VietnamVet
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Viruses have been around as long as life has been able to replicate. The coronavirus pandemic is nothing new. Novel viruses jump into humans periodically. With 7.8 billion people and humans and wildlife intermingling, pandemics are inevitable. The question is who dies early and how many. American Elite have gambled that the jackpot vaccine will halt the epidemic by next year and Americans will not restore old proven means to fight the pandemic; democracy and a national free public health system. The rich and professionals simply don’t want to pay for it and lose their exploitative credit card healthcare system. The illness and death of little people don’t matter in the current economic system. The lockdowns were only implemented in the West once intensive care units were overwhelmed in Italy, Spain and New York. Way too late.
If there is no vaccine nor prophylactic treatment, suggestions like Kruppy’s that communities throw up their hands and die is highly misleading and evil. The virus is infective at most for 21 days. It needs uninfected humans to propagate. Implementing a social system that isolates the infected from the uninfected must be instituted with universal quick daily testing, contact tracing and government run quarantine centers. This isn’t unknown. Asian and South Pacific nations successfully implemented it. It is just hard, costs lots of money and may become permanent. It puts life above profits. It also requires empathetic leaders who understand science and throwing the corrupt incompetent ones out.
The three deaths in 20,000 infected in the US military is low. The one death out of the thousands infected on the USS Theodore Roosevelt has been attributed to the MMR vaccine given to all military personnel priming the immune system. On an average 1,320 US armed forces die in accidents per year not counting those dead in combat. But the heart damage and comorbidity caused by COVID-19 is the other side of the coin.
Six months in and the American response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a debacle. Donald Trump’s ineptitude is a symptom not the cause. The US federal government was emptied out of knowledgeable, skilled, untouchable employees since Al Gore’s Reinventing Government. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that it was incapable of running anything right. The Pandemic was dumped on 50 states with inadequate funds and no coordination. No different than fighting Imperial Japan with only state and territory national guard units paid for with state and local taxes. What is unmentionable is that the wealthy deliberately paid trade organizations, think tanks and politicians to dismantle the western democracies to end taxes and regulations. Thus, off-patent drugs and treatments are ignored to await a pot of gold vaccine. The restoration of the national public health system to test, contact trace and isolate super-spreaders is ignored. The transfer of middle-class taxes to the wealthy continues. The rebirth of a functional government that cares for the needs of its citizens is aborted. The warrantless arrest of demonstrators by combat dressed federal agents has started.
One’s world view is dependent on how one survives and the belief if the “Earthrise” photo taken by American Astronauts circling the moon is real or not.
It is unmentionable. But the western wealthy bought control of everything. They dismantled democracy and pushed the free movement of people, goods, capital and services with transnational trade pacts to get even richer. Who pays you and your position on inverted pyramid determines in your gut if globalism is good or bad. What is not in the conversation is that the dismantling of government by corruption and incompetence destroyed the only protection the little people have from psychopaths, grifters, and a killer cold.
The US politicians and consultants are performing a pagan ritual instead of embracing science and spending the money to restore the national public health system. The Trump Administration has moved pandemic record keeping from the Center for Disease Control to Health and Human Services. No doubt because the top of the chain knows that the epidemiologists are in cahoots with the FBI agents in the government employees witch hunt against him.
The fundamental problem is that this magical thinking is divorced from reality. The Wuhan coronavirus is the fifth common cold that kills humans. It would have simply been ignored by the Elite except the sick clog up intensive care units. It is unlikely there will be a lifetime vaccine or it will die out like Spanish flu. Testing, tracing and isolation must be implemented now in the United States. Americans cannot wait for a for-profit vaccine or treatment.
If not, the consequences are severe. Americans will remain quarantined from the virus free nations of the world. Jet Setters will be banned forever unless they have their own islands, a 727 Lolita Express, plus pay bribes to airport officials, but risk jail time or worse if they ignite a new hot spot. Delta Air Lines is losing billions of dollars invested on overseas airlines and international flights. The company will not be able to unblock center seats in the USA since even with filtered air, super spreaders will infect seat mates. Prices will have to skyrocket to make a profit. Unemployed and uninfected Americans will stop flying. Boeing Commercial Airplanes will fail. Boeing Field, Renton Municipal Airport and Paine Field manufacturing facilities will be the new Rust Belt.
WaPo newsletter despite the misleading headline “Some U.S. health officials lament a coronavirus crisis that didn’t need to happen” lays out the debacle that has killed 132,000 Americans. “The thing that’s been driving me crazy is that we’ve just decided that the standard health response — the only thing that’s worked in any of the countries that suppressed the virus — is something that we’re just not going to do… This number of deaths is a fourth of what the country lost to World War II in three and a half years… If the United States employs effective containment measure — including social distancing and mask wearing — that 200,000 number doesn’t have to be inevitable.”
This is the direct result of the West’s amoral ruling neo-capitalism ideology that dismantled democracy. Profit and bonuses are all that matters. Wait for the for-profit treatment or vaccine. No different than the austerity imposed on Greece or the 737 Max crashes. Work to live. Get infected and die or survive to pay off the bills for the rest of your life. Money is not being spent for adequate personnel protective equipment for workers (prisons, nursing homes, meat packing plants, and hospitals) or to restore the federal public health system to coordinate the fight against the pandemic.
Dr. D sure can catch inconsistencies. I knew something was wrong since I used to commute that way across 14th Street Bridge for decades. So, I googled it. It is a bad photoshop of the projected 25-foot rise of water at high tide from climate change. My first thought was that, by then, dikes would have been built to protect the highway and Metro’s tunnel entrance. But, after reconsideration, Washington DC’s surrender to the coronavirus pandemic indicates that nothing will be built. What will be flooded will be flooded.
This is part and parcel of the basic failure of the belief that money defines everything. Profit comes treating the disease not preventing it. A complete amoral reversal of the Hippocratic oath; “First do no harm”.
The West devolved in to an extortion empire and financial Ponzi scheme to extract wealth from workers and the earth. The second restoration of globalism tore down barriers to free movement of people, goods, capital and services. Democracy was extinguished. Although other epidemics have occurred since the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, preparation for the next one would cost the wealthy money that they are not willing to spend. The last thing they care about is the lives of the little people. As a result, parts of Europe and North and South America are, once again, awash with disease.
The Trump Administration and Congress made the decision to not to try to control the coronavirus pandemic through old fashioned public health measures; face masks, testing, contact tracing and isolation of the infected that worked in nations in Eurasia and the South Pacific. Instead a vaccine is being developed at “Warp Speed”. The Elite and subservient Professionals think they have no choice. They are defined by their money, class arrogance and prejudices. They will not spend their money to hire government infection tracers or obtain treatment and quarantine centers. Personal Protective Equipment and pharmaceutical supplies all come from Asia. There is no push to rebuild the capability in the West.
Greed destroyed the Western Empire. The original rough estimate of about a million American dead likely is about to come true if no for-profit treatment or vaccine is developed. Only the restoration of democracy can calm the unrest and avoid a second Succession of American States. Quarantines and fines are now in place for travelers from other hot-spot states.
The neighborhood fireworks started for this July 4th. This date, 244 years ago, the North American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
I never thought we would see the fall of a second Empire, 30 years after the USSR, but here we are. Not quite the fall of Constantinople, but it is not over yet. An amoral ideology, incompetence, the fallen statues are all the symptoms.
Hillary Clinton for Veep would be the final Grand Mal Seizure, shaking down all the marble in the Capitol. It is the Republicans who are, again, radicals bringing on a second Succession of the States (except for Mitt Romney). It is the Democrats who are pallbearers for a deadly extractive vampire capitalism, as before. Adam Schiff and Hillary Clinton reek of their venom towards the little people.
Way back in July 2016, I thought Donald Trump’s unedited comment about the Russians finding Hillary Clinton’s lost e-mails funny. The headline that he wants less COVID-19 testing is a deadly tragedy. To control the pandemic, you must do the exact opposite.
There is no doubt that the media moguls want him gone. For the professional news readers, the paycheck covers their omissions and lies. For Democrat Pros, all they are good for is getting donations. Only the crassest, deluded, power mad, incompetent would impeach President Trump for trying to get political dirt from Ukraine when that nation is the exact spot where Barrack Obama and Joe Biden restarted the Cold War with Russia. The Intelligence Community’s Russiagate Coup fell flat on its face. Mainly because Donald Trump is not normal. . He cannot be scared into resigning. He is a money savant
The West has been all corrupted to make a profit. The left-overs of the fallen Empire: Western Europe, South and North America are sick with no fix in sight. All of the king’s men cannot put it back together again.
Yes, the picture of the Catalina Seaplane was posed. Male over female. But I never knew an officer who’d let a draftee stand over them. But it does show that war is a young person’s game. You get a chance to do things that you will never do again, if you survive. It is really addictive to adrenaline junkies and the pathological.
The US COVID 121,125 deaths has surpassed the total number in WWI; 116,516. 4.1 million Americans served in that war. The 2.2 million American coronavirus confirmed cases are twice as likely to die as in that war. But there is probably a similar number of asymptomatic spreading the virus but not tested. Being infect is almost an identical risk as being in the military during a World War. The average person’s chance of dying from coronavirus is similar to being behind the lines in a war. But if you don’t wear a face mask, attend the crowed indoor Tulsa Trump rally tonight, or are returning to work in a high-rise office without PPE and distancing; you are literally climbing onto a 4 by 4 truck and being driven to the frontlines. The denial is mindboggling.
There is clearly a battle in the western ruling class between globalists and nationalists. Much like the one between southern plantation owners and northern financiers in the 1850s. When the expansion of slavery was halted by the Compromise of 1850 and California entered the nation as a free state, the freezing of the economic growth of plantation slavery made the civil war inevitable.
Donald Trump is clearly incompetent. The US federal government failed to protect its citizens from the coronavirus pandemic unlike nations in Eurasia and the South Pacific. Joe Biden is really too old and any attempt to rebuild a new Western Empire is just as futile as the Bourbon Restoration after Napoleon. There is no communication across the divides. A bipartisan compromise to end today’s battle between globalists and nationalists for control seems impossible. Unless the future goes Mad Max from the get-go, a regional and class-based civil war is likely.
Good luck on what is now today in Europe.
Kamala Harris is a female counterpart to Barrack Obama. Neither are “African American”. He is half Kenyan and half American. She is half Jamaican and half East Indian. Both are globalists. But since Republicans have become the resettled European party, Democrats have turned to identity politics and the color of the skin to determine one’s position. After high school in Montreal she made a conscious decision to ignore of her East Indian ancestry and remake herself into an African American by going to a historical black Howard University in Washington DC. This shows how screwed up the USA is from its history of plantation capitalism. Fifty years ago, in Vietnam, I had more in common with urban blacks that country whites, my first encounter with Okies from Muskogee. They are the ones not wearing face masks and attending Trump’s Tulsa rally.
The various cultural, religious and regional groups each has about 20% of the population. The Establishment needs the lower classes at each other’s throats in order to eliminate taxes and end government regulation. There is no real attempt for understanding or compromise. With the collapse of federal government, incapable of fighting the pandemic, plus the greatest depression, and the fall of the Empire; a civil war is inevitable unless the USA peacefully withdraws home and democracy is restored.
I drink a glass of water every day. I can say “discombobulated”. But could only think of “Gnat”. I am a year younger than Joe Biden and have lost my short-term memory. “Did I take that pill or not?” He is the last great hope for a member of the Silent Generation to become President.
My Dentists and Eye Doctors are reopening. I should go to see them. But I am not persuaded yet that cotton gloves and a face mask will prevent me from catching coronavirus. The infection rate in Maryland is going down but is about halfway there at 673 new cases yesterday. Asymptomatic patients and workers in medical offices are death dealers to me. The collapse of the federal government. The failure to test everyone and isolate the infected. The 117,426 dead Americans are impossible for me to ignore.
Cognitive Dissidence is running wild. The first iteration of global Imperialism died In Flanders Fields. After a Depression and a Second World War, global aristocrats regained control in the 1980s. The second global Imperium ruled by American Multi-Nationals collapsed in 2020 from a global pandemic, depression, unrest and Donald Trump. Except nobody dares acknowledge the fall. Too many good paying jobs, sheltering at home, and pensions are at stake. The US military pulled out of Washington DC. It dares not take sides in the fight between the Nationalists and Globalists Oligarchs or in the 10% exploitation of the 90%. A civil war will destroy the Pentagon. Instead, the unrest is explained away as black race riots again. Except, the protests are integrated, led by women, occurring across the world in the last remnants of the Empire, and at risk of catching COVID-19.
If the November 2020 election turns out to be a fraud, the conflicts between anarchy and order, aristocracy and the middle class, war and peace, will erupt and could escalate to nuclear war. Only societies of law, order, peace and middle-class families, where everyone has food, shelter, healthcare and a purpose in life, can human sin and greed be controlled and climate change faced.
The outcome will determine if mankind continues to inhabit the earth.
Our host can explain it clearer but the subjugation of Greece by the EU had the opposing effect of making Greece more unified and their governmental public health system worked. They are testing and quarantining incoming airline passengers and halted all Qatar Airways flights. All nations that have controlled the virus will have to do the same. Billionaires, Jamie Dimon, and Enablers, Tim Geithner, can no longer fly the globe to survey their riches. They must test negative or be quarantined for two weeks. If they bribe their way into nations that have controlled the virus, outbreaks will follow in their footsteps. From now on they are outcasts.
The whole of the former Western Establishment has yet to realize that their Empire is no more. Americans who are oppressed, out of work, broke, families subject to Eldercide, know what is happening. Due to the failure to demand a national jobs program and a free public health system to overcome the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats have joined the Whigs in the dustbin of history. If the Constitution and the rule of law are not restored and Trumpian Authoritarianism triumphs, the United States of America is finished.
The COVID-19 pandemic is real. The 56-second overview, above, shows that the 2020 deaths from the virus are now greater than Malaria or Malnutrition. Yes, there are consequences due to overwhelming of hospital systems with sick patients and stopping elective procedures and medical checkups. For profit hospitals are losing money. The West is in the “Greatest Depression” with unemployment rising to 1930s levels. The riots are not just about racial injustice; they are also about economic inequality, the lockdown and the loss of democracy. Basically, the unrest is due to the abject failure of government to address these grievances and control the virus. Plus, there are shock entrepreneurs who exploit violence to make a profit.
There is a very short period left for the Establishment to recognize this is a revolutionary period. The pandemic has split the world into nations that controlled the virus and those that can’t. Unless youth are provided jobs that support families, democracy restored, and free national public health system rebuilt to test, trace and isolate the ill; North America will splinter apart into autocratic failed pariah-states.
If South Korea public health system that contained the coronavirus is having problems with reopening, this pretty much assures that the haphazard 50 state reopening in the USA will be a disaster. I’m incarcerated at home but I have a gut feeling that the integrated uprising in Minneapolis is getting additional energy from the lack of direction and incompetence of government in combating the virus. The President, Congress and federal bureaucracy are not fighting the virus in cooperation with the States and the American people in a national public health program to defeat the virus. Instead in order that the pharmaceutical industry will have a patentable profitable virus treatment sometime in the future; the virus is being allowed to spread across North America. The 100,000s deaths to date and the projected deaths of nearly a million Americans due to the reopening would have be prevented if the USA had a functional government like those in Asia and the South Pacific.
Yes, the pandemic has made the world bi-polar; China, Vietnam, Cuba, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Austria and the other nations and local states and provinces where government still works and the public health system stopped the virus spread dead and the rest of earth still suffering from the coronavirus pandemic.
A WaPo editorial said “Diagnostic testing is important, absent a vaccine or therapy, as part of a concerted effort to identify the sick, isolate and treat them, and allow everyone else to get back to business.” Then goes on to say why testing is so necessary. No doubt to please the for-profit corporations who develop and administer the tests. But it completely ignores that the only way to control the virus everywhere in the USA is with a working federal government public health system. No mention that the CDC is sidelined.
It is not a coincidence that the top eight nations with the most cases of coronavirus are those ruled by corporations and oligarchs and the politicians bought and paid for. The Elite are simply unwilling put people back to work to control the pandemic. That will take a portion of their wealth. It is of no matter to them that spending the money now avoids the enormous costs later of the Greatest Depression, the collapse of the Western Empire, and the quarantine and halt of trade with pariah nations that remain infected with the Wuhan coronavirus.
This might well be the fourth turning. I think those with a natural science background realized something unfathomable just happened. The USA is reopening without a federal public health system in place to test, trace and isolate the infected. Only a handful of island and mountain rural American states have the virus under control. Hawaii and Alaska require a 14 day quarantine for outsiders. In all the other states, there is no doubt that coronavirus deaths will again spike. The degree depends on each state’s Department of Health. Florida fired the scientist who had a web based state coronavirus tracking system because she refused to alter the numbers.
My old alma mater, the University of Washington, predicts that the pandemic “could claim between 350,000 and 1.2 million American lives by the end of this year”. Ford had to shut down its assembly lines after two days because workers became infected.
The US government is dysfunctional. It has no idea of the spread, extent, the identity of the infected, or how to end transmission of the virus between people except with a lockdown. Every one of the excess deaths from the Wuhan coronavirus could have been prevented by closing the borders and following good public health procedures i.e. New Zealand and Australia. Instead the pandemic became a profit seeking scam to see what corporation develops the jackpot treatment or vaccine. The Western Empire has collapsed. Until the virus goes away, the USA is a pariah nation, its people and goods requiring testing or quarantine to enter virus free nations. Greenbacks will have to be decontaminated. It is all over. Scapegoating, loss of income, food shortages and needless deaths are sure to spread chaos across North America. The only way out is the restoration of a practical working democracy and provide jobs, food, shelter and healthcare to all.
350,000 infected and the death of 22,619 in NY State mostly in the City and Long Island are not nothing. The severe cases are ghastly and there are reports of significant aftereffects including deaths from an overreacting immune system. Patients are dying in the hospitals are all by themselves, face down. The lucky ones are unconscious. The NY city health department calculated that there were (up to May 2nd) 5,293 excess deaths that might have been directly or indirectly attributable to the pandemic. Nearly 30,000 dying in three months in New York State is not a blip. The NY hospital system was severely strained downstate treating patients.
This is a direct result of the failure of city, state and federal, government to do its primary job; protect its citizens. If the Mayor, Governor and President, who allowed this pandemic to happen, are reelected, it is proof positive that the USA is not a constitutional democracy.
If there is a conspiracy, it is not a secret one. “Greed is good” was said by Michael Douglas playing Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko in 1987. “Government is bad.” is the result. There is no profit in preparing for a once in a century pandemic. President Trump simply does not understand what has been said here about the Wuhan coronavirus since January 2020.
Corporation managers and oligarchs set up supra-national global trade pacts like NAFTA, WTO and the European Union to remove democratic government control over trade in order to make more profit. They simply do not care about the public good.
In the Pandemic, the only way to make money is to have a patentable treatment or vaccine. Corporate Democrats and Republicans will not fund a federal public health system to test, contact trace, and isolate the infected. As a result, the pandemic will wax and wane, mutate and kill even more wherever the state public health response is inadequate. The extent and spread of the virus will remain unknown. A million could die in the USA, if reopening the states removes all mitigation. Taxing the rich to save lives will never happen until democracy is restored. Until then, everyone is on their own.
Andrew Cuomo’s report that “66% of NYers got the virus in locked in their homes” is the crux of the problem America’s response to the Wuhan corornavirus and why I am going bonkers. There is no information on how this is possible.
Humans can only get infected by significant contact with the virus transferred to nose and eyes or by breathing the aerosol droplets of the viruses shed by other infected humans. It is possible also by contact with surfaces contaminated earlier; for example, elevator buttons or amazon packages with your hands and transferred to the nose and eyes. But this is speculation. Are gloves alone sufficient to mitigate the risk? All questions that the federal CDC should be gathering. But it is sidelined by the White House.
There is no universal testing to see who is shedding the virus or not. Yes, college students forced to return home could have infected their families. Did the patients go grocery shopping? Did home cleaners or repairman visit? Were their home deliveries contaminated? Did the apartments have central heating? Only contact tracing, gathering the data, review and scientific studies can find the answers. But the US federal government is not spending the money or directing programs to do the testing and contact tracing required for this.
There is no federal program to isolate the infected in safe secure facilities. The lockdown of Americans at home is not a public health quarantine program that has controlled the pandemic in other nations. It is mitigation that is not working in 20 states including Maryland where I live.
The 81,537 deaths are directly due to the White House failure to close all borders in the first week of February 2020 and the current lack of a functional public health system in the USA. More deaths are to come.
Again, the “End Coronavirus.org” graphs are very interesting. The winning green states, Hawaii and both Montana and Alaska in the winter, are islands. To keep it this way they will have to test everyone entering the state. Hawaii and Alaska can require a negative virus test at their airports, for cruise ships departures, or a 14 day quarantine like Austria. This will keep these states safe but what can Montana do? Close their borders? Universal testing in the USA would solve this problem.
Right next door to each other, green Vermont is winning and red New Hampshire is losing the fight against the Wuhan coronavirus. Both declared an emergency on the same date. What is Vermont doing right than New Hampshire didn’t do? The rest of the USA should do it too. But an incompetent White House has sidelined the dysfunctional CDC, the federal agency tasked to find these answers. This is what killed 80,690 Americans to date with many more to come.
The virus needs new hosts to propagate. Human “know-nothingness”, greed and gross error are aiding the contagion.
Good. The “End Coronavirus.org” graph is now clear. The four, neoliberal infested, failed nations, USA, UK, Canada and Sweden are identified in the center in red. Their governments have no desire to contain the Wuhan coronavirus because they are no longer democracies. The excess deaths are of no concern to their ruling class. They refuse to spend the money to hire contact tracers, provide universal testing and quarantine the infected in safe secure facilities.
The cure is clear but difficult. Discard the aristocracy. Restore government by and for the people. Halt the pandemic, then, rebuild the nations. Serve the people!
“Containment Is Possible” graphs are a bit misleading, the USA in red is buried in the middle and the UK is missing. Both nations have plateaued but the USA is reopening which is bound to spike the number of coronavirus infections again. This is a verboten subject but both American political parties’ sole goal is to enrich the wealthy. The lockdown was imposed to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed and the elite dying alongside the rift-raff. Corporate media never mentions that hospitals and nursing homes are solely for profit and designed to extract wealth from the patients. Naturally these deregulated businesses didn’t spend any money on PPE for a once a century pandemic or follow safety protocols. Killing elderly, first responders and healthcare workers. Not too different than Boeing killing 346 people earlier.
The USA and UK governments were dismantled to cut taxes and end regulations. Both are too dysfunctional to deal with the pandemic. The excess deaths are of no matter to the Establishment. No US federal government employees will be hired to trace, contact and quarantine the infected in safe secure facilities. To do this requires taking a fraction of their donors’ wealth. An effective response to the pandemic won’t happen until the herd immunity / war for profit gang are gone and Democracy (government by and for the people) is restored in both nations.
Nothing shows how dysfunctional the White House is their sidelining of CDC and going ahead with temperature screening at airports to reassure passengers. Except 20 to 50 percent of the infected are shedding coronavirus with no elevated temperature or symptoms. This screening is pointless and will kill people.
Two nations in the five eyes English language intelligence consortium controlled the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic; two did not. Canada is a tossup looking bad in 12th place. Two are islands. Three possess all or most of a continent. All are mostly surrounded by oceans except for the Mexican border. Two were near previous coronavirus outbreaks. All have immigration issues. Three are next to developing nations.
Australia and New Zealand retained functional governments that did their job and protected the public health. In the USA and UK, hubris rules. The Oligarchs and Corporate Managers drowned these national governments in the toilet. Wild ass theories that support “greed is good” and “there is no society” seized control. With the public health system dismantled and all around dysfunctional, the UK and the USA governments are unable to fight the Pandemic. The USA is about to reopen piecemeal which will raise the number of deaths to near 9/11 levels every day for foreseeable future.
Yes, Americans are bamboozled but it is just hard to image they would quietly die from the virus, or with no food, no healthcare, no income and their homes foreclosed again without an uprising. Hopefully the 90% will work together to restore a constitution democracy that would combat the virus and repair the economy which at some point in the future 2020 would be a bad memory for the survivors like the Spanish flu was to my grandparents who lost a father and a mother a century ago. But, instead, staying the current course will lead to the splintering the USA into nuclear armed regional states and the UK into England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland.
Let’s not forget the big divide in the West between the rich and the 10% lackeys and the 90%, everyone else. In no sense are the USA or UK democracies (governments by and for the people) or functional. The Coronavirus Pandemic is real; no government would purposefully lock down a city of 12 million people or allow the situation get so far out of hand that hospitals were overwhelmed in Italy, Spain, England and New York State. Over 104,000 people have died early in the USA and UK.
Corporate media hides it but the Aristocracy’s arrogance slips out. Secretary of Health and Humans Services, Alex Azar, reportedly said in a conference call that meat packing plant employees caught the coronavirus in the community not the workplace. The Elite Corporate Managers can in no way be a fault for the closure of 52 meat packing plants in the USA by not providing PPE or a safe workplace. No. It is riff-raft’s lowlife crowded together culture that makes them sick. Their immaculate minds can’t grasp that they are actually at fault themselves for the pandemic by ignoring the threat, screwing up testing and shirking from their public health responsibilities. The owners earlier busting of Meatpacking Unions and importing immigrants to do the butchering is ignored.
The haphazard reopening of the economy is projected to kill 130,000 Americans. If society collapses from loss of income and unrest, millions more will die. This is on the oligarchs and the 10% technocrats and politicians of both parties who through greed, ideology and ignorance enabled the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus across Europe and North America.
The basic fact is that by January 20, 2020 when the first cases outside China were confirmed in the USA and South Korea, western national governments failure to close their borders directly resulted in the explosion of Wuhan coronavirus cases and deaths. This was due to the Western Empire’s belief in the free movement of money, people, goods, and services. To do what was necessary to save lives goes against an aristocrat’s very sense of purpose and being. The SNAFUs cascaded after that 1) not using the WHO test for the virus, 2) no stock piles of PPE, 3) offshoring critical supplies and pharmaceuticals to China, 4) delegating public health authority to 50 states, and 5) no crash national program to test everyone. The response to the pandemic became the “Wild Wild West”. Western governments still have no idea the extent and spread of the pandemic except for Iceland. Who is infected? Who is not? What tests work? Which ones are frauds?
The lock down came about because of these earlier debacles. Italy showed that the coronavirus could overwhelm a nation’s healthcare system. Jet Setters skiing in the Alps brought the virus back to Long Island. Donald Trump’s hometown hospitals were filling up. The Elite are at just as much risk as NY City riff-raft. Drs. Fauci and Brix got the President to recommend national guidelines for a lock down. There was no alternative.
A month and a half later the lock down is a failure. The number of cases is increasing in 19 US states. Red states are reopening. Shortages of goods and food are appearing. There is lock down fatigue. Without income for food and shelter, unrest is certain. The number of pandemic cases and deaths are not decreasing. They are not even plateauing in the USA. 100,000 will die in North America in approximately three weeks. If the virus is free again to pass unchecked from the infected to the uninfected, at a 0.5% mortality rate, a million and half Americans will die. The pandemic will wax and wane. In hotspots, for-profit hospitals will be swamped. Millions more will die untreated or from violence.
There is a way out. Institute good old fashion public health techniques that are already successful against the virus in Asian and South Pacific nations. Test, trace and isolate the infected. Congress has to quit hiding and restore the US Public Health System, provide free hospitalization, universal testing, and safe secure quarantine sites. The height of irony is that it is the Masters of the Universe who oppose their wealth being used to save American lives. Ultimately when Americans realize that Wall Street is the reason their families are dying, the USA will no longer be a safe place for flight capital and the whole edifice will crumble down and their wealth disappear.
The graphs above are truly frightening. The FT graph demolishes the February meme that Asians are more susceptible to coronavirus. It is the opposite, 80% of the deaths are in North America and Europe. The graphs for nineteen US states including Maryland where I live, show that new cases are climbing. The disorderly reopening of shops, salons, restaurants and schools is the exact wrong response to the pandemic. It will only increase the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. The deaths aren’t geographical. They exploded in Europe and North America. It isn’t racial. But the deaths are the direct result of one’s economic class and if the nation was a member of the now defunct post-WWII free trade Western Empire. USA, Canada, Spain, Italy and the UK comprise 60% of the deaths. All are failed states killed by greed, incompetence and corruption.
The last time I went grocery shopping was exactly two months ago. I recognized the coming pandemic but didn’t comprehend the cognitive dissonance of watching a disaster happening in real time but the government, corporations and the establishment doing all the wrong things making a crash inevitable. They are all betting on a huge monetary jackpot when Big Pharma discovers the treatment or vaccine that reopens the world and globalists can restart their exploitation the environment and people.
The only proven way to successfully combat the Wuhan Coronavirus is by good old fashion public health techniques of testing, tracking and isolating the infected as shown by the manageable red line for Asia next to bottom on the FT graph. The Western Elite are simply unwilling to hire government workers, to establish universal testing, tracking, and provide safe quarantine sites. With hundreds of thousands of dead, lost income, and starvation; unrest is certain. Like in the trenches of WWI, it is only time before healthcare and essential workers mutiny. Only the restoration of democracy and a functional public health system can avoid millions of deaths. Yet, the lure of the jackpot under the rainbow, the wish to return to jet setting across the globe, and greed will keep the Western rulers from doing the right necessary thing.
WaPo points out that the White House is testing and tracking people for coronavirus infections that the rest of the United States has not implemented. VP Pence does not need to wear a mask at the Mayo Clinic since he and all who have contact with him are tested to be virus free. The Congress can do things instantaneously if it wants. It gave it 4 trillion dollars to Wall Street weeks ago.
Proof that the Elite do not give a damn for workers from Mount Sinai Hospital to Staten Island Amazon Fulfillment Center is that universal testing, tracking and isolation has not been implemented anywhere in the USA except the White House. If the Masters of the Universe can be bailed out, so can essential workers. The White House and Congress simply do not want to. Instead hundreds of thousands of Americans will be killed by haphazard Republican State economic reopenings without any scheme to keep the infected from exposing the uninfected and the real substantial risks for hospitalization and death especially for the elderly.
The only confusion is cognitive dissonance. May 1st, 2020 Amazon worker’s protest sign reads; “Capitalism Kills”.
Workers from Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, Target and Walmart join forces to stage a mass sick-out
The US Federal government orders 100,000 body bags.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/29/fema-orders-100000-more-body-bags-for-worst-case-scenario/The western oligarchy was unprepared for a pandemic for the simple reason stockpiling PPE, closing borders, hiring contact tracers, and isolating the infected costs a great deal of money that they are unwilling to spend. Killing unfortunates benefits their bottom-line. They are still quite unwilling to do the basic national public health functions (test, trace and isolate) that have controlled pandemics in the past and worked against the Wuhan Coronavirus in China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Singapore. The West only restored to a lockdown after seeing Italian hospitals overwhelmed and the Elite flying back to the Hamptons infected from skiing in the Alps.
Lockdown fatigue and an economic Depression have set in. Republican governors in the USA are haphazardly reopening up their states. Quite willing to kill hundreds of thousands of American to restart the economy.
The Establishment really doesn’t want Americans to wake up to the truth.
The world has separated into nations who controlled the Wuhan coronavirus, and those who didn’t. The USA has the added problem that the food supply chain is breaking down. Right now there are shortages of meat, vegetables and goods for a stay at home population. If the West did what the Asian and South Pacific nations did, they would have the same outcome. But that means restoring competent national governments and public health system that provides all the healthcare and food they need plus a safe shelter for the infected. Instead, the professional managerial class will seize assets, profiteering on lost American lives. The lockdown will evaporate. The death toll will climb from the Vietnam War to the US Civil War levels. Millions more will die; if the wild cat strikes escalate, the food shortages become permanent, the virus overwhelms the nation’s hospitals, and the USA splinters apart.
Tyson Food is offering a $1,000 dollars to its workers. This is a living hell with no alternative. Risking respiratory death by downing at home or in the ICU if space is available just to pay a couple of weeks of bills. This is the replay of the sacrifices at Chernobyl without the valor.
I am old. I am a target of the virus. I have all the symptoms, but no fever, shortness of breath or cough. I live at home with no contact with outsiders going on six weeks, with a government pension. To be successful, the virus will have to mutate not to kill its hosts. Humans also must relearn ancient truths, like old farts have seen and lived a lot. Besides greeters they can also be teachers. Western Society has to relearn that life is more important than money.
Since the world is run by greed-based extractive capitalism and the booms and busts are getting catastrophic; humans must come up with a science based human cooperative society to survive on earth. Since psychopaths gravitate to the top of the pyramid and there will always be fungi, viruses, and bacteria; society will have to be a real democracy with strong borders; defended by public health and militia draftees.
I find it strange that no one has come with nursing home defense corps who have PPE, are tested to be virus free, trained and paid a living wage to take care of and keep seniors alive. My take is that the psychopaths want to keep the money and let the unproductive ones die now, alone.
VA,
The Wuhan Coronavirus Pandemic killed Neo-Classic Economics and Globalism Version 2.0 like WWI did the Version 1.0. The Western Empire has fallen. 4.5 trillion digital dollars handed to the wealthy won’t work a second time. Full faith and credit of the U.S. government is gone. Reopening the economy early won’t resurrect it. Yes. Chaos, splintering and widespread death are most likely. An autocracy is possible. But there is no one competent enough in the West to jump in front of the mob. Only Tulsi Gabbard comes to mind with the intelligence and charisma to lead. A sane option is restoring constitutional democracy that worked more or less until the 1980s but that will take reestablishment of the media fairness doctrine and ending of corporate campaign funding. This requires an incompetent Establishment somehow recognizing that is in its own best interest to elect 21st century Franklin Delano Roosevelt as President. But, the 2020 NY governor is Andrew Cuomo, no FDR. On the other hand Samuel Johnson’s quote is very appropriate today. “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
The US federal government failed to prevent the introduction and spread of Wuhan Coronavirus. The pandemic is swamping of hospital systems in NY State, Boston, and New Orleans. Future hot spots will pop up. Similar debacles occurred in Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom. This cannot be a coincidence. More than 50,000 Americans have died because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The global economy has crashed. Yet China, South Korea, New Zealand and Taiwan have managed to keep the virus at bay.
It is not science that failed. Public health fundamentals of testing, tracing and isolating the infected work; even with the asymptomatic highly contagious Wuhan coronavirus.
The facts are fairly straight forward. Markets never have cared if humans live or die. The US healthcare system was converted from affordable hospitals preventing and treating illnesses into an efficient for-profit wealth extractor. What failed are North American and European governments. Reopening the economy early without a functioning public health system in place will kill hundreds of thousands more Americans. Only the restoration constitutional democracy, the rebuilding of the public health systems and jailing corrupt profiteers and politicians will prevent future waves of death by mutant coronavirus infections or other contagions.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
The intentional release of a bioweapon would have resulted in an immediate retaliation and lockdown by Beijing; not a month’s delay. Nor the complete ineptitude of the Western Elite bringing the virus home from overseas to the totally unprepared Hamptons, NY City and Washington DC. Killing the economy.
The John Hussman’s graph has the identical projected causality level of 60,000 deaths, similar to the Vietnam War, as Dr. Anthony Fauci’s estimate last week. My take is that the lockdown is leaking; people are desperate; no income, cabin fever and anxiety. They are getting out and getting infected. Also, essential workers are not being provided with the necessary PPE to prevent infection. US Deaths due to COVID-19 and collapse of regional healthcare systems will be in the hundreds of thousands. If society splinters apart, millions will die.
The shocking discovery is that the US federal government is totally incompetent. It is not even trying to test, track or isolate the infected. It is completely in the dark. It does not have the data to make sound decisions. PR cannot hide the number of deaths, the collapse of regional healthcare systems or the loss of income. If there is a conspiracy, it is ingrained stupid arrogance of the Establishment. Make the oligarchs whole again and ignore the rest of humanity and global pollution. That simply will not work any longer.
The problem in the UK and USA are the politicians and technocrats are paid to make this the best of all possible worlds for the rich; the hell with the rest. It never sank into their heads (despite the reports from the Diamond Princess to the USS Theodore Roosevelt) that the Wuhan coronavirus is highly contagious; around 40% onboard got infected and around half of those were asymptomatic. With quarantines, tracing and good medical care there were 7 fatalities on the cruise ship and 1 on the carrier. The real problem is that the approximate 15% of the infected that needed hospitalization. In the both countries public health systems have been cut to reduce costs to increase profits. Essential Workers, First Responders and Medical Staff still do not have necessary equipment to protect themselves from the virus. People are dying because professional managers got bonuses and stockholders became richer. Both national governments threw up their hands and tossed aside time proven techniques to fight epidemics; test, trace and isolate the infected. Only after Italy, way too late, did both countries lockdown their populations to try to prevent overwhelming the healthcare systems; they failed; New York, London, Boston, New Orleans hospitals are swamped. In hot zones without treatment, the death rate could exceed 10% plus all the other illnesses and injuries left untreated. Protests to reopen the economy to get income to survive have started. Free food lines extend for miles.
The governments in both countries are unable to perform the most basic functions of governance: to protect lives and secure livelihoods. They will be overthrown; either at the ballot box or from lampposts. The Western Empire has fallen.
There was/is about a dozen ships with thousands aboard sailing the seas or docked that are perfect Wuhan coronavirus petri-dishes. The astonishing thing about corporate owned fake media is that no-one has complied the results from each. My summary, off the top: 1) The coronavirus is contagiousness and asymptomatic in 40% to 50% of those infected. Temperature screening is worthless. Half of the virus shredders pass through. 2) The infection lasts around a month. 3) With competent healthcare the death rate is less than 1% but about 10-fold higher than seasonal flu. 4) Despite quarantine efforts around 50% aboard the ships got infected. 5) Around 15 to 20% of the infected need hospital care. Healthcare systems have already been overwhelmed in Wuhan city, Iran, Italy, Spain, England, New Jersey, NY State, Louisiana and Massachusetts. When hospitals collapse the overall death-rate climbs above 10%.
The US federal government has collapsed. Congress is in hiatus. Oligarchs saved. Workers screwed. Both political parties failed to pick competent Presidential candidates.
Simply put as long as there are coronavirus spreaders in the population, the uninfected will have around a fifty-fifty chance of being infected if have contact or come in contact with an infected person’s coughs or sneezes. The newly infected have one in ten chance of having to going to the hospital to keep breathing or staying home and dying. The only way to lower this risk and open up the economy safely is to test, trace and isolate the infected. Only the federal government has fiat money to pay for the staff and facilities to do this. The basic fact that sole purpose of government, saving the lives of its citizens, is being ignored by all is proof positive that the Western Empire has fallen. The West is about to go through an upheaval similar to collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the Great Depression, and the Spanish Flu, all combined together, at the same time.
The West did lockdowns because they had no other choice after Italy. The hospitalization rate for the Wuhan coronavirus is too high. It has knocked out NY State’s healthcare systems; from the Hamptons to the Queens. But like all things, it is adversely affecting poor minorities more than the wealthy who brought the virus into the East Coast of the USA in the first place. Basically, today, the Elite decided to let the virus run wild and lockdown locally when a regional healthcare system starts to breakdown. There is an alternative; test, trace and isolate. Only government can direct resources, make contracts, hire staff and set priorities so that a system of safe and fair quarantines can control the epidemic sufficiently for the economy to reopen. This is abhorrent to the Oligarchy. It makes government superior once again, requires democracy to work, and extracts wealth back from the rich. Every death above normal in the USA from now on is directly on the Establishment. PR cannot hide the responsibility of the top 10% for this murder.
This post makes wearing a mask and gloves in public plain simple common sense if you want to stay alive. That it isn’t, begs the question why not. Also, why hasn’t a crash program undertaken to do the following; 1) identify patients infected with the Wuhan Coronavirus, 2) provide effective adequate PPE to first responders and healthcare workers, 3) divert personnel and resources to keep the healthcare system functioning and 4) isolate the infected. This isn’t rocket science. How to control the spread of infectious diseases has been known for over a century.
What changed this century was public health was privatized and downsized in the West as part and parcel of cutting taxes on the rich and globalizing the economy. The very political leaders who the global system benefited now have to change their perspective. Joe Biden and Donald Trump can’t. Neither will rebuild and staff the public health system to track, isolate and treat all Americans. They will keep the current system and let the 90% fend for themselves and let thousands of Americans die for no good reason and leave the survivors deeper in debt.
Last week Dr. Anthony Fauci projected 60,000 death from coronavirus. This is more than the number of U.S. combat deaths in the Vietnam War. What comes out on the other side will be a different nation. No longer an empire, either the USA be a renewed democracy or a dying autocracy.
The COVID-19 pandemic is not a rounding error. Neoliberalism, enriching the crony rich at the expense of everyone else, has extracted all resilience from the West. Coronavirus hospitalizes 15% to 20% of the infected. Look at Boris Johnson’s face in his video thanking the hospital staff, it is a terrible illness. He will never be the same.
With no public health system in the USA, and lack of hospital beds elsewhere in the West except for Germany, the virus overwhelms downsized and for-profit hospital systems. Everyone, rich or poor, is at risk. Once they realized this, the Elite very belatedly decided not to let the virus run wild. For now, the only way to keep the healthcare systems running is to conduct lockdowns to isolate the infected from the uninfected. Other than a vaccine; China, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan show that contact tracing and safe effective quarantines staffed and run by functional governments is the way to effectively fight the pandemic at this time.
For the next 18 months and longer; to lower the number of casualties and reopen the economy, the West must reconstitute their national public health systems. Stephanie Kelton is right. The pandemic can be defeated with new ideas; together.
The FT graphs are interesting. How you view them depends on one’s education and world view.
The State of Washington deaths were jagged at the beginning. Likely did to imported infections that were not detected due to the testing debacle by the US federal government that let the pandemic spread undetected throughout the USA. Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted America did nothing until it saw what was happening in Italy and then the Washington DC issued guidelines and left it to the 50 States to do haphazardly lockdowns. This caused the differences in the graphs between Washington, New York and the other states.
The top five nations for new cases were all members of the now defunct Western Empire. A global trade organization instituted to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. They succeeded. Government was drowned in the bathtub. Except unprepared, the Wuhan Coronavirus crashed the global economy totally. The differences in the number of each nation’s deaths are directly due to how well government dealt with the crisis. In the West it is horrific due to western plutocrats who put profit above human lives.
All four nations at the bottom of the graph instituted strict contact tracing and isolation of the infected. Unless national governments are reconstituted in the West and strict testing regime, staffing and safe quarantines of the infected are set up, my prediction is the number of new cases will plateau and trail off very slowly as the herd is culled. A dark age will engulf the West until a treatment is found or democracy, government by and for the people, is restored. Only people working together can overcome the pandemic and reopen the economy.
