- Communist China's Silent War Against America
Communist China’s Silent War Against America
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 23:30Authored by Bowen Xiao via The Epoch Times,
Stealthily, surreptitiously, and with sweeping precision, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began a decades-long war against America for world domination by utilizing a military strategy known as “unrestricted warfare” that continues today.
Unbeknownst to most of the population, the CCP has infiltrated almost every major avenue of life in the United States – leaving virtually no industry untouched. While this threat has largely existed undetected, the effects it’s had on the nation, as well as its geopolitical consequences, are far-reaching.
Skirting the traditional, direct military confrontation offensives that have become somewhat outdated in modern times, this unconventional strategy has become central to the communist regime’s approach to warfare.
The strategy is highlighted in the 1999 book “Unrestricted Warfare,” authored by two Chinese air force colonels—Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui—and published by the People’s Liberation Army, the armed forces of the CCP. The book, which has been translated into English, is based on the original army documents.
Beijing uses an array of subversive tactics, including, but not limited to, propaganda warfare, culture warfare, memetic warfare, front operations, political infiltration, technological and telecommunications warfare, legal warfare, economic espionage, education espionage, cyberwarfare, and sanctions warfare.
Exploitation, infiltration, and espionage are all recurring themes. The CCP employs all of them to varying degrees simultaneously in multiple sectors of society in order to undermine or influence the United States—its main impediment to global domination.
While some examples are more obvious, such as China’s long history of intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices with the United States, others that use what it calls “soft power” are harder to detect.
One such avenue is its Party-backed Confucius Institutes (CIs) that infiltrate and operate on American college campuses in order to boost CCP’s image. It also aims to push a foreign policy goal of making the regime not only an economic superpower, but also a cultural one.
CIs have attracted attention from lawmakers, national organizations, and the FBI over allegations that the program undermines academic freedom. The CIs have been accused of promoting Chinese communist propaganda under the pretense of promoting the Chinese language and history. There are thousands of CIs over the world and, by one count, at least 75 in America.
Other examples are more blatant, from a former chair of Harvard University’s chemistry department being recently indicted for making false statements about funding he received from China to a Chinese citizen who was found guilty of economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and conspiracy.
In the latter case, a man identified as 41-year-old Hao Zhang was found to have attempted to steal trade secrets from two U.S. companies “for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China,” according to the Justice Department. Zhang stole information specifically related to the performance of wireless devices.
Economic espionage “is a pervasive threat throughout the United States, particularly to the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, which is the center of innovation and technology,” John F. Bennett, special agent in charge of the San Francisco Division of the FBI, said of the case involving Zhang.
The Thousand Talents Plan, one of the more widely known CCP talent recruitment or “brain gain” programs, encourages theft of intellectual property from U.S. institutions, according to the FBI. By offering competitive salaries, state-of-the-art research facilities, and honorific titles, these programs lure talent from overseas into China, “even if that means stealing proprietary information or violating export controls to do so,” the bureau states.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified in 2018 that the bureau was attempting to view the danger posed by China “as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat on their end.” To counter China’s strategy effectively, Wray said the United States must also employ a “whole-of-society response.”
Walter Lohman, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, said the United States has treated China’s “sensitivities” carefully, yet has received “nothing in return.”
“China’s aggressive behavior over the last 15 years or so has only gotten worse, despite our best efforts,” he told The Epoch Times.
China currently poses the biggest threat to the United States because it is “powerful across the range of indicators, and … is directly threatening so many American interests, like our communication networks, like Taiwan, freedom in Hong Kong, and freedom of the seas,” he said.
The CCP also has aggressively promoted and pushed its telecommunications companies, such as Huawei, and ZTE, as well as Chinese-owned apps like TikTok and Zoom, into the United States and around the world.
Lawmakers and U.S. officials have begun to realize the national security threats these Chinese companies pose. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in June formally designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats, thus banning access to money from the FCC’s $8.3 billion a year Universal Service Fund to buy or modify any equipment or services provided by the suppliers.
One reason behind the decision, as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai notes, is that both companies are closely linked to the CCP and its military apparatus, in that they “are broadly subject to Chinese law obligating them to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services.” Both companies deny this.
Chinese-owned TikTok, which has seen meteoric growth in the United States, also was recently found to be secretly reading users’ clipboard data, although the app now claims that it has fixed the issue. There are similar concerns about Zoom, as researchers found that encryption keys were being transmitted to servers in China.
While the United States is stepping up its efforts to counter threats from Beijing, the communist regime is simultaneously ramping up its own aggressive endeavors through the CCP’s United Front Work Department.
This unit coordinates thousands of groups to carry out foreign political influence operations, suppress dissident movements, gather intelligence, and facilitate the transfer of other countries’ technology to China, according to a June report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Its political influence initiatives target foreign elites, including politicians and business executives, and are often covert in nature, the report said. Overseas Chinese communities are also key targets, with the Party seeking to co-opt and control community groups, business associations, and Chinese-language media.
Alex Joske, author of the report, said that the United Front’s work abroad amounts to an “exportation of the CCP’s political system.” Its effort “undermines social cohesion, exacerbates racial tension, influences politics, harms media integrity, facilitates espionage, and increases unsupervised technology transfer,” the report states.
With these CCP-backed companies, the regime is attempting to exert its influence over the entire globe, not just the United States. Some major programs backed by the regime that also play into its international ambitions are its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its “Made in China 2025″ plan.
The CCP, through the BRI, injected billions of dollars into low-income countries in order to build their infrastructure projects. Since 2013, the initiative has launched more than 2,900 projects valued at $3.87 trillion. The BRI has been called a “debt trap” because of Beijing’s predatory lending practices, which leave countries vulnerable to China’s aggressive influence campaigns.
Over the past two decades, China has become a major global lender, with outstanding debt exceeding $5.5 trillion in 2019—more than 6 percent of global gross domestic product, a report by the Institute of International Finance stated.
And the CCP’s “Made in China 2025″ industrial plan, which was rolled out in 2015, seeks to make the country a global competitor in 10 tech sectors by 2025. In late 2018, Beijing also began “China Standards 2035” to accelerate efforts to become the leader in burgeoning tech sectors such as big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things (IoT).
Meanwhile, a report published in March determined that Beijing was exploiting the global CCP virus pandemic, which first broke out in Wuhan, China, to advance its economic goals and fulfill its wider ambitions.
“Beijing intends to use the global dislocation and downturn to attract foreign investment, to seize strategic market share and resources—especially those that force dependence [on China],” the report by Horizon Advisory, a U.S.-based independent consultancy, states. The group reviewed recent policies and notices announced by Chinese central government agencies, regional governments, and research institutes.
While a growing number of countries are expressing anger and frustration over Beijing’s botched handling of the outbreak, exacerbated by a wide-reaching coverup, backlash is also mounting against its efforts to brand itself as a global leader in combating the pandemic.
Beijing sent a slew of medical experts and supplies such as masks and respirators to countries where they were desperately needed in a bid to improve its image.
But the products it delivered often turned out to be defective, leaving countries no choice but to reject the faulty equipment. The Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, Finland, Britain, and Ireland are just some of the countries that received supplies found to be unusable.
“Authoritative Chinese sources state explicitly that the economic ravages and dislocation that COVID-19 creates give China an opportunity to expand its dominance in global markets and supply chains—both in the real economy and in the virtual domain,” the Horizon Advisory report states. “They also stress that the present crisis will allow Beijing to reverse U.S. efforts to protect its systems, and those of its allies, from China.”
- First Federal Execution In 17 Years Halted On Coronavirus Fears
First Federal Execution In 17 Years Halted On Coronavirus Fears
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 23:00A year ago the Department of Justice announced for the first time in nearly two decades the resumption of capital punishment in federal cases, with Attorney General William Barr announcing the process for the execution of five death-row in mates is set to move forward, marking the first federal executions since 2003.
The first federal execution in 17 years was to take place on Monday of this next week prior to a federal judge in Indiana halting it. 47-year old Daniel Lee is to die by lethal injection for the 1996 slaying of a family — William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.
The only execution chamber in the federal prison system, at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute. Via AP But Chief District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson in an unusual ruling has halted the scheduled execution on coronavirus fears. She cited that the families of the victims are too afraid of traveling during the pandemic, as well as the potential risk to elderly family members at the site of the execution given that COVID-19 has especially ravaged prisons and correctional facilities.
The family of the victims filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to get the execution date pushed back:
Earlene Peterson, the mother of Nancy Mueller and grandmother of 8-year-old Sarah Powell, two of the three brutally murdered in 1996, says the coronavirus poses too much of a travel threat for her to leave her home in Hector to go to Indiana.
Right now, Lee is set to be put to death Monday at the federal prison in Terre Haute, but the lawsuit filed Tuesday could change that.
In it, Peterson’s attorney sites multiple health conditions of different family members that could be lethal if one of them contracts coronavirus while traveling to the execution.
Upon the delay, the Justice Department said it would be appealing Magnus-Stinson’s ruling to the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
1997 file photo Danny Lee, The Courier via AP. Two more executions are scheduled at Terre Haute for next week as it’s the only federal prison to have an active death chamber. The judge’s ruling in the Lee execution does not impact these.
The men awaiting federal death sentences were involved in heinous crimes involving deaths of families and children: “In January 1996, Lee and his accomplice, Chevie Kehoe, burglarized Mueller’s house in Tilly and waited for him and his wife and stepdaughter to come home. Lee and Kehoe used a stun rod to incapacitate the victims before taping plastic bags over their heads to asphyxiate them, authorities said.”
Prior to stopping federal execution cases in 2003, perhaps the more notorious criminal to be put to death was Timothy McVeigh in 2001, for killing 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing, and further recent death row cases awaiting execution include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in 2015 for the Boston Marathon bombing, and white supremacist Dylann Roof in 2017 for the Charleston church shooting.
- Binney & Sullivan: An Open Letter Challenge To Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey On Censorship
Binney & Sullivan: An Open Letter Challenge To Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey On Censorship
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 22:30Authored by Jason Sullivan and Bill Binney,
Open Letter to Jack Dorsey…
The American People and Social Media
“We seek a free flow of information… we are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.”
– John F. Kennedy, February 1962
Dear Mr. Dorsey,
At the September 5, 2018, U.S. Congressional Hearing in which you gave testimony under oath, you stated, in part:
“Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules. We believe strongly in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our rules impartially. We do not shadowban anyone based on political ideology. From a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform.”
What we now know, thanks to multiple media investigations, is that; not only is Twitter engaged in censorship, but that it also openly weights its decisions by subjective terminology like “highest potential for harm” meant to obscure its motive of silencing any opposition to the mainstream narrative of both political “sides.”
At its inception, America was intended to be a free and open society, a land of opportunity where common people could freely express their thoughts and ideas, a place where Americans could practice freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly without fear of persecution. Throughout the history of our great nation, brave men and women have fought and died to protect these God-given inalienable rights. That is why the Founding Fathers wrote protections into the Bill of Rights for the generations to come. Thomas Jefferson insisted on the 1st Amendment, and swore upon an altar of God against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man.
It is the great wisdom and divine vision of our Founding Fathers that is responsible for propelling America’s trajectory to become the greatest nation on earth, both admired by those inspired by its idea and feared by those who oppose the light of truth it represents.
President Harry S. Truman said:
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
Our Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights not to protect popular speech or the popular majority, but to protect the rights of the minority, lest they fall silent and all real social progress cease. By attempting to make polarized views inaccessible, you effectively shut down the discussion of ideas born out of the flaws in the current system, creating a two-sided echo chamber that neither enlightens people nor helps society grow.
It prevents people from engaging in quality discourse over any ideology that subjectively may “offend” people on all sides.
This Orwellian tactic represents the wishes of citizens on either side of the aisle, but perfectly captures the profit-driven motive behind the corporate stance. That no opinion except the popular view of the moment need be allowed. The popular opinion can be shaped by the controlling interests of the corporation that holds the medium hostage. After all, in a world where lines of division are controlled and silenced, new generations of people being immersed in only an ofGicial narrative will have little other recourse for truly free thought.
We understand that social media is not the government and that companies such as Twitter are private entities. Yet at what point does a private body expand beyond using this excuse to shelter themselves from accountability for their provably suspicious behavior, and enter the realm of being a public service used by billions of people the world over?
Twitter is not just a messaging board. After all, it aggregates news, offers content suggestions based on meticulously created algorithms that track a person’s every click. It is designed to create and maintain echo chambers and censor out any offending opinions. This creates a dangerous precedent, especially in terms of abusing its power to shape public opinion along controlling party lines actively.
For example, the very powerful Democratic Congressman, Adam Schiff, chair of the Congressional Intelligence Community, wrote a letter to the top social media platforms, urging them to censor discussions of vaccine injuries, which certainly do occur. The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out over $4 billion for vaccine injuries since its inception in December 1987. Yes, there are those who, in misplaced zeal, offer opinions less than worthy of note. Still, there should never be a point where a multi-billion dollar corporation steps in and removes people’s ability to actively discuss issues like this on either side of the aisle. Healthy discussion, after all, is what leads to progress, spurs forward innovation, and motivates accountability across the board.
President John F. Kennedy said:
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweigh the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.“
By their very nature, social media platforms have become the dominant platform in the exchange of information and ideas. Technology’s inexorable march into the Digital Age has created a connected world, a communications platform without peer or precedent. Whether by design or not, social media has become the largest and most powerful public forum on the planet. As you duly noted in your testimony, Twitter and other platforms have created a true “global public square.”
Why would any American-based platforms intentionally design their rules or weight their “community standards” toward one group of views over another, in direct conflict with the protections of the 1st Amendment of the United States? Any “community standard” practices less than or not equal to the 1st Amendment standards would essentially be unAmerican, wouldn’t it?
In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized (in a unanimous opinion) that social media platforms are the most important platforms for the exchange of information and ideas. That is why so many people, government officials, human rights agencies, and activists are working around the clock to protect “equal and fair” access to social media for all of the people, even if someone’s ideas are unpopular or controversial.
The more profound question then becomes: With evidence mounting to support the fact that censorship not only occurs but often leans toward the moderator’s individual biases or those few interests who control the moderator, at what point do we look at the equation and note the collusion that takes shape? What begins to appear out of the murky water of legalese excuses is a distinct pattern of systematic control exercised by a few interests who can weight and shape the landscape of public opinion with a dangerous amount of unchecked power.
The fact is, that for all the excuses put forward, the lies given to not just the American People, but the citizens of the global community at large, the provability of censorship to a startling degree is not only easy to see, but can be identified with cold sets of data, and be recreated and shown to the masses.
Pursuant to the above, I, Jason Sullivan (aka “The Wizard of Twitter”), along with Bill Binney (former NSA Lead Technical Director and developer of its surveillance metadata program Thin Thread) hereby challenge you, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, that your company systematically and aggressively censor “free speech” on your ubiquitous platform concerning the following three criteria.
1. Twitter shadowbans ( including “deboosting” people and hiding their words to more substantial audiences “based on larger political success of their corporate ideology.
2. Twitter censors religious and medical freedoms that subvert human rights. (while promulgating some alarming content that Gits their broader agenda.)
3. Twitter removes and physically deplatforms voices that challenge its views and ideology while lifting similar content; it deems in line with its own goals.
We are intent on proving these facts beyond a shadow of a doubt and are fully prepared to do so.
Mr. Dorsey, please prove us wrong. Please show to the American people and us that you do not shadowban based on political views; you do not censor religious and health freedom views; and you do not censor voices dissonant with your personal views.
Please provide this evidence to the public within seven days. If you would like to discuss how to do that best, please contact us. We look forward to the evidence of testimony before Congress and the President of the United States. We look forward to your timely response.
Sincerely yours,
Jason Sullivan [aka The Wizard of Twitter]
Bill Binney [former NSA Lead Technical Director]
* * *
Co-signatories:
Lynnette Hardaway & Rochelle Richardson
aka: Diamond & Silk
Terrence K. Williams
Actor / Comedian / Commentator Extraordinaire
Chris Sullivan
Founder of the Outback Steakhouse Restaurant Concept – Now Bloomin’ Brands
Richard Beard, III
Principal at RA Beard Company
Dr. Rodney Howard Browne
Lead Pastor at Revival Ministries International
Dr. Ben Graham
Pastor and President of Graham Family Films
David J. Harris, Jr.
Author of Why I Couldn’t Stay Silent: One Man’s Battle as a Black Conservative
Christina Engelstad & Lyndsey Morris
The Deplorable Choir
Ben & Tina Garrison
American Political Cartoonists
Zach Vorhies
Google Whistleblower
Dr. Tony B. Beizaee
Leadership Council at Republican Jewish Coalition, Special Envoy at America Israel Society
Ty and Charlene Bollinger
Founders of The Truth About Cancer (TTAC)
Kevin Jenkins
Executive Director, Urban Global Health Alliance
Jason Fyke
The ongoing lawsuit against Facebook on anti-competitive grounds in the 9th Circuit Court
Dr. Judy A Mikovits
Ph.D., Author of Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science
Dr. Joseph Mercola
D.O., F.A.C.N., Founder of Mercola.com
Dr. Sherri J Tenpenny
D.O.
Dr. Andrew Jeremy Wakefield
MB, BS
Ann Vandersteel
Host of SteelTruth
Dr. Edward F. Fogarty, III, MD
Adjunct Professor, Radiologist, HBOT Specialist
Past President of the International Hyperbaric Medical Foundation
James O. Grundvig
Author & Investigative Journalist
- Coronavirus: The Under-40s Dilemma
Coronavirus: The Under-40s Dilemma
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 22:00Last week, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid made a striking observation, one which threw all coronavirus comparisons to the Spanish Flu, and the coming second wave of the pandemic, in for a loop.
Specifically, Reid cited a paper that influenced market thinking in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic looked at the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions like social distancing and school closures during the Spanish flu (link here). The paper found that the US cities that implemented these measures tended to have better economic outcomes over the medium term. This offered historical support to the argument that there wasn’t such a big trade-off between economic activity and public health, because you needed to suppress the virus to enable consumers to be more confident and for businesses to operate as normal.
However, a major difference between Spanish flu and Covid-19 was the age distribution of fatalities, as shown in the chart below:
Here is the punchline: for Covid-19, the elderly have been overwhelmingly the worst hit. For the Spanish flu of 1918, the young working-age population were severely affected too. In fact, the death rate from pneumonia and influenza that year among 25-34 year olds in the United States was more than 50% higher than that for 65-74 year olds, “a remarkable difference to Covid-19.”
Now, in a follow up observation from Reid, the DB credit strategist points out another coronavirus peculiarity: the fact that the virus leads to virtually no fatalities of people below 45.
As Reid writes, the UK has been one of the worst-hit countries in the world when it comes to fatalities per head from Covid-19. The country has seen around 60,000 excess deaths relative to the previous 5-year average. But given the scale of these numbers, Reid points out a “remarkable fact” that among those aged under around 40, deaths have been roughly the same as for the previous 5-year baseline (using England and Wales data). This backs up previous observations on how age-discriminant Covid-19 has been.
It’s not just the UK: in Sweden (pop. 10.25m), where there was no lockdown, huge international criticism of its strategy, and one of the highest fatalities per head in the world – only 70 people under 49 years old have died of Covid-19, out of 5,482 total virus deaths (1.3%) so far. For context, average annual deaths in Sweden over the last 5 years for under-49-year-olds have been 3,417.
And yet, while the coronavirus has lead to virtually no excess deaths in younger age cohorts, it is the younger strata of society that are the most impact by the economic shutdowns that have resulted in tens of millions of unemployed Millennials.
Indeed, as the second DB chart below shows, lockdowns will likely lead to 2020 being the worst year for the UK economy for 310 years.
As Reid provocatively puts it, “younger people will be suffering most from the economic impact of Covid-19 for many years to come, we wonder how history will judge the global response.” That said, since the economic crisis resulting from Covid-19 has also unleashed full-blown helicopter money as well as the biggest round of corporate bailouts of insolvent and zombie companies in history, we are confident that the tsunami of global moral hazard – which will leave tens of millions of young workers without a job – will allow central bankers to sleep soundly at night.
Reid’s conclusion: “the debate is more nuanced than a 250-word email can capture (e.g. the potential long-term implications of Covid-19 on individual health, the need to protect healthcare systems, etc.), but it’s a good discussion to have.”
Alas, the die has already been cast and it is now far too late.
- Matt Taibbi: "It Was Like Watching Bruce Springsteen And Dionne Warwick Be Pelted With Dogshit For Singing We Are the World"
Matt Taibbi: “It Was Like Watching Bruce Springsteen And Dionne Warwick Be Pelted With Dogshit For Singing We Are the World”
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 21:45Authored by Matt Taibbi
As excerpted from “If it’s Not “Cancel Culture,” What Kind of Culture is it?“
Any attempt to build bridges between the two mindsets falls apart, often spectacularly, as we saw this week in an online fight over free speech that could not possibly have been more comic in its unraveling.
A group of high-profile writers and thinkers, including Pinker, Noam Chomsky, Wynton Marsalis, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem and Anne Appelbaum, signed a letter in Harper’s calling for an end to callouts and cancelations.
“We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom,” the authors wrote, adding, “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”
This Hallmark-card-level inoffensive sentiment naturally inspired peals of outrage across the Internet, mainly directed at a handful of signatories deemed hypocrites for having called for the firings of various persons before.
Then a few signatories withdrew their names when they found out that they would be sharing space on the letterhead with people they disliked.
“I thought I was endorsing a well meaning, if vague, message against internet shaming. I did know Chomsky, Steinem, and Atwood were in, and I thought, good company,” tweeted Jennifer Finney Boylan, adding, “The consequences are mine to bear. I am so sorry.”
Translation: I had no idea my group statement against intellectual monoculture would be signed by people with different views!
In the predictable next development – no dialogue between American intellectuals is complete these days without someone complaining to the boss – Vox writer Emily VanDerWerff declared herself literally threatened by co-worker Matt Yglesias’s decision to sign the statement. The public as well as Vox editors were told:
The letter, signed as it is by several prominent anti-trans voices and containing as many dog whistles towards anti-trans positions as it does, ideally would not have been signed by anybody at Vox… His signature on the letter makes me feel less safe.
Naturally, this declaration impelled Vox co-founder Ezra Klein to take VanDerWerff’s side and publicly denounce the Harper’s letter as a status-defending con.
“A lot of debates that sell themselves as being about free speech are actually about power,” tweeted Klein, clearly referencing his old pal Yglesias. “And there’s a lot of power in being able to claim, and hold, the mantle of free speech defender.”
This Marxian denunciation of the defense of free speech as cynical capitalist ruse was brought to you by the same Ezra Klein who once worked with Yglesias to help Vox raise $300 million. This was just one of many weirdly petty storylines. Writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who organized the letter, found himself described as a “mixed race man heavily invested in respectability politics,” once he defended the letter, one of many transparent insults directed toward the letter’s nonwhite signatories by ostensible antiracist voices.
The whole episode was nuts. It was like watching Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick be pelted with dogshit for trying to sing We Are the World.
This being America in the Trump era, where the only art form to enjoy wide acceptance is the verbose monograph written in condemnation of the obvious, the Harper’s fiasco inspired multiple entries in the vast literature decrying the rumored existence of “cancel culture.” The two most common themes of such essays are a) the illiberal left is a Trumpian myth, and b) if the illiberal left does exist, it’s a good thing because all of those people they’re smearing/getting fired deserved it.
In this conception there’s nothing to worry about when a Dean of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell is dismissed for writing “Black Lives Matter, but also, everyone’s life matters” in an email, or when an Indiana University Medical School professor has to apologize for asking students how they would treat a patient who says ‘I can’t breathe!’ in a clinical setting, or when someone is fired for retweeting a study suggesting nonviolent protest is effective. The people affected are always eventually judged to be “bad,” or to have promoted “bad research,” or guilty of making “bad arguments,” etc.
In this case, Current Affairs hastened to remind us that the people signing the Harper’s letter were many varieties of bad! They included Questioners of Politically Correct Culture like “Pinker, Jesse Singal, Zaid Jilani, John McWhorter, Nicholas A. Christakis, Caitlin Flanagan, Jonathan Haidt, and Bari Weiss,” as well as “chess champion and proponent of the bizarre conspiracy theory that the Middle Ages did not happen, Garry Kasparov,” and “right wing blowhards known for being wrong about everything” in David Frum and Francis Fukuyama, as well as – this is my favorite line – “problematic novelists Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, and J.K. Rowling.”
Where on the irony-o-meter does one rate an essay that decries the “right-wing myth” of cancel culture by mass-denouncing a gymnasium full of intellectuals as problematic?
Continued reading on Matt Taibbi’s Substack
- LA Teachers Union Says Schools Can't Reopen Unless Charter Schools Get Shut-Down, Police Defunded
LA Teachers Union Says Schools Can’t Reopen Unless Charter Schools Get Shut-Down, Police Defunded
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 21:30Authored by Daniel Payne via JustTheNews.com,
A major teachers union is claiming that the re-opening of schools in its district cannot occur without several substantial policy provisions in place, including a “moratorium” on charter schools and the defunding of local police.
United Teachers Los Angeles, a 35,000-strong union in the Los Angeles Unified School District, made those demands in a policy paper it released this week. The organization called on local authorities to “keep school campuses closed when the semester begins on Aug. 18.”
The union outlined numerous major provisions it says will be necessary to reopen schools again, including sequestering students in small groups throughout the school day, providing students with masks and other forms of protective equipment, and re-designing school layouts in order to facilitate “social distancing.”
Yet the union goes even farther than those requests, calling for “local support” in the form of defunded police departments and the shuttering of charter schools.
Police violence “is a leading cause of death and trauma for Black people, and is a serious public health and moral issue,” the union writes. The document calls on authorities to “shift the astronomical amount of money devoted to policing, to education and other essential needs such as housing and public health.”
“Privately operated, publicly funded charter schools,” meanwhile, “drain resources from district schools,” the union states. The practice of “colocating” charter schools in existing structures, it continues, “adds students to campuses when we need to reduce the number of students to allow for physical distancing.”
The union also demands the implementation of a federal Medicare-for-All program, several new state-level taxes on wealthy people, and a “federal bailout” of the school district.
“The benefits to restarting physical schools must outweigh the risks, especially for our most vulnerable students and school communities,” the document continues.
“As it stands, the only people guaranteed to benefit from the premature physical reopening of schools amidst a rapidly accelerating pandemic are billionaires and the politicians they’ve purchased,” it adds.
- China Says Samples Of Imported Salmon Tested Positive For COVID-19
China Says Samples Of Imported Salmon Tested Positive For COVID-19
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 21:00We’ve been paying close attention to Chinese propaganda since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, and six months in now, we must give the CCP credit where credit is due: thanks to the tightly controlled media atmosphere inside the country, the CCP’s propaganda machine is mercilessly effective. With the full weight of the state-controlled press behind them, the CCP can manufacture false narratives out of thin air, subtly sowing doubts in the minds of the Chinese people that maybe SARS-CoV-2 didn’t originate in China.
Yesterday, we noted a report in the Global Times (one of many English-language outlets controlled by the CCP) relaying a warning from China’s embassy in Astana about a deadly pneumonia potentially even more lethal than the coronavirus. More than 1,500 had apparently been confirmed already, and it’s feared that more remain unconfirmed – at least, according to the report. Given the sourcing – the story cited China’s embassy in the country as its primary source, not the Kazakh public health officials who have been overseeing the coronavirus outbreak.
Immediately, it was clear to us the report was planted as a nudge to the Chinese people to sow doubts about China’s role in unleashing the outbreak. Unsurprisingly, the WHO treated the report with deference, saying that while they believed most of these pneumonia cases were caused by SARS-CoV-2, they would look into it nonetheless.
Of course, every narrative becomes easier to swallow when the people want to believe it. But that’s perhaps besides the point.
Much like the Big Apple, China’s propaganda machine never sleeps. And on Saturday, Bloomberg signal-boosted local reports claiming that imported shrimp from Ecuador had been found to be carrying traces of the virus which were found in the packaging (apparently, no traces were detected in the shrimp itself).
China said samples of imported shrimp tested positive for the coronavirus, raising questions again over whether the pathogen can spread through food or frozen products.
The virus tested positive on both the inside and outside of the shrimp packaging, said China’s General Administration of Customs. The samples were from three Ecuadorian plants, and imports from those processors will be halted, it said. A leading Ecuadorian shrimp exporter disputed the findings.
“The test result doesn’t mean the virus is contagious, but reflects the loopholes in companies’ food safety regulations,” said Bi Kexin, director of the food import and export safety bureau in the customs department. “Customs will further strengthen control of the origins of imported cold-chain food.”
This isn’t the first time the CCP has tried to portray imported seafood as a threat. A few weeks ago, when the first post-lockdown cluster was found in Beijing and traced to a wholesale market in the southwestern parts of the city, officials there said traces of salmon found on a cutting board had tested positive. This triggered a nationwide boycott that led to thousands of tons of imported salmon being thrown in the trash.
Though traces of the virus were apparently found on the packaging, whether those traces may have actually been infectious isn’t clear.
At the time, China began mass testing cold food imports at ports, and blocked shipments of meat from plants abroad that reported infections.
But as one Rabobank analyst confirmed to BBG, evidence suggests that it’s extremely unlikely for the virus to be transmitted through food, according to Gorjan Nikolik, Rabobank’s director of seafood .
“It’s a typical food scare” he said. “I expect them to be very short-lived.”
By testing seafood so aggressively, this setup effectively guarantees the CCP a steady stream of legitimate ‘positive’ tests. These reports will induce panic, and hurt local businesses forced to take a loss on their wears, but the CCP doesn’t care. The propaganda value is clearly too great.
Understandably, the FDA felt compelled to issue a statement on the issue, and in that statement the agency asserted that there is no evidence that tainted food packaging can transmit the virus (not even to workers at the warehouses that handle the packaging).
The Ecuadorian exporter, who agreed to close down and do a cleaning, helped put into context how minor the sample actually was.
Ecuadorian shrimp exporter Santa Priscila questioned the findings and lamented the blow to the industry’s reputation, saying Chinese officials had refused to provide information on the testing in recent weeks.
“They found one positive non-contagious test ‘inside the wall of the container’ as a result of 227,934 samples taken from the containers, that is 0.0000043%,” Santa Priscila President and founder Santiago Salem said in a statement.
So anybody shipping seafood to markets in China, beware: If there’s even a speak of virus RNA on the packaging or in the food that you ship, the CCP will find it, and exploit it for political gain. And if you lose money and your business goes under? Well, my friend, that’s just a little something called “counterparty risk”.
- When Will The Madness End?
When Will The Madness End?
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 20:30Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic research,
I was sitting in the green room in a Manhattan television studio on the day that the storm seemed to hit. It was Thursday, March 12, 2020, and I was waiting anxiously for a TV appearance, hoping that the trains wouldn’t shut down before I could leave the city. The trains never did shut but half of everything else did.
On this day, everyone knew what was coming. There was disease panic in the air, fomented mostly by the media and political figures. A month earlier, the idea of lockdown was unthinkable, but now it seemed like it could happen, at any moment.
A thin, wise-looking bearded man with Freud-style glasses sat down across from me, having just left the studio. He was there to catch his breath following his interview but he looked deeply troubled.
“There is fear in the air,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Madness is all around us. The public is adopting a personality disorder I’ve been treating my whole career.”
“What is it that you do?” I asked.
“I’m a practicing psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders, paranoid delusions, and irrational fear. I’ve been treating this in individuals as a specialist. It’s hard enough to contain these problems in normal times. What’s happening now is a spread of this serious medical condition to the whole population. It can happen with anything but here we see a primal fear of disease turning into mass panic. It seems almost deliberate. It is tragic. Once this starts, it could take years to repair the psychological damage.”
I sat there a bit stunned, partially because speaking in such apocalyptic terms was new in those days, and because of the certitude of his opinion. Underlying his brief comments were a presumption that there was nothing particularly unusual about this virus. We’ve evolved with them, and learned to treat them with calm and professionalism. What distinguished the current moment, he was suggesting, was not the virus but the unleashing of a kind of public madness.
I was an early skeptic of the we-are-all-going-to-die narrative. But even I was unsure if he was correct that the real problem was not physical but mental. In those days, even I was cautious about shaking hands and carrying around sanitizer. I learned later, of course, that plenty of medical professionals had been trying to calm people down for weeks, urging the normal functioning of society rather than panic. It took weeks however even for me to realize that he was right: the main threat society faced was a psychological condition.
I should have immediately turned to a book that captivated me in high school. It is Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841). I liked reading it because, while it highlighted human folly, it also seemed to indicate that we as a civilization are over that period in history.
It allowed me to laugh at how ridiculous people were in the past, with sudden panics over long hair and beards, jewelry, witches, the devil, prophecies and sorcery, disease and cures, land speculation, tulips, just about anything. In a surprising number of cases he details, disease plays a role, usually as evidence of a malicious force operating in the world. Once fear reaches a certain threshold, normalcy, rationality, morality, and decency fade and are replaced by shocking stupidity and cruelty.
He writes:
In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity…. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
After 2005 when the Internet developed into a serious repository for human knowledge, and it became accessible via smartphones and near-universal access, I too was tempted by the idea that we would enter into a new age of enlightenment in which mass frenzies would be quickly stopped by dawning wisdom.
You can see evidence of my naivete with my April 5, 2020 article: With Knowledge Comes Calm, Rationality, and, Possibly, Openness. My thought then was that the evidence of the extremely discriminatory impact of the virus on plus-70 people with underlying conditions would cause a sudden realization that this virus was behaving like a normal virus. We were not all going to die. We would use rationality and reopen. I recall writing that with a sense of confidence that the media would report the new study and the panic would end.
I was preposterously wrong, along with my four-month-old feeling that all of this stuff would stop on Monday. The psychiatrist I met in New York was correct: the drug of fear had already invaded the public mind. Once there, it takes a very long time to recover. This is made far worse by politics, which has only fed the beast of fear. This is the most politicized disease in history, and doing so has done nothing to help manage it and much to make it all vastly worse.
We’ve learned throughout this ordeal that despite our technology, our knowledge, our history of building prosperity and peace, we are no smarter than our ancestors and, by some measures, not as smart as our parents and grandparents. The experience with COVID has caused a mass reversion to the superstitions and panics that sporadically defined the human experience of ages past.
Eventually, people have and do come to their senses, but it is as Mackay said: people “go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
- Trump Admin Tells Minnesota Governor To Get Bent Over $16 Million Aid Request Following Riots
Trump Admin Tells Minnesota Governor To Get Bent Over $16 Million Aid Request Following Riots
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 20:00The Trump administration has denied a request by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) for $16 million in federal aid to help rebuild widespread damage in Minneapolis caused by rioters protesting the death of George Floyd.
Late Friday, Walz spokesman Teddy Tschann confirmed that the July 2 federal aid request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was denied.
“The Governor is disappointed that the federal government declined his request for financial support,” said Tschann in a statement. “As we navigate one of the most difficult periods in our state’s history, we look for support from our federal government to help us through.”
Over 1,500 buildings were damaged by fires, looting and vandalism following Floyd’s death on May 25 while in police custody. According to Walz, over $500 million in damages ensued.
Many small businesses and grocery stores, pharmacies and post offices were damaged during the unrest. In his letter to FEMA, Walz said what happened in the Twin Cities after Floyd’s death was the second most destructive incident of civil unrest in U.S. history, after the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.
The Walz administration conducted a preliminary damage assessment that found nearly $16 million of eligible damages related to fires. The federal funds would have been used to reimburse local governments for repairs and debris removal. –Star Tribune
On Thursday, Republican Rep. Tim Emmer (MN) sent a letter to President Trump asking for a “thorough and concurrent review” of how state officials handled the civil unrest so that “every governor, mayor and local official can learn from our experiences.”
“If the federal government is expected to assist in the clean-up of these unfortunate weeks, it has an obligation to every American — prior to the release of funding — to fully understand the events which allowed for this level of destruction to occur and ensure it never happens again,” wrote Emmer.
“Current damage estimates are now five times their original projections, but the extent of the destruction cannot be calculated solely in dollars and cents,” continues Emmer’s letter. “Thousands of livelihoods have been permanently disrupted, future economic development plans have been derailed as businesses reconsider investing in and around the Twin Cities, and numerous public lifelines for the community have been cut leaving Minnesotans searching for alternative means of care for their families.
“To date there have been no federal analysis of the actions that were – or were not – taken by local and state officials to prevent one of the most destructive episodes of civil unrest in our nation’s history.“
- Why The Roger Stone Commutation Is Not As Controversial As The Outrage Mob Thinks
Why The Roger Stone Commutation Is Not As Controversial As The Outrage Mob Thinks
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 19:30Authored by Jonathan Turley, op-ed via The Hill,
Washington was sent into vapors of shock and disgust with news of the commutation of Roger Stone. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin declared it to be “the most corrupt and cronyistic act in all of recent history.” Despite my disagreement with the commutation, that claim is almost quaint. The sordid history of pardons makes it look positively chaste in comparison. Many presidents have found the power of pardons to be an irresistible temptation when it involves family, friends, and political allies.
I have maintained that Stone deserved another trial but not a pardon. As Attorney General William Barr has said, this was a “righteous prosecution” and Stone was correctly convicted and correctly sentenced to 40 months in prison.
President Trump did not give his confidant a pardon but rather a commutation, so Stone is still a convicted felon. However, Trump should have left this decision to his attorney general. In addition to Stone being a friend and political ally, Trump was implicated in those allegations against Stone. While there was never any evidence linking Trump to the leaking of hacked emails, he has an obvious conflict of interest in the case.
The White House issued a statement that Stone is “a victim of the Russia hoax.” The fact is that Stone is a victim of himself. Years of what he called his “performance art” finally caught up with him when he realized federal prosecutors who were not amused by his antics. Stone defines himself as an “agent provocateur.” He crossed the line when he called witnesses to influence their testimony and gave false answers to investigators.
But criticism of this commutation immediately seemed to be decoupled from any foundation in history or in the Constitution.
Indeed, Toobin also declared, “This is simply not done by American presidents. They do not pardon or commute sentences of people who are close to them or about to go to prison. It just does not happen until this president.”
In reality, the commutation of Stone barely stands out in the old gallery of White House pardons, which are the most consistently and openly abused power in the Constitution. This authority under Article Two is stated in absolute terms, and some presidents have wielded it with absolute abandon.
Thomas Jefferson pardoned Erick Bollman for violations of the Alien and Sedition Act in the hope that he would testify against rival Aaron Burr for treason. Andrew Jackson stopped the execution of George Wilson in favor of a prison sentence, despite the long record Wilson had as a train robber, after powerful friends intervened with Jackson. Wilson surprised everyone by opting to be hanged anyway. However, Wilson could not hold a candle to Ignazio Lupo, one of the most lethal mob hitmen who was needed back in New York during a mafia war. With the bootlegging business hanging in the balance, Warren Harding, who along with his attorney general, Harry Daugherty, was repeatedly accused of selling pardons, decided to pardon Lupo on the condition that he be a “law abiding” free citizen.
Franklin Roosevelt also pardoned political allies, including Conrad Mann, who was a close associate of Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast. Pendergast made a fortune off illegal alcohol, gambling, and graft, and helped send Harry Truman into office. Truman also misused this power, including pardoning the extremely corrupt George Caldwell, who was a state official who skimmed massive amounts of money off government projects, like a building fund for Louisiana State University.
Richard Nixon was both giver and receiver of controversial pardons. He pardoned Jimmy Hoffa after the Teamsters Union leader had pledged to support his reelection bid. Nixon himself was later pardoned by Gerald Ford, an act many of us view as a mistake. To his credit, Ronald Reagan declined to pardon the Iran Contra affair figures, but his vice president, George Bush, did so after becoming president. Despite his own alleged involvement in that scandal, Bush still pardoned those other Iran Contra figures, such as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
Bill Clinton committed some of the worst abuses of this power, including pardons for his brother Roger Clinton and his friend and business partner Susan McDougal. He also pardoned the fugitive financier Marc Rich, who evaded justice by fleeing abroad. Entirely unrepentant, Rich was a major Democratic donor, and Clinton had wiped away his convictions for fraud, tax evasion, racketeering, and illegal dealings with Iran.
Unlike many of these cases, there were legitimate questions raised about the Stone case. The biggest issue was that the foreperson of the trial jury was also actually a Democratic activist and an outspoken critic of Trump and his associates who even wrote publicly about the Stone case. Despite multiple opportunities to do so, she never disclosed her prior statements and actions that would have demonstrated such bias. Judge Amy Berman Jackson shrugged off all that, however, and refused to grant Stone a new trial, denying him the most basic protection in our system.
Moreover, I think both the court and the Justice Department were wrong to push for Stone going to prison at this time, because he meets all of the criteria for an inmate at high risk for exposure to the coronavirus. None of that, however, justifies Trump becoming involved in a commutation, when many of the issues could have been addressed in a legal appeal.
There is lots to criticize in this move without pretending it was a pristine power besmirched by a rogue president. Indeed, Trump should have left the decision to a successor or, at a minimum, to the attorney general. But compared to the other presidents, this commutation is not even a distant contender for “the most corrupt and cronyistic act” of clemency.
- Phoenix Mayor Lied About Morgues Bringing In 'Refrigerator Trucks' To Store Overflow COVID Bodies
Phoenix Mayor Lied About Morgues Bringing In ‘Refrigerator Trucks’ To Store Overflow COVID Bodies
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 19:26As the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Maricopa County climbed to new highs late this week, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego appeared on MSNBC Friday morning for an interview with Chuck Todd and Katy Tur to discuss the situation in the state, which has moved to close bars, and rollback other reopening measures to combat the outbreak.
During the interview, Gallego claimed that the county’s public health agency had just put in an order for refrigerated trucks because they were running out of space in the morgue.
“Maricopa County, which is our county public health agency, just announced that they’re going to be getting refrigerated trucks because the Abrazo health care system has run out of morgue beds,” Gallego said.
Hours later, as the mayor’s comments started proliferating through the media, representatives for the hospital system called and complained that the mayor’s comment wasn’t true, despite the fact that she made the claim – seemingly with a high degree of certainty – on a popular cable new show.
Spokesman Keith Jones told azcentral.com that Abrazo hospitals have “adequate morgue space.”
Here’s the story: Phoenix and the rest of the state have been asked to implement their emergency plans to prepare for possible COVID-19 overloads.
Part of the plan, Jones said, was to proactively make sure there would be enough morgue space. So the hospital system ordered refrigerated storage weeks ago, but they have yet to be deployed.
“At this point, it is not needed,” Jones said.
Of course, it’s not difficult to imagine why Gallego made such a specious – and, some might argue, alarmist – claim:
Democrats in the state believe they need to discredit Gov Doug Ducey’s COVID-19 response if they want to succeed in flipping John McCain’s old Senate seat, currently occupied by Republican Senator Martha McSally, on Nov. 3.
The special election is being held to find a permanent successor to the former presidential candidate and longtime Republican Senator.
For some reason, we couldn’t find the video of the interview on YouTube.
Update – we found it on Twitter…
Phoenix Mayor Gallego says Maricopa Co. has requested refrigerated trucks because one health system in the region has run out of morgue beds. pic.twitter.com/uCeHfzjjLk
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 10, 2020
- Russian Fighter Jets Intercept US Spy Plane Over Sea Of Japan
Russian Fighter Jets Intercept US Spy Plane Over Sea Of Japan
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 19:00Russia’s defense ministry (MoD) announced that on Saturday its Su-35 and MiG-31 fighter jets intercepted a US spy plain over the Sea of Japan.
“On 11 July, the Russian airspace surveillance identified an air target over the neutral waters of the Sea of Japan [East Sea], flying in the direction of the state border of the Russian Federation,” the MoD statement said.
Sukhoi Su-35 fighter, file image. “On July 11, the Russian airspace monitoring system over the neutral waters of the Sea of Japan discovered an air target flying towards the state borders of the Russian Federation, and Russian fighters escorted the American reconnaissance plane at a safe distance, and the Russian fighters returned to the airport after the American plane had rotated and moved away from the Russian border,” the statement continued.
The Russian statements identified the American aircraft as an Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance jet.
Over the past two months there’s been dozens of intercept incidents between the rival superpowers, but typically not in this location.
Most close encounters have taken place off Alaska’s coast, as well as over the Black and Baltic Seas, as well as the Mediterranean near Syria.
Last month there was a rare similar intercept incident over the remote Sea of Okhotsk just off the Russian far east.
Russian media detailed of this latest Sea of Japan incident: “Russian fighter jets escorted the reconnaissance aircraft at a safe distance and returned to the home base after the US aircraft flew away from the Russian border.”
The intercepts have been part of a developing tit-for-tat spate of intercepts between the US and Russian militaries over international waters and airspace.
- The Delusion Of A Seamless Reopening Is Being Obliterated
The Delusion Of A Seamless Reopening Is Being Obliterated
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 18:30Authored by Brandon Smith via Birch Gold Group,
During the first wave of pandemic lockdowns, America became a rather surreal place. The initial shock that I witnessed in average people in my area was disturbing. Half the businesses in the region closed and a third of the grocery store shelves were empty. The look in people’s faces was one of bewilderment and fear; their eyes were like saucers, no one was staring into their cell phones as they usually do, and people huddled over their shopping carts like wild dogs protecting a carcass.
Luckily, this tension has subsided, but only because the majority of Americans have been assuming for the past couple months that the pandemic was going to fade away in the summer and that the “reopening” was permanent. Sadly, this is a delusion that is going to bite people in the ass in the next month or two.
In “The Economic Reopening Is A Fake-Out”, published at the end of May, I stated:
“The restrictions will continue in major US population centers while rural areas have mostly opened with much fanfare. The end result of this will be a flood of city dwellers into rural towns looking for relief from more strict lockdown conditions. In about a month, we should expect new viral clusters in places where there was limited transmission. I suggest that before the 4th of July holiday, state governments and the Federal government will be talking about new lockdowns, using the predictable infection spike as an excuse.”
I also noted:
Certainly, it appears that most Americans hate the lockdowns. But will they be fooled by the “reopening” into complacency for the next several weeks while the government gets ready to hit them with the next round of restrictions? Will they be so caught off guard they won’t know how to react? Imagine the economic devastation of just one more nationwide lockdown event? It will be carnage, and a lot of hope within the population will be lost.
In “Pandemic And Economic Collapse: The Next 60 Days”, published in April, I predicted:
The extent of the crisis will become much more clear in the next two months to the majority. The result will be civil unrest in the summer, likely followed by extreme poverty levels in the winter. No measure of “reopening” is going to do much to stop the avalanche that has already been started.
My position at the time, on secondary infection spikes in the summer as well as renewed lockdown restrictions, appears to have proven correct. Currently, daily reported infections in the U.S. are at a record 50,000 per day or more and cases are rising in 40 out of 50 states. Many of the new infection clusters are in more rural areas and states that a lot of people thought had dodged the initial wave, including California. There has been a massive rush of home buyers moving to rural and suburban America away from the cities. The great migration has begun.
Subsequently, public anxiety is rising yet again. Protests such as those in Michigan over the lockdowns were overwhelmingly peaceful, yet liberty movement activists were demonized and accused of “inciting violence” and “spreading the virus”. Some groups with left-leaning political agendas used the death of George Floyd to create civil unrest. The mainstream media mostly lavished these groups with praise and refused to acknowledge that they might be spreading the virus.
The double standard is clear, but this is just the beginning.
As I have argued for the past few months, the REAL public crisis will strike when the secondary lockdowns are enforced, either by state governments or the federal government. Make no mistake, these orders are coming. We can already see restriction in some states being implemented, though they refuse yet to call the situation a “lockdown”.
California has recently added 24 counties to its “Covid watchlist”, and most of these counties have added new restrictions, including many non-essential businesses being ordered to remain closed.
The governor of Arizona announced statewide restrictions including business shutdowns, suggesting there may be a reopening at the end of July. If the previous lockdown is any indication, this means the next reopening will probably not happen until early September.
Similar restrictions have been announced in Texas, Florida, Georgia, etc. This is essentially a new shutdown that has not yet been officially labeled a “shutdown”.
So what does this mean for the U.S. economy going forward?
Well, the first lockdowns caused an explosion in unemployment, with 40 million jobs lost on top of around 11 million existing jobless. Beyond that, you can add the 95 million people without work that are no longer counted on the rolls by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only a portion of these jobs were regained when the reopening occurred. According to Shadowstats.com, the real unemployment rate including U-6 measurements is 31% – around the same level as it was during the Great Depression.
So far in 2020 there have been 4,300 major retail store closings, added onto the thousands of businesses already hit in 2019 in what many are calling “The Retail Apocalypse”. Small business closings are harder to gauge at this time, but according to Yelp, over 41% of their listed participants are announcing they are closing for good.
This outcome was easy to predict when it became clear that only 13% to 18% of businesses applying for the small business bailout loans received aid, and half of those businesses were actually large corporations
What happens next? The companies that did survive the first phase lockdowns are now going to get hit again, hard. I expect another 50% of small businesses to either close permanently or announce bankruptcy over this summer and fall. This means a second huge surge in job losses in the service sector.
It’s important to remember that the U.S. economy is 70% service based, and around 50% of total jobs are provided by small businesses. The lockdowns hit both these areas of our system mercilessly. And, with most of the aid from the government bailouts being diverted to major corporations, it’s as if someone was trying to deliberately crush the small business pillar of support for our economy. If you were attempting to drag the U.S. into an economic collapse, the Covid lockdowns are a perfect cover to make this happen.
Another economic threat is the slowdown in the supply chain. There will be renewed shortages in many goods. I have received numerous emails from readers who work in manufacturing, repair and acquisitions of vital parts for major companies who have told me that simple components, such as electronic and industrial parts that are required for factories to produce goods and repair goods, are almost gone. Meaning they are not being produced overseas in places like China, either due to the pandemic or geopolitical conflict. They tell me there is a maximum of two months before these components are completely gone.
The greater danger, however, is the higher likelihood of civil unrest. I’ve heard many people suggest that Americans will “never” put up with another round of shutdowns. I think it depends on the state you live in. If you live in places like California, Illinois, New York, or even Florida, the majority of people are going to conform to lockdowns even in the face of financial calamity. Interior states with more conservatives are not as certain. Regardless, I expect at least half the country to be shut down in the next few weeks, and those places that don’t shut down will be accused of “selfishly endangering others”.
As I have said many times since this crisis began, it does not matter how dangerous or deadly a virus is; shutting down the economy is assured destruction and is not an acceptable response.
Of course, certain special interest groups benefit greatly from the increased fear and chaos that economic instability brings. Right now, states like Georgia are pushing to stage the national guard to quell unrest, and I think this will spread to many places in the U.S. over the summer. They know what is coming, and they are worried about people hitting the wall of poverty that is ahead and reacting angrily.
As the globalist Imperial College of London published in March, the plan is for lockdowns to continue on and off for the next 18 months or more. This is not going away, and after the next wave of lockdowns, most Americans are finally going to realize it.
Rather than promoting localized production, independent economies and self-sufficiency, the establishment is going to suggest martial law and medical tyranny as the solution to the pandemic problem. In other words, they will demand total control over the population and the erasure of constitutional liberties in the name of “the greater good”.
These are the same people that downplayed the pandemic at the beginning of the year and refused to stop travel from China until it was too late. They are also the same people (including Dr. Anthony Fauci) who gave the Chinese millions of dollars to play around with the coronavirus at the Level 4 lab in Wuhan, which is the likely source of the current outbreak. I’m not sure why ANYONE would want to give more power to the people that caused the crisis in the first place.
Three factors are working hand-in-hand to undermine U.S. stability and create a rationale for totalitarian controls including the economic crash, civil unrest and the pandemic itself. Understand that preparations to protect yourself and your family must be finalized NOW. There will not be even a minor recovery after the next shutdown.
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- Testing, Tracing, Treating – How Asia's Biggest Slum Is Beating The Coronavirus
Testing, Tracing, Treating – How Asia’s Biggest Slum Is Beating The Coronavirus
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 18:00As the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India passes 800k, pushing India past Russia and into third place on the ranking of most global cases…
…the country’s leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been hard-pressed to come up with a solution, particularly after an economy-crippling shutdown.
Earlier this month, local officials in Mumbai and New Delhi, the country’s two hardest-hit areas, launched an effort to perform a ‘COVID-19 audit’ on the city’s inhabitants in an ambitious testing program that would ideally test everyone in the two cities.
Now, local media are reporting that the WHO has praised an effort to contain an outbreak in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum, said to be the largest slum in all of Asia, and also one of the densest.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the WHO’s press conference in Geneva on Friday that the situation in Dharavi is an example of how even some of the most intense outbreaks can be brought under control with a proactive strategy.
“And some of these examples are Italy, Spain and South Korea, and even in Dharavi – a densely packed area in the megacity of Mumbai,” he had said.
According to local officials, the strategy they used to successfully start suppressing the outbreak relied on proactive testing first and foremost, along with the support of medical professionals and other medical resources focused on the area aside from the tests and the people needed to administer them.
The neighborhood, once deemed a global COVID-19 hotspot, has managed to flatten its curve.
One of the top hospital officials who participated in the effort said that the linchpin of the strategy was going out into the community and proactively testing individuals – especially the most vulnerable – instead of waiting for patients to come to get tested at a facility.
“Proactive screening helped in early detection, timely treatment and recovery,” he said.
When positive cases were found, officials diligently guided the subject to care (if they needed it) or quarantine, then made sure to trace cases back to the point of infection while keeping confirmed patients from spreading it to others.
Across Dharavi, 14,000 people were reportedly tested and 13,000, were placed in institutional quarantine with medical facilities and community kitchen for free,” the senior official said. That’s across a slum that measures 2.5 square kilometers, with a population density of 2,27,136 people per square kilometer.
Soon, officials noted progress in the data. In April, the doubling rate was 18 days. It was gradually improved to 43 days in May and slowed down to 108 and 430 days in June and July respectively.
As many as 2,359 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in Dharavi so far, of which 1,952 patients have recovered from the deadly infection, while there are only 166 active cases at present. However, achieving this monumental feat was not easy for the local authorities, who had to overcome their fair share of challenges.
“At least 80% of Dharavi’s population depends on 450 community toilets and the administration had to sanitize and disinfect these toilets several times a day,” Dighavkar said.
[…]
“Our approach to tackle the virus was focused on four Ts – tracing, tracking, testing and treating,” he said.
Social distancing was next to impossible in Dharavi, where families of eight to 10 people live in 10×10 huts, and travel requires walking through narrow lanes in between the tenement houses.
Doctors and private clinics, as part of proactive screening and fever camps, covered as many as 47,500 houses, while 14,970 people were screened in mobile vans, the official said.
Apart from this, special care was taken for the elderly residents and 8,246 senior citizens were surveyed, he said.
Manpower was a major issue for organizing fever camps and proactive screening in high-risk zones.
“We mobilised all private practitioners. At least 24 private doctors came forward and the civic body provided them with PPE kits, thermal scanners, pulse oxymetres, masks, gloves, and started door-to-door screening in high risk zones and all suspects were identified,” he said.
City officials also cleared schools and other buildings to transform them into makeshift hospitals and quarantine units. In just 2 weeks, a 200-bed hospital was devised.
Like the US, India saw a surge in cases after exiting a lengthy lockdown. The lockdown imposed by the Indian government was by all accounts far more strict than what most Americans experienced. Still, the virus has made a comeback, suggesting that lockdowns in India aren’t a sustainable way to deal with the problem. But proactive testing sounds like it could certainly go a long way.
- The Fed Put Narrative Era
The Fed Put Narrative Era
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 17:35Submitted by The Swam Blog,
For years, I have heard fund managers and economists claiming that “a financial crisis is unlikely as long as central banks intervene”. This postulate has been the foundation of the well-known “Fed put”. Stocks should only go up thanks to monetary policy.
The past ten years have reinforced that conviction, since all the actions of the Fed and the ECB had strong positive impact on risky assets. But, as Tyler Durden would say, “on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero”.
In fact, if you study economic history, then you are likely to realize that such relationship between money supply and asset prices has no real foundations. Besides, the purchasing power of money theory tells us that increasing money supply can lead to higher prices, but only if the so-called velocity of money does not decrease. Thus, velocity is a key variable. When it comes to investment, it seems that velocity is mostly driven by psychological factors. In other words, if QE has become so bullish for stocks or bonds, it is mainly because people believe that it is.
Therefore, everyone should remember that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. Not only can the market drop despite the Fed, but it might crash precisely because of such dominant belief.
Intersubjective Markets and Narratives
Intersubjectivity can be thought as a share agreement of meanings between multiple people. According to Yuval Noah Harari, without intersubjective frameworks like religions, governments, money, firms, etc., anatomically modern humans would not be able to form and control large social groups.
Financial markets can also be treated as an intersubjective framework. From that perspective, a market narrative can be defined as a subculture (or ideology) common to multiple investors, sharing a common vision on how markets work and how assets are priced.
Without narratives, there would be no bull or bear markets. Of course, bull markets can be driven by positive news such as earning growth. However, speculative bubbles would make no sense without intersubjectivity. The concept of narratives is the key to understand how markets work and how investor price assets.
The “Fed put” can regarded as the dominant narrative since 2009. And it has become so dominant that Nasdaq stock prices have disconnected from economic fundamentals like they did in 1999.
Fractals and Avalanches
Today, equity markets seem to display a macro-behavior, since almost everyone has turned bullish. Despite a few skeptical folks, even pessimistic investors have resigned themselves to the idea that markets would not drop anymore because of Jerome Powell. In other words, a form of order has emerged (i.e. low entropy), and the market has reached a critical state.
The problem is that such a state is very unstable, and a fast reversal becomes more and more likely. What could be the trigger? It could be anything like the acceleration of the pandemic, bankruptcies, geopolitical tensions, etc. However, answering this question is not essential.
Indeed, the bubble has been driven by endogenous feedback loops. So, the market can crash without any obvious reason. This is what we observed on US equity markets in 1929, 1987 and 2000. And this is also how ended the bitcoin mania in 2017, and the China A shares rally in 2015.
What we know so far is that a reversal can lead to a significant volatility spike since the apparent order will be suddenly broken.
Hidden Risks Behind the Tech Rally
Some physicists state that the whole boom and bust process can be captured using the so-called log-periodicity power law singularity (LPPLS) model. Whether it is purely theoretical or not, the model indicates that Nasdaq euphoria is likely to terminate by the end of the summer (see It is All About Waves – Tech Stocks and The Log-Periodicity Power Law Singularity Model and We Are Warned – Precisions About the Log-Periodicity Power Law Singularity Model).
Beyond that statistical prediction, it is important to have a look at technicals as the current trend looks quite unsustainable (see Sven Henrich’s chart above) with numerous unfilled gaps below. And while the Nasdaq is breaking records every day, the VIX remains at historically high levels.
At this stage, the question is, what will support the market if the dominant narrative is broken? The Fed has our backs, until it has not. Extreme concentration and short-volatility bets are major risks for equity investors, especially Robinhood retail traders.
As Nassim Nicholas Taleb says, “missing a train is only painful if you run after it”.
- For First Time Since The Great Depression, Americans Must Wait In Line For The Most Basic Essential Items
For First Time Since The Great Depression, Americans Must Wait In Line For The Most Basic Essential Items
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 17:10The scene can be somewhat dystopian and third world when you look at it: as a result of the pandemic and the new way that our economy is forced to do business, Americans all over the country are waiting in line – even for the most basic of essentials.
For example, Bloomberg points out that food banks in Vermont have to deal with “miles long” lines of cars and at Covid testing sites in Florida, people have to show up with full tanks of gas because of how long they have to wait.
People applying for unemployment have similar horror stories – as we have detailed – trying to pile onto an overwhelmed website to collect benefits and left with no one to call when the system doesn’t function properly. The physical waits in unemployment lines are similarly distressing.
Kara Eaton, a 27-year-old industrial welder from Eufaula, Oklahoma, said: “We have to hope that the person next to us in line will hold our place while we use the bathroom — Subway usually doesn’t mind if we use theirs.”
Rachelle Basaraba of Oregon said: “Having to be patient and wait your turn — I don’t know if that’s necessarily the American way.” She says that a “herd mentality” and respect for rules bring order to waiting in line in Denmark, where her company is based. She called this a “a positive thing,” though was unsure about how it would catch on the U.S.
This time in America is the first since the Great Depression to make Americans wait in line for limited resources.
J. Jeffrey Inman, a marketing professor and associate dean at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business, said: “The U.S. is getting a dose of the scarcity economy, and we don’t like it. The U.S. has gotten spoiled where we’ve always had a plentiful, efficient supply chain. Now we’re seeing what can happen once it gets disrupted.”
But capitalism is trying to swoop in and solve the problem. For example, a company called Lavi Industries, that usually makes post-and-rope systems for Homeland Security, is now involved in making plastic sneeze guards and portable stations for lines to make the waiting for bearable. They are also working on their “virtual queueing technology,” which is a smart phone technology that can summon customers out of line from afar.
Perry Kuklin, Lavi’s marketing director, put it simply: “People hate to wait. If you make it more pleasant, make it more efficient, you as a business can not only profit from it, but you create a better passenger experience or theater experience.”
Richard Larson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and expert on queuing theory, says the issue is just temporary: “My parents had to wait in a bank queue line between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and now ATMs are everywhere. We have umpteen more gas station pumps you can stop at. A lot of traditional pesky queuing is gone.”
Some Americans are trying to make the best of the situation. “It was time to stop and notice, to look around and watch, to not be on my phone. I tried just to be there,” said Dena Babb of Torrance, California, about trying to be mindful while enjoying waiting in line.
But other Americans continue to grow more and more skittish about the practice, leading to another vein of increased tension across the nation. Francisco Salazar of East Meadow, New York, concluded: “Earlier in the pandemic, they were checking people for masks, cleaning the carts, giving sanitizer — they’re no longer doing any of it. I feel paranoid. I don’t want to be on these long lines.”
- Official COVID-19 Statistics Are Missing Something Critical
Official COVID-19 Statistics Are Missing Something Critical
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 16:45Authored by Thomas Smith via Elemental,
Even if you recover from Covid-19, you may not escape unscathed…
At the moment, official record-keeping offers only three options when it comes to Covid-19: infection, recovery, or death. This misses a broad range of other potential outcomes for people who catch the virus — many of them bad.
In medicine, physicians talk about “M&M,” or “Mortality and Morbidity.” Many hospitals even hold closed-door “M&M” conferences, where their providers discuss everything that’s gone wrong with their patients over the last week or month.
Mortality is a pretty straightforward concept. Have patients died from a particular disease process, and if so, how? Were their deaths avoidable? Can the field of medicine learn anything from them which will improve patient care in the future?
Morbidity, though, is a much trickier concept. It includes the complications, health issues, and other negative outcomes (other than death) that a disease causes. Basically, it’s all the ways that a disease can make you unwell, even if it doesn’t actually kill you.
Official statistics capture deaths that occur from Covid-19 reasonably well. Reporting methods are often updated, and epidemiologists have gone back and attempted to quantify Covid-19 deaths that were originally missed. But overall, death counts are a relatively easy metric to apply. Patients are either alive or dead. Knowing the difference is comparatively simple.
But these official statistics miss quite a lot. Specifically, they fail to represent Covid-19 morbidity — the harm that the disease causes, even in people that it doesn’t kill. In terms of measuring the long-term impact of the disease — and accurately evaluating risk — that’s a big problem.
Mounting evidence shows that even if Covid-19 kills less than 1% of patients, it doesn’t necessarily leave the others it infects unharmed. Even those who have “recovered” may have long-term impacts from it.
Morbidity can happen over a long-term period, so it is a harder variable to study and track in the early stages of a pandemic than death. Anecdotal reports and early data, though, show that Covid-19 morbidity may be a very real concern. According to a report in The Atlantic which followed several people with Covid-19 over multiple months, many had long-lasting symptoms and impairments (including headaches and debilitating fatigue) that didn’t resolve when their active infection stopped.
All of these cases were considered “mild” and didn’t result in the use of a ventilator or a stay in the ICU. And they occurred in people from a variety of age groups, not only older adults and the infirm. Yet despite these “low risk” factors, patients were still experiencing major impacts from the disease months after contracting it.
A handful of studies about Covid-19 (as well as scholarship on previous coronaviruses) bears this out. Covid-19 infection can have long-term impacts on the lungs, heart, immune system, and even the brain. These include an increased risk for heart attacks, future respiratory infections (including more severe cases of flu), and neurological impacts like cognitive impairment.
These are in addition to the known risks for hospitalization, especially if a hospitalization results in an ICU stay and might trigger ICU delirium, a condition that can be permanent. Just because you’ve recovered from Covid-19 doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily escaped unscathed — especially if the disease landed you in the hospital.
Even more concerning is emerging data showing that “asymptomatic” Covid-19 infections can cause long-term damage. Recent studies, including one published in Nature Medicine, have found “ground-glass opacities” in the lungs of asymptomatic carriers of Covid-19 — evidence of inflammation which could be causing damage internally, even if the patient feels completely fine.
And although earlier evidence suggested that children are less affected by the disease, the emergence of a new condition, Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, suggests that the virus may be having longer-term impacts even on the young. MSIS symptoms can emerge weeks or months after the original infection and can be deadly without prompt treatment.
All these early reports point to the possibility that Covid-19 causes acute infection, but also long-term inflammatory damage. Inflammatory diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. If Covid-19 worsens these conditions — or causes its own long-term inflammatory damage — the result could be millions of additional deaths from heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and the like, especially in already vulnerable populations. These effects of the disease may not be apparent for years or decades.
At the moment, official statistics largely fail to take such ongoing health impacts of the coronavirus into account. Traditional epidemiology does have metrics for morbidity. But they tend to focus on disease prevalence. Once a person’s active infection has passed, they are often no longer followed or counted.
As risk professionals like Nassim Nicholas Taleb have pointed out, the failure to measure Covid-19 morbidity makes it far harder to evaluate the true risk from the pandemic. Simply looking at deaths is not enough. Mortality statistics fail to account for the people who survive the disease but suffer long-term harm — or those who die from its complications long after their initial infection has subsided.
This blindness to morbidity may push populations toward more aggressive reopening, or away from risk-reduction measures like mandating face coverings. If deaths are declining, the picture may appear rosy. But in reality, the disease may be causing irreparable harm to millions of people — just in a way that’s invisible in current statistics.
In an increasingly polarized world, morbidity is an issue that cuts across political lines. Even if your primary goal is to restart the American economy, you should care about Covid-19 morbidity. Chronically sick people often have a hard time working, or the efficiency of their work suffers. Several of the patients profiled in The Atlantic experienced “brain fog” and other neurological effects from the virus, and have found even simple activities like housework and yoga challenging. These patients would almost certainly have a hard time returning to work. To achieve lasting economic recovery with minimal burden from worker illness, Covid-19 morbidity has to be accounted for.
Thankfully, tracking Covid-19 morbidity doesn’t require reinventing the wheel. Medicine and risk management already have a robust tool for measuring the impact (health-wise and financial) of morbidity: the Quality-Adjusted Life Year (QALY) and its sister statistic, the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY).
QALYs and DALYs take into account both a person’s life expectancy and their quality of life (defined, broadly, by how much a disease affects their ability to perform daily tasks). Lowered life expectancy affects QALYs, but so do long-term disease effects like the kind we’re beginning to see from Covid-19.
QALYs and DALYs are often used to evaluate new treatments. But there’s no reason QALYs and DALYs couldn’t be applied more broadly, to estimate and measure the disease burden of the Covid-19 pandemic on a given population.
In the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic, QALYs and DALYs could be applied by deciding on an estimate for a “weight factor” measuring the severity of Covid-19’s impact on patients’ health (this is usually done on a scale of 0 for “perfectly healthy” and 1 for “dead”). This weight factor could be set differently for different populations. For example, older people with Covid-19 or those with more preexisting conditions could receive a higher weight factor.
Using demographic data for a particular population (mean age, prevalence of existing diseases, etc.) and these weight factors, an estimate of the impact of Covid-19 morbidity could be established for a population. This could then be multiplied by the number of confirmed infections in the population to arrive at a crude estimate of the overall burden of Covid-19 morbidity.
Accounting for morbidity in this way could have some major impacts on plans for reopening. Regions with highly vulnerable populations (those expected to suffer more morbidity as a result of Covid-19 infections) could reopen more slowly. And those with relatively lower projected morbidity might be emboldened to open more quickly.
As the pandemic continues and more data on the long-term impact of Covid-19 becomes available, weights could be adjusted. If it emerges that certain populations are less vulnerable than expected, their weights could be adjusted downward. If more long-term impacts of Covid-19 infection emerge (like breathing issues in asymptomatic carriers), weight factors could be adjusted upward.
QALYs and DALYs are not perfect metrics. Setting weight factors is inherently subjective, and can reflect biases present in a society. At the early stage of a pandemic, very little data is available, so estimating morbidity is more an art than a science. There are also ethical concerns with QALYs and DALYs since they’re often used to weigh the value of one life against another. QALYs and DALYs can also miss the hard-to-measure impacts of disease, like their impact on mental health.
But given that Covid-19 morbidity is basically invisible in current public health models, measuring morbidity with metrics like QALYs and DALYs would at least be a helpful start. It could begin to give us a way to estimate not only how many people will die from Covid-19, but how many lives will be negatively impacted by the disease.
Measuring morbidity could also provide better treatment and follow-up. Current approaches assume that once an asymptomatic carrier of Covid-19 tests negative, their disease has run its course. Follow-up for these patients is likely to be limited. If it turns out that Covid-19 causes ongoing morbidity in patients who appear healthy, providers could shift toward monitoring them months or years after their infection (looking for evidence of inflammation and lung damage, for example).
On a personal level, if you’ve tested positive for Covid-19 and feel fine now, don’t assume your disease is over. Especially in the longer term, be aware of potential Covid-19 symptoms, and talk with your doctor about testing for any long-term impacts that emerge.
And if you still have symptoms after your Covid-19 test has turned negative, and are told that these are unrelated to the disease, be skeptical. In the grand scheme, very little is known about Covid-19. You may be experiencing lingering effects from your infection, which your doctor should help you address and manage.
Tracking deaths and recoveries is a start. But current approaches to tracking Covid-19 are binary — you’re either positive or negative, alive or dead. To truly measure (and react to) the long-term impacts of the pandemic, we need more nuanced measures.
Specifically, we need a way to measure morbidity. Otherwise, we risk missing impacts of Covid-19 which could have massive, invisible consequences — especially for our most vulnerable.
- Louisiana Gov Orders All Bars To Close As COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Surge: Live Updates
Louisiana Gov Orders All Bars To Close As COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Surge: Live Updates
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 16:24Summary:
- Louisiana closes all bars, limits size of outdoor gatherings as virus case spike
- 40% of COVID-19 infections asymptomatic, CDC says
- Florida revises Friday death toll
- NY 3-day average deaths fall to 7
- Florida reports 2nd highest jump yet
- US reports 70k+ new COVID-19 cases
- Deaths near 1k for 4th day
- Global case number: 12,689,741
- India cases top 400k
- Japan sees record 430 new cases
- Victoria reports 216 new cases
- Australian official: vaccine may be 2 years away still
* * *
Update (1611ET): With the US on track to report another record, or near record, jump in new coronavirus cases reported Saturday (remember, those cases were reported with a 24-hour delay), Louisiana Gov John Bel Edwards announced that he would be closing bars in the state, following other southern states like Mississippi and Texas.
The governor’s new order will also limit gatherings to 50 people indoors and require social distancing for gatherings outdoors.
“None of these steps are ones that I wanted to take, but I do think their essential,” Edwards said.
The state reported 2,167 new cases Saturday, the fourth highest single-day total since the pandemic began, for a total of 76,803. The state has also reported 3,295 deaths.
Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Saturday he will issue a public mask mandate and new restrictions on bars and crowd sizes Saturday.
Edwards, a Democrat, has resisted tightening restrictions since he moved the state into Phase 2, but cases and hospitalizations climbed sharply in July, with 1,182 COVID-19 patients hospitalized throughout the state, and 120 of them on ventilators.
BREAKING: All bars will be closed for on-premise consumption in Louisiana. All drinks have to be to go. That includes those with food permits. @LouisianaGov @WAFB
— Lester Duhé (@LesterDuhe) July 11, 2020
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The state is now No. 3 in per capita cases in the nation behind only New York and New Jersey.
“It’s become clear to me the current restrictions are not enough,” Edwards said. “We cannot risk losing our capacity to deliver hospital care.”
A previous Edwards mask order requires employees who interact with the public to wear masks, but not the general public.
The new order mandates face coverings statewide for people ages 8 and older.
Parishes and cities may opt out if they don’t have a high rate of COVID. So far, only Grant, Red River and West Feliciana would qualify to opt out.
Louisiana reported more than 2,000 new COVID cases Saturday for the second straight day as the infection continued to intensify in the state.
* * *
Update (1430ET): Florida’s Department of Health has issued an apology and a retraction claiming that Saturday’s death toll figures were “miscalculated”, and that the state only suffered 97 deaths instead of the 188 reported, which would have been a record number, beating the prior record by a considerable margin.
“The previous report calculated the change in the deaths over the last two days (93 on 7/10 and 95 on 7/11), instead of the change from yesterday to today. It has now been corrected to only reflect the change in deaths from yesterday to today,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Meanwhile, in New York, the state recorded its lowest COVID-19 three-day death toll average – at 7 – since March 16, the governor said in a Saturday tweet. New York reported just six deaths yesterday.
Today’s update on the numbers:
69,203 tests were performed yesterday. 730 tests came back positive (1.05% of total).
Total hospitalizations fell to 799
Sadly, there were 6 COVID fatalities yesterday. pic.twitter.com/mAwlD98Tr1
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) July 11, 2020
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In other news, the CDC announced on Saturday that it had updated its guidance for the number of asymptomatic carriers roaming around. According to the new numbers, officials are estimating that roughly 40% of all those infected are asymptomatic, up from 35% during a previous estimate released in May.
The CDC is now including an infection fatality ratio, which supposedly takes into account both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases: It estimates that in total, 0.65% of people who contract the virus are thought to die. Though the agency warned that the situation remains highly uncertain, according to CNN.
The report also disputes the claim (once advanced by the WHO) that asymptomatic people can’t infect others.
* * *
Update (1125ET): Florida health officials on Friday reported 10,360 (+4.2%) new COVID-19 cases and 188 deaths, marking the second-most cases reported in a single day, according to data from the state Department of Health dashboard. However, the increase is below the 7-day average of +4.6%.
The 188 deaths reported Saturday is also the most deaths reported in a single day yet. The figure is 50% larger than the number from the prior day. Florida’s previous single-day death tally was 120, which was reported on July 9. The state has reported a total of 4,197 since the beginning of the pandemic.
* * *
The US reported yet another record-breaking single-day number of new coronavirus cases on Friday. And while counts by Johns Hopkins and others put the total at roughly 64k cases, a tally by worldometer put the number of new cases at 71,787, the first time the US has reported more than 70k cases in a day.
Those numbers brought the case total in the US to 3,294,539, while the US also reported another 854 new deaths, bringing the total to 136,735k.
That number marked a fourth day of new deaths trending closer to 1k, a psychologically important level.
Globally, the world recorded 228,000 new cases yesterday, another record high as Brazil and India see cases spiral out of control. That brought the international total to 12,689,741.
Friday’s numbers brought the mortality rate in the US to 4.8%, while the number of total cases in the country, home to the world’s largest outbreak, still represented roughly a quarter of the global total. Globally, there were 12,689,741 confirmed cases as of Saturday morning on the East Coast of the US.
Meanwhile, in Florida, hospitals confirmed that a total of 7,063 patients were hospitalized with the virus in Florida, according to data released Saturday by a state agency. Miami-Dade County is the state leader with 1,601 patients hospitalized, the most in any single county in the country.
While the Sun Belt outbreaks continue to spiral out of control, we noticed an interesting report out of NYC on Saturday. The NYT recently reported that more than 68% of people tested positive for antibodies at a clinic in Corona, a working-class Queens neighborhood, while 56% tested positive at another clinic in nearby Jackson Heights.
That compares with just 13% of people tested in ritzy Cobble Hill, a ritzy Brooklyn neighborhood.
India has registered more than 800,000 Covid-19 cases so far, the country’s health ministry announced Saturday.
It reported a record 27,114 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, bringing the nationwide total to 820,916.
This is the third consecutive day that the country has recorded its highest single-day jump in new coronavirus cases.
As virus cases continue to soar, Indian cities and states are reimposing strict measures to curb the spread.
A coronavirus vaccine may be two years away, if one is ever found, and low levels of infection may become a part of life, Australia’s deputy chief medical officer warned.
On Friday, India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, imposed new restrictions for the weekend, leaving only essential services operating.
The South Asian nation has so far tested over 11.3 million samples for coronavirus, according to the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Japan recorded 430 new cases, first time the country has registered more than 400 in a day since April 24, when the countywide emergency order was still in effect. Tokyo contirbted 243 of those, its highest daily jump in new cases yet. Japanese TV station NHK also reported that US military facilities in Okinawa have found at least 50 cases.
Finally, in Australia, the state of Victoria, home to Melbourne, recorded 216 new coronavirus cases, Premier Daniel Andrews announced Saturday. Of these 186 remain under investigation, while the other 30 have been linked to known outbreaks. The number was down from the 288 cases reported Thursday, the most in a single day in any Australian state. So far, a total of 21,841 cases have been confirmed, along with 995 deaths.
As the country struggles with this still-relatively-mild resurgence, Australia’s deputy chief medical officer issued a stark warning on Saturday. As several vaccine trials get under way in the country (Moderna is testing its vaccine candidate in the country) he warned that a vaccine may be two years away, if one is ever found.
It’s still possible that low levels of SARS-CoV-2 infection might become “a part of life.”
- Shocking Video Shows Deranged Man Stabbing Multiple People On NYC Subway
Shocking Video Shows Deranged Man Stabbing Multiple People On NYC Subway
Tyler Durden
Sat, 07/11/2020 – 16:20We have a feeling you won’t see this on the evening news.
In another bloody incident of violent crime caught on tape, an assailant armed with a knife slashes at least two terrified men on a subway car in NYC. The incident was filmed by one very steady-handed bystander.
BREAKING – Man with knife stabs multiple passengers on NYC subway.pic.twitter.com/ZGMfhgpWPu
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) July 11, 2020
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Since the riots that swept NYC and other cities during the George Floyd protests, crime in New York has come soaring back to levels not seen in decades as Mayor de Blasio has taken hundreds of undercover officers off the streets and moved to lay off thousands of NYPD employees as part of a massive budget cut to the country’s biggest policing force.
This isn’t the only stabbing incident we’ve seen lately. In Houston, a group of bystanders were recently filmed helping police subdue an unhinged attacker at a gas station on Fuqua Street in southeast Houston.
At first, it seems the man filming had the audacity to tell the officers who were arresting the attacker “don’t put your hands on his neck now”.
In response, the officer calmly explained his technique, clearly showing how he had his hand on the suspect’s back, before inviting the person filming and other bystanders to help hold the man down while he was being handcuffed.
Field’s video has hundreds of thousands of views. On Thursday, musician Timbaland shared it on his Instagram page with the comment, “they got it right this time‼️”
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