Oct 282021
 
 October 28, 2021  Posted by at 7:19 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


M. C. Escher Drawing hands1948

 

Fauci’s NIH Also Funded Medical Experiments on AIDS Orphans in NYC (GP)
Congress Didn’t Give OSHA Authority to Impose Vaccine Mandates (HF)
Japan Drops Vax Rollout, Goes To Ivermectin, Ends Covid Almost Overnight (HTRS)
Two Indian Drugmakers to End Trials of Generic Merck Pill (R.)
Minnesota Surgeon Fired After Saying Parents Should Decide On Kids’ Masks (JTN)
Instagram Censors Popular Animal Rescuer for Slamming Fauci (GP)
Revolt of the Essential Workers (Tab)
Biden’s Nominee Omarova Wants to Move All Bank Deposits to the Fed (Martens)
China Cannot Offset Its Property Bubble Easily (Lacalle)
EU Fines Poland €1 Million Per Day Over Judicial Reforms (DW)
Pfizer Vaccine To Lower Child Deaths From Almost Zero To Almost Zero (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Wait, so we can’t use Ivermectin because “We don’t have enough data,” But..
“Let’s vaccinate children to see how safe the vaccine is because we don’t have enough data.”

 

 

Tucker FDA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1453180072937107456

 

 

 

 

Such a fine man.

Fauci’s NIH Also Funded Medical Experiments on AIDS Orphans in NYC (GP)

In August Gateway Pundit contributor Cassandra Fairbanks broke the story on Dr. Fauci’s use of taxpayer money to torture beagles in barbaric animal testing. Dr. Fauci funded a study in Tunisia where beagle dogs were eaten alive by parasite-infected flies. Dr. Fauci also spent over $16 million in taxpayer funds on disturbing “toxic brain injection” experiments on monkeys in 2018. And Dr. Fauci was more recently caught funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China laboratory blamed for the production and leak of the coronavirus. Fauci lied about his funding of the lab under oath numerous times. Now this… Dr. Fauci’s NIH was also caught funding experiments on AIDS orphans at a New York City hospital in 2004.

The Fauci NIH approved experiments on hundreds of New York City orphans. Government agencies and pharmaceutical companies used the orphans in deadly AIDS drug trials. In 2005, the city of New York hired the VERA Institute to form a final report on the drug trials. VERA was given no access to medical records for any of the children used in trials. Their report was published in 2008. They reported that twenty-five children died during the drug studies, that an additional fifty-five children died following the studies (in foster care), and, according to Tim Ross, Director of the Child Welfare program at VERA (as of 2009), 29% of the remaining 417 children who were used in drug studies had died (out of a total 532 children that are admitted to have been used). [LINK]

The WIKIPEDIA writers cover up all details, as is expected. No payment or compensation has been paid to any of the children used in the trials, or to their families. A hospital nurse later spoke out to reporters about the testing. She reported that children would immediately get sick, break out or throw up during the testing. They were orphans at the Incarnation Children’s Center in New York City. The ICC Investigation website offers several documents and interviews with children and childcare workers at the hospital who participated in the research.

Read more …

“OSHA will issue the order. And then get sued.”

Congress Didn’t Give OSHA Authority to Impose Vaccine Mandates (HF)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is about to require 80 million working Americans to get vaccinated. You may be among them. There’s just one catch: OSHA lacks the legal authority to impose a vaccine mandate. Declaring that his patience was “wearing thin” with unvaccinated Americans, President Joe Biden on Sept. 9 announced that OSHA would require companies with at least 100 employees to mandate that workers either get vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID-19 tests. OSHA sent a draft mandate to the White House on Oct. 8. Once the White House completes its review, OSHA will issue the order. And then get sued. As we detail in our legal analysis, the courts will almost certainly strike down the OSHA vaccine mandate. Here are a few reasons why:

Congress did not place vaccines within OSHA’s purview. OSHA is establishing the vaccine mandate through an “emergency temporary standard.” This highly unusual process allows OSHA to bypass public notice and comment. Federal agencies, including OSHA, typically must submit major rules to public scrutiny before finalizing them. To take the “emergency temporary standard” shortcut, the agency must persuade a court that workers are in “grave danger” and that it is “necessary” to protect them against that danger. The “grave danger” that an emergency temporary standard must address must come from “exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or new hazards.” A toxic substance or agent is a poisonous element or compound. A substance or agent can be “physically harmful” because it is flammable, explosive, or carcinogenic.

The danger a virus causes, by contrast, derives from its ability to replicate within a living organism. Congress created OSHA to promote workplace safety. OSHA inspectors look for hazards that can potentially harm employees, such as improperly stored chemicals, inadequately lighted or ventilated workstations, or lack of protective equipment (e.g., gloves and hard hats). Vaccines against viruses are an entirely different form of protection and are beyond the scope of OSHA’s mandate. Congress tasked the Department of Health and Human Services with determining the safety, efficacy, and appropriate use of vaccines. Congress authorized the Food and Drug Administration to determine whether vaccines should be allowed in interstate commerce. It empowered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend who should receive such vaccines. Both agencies are within HHS. OSHA resides in the Department of Labor. Congress has given neither OSHA nor the Labor Department authority over vaccines.

Read more …

Are US, EU even studying this?

Japan Drops Vax Rollout, Goes To Ivermectin, Ends Covid Almost Overnight (HTRS)

The European Medicines Agency said Thursday that new preliminary data from the Nordic countries supports a warning the agency adopted in July that inflammatory heart conditions called myocarditis and pericarditis can occur in very rare cases following vaccination with Covid-19 shots made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. By far, however, the absolute superstar among foreign nations dealing with COVID is Japan. Japan has PULLED the vaccines and substituted Ivermectin – and in one month, wiped COVID out in that country! [..] By September deaths from the COVID-19 Vaccine jabs were being investigated. At roughly that time, the vials were under scrutiny and metal “magnetic” material was found in them.


Very shortly thereafter, the Japanese minister of health announced doctors could prescribe Ivermectin. A month later, the Western press is shocked that COVID has all but disappeared from the island. [..] This is what it looks like in a country that still has rule of law. The governemnt responds to reports of death and contaminated vaxes, moves to real treatment, people get better, and the virus disappears. Now compare that to what is happening in the United States and in Australia and New Zealand. All three countries are in dismal failure in their handling of COVID-19, and that failure has resulted in staggering loss of freedom and destruction of commerce. This is the biggest news story right now Japan has ended COVID. It did it after it stopped the vax rollout and went to Ivermectin.

Rogan IVM

Read more …

Why do they call it generic?

Two Indian Drugmakers to End Trials of Generic Merck Pill (R.)

Two Indian drugmakers have requested permission to end late-stage trials of their generic versions of Merck & Co’s promising experimental oral antiviral drug molnupiravir to treat moderate COVID-19, a week after Merck said its own trial had succeeded for mild-to-moderate patients. Merck earlier this year suspended its own development of molnupiravir as a treatment for hospitalized COVID-19 patients since many of them have reached a phase of the disease that is too late for an antiviral drug to provide much help. The Indian companies – Aurobindo Pharma Ltd and MSN Laboratories – did not exclude hospitalized patients in designing their moderate COVID-19 trials, according to study documents, although it was not known if the trials ultimately included people in the hospital.

Merck spokesperson Melissa Moody said Merck and the Indian companies had defined “moderate” disease differently. Merck’s trials are based on U.S. Food and Drug Administration definitions, which for moderate COVID-19 describe blood oxygen levels as no lower than 93%. It defines blood oxygen levels for severe COVID-19 as 93% or lower. The trials in India define moderate COVID-19 blood oxygen levels as 90% to 93%, according to the trial documents for the two companies.Aurobindo and MSN are continuing to conduct studies of molnupiravir in patients with mild COVID-19 who have not been hospitalized, according to trial documents and the website of the Indian drug regulator’s internal expert committee.

Merck and partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics last week said molnupiravir had nearly halved the risk of hospitalization or death in at-risk non-hospitalized patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19, results hailed by experts as potentially a major advance in fight against the illness. The Indian drug regulator’s committee also disclosed on its website that Aurobindo and MSN had presented interim clinical trial data for moderate COVID-19 patients and asked to end the trials.

Read more …

“.. it’s still their responsibility. It’s not yours. God gave it to them. Honor their wishes, either side of the fence.”

Minnesota Surgeon Fired After Saying Parents Should Decide On Kids’ Masks (JTN)

A Minnesota surgeon was fired from his job earlier this month for giving a speech to school officials in which he advocated for parents to decide whether their children should wear masks. According to Fox News, Dr. Jeffrey Horak spoke before the Fergus Falls School Board on Oct. 11, arguing that parents should have the final decision concerning the health of their children. Dr. Horak’s comments were in response to a district-wide mask mandate that went into effect the day prior. “Who does God put in charge of these kids? Their parents,” Horak said during the meeting. “God gave each one of these kids… to their parents and they speak for them. They may be wrong, they may be dumb, they may be perfect in their decisions. But it’s still their responsibility. It’s not yours. God gave it to them. Honor their wishes, either side of the fence.”


Horak reportedly said that more than a week later, he was dismissed from his position at Lake Region Healthcare because his “views were no longer congruent” with that of the hospital. A spokesperson for Lake Region confirmed that Horak no longer works there as of Wednesday. The spokesperson went on to say that Lake Region’s didn’t make the decision concerning Horak’s employment, rather it was the “Medical Group Board who made the decision about discontinuing Dr. Horak’s practice.”

Read more …

Fauci is a protected species.

Instagram Censors Popular Animal Rescuer for Slamming Fauci (GP)

Instagram has censored the founder of SPARTN Monkey Rescue for blasting Dr. Anthony Fauci over experimental COVID vaccines being injected into sanctuary primates. Michael Robison, a primate expert and rescuer, had stated that Fauci “just helped fund a $37M experimental vaccine trial on 77 chimps via a partnership with Zoetis/Pfizer at a Georgia sanctuary!” “Chimps that were rescued from this mess and other abuse… are now part of the largest animal testing trial in history at his guidance,” Robison continued. Robison added that the use of the experimental vaccines in these rescued primates is a violation of the Endangered Species Act and the CHIMPS Act, both of which are federal laws, “for a version of the vaccine meant for kids!”

The comments were flagged by Instagram for possibly “containing racist language or other content that goes against our community guidelines.” Robison is a well-respected rescuer who has developed quite a following on social media for his charming videos of monkeys and other animals that he has saved. Robison was also recently censored on Twitter for speaking out about his own regrets about getting the vaccine after suffering severe side effects — making his desire to defend the chimps even more urgent. As Gateway Pundit previously reported, one of the largest vaccine testing trials in history will be taking place at Project Chimps — a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals allied “sanctuary” for great apes. Project Chimps was founded in 2014 following the end of National Institutes of Health funding for biomedical research on these animals.

“About 70% of the chimpanzees at Project Chimps have been trained to receive voluntary injections, and the staff is working on preparing the rest,” Science Magazine reports. The nonhuman COVID-19 vaccine was created by Zoetis, a U.S. company that was originally the animal division of Pfizer. It has only been authorized for experimental use in animals. Testing experimental vaccines on these chimps, many of whom were already used for animal research in the past, does appear to be a direct violation of the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Management and Protection (CHIMP) Act and the Endangered Species Act. Under the CHIMP Act, which passed in 2007, chimpanzees that are retired from biomedical research are prohibited from being returned to laboratories or used for experimentation.

Read more …

Wishful thinking. They don’t even protest a jab for their kids.

Revolt of the Essential Workers (Tab)

Back before the COVID-19 pandemic started, the year 2019 saw anti-government demonstrations in Paris, Manila, La Paz, Port-au-Prince, Bogotá, Prague, Quito , Beirut, Hong Kong, London, Baghdad, Barcelona, Budapest, Santiago, New Delhi, Jakarta, Buenos Aires and more, earning the title “the year of the protest.” It was also a year of resurgent labor activity in the United States. After decades of declining union participation, the country saw 25 major work stoppages involving 425,500 workers, the highest number since 2001.

The economic discontent that propelled both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders to popularity had been building for many years. As a recent article in the journal American Affairs noted, $34 trillion of real equity wealth, in 2017 dollars, was created between 1989 and 2017. Nearly half that sum (44%) consisted of a reallocation of corporate equity to shareholders at the expense of worker compensation, while economic growth accounted for just 25% of that increase in wealth. In other words, despite the advent of seemingly near-miraculous, time- and space-saving digital technologies, the post-Cold War “economic boom” consisted mainly of America’s wealthy shareholders taking money from its increasingly insecure workforce.

America, and other Western societies, had moved from a model of real growth and expanding benefits for all to a model where the rich got richer by impoverishing the less wealthy orders of society—and the lower orders were fighting back. However, after lockdowns were imposed in March 2020, the balance of power abruptly shifted back toward billionaire oligarchs and large corporations. Tech-based U.S. monopolies widened their profit margins as workers and their children were confined to their homes and the Fed pumped money into Wall Street. As the Fed provided unlimited purchases of corporate debt and securities, millions of people filed for unemployment, nearly 1 in 4 households experienced food insecurity, and 200,000 small businesses closed. The result was an estimated loss of $1.3 trillion in household wealth for American workers. Meanwhile, U.S. billionaires gained $1 trillion.

Read more …

Have nothing and be happy.

Biden’s Nominee Omarova Wants to Move All Bank Deposits to the Fed (Martens)

This month, the Vanderbilt Law Review published a 69-page paper by Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal regulator of the largest banks in the country that operate across state lines. The paper is titled “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.” The paper, in all seriousness, proposes the following: (1) Moving all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve; (2) Allowing the Fed, in “extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates,” to confiscate deposits from these FedAccounts in order to tighten monetary policy;

(3) Allowing the most Wall Street-conflicted regional Fed bank in the country, the New York Fed, when there are “rises in market value at rates suggestive of a bubble trend,” such as with technology stocks today, to “short these securities, thereby putting downward pressure on their prices”; (4) Eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insures bank deposits; (5) Consolidate all bank regulatory functions at the OCC – which Omarova has been nominated to head. Republican Senator Pat Toomey has been running a Red Scare campaign against Omarova, who was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (now Kazakhstan) and attended Moscow State University on a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.

The real threat that Omarova poses to U.S. financial stability, that Democrats should be calling out, is that she wants to further concentrate all major aspects of the U.S. banking system in the hands of the Federal Reserve, a captured regulator whose 12 regional bank tentacles are, literally, owned by the banks. Omarova offers not one scintilla of a suggestion about restructuring the Fed so that it is not owned by or controlled by the banks. In her paper, Omarova characterizes the current relationship between the Fed and the banks as the Fed running a “franchisor ledger” to assist its franchisee-banks.

But as the Fed’s secret $29 trillion bailout of the mega banks on Wall Street and their foreign derivative counterparties proved following the financial crash in 2008, it’s actually the banks that are cracking the whip and the Fed amicably doing their bidding. That means that the mega banks are the franchisor and they’ve shifted their faux bank examinations and faux stress tests to the Fed, for appearances sake. This point is further demonstrated by the fact that during the Fed’s 2007-2010 bailouts, most of the Fed’s emergency lending programs were farmed out in no-bid contracts to the very banks being bailed out. JPMorgan Chase, a five-count felon, continues to have a contract with the Fed to serve as custodian of more than $2 trillion of the Fed’s agency Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS).

Read more …

“..four times larger than China’s GDP.”

China Cannot Offset Its Property Bubble Easily (Lacalle)

No economy has been able to ignore a property bubble and, even less so, offset it and continue to grow, replacing the bust of the real estate sector with other parts of the economy. Heavily regulated economies from Iceland to Spain have failed to contain the negative impact of a real estate sector collapse. It will not be different in China. China has three real estate problems: the massive size of the sector, its excessive leverage, and the amount of developer debt in the hands of average households and retail investors. According to China researcher George Magnus, writing in The Guardian, “China’s real estate market has been called the most important sector in the world economy. Valued at about $55tn, it is now twice the size of its U.S. equivalent, and four times larger than China’s GDP.”

Considering construction and other real estate services, the sector accounts for more than 25 percent of China’s GDP. Just to consider other previous examples of property bubbles, the average size of the sector was somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of a country’s GDP. And none of those economies managed the excess of the property sector. Of course, the problem of a real estate bubble is always excessive leverage. Developers take on too much debt, and the smallest decrease in housing prices makes their equity vanish and their solvency ratios collapse. In the case of China, the level of debt is simply staggering. According to the Financial Times, the ratio of net debt of 19 of the largest Chinese developers stands at over 60 percent to equity. Evergrande is not even the most indebted.

Two developers stand at more than 120 percent net gearing. The top 10 most indebted Chinese developers amply surpass the level of debt-to-assets that made Spain’s Martinsa-Fadesa collapse. Chinese and foreign retail investors are also heavily exposed to the real estate and construction market. Evergrande was the biggest issuer of commercial paper, and developers’ debt was sold to small investors in different packages. Furthermore, Chinese families have around 78 percent of their wealth tied up in property, more than double the United States, according to a 2018 report by Chengdu’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and China Guangfa Bank.

Read more …

Bully. All your base are belong to us.

EU Fines Poland €1 Million Per Day Over Judicial Reforms (DW)

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ordered Poland to pay a fine of €1 million ($1.2 million) per day on Wednesday over its decision to ignore an EU ruling on Warsaw’s judicial reforms. The top EU court imposed the penalty as Poland has not suspended the disciplinary chamber of the Supreme Court. The ECJ had ruled in July that the chamber did not guarantee impartiality. The ECJ said in a press release the fine was “necessary in order to avoid serious and irreparable harm to the legal order of the European Union and to the values on which that Union is founded, in particular that of the rule of law.” The European Commission had requested “financial penalties” be levied on September 9 after Poland failed to comply with the July ruling. On Twitter, Poland’s Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta called the fine “usurpation and blackmail.”


The disciplinary chamber was set up in 2018 and is able to dismiss judges and prosecutors. The ECJ fears this could be abused to inflict punitive sanctions on those who show independence in not bowing to political will. Earlier this month, Poland’s constitutional court ruled Polish law supersedes EU law when there is a conflict between the two. Last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki told the European Parliament the disciplinary chamber will be abolished, but he gave no timeline for when that would occur and no draft law has been introduced. Poland has been accused of backsliding when it comes to the independence of the judiciary and press freedom by other EU member states. The EU asserts Poland has politicized the judiciary with the placement of judges loyal to the ruling Law and Justice Party.

Read more …

“We’re excited to start giving it to them so we can find out.”

Pfizer Vaccine To Lower Child Deaths From Almost Zero To Almost Zero (BBee)

In a moment celebrated by all hard-working lobbyists, Pfizer announced that the COVID-19 vaccine will reduce average daily child COVID deaths from almost zero all the way down to almost zero. “These are phenomenal results. Our internal studies have proven a microscopic benefit to an even more microscopic risk to children,” stated Dee Pimbly, head of Pfizer’s Department of Propaganda to a crowd of journalists who have not allowed their own children to bask in the warm glow of sunlight, or interact with other children for almost no reason whatsoever.


FDA officials praised Pfizer for fighting a virus that is the leading killer of children after cancer, vehicular accidents, suicide, heart disease, drowning, suffocation, the flu, meteors from space, and slipping on a banana peel. Experts say the vaccine will probably kill more kids than it saves, but it’s ok because science. When asked about any safety concerns, an FDA official replied, “We’re excited to start giving it to them so we can find out.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime; donate with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

Nov 062020
 


W. Eugene Smith Orson Welles 1942

 

Death by Lockdown (AIER)
China: Life After COVID Is Back To Normal (marc)
Vladimir Putin ‘Will Quit In January Amid Fears of Parkinson’s Disease’ (DM)
Which is the Real “Working Class Party” Now? (Taibbi)
President Trump Delivers Remarks About The Election From White House
Trump Gets ‘Big Legal Win In Pennsylvania,’ Setback In Michigan, Georgia (RT)
Dems Melt Down On Conference Call Over Losing House Seats (RT)
EHRC Antisemitism Report Added Fire To Labour’s Simmering Civil War (Cook)
Australian Property Bubble Hasn’t Yet Burst Amid The Pandemic (Abc.au)
Experts Want 15 Days Of Counting To Flatten The Curve Of Votes For Trump (BBee)

 

 

Election fatigue is setting in. Good thing I’m not a lawyer.

 

 

 

 

Bob Hope Democrats
https://twitter.com/i/status/1324577385153470464

 

 

“The most startling data concerns the age group 25-44. This is a group with a Covid-related infection fatality rate of 0.0092%, which is to say barely a disease at all for nearly everyone in this group. And yet they are dying at a rate far above what is expected..”

Death by Lockdown (AIER)

On March 28 – very early in the pandemic – AIER published an article that I felt at the time received far too little attention. “Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown” by economists Audrey and Thomas Duncan cited empirical literature on the human toll of economic devastation. This article forecasted more than 100,000 excess deaths due to drug overdoses, suicide, alcoholism, homicide, and untreated depression – all a result not of the virus but of policies of mandatory human separation, economic downturn, business and school closures, closed medical services, and general depression that comes with a loss of freedom and choice.

These two economists demonstrated that as bad as a virus is, policies that wreck normal social functioning will cause massive and completely unnecessary suffering and death. Because the article was so well-cited, with references to all the available literature, I thought it would make a difference. But after it appeared, it was crickets. I was amazed. Here you have a beautiful piece of research that perfectly forecasted the nightmare being created by politicians and their advisers and it made no dent in the national narrative. Here we are seven months later and the worst has come true. These two economists should be considered prophets. Sure enough, the Centers for Disease Control has documented a shocking number of excess deaths not from Covid.

Scott Atlas summarizes:
• Hispanic: 40% excess deaths NOT Covid related
• Black: 46% NOT Covid related
• White: 38% NOT Covid related
• 25-44: 77% excess deaths NOT Covid related
• 65+: 39% NOT Covid related

The most startling data concerns the age group 25-44. This is a group with a Covid-related infection fatality rate of 0.0092%, which is to say barely a disease at all for nearly everyone in this group. And yet they are dying at a rate far above what is expected, and mostly from issues not related to Covid. There should not be any excess deaths. Instead we find people dropping dead in ways that are shocking.

Read more …

“The science is clear, but politicians are clearly no scientists.”

China: Life After COVID Is Back To Normal (marc)

A few months ago I was lucky to get a visa to China so I could visit the country during the middle of the global pandemic. After 2 weeks in quarantine in Xiamen in late September and a total of 5 COVID tests I was finally allowed to fly to Beijing. When I landed there I had literally arrived in a different world, a world without COVID. Of course I knew that there is no COVID in China anymore, but seeing it for yourself is different. Everything is open again, even bars and clubs. Social distancing is a thing of the past, but when I arrived in Beijing most people still wore face masks, even outside. When I visited Xiamen again last week a lot less people wore them, but maybe that was also because of the much higher temperatures there. Everybody needs to have a health app installed on their phones, without it you can’t enter many public places (the app proves you have no COVID or have not been in contact with COVID-positive people) and you can’t fly without a green QR code on your app (not even if you just want to leave China).

Life is back to normal in China. Interesting is that people work from their offices again: The work-from-home phase did not last here, maybe because people only worked from home for a few weeks instead of a few months. I wonder if that will also happen in the Western world or if people will keep working remotely. Everything is open and there are hardly any restrictions left, although you still need to wear face masks in among others taxis and in school. What dit China do to get here? It’s actually quite simple, they had a complete lockdown of the whole country for a couple of weeks, and for some hotspots like Wuhan for a few months. After that they opened up again, but they did that with ubiquitous testing and obligatory face masks everywhere. Each time a new outbreak occurred they would lock (part of) a city down and test everybody. In that way China got the virus completely under control.

It may be hard to believe if you live in Europe or the US, but it is really not that hard to do. The partial lockdown in many other countries is simply not enough. It turns out that it is much better to have a shorter but very strict lockdown than to have a much longer partial lockdown that just tries to ‘flatten the curve’. I think Europe and the US are shooting themselves in the foot by trying to remain open for business. The long term effect in the Western world will simply be much worse than the short term effect in China.I am actually flabbergasted that the Western economies don’t see this and don’t copy the China playbook. I have argued for a short but full lockdown on Twitter since March, but most people did not take it serious. Of course it’s not the full story, China also had face masks from day one, while many other countries still don’t seem to ‘believe’ in them (although that finally started to change after the summer). The science is clear, but politicians are clearly no scientists.

And of course you need testing capacity, something that seems impossible to scale up in many Western countries. The virus started in January and soon after that it became clear to me that this could be a global danger. As I noted on Twitter, face masks were sold out in Vancouver on January 25 already, simply because most Chinese in Vancouver also saw the risk and started buying them. But governments took a full 6-7 weeks before they started to take it more serious. They lost so much precious time, instead of getting face masks ready and prepare test facilities they downplayed the risk. It was hard to believe for me, but I realized (once again…) that you should never rely on politicians for information but do your own research.

Read more …

No idea what to make of this, can’t trust western media to say one true thing about Putin, but I do like Scott Adams’ take.

Vladimir Putin ‘Will Quit In January Amid Fears of Parkinson’s Disease’ (DM)

Vladimir Putin will quit in January amid fears he has Parkinson’s disease, Moscow sources have claimed. The 68-year-old strongman president of Russia is being urged to retire by his former gymnast lover Alina Kabaeva, 37, insiders say. Recent footage of Putin’s legs moving around as he gripped onto the armrest of a chair have raised eyebrows. Eyes are also drawn to a twitching pen in the former KGB operative’s fingers and a cup which analysts told The Sun was filled with painkillers. Earlier this week it emerged that unexpected legislation was being rushed through to ensure that Putin could be made a senator-for-life. The new draft legislation was introduced by Putin himself, and would guarantee him legal immunity and state perks until he dies.


State-run RT media forecast the move will be seen ‘as a sign that the groundwork is being laid for an eventual transition of power in Russia’. It is not the first time that people have speculated that Putin may be suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Others have previously noted his ‘gunslinger’s gait’ – a clearly reduced right arm swing compared to his left, giving him a lilting swagger. An asymmetrically reduced arm swing is a classic feature of Parkinson’s and can manifest in ‘clinically intact subjects with a predisposition to later develop’ the disease, according to the British Medical Journal.

Read more …

“There were so many serious analyses wondering what could be done to convince Homer Simpson not to vote Trump that it soon became clear Bart’s donut-loving Dad was the closest thing to a Trump voter most educated people could relate to, or knew even.”

Which is the Real “Working Class Party” Now? (Taibbi)

In an irony he is humorously ill-equipped to appreciate, Donald Trump by losing this week may have gained something for the Republican Party bureaucracy he took such pleasure in humiliating four years ago: a future. Defying years of muddle-headed media analyses, Trump underperformed with white men, but made gains with every other demographic. Some 26 percent of his votes came from nonwhite Americans, the highest percentage for a Republican since 1960. The politician who became instantly famous — and infamous — by saying of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists,” performed stunningly well with Latino voters.

Exit polls, which can be unreliable, pegged his national support at 32%-35% of the Latino vote. More tellingly were results in certain counties. Starr County, Texas, the county with the highest percentage of Hispanic or Latino voters – above 95% – voted for Hillary Clinton by a 60-point margin in 2016, but went for Biden by just five points in 2020. Even more amazing was Trump’s performance among Black voters. The man whose 2016 message to “the blacks” was very nearly a parody of long-ago New York mayoral candidate Mario Procaccino’s pledge that “My heart is as black as yours” must have found a new way to connect. Trump doubled his support with Black women, moving from 4% in 2016 to 8%, while upping his support among Black men from 13% to 18%. Remember, this was after four years of near-constant denunciations of Trump as not just a racist, but the leader of a literal white supremacist movement.

Trump’s numbers with the LGBTQ community were a stunner also, jumping from 14% to 28%. In September, a dating app for queer men called Hornet ran a survey that showed 45% support for Trump among gay men. Ever since Trump jumped into politics, media observers have rushed to denounce any Trump-related data that conflicts with conventional wisdom, and the Hornet survey was no different. Out magazine quoted a communications professor from Cal Poly Pomona as saying, “To tout a Hornet poll as evidence of LGBTQ support for Trump is clickbaity, sloppy journalism.” Even the Hornet editor scoffed at his own poll, before it all turned out to be true in the election.

Read more …

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win..”

President Trump Delivers Remarks About The Election From White House

As the nation continues waiting to find out who will win the 2020 presidential contest, President Trump on Thursday delivered remarks from the White House. “If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump said. “If you count the illegal votes they can try to steal the election from us, if you count the votes that came in late,” he said. The president said that election polling was weaponized to harm his candidacy. “As everyone now recognizes media polling was election interference, in the truest sense of that word,” Trump said. “By powerful special interests, these really phony polls…were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden and diminish Republicans’ ability to raise funds. They were what’s called suppression polls, everyone knows that now.”


“So it will be hopefully cleared up, maybe soon, I hope soon,” he said. “But it’ll probably go through a process, a legal process and as you know I’ve claimed certain states and he’s claiming states…but ultimately I have a feeling judges are gonna have to rule. But there’s been a lotta shenanigans and we can’t stand for that in our country.”


Jo Jorgenson losing half her support in the space of 12 minutes

Read more …

Georgia count just flipped to Biden.

Trump Gets ‘Big Legal Win In Pennsylvania,’ Setback In Michigan, Georgia (RT)

As Donald Trump continues to accuse Democrats behind Joe Biden of trying to “steal” the presidential election, he celebrated a “big legal” win in his Pennsylvania lawsuit. “Big legal win in Pennsylvania!” the president tweeted on Thursday, following orders mandating certain mail-in ballots to be placed aside for the time being and allowing Republican poll watchers to observe more closely as votes are counted. It remains to be seen how this “big legal win” will benefit Trump, but it does ensure that it could be even longer before people know who has won the presidential race. Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, a key swing state that remains up for grabs, that lack identifying information from their voter will be placed aside and not counted until the court gives further guidance on what to do.

Once ballots are “segregated,” those with information that cannot be confirmed by November 9 will “not be counted until further notice” from the court. Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has also ordered that Republican poll watchers will be able to observe ballots being counted in Philadelphia from a distance of six feet following complaints that they were being kept too far away from the actual counting. In Michigan, the president has faced a setback with a judge scoffing at Trump’s lawsuit to stop the count in the state due to allegations voter fraud. Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens said on Thursday she will deny Trump’s request as the accusations of voter fraud are “hearsay” and contain no “firsthand knowledge.”

Michigan has been called in Joe Biden’s favor by multiple US outlets, but Trump has claimed victory in the state, blaming last minute “ballot dumps” on the former vice president’s surge on the night of the election. Earlier, a judge in Georgia also dismissed lawsuit by Trump campaign that requested to ensure that state laws were followed in regards to absentee ballots. Trump’s campaign has also said they will be demanding a recount in Wisconsin, which Biden reportedly won by around 20,000 votes. The incumbent president has also alleged in another lawsuit that thousands of people voted in Nevada who are not residents there.

Read more …

Will they oust Pelosi?

Dems Melt Down On Conference Call Over Losing House Seats (RT)

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia), who is leading her congressional race by a thread, has reportedly blamed the Democrat Party for losing elections “we shouldn’t have lost” due to embracing radical ideas like Defund the Police. During a conference call between Democrats discussing the results of various 2020 elections, Spanberger claimed she nearly lost her race (she’s won by a few thousand votes) because of an attack ad connecting her to the Defund the Police movement. “Don’t say socialism ever again,” the congresswoman said on the call, according to Washington Post reporter Erica Werner.


“We need to be pretty clear … it was a failure. It was not a success,” she added about election night. While the results of the presidential race remain unclear, Democrats had a disappointing election night regardless, as they failed to gain control of the Senate and actually ended up losing seats in the House, where they still remain the majority party. Werner reported that Spanberger did not find a lot of support on the call, with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) openly disagreeing with the assessment, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) pushing back and saying former President Barack Obama was called a Muslim and socialist without being connected to movements like Black Lives Matter or Defund the Police.

Read more …

The totally insane idea that Corbyn is an anti-semite has been as hard to kill by evidence in the UK as Russiagate is in the US and UK. And several lies about Assange. The media has become toxic.

EHRC Antisemitism Report Added Fire To Labour’s Simmering Civil War (Cook)

It was easy to miss the true significance of last week’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report on the British Labour Party and antisemitism amid the furore over the party suspending its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn. The impression left on the public – aided by yet more frantic media spin – was that the EHRC’s 130-page report had confirmed the claims of Corbyn’s critics that on his watch the party had become “institutionally antisemitic”. In fact, the watchdog body reached no such conclusion. Its report was far more ambiguous. And its findings – deeply flawed, intentionally vague and glaringly inconsistent as they were – were nowhere near as dramatic as the headlines suggested.

The commission concluded that “there were unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination for which the Labour Party is responsible”. Those failings, according to the commission, related to the handling of antisemitism complaints, interference by the leader’s office in the disciplinary procedure, and “unlawful harassment” by two Labour Party “agents”. None of that seemed to amount to anything like the supposed claims of a “plague” and “tidal wave” of antisemitism that have dominated headlines for five years. Paradoxically, the equalities commission’s conclusions sounded a lot like Corbyn’s statement that the scale of Labour’s antisemitism problem had been “dramatically overstated”. That remark quickly became grounds for the party suspending him.

So sustained has the furore about “institutional antisemitism” been in Labour that, according to a recent survey by academics Greg Philo and Mike Berry, the British public estimated that on average a third of Labour members had been disciplined for antisemitism – more than 300 times the real figure. But in the end, the commission could identify only two cases of unlawful antisemitism the party was responsible for. According to the report, there were 18 “borderline” cases, however, “there was not enough evidence to conclude that the Labour Party was legally responsible for the conduct of the individual.”

Read more …

“The Government also has to consider the political consequences of continuing to throw stimulus at construction over other sectors that are in pain..”

Sorry, but that government is stuck in a corner.

Australian Property Bubble Hasn’t Yet Burst Amid The Pandemic (Abc.au)

After years of dire predictions that Australia’s property bubble could burst, national house prices continue to withstand the otherwise devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and once again the doomsayers have been proven wrong. Data released this week from CoreLogic shows the national average rose 0.4 per cent in October, following five months of national declines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Every state across Australia (except for Melbourne which suffered the impact of a second COVID lockdown) experienced gains. But how long will the good run last? It’s a question I asked AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver, who in late March at the onset of the pandemic in Australia, had warned that house prices could plummet by 20 per cent in a worst-case scenario.

In response to my question, Dr Oliver jokes that when people get their Australian citizenship, it should come with a written warranty saying, ‘Congratulations, you are now guaranteed to live in a country where house prices will continue to rise’. He says over the years regulators and government have always stepped in and introduced measures that stopped the bubble bursting. These range from interest rate cuts, tax incentives for property investors and other measures aimed at propping up construction. During the early 1990s recession, the level of household debt in Australia was around 40 per cent of income, he says, whereas now it is close to 200 per cent — one of the highest levels in the world.

“Each time there’s a downturn people get worried about debt and pay some of it back, but before things go too far [into the positive], the Reserve Bank cuts rates and people start borrowing again — we go back to a new level of debt and it starts the cycle again.” [..] But Dr Oliver and other economists also warn that in the current environment there are limits to how fiercely regulators and governments can fuel house prices. Interest rates are near zero, and tax incentives aimed at housing are already generous (with calls to wind them back as part of a wider tax reform package). The Government also has to consider the political consequences of continuing to throw stimulus at construction over other sectors that are in pain. In short, the pandemic has created several reasons to maintain a level of cynicism about the future of house prices.

Read more …

“..the CDC quickly reversed its support for the decision, then went back and supported it again, then did it again, etc.”

Experts Want 15 Days Of Counting To Flatten The Curve Of Votes For Trump (BBee)

After a concerning spike in votes for Trump occurred on election night, experts are calling for 15 days of counting to flatten the curve of votes for the “wrong candidate.” While some scientists recommended just letting the votes for Trump be counted fairly until we all achieve herd immunity to Trump, others said we need to lock down the vote-counting places, and make sure no one can get inside, in order to kill off the virus of Trump. “If we all band together and allow just 15 days of counting, we can flatten the curve of votes for Trump,” said Dr. Fauci. “And we also advise Trump supporters to wear airtight masks. For, you know, science.”


The CDC, WHO, and China are all backing the plan, saying it is “SCIENCE!” and anyone who is opposed to it is “ANTI-SCIENCE!” However, the CDC quickly reversed its support for the decision, then went back and supported it again, then did it again, etc. At publishing time, the experts had revised their recommendation to at least 8 months of counting to flatten the curve.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site.

Click at the top of the sidebars for Paypal and Patreon donations. Thank you for your support.

 

 

Bill Barr in September on mail-in ballots
https://twitter.com/i/status/1324438683336929281

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime, election time, all the time. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.