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Trump says U.S. will withdraw from WHO: President also declares Hong Kong is no longer separate from China | Washington Post

PNG imageBy David J. Lynch & Emily Rauhala

President Trump on Friday leveled an extraordinary broadside at the Chinese government, accusing it of a comprehensive “pattern of misconduct” and ordering U.S. officials to begin the process of revoking Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law.

The president did not outline a deadline for the historic action. But if carried out, it would mean that the United States would no longer treat Hong Kong and China as separate entities for the purposes of extradition, customs, trade and visa issues, he said. And the announcement could include sanctions on Hong Kong or Chinese officials.

In Rose Garden remarks, Trump alleged that the Chinese government covered up the coronavirus outbreak and instigated “a global pandemic that has cost more than 100,000 American lives and over 1 million lives worldwide.” The president also attacked the World Health Organization as effectively controlled by Beijing.

“We will today be terminating our relationship” with the WHO, the president said, adding that the organization’s more than $400 million annual U.S. contribution will be diverted to other health groups.

The president later issued a proclamation to protect sensitive American university research from Chinese spying and to bar an unspecified number of Chinese nationals from entering the United States for graduate study. He also directed an administration working group headed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to evaluate Chinese corporations listed on U.S. financial markets as potential targets of future restrictions.

The moves seemed certain to intensify growing U.S.-China tensions , though investors on Friday took them in stride.

The president’s comments were as notable for what he did not say. There was no mention of his irritation with China’s failure to quickly increase purchases of American goods as required by the trade deal he signed in January. He also made no direct reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping, even as he said “the world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government.”

In one sign of Trump’s increased fury with the world’s second-largest economy, on Friday morning he tweeted simply: “CHINA!”

His formal Friday announcement — while long on harsh rhetoric — was short on details. The president reiterated some familiar grievances, blaming the Chinese for stealing American trade secrets and jobs and assailing his predecessors for allegedly letting them get away with it.

He expanded his indictment of the Chinese government to include its program of island construction in the South China Sea, a national security concern he rarely addresses.

“The Chinese government has continually violated its promises to us and so many nations,” he said.

Trump also stopped short of taking concrete action against the U.S.-listed Chinese companies he said posed “hidden and undue risks” for American investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators have complained for years about China’s refusal to grant access to their companies’ audit records.

As of last year, 156 Chinese companies — including 11 with significant government ownership — traded on U.S. markets, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a nonpartisan congressional body.

After Trump’s remarks, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggested the president was trying to use China to distract from the pandemic and battered economy.

“President Trump’s Rose Garden event just now was pathetic,” he said. “It perfectly encapsulates his inability to lead when our nation needs it most. The only question is whether President Trump is afraid to lead or just doesn’t know how.”

Trump’s announcement followed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement earlier this week that Hong Kong was no longer sufficiently autonomous from mainland China to deserve separate treatment. Under the 1997 handover agreement with the United Kingdom, China agreed to preserve the former British colony’s democratic system for 50 years. Xi’s decision to impose security legislation on Hong Kong directly rather than by working through the territory’s local legislature may mark the collapse of that “one country, two systems” approach.

Some advocates of a tougher U.S. approach to China were disappointed by the president’s 10-minute statement.

“They didn’t do anything with regard to Hong Kong. His Hong Kong comments could have been issued as a statement a week ago,” said Derek Scissors, a China specialist at the American Enterprise Institute. “The administration has absolutely considered specific actions since the NPC proposal was made public but decided not to announce a single one.”

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Caught in the middle of the deepening U.S.-China dispute are more than 1,350 U.S. corporations with offices in Hong Kong. The erosion of the city’s freedoms, including an independent judiciary, threatens to turn one of the global economy’s financial centers into just another Chinese city and calls into question the rationale for such a sizable commercial presence there.

The Chinese National People’s Congress, the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, on Thursday approved a plan to impose national security legislation in Hong Kong. The move was denounced in a joint statement by the United States, Canada, Australia and United Kingdom as in “direct conflict” with China’s promises in 1997 when it regained sovereignty over the former British colony.

“The United States may well have to do something the market doesn’t like in light of its longer-term interests,” said Patrick Chovanec, economic adviser for Silvercrest Asset Management in New York. “But there is concern about whether the U.S. is in a spiral of escalation with China on several fronts.”

The president’s visa move targets Chinese graduate students in the United States who have worked, studied, or been employed by entities linked to China’s efforts to “acquire or divert” technology for the People’s Liberation Army.

It is not immediately clear how many of the 350,000 Chinese students in the United States will be affected. And the announcement is expected to draw strong pushback from U.S. universities; some are heavily reliant on the full-fee tuition payments from Chinese students.

Over a 10-year period, the People’s Liberation Army dispatched 2,500 scientists and engineers to study overseas, focusing on democracies like the United States, according to a 2018 report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

In January, the FBI arrested a 29-year-old Boston University student, accusing her of failing to disclose on her visa application that she was a lieutenant in the PLA.

Friday’s action represents only the administration’s latest slap at Beijing. The president earlier this month pushed a federal retirement pension board to abandon plans to invest in Chinese securities. And the Commerce Department tightened limits on Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s ability to purchase American computer chips.

Just four months after Trump celebrated a partial trade deal with China, marking an apparent truce in a two-year diplomatic conflict, relations between the two countries have plummeted. The president has been openly displeased with China’s failure to quickly fulfill the trade deal’s terms, including massive additional purchases of American crops, energy products and manufactured goods.

“Frankly the U.S. government is — I’ll use the word furious with what China has done in recent days, weeks and months. They have not behaved well and they have lost the trust I think of the whole Western world,” Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday on Fox News.

Lawmakers in both parties also are increasingly impatient with Beijing, and the president failed to address some issues of concern on Capitol Hill. He made no reference, for example, to new legislation that requires him to impose sanctions on Chinese officials implicated in human rights violations in the Muslim-majority province of Xinjiang.

Trump’s decision to “terminate” the United States’ relationship with the World Health Organization comes after repeated threats to act.

Of the $893 million the United States sent in the 2018 and 2019 funding period, $237 million was an “assessed contribution” — a type of membership fee that may prove hard to cut without congressional approval.

At greater risk is what’s known as the “voluntary contribution,” that is money provided to U.S. agencies for health efforts and then given to WHO programs. The largest share of this money goes to polio eradication, with large chunks to fight vaccine preventable disease, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and the provision of basic health care.

The prospect of cutting U.S. funding for public health issues like polio in the middle of the pandemic drew immediate fire. Patrice Harris, president of the American Medical Association, said the action “serves no logical purpose and makes finding a way out of this public health crisis dramatically more challenging.”

Source: Washington Post

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Mari Foreman Groff: Pushing the limits: governors’ emergency powers | Wenatchie World

5ecc03602a6b6.imageBy Mari Groff

If you find yourself scratching your head at recent Washington COVID-19 headlines, don’t worry, you are not alone.

Last week, the Attorney General of Washington sued two gym owners for remaining open, threatening severe penalties. That was the day after four more Washington casinos reopened. You still can’t get a haircut here, but you can buy pot. Crowded parking lots at Home Depot are a common occurrence, but if you participate in a religious service in a church parking lot, you cannot open your windows or get out of the car. A cashier at McDonald’s drive thru can hand you a burger, but a priest may not hand you a bag of communion bread and grape juice. You can shop for a new shirt inside Target, but small local clothing shops cannot let you in without violating the law.

Some people are confused; some are getting angry.

Looking south to Oregon, a judge last week found coronavirus restrictions “null and void” only to be halted by the Oregon Supreme Court hours later. A different result occurred in Wisconsin where their state Supreme Court struck down its stay-at-home order.

In North Carolina, a federal judge ruled the governor’s coronavirus restrictions violate religious expression. In Minnesota, the governor’s May 13 order allowed the giant Mall of America to re-open, but restricted religious gatherings to 10 or fewer.

This past weekend President Trump reentered the fray, demanding that governors allow places of faith to open right now. The next day, Minnesota’s governor changed course. U.S. Attorney General Barr says, “There is no ‘pandemic exception’ to the U.S. Constitution.”

What is going on?

Fundamentally, governors are pushing the limits of their “emergency powers.”

For the last two months, governors have wielded king-like authority, controlling our day-to-day lives in ways previously unimaginable, at times, in seeming violation of the U.S. Constitution.

They have forbid us from peaceably assembling (what about the First Amendment?), we can’t gather for religious services (First Amendment?), we can’t freely travel (Privileges and Immunities Clause, Fifth Amendment?), we can’t operate our businesses (Fifth and 14th Amendments?).

Can governors really infringe upon our civil liberties in times of trouble? What is the source of these emergency powers? And what are the limits?

First, the source: You may remember from high school civics that ours is a system of limited federal government. The federal government does not have a police power; state governments do. It’s the police power that allows states the ability to regulate in the interest of the health and safety of citizens — which of course, is what governors are doing with their proclamations, orders and directives keeping us home, closing businesses, and schools to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Specifically, here in Washington, Gov. Inslee is purporting to act under RCW 38.08, Powers and Duties of Governor, 38.52, Emergency Management, and 43.06, State of Emergency Powers (but maybe it should be RCW 70.26, Pandemic Influenza Preparedness, time will tell.)

There are several lawsuits pending against the governor, including suits by public school parents, state legislators, and small business owners. And last Friday, two more suits were filed by local folks right here in town.

The governor’s emergency powers are vast, but not without limits.

The most obvious limit is that emergency powers last only for the duration of the “emergency.”

Who decides when the “emergency” ends? Here in Washington, the governor. Are Chelan and Douglas counties in a state of emergency right now? Gov. Inslee says yes.

What criteria is he using to make that decision? Well, that’s a moving target: Most recently it was having an average of less than 10 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 in a county over 2 weeks’ time, but the governor’s spokeswoman recently said additional criteria could be announced this week.

Here is another limit: the Constitution forbids arbitrary government action. Government action — even governor “directives” issued using those broad emergency powers — must, at a bare minimum, be rationally related to a legitimate public interest.

Government action that affects First Amendment rights must meet an even higher standard, which makes sense given the importance of such rights.

Remember back in March? The “legitimate public interest” given for the shut-down was “flatten the curve!” Preventing the health care system from becoming overwhelmed was a legitimate public interest at the time, given what medical professionals were projecting about COVID-19 mortality and transmission rates.

But that was months ago. We have learned more about COVID-19 since then. Just last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lowered its estimates for future coronavirus infections and deaths. Testing shows that many have had COVID-19 and produced antibodies while never experiencing symptoms. Our health care system here in Wenatchee is not overwhelmed. Our state just sent 400 more ventilators back East because we do not have the shortage we anticipated.
The rationale that initially justified shutting down our whole state is now, with more information and changed circumstances, called into question.

Yes to Target, no to local clothing shop; yes to Home Depot, no to church; yes to marijuana, no to gyms: things are starting to look arbitrary.

If governors’ directives restrict some, but not others, using changing criteria we can no longer understand, and under circumstances that no longer look like the original “emergency,” the constitutionality of those directives is called into question.

At this point, governors’ use of emergency powers is undermining the checks and balances in our federal and state government. It’s time to call our state legislature into special session. We need more local, representative voices at the table to lead us through the coming phases of COVID-19.

Source: Wenatchie World

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600 Physicians Say Lockdowns Are A ‘Mass Casualty Incident’ | Forbes

960x0Editor’s Note: An Associated Press article by Michael Biesecker and Jason Dearen that includes a description of the 600-physician letter is headlined “GOP fronts ‘pro-Trump’ doctors to prescribe rapid reopening,” which has led to criticism of Gold and her colleagues on social media. However, as the article acknowledges in the text, “Gold denied she was coordinating her efforts with Trump’s reelection campaign.” Gold echoed those comments to us, saying, “This was 100% physician grassroots. There was 0% GOP.”

More than 600 of the nation’s physicians sent a letter to President Trump this week calling the coronavirus shutdowns a “mass casualty incident” with “exponentially growing negative health consequences” to millions of non COVID patients.

“The downstream health effects…are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error,” according to the letter initiated by Simone Gold, M.D., an emergency medicine specialist in Los Angeles.

“Suicide hotline phone calls have increased 600%,” the letter said. Other silent casualties:  “150,000 Americans per month who would have had new cancer detected through routine screening.”

From missed cancer diagnoses to untreated heart attacks and strokes to increased risks of suicides, “We are alarmed at what appears to be a lack of consideration for the future health of our patients.”

Patients fearful of visiting hospitals and doctors’ offices are dying because COVID-phobia is keeping them from seeking care. One patient died at home of a heart attack rather than go to an emergency room. The number of severe heart attacks being treated in nine U.S hospitals surveyed dropped by nearly 40% since March. Cardiologists are worried “a second wave of deaths” indirectly caused by the virus is likely.

The physicians’ letter focuses on the impact on Americans’ physical and mental health.  “The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse.

“It is impossible to overstate the short, medium, and long-term harm to people’s health with a continued shutdown,” the letter says. “Losing a job is one of life’s most stressful events, and the effect on a person’s health is not lessened because it also has happened to 30 million [now 38 million] other people.  Keeping schools and universities closed is incalculably detrimental for children, teenagers, and young adults for decades to come.”

While all 50 states are relaxing lockdowns to some extent, some local officials are threatening to keep stay-at-home orders in place until August.  Many schools and universities say they may remain closed for the remainder of 2020.

“Ending the lockdowns are not about Wall Street or disregard for people’s lives; it about saving lives,” said Dr. Marilyn Singleton, a California anesthesiologist and one of the signers of the letter. “We cannot let this disease change the U.S. from a free, energetic society to a society of broken souls dependent on government handouts.” She blogs about the huge damage the virus reaction is doing to the fabric of society.

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, also warns that restrictions are having a huge negative impact on non-COVID patients.

“Even patients who do get admitted to hospital, say for a heart problem, are prisoners. No one can be with them. Visitation at a rare single-story hospital was through closed outside window, talking via telephone,” she wrote us.  “To get permission to go to the window you have to make an appointment (only one group of two per day!), put on a mask, get your temperature taken, and get a visitor’s badge of the proper color of the day.”

How many cases of COVID-19 are prevented by these practices? “Zero,” Dr. Orient says.  But the “ loss of patient morale, loss of oversight of care, especially at night are incalculable.”

Virtually all hospitals halted “elective” procedures to make beds available for what was expected to be a flood of COVID-19 patients.  Beds stayed empty, causing harm to patients and resulting in enormous financial distress to hospitals, especially those with limited reserves.

Even states like New York that have had tough lockdowns are starting to allow elective hospital procedures in some regions.  But it’s more like turning up a dimmer switch. In Pennsylvania, the chair of the Geisinger Heart Institute, Dr. Alfred Casale, said the opening will be slow while the facility is reconfigured for COVID-19 social distancing and enhanced hygiene.

Will patients come back?  COVID-phobia is deathly real.

Patients still are fearful about going to hospitals for heart attacks and even for broken bones and deep lacerations. Despite heroic efforts by physicians to deeply sanitize their offices, millions have cancelled appointments and are missing infusion therapies and even chemotherapy treatments. This deferred care is expected to lead to patients who are sicker when they do come in for care and more deaths from patients not receiving care for stroke, heart attacks, etc.

She waited almost a week before going to the hospital where doctors discovered she had a brain bleed that had gone untreated.  She had multiple strokes and died. “This is something that most of the time we’re able to prevent,” said her neurosurgeon, Dr. Abhineet Chowdhary, director of the Overlake Neuroscience Institute in Bellevue, Wash.

As the number of deaths from the virus begin to decline, we are likely to awaken to this new wave of casualties the 600 physicians are warning about. We should be listening to the doctors, and heed their advice immediately.

Source: Forbes & Associated Press

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Pandemic Profiteering | Inequality

The number of U.S. citizens filing for unemployment increased to 38.6 million since March 18, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Over the same two months, the wealth of U.S. billionaires has surged $434 billion – an increase of 15 percent.

The combined fortunes of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg alone grew by nearly $60 billion during these two months, according to a new analysis, jointly released by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies, which released Billionaire Bonanza 2020 in April to examine billionaire wealth during the first month of the pandemic.

Between March 18 and May 19, the total net worth of the 600-plus U.S. billionaires rose from $2.948 trillion to $3.382 trillion.  In March, there were 614 billionaires on the Forbes list. There are 630 two months later, including newcomer Kanye West at $1.3 billion.

Among other COVID-19 victims are the more than 16 million Americans who have likely lost employer-provided healthcare coverage. Low-wage workers, people of color and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises. Billionaires are overwhelmingly white men.

Wealth growth of other select billionaires in the top 30 on the Forbes May 19 list are below.

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Sources: All data analyzed by ATF and IPS is from Forbes and available here.
March 18, 2020, data is from the Forbes World’s Billionaires List: The Richest in 2020.
May 19, 2020 data was taken from Forbes real-time estimates of worth that day.

May 14, 2020 Update

 

Between March 18 and May 14, 2020, over 36 million U.S. workers lost their jobs, with 2.98 million claims in today’s announcement. Over these same eight weeks, U.S. billionaires saw their wealth increase by $368.8 billion, a 12.51 percent increase.

On March 18th, U.S. billionaires had a combined $2.947 trillion, down from $3.111 trillion a year earlier, according to Forbes annual global billionaire survey. As of May 14, total U.S. billionaire wealth has increased to $3.316 trillion.  In the last eight weeks, 14 new billionaires joined the U.S. billionaire list, which increased from 614 to 628.

Even with a decline in markets, Elon Musk’s wealth increased $3.5 billion in the last week, since May 6. Jeff Bezos’ wealth increased by $900 million and Eric Yuan saw his wealth increase by $800 million.  Mike Bloomberg saw his wealth increase by $400 million.

Between March 18, when Forbes published their 2020 annual Global Billionaire Survey, and the morning of Thursday, May 14, these billionaires have seen their wealth surge:

  • Jeff Bezos – up $30 billion
  • Mark Zuckerberg – up $21 billion
  • Steve Ballmer – up $11.6 billion
  • Elon Musk – up $11.3 billion
  • Michael Bloomberg – up $10 billion

Read more about IPS’s methodology in our report and in this fact check by USA Today.

April 30, 2020 Update

Between March 18 and April 30, 2020, over 30 million U.S. workers lost their jobs. Over these same weeks, U.S. billionaires saw their wealth increase $406 billion, an increase in 13.8 percent increase.

On March 18th, U.S. billionaires had a combined $2.947 trillion, down from $3.111 trillion a year earlier, according to Forbes annual global billionaire issue.

As of April 29, total U.S. billionaire wealth had increased to $3.353 trillion.  This is a boost of $406.2 billion, a 13.78 percent increase in six weeks.

Between April 22 and April 29, billionaire wealth increased $98.1 billion, a 3 percent increase.

The Reach of Billionaire Bonanza 2020

Our Billionaire Bonanza 2020 report has struck a nerve around the world with over 200 media stories in U.S. and global press. See the full report, Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes, and Pandemic Profiteers

Highlights of coverage include: Reuters, Newsweek, New York Post, The New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News, Investing.com, Nasdaq, GQ,  US News & World Report,  Fortune,  The Week, Business Insider , Futurism, Bill Moyers.com, LA Progressive. In These Times, Yahoo Finance, Gizmondo, and GQ Magazine, and Jacobin.

Several feature pieces include:

Fast Company, “American Billionaires Have Gotten $280 billion richer since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic,”

Capital & Main: “Tale of Two Pandemics: The Rich Are Getting Richer”

Sunday Guardian (UK): “Heads we win, tails you lose; America’s rich have turned pandemic into profit.”

Business Insider did four different stories, including: “9 mind-blowing facts about America’s richest people”.

New Republic, “Billionaires Are Eating the Economy,” May 7, 2020

We were fact-checked as true by USA Today, which resulted in one of the best stories about our methodology. See: USA Today:  Molly Stellino, “Fact Check: The super rich did indeed get richer in early weeks of coronavirus pandemic,” May 7, 2020.

Billionaire Bonanza made a splash in the sports reporting world, including this story in Football Times, “Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke’s wealth increases by £323m as players take wage cut”, May 6, 2020.  James Benge wrote, “ The wealth of Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke has increased by over £300million since the start of 2020, a study by a leading American think tank has revealed.”

Sample of international coverage: Straits Times (Singapore) Observador (Portugal), Daily Mail (Australia), Regina Leader Post (Saskatchewa, Canada), Sunday Times(South Africa) “Corona boost for richest in the U.S.”  International Business Times. La Jornada (Mexico), Publico (Spain),

Our own commentaries appeared in CNN and The Guardian.  An op-ed by report co-authors, Omar Ocampo and Chuck Collins, “Rich Getting Richer Despite Pandemic,” has been syndicated in over 60 U.S. newspapers by the Tribune News Service/ Progressive Media Project, including in Houma Today (LA), Daily Comet (Lafayette, LA), Tyler Paper (TX) The Derrick (Oil City, PA), Bozeman Daily Chronicle (MT).

Source: Inequality

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The Top Twelve Lies about COVID-19 | Unlock The Lockdown

This article is just a quick run-down of the Top Twelve Lies.

1.   People dropping dead in the streets.

Guardian January

Metro January 31st

The Sun January 31st

This is how the media portrayed COVID-19 at the beginning: a disease so dangerous that people walking along the street suddenly dropped down dead. Virtually all the UK media carried these photos. It’s very odd that in the first two pictures, and variants of them in other papers, those emergency workers have no equipment with them, and appear to be just standing around doing nothing. Are these faked photos? There have been no reports of people dropping dead in the street anywhere since then. And if it had been true in China, the virus would have been noticed very quickly. We now know that the symptoms are indistinguishable from colds, flu or pneumonia. These photos were the start of the Coronapanic lies.

2.   Three Percent Will Die.

The WHO put out this 3% death rate figure early on. You don’t need to be a maths wizard to know that’s one person in thirty. That’s a serious reason to panic. We now know that the death rate is around 0.1%. That’s about one in a thousand, and comparable to seasonal flu. But just as important, the figures are massively skewed towards people around eighty who have at least two existing serious conditions, and are already in a care home: people who have minimal quality of life, and little remaining expectation of life. For younger, healthy people, and younger here can mean under seventy, never mind twenty or thirty, the risk of death is vanishingly small.

3,    Herd Immunity is a Dangerous Idea.

This is one of the most serious corruptions of science ever. You don’t need a degree in Epidemiology to know that epidemics come and go. The very definition of the word implies that. (Conversely, a disease which stays around for many years is called endemic.) You do need to know just a smidgen of Epidemiology to understand why epidemics come and go. It’s not rocket science. When the new disease arrives, everybody is susceptible to it, because it is new and therefore nobody has any immunity. The disease can race through the population, but as it does so it leaves immune people in its wake. As the number of immune people grows, the disease finds it harder and harder to spread. When the number of immune people reaches a certain point (which varies with different diseases) the bug can find no new people to infect, so the bug itself effectively dies. That point is called herd immunity. It is the only way to defeat a new virus. But see number 4.

4.   We Need a Vaccine to Give us Herd Immunity.

Vaccines work by creating artificial herd immunity, but that’s no better than natural herd immunity. And the simple fact is, as everyone knows, we don’t have a vaccine. How long will it take to make one, test it properly, and roll it out? Eighteen months? Three years? Never? In any event, even if we use a vaccine before proper safety testing, it will still take longer than it does to reach herd immunity naturally. (And note that the Common Cold is also often caused by some other Coronaviruses. Still no sign of a vaccine for any of those.)

5 Lockdowns Work.

The evidence here is very, very weak. It is common sense that they must have some effect. But we have New York, with a hard lockdown and massive deaths, while Tokyo with a minimal lockdown has hardly any. Or Sweden with a very mild lockdown having a lower death rate than Britain with a draconian one. Or Spain and Portugal, which together make up the Iberian Peninsula, having massively different death rates. There is another factor, or factors, involved here, and the mass media seem to have no concern as to what they might be. Happily there are some scientists who do seek to explain the differences. Several factors have been put forward with good evidence:

  1. Vitamin D plays a huge role in the immune system, and variations in deficiency certainly play a part, at least in individual cases. In fact, it is negligent of the Government not to have promoted Vitamin D supplementation on a large scale.
  2. Flu vaccines also play a role in causing worse outcome with Coronaviruses. The mechanism is called vaccine-induced viral interference. Naturally those who make vaccines are not keen for you to know about such undesirable side-effects.
  3. Obesity is a negative indicator, which will partly explain New York’s high death rate. One of the oddest Covid statistics to date is that out of the small number of deaths in Japan, no less than seven are Sumo Wrestlers!

One could tease out many other factors, but not one comes close to the Grand Deal-Breaker in Epidemiology, which is immunity. Immunity is the principal reason people do not get sick with any disease. Hence the primary factor in differential death rates must be how long different countries had the virus before they realised. As the infection travelled through populations, confused with colds and flu, it was steadily building immunity. China has a truly miniscule number of deaths given its huge population. The virus there was on the rampage right through Winter Flu Season, before they realised there was something new. When they did, they locked down, and the lockdown appeared to be very effective; but only because they were already close to herd immunity. The countries surrounding China, which have a great deal of intercourse with it, have similarly low death rates (Vietnam, nobody at all!) How and when the virus got into other countries is difficult to unravel now; but one should be aware that Wuhan Airport is a major hub, with flights all over the World. We can reasonably infer that Norway, for example, was infected early, yielding the much lower recorded deaths later. Such a conclusion is borne out by the fact that, having now eased its lockdown, cases are still going down. In other words, there is no sign of a “Second Wave”. After a tight and effective lockdown preventing transmission, and also therefore preventing the growth of immunity, there should indeed be a second wave. The lack of one points very strongly to previously acquired immunity. (In all of this New York remains the ultimate outlier, and I’m no more prepared to attempt a complete explanation of NY statistics at this stage than anybody else.)

6.   Lockdown Does Not Cause More Deaths than it Saves.

The leaked figure of 150,000 lockdown-caused deaths has never been refuted by the UK Government. It is only common sense that with the NHS shut down to almost everyone, there will be more deaths from other causes. Also more suicides, more domestic violence, and the array of problems that increase mortality when poverty increases. The economic crash is going to have a big effect there. And do we regard the suicide of a healthy 20-year-old as equivalent to the death of an ailing 85-year old? Lockdown is not a One-Way Street when it comes to saving lives; more likely a Wrong-Way Street.

7.     Being Infected May Not (or Does Not) Make You Immune.

This is a truly bizarre assumption to make about any specific infection. (Note that the Common Cold, which is endemic, is caused by a number of different viruses.) This “fact” was allegedly based on some people who seemed to be infected twice. But the extreme difficulty of distinguishing between Colds, Flu, Covid19 and Pneumonia means this was always a ridiculous conclusion to reach. And if it were true it would be a one shot kill of the “Race for a Vaccine.” Vaccines only work because they stimulate the immune system in the way a natural infection does. If Covid19 did not provoke a normal immune response, any vaccine would be useless.

8.    Having Covid Means Having Serious Symptoms.

In the beginning of this sorry saga, the most serious symptom, as noted in Lie 1 above, was instant death. Now we know that it mostly has no symptoms at all, or presents like a Common Cold. All the World’s highly-paid and endlessly-promoted “experts” somehow didn’t notice this.

9.    Masks Work.

If they do, why can’t we all wear them and get back to normal? If they don’t, why are we ever recommended to use them? The effectiveness or otherwise of masks has been a controversial matter for months. Some Doctors have said that healthy people wearing them outside of a clinical setting is definitely a bad idea. Is the mask controversy just another way to ramp up fear and confusion?

10.   Two Meter Social Distancing is Necessary.

There is no good science behind this. In Norway, with its incredibly low death rate, they use one metre. And there is never a reference to whether you are indoors or out. If you breathe out virus indoors, it has little choice but to hang around in the room for a while. If you are outside in fairly still air, which has a speed of about 2 metres per second, the virus you breathed out 2 seconds ago is already 4 metres away. And because the air you breathe out is always warmer than the surrounding air, and warm air rises, that potentially virus-laden air will rise up outside with no ceiling to stop it. So two metres is not necessary in Norway, but it is in England, whether you are in a small room or on a breezy beach. Is this fear-mongering nonsense, or science? It is certainly not the latter.

11.    Money has Nothing to do with Any of This.

The influence and mega-bucks of Bill Gates and Big Pharma is supposedly not skewing the debate. Bill Gates’s donations to Prof Lockdown Ferguson’s Imperial College, or to the WHO, make no difference, and Bill Gates’s desire to produce seven billion doses of vaccine does not give him a financial interest. Bill Gates is a nice guy who knows a lot about computer viruses, so we should all look to him as our Saviour from this virus. I fancy there’s more logic in Alice in Wonderland.

12.   The Destruction of Basic Human Rights is a Price Worth Paying.

People being under virtual House Arrest, with Freedom of Movement, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Work, Freedom to attend School, all curtailed, is OK? The introduction of mass personal surveillance is a good thing? If a foreign invader threatened our Rights like that we would fight for them, and accept casualties in the process. Why are we suddenly turning that logic on its head, and deciding to give up Rights to (possibly) save lives? Do we all fondly imagine that we will soon have our Rights back? History shows that Rights are generally hard won, and once lost they are very hard to get back. And if you think you still have Freedom of Speech, try as I and others have, to put across a view that is different to the Government. Yes, you can get it across to a few. But if it reaches many more, Google, or YouTube, or Facebook will soon censor it. If you are reading this article, it is because you are one of a small number, meaning the article is still below the censor’s radar, or the popularity level that triggers censorship.

In those wonderful days before Covid19, we all knew that Politicians, Journalists and Salesmen are inveterate Purveyors of Porky Pies. Now these same people are regarded as Saints and Saviours, with absolutely nothing but our best interests and well-being in their hearts. It is a fact, meaning a real one, not a fake one, that I can think of no topic ever that has had so many utterly bizarre lies told about it. It is also a fact that I cannot think of any matter where politicians around the World all suddenly started braying like donkeys with the same awful hoo-ha. And also a fact that I cannot think of any occurrence which has simultaneously destroyed human rights and wrecked the economy across the entire Globe. Is it not odd that all of those three extreme observations should apply to the very same little virus? If anyone can’t see a problem here, it can only be that Coronapanic has totally obliterated their thought processes.

Source: The Lockdown

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Robert Kennedy Jr. Exposes Big Pharma, Fauci and the Danger of a COVID-19 Vaccine | YouTube

As the COVID-19 crisis continues to drift on, western governments are looking for more excuses to extend what is now known to be a disastrous lockdown policy. One of the hooks which politicians and health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci continue to dangle in front of the public is the promise of a “cure” for the Coronavirus, or more specifically – a vaccine. The sheer scale of the corruption between industry and government is difficult to fathom. Masterminding the public campaign for a Coronavirus vaccine ‘panacea’ is billionaire Bill Gates and his funding machine, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who are now partnering with Big Pharma to roll-out a global vaccine program for 7 billion people worldwide. This incessant rush to market means that this new ‘miracle vaccine’ will not go through the normal research, development and safety procedures. With such a well-connected and well-financed corporate and ideological cartel now in control of western governments, there’s a very real danger of unprecedented corruption on a global level – a clear and present danger to the health and well being of many millions.

Source: 21 Century Wire

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A Study on Infectivity of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Carriers | National Library of Medicine

Asymptomatic

Editor’s Note: The National Library of Medicine (NLM), on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has been a center of information innovation since its founding in 1836. The world’s largest biomedical library, NLM maintains and makes available a vast print collection and produces electronic information resources on a wide range of topics that are searched billions of times each year by millions of people around the globe. It also supports and conducts research, development, and training in biomedical informatics and health information technology. In addition, the Library coordinates a 6,500-member National Network of Libraries of Medicine that promotes and provides access to health information in communities across the United States.

Background: An ongoing outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread around the world. It is debatable whether asymptomatic COVID-19 virus carriers are contagious. We report here a case of the asymptomatic patient and present clinical characteristics of 455 contacts, which aims to study the infectivity of asymptomatic carriers.

Material and methods: 455 contacts who were exposed to the asymptomatic COVID-19 virus carrier became the subjects of our research. They were divided into three groups: 35 patients, 196 family members and 224 hospital staffs. We extracted their epidemiological information, clinical records, auxiliary examination results and therapeutic schedules.

Results: The median contact time for patients was four days and that for family members was five days. Cardiovascular disease accounted for 25% among original diseases of patients. Apart from hospital staffs, both patients and family members were isolated medically. During the quarantine, seven patients plus one family member appeared new respiratory symptoms, where fever was the most common one. The blood counts in most contacts were within a normal range. All CT images showed no sign of COVID-19 infection. No severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections was detected in 455 contacts by nucleic acid test.

Conclusion: In summary, all the 455 contacts were excluded from SARS-CoV-2 infection and we conclude that the infectivity of some asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers might be weak.


Keywords: Asymptomatic carrier; Contacts; Infectivity; SARS-CoV-2.

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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References

    1. Lescure F.X., Bouadma L., Nguyen D. Clinical and virological data of the first cases of COVID-19 in Europe: a case series. Lancet Infect. Dis. 2020 doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30200-0. Published Online March 27 2020. Available at: – DOI
    1. Adalja A.A., Toner E., Inglesby T.V. JAMA; 2020. Priorities for the US Health Community Responding to COVID-19. Published Online March 03 2020. Available at: – DOI
    1. McCloskey B., Zumla A., Ippolito G. Mass gathering events and reducing further global spread of COVID-19: a political and public health dilemma. Lancet. 2020;395:1096–1099. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30681-4. Available at: – DOI – PMC – PubMed
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Source: National Library of Medicine

 

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US Begins To Implement WHO “Contact Tracing” To Forcibly Remove People From Their Homes? | Activist Post

By Spiro Skouras 

This report is a follow-up to one where I cover how Michael Ryan of the WHO stated in a press briefing how the WHO (which is of course in the pocket of Bill Gates) now believes it is time to start removing people from their homes.

I know many people, especially those of you who are in the US, think that could never happen here … well, those are probably the same people who thought just a couple months ago that it would be impossible to lockdown the entire country because people would never put up with it and because we have rights… right? This is being said even as we are ON lockdown.

For those of you who can’t wait for the government to lift the lockdowns, as many states are preparing to do, remember that we were told things will not go back to normal until there is a vaccine and the entire planet has largely received it… we have also been told about how we must embrace the new normal.

Part of that new normal is contact tracing. Hmm, sounds normal enough – or at least harmless – kind of like how the Patriot Act sounds harmless or Operation Iraqi Freedom may have sounded like a good thing to many, despite the fact that it was a war of aggression based on lies which resulted in the death of over a million people… but, hey, it has the word freedom in it.

So what exactly is contact tracing? Well, according to California Governor Newsom…

Contact tracing, combined with expanded testing, is a pillar of the state’s modified stay-at-home order and The goal is to track and trace every person in the state who may have been exposed, then quickly isolate and test them.

So, in other words, the state cannot open up without contact tracing; and only then it would be a modified stay-at-home order, and not actually removing the lockdown in its entirety.

And how are they going to accomplish this? In their own words… “California is building an army of 20k people who will be trained as disease detectives, serving six- to 12-month-long gigs that demand skills ranging from data entry and psychology to project management and crisis intervention.” Saying the state is providing a “customer service,” while others may see this customer service as the new secret police.

California will be the test pilot for this program which they have stated will serve as the template nationwide.

Welcome to COVID1984.

Source: Activist Post

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Trump takes control of the Federal Reserve Bank under the U.S. Treasury with Michael Telling | YouTube

By Michael Tellinger

U.S. President Donald Trump breaks a 250-year long stranglehold of the Royal Political Elite and their central banks. Since the 1760s and the rise of the Rothschild banking empire, the world has been held hostage by the global banking elite families, led by the Rothschilds – creating the largest organised crime syndicate on Earth – larger than all other crime syndicates combined – more brutal, more bloodthirsty and yet completely visible to all. They have abducted, tortured, bribed, extorted and murdered all their opponents to stay in control. They launched most of the wars in history, invaded countries and removed any threat with brutal force over and over again.

They have more blood on their hands than all other crime syndicates combined. Many honest leaders, presidents and prime ministers have tried to free their countries from the banksters’ stranglehold over this period, but so far, in over 250 years, no one has succeeded. Until NOW President Donald J Trump has quietly taken over the Federal Reserve Bank of the USA, in the last 2 weeks of March 2020 – without any fanfare or massive media exposure.

In a cunning move, Trump is now in complete control of the largest Reserve Bank on Earth – without any violence or bloodshed – by simply absorbing the FED into the Treasury Department. It may take some time for this to sink in – But this is a pivotal moment in more that 250 years – will other leaders follow the USA president, or are they too fearful? At least the USA will not invade your country, as they have done before – to topple the “rogue” leadership in order to retain control of the central bank – because the USA is now leading this historic break-away moment.

If only 10 countries of the world do this – take control of their central banks – and in essence rename them the “Peoples Banks” – we will rapidly break the Rothschild stranglehold over humanity and usher in a new era of freedom from economic slavery – prosperity and abundance for all.

Source: YouTube & Michael Tellinger’s Ubuntu Planet