Walter Langley Never morning wore to evening but some heart did break 1894
CNN Democrats’ corona hypocrisy
WATCH: CNN's Brianna Keilar with an absolutely brutal 5 minute take down of Democrat coronavirus hypocrisy starring SF Mayor London Breed, CA Gov Gavin Newsom, LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, and NY Gov Andrew Cuomo. pic.twitter.com/Ew7y4RK9mp
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 2, 2020
“The nursing home has about 90 residents…”
• One In Six Covid-19 Deaths In Vermont Came From A Single Nursing Home (IC)
One in six Covid-19 deaths in Vermont have come from a single nursing home, owned by a troubled for-profit chain, Genesis HealthCare. The novel coronavirus began to spread like wildfire in Burlington Health and Rehab in March, leading to 12 deaths in the first wave of the virus. The pandemic arrived just a few weeks after the state’s attorney general, T.J. Donovan, a Democrat, had settled an investigation into the facility for “allegations of neglect that resulted in serious injury to three residents and the death of a fourth.” The nursing home has about 90 residents. Federal nursing home staffing records reveal that registered nurse staffing in the facility failed to meet minimum levels even after the settlement, suggesting that the settlement failed to protect nursing home residents.
Lobbyists for the chain have donated to Donovan’s reelection campaign, as they have for Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, whose administration collaborated with Donovan on the settlement. The Covid-19 outbreaks in these facilities showcase not just the failed national approach to nursing home oversight, but a cozy relationship between state regulators and nursing homes. As another wave of Covid-19 hits the state, a massive outbreak has occurred at another Genesis facility in Rutland, Vermont, with 41 cases. Seven more cases have appeared at another Genesis facility in Berlin, Vermont. Nationwide, over 100,000 residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have died from Covid-19, accounting for 40 percent of the total. The new wave of nursing home Covid-19 cases is not unique to Vermont; many other states are again seeing significant outbreaks at their nursing homes.
Things will be so much better under Biden…
• Possible HHS Pick Shielded Nursing Homes From Liability In COVID Outbreak (DP)
Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo has presided over one of the deadliest COVID outbreaks in the country — and new documents obtained by The Daily Poster detail how she helped nursing home lobbyists shield health care companies from coronavirus-related lawsuits. Now, Raimondo — a former Wall Street executive — is reportedly being considered for the nation’s top health care policy job in the incoming Biden administration. Politico reported last week that Raimondo, who made her name slashing state workers’ pensions, is one of the finalists to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President-elect Joe Biden. Raimondo was also previously considered for Treasury Secretary, according to the American Prospect.
As governor, Raimondo has slammed proposals to expand Medicare to cover everyone. Amid the pandemic in August, her administration approved health insurance companies’ steep premium increases that were criticized by the state’s Democratic attorney general as “unnecessary and ill-advised.” Health insurers have been raking in record profits, with fewer people seeking care because of the pandemic. Raimondo has also pushed for Medicaid cuts that nursing home workers warned would result in unsafe staffing levels — and in April, she issued an executive order sought by health care industry lobbyists that shielded nursing homes from lawsuits when their business decisions injure or kill people. The order was later expanded to shield nursing homes, hospitals, and other health care providers.
While the Biden transition is reportedly considering Raimondo for HHS Secretary, residents and workers in Rhode Island’s nursing homes have faced deadly consequences. Documents obtained by The Daily Poster show that Raimondo quickly responded to lobbyists’ demands for an executive order granting them legal immunity during the pandemic. “What immunity has done is allow nursing homes to act unreasonably without accountability,” one personal injury lawyer told the Providence Journal last month.
“They failed miserably with PPE (personal protective equipment) and testing and now they want you to be guinea pigs for the vaccine..”
• First In Line For Covid Vaccine? Some US Health Care Workers Say No (Y!)
They can move to front of the line for a Covid-19 vaccine if they want, but some US health care workers are skeptical about taking a vaccine that was developed in record time — even as the pandemic rages on. Some want more time, despite assurances from experts that they trust the vaccine vetting process carried out by the US Food and Drug Administration. “I think I would take the vaccine later on, but right now I am a little leery of it,” nurse Yolanda Dodson, 55, told AFP. Dodson works at the Montefiore Hospital in New York City and spent the spring in the heart of the deadly fight against the virus. Vaccine studies so far “look promising but I don’t think there is enough data yet,” Dodson said.
“We have to be grateful to those who are willing to subject themselves to take that risk” to participate in the studies, she said. “It is a very personal decision.” Diana Torres is a nurse at a Manhattan hospital who saw several of her co-workers die of the novel coronavirus this spring. She is particularly suspicious of vaccines rushed for approval under the Trump administration, which she says has handled the entire pandemic like “some sort of joke.” “This is a vaccine that was developed in less than a year and approved under the same administration and government agencies that allowed the virus to spread like a wildfire,” Torres said. “They didn’t have enough time and people to study the vaccine,” she said. “This time around I will pass and watch how it unfolds.”
Data from clinical trials have shown that two vaccines — one developed by Pfizer and BioNtech, the other by Moderna and the US National Institutes of Health — are about 95 percent effective. Normally the FDA requires six months of follow up, but if no adverse reactions appear in the first two months, it is rare to see anything in the next four — and the raging pandemic has altered the risk-benefit calculations. There were 44,000 volunteers in the Pfizer trial, and 30,000 in Moderna’s, and the data was firewalled from the companies and analyzed by experts free from political pressure. Fellow nurses commenting on Torres’s Facebook page seemed just as skeptical. “They failed miserably with PPE (personal protective equipment) and testing and now they want you to be guinea pigs for the vaccine,” one friend wrote.
So not the health care workers, but the presidents do.
Obama: “I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid”
Maybe someone should tell him the vaccine doesn’t protect him from getting COVID. It was never meant to do that.
• Obama, Bush and Clinton Volunteer To Get Coronavirus Vaccine Publicly (CNN)
Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are volunteering to get their Covid-19 vaccines on camera to promote public confidence in the vaccine’s safety once the US Food and Drug Administration authorizes one. The three most recent former presidents hope an awareness campaign to promote confidence in its safety and effectiveness would be a powerful message as American public health officials try to convince the public to take the vaccine. Freddy Ford, Bush’s chief of staff, told CNN that the 43rd President had reached out to Dr. Anthony Fauci — the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the nation’s top infectious disease expert — and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, to see how he could help promote the vaccine.
“A few weeks ago President Bush asked me to let Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx know that, when the time is right, he wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” Ford told CNN. “First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations. Then, President Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.” Clinton’s press secretary told CNN on Wednesday that he too would be willing to take the vaccine in a public setting in order to promote it. “President Clinton will definitely take a vaccine as soon as available to him, based on the priorities determined by public health officials. And he will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same,” Angel Urena said.
Obama, in an interview with SiriusXM host Joe Madison scheduled to air Thursday, said that if Fauci said a coronavirus vaccine is safe, he believes him. “People like Anthony Fauci, who I know, and I’ve worked with, I trust completely,” Obama said. “So, if Anthony Fauci tells me this vaccine is safe, and can vaccinate, you know, immunize you from getting Covid, absolutely, I’m going to take it. “I promise you that when it’s been made for people who are less at risk, I will be taking it,” he said. “I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid,” he added. CNN has reached out to representatives for former President Jimmy Carter to see if he would be willing to take the vaccine publicly as well.
“It’s cheap, fast – and absolutely useless.”
• 10 Fatal Flaws In The Main Test For COVID (RT)
A peer review from a group of 22 international experts has found 10 “major flaws” in the main protocol for such tests. The report systematically dismantles the original study, called the Corman-Drosten paper, which described a protocol for applying the PCR technique to detecting Covid. The Corman-Drosten paper was published on January, 23, 2020, just a day after being submitted, which would make any peer review process that took place possibly the shortest in history. What is important about it is that the protocol it describes is used in around 70 percent of Covid kits worldwide. It’s cheap, fast – and absolutely useless. Among the fatal flaws that totally invalidate the PCR testing protocol are that the test:
• is non-specific, due to erroneous primer design • is enormously variable • cannot discriminate between the whole virus and viral fragments • has no positive or negative controls • has no standard operating procedure • does not seem to have been properly peer reviewed. Oh dear. One wonders whether anything at all was correct in the paper. But wait – it gets worse. As has been noted previously, no threshold for positivity was ever identified. This is why labs have been running 40 cycles, almost guaranteeing a large number of false positives – up to 97 percent, according to some studies. The cherry on top, though, is that among the authors of the original paper themselves, at least four have severe conflicts of interest. Two of them are members of the editorial board of Eurosurveillance, the sinisterly named journal that published the paper.
And at least three of them are on the payroll of the first companies to perform PCR testing! The 22 members of the consortium that has challenged this shoddy science deserve huge credit. The scientists, from Europe, the USA, and Japan, comprise senior molecular geneticists, biochemists, immunologists, and microbiologists, with many decades of experience between them. They have issued a demand to Eurosurveillance to retract the Corman-Drosten paper, writing: “Considering the scientific and methodological blemishes presented here, we are confident that the editorial board of Eurosurveillance has no other choice but to retract the publication.’’ Talk about putting the pressure on.
It is difficult to overstate the implications of this revelation. Every single thing about the Covid orthodoxy relies on ‘case numbers’, which are largely the results of the now widespread PCR tests. If their results are essentially meaningless, then everything we are being told – and ordered to do by increasingly dictatorial governments – is likely to be incorrect. For instance, one of the authors of the review is Dr Mike Yeadon, who asserts that, in the UK, there is no ‘second wave’ and that the pandemic has been over since June. Having seen the PCR tests so unambiguously debunked, it is hard to see any evidence to the contrary.
Since the vaccines are useless, maybe getting infected is the only protection available?!
• Study Finds 98% Of COVID Patients Still Have Antibodies 6 Months Later (ZH)
In another example of how COVID-19 research has painted a complex, and sometimes conflicting, picture of the virus and the ability of the human immune system to fight it off, a team of researchers at Japan’s Yokohama City University published research showing that antibodies in COVID-19 patients persist for six months or more, even amid a preponderance of reports warning about the risk of reinfection for many particularly vulnerable patients. A Japanese research team said Wednesday that it has detected neutralizing antibodies in 98% of people six months after they were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Another study performed in the UK found that antibodies found evidence that antibody levels start to degrade within six months.
The team, led by Yokohama City University professor Takeharu Yamanaka, is already planning to conduct a follow-up study to see whether these people will still have such antibodies a year after their infections. But in the survey data released Wednesday, researcher checked blood samples from 376 people who had already recovered – the largest study of its type in Japan. The samples were collected six months after the patients were infected. According to a report on the study published by Nippon, Yamanaka said that “in general, people with neutralizing antibodies are believed to carry a low risk of reinfection…This gives some hope” for the effectiveness of the vaccines that are soon to be delivered to the public. As the west prepares to roll out the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations, scientists will be watching closely for more data to try an ascertain whether COVID-19 can truly be defeated, or whether it might morph into a flu-like seasonal infection.
Yes, but: horse, barn.
• Fed and Treasury Urge Congress To Approve More Virus Relief (AP)
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urged Congress to approve COVID-19 relief funds without further delay, though Democrats continued to attack a decision by Mnuchin to allow five Fed lending programs to expire during the pandemic. In his most direct comments so far, Powell told the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday that it’s “very important” for Congress to provide economic support. New funding would serve as a “bridge” for the economy to get from the current environment in which virus infections are spiking, to next year when vaccines should be widely available, Powell said.
“We are trying to get as many people across that bridge as we can,” Powell said. Without more assistance, Powell said, people will lose their homes and small businesses will fail. “You could lose parts of the economy,” which would slow any recovery next year, he said. “We are hearing from all over that small businesses are really under pressure,” Powell told lawmakers. For a second day a number of Democratic lawmakers on the committee challenged Mnuchin’s decision to allow five Fed lending programs to expire at the end of this year, contending that his reading of the law was incorrect. They say it’s a political maneuver to hobble the incoming Biden administration financially.
[..] In a rare split with Treasury last month, the Fed issued a statement saying that it believed it was important to continue providing an economic backstop after Mnuchin said he was terminating the programs. Mnuchin has repeatedly insisted that he was just following the CARES Act law. When Powell was asked if he agreed with that interpretation, Powell deferred to Mnuchin. Powell did say Wednesday that the Fed had issued its statement to make it clear that the central bank was committed to providing further support to the economy. “We were concerned that the public might misinterpret (Mnuchin’s action) as the Fed stepping back and thinking our work is done,” Powell said.
Asked what Congress should put in a relief bill that could pass in the lame-duck session this month, Mnuchin said his priority would be an authorization allowing the Treasury to use $140 billion in left-over funds to provide small businesses with a second round of Paycheck Protection Program loans.
Again: Yes, but: horse, barn.
• Trump Demands Social Media Giants’ Liability Shield Be Scrapped (JTN)
President Trump said in a Tuesday night tweet that he will veto the National Defense Authorization Act if it does not eliminate Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. Section 230 protects companies like Twitter from a range of laws and being held liable for what is said on their platform, as long as they don’t attempt to censor or enforce what speech is acceptable and what isn’t. “Section 230, which is a liability shielding gift from the U.S. to “Big Tech” (the only companies in America that have it – corporate welfare!), is a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity,” the president tweeted. “Our Country can never be safe & secure if we allow it to stand.”
“Therefore, if the very dangerous & unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk,” Trump wrote. “Take back America NOW. Thank you!”
“On no planet is that not news.”
• CNN Caught Burying The Post’s Hunter Biden Exposé (NYP)
The collusion of mainstream media and Big Tech to censor The Post’s Hunter Biden story now is laid bare in leaked recordings of CNN’s news meetings from the time. CNN boss Jeff Zucker is heard instructing his staff to downplay the bombshell story which implicated Joe Biden in a shady foreign-influence peddling scheme, according to audio released Tuesday by undercover news outlet Project Veritas. On the morning of Oct. 14, the day we published an e-mail from Hunter’s abandoned laptop in which a top executive from corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma thanked Hunter for arranging a meeting with his then-VP father, CNN political director David Chalian is heard telling Zucker and his underlings that the news network would not cover the story.
“Obviously, we’re not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden,” said Chalian. “We’ll just continue to report out this is the very stuff that the President was impeached over . . . that Senate Committees looked at and found nothing wrong in Joe Biden’s interactions with Ukrainians.” Chalian, who oversees all CNN’s political coverage, was not being straight with his colleagues. This was new evidence reflecting on Joe Biden’s integrity, suggesting that despite repeated denials, he had met with an executive of the company which was paying his wayward son up to $83,000 a month to sit on its board, at a time when Burisma was looking for favors from the US government and he was vice president.
This was the first concrete link between Joe and his family’s shady foreign business deals and there was much more to come over the next few days, all ignored or pooh-poohed by CNN in a naked bid to protect the Biden campaign from legitimate scrutiny. Most of the rest of the media followed suit. Twitter locked the Post account for two weeks and Facebook throttled our audience reach. What made our story all the more compelling that first day was the feeble response from Joe’s campaign. Initially, they said there was no record of any such meeting on his “official schedule” but finally admitted that an “informal” meeting with Burisma may have occurred. On no planet is that not news.
Makes sense.
• Congress Passes Bill To Target Foreign Businesses Blocking US Auditors (JTN)
The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation Wednesday that would boot businesses from China and other foreign countries from U.S. stock exchanges if they failed to give American auditors access to examine financial reports. The legislation would obligate foreign businesses to give access to U.S. auditors to scrutinize financial reports or be in danger of getting barred from trading on an American stock exchange or over-the-counter market. Politico described the bill as an aspect of a larger crackdown regarding Chinese engagement with Wall Street that has been building steam in the U.S. legislature, the White House and the financial industry.
The bill calls for the Securities and Exchange Commission to make rules to block trading the stock of businesses that have barred inspectors for three years in a row, the outlet said. “Communist China is right now using U.S. stock exchanges to exploit American workers and families—people who put their retirement and college savings in public companies,” U.S. Sen. John Kennedy said in a statement. “U.S. policy is letting China flout rules that American companies play by, and it’s dangerous.” During a press conference earlier on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying expressed opposition to the U.S. bill, stating that it demonstrates “the United States applies discriminatory policies to Chinese companies and launches political oppression against them.”
Odd consequences.
• Here Comes the Trucking Boom in the Weirdest Economy Ever (WS)
Boom and bust cycles are guaranteed in this business. And now, this is the Weirdest Economy Ever, powered by the $3 trillion the Fed threw at the markets, and by $3 trillion in government stimulus and bailout spending, and by a huge shift to work-from-home and learning-at-home that required all kinds of spending on laptops, network equipment, office chairs, desks, and, well, hot-tubs, and powered also by huge shifts on what consumers actually spent their money on. Spending shifted from services, such as plane tickets, hotels, gyms, haircuts, manicures, rent (encouraged by eviction bans), and mortgage payments (made possible by forbearance), to stuff.
And ecommerce is booming, and this stuff needs to be transported, much of it from overseas, and so imports are booming, and all this stuff has to then be shipped by truck or rail, and so all heck has broken loose in the container shipping business. Trucking companies, which had cut their equipment orders to the bone during the two-year-long freight recession, are now grappling with the notion of equipment shortages. And starting in September, they started ordering large numbers of class-8 trucks that haul the goods across America, and in November, orders for class 8 trucks exploded to 52,600 orders, according to FTR Transportation Intelligence, matching the prior two historic records of July and August 2018:
“The tremendous volume reflects several large fleets placing their requirement orders for the entirety of 2021 to lock up build slots, which they perceive could be in short supply next year,” FTR said in the note. Truckers are dealing with the current flood of consumer-oriented freight. And they expect the industrial-oriented freight, which is still lagging, to hopefully pick up soon. “Fleets are placing big orders anticipating needing more trucks throughout next year,” FTR said. This boom in orders was triple the number of orders in November last year, the biggest year-over-year percentage gain (199%) in years. This chart of percentage changes from the same month a year earlier also depicts the whiplash-inducing boom-and-bust nature of the industry:
Huh, what? “..much of Syria’s infrastructure was destroyed by the blind bombing of the regime and its Russian allies..”
• Assad’s Syria Is Starving Like Saddam’s Iraq (FP)
Thirty-year-old Ayman fled Damascus, Syria, for Beirut at the beginning of the Syrian civil war. Over the last year, while Lebanon’s economy collapsed and it became harder for him to find work, the conflict back home seemed to be subsiding. So he called several of his friends, all living in regime-controlled territory, to inquire if it was time to return. They were unequivocal. “They said, ‘Stay wherever you are, there’s not even enough to eat here,’” Ayman said, on condition of anonymity because of security concerns. During the nine-year civil war, much of Syria’s infrastructure was destroyed by the blind bombing of the regime and its Russian allies, as well as front-line fighting. Food production, power generation, and other industries fell by the wayside.
Syria’s economy, tethered to Lebanon’s, hobbled on for a while. However, early this year, as Lebanon’s monetary policy unraveled and capital controls were imposed to avoid a run on the banks, billions of dollars of deposits by Syrian businesses were also blocked. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claims Lebanese banks hold at least $20 billion of Syrians’ earnings, which, if they were accessible, would resolve the Syrian economic crisis all at once. The currencies of Lebanon’s neighbors plummeted simultaneously as prices of basic commodities skyrocketed, in Syria by more than 200 percent. Life became hard for the Lebanese, but harder still for war-ravaged Syrians.
Does he still fly, drive, buy stuff wrapped in plastic? If so, what’s the message here exactly?
• Humans Waging ‘Suicidal War’ On Nature – UN Chief Antonio Guterres (BBC)
“Our planet is broken,” the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, has warned. Humanity is waging what he describes as a “suicidal” war on the natural world. “Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury,” he told a BBC special event on the environment. Mr Guterres wants to put tackling climate change at the heart of the UN’s global mission. In a speech entitled State of the Planet, he announced that its “central objective” next year will be to build a global coalition around the need to reduce emissions to net zero. Net zero refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any further releases by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.
Mr Guterres said that every country, city, financial institution and company “should adopt plans for a transition to net zero emissions by 2050”. In his view, they will also need to take decisive action now to put themselves on the path towards achieving this vision. The objective, said the UN secretary general, will be to cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels. Here’s what Mr Guterres demanded the nations of the world do: • Put a price on carbon • Phase out fossil fuel finance and end fossil fuel subsidies • Shift the tax burden from income to carbon, and from tax payers to polluters • Integrate the goal of carbon neutrality (a similar concept to net zero) into all economic and fiscal policies and decisions
Help those around the world who are already facing the dire impacts of climate change It is an ambitious agenda, as Mr Guterres acknowledged, but he said that radical action is needed now. “The science is clear,” Mr Guterres told the BBC, “unless the world cuts fossil fuel production by 6% every year between now and 2030, things will get worse. Much worse.” Climate policies have yet to rise to the challenge, the UN chief said, adding that “without concerted action, we may be headed for a catastrophic three to five-degree temperature rise this century”. The impact is already being felt around the world. “Apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are the new normal,” he warned. “Biodiversity is collapsing. Deserts are spreading. Oceans are choking with plastic waste.”
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.
Support the Automatic Earth in virustime, election time, all the time. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.
