Nov 282020
 
 November 28, 2020  Posted by at 10:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Hieronymus Bosch The Conjurer 1502

 

Lockdowns Destroy What Makes Us Human (Yost)
Johns Hopkins Posted Then Deleted Article Questioning US COVID Death Rate (JTN)
A Closer Look At US Deaths Due To COVID-19 (Gu)
Landmark Legal Ruling Finds That Covid PCR Tests Are Not Fit For Purpose (RT)
Chinese Academics Say Coronavirus Spread In India Months Before Wuhan (RT)
Russia’s 2nd COVID19 Vaccine ‘EpiVacCorona’ Set For Release In December (RT)
Side Effects From COVID19 Vaccine Won’t Be A ‘Walk In The Park’ (JTN)
President Swamp (Jim Kunstler)
Renowned Expert Concludes 2020 Election Results Were Fraudulent (CTH)
Jill Stein Won Right to Examine Voting Machine Source Code (GP)
Claims The UK Has ‘Maxed Out’ Its Credit Card Are Bad Economics (Gabor)
19 Million Americans Could Face Eviction When Limits Expire Dec. 31 (CBS)
China To Impose Temp Anti-Dumping Measures On Australian Wine Imports (R.)

 

 

 

 

Hacking democracy

 

 

Along the lines of “if a tree falls in a forest”, people are not alive without other people.

Lockdowns Destroy What Makes Us Human (Yost)

Nearly every culture and religion throughout human history has held that humans are both material and spiritual beings. However, living in the secular age as we do, the material aspect of our existence has supplanted the spiritual to such an extent that it is barely recognized to exist. Russell Kirk goes so far as to claim that the dividing line in contemporary politics hinges on this difference in understanding, stating that “on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.”

A purely material outlook on human existence will of course lead to certain policy prescriptions, especially in the face of a pandemic. To deny the spiritual existence of man is to deny the possibility of life after death—only the void of annihilation awaits. From this perspective, it makes sense that one might conclude that earthly life must continue on at any cost—that no tradeoff is too high to put off the coming oblivion. In contrast, those who retain a more traditional conception of human nature, no matter the specific religion or creed to which they belong, can easily see an entire world of costs to lockdowns that those with a purely materialist perspective are not even capable of understanding. Humans are social beings. Our very existence and development as human persons rests upon this social nature.

Social contract thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau may fantasize about a solitary human existence, but all evidence from feral or isolated children indicates that without other humans a solitary individual would swiftly perish, not to mention fail to develop self-awareness or the ability to think and speak with language. Some personalist scholars, such as political theorist David Walsh, argue that our entire conception of self can only be formed in relation to other persons. In contrast to Descartes’s famous line that “I think, therefore I am” a personalist would argue that we are not even capable of understanding the existence of “I” until we have first understood the existence of an “I” in others. Much like we can never truly see our own face, but only the faces of others, which in turn allows us to understand our own unseen face, we cannot become aware of ourselves until we find ourselves in the context of others, and through them recognize the mutual nature of our interior lives that makes us persons.

Read more …

More on that Johns Hopkins paper.

Johns Hopkins Posted Then Deleted Article Questioning US COVID Death Rate (JTN)

Last week, Johns Hopkins University published a now-deleted article explaining a study examining the effects of the novel coronavirus on United States death totals using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Genevieve Briand, the assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Johns Hopkins, determined, in the study, that there have been 1.7 million deaths in the U.S. between March 2020 and September 2020, 12% (or roughly 200,000) of which have been coronavirus-related. Briand posits that the only way to understand the significance of the U.S. coronavirus death rate is by comparing it to the number of total deaths in the country.

According to Briand, who compared the total deaths per age category from both before and after the onset of the global pandemic, the death rate of older people stayed the same before and after coronavirus. “The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals,” wrote Briand. She also noted that between 50,000 and 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after the emergence of the virus, meaning that, according to her analysis, coronavirus has had no effect on the percentage of total deaths of older people, nor has it increased the total number of deaths in the category.

These results contradict the way most people see the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately affects the elderly population. Briand believes, after reviewing the numbers, that coronavirus deaths are being over-exaggerated. After seeing that in 2020, coronavirus-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart disease — the leading cause of death in the U.S. for many years prior — Briand began to suspect that the coronavirus death toll figure may be misleading. Briand found that “the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19,” according to the original JHU newsletter.

“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,” said Briand.

Read more …

And here’s the original Newsletter that was deleted. Because it “could lead to misinformation”?!

A Closer Look At US Deaths Due To COVID-19 (Gu)

According to new data, the U.S. currently ranks first in total COVID-19 cases, new cases per day and deaths. Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins, critically analyzed the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in her webinar titled “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data.” From mid-March to mid-September, U.S. total deaths have reached 1.7 million, of which 200,000, or 12% of total deaths, are COVID-19-related. Instead of looking directly at COVID-19 deaths, Briand focused on total deaths per age group and per cause of death in the U.S. and used this information to shed light on the effects of COVID-19.

She explained that the significance of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths can be fully understood only through comparison to the number of total deaths in the United States. After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September, which includes the period from before COVID-19 was detected in the U.S. to after infection rates soared. Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.

“The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals,” Briand said. Briand also noted that 50,000 to 70,000 deaths are seen both before and after COVID-19, indicating that this number of deaths was normal long before COVID-19 emerged. Therefore, according to Briand, not only has COVID-19 had no effect on the percentage of deaths of older people, but it has also not increased the total number of deaths.

Read more …

From yesterday’s article.

Landmark Legal Ruling Finds That Covid PCR Tests Are Not Fit For Purpose (RT)

Four German holidaymakers who were illegally quarantined in Portugal after one was judged to be positive for Covid-19 have won their case, in a verdict that condemns the widely-used PCR test as being up to 97-percent unreliable. Earlier this month, Portuguese judges upheld a decision from a lower court that found the forced quarantine of four holidaymakers to be unlawful. The case centred on the reliability (or lack thereof) of Covid-19 PCR tests. The verdict, delivered on November 11, followed an appeal against a writ of habeas corpus filed by four Germans against the Azores Regional Health Authority. This body had been appealing a ruling from a lower court which had found in favour of the tourists, who claimed that they were illegally confined to a hotel without their consent.

The tourists were ordered to stay in the hotel over the summer after one of them tested positive for coronavirus in a PCR test – the other three were labelled close contacts and therefore made to quarantine as well. The deliberation of the Lisbon Appeal Court is comprehensive and fascinating. It ruled that the Azores Regional Health Authority had violated both Portuguese and international law by confining the Germans to the hotel. The judges also said that only a doctor can “diagnose” someone with a disease, and were critical of the fact that they were apparently never assessed by one. They were also scathing about the reliability of the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, the most commonly used check for Covid.

The conclusion of their 34-page ruling included the following: “In view of current scientific evidence, this test shows itself to be unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt that such positivity corresponds, in fact, to the infection of a person by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.” In the eyes of this court, then, a positive test does not correspond to a Covid case. The two most important reasons for this, said the judges, are that, “the test’s reliability depends on the number of cycles used’’ and that “the test’s reliability depends on the viral load present.’’ In other words, there are simply too many unknowns surrounding PCR testing.

This is not the first challenge to the credibility of PCR tests. Many people will be aware that their results have a lot to do with the number of amplifications that are performed, or the ‘cycle threshold.’ This number in most American and European labs is 35–40 cycles, but experts have claimed that even 35 cycles is far too many, and that a more reasonable protocol would call for 25–30 cycles. (Each cycle exponentially increases the amount of viral DNA in the sample). [..] The Portuguese judges cited a study conducted by “some of the leading European and world specialists,” which was published by Oxford Academic at the end of September. It showed that if someone tested positive for Covid at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher, the chances of that person actually being infected is less than three percent, and that “the probability of… receiving a false positive is 97% or higher.”

Read more …

Just as the WHO team is set to start investigating the origin. Good timing.

Chinese Academics Say Coronavirus Spread In India Months Before Wuhan (RT)

The coronavirus did not start in Wuhan, but instead emerged in India last summer, Chinese academics have boldly claimed, as tensions continue to flare between the two states and amid the ongoing search for the origins of Covid-19. Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences claim the pandemic actually originated in India, explaining that a heatwave there from May to June 2019 spawned a water crisis, which in turn led to increased close contact between humans and wild animals such as monkeys. In a preprint paper with the Lancet medical journal – meaning it has yet to be formally peer reviewed – the Chinese researchers outline their explanation of the “zoonotic transmission” of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from monkeys to humans as they shared water resources.


The researchers also say that India’s poor hygiene conditions and “less efficient” public medical system, as well as its “tropical climate” and “very young population”, were all contributing factors in the virus’s spread. They estimate that the first “human-to-human transmission” of Covid-19 in India was in July or August. Back in March, Chinese officials blamed the coronavirus outbreak on US soldiers visiting Wuhan, while last week China pointed the finger at Italy after a study from Milan suggested the virus had been circulating locally since last year. The identification of India as the possible source of the virus comes after New Delhi last week fortified its military capabilities in Eastern Ladakh, the region by the Chinese border, by building camps for tens of thousands of soldiers. In June, 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese were killed as the two sides engaged in a skirmish in the contested border area.

Read more …

What’s the technology behind this one?

“As for the immune response that it creates, there is a lot of hope for the vaccine, in contrast to the immunity formed as a result of infection..”

Russia’s 2nd COVID19 Vaccine ‘EpiVacCorona’ Set For Release In December (RT)

With Sputnik V set for launch after its phase-three trial is completed, another Russian Covid-19 vaccine, EpiVacCorona, will be made available to the public next month. It is hoped that mass inoculation can begin in the New Year. Developed by Siberia’s Vector Center, results from testing are ready to be presented, and an international publication is being sought to publish them, according to the head of the research body’s zoonotic infections and influenza department. “I think that in 2021 it will appear in almost all regions of Russia,” Alexander Ryzhikov explained. “The earliest date of receipt of the vaccine in civil circulation is December 10. In the future, mass vaccination will begin in 2021.”

On November 17, EpiVacCorona began third-phase, post-registration trials. Batches of the formula were delivered to nine medical centers around the country, with 30,000 volunteers due to receive the jab. Another separate trial for over 60s is taking place simultaneously, which will involve 150 people. Once the vaccine is received, a second booster jab is necessary six to 10 months later, with the current plan to revaccinate patients again every three years. “As for the immune response that it creates, there is a lot of hope for the vaccine, in contrast to the immunity formed as a result of infection,” Ryzhikov explained. “Immunity created as a result of infection and recovery has already been shown to be insufficient. After five to seven months, antibodies disappear.”

Unlike many other potential Covid-19 vaccines, EpiVacCorona does not need to be stored at sub-zero temperatures. The vector vaccine can be stored between two and eight degrees, significantly reducing the logistical burden. In contrast, the formula proposed by American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer needs to be kept at -70 degrees Celsius.

Read more …

Which vaccine though?

Side Effects From COVID19 Vaccine Won’t Be A ‘Walk In The Park’ (JTN)

Doctors are suggesting that the CDC warn the public that the new coronavirus vaccines, which are expected to be approved by the FDA in the next few weeks, will have unpleasant effects on patients. Pfizer and Moderna each have acknowledged that their vaccines could induce side effects similar to the virus itself, with possible muscle pains, chills and headache. In a Monday meeting with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisers, doctors said public health officials and drugmakers need to warn people about the rough side effects so they are prepared and not scared away from getting the second dose.

Both vaccines that are in the process of approval by the Federal Drug Administration require two doses, according to Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association. Fryhofer says she’s warned that her patients won’t come back for the second dose if the side effects are bad enough. “We really need to make patients aware that this is not going to be a walk in the park,” Fryhofer said during a virtual meeting with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an outside group of medical experts that advise the CDC. “They are going to know they had a vaccine. They are probably not going to feel wonderful. But they’ve got to come back for that second dose.”

Participants in the September vaccine trials reported symptoms including a high fever, body aches and daylong exhaustion after receiving the vaccine. The side effects also raise the question about whether getting the vaccine outweighs the risk of getting the virus. A 50-year-old participant in the Moderna study said she suffered a bad migraine and loss of energy. “If this proves to work, people are going to have to toughen up,” she said. “The first dose is no big deal. And then the second dose will definitely put you down for the day for sure. … You will need to take a day off after the second dose.”

Read more …

“The deadline for adjudicating the janky election is soon upon us, and upon the SCOTUS justices, so the country will know shortly whether it has become the Honduras of the north.”

President Swamp (Jim Kunstler)

Donald Trump found out the hard way how illusory his powers as POTUS really were, conditioned against the inertia, malice, and bad faith resistance of the bureaucratic establishment, a.k.a. the Swamp. He also knows that the Swamp just worked the system it created to elect itself president as (it likes to think) a final act of revenge against the orange interloper who threatened to drain it and, alas, failed to. All hail President Swamp!Unless that doesn’t pan out, and there’s a fair chance it won’t, since a 2020 election fraud case will eventually land in the Supreme Court where at least five justices might not be so inclined to let what remains of the Republic roll into a Woke sludge of lawlessness. Do you suppose Clarence Thomas & Co haven’t been paying attention the past four years to the swampish doings in the other branches of government?

And that they are, just perhaps, good and goddam sick of it? Everything from RussiaGate and the manipulation of the FISA court through the attempted character assassination of Justice Kavanaugh, to the Eric Ciaramella “whistleblower” impeachment caper starring Rep. Adam Schiff, plus all the side dishes of Antifa / BLM street anarchy, Covid-19 lockdown tyranny, French Laundry hypocrisy, and the gaslighting of America by the news-and-social media, with a transsexual reading hour cherry-on-top?I hope the justices are pissed off a little bit at the hijacking of this country by a party that laughs at the law the way, for one example, DC District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan blew raspberries at the Department of Justice and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals when they both told him to drop the Flynn case.

The deadline for adjudicating the janky election is soon upon us, and upon the SCOTUS justices, so the country will know shortly whether it has become the Honduras of the north. In a just universe, the SCOTUS would invalidate the election results in several states and send the matter into the House of Representatives as the constitution stipulates. Heads would explode from sea to shining sea as heroes of the Resistance — Brennan, Comey, Weissmann, Strzok, and many more — realize they will not be getting their get-out-of-jail-free cards after all. Hunter B would retreat to the Chateau Marmont with his crack pipe for one last lost weekend. Nancy Pelosi would melt into a puddle of rage, prednisone, and hairspray in the capitol rotunda. And for Ol’ White Joe Biden it would be just another day of fog and stillness.

Read more …

“Dr. Keshavarz-Nia is not a stranger to the mainstream media. In fact The New York Times published a glowing report on Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia way back in September writing, “Navid Keshavarz-Nia, those who worked with him said, ‘was always the smartest person in the room.’”

Renowned Expert Concludes 2020 Election Results Were Fraudulent (CTH)

Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia, is an experienced cybercrimes investigator and digital security executive, who has worked with the CIA, NSA, FBI, and U.S. military counterintelligence. In addition to his work with U.S. intelligence agencies Dr. Keshavarz-Nia works on cyber security and fraud with financial giants like Deutsche Bank and Stripe. Within the documents filed by Sidney Powell in Georgia Wednesday, Dr. Keshavarz-Nia shares this bombshell assessment in his affidavit. Ms. Powell has some high-powered experts in support of her court filings.

Read more …

It took her four years to get that right.

Jill Stein Won Right to Examine Voting Machine Source Code (GP)

Let’s hope this makes it to the Trump Campaign. On October 30, 2020 2016 Green Party Candidate Jill Stein FINALLY won her groundbreaking case that gave her campaign the right to examine voting machine source code in Wisconsin.It took Jill Stein four years to win this court case. After witnessing the historic level of fraud in this year’s election it makes us all question the numbers in past elections. In 2016 Libertarian voters kept Donald Trump from adding New Hampshire, Minnesota and Maine to his electoral haul. Were those actual Libertarian votes in 2016 or were they switched from Trump to Gary Johnson to prevent him from winning those states? Dr. Jill Stein celebrated this win with a string of tweets on October 30th.


The Trump campaign should take notice. Confiscating the voting machines in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada may be crucial to exposing the fraud in this year’s election.

Jill Stein
https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/status/1322251491781058566

Read more …

“Rather than making cuts, the government should be using this opportunity to borrow more in order to finance the country’s recovery.”

Claims The UK Has ‘Maxed Out’ Its Credit Card Are Bad Economics (Gabor)

When fiscal fundamentalists announce the government has “maxed out its credit card”, they belittle the experience of every poor family that has been forced to live on credit and pay higher interest as they borrow more. The truth is that the government can afford to take on debt. But acknowledging this reality would invalidate the fiscal fundamentalists’ beloved rhetoric of “tough choices”, which you will likely hear over the next few years from those attempting to make austerity palatable again. The fiscal centrists, meanwhile, know that Rishi Sunak has already effectively introduced austerity through a combination of public sector pay freezes, higher council taxes hidden in the small print and cuts to planned non-Covid spending in the future.

Centrists also worry – rightfully so – about where the money is going. When the crisis forced them to spend, the Conservative party gave Covid contracts to their friends and rewarded their voters, all the while pretending that there was no money available to feed children in poverty. While accepting that spending and taxing are political choices, centrists pray to the God of pragmatism. They believe the British public will not listen to politicians who forever throw money at social and economic problems, and that economic credibility is hard to earn and easy to lose. This is why they share the fundamentalists’ view that in the long run “tough choices” must be made.

This “tough choices” narrative – raise taxes or cut spending to reduce the deficit and bring public debt down – is compelling for centrists not because it is correct, but because it chimes with the public’s common sense, which has been shaped by decades of media coverage and political discourse venerating balanced budgets. The fiscal centrists, captive to their audience and unwilling to engage into the Herculean task of changing minds, can only ever promise to cut and tax better or slower than the Conservatives. The government is not a household, and it does not have a credit card that can be maxed out. Fiscal heretics know this, and reject the idea that we face a public debt crisis. There are numerous reasons why this narrative is flawed.

The government, unlike a household, has a central bank that can keep borrowing costs under control. The Bank of England, like other central banks across Europe, has this year bought more than 80% of all debt issued by the British government. It hasn’t done so under political pressure, but because independent central banks have come to accept that large-scale purchases of government bonds are a legitimate and effective monetary policy instrument. And unlike households, governments can rely on the financial sector to buy their debt in times of crisis. Modern financial institutions view government debt as the ultimate risk-free asset, a safe haven to run to when economic shocks hit. For instance, on 26 November, one day after Sunak warned that “the economic emergency has just begun”, investors were prepared to lend for 50 years to the UK government at an interest rate of less than 1%.

These two forces combined – the central bank and the City – explain why interest rates on public debt are at historical lows. Rather than making cuts, the government should be using this opportunity to borrow more in order to finance the country’s recovery.

Read more …

This is serious.

19 Million Americans Could Face Eviction When Limits Expire Dec. 31 (CBS)

Millions of Americans are in danger of losing their homes when federal and local limits on evictions expire at the end of the year, a growing body of research shows. A report issued this month from the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the University of Arizona estimates that 6.7 million households could be evicted in the coming months. That amounts to 19 million people potentially losing their homes, rivaling the dislocation that foreclosures caused after the subprime housing bust. Apart from being a humanitarian disaster, the crisis threatens to exacerbate the coronavirus pandemic, according to a forthcoming study in the Journal of Urban Health.


“Our concern is we’re going to see a huge increase in evictions after the CDC moratorium is lifted,” said Andrew Aurand, vice president of research at the NLIHC and a co-author of the report. The number of Americans struggling to pay rent has steadily risen since this summer, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. In the latest survey, from early November, 11.6 million people indicated they wouldn’t be able to pay the rent or mortgage next month. Meanwhile, some renters who are still paying rent are relying on “unsustainable” income to make ends meet. Among those who report trouble making rent, “More than half are borrowing from family and friends to meet their spending needs, one-third are using credit cards, and one-third are spending down savings,” the NLIHC report found.

Read more …

No, not political at all…

China To Impose Temp Anti-Dumping Measures On Australian Wine Imports (R.)

Australia has responded defiantly to China imposing anti-dumping tariffs on Australian wine, saying the “seriously concerning development” looks to be about diplomatic grievances and not any action by winemakers. China will impose temporary anti-dumping tariffs of 107.1% to 212.1% on wine imported from Australia from Nov. 28, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Friday. Australia’s trade minister Simon Birmingham said the tariffs were unjustifiable and it was a distressing time for hundreds of wine producers because it “will render unviable for many businesses, their wine trade with China”. China takes 37 per cent of Australia’s total wine exports, an industry worth AU$2.9 billion, the government said.


Last week China outlined a list of grievances about Australia’s foreign investment, national security and human rights policy, saying Canberra needed to correct its actions to restore the bilateral relationship with its largest trading partner. “China’s recent comments gives the perception that it’s more about their grievances around those matters, rather than in fact around anything any industry has done wrong,” Australia’s agriculture minister David Littleproud told media on Friday. He added, “It just doesn’t worry Australian exporters, it worries exporters from around the world.”

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 28 2020

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • Author
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  • #66127

    Hieronymus Bosch The Conjurer 1502   • Lockdowns Destroy What Makes Us Human (Yost) • Johns Hopkins Posted Then Deleted Article Questioning US CO
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 28 2020]

    #66129
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    “The reason we have a higher number of reported COVID-19 deaths among older individuals than younger individuals is simply because every day in the U.S. older individuals die in higher numbers than younger individuals,” Briand said

    .

    Holy smokes, old people are more likely to die?! Who would have ever thought that before 2020.

    When is the fog going to lift and everybody realizes that we have been duped by what is—more or less—a seasonal cold or flu but re-packaged by a PR team into coved-19? Excuse me, I forgot the panic-inducing all caps. Obviously meant COVID-19. Earlier this year there was a supposed leak of a report for the German Interior Ministry that basically said most people dying with corona virus infection were old and/or sick enough that they likely would have died within 12 months one way or another any how.

    I’ve been following the virus outbreak story since about Jan 1st and after the early fear (yes me too) with strange reports out of China and then the overwhelmed Italian hospitals, I began to regain my sanity in about Easter time in mid-April. Even by then it was becoming clear that the threat was overblown and that this was not the pandemic that we had always feared from scary movies or tales of the Black Death in the Middle Ages.

    It has been really surreal to see the ongoing nuttiness in all facets of the public realm.

    #notthepandemicwewerepromised

    #66130
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    I had a thought last night that I’ll drop here since this is a lively, intelligent group with thoughtful opinions:

    If we were actually living through a catastrophic pandemic there would be no need to debate statistics, would there? The evidence would be right in front of our faces. We’d be too busy burying and mourning loved ones to find time or even care about arguing with anyone.

    ————————

    Here in my county in upstate NY the County health dept states we have 235 deaths. Deaths are blared in the headlines every single day (fatality rate is pretty much flat line on a graph). The NY state health dept website shows 230 deaths in the county … of which only 209 were RESIDENTS of our county. I thought deaths were counted by where you lived, but what do I know.

    Bottom line, 209 is a fatality rate of less than 1 person per 10,000 county residents. Of these, almost half were nursing homes. I’m not clear whether that means they died IN the nursing home, or were nursing home residents prior to being hospitalized. But, less than 1 per 10,000 people any way you look at it.

    Remote schools, remote work, job loss, small business closings, long waits to get the dog into the vet, to see the eye dr, the dentist, the list is endless. This year we get to have a “virtual” tree lighting ceremony. Truly, what’s the point??

    Unlike Vietnam Vet, I cheered when the court decided people are free to worship. I don’t personally go to church. But it’s about time someone had the money and the means to fight our loss of rights.

    #66132
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    The Russian vaccine EpiVacCorona is based on peptide antigens with an aluminum-containing adjuvant. The carrier protein wasn’t disclosed, but there is speculation that the carrier is a bacterial protein, which would have to be a non-immunogenic type to avoid causing an allergic reaction.

    EpiVacCorona (EpiVacCorona vaccine based on peptide antigens for the prevention of COVID-19)
    EpiVacCorona vaccine is intended to prevent COVID-19. The vaccine relies on chemically synthesized peptide antigens of SARS-CoV-2 proteins, conjugated to a carrier protein and adsorbed on an aluminum-containing adjuvant (aluminum hydroxide). The EpiVacCorona vaccine contributes to the development of protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus following two intramuscular administrations spaced 21-28 days apart.

    https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04527575

    #66134
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    Final Destination

    I read an article about an NHS campaign to reduce the number of deaths by heart attack in the elderly. They succeeded and reduced deaths by 2,000 per year.

    The number of people with dementia increased by 2,000 per year.

    You have to die of something – if it is not one thing it is another!

    +++++++

    When an old person dies it is not like CSI where the exact cause of death is found – it is more ‘best guess’. One NHS doctor said that he continued to try and determine what the cause of death was but many of his fellow doctors said they simply put them all down to COVID.

    #66135
    John Day
    Participant

    Diana Johnstone: The Great Pretext … for Dystopia  Thanks Eleni
      I would describe the WEF as a combination capitalist consulting firm and gigantic lobby.  The futuristic predictions are designed to guide investors into profitable areas in what Schwab calls “the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR)” and then, as the areas are defined, to put pressure on governments to support such investments by way of subsidies, tax breaks, procurements, regulations and legislation.  In short, the WEF is the lobby for new technologies, digital everything, artificial intelligence, transhumanism.
      It is powerful today because it is operating in an environment of State Capitalism, where the role of the State (especially in the United States, less so in Europe) has been largely reduced to responding positively to the demands of such lobbies, especially the financial sector.  Immunized by campaign donations from the obscure wishes of ordinary people, most of today’s politicians practically need the guidance of lobbies such as the WEF to tell them what to do.
      In the 20th century, notably in the New Deal, the government was under pressure from conflicting interests.  The economic success of the armaments industry during World War II gave birth to a Military-Industrial Complex, which has become a permanent structural factor in the U.S. economy.
    It is the dominant role of the MIC and its resulting lobbies that have definitively transformed the nation into State Capitalism rather than a Republic…  The WEF can be seen as analogous to the MIC.  It intends to engage governments and opinion manufacturers in the promotion of a “4IR” which will dominate the civilian economy and civilian life itself.
      The pandemic is a temporary pretext; the need to “protect the environment” will be the more sustainable pretext.  Just as the MIC is presented as absolutely necessary to “protect our freedoms,” the 4IR will be hailed as absolutely necessary to “save the environment” – and in both cases, many of the measures advocated will have the opposite effect…  But the real danger of all power going to the Reset lies not with what is there, but with what is not there: any serious political opposition.  The Great Reset has a boulevard open to it for the simple reason that there is nothing in its way.  No widespread awareness of the issues, no effective popular political organization, nothing.  Schwab’s dystopia is frightening simply for that reason.    The 2020 presidential election has just illustrated the almost total depoliticization of the American people… There were no real issues debated, no serious political questions raised either about war or about the directions of future economic development. The vicious quarrels were about persons, not policy…  A revival of democracy could stem from organized, concentrated study of the issues raised by the Davos planners, in order to arouse an informed public opinion to evaluate which technical innovations are socially acceptable and which are not…  Unless faced with informed and precise critiques, Silicon Valley and its corporate and financial allies will simply proceed in doing whatever they imagine they can do, whatever the social effects…  The political distinctions between left and right, between Republican and Democrat, have grown more impassioned just as they reveal themselves to be incoherent, distorted and irrelevant, based more on ideological bias than on facts.  New and more fruitful political alignments could be built through confrontation with specific concrete issues.
    We could take the proposals of the Great Reset one by one and examine them in both pragmatic and ethical terms…  Health and “well-being”. Here is where the discussion should heat up considerably. According to Schwab and Malleret: “Three industries in particular will flourish (in the aggregate) in the post-pandemic era: big tech, health and wellness.”  For the Davos planners, the three merge.
      Those who think that well-being is largely self-generated, dependent on attitudes, activity and lifestyle choices, miss the point. “The combination of AI [artificial intelligence], the IoT [internet of things] and sensors and wearable technology will produce new insights into personal well-being. They will model how we are and feel […] precise information on our carbon footprints, our impact on biodiversity, on the toxicity of all the ingredients we consume and the environments or spatial contexts in which we evolve will generate significant progress in terms of our awareness of collective and individual well-being.”
      Question: do we really want or need all this cybernetic narcissism?  Can’t we just enjoy life by helping a friend, stroking a cat, reading a book, listening to Bach or watching a sunset?  We better make up our minds before they make over our minds…  What about human work?
    “In all likelihood, the recession induced by the pandemic will trigger a sharp increase in labor-substitution, meaning that physical labor will be replaced by robots and ‘intelligent’ machines, which will in turn provoke lasting and structural changes in the labor market.”…  “As consumers may prefer automated services to face-to-face interactions for some time to come, what is currently happening with call centers will inevitably occur in other sectors as well.”
      “Consumers may prefer…”! Everyone I know complains of the exasperation of trying to reach the bank or insurance company to explain an emergency, and instead to be confronted with a dead voice and a choice of irrelevant numbers to click.   Perhaps I am underestimating the degree of hostility toward our fellow humans that now pervades society, but my impression is that there is a vast unexpressed public demand for LESS automated services and MORE contact with real persons who can think outside the algorithm  , not simply cough up preprogrammed fixes…  I maintain, consumer demand would merge with the desperate need of able-minded human beings to earn a living.  The technocrats earn theirs handsomely by eliminating the means to earn a living of other people…  And incidentally, a guy riding a delivery bicycle is using renewable energy.  But all those robots and drones?  Batteries, batteries and more batteries, made of what materials, coming from where and manufactured how?  By more robots?  Where is the energy coming from to replace not only fossil fuels, but also human physical effort? …   “Whereas in the past, humans had to struggle against exploitation, in the twenty-first century the really big struggle will be against irrelevance… Those who fail in the struggle against irrelevance would constitute a new ‘useless class’ – not from the viewpoint of their friends and family, but useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system. And this useless class will be separated by an ever-growing gap from the ever more powerful elite.”    …  “In the end, warfare is a time competitive process, where the side able to decide the fastest and move most quickly to execution will generally prevail.  Indeed, artificially intelligent intelligence systems, tied to AI-assisted command and control systems, can move decision support and decision-making to a speed vastly superior to the speeds of the traditional means of waging war. So fast will be this process especially if coupled to automatic decisions to launch artificially intelligent autonomous weapons systems capable of lethal outcomes, that a new term has been coined specifically to embrace the speed at which war will be waged: hyperwar.”  Americans have a choice.  Either continue to quarrel over trivialities or wake up, really wake up, to the reality being planned and do something about it.
      The future is shaped by investment choices.  Not by naughty speech, not even by elections, but by investment choices.  For the people to regain power, they must reassert their command over how and for what purposes capital is invested.
      And if private capital balks, it must be socialized. This is the only revolution – and it is also the only conservatism, the only way to conserve decent human life. It is what real politics is about.https://consortiumnews.com/2020/11/24/diana-johnstone-the-great-pretext-for-dystopia/

    #66136
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    MADE IN CHINA?

    At one point ALL the MSM said the virus DEFINITELY escaped from a Wuhan lab in Dec19. You have to be skeptical when all the media speaks in unison, especially when there is no definitive evidence.

    – Two studies by Western universities suggest the virus was active in China for months before Dec19.

    – Sewage samples in South America and Europe detected the virus in Dec19, and one sample in Barcelona detected it in MARCH 2019!

    – In Italy blood samples taken from cancer patients in Sep19 show 10% had the virus.

    – In the US in Sep19 hundreds of elderly died from pneumonia and the underlying cause could not be determined. In retrospect it COVID seems to be the most likely suspect.

    Given the above evidence I am sure the WHO will come to the inevitable conclusion that it escaped from the Wuhan lab in Dec19! [The country that detected MUST have infected!]

    It seems to me that the most promising way to detect the source is by using sewage samples, although I do not know how common it is for water authorities to keep samples for two years or more.

    #66137
    Noirette
    Participant

    All this is bringing up memories of past events.

    Here is Bush J. touting smallpox vaccines, Dec. 2002.

    “Our government has no information that a smallpox attack is imminent, but it is prudent to be prepared for the possibility that terrorists . . . would use this disease as a weapon,” the grim-looking president said in prefacing his televised announcement.

    Noting that public health agencies began preparing for a smallpox vaccination program more than a year ago, he said, “America has stockpiled enough vaccine and is now prepared to inoculate our entire population in the event of a smallpox attack. Americans and anyone who would think of harming Americans can be certain that we are prepared to respond quickly to a smallpox emergency.”

    https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2002/12/bush-announces-smallpox-vaccination-plan-military-health-workers

    The predicted bio-terror attack was to be the work of Al-Quaida and Saddam Hussein! (\Who loathed each other..) followed on after Amerithrax, which killed 4-5 ppl and ensured the passing of the Patriot Act after 9/11.

    Didn’t work out, partly because of oppo from medics, just one ex.top of google:

    https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/president-bush-announces-national-smallpox-vaccination-plan-los-angeles-nurses

    #66138
    Noirette
    Participant

    More from the Past. On Dark Winter, has a title mention up top. Of course it’s a standard expression, yet references are being made to it again and again, by J. Biden for ex.

    Operation Dark Winter was a simulated exercise of a bio-terror attack (smallpox) in the USA which took place just before 9/11, end June. Wiki has an entry:

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

    Hospitals overwhelmed, services down (electric grid for ex.), mob violence, perhaps civil war, massive loss of life..

    other:

    https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/events-archive/2001_dark-winter/about.html

    from Wiki:

    Participants worried that it would not be possible to forcibly impose vaccination or travel restrictions on large groups of the population without their general cooperation. To gain that cooperation, the President and other leaders in Dark Winter recognized the importance of persuading their constituents that there was fairness in the distribution of vaccine and other scarce resources, that the disease-containment measures were for the general good of society, that all possible measures were being taken to prevent the further spread of the disease,[and that the government remained firmly in control despite the expanding epidemic.

    Plus ca change as the French would say.

    #66139
    Dr. D
    Participant

    A lot in Bosch I don’t understand. A rabbit out of a hat or an owl from a basket? A pickpocket for a man showing off by dangling his keys. A good opportunity to place a hand on a woman’s breast. A series of optical illusions. But most interested, is that child have a helicopter stick toy in 1500? Why not, it would work as well as any bullroarer.

    For today’s economic reset, some headlines:

    To Build Back Better, we must reinvent Capitalism. Here’s how.”

    So it’s not capitalism, which is voluntary free exchange, and therefore not freedom. So it will require overthrowing the Constitution, that is to say, overthrowing our National government. Would this be anything like “Fundamentally transforming the United States”?
    pic
    https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/WEF-Conspiracy.jpg

    A Fusion of State and Corporation is what form of government? “State Capitalism”? Or something more pointed, according to the man who coined the term, Bonito?

    Ah but this is the GOOD Fascism. This is the techno Fascism that will get the Hyperloop monorail space trains to run on time. Trust me. Would a guy who gets rich burning drivers alive and the government who both pays him and protects him lie to you?

    The one thing you learn from history is that I’m doomed to watch people repeat history. Doubleplus hard.

    Covid chart has reporting problems. Africa is best of all: do they do tests? No additional deaths means 100% deaths are shifted to Covid, but HOW MUCH they shift is political. What do you WANT the numbers to say? Who are you conning and how suspicious are they? So I’m saying at this point, we don’t even HAVE Covid death numbers – my God – because we are overrun with rapacious, bare-faced liars. ARE we worse than Greece and Russia? Or are they telling the truth not adding in accidents, heart attacks, and poisonings, as we ADMIT we do.

    If I’m wrong, why does no one fill the middle space on that chart? They should congregate the middle. Instead, unrelated to behavior, they either are nations Covid=yes or Covid=no. Like, please report it, I’ve got cures to sell, or don’t report it, for…whatever.

    New rule Research = Misinformation! And when that’s true, no wonder they don’t want scientists discussing things. They’ll only all misinform each other. We’re modern and enlightened, not cave men: Don’t you know we start from the conclusion now?

    “Just as the WHO team is set to start investigating the origin.”

    The the WHO that covered for China and missed everything for politics, is now investigating China. Sure, goldfish. Squirrel. Why wouldn’t we trust their every word? And the WHO used what test to show it pre-existed Wuhan?

    And China says it’s arch-enemy India’s fault? It’s settled. India Man Bad. It was their bats and pangolins, or whatever made-up nonsensical story is official in this half-hour of November.

    Actually it’s surprising no pandemics come from India. Maybe has to do with how they don’t have bioweapon labs like Wuhan, Porton Down, or that amazing center of coincidences, Ft. Dix

    Renowned Expert Concludes 2020 Election Results Were Fraudulent (CTH)”

    But he said one wrong thing, so now he’s stupid, wrong, and works for Russia. News at 11. Like “America’s (former) Mayor” I try not to get lost in the details: they kicked out the monitors, boarded up the windows, then found 100k Biden votes at a pop at a 90% rate. What do you want from me? I can’t cover that up. I can’t help you.

    Example: in polling stations, in time allotted, the scanning machines are physically incapable of scanning 110k ballots in the time they appeared. Ideal, race-car conditions, 80k, which is not real-world. 70M Trump votes + 85M Biden votes = 153M total votes. Congratulations! We had a 100% voter turnout, higher than Australia! There are as many of these examples as you care to read. Since apparently no one cares, what does it matter? We’ve been doing this long before Kennedy in the same 14 cities all the anomalies appeared in this year too.

    The Government Does Not Have a Maxed out Credit Card.” Really? Is that why Gold is $2k and Bitcoin $20k? Is that why Thanksgiving costs were higher than ever and there are food and supply shortages appearing everywhere? Before you do victory laps, safe in apparatchik-land of Starbucks and yoga studios, ask Argentina if this looks at all familiar. It’s hits the poor first and hardest, and makes the rich wealthy as Croesus.

    Looks like the court agrees with the Doctor, it IS strange to have every church closed and every casino and liquor store wide open. …Not to mention for these mental midgets I can still go down the street and buy a gay hooker and a bag of heroin and they’re not closed at all. They are wide open. But not to fear: if you’re worried, they can sell me a gun to protect myself using a fake ID. And the judge thinks we follow any of those laws either.

    #66140
    John Day
    Participant

    The commentariat has already seen mot of what I am posting today:
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/11/investment-choices.html

    Please take this very seriously. The 1975-1976 Swine Flu vaccine killed more people than the swine flu.
    It’s the basis of the stories about “getting the flu from the vaccine”.
    It was a rush-job vaccine in a perceived emergency after some early flu fatalities in US military personnel..
    ​ Side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine won’t be a ‘walk in the park,’ doctors warn
    The vaccines in final stages of trial are said to induce symptoms similar to the virus.
    ​ ​”We really need to make patients aware that this is not going to be a walk in the park,” Fryhofer said during a virtual meeting with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an outside group of medical experts that advise the CDC. “They are going to know they had a vaccine. They are probably not going to feel wonderful. But they’ve got to come back for that second dose.”
    https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/side-effects-covid-19-vaccine-wont-be-walk-park-doctors-warn

    ​Ilargi at The Automatic Earth also sends this article about the UK giving its most vulnerable subjects “4 months of free vitamin-D”.
    (The fine point is that this is a 400 IU dose, the minimum USRDA, so little as to never have been shown helpful in any medical study for any purpose. Doses for immune support are higher than for bone formation support. It takes A LOT to get blood levels up into normal range.)
    400 IU (10 microgram, 1/100th milligram) is the dose you give if you need to show vitamin-D not working.
    I’m a scientist. I have done medical research. This is how “science” is done if you know you need to show a failure.
    (Notice that 4 months of 400 units per day is about 48,000 units cumulative winter dose of vitamin-D. It is less than a single day’s dose in the study I reference below, which gave this as a daily dose for 14 days or more, attempting to get vitamin-D levels into the mid-normal range.)
    More than 2.5m people in England to get free vitamin D
    Care home residents and clinically vulnerable to be offered four-month supply
    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/28/more-than-25m-people-in-england-to-get-free-vitamin-d-supply?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    ​From my 11/25/20 post​
    It’s a small study, but it helps define vitamin-D dose for hospital inpatients, or anybody who needs to get vitamin-D levels up quickly. 60,000 units per day is 12 of the 5000 unit pills of vitamin D3 that we can buy at the store. That’s the daily dose for about 2 weeks. Most people got into the mid-normal range on this dose and nobody’s level went above the normal range. The people who got vitamin-D cleared the virus sooner, based on repeat testing. Thanks to commenter “Amazed”.
    https://pmj.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/12/postgradmedj-2020-139065

    #66141
    Dave Note
    Participant

    Hieronymus Bosch The Conjurer 1502

    Shell game Hustle

    Nothing new under the sun

    #66142
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    If we were actually living through a catastrophic pandemic there would be no need to debate statistics, would there? The evidence would be right in front of our faces.

    In the beginning it was. We saw the body bags. But then something happened, and the viral load numbers started to drop. Once that happened, the death rate plummeted. Why did the viral load numbers drop? Mutation? Weather? Social distancing? There has been a conspiracy of silence about viral load — it’s just not discussed.

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