, the crowded market easily facilitating further transmission of the
virus to buyers, which caused a wider spread in early December 2019. (Global Times, February
22, 2020, emphasis added (2)
Chinese medical authorities – and "intelligence agencies" – then conducted a
rapid and wide-ranging search for the origin of the virus, collecting nearly 100 samples of the
genome from 12 different countries on 4 continents, identifying all the varieties and
mutations. During this research, they determined the virus outbreak had begun much earlier,
probably in November, shortly after the Wuhan Military Games.
They then came to the same independent conclusions as the Japanese researchers – that
the virus did not begin in China but was introduced there from the outside.
China's top respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan said on January 27
"Though the COVID-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated
from China"
"But that is Chinese for "it originated someplace else, in another country". (4)
This of course raises questions as to the actual location of origin. If the authorities
pursued their analysis through 100 genome samples from 12 countries, they must have had a
compelling reason to be searching for the original source outside China. This would explain why
there was such difficulty in locating and identifying a 'patient zero'.
Japan's Media: The Coronavirus May Have Originated in the US
In February of 2020, the Japanese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coronavirus originated
in the US, not in China , and that some (or many) of the 14,000 American deaths attributed
to influenza may have in fact have resulted from the coronavirus. (5)
... ... ....
These claims stirred up a hornet's nest not only in Japan but in China,
immediately going viral on Chinese social media, especially since the Military World Games were
held in Wuhan in October, and it had already been widely discussed that the virus could have
been transmitted at that time – from a foreign source.
"Perhaps the US delegates brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, and some mutation occurred to
the virus, making it more deadly and contagious, and causing a widespread outbreak this
year." ( People's Daily , February 23,
2020) (1)
... ... ...
Taiwan Virologist Suggests the Coronavirus Originated in the US
...The basic logic is that the geographical location with the greatest diversity of virus
strains must be the original source because a single strain cannot emerge from nothing. He
demonstrated that only the US has all the five known strains of the virus (while Wuhan and most
of China have only one, as do Taiwan and South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam, Singapore, and
England, Belgium and Germany), constituting a thesis that the haplotypes in other nations may
have originated in the US.
Korea and Taiwan have a different haplotype of the virus than
China, perhaps more infective but much less deadly, which would account for a death rate only
1/3 that of China.
Neither Iran nor Italy were included in the above tests, but both countries have now
deciphered the locally prevalent genome and have declared them of different varieties from
those in China, which means they did not originate in China but were of necessity introduced
from another source. It is worth noting that the variety in Italy has approximately the same
fatality rate as that of China, three times as great as other nations, while the haplotype in
Iran appears to be the deadliest with a fatality rate of between 10% and 25%. (7) (8) (9)
...The Virologist further stated that the US has recently had more than 200 "pulmonary
fibrosis" cases that resulted in death due to patients' inability to breathe, but whose
conditions and symptoms could not be explained by pulmonary fibrosis. He said he wrote articles
informing the US health authorities to consider seriously those deaths as resulting from the
coronavirus, but they responded by blaming the deaths on e-cigarettes, then silenced further
discussion.
The Taiwanese doctor then stated the virus outbreak began earlier than assumed,
saying, "We must look to September of 2019".
He stated the case in September of 2019 where some Japanese traveled to Hawaii and returned
home infected, people who had never been to China. This was two months prior to the infections
in China and just after the CDC suddenly and totally shut down the Fort Detrick bio-weapons lab
claiming the facilities were insufficient to prevent loss of pathogens. (10) (11)
He said he personally investigated those cases very carefully (as did the Japanese
virologists who came to the same conclusion).. This might indicate the coronavirus had already
spread in the US but where the symptoms were being officially attributed to other diseases, and
thus possibly masked. The prominent Chinese
news website Huanqiu related one case in the US where a woman's relative was told by
physicians he died of the flu, but where the death certificate listed the coronavirus as the
cause of death.
Just for information
In the past two years (during the trade war) China has suffered several pandemics:
February 15, 2018: H7N4 bird flu . Sickened at least 1,600 people in China and killed
more than 600. Many chickens killed. China needs to purchase US poultry products.
June, 2018: H7N9 bird flu . Many chickens killed. China needs to purchase US poultry
products.
August, 2018: outbreak of African swine flu . Same strain as Russia, from Georgia.
Millions of pigs killed. China needs to purchase US pork products.
May 24, 2019: massive infestation of armyworms in 14 province-level regions in China,
which destroy most food crops. Quickly spread to more than 8,500 hectares of China's grain
production. They produce astonishing numbers of eggs. China needs to purchase US agricultural
products – corn, soybeans.
December, 2019: Coronavirus appearance puts China's economy on hold.
January, 2020: China is hit by a "highly pathogenic" strain of bird flu in Hunan province
. Many chickens died, many others killed. China needs to purchase US poultry products.
The standard adage is that bad luck happens in threes, not sixes.
***
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Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior
executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export
business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, presenting case
studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is
currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be
contacted at: [email protected] . He is a frequent contributor to Global
Research.
What about the WHO's refusal to declare a global pandemic? Maybes Yves can weigh in on the
"pandemic bonds" issued by the World Bank on which investors stand to lose tens of millions
of dollars.
Again, we have to take the Italian figures carefully.
– The population is skewed elderly (I am not saying elderly deaths don't count, I am
saying that the different age structure of the population will produce a different CFR from
China despite the same virus properties).
– The early cluster was of hospital transmission, so a lot of people who were already
sick in hospital for other reasons have died of it
– There have only been one or two deaths of "healthy" patients (the 60 year old doctor
yesterday for example). Same in South Korea, the one 35 year old who died was a Mongolian
health tourist with liver and renal failure in SK for a liver transplant.
I am not minimizing the impact of the virus in S Korea or Italy – we have to take
the population we have, so the CFR will be higher – but the terrible dead/recovered
ratios we are seeing are an artefact of two high income countries with high quality care
which, in normal times, keep alive a lot of frail people, and the excess mortality will be
concentrated in these cohorts – very elderly and serious comorbidities (which are
strongly correlated anyway).
The virus enters in the healthcare systems. Many of these people are going to die in this
epidemic, of competition for resources if not of coronavirus. You could say that COVID-19 is
a disease of weak / dissolute healthcare systems (and by extension governments/polities) and
we are going to find out which national bodies can resist it .
we are seeing are an artifact of two high income countries with high quality care which,
in normal times, keep alive a lot of frail people, and the excess mortality will be
concentrated in these cohorts
"Chinese scientists have now managed to separate some high-quality antibodies"
Besides the rush towards a vaccine this is a required step towards making
serology tests available. It will take some time of course
but it is very encouraging that they've achieved this. In time this might also help explain some things about how the virus seems
to be so tricky to detect very early after infection since when serology becomes available one can compare swabbing and serology
from both suspected cases and those that seem entirely uninfected.
Countries around the world ought to be eager to cooperate closely with and support China and benefit from these efforts but
"our" local politicians seem like they might be too proud or dumb to do so. That could change for the better.
It really seems like a good angle for public health would be prioritizing transmission
risk: a healthy 25 year old working in a restaurant or public school would be worth targeting
from the angle of exposure even if they're not likely to have an especially bad personal
experience.
I'm taking it very seriously, being immunosuppressed due to Chemo.
No more gym, no more broker's meetings, stopped doing volunteer work at the jails after 15
years,Deep cleaned and disinfected my home and vehicle and continue disinfecting doorhandles
etc daily. started shopping a times when stores have few customers, nitrile gloves in public
and thorough handwashing ,
Close to a self quarantine until my immune system recovers.
Unfortunately my Chemo requires a hospital stay of roughly 30 hours and there are four
more to go a month apart, the next one tomorrow, my most likely point of exposure.
And in Singapore (admittedly a best case scenario), there have been 110 total cases. 79
are discharged from hospitals. 33 are still warded of which 7 are in critical condition. No
deaths.
Singapore is the only country in SE Asia where I trust the figures, so I follow them closely. What is impressive is that
they are still quite successful at contact tracing (12 cases only unresolved out of 110) and
the number of clusters is still quite small. Considering they have not closed schools, nor
closed borders (300,000 passages a day), that is quite encouraging. My take is that the virus
can't take the heat, so we really should yearn for summer
A tip of the hat, to Karl Denninger, who I learned the following from .
The sick room of a covid19 patient should always be at negative pressure . This is
especially important in a hospital setting. The air in the sick room (or covid19 wing of the
hospital) should be exhausted to the outside, (but well away from other people). This means
that virus laden air is not forced back, into the rest of the hospital or house by positive
pressure (by conditioned air, blown into the sick room.) This simple tech greatly protects
the uninfected from infection by the virus.
FI, if a covid19 patient is sheltering at home with other, uninfected people in the house;
Put the patient in a sick room with an en suite. Have an exhaust fan in their bedroom window
which sucks the tainted air out of their room and into the outside. or, better yet, up a
chimney (if present).
Also, in Wuhan, the patient's door, into the home, would be sealed with tape, and the
patient would lower a basket on a rope out their window to get food and supplies. Their
rubbish would be double bagged and thrown out the window for collection. This is real
quarantining. So simple, practical and medieval!
Please somebody who has a better grasp of the concept, jump in with a clearer
explanation.
Years ago, people would have open windows and open doors, with a breeze blowing through
the sick room, to clear out air born pathogens bringing in fresh, clean air, which was
already partially sterilized by the UV radiation of the sunlight.
According to
the Guardian , Russia has been targeted by "enemies" spreading fake news about the
coronavirus to sow panic and discord across the country, President Vladimir Putin said:
His remarks came as Russia's communications regulator said it had shut down access to some
social media posts containing falsehoods about the virus outbreak.
"The Federal Security Service reports that they (the fakes) are mainly being organised
from abroad. But unfortunately this always happens to us," Putin said on Wednesday, in
televised remarks at a government meeting.
"The purpose of such fakes is clear: to sow panic among the population."
Reuters reports that a Russian cyber security company, Group-IB, on Monday identified what
it said were thousands of fake news posts on messaging services and social networks such as
Russia's VK alleging that thousands of Muscovites have caught the virus.
China and Korea have done enough testing to come up with a lot of negative tests. This
makes WHO's current interpretation that most COVID-19 cases end up with significant
observable symptoms and that there aren't a lot of undetected cases that just go away without
symptoms credible.
I think it is the long incubation period that throws people for a loop. We are used to
getting exposed and then getting sick within a handful of days. Something that takes a week
to three weeks to create symptoms does not fit well into our brains' acclimation to instant
feedback on everything. This is more of an information exchange using handwritten letters via
US Post than Twitter.
It is also why there is probably a rising issue lurking in the US because it is taking
time to get people who are showing symptoms tested, never mind screening people they may have
been in contact with. By the time they are diagnosed, they could have exposed dozens of
people.
Direct comparison between flu and SARS-CoV2 regarding all aspects from epidemiology to
diagnostics and clinical development is not advisable.
From
EU-CDC : Cases with mild symptoms are numerous and able to transmit the infection.
Cases with mild symptoms are not always aware of their potential infectivity, and some people
with mild symptoms have sought medical care, thereby infecting health care workers;
To be precise:
– WHO rejected the contention there is a large number of unconfirmed mild cases
*outside* Hubei
– WHO confirmed that there are asymptomatic patients, their infectiousness is
unclear.
I would say one point, because I know there will be questions, and I'll stay as long as we
need to try and help with any of those, but one of the big questions that we keep hearing
about is how much transmission is going on in communities? And you keep hearing the tip of
the iceberg, we can't see this thing, there are millions of people infected, etc. So, we
tried to look at those kinds of questions as well. Again, you're at war here and there's a
huge fog in any war. You're trying to find those little bits of information that can add up
and give you some confidence in what you're saying.
We tried to look at where was there sampling of people in the population that might give
us a sense of how widely this virus was spreading? And again, this is where it's great to
look at these things in China because the numbers are so big. But you've probably heard that
there's something called an influenza like illness surveillance system that runs around the
world with many sentinel sites that collect 20 samples every month and we get them analysed.
But this happens in multiple places in China, and what you can do is look at those data and
they can show you, here's our data, our sampling, here's all the flu cases that are coming
up, in November, December of last year, they all went back to look.
Because once we had a COVID-19 test and they went back to test all of these, nobody found
it. It wasn't there. They found lots of flu. But then in January, they did find it, it comes
up in the first couple of weeks in January. But outside of Hubei, very rare. One might be
positive here or one there, it wasn't like all of these samples were positive, like there was
a lot of it circulating. And then another thing we did was in places that were heavily
infected, more and more people were coming to fever clinics and wanted to get tested.
00:49:40
And in one place, it might have been Guangdong, they had tested 320,000 samples for the
COVID virus. 320,000 is going to give you some sense of what's going on. And when they
started the sampling of those, about 0.49% of them were positive, so less than 05%. And in
the recent period, it's something like 0.02%. So, I know everybody has been out there saying,
this thing is spreading everywhere and we just can't see it, tip of the iceberg. But the data
that we do have don't support that. What it supports is sure, there may be a few asymptomatic
cases, and that probably is a real issue, but there's not huge transmission beyond what you
can actually see clinically.
"
So, in Hubei, retrospective testing of flu cases showed up COVID-19 but in Guangdong
large-scale population sampling shows minimal undiagnosed/asymptomatic cases.
And here is the transcript on asymptomatic cases (from the WHO press conference in China
the previous night):
"
[Liang Wannian speaking for China National Health Commisson]
The proportions of mild, severe, and critically ill patients are about 80%,
13%, and 6%, respectively. Some asymptomatic patients have been found. However,
whether such cases are patients with asymptomatic infections or carriers whose virus is
still in the incubation period warrants further study. It is unclear whether the
asymptomatic carriers can also spread the disease."
I did a rough estimate of SK figures assuming around 10 days lag (just a guess), and I
came up with just over 1%. The problem they face is that the overall numbers now are
manageable in hospitals. What happens when they run out of respirators and isolation wards? I
would expect death rates to climb significantly. Also I think early mortality rates are
likely to be very dependent on the population cohort hit first – we've seen how in
Italy it spiked dearly because it seems to have hit a major hospital first. In SK, its mostly
older churchgoers, but from what I've seen, older right wing xtian South Koreans are a hardy
bunch.
Silver linings – yes, CO2 levels are dropping, and this may even be long term. A lot
of older foundries and power stations may not be worth restarting once they go cold. This may
fundamentally change the world travel market, especially if the airlines take a serious hit
which would stop them from investing in more capacity. I doubt if there is much appetite at
government level for supporting big airlines. Boeing is toast, which might fundamentally
reduce production capacity. It may even lead to the closure of coal mines and oil/gas
fields.
"... The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not billing patients for coronavirus testing, according to Business Insider . "But there are other charges you might have to pay, depending on your insurance plan, or lack thereof," Business Insider noted. "A hospital stay in itself could be costly and you would likely have to pay for tests for other viruses or conditions." ..."
"... Congress needs to immediately pass a bill appropriating funding to cover 100% of the cost of all coronavirus testing & care within the United States. We will not have a chance at containing it otherwise. @tedlieu - as my rep, can you please ensure this is brought up? ..."
"... In the case of the Wucinskis, Kliff reported that "the ambulance company that transported [them] charged the family $2,598 for taking them to the hospital." ..."
"... Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Osmel Martinez Azcue "received a notice from his insurance company about a claim for $3,270" after he visited a local hospital fearing that he contracted coronavirus during a work trip to China. ..."
"... Did anyone expect the unconscionable greed of capitalism to cease when a public health crisis emerges? This is just testing for the virus, wait until a vaccine has been developed so expensive that the majority of the US populace can not afford it at all and people are dropping like flies. Wall Street, never-the-less, will continue to have its heydays ..."
"... The very idea that the defense and "Homeland" security budgets are bloated and additional funding approved year after year but the citizens of this country are not afforded 100% health coverage In a time of global health crisis that could become a pandemic. ..."
"Huge surprise medical bills [are] going to make sure people with symptoms don't get tested. That is bad for everyone." by
Jake Johnson, staff writer Public health
advocates, experts, and others are demanding that the federal government cover coronavirus testing and all related costs after several
reports detailed how Americans in recent weeks have been saddled with exorbitant bills following medical evaluations.
Sarah Kliff of the New York Times
reported Saturday
that Pennsylvania native Frank Wucinski "found a pile of medical bills" totaling $3,918 waiting for him and his three-year-old daughter
after they were released from government-mandated quarantine at Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California.
"My question is why are we being charged for these stays, if they were mandatory and we had no choice in the matter?" asked Wucinski,
who was evacuated by the U.S. government last month from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
"I assumed it was all being paid for," Wucinski told the Times . "We didn't have a choice. When the bills showed up, it was just
a pit in my stomach, like, 'How do I pay for this?'"
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is not billing patients for coronavirus testing,
according
to Business Insider . "But there are other charges you might have to pay, depending on your insurance plan, or lack thereof,"
Business Insider noted. "A hospital stay in itself could be costly and you would likely have to pay for tests for other viruses or
conditions."
Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, told the Times that
"the most important rule of public health is to gain the cooperation of the population."
"There are legal, moral, and public health reasons not to charge the patients,"
Gostin said.
Congress needs to immediately pass a bill appropriating funding to cover 100% of the cost of all coronavirus testing & care
within the United States. We will not have a chance at containing it otherwise.
@tedlieu - as my rep, can you please ensure this
is brought up?
In the case of the Wucinskis, Kliff reported that "the ambulance company that transported [them] charged the family $2,598
for taking them to the hospital."
"An additional $90 in charges came from radiologists who read the patients' X-ray scans and do not work for the hospital," Kliff
noted.
The CDC declined to respond when Kliff asked whether the federal government would cover the costs for patients like the Wucinskis.
The Intercept 's Robert Mackey
wrote
last Friday that the Wucinskis' situation spotlights "how the American government's response to a public health emergency, like trying
to contain a potential coronavirus epidemic, could be handicapped by relying on a system built around private hospitals and for-profit
health insurance providers."
We should be doing everything we can to encourage people with
#COVIDー19 symptoms to come forward.
Huge surprise medical bills is going to make sure people with symptoms don't get tested. That is bad for everyone, regardless
of if you are insured. https://t.co/KOUKTSFVzD
Play this tape to the end and you find people not going to the hospital even if they're really sick. The federal government
needs to announce that they'll pay for all of these bills https://t.co/HfyBFBXhja
Last week, the Miami Herald reported
that Osmel Martinez Azcue "received a notice from his insurance company about a claim for $3,270" after he visited a local hospital
fearing that he contracted coronavirus during a work trip to China.
"He went to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he said he was placed in a closed-off room," according to the Herald . "Nurses
in protective white suits sprayed some kind of disinfectant smoke under the door before entering, Azcue said. Then hospital staff
members told him he'd need a CT scan to screen for coronavirus, but Azcue said he asked for a flu test first."
Azcue tested positive for the flu and was discharged. "Azcue's experience shows the potential cost of testing for a disease
that epidemiologists fear may develop into a public health crisis in the U.S.," the Herald noted.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, highlighted Azcue's case in a tweet last Friday.
"The coronavirus reminds us that we are all in this together," Sanders wrote. "We cannot allow Americans to skip doctor's visits
over outrageous bills. Everyone should get the medical care they need without opening their wallet -- as a matter of justice and
public health."
Last week, as Common Dreams
reported , Sanders argued that the coronavirus outbreak demonstrates the urgent need for Medicare for All.
The coronavirus reminds us that we are all in this together. We cannot allow Americans to skip doctor's visits over outrageous
bills.
Everyone should get the medical care they need without opening their wallet -- as a matter of justice and public health.
https://t.co/c4WQMDESHU
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S.
surged by more than two
dozen over the weekend, bringing the total to 89 as the Trump administration continues to
publicly downplay the severity of the outbreak.
Dr. Matt McCarthy, a staff physician at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital,
said
in an appearance on CNBC 's "Squawk Box" Monday morning that testing for the coronavirus is still not widely available.
"Before I came here this morning, I was in the emergency room seeing patients," McCarthy said. "I still do not have a rapid
diagnostic test available to me."
"I'm here to tell you, right now, at one of the busiest hospitals in the country, I don't have it at my finger tips," added
McCarthy. "I still have to make my case, plead to test people. This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United
States. There are going to be hundreds by middle of week. There's going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue."
Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
Did anyone expect the unconscionable greed of capitalism to cease when a public health crisis emerges? This is just testing
for the virus, wait until a vaccine has been developed so expensive that the majority of the US populace can not afford it at
all and people are dropping like flies. Wall Street, never-the-less, will continue to have its heydays
A wall street bank or private predator may own your emergency room. A surprise bill may await your emergency treatment above
insurance payments or in some instances all of the bill.
An effort was made recently in congress to stop surprise billings but enough dems joined repubs to kill it. More important
to keep campaign dollars flowing than keep people alive.
fernSmerl 12h I know emergency rooms are being purchased by organizations like Tenet (because they are some of
the most expensive levels of care) and M.D.s provided by large agencies. I'm not as up on this as I should be but a friend of
mine tells me that some of this is illegal. I have received bills that were later discharged by challenge. This is worth investigating
further. Atlasoldie 11h Hmmmm A virus that
overwhelmingly kills the elderly and/or those with pre-exisitng conditions.
Sounds like a medical insurance companies wet dream. As well as .gov social security/medicare wet dream.
The very idea that the defense and "Homeland" security budgets are bloated and additional funding approved year after year
but the citizens of this country are not afforded 100% health coverage In a time of global health crisis that could become a pandemic.
And as has been stated, the unconscionable idea suggested that a possible vaccine (a long way away or perhaps not developed at
all) might not be affordable to the workers who pay the taxes that fund the government? That's insane.
Another example of "American Exceptionalism." China doesn't charge its coronavirus patients, neither does South Korea. I guess
they are simply backward countries.
I own my own home after years of hard work paying it off. It's the only thing of value, besides my old truck, that I have.
If I get the virus, I will stay home and try to treat it the best I can. I can't afford to go to the hospital and pay thousands in
medical bills, with the chance that they'll come after my possessions. America, the land of the _______. Fill in the blank. (Hint:
it's no longer free).
There are other ways to protect your home. Homesteading or living trust. I'm not good at this but I know there are ways to
do it. Hopefully, it would never come to that but outcomes are not certain even with treatment in this case.
As someone
who lost a mother at 5 years old I can sympathize with your grief in losing a daughter-in-law and especially seeing her four children
orphaned. However, I think you miss the point here: This is about we becoming a society invested in each others welfare and not a
company town that commodifies everything including the health and well being of us all.
As a revision it is better but flawed. It is a cost containment bill based on the same research as the republican plan with global
budgets and block grants.
Edited: I encourage you to read this: -ttps://www.rand.org/blog/2018/10/misconceptions-about-medicare-for-all.html Giovanna-Lepore10h oldie:
Part D
Higher education is not free but they do need to become free for the students and payed by us as a society.
Part D is a scam, a Republican scam also supported by corporate democrats because of its profit motive and its privatization
Medicare only covers 80% and does not cover eye and dental care and older folks especially need these services. Medicaid helps but there are limits and one cannot necessarily use it where one needs to go.
Expanded, Improved Medicare For All is a vast improvement. because it covers everyone in one big pool and, therefore, much more dignified
than the rob Paul to pay peter system we have.
Social Security too can be improved. Why should it simply be based on the income of the person which means that a person working
in a low paying job in a capitalist system gone wild with greed will often work until they die.
Pell grants can be eliminated when we have what the French have: publicly supported education for everyone.
The demise of unions certainly did not help but it was part of the long strategy of the Right to privatize everything to the enrichment
of the few.
The overall competence that Canada is handling this outbreak, compared to the USA, is stark. First world (Canada) versus third-world
(USA). Testing is practically available for free, to any suspect person, sick or not, as Toronto alone can run 1000 tests a day and
have results in 4 hours. That is far more than all the US's capacity for 330 million people.
I wonder how long before Canada closes its borders to USAns? Me and my wife (both in a vulnerable age/medical group) should seriously
consider fleeing to my brother's place in Toronto as the first announced cases in Pittsburgh are probably only days away. What about
our poor cat though? We could try to smuggle her across the border, but she is a loud and talkative kitty
Don't want to discourage anyone from any protective measures – but the
"low down" from my veggie store today was that a lot of health professionals
shop there and they think it's being hyped by media. Did get this from my NJ Sen. Menendez –
Center for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC)
There is currently no vaccine to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being
exposed to this virus. However, everyday preventive actions can help prevent the spread of respiratory diseases:
Wash your hands often
Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
Stay home when you are sick.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
For more information : htps://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/prevention-treatment.html
How it spreads : The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person. 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. [Read more.] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/transmission.html )
Symptoms : For confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, reported illnesses have ranged from mild symptoms to
severe illness and death. Symptoms can include fever, cough, and shortness of breath.
Don't want to discourage anyone from any protective measures – but the
"low down" from my veggie store today was that a lot of health professionals
shop there and they think it's being hyped by media.
I agree it is being hyped by the media to the point of being fear mongering. At the same time it is being ignored by the administration to such an extent that really little almost nothing is being done. At some point the two together will create an even bigger problem.
It is like the old adage: "Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you." Each over/under reach in considering the reality of the situation has its own problem, which multiply when combined. Every morning when I wake up I say a little atheistic prayer to myself before I get out of bed: "Another day and for better or
worse...".
Well, two reported here in Florida tonight. One in my county, one in the county next door. And more of the "we already knew, but told you late". One person checked into the hospital on Wednesday. We hear it Monday night.
Both were ignored far a long time it seems, and 84 in particular are being watched (roommates, friends, hospital workers not alerted
for several days, the usual). But no one knows every place they had been since becoming infected.
Oh, and they have tested a handful of people. No worry?
I can't see anyway that this level of incompetency is an accident. Spring break is just starting usually a 100's of thousand tourist
bonanza.
So the question is do they want to kill us, or just keep us in fear?
I think the later. But the end result is a crap shoot. So once again, it is a gamble with our lives.
The business of America is business. Sometimes that can go too far and this is one of those times. Making money from the loss,
distress, harm and suffering of others is perverse beyond belief.
An excellent, if technical video from 27 Feb. The speaker is a HK Chinese (English speaking)
Epidemiologist.
He point out "family clustering" of Chinese cases and most cases originating from Hubey
province, not local clusters. He also pointed out the Wuhan has large cluster of old
population.
When it comes to estimating mortality, I think it's helpful to keep in in mind the concept
of multiple tiers and required care at each tier. My numbers here are very roughly derived
from case report data from a handful of sources. Uncertainties are large here, and I mostly
just want to illustrate the point.
First, we are told that around 80% of cases are "mild". Mild means that they don't require
hospitalization to recover. That's "tier zero" as it requires no significant health-care
resources.
About 20% of cases, require a hospital bed and supplemental oxygen. About 3 in 4 of these
cases (15% of total) recover without additional measures, and these "serious" cases make up
"tier one".
This implies about 5% of cases need mechanical ventilation. About 3 in 4 of these cases
(3.75% of total) will recover without additional measures, and these "severe" cases make up
"tier two". About 1.25% of cases need extreme measures that can only be delivered in highly
equipped ICUs.
About 3 in 4 of these cases will survive (although they can tie up other hospital
resources for many weeks), and these "critical" cases make up "tier three".
Finally, even with all resources brought to bear, some small fraction of cases (like
0.3%???) still die anyway ("tier 4").
Like I said, all these numbers are uncertain, but you can see how resource shortages at
each tier are likely to impact mortality variance from region-to-region, and how reducing the
spread of the disease through containment measures can make a huge impact on the number of
lives lost. Of course if the whole point is to keep the hospitals from overflowing, whatever
containment measures are necessary are likely to have to remain in place for a long time with
such a contagious disease. This means that the knock-on effects of such policies (i.e., a
cratering of economic demand in the services) are likely to be more severe. What a nasty
trade-off!
IMO, it may be time for helicopter money in addition to NDMS health-care. And someone
should figure out how to accurately test for immunity so that people who are (hopefully)
already immune can be recruited rapidly for jobs that are high risk.
China epidemic subside -- only 119 additional cases. That's compared with 125 additional
cases and 31 new deaths the previous day. The new cases bring the total number of mainland cases
to 80,270 and death toll at 2,871. In a couple of months China part of epidemic probably will be
over.
Isolating seniors who are at risk is a very reasonable measure. Should probably be
implemented in all areas with high number of infections.
On the bright side there is now an indirect evidence that summer weather slows the virus down
.
New York has reported its third case: the son, wife and daughter of an infected
Westchester County lawyer have been diagnosed with the virus
Italy will ban public events, and close cinemas and theaters even though the government
denied an earlier ANSA report that the country would also close schools & universities
momentarily
Italy urges elderly people to stay indoors if possible
Ecaudor confirms 3 new cases, raising total to 10
German finance minister declares outbreak "a global pandemic"
... ... ...
Israel urges people to stop shaking hands, will quarantine travelers from most of
Europe
EU reports a second coronavirus case at its headquarters in Brussels
France has reported 45 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 257
UK cases surge by 34 to a total of 85 - a 66% surge.
China reported 119 additional coronavirus cases and 38 additional deaths
South Korea reported 809 additional coronavirus cases and 4 additional deaths
For apples to apples, I think one needs to look at end states of all patients infected at
the same time; one doesn't have this and so the ratio evolves as end states are reached.
Also, in early stages of an epidemic, incidence is rising and if mortalities occur quicker
than recoveries (as appears to be the case in this epidemic), the #died/(#died + #recovered)
can be extremely high at first.
In China, in both Hubei and "all China other than Hubei", this ratio has been declining
day by day since Feb 17 (for Hubei) and Feb 19 (for China ex Hubei), ie since the
first day I have been tracking the daily JHU CSSE numbers for the respective regions.
China ex Hubei is (assuming the reported numbers are accurate), as of late 3/3, at 0.96%,
with about 1500 unresolved cases (of 11300 total cases) and almost no new fatalities in
recent days. I think this gives a plausible guess at a final ratio of around 0.8% if all
future outcomes of the current cases in this region were known. But that was with very
aggressive containment measures. One would be justified to wonder whether there is sufficient
will to do this in US.
--
It would be very helpful, I think, to know whether, or the extent to which, "smoking" is a
prior condition that predisposes patients to more severe respiratory complications. China
consumes a lot of tobacco products. There appears to be a very high prevalence of smoking in
China.
Estimating mortality is quite complicated. Given the rapid progress of infection the (not
accumulated but current) casualties have not to be compared with current confirmed cases but
with the number of infected about 7-10 days ago, which is not exactly the same as confirmed
one week ago. Even in SK because they have different rules for testing are detecting many
more cases than elsewhere, there are almost certainly many undetected infections and there
are also some unknown numbers of let's call them atypical infections.
Yes, you made reasonable corrections/clarifications. Thank you !
That said, the number of identified non-Chinese cases looks to be doubling every two
weeks or so. That'll be a big deal soon unless we can bend the curve through large
scale action like in China, or the dynamics change as the weather gets warmer (sorry
southern hemisphere ).
I agree then 20% susceptibility is probably too optimistic. It is interesting that
susceptibility of medical personal exposed to patients in Wuhan is over 50%. And that are
people with well trained immune system.
Health care personnel infected
◦3.8% (1716 of 44 672)
◦63% in Wuhan (1080 of 1716)
◦14.8% cases classified as severe or critical (247 of 1668)
◦5 deaths
So my 20% figure is definitely suspect.
At the same time doubling each two weeks for the initial stages of epidemic is what
you can expect in any flu epidemics.
The situation in the USA complicated by the fact the people are pushed coming to work
even with slight flu symptoms.
Also healthcare is weakened by neoliberal healthcare and dominance of the private
equity sharks in emergency rooms.
For all practical purposes I would classify the situation in the USA as similar to the
situations in the third world countries. And that will increase the cost and duration of
the epidemic considerably.
Much depends on availability of a reliable and free test. Currently the test cost
money and that greatly complicates the situation in the USA increasing the number of
infections and prolonging its duration. Probably considerably unless God and spring help
us.
Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Osmel Martinez Azcue "received a notice from
his insurance company about a claim for $3,270" after he visited a local hospital fearing
that he contracted coronavirus during a work trip to China.
If test cost money, that will also help to kill more old and infirm ("disaster
capitalism" in action). which could be saved if intervention come on easily stages of the
disease (this is just a virus pneumonia after all)
And the private equity sharks with their exorbitant ambulance and emergency room
changes need to be put in place and limited to what Medicare pays.
Sarah Kliff of the New York Times reported Saturday that Pennsylvania native Frank
Wucinski "found a pile of medical bills" totaling $3,918 waiting for him and his
three-year-old daughter after they were released from government-mandated quarantine at
Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, California.
In the case of the Wucinskis, Kliff reported that "the ambulance company that
transported [them] charged the family $2,598 for taking them to the hospital."
So hopefully Congress will provide emergency funding for that. We are wasting so much
money of homeland security that I would take those money from them.
"... The latest FluView surveillance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that as of January 18, 2020, there have been 15 million cases of flu, 140,000 hospitalizations, and 8200 deaths in the US this influenza season. (emphasis added) ..."
The media hype and disinformation campaign regarding the spread of the COVID-19 novel
coronavirus have created a Worldwide atmosphere of fear and uncertainty following the launching
of a global public health emergency by the WHO on January 30th.
The fear campaign is ongoing. Panic and uncertainty. National governments and the WHO are
misleading the public.
"About 84,000 people in at least 56 countries have been infected, and about 2,900 have died"
says the New York Times. What they fail to mention is that 98% of those cases of infection are
in Mainland China. There are less than 5000 confirmed cases outside China. (WHO, February 28,
2020)
While COVID-19 is a matter of Public Health concern, at the moment, there is no real
pandemic outside Mainland China. Look at the figures.
At the time of writing, the number of "confirmed cases" in the US was 64.
The latest FluView surveillance from the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that as of January 18, 2020,
there have been 15 million cases of flu, 140,000 hospitalizations, and 8200 deaths in the US
this influenza season. (emphasis added)
Data on the COVID-19 pandemic:
The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on February 28, 2020 83,652 confirmed cases of
COV-19 of which 78,961 are in Mainland China. Outside China, there are 4691 "confirmed cases"
(WHO, February 28, 2020, See table on right).
The WHO has also reported 2,791 deaths of which only 67 have occurred outside Mainland China
.
These figures confirm that the pandemic is largely limited to Mainland China.
Moreover, recent data suggests that the epidemic in China is firmly under control. On
February 21, 2020, China's National Health Commission reported that 36.157 patients were
designated as cured and discharged from hospital. (see graph below).
Chinese reports confirm that people have received treatment and are recovering from the
virus infection. Concurrently, the number of infected patients is declining.
According to the National Medical Products Administration of China, hospitals are using
Favilavir, an anti-viral drug, "as a treatment for coronavirus with minimal side effects".
.
Lets Crunch the Numbers
The World Population is of the order of 7.8 billion.
The population of China is of the order of 1.4 billion.
The World population minus China is of the order of 6.4 billion.
4691 confirmed cases and 67 reported deaths (outside China) out of a population of 6.4
billion does not constitute a pandemic. 4691/6,4oo,ooo,ooo =0.00000073 = 0.000073 %
64 cases in the US which has a population of approximately 330 million is not a pandemic.
(Feb 28 data): 64/330,000,000 = 0.00000019 = 0.000019 %
Why the Propaganda? Racism directed against Ethnic Chinese
A campaign against China was launched, a wave of racist sentiment against ethnic Chinese is
ongoing largely led by the Western media.
The Economist reports that "The coronavirus spreads racism against -- and among -- ethnic
Chinese"
Fear of covid-19 makes people behave badly, including some Chinese
"Britain's Chinese community faces racism over coronavirus outbreak"
according to the SCMP
"Chinese communities overseas are increasingly facing racist abuse and discrimination amid
the coronavirus outbreak. Some ethnic Chinese people living in the UK say they experienced
growing hostility because of the deadly virus that originated in China."
And this phenomenon is happening all over the U.S.
Economic Warfare against China
US strategies consist in using COVID-19 to isolate China, despite the fact that the US
economy is heavily dependent upon Chinese imports.
The short-term disruption of the Chinese economy is largely attributable to the (temporary)
closing down of the channels of trade and transportation.
The WHO Global Public Health emergency is coupled with media disinformation and the freezing
of air travel to China.
Panic on Wall Street
Spearheaded by media disinformation, there is another dimension. Panic in the stock
markets.
The Coronavirus fear has triggered the drop of financial markets Worldwide.
According to reports, roughly $6 trillion have been wiped off the value of stock markets
Worldwide. The decline in stock market values so far is of the order of "15 percent or
more".
Massive losses of personal savings (e.g. of average Americans) have occurred not to mention
corporate failures and bankruptcies.
It's a bonanza for institutional speculators including corporate hedge funds. The financial
meltdown has led to sizeable transfers of money wealth into the pockets of a handful of
financial institutions.
In a bitter irony, analysts in chorus have casually linked the market collapse to the
escalation of the coronavirus at a time when there was less than 64 confirmed cases in the
US.
It's not surprising that the market went down because the virus has gotten so expanded.
'
Was it Possible to "Predict" the February Financial Crash?
It would be naive to believe that the financial crisis was solely the consequence of
spontaneous market forces, responding to the COVID-19 outbreak. The market was carefully
manipulated by powerful actors using speculative instruments in the market for derivatives,
including "short-selling". Media disinformation on the "escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic
certainly played a role.
... ... ...
Timeline
October 18, 2019 : The B. and M. Gates Foundation and the WEF were partners in the John
Hopkins National Security October 2019 nCoV-2019 Pandemic "Simulation Exercise".
December 31, 2019 China alerted WHO to several cases of "unusual pneumonia" in Wuhan, Hubei
province.
January 7 , 2020 Chinese officials announced they had identified a new virus, The novel
virus was named by the WHO 2019-nCoV ( exactly the same name as the virus pertaining to the
John Hopkins simulation exercise, with the exception of the placement of the date).
January 24, 25, 2020: Meeting at Davos, under the auspices of CEPI which is also a WEF-Gates
partnership, the development of a 2019 nCoV vaccine was announced. (2 weeks after the January
7, 2020 announcement, and barely a week prior to the launching of the WHO's Worldwide Public
Health emergency).
January 30th, 2020 , WHO Director General announces the "Public Health Emergency of
International Concern (PHEIC).
Meanwhile, the Italian government is about to release a series of recommendations to try to
halt the coronavirus outbreak,
the Guardian reports.
The tips are contained in a document issued by the the country's scientific committee that
will be released within the next few hours. They include:
Social distancing : remaining away from crowded environments and maintaining a distance of
two meters from other people; especially within enclosed spaces.
Greetings: avoiding kisses and hugs when greeting people.
Elderly population: people older than 75 years with underlying health conditions are
advised to remain at home and avoid social events.
.... ... ...
The death toll from Covid-19 in Italy has risen to 79 and confirmed cases to 2.263, the
emergency commissioner and civil protection chief Angelo Borrelli has said.
If you're infected, what would be the typical experience you'd go through? A lot has been
said on prevention but less so on treatment. level 2 PercyXLee 313 points ·
8 hours ago · edited 2 hours ago
There's is no treatment at the moment. (In fact, there's very little treatment for viruses
in general). The virus is brand new and nobody has any clue about it.
You go through a typical flu symptom if you're infected. For most healthy and young people,
that's all. Severe symptoms need to be put on oxygen to help breathing.
Don't try to self diagnose and take drugs if you believe you have it. It could mess up your
immune system and make you more vulnerable. Maintain a healthy diet and sleep is important.
Info from news and youtube channels hosted by doctors.
Edit: since there are a lot of arguments over the definition of "treatment", i should
clarity that in the sentence, "treatment" did not include supportive care, treatments of
secondary infections, and experimental clinic trial being conducted. Divesto 6 points ·
7 hours ago
What if hospital beds fill up and we need to? Is dayquil/nyquil, advil going to be worth
anything at all if we can't get into a hospital and need to self quarantine? Pedialyte? level 4
bronsteezy 4 points
·
5 hours ago
I'm not a medical worker so I can't commeny on the fever reducers. Pedialyte (or just google
how much salt and sugar to mix in water to get an optimal ORS) is absolutely needed if you're
self quarantining because fluid replenishment is essential for any condition that causes
sweating (in this case, the cause is a fever) or diarrhea or other water loss like frequent
urination. Just drinking water is not as effective, as your kidneys will excrete a larger
portion of it, whereas higher-than-optimal molarity drinks like Gatorade can cause stomach
upset. artgo 62 points
·
8 hours ago
There's is no treatment at the moment.
You seem to be using the word "treatment" in a way that distorts things. Do you mean "cure"
or "vaccine"?
There are lots of treatments for flu symptoms. They don't remove the flu, but they can make
the experience more tolerable. level 4 PercyXLee 73 points ·
7 hours ago
I'm using treatment as in any medical procedures that could help with recovery/survival. I
don't consider symptom relief drugs "treatments", because they only make the experience more
tolerable. (Notice most OTC flu drugs would only claim to be "Rapid Relief" or similar)
"Vaccine" is not a treatment, it is a preventative measure.
"Cure" is too strong of a word choice. Antibiotics are cures for bacterial infections.
But
Low grade fever, yes. Over reactions from immune system can kill you too. But it could be
complicated so if it the symptoms are severe you need to see a doctor.
1. The World Bank announced Tuesday afternoon that it would fund an initial $12
billion in financing to combat the Covid-19 outbreak that is threatening to plunge the
global economy into recession
"Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely, it has. Are we there yet? From
our assessment, not yet," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists
in Geneva.
He explained that the decision to use the word 'pandemic' is based on an ongoing
assessment of the geographical spread of the virus, the severity of disease it causes,
and the impact on society.
" For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this
virus, and we are not witnessing large-scale severe disease or death ," he said,
adding that what is occurring is coronavirus epidemics in different parts of the world,
which are affecting countries differently.
3. US government: administration has shifted from a strategy of prevention to
containment, recommending that labs test any suspect patients, even if connections to
other patients are not clear.
the nation's public health labs could run up to 10,000 tests per day by the end of
the week, according to figures provided by the Associated of Public Health
Laboratories.
"... the official Chinese numbers as unreliable, with large error bars in unpredictable directions. Look to South Korea and Singapore for reliable data; both are actively and aggressively testing, and both are strong open information societies. ..."
> The risk of business as usual is a small chance of tens of millions of deaths, because drug shortages prevent effective
control of the epidemic
Does not look this way. In China epidemic is almost over with mortality between 2 and 3%. Cases in other countries has mortality
on 0.1% much like for a regular flu.
I think chances of infection of a billion people are non-existent. Trump might have a point that spring can help -- coronaroviruses
worst period of spreading is winter (although there are exceptions)
As the virus is very similar (I think 80% of the genome) to chicken flu the creation of vaccine is possible. Israeli scientists
claim that 'In a few weeks, we will have coronavirus vaccine'
[BUT] after scientists sequenced the DNA of the novel coronavirus causing the current worldwide outbreak, the MIGAL researchers
examined it and found that the poultry coronavirus has high genetic similarity to the human one, and that it uses the same
infection mechanism, which increases the likelihood of achieving an effective human vaccine in a very short period of time,
Katz said.
"All we need to do is adjust the system to the new sequence," he said. "We are in the middle of this process, and hopefully
in a few weeks we will have the vaccine in our hands. Yes, in a few weeks, if it all works, we would have a vaccine to prevent
coronavirus."[.]
Akunis said he has instructed his ministry's director-general to fast-track all approval processes with the goal of bringing
the human vaccine to market as quickly as possible.
"Given the urgent global need for a human coronavirus vaccine, we are doing everything we can to accelerate development,"
MIGAL CEO David Zigdon said. The vaccine could "achieve safety approval in 90 days," he said.[.] (emphasis added)
I think the danger of the pandemic was exaggerated. In no way this is a new Spanish flu. Not even close.
Which means chances of tens million of more death are very exaggerated, highly unrealistic estimate.
Robert Waldmann , March 2, 2020 7:04 pm
There is no basis for the 0.1% death rate outside of China assertion. The ratio of deaths to cases is greater than that and
many people are in serious or critical condition. The death rate is not statistically signficantly higher in China than in other
countries. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Other countries have neither the public health competence nor the ruthlessness of China (I am thinking mostly of other developing
countries but the USA does seem to have problems with testing kits).
A candidate vaccine will be available soon. It will not be proven safe and effective and then mass produced soon. The argument
that it is better to consider costs and benefits and not stick to the rule that first second and third do no harm applies to vaccines
much more than to remdesivir (known to be safe can be quickly tested for effectiveness).
All experts agree that a vaccine will be available in a year or two. They know that candidate vaccines will exist soon. They
know that the problem is proving safety and effectiveness and then producing a lot. A vaccine could be available in much less
than a year. It would be used well within a year if people listened to me. But they won't.
It probably won't be like the Spanish Flu, because of vigorous quarantine type counter measures. A vaccine will help, but could
be too late for tens of millions. Remdesivir will probably work and this will be proven fairly soon. I will probably make a difference.
It could make a larger difference.
Erik , March 2, 2020 8:02 pm
All commenters: please note that official numbers from China are almost certainly inaccurate, both in numerator and denominator.
The total number of cases diagnosed is limited by test kits, which have recently moved from 300 kits manufactured per day to
4000 kits/day. Which is still at least an order of magnitude lower than the number of known cases. And anecdotal data coming from
Chinese physicians and health workers indicates both a higher patient population than official, and many deaths not attributed
to Covid (an epidemic of "pneumonia" deaths in Wuhan preceding the announcement of Covid, for example). Much is being hidden –
not from us, they don't care about us; they're hiding the information from their own people, which they do as a general policy
on most subjects.
Which is all mostly to say, treat the official Chinese numbers as unreliable, with large error bars in unpredictable directions.
Look to South Korea and Singapore for reliable data; both are actively and aggressively testing, and both are strong open information
societies.
likbez , March 2, 2020 9:43 pm
> There is no basis for the 0.1% death rate outside of China assertion
Low mortality rate for COVID-19 is masked by high (15%) mortality rate of persons over 80.
For people younger then 40 it is a reasonable assertion as deaths concentrate on the age group starting from 50-59. Men are
approx. twice more susceptible then women.
Case-Fatality Rates (CFR) China by Age as of 2/11/20
80+ 14.8%
70-79 8.0%
60-69 3.6%
50-59 1.3%
40-49 .4%
30-39 . 24% (18/7,600)
20-29 .19% (7/3,619)
10-19 .02% (1/549)
0-09 0 (0/416)
The most cruel experiment was with the Diamond Princess cruise ship (close space, high level of contact between passengers,
lack of qualified medical personnel and supplied, etc)
Six people died and 700 people were infected out of 3700. For all other the immune system managed to kill the virus. Which
suggests susceptibility rate of around 20%. It suggests 0.2% mortality
Two Japanese passengers – an 87-year-old man and an 84-year-old woman – were the first to die from the disease on February
19.
In the USA out six deaths at least four have been among residents of a long-term care facility called Life Care Center, where
more than 50 residents and staff members have shown symptoms of the virus.
Only 14% of cases are more severe then a regular flu:
I believe your hypothetic case about the possibility of the pandemic with high mortality rate is without merit.
We do not need to contribute to the panic, which already started in the USA with population buying masks, isopropyl alcohol
and hand sanitizers as if there no tomorrow (a friend told me that bottle of hand sanitizer on Amazon today in $60 or so ;-).
And masks are effective mostly for sick people (block spreading of infected aerosol from lungs) , mush less for healthy people
as they do no follow proper decontamination procedures anyway.
BTW in China epidemics is already subsiding. Again only 14 percent of cases are severe (which means more serere than a regular
flu):
The health ministry on Tuesday announced just 125 new cases of the virus detected over the past 24 hours, the lowest number
since authorities began publishing nationwide figures on Jan. 21. Another 31 deaths were reported, all of them in the hardest-hit
province of Hubei. The figures bring China's total number of cases to 80,151 with 2,943 deaths.
China's U.N. ambassador says the government believes that "victory" over the coronavirus won't be far behind the coming
of spring.
> There is no basis for the 0.1% death rate outside of China assertion
Low mortality rate for COVID-19 is masked by high (15%) mortality rate of person over
80.
For people younger then 40 it is a reasonable assertion as death concentrate on age
group starting from 50-59. Men are approx. twice susceptible then women.
Case-Fatality Rates (CFR) China by Age as of 2/11/20
80+ 14.8%
70-79 8.0%
60-69 3.6%
50-59 1.3%
40-49 .4%
30-39 . 24% (18/7,600)
20-29 .19% (7/3,619)
10-19 .02% (1/549)
0-09 .0 (0/416)
The most cruel experiment with the Diamond Princess cruise ship (close space, high
level of contact between passengers, lack of qualified medical personnel and supplied,
etc)
Six people died and 700 people were infected out of 3700. For all other the immune
system managed to kill the virus. Which suggests susceptibility rate of around 20%.
It suggest 0.2% mortality and the around 20% population are susceptible for the virus.
For 80% the immune system proved to be strong enough to kill the virus.
Two Japanese passengers – an 87-year-old man and an 84-year-old woman –
were the first to die from the disease on February 19.
In the USA out six deaths at least four have been among residents of a long-term care
facility called Life Care Center, where more than 50 residents and staff members have
shown symptoms of the virus.
Only 14% of cases are more severe then a regular flu:
I believe you hypothetic about the possibility of the pandemic with high mortality
rate is without merit.
We do not need to contribute to the panic, which already started in the USA with
population buying masks, isopropyl alcohol and hand sanitizers as if there no tomorrow (a
friend told me that bottle of hand sanitizer on Amazon today in $60 or so ;-).
And masks are effective mostly for sick people (block spreading of infected aerosol
from lungs) , mush less for healthy people as they do no follow proper decontamination
procedures anyway.
BTW in China epidemics is already subsiding:
The health ministry on Tuesday announced just 125 new cases of the virus detected
over the past 24 hours, the lowest number since authorities began publishing nationwide
figures on Jan. 21. Another 31 deaths were reported, all of them in the hardest-hit
province of Hubei. The figures bring China's total number of cases to 80,151 with 2,943
deaths.
China's U.N. ambassador says the government believes that "victory" over the
coronavirus won't be far behind the coming of spring.
I thought the twitter name was just some joker but it turns out to be genuine.
U.S. Surgeon General
@Surgeon_General
Feb 29
Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!
They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if
healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our
communities at risk!
Where was the free press? Where were the whistleblowers?
I remember the narrative was that countries with "freedom of speech" would have an
immediate response to the outbreak of the virus, therefore being much more efficient than
China in containing the epidemic...
... meanwhile, cases in Italy have skyrocketed by 50% in one day.
Source: an exiled activist called Wu'er Kaixi. I thought the era of making shit up from
refugee stories was over with the end of the Cold War. Looks like I was wrong.
Astonished they've made iso hard to get in Kiwi. I see that your indigenous kitchen
chemists making smack can make all the iso the might wish from acetone. Copper and chromium
oxide catalyst & hydrogenation...
Wiki says 75% ethanol/25% water or 75/25 iso are equivalent as hand-sanitizers... But 75%
ethyl alcohol is roughly 150 proof - Such concentration of ethyl alcohol are often sold for
drinking...but dangerous (overdose) and expensive. Iso is a neurotoxin, ethyl less toxic.
I'd use the vodka approach...or wear gloves (which I do! (and not because of CV - it's an
old habit))
Here's a video made by a Russian, but dubbed into English, which films what's actually going
on in China - multiple locations including in Hubei province actual China footage under
nCOV
Global Times has published two editorials dealing with the COVID-19 issue. This one looks at how
differing societies are reacting:
"South Korea, Japan, and European countries have suffered fewer losses in economic
activities than most parts of China, although they are facing a higher risk from the epidemic
than in the Chinese mainland, except for Hubei.
"It is uncertain whether their approach of 'as much prevention as available' will
ultimately lead to a serious humanitarian crisis or help them become resilient to the
epidemic. Much will depend on the mortality rate of COVID-19."
"Some Americans like to compare the US system with those of other countries. These people
tend to describe how other systems are inferior to theirs, as if the US system is the
standard in the world. But what really tests a country's system? It is whether the government
has the ability to let all people receive equal and timely assistance.
"Due to the expensive healthcare system in the US, many people cannot afford even to pay
for a test for COVID-19, not to mention the cost of treatment after diagnosis."
The initial gloating within the Outlaw US Empire at China's predicament will soon be
replaced by outrage. The CDC continues to issue contradictory statements, particularly about
masks and their effectiveness. Current pictures from China show Xi and his aides all wearing
masks. From a WHO official: "I'm not saying you shouldn't wear masks – you should, but
there's no guarantee." The reason there's no guarantee is the virus can enter through the
eyes and ears which masks don't cover. Within the Outlaw Empire, the problem as admitted is
there's only 10% of the needed amount of masks, so officials are lying about effectiveness to
deter people from buying.
IMO, China's method of reaction shows it took the correct measures to protect the vast
majority of its populace. No other nation will do as well because they lack China's
system.
Good concise report about COVID-19 and its affects on public health policy in this
election year and how it's very likely to cause a vitally needed change in direction.
Sanders's statement on the matter is primarily why Trump is downplaying the extent of the
rising crisis:
"The coronavirus reminds us that we are all in this together. We cannot allow Americans to
skip doctor's visits over outrageous bills.
"Everyone should get the medical care they need without opening their wallet -- as a
matter of justice and public health."
This article discusses how Trump's used the outbreak as a political tool and worse.
Apparently, the WaPost's attacks were effective, but could only be so due to Trump's behavior
and willful distortions.
In my last article,
Are Oil Markets Overreacting To The Coronavirus?
, I warned of the power of media hype when it comes
to epidemics. The human brain has a tendency to mix up the severity of an outcome with how likely that
thing is to happen. Just like our
fear of terrorism
or
shark attacks
, when it comes to epidemics we are incredibly poor judges of how much of a danger they
really pose.
Our intensely interconnected societies and sensationalist media mean that this failure of judgment can
translate into mass hysteria and fear in the markets that can have a tangible impact on the world
economy. Oil prices have collapsed, stock markets have fallen by the largest amount since the 2008
financial crisis and the Dow Jones saw its largest single-day points drop in history. All of this has
come from the spread of the coronavirus from China to South Korea, Italy, Iran, and Japan. But as this
spread continues there is one key factor that market observers appear to be missing, highlighted by the
below chart.
This is an epidemic curve showing the number of new cases per day in China (the world's second-largest
economy and the world's largest importer of goods). It appears that China is in the process of
successfully containing the coronavirus and, for that reason, has already begun to reboot its economy.
The large jump in the middle of the above graph was caused by China changing its recording method from
positive test cases to clinical diagnosis. The trend can perhaps be seen more clearly in the Guangdong
outbreak in the curve below.
You can follow more epidemic curves updated regularly on
Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection
, including the more recent and smaller outbreaks beyond
China's borders. All of the Chinese data suggests that the epidemic is coming under control there.
Here is a graph of containership congestion levels in the Outer Pearl River Delta:
Here are some other key indicators that show the same thing:
But these are generally not the statistics or the graphs reported by the media. Instead, they report
cumulative data and crude numbers out of context.
These cumulative graphs suggest that coronavirus deaths and cases are increasing and therefore the
epidemic is getting worse. Of course, in a cumulative graph, the cases will only ever go up or plateau.
This graph, which is far more relevant, shows a general downward trend in global new confirmed cases
per day and an increase in new recovered cases. This data would suggest that containing the coronavirus
is very much a possibility and if governments continue to follow good practice the new outbreaks can be
controlled without impacting the economy too severely.
In fact, the largest threat to the markets at the moment is not an epidemic of disease but an epidemic
of hysteria. Governments and medical institutions are reacting, as they should, to prevent a worst-case
scenario. But for societies and markets to react in the same way is neither logical nor healthy.
For example, the WHO recently
upgraded
the global
risk of the coronavirus outbreak to 'very high', a fact that spread across media outlets like wildfire.
At the same time, the head of the WHO stressed that the biggest challenges to overcome were fear and
misinformation. It is this fear and misinformation that is driving a huge portion of the negative
sentiment in global markets.
Another way that media spreads this fear is by reporting the number of deaths and cases without
context. Take the numbers below.
Yet, when compared to the
global
annual mortality
of other diseases, the number of total deaths is relatively insignificant.
Measles:
140,000 deaths
Influenza:
650,000 deaths
Tuberculosis:
1.5 million deaths
Infectious gastroenteritis:
1.8 million deaths
Imagine a world in which every death from the flu was reported on the front page of every media
outlet. You might be surprised, for example, to find out that in the U.S.
105 children have died
from the flu so far in 2020 - the second-highest number of deaths at this time
of year since records began in 2004.
Another piece of relevant data that is frequently excluded from articles about the coronavirus is the
age and health of coronavirus victims. With the death rate for an infected individual aged 50 or lower
under 1% and the death rate of an infected individual without a pre-existing condition also below 1%.
Related: Saudi Arabia Aims For Additional Cuts As Oil Plunges Below $50
A vital point to understand when it comes to public health measures designed to contain an epidemic is
that it is always a trade-off between the deaths caused by the epidemic and the deaths caused by economic
stagnation. Poverty is the single
largest determinant of health
, and economic growth is the single
most powerful instrument
for reducing poverty
. This is not a zero-sum game and it will be a calculation that the Chinese
government must make as its population returns to work.
It is possible that stock markets were in a bubble at the start of 2019 and the coronavirus was the
black swan event necessary to bring it all crashing down to earth. As for oil markets, there is plenty of
bearish news at the moment, with an oil supply glut, Russia
angling to
leave
the OPEC+ deal and Libyan oil production
poised to come back online
. Chinese demand has undoubtedly fallen in Q1 and everything from refinery
runs to imports have been hit extremely hard. An oil price crash was entirely justified then. But the
data doesn't suggest that the coronavirus is escalating. The data suggest China has already started
coming back online. The question is, when will that data begin to show in the markets?
Of course hand sanitizer isn't essential but if more people make their own it could prevent
the inevitable price jump that will accompany its return to supermarket shelves.
Add a few drops of tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil, maybe one drop or two of thyme oil.
Not excess on the thyme. That is also a great mixture to spray on bed to refresh but mainly
to slaughter dust mites. I mop the floors with that sort of mix and its great.
The coronavirus epidemic is almost defeated in China. There were only 13 new cases diagnosed yesterday
outside city of Wuhan. Most of these people have likely been infected over two weeks ago. The
epicenter, Wuhan still under quarantine had only 196 new cases, less than half as many as the
day before.
The number of cases outside still China follows an exponential trend. Italy had 585 new
cases,
twice as many as yesterday. Thousands more have been exposed and infected but are not yet
showing symptoms. Three people in Finland are ill and 130 under quarantine after one tourist
brings the virus from northern Italy.
The United States has 8 new cases for a total of 77. The American health care system is
totally unsuited and incapable in dealing with an outbreak if the virus ever succeeds in
entering the US population in general.
The previous post on Moon of Alabama
sums up what is needed:
Tests must be freely available for anyone with even slight symptoms. Those who test
positive must be isolated. There must be teams to trace and alarm all their contacts. All
costs for COVID-19 cases, including money to pay people during for quarantine, must be paid
by the government.
Services must be set up for deliveries to people who quarantine
themselves at home. Each new cluster must receive an immediate response on a large scale.
Health staff needs to get extra pay.
Time is working against the virus as spring is coming. Due to measures already taken the
spread of the virus is slow and the number of death are minuscule and comparable with a regular
flu epidemics: On Friday, Iran had 388 cases (+143 from the day before) with only 34 deaths (+8);
Italy had 889 (+234) with only 21 deaths (+4); South Korea had 2,337 (+571) with only 16 deaths
(+3).
The World Health Organization (WHO) has upgraded its assessment of the danger posed by the
coronavirus to "very high," stopping short of calling the outbreak a pandemic. Director-General
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a recent press conference, "For the moment, we are not
witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus, and we are not witnessing large-scale
severe death or disease."
The coronavirus has now been documented in at least 56 countries.
... ... ...
A declaration of a pandemic would trigger emergency-grade response plans at
local and state levels. These measures would include school closures, the use of essential
personnel only, the use of telecommunications for the conduct of business, the closure of
public events – sporting events, conferences, political rallies and conventions –
and the possible use of massive quarantine measures, to include the deployment of military or
police forces to enforce regulations. These measures have been employed by many nations that
are essentially preparing for massive outbreaks in their communities.
The last time the WHO declared a pandemic was in 2009 when the H1N1 flu, better known as the
swine flu, infected over 1 billion people on the globe and killed over half a million people.
The WHO was severely criticized for its declaration of a pandemic and handling of the crisis.
It was cited for the needlessly complex definition of a pandemic, potential conflict of
interest with the vaccine industries, and responding with lack of resolve after declaring the
pandemic.
According to the New York Times , "Countries that needed technical help could not
obtain it in enough languages, and the WHO bureaucracy created an unmanageable number of
documents."
During a 2011 review of the pandemic, the WHO noted in its draft that the "core national and
local capacities called for in the International Health Regulation (IHR) are not yet fully
operational and are not now on a path to timely implementation worldwide." Essentially, the WHO
lacks enforceable sanctions. In other words, it cannot make countries subscribe to its
recommendations.
In its summary conclusion 3, the WHO wrote that the world is "ill-prepared to respond to a
severe influenza pandemic or any similarly global, sustained and threatening public health
emergency." It continued: "Beyond the implementation of core public health capacities called
for in the IHR, global preparedness can be advanced through research, strengthened health care
delivery systems, economic development in low- and middle-income countries and improved health
status."
There are presently 84,175 cases of Covid-19, with 2,876 deaths so far. The number of
people who have recovered from the disease is 36,884.
The three countries posing serious acceleration in cases - Iran, Italy and South Korea
– reported more than 3,500 infections on Friday, doubling in two days. On Friday, Iran
had 388 cases (+143 from the day before) with 34 deaths (+8); Italy had 889 (+234) with 21
deaths (+4); South Korea had 2,337 (+571) with 16 deaths (+3).
COVID-19 is not a new virus. Its a new strain of an old virus. Corona virus is an old
virus. It does not stay within the body like some viruses do.
For example, chicken pox virus is not cleared from the body but lies dormant, but when
reactivated it causes shingles which is not very infectious. HIV stays infectious and
supposedly fatal without treatment. COVID-19, even if it could somehow remain in body and be
infectious , is not fatal except to 0.2-2% of people. In fact outside China and Iran it seems
to be no more than 0.1% fatal, same as flu.
So in such a case, if everyone eventually harbors COVID -19, and there is no evidence for
this, there is nobody left to infect, we will all be carriers, natural selection will ensure
the human race will live comfortably with this virus as it does with many other viruses,
becoming harmful only when the immune system fails.
Now COVID-19 might be able to reinfect people, like the flu. However, unless its like
Dengue, subsequent reinfections would be milder except in a few people susceptible to immune
enhancement where an overwhelming immune response due to previous sensitization might cause
complications. This could explain the higher fatality rates in China and Iran which were
previously exposed to SARS and MERS.
You hug that thought on a few "rare cases." I could present a few dozens links on peer
reviewed published papers and audio on the advances made in Immunobiology and immunotherapy
to include cancer as well.
Taking up the discussion on COVID-19. It may interest you that researchers in Israel say
they have developed a vaccine, anticipating it will be available in 90 days. Look at their
findings!
Israeli scientists: 'In a few weeks, we will have coronavirus vaccine'
[BUT] after scientists sequenced the DNA of the novel coronavirus causing the current
worldwide outbreak, the MIGAL researchers examined it and found that the poultry
coronavirus has high genetic similarity to the human one, and that it uses the same
infection mechanism, which increases the likelihood of achieving an effective human vaccine
in a very short period of time, Katz said.
"All we need to do is adjust the system to the new sequence," he said. "We are in the
middle of this process, and hopefully in a few weeks we will have the vaccine in our hands.
Yes, in a few weeks, if it all works, we would have a vaccine to prevent
coronavirus."[.]
Akunis said he has instructed his ministry's director-general to fast-track all approval
processes with the goal of bringing the human vaccine to market as quickly as possible.
"Given the urgent global need for a human coronavirus vaccine, we are doing everything
we can to accelerate development," MIGAL CEO David Zigdon said. The vaccine could "achieve
safety approval in 90 days," he said.[.] (emphasis added)
20 global centres are rushing to develop an effective vaccine for COVID-19
"... The federal government's response to the coronavirus has been woefully lacking from the start. Between the president's own attempts to The federal government's response to the coronavirus has been woefully lacking from the start. Between the president's own attempts to dismiss the severity of the situation and the CDC's inexplicable delays in testing patients, it is clear that the relevant authorities are not taking this outbreak as seriously as they should be. ..."
"... The administration seems to be more concerned with the damage that the virus could do to the president's political fortunes than they are with halting its spread and providing the necessary resources to treat those infected by it. ..."
"... The account surfaced after President Trump sought to play down the danger of a domestic coronavirus outbreak amid bipartisan concern about a sluggish and disjointed response by the administration to an illness that public health officials have said is likely to spread through the United States. The first American case of coronavirus in a patient with no known contact with hot zones or other coronavirus patients emerged near Travis Air Force Base this week. The account surfaced after President Trump sought to play down the danger of a domestic coronavirus outbreak amid bipartisan concern about a sluggish and disjointed response by the administration to an illness that public health officials have said is likely to spread through the United States. The first American case of coronavirus in a patient with no known contact with hot zones or other coronavirus patients emerged near Travis Air Force Base this week. ..."
The New York Times
reports on the contents of a whistle-blower complaint in the Department of Health and Human Services that describes the government's
incompetent handling of the quarantining of Americans exposed overseas to the coronavirus. This incompetence appears to have led
to the spread of the virus into the general population:
Federal health employees interacted with Americans quarantined for possible exposure to the coronavirus without proper medical
training or protective gear, then scattered into the general population, according to a government whistle-blower.
In a portion of a complaint filing obtained by The New York Times that has been submitted to the Office of the Special Counsel,
the whistle-blower, described as a senior leader at the health agency, said the team was “improperly deployed” to two military
bases in California to assist the processing of Americans who had been evacuated from coronavirus hot zones in China and elsewhere.
The staff members were sent to Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base and were ordered to enter quarantined areas, including
a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being received. They were not provided training in safety protocols until five days later,
the person said.
Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one
person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperature
three times a day.
The federal government's response to the coronavirus has been woefully lacking from the start. Between the president's own attempts
to The federal government's response to the coronavirus has been woefully lacking from the start. Between the president's own attempts
to
dismiss the severity of the situation and the CDC's
inexplicable delays in testing patients, it is clear that the relevant authorities are not taking this outbreak as seriously
as they should be.
The administration seems to be more concerned with the damage that the virus could do to the president's political fortunes
than they are with halting its spread and providing the necessary resources to treat those infected by it. The exposure of federal
health workers occurred in the same part of California where the first domestic case of coronavirus recently appeared: The exposure
of federal health workers occurred in the same part of California where the first domestic case of coronavirus recently appeared:
The account surfaced after President Trump sought to play down the danger of a domestic coronavirus outbreak amid bipartisan
concern about a sluggish and disjointed response by the administration to an illness that public health officials have said is
likely to spread through the United States. The first American case of coronavirus in a patient with no known contact with hot
zones or other coronavirus patients emerged near Travis Air Force Base this week. The account surfaced after President Trump sought
to play down the danger of a domestic coronavirus outbreak amid bipartisan concern about a sluggish and disjointed response by
the administration to an illness that public health officials have said is likely to spread through the United States. The first
American case of coronavirus in a patient with no known contact with hot zones or other coronavirus patients emerged near Travis
Air Force Base this week.
The article details the inadequacy of the preparation and training provided to the staff that received the evacuees: The article
details the inadequacy of the preparation and training provided to the staff that received the evacuees:
The staff members, who had some experience with emergency management coordination, were woefully underprepared for the mission
they were given, according to the whistle-blower. "They were not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health emergency
situation," the official wrote. "They were potentially exposed to coronavirus; appropriate measures were not taken to protect
the staff from potential infection; and appropriate steps were not taken to quarantine, monitor or test them during their deployment
and upon their return home." The staff members, who had some experience with emergency management coordination, were woefully
underprepared for the mission they were given, according to the whistle-blower. "They were not properly trained or equipped to
operate in a public health emergency situation," the official wrote. "They were potentially exposed to coronavirus; appropriate
measures were not taken to protect the staff from potential infection; and appropriate steps were not taken to quarantine, monitor
or test them during their deployment and upon their return home." "They were not properly trained or equipped to operate in a
public health emergency situation," the official wrote. "They were potentially exposed to coronavirus; appropriate measures were
not taken to protect the staff from potential infection; and appropriate steps were not taken to quarantine, monitor or test them
during their deployment and upon their return home." "They were not properly trained or equipped to operate in a public health
emergency situation," the official wrote. "They were potentially exposed to coronavirus; appropriate measures were not taken to
protect the staff from potential infection; and appropriate steps were not taken to quarantine, monitor or test them during their
deployment and upon their return home."
It appears that the administration's shoddy handling of the situation has already put the public at greater risk of exposure unnecessarily,
and this episode hardly inspires confidence that they will be able to manage a larger outbreak here in the U.S. It appears that the
administration's shoddy handling of the situation has already put the public at greater risk of exposure unnecessarily, and this
episode hardly inspires confidence that they will be able to manage a larger outbreak here in the U.S.
One of the most striking features of the working of the U.S. imperial system and media is
the regular inflation of the threat posed by imperial targets-an inflation process that very
often attains the ludicrous and incredible. When the imperial managers want to go after some
hapless small country-Guatemala, Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, Iraq-that for one reason or another has
been put on the U.S. hit list, the managers issue fearsome warnings of the dire threat posed by
the prospective victim. The media quickly get on this bandwagon and suddenly give enormous
attention to a country previously completely ignored. Critical analyses of the reality of the
"threat" are minimal, and the gullibility quotient of the media escalates in view of the
alleged seriousness of the threat and need for everybody to be "on the team." As soon as the
small target is smashed-with great ease, despite the prior claims of its capability-and as
official attention moves elsewhere, the media drop the subject and allow the target to return
to black hole attention.
A closely related feature of the threat inflation process has been the unwillingness of the
media to allow that the United States poses any threat to the imminent victim. U. S. officials
may even have announced an intention to displace a government, they may have organized a proxy
army to invade, and positioned their own forces in the vicinity, but any actions of the target
to prepare to defend itself are considered sinister and further proof of their menacing
character. In the Cold War era, when targets reached out to the Soviet bloc to get arms, this
added to the proof of a threat, demonstrating that they were part of the larger Soviet threat.
That they sought weapons from the Soviet bloc because they were prevented from buying them from
the United States and its allies, and that forcing them to do this was part of a strategy
making their threat more credible, was outside the orbit of media thought.
Thus, in the official and therefore media view, threats were and remain
unidirectional-democratic Guatemala (1945 -54), Sandinista Nicaragua (1980-90), Iraq today have
allegedly posed threats to the United States, but they themselves are not threatened by it.
This results in part from the media's ideological and patriotic subservience. Just as in a
totalitarian society, the media here take it as a premise that their leaders are good and
pursue decent ends, so that invidious words like "threat" or "aggression" cannot be applied to
their language and behavior. This is helped along by the fact that the targeted leaders are
quickly demonized, so that any apparent threats from our end are a response to evil and quest
for justice (as well as countering a real threat). This exquisitely and comically biased
perspective has helped make it possible to find that no actions by the targets constitute "self
defense," and in effect they do not have any right of self-defense.
Guatemala
Guatemala in the late 1940s and early 1950s offers a model case. Guatemala's democratic
leaders had aroused suspicion by granting labor the right to form unions back in 1947, and when
in 1952 president Jacopo Arbenz proposed taking over idle United Fruit land (with compensation)
in the interest of landless peasants, United Fruit Company and U.S. government officials
escalated the charges of a dire Communist threat. The media, which had previously rarely
mentioned Guatemala, increasingly focused on the official target. The Communists never took
over" Guatemala (see Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit), but United Fruit,
the U.S. government, and the media claimed that they had, and the media became frenetic and
hysterical on the subject. This was a completely fraudulent threat to U. S. national
security.
On the other hand, the United States posed a genuine security threat to Guatemala, openly
menacing it with hostile words and organizing a "contra" army in Nicaragua to invade Guatemala.
The United States also refused to sell arms to Guatemala and got its allies to do the same.
When Guatemala imported a small quantity of arms from Czechoslovakia in 1953 this caused a
media frenzy, and demonstrated for the media the aggressive intent of the U.S. target. In the
U.S. media the notion that Guatemala was threatened and might be acting in self defense in
acquiring arms was outside the realm of permissible thought. After all, could the United States
be planning a proxy aggression against Guatemala? Not for the amazing U.S. media-the tiny
target threatened us.
None of the non-dictatorships in Latin America considered Guatemala a threat, although they
were closer to the U.S. target and less capable of defending themselves from it if the threat
were valid. But they were bribed and bullied by John Foster Dulles into condemning
"international communism" in the hemisphere and the need to confront it. Did the U.S. officials
believe the malarkey about a threat? The NSC Policy Statement on "United States Policy in the
Event of Guatemalan Aggression in Latin America" (May 28, 1954) conveys the impression of
official panic over the Guatemala menace, declaring Guatemala to be increasingly [an]
instrument of Soviet aggression in this hemisphere." This was about a virtually disarmed tiny
country that had not moved one inch outside its borders, in which the Soviet Union had invested
nothing and with which Guatemala didn't even maintain diplomatic relations (out of fear of U.S.
reaction), whose democratic government was shortly to be overthrown by a rag-tag proxy army,
with much U.S. assistance.
After the overthrow of the Guatemalan democracy in 1954 the media once again allowed
Guatemala to disappear from their sights. A very similar process took place following the
victory of the Sandinistas over the authoritarian Somoza regime in Nicaragua in 1980. Here
again it was the democratic government that quickly became a "threat" to the United States,
after the United States had supported dictatorship for 45 years. Here again it organized a
contra army to harass and invade the democracy. Once again it imposed an economic and arms
embargo on the target, forcing it to acquire arms from the Soviet bloc, and then using this to
demonstrate that it was an instrument of that bloc. Once again the nearby small countries were
not frightened by the new menace, and much of their effort was spent trying to settle the
conflict-in opposition to the Reagan administration's preference for the use of force.
Nicaragua, Soviet Threat, etc., etc.
Here again, also, after the Sandinista government was ousted, following a decade of boycott
and U. S. -sponsored international terrorism, the media were enthused over this triumph of
democracy and U.S. "patience" in using means other than a direct invasion to end social
democracy in Nicaragua. Once this "threat" was terminated, the media once again moved away from
Nicaragua to focus on other good deeds by their leaders coping with other threats. As with
Guatemala, and later in the case of NATO-occupied Kosovo, the media carefully averted their
eyes from the results, which were not in keeping with the alleged war aims and claims that
beneficial effects would follow the removal of the threat.
The big threat featured in the Cold War years was that posed by the Soviet Union, which at
least referred to the challenge of a serious rival on the global scene. But even here, the
threat was misread and hugely inflated. The Soviet Union was always a conservative and
defensive-minded regional power, its reach beyond its near neighbors tentative, reactive, and
weak. It never posed a threat to the United States and constantly sought accommodation with the
real (U.S.) superpower-its real threat was that it offered an alternative development model and
supported resistance to the global thrust of U. S. imperialism.
On the other hand, World War II was hardly over when the United States was funding groups
trying to destabilize the Soviet Union and in NSC 68 (1950) U.S. officials laid out an agenda
for destabilization and "regime change" in the Soviet Union as basic U.S. policy. The United
States never accepted the legitimacy of the Soviet Union and from the invasions in 1917 to the
final important assist given Yeltsin and his apparatchiks, its aim has been regime change.
But in the U.S. propaganda system it was an ideological premise that the Soviet Union was
trying to conquer the world and we were on the defensive, "containing" it. This was confirmed
when Khrushchev said, "We are going to bury you," a blustering statement that was hardly on a
par with the neglected NSC 68 policy pronouncement of an intent to bury the Soviet Union. A
prime fact of Cold War history was that the Soviet Union provided a limit to U.S.
expansionism-and it was the end of that real containment that has allowed the United States to
go on its current rampage.
It should be noted that throughout the Cold War U.S. officials proclaimed Soviet advances
and "gaps" that invariably proved to be disinformation, but which the New York Times and its
colleagues invariably passed along as truth. Equally important, when it turned out that the
"missile gap," "warhead gap," or "window of vulnerability" was a lie, the media kept
this under the rug, along with the fact that they had been propaganda and disinformation
agents. In his classic, The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy (Harper & Row, 1986), Tom
Gervasi showed how the media passed along Reagan administration claims of Soviet superiority in
weapons systems that were refutable from the Pentagon's own information releases, but which the
New York Times and company were too lazy or too complicit with their leaders to examine and
challenge, saying merely that figures "were difficult to pin down" (NYT), which was false. As
Gervasi said, "The frequent assertions of editors...that they must strive for 'balance' and
'objectivity,' were simply an effort to hide the lack of attempt at either, to justify wholly
uncritical acceptance of official views, and to deny that a great deal of information was
missing from public view.
Iraq
In the buildup to the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991, U.S. officials and the media
conveyed the impression that Iraq was a mighty power and huge military challenge to the United
States and its "allies," when in fact Iraq was a Third World country exhausted by its brutal
conflict with Iran and hardly able to put up token resistance to the "allied" assault. It was
overwhelmed within a week and forced into de facto surrender. Ironically, Iraq didn't dare to
use any weapons of mass destruction it possessed, but the "allies" blew up a number of Iraq
weapons caches, spewing forth chemicals on allied soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The United
States also used depleted uranium "dirty" munitions, thus making the Persian Gulf war a low
level nuclear war, as it was later to do in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. Once again, following
the war-or more properly, slaughter-the media failed to reflect on either the evidence that the
threat had been inflated or the costs of the war in terms of "friendly fire"_or rather
"friendly use of depleted uranium and release of enemy chemicals"-on both allied soldiers and
Iraqi civilians.
In the buildup to the prospective 2003 attack on Iraq, once again there has been a
multi-pronged threat inflation that the mainstream media pass along in their now standard
propaganda agency role.
Most important, there is the pretense that if Iraq possessed WMD it would pose a serious
threat of using them offensively and against the United States in particular. To make this
plausible the officials-media phalanx stress what a bad person Saddam is and the fact that he
used WMD in the 1980s. What the phalanx avoids discussing are: (1) that Saddam only used those
weapons when supplied and supported by the United States and Britain-he did not use them in the
Persian Gulf War; (2) that the sanctions and inspections regime has made him far weaker now
than in 1991 when he failed to use such weapons; (3) that his use of them offensively against
either the United States or any U.S. client state would be suicidal; and (4) that it follows
that if he possessed them they would only be serviceable for defensive purposes.
The idea that he poses a serious threat to the United States, claimed by President George
Bush and his associates, is therefore absurd. But it is reported in the media as real and is
essentially unchallenged. It is certainly never called absurd, as it is. Saddam does pose a
possible threat to U.S. forces if attacked, but only then. We get back to the fact, however,
that a target of U.S. enmity, from Vietnam to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua to Iraq
has no right of self-defense in the media propaganda system.
Further arrows in the war-makers quiver are the facts that Saddam is a cruel dictator and
that he has been less than completely cooperative with the inspections process designed to
assure the elimination of his WMD. The former is true but irrelevant and its use is
hypocritical. The United States and Britain supported this dictator when he served their
interests and it continues to support others who are amenable, as Saddam appeared to be in the
1980s. International law and the UN Charter do not allow "regime change" of dictatorships by
military intervention and actions with such design constitute straightforward aggression.
"Helping" people by warring on them is also profoundly hypocritical and there is every reason
to doubt any humanitarian end in Bush administration war planning.
It is also true that Saddam has not been fully cooperative with the inspections system, but
why should he be when the United States has repeatedly admitted that inspections are a cover
for an intent to dislodge him from power and have been used in the past to locate war targets?
(The same motive of regime change underlies the genocidal sanctions regime that has killed over
a million Iraqi civilians.) Furthermore, the inspections regime is a U.S.-British imposition
that reflects their domination of the Security Council and their political agenda, it has
nothing to do with justice. Israel is allowed to have WMD and ignore UN Security Council
rulings because it is a Western ally and client, but Israel not only threatens its neighbors,
it has repeatedly invaded Lebanon and is currently carrying out a ruthless program of
repression and ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine, in violation of UN rulings and the
Fourth Geneva Convention. But the U.S. mainstream media ignore this, and have gotten on the
bandwagon, proclaiming that
Iraq's lack of full cooperation with the inspections regime is intolerable.
A number of critical writers have stressed that while Iraq poses no threat to the United
States, the attack on Iraq will create a threat in a feedback process. Thus Dan Ellsberg points
out that: (1) "the number of recruits for suicide bombing against the U.S. and its
allies...will increase a hundred-fold;" (2) "regimes with sizeable Muslim populations
(including Indonesia, the Philippines, France and Germany...) will find it politically almost
impossible to be seen collaborating with the US on the anti- terrorism intelligence and police
operations that are essential to lessening the terrorist threat..."; (3) Iraq under attack, and
possibly even segments of the Pakistani army, may finally share WMD with Al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups (Dan Ellsberg on Iraq, Weblog Entry, Jan. 23, 2003, www.ellsberg. net/weblog/
1_23_03. htm).
Once again the mainstream media have cooperated in a ludicrous threat inflation, which has
prepared the ground for their country to wage a war of aggression. That war will not reduce a
threat from Iraq, which was negligible, but it will produce serious threats as a consequence of
the attack. However, this may well be what some of Bush's advisers want, as it will justify
further U.S. militarization and warfare, intensified repression at home, and provide a cover
for further Bush service to his business constituency here and for Sharon's accelerated ethnic
cleansing and transfer in Palestine.
Edward S. Herman is an economist, author, media analyst, and a regular contributor to Z
since 1988.
"... Looking at the responses to the North Korea question over the decades, it is striking how little support there used to be for defending South Korea even during the Cold War. Over the last forty years, there has been a huge increase across the oldest three cohorts in a willingness to fight another war in Korea: ..."
"... Some of this increase might be explained by the demise of the USSR, but it cannot account for the dramatic increase in the last twenty years. There have been double digit increases in support for using U.S. forces to respond to a North Korean invasion since 2002, and in some of the cohorts the increase has been huge. 33% of Gen X respondents favored using U.S. troops in this scenario 18 years ago, and now 56% do. ..."
... there has been an increase since the start of the century. The story is much
the same with the Gen X cohort: in 1998, only 49% agreed with the "active role" option, and
today the number stands at 69%. All of these cohorts tend to become more supportive of an
"active role" as time goes by regardless of how much damage U.S. activist foreign policy
does.
The most troubling result is the broad public support for military action to "stop Iran from
obtaining nuclear weapons":
It is remarkable that there is less support for coming to the defense of a treaty ally when
it is invaded than there is for attacking Iran in an illegal, preventive war. The good news is
that Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons, so this scenario is not likely to happen, but it is
very worrisome that there is such an unthinking consensus in favor of an unjustified and
aggressive military option. When the cohort that is least supportive of military action still
favors launching an illegal attack on another country by two-to-one, that shows just how much
public opinion has been warped by constant fear-mongering and threat inflation about Iran.
Looking at the responses to the North Korea question over the decades, it is striking how
little support there used to be for defending South Korea even during the Cold War. Over the
last forty years, there has been a huge increase across the oldest three cohorts in a
willingness to fight another war in Korea:
Some of this increase might be explained by the demise of the USSR, but it cannot account
for the dramatic increase in the last twenty years. There have been double digit increases in
support for using U.S. forces to respond to a North Korean invasion since 2002, and in some of
the cohorts the increase has been huge. 33% of Gen X respondents favored using U.S. troops in
this scenario 18 years ago, and now 56% do.
34% of Silent generation respondents gave this
response in 2002, and it is now 76%. 38% of Boomers gave this answer at the start of the
century, and now 65% back using U.S. troops in a new Korean war. The sharpest increases seem to
be related to North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons. This is strange, since one wold
think that North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons would make Americans less likely to want
to get involved in a war on the Peninsula. Once again, it looks like public opinion on this
question has been driven by the steady drumbeat of fear-mongering about a manageable,
deterrable threat from the DPRK. It is interesting that the generation that has grown up with
the most threat inflation about Iran and North Korea is also the generation least inclined to
use force against them. It may be that the generation that came of age with 9/11 and the Iraq
war are understandably more skeptical of official claims and more likely to discount alarmism
about foreign threats. Whatever the reason, it is encouraging that younger Americans are less
supportive of military options, and if they stick with these views that bodes well for the
prospects of a more restrained and peaceful foreign policy in the decades to come.
Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo
blog . He has been
published in the New York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World
Politics Review , Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic,
The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in
history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter . email
Nonsense. They started managing it early. A couple weeks ago they took US passengers off the
infected cruise ship and flew them in tight security to isolation facilities in various
places. One of those facilities is at a hospital here in Spokane, and they've been training
and waiting for four years. This is the first use of the facility. I'd call that preparation.
"The staff members were sent to Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base and were
ordered to enter quarantined areas, including a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being
received. They were not provided training in safety protocols until five days later..."
"Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely
around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving
California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperature
three times a day."
"The first American case of coronavirus in a patient with no known contact with hot zones
or other coronavirus patients emerged near Travis Air Force Base this week."
This country is so scr*wed. Trump and his band of completely incompetent people will lead to
thousands infected and hundreds dead. I think the only upside is that this debacle will end
with the removal of Trump from office. How can any thinking person let this happen?
Yeah well, the merry band of Trump Grifters and Cronies can easily turn a disaster into a
catastrophe. The latest info shows that the people charged with quarantining the infected
people from the cruise ship in No Cal were under trained and did not have protective
equipment. Now there is an infected case from that same county that is not traced to China
travel. Workers who complained were told "they weren't good team players".
The refusal by some Trump followers to even acknowledge the ineptness and incompetence (see below), is Jim-Jones-level
(Jonestown) cult behavior. A real moral/spiritual sickness with self-deception at its core.
---------
"The staff members were sent to Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base and were
ordered to enter quarantined areas, including a hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being
received. They were not provided training in safety protocols until five days later..."
"Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed
staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a
nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to
test their temperature three times a day."
"The first American case of coronavirus in a patient with no known contact with hot zones
or other coronavirus patients emerged near Travis Air Force Base this week."
"The staff members were sent to Travis Air Force Base and March Air
Reserve Base and were ordered to enter quarantined areas, including a
hangar where coronavirus evacuees were being received. They were not
provided training in safety protocols until five days later..."
"Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed
staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one
person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial
flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperature three
times a day."
"The first American case of coronavirus in a patient with no known contact
with hot zones or other coronavirus patients emerged near Travis Air
Force Base this week."
In fact, other Trump policies will probably contribute to the spread. What happens when
illegal immigrants start catching the virus? In general, they are trying to avoid all contact
with the government, and cannot afford to pay for health care, so they are not likely to seek
early treatment. Many of them have jobs that involve handling food or cleaning living spaces.
I'm not advocating that we ignore illegal immigration, but I think there are situations in
which it makes sense to turn a judicious blind eye to the problem. I don't think this
administration is capable of that kind of nuance.
Interesting, but we are not even close to that. Still only 60 US cases. They might actually
be better conditioned to avoiding the virus, at least in those industries.
Agree. And by all means stay away from places like the upcoming Democratic Primaries and
Caucuses where the risk of catching it can be very high! The Democratic leadership refuses to
cancel them.
Despite a female chief doctor has reported this disease on Dec. 26 last year as a unknown
contagious pneumonia, Chinese officials didn't treat it seriously other than did routine such
as notified UN on Jan. 7 this year.
Only until patients with high fever crowded hospitals' emergency room, then, they realized
this is a big issue.
Hopefully, we won't that happen in US but it is possible.
Government needs to stock necessary medical suppliers, need to select hospitals to treat
this highly contagious diseases, need ... many things but it seems that they only prepare to
brag that through their efforts, this disease doesn't spread.
I agree with 2014-era Donald Trump. We need an expert with "experience in infectious disease
control" in charge of pandemic response.
Yet instead we get the former governor of Indiana.
DJT, 10/17/2014: "Obama just appointed an Ebola Czar with zero experience in the medical
area and zero experience in infectious disease control. A TOTAL JOKE!"
So I understand that Trump has appointed Mr. Pence and two highly placed FINANCIAL ADVISORS
to manage our national response. His priorities could not be more blatant .Why is it that our
Republican legislators are not beating him over the head with this obvious mismanagement of a
potential medical crisis, and allow him to focus on the financial ramifications (and
associated impacts on his reelection campaign)?
"Why is it that our Republican legislators are not beating him over the
head with this obvious mismanagement of a potential medical crisis, and
allow him to focus on the financial ramifications (and associated
impacts on his reelection campaign)?"
Hey, a pile of Coronavirus corpses is just par for the course in MAGA-land.
Trump's constant lying, his focus on appearances instead of reality, his rewarding loyalty
over competence, expertise, and integrity, all of it has hindered the government response to
this crisis. If we avoid the worst, we'll owe thanks to God, certainly not to Trump and his
bunch of liars and incompetents. My 2016 vote for Trump was the worst one I ever cast.
Trump's been very lucky so far, there have been no crises other than those he created
himself. Now we have a real one, and his government's initial response has been muddled at
best.
Appointing Pence is just a way to deflect the blame. Whether Pence can handle the job or
not doesn't matter anyway...Trump will be constantly sticking his nose and Twitter thumbs
into the process and making it impossible for anyone to do the job, even if they were
competent.
If this lasts until November and his polling numbers aren't looking great, a part of me
wonders if he'll 'postpone' the elections out of 'public health' concerns.
But the rest of me tells me that I'm skirting a little too close to the Q crazy line by
thinking about that.
Incompetence is not a bug of the Trump administration. It is a feature.
The Government is the problem, so declared Saint Ronald, and the Donald is the guy who will
finally bring it to its knees, just in time for a pandemic.
Who knew that a moron could not be trusted with the office of POTUS. I did not see this
coming
Bottom line - neither the administration nor Democratic Party response the coronavirus issue
as a public health issue. They all want to score in their political ambitions:
1. At the epidemic lost control in China, the administration is busy to use it to contain
China and hope to achieve de-coupling and de facto economic blockage - travel ban
announced
2. As the epidemic reaches US and stock market tumbles - both sides want their
^&#%$@
Very few politicians care:
1. Do we have a strategy to handle the epidemic if it spread out in US?
2. Do we have enough hospital beds to handle this?
3. Have we designated hospitals to treat this highly contagious diseases (not to mingle
with other patients)
4. Do we have enough supplies to handle an e[odemic
Of course, there are more to be considered.
Meanwhile, politicians and their supporters DESERVE bad outcomes from their political
operations.
World stock markets are expected to fall further next week after the first surveys of
China's economic health since the coronavirus outbreak showed factory output has plunged and
the country's service sectors have contracted.
.. ...
Investors expect to find out in the next few days whether the outbreak is accelerating in
the US, the world's biggest economy, and how far central banks and governments are prepared to
go to deal with an epidemic.
"Right now the market is saying that this is unbounded. We don't know what the limits are
and we don't know where it's going to peak," said Graham Tanaka, the chief investment officer
at New York-based Tanaka Capital.
... ... ...
Last weekend China's president, Xi Jinping, told local officials that low-risk areas
should "resume full production and normal life". The government reported that larger factories
reached 85.6% of their capacity by the middle of last week.
Analysts at ING said: "This isn't as positive as it sounds. Even if China's factory
production can recover in March, it will still face the risk of a low level of export orders.
This is because the supply chain will continue to be broken, this time in South Korea, Japan,
Europe, and the US, where Covid-19 has begun to spread."
Unofficial reports show that factories outside Hubei province, where the virus started,
could be working at no more than 75% of their capacity and many nearer 25% to 50% while
millions of workers remain trapped in their home province, unable to travel back to their place
of work.
Hundreds of corporate events have been cancelled or postponed in recent days in response to
calls for a clampdown on large gatherings
The risk is limited - this kills the old and infirm.
MOA was accurate in all the panic - China controlled its initial outbreak (although a
re-entry is not unlikely imo). That the rest of the world didn't react fast enough, is
expected though, but saying that before it was a thing would have been unnecessarily
scare-mongering I'd say.
Hi B,
looks like the guys at New England Biolabs have a very rapid assay for COVID-19 --- Rapid
Molecular Detection of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Virus RNA Using Colorimetric LAMP
Yinhua Zhang, Nelson Odiwuor, Jin Xiong, Luo Sun, Raphael Ohuru Nyaruaba, Hongping Wei,
Nathan A Tanner
Its a preprint -- but this is the way to go an isothermal loop mediated amplification
(LAMP) assay. You ought to be able to get a result in about 30 minutes -- faster once they
really automate it. Should cost virtually nothing a few cents.
Other versions of it might be adapted so you can use them in the field so a general
practitioner or even a soldier will be able to make the diagnosis at the bed side-- its a
simple color change in a tube. All you need is a pipette the assay tube a hot block and a
timer. True positive rate 99.99% false positive about 1% or less. This what the CDC needs.
Problem is that they have to mass produce the assay tubes -- we need 100 million like
yesterday. The other thing is that we might need martial law to quarantine people and we need
to train people to use the kits and fast.
All of a sudden, "freedom isn't free" axiom acquires a really macabre meaning. The inevitable
devastation in countries with laissez-faire approach to this emergency will eventually prove
"totalitarian" Chinese measures as being vastly superior.
The US will undoubtedly - if grudgingly - adopt Beijing MO, but only after hundreds of
thousands of people die needlessly, and America's healthcare system falls apart under the
pressure of millions of patients unable to pay exorbitant bills.
The American mind does not know what "public health" is.
"Public health" is not a thinkable thought. b's paragraph beginning with "Tests must be
freely available..." is a sequence of events that cannot exist even in fiction in America.
Only someone who has never lived here could write that paragraph. None of b's suggestions are
happening. And because these simple measures cannot happen, a price will be paid.
The overreaction to this will cause much, much more damage than the virus would have if it
were responded to in a conventional, sensible way. Those in positions of responsibility are
terrified of underreacting, and it's easy to rationalize that it's better to be safe than
sorry.
If measures taken cause unnecessary disruption, if they increase the level of stress, the
levels of disease and the amount of death will rise rather than fall. There is more to
disease than just microbes.
This is not to say that we should be laissez-faire. Our response to the yearly outbreak of
the flu is, in my opinion, insufficient. Schools are an unprecedented institution of
prolonged propinquity. Children go to school, are with their classmates in enclosed rooms all
day, and bring the disease home. Children survive, but grandma and grandpa might not. Schools
can be shuttered during outbreaks, and the technology exists, at least for the relatively
fortunate, to continue the instruction online. People should also be encouraged to avoid
stressful prolonged propinquity situations such as travel on planes, trains, and interstate
buses.
It's occurred to me that the death rate statistics might be misleading. Since China closed
their schools, one can assume that the disease rate among children fell substantially.
However, elderly people who live in care facilities, which is a high density living
situation, would not enjoy the falling infection rate, and they are exactly the population
most susceptible to a fatal outcome. This alone, perhaps, might make the death rate higher
for COVID19 than for the flu.
The US healthcare system, the privatized system of exploitation of the sick for greater
investor profits, is not capable of dealing with a pandemic. Trump and his gang of thieves,
charlatans, and unapologetically incompetent followers of Ayn Rand and graduates of the Koch
Brothers University, will prevent the socialization of medicine if they possibly can. Will a
future cover of Time Magazine show them all hanging from lamp posts?
Whether this pandemic provokes the rapture of Pence & his 144,000 elect and the much
anticipated End Times, or whether it fizzles out, I do heartily wish for one outcome: the
disenfranchisement of Donald J Trump, his heirs & assigns, and all those who seem unable
to smell the stink of his bullshit.
CDC estimates 30 million flu cases each year with 30,000 deaths and 500,000
hospitalizations. I think we are a long way from any real concern. The US is nowhere near as
polluted or densely populated as China. Also, I don't think we know how the disease spreads
among non Asians. They are keeping that under wraps. Aside from those captives on the cruise
ship there really has not been much spread from those who returned from China (visitors or
citizens).
Agreed that the US leadership is clueless and their thrashing around in order to protect
corporate capitalism is xenophobic and dangerous to the world. Came across this research on a
plant bioflavonoid that you might find useful in the treatment of SARS COV-1 (aka
COVID-19).
It's always Groundhog Day in the USA.
It's always late August 2005.
It's always New Orleans.
It's always Hurricane Katrina [or something else] on the horizon.
It's always a Republican Administration in power.
Who needs external enemies when we have such internal incompetents available to do the work
of sabotage? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)
Neither Reps nor Dems are psychologically capable even of conceiving the kinds of measures
the post calls for. Trump's stooge already proclaimed that profit is the one and only goal of
any response ("the market must decide"), while the Dem leadership as well can speak and think
only in terms of making care "affordable", IOW the main purpose of the whole process still
has to be corporate control and profit, even if a few stray Dems do want government to
subsidize some victims. The purpose still is money changing hands, profit, commerce. Until
the Big One levels the karma of this place that will never change.
It seems almost like fate is teeing up one practice play each time, just to show the US
how hollowed out it is, before the real play begins. First was the Iranian reprisal strike
which could have been so much more devastating. And now, although it's too early to tell how
severe this pest ultimately will be, it looks so far like it won't completely cleanse the
place. But if so that won't be for the lack of the US economic and cultural system giving it
every opportunity it can use.
I have no doubt the US learns zero from either test case. By now the US is too berserk and
stupid to deduce anything from its very survival than confirmation of the excellence of its
policy and encouragement to further escalate and accelerate.
The idea that Uncle Sam will do something useful and timely is simply laughable. I have been
mostly housebound due to severe illness for the past five years. Imagine a five year
quarantine! In all that time I have had zero social support besides receiving a disability
pension. I hire a personal shopper every two weeks to bring groceries; everything else comes
via UPS or FedEx. I frequently go two weeks at a time and never see anyone except maybe a
delivery driver.
There is no system to take care of housebound people. For me there is no medical personal
to make housecalls, no social support, no personal care workers, nothing. And this at a time
when nationwide there are only small numbers of people like myself. Multiply this non-system
by 100 or 1000 and people will die at home and no one will even notice.
Uncle Sam's Day of Reckoning may be fast approaching. And we will have well-earned every
bit of suffering headed our way.
Funny thing, b was right - China (and online deliveries as well really) managed to snuff the
spread out well, and it seems that the rest of the world and their 'representative
bureaucracies' will show all how limited they are when a fast acting 'unknown unknown'
(Rummy, how you made sense here!) does its thing.
This is a mutation of a typical seasonal Coronavirus flu, so all measured affective for a
regular flu apply. Do not touch your face and especially nose and eyes by hands is one important
safety measure. Disinfect hands with alphobol and glycerin mix is another. Wearing mask in public
places might be necessary in areas with many cases, but for areas without them is probably an
overkill. But it can help against a regular seasonal flu.
The main concern is that the flue will serve as a catalyst for the "Coronarovirus recession."
The panic already exposed weaknesses of the global supply chains created by neoliberal
globalization. Looks like this process is already under way.
Alcogol (including Isopropil alvhogol) is quite effective disinfectant, so the need for
something like Lizol is questionable outside bathrooms. There is no data that daily
disinfestations of door knobs and such might help.
The most important think is that sick people who have no symptoms or minor symptoms do not
spread the deases by wearing masks. So wearing a mask is not that important for healthy people
but is extremely important for infected people to slow the spread of the flu.
Notable quotes:
"... The disinfectant is seen as providing protection against the spread of the disease, although its effectiveness has not yet been scientifically proven. ..."
The disinfectant is seen as providing protection against the spread of the disease, although
its effectiveness has not yet been scientifically proven.
Dettol owner Reckitt Benckiser said in its results on Thursday. "We are seeing some
increased demand for Dettol and Lysol products and are working to support the relevant
healthcare authorities and agencies, including through donations, information and education. We
do see increased activity online for our consumers in China,"
"... The Trump administration has done exactly the opposite: It has slashed funding for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its infectious disease research. For fiscal year 2020, Trump proposed cutting the CDC budget by US$1.3 billion, nearly 20% below the 2019 level. ..."
“As coronavirus continues to spread, the Trump administration has declared a public
health emergency and imposed quarantines and travel restrictions. However, over the
past three years the administration has weakened the offices in charge of preparing
for and preventing this kind of outbreak.
Two years ago, Microsoft founder and
philanthropist Bill Gates warned that the world should be “preparing for a pandemic
in the same serious way it prepares for war.” Gates, whose foundation has invested
heavily in global health, suggested staging simulations, war games and preparedness
exercises to simulate how diseases could spread and to identify the best response.
The Trump administration has done exactly the opposite: It has slashed funding for
the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its infectious disease
research. For fiscal year 2020, Trump proposed cutting the CDC budget by US$1.3
billion, nearly 20% below the 2019 level.
As a specialist in budgeting, I recognize
that there are many claims on public resources.
But when it comes to public health,
I believe it is vital to invest early in prevention. Starving the CDC of critical
funding will make it far harder for the government to react quickly to a public
health emergency.”
"This is massively dishonest," tweeted Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for Trump's
campaign. He was responding to a tweet claiming a local outlet said Trump called the virus a
"hoax." The tweet from the outlet has since been deleted.
"Trump says the media's hysteria-inducing coverage of the government response is the hoax,
not the virus itself. Willful and malicious dishonesty," Murtaugh said. He also blasted The
Washington Post's Dana Milbank and commentator Bill Kristol arguing that their claims proved
Trump's point about Democratic hysteria surrounding the illness.
What do you do when their is a communicable disease? isolate the source (travel
bans/Quarantine) develop treatment protocols, insure there are enough beds, equipment,
personnel, and work on a vaccine. Did I miss anything? Has the administration overlooked
anything? Reply Share Report 1 Like
Please stop blindly believing Trump's misinformed assumptions. Covid19 is NOT
comparable to the flu. Covid19 appears to be highly transmissible, there's no vaccine, and
it can lodge deeply into lung tissue causing Sudden Acute Respiratory Distress (SARS).
Also, the death rate for people over 60, or for people with underlying health conditions is
10x-20x that of the flu. AND--- transmission has been increasing, not slowing. Do your own
research people. And let's have some concern for our elderly population. Reply Share Report
2 Likes
Why is Fox News and Trump focusing more on the "politicization" of the coronavirus than
on the actual reporting of the spread of the virus? It's the Dems' job to call the
president on things and its Trump's job to answer to Congress. This is the two-party system
the USA has embraced as a democratic society. In Canada, they have weekly 'Question
Periods' where the Prime Minister is bombarded with questions and yes -- political attacks
-- and he stands right there in front of all of the elected members of parliament and
defends his policies and positions. Canadians accept this political discord as healthy and
necessary debate -- why can't Americans???
Below age 50, the risk of death is 0.4% or less. Men, especially smokers, are significantly
more vulnerable than women
One positive factor in containing epidemics in the USA is that the US population is much more
socially isolated than many other nations. At the same time since the disease affects working age
people far more mildly, it is very possible that it is more widespread but is largely
indistinguishable from the regular flu for those people.
It is doubtful that the political lobbyists for the US health care industry would support any
form of government response that interferes with their profit-making machinery.
Notable quotes:
"... The threshold contagion rate for an epidemic is R1, i.e. on average each person passes the disease on to one more ..."
It also vastly expands the network of possible contacts before and after a case of infection,
so containment becomes exponentially more difficult. The UK's twentieth case, appearing in
Surrey on Friday, is the first to have occurred here through secondary or tertiary transmission
but given a prolonged pre-symptom period the trail can easily go cold.
"... We've been over the statistics , there's no need to go over them again. Thus far, scientifically speaking, the Coronavirus is nothing all that remarkable . And yet here we are. A world on the verge of all-out, no-holds-barred panic. Two days ago the scare was related to a woman in Japan who allegedly got the disease twice . Today the authoritarians mouths are watering over discussion of stadium quarantines in Australia and the possibility of the military having to aid the struggling NHS in the UK. ..."
"... Fewer than fifty people, total, have been infected across those two countries. The media are certainly taking to the task of spreading as much hysteria as they can, as quickly as they can. The Guardian is especially on the ball, as they always seem to be when it comes to spreading baseless, ephemeral fear. Firstly they have a neat little "fact check" piece, trying to stop people gaining any sense of perspective. ..."
"... if you more properly compare hospitalised flu cases with the hospitalised COVID19 cases, the regular flu actually has a much higher mortality rate. 5.6% (in the US) compared with 1-3%. ..."
"... Elsewhere, one headline warns us of the dangers of "superspreaders" , and another declares that "An epidemic is coming: Europe struggles to contain coronavirus." It doesn't mention that the "epidemic" Europe is "struggling to contain" has only infected 1093 people on the entire continent, or that only 23 of them have died. (They have since changed the headline to something less theatrical ) ..."
"... There's also the money angle. Not just the vaccine research grants or the tests being sold and shipped out by the case, but also the stock market game. It's all over the headlines that this "pandemic" is causing the biggest crashes in stock prices since 2008, but markets declining are still opportunities to make a lot of money. ..."
"... This is greatest mass-panic I can remember in a long time, maybe since Y2K. Either the world is truly facing a global instance of mass hysteria, or some powerful hand is about to make a big play. ..."
"... Just follow the MONEY: https://www.gurufocus.com/shiller-PE.php The overblown bubble is popping – the usual centuries long play – over inflate assets, get the small investors debt laden make profits from their borrowing against these assets then -POP the bubble ! And hey presto all the assets end up with the bankers! ..."
"... A number of investment banks issued global travel restrictions. JPMorgan issued a ban on non-essential travel on Thu. GoldmanSachs, Citigroup, CreditSuisse, BNPParibas, DeutscheBank and other investment banks have restricted travel to Italy. ..."
"... It's an instinctive reaction for hedge fund vultures to swoop about ready to feast on every economic disaster by buying low and selling high – this is how financial scavengers operate –they're capitalists to the bone .. That being said, I doubt Xi Jinping and China's cabal of oligarchs took a COVID-19 financial hit just to eliminate the orange buffoon in 2020. ..."
"... The death rate from COVID-19 is 3.427% and rising. Here is a good website which tracks the progress of COVID-19 around the world – the number of confirmed cases, the number of deaths and the number of recovered. It is updatetd twice or thrice a day, so refresh it twice or three times a day: ..."
"... As we ought to know from Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" any event, whether man-made or natural, provides a window of opportunity for the corporate vampires whipped up by their armies of owned journalists, NGOs, dystopian trolls. There is indeed a plague upon Mankind, but it is not caused by sneezing and coughing, but by the influenza of evil. No wonder we say "Bless you" when somebody sneezes. The US is at war with Mankind and the enemies du jour are Russia and China. In this globalist world, when China sneezes, we all catch a cold. ..."
Another day, another round of shrill headlines. The coronavirus could spread to "every
country in the world" (like chickenpox), we might have to
cancel the Olympics . Ban handshakes! We're running out of masks !
Fewer than fifty people, total, have been infected across those two countries. The media are certainly taking to the task of spreading as much hysteria as they can, as
quickly as they can. The Guardian is especially on the ball, as they always seem to be when it comes to
spreading baseless, ephemeral fear. Firstly they have a neat little "fact check" piece, trying
to stop people gaining any sense of perspective.
This is a) clearly aimed at countering articles like this one that try to bring some realism
to bear (apparently that now counts as myth-making), and b)so deceptive it verges on a total
lie.
If you include every single known or estimated case of flu in the world then sure you can
bring the death rate down to 0.1%. But if you more properly compare
hospitalised flu cases with the hospitalised COVID19 cases, the regular flu actually has a
much higher mortality rate. 5.6% (in the US) compared with 1-3%.
So, why aren't they closing the world down to save us from this familiar but deadly
pathogen?
That's just the "facts" (formerly sacred), the opinion is even better.
Gabby Hinsliff, the
forgettable face of the dystopian future-builders , think's Britain is "too selfish" to
properly deal with the coronavirus these days (all 20 victims of it). Rounding on people who
haven't had their kids vaccinated, and rambling incoherently about the "greater good".
Meanwhile, Jonathan Freedland
talks about the "war on disease", slapping the West on the back for being "open and honest"
(unlike China and Iran), whilst taking aim at the only person he ever criticises now Jeremy
Corbyn is standing down as Labour leader – Donald Trump.
Apparently Trump should be doing more to combat the disease which, thus far, has infected
only 60 US citizens, none fatally. More Americans are in danger from high-fructose corn syrup,
or Flint's poisoned water (but as those can't be lazily attributed to the political monster of
the week, Freedland will never write about them).
But what is all this in aid of? It's hard to say, except that every authoritarian agenda
seems to be sticking its oar in.
More generally, we're being encouraged to think of the "big picture", that being curfewed
and quarantined and banned from travelling will all be best for the group. There hasn't been
much talk of mandatory vaccinations yet, but you see whispers of it here and there (that Gabby
Hinslif piece is very much a straw in the wind for that issue).
There's also the money angle. Not just the vaccine research grants or the tests being sold
and shipped out by the case, but also the stock market game. It's all over the headlines that
this "pandemic" is causing the biggest crashes in stock prices since 2008, but markets
declining are still opportunities to make a lot of money.
Buying stocks low and waiting for the market recovery, shorting currency, or the ridiculous
derivatives market (essentially gambling on whether stocks will go up or down). All can make
you a fortune if you play the recession right, which is made much easier when you can predict a
crash coming say, by stoking a lot of fear.
When a very similar real-life event started occurring, they would have a motive to start
trading some derivatives and stoking up the fear machine. It's easy money, like gambling on a
fixed game. The event was held by the NGO Center for Health Security , and sponsored by
Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Medicine and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (The
exercise ended with a list of seven recommendations, which you can read here .)
All the while, an important trial is getting no coverage at all, whilst Turkey might
actually start a full-fledged war with Syria. Crickets chirp in the media where these stories
might appear. Reality has no place in our headlines right now.
This is greatest mass-panic I can remember in a long time, maybe since Y2K. Either the world
is truly facing a global instance of mass hysteria, or some powerful hand is about to make a
big play.
Stay tuned.
Amarka
,
Coronavirus is a generic term for ALL
cold and flu viruses!
5 Million Cases of flu Worldwide,
650,000 Deaths Annually: The Seasonal Corona Flu Virus is a "Serious Concern", But the Wuhan
Coronavirus Grabs the Headlines
sharon marlowe
,
Another very good article from
OffGuardian on the virus panic. Thank you:)
"This is greatest mass-panic I can
remember in a long time, maybe since Y2K."
This quote got me thinking. I
actually don't remember Y2K being anything more than a curiosity. I don't believe that I knew
anyone who thought it was serious.
But I would say Daesh(ISIS) caused panic, even outside the Internet. I think Russia/Putin
caused panic, but mostly on the Internet. Of course, Trump caused panic, both on and off the
Internet. Trump caused a syndrome that people still haven't gotten over:D
But probably the three biggest panics that I've seen, here in the U.S., were the 9/11 event
and the housing crisis/stockmarket plunge.
sharon marlowe
,
*two biggest, not three:)
Dungroanin
,
Just follow the MONEY: https://www.gurufocus.com/shiller-PE.php The overblown bubble is popping
– the usual centuries long play – over inflate assets, get the small investors
debt laden make profits from their borrowing against these assets then -POP the bubble
! And hey presto all the assets end up
with the bankers!
Just need a good story and a fall guy
villain to blame it on. This time the villain was to be China
and Xi. It seems the Chinese leadership were
aware of that danger and have moved too quickly for the bankers story to gain legs – it
also therefore seems to implicate skullduggery in Hubei.
It explains why the Donald is
sanguine and has handed the hot potato to his hapless VP – knowing it will be dropped!
A perfect opportunity to play the 'you're fired' line and replace with another running mate
just in time for the elections!
And if one scrys further it reveals
the direction to the media and the messaging, across the spectrum , as they deploy the play
and try to fire fight in the alt-media too.
Beyond the Gates Foundation and WEF
fronts are the REAL players.
Schiller long term correction
requires 30% drop.
Scalpers may want more.
Dungroanin
,
And right on cue to prove my
point
9:49 am Feb 29
A number of investment banks issued
global travel restrictions. JPMorgan issued a ban on non-essential travel on Thu.
GoldmanSachs, Citigroup, CreditSuisse, BNPParibas, DeutscheBank and other investment banks
have restricted travel to Italy.
Lol – sometimes you have to get
your own hands dirty when the dumb media hype is failing ..
Charlotte Russe
,
"Buying stocks low and waiting for the
market recovery, shorting currency, or the ridiculous derivatives market (essentially
gambling on whether stocks will go up or down). All can make you a fortune if you play the
recession right, which is made much easier when you can predict a crash coming say, by
stoking a lot of fear."
It's an instinctive reaction for
hedge fund vultures to swoop about ready to feast on every economic disaster by buying low
and selling high – this is how financial scavengers operate –they're capitalists to
the bone .. That being said, I doubt Xi Jinping and China's cabal of oligarchs took a
COVID-19 financial hit just to eliminate the orange buffoon in 2020.
In any case, the real issue is that
medical care in a civilized society should never be commodified. The barbarity of how
healthcare is accessed is revealed every time someone with substantial assets has exclusive
concierge treatment while millions are left to fend for themselves.
This is the consequence when profits
surpass compassion.
The carnage of millions is required
for a multibillion dollar medical industry to operate exclusively for profit–the deaths
of the poor, old, and sickly are merely viewed as collateral damage .
Longevity is based on being the most
physically and economically fit. This is the requisite libertarian mentality required to
complete the neoliberal main dish. Simply put, the implementation of worldwide neoliberalism
(gangster capitalism) requires the murder of millions–an economic phantasm which
thrives on collateral slaughter.
Economic sanctions against
nation-states like Iran and Venezuela is really economic warfare against indigenous
populations who die from lack of medical care. This is similar to how healthcare is dispensed
to indigent Americans–they're also sanctioned by the US medical system. The result is
the same– genocide.
Fair dinkum
,
"Listen to us, watch us, read us,
believe in us, bow down to us, buy this, eat this, drink this, wear this" _ _ _ _ etc, etc,
ad nauseum.
Give it a fucking rest you pricks, we're not all that gullible.
Vierotchka
,
The death rate from COVID-19 is 3.427%
and rising. Here is a good website which tracks
the progress of COVID-19 around the world – the number of confirmed cases, the number
of deaths and the number of recovered. It is updatetd twice or thrice a day, so refresh it
twice or three times a day:
'Good news! With 39,002 COVID19 recovery cases, the tally surpasses the total 37,414
confirmed cases as of Friday end, for the first time in the Chinese mainland:
NHC.'
&
'Hubei Province reported 423 new cases of novel coronavirus pneumonia on Feb 28, with 45 new
deaths and 2,492 cases of recovery. The total number of infections in the province climbed to
66,337, with 28,895 recovered and 2,727 dead.'
(Indicating mortality of 4.1%
average)
-- -- -
1. I haven't come across autopsy
reports confirming ncov19 in the deaths – have you?
2. I haven't come across what is the
definitive test for ncov19 – have you?
3. The confusion introduced by WHO in
creating a classification of COVID without a clear link to n-Cov19 is staggering!
4. There have been few genomes mapped
and the research quoted often is 'in silico' – i.e computer modelling
As a non-expert I think we (you, me
other non connected or compromised opinions) ought to collaborate in our head-banging ways to
rattle the truths out of the jar.
Hugh O'Neill
,
I think you doth protest too much.
As we ought to know from Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" any event, whether man-made or natural, provides a window of
opportunity for the corporate vampires whipped up by their armies of owned journalists, NGOs, dystopian trolls. There is
indeed a plague upon Mankind, but it is not caused by sneezing and coughing, but by the influenza of evil. No wonder we say
"Bless you" when somebody sneezes. The US is at war with Mankind and the enemies du jour are Russia and China. In this
globalist world, when China sneezes, we all catch a cold.
The good news is that many of the hot, humid countries don't have the money or technical
capability to test for COVID-19, so it won't be in their countries. Just like it is not in
the US, because if it was we would know even in the absence of testing.
This guy is saying that if there's a real pandemic, Doctors and Nurses won't show up
because Healthcare has become a career and not a calling. They wouldn't want to risk their
lives to save others, especially the poor ones.
An acquaintance repairs advanced medical imaging systems. The various units are tied
together using a router/hub, making the images accessible to PCs all over the network (e.g.,
radiologists, other specialists and permanent patient records).
The hubs are made in Wuhan, China. The end-use seller practices JIT inventory management.
Very few are kept in stock, since another FedEx shipment was just an order and a few days
away. Needless to say, the hubs have become unavailable These hubs are designed with
proprietary architecture, so the seller can screw the customers with exorbitant rent-seeking
pricing, so you can't buy them off the shelf someplace else.
Consider a large US hospital that has maybe a dozen of these imaging systems and their hub
goes down how does it get put back into service now? Answer: it doesn't.
One example or probably tens or hundreds of thousands others.
Servants to the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), Janitors, Secretaries, Food Services
Workers – Now is your chance for paid sick leave. Come to work with the Coronavirus,
cough on everyone. You can't afford to stay home. Paid Sick Leave Now.
I don't disagree, however, the bottom rungs of society, the working poor are going to do
this anyway, they CAN'T afford to stay home. How many pay checks can you miss at the bottom
– none. The PMC have told the rest of us to work or die, poor people understand this
and will work, even if they spread an infectious disease. The working poor are going to skip
getting tested if it interfers with getting paid, they will work until they collapse on your
desk.
This is going to happen, which is why it's not a call for revolution. It's just a
fact.
I did work at a company that switched from sick time to PTO, were sick time and vacation
counts the same.
Flu meant no summer on the beach. I went to work with flu. If the boss or coworkers got sick
it was of no economic consequence to me. The loss of my holiday on the other hand .
Perhaps this anecdote makes me a bad person, but I didn't change the rules, just played by
them.
Corona Virus is the same but worse since it can kill, however the symptoms are such that
if I were scraping along I would cross my fingers and not get tested. Ignorance is plausible
deniability, especially if I can't afford a test that tells me I can't work.
Well sure it makes you a bad person. Because when others get sick because of you coming
in, they MIGHT use their vacation time for sickness that you refused to. So you are just
FOBing it off on the next guy and making them lose their vacation instead of you. And some of
them may not even have paid time off (are they contract workers, what about the janitor
etc.?) But you've got yours.
I would give up summer on the beach in a New York nanosecond to be able to stay home sick.
Not even "for the good of society and infecting others", but for far more selfish reasons:
the pleasure of the vacation ISN'T WORTH the suffering it entails to work while feeling
aweful. When I have worked without any time off it made me long with all my being for time
off for things like sickness and doctors visits. My priorities got real real, real fast, and
it wasn't about vacation, but it was about seeing the doctor, what if I got sick, etc.. I
mean look if I lived in a country that believed in vacation then it would be one thing, but
we have to deal with actual reality here.
Agreed, I selfishly chose what was best for me. I did not optimize for the greater good.
Please note, the company made the same choice first.
I did make sure to tell my managers in advance of the consequences of the change to
PTO.
It's an interesting example of "economic man", I only followed my own interests, when I
had sick time, I took it and everyone was better off because of it.
I felt it was worth suffering at work to spend time off with family.
the situation in Korea is remarkably orderly -- -news reports/video of queues of citizens
waiting for 3+ hours to buy their face mask at pharmacies, post offices, stores -- definitely
a "keep calm and carry on" mentality.
would the situation in the US be similar if the US had a similar per capita rate of the
virus? Or would much of the US voluntarily hunker down?
i don't know the answer but really hope that Americans can band together -- but then again
the media and pundits give me no hope.
It seems to me that people who can afford to hunker down are the ones who have sufficient
$$ on hand or easily obtainable that they can stock up necessities. But the typical US
household cannot meet a $400 unexpected expense.
How does that saying go? "the wealthy do what they can, and the poor what they must"?
====
I have the sense that the case for "democratic socialism" is getting stronger by the day.
There may be vast political consequences to this entirely foreseeable but not foreseen
event.
I was told today that: If you got to a hospital in Korea to get checked for the virus, it
will cost you 160$. If you have it, the government will pay you back. If you don't you're
stuck with the bill.
If the government orders you for home quarantine, it will also pay you to stay home(I
don't know the rate though). If you violate the quarantine, it's $10,000 fine or something.
The church members are in a lot of heat because they refuse to follow the quarantine
orders.
In fact, the more efficient are supply chains and the logistics "on time" and "without
stocks", the more sensitive to disruptions. Quarantines doing more harm than good because the
"bug" can also go around, over or after the hurdles.
This joke from yesterday is still germane.
My relative was a senior contracting specialist for the federal government, who also
ordered supplies for the military. According to him, contracting specialists have always been
very aware of the need for redundancy and the many dangers of reliance on just one supplier.
I guess the efficiency geniuses, globalists, & disruptors at McKinsey have no clue. Why
do we always have to be reinventing the wheel?
Trump might not survive the Coronavirus, literally (he is over 70 and has a high range of
contacts; the mortality to this age group is close to 10%), or figuratively as voters might
not forgive him inadequate and/or incompetent response (which is given) .
Unfortunately, Bernie is at even higher risk as mortality for 80+ is over 15%, and
pre-existing cardiovascular disease is a serious negative factor.
One can wonder if this will be " Strawthat broke the camel'sback " for Trump. With 10% drop of S&P500 (aka "correction") it is difficult to
talk about booming economy on rallies ( 20% decline marker defines a recession and some
stocks -- like oil sector are already in this territory ). High yield bonds are also going
down, although more slowly. Now suddenly, Trump has nothing to talk about on his rallies, and
he knows it.
A part of rich retirees who are overexposed to stocks constitutes a sizable part of
remaining avid "Trumpers" voter block (kind of double stupidity, if you wish :-) , and some
of them might not forgive Trump the liberty of depriving them honestly earned in 2019 ~10% of
their 401K accounts.
IMHO troubles for Trump just started. Being incompetent DJT and his merry band of grifters
will almost definitely botch the response.
They already made three blunders.
1. When asked if, and when, a vaccine is produced, would the vaccine be affordable to
everyone? They replied; We'll let the "market" decide that. And some part of electorate
probably noted that.
2. The last December, they cut the budget for the CDC (center for disease control).
In this sense appointing Pence as the head of the coronavirus response may be a smart move
by Trump. When and if the pandemic hits big time, exposing the mass incompetence and
unpreparedness of the US government, in combination with the tanking of the stock market,
Trump can, of course, blame Christian Zionist neoconservative Israeli apartheid supporter
Pence for his troubles :-)
But, unfortunately, that will not do him any good.
At CDC it is important to know how to kiss ass, administer contracts, do public relations,
organize meetings, and write memos. Actual medical and research skills are far, far, far
down the list. Everything they do is contracted out and takes forever to happen. It is
impossible for the bureaucracy to respond to a crisis. One might as well ask a whale to
walk on land.
US peons are about to find out just what it means to live in a crumbling, hollowed-out
empire-shell made of corruption and incompetence. Hint: it's gonna suck.
The Revenge of the Intelligent. That is what this is. Too bad it has backfired and seems to
kill the Elderly at a much higher rate.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention isn't yet ready to detect whether the
coronavirus is spreading across the country.
Just 12 of more than 100 public health labs in the U.S. are currently able to diagnose
the coronavirus because of problems with a test developed by the CDC, potentially slowing
the response if the virus starts taking hold here. The faulty test has also delayed a plan
to widely screen people with symptoms of respiratory illness who have tested negative for
influenza to detect whether the coronavirus may be stealthily spreading.
...
Only six states -- California, Nebraska, Illinois, Nevada, Tennessee, and Idaho -- are now
testing for the virus, the Association of Public Health Laboratories told POLITICO.
...
Under current rules, each positive test must be confirmed by a second round of testing at
the CDC. [Director Robert Redfield] told lawmakers that the agency can now screen 350-500
samples per day.
...
"I understand very much the FDA is focused on quality control, but there's also a need to
have a system that can respond to their needs," [Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology professor
at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,] said. "China tested 320,000 people in
Guangdong over a three-week period. This is the scale we need to be thinking on."
Stupid is as Stupid does. Totally inexcusable for the lack of a test, but exactly what
would be the most certain outcome with the pseudo education in the US for the last 30
years.
B said, in part;"The Trump administration seems to be far behind them."
Gee imagine that. For DJT and his merry band of grifters, this virus is just a liberal plot
to hinder their ability to make money, and disparage DJT's admin.
When asked if, and when, a counter measure is produced, would the vaccine be affordable
to everyone, they replied; We'll let the "market" decide that.
Incredible, but, consistently mercenary in today's " if you can't afford die" mentality,
here in the U$A..
And, last December, they cut the budget for the CDC (center for disease control)...
B said, in part;"The Trump administration seems to be far behind them."
Gee imagine that. For DJT and his merry band of grifters, this virus is just a liberal plot
to hinder their ability to make money, and disparage DJT's admin.
When asked if, and when, a counter measure is produced, would the vaccine be affordable
to everyone, they replied; We'll let the "market" decide that.
Incredible, but, consistently mercenary in today's " if you can't afford die" mentality,
here in the U$A..
And, last December, they cut the budget for the CDC (center for disease control)...
Appointing Pence head of the coronavirus response may have been a smart move by Trump. When
the pandemic hits big time, exposing the mass incompetence and unpreparedness of the US
government, in combination with the tanking of the stock market, Trump can blame Christian
Zionist neoconservative Israeli apartheid supporter Pence. He might even dump him and
select someone who he thinks will bring in more votes. It won't make any difference; Trump
is a goner. This time next year we will have been without the Golden Gollem of Greatness
for some 37 days.
For the life of me I don't understand why Mike doesn't get up and say hi I'm Mike
Bloomberg and I promise to put a chicken, a Covid 19 test kit, a hazmat suit and a respirator
in in every pot. In fact I'm going to go broke starting today doing just that.
And I'm going to make damn sure that if you are a community physician and Bethesda is not
listening to you I'm going to take your call and I'm going to throw as much money as needed
to make what needs to happen, happen.
And then walk off the stage.
Nobody from that moment forward would give a damn about his negatives. And I say that as a
Sanders supporter, who admittedly does not think that Elizabeth Warren is Jack Kemp in a
dress.
One thing that I do want to throw out to the commentariat is that we're going to see and
we're seeing it now, the dynamic where DC and Bethesda have their head up their ass and local
community providers scream bloody murder and that gets things moving.
For example where UC Davis Physicians want the CDC the test for the coronavirus and the
CDC says no, based upon what is now outdated criteria.
South Korea has done like what 20,000 tests they have drive-thru testing!
Back in the 1980s clinicians in Manhattan. (CRI/Sonnabend), and SF started small-scale
clinical trials especially focusing on opportunistic infection treatment which Bethesda was
completely neglecting as they were shoveling out AZT for HIV like it was candy.
Now the same dynamic is happening only with test kits.
"Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
Gee- +505 new #COVID19 cases in South Korea since yesterday, up 40% in one day! Crazy they've
done also >13,000 tests in just one day to find the new 505 cases.
US having our inefficient, chaotic and deadly healthcare system will make a pandemic far
worse. The idea that a person opposed to a rational and efficient national healthcare system
would be a good match for a pandemic is a bit absurd. Trying to plan a system like this is
infinitely more difficult. If he wants to help with a pandemic though, he doesn't have to be
president. Let him spend the money he would spend to buy the presidency in opening healthcare
clinics in rural areas and poor communities, people who would be least able to see a doctor if
they think they may be sick. And people who would be far more likely to use public
transportation, which would quicken the spread of the disease.
I used to live in China. Because of my work schedule there, I had to shop on the weekends.
It was a special form of torture. The buses would all be so packed you couldn't move, and the
stores themselves weren't tons better. Ever shopped in a store so packed with people you could
barely move? Imagine black Friday all the time. So, if a person had the virus and didn't know
it in China, they would almost certainly get around by public transportation, absolutely packed
with people, and then would go to crowded places to shop. When I say crowded, again, not
something that could be put into words for you all to understand, it must be experienced. The
situation in rural areas is often the same, high density, heavy reliance on public transport,
and there is far less of a healthcare infrastructure in rural areas. So, not only could people
be sick and not know it, not only would they get around in packed busses and trains, not only
would they shop and go about very densely populated cities, in rural areas people are poor and
access to doctors and nurses is often lacking. The government has tried to create in recent
years a "socialist countryside", where there are investments in rural areas, hospitals, public
housing and the like, but there is still a massive gap between living standards between coastal
areas and inner China, and rural and urban areas. Here in the US, one thing going for us is
that people in many parts of the country get around in private cars. That lessens the exposure
to a virus, which could maybe buy us a little more time, having such a car-centric mode of
transport. But, one thing we do have that other developed countries don't, is a horrible,
inefficient, chaotic healthcare system. And that is why things could get worse here in ways it
wouldn't if we had single payer. Bloomberg opposes a system that could deal with this, is
indifferent to 68,000 a year dying from this system, and seems even opposed to moderate
improvements that would at least inch us closer to such a system. And keep in mind, the costs
of the pandemic among those with insurance will be transferred to those paying into insurance
pools managed by private corporations. We will socialize costs in very inefficient ways. We're
doomed if he gets power. He and Biden should be non-starters.
CNN is reporting multiple medical personnel were exposed to coronavirus from the first
community spread victim because the CDC or whomever wouldn't allow testing since the patient
was outside of the federal guidelines. This is with doctors requesting it. This is with the
case occurring in the same county as Travis AFB, where people repatriated with coronavirus
are being quarantined.
Coronavirus will thrive because of corporatist, neoliberal, admin and management in
healthcare and government. Because the people in those roles are promoted and lionized for
their lack of imagination and inability to be perturbed by a threat to the status quo. Iran
is more a prediction of our future in the US than China. Can you even imagine a months long
heroic effort by American medial staff like the Chinese? Our medical pros at university
hospitals can't take enough precautions with a suspected coronavirus case to keep dozens of
them from being possibly infected.
The death of neoliberal magical thinking is going to require many deaths in the heart of
empire, while the economy crumbles. And even then, that may not be enough, if the heroin
epidemic is any indicator.
Virus Spreads Over The Planet As Governments React Too Slowly
After a uneven first response China did its very best to limit the spread of the nCov-19
virus and the Covid-19 disease the virus causes. The extreme quarantine, which began in mid
January, has come at a great economic cost but bought the rest of the world
time to prepare for the inevitable surfacing of the virus in other countries.
Unfortunately many governments did not use the month given to them and botched their
responses. The number of newly confirmed cases per day outside of China is now bigger than the new
daily number inside of China. South Korea alone reported 334 new confirmed cases today while
the much larger China only reported 433.
China has shown that it is possible to successfully fight and stop the epidemic.
Unfortunately other countries are not ready to follow its example. This is now making it likely
that the epidemic in China will become
a pandemic and will spread mostly uninhibited all over the globe.
South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy and the U.S. are now the countries which will see the next
great impacts. Other countries will follow in a third wave as Brazil, Pakistan, North
Macedonia, Greece, Georgia, Algeria, Norway and Romania all saw their first cases in the last
24 hours.
It's not clear where Patient 31 became infected with the virus, but in the days before her
diagnosis, she travelled to crowded spots in Daegu, as well as in the capital Seoul. On
February 6 she was in a minor traffic accident in Daegu, and checked herself into an Oriental
medicine hospital. While at that hospital, she attended services at the Daegu branch of the
Shincheonji Church of Jesus, on February 9 and again on February 16.
In between those visits, on February 15, doctors at the hospital said they first suggested
she be tested for the coronavirus, as she had a high fever. Instead, the woman went to a
buffet lunch with a friend at a hotel. In an interview with local newspaper JoongAng Ilbo,
the woman denied that doctors had advised her to be tested. As her symptoms worsened,
however, doctors say they once again advised her to be tested. On February 17, she finally
went to another hospital for the test. The next day, health authorities announced she was the
country's 31st confirmed case. In only a matter of days, those numbers had soared as hundreds
of people at the Shincheonji Church and surrounding areas tested positive.
On Saturday, the health minister admitted that 23 passengers had been released from the ship
without taking a valid recent test and had traveled by public transit after disembarking this
past week.
Now that the quarantine has ended and most of the passengers have left, the concern is
that they could start spreading the virus on shore.
Japan now has 200 cases and its government has decided to close all schools
throughout March.
In Iran the epidemic came from China with people who went to Qom for religious training. The
spiritual center of Iran has many religious schools and universities and many pilgrim visit the
shrines in the city. They contributed to the further spread of the virus. Iran now has a total
of 254 confirmed cases including two lawmakers, a
vice president and a deputy minister.
Yesterday Iran still rejected to close its shrines and to prohibited religious services.
Today it canceled tomorrows Friday prayers.
Italy
has some 400 cases of which 190 are confirmed. It put 55,000 residents in the northern
regions of Lombardy and Veneto under lockdown.
The above countries have now grasped the severity of the issue. The Trump administration
seems to be far behind them.
The U.S. is likely to already have a significant number of cases but a lack of testing
capacity has made any realistic estimate impossible.
Chinese scientists had published the genome sequence of the virus on January 12 and, based
on it, developed test kits within a few days. The U.S. Center of Disease Control and Prevention
also developed a test kit but had problems with its first version and its wider distribution.
More than a month later it is still not ready for
the foreseeable need:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention isn't yet ready to detect whether the
coronavirus is spreading across the country.
Just 12 of more than 100 public health labs in the U.S. are currently able to diagnose the
coronavirus because of problems with a test developed by the CDC, potentially slowing the
response if the virus starts taking hold here. The faulty test has also delayed a plan to
widely screen people with symptoms of respiratory illness who have tested negative for
influenza to detect whether the coronavirus may be stealthily spreading.
...
Only six states -- California, Nebraska, Illinois, Nevada, Tennessee, and Idaho -- are now
testing for the virus, the Association of Public Health Laboratories told POLITICO.
...
Under current rules, each positive test must be confirmed by a second round of testing at the
CDC. [Director Robert Redfield] told lawmakers that the agency can now screen 350-500 samples
per day.
...
"I understand very much the FDA is focused on quality control, but there's also a need to
have a system that can respond to their needs," [Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiology professor at
the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,] said. "China tested 320,000 people in
Guangdong over a three-week period. This is the scale we need to be thinking on."
It took several days to test a coronavirus patient in Northern California who might be the
first to have contracted the disease through community exposure in the United States.
The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento
County, according to the state Department of Public Health.
UC Davis officials said the patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another
hospital Feb. 19. But the patient was not tested until Feb. 23.
The test results were only known three days later.
Under the U.S. medical system testing will be expensive for the patients. Insurances may not
pay for it. Many people will be unable or unwilling to spend money on it. Care for serious
cases will also be limited by high prices. This guarantees that the virus will spread further.
China was smart enough to guarantee 100% state coverage for testing and all necessary care. The
U.S. should follow that principle but is unlikely to do so.
Trump announced that Vice-President Pence, a man who does not believe in science, will lead
the response. The libertarian and neo-liberal approach to the problem will further the
epidemic's growth. Only after it becomes really severe will the necessary measures be
taken.
To assess the wider global impact of the pandemic this table
is most helpful:
* Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) = probability of dying if infected by
the virus (%). This probability differs depending on the age group. The percentage shown
does NOT represent in any way the share of deaths by age group . Rather, it represents, for
a person in a given age group, the risk of dying if infected with COVID-19.
In an unrestricted pandemic the virus will infect between 40 to 70 percent of the
population. The virus is more deadly than a normal flu but mostly for elderly people with
severe preconditions. Children and grown ups in their most productive years can carry the
virus without showing symptoms and will only rarely become critical cases. This guarantees
that our societies will continue to function. The pandemic will have severe, but not
catastrophic, economic consequences as quarantines and fear will limit production and trade
on all levels.
Trump's reelection chances are sinking as Covid-19 cases rise. The incompetence of his
administration will come under new light. The stock markets will continue to tumble and erase
the economic gains Trump had claimed. Bernie Sanders' chances to win, if he survives the
pandemic, will increase as his prime campaign promise -Medicare for all- will become even
more acceptable when the problems with the current U.S. healthcare system come under new
public scrutiny.
There are only few personal measures one can take to protect oneself from exposure. One
should avoid personal contacts where possible. Wearing a mask, unless it is a special N-95
respirator which also makes it difficult breathe, does not prevent one from catching the
virus. But infected persons should use masks to protect those they may come in contact with
from droplet infections. Stocking up on basic foodstuff and other needs might help to avoid
potential shortages.
"The agency can be a force for good but only by letting innovators get life-saving
medications and tests to market."
Limited intelligence displayed in this article. Anyone who thinks pharma and lab execs are
anything but short-term shareholder value regardless of the public are kidding themselves.
That being said, there are ways to make it happen, though this author would never be able to
imagine them.
Make private lab testing subject to the following rules:
1. They are paid by the federal government, not the pharma companies.
2. They are selected by the federal government to perform the tests, not the pharma
companies.
3. Their labs and methods are regularly tested and approved by the federal government,
failure would mean a massive loss of revenue.
These simple rules ensure lab testing can be efficiently performed by the private sector
while working in the best interests of the population, not any individual pharma shareholder.
Far too complex a thought for our author though.
The relationship of the FAA to the commercial aircraft industry is analogous. When the FAA
was actively involved in all levels of testing, we managed to produce very safe aircraft.
When the FAA started relying on the aircraft manufacturers for testing, we get the 737 Max.
It is too tempting to take shortcuts when there are a lot of profits and bonuses to be
made.
Standard economic theory contends that manufacturers will be too concerned about their
long term reputations to cheat. Unfortunately for the theory, there are too many people
within the manufacturer that have incentives to grab as much as they can and move on before
the long term costs are apparent.
The government can be incompetent or corrupt, yes, but the private sector can also be
driven by desire for short term profit. Both have their weaknesses.
We seem likely to get the worst of both right now.
Maybe they're going slow because they recognize that this alleged "pandemic" isn't as bad
as everyone in the media and NYC world is making it. Going fast usually breaks things. See
Elon or Boeing or any other "tech" innovator.
Tens of millions of people die from viral influenza every year. Some estimates are over 60
million a year world wide. Some people who contract this new Coronavirus never get sick or
exhibit symptoms at all, some only get mild flu symptoms. In other words there's nothing
different here. Even if there were there isn't a damn thing that can be done about it now.
It's global and obviously airborne - everyone will get it. Coronavirus parties! Lets get it
over with
The cost of bringing a new medication to market is now more than $2 billion and patients
have to wait more than a decade to see life-saving drugs become available.
Does this regime also apply to flu vaccines? They release a new one every year. Are
these also decades in the making?
Car companies release "new" cars every year. Do they cost the same as the development of a
new car? Tweaks to an existing thing do not cost what development from nothing costs. The
yearly flu vaccine is tweaked depending on which strains they think will be prevalent given
current and expected environmental conditions. It is not a "new medication".
The face mask suppliers are doing a booming biz.
However... Eventually -- face masks will run out of supply. Then everyone will resort to
rubber bands attached to automatic coffee maker filters.
"... This is epic, very well written and thought of, and it matched the original lyrics tone very well. Well done Kathy, I love it! ..."
"... As someone working in the healthcare sector... Thanks for bringing some much needed laughter and humour for stress relief :) <3 ..."
"... So many perfect, funny lines that fit! Perfect physical comedy at the end. Great attitude that I am sure brightened up the day of many a confined person and gave a needed laugh in a sad time. Thank you so much! Make more like this! ..."
So many perfect, funny lines that fit! Perfect physical comedy at the end. Great attitude that I am sure brightened up the
day of many a confined person and gave a needed laugh in a sad time. Thank you so much! Make more like this!
This is PERFECT. Much needed humour at these trying times! Man supermarkets are like warzones these days. Though I'll still
buy that pasta, cheese, and corn thank you.
Health officials have been suggesting the use of face masks to prevent the spread and
transmission of the coronavirus, which is quickly spreading around the globe. But the real
question is do they really protect you from the virus?
The simple answer is yes, but efficacy is still not 100%. As masks sell out everywhere, it's
time to understand what they do to help.
If you decide to use a face mask, choose a NIOSH-approved N100 mask because it protects the wearer by fully covering the
mouth. An N100 mask will help prevent inhalation of 99.7% of airborne germs, which means they
aren't a totally fail-proof method.
N95 and N99 masks can also be effective. They are still your best bet IF you have a proper
fit and it is not loose on the sides. Protection from debris and materials that are larger than
0.3 microns or greater can be achieved with both N100 and P100 respirators, as well as N95 and
N99 respirators.
Since the general consensus has been that the coronavirus is expelled from an infected
person and remains on dust particles and water droplets in the air, these can be effective at
preventing the inhalation of infected debris as long as the fit is correct.
Also, it's important to note that the "N" designation means that these respirators are not
resistant to oil.
The "P" indicates that a P100 respirator is oil proof, meaning it should also work, but may
cost you a bit more. If that's all you can
find , however, it could boost your chances of not getting sick. But again, the mask needs
to fit correctly and that cannot be stressed enough.
Don't just use a mask and expect that to be enough either. Even if it's properly worn, it's
only about 80% effective, according to doctors. Take the same precautions you would with the
flu. Avoid public places and crowds, stay at least six feet away from others, and cover your
cough or sneeze.
Wash your hands well and sanitize the surfaces of your home frequently ( bleach works wel l and it's inexpensive), especially those
often touched. Teach your children proper handwashing techniques and send them to school with
hand sanitizer. Practice good hygiene and make sure you do the best you can to keep your immune
system running on all cylinders.
If this becomes a pandemic, you'll want to make sure you have stored extra food and water
to keep from having to go to the grocery store often.
The best way to beat the coronavirus is to not get it and not spread it. lay_arrow
BobPaulson , 2 minutes ago
The .gov advice to people on this drives me into a rage. All over the place, you see guys
like HuffPo saying "masks don't fully protect you, so we don't recommend them", then in the
same article they say the masks reduce transmission 70-80%!!! That is a massive improvement,
what the hell are all these news media up to all saying "they aren't perfect, so don't use
them". Can you imagine if they said that for condoms?
The point is they are more concerned with behaviour control (trying to stop mask hording
or facial recognition jamming) than letting helpful information into the public. It will kill
people.
Agent P , 12 minutes ago
It's a line of defense, not guaranteed protection. I wouldn't never discourage using a
line of defense. Besides, if someone is infected and wears a mask, it helps prevent spreading
the virus, so I say mask up, bitchez!
Daddy Cool , 25 minutes ago
Face masks work. Any person working in a hospital in the US is required to receive an
injection of a flu vaccine every year (originally mandated by Obamacare) even though face
masks are proven to ward against the flu much better than a vaccine that doesn't work half
the time. Since the flu vaccine became a requirement for healthcare workers the drug
companies profits for the flu vaccine are up over 1000%. Not to mention the toxins the flu
vaccine still contains even though they say it's perfectly safe.
E5 , 24 minutes ago
AND a decontamination protocol when you enter your home...
accept it. You and your family are going to catch this.
I am more concerned this will have the second bloom that SARS (it is SARS) has. It will
kill the children.
of course the idea that that 30% HIV genome actually leaves survivors with HIV is
unnerving
Coronarovis is an indiscriminate tool. That exclude using it as a weapon, as boomerang tends
to return. But propaganda campaign against China unleashed is a very real.
Also what is about the fact that the pandemic if occurs will crash the entire capitalist
system worldwide?
As the usual suspects fret over the "stability" of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the
Xi Jinping administration, the fact is the Beijing leadership has had to deal with an
accumulation of extremely severe issues: a swine-flu epidemic killing half the stock; the
Trump-concocted trade war; Huawei accused of racketeering and about to be prevented from buying
U.S. made chips; bird flu; coronavirus virtually shutting down half of China.
Add to it the incessant United States government Hybrid War propaganda barrage, trespassed
by acute Sinophobia; everyone from sociopathic "officials" to self-titled councilors are either
advising corporate businesses to divert global supply chains out of China or concocting
outright calls for regime change – with every possible demonization in between.
There are no holds barred in the all-out offensive to kick the Chinese government while it's
down.
A Pentagon cipher at the Munich Security Conference once again declares China as the
greatest threat
, economically and militarily, to the U.S. – and by extension the West, forcing a wobbly
EU already subordinated to NATO to be subservient to Washington on this remixed Cold War
2.0.
The whole U.S. corporate media complex repeats to exhaustion that Beijing is "lying" and
losing control. Descending to sub-gutter, racist levels, hacks even accuse BRI itself of
being a
pandemic , with China "impossible to quarantine".
All that is quite rich, to say the least, oozing from lavishly rewarded slaves of an
unscrupulous, monopolistic, extractive, destructive, depraved, lawless oligarchy which uses
debt offensively to boost their unlimited wealth and power while the lowly U.S. and global
masses use debt defensively to barely survive. As Thomas Piketty has conclusively shown,
inequality always relies on ideology.
We're deep into a vicious intel war. From the point of view of Chinese intelligence, the
current toxic cocktail simply cannot be attributed to just a random series of coincidences.
Beijing has serial motives to piece this extraordinary chain of events as part of a coordinated
Hybrid War, Full Spectrum Dominance attack on China.
Enter the Dragon Killer working hypothesis: a bio-weapon attack capable of causing immense
economic damage but protected by plausible deniability. The only possible move by the
"indispensable nation" on the New Great Game chessboard, considering that the U.S. cannot win a
conventional war on China, and cannot win a nuclear war on China.
A biological warfare weapon?
On the surface, coronavirus is a dream bio-weapon for those fixated on wreaking havoc across
China and praying for regime change. Yet it's complicated.
This report is a decent effort trying to track the origins of coronavirus. Now compare it
with the insights by Dr. Francis Boyle, international law professor at the University of
Illinois and author, among others, of Biowarfare and Terrorism . He's the man who
drafted the U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 signed into law by George H. W.
Bush.
Dr. Boyle is convinced coronavirus is an "offensive biological warfare weapon"
that leaped out of the Wuhan BSL-4 laboratory, although he's "not saying it was done
deliberately."
Dr. Boyle adds, "all these BSL-4 labs by United States, Europe, Russia, China, Israel are
all there to research, develop, test biological warfare agents. There's really no legitimate
scientific reason to have BSL-4 labs." His own research led to a whopping $100 billion, by
2015, spent by the United States government on bio-warfare research: "We have well over 13,000
alleged life science scientists testing biological weapons here in the United States. Actually
this goes back and it even precedes 9/11."
Dr. Boyle directly accuses "the Chinese government under Xi and his comrades" of a cover up
"from the get-go. The first reported case was December 1, so they'd been sitting on this until
they couldn't anymore. And everything they're telling you is a lie. It's propaganda."
The World Health Organization (WHO), for Dr. Boyle, is also on it: "They've approved many of
these BSL-4 labs ( ) Can't trust anything the WHO says because they're all bought and paid for
by Big Pharma and they work in cahoots with the CDC, which is the United States government,
they work in cahoots with Fort
Detrick ." Fort Detrick, now a cutting-edge bio-warfare lab, previously was a notorious CIA
den of mind control "experiments".
ORDER IT NOW
Relying on decades of research in bio-warfare, the U.S. Deep State is totally familiar with
all bio-weapon overtones. From Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Korea, Vietnam and Fallujah,
the historical record shows the United States government does not blink when it comes to
unleashing weapons of mass destruction on innocent civilians.
For its part, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has spent a
fortune researching bats, coronaviruses and gene-editing bio-weapons. Now, conveniently –
as if this was a form of divine intervention – DARPA's "strategic allies" have been
chosen to develop a genetic vaccine.
The 1996 neocon Bible, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), unambiguously stated,
"advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform
biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
There's no question coronavirus, so far, has been a Heaven-sent politically useful tool,
reaching, with minimum investment, the desired targets of maximized U.S. global power –
even if fleetingly, enhanced by a non-stop propaganda offensive – and China relatively
isolated with its economy semi paralyzed.
Yet perspective is in order. The CDC estimated that up to 42.9 million people got sick
during the 2018-2019 flu season in the U.S. No less than 647,000 people were hospitalized. And
61,200 died.
This report
details the Chinese "people's war" against coronavirus. It's up to Chinese virologists to
decode its arguably synthetic origin. How China reacts, depending on the findings, will have
earth-shattering consequences – literally.
Setting the stage for the Raging Twenties
After managing to reroute trade supply chains across Eurasia to its own advantage and hollow
out the Heartland, American – and subordinated Western – elites are now staring
into a void. And the void is staring back. A "West" ruled by the U.S. is now faced with
irrelevance. BRI is in the process of reversing at least two centuries of Western
dominance.
There's no way the West and especially the "system leader" U.S.
will allow it. It all started with dirty ops stirring trouble across the periphery of Eurasia
– from Ukraine to Syria to Myanmar.
I would believe anything of the US government, but: that they are capable of actually
carrying out such a fiendish plot? I doubt their competence as much as I know their
corruption.
As far as escaping from a lab, I work in science, and I can say with certainty: these
biosafety labs are leaky. Human beings simply cannot maintain the required safety protocols
without a single lapse for years/decades, it can't be done. So if China had such a virus in a
lab in Wuhan, it is very plausible that it would escape into the general population.
Side note : all countries keep putting their labs with dangerous pathogens in the
middle of big cities. It makes it easier to staff them with qualified people, but it's BLOODY
MADNESS. For example, after 9/11, a concerned US congress decided to fund the construction of
new research centers with hazardous organisms in dozens of major cities all over the country.
I feel safer already
And finally: if this was indeed a US plot, as usual they have shot themselves in the
foot. Remember: the US elites have (treasonously) shifted the bulk of US manufacturing to
China. If this virus really hammers China's economy, it will also hammer the US economy,
because of all those US-owned factories in China. And don't forget that China is the
source of most of the pharmaceutical the US uses
At this point, shutting down trade with China would hurt the US elites more than it
would hurt China.
Ability of that authority to declare something to be an absolute priority and then direct
resources to it.
Chinese culture values social responsibility higher than individual rights.
China is actually a nation. Genetically related oeople with a common story, a common
identity, going back 5000 years. America, by contrast,, is a collection of individuals from
all over the world who just happen to live in the same legal jurisdiction.
@clickkid Escobar's essay is not that different from that of Metallicman, published on
this site only a week or so ago. If some American madmen are behind this Coronavirus
pandemic, and I pray they are not, there will be global war. No doubt Chinese leadership is
planning its retribution even as I write.
@Jason Liu China is totally backward when it comes to propaganda and isn't able to
compete with the US's/West's devilishly sophisticated propaganda machine. CGTN pales by
comparison with Russia's RT and is often like watching the BBC. They use the crude tool of
censorship instead of a more sophisticated offensive strategy like Russia does with RT,
trying to get its version of events across to people in the West. It's a major strategic
weakness. East Asian's supposed deficits in 'verbal intelligence' seem to hold them back in
this domain.
First case detected on Dec. 1st. That doesn't say when the infection started.
Another factor here is that the period between contracting the virus and its becoming
symptomatic and detectable is sometimes 30 days, not two weeks. The long and short of it is
that the delay between the timing of the games and the timing of the identification of the
early cases of COVID-19 fits very well the scenario of USA as source. Its circumstantial of
course. The time argument doesn't on its own prove the US did it.
The other long and short of it is that the public is being messed with by all the
obfuscation on where the disease comes from. When someone disagrees, the biggest serial liar
media offenders often just say "conspiracy theorist," as if this cliche actually explains
something. Of course there are laws and a UN Convention prohibiting preparation for
biological warfare so no national government is likely to volunteer it has been breaking the
law, not China or not US.
There is lots on record to suggest US actually does biological warfare, not just
studies it. The evidence is considerable, for instance, that the US government was behind the
bioweapon attack on Congress in Oct. of 2001 in order to clear aside the resistance of
Senators Leahy and Daschle to the passage of the Patriot Act. Of this phenomenon Prof.
Francis Boyle has commented
"The Pentagon and the C.I.A. are ready, willing, and able to launch biowarfare when it
suits their interests. They already attacked the American People and Congress and disabled
our Republic with super-weapons-grade anthrax in October 2001."
Prof. Boyle has put the anthrax attacks in the context of the 9/11 psy op as follows:
"Could the real culprits behind the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, and the
immediately-following terrorist anthrax attacks upon Congress ultimately prove to be the
same people? Could it truly be coincidental that two of the primary intended victims of the
terrorist anthrax attacks – Senators Daschle and Leahy – were holding up the
speedy passage of the pre-planned USA Patriot Act an act which provided the federal
government with unprecedented powers in relation to US citizens and institutions?"
I like to disagree with one important point in the article. Dr Boyle statement that the
CoronaVirus "leaped out of the Wuhan BSL-4 laboratory" is an anti-China propaganda.
Evidence ( posted on UNZ and elsewhere) show that the U.S. is the most likely source of the
Virus.
Yes, it is a Biological warfare weapon introduced by the U.S. in a very important time of
the year. China was very careful and open about its efforts to contain the Virus. China
managed very well to stop its spread, never mind the few tourists who left China taking the
Virus with them
Dean Koontz had it all figured out in his 1981 novel, The Eyes of Darkness . Like
in 3 Days of the Condor I believe the CIA read novels to get ideas.
@Alfred The elderly in other cultures aren't just geriatric fools who expect respect and
feel entitled to loot their children for the great job they did at ruining their countries
with debt and immigration.
The respect for the elderly mantra exists only within cultures with high mortalities where
being old was hard. Stop complaining like an easy woman wanting the respect studly men get.
All you did to get to your age was breathe longer than the rest of us.
And writers don't have the onus to educate their readership. Only bad writers feel the
need to explain everything so that senile idiots won't feel excluded. Good writers focus on
the flow of ideas.
And you'd know that if you'd have published any academic article where prior knowledge is
implied and documentation for prior ideas is provided.
FYI, anybody with at least two functioning neurons would have told the correct PPP is the
first Google result from the context in which it was used.
@TG You have nailed why US globalist economic policy is not merely stupid; it is akin to
treason.
And then there's this – "China largely beats the U.S. on patent filings and produces
at least 8 times as many STEM graduates a year than the U.S., earning the status of top
contributor to global science."
The US wastes fortunes bribing girls to go into STEM, and trying to find any smart
Numinous Negroes to follow suit.
@Rollmop Global White identity only exists in the minds of Americans as America was in
its early days a pan-European project. In Europe the nationalists are still involved in their
little squabbles with eachother.
The US government works for the multinational corporations. Their supply lines are drying
up due to China's shutdown. For instance 97% of American antibiotics come from China. P&G
has issued a statement all their products are being impacted. American car makers are having
part problems. So if this is a war act, its really an act of stupidity on the deep state's
part. Or maybe China took the hit of offing some old folks to sink the U.S.? Prof Boyle
suggested on Alex Jones this could be bioweapon to attack Russia to kill off Russians for
much needed real estate. It's Infowars, but Russia did shut the border fairly quickly.
Personally I think these all labs are in cahoots with each other. They are employed by the
one precent-transhumanist crowd, and working on some weird stuff to kill us off. China just
did what China does, cut some corners. Oops!
@P. McSorleyI believe the CIA read novels to get ideas.
Brilliant. I agree. The CIA gets ideas from novels.
They also use novels and movies to exaggerate their own prowess and successes. I once
tried to read a fat novel by Tom Clancy with that character Jack Ryan. Stomach churning
stuff. I couldn't read more than a few pages. My American nephews loved it.
The Russians have a very simple way of finding out who is CIA at any embassy. They look at
what sort of car the guy drives and where he lives and whether he keeps a mistress. Since
they earn a lot more than real diplomats, they always give themselves away. They just cannot
keep away from the toys.
@Jason Liu Its not exactly lets trade and leave each other alone.
Its warfare according to a different set of rules. In ancient times China was divided into
many small states, like in Europe, who were constantly at war with each. Like in Europe,
these wars were extremely vicious, cruel, and self-destructive. Like in Europe, there seemed
no way out of the cycle of aggression. It seemed that humanity must eventually destroy itself
and have no future.
The best Chinese minds of the time tried to figure out a way out. Lao Tzu thought the
solution was "inaction" – non-response to aggression. Sun Tzu developed this theme
– he didn't think aggression could be entirely avoided, but he tried to develop means
of warfare that relied on deception, illusion, managing appearance, and using the minimum of
effective force only when necessary.
In the Chinese rules of war, in order to avoid destructive mass bloodshed that might
destroy humanity, aggression is channeled into deceptive practices. In this system, you're
allowed to steal technology, deceive, bend the rules, gain illicit influence, etc –
this isn't supposed to lead to actual war. If you get caught, some kind if negotiation is
supposed to settle the matter.
Now, this system is very wise – it accepts realistically that human aggression is
regrettably not going away, and it tries to channel it into less destructive forms.
The problem is that today it is clashing with the European based system, which is based on
different principles. Europe faced the exact same problem China did – extremely
destructive warfare between small states with no end in sight, seemingly leaving no future
for humanity.
But Europe developed a different answer – a rules-based system where you aren't
allowed to cheat at all. Aggressive tendencies are supposed to be channeled into competition
within a set of clearly defined rules, like a sports match – where cheating ruins the
whole point of the competition and actually demonstrates the opposite of dominance and
success.
A necessary element of the European system was the suppression of national pride, which
left unchecked quickly leads to warfare. In the Chinese system, however, national pride
doesn't need to be suppressed, just the manner of fighting has to be channeled by tacit
agreement.
So we are dealing with two clashing systems designed to deal with the exact same problem
– and it's tragic because really both sides want to have a system that limits and
channels aggression a way from self destructive forms, but are going about it in opposite
ways.
I guess that will lead to aggression and war – and from the ashes a new system will
develop that everyone agrees on. Or the clash of the two systems will create some sort of
hybrid.
Like in 3 Days of the Condor I believe the CIA read novels to get ideas.
I believe you have the concept not exactly backward but inside-out: novelists like Koontz,
Baldacci, Silva, Thor, Meltzer, David Ignatius -- a raft of others who have made it to
NYTimes best seller status, are (I speculate) on some US department payroll to prepare or
socially engineer the public to begin to perceive as normal and acceptable things like
assassinations (i.e. Daniel Silva's plot lines parallel Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill
First);
infiltrating other nation's universities, research labs to turn scientists into traitor-spies
for USA (David Ignatius -- The Increment, Quantum Spy);
Almost everything Baldacci writes is "ripped from the headlines" of the latest foreign policy
scandal -- sometimes even before the headlines become headlines.
USA has been doing this at least since WWI.
Public libraries in the US are a major outlet for US government propaganda pumped out in
collaboration with major publishing firms.
Public libraries spend hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars -- tax payer
dollars– on these pop culture novels -- far more than is spent on balanced coverage of
US wars.
I was still young and innocent when I started to notice that the bad guy, either the main
bad guy or at very least some ancillary bad actor is German, Iranian, Italian, Arab. If
Nazis/Holocaust/Hitler/white supremacists are not mentioned in one of these NYTimes best
seller-dude's books it's a rarity.
There was never a Jewish villain in these pop novels: the Jewish character was always benign,
kindly, a victim, or a helper, but never an evil doer.
Then -- face palm: NYTimes best seller. You know, where you'd find David Irving, and Carlo
Mattogno and Arthur Butz -- that NYTimes.
John B. Hench's Books as Weapons: Propaganda, Publishing, and the Battle for Global
Markets in the Era of World War II is an eye-opener, disturbingly so: Hench is retired VP
of the American Antiquarian Society -- a harmless, maybe dotty old man, right?
Wrong.
I've come to think of Hench as a depraved warmonger, one step removed from a neocon who
applauds as Germany and Western Europe were raped of their own culture while American
publishing houses raced to fill the vacuum with their ideas -- and revenue-generators–
of what Europeans and the rest of the world ought to read and think and believe.
@denk Part of the reason the Western rules based system is breaking down today is in
response to the challenge of a China playing by a different set of rules.
As I said, I don't think China is a chaotic or malicious actor – they are just
playing the eternal game of human aggression and competition by a different set of rules that
Chinese culture developed in order to avoid endless warfare and guarantee humanity a
future.
It is hard for Westerners to grasp, but in its own way when China steals technology and
uses deceptive trade practices it is as noble as when the West competes within clear, rigid
rules that leaves many people as losers and with harsh, bleak lives.
From one perspective, the Western system of fair play based on rigid rules is extremely
inhumane and harsh, creating as it does so many broken lives and losers, despite being "fair"
and "honest". From another perspective, the Chinese system is manifestly dishonest and
unfair, despite being based on the noble desire to avoid the immense suffering caused by
endless warfare.
The problem is human aggression – as long as you accept that human aggression has a
place in life, you must accommodate immorality in some form. The question then becomes which
is is the least damaging form that leaves most space for human goodness, and different
cultures answer this differently – and now two different answers, both based on good
intentions, are clashing.
Practical moral philosophy must, at least in the foreground, be based on mitigating
aggression rather than eliminating it. That is the most moral stance one can take in
practical philosophy.
When some actual eyewitness who was actually there in whatever lab developing whatever
bio-weapon and knows actually what was done with it and who did it, when, where, how, why
comes forward to a trustworthy media source right, all three of them to actually tell the
truth about all this, let me know. Because right now I trust absolutely no media source on
this: MSM, alt-left, alt-right, alt-whatever. It's all opinion or forced-fake news, IMHO, to
line someone's or some group's pocket.
@AaronB You're not allowed to cheat in the European system? Lol what kind of nonsense is
that? That is not reflective of Euroculture.
Just look at Italy with its mafia or France with its massive corruption.
You can say that about Anglos with its attempt at the rule of law, but even that is
deceptive as it was never universal and ended up as a means of one group to scalp
another.
@AaronB The west rules bases system is breaking down because it was never legit to begin
with.
From the beginning it was not universal. There were people it applied to and people it did
not apply to.
In modern times, the west can only blame themselves for the collapse. The wests voracious
appetite to have something for nothing is breaking down because it is running out of people
to colonize and stronger countries like China, Russia, and Iran are fighting back.
But, it is passing strange that China has had so many viral "problems" over a relatively
short period of time.
Not so.
A huge rural population living in close proximity with pigs, chickens and fish (raised in
ponds and paddies), all harboring viruses or other agents capable of transmission to humans,
with much coming and going between urban and rural populations by means of China's
magnificent new roads and railways, China is a natural spawning ground for novel human
pathogens. And China has been spawning novel human pathogens since at least the
Fourteenth-Century Black death.
What is a "CIA/Falun Gong operation"? Are you saying the CIA created Falun Gong, or they
infiltrated it, or that Falun Gong infiltrated the CIA, or what? And what's the evidence for
this relationship, whatever it is?
@Tor597 Sure, but no system is perfectly followed. There are always infractions, some bad
actors, subverters, lapses, and loopholes.
The same can be said about China's system – it didn't always prevent bloodshed and
war, and was often imperfectly followed. Revolutions were not uncommon.
But both systems worked fairly well for decent lengths of time. Although the West's system
is post WW2, so its hard to say how it would have stacked up in the long run.
The important thing is to realize these systems both have a moral logic to them –
they are serious and noteworthy works of practical moral philosophy.
Perhaps today, as in many areas, better systems can be designed that combine elements from
both traditions. Christianity has instilled in the West a basic aversion to deception –
this isn't the place to discuss the metaphysical assumptions that this is based on, but
suffice it to say the East has always thought deception can be moral in certain uses –
for instance, Buddhism developed the notion of "upaya" (skillful means), where a statement
may not be strictly true but may be a relative truth that has a legitimate use in advancing
spiritual growth. This is based on very different metaphysical assumptions about the nature
of reality – basically, that everything revealed to us by our senses and mind are only
relative truth anyways.
Now, of course I am not saying that the West doesn't engage in deception – of course
it does. But Western moral philosophers are reluctant to make deception part of a moral
system – failing to realize that a system of honest competition may be very harsh and
inhumane on those it leaves behind, and ultimately lead to bloodshed and war.
By contrast Sun Tzu, who more than just a brilliant strategist was a great moral
philosopher whose main concern was preventing the immense suffering and bloodshed involved in
war, recognized the moral uses of deception. In the West, only Machiavelli recognized the
potential moral dimension of deception.
Escobar is a lively writer and sometimes says something I didn't know. But this is just
boiler plate, Unzite, paranoid, anti-American, drivel. I started making a note of the crazy,
unsupported assertions, such as:
From the point of view of Chinese intelligence, the current toxic cocktail simply cannot
be attributed to just a random series of coincidences.
the incessant United States government Hybrid War propaganda barrage, trespassed by
acute Sinophobia
everyone from sociopathic "officials" to self-titled councilors are either advising
corporate businesses to divert global supply chains out of China or concocting outright
calls for regime change
There are no holds barred in the all-out offensive to kick the Chinese government while
it's down.
Until I realized I'd have to note almost the entire article.
What's more, with one or two possible exceptions, no one here know's nuthin' more than
Escobar, and it is likely, given the general obscurity of complex biological events, that the
world never will know how the current China-originated viral pathogen emerged.
But since almost everyone's bullshitting, here's my theory. The novel corona virus is
particularly deadly to old folks, while it manifests as little more than a cold in the young.
Thus, Trump and Xi plotted together to release this virus to rectify China's demographic
problem, and America's too: an aging population. Thus will Social Security in America be
saved: by getting rid of the most expensive recipients.
@AaronB I think that a lot of your general thesis is correct.
However, I do not think that wars leave no future for "humanity."
European countries fought many wars from the Middle Ages all through to the Mid 20th
century, and yet, their populations grew.
Having a war every 20 years that kills 10% of the young men still does not greatly affect
your population's prospects. I believe that most warrior nations understand and accept this.
I believe that MOST white people understand and accept this.
But European violence and patriotism did threaten other groups. (You are Jewish, right?)
warring Europeans might threatens certain other groups' survival, such as Jews and maybe
native Americans (although it seems *relatively* few Americans were actually murdered by
whites).
The peaceful, globalized world actually is far more threatening to the survival of the
Western man than were the days of war. We are headed down a path where, in 150 years, whites
will be a tiny minority of every Western city. Racial amalgamation will leave few whites in
US, Canada, UK, France, (maybe) N. European countries, by 300 years, except for "rural
backwaters," to use the terminology of the anti-alt-right intellectual Eric Kaufman.
War neurosis – the extreme commitments we must make to end all wars – is
genociding us. War is preferable to genocide.
@Anon Sure, endemic small scale war isn't a threat to civilization. It can even be fun
and healthy, for those inclined. This is a kind of limited war, often fought according to
limiting rules – chivalry was one such system. Trying excessively to eliminate this
kind of thing can do more harm than good, I agree.
But there is a kind of total war that becomes extremely vicious and destructive and which
is felt as so horrific and threatening to civilization that it becomes a "problem" to be
solved.
In Europe, the Wars of Religion were such an episode, and the Thirty Years War in Germany
– which reduced the population by an incredible 30% and left in its wake depopulated
villages inhabited by wolves – was a representative sample. This inspired strenuous
efforts by thinkers in Europe to find a solution to what was seen as qualitatively different
than previous wars. From this was born many key elements of the modern liberal order, such as
religious tolerance, free speech, compromise, a commitment to reasonableness, etc.
WW1 of course was the next such episode, and inspired the further development of ideas
that mitigate the ferocity of total war – like anti-nationalism, which was thought to
be a massive contributing factor to Europe's self-immolation, and the League of Nations.
Now, I do take your point that solutions have to be found that are not worse than the
disease, but the problem is a very grave one for humanity – especially now with nuclear
weapons.
Please not, I am not recommending the abolishment of war, i.e human aggression and
competition. That would be impossibly utopian. So competition and aggression are a given
– what is the best way to mitigate it?
The recent Western way of extreme anti-nationalism coupled with total competition within
transparent rules that leave no sympathy for the losers is, as I mentioned, a sub-optimal
system.
Whether or not the United States has the knowhow and the will, I just don't think the
relevant part of the US elite have the moral courage to do it.
Sean, you comment frequently on China, especially on the growing rivalry between the US
and China. It seems like every other day or so you make a comment on this. Furthermore, you
often claim in these comments that because of China's economic growth and its potential to
become economically larger than the US, the US will in the very near future engage in
military action to curb China's economic growth.
Given the fact that US military action against China would be far more dangerous, risky,
and destabilizing, and potentially risk a world war and nuclear war, why do you think that
it's a near inevitability that military action and war against China will be undertaken by
the US elite in the near future to curb Chinese economic growth, but that a covert operation
deploying a severe flu primarily harming older impaired people and mainly causing economic
and political damage to China and disrupting its economic growth is somehow totally out of
the realm of possibility?
Isn't military war and potentially risking world and nuclear war much riskier and
requiring much more courage?
Basically, white people are high minded people trying to institute the rule of law and
Asians are sneaky bastards trying to conceive their way through life. You have that
perspective because you are white.
You say it worked for a very long time, but worked for whom? It didn't work for black
people who were enslaved, nor for red people who were wiped out, nor for yellow people who
were colonized, nor for poor white people who were also enslaved and genocides.
The people at the top, white Anglos in America, did well for awhile. But that does not
make it moral.
If anything, what defines white people us this path of winner takes all where there is an
elite that makes out but everyone else gets exploited.
@CanSpeccy It's not paranoid, PNAC literally mentions using bioweapons and how it is a
useful tool. Plus Darpa has done a lot of research into Corona Virus as a weapon.
" combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, "cyber-space," and perhaps
the world of microbes advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific
genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful
tool."
@Tor597 I was trying to show how the so called rule of law can be harsh and inhumane, and
how deception can be a way to channel aggression into more manageable forms.
I am trying to introduce nuance into the ordinary view.
@Anonymous First of all nuclear weapons are a deterrent to nuclear war, not conventional
war, because the threat of an incredible action is not a credible deterrent. If a China
mounts an offensive to take Vladivostok (to teach Russia a lesson) then Russia is going to
fight conventionally. No one is going to start a nuclear war, although they all would
retaliate to a nuclear first use.
Given the fact that US military action against China would be far more dangerous,
risky, and destabilizing, and potentially risk a world war and nuclear war, why do you
think that it's a near inevitability that military action and war against China will be
undertaken by the US elite in the near future to curb Chinese economic growth, but that a
covert operation deploying a severe flu primarily harming older impaired people and mainly
causing economic and political damage to China and disrupting its economic growth is
somehow totally out of the realm of possibility?
Clearly a a covert operation deploying a severe flu for causing economic damage to China
is by no means an impossibility if it was the action of some tiny clique inside the Deep
State. But they would have to be acting alone because as I tried to explain in the gist of
mycommnet, the US elites are not like the Chinese elite , which is coelesed in the
Chinese Communist Party. American elites as they have a plurality of interests; being Deep
State, Wall St, political officials and elements of the executive and the economic elites are
the most deeply invested in China. Even Trump is backing off the tariffs because he knows
China cannot be taken down sharply without hurting the average person in the US.
This outbreak seems to be not very bioweapon like because it has not killed young people
of many people. An actual bioweapon would be about as carefully guarded as nuclear weapons,
which is very carefully indeed by special military police and with officers demanding
triplicate countersigned before releasing them. For drone hitting that Iranian the officers
asked to see the written order. The slightest slip up with protocols for nukes is the end of
a officer's career. You cannot get them out their repositories without multiple top level
authorisation, except in the movies.
Even if the scientists created such a bioweapon without asking questions as to the
provenance of the order, it would be obvious to them it was intended to be used in peacetime
to be releases and would necessarily kill innocent people and all over the world including
America would not be handed over targeting Chinese would have to be the product of a very
well funded program authorized by someone in authority. It would not be under the CIA, but a
different institution. Dubious that the US even has the capacity to create a super flu, let
alone one that that kills mainly Chinese and not too many of them. Much too obvious to just
start an outbreak in China, and so the US Deep State would use Russia as a cat's paw if it
was doing it.
The odds are that because of China's economic growth and its potential to become
economically larger than the US, the US and China are fated to get into military pressure,
possibly proxy war . However, the Chinese know that is best avoided while they are still in a
vulnerable stage with an economy than needs to become more powerful. Once they are a strong
as you know what they will act like it.
Mearsheimer writes: "My theory of international politics says that the mightiest states
attempt to establish hegemony in their own region while making sure that no rival great
power dominates another region. The ultimate goal of every great power is to maximize its
share of world power and eventually dominate the system." Because no power can truly make
itself a global hegemon – resources are too finite, distances that attenuate power
too great – the most any state can realistically hope to accomplish is to enforce its
own rules in its geographic environs while keeping others from posing a serious
extra-regional threat.
Trump is the worst thing that has happened to China and I really do not think he can be
seen as part of one of the US's aforementioned elites. The Deep State hate Trump, and I think
this is because they–still fixated on the Cold War–see Russia as the threat. That
China is infiltrating and hollowing out the America is not something the Deep Staters worry
about , apart from Gen (Ret) Rob Spalding who was forced out daring to
talk about the issue
@robert_spalding
"In sum: Whoever rules the words rules the world. In the eyes of the CCP, the West's
superior discourse power is an existential threat more imminent than the remote possibility
of a foreign military invasion."
Even Trump is backing off the tariffs because he knows China cannot be taken down
sharply without hurting the average person in the US.
This outbreak seems to be not very bioweapon like because it has not killed young people
of many people.
It does not follow that just because an outbreak doesn't kill everybody that it cannot be
a bioweapon. That's like saying the assassination of Soleimani couldn't have been a US drone
strike because it didn't kill the rest of the Iranian military and government.
Trump is not "backing off the tariffs" on China. Most of the tariffs remain in place. The
point of tariffs is to gradually reduce the US trade deficit with China and to slow down
Chinese economic growth. It's not supposed to be a sharp dislocation that causes too much
sudden pain to most average Americans. A putative bioweapon behind this outbreak would be
similar in that it would not be too deadly and too much of a sudden escalation.
In the eyes of the CCP, the West's superior discourse power is an existential threat
more imminent than the remote possibility of a foreign military invasion.
And we've been seeing this superior discourse power during the coverage of this outbreak,
shaping perceptions and reality for people around the world. This discourse power is more
powerful and a greater threat to China than the virus outbreak itself.
@Tor597 AaronB is not talking about the world of American slavery or European
colonialism, he already told you that. If you read his comments, he is talking about what
European countries began to do after the World Wars ("Although the West's system is post
WW2").
He is talking about the post-colonial world of the UN, trade agreements, international
law, etc. The world is not one of winner-take-all for white people anymore.
Also, I'm pretty sure that AaronB is Jewish, so he is not going to be too pro-white.
It's not paranoid, PNAC literally mentions using bioweapons
Well obviously bioweapons exist for possible use, as with every other type of weapon.
But no war has been declared and there is no reason for a state of war to exist.
The US an China have a massive bilateral trade relationship by which both parties benefit.
Why would either declare war or engage in surreptitious war against the other?
And why, if they intended to wage war, would the US use a biological weapon that would
inevitably come back on them?
Your assumption is completely unsupported by real evidence and anyway makes no sense.
@Anon That is an arbitrary point to argue. Post WW2 was not like an age of enlightenment
for white people or anything.
During this stage white people still brutally colonized the rest of the world. See the
Korean war, Vietnam War, Iraq War, assasinations, etc etc. This is actually a worse period
for the rest of the world because it is when the west established itself as the most
powerful, and used its power to establish hegemony throughout the world.
This was definitely not the period of the rule of law or some other nonsense.
By the way, it still is a winner take all world for white people. It's just that it's not
for all white people. Only the whites at the very top benefit, while the poor non elite
whites get harvested like everyone else.
@Naill Well it bodes pretty well with my experience of Mainland Chinese. A decade back
the unemployment office sent me over to a local business that I got hired on with, it is
owned by a mainland Chinese dual citizen who reserves all the good positions for his
nepotistic family hires, even making fake unnecessary positions for them, some even live in
other states, check in on the computer once or twice a day and get a direct deposit paycheck.
I've found them to be EXACTLY LIKE THE FERENGI ON STAR TREK. Whoever wrote those Ferengi
episodes centering on Quark's Bar on Deep Space 9 must have had first hand experience with
Mainland Chinese. Foul, selfish, offensive, cheap, and arrogant. They are also quite
incompetent and peddle total junk that doesn't work. I can't believe the government lets this
crap into the country, on Amazon and Ebay you can bypass the professional purchasing managers
who know their craft in the brick and mortar stores. Now I know a whole lot of these online
sellers at Amazon are really Mainland Chinese infesting our country peddling shoddy goods.
The brothers at work joke and call it "fake ass shit" it's not outright counterfeits, just
strange off brand knock offs with domestic Chinese consumer grade quality. They are also big
liars, I don't believe a word they say.
There is no official war declared, but we are in a new Cold War with China. This is
obvious even though it is not stated directly. See the trade wars, war against Huawei, fight
for control in Africa and the ME.
Both parties benefit from trade, but China more so. This is mainly because our banking
system is parasitical and serves to extract wealth instead of creating wealth.
But never the less, the powers that be in America see the writing on the wall. If momentum
Carrie's through as is, China will surpass the west and become too powerful to contain.
The real threat to America is the threat to dollar hegemony. At some point China could
have an alternate to the dollar, and at that point America could not just print money.
America would just be like any other country and have to earn wealth the hard way.
Biological warfare, especially one targetted by race, is pretty much the only card America
had left to play. America could not win a conventional war. Neither could it win a nuclear
war.
America could win a biowar, since there is plausible deniability and the intention was to
wreck China while America was left unaffected.
@Anonymous I think there are problems with thinking it is a bioweapon at all; much too
specialised and asking scientist to develop something like that and then ordering it used by
the CIA would be impossible. I don't think the people would obey orders because they would
know they were illicit. A huge reason for doubting it is a bioweapon is it surely is beyond
the state of the art at present. Even if it was not this is not the kind of thing that would
be developed except for surreptitious peacetime use, as the scientist s commissioned to
create it would understand. Moreover they would know too much in the aftermath, and knowingly
be signing their own death warrant; they would not be left around to talk. Inasmuch it looks
very like another of the Chinese bat origin flus, and is hitting immune compromised
especially the old hardest, there is no compelling reason to think it it is anything but a
naturally arisen disease.
It could be a incredibly sophisticated bioweapon, yet supposing that was true the Chinese
(who are no fools and have their own scientists) would know that had been attacked and return
the favour by tweaking it to kill Americans and releasing it in America, wouldn't they? And
all that is assuming the original bioweapons scientists could know how lethal it would be.
They would have to have tested it to gauge its lethality, and yet how it would spread in a
city (speed of spread affects virulence) would be impossible to know with any degree of
certainty. It could infect most of the world's population and kill orders of magnitude more
people than projected quite easily. I think people tend to assume that secret services like
007's Q, have all kinds of capabilities far beyond current state of the art, and they are
staffed with fanatics who are, without question comment or misgivings, willing to flush their
life down the toilet just because some superior tells them to. Malevolence does not confer
capability .
There's still a lingering desire for "let's trade but leave each other alone". That's
not gonna happen. It was never gonna happen. I hope they smarten up.
I don't think China is as naive as you think. Why is it that all our high schools are now
teaching Chinese as a foreign language? Practically all the teachers are from China, paid for
by the Chinese government. In addition, many of our colleges now have a "Confusion
Institute", again paid for by the Chinese government. People of Chinese descent in the US,
regardless of whether they are or were Chinese citizens, find the CCP mouthpiece China
Daily mysteriously appearing in their driveway every Friday, unless they call some
mysterious number to stop it. They get knocks on their doors from China people they've never
met asking if they spoke Chinese.
The Chinese government has been secretly recruiting ethnic Chinese in the US to work on
their behalf for years now. The US is playing a dangerous and stupid game. You cannot
simultaneously launch a war against China and then continue to accept large numbers of
citizens from that country into the US, giving them student visas, 10 year tourist visas, EB5
visas, work visas, green cards, citizenships. These people can only be loyal to China, no
matter what passport they hold. If the US is to win this war, the first thing we need to do
is repatriate every single Chinese citizen in this country, present and former. Send them
packing or we will have the fifth columnists working against us from within.
The US an China have a massive bilateral trade relationship by which both parties
benefit. Why would either declare war or engage in surreptitious war against the other?
And why, if they intended to wage war, would the US use a biological weapon that would
inevitably come back on them?
Geopolitics is a zero-sum game. The more powerful country X becomes, the less powerful
country Y does.
The more China trades with the US and other countries, the greater its economic growth,
which translates to greater political and military power. The greater the Chinese political
and military power, the lesser the power of the US in the zero-sum game of geopolitics.
The Trump administration and many in the US foreign policy establishment have said that
the trade relationship with China, regardless of its economic benefits, is a problem because
it supports Chinese economic growth, which then supports Chinese political and military
power. The point of the tariffs and moving supply chains and production out of China is to
reduce or slow down the Chinese economic growth which supports China's political and military
power.
A bioweapon like this coronavirus in this context is the perfect weapon. It slows down
China's economy and image as a trade partner around the world, promotes the movement of
supply chains and production out of China and back into the US or into US allies, builds up
political capital for China hawks who want greater decoupling from China and a more hostile
stance towards it, and its collateral damage is relatively low such that even if it hits the
US it will not be too devastating but like a severe flu outbreak.
This bioweapon needs to be seen as an alternative weapon, not as a military weapon whose
efficacy is measured solely in terms of physical casualties. It's an economic, political,
cultural, psychological weapon. It should be viewed as akin to tariffs, sanctions, media
propaganda.
Remember that former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright responded affirmatively when she was
asked if the sanctions against Iraq were "worth it" even if as it was estimated half a
million children had died as a result of them. The human toll of those sanctions supported by
the US against Iraq were far worse than this outbreak in China.
@Sean It's well established that this sort of research and development into bioweapons
has been going on for decades in many countries.
Yes, retaliation would be bad, but if the possibility of retaliation were sufficient to
prevent any kind of initiative, nothing would ever happen. Things do happen. Moreover,
retaliation would accelerate decoupling and hostilities, which would not be unwelcome from
the point of view of those who would choose to go down this road in the first place.
This was definitely not the period of the rule of law or some other nonsense.
Law does not mean benevolence – it means competition within certain limits, that are
clear and transparent, that limits the level of aggression. It does not mean benevolence.
I did not suggest the West was acting in a benevolent manner – I suggested it
devised a system of limits on aggression, a set of clear rules, for the purpose of preventing
aggression from getting out of control. Within those limits, selfish aggression is
permitted.
It is based on the idea that it is impossible to eliminate selfish aggression from the
world, so the practical moralist tries to prevent it from getting too destructive.
So I wasn't idealizing the West. Morally, I do not see why brute force is better than
cunning, although the person who excels at brute force may well wish to convince others of
that.
Brute force and blunt confrontation may lead to devastating bloodshed, as the West
discovered most recently in WW1 and 2 and China discovered in ancient times. Moving away from
brute force and towards cunning may be a way to save lives.
I am not promoting this morality – no good person would act with cunning or force
for selfish ends. It is certainly not a morality one should personally practice. I am saying
that if we wish to constrain the most selfishly aggressive people in society, we have to
accept their disposition as it is and try and push it into channels that will allow them to
carry on their competition in wats that won't destroy civilization.
@Alfred There's another one.
During the SARS1 attack, JOn Rapopport was one of my go to guy
He correctly identified SARS1 as an economic warfare against not only China, but Asia.
SARS AS ECONOMIC WARFARE
May 12. Toronto will suffer half a billion dollars worth of lost business. Economies in
Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and mainland China are taking heavy hits. Global airline $$
have fallen off.
Trade wars go on all the time, and the US versus Asia is no exception. The US CDC has
pitched in to put a major crinkle in Asia's economies
The current SARS2 [covid 19] is obviously the hot phase of Trump's economic
blitzkrieg , just see how [[[they]]] are salivating for a economic melt down in China
.[[[Gordon Chang]]] is finally vindicated LOL !
Yet Rapopport has gone full retard about 'a Chinese FF to cover up their smog and
suppress their dissidents' !
Jeeze !
what happens to these people, have they
been doing limited hand out all these years in order to earn some street cred and
they'r showing their true color now ???
that shows that for the last six days the number of 'New Recovered' cases is larger than
'New Confirmed' cases by a factor close to 2. This means that at least China was able to
arrest the epidemic.
"... There currently 80,348 cases, or 0.000011% of the global population. Over 77,000 (97%) cases, and 2664 deaths (98%) are from China, and a large portion of those were "clinically diagnosed" (ie. untested). The 2707 deaths (allegedly) due to Coronavirus mean it has death rate of just 3.4%. (For cases outside China, that number drops to 1.6%) Conversely, over 40,000 cases are considered mild, and over 27,000 have been cured. ..."
"... Some (including US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ) are claiming the disease is being under-reported by China (and Iran), and the panic is a response to much more alarming but hidden statistics. ..."
"... similar claims were made about SARS, Swine Flu and all the other non-event overhyped 'death bugs' we have been told about in recent times. ..."
"... At this stage, it might seem more likely that 'new CV' is just another one of these. The latest scare tactic being used to close down rational thinking in the world populace and normalise increased government control. ..."
"... coronavirus is definitely being used to spread and deepen Sinophobic hatred, by organisations of Evil like the villainous BBC. ..."
In Hubei Province, China, where the 'new' virus was first diagnosed, and where the vast majority of the cases have occurred, it's
no longer considered necessary to test for the presence of CV antibodies before diagnosing the disease.
Let's say that again.
The epicentre of the so-called new virus outbreak is currently diagnosing new cases of the disease without testing for the
virus.
Instead they are relying on 'clinical diagnosis'
, which is defined as [our emphasis]:
The estimated identification of the disease underlying a patient's complaints based merely on signs, symptoms and medical history
of the patient rather than on laboratory examination or medical imaging.
Which means physicians look at presenting symptoms and make a guess on what is causing them.
Now if you're talking about something like Smallpox that option can make some sense – because Smallpox presents with one very
distinct clinical feature – a recognisable rash – that makes it fairly easy to distinguish from other viral agents or other disease
processes.
But the 'new' coronavirus does not do that. In fact, symptoms of the 'new' CV are exactly like symptoms of the numerous 'old'
CVs, and indeed of the common cold or flu. Cough, fever, malaise, upper respiratory tract inflammation and (in severe cases) lung
involvement – up to and including full-blown pneumonia.
The only way to differentiate a case of 'new' CV from severe regular flu, viral pneumonia or even environmental lung disease,
is by testing for antibodies. If they aren't doing this, physicians in Hubei Province are now at grave risk of essentially diagnosing
every single case of pneumonia or lung inflammation they see as the new CV.
Which goes quite a long way to explaining the sudden increase in cases [our emphasis]:
China's Hubei province reported an additional 242 deaths and 14,840 new cases as of Feb. 12 -- a sharp increase from the previous
day. The province said it is starting to include "clinically diagnosed" cases in its figures and that 13,332 of the new cases
fall under that classification .
By CNBC's figures, fully
89% of the "new cases" reported in Hubei province have never been tested for the virus .
According to Our World in Data , roughly 180,000 people die
of pneumonia in China every year. Under this new system, all of those people could be diagnosed with coronavirus .
Further, "signs of pneumonia" don't have to be a sign of any disease at all. Pneumonic symptoms can come simply as the result
of
being
exposed to a heavily polluted air , something very common in China's densely populated urban centres.
A major question here has to be – why? Why take a step that inevitably increases the number of false positives? Why intentionally
inflate the apparent caseload? What rational benefit can there be in that?
Is it some form of hyper-caution? They would rather throw the net too wide than risk missing cases?
Or is it, as Jon Rappoport suggests , a cynical bid to drive up
the numbers in pursuit of ever-valuable fear porn?
That this alleged outbreak is being used to promote fear as a backing for a number of control-based agendas is undeniable, and
we have already pointed this out in previous articles
(not to mention the financial
aspect ). The simple truth is that the reality of this 'new' virus, even as defined by those promoting panic, does not merit
the fear being sold to us on its behalf.
Here are some stats for you, compiled by Kit Knightly.
There currently 80,348 cases, or 0.000011% of the global population. Over 77,000 (97%) cases, and 2664 deaths (98%) are from
China, and a large portion of those were "clinically diagnosed" (ie. untested). The 2707 deaths (allegedly) due to Coronavirus mean
it has death rate of just 3.4%. (For cases outside China, that number drops to 1.6%) Conversely, over 40,000 cases are considered
mild, and over 27,000 have been cured.
For the sake of further reassurance, study these tables:
<table omitted -- see the original for full text>
Essentially, unless you are either elderly or already sick, there's very little chance you are in danger.
On what rational basis can a disease with this profile possibly justify the government and media response worldwide? Are we really
approaching a
"tipping point" ? Does this sound like a
"public health emergency" ?
Some (including US Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo ) are claiming the disease is being under-reported by China (and Iran), and the panic is a response to much more
alarming but hidden statistics.
Well, that is possible of course. But similar claims were made about SARS, Swine Flu and all the other non-event overhyped
'death bugs' we have been told about in recent times.
At this stage, it might seem more likely that 'new CV' is just another one of these. The latest scare tactic being used to
close down rational thinking in the world populace and normalise increased government control.
That the Chinese government might be party to any such idea might seem unthinkable to those who like their geopolitics simple
and binary, but can't be rationally excluded.
Time will tell of course. But if – as we consider overwhelmingly likely – this 'new' scare bug turns out to have been as overhyped
as all the rest, maybe those panicking in our comments and elsewhere will learn a valuable lesson, and decline to play along with
this particular sick little game next time?
This is mostly fear mongering as an affective bioengineered virus will create a pandemic, but
the truth is that Anthrax false flag attack after 9/11 was not an accident...
Trump administration beahaves like a completely lawless gang (stealing Syrian oil is one
example. Killing Soleimani is another ) , as for its behaviour on international arena, but I do
not believe they go that far. Even for for such "ruptured" gangster as Pompeo
Notable quotes:
"... Consider that a deadly virus created by the U.S. and used against another country was found out and verified, and in retaliation, that country or others decided to strike back with other toxic agents against America. Where would this end, and over time, how many billions could be affected in such a scenario? ..."
"... "In vast laboratories in the Ministry of Peace, and in experimental stations, teams of experts are indefatigably at work searching for new and deadlier gases; or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents; or for breeds of disease germs immunised against all possible antibodies." ..."
"... Additional notes: here , here , here , here , here and here . ..."
Interestingly, in the past, U.S. universities and NGOs went to China
specifically to do illegal biological experimentation, and this was so egregious to Chinese
officials, that forcible removal of these people was the result. Harvard University, one of the
major players in this scandal, stole the DNA samples of hundreds of thousands of Chinese
citizens, left China with those samples, and continued illegal bio-research in the U.S. It is
thought that the U.S. military, which puts a completely different spin on the conversation, had
commissioned the research in China at the time. This is more than suspicious.
The U.S. has, according to this
article at Global Research ,
had a massive biological warfare program since at least the early 1940s, but has used toxic
agents against this country and others since the 1860s . This is no secret, regardless of the
propaganda spread by the government and its partners in criminal bio-weapon research and
production.
As of 1999, the U.S. government had deployed its Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW)
arsenal against the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, China, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia,
Cuba, Haitian boat people, and our neighbor Canada according to this article at
Counter Punch . Of course, U.S.
citizens have been used as guinea pigs many times as well, and exposed to toxic germ agents and
deadly chemicals by government.
Keep in mind that this is a short list, as the U.S. is well known for also using proxies to
spread its toxic chemicals and germ agents, such as happened in Iraq and Syria. Since 1999
there have been continued incidences of several different viruses, most of which are presumed
to be
manmade , including the current Coronavirus that is affecting China today.
There is also much evidence of the research and development of race-specific bio-warfare
agents. This is very troubling. One would think, given the idiotic race arguments by
post-modern Marxists, that this would consume the mainstream news, and any participants in
these atrocious race-specific poisons would be outed at every level. That is not happening, but
I believe it is due to obvious reasons, including government cover-up, hypocrisy at all levels,
and leftist agenda driven objectives that would not gain ground with the exposure of this
government-funded anti-race science.
I will say that it is not just the U.S. that is developing and producing bio-warfare agents
and viruses, but many developed countries around the globe do so as well. But the United
States, as is the case in every area of war and killing, is by far the world leader in its
inhuman desire to be able to kill entire populations through biological and chemical warfare
means. Because these agents are extremely dangerous and uncontrollable, and can spread wildly,
the risk to not only isolated populations, but also the entire world is evident. Consider
that a deadly virus created by the U.S. and used against another country was found out and
verified, and in retaliation, that country or others decided to strike back with other toxic
agents against America. Where would this end, and over time, how many billions could be
affected in such a scenario?
All indications point to the fact that the most toxic, poisonous, and deadly viruses ever
known are being created in labs around the world. In the U.S. think of Fort Detrick, Maryland,
Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas, Horn Island, Mississippi, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, Vigo
Ordinance Plant, Indiana, and many others. Think of the fascist partnerships between this
government and the pharmaceutical industry. Think of the U.S. military installations positioned
all around the globe. Nothing good can come from this, as it is not about finding cures for
disease, or about discovering vaccines, but is done for one reason only, and that is for the
purpose of bio-warfare for mass killing.
The drive to find biological weapons that will sicken and kill millions at a time is not
only a travesty, but is beyond evil. This power is held by the few, but the potential victims
of this madness include everyone on earth. How can such insanity at this level be allowed to
continue? If any issue could ever unite the masses, governments participating in biological and
germ warfare, race-specific killing, and creating viruses with the potential to affect disease
and death worldwide, should cause many to stand together against it. The first step is to
expose that governments, the most likely culprit being the U.S. government, are planting these
viruses purposely to cause great harm. Once that is proven, the unbelievable risk to all will
be known, and then people everywhere should put their divisiveness aside, stand together, and
stop this assault on mankind.
"In vast laboratories in the Ministry of Peace, and in experimental stations, teams of
experts are indefatigably at work searching for new and deadlier gases; or for soluble
poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole
continents; or for breeds of disease germs immunised against all possible antibodies." ~
George Orwell – 1984
It seems that Japan's feared bureaucracy has handled the issue without
the advice from any specialist. Cruise ships are perfect to spread diseases. They have
central air condition and central septic systems that can spread viruses to every room on
board. There are many places on board which are commonly used. The crew is usually housed
in less than perfect conditions. Any suspected cases should have been taken off board
immediately. But these were simply told to stay in their cabins which they, of course, did
not do.
The Japanese military has some troops working on the ship but they are only now taking
protective measures which are still
less than sufficient :
About 50 staffers from the Self-Defense Forces are working on the vessel to examine the
passengers, disinfect cabins and transport patients. The ship was quarantined for two
weeks off Yokohama on Feb. 5 to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in Japan.
Those handling medicine are now required to wear masks, gloves, gowns and hair caps,
ministry officials said.
At a news conference, Kono admitted that the Defense Ministry applied the standards --
which are higher than those in use by health ministry officials working on the vessel --
after viewing a video from the ship posted by Dr. Kentaro Iwata of Kobe University
Hospital, who joined the disaster-relief team as a veteran infectious disease
specialist.
On Wednesday 500 Japanese passengers who had tested negative
were let go from the ship without further measures. But many of them will carry the
virus as more new confirmed cases from the ship still appear daily. These people should
have been further isolated. Letting them leave without such measures guarantees that new
outbreaks will soon appear throughout Japan.
This situation might have developed due to political pressure. Japan is supposed to hold
the summer Olympics later this year and it may have wanted to avoid bad headlines. To me it
seems that there will be no Olympics this year and that Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
will soon hear some harsh
public criticism .
Another big clusters established itself in Daegu, South Korea, where people from a
Christian sect infected each other during mass. There are currently some 130 such cases and
some 70 more spread elsewhere in South Korea.
Iran has a smaller cluster in Qom with 14 cases. It closed all schools and seminaries
and suspended religious gatherings in the city. Other countries report single new cases or
small clusters. This will continue as the disease races around the world. Large new
outbreaks will appear in those many countries which have less than perfect medical systems
or where the authorities want to suppress news of a smaller outbreak.
In the Ukraine rioters had to be brought under control when they protested
against quarantining evacuees from China near their villages.
The economic ripple effect of this epidemic and of the enormous quarantine in China will
be huge. It will be felt everywhere but especially in highly developed
industries :
The impacts on China both intrinsic and psychological are still vastly under estimated.
This is the largest containment/effective imprisonment via quarantine of human being in
world history. People are assuming no ripples from that.
The biggest factor that's not understood is the non linearity of supply chains. A two
week total shut down *does not* mean a two week delay in products to consumer. This is
very different from the tariff impacts, where pricing was adjusted.
A single component missing in a 500+ part product means all levels of production are
moot. Autos and consumer electronics are obvious examples. We have heard from multiple
auto players and Jaguar has publicly stated they have sub 2 weeks of operating
inventory.
Just In Time (JIT) production is a form of operational leverage. And like all forms of
leverage, there is a non linear downside effect. People are not putting it together that
this is a very big deal. It's not a 1 month hit. It's not a 1 quarter hit. It's an annual
hit *right now*.
Some large factories which depend on parts from China will soon have to shut down. Then
their other suppliers will also have to cease production. The loss of income will be felt
throughout the local economies.
The effects of the epidemic may well lead to an end of the globalization of production
processes. Companies will go back to buy locally to be as unaffected as possible from
similar future incidents. This might well be the most positive long term outcome of this
epidemic.
Some large factories which depend on parts from China will soon have to shut down. Then
their other suppliers will also have to cease production. The loss of income will be felt
throughout the local economies.
The ones who are insured won't be monetarily affected. The uninsured will. This may
trigger a bubble burst in the West, though.
The effects of the epidemic may well lead to an end of the globalization of production
processes. Companies will go back to buy locally to be as unaffected as possible from
similar future incidents. This might well be the most positive long term outcome of this
epidemic.
Globalization had already halted after 2008. That was the material base for the
so-called "populist" rise in the Western Civilization. Populism is a symptom, not the
cause, of the halt of globalization.
That doesn't mean, though, the the western countries are heading towards socialism. This
is specially the case with the First World countries, which have powerful armies, and thus
can restore (at least in part) their economies through dispossession of the weaker (Third
World) countries. The working classes of the First World tend to fascism, not
socialism.
That's why China is countering the death of globalization with OBOR. For socialism to
rise, there needs to be world prosperity. If the pot is small, fascism will rise again.
Infodemic continuing to spread.
Gullible people continuing to fail to understand that the real issue isn't the coronavirus,
it is the fear which the infodemic (and outright agitprop) is feeding - and which many of
these people are exacerbating.
China supplies enormous amounts of everything the world uses except energy.
Even food - China doesn't supply as much of the raw, but provides an enormous amount of
processing/handling.
And yes, "just in time" combined with the Lunar New Year holiday and a greatly prolonged
re-ramp time is going to impact everyone, everywhere.
The only question is how much.
The effects of the epidemic may well lead to an end of the globalization of production
processes. Companies will go back to buy locally to be as unaffected as possible from
similar future incidents. This might well be the most positive long term outcome of this
epidemic. I wholeheartedly agree but I have some trouble reconciling this with your
support of the EU and the British remainers.
Pepe Escobar writes about the possibility
that the virus is a bioweapon --but produced by whom? He looks at the Outlaw US
Empire's Hybrid War against China:
"There's no question coronavirus, so far, has been a Heaven-sent politically useful
tool, reaching, with minimum investment, the desired targets of maximized U.S. global power
– even if fleetingly, enhanced by a non-stop propaganda offensive – and China
relatively isolated with its economy semi paralyzed.
"Yet perspective is in order. The CDC estimated that up to 42.9 million people got sick
during the 2018-2019 flu season in the U.S. No less than 647,000 people were hospitalized.
And 61,200 died."
As far as I know, the bioweapon hypothesis has yet to be 100% disproven. IMO, it isn't.
I know how bacteriums and viruses share their DNA such that as I wrote previously humans
must always treat them as their #1 enemy/threat as they're potentially very deadly. It's
also a big mistake for the Outlaw US Empire to gloat about China's misfortune as it's not
immune whatsoever.
I read Escobar on your comment. He does have the Chinese and Persian perspective well in
hand. I still remember Trump at Mar-a-Lago treating Xi to 'beautiful piece of chocolate
cake', and bombing the Syrians.
A threat thrown at Xi and China. That was very telling and the threats, sanctions, have
occurred ever since non stop. This virus is all too convenient and once the dust settles we
may have some reciprocal action.
It is also hard to imagine how "first-world" countries will control the virus if it ever
does get a foothold, since they are scared of their own shadows and can't possibly compete
with the PRC when it comes to ruthlessness (at times there may be advantages to living in a
dictatorship ..)
Container shipping from Chinese ports has collapsed since the outbreak of coronavirus and
has yet to show any sign of recovery, threatening weeks of chaos for manufacturing supply
lines and the broader structure of global trade.
Almost half of the planned sailings on the route from Asia to North Europe have been
cancelled over the last four weeks. A parallel drama is unfolding on routes from the
Pacific Rim to the US and Latin America.
Lars Jensen from SeaIntelligence in Copenhagen said the loss of traffic is running at
300,000 containers a week. This will cause a logistical crunch in Europe in early March
even if the epidemic is brought under control quickly.[.]
Refrigerated ships full of frozen food are unable to enter Chinese ports because
berths are full.... cannot tap into electricity. No dockers or drivers.
In Europe Fiat Chrysler has suspended production. Jaguar Land Rover are flying in parts
in suitcases from China to UK.....
=========
Not just Europe. It's global. Could tip the world into a deep recession. Shortages
abound from everyday essentials,[Walmart, Family Dollar, DollarTree, Home Depot] food,
pharmaceuticals and manufacturers.
Food!!? Yes. garlic in the produce area.
You shop at Costco? Cheesecake - loaded with sodium benzoate- with milk being the last
ingredient listed on the label.
Good question: As one analyst asked; over the next 3-4 months who will want to open a
container from China or buy anything marked "Product of or Made in China?
I do not think the Chinese will counter-attack for this US bio weapon attack.
Why is it that many people dismiss this event as being biological warfare launched by
the US against China? Because it is too horrific. We know that the empire murders by the
thousands and millions without the slightest hesitation or guilt, but for some reason we
assume that even the empire is not so vile and malevolent as to use biological weapons. We
assume that the empire has some sort of conscience that will moderate its behavior, even
though we've never seen evidence of it.
These are people who built armies of literal head-choppers... death squads. They
gleefully murder respected statesmen on diplomatic missions. If they can do nothing else
then they will run you off the road just because they are hatefully psychotic.
This collectively psychotic culture cannot back down from their aggression if they are
losing, so they always escalate that aggression as far as they can.
America is losing its trade war with China, but is running out of economic weapons. From
within its bubble of psychosis America feels it has no choice but to escalate beyond
economic weapons. What other weapons can America possibly use to defeat China at this point
other than bio weapons?
There is no question that this is biological warfare.
That said, China is not going to retaliate and try to hurt Americans.
Why not?
Because unlike America they are not a culture of psychopaths.
Lost in this whole scaremongering affair is the CDC estimates that already for this flu
season 29 million have contracted the flu and 16,000 have died.
The American Sheeple can be herded anywhere with the MSM sheepdogs being controlled by
competent shepherds.
Mr. Gruff: I am told that bioweapons are not considered, by developed world spooks and
military types, to be "useful" as weapons. They are highly unstable, difficult to deploy
and tend to have lots of blowback, as in their effects being next to impossible to predict
and just as likely to result in non-desired outcomes as desired. Yes, Escobar makes a good
point that it sure all looks very, very suspicious, especially given the gigantic Western
anti-China info op that was marched out, and that right quick. But bioweapons are said to
not be considered serious as weapo0ns systems.
"...bioweapons are said to not be considered serious as weapons systems." --casey
@31
That just makes them all the more attractive to the "Shock Doctrine" CIA
gangsters. Agents of chaos love that sort of stuff. Nothing serious, just "bloodying
their nose" a little.
A bio-weapon is a dubious hypothesis, or at the very least, it's not exactly destined to
kill massess of "enemy" people. The virus kills basically 70/80+ years old people, which
isn't exactly a problem for most countries. The heavy load on healthcare system and its
cost might be a reason, but there's many other ways of attaining such a goal. A Trump-ian
desire to limit globalization perhaps, but doubtful as well.
That said, we can only state that China did its job, but it remains to be seen if other
countries are as effective. Japan obviously isn't. I suspect many European countries won't
as well - they're repatriating people from China and cruise ships by commercial flights and
don't bother with quarantines if people have no symptoms. Then there's Iran; was it some
Iranian who came back infected, was it Chinese workers who were let in unquarantined? (if
the latter, then it's a minor failure for China not to have screened them, though the
bigger failure would probably be Iranian immigration authorities)
B's last paragraph seems spot on. Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases are going down
big time, and other countries might learn the virtues of being self-sufficient as much as
possible.
While most of the discussion here centres on supply-chains and manufacturing exports from
China, in Australia it's our service sector that will be hit. We rely on at least three
relationships with China: education (Chinese fee-paying university students), tourism
(AUD$12bn/annum from PRC) and mining exports (iron-ore and coal). The first is the sector I
work in and my university is hysterical about the 6000 PRC students stranded in China under
the travel ban. Each of those students spends a lot of money here on accom, food, etc. and
represent about AUD$100m across the year including tuition fees. As b and others have said,
it's the ramifications and delayed unexamined consequences that will bite already
over-leveraged sectors. And the MSM are very silent on this aspect of the situation,
preferring instead to whip up fear and loathing toward the PRC, which may indeed be the
intent in order to prepare populations for a longer-term 'decoupling' from the Chinese
economy.
It's not that the Outlaw US Empire wouldn't deploy a bioweapon--it did in September
2001, anthrax--but as with The Omega Man and The Walking Dead they're too
unpredictable and can easily blowback on the users. IMO, chemical weapons that are
carcinogens like Agent Orange and glyphosate (Roundup) also ought to be classed as
bioweapons since they attack our biological systems in ways different from "classical"
chemical agents.
The economic affects have yet to even be felt; and if the virus was a bioweapon, its
blowback will severely damage Western economies as they're the most developed and
dependent. Otherwise, we have another deadly strain of virus that must be controlled just
as with all the other viruses.
I wish I had the optimism of some here ! Casey @ 31 for instance.
But we live in a real distopyian world, the most powerful country is run by a psychopathic
mass murderer whose population has been brain washed! To look for logic and reason in the
actions of the insane will never work! Their insane end of story.
So here is the truth it may save a lot of speculation.
Must read. But very long. Solid evidence as to intent, motavation and opportunity
What makes you think the ones using the bioweapons (CIA) care? If a million people in
poor health, or elderly, or with no insurance die in the US these monsters will put that on
the benefit side of the ledger. Less useless eaters leaching the empire's resources (most
of the US population are considered useless eaters now that the country has been largely
de-industrialized). Blowback doesn't faze them in the slightest. Head-chopping terrorists
are rabid dogs... very difficult to control. The CIA's version of James Bond got snuffed in
Benghazi by the very same rabid dogs that he was recruiting for the "American Foreign
Legion" . Has that blowback slowed the CIA down working with these animals? No, of
course not.
Posters are trying to maintain the completely unfounded belief that these people behind
the attacks are rational and intelligent. They are not. They are psychopaths, and that is
not hyperbole. These psychopaths actually like collateral damage, even when it
happens to citizens of the empire. They're laughing about the people dying on the cruise
ships. They are joking with each other about how stupid the useless eaters are for getting
on planes with infected people. They don't see this as a problem at all, aside perhaps from
being disappointed that more people in China are not dying.
Time and again people insist upon fooling themselves into disbelieving how monstrous
these psychotic freaks are, despite the fact of their monstrosity being revealed over and
over.
Try this: Read up on Jeffrey Dahmer. Maybe you think you know a little about him but
most people don't dig too deep because it makes them uncomfortable trying to imagine how
another human being could be that messed up.
Once you get a good idea of what I am referring to by "psychopath" , then try to
imagine an entire global crime syndicate made up of these types of individuals. If you work
at it you may start to get a grasp of what the CIA really is.
Yeah, I agree with your reasoning and have referred to The Establishment of being
wannabe Neros and Caligulas, and elsewhere I've described their philosophy as Libertinism
as designed by the Marquis de Sade. Some movies depicting CIA personnel behaviors come
close to portraying what you describe, like Mr Joshua and ilk from Lethal Weapon .
Not enough people seem to be troubled by the "fictional" Jason Bourne Story. Proven yet
again: Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. It's this aspect that's always troubled me when
thinking about how to disband the CIA. The fiction's horrid enough, and we know the truth's
worse.
Different strain a cold virus causing only a fraction of hospitalizations and deaths from
pneumonia from other infections, are way overhyped by China and international health
organizations. To what end?
Mandatory vaccinations down the road which will cause many adverse effects that will be
underreported, conditioning people to allow governments worldwide to lockdown people
without protest to keep them safe, etc.
This is all a psy-ops operation for greater pharma profits and government control. China
will blame the US for using a biowarfare weapon to gain the peoples nationalist support
(fake enemies are wonderful for that purpise). Despite being "attacked" China will continue
providing America antibiotics, tech gadgets and API's used for drugs and vaccines and will
honor American intellectuals property rights and pay royalties for vaccines they produce
using patented vaccine processes. Fake wrestling man.
Anyone notice it was not until China signed the trade agreement that the virus became
newsworthy?. Gates Event 201 and his documentary on Netflix shows the this was a preplanned
psyops .
For all we know there is not even a new virus. Just a test that detects endogenous viral
proteins present in a percentage of people that get tested when sick or exposed to a sick
person. How would we even know? But lets assume it is a new virus. Just look at the numbers
outside Hubei (numbers not to be trusted), and understand many people had the virus without
symptoms and you see the mortality rate not much greater than influenza and affecting
mostly elderly or other sick people hardest.
From past conversations I've had here at MoA with Clickkid, VK and some others on the
COVID-19 virus as a bioweapon, my conclusion is that it cannot be a bioweapon.
It's too contagious and it has too many modes of transmission for it to be easily
controllable by the attackers using it to subdue an enemy without risking blowback once the
enemy is dead and gone, and the attackers start moving their own people in to mop up and
take over cities and steal equipment, factory machines and armaments where the virus may
still be lingering. A virus that kills people past the age when they've finished raising
families and their own health is in long-term decline? Not ideal - as Clickkid pointed out,
a better bioweapon is one that incapacitates people in the prime of their lives, doesn't
kill them outright but reduces their productivity, maybe also renders them sterile or
infertile.
A vaccine would be a better bioweapon than an actual disease. With the various side
effects that have been reported for it, Gardasil (to prevent cervical cancer in women)
would be ideal as a bioweapon.
my conclusion is that it cannot be a bioweapon.
Bingo!
We have a winner.
It is 96% similar to a 2014 coronavirus, of bat origin, a double stranded positive RNA
virus.
A bat virus, like SARS and MERS, the other two significant coronavirus.
Jen
China has been in lockdown. Factories closed ect. Major resources diverted to stop the
spread. It is a major economic hit to China.
Hygiene is high in China compared to other densely populated parts of Asia. China has been
hit now with a number of exotic viruses ect that have been hits to its economy. Ebola
kicked off in Africa, but other than that, other countries that eat anything and
everything, who's hygiene is often not up to the standard of China do not seem to be
experiencing these outbreaks.
As to using bio weapons, any country that would develop and use them would have also
developed a vaccine.
my comment with LINK @ 25 addressed the just-in-time supply chain, global shipping
disruptions.
Now, the CDC has announced "in the eventuality of" they are getting prepared to adopt
closures:
(Reuters) - U.S. health officials on Friday said they are preparing for the possibility
of the spread of the new coronavirus through U.S. communities that would force closures
of schools and businesses.
The United States has yet to see community spread of the virus that emerged in central
China in late December. But health authorities are preparing medical personnel for the
risk, Nancy Messonnier, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) told reporters on a conference call.
In coming weeks, if the virus begins to spread through U.S. communities, health
authorities want to be ready to adopt school and business closures like those undertaken
in Asian countries to contain the disease, Messonnier said.[.]
The CDC is taking steps to ensure frontline U.S. healthcare workers have supplies they
need, she added, by working with businesses, hospitals, pharmacies and provisions
manufacturers and distributors on what they can do to get ready.[.]
The United States currently has 13 cases of people diagnosed with the virus within the
country and 21 cases among Americans repatriated on evacuation flights from Wuhan, China,
and from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, CDC said.
Of 329 Americans evacuated from the cruise ship, 18 tested positive for the
virus. Eleven of them are at University of Nebraska Medical Center, five are in medical
facilities near Travis Air Force Base in California and two are near Lackland Air Force
Base in San Antonio, Texas.[.]
That's the downer that australia experiences after drinking to excess.
He is also the downer that as aus ambassador to UK blew the game with his formal
references to Joe Mifsud and the Papadopolus fiasco in Italy and the Englanders homeland.
Once he had committed his report and used the diplomatic service to deliver it the game had
to follow with a formal presentation to FBI. Then the FISA court evidence and so on.
He also gave $30Mil to the Clinton Foundation for their non work on AIDS in Papua New
Guinea or some scam like that.
Can someone prosecute these thieving scum? But then they are useful idiots to both the
oligarchy and to us mere observers.
It is 96% similar to a 2014 coronavirus, of bat origin, a double stranded positive RNA
virus.
A bat virus, like SARS and MERS, the other two significant coronavirus.
To be any sort of winner one would have to go a further furlong and explain some of the
anomalies being reported or refute those reports etc. To say a coronavirus of today is
closely similar to a (bat derived) coronavirus of yesterday and therefore the source
identified is direct really stretches evidence a little.
WTF do you mean %96? What is the %4 comprised of?
If I drink %96 water with %4 arsenic it is not healthy water eh?
How many bats were sold at the FISH market?
Have they been reduced/banned in their popularity following the last outbreak?
Is the coronavirus species specific?
Try some detailed refutation if you will Duncan Idaho and actually negate the
proposition that the previous coronavirus could not be fiddled to produce this
emergence.
The speed, location and size of this COVID-19 outbreak are not natural and do not fit the
online narratives targeting China.
Attacking China with bioweapons is nothing new, Japan did it with Unit 731 and US did it
during Korean War in 1950s attacking China with Yellow Fever.
These latest attacks on the sounder of pigs with Swine Flu then followed by COVID-19
carefully timed near Chinese New Year at the central of China for maximum impacts. Followed
by the US hypocrisy pretending to help then later lied that China refused the offer.
It has become too obvious the motive of a very well coordinated amount of online disinfo
as deflections with "Eating bat soup, eating wild animals, engineered virus escape from
Wuhan L-4 lab" to pin the blame China for the outbreak.
The amount of intensive of online trolls attacking China to support the anti-China
propaganda narratives above. Have seen these kinds one too many times, like White Helmet
making fake video blaming Syrian government gas attack on Syrian people, Saddam Hussein got
WMD and he ripped babies out of incubators testimony in UN, no less. Muammar Gaddafi
violated human right, et al.
Hong Kong Color revolution, Uighur Islamic Extremist, Tibet Dalai Lama bill, swine flu
attack, virus attack on the people, kidnapping Huawei CFO by Canada, .......... amid
US-China trade war. All the attacks on China intensified when China launched the Belt and
Road Initiative. Can it be more obvious?
The remaining patient contracted the disease from his daughter, who had travelled
along with seven workmates to a training course in Wuhan. The workers who attended the
course were all from the province of Vinh Phuc, where currently 73 persons are suspected of
having contracted the virus. They, and affected areas in the commune (population 10,000)
are under a twenty-day quarantine, due to end on March 3. If anyone tests positive, of
course further quarantine and treatment will follow.
Elsewhere in Vietnam, schools are closed, and will stay closed until at least the
beginning of March, and large gatherings have been suspended. Masks were in short supply
but production is now beginning to meet the demand. The government is attempting to enforce
a quarantine for fourteen days for citizens returning from travel to China; non-citizens
are not being permitted to enter VN from China. (Unfortunately, some people are attempting
to avoid these restrictions by travelling to a third country, and entering Vietnam from
there.)
In sum, there is no large outbreak of the virus in Vietnam as yet, public awareness
campaigns are in full swing, there is clear awareness of the economic impacts in all
sectors, and concentrated nursing care has led to recovery in all cases to date.
What makes you believe the ZOG can surreptitiously attack China with COVID-19 won't carry
out the same attack at home and at the enemies of the ZOG empire?
You are cheering the death of innocent Chinese people, you better think again what makes
you so special that you will be spared.
I stopped reading ZeroHedge as it's the most anti China disinfo portal. They publish
anti China propaganda from Falun Gong, EpochTime, Gatestone, NED, Propaganda outlets from
India, et al.
Also ZeroHedge banned several times for questioning their narratives. But my other
account bashing China, Iran, North Korea, ........ is still alive after more than 10
years.
As the usual suspects fret over the "stability" of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and
the Xi Jinping administration, the fact is the Beijing leadership has had to deal with an
accumulation of extremely severe issues: a swine-flu epidemic killing half the stock; the
Trump-concocted trade war; Huawei accused of racketeering and about to be prevented from
buying U.S. made chips; bird flu; coronavirus virtually shutting down half of China.
Add to it the incessant United States government Hybrid War propaganda barrage,
trespassed by acute Sinophobia; everyone from sociopathic "officials" to self-titled
councilors are either advising corporate businesses to divert global supply chains out of
China or concocting outright calls for regime change – with every possible
demonization in between.
There are no holds barred in the all-out offensive to kick the Chinese government while
it's down.
A Pentagon cipher at the Munich Security Conference once again declares China as the
greatest threat, economically and militarily, to the U.S. – and by extension the
West, forcing a wobbly EU already subordinated to NATO to be subservient to Washington on
this remixed Cold War 2.0.
The whole U.S. corporate media complex repeats to exhaustion that Beijing is "lying" and
losing control. Descending to sub-gutter, racist levels, hacks even accuse BRI itself of
being a pandemic, with China "impossible to quarantine".
All that is quite rich, to say the least, oozing from lavishly rewarded slaves of an
unscrupulous, monopolistic, extractive, destructive, depraved, lawless oligarchy which uses
debt offensively to boost their unlimited wealth and power while the lowly U.S. and global
masses use debt defensively to barely survive. As Thomas Piketty has conclusively shown,
inequality always relies on ideology.
We're deep into a vicious intel war. From the point of view of Chinese intelligence, the
current toxic cocktail simply cannot be attributed to just a random series of coincidences.
Beijing has serial motives to piece this extraordinary chain of events as part of a
coordinated Hybrid War, Full Spectrum Dominance attack on China.
Enter the Dragon Killer working hypothesis: a bio-weapon attack capable of causing
immense economic damage but protected by plausible deniability. The only possible move by
the "indispensable nation" on the New Great Game chessboard, considering that the U.S.
cannot win a conventional war on China, and cannot win a nuclear war on China.
A biological warfare weapon?
On the surface, coronavirus is a dream bio-weapon for those fixated on wreaking havoc
across China and praying for regime change.
Yet it's complicated. This report is a decent effort trying to track the origins of
coronavirus. Now compare it with the insights by Dr. Francis Boyle, international law
professor at the University of Illinois and author, among others, of Biowarfare and
Terrorism. He's the man who drafted the U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989
signed into law by George H. W. Bush.
Dr. Boyle is convinced coronavirus is an
"offensive biological warfare weapon" that leaped out of the Wuhan BSL-4 laboratory,
although he's "not saying it was done deliberately."
Dr. Boyle adds, "all these BSL-4 labs by United States, Europe, Russia, China, Israel
are all there to research, develop, test biological warfare agents. There's really no
legitimate scientific reason to have BSL-4 labs." His own research led to a whopping $100
billion, by 2015, spent by the United States government on bio-warfare research: "We have
well over 13,000 alleged life science scientists testing biological weapons here in the
United States. Actually this goes back and it even precedes 9/11."
Dr. Boyle directly accuses "the Chinese government under Xi and his comrades" of a cover
up "from the get-go. The first reported case was December 1, so they'd been sitting on this
until they couldn't anymore. And everything they're telling you is a lie. It's
propaganda."
The World Health Organization (WHO), for Dr. Boyle, is also on it: "They've approved
many of these BSL-4 labs ( ) Can't trust anything the WHO says because they're all bought
and paid for by Big Pharma and they work in cahoots with the CDC, which is the United
States government, they work in cahoots with Fort Detrick." Fort Detrick, now a
cutting-edge bio-warfare lab, previously was a notorious CIA den of mind control
"experiments".
Relying on decades of research in bio-warfare, the U.S. Deep State is totally familiar
with all bio-weapon overtones. From Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Korea, Vietnam and
Fallujah, the historical record shows the United States government does not blink when it
comes to unleashing weapons of mass destruction on innocent civilians.
For its part, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has spent
a fortune researching bats, coronaviruses and gene-editing bio-weapons. Now, conveniently
– as if this was a form of divine intervention – DARPA's "strategic allies"
have been chosen to develop a genetic vaccine.
The 1996 neocon Bible, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), unambiguously
stated, "advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may
transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
There's no question coronavirus, so far, has been a Heaven-sent politically useful tool,
reaching, with minimum investment, the desired targets of maximized U.S. global power
– even if fleetingly, enhanced by a non-stop propaganda offensive – and China
relatively isolated with its economy semi paralyzed.
Yet perspective is in order. The CDC estimated that up to 42.9 million people got sick
during the 2018-2019 flu season in the U.S. No less than 647,000 people were hospitalized.
And 61,200 died.
This report details the Chinese "people's war" against coronavirus.
It's up to Chinese virologists to decode its arguably synthetic origin. How China
reacts, depending on the findings, will have earth-shattering consequences –
literally.
Setting the stage for the Raging Twenties
After managing to reroute trade supply chains across Eurasia to its own advantage and
hollow out the Heartland, American – and subordinated Western – elites are now
staring into a void. And the void is staring back. A "West" ruled by the U.S. is now faced
with irrelevance. BRI is in the process of reversing at least two centuries of Western
dominance.
There's no way the West and especially the "system leader" U.S. will allow it. It all
started with dirty ops stirring trouble across the periphery of Eurasia – from
Ukraine to Syria to Myanmar.
Now it's when the going really gets tough. The targeted assassination of Maj. Gen.
Soleimani plus coronavirus – the Wuhan flu – have really set up the stage for
the Raging Twenties. The designation of choice should actually be WARS – Wuhan Acute
Respiratory Syndrome. That would instantly give the game away as a War against Humanity
– irrespective of where it came from.
Theres been massive media and of course covert pressure to make china submit to US
diktat.. Hongkong riots is one of a mess , indoctrinationg HK young people into rabid
terrorist who rejoice on chinese coronavirus debacle.
now this is funny , these HKers are also chinese descent no matter what their delusional
mind feeds them.. Corona virus practically next door and without chinese effort to contain
it , HK will get wiped out.. yet they are still acting like useful idiots ..
the world knew about these morons and their names , i doubt they are welcome to other
countries even australia banned them entry
Global
Times OP/ED tangentially about virus and more about China/Outlaw US Empire
deteriorating relation. Some meat:
"No matter how you look at it, there will be no winner in this hypothetical cold war,
and the US will not be able to continue its march to greatness unscathed. In a word, the
time has changed, and Sino-US relations are very different from the US-Soviet relations 70
years ago.
"First of all, although the development paths of the two countries are different, China
holds the correct course. For more than 40 years, China has always adhered to the path of
reform and opening up, firmly integrated into and safeguarded the current international
system, and committed itself to a fair and reasonable reform direction. In contrast, the
foreign policy of the present US administration is not only disorderly, but also
increasingly assertive. The US presents itself to the world as a destroyer and subversive
of the international order, which makes it mired in a moral deficit."
A "moral deficit" indeed! In that connection, it ought to be noted that the Boy Scouts
of America filed for bankruptcy because of the numerous lawsuits targeting its pedophile
scoutmasters for which it's liable.
A very deep "recession" aka depression was already expected by those paying attention. How
do the financial elites hide blame for it? Launch a bio-weapon in a nation that is the
world's factory, grinding the world economy to a crawl, and blame the depression on that.
The CIA exists primarily to advance the interests of Wall Street. The timing of this is
just too coincidental.
As I said, I'm not sure enormous viral outbreaks are blacks swans; I think a little research
would show plenty of Cassandras. That said, it certainly looks like skimping on public health
was a very bad bet (besides the suffering and death, a recession in China, or even a global
recession, permanent reconfiguration of the supply chain, loss of soft power by China,
etc.).
Finally, our globalizing, neoliberal elites. This is a whole post, and probably a whole
book. Simplifying absurdly, our neoliberal elites destroyed manufacturing in this country and
moved it to China. (And yes, a great swath of the American working class in flyover was
destroyed, but there were downsides, too!) Save for the profits they accrued, most of their
working assumptions for this policy proved false. China, for example, did not become a liberal
democracy; as it turns out, liberal democracy does not automagically happen because there are
markets, or capitalism. Nor did China become a happy member of "the rules-based international
order." Rather -- and who could blame them -- they decided to write their own rules. Finally, a
highly optimized supply chain system so complex as to be unmanageable developed to ship
consumer goods from China to the world, and to ship raw materials from the world into China. As
we have seen in the last few weeks, the supply chain is extremely fragile, and its failure may
mean a loss of truly essential commodities to the United States, like pharmaceuticals (although
the wealthy will be able to get what they need, so no problem there). And what bad bet did our
globalizing, neoliberal elites make? The same as the bureaucrats running Wuhan: That public
health doesn't matter. (An absurdly bad bet, after H1N1, SARS, and swine fever in China, an
animal epidemic running concurrently with the human.)
Clearly, a less fragile, more robust system of global public health is needed; one that can
take precautionary measures, instead of just reacting to outbreaks as they occur. How to get to
that point, however, is little beyond me. We might start from the premise that human life is
the most important thing. That may be difficult for our elites to accept. But they might be
making a bad bet if they don't.
Thinking back to when my seventh past life was young, I tried to imagine how an
elite of that age differs from the elites of today. The main thing that I, with my limited
cognition abilities, could come up with was: The sources of wealth for the elites.
Today, wealth itself has been financialized. Olde guarde elites could retreat to their rustic
abodes, hence the English colloquialism for being sent home from college, rustication. There,
said elites could weather the storm in relative safety. Distance itself from centres of
population, and hence, centres of contagion, was a buffer.
Today, the wealthy are constantly mingling with the hoi-polloi, out of sheer random contacts
related to the heightened mobility of all classes. As the spread of the latest contagions
shows, air travel has effectively eliminated the buffering function of geographical distance.
The new elites do not rely on manses and demesnes for power or sustenance. They are basically
reliant on the exact same supply chains that the "rest of us" are. Paradoxically, "free
trade" is a "great leveler."
We live in interesting times.
its almost as if they know their actions will destroy the world and they need to be
ready to once again leave someone(s) else with the bill of their recklessness.
We set up a 'brain trust' in the Cafe in order to write a combined sitrep for The Saker Blog
about the Coronavirus. The new name in the taxonomy is COVID-19 but let's stick to Novel
Coronavirus for now. It is of course too early to come to any conclusions, but we can start
isolating the discernible high level trends and perhaps get an early glimpse as to what effect
the outbreak may have geopolitically and economically, although it is very early days.
We will not attempt to look at the technical picture here – the numbers of recoveries,
the death rates and the infection rates, rates of transmission, life of virus on surfaces and
so on because the technical picture is not yet clear and all data is in a state of flux with
opposing and inconsistent reports from all sides. One cannot expect otherwise as the world is
still shooting at a rapidly moving target in terms of statistical ground and epidemiological
analysis.
In addition, we have professional organizations like the WHO and the CDC not really in
lockstep and giving different pronouncements on a professional level. It is too early to draw
conclusions.
What people are saying:
Let us look for a moment as to what 'people are saying'.
(If you want to end up deeply into conspiracies, I would suggest you go to subReddits
/r/Coronavirus and
/r/China_Flu )
What 'people are saying' runs the gamut from messages received in meditation, prayer, even
channeling, and this information is being put out there as valid for everyone else in the face
of no definitive information you can hang your hat on.
Every talking head on youtube has suddenly turned into an expert, both on China and on
the Novel Coronavirus. Every uninformed blockhead has now turned into a specialist. Every
Twitter feed out there now considers itself an insta-influencer.
Most of the western alternative news medias have suddenly decided to follow their
governmental lead on China, and the message is overwhelmingly that Brutal China is indeed
very Brutal and very Bad.
China is attacking her own people to reduce population
Lab Accidents happen. (this is of course a pragmatic view, but usually Level 4
laboratories are situated very far away from the center of busy cities).
Wuhan was on the point of massive riots, Hong Kong Style against their government
The Chinese government is lying and not reporting correctly. The death rate is much
higher.
The Chinese Defense Forces are riddled with virus infected soldiers, and they are being
contained somewhere else. There is no information on this excepting wild speculation.
Every non-flattering video from China is being passed along salaciously; usually grainy
and one cannot really figure out where it is from – no markings, road signs, store
names or anything where anything can be identified. The scuttlebut is that these mostly
security camera videos and actively distributed by Falun Gong. Your guess on this is as good
as mine.
As you can see from this list, and it is by no means exhaustive, all over the show, and
there are literally 10's more of these
What the timing indicates
The timing is suspicious no matter how you look at it.
Manufacturing usually shuts down or goes slow over Chinese New Year / Spring Festival
which can last as much as 15 days. So, economically, this was a good time for a virus (if
China 'did it').
On the other hand, this holiday gives rise to the greatest migration of people on our
planet which also makes it an ideal time to infect a population (if someone outside of
China 'did it').
The timing so close to the signing of the of the US/China Phase I Trade Agreement, which
the Chinese referred to as only a 'cease fire' in the trade war, and the US referred to as
a great breakthrough, is suspicious. The Chinese were indicating that they are very
hesitant to even go to a phase II negotiation. And of course, there is a black part of the
actual agreement that we do not know about.
The Main Tropes
1. The main trope out there is that this is a bioengineered bioweapon . But right at
that point opinions diverge so widely that one can only ask questions, and not conclude
anything.
2. The second trope is that people are being arrested widely. We've seen reports of
arrests in Canada and in the US, and out of Harvard.
Here is but one .
3. The third trope is that China is "The Sick Man", and we hate them for dumping this
virus on the rest of us. Let me just say that the level of invective against China is not
only unprecedented, it is also suspicious. Rebranding of the Coronoa Virus to the Chinese
Virus is proceeding apace, even though it has a formal name now – COVID-19. In my
life I have never seen such an overt manipulation of the common headspace such as this,
since 'weapons of mass destruction'.
4. The fourth trope is that the US, on a public and governmental basis has decided to
vilify China , correctly or incorrectly. Note Mr
Pompeo. Is he only taking an opportunity that is presented to him, or does he know
more than what we think?
5. The fifth trope is that the civilizational fear against China is suddenly out in
the open for everyone to see. It is almost a morphic resonance of fear expressed against
China and that China is the culprit. However, we don't really know who the culprit is
actually. We don't even know if there is a culprit.
Is China the culprit, or is China the victim, or is this a virus that spread from
animal to human or has it escaped from some or other lab by accident (or on purpose)? We
do not know any of this and this trope just creates more FUD (fear, uncertainty and
doubt).
6. The sixth trope is that China is wrong no matter what she does . Quarantine and
even forced quarantine is expressed by the blockheads of Brutal China Cracking Down on
Their People, without thinking what is actually necessary to do for this kind of
outbreak, no matter where it comes from. One after the other video supposedly from China
showing the so-called Brutal Chinese government is distributed with relish, with nary a
thought that you and I are actually being protected by these heavy handed tactics. The
snoflakes are out in force talking about human rights, yet, by the looks of things, China
is going all out protecting the many.
Because there is a strange consistency in what the State (used generally) says, and
what the alternative media says, this is more worrying than anything else. On the one
hand nobody can believe the State, and on the other hand alternative media is reproducing
and disseminating the message of the State.
7. The seventh trope is that the few voices, even here on The Saker Blog, that try to
look at this realistically are drowned out in the general societal willingness to believe
the worst . Viva free speech!?!
The formal state, and the western alternative media are generally in lockstep on this
issue.
China is now attempting to go back to work. We do not know how successful this is, but
some are trying to measure the actual air pollution to try and figure out if China has gone
back to work, or not. Economically China has also given guidance to business, saying that
this event is a force majeure, known colloquially in contractual terms as 'an act of God',
and therefore they can renegotiate contracts, delivery dates and completion.
Let us
look at what is clear.
China is fighting for its life . The death-toll or even containment is not truly
visible in any numbers as yet. This will have tremendous impact on supply lines and not
only on China's economy, but all parts of the international supply chain, upstream and
downstream. China is acting on expressed unhappiness of their people. They are firing
those who do not perform, who put red-tape in the path of directly fighting this virus.
It may look brutal to lock people into their homes, but how many do they save by this
action? Where do these get food? It is in the Chinese media that food gets delivered.
This is something that the western youtube pundits (and their a-hole brothers) forget to
report, although this is open and publicized in the Chinese media.
This is a catastrophe . It is not a flu, it is not a common cold, it is not something
that 5G brought onto China, it is not God punishing the Godless red commies. Whatever it
is, it is a catastrophe with world-wide consequences. We do not know enough to come to
any meaningful conclusions except to say that considering the timeline, we are right to
be suspicious and we may be right to prepare with the basic masks, gloves and limited
public exposure, i.e., not visiting large gatherings, for a period of time.
If this virus continues, it will have societal impact that may be severe – we
won't shake hands, we won't hug babies, social interaction will be vastly compromised,
and a few more common contact methods like music concerts or sporting activies for humans
will be left by the wayside.
If it continues much beyond the current level, the extensive economic fallout cannot
be estimated. You and I and no analyst in the world can truly get their arms around the
economic fallout and the breakdown of worldwide supply chains. Who knows, we may be out
of a specific little part for a normal service of a vehicle, we may be out of medicines
(the idea of the many people that are taking anti-depressants and such types of medicines
having to go cold-turkey is quite scary, and there may be a severe shortage of simple
medical equipment, like masks and gloves that are even now getting hard to source –
just try buying masks on Amazon).
In the current analysis and according to what we have available, we do not yet know
enough to be meaningful . Much more than that is pure speculation and gives rise to other
agendas being seeded into the public narrative.
What is clear, is that fear, uncertainty, and doubt is rife and people are terrified
...
Mitchell Tsai
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Mitchell Tsai
,
Virus researcher at Harvard Medical School in 1980s
Updated Feb 18, 2020
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COVID-19 is
very infectious (Each person infects 1.4–6.77 others), but
rarely fatal (0.6–2.5%).
19% of China
cases in severe/critical condition (16%) or dead (2.6%)
5% of non-China cases in severe/critical condition (4.0%) or
dead (0.6%)
Maybe
most infected people show no symptoms (possibly 10–70%).
Non-China: 4% detected while showing no symptoms (16/447).
Cruiseship: 70% detected show no symptoms.
Kill more
men (64%) than women (36%), and people with high blood
pressure, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and
cerebrovascular disease.
People under
50 have little danger of dying (<1%).
Chil...
COVID-19
is very infectious (Each person infects 1.4–6.77 others),
but rarely fatal (0.6–2.5%).
19% of
China cases in severe/critical condition (16%) or dead
(2.6%)
5% of non-China cases in severe/critical condition (4.0%) or
dead (0.6%)
Maybe
most infected people show no symptoms (possibly 10–70%).
Non-China: 4% detected while showing no symptoms
(16/447).
Cruiseship: 70% detected show no symptoms.
Kill more
men (64%) than women (36%), and people with high blood
pressure, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and
cerebrovascular disease.
People
under 50 have little danger of dying (<1%).
Children may have light/no symptoms (as with SARS & MERS).
Case-Fatality Rates (CFR) China 2/11/20:
Age
80+ 14.8%
70-79 8.0%
60-69 3.6%
50-59 1.3%
Effects
of COVID-19 are similar to OC43 (one of four other mild
coronaviruses probably responsible for 1/4 of all "common
colds", 15% severe, 0.2% death).
Japan has completed tests for all passengers and crew aboard the ship as of Monday, but the
results for the last batch of tests aren't expected until Wednesday, the day that the
quarantine is slated to end. So far, results are back for 2,404 passengers and crew, out of the
3,711 who were on board the ship when the quarantine began on Feb. 5.
Since we haven't reported a full breakdown of cases in a while, here's a complete list and
breakdown of infections by country and territory, courtesy of the
AP :
Mainland China: 1,868 deaths among 72,436 cases, chiefly in Hubei
Hong Kong: 58 cases, 1 death
Macao: 10
Japan: 607 cases, including 542 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 1 death
Singapore: 77 cases
Thailand: 35
South Korea: 31
Malaysia: 22
Taiwan: 22 cases, 1 death
Vietnam: 16 cases
Germany: 16
United States: 15 cases; separately, 1 US citizen died in China
Australia: 14 cases
France: 12 cases, 1 death
United Kingdom: 9 cases
United Arab Emirates: 9
Canada: 8
Philippines: 3 cases, 1 death
India: 3 cases
Italy: 3
Russia: 2
Spain: 2
Belgium: 1
Nepal: 1
Sri Lanka: 1
Sweden: 1
Cambodia: 1
Finland: 1
Egypt: 1
In a recent study, China's CCDC found that the virus's fatality rate - 14.8% - is for people
aged 80 or older with co-occurring medical conditions. Young and healthy people, meanwhile,
typically experience much more mild symptoms, according to the BBC . Along those same lines, the
WHO confirmed on Tuesday that the virus manifests as only a minor infection in four out of five
people who contract it, according to
the Guardian.
As the coronavirus outbreak has come to dominate headlines in recent weeks, several media
outlets have promoted claims that the reported epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, China was
also the site of laboratories allegedly linked to a Chinese government biowarfare program.
However, upon further examination of the sourcing for this serious claim, these supposed
links between the outbreak and an alleged Chinese bioweapons program have come from two highly
dubious sources.
Link Bookmark For instance, the first outlet to report on this claim was Radio Free
Asia , the U.S.-government funded media outlet targeting Asian audiences that used to be
run covertly by the CIA and named by the New York Times as a key part in the agency's "
worldwide propaganda network ." Though it is no longer run directly by the CIA, it
is now
managed by the government-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which answers
directly to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was CIA director immediately prior to his
current post at the head of the State Department.
In other words, Radio Free Asia and other BBG-managed media outlets are legal outlets
for U.S. government propaganda. Notably, the long-standing ban on the domestic use of U.S.
government propaganda on U.S. citizens
was lifted in 2013 , with the official justification of allowing the government to
"effectively communicate in a credible way" and to better combat "al-Qaeda's and other violent
extremists' influence."
Returning to the subject at hand, Radio Free Asia 's recent report on the alleged
origins of the outbreak being linked to a Chinese state-linked virology center cited only Ren
Ruihong, the former head of the medical assistance department at the Chinese Red Cross, for
that claim. Ruihong has been cited as an
expert in several Radio Free Asia reports on disease outbreaks in China, but has not
been cited as an expert by any other English-language media outlet.
"It's a new type of mutant coronavirus.They haven't made public the genetic sequence,
because it is highly contagious Genetic engineering technology has gotten to such a point
now, and Wuhan is home to a viral research center that is under the aegis of the China
Academy of Sciences, which is the highest level of research facility in China."
Though Ruihong did not directly say that the Chinese government was making a bioweapon at
the Wuhan facility, she did imply that genetic experiments at the facility may have resulted in
the creation of this new "mutant coronavirus" at the center of the outbreak.
With Radio Free Asia and its single source having speculated about Chinese government
links to the creation of the new coronavirus, the Washington Times soon took it much
farther in a report titled "
Virus-hit Wuhan has two laboratories linked to Chinese bio-warfare program ." That article,
much like Radio Free Asia 's earlier report, cites a single source for that claim,
former Israeli military intelligence biowarfare specialist Dany Shoham.
Yet, upon reading the article, Shoham does not even directly make the claim cited in the
article's headline, as he only told the Washington Times that: "Certain laboratories in
the [Wuhan] institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development,
in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally , yet not as a principal
facility of the Chinese BW alignment (emphasis added)."
While Shoham's claims are clearly speculative, it is telling that the Washington
Times would bother to cite him at all, especially given the key role he played in promoting
false claims that the 2001
Anthrax attacks was the work of Iraq's Saddam Hussein . Shoham's assertions about Iraq's
government and weaponized Anthrax, which were used
to bolster the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq , have since been proven completely
false, as Iraq was found to have neither the chemical or biological "weapons of mass
destruction" that "experts" like Shoham had claimed.
Beyond Shoham's own history of making suspect claims, it is also worth noting that Shoham's
previous employer, Israeli military intelligence, has a troubling past with bioweapons. For
instance, in the late 1990s, it was reported by several outlets that
Israel was in the process of developing a genetic bioweapon that would target Arabs,
specifically Iraqis, but leave Israeli Jews unaffected.
Given the dubious past of Shoham and the clearly speculative nature of both his claims and
those made in the Radio Free Asia report, one passage in
the Washington Times article is particularly telling about why these claims have
recently surfaced:
"One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that the false rumors since the outbreak began
several weeks ago have begun circulating on the Chinese Internet claiming the virus is
part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons . That could indicate China is
preparing propaganda outlets to counter future charges the new virus escaped from one of
Wuhan's civilian or defense research laboratories (emphasis added)."
However, as seen in that very article, accusations that the coronavirus escaped from a
Chinese-state-linked laboratory is hardly a future charge as both the Washington
Times and Radio Free Asia have already been making that claim. Instead, what this
passage suggests is that the reports in both Radio Free Asia and the Washington
Times were responses to the claims circulating within China that the outbreak is linked to
a "U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons."
Though most English-language media outlets to date have not examined such a possibility,
there is considerable supporting evidence that deserves to be examined. For instance, not only
was the U.S. military, including its controversial research arm -- the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), recently funding studies in and near China that discovered
new, mutant coronaviruses originating from bats, but the Pentagon also became recently
concerned about the potential use of bats as bioweapons.
In addition, one preliminary study on
the coronavirus responsible for the current outbreak found that the receptor,
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), is not only the same as that used by the SARS
coronavirus, but that East Asians present a much higher ratio of lung cells that express that
receptor than the other ethnicities (Caucasian and African-American) included in the study.
However, such findings are preliminary and the sample size is too small to draw any definitive
conclusions from that preliminary data.
Two years ago,
media reports began discussing the Pentagon's sudden concern that bats could be used as
biological weapons, particularly in spreading coronaviruses and other deadly diseases. The
Washington Post asserted that the Pentagon's interest in investigating the potential use
of bats to spread weaponized and deadly diseases was because of alleged Russian efforts to do
the same. However, those claims regarding this Russian interest in using bats as bioweapons
date back to the 1980s when the Soviet Union engaged in covert research involving the Marburg
virus, research that
did not even involve bats and which ended with the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.
Like much of the Pentagon's controversial research programs, the bats as bioweapons research
has been framed
as defensive , despite the fact that no imminent threat involving bat-propagated bioweapons
has been acknowledged. However, independent scientists have recently accused the Pentagon,
particularly its research arm DARPA, of claiming to be engaged in research it says is
"defensive" but is actually "offensive."
The most recent example of this involved DARPA's "Insect Allies" program , which
officially "aims to protect the U.S. agricultural food supply by delivering protective genes to
plants via insects, which are responsible for the transmission of most plant viruses" and to
ensure "food security in the event of a major threat," according to both DARPA and media
reports .
However, a group of well-respected, independent scientists revealed in
a scathing analysis of the program that, far from a "defensive" research project, the
Insect Allies program was aimed at creating and delivering "new class of biological weapon."
The scientists,
writing in the journal Science and led by Richard Guy Reeves, from the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, warned that DARPA's program -- which uses
insects as the vehicle for as horizontal environmental genetic alteration agents (HEGAAS) --
revealed "an intention to develop a means of delivery of HEGAAs for offensive purposes
(emphasis added)."
Whatever the real motivation behind the Pentagon's sudden and recent concern about bats
being used as a vehicle for bioweapons, the U.S. military has spent millions of dollars over
the past several years funding research on bats, the deadly viruses they can harbor --
including coronaviruses -- and how those viruses are transmitted from bats to humans.
For instance, DARPA
spent $10 million on one project in 2018 "to unravel the complex causes of bat-borne
viruses that have recently made the jump to humans, causing concern among global health
officials." Another research project
backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Colorado State University examine the
coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in bats and camels "to
understand the role of these hosts in transmitting disease to humans." Other U.S.
military-funded studies, discussed in detail later in this report, discovered several new
strains of novel coronaviruses carried by bats, both within China and in countries bordering
China.
Many of these recent research projects are related to DARPA's Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats,
or PREEMPT program , which was officially announced in April 2018. PREEMPT focuses
specifically on animal reservoirs of disease, specifically bats, and DARPA even noted in its
press release in the program that it "is aware of biosafety and biosecurity sensitivities that
could arise" due to the nature of the research.
DARPA's announcement for PREEMPT came just a few months after the U.S. government decided to
controversially end a moratorium on so-called "gain-of-function" studies involving dangerous
pathogens. VICE News explained "gain-of-function" studies as follows:
"Known as 'gain-of-function' studies, this type of research is ostensibly about trying to
stay one step ahead of nature. By making super-viruses that are more pathogenic and easily
transmissibl e, scientists are able to study the way these viruses may evolve and how
genetic changes affect the way a virus interacts with its host. Using this information, the
scientists can try to pre-empt the natural emergence of these traits by developing
antiviral medications that are capable of staving off a pandemic (emphasis added)."
It is also important to point out the fact that the U.S. military's key laboratories
involving the study of deadly pathogens, including coronaviruses, Ebola and others, was
suddenly shut down last July after the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
identified
major "biosafety lapses" at the facility .
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) facility at Fort
Detrick, Maryland -- the U.S. military's lead laboratory for "biological defense" research
since the late 1960s -- was
forced to halt all research it was conducting with a series of deadly pathogens after the
CDC found that it lacked "sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater" from its
highest-security labs and failure of staff to follow safety procedures, among other lapses. The
facility contains both level 3 and level 4 biosafety labs. While it is unknown if experiments
involving coronaviruses were ongoing at the time, USAMRIID has recently been
involved in research borne out of the Pentagon's recent concern about the use of bats as
bioweapons.
The decision to shut down USAMRIID garnered surprisingly little media coverage, as did the
CDC's
surprising decision to allow the troubled facility to "partially resume" research late last
November even though the facility
was and is still not at "full operational capability ." The USAMRIID's problematic record
of safety at such facilities is of particular concern in light of the recent coronavirus
outbreak in China. As this report will soon reveal, this is because USAMRIID has a decades-old
and close partnership with the University of Wuhan's Institute of Medical Virology, which is
located in the epicenter of the current outbreak.
The Pentagon in Wuhan?
Beyond the U.S. military's recent expenditures on and interest in the use of bats of
bioweapons, it is also worth examining the recent studies the military has funded regarding
bats and "novel coronaviruses," such as that behind the recent outbreak, that have taken place
within or in close proximity to China.
For instance, one study conducted in Southern China
in 2018 resulted in the discovery of 89 new "novel bat coronavirus" strains that use the
same receptor as the coronavirus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). That study
was jointly funded by the Chinese government's Ministry of Science and Technology, USAID -- an
organization long alleged to be
a front for U.S. intelligence , and the U.S. National Institute of Health -- which
has collaborated
with both the CIA and the Pentagon on infectious disease and bioweapons research.
The authors of the study also sequenced the complete genomes for two of those strains and
also noted that existing MERS vaccines would be ineffective in targeting these viruses, leading
them to suggest that one should be developed in advance. This did not occur.
Another U.S. government-funded study that discovered still more new strains of "novel bat
coronavirus" was published just last year. Titled " Discovery and Characterization of Novel Bat
Coronavirus Lineages from Kazakhstan ," focused on "the bat fauna of central Asia, which
link China to eastern Europe" and the novel bat coronavirus lineages discovered during the
study were found to be "closely related to bat coronaviruses from China, France, Spain, and
South Africa, suggesting that co-circulation of coronaviruses is common in multiple bat species
with overlapping geographical distributions." In other words, the coronaviruses discovered in
this study were identified in bat populations that migrate between China and Kazakhstan, among
other countries, and is closely related to bat coronaviruses in several countries, including
China.
The study was entirely funded by the U.S.
Department of Defense, specifically the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) as part of a
project investigating coronaviruses similar to MERS, such as the aforementioned 2018 study.
Yet, beyond the funding of this 2019 study, the institutions involved in conducting this study
are also worth noting given their own close ties to the U.S. military and government.
The study's authors are affiliated with either the Kazakhstan-based Research Institute for
Biological Safety Problems and/or Duke University. The Research Institute for Biological Safety
Problems, though officially a part of Kazakhstan's National Center for Biotechnology,
has received millions
from the U.S. government, most of it coming from the Pentagon's Cooperative
Threat Reduction Program . It is the Kazakhstan government's official depository of "highly dangerous animal
and bird infections, with a collection of 278 pathogenic strains of 46 infectious diseases." It
is part of a
network of Pentagon-funded "bioweapons labs" throughout the Central Asian country, which
borders both of the U.S.' top rival states -- China and Russia.
Duke University is also
jointly partnered with China's Wuhan University, which is based in the city where the
current coronavirus outbreak began, which resulted in the opening of the China-based Duke
Kunshan University (DKU) in 2018. Notably, China's Wuhan University -- in addition to its
partnership with Duke -- also includes a multi-lab Institute of Medical Virology that has
worked closely with the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases since the
1980s, according
to its website . As previously noted, the USAMRIID facility in the U.S. was shut down last
July for failures to abide by biosafety and proper waste disposal procedures, but was allowed
to partially resume some experiments late last November.
The Pentagon's Dark History of Germ Warfare
The U.S. military has a troubling past of having used disease as a weapon during times of
war. One example involved the U.S.' use of germ warfare during the Korean War, when it
targeted both
North Korea and China by dropping diseased insects and voles carrying a variety of
pathogens -- including bubonic plague and hemorrhagic fever -- from planes in the middle of the
night. Despite the mountain of evidence and the testimony of U.S. soldiers involved in that
program, the U.S. government and military denied the claims and ordered the destruction of
relevant documentation.
In the post World War II era, other examples of U.S. research aimed at developing biological
weapons have emerged, some of which have recently received media attention. One such example
occurred this past July, when the U.S. House of Representatives
demanded information from the U.S. military on its past efforts to weaponize insects and
Lyme disease between 1950 and 1975.
The U.S. has claimed that it has not pursued offensive biological weapons since 1969 and
this has been further supported by the U.S.' ratification of the Biological Weapons Convention
(BWC), which went into effect in 1975. However, there is
extensive evidence that the U.S. has continued to covertly research and develop such
weapons in the years since, much of it conducted abroad and outsourced to private companies,
yet still funded by the U.S. military. Several investigators, including Dilyana Gaytandzhieva,
have documented how
the U.S. produces deadly viruses, bacteria and other toxins at facilities outside of the U.S.
-- many of them in Eastern Europe, Africa and South Asia -- in clear violation of the BWC.
Aside from the military's own research, the controversial neoconservative think tank, the
now defunct Project for a New American Century (PNAC), openly promoted the use of a
race-specific genetically modified bioweapon as a "politically useful tool." In what is
arguably the think tank's most controversial document, titled " Rebuilding America's
Defenses ," there are a few passages that openly discuss the utility of bioweapons,
including the following sentences:
" combat likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, "cyber-space," and perhaps
the world of microbes advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific
genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful
tool."
Though numerous members of PNAC were prominent in the George W. Bush administration, many of
its more controversial members have again risen to political prominence in the Trump
administration.
Several years after "Rebuilding America's Defenses" was published, the U.S. Air Force
published a document entitled " Biotechnology: Genetically Engineered
Pathogens ," which contains the following passage:
"The JASON group, composed of academic scientists, served as technical advisers to the U.
S. government. Their study generated six broad classes of genetically engineered pathogens
that could pose serious threats to society. These include but are not limited to binary
biological weapons, designer genes, gene therapy as a weapon, stealth viruses, host-swapping
diseases, and designer diseases (emphasis added)."
Concerns about Pentagon experiments with biological weapons have garnered renewed media
attention, particularly after it was
revealed in 2017 that DARPA was the top funder of the controversial "gene drive"
technology, which has the power to permanently alter the genetics of entire populations while
targeting others for extinction. At least two of DARPA's studies using this controversial
technology were classified and "focused on the potential military application of gene drive
technology and use of gene drives in agriculture," according to media reports .
The revelation came after an organization called the ETC Group obtained over 1,000 emails on
the military's interest in the technology as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request. Co-director of the ETC Group Jim Thomas said that this technology may be
used as a biological weapon:
"Gene drives are a powerful and dangerous new technology and potential biological weapons
could have disastrous impacts on peace, food security and the environment, especially if
misused, The fact that gene drive development is now being primarily funded and structured by
the US military raises alarming questions about this entire field."
Though the exact motivation behind the military's interest in such technology is unknown,
the Pentagon has been open about the fact that it is devoting much of its resources towards the
containment of what it considers the
two greatest threats to U.S. military hegemony: Russia and China. China has been cited as
the greatest threat of the two by several Pentagon officials, including John Rood, the
Pentagon's top adviser for defense policy,
who described China as the greatest threat to "our way of life in the United States" at the
Aspen Security Forum last July.
Since the Pentagon began "
redesigning " its policies and research towards a "
long war " with Russia and China, the Russian military
has accused the U.S. military of
harvesting DNA from Russians as part of a covert bioweapon program, a charge that the
Pentagon has adamantly denied. Major General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's
radiation, chemical and biological protection unit who made these claims, also asserted that
the U.S. was developing such weapons in close proximity to Russian and Chinese borders.
China has also accused the U.S. military of harvesting DNA from Chinese citizens with ill
intentions, such as when 200,000 Chinese
farmers were used in 12 genetic experiments without informed consent. Those experiments
had
been conducted by Harvard researchers as part of a U.S. government-funded project.
Darpa and Its Partners Chosen to Develop Coronavirus Vaccine
Last Thursday, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced that it
would fund three separate programs in order to promote the development of a vaccine for the new
coronavirus responsible for the current outbreak.
CEPI -- which describes itself as "a partnership of public, private, philanthropic and civil
organizations that will finance and co-ordinate the development of vaccines against high
priority public health threats" -- was founded in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India
along with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its massive
funding and close connections to public, private and non-profit organizations have positioned
it to be able to finance the rapid creation of vaccines and widely distribute them.
CEPI's recent announcement revealed that it would fund two pharmaceutical companies --
Inovio Pharmaceuticals and Moderna Inc. -- as well as Australia's University of Queensland,
which became
a partner of CEPI early last year. Notably, the two pharmaceutical companies chosen have
close ties to and/or strategic partnerships with DARPA and are developing vaccines that
controversially involve genetic material and/or gene editing. The University of Queensland also
has ties to DARPA, but those ties are not related to the university's biotechnology research,
but instead engineering and
missile development .
For instance, the top funders of Inovio Pharmaceuticals include
both DARPA and the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the company has
received millions in dollars in grants from DARPA, including
a $45 million grant to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Inovio specializes in the creation of
DNA immunotherapies and DNA vaccines, which contain genetically engineered DNA that causes the
cells of the recipient to produce an antigen and can permanently alter a person's DNA. Inovio
previously developed a DNA vaccine for the Zika virus, but -- to date -- no DNA vaccine has
been approved for use in humans in the United States. Inovio was also recently
awarded over $8 million from the U.S. military to develop a small, portable intradermal
device for delivering DNA vaccines jointly developed by Inovio and USAMRIID.
However, the CEPI grant to combat coronavirus may change that, as it specifically funds
Inovio's efforts to continue developing its DNA vaccine for the coronavirus that causes MERS.
Inovio's MERS vaccine program
began in 2018 in partnership with CEPI in a deal worth $56 million. The vaccine currently
under development
uses "Inovio's DNA Medicines platform to deliver optimized synthetic antigenic genes into
cells, where they are translated into protein antigens that activate an individual's immune
system" and the program is partnered with U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious
Diseases (USAMRIID) and the NIH, among others. That program is currently undergoing testing in
the Middle East.
Inovio's collaboration with the U.S. military in regards to DNA vaccines is nothing new, as
their past efforts to develop a DNA vaccine for both Ebola and Marburg virus were also part of
what
Inovio's CEO Dr. Joseph Kim called its "active biodefense program" that has "garnered
multiple grants from the Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA),
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and other government
agencies."
CEPI's interest in increasing its support to this MERS-specific program seems at odds with
its claim that doing so will combat the current coronavirus outbreak, since MERS and the novel
coronavirus in question are not analogous and treatments for certain coronaviruses have
been shown to
be ineffective against other strains.
It is also worth noting that Inovio Pharmaceuticals was the only company selected by CEPI
with direct access to the Chinese pharmaceutical market through
its partnership with China's ApolloBio Corp. , which currently has an exclusive license to
sell Inovio-made DNA immunotherapy products to Chinese customers.
The second pharmaceutical company that was selected by CEPI to develop a vaccine for the new
coronavirus is Moderna Inc., which will develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus of concern
in collaboration with the U.S. NIH and which will be funded entirely by CEPI. The vaccine in
question, as opposed to Inovio's DNA vaccine, will be a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine. Though
different than a DNA vaccine, mRNA vaccines still use genetic material "to direct the body's
cells to produce intracellular, membrane or secreted proteins."
Moderna's mRNA treatments, including its mRNA vaccines, were largely developed using
a $25 million grant from DARPA and it often touts is strategic alliance with DARPA
in press releases . Moderna's past and ongoing research efforts have included developing mRNA vaccines
tailored to an individual's unique DNA as well as an unsuccessful effort to create a mRNA
vaccine for the Zika Virus, which was funded by the U.S. government.
Both DNA and mRNA vaccines involve the introduction of foreign and engineered genetic
material into a person's cells and past studies have found that such vaccines
"possess significant unpredictability and a number of inherent harmful potential hazards" and
that "there is inadequate knowledge to define either the probability of unintended events or
the consequences of genetic modifications." Nonetheless, the climate of fear surrounding the
coronavirus outbreak could be enough for the public and private sector to develop and
distribute such controversial treatments due to fear about the epidemic potential of the
current outbreak.
However, the therapies being developed by Inovio, Modern and the University of Queensland
are in alignment with DARPA's objectives regarding gene editing and vaccine technology. For
instance, in 2015, DARPA geneticist Col. Daniel Wattendorf
described how the agency was investigating a "new method of vaccine production [that] would
involve giving the body instructions for making certain antibodies. Because the body would be
its own bioreactor, the vaccine could be produced much faster than traditional methods and the
result would be a higher level of protection."
According to
media reports on Wattendorf's statements at the time, the vaccine would be developed as
follows:
"Scientists would harvest viral antibodies from someone who has recovered from a disease
such as flu or Ebola. After testing the antibodies' ability to neutralize viruses in a petri
dish, they would isolate the most effective one, determine the genes needed to make that
antibody, and then encode many copies of those genes into a circular snippet of genetic
material -- either DNA or RNA, that the person's body would then use as a cookbook to
assemble the antibody."
Though Wattendorf asserted that the effects of those vaccines wouldn't be permanent, DARPA
has since been promoting permanent gene modifications as a means of protecting U.S. troops from
biological weapons and infectious disease. "Why is DARPA doing this? [To] protect a soldier on
the battlefield from chemical weapons and biological weapons by controlling their genome --
having the genome produce proteins that would automatically protect the soldier from the inside
out," then-DARPA director Steve Walker (now with Lockheed Martin)
said this past September of the project, known as " Safe Genes ."
Conclusion
Research conducted by the Pentagon, and DARPA specifically, has continually raised concerns,
not just in the field of bioweapons and biotechnology, but also in the fields of
nanotechnology, robotics and several others. DARPA, for instance, has been developing a series
of unsettling research projects that ranges from
microchips that can create and delete memories from the human brain to
voting machine software that is rife with problems.
Now, as fear regarding the current coronavirus outbreak begins to peak, companies with
direct ties to DARPA have been tasked with developing its vaccine, the long-term human and
environmental impacts of which are unknown and will remain unknown by the time the vaccine is
expected to go to market in a few weeks time.
Furthermore, DARPA and the Pentagon's past history with bioweapons and their more recent
experiments on genetic alteration and extinction technologies as well as bats and coronaviruses
in proximity to China have been largely left out of the narrative, despite the information
being publicly available. Also left out of the media narrative have been the direct ties of
both the USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the city of Wuhan, including its
Institute of Medical Virology.
Though much about the origins of the coronavirus outbreak remains unknown, the U.S.
military's ties to the aforementioned research studies and research institutions are worth
detailing as such research -- while justified in the name of "national security" -- has the
frightening potential to result in unintended, yet world-altering consequences. The lack of
transparency about this research, such as DARPA's decision to classify its controversial
genetic extinction research and the technology's use as a weapon of war, compounds these
concerns. While it is important to avoid reckless speculation as much as possible, it is the
opinion of this author that the information in this report is in the public interest and that
readers should use this information to reach their own conclusions about the topics discussed
herein.
Interesting and thought provoking article. Queensland University is in Brisbane, the capital
city of Queensland. Also in Brisbane is the suburb of Hendra, where the Hendra virus was
first identified. It too appears to be transmitted by bats to animals and humans.
Israel has a long and well documented record of using bio-weapons against the British,
Syrians, Egyptians and of course the Palestinian civilian population in 1947 and 1948, see
Traces of Poison,
Another great article by Whitney Webb, thank you. After reading the article I am now more
inclined to believe some of the rumors suggesting that the Wuhan Coronavirus was possibly
leaked from a biological research lab in Wuhan. Especially after reading about the direct
ties of USAMRIID and DARPA-partnered Duke University to the Institute of Medical Virology in
Wuhan.
Also, I read that patient zero was diagnosed on Dec. 1 long before the Chinese official
statements of Dec. 31 and the fact that patient zero had no contact with the wet market that
was supposed to be the origin of the virus. Of course it's still early and a great deal of
confusion but as someone famously said" "All governments lie".
If the mortality rate is 1% and Coronavirus infects 20% of global population, something
like 16 million people will die. Let's hope the virus doesn't mutate to a more lethal
form.
The supply chains from China are now toast. Will be interesting to see how long the Fed
can create enough digital currency to prop up the markets while things fall apart.
The Center for Disease Control in the U.S. does not and never did have any kind of definitive
count of flu deaths here. They estimate the number from mathematical modeling based on (U.S.
numbers, 2020 Weeks 1-5):
1) total deaths - 240,000
2) pneumonia deaths - 15,700
3) primary cause/lab confirmed flu deaths 1,723
I don't think the CDC even publishes their model estimate of weekly deaths caused by
the flu . They only publish the % of total deaths (5-7%) as flu deaths, but that number
seems to be just the confirmed flu + pneumonia deaths.
Just for illustration, if the same 330 million U.S. 'regular' seasonal flu CDC numbers
were applied to the population of Hubei for weeks 1-5, you would get:
43,000 total deaths
2,800 pneumonia deaths
310 confirmed flu deaths
The CDC equivalent U.S. numbers would translate to 3,100 deaths from seasonal flu in Hubei
the first five weeks of this year.
What we really want to know is how many excess deaths coronavirus has really caused
in Hubei. Expecting either the CPC, WHO or the U.S. government to cough up that number with
any kind of accuracy without being told the number of 'regular' flu cases is pointless.
There is scare propaganda everywhere - especially on Zero Hedge. There are speculations that
it is a bioweapon made in a semi secret Chinese bioweapons laboratory placed oddly in the
very large city of Wuhan where it escaped. Since this is somewhat suggested by US government
types it gives rise to the thought that this is indeed a bioweapon but made by the US. US
laboratory weaponized anthrax was used shortly after 9/11.
Most of us have heard about the Tuskeegee experiments on blacks and recently exposed about
experiments using Guatemalans. I have even read Vanderbilt Medical School gave irradiated
iron to pregnant white women in the 50s. (They were, of course, poor white trash and only one
of the resulting babies got cancer.)
It is pretty well confirmed that the US introduced swine fever to Cuba and later a foreign
strain of dengue fever so as to cause hemorrhagic dengue fever in people who had previously
had the local Caribbean variety.
I forget where the US used screw worms (was it Nicaraugua. It is well known that the US
tried to use biowarfare utilizing anthrax against N Korean and China during that war - not
only from captured USA pilot sources.
So with the present antagonism of the US and China it doesn't seem unlikely to me. On one
hand it is the flu season. On the other there is the timing of the Chinese New Year. And the
timing of that corona virus pandemic presentation associated with Bill Gates and the pentagon
people just a month before the outbreak arouses my suspicians. There is a large number of
pigs in China and China is crowded but it has been devastating for a people that eat mainly
pork as meat. And how many avian flu epidemics there in the last few years? And SARS. There
are the recent revelations of a Pentagon sponsored animal pathogen lab in Georgia (bordering
Russia). Less seriously I mention the series, the Americans, with them investigating a plot
of the Americans to destroy the wheat crop in Russia. A country whose military is lately only
good for turning cities and countries into rubble I wouldn't put it past them to initiate
biowarfare on a perceived opponent.
"On October 18th the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in conjunction with the World
Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brought together "15 leaders of
business, government, and public health" to simulate a scenario in which a coronavirus
pandemic was ravaging the planet. Major participants were American military leadership, and
certain neocon political figures.
"The Chinese were not invited. This is unusual, as almost all the major viral outbreaks
for the last decade occurred inside of China and Africa."
This is patently untrue, as my post #15 to Godfree Roberts' January 28th article here on
Unz made abundantly clear:
-- -- -- -- –
Godfree Roberts writes:
"On October 18th, 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in conjunction with
the World Economic Forum assembled "15 leaders of business, government, and public health" to
simulate a scenario in which a coronavirus pandemic was ravaging the planet. Major
participants were American military leadership, and certain neocon political figures. The
Chinese were not invited."
This appears to be incorrect. Dr George F. Gao, head of China's CDC was not only invited,
but was openly listed as a major player at this conference, one of the very "15 leaders"
cited by Mr Roberts (see here: http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/players/index.html
)
That Dr. George F. Gao is the head of China's CDC, and one of China's top virologists, if
not the top virologist, is found here, in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Gao
-- -- -- -- -
Also, please note the following: apparently one of the world's greatest experts on
Corona viruses has (allegedly) informed an investor group that the novel corona virus is
simply a very severe cold virus, which will almost assuredly burn itself out by mid to late
spring, as corona viruses don't replicate well in warmer, wetter environs, but flourish in
cold dry circumstances, and that the corona virus will likely not become endemic, but will be
a simple flash-in-the-pan:
https://www.sott.net/article/429100-Coronavirus-Expert-in-Leaked-Analysis-This-is-Just-a-Severe-Localized-Common-Cold
Of course, Dr Nicholls could be lying as part of another Western conspiracy, trying to
make the east asian authorities let down their collective guards against a well-planned
bio-weapons assault, but somehow I doubt a world-renowned Corona virus expert would take such
a gambit in the context of his leaked comments, i.e., to a bunch of wealthy investors seeking
advise on the subject at hand. Not impossible, just unlikely.
However, the ease of transmission certainly IS something which should give us pause, and
coupled with the fact it apparently targets east asians of Chinese descent, should also give
rise to reasonable suspicions about its origin.
But the Chinese government has been, and will likely continue to insist that any and all
such 'conspiracy theories' are ridiculous, as the Chinese, even if they knew otherwise, would
also know such claims would be met with 'hails of derisive laughter' (to quote from the
famous "Bruces" Monty Python sketch), and FAR more importantly, know all too well that
revenge in such circumstances is a dish served very, very cold
Jon Rappoport's blog questioning suppositions about the corona virus is a good one to read.
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/02/10/china-epidemic-cases-with-no-coronavirus-what/
There is scare propaganda everywhere - especially on Zero Hedge. There are speculations that
it is a bioweapon made in a semi secret Chinese bioweapons laboratory placed oddly in the
very large city of Wuhan where it escaped. Since this is somewhat suggested by US government
types it gives rise to the thought that this is indeed a bioweapon but made by the US. US
laboratory weaponized anthrax was used shortly after 9/11. Most of us have heard about the
Tuskeegee experiments on blacks and recently exposed about experiments using Guatemalans. I
have even read Vanderbilt Medical School gave irradiated iron to pregnant white women in the
50s. (They were, of course, poor white trash and only one of the resulting babies got
cancer.) It is pretty well confirmed that the US introduced swine fever to Cuba and later a
foreign strain of dengue fever so as to cause hemorrhagic dengue fever in people who had
previously had the local Caribbean variety. I forget where the US used screw worms (was it
Nicaraugua. It is well known that the US tried to use biowarfare utilizing anthrax against N
Korean and China during that war - not only from captured USA pilot sources. So with the
present antagonism of the US and China it doesn't seem unlikely to me. On one hand it is the
flu season. On the other there is the timing of the Chinese New Year. And the timing of that
corona virus pandemic presentation associated with Bill Gates and the pentagon people just a
month before the outbreak arouses my suspicians. There is a large number of pigs in China and
China is crowded but it has been devastating for a people that eat mainly pork as meat. And
how many avian flu epidemics there in the last few years? And SARS. There are the recent
revelations of a Pentagon sponsored animal pathogen lab in Georgia (bordering Russia). Less
seriously I mention the series, the Americans, with them investigating a plot of the
Americans to destroy the wheat crop in Russia. A country whose military is lately only good
for turning cities and countries into rubble I wouldn't put it past them to initiate
biowarfare on a perceived opponent.
I personally do not believe in the bat to human transmission story at all.
Bat to human viral transmission is well known. See Hendra Virus which is a mighty deadly
little bundle.
I too am sceptical in this case as there are some strong stories of this coronavirus being
expertly fiddled and reconfigured for a deadlier impact. Some versions of this story have
been debunked but I have not followed the storyline intently as in forensically. More
information on the Canadian Lab and its inventory of pathogens might help but not much chance
of that.
I consider it probable that China has been attacked by another nation. The African swine
flu and the army worm outbreaks seem highly suspicious.
Dltravers: Sure but the US has a similar long track record of psychological warfare and the
"US did it" opinions are being twisted FUD-style into support for the narrative which attacks
China and the WHO and everyone who works with them as being clueless, useless, liars and so
on.
In a normal flu season in China 80,000 to 90,000 will die. In a bad flu season double that.
It is simply nonsense that China would turn itself upside down for a novel flu that had
claimed only 1300 additional lives. Oh, this began to be reported as a pandemic when the
numbers were a couple hundred. Local doctors would notice if there were a flu that was
conspicuously different, there would not be a national and a global response.
This does not mean the doom porn is believable. Particular warning against Epoch Times
which has been extremely active and widely cited/reposted. They are Falun Gong and will libel
China any way they can. All are advised to apply the epistemological question continuously.
At the moment there is no such thing as a credible source, only credulous consumers of
information.
The single study that has been misinterpreted as meaningful regarding Asians being more
susceptible to nCOV - cited ACE2 receptors as the cause.
The problem is - smoking is known to cause the abnormal development of ACE2 receptors. The
single Asian in the study was a smoker; only 1 of the other 5 was a smoker and the relative
level of smoking aren't documented.
However, from my personal experiences in China - Chinese men are heavy smokers - much more
so than women.
There may be a link between ACE2 and nCOV vulnerability - but if so, it is much more
likely due to smoking than it is due to ethnicity. That's why studies with higher n matter -
it is far easier to understand potential secondary lines of investigation from a large sample
set, plus high n means less likelihood of random shit skewing results.
This study notes there is *no* difference in ACE2 expression between different races,
people of different ages, etc - but there is a difference between smokers and non-smokers
ACE2
study
Recently, studies found that 2019-nCov and SARS-nCov share the same receptor, ACE2. In this
study, we analyzed four large-scale datasets of normal lung tissue to investigate the
disparities related to race, age, gender and smoking status in ACE2 gene expression. No
significant disparities in ACE2 gene expression were found between racial groups (Asian vs
Caucasian), age groups (>60 vs <60) or gender groups (male vs female). However, we
observed significantly higher ACE2 gene expression in smoker samples compared to non-smoker
samples.
This indicates the smokers may be more susceptible to 2019-nCov and thus smoking
history should be considered in identifying susceptible population and standardizing
treatment regimen.
There is not a note about air pollution - that is another possible factor. The
air pollution level in Wuhan actually worse than Beijing:
Relative air pollution Beijing vs. Wuhan
The SARS conspiracy theory began to emerge during the severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China in the spring of 2003, when
Sergei Kolesnikov , [1] a Russian scientist and a member of the
Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, first publicized his claim that the SARS coronavirus is a synthesis of
measles and mumps . According to Kolesnikov, this
combination cannot be formed in the natural world and thus the SARS virus must have been
produced under laboratory conditions. Another Russian scientist, Nikolai Filatov , head of Moscow 's epidemiological services, had earlier
commented that the SARS virus was probably man-made. [2]
However, independent labs concluded these claims to be premature since the SARS virus is a
coronavirus ,
[3][4][5] whereas
measles and mumps are paramyxoviruses . [6][7] The primary
differences between a coronavirus and a paramyxovirus are in their structures and method of
infection, thus making it implausible for a coronavirus to have been created from two
paramyxoviruses. Overview [
edit ]
The widespread reporting of claims by Kolesnokov and Filatov caused controversy in many
Chinese internet discussion boards and chat rooms. Many Chinese believed that the SARS virus
could be a biological
weapon manufactured by the United States, which perceived China as a potential threat.
[8] The failure to
find the source of the SARS virus further convinced these people and many more that SARS was
artificially synthesised and spread by some individuals and even governments. Circumstantial
evidence suggests that the SARS virus crossed over to humans from Asian palm civets ("civet cats"), a type
of animal that is often killed and eaten in Guangdong , where SARS was first discovered.
[9][10]
Supporters of the conspiracy theory suggest that SARS caused the most serious harm in
mainland China, Hong Kong
, Taiwan and Singapore ,
regions where most Chinese reside, while the United States, Europe and Japan were not affected as much. However, the highest
mortality from SARS outside of China occurred in Canada where 43 died. [11][12]
Conspiracists further point out that SARS has an average mortality rate of around 10% around
the world, but no one died in the United States from SARS, despite the fact that there were 8
confirmed cases out of 27 probable cases (10% of 8 people is less than 1 person).
[11][13][14]
Regarding reasons why SARS patients in the United States experienced a relatively mild illness,
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has
explained that anybody with fever and a respiratory symptom who had traveled to an affected
area was included as a SARS patient in the U.S., even though many of these were found to have
had other respiratory illnesses. [14][15]
In October 2003, Tong Zeng, a Chinese lawyer and a volunteer in a 1998 Chinese-American
medical cooperation program, published a book [16] that again
speculated that SARS could be a biological weapon developed by the United States against China.
In the book, Tong disclosed that in the 1990s, many American research groups collected
thousands of blood and
DNA samples and specimens of
mainland Chinese (including 5,000 DNA samples from twins ) through numerous joint research projects
carried out in China. These samples were then sent back to the United States for further
research, and could be used in developing biological weapons targeting Chinese. These samples
came from 22 provinces in China, all of which were hit by SARS in 2003. Only provinces like
Yunnan , Guizhou , Hainan , Tibet , and Xinjiang were left out, and all these provinces
suffered less severely during the SARS outbreak. The author suspects that Japan is also involved, as many Japanese
factories in Guangdong in the 1990s made it compulsory for all workers to have blood tests in
the factory annually, rather than asking workers to go to local hospitals for blood tests and a
proper physical examination. However, Tong Zeng admits that these are only speculations, and he
does not have any concrete proof from the study of the virus's genetic sequence . [17]
The two scientists named above expressed the possibility that the SARS virus was man-made.
[18] The SARS
coronavirus has been fully gene sequenced and that the genome has been made globally available.
[3]
There has been no evidence found of genetic engineering in the genome. The SARS coronavirus is
novel, but this only implies it has mutated or was previously undiscovered, not that it is
genetically engineered.
Coronaviruses
similar to SARS have been found in bats in China, suggesting they may be their natural
reservoir. [19]
Thanks for providing the CDC stats, b! They're all that's need to prove the hysteria aimed at
China is 100% political in a Psyop sense and not based on reality whatsoever. Indeed, the
Chinese have commented about that as soon as it began, and has now reached a point where
Chinese patience is wearing out as seen in this article :
"The novel coronavirus outbreak has given us a clearer understanding of US strategic
direction toward China. Although China is working hard to promote the relationship between
the two countries toward healthy and stable development, the recent strategic moves of the US
showed that a strong force in the US is pushing the ties toward a hostile path, which is
obviously making the future of Sino-US relations more unstable....
"The epidemic could become a chance for the two countries to cooperate and enhance mutual
trust, yet as China is all in to fight the virus, the death of Li is being exploited and
politicalized by some US politicians. This once again shows that attacking China's political
system has become part of the US' China strategy. It must realize that this is one of the
main causes of turbulence in China-US relations....
"China does not want to be a US rival, but if the US continues following this strategy,
it is making itself an enemy ." [My Emphasis]
Given the woeful state of healthcare within the Outlaw US Empire, many tens of thousands
would die if a similar outbreak occurred here. When that happens, I hope the DC Jingos are
the ones to die first.
I must admit it's been so hard to sift wheat from chaff on the sheer scale of reports coming
out form across the spectrum. From doom porn end of days stuff to it's just an Asian flu
thing.
Imperial College is a well respected institute in UK, this faculty guy has been saying a
few useful things:
ZH continues with the cataclysmic end of the world view.
My 5 cents for what its worth is it will diminish in Asia in the next month and a half,
may rear its head for a while in Europe to an extent to be determined by the spring climate.
Either way its those in marginal health, exhaustion, overworked and fragile who should take
most care.
Things to think about. First on the list is that all these numbers that are being thrown at
us are, one way or another, derivatives of the antibody test for this specific virus which
was developed in less than a month. Considering that we are at about 40 years and counting
for a AIDS vaccine, purportedly against another RNA virus, this one though a retrovirus, this
is certainly quick (and hopefully not dirty) work. Trying to get some details for this
miracle I came across this excerpt
=========
The first challenge of sequencing a coronavirus genome is that it's made of RNA rather than
DNA. Most of our tools for working with nucleic acids are specific to DNA. Fortunately, we've
discovered an enzyme called "" that takes RNA and makes a DNA copy of it -- transcription is
the copying of DNA into RNA; this enzyme does the opposite, hence the name. (Reverse
transcriptase was first identified in other RNA viruses that need to be copied into DNA as
part of infection.) Using reverse transcriptase, researchers were able to make DNA copies of
parts of 2019-nCoV as a first step to studying its genome.
But reverse transcription of samples from infected individuals would simply create a mess
of DNA fragments from everything present: the patient's own cells, harmless bacteria, and so
on. Fortunately, DNA sequencing and analysis techniques have become so advanced that it's now
possible to just sequence the whole mess, irrelevant stuff and all, and let computers sort
out what's present. Software is able to take what we know about the average coronavirus
genome and identify all of the fragments of sequence that look like they came from a
coronavirus. Other software can determine how all these fragments overlap and then stitch
them together, producing a near-complete coronavirus genome.
=====================
Sort of reminds me of the dictum to shoot everyone and let God sort them out.
Hopefully the RNA reverse transcriptase does a better job than Google Translate going from
Mandarin to English.
Since the antibody test was developed by a complex computer program based on a generic
sampling of the vast complex of various corona viruses (most of them either harmless or
slightly harmful to humans), there are very few people on the planet that could evaluate its
value and accuracy. Furthermore, it is based on a translation of the RNA into DNA via an
enzyme. Evaluators would need to be experts in both stereo computer programing and virology
and be allowed access to the source code.
My grandfather died of pneumonia at the age of 82. This is not rare at all, and the new
classification that may falsely diagnose pneumonia cases may be practical. Basically, the new
drug cocktail cannot be given to all pneumonia cases in China, there are limits on increase
of production and imports, but in Hubei they will be considered the new corona virus.
The course of the epidemic is hard to predict, finding therapies etc. is as paramount as
slowing the spread.
Cambodia gave berth to corona virus ship. There is a talk about depression in cruise
industry. Given that, I would recommend a cruise to North Pole. Not crowded, great unique
views, few viruses up there, nice weather: "normal Moscow winter clothing should be
sufficient" (around Summer solstice).
It's the reclassification by Cat scans (CT) scans. Modeling.
Spike in China virus cases doesn't show big shift in epidemic: WHO
GENEVA (Reuters) - The spike in cases reported from China reflects reclassifying a backlog
of suspect cases using patients' chest images and not necessarily the "tip of an iceberg"
of a wider epidemic, a top World Health Organization official said on Thursday.
"Crucially we understand that most of these cases relate to a period going back over
days and weeks and are retrospectively reported as cases, sometimes back to the beginning
of the outbreak itself," he told a news conference at WHO headquarters.
"We've seen this spike in the number of cases reported in China, but this does not
represent a significant change in the trajectory of the outbreak," he said. [.]
No significant shifts in mortality or severity patterns had been detected, Ryan
said.[.]
The truth is probably somewhere between Zerohedges sensationalism and B's 'nothing to see,
move along, have another joint approach'!
However, the cure may be worse than the disease. If China continues to lock down a third
or so of the nation, then the Chinese economy will collapse and the supply chains to the
world are going to evaporate.
Welcome to 'unintended consequences'.
It is this economic collapse which may be the true contagion!
I would like to know how Chinese workers in the affected zones will survive financially. It
sounds like they won't have medical bankruptcies, but how will they pay rent and buy food?
Even if regular employers still pay wages, I assume there are many workers who are day
laborers, self-employed, casual work, etc. Will they end up living on the street? That's
certainly what happens in Uncle Sam Land.
Americans experiencing coronavirus symptoms may have to wait longer to receive a
diagnosis from state health officials after the CDC revealed Wednesday that the 200
COVID-19 testing kits issued across the country last week may return inconclusive - neither
positive nor negative - results.
Some of the states identified some inconclusive laboratory results," Dr. Nancy
Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said
during the February 12 news conference, speaking on the states' own quality control
protocols regarding the kits.
Sorry b, but China would not fire its top provincial officials and Xi would not call it a
"grave situation" , if it wasn't a grave situation.
There are too many virus epidemics in China hitting people and wiping out animals (if you
haven't noticed) and that is a problem of chinese culture.
Many people overestimate China, forgetting that the country is still significantly poorer
than even Russia on per capita basis, and technologically has many problem areas - such as
being incapable of creating a good submarine, or putting a nuclear reactor on large surface
ship, or creating good aircraft, especially aircraft engines, or creating good radar
surveliance network (it needed help from Russia for many of those things), or creating good
air defense (had to buy S-400), etc.
While there are some areas where it the took the lead, there are also many areas where it
is lacking.
China will be on par with the US by 2030 as great power, but it is not right now, and it
is still relatively poor country on per capita basis, with many areas where it is lacking.
Not surprisingly it got bullied into buying 200 billion $ more in US goods, with half of US
tarrifs still not removed.
Excellent article at Counterpunch on NYT/CFR propaganda efforts.
"Instead of voicing support or encouraging solidarity–"We are Wuhan" -- western
corporate media have chosen to go all out to criticize and demonize China, sparing no effort
to recycle and rekindle ugly, racist, orientalist, and dehumanizing tropes, using any
perceived misstep, pretext, and shortcoming to tar China and the Chinese. One virulent
narrative is that this is deliberate Chinese bioweapon to reduce population, another
narrative, no less toxic and virulent, alleges that the Chinese leadership, out of a "fear of
political embarrassment", suppressed free speech and silenced the flow of information "at
critical moments", "allowing the virus to gain a tenacious hold", thus creating the
conditions for a lethal epidemic that has led to the deaths of hundreds and the infection of
thousands.
The NY Times takes the [yellow] cake for sowing this toxic, racist disinformation,
alleging in numerous articles and opinion pieces of a "cover up": that "China's old habits
put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the crisis"; that "they played down dangers
to the public, leaving the city's 11 million residents unaware that they should protect
themselves", and presenting this as proof dispositive that the Chinese system is fatally
flawed. All this while reveling in and boosting on its website, unseemly schadenfreude that
suppression of information and free speech has led to condign and expected catastrophe.
The most recent iteration of this propaganda concerns a Dr Li Wenliang..."
From the article I cited above - the following would be considered a "mission accomplished"
scenario of the CIA:
"c) Panicked, mass hysterical responses are not uncommon, and themselves can constitute a
public health hazard. Either of these effects, caused by premature or careless disclosure
could have resulted in:
i) People thinking themselves sick
ii) People crowding hospitals, stretching resources, while spreading the infection faster,
as well as preventing genuinely sick people from getting care (all at a time when public
services are winding down)
iii) Mass exodus, spreading the infection outside of Wuhan much faster
iv) Hoarding & scarcity of masks and other supplies, vigilante quarantines, and other
hysterical, dangerous, and unproductive behavior."
Hong Kong is not considered an area of geopolitical vulnerability by the Chinese Armed
Forces.
The two regions the PLA considers to be China's greatest vulnerability points, in order of
greatest and second greatest are: 1) Xinjiang and 2) Tibet. That, of course, from the outside
(i.e. an American attack).
Obviously, an internal rebellion in Wuhan (central China, the heart of Chinese communism)
would far surpass any military threat any of those regions could give to the CCP. Hence, of
course, the COVID-19 being a greater threat to the CCP than the latte-sipping liberals from
Hong Kong and the wannabe Americans from Taiwan could ever be.
One used to hear the Brits talk of the "Dunkirk Spirit". Similarly, one used to hear of the
American "can do" spirit.
Only in very recent years have I come to get a feel for the Chinese Spirit, and this
30-second news clip exemplifies it for me.
A Wuhan doctor has quarantined herself from her family, staying in a hotel while she
treats the outbreak. As she walks to work in the evening, her husband drives slowly behind
her to light the way. When she returns to the hotel, he has prepared a hot meal for her.
yesterday someone compared the death toll to be TENS OF MILLIONS while comparing nCov-19
to the 1918 pandemic ... but times have changed ... new technology, improved sanitary
science, and governments that have bullets .
Posted by: Barovsky | Feb 14 2020 0:04 utc | 34
that's what WaPo is also telling but i can't find numbers/graphs
Posted by: Pft | Feb 14 2020 0:36 utc | 37
i want what you're smoking ... wanna try dangerous things at least once in my life
"The United States is "deeply concerned" about the possible impact of a coronavirus
outbreak in North Korea and is prepared to help U.S. and international organizations contain
the spread of the virus, the State Department said on Thursday."
"...since then he appears resigned to the reality that all spooks are low life types
capable of any dastardly act." --A User @50
B has not yet given in to the level of cynicism necessary to fully acknowledge the true
depths of villainy of these spook gangs. We are talking gangs composed of the kinds of people
who as children torture small animals to death, but grow up to need larger victims to satisfy
their perverse lusts. Who is so naive as to believe that the CIA runs secret torture
facilities because they really think they can get useful information that way? Those
facilities are vacation resorts for staff who have served the gang well. They also serve as
initiation/training facilities for staff who might still be a little squeamish about spilling
the blood of helpless innocents.
Consider that these gangs of literal psychopaths are supplied with the almost limitless
cash that is raised by controlling global trade in drugs, slaves, and black market weapons.
Consider that they have free use of America's ridiculously extensive consular networks and
military bases. Consider that they can easily travel anywhere on diplomatic documents forged
by the US government itself, and you can start to see how these bloodthirsty monsters can get
away with what they do.
But wait! There's more!
They have "recruiters" , both formal and informal; covert and overt, on every major
college campus in the US. They make contacts with the choicest up-and-coming talent that
looks to go places in business and government. They volunteer "favors" for these kids,
building webs of obligation. They observe fraternity hazings to identify fellow sadists, or
where the opportunity arises push the fraternity hazing over the edge to collect blackmail
material for future use while simultaneously building out their web of obligation by offering
to help covering up grave transgressions against human decency. Commit an unforgivable act in
the presence of these CIA "recruiters" and they own you for life. Students
"vetted" in this manner are then treated as "trustworthy" by the oligarchy and
get rapid promotions in the capitalist power structures. Think of it as more than just CIA
recruiting, but also pre-employment screening for the oligarchy. After all, the oligarchy
will want insurance that their tools don't go all Howard Beale on them and use one
of capitalism's enormous soapboxes to blurt out the truth to all of the vegetative mass media
consumers sitting slack-jawed on their couches in front of their Plato's Cave
screens.
They killed millions in southeast Asia. They torture and murder all across Latin America.
They assassinate presidents, both inside and outside the empire. They lie as naturally as
breathing. They kill even when the empire has no need of it. They kill their own loyal tools,
like Nemtsov, if it suits their amusement of the day. They killed highly respected statesmen
on a diplomatic missions. When trying to determine if they are likely to be behind some
horrific incident, you only need to consider if it is feasible and if it serves the empire's
or their own internal needs. Never waste your time trying to ponder if the CIA and their
subsidiaries could stoop so low as to commit the very most horrendous crimes imaginable
because they have already done it again and again. These CIA monsters make ISIS head-choppers
look like choir boys in comparison.
Would the CIA go around a crowded city spraying a horrible virus into the air? If they had
such a virus they would do it for fun. You only need ask if they could get their hands on
such a virus, not if they could be so evil as to use it, because that last is a forgone
conclusion.
And, yes, the CIA can easily get their hands on such a virus.
"Moreover, some of the Russian sources are far-right, Russian nationalists that have
their own axe to grind."
Many American opinions on this issue are from far-right, centrist, or "progressive"
American nationalists who have their own axe to grind and are peddling opinions without
proof.
One of the Russians cited in those articles is Igor Nikulin, a former member of the UN
Commission on Biological and Chemical Weapons. I think he is more credible than most
Americans pushing their views on this topic.
The MK.ru article can be easily translated from Russian into English, using an online
translator of your choice.
Dmitry Orlov also weighs in on the "convenient" Coronavirus, and after reviewing various
factors, suggests that the most likely scenario is an American bioweapon.
And to be frank, it's obvious that America is manipulating the Coronavirus Issue itself
(beyond the health issues involved) as a hybrid war weapon against China.
The America agenda is economic disruption, political destabilization, and infowar
propaganda against one of its major "New Cold War" opponents.
Some nations like China are aware of that other antagonist you describe so well that must
be defended against. The Outlaw US Empire's public's been brainwashed via media shows like
Mission: Impossible and books like Tom Clancy's series starring Jack Ryan to view the
CIA as needed and a force for good. Combatting that are the Jason Bourne books and movies,
but they're not nearly enough. Then there're the many dozens of TV-cop shows through the
years since Dragnet , the Untouchables and The FBI Story depicting
police as a force for good. If TV technology had arrived sooner, there'd be shows in the
South extolling the KKK as a force for good showing real lynching's on TV--the racism present
in Oaters only ended with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and Ladybird Johnson's use of
a Native American to symbolize her campaign to beautify America (Do ya'll remember that?).
But there's never been any movie about the CIA's Death Squads, although the Terrorist Foreign
Legion's now getting Oscars for the propaganda films extolling their exploits--which I
think's an excellent marker for just how deeply immoral the Outlaw US Empire's
Establishment's become.
Does the above fit into the nihilism The Saker gets into at the end of this
recent essay , or is it closer to the Libertinism of de Sade which justifies its criminal
controlling as the product of a superior over inferiors--Exceptionalists over the
non-exceptional. What lurks in the minds of those US Senators who were the cause behind the
Global Times editorial I linked @8? Then we have Pompeo, who appears to liken himself
as a reborn Nero or Caligula. Or are they merely continuing what the Pilgrims began in
Plymouth--the buried part of that history never taught in schools: the place where American
Death Squads began.
Oops. b's article of Feb 8 about how the coronavirus is under control was way off base.
Zerohedge reports that Hubei Province has come clean and reported a huge increase in
infections using the previous statistical gathering rules. Hopefully it will be less severe
than the 1918 flu pandemic that caused the death of TENS OF MILLIONS.
Do not ever trust a government to communicate truthful information to you if they have
something to gain by lying. It doesn't matter if it is your home country or an adversary
country - they all lie when it is to their advantage. Truth is a very elusive commodity
today.
Below are quotes from two different postings at Xinhuanet that I think are related
"
WUHAN, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- China's Hubei Province, center of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19)
outbreak, reported 14,840 new confirmed cases and 242 new deaths on Wednesday, the highest
daily increases so far, local health authorities said Thursday.
The Hubei Provincial Health Commission said the number of new cases included 13,332
clinically diagnosed cases, which have been seen as confirmed cases from Thursday.
It brought the total confirmed cases in the hard-hit province to 48,206. The province had
a total of 1,310 deaths as of Wednesday.
Clinically diagnosed cases are unique to Hubei statistically. The inclusion of those cases
drives the surge in the number of new confirmed cases.
.........
"
"
BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Ying Yong has been appointed secretary of the Hubei Provincial
Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), replacing Jiang Chaoliang, according to a
decision by the CPC Central Committee.
"
Interviewee: Professor Neil Ferguson, Director of MRC GIDA, J-IDEA, School of Public
Health
Interviewer and Associate Producer: Sabine van Elsland, MRC GIDA, J-IDEA, School of Public
Health
Infectious disease scientist Neil Ferguson estimates coronavirus could be infecting 50,000
people a day. For over a week, China has consistently reported about 3,000 new infections per
day. The number has stayed suspiciously constant over the last ten days. A steady rate of
3,000 diagnoses per day points to the upper limit of detection kits that are available to the
health workers.
China reportedly has quarantined hundreds of millions of people at this point. Not a
response you would expect for something that is innocuous.
"China reportedly has quarantined hundreds of millions of people at this point. Not a
response you would expect for something that is innocuous."
It's weird how many people here hold the schizoid position that, on one hand the epidemic
is mild and nothing to panic about, but at the same time China's extreme measures have
comprised an heroic campaign against an horrific danger.
Of course if the virus is not a great threat then China's actions themselves would
constitute a form of panic, if not something more sinister. But if it is such a threat that
the big lockdown is warranted, then whence comes the "it's not a big deal" rhetoric?
Sounds to me like these people are on the verge of panic themselves and are trying to calm
themselves down, in no matter how incoherent a fashion.
(Not all that different from those who politically say or imply the US is in great
existential crisis yet who assure themselves and everyone else that the sufficient, even
necessary solution can be found within the Democratic Party.)
China reportedly has quarantined hundreds of millions of people at this point. Not a
response you would expect for something that is innocuous.
Thank you for that observation and if the coronavirus is anything like constructed from a mix
of elements from other forms (deliberately or naturally) then it IS a serious threat. It
appears that it is infectious BEFORE a person shows symptoms and so the threat is magnified
immensely unless it is easily attenuated in open air. That is not likely from what I have
read.
China has responded rationally and rapidly to date. Its response will certainly generate
ill feeling and antagonism but people behave irrationally and are driven by self interest
beyond the caring for the community when faced with these lethal unseen predators.
If/when this level of quarantine were to break out in the hysterical USA, could you
imagine the response? The freedom brigades would be barricading streets, commandeering trains
to escape and break quarantine. Hysterics like Rachel Maddow would weeping inanities on MSNBC
every night. Chris Mathews would crapping his pants about it being a public execution virus
... russia russia russia.....
Faced with the sudden CODIV-19 outbreak, problems such as sloppiness and poor management of
work have been exposed among Wuhan and Hubei authorities, reflecting severe loopholes in
local governance. The appointment of new officials will not only enhance prevention and
control measures against the outbreak but also aim to highlight the urgency of improving
crisis-handling capability among officials, analysts said.
The new appointed official was responsible for containing the epidemic to Shanghai:
In his effort in combating the virus in Shanghai, Ying, also head of Shanghai's leading
group for virus containment, emphasized grass-roots level units' strength in fighting the
battle. He also conducted detailed and thorough discussion with people working in
residential communities, hearing their opinions concerning the containment work.
He also underlined the role that science plays in this battle. Ying suggested Shanghai
use its edge as a "scientific highland" to support the prevention and control of the virus.
Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, Ying suggested scientific achievements should race
against time, against virus, to gain initiative of fighting the coronavirus.
An anonymous Shanghai-based expert praised Shanghai's virus containment work. He told
the Global Times that Shanghai, home to millions of migrant workers, could be the next
epidemic center for the coronavirus.
However, with effective and scientific measures, which do not disturb people's normal
life, Shanghai has managed to keep the infection at a moderate level compared with other
provinces and municipalities. The city reported 311 confirmed cases of the CODIV-19
infection.
This is very far from the dictatorial and brutal scenario the western MSM is describing.
To fight an epidemic from spreading without disrupting the economy, you need more - not less
- democracy. And that's what the CCP is doing.
Also pay attention to the emphasis the new official gives to science as opposed to
religion (i.e. superstition). This is not only a teaching moment for the Chinese people, but
also an indirect jibe at Chinese paganism. The COVID-19 will be defeated with science (i.e.
communism), not with religion (i.e. Chines paganism, or even Christianism or Islamism,
depending on the province you go in China).
The Guardian described this reshuffling as a "purge". It continues to descend more and
more to a pro-capitalist (liberal) pamphlet.
--//--
@ Posted by: Russ | Feb 13 2020 7:16 utc | 129
What is most amazing is how many commenters here completely ignore Chinese media.
Xi Jinping literally made a speech where he stated the COVID-19 was a grave danger and
crisis, that the battle against the virus would be very difficult, but that he had confidence
the Chinese people was capable of fighting it off.
Before his speech, many editorials and other articles were published in the Chinese
official and extraofficial media, all of them making extremely clear the crisis was grave,
and that in no way the virus was a non-issue. It also highlighted the failures of the Chinese
local governance and healthcare system, as well as its deficiencies in R&D in the
medicine area. The Chinese media never downplayed the COVID-19 and its shortcomings.
It is only in the world of the Western MSM that the CCP is hiding the crisis from its own
people, is falsifying the number of infected and dead, is brutally crushing a rebellion for
free speech in Wuhan etc. etc.
The story of the millions of bodies cremated in Wuhan is even more bizarre, since it makes
it clear commenters here do not research on Chinese media. There are inumerous videos on
TikTok (Chinese Instagram) of people living in Wuhan documenting how their lives are going
amid the quarantine. There's no rebellion there; people are compreensive of the graveness of
the situation, and understand it is a necessary evil. They are not cut off from the internet
or any other kind of media. Sure, the situation is shitty, and many non-infected people in
Wuhan are pissed off with the situation (as is in the nature of any human being) - but that's
far from being a rebellion to topple the CCP.
Wuhan was the birthplace of Chinese communism. In the 1920s, it was the first attempt to
install a socialist republic in practice. It was brutally crushed by the Han supremacist
forces of Chiang Kaishek - who personally ordered the massacre of all the communists there
once he entered the city believed to be peacefully. It would take another 20 years for
communism to recover from that episode. The people of Wuhan know their history, and they know
they can trust the CCP.
Of course the number of infected is rising - the Japanese cruise ship is moored since
February 3rd!
The test kits come out with the results in 24 hours. Why is the damn ship isolated for ten
days and counting?
The article states the passengers are kept in their own cabins, with masks. How is the
Japanese government so shure this will keep the non-infected from being infected, if rumors
from the media claim it can be transmitted even from contact with a piece of metal? Why isn't
the westerm MSM publicly denouncing this potential death trap set up by the Japanese
government?
The article also states that the people who are already tested negative are being freed
from the ship. That means the Japanese simply don't have the means, that is, the human and
material resources, to test all the passengers at once (that is, in 24 hours). A declaration
by health minister Katsunobu Kato implies they can only test 200 people simutaneously. Why
isn't the Japanese people angry with such inneficiency? Why isn't such government
inneficiency not being publicly denounced by the western MSM?
Japanese ineptitude will cost dozens of lives in that ship.
Japanese ineptitude will cost dozens of lives in that ship. by: vk @ 150
I can't see why anyone would be released until the entire ship tests free for at least 14
days of the virus.. If the whole damn ship comes down with the disease, it provides the
masses needed to study the disease and to develop antibodies. The ship is a laboratory
crucible of the kind that cannot be assembled anywhere else.. There may be a few deaths, but
not likely, more than will occur by releasing those falsely testing negative into the whole
world, only to have them distribute the disease and incubate it in places it might not
otherwise reach.
Mass General Hospital researchers identify new "universal" target for antiviral
treatment
Key Takeaways
Mass General researchers have uncovered a novel potential antiviral drug target that could
lead to treatments protecting against a host of infectious diseases – creating a
universal treatment
Their work suggests that the protein Argonaute 4 (AGO4) is an "Achilles heel" for
viruses.
Researchers suggest that boosting levels of AGO4 could shore up the immune system to protect
against multiple viruses
https://www.massgeneral.org/news/press-release/Mass-general-hospital-researchers-identify-new-universal-target-for-antiviral-treatment
What is it about your site that you invite such mediocre comments? I have thought about
this a great deal.
Here Lochearn, do provide us with an erudite commentary on the role of the state and the
populace in regard to the extract below:
French security agencies then more than adequately identified the "Charlie Hebdo shooting"
perpetrators as potential threats and tracked them for years beforehand. More recently,
British authorities were more than well aware of the danger Sudesh Amman posed to society.
The problem is instead what appears to be a deliberate effort to keep these terrorists
roaming freely among society. Free to join Western-backed mercenary forces abroad to fight
in the West's various proxy wars, and free to commit heinous acts of terror at home, both
serving the singular agenda of expanding Western hegemony abroad while preserving the
primacy of select special interests at home through divide and conquer politics and the use
of fear as a political weapon.
Do assist us all to raise the debate and discuss the human challenges that we can
influence with our analysis.
I haven't followed the terror attacks in Britain closely enough to evaluate them, but I
did closely look at the one in Paris & quite a number of them here in the US. Every one
that I researched was indubitably phoney.
It used to be quite easy to piggy-back one's own research on that of others. One would
simply search "Nashville shooting hoax" or wherever it was, and all of the citizen videos
& commentaries would come up at once. These usually included images of the location
before the incident, often showing alterations that had been made to facilitate the
"incident."
Alas, these citizen analytics proved so effective in persuading others that TPTB began
abruptly to block them. (sigh)
I woke up today and saw a 15000 increase of cases in Hubei province. I actually feel happy
to see this update, because it is a result of more transparent reporting, which added many
overlooked cases in Wuhan city. This number increase has pushed Hubei's province's case number
account to over 81% of all cases. The other parts of China have seen steady decrease in case
growth. Guangzhou, a heavily affected city only had 4 new cases over the past day. It is an
encouraging sign, and shows China has managed the situation except for Wuhan. I have relatives
near Wuhan, and their life besides been grounded at home, isn't very bad. They also confirmed
with that Wuhan is in a horrible position still.
My wife and I live in Guangzhou, in the southern Canton province where at this very moment
has nearly 1000 cases confirmed. We just travelled to and came back from my in-laws' home in
Jiangxi, where it is a little closer to Wuhan, but less affected by the outbreak.
The entire country is literally on quarantine. This is what we experienced during our drive
back to Guangzhou. When entering the provincial border, emergency crew checked every single
passenger's temperature.
Nearly everything on the street is closed in every city. I have basically stayed home for
two weeks now, except for necessary grocery run. Below are my personal understandings developed
during this viral outbreak:
Panic is the worst enemy. Though many are saying that the situation is worse than
govt reports, which I agree, I hope people can have more faith in the official numbers and
reports. The govt is already taking very drastic measures, and I understand well why they
only report optimistic news. What else can they do? Tell 1.4 billion people that the country
is doomed? Blame the Wuhan local govt for their inefficiency in handling the initial
outbreak, but stand with the Chinese government for it is pulling incredible work at this
moment.
The disease is highly contagious. Short unprotected exposure to carriers of the
virus can lead to infection . However, with medical treatment, the fatality rate is VERY LOW.
A majority of the cases confirmed are in Hubei province, the epicentre. Outside of that
province, out of over 8000 confirmed cases, only 16 people have died, mostly elderly and with
prior medical complications. This is a very low fatality rate. Guangzhou has nearly 300
confirmed cases, but put in mind this is a city of roughly 10 million people.
Wuhan is in hell now. Lack of medical resources and the spread of virus in highly
populated urban area has lead to a fatality rate 30 times higher than other parts of China.
Many patients are advised to stay home, without timely medical help. Some eventually go into
critical condition and even die before even getting confirmed. Sad.
This point is not confirmed, but I feel that except for Hubei province, the outbreak
is getting more and more contained. In Guangdong and Zhejiang, both have reported nearly
1000 confirmed cases, NO DEATH is reported. The spread is mainly developing fast in the
epicentre, which is now effectively sealed off.
I notice that discrimination is growing at all levels. Globally, some media
outposts are labeling the virus as China virus (include my home media in BC, Canada), linking
viral outbreak with Chinese or Asian ethnicity. Regionally, Wuhan and Hubei province are
being labeled as the source of the contagion I suppose this is our human nature, the dark
part of it.
My feelings:
This outbreak made my 1st tier city middle class bubble burst. For a long time, I have lived
in relative privilege.
The first tier Chinese cities have provided so much that made me feel
like living in a futuristic and developed country.
This outbreak slaps me hard, and it woke me
up. In many areas China is still poor and decades behind the developed world. There is much to
be done, and as someone working in education, I have a good field to start with.
Sitting in my apartment in the centre of Guangzhou, the world outside is so quiet. The
country has slowed down, but now it is a tranquil moment for me to think about life and maybe
for this country to reflect on itself too.
"... the predominant demographic of nCOV deaths so far are 60+ year old men with severe health problems; I'd not be surprised that these types of people don't travel much, if at all. ..."
This is a classic case of panic-mongering and hysteria-inducing journalism.
Every test has its percentage of false negatives. Of course there are patients infected with the new coronavirus that were
dismissed by the hospitals. But this is a calculated risk, with its given margin of error.
If we were to publish in the MSM the number of deaths due to misdiagnosed cancer in the First World, there would be mass hysteria
and a spike in demand for cancer screening. That doesn't happen because the western MSM is not interested in causing chaos in
their home court.
Here's an interesting point about nCOV which hasn't been talked about much: fecal-oral transmission.
Some of the news articles note that bodies are being treated as contagious, reinforcing this author's point about there being
multiple ways nCOV can be transmitted:
Wim
Rost talking about nCOV at WuWT
No idea if his view is correct or supported: he's saying that nCOV infection via fecal-oral is less dangerous because the victim
has more time to build up defenses vs. infection via aerial transmission directly into the lungs.
He does have a good precedent/point about the ability of nCOV to transfer from digestive system to rest of the body, if true:
bubonic plague is transmitted by fleas on rats - going from bloodstream to rest of body, but it got really bad when the bacterium
got into the lungs. At that point, transmissibility became aerial.
I'm not 100% convinced of the digestive system route though. Shaking hands = virus to other people, but it is just as likely the
transmission is occurring when these people touch their eyes or nose as because they eat food without washing their hands first.
The conclusion is also not strong concerning deaths outside of China: the predominant demographic of nCOV deaths so far are 60+
year old men with severe health problems; I'd not be surprised that these types of people don't travel much, if at all.
Not to mention that it has been only the US who is using its shameful schadenfreude to try to profit from the outbreak of the
Coronavirus epidemic, debunking some commenters´ here theory on that it is the "West" who is using this on the grounds of information
warfare.
No European country has made such thing, as the statements from the Chinese authorities have clearly showed, calling only on the
US to stop using this infection as informational weapon.
More leaders from foreign countries and heads of international organizations have recently expressed their support for the
battle of #China against the outbreak of the new #coronavirus and praised China's measures to prevent and control the epidemic.
"We all live in a global village and we must fight together against disasters." Leaders of foreign political parties have expressed
their support for #China's efforts in the battle against the outbreak of the new #coronavirus in messages addressed to the
CCP.
On how this has been clearly used by the US against China, in spite of the recent and missleading Twitts and phone calls by the
Donald ( surely provoked by the absolute isolation amongst the international community on his and his admnistration use of this
event for profit ):
"... "a correct comparison is not SARS or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold." ..."
"... However, a breakdown of the figures in cities in Hubei paints a different picture. In Wuhan, the center of the outbreak with a population of 11 million, the fatality rate was 4.09% with 10,117 people infected and 414 deaths. In Huanggang, the second-largest city in Hubei, with a population of 6.29 million, the fatality rate was 1.6% with 29 people out of 1,807 infected patients having died. ..."
"... On January 24, Yuen Kwok-yung , chair of Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong's Department of Microbiology, and his team wrote in an article published in The Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, that the Wuhan coronavirus could be more infectious than SARS as its attack rate was 83%, based on the fact that six out of seven people in a Shenzhen family were infected. ..."
"... the coronavirus could survive on a stainless steel surface for 36 hours, but sunlight could shorten its half-life from 13-20 minutes in the dark to just to 2.5 minutes. ..."
"... Fukuda, a former special representative for antimicrobial resistance for the Director-General of the World Health Organization, said it was too early to predict that the Wuhan virus would be contained in April and May, as it has proved contagious in tropical places such as Singapore and Bangkok. ..."
No worse than a 'bad cold' say some experts, but others fear it could kill 14,000 people in Hong
Kong alone
Pathologists, microbiologists and public health experts from the University of Hong Kong have
expressed different views about the lethality of the Wuhan coronavirus in a bid to help governments
shape their strategies against the epidemic.
Based on different scientific evidence and
viewpoints, some said the mortality or fatality rate, which indicates the lethality of the Wuhan
coronavirus could be as low as 0.6% and that it may go down further if more minor cases are
recorded.
Others said even if the mortality rate was between 1-2%, compared with 7% of the severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS), the Wuhan virus could kill tens of thousands of people due to it being
highly contagious.
The fatality rate of the Wuhan disease in
mainland China was between 2.2% and 2.4% but the percentage outside mainland China was 0.6%, given
that only two people had died from 321 confirmed cases,
John Nicholls
, a Clinical Professor in Pathology at the University of Hong Kong, told Asia
Times in an email.
"Whether this difference reflects a delay in disease progression, different criteria in
reporting or other treatment factors requires further investigation, but whichever figure you
choose, there is certainly a reduced mortality compared with Sars or Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome (Mers)," Nicholls said.
In an unpublished transcript from a February 6
conference call with personnel at Hong Kong's CLSA investment group
, which has been widely
circulated on the internet, Prof Nicholls is quoted as saying that "a correct comparison is not SARS or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold."
(Note: Asia Times takes no responsibility for the accuracy of the transcript).
According to China's National Health Commission, the number of people infected with the Wuhan
coronavirus
amounted
to 31,774 as of Friday, with the death toll at 722. The fatality rate, or the ratio of
the number of deaths to infections, is 2.27%. The figure has remained at around 2.2% since late
January.
As of Wednesday, the number of infections in Hubei province totalled 19,665, 70% of the total
number on the mainland. The death toll in the central China province amounted to 549 – about 97.5%
of all deaths reported in the country to date. The fatality rate in the province was 2.79%.
However, a
breakdown
of the figures in cities in Hubei paints a different picture. In Wuhan, the center of
the outbreak with a population of 11 million, the fatality rate was 4.09% with 10,117 people
infected and 414 deaths. In Huanggang, the second-largest city in Hubei, with a population of 6.29
million, the fatality rate was 1.6% with 29 people out of 1,807 infected patients having died.
In Tianmen, with a population of 1.73 million, the percentage reached 7.25% as 10 people out of
138 patients died. In Ezhou, with a population of 1.08 million, the percentage was 4.26% as 18 out
of 423 people who had the disease died.
It would be useful to track whether there was a significant difference in mortality and
morbidity within the major outbreak cities in mainland China, Nicholls said, as that may give an
indication on how severe the Wuhan disease is.
It was important not to look at the mortality rate in Wuhan solely but also the figures outside
Wuhan, as Hubei province was overwhelmed by a lot of milder cases because people were not admitted
to hospital, Nicholls is quoted as
saying
in
the transcript above. "It's important not [only] to look at the mortality rate in Wuhan but to look
at the mortality rate in Shanghai or Shenzhen" where it was much less deadly, he said.
Meanwhile, some other scientists
warned
that it could be too early to conclude the fatality rate because "it takes time to die
from the coronavirus."
Epidemic in Hong Kong
As of 8pm on Friday, the number of infections in Hong Kong was 26. One person died from the
disease on February 4. The fatality rate was 3.8% but based on very small numbers.
On January 24,
Yuen Kwok-yung
, chair of Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong's Department of
Microbiology, and his team wrote in an
article
published in The Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, that the Wuhan
coronavirus could be more infectious than SARS as its attack rate was 83%, based on the fact that
six out of seven people in a Shenzhen family were infected.
The attack rate for SARS virus ranged from 10.3% to 60%, according to a
previous
research study.
On February 1, Yuen said in a radio program that if the Hong Kong government did not take any
measures, the number of people infected with the Wuhan disease could reach 1.4 million people –
about 20% of the city's population.
He said 14,000 people could be killed by the virus in Hong Kong if an estimated fatality rate of
1%, instead of the current 2%, was used for calculation.
In an
article
published by Stand News on Friday, a Hong Kong-based columnist explained how Yuen made
the estimation.
Yuen cited data from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection that about 17.6 to 25.4% of
patients with flu symptoms were diagnosed with seasonal influenza in emergency rooms at peak flu
season, it said. He also used the reported fatality rate of 2% on the mainland – but halved it to
reduce public panic.
The article said 2,618 out of 1.4 million people would die if the mortality rate of flu-related
diseases (0.187%) between 2009 and 2016 in Hong Kong was used instead. And 14 people would die if
the global mortality rate of the 2009 H1N1 or swine influenza (0.001 to 0.007%) was used.
In fact, 356 deaths were
recorded
in Hong Kong during the influenza season between December 30, 2018 and April 6, 2019,
according to the Centre for Health Protection.
Sunlight, temperature and humidity
Apart from the fatality rate, the thermal tolerance – the temperature range at which the Wuhan
virus can survive – was also another hot debate topic among scientists.
There were articles published on temperature and humidity linked to coronaviruses and SARS, from
an outbreak of the latter disease in 2003, Nicholls told Asia Times.
He told
CNN
on Thursday that the Wuhan virus would be like SARS – as "the world is going to get
basically a very bad cold for about five months."
He also said elsewhere that the coronavirus could survive on a stainless steel surface for 36
hours, but sunlight could shorten its half-life from 13-20 minutes in the dark to just to 2.5
minutes.
The virus could remain intact at 4-10° Celsius for a longer period of time, he said, so
Australia and the southern hemisphere would not see any great infections, as they are now in the
middle of summer. And, the virus did not like high humidity.
But,
Keiji Fukuda
, director and Clinical Professor at the University of Hong Kong's Division of
Community Medicine and Public Health Practice, said in an interview with
Sing Tao Daily
on Friday the Wuhan disease may not necessarily disappear in summer.
Fukuda, a former special representative for antimicrobial resistance for the Director-General of
the World Health Organization, said it was too early to predict that the Wuhan virus would be
contained in April and May, as it has proved contagious in tropical places such as Singapore and
Bangkok.
The value of that observation is at least questionable as most cases of infection in Thailand
and Singapore were brought in by Chinese travellers, with no evidence of significant community
transmission initially.
The novel Coronavirus (nCoV19) epidemic is a receding danger but its effects will stay
with us for some time. Here is an update on the current situation.
In general, with the increase in isolation and treatment work, the number of new suspected
cases nationwide has decreased, and the number of new confirmed cases outside Hubei has
fallen for 4 consecutive days . The situation of the new coronavirus epidemic situation may
have improved. On the 7th, the first confirmed case appeared in only one city, and the
number of newly cured cases exceeded the number of new deaths for 9 consecutive days,
indicating that the epidemic was under control.
The graphic below shows the newly suspected cases per day (yellow) and the number of newly
confirmed cases per day (red).
Newly suspected cases get tested and it takes about a day until they are 'converted' to
confirmed cases or removed from the count. It makes therefore sense to combine those numbers
and to show a total of new cases per day.
Posted by b at
17:18 UTC |
Comments (58) thanks for this b.... your quote "The Chinese authorities will soon have to
balance public safety with the necessity of economic activities. They are likely to stay
cautious. They will want to make sure that the epidemic is under total control before
allowing a return to normal life." it reminds me of how messed up the world is where economic
activities are always interfering with our priorities... i was just saying this on the boeing
thread - when money is an important priority - people make wrong decisions..
China's economy is severely effected by the epidemic.
China wisely decided to take extraordinary measures at an early stage. If they hadn't done
so, the impact on the people and the economy would've ultimately been much much greater.
"This will likely speed up the 'decoupling' from China which the U.S. under Trump promotes."
The whole talking-point about 'decoupling' borders on fantasy. China is the supply-chain
capital of the world; while US manufacturing has been gutted and will not return without
ginormous initiative for industrial planning by the US govt, which is highly unlikely given
the current political ideology.
The only meaningful area we can speak of 'decoupling' is in military manufacturing, such
as US attempts to sever dual-use drones purchases from Chinese DJI; and to move
semi-conductor production back to the US, for example by trying to pressure TSMC to re-locate
to the US. The purpose of such military decoupling is to minimize disruption in the case of a
US-China hot war.
In the larger economic picture, there is no meaningful way to de-couple from China, for
the US or any major economic power such as Germany for that matter, not just because China
manufactures so much but also because it is the biggest purchaser of goods and services;
indeed is the largest trading partner for most countries in the world.
Undoubtedly JR, but I can't help but notice how the extraordinary measures taken by China
were described as both "draconian" and "late" at the same time.
China is not facing a deadly outbreak of a corona virus alone, the world is facing an also
deadly outbreak of rumour induced stupidity the viral cause being lead by "social"
networks.
we are wading through Incredible hyper-reporting. One news site in Olso, Norway has a
"professor" reporting 50,000 infections per day. Bet he does not read, speak Mandarin or
Cantonese.
We are seeing disruptions in supply chain - the just-in-time delivery on which global
economy relies will be more pronounced in another month. [household goods to chemical,
medical products] A walk down the isle or factory floor reads "Product of China" : "Made in
China"
All that stuff reminds me so much of the "climate change" (we're guilty off of course) thing.
The target here was the chinese, I feel chinese these days.
"Japan also said on Saturday that one of its citizens had died in a Wuhan hospital from a
suspected case of the coronavirus. But the Japanese Foreign Ministry said that based on
information it received from the Chinese authorities, it could not confirm whether the man,
who was in his 60s, had been infected with the new virus. The ministry called the cause of
death viral pneumonia."
Nope cornonavirus cases are going down, but "viral pneumonia" cases are through the
roof..s/
Do you rely on the BLS - Bureau of Labor Statistics?
droje @10;
Professor N.Ferguson, Imperial College of London, went on record February 3rd stating
that the real rate of infection is now 50,000/day.
did you read his was a computer modelling? Garbage in; garbage out. The guy is guessing
and fear mongering.
"My best guess now is" said he.
"My best guess now is perhaps 100,000 cases right now," Neil Ferguson, a public health
expert at Imperial College in London who's been estimating the disease's spread for the
World Health Organization, told the Guardian. He thinks the actual number could be anywhere
between 30,000 and 200,000. [.]
He thinks! That is quite a range? But let's run with the higher number.
Garbage in, garbage out.
there was a time when westerners thought China was all rice paddies and bowl hats. No
factories, no technology, no industries. 1992.
Fast Forward China is now our warehouse.
China is at the forefront of:
medical research: Check the link @ 6
technology: supercomputers 5 G left west trailing to catch up.
"Guangzhou, the capital of China's southwestern Guangdong Province and the country's fifth
largest city with nearly 15 million residents, has just joined the ranks of cities imposing a
mandatory lockdown on all citizens, effectively trapping residents inside their homes, with
only limited permission to venture into the outside world to buy essential supplies.
The decision means 3 provinces, 60 cities and 400 million people are now facing China's
most-strict level of lockdown as Beijing struggles to contain the coronavirus outbreak as the
virus has already spread to more than 2 dozen countries."
400 million quarantined, but yeah, nothing to see Occupatio @ 15:
I looked up Dr N Ferguson whom Dorje refers to @ 10 and discovered at the RMS blog @
www.rms.com that Dr Neil Ferguson obtained his PhD in theoretical physics at Oxford
University and specialises in infectious disease modelling using sparse observational data at
Imperial College in London under WHO auspices.
Lancet article "Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread
of the 2019-nCoV outbreak..." supports your position. Respected medical journal maintaining a
series of resource articles on nCoV. Also see Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of
99 cases of nCoV. Note that recently confirmed as pandemic by WHO.
Anecdotal reporting indicates that Dr. Fauci, US virologist with CDC is currently in China,
WHO is sending in teams. Would anticipate perhaps better epidemiological info in upcoming
weeks, with better detailed methodology, particularly as regards missing data which in this
situation is crucial.
I see no reason to doubt the Chinese government numbers as it is in THEIR best interest to
get this thing under control. They have no way to benefit from hiding any higher numbers. It
would not work as the epidemic would continue to spread. How would China's government profit
from that?
People in Wuhan have been left to die at home. The government went around dragging
people into the quarantine camps where, so far, their is no medical care let alone proper
sanitation. They don't have enough testing, supplies, masks, etc.
In fact there are police and others working door to door to take peoples' temperature.
Those who have significant symptoms will have to see a doctor and may get quarantined. Those
places where that happens are large sports or conference centers which have sanitations for
mass events. Medical personal has been deployed and is available where needed.
Test kits are now available. The WHO alone distributed at least a quarter million. China
produces them en mass. There might be still be a lack in qualified laboratory personal and
laboratory space.
It took some time to recognize the danger of this outbreak. The local doctors (see
recommended piece) were pretty fast in getting it. It took some time for that to filter
upward through the bureaucracy. China is country of 1.4 billion people. A sudden local
increase of pneumonia death of some 20 or 50 people takes time to be recognized at the top
level.
After that happened China did all the right things. Identified the virus, alarmed the global
public, isolated the epidemic, moved all possible resources to the response.
The H1N1 broke out in the U.S. and Mexico in April 2009. It took President Obama until
October 2009 to declare it a national emergency. By that time it had already spread worldwide
and in the end killed some 17,000 people. What do you think would have happened if nCoV19
would have emerged in the U.S.?
All this talk of 50000 new cases per day is nonsense.
The numbers for Hong Kong and Macao are compiled independently from the Chinese government.
These figures are currently 26 for HK and 10 for Macao.
These figures are completely in line with the official Chinese figues on a province by
province basis, where Guangdong, for example, now has 1095 infections according to official
figures.
All of These exaggerated numbers are either hysteria, clickbait or propaganda.
Jackrabbit , Feb 8
2020 21:04 utc |
30Michael , Feb 8 2020 21:09 utc |
31
Thanks b! Asia Times has an article with some interesting facts on fatality rates, virus
longevity in different environment (it likes cold temps), etc. Their bottom line was it was
like a severe cold, but lasted longer.
If you go over to www.cdc.gov, you will see that over a 4-month period from 1 October 2019
to 1 February 2020, at least 22 million Americans caught influenza and at least 12,000 have
died from it.That works out to 3,000 deaths per month. And these are conservative
estimates.
That sure puts the Wuhan-origin coronavirus infection scare into some perspective.
This c-virus itself is a nothing-burger then? (It would still be good to hear from that
research scientist and that lab in Wuhan though. What were they up to? What are they
researching and was there an "accident"?)
Does the media hysteria, travel bans and the like fulfill a bigger purpose? It all does
make for diversion of attention from other developments. And, of course, we have yet to
experience the secondary consequences and fall out.
Robert @27 and Dorje The Indomitable can have their opinions, yet B's empirical analysis
makes far more sense than the statements they have posted. Why indeed would the Chinese gov't
lie about the numbers of infections if the infection rates were as high as R and D have
claimed? Such high numbers would quickly expose the lie, and the Chinese gov't would then be
completely discredited, and hence the reason to lie in this case is vastly reduced, as our
host has pointed out.
As for Prof Ferguson's epidemiological model: I have an MSc degree in Mathematics, and
I've worked with plenty of epidemiologists, trying to implement their often vague ideas into
valid mathematical models. Such models can only be back-validated (and climate models suffer
from the same problem), meaning their various parameters and so-called "fudge factors" (that
is really the term!) must be adjusted so that their predictions agree with data from past
epidemics. Since every epidemic is different from every other in often quite subtle ways,
epidemiologists "specialise" in fudging a model's parameters (hence the term "fudge factor")
so that the model now agrees with historical data. Yet why would current epidemics always
behave like past epidemics? No epidemiologist I have asked was ever able to answer this
question with the hard empirical reasoning that is science's only guarantee, and hence the
predictions are really not all that trustworthy.
Model this: as of today there were 343 2019-nCoV cases reported OUTSIDE China. There is
exactly ONE death recorded OUTSIDE China in the Phillipines, or a fatality rate of .3%.
Now, I'm including HK as part of China, but if you disagree then there are exactly TWO
fatal cases, or a rate of .6%. Hardly apocalyptic.
Considering that U.S. patients were identified over two weeks ago, according to hysterical
nutcases we should be seeing an explosion of new patients from cross-infection. Where are
they?
Dorje, Robert, et al
Your point of view is noted.
It is 9 February. Let's review on 1st April and see how things are then.
If there is pandemic, then everyone will need to apologise to you for not listening.
If the epidemic has been controlled and the infection rate has dropped to low levels, then I
guess you'll admit that you got it wrong.
Sound fair?
Siotu -perhaps part of a long-term effort to "other" and vilify the Chinese, in the
eventuality of a hot war where you will be required to die fighting them.
I see no reason to doubt the Chinese government numbers as it is in THEIR best interest to
get this thing under control. They have no way to benefit from hiding any higher numbers. It
would not work as the epidemic would continue to spread. How would China's government profit
from that?
That's a non sequitur.
It fails to demonstrate that the government needs to tell the true numbers. It only
demonstrates the obvious: govt needs to know the correct numbers in order to be able to act
accordingly and effectively.
Furthermore, no govt action would work if there is panic or social trouble. For that
reason, lying on the numbers may be a necessary tool for the victory against the
epidemic.
On the other side I don't believe the Tencent numbers. Do somebody knows the source of
that story? From my quick and dirty search, it looks like it was a Taiwanese newspaper which
is regularly smearing China.
On the other side of the other side, I give some credit to the Lancet article. Some
commentators went away with it by saying: "It's simulation, and you know that garbage in -
garbage out ". Did he notice there was no garbage in the input data? They were 1) numbers of
cases outside China and 2)numbers of travelers who went outside China.
Let's say 200 repatriated from Wuhan to France, one week ago. According to the Lancet paper,
one would have expected one contaminated amongst the repatriated. And we got exactly what was
expected. On the next batch of 250 repatriated there was no cases.
To conclude:
- the thesis of the correctness of officially released Chinese data has no strong argument
for it.
- the Lancet is probably overestimating, maybe 2 times. The reality would still be several
times above official numbers.
By the way, one key witness of the skripal-like story of a Chinese spy stealing the virus
in Canada will not be able to help. Dr. Frank Plummer just died unexpectedly...
Posted by: Theophrastus | Feb 8 2020 21:45 utc | 35
[.] "Since every epidemic is different from every other in often quite subtle ways,
epidemiologists "specialise" in fudging a model's parameters (hence the term "fudge factor")
so that the model now agrees with historical data. Yet why would current epidemics always
behave like past epidemics? No epidemiologist I have asked was ever able to answer this
question with the hard empirical reasoning that is science's only guarantee, and hence the
predictions are really not all that trustworthy."
Kudos. Thank you.
In grabbing "numbers" what has been overlooked by most is the fact that the Prof Ferguson
said he was "estimating" "guessing'
And there is that bit of anti-China seeping through.
b reminded us of the 2009 swine flu. Fear mongering went with that one too. Governments
bought millions of doses of vaccines, months after some 4.7 million vaccines were destroyed.
It's only money.
If nCoV is indeed a bio weapon, a Frankenstein entity bioengineered by man: http://stateofthenation.co/?p=6103
And if this came from outside of China, then, I suspect the Chinese gov are indeed lying.
It is like in a war. The enemy fires some heavy duty weapons at you and you try hide the
effect of it. Not to mention that revealing the true situation could get the gov toppled.
This could be to big of a loss for them to remain on top.
'What do you think would have happened if nCoV19 would have emerged in the U.S.?" b@24
That is the big question: the US is totally oriented towards maximising profits for the
healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. There are large areas in which half or more of the
population is uninsured and thus beyond the purview of doctors and other practitioners. All
infrastructure including those vital to public health are in an unprecedented state of
disrepair and collapse.
Jen @32 goes some way to answering the question. Relying on a compliant propaganda apparatus
masquerading as news media the authorities would lie, there would be massive migrations
towards 'safer areas.' And then the killing would start.... Among the first victims would
independent sources of information.
The economic blowback will be the same regardless of the true scale of the epidemic. It will
take as long to ratchet up production lines again as they have been down. That means that the
supply-chain issues are only going to get worse even if the scale of the epidemic is
decreasing. Countries like mine (Australia) will feel it both ways (lower demand for
commodities, more expensive parts/supply), and then some: Australia's economy is baked into
China's, especially in the service sector -- $34b/annum tertiary education sector, 25% of
tourist market, with the added effect that Chinese tourists outspend the next highest
spenders (those from the US) by 3 to 1. At the university I work at, 6000 Chinese students
cannot return to Australia to commence the first semester of the year (beginning Feb 24). One
can only imagine the loss of fees, accomodation spending, per diem spending in local
businesses, etc. Australia will not lift the travel ban until they are absolutely sure -- and
if there is such uncertainty about the true scale of the epidemic or the reliability of the
CCP reporting, then the travel ban will last longer than is necessary. There are fears here
that this will finally tip Australia into recession.
Which raises a further question, linked to scale: Is the exaggerated response a calculated
pretext for decoupling? I wonder whether our government is using the opportunity to
precipitate an economic crisis for which it would be otherwise blamed. The collateral damage
is going to be extensive. Universities in Australia, who have lost almost half their public
funding in the last 25 years, and who are utterly dependent on Chinese patronage, are soiling
themselves as we speak. It won't matter in the end whether it was a real or fake epidemic,
the 'contagion' (as they say in financial doublespeak) has already begun.
All reports and remarks about a Case Fatality Rate of 2% or less are nonsense.
After infection diagnosis, median time to death (if death occurs) was reported to be around
two weeks, and might even be longer.
Implication: you have to compare accumulated deaths as of today with total infections two
weeks ago. Prof. Ferguson mentioned this as well. Kindly ask B and others to consider this
methodical approach. It seems to be very important to get a more realistic feeling for the
CFR. This virus is very dangerous.
pft @62:
Yes, the coronavirus "incident" has the feel of a rehearsal to me. I know it's difficult, but
I think we ought to struggle to keep alive our skepticism. We are taking the media on faith.
We do not in fact actually know if there is an epidemic, let alone if it is severe.
Once again I call everyone's attention to the preparatory work:
Even if this were not real, but only a hoax, I don't know how it wd look any different.
Fact is-- we are endlessly manipulated by Big Media and know nothing. We're in Plato's
cave.
"decade-old simulation titled "Lock Step" devised by the Rockefeller Foundation in
conjunction with the Global Business Network. The scenario, one of four included in a
publication called "Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development" in
2010, describes a coronavirus-like pandemic that becomes the trigger for the imposition of
police-state controls on movement, economy, and other areas of society."
"... "...real fear or anguish..." in fact only exist in people's heads. Identity politics poisoned neolibs like to externalize these sensations as being tangible features of the physical (non-metaphysical and non-imaginary) world. They are not. ..."
"... The corporate mass media exists solely to manufacture megatrends in society. Whether that is to manufacture mass cravings for a particular color and artificial flavor of carbonated corn syrup water or to manufacture the "real fear or anguish" that we are threatened by scary "others" to get the herd to crowd around symbols of security, the overall purpose is the same: Serve the interests of the big business elites. ..."
"...real fear or anguish..." in fact only exist in people's heads. Identity politics
poisoned neolibs like to externalize these sensations as being tangible features of the
physical (non-metaphysical and non-imaginary) world. They are not.
More topically, the corporate mass media excels at manufacturing "real fear or
anguish" . The farce taking place in HK is a perfect example of this, but we can see
similar examples elsewhere like Venezuela where well-fed upper middle class Venezuelans are
convinced beyond reason that Venezuelans (others that they don't know) are starving, or like
in Ukraine where western Ukrainians were certain in their anguish that eastern Ukrainians
were being killed by Russians. Many Americans are still experiencing very "real
fear or anguish" that Russians are wrecking their sham "Democracy™" . As
real as this may seem to the delusional and hysterical, it is still delusion and
hysteria.
The corporate mass media exists solely to manufacture megatrends in society. Whether
that is to manufacture mass cravings for a particular color and artificial flavor of
carbonated corn syrup water or to manufacture the "real fear or anguish" that we are
threatened by scary "others" to get the herd to crowd around symbols of security, the overall
purpose is the same: Serve the interests of the big business elites.
"... But you have to admit, it's a well-played scam: the CIA stirs up internal chaos in a country, and the US military then completes the destabilization program by bombing it into submission or terminal chaos. ..."
Is "national security" really the goal of the US military, or is "multinational corporation security" the real reason the US has
thousands of military bases around the world?
The US taxpayer foots the security bill for the same corporations that buy all of
our national elections.
But you have to admit, it's a well-played scam: the CIA stirs up internal chaos in a country, and the
US military then completes the destabilization program by bombing it into submission or terminal chaos.
"... Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans, but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon. ..."
"... This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps. Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent shape public perception." ..."
"... During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no one really wanted. ..."
"... When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. ..."
"... Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of war." ..."
"... The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam. ..."
"... Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. ..."
The war on Iraq won't be remembered for how it was waged so much as for how it was sold. It
was a propaganda war, a war of perception management, where loaded phrases, such as "weapons of
mass destruction" and "rogue state" were hurled like precision weapons at the target audience:
us.
To understand the Iraq war you don't need to consult generals, but the spin doctors and PR
flacks who stage-managed the countdown to war from the murky corridors of Washington where
politics, corporate spin and psy-ops spooks cohabit.
Consider the picaresque journey of Tony Blair's plagiarized dossier on Iraq, from a grad
student's website to a cut-and-paste job in the prime minister's bombastic speech to the House
of Commons. Blair, stubborn and verbose, paid a price for his grandiose puffery. Bush, who
looted whole passages from Blair's speech for his own clumsy presentations, has skated freely
through the tempest. Why?
Unlike Blair, the Bush team never wanted to present a legal case for war. They had no
interest in making any of their allegations about Iraq hold up to a standard of proof. The real
effort was aimed at amping up the mood for war by using the psychology of fear.
Facts were never important to the Bush team. They were disposable nuggets that could be
discarded at will and replaced by whatever new rationale that played favorably with their polls
and focus groups. The war was about weapons of mass destruction one week, al-Qaeda the next.
When neither allegation could be substantiated on the ground, the fall back position became the
mass graves (many from the Iran/Iraq war where the U.S.A. backed Iraq) proving that Saddam was
an evil thug who deserved to be toppled. The motto of the Bush PR machine was: Move on. Don't
explain. Say anything to conceal the perfidy behind the real motives for war. Never look back.
Accuse the questioners of harboring unpatriotic sensibilities. Eventually, even the cagey
Wolfowitz admitted that the official case for war was made mainly to make the invasion
palatable, not to justify it.
The Bush claque of neocon hawks viewed the Iraq war as a product and, just like a new pair
of Nikes, it required a roll-out campaign to soften up the consumers. The same techniques (and
often the same PR gurus) that have been used to hawk cigarettes, SUVs and nuclear waste dumps
were deployed to retail the Iraq war. To peddle the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell
and company recruited public relations gurus into top-level jobs at the Pentagon and the State
Department. These spinmeisters soon had more say over how the rationale for war on Iraq should
be presented than intelligence agencies and career diplomats. If the intelligence didn't fit
the script, it was shaded, retooled or junked.
Take Charlotte Beers whom Powell picked as undersecretary of state in the post-9/11 world.
Beers wasn't a diplomat. She wasn't even a politician. She was a grand diva of spin, known on
the business and gossip pages as "the queen of Madison Avenue." On the strength of two
advertising campaigns, one for Uncle Ben's Rice and another for Head and Shoulder's dandruff
shampoo, Beers rocketed to the top of the heap in the PR world, heading two giant PR houses:
Ogilvy and Mathers as well as J. Walter Thompson.
At the State Department Beers, who had met Powell in 1995 when they both served on the board
of Gulf Airstream, worked at, in Powell's words, "the branding of U.S. foreign policy." She
extracted more than $500 million from Congress for her Brand America campaign, which largely
focused on beaming U.S. propaganda into the Muslim world, much of it directed at teens.
"Public diplomacy is a vital new arm in what will combat terrorism over time," said Beers.
"All of a sudden we are in this position of redefining who America is, not only for ourselves,
but for the outside world." Note the rapt attention Beers pays to the manipulation of
perception, as opposed, say, to alterations of U.S. policy.
Old-fashioned diplomacy involves direct communication between representatives of nations, a
conversational give and take, often fraught with deception (see April Glaspie), but an exchange
nonetheless. Public diplomacy, as defined by Beers, is something else entirely. It's a one-way
street, a unilateral broadcast of American propaganda directly to the public, domestic and
international, a kind of informational carpet-bombing.
The themes of her campaigns were as simplistic and flimsy as a Bush press conference. The
American incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were all about bringing the balm of "freedom" to
oppressed peoples. Hence, the title of the U.S. war: Operation Iraqi Freedom, where cruise
missiles were depicted as instruments of liberation. Bush himself distilled the Beers equation
to its bizarre essence: "This war is about peace."
Beers quietly resigned her post a few weeks before the first volley of tomahawk missiles
battered Baghdad. From her point of view, the war itself was already won, the fireworks of
shock and awe were all after play.
Over at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld drafted Victoria "Torie" Clarke as his director of
public affairs. Clarke knew the ropes inside the Beltway. Before becoming Rumsfeld's
mouthpiece, she had commanded one of the world's great parlors for powerbrokers: Hill and
Knowlton's D.C. office.
Almost immediately upon taking up her new gig, Clarke convened regular meetings with a
select group of Washington's top private PR specialists and lobbyists to develop a marketing
plan for the Pentagon's forthcoming terror wars. The group was filled with heavy-hitters and
was strikingly bipartisan in composition. She called it the Rumsfeld Group and it included PR
executive Sheila Tate, columnist Rich Lowry, and Republican political consultant Rich
Galen.
The brain trust also boasted top Democratic fixer Tommy Boggs, brother of NPR's Cokie
Roberts and son of the late Congressman Hale Boggs of Louisiana. At the very time Boggs was
conferring with top Pentagon brass on how to frame the war on terror, he was also working
feverishly for the royal family of Saudi Arabia. In 2002 alone, the Saudis paid his Qorvis PR
firm $20.2 million to protect its interests in Washington. In the wake of hostile press
coverage following the exposure of Saudi links to the 9/11 hijackers, the royal family needed
all the well-placed help it could buy. They seem to have gotten their money's worth. Boggs'
felicitous influence-peddling may help to explain why the references to Saudi funding of
al-Qaeda were dropped from the recent congressional report on the investigation into
intelligence failures and 9/11.
According to the trade publication PR Week, the Rumsfeld Group sent "messaging advice" to
the Pentagon. The group told Clarke and Rumsfeld that in order to get the American public to
buy into the war on terrorism, they needed to suggest a link to nation states, not just
nebulous groups such as al-Qaeda. In other words, there needed to be a fixed target for the
military campaigns, some distant place to drop cruise missiles and cluster bombs. They
suggested the notion (already embedded in Rumsfeld's mind) of playing up the notion of
so-called rogue states as the real masters of terrorism. Thus was born the Axis of Evil, which,
of course, wasn't an "axis" at all, since two of the states, Iran and Iraq, hated each other,
and neither had anything at all to do with the third, North Korea.
Tens of millions in federal money were poured into private public relations and media firms
working to craft and broadcast the Bush dictat that Saddam had to be taken out before the Iraqi
dictator blew up the world by dropping chemical and nuclear bombs from long-range drones. Many
of these PR executives and image consultants were old friends of the high priests in the Bush
inner sanctum. Indeed, they were veterans, like Cheney and Powell, of the previous war against
Iraq, another engagement that was more spin than combat .
At the top of the list was John Rendon, head of the D.C. firm, the Rendon Group. Rendon is
one of Washington's heaviest hitters, a Beltway fixer who never let political affiliation stand
in the way of an assignment. Rendon served as a media consultant for Michael Dukakis and Jimmy
Carter, as well as Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Whenever the Pentagon wanted to go to war, he
offered his services at a price. During Desert Storm, Rendon pulled in $100,000 a month from
the Kuwaiti royal family. He followed this up with a $23 million contract from the CIA to
produce anti-Saddam propaganda in the region.
As part of this CIA project, Rendon created and named the Iraqi National Congress and tapped
his friend Ahmed Chalabi, the shady financier, to head the organization.
Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon handed the Rendon Group another big assignment: public
relations for the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Rendon was also deeply involved in the planning
and public relations for the pre-emptive war on Iraq, though both Rendon and the Pentagon
refuse to disclose the details of the group's work there.
But it's not hard to detect the manipulative hand of Rendon behind many of the Iraq war's
signature events, including the toppling of the Saddam statue (by U.S. troops and Chalabi
associates) and videotape of jubilant Iraqis waving American flags as the Third Infantry rolled
by them. Rendon had pulled off the same stunt in the first Gulf War, handing out American flags
to Kuwaitis and herding the media to the orchestrated demonstration. "Where do you think they
got those American flags?" clucked Rendon in 1991. "That was my assignment."
The Rendon Group may also have had played a role in pushing the phony intelligence that has
now come back to haunt the Bush administration. In December of 2002, Robert Dreyfuss reported
that the inner circle of the Bush White House preferred the intelligence coming from Chalabi
and his associates to that being proffered by analysts at the CIA.
So Rendon and his circle represented a new kind of off-the-shelf PSYOPs , the privatization
of official propaganda. "I am not a national security strategist or a military tactician," said
Rendon. "I am a politician, and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or
corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior and a perception
manager."
What exactly, is perception management? The Pentagon defines it this way: "actions to convey
and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their
emotions, motives and objective reasoning." In other words, lying about the intentions of the
U.S. government. In a rare display of public frankness, the Pentagon actually let slip its plan
(developed by Rendon) to establish a high-level den inside the Department Defense for
perception management. They called it the Office of Strategic Influence and among its many
missions was to plant false stories in the press.
Nothing stirs the corporate media into outbursts of pious outrage like an official
government memo bragging about how the media are manipulated for political objectives. So the
New York Times and Washington Post threw indignant fits about the Office of Strategic
Influence; the Pentagon shut down the operation, and the press gloated with satisfaction on its
victory. Yet, Rumsfeld told the Pentagon press corps that while he was killing the office, the
same devious work would continue. "You can have the corpse," said Rumsfeld. "You can have the
name. But I'm going to keep doing every single thing that needs to be done. And I have."
At a diplomatic level, despite the hired guns and the planted stories, this image war was
lost. It failed to convince even America's most fervent allies and dependent client states that
Iraq posed much of a threat. It failed to win the blessing of the U.N. and even NATO, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Washington. At the end of the day, the vaunted coalition of the willing
consisted of Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia, and a cohort of former Soviet bloc nations. Even
so, the citizens of the nations that cast their lot with the U.S.A. overwhelmingly opposed the
war.
Domestically, it was a different story. A population traumatized by terror threats and
shattered economy became easy prey for the saturation bombing of the Bush message that Iraq was
a terrorist state linked to al-Qaeda that was only minutes away from launching attacks on
America with weapons of mass destruction.
Americans were the victims of an elaborate con job, pelted with a daily barrage of
threat inflation, distortions, deceptions and lies, not about tactics or strategy or war plans,
but about justifications for war. The lies were aimed not at confusing Saddam's regime, but the
American people. By the start of the war, 66 per cent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was
behind 9/11 and 79 per cent thought he was close to having a nuclear weapon.
Of course, the closest Saddam came to possessing a nuke was a rusting gas centrifuge buried
for 13 years in the garden of Mahdi Obeidi, a retired Iraqi scientist. Iraq didn't have any
functional chemical or biological weapons. In fact, it didn't even possess any SCUD missiles,
despite erroneous reports fed by Pentagon PR flacks alleging that it had fired SCUDs into
Kuwait.
This charade wouldn't have worked without a gullible or a complicit press corps.
Victoria Clarke, who developed the Pentagon plan for embedded reports, put it succinctly a few
weeks before the war began: "Media coverage of any future operation will to a large extent
shape public perception."
During the Vietnam War, TV images of maimed GIs and napalmed villages suburbanized
opposition to the war and helped hasten the U.S. withdrawal. The Bush gang meant to turn the
Vietnam phenomenon on its head by using TV as a force to propel the U.S.A. into a war that no
one really wanted.
What the Pentagon sought was a new kind of living room war, where instead of photos of
mangled soldiers and dead Iraqi kids, they could control the images Americans viewed and to a
large extent the content of the stories. By embedding reporters inside selected divisions,
Clarke believed the Pentagon could count on the reporters to build relationships with the
troops and to feel dependent on them for their own safety. It worked, naturally. One reporter
for a national network trembled on camera that the U.S. Army functioned as "our protectors."
The late David Bloom of NBC confessed on the air that he was willing to do "anything and
everything they can ask of us."
When the Pentagon needed a heroic story, the press obliged. Jessica Lynch became the
war's first instant celebrity. Here was a neo-gothic tale of a steely young woman wounded in a
fierce battle, captured and tortured by ruthless enemies, and dramatically saved from certain
death by a team of selfless rescuers, knights in camo and night-vision goggles. Of course,
nearly every detail of her heroic adventure proved to be as fictive and maudlin as any
made-for-TV-movie. But the ordeal of Private Lynch, which dominated the news for more than a
week, served its purpose: to distract attention from a stalled campaign that was beginning to
look at lot riskier than the American public had been hoodwinked into believing.
The Lynch story was fed to the eager press by a Pentagon operation called Combat Camera, the
Army network of photographers, videographers and editors that sends 800 photos and 25 video
clips a day to the media. The editors at Combat Camera carefully culled the footage to present
the Pentagon's montage of the war, eliding such unsettling images as collateral damage, cluster
bombs, dead children and U.S. soldiers, napalm strikes and disgruntled troops.
"A lot of our imagery will have a big impact on world opinion," predicted Lt. Jane Larogue,
director of Combat Camera in Iraq. She was right. But as the hot war turned into an even hotter
occupation, the Pentagon, despite airy rhetoric from occupation supremo Paul Bremer about
installing democratic institutions such as a free press, moved to tighten its monopoly on the
flow images out of Iraq. First, it tried to shut down Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel. Then
the Pentagon intimated that it would like to see all foreign TV news crews banished from
Baghdad.
Few newspapers fanned the hysteria about the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass
destruction as sedulously as did the Washington Post. In the months leading up to the war, the
Post's pro-war op-eds outnumbered the anti-war columns by a 3-to-1 margin.
Back in 1988, the Post felt much differently about Saddam and his weapons of mass
destruction. When reports trickled out about the gassing of Iranian troops, the Washington
Post's editorial page shrugged off the massacres, calling the mass poisonings "a quirk of
war."
The Bush team displayed a similar amnesia. When Iraq used chemical weapons in grisly
attacks on Iran, the U.S. government not only didn't object, it encouraged Saddam.
Anything to punish Iran was the message coming from the White House. Donald Rumsfeld himself
was sent as President Ronald Reagan's personal envoy to Baghdad. Rumsfeld conveyed the bold
message than an Iraq defeat would be viewed as a "strategic setback for the United States."
This sleazy alliance was sealed with a handshake caught on videotape. When CNN reporter Jamie
McIntyre replayed the footage for Rumsfeld in the spring of 2003, the secretary of defense
snapped, "Where'd you get that? Iraqi television?"
The current crop of Iraq hawks also saw Saddam much differently then. Take the writer Laura
Mylroie, sometime colleague of the New York Times' Judy Miller, who persists in peddling the
ludicrous conspiracy that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
How times have changed! In 1987, Mylroie felt downright cuddly toward Saddam. She wrote an
article for the New Republic titled "Back Iraq: Time for a U.S. Tilt in the Mideast," arguing
that the U.S. should publicly embrace Saddam's secular regime as a bulwark against the Islamic
fundamentalists in Iran. The co-author of this mesmerizing weave of wonkery was none other than
Daniel Pipes, perhaps the nation's most bellicose Islamophobe. "The American weapons that Iraq
could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines and
counterartillery radar," wrote Mylroie and Pipes. "The United States might also consider
upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad."
In the rollout for the war, Mylroie seemed to be everywhere hawking the invasion of Iraq.
She would often appear on two or three different networks in the same day. How did the reporter
manage this feat? She had help in the form of Eleana Benador, the media placement guru who runs
Benador Associates. Born in Peru, Benador parlayed her skills as a linguist into a lucrative
career as media relations whiz for the Washington foreign policy elite. She also oversees the
Middle East Forum, a fanatically pro-Zionist white paper mill. Her clients include some of the
nation's most fervid hawks, including Michael Ledeen, Charles Krauthammer, Al Haig, Max Boot,
Daniel Pipes, Richard Perle, and Judy Miller. During the Iraq war, Benador's assignment was to
embed this squadron of pro-war zealots into the national media, on talk shows, and op-ed
pages.
Benador not only got them the gigs, she also crafted the theme and made sure they all stayed
on message. "There are some things, you just have to state them in a different way, in a
slightly different way," said Benador. "If not, people get scared." Scared of intentions of
their own government.
It could have been different. All of the holes in the Bush administration's gossamer case
for war were right there for the mainstream press to expose. Instead, the U.S. press, just like
the oil companies, sought to commercialize the Iraq war and profit from the invasions. They
didn't want to deal with uncomfortable facts or present voices of dissent.
Nothing sums up this unctuous approach more brazenly than MSNBC's firing of liberal talk
show host Phil Donahue on the eve of the war. The network replaced the Donahue Show with a
running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired
generals, security flacks, and other cheerleaders for invasion. The network's executives
blamed the cancellation on sagging ratings. In fact, during its run Donahue's show attracted
more viewers than any other program on the network. The real reason for the pre-emptive strike
on Donahue was spelled out in an internal memo from anxious executives at NBC. Donahue, the
memo said, offered "a difficult face for NBC in a time of war. He seems to delight in
presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's
motives."
The memo warned that Donahue's show risked tarring MSNBC as an unpatriotic network, "a home
for liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every
opportunity." So, with scarcely a second thought, the honchos at MSNBC gave Donahue the boot
and hoisted the battle flag.
It's war that sells.
There's a helluva caveat, of course. Once you buy it, the merchants of war accept no
returns.
When emotion rules the day facts do not matter. Sadly, that is the reality we confront when
it comes to talking about Iran and terrorism. The U.S. Government and almost all of the media
continue to declare that Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism. That is not true. That is a
lie. I realize that calling this assertion a lie opens me to accusations of being an apologist
for Iran. But simply look at the facts.
Iran remains the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism. The regime has spent nearly one
billion dollars per year to support terrorist groups that serve as its proxies and expand its
malign influence across the globe. Tehran has funded international terrorist groups such as
Hizballah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It also has engaged in its own terrorist
plotting around the world, particularly in Europe. In January, German authorities investigated
10 suspected Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force operatives. In the summer,
authorities in Belgium, France, and Germany thwarted an Iranian plot to bomb a political rally
near Paris, France. In October, an Iranian operative was arrested for planning an assassination
in Denmark, and in December, Albania expelled two Iranian officials for plotting terrorist
attacks. Furthermore, Tehran continued to allow an AQ facilitation network to operate in Iran,
which sends fighters and money to conflict zones in Afghanistan and Syria, and it has extended
sanctuary to AQ members residing in the country.
You notice what is absent? A list of specific attacks that caused actual casualties. Plans
and plots are not the same as actions. If Iran's malevolent influence was so powerful, we
should be able to point to specific attacks and specific casualties. But you will not find
those facts in the U.S. State Department report because they do not exist. The statistical
annex that details the attacks and the groups responsible reports the following:
The Taliban was responsible for 8,509 deaths and 4,943 injuries, about 25 percent of the
total casualties attributed to terrorism globally in 2018. With 647 terrorist attacks, ISIS was
the next-most-active terrorist organization, responsible for 3,585 fatalities and 1,761
injuries. Having conducted 535 attacks, al-Shabaab was responsible for 2,062 deaths and 1,278
injuries. Boko Haram was among the top-five terrorist perpetrators, with 220 incidents, 1,311
deaths, and 927 injuries. It should be noted that local sources do not always differentiate
between Boko Haram and ISIS-West Africa.
Not a single group linked to Iran or supported by Iran is identified. Look at the this table
from the statistical annex:
No Hezbollah and no Hamas. If a country is going to "sponsor" terrorism then we should
expect to see terrorist attacks. The attacks that are taking place are predominantly from Sunni
affiliated groups that have ties to Saudi Arabia, not Iran.
The State Department's explanation about Iranian support for terrorism exposes what the real
issue is (I am quoting the 2016 report but, if you
read the 2017 or 2018
versions there is no significant difference):
Designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984, Iran continued its terrorist-related
activity in 2016, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and
various groups in Syria, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East. Iran used the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps‑Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to implement foreign policy goals, provide
cover for intelligence operations, and create instability in the Middle East. Iran has
acknowledged the involvement of the IRGC-QF in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria and the IRGC-QF
is Iran's primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.
In 2016, Iran supported various Iraqi Shia terrorist groups, including Kata'ib Hizballah, as
part of an effort to fight ISIS in Iraq and bolster the Assad regime in Syria. Iran views the
Assad regime in Syria as a crucial ally and Syria and Iraq as crucial routes to supply weapons
to Hizballah, Iran's primary terrorist partner. Iran has facilitated and coerced, through
financial or residency enticements, primarily Shia fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan to
participate in the Assad regime's brutal crackdown in Syria. Iranian-supported Shia militias in
Iraq have committed serious human rights abuses against primarily Sunni civilians and Iranian
forces have directly backed militia operations in Syria with armored vehicles, artillery, and
drones.
The United States is upset with Iran because it has thwarted the U.S. covert action in
Syria. It was the United States, along with the U.K., Saudi Arabia and Turkey, that helped
ignite and escalate the civil war in Syria. Why? The Saudis and the Israelis were growing
increasingly concerned in 2011 about Iran's spreading influence in the region. And what enabled
Iran to do that? We did. When the United States removed Saddam Hussein and destroyed the
Baathist movement in Iraq, the Bush Administration thought it was a dandy idea to install Iraqi
Shia in positions of leadership. Not one of the key policymakers on the U.S. side of the
equation expressed any qualms about the fact that these Iraqi politicians and military
personnel had longstanding relationships with Iran, which included financial support.
Iran also had a longstanding relationship with Syria. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
decided that if we could eliminate Bashir Assad, the Syrian leader, then we would weaken Iran.
This was a policy that many Republicans, most notably John McCain and Lindsey Graham,
supported. But the scheme to weaken Iran backfired. Iran, along with Russia, came to the aid of
the Government of Syria in full blown counter-insurgency campaign. Iran, the Russians and the
Syrian Government were fighting radical Sunni islamists, many of whom were funded by the
Western alliance.
Iran's military support for the Government of Syria clearly rankles U.S. policymakers, but
it is not "terrorism." It is pure counter insurgency.
Wikipedia offers additional evidence about the true nature of international terrorism. I
have reviewed the lists of incidents, which includes the description of the attacks, the
perpetrators and the number of casualties for 2016-2018. I have only been able to put the 2016
incidents into a spreadsheet. Here are the actual facts.
In 2016 there were seven terrorist attacks that caused at least 100 casualties. All were
attributed to ISIL aka the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Not one was linked to Iran
or any group receiving financial support from Iran. There were a total of 1753 terrorist
attacks and at least 15,993 deaths during 2016.
Here is the monthly breakdown for 2016:
January -- 105
terrorist attacks that caused the deaths of at least 1,351 people. There were no attacks linked
to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah. The seven attacks in Israel that left 7 dead were
ascribed to a "Palestinian" lone-wolf.
February -- 72
attacks that left 1075 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah. There were seven attacks and 3 dead attributed to "lone-wolf" Palestinians.
March -- 112
attacks leaving at least 778 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah. There were 13 attacks in Israel identified as "lone-wolf" Palestinian. No
significant Israeli casualties.
April -- 152
attacks that caused at least 1012 fatalities. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib
Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
May -- 202 attacks
leaving at least 1600 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah.
June -- 187
attacks and at least 1693 fatalities. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas
or Hezbollah.
July -- 187
attacks with at least 1684 deaths. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or
Hezbollah.
August -- 139
terrorist attacks resulting in 1224 dead. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah,
Hamas or Hezbollah.
September --
128 terrorist attacks, which caused at least 849 fatalities. There were no attacks linked to
Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
October -- 166
terrorist attacks and at least 2139 deaths. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib Hizballah,
Hamas or Hezbollah.
November --
153 terrorist attacks that killed at least 1446. There were no attacks linked to Kata'ib
Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
December --
147 terrorist attacks, which resulted in at least 930 deaths. There were no attacks linked to
Kata'ib Hizballah, Hamas or Hezbollah.
The U.S. State Department continues to insist that Iran is providing indirect support to Al
Qaeda. That is pure nonsense. Iran is fighting and killing Al Qaeda forces inside Syria. They
have no ideological affinity with Al Qaeda.
I wish the American people would take the time to be educated about the actual nature and
extent of "international terrorism." There was a time in the 1980s when Iran was very active in
using terrorism as weapon to attack U.S. military and diplomatic targets. But even those
attacks were focused in areas where Iran's perceived national interests were at stake. I am not
excusing nor endorsing their actions. But I do think we need to understand that terrorism
usually has a context. It is not the actions of a mentally ill person who is angry and lashing
out at the nearest available target. Those attacks were planned and very calculated.
The real issue that we should be focused on is whether or not we can halt the expansion of
Iran's influence in the Middle East. This remains a major concern for Israel and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. policymakers are betting that isolating Iran diplomatically, ratcheting up economic
pressure and using some military power will somehow energize the regime opposition and lead to
the overthrow of the Mullahs. We tried that same policy with Cuba. It did not work there and
will not likely work now in Iran.
Iran has options and is pursuing them aggressively. China and Russia, who are facing their
own bullying from the United States, already are helping Iran tweak the the nose of the Trump
Administration. In late December 2019, Iran, Russia and China carried out a joint military
exercise . The Iranians were very clear about their view of this cooperation:
"The most important achievement of these drills . . . is this
message that the Islamic republic of Iran cannot be isolated," vice-admiral Gholamreza Tahani,
a deputy naval commander, said. "These exercises show that relations between Iran, Russia and
China have reached a new high level while this trend will continue in the coming years."
The Trump Administration needs to stop with its infantile ranting and railing about Iran and
terrorism. The actual issues surrounding Iran's growing influence in the region have little to
do with terrorism. Our policies and actions towards Iran are accelerating their cooperation
with China and Russia, not diminishing it. I do not think that serves the longterm interests of
the United States or our allies in the Middle East.
I do not know where you are going with this: "Are you honestly expecting the little people in the US to believe the DC chickenhawks
or the MSM again?"
Trump received massive support for firing missiles into Syria after the purported gas attacks including from ~ 50% in public
opinion polls, so IMO there is no doubt that the "little people" will buy into the next war hook, line and sinker with 65% approval
if there is a long lead-up. The Iran / 9-11 trial balloon is being floated in some rightwing media outlets.
There is fear and there then are reasonable concerns that can look a lot like fear to the undiscerning mind. Third world immigration
isn't what it used to be. Today there is welfare and other benefits and services that will come out of the pockets of tax paying
citizens. That wasn't the case even in the 1950s. There is also the question of jobs being taken from citizens now that manufacturing
has been gutted and moved out of the country. These are real and valid concerns; not just unexamined fear. But there is something
worse. These immigrants are entering the country at a time when globalists and other liberals are teaching that America is a morally
bankrupt place - always has been, actually - and that "whites" are evil. This is open racism and anti-Americanism on the part
of liberals and a lot of that propaganda is targeted at the Latinos and other third world immigrants. Some of it is just plain
insanity and much is, as you say, using manufactured fear [of racism by whites] to gain support of masses so the fear mongers
will have an avenue to the power they crave. On that note, the battle between the globalists and nationalists is irreconcilable.
One cannot be a globalist and a patriot. There cannot be a One World and an America as we have come to know it. I say if a confrontation
is inevitable, then most definitely throw the first punch (and that comes from experience).
Eric – I think you are exaggerating the impact of immigration. Most illegal immigrants are not eligible for any of our American
benefits. If they are legal immigrants then they are paying taxes like everyone else. I grew up in the 1950's and remember to
resentment of "those people" taking our jobs. I can remember our local Catholic church having a big problem with the parishioners
over spending money to help the homeless immigrants. There was a big controversy over the Irish taking jobs when there were still
vets who served in WWII not having jobs. I'm old enough to remember the absolute fear and hatred of the Irish and Italian immigrants.
I grew up in Minnesota and for a long time Minneapolis was the city of white Protestants from Norway and Sweden while St. Paul
was teeming with those dirty Catholic Irish and Italians. There was little interaction or commerce between the two cities which
are next door to each other separated only by a river.
Back in the 1950's the state you were living in was far more important than it is now. It may seem quaint now but back then
a people who visited Wisconsin were chastised for contributing tourist dollars to "them". Society has developed over many thousands
of years from a family clan, to a village, to a town to a "statelet" to a country. Post nationalism seems like the next natural
evolution. Just imagine from the Science Fiction stories of your youth that if aliens were to attack earth, the response would
be a worldwide effort and artificial distinctions like countries would be meaningless. Just look at how America has evolved –
200 years ago the state you were living in was the primary concern, then it was the region and now it is the country. Change happens
whether we like it or not.
I am a liberal and white and I don't hate America or fellow whites. While a few jackasses who are liberal may have made anti-American
or anti-white comments but they are no more indicative of Liberals than what a few jackasses on the right may have said. I love
America but having lived in 7 different countries as an adult, I have come to appreciate what those people and cultures have to
offer. In other words, America is great but it is not the best at everything.
As usual, as far as I'm concerned, your attempt at persuasion, rife with false equivalencies and non sequiturs, gets an F;
actually, an F-. as you are a reminder to me of the reason liberals are a sneaky enemy. Illegals do get benefits by hook and by
crook. Their children, who become instant citizens when born here, certainly receive benefits at a far greater rate than native
Anglos.
I wasn't alive in the 1950s.
A "few jackasses" eh? Like virtually every humanities/liberal arts department and US Congress people (Democrats, of course)? There
are actually classes, nay degrees, that are that are based on learning how evil "white people", particularly the males, are. America's
illegitimacy due to roots in immorality is an accepted fact amongst these types.
If the rest of the world is so wonderful, why are the immigrants all trying to come here? The Guatemalans should have been happy
to stay in Mexico, if not in Guatemala itself. How come the Guatemalans don't get on a boat and immigrate to somewhere in Africa
or India or SE Asia or the MENA? Most of the population of the world lives at a level of material comfort and quality lower than
the population of Mexico. I guess you skipped visiting the spa in this those places.
When I began my undergrad program in '67, I was required, as were all freshmen, to take a sociology class. During that class we
had to read a small book on the concept of "machismo" in the Hispanic culture. (I think the word them was prob ably the "Mexican"
culture. Those of us in Colorado knew exactly what that mean. The Anglo boys were not raised to act the way the Hispanic boys
were raised.
Our local paper printed the "police logs." We knew that if it reported a brawl that turned really nasty--knives and fists,
etc.--it was a Mexican wedding, and it probably involved someone insulting the bride and thus causing the new husband to react.
We "white" girls had our girl fights, but they involved giving the cold shoulder or writing and passing mean notes. For the
Mexican girls, it often involved actual fights in the park in which blouses were torn and hair was pulled.
I know I have just typed something that might get my comment banned. But, my question is this: If it was o.k. to address
this cultural difference between the many "white" cultures in our state and the "machismo" (I know that is the word) of
the many Hispanics then, why can't we discuss it now?
As an English teacher, I and all other English teachers were called to a session put on by our very large district. There
we were lectured on how we needed to change our teaching practices to make the classroom better for Hispanics.
The major request was to let them do more "group" writing assignments because their culture was such that they just love
to talk. That would allow them to talk it out and turn in one paper.
I raised my hand and objected on two grounds. First, as a student I had on a few occasions been involved in a "group"
writing assignment, and it meant that I would take notes and write the answer and my A would be given to everyone involved,
even though I really did not use the ideas--many silly--that were given in the group and I had actually learned some of
the many rhetorical structures for developing a good essay.
Second, I asked why we didn't teach them instead the idea of "academic culture" and what that meant about classroom behavior
and the necessity of doing homework.
This is a bit off the topic of fear. But, in reality, it is now the fear that has been planted in many of us that we
may be accused of being racist that is causing so much trouble. I know I am constantly questioning myself: Am I a bigot?
I have worked with and attended school with many Hispanics. Many are my good friends. These are the ones who have in
some way adopted American culture without giving up many of the very good things about their own culture--i.e., the love
of children, the foods, the ability to be happy over many simple things, the love of elders, the love of bright colors.
And why can't we as Americans be a little put off by "machismo"?
"Robespierre's fall was brought about because the day before, after he leveled a lot of vague charges against his peers, they
felt threatened by him and they killed him to be safe."
My memory is a bit hazy Richard, having only graduated from what the folks in the UK would call "A good school of the second
rank" (Though thanks to the efforts of the Ivy League it's been moving up steadily), but didn't Robespierre kill off thousands,
including real and percieved enemies, during the Terror? Concluding that you are going to find yourself on his execution list
seems to be a quite rational conclusion to reach.
"Gullible people lack the knowledge to question and analyze what they're being told. Worse, what they are told coincides with
their ingrown prejudices."
The current senate race is Mississippi seems to point to both the truth of your statement yet at the same time begs the question
of what happens to those who ask "why" when they question what is commonly called "the narrative", such as the one being pushed
by the media regarding the candidates. A look at virtually all US college campuses should bring to mind the same question: What
happens to those who question the dogma of those in the (localized) ideological majority?
"They put down roots, got jobs, paid their taxes, but their presence began to deeply alarm the white citizens of the city who
thought the foreigners would undermine their society."
This article seems to be based on the fear human beings don't conform to the vision of the author. Notice its complete inability
to even begin to grapple with the world as experienced by being who is more than just a rational, calculating agent. I could go
through and challenge any number of the tropes or chains of logic presented. 'Don't hit first.' Effective Imperial domination
of India relied upon the ability of the British to hit hard and brutally at the slightest sign of rebellion. Hesitation would
have produced more conflict. 'Fear of the stranger. ' We know from empirical studies released by Putnam that diversity between
different groups of whites, let alone extra-racial social admixture, creates distrust and disharmony. 'Gullibility.' Most hatred
throughout history arise from contact between disparate groups who know each other very well. 'Prejudice.' We are inductive beings.
Making prior judgments is the basis of civilization. We have research to suggests stereotypes convey accurate heuristic truth.
It's been awhile since I read it, but Rick Atkinson's history of WWII devotes several chapters to American decisions and practice
of sending GIs to North Africa FIRST, to train them to hate the enemy. These were conscripts, not today's professional war fighters,
and the belief was they needed to be motivated and blooded.
Atkinson said that it turned out US troops suffered more losses at the hands of the French. What infuriated these troops most
about the Germans was that they sang as they carried out orderly surrender.
One more point: in a conversation with John Dower on the Japanese surrender, Sanho Tree remarks that "nineteen year olds must
be conditioned to kill; killing does not come naturally. To kill another human, he/she must be de-humanized. The process of de-humanizing
the Other makes it impossible to achieve a resolution short of inflicting harm and impossible to attempt to stand in the shoes
of the Adversary.
attempt to stand in the shoes of the Adversary. Thus, conditioning young men to fight and kill short-circuits
the possibility of non-violently resolving conflicts."
https://www.c-span.org/vide...
But then, that's not what the military is expected to do, is it; diplomats are supposed to resolve conflicts without
resort to violence.
BUT: Walter Hixson has argued that American diplomacy is a "myth" --
The Myth of American Diplomacy ,
and
Benjamin Ginsberg claims that all political, territorial, etc. gains are achieved by war, and "non-violence" is
a feint to create the conditions for military engagement.
The Worth of War
In summary, I submit that it is not fear, so much, that dooms a people, it is fundamental dishonesty on the
part of leadership and especially the media that leadership manipulates: if leadership can deploy media to move
a people to war, they can equally use media to move a people to non-violence and diplomacy to achieve a concert
of nations. Without a vision, the people perish.
I have a long experience of soldiers and warfare and do not believe that all people need to be taught to kill. In every combat
unit there are always some who kill without hesitation or remorse. In some units the percentage of these is much higher than in
others. But, believe if you wish in the "better angels of our natures." I hope it makes you less afraid.
In the course of the last two weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) had already
pointed to a possible Global Public Health crisis in relation to China's novel coronavirus
(2019-nCoV) categorized as a viral pneumonia. The virus outbreak is centred in the city of
Wuhan, a city in Eastern China with a population in excess of 11 million.
On 22 January, the members of the WHO Emergency Committee "expressed divergent views on
whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not".
On January 30, The Committee reconvened and declared the coronavirus epidemic as a Public
Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
(for details on the Committee meetings scroll down to ANNEX)
What justified this far-reaching decision by the WHO Director General?
About 9,600 corona virus (pneumonia) confirmed cases (Jan 30). And 213 deaths recorded in
China on Jan 30, which has a population of almost 1.4 billion.
No deaths have been reported out of Mainland China.
Out of 9600 confirmed cases, approximately 150 cases of infection have been recorded outside
China. Moreover, (based on the above data, Jan 30), the 2019 nCoV has a low mortality rate
(2.1%) compared to the Seasonal flu.
CBS Screen scan, Jan 30, 2020
The above CBS quotation is misleading.
Based on January 30 data, what should be emphasized is the following
No deaths occurred outside China,
More than 9500 recorded cases in China,
Approximately 150 cases recorded outside China, (see list below)
In contrast, in the US, the Centers of Disease Control estimate that so far for the 2019-20 season, at
least 15 million flu virus illnesses , 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths in the U.S,
which has population of 330 million, about a quarter that of China.
And there was virtually no coverage or concern regarding the Seasonal Flu, which in 2017
resulted globally in 650,000 deaths.
Source CDC
The media has gone into hight gear: The Wuhan coronavirus is portrayed as a global
threat.
The latter is not corroborated by the recorded cases of infection and death.
Only 150 cases outside of China Mainland (Jan 30). No deaths recorded outside China.
Ironically, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a press conference confirmed
that:
"The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China, but
because of what is happening in other countries. Our greatest concern is the potential for
the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, and which are ill-prepared to
deal with it."
What was happening "in other countries" (aka approximately 150 cases of infection and no
recorded deaths in 23 countries and 2 territories (Macau and Hong Kong) (Jan 30)) does not
justify the launching of a WHO sponsored Worldwide Public Health Emergency. (See below for
distribution by country).
Coronavirus cases of infection: by country
Source Al Jazeera quoting official sources, January 31, 2020
Do these numbers justify the launching of a Worldwide Public Health Emergency?
6 in the US, 2 in Canada, 16 in Japan, 2 in the UK, 7 in Germany, etc. (Jan 30)
No deaths outside China recorded (Jan 30). And expert opinion under the helm of the World
Health Organization (WHO) has endorsed a Worldwide health emergency, which is creating havoc.
What is required is routine WHO support to China and countries which have recorded virus
infections.
The decision of the Director-General of the WHO is dramatic and unnecessary. It has
triggered an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.
Fake Emergency? Can we Trust the WHO?
In turn, the corporate media serves as an instrument of disinformation. The public has been
misled.
About 150 infections Worldwide (excluding China). The World population is 7.7 billion,
China's population is 1.4 billion.
A rash Committee decision adopted at WHO headquarters in Geneva.
There are precedents: In 2009, based on incomplete and scanty data, the WHO predicted ("with
authority") that the H1N1 swine flu virus would result in :
" as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years -- nearly
one-third of the world population. " (World Health Organization as reported by the Western
media, July 2009).
It turned out to be a multibillion bonanza for Big Pharma supported by the WHO's
Director-General Margaret Chan.
In June 2009, Margaret Chan made the following statement:
"On the basis of expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an
influenza pandemic have been met. I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza
pandemic alert from Phase 5 to Phase 6. The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza
pandemic.Margaret Chan,
Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Press Briefing 11 June 2009)
A financial windfall for Big Pharma Vaccine Producers including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis,
Merck & Co., Sanofi, Pfizer. et al.
Swine Flu Fake News, Fake Statistics, Lies at the Highest Levels of Government
The media went into overdrive. (without a shred of evidence). Fear and Uncertainty. Public
opinion was deliberately misled
" Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as
many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren't
successful." (Official Statement of Obama Administration, Associated Press, 24 July
2009).
"The U.S. expects to have 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in
October", ( Associated Press, 23 July 2009)
But the pandemic never happened.
There was no pandemic affecting 2 billion people
Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had been ordered by national governments from Big
Pharma. In the meantime the H1N1 virus had mutated. Millions of doses were subsequently
destroyed: a financial bonanza for Big Pharma, an expenditure crisis for national
governments.
There was no investigation into who was behind this multibillion fraud.
Several critics said that the H1N1 Pandemic was "Fake" .
Reported by Forbes:
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is
publicly
investigating the WHO's motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its
influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the "false pandemic" is
"one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century." (
Forbes , February 10, 2010, emphasis added)
Can we trust the World Health Organization (WHO) and Western governments including the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), all of which are serving the interests of Big
Pharma (at tax payers' expense)?
What are the stakes, why the media propaganda?
ANNEX
This annex provides details on the January 3oth WHO Decision to identify the Wuhan
coronavirus epidemic as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).
The Director-General welcomed the Committee and thanked them for their support. He turned
the meeting over to the Chair, Professor Didier Houssin.
.
Representatives of the Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China reported on the
current situation and the public health measures being taken. There are now 7711 confirmed and
12167 suspected cases throughout the country. Of the confirmed cases, 1370 are severe and 170
people have died. 124 people have recovered and been discharged from hospital.
The WHO Secretariat provided an overview of the situation in other countries. There are now
83 cases in 18 countries. Of these, only 7 had no history of travel in China. There has been
human-to-human transmission in 3 countries outside China. One of these cases is severe and
there have been no deaths.
At its first meeting, the Committee expressed divergent views on whether this event
constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a
PHEIC, but the Committee members agreed on the urgency of the situation and suggested that the
Committee should continue its meeting on the next day, when it reached the same conclusion.
This second meeting takes place in view of significant increases in numbers of cases and
additional countries reporting confirmed cases.
The Committee welcomed the leadership and political commitment of the very highest levels of
Chinese government, their commitment to transparency, and the efforts made to investigate and
contain the current outbreak. China quickly identified the virus and shared its sequence, so
that other countries could diagnose it quickly and protect themselves, which has resulted in
the rapid development of diagnostic tools.
The very strong measures the country has taken include daily contact with WHO and
comprehensive multi-sectoral approaches to prevent further spread. It has also taken public
health measures in other cities and provinces; is conducting studies on the severity and
transmissibility of the virus, and sharing data and biological material. The country has also
agreed to work with other countries who need their support. The measures China has taken are
good not only for that country but also for the rest of the world.
The Committee welcomed a forthcoming WHO multidisciplinary technical mission to China,
..
The Committee wished to re-emphasize the importance of studying the possible source, to rule
out hidden transmission and to inform risk management measures
The Committee also emphasized the need for enhanced surveillance in regions outside Hubei,
including pathogen genomic sequencing, to understand whether local cycles of transmission are
occurring.
WHO should continue to use its networks of technical experts to assess how best this
outbreak can be contained globally.
WHO should provide intensified support for preparation and response, especially in
vulnerable countries and regions.
Measures to ensure rapid development and access to potential vaccines, diagnostics,
antiviral medicines and other therapeutics for low- and middle-income countries should be
developed.
WHO should continue to provide all necessary technical and operational support to respond to
this outbreak, including with its extensive networks of partners and collaborating
institutions, to implement a comprehensive risk communication strategy, and to allow for the
advancement of research and scientific developments in relation to this novel coronavirus.
WHO should continue to explore the advisability of creating an intermediate level of alert
between the binary possibilities of PHEIC or no PHEIC, in a way that does not require reopening
negotiations on the text of the IHR (2005).
WHO should timely review the situation with transparency and update its evidence-based
recommendations.
The Committee does not recommend any travel or trade restriction based on the current
information available.
The Director-General declared that the outbreak of 2019-nCoV constitutes a PHEIC and
accepted the Committee's advice and issued this advice as Temporary Recommendations under the
IHR.
The Emergency Committee will be reconvened within three months or earlier, at the discretion
of the Director-General.
The Director-General thanked the Committee for its work.
More fun with climate:
Yet another of the implicit assumptions behind climate catastrophe is the CO2 levels will keep going up - not just higher, but
exponentially higher, until 2100.
But is that true?
The EIA doesn't think so. The EIA, even after correcting for its fracking fail, projects CO2 emissions to increase by 0.6%
per year until 2050 - after which it levels off.
EIA CO2 emissions projections
Secondly, the amount of CO2 "disappearing" from the atmosphere - whatever the source - is increasing every year. Earlier, the
panicmongers were predicting a limit to this biological appetite for CO2: plants, zooplankton, etc but so far, these predictions
have failed (along with literally 100% of their catastrophe predictions).
Mauna Loa CO2 annual
variance
So what happens when you plug EIA projections into the various IPCC models?
Or in other words - CO2 will not even double from today's levels in any but the RCP8.5 case.
Dr. Roy Spencer then takes these 3 data points, creates a simple CO2 model and compares that with the IPCC scenarios.
Net net? If CO2 levels don't even double - the ECR value may not even matter (ECR is the response in temperature to a doubling
of CO2).
Last note: the extreme scenarios pushed by the panicmongers always involve exponential increases in (whatever bad: CO2, temperature,
etc) that is coming ... any day now...
I've been watching this dynamic for nearly 20 years - at which point does this exponential projection be called nonsense?
Here are links to antiviral treatments using natural ingredients that are effective against
all the other cold and flu virus outbreaks that happen every year. As "B" points out the vast
majority of cases are just run of the mill virus outbreaks that happen every year.
Zn(2+) inhibits coronavirus and arterivirus RNA polymerase activity in vitro and zinc
ionophores block the replication of these viruses in cell culture. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21079686
Posted by: krollchem | Feb 2 2020 18:42 utc |
17 napper 19 minutes ago ( Edited ) remove Share link Copy Propaganda op to stoke panic & fear.
"... Taylor exaggerates what the conflict is about by saying that Ukraine is defending "the West." That's not true. Ukraine is defending itself. The U.S. does not have a vital interest in this conflict, but Taylor talks about it as if we do. He says that the relationship with Ukraine is "key" to our national security, but that is simply false. To say that it is key to our national security means that we are supposed to believe that it is crucially important to our national security. That suggests that U.S. national security would seriously compromised if that relationship weakened, but that doesn't make any sense. We usually don't even talk about our major treaty allies this way, so what justification is there for describing a relationship with a weak partner government like this? ..."
"... The op-ed reads like a textbook case of clientitis, in which a former U.S. envoy ends up making the Ukrainian government's argument for them ..."
"... To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that enabled major powers in Europe to avoid war for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy. It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do. ..."
"... These make for catchy slogans, but they are lousy policy arguments. This rhetoric veers awfully close to saying that you aren't on the side of freedom if you don't support a particular policy option. In my experience, advocates for more aggressive measures use rhetoric like this because the rest of their argument isn't very strong. It is possible to reject illegal military interventions of all governments without wanting to throw weapons at the problem. ..."
"... Taylor has set up the policy argument in such a way that there seems to be no choice, but the U.S. doesn't have to support Ukraine's war effort. He oversells Ukraine's importance to the U.S. to justify U.S. support, because an accurate assessment would make the current policy of arming their government much harder to defend. Ukraine isn't really that important to U.S. security and our security doesn't require us to provide military assistance to them. Of course, our government has chosen to do it anyway, but this is just one more optional entanglement that the U.S. could have avoided without jeopardizing American or allied security. ..."
ormer ambassador William Taylor wrote an op-ed on Ukraine in
an attempt to answer Pompeo's question about whether Americans care about Ukraine. It is not
very persuasive. For one thing, he starts off by exaggerating the importance of the conflict
between Russia and Ukraine to make it seem as if the U.S. has a major stake in the outcome:
Here's why the answer should be yes: Ukraine is defending itself and the West against
Russian attack. If Ukraine succeeds, we succeed. The relationship between the United States
and Ukraine is key to our national security, and Americans should care about Ukraine.
Taylor exaggerates what the conflict is about by saying that Ukraine is defending "the
West." That's not true. Ukraine is defending itself. The U.S. does not have a vital interest in
this conflict, but Taylor talks about it as if we do. He says that the relationship with
Ukraine is "key" to our national security, but that is simply false. To say that it is key to
our national security means that we are supposed to believe that it is crucially important to
our national security. That suggests that U.S. national security would seriously compromised if
that relationship weakened, but that doesn't make any sense. We usually don't even talk about
our major treaty allies this way, so what justification is there for describing a relationship
with a weak partner government like this?
The op-ed reads like a textbook case of clientitis, in which a former U.S. envoy ends up
making the Ukrainian government's argument for them. The danger of exaggerating U.S. interests
and conflating them with Ukraine's is that we fool ourselves into thinking that we are acting
out of necessity and in our own defense when we are really choosing to take sides in a conflict
that does not affect our security. This is the kind of thinking that encourages people to spout
nonsense about "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." If we view
Ukraine as "the front line" of a larger struggle, that will also make it more difficult to
resolve the conflict. When a local conflict is turned into a proxy fight between great powers,
the local people will be the ones made to suffer to serve the ambitions of the patrons. Once
the U.S. insists that its own security is bound up with the outcome of this conflict, there is
an incentive to be considered the "winner," but the reality is that Ukraine will always matter
less to the U.S. than it does to Russia.
If this relationship were so important to U.S. security, how is it that the U.S. managed to
get along just fine for decades after the end of the Cold War when that relationship was not
particularly strong? As recently as the Obama administration, our government did not consider
Ukraine to be important enough to supply with weapons. Ukraine was viewed correctly as
being of
peripheral interest to the U.S., and nothing has changed in the years since then to make it
more important.
Taylor keeps repeating that "Ukraine is the front line" in a larger conflict between Russia
and the West, but that becomes true only if Western governments choose to treat it as one. He
concludes his op-ed with a series of ideological assertions:
To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that enabled major
powers in Europe to avoid war for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy.
It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do.
These make for catchy slogans, but they are lousy policy arguments. This rhetoric veers
awfully close to saying that you aren't on the side of freedom if you don't support a
particular policy option. In my experience, advocates for more aggressive measures use rhetoric
like this because the rest of their argument isn't very strong. It is possible to reject
illegal military interventions of all governments without wanting to throw weapons at the
problem.
Taylor has set up the policy argument in such a way that there seems to be no choice, but
the U.S. doesn't have to support Ukraine's war effort. He oversells Ukraine's importance to the
U.S. to justify U.S. support, because an accurate assessment would make the current policy of
arming their government much harder to defend. Ukraine isn't really that important to U.S.
security and our security doesn't require us to provide military assistance to them. Of course,
our government has chosen to do it anyway, but this is just one more optional entanglement that
the U.S. could have avoided without jeopardizing American or allied security.
@WestcosastPutin himself is a science denier and does not attribute climate change to
human activity but to natural cycles
Funny how so many people seem to think that climate history only started a few decades
ago. Global Warming is natural in a post ice-age period. Places like Norway's north are still
rising because the weight of ice was removed thousands of years ago. We are talking about
geological time.
In the Alps, as glaciers retreat, we find the stumps of trees that once grew there. Today,
the nearest living trees are way lower on the mountain sides.
If you have not yet worked out that it is just another hoax to justify governments
stealing more of your income and to help governments explain why you won't be getting the
pension they promised, I cannot help you. You deserve to be fleeced.
The film linked to above has the title 'Climate Forcing: The Future is Cold'
The fake news industry complex - mass media and corrupt institutions and corrupt science
and ordinary people who zealously promote their brainwashed perspectives - generate quite the
prolific ongoing blizzard of ignorance and duplicity. Trying to dig our way out of it, at
least enough to take a few breathes of fresh honest air, takes quite the effort.
A friend of mine said to me, after having spent many years trying to figure out what has
actually been going on, where the truth lies, who are the poisonous smiling 'snakes', who to
trust, and so on, that the price he has paid is having to keep his mouth diplomatically shut
in normal company.
He does get to wear a very slight - micro expression - a very subtle and slightly
mysterious expression of mirth can usually escape condemnation - consider the Mona Lisa.
> Global warming is the ultimate refutation of Lockean propertarianism
While I agree about the refutation there is a minor point with using global warming as an
example. As far as I understand, the problem of "global warming" is a scientific hypothesis,
not a scientific fact yet.
The main issue is whether we observe a short term ( lasting just a couple of centuries )
reversible effect connected with the "oil age" and the local sun activity max, or this is a
start of a long term trend, potentially devastating to the Earth ecosystem.
For example, we have only 50 years of observation about hurricane activity and that data
shows that the current period is the period of decreased not increased hurricane activity
(1988-1997 decade has the max landfalls in 10 year period -- 177, while 2010-2019 has 148).
Another "known unknown" factor is how long the current "oil age" will last. If we assume
that it probably ends in approx. 50-70 years (existing giant oil fields are depleting at the
rate of around 3-5% a year and can be replaced only with much smaller fields and/or more
expensive extraction processes ), the danger will diminish in the next century. Maybe
considerably.
And even two centuries of "oil age" (say, 1950-2150) is nothing for the Earth history, not
even a blip.
Also, the end of oil age necessarily means the start of the shrinking of the world
population. Maybe even a dramatic one.
Acidification of oceans due to increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is
currently the only real and irrefutable problem in this domain, and it can eventually lead to
the drastic disruption of the ocean food chains, but with the end of the oil age, it also might
become a less acute problem.
"... While the pending grand solar minimum will mitigate global temperature rise for the next 50 years or so.... continuing CO2 emissions will accelerate ocean acidification... and quicken the day pH drops to the point arthropods and mollusks can no longer make exoskeleton or shells.... thence going extinct.... ..."
This is another example where "warm" climate models and extreme scenarios (i.e. RCP 8.5)
are so useful to the panicmongers: they skew everything to be scary.
Indeed, such models (they are not reality) are based on incorrect science and motivated by
politics. Below is a link to an interesting article by Claes Johnson.
What is the warming effect of the radiative action of the Earth atmosphere on the
temperature of the surface of the Earth, the so-called greenhouse effect?
What would thus the temperature be if the atmosphere was fully transparent without
the so-called greenhouse gasses water vapour and CO2, thus without effects of (infrared)
radiation? This would be like an Earth with no atmosphere.
And the other way around: What would the temperature be if the atmosphere was fully
opaque?
He concludes (see article for why):
The total greenhouse effect is thus at most 9 C, instead of the 33 C as the corner stone
of global warming alarmism.
@12 c1ue
I work for NOAA and amongst my peers it is frustrating how incomplete scientific studies get
used by both sides to support their view.
There hasn't been a scientific established correlation between warmer global temperatures
and hurricanes in any given basin. That is because there are four big factors at play in
hurricane genesis that have some tendencies to counteract each other.
1) Warmer ocean water does have a positive effect on cyclogenesis, and the oceans are
warmer than they have been for at least 500 years...but...
2) Warmer global temperatures also mean more wind shear, which is the major preventative
factor for cyclogenesis.
3) Hurricanes are a heat transfer mechanism, meaning they transfer heat from warmer areas
to cooler areas. The steeper the temperature gradient, the likelier it is a hurricane forms.
It does appear that global warming is flattening temperature gradients to some degree, but
the research on this is in its nascent stages.
4) Hurricanes initial form from what we often refer to as invests...a disturbed weather
pattern brought about by atmospheric instability. Data shows these invests are increasing,
but once again the research is in its early stages.
I'd link an interesting study done in 2006 on the relationships I have described above,
but I am afraid I will screw up the feed by doing it wrong.
Anybody who has studied atmospheric sciences knows the earth's climate has changed
hundreds of times in the past billion year, no shit Sherlock. Climate changes science is
simple physics, it was proven back in 1879, having to due with the Laws of Thermodynamics.
There is no such thing as an independent climate scientist. Every single neysayer gets money
from the fossil fuel lobby. Big oil hires the same lobbying firm as big tobacco did, and spin
the same type of lies.
I see no way Bernie is going to beat Trump nor is he going to break the back of the
collective power centers arrayed against the average person trying to exist. Bernie talks a
great game but like Trump he will not deliver other than maybe appointing some judges.
Warm planet good, cold planet bad. We have had four bitterly cold winters in a row and
massive crop failures to boot. The sun drives the weather on the planet and CO2 is a
minuscule percentage of the atmosphere. These climate change cycles are normal and be tracked
thought history with warm periods being the height of progress and cold periods leading to
the collapse of civilization.
They can be devastating if not recognized and prepared for in its outcome. Global food
production suffers, crops cannot be planted in the same spots leading to decades of recovery.
People starve, civilizations goes into a mad max type scenario as people hunger. It has
happened numerous times.
The planet is cooling not warming in the northern latitudes. the crazy weather occurrences
belies that change and as the Northern latitudes cool. Eventually things will stabilize into
a 200 year cooler cycle. The power of the media pushing an agenda, the very thing everyone
rails about constantly, has fooled you all.
The film linked to above has the title 'Climate Forcing: The Future is Cold'
The fake news industry complex - mass media and corrupt institutions and corrupt science
and ordinary people who zealously promote their brainwashed perspectives - generate quite the
prolific ongoing blizzard of ignorance and duplicity. Trying to dig our way out of it, at
least enough to take a few breathes of fresh honest air, takes quite the effort. A friend of
mine said to me, after having spent many years trying to figure out what has actually been
going on, where the truth lies, who are the poisonous smiling 'snakes', who to trust, and so
on, that the price he has paid is having to keep his mouth diplomatically shut in normal
company. He does get to wear a very slight - micro expression - a very subtle and slightly
mysterious expression of mirth can usually escape condemnation - consider the Mona Lisa.
It is well known from the geologic record that rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
lead to rising concentrations of carbonic acid in the oceans, & concomitant drop in
pH.... ie: acidification.
The man who posted his experience with dungeness crab is observing this effect acting upon
the crab he catches for a living.
However, as acidification progresses.... which it will... conditions will deteriorate for
mollusks and corals to the point they no longer are able to make calcium carbonate shells,
and will go extinct.
This happened during the Permian extinction.
While the pending grand solar minimum will mitigate global temperature rise for the
next 50 years or so.... continuing CO2 emissions will accelerate ocean acidification... and
quicken the day pH drops to the point arthropods and mollusks can no longer make exoskeleton
or shells.... thence going extinct....
Given they are the zoo plankton during their juvenile stage.... this will lead to dramatic
drop in the zooplankton... followed by collapse of the oceanic food chain... all the way up
to those at the top.... tunny, swordfish, sailfish, shark, whales, and birds.
And yet more data hammering the panicmonger climate memes: 50 year historical hurricane data.
Summary: There is no pattern of increase - in frequency, strength, damage done, rainfall,
whatever.
Maue and Pielke 50 year Hurricane data
Summary highlights:
Here are some summary statistics on landfalling hurricanes from 1970 to 2019:
All landfalls: 15 (median), 15.4 (average), 4.3 (sd)
Categories 1 & 2 at landfall: 10, 10.4, 3.7
Category 3+ at landfall: 5, 5.0, 2.6
Most total landfalls in one year: 30 (1971)
Fewest total landfalls in one year: 7 (1978)
Most Category 3+ landfalls in one year: 11, (2015)
Fewest Category 3+ landfalls in one year: 0 (1981)
Most total landfalls over a 10-year period: 177 (1988-1997)
Fewest total landfalls over a 10-year period: 120 (1975-1984)
Total landfalls 2010-2019: 148
Most Category 3+ landfalls over a 10-year period: 65 (1999-2008)
Fewest Category 3+ landfalls over a 10-year period: 33 (1972-1981 and 1978-1987)
Total Category 3+ landfalls 2010-2019: 60
Total landfalls 1970-2019: 772, (520 were Categories 1 & 2, 252 were Category 3+)
Note that the reason why we only have 50 years of data is because the satellite record is
only 50 years old. Prior to that, nobody knows how many actual hurricanes there were due to
no landfall, poor record keeping, etc.
This is another example where "warm" climate models and extreme scenarios (i.e. RCP 8.5)
are so useful to the panicmongers: they skew everything to be scary.
Indeed, such models (they are not reality) are based on incorrect science and motivated by
politics. Below is a link to an interesting article by Claes Johnson.
What is the warming effect of the radiative action of the Earth atmosphere on the
temperature of the surface of the Earth, the so-called greenhouse effect?
What would thus the temperature be if the atmosphere was fully transparent without
the so-called greenhouse gasses water vapour and CO2, thus without effects of (infrared)
radiation? This would be like an Earth with no atmosphere.
And the other way around: What would the temperature be if the atmosphere was fully
opaque?
He concludes (see article for why):
The total greenhouse effect is thus at most 9 C, instead of the 33 C as the corner stone
of global warming alarmism.
Some years ago,
Look
, a now-defunct American magazine, published a set of cartoons
which attempted to illustrate the basic framework of Friedrich Hayek's
Road to Serfdom
. We
have published them in other essays. We did it
here
.
And
here
.
And
here
. Today we do it again
with an excerpt of the first ten 'steps'. You can see the full range on the Mises Institute's
website
.
We keep publishing these cartoons because they are relevant and because they are
powerful illustrations of the role of narrative in aiding the concentration of political power.
We also think it is valuable to frequently consider forces like this which remain so applicable
across time and circumstance.
Yet there is more than one path to serfdom.
This is one. In the illustrated
scenario, a major event like World War II is used by well-meaning political leaders to establish
more long-lasting central control over the planning of economies. They also conjure a
Strong
Man
to see them through. It was a familiar story for mid-20th century Europe and many other
times in history. There are other paths. For example, there are paths which run through corporate
monopoly power or, say, the Church. These sorts of paths tend to get less attention from those of
us who cherry-pick when it comes to Hayek, but that doesn't make them any less real.
Still, the power of the political
Strong Man
is a special case.
The
political
Strong Man
who seized power immorally or illegally is an even
more
special
case. Yet it isn't so much the specific case study that interests me so much as the evolution of
the road itself. And it
has
evolved.
Seventy-five years after the book that
described it was printed, the road to serfdom has gotten shorter. Faster. Those who seek power no
longer have to grapple with the kind of public debate that arrested the growth of political
movements in the past.
Always-on traditional and social media now provide much more
powerful tools for missionaries to create common knowledge out of whole cloth. The
Widening
Gyre
has created an environment of identity-based political support ready to muster at will.
The methods to summon existential memes to compel compliance are now old hat.
In 2020, all it takes is a critical mass of missionaries to take up the message.
There is a new Road to Serfdom, and I think it looks something like this.
Step 1
:
Missionary promotes the narrative that "something must be
done"
about a problem
Step 2:
Other missionaries work to establish the narrative as common
knowledge, something "everybody knows that everybody knows"
Step 3: Missionaries decry lack of action by traditional mechanisms, need for an
unfettered hand to pursue it
Step 4: Missionaries make an explicit play for power
Step 5: Missionaries warn what will happen if they are not given the power
No matter your political identity, I suspect you can think of appealing examples of this
pattern. But if you will indulge me, I want to walk you through an especially relevant, present-day
example. We are going to explore the evolution of the curious intersection of central banking and
climate change over the past four years.
We're going to do it because I think we are charting a potential new route on the road to
serfdom.
That road starts in January 2016, with Step 1.
Step 1
|
Missionary promotes the narrative that "something must be
done" | January 2016 – August 2018
Sources: Epsilon Theory, LexisNexis Newsdesk
The title of this graph is a bit of a mouthful. So what, exactly, does it show? In each month
between January 2016 and January 2020, it plots a fraction. The numerator of that fraction is the
total number of articles with text referring to both climate change AND central banks, where
"central banks" means both the
term
"central banks" or "central banking" as well as the
Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, Bank of England, People's Bank of China and
the key public-facing officials of those institutions. The denominator of that fraction is just the
raw count of central banking articles.
As you'll note in the first graph above, the first period we charted runs from approximately
January 2016 through August 2018. During this first stretch, there was almost no relationship
between the way that elected political leaders, unelected political officials, corporate leaders
and media members with prominent platforms (collectively in our parlance, "missionaries") wrote or
spoke about central banks and climate change
together
. These were practically
non-overlapping topics. More specifically, between January 2016 and August 2018 about
8 in
every 1,000
news articles about the Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, People's Bank of
China, European Central Bank or Bank of England, or any of their respective key officials, related
the activities of those banks to climate change.
You will probably also note a period of modest acceleration in the relationship between these
topics between November 2016 and the summer of 2017. This was the result of broad economic pieces
published in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, many of which discussed, analysed and
expressed opinions on a range of topics, from climate and energy policy to the Fed without
necessarily connecting the two. Excluding that brief flurry, articles which related the two
concepts were almost entirely related to one of two things:
The PBOC's establishment of guidelines for the issuance of Green Bonds; and
Statements made by Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and Chair of the Monetary
Policy Committee
I am always inclined to ascribe at least some missionary intent to any publication referencing
the PBOC, but these are largely perfunctory, logistical and trade articles. Not speeches,
finger-waving or "this is how you should think about the environment" propaganda. Green-washing
propaganda? Yes, I think that's a charge you could level. But while it
is
a lark to talk
about actors buying "clean" jet fuel for their G5s in Davos, or the world's biggest polluter
touting its various green initiatives, that isn't really what we're talking about here.
No. Instead, what interests us is Goldman alum Carney, the first mission creep missionary. From
a June 2016 article in Canada's Globe And Mail, he was already active establishing the
idea
that something must be done
to create a connection between regulatory policy – more to the
point, monetary policy – and climate change. And he did so in a way that was crafted for an
audience of institutional investors.
He estimated that global carbon reduction needs imply "somewhere in the order of $5 to
$7-trillion a year" in clean-infrastructure investments. "The question is, how much of that is
going to be financed through capital markets?" He said that if there is a "global standard"
established for green-infrastructure bonds – something the G20 is working on – it would create
"a core mainstream fixed-income opportunity."
He said that China, in particular, has large needs for such infrastructure that could
generate relatively high-yielding investment products.
He also argued that a "a consistent, comparable, reliable" global system for corporate
disclosure on carbon emissions would better allow equity markets to price in relative risk into
company valuations. Mr. Carney has been championing such a system for much of the past year, in
his dual roles as the head of the Bank of England and the chairman of the international
Financial Stability Board.
"The relative value opportunity in equities is considerable," he said.
"Having the Governor of the Bank of England here sends a very strong message that it is
important that we act now, and that we have a real opportunity for Canadian business," Ms.
McKenna told reporters following the session.
Source: Climate change a $5-trillion opportunity, Globe and Mail, July 16,
2016
Carney's September 2016 speech in Berlin was a masterpiece in narrative construction, explicitly
conflating climate change with terms of art in the world of financial risk management. He begins:
Your invitation to discuss climate change is a sign of the broadening of the responsibilities
of central banks to include financial as well as monetary stability. It also demonstrates the
changing nature of international financial diplomacy.
Source: Resolving the Climate Paradox, Mark Carney, September 22, 2016
That is, I believe, what we call saying the quiet part out loud. Still, to really appreciate the
skill being applied here, take note of the effective redefinition of climate change in the most
well-known memes of financial risk. A Minsky moment, indeed.
A wholesale reassessment of prospects, as climate-related risks are re-evaluated, could
destabilise markets, spark a pro-cyclical crystallisation of losses and lead to a persistent
tightening of financial conditions: a climate Minsky moment.
Source: Resolving the Climate Paradox, Mark Carney, September 22, 2016
In fairness to Carney, at this point he is
not
advocating the establishment of
some grand global central banker-driven policy-making body. In fact, in the speech he delivered at
Lloyd's London to really kick off this whole cycle back in September 2015, he said explicitly that
he
doesn't
see that as the proper response. His speeches and plans have favored
mostly
an
expansion of accounting standards for carbon reporting, climate change-based stress testing and
application of existing risk management tools to this emerging problem. In short, Carney's vision
was an extension of existing central banking tools for measuring, responding to and mitigating
systemic shocks that might be the result of climate change. If you see the $10-dollar term of art
'macroprudential
'
in this note, that's what we mean by it.
Still, for months, we had a missionary – or perhaps a prophet – alone in the wilderness,
shouting that
something must be done
to address the risks of climate
change through monetary policy.
Step 2
|
Other missionaries work to establish the narrative as common
knowledge, something "everybody knows that everybody knows"
|
September 2018 –
January 2019
Source: Epsilon Theory, LexisNexis Newsdesk
While there were occasional flareups in the discussion over this period – usually prompted by a
Carney speech or a related conference topic within the
professional
environment of
economics, it wasn't until the fourth quarter of 2018 that any acceleration in the intersection of
these two topics began. In the build-up to Davos in 2019, other missionaries in the world of
economics and economics journalism began to take on the mantle of addressing climate change
through
financial regulation
. Some of the less noteworthy among them clamored already for
an unfettered, unelected global power to tackle it.
Here, though, the breakdown in international cooperation and trust becomes really damaging.
Ideally, existing global institutions – the IMF, the World Bank, the UN and the World Trade
Organization – would be supplemented by a new World Environmental Organisation with the power to
levy a carbon tax globally. Even in the absence of a new body, they would be working together to
face down the inevitable opposition to change from the fossil fuel lobby.
Source: Larry Elliott, " Climate change will make the next global crash the
worst", The Guardian, October 11, 2018
There are a lot of ways to write "I want to establish a world body who can tax everyone on the
planet, but I'll settle for some strongly worded letters to the CEO of ExxonMobil," and this is
apparently one of them.
Still, this sort of overzealous shield-banging was the exception during this period, not the
rule. The most prominent emerging voices, former officials of the Federal Reserve and some of their
associates in the Climate Leadership Council, began a regular flow of Op-Eds to papers and
publications around the United States. The flood began in earnest on September 10, 2018 with the
publishing of an
Op-Ed piece in
Fortune
written by Janet Yellen and Ted Halstead. The CLC had published its plan almost a year
earlier to some acclaim from editorial pages, but had not gotten much traction. This did.
Other economists had similar Op-Eds published in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the
Dallas Morning-News and many other large, metropolitan publications in each of October, November
and December 2018. Nobody here was pining for the Fed to have 'managing climate change risks' added
to its mandate. None looked to take the intersection of monetary policy and climate change beyond
macroprudential risk management. None that I can detect (other than including Fed officials as
authors) even so much as
imply
a role for central banks. Most contemplate a set of the
CLC's regulatory policies for addressing climate change in context of traditional political systems
governed by elected officials. If you ask me (and you didn't, but you're on my website), their
proposals and Op-Eds were perfectly sensible and blessedly light on existential memetics.
But from a narrative perspective, whether the proposals were sensible, made in earnest and good
faith, or even if they were a good idea, simply doesn't matter.
From a narrative
perspective, what is important is that these well-intentioned planners established common knowledge
that financial regulation would be necessary to mitigate the negative impact of climate change.
By the end of 2018 and 2019, I think that it was something
everybody knew that everybody
knew.
Step 3 | Missionaries decry lack of action by traditional mechanisms, need for an
unfettered hand to pursue it
|
February 2019 – October 2019
Source: Epsilon Theory, LexisNexis Newsdesk
Davos in 2019 was well, it was like Davos always is. It was an opportunity for political and
corporate missionaries to scream from a microphone provided by media missionaries for reasons that
escape literally every other person on the planet. Still, as irritating as we might find it, the
narratives promoted there often take root.
Four days after Davos concluded, the opening salvo of Step 3 was an open letter submitted by 20
Senate Democrats to Jerome Powell telling him that they considered it "imperative" that the Federal
Reserve ensure the stability of the US financial system in the face of climate change risks. The
letter was directed by a member of the Banking Committee, and a person whose job is,
coincidentally, to make and pass laws which could govern just about every conceivable climate
policy.
But it wasn't just congressional leaders who began to float the idea that an independent
institution like the Fed ought to more explicitly incorporate climate change into its mandate. It
was the Fed itself. In March, a senior policy adviser at the San Francisco Fed wrote approvingly of
the latitude some comparable institutions have to influence the relative cost of capital of "green"
vs. "non-green" issuers of securities.
This is a
Big Deal
.
The question of using a central bank's balance sheet to influence asset prices was controversial
and problematic enough when the activity was largely constrained to government debt. It was more
concerning when it began to include corporate debt securities and (in some countries) equity
securities. Probably half of the content on this website concerns our agitation with these
activities, so I won't belabor their discussion. I will, however, say that the expansion of central
banks' activities to include the open, intentional and unavoidably arbitrary influencing of costs
of capital and securities prices for different sectors and companies to reflect some scheme of
'good' and 'bad' isn't just a simple next step. It would represent a quantum change in the accepted
macroprudential role we cede to central banks under our present social contract.
I think it is important, especially for those who may not deal with these questions every day,
to know what is being suggested here. Some economists were – and are – proposing that an unelected
body sit in the position of determining by fiat the price at which (and whether!) different
companies would be able to access capital based on that body's assessment of whether that
institution was deemed to be sufficiently green. And yes, some of this is already happening.
In a classic economist's conclusion, the author then lamented the Fed's more limited present
power.
Many central banks already include climate change in their assessments of future economic and
financial risks when setting monetary and financial supervisory policy. For the Fed, the
volatility induced by climate change and the efforts to adapt to new conditions and to limit or
mitigate climate change are also increasingly relevant considerations. Moreover, economists,
including those at central banks, can contribute much more to the research on climate change
hazards and the appropriate response of central banks.
Climate Change and the Federal Reserve (March 25, 2019)
By April, some missionaries started saying the quiet part out loud again. In a Fortune article
published in April 2019, various commentators presented a cynical step-by-step explanation of the
application of the "gameplan" that had worked to get central banks engaged in diversity issues that
also had proved too problematic to solve via democratic and political mechanisms.
Now, central banks are making a similar case when to comes to addressing climate change "If
you get in with the herd that says climate change is a financial risk, then central banks have
all the tools," says Williams. "I think what you're seeing is a wave of progress."
Central Banks are the World's New Climate Change Activists (Fortune, April 26,
2019)
All that must be done is to change
common knowledge.
That is exactly what pieces like
this do. They change what everybody knows that everybody knows. By the late spring of 2019,
everybody at least
suspected
that others
suspected
that climate policy was too
important to be left to officials and deliberative bodies constrained by pesky consensus-building
and politics.
Major financial news outlets began covering the topic from this angle at this time as well, now
bringing up the "M" word. Mandate. It simply means the official policy objective(s) to be targeted
by the unelected officials of the world's various central banks. Bloomberg brought up the topic in
early April. And yes, the below is theoretically from a news article, not an Op-Ed, but leave that
alone for the moment.
Freak weather events blamed on global warming -- largely regarded as temporary shocks so far --
risk becoming serious impediments to economic management in the future. They could even require
a rethink of central-bank mandates at some point
Central Banks Are Thinking Greener as Climate Change Hits Policy (Bloomberg,
April 2, 2019)
The idea that
subjective
regulatory policy, rather than traditional macroprudential
activities, ought to be shifted to an unelected body was now mainstream. The related narrative of
the need for a central bank mandate for climate change, which in most cases would
codify
that
shift in responsibilities, was now mainstream.
When narratives begin to accelerate, we find that they often manifest in Fiat News. That's our
term for the the use of affected language, opinions presented as fact and obvious issue framing in
news articles. The intent is usually to tell you
how to think
about an issue. Nobody does
it better than the New York Times, and here they really go for the gusto. In the lede, no less!
I'll leave you to guess at the author's opinion.
A top financial regulator is opening a public effort to highlight the risk that climate
change poses to the nation's financial markets, setting up a clash with a president who has
mocked global warming and whose
administration
has sought to suppress climate science.
Climate Change Poses Major Risks to Financial Markets, Regulator Warns (New
York Times, June 11, 2019)
In July, the
economics
research side of a global investment bank
published a piece asserting that
not
adding
climate change to the mandate of central banks could be considered an abrogation of fiduciary
duties owed by the Federal Reserve to citizens. They added that even if that wasn't possible, they
might have an argument for considering it part of the mandate already given its theoretical impact
on employment and prices. Let us conveniently ignore for a moment that extension of this logic
would permit the inclusion of literally every molecule between earth and sun in the mandate of
central banks.
The real quiet-part-out-loud moment, however, came later in July. It was a widely circulated and
shared piece published in Foreign Policy magazine that was later rehashed in an interview with the
Atlantic. It was very explicit about the belief not only in the attractiveness of a mandate change,
but in a mandate which went
well
beyond
the macroprudential
authority we have traditionally afforded to our central banks.
As of yet, their response is defensive, focusing on managing financial risks. The rest of us
have no choice but to hope that they move into a more proactive mode in time.
Why Central Banks Need to Step Up on Global Warming (Foreign Policy, July 20,
2019)
And that is exactly where the narrative starts to take off from what Carney originally had in
mind, and from the narrative the various CLC authors promoted in their Op-Ed push of 2018. The
author asserts that central banks need to embrace not only the regular roles of ensuring liquidity
and functioning lending markets, but the re-engineering of the economy, where it is growing and
where it isn't.
Taken at face value, the macroprudential approach makes sense. It is better for the financial
system to be resilient. But in adopting this approach, the central banks are using the same
conservative approach to climate change that proved lacking when it came to financial reform. In
the years since the 2008 financial crisis, they have perfected their tools of crisis management
but without addressing the root cause of the problem: that banks were too big to fail. More than
a decade on, they still are.
Of course, everything possible should be done to make the financial system resilient in the
face of climate-related Minsky moments. But why is financial stability the principal concern?
Central banks and financial regulators should instead be urgently exploring what they can do to
alter the course of economic growth so that the world can rapidly decarbonize and thus prevent
worst-case climate change -- and the related financial fallout -- in the first place .
If the world is to cope with climate change, policymakers will need to pull every lever at
their disposal.
Why Central Banks Need to Step Up on Global Warming (Foreign Policy, July 20,
2019)
Or, as the author put it more succinctly in the Atlantic interview:
Realistic? No. I mean, depends what you mean by realism. The scale of the challenge requires
a boldness of action for which there is no precedent.
How Climate Change Could Trigger the Next Global Financial Crisis (The
Atlantic, August 1, 2019)
Let's be really clear about what this is:
This is a clarion call for unelected
individuals participating in a body with limited transparency and limited oversight to be granted
the authority to exert policies to lift up specific industries, companies and individuals, and to
bring down specific industries, companies and individuals.
This is Step 9 of the Hayek road.
It is also the culmination of Step 3 of our variant of that road. Its call is always Always
ALWAYS the same: We are faced with an existential risk! We simply cannot abide the slowness and
inefficiency of open democratic processes! We must vest power in a body with the autonomy and
authority to act without debate or politics!
Let's get a man who can make a plan work.
Step 4 | Missionaries make an explicit play for power
|
November 2019
– December 2019
Source: Epsilon Theory, LexisNexis
The demand for "a man who can make a plan work" is only that – a demand – until its call is
heard and taken up. Our next brief period is defined by the taking up of that call. Only it wasn't
a man. It was taken up by incoming ECB President Christine Lagarde. She did so at a time that the
intersection of these two topics was reaching a fever pitch.
By then, the narrative pivot so cynically described earlier was no longer a secret. What was
once "we need to consider stress testing, reporting requirements and accounting standards for
climate-related risks to the financial system" had become "we support the ECB as a lever for
climate protection."
Not
just
protecting the financial system from unique risks that might be presented by
climate change.
Protecting the climate.
I am not paraphrasing.
"We will support Lagarde as she makes the E.C.B. a lever for climate protection," said Mr.
Giegold, who sits on the economics committee.
Lagarde Vows to Put Climate Change on the E.C.B.'s Agenda (New York Times,
September 4, 2019)
In the lead-up to her confirmation, Lagarde was strident in her remarks about the "strategic
review" that would characterize climate change as a "mission critical" consideration for the ECB.
Media outlets were
eager
to attach
the "mandate" language, although (as Lagarde herself pointed out in her first
post-confirmation press conference) a true formalized mandate would require changes from EU's
Parliament. But that is what narrative does. Once an idea like "let's do it through a mandate
change!" becomes common knowledge, it becomes the default framing for all such stories.
Alas, the cat was already out of the bag anyway. Lagarde's comments consistently embraced the
role of the ECB to
selectively
do exactly what a mandate would
require
: influence
the composition and winners and losers of the economy by manipulating the price of capital of
issuers who fit or do not fit a particular standard.
On the other side of the pond, efforts to drive the Fed into a similar posture in November and
December 2019 were relentless from both media and political missionaries. Bloomberg's coverage, in
particular, took a derisive tone on the insistence from Fed officials that playing a role in
engineering a solution to climate change was not part of its mandate ("Federal Reserve Leaves
Action on Climate Change to Politicians").
Yet – somehow – the Fed has remained above the fray. For now.
Step 5 | Missionaries warn what will happen if they are not given the power
|
January
2020
Source: Epsilon Theory, LexisNexis Newsdesk
Step 10 of the Hayek cartoon and Step 5 of our ad hoc alternative framework for a modern path to
serfdom cover what happens next:
Fear
.
The
primary tool of the Long Now.
Don't mistake me. I'm not talking about fear of climate change,
which I happen to think is pretty well-founded. I'm talking about the manufactured, memetic fear of
what will happen if we
do
not
consent to transferring the keys to global
political power and the world economy over to central banks any more than we already have.
It is almost too perfect that only weeks after Lagarde stepped out of confirmation hearings, the
BIS was putting the finishing touches on its new book, entitled "The Green Swan: Central Banking
and Financial Stability in the age of climate change." In context of some of the posturing for more
aggressive central banks, it is a pretty measured document and in many places recognizes the fact
that this isn't good metagame. It's not a fear-mongering book by
any
stretch. Still, even
in its hedging, it can't help but restate the emerging arguments for an expanded, open-ended role
for central banks.
On the one hand, if they sit still and wait for other government agencies to jump into
action, they could be exposed to the real risk of not being able to deliver on their mandates of
financial and price stability.
The Green Swan: Central Banking and Financial Stability in the age of climate
change
(BIS, January 2020)
But that's the whole thing about narrative.
It doesn't matter
that the book is
measured and cautious about arguing in favor of an expansion of central banking beyond traditional
macroprudential activities. It doesn't matter because a strong narrative means that the media would
frame it in a narrative-consistent way. The most shared article referring to that new book? A
Forbes article titled "
Financial Crisis Sparked by Climate Change Could Leave Central Banks
Powerless, Warns New Book.
"
Fear
. Fear of what will happen if you don't hand
over power.
I don't think we have really seen Step 5 yet. But the language to facilitate it is already
floating out there in the ether today, ready for missionaries to seize.
Before we get much further into "OK, so what do we do about all of this", I think it's worth
remembering a couple things.
First, none of this has a mite to do with what you or I think about climate change. I happen to
think it's almost certain it is happening, and that it is far more likely than not that it is
anthropogenic. I think it may be a really big deal economically during our lifetimes. I think many
of the things that the people quoted here are talking about are real risks. I think some of them
can be mitigated, and should be. You might not, and while my default skepticism about modeling of
complex systems means I won't be as supremely confident as some, I'll still think you're probably
wrong. But again, that doesn't matter. Not for anything we are talking about here, anyway.
Second, some of our readers will call me naive, but I think most of these people are
well-meaning. Really. The politicians, the media members, the central bankers (okay, maybe not
them). This isn't about evil dictators seeking power.
But it is also worth remembering that nearly every usurpation of the power of the individual –
especially already disempowered and disenfranchised individuals – has come in response to really
big threats. Real threats. Often, although not always, through
well-meaning
response to
those threats. Literally any argument being made about climate change and its indirect, but
potentially significant, relationship to risks to financial markets could have been made
historically about all sorts of big, non-financial events of indeterminate probability and hugely
variable, potential extreme severity. Disease epidemics, nuclear war, and global conventional wars
all fit the bill. What is being discussed here would materially reduce the autonomy and power of
the individual in ways for which they have no non-violent avenue for redress.
So what do we do? What
can
we do?
One thing we can do is ask ourselves, "
Why am I reading this now
?"
Why am I suddenly being told that central banks are a critical pillar to climate change response?
Is it because climate change has rapidly emerged from nothingness into the collective zeitgeist in
the last year? Is it because we have only conceived the role of green bonds or pricing climate
change risk on certain heavily leveraged balance sheets? Really?
Or is it because – like you see elsewhere in the Zeitgeist right now – anger at inaction in the
political arena is boiling over? Is it because the impulse to
get
a man
who can make a plan work
is becoming irresistible? Do you feel that way? Or, at the least,
are you feeling like others want you to feel that way?
As a citizen, another thing I would be looking for right now – what I AM looking for right now –
is what all these parties have wittingly or unwittingly set the table for: missionary statements
trying to stoke the fear of what will happen if we do not immediately begin granting power to
central banks and other similarly unfettered policy-making bodies to take matters into their own
hands.
Most importantly, when we see narrative being marshaled to hand over arbitrary power to
institutions that are not accountable to us, the people, we can speak up and resist. Resist an
extension of the territory granted to central banks beyond traditional, explicitly defined
macroprudential activities. Resist extending quantitative easing (and tightening!) to ideologically
and environmentally derived rankings of sectors, industries, companies and municipalities.
And when we
agree
with the underlying aims of those proposing these ideas, we can
remind ourselves that it is not
less
important that we resist them.
"... no reason to believe she'd be any less a hawk than she was as a senator, when she backed George W. Bush's war in Iraq, or as secretary of state, when she encouraged President Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. If her nomination is as sure a thing as people say, then antiwar organizing needs to start right away. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... it's something that might have been called neocon, ..."
"... Charles Davis is a writer in Los Angeles. His work has been published by outlets such as Al Jazeera, The New Republic, and Salon. Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the human rights organization Global Exchange. She is also the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. ..."
Announcing her latest campaign for the presidency, Hillary Clinton declared she was entering the race to be the champion for "everyday
Americans." As a lawmaker and diplomat, however, Clinton has long championed military campaigns that have killed scores of "everyday"
people abroad, from Iraq to Yemen.
As commander-in-chief, there's no reason to believe she'd be any less a hawk than she was
as a senator, when she backed George W. Bush's war in Iraq, or as secretary of state, when she encouraged President Barack Obama
to escalate the war in Afghanistan. If her nomination is as sure a thing as people say, then antiwar organizing needs to start right
away.
"If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he said, "it's something that might have been called neocon,
but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."
We're going to call it what it is: More of the same sort of murderous policies that destroyed Iraq,
destabilized Libya, killed women
and children
with
cluster bombs and drones in Yemen, and legitimized the undermining of democracy in Honduras. There's little chance the Republicans
will nominate someone better, but given Clinton's record as a senator and secretary of state - the latter giving us a very good idea
of how she would approach foreign affairs once in office - it will be hard for them to find anyone much worse.
We know that Clinton is no reliable friend of peace. Today she supports diplomacy with Iran, but
back in 2009, as secretary
of state, she was adamant that the U.S. keep open the option of attacking the Islamic Republic over never-proven allegations it was
seeking nuclear weapons. (In fact, Israel is the region's only
nuclear power.)
Her attempts to portray herself as an ally of those who are pro-peace, as a sort of reluctant imperialist, is the same sort of
co-opting distortion that has helped quiet opposition to President Obama's hawkish agenda. If anything, Hillary is even more militaristic
than the ostensibly reluctant warrior she's campaigning to replace. Still, that hasn't stopped her from trying to be all things to
all people - even people like us.
Indeed, in March 2003, Clinton did something she'll probably never willingly do again: She
met with CODEPINK to explain her support for the Iraq war.
"I like pink tulips around this time of the year," she began. They "kind of remind ya that there may be a spring. Well, you guys
look like a big bunch of big tulips!" It got progressively more awkward after that. "I admire your willingness to speak out on behalf
of the women and children of Iraq," said Clinton, but "There is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being put into harm's way
and that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm and I have absolutely no belief that he will."
We thought the easiest way to prevent harming the women, children, and other living things in Iraq was to stop a war of aggression,
ostensibly over weapons of mass destruction that UN inspectors on the ground couldn't find and which were, in fact, never found -
because they didn't exist. Clinton, however, was steadfast: "If Saddam were serious about disarming he would have been much more
forthcoming," she claimed. "The very difficult question for all of us is how does one bring about the disarmament of someone with
such a proven track record of a commitment, if not an obsession, with weapons of mass destruction?"
Her answer: Destroying Iraq by dropping millions of U.S.-made WMDs, including bombs with
depleted uranium that have more
than doubled the country's pre-2003
rate of cancer. Speaking
to the women of CODEPINK, Clinton even explicitly defended George W. Bush's unilateralism, citing her husband's go-it-alone intervention
in Kosovo back in the 1990s.
In 2011, when the Arab Spring came to Libya, Clinton was the Obama administration's
most forceful advocate for going above and beyond a no-fly zone to depose Muammar Gaddafi, whose U.S.-trained security forces
were killing Libyans with the help of weapons and equipment provided by his erstwhile allies in the United States, Britain, and France.
She even
out-hawked Robert Gates, the defense secretary first appointed by George W. Bush who was less than enthusiastic about going to
war. When Libyan rebels carried out an extrajudicial execution of their country's former dictator, her response was sociopathic:
"We came, we saw, he died," she
said, smiling and laughing. That sent a message that the United States would look the other way at crimes committed by allies
against its official enemies; indeed, it was the same policy of tolerance for friends' war crimes that arguably led Gaddafi to believe
he could get away with killing anyone he labeled "al-Qaeda."
Libya was part of a pattern for Clinton. On Afghanistan, she advocated a repeat of the surge in Iraq, encouraging President Obama
to more than double
the number of troops there. Her State Department also provided cover for the expansion of the not-so-covert drone wars in Pakistan
and Yemen. Clinton's top legal adviser, Harold Koh, exploited his pre-government reputation as an advocate for human rights to declare
in a 2010 speech that not only did the government
have the right to detain people without charge at Guantanamo Bay, but it can kill them with unmanned aerial vehicles anywhere in
the world.
Clinton practiced "soft power" diplomacy too, of course: After Honduran forces trained at the U.S. School of the Americas carried
out a coup against elected president Manuel Zelaya, Clinton's State Department immediately got to work on legitimizing the regime
that seized power. As commentator
Mark
Weisbrot observes, she even said as much in her book, Hard Choices: "In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke
with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico," wrote Clinton. "We strategized on
a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render
the question of Zelaya moot."
The subsequent "free and fair" election would end up being between two candidates who supported a coup opposed by most "everyday
people" in Honduras, now one of the most violent,
drug-war ravaged countries in
the world. Clinton has also
called for deporting child refugees fleeing that violence. In Honduras, as elsewhere, it seems it's not the lives of "everyday
people" that are of chief concern to politicians like Clinton.
When Barack Obama became president, the anti-war movement became his first casualty - followed by a group of Pakistanis
droned to death three days after his inauguration. We should never lose hope that we can bring about positive change, but actually
changing the world for the better requires being aware that whoever sits in the White House come January 2017 is not going to be
our friend.
Charles Davis is a writer in Los Angeles. His work
has been published by outlets such as Al Jazeera, The New Republic, and Salon. Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the peace group
CODEPINK and the human rights organization Global Exchange. She is also the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
"... Currently the United States is assisting Ukraine against Russia by providing some non-lethal military equipment as well as limited training for Kiev's army. It has balked at getting more involved in the conflict, rightly so. ..."
"... The Ukrainians were not buying any of that. Their point of view is that Russia is seeking to revive the Soviet Union and will inevitably turn on the Baltic States and Poland, so it is necessary to stop evil dictator Vladimir Putin now. They inevitably produced the Hitler analogy, citing the example of 1938 and Munich as well as the subsequent partition of Poland in 1939 to make their case. When I asked what the United States would gain by intervening they responded that in return for military assistance, Washington will have a good and democratic friend in Ukraine which will serve as a bulwark against further Russian expansion. ..."
"... But Obama chose to stay home as punishment for Putin, which I think was a bad choice suggesting that he is being strongly influenced by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the other neocons who seem to have retained considerable power in his administration. ..."
"... Obama told a crowd gathered outside the Nike footwear company in Oregon that the deal is necessary because "if we don't write the rules, China will " ..."
"... Obama takes as a given that he will be able to "write the rules." This is American hubris writ large and I am certain that many who are thereby designated to follow Washington's lead are as offended by it as I am. Bad move Barack. ..."
Currently the United States is assisting Ukraine against Russia by providing some non-lethal military equipment as well as
limited training for Kiev's army. It has balked at getting more involved in the conflict, rightly so. With that in mind,
I had a meeting with a delegation of Ukrainian parliamentarians and government officials a couple of weeks ago. I tried to explain
to them why many Americans are wary of helping them by providing lethal, potentially game changing military assistance in what Kiev
sees as a struggle to regain control of Crimea and other parts of their country from militias that are clearly linked to Moscow.
I argued that while Washington should be sympathetic to Ukraine's aspirations it has no actual horse in the race, that the imperative
for bilateral relations with Russia, which is the only nation on earth that can attack and destroy the United States, is that they
be stable and that all channels for communication remain open.
I also observed that the negative perception of Washington-driven
democracy promotion around the world has been in part shaped by the actual record on interventions since 2001, which has not been
positive. Each exercise of the military option has wound up creating new problems, like the mistaken policies in Libya, Iraq and
Syria, all of which have produced instability and a surge in terrorism. I noted that the U.S. does not need to bring about a new
Cold War by trying to impose democratic norms in Eastern Europe but should instead be doing all in its power to encourage a reasonable
rapprochement between Moscow and Kiev. Providing weapons or other military support to Ukraine would only cause the situation to escalate,
leading to a new war by proxies in Eastern Europe that could rapidly spread to other regions.
The Ukrainians were not buying any of that. Their point of view is that Russia is seeking to revive the Soviet Union and will
inevitably turn on the Baltic States and Poland, so it is necessary to stop evil dictator Vladimir Putin now. They inevitably produced
the Hitler analogy, citing the example of 1938 and Munich as well as the subsequent partition of Poland in 1939 to make their case.
When I asked what the United States would gain by intervening they responded that in return for military assistance, Washington will
have a good and democratic friend in Ukraine which will serve as a bulwark against further Russian expansion.
I explained that Russia does not have the economic or military resources to dominate Eastern Europe and its ambitions appear to
be limited to establishing a sphere of influence that includes "protection" for some adjacent areas that are traditionally Russian
and inhabited by ethnic Russians. Crimea is, unfortunately, one such region that was actually directly governed by Moscow between
1783 and 1954 and it is also militarily vitally important to Moscow as it is the home of the Black Sea Fleet. I did not point that
out to excuse Russian behavior but only to suggest that Moscow does have an argument to make, particularly as the United States has
been meddling in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine where it has "invested" $5 billion, since the Clinton Administration.
I argued that if resurgent Russian nationalism actually endangered the United States there would be a case to be made for constricting
Moscow by creating an alliance of neighbors that would be able to help contain any expansion, but even the hawks in the U.S. Congress
are neither prepared nor able to demonstrate a genuine threat. Fear of the expansionistic Soviet Union after 1945 was indeed the
original motivation for creating NATO. But the reality is that Russia is only dangerous if the U.S. succeeds in backing it into a
corner where it will begin to consider the kind of disruption that was the norm during the Cold War or even some kind of nuclear
response or demonstration. If one is focused on U.S. interests globally Russia has actually been a responsible player, helping in
the Middle East and also against international terrorism.
So there was little to agree on apart from the fact that the Ukrainians have a right to have a government they choose for themselves
and also to defend themselves. And we Americans have in the Ukrainians yet another potential client state that wants our help. In
return we would have yet another dependency whose concerns have to be regarded when formulating our foreign policy. One can sympathize
with the plight of the Ukrainians but it is not up to Washington to fix the world or to go around promoting democracy as a potential
solution to pervasive regional political instability.
Obviously a discussion based on what are essentially conflicting interests will ultimately go nowhere and so it did in this case,
but it did raise the issue of why Washington's relationship with Moscow is so troubled, particularly as it need not be so. Regarding
Ukraine and associated issues, Washington's approach has been stick-and-carrot with the emphasis on the stick through the imposition
of painful sanctions and meaningless though demeaning travel bans. I would think that reversing that formulation to emphasize rewards
would actually work better as today's Russia is actually a relatively new nation in terms of its institutions and suffers from insecurity
about its place in the world and the respect that it believes it is entitled to receive.
Russia
recently celebrated the 70 th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe. The celebration was boycotted by
the United States and by many Western European nations in protest over Russian interference in Ukraine. I don't know to what extent
Obama has any knowledge of recent history, but the Russians were the ones who were most instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany,
losing 27 million citizens in the process. It would have been respectful for President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry to
travel to Moscow for the commemoration and it would likely have produced a positive result both for Ukraine and also to mitigate
the concern that a new Cold War might be developing. But Obama chose to stay home as punishment for Putin, which I think was
a bad choice suggesting that he is being strongly influenced by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the other neocons
who seem to have retained considerable power in his administration.
And I also would note a couple of other bad choices made during the past several weeks. The Trans-Pacific multilateral trade agreement
that is currently working its way through Congress and is being aggressively promoted by the White House might be great for business
though it may or may not be good for the American worker, which, based on previous agreements, is a reasonable concern. But what
really disturbs me is the Obama explanation of why the pact is important. Obama
told a crowd gathered outside the Nike footwear company in Oregon that the deal is necessary because "if we don't write the rules,
China will "
Fear of the Yellow Peril might indeed be legitimate but it would be difficult to make the case that an internally troubled China
is seeking to dominate the Pacific. If it attempts to do so, it would face strong resistance from the Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos
and Koreans among others. But what is bothersome to me and probably also to many in the Asian audience is that Obama takes as
a given that he will be able to "write the rules." This is American hubris writ large and I am certain that many who are thereby
designated to follow Washington's lead are as offended by it as I am. Bad move Barack.
And finally there is Iran as an alleged state sponsor of terrorism. President Obama claims that he is working hard to achieve
a peaceful settlement of the alleged threat posed by Iran's nuclear program. But if that is so why does he throw obstacles irrelevant
to an agreement out to make the Iranian government more uncomfortable and therefore unwilling or unable to compromise? In an
interview with Arabic
newspaper Asharq al-Awsat Obama called Tehran a terrorism supporter, stating that "it [Iran] props up the Assad regime in
Syria. It supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It aids the Houthi rebels in Yemen so countries in the region
are rights to be deeply concerned " I understand that the interview was designed to reassure America's friends in the Gulf that the
United States shares their concerns and will continue to support them but the timing would appear to be particularly unfortunate.
The handling of Russia, China and Iran all exemplify the essential dysfunction in American foreign policy. The United States should
have a mutually respectful relationship with Russia, ought to accept that China is an adversary but not necessarily an enemy unless
we make it so and it should also finally realize that an agreement with Iran is within its grasp as long as Washington does not overreach.
It is not clear that any of that is well understood and one has to wonder precisely what kind of advice Obama is receiving when fails
to understand the importance of Russia, insists on "writing the rules" for Asia, and persists in throwing around the terrorist label.
If the past fifteen years have taught us anything it is that the "Washington as the international arbiter model" is not working.
Obama should wake up to that reality before Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush arrives on the scene to make everything worse.
Tom Welsh, May 19, 2015 at 7:02 am GMT • 100 Words
All of this misses the point, IMHO. There is really no need to explain that Russia has no plans to conquer Europe, China has
no plans to take over the Pacific, etc. Anyone with a little historical knowledge and some common sense can see that plainly.
What is happening is that the USA has overweening aspirations to control (and then suck dry) the entire world – and Europe, Russia
and China are next on its hit list.
So it naturally accuses those nations of aspiring to what it plans to do. Standard operating procedure.
The Priss Factor, May 19, 2015 at 7:19 am GMT • 100 Words
"The Ukrainians were not buying any of that. Their point of view is that Russia is seeking to revive the Soviet Union and will
inevitably turn on the Baltic States and Poland, so it is necessary to stop evil dictator Vladimir Putin now."
I can understand Ukrainian animus against Russia due to history and ethnic tensions.
But that is ridiculous. They can't possibly believe it. I think they're repeating Neocon talking points to persuade American
that the fate of the world is at stake.
It's really just a local affair.
And Crimea would still belong to Ukraine if the crazies in Ukraine hadn't conspired with Neocons like Nuland to subvert and
overthrow the regime.
Neocons lie should properly be called "threat inflation"
The underlying critical
point-at-issue is credibility as I noted in my comment on b's 2017 article. I've since
linked to tweets and other items by that trio; the one major change seems to have been the
epiphany by them that they needed to go to where the action is and report it from there to
regain their credibility.
The fact remains that used car salespeople have a stereotypical reputation for lacking
credibility sans a confession as to why they feel the need to lie to sell cars.
Their actions belie the guilt they feel for their choices, but a confession works much
better at assuaging the soul while helping convince the audience that the change in heart's
genuine. And that's the point as b notes--genuineness, whose first predicate is
credibility.
John Glaser and Christopher Preble have written a valuable
study of the history and causes of threat inflation. Here is their conclusion:
If war is the health of the state, so is its close cousin, fear. America's foreign policy
in the 21st century serves as compelling evidence of that. Arguably the most important task,
for those who oppose America's apparently constant state of war, is to correct the threat
inflation that pervades national security discourse. When Americans and their policymakers
understand that the United States is fundamentally secure, U.S. military activism can be
reined in, and U.S. foreign policy can be reset accordingly.
Threat inflation is how American politicians and policymakers manipulate public opinion and
stifle foreign policy dissent. When hawks engage in threat inflation, they never pay a
political price for sounding false alarms, no matter how ridiculous or over-the-top their
warnings may be. They have created their own ecosystem of think tanks and magazines over the
decades to ensure that there are ready-made platforms and audiences for promoting their
fictions. This necessarily warps every policy debate as one side is permitted to indulge in the
most baseless speculation and fear-mongering, and in order to be taken "seriously" the skeptics
often feel compelled to pay lip service to the "threat" that has been wildly blown out of
proportion. In many cases, the threat is not just inflated but invented out of nothing. For
example, Iran does not pose a threat to the United States, but it is routinely cited as one of
the most significant threats that the U.S. faces. That has nothing to do with an objective
assessment of Iranian capabilities or intentions, and it is driven pretty much entirely by a
propaganda script that most politicians and policymakers recite on a regular basis. Take Iran's
missile program, for example. As John Allen Gay explains in a recent
article , Iran's missile program is primarily defensive in nature:
The reality is they're not very useful for going on offense. Quite the opposite: they're a
primarily defensive tool -- and an important one that Iran fears giving up. As the new
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report entitled "Iran Military Power" points out, "Iran's
ballistic missiles constitute a primary component of its strategic deterrent. Lacking a
modern air force, Iran has embraced ballistic missiles as a long-range strike capability to
dissuade its adversaries in the region -- particularly the United States, Israel, and Saudi
Arabia -- from attacking Iran."
Iran's missile force is in fact a product of Iranian weakness, not Iranian strength.
Iran hawks need to portray Iran's missile program inaccurately as part of their larger
campaign to exaggerate Iranian power and justify their own aggressive policies. If Iran hawks
acknowledged that Iran's missiles are their deterrent against attacks from other states,
including our government, it would undercut the rest of their fear-mongering.
Glaser and Preble identify five main sources of threat inflation in the U.S.: 1) expansive
overseas U.S. commitments require an exaggerated justification to make those commitments seem
necessary for our security; 2) decades of pursuing expansive foreign policy goals have created
a class dedicated to providing those justifications and creating the myths that sustain support
for the current strategy; 3) there are vested interests that benefit from expansive foreign
policy and seek to perpetuate it; 4) a bias in our political system in favor of hawks gives
another advantage to fear-mongers; 5) media sensationalism exaggerates dangers from foreign
threats and stokes public fear. To those I would add at least one more: threat inflation
thrives on the public's ignorance of other countries. When Americans know little or nothing
about another country beyond what they hear from the fear-mongers, it is much easier to
convince them that a foreign government is irrational and undeterrable or that weak
authoritarian regimes on the far side of the world are an intolerable danger.
Threat inflation advances with the inflation of U.S. interests. The two feed off of each
other. When far-flung crises and conflicts are treated as if they are of vital importance to
U.S. security, every minor threat to some other country is transformed into an intolerable
menace to America. The U.S. is extremely secure from foreign threats, but we are told that the
U.S. faces myriad threats because our leaders try to make other countries' internal problems
seem essential to our national security. Ukraine is at most a peripheral interest of the U.S.,
but to justify the policy of arming Ukraine we are told by the more
unhinged supporters that this is necessary to make sure that we don't have to fight Russia
"over here." Because the U.S. has so few real interests in most of the world's conflicts,
interventionists have to exaggerate what the U.S. has at stake in order to sell otherwise very
questionable and reckless policies. That is usually when we get appeals to showing "leadership"
and preserving "credibility," because even the interventionists struggle to identify why the
U.S. needs to be involved in some of these conflicts. The continued pursuit of global
"leadership" is itself an invitation to endless threat inflation, because almost anything
anywhere in the world can be construed as a threat to that "leadership" if one is so inclined.
To understand just how secure the U.S. really is, we need to give up on the costly ambition of
"leading" the world.
Threat inflation is one of the biggest and most enduring threats to U.S. security, because
it repeatedly drives the U.S. to take costly and dangerous actions and to spend exorbitant
amounts on unnecessary wars and weapons. We imagine bogeymen that we need to fight, and we
waste decades and trillions of dollars in futile and avoidable conflicts, and in the end we are
left poorer, weaker, and less secure than we were before.
Daniel
Larison is a senior editor at TAC , where he also keeps a solo blog . He has been published in the New
York Times Book Review , Dallas Morning News , World Politics Review ,
Politico Magazine , Orthodox Life , Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and
Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week . He holds a PhD in history from the
University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter .
"... How about the hysteria that led to the Spanish War? "Remember the Maine," The ship was supposedly sunk in Havana Harbor by Spanish perfidy. In fact the Maine blew up because a coal bunker fire burned through a bulkhead and set off something or other. That was the US Navy's investigative finding after the war. Don't tell me about Hearst. Hearst was just selling newspapers. The American people went into a hysteric rage against Spain and that was the cause of war. Hearst just wanted to find "Rosebud." Figure it out. ..."
I am increasingly impressed with the number of people in the US who have been converted to
the climate change hysteric state. People I have known for years are considering winding up
their earthly affairs. One man asked if the government would help us all "transition" before
the end.
We Americans seem to be be particularly prone to waves of hysteria.
People lived in dread of a nuclear holocaust during the Cold War. A lot of money was spent
on fallout shelters from coast to coast. Food stocks were stored against the day of nuclear
winter. My father, who was as tight as a tick when it came to money, actually considered
digging up his back yard for the purpose.
And then there was the millennial hysteria when all the computers were expected to stop or
start running backward.
After 9/11 people lived in a hysteric state for months afraid of everything and everyone.
The Muslims are coming! The Muslims are coming! This might have been the grito of the
day. Federal Civil servants and employees of the World Bank in DC refused to go to work because
they were afraid. Of what? of everything and nothing. I had a beard then and a man on a subway
train told me that I should go back where I came from. Hysteria. I offered to give him help
with an attitude adjustment.
In 1941 the population of the west coast expected to be bombed and invaded by the Japanese.
Hysteria set in and sober people like FDR and George Marshall accepted the idea that American
citizens of Japanese descent should be interned for the duration of the war in camps well away
from the Pacific Ocean. They were interned solely because they were of Japanese descent and
public hysteria forced Washington to act.
I could go on and on ...
How about the hysteria that led to the Spanish War? "Remember the Maine," The ship was
supposedly sunk in Havana Harbor by Spanish perfidy. In fact the Maine blew up because a coal
bunker fire burned through a bulkhead and set off something or other. That was the US Navy's
investigative finding after the war. Don't tell me about Hearst. Hearst was just selling
newspapers. The American people went into a hysteric rage against Spain and that was the cause
of war. Hearst just wanted to find "Rosebud." Figure it out.
And now we have the approaching end of the world through man made climate change. It would
be funny if there were not so many who believe it.
Science? Hah! For every study you can produce in support of this fantasy I will find you one
to rebut it. All you ecofreaks! Don't send me material about this. I will not help you support
the hysteric fantasy. Send money to the Democratic Party. They believe this crap. pl.
The climate crisis is like the Olympics: the previous records are always beaten. Every day
the temperature rises a little; every day there is more CO2 in the atmosphere; every day
the level of the seas goes up ... Nothing ever goes down.
Atmospheric CO2 levels have never been as low in Earth's history as now. In the
Precambrian, the CO2 rate was several tens of thousands of ppm and in the Phanerozoic (541
million years ago) it was between 15 and 25 times higher than today.
Since it was isolated from the air at the end of the 18th century, scientists have made
direct measurements of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 that they were concerned with
documenting. Like all measurements, some are better than others, but show that in 1825,
1857 and 1942 CO2 levels were produced in the same order as the current ones. But above all
they show that these levels are oscillating, they rise and fall periodically, not in a
linear way as they want us to believe.
The average prepared by the World Meteorological Organization is not as global as it
seems because it comes from information from 53 countries. We don't know anything about the
rest of the countries in the world, so the data must be taken with tweezers, since we don't
even know its geographical distribution.
The quantitative data that we read continuously in the media about CO2 is an insult
to intelligence.
Journalists of scientific information claim that "humans generate 100 times more CO2
than all the volcanoes on Earth". Humans cannot generate that amount of CO2 at all.
To this day, the amount of CO2 that human activities send to the atmosphere is not
known because they are not measured but are estimated , that is, they are calculated in
a more or less approximate way, at "ojo de buen cubero" and, naturally, each country has
its own (if they have them). Readers would have better information if they read newspapers
like La Tribune that in 2011 told them the following: there are "a thousand different
ways" to measure CO2 emissions .
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere changes from one place to another, with
the seasons and with the hemisphere . In a home, the concentration of CO2 changes in a
few hours. Do the test yourself and you will see it.
Each country provides the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) with an inventory of its emissions, which should comply with the recommendations
of the IPCC.
But this is not the case either because each country measures its emissions (if it
measures them) as it pleases and these norms have changed over time, both because the IPCC
asks for it and because each government modifies them.
In May of this year the IPCC changed its recommendations. More than 280 experts
participated in a task that, by itself, modifies the previous and future calculations,
which are obsolete. Similarly, if next year the IPCC or the Ministry of Ecological
Transition change the measuring stick again, the figures we read today in the press will be
wet paper.
So far we have only talked about emissions, which leaves out the other half of the
issue that is rarely talked about: the absorption of CO2 by land, biomass or the ocean. It
is a subtraction: to the emissions the sinks must be deduced, which means entering a second
calculation that, from what is seen, worries much less .
According to the IPCC, CO2 remains between 50 and 200 years, a rather rude calculation
that indicates that science today cannot ensure it minimally accurately. According to Tom
V. Segalstad, the term is two to three years. According to other authors, it ranges between
three and ten years.
My research agrees with E. D. Here is a link to a non-technical article with a useful graph
of CO2 and temperature levels over the last 600 million years.
It's occurred to me that given the last 3 million years have been 80% +/- ice ages with
10,000 to 20,000 year enter glaciation periods, we might be near the end of a normal
interglacial period at present. A little warming may not be a bad thing over the next several
thousand years. Nevertheless, it would probably be better not to dump large volumes of
various gases into the atmosphere and oceans, and it probably would be wise to be prepared to
adapt to changes in fisheries, regional climate patterns, etc., without the fear and
hysteria. After all, things change.
Rollo May in 1965 predicted the Age of Aquarius would become the Age of Addiction in his book
(a college favorite at the time) "Love and Will". Indeed, this addiction to "climate change"
is the fated outcome when feelings took over fact.
Let's say all 100,000 "scientists" lived in the US- that is about 2000 for every state and
I think this number includes dentists. These "scientists" can be easily out-voted. 2000
voices of "science" can get drowned out within California's population of 40 million.
Hard to believe the mantra from the 1960's's was "Question Authority". What happened? What
brought about the total opposite mantra - question authority and you go to jail. What was the
progression from one spectrum to the other?
Google "debunking ice core samples" and one finds the following:
CO2 lags temperature
"An article in Science magazine illustrated that a rise in carbon dioxide did not precede a
rise in temperatures, but actually lagged behind temperature rises by 200 to 1000 years. A
rise in carbon dioxide levels could not have caused a rise in temperature if it followed the
temperature." (Joe Barton)
"One of the bill's mandates requires utilities to buy 9,000 megawatts of offshore
wind-generated electricity by 2035. That would result in 900 10-megawatt turbines to be
constructed off the coast of New York City and Long Island. Offshore wind is expensive. Based
on current state estimates for similar projects, the capital costs for these wind turbines
will total $48 billion, which the ratepayers will have to pay. If this and other targets are
not met for new renewables and energy storage capacity, the Public Service Commission (PSC)
will demand that the utilities buy renewable energy credits or pay penalties."
"The impacts of subsidized wind upon electricity markets are highly uncertain, and in many
cases demonstrably harmful. Wind serves to raise costs, complicate scheduling, destabilize
markets, and adversely impact reliability all in a hopeless effort to receive "free" energy
that is actually quite costly.
The potential for wind is limited. Any sub area can have a high penetration of renewables
if those resources are diluted into a larger area. Wind can provide adequate performance when
correctly integrated with hydro and fossil resources. But the challenges are significant at
this time to reach high penetration levels within most standalone resource mixes in most
system grids."
Article makes the following points
1) Wind farms are not built where there are not subsidies.
2) They wear out quickly so hidden capital costs are higher
3) They need substantial back up generation for when winds are too low high
4) The larger the wind farm larger back up capacity needed
On average, researchers found 20 microplastic particles in every 10 grams of stool,
suggesting humans are swallowing them in food. Particles between 50 and 500 micrometres
across were found, the most common being polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate
(PET).Oct 22, 2018
Climate change is only on part of the problem.Overpopulation and lack of fresh drinking
water is another.Luckily it is not my problem but it surely will be my children's.I would say
that is the attitude of most people in leadership roles today.
After the Spaniards arrived in the Sonoran Desert, it took less that 200 years of running
cattle to turn the deep soils of treed grassland with few cacti and many perrenial rivers
into a true desert. The soil is thin, grasslands gone, rivers intermittent, etc. The process
in the Sahara happened 2 millennia earlier. Britain used to be a temperate rainforest.
Iceland had trees and grasslands. There are plenty of other examples. In all these cases,
man's actions radically changed the environment and local climate changed as a result.
Why is it considered implausible that man's impact on the atmosphere and resulting chimate
change is any different?
Pre-industrial socities were more destructive of the environment than industrial ones. Think
of the Cedars of Lebanon, consumed by Phonecians, Greeks, and Romans for building ships.
One of the Earth's major periods of catastrophic climate change was the Permian-Triassic
extinction, also called the Great Dying. In a period of several hundred years, global
temperatures increased close to 10 degrees Celsius. The Earth lost 96% of its ocean life and
70% of life on land. Obvious this was not a man made crisis. There was a massive eruption of
multiple Siberian volcanoes spewing CO2, methane and enough lava to cover North America. The
massive increase in greenhouse gases caused a fairly quick global warming with catastrophic
results.
The current increase in greenhouse gases are only a fraction of the increase associated
with the Great Dying. One of the effects we'll likely see is an increase in Summer dead
zones, red tides and flesh eating bacteria blooms in coastal areas. It's not Doomsday, but
it's going to suck especially for those of us who like the water.
... Seven in 10 American voters support government action to address climate change,
including more than four in 10 (42%) who strongly support it. A large majority (71%) of
voters supports establishing a national renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requiring 100% of
electricity to be generated from renewable sources by 2050, and nearly half of voters (49%)
would approve of the federal government using their tax dollars to help pay for the
transition to 100% renewable-generated energy. Majorities say enacting a national 100% RPS
would have a positive impact on the environment in the U.S. (77%) and the U.S. economy (61%),
bring down electricity costs (61%), and benefit rural and farming communities (56%).
Some three-quarters of American voters (76%) say it's important to invest in building
infrastructure to be better able to withstand the effects of climate change; they also want
upgrades to existing infrastructure (74%) and new infrastructure projects (75%) be built to
withstand extreme weather, even when those upgrades come at a higher cost to taxpayers.
"Most Americans see that climate change has arrived and is already causing harm,"
said Dr. Edward Maibach, Director of George Mason University's Center
for Climate Change Communication. "They also support a range of science-based
solutions for fighting climate change, because they understand that these solutions will be
good for their families and their communities." ...
UPDATE: the majority of Americans surveyed DO believe it will harm them personally...
[ Though I am no scientist, I am struck by being asked about the seriousness of climate
change by casual acquaintances because there is concern that has gone much beyond ordinary
weather reporting.
The matter is, by the way, continually addressed in the Chinese press and all Chinese
development policy involves attention to increased greenness. ]
This is something that has always deeply worried me about climate science. There is a well
recognised form of epistemological error that arises from reductionist thinking that breaking
down problems into variables that can be studied results in excessive confidence in the
result – the problem comes from the variables overlooked or ignored. Or put another
way, forgetting about the 'unknown unknowns'. All scientists should be well aware of this,
but I see it all the time in papers – comments like 'we have assessed all the animal
studies and none have revealed excess cancer rates, therefore the product is considered
safe'. This is why the precautionary principle was invented, and why it is so very
important.
Climate science is so complex it is absolutely inevitable that there will be overlooked
variables. Of course, these variables could impact either positively or negatively, but for
all sorts of reasons the likelihood of them being negative (i.e. positive feedbacks or
unpleasant surprises) is higher. So it was always very likely that, even allowing for
political pressures, mainstream science would err on the side of understating risk. This is
one reason among others why so many economic studies based on the science are junk, they are
assuming a far greater degree of predictability than is possible.
Another further issue is that global models are very poor at predicting localised impacts.
I've sat in talks from engineers solemnly discussing how they have built predicted climate
change impacts into (for example) flood mitigation designs. But talk to the modellers and
they'll tell you it is simply impossible to extrapolate their predictions down to the scale
of an individual flood basin. The engineers are basing their designs on what amounts to
guesswork, disguised as sound science.
The reality is that we will be hit with more and more of these bad news stories, many
completely coming from left field. This is the world we've built.
Following your thinking I think that the next step for us, the common people, is to
realise that not only there may be coming many negative surprises but also there is not a
private or public service/agency that we can rely in case a nasty surprise comes to our
neighbourhood. We should think twice when making decisions and consider vulnerabilities
associated with them. For instance. Will I enjoy unlimited access to natural gas in the
following 20 years to heat my house? Not sure. Will my government provide a solution in case
supply is interrupted? Unlikely. Will be more reliable a heating system based on electricity?
May be. Should then I change my heating system and can I afford it? Yes and no. What is then
my priority? Will i suffer hotter summers because of climate change or colder winters beacuse
the gulf stream weakens? May be both.
Even though I am aware of some of the risks and despite my knowledge on heating, cooling
and ventilation systems is well above the average it is not easy for me to make decisions in
this sense. I just can try to avoid making big mistakes, but most people has to rely on
others counselling. Not surprisingly we keep making big mistaken decisions.
Indeed – as systems become more complicated and interlinked, we are losing the
ability to be self-reliant. I'm old enough to remember when most people repaired their own
cars and their heating/electrical systems. This simply isn't possible anymore.
Maybe more decentralised systems and the growth in home batteries, etc., will increase
resilience, but I'm becoming less sure of this.
Sometimes I think those crazy preppers living in the wilds of Montana were actually right
all along.
Crazy like foxes! Government will provide *solutions* for elites first, and foremost the
rest of us? we are counted on to *take care of* (euphemism) each other .
@ Posted by: Trailer Trash | Feb 25, 2019 9:13:36 AM | 49
We must separate what the scientists say to what is in the public arena.
There's no doubt our planet will warm up: we're still, technically, in an ice age, and all
ice ages end.
What is being debated is if human activity is accelerating or not the process (the
so-called anthropogenesis hypothesis). All evidence we can gather points to the validity of
anthropogenesis.
The thing is: if the world warms up too fast, we will not have time to adapt. If it takes
more, say, 350,000 years to warm up, we may have a chance to plan for a warmer planet (or we
may not, who knows). It's all about increasing humanity chances of survival in the long
term.
Now, of course, there are a lot of people who wants to earn a few political points or
money over this, but one thing is certain: the integrity of the scientists behind climate
monitoring is beyond doubt.
i love how they must line up all these '''managed events''' in a row to sync with events...
pence and freeland leading another lima group meeting in columbia to yammer on about the
same bullshit... totally predictable..
cbc - new water carrier for regime change article is here.. the canuck
federal election in oct 2019 can't come soon enough.. no way freeland will be in power after
that..
Sunny Burger 18
Had a look at it on Google Maps, and then on Google Earth. Was a bit weird that the
pixellized part wasn't along the dirt track's path but perpendicular to it. Then, I had
already seen once or twice that kind of weird shit artefact on Google Maps messing up some
areas for no discernible reason.
As others said, it doesn't make much sense to have some outpost there, specially if it's
supposed to be some hidden path to invade or infiltrate agents. The whole area isn't exactly
flat or friendly. Unless Brazil would be as efficient as 1950 China building whole roads to
invade Tibet, that's unlikely. My guess is that they'd just go through the 174/10 roads.
Then I had a look at Google Earth and closed up to have some (not very well done, but
that's better than nothing) 3D look. I correctly assumed that the forested part West of the
pixels is a flat area. It's actually the Northern top of the bloody tepui. On the other hand,
I was deadly wrong for what I assumed would be a track or (more probably) river that goes
South-North, just South of it, on the Brazilian Eastern side of the border. That's actually
the high rocky escarpment of the tepui... Which means the "dirt track" actually is located on
the side of said tepui. So, looks like some kind of ravine. That pic might possibly be of the
general area (Northern tip of Uei Tepui), and that "track" should be on the right side of the
picture: https://plus.google.com/photos/photo/100852354923520644519/6636405424949907330
Going back in time on Google Earth, that dirty strip seems quite recent, 2015 more or less.
Might be some landslide happened there recently during a nasty rainy time?
Since there is a tributary going NE from there (which then joins another river and goes
further NE, though I haven't followed them to the ocean or even the border), it's quite
definitely a ravine on the very steep side of the tepui - I mean, the unpixellated Western
end of the dirt strip seems to basically be the source of that river.
reply to Noirette 52
re differences in the photos of the bottle's labels.
Have you considered photoshop? This is MI5 and possibly MI6 we are dealing with here after
all.....
It's now called global climate change because some places will become warmer and others
colder.
As for scientists being unsure, that is part of the scientific method:
The steps to the Scientific Method are:
1) Pose a Testable Question.
2) Conduct Background Research.
3) State your Hypothesis.
4) Design Experiment.
5) Perform your Experiment.
6) Collect Data.
7) Draw Conclusions.
8) Publish Findings.
9) Others Review your Findings.
10) Start again at the beginning (step 1).
So, subsequent scientific research can prove that some parts or all of the hypothesis are
wrong but it gets us closer to the truth with each iteration. The average anti-scientist says
part of that hypothesis is wrong so all of the hypothesis is wrong and i'll ignore all the
subsequent work done on improving the hypothesis.
>It's now called global climate change because
> some places will become warmer and others colder.
>
> The average anti-scientist says part of that
> hypothesis is wrong so all of the hypothesis is
> wrong and i'll ignore all the subsequent work done
> on improving the hypothesis.
>
> Posted by: Ghost Ship | Feb 25, 2019 12:35:10 PM | 65
Man-made global warming is now called "climate change" because their predictions that CO2
drives global temperature have failed, as your response implies somewhat sideways. I'm
thinking about "The Pause" - the recent approx 15 year period where CO2 went up but the
earth's average temperature did not. (Assuming for the moment that "earth's average
temperature" is actually a valid, meaningful concept.)
I dare say Albert Einstein would be surprised to know he was anti-scientist:
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me
wrong."
That's the thing about the man-made global warming theory - it can never be proved wrong,
since it causes everything everywhere at any time. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too
windy, too calm - they are all caused by the magic molecule. This isn't science - it's
religion. What if the weather is "just right" - is that caused by the magic molecule too?
I had a long career in computer programming; I still remember punched cards (not fondly).
Every business application I wrote was a model of the business. Funny thing was that my
models actually had to work. If stuff wasn't in stock like the computer said, or invoices
were wrong, the company would soon be out of business.
Climate models are completely different. Their predictions are always well into the
future. It doesn't matter if they work or not; no one can tell until the future arrives. The
climate modellers get paid either way, so it's all good. Except for poor people who can't
afford $4 a gallon heating oil caused by "carbon taxes".
The models can't ever work because their resolution is too large to model weather
phenomena like clouds and thunderstorms. Whoops. So the models make lots of assumptions
instead. The biggest green house gas by far is water vapor, and it is left out of the
equations. Whoops again.
People have been convinced that model output is "data", but it isn't; the output is a
prediction that has to be compared to future observations. Promoters claim that one can
average the output of a hundred models, all of which are wrong, and come up with the right
answer. Garbage In is always Garbage Out, no matter how the data is tortured and how many
decimal places are added to "the answer".
The idea that anyone can ever predict, or even measure, the "earth's temperature" to .01
degrees is ludicrous. Have the climate scientists truly never heard of "margin of error" or
"false precision"? These are high school level concepts - no PhD required.
The same people have been making predictions since 1970s when we were all supposed to be
afraid of Global Cooling. None of their predictions have come true so far. Wake me if that
changes.
I'm not sure why Professor Li brings up the 'capitalist system' so prominently in the
article?
Perhaps I don't know the proper definition.
Seems to me that communist or socialist systems can produce just as much CO2.
Depends more on how many people, and their level of industrialization.
The only connection I can see is debt-fueled growth.
If you maximize the economic growth with as much debt as you can muster (borrowing from the
future economic production and wealth), you can grow far into overshoot. Like we have
now.
Perhaps this is more likely in a capitalist system. I'm not at all sure that is true.
Capitalism is simply the default system. The history of civilization has been a history of
capitalism. It has always been a dog eat dog world. To blame anything on capitalism is
nothing more than blaming it on human nature.
I would have said capitalism is simply the natural system. Other wise I think your right
on. Regulations are capitalism guard rails to a civil and successful society. Those who call
for a change to a different system are just ill informed.
There was no capitalist world system 500 years ago. Even 200 years ago, it was still
restricted to Western Hemisphere plus a fraction of Eurasia. In fact, even the English word
"capitalism" was not yet invented then. In 1848, Marx talked about "bourgeois society". So
there is not such a thing called "natural system"
Capitalism is very recent development.
First developed in Netherlands and England in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, and
wasn't part of the global world until colonization.
It will be gone shortly, as it needs a expanding economy.
What comes next?
Who knows?
Capitalism – an economic and political system in which a country's trade and
industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. Synonyms:
free enterprise, private enterprise, the free market; enterprise culture
The free market has always existed, albeit at low percentage levels of total production,
which was mostly subsistence agriculture or hunting and gathering. It is certainly true that
capitalism has expanded greatly with the dramatic increase in production that came with
widespread use of fossil fuels, but the concept of private enterprise and private trade
didn't spring out of nothing. It was always there.
There were even private markets under pre-fossil-fuel feudalism, in which the politically
powerful were mostly concerned with defense and taxation. Lots of trade opportunities were
given to people by the state, but they were given to private enterprises. There were also
private traders operating without state support at the same time.
Even tribal groups engaged in trade, although it is often difficult to discern a
distinction between "the state" and "private enterprise" in tribal circumstances.
Capitalism as a word didn't exist but the mercantile economy (profitable trade) has been
going on well before money and money has been around for 5K years.
It seems to me that capitalism has no monopoly on damaging the environment. I'd suggest
rapidly destroying the environment is more a function of being an industrial economy, whether
capitalist or some other. Non-industrial economies seem to destroy the environment more
slowly.
First of all, people who lived in former socialist societies did not call these societies
"communism". That's an American expression later imposed on the rest of the world
Secondly, 20th century socialisms were a part of the capitalist world system and had to
play the system's basic game–economic growth
Thirdly, according to the world system theory (and agreed by many others), the essential
feature of capitalism is the pursuit of endless accumulation of capital.
Someone might say you can have market without growth. It is possible to have a non-growth
economy if the market is not dominant, like all the pre-capitalist societies. But if the
market is dominant, then you have competition everywhere and competition forces everyone to
pursue growth. If you do not grow, you fail and you are eliminated. That happens both to
individuals and countries
Lastly, at least a large minority of environmentalists agree that economic growth is
fundamentally incompatible with sustainability. So if you agree with point three and four,
you have to conclude that so long as capitalism exists, there is no hope for
sustainability.
a large minority of environmentalists agree that economic growth is fundamentally
incompatible with sustainability.
I would disagree. In fact, I'd say that some of the push for this idea has come from
ultra-conservatives like the Heartland Institute, which hopes to discredit
environmentalists.
Have you seen evidence for the idea that this is an idea held by a large minority of
environmentalists?
The article you provided starts with "To read the accounts in the mainstream media,
one gets the impression that renewable energy is being rolled out quickly and is on its way
to replacing fossil fuels without much ado, while generating new green jobs."
That's an explicit acknowledgement that the author is outside the mainstream.
it's fair to say that growth sustainability has yet to be proved
I would strongly disagree. I would describe the idea that investing in renewable power and
EVs would necessarily destroy economic growth as a fringe idea, outside the economic and
environmental mainstream. It is an extraordinary idea, which needs extraordinary
evidence.
For instance, I think it's fair to say that Germany is both an engineering and
environmental leader, and that the general consensus in German environmental circles is that
a transition away from FF is compatible with economic growth.
Yes, I understood. And I'm disagreeing. I think it's a small minority – a fringe.
The idea of a "large minority" suggests some degree of acceptance by the general
environmental community. It suggests that this is a strong contender in the "marketplace of
ideas". As the author of the article you provided acknowledged: he's out of the mainstream.
He's arguing to try to change that, but .his opinion is definitely outside the general
consensus. It's not generally considered a "strong contender".
Thirdly, according to the world system theory (and agreed by many others), the essential
feature of capitalism is the pursuit of endless accumulation of capital.
Well not really–
The essence is:
"The capitalist mode of production proper, based on wage-labour and private ownership of the
means of who derive their income from the surplus product produced by the workers and
appropriated freely by the capitalists."
But agree– appropriate or die by the hands of those with greatest greed.
I've stopped using the term "capitalism" because it elicits so damn many knee-jerk reactions.
Of late, I always refer to "neoliberalism" and then if I feel like picking a fight, I'll
follow in parentheses (end-stage capitalism, that is). Neoliberalism is the end-stage of the
global economic system, in which I include China as well, because it's the period of total
rent-seeking (completely unearned wealth) and what I like to call The Mother Of All Asset
Bubbles (MOAAB).
All of U.S. energy policy since the Greatest Recession Ever, Dude began in Dec. 2007 has
been fostering full-out flat-out shale production in order to squash the less-diversified
energy-dependent economies such as Venezuela, Iran (where it hasn't succeeded, yet) and even
Russia (hasn't succeeded). But it's left the USA as the Hegemon of global energy at the
present moment.
This should leave the USA in the position for loads more unearned wealth-accumulation at
least until there is a bust in the fracked energy production. All this does is prolong the
length of the end stage of the economic system, in my humble opinion. At some point we'll
have to reckon with the end of the end stage.
According to UAH temperature records there has been no warming since 2003 although the
strong El Nino a couple of years ago caused a transient temperature spike which has since
subsided
The world was been warming over 14000 years along with some cooling periods in between.
This is normal in interglacial periods. We are cooler and sea levels lower than the previous
interglacial. The normal for the world is the longer lasting glacial periods which come and
go every 100,000 years to be followed by interglacials lasting 10,000-20,000 years. Since the
end of the last glaciation, there has been an average sea level rise of 1 cm per year. During
this time, sea level has fallen and risen at rates of over 2 cm per year. This rate of sea
level change is far higher than the most catastrophic IPCC speculations.
Sea levels have been rising since the last glaciation ended and reached a maximum 6000
years ago. There has been no acceleration of sea level rise amid the period of
industrialisation.
Man has contributed to warming. The UHI effect is real but localized and most of the
worlds land temperature stations are located in industrialized US and European urban areas
distorting the picture. Fortunately we have satellite measurements like UAH although only for
the last 40 years
Outgoing long wave radiation has not decreased, which the models predict as being
necessary for the planet to be warming at an accelerated rate. They claim the heat is hidden
by the oceans but this should be reflected with a lower OLWR. They also predict increased
water vapor in the upper-mid troposphere as a feed back to increased CO2. Water vapor in that
region has dropped 20% since 1950 despite a 40% increase in C02. As reduced water vapor in
the upper troposphere increases OLWR (cooling) that offsets any reduction (warming) from CO2.
Since 2003 when temperatures have been flat, water vapor in the upper-mid troposphere has
been flat as well despite an increase in CO2 from 370-410 ppm. The fact it has not declined
may be due to other variables causing cooling. Nevertheless it has not increased as the
models predicted
The AGW theory as demonstrated by the models failing to predict OLWR, Temperature and
upper level water vapor is thus proven to be false or at least questionable
"Not a single one of the widely-varying dozens of AGW projections (ergo, there is no
'consensus'), not a single one of those 'hard science' specious futurology theories has been
even remotely close to actual temperature or sea rise data, which proves, unequivocally,
every one of those theories is FALSE, and false despite constant and unrepentant hindcasting
re-tweeking, and $100Ms, if not $10Bs in Public Treasury funds wasted on public dole
Scientocracy theoretical massagination ... or are you a Denier like Trump, shouting FAKE NEWS
and wearing AGW! emblazoned on your little green hat? Next you'll be saying little green
aliens stole the missing heat and are hiding it in the center of the earth, because, magma,
lol."
this is completely wrong. you keep making these assertions but never bother to try to back
them up with evidence. probably because there isn't any. it isn't a worldwide science plot,
anymore than the moon landing or evolution or thermodynamics is a worldwide science plot.
and by the way christy is one of the few scientists that get trotted out regularly by the
deniers, and he is usually wrong, as his papers get roundly criticised and are eventually
ignored. as i said, the creationists had a few tame evolutionary biologists they would trot
out regularly, but evolution is still good science.
pfft, the mann hockey stick study has been replicated repeatedly. you seem to be getting
your bogus science and talking points from sites like wattsupwiththat, or jonova, or from
other people that don't know what they are talking about.
Tide gauge data shows sea-level increasing about 20 cm per century for at least 2
centuries – with no sign of acceleration to the present. The claim that this increase
is accelerating is very peculiar.
Since 1979 we have been able to measure sea level itself with satellites. However, the
accuracy of such measurements depends on such factors as the precise shape of the earth.
While the satellites show slightly greater rates of sea level rise, the inaccuracy of the
measurement renders the difference uncertain. What the scientists have done is to accept the
tide gauge data until 1979, but assume that the satellite data is correct after that date,
and that the difference in rates constitutes 'acceleration.' They then assume acceleration
will continue leading to large sea level rises by the end of this century.
Manns Hockey Stick is another example. His proxy data should what he wanted up to 1980.
That was the stripbark tree ring proxies that NAS recomended against because the tree ring
widths were susceptible to other non temperature variables. After 1980 with temperatures
increasing, his tree ring proxies showed a decline in temperature. That wouldnt do so he
switched to the actual temperature data after1980
Ice core data for CO2 is another example. Ice cores that were determined to be late 19th
century ice were showing cO2 levels far higher than desired, close to 350 ppm rather than 280
-300 ppm. So these scientists arbitrarily decided without evidence that these samples were 80
years younger (mid 20th century). Ice core data from deeper samples are under much greater
pressure and undergo hydrolysis and other complex processes that lower CO2 levels so are
presumed to be accurate. Even they show CO2 lags temperatures. In other words, temperatures
drive CO2 levels, or at least they did in the past.
Posted by: Glenn Brown | Nov 6, 2018 4:06:32 PM | 15"
Glenn, about satellite sea level measurements, did you know that the value is not a measured
sea level increase, but contain an additional adjustment (GIA) addressing calculated increase
of sea capacity? It is a virtual sea level increase?
The article that you posted adds those values without considering the additional
adjustment.
Reality in Fiji Islands:
" A +70 cm higher sea level was observed, sampled and dated at AD 1530-1673. It was followed
by a
significant regression of about 1.7-1.8 m, killing coral reefs and cutting a new rock-cut
platform some 20-30 cm above
present mean low tide level (LTL). Then sea level rose again to its present position, or
slightly above, a level, which
remained fairly constant over the last 150-200 years. In the last 60 years corals were killed
due to a sea level lowering
or a severe bleaching episode. After that very stable sea level conditions must have
prevailed for the last decades,
forcing corals at several sites to grow laterally into microatolls"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323253640_New_Records_of_Sea_Level_Changes_in_the_Fiji_Islands
The human produced CO2 was insignificant before 1950. It grew (a lot) since then, however
the sea level shows no acceleration in real life: http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/
Look at the tide gauges = reality, where does one see a doubling of sea level increase
in the last decades as says your linked article? "The pace of global sea level rise
nearly doubled from 1.7 mm/year throughout most of the twentieth century to 3.1 mm/year since
1993."
Nothing is heating up dangerously when the sea level is meters lower that in the Roman
period. There is no acceleration & no reason for panic.
BM , Nov 9, 2018 5:27:20 AM |
linkLP , Nov 9, 2018 7:20:56 AM |
link
The one fact denialists can't explain away--increasing ocean acidification. It's already
killing aquaculture here in the Pacific Northwest, and there's only one possible
cause--increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 thanks to carbon pollution.
Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 8, 2018 4:51:43 PM | 98
Moving the goalpost once an alarmist post has been debunked?
First let it sink in, the sea level alarmism has been debunked in this conversation.
Fun point aside, there have been several times links posted from 'skeptical science' site.
You realise how orwellian the name is?
What is skeptical there? The whole site is built on straw man arguments, there is no free
comments area there, all arguments are careful crafted
and moderated so as to build their pet theory, but sight, a believer would never suspect
their priests isn't it?
I do not receive any oil money and most debunker don't do neither. There is too much BS in
the global warming theory to accept it like it is, but you are free to believe in it. Don't
force it on me. You can convince me with arguments, but not with insults.
If it would be really warming it would start at the poles, you realise that? You see there is
no warming in Antarctica with all the alarmism and cherry picking.
With all your 'debunking' skills, seeing a temperature chart that is being changed,
'adjusted' in the past does not ring a bell to any of you alarmist?Seeing a sea level chart
that is been updated the same way?
Are you old enough to have seen it evolve? Have you looked at past charts and put them over
the new ones?
Are you old enough, have you lived through the ice age theory in the 60's 70's? Do you
remember it?
All life is based on carbon, do you remember organic chemistry? Carbon is no
pollution.
Probably the cosmic ray theory explains the way how climate evolved in the past, explains
why there were ice ages when the CO2 levels were above 1000 ppm - probably the Earth was
bombarded with much more cosmic rays in those times. CO2 is not the main climate driver, in
know climate history it lagged behind temperature.
To my knowledge first come the ocean circulation and that depends on the continental
distribution, the currents around Antarctica enabled the freezing of that continent. Once
that circumpolar current is affected Antarctica will melt and become something like the North
Pole, but not before.
The other main driver are the clouds.
You know the oceans are attributed no warming, everything is attributed to the greenhouse
gases. Is this right? Would a planet without oceans have exactly the same average temperature
as a planet with oceans?
It is a pity with so much anger and fanaticism a proper theory cannot really be developed.
Imagine what chances does a scientist have to promote now a theory that contravenes to the
Global Warming theory?
Fossil fuels heresy!
Are they really fossil fuels? Of course, as all life is based on carbon, all sediments that
come from living beings will have carbon in them, but is this the only thing? What about the
methane dunes on Pluto?
I used to assume that AGW was real. Everyone said so and I saw only poor arguments against
it.
Then one day I thought I'd double-check to make sure of my facts in this very polarised
issue.
Here are some facts that changed my mind (you are under no obligation to even consider
these facts):
1. "97% of scientists"
The original study found that, among 3146 scientists of various disciplines, about 77-82%
favoured AGW. The criteria were progressively narrowed until 97% of 168 scientists agree.
This 97% claim is such a linchpin of the pro-AGW argument that it is important to know in
what way is it both true and misleading.
2. "100% of temperature increase is adjustments"
It is essential to know whether or not this anti-AGW claim is true or not. To investigate,
I shuttled back and forth between the two sides. To summarise:
Pro: US land temperatures show an increase over the last century
Anti: Yes, but the adjustments to temperatures account for all of the increase. raw
temperatures have not increased much at all
Pro: The histogram of adjustments show a balanced bell curve of positive and negative so
they must be fair
Anti: Yes, but the adjustments plotted over time show a steady increase, adjusting 1920
temperatures down and 2010 temperatures up means adjustments increase steadily over the
last century, and account for ALL of the increase in temperatures that is reported
Pro: But experts from NOAA make these adjustments for good reasons so you should trust
them
Anti: Yes, some of the trend can be explained by time-of-day bias (TOB) adjustments, but
less than 0.3C so what about the rest of the 0.6C of adjustments?
At this point, my Pro correspondent lost interest and went back to talking about 97%
3. Ocean rise
We have satellite data for the last 25 years. Satellites orbit lower each pass (eg. 19cm
per year) so you need to make those kind of adjustments and everyone agrees with those.
With only those adjustments to sea level readings, there is no discernible change to sea
level over the last 25 years.
Then there is a second set of adjustments that experts like Professor Mölner regard as
arbitrary and unproven, but they produce a chart showing sea level rising.
Against those charts, however, we find that most of the "vulnerable" Pacific islands that
were feared to go under the waves have actually been increasing their shorelines over the
last decade.
I'm happy for my mind to be changed again, but it cannot be changed by name calling.
I think its important to know the level of scientific certainty, if temperatures are
rising, and if seas are rising. The more I looked into it, the more I found that it is
uncertain.
The media are not uncertain, however, and I do not have a ready explanation for why that
is. Although, if pushed I'd refer you to Matt Taibi's magnificent 2010 article on Goldman
Sachs with its reference to how the idea of climate change can create a huge market for GS
to manipulate.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-195229/
I am another of those who doesn't believe that man made CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. This
is good news. The belief that CO2 is a major factor in determining climate is believed
because it is one of the easier factors to mathematically model - everything else staying
the same - which of course it doesn't. All of the disastrous predictions ('It's tough to
make predictions, especially about the future' - Yogi Berra) are from climate models - not
observable evidence. There is a reason they changed the name from Anthropogenic Global
Warming to Climate Change. Climate change happens all the time. Global Warming has been
happening since end of the Little Ice Age. Sea level rise happening at the same rate also.
The ice cores say temperature changes first - CO2 levels follow - not initiate. A carbon
footprint would be the basis for almost total control of people's lives. Why the Little Ice
Age happened is not settled science unless you're Mike (Mike'e Nature trick) Mann who just
made it go away like he did the Medieval Warming with his hockey stick. Before NOAA went
and changed the temperature figures to make the pause go away there were over 100 peer
reviewed papers trying to explain the pause Even Michael Mann wrote a paper trying to
explain why the pause wasn't a pause - most of them say natural variation mostly in the
ocean https://revengeoftheherd.com/2017/03/12/james-corbett-on-climate-change-hoax/
has a number of his short videos on why the climate change alarmism is a hoax. Why do most
climate scientists agree with climate alarmism?: Lennart Bengston - the former director of
the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the world's leading climate
research centers on why he resigned from GWFP - In 2014, only three weeks after his
appointment as a member of the Advisory Board to the Global Warming Policy Foundation
(GWPF), he was forced to resign(20). The GWPF is a significant organization known for its
support of sceptical views concerning climate change. The reasons for his resignation are
clear from the following abstracts from his resignation letter to the GWPF. "I have been
put under such an enormous group pressure in recent days from all over the world that it
has become almost unbearable to me. If this is to continue I will be unable to conduct my
normal work and will even start to worry about my health and safety .I had not expected
such an enormous world wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to
all my life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing
from joint authorship etc It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy."
Judith Curry used to be the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. Being part of the IPCC led her to be a climate skeptic -
which led to Scientific American calling her a heretic. Later to her leaving academia all
together. There are billions (yes plural) of dollars for research grants for studies that
validate climate warming caused by CO2. Thge millions the Koch brothers spend skeptic views
is paltry. I could go on but its not science but religion where one has heresy if one
disagrees with the consensus. `
"... What makes Jeff Bezos a capitalist is not his belief system but his ownership and deployment of capital. Capitalism is a system of institutions that give economic and political primacy to the possession and control of capital. ..."
The
very long New York Times piece on climate change politics in the 1980s by
Nathaniel Rich has attracted a lot of critical commentary -- justifiably. To say that the
failure to achieve a political response was due to human nature, a genetic defect that prevents
our species from planning ahead, is just lazy and wrong. Were the scientists, environmentalists
and other activists that did want to take action a bunch of mutants? Haven't humans acted with
foresight (and also failed to act) since time immemorial? "Human nature" explains everything
and nothing; it's what you invoke when you don't want to do the digging a real explanation
would require.
I wish the left had a solid response to this immobilizing mushiness, but instead it mostly
offers its own version of counter-mush. A case in point is Naomi Klein.
I've already written at length about her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism and
the Climate , but I don't want to let her latest piece
at The Intercept pass without notice.
Klein rightly excoriates Rich, but then goes on to make this argument:
Capitalism, not human nature, is responsible for climate inaction.
Capitalism is an ideology that worships profit and "endless growth".
Its purest form is neoliberalism.
The late 1980s was the high water mark of neoliberalism, so climate activism was
suppressed.
We must reject capitalism by adopting the earth-centered philosophy of indigenous
peoples.
Politically, this means embracing a caring economy of green jobs, meeting human needs and
rejecting "extractivism".
If this were just Klein's own idiosyncratic viewpoint we could shrug and move on, but since
it reflects what may be the main current in left thinking about the climate crisis, it matters
that it turns what ought to be well focused and clear into a thick, gummy soup.
No, capitalism is not an ideology. What makes Jeff Bezos a capitalist is not his belief
system but his ownership and deployment of capital. Capitalism is a system of institutions that
give economic and political primacy to the possession and control of capital. There is no
single metric that captures the effect that a capitalist context has on an issue like climate
change, but the starting point is surely anticipated capital gains or losses from a given
policy. (One way we can tell that existing policies are largely toothless is that their
enactment had imperceptible effects on asset prices.)
Yes, the 1980s was the zenith of the modern neoliberal project, but there are currents
within neoliberalism that support climate action. One doesn't have to be a fan of this school
of thought to recognize that it's not monolithic on environmental matters -- or on racism,
criminal justice, public health and other questions.
Comments (5)
SW , August 5, 2018 10:32 am
It was the Clinton administration's obsession with a balanced budget in the nineties
that prevented a robust response to climate change. SERI had just been christened the
National Renewable Energy Lab by George Bush. Climate warrior Al Gore was Vice President.
And for eight years there was never a visionary proposal put before Congress regarding
Climate Change and renewable energy. You can say that they couldn't have gotten it
through a hostile congress. Fair enough. But they never tried. The mantra from them was,
we need to balance the budget, then all things are possible. Well they did accomplish
this miracle and what did it enable? George Bush II's tax cuts.
JackD , August 5, 2018 12:44 pm
If capitalism is a system that allows people with money and assets to use them as they wish,
then capitalism is, indeed, the culprit. Action on climate change (reducing carbon, and
methane, by the way) was avoided by wealthy and, therefore, powerful interests in order to
protect their money and assets.
pgl , August 5, 2018 2:10 pm
"It was the Clinton administration's obsession with a balanced budget in the nineties that
prevented a robust response to climate change."
The original tax increase proposal in 1993 would have provided for more tax revenues to
pursue a progressive agenda including a BTU tax which would have been an excellent move. Alas
we were sold out by about of Blue Dog Democrats.
Karl Kolchak , August 5, 2018 3:18 pm
Klein is right in this sense: economic growth = greater climate destruction. Look at the
current weather headlines–deadly climate change is no longer decades away, but right at
our doorstep. "Mushy" measures like "green" automobiles (a total oxymoron) and increased solar
and wind power are going to do no more than delay the ultimate catastrophe by a few years.
Fossil fuels are still the only viable way we have of powering the modern middle class
lifestyle so many in America will never agree to forgo, and that so many around world aspire to
achieving.
Unless you are willing to give up your car, your house, your electronic gadgets and most
your modern conveniences, you are part of the problem, and blaming Trump and his denialist
minions just makes you a hypocrite.
SW , August 5, 2018 4:07 pm
"The original tax increase proposal in 1993 would have provided for more tax revenues to
pursue a progressive agenda including a BTU tax which would have been an excellent move. Alas
we were sold out by about of Blue Dog Democrats".
So from 1993 until 1999 in the midst of the best economy in a generation, you simply give up
because you didn't get something passing in '93? OK.
Interesting, if not quite as d&mning as the East Anglia collection of emails showing
worldwide fraud among scientists who get money to hawk global warming:
"Astrophysicist -- Mini Ice Age accelerating -- New Maunder Minimum has started May 3,
2018
We are plunging now into a deep mini ice age," says astrophysicist Piers Corbyn. "And there
is no way out." For the next 20 years it's going to get colder and colder on average, says
Corbyn.
The jet stream will be wilder. There will be more wild temperature changes, more hail
events, more earthquakes, more extreme volcano events, more snow in winters, lousy summers,
late springs, short autumns, and more and more crop failures.
"Carbon dioxide levels do not have any impact -- I repeat, any impact -- on climate," says
Piers. "The CO2 theory is wrong from the start."
"The fact is the sun rules the sea temperature, and the sea temperature rules the
climate."
"The basic message is that the sun is controlling the climate, primarily via the sea."
"What we have happening -- NOW! -- is the start of the mini ice age it began around 2013.
It's a slow start, and now the rate of moving into the mini ice age is accelerating."
"The best thing to do now is to tell your politicians to stop believing nonsense, and to
stop doing silly measures like the bird-killing machines of wind farms in order to save the
planet (they say), but get rid of all those things, which cost money, and reduce electricity
prices now."
Piers Corbyn is a crank -- plenty of them out there -- most not related to someone famous.
But just a few minutes of research should raise some red flags on this guy.
Red flag #1 -- the guy leaves a physics graduate school with only a masters -- this is
normally a booby prize -- these programs are designed for PhDs.
Red flag #4 -- Piers is quoted as saying "Carbon dioxide levels do not have any impact -- I
repeat, any impact" -- this means he rejects the basic physics of radiation
absorption/reflection taught at the undergrad level.
Red flag #5 -- economic interests -- "For Corbyn, 51, all this is a lot more than an
intellectual exercise. He has his eye both on writing a new chapter in meteorological science
and on grabbing a piece of an international business worth an estimated $2 billion a year."
https://www.wired.com/1999/02/weather-2/
Red flag #6 -- "If I'm to believe Corbyn, his scrawls represent something conventional
science says cannot exist: a detailed weather forecast that reaches nearly a year into the
future." -- which for anyone familiar with the nature of coupled partial differential equations
that form chaos theory, you would know about the inability to make such forecasts. https://www.wired.com/1999/02/weather-2/
Thanx for the info. I will file it right next to the picture of Noah's ark with baby dino
heads sticking up through the deck and the latest minutes from the Flat Earth Society
meetings.
"A study by Cornell and the University of Michigan researchers found that those "highly
concerned" about climate change were less likely to engage in recycling and other eco-friendly
behaviors than global-warming skeptics.
"Belief in climate change predicted support for government policies to combat climate
change, but did not generally translate to individual-level, self-reported pro-environmental
behavior," said the paper.
As Pacific Standard's Tom Jacobs put it, "remember that conservatism prizes individual
action over collective efforts."
"So while they may assert disbelief in order to stave off coercive (in their view) actions
by the government, many could take pride in doing what they can do on a personal basis," he
said in a Friday post.
Mr. Gore, a leading climate-change activist, has long come under fire for his
carbon-emitting ways, such as burning 21 times more kilowatt hours annually at his Nashville
mansion than the average U.S. household, according to a 2017 study by the National Center for
Public Policy Research.
His swimming pool alone uses enough electricity to power six average homes for a year, the
study said."
Luke provides a perfect example of confirmation bias -- start with a predetermined position,
look for evidence that confirms that position, and reject evidence to the contrary. He quotes
The Washington Times -- a propaganda paper created by the Moonies (next time he will probably
quote Fox News -- or is it Faux Noise). Why would anyone cite this Moonie rag as a source? In
this case the Moonie paper appears to have found one example of a flawed study to attack
supporters of climate science. For those unfamiliar with propaganda techniques, check out the
wiki page which identifies this Ad Hominem attack. The Moonie article is classic propaganda --
the worst kind of corporate media dribble. The Moonie paper quotes a single study with a
statistically small sample (600) using the least reliable form of data collection --
self-reporting. There are plenty of other studies that show behavior correlates with belief.
But as with many news articles, "man bites dog" gets the headline when we all know the opposite
is more likely. The Moonie newspaper begins with an attack on a wealthy elitist politician as
an example of a climate activist -- someone who is hardly typical of climate activists.
Attacking the Democratic Party elites (who deserve our scorn) and climate activists is a
twofer. The Moonie paper's opening line combines class-envy, loaded language, name calling, red
herring, scapegoating, and transfer -- a good propagandist must have written this dribble. And
to be fair and balanced -- my repeatedly calling the Washington Times a Moonie paper is also a
form of "loaded language" -- but it was just so fun to do so I couldn't help myself. I
personally reject the premise that progressives must disarm themselves in the battle of ideas
-- as long as we acknowledge what we are doing.
Lest we forget Trump thinks climate change is a fraud. That alone makes him an imminent
threat to the survival of the human species.
What could be more important than that? What could argue for change more convincingly?
Oh, I know, some duel of personalities that misses the main point again and again. That's
how Clinton with help from Obama allowed the election to be even close. They pounded the
theme of Trump being an awful person rather than addressing the needs of the people. Same
thing with this article. It's all a waste of time to the disservice of much greater
issues.
irina , March 20, 2018 at 3:09 am
As I understand it, Trump doesn't so much "think it's a fraud" as he thinks that factors
other than human activities are the main drivers of climate change, so there is no need to
modify human activities. I live in the subarctic and it's obvious that many 'climate change
switches' have already been flipped, it's just that the consequences (which are many,
multi-faceted, nonlineal, and fairly unpredictable) are only now beginning to manifest.
While I certainly think that humans are responsible for putting a lot of CO2 into the
atmosphere, there are other factors which can and do contribute to climate change : solar
output is variable (at the moment we seem to be heading into a 'solar minimum', which is
probably a good thing); volcanic eruptions play a big role by both ejecting particulate
matter into the atmosphere and releasing gases into the atmosphere; ocean and atmospheric
currents can shift; and glaciers can grow or melt quite rapidly due to a variety of
factors.
We may be past the point of no return of ocean acidification and methane release from the
shallow East Siberian Sea, or we may not. But until the types who are all about the Paris
Climate Acords put their lifestyles where their mouths are, it's hard for me to take them
seriously.
Specifically, how exactly did all those scientists / politicians / intellectuals get to
Paris ? They mostly flew. Why don't we ever hear about how much jet air travel contributes to
climate change ? (It's a significant amount, and that doesn't include military air travel . .
.)
We can and should conference remotely instead of flying all over the world to 'combat
climate change'.
backwardsevolution , March 20, 2018 at 3:52 am
irina -- excellent post. I was waiting to pick one of my children up at the airport one
day, and I looked online at all the flights that were currently in the air. I could NOT
believe it. It was incredible! A sea of flights! No doubt many people on those flights would
have agreed with the Paris Climate Accords, gone on about how we must change our ways,
without even realizing they're causing it.
I am really torn on this question, irina. The Earth is a well-oiled machine. There are
forces at play that we cannot override.
Trump believes "factors other than human activities are the main drivers of climate
change." From my reading, I tend to believe Trump is right.
Of course, there's lots we could do. Limiting our population would be a good place to
start.
I don't know if you follow weather much, but a great site to monitor is nullschool
weather. It collects the weather data from all over the planet from satellites, runs it
through super computers and gives about 35 overlays of weather, pollution, and ocean currents
in one animation for any point on planet that is only 3 hours old. Not only is it incredibly
useful, but it is some of the best free eye candy I've found. Additionally, it allows an
individual to monitor the entire planet's weather patterns.
One thing I've been watching over the past two years is how the jets streams have become
much more wavy, or broken, due to a melting Arctic. Inasmuch as the jet streams drive
precipitation patterns, the location of storms and droughts have become much more
unpredictable, and result in much more freakish weather such as snow in the Sahara, a
constant drought in the western US, icy cold weather on the US East Coast, etc.
Under old normal conditions the jet streams ran pretty much from west to east and acted as
boundaries between Arctic cold air and equatorial warm air. With the differential of
temperatures between the Arctic and Equator diminishing, as the Arctic is warming twice as
fast as the rest of the planet, the jet streams have become much wavier delivering Arctic
cold blasts to the tropics, and massive warm storms to the Arctic. Additionally the jet
streams will now tend to get "stuck" in one position so certain areas will have prolonged dry
or prolonged wet. With a runaway climate this will accelerate melting the Arctic more and as
a wonderful side effect release massive amounts of frozen methane, which is 27x (100 year) to
86x (5 year) more powerful than CO2.
We are trying to use the Cimate Change issue to fix this mess:
Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC's fourth summary report released in 2007 candidly expressed the priority. Speaking
in 2010, he advised, "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead,
climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world's wealth."
Or, as U.N. climate chief Christina Figueres pointedly remarked, the true aim of the U.N.'s 2014 Paris climate conference was
"to change the [capitalist] economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution."
But the problem is the stupid skeptics are attacking all the science and so itis not as easy to manipulate the people anymore:
The late Stephen Schneider, who authored The Genesis Strategy, a 1976 book warning that global cooling risks posed a threat
to humanity, later changed that view 180 degrees, serving as a lead author for important parts of three sequential IPCC reports.
In a quotation published in Discover, he said: "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method,
on the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, we'd like to see the world a better
place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do
that, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of
media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of the doubts
we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. "
And thanks to Trump it is getting even harder to twist the science to allow us to redistribute the world's wealth. With Hillary
Clinton it would have been full speed ahead. So, as Obama said, people need to get out there and vote! He / we can't do it alone.
Stronger Together !!!
mike k , December 22, 2017 at 9:16 pm
This is just human caused climate change denial in drag. The overwhelming judgment of climatologists worldwide is that our
industrial activities are changing the Earth's climate in very dangerous ways. This NEARLY UNIVERSAL JUDGMENT HAS NOTHING TO DO
WITH MANIPULATING POLITICS, SENSATIONALISM, OR ANY ATTACK ON CAPITALISM.
The blatant plug for Trump tells all about where this poster is coming from. The next thing we will hear from similar sources
is that the whole climate thing is a Russian/Chinese plot to destroy America! Pure baseless Trumpian fabrication, with no proof
whatever – just hot air (not cool!)
As Reported by the MSM.. lol , December 22, 2017 at 11:46 pm
If it is nearly Universal Judgement you all ought to try telling the TRUTH then, at that point you might start
getting more adherents. Meanwhile you are FINE with all this:
Thank God people are turning off the MSM and are starting to do their own research. As we have seen from Wikileaks, the Democrats
have no problem corrupting an election, so it stands to reason they would have no problem corrupting the climate record if it
served their agenda.
All this is, is another Progressive Democratic Vote Harvesting Scheme piggy backed onto a Global Wealth Redistribution Scheme.
Instead of dividing people by their skin color, they are now dividing people via their environmental beliefs. And it is a good
investment: if global warming is your "issue" they have you locked in for life, as AGW will take centuries to correct.
About the only Universal Judgement that exists is "As Reported by the MSM". What this is is FRAUD and Trump and a good
literate and well read percentage of the population is onto you.
Meanwhile lets us all know when the North Pole finally melts and New York finally disappears into the sea, we have been living
through DECADES of failed predictions.
Zachary Smith , December 22, 2017 at 11:12 pm
First, a look at the author of the old Forbes piece. From the Exxonsecrets site:
Larry Bell is a professor of space archetecture at University of Houston. He also writes a weekly column called The Bell
Tells You for Forbes.com. The topics of his columns range from defense of hydrofracking to climate denial. He has written articles
against wind energy, eco-friendly light bulbs, and various energy policies.
More on this denier nut:
h**ps://www.desmogblog.com/larry-bell
Not let's look at some of the people he named in his crap article in the crap magazine.
Ottmar Edenhofer
Edenhofer completed his Diploma in Economics with honors at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He belonged the
Jesuit Order from 1987–1994 and earned a bachelor's degree in Philosophy with summa cum laude at the Munich School of Philosophy.
During this time he also founded an enterprise in the public health sector and lead a humanitarian aid organization in Croatia
and Bosnia from 1991–1993. After leaving the Order, Edenhofer worked as a research assistant from 1994–2000 and completed his
PhD in Economics with summa cum laude at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1999 under the supervision of Carlo Jaeger
An economist who presumably knows as much climate science as your average high-school drop-out. Makes me think that "lead author"
is applied to anybody who wants to work for the IPCC for nothing or next to nothing. BTW, this fellow's wiki says he is a great
admirer of Karl Marx.
Christiana Figueres
Growing up in La Lucha, Figueres attended the local Cecilia Orlich grammar school. She moved to the German Humboldt Schule
in the capital and later graduated from Lincoln High School. She travelled to England for a year of A Level studies before
entering Swarthmore College[8] in Pennsylvania. As part of her studies in anthropology, she lived in Bribri, Talamanca, a remote
indigenous village in the Southeastern plateau of Costa Rica for one year, designing a culturally-sensitive literacy program
which was used by the Ministry of Education for several years.
Figueres joined botanist Dr. Russell Seibert to improve nutritional conditions in Western Samoa using highly nutritious
plants.[citation needed]
She then went to the London School of Economics for a master's degree in social anthropology and graduated in 1981.
Anybody see any qualifications here for the IPCC? My theory of "free or cheap worker" looks even better.
Stephen Schneider The Forbes author simply isn't truthful about this actual scientist.
But that's what Deniers do. They lie, and the world dies. Eager beavers seem to be always available to spread this muck around.
Assuming that's what they are – and they're not actually on Exxon's payroll.
As Reported by the MSM.. lol , December 23, 2017 at 12:12 am
And another full blown NUT here. Angela Merkel, ever hear of her?
Merkel, at her press conference (about Trump pulling out of the Paris Accord), said, "This Paris climate accord is not just
some accord or the other. It is a central accord in defining the contours of globalization. " She added, "I believe that
the issue of Paris is so important that one simply can't compromise on it."
Now that is pretty bizarre statement / worry when the planet is supposedly facing a climatic disaster with New York & Venice
soon to be under water. Merkel is worried about globalization? (Do you think she might have been accidentally reading Ottmar Edenhofer?
lol)
But that fits with how other countries veiw the Paris Climate Accord:
Despite the Paris Agreement, China and India Continue To Build Coal Plants
It is your side, day after day, that feeds the Skeptics. Why not just report the facts? It makes us all wonder. If anyone is
destroying the planet, it is you all, with your inability to report the facts as they are.
But that's what pellet fed MSM Alarmists do. Eager beavers seem to be always available to spread this muck around. Assuming
that's what they are – and they're not actually recieving grants and subsidies from the government payroll.
Zachary Smith , December 23, 2017 at 1:29 am
Why not just report the facts?
Good idea, and this person ought to try it sometime. What Angela Merkel believes or doesn't believe; says or doesn't say about
most anything is irrelevant to me.
Regarding China, it's true that there are many stupid/dishonest companies. Most likely it's an investor scam of some kind.
Despite declining coal use, loopholes in government policy mean new coal projects continue to spring up across China
The Chinese appear to be the world's leaders in photovoltaic power generation, and these new coal plants (and probably the
old ones too) will soon enough be abandoned hulks. Same is true with India.
In January last year, Finnish company Fortum agreed to generate electricity in Rajasthan with a record low tariff, or guaranteed
price, of 4.34 rupees per kilowatt-hour (about 5p).
Mr Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the IEEFA, said that at the time analysts said this price was so low would
never be repeated.
But, 16 months later, an auction for a 500-megawatt solar facility resulted in a tariff of just 2.44 rupees – compared to
the wholesale price charged by a major coal-power utility of 3.2 rupees (about 31 per cent higher).
"For the first time solar is cheaper than coal in India and the implications this has for transforming global energy markets
is profound," Mr Buckley said.
The Greenland ice sheet melting will raise sea-level 6.55 meters (21.5 feet), the West Antarctica ice sheet melting will raise
sea-level 8.06 meters (26.4 feet), the East Antarctica ice sheet melting will raise sea-level 64.8 meters (212.6 feet), and all
other ice melting will raise sea-level 0.91 meters (3 feet).
For a grand total of 80.32 meters (263.5 feet).
So, what does an 80 meter (263 feet) rise in sea-level mean. Have a look at the following map of the world after an 80 meter
rise. It means that over one billion people will have to be resettled to higher ground and that much of the most productive agricultural
land will be under water. Fortunately, at current rates, the Greenland ice sheet will take over a thousand years to melt and the
Antarctica ice sheet, much longer. However, the greater the temperature rise the faster the ice sheets will melt, bringing the
problem much closer. Remember, the huge ice sheet that recently covered much of North America, almost completely melted in only
15,000 years (today, only the Greenland ice sheet, and some other small patches of it, remain). Since then (15,000 years ago),
sea-levels have risen about 125 meters (410 feet), only 80 meters to go.
For HUGE detailed maps of the "World after the Melt" go to:
The Earth doesn't need to be saved...it was around, long before we were, and will still be around, long after we're gone.
What needs to be saved, is people. Smart people. Saved. From all the dumb people.
Like I said to Pods yesterday:
"I hate these "sustainability" assholes with a burning passion. As an example of their hypocrisy:
Comcast has "sustainability initiatives"; between both houses, they send me junk mail constantly...trying to get me to upgrade
services, and trying to get service installed at the other place. It amounts to about 10-15 lbs. of needless paper, every year.
We'll split the difference and say 12.5 total, for both places, or 6.25 lbs. each.
One day, I figured out (using really loose numbers) that they're probably marketing to about 30M people like me...and using
those numbers, you're talking over 90,000+ TONS of unnecessary junk mail that they're sending out...and that's just 1 company.
Paper mills creating carbon, delivery vehicles creating carbon, paper not always getting recycled (est. 30% gets recycled),
JUST so they can pimp their "special offers"?
And then these hypocritical, lying motherfuckers have the GALL to lecture us about "let's not be wasteful", "let's save the
planet"...
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
I'm not an 'environmental whacko', but I do make an effort to not be wasteful, and clearly folks like us are doing a better
job of it than the "Sustainability" wankers are."
If you AGW assholes want to do something useful with your lives, you might consider suicide, so you stop creating carbon with
all the bullshit hot air you blow around.
I agree with you on the mail thing. I go to my mailbox once a week, take out what;s in there and take it immediately to the
round-open-top file. Told the mail carrier, if it wasn't for junkmail, you'd be unemployed. I get not one piece of useful or wanted
mail, every friggin week. All trash.
"The past million years has been essentially a continuing ice-age, broken occasionally by short-lived interglacials. It is
also why those who have engaged in lurid talk over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth's temperature by a degree or
two should be seen as both demented and dangerous. The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an
ice-age, not away from an ice-age." Frederick Hoyle Then there is our planet's pesky, ~100,000-year, orbital Eccentricity cycle
that probably isn't going to stop doing what it does just because we pay a bunch of carbon taxes that Wall Street can then fleece
as rights-to-polluted are traded on Blood and Gore's Chicago Climate Exchange. Earth's orbit of the sun becomes more and less
eliptical and off-centered (Eccentric) over the 100k cycle. When we are in a more centered, less elliptical phase (which is where
we are heading now), the North Pole just doesn't get as close to the sun during the summer (as during a more elliptical phase)
so less snow melts during the summer, and it doesn't get as far away from the sun during the winter so there is a little warmer
with more moisture in the atmosphere, and more snowfall. Overall, we receive less solar irradiance the higher the eccentricity.
This will keep driving the ice ages.
http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm
http://www.leif.org/research/M-Cycles-2.png
The data was obtained from sediment core samples. "The new technique works by analyzing variations in the ratio of magnesium
to calcium contained in the fossilized shells of tiny microorganisms called foraminifera trapped in successive layers of sediment
on the seabed. As the foraminifera were growing, they absorbed calcium and magnesium in proportions that depended on the temperature
of the water around them." You can read more about it at:
https://phys.org/news/2012-10-deep-ocean-sediment-ancient-temperature.ht...
For the more recent 800,000 years they were able to collect ice cores from Greenland and Antartica, and use the uranium decay
data found in the dust and ash layers. They then compared the data with the sediment core samples. Other ice core studies have
found that CO2 lags temperature during the onset of glaciations by several thousand years, not the other way around, as the IPCC
would have everyone believe.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/12/vostok-ice-cores-and-the-8...
And since we are going to develop more reflective clouds as the magnetosphere and solar activity (heliosphere) weaken, allowing
more cosmic radiation to penetrate further into the atmosphere and creating more condensation nuclei, we can expect increased
albedo and further cooling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh-m7PKXMRs&list=PLHSoxioQtwZcqdt3LK6d66...
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2012-10-deep-ocean-sediment-ancient-temperature.html#jCp
The new technique works by analysing variations in the ratio of magnesium to calcium contained in the fossilised shells of
tiny microorganisms called foraminifera trapped in successive layers of
sediment on the
seabed . As the foraminifera were growing, they absorbed calcium and
magnesium in proportions that depended on the temperature of the water around them.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2012-10-deep-ocean-sediment-ancient-temperature.html#jCp
The new technique works by analysing variations in the ratio of magnesium to calcium contained in the fossilised shells of
tiny microorganisms called foraminifera trapped in successive layers of
sediment on the
seabed . As the foraminifera were growing, they absorbed calcium and
magnesium in proportions that depended on the temperature of the water around them.
There is plenty of geological evidence for the ice ages. And the mini ice ages.
And the strongest linear regression correlation to carbon increase is the growth of China. A country that could have developed
along with modern environmental standards but chose the route of the Stone Age.
"What needs to be saved, is people. Smart people."
Yes. All three of them.
Did you know that they started the SETI program because they couldn't find any intelligent life here on Earth? They never looked
on ZH, which does host the three to whom I referred.
As for AGW, if all the people who claim to believe that crap would simply off themselves and their families then, with approximately
50% fewer people the environment would be saved for quite a long while.
Do you include yourself as one of the three? If not, good for you! I see most of the solutions to our problems stated on ZH.
Cheaper than government can solve them, which is clearly not their purpose anyway.
I agree, the assholes who say people are a cancer on the planet should walk the talk and remove themselves from the landscape.
you can make an extra 1200/USD a week in your income just working on the internet for a couple of hours per day.. go to this
link... http://bit.ly/2jdTzrM
Like Steve Hughes said, they're doing nuke and ICBM tests, shelling the Middle East with depleted uranium, Fukushima contaminates
300 tons of water per day, and they expect the consumers to save the planet with reusable IKEA bags and energy efficient light
bulbs.
You didn't raise the issue of the USPS sending out this junk mail AT A LOSS and requiring extra money to make up the loss and
thus provide bonuses for the bumb fucks in their high places. Calculate what all that waste back to MOTHER EARTH will do for the
planet. AND add-in what it costs for me (us) to throw that trash away (unrecycled in many cases) that we don't read and shouldn't
have been sent to us in the first place. Plus the wasted fuel by the USPS. Now we are talking some BUCKS plus helping our planet.
Hey, Putin...This reminds me of the anti-Semitism crap. The Jews in charge/in power are not to be blamed?? Everything they
do is to blame on anti-semitism when they are the ones who give Jews a bad name.
I believe he was being sly. This is a message to Putin-haters. This is a message to those who believe "Putin said it so it
can't be true." He put Global Warming and Jewish Conspiracy on the same page. Who knows where that could lead? Sure, it proves
he is muzzled but remember that he did not have to mention the Jewish Conspiracy AT ALL. At the moment it is just a minor blemish
in the snowflakes' belief systems. A little bit of Cog-Dis to irritate them like a small stone in their shoe.
Shit! Now I'm starting to sound like Scott Adams.
Yeah, I give me low odds but I do think he's trying to pry a small crack into snowflake's belief systems. At this stage it
is all he can do and get away with it.
Not so fast, with record volcanoes, earthquakes, sink holes, solar flares and incoming cosmic debris, could it be that our
Sun's binary twin has once again approached our inner solar system?
Science says yes, it's here, it's now, the global warming oh excuse me, climate change is just a way for JPM to force carbon
credits on humanity for profit.
Global warming is far better than global cooling. Where I am sitting right now was under 5 kilometers of ice 11,000 years ago.
The idiots can't answer what caused the glaciers to melt yet they claim to know what the future holds.
So your the guy feeding all the dipshits and the starving people all over the world. OK, now we got someone to blame. (I lived
in IN, both N and S and loved those basketball size pale green inside melons each summer. Now I know why Hoosier basketball was
on top all the time. THANKS for the chow.
If you like 'Worrying' I can offer you an Insurance policy, If you or any of your offspring suffer any loss whatsoever after
a period of 100 years due to 'Climate Change' I will give you $1000,000 dollars for a low premium of a mere $100 one-off payment
now.
Grow up and read "Watts Up With That" where real Scientists blow the 'Global Warming scam' into the dust.
Don't worry, be happy. Global warming will allow hordes of islamics to satisfy your festering rectum. You syphilitic mind is
not worth talking to, but i'm sure 10 degree rise in globball temperatures will make sahara, australia and greenland green. Even
africa might be able feed itself.
There is no physical evidence for the AGW Theory : (Anthropogenic Global Warming), the theory that the Earth is warming due
to human caused increases in greenhouse gasses, primarily, carbon dioxide (CO2). There are only climate models that purport to
prove the theory. The climate models have many inaccuracies which completely invalidate the models. Among the inaccuracies are
the following:
1.
The climate models have no way of accurately estimating the temperature effect due to changes in cloud cover. Changes in cloud
cover have been shown to have much more effect on global temperature than changes in CO2 levels.
2.
It has been proven that past periods of increasing temperature preceded increases in CO2 by as much as 800 years. The models
assume that the C02 increases precede the temperature increases.
3.
Water vapor feedback: The AGW theory models assume that the Earth's temperature goes up 1.1 degree C for each doubling of CO2
just based on the effect of the increases in water vapor which are caused by increases in CO2. This has never been proven. The
models do not take into consideration the cooling effect of cloud cover which also results from increases in water vapor.
4.
Aerosols: The AGW models use changes in atmospheric aerosol levels as a fudge factor to make the models agree with actual temperature
changes, even though there is no data to support this claim.
5.
The climate models have no way of modeling vertical heat vents. Vertical heat vents can form when the ocean surface temperature
is over 28 degrees C. Heat is transported to the upper atmosphere which cools the earth. Heat vents transport so much heat that
their effect on global average temperatures is more than the increases caused by CO2. The Pacific Vertical Heat Vent in the western
Pacific alone vents enough heat to completely cancel out the effects of CO2 increases.
6.
The climate models have no way of modeling changes in the Sun's level of radiation. It has been shown that changes in the Sun's
radiance accounts for at least 50% of the global temperature increase since 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. Proponents of
the AGW Theory say that the Sun's total irradiance only varies by 0.1%, so has little effect on global average temperatures. This
is true, however there are large variations in several components of the Suns total irradiance, which have been shown to have
large effects on the Earth's temperature. The UV wave component of the Sun's total irradiance can fluctuate by as much as 70%
which can change the Earth's global average temperature by several degrees C. The Sun's magnetic field also fluctuates. The magnetic
field shields the Earth from cosmic rays. Cosmic rays can fluctuate by 10%-20%. Increases in cosmic rays have been shown to cause
increases in cloud cover. This has been shown to have a greater effect on global temperatures than changes in CO2.
7.
The Hockey Stick : The climate models do not take natural, global temperature cycles into effect. In the late 1990's the Hockey
Stick Theory was developed by Michael Mann which disregarded, and drew a straight line through, all the past temperature cycles
except the warming trend from 1970-2000. A straight line was drawn through all past cycles to 1970 and then showed the increase
in temperatures to 2000 to form the hockey stick. This theory denies the existence of all the Earth's cycles which are well documented
to have a greater effect on global average temperatures than changing CO2. The proponents of the AGW theory have stated many times
that the cycles like the Eddy Cycle are regional and not global. In the past 15 years, the Eddy Cycle has been proven to be global
by many people around the world. Among the most important cycles are the following:
a.
Milankovitch Cycle : Caused by changes in the eccentricity, axial tilt, and orientation of the Earth's orbit. The major components
are on a 400,000 year cycle. Most of the components are on a 110,000 year cycle, which cause the ice ages. On average, the Earth
is in an ice age for 100,000 years with a warm, interglacial period of 10,000 years. The Earth is currently nearing the end of
the Holocene Interglacial period. These cycles cause differences in solar radiation of up to 6.8%.
b.
Eddy cycle: 1000 year cycle: Has been documented to have changed phases globally 25 times since the last ice age. It is caused
by changes in solar radiation and a combination of the 206 year solar cycle and the Pacific and Atlantic oceanic cycles. This
cycle is responsible for: the Modern Warm Period (1850 - present), Little Ice Age (1300-1850), Medieval Warm Period (900-1300),
Dark Ages Cold Period (400 - 900), Roman Warm Period (250 BC-400 AD), etc. The Medieval and Roman warm periods were warmer than
the Modern Warm Period. Logs from Icelandic fishing boats indicate that the Arctic Ice Edge was much further north during the
Medieval Warm Period than today. Diaries from vineyards in the UK indicate that grapes were grown for winemaking in Central England
until the early 1300's. This was 500 km further north than where grapes can be grown today. Farms also flourished in Greenland
where farms cannot exist today.
The coldest point of the Little Ice Age was the year 1700. The Earth has been warming at a rate of 1 degree C per century since
then. The warming rate is the same both before and after the Industrial Revolution .
c.
Suess / deVries Solar Cycle: 206 years. Caused by variations in the number of sun spots which causes fluctuations in the sun's
total radiance. The Sun has been in hibernation, or a sun spot minimum, since 2009. The previous minimum was the Dalton Minimum
(1790 – 1830). Dalton minimum caused total crop failures for several years in New England and Upstate New York. The current minimum
should cause a cold period extending to the late 2030's. This causes a 1 degree C difference in global average temperatures. The
20 th century had a higher number of sun spots than any century for 10,000 years. The Dalton minimum occurred during
a cold phase of the Eddy Cycle. The current solar minimum is occurring during a warm phase of the Eddy Cycle, so the temperature
variances should not be as extreme as during the Dalton minimum.
d.
Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO): 60 years. Caused by the alignment of the Earth with Jupiter and Saturn, the two planets
with the highest forces of gravity. The alignment causes the Earth to be pulled closer to or further from the Sun by a distance
of three Sun diameters. Also causes extreme changes in tides causing reversals in warm and cold water masses in the Pacific. The
PDO has been shown to change the Earth's average temperature by several tenths of a degree C. The PDO has been in a cold phase
since 2000 and has deposited abnormally cold water off the coast of California, causing an extended drought. The PDO has caused
warm periods from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1970-2000. This cycle was discovered in 1992. In the early 1970's when climatologists
were predicting the coming of an ice age, they were merely extrapolating the cold phase of the PDO cycle (1940-1970). Today they
are forecasting extreme warming by making the same mistake: They are extrapolating the warm phase of the PDO cycle.
e.
Schwabe Solar cycle: Solar activity increases and decreases on an 11 year cycle. This was discovered in 1755 and has been well
documented since. We are currently in Cycle 24 which started in 2009. The current cycle is breaking records for low solar activity.
Whenever an 11 year cycle is this low, it is always followed by 2 more abnormally low cycles, which is what happened during the
Dalton Minimum.
Conclusion:
The conclusion is that the Earth was in a warming period from 1970 – 2000 primarily due to a maximum level of sun spots, the
warming phase of the PDO combined with the warm phase of the Eddy Cycle, with a relatively minor contribution from increases in
CO2. Since 2009, the Sun has gone into hibernation for the first time since the Dalton Minimum (1790 – 1830). We are also in a
cold phase of the PDO, since 2000. The 206 year solar cycle and the PDO will be the primary climate factors for the next 20 years
which will be a significant cooling trend. The AGW climate models did not predict this cooling trend because the models to not
take any of the climate cycles into consideration. The AGW proponents are using unsubstantiated aerosol levels as a fudge factor
to explain the current cooling trend.
The Future:
The cold phase of the PDO should last until 2030. The cold phase of the Suess / deVries Solar Cycle should last until sometime
in the 2030's. These cooling trends will be offset by the warming phase of the Eddy cycle. Sometime in the 2030's all three cycles
will be in the warm phase. This is when the Earth will begin warming as it did in the Medieval Warm Period. The warm phase of
the Eddy Cycle will probably end around 2100 - 2200 and may coincide with the cold phase of the Suess / deVries Solar Cycle. It
is during this time that the Earth will be as cool as it was during the Dalton Minimum. The next Ice Age could start within the
next 1000 – 2000 years.
In 2100 - 2200, England will be exporting wine to Continental Europe, and the French will apply import restrictions on English
wine, like they did in the 11 th century.
The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased in every year since 1959 when modern measurements began. Also,
the growth rate of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere has gradually quickened. The concentration of atmospheric CO2 in 2015
was the highest ever recorded, and the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere was the highest ever recorded. Again, the concentration
of atmospheric CO2 in 2016 was the highest ever recorded and the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere was the 2nd highest ever
recorded.
The problem can be understood by thinking of a bathtub that is filling with water even though the plug is out. The water is
flowing into the tub faster than the drain can empty water from the tub.
Simply leaving the flow of water coming into the tub at a given rate is not enough, the tub will keep filling. What must be
done is to lessen the flow of water into the tub so much that the drain will hold the level of water in the tub constant or lower
the level of water.
We are in no way close.
We have in April 2015 reached an atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million or 400.40, then the
highest level ever recorded but climbing still through March 2017 to 405.60 ppm. * We should be at a level of no more than 350
ppm, which was where we were in October 1987. **
While the atmospheric concentration of CO2 averaged above 400 ppm for all of 2015 and for every month of 2016, seemingly more
significant was the record growth rate of the CO2 level in 2015 and the confirmed quickening of the growth rate in 2016.
Atmospheric Warming
We have just passed through the warmest 10 year period since 1880 when modern measurements began. We have also just passed
through the warmest 5 year period since 1880. *** The year 2016 was the warmest recorded since 1880, while 2015 was the 2nd warmest
year, 2014 was the 5th warmest year and 2010 was the 3rd warmest.
March 2015 was the 3rd warmest March since 1880 and the 5th warmest month ever since 1880. June 2015 was the 4th warmest June
since 1880. September was the 11th warmest September.
October 2015 was the warmest October and the 3rd warmest month ever recorded. November 2015 was the warmest November and the
2nd warmest month ever recorded. December was the warmest December and the warmest month ever recorded.
The year 2016 has proven to be the new warmest year recorded since 1880.
January 2016 was the warmest January since 1880 and the new warmest month ever recorded.
February 2016 was the warmest February and again the new warmest month ever recorded.
March was the warmest March and the new 2nd warmest month ever recorded.
April was the warmest April and the new 5th warmest month ever recorded.
May was the warmest May and the 8th warmest month ever recorded.
June was the 2nd warmest June.
July was the warmest July.
August was the warmest August and the 6th warmest month ever recorded.
September was the warmest September.
October 2016 was again the warmest October.
November 2016 was again the warmest November.
December 2016 was the 2nd warmest December.
January 2017 was the 3rd warmest January since 1880.
February 2017 was the 2nd warmest February and the new 3rd warmest month ever recorded.
I am skeptical. You repeat this again and again and do not listen (or do not want to listen) to any counter arguments. Looks
like this is an article of faith for you because it does not correlate with facts:
Your months statistic is unconvincing. The proper measurement period for climate changes is probably dynamic of year averages
for the last century is not two.
And some counterarguments do exist.
1. Why you assuming that Earth climate is a stable and can't "naturally" ossilate between warm periods and "Mini Ice age" periods?
What it this period is just a prelude tot he next "small ice age period (which can last the next 5000 years)".
2. Some research indicates that a hockey stick pattern-with a sudden upswing of temperatures in the last century or so is simply
a feature of our planet's history. This won't make the controversy go away overnight, but it has become increasingly clear that
there are other factors to talk about.
2. Even if we assume the all affects that you listed are anthropogenic the question are they irreversible, or they naturally
fade with the decline of production of "cheap" fossil fuels and related shrinking of the world population (shale oil might well
be "the Last Hurrah" of oil production)
To continue to "heat" the Earth at current rate requires burning at least the same amount of oil (and coal) as now. Where all
this oil (and coal) will be extracted from ? From which countries ?
The decline of existing fields is around 5% a year and new "giant-fields" are nowhere to find. For example, Mexico might become
oil importer, not exporter the next decade
The current global consumption of oil is staggering -- over 96.64 million barrels a day. It is unsustainable and might be reversed
with a decade or two.
In this sense the US with its stupid fleet of personal SUVs driving with a single passenger helps to speed up the "return to
average" of Earth temperatures.
By dramatically speeding up the end of "cheap oil bonanza" ;-)
This very interesting in light of Dr. Peter Wadham's video posted on December 27, 2016, where
he announced that Dr. Natalia Shakhova claimed we are in the midst of a 50 gigaton methane release
from the East Siberian continental shelf, minute 16:30. Apparently, based upon other releases
from arctic-news.blogspot.com this release will take 2-3 years to complete. Their estimate is
that it would raise the equivalent CO2 equivalent from 400ppm to 800ppm. They are calling for
all hands on deck, right now.
If true, it's fun times ahead. Their pieces on geo-engineering are also enlightening.
Thanks Michael. As a country we need to "grow up" as Chris Hedges has been saying recently
and face some hard economic as well as environmental truths. Not sure what the squillionaires
plan is when the methane gas is released after the arctic ice melts. Don't think their NZ doomsday
bunkers will save them.
Call me cynical, but I never took Mars habitation seriously, due to the fact that due to the
duration of the trip and lack of radiation protection, (a magnetosphere), with current technology
people would have cancer by the time they arrived.
I always thought the technology developed would only be applicable for testing self sustaining
human habitats for this planet.
We might actually have an opportunity to try that out.
Why'd they cut the budget of NASA? Space is a very, very difficult place for humans and it
will take a lot of effort to get any human habitation in space.
In a series of videos Dr. Wadhams et al outline the possibilities and limitations of geo-engineering,
their point being that since not much as ever been tested, the time for research is right now.
The biggest problem of post release cleanup is the the sheer cost of CO2 and methane atmospheric
extraction. One calculation was $60 trillion dollars. I cannot recall if that was the total, or
per year.
I would watch the videos to get a notion of what we're up against.
In any extent the timing of this with regard to the Trump administration is itself catastrophic,
as I expect there will be increased censoring of the media. In my state in the US there is already
legislation being presented making protesters liable for the costs they incur to the police.
While the potential methane release is certainly a serious concern your interpretation above
is very inaccurate. Shakhova is not and has not said we are in the midst of a 50 Gtonne release.
Just that there is a potential for one. In this all of the top researchers agree.
The question is when this might happen. And all there are are estimates and none of them are
sooner than near 2100.
" .Tipping point for runaway warming
The specter of Shakhova's envisioned worst-case, 50-gigaton release hinges on many variables
and unknowns. ..When and how things might unfold is profoundly uncertain, but the trigger point
for the short-term catastrophic methane release postulated by Dr. Shakhova could be a temperature
rise as low as an additional 1.5°C or as high as an additional 10°C. These are not the rantings
of fearmongers, but scenarios described by respected Arctic oceanographers .."
Thus when climate change has resulted in a global temperature rise of about 2.6 C (today we
are at about 1.1 C) up to a rise of about 11C. Note that if 10C of warming occurs absent the methane
release it will essentially already have destroyed civilization so the high end estimate is not
relevant to our concerns only if it is near the lower estimates. Not hitting the lower estimated
limits is going to be very difficult as the global trends and the Paris agreement have us on track
to near 3C of warming so that is certainly scary.
Actually, if you carefully watch the linked video at 16:30 Stuart Scott specifically states,
"Dr Shakhova estimates that we are in the midst of a 50 gigaton burst underway right now ".
So, either Mr. Scott has got his facts wrong, or you do.
In my mind, how long will this video be available?
Seismic activity could release hundreds of gigatonnes of methane from the arctic once the ice
is thin enough. "The worst thing could happen."
She thinks it couldn't happen tomorrow, because
the ice is still too thick, but her male colleague off-screen thinks that it could happen tomorrow.
Men are so emotional.
Again, I am especially struck by the rate of increase of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. The rate of increase
has been growing.
Looking to the data even casually points out the growing rate of increase of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. This year,
in this regard, looks as alarming as last, in which the rate of increase was at a record high. Why this should be, through a time
of relatively slow international economic growth and increasingly broad efforts to limit CO2 emissions, has to be an especially
important question.
Not to discourage you, but to talk intelligently about CO2 in atmosphere you as a minimum need a degree in geophysics.
This is mind-bogglingly complex porblem with many factors beyond ordinary human comprehension. For example "How do human CO2
emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?"
Fractal Hurricane -> anne...
As the population increases the first derivative of CO2 concentration increases, roughly speaking. Even if all humans opt for
universal vasectomy, population expansion will not stop for another 9 months. Population shrinkage will be slow at first and will
take roughly 4 generations to bring CO2 expansion back to 1960 levels. Shrinkage of CO2 concentrations will take even longer.
Even with forest replanting and careful management of our energy choices, the humanity is probably doomed forever. Still, we
have to
Want to Slow Climate Change? Stop Having Babies Bloomberg
The quickest mechanism to cutting population growth is promoting poor people to the middle class. This involves higher pay.
It does not involve massive, increasing rent extraction by the wealthy.
Population is the favoured red herring of genocidaires who wish to justify their consumption. 5% of the global population's
consumption is responsible for 50% of the emissions.
and by promoting people to the middle class, you massively increase their energy and material demands – thus negating any reduction
in numbers in fact making them HUGELY more of an issue.
Wanna slow climate change? Plus, we emit 3x more carbon per capita than Western Europe
Some here say climate change is our biggest existential problem, and the real issue is too many people, So
Guns kill, gun control bad?
Wars kill, more wars good? Plus less breeding in war zones. (May affect your vote.)
Starvation kills, stop food aid?
Disease kills, stop research in deadly diseases?
And it's past time to tell all the third worlders to stop all that dreaming about higher standard of living, they need to stay
on their rice paddies.
Yes, women's education/birth control would help in those countries lacking same, but as the world gallops towards 9 billion
the US would need to pull out all the stops our country's massive per capita sinning mean we emit as if 1 billion or so live here.
We have a lot of extra miles to go. Think about what we would have to do to cut emissions here 2/3 and get down to Western Europe
levels.
Of course people find the topic uncomfortable, who will step up and cut first? Or make the ultimate sacrifice and jump off?
And now, back to the election, sex, action movies and other fun stuff.
(Imagine we discover a large asteroid will hit us, but not for another 100 years
So, one middle class person consumes 3x a middle class western European.
And one middle class European consumes ?X a poor Third World person?
Hopefully, a middle class Third World person is wiser than a middle class western European, so when more Third World poor persons
becomes middle class Third World person, there is no increase in carbon emission.
I think we need to address inequality.
Regarding climate change, those already in the middle and especially, the 1%, need to reduce consumption.
"... These are unsustainable trends that cannot be ignored and part of the reason I absolutely hate all the "green energy" (which isn't really green) miracle cures. Even if 100% renewable carbon free energy existed, it would not matter, we would still face environmental and ecological collapse due to the pressures of unsustainable populations. ..."
"... Population is the number one driver of global warming, in addition to decreasing arable topsoil at an unimaginably fast rate. Currently the world has between 60-200 years worth of topsoil left that will take 1000-2000 years to fully renew in "ideal" conditions. ..."
"... Yes better more sustainable methods are important. but you are saying by implementing these we can have infinite population growth which is insane. 9 billion no problem, 12 billion no problem, 20 billion no problem, Ad infinitum, right? Do you really believe that? ..."
Population is the number one driver of global warming, in addition to decreasing arable topsoil
at an unimaginably fast rate. Currently the world has between 60-200 years worth of topsoil left
that will take 1000-2000 years to fully renew in "ideal" conditions.
In addition to acidification from population driven climate change, the oceans have faced so
much demand as a food source that 85% of the world's oceans have been fully exploited as a food
source.
These are unsustainable trends that cannot be ignored and part of the reason I absolutely hate
all the "green energy" (which isn't really green) miracle cures. Even if 100% renewable carbon
free energy existed, it would not matter, we would still face environmental and ecological collapse
due to the pressures of unsustainable populations.
Honestly, (in a selfish sense) I am glad I was born when I was, it looks like nothing will
ever be done about population and population driven Global warming, soil collapse and empty oceans
will all likely make the perfect storm just after I kick it. That's not to say I don't practice
personal sustainability; no car, local shopping only, limited meat, no fish etc. But that doesn't
really matter on the macro level.
Population is the number one driver of global warming, in addition to decreasing arable topsoil
at an unimaginably fast rate. Currently the world has between 60-200 years worth of topsoil left
that will take 1000-2000 years to fully renew in "ideal" conditions.
In addition to acidification from population driven climate change, the oceans have faced so
much demand as a food source that 85% of the world's oceans have been fully exploited as a food
source.
These are unsustainable trends that cannot be ignored and part of the reason I absolutely hate
all the "green energy" (which isn't really green) miracle cures. Even if 100% renewable carbon
free energy existed, it would not matter, we would still face environmental and ecological collapse
due to the pressures of unsustainable populations.
Honestly, (in a selfish sense) I am glad I was born when I was, it looks like nothing will
ever be done about population and population driven Global warming, soil collapse and empty oceans
will all likely make the perfect storm just after I kick it. That's not to say I don't practice
personal sustainability; no car, local shopping only, limited meat, no fish etc. But that doesn't
really matter on the macro level.
The too-many-humans argument is nihilistic and a deflection. Increased CO2 into the atmosphere
and oceans is the number one driver. Poor farming methods, deforestation, over-consumption of
fossil fuels (and everything else) are to blame, not numbers of humans per se. It is perfectly
possible to feed the world and sequester carbon without destroying soil and destroying forests.
Soil can be maintained as long as there are rocks for soil life to dissolve. It is perfectly possible
for humanity to survive and prosper without turning insane amounts of energy into atmospheric
carbon and heat. The argument amounts to humans are too ignorant and/or stupid to live with nature,
so the amount of humans is the problem. No, it is human ignorance and/or stupidity that is the
problem. It's not the numbers, it's how those numbers behave, and Western humans behave the
worst and they are exporting their behavior all over the world. Yes, the negative behaviors
are amplified by more humans doing them, but reducing the numbers does nothing to solve the negative
behaviors. The economic system the west, and increasingly the world, lives under (exploitative
"Capitalism") was designed to ignore thermodynamics, biosphere services and externalities. So
is it any surprise that these negative behaviors have become accepted as normal and considered
a birthright? We won't be screwed because there are too many of us, we will be screwed because
we fail to challenge our assumptions and recognize and correct our mistakes.
Yes better more sustainable methods are important. but you are saying by implementing these
we can have infinite population growth which is insane. 9 billion no problem,
12 billion no problem,
20 billion no problem,
Ad infinitum, right? Do you really believe that?
I hate when people simplify a complex problem. Carbon fuels depletion might take care of CO2 emissions sooner that we think.
May be around 2050.
Also it is not clear what role CO2 emissions play globally in such a short time frame. 100 years is way too short period for
the trend to be established.
The crux of the so called climate crisis is supposedly human generated carbon dioxide, but not enough attention is paid to
the fact not debated that the amount of such human C02 is so minuscule as to be nearly undetectable. Do the math. Water vapour
is the main component of greenhouse gases at 95% leaving only < 4% for C02. Therefore water vapour is 25 times more prevalent
and three times more effective making it 75 times more important. The total contribution of C02 to the greenhouse effect is 0.013.
Further greenhouse gases combined cover only a small percentage of the atmosphere globally. This means that C02 of 400 pp per
million is surely almost imperceptible - 0.00013. This truly is just a trace amount very difficult to even imagine how it could
be so important as a heat covering gas. Water and C02 have the same specific gravity around 17 and in most cases clouds make the
climate cooler not warmer from shutting out the suns radiation. These facts make many scientists dubious about the apoplectic
global warming theory of the UN IPCC. "The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has varied a great deal over time.
Sometimes it has been lower than now and sometimes it has been much higher than now. It is also true that it has been both a lot
hotter and lot colder at various time in the past. There is no evidence that CO2 has caused the temperature to change in the
past. All studies of temperature and CO2 levels in the past show that it is the temperature changing which changes the CO2
level and not the other way round- ..Because most of the energy which CO2 can absorb was already being absBorbed before the CO2
level was increased any extra CO2 can only absorb a small extra bit of energy. Even if the atmosphere were heavily laden with
carbon dioxide, it would still only cause an incremental increase in the amount of infrared absorption over current levels and
temperatures would only go up incrementally. Doubling carbon dioxide would not double the amount of global warming...thinking
of adding blankets to your bed on a cold night: if you have no blankets, adding one will have a big effect. If you have a thousand
blankets, adding another thousand will have an unmeasurably small effect.
Trofim Lysenko became the Director of the
SovietLenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural
Sciences in the 1930s under Josef Stalin. He was an advocate of the theory that characteristics
acquired by plants during their lives could be inherited by later generations stemming from the changed
plants, which sharply contradicted Mendelian genetics. As a result, Lysenko became a fierce critic
of theories of the then rising modern genetics.
Under Lysenko's view, for example, grafting branches of one plant species onto another could create
new plant hybrids that would be perpetuated by the descendants of the grafted plant. Or modifications
made to seeds would be inherited by later generations stemming from that seed. Or that plucking all
the leaves off of a plant would cause descendants of the plant to be leafless.
Lysenkoism was "politically correct" (a term invented by Lenin) because it was consistent with
certain broader Marxist doctrines. Marxists wanted to believe that heredity had a limited role even
among humans, and that human characteristics changed by living under socialism would be inherited
by subsequent generations of humans. Thus would be created the selfless new Soviet man.
Also Lysenko himself arose from a peasant background and developed his theories from practical
applications rather than controlled scientific experiments. This fit the Marxist propaganda of the
time holding that brilliant industrial innovations would arise from the working classes through practical
applications. Lysenko's theories also seemed to address in a quick and timely manner the widespread
Soviet famines of the time arising from the forced collectivization of agriculture, rather than the
much slower changes from scientific experimentation and genetic heredity.
Lysenko was consequently embraced and lionized by the Soviet media propaganda machine. Scientists
who promoted Lysenkoism with faked data and destroyed counterevidence were favored with government
funding and official recognition and award. Lysenko and his followers and media acolytes responded
to critics by impugning their motives, and denouncing them as bourgeois fascists resisting the advance
of the new modern Marxism.
The V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced on August 7, 1948 that thenceforth Lysenkoism
would be taught as the only correct theory. All Soviet scientists were required to denounce any work
that contradicted Lysenkoism. Ultimately, Soviet geneticists resisting Lysenkoism were imprisoned
and even executed. Lysenkoism was abandoned for the correct modern science of Mendelian genetics
only as late as 1964.
The Theory of Man Caused Catastrophic Global Warming
This same practice of Lysenkoism has long been under way in western science in regard to the politically
correct theory of man caused, catastrophic, global warming. That theory serves the political fashions
of the day in promoting vastly increased government powers and control over the private economy.
Advocates of the theory are lionized in the dominant Democrat party controlled media in the U.S.,
and in leftist controlled media in other countries. Critics of the theory are denounced as "deniers,"
and even still bourgeois fascists, with their motives impugned.
Those who promote the theory are favored with billions from government grants and neo-Marxist
environmentalist largesse, and official recognition and award. Faked and tampered data and evidence
has arisen in favor of the politically correct theory. Is not man-caused, catastrophic global warming
now the only theory allowed to be taught in schools in the West?
Those in positions of scientific authority in the West who have collaborated with this new Lysenkoism
because they felt they must be politically correct, and/or because of the money, publicity, and recognition
to be gained, have disgraced themselves and the integrity of their institutions, organizations and
publications.
The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is supposed to represent the best science
of the U.S. government on the issue of global warming. In January, the USGCRP released the draft
of its Third National Climate Assessment Report. The first duty of the government scientists at the
USGCRP is to produce a complete picture of the science of the issue of global warming, which is what
the taxpayers are paying them for. But it didn't take long for the Cato Institute to do the job of
the USGCRP with a devastating line by line rebuttal, The Missing Science from the Draft National
Assessment on Climate Change, Center for the Study of Science, Cato Institute, Washington, DC, 2012,
by Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. Knappenberger, Robert C. Balling, Mary J. Hutzler & Craig D. Idso.
Check it out for yourself if you dare. Both publications are written to be accessible by intelligent
laymen. See which one involves climate science and which one involves political science.
All the climate alarmist organizations simply rubber stamp the irregular Assessment Reports of
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). None of them do any original
science on the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming. But the United Nations is a proven,
corrupt, power grabbing institution. The science of their Assessment Reports has been thoroughly
rebutted by the hundreds of pages of science in Climate Change Reconsidered, and Climate
Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, both written by dozens of scientists with the Nongovernmental
International Panel on Climate Change, and published by the Heartland Institute, the international
headquarters of the skeptics of the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming.
Again, check it out for yourself. You don't have to read every one of the well over a thousand
pages of careful science in both volumes to see at least that there is a real scientific debate.
The editors of the once respected journals of Science and Nature have abandoned
science for Lysenkoism on this issue as well. They have become as political as the editorial pages
of the New York Times. They claim their published papers are peer reviewed, but those reviews
are conducted on the friends and family plan when it comes to the subject of anthropogenic catastrophic
global warming. There can be no peer review at all when authors refuse to release their data and
computer codes for public inspection and attempted reconstruction of reported results by other scientists.
They have been forced to backtrack on recent publications relying on novel, dubious, statistical
methodologies not in accordance with established methodologies of complex statistical analysis.
Formerly respected scientific bodies in the U.S. and other western countries have been commandeered
by political activist Lysenkoists seizing leadership positions. They then proceed with politically
correct pronouncements on the issue of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming heedless of the
views of the membership of actual scientists. Most of what you see and hear from alarmists regarding
global warming can be most accurately described as play acting on the meme of settled science. The
above noted publications demonstrate beyond the point where reasonable people can differ that no
actual scientist can claim that the science of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming has been
settled or that there is a settled "consensus" that rules out reasonable dissent.
Indeed, 31,487 U.S. scientists (including 9,000 Ph.Ds) with degrees in atmospheric Earth sciences,
physics, chemistry, biology and computer science have signed a statement that reads: "There is no
convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse
gases is causing, or will in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere
and disruption of the Earth's climate."
See here. Some consensus.
Real science, of course, is not a matter of "consensus," but of reason, with skepticism at its
core.
The Decline and Fall of the Theory of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming
The alarmist claims of the UN's IPCC are ultimately based not on scientific observations, but on
unvalidated climate models and their projections of future global temperatures on assumptions of
continued increases in carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the burning and use of fossil fuels.
The alarmists are increasingly in panic because the past projections of the models are increasingly
divergent from the accumulating actual temperature records. Those models are not real science, but
made up science. And no way we are abandoning the industrial revolution as the Sierra Club is hoping
based on model fantasies and fairy tales.
The Economist magazine, formerly in lockstep with the Lysenkoists, shocked them with a
skeptical article in March that began with this lede:
"OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth's surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas
emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the
atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity
since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
observes, 'the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade. . . .'"
Reality is not complying with the alarmism of the UN's global warming models, just as it refused
to do for Trofim Lysenko. Remember all that hysteria about melting polar ice caps and the disappearing
ice floes for the cute polar bears? As of the end of March, the Antarctic ice cap was nearly one
fourth larger than the average for the last 30 years. The Arctic ice cap had grown back to within
3% of its 30 year average. (The formerly declining Arctic ice was due to cyclically warm ocean currents).
Global sea ice was greater than in March, 1980, more than 30 years ago, and also above the average
since then.
Remember the alarm about the rising sea level? Yeah, that has been rising, as it has been since
the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago. Just exactly as it has been, at the same
rate. And anyone you know that has been scared by this alarmist propaganda has been successfully
played by whatever media the fool has been relying on.
Murderous recent winters in Europe are killing as well belief in alarmist global warming on the
continent. University of Oklahoma Professor and geophysicist David Deming reported in a recent column,
"The United Kingdom had the coldest March weather in 50 years, and there were more than a thousand
record low temperatures in the United States. The Irish meteorological office reported that March
"temperatures were the lowest on record nearly everywhere." Spring snowfall in Europe was also
high. In Moscow, the snow depth was the highest in 134 years of observation. In Kiev, authorities
had to bring in military vehicles to clear snow from the streets."
In the Northern Hemisphere, Deming adds, "Snow cover last December was the greatest since satellite
monitoring began in 1966." That reflects similarly bitter cold winters in North America as well.
Despite claims by global warming Lysenkoists that soon children "won't know what snow is," on February
6, 2010, a blizzard covered the northeastern U.S. with 20 to 35 inches of snow. Three days later
another 10 to 20 inches were added.
These developments should have been expected from known indisputable facts. Carbon dioxide is
a natural substance essential to the survival of all life on the planet. It is effectively oxygen
for plants, and without plants there would be no food for animals to survive. Because of the increased
atmospheric CO2 agricultural output is already increasing.
CO2 is also a trace gas in the atmosphere, representing only 0.038% of the total atmosphere, up
only 0.008% since 1945. That tiny proportion of the atmosphere is supposed to produce catastrophic
global warming that will end all life on the planet? The historical proxy record shows CO2 concentrations
in the distant history of the earth much, much greater than today. Yet life survived, and flourished.
Moreover, the basic science of global warming is that the temperature increasing effect of increased
CO2 concentrations declines as those concentrations increase. So stop worrying and enjoy the agricultural
abundance in your grocery store.
A tip off regarding reality should have been apparent from the dodgy propaganda involved in changing
the labeling of the problem from "global warming" to "climate change." Of course, Earth has been
experiencing climate change since the first sunrise on the planet. We are not going to abandon the
workers' paradise of capitalism because climate change will continue.
Another tip off should have been the effective admission by global warming alarmists that they
cannot defend their position in public debate. The day the theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global
warming died can be dated from the time that one leading alarmist was foolish enough to debate James
Taylor of the Heartland Institute, a video of which can be found on the Heartland website at
Heartland.org.
Still another tip off should have been the practice of the alarmist new Lysenkoists to respond
to dissenting science with ad hominem attacks. That apparently reflects poor public schooling
that never taught that an ad hominem attack is a logical fallacy, as Aristotle taught more
than 2,000 years ago. My how western science has fallen.
The basic science shows that global temperatures are just not very sensitive to CO2 itself. Even
alarmists will concede that. Where they get their alarm is with the modeling assumption that the
CO2 induced temperature increases will produce positive feedbacks that will sharply increase the
overall resulting warming. The better recent science indicates, however, that instead of positive
feedbacks, the naturally stable Earth would enjoy negative feedbacks restoring long term equilibrium
and stability to global temperatures.
Then there is the man caused, global warming, fingerprint that the U.N.'s models all showed would
result in a hot spot of particularly large temperature increases in the upper troposphere above the
tropics. But the incorruptible, satellite monitored, atmospheric temperature record shows no hot
spot. That is further confirmed by modern weather balloons measuring atmospheric temperatures above
the tropics. No hotspot. No fingerprint. No catastrophic, man caused global warming. QED.
The revival of western science requires that the new Lysenkoism be discredited. That is going
to require quite some work, given the extent of the infestation.
I am Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, Senior Advisor
for Entitlement Reform and Budget Policy at the National Tax Limitation Foundation, General Counsel
for the American Civil Rights Union, and Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.
I served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate
Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush. I am a graduate of
Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of America's Ticking Bankruptcy
Bomb (New York: Harper Collins, 2011). I write about new, cutting edge ideas regarding public policy,
particularly concerning economics.
The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.
"... Science and scientists are now heavily politicized. A lot of them are just political charlatans spreading nonsense for money and abusing mathematics, using it as smoke screen to hide their disgraceful actions. Take for example neoclassical economists. ..."
"... Many scientists now have connections and receive funding from military industrial complex or other industrial lobbies which also affects objectivity. ..."
"... Scientists with integrity of Rutherford are extinct. Now this is "He who pays the piper calls the tune" all over the science. ..."
"... That does not exclude objectivity, but it now can never be taken for granted. Scientific schools struggles can now well be the struggles of influence groups standing behind particular groups of scientists. The attitude should be like in the Russian proverb that Reagan used to love so much: "Trust but verify" ..."
"... IMHO you can view neoclassical economics as a cancer or a modern version of Lysenkoism (and a very successful, dominant one), if you wish (with due apologies to "strict" supply-demand equilibrium believers; of course, in a long run everything comes to equilibrium, but in a long run we all are dead ;-). ..."
"... How the existence and success of Lysenkoism ( let's say in the form of neoclassical economics ) correlates with your optimism about modern science and scientists ? That is the question to be answered. ..."
Fred from way up thread.
"Sorry Tea, this is the 21st century and while that might have been true even a century ago, we now have a very extensive and
solid body of scientific knowledge to work with and therefore all scientists do not in any way shape or form get it wrong ALL
THE TIME! That isn't how science works today."
I will not shove words into you mouth and I will ask that you don't try it with me. No one said all scientist get it wrong
all the time. What was said is that most scientists have ideas that will later be proven wrong. In the field of climate science
the models developed and played up in the media that were used to promote all kinds of false assumptions and alarming predictions
have been frequently and objectively proven to be wrong. Most intellectually honest scientists would agree that we do not have
the information needed for the models to fully understand all the variables that influence earths climate. Which of course includes
sun cycles and the natural earth processes such ocean cycles, tectonics (volcanoes) ect (not to ramble on). To take one possible
influence, the increase or decrease of CO2 and make predictions as to what the climate will be in 50 years is not science, it
is at best guess work, it is one part of a jigsaw puzzle and it is dishonest to present in any other way.
It does not matter what field of science one works in, but to chose one for an example, medical science and drug development.
Billions of $$$ are spent on drug development, more times than not the drugs and the research behind them are thrown into the
trash because they do not work. The "science" relating to human diets and the epidemic of obesity and diabetes, another great
example where they just flat got it wrong for over 30 years. I could ramble on but the point is made, good people often get it
wrong, bad people do not care and evil people profit from it. :-)
most scientists have ideas that will later be proven wrong.
And that's misleading to the point of just being wrong.
Yes, almost all scientists are working with concepts that can be improved in some way. But are they just flat out wrong? No.
Why is this important? Because your argument above uses this idea to frame climate science improperly: climate science can
certainly be improved, in many, many ways. But it's good enough to identify serious risks in what we're doing now, and tell us
that we need to take some action to mitigate those risks.
Of course, climate science mostly tells us what we already know for other reasons: fossil fuels are expensive, risky and polluting,
and we should move away from them as fast as we can.
And, of course, that's why the Koch brothers and Exxon want to throw doubt on climate science: it's bad for their business.
"But it's good enough to identify serious risks in what we're doing now, and tell us that we need to take some action
to mitigate those risks."
this is a statement i can agree with as it attempts to understand the limitations we are struggling with but also why further
study and research is needed. Now include that idea with a cost benefit analysis of our current energy mix and all of a sudden
we have someone who at least correctly frames the issues.
Tell the Chinese and Indians I doubt that any of them have ever heard of the Koch brothers. It isn't about doubt created by
Exxon or Koch brothers, those doubt exist on the merits of the science itself it is about maintaining civil order in their own
countries.
Yes, the layman looks on scientific results as indeterminate and without confidence, couched in error limits and probabilities,
and subject to correction or change. Of course the reality is far different, just look around you.
The very simple statements of the non-scientific populous seem so confident, so definite. Mostly they are wrong or misleading
but they are not couched in terms of the reality of the situation and are generally one-sided and agenda based. We call that propaganda,
I call it deceit.
The scientist understands the limitations of his investigations and puts them honestly out front for public viewing, being heavily
checked by his peers. Probably about as honest as you can get in this world.
Again, if you think science is wrong and does not work, look around you, even as you type or read on the electronic inventions
derived from all the "wrong" science. You sound like you have no idea how knowledge is gained or grows. Nor do you know how to
interpret scientific results. Best to leave that to others.
And if you are thinking about global warming, the physics are rock solid, the details of climate change are fuzzy, mostly because
of lack of funding for enough research teams and sensors. But it is only fuzzy, not wrong. If some of those rich businessmen and
their puppet governments would actually spend enough money and effort on the science effort, we might know with greater certainty
the details of climate change.
But they do not want to know, because it will force inconvenient action and change. Throughout history, the search for knowledge
has been directed and throttled by the powers that be. We are still medieval in many ways.
But I guess today's profit and power are far more important than the world or our future generations.
Science and scientists are now heavily politicized. A lot of them are just political charlatans spreading nonsense for
money and abusing mathematics, using it as smoke screen to hide their disgraceful actions. Take for example neoclassical economists.
Many scientists now have connections and receive funding from military industrial complex or other industrial lobbies which
also affects objectivity.
Scientists with integrity of Rutherford are extinct. Now this is "He who pays the piper calls the tune" all over the science.
As such most of them (outside few fields yet not politicized enough, like pure mathematics ) became the same prostitutes for
the elite as journalists.
That does not exclude objectivity, but it now can never be taken for granted. Scientific schools struggles can now well
be the struggles of influence groups standing behind particular groups of scientists. The attitude should be like in the Russian
proverb that Reagan used to love so much: "Trust but verify"
TT, I apologize for giving the impression that I was quoting you verbatim.
However when you say this: What was said is that most scientists have ideas that will later be proven wrong.
I have to agree with Nick below. That statement is flat out wrong! Science does not operate in a vacuum and most scientists
today build on a very solid scientific foundation of accepted scientific theories. They don't just pull ideas out of their asses!
It does not matter what field of science one works in, but to chose one for an example, medical science and drug development.
Billions of $$$ are spent on drug development, more times than not the drugs and the research behind them are thrown into the
trash because they do not work.
Ok I'll run with that! While a particular drug may not work as expected the scientific research they engage in does not overturn
germ theory or the theory of evolution!
LOL! You really should read the rationalwiki link you posted! From that link:
When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But
if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than
both of them put together.
As for the Wired link, Meh! And for the Guardian link I suggest you watch this to at least dispel some common myths about Einstein.
How about such thing as Lysenkoism? Is not this a cancer for science, from which there is essentially cures are as difficult to
obtain and are as destructive as for regular cancer.
IMHO you can view neoclassical economics as a cancer or a modern version of Lysenkoism (and a very successful, dominant
one), if you wish (with due apologies to "strict" supply-demand equilibrium believers; of course, in a long run everything comes
to equilibrium, but in a long run we all are dead ;-).
How the existence and success of Lysenkoism ( let's say in the form of neoclassical economics ) correlates with your optimism
about modern science and scientists ? That is the question to be answered.
"... "How do you explain a person seemingly legitimately trained in science drifting off and becoming more and more of a science denier? ..."
"... In the case of Judith Curry I was unwilling to think of her as a full on science denier for a long time because her transition into denierhood seemed to be going very slowly, methodologically she just kept providing more and more evidence that she does not accept climate science's consensus that global warming is real, caused by human greenhouse gas pollution, involves actual warming of the Earth's surface, and is important. And lately she has added to this slippery sliding jello-like set of magic goal posts yet another denier meme she is either doing something here that is morally wrong (lying to slow down action on climate change) or stupid (she is not smart enough to understand what she is looking at) ..."
"... it is my children's future that is at risk here " ~ Greg Laden ..."
"... Your tactics speak volumes about you. Instead of discussing the evidence you engage in ad-hominem attacks against those that do not share your beliefs. ..."
"I am pointing out that current hypothesis is faulty and we need a new one. There are plenty
of climatologists working on that. For example Judith Curry " ~ Javier
"Curry is a lightweight that barely has a grasp on physics." ~
WebHubbleTelescope
"How do you explain a person seemingly legitimately trained in science drifting off and
becoming more and more of a science denier?
In the case of Judith Curry I was unwilling to think of her as a full on science denier for
a long time because her transition into denierhood seemed to be going very slowly, methodologically
she just kept providing more and more evidence that she does not accept climate science's
consensus
that global warming is real, caused by human greenhouse gas pollution, involves actual warming
of the Earth's surface, and is important.
And lately she has added to this slippery sliding jello-like set of magic goal posts yet another
denier meme
she is either doing something here that is morally wrong (lying to slow down action on climate
change) or stupid (she is not smart enough to understand what she is looking at)
it is my children's future that is at risk here " ~
Greg Laden
Alarmists are very big on character assassination based on fact-less opinions. They also refuse
to engage skeptics in debate. Both tactics speak of a self-perceived weakness in their position.
Judith Curry publication list is available to anybody so there is no need to defend her scientifically.
I really object to your tactic of saying that any scientist that supports consensus deserves respect
but any scientist that doesn't support consensus does not deserve respect. That has never been
the way scientific disputes have been settled.
Your tactics speak volumes about you. Instead of discussing the evidence you engage in ad-hominem
attacks against those that do not share your beliefs.
Nice. You want to have a go at me also. It isn't going to work either. A scientists is judged
by the value of his/her research and not by his/her opinions. The publication record of Judith
Curry speaks for herself.
There's a lot of climate activists going after scientists that don't
share the consensus. Nothing really new about it, but science doesn't care about those things.
You just demonstrate your inability to discuss about what science knows or doesn't about climate
and about what the evidence really supports or doesn't. Hence you embark on a travel to attack
the credibility of those that sponsor a different view, as if that was going to change anything
about the science of climate.
That is a losing proposition. Science will eventually sort out this debate and your efforts
will be in any case meaningless, misguided, and petty.
[Mar 15, 2016] Coal probably has peake
Notable quotes:
"... Just last year electric generation by coal was reduced by 4.6%. ..."
"... We know that China, one of the biggest producers and consumers is reigning in coal consumption for environmental issues and closing down thousands of mines, while at many developed nations like UK coal energy plants are being phased out and closed down. ..."
"... We do know that CO2 emissions have stabilized and are starting to go down. It might be the looming economical crisis or it could be a change in coal use that starts a downward trend. ..."
200 of the 534 US coal fired generation plants are now gone, retired as they say. Expect more
in April as the EPA extensions run out. " Nearly 18 gigawatts (GW) of electric generating capacity
was retired in 2015, a relatively high amount compared with recent years. More than 80% of the
retired capacity was conventional steam coal. " EIA
Coal may be leaving us faster than we think. The combination of aging, pollution laws and competition
is steadily reducing coal use. Just last year electric generation by coal was reduced by 4.6%.
What about the possibility that Peak Coal is taking place right now? We know that China, one
of the biggest producers and consumers is reigning in coal consumption for environmental issues
and closing down thousands of mines, while at many developed nations like UK coal energy plants
are being phased out and closed down.
We do know that CO2 emissions have stabilized and are starting to go down. It might be the
looming economical crisis or it could be a change in coal use that starts a downward trend.
Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
"The oceans contain 37,400 billion tons ( GT ) of suspended carbon, land biomass has 2000-3000 GT
. The atpmosphere contains 720 billion tons of CO2 and humans contribute only 6 GT additional load
on this balance. The oceans, land and atpmosphere exchange CO2 continuously so the additional load
by humans is incredibly small. A small shift in the balance between oceans and air
... ... ...
But consider what happens when more CO2 is released from outside of the natural carbon cycle –
by burning fossil fuels. Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons
moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all
of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere,
and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati
2009). (A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm
has taken just 120 years).
Human CO2 emissions upset the natural balance of the carbon cycle. Man-made CO2 in the atmosphere
has increased by a third since the pre-industrial era, creating an artificial forcing of global temperatures
which is warming the planet.
While fossil-fuel derived CO2 is a very small component of the global carbon cycle, the extra
CO2 is cumulative because the natural carbon exchange cannot absorb all the additional CO2.
Whether it is weather, climate change, El Nino or something new the state of Arctic Sea ice looks
to be a major outlier at the moment (i.e. the winter maximum area/extent is well below anything
seen recently and temperatures there are far above average, meaning ice volume is about to start
falling when it should be still growing for a few more weeks).
The Arctic appears to act as a sort of overflow tank for northern hemisphere heat – i.e. excess
heat gets dumped there by melting the ice without raising temperatures and in colder years the
ice builds up ready for use next time. But if everything melts then this function goes away and
the effects will be seen all over as more severe weather extremes.
It is more complex than that. During winter sea ice acts as an insulator preventing the loss of
heat from a warmer ocean to a colder atmosphere. Right now the Arctic ocean is cooling more and
that heat is being mostly radiated to space, since it is dark most of the time.
We cannot predict if this lower maximum will develop into a lower minimum or not.
Yes indeed very complex. That's why we have trained climate scientists and specialized institutions
and places of learning where they understand these things in detail.
I do not provide any personal data over the internet. No exceptions.
Ron has my full name since I published a guess article sometime ago in his blog, and can check
my publication record anytime. I am sure he would call my bluff if I wasn't a real scientist.
I would also provide it to him if he requested it. By email.
Jav – Please tell me why it is so important for you to generate doubt about AGW. You have said
that you care not one bit about the politics of the thing which is where it ALL plays out.
By far the science is pretty clear and if even half of it is accurate humanity is in for one
hell of a ride and there is even a possibility that it is a one way ride but you are making it
your mission, going way beyond the pale, to refute all of it WHY?
Jef, it is not important to me personally. I believe it is a non issue because there is no indication
that global warming is going to proceed to the point of becoming dangerous. Peak oil is going
to make it irrelevant.
There are two reasons for me to care about climate change.
The first is scientific curiosity. Climate change is one of the most interesting complex problems
and is a very popular one. You can talk and discuss it with a lot of people, and new information
is discussed widely.
The second is that it makes me mad that all the people in the world are being scared by an
unproven hypothesis that looks wrong on many issues and that is trying to invert the burden of
proof.
The question is not to generate doubt about AGW, it is to show that science has not decided
about the CO2 hypothesis despite claims to the contrary, and to tell people that they have nothing
to fear from the climate so they can have one worry less.
Interesting, since the thermal conductivity of water is 0.6 W/(m-K) and the thermal conductivity
of ice is 2.2 W/(m-K). Just the opposite.
Also cloud cover keeps much of the heat from going into space.
"The multidecadal trends from surface observations over the Arctic Ocean
show increasing cloud cover, which may promote ice loss by the longwave
effect. The trends are positive in all seasons, " http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~rmeast/ThesisSub.pdf
Not that I care for your candidates and nor do I sympathize with your somehow extremist (from
an European pov) republican candidates, but the proposition that climate change is going to become
dangerous is an unproven hypothesis not supported so far by any evidence.
An impartial observer would acknowledge that global warming has been very beneficial to humanity,
as the LIA was a terrible time and millions died because of pre-industrial climate.
You should go stand in front of a large speeding truck on the highway because it's an unproven
hypothesis that it will hit you.
Really ? Are you claiming that standing in front of speeding truck is equal to doubts about
global warning ? Unless this is not a well though out hyperbola you are sick, my friend.
Classic mechanics is undisputable. So results of standing of an object with mass M in front
of the truck with mass T and speed S are predictable to a high degree.
Let's assume that global warning currently is happening as measured by average Earth temperature.
But the assumption that it is happening due to human activity not some periodic cycle after which
global cooling will re-emerge, is much less proven. Here we also need to include in the model
the activity of Sun (big unknown which could have century long cycles), variations of Earth orbit,
angle as well as possible speed of rotation variations, activity of volcanos, ocean currents and
their long term dynamics, the level of transparency of the atmosphere (did you hear about such
notion as "Nuclear winter") etc. Earth with its atmosphere is a very complex system and to predict
how Earth climate will change with certain anthropogenic inputs is a very challenging task. Because
there are not the only one you need to include in the model.
The key problem is that for such a short period as one century it is unclear if we deal with
human induced trend or some other trend correlated in time with a rise (and coming fall) of oil
based human civilization which caused additional CO2 emissions (which still can be a contributing
factor). And BTW what is the optimum temperature for the life on Earth ? May be it is higher then
current. May be it is lower. But why it is assumed that temperature at the beginning of XX century
was optimal for the life on Earth and should be preserved by all means?
Currently, there really is quite a lot of basic agreement within the climate science world:
climate change exists; there has been warming since the Little Ice Age ended around the
beginning of the 19th Century (well before emissions are regarded as contributing significantly);
human emissions can contribute to climate change; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been
increasing.
None of this is controversial and none of this actually implies alarm. However, in the policy
world, as emerges from virtually any reading of the current political discourse and its attendant
media coverage, the innocuous agreement is taken to be equivalent (with essentially no support
from observations, theory or even models) to rampant catastrophism. There are numerous examples
of the issuance of unalarming claims (regardless of their validity or lack thereof) that are
interpreted as demanding immediate action.
Perhaps the most striking example involves the iconic statement of the IPCC: Most of the
warming over the past 50 years is due to man. Is this statement actually alarming? First, we
are speaking of small changes. 0.25C would be about 51% of the recent warming. Given the
uncertainties in both the data and its analysis, this is barely distinguishable from zero.
Evidence of this uncertainty is shown by the common adjustments of this magnitude that
are made to the record.
Why such an uncompromising attitude. Are you a religious zealot ?
Did you study at school such notions as accuracy of measurements and error margins? What about
statistical theory ? You remind me brave souls from EIA which provide four digits for measurements
which at best has 1% error margin with some that has error margin closer to 10%.
While I personally think the humans might be the reason. I at the same time consider it to
be an unproved, albeit plausible hypothesis. The one that has the right to exist along with many
others. For example, a model that explains this phenomenon by century long (or so) variations
of activity of Sun would be OK in my book.
Why this alternative hypothesis should be disregarded? Nobody measured activity of Sun for
a century with any accuracy so this is just one unknown variable.
Somebody should tell NOAA, because their
Laboratory for
satellite altimetry has not detected any increase in the rate of sea level rise for the last
24 years.
Another case of different instruments saying different things?
"An international team of scientists dug into two dozen locations across the globe to chart
gently rising and falling seas over centuries and millennia. Until the 1880s and the world's industrialization,
the fastest seas rose was about 1 to 1.5 inches (3 to 4 centimeters) a century, plus or minus
a bit. During that time global sea level really didn't get much higher or lower than 3 inches
above or below the 2,000-year average."
So before 1880, the fastest measured global sea level rise was only ~0.3-0.4 mm/year. The current
rate of change, according to the NOAA altimetry chart above (1993-2016), is nearly 10x that.
The LIA that ended around 1825-1850 was the coldest period of the Holocene, with the largest
glaciers and lowest sea levels in thousands of years.
Since then sea levels have been on the rise, but there is no discernible anthropogenic signature
in that. It started long before our emissions and it would most probably proceed even if we reduce
our emissions.
Whether it is weather, climate change, El Nino or something new the state of Arctic Sea ice looks
to be a major outlier at the moment (i.e. the winter maximum area/extent is well below anything
seen recently and temperatures there are far above average, meaning ice volume is about to start
falling when it should be still growing for a few more weeks).
The Arctic appears to act as a sort of overflow tank for northern hemisphere heat – i.e. excess
heat gets dumped there by melting the ice without raising temperatures and in colder years the
ice builds up ready for use next time. But if everything melts then this function goes away and
the effects will be seen all over as more severe weather extremes.
AIER
Staff
–
November
21, 2020
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May 20, 2021
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May 19, 2021
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May 19, 2021
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