Mar 10

Today’s News 10th March 2020

  • On International Women's Day, Topless French Protesters Blast "Patriarchal Pandemic"
    On International Women’s Day, Topless French Protesters Blast “Patriarchal Pandemic”

    While most coronavirus-related headlines bring disappointing news about new infections and deaths, every once and a while, we get a respite from the constant gloom and doom.

    On Monday, that brief reprieve came courtesy of Femen, the infamous international feminist group that has a very specific – and memorable – MO: Its members pose topless, often with their ‘message’ scrawled sloppily painted across their chests.

    As the coronavirus spreads across the world, it appears the ‘Women’s Rights’ campaigners – who have never set foot in Saudi Arabia, as far as we are aware, preferring to protest only in relatively open western countries – have tweaked their methods slightly: Armed with rubber gloves, purple smoke and exposed breasts, the ‘Femen’ went out to symbolically cleanse Paris streets of the “patriarchy virus”, before being shooed away by the police.

    The performance was timed to coincide with International Women’s Day on Sunday, which, as several twitter wits noted, happened to fall on the “shortest day of the year, the only day with 23 hours in it thanks to the beginning of Daylight Saving Time (which is now officially sexist).”

    Some 40 protesters wearing plastic coveralls, rubber gloves and protective glasses – but nothing on their chests bar slogans in accordance with their whole schtick – mobbed the Paris’ Place de la Concorde.

    Chanting feminist slogans, they fired purple smoke sticks and doused the ground using portable sprayers to wash away the patriarchy virus as they said they were more interested in fighting the “epidemic” of violence against women (for context: violent crimes against women across the world are at their lowest levels in history).

    But we’re glad to see the femen are finally doing their part to help inject a bit of levity into the unceasing torrent of misery.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 03/10/2020 – 02:45

  • Migrant Crisis 2.0: Who's To Blame And What's To Be Done?
    Migrant Crisis 2.0: Who’s To Blame And What’s To Be Done?

    Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    It now looks like Europe may be moving towards Migrant Crisis 2.0 as footage from the Greek border is pouring in over the Mainstream Media. However the key player to pay attention to is Turkey, they may have started the new migration problem and thus they may be the ones who can end it.

    The original Migrant Crisis at the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011 was portrayed as an organic consequence of events that happened on their own. The Mainstream Media pushed hard to sell the idea of the migrants as victims of either circumstance or Assad, who deserved to get everything they want from the wealthy West.

    However, this time around the narrative is surprisingly different (at least for the moment) as Migrant Crisis 2.0 is not really getting much media push, in fact the opposite appears to be happening, possibly due to the fact that Erdogan made it so bluntly clear that with his decision to allow migrants to leave Turkey is directly connected to his failures in Syria. If he doesn’t get a piece of Syria, then Europe will.

    For example Foreign Policy frames the move as “Turkey’s decision to allow migrants to cross into the European Union was intended to pressure EU leaders to come to Ankara’s aid against Bashar al-Assad”.

     The Independent went with the headline “Turkey says it has allowed more than 100,000 migrants and refugees across its border with Greece”.

    This is not the narrative of waves of poor victims coming to Europe, but instead the tale of the Turks using human beings as pawns of influence. Even the Hyper-Liberal Cultural Masochist den that is NPR positioned the event as an attempt for victims to “Leave Turkey For Europe, But This Time The Gate Is Closed” which is surprisingly soft. It is almost like NPR is hinting at some sort of logic like “well we should let them in but we can’t, I guess it’s bad, but whatever”.

    What a difference a decade and a resurgent Turkey make as this migrant narrative has completely shifted. Furthermore, it is important to note that according to RT, the footage of the poor migrants trying to find peace and happiness in Europe, while being attacked by Greek authorities comes from Turkish sources. Essentially, the Turks who were able to hold all these migrants perfectly fine for years (since a deal was struck with the EU in 2016) have now, all of a sudden, decided they can’t do it anymore, releasing them into the wild. This also by a stroke of luck happened at the exact moment when NATO denied help to Ankara in their fight for Idlib partially via proxies against Assad and his Russian pals.

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    Even with the best of intentions massive waves of migrants are unlikely to be loyal to Europe thus turning into a subconscious fifth-column of foreign interest.

    This is the point in an article where one might get the feeling that this is a hit piece against the Turks but it is far from it. The Turks are the ones making the moves now but they did not start the Syrian crisis, they just capitalized on it.

    Firstly, the Civil War in Syria was started by Washington. This mess was started by the Obama era with a massive demonization campaign of Assad all over the Mainstream Media.

    Secondly, it is the EU’s welfare state policies that send a message to the world that “if you sneak in, you are entitled to live like kings for free” that attracts the bottom of global society to immigrate to Europe. EU law/policies are really what created the Migrant Crisis, if they were to “man up” and have real borders and reasonable attitudes towards immigration (as well as dump the welfare state for immigrants) there would be zero problems.

    So to be clear the Turks are just taking advantage of conditions created by Europeans and if I were born a Turk and were in Erdogan’s place I would have done many of the same moves. We shouldn’t blame others for jumping on the opportunities that we ourselves create for them. Yes, Turkey is now fanning the flames but they never started the fire.

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    So what could or should the strategies be for the various players going forward in Migrant Crisis 2.0?

    Greece

    This country finds itself as the farpost of Europe in terms of a migrant invasion. The Greek economy is still in ruins and the nation has definitely not been a beneficiary of EU status. If the Greeks actually have any political will of their own to take action, then they unfortunately need to “go hard” on any attempts to violate their borders.

    Greece has nothing to lose but its Euro chains so they may as well militantly react to any attempts to violate their territory to send a message to Turkey that “this won’t work”. This may sound violent, but allowing enough migrants into your country to the point that it destabilizes, would lead to vastly more violence. A few unpleasant pieces of footage from Greece will make thousands of potential migrants think twice against storming a border unarmed with an army sitting on the other side of the barbed wire.

    If Greece did become like a real country and actually protect its borders it would be demonized by Brussels, but then again so what? What are they going to do, kick them out of the EU? If so then that would be a boon for the average Greek. If Greece does actually have sovereign control of itself and can take action then Brussels has no real means to punish them for said actions, and any punishments would only push Greece towards an independence that it needs anyways. Harsh border control of Greece is a win win for anyone except the most delusional EU enthusiasts in Athens.

    Turkey

    In many ways the Turks are doing the right things to restore their former glory. They have done a good job of convincing Central Asians that they are actually Turks via their massive trade and education network in those countries. As stated above the flood of Turks into Europe is an exploitable beachhead for Ankara, and if they were to have negotiated with the Russians for some eastern chunk of Syria, this could have become an ideological Sudetenland for Erdogan, who may start to feel the heat as home as the proud Turks are losing to the WWII era looking Syrian Arab Army.

    The Turks need to slow down and be patient. The West is slowly eroding, but until it hits the breaking point it will be an unstoppable barrier. Erdogan needs to stay cool and keep shoving as much of his fifth column of migrants into the EU as he can, and rally Europe’s migrant Muslims around himself even if they are non-Turks.

    Turkey is in the rough geopolitical position of having Europe to the west and Russia to the north which made the idea to push south against weak Syria very logical, until it essentially became part of Russia. They want to expand but they are surrounded by spheres of influence even to the East. Right now there is no wiggle room for the Ottomans so they need to patiently grow and maybe try to make some deals with the Russians to understand just what the spheres of influence could turn into in a world with a collapsing EU that we will probably see in our lifetimes. Today is not Turkey’s day, but a weak West will open up huge opportunities for Turkey, they just need to stay patient, stay in NATO and wait it out.

    Brussels

    The EU is the source of its own problems. The mentality of those in power in the Euro bureaucracy is culturally suicidal. If they would only turn on a tenth of their former zeal for European Civilization and control their borders while cutting out immigrant welfare, they could save the continent, but they won’t do that.

    Immigrating to Europe needs to become an impossibility so Europe an assimilate the people it has now and fine a future for itself. They need some sort of “Renaissance II: The Revenge of Europe” to take place, but the elite and intelligentsia fervently against any such move. The borders around Europe need to close but the powers that be are convinced the opposite is the correct policy. This is good for Ankara, Moscow and Beijing, but not so great for Europeans.

    Europe’s openness is on track to being essentially the same as Africa’s helplessness during the Colonial Period. If you cannot defend yourself you will get carved up, this is the reality of International Relations that the status quo in Brussels does not believe in.

    In Summary

    • The Turks did not create the conditions for the first or second Migrant Crisis

    • The Turks are exploiting these conditions for their benefit by artificially starting a new Migrant Crisis, which is opportunistic and not evil.

    • The Greeks have everything to gain by using any means necessary to send a message that they cannot be overrun by migrants.

    • The Turks want to grow but have their backs to the wall geopolitically and have started Migrant Crisis 2.0 due to their failure in Syria and NATO’s lack of will to support them.

    • All migration problems in Europe could be solved by having a strict external border and enacting pro in-group policies towards throughout the EU, while cutting all welfare for the migrant out-group.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 03/10/2020 – 02:00

  • Meanwhile, American Troops Are Still Dying In Iraq
    Meanwhile, American Troops Are Still Dying In Iraq

    Pentagon officials announced Monday the deaths of two US service members in northern Iraq while engaged in anti-ISIS operations with Iraqi Security Forces.

    They’ve been identified as Marines operating south of Erbil, on a “mission to eliminate an ISIS terrorist stronghold in a mountainous area of north central Iraq,” according to a statement from Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve.

    “On the evening of March 8, the U.S.-led Coalition launched additional forces to recover two U.S. service members from the southern Makhmur Mountains in Iraq, approximately 60 km south of Erbil,” Col. Myles B. Caggins III said.

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    US military/Marsoc image

    “The purpose of the mission was to eliminate ISIS safe-havens in a cave complex in the Makhmur Mountains,” Caggins told Marine Corps Times. “The Makhmur Mountains are historically known to be an ISIS safe haven. However, there is no safe place for ISIS to hide,” he added.

    In the rugged and enemy-filled area it was apparently was difficult to recovered the fallen Marines’ bodies – Col. Caggins indicated it took six hours to do so.

    It further appears the Marines had been part of an elite special forces unit still at the forefront of cleaning out the last mountainous holdout pockets of ISIS terrorist cells in the region.

    “A source familiar with the operation told Marine Corps Times on background that the Americans were Marine Raiders partnering with Iraqi special forces in a large operation against ISIS,” the Marine Times report says.

    With the coronavirus pandemic spreading throughout the globe and dominating headlines, it seems many have forgotten about the some 30,000 American troops stationed in the broader Middle East – with thousands still in Iraq, and tragically still dying.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 03/10/2020 – 01:00

  • Wikipedia: A Disinformation Operation?
    Wikipedia: A Disinformation Operation?

    Via Swiss Propaganda Research,

    Wikipedia is generally thought of as an open, transparent, and mostly reliable online encyclopedia. Yet upon closer inspection, this turns out not to be the case.

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    In fact, the English Wikipedia with its 9 billion worldwide page views per month is governed by just 500 active administrators, whose real identity in many cases remains unknown.

    Moreover, studies have shown that 80% of all Wikipedia content is written by just 1% of all Wikipedia editors, which again amounts to just a few hundred mostly unknown people.

    Obviously, such a non-transparent and hierarchical structure is susceptible to corruption and manipulation, the notorious “paid editors” hired by corporations being just one example.

    Indeed, already in 2007, researchers found that CIA and FBI employees were editing Wikipedia articles on controversial topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo military prison.

    Also in 2007, researchers found that one of the most active and influential English Wikipedia administrators, called “Slim Virgin”, was in fact a former British intelligence informer.

    More recently, another highly prolific Wikipedia editor going by the false name of “Philip Cross” turned out to be linked to UK intelligence as well as several mainstream media journalists.

    In Germany, one of the most aggressive Wikipedia editors was exposed, after a two-year legal battle, as a political operative formerly serving in the Israeli army as a foreign volunteer.

    Even in Switzerland, unidentified government employees were caught whitewashing Wikipedia entries about the Swiss secret service just prior to a public referendum about the agency.

    Many of these Wikipedia personae are editing articles almost all day and every day, indicating that they are either highly dedicated individuals, or in fact, operated by a group of people.

    In addition, articles edited by these personae cannot easily be revised, since the above-mentioned administrators can always revert changes or simply block disagreeing users altogether.

    The primary goal of these covert campaigns appears to be pushing Western and Israeli government positions while destroying the reputation of independent journalists and politicians.

    Articles most affected by this kind of manipulation include political, geopolitical and certain historical topics as well as biographies of non-conformist academics, journalists, and politicians.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, a friend of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a “Young Leader” of the Davos forum, has repeatedly defended these operations.

    Speaking of Davos, Wikimedia has itself amassed a fortune of more than $160 million, donated in large part not by lazy students, but by major US corporations and influential foundations.

    Moreover, US social media and video platforms are increasingly referring to Wikipedia to frame or combat “controversial” topics. The revelations discussed above may perhaps help explain why.

    Already NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed how spooks manipulate online debates, and more recently, a senior Twitter executive turned out to be a British Army “psyops” officer.

    To add at least some degree of transparency, German researchers have developed a free web browser tool called WikiWho that lets readers color code just who edited what in Wikipedia.

    In many cases, the result looks as discomforting as one might expect.

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    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 03/10/2020 – 00:05

  • Bill Gates Could Supply Your Next Coronavirus Test Kit
    Bill Gates Could Supply Your Next Coronavirus Test Kit

    The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will soon begin distributing at-home testing kits for Seattle-area residents who suspect they have contracted Covid-19, according to a new report in the Seattle Times.

    Test kits could become available as soon as this week, via a lab funded by the foundation, could start testing hundreds per day with scaling availabilities in the weeks ahead. 

    “Although there’s a lot to be worked out, this has enormous potential to turn the tide of the epidemic,” Scott Dowell, who is in charge of the Covid-19 response effort by the foundation, told the Times.

    “One of the most important things from our perspective, having watched and worked on this in other parts of the world, is the identification of people who are positive for the virus, so they can be safely isolated and cared for, and the identification of their contacts, who can then be quarantined,” Dowell said.

    News of the test kits comes as confirmed cases in the US surge above 500 across 34 states. Washington state, specifically the Seattle Metropolitan Area, has been the hardest hit region in the country, with 16 deaths and 128 confirmed cases.

    The Gates Foundation has spent more than $20 million in the virus response effort and has committed at least $5 million for the Seattle area.

    Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, warned last week that actual cases in Seattle could be around 600. Bedford said cases could soar to 12,000 to 30,000 by the end of the month if virus containment measures weren’t in place to slow down the transmission rate. 

    While the foundation’s urgency for developing a new test kit is timely, Gates was apart of The Event 201 scenario in October (months before Covid-19) that modeled a breakout of coronavirus across the world, killing 65 million people by month 18. 

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    With the Covid-19 breakout only just getting started on the continental US, expect this map to be much redder in the coming weeks. One can only hope the foundation can ramp up test kits, considering there’s a massive shortage at hospitals. 


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 23:45

  • Covid-19 & China's War On The Truth
    Covid-19 & China’s War On The Truth

    Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

    “On current course, China is liable to do significant damage to the rest the world, by accident or intent,” wrote columnist Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal on January 29.

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    “The Chinese Communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large”, wrote the noted historian Victor Davis Hanson on February 20.

    According to The Sunday Times,

    “Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news, a Chinese media outlet has revealed.

    “A regional health official in Wuhan, centre of the outbreak, demanded the destruction of the lab samples that established the cause of unexplained viral pneumonia on January 1. China did not acknowledge there was human-to-human transmission until more than three weeks later.

    “The detailed revelations by Caixin Global, a respected independent publication, provide the clearest evidence yet of the scale of the cover-up in the crucial early weeks when the opportunity was lost to control the outbreak.”

    In a speech on December 31, 2019, Xi Jinping was already triumphantly heralding a new year of “milestone significance in realising the first centenary goal”.

    “Censorship. It can have deadly consequences,” said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on February 25.

    “Had China permitted its own and foreign journalists and medical personnel to speak and investigate freely, Chinese officials and other nations would have been far better prepared to address the challenge.”

    Unfortunately, the World Health Organization did the opposite, “praising” China for fighting the virus. Europe has also been busy appeasing China.

    In China, 780 million people – roughly half its population – are living under travel restrictions, and its president, Xi Jinping, is using the crisis to strengthen his control. Since 2013, he has continued to expand his immense authority to remain “president for life“, and is now seeking to take advantage of the coronavirus to tighten his control over the public even further, while silencing dissent.

    The consequences for Italy, which currently has far more infected persons than the rest of Europe combined, are described by Massimo Galli, the primary infectious disease specialist at Milan’s Sacco Hospital:

    “We are in full emergency. Yes, I am worried. The epidemic has to all intents and purposes conquered a part of Italy…. The situation is, frankly, an emergency from the point of view of the healthcare system. It is the equivalent of the tsunami in terms of the number of patients with major illnesses hospitalized all at once. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Even the best health organization in the world, and we are among them, risks not being able to withstand such an impact”.

    Meanwhile, China’s war on the truth marches on. The laboratory of the Shanghai Health Center was closed on January 12, one day after Professor Zhang Yongzhen’s team revealed the sequence of the coronavirus genome on open platforms. The Chinese regime prevented its scientists from finding ways to contain the epidemic. Their “crime”? Releasing the sequence to the world before the Chinese authorities did.

    “The epidemic has exposed this country completely in its corruption, bureaucracy, information control and censorship,” said Phillip Wu, a freelance writer in Beijing.

    And if you think the Chinese regime is meddling only in its own country, read a recent British report revealing how China is also curbing academic freedom in the UK.

    Zeng Yingchun and Zhen Yan, two nurses from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus, wrote a dramatic letter for the medical journal The Lancet, in which they asked the international scientific community for help:

    “The conditions and environment here in Wuhan are more difficult and extreme than we could ever have imagined. There is a severe shortage of protective equipment, such as N95 respirators, face shields, goggles, gowns, and gloves. The goggles are made of plastic that must be repeatedly cleaned and sterilised in the ward, thereby making them difficult to see through.”

    One day later, the nurses requested that their letter be withdrawn.

    The Chinese regime arrested Li Wenliang, the doctor who had issued the first admonition about the epidemic that soon killed him. On December 30 he had sent out a warning to his fellow medical workers, but police told him to stop “making false comments“. Many journalists told the truth, but were arrested or “vanished.” Social media in China talked about the virus weeks before the government did. Now the Chinese communist regime is announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak; the book portrays President Xi as a “major power leader” with “care for the people”.

    At the Wuhan Institute of Virology, scientists carry out research at a laboratory that has the highest level of biological containment on the mainland, to study the world’s “most dangerous pathogens”. That the coronavirus might be related to Wuhan’s virus research laboratory is considered by some a “conspiracy theory,” but China’s refusal immediately to accept help from the US Centers for Disease Control understandably arouses suspicion. According to Paul Wolfowitz, former President of the World Bank and former US Deputy Secretary of Defense:

    “The fact that Wuhan is home to China’s advanced virus research laboratory known as the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which does some classified work for the Chinese military, has predictably generated speculation that the novel Corona virus might have somehow leaked out of that institute.”

    “Don’t buy China’s story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab”, wrote Steven Mosher, an expert on China, in The New York Post. We do not know the truth and we might never know it. The theory that the virus originated in a bio-research laboratory might indeed might turn out to be “fringe.” However, considering China’s level of secrecy and its dangerous campaign of censoring talk about the virus, is not doubt at least legitimate?

    So far as anyone can see, the Chinese communist regime has no regard for human life, freedom or dignity. The regime kills prisoners to harvest their organs for transplant, and performs “forced abortions” for “population control”. There is not only an epidemic of viruses but also of “infanticide.” According to research by Harry Wu, a 75-year-old Chinese human rights activist, “there are six to eight million inmates working” in China’s “re-education camps” today. Meanwhile, the Chinese regime, by suppressing the truth about its deadly coronavirus, has endangered not only its own people but also the international community.

    Italy’s fatal mistake was in trusting China’s regime. Instead of checking everyone — Chinese or Italian — returning from China since January, Italy kept its borders open. It is now dealing with tens of thousands of Italians under quarantine, 3,858 people infected and 148 deaths (as of March 6), the paralyzation of northern Italy’s economy, fear and hysteria in the population, with empty supermarkets in Milan, to mention just some effects of the coronavirus. Italy is now the world’s third-most-infected country after China and South Korea, with Iran not far behind.

    Professor Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, in an interview with the South China Morning Post newspaper, compared the coronavirus’ fallout to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in Ukraine. “It will be a crisis of Chernobyl proportions, especially because we will have to contend with the virus for years to come,” Yang said. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world are working on a vaccine, which should at some point limit the damage. In 1979, there was an anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, when deadly spores, leaked from a Soviet biological weapons facility, killed at least 64 people. Soviet and Russian authorities were able to cover up the incident until 1992. Nuclear, viral and biological disasters — followed by state campaign to keep these secrets — seem to be routine in dictatorships.

    Unfortunately, we in the West appear to be making the same unforgivable mistake with communist China as we did with the Soviet Union: trusting a paranoid and merciless dictatorship.

    “It is clear,” noted the Chinese dissident Ma Jian, “that the virus of Xi’s totalitarian rule threatens the health and freedoms not only of the Chinese people, but of all of us everywhere.”

    A WeChat post dedicated to the late Dr. Li Wenliang included quotes from the Soviet chemist Valery Legasov, who investigated the Chernobyl disaster, and wanted to speak the truth but was silenced, persecuted and forced to lie by the Soviet regime:

    “What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth …”

    Legasov took his own life. One day, we Westerners might also feel remorse for not having made the Chinese communist regime accountable for its cold-blooded crimes. Appeasing China, as we did the Soviet Union, is not just a failure; it is a lethal threat.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 23:25

  • Trial Of Alleged "Vault 7" CIA Leaker Ends In Hung Jury
    Trial Of Alleged “Vault 7” CIA Leaker Ends In Hung Jury

    The trial of a former CIA computer engineer accused of the largest leak of classified information in the spy agency’s history has ended with a hung jury.

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    On Monday, a federal jury in Manhattan could not agree on whether to convict 31-year-old Joshua Schulte on eight counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information, according to the New York Times. Schulte was convicted on two other counts; contempt of court and making false statements to the FBI.

    The motivation for the alleged theft, prosecutors said, was Mr. Schulte’s belief that C.I.A. management did not take his workplace complaints seriously. His feuding with co-workers led to his resignation in November 2016 to join Bloomberg L.P. as a software engineer.

    The partial verdict came after six days of chaotic deliberations. One juror was dismissed in the middle of the discussions because she violated the judge’s orders by researching the case, and the lawyers involved, on her own, and then shared that information with the jury. The judge declined to replace her with an alternate, leaving a panel of 11 people. –New York Times

    The jury reportedly complained about one juror who was not cooperating with the rest, causing concern over “her attitude.” One juror described the deliberations as a “horrible experience” – her eyes welling with tears as she finished talking to reporters.

    Schulte, who created malware for the U.S. Government to break into adversaries computers, was named as the prime suspect in the cyber-breach one week after WikiLeaks published the “Vault 7” series of classified files.

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    As we noted in 2018, Vault 7 – a series of 24 documents which were released beginning on March 7, 2017 – revealed that the CIA had a wide variety of tools to use against adversaries, including the ability to “spoof” its malware to appear as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency, as well as the ability to take control of Samsung Smart TV’s and surveil a target using a “Fake Off” mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping.

    The CIA’s hand crafted hacking techniques pose a problem for the agency. Each technique it has created forms a “fingerprint” that can be used by forensic investigators to attribute multiple different attacks to the same entity.

    …

    The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.

    With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.

    UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques. –WikiLeaks

    Vault 7 also revealed:

    In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

    CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( “Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe” or CCIE) are given diplomatic (“black”) passports and State Department cover. 

    • Instant messaging encryption is a joke.

    These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

    • The CIA laughs at Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware programs.

    CIA hackers developed successful attacks against most well known anti-virus programs. These are documented in AV defeats, Personal Security Products, Detecting and defeating PSPs and PSP/Debugger/RE Avoidance. For example, Comodo was defeated by CIA malware placing itself in the Window’s “Recycle Bin”. While Comodo 6.x has a “Gaping Hole of DOOM”.

    • iPads / iPhones / Android devices and Smart TV’s are all susceptible to hacks and malware. The agency’s “Dark Matter” project reveals that the CIA has been bugging “factory fresh” iPhones since at least 2008 through suppliers. Another, “Sonic Screwdriver” allows the CIA to execute code on a Mac laptop or desktop while it’s booting up.

    Schulte previously worked for the NSA before joining the CIA, then “left the intelligence community in 2016 and took a job in the private sector,” according to a statement reviewed in May of 2018 by The Washington Post.

    The verdict showed that the jury had doubts about the government’s most important evidence, which came from a C.I.A. server. Trial witnesses guided jurors through a complicated maze of forensic analysis that, according to prosecutors, showed Mr. Schulte’s work machine accessing an old backup file one evening in April 2016.

    He did so, prosecutors said, by reinstating his administrator-level access that the C.I.A. had removed after his workplace disputes. The file matched the documents posted by WikiLeaks nearly a year later, according to the government.

    The defense argued that the C.I.A. computer network had weak passwords and widely known security vulnerabilities, and that it was possible other C.I.A. employees or foreign adversaries had breached the system. –New York Times

    As the Times notes, Schulte’s legal troubles are far from over, as the government could retry the case. He also faces a separate trial after federal agents found over 10,000 images and videos of child pornography on electronic devices in his home.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 23:05

  • Strategic Remix For The Middle East
    Strategic Remix For The Middle East

    Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    The End of an Era.

    When the first World War came to its end, intimations of an end to the European Era were already evident in symptoms: aching diplomatic joints, straitened perceptual political vision and the general financial health of the patient about to turn acute, as the constipated monetary policies of the Central Banks ushered in the Great Depression. But ‘life’ went on: European men and women wildly danced the Cancan throughout the 1920s; It was Cabaret, party time. No one wanted to acknowledge the omens of what lay afore them.

    Last month, an Israeli academic opined that the future shape of the Middle East lies in the hands of three ‘insider’ states: Iran, Turkey and Israel.

    It was an interesting observation. None are Arab; and it implied an incremental US disengagement, and a modest ‘king-maker’ role for Russia.

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    What makes this statement intriguing is the focus on just three states and the downplay of external intervention as the key ‘shaper’ of the future strategic ‘map’. Implicit here is that all three are flexing their military muscles. But diplomats and political analysts usually prefer to stay at the plane of politics and national interests. They dislike the fact that the outcome of military contestation, per se, can determine political outcomes, and thus validate or negate national interests. It is offensive to diplomacy. But often, it is just so. The region at this time is not really susceptible to a direct conceptual approach: So, the focus on the outcome of military contestation, trials of strength, and then on the other – quite different dynamic – of Covid-19 and its economic effects, makes more sense than traditional purely political calculus of interests.

    And, of course, none of us find it easy to mix into this ‘pudding’ of the three powers’ military trials of strength, the possible effects of some extraneous occurrence – such as a Coronavirus outbreak, about which all is guesswork. Nonetheless, let’s try …

    Let us consider Turkey: It’s leadership has tossed aside its mask. Ah yes, Turkey has been supporting (moderate?) Islamist opponents to President Assad? But, suddenly, the mask is gone — “Idlib is ours” (i.e. is Turkish). “Aleppo like Hatay, is Turkish too”. Neo-Ottomanism; pan-Turkicism. Yes, the Arab world has noticed, and Gulf States are quickly making good with Damascus against this neo-Ottomanism.

    And, just as the moment this explicitly revanchist project seemed at risk of failing – under direct military pressure from Syria and its allies – Ankara simply threw its own troops in support of the al-Qaida forces, and even called down Uyighur and Chechen Jihadist reinforcements from Jisr al-Shagoor (the worst of the worst, extremists). Let us then hear no more from certain western circles of those ‘moderate’ forces with which Turkey is linked.

    Some Turkish soldiers (34+), mixed in with these extremist forces, were killed, as they tried to exfiltrate from Saraqib, when it fell again to Syrian and allied forces. Turkish leaders went nuts with emotion and anger. The rhetoric of ‘betrayal’ went off the scale; and then, in defiance of their agreement with President Putin, they unleashed a barrage of ‘suicide’ attack drones on Syrian forces (and military installations) – and separately killed a fair number of Iranians and Hizbullah, by-the-by.

    What has this to do with the strategic future of the Middle East? Well this: Turkey’s vastly larger army got a bloody nose (well beyond the Turk’s 34+ dead after Saraqib), from the asymmetric warfare strategy turned on them. Let that sink in: NATO’s second largest standing army effectively was trounced by smaller, irregular (but experienced) forces.

    And worse, after 24 hours of Turkey beating its chest about the extraordinary success of its armed drones (launched during an unfortunate ceasefire called by Russia) that were to tip the balance of power in the Middle East, no less, Syrian air defences and (probably Russian) electronic warfare, fully neutralised the Turkish drone threat.

    Let’s add up: Turkey has been exposed as having been using Islamism (and Al-Qaida Jihadists) as mere cover for its true neo-Ottoman and Pan-Turkic revanchist ambitions. The mask has fallen. It cannot be replaced. Neither its army, nor its armed drones, have turned out to be the game-changers that the Turkish leadership imagined them to be. Turkey too, has alienated Europe by its refugee blackmail (didn’t Erdogan take into account the impact of ‘the virus’ on European migration sentiment?).

    Erdogan has infuriated the Russian military; and in an unprecedented joint warning, Iranian and Hizbullah militaries said that Turkish troops would become vulnerable, were Turkey to continue in this mode. This time, Turkey has ‘ticked off’ just about everyone.

    But that is not the end of it. The virus affects another calculus, too: Debt – especially sovereign debt – suddenly is being viewed in highly sceptical way, following the sudden global ‘supply-shock’. Turkey’s economy is in deep trouble – but unlike earlier episodes, when the Chinese helped the Turkish Lira stay afloat, they too have been unimpressed by Erdogan’s trying to protect and use (some 3,000) Uyighur jihadists as a handy Turkish tool. The troubles mount up … and there are signs that Erdogan’s domestic political support is fragmenting (even within his own ruling party).

    Putin saw the situation: Conflict between Russia and Turkey is only to the benefit of America. He smoothed Erdogan’s ruffled feathers, caressed his ego – and took ‘off the board’ the M4, the M5, and (ultimately) Idlib too. The 5 March “cease-fire” is a temporary agreement. It won’t last, but it puts the writing on the wall. Idlib is the pin that has popped the Turkish balloon. This represents a major regional strategic shift.

    So, let’s visit the other pole to the strategic military equation: Iran has amply demonstrated an effective military prowess – both in terms of missile, drone and electronic warfare technology, as well as by its adoption of a radically de-centralised, amorphous and ambiguous, offensive capability. It is not perfect: it is not intended for going head-to-head with the US or Israel; but it can impose asymmetric costs on any adversary, and spread them across the region.

    The Gulf States have come to this understanding; and so has Israel, which cannot face a multi-front war, any more than Iran can prevail in a head-to-head war with the US. (Though the US capability to mount the latter, probably no longer exists. The US can no longer credibly invade Iran in order to supress a concealed and prolonged missile assault on American and Israeli targets.) In short, Iran has acquired something of a military edge — enough to establish deterrence, at least.

    And after the military dynamics, we are brought to the geo-politics and economics of the Corona virus.

    The virus has brought an extraneous, sudden ‘shock’ to the real economy. The virus is not like seasonal ‘flu. It is much more infectious (the virus being in the throat, rather than lungs), and it propagates via cough and sneeze droplets that linger for many days on objects that others then touch. But unlike seasonal ‘flu, Covid-19 carriers may have the virus, but not have the disease (i.e. show no symptoms), which makes it hard to identify any chain of infection – or to take appropriate containment action. Medical experts, however, do not know the circumstances of Covid-19’s inception (presumed to be zoonotic, but lacking evidence for this); do not know its reproduction number; its fatality ratio; and do not know whether it is affected by seasons. It seems to have already mutated once, producing both a milder and a more lethal variant.

    In short, anyone saying how long this virus will last simply is guessing. (Spanish ‘flu – by way of illustration of the nature of viral ‘unknowns’ – began in late 1917, processed through three distinct phases in 1918; mutated, and became more lethal in August 1918; (with the peak lethality taking place in September – November); and began to wane in 1919. It infected one-third of the global population, and killed between 50–100 million persons in Europe, North America and Asia.

    So, in the face of such uncertainty, what can we say about the Middle East?

    Well, the first point is that this economic shock comes toward the end to a long-term, debt and credit cycle, with the Central Banks having ‘goosed’ asset values with liquidity injections, and near zero interest rates. And here is the point: really for some decades now, all western (and Chinese) policy has been geared to demand stimulation. All the so-called ‘tools’ were monetary, and intended to make people spend and consume more.

    But a sudden ‘supply-stop’ caused by a pandemic cannot be corrected by monetary or interest rate means. And factories dislocated, and supply lines cut, also implies ‘demand stop’, as merely being the obvious other side of the production ‘coin’ (as workers are laid off, or their pay is cut).

    Already, trade is stalling, tourism is extinct and markets are fluctuating giddily. The virus is even putting into question globalist supply chains and western monetary policy. When the US ‘Fed’ announced an emergency 0.5% rate cut – the first since 2008 – markets fell. Of course the talk will be now of fiscal measures. But even fiscal measures cannot open factories, closed through disease and quarantine. What fiscal measures can do is subsidise otherwise failing businesses, ad interim. But that would go directly against our laissez faire culture (and in the EU, its direct rules).

    How badly will the Middle East be affected? No one knows the timeline, or the final virulence of this virus. (Seasonal ‘flu has a 0.2% mortality rate of those infected; but the WHO is estimating 3.4% for Corona virus. The UK’s worst case scenario is half a million dead.) It is unlikely that regional healthcare can sustain the forecast 15-20% hospitalisation of those infected by Covid-19, who will require hospital treatment. Nor can Europe’s health system, either. Estimates (guesses really) for its peak is early summer.

    Then there are the economic consequences: Tourism is dead; global markets have been crashing; and everyone is concerned about the massive overhang of corporate and sovereign debt – were the ‘supply-stop’ to be prolonged. Of course, oil producers will be the most vulnerable – for which, read the Gulf States. WTI is already trading in the mid $40s. But also, those most integrated in the New York financial system may be vulnerable to financial turbulence and bankruptcies – for which read Israel and the Gulf States.

    It is unlikely that anyone will escape Corona’s effects, one way or another. Even if Covid-19 eases today, there is unlikely to be an economic snap-back. The effects will linger into the following two quarters. At the moment it is Iran that is feeling it most; but the twists and turns in the life of a virus can be capricious: Why is it that Italy has been so badly struck in Europe? No one knows (it seems it may have the more virulent ‘L’ mutation).

    So to the bottom line: Strategically, Turkey has lost its game of ‘chicken’ in Syria, and may be about to experience an economic implosion – to be mitigated only by its preparedness, or not – to kowtow to Moscow and Beijing’s demands. Iran will survive – the Shi’a have a long experience of hardship – and Iran is too important-to-fail, for either China or Russia. The Lebanese, Iraqi and Jordanian oligarchs and Zaim (sectarian leaderships) were on the ‘critical list’, even before the Corona economic effects hit them, anew. They cannot reform, and refuse to adapt. Discontent will get worse, and protests generated by the virus-effects will proliferate – just as discontent in South Korea and Japan over Covid-19 already has been directed towards their leaders.

    But the Gulf States, already politically undercut by the ‘new Sykes-Picot’ type humiliation on which Trump insists under his ‘deal of the century’ ultimatum – and caught between the rock of Washington’s Iran policy and the ‘hard place’ of the Iranian push-back – will suffer economically in ways for which neither its leaders, nor its stipendiary populations, are prepared.

    Oil in the mid $40s (WTI), and a paralysed tourist industry for as long as Covid-19 takes, represents a new ‘shock’ worse than the September Aramco vulnerability ‘shock’.

    The strategic map, it is a-shifting.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 22:45

  • Wuhan Students Get Homework Software Banned From App Store By Spamming It With One Star Ratings
    Wuhan Students Get Homework Software Banned From App Store By Spamming It With One Star Ratings

    In what is likely the most epic story to come out of China as a result of the coronavirus so far, locked down students in Wuhan have found a creative way to avoid doing their homework while schools are closed.

    While schools have been suspended, teachers have been using an app called DingTalk to assign their students online lessons and homework, despite the lockdown. 

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    Via technode

    After the app was introduced, however, students who were happy to be on lockdown beforehand grew annoyed with having to do work, according to the London Review of Books.

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    So they engineered their own solution and decided to take action. Students figured out eventually that if they had enough users spam the app with one star ratings, they could get it kicked off of the app store, which would then in turn prevent them from having to do homework. 

    As a result, “thousands of reviews” flooded into and DingTalk saw its app rating fall from 4.9 to 1.4 overnight. 

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    Via technode

    According to the report, “the app has had to beg for mercy” on social media, stating: ‘I’m only five years old myself, please don’t kill me.’

    Not much out of the country has given us hope since the coronavirus outbreak began, but this story should possibly give future generations optimism about young Chinese citizens’ eagerness to band together and overthrow authority. 

    And to the teachers, it’s already bad enough the kids are suffering through what is likely going to be one of the most impactful pandemics of modern times. Maybe you can cut them a break on the book reports for the time being.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 22:25

  • Caught On Video: Australian Women Brawl Over Roll Of Toilet Paper
    Caught On Video: Australian Women Brawl Over Roll Of Toilet Paper

    While footage of insane lines and empty shelves at big-box stores such as Costco have made headlines in recent weeks, things have turned violent in some parts of the world – such as this Australian grocery store, where a trio of women got into an altercation over a package of toilet paper.

    It’s as if toilet paper factories are going to shut down and people will have to revert to whatever humans did before TP.

    A thought:

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    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttps://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 22:05

  • Prisons In Uproar As Italy Expands Lockdown, South Korea Reports Huge Drop In Case, Washington Confirms 4 More Deaths Tied To Nursing Home: Live Updates
    Prisons In Uproar As Italy Expands Lockdown, South Korea Reports Huge Drop In Case, Washington Confirms 4 More Deaths Tied To Nursing Home: Live Updates

    Summary:

    • First 2 Coronavirus deaths recorded in Germany
    • Washington State confirms 4 more deaths, 30+ more cases as nursing home finishes tests
    • South Korea reports 131 new cases for Monday, a sizable drop
    • 7 dead as prison riots spread across Italy
    • Italy reports 1,797 new cases, bringing total to 9,172 as deaths increase by 27% overnight, to 463
    • Santa Clara reports second coronavirus death
    • 3 more deaths confirmed in Washington State
    • LA reports first case of community spread
    • De Blasio says NYC quarantine “a possibility”
    • WHO’s Dr. Tedros says threat of pandemic has become “very real”
    • Confirmed cases near or pass 1,000 in France, Germany and Spain
    • US deaths hit 22
    • Canada reports first death in British Columbia
    • Germany state of Brandenburg has between 4k and 5k in home quarantine
    • Trump to meet with Wall Street CEOs Wednesday
    • South Korea imposes travel advisory, confirms another 96 cases; 3 new deaths (total: 54)
    • Hungary stops flights to and from Northern Italy
    • PM Johnsons says UK won’t close parliament
    • Trump to hold WH meeting on fiscal stimulus
    • Italian PM promises “massive shock therapy” to save economy from coronavirus
    • Amazon asks employees in NY, NJ to work from home
    • Deutsche Bank cancels 150-year-anniversary celebrations
    • Dozens of flights leave northern Italy despite quarantine, even as airlines cancel routes
    • Moody’s says US economy headed for recession
    • Cuomo confirms 142 new cases in New York State, bringing total confirmed in NYC to 19
    • NY has started making its own sanitizer
    • Columbia University cancels classes, Princeton moves lectures online
    • 78 new public health labs open across US Monday
    • Spain PM says he will have ’emergency plan’ to tackle outbreak
    • UK confirms another 45 cases
    • VP Pence will hold press conference at 5:30ET Monday
    • Amtrak shutters ‘Acela Corridor’
    • Korean construction worker contracted by US military tests positive
    • Total number of cases jumps above 9,000 while deaths hit 463
    • ‘Grand Princess’ docks in Oakland
    • Another cruise ship disaster might be shaping up in Fla.
    • Trump congratulates VP Pence via tweet
    • New cases in South Korea drop as Philippines case total doubles
    • EUCO President says conference call will be held to coordinate EU response
    • Germany and France finmins hold talks to discuss crisis
    • Missouri declares first “presumptive” positive Sunday night; father of patient breaks quarantine
    • Dutch infections climb to 321

    * * *

    Update (2145ET): Here’s some more grist for a market rally.

    Following what has been by all accounts a well-organized and properly orchestrated containment plan, South Korea reported another 35 cases early Tuesday morning in Seoul, raising the total cases confirmed on Monday to just 131 cases.

    That brings South Korea’s total to 7,513, according to the Korean CDC.

    * * *

    Update (2130ET): The Life Care Center of Kirkland, the nursing home in Washington State’s King County that has emerged as the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in that state (how the virus arrived in the home is still unknown, officials say), has finally finished testing the rest of the three dozen or so patients who remain at the facility following a recent outbreak of novel coronavirus.

    By Monday, the number of residents remaining at the facility – which recently held as many as 120, and as many as 55 over the weekend –  residents remain at the post-acute care center, which had 120 residents as recently as Feb. 19. Of the 35 residents tested, 31 tested positive, 3 tested negative, and one case was inconclusive.

    Shortly after the facility, which is currently being aided by a state ‘strike team’ of 30 doctors and nurses, announced the testing results, state officials confirmed more deaths and positive tests.

    According to KIRO7, on Monday, Public Health – Seattle & King County – announced three new deaths and Overlake Medical Center announced one death, bringing Washington’s statewide total to 23. The four new deaths were all Life Care Center residents. The county also announced 33 new cases, bringing the King County total to 116.

    Roughly two dozen cases from the nursing home – including residents and staff – have already been confirmed, and more than 16 residents have died. All four of the new deaths in the county confirmed on Monday were said to be associated with the home.

    Family members of the facility’s residents are furious that its operators didn’t close the facility as soon as the first case was detected, and state officials, including the County executive of King County, have attacked the home’s Tennessee-based owner for being difficult to deal with.

    WaPo’s coronavirus tracker, one of the most up-to-date records of cases in the US, hasn’t yet factored in the numbers announced by Washington State officials.

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    * * *

    Update (2000ET): In what was undoubtedly Prime Minister Matteo Conte’s boldest moment since rising from relative obscurity to lead a coalition government forged between two ideologically-incompatible parties back in 2017, the Italian prime minister declared during a press conference from the Palazzo Chigi, the PM’s official residence, that the extreme quarantine measures leaked to the public just two days prior simply weren’t comprehensive enough to suppress the outbreak.

    Unfortunately, things have gone too far for that Conte said, and declared, as we described below, a China-style lockdown that requires everybody in the country to basically remain where they are – no traveling – and, for the elderly and high-risk especially, it calls for the cancellation of almost every conceivable activity except jobs that can’t be done from home, leaving people with little option but to hang out at home or in small groups (where risks of an outbreak are lower).

    Unused to such heavy-handed government, the Italian population has accepted the government’s yoke with surprising deference so far. Well, except for one notable group: prisoners.

    As we mentioned earlier, prison uprisings that began in Modena have spread throughout the northern lockdown zone. Since this morning, another inmate has been declared dead, bringing the total death toll from the riots to seven, while two guards were briefly captured at a prison in the town of Pavia on Sunday, but have since been released.

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    According to Reuters, inmates revolted in Milan’s San Vittore prison, taking to the roof and unfurling a banner demanding a general pardon. Moving further South, prisoners in the Tuscan city of Prato set fire to mattresses.

    Even further south, riots took root in Sicily and the southern city of Foggia, where a tank was reportedly dispatched to look for 50 escaped inmates (though, as one twitter wit joked, locals needn’t worry about the prisons thanks to the quarantine: they’ll be stuck inside anyway).

    In Sicily, inmates rebelled at Palermo’s Ucciardone prison, which houses several high-profile Mafia convicts. Fortunately were able to regain control of the situation according to officials.

    In Modena, officials blamed three of the deaths on ‘drug overdoses’ after prisoners raided a prison hospital and stole methadone and benzodiazepines.

    Experts have applauded Conte for taking such a bold step, but whether Italians obey the quarantine still remains to be seen. Hopefully, the images of the prisons in chaos instills a sense of duty in them, as they’re offered a glimpse of what chaos could like look if things really spin out of control.

    * * *

    Update (1640ET): Is Italy really trying to beat China at its own authoritarian game?

    In a stunning announcement late Monday evening, PM Giuseppe Conte revealed during an announcement from the Palazzo Chigi that he would be expanding Italy’s strict quarantine travel restrictions to the entirety of the country, Corriere Della Sera reports.

    The restrictions will last for two weeks, and during that time, movement will be restricted across Italy.

    • ITALY PM CONTE SAYS WILL NO LONGER BE “RED ZONE”, ALL OF ITALY WILL BE UNDER SAME CONDITION
    • ITALY PM CONTE SAYS MOVEMENT WILL BE RESTRICTED ALL OVER ITALY
    • CONTE SAYS ITALY WILL LIMIT PUBLIC ASSEMBLY THROUGHOUT COUNTRY
    • CONTE TO SIGN MEASURE TO EXTEND MEASURES THROUGH COUNTRY

    The shutdown of schools and universities across the country will be prolonged until April 3.

    The unprecedented nationwide quarantine comes as the Italy’s new cases soar by a record high 1,797 to 9,172 as the deaths increase by 27% overnight, or almost 100, to 463.

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    The right behavior now, Conte said, is for people to just stay home.

    Pretty soon, this map will be obsolete:

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    * * *

    Update (1550ET): Santa Clara County has reported its second coronvirus-linked death.

    According to KRON 4, the woman who passed away was in her 60s, and was in the hospital for several weeks before passing away. She was the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the county who had not traveled internationally, or had contact with an already infected patient, which suggests it was a ‘community spread’ case.

    Overall, she was the third case in the county, and the second death. The two prior had a direct, easily traceable line of transmission. The patient died at El Camino Hospital.

    This comes after health officials in King County Washington reported another 3 days earlier, raising the total to 22, along with this death, which raises the US death toll to 23. All of them were residents of the Life Care nursing home in Kirkland.

    LA County, meanwhile, reported two new cases, including the County’s first case of community spread, while Mayor De Blasio said during an interview with CNN Monday that declaring a city-wide quarantine is a “possibility” as the total number of cases in NYC alone hits 16. The three new cases announced earlier by Cuomo on Monday involved two residents from Brooklyn, and one from Queens.

    Back in LA, one of the two new patients had a recent travel history to Japan. The close contacts of both individuals would be traced, LA Times reported. Officials said between 80 and 100 tests have already been run in a local lab.

    “It’s a possibility but I do think people are getting a little ahead of ourselves and we should be careful,” de Blasio said.

    He added the school closures also possible.

    * * *

    Update (1545ET): As we near the end of the US trading day, let’s review some important developments from the last few hours.

    Qatar has become the latest Gulf State to place restrictions on travel; the tiny kingdom said it would ban travelers from a list of 14 countries. Asian FIFA World Cup 2022 postponed several qualifiers. Saudi Arabia has temporarily suspended land and sea travel to and from Oman, France, Germany, Turkey and Spain on Monday for citizens and residents to help block the virus, a local media outlet reported, per Bloomberg.

    Al Jazeera reports that ‘bootleg’ booze has killed 27 people in Iran after rumors that drinking alcohol could help cure the virus led for a spike in demand for moonshine in the notoriously alcohol-intolerant Muslim nation. A spokesman for Jundishapur medical university in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan, said 218 people had been hospitalised there after being poisoned. The poisonings were caused by “rumours that drinking alcohol can be effective in treating coronavirus,” they said. Saudi Arabia has also said it would impose a fine of up to 500,000 riyals ($133,000) on people who do not disclose their health-related information and travel details at entry points

    The CDC said earlier that the death toll in the US had climbed to 22, while the WHO pointed out that the US is “under testing.”

    As of Monday morning, more than 560 people have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus in dozens of US states, while 22 deaths have been confirmed in the country in connection with the outbreak, with the deaths recorded in Florida, Cali and Florida.

    * * *

    Update (1445ET): Public health officials in Canada have confirmed the first death tied to SARS-COV-2, better known as the novel coronavirus, which causes the illness known as Covid-19.

    The man was living in a British Columbia nursing home. He passed away last night, said Dr. Bonnie Henry during a press conference roughly an hour ago.

    Two other residents and an employee at the BC facility have also tested positive for the virus.

    * * *

    Update (1440ET): During NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s latest update on the coronavirus situation, he reportedly asked New Yorkers to ‘consider’ working from home, if they aren’t already doing so.

    Around the same time, Amazon reportedly advised New York and New Jersey employees to work from home from March 10 until the end of the month if possible, WSJ reports.

    In other news, a US Marine who tested positive for the coronavirus in Virginia – one of the first two cases to be confirmed in the state – reportedly worked at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is situated near the Pentagon.

    New York and New Jersey offices include employees in marketing, fashion, advertising, cloud computing, plus the company’s Audible division.

    * * *

    Update (1340ET): As the government boosts testing following the imposition of a sweeping quarantine impacting most of the Italian north, for the third day in a row, officials have pointed a more than 1,000-case jump in the total coronavirus infections, and a 25% increase in deaths.

    On Monday, officials reported 1,797 new cases, and 93 new deaths.

    • ITALY REPORTS 9,172 CORONAVIRUS CASES, 463 DEATHS AS OF MONDAY

    The new cases pushed the total global case number above 110,000. Earlier, Spanish authorities reported 2 new deaths as the Catalonian health department has confirmed “the death of a 97-year-old man and an 88-year-old woman,” bringing the total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Spain to 28.

    During its regular press briefing, the CDC announced that 78 labs across the country in all 50 states and Washington DC have been certified to test up to 75,000 people for the coronavirus, according to Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

    Wall Street execs will reportedly visit the White House on Wednesday to discuss the country’s response to the coronavirus and what can be done to save the economy, according to the Washington Post. Trump is supposed to meet with his top economic advisors, including Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin, on Monday afternoon with markets back near their lows of the day.

    * * *

    Update (1300ET): It looks like another troubling cruise-ship coronavirus disaster is shaping up in Florida, one of three states that has recorded fatalities related to the outbreak.

    According to CNN, two recently diagnosed cases in Florida are tied to a cruise that recently docked in Port Everglades. Broward County in Florida announced that two of the three presumptive positive cases of coronavirus in the county are related to people coming through Port Everglades. Port Everglades is among the most active ports in the US for cruise ships, cargo and petroleum products. However, the county wont’ say more than that: Were these individuals passengers on a cruise ship? How were they exposed.

    * * *

    Update (1240ET): During the WHO’s daily press update, Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that the global coronavirus outbreak, which is closing in on its 4,000th death, is beginning to look like a “real pandemic.”

    Dr. Tedros said the WHO is “encouraged” by Italy’s quarantine, and hopes that these methods will “prove effective” in the coming days. The rule of the game, he added, is “never give up.”

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    Of the four countries with the worst outbreaks, China is bringing its epidemic under control, and South Korea is now reporting a decline in cases, he said.

    Both countries have demonstrated that “it’s never too late” to turn back the virus tide. Every country with confirmed cases of the virus has an opportunity to follow in their footsteps, Dr. Tedros said, because so far, most countries are only seeing “clusters” of community transmission. As long as that’s the case, these clusters can be contained, he said.

    “For the moment, only a handful of countries have signs of sustained community transmission. Most countries still have sporadic Covid-19 cases or defined clusters,” he said.

    Watch the daily briefing here:

    Gov Cuomo made a similar comment earlier:

    “This is not the ebola virus. This panic that you see is unwarranted. We have dealt with worse viruses,” Cuomo said.

    * * *

    Update (1200ET): South Korea showed once again that the pace of new infections has continued to slow on Monday, while also raising its travel advisory for northern and central Italy

    This follows SK’s second case update for Sunday: 96 new cases, which were identified between midnight Sunday and 4 pm, have brought the nation’s total number of infections to 7,478, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, according to Yonhap. That follows 248 new cases detected earlier. About an hour ago, the Korean CDC confirmed 3 new deaths, bringing its total to 54.

    After recording its first coronavirus case last week, Hungary has stopped flights to and from northern Italy and cancelled its March 15 national day celebrations amid growing fears that the outbreak will spread, according to the FT.

    In the UK, a fourth coronavirus patient died on Monday. The patient was being treated at the Royal Wolverhampton Hospital and was in their 70s with underlying health conditions, UK health authorities confirmed. The person had contracted the virus in the UK and efforts are being made to trace their contacts.

    * * *

    Update (1140ET): Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. Cotton, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the independent quasi-public government agency responsible for the port, apparently contracted the virus after visiting airports and other Port Authority facilities.

    He is at home under quarantine, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

    During what has become a daily (sometimes twice-daily) live press update, Cuomo confirmed that the number of cases in New York State has climbed to 142, with 16 new cases in Westchester, 7 new cases in NYC, 12 new cases in Nassau County, 2 new cases in Rockland County and 1 new case in Ulster County:

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    With 142 cases of the new coronavirus, New York has 6% of the cases in the nation, however, only 8 of those people are hospitalized currently.

    After reiterating that the panic and hysteria is far out of proportion to what’s actually happening, Cuomo said Monday morning that as the national run on Purell continues, the state will produce its own hand sanitzier, which it can accomplish at a cost of $6 a gallon to make the NYS hand sanitizer. 

    The product is being produced at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Washington County. Unfortunately for NYC residents, the hand sanitizer is not available to the general public; it’s being provided, for free, to school districts and municipalities.

    Cuomo added that the NYS hand-sanitizer has “a floral bouquet” – before adding that he was joking, though in all seriousness the governor said he did detect a “hint of citrus.”

    Speaking after Cuomo, NYS Health Commissioner Howard Zucker says the state, in consultation with the CDC, is considering a closure of the public schools in New Rochelle for a period of weeks. Jewish schools in the city, a locus for new coronavirus infections, are already closed. Zucker added that New York state’s public health labs can test “several hundred” coronavirus samples each day.

    In addition, Cuomo said the state has shut down nursing homes in the Westchester County city of New Rochelle to visitors. He urged other nursing homes to be cautious because “this is the vulnerable population.” Cuomo said he spoke with VP Pence on Monday about NY getting approval for automated testing.

    Outside the evacuees, at least 15 patients have recovered: Six in California, four in Nebraska, two in Illinois, one in Washington, one in Arizona and one in Wisconsin.

    Here’s an updated case map of the US, courtesy of NBC News:

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    * * *

    Update (1130ET): In a landmark moment for the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, German health officials have reported the first coronavirus-linked death on German soil, Bild reports.

    Moments later, the German health ministry confirmed that two patients have died on Germany soil.

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    This comes after a German man died in Egypt yesterday.

    * * *

    Update (11:25ET): A statement delivered minutes ago by the CDC asked colleges and universities with students studying abroad to consider bringing them back to the US, and that upcoming study abroad programs should be cancelled.

    * * *

    Update (1120ET): Italian PM Giuseppe Conte promised earlier on Monday a “massive shock therapy” intended to revive the Italian economy during comments to La Repubblica.

    Conte also urged Europe to embrace “strong” action to stop the outbreak. These sentiments were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, when he demanded that Europe come up with a “strong, massive and coordinated response”. During a euro zone finance ministers meeting next week, the bloc is expected to come up with a plan to revive to Continental economy and avoid a brutal downturn.

    * * *

    Update (1115ET): The German state of Brandenburg, which encircles Berlin, has reportedly between 4,000 to 5,000 locals in an at-home quarantine following a “presumptive” case was confirmed in the area. Dozens of cases have been confirmed in Berlin, but ‘community transmission’ in the region hasn’t been confirmed.

    Elsewhere in Germany, Deutsche Bank has reportedly cancelled festivities scheduled in Berlin on Saturday to celebrate the bank’s 150-year-anniversary.

    * * *

    Update (1058ET): If there was ever a moment that an aide needed to seize the president’s phone…this is it.

    Trump has become one of those “it’s only the flu” people? Hasn’t somebody explained to him why this is a flawed argument?

    Hopefully, they can keep the US death toll below that of Hurricane Katrina, at least. More US classes, including Colombia University in New York, are cancelling classes for the rest of the semester, while Princeton, an Ivy League institution in New Jersey, is moving its lectures online.

    Meanwhile, Irish carrier Ryan Air has stopped more flights to and from Italian cities. Other carriers to drop some or all flights to and from Italy include Alitalia (the country’s flagship carrier, which is only flying domestic right now), Delta Air Lines has also cancelled some flights, has has British Airlines.

    However, despite these cancellations and the quarantine, there are still dozens of flights leaving northern Italy on Monday.

    * * **

    Update (1045ET): President Trump, oil analyst, has checked back into the chat.

    While we suspect Trump is less-than-pleased with today’s equity-market selloff (hence the headline a few moments ago about a White House meeting to discuss economic stimulus plans), the president has proven time and time again that he doesn’t really understand the downside of falling oil prices (though the Fed very much does, thanks to Powell’s comments on HY credit).

    Which is why he didn’t hesitate to celebrate the drop in prices as a de facto ‘tax cut’ for Americans.

    It’s good for the consumers: In other words, the federal government is telling them they should avoid traveling or even leaving the house. But if they decide to roll the dice, at least gasoline will be cheap, cheap, cheap!

    * * *

    Update (1027ET): Following President Trump’s return to the White House this afternoon, a meeting about options for ‘economic stimulus’ – which the administration has said could include more tax cuts – will be held with some of the administration’s top economic advisors.

    That headline couldn’t have come at a better time, having just followed this remark from Moody’s economist Mark Zandi, one of the loudest voices in the market place.

    If Trump is lacking for ideas, he could give the US economy research desk at 200 West a ring. They’ve already committed a few ideas to paper.

    In the US, equity markets have bounced off their lows.

    Ahead of the meeting between Trump and his economic team, where Trump will be presented with a “full menu of economic options”, one source told CNBC’s Eamon Javers that oil-market intervention wouldn’t be a part of the plan.

    While it’s definitely a short-term negative for US shale, we’re sure President Trump won’t mind the de facto ‘tax cut’ for consumers.

    * * *

    Update (1015ET): Across the US, 77 public health labs have finished setting up their Covid-19 testing as of Monday morning. Seven more labs are in the middle of the ‘process of verification’, which involves the CDC.

    * * *

    Update (0950ET): While the world has been transfixed by the chaos in American equity markets as the first major circuit breaker is triggered, the coronavirus news just keeps coming:

    Five new cases have been confirmed in Scotland, bringing the Scottish total to 23, and the UK-wide total to 281. Spain has closed schools in the Basque town of Labastida for 14 days. Italy’s market watchdog Consob said in a statement on Monday that halting stock-market trading would generate long-term problems. However, a ban on short selling could be considered when shares’ movement exceed 10% and if other conditions are in place, as per European rules.

    CNN reported that the Trump Administration is considering ‘discouraging’ Americans from taking air travel.

    Three additional coronavirus cases were confirmed in New York City bringing the total to 16 confirmed cases, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s spokesperson Freddi Goldstein.

    The three new cases raise the NYS total to 108. Above, Mayor de Blasio says 85 additional school nurses will be dispatched to help deal with the coronavirus-related demand.

    Finally, national UK health officials have confirmed another batch of cases, bringing the total to 319 from 273.

    Meanwhile, the WHO is holding its daily press conference:

    * * *

    Update (0915ET): As critics slam President Trump for not focusing on the virus, the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces tweeted another congratulatory message to VP Mike Pence.

    Trump also insisted that the best decision he made was closing off travel from China early on as epidemiologist slam his administration for not stockpiling enough tests.

    Unfortunately, it would have been better if the CDC had administered more than 2,000 tests as of eod Friday, but those unfortunately aren’t the circumstances on the ground. We look forward to hearing more from the administration tonight – perhaps some encouraging information about when the market can expect test kits to be made available to everyone who needs one – when VP Pence leads a press conference beginning at 5:30 pm ET.

    Over in China, officials in Wuhan announced Monday that they would be closing 11 of the 18 makeshift hospitals built during the outbreak.

    * * *

    Update (0845ET): Following UK PM Boris Johnson’s emergency meeting Monday morning with fellow government officials, the UK leadership has reportedly decided against closing Parliament over the outbreak, though access to visitors will be strictly limited.

    Overnight, the number of confirmed cases in Spain nearly doubled, going from 589 on March 8 to 999 on March 9. In response, the government has ordered all schools and universities in the country to close. With acute concentrations of cases in the capital, Madrid, as well as the country’s industrial hub in the Basque country, deaths have climbed to 26 across the country. In Madrid alone, confirmed cases increased by about 200 between Sunday and Monday, BBG reports.

    After the number of cases in the Philippines doubled to 20 on Monday, from now on well-wishers will not be allowed to touch Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to protect him from the coronavirus, his security detail said. Duterte is 74, and thus technically a high-risk patient.

    In Iran officials have temporarily released 70,000 prisoners in a bid to contain coronavirus in the country.

    Iran’s Mizan news agency quoted judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi as saying “it is necessary for the temporary release of prisoners to continue… so long as it does not create insecurity in society.”

    In the Netherlands, cases have climbed to 321, according to local media reports.

    * * *

    Update (0830ET):  As Boris Johnson holds an emergency meeting with senior government leaders in London, across the Channel, European Council President Charles Michel said Monday that Brussels would be hosting a conference call with all EU leaders.

    • PRES. OF EUCO MICHEL: FOLLOWING CONSULTATIONS, I WILL HOLD A EUCO MEMBERS CONFERENCE CALL SHORTLY ON COVID-19 TO COORDINATE EU EFFORTS. WE NEED TO COOPERATE IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE HEALTH OF OUR CITIZENS.

    Meanwhile, over in India, four new cases of the virus have been confirmed, including a 3-year-old child.

    In Spain, which is finally confronting the severity of its outbreak as the number of confirmed cases teeters right at the 1,000-case mark, and the president of neighboring Portugal has gone into quarantine, is preparing to unfurl an “emergency plan” of its own, according to socialist PM Pedro Sanchez.

    • SPAIN’S PM SÁNCHEZ: THE GOVT. PREPARES TO LAUNCH AN EMERGENCY PLAN TO DEAL WITH CORONAVIRUS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

    * * *

    Update (0650ET): As case counts explode across Europe, it looks like Spain – conveniently, Europe’s fourth-largest economy – will be next to cross the 1,000-confirmed-case threshold.

    • SPANISH CORONAVIRUS CASES JUMP TO 999: HEALTH MINISTRY

    The health ministry has also just reported another 8 deaths, raising the total to 25.

    * * *

    Update (0620ET): As case totals climb above 1,000 in Europe’s two largest economies – France and Germany – while one-fifth to one-quarter of the Italian economy (Europe’s third-largest) goes offline, the finance ministers of France and Germany have reportedly been commiserating about their shared predicament this morning.

    And that’s pretty much all that needs to be said about that.

    In other news, VP Pence will hold a briefing in the situation room at noon, followed by several other briefings throughout the day, culminating with a public press briefing at 5:30.

    * * *

    Since we checked in last on Sunday evening, hundreds of new cases have been confirmed in Europe and Asia, but the ambient level of global hysteria has seemingly escalated with the limit-down moves in seemingly every global market that isn’t nailed down.

    In the US, 537 cases have been identified since the first cases arrived in Washington State and California back in January, including the dozens of travel-related and ‘community spread’-related cases, along with the ~50 evacuees, according to the Washington Post.

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    An emblematic sign of the hysteria in the US, Amtrak has suspended its non-stop service between New York and Washington – suspending travel along the so-called “Acela corridor” for power commuters who routinely travel back and forth between NY, Washington, Philly, Boston and all the places in between.

    Late last night, the state of Missouri confirmed its first “presumptive positive,” a girl who lives at home with her parents, according to a local TV station.

    News reports claimed that the father of the student broke quarantine by attending a school dance with his other daughter, Fox News reported.

    A school attended by the patient’s sister has closed out of an “abundance of caution.”

    In the US, Dr. Anthony Fauci said yesterday that the US would have 400,000 more test kits available on Monday, and 4 million more by the end of the week. So get ready for an explosion in US cases.

    More tech firms and banks are telling all employees who can to work from home until further notice.

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    In the UK, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is planning to lead an emergency meeting of the government on the virus a day after cases doubled in the UK to 273, while deaths have held steady at 3 since Saturday. On Monday, two new cases have been confirmed in Wales (marking 6 all together), while a healthcare professional at University Hospital Southampton has also tested positive, raising the national total to 276, per the BBC.

    Over the weekend, we saw the first signs of optimism out of South Korea, as the mayor of Daegu, the epicenter of the South Korean outbreak, reported a sharp drop in newly confirmed cases, evidence that the outbreak is slowing (since the South Koreans have been matched only by the Hong Kongers and Singaporeans in efficiency of testing), he said. The slowdown in new SK cases gave Italy the opportunity to snatch the crown, becoming the undisputed new global epidemic leader outside China (though the outbreak in Iran is certainly much more severe, however, the regime has chosen to hide the extent of deaths and confirmed cases).

    CNN adds that a construction worker contracted by the US military in Korea has tested positive for the coronavirus, making this the eighth USFK-related patient. An hour ago, South Korea confirmed 96 more cases, bringing national total to 7,478, marking a sharp slowdown in new cases.

     

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    As the quarantine across the Italian north enters its first business week, the total number of cases in Italy has hit 7,375, with 366 deaths. The situation is getting so bad, that riots are breaking out in Italian prisons, with one leaving 6 dead.

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    Courtesy of the BBC

    As an editorial writer for the Washington Post explains, current estimates suggest that it takes about a week for the number of cases to double, though there’s considerable uncertainty around the exact number. According to this principle, for each death, there are 49 other infections in the community when the patient who died became infected.

    That means, one week later, as that patient is seeing symptoms first emerge, that number has doubled to 98. After two weeks, when the patient is seeing his symptoms intensify, the number of community cases is 196. During week three, as the patient is lying on his or her deathbed, the number of community infections will have climbed to 396.

    In Iran, the head of the country’s Crisis Management Agency, Esmaeel Najjar, has been confirmed infected with the virus. Najjar was discharged from the hospital and has been self-quarantining at home, according to Iran’s ISNA state-controlled news agency.

    Offering a stark contrast to the panic that is engulfing Europe, Iran and the US, in China, Shanghai Disney has started “phased reopening” of some shopping and dining destinations have reopened, though the main park – Shanghai Disneyland – remains closed. Meanwhile, the first case of coronavirus has been confirmed among staff at Disneyland Paris, according to Le Parisien. The patient, who had been off sick since symptoms emerged days ago, is quarantining at home.

    Germany and France are each seeing the number of confirmed cases break above 1,000. Germany confirmed another 256 cases on Monday, bringing its national total to 1,112, according to the Robert Kock Institute, Germany disease-control agency. After banning gatherings with more than 1,000 people in attendance as we noted last night, French officials confirmed that the national total had climbed to 1,126, with more than 200 new cases. The death toll in France stands at 19, while the German outbreak, which is still mostly confined to Bavaria, specifically the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, hasn’t recorded any deaths.

    Cruise ships attempting to enter Puerto Rico must first certify that there are not coronavirus cases on board, Gov. Wanda Vazquez Garced claimed in a tweet on Sunday. This followed a local controversy that erupted after the Costa Luminosa, a cruise ship with a rumored sick passenger aboard, allowed its passengers to disembark in San Juan.

    The State Department has published a warning on Monday telling Americans not to travel on cruises, saying the US government can’t continue to intervene with passenger ships quarantined at sea.

    Finally, officials in China, who confirmed just 30 cases in Hubei late last night, have also confirmed that at least 11 have died following the collapse of a hotel being used as a quarantine that we reported on over the weekend. 80 were inside the building when it came down, while nine escaped, 71 were trapped. Of those, 50 have been pulled from the rubble, and 21 remained unaccounted for on Monday afternoon.

    In other new overnight developments, an American in Saudi Arabia has tested positive for the virus, according to the Saudi health ministry. The man had been travelling from the Philippines and Italy before arriving in the kingdom. Three others in al Qateef Province, including two Bahraini citizens, have also been infected. This comes after Saudi Arabia presided over the dissolution of OPEC and a ramped-up rivalry with Russia that has prompted the largest drop in oil prices since the early 90s Gulf War.

    Over in Oakland, the ‘Grand Princess’ cruise ship is preparing to dock at the Port of Oakland later in the day on Monday. The ship’s captain and Carnival-owned Princess cruises have said the disembarkation process will be “a multiple day process.”

    “Disembarkation will commence in order of priority, as defined and directed by both state and local authorities. It is expected to be a multiple day process,” said the release.

    “Once disembarkation of the guests is completed, the crew will remain onboard and Grand Princess will depart from San Francisco bay. Plans for a crew quarantine are still being determined.”

    We’ll be keeping a close eye on the situation in California and New York State, which is also seeing a surge in cases following an outbreak in a Westchester Jewish Community based in New Rochelle.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 21:49

  • Hand Sanitizer Is Flying Off The Shelves For $79 And $109 A Bottle At One NYC Hardware Store
    Hand Sanitizer Is Flying Off The Shelves For $79 And $109 A Bottle At One NYC Hardware Store

    At the Scheman & Grant Hardware at Eighth Avenue and 38th Street, the coronavirus represents shameless economic opportunity to take full advantage of the law of supply and demand. 

    Taking advantage of the ongoing panic, S&G is now selling 1200 ml bottles of Purell – a bottle that regularly costs about $5.49 – for $79.00.

    And the price doesn’t seem to be deterring people from buying them, either. An employee at the store told the NY Post: “Everyone who comes in the store buys them. We sold about fifty of those today.”

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    The hardware store was also offering larger size 2 liter bottles of Purell for $109 each. It sold out of its supply. 

    Mayor Bill de Blasio, always eager to stick his nose into the affairs of someone else’s private business, commented that it “sounded like” price gouging. “I’d like my Department of Consumer Affairs to pay them a visit immediately,” de Blasio said.

    Reached for comment, an Ace Hardware representative (the parent corporation of the hardware store) said: “Retailers are independent businessmen and women with sole control over the operation of their business, including pricing decisions and policies.”

    Meanwhile, the rise in price reflects the extraordinary spike in demand for the product, which along with Lysol wipes, has risen 1400% from December to January, according to CBS. Laxman Narasimhan, CEO of Lysol parent Reckitt Benckiser said last week the company’s “people are working around the clock with consumers in mind.”

    One 29 year old restaurant worker in Times Square who noticed the prices while in the hardware store said: “It makes me mad, man. It’s not right what they’re doing. They’re taking advantage of everything that’s going on. My boss at work was talking about. He has to make his own hand sanitizer out of alcohol and aloe Vera because look at these prices.”

    Economist Peter Schiff had a different take on price gouging during the coronavirus panic.

    “People are raising prices for certain supplies. Well of course,” Schiff said Friday on the QTR podcast. “Demand’s going up. Of course you’re going to raise prices! What are you supposed to do? If you don’t raise prices, all of your stuff is going to get bought by a few people who are then going to hoard it or resell it on the black market. Prices are a rationing mechanism.” 

    Meanwhile:

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 21:45

  • All 3 US Cities Hit By COVID-19 Show Markedly Lower Weekend Traffic
    All 3 US Cities Hit By COVID-19 Show Markedly Lower Weekend Traffic

    Almost one month ago, we first looked at TomTom traffic congestion data across various Chinese cities (and a handful of US “control” cities) to assess the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the broader economy. Overnight, DataTrek’s Nicholas Colas took the TomTom data in his analysis of not only China, but also Italy and that other cluster of covid-19 cases, the U.S.

    Here is what he found, from his latest Morning Briefing note to clients.

    We continue to track traffic congestion around the world as a real-time measure of COVID-19’s impact on the global economy. This weekend’s data shows how the virus is affecting consumer demand, in comparison to weekday volumes that highlight commutation patterns. Today we will review the data from 9 major cities around the world, all touched by the virus but at various stages of reaction to the health threat.

    First, here is the 7-day data for Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen (recent week in red, 1-year averages in light blue):

    Beijing:

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    Shanghai:

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    Shenzhen:

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    Takeaway: while weekday traffic is getting back to normal, weekend congestion is essentially zero in Beijing and Shanghai although somewhat better in Shenzhen. China is clearly getting back to work but leisure travel/shopping is still not yet reaccelerating.

    Now, here are Milan, Rome and Paris:

    Milan:

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    Rome:

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    Paris:

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    Takeaway: the northern Italian quarantine is not affecting Milan’s traffic as much as China’s weekend data shows, but Roman congestion shows a marked slowing of economic activity starting Thursday and Paris was well below trend this weekend.

    Finally, here are Seattle, San Francisco and New York:

    Seattle:

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    San Francisco:

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    New York:

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    Takeaway: all 3 US cities affected by COVID-19 show markedly lower weekend traffic than average, and the generally subpar congestion during the middle/later part of the workweek tells us this is not due to the sorts of seasonal patterns we mentioned in our “Markets” section.

    The upshot from all this: as capital markets have already started to discount, the global consumer is quickly retrenching, led by individuals who live in a city where COVID-19 has taken hold.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 21:25

  • First Virus-Related Hate Crime? Man Wearing Surgical Mask Stabs Asian In NYC
    First Virus-Related Hate Crime? Man Wearing Surgical Mask Stabs Asian In NYC

    A man wearing a surgical mask stabbed an Asian man in Brooklyn, New York, more than a dozen times over the weekend, reported the New York Post. 

    NYPD sources told The Post that the incident occurred on Saturday evening, around 8th Avenue, could be one of the first Covid-19-related hate crimes in the country. NYPD later tweeted that there was “absolutely no nexus between the attack and the coronavirus.” 

    Li Qianyang, 48, was walking down 8th Avenue on Saturday evening when a man wearing a surgical mask stabbed him 13 times, the police said. 

    A police source told The Post that the attacker “was on top of him stabbing him.” 

    “One guy was chasing the other guy, and caught up with him outside,” a store owner told the Post. “He stabbed him so many times, and I’m amazed he survived.”

    First responders found Qianyang in a pool of blood, and it was reported that the attacker stabbed him in the heart. He was immediately taken to Lutheran Medical Center and remained in critical condition. 

    Video of the incident was recorded on a mobile phone, which shows how the attack played out. It appears the assailant had no interest in robbing the man but instead wanted Qianyang dead for reasons that are still unknown

    If this incident were indeed a Covid-19-related hate crime, it would be the first in the country. Everyone in New York City is on edge as virus cases in the tri-state area have jumped 200% since Friday, from 49 cases to now 150.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 21:05

  • Standard Chartered: Only A Combination Of Low Rates And Fiscal Stimulus Has A Chance Of Working
    Standard Chartered: Only A Combination Of Low Rates And Fiscal Stimulus Has A Chance Of Working

    With investor expectations for an imminent rate cut to 0% (or lower) running high, only surpassed by expectations for an imminent – and “very, very substantial” fiscal stimulus – Standard Chartered’s head of FX strategy Steve Englander has an unorthodox take: neither may be sufficient.

    As Englander writes in a note titled “Emptying the monetary policy cupboard?”, while the Fed may think that aggressively reducing policy rates is a prerequisite to fiscal policy, investors are sceptical that monetary policy is effective (and perhaps so is the Fed). But since “the FOMC may feel that fiscal stimulus is practical politically only if monetary policy is maxed out”, the combination of low rates and fiscal stimulus may be the key to enabling borrowers to meet obligations, according to the FX strategist.

    In terms of monetary expectations, Englander does not see the Fed doing anything too crazy, and expects the Fed to ease 25bps at its March and April meetings Fed easing likely in March and April, but as he admits, “recent Fed comments and asset market selling have led to markets pricing in just under 60bps for the March meeting.” Indeed, markets now price in end-April fed funds rates below 40bps. However, the problem is that per discussions with clients there is “little confidence that easier money will lead to a rapid economic rebound; many feel that that the recent 50bps move may have been ‘wasted’.“

    As such, and given economic and credit market concerns, fiscal policy will likely be more effective than monetary policy, according to Englander. To be sure, Fed officials have argued that lower rates will lead to mortgage refinancing, among other activity spurs. But the counterargument to more monetary easing (absent Quaranatative Easing of course) is that neither consumer durables spending nor plant and equipment investment will likely be much affected by lower interest rates when uncertainty is so elevated.

    Here’s the problem: as the Std Chartered strategist admits, “Fiscal stimulus may not be significantly effective, either, in generating additional spending. A tax cut that increases disposable income or business cash flow might not increase spending. However, it may enable businesses and households to avoid a major credit crunch, when payments are due but the expected revenues are not there.”

    The impact of fiscal stimulus via lower taxes may be less in generating additional spending than in substituting federal government credit, which is looking pretty good, for private-sector credit, where market concerns are beginning to emerge.

    And while this would not be a free lunch, but might be the cheapest eats out there as the objective of fiscal easing would be to keep households and businesses solvent so that supply and demand can bounce back quickly once the coronavirus abates.

    There is another consideration when expecting a major fiscal stimulus: the US elections and the lack of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats complicate reaching agreement on fiscal matters. As we saw in 2008, there can be cooperation even in an election year, when the political costs of not cooperating are sufficiently high. However, other policy options have to be exhausted.

    These considerations make a rapid response essential according to Englander, who cautions that the cost of repairing private-sector solvency, once impaired, is much greater than maintaining solvency by acting quickly. While the Fed has discussed fiscal policy in general terms, but has not come out squarely in its favor. However, in recent days we see signals of more urgency than we or the market expected in comments by Fed officials. As such, Friday’s comments by Boston Fed President Rosengren on the possibility of the Fed buying assets other than Treasuries can be seen in a similar light (although it is not clear if the Fed would just buy stocks or also barrels of oil after Monday’s record plunge).In any case, by narrowing the spread with already low-yielding US Treasuries, such purchases would directly reduce debt-servicing burdens.

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    Meanwhile, confirming the open-ended nature of the upcoming stimulus, St Louis Fed President James Bullard has made several television appearance in recent days with the message: “”Everything is on the table, we’re willing to do more,” and “We can meet at any time and move at any time in this situation” as he appeared to de-emphasise the March meeting, “I just don’t want people to focus so heavily on that particular day because the FOMC has already shown, Jay Powell has already shown, we can move between meetings.” And while Bullard says that the Fed could ease either before or after the March meeting, neither Englander nor others see “much to be gained by the Fed encouraging market speculation that the Fed would disappoint.”

    Putting this together, the logic is to clear the table of monetary policy so that the focus can shift to fiscal policy – which is likely to be more effective. Any fiscal measures are likely to involve some government spending in order to help steady employment. If this analysis is correct, measures will include a heavy dose of temporary tax reductions to improve cash flow and enable private-sector firms and households to stay current on debt servicing. Meanwhile, “the Fed’s contribution would be to enable the government to increase its debt burden on as favourable terms as possible.”


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 20:45

  • MSNBC Journalist Claims Calling Covid-19 "Wuhan Virus" Is Racist
    MSNBC Journalist Claims Calling Covid-19 “Wuhan Virus” Is Racist

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    MSNBC journalist David Gura claims that referring to coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus” is racist despite the fact that virtually every other virus was named after its geographical origin.

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    “FYI: Calling #COVID19 the “Wuhan Virus” is racist,” commented Gura in a tweet that received 25,000 likes.

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    He was immediately reminded of the fact that virtually every major virus in recent and not so recent history was named after the geographical region from which it emerged.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The mainstream media also repeatedly called COVID19 the “Wuhan virus” for weeks on end.

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    Even Chinese news sources refer to it as the “Wuhan virus.”

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    “FYI: Being patronizing and paternalistic about everything that involves anyone non-white is racist,” responded one Twitter user.

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    Gura’s comments are part of the continuing effort to patrol language in relation to the coronavirus outbreak.

    The World Health Organization has repeatedly issued statements demanding people avoid profiling or using certain words to describe the virus in order to avoid “stigmatizing” people.

    Perhaps if health authorities and the media concentrated wholly on preventing a global pandemic rather than policing words, we’d be in a better position.

     

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 20:25

  • Oil, Stocks Rip Higher After Trump Promises "Very Dramatic" Actions To Support The Economy
    Oil, Stocks Rip Higher After Trump Promises “Very Dramatic” Actions To Support The Economy

    After almost the biggest single-day drop since Black Monday, it is hardly surprising that markets are bouncing back a little and all it took was the promise of ‘very very substantial’ relief to hard-working Americans hurt by the impact of the virus.

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    During the daily virus update press conference, President Donald Trump said his administration will discuss a possible payroll tax cut with the U.S. Senate, saying they would seek “very very substantial relief” for the economy that has been roiled by the outbreak of coronavirus.

    Trump, speaking at a White House news conference, added his administration plans to speak with lawmakers on Tuesday, seeking the aid to help hourly wage earners “so they don’t get penalized for something that’s not their fault.”

    The president also said he that he plans to announce “very dramatic” actions to support the economy at a press conference on Tuesday.

    And just like that WTI is up 4%…

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    And Dow futures are up over 400 points…

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    We wouldn’t hold our breath however, as we noted previously, the idea that Democrat-controlled Congress would ‘help’ is beyond a joke and in fact it could corner the President. If he comes asking for a payrolls tax-cut “for the people,” Democrats can easily respond “sure, just unwind the corporate tax cuts to pay for it and it’s a done deal.”

    But of course that will crush the stock market – which is the only thing really matters – and so Trump will refuse and Dems can play the “see, he doesn’t work for the ‘little people’ card.”

    Meanwhile, Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross asked an excelent question:

    “Confused why, from an expectations management standpoint, the White House isn’t letting public know that there will be a spike in COVID cases as testing ramps up.”

    We can only imagine what that sudden jump will do markets.

    Additionally, it appears Mnuchin ‘made the call’ again…

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    As CNBC’s Wilfred ZFrost reports that I can confirm that the White House meeting with bank CEO’s will be on Wednesday at 3p ET. The nation’s biggest 7 banks have all been invited – maybe more too. I know at least 2 will send their CEO – I imagine all (other than JPM) will do so. Some industry bodies like ABA invited.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 20:06

  • To Avoid 'Mass Hysteria', Amazon, Facebook Ban Ads For 'Viral' Products
    To Avoid ‘Mass Hysteria’, Amazon, Facebook Ban Ads For ‘Viral’ Products

    All of a sudden, people are panic buying virus-related prevention products, such as N-95 respirators and surgical masks, Purell hand sanitizer, and disinfectants, amid the Covid-19 outbreak in the US. Many of these items have seen shortages at big-box retailers and on e-commerce platforms. The remaining supply has been shifted to Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, prepping sites, and or other e-commerce platforms, have seen prices skyrocket in the last several months. 

    Price gouging of virus-related products has become a significant issue since confirmed cases in China began to soar in mid-January. We noted how 3M N-95 masks were becoming short supply at the start of the year. Now prices have jumped nearly 10x in some cases; a box of 20 3M N-95 masks is going for more than $200 on some websites. 

    In the name of price gouging and just overall censorship of the virus, Facebook last Friday said it would block commerce listings and advertisements for respirators and surgical masks.

    “We’re monitoring COVID19 closely and will make necessary updates to our policies if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency,” Facebook Director of Product Management Rob Leathern tweeted. “We’ll start rolling out this change in the days ahead.”

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    “We are temporarily banning advertisements and commerce listings that sell medical face masks,” a Facebook spokesperson said last week. “Our teams are monitoring the COVID19 situation closely and will make necessary updates to our policies if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency.”

    Facebook will also ban ads that imply medical products are in limited supply, as well as make claims about virus “cures” or prevention. The social media website will remove virus-themed groups and pages from its algorithmic recommendations.

    On Friday, Google said it was blocking all ads that were virus-themed products. It said it has so far blocked tens of thousands of ads over the last month and a half. YouTube has also removed the content of virus prevention products. 

    eBay announced last week that N-95 and N-100 masks, sanitizers, and alcohol wipes would be forbidden on the online auction site. 

    Amazon said it’s working on banning sellers that are price-gouging customers. 

    The narrative by big tech companies is that price gouging is evil, and censoring and banning products from platforms are the solutions to protect consumers. But in reality, this is just a ploy to censor the virus and prevent further mass hysteria. The less you know, the less you panic, and the more compliant you will become too big government who tells you: “it’s just the flu bro.” 


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 20:05

  • Scientists Warn About Dangerous "Tipping Point" Where Covid-19 Goes From Mild To Deadly
    Scientists Warn About Dangerous “Tipping Point” Where Covid-19 Goes From Mild To Deadly

    As researchers, doctors and epidemiologists spend more time studying the coronavirus under a microscope, as well as in the 100k+ infections that have yielded reams of useful data, a troubling trend has emerged: researchers have identified a “tipping point” at which the virus goes from dangerous to deadly in extremely susceptible patients.

    According to research, while many patients experience nothing more than a mild cold, one in seven patients develops difficulty breathing and other “severe” complications, while 6% become critically ill and require hospitalization to stabilize their condition, risking death if they can’t receive the highest level of care.

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    Patients in these life-threatening situations typically suffer from respiratory and other vital system failures, according to the report by a team of WHO researchers delivered last month. Sometimes, sufferers can even experience sceptic shock.

    Since roughly 10-15% of mild-to-moderate patients progress to this next severe state, it’s important for hospitals and doctors to understand which patients are at highest risk of a worsening infection so they can factor this into their risk assessments and direct resources and attention accordingly. Because of these 10-15%, 15% to 20% of that group may progress to critically severe infection stage requiring the highest level of attention and care to save a life.

    Patients at highest risk include people at age 60 and older and those with pre-existing conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

    This type of triage should at least be familiar to most doctors since it resembles the infection profile of the seasonal flu, albiet with more patients progressing to the final most critical stage, said Jeffery K. Taubenberger.

    When everything goes well, white blood cells attack the virus and lock the infection down within a few days.

    Infection generally starts in the nose. Once inside the body, the coronavirus invades the epithelial cells that line and protect the respiratory tract, said Taubenberger, who heads the viral pathogenesis and evolution section of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. If it’s contained in the upper airway, it usually results in a less severe disease.

    But if the virus treks down the windpipe to the peripheral branches of the respiratory tree and lung tissue, it can trigger a more severe phase of the disease. That’s due to the pneumonia-causing damage inflicted directly by the virus plus secondary damage caused by the body’s immune response to the infection.

    “Your body is immediately trying to repair the damage in the lung as soon as it’s happening,” Taubenberger said. Various white blood cells that consume pathogens and help heal damaged tissue act as first-responders. “Normally, if this goes well, you can clear up your infection in just a few days.”

    But if this doesn’t happen, if the virus persists, and continues to attack the tissue of the nose and throat, at some point, it will become more difficult for the body to fight off a secondary bacterial infection. Such secondary bacterial infections are particularly dangerous because they can damage the stem cells in the lungs, basically making it impossible for a patient’s lungs to heal.

    Secondary bacterial infections represent an especially pernicious threat because they can kill critical respiratory tract stem cells that enable tissue to rejuvenate. Without them, “you just can’t physically repair your lungs,” Taubenberger said. Damaged lungs can starve vital organs of oxygen, impairing the kidneys, liver, brain and heart.

    “When you get a bad, overwhelming infection, everything starts to fall apart in a cascade,” said David Morens, senior scientific adviser to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “You pass the tipping point where everything is going downhill and, at some point, you can’t get it back.”

    That tipping point probably also occurs earlier in older people, as it does in experiments with older mice, said Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who has studied coronaviruses for 38 years.

    But this isn’t the only way things can go wrong. Even healthy younger adults have succumbed to the virus, including Dr. Li Wenliang, the 34-year-old ophthalmologist who was one of the first to warn about the coronavirus in Wuhan. He died after receiving antibodies, antivirals, antibiotics, oxygen and having his blood pumped through an artificial lung. Scientists have theorized that some people have more of the distinctly shaped protein receptors in their respiratory epithelial cells that the virus targets.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 03/09/2020 – 19:45

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