Sic Semper Tyrannis

More False Covid Hysteria

Let's start with this blaring headline from the Miami Herald:

White House looks at domestic travel restrictions as COVID mutation surges in Florida

For those of you not familiar with my previous pieces on the Florida pandemic as viewed from my perch in the Sarasota/Bradenton area (A Covid Panic Update and Why Does the Liberal Media Refuse to Report Meaningful Data on COVID?), I have been a consistent critic of the scare tactics because I look at the actual facts.

Here's the latest numbers for February compared to November and December 2020. The percent of patients hospitalized with COVID at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in December was 10.3%. That number now is 6.27%. Do you call that a surge?

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).

Joe! Joe! Save us Joe. You said you would save us ...

"Biden addressed his administration’s response efforts during a press briefing on two executive orders meant to provide food assistance to low-income families and protect workers’ rights during the pandemic. Days after the US surpassed 400,000 deaths related to COVID-19, the president warned the country had little ability in the near term to prevent spiking case totals.

"If we fail to act, there will be a wave of evictions and foreclosures in the coming months as this pandemic rages on because there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months," Biden said."  foxnews

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Hey!  Wait a minute!   Didn't you run on this?  Weren't you going to halt the pandemic through good government and compassion?  

What?  What?  Trump did it?  He made all those people die through neglect and some as yet undetected crime?

But what about all those millions of doses of vaccines out there in freezers?  Ah, Trump screwed that up.  Poor Cuomo!  Poor Newsom!  What could they do?  pl 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-nothing-we-can-do-to-change-coronavirus-pandemic-trajectory-in-coming-months

Briard's presentation at Johns Hopkins University

One of our correspondents was kind enough to send me what he says is an unmodified video of Professor Briard's presentation on COVID-19 deaths.  pl

https://url.emailprotection.link/?bSYr50gRhBjC615YOdskIg0xxU1LejLqUk1UQ14SxNXFhWAQfWYBlryzE0R2oqACXnwyJNEdUkY5vx1Cf0V7FAu49lDZkzwrXN6pRl5Hwnun-KUOTCHB354SulJiavSDil_NK6tUAjx5EO2gZxq7WniWWke-JnWIGQnEKcOEHl1CBDf6eNwKxarB1O1XsIzWD4kSx-EDRSPnrjY9VG6WWKw~~

"A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19" retracted Johns Hopkins journal article

"The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease.

“All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,” Briand concluded.

In an interview with The News-Letter, Briand addressed the question of whether COVID-19 deaths can be called misleading since the infection might have exacerbated and even led to deaths by other underlying diseases.

“If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification,” Briand replied.

In other words, the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the U.S. is considered problematic only when it increases the total number of deaths or the true death burden by a significant amount in addition to the expected deaths by other causes. Since the crude number of total deaths by all causes before and after COVID-19 has stayed the same, one can hardly say, in Briand’s view, that COVID-19 deaths are concerning."

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The editorial board of this Johns Hopkins student journal retracted the article after they were confronted by faculty wokists and Covidians.  pl

https://web.archive.org/web/20201126163323/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

" ... late-term bid to lower prescription drug costs" APNEWS

"President Donald Trump said in announcing the new policy at the White House. “I just hope they keep it. I hope they have the courage to keep it,” he added, in an apparent reference to the incoming Biden administration, while noting the opposition from drug company lobbyists.

The two finalized rules, long in the making, would:

— Tie what Medicare pays for medications administered in a doctor’s office to the lowest price paid among a group of other economically advanced countries. That’s called the “most favored nations” approach. It is adamantly opposed by critics aligned with the pharmaceutical industry who liken it to socialism. The administration estimates it could save $28 billion over seven years for Medicare recipients through lower copays. It would take effect Jan. 1."

"— Require drugmakers, for brand-name pharmacy medications, to give Medicare enrollees rebates that now go to insurers and middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers. Insurers that deliver Medicare’s “Part D” prescription benefit say that would raise premiums. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates it would increase taxpayer costs by $177 billion over 10 years. The Trump administration disputes that and says its rule could potentially result in 30% savings for patients. It would take effect Jan. 1, 2022."  APNEWS

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Bad Orangeman!  Bad!  Hurting poor pharma company profits!  Bad!  Why should the nasty Deplorables pay the same price for American developed drugs as the dear sweet Canadians?  After you!  No.  No.  After you.  (Canadian customary speech).

Orangeman was very specific in his spiel and said that the pharmies tried to screw him, actually DID screw him, in their election advertising and that payback although a bitch is sweet.

Deplorables cry out "Good Orangeman!  Good!"  pl

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-medication-prescription-drug-costs-medicare-prescription-drugs-e171198402445755b920842ded293b59

A heretic speaks against Covidianism, the new faith.

Top pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson told government officials in Alberta during a zoom conference call that the current coronavirus crisis is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”

Hodkinson’s comments were made during a discussion involving the Community and Public Services Committee and the clip was subsequently uploaded to YouTube.

Noting that he was also an expert in virology, Hodkinson pointed out that his role as CEO of a biotech company that manufactures COVID tests means, “I might know a little bit about all this.”

“There is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians, it’s outrageous, this is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public,” said Hodkinson.

The doctor said that nothing could be done to stop the spread of the virus besides protecting older more vulnerable people and that the whole situation represented “politics playing medicine, and that’s a very dangerous game.”

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You see, pilgrims.  These are the kind of lies that Laura Wilson, whoever she may be, wants to to protect you from.  pl

https://www.infowars.com/posts/top-pathologist-claims-coronavirus-is-the-greatest-hoax-ever-perpetrated-on-an-unsuspecting-public/

"Wear a Mask When You’re Alone" Wisconsin Government

"It’s nothing new for political religions to produce radicals that develop their own sects or cults. This time around, rigid devotion to enforcing mask compliance has produced runaway fanaticism based on nothing but blind faith that more mask-wearing is always better. Even the public health experts, whom these followers all promoted as great prophets just months ago, can’t tame their fervor.

That’s a problem, because a return to normalcy will require subduing radical factions that agitate for oppression. Restrictions such as mask mandates are like oxygen to followers of radical fundamentalist Covidianism — the abiding belief that only lockdowns, social distancing, and masks can deliver us from the deadly pandemic. The longer mandates stay in place and experts continue promoting mask use — “My mask protects you! Your mask protects me!” — the stronger and more widespread the extremism will grow, and the less influence experts will have over their behavior.

The evidence is abundant, but consider these three cases of radical Covidianism and how they trace back to an abandonment of the scientific standards necessary to maintain public health and a functioning society."  The Federalist

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Yes.  IMO this has gotten very much out of hand and Covidianism is launched as a basis and justification for government/fanatic control of our lives and very way of life.  The ever present hyper-ambitious politicos and civil servants see in this pandemic an opportunity to impose control and often do so for the mere purpose of training and conditioning the populace to the acceptance of government authority in all things.  

They have now reached a level of ambition at which they are so bold as to forbid the ancestral tradition of the practice of a family reunion and feast on Thanksgiving Day.  The  rulers know quite well that the restrictions they wish to impose in California, New York and other satrapies will kill the tradition, but the masses will, in the minds of the autocrats, be better off without it, as are sheep in their fold.  Baa!  pl

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/22/mask-fanatics-have-officially-abandoned-science-to-control-your-life/

No! No! Not yet! Keep wearing your masks! No vaccine! No vaccine! Not yet!

"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that while it is "good news" that Pfizer has had a recent breakthrough in its coronavirus vaccine clinical trial, he believes it is "bad news" that the Trump administration will get to plan the distribution.

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday, Cuomo said he has spoken to other governors about how they can alter or even block Trump's plan so that President-elect Joe Biden could do it instead."

""Well, it's good news, bad news, George," Cuomo said. "The good news is the Pfizer tests look good and we'll have a vaccine shortly. The bad news is it's about two months before Joe Biden takes over, and that means this administration is going to be implementing a vaccine plan."

""And the Trump administration is rolling out the vaccination plan and I believe it's flawed," Cuomo continued. "I believe it learns nothing from the past. They're basically going to have the private providers do it, and that's going to leave out all sorts of communities that were left out the first time when COVID ravaged them."

Stephanopoulos then asked Cuomo what Biden could do that Trump will not do, and Cuomo immediately went back to discussing his problems with Trump."

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Now, listen up pilgrim cowboys!  Orange man bad!  Did you hear me?  Repeat after me!  Orange man bad!

Now remember, pilgrim cowboys,  Orange man bad!  All you Deplorables!  Shut up and chant!  We are taking names!

Cuomo killed over 5,000 elderly people in nursing homes?  Shhh!  The FBI will be watching for people who say or write thing like that.

"Two legs bad!  Four legs good!"  That's it, keep up the chant.  pl 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cuomo-bad-news-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-trump-administration

"Britain's Covid response is utterly mad – here are 10 reasons why" Dr. John Lee

" ... how can we find the right way forward? Revocation of progressively inappropriate emergency powers, with restoration of parliamentary scrutiny, accountability, transparency and debate must be part of it, along with involvement of a more diverse base of scientific and medical advisors.

If the NHS is struggling for capacity – which is debatable, and anyway substantially due to self-imposed rules related to “controlling” Covid – then sort it out: build more capacity, and remind NHS workers that they are there to look after the sick. 

The bottom line is that, at the present time, there is no reasonable scientific or medical justification for lockdowns, convoluted social distancing rules, masks, travel restrictions, quarantines or most of the rest of the flotsam that has attached itself to the Covid response. The sky is not falling. And the more people who understand the multifaceted reasons why this is the case, the sooner we will all get our lives back."  

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This doctor lays out the extent of the damage we have done to ourselves in the UK and US and the reasons why this happened.   The great majority of the reasons are political and psychological.  Cowboy up, folks!  Cowboy up!  pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/britains-covid-response-utterly-mad-10-reasons/

 

COVID-19 Note

In re COVID-19. People get the virus, but very few die! VERY FEW DIE! Does Trump look dead to you? He had the virus.  pl

"... this whole pandemic really is a conspiracy." Telegraph

"I was waiting for a revelation that never came. Months went by and millions of tests were performed, revealing with increasing certainty that here was a virus with a very low death rate indeed. Exact approximations vary but the survival rate for Covid-19 is thought to be somewhere above 99 per cent, and maybe as high as 99.8 per cent. 

The average age of someone who dies from coronavirus is 82.4, which, by the way, is nearly identical to the average life expectancy in Britain (81.1). Surely it is people in this segment of society we should be focusing on protecting, I thought, as schools closed and businesses went bust up and down the country.

It looked vaguely promising in July when restaurants, hotels and shops reopened, and when most of Europe opened its borders to international travel, but this break from the tyranny of lockdown was short-lived. 

Between mid-June and mid-September – even as we socialised, holidayed, and swapped germs to our heart’s content – influenza and pneumonia contributed to more weekly deaths than Covid-19. Sweden, one of the only countries on Earth that refused to lock down, had by this point proved beyond reasonable doubt that its tactic had broadly worked; even with such little intervention, the nation had not collapsed into the sort of apocalyptic health crisis predicted by the likes of Neil Ferguson."  Telegraph

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Once again, our cousins across the way are demonstrating that our hearts beat as one, unfortunately.  Their government is even nuttier than ours on the subject of locking down the economy over a fever epidemic that kills so few people among the vast masses of the population.   The hysteria involved in COVID-19 lockdowns is a phenomenon that we see often now.  The mass media have the ability to whip public opinion into a frenzy over any issue, any issue at all.  Politicians here and in the UK have learned that they can mount that tiger but they have not learned yet how difficult it is to dismount.  pl 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/almost-starting-think-whole-pandemic-really-conspiracy/

Peru, severely locked down, has the worst COVID death rate in the world.

"No country has been harder hit by Covid than my native Peru. Officially, the virus has claimed 33,600 lives from a total population of 32 million – the worst fatality rate in the world. But the real figure is far higher. Peru has a rickety public health system, and relied on Chinese antibody tests rather than PCR tests, so many coronavirus casualties went undiagnosed. I spoke to half a dozen Peruvians this week, including a doctor and a government official. All of them thought the true number of Covid deaths was closer to 80,000.

What has turned the ancient seat of Spain’s Viceroyalty into such a global outlier? You might think the answer is obvious, namely that Peru is a poor, sprawling place, with shantytowns, crowded minibuses and teeming markets. But you’d be wrong. Well aware of its situation, Peru decreed what must surely count as the toughest and, relative to infection rates, earliest lockdown on the planet.

On March 16, when there were only 28 confirmed cases, Peru closed its borders and imposed an eye-watering curfew. Men and women were allowed to leave home on alternate days, and only for essential purposes. The restrictions were enforced by the army and, by and large, they were obeyed. Google images showed a massive reduction in the number of people outdoors.

The economic consequences were catastrophic. Even in a wealthy country such as Britain, closures hit folk with cash-in-hand jobs much harder than people who can work from home. In Peru, where around two thirds of the economy is informal, things ground to a halt. Yet it did not slow the virus. Peru’s excess deaths – the number of people who have died in 2020 as against what would normally be expected – are the highest in the world."   Telegraph

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I was in Iquitos once.  A small group of SF sergeants from 8th Group in Panama were there for six months in 1966 doing some sort of training for the local forces of order.  They got bored after a few months and decided in their happy, goofy way to stage the death and funeral of one of the team, someone popular with the townspeople.

The city dwellers mourned and followed the horse drawn hearse to the plaza in front of the cathedral.  The vehicle was one of those glass sided things with black plumes on the heads of the horses.  The deceased was laid out on top of the hearse surrounded with flowers.  Eulogies were spoken. The city brass band played the "Dead March in Saul."

At the emotional apogee of the thing, the deceased sat up and waved to the crowd and thanked them in fluent Spanish for their concern.

The American ambassador in Lima, far away from Amazonian Iquitos, was not happy when he heard of this episode.  For some reason I was sent down there to unscrew this mess.  I felt like I needed a new butt after the ambassador got through chewing it, but at Iquitos the city administration told me they thought the funeral was funny and that they wanted our sergeants to stay, especially "El Muerto."  pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/18/peru-has-toughest-lockdown-world-still-ended-worst-fatality/

A physically sick, brave, tough man walked to that helicopter.

I recognized the walk to the helicopter as a massive exercise of will power in forcing the body to perform.  He was careful not to stop to talk to the ever hostile press.  He waved once, knowing that he must. He was ever so grateful to reach the handrail of the helicopter steps.  He was very sick.

The Democrat/media response has been to hypocritically offer good wishes but at the same time his adherents have moved their lawn signs closer to the curb so that the faithful will remember that they had hoped for his defeat and possibly worse.

They are sowing the wind.  pl

"... sex during the coronavirus pandemic..." Telegraph

(safe sex)

"But this isn't the first time that sex has sparked debate over coronavirus restrictions. Earlier this month, it was made illegal to have sex with someone outside your household, with the rules being put into place from June 1. At the time, anyone caught breaking the law could face having a criminal record - although police officers were not able to enter people's homes in order to enforce it, according to a Downing Street official."

"In August, the Terrence Higgins Trust published advice suggesting people avoid kissing, wear a face covering and choose positions that aren't face-to-face during sex. The organisation maintains that the safest form of sex is with yourself. 

"Indeed, this is a position echoed by health professionals in Canada. Dr Theresa Tam, the country’s Chief Public Health Officer, recommended people don’t kiss, avoid face-to-face closeness and wear a mask during sex to prevent the spread of coronavirus." 

"Dr Carlos E. Rodríguez-Díaz, associate professor of prevention and community health at George Washington University, told The Telegraph: “There is no evidence that Covid-19 can be transmitted via sexual intercourse; either vaginal or anal.

"However, kissing is a very common practice during sex, and the virus can be transmitted via saliva. Therefore, the virus can be transmitted by kissing."  Telegraph

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The picture? - A truly great love scene played out between Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley in the "Naked Gun" series of films.  I was touched when I first saw this depiction of truly safe sex and remain so.  Touched.  Touched.

The basic inhumanity in all this silliness is, or should be, obvious to one and all.  But, the inability to understand human nature as opposed to epidemiology, has been a characteristic of the doctor parts of governments here and over there in the UK.   pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/sex-what-law-rules-covid-risks-safe-catch-household-coronavirus/

" ... nobody wants them to be punished in our name." Telegraph

"As a mother, I detest Professor Ferguson and his recklessly inaccurate model for laying waste to my children’s prospects. I despise those senior civil servants who have secure pensions and nothing to fear from the economic danger their myopic safetyism has wrought. And I am coming to hate the men in Downing Street who are so busy eliminating risk (mainly to their own reputations) that they condemn the elderly to wither in loneliness and treat students like cattle with foot and mouth.

University term starts this week. It’s the ideal time for freshers to socialise, swap mobile details and microbes. Far from relations who may be vulnerable to Covid, they live in promisingly fetid halls of residence where they can easily get the virus during Match of the Day and be rid of it in a week.

Alas, far from seeing uni as the perfect Petri dish in which the virus can be cultured – and ultimately curbed – the authorities have imposed restrictions so draconian you wonder why any young person would want to be there at all.

Glum reports reach me from Exeter and Edinburgh where freshers have to stand two metres apart in a queue for the dining halls and then – get this – sit on their own at an exam-type desk far away from their nearest neighbour, a cordon sanitaire marked out by hazard warning tape. “My daughter hasn’t done this yet,” emails Diana, “as the thought of standing on your own followed by eating on your own is far too anxious-making. Our other daughter, who is in the second year, tells us the dining hall was the chief place to make friends. How is this going to work for our youngsters?”

“All Edinburgh courses are online,” says one dad who is worried that his shy son is isolated in distant lodgings – after the A-levels fiasco, university halls of residence were hugely oversubscribed. “So, he’s on a computer in his room all day followed by solitary dining and can’t go to the pub because he just missed out on being invited to join a group of six. And seven is breaking the rules. WHAT kind of experience is that?”"  Allison Pearson in the Telegraph

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I, for one, do not want them to suffer in my name.  pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/ridiculous-covid-rules-hurting-young-nobody-wants-punished/

"Lockdown failed. We must follow the Swedish model and learn to live with Covid" Woolhouse

 

"We should set some ground rules too. First, we deploy only evidence-based interventions, unlike the rule-of-six in England which unnecessarily applies to children, who play a minor role in transmission, and outdoor activities, which are very low risk. Second, we have a clear plan for using the time we have bought; for instance, to build testing capacity. Third, we agree on a long term strategy that does not involve a crippling on-off cycle of circuit breakers until whenever we might get a vaccine. We must not allow the cure to become worse than the disease.

That long term strategy has to be a risk-based approach to living with Covid-19. This is a very unpleasant virus but, for the great majority of people, not nearly so unpleasant that we should contemplate shutting down society to deal with it. We can help individuals assess the risk to themselves and the people around them, enable everyone to mitigate those risks while ensuring that the most vulnerable are protected, and thereby minimise the need for government-led interventions. Would that work? It seems to be working in Sweden."  

Prof Mark Woolhouse is Chair of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. He is a member of the UK SPI-M advisory group and of Scotland's Covid-19 Advisory Group. He is writing in a personal capacity. 

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So, what do the Shanghai police say about this man?

pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/19/uk-needs-follow-swedish-model-learn-live-covid/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Woolhouse

Interesting political events

1.  Governor Cuomo of New York made an on camera statement yesterday that Trump is "responsible" for CODIV-19 in New York state.  He made it clear that IHO Trump caused it.  He went on to say that Trump could not walk the street of the Big Crummy without an army of bodyguards.  The implication being that he would be attacked physically by outraged New Yorkers crying something like "off with his head!"  That could be easily interpreted to be incitement to violence against a president of the US.  This is probably a federal crime.  In response Broadway Joe Scarborough has exhorted Cuomo to withdraw the remark.

2.  Whether or not the hero salon owner in San Francisco lured Nancy Pelosi into her shop for a hair "blow out" (whatever that is) is irrelevant.  The political damage done to Pelosi everywhere but San Francisco is immense.  She is exposed as a hypocrite who preaches submission to the commandments of the god Fauci, but then surreptitiously violates them when in her private world.  Even more compelling is the implication that her sins are caused by a lack of belief in CODIV-19 as the return of a scourge with Black Death levels of effectiveness as a civilization buster.  IOW her moaning and bitching about COVID-19 is just political noise.

3.   And today Old Joe is weeping and moaning about how Trump insulted his hero son by saying that KIA/WIA were "suckers and losers" during his trip to France. Trump and the people around him deny that ever happened. The Dems must be worried. BTW someone should tell Joe that his hero JAG officer son was neither killed nor wounded in Iraq. Joe may be a little cloudy about that.  pl

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/515066-scarborough-calls-on-cuomo-to-walk-back-statement-he-made-about-trump-out-of

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nancy-pelosi-salon-setup-video-owner-responds/

9,210 is the real US COVID death number?

"So get this straight – based on the recommendation of doctors Fauci and Birx the US shut down the entire economy based on 9,000 American deaths to the China coronavirus." The Gateway Pundit."

"... the coronavirus fatality rate reported by the liberal mainstream media was completely inaccurate and the actual rate more like a typical seasonal flu – the media was lying again.

Doctors Fauci and Birx were next to push ridiculous and highly exaggerated mortality rates related to the coronavirus:

** Dr. Tony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx used the Imperial College Model to persuade President Trump to lock down the ENTIRE US ECONOMY.

** The fraudulent model predicted 2.2 million American deaths from the coronavirus pandemic.

** The authors of the Imperial College Model shared their findings with the White House Coronavirus task force in early March

** Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx then met with President Trump privately and urged him to shut down the US economy and destroy the record Trump economy based on this model

But the Imperial College model Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx pushed was garbage and they recommended the destruction of the US economy using this model."  Gateway Pundit

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Hmmm ... The Fauci is a god crowd will heap scorn on this but, thing about it.  pl

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/shock-report-week-cdc-quietly-updated-covid-19-numbers-9210-americans-died-covid-19-alone-rest-serious-illnesses/

"Europe is at last waking up to its lockdown folly." Sherelle Jacobs

"Emmanuel Macron was the first leader to drop this little bombshell. Last week he said that France can’t cope with the “collateral damage” of a second lockdown, explaining that “zero risk never exists in any society”. Italy joined in three days later, with the health minister hinting that the country will not return to national hibernation. Meanwhile, after lauding China’s draconian lockdown, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is imploring countries to avoid battening down the hatches again.

About time. Lockdowns are officially indefensible. Sweden has won the international experiment, as its firms outperform even the German Großunternehmen while Covid deaths plummet in line with the rest of Europe. Scientists caution that it may take years to develop a vaccine. Economists warn that even the richest economies in the world cannot afford national lockdowns costing up to 3 per cent of GDP per month.

Perhaps even doom-mongering politicians have twigged that civilisation threatens to evaporate into a mushroom cloud of psychoneurotic delirium. Polling reveals that Westerners on average believe 6 per cent of their national populations have died from Covid-19. The real figure is around 100 times lower."  Telegraph

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Just read the article and forget about what the dwarf Fauci says.  pl 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/europe-last-waking-lockdown-folly/

"LOCKDOWN LUNACY 3.0: It's over" JB Handley

"Have we lost our collective minds? Yes.

You may not be one of them. In fact, I’m guessing the people who actually take the time to read my blog posts are the few remaining who haven’t been subsumed by the panic, but can we agree that most have? Jeffrey A. Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research put it best in his excellent essay on July 10 titled, When will the Madness End?:

“I’m a practicing psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders, paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. I’ve been treating this in individuals as a specialist. It’s hard enough to contain these problems in normal times. What’s happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population. It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic. It seems almost deliberate. It is tragic. Once this starts, it could take years to repair the psychological damage.”"

 

https://jbhandleyblog.com/home/2020/7/27/lockdownlunacythree

pl

A COVID Panic Update by Larry C Johnson

While much of the media and a fanatic bunch of pundits are ferverishly trying to fan the flames of Covid panic, the disease does not appear to be cooperating. Worst of all, Donald Trump is not frozen in place lacking any clue about how to confront the pandemic. Nope, he is pushing ahead on a variety of fronts, which includes getting the best treatment available out to the states and streamlining the production of a vaccine. This is driving the Democrats crazy.

So, let’s start small and look at what is happening in my neck of the southern jungle–Sarasota and Manatee counties. The following comes courtesy of my friend and golfing buddy, Joe A. He sat down and put the numbers of Covid cases and deaths into a spreadsheet and divided the data into age groups. The pictures and numbers tell a great story.

Eighty four percent (84%) of the dead are 65 years of age or older. Wow. There is a shocker. Elderly people are more likely to die than younger people. But the real good news is that an overwhelming majority of elderly who contractted Covid in Manatee and Sarasota counties survived. Two thousand six hundred and sixty one fell ill. Thankfully, 2374 grandmas and grandpas 65 years of age and older survived.

"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 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/22/hysteria-dangerous-coronavirus-symptom/

Virginia To Force COVID Vaccine On Its Citizens. by J

 

How can the State Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver force COVID Vaccine on the citizens of Virginia?  He apparently thinks he can.

Virginia Health Commissioner says he’ll mandate a COVID-19 vaccine

J.

3 deaths from Covid-19 in Victoria State on Saturday. the Guardian

"The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, has warned of “growing concern” over dozens of “mystery cases” of coronavirus that cannot be traced by authorities, as the state recorded 397 new infections and three more deaths on Saturday.

The Victorian deaths – of a man and a woman in their 80s, and a woman in her 90s – and the death of an 83-year-old man connected to the outbreak at the Crossroads hotel in south-west Sydney, New South Wales, took Australia’s coronavirus death toll to 201 since the pandemic began.

NSW announced 17 new coronavirus cases on Saturday. At least one of the 17 new cases had no known source of infection. "  The Guardian

--------------

Australia has a population of 26 million.  Victoria State 6.6 million.  201 cumulative deaths country wide?  And Victoria State is locked down?  pl

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/01/victoria-reports-397-new-coronavirus-cases-as-four-new-deaths-send-australian-toll-above-200

Doctors go to Washington about hydroxychloroqine and COVID-19. Censorship follows.

By Robert Willmann

Today, 28 July, a story popped up that some doctors had a little press event about the SARS-CoV-2 virus in front of the Supreme Court building yesterday in Washington D.C., introduced by Congressman Ralph Norman (Repub., South Carolina), but now the Internet websites called Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have removed the video.  The "main stream media" did not seem to be there.  By the time Facebook censored the video, it had received over 17 million views.  A group of medical doctors called America's Frontline Doctors participated in the event, and had a conference scheduled for yesterday that would end today.  The Tea Party Patriots organization helped to sponsor the events.

Dr. Simone Gold organized the doctors.  She received a medical degree in 1989 from Rosalind Franklin University, the Chicago Medical School, and has a law degree, but she does not appear to have a law license in California.  She practices emergency medicine in Los Angeles, California.  The little event had been on the vimeo.com video website earlier today, but then was removed [1].  The America's Frontline Doctors website was available this morning, but after a while today it said:  "Website Expired.  This account has expired. If you are the site owner, click below to login" [2].  

Dr. Gold said that hydroxychloroquine can be purchased over the counter in Indonesia and Iran!

The breitbart.com website has its its own video, which is still available, and it is about 44 minutes long.  During the event, a study from 2005 on chloroquine was mentioned, which is entited, "Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread".  SARS is said to be a worse virus than SARS-CoV-2.  The study is on the National Insitututes of Health website--

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/27/facebook-censors-viral-video-of-doctors-capitol-hill-coronavirus-press-conference/

The program the group had scheduled for yesterday and today included presentations indoors.  Two of them as videos were on the YouTube section for the Tea Party Patriots earlier this afternoon, but one is now gone:  "This video has been removed for violating YouTube's community guidelines" [3].  The remaining one is about 3 hours, 11 minutes, and the audio is out until 4 minutes, 53 seconds into the video. It was still available as of 5:52 p.m., central time--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKbQbcInHnA

This morning, the CNN network followed the censorship with its own misdirection, starting out by saying: "A video featuring a group of doctors making false and dubious claims related to the coronavirus was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube after going viral online Monday" [4].

The COVID-19 peak death rate occurred the week of April 11- 18

 

"But there is a graph here that if I explain this properly, it’ll make sense to you. This is from the Centers for Disease Control. And it is death counts attributable to COVID-19 through July 11th. The week ending July 11th, which is the most recent date for data. They run about, you know, a week to two weeks behind here.

So throw the chart up. This is by age. All sexes by age. So if you look at the top line, the red line, the very top, that is the week ending April 11th. You can’t see this on the chart. Go ahead and put the chart up there, Brian, switch it over. The top line is red. You can’t even probably tell that. But, trust me. The top-most line is red, and it occurs on April the 11th. That is the peak death rate, and it’s probably about 6,000. I don’t know in what interval that this thing is reporting.

Probably… Eh, it’s in a week. The key is to go all the way over to the right side. You see the peak of death rates was April the 11th. It isn’t now. The peak death rate was April 11. That red line is people 85 years and older. The line under it is people 75 to 84. That’s the yellow line. The blue line underneath that is people 65 to 74. We’re under 4,000 now in a week. So the top line is people 85 and older.

If you go to the… This is where I’m not gonna… There are two reds, but you can’t tell the difference in them. Just trust me. Let’s move to the far-right side of the chart. That’s July 11th, and you’ll see that the death rate is not even 500, right now, per week — CDC — in all ages, in all demographics, says the CDC. We’re not at peak death rate. The peak death rate was April the 11th to April the 18th."  Limbaugh

----------------

But, what would Fauci say?  pl 

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/07/20/cdc-chart-shows-rapidly-declining-covid-19-death-rate/?fbclid=IwAR1zMOwCD_0vA5e-fC7qwws73VdV6f2hj_tJlEClxc-SXyTtriZbnCkT0_c

Death rates have fallen for the last 12 weeks.

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the 12th straight week of a declining coronavirus death rate in the U.S.

"Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 8.1% during week 27 to 6.4% during week 28, representing the twelfth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC," the CDC website states.

The CDC says the numbers "will likely change as more death certificates are processed, particularly for recent weeks," but a 12-week decline is a well-established trend that just so happens to coincide with states reopening their economies.  

For the week ending Apr. 18, there were 16,395 deaths involving COVID-19 as reported by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). That number has dropped for 12 straight weeks, down to 1,099 deaths reported by NCHS for the week ending Jul. 11. The number of deaths attributed to COVID-19, pneumonia, and influenza has similarly fallen, from 21,060 for the week ending Apr. 18 to 2,174 for the week ending Jul. 11.

To get some perspective, while just over a 1,000 coronavirus deaths were reported for the week ending Jul. 11, there were 24,723 deaths from all causes in the U.S. For the week ending Jul. 4, the NCHS reported 2,462 coronavirus deaths out of 42,219 deaths from all causes."  Townhall

---------------

The marxo/Democratic run MSM would have you believe that COVID-19 is running wild in the US.  That is all bullshit as you can see from these numbers.  pl

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2020/07/17/wuhan-coronavirus-death-rate-drops-for-twelfth-straight-week-n2572702

The hospitals are being paid more for reporting "death by COVID."

"The liberal media desperately wants people to die in Florida because nothing gets these people off more than having a narrative that explicitly reads, ‘I told you so, you dumb red state country bumpkin.’ Gov. Ron DeSantis has become public enemy number one for the COVID panic porn peddlers. We’ve seen a surge of new cases from the Sunshine State, but what are the real numbers? With some labs, like Orlando Health, not even reporting negative test results, the positivity rates are all messed up. In that case, Orlando Health reported a 98 percent positivity rate, but when you add the negatives, it drops to 9.4 percent. Look, I’m an Asian who absolutely sucks at math, but I know that will screw up the data. 

Now, we have a man who died and was listed as a COVID fatality, but he didn’t die from the virus. He was in a motorcycle crash. Dying with COVID isn’t the same as dying of COVID, which is why I think the death toll is going to have to be revised."  Townhall

*****

"We rate the claim that hospitals get paid more if patients are listed as COVID-19 and on ventilators as TRUE.

Hospitals and doctors do get paid more for Medicare patients diagnosed with COVID-19 or if it's considered presumed they have COVID-19 absent a laboratory-confirmed test, and three times more if the patients are placed on a ventilator to cover the cost of care and loss of business resulting from a shift in focus to treat COVID-19 cases."  USA Today

"This higher allocation of funds has been made possible under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act through a Medicare 20% add-on to its regular payment for COVID-19 patients, as verified by USA TODAY through the American Hospital Association Special Bulletin on the topic."  USA Today"

----------------

So... pilgrims, doctors and hospitals are being paid more for caring for people they describe as COVID patients, a lot more!

Get it?  This is a scam, A scam that in which political orientation probably plays a significant part.    pl 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/07/17/one-covid-death-in-florida-was-actually-a-motorcycle-accident-n2572661

"... global crash in children being born." BBC

"Japan's population is projected to fall from a peak of 128 million in 2017 to less than 53 million by the end of the century.

Italy is expected to see an equally dramatic population crash from 61 million to 28 million over the same timeframe.

They are two of 23 countries - which also include Spain, Portugal, Thailand and South Korea - expected to see their population more than halve.

"That is jaw-dropping," Prof Christopher Murray told me.

China, currently the most populous nation in the world, is expected to peak at 1.4 billion in four years time before nearly halving to 732 million by 2100. India will take its place.

The UK is predicted to peak at 75 million in 2063, and fall to 71 million by 2100."  BBC

**********

"Researchers at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 - and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100."  BBC

-------------

Is the university department cited to be relied on?  Anyone here know?

The decline in population is attributed in the study to improvements in the quality of women's lives.  Well, good.  The concern is that there won't be enough worker bees to take care of the old folks.

Well, maybe robots will help a lot.  Or maybe old folks will be made more productive until later in life?  Maybe?  pl

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521

"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 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/investigation-shows-errors-in-florida-virus-positivity-report-hospitals-say-actual-rate-much-lower

" ... Fauci has been wrong about everything..." Navarro

"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

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/todaysdebate/2020/07/14/anthony-fauci-wrong-with-me-peter-navarro-editorials-debates/5439374002/

"My Covid-19 symptoms have lasted more than 100 days..." Statnews

"As a relatively inexperienced physician, the bulk of medicine I have practiced has been focused more on the known than the unknown. As a psychiatry resident, I have become somewhat more accustomed to diagnostic uncertainty and clinically guided trial and error. Yet as my Covid-19 symptoms dragged on, my physician identity began blending into my patient identity. As I repeatedly encountered the term supportive care, I realized that this wait-and-see approach hardly seemed like care at all.

Doubt started creeping in. Mild and moderate cases resolve within two weeks, I kept telling myself over and over, while my body was telling me a different story. Soon, though, articles about the potential for prolonged symptoms trickled in, easing the isolation I felt from being an outlier and giving me some hope. At the same time, the guilt of being unable to assist my colleagues in a time of crisis lurked in the background.

My search for answers eventually led me to an online support group that included people like me with prolonged Covid-19 symptoms. In addition to validating my experience, I felt a strong sense of belonging to a larger community as I read through reports of others going through the same thing I was, sometimes even with the same emotional response.

Some in the group had prolonged low-grade fevers that didn’t respond to standard fever-reducing medications. Some experienced terrifying neurological manifestations such as memory loss and changes in their ability to recall words in a primary or secondary language. Others were battling exercise-induced fatigue, with attempts at walking around the block sparking a relapse of symptoms. I’ve seen people citing symptoms in the central and peripheral nervous systems, the gastrointestinal tract, the skin, cardiovascular system, and more."  statnews

--------------

I have had some of these symptoms for months, but they have not been severe enough to force me into a hospital.   IMO, for an old man to let the medicos decide to intubate and hook him up to a ventilator is suicidal.

I saw my family physician two weeks ago for a routine visit and we discussed this.  He did not seem overly concerned about the old man.  Perhaps he is tired of me.

The media continue to rant and rave against re-opening the economy, opening the schools, etc.  This is pathetically, obviously, part of a "throw it all at the barn door and see what sticks" effort to raise the public's discomfort reaction  to such a level that enough of them will give the marxists and the machine Democrats the perhaps irreversible power they lust for.  Judge Emmet Sullivan is just another such operative in this game.  So far, their Goebbelsian campaign is working.

I did the arithmetic today on Florida's casualties to date.  Florida has around 20 million inhabitants and just over 4000 deaths attributed to COVID-19.  This yields a product number of .03 % death in the overall population.  The same arithmetic against deaths among those said to be infected (254,000) yields 1.6 %.

This is the Black Death?  I think not.  pl 

https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/08/my-covid-19-symptoms-lasted-100-plus-days/

"... Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes."

"Dr Jefferson believes many viruses lie dormant throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favourable, which also means they can vanish as quickly as they arrive.

"Where did Sars 1 go? It's just disappeared," he said. "So we have to think about these things. We need to start researching the ecology of the virus, understanding how it originates and mutates.

"I think the virus was already here – here meaning everywhere. We may be seeing a dormant virus that has been activated by environmental conditions. 

"There was a case in the Falkland Islands in early February. Now where did that come from? There was a cruise ship that went from South Georgia to Buenos Aires, and the passengers were screened and then on day eight, when they started sailing towards the Weddell Sea, they got the first case. Was it in prepared food that was defrosted and activated? 

"Strange things like this happened with Spanish Flu. In 1918, around 30 per cent of the population of Western Samoa died of Spanish Flu, and they hadn't had any communication with the outside world.

"The explanation for this could only be that these agents don't come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should be looking for.""  The Telegraph.

---------------

This article is behind a paywall but may have been re-published elsewhere.

I find this to be an appealing theory.  It supports my suspicion that, as Trump says, the more you test the more of this virus you will find.   Why?  Perhaps that is true because the virus has been widely present in populations and dormant for a long time only to be activated by some environmental change in the recent past.  

Dr. Jefferson asks rhetorically where the Spanish flu disappeared to.  No cure or vaccine was ever found.  He asks the same question about SARS.  Where did it go?

If the Jeffersonian theory is correct, the implications are enormous.  pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/05/covid-19-may-not-have-originated-china-elsewhere-emerged-asia/?WT.mc_id=tmgliveapp_iosshare_AvlLDXGB2PqF

"Hydroxychloroquine lowers COVID-19 death rate, Henry Ford Health study finds" Detroit News

"A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday.

Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug “significantly” decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis.

The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system’s six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died.

Among all patients in the study, there was an overall in-hospital mortality rate of 18%, and many who died had underlying conditions that put them at greater risk, according to Henry Ford Health System. Globally, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients is between 10% and 30%, and it's 58% among those in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator."  Detroit News

-----------------

No comment needed.  pl 

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/07/02/michigan-henry-ford-health-study-finds-hydroxychloroquine-lowers-covid-19-death-rate/5365090002/

"One-time treatment generates new neurons, eliminates Parkinson's disease in mice" Science Daily

"Several years ago, a postdoctoral researcher working in Fu's lab was taking that approach, using a technique called siRNA to silence the PTB gene in connective tissue cells known as fibroblasts. But it's a tedious process that needs to be performed over and over. He got tired of it and convinced Fu they should use a different technique to create a stable cell line that's permanently lacking PTB. At first, the postdoc complained about that too, because it made the cells grow so slowly.

But then he noticed something odd after a couple of weeks -- there were very few fibroblasts left. Almost the whole dish was instead filled with neurons.

In this serendipitous way, the team discovered that inhibiting or deleting just a single gene, the gene that encodes PTB, transforms several types of mouse cells directly into neurons."  Science Daily

-----------------

Does this have some relevance to approaches to treatment of senile dementia and Alzheimer's?  pl

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200625102540.htm

“All this room will be dead by tomorrow.” Nurse supervisor at the Holyoke abattoir.

"Staff members told investigators that they were initially discouraged from wearing protective equipment, in an effort to conserve a limited supply, and that they felt “annoyed, paranoid and fearful for their lives because they could not find masks,” the report said.

The most troubling portions of the report describe the weekend of March 28 and 29, when staffing was so short at the home that two wards were hurriedly combined, a decision one employee described as “the most insane thing I ever saw in my entire life.”

A social worker described listening to the chief nursing officer say “something to the effect that this room will be dead by Sunday, so we will have more room here.” Another social worker recalled seeing a supervisor point to a room and say, “All this room will be dead by tomorrow.”"  NY Times

-------------

Were they thanked for their service at some point before the end?  Did they receive "the thanks of a grateful nation?"

The Democrats want to f---k around with Trump over the names of Army posts where a lot of these men trained before going overseas.  I was trained at Fts. Bragg and Benning.  Are the Democrats interested in anything but their power and the present goodwill of their Marxist allies?

I doubt it.  pl 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/us/holyoke-soldiers-home.html

 

Number of CODIV-19 cases does NOT = number of deaths from CODIV-19

Anyone want to contest that statement or document the facts?  pl 

A summary on COVID-19 from "Deap"

"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. The 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

"Coronavirus vaccine developers are chasing outbreaks before they disappear" Washpost

"The top teams rushing to develop coronavirus vaccines are alerting governments, health officials and shareholders that they may have a big problem: The outbreaks in their countries may be getting too small to quickly determine whether vaccines work

A leader of the Oxford University group, one of the furthest ahead with human trials, admits the reality is paradoxical, even “bizarre,” but said the declining numbers of new infections this summer could be one of the big hurdles vaccine developers face in the global race to beat down the virus.

Even as new cases are growing worldwide, transmission rates are falling in Britain, China and many of the hardest-hit regions in the United States — the three countries that have experimental vaccines ready to move into large-scale human testing in June, July and August."  Washpost

---------------

Well, pilgrims it would seem that the Post staff  does not see the irony in their own writing, or perhaps they do.  There have been scattered evidences of rationality there lately.   Even as Democrat governors and mayors across the country drag their feet on the re-opening of the American economy, infection rates are falling.  In the Faucibirxist view of things everything depends on vaccine development (or herd immunity post holocaust).  But, alas there just aren't enough new, vibrant infections to make development of the vaccines convenient.   What will happen to the flow of government money to these projects if this phenomenon becomes  general knowledge.  Someone at the Post should be disciplined for this indiscretion.  pl 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-trials-astrazeneca-moderna/2020/06/09/48f28fea-a414-11ea-898e-b21b9a83f792_story.html

A Bombshell Report from the New CNN

A report by Fred

There I was, first day on the new job. Trying to impress the boss with my worsmithing and insights on life, the universe, and, well - everything. Of course all good writing takes coffee, and some fresh air. So I went for a stroll and imagine, as luck would have it, what came by? I think this is what Joseph Campbell referred to as a 'call to adventure'. Take a look.

 

"End New York City’s lockdown now!" David Marcus

"In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.

We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.

Meanwhile, the Big Apple is ­dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. ­Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.

Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated."  David Marcus

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As you may have noticed, I am not a fan of New York City, but this man understands the truth.

You heard it first here.  We understood early at SST that the hysterical, panicked, media driven BS that led to surrender of the course of national life to a bunch of medical academics driven by their professional deformations was simply suicidal.

The Left hates the US, hates the country as "irredeemably deplorable," hates it as stained by the great Faulknerian sins of slavery and colonial creation.  In their collective mind the US can only be redeemed by self destruction and a new beginning in socialist rectitude as part of a global state.  You get it, America in the Year Zero.

How natural it was for the leftist politicians and leftist media to embrace a medical analysis of the situation that pushed the country into an economic suicide attempt.  How natural ...  And how convenient for the limousine leftists like Pelosi and the Young Pioneer types like AOC to want to keep the economy down long enough to win in November.  How natural...

A lot of people die every day of a variety of causes.  This virus is a reaper that culls the population, eliminating the weak and the old.  The great majority of healthy, productive people survive infection with little or no apparent effect.   You may die of the long term damage done to your organs?  Yes, well, so what.  You are going to die of something no matter what you do.  No matter what they think in California we are all mortal.

Re-open the country, all of it!  Now!  pl

https://nypost.com/2020/05/20/end-new-york-citys-lockdown-now/

River prawns as canal cleaners. Who knew?

 

"Beyond the consumer applications, Professor Sagi has also been involved in research on using the prawns to combat schistosomiasis, a debilitating waterborne disease that affects around 200 million people worldwide, primarily in impoverished areas. Also known as Snail Fever, the disease is caused by parasitic flatworms called schistosomes, which use aquatic snails as an intermediate host. Anyone swimming in, or drinking water inhabited by, these snails is likely to contract the disease, which can eventually lead to liver damage, kidney failure, infertility, or bladder cancer. In children, it may also inhibit growth and mental development.

Since the prawns are voracious predators of water snails, trials are underway to determine how commercial aquaculture operations can be most effectively configured for a parallel role as snail control centers. In a recent paper, Sagi and other proponents argue that the prawns could significantly reduce the number of infected people and the cost of the drugs required to treat them, plus the prawn ponds would provide permanent sources of food and income."  ars technica

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These are the size I am familiar with.

I have eaten a lot of these guys in SE Asia and in fancy restaurants in Dubai, Morocco and Abu Dhabi.  These are absolutely wonderful grilled with the heads on.  Oil, lemon, S&P, garlic, three minutes on a side.  The heads are deliciously crunchy.

This Israeli bio-engineering company has managed to raise them in tanks filled with females only.  Brilliant!  The males are a nuisance.  They are very territorial and fight all the time, injuring each other, killing other prawns and are thus much distracted from the serious business of gaining weight and making little prawns.  Yum.  pl

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/05/can-gender-bending-israeli-super-prawns-help-feed-the-world/

There may be no vaccine. What then?

(My grandmother who died of the influenza in 1918

with her infant daughter)

"Paul’s challenge encapsulates the debate between elected officials eager to open up businesses and willing to accept the risk that more people will die, and public health experts committed to lowering infection rates and keeping the public as safe as possible.

“People are hurting and we’re destroying our country,” Paul told reporters outside the hearing room. “We’ve got to open up business we got to let people vote, and we’re not going to live in a perfect world without infectious disease, we’re still going to have it, but we got to open the economy and that’s the number one message I have.”

The Kentucky senator, an opthamologist, told Fauci he didn’t believe there would be a surge in cases if schools opened, which is not what public health experts say. Paul dismissed predictive models of the virus. “The history of this, when we look back, will be of wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction,” Paul said.

Paul then targeted Fauci personally: “As much as I respect you Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all, I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make the decision. We can listen to your advice. But there are people on the other side saying there won’t be a surge and we can safely open the economy.”  CNBC

--------------

IMO, there may or may not be an effective vaccine developed against COVID-19.  Some virus bugs are never countered effectively by vaccines.  There are no vaccines for the common cold, the Spanish Influenza of 1918, and many other virus strains.  Some diseases must burn themselves out in a population by establishing  herd immunity.  Bubonic Plague is a bacterial infection, but the same thing was true of it.  It ravaged Europe, but eventually the fire of infection burned out in Europe and those of us who are descended from Europeans are the descendants of the herd survivors.

COVID-19 is nothing like the Black Death or the Spanish Influenza in lethality except for the old and infirm.  Suck it up, people!  Cowboy up!  Grow a pair!  Fauci is a techno dweeb who would keep the US shut down economically until the survivors of COVID-19 would be living in a post-apocalyptic world of small communities living in poverty, a dystopian nightmare.

Rand Paul is also a doctor, and a survivor of the disease.

The Democrats are having a good time playing with Trump while the country burns to the ground economically.

Biden?  Pelosi?  Juan Williams?  Northam?  You want them?  If you do, and you want to hunker down until the country dies, well then, Bless You!  You will deserve what you get.

SWMBO and I, and the doggies are unlikely to be here to share your pain.  pl

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/12/dr-anthony-fauci-sen-rand-paul-spar-over-safety-and-death-rates-among-children-with-coronavirus.html

De Niro wants to be cast as this guy?

"Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus nursing home policy proves tragic"  Goodwin - 

"The letter was heartbreaking as it recounted the death of an 88-year-old woman in a New York nursing home. But it was also angry and accurate about a strange New York policy that is ­fatally wrongheaded.

“I am wondering who will hold Gov. Cuomo accountable for the deaths of so many older people due to his reckless decision to place covid19 patients in nursing and rehabilitation homes,” the letter began. “I am writing as a daughter who lost her beautiful 88 year old mother who was receiving physical therapy at one such facility.”

The writer, Arlene Mullin, went on to recount examples of the governor promising to protect the elderly because of their known vulnerability. She noted that he named his stay-at-home order after his own mother, Matilda ­Cuomo, and talked several times about protecting her.

“My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable and our brothers and sisters are not expendable,” Cuomo said a month ago."  Goodwin

https://nypost.com/2020/04/21/cuomo-coronavirus-nursing-home-policy-proves-tragic-goodwin/

----------------

Pilgrims - it appears that they really WERE expendable.

Roberto De Niro, he of the public "potty mouth" diatribes against Trumpy, is organizing a Horrywood ("1941" reference) production and is seeking to play Andrew Cuomo in a drama about the coronavirus plague.  Presumably Cuomo will be the heroic and effective Italian American protagonist destined to be POTUS one day.  Well, good!  Let it be!  Please God, let it be!

***********

"Cuomo didn’t know coronavirus patients are being sent back to nursing homes"  - NY Post

"New York’s health commissioner on Monday defended a directive that requires nursing homes to readmit residents who’ve tested positive for the coronavirus — as Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed he didn’t know the policy was in place.

Cuomo was asked about the state’s policy on admitting or readmitting to nursing homes people who’d tested positive for COVID-19.

“That’s a good question, I don’t know,” the governor said.

Cuomo’s startling admission came days after the state revealed last week that at least 3,316 people in nursing homes and adult care facilities had died of coronavirus at their residences or in hospitals across the state."  NY Post

--------------- 

Actually, pilgrims, the body count on "non-expendables" in NY City area infection centers (nursing homes) is at 5,000 thus far.    This massacre of the "non-expendables" occurred while federally provided temporary hospital facilities were very under used.  pl

https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/cuomo-didnt-know-coronavirus-patients-are-being-sent-back-to-nursing-homes/

Dr. Bright's complaint - basis for another impeachment?

The attached link will take you to the text of the Whistle Blower complaint filed by Dr. Bright, an employee of the Department of Health and Human Services, who was formerly the boss of handing out money for trial projects and the like in pursuit of cure(s), vaccines etc., in pursuit of public health.

In the present emergency, Dr. Bright proved to be an obstacle to a wide ranging effort to find an end to the nation's suffering.  Like Fauci and Birx he was a formidable gatekeeper, guarding his trade's methodology above all else.

Having served on the boards of academically oriented foundations that handed out grant money to aspiring scholars I recognize the Welfare for Real Scholars mentality.

Not surprisingly Dr. Bright has been transferred from his throne of power and now cries to heaven for "justice."

Does anyone imagine that Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Jim Acosta and the like will allow such a divine gift to slip through their fingers?

NO! NO! NEVER!

But, alas for Dr. Bright's cause, it will probably prove difficult to pin this offence on the Orange Man.  pl

https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=6882560-Rick-Bright-Whistleblower-Complaint

“Clever girl” - TTG

It’s a phrase used in countless TV and movie scenes. I find it an apt phrase to describe this particular coronavirus, even though most don’t consider that protein wrapped string of RNA to be sentient. Unlike Ebola or HIV, this coronavirus is not extremely deadly to its host, but it has a far more efficient and effective strategy for infection. This story from France illustrates the cleverness of this virus.

———— 

(Reuters) - A French hospital which has retested old samples from pneumonia patients discovered that it treated a man who had COVID-19 as early as Dec. 27, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases. Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for the flu. "Of the 24, we had one who was positive for COVID-19 on Dec. 27," he told the news channel on Sunday.

The samples had all initially been collected to detect flu using PCR tests, the same genetic screening process that can also be used to detect the presence of the novel coronavirus in patients infected at the time the sample is collected. Each sample was retested several times to ensure there were no errors, he added. Neither Cohen nor his team were immediately available for comment on Monday.

France, which has seen almost 25,000 people die from the virus since March 1, confirmed its first three COVID-19 cases on Jan. 24, including two patients in Paris and another in the southwestern city of Bordeaux.

Cohen said it was too early to know if the patient whose Dec. 27 test was COVID-19 positive is France's "patient zero". Knowing who was the first is critical to understanding how the virus spread. Cohen said the patient had survived and that a first investigation to trace the first contamination has been carried out. "He was sick for 15 days and infected his two children, but not his wife, who works in a supermarket.  (Reuters)

————

Just as we’ve found the covid-1 virus has been circulating in the US longer than we first thought, the same is true in Europe. Who knows how long it was  silently circulating in China before making its presence known in Wuhan. Paris Match has a story about how this “patient zero” case in France may have found its way from China. 

————

“The patient in question has not traveled to Wuhan, the cradle of the epidemic in China, and does not know how he may have been infected. He transmitted the virus to his two children but not to his wife. Doctor Yves Cohen raised the possibility that the latter had contracted the virus at her workplace, the fishmonger's supermarket, and had developed the disease asymptomatically before transmitting it to her husband. After having thought for a while that she had been able to handle fish of Chinese origin, the doctors learned "by chance" that she worked alongside sushi vendors, some of whom were of Chinese origin.”  (Paris Match)

————

This asymptomatic infection is widespread as we’re finding out and is a key factor in the evolutionary success of the virus. If all the virus did was spread wildly throughout the host population (that means us) with little effect, there would be nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, it is devastating to a small percent of the population affecting a wide variety of bodily functions. Still manageable. However, what are the long-term effects of asymptomatic infections? We won’t know for a while whether these asymptomatic infections cause long-term damage in their hosts’ pulmonary, vascular, immunological and/or neurological systems. Clever girl, indeed.

TTG  

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN22G20L

https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Sante/Coronavirus-un-premier-cas-en-France-des-le-27-decembre-selon-un-professeur-1684176

Fauci vs Atlas and Ioannides. Who will wear the dunce cap?

"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 

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/495833-how-to-open-society-using-medical-science-and-logic?fbclid=IwAR2nEYTdayVhhU47mmrIZ9FawIw9M6I2yTtOAyKhNvv0wLdSv_R4Xw6vhFI

The Five Eyes do not believe the CCP/WHO

"A research dossier compiled by the so-called "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance states that China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak, leading to the loss of tens of thousands of lives around the world

The 15-page document from the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was obtained by Australia's Saturday Telegraph newspaper and states that China's secrecy amounted to an “assault on international transparency."

TIMELINE OF CHINA'S POSSIBLE CORONAVIRUS COVER-UP

The dossier touches on themes that have been discussed in media reports about the outbreak of the virus, including an initial denial by China that the virus could be transmitted between humans, the silencing or "disappearing" of doctors who tried to speak up, the destruction of evidence in laboratories and refusal to provide live samples to international scientists working on a vaccine.

Specifically, the file notes that China began censoring news of the virus on search engines and social media beginning Dec. 31, deleting terms including “SARS variation," “Wuhan Seafood market” and “Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.”

Three days later, on Jan. 3, China’s National Health Commission ordered virus samples to be either moved to designated testing facilities or destroyed, while simultaneously issuing a "no-publication order" related to the disease."  Foxnews et al

--------------

Just so we understand what the Five Eyes is ...  These agencies operate as though the Anglo World really is what Churchill called the "English Speaking Peoples."  The extent to which their governments can actually impede that cooperation is IMO a debatable matter.

Much good has come of the alliance and also much evil.  The Brennan/Clapper scumbags made effective use of this alliance.  pl

https://www.foxnews.com/world/new-dossier-condemns-china-for-destroying-evidence-of-covid-19-outbreak

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/bombshell-dossier-lays-out-case-against-chinese-bat-virus-program/news-story/55add857058731c9c71c0e96ad17da60

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

"... 47 old drugs that might treat the coronavirus..." The Conversation

"The more researchers know about how the coronavirus attaches, invades and hijacks human cells, the more effective the search for drugs to fight it. That was the idea my colleagues and I hoped to be true when we began building a map of the coronavirus two months ago. The map shows all of the coronavirus proteins and all of the proteins found in the human body that those viral proteins could interact with.

In theory, any intersection on the map between viral and human proteins is a place where drugs could fight the coronavirus. But instead of trying to develop new drugs to work on these points of interaction, we turned to the more than 2,000 unique drugs already approved by the FDA for human use. We believed that somewhere on this long list would be a few drugs or compounds that interact with the very same human proteins as the coronavirus.

We were right."  The Conversation

------------ 

Having seen quite a few drugs re-purposed in the field by Special Forces medical sergeants, I was fairly sure that there must be existing medications that can be re-purposed to help defeat the COVID-19 virus.  I wuz right.   I realize that I am unlikely to receive a lot of Christmas cards from epidemiologists.  pl

https://theconversation.com/we-found-and-tested-47-old-drugs-that-might-treat-the-coronavirus-results-show-promising-leads-and-a-whole-new-way-to-fight-covid-19-136789

A sad situation at the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center - TTG

Colonel Lang sent me an eye opening link last night concerning the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA hospital in Richmond. Here are some excerpts from the Richmond Times-Dispatch article.

————

As of Thursday, 23 employees at the 4,000-employee VA hospital,  had tested positive, according to an update the hospital director emailed to employees. Another 45 employees are home awaiting test results. The hospital declined to say how many of the employees who are positive or are awaiting results are nurses, or name which parts of the hospital they work in. 

…

Three VA nurses said they were given N95 respirators for several days early in the crisis in March, but after that they were given surgical masks, which provide less protection from the coronavirus. Another nurse reported wearing only a surgical mask the entire time caring for coronavirus patients. The nurses, who work in a unit that treats COVID-19 positive patients or patients awaiting test results who are suspected to be positive, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to news media and their job security could be at risk if they spoke publicly.

…

The hospital had 73 confirmed coronavirus cases among patients as of Friday, and four inpatient deaths. "Currently every health care system is taking steps to conserve PPE. VA is no different," Hodge wrote in a series of responses by email to questions. Hodge also said that the hospital is issuing surgical masks to all staff who work in non-COVID-19 units. “Those staff are provided one surgical mask weekly to assist in protecting high-risk patients who are asymptomatic,” he wrote.  (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

———

I’m not surprised by the numbers. Richmond, itself, is a virus hot spot although that is mostly due to several deadly assisted living/nursing home outbreaks. What shocks me is the PPE situation. The fact that nurses have to treat known Covid-19 patients with hospital masks rather than the N95 respirators is only moderately better than third world conditions in my view. Hospital masks offer the wearer no protection against the aerosolized virus. If the patients were wearing those masks, it would be more helpful than the nurses wearing them. 

Here’s a tip. If you can still smell odors like onions or bacon while wearing the mask, the aerosolized virus can get into your lungs. Hospital masks and other improvised masks protect those around the wearer, not the mask wearer. The concept behind the universal wearing of such masks is mutual protection. For any of you who spent time in the infantry, it’s the same concept behind the DePuy fighting positions where you are not defending yourself. You are forming interlocking fields of fire to protect your comrades to the left and right of you. Protecting those around you actually provides the best protection for all of you. We wear masks in grocery stores and other such places to protect the entire community, not just our own sorry asses. 

But back to the situation at McGuire. In the early days of the pandemic in America, the hospital instituted a screening program at the hospital entrances consisting of temperature and health interview. We were told to expect delays and to be given a mask for wear in the hospital. Not long after that, we were called to reschedule our appointments to May or beyond. By mid-April, this was the COVID-19 testing situation.

Since the number of COVID-19 tests are limited nationwide, there is no COVID-19 testing capability at our CBOC locations. Please call your provider to determine whether you would be a candidate for testing. If so, then you may proceed to the Hunter Holmes McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia where Monday – Friday, 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., a Drive-Thru Clinic is available for screening and testing (if you need it); you will be triaged according to your symptoms. Also, Monday – Friday, 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., you may be directed to be seen in the medical center’s High Consequence Infections (HCI) Clinic. Last, depending on your symptoms, you may go to the hospital’s Emergency Department or to an Urgent Care Center or Emergency Department in your area.   

McGuire seems to have had all its ducks in a row. It’s what I expect. This VA medical center is well run. The professionalism, pride and morale among the staff is astoundingly high. It shows among us broke down old vets who show up for care. We are proud of McGuire. That this fine facility is now forced to ration out PPE to its staff is a travesty. The VA dropped the ball. The federal government dropped the ball… for several administrations. PPE should have been stockpiled at all levels and those stockpiles should have been replenished by a push logistics system. 

That’s the long term screw up. In the more immediate term, the federal government should have been acquiring that PPE and forcing industry to massively produce supplies back in January. Trump should have invoked and used the Defense Production Act robustly in January rather than waiting until March and April to weakly wield that executive authority. Every hospital and every first responder should have had all the PPE needed. Every household could have been sent a dozen disposable masks with a note from President Trump telling us to keep these in case we need them. What a galvanizing message that would have sent across the nation. Even if Covid-19 proved to be a non-problem, it would have been a message of Churchillian defiance in the face of a potential threat. A missed opportunity for both the American people and Trump.

TTG

https://www.richmond.com/special-report/coronavirus/at-mcguire-va-hospital-in-richmond-nurses-fear-the-masks-they-wear-dont-protect-them/article_6da49ed3-84c7-52a6-b052-32ca3cd305b9.html?utm_source=RTD&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Breaking%20News