Feb 232021
 
 February 23, 2021  Posted by at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


MC Escher Convex and concave 1955

 

It’s Gene Therapy, Not a Vaccine (Dr. David Martin)
COVID-19 And The New Great Depression- Jim Rickards (Diana)
Michael Burry Warns Weimar Hyperinflation Is Coming (ZH)
Hospitals Across US Report Sharp Drop In New COVID patients (JTN)
Spectacles-Wearers Two To Three Times Less Likely To Get Covid-19 – Study (RT)
The ZeroCovid Movement: Cult Dressed as Science (AIER)
Resign, Andrew Cuomo (Week)
How Wall Street Kills Grandma (DP)
Repentence (Kunstler)
‘Thank You,’ Says MyPillow’s Mike Lindell As He’s Finally Sued By Dominion (RT)
Lawmakers to Cable Providers: Why Do You Carry These News Channels? (Soave)
Building a Bitcoin Prison – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)

 

 

 

 

Do read the whole interview. I think I caught the essence.

It’s Gene Therapy, Not a Vaccine (Dr. David Martin)

A viral infection hasn’t been documented in the majority of what is called cases. There is no basis for that conflation other than the manipulation of the public. That’s the first half of the problem. The second half of the problem is that what is being touted as a vaccination, which as you well know when somebody says the word vaccination, the public understanding is that you are being treated with an attenuated or alive virus or a fragment of an attenuated and that the treatment is meant to keep you from getting an infection and it is meant to keep you from transmitting the infection that vaccine in the common definition of a vaccine is meant to do.

The problem is that in the case of Moderna and Pfizer, this is not a vaccine. This is gene therapy. It’s a chemotherapy agent that is gene therapy. It is not a vaccine. What is this doing? It’s sending a strand of synthetic RNA into the human being and is invoking within the human being, the creation of the S1 spike protein, which is a pathogen. It’s a toxin inside of human beings. This is not only not keeping you from getting sick, it’s making your body produce the thing that makes you sick. In that sense, it does sound like a vaccine? No, not at all because a vaccine is supposed to trigger immunity. It’s not supposed to trigger you to make a toxin. That’s how this differs.

It’s not somewhat different. It’s not the same at all. This is a public manipulation of misrepresentation of clinical treatment. It’s not a vaccination. It’s not a prohibiting infection. It’s not a prohibiting transmission device. It’s a means by which your body is conscripted to make the toxin that then allegedly your body somehow gets used to dealing with, but unlike a vaccine, which is to trigger the immune response, this is to trigger the creation of the toxin.

This is not going to stop you from getting Coronavirus. It’s not going to stop you from getting sick. In fact, on the contrary, it will make you sick far more often than the virus itself. How can you say that so definitively? Because the data is nothing but that, for people receiving by the time they got the second shot, 80% of people had one or more clinical presentations of COVID-19, 80% of people who have an infection according to RT-PCR have no symptoms at all. People are getting it more from the “vaccine?” Yes. You will get COVID-19 symptoms from getting the gene therapy passed off as a vaccine. You will get COVID symptoms from that 80% of the time. If you’re exposed to SARS-CoV-2 according to RT-PCR, 80% of the time, you will have no symptoms at all.

Read more …

First a pandemic. Then a depression.

“Significant macroeconomic after-effects of the pandemics persist for about 40 years..”

COVID-19 And The New Great Depression- Jim Rickards (Diana)

In a new book by James Rickards, the author explores both the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact. A prolific writer, Economist, and adviser, Mr. Rickards predicts years of economic turbulence ahead. In The New Great Depression, Mr. Rickards sees the pandemic through an historical lens, where crisis presents a gateway between one world and the next. With an eye towards history, he concludes that the Keynes practical definition of a depression fits, and we are now in a new depression that is more far reaching than a mere technical recession. Along the way, the author wades into controversial topics such as China’s role in spreading the virus and the lockdown that ensued (which he calls the biggest policy blunder ever).

Based on the pattern of four influenza pandemics he studied, he positions three scenarios among the most likely patterns to expect in the months ahead. He found that three of the four great pandemics since 1918 have followed scenario 2, which he stated as follows: “Scenario 2 also involves repetitive waves. The difference is that the second wave (arriving in 2021) would be far more lethal than the first wave of 2020, due possibly to a mutation or recombination of genetic material. This pattern was seen in the 1918 Spanish flu, the 1957 Asian flu, and the 2009 swine flu. In all three pandemics, a moderate yet lethal wave began in the spring and subsided by the early summer. Then, in the fall, a larger, super lethal wave of infections arrived.”

The timeframe of this writing was October of last year, so the winter wave we experienced could indeed be the lethal wave predicted. Beyond the virus, the book explores the economic conditions he expects post-pandemic. Mr. Rickards effectively looks at past economic crisis and how they evolved. His conclusions point to a period of economic decline. As is the case across topics, the virus has accelerated issues and trends that existed pre-pandemic – and the economy is no exception. Here is a view of that from the book:

“The best evidence points to slow growth for thirty years. A March 2020 study entitled “Longer Run Economic Consequences of Pandemics” by a Federal Reserve economist and two academics from the University of California, examines the economic impact of pandemics with at least 100,000 deaths, beginning with the Black Death in 1347. The authors conclusion states: “Significant macroeconomic after-effects of the pandemics persist for about 40 years, with real rates of return substantially depressed.”

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Burry basically says the same as Rickards.

Michael Burry Warns Weimar Hyperinflation Is Coming (ZH)

“The life of the inflation in its ripening stage was a paradox which had its own unmistakable characteristics. One was the great wealth, at least of those favored by the boom..Many great fortunes sprang up overnight…The cities, had an aimless and wanton youth””Prices in Germany were steady, and both business and the stock market were booming. The exchange rate of the mark against the dollar and other currencies actually rose for a time, and the mark was momentarily the strongest currency in the world” on inflation’s eve.”Side by side with the wealth were the pockets of poverty. Greater numbers of people remained on the outside of the easy money, looking in but not able to enter. The crime rate soared.”

“Accounts of the time tell of a progressive demoralization which crept over the common people, compounded of their weariness with the breakneck pace, to no visible purpose, and their fears from watching their own precarious positions slip while others grew so conspicuously rich.””Almost any kind of business could make money. Business failures and bankruptcies became few. The boom suspended the normal processes of natural selection by which the nonessential and ineffective otherwise would have been culled out.””Speculation alone, while adding nothing to Germany’s wealth, became one of its largest activities. The fever to join in turning a quick mark infected nearly all classes..Everyone from the elevator operator up was playing the market.”

“The volumes of turnover in securities on the Berlin Bourse became so high that the financial industry could not keep up with the paperwork…and the Bourse was obliged to close several days a week to work off the backlog” “all the marks that existed in the world in the summer of 1922 were not worth enough, by November of 1923, to buy a single newspaper or a tram ticket. That was the spectacular part of the collapse, but most of the real loss in money wealth had been suffered much earlier.” “Throughout these years the structure was quietly building itself up for the blow. Germany’s #inflationcycle ran not for a year but for nine years, representing eight years of gestation and only one year of #collapse.”

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Nothing to do with a vaccine, or very little. Just 5% or so of Americas have been “vaccinated”.

Hospitals Across US Report Sharp Drop In New COVID patients (JTN)

The number of COVID-19 patients being hospitalized in the U.S. is dropping rapidly, as the infection rate in past weeks has also declined, as the total number of infections in the county nears the 500,000. The number of U.S. patients hospitalized currently is now just below 56,200, the lowest number since early November. The in-patient number declines as the virus death toll is expected to hit 500,000 this week. Expert have given several explanation for the decline and slowing numbers, foremost that more Americans are now vaccinated, especially among the elderly, the most at risk to be hospitalized and die from the virus.


At Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, the number of new coronavirus admits has fallen to about 10-15 a day, which is a decline of about half from early January, according to the director of the hospital’s group that tracks coronavirus hospitalizations. The decline has brought relief to intensive care staffers, having worked on the frontlines of the pandemic now for about a year. “People are smiling. They are optimistic. They’re making plans for the future,” one medical director in New Mexico told the New York Times. In Springfield, Missouri, a medical staff emptied the emergency coronavirus ICU wing that was built last spring. “We have not defeated this disease, but the closing of this unit, at least for now, is a tremendous symbolic victory,” said Steve Edwards, the hospital system’s chief executive.

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No wait. Didn’t we just find that the virus is airborne, and it’s not on surfaces?

And also: people who wear contacts rub their eyes more than those who wear glasses?

Spectacles-Wearers Two To Three Times Less Likely To Get Covid-19 – Study (RT)

Research from India has indicated that people wearing glasses are far less likely to become infected with Covid-19 than those without, which appears to support health advice to wear spectacles instead of contact lenses. Covid-19 can spread in many different ways, and one of those is through germs being spread to the eyes due to touching or rubbing. According to the new study, published at medRxiv.com and not peer-reviewed, people who wear glasses touch their eyes far less and are therefore less likely to spread the virus in this way. Researchers found that, on average, people touch their face 23 times an hour and their eyes three times an hour.


Health officials have advised those wearing contact lenses to switch to glasses during the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid potentially spreading the virus through such constant touching. In the study of 304 adults aged between 10 and 80, two-thirds of them male, 19 percent said they wore glasses. The researchers found this group were two to three times less likely to contract the virus. “Long-term use of spectacles may prevent repeated touching and rubbing of the eyes,” the report said, citing the eyes as possibly a “significant route of infection.” A similar study conducted in China and released last fall theorized that people who are infected with Covid-19 are five times less likely to wear glasses.

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Jury’s out. My main thing with ZeroCovid would be the complete lack of discussing prophylaxis.

The ZeroCovid Movement: Cult Dressed as Science (AIER)

This past year has given rise to some strange and novel methods of disease containment, including lockdowns and mask mandates. It is unsurprising that the natural next step in this progression has been the development of a movement known as “ZeroCovid.” Its growing influence is, perhaps, predictable given that for nearly a year we have been inundated by the views of so-called experts seeking to legitimize their myopic worldview that public health is determined solely by prevention of Covid-19. Rather than acknowledge to a weary public that their approach has been a failure, they are doubling down and attempting to save their reputations by claiming that the problem is not that lockdowns do not work, but that they have not gone far enough.

There is, apparently, some diversity of opinion among the ZeroCovid crowd as to whether the term is to be interpreted literally, as some of its most impassioned and vocal proponents argue, or whether it simply means a more extreme version of the ideology that has dominated societies around the globe for the past year: the belief that suppressing the coronavirus is a singularly important goal, to replace all others and to be pursued with no or only minimal consideration of the effects of doing so. ZeroCovid promoters appear to agree that much stricter border controls, lockdowns, and mask mandates are needed than exist in most nations today. Sam Bowman, one of the most prominent ZeroCoviders, claims for instance that the only way to address the coronavirus problem is with “lockdowns, school closures, travel bans, mass testing, contact tracing, and masks.”

Likewise, former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair’s think-tank has stated that the only way to avoid another lockdown is to bring coronavirus cases to zero. China, Australia and New Zealand are portrayed as successes by ZeroCovid proponents, and prove that suffering now brings with it the promise of eventual freedom. Even Australia and New Zealand, which before 2020 were considered beacons of liberal democracy, have recently been the subject of investigations or inquiries by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The ZeroCovid proponents do not address the reality that China, Australia, and New Zealand have continually had to implement lockdown policies in response to new cases arising even after declaring victory over the virus, and that the latter two are island nations able to effectuate border control in a way that cannot possibly be applied to nations that are geographically proximate to others and in which the virus has already become endemic.

The “Covid Community Action Summit,” a conference held at the end of January, and led and attended by many of ZeroCovid’s main players – needless to say, over Zoom – offers a glimpse into the warped worldview that pervades the ideology. The architect of ZeroCovid, and the first speaker at the Summit, was Yaneer Bar-Yam, an American scientist who specializes in complex systems and quantitative analysis of pandemics and founded the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI). The participants came from a variety of backgrounds: in addition to doctors and scientists, political consultants and communications specialists were in attendance. Many presenters had business interests in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, and those from the United States tended to be affiliated with Democratic Party politics and campaigns.

Read more …

Your daily Cuomo content.

Resign, Andrew Cuomo (Week)

“I want to get things done and be judged by results and by making a positive difference, and I can be obsessive in that pursuit,” boasts New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in his book American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic — the book he (supposedly) wrote himself about how he did such a great job managing the virus. Since that book was published in October, a devastating second wave of infections has struck New York, claiming roughly 13,000 more lives and counting in the state. Now Cuomo is reeling under a barrage of pandemic scandals. It turns out his administration concealed data about coronavirus cases in nursing homes, reportedly for fear of federal prosecution. And stories of his vitriolic abuse and threats directed at other Democratic New York politicians are coming out.

Yet even all that is only the start of Cuomo’s deadly, corrupt incompetence. So in keeping with judging him by his “results,” Cuomo should resign immediately and free New York state from his dismal misrule.The nursing home scandal has been bubbling for nearly a year now. It starts with Cuomo’s inexplicable decision back in March 2020 to order nursing homes to accept recovering COVID-19 cases even if they were still testing positive (instead of setting up some isolated quarantine facility, for instance). A recent Associated Press investigation found that at least 9,056 recovering patients were sent back to nursing homes and long-term care facilities — a number that is 40 percent larger than his administration had previously admitted. This unquestionably worsened the pandemic as it ripped through New York’s elderly population.

But that isn’t the only number Cuomo fudged on nursing homes. New York Attorney General Letitia James investigated the situation, and found that his people may have undercounted the number of deaths associated with nursing homes by 50 percent. Cuomo then admitted that instead of the 8,500 dead they had been reporting, the true number was over 15,000 — or about a third of the state’s total deaths. The scandal really blew up when the New York Post reported comments from Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa (in his book he writes, “she is the quarterback on my team and is responsible for managing all the pieces”), seemingly admitting they had deliberately faked the numbers as part of a cover-up. His officials “froze,” she said, for fear the truth was “going to be used against us” by federal prosecutors.

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“In all, 70 percent of nursing homes currently operate as for-profit businesses, far more than other healthcare facilities. Only about one quarter of hospitals, for example, are for profit.”

How Wall Street Kills Grandma (DP)

As governors in New York and Florida face political crises over their handling of the pandemic, the scandals have spotlighted how a disproportionate amount of COVID casualties have occurred in the nation’s nursing homes. The situation is a cautionary tale not only about political corruption, but about the consequences of a nursing home infrastructure being run by for-profit corporations — and now a study documents some of the body count. The analysis found that between 2004 and 2016, more than 20,000 Americans perished as a consequence of living in nursing homes run by private equity firms. The data showed that going to a private-equity-owned nursing home significantly “increases the probability of death during the stay and the following 90 days” as compared to nursing homes with a different ownership structure.

The study from University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago and New York University researchers evaluated data from 15,000 nursing homes across the United States, alongside Medicare patient data, to assess the impacts of private equity ownership on patient outcomes. In all, the researchers found that the deaths accounted for “about 160,000 lost life-years.” Private equity firms typically take over existing corporations with borrowed or investor money and then impose cost-cutting measures to maximize revenues — often in preparation for selling off the newly stripped down firms at a profit. In the health care sector, private equity buyouts have been associated with lower staffing levels, more frequent citations for health and safety violations, shortages of supplies like ventilators that are crucial for COVID patients, and other failings tied to the constant imperative to cut costs.

In all, 70 percent of nursing homes currently operate as for-profit businesses, far more than other healthcare facilities. Only about one quarter of hospitals, for example, are for profit. The new study — which updates the researchers’ previous findings — offers clues about why private equity ownership of nursing homes has resulted in higher casualty counts. As the paper noted, private equity-owned nursing homes have lower staffing levels than their counterparts, which is directly correlated with patient outcomes.

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“To what degree are we seeing simple cowardice?”

Repentence (Kunstler)

Ms. Shaw, a divorced mother with two children (and Smith alum, 1993) worked as a Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life (that is, a dorm counselor). She was asked to denounce herself in staff meetings about “systemic racism,” and complained about it through the proper channels, which only invited more hectoring abuse. In frustration, she finally posted a video on the web to expose the Stalinist bullying that was allowed to infect every corner of campus life at Smith. The admin offered her a cash settlement to shut up and get lost. Ms. Shaw turned it down but resigned anyway in a long letter to Smith President Kathleen McCartney that she made public about the college’s hostile workplace.

How does this happen? Because Wokery above all is about status, and the elite schools exist to confer status on the young people who can get into them, who then move on into an adult life of high-status (high-paying) employment facilitated by their old school connections. In prior times, the elite schools accomplished this by offering a superior education via superior faculty and superior curricula. Lately, the emphasis has shifted to promoting sham moral superiority, because it is a shortcut to gaining power over other people — and nowadays, elitism is no longer about excellence, but just raw power over others. As the Woke hysteria ramped up on campuses across the nation, and the various colleges and U’s started competing to out-do each other in moralistic fanaticism, Smith College vied with its sister schools and the other Ivies for Woke-est of all.

The moral black hole at the center of this vicious nonsense is the spectacular failure of authority of the people who run these institutions. Smith President Kathleen McCartney supported and encouraged the Woke inquisition on her campus. She gets paid the tidy sum of $515,461 a year. Maybe she didn’t want to give that up by taking a principled stand against bad behavior and bad ideas. Maybe she favors the rule of bad ideas and unprincipled behavior? Is she stupid or depraved? And, of course, what about her huge staff of vice-presidents and deans, not to mention the school’s board of trustees? To what degree are we seeing simple cowardice?

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The man must have sold a lot of pillows.

‘Thank You,’ Says MyPillow’s Mike Lindell As He’s Finally Sued By Dominion (RT)

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a lawsuit against MyPillow CEO and vocal Donald Trump supporter Mike Lindell over his election fraud claims, saying “the lie sells pillows.” Lindell is only the latest person to be legally targeted by Dominion over election fraud conspiracy theories. The company filed suit last month against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, accusing him of pushing election conspiracies to “financially enrich himself.” Dominion is now suing Lindell for defamation, seeking $1.3 billion in damages. “MyPillow’s defamatory marketing campaign – with promo codes like ‘FightforTrump’, ‘45’, ‘Proof’, and ‘QAnon’ – has increased MyPillow sales by 30-40 percent and continues duping people into redirecting their election-lie outrage into pillow purchases,” the lawsuit claims.


Lindell fired back at the lawsuit and said “it’s been cancel culture for MyPillow” as his outspokenness has led to 22 retailers dropping his popular products from their stores. Lindell has alleged the election was rigged in Joe Biden’s favor through Dominion and other voting software systems through not only interviews, but also a two-hour documentary titled ‘Absolute Proof’, which aired earlier this month. He was previously booted from Twitter for his refusal to back down on his election fraud beliefs. “I’m very happy that they finally got that suit filed,” Lindell told CNBC of Dominion’s lawsuit. He previously invited one from the company multiple times and even to sue them earlier this month “for the American people” as a way to keep the discussion about alleged election fraud going. “My message to Dominion is thank you for finally getting this done, because it’ll be back in the limelight now,” Lindell said.

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“..the First Amendment prohibits Congress from infringing on free speech..”

Lawmakers to Cable Providers: Why Do You Carry These News Channels? (Soave)

Today two Democratic members of Congress sent letters to the presidents of Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, Dish, and other cable and satellite companies implying that they should either stop carrying Fox News, One America News Network, and Newsmax or pressure them to change their coverage. According to the lawmakers, these conservative channels are responsible for promoting misinformation and political violence. “To our knowledge, the cable, satellite, and over-the-top companies that disseminate these media outlets to American viewers have done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets,” wrote Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, both of California.

Released in advance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Wednesday hearing on “Disinformation and Extremism in the Media,” the letter makes clear that some lawmakers do not want television providers to let their customers watch conservative news channels. (Disclaimer: I am interviewed regularly on Fox News and Newsmax.) Eshoo and McNerney ask the companies to explain the “moral and ethical principles” that undergird their decisionmaking with respect to which channels are carried, how many viewers tuned in to these channels during the four weeks before the the Capitol riots on January 6, 2020, and what steps were taken to “monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation.” “The committee members also sent the letter to Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu, digital companies that distribute cable programming,” reports The New York Times.

False claims do appear with some frequency on conservative news channels, streaming services, and social media. But they also appear in The New York Times, on CNN, and in other mainstream information outlets. The traditional remedy to misinformation is to file a defamation lawsuit. The federal government does not need to involve itself. On the contrary, the First Amendment prohibits Congress from infringing on free speech—and that includes the freedom of provide companies to decide what kind of speech appears on their platforms. Politicians are not in charge of setting the parameters for acceptable speech on the internet and television. That responsibility devolves to individual companies and individual viewers.

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“The easiest way to build the prison is to get freedom lovers everywhere to build the prison for you.”

Building a Bitcoin Prison – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)

Former Assistant Secretary of Housing and investment advisor Catherine Austin Fitts says you have to be careful and fully understand Bitcoin. Fitts explains, “We do know they want to go to an all-digital system with central bank cryptos. The easiest way to build the prison is to get freedom lovers everywhere to build the prison for you. To me, Bitcoin has always been the prototype on the way to building the all-digital crypto system that they would love to put into place. You have $400 trillion in fiat (currency) and it needs a place to go. If you are trying to buy up all the gold, silver and farmland, the last thing you need is competition from retail. They want to shift them into crypto and get them to build the crypto train tracks. In a funny kind of way, it’s brilliant.

There is talk by big banks that Bitcoin could go to $300,000 per unit by the end of the year. Fitts thinks, “This is absolutely possible. This is pure politics. This has nothing to do with economics. How much will the central bankers, who can print as much money as they want, spend to get you into this platform? Your guess is as good as mine. The sky’s the limit as to how much they can spend. Remember, once they decide to bring out the central bank currencies, and they have steadily been regulating the crypto currencies, Bitcoin and everything else, so the day they decide to take this to zero, they can do it. If you are going to invest into cryptos and build our prison for us, what you need to know is this thing could go to $300,000, and it can also go to zero. This is a highly speculative market, and you need to approach it accordingly.”

Fitts warns of a dark future if the central bankers get everything they want. Fitts says, “When they decide to shut down our bank accounts and say you all get on crypto, universal basic income and take that injection or you can’t transact on the financial system, this is instituting a totalitarian system through the financial system. . . . When they shut that trap door, what you need to think about is where are you going to buy food?” In closing, Fitts says, “We are in Never, Never Land. We have two groups in our society: One group that can print money, and the other who can earn money. What we saw last year is the people who could print money declared war on the people who earn money. They basically said we are going to shut down your businesses, and we are going to suck up and take your market share or buy you out with money we print out of thin air. . . . We have no pandemic. What this is is an economic war.”

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