VietnamVet
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To reduce risks, mRNA vaccines should be injected only into persons who never have been infected with coronavirus. This is a sensible statement but the real world intervenes.
Pfizer and Moderna would lose millions of dollars if the minimum 21% of Americans modeled to be already infected aren’t jabbed. A cheap quick accurate antibody test is needed to detect COVID-19 infected (asymptomatic and recovered) before the injection. Not to mention a cheap quick accurate antigen test to determine who is presently shedding the virus. Sixteen months into the pandemic and there are no such tests plus no universal testing in the West. This would cut into the profits of private testing laboratories.
If everyone is tested, there must be safe free quarantine locations for the contagious. Contact tracers to find who else was exposed. Healthcare for all to treat the ill. School and work bubbles. Job guarantees to end homelessness and the unrest.
The Establishment won’t fund this. The pandemic makes them richer. They are going to ride it out by continuing their ‘divide and conquer’ reign.
Very Interesting times. Joe Biden is taking Dick Nixon’s path out of war. Good luck with that.
“Pfizer CEO says third Covid vaccine dose likely needed within 12 months”
Yes, there is a pandemic. Left uncontrolled the USA will be the northern Brazil.
The West is being subjected to a full blown private/public PR campaign to sell mRNA vaccines. The problem is that it isn’t working. Fox News raises the efficacy question. AstraZeneca’s and J & J’s bio-engineered spike DNA gene incorporated into incompetent adenovirus jabs are paused due to blood clotting with low platelet counts in young women. The variants appear to have flanked herd immunity. With 23.1 percent of Americans vaccinated and one models calculating of another 21.5% have contracted COVID-19 plus warmer longer days, there should not be a possible fourth spike underway. It is clear to me that the coronavirus vaccines alone will not control the pandemic in the USA.
For-profit medicine has tied the hands of healthcare providers. Cheap effective treatments are gaslighted. Messaging, testing, and contact tracing is a debacle. There are half-ass lockdowns to keep hospitals open but no safe effective paid quarantines of travelers or of the infected. No work or school bubbles.
The only way to assure an end of the pandemic is to use the public health policies that are working in Asia and Island nations with a unified national command and control. The 50 state departments of health have failed. The wealth and skills of all Americans working together are needed to defeat the virus.
V.A.
You are correct. Instead of messenger RNA that enters the cell and directs protein synthesis; AstraZeneca, Sputnik V and Johnson and Johnson vaccines are adenoviruses that are engineered. The coronavirus spike gene is inserted directly into the virus’s genetic material. My error.
“Unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which store the instructions in single-stranded RNA, Sputnik V uses double-stranded DNA.”
The modified virus after injection enter the cell’s nucleus to modify the genes like viruses do to reproduce themselves but instead they produce mRNA that then directs the assembly of the spike protein by the cell.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/health/johnson-johnson-covid-19-vaccine.htmlBesides old age, I also blame omissions and confusion in the media that appears to be intentional.
Wes
A quick google search indicates that China is developing a traditional inactivated whole-virion SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Yes, a whole virus should give more proteins/folds for the immune system to recognize and attach/attack. Reducing the variant problem.
The basic design problem with gene therapy is triggering an effective immune response for a viral protein structure that also does not occur naturally in humans for both sexes for a lifetime. The immune system attacking unique cancer tumor proteins, for example, is not a problem. A few more years is better than none.
All of the current coronavirus vaccines (including Sputnik V) are mRNA gene therapies that act the same way as a virus but have been engineered by humans to cross the cell membrane and take over the cell’s protein assembly process to make snippets of the coronavirus spike protein that then passes into the circulatory system to trigger an immune system. To get mRNA inside the cell there are two techniques, lipid capsules used by Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and all the others which took a “viral vector” approach. AstraZeneca took a chimpanzee adenovirus — a common cold — and spliced in the same spike protein genetic sequence from the coronavirus into it. Sputnik V uses a human adenovirus. There are discussions of using AstraZeneca’s and Sputnik V together.
This is a technology that was available to meet a money-making need caused by government failure to control the pandemic but it hasn’t been fully tested for long-term efficacy or safety.
Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines are showing the similar severe blood clotting syndrome in young women with seven deaths reported out of millions injected. The virus vector used by both vaccines is an adenovirus, a common type of virus that typically causes mild cold symptoms when it infects someone rather than lipid capsules used by Pfizer and Moderna jabs. Earlier human clinical trials have tested viral vector vaccines against Zika, influenza, HIV and malaria, among other viruses. Apparently without this clotting reaction. However, COVID-19 in severe infections has profound affect attacking blood vessels, clotting the alveoli in the lungs, cutting off oxygen. Being a Biologist before I retired, I wouldn’t be surprised if the body’s reactions to coronavirus and mRNA injections are interrelated. They just weren’t detected due to the warp speed emergency use vaccine approval without the long-term studies being finished.
A vaccine acceptance required because western governments are too corrupt and incompetent to go on an immediate war footing and implement national public health procedures that would have prevented coronavirus from becoming endemic in Europe and the Americas unlike the Asian and Island nations which averted it. In the USA there is no alternative to the mRNA jabs. Americans must make the risk benefit decision on getting injected in a politicized dysphoria. There is absolutely no intention of providing public healthcare for all or ending the PR campaign to maintain the status quo for-profit system.
COVID-19 is real and it is here to stay. If left alone, the endemic will resemble Brazil. Society falls apart without income, security, education and healthcare. On the opposite pole are virus free nations that are fighting imported outbreaks; China, Australia, Thailand, South Korea and Island nations. In the middle is the West; incompetent/corrupt and lying about it. Western rulers must. All that matters to them is money not the people.
mRNA vaccines were approved for emergency use on the basis that they prevent severe infections and death in short-term less than a year-long trials. More information awaits studies of the over 100 million humans already jabbed for long term effectiveness and safety data. Doc Robinson is keeping us updated. But there seems to be a dearth of studies recently. Likely because mRNA vaccines are not a panacea. The only thing known to work are old fashion public health procedures (universal testing, bubbles, contact tracing and quarantines) that require consent of the governed and using resources, labor and capital that only a functional nation can command to eradicate the virus.
‘Vaccine hesitancy’ is understandable. When injected the individual is taking a risk that benefits the community and becomes resistant to a disease that one may never be exposed to. Generally, in the past, adults/parents consented to this. But plagues are back. The measles outbreaks in the USA are within the anti-vaxx population or the home taught who skipped a public education and being forced to be vaccinated.
The coronavirus pandemic is the direct result of failed governments. There is no alternative to mRNA jabs. The chances of being exposed to diseases are increasing for those who reject vaccination. Ultimately this is a response to money being the only measure of value in the West — the dismantling of democracy and devolving communities back into ethnic tribes.
It is a package deal, public health, public education, good governance, and a better society go together. The nouveau riche will not pay for this. They are profiteers. As a result — war, famine, and the plague are again ravaging the world.
Coronavirus is parasitic messenger RNA that first appears to have originated in arthropods (insects etc.) and diversified from there. If the host can avoid contact with the pathogen, they don’t get sick. Some are unavoidable and human beings adapted to survive. Others, gut bacteria, are beneficial and necessary to digest food and produce vitamins. “Quarantine” is from the Venetian language meaning 40 days.
The coronavirus pandemic is real but it is nothing new. Not as deadly as Spanish flu or the Black Plague, but it kills; especially the elderly and is highly contagious. Hot Spots overwhelm for-profit hospitals. What is very human is forgetting the lessons from the past and using it to make money.
The top five nations with the most deaths; USA, Brazil, Mexico, India and UK are by definition failed states. These governments could not protect their citizens from the plague. They all are addicted plutocracies. Say what you want. But Island, Asian, and South Pacific nations have controlled coronavirus. The USA and Canada could control the virus also the exact same way. But mRNA jabs are not enough to eradicate it. This requires the restoration of good governance and national public health systems.
The Coronavirus Pandemic illustrates the slow-motion collapse of the Western Empire. The first job of government is to protect its people against war, plague, and famine. Washington DC failed. It is not a coincidence that a new Green Zone circles the Capitol. It also cannot be ignored that the Empire’s wars have come home. Both US political/business parties are complicit with the military occupations of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
Although censored by social media, Moon of Alabama’s post and link are relevant:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/Fake democracy is at a breaking point. If the vaccine campaign likely fails and a US national public health system is stillborn, if the Central American famine remains unaddressed, or if a World War erupts to challenge China’s, Russia’s, and Iran’s resistance to the current global financial system; a new Dark Age is inevitable for the survivors in the Americas and Europe.
I have yet to see a good graphic of Western Plutocracy with all the wealth and power concentrated with a very few rich global families at the top and the masses below having less and less.
I’ve seen it mentioned once but the reason so many children are risking death to cross the southern US border are the two hurricanes that hit Central America last year and famine stalking them.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/3/22/22335816/border-crisis-migrant-hurricane-eta-iota
Government has done nothing to alleviate it. Joe Biden won’t force the children back into Mexico.My analogy is that modern Civilization is a Temple held up by finance, business, politics, military, science, education, agriculture, transportation and engineering pillars overseen by Priests and Mandarins. The problem is that finance has been allowed by the overseers to parasitize all the others and is passing wealth to itself weakening the rest to the point of collapse.
COVIED-19 pandemic has become a means to enrich the pharmaceutical industry. This is needlessly causing the loss of life in nations without functional public health systems. It is culling of the hapless in nations that have no intention of implementing universal testing, contact tracing, and safe/free quarantines. The for-profit vaccines could fail due to mutant variants, an unknown long-term adverse reaction, short term immunity, jab avoidance due to cost/fear, and semi-annual booster shots.
This is finally seeping into the politician’s consciousness. The US Capitol is not safe. They are failing to protect the lives, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of Americans. Economic distribution must be equable. Or it all falls apart.
I readily admit that I am speculating. But since the Caribbean Plantation Capitalists re-seized power in the USA starting in the 1980s; all that matters is money. In other words, it is everyone for themselves. “There’s no such thing as society”. The West is an Empire ruled by global Oligarchs using ethnic divide and conquer tactics to make more money and to stay in power.
Corporate media were never were paragons of the truth but at least Walter Cronkite said the Vietnam War was unwinnable and for that he was retired at age 65. We are all “Green Zone” watchers speculating who is still in power and who has been photoshopped out, silenced. Matt Taibbi, 51, who first reported in Moscow on the shock treatment of Russia that led to the rise of Vladimir Putin, depends on the kindness of internet clickers.
The coronavirus pandemic is real and has killed half a million Americans. But it is clearly being exploited to make big money for the Pharmaceutical Industry and the Connected. Jeff Bezos has never been richer than today. We are the targets of a public/private PR campaign to sell coronavirus gene therapy.
mRMA vaccines work but the long term affects are unknown and they are almost guaranteed not to eradicate coronavirus due to the virus being endemic, mutation and vaccine reluctance/expense. AstraZeneca’s has blood clotting issues in young women. Semi-annual jabs will be needed for variants and to boost immunity.
It is possible to isolate in suburbia in the USA and not be exposed to coronavirus. Except this life is nerve racking. It is like being in a war zone with an invisible enemy but without the explosions. It damn sure is not sustainable. This is why national public health programs to eradicate coronavirus are needed in the Americas and Europe. Plus they will prepare the nations for future pandemics. It can be done. Public Health Systems are working right now in the virus free nations across the globe.
The basic human problem is putting yourself in another person’s shoes; especially, when your livelihood depends on fitting in.
Coming back to CDC’s weekly number of deaths and the reality they reflect, what policies should be implemented?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htmAt the last peak in early January there where 20,000 US weekly deaths above the statistical average. The striking fact ignored by corporate media but pointed out by Doc Robinson is the weekly average on March 20th is 20,000 deaths below average, the lowest level on the chart. To me this is due to 54 million Americans fully vaccinated, natural immunity, and empty cubicles in office buildings – lockdowns still in effect.
But European and Midwest and Northeast US States (i.e. Michigan) are seeing an increase in hospitalizations. France is going into lockdown again. This must be due to coronavirus being endemic and the mutation of new variants that are more contagious plus society reopening. The lockdowns outside of Asia and the South Pacific work (they’ve controlled seasonal flu) but are inadequate to control coronavirus. They are imposed anyway to alleviate the overcrowded in the for-profit healthcare system. Western rulers have no interest in building more hospitals or doing what is necessary to eradicate the virus. A very strict quarantine that would stop coronavirus transmission would halt everything for two months. The basic problem is the status quo does not work. Vaccines alone will not eliminate the virus without repeated semiannual jabs and addressing vaccine avoidance. If the virus runs wild, like Brazil, there will be repeated shutdowns, illness and death in variant hot spots until it mutates to coexist with its host. Or nations can go on a war footing with a comprehensive public health programs (strong borders, democracy, and healthcare for all) to end coronavirus transmission, eradicate it completely, and rejoin the virus free world.
Implementing a comprehensive campaign to defeat coronavirus would also assure that the next pandemic isn’t a disaster even worse than the current one.
madamski,
Seasonal flu and coronaviruses are two different pathogens.
Aside from increasing corporate profit margins at the expense of the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens, the greatest failing of governments across Europe and the Americas is the belief that the viruses are similar. From the Diamond Princess petri-dish on, it was clear that the coronavirus is deadly to the old and infirm, 14 died on the ship. Also, the virus is highly contagious; around 75% of passengers and crew were infected and around 40% were asymptomatic. Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Brix did not grasp the difference. They could not. Their positions and salary required it – profits over lives.
What New Zealand and Australia are doing to control the virus is what necessary to eradicate the virus in the rest of the world; universal testing, contact tracing, closing international and internal state borders around hot spots, safe paid quarantines, and bubbles for work and school. The USA, UK, Belgium, Brazil etc. do not have functional governments that can do this. France is going into a fourth lockdown.
Coronavirus is transmitted by aerosols; apparently not by fomites. Much stricter public health measures are required for coronavirus than with the seasonal flu. Another failing is testing. A cheap paper test (like a pregnancy test) is still not available for the simple reason it disrupts laboratory and clinician money making schemes. Also, there is insufficient population and variant testing.
If everyone uses the antigen test to see that they are not infectious before going out in public for two months, the virus would be eradicated. This requires governments going on a war footing (It is disruptive and expensive) plus trust in people and democracy. This is why the pandemic response in the West has failed to date.
Yes, coronavirus vaccines work. They prevent hospitalization and death. They were rushed into use because they make money and there is no alternative in the Western Empire. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is being limited to over 55 in Europe due blood clotting issues. This is not unexpected since there are no long term animal tests with the mRNA jabs.
The vaccines do hinder the transmission of coronavirus. But there are positive tests in vaccinated populations. Apparently there is around a 10% transmission rate for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and 50% for AstraZeneca.
The vaccines will not eradicate the virus by themselves. The unvaccinated in Europe and the Americas will be at risk for long haul COVID and death including catching it from the vaccinated.
“Imminent doom” is an apt term for the bleak future where variants keep mutating and there are more and more victims of the private/public information campaign to sell vaccine jabs without providing public health care for all.
I agree excess death and life expectancy data are important. The statistical average is cyclic due to mostly seasonal flu and winter depression. But the coronavirus mitigations implemented so far have eliminated seasonal flu. Clearly the spikes last year and at the beginning of this year are due to the pandemic. Like all statistics, the graph Doc Robinson posted could be massaged. There is a lot of pressure to keep the failing for-profit healthcare system intact. Hospital mistakes, lack of health insurance, and Opioid Addiction kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. But only medical care for all will reduce these numbers. These graphs are science-based data from science orientated institutions unlike unemployment figures. They indicate that if coronavirus is eradicated the number of deaths will decrease.
Nations in Asia and South Pacific document that national public health programs work but it is a constant battle to contain outbreaks that people carry in country across the borders. Vaccines alone are appearing more and more unlikely to control the pandemic. Impending Doom is appropriate. Deaths are starting to climb in the USA despite the vaccine injections. Unless coronavirus transmission is stopped, the Americans and Europe are facing an endemic that will last far into the future with new variant hot spots breaking out sporadically. After much illness and pain on these continents, humans and coronavirus will mutate to coexist together like the four other common colds. Or on the other hand, democratic government and functional national health programs can be implemented today in the USA, EU and Canada to eliminate the virus and restore the people’s health.
AstraZeneca vaccine reduced transmission by some 50%. Since this uses a virus instead of a lipid capsule to get the mRNA inside the cell to produce spike protein to trigger an immune reaction, the reduction in transmission from the other gene treatments will likely be similar. Russian Roulette has better odds.
There is one big lie that permeates the West. “Government works”. Democracy died before the Iraq Invasion. In nations with functional governments, public health procedures work and the transmission of the virus is stopped – 0%. The virus is eradicated and people can work and play smartly but it is a constant battle to contain new outbreaks that come in over the borders. Unless democracy is restored in the West with universal testing, contact tracing, work and school bubbles, plus safe paid quarantines, the coronavirus endemic will never be controlled in the Americas and Europe.
Nobody knows the risk of going out in public in the USA. If pandemic continues with new variants plus the real risks of long haul COVID and death together with no jobs, no homes, no medical/dental care; unrest is certain.
V.A.
Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of the last American combat troops out of Vietnam. That war was so full of delusions, it never could have been won. But a major one is that there is no clash of civilizations. The lowland paddy farmers dove the Hmong into the mountains. The Vietnamese drove the Cambodians out. There is a Cambodian temple near the airfield I few in and out of that I saw from the back of a four by four. The Vietnamese defeated the French and then American colonists with Chinese and Russian help. Later Vietnam fought China to a draw that ended their occupation of Cambodia. The Burmese ethnic cleanse Muslim Rohingya. There is a southern divide between Thais and Malays. Fifty years ago, there were race riots in Malaysia and Singapore.
Never for a second, do American rulers admit that the intent of the clash of the NATO with Russia/China/Iran is to keep the western colonial capital empire intact.
I am so old I think history rhymes. The coronavirus pandemic response shows the degree that the global financial elite will go not to have to pay for governmental public health systems to save the lives of Americans or to keep the EU together. They will risk Armageddon for a few more dollars.
USA, EU, Mexico and Brazil prove that the pandemic is real. Coronavirus is endemic in these regions and variants are arising that predominate. News from Israel of the effect of mRNA gene therapy on the transmissibility of coronavirus has become silent lately. It is true that for the original genome, the jabs are effective at preventing COVID-19 illness but a certain unknown percentage of mRNA treated patients are asymptomatic and transmit the virus to others. Semi-annual jabs are likely for those who can afford them to stay out of the for-profit hospital system due to the variants and declining immunity.
The tragedy in the West is that the ruling ideology, a combination of ignorance, greed and hubris, aborted an effective response of the pandemic. The control of coronavirus requires both population immunity (vaccines) and suppression of virus transmission by public health measures. Effective public health measures were never implemented in the Western Empire except in Asia and the South Pacific nations. Public Health is heresy for neoliberals. Dr. Deborah Brix says only 100,000 should have died from the first wave in the USA. Actually, if the USA closed all its international borders (including city and state borders around hot spots) fourteen months ago and implemented the public health procedures that work in New Zealand and Australia; only around 11,000 Americans would have died in the pandemic, not 562,524.
This post seems mostly about racism. Cultural and ethnic differences are real. Civilization and society are real. Racism is real. Human beings are genetically imprinted to distrust those who look different than their tribe. Skin color is easy to pick out. But the reason it predominates now is that western politicians use it to divide the population to keep control of the fake democracy and earn millions of dollars from speaker fees, revolving door jobs, and insider trading.
Charging $2,000 Canadian Loonies at Pearson Airport for a two-week quarantine hotel room is the tip-off. Canada is just as infested with neoliberalism as the rest of the West. Whoever is directing the coronavirus response in the Americas and Europe is only concerned about money. Public Health is ignored, forbidden, discarded. The only certainty is the rich will get richer and the poor poorer. Lockdowns were instituted so hospitals could keep functioning and make money. Corporate Media is looking here and there, especially at ethnic incitement, to avoid the obvious — Western Governments have failed.
I think deep down, the global rulers think this pandemic is another flu and shortly will go away instead of becoming endemic across the world like HIV which killed around 32.7 million humans but is treatable by taking lifetime antivirals. However, the gene-therapy vaccines could fail, or immunity is too limited, and without new effective antivirals, variant coronavirus outbreaks could continue to overflow healthcare systems and close economies in hot-spots.
There is a reason Plague is one of the Four Horsemen.
Left and Right are meaningless now. If used, it indicates an agenda. Drs. Deborah Brix and Anthony Fauci are neither left, right or moderate. They are fixers. They join need with money and get a cut for their services. Dr. Fauci is reported to earn the highest US government salary. But, no doubt at 80, he thinks that he is too important consigliere to retire.
The EU and “the free movement of people, goods, services and capital” may wrap themselves with goodness and state that this prevented another European War but, in the end, they serve only one master – money. The Ukraine War may get very hot very shortly. Government and strong borders are the only protection people have from robber barons, plague, famine, and war. But since the 1980s Reagan/Thatcher counter-revolt, democracies and working governments are no more. Western nation states simply bundle money to move to billionaires and corporations.
The US federal government, the European Union, and the World Health Organization are incapable of planning and implementing basic public health procedures to protect human life. Money making vaccines are their only counter to the coronavirus pandemic.
It is time for retrospectives. I am one of the believers; otherwise, a year of going stir crazy was for nothing.
Medscape; “Year of COVID: Everything We Thought We Knew Was Wrong”:
March 2020: No Need to Panic. The Flu Is Worse
March 2021: It’s Worse Than the FluMarch 2020: Masks Aren’t Necessary
March 2021: Consider Wearing TwoMarch 2020: Asymptomatic Spread Is Rare
March 2021: 40% of New Cases Come from People Without SymptomsMarch 2020: We Don’t Think the Virus Is a Threat to Young People
March 2021: Sadly, No.March 2020: We Don’t Think the Virus Stays in the Air for Long
March 2021: Check Your CO2 Levels and Ventilate Because This Virus Definitely Hangs Around in the Air”WaPo; “Unraveling the mystery of Europe’s uneven Covid surges”:
There were three waves; first waves (Italy, Spain, Belgium), deferred waves (Sweden, Germany) and latecomers (Bulgaria, Greece). “…a virus that is not very easily modeled.”The USA had all three waves. Reality is explainable. The differences between nations are actually due to how society and government reacted to the pandemic. But the ruling western neoliberal ideology says that the only thing that matters is money and markets. “There’s no such thing as society”. Nations that closed their borders were saved from the first wave. European nations are diminished by the EU, unlike Australia or New Zealand. They were unprepared and unable to halt later transmission of coronavirus with working public health procedures of contract tracing, universal testing, and safely isolating the infected. An earlier example of a European government being unable to cope was Greece being forced into austerity because the state was not powerful enough to escape the Eurozone.
The US, Mexican, and Brazilian governments also are incapable of controlling the virus’s transmission. Everything depends on the mRNA vaccines doing what these nations’ public health services cannot do. It is astonishing, the lure of money, keeping the Empire running, all demand that the truth not be told.
V.A.
I use the term “little people” because it is disturbing but it also accurately reflects the attitude of top-class billionaires like Leona Helmsley, who said “We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes”.
One of the offshoots of all the money spent to deny the restoration of the global, new money, aristocracy (neoliberalism) by funding Think Tanks, Universities and Politicians is that there is no acceptable English term for the Western Empire’s new-world-order rulers. “Elite”, for me, is OK but, yes, it is too broad of a term. “Brahmin” is close but it is already in use to describe high caste Indians and Boston Elite. “Aristocracy” is archaic.
What Joe Biden does is in the best interests of these billionaire Plutocrats. He will try to placate the American people to keep the system going a little bit longer. MAGA voters on January 6th wanted to topple it.
As pointed out before, your world view depends if you can see the Corporate run Matrix or if you can’t.
Despite the headline being repeated over and over in this post, on January 6, 2021 one shot was fired within the US Capitol. It killed Ashli Babbitt, age 35.
One world view states that the Texas deaths and freeze damage are due to centralized government forcing green wind power onto the power grid. Reality is just the opposite. To make money and provide cheaper energy, deregulated corporations installed unwinterized wind turbines and did not provide for guaranteed backup power for when the wind stops like in a deep freeze which last happened in Texas in 2011.
The Pandemic is the ultimate matrix. Too much money is extracted from the privatized for-profit healthcare system (17.7% of GDP) for the USA to restore healthcare for all and implement a national public health system to halt the transmission of coronavirus like Asia or the South Pacific nations did. The cost in little people’s lives is of no concern in the plutocracy. 105.7 million doses have been administered in the USA. Any short term or intermediate adverse responses would have shown up by now. The long-term effects are still unknown. If you are elderly, the benefits of hugging your grandkids in two weeks may out weight the risks of going out in public and getting jabbed now.
On my Honda drive today to see if it still works, News Radio huffed and puffed about Joe Biden forgetting the Defense Secretary’s name and wondering if a fit energetic Kamala Harris wouldn’t be better for the nation. This station takes the Foreign Establishment’s Syria, Ukraine, Libya, and Iraq propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
I feel for Joe, he is a year older than me. My short term memory is gone. Did I take that last pill or not? But there is a bigger problem, cognitive dissonance. Joe is the Last Emperor. Way back in the Reagan Administration, I acknowledged that I didn’t get RIFed (Reduction in Force) because corporations thought that safety testing and government approval was important and it kept the competitors from entering the market place.
Now that corporations have consolidated into a few multi-nationals and have bought the democracies, safety testing and planning for the future are no longer needed. All that matters is this quarter’s profit (not the millions of humans dead from the weather, plague, war or famine). Life is so bad that the kids are being sent across the Southern US border by themselves. War and economic refugees drown in the Mediterranean Sea.
Since the pandemic, things are not the same in the West. The points in this post are valid but cannot be acknowledged. The Green Zone protects the US Capitol.
If Joe Biden is removed out of office by the 25th amendment, it will be the 75 million MAGA Nationalists against the top 5% Globalists led by Kamala Harris. There is no compromise possible. They don’t live on the same world. Chaos is about to engulf the Americas. But, the US Senate Republican Minority Leader says the economy is just about to come roaring back.
What is the truth?
The gene therapy of lipid encased mRNA taking over the cell’s protein assembly process to make coronavirus spike protein to flood the body to induce an immune response does appear to be a sledge hammer approach. My gut feeling is that without animal safety data this is taking a real unknown risk. Hundreds of millions of humans are Guinea Pigs. Adding to the unease is the lack of trust that corporate media would honestly report any adverse events.
There was a conscious high level Western Establishment decision to accelerate at warp speed the development and marketing of profit-making gene therapy and call it a vaccine. The governmental public health responsibility to eliminate the transmission of the virus by closing of the borders, universal testing, contact tracing, structuring work and school bubbles, and safe quarantines is ignored.
There wasn’t a second thought. Profits are more important. In fact, only functional governments protect their people from war, famine, and the plague. The loss is self-evident now in the Americas and Europe.
I have found the hardest thing about old age is the brain sees what it wants to see. I read that this is also a problem with youngsters who are raised watching smart phones. Charter schools kept open and public education closed does not help. It is frustrating how in the West public health procedures that prevent the transmission of coronavirus were dumped in a time of plague without a peep. Too many sick and dead, unsafe behavior, corporations making more money, and ignoring reality reflect the failure of government and the end of democracy — a Woke Plutocracy. This is what yesterday’s post “The Trial of Winnie the Pooh” illuminates so well.
The new corona outbreak in the vaccinated B.C. care center basically says that the virus is not going away, just like the other common colds. Vaccinated Vulnerables are at risk, if not from death, then long haul COVID. Stopping the transmission of the virus is proven to work. The Western for-profit healthcare system that makes its money from treating the sick, not preventing illness, is and will continue to be an utter failure.
Ben Franklin stated the fact; “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Winterize Texas natural gas facilities this summer before more Texans die in the next Polar Vortex. Prevention works but cuts into corporate profits.
A functional national public health system that cares for all Americans is needed now. Safely isolate the infected. Require universal testing. Contact trace the virus. Form work and school bubbles. Find and fund alternative treatments. Universal healthcare will cost less than the current system, if professional administrators are cut out of the scheme.
Jail corporate criminals. Thirty-eight Tyson Foods meat packers died from coronavirus — “twice as many deaths as any other meatpacking company”.
Government by and for the people must be restored.
This post is so true. Our minds do not like uncertainty. My old brain hates change.
Messenger RNA dispersed in lipids and injected into humans is a new way to induce an immune reaction. Different from traditional vaccines that use live or killed viruses. This raises toxicity and immune response concerns since these formulations have not been tested in laboratory animals (which takes years). Gene therapy has been used to treat cancer where long-term effects are not of particular concern. The dengue fever vaccine failed after injection because if infected with one of the three wild variants, the vaccine caused severe adverse reactions. The mRNA vaccines could be produced now and increase corporate profits, and hopefully return the economy to normal. The risks are ignored and the media disparages anyone who points out the uncertainty.
My take is fairly simple. The billionaires and multinational corporations simply do not want to pay for a functional national public health system that can control the virus as proven in Asia, New Zealand and Australia. This would make government supreme over global big business, once again. Ending their ability to take profit over lives. The establishment simply does not care that half a million Americans have died, so far. As a result, the Western Empire (US, UK & EU) has been shown to be so corrupt and incompetent that it will not survive the pandemic intact. There is a reason there is a Green Zone around the US National Capitol.
One wonders at the cognitive dissonance. The Green Zone in DC serves the same purpose as the Green Zone in Baghdad; it is to protect the Occupier’s government. It keeps the money flowing solely through Wall Street, not anywhere else. The propaganda and scapegoating of others has gone to such an extreme to keep this hidden. But it is impossible in a middle of the pandemic when the US public health system has failed. The only thing that will save the new world order is the three warp speed vaccines working despite, at the same time, the for-profit healthcare system (17.7% of the US GDP) purposefully exploits the ill.
The Congressional hearings on the Storming of the Capitol are ignoring the elephant in the room just like all of the earlier US government failures. The Plutocrats and their Overseers simply do not want government to work except to increase their own personnel wealth.
Insiders simply cannot conceive that Outsiders (non-corporate/state actors) could attack the Twin Towers or the Capitol. In reality, there have been numerous blowbacks since the proclamation of the Carter Doctrine, arming of Islamic Radicals, globalization, outsourcing of middle class jobs, or intensifying ethnic hatreds (Woke Identity Politics). Ultimately, the global top class will never admit that corporate profits outweigh the deaths of little people. They can bank on it and avoid jail too.
There is a direct correlation of the failure of national public health systems in the Americas and Europe and the number of COVID-19 deaths. Donald J Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci together with supporting players are responsible for the failure of the US public health system and the death of 531,652 Americans to date.
I second the question about Mexico being in a major war. I last vacationed there 30 years ago. There was no major war. I’ve been there and seen one. But I did see Huey helicopters parked in an open field used in drug raids. Senator Ted Cruz took an aborted tour of the war zone a couple weeks ago. The Establishment cannot admit that a major war is ongoing within the Americas with Drug Cartels. They finance Wall Street. The USA is a major market. Plus, this is how the connected earn their bribes and bonuses.
If drums start beating for a war in the Americas, then the Corporate/State Generals will have to start talking about winning “hearts and minds” and “pacification” – not just in Mexico but the Elite will include the seditionists in “El Norte” (the 75 million MAGA voters and roughly 40 million Progressives). There is no way Canada can avoid collateral damage.
A fact that is ignored is the US government has been a continuous string of failures since losing the Vietnam War. With the proclamation of the Carter Doctrine, the USA has been stuck in the Middle East Sandbox for 40 years. The Clinton/Bush II Administrations failed to prevent 9/11. Obama gave corporate CEOs a free get out of jail card. Donald Trump failed to prevent the Wuhan coronavirus from entering the USA. 527,226 Americans have died to date from the virus.
This was intentional. The failures lined the pockets of war profiteers, corporations; the connected. The Corporate State now reigns. All that matters is increasing corporate bonuses and the speech, seminar and book fees for public overseers. There is no “We the People”.
The tragedy is that public health services, democracy and the truth work. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It is just in the West, today, billionaires and multi-national corporations have no intention of allowing functional national governments that would raise their taxes, jail them for their crimes, and save the lives of its citizens.
The three Warp Speed Vaccines are profit makers.
I admit that I voted for Barrack Obama twice. I didn’t see the light until the Ukraine Coup and the USA got all upset that Russia kept Crimea where they’ve had a naval base at Sevastopol since Catherine the Great in 1783. This was before the US Constitution was adopted in 1787 and way before California (San Diego) was annexed in 1850 and Hawaii (Pearl Harbor) in 1898. Yes, the naval base that Imperial Japan attacked less than 43 years later and ended with America’s last victory in 1945. The same World War when Russia defeated Germany to regain control of Sevastopol.
Joe Biden is too far gone.
Then there is the malarky about the Administrative State. This is a big lie. It is deregulation and privatization of energy corporations and the deep freeze that killed Texans and likewise wildfires caused by winds downing power lines that killed Californians. The current problem is the globalist controlled Corporate State which freely exploits the little people and the earth. Profit over lives. It is no coincidence that the last American CEO jailed for their crimes was Enron’s Jeff Skilling in the second Bush Administration.
Likewise, for-profit healthcare is incapable of controlling the coronavirus pandemic that has killed half million Americans. The USA is solely dependent on the three Warp Speed vaccines working. The functional national public health systems in Asia and the South Pacific (that have controlled the virus so far) assure success as much as humanely possible as long as these nations keep billionaires from flying the virus into the country in their private jets.
The freeze damage and deaths in Texas is directly due to deregulation and privatization. Energy producers couldn’t be bothered to spend the money to winterize their natural gas facilities and cut their profits. The exact same reason PG&E didn’t bother to maintain their power lines and killed 84 when Paradise CA burned down. This will keep repeating until C-suite executives who kill Americans are jailed for manslaughter.
The Coronavirus pandemic has killed half a million Americans for the same reason. A prompt thorough public health response in New Zealand (#174) limited the deaths to 26 and in Australia (#111) to 909 deaths. Roughly equivalent to 10,000 Americans dying instead of 500,000. The reason for the difference is Big Pharm, Hedge Funds, and their bought politicians whose sole goal is to increase corporate profits; not save human lives.
This has led to disinformation and confused messaging since the truth is unwelcome. The mRNA jabs are more like gene therapy than traditional vaccines. If you are rich or Jimmy Carter, the brain cancer genome is identified and selected genetic portions of the tumor reproduced and injected to trigger an immune response to the cancer. If diagnosed with cancer, long term effects are hardly the main concern. A conscious high-level decision was made to give billions to Pfizer and Moderna and protect their patent rights. Public Health and alternative treatments were ignored. Global corporations developed Warp Speed mRNA “vaccines” with no long-term health studies. Humans are the guinea pigs. The mRNA injections seem to be working and no adverse effects are reported for except some allergic reactions so far and perhaps a hematological reaction.
The ultimate outcome is that all trust in government and the media is gone. The US is nearing Civil War casualty levels. America’s little people are in the same vulnerable position as the Texas Veteran who was scammed with a $17,000 energy bill automatically deducted from his banking account due to the big freeze.
Both California and Texas have had wild weather events. But more basically, both have Enron designed energy markets. Since the ruling ideology believes markets are perfect and are a perfect reflection of value; external distortions like increasing extensive wildfires or a polar vortex induce distortions into the power grid that cause wild variations in pricing and kills people.
Simply put, government is required to force business to plan for future events which cut into company profits and saves human lives. The USA appears to be at the tipping point, the costs of the private and public debt and of unaccounted for externalities have grown so enormous that the nation is unable to plan for future calamities. It is everybody for themselves until something catches up with you and then it is over.
I have only been in Texas in its airports and traveling on Amtrak. I spent a couple nights in El Paso going to Mexico and back to ride the Copper Canyon train in the early 1990s. Texas is big and once was a nation. It has its own power grid; separate from the US regional ones. I take at face value that the Texas Permian Basin Gas Wells are frozen solid. No gas. No gas heating. No gas turbine electrical generation. But I doubt it was environmentalists. I’d bet the real cause is deregulation and energy companies out for the big bucks now switching to cheaper fracked natural gas.
This is tragically typical of the new America, absolutely no planning, no stockpiles, no preparedness for future events — a polar vortex, a pandemic, or the fracked wells drying up faster than predicted.
At the beginning of the 21st century, a fellow cubical inhabitant with a Russian wife said she told him that the Soviet Union fell because they didn’t believe the propaganda anymore. The neo-liberal West is in the exact same position today. If history is correct, Joe Biden’s fate rhymes with Yuri Andropov’s. From another life, I am now getting MoveOn e-mails demanding “defeat the seditionists”. Sure, all 75 million of them.
Since I am still alive with a 4.8 out of 10 chance of death if exposed for half an hour indoors without protection to a coronavirus shedder, I must accept being isolated for a year served a purpose and continues to do so. Caitlin Johnstone discusses this disconnect between “The Real World and the Narrative World”. The conflict that arises when the notational human mind tries to understand the real biological world. The Trump 75 million live in a different world than the top ten percent meritocracy that earn a living serving Plutocrats. In the real world this is the difference between the crowded russian roulette on a Spirit Airlines flight or a catered Lear Jet.
This disconnect is most obvious to me in the discussions of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Donald Trump would still be President, if the US Civil Service had not been decimated, and America had a function public health service like Australia’s and New Zealand’s. But he didn’t and at his core Donald Trump was and will be a know-nothing, anti-science, bully. Joe Biden will not be any more successful as President. He still has the same dysfunctional government and Dr. Anthony Fauci remains his chief medical advisor. Joe Biden is so faded he melts into the woodwork.
I can’t decide if the outcome was conscious planning or if Americans are so incompetent that nature overwhelmed their intellect. I am trending towards a conspiracy to keep the status quo.
Dr. Michael Mina points out basic public health procedures that were never implemented:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/02/harvards-michael-mina-on-covid-seasonality-vaccines.html1) Lack of cheap paper daily antigen tests.
2) Not vaccinating the most vulnerable first
3) Prioritizing mRNA and spike vaccines only.
4) Lack of population screening for the virus and genetic variants.
5) Lack of funding for alternative treatments or dispensing known prophylactics like Vitamin D.The bottom line; fund and start universal testing. “That would actually allow us to predict with a whole new level of accuracy when these viruses are transmitting, how they’re transmitting, who are the main culprits, where are they?”
When it is clear that the death and trauma were unnecessary, the rulers and ideology responsible, “profit over lives” will be thrown out. On the other hand, if like the Spanish flu that killed two of my Great Grandparents, it disappears after this Winter’s third wave; coronavirus will be forgotten too by the next generations. But tragically, being endemic in the Americas, and continual mutating; new variants makes this unlikely.
I admit to being stir-crazy and old, so instinctively, I know that everything comes around again. The counter-revolt that seized the Western Empire starting with Ronald Reagan was the result of new money merging the surviving intellects of the Austria-Hungarian Empire and the old money plantation caste to birth a supra-money-making global autocracy to supplanted democracies that were bought and compromised. Joe Biden and especially Kamala Harris are supra-global members.
What is interesting is that Larry Summers is no longer an Insider. The fatal flaw was that the new/old aristocracy firmly believed that government is pointless, a hindrance, a curse; especially democracy. But the US government failed on 9/11, let coronavirus become endemic, threw its essential workers into the trash, and had two fiscal crises in 12 years. Government is necessary to prevent the Four Horsemen from running wild. Rich and poor are equally vulnerable to chaos.
For the Hamptons to survive, democracy and good government must be restored. Blaming 75 million Trump voters and Russia for everything will only bring on a civil or a world war. It is time to recognize this is a multi-polar world again, withdraw to North American, and make the New World a violence and illness free zone as much as it is humanly possible.
Yesterday, V.A. asked why I was so glum; thinking the USA could collapse this year.
The Alberta graph above and the rise of new variants in UK, Brazil and South Africa puts neoliberal countries like the USA between a rock and a hard place. To control the virus requires going a war footing and nationalization of the for-profit healthcare system that is clearly incapable of coordinating, funding, or fighting the pandemic. Vaccines at best will protect the rich who can afford the semi-annual or annual corona-jabs until a non-lethal version of the virus predominates and the susceptible hosts are dead.
There is a possibility that the 1889 to 1895 Russian flu pandemic was caused by one of the now five human coronaviruses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1889%E2%80%931890_pandemicThe USA is too corrupt, greedy and incompetent at the moment to mount an effective public health campaign against the virus. Coronavirus is nearly endemic in the Americas. Without a functional government, it is nature, the effectiveness of local healthcare systems, and death that will decide want happens next.
@ V. A.
I’m not sure. I edited a typo and hit submit, twice, the screen changed but it didn’t post.
Basically it said that the truth has become a conspiracy theory. The judiciary in the USA is a branch of government in the USA along with executive and legislature. All have been bought. Vaccines alone will not eradicate the virus; it is endemic and mutating. With no functional national public health campaign, barriers to alternative treatments, and a never-ending economic Depression; America could fall apart this year.
Dr. D is right; “the times they are a changing”.
It one is alive it is simply impossible not to believe in conspiracy theories. Take Bill Gates. He is buying up farmland in the USA. In a renter economy with 0% interest rate, land is about the only way to make more money if one has created a monopoly like Microsoft. Or is it to produce corn and soybeans to sell to Asia to feed the workers where all the Windows computer hardware is manufactured.
I have the last episode of “The Looming Tower” on Hulu yet to watch. I already know what is going to happen next. The end result, 9/11, was blamed on hubris, keeping the House of Saud on the throne to support the petrodollar, and wasting trillions of dollars on purpose in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) to line the pockets of war profiteers. If you are peeling onions what is further underneath?
In disaster B-movies, TV reporters set the stage for the action to follow. What is weird about reality is that corporate media cuts out anything that adversely effects their owner’s profits, so the truth isn’t the truth. There is no prelude. The US Postal System stops working and nobody reports it. What else isn’t working? There are hints that global manufacturing is shutting down due to failure of just-in-time logistics i.e. Toyota shut a US auto assembly line due to lack of computer chips.
Today’s post below links to the dire resurgence of COVID-19 in Manaus Brazil that has prostrated the city. It is right on the Amazon River just around 300 miles just south of the equator with tropical humidity, lack of a breeze, interior location and cloudy most of time that cuts down on vitamin D made by the skin.
The United States has the highest number of deaths in the world followed by Brazil and then Mexico. What is it with the Americas?
The US federal government has once again failed spectacularly to protect its citizens. I agree with Chris Hedges. My take is that the great reset is unintentional, but inevitable, in a society governed solely to enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
