Dec 042020
 
 December 4, 2020  Posted by at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Stanley Kubrick Walking the streets of New York 1946

 

Pfizer Not Sure If Someone Can Transmit Virus After Vaccination (Hill)
NHS Staff No Longer Top Priority For Covid Vaccine (G.)
Half The World Could Get Russian Sputnik V COVID19 Vaccine (RT)
Facebook Bans Anti-Vaccine “Conspiracy Theories” As US Rollout Begins (ZH)
GOP Senators Release 400 Pages Of New Docs On Crossfire Hurricane (SAC)
DNI Ratcliffe Says He Has Given ‘1000s Of Documents To John Durham’ (JTN)
The Georgia Runoffs and Our Embattled Constitution (RCP)
Confessions of a Clintonworld Exile (VF)
Bill Clinton ‘Couldn’t Stay Away’ From Jeffrey Epstein (ZH)
Will The Empire Sacrifice the Dollar? (CHS)
Banks To Chairman Powell On Libor: Foxtrot Oscar (Whalen)
Bank of England Criticised For Losing Track Of £50bn Of Banknotes (G.)
China Stakes Its Claim to Quantum Supremacy (Wired)
Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as “Feeding the World” (CP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s starting to feel like we’re going to need new definitions for “vaccine” as well as for “immunization”.

Pfizer Not Sure If Someone Can Transmit Virus After Vaccination (Hill)

Pfizer chairman Albert Bourla told Dateline host Lester Holt that the pharmaceutical company was “not certain” if the vaccine prevented the coronavirus from being transmitted, saying, “This is something that needs to be examined.” In a prime-time special titled “Race for a Vaccine” set to air Thursday, Holt questioned Bourla and other individuals involved in the development and distribution of the medicine. In November, Pfizer announced that its vaccine candidate had been shown to be more than 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 and has applied for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The U.K. became the first country to approve Pfizer’s vaccine this week with the first round of immunizations expected to roll out next week.


In a list of interview highlights released before the special, Holt asked Bourla, “Even though I’ve had the protection, am I still able to transmit it to other people?” “I think this is something that needs to be examined. We are not certain about that right now with what we know,” Bourla responded. Though Pfizer’s vaccine has shown promising results, challenges have surfaced when it comes to distributing and administering it. The vaccine must be delivered and stored in extreme sub-zero temperatures, which has heightened the demand for dry ice. Once the vaccine is kept at normal refrigeration temperatures, it must be used within four or five days or be discarded. The vaccine is administered in two doses spaced a few weeks apart.

Read more …

“NHS personnel will be able to take the vaccine into care homes to immunise residents later this month..”

NHS Staff No Longer Top Priority For Covid Vaccine (G.)

NHS staff will no longer get the coronavirus vaccine first after a drastic rethink about who should be given priority, it emerged last night. The new immunisation strategy is likely to disappoint and worry thousands of frontline staff – and comes amid urgent warnings from NHS chiefs that hospitals could be “overwhelmed” in January by a third wave of Covid-19 caused by mingling over Christmas. Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “If we get a prolonged cold snap in January the NHS risks being overwhelmed. The Covid-19 restrictions should remain appropriately tough. “Trust leaders are worried about the impact of looser regulations over Christmas.”

Frontline personnel were due to have the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine when the NHS starts its rollout, which is expected to be next Tuesday after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved it on Wednesday. However, hospitals will instead begin by immunising care home staff, and hospital inpatients and outpatients aged over 80. The new UK-wide guidance on priority groups was issued by the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) amid uncertainty over when the rest of the 5m-strong initial batch of doses that ministers ordered will reach the UK.

NHS personnel will be able to take the vaccine into care homes to immunise residents later this month if, as expected, the MHRA agrees that the batches of 975 doses it comes in can be subdivided and the stability and safety of the drug be maintained. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the leader of the British Medical Association, said it backed care home residents getting the jab first. However, that means NHS staff will be left at higher risk of getting infected and potentially dying, he added.

Read more …

How does Sputnik V differ from the Pfizer “vaccine”?

Half The World Could Get Russian Sputnik V COVID19 Vaccine (RT)

At least 40 countries, representing more than half of the world’s population, have expressed interest in Russia’s coronavirus vaccine, the team behind it have said as mass vaccination begins in Moscow. At a presentation to the United Nations on Thursday, scientists from the Gamaleya Institute, which developed the formula, said that preliminary orders have been placed for more than 1.2 billion doses. Trials involving 45,000 people across the globe have concluded that 95 percent of those given both doses of Sputnik V develop immunity to the virus. On Wednesday, the vaccine’s creators released footage of vials touching down in India ahead of the start of studies into its efficacy there.


A number of countries, including Hungary, Venezuela and the UAE, have already imported sufficient quantities to conduct their own tests. At the same time, the Philippines announced that it would work with Russia to secure access to supplies in order to begin mass immunizations early next year. On Thursday, Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin announced that residents of the capital would be able to access the vaccine from Saturday. Doctors, teachers and social workers will be first in line for appointments, and an “electronic immunization record” will be set up. According to Sobyanin, Muscovites will be able to get the jab at ‘vaccine points’ set up around the city. President Vladimir Putin ordered the start of the program on Wednesday, adding that “the production of Sputnik V, the world’s first registered vaccine against the coronavirus infection, is what allows us to begin the vaccination.”

Read more …

Our new Supreme Court.

Facebook Bans Anti-Vaccine “Conspiracy Theories” As US Rollout Begins (ZH)

It was probably inevitable. Just in time for the vaccine rollout in the US this coming week (as Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said, inventory has already been loaded on to trucks, and will be en route to destinations across the country as soon as the FDA gives the green light) Facebook said Thursday that it’s “updating its policies around the coronavirus by removing false claims about upcoming vaccines”. The social media giant said it will be monitoring for misinformation that has been debunked by public health experts on both Facebook and Instagram. “This could include false claims about the safety, efficacy, ingredients or side effects of the vaccines. For example, we will remove false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips, or anything else that isn’t on the official vaccine ingredient list,” Facebook said in its announcement.

The company added that it will also remove conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccines that we know today are false, such as that specific populations are being forced to test the vaccine against their will. “Since it’s early and facts about COVID-19 vaccines will continue to evolve, we will regularly update the claims we remove based on guidance from public health authorities as they learn more,” Facebook added, but also said that it would “not be able to start enforcing these policies overnight.” Previously, Facebook removed Covid-19 misinformation that could contribute to “imminent physical harm.” That included false claims or cures about the disease, that the coronavirus is caused by 5G, or that it does not exist.

According to the Independent, PA News Agency editor Tom Phillips said social media companies should do more to combat misinformation, but they also must be extremely careful not to go too far and quash public debate. “We have seen a lot of the internet platforms take stricter measures against vaccine misinformation and I think that is the correct approach. Could some of them go further? Yes, possibly.” “But at the same time, it is important to remember the importance of free speech. It’s not illegitimate to have questions or worries about the vaccine and it’s important that we don’t just react by trying to suppress those questions. We allow people to ask the questions, get good quality answers and make up their minds based on good quality information.”

Read more …

How crazy would it be if Crossfire Hurricane never gets thoroughly investigated?

GOP Senators Release 400 Pages Of New Docs On Crossfire Hurricane (SAC)

Two top GOP Senators released more than 400 pages of documents related to the FBI’s investigation of the now-debunked probe into President Donald Trump and his alleged ties with Russia, known as the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ probe. The Senators also stated in their letter Thursday that the documents they received are still far less than what they had originally requested in their official letters sent in May to the FBI and State Department. U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, R- Wisconsin, and chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R -Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, released the documents as part of their ongoing probe into the FBI’s malfeasance during the Obama administration’s probe into Trump.

Some of the documents, which SaraACarter.com is still reviewing, are now declassified Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of State documents. “The Committees obtained these records through joint requests, as well as Chairman Johnson’s August 6, 2020, subpoena to the FBI,” stated a press release. “The Chairmen also released a comprehensive timeline of key events related to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.” In a joint statement from Grassley and Johnson they said “for years, the American people have demanded answers to questions regarding the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and its targeting of the Trump campaign, the presidential transition, and the Trump administration.”

“Our committees have sought to uncover and expose misconduct by calling on agencies to declassify and produce text messages, internal emails, and other investigative material, which in turn we have made public,” they noted. “Although agency bureaucrats have fought tooth and nail to keep records hidden, our commitment to transparency has never wavered.” The chairmen added that “the documents we are releasing today are the product of our continued fight for transparency. These documents are far less than what we have requested, but we are making them public so the American people can decide for themselves what wrongdoing did and did not occur.”

In May, the Senators asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to turn over all material regarding former British Spy Christopher Steele’s communications and documents related to the now debunked dossier used to investigate Trump. Wray has been uncooperative with the Senate requests and has been slow to produce the documents since he was appointed by Trump to the position, said numerous Congressional staff familiar with the requests. In the letter to Wray, Johnson and Grassley requested that they were “seeking information about Christopher Steele’s interactions with State Department employees before the 2016 presidential election.”

Read more …

Durham is starting to look like a black hole.

DNI Ratcliffe Says He Has Given ‘1000s Of Documents To John Durham’ (JTN)

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe during an interview with the Washington Examiner on Thursday said that he has given thousands of documents to U.S. Attorney John Durham, but Ratcliffe noted that much of the material includes information that cannot be publicly released. “Between my predecessor Richard Grenell in an acting capacity and myself, we have declassified most of the intelligence community documents that would be suitable for the public to see, that wouldn’t jeopardize sources and methods,” Ratcliffe told the Washington Examiner. “There are others, many many documents — I think it’s been out there that I’ve provided literally thousands of documents to John Durham, but many of those do contain sources and methods that we can’t make public for a number of reasons, including to jeopardize any investigation that’s going there. So I think the level of cooperation — I’ve given them everything that they’ve asked for.”


Ratcliffe said that wrongdoing definitely occurred and Americans are entitled to “an accounting.” “There was an abuse of power and of legal authorities, and it’s not a question about whether those things took place — they did. I mean, there’s an FBI lawyer who is going to jail for counterfeiting evidence before the FISA court. And that after all of the Obama-Biden senior national security officials said the idea of illegal spying and abuse at the FISA court is a bunch of nonsense, and now, they’re sprinting the opposite direction,” Ratcliffe stated. “I mean, literally, every one of them — Comey, McCabe, Yates — they’ve all said, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re shocked and had we only known.’ And so, again, the American people deserve an accounting, and I’ve certainly provided a lot of information to the now-special counsel to provide that accounting, and I’m counting, like all Americans, on him to talk about a lot of the things that I know that I can’t talk about.”

Read more …

“..the rise of political parties undermines the separation of powers and, with it, one of the Founders’ barriers against consolidated, oppressive power..”

The Georgia Runoffs and Our Embattled Constitution (RCP)

If Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate runoffs, Democrats will control both houses of Congress as well as the presidency. The Republican Party, which won nearly half the national vote, will have no check on the Democrats, aside from the Senate’s filibuster rule. Although that rule requires a supermajority to pass some legislation and appointments, it can be abolished by a simple majority when the new Senate convenes. Preventing one-party rule is one of the strongest arguments advanced by Republican incumbent Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. They are reminding voters of the threat posed by Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who proudly announced: “Now we take Georgia, then we change the world.”

That might be a winning line for national fundraising, but it’s more problematic for the Georgia electorate. Not many voters there want to “change the world,” so Warnock and Ossoff are downplaying it. Don’t expect to seek to see Schumer on the stump in Atlanta, Augusta, or Macon. It’s understandable that the national debate should focus on which party will control the Senate and just how radical the Democrats’ program will be if they do. But just beneath the surface lurk potential constitutional issues, which have received almost no attention. The basic problem is this: although America’s Founders were deeply concerned about tyranny, centralized power, and the suppression of individual rights and constructed institutional barriers to prevent those abuses, they never envisioned the mechanisms that pose serious threats today.

One of those threats is one-party rule. It’s understandable the Founders missed that since they worked before the age of entrenched and nationalized political parties. The closest analogues were England’s Whigs and Tories, but they were a far cry from modern parties. The political world envisioned by America’s Founders was populated not by parties but by cross-cutting “factions,” much like today’s interest groups. The Federalist Papers (especially the famous No. 10, written by James Madison as “Publius”) argued that, in a large republic like America, multiple factions would emerge, push against each other, and usually block any one from dominating.To prevent government authority from becoming too centralized and oppressive, the Constitutional Convention divided that authority among the three branches.

Each one, they figured, would have strong institutional interests in preventing the others from encroaching. It was a profound insight, and a remarkably successful one. But with the rise of modern political parties, it faced a challenge that no 18th century politician could imagine. Strong political parties unify their members across the legislative and executive branches. The stronger their common interests as Democrats or Republicans, the weaker their institutional interests as members of House or Senate, if those interests diverge from fellow partisans in the other house or branch. Put differently, the rise of political parties undermines the separation of powers and, with it, one of the Founders’ barriers against consolidated, oppressive power.

Read more …

is Doug Band fully turning on the Clintons?

Confessions of a Clintonworld Exile (VF)

Doug Band’s office at Teneo, the corporate advisory firm he cofounded, is decorated like a wing of the Bill Clinton presidential library. Framed photographs of the 42nd president adorn virtually every surface except for windows overlooking the rush hour traffic crawling down Park Avenue. “A lot of these pictures are just about moments,” Band said one morning last winter as he showed me his collection. Band, a broad-shouldered man with dark eyes and prematurely graying hair, appeared in many of the pictures. There were photos of Band and Clinton playing golf with Barack Obama, posing backstage with Michael Jackson, and meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. “Bill Clinton was my life for almost 20 years,” Band said.

Band was 22 when he landed an unpaid internship in the White House counsel’s office midway through Clinton’s first term. He served as Clinton’s “body man” during the second while earning a Georgetown law degree at night. On paper, the job is a glorified gofer, but Band leveraged the position to build a filial bond with the leader of the free world. When Clinton left office in January 2001, Band was one of the aides Clinton invited to go with him. Band took on a role that was equal parts fixer, gatekeeper, wingman, consigliere, and adopted son. (Officially, his title was counselor.) “They were with each other all the time,” said former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, who first got to know Band in the Clinton White House.

Band virtually invented Clinton’s postpresidential life. He set up Clinton’s Harlem office, helped launch the Clinton Foundation, and created the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), the annual Davos-style conference that Clinton hosted in New York. Band and Clinton circled the globe in a private jet with a Rat Pack of billionaires that included supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, movie producer Steve Bing, and, infamously, Jeffrey Epstein. Before Clinton had quadruple-bypass surgery in 2004, he dialed Band at the first sign of chest pains. There were years that Clinton spent more time with Band than with any other person—including Hillary and Chelsea. But when I met Band last February, he hadn’t been in a room with Bill Clinton in nearly five years. He couldn’t remember the last time they had spoken. “I don’t want anything to do with that whole world,” Band said after we’d been talking for nearly an hour.

Read more …

More Doug Band.

Bill Clinton ‘Couldn’t Stay Away’ From Jeffrey Epstein (ZH)

Bill Clinton’s former top aide and Chelsea Clinton nemesis Doug Band has told Vanity Fair that former President Bill Clinton did visit Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous “pedo island” in January 2003, and that he was unable to push Epstein out of Clinton’s orbit since they flew to Africa together in 2002 aboard the the pedophile’s (Epstein’s) private 727, dubbed the “Lolita Express.” “Band said he had no idea about Epstein’s sex crimes back then but got enough bad vibes that he advised Clinton to end the relationship. But Clinton continued to socialize with Epstein and take his money. In 2006 Epstein donated $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton made more than two dozen trips on Epstein’s jet around this time, Epstein’s flight logs show. In January 2003, according to Band, Clinton visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island, Little St. James. Band said it was one of the few trips he declined to go on in his time with Clinton.” -Vanity Fair

Band – who revealed the Clinton Foundation’s ‘for-profit’ activity and accused Chelsea Clinton of tapping Foundation funds to pay for her wedding (known only because of WikiLeaks) – also says Chelsea Clinton had a relationship with Epstein and his alleged co-conspirator in an underage sex trafficking ring, Ghislaine Maxwell. “Chelsea had ties to Epstein and Maxwell, Band said; he showed me a photo of Bill and Chelsea posing with Epstein and Maxwell at the King of Morocco’s wedding. Chelsea remained friends with Maxwell for years after the press revealed Maxwell was a close associate of Epstein’s. For instance, Chelsea invited Maxwell to her 2010 wedding at the Brooke Astor estate in Rhinebeck, New York, after Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to procuring sex from a minor.” -Vanity Fair

“Ghislaine had access to yachts and nice homes. Chelsea needed that,” said Band. Band notably created the now-defunct Clinton Global Initiative, which has helped to raise $74 billion for Clinton global charities, according to Newsmax. Thanks again to WikiLeaks, we also know that Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR and investment firm, Teneo in an sordid example of “pay for play” which most of the mainstream media refused to cover – which he worried about in an email to John Podesta, saying: “If this story gets out, we are screwed.”

Read more …

As rumors swirl about the Euro’s steep rise due to the ECB running out of powertools.

Will The Empire Sacrifice the Dollar? (CHS)

Let’s keep it simple: US dollar up, stocks down. US dollar down, stocks up. Stocks up, billionaires get richer. Since that spot of bother in March 2020 when the US dollar (USD) soared and stocks cratered, the USD has been in a free-fall, boosting the wealth of America’s Robber Barons and various other skimmers, scammers and other undeserving scoundrels. Chief among the undeserving scoundrels feasting on the decline of the USD are global stock markets which have soared not because revenues and profits are soaring but because the USD has plummeted. The Federal Reserve is widely worshiped as the Ultimate Power in the Universe, a kind of financial Death Star. The Fed has seen fit to crush the USD to further boost the wealth of billionaires and save global stock markets from their well-deserved ruin.

[..] The Fed is not the Empire, it is the handmaiden of the Empire. The Fed’s dual mandate– for PR purposes, stable employment and prices–is actually balancing the conflicting demands of a global and domestic currency–Triffin’s Paradox writ large. The inherent problem with a reserve currency is that it must meet global economic needs and domestic needs, and these are intrinsically in conflict. America’s billionaires and pension funds want the US stock market to loft higher on the back of a declining USD, but that diminishes the global purchasing power of the USD–a trend heading for economic ruin.

The Fed has had numerous reasons to weaken the dollar since March: a desperate need to “save” global stock markets from well-deserved collapse, and an equally desperate need to keep the dollar weak so global debtors with loans denominated in dollars can manage to service their trillions in USD-denominated debts. But drawing a line extending this short-term necessity all the way to hyper-inflationary oblivion is a grave misreading of the Empire’s need for the exorbitant privilege of a strong dollar. The Fed is about done with its “rescue” of billionaires and global markets and debtors. Against virtually all expectations of seers, pundits, gurus, etc. the USD is about to start serving the Empire in its foundational role. As for stock markets–the devil take the hindmost.

Read more …

“The 2017 decision by the Fed to do away with LIBOR is one of the most ill-considered and thoughtless actions taken by the US central bank in many years..”

Banks To Chairman Powell On Libor: Foxtrot Oscar (Whalen)

Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Board and other agencies blinked on the ill-advised transition from LIBOR as a pricing mechanism for financing various types of assets and secured money market transactions. “The Federal Reserve Board, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency today issued a statement encouraging banks to cease entering into new contracts that use USD LIBOR as a reference rate as soon as practicable and in any event by December 31, 2021, in order to facilitate an orderly—and safe and sound— LIBOR transition.” Unfortunately, as we wrote back in September in National Mortgage News (“Housing market needs SOFR alternative — now”), the proposed “replacement” for LIBOR — the secured overnight funding rate or SOFR — is not really a market price at all.

“According to the Fed, SOFR is a broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight, collateralized by Treasury securities,” we wrote in NMN. “In fact, SOFR is an imaginary, backward-looking benchmark dreamed up by the economists at the Fed with no discernable market.” The 2017 decision by the Fed to do away with LIBOR is one of the most ill-considered and thoughtless actions taken by the US central bank in many years. Not only did the Fed displayed its ignorance of the workings of the US capital markets, but it also revealed its arrogance and stupidly. Simply stated, LIBOR is a price for conducting financing in dollars. SOFR is an economists’ wet dream, a backward-looking measure that may seem interesting from a research perspective, but one that lacks actual liquidity.

As we noted in NMN, the solution for the “problem” with LIBOR is to fix the existing benchmark, not to dream up some farcical concept and then try to bully insured depository institutions to use SOFR for actual risk taking. We understand that many banks have told regulators privately the same thing we hear from clients in the too-be-announced (TBA) market for mortgage backed securities (MBS): SOFR is a non-starter and must be discarded. As late as last week, the Fed and other regulators were trying to bully the large dealer banks to stop using LIBOR by December 31st. The resounding answer: “Foxtrot Oscar.” Indeed, a growing number of analysts seem to have reached the same conclusion that we made months ago, namely that asking banks to take tens of billions of dollars in risk every day using SOFR as the pricing mechanism would be unsafe and unsound.

Read more …

Go to the mattresses.

Bank of England Criticised For Losing Track Of £50bn Of Banknotes (G.)

It is known throughout the world as a byword for security. But the Bank of England is evidently a tad unclear on the whereabouts of £50bn of banknotes, and it doesn’t seem to be overly concerned about it, a powerful group of MPs has said. In a stiff rebuke for Threadneedle Street, the Commons public accounts committee said the money – equivalent to a stack of £5 notes more than 800 miles high – had essentially gone “missing” because the Bank did not keep close enough tabs on cash usage in modern Britain. Despite walls 8ft thick and an imposing reputation for guarding billions of pounds of gold bars in its vaults, the PAC said the Bank had nonetheless displayed a “lax attitude to whereabouts of bulk of sterling cash supply”.

However, banknotes by their very design are not traceable, making it hard for the Bank to follow the money and know exactly where its notes end up. According to a report from the National Audit Office, there are about £50bn worth of issued banknotes that may be being used overseas or in the UK, a tiny fraction of the trillions of pounds in money circulating in the UK economy in physical notes and by digital transfers. The PAC speculated that this money could be stashed away under mattresses as unreported household savings, may have been taken abroad, or used in the shadow economy. “The Bank of England doesn’t know,” it said.

The value of banknotes in circulation has shot up this year, which the Bank has said is probably because more people started hoarding cash during the Covid-19 pandemic in case they needed it. Coin use has declined over recent years, with the production of new pennies and pounds by the Royal Mint falling by about 65% in the last decade, a trend which could be accelerated by the pandemic as more people move to using contactless debit card payments. Meg Hillier, chair of the PAC, said: “£50bn of sterling notes – or about three-quarters of this precious and dwindling supply – is stashed somewhere but the Bank of England doesn’t know where, who by, or what for, and doesn’t seem very curious.

Read more …

“..produced results in minutes calculated to take more than 2 billion years of effort by the world’s third-most-powerful supercomputer..”

China Stakes Its Claim to Quantum Supremacy (Wired)

Last Year GOOGLE won international acclaim when its prototype quantum computer completed a calculation in minutes that its researchers estimated would have taken a supercomputer 10,000 years. That met the definition for quantum supremacy—the moment a quantum machine does something impractical for a conventional computer. Thursday, China’s leading quantum research group made its own declaration of quantum supremacy, in the journal Science. A system called Jiuzhang produced results in minutes calculated to take more than 2 billion years of effort by the world’s third-most-powerful supercomputer. The two systems work differently. Google builds quantum circuits using supercold, superconducting metal, while the team at University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei, recorded its result by manipulating photons, particles of light.

No quantum computer is yet ready to do useful work. But the indications that two fundamentally different forms of the technology can outperform supercomputers will buoy the hopes—and investments—of the embryonic industry. Google and rivals including IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, and several large startups have all spent heavily on developing quantum computing hardware in recent years. Google and IBM offer access to their latest prototypes over the internet, while Microsoft’s and Amazon’s cloud platforms each host a smorgasboard of quantum hardware from others, including Honeywell.

The potential power of quantum computers springs from their basic building blocks, dubbed qubits. Like the bits of conventional computers, they can represent 0s and 1s of data; but qubits can also exploit quantum mechanics to attain an unusual state called a superposition that encapsulates the possibilities of both. With enough qubits it’s possible to take computational shortcuts conventional computers can’t—an advantage that grows as more qubits work together. Quantum computers don’t yet rule the world, because engineers haven’t been able to get enough qubits working together reliably enough. The quantum mechanical effects they depend on are very delicate. Google and the Chinese group were able to stage their supremacy experiments because they managed to corral qubits in relatively large numbers.

Read more …

Ukraine once fed half of Europe. Seems worth a Maidan revolution.

Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as “Feeding the World” (CP)

The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations. Smallholder farmers are being criminalised and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion. In 2014, the Oakland Institute found that institutional investors, including hedge funds, private equity and pension funds, are eager to capitalise on global farmland as a new and highly desirable asset class. Financial returns are what matter to these entities, not food security.

Consider Ukraine. The organisation Grain found that in 2014 small farmers operated 16% of agricultural land in that country, but provided 55% of agricultural output, including: 97% of potatoes, 97% of honey, 88% of vegetables, 83% of fruits and berries and 80% of milk. It is clear that Ukraine’s small farms were delivering impressive outputs. Following the toppling of Ukraine’s government in early 2014, the way was paved for foreign investors and Western agribusiness to take a firm hold over the agri-food sector. Reforms mandated by the EU-backed loan to Ukraine in 2014 included agricultural deregulation intended to benefit foreign agribusiness. Natural resource and land policy shifts were being designed to facilitate the foreign corporate takeover of enormous tracts of land.

Frederic Mousseau, policy director at the Oakland Institute, stated at the time that the World Bank and IMF were intent on opening up foreign markets to Western corporations and that the high stakes around the control of Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector, the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat, constitute an overlooked critical factor. He added that in recent years, foreign corporations had acquired more than 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian land. Western agribusiness has been coveting Ukraine’s agriculture sector for quite some time, long before the coup. That country contains one third of all arable land in Europe. An article by Oriental Review in 2015 noted that since the mid-90s the Ukrainian-Americans at the helm of the US-Ukraine Business Council had been instrumental in encouraging the foreign control of Ukrainian agriculture.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle December 4 2020

Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)
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  • #66395

    Stanley Kubrick Walking the streets of New York 1946   • Pfizer Not Sure If Someone Can Transmit Virus After Vaccination (Hill) • NHS Staff No Lo
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 4 2020]

    #66397
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    It’s starting to feel like we’re going to need new definitions for “vaccine” as well as for “immunization”.

    It’d probably be a good start if we would just revisit the existing definitions. Too many people seem to equate vaccine with cure, particularly a magic bullet or panacea. It’s not. Certainly doesn’t eliminate or even attack the virus itself. Instead, vaccine basically stimulates the immune system for the virus. Kind of like a sparring partner prepping a boxer for a fight. Problem is that if the boxer (i.e., immune system) isn’t already in good shape via training then it doesn’t matter much what the sparring buddy does. Guy will get crushed in the fight if he hasn’t put in the hours of running, weight training, diet etc.

    A vaccine is basically a way of speeding up herd immunity process, nothing more. The irony is that we’e been actively using lockdowns and social distancing to slow the herd immunity process for almost a year now. Big picture…our approach to this corona virus has been insanely stupid.

    On another note, how can we claim that a vaccine is, for example, 5% effective if we don’t know how many people are already immune to the virus? There is speculation and some anecdotal evidence that as much as 80% of population can avoid infection based on the health of their immune systems with T-cell and antibodies via exposure to previous corona viruses. If we can eliminate 80%o f population from trial studies on that count, then effectiveness of vaccine in protecting vulnerable people drops to what, something more like 50–75%, right?

    And if it sounds like the idea that 80% of people already have effective natural immunity, let’s not forget the Diamond Princess cruise ship debacle. A real nightmare worst case scenario: hundreds of people (may elderly) trapped on a boat, winter weather, shared hvac system, with a brand new virus raging about. And guess what? If you resist the numbers, you’ll see that about 80% of passengers & crew somehow managed to avoid infection.

    #66398
    John Day
    Participant

    https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/12/when-generals-talk.html

    When The Generals Talk, Midnight Oil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqP61lGsXOM

    ​ ​Former national security adviser Michael Flynn promoted a petition Tuesday calling on President Donald Trump to temporarily suspend the U.S. Constitution, declare martial law and order the military to oversee a national re-vote for the 2020 presidential election. The petition, published Tuesday by the Ohio-based non-profit group We The People Convention, said there was “no peaceful way left to preserve our Union” following President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory and urged Trump to exercise his “extraordinary authority” to avert a second civil war.
    “Limited Martial Law is clearly a better option than Civil War!” a letter accompanying the petition states.

    Michael Flynn endorses martial law and national re-vote for president

    ​Military Times is careful to repeatedly deny that there is any validity, while giving a detailed report of the claims made by​ retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney. This is high level scuttlebut. Thanks Travis!
    ​ ​In his unfounded version of events, U.S. special operations forces died in an attack on a CIA computer facility in Germany that was hiding information about a massive, covert effort to flip votes from President Donald Trump to his opponent, Joe Biden.
    ​ ​But even though big Army and U.S. Army Special Operations Command have told Military Times that there was no such attack, or loss of life, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney is sticking by his claims. They became so widely distributed on social media that numerous accounts on Twitter falsely claimed that five soldiers killed in a Sinai helicopter crash were really killed in the firefight with the CIA.
    https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/12/01/this-retired-three-star-falsely-claims-us-soldiers-died-attacking-a-cia-facility-in-germany-tied-to-election-fraud/

    Decorated 3-star general calls on Trump to ‘honor your oath of office’ and protect America from ‘treasonous’ enemies within
    McInerney lays out strategy to defeat deep-state coup plotters
    Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney [U.S. Air Force Retired] said in a no-holds-barred interview that he doesn’t believe the courts are likely to come through for President Trump.
    Decorated 3-star general calls on Trump to ‘honor your oath of office’ and protect America from ‘treasonous’ enemies within

    Michael Flynn endorses martial law and national re-vote for president
    ‘Freedom never kneels except for God’

    Michael Flynn endorses martial law and national re-vote for president

    ​This is not yet confirmed, but holds with Trump’s talk the other night, “most important ever”.
    ​According to multiple senior administration officials, the president intends to invoke the “tremendous powers” of the act to remove illegal immigrants from the country.
    The Insurrection Act, passed by Congress in 1807, allows the president to deploy National Guard and U.S. military troops to combat “rebellion” against the United States of America. The Act has been invoked by other presidents to quell violent uprisings such as the L.A. Riots.

    BREAKING – The Fight For America Begins: Trump To Invoke Insurrection Act That Authorizes National Guard, Military Action Inside U.S. borders

    Dominion Whistleblower Testifies On “Complete Fraud” At Detroit Voting Center
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/dominion-contractor-testifies-complete-fraud-detroit-voting-center

    WATCH: USPS trucker driver says he drove of hundreds of thousands of COMPLETED absentee ballots from New York to Pennsylvania

    WATCH: USPS trucker driver says he drove of hundreds of thousands of COMPLETED absentee ballots from New York to Pennsylvania

    Georgia Gov. Kemp Calls For Signature Audit Following CCTV Footage Of Late-Night Ballot Malarkey
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/georgia-gov-kemp-calls-signature-audit-after-cctv-footage-late-night-ballot-malarkey

    ​Russian news… ​
    Covid-19 was present in America BEFORE being officially confirmed in China, study by US health protection agency says
    https://www.rt.com/usa/508447-coronavirus-us-before-china/

    Rewriting History

    #66399
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Totally predictable, yet a new layer of bald-faced lies:

    “The health body [WHO] issued a new information sheet with the guidelines, but admits that there is “limited evidence” that masks have any effect on stopping the spread of coronavirus.”
    “Van-Tam urged that there will be no opportunity to “have a massive party and throw out our masks and hand sanitiser” now that a vaccine is here.”
    https://summit.news/2020/12/03/uk-government-medical-officer-says-masks-should-be-worn-for-years/

    So let me get this straight: everyone taking the vaccine was going to end the whole Covid/Lockdown problem, but now you’ll take the vaccine and it WON’T end the lockdown/bailout/end of all human rights/Fear/Totalitarian control straight out of “V for Vendetta”?

    Raise your hand if you knew this was 100% going to happen.

    [Raises hand] “Question: if I have to wear a mask and pretend I care about Covid anyway, WHY WOULD I CONSENT TO YOUR VACCINE? It won’t make a bit of difference besides risking unlimited fatal side effects.”

    Second question: “I thought we needed 15 days BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T STOP IT, everyone was going to get it, and you just didn’t want the hospitals overrun. If this is going to be with us forever, are we going to destroy the economy forever, end human rights forever, and end all human contact and society forever?

    But these are rhetorical questions. The answer is of course, yes, yes, and yes. Unless you are the “Very Very Important People” some of whom are “More equal that others.” Then none of the rules apply to you. List here:

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/democrats-keep-getting-caught-breaking-their-own-coronavirus-rules

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/denver-mayor-coronavirus-thanksgiving-flight-b1761985.html

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/16/politics/bill-de-blasio-gym-coronavirus/index.html

    Cuomo having his whole maskless family flown in for Thanksgiving:

    https://abc7.com/la-county-dining-ban-coronavirus-covid-19-supervisor-sheila-kuehl/8402376/

    https://thehill.com/homenews/house/498126-the-14-democrats-who-broke-with-their-party-on-coronavirus-relief-vote (Yes, that was May. No one cares, no one arrested, no one is capable of shame, consequences, or change)

    It’s almost like they think it’s all bulls—t or something.

    I mean: I follow the experts. The WHO guy above just said masks don’t work, citing Denmark among hundreds. CDC experts say schools shouldn’t be closed. Cuomo experts say we should fly for every holiday and see our families. Health Experts say we should eat out at restaurants. Mayors of NY say we should go to the gym. And ALL the governors say we should take off our masks and go get our hair cut.
    I mean, you can’t have more experts than that, right?

    Similar insanity: “Ivy League Librarians Demand A “World Without Policing”
    That is a great idea! I am going to your library right now the take all the books!

    …And does anyone think I’m kidding? Have they been following Minneapolis, the “Defund the Police” endless spike in deadly, violent crime, and now Minnesota’s “We are going to end all prosecutions” initiative? If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on his support. And Paul is really, really busy beaver right now, killing and robbing at leisure.

    Back to at-hand: “Newsom Places California Under 3-Week Stay At Home Order.”…that he knows is totally, completely illegal, totally unconstitutional, and a violation of basic human rights, as decided by the Supreme Court a minute ago. Because they can leave and go to church. AND IN THE SAME LAW, THEY CAN LEAVE AND ASSEMBLE ANY TIME, ANY PLACE, AND IN ANY NUMBER FOR ANY REASON. Peaceably. One Tequila Bar made themselves into a Church for just that purpose. England, I think.

    “Will The Empire Sacrifice the Dollar? (CHS)”

    US$ cracks hard floor on Black Friday, has dropped 4%. BTC is $20k, gold $2k. See? You can print 25% of all dollars ever made in just 6 months and nothing will happen! You can UBI everything, Stimulus everything, pay everyone to stay home and eat bonbons, and history shows this always works out! …What’s that? History says it DOESN’T work out? Don’t be a nattering nabob of negativity, Nancy. Nobel Prize Winners like Krugman say you can all stop working and print “To Infinity…and Beyond!” with no bad effects ever. …As long as you only give it to banks and billionaires. And boy, have we ever. $2T/quarter, 25% of all dollars ever created.

    Yes, US$ down. US Dow up. …For a while. The core currency drops last. People are hiding from bonds and the world in US Stocks, which are now only 5 stocks holding the whole index, most of whom – like Tesla – never made a profit and never will. Does this sound like Cisco/Nortel anyone, where Cisco’s growth rate made it larger than the GDP of the PLANET is just two years? …Yeah that didn’t last either. Remember you could have invested your Nortel Stock in Beer, drink the beer, and the cans would be worth more than Nortel stock.

    Armstrong says, sure they will hide in stocks. But when the currency depreciation reaches losses, foreigners looking at the price in foreign currency will also sell. Suddenly. Like 1987.

    “Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as “Feeding the World” (CP)”

    Ah, how Europe treats the family: with extraction and mass-murder. Then gaslighting and threats. Then lies, plus MORE threats. Then payoffs, blackmail and threats. One big happy family. Of murder, oppression, and hate. Well, at least “La meme chose”

    #66400
    Kimo
    Participant

    Oh, God. As all the fraud claims across battleground states congeal, is it a vain thought that Biden concedes? With a confession from him, perhaps amnesty extended to others that confess? It sure beats what I reading here, today.

    #66403
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Oh, God. As all the fraud claims across battleground states congeal, is it a vain thought that Biden concedes? With a confession from him, perhaps amnesty extended to others that confess? It sure beats what I reading here, today.”

    HAHAHAHAHAHA. Come on man, after 4 years of Russiagate you can’t be serious. I didn’t vote for Trump either time, nor do i think he’ll actually fix anything. Two factions within our .gov are at war. One side is the globalist/great reset type (bushes, clintons, news media, colleges, healthcare) and the other, well i’m not certain yet what the other is for. I do remember hearing in 2016 that Trump was representing the military or some such, but i can’t say for certain. The one faction has ruled for something like 40 years and things have consistently gotten worse in the world. Neither will fix anything, but if the future is SJW politics and censorship and being called a racist/sexist/whatever is fashionable for the day and the other isn’t….. i’ll take the other. You guys want to fix anything (and i’m not certain it really would) you might as well start a 3rd party and stop arguing amongst yourselves.

    #66404
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    y so srs?

    Perhaps a bit of cheering up would do for us:

    O Death

    I see Mr. Flynn is floating some kind of trial ballon. There seems to be a bit of donward vortex appearing now and then in the center of the Great Dismal Swamp. Zuckerberg has donned his Black Lagoon Creature costume. (You call that a codpiece?! I’ve got clitoris enlargement pills bigger than that!) Closet skeletons like those of Clinton keep crawling zombie-like from the crypt despite incessant shushing. China may be this close to being able to thrash our networks with almost invisible ease.

    And, horrors, half the world could get Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine! I don’t want to catch Sputnik vaccine, do you? I wouldn’t want to get sick, and I wouldn’t want to be the person who wrote that headline.

    The word cusp comes to mind. With Hannukah/Solstice/Xmas/New Years as fulcrum. Staying warm with a Santa-beard face mask and a shotgun.

    #66405
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “In his unfounded version of events,”

    How is this unfounded? HE is the source. That doesn’t make it TRUE, but he is alleging, or else his credibility it at stake. …Unlike Anonymous Sources, who practically owns an whole office wing at CNN and NYT now.

    Me: “I declare I ate noodles last night!” Them: “We don’t believe you, you need the NY Times or BuzzFeed to report it from ‘Anonymous sources familiar with your thinking’” Uh huh.

    “invoke the “tremendous powers” of the act to remove illegal immigrants”

    Huh? His press meeting was outlining in painful detail all the allegations of election fraud. In this scenario the people supporting this – by certifying known-bad/contested election results — would be the “Insurrection,” and if true that would be legally correct. That’s what the very next sentence picks up with. You added this why? Is Kemp an illegal immigrant now?

    As far as aaaaaaannnnnnnnnyyyyyything I’ve read, they are trying to remove illegal immigrant votes (being, you know: illegal) not illegal persons. And ALL illegal votes. Like a few ten-thousands improperly voting twice, out of state, from illegal commercial addresses, etc, but 90% of expected frauds are probably Americans if they exist at all.

    “Mayor of Austin, Texas, apologizes for taking Mexico vacation while urging residents to stay home” –MSNBC

    I could keep this up all day with liars, frauds, hypocrites, and fiends, but I’m bored.

    #66406

    “Walking the streets of New York”:
    Beauty and grace are not just a face.

    Last night I watched “Space Seed”, the Star Trek episode that introduced Khan Noonien Singh (played by Ricardo Montalban): Supremely confident, unhesitant, hyper-intelligent, and fictional.

    When I learned about the men in history who took over the world way back in fourth grade, I began to wonder who it would be in my lifetime. It seems to me the world is ripe for a charismatic, brutal, ruthless, megalomaniac to lord over all the groundwork that has been laid by the risk-averse oligarchs. I just don’t see ZuckerB, Bezos, Musk, etal, being able to pull it off. Real nasty wannabes like Kissinger (a horse screeches a whinny in the background any time I type the odious name) and Schwab, and even the Empress of Grudge herself are all too old.
    I suspect that many who may have been smart and psychopathic enough were culled out of the system in grade school, specially educated, and then “perked” into apathy with glitz and meaningless occupations.

    [I’m afraid I am not up on names of oligarchs from other lands, or charismatic young leaders, for that matter.]

    #66409
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Basseterre Kitona: “If we can eliminate 80%o f population from trial studies on that count [already immune], then effectiveness of vaccine in protecting vulnerable people drops to what, something more like 50–75%, right?”

    When Pfizer said its vaccine may be “more than 90% effective” this meant that during the vaccine trial, 8 people (out of 20,000) in the vaccinated group became infected, while 86 people (out of 20,000) in the placebo group became infected, giving an effectiveness of 90.7% (based on the relative risk reduction, not the absolute risk reduction).

    If 80% of these trial participants were already immune prior to this trial, then the non-immune people would be 20% (or 4,000 in each group), and the “effectiveness” based on relative risk reduction to the non-immune people would still be 90.7%

    Imagine a vaccine trial where the entire population of the United States participates, with half the people getting the vaccine and half getting a placebo. If only 86 unvaccinated people (out of 165 million unvaccinated) become infected, while 8 vaccinated people (out of 165 million vaccinated) become infected, then the trial result would still be “more than 90% effective” even though the infection rates are such a tiny percentage of the population.

    To me, these are the more relevant numbers coming out of that Pfizer trial:

    99.57% of the unvaccinated people did not become infected.
    99.96% of the vaccinated people did not become infected.

    Absolute risk reduction = 99.96% – 99.57% = 0.39%

    94 cases in a trial that has enrolled about 40,000 subjects: 8 cases in a vaccine group of 20,000 and 86 cases in a placebo group of 20,000. This yields a Covid-19 attack rate of 0.0004 in the vaccine group and 0.0043 in the placebo group. Relative risk (RR) for vaccination = 0.093, which translates into a “vaccine effectiveness” of 90.7% [100(1-0.093)]. This sounds impressive, but the absolute risk reduction for an individual is only about 0.4% (0.0043-0.0004=0.0039). The Number Needed To Vaccinate (NNTV) = 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just 1 Covid-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them……We’ve already heard that an early effect of the vaccine is “like a hangover or the flu.” Will vaccinees who are later exposed to coronaviruses have more severe illness as a result of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADEI), a known hazard of coronavirus vaccines? Is there squalene in the Pfizer vaccine? If so, will vaccinees be subject to autoimmune diseases, like Gulf War Syndrome and narcolepsy that have been associated with the adjuvant?

    https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4347/rr-4

    #66410

    Maybe I’ll fashion a couple of latex triceps I can slip on my arms for when the military thugs break down my door to jab me with the oh-so-necessary vaccine.
    If I were a health care worker I would be mighty suspicious of being guinea pig prime. Killing off the oldsters is still part of the plan, I think, as it is clear you have NO rights in a care home.
    Who needs to live past seventy-five? /S!

    #66411
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    VACCINE UK

    Given the unknown effects of the Pfizer vaccine it makes sense to use the elderly as guinea pigs.

    I have read that the effects of the second shot can be severe lasting one to three days. It will be interesting to see how the elderly cope.

    I am not sure how many NHS staff were desperate for this novel vaccine!

    #66412
    Mr. House
    Participant

    I thought this was an excellent comment on the great reset over at https://www.ecosophia.net/a-faint-whiff-of-lemonade/#comments that i would share with you.

    “I can’t say as how I plan to do much at all except be as ungovernable as possible, but that’s not so new a habit for me. As for any shiny new rent-seeking scheme, it’s nothing but a wet dream of a doomed elite at this point. Were they succeeding in any way in achieving their delusions of unlimited power, they wouldn’t need to dream up such insane moonshots in the first place.

    The elite are headed downhill quite rapidly, and they have no idea how to stop their descent. That’s when elites always cook up this kind of garbage, in a desperate attempt to turn back the inevitable. Their recent obsession with the word “inevitable” and earlier obsession with “TINA” point out pretty clearly what their overarching fear is — they have no more options, no alternatives; their fate is inevitable.

    Consider that they haven’t been able to birth any sustainable value creation since before “TINA” was in vogue (they’ve been looting and destroying value for quite a long while now.) Their having to mis-label extraction schemes as “Value-Added Taxes”, kinda makes clear what they simply can no longer do — if they were creative enough to add any value, they already would have. Instead, they can only fantasize about looting and destroying everything, like angry toddlers. They really belong in the time-out chair (for several generations) until their offspring can learn to play well with others. I prefer to think of the Great Reset as a shrieking tantrum of our diapered elite, wailing against the very long nap they’re way overdue for.

    Their big propaganda push for their lemonade future is certainly designed to discourage us commoners into a state of stunned despair. But, so far, I haven’t see that playing out as hoped for, especially given the snowballing disregard granted anything coming out of their favored propaganda outlets. The elite are too sheltered and cocooned — all-powerful toddlers that they are — to have any awareness that their messages are only connecting with their own faithful, the low-level PMCs and their wannabes. Inside the elite’s echo chamber, their Great Reset reverberates more like the first move in an upcoming purity purge. Anyone who doesn’t kowtow properly to the elite’s insanely unachievable delusions will get jettisoned from their rapidly shrinking circle of fanatics!! Tremble you mere mortals!!!

    That’s somehow supposed to scare us all into groveling obedience, which will then turn their unachievable delusions achievable. Yes, they really are that uncreative. Worrying about their apocalyptic nightmare somehow magically becoming our reality is the despairoin they hope to get us hooked on. Avoid it by contemplating the delusional supposition their whole mythology rests on: that you can keep looting rent out of people you have already bankrupted.

    All the rent seeking they have already inflicted has led to uncontainable populist backlash. If they can’t even manage the fledgling resistance to the current imbalanced state, how on earth are they going to control our universal rage once they try to squeeze more blood out of that stone? Perhaps by telling us adorable fairy tales about how, when they finally steal everything, we’ll just love it? I could tell them a few fairy tales that don’t end anywhere near that happily…”

    #66413
    zerosum
    Participant

    A big problem …. math

    #66414
    Mr. House
    Participant

    @Johnday

    Just saw an article on business insider talking about 4 generals who have embraced “bizarre” Trump conspiracies, which leads me to believe they might actually be true. 4 years of russiagate never once called a conspiracy, anything trump says= conspiracy. Get out the popcorn, perhaps Gina haspel has been arrested.

    #66415
    Dr. D
    Participant

    U.S. Attempts to mass-murder their citizens:

    “Mayor Garcetti Bans Walking As Latest LA Lockdown Begins”

    “All travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit is prohibited, subject to the exceptions in Paragraph V…”

    So much for that “food” thing. Because sure, you can GET food, but the rules don’t allow them to DELIVER food. Or fix the trucks, the coolers, the registers, the doorways, sanitize the floors…

    But according to the Supreme Court — you know, yesterday — you only need to be going to a Bible study. For 10. At your friend’s house. With beer.

    But murdering those 100k sure will be Green. Super carbon-efficient. And I can throw plastic out of my Lear jet all day.

    #66416
    Dr. D
    Participant

    That Eco-comment is Fab. Every word.

    #66417
    christopher cobb
    Participant

    “How does Sputnik V differ from the Pfizer “vaccine”?

    one difference is that Russia has been researching rna vaccines for decades.

    another is the Russian vaccine is less than $10 a pop. Pfizer is $20. again Russia has been studying rna vaccines for decades without a massive profit seeking motive.

    #66418
    WES
    Participant

    Hey, don’t you know that after the first 100 days of Biden’s administration the virus will disappear?

    And there was no election fraud!

    You need to get with the program!

    #66419
    WES
    Participant

    New Math

    O.K. Since I took some engineering math, you know like last century, how would you like to take your chances crossing the bridge I just designed using drug dealer math!

    My bridge is guaranteed @95.6%!

    What odds do you get that you can cross my bridge and arrive at the other end alive??????

    #66420
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    How do vaccines work?
    Pfizer and Moderna use a technology known as mRNA. When it is introduced, the human body begins to produce proteins similar to those of the virus. This triggers an immune response. Visipess Insiders writes that previously mRNAs were not used for the development of approved vaccines.
    This type of advanced biotechnology scales data and opens up new avenues for vaccine development.
    “If this works, it is quite possible that this will be the last pandemic in human history,” said ThePrint editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta.
    The Russian Sputnik V vaccine belongs to the “older generation”. It uses the adenovirus protein-a weakened cold virus-just like the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine. The vaccine uses two adenoviruses-Ad5 and Ad26. Having two vectors is better than one, because if the body rejects one for some reason or it doesn’t last long enough, there will still be another one left.
    All three vaccines require two inoculations from the patient. Moderna is introduced at intervals of one month, Pfizer — at intervals of three weeks, and Sputnik V — at intervals of two to three weeks.
    I lost the link to the above…sorry…

    Pfizer and Moderna use a technology known as mRNA.

    There seem to be serious concerns among a number of researchers and doctors concerning the mRNA and its interaction with human DNA. From what I’ve read; no thank you…

    …and I’m 75+ and would enjoy a few more years, given I’m still in good health thank you….

    #66421
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    WES: “My bridge is guaranteed @95.6%!”

    This means that out of the 165 million people who didn’t use your bridge to get across the water, one thousand of them fell in the water (we don’t know whether they got hurt, or if they only got a little wet), but more than 99.999% of these 165 million people got across the water okay without even getting wet.

    Meanwhile, 165 million other people did use your bridge, and 44 of them fell into the water when the bridge failed. We don’t know how badly those people got hurt, either, but because of the experimental materials used to make the bridge, everyone using the bridge has an unknown risk of developing a serious illness, sometime in the future, as a result of crossing the bridge.

    In addition, a good proportion of the 165 million people who used the bridge will shortly afterward experience some fatigue, muscle pain, and headache from coming in contact with the experimental materials.

    #66422
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Bridge “effectiveness” in that example
    = 1 – (44/1000) = 0.956 = 95.6%

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