- Did Bill Gates Just Reveal The Real Reason Behind The Lock-Downs?
Did Bill Gates Just Reveal The Real Reason Behind The Lock-Downs?
Authored by Rosemary Frei via Off-Guardian.org,
On March 24 Bill Gates gave a highly revelatory 50-minute interview to Chris Anderson. Anderson is the Curator of TED, the non-profit that runs the TED Talks.
The Gates interview is the second in a new series of daily ‘Ted Connects’ interviews focused on COVID-19. The series’s website says that:
TED Connects: Community and Hope is a free, live, daily conversation series featuring experts whose ideas can help us reflect and work through this uncertain time with a sense of responsibility, compassion and wisdom.”
Anderson asked Gates at 3:49 in the video of the interview – which well over three million views now – about a ‘Perspective’ article by Gates that was published February 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“You wrote that this could be the once-in-a-century pandemic that people have been fearing. Is that how you think of it, still?” queried Anderson.
“Well, it’s awful to say this but, we could have a respiratory virus whose case fatality rate was even higher. If this was something like smallpox, that kills 30 percent of people. So this is horrific,” responded Gates.
“But, in fact, most people even who get the COVID disease are able to survive. So in that, it’s quite infectious – way more infectious than MERS [Middle East Respiratory Syndrome] or SARS [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] were. [But] it’s not as fatal as they were. And yet the disruption we’re seeing in order to knock it down is really completely unprecedented.”
Gates reiterates the dire consequences for the global economy later in the interview.
“We need a clear message about that,” Gates said starting at 26:52.
“It is really tragic that the economic effects of this are very dramatic. I mean, nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes. But … bringing the economy back and doing [sic] money, that’s more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. So we’re going to take the pain in the economic dimension, huge pain, in order to minimize the pain in disease and death dimension.”
However, this goes directly against the imperative to balance the benefits and costs of the screening, testing and treatment measures for each ailment – as successfully promulgated for years by, for example, the Choosing Wisely campaign – to provide the maximum benefit to individual patients and society as a whole
As noted in an April 1 article in OffGuardian, there may be dramatically more deaths from the economic breakdown than from COVID-19 itself.
“By all accounts, the impact of the response will be great, far-reaching, and long-lasting,”
Kevin Ryan wrote in the article. Ryan estimated that well over two million people will likely die from the sequelae of the lock-downs and other drastic measures to enforce ‘social distancing.’
Millions could potentially die from suicide, drug abuse, lack of medical coverage or treatment, poverty and lack of food access, on top of other predictable social, medical and public-health problems stemming from the response to COVID-19.
Gates and Anderson did not touch on any of those sequelae. Instead, they focused on rapidly ramping up testing and medical interventions for COVID-19.
Gates said at 30:29 in the interview that he and a large team are moving fast to test anti-virals, vaccines and other therapeutics and to bring them to market as quickly as possible.
The Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust with support from Mastercard and now others, created this therapeutic accelerator to really triage out [candidate therapeutics]…
You have hundreds of people showing up and saying, ‘Try this, try that.’ So we look at lab assays, animal models, and so we understand which things should be prioritized for these very quick human trials that need to be done all over the world.”
The accelerator was launched March 10 with approximately $125 million in seed funding. Three days later Gates left Microsoft.
Not long before that, on January 23, Gates’s organization the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced it will fund three programs to develop COVID-19 vaccines. These are the advancing of DNA-vaccine candidates against MERS and Lassa fever, the development of a “‘molecular clamp’ platform” that “enables targeted and rapid vaccine production against multiple viral pathogens,” and the manufacture and Phase 1 clinical study of an mRNA vaccine against COVID.
“The programmes will leverage rapid response platforms already supported by CEPI as well as a new partnership. The aim is to advance nCoV-2019 vaccine candidates into clinical testing as quickly as possible,” according to a news release.
Then at 32:50 in the video, Anderson asked whether the blood serum from people who have recovered from a COVID infection can be used to treat others.
“I heard you mention that one possibility might be treatments from the serum, the blood serum of people who had had the disease and then recovered. So I guess they’re carrying antibodies,” said Anderson.
“Talk a bit about that and how that could work and what it would take to accelerate that.”
[Note that Anderson did not ask Gates about, instead, just letting most of the population – aside from people most vulnerable to serious illness from the infection, who should be quarantined — be exposed to COVID-19 and as a result very likely recover and develop life-long immunity. As at least one expert has observed, “as much as ninety-nine percent of active cases [of COVID-19] in the general population are ‘mild’ and do not require specific medical treatment” to recover.]
“This has always been discussed as, ‘How could you pull that off?’” replied Gates.
“So people who are recovered, it appears, have very effective antibodies in their blood. So you could go, transfuse them and only take out white cells, the immune cells.”
However, Gates continued, he and his colleagues have dismissed that possibility because it’s “fairly complicated – compared to a drug we can make in high volume, you know, the cost of taking it out and putting it back in probably doesn’t scale as well.”
Then a few seconds later, at 33:45, Gates drops another bomb:
We don’t want to have a lot of recovered people…
To be clear, we’re trying – through the shut-down in the United States – to not get to one percent of the population infected. We’re well below that today, but with exponentiation, you could get past that three million [people or approximately one percent of the U.S. population being infected with COVID-19 and the vast majority recovering]. I believe we will be able to avoid that with having this economic pain.”
It appears that rather than let the population be exposed to the virus and most develop antibodies that give them natural, long-lasting immunity to COVID-19, Gates and his colleagues far prefer to create a vast, hugely expensive, new system of manufacturing and selling billions of test kits, and in parallel very quickly developing and selling billions of antivirals and vaccines.
And then, when the virus comes back again a few months later and most of the population is unexposed and therefore vulnerable, again selling billions of test kits and medical interventions.
Right after that, at 34:14, Gates talked about how he sees things rolling out from there.
Eventually what we’ll have to have is certificates of who’s a recovered person, who’s a vaccinated person…
…Because you don’t want people moving around the world where you’ll have some countries that won’t have it under control, sadly.
You don’t want to completely block off the ability for people to go there and come back and move around.
So eventually there will be this digital immunity proof that will help facilitate the global reopening up.”
[Some time on the afternoon of March 31 the last sentence of this quote was edited out of the official TED video of the interview. Fortunately, recordings of the complete interview are archived elsewhere.]
In the October 2019 Event 201 novel-corona virus-pandemic simulation co-sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and a division of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a poll that was part of the simulation said that 65% of people in the U.S. would be eager to take a vaccine for COVID-19, “even if it’s experimental.”
This will be tremendously lucrative.
Vaccines are very big business: this Feb. 23 CNBC article, for example, describes the vaccine market as six times bigger than it was 20 years ago, at more than $35 billion annually today, and providing a $44 return for every $1 invested in the world’s 94 lowest-income countries.
Notably, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – which has an endowment of $52 billion – has given more than $2.4 billion to the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2000, according to a 2017 Politico article. (While over the same time frame countries have reduced their contributions to the world body, particularly after the 2008-2009 depression, and now account for less than one-quarter of the WHO’s budget.) The WHO is now coordinating approximately 50 groups around the world that are working on candidate vaccines against COVID-19.
The Politico article quotes a Geneva-based NGO representative as saying Gates is “treated liked a head of state, not only at the WHO, but also at the G20,” and that Gates is one of the most influential people in global health.
Meanwhile, officials around the world are doing their part to make sure everyone social distances, self-isolates and/or stay locked down.
For example, here’s Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Eileen DE Villa, at her and Toronto Mayor John Tory’s March 30 press briefing:
“We find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic. We should expect some more people will get sick – and for some, sadly, will die.
This is why it is so important to stay at home to reduce virus spread. And to protect front-line workers, healthcare workers and our essential workers, so they can continue to protect us. People shouldn’t have to die, people shouldn’t have to risk death taking care of us because others won’t practice social distancing or physical distancing.”
Yet look how close Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David Williams, is sitting to Haley Chazan, Senior Manager, Media Relations, for Christine Elliott, Deputy Premier and Minister of Health of Ontario.
This was on Friday, March 27, just before the start of that day’s daily press conference by Dr. Williams and Ontario’s Associate Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe:
They were sitting two seats, or just a couple of feet, apart. A short time later Chazan got up and stood even closer to Dr. Williams for a little while:
Dr. Williams and Chazan do not live together. Rather, Dr. Williams very likely knows – just as Gates knows – that there is little any reason to worry about being in close contact with other people unless you or they are vulnerable to developing a severe illness from COVID-19. He surely knows, also, that if you contract COVID-19 and you’re otherwise healthy you’ll very likely have few symptoms, if any, and recover quickly. And that this exposure in fact is beneficial because in the process you will develop antibodies to the virus and have natural, long-lasting immunity to it.
Yet in the March 27 press conference, just like all the others he has participated in during the COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Williams lectured the public about maintaining social distancing. He told people not to go outside on the coming weekend to enjoy the nice weather because, otherwise, they might walk past someone and not be two metres apart.
Dr. Williams is among the large cadre of powerful officials who’ve crashed the global economy by forcing tens of millions of small- and medium-sized businesses to close in the name of the need for forced, severe, social distancing and lock-downs.
They’ve shattered society, suspended most civil liberties and prohibited most activities and connections that kept people mentally and physically healthy. At the same time the officials have prioritized COVID-19 care over everything else and, as a result, severely limited billions of people’s access to life-saving healthcare services ranging from acquiring medication and blood transfusions to having organ transplants and cancer surgeries.
* * *
Rosemary Frei has an MSc in molecular biology from a faculty of medicine and was a freelance medical journalist for 22 years. She is now an independent investigative journalist in Canada. You can find her recent detailed investigative analysis of COVID here and follow her on Twitter.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 23:40 - Mysterious Colorado Doomsday Shelter For When "Law & Order Breaks Down" Sees Spike In Interest
Mysterious Colorado Doomsday Shelter For When “Law & Order Breaks Down” Sees Spike In Interest
As the pandemic unfolds across the US, city dwellers are getting the hell out of dodge and escaping to rural areas. We noted this last week, with many leaving large metro areas in California, fleeing for the mountains and rural communities to limit their probabilities of contracting COVID-19. Now it appears the virus crisis is evolving, as fears of social unrest across large US metro areas are spiking interest in doomsday shelters.
The Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned last week that a “social bomb” is getting ready to explode across Western cities amid the collapse of economies and high unemployment. This has forced many people to request information about a mysterious doomsday ranch in Colorado, called Fortitude Ranch, stockpiled with food, weapons, ammo, and designated bunkers, reported CBS4 Denver.
The ranch describes itself as “a survival community equipped to survive any disaster and long-term loss of law and order,” and its actual location is unknown to non-members.
“Fortitude Ranch is a survival community equipped to survive any type of disaster and long-term loss of law and order, managed by full time staff. Fortitude Ranch is affordable (about $1,000/person annually) because of large numbers of members and economies of scale. Fortitude Ranch is especially attractive to join because it doubles as a recreation and vacation facility as well as a survival retreat. Members can vacation, hunt, fish and recreate at our forest and mountain locations in good times, and shelter at Fortitude Ranch to survive a collapse,” the company’s website said.
Drew Miller, a retired Air Force Colonel, operates several ranches in Colorado and West Virginia, with ten more locations expected in the near term.
“If law and order breaks down, then by all means, we will open and ask our members to come, but thus far our members pretty well understand that they really don’t need to be at Fortitude Ranch now,” Miller said.
The beginning innings of social unrest could be unfolding in the US. President Trump signed an executive order last Friday that could call up as many as one million reserves, not to fight the virus solely, but to maintain social order.
If an economic crisis collapses the US government, the doomsday ranch states that it will operate a “fleet of aircraft” that can travel to and from other sites, as it says, “overland travel may be unsafe for a long time.”
And for years, mainstream media laughed at the prepper community – calling anyone who preps a “tin foil hat conspiracy theorist,” but, in a few short months, it’s those who bashed preppers are the crazy ones as they frantically storm big-box retailers without 3M N95 masks for food.
The virus storm has triggered the next big shift: a mass exodus of cities as
lockdownsMartial law has confined people to their studio apartments, with no security of land, no weapons for protection, and limited food. And where are the people that manage to escape the city going? Well, besides a doomsday ranch, there is also a huge demand for “prepper properties…”The next chapter of the virus crisis could be here in a matter of weeks, as lockdowns are being extended across the Western world, now till the end of April, people are now starting to get frustrated with governments.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 23:15 - How China's Fake-News-Machine Is Rewriting The History Of COVID-19, Even As The Pandemic Unfolds
How China’s Fake-News-Machine Is Rewriting The History Of COVID-19, Even As The Pandemic Unfolds
Authored by Robert Boxwell via The South China Morning Post,
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s retweet of an article blaming the US for infecting Wuhan with coronavirus went viral, viewed 160 million times within hours. But where did the story come from?
By now, the early history of Covid-19 is well known, if not clear in its details. The virus was first detected somewhere around Wuhan, in Hubei province, then appears to have entered the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, from where it infected many others. Doctors in Wuhan first noticed the novel coronavirus in December and began exchanging urgent warnings.
Local government authorities set out to silence them; some were detained and made to sign documents admitting wrongdoing.Meanwhile, Wuhan officials went about business as usual, which included a disastrous Lunar New Year banquet attended by about 40,000 families. Soon, many more thousands around Wuhan were infected, with hundreds dead or dying, including ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who had been punished for trying to raise the alarm.Realising it was in the firing line not just for running the nation that had unleashed the deadly virus on the world but also for ignoring, covering up and denying its spread, China’s Communist Party moved into damage-control mode. This included suggesting it was the United Statesthat was responsible for the virus.
Chinese state media regularly tweet propaganda and what many describe as “fake news”. Global Times has 1.7 million followers on Twitter; China Xinhua News, 12.6 million; People’s Daily, 7.1 million; China Daily, 4.3 million; and China Global Television Network (CGTN), 14 million.
Zhao Lijian, spokesman and deputy director general of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Photo: Kyodo
Zhao Lijian, spokesman and deputy director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ information department, had 287,000 followers when he tweeted a link to a conspiracy website alleging the US was responsible for the virus. (Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying had 146,700 followers; the ministry’s “spokesperson” account, used by Geng Shuang, had 61,000; and Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of Global Times, had 175,000.)
With the outbreak of an epidemic, one of the first jobs of scientists and doctors, even while they fight to save lives, is to identify its source. This is critical in the search for medicines to combat a virus and a vaccine to prevent its spread.
On January 24, an article written jointly by 29 Chinese medical doctors and scientists was published in The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals. The authors shared their findings from a study of patients who were suspected of having been infected with 2019-nCoV and had been admitted to a Wuhan hospital. The report said that by January 2, 41 of them had been “laboratory-confirmed” as infected with the virus – which causes Covid-19 – and two-thirds of those infected “had been exposed to the Huanan market”.
The findings appeared to support anecdotal evidence that the source of the virus was the market, which had been closed by city officials on January 1. This had been often repeated by Chinese authorities and reported widely in the global media. The Lancet article gave scientific currency to this narrative.
Then, on February 19, another study – this time published on ChinaXiv.org, an open repository and distribution website used by scientific researchers – suggested the market was likely not ground zero for the virus, but rather that it had been “imported”from outside.
The study was by a team of scientists from several institutions: Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of Chinese Academy of Sciences; South China Agricultural University; and the Chinese Institute for Brain Research. It was revised on February 21. Neither version of the study suggested Covid-19 had originated outside China.
But the fake news machine was about to go to work.
On February 23, the People’s Daily’s English-language site reprinted a February 22 Global Times article titled, “Japanese TV report sparks speculations in China that Covid-19 may have originated in US”. The original Global Times article, which is no longer available online, began: “A report from a Japanese TV station that suspected some of the 14,000 Americans died of influenza may have unknowningly [sic] contracted the coronavirus has gone viral on Chinese social media, stoking fears and speculations in China that the novel coronavirus may have originated in the US.
“The report, by TV Asahi Corporation of Japan, suggested that the US government may have failed to grasp how rampant the virus have gone [sic] on the US soil.”
The article continued: “The story sparked various conspiracy theories on [sic] Chinese cyberspace.
“The Military World Games were held in Wuhan in October. ‘Perhaps the US delegates brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, and some mutation occurred to the virus, making it more deadly and contagious, and causing a widespread outbreak this year,’ a user posted on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
“[An] international relations professor at the Shanghai-based Fudan University, noted that global virologists are working to track the origin of the virus, including the intelligence agencies. Netizens are encouraged to actively partake in discussions, but preferrably [sic] in a rational fashion.”
The original Global Times article appears to have been replaced with one about the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s denial of the TV Asahi report.
On March 4, the People’s Daily reprint of this article was used as the basis for a piece published on conspiracy website GlobalResearch.ca, titled “China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US?” It was the first of two articles on the website that would lead to Zhao’s tweet nine days later suggesting the US Army had brought the virus to Wuhan.
The March 4 article begins: “The Western media quickly took the stage and laid out the official narrative for the outbreak of the new coronavirus which appeared to have begun in China, claiming it to have originated with animals at a wet market in Wuhan.”
This omits a few salient facts: that China’s state-controlled media had also “laid out the official narrative”; that reporters had received that narrative from the Chinese government; and that in the early days of the outbreak, the majority of evidence, including the Lancet article by 29 Chinese doctors, pointed to the Wuhan market.
The Global Research article continues: “In fact the origin was for a long time unknown but it appears likely now, according to Chinese and Japanese reports, that the virus originated elsewhere, from multiple locations, but began to spread widely only after being introduced to the market.
“More to the point, it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US.”
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times. Photo: SCMP / Simon Song
The article then presents a subheading that inflates “may have originated in the US” to “Chinese Researchers Conclude the Virus Originated Outside of China”. Underneath, it quotes two reports – a February 22 article in Global Times and a February 23 article in CGTN – both about the ChinaXiv study, which did not suggest the virus originated outside China.
But Global Research wanted readers to draw the conclusion that it did, and so it created some dots to be connected: “Chinese medical authorities – and ‘intelligence agencies’ – then conducted a rapid and wide-ranging search for the origin of the virus, collecting nearly 100 samples of the genome from 12 different countries on 4 continents, identifying all the varieties and mutations. During this research, they determined the virus outbreak had begun much earlier, probably in November, shortly after the Wuhan Military Games.
“They then came to the same independent conclusions as the Japanese researchers – that the virus did not begin in China but was introduced there from the outside.”
That was not the “conclusion” of the scientists who posted their research on ChinaXiv.
Next, citing a February 27 story on Xinhuanet, Global Research invokes a Chinese national hero, Zhong Nanshan, who led the fight to contain severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003. “China’s top respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan said on January 27 … ‘Though the Covid-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China’.”
Global Research translates this for its readers: “But that is Chinese for ‘it originated someplace else, in another country’.”
Zhong did not say that. Neither did Xinhuanet. And the “Japanese researchers” Global Research refers to are never identified. The only reference to a Japanese source is: “In February of 2020, the Japanese Asahi news report (print and TV) claimed the coronavirus originated in the US, not in China …”
Global Research offers no link to Asahi, only a link to the February 23 People’s Daily article, which also has no Asahi link but was a reprint of the Global Times story, which appears to have been revised on February 22, and – you guessed it – provides no Asahi link.
An online search for “Asahi news coronavirus originated in the US” from February 1 to 29 reveals no link to any such Asahi article. Neither does a search of the Asahi news website, which returns 688 articles containing the word “coronavirus” through March 4. But not this one.
Global Research also cites the Fudan University quote in Global Times: “[The professor] stated that global virologists ‘including the intelligence agencies’ were tracking the origin of the virus. Also of interest, the Chinese government did not shut the door on this. The news report stated: ‘Netizens are encouraged to actively partake in discussions, but preferably in a rational fashion.’
“In China, that is meaningful. If the reports were rubbish, the government would clearly state that, and tell people to not spread false rumours.”
Ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who was reprimanded by the police after alerting colleagues to a Sars-like virus and who later died of Covid-19. Photo: Weibo
The final piece of “evidence” in Global Research’s March 4 article is headed “Taiwan Virologist Suggests the Coronavirus Originated in the US”, and includes an embedded video of a Taiwan television show, identified as This! Is Not News, and a screenshot of a man with a pointer giving a colourful lecture about the origins of the virus. “The man in the video is a top virologist and pharmacologist who performed a long and detailed search for the source of the virus,” claims the article.
Except the man in the video – whom the report does not name – is not a virologist at all. He is a politician from the pro-Beijing New Party and a member of the Taipei City Council, who, before entering politics full time in 2002, was a pharmacology professor.
The clip opens with an introduction from a man in a crew cut, who talks about China and Russia and Georgian defectors carrying American biowarfare secrets, and mosquitoes and bats developed by the US for diabolical purposes. As he talks, tabloid-sized purple characters scroll along the bottom of the screen, punctuated with question marks and exclamation marks, and the one English acronym every conspiracy theorist worldwide knows: “CIA!”
Capping his performance is a 1981 analysis purported to have been carried out by the US Army that showed the attraction of “entomological warfare” to the US military and American taxpayers: 50 per cent of a city of 1.2 million people could be wiped out at a per-corpse cost of 29 cents.
Military Personnel stand guard outside the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick. Photo: AFP
Up next, “the man in the video”notes that, while the man with the crew cut had been talking in terms of Cold War-style geopolitics where everybody fears and loathes everybody else, he is there solely to discuss science. Then he waves a pointer with a plastic yellow index finger at its tip, indicating diagrams of multicoloured circles. As the most complex diagram arrives on screen, he reassures the show’s hostess, “The next slide will make it very clear.”
Such was Global Research’s Taiwan “expert evidence”. Undaunted, the article continues: “The Taiwanese doctor then stated the virus outbreak began earlier than assumed, saying, ‘We must look to September of 2019’.
“He stated the case in September of 2019 where some Japanese travelled to Hawaii and returned home infected, people who had never been to China. This was two months prior to the infections in China and just after the CDC suddenly and totally shut down the Fort Detrick bio-weapons lab claiming the facilities were insufficient to prevent loss of pathogens.”
The introduction of the US Army’s Fort Detrick bio-weapons lab is a solid piece of conspiracy theory craftsmanship. The “man in the video” had not mentioned Fort Detrick – Global Research did, in an apparent attempt to tie the Taiwanese “virologist’s” Japanese travellers who visited Hawaii in September to a US Army bioweapons lab.
The Fort Detrick facility had not been “suddenly and totally shut down” – it ceased research in mid-July (and not in September). And how one of the most contagious viruses in history travelled from Maryland to Hawaii over a six- to eight-week period, leaving no trail of illness and death, goes unexamined by Global Research.
Renowned Chinese respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan. Photo: Xinhua
For good measure, the article closes by listing six outbreaks in 2018, 2019 and 2020 of “pandemics” that “sickened” and “killed” people, chickens and pigs in China. Each includes notes such as, “China needs to purchase US agricultural products,” suggesting that as part of the trade war, the US has been unleashing pathogens in the mainland for more than two years in order to make China buy American.
In summary, the March 4 article invokes mainland hero Zhong, the “Japanese” and the “Taiwanese” – two American allies with no reason to lie – and adds the “CIA” and a leaky US bioweapons research lab for spice. All independent and none really confirming the others while appearing to come close. Perhaps most impressive of all, the author produced almost 2,000 America-bashing words, and not one of them was “Trump”.
On March 5, without citing the Global Research March 4 piece or any of the underlying Chinese media articles, Zhao tweeted: “Confirmed cases of #COVID19 were first found in China, but its origin is not necessarily in China. We are still tracing the origin.”
On March 11, Global Research published a follow-up: “COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US”.
The story begins by recapping the March 4 article, upgrading the never-found Japanese Asahi broadcasters and the “man in the video” to “Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists [who] have determined that the new coronavirus could have originated in the US”. The “man in the video” was now also a “physician” and a “scientist”.
Personnel working inside Fort Detrick. Photo: AFP
Recalling his attempt to place the first Covid-19 case in the US, Global Research again points out, “immediately prior to that, the CDC totally shut down the US Military’s main bio-lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, due to an absence of safeguards against pathogen leakages, issuing a complete ‘cease and desist’ order to the military”.
As evidence, Global Research had posted a screenshot of an August 5 New York Times headline, “Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns; Problems with disposal of dangerous materials led the government to suspend research at the military’s leading biodefence centre”.
In fact, the New York Times article had not stated the centre had been “totally shut down”. It had reported that 900 people worked at the facility and, “Although many projects are on hold, [a facility spokeswoman] said scientists and other employees are continuing to work, just not on select agents”. Both The New York Times and a local newspaper that first reported the cessation of the research noted that no pathogens had escaped the facility.
Global Research’s March 11 story continues: “We also had the Japanese citizens infected in September of 2019, in Hawaii, people who had never been to China, these infections occurring on US soil long before the outbreak in Wuhan but only shortly after the locking down of Fort Detrick.
“Then, on Chinese social media, another article appeared, aware of the above but presenting further details. It stated in part that five ‘foreign’ athletes or other personnel visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games (October 18-27, 2019) were hospitalised in Wuhan for an undetermined infection.”
The opening ceremony of the CISM Military World Games, in Wuhan. Photo: Reuters
That other article is a blog on Chinese social media, identified only by a QR code, that began: “Because there have been so many American dogs recently, in consideration for my account’s safety, [I must write] ‘some country’ or ‘M Country’ [when referring to America].”
The blog entry, which appeared to be a work in progress and is no longer online, recycled much of Global Research’s March 4 article, adding screenshots of local news stories about US military personnel in Wuhan for the October military gameswho were hospitalised.
According to Global Research: “The article explains more clearly that the Wuhan version of the virus could have come only from the US because it is what they call a ‘branch’ which could not have been created first because it would have no ‘seed’. It would have to have been a new variety spun off the original ‘trunk’, and that trunk exists only in the US.”
So there it was. A post on “Chinese social media” about “‘foreign’ athletes or other personnel visiting Wuhan for the World Military Games” in October completed the conspiracy’s journey. The fake news world had rewritten the origin of Covid-19: it was not due to a catastrophic natural occurrence somewhere in or around Wuhan, as the world’s scientists believed, but to a bioweapon brought to Wuhan by the US Army.
At the end of its March 11 article, Global Research returned to January, citing two articles in Science magazine for further “evidence” of its conspiracy – neither of which states the origin of the virus was, as Global Research puts it, “Not in Wuhan” – tying a bow around the package Zhao would soon forward to hundreds of thousands, who would forward it to hundreds of millions.
This article is very much important to each and every one of us. Please read and retweet it. COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US. https://t.co/LPanIo40MR
— Lijian Zhao 赵立坚 (@zlj517) March 13, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
On the morning of March 13, Zhao tweeted links to the Global Research articles: “This article is very much important to each and every one of us. Please read and retweet it. COVID-19: Further Evidence that the Virus Originated in the US. It would be useful to read this prior article for background: China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus …”
Followed by:
“Just take a few minutes to read one more article. This is so astonishing that it changed many things I used to believe in. Please retweet to let more people know about it. China’s Coronavirus: A Shocking Update. Did The Virus Originate in the US? – Global Research: The Western media quickly laid out the official narrative for the outbreak of COVID-19 which appeared to have begun in China …”
By late afternoon, the South China Morning Post reported that the hashtag topic “Zhao Lijian sent out five consecutive tweets questioning the US” had been viewed more than 4.7 million times on Weibo. Twelve hours later, The New York Times reported it had been viewed more than 160 million times.
Zhao’s Twitter followers have increased from 287,000 to more than 500,000. Media worldwide carried stories about his tweets, putting them in front of millions more readers, most of whom would never have seen them on Twitter or Weibo. Fake virus news had gone viral.
In October, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence noted in the first line of its report on Russia’s use of social media to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election, that “information warfare [is] designed to spread disinformation and societal division”. Zhao’s tweets accomplished both. The disinformation was obvious. Critical thinking in abeyance, plenty of people will believe a claim that the US Army planted Covid-19 in Wuhan; even more will want it to be true.
When US President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others began fighting back by loudly and repeatedly calling Covid-19 “the Chinese virus”, social division in the US grew, if that is possible. The media accused Trump of being racist and xenophobic, and inciting more of the same towards Chinese-Americans. This only caused Trump to say it louder and more often.
One wonders how much longer Washington will continue fighting the information war against Beijing with one arm tied behind its back. Chinese media enjoy free run of the US, including on Twitter. The US has no such freedom in China.
Not a few pundits in these past few weeks have predicted Covid-19 will end globalisation, or even “life as we know it”. That seems unlikely, given the short-term nature of people’s memories and how profitable “life as we know it” has been for so many. But given the mischief Zhao’s tweets caused, Beijing’s days on Twitter might be numbered.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 22:50 - Putin: Oil Glut Is Really About Saudi Desire To Crush US Shale
Putin: Oil Glut Is Really About Saudi Desire To Crush US Shale
While it appears an expected emergency virtual OPEC+ meeting planned for Monday has been postponed, pushed back to later in the week to allow more time for negotiations, it’s likely that we’ll actually see the heated blame-game for the collapse in oil prices ratchet up — and oh, in the meantime oil is set to crater come Monday as the feud is only expected to get uglier.
Indeed the aggressive war of words has started, with Putin offering a biting Russian narrative aimed at the Saudis in remarks Friday: “It was the pullout by our partners from Saudi Arabia from the OPEC+ deal, their increase in production and their announcement that they were even ready to give discounts on oil” that drove the crash alongside the double-whammy of the coronavirus-driven drop in demand, Putin said according to Bloomberg.
“This was apparently linked to efforts by our partners from Saudi Arabia to eliminate competitors who produce so-called shale oil,” Putin continued. “To do that, the price needs to be below $40 a barrel. And they succeeded in that. But we don’t need that, we never set such a goal.”
Via Daily Mail Thus in one fell swoop Putin, ironically enough, framed the new ‘war on US shale’ as in reality a Saudi dirty little secret and motive despite all spin to the contrary, perhaps also seeking to inject division and tension in the close Washington-Riyadh alliance.
Both Russia and the Saudis opened the taps and prices plunged following Russia’s early March declaration that it would be quitting the OPEC plan to slash output by 1 million bpd, conditioned also on Russia-led non-OPEC countries cutting 500,000 bpd. Moscow reasoned that ultimately US shale-oil producers would be the ones benefiting as they had previously, filling the gaps in earlier curtailments.
Putin’s attack has for the time being had the immediate effect of forcing Riyadh into the awkward position of having to deny it could have been a willing participant in deeper machinations to crush US shale producers in a price war. This as already the steep drop-off in prices have left some US shale producers saying they’re ready to initiate voluntary production cuts amid the ballooning oil glut, as the WSJ reported Friday.
White House convenes oil CEOs as bust threatens US boomhttps://t.co/PfalMCQlgy pic.twitter.com/vbmIteGC8P
— News 10 (@KTVL) April 4, 2020
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Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan responded to Putin in early Saturday comments, blasting the allegations as “fully devoid of truth.”
“Russia was the one that refused the agreement” the Saudi foreign ministry statement said. “The kingdom and 22 other countries were trying to to persuade Russia to make further cuts and extend the agreement.”
Energy minister and half-brother of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman said something similar, noticeably without taking the shale angle to the Russian accusations head-on.
“The Russian Minister of Energy was first to declare to the media that all the participating countries are absolved of their commitments,” he said. “This led to the decision by countries to raise their production in order to offset lower prices and compensate for their loss of returns.”
Interestingly, Bloomberg’s own summary of the OPEC+ unraveling tacitly admits what few pundits are ready to do, namely that the Saudis for all practical purposes have appeared ‘equal partners’ in squeezing US shale: “The Saudis, who have ramped up production to a record 12 million barrels a day in the past month and massively discounted the price of their oil, have insisted a new agreement must involve significant contributions from all OPEC+ nations and major producers outside the coalition, including the U.S. and Canada,” as the report puts it.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 22:25 - Goldman Warns Of A "Significant" Adverse Impact On Stocks As 2020 Buybacks Are Cut In Half
Goldman Warns Of A “Significant” Adverse Impact On Stocks As 2020 Buybacks Are Cut In Half
One week ago, following the fastest bear market on record…
… which was followed by one of the fastest bear market rallies in history (which briefly became a bull market from the March 20 lows), Goldman’s clients – together with everyone else – had just one question: was this the bottom?
One week later, with the market below last Friday’s lows, it appears that nobody knows what the correct answer is. So, to narrow down the confusion, Goldman’s clients have shifted their attention to a just a more easily answerable question: will the buybacks that helped push the market to all time highs on increasingly less volume, still be there in the coming months?
The reason for the angst is the fact that, as we wrote last Sunday, Goldman’s buyback desk warned that nearly 50 US companies have suspended existing share repurchase authorizations in the past two weeks, representing $190 billion of buybacks or nearly 25% of the 2019 total.There’s more: as Goldman’s chief equity strategist David Kostin wrote, reduced cash flows and select restrictions mandated as part of the Phase 3 fiscal legislation “suggest more suspensions are likely.” And since buybacks have represented the single largest source of US equity demand in each of the last several years…
… the strategist concludes that “higher volatility and lower equity valuations are among the likely consequences of reduced buybacks.”
Which brings us to the latest weekly note from the Goldman strategist, in which he writes that in the latest week, “many of our investor discussions gravitated towards the topic of dividends and share repurchases. The intensifying economic crisis, collapse in company revenues, flurry of suspension announcements, and restrictions in the recently-passed $2 trillion fiscal package have raised questions regarding future corporate cash spending priorities.”
His answer will hardly appeal to Goldman’s client base, or anyone else for that matter, so used to corporation repurchasing their stocks when times get rough: in 2020, Goldman forecasts that S&P 500 dividends will fall by 25% and buybacks will plummet by 50% compared with 2019 levels.
Here are the details behind Goldman’s dour assessment, first dividends:
We estimate S&P 500 dividends will decline by 25% in 2020. Dividends actually rose by 9% during 1Q. However, dividend suspensions, cuts, and eliminations will result in DPS falling by 38% during the next nine months so on a full-year basis dividends will be 25% below the level of last year.
And then buybacks:
In total, we expect S&P 500 share repurchases will decline by 50% to $371 billion during 2020. Despite elevated market volatility, a review of sell-side analyst estimates published since the market’s peak suggests buybacks likely fell by 21% during the first quarter. However, Goldman Sachs buyback desk executions actually rose by 25% year/year. Averaging these two approaches, we assume buybacks were flat year/year during 1Q. We forecast buybacks will fall by 75% year/year in 2Q, by 70% in 3Q, and by 65% in 4Q. An additional 40% year/year slide during 1Q 2021 will result in 12-month repurchase volume that is 65% below the 2018 peak.
The irony, of course, is that company should not have been repurchasing their stock at the all time S&P500 highs, yet that’s precisely what they were doing. In fact, as we explained in late 2019, the main reason why stocks were at all time highs at a time when virtually every investor class was selling, was because of stock buybacks!
To be sure, our insistence ever since 2012 that it was only buybacks behind the market’s relentless grind higher, was met with stern opposition and mockery from some of the more imbecilic financial commentators, most of whom were either tweeting from their parents’ basement or the AQR trading floor, although suddenly their vocal “explanations” how buybacks had nothing to do with the stock market – even though it was painfully obvious why speculators would always frontrun and buy ahead of price indiscriminate CFOs and treasurers who had billions in freshly minted dollar burning a hole in their pockets thanks to a record amount of debt issuance and who were buying up their stock to make sure their equity-linked comp was deep in the money – have gone very mute.
So for the benefit of all those “financial expert” idiots who did not have a grasp of the simplest concept in capital markets, namely supply and demand (and likely still don’t now), here is not some fringe blog but Goldman Sachs setting the record straight once and for all:
“The decline in share repurchases will have a significant impact on the equity market.”
Got that fintwit echo chamber? We doubt it, so here is Kostin’s fuller explanation: “Corporate buybacks have far exceeded demand from all other investor categories combined since 2010.“
As an aside, this is something we have been saying… since 2012! Starting in 2012, among countless other pieces on the topic, we wrote “How The Fed’s Visible Hand Is Forcing Corporate Cash Mismanagement” and “Where The Levered Corporate “Cash On The Sidelines” Is Truly Going”, i.e., buybacks“, then in 2013 with “$500 Billion In 2013 Corporate Buybacks: Half Of QE“, then again in 2014 in “Here Is The Mystery, And Completely Indiscriminate, Buyer Of Stocks In The First Quarter” then in 2015 “It’s Not The Record High Debt That Is The Biggest Risk, It’s [the dropping cash flows]”, and on, and on, and on, we have constantly explained that the primary source of stock buying over the past several years have been corporate management teams repurchasing their own shares using ever greater amounts of debt as a source of funds, in the process boosting not only their stock price but their equity-linked compensation and bonus pools.
It only took nearly a decade for what we said – which was year after year mocked and ridiculed by the so-called “experts” – to become Wall Street gospel. With that we give the floor back to Kostin: “The removal of the principal buyer of shares will widen trading ranges and increase volatility.”
And the punchline: “Reduced buyback spending means less downside support for equity prices since fewer firms will step in to repurchase shares if their stock prices fall. During the past 25 years, the 20th percentile return for stocks within the S&P 500 has averaged -27% annualized during buyback blackout periods compared with -16% when companies can freely repurchase their shares. Fewer buybacks also means slower EPS growth. Since 2008, the gap between EPS growth and earnings growth for the aggregate S&P 500 index averaged 1-2 pp annually. “
And just like that the debate whether stock buybacks propped up stock prices is over, and anyone who has ever told you otherwise should be ignored.
A few more points before we close the chapter on this formerly controversial topic forever, here is Goldman’s explanation why buybacks are about to fall off a cliff:
The recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act prohibits buybacks and dividends among companies that accept assistance from the Treasury. The bill stipulates that any company that borrows money from the Treasury may not repurchase stock or pay a dividend until 12 months after the loan is repaid. The bill explicitly provisions assistance for airlines, air cargo, and aerospace companies, but our economists believe any company receiving assistance under the Treasury’s $454 billion credit facility could also be subject to these restrictions. More guidance from the Treasury is expected soon.
Since the start of March, 51 S&P 500 companies accounting for 27% of 2019 aggregate buybacks have suspended their repurchase programs. While United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Alaska Air have suspended buybacks, not all repurchase suspensions have come from companies expected to receive government assistance. Eight of the largest US banks recently announced that they would suspend buybacks through at least the second quarter and allocate that capital toward supporting the global economy. Prominent retailers, hoteliers, and cruise operators have also suspended their buyback programs.
What about the sectors that have mattered the most in recent years, namely tech?
Yep, them too.
Semiconductor and Pharmaceutical buybacks are also likely to decline. Intel recently announced that it was suspending its buyback program, which totaled $13.5 billion last year (nearly 2% of S&P 500 total). Broadcom reiterated that buybacks are on hold. Our semiconductors analysts expect other chipmakers will follow suit and noted that many investors have indicated they would prefer firms focus on shoring up the balance sheet rather than repurchasing stock. Our biopharma analysts believe that the current political spotlight on repurchases may result in firms reducing repurchase spending in 2020 despite significant outstanding authorizations.
And while we already know that such a plunge in buybacks which was last observed during the financial crisis will have a “significant” and not positive “impact on the equity market”, what does it mean quantitatively?
The historical relationship between EPS growth and buyback growth would suggest a roughly 30% decline in buybacks during 2020.
However, we believe the decline in share repurchases will be worse than this relationship implies. Our quarterly review of S&P 500 earnings transcripts consistently reveals that management teams view buybacks as the lowest priority use of cash. A spate of recent suspensions, escalating employee layoffs, and increasing political and social pressure will curtail buyback spending, which remains historically elevated following the passage of corporate tax reform
In historical context, a 50% decline in buybacks would be consistent with the 8-quarter, 67% peak-to-trough decline during the Global Financial Crisis.
Repurchases also declined by 56% peak-to-trough over a period of 11 quarters during the early 1990s. Following each of these sharp declines, equity issuance actually exceeded share repurchases: so are we about to see a flood stock buybacks in reverse as cash-strapped companies flood the market with their shares a la what Carnival did last week? Back in 2008/2009 S&P 500 firms issued $453 billion of equity during the 12-month period ended September 2009, more than double the $208 billion of aggregate share repurchases. Will the number this time be above $1 trillion?
Finally, with everyone fleeing away from companies that have historically returned most capital to investors due to fears such shareholder friendly activity is now over, Goldman is too, and as Kostin concludes, “we rebalance our baskets of stocks with the largest spending on buybacks and dividends. Our sector-neutral Buyback basket (GSTHREPO) consists of the 50 S&P 500 stocks with the largest trailing 12-month buyback spending as a share of market cap. Our Total Cash Return basket (GSTHCASH), also sector-neutral, consists of the stocks with the highest combined buyback and dividend spending over the same period. Both of these baskets have underperformed sharply YTD…
… as investors skeptical of the sustainability of buybacks and dividends have instead rewarded firms with safe balance sheets and those paying down debt” as well as those companies that generate cash flow instead of “pie in the sky” growth narratives that only a Tesla lemming could believe.
Well would you look at that: efficient, rational markets are suddenly back, now that companies can’t fall back to the old trick of issuing ultra cheap credit to boost their stock price.
In other words, the Fed may well be on its way to nationalizing the entire market, but in its last gasps of normalcy, the market is finally exhibiting the kind of lucid efficiency, at least briefly, that was missing for much of the past decade, and for once is actually doing the right thing in rewarding prudent corporate behavior and debt repayment while punishing all those companies that hit all time highs only because their management teams knew nothing more than “wave it in.”
We doubt the Fed will allow this kind of rational behavior to last too long before it goes “full USSR” and completely takes over the stock market as well, at which point capitalism will officially be dead.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 22:00 - From 'Nightmare' To 'Surprisingly Seamless' – Small Business Owners Describe COVID-19 Bailout Experiences
From ‘Nightmare’ To ‘Surprisingly Seamless’ – Small Business Owners Describe COVID-19 Bailout Experiences
The Trump administration’s $350 billion SBA Paycheck Protection Program was launched on Friday as part of the $2 trillion bailout package, letting small businesses gain access to capital for payroll and other overhead costs.
As we reported on Friday, the rollout went horribly awry for some – with banks such as BofA requiring an existing credit line to qualify, surprising many. JPM delayed the rollout until 1pm, while Wells Fargo and others completely dropped the ball.
That said, it wasn’t all bad on Friday – with some business owners such as small business owner Kyle Stewart, who told Bloomberg that the process was “surprisingly seamless” when he applied for a loan to keep his batting-cage and baseball training business afloat.
After spending two hours gathering the payroll and business information required and completing the Paycheck Protection Program application Thursday night, Kyle found uploading the form to the bank’s portal Friday morning was “surprisingly seamless” and automated.
After San Francisco announced a shelter-in-place order on March 16, Stewart told his five hourly workers he wouldn’t be able to pay them going forward. The timing couldn’t have been worse, as his company makes 60% of its profit in the month of March ahead of the baseball season. He’s hoping the loan will help keep them on until the business is able to reopen. –Bloomberg
“We are still stuck on second base with 2 outs in the ninth inning,” said Stewart. “Here is to hoping for a clutch hit from the Feds.“
Cute.
Others, such as Ohio hair salon owner Clara Osterhage found the process to be a “nightmare.” After gathering documents in preparation to be one of the first in line with her application on Friday, she was told by her small regional bank at 11 a.m. that they weren’t going to be able to submit applications that day, and that ‘even big banks weren’t able to do it.’
“This is a nightmare,” she said, adding that she doesn’t have a clue when she’ll gain access to the funds she needs.
“How do I feel? Uncertain with a capital ‘U.’“
Goat’s milk soap maker Theresa Richard of Arnaudville, Louisiana was “at a loss” after trying to obtain a loan for her Youngsville store, Bain Amour Bath & Body Co., which has been shut since the state’s March 22 stay-at-home order, which has left her lone employee without work.
Richard’s local bank, Farmers and Merchants Bank & Trust Co. of Beaux Bridge told her they’re still waiting on more information about the program. Her other bank, Chase, sent her an email notifying her that they wouldn’t be ready for the program’s Friday morning launch.
“Nobody has a real clear idea of what they need in place to start doing the loans,” she said.
Community bankers are “rightfully frustrated and, in many cases, livid” after promised online portals never went live on Friday, said Rebeca Romero Rainey, chief executive officer of Independent Community Bankers of America.
It was “a nightmare situation,” Rainey said. “Media reports continue to indicate successful launches through the country by community banks, few of which we have been able to confirm.” –Bloomberg
Robin Schultz, who operates Birmingham, Alabama commercial lighting company Quality Electric, says that despite using the same lender for over two decades that she was surprised to receive an email from them Thursday night notifying her that it hadn’t received guidelines from the feds.
After trying to apply at 4 a.m. Friday morning, she received an email around noon to let her know that the site was operational. Moments later, it was down, and she still wasn’t able to file paperwork for the loan.
More tales of woe and optimism (via Bloomberg):
‘Eight Weeks Is Ten Years’
Erik Bruun owns SoCo Creamery, an ice cream shop and wholesale supplier in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Foot traffic into his store is slower this time of the year, but is down 60% from where it typically is.
Wholesale ice cream sales, which make up the majority of revenue during the off-season, have completely stopped.
Bruun applied for an emergency loan last week but has yet to hear back. He tried to apply to the paycheck protection program as well, but his local bank told him the application changed and he’d have to wait until they receive instructions to proceed.
The application made it sound like the money would be dispersed in 72 hours. Time is critical right now, and even if his paycheck protection application is approved he’s not sure if the duration will be enough.
“Eight weeks? Eight weeks is ten years right now,” he said. “Eight weeks ago we lived in the allegedly good times. Now we live in the Great Depression.”
One small perk with the lockdown: as people hunker down, pint sales in local grocery stores are up.
‘So Much Confusion’
Wahid Nassar, who runs a restaurant in Highlands, New Jersey, tried going online Friday morning to apply for the loan through his lender, Bank of America, but repeatedly got error messages.
“There’s so much confusion and hard to get a straight answer from anyone right now,” he said.
‘Bringing Hope’
At 9:30 a.m. Friday, the paperwork, so utterly confusing at times, was finally in order for Jason Maxwell. The CEO of MassPay, a payroll and human resources firm that employs 59 people in Beverly, Massachusetts, faxed his application for an SBA loan to his banker in nearby Salem.
Late Thursday, Maxwell was told the federal loan program had tweaked its application. Luckily, Maxwell has a good relationship with his banker, Ed Lomasney, a senior vice president at Salem Five Bank. Lomasney contacted Maxwell, who immediately filled out the new form.
Maxwell has worked with Lomasney for seven years, even switching lenders when the banker relocated to a new financial-services institution three years ago.
“He’s the kind of guy who would knock down doors for us,” Maxwell said of his financial guru, who was too busy Friday with applications to comment.
Maxwell has also been helping other business owners navigate the programs and loans available. He called the owner of his favorite coffee shop, who is not a client, when he heard the man was feeling utterly hopeless, and offered information and advice on how to get some relief.
The programs “are bringing hope to a pretty grim situation,” Maxwell said.
‘Somewhat Optimistic’
Steve Vernetti, owner of Vernetti, an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles that’s a favorite of Mayor Eric Garcetti, said he had to fill out multiple applications because they kept changing, including as recently as Friday morning.
“It seems like the program is being fleshed out in real-time,” Vernetti said.
Vernetti said his business manager has a close relationship with his bank that’s keeping them in the loop, and that “I can only imagine what the confusion is like for those who don’t have the advantages we have.”
The restaurant owner said he’s been paying his 20 employees for two weeks out of his own pocket but won’t be able to continue. If he gets some confirmation of the SBA funding, he’ll consider opening for pickup and delivery services in two weeks.
“I am starting to see a way through this, and I am feeling somewhat optimistic,” Vernetti said.
Let’s see what next week brings in the land of struggling business loans…
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 21:35 - Nobody Knows How To Politicize A Pandemic Like Nancy Pelosi
Nobody Knows How To Politicize A Pandemic Like Nancy Pelosi
Authored by David Krayden via HumanEvents.com,
The Speaker is using the coronavirus to push through legislation for her very wealthy, very loyal base…
On Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden (who, one must remember, holds no elected office at the moment) promised that any further coronavirus legislation might just contain something of “my green deal.” It’s not clear if he was referring to some sort of environmental plan—or how he expects to craft legislation from his basement in Delaware—but even Sleepy Joe seems to think that a global pandemic signals a time for pork-barrel politics.
None among the Democrats has embraced this ethos more than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however. As the coronavirus crisis rages on around us, Pelosi is still looking for creative ways to spend your tax dollars.
After failing to stuff the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package with a bevy of her social justice pet projects, Pelosi had the gall to announce that Democrats had made the bill about “workers first.”
“It went from a corporate first proposal that the Republicans put forth in the Senate to a workers first—Democratic workers first—legislation,” said Pelosi, at one of her increasingly bizarre news conferences where the grand dame of Congress appears to be crumbling under the weight of her own rhetoric.
“The bill that was passed in the Senate last night [Wednesday] and that we will take up tomorrow [Friday] is about mitigation: mitigation for all the loss that we have in our economy while still addressing the emergency health needs that we have in our country.”
What the Speaker neglected to mention, however, was how her bill would have forced any airline receiving government bailout money to cut their carbon footprint in half and any business to implement a “diversity plan.” Oh, and she made sure the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts received a handsome handout (note: after they grabbed the $25 million in cash, the management promptly started laying-off musicians).
Now, Pelosi is moving on to “phase four” of the Democrats’ coronavirus rescue package: save the (Democratic) millionaires.
PELOSI WAGES CLASS WARFARE—BUT NOT ON BEHALF OF THE CLASS YOU’D EXPECT
The Pelosi plan would remove a cap on the state and local tax deduction (SALT) that could quickly put cash in people’s pockets—but the beneficiary won’t be average American workers. The beneficiaries will be the real base of the Democratic Party: millionaire liberals from coastal states.
The tax rebates would affect approximately 13 million families—very wealthy families, all of which are earning at least $100,000 and many over a million per annum. “More than half of the proceeds from fully repealing the SALT cap would go to the top 1 percent, households making more than about three-quarters of a million dollars a year,” reports Politico.
To hear Nancy explain the cash infusion, it’s just some extra beer money at the end of the month: “We could reverse that for 2018 and 2019 so that people could refile their taxes” and receive more substantial rebates, Pelosi told The New York Times. “They’d have more disposable income, which is the lifeblood of our economy, a consumer economy that we are.”
The cruel irony of this latest Democratic ploy is that the SALT cap was put in place as part of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2017. Those are the same tax cuts that Pelosi wanted to repeal because, supposedly, only the wealthy would benefit from them.
Democrats have wanted the cap removed for quite some time. Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was so angry about it in 2017 that he accused the president of waging “economic civil war” on blue states with the measure. It was a huge issue during the 2018 midterm elections, especially among bleeding heart Democrats fighting for their millionaire friends.
“In the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats wielded the SALT limits in House campaigns against Republicans in wealthy blue-state suburbs of cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago,” writes the Times. According to Politico, House Democrats “who made large gains in upscale suburbs as they took the majority in the 2018 elections” voted last year to repeal the cap, but the effort died in the Republican-controlled Senate—“where few states represented by Republicans are all that troubled by the $10,000 limit.”
Removing the SALT cap benefits the people who really embody what Pelosi’s party has become: a coffee clatch of free-thinking progressives who have nothing better to do with their time but think of ways to socially re-engineer the rest of society by obsessing over the LGBT-GQ agenda, inventing genders that don’t exist, and worrying about hate speech lurking under every bed. The kind of people who have the inclination to attend a Seattle yoga class in “undoing whiteness.” The only blue-collar workers they know are the ones who fix the plumbing and pick up the garbage.
“These are people who won’t spend the extra money and don’t really need it,” Michael Linden, executive director of the progressive Groundwork Collaborative, told Politico.
“That’s why they were left out of the cash assistance in the first place.”
But, as Pelosi demonstrated during the last COVID-19 stimulus bill, a health crisis provides a serendipitous opportunity to pass a plethora of unrelated legislation—and Madame Speaker is apparently up to her antics again.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 21:10 - Looting Wave Strikes New York City Amid Coronavirus Lockdown
Looting Wave Strikes New York City Amid Coronavirus Lockdown
We’ve been laying out the possible case for the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic could be social unrest.
Millions of Americans have just lost their jobs, have no saving, and insurmountable debts, are flooding food banks across the nation to survive. With the economy crashed and now entering a depression, last week was a significant milestone in the progression of the crisis, as looting of businesses in California and South Carolina began.
Now the looting is spreading across the nation. We noted how stores in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago, were boarding up their windows, preparing for civil unrest.
After all, when 10 million people lose their jobs in two weeks, and an estimated unemployment rate that could reach 15-20% in the second quarter, as per RealInvestmentAdvice.com’s Lance Roberts latest report, the ripple effect on society is so sudden that there could very well be an outbreak of unrest when the weather shifts too much warmer trends, and geographically be situated in low-income areas of inner cities. Hence why the National Guard was called up and now being positioned around and or in major metros.
The beginning innings of social unrest could now be unfolding across New York City. Households are cracking as hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs over several weeks. The city has become the epicenter of the virus crisis, recording 103,060 confirmed cases and 2,935 deaths (as of Saturday afternoon, April 4).
The Wall Street Journal reports an increase in burglaries of commercial establishments across all five boroughs from March 12-31, coinciding when mass shutdowns went into effect.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) recorded a 75% jump in burglaries of businesses during the period, or about 254 burglaries, compared with 145 over the same period last year.
“The increase in burglaries coincided with steps to stop the spread of the coronavirus. On March 15, the city ordered restaurants and bars to cease on-site service, prompting many establishments to close altogether or limit operations. A March 20 decree by Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the closure of all nonessential businesses, leading many retail stores to shutter,” the Journal noted.
“We knew with the closing of many stores that we could see an increase and, unfortunately, we are,” said NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri.
LiPetri said the most targeted establishments by criminals had been restaurants, supermarkets, and retail stores. Between March 12-31, there were over 30 reports of burglaries of supermarkets, a 400% increase over the same period last year.
He said thieves were specifically after food, alcohol, and retail goods. Many gained entry from rooftops and or forcing doors open or breaking windows.
The Journal notes that some retail chains have boarded up shops across the city, citing fears that social unrest could soon follow. Here are some shops that have already boarded up windows:
Thousands of stores in New York have boarded up their doors and windows to avoid possible looting pic.twitter.com/Bc0UvZGuoO
— TRT World (@trtworld) March 31, 2020
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New York Gazette ™ Store owners boarding up buildings across Manhattan: https://t.co/aEawtKmPAq – NEW YORK – A growing scene for those who venture out into the streets of Manhattan these days is boarded up storefronts. From luxury retailers to small… https://t.co/te7a7D74at pic.twitter.com/Bo5wbvFMWh
— George Mentz JD MBA (@GeorgeMentz) April 4, 2020
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As looting surges in New York City, the next fear is that the NYPD could become overwhelmed by virus-related incidents and or a shortage of officers.
On Friday, one out of every six NYPD officers was sick or in quarantine. Over 1,500 have tested positive for the virus, which could lead to decreased patrols while crime is surging across the city.
“It’s a worst-case scenario across the board,” a sergeant told The New York Times.
And now it should make sense why President Trump recently signed an executive order to activate up to one million troops – that is because the evolution of the virus crisis and economic collapse, is social unrest and looting and whatever else that may bring.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 20:45 - All Trails Lead Back To The Wuhan Bio-Lab
All Trails Lead Back To The Wuhan Bio-Lab
Authored by Jim Geraghty via NationalReview.com,
There’s no proof the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a laboratory, but we can’t take the Chinese government’s denials at face value.
It is understandable that many would be wary of the notion that the origin of the coronavirus could be discovered by some documentary filmmaker who used to live in China. Matthew Tye, who creates YouTube videos, contends he has identified the source of the coronavirus — and a great deal of the information that he presents, obtained from public records posted on the Internet, checks out.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China indeed posted a job opening on November 18, 2019, “asking for scientists to come research the relationship between the coronavirus and bats.”
The Google translation of the job posting is: “Taking bats as the research object, I will answer the molecular mechanism that can coexist with Ebola and SARS- associated coronavirus for a long time without disease, and its relationship with flight and longevity. Virology, immunology, cell biology, and multiple omics are used to compare the differences between humans and other mammals.” (“Omics” is a term for a subfield within biology, such as genomics or glycomics.)
On December 24, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology posted a second job posting. The translation of that posting includes the declaration, “long-term research on the pathogenic biology of bats carrying important viruses has confirmed the origin of bats of major new human and livestock infectious diseases such as SARS and SADS, and a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified.”
Tye contends that that posting meant, “we’ve discovered a new and terrible virus, and would like to recruit people to come deal with it.” He also contends that “news didn’t come out about coronavirus until ages after that.” Doctors in Wuhan knew that they were dealing with a cluster of pneumonia cases as December progressed, but it is accurate to say that a very limited number of people knew about this particular strain of coronavirus and its severity at the time of that job posting. By December 31, about three weeks after doctors first noticed the cases, the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization and the first media reports about a “mystery pneumonia” appeared outside China.
Scientific American verifies much of the information Tye mentions about Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist nicknamed “Bat Woman” for her work with that species.
Shi — a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years — walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical areas of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals — particularly bats, a known reservoir for many viruses. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “could they have come from our lab?”
. . . By January 7 the Wuhan team determined that the new virus had indeed caused the disease those patients suffered — a conclusion based on results from polymerase chain reaction analysis, full genome sequencing, antibody tests of blood samples and the virus’s ability to infect human lung cells in a petri dish. The genomic sequence of the virus — now officially called SARS-CoV-2 because it is related to the SARS pathogen — was 96 percent identical to that of a coronavirus the researchers had identified in horseshoe bats in Yunnan, they reported in a paper published last month in Nature. “It’s crystal clear that bats, once again, are the natural reservoir,” says Daszak, who was not involved in the study.
Some scientists aren’t convinced that the virus jumped straight from bats to human beings, but there are a few problems with the theory that some other animal was an intermediate transmitter of COVID-19 from bats to humans:
Analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 genome indicate a single spillover event, meaning the virus jumped only once from an animal to a person, which makes it likely that the virus was circulating among people before December. Unless more information about the animals at the Wuhan market is released, the transmission chain may never be clear. There are, however, numerous possibilities. A bat hunter or a wildlife trafficker might have brought the virus to the market. Pangolins happen to carry a coronavirus, which they might have picked up from bats years ago, and which is, in one crucial part of its genome, virtually identical to SARS-CoV-2. But no one has yet found evidence that pangolins were at the Wuhan market, or even that venders there trafficked pangolins.
On February 4 — one week before the World Health Organization decided to officially name this virus “COVID-19” — the journal Cell Research posted a notice written by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology about the virus, concluding, “our findings reveal that remdesivir and chloroquine are highly effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro. Since these compounds have been used in human patients with a safety track record and shown to be effective against various ailments, we suggest that they should be assessed in human patients suffering from the novel coronavirus disease.” One of the authors of that notice was the “bat woman,” Shi Zhengli.
In his YouTube video, Tye focuses his attention on a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology named Huang Yanling: “Most people believe her to be patient zero, and most people believe she is dead.”
There was enough discussion of rumors about Huang Yanling online in China to spur an official denial. On February 16, the Wuhan Institute of Virology denied that patient zero was one of their employees, and interestingly named her specifically: “Recently there has been fake information about Huang Yanling, a graduate from our institute, claiming that she was patient zero in the novel coronavirus.” Press accounts quote the institute as saying, “Huang was a graduate student at the institute until 2015, when she left the province and had not returned since. Huang was in good health and had not been diagnosed with disease, it added.” None of her publicly available research papers are dated after 2015.
The web page for the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Lab of Diagnostic Microbiology does indeed still have “Huang Yanling” listed as a 2012 graduate student, and her picture and biography appear to have been recently removed — as have those of two other graduate students from 2013, Wang Mengyue and Wei Cuihua.
Her name still has a hyperlink, but the linked page is blank. The pages for Wang Mengyue and Wei Cuihua are blank as well.
(For what it is worth, the South China Morning Post — a newspaper seen as being generally pro-Beijing — reported on March 13 that “according to the government data seen by the Post, a 55 year-old from Hubei province could have been the first person to have contracted Covid-19 on November 17.”)
On February 17, Zhen Shuji, a Hong Kong correspondent from the French public-radio service Radio France Internationale, reported: “when a reporter from the Beijing News of the Mainland asked the institute for rumors about patient zero, the institute first denied that there was a researcher Huang Yanling, but after learning that the name of the person on the Internet did exist, acknowledged that the person had worked at the firm but has now left the office and is unaccounted for.”
Tye says, “everyone on the Chinese internet is searching for [Huang Yanling] but most believe that her body was quickly cremated and the people working at the crematorium were perhaps infected as they were not given any information about the virus.” (The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that handling the body of someone who has died of coronavirus is safe — including embalming and cremation — as long as the standard safety protocols for handing a decedent are used. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether those safety protocols were sufficiently used in China before the outbreak’s scope was known.)
As Tye observes, a public appearance by Huang Yanling would dispel a lot of the public rumors, and is the sort of thing the Chinese government would quickly arrange in normal circumstances — presuming that Huang Yanling was still alive. Several officials at the Wuhan Institute of Virology issued public statements that Huang was in good health and that no one at the institute has been infected with COVID-19. In any case, the mystery around Huang Yanling may be moot, but it does point to the lab covering up something about her.
China Global Television Network, a state-owned television broadcaster, illuminated another rumor while attempting to dispel it in a February 23 report entitled “Rumors Stop With the Wise”:
On February 17, a Weibo user who claimed herself to be Chen Quanjiao, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, reported to the public that the Director of the Institute was responsible for leaking the novel coronavirus. The Weibo post threw a bomb in the cyberspace and the public was shocked. Soon Chen herself stepped out and declared that she had never released any report information and expressed great indignation at such identity fraud on Weibo. It has been confirmed that that particular Weibo account had been shut down several times due to the spread of misinformation about COVID-19.
That Radio France Internationale report on February 17 also mentioned the next key part of the Tye’s YouTube video. “Xiaobo Tao, a scholar from South China University of Technology, recently published a report that researchers at Wuhan Virus Laboratory were splashed with bat blood and urine, and then quarantined for 14 days.” HK01, another Hong Kong-based news site, reported the same claim.
This doctor’s name is spelled in English as both “Xiaobo Tao” and “Botao Xiao.” From 2011 to 2013, Botao Xiao was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and his biography is still on the web site of the South China University of Technology.
At some point in February, Botao Xiao posted a research paper onto ResearchGate.net, “The Possible Origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus.” He is listed as one author, along with Lei Xiao from Tian You Hospital, which is affiliated with the Wuhan University of Science and Technology. The paper was removed a short time after it was posted, but archived images of its pages can be found here and here.
The first conclusion of Botao Xiao’s paper is that the bats suspected of carrying the virus are extremely unlikely to be found naturally in the city, and despite the stories of “bat soup,” they conclude that bats were not sold at the market and were unlikely to be deliberately ingested.
The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan [area] of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization could not confirm if bats were present at the market. Botao Xiao’s paper theorizes that the coronavirus originated from bats being used for research at either one of two research laboratories in Wuhan.
We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus. Within ~ 280 meters from the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention. WHCDC hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification. In one of their studies, 155 bats including Rhinolophus affinis were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province. The expert in Collection was noted in the Author Contributions (JHT). Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nation-wide newspapers and websites in 2017 and 2019. He described that he was once by attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin. He knew the extreme danger of the infection so he quarantined himself for 14 days. In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him.
Surgery was performed on the caged animals and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing. The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were source of pathogens. They were only ~280 meters from the seafood market. The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital (Figure 1, bottom) where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic. It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.
The second laboratory was ~12 kilometers from the seafood market and belonged to Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences . . .
In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.
However, Xiao has told the Wall Street Journal that he has withdrawn his paper. “The speculation about the possible origins in the post was based on published papers and media, and was not supported by direct proofs,” he said in a brief email on February 26.
The bat researcher that Xiao’s report refers to is virologist Tian Junhua, who works at the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control. In 2004, the World Health Organization determined that an outbreak of the SARS virus had been caused by two separate leaks at the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing. The Chinese government said that the leaks were a result of “negligence” and the responsible officials had been punished.
In 2017, the Chinese state-owned Shanghai Media Group made a seven-minute documentary about Tian Junhua, entitled “Youth in the Wild: Invisible Defender.” Videographers followed Tian Junhua as he traveled deep into caves to collect bats.
“Among all known creatures, the bats are rich with various viruses inside,” he says in Chinese.
“You can find most viruses responsible for human diseases, like rabies virus, SARS, and Ebola. Accordingly, the caves frequented by bats became our main battlefields.” He emphasizes, “bats usually live in caves humans can hardly reach. Only in these places can we find the most ideal virus vector samples.”
One of his last statements on the video is:
“In the past ten-plus years, we have visited every corner of Hubei Province. We explored dozens of undeveloped caves and studied more than 300 types of virus vectors. But I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research and will never be used in real life. Because humans need not only the vaccines, but also the protection from the nature.”
The description of Tian Junhua’s self-isolation came from a May 2017 report by Xinhua News Agency, repeated by the Chinese news site JQKNews.com:
The environment for collecting bat samples is extremely bad. There is a stench in the bat cave. Bats carry a large number of viruses in their bodies. If they are not careful, they are at risk of infection. But Tian Junhua is not afraid to go to the mountain with his wife to catch Batman.
Tian Junhua summed up the experience that the most bats can be caught by using the sky cannon and pulling the net. But in the process of operation, Tian Junhua forgot to take protective measures. Bat urine dripped on him like raindrops from the top. If he was infected, he could not find any medicine. It was written in the report.
The wings of bats carry sharp claws. When the big bats are caught by bat tools, they can easily spray blood. Several times bat blood was sprayed directly on Tians skin, but he didn’t flinch at all. After returning home, Tian Junhua took the initiative to isolate for half a month. As long as the incubation period of 14 days does not occur, he will be lucky to escape, the report said.
Bat urine and blood can carry viruses. How likely is it that bat urine or blood got onto a researcher at either Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Alternatively, what are the odds that some sort of medical waste or other material from the bats was not properly disposed of, and that was the initial transmission vector to a human being?
Virologists have been vehemently skeptical of the theory that COVID-19 was engineered or deliberately constructed in a laboratory; the director of the National Institutes of Health has written that recent genomic research “debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally.” And none of the above is definitive proof that COVID-19 originated from a bat at either the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention or the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Definitive proof would require much broader access to information about what happened in those facilities in the time period before the epidemic in the city.
But it is a remarkable coincidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses in bats before the pandemic outbreak, and that in the month when Wuhan doctors were treating the first patients of COVID-19, the institute announced in a hiring notice that “a large number of new bat and rodent new viruses have been discovered and identified.” And the fact that the Chinese government spent six weeks insisting that COVID-19 could not be spread from person to person means that its denials about Wuhan laboratories cannot be accepted without independent verification.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 20:20 - "Medical Supply Arbitrage": How Hordes Of Middle Men, Profiteers & Scammers Massively Inflated Prices Of N95s
“Medical Supply Arbitrage”: How Hordes Of Middle Men, Profiteers & Scammers Massively Inflated Prices Of N95s
Americans hear it every day now during Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press briefings. In the middle of a crushing pandemic, New York and other states are being grossly gouged as they shop around for medical supplies. With most of their regular relationships exhausted, states are competing against each other, a nonsensical and costly “bidding war” that Cuomo has blamed on President Trump.
N95 masks, which are now among the most prized commodities on the planet, are in such short supply, that some hospitals in NYC simply don’t have them to provide to workers, forcing them to improvise. Cuomo says masks that recently cost just 40 or 50 cents are now being sold for $7 a pop, a roughly 13x markup.
While the administration’s failure to better prepare for the epidemic certainly hasn’t helped, the New York Times on Friday pointed out another, bigger factor that’s greatly contributed to this problem. Complex globalized supply chains have been disrupted by the outbreak, and with production largely centered in China, producers are effectively using the masks as political chits: Beijing has given them to Italy, and the UK – and even a few to the US.
But beyond that, the chaos caused by the outbreak caused such a mad scramble to buy up these supplies, that brokers are selling them at crazy markups, many because they bought them at already-crazy markups, and are now either trying to make a sliver of profit, or just break even. Even wannabe ‘Good Samaritans’ have fallen prey to this cycle, as the dogooders ask simply to be reimbursed for their costs, or just accept that they will lose money, which is hard to do during a time of looming economic catastrophe. At a certain point, it almost becomes difficult to differentiate the scammers from the do-gooders.
Others are exploiting relationships to act as ‘brokers’, middle-manning N95 masks and other supplies – the masks especially will become even more scarce and costly once the White House and CDC inevitably advise people to wear them in public – for modest profits.
Rampant crisis profiteering has already been well-documented by the press, as have the efforts by states and the federal government to police it. Earlier this week, AG Barr got up at the White House’s daily press conference and warned that federal prosecutors would be cracking down. And many have been publicly shamed.
But even as Amazon bans the sale of masks to the general public, next-level ‘brokers’ are using the power of the internet to deal with hospital systems and other health-care providers who have essentially been forced to participate in the shadowy grey market to acquire essential supplies at a time when people’s lives – even the lives of young, healthy people – are very much on the line.
One of the details that most stood out to us in Friday’s New York Times story was the description of the practice as “medical supply arbitrage.” Here’s how it works, according to NYT:
Not every new entrant to the market is a good Samaritan. Groups on Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram are teeming with posts hawking thousands of masks at inflated prices.
Some are wholesalers who bought pallets of masks from China or in liquidation sales and then marked them up. Many more are simply middlemen who call themselves brokers. They scour the groups for masks advertised for a relatively low price, and then repost the offer for a few thousand dollars more. They don’t handle the masks or put up their own money.
Yaear Weintroub is one of those brokers. A 22-year-old community college student from Brooklyn, he typically sells wholesale electronics to Amazon sellers. But the online forums he searches for deals became flooded with listings for masks last month, so he now spends his days trying to connect buyers and sellers for a bit of medical-supply arbitrage.
In a recent interview, he said he was working with a partner to close a deal for 280,000 surgical masks that would increase their price 20 percent and net the pair a roughly $40,000 profit. He said many of the brokers sold to other brokers, each one marking up the price, until the masks presumably make it to a nursing home or a hospital. He said he would prefer to sell directly to hospitals.
“They’re just more serious,” he said. “So if I have the goods, I want a serious buyer for them. And besides, it’s a morally good reason.”
To these sellers, medical supplies are simply another hot product to flip for a profit. Avraham Eisenberg, a New York wholesaler who is trying to ship masks from China, compared the rush for masks to the fad several years ago for fidget spinners.
As prosecutors crack down on re-sellers of medical supplies, the line between what constitutes ‘gouging’ and simple sales of products that aren’t illegal to sell to the general public is becoming more difficult to discern. Barr’s press conference appearance aside, last month, the DoJ said it would investigate people manipulating the medical-supply market. Then, five days later, federal authorities charged a Brooklyn man with lying about price gouging after he tried to sell 1,000 masks and other supplies to a doctor for $12,000 (he was also charged with assault for coughing on one of the agents).
It might still be legal, but anybody who’s still doing this should watch their backs.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 19:55 - This Is What COVID-19 Does To Your Body That Makes It So Deadly
This Is What COVID-19 Does To Your Body That Makes It So Deadly
COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Coronaviruses belong to a group of viruses that infect animals, from peacocks to whales. They’re named for the bulb-tipped spikes that project from the virus’s surface and give the appearance of a corona surrounding it.
A coronavirus infection usually plays out one of two ways: as an infection in the lungs that includes some cases of what people would call the common cold, or as an infection in the gut that causes diarrhea. COVID-19 starts out in the lungs like the common cold coronaviruses, but then causes havoc with the immune system that can lead to long-term lung damage or death.
SARS-CoV-2 is genetically very similar to other human respiratory coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. However, the subtle genetic differences translate to significant differences in how readily a coronavirus infects people and how it makes them sick.
SARS-CoV-2 has all the same genetic equipment as the original SARS-CoV, which caused a global outbreak in 2003, but with around 6,000 mutations sprinkled around in the usual places where coronaviruses change. Think whole milk versus skim milk.
Compared to other human coronaviruses like MERS-CoV, which emerged in the Middle East in 2012, the new virus has customized versions of the same general equipment for invading cells and copying itself. However, SARS-CoV-2 has a totally different set of genes called accessories, which give this new virus a little advantage in specific situations. For example, MERS has a particular protein that shuts down a cell’s ability to sound the alarm about a viral intruder. SARS-CoV-2 has an unrelated gene with an as-yet unknown function in that position in its genome. Think cow milk versus almond milk.
How the virus infects
Every coronavirus infection starts with a virus particle, a spherical shell that protects a single long string of genetic material and inserts it into a human cell. The genetic material instructs the cell to make around 30 different parts of the virus, allowing the virus to reproduce. The cells that SARS-CoV-2 prefers to infect have a protein called ACE2 on the outside that is important for regulating blood pressure.
The infection begins when the long spike proteins that protrude from the virus particle latch on to the cell’s ACE2 protein. From that point, the spike transforms, unfolding and refolding itself using coiled spring-like parts that start out buried at the core of the spike. The reconfigured spike hooks into the cell and crashes the virus particle and cell together. This forms a channel where the string of viral genetic material can snake its way into the unsuspecting cell.
An illustration of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein shown from the side (left) and top. The protein latches onto human lung cells. 5-HT2AR/Wikimedia
SARS-CoV-2 spreads from person to person by close contact. The Shincheonji Church outbreak in South Korea in February provides a good demonstration of how and how quickly SARS-CoV-2 spreads. It seems one or two people with the virus sat face to face very close to uninfected people for several minutes at a time in a crowded room. Within two weeks, several thousand people in the country were infected, and more than half of the infections at that point were attributable to the church. The outbreak got to a fast start because public health authorities were unaware of the potential outbreak and were not testing widely at that stage. Since then, authorities have worked hard and the number of new cases in South Korea has been falling steadily.
How the virus makes people sick
SARS-CoV-2 grows in type II lung cells, which secrete a soap-like substance that helps air slip deep into the lungs, and in cells lining the throat.
As with SARS, most of the damage in COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, is caused by the immune system carrying out a scorched earth defense to stop the virus from spreading. Millions of cells from the immune system invade the infected lung tissue and cause massive amounts of damage in the process of cleaning out the virus and any infected cells.
Each COVID-19 lesion ranges from the size of a grape to the size of a grapefruit. The challenge for health care workers treating patients is to support the body and keep the blood oxygenated while the lung is repairing itself.
How SARS-CoV-2 infects, sickens and kills people.
SARS-CoV-2 has a sliding scale of severity. Patients under age 10 seem to clear the virus easily, most people under 40 seem to bounce back quickly, but older people suffer from increasingly severe COVID-19. The ACE2 protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses as a door to enter cells is also important for regulating blood pressure, and it does not do its job when the virus gets there first. This is one reason COVID-19 is more severe in people with high blood pressure.
SARS-CoV-2 is more severe than seasonal influenza in part because it has many more ways to stop cells from calling out to the immune system for help. For example, one way that cells try to respond to infection is by making interferon, the alarm signaling protein. SARS-CoV-2 blocks this by a combination of camouflage, snipping off protein markers from the cell that serve as distress beacons and finally shredding any anti-viral instructions that the cell makes before they can be used. As a result, COVID-19 can fester for a month, causing a little damage each day, while most people get over a case of the flu in less than a week.
At present, the transmission rate of SARS-CoV-2 is a little higher than that of the pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, but SARS-CoV-2 is at least 10 times as deadly. From the data that is available now, COVID-19 seems a lot like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), though it’s less likely than SARS to be severe.
What isn’t known
There are still many mysteries about this virus and coronaviruses in general – the nuances of how they cause disease, the way they interact with proteins inside the cell, the structure of the proteins that form new viruses and how some of the basic virus-copying machinery works.
Another unknown is how COVID-19 will respond to changes in the seasons. The flu tends to follow cold weather, both in the northern and southern hemispheres. Some other human coronaviruses spread at a low level year-round, but then seem to peak in the spring. But nobody really knows for sure why these viruses vary with the seasons.
What is amazing so far in this outbreak is all the good science that has come out so quickly. The research community learned about structures of the virus spike protein and the ACE2 protein with part of the spike protein attached just a little over a month after the genetic sequence became available. I spent my first 20 or so years working on coronaviruses without the benefit of either. This bodes well for better understanding, preventing and treating COVID-19.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 19:30 - 350 More COVID-19 Deaths Reported In NYC As US Braces For 'Seven Days Of Hell': Live Updates
350 More COVID-19 Deaths Reported In NYC As US Braces For ‘Seven Days Of Hell’: Live Updates
Summary:
- UK reports more than 700 deaths, mortality rate climbs to record 10.35
- Germany reports smallest batch of deaths in 2 weeks
- NYC reports 249 deaths in evening update
- Spain case numbers pass Italy, after reported lowest deaths in a week yesterday deaths
- Journalist says more than 800 health-care workers infected in Massachusetts
- Trump warns “deadliest week” is ahead for US
- NY reports 10k+ new cases as statewide total nears those of Italy, Spain
- Italian government agrees on emergency business loan program
- About 100 more New Jersey residents have died from COVID-19 than on 9/11 as state reports new cases, deaths
- US cases of COVID-19 near 280k
- Coral Princess reports 2 deaths, presumably from COVID-19
- US death toll tops 7k
- Portugal reported 638 new cases
- Italy reports another small slowdown in cases, deaths
- Belgium reported 1,661 new cases and 140 new deaths
- European death toll tops 45k as France reports ~400 new deaths
- COVID-19 pateints ‘accidentally’ brought aboard Navy hospital ship ‘overflow hospital’ docked in Manhattan
- Cuomo authorizes medical students slated to graduate in the spring to start practicing now
- A looting wave has struck NYC businesses
- France says 600 soldiers infected
- UK Health Secretary reminds Britons to stay inside this weekend
- Pop star Pink test positive
- India quarantines 20k people connected to Islamic missionary movement
- Trump uses DPA act to block export of medical equipment
- Tokyo reports more than 100 cases in a day, largest jump yet, as Japan’s 2nd wave worsens
* * *
Update (1900ET): NYC reported 349 more deaths since this morning as several hospitals in Manhattan and the outer boroughs report that their ICUs are at, or have breached, max capacity during the deluge of serious cases of the virus.
Across the city, chaos is unfurling. pharmacies are running out of common drugs (including Tylenol), cleaning supplies and other essential items. Around Manhattan, the National Guard is setting up makeshift morgues and hospitals. Thousands of workers are still forced to pack into crowded subway cars, dangerously violating social distancing policy as they commute to their “essential” jobs (and for many it’s low paid, hourly work).
Unsurprisingly, some small business owners are starting to get a little frustrated with customers coming in their stores and not respecting social distancing, as most clerks reckon with the reality that they’re practically guaranteed to interact with someone who later tests positive for the virus.
God bless NYC pic.twitter.com/yTIQOkSpCg
— Noah Hurowitz (@NoahHurowitz) April 4, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
As the city and state scramble to make sure hospitals are stocked with supplies and other elements of the response are in place, Fox News reports that several COVID-19 patients were accidentally brought aboard the USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship docked at Pier 90 in Manhattan that’s supposed to act as a virus-free ‘overflow’ hospital for NYC patients. The number of patients brought aboard the ship were “fewer than five”, and they didn’t test positive until after they had been brought aboard.
Though understandable in a time of intense stress while health-care workers are battling a virus that can lay dormant for weeks, the fact that this happened is just another discouraging reminder of how difficult it will be to keep patients from being infected in a medical setting.
As NYC braces for the peak, the city is still dangerously short on ventilators. As the mayor said in a tweet on Saturday, “our city is facing a dire shortage of ventilators. It is unthinkable to leave a single ventilator in a stockpile or in a warehouse when they could save lives in our hospitals. We need these supplies. We have another difficult week ahead, and our single-minded focus is bringing in the ventilators, hospital beds and health care workers we need to save every life we can.”
The city is still short on health-care workers and essential equipment. Though they’ve exchanged some congenial words, it seems like President Trump and Andrew Cuomo are still feuding over it.
If the city doesn’t get the ventilators it needs, and people die who could have easily been saved with the necessary equipment, there will be political hell to pay.
* * *
Update (1715ET): President Trump reiterated warnings from the last few press briefings (perhaps the administration should start to think about switching the format to a biweekly?) on Saturday, as the administration task force held its latest post-meeting press briefing. Trump warned that the US should brace for the “toughest week”, which Trump said is expected to transpire of the next 7 days as the outbreak ‘peaks’ in the US.
The seven-day figure was also used by Gov. Cuomo earlier. Speaking of Cuomo, Trump insisted that he’s working with the governor to make sure the state has all the supplies it needs before more hospitals in NYC are overwhelmed.
- TRUMP SAYS THERE WILL BE A LOT OF DEATH, THESE NEXT TWO WEEKS WILL BE THE TOUGHEST
- TRUMP SAYS LARGE NUMBER OF NATIONAL GUARD TO ASSIST
- TRUMP: SOME AREAS NOT HARD HIT MAKING INFLATED SUPPLY REQUESTS
- TRUMP SAYS HE SPOKE WITH CUOMO, WORKING TO GET SUPPLIES TO N.Y.
If you’re interested in watching a replay of the briefing, you can check it out here.
* * *
Update (1450ET): Italy’s Civil Protection Agency reported another modest drop in new deaths and cases across Italy as the country’s hospitals reported the first drop in COVID-19 ICU patients since the outbreak started.
The agency reported 681 new deaths, bringing Italy’s death toll to 15,362, while the number of confirmed cases climbed by roughly 5k to 124,632.
That’s a modest slowdown, as we said above.
* * *
Update (1400ET): New Jersey just reported its latest figures for deaths and new cases in state, with 200 new deaths bringing its total to 846. That’s about 100 more New Jersey residents than died during the 9/11 attacks.
We have 4,372 new positive #COVID19 cases, bringing our total to 34,124.
• Atlantic: 98
• Bergen: 5,760
• Burlington: 469
• Camden: 481
• Cape May: 50
• Cumberland: 40
• Essex: 3,584
• Gloucester: 215
• Hudson: 3,491
• Hunterdon: 171 pic.twitter.com/i1sdJMZld2— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) April 4, 2020
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• Hunterdon: 1
• Mercer: 13
• Middlesex: 76
• Monmouth: 54
• Morris: 51
• Ocean: 56
• Passaic: 38
• Salem: 2
• Somerset: 24
• Sussex: 9
• Union: 66
• Warren: 6
• Unknown: 14— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) April 4, 2020
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As of 1:00 PM, #COVID19 statewide stats:
• Positive Tests: 34,124
• Deaths: 846For updates: https://t.co/JW1q8awGh7 pic.twitter.com/syiLIWutqs
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) April 4, 2020
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Meanwhile, France just released its latest numbers, and reported more than 400 new deaths, bringing the nationwide total to 7,560.
In some non-coronavirus news, a town in southeastern France suffered what appears to be a terror attack carried out by an asylum seeker.
The new deaths in France brought the virus death toll in Europe north of 45k.
Two people on the Coral Princess cruise ship died overnight, after the ship reported 12 positive cases of coronavirus on Thursday, according to an announcement from the ship’s captain, who said the ship likely wouldn’t arrive in South Florida on Saturday as planned, but would rather make landfall on Sunday.
The captain didn’t say whether the deceased had tested positive for the virus, but he confirmed they were treated in the ship’s medical center.
The ship is carrying 1,898 people, including 1,020 guests. It left San Antonio, Chile, on March 5.
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Update (1255ET): With the pace of new COVID-19 infections finally slowing in Europe, officials in the US, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the peak still remains weeks away. At least that’s what New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday after providing the latest update on the outbreak in New York.
As National Guard troops set up a temporary morgue across from the medical examiner’s office in Manhattan, Cuomo warned that while nobody knows the number “at the top of the mountain”, experts expect that the number of new cases could peak “in the seven-day range,” he said. Unfortunately, Cuomo added, his state – the hardest hit in the US – remains short of vital equipment, most importantly ventilators, needed to fight it.
“Nobody can tell you the number at the top of the mountain,” Mr. Cuomo said, but estimated that it would be “in the seven-day range.” He said the state was not yet prepared for that point.
“It feels like an entire lifetime,” he said. “I think we all feel the same, these stresses, this country, this state – like nothing I’ve experienced in my lifetime.”
On Saturday, New York State reported 10,841 new coronavirus cases and 630 new deaths for Friday, bringing the number of total cases to 113,704, just shy of the countrywide figures for Italy and Spain, with 3,565 dead.
At the same time, Cuomo urged residents not to lose hope: “This is a painful, disorienting experience,” he said. “But we find our best self, our strongest self – this day will end. We will get through it, we will get to the other side of the mountain. But we have to do what we have to do between now and then.”
He also offered some more optimistic figures: The rate of hospitalizations in the state has slowed, as the number of patients currently hospitalized increased by just 7% since Friday to 15,905 at the latest count, the smallest jump in at least two weeks. Of those, 4,126 were in intensive care. On average, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations rose by just 27 a day during the week ended on March 28. So far, two-thirds of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 have been discharged, Cuomo said. After earlier allowing retired nurses and doctors with expired licenses, as well as practitioners from other states, to practice in the state, Cuomo said Saturday he would sign an executive order allowing med students slated to graduate in the spring to start practicing now.
The governor has warned that the state will need 30K ventilators before the peak arrives. It’s unclear how many they have on hand right now: Cuomo is storing a stockpile in a state warehouse and has promised to dole them out to hospitals as they are needed, while he continues to beg Trump for more from the federal stockpile (if there are any available, which he said yesterday he believes there aren’t).
Fortunately, China and the State of Oregon have offered ventilators, because the Ford’s decision to team up with GE to produce ventilators will help, but those machines will almost certainly arrive too late to treat those seriously sickened during the peak of the outbreak in New York State.
In NYC meanwhile, businesses are being hit by a wave of looting after the mayor let out hundreds of “nonviolent” criminals from Rikers.
* * *
As the scramble for ventilators & PPE continues across the country, President Trump last night finally invoked the DPA to ban “unscrupulous actors and profiteers” (an apparent reference to 3M, the pillar of American manufacturing that has become embroiled in a feud with the administration in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic) from exporting critical medical gear used to protect wearers from the coronavirus. Unfortunately, that won’t do anything to increase the availability of badly needed ventilators as hospitals in NYC discover that an alarming number of ICU patients require ventilators. If the number of critical patients starts to overwhelm ICUs, without enough ventilators on hand, nurses and doctors will effectively be deciding who lives and who effectively suffocates to death on their own fluids.
The issue of health-care workers becoming infected has become a major problem in the UK, and was infamously a huge problem in Wuhan during the early days of the epidemic (who can forget the martyrdom of Dr. Li Wenliang?). But now, it looks like it’s becoming a growing problem in the US: More than 850 hospital employees in Massachusetts have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a tally being kept by one journalist.
UPDATE: More than 850 hospital employees in Massachusetts have tested positive for COVID-19, according to a tally I’ve been keeping.
These includes workers in clinical & non-clinical roles.
The hospitals with the most cases are below.
Full list: https://t.co/JyigvzzBVQ pic.twitter.com/4avirt2LVP
— Mike Saccone (@mikesacconetv) April 4, 2020
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All of this comes as the number of cases confirmed in the US nears 280k, more than the next two countries (Spain + Italy) combined.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed deaths in the US topped 7k (it was 7,134 at last count, to be exact)…
On Friday evening, England’s chief nursing officer Ruth May paid tribute to two nurses, Areema Nasreen and Aimee O’Rourke, who succumbed to COVID-19 after catching it on the job. They were “part of our NHS family,” May said.
“They were one of us, they were one of my profession, of the NHS family,” said Ms May. “I worry that there’s going to be more and I want to honour them today and recognise their service.”
May urged Britons to resist the temptation to go out and party during the expected beautiful weather this weekend. “But please, I ask to remember Aimee and Areema. Please stay at home for them,” she according to the BBC.
Last night, the chair of the surgery department at New York Presbyterian’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center said 98% of ICU patients required ventilators.
During a Friday morning interview on CNBC, 3M CEO Mike Roman said it was “absurd” to suggest his company wasn’t doing all it could to help the U.S. fight the pandemic, and that by banning export of critical gear, it could make it more difficult to acquire these products in the US as more companies start hoarding and banning export in response.
But perhaps the biggest news overnight came out of the UK, where the Department of Health reported the biggest jump in deaths yet. The DoH said early Saturday that 708 patients had died across the UK on Friday, bringing the nationwide death toll to 4,313. Meanwhile, the 3,735 new cases of COVID-19 reported brought the UK’s total above 40k to 41,903 . The drop in new cases combined with the jump in new deaths brought the UK’s mortality rate to an all-time high of 10.3%.
Put another way:
New UK coronavirus deaths reported:
4/4: 708
4/3: 684
4/2: 569
4/1: 563
3/31: 381
3/30: 180
3/29: 209
3/28: 260
3/27: 181
3/26: 113
3/25: 43
3/24: 87
3/23: 54
3/22: 48
3/21: 56
3/20: 33— Norbert Elekes (@NorbertElekes) April 4, 2020
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Meanwhile, with London looking eerily empty as citizens finally obey the lockdown, Health Secretary Matt Hancock reminded the country on Saturday that the order for Britons to stay indoors this weekend was “not a request.”
As deaths in the UK climbed, Germany reported its smallest batch of deaths in two weeks. Health officials recorded 6,082 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours in Germany, bringing its total to 85,778, while the number of deaths rose by just 141 to 1,158, only a 14% jump, according to the Robert Koch Institute.
Outside Europe, perhaps the most startling numbers reported overnight was another jump in confirmed cases in Tokyo: More than 110 new cases of coronavirus were confirmed, the largest daily jump since the outbreak began, a record that has been broken over and over these last two weeks.
In India, more than 20,000 people linked to Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat or having had recent ‘contacts’ with its members have been quarantined as authorities struggle to stay well “ahead of the curve” to prevent uncontrollable outbreaks across the world’s second-largest country, and one that’s pockmarked with pockets of densely populated slums, per the FT.
We suspect the decision will be cited as yet another example of the Modi government’s unkind treatment of the country’s Muslim minority.
In Italy and Spain, officials reported another promising decline in new cases, suggesting that the lockdowns imposed by both countries are finally working. However, as the number of confirmed cases in Spain surpassed the number of total cases in Italy, the government of PM Pedro Sanchez ordered a two-week extension of Spain’s mandatory lockdown.
More than 20,000 people linked to Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat and their contacts have been quarantined in India as authorities work to contain COVID-19.
“I understand it’s difficult to extend the effort and sacrifice two more weeks,” Sanchez said in a televised speech on Saturday. “These are very difficult days for everyone.” At this point, a longer lockdown would need the approval of Spain’s cabinet and congress.
The number of confirmed cases climbed by 7,026 over the last day to 124,736, according to the Health Ministry. Deaths rose by 809 to 11,744. That 809 number was the actually the lowest number of deaths in a week.
Despite Spain officially moving into the No. 2 spot in terms of total confirmed cases (right behind the US at No. 1, though China likely saw the largest number of cases, as possibly hundreds of thousands went uncounted). Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Friday that the goal of slowing the epidemic was “within reach,” as Spain’s government has imposed some of the most restrictive lockdown measures in Europe.
In Italy, Parliament and the ruling government approved an additional €200 billion ($216 billion) of emergency loans for businesses, according to the local press. It said the moves, part of a new aid decree, will be approved by Monday and will let companies seek state-backed bank loans for as much as 25% of their revenue (with, we suspect, a generous handout to Italy’s struggling banks).
Meanwhile, the number of cases, at 119,827, with the number of deaths at 14,681.
Meanwhile, Portugal reported 638 new cases of coronavirus and 20 new deaths, bringing it to a total of 10,524 cases and 266 deaths. Belgium reported 1,661 new cases and 140 new deaths, bringing it to a total of 18,431 cases and 1,283 deaths.
As Joe Biden and dozens of Democrats bash the administration for the abrupt firing of Capt. Brett Crozier, who circumvented the chain of command to insist that his sailors be saved from an inevitable outbreak onboard his ship, the American military is learning that it isn’t alone. After bringing several infected soldiers from abroad, the French Army Minister said that around 600 French soldiers have now tested positive for the virus.
The problem of active military troops being infected is vexing the US military, as it bases around the world cut off exercises with local military forces and limit training and exercises for US troops as well. Navy officials fear the virus might already have found its way aboard other Navy vessels. Widespread infection could quickly become a massive headache for the US military, since once the virus enters a ship, it’s bound to spread, given that social distancing in that environment is virtually impossible.
In the US, pop singer Pink announced late Friday that she had tested positive for COVID-19.
Meanwhile, with markets closed, investors will still be keeping a close eye out for any progress in the US’s $2.2 trillion stimulus, as well as any news about the ‘Part 4’ deal that’s purportedly being worked out.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 19:06 - Outrage After COVID-19 Test-Scammers Set Up Pop-Up Tents In Louisville
Outrage After COVID-19 Test-Scammers Set Up Pop-Up Tents In Louisville
Unbelievable as it sounds at a moment local and state police are in many instances imposing draconian measures limiting citizens’ movement across state borders, and in some instances fining them for not wearing virus protective face gear, as well as ticketing small businesses for alleged price gouging, this one has slipped past authorities, apparently:
Kentucky officials are warning residents of fake coronavirus testing sites in the Louisville area, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Medical marketing companies offering coronavirus tests, including one that promises results in 24 hours, have charged people up to $250 per test.
We should also note this seems an incredibly dangerous threat to public safety, given scammers posing as medical professionals administering ‘fake COVID-19 tests’ on people showing up with symptoms itself increases the likelihood of local spread.
No doubt the scammers are not at all following safe health protocol like changing over gloves and strict sanitization procedures, so the presumed ‘test’ itself could spread the virus.
“Metro Council President David James and several local advocates have been hunting down a group they say are fake COVID-19 testers,” local media reports say further of the group, which has been in the state before conducting similar medical-related scams. “So far, James said the scammers have set up pop-up drive-thru testing tents at Wayside Christian Mission, Sojourn Church and at Broadway and 17th Street.”
“It’s a scam,” James said. “They couldn’t even spell HIPAA right on their name tags!” He further said of the health risks posed by the unique new con:
“They would test somebody and use the same gloves they used on the person before. They get your $240 dollars plus they can turn in fake Medicaid claims.”
Stop. Drop. Don’t open up #COVID19 testing shop. Some from the community went ‘Woah’ as ‘medical professionals’ opened in parking lot of Shorty’s Food Mart. https://t.co/Mur7NT82d3 pic.twitter.com/uYaIMq9FGs
— Matt Stone (@mattstonephotog) April 1, 2020
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Some states have begun issuing warnings against fraudulent test sites, such as Indiana which also recently saw some examples. Kentucky and others have begun requiring that test sites and labs be approved to work with the state.
The Louisville Courier Journal reported of growing public outrage regarding the increase in unapproved ‘pop-up testing sites’:
A spokeswoman for Mayor Greg Fischer’s office said that the city has received calls about multiple pop-up testing sites and that police are investigating for “further review and possible action.”
“At this time, we are advising residents experiencing symptoms to seek COVID-19 testing from hospitals, health care providers or government resources,” Louisville city spokeswoman Jessica Wethington said after the fraudulent activity was exposed.
Screengrab of local footage of fake testing site, via Louisville Courier Journal. And one local advocate, Tara Bassett, who’s been investigative the group said they’d been run out of town on prior occasions.
“They showed up again in late February, early March and I actually ambushed interviewed one of the guys that’s still on this team,” Bassett said. “They’re the scum of the earth and they’re preying on the poorest of the poor and I’m going to do everything in my power to get them the hell out of Kentucky.”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 19:05 - What Will The Future Bring? Here's How To Survive The Uncertainty
What Will The Future Bring? Here’s How To Survive The Uncertainty
Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
We live in a very different world than we did back in January when the calendar turned to 2020 and everyone was anticipating the great things they’d accomplish in the brand new decade.
Only 3 months ago, we all had futures we imagined…
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Kids graduating from high school or college
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A vacation we were planning
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A new job we were striving toward
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Retirement so close you could practically smell the beach where you’d spend your golden years
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The health and fitness goal you were finally going to achieve
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A positive lifestyle change you were planning to make
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A relocation to a new destination
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The advancement of your relationship, whether it was a new one or one you’d been in for a while
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A summer road trip
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Getting a new pet
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An empty nest and what you were going to do with that newly vacant bedroom
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A new family member
Three months ago, we all had dreams, goals for the future, or at least some idea of what the upcoming year would hold for us.
I’ll bet none of us even considered on New Year’s Eve that we’d spend the first half (at least) of the year dealing with a deadly pandemic. Heck, I sat on a balcony in a little seaside village in Montenegro, toasting the new decade with a friend and some Jack Daniels, watching fireworks over the Adriatic Sea, and planning what European destination I’d be heading to next.
It probably never crossed anyone’s mind that there’d be some crazy new virus that nobody had ever heard of which would leave us under the equivalent of house arrest for months. Few of us imagined that suddenly, over the course of just a few weeks, more than ten million Americans would suddenly become unemployed.
Dreams have been shattered.
Goals have been put aside.
Lives have been lost.
Everything has changed.
And nobody knows what the future will hold.
A lot of the things we do know are horrible.
How utterly terrifying to know that we’re all likely to lose somebody we love to this virus or to a medical condition that would have been survivable if the local hospital hadn’t been overflowing with COVID patients.
We know there’s nary a roll of toilet paper to be found in a huge swath of the United States. We know that our supply chain, if not broken, is at the least, badly bruised. We know that if a person we love goes into the hospital with COVID-19, there’s a frighteningly large chance they may never come out again unless it’s in a body bag. We know that medical professionals in New York City don’t even have personal protective equipment to keep themselves healthy while they try to keep people alive. We know that yesterday in the state of New York, 23 people died every hour of the day from the coronavirus that has destroyed the world as we know it.
We nearly all know people who have been laid off. Maybe it’s someone in your family. Maybe it’s you. And if you haven’t yet lost your job, are you waiting for that hammer to drop? We all know of businesses that aren’t going to make it through months of this shutdown.
We know people who couldn’t pay their rent this month. We know people who pulled it together this month but won’t be able to pay May’s rent if this lockdown should continue. We know it’s so bad that the government has said landlords can’t evict tenants in many states – which means the landlords may not be able to pay their mortgages.
We may not know much right now, but we know that the economy is a f*cking disaster.
And we have no idea when this current purgatory will end.
The uncertainty is one of the hardest parts.
The advent of COVID-19 has changed our lives so much that none of us has any idea what the future will bring. Whereas before we’d be thinking about our summer plans, perhaps a holiday at the beach or a camp for the kids, now we don’t know if we’ll even be able to leave our homes by the time summer rolls around.
How absolutely bizarre to have no idea what our worlds will look like in 3 months.
My family, so far, is blessedly healthy, a fact for which I give thanks every day. But it’s become difficult to think of much beyond that. We don’t know if my one daughter’s plan to relocate to another state for an opportunity will still be available. We don’t know if my other daughter’s workplace will reopen. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to head back to Europe and continue my long-awaited trip around the world.
When the lease is up at my daughter’s apartment, we don’t know where we’ll go because we don’t know what the world will look like then. Will we need to tap into those homesteading skills we learned back in California? If so, we sure can’t do it from where we live right now. Where will we go?
Will running a business online still even be a possibility at the end of this? Everything…every single thing…is in question.
All of us have some variation of these same questions running through our heads right now. It’s pretty hard to plan when you don’t know if the post-COVID world is going to look more like Mad Max, The Walking Dead, or Little House on the Prairie. Or maybe it’ll be a lot like the pre-COVID world, only with more money problems.
It’s hard to figure out your plan when you have no idea what post-apocalyptic world you’re going to end up in. So how do you keep from going nuts? How do you find some peace in a world with so much uncertainty?
How to survive in a world of uncertainty
The word “survive” may sound melodramatic, but for a lot of people who are finding themselves living with broken dreams, for those who have vulnerable loved ones, for those living with sudden financial uncertainty, and for those who are sacrificing time and contact with loved ones due to their own exposure to the virus, it fits the bill right now. No, we may not die from this but when your peace of mind suffers, it can be a real struggle.
Below are some ideas that may help you to get through this if you’re struggling.
Make plans every day. While you can’t really make plans for 6 months down the road, you can make plans for the day or even the week. Create a schedule for yourself. Don’t just lay there on the sofa watching Netflix and Amazon Prime all day long. It’s not good for you. Get up and get dressed (not necessarily office-dressed but don’t wear the same thing to live in and sleep in for three days in a row.) Figure out what nutrient-rich meals you’re going to make that day. Think about how you’ll exercise – will it be a walk with the dogs around the neighborhood or will you go to a nearby hiking trail? What work do you need to get accomplished? What room are you going to deep clean? Write it all down on a whiteboard or a piece of paper on the fridge so everybody knows what’s on the day’s agenda.
Don’t lay around watching television all day. Set yourself a time at which you’ll watch a movie or show online. I’ve worked from home for years, and one rule I’ve held for myself throughout it is that we don’t turn on Netflix until it’s getting dark. That means in the summer, it’s later because we can spend time doing things outdoors during the nice weather. With us being home all the time now, I’ve relaxed that rule slightly to 6 pm. But if you start watching while you have lunch it’s way to easy to get sucked into a series and the next thing you know, it’s bedtime and you never accomplished anything. This isn’t healthy mentally or physically so I strongly advise that if you are a television viewer or a person who likes to stream shows you limit this to evenings.
Prepare for what you can. We all know that we need to prep with the basics of food, water, seeds, tools, and the like. This doesn’t really change, regardless of what the future holds. So keep doing what you can to build up supplies and skills. A lot of things are out of our hands but you can control what is within your power.
Don’t consume a constant diet of bad news. I spend a lot of time researching this virus, the effects on our economy, how it has decimated other parts of the world, reading the heartbreaking stories of loss. I’ve been doing this since January 20th, when it first really appeared on my radar. I do not advise it to anyone. It can be hard to see the light when you spend your time delving into the darkness. I’ve been doing this for years and can compartmentalize to some degree, but this has been a long haul. Limit the amount of time you spend reading about this outbreak and the difficulties surrounding it. Unless your job depends on you knowing every detail about COVID-19 and it’s effect on the world, you can stay informed reading about it for 30 minutes a day instead of 6 hours a day. Trust me when I say this: your outlook will become much brighter when your day is not filled by press conferences, the follies of incompetent government officials, and stories of suffering.
Enjoy making healthful, home-cooked meals. Remember all those times you said you didn’t have time to cook? Now, if you’re currently out of work, you finally have time to cook. Don’t just heat up frozen pizza after frozen pizza! Get in that kitchen and whip up all those tasty delights you’ve wanted to make for years. Learn to bake bread if you don’t know how to do so. Cook things that take half a day to prepare. Make every tiny detail from scratch. Set the table with the nice china and give your food the showcase it deserves.
Work on some projects you never had time to do before. What projects have you always put off because you didn’t have the time? We’re currently converting a storage room in my daughter’s small apartment into a second bedroom since it looks like I’m going to be here for a while. We’ve been going through the boxes of our past and enjoying the walk down memory lane. I’m finally getting all this stuff into scrapbooks. We’re devising clever storage methods and purging things we don’t need. Soon we’ll have an adorable tiny room off the laundry room for some much needed extra space. After that, we’re building some shelves with curtains in front of them for the kitchen to put away our canned and boxed goods, hidden from prying eyes. We also each have some craft projects on the go for entertainment because productive hobbies are always a great idea.
Spend time outdoors. If your municipality allows it, spend some time outdoors. You can still be socially distant while getting fresh air. Avoid the clusters of humans and walk the challenging trails at your local hiking place. Or go early in the day while everybody else is still sleeping in. Getting some fresh air, exercise, and sunshine is healthy for both your body and your mind. If you can’t go out for a walk, at the very least, sit on your balcony or patio and read for a while.
Find something to be thankful for as often as possible. An attitude of gratitude makes tough times easier to stomach. Even now, there are things for which we can be grateful. I am spending time with my daughter and talking regularly on the phone to my other daughter. I am enjoying the blossoming of the spring flowers – always a favorite time of year for me. I am grateful that for now, I still have work online. I’m grateful my daughter is no longer working in retail during this outbreak and that she’s safely home. I’m grateful I have the time to cook delicious meals, experience my daughter’s cooking (she’s really good at it), and spend some bonus time with her. We have two dogs to walk and two cats to cuddle. Life could be much, much worse so take a moment to appreciate what you have right now.
Find something to anticipate. As we talked about before, we live in a period of extreme uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find anything to anticipate. I’m looking forward to the new room we’re setting up this week. I’m looking forward to a movie we plan to watch this weekend when all our tasks are done. I’m even looking forward to organizing the kitchen because that will be such a satisfying task. I also have a book on Kindle I plan to read on my birthday that is coming up. I noticed that daffodils are poking their heads through in the front yard and I can’t wait to see how the place looks when there are sunny yellow flowers everywhere. My homesteader friends back in California are filling my social media feeds with baby goats and baby chicks and I’m counting down the days until a friend’s baby is born.
Sure, these things are short term, and some of them aren’t even my things, but right now, the short term is all we have. Take the joy that’s there. Find things that will occur within the week and don’t look too far in advance.
Stop focusing on things going back to “normal.”
We’d all like to think that one day this will suddenly be over. The kids will return to school. We’ll go back to our offices and our commutes. We won’t be struggling over money anymore. Life will return to the pre-COVID days.
But is this the healthiest way to look at the situation?
Spending all your time looking forward to the day when this is over is an exercise in frustration because nobody knows when that will be. And more than that, nobody knows what “normal” is going to look like when all the lockdowns are over. A lot of things will never be the same.
You can help yourself by learning to adapt now to changed circumstances. This will help you learn to live with the new normal, whatever that turns out to be. Major events are bound to cause major and long-lasting changes. This has happened throughout history.
In reality, the things we’re experiencing right now, while not necessarily easy, aren’t so bad. Things will probably get worse before they get better, but eventually, some form of “better” will come.
Your ability to adapt is indicative of your ability to survive. So let’s get through this lockdown and keep our mindsets positive. Let’s get through the part that comes next.
Then, eventually, we’ll come out on the other side, ready to tackle the new normal, whatever that ends up being like.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 18:45 -
- "Don't Disrupt The Supply Chain": The 9 States Still Resisting Stay-At-Home Orders
“Don’t Disrupt The Supply Chain”: The 9 States Still Resisting Stay-At-Home Orders
Dr. Anthony Fauci has been talking up a federal-imposed nationwide ‘stay at home’ order, though many might challenge the very legality or possibility that Washington would even have the power to impose it on states. Thus far Trump has resisted such a move, preferring to leave these questions to the governors.
Fauci told CNN’s Anderson Cooper at the end of this week of a federal order, “I don’t understand why that’s not happening.” He said, “If you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that. We really should be.”
Meanwhile much of the mainstream media has directed its ire at the last “hold-out” states which have “dragged their feet” on the issue. Many governors have expressed that they don’t see the need to take such a drastic step that could decimate their local economies, leaving social distancing to the ‘good judgments’ of counties, towns, and individuals.
Via The New York Times For example CNN has headlined its story: “Why these 8 Republican governors are holding out on statewide stay-at-home orders?”
The nine states that have resisted shutting everything down are Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa expressed this during a recent press conference, saying:
“What else are we doing by doing a shelter-in-place or stay-at-home order except for potentially disrupting the supply chain, putting additional pressure on the essential workforce, and making sure that we are considering how we bring that back up?”
In some instances like Iowa, schools and ‘non-essential’ businesses have been closed, while a state-wide ‘one size fits all’ approach has been resisted. Oklahoma has also come practically close to a stay at home order, without actually issuing the formal directive.
Map & data via The Guardian/Johns Hopkins CSSE
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts also affirmed it should be a local and regional matter. He was cited in ABC News as saying, “We’re a different state than states like New York that are doing that. We are much earlier in the epidemic curve than New York.”
By the New York Times’ numbers, some 311 million people have been urged to stay home in at least 41 states:
In a matter of days, millions of Americans have been asked to do what might have been unthinkable only a month ago: Don’t go to work, don’t go to school, don’t leave the house at all, unless you have to.
The directives to keep people at home, which began in California in mid-March, have quickly swept the nation.
On Friday, Alabama and Missouri became the latest states to issue such orders. A significant majority of states, the Navajo Nation and many cities and counties have now instructed residents to stay at home in a desperate race to stunt the spread of the coronavirus.
This means at least 311 million people in at least 41 states, three counties, eight cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are being urged to stay home.
Governors have said they’ve “agonized” over the decision, given the economic effects among the earliest states to give the directive were felt immediately.
Ohio for example just days after its governor essentially shut down the state, saw an immediate 600% rise in unemployment filings, with that figure climbing steadily since.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 18:25 - Police App Encourages People To Report Neighbors Who Violate Stay-At-Home Orders
Police App Encourages People To Report Neighbors Who Violate Stay-At-Home Orders
How do you encourage people to turn against each other during the COVID-19 pandemic?
The answer is not that complicated, especially if you live in the City of Bellevue, Washington.
Four years ago, when the city created the MyBellvue app, it was touted as being a quick and easy way to report things like downed street signs, potholes, street light issues and noise complaints.
Fast forward to 2020 and public fears of COVID-19 have encouraged law enforcement to turn neighbors into government snitches.
Geekwire revealed how the Bellevue Police Department has turned a public service app into a report on your neighbors app. You can report these incidents through the MyBellevue app on your electronic device or the MyBellevue portal.
“Police in Bellevue, Wash., are asking residents to report violations of the state’s “stay home” order online in an effort to clear up 911 lines for emergencies.”
A recent Associated Press article revealed that people are all to happy to report on their neighbors.
“Snitches are emerging as enthusiastic allies as cities, states and countries work to enforce directives meant to limit person-to-person contact amid the virus pandemic that has claimed tens of thousands of lives worldwide. They’re phoning police and municipal hotlines, complaining to elected officials and shaming perceived scofflaws on social media.”
LA Mayor Offers Snitches Rewards For Reporting On Neighbors
According to a CBS LA4 article Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the city would reward snitches.
Four businesses have been referred to the city attorney’s office for misdemeanor filings.
“You know the old expression about snitches, well in this case snitches get rewards,” Garcetti said. “We want to thank you for turning folks in and making sure we are all safe.”
When law enforcement encourages Americans to turn against each other we all lose. We become a nation controlled by fear.
“Suspected violations are tracked in the MyBellevue app and generate a heat map that shows where gatherings have been reported. The map shows hot spots of activity throughout the City of Bellevue, which is about 10 miles from Seattle.
The Bellevue Police Departments’ MyBellevue page claims police need the public’s help monitoring their neighbors.
“The vast majority of people in our community are following the “Stay Home” order and are being safe,” said Chief Steve Mylett. “But we need your help in reporting violations where there may be a large amount of people at risk.”
The MyBellevue customer assistance portal spells out exactly what this is app is really meant for now.
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Report Gatherings: You may report gatherings here in violation of the State mandate to “Stay Home”
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Contact Your Police Sector Captain: Got an issue affecting your neighborhood? Contact the sector captain for your area! A captain is assigned to each of three geographical sectors — North, South and West — and is ultimately responsible for issues taking place in their sector.
When city services apps get turned into a glorified version of DHS’s “If See Something, Say Something” we all lose. As Geekwire notes,
“Sometimes there is a need to implement extreme measures but often these crises are used as justification to implement surveillance and data collection measures for purposes beyond that crisis,” the ACLU of Washington’s Jennifer Lee said.
Reporting on your neighbor apps fly in the face of the freedoms Americans have enjoyed for centuries.
The MyBellevue mobile app can be found at the Apple store and Google Play store. Two recent reviews spell out how everyone should view apps that encourage Americans to report on each other.
Leo Rosas said,
start sarcasm “Yes daddy, step on me harder, oh yes take my constitutionally protected rights away!* end. YOU SOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES! tell on your neighbors for leaving their house is BS you have no clue where they are going or for what. Since no crime has been committed in traveling, the police have no right to know where you go or why. There is no right to Abridge constitutionally protected free travel! Y’all were sworn to protect and uphold the constitution, covid doesn’t change that.”
Matthew Harphan said,
“I bet Hitler is rolling in his grave, super Jealous of your app used to violate civil rights through unconstitutional enforcement during Corona virus. You swore an Oath to Uphold and Defend the Constitution.. this is pathetic. I expect better from police. Despicable”
Now is the time to fight for our freedoms before a panicked nation willingly gives them away.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 18:05 -
- UN Blasted As "Absurd & Immoral" For Appointing China To Key UN Human Rights Panel
UN Blasted As “Absurd & Immoral” For Appointing China To Key UN Human Rights Panel
In what will no doubt be taken as a direct shot across the Trump administration’s bow, China has been appointed to a key United Nations human rights post.
Fox reports on Saturday: “China has been appointed to a panel on the controversial U.N. Human Rights Council, where it will help vet candidates for important posts — despite its decades-long record of systematic human rights abuse that the U.S. has said fueled the coronavirus pandemic.”
UN file image The timing couldn’t be worse, given the soaring tensions and weeks-long war of words between US and Chinese officials, both floating bombastic charges against the other of intentionally spreading COVID-19.
President Trump has even taken to calling the deadly virus the “Chinese virus” – given as he said last month: “It could have been contained to that one area in China where it started.” He followed at the time by saying of China “certainly the world is paying a big price for what they did.”
Jiang Duan, minister at the Chinese Mission in Geneva, will represent Beijing on the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Consultative Group, alongside four other international representatives.
A Geneva-based human rights watchdog called UN Watch, meanwhile, slammed the development as “absurd and immoral” for the UN to allow China to have a hand in selecting human rights officials for the top body.
“Allowing China’s oppressive and inhumane regime to choose the world investigators on freedom of speech, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief,” UN Watch said in a statement, according to FOX.
The Human Rights Council, itself long subject of controversy – especially after the Saudis recently occupied a top spot on the bloc – examines freedom of speech, war crimes, and disappeared persons issues around the world.
The central irony is that China – itself long documented to have an extensive ‘political prison’ system and with more recent charges of “disappearing” doctors and scientists who have tried to blow the whistle over its COVID-19 response – will now have a key role in selecting the top human rights body’s make-up.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 17:45 - 2 Passengers Die Aboard "Coral Princess" Cruise Ship Amid Another COVID-19 "Nightmare At Sea"
2 Passengers Die Aboard “Coral Princess” Cruise Ship Amid Another COVID-19 “Nightmare At Sea”
Two people on the Coral Princess cruise ship died overnight, after the ship reported 12 positive cases of coronavirus on Thursday, according to an announcement from the ship’s captain, who said the ship likely wouldn’t arrive in South Florida on Saturday as planned, but would rather make landfall on Sunday.
The captain didn’t say whether the deceased had tested positive for the virus, but he confirmed they were treated in the ship’s medical center.
“I know how difficult this news is to bear, but given the current situation, we remain committed to transparent and consistent communication with you,” he said. “This information will need to be shared with shoreside authorities and will become public, so I wanted you to hear it from me first,” the Captain said, according to a recording of the announcement provided to the Washington Post.
Appearing to follow a similar playbook to the Zaandam – another Carnival-subsidiary-owned cruise ship that docked along with another ship in Port Everglades this week after several passengers and crew had died of the virus, and the ship had been refused entry to several ports – Princess Cruises said guests who are deemed “fit to fly” are expected to start disembarking Sunday and will transfer straight to Miami International Airport to catch flights home. Meanwhile, anyone with respiratory symptoms who is not too sick to require immediate hospitalization, or who is recovering from being sick previously, will stay on the ship until they are cleared by doctors on board.
The ship is carrying 1,898 people, including 1,020 guests. It left San Antonio, Chile, on March 5, a week before the cruise line announced it would suspend operations after the debacle with the “Diamon Princess”, which became host to what was at the time the biggest outbreak outside mainland China after it docked in Yokohama.
At least 12 infected individuals who traveled aboard the “Diamond Princess” eventually died from their infections.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 17:25 - Half A Million Chinese People Entered America At The Height Of The COVID-19 Outbreak
Half A Million Chinese People Entered America At The Height Of The COVID-19 Outbreak
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Around half a million Chinese people, some of them infected with coronavirus, entered America from December to February at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, new figures show.
The numbers, which were obtained from Commerce Department and U.S. Customs and Border Protection records, were compiled by ABC News.
They show that in the three month period when coronavirus was raging across China, 759,493 people entered the U.S. from China.
This number included 228,000 Americans who were returning home, meaning that roughly half a million were Chinese citizens or people living in China who were visiting the U.S. for tourism, business or to see family.
This number of people were pouring into the U.S. while the World Health Organization was simultaneously insisting that no country should enforce any kind of border controls to stop the spread of the virus.
President Donald Trump restricted travel from China from February 2nd onwards, but that was too little too late because the outbreak (which was subsequently covered up by China for two months) had started in Wuhan in November, according to Johns Hopkins University.
According to Dr. Vinayak Kumar, an internal medicine resident at the Mayo Clinic, out of the total figure arriving in the U.S. from China, “a large number might have been infected at the time of travel.”
The numbers illustrate “how globalized our world has become,” he added.
However, infectious disease specialist Dr. Simone Wildes suggested that the virus outbreak was the price of globalization and that Americans would just have to get used to it.
“It shows that globalization is here, and we have to be better prepared to deal with the impact this will have on all our lives in so many ways,” he said.
The data also shows that “From December, January and February on travelers entering the U.S. from eight of the hardest-hit countries: 343,402 arrived from Italy, 418,848 from Spain and about 1.9 million more came from Britain.”
As we document in the video below, while three quarters of a million people, some of them infected with coronavirus, were entering America, political leaders were telling Americans to go out and congregate in huge crowds, including at Chinese Lunar New Year parades.
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Sat, 04/04/2020 – 17:05
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