Today’s News 17th January 2022

• State-Backed Doping Strategy Imposed On Chinese Athletes, Former Doctor's New Book To Release Before Beijing Olympics
  State-Backed Doping Strategy Imposed On Chinese Athletes, Former Doctor’s New Book To Release Before Beijing Olympics

  Authored by Shawn Lin via The Epoch Times,

  Former Chinese national sports team doctor Xue Yinxian revealed China’s General Administration of Sport has been widely doping Chinese athletes. The whistleblower’s new book—containing extensive evidence on this—will be published before the Beijing Winter Olympics as a reminder to the international community that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is violating not only human rights but also the spirit of the Olympics, Xue’s son said.

  Xue wrote 68 work diaries from 1978 to 1985 when she served as the head of medical supervision in the Training Bureau of China’s General Administration of Sport. In 2017, Xue fled China with her diaries, and she is now living with her son Yang Weidong in Germany.

  

  Former Chinese National Team doctor Xue Yinxian in Germany in 2017. (Courtesy of Xue Yinxian)

  Yang, who assisted his mother with the new book entitled “China’s Drug,” told the Chinese-language Epoch Times that in addition to the doping cases that have been detected, the table tennis team, women’s volleyball team, gymnastics team, badminton team, etc.—as long as they belong to the 11 teams under the main control of the State General Administration of Sports and the Training Bureau—all are requested to consume performance-enhancing drugs.

  “The ‘scientific training’ proposed by the Training Bureau of the CCP’s National Sports Commission is in essence ‘doping training,’” Yang said.

  On Oct. 11, 1978, Chen Xian, then vice director of the General Administration of Sport, chaired a meeting of the administration’s medical department, which Xue attended as a doctor for the basketball team. At the meeting, Chen said that performance-enhancing drugs were being used abroad, so “why can’t we use them?”

  At that time, China had just come out of the Cultural Revolution and was facing a severe shortage of materials—even food needed to be bought with rationed tickets. Because of that, the sports department regulator would think the only way for Chinese athletes to get fit and compete in the international arena was to rely on doping substances.

  Since then, the history of Chinese athletes taking banned drugs began, Yang said.

  Medals of Chinese Sports Tainted by Doping

  Yang told Radio Free Asia on Jan. 6 that the first application of banned doping was in the table tennis team, weightlifting team, track and field team, and swimming team. Then in the later stages of the trial, all athletes were doping.

  

  Lang Ping of Team China looks on against Team Argentina during the Women’s Preliminary Pool B volleyball on day ten of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan, on Aug. 2, 2021. (Toru Hanai/Getty Images)

  The Chinese women’s volleyball team won successive international championships after 1981. In fact, Luo Weiwei, a doctor for the Chinese women’s volleyball team, has been studying the use of doping since 1980.

  In 1982, Luo published two articles on iron tablets (ferrous sulfate) for athletes in the Chinese journal Sports Science, naming Lang Ping, the famous Chinese women’s volleyball player, as the one who took the doping.

  “She [Lang Ping] was only in her 20s in the 1980s, so how could she afford to fight the system’s demand for taking doping? “said Yang.

  Those athletes take 600-800 mg a day and cannot digest the iron, which will be deposited in their bodies for many years before health problems arise. And some who have doped suffered side effects such as unexplained headaches, body aches and pains, and sports injuries that would not otherwise occur, Yang said.

  An average person’s daily intake of iron is about 11.5–18.9 mg based on different age stages and gender, data by the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows.

  In November 1987, Xue published an article in a gymnastics magazine, analyzing the case of Li Donghua, who was an athlete of the Chinese gymnastics team, after doping continuously for one month. One day, he ruptured his Achilles tendons in both feet when he did a backflip and landed. According to Xue, this is a side effect of doping: the blood vessel walls become very fragile and the Achilles tendons rupture with the slightest external force.

  

  Liu Xiang of China gets assisted off the track after getting injured in the Men’s 110m Hurdles Round 1 Heats on Day 11 of the London 2012 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium in London, England, on Aug. 7, 2012. (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

  In 2008, Chinese athlete Liu Xiang, the world’s first Grand Slam athlete in the 110m hurdles, ruptured his Achilles tendon. Xue found, through Liu’s entire description of treatment, that it was the same cause as Li’s case.

  Artificial Insemination for Androgens, Abortion After Winning a Medal

  Besides having athletes dope, Yang also recalled a case about the CCP enhancing athletes’ androgens through artificial insemination. In 1995, Deng Yaping, a multiple world champion in table tennis, was artificially inseminated before competing in a world championship. After getting pregnant, her body’s androgen level increased, and then she had an abortion after the tournament.

  

  China’s Den Yaping in action against South Korean Kim Hyon Hui (not pictured) during the women’s team event at the World Table Tennis Championships in Manchester on April 29, 1997. (Bob Collier/AFP via Getty Images)

  As the revelation was too shocking, Epoch Times reporters asked experts and athletes for professional advice.

  Mr. Yu, a former Chinese cyclist living in New Zealand, said pregnancy does increase the number of androgens in the body. But once the female athlete has an abortion, her body goes down also, which is actually a very cruel way to tap into the human body’s potential.

  Yu said he was not surprised to learn that because he heard of similar brutal methods, such as the blood exchange method commonly used in cycling and similar endurance competitions.

  Dr. Yang Si, a medical doctor at the University of Tokyo, told The Epoch Times that he had not heard of this method, but it is possible that after a woman is pregnant, many compounds are produced in the blood, and these substances may mask the ingredients of those stimulants.

  Dr. Yang further explained that because stimulants are also organic compounds, if the compound produced after pregnancy is close to the stimulant taken, then it can mask the performance-enhancing drug. The testers would think it is caused by pregnancy, which is called a “false positive” in medical science and it’s very common.

  If there are specialized biologists to study what substances women produce after pregnancy, it is also possible to choose the same kind of stimulant to make athletes take, Dr. Yang said.

  Xue’s Family Suffered From the CCP’s Persecution for Decades

  Xue, 84, was part of the first generation of sports medicine experts after the CCP founded its regime, serving as the doctor for the national team in the 1980s. Since the late 1970s, when the Communist Party launched its state-sponsored doping craze, Xue has been a rare public opponent of the system. On the eve of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Xue refused to administer stimulants to sports stars such as Li Ning. As a result, Xue and her family suffered decades of suppression from authorities.

  

  Xue Yinxian participated in the 1988 Seoul Olympics with the Chinese national team. (Courtesy of Xue Yinxian)

  In December 2007, Yang’s father died after being attacked at his home by the General Administration of Sport, and in 2015, Yang was arrested for protesting his father’s death to the administration. In 2016, Xue became seriously ill but failed to receive medical treatment. In 2017, Xue, her son, and her daughter-in-law escaped from China and arrived in Germany, and chose to go into exile.

  In the interview, Yang told Radio Free Asia that his mother’s courage to criticize and resist was due to her professional ethics as a doctor.

  “She was thinking that the athletes were taking stimulants that would cause physical damage to these young children 20 years later.”

  Epoch Times reporters couldn’t reach the athletes mentioned in the article, and several calls to the phone number listed on the website of China’s General Administration of Sports went unanswered.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 23:00

• The Most Dangerous Job In America… Is Not Frontline Healthcare Worker Or Teacher
  The Most Dangerous Job In America… Is Not Frontline Healthcare Worker Or Teacher

  Fishermen and hunters are officially the most dangerous jobs in the US, according to the 2020 census released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last month. The group saw 132.1 fatalities for every 100,000 full-time equivalent workers; a stark contrast to the overall worker fatality rate across all industries of 3.4 deaths.

  As Statista’s Mathias Brandt shows in the chart below, delivery and truck drivers came lower on the list, despite the fact that 887 people died on the job in 2020 alone – the highest absolute figure on the graph. This comes down to the fact there are so many people in this profession, pushing the proportional risk of harm lower.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Taking a step back, in the entire year of 2020, 4,764 people were killed on the job in the U.S. That’s an average of 13 people dying each day, or one worker dying every 111 minutes.

  This figure represents the lowest rate of deaths since 2013.

  As Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of U.S. unions, explains on CNBC, much of this change is credited to the coronavirus pandemic which “meant fewer people were in direct contact with preventable hazards, production priorities shifted and businesses were forced to do more prevention planning.”

  Those who continued to work on site, and subsequently were at greater risk of injury, proved to be disproportionately Hispanic or Latino and Black workers, with 4.5 and 3.5 deaths respectively. Deaths of Hispanic or Latino workers have been on the rise in the past years.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 22:30

• Leveraged Trading Is Not The Source Of Recent Crypto Weakness: So What Is?
  Leveraged Trading Is Not The Source Of Recent Crypto Weakness: So What Is?

  By Marcel Kasumovich, One River Asset Management head of research

  Macro narratives are driving digital asset sentiment, from asset swings to regulatory decisions. This alone speaks to a maturing ecosystem – investors want the macro story. But digital asset volatility has been mostly uncorrelated to other macro markets in the recent past. It is more about a shift in investor behavior.

  1/ As digital assets enter the mainstream, market commentary focuses on price. And in a world where exchange rate volatility is near all-time lows, attention has naturally shifted to digital assets where volatility against the US dollar is breathtaking by comparison. The megatrend towards the digitalization of finance will not be defined by the shorter-term gyrations. The innovation happening more behind the scenes will dictate the secular formations. Recent advancements in the Lightning Network illustrate the quiet determination to digitalize finance.

  2/ The Lightning Network was proposed in 2015 as a way of scaling smaller payments, able to accommodate billions of transactions in a second (here). It addressed the tiring argument of Bitcoin’s inefficiency head-on. And after a slow start, user adoption surged last year with a 3-fold rise in network capacity (Figure 1). It is also integrating into the regulatory mainstream. This week, Bottlepay, a payment provider built on the Lightning Network, was approved by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. These new technologies can hold up to regulatory standards including anti-money laundering (here). It is a powerful example of technologists and regulators working together to encourage innovation in a complacent legacy system.

  3/ Innovation may drive the megatrends, but investors are still left to manage and explain portfolio volatility from digital assets. And just as digital innovation is garnering more institutional attention, so too are the narratives around the volatility of digital assets. Investors are looking for macro thematic narratives, including the sharp downturn since November and the abrupt decline to start the year. Explanations center on the downturn in inflation expectations, the Fed pivot toward faster rate hikes and balance sheet normalization, as well as the decline in growth stocks tied to the rise in real interest rates. The high correlation of bitcoin returns to inflation expectations last year (56%) reinforces a desire to put a tidy macro narrative to the digital ecosystem.

  4/ But the analytics tell a different story. We run a simple empirical exercise to evaluate bitcoin returns as explained by three macro factors: market-based inflation expectations (5y5y inflation swaps), the inflation-adjusted terminal policy rate (5y5y overnight interest rate swap less 5y5y inflation swaps), and Nasdaq 100 equity returns. These factors only explain 10-45% of the variation in bitcoin over the past two years and with various representations of the data. More importantly, there is almost no relevance of these factors in explaining the bitcoin downturn since November. Those factors would imply a bitcoin price of 50-60k, much higher than the current price.

  5/ What does that mean for investors? Digital assets volatility has been largely independent of macro factors in the recent past. To be sure, the independent volatility that most investors hope for is skewed to the upside. But in assets where volatility expectations have ranged from 55% to 158% in the past two years, there will be plenty of periods where idiosyncratic moves detract from a portfolio. The test for any investor is asking about the structural trends. What tokens will prosper with the digitalization of finance? How broad will token pluralism extend? If the answers to the structural questions are positive, then downside volatility should be met with programmatic rebalancing into digital assets.

  6/ Of course, idiosyncratic volatility is not satisfying. It is a polite way of saying we need to dig deeper for an explanation. What is behind the swings in digital assets if the macro narrative falls flat? The hunt for the explanation is partly a process of elimination and partly identifying new patterns of behavior. There are three key elements of the market microstructure of interest.

  7/ First, the bitcoin forward yield curve has been stable, indicating leveraged trading is not a source of downside volatility. Figure 2 illustrates the one-month annualized yield implied by bitcoin futures on the Deribit exchange, where leverage is more readily available to traders. A rise in speculative demand leads to higher forward bitcoin prices and higher implied yields (vice versa). In periods of excess leverage, forward prices fall more than spot as speculative traders forced to close positions at unfavorable prices. Last May, one-month yields fell to an annualized –75%, reflecting a costly, steep inversion of the forward curve to speculative long traders. On this downturn, the compression in yields is barely visible.

  8/ Second, option markets have decoupled from previous correlations to spot prices, with declining volatility expectations. The one-week implied volatility on Ether is 70%, near the lows of the past year (Figure 3). Ordinarily, declines in spot prices, particularly severe ones, would have seen a surge in volatility expectations. However, volatility is low despite a sharp decline in spot prices. The same pattern is evident in 25-delta put-call volatility skew. The one-week skew in Ether options is only marginally positive, near the average of the past year. This is strongly counter to past downturns in spot prices, where option skew spiked well above 40%! Again, leveraged trading is not the source of the recent price weakness.

  9/ Third, a rise in the dispersion of digital asset prices hints at a change in investor behavior. We illustrate this point with a unique parsing of the data based on the last two downturns: May 8, 2021 and Nov 9, 2021. Dispersion is measured by the median difference between the individual returns on the 12 assets of our Core Index and bitcoin returns. When Index asset returns are evenly dispersed around bitcoin returns, the measure is zero. The one-month dispersion in the latest downturn measures near-zero (–0.4%). This is vastly different from May 2021, where the one-month dispersion index measured –9.1%. Index assets exhibited higher beta to the bitcoin downturn. No doubt, two cyclical periods don’t make a trend, but it does call for attention.

  10/ Market behavior is bifurcating. It is evident in futures markets, where the decline in yields has been greater in regulated markets (CME) than in unregulated ones (Deribit). It is evident in active supply, where the percentage of longer-term holders has dropped alongside a more-than 20% fall in large-value bitcoin addresses (greater than $10mn). It is evident in the surge of interest in venture applications (here). Investors focused on macro narratives have mattered more than leveraged traders. And it is these ebbs and flows that should remind investors that we are at the very early stages in the digitalization of finance. It is precisely in those imperfect, inefficient early stages where megatrend assets are most additive to a portfolio.

  Figure 1 – Lightning Network Capacity Surge, Adoption Rising

  

  Figure 2 – Bitcoin Futures’ Yield Stable, No Sign of Speculative Excess

  

  Figure 3 – Ether Volatility Low Despite Declining Prices

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 22:00

• China Unexpectedly Cuts Key Rate, Adds Liquidity As Economic Growth Slowed, Retail Sales Slump
  China Unexpectedly Cuts Key Rate, Adds Liquidity As Economic Growth Slowed, Retail Sales Slump

  A busy night started with weakness in US equity futures (Nasdaq down 0.5%) and an unexpected cut in a key China policy rate and a modest addition of liquidity. This was then followed by a mixed bag of China macro with a GDP beat (but slowing growth) but ugly retail sales disappointment. All of which sent the Yuan lower…

  

  As Bloomberg reports, China lowered a key interest rate for the first time since the peak of the pandemic in 2020 as a property-market slump and repeated virus outbreaks dampened the nation’s growth outlook. The People’s Bank of China cut the rate on its one-year policy loans by 10 basis points to 2.85%. That’s the first reduction since April 2020. It also slashed the rate on the seven-day reverse repurchase agreements by the same magnitude to 2.1%.

  

  The central bank made the move while offering 700 billion yuan ($110 billion) via the medium-term lending facility, exceeding the 500 billion yuan coming due. It added 100 billion yuan with seven-day reverse repos.

  “The PBOC has accelerated its pace of policy easing in order to guide borrowing costs lower and to encourage credit supply,” said Yewei Yang, an analyst at Guosheng Securities Co.

  “The move suggests China’s economic is weak and it will trigger a significant slide in borrowing costs.”

  The cut to policy rates indicates the PBOC is taking easier stance to deal with economic downward pressures which were reflected somewhat in a mixed set of data from China that showed growth slowing (albeit better than expected) and retail sales notably disappointing.

  • China 4Q GDP Grows 4% Y/Y; Est. 3.3%, but notably below Q3’s +4.9%

  • China Dec. Industrial Output Rises 4.3% Y/Y; Est. 3.7%

  • China Jan.-Dec. Fixed Investment Rises 4.9% Y/Y; Est. 4.8%

  • China Jan.-Dec. GDP Grows 8.1% Y/Y; Est. 8%

  • China End-Dec. Survey Jobless Rate Rises to 5.1% vs 5.0% Prior

  • China Dec. Retail Sales Rise 1.7% Y/Y; Est. 3.8%

  As is clear in the chart below, all of the key macro measures worsened…

  

  As Bloomberg’s Enda Curran notes, the retail sales weakness looks broad based. There was a big decline in sales of household electronics and automobiles and also contraction for restaurant/catering, clothing, jewelry and furniture. Given the news through January regarding the virus outbreaks, one wonders if that can turn around materially in the near term. The annual new years holiday would be an obvious boost in other years, but less clear how it plays out this year.

  

  On a seasonally adjusted month/month basis, China’s retail sales rose in just four months last year. Even during 2020’s pandemic impacts, there were five months of such sales growth.

  On top of the big miss for retail sales, online shopping shows more worrying signs for the country’s weakening consumer demand. Online retail sales grew 14.1% in 2021, the slowest annual pace since 2014.

  Chang Shu and David Qu, economists at Bloomberg Economics, say the bigger-than-expected cut to the one-year MLF rate shows it’s serious about supporting the economy.

  We give the final words to Peiqian Liu, an economist at NatWest Markets:

  This is a decisive dovish tilt as the policymakers acknowledged the importance to stabilize short term growth.

  The rate cut may translate into a broad-based 10bps lower in 1Y and 5Y LPR on Thursday.

  In terms of our outlook for monetary policy in 2022, we think the PBOC will unlikely resort to “flood-style stimulus” of consecutive and aggressive rate cuts. Instead, we see room for moderate easing with another 20bps rate cut and 100bps RRR cut for the rest of this year.

  

  US equity futures extended their losses despite the MLF rate cut…

  

  The stock market reaction to the PBOC’s interest rate cut is relatively muted because “the latest cut seems to be in line with the targeted pro-growth policy guidance for 2022 as highlighted by the key economic working group,” says Kelvin Wong, analyst at CMC Markets

  One last thing of note, China’s stats folks say the country’s population was about 500,000 people more at year’s end than a year earlier (albeit a rounding error), but it signals that China hasn’t gotten to peak population just yet apparently.

  

  So, as we pointed out in December, it is now clear that China is shifting to an easing mode as the rest of the world is shifting to a tightening cycle.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 21:28

• Walmart Creates Its Own Cryptocurrency, NFTs, Enters Metaverse With Sales Of Virtual Goods
  Walmart Creates Its Own Cryptocurrency, NFTs, Enters Metaverse With Sales Of Virtual Goods

  The last time Walmart was reportedly entering the crypto space, it turned out to be a giant Litecoin-promoting hack, that was quickly reversed, after it became clear that playful hackers had fabricated a press release. But there appears to be nothing fake about the latest news involving Walmart’s desire to ride the latest wave of crypto/web 3.0/metaverse/NFT euphoria, and as a result the big box retailer is boldly venturing into the metaverse with plans to create its own cryptocurrency and collection of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

  According to CNBC, Walmart filed several new trademarks late last month that indicate its intent to make and sell virtual goods, including electronics, home decorations, toys, sporting goods and personal care products. In a separate filing, the company said it would offer users a virtual currency, as well as NFTs.  In total, seven separate applications have been submitted.

  

  The patent applications were among a flurry the company filed on Dec. 30, including three under “Walmart Connect” – the name of the company’s existing digital advertising venture – for a financial exchange for virtual currency and advertising. Applications also were filed for “Verse to Store,” “Verse to Curb” and “Verse to Home” for shopping services. It’s also seeking trademarks to apply the Walmart name and “fireworks” logo to heath-care services and education in virtual and augmented reality.

  “They’re super intense,” said Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney, quoted by CNBC. “There’s a lot of language in these, which shows that there’s a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how they’re going to address cryptocurrency, how they’re going to address the metaverse and the virtual world that appears to be coming or that’s already here.”

  Gerben said that ever since Facebook announced it was changing its company name to Meta, signaling its ambitions beyond social media, businesses have been rushing to figure out how they will fit into a virtual world.

  

  The applications represent a significant step for the retail giant as it studies how to participate in the metaverse, a virtual world that blends aspects of digital technologies. Walmart dropped a hint to what was coming, after it advertised in August a position to develop “the digital currency strategy and product roadmap” while identifying “crypto-related investment and partnerships,” according to a job posting on the company’s website.

  “Walmart is continuously exploring how emerging technologies may shape future shopping experiences,” the company responded in an emailed statement. “We don’t have anything further to share today, but it’s worth noting we routinely file trademark applications as part of the innovation process.”

  Walmart’s cryptocurrency plans were the subject of a high-profile hoax in September, when a fake announcement caused a short-lived surge in Litecoin, a relatively obscure cryptocurrency. According to the faked news release, Walmart would start letting its customers pay with Litecoin.

  In October, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer started a pilot program in which shoppers can buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks in some of its U.S. stores. The test with Coinstar, which is known for the machines that let customers exchange U.S. coins for paper bills or gift cards, includes 200 kiosks in Walmart stores.

  In early December, Walmart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said at an analyst conference that the company was open to allowing shoppers to pay in cryptocurrency if customers demand it, but the company didn’t see a need to rush out any capabilities.

  Walmart is the latest brand to jump on the bandwagon of selling virtual goods and/or NFTs. In November, Nike filed a slew of trademark applications that previewed its plans to sell virtual branded sneakers and apparel. Later that month, it said it was teaming up with Roblox to create an online world called Nikeland. In December, it bought the virtual sneaker company RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”) for an undisclosed amount.

  “All of a sudden, everyone is like, ‘This is becoming super real and we need to make sure our IP is protected in the space,’” said Gerben.

  Others are also piling in: Gap has started selling NFTs of its iconic logo sweatshirts. The apparel maker said its NFTs will be priced in tiers ranging from roughly $8.30 to $415, and come with a physical hoodie. Meantime, both Under Armour’s and Adidas’ NFT debuts sold out last month. They’re now fetching sky-high prices on the NFT marketplace OpenSea.

  Gerben said that apparel retailers Urban Outfitters, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch have also filed trademarks in recent weeks detailing their intent to open some sort of virtual store.

  A report from CB Insights outlined some of the reasons why retailers and brands might want to make such ventures, which can potentially offer new revenue streams. Launching NFTs allows for businesses to tokenize physical products and services to help reduce online transaction costs, it said. And for luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, NFTs can serve as a form of authentication for tangible and more expensive goods, CB Insights noted.

  As the following chart from JPM shows, the NFT space has been red hot in the past year, and the market cap of the NFT universe has never been higher even though crytpocurrencies have tumbled by more than 40% in the past 2 months as institutions dumped the best performing assets of 2021 ahead of widely telegraphed Fed tightening.

  

  Launching NFTs allows for businesses to tokenize physical products and services to help reduce online transaction costs, it said. And for luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, NFTs can serve as a form of authentication for tangible and more expensive goods, CB Insights noted.

  Gerben said that as more consumers familiarize themselves with the metaverse and items stored on the blockchain, more retailers will want to create their own ecosystem around it. And after all, while it is the view of the World Economic Forum that after the Great Reset “you will own nothing, and you will be happy”, nobody said that one can’t own virtual goods in the coming dystopian future.

  

  Quoted by CNBC, Frank Chaparro, director at crypto information services firm The Block, said that many retailers are still reeling from being late to e-commerce, so they don’t want to miss out on any opportunities in the metaverse.

  “I think it’s a win-win for any company in retail,” Chaparro said. “And even if it just turns out to be a fad there’s not a lot of reputation damage in just trying something weird out like giving some customers an NFT in a sweepstake, for instance.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 21:00

• After 28 Days On Ventilator, Family Loses Legal Battle To Try Ivermectin, Other Alternative Treatments, For Dying Father
  After 28 Days On Ventilator, Family Loses Legal Battle To Try Ivermectin, Other Alternative Treatments, For Dying Father

  Authored by Nanette Holt via The Epoch Times,

  A Florida family fighting to give their loved one on a ventilator alternative treatments for COVID-19 have lost another battle—this time in Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.

  

  The wife and son of Daniel Pisano first squared off against Mayo Clinic Florida at an emergency hearing on Dec. 30 in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit. Before that, they’d been begging the hospital to allow them to try treating Pisano—who’s been on a ventilator now for 28 days—with the controversial drug ivermectin, along with a mix of other drugs and supplements, part of a protocol recommended by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).

  The family’s request for an emergency injunction to force the Mayo Clinic to allow treatments recommended by an outside doctor was denied by Judge Marianne Aho. They appealed the decision.

  On Jan. 14, Aho’s decision was upheld by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal. The three-judge panel deciding the case included Judge Thomas “Bo” Winokur, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Scott in 2015; Judge M. Kemmerly Thomas, appointed in 2016 by Scott; and Judge Robert E. Long, Jr., appointed in 2020, by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

  “An opinion of this Court explaining its reasoning will follow,” the judges stated in the order they issued. 

  “So we wait to see what that looks like, unless it takes too long,” said Jeff Childers, an attorney for the family. 

  Seventy-year-old Daniel Pisano doesn’t have unlimited time, says Eduardo Balbona, M.D., an independent doctor in Jacksonville who’s been advising the family since they reached out to him while researching other treatments that could potentially help their loved one.

  

  Daniel and Claudia Pisano moved to Florida and bought a homesite to be 20 minutes from their only two grandchildren. (Photo courtesy of Chris Pisano)

  Balbona, who has been monitoring Pisano’s treatment at the Mayo Clinic through an online portal, testified on behalf of the Pisano family in the first hearing.

  The Mayo Clinic has argued that the treatment plan doesn’t fit with the hospital’s standard protocol for treating COVID-19 patients and they don’t know what the effects of following Balbona’s recommendations would be. The hospital has told the family that Pisano has a less-than-five percent chance of survival, and all that’s left to do is wait and see if he recovers on the ventilator. The Mayo Clinic has not responded to requests for comment.

  The family has begged the Mayo Clinic to simply step aside and let Balbona try what he thinks could work. But the Mayo Clinic doesn’t allow outside doctors to treat patients.

  Since media reports mentioned his involvement in the case, particularly his confidence in recommending ivermectin, Balbona has faced a mix of hate-filled criticism and desperate cries for help.

  He says he’s used ivermectin along with the rest of the FLCCC protocol successfully with minor modifications, on “dozens and dozens” of seriously ill patients suffering the effects of COVID-19. Some of those patients have come to him from as far away as California.

  He’s not alone in his belief in ivermectin and the mix of drugs and supplements he’s suggesting. Different health care professionals across the country have spoken out over the past two years about the efficacy of using ivermectin and the FLCCC protocol to treat COVID-19.

  The drug has been used for 40 years and won a Nobel Prize for its creator. While ivermectin is most often used to prevent or kill parasites in animals, it has also been widely and successfully used for years to treat parasites and viruses in humans in the United States and other countries. There is an ever-growing list of peer-reviewed studies showing the drug’s efficacy in treating COVID-19.

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) indicates there are ongoing clinical trials investigating the use of the drug in the treatment of COVID-19 on a webpage warning people not to self-medicate with ivermectin. The FDA published a tweet in August mocking those who do. And some politicians and media outlets have railed relentlessly against those claiming ivermectin could be an effective and inexpensive way to combat COVID-19.

  

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shared this tweet on Aug. 21, 2021, mocking the use of the drug ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19. (Photo courtesy of FDA via Twitter)

  “You should be embarrassed to practice medicine, to sue the Mayo Clinic to get horse medicine to a human being, because of Internet garbage,” one person seethed on a voicemail at Balbona’s office after his court testimony was mentioned in an Epoch Times article.

  “Your license should be revoked, you worthless piece of garbage. You are killing people, not helping them, and to harass the Mayo Clinic, because you are not good enough to be their doctor is disgusting. Disgusting. You and doctors like you should all be banned from society. Shame on you. Disgusting. Goodbye and good riddance. I hope you get COVID. Goodbye.”

  Balbona says he deletes messages like that and pushes on with his treatment of patients.

  It’s “just the intolerance and hatred that takes me by surprise,” he said, about his office communications now getting “flooded by hate.”

  

  Eduardo Balbona, M.D., completed specialty training in internal medicine at the National Naval Medical Center and served as a physician at the U.S. Capitol, caring for senators, congressmen and Supreme Court justices. (Photo courtesy of Eduardo Balbona, M.D.)

  “Everything I do treating COVID is directed at lowering the inflammatory response, which is out of control, and improving blood flow to the lungs, and avoiding the complications of clots,” he said.

  “Perhaps the biggest change I’ve made from protocols in the hospital and with FLCCC is increasing the dose of dexamethasone. The dose of dexamethasone in FLCCC is relatively low at 6 mg, and I generally increase that to 18 mg daily in more serious cases. That’s a logic change, and I realize the study support is at 6 mg.”

  “There’s a reason for every medicine and everything I do treating COVID with my protocol. I have to be able to defend it since I know it will be attacked. Crazy world we’re in.”

  Christie DeTrude, of Switzerland, Florida, feels certain that Balbona’s recommendations saved her husband, Dewey. He had just retired last spring at 59 after a long career as a pipe-fitter. At 200 pounds and 6-feet-tall, he was in the peak of health, with strong “country muscles after a lifetime of turning a wrench,” she said.

  

  Dewey and Christie DeTrude on vacation in Hawaii, before he fell ill with COVID-19. (Courtesy of the DeTrude Family)

  When he sought treatment for COVID-19 at an urgent-care clinic in July, he was prescribed ivermectin by a doctor there.

  “But what we didn’t know at the time was, it wasn’t a high enough dose, because it’s supposed to be weight-based,” Christie DeTrude said. “Theirs was a very low dose, and they discontinued it after five days and said that it would be damaging to his liver and kidneys if they continued, which isn’t true.”

  On his eighth day of illness, he had developed pneumonia, and the urgent-care clinic told him to go to the hospital for treatment with convalescent plasma and oxygen. The referring doctor promised he wouldn’t be admitted, Christie DeTrude said.

  When she dropped him off at the Mayo Clinic Florida emergency room, she was told to come back and pick him up in 4-5 hours.

  “Once he got to Mayo, they just completely took over, and there was no informed consent,” DeTrude said. “There was no giving him information and letting us make a decision. They made all of his decisions for him, and they follow a standard protocol.”

  “There were no choices, there was no discussion…they just kept upping the oxygen,” DeTrude said.

  The Mayo Clinic did not return requests for comment by The Epoch Times about DeTrude’s case, Pisano’s case, or COVID-19 treatment protocols, in general.

  DeTrude said that eventually, her husband had become so weak, he couldn’t get out of the hospital bed. She felt that the hospital’s treatments weren’t working. She wanted to take him home. The hospital wouldn’t agree to discharge him and didn’t allow her to visit, she said.

  

  Dewey DeTrude’s wife hired an attorney to help her get her husband out of the intensive care unit at Mayo Clinic Florida, so he could be treated at home with ivermectin. DeTrude, shown here on Aug. 3, 2021, spent 46 days in the hospital. (Courtesy of the DeTrude Family)

  Days passed. Then, weeks. She says that she could tell from their phone calls that her husband was getting weaker. His 60th birthday came and went. And still, she says the hospital wouldn’t let her visit.

  “I was able to get a Catholic priest to come give him Last Rites, and the priest said that my husband’s mental state was like that of a prisoner of war, that he was definitely suffering trauma from the isolation from family, from his faith, from not seeing the sun. He’d lost 35 pounds,” she said.

  Part of the problem was that she wasn’t allowed to bring him vegan meals, she said.

  “A lot of the food, my husband wasn’t interested in. And when you’re on oxygen, it does affect your appetite, and he needed assistance eating, but they wouldn’t let me be that person,” she said.

  After 18 days, Christie DeTrude hired an attorney to help her push the hospital to stabilize her husband so she could take him home. Meanwhile, she searched for an outside doctor who could help.

  With that aim, she attended a medical freedom rally in Jacksonville in August, hoping to find something or someone who could advise her. Several doctors spoke about alternative treatments for COVID-19 that hospitals weren’t using, including ivermectin.

  The next day, she called them all. Only Dr. Balbona came to the phone to speak with her, she said.

  At Christie DeTrude’s request, Balbona promised the hospital that he’d take over her husband’s care. He ordered oxygen, medication, and home-health assistance for the family, she said.

  As she waited for Mayo doctors to agree to discharge him, Christie DeTrude prayed every day that her husband could hang on a little longer.

  After 46 days at Mayo Clinic, Dewey DeTrude finally was discharged and immediately started following Dr. Balbona’s instructions, taking ivermectin, fluvoxamine to prevent blood clots, and propranolol to treat anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder from his hospital stay. He also took Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and zinc. He ate healthy food and spent time in the sunshine. Within days, it was clear her husband was on the mend, Christie DeTrude said.

  Now, four months later, “he’s working part-time, going to the gym,” she said. “He’s completed physical therapy and working on rebuilding his stamina and lung capacity. And if it weren’t for Dr. Balbona, I’m quite sure he would have died in the hospital.”

  Gene Bennett, a 77-year-old retired field engineer for IBM, tells a similar story.

  He was enjoying life in Bryceville, Florida helping his son clear five acres of land for a homesite when COVID-19 struck in January 2021.

  An ambulance transported him to Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville, where he was treated with remdesivir.

  “They had to keep getting my oxygen higher and higher,” Bennett said. “I was finally up to the point of seven liters per minute, which is almost pure oxygen. And I knew that I wasn’t getting better. I could tell I was getting weaker and weaker. So when the doctor made his rounds on the Monday morning, I said, ‘This is my last day of remdesivir treatment and I know that I’m not improving. What’s our next step?’

  “He looked at me and very calmly said, ‘Mr. Bennett, we don’t have a next step.’ He said, ‘We have done all for you that we can do. There’s nothing else we can do for you.’”

  

  Gene Bennett insisted on leaving the hospital, instead of going on a ventilator. (Courtesy of Jane Bennett)

  Overnight, Bennett thought a lot about the conversation. The next day, he asked the doctor, “Are you serious? There’s nothing else that this hospital can do for me?”

  “He said, ‘No, sir. The next step is for you to go on a ventilator.’”

  “Well, I’m not going to do that,” Bennett recalls saying. “I want to be released from this hospital.”

  He quickly learned that was no longer a decision he could make for himself.

  Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside Hospital did not respond to a request for comment.

  “They weren’t going to release me because I was on a high level of oxygen,” he told The Epoch Times. “So finally, after I raised hell with them, to put it mildly, all day, my son picked me up” that evening.

  The next morning, Bennett’s wife drove him to Dr. Balbona, his physician for many years. Balbona came out to the parking lot of his office to help him out of the car.

  “I could barely walk with a walker without assistance — that’s how bad off I was,” Bennett said. He says Balbona told him, ” You have the most severe case of COVID that I have seen. But I have a medicine I have been using and I’ve had great success with it.”

  Bennett needed no convincing.

  “What is it? I’ll take it,” Bennett recalls saying. “I know I’m dying. I just feel it.”

  “He told me and my wife, ‘Most people that have COVID as severe as you do not survive. We’re behind the curve, but we’re going to try to get you over the hump. The medicine I’d like to prescribe for you is normally a heartworm medicine for dogs—that’s the most common use.’

  “He said, ‘They use it all over the world. It’s been around for 40 years, and it’s dirt cheap, but very effective.’

  “He said, ‘I would never, ever give a patient a medicine that I thought would be harmful to them.’ And I totally believed, and just accepted the fact he was doing what he thinks was right.

  “I thought, I don’t have any options. I know if I don’t take something to stop this, it’s going to kill me.”

  They picked up a $30 supply of ivermectin from a drug store that day. Bennett was so weak, he could barely feed himself. His wife and son later told him that they thought he was going to die.

  But after five days on what Dr. Balbona prescribed, including Vitamin C, Vitamin D, zinc, steroids, and a diuretic to get fluid off his lungs, he started to improve.

  “I’m a firm believer and I’d swear on the Bible, had I not been prescribed ivermectin, I would have died. Had I not stepped out of St. Vincent’s and checked myself out and gone to him and got the ivermectin, I wouldn’t be talking to you today. It saved my life. And for how much money? Thirty dollars!”

  He has since read a lot of research about the efficacy of ivermectin in the treatment of COVID-19.

  

  Gene Bennett refused to go on a ventilator when he was seriously ill with COVID-19. After leaving the hospital, his doctor treated him with ivermectin. He made a full recovery.  (Courtesy of Jane Bennett)

  “I can’t tell you if it is 100 percent effective for everyone, but I can tell you it was for me. I personally cannot understand why the government balks at giving these treatments. Why don’t they make the announcement that it’s available and let it be an individual’s choice?”

  Ivermectin has been approved for the treatment of COVID-19 in all or part of 22 countries.

  Over the past year, Bennett’s gotten back to full health, almost, regaining about half of the 45 pounds he lost while he was ill.

  His wife’s brother died in early January of COVID-19. They begged the hospital to try ivermectin. The hospital declined.

  His daughter-in-law’s mother died of COVID-19, too, in a Jacksonville Beach hospital, after the family begged to try ivermectin, and the hospital refused, Bennett said.

  An FDA spokeswoman said she would provide the number of reports of patients who had problems after self-medicating with ivermectin. Three days later, that information had not been provided to The Epoch Times.

  The FDA Office of Media Affairs said a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) would be required to obtain details about when ivermectin might be approved for use in treating COVID-19, and about bonafide injuries to people who’ve used ivermectin to treat the illness.

  “The most effective ways to limit the spread of COVID-19 include getting a COVID-19 vaccine when it is available to you and following current CDC guidance,” the FDA’s website advises.

  The Epoch Times spoke to a dozen people who have used ivermectin formulated for humans to treat COVID-19 at home. Most obtained prescriptions for the drug through online medical services. None reported having any side effects, even those who admitted to using ivermectin formulated for animals.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 20:30

• Quantifying The World's Most Powerful Militaries
  Quantifying The World’s Most Powerful Militaries

  When it comes to manpower, no military in the world comes close to that of China.

  

  According to Global Firepower estimates, the People’s Republic has around 2 million active military personnel. The United States in comparison, has significantly less – 1.4 million – but when assessing the overall power of the world’s military forces, the U.S. comes out on top, ahead of Russia and China in second and third, respectively.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  With Russian military build up around Ukraine and increasingly aggressive posturing from the Kremlin, the chances of at least one of the world’s most powerful militaries applying its strength in a major new conflict appear to be at their highest for some time. Diplomatic efforts have so far failed, and it now remains to be seen how Russia will act. Elsewhere, the risk of China and the United States clashing in some form over Taiwan remains ever-present.

  The index “utilizes over 50 individual factors to determine a given nation’s PowerIndex score with categories ranging from military might and financials to logistical capability and geography.” While a rating of 0.000 would represent the perfect score, it is considered realistically unattainable.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 20:00

• Morgan Stanley: As The Fed's Balance Sheet Runoff Begins, The Withdrawal Of Liquidity Will Have Profound Impacts
  Morgan Stanley: As The Fed’s Balance Sheet Runoff Begins, The Withdrawal Of Liquidity Will Have Profound Impacts

  By Vishwanath Tirupattur, head of Quantitative Research at Morgan Stanley

  The Devil Is in the Details

  The first two weeks of the year have reinforced the key message from our 2022 Strategy Outlook – the policy training wheels are indeed coming off, and fast! The hawkish shift in the minutes of the FOMC’s December meeting, reinforced by the rhetoric from a number of Fed officials, signals policy tightening through more hikes. They are coming sooner than expected, and the timeline between the first rate hike and the beginning of balance sheet runoff will be compressed. Our economists now expect the Fed to deliver four 25bp hikes this year, at its March, June, September,and December meetings, in addition to an August start for the balance sheet runoff announced last July. Market pricing already reflects this hawkish shift, with the March liftoff nearly fully priced in along with 3-4 hikes in the subsequent 12 months.

  

  Given the size of the Fed’s balance sheet (US$8.2trillion, consisting of US$5.6 trillion in Treasuries of varying maturities and US$2.6 trillion of agency MBS), the runoff has important market implications. However, quantifying its impact is far from straightforward. One could look to the balance sheet expansion in the post-GFC years with the view that if the buildup lowered interest rates, the runoff should have the opposite effect. A rule of thumb (with a lot of handwaving) suggests a 4-6bp change in the 10-year interest rate from a US$100 billion change in the balance sheet. However, we would argue that the market effects are unlikely to be symmetric and a simple sign reversal between the buildup and the runoff ignores the complexity of the modalities. We expect different impacts for Treasuries and agency MBS, given the different ways they were acquired during the buildup and the share of the Fed’s holdings in their respective markets.

  During the balance sheet buildup, Treasury securities were predominantly acquired through the US Treasury’s new issue process. The Fed consciously decided how much duration to take out of the market by picking securities with varying maturities. In contrast, we expect the balance sheet runoff to be implemented by allowing securities to mature without reinvestment. That means the impact on the yield curve depends on how the Treasury responds to its increased issuance needs as the Fed decreases its Treasury holdings. Our interest rate strategists estimate that US Treasury issuance needs will rise by ~US$850 billion by the end of 2023and ~US$1,300 billion by the end of 2024. If we assume that the Treasury follows the advice of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, the optimal targets for increased issuance would be at the 7-year and 10-year points of the yield curve. Consequently, our strategists now forecast 10-year rates to reach 2.30% by the end of 2022.

  The story with agency MBS is quite different. Agency MBS were purchased in the secondary market,and we expect their runoff to come through paydowns resulting from prepayments and amortizations of the underlying mortgages. Since the Fed has been a non-price-sensitive and programmatic buyer, the Fed’s portfolio of agency MBS would have received faster-prepaying mortgages (cheapest-to-deliver, in mortgage parlance). In addition, Fed holdings constitute a much larger share of the outstanding agency MBS market than of the Treasury market, hence the runoff will have a greater negative impact on agency MBS. In 2021, the Fed bought US$575 billion of agency MBS versus net issuance of US$875 billion, resulting in US$300 billion of MBS that the market absorbed. Our agency MBS strategists project that in 2022 the runoff will remove US$15 billion from the Fed’s balance sheet against projected net issuance of US$550 billion, implying that the market needs to absorb US$565 billion in mortgages, the largest amount of mortgages the private market would ever digest. What’s more, the market will have to find a more price-sensitive buyer for the cheapest-to-deliver mortgages. Putting it all together, the balance sheet runoff clearly will have more impact on agency MBS than other asset classes.

  Of course, the markets have already begun to price in some of these effects,as mortgage spreads have widened about 20bp in the last two weeks. Still, our agency MBS strategists have advocated being short the mortgage basis for some time,and they think there is still room for modest widening (~10bp) in the mortgage basis from here, with mortgage rates rising towards 4%.

  Do not underestimate the effects of liquidity withdrawal. The mammoth balance sheet the Fed has built up was a key determinant of liquidity across markets. As balance sheet runoff is put into motion, the withdrawal of liquidity will have profound impacts. Determining how it plays out is far from straightforward and will be determined by a variety of factors. Understanding the details matters. So hold on tight – there’s volatility ahead.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 19:30

• American Students Organize Classroom "Walk Outs" To Demand Return To Remote Learning
  American Students Organize Classroom “Walk Outs” To Demand Return To Remote Learning

  This is only the latest indication of just how easily influenced young people are by their teachers.

  Even though young Americans are perhaps the least susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 as a group, the ever-rebellious young people of America have decided once again to follow their teacher and protest by staging classroom “walkouts” intended to disrupt the school day.

  

  Just when their parents could finally breathe a sigh of relief now that in-person classes had finally resumed, the “long-suffering” young people have America have taken it upon themselves to mimic the bad behavior of their elders (in this case, the teachers who function as de facto babysitters for millions of young people today). In Chicago, where a teacher’s strike had only just ended, a small group of protesting students staged a walkout, complaining that they were dissatisfied with the additional health protocols the teachers union agreed to earlier this week, ending its standoff with the Chicago Public Schools district and Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

  “I think CPS is listening, but I’m not sure they’ll make a change,” said Jaden Horten, a junior at Jones College Prep High School, during a rally at district headquarters that was attended by roughly 1,000 students, according to Reuters.

  Student walkouts have occurred at schools across Chicago, and in scattered areas across the country.

  For example, about 600 young people from 11 Boston schools participated in student walkouts there, according to the school district, which serves nearly 52K pupils. Many protesting students returned to classrooms later, while others went home following “peaceful” demonstrations. Fortunately for the district, it looks like these protests have petered out as the city’s climate-focused Mayor Michelle Wu, who rose to prominence as a public education activist, praised the young people for letting their voices be heard.

  Amusingly, an online petition started by one Boston high school senior branded schools a “COVID-19 breeding ground” and called for a remote learning option. This had collected more than 8K signatures as of Friday morning.

  Echoing the Chicago Teacher’s Union, the Boston Student Advisory Council, a group representing students that claims to have organized the walkout posted a series of “demands” on Twitter, including two weeks of online instruction and more stringent COVID-19 testing for teachers and students. The kids are even holding their own press conferences now.

  Today! https://t.co/u1AzHM884u

  — Boston Student Advisory Council (@BSACbuzz) January 14, 2022

  At least one student who spoke with a Reuters reporter said they no longer feel safe in school on account of them living with vulnerable grandparents.

  Ash O’Brien, a 10th-grade student at Boston Latin School who left the building with about a dozen others on Friday, said he didn’t feel safe staying in school.

  “I live with two grandparents who are immune-compromised,” he said. “So I don’t want to go to school, risk getting sick and come home to them.”

  In a statement, Boston Public Schools said it supports students advocating for their beliefs and vowed to listen to their concerns.

  The walkouts started in NYC, and have so far pushed Mayor Adams to consider a “temporary” remote learning option. But that’s about all of the “progress” the students can claim so far.

  So far, it appears that the omicron wave in the US might just be peaking, as cities, typically the locus of spread, have seen cases start to turn over.

  Earlier this week, students at several New York City schools staged a walkout to protest what they said were inadequate safety measures. Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday his administration was considering a temporary remote learning option for a significant number of students who were staying home.

  So far, roughly 5K public schools across the country have closed for at least one day due to the pandemic according to one website that tracks school closures.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 19:00

• Glenn Greenwald Exposes Deep State Effort To Stop Trump Pardoning Edward Snowden And Julian Assange
  Glenn Greenwald Exposes Deep State Effort To Stop Trump Pardoning Edward Snowden And Julian Assange

  Authored by Adam Dick via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  There was much speculation toward the end of Donald Trump’s term as president of the United States that Trump would pardon Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, or both of these men who were responsible for exposing vast amounts of wrongdoing by the US government. But, it did not come to pass. Why? Glenn Greenwald, who played a key role in helping Snowden expose information about the US government’s mass surveillance programs and who advocated in public and behind the scenes that Trump pardon both men, has some interesting thoughts about that.

  

  The reason Trump failed to issue a pardon for either Snowden or Assange centers on the deep state trying to protect itself by placing Trump in jeopardy, suggested Greenwald last week in an episode of his System Update show.

  In a written introduction for the episode, Greenwald notes that Trump, while president, had both “raised the possibility that he might pardon Snowden” and was “actively considering a pardon for Assange.”

  Greenwald, in the introduction, zeros in on a recent interview of Trump by Candace Owens. In the interview, Trump stated he came “very close” to pardoning one of them but did not ultimately do so. Why? Trump said the reason was because Trump “was too nice” to issue the pardon.

  Greenwald isn’t buying that explanation. He writes:

  The question that obviously emerges from that answer: too nice to whom? To the U.S. security services — the CIA, NSA and FBI — which had spent four years doing everything possible to sabotage and undermine Trump and his presidency with their concoction of Russiagate and other leaks of false accusations to their corporate media allies? Too nice to the war-mongering servants of the military-industrial complex in the establishment wings of both parties who were the allies of those security services in attempting to derail Trump’s America First foreign policy agenda? Too nice to John Brennan, James Clapper and Susan Rice, the Obama-era security officials most eager to see both Assange and Snowden rot in prison for life because they exposed Obama’s spying crimes and the Democrats’ corruption in 2016? Trump’s “I’m too nice” explanation is, shall we say, less than persuasive.

  In the System Update episode, Greenwald further explains that Trump’s enmity toward these deep state forces that helped lead Greenwald and many other individuals to think that Trump may issue the pardons:

  Now the argument for why President Trump not only should have pardoned Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, but why some of us believed there was a chance that he could didn’t rely on the benevolence of President Trump. It relied on the fact that he knew better than anybody how deceitful and abusive and dangerous these agencies are. The agencies that were exposed by Snowden and Assange and the ones that were demanding that they be imprisoned forever. He knew, as well as anybody, the treachery and the illegal interference in our domestic politics because he was one of their targets.

  Yet, the pardons did not materialize. Why? Greenwald states that Greenwald “knew that Trump wanted to pardon Edward Snowden and had strongly considered pardoning Julian Assange.” But, continues Greenwald, Trump “got scared into pardoning neither of them for reasons I’m about to explain to you.” Greenwald then argues that ultimately Trump gave in to deep state pressure applied through Republican Senators’ threat to convict Trump on the impeachment brought against him in his final weeks in office. Says Greenwald:

  They were making very clear to him explicitly clear Republican senators like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell that if you do any of those things that you are considering doing, pardoning Assange and Snowden, declassifying JFK files, declassifying other secrets that should have been declassified long ago because they’re from decades old treachery on the part of the US government, we will vote to impeach you. They had this leverage the sword of Damocles hanging over his head….

  “This is the story of why the deep state yet again got its way,” concludes Greenwald in his System Update episode, “even with a person in the White House who knows firsthand just how evil and destructive and toxic they are.”

  Watch the System Update episode, and read the introduction and transcript, here.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 18:30

• Crypto Options Suggest Bitcoin Bottom Is In As Hash Rate Hits Record High
  Crypto Options Suggest Bitcoin Bottom Is In As Hash Rate Hits Record High

  After two months of brutal, constant pain for crypto longs on the back of fears the Fed is about to yank the punchbowl and drain enough liquidity to end the party (at least until the next recession and market crash, when the Fed will double-down on easing, launch NIRP, buy equity ETFs and upgrade helicopter money to tactical money ICBMs, finally sending all cryptos to the moon and beyond), the tide may finally be turning at least according to the options market.

  After bitcoin suffered its biggest drop since May 2021 as it tumbled more than 40%, sending the price to the most oversold level since the covid crash – traditionally a failsafe bullish indicator…

  

  …. the world’s largest cryptocurrency rebounded this week after falling below $40,000 for the first time since September on Monday and has bounced as much 10%, just as we said last weekend it would.

  In short, Bitcoin appears to have stabilized, and options activity suggests investors believe the test of $40,000 – a critical support level below which Mike Novogratz said last week is where he would buy more (and appears to have done just that)…

  Looks like a “yes” https://t.co/2mvfynJwJY

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 10, 2022

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

  … is over, and more upside is ahead, according to Genesis Global Trading including Noelle Acheson.

  For one, the skew – or difference in implied volatility of bullish and bearish bets – has recently dropped from double-digits to near zero, and revealed a decrease in investor demand for put options and an increase for call options, Genesis data show.

  

  “That shift in preference may be bullish for the price of BTC, all else equal,” Acheson added, and indeed a look at the option-implied probability cone shows an upside target just shy of $10,000..

  

  It’s not just option traders and billionaire investors who see $40,000 as a bottom- it is a view echoed by many analysts in the famously optimistic world of crypto. Quoted by Bloomberg, Martin Gaspar and Katherine Webb at CrossTower said in a Friday note that Bitcoin’s reserve risk, a measure of confidence of long-term BTC holders, is currently lower than it was at the coin’s last bottom in July 2021, and now stands in the “buy” zone, which could give “more weight to the indication that this is a bottom.”

  The $40,000 level “has been the key pivot point,” said Bloomberg Intelligence’s famously bullish crypto analyst, Mike McGlone. Up next, $50,000 comes into play before Bitcoin resumes its upward trend toward his forecast of $100,000, he said.

  “Demand and adoption are increasing and supply is declining,” McGlone said. “Something has to reverse the increasing Bitcoin adoption trend or the rules of economics point to higher prices. I expect demand and adoption trajectories to remain favorable.”

  

  McGlone isn’t alone in his calls for Bitcoin to more than double from current levels. According to Bloomberg, Jonathan Padilla, co-founder of Snickerdoodle Labs, a blockchain company focused on data privacy, expects Bitcoin to hit that level by the end of 2022, and also said that $40,000 is likely a floor, given the level of institutional capital he expects to flow into the market this year.

  “The institutional nature is dramatically different from the primarily retail focus in 2017, 2018,” Padilla said. “That shows the strength of institutional buying and the demand from the long-term perspective.” Of course, this cuts both ways, because when institutions are deleveraging, they dump those assets first that have outperformed in 2021 – such as cryptos – which is also why crypto’s correlation to risk assets has exploded as institutional adoption has grown.

  David Tawil, president of ProChain Capital, was ready to watch the $38,000 level in this past week’s sell-off. But, he hoped to see U.S. tech stocks start to rebound, which signals to him that “the bottom is in” for Bitcoin, he told Bloomberg’s “QuickTake Stock” broadcast.

  “This is a pretty good buying level, especially if we go ahead and just retrace the losses — you’re talking about a 50%-plus gain from a year,” Tawil said.  

  A surprising view comes from some of the biggest crypto skeptics around – JPMorgan, and specifically their clients, who have recently initiated a new target price for Bitcoin for this year of 2022. In a recent report, America’s largest commercial bank asked its clients where they see Bitcoin by the end of 2022. Based on the results, nearly 41% of clients believe that Bitcoin could be trading at $60,000 or above by the year-end, or about 50% higher than the current levels and more than what other asset classes can offer.

  Others are less bullish. Another 23% of JPMorgan clients believe that BTC will be available at a 50% discount from the current levels i.e. $20,000. While another 20 percent believe that Bitcoin will be trading flat at $40,000. Only a mere 5% believe that Bitcoin will be trading above $100,000 levels.

  Marko Papic, chief strategist at Clocktower Group, is another skeptic – he warns that Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 remains at one of its highest readings in the past 12 months; this is happening just as tech names have swooned amid fears of a hawkish Fed.  In this environment, “you don’t really want to own high-beta risk assets,” he said. “You want to own things that are much more sensitive to value, much more sensitive to global growth and cyclicals, and that’s why I don’t think crypto and Bitcoin are going to really do great over the next three to six months.”

  In his latest Crypto Keys note (available to professional subs), UBS FX strategist James Malcolm has turned quite bearish on crypto, writing that the recent drop in bitcoin prices is the result of disappointment with the SEC not approving ETFs, as well as three other reasons: 1. It’s not better money; 2. The technology may prove subpar; 3. Regulation is a rising hurdle. While we disagree with all of these points, UBS does point out something notable: whales now own more bitcoin than ever before.

  

  Meanwhile, as debates rage what’s next for crypto, one thing that is certain is that China’s attempt to crush the largest cryptocurrency last year when it banished all crypto miners has now failed (and backfired) spectacularly:

  Bitcoin’s hash rate has returned to all-time highs despite losing a key hash rate contributor. Meanwhile, amid lackluster price action, Block CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed the creation of an open Bitcoin  mining system. according to CoinTelegraph, while Kazakhstan, the network’s second-most important BTC mining country, experienced an internet blackout last week due to civil unrest, the hash rate faltered no more than 13.4% before regathering to reach all-time highs.

  As shown in the data below from Glassnode, with the price checking into the $42,000 range on Thursday, the mean hash rate hit 215 million terahashes per second.

  

  Said otherwise, Bitcoin miners continue to show resilience, and as Fidelity Digital Assets observed, the network is even “more widely distributed around the world.”

  As testament to this, Jack Dorsey’s Block confirmed it would develop open-source Bitcoin mining systems in 2022. In the Twitter thread, Thomas Templeton, a general manager at Block, addressed issues relating to the availability, reliability, performance and products pertaining to BTC mining. In sum, Block’s goals for BTC mining are the following:

  “We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining. We’re interested because mining goes far beyond creating new bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless.”

  Building a BTC mining system “out in the open” and alongside the community is no mean feat. Econoalchemist, an established home BTC miner and BTC magazine contributor, tweeted that developing products in open source would “build trust where no reputation exists currently and also might shift consumer expectations in that direction.”

  Ultimately, Block’s mining solutions may pave the way for more DIY miners to enter the space.

  Ultimately, it seems the sky’s the limit for Bitcoin’s hash rate, at least until the next 2,016 blocks, when the network difficulty resets.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 18:00

• Is Masking Kids At School Working?
  Is Masking Kids At School Working?

  Authored by Ian Miller and Michael Betrus via The Brownstone Institute,

  Kids in California, New York, Illinois and a number of other states are required to wear face masks every day at school. Nearly 40% of school children nationwide are required to do so. Other states leave it up to local rules, which means about half the kids in the country are wearing face masks every day, social distancing, eating lunch outside, and performing athletics in masks. 

  

  Close to 30% of all schools are legally prevented from implementing mandates, or face pending legal challenges to restrictions, which means few in those states are imposing restrictions like we saw in 2020-2021.

  Below are those states with and without face mask requirements in schools.

  

  There are two things that would almost assuredly amaze most parents across the country. Many parents in states like California or Illinois with mask mandates would likely be shocked how normal school protocols are in Texas, Florida, Utah, Iowa and other states shown in dark green or orange. Those with school-aged children in the green states would be stunned to learn that those in blue are requiring kids to wear face masks in school, socially distance, and eat outside in the cold or rain.

  Some universities are requiring students to wear masks while on campus, even outdoors, including the University of Southern California and the University of Arizona.

  COVID-19 is currently surging all over the country. Fortunately, a combination of a less lethal variant, recovered immunity and vaccinations are preventing many from the highly serious conditions we have seen in the past. You can see below that positive tests have skyrocketed over the past few weeks. Why so many people who aren’t sick are waiting in long lines and panicking to buy at-home tests is the subject for another article, but it’s clear that millions are currently contracting COVID-19:

  

  In looking at the grouping of the states (CA/OR/WA/IL/NY/DE/MA/CT/NJ/MD/NV/NM/VA/RI) with required masking in schools compared to those without mask mandates (UT/FL/AZ/TX/OK/MO/IA/AR/TN/SC), where very few students are wearing them, we see nearly identical trends, and those with little to no masking have lower current case rates: 

  

  The proportion of pediatric positive tests is similar in all parts of the country right now, about 20% of all positive tests across the three 0-17 age groups shown below. This is about the same regardless of weather (seasonality) or restrictions:

  

  It made us wonder. Are the school restrictions in some states working? It’s not about cases; cases are really a product of community spread and how much testing we do. It is about sickness. Are more kids getting hospitalized for or with COVID-19 in the states with normal school protocols than those requiring face masks?

  We reached out to Josh Stevenson (@ifihadastick on Twitter), who has repeatedly produced amazing data analysis throughout the pandemic. Below is what he uncovered. This is an original compilation you won’t see anywhere else. For the states requiring masks, COVID-19 pediatric hospitalizations are averaging 4.23 per 100,000 kids:

  

  For the states not allowing face mask mandates (or close to not requiring), COVID-19 pediatric hospitalizations are averaging 4.90 per 100,000 kids:

  

  The hospitalization rate is nearly identical. There is no discernible difference between outcomes of infection or hospitalization for kids in communities where face masks are required in school and those where face coverings are optional.

  Kids should be in school with normal protocols.

  They should be in class without masks, without plexiglass dividers, socializing while they eat lunch and participating in sports without face masks. Logic clearly tells us this, and this data overwhelmingly proves there is no health benefit to requiring kids to wear face masks in school.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 17:30

• "No Trust In Tesla Brand" – New Model 3 Delivered To Customer Without Brake Pad
  “No Trust In Tesla Brand” – New Model 3 Delivered To Customer Without Brake Pad

  Tesla owner, April Gillmore, took delivery of a new Model 3 Performance on Dec. 19, only to notice a deafening scraping sound coming from the rear. 

  Gillmore put a few dozen miles on the Model 3 last month before contacting Tesla about “a grinding noise” coming from the driver-side rear wheel while driving. The Tesla Dealership on Florida Avenue in Tampa had no service appointments for inspection. They even told her the “noise was normal.” 

  Response from Tesla was that the “noise was normal.” Obviously, nothing is normal about the noise. At this point, I thought there must be a rock or pebble stuck between rotor and dust shield. So, I drove the car to an independent shop to have the wheel inspected. pic.twitter.com/FaT4KKAsKi

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 13, 2022

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

  She was fed up with Tesla’s terrible service and took the Model 3 to an independent shop for inspection. Mechanics discovered “there wasn’t an inside brake pad installed at the factory,” she said, adding the “backside of the rotor and that side of the caliper are destroyed.” At the time, the car only had 112 miles on it. 

  Watched as wheel was removed and learned there was NO INSIDE BRAKE PAD installed on the wheel. 😳 Called Tesla roadside and had car towed directly to Tesla Service Center. pic.twitter.com/haKGGOSYxr

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 13, 2022

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

  Around Dec. 27, she had the car towed to Tesla via Roadside Assistance to the Tesla facility. They said all brake components for that wheel would be replaced by Dec. 31. However, what was supposed to be a quick fix has become a nightmare. The car is still in the shop as of Jan. 14. 

  @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/TAKCTsEJPH

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 14, 2022

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

  Gillmore told The Drive she had “never purchased a new or used vehicle that was under warranty and had this type of experience with a service department.”

  “I absolutely do not trust the Tesla brand in any way. Not only did they deliver a car to me that was unsafe to drive, but they also blew me off about the noise the car was making, and now they’re dragging their feet on making things right. If they can build and ship new Model 3Ps then why can’t they repair the ones that they’ve already sold to people? I had no clue that Tesla treated their customers this way prior to this experience,” she said.

  If you’re considering buying a Tesla, make sure you’re prepared for the worst customer service experience EVER. Once you drive off the lot, they do not care… even if the issue you’re having is 100% their fault. #teslamodel3 #model3 #horribleservice

  — April G (@aprildawn78) January 13, 2022

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

  This is the latest quality control issue plaguing the Tesla brand. Last month, the company recalled nearly half a million cars for rearview camera problems that could increase cars’ crash risk. 

  Over the years, some Tesla owners have reported bumpers ripping off in adverse weather conditions, roofs flying off, and trim and paneling not lining up, among many other defects. Some owners have recently had “buyers remorse” as their heaters stopped working in freezing temperatures.  

  What’s mindboggling is that a trillion-dollar carmaker continues to have quality control issues. Who the hell is in charge of signing off on these defective vehicles?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 17:00

• Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic
  Leaked Fauci Financials Expose How Millionaire Doctor Profited From Pandemic

  Finally, after a handful of organizations tried suing Dr. Anthony Fauci in order to have them released, the good doctor’s financials – along with those of his wife, who is the NIH’s top bioethicist – have been disclosed in detail. And they were leaked by the same Senator who Fauci called a “moron” last week during a hot-mic moment.

  

  We already knew that Dr. Fauci is the highest-paid federal government employee, earning an annual salary of more than $400K. His wife, Christine Grady, earns $176K as Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH.

  The records, published by Republican Roger Marshall, himself a doctor and also the junior US senator from Kansas, showed that the Faucis’ have a combined net worth of more than $10MM.

  🚨🚨 BREAKING! I obtained Dr. Fauci’s previously unpublished financial disclosures. Dr. Fauci was completely dishonest about his disclosures being readily accessible to the public which is why I am releasing them now.

  Dr. Fauci’s Financial Disclosures ⬇️https://t.co/KdRbedRTX5

  — Dr. Roger Marshall (@RogerMarshallMD) January 15, 2022

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

  As the Daily Mail explains, Fauci, 80, has led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and, if he continues until the end of Biden’s term in 2024, will have made roughly $2.5MM as the president’s chief medical advisor. When he retires, Fauci’s pension will be the largest in US history, exceeding $350,000 per year.

  As a reminder, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress yet again by insisting that his financials were public, when they very much weren’t (before being leaked by the Senator from Kansas, that is).

  While the doctor has insisted he hasn’t profited from the pandemic, his paperwork showed that he and his wife were paid $14,000 to “virtually” attend a series of galas directly related to his position as the nation’s de facto COVID czar.

  

  Perhaps the most entertaining disclosure from Dr. Fauci’s financials is the revelation that the couple owns a restaurant in tony San Francisco. It’s called Jackson Fillmore Trattoria. Unfortunately for them, the restaurant didn’t make any money last year.

  Sen. Marshall clashed with the 80-year-old doctor on Tuesday when Marshall wanted to see Fauci’s financial information. Fauci replied that the documents were public, and appeared to take umbrage at even being asked. “Yes or no, would you be willing to submit to Congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments?” Marshall asked. “Our office cannot find them.” Fauci replied: “I don’t understand why you’re asking me that question…my financial disclosure is public knowledge and has been so for the last 37 years or so.”

  According to the Center for Public Integrity, Fauci’s financial statements were indeed publicly available, however, obtaining them was a lengthy procedure: they requested the document in May 2020 didn’t receive it until three months later.

  All told, Dr. Fauci has three accounts with Charles Schwab that have a total of $8,337,940.90. He has a contributory IRA with $638,519.70 in it, and a brokerage trust account with $2,403,522.28. Finally, the most valuable of the three disclosed was a Schwab One Trust containing $5,295,898.92.

  

  

  

  Most of Dr. Fauci’s wealth comes from his government salary, but he has also made a substantial portion from books and appearances. Sen. Marshall is pushing for a new law called the “FAUCI Act” that would require unelected bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci to produce more thorough financial disclosures so that they can be appropriately scrutinized by the American public.

  Readers can find more disclosures on Sen. Marshall’s website, which features a more comprehensive breakdown of the doctor’s financials, along with copies of all the associated paperwork.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 16:44

• States Investigating Surge In Mortality Rate Among 18–49-Year-Olds, Majority Unrelated To COVID-19
  States Investigating Surge In Mortality Rate Among 18–49-Year-Olds, Majority Unrelated To COVID-19

  Authored by Petr Svab via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Health departments in several states confirmed to The Epoch Times that they are looking into a steep surge in the mortality rate for people aged 18 to 49 in 2021—a majority of which are not linked to COVID-19.

  Deaths among people aged 18 to 49 increased more than 40 percent in the 12 months ending October 2021 compared to the same period in 2018–2019, before the pandemic, according to an analysis by The Epoch Times of death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

  The agency doesn’t yet have full 2021 figures, as death certificate data has a lag of up to eight weeks or more.

  

  The surge differed greatly from state to state, with the most dramatic increase in young-to-middle age deaths in the South, Midwest, and the West Coast, while the northeastern states generally saw much milder spikes. Public health authorities in several states with some of the largest increases are examining the issue.

  Texas saw the 18 to 49 age mortality jump 61 percent, the second-highest increase in the country. Of that, less than 58 percent was attributed to COVID-19.

  “Our Center of Health Statistics is looking at the data,” said Chris Van Deusen, the head of Media Relations at the Texas Department of State Health Services, via email. “We’ll get back with you.”

  Florida, which saw an increase of 51 percent, 48 percent of that attributed to COVID-19, is also probing the matter.

  

  “I am looking into it to see if there is some sort of correlation/causation,” said Jeremy Redfern, spokesman for the Florida Department of Health via email.

  Nevada saw the highest increase, 65 percent, of which just 36 percent was attributed to COVID-19.

  Shannon Litz, a public information officer at the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, said via email she passed on questions regarding the mortality spike to the agency’s Office of Analytics “for review.”

  The District of Columbia experienced an increase of 72 percent, none of it attributed to COVID-19.

  Robert Mayfield, spokesman for D.C.’s health authority, referred The Epoch Times to the district’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), which suggested it lacked the expertise to analyze the phenomenon.

  “OCME does not currently have an epidemiologist (the position is being advertised) so it has no present ability to analyze the data,” said the office’s spokesman Rodney Adams via email.

  Arizona recorded a 57 percent increase, 37 percent of which was attributed to COVID-19.

  Arizona’s Department of Health Services couldn’t respond to questions regarding the issue because its data is “not yet finalized,” said Tom Herrmann, the agency’s public information officer, via email.

  

  Other states with some of the highest increases were Tennessee (57 percent up, 33 percent attributed to COVID-19), California (55 percent up, 42 percent attributed to COVID-19), New Mexico (52 percent up, 33 percent attributed to COVID-19), and Louisiana (51 percent up, 32 percent attributed to COVID-19). None of their health authorities responded to requests for comment.

  The mortality surge seemed to be significantly milder in the northeast. New Hampshire saw no increase, Massachusetts had only a 13 percent spike (24 percent of it attributed to COVID-19), and New York, one of the worst-hit by the pandemic in the region, was up 29 percent (30 percent of it attributed to COVID-19).

  CDC data on the causes of those excess deaths aren’t yet available for 2021, aside from those involving COVID-19, pneumonia, and influenza. There were close to 6,000 excess pneumonia deaths that didn’t involve COVID-19 in the 18 to 49 age group in the 12 months ending October 2021. Influenza was only involved in 50 deaths in this age group, down from 550 in the same period pre-pandemic. The flu death count didn’t exclude those that also involved COVID-19 or pneumonia, the CDC noted.

  

  A part of the surge could be likely blamed on drug overdoses, which increased to more than 101,000 in the 12 months ending June 2021 from about 72,000 in 2019, the CDC estimated. About two-thirds of those deaths involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl that are often smuggled to the United States from China via Mexico.

  For those aged 50 to 84, mortality increased more than 27 percent, representing more than 470,000 excess deaths. Some 77 percent of the deaths had COVID-19 marked on the death certificate as the cause or a contributing factor.

  For those 85 or older, mortality increased about 12 percent with more than 100,000 excess deaths. There were more than 130,000 COVID-related deaths in this group, indicating these seniors were less likely to die of a non-COVID-related cause from November 2020 to October 2021 than during the same period of 2018–2019.

  Comparing 2020 to 2019, mortality increased some 24 percent for those aged 18 to 49, with less than a third of those excess deaths involving COVID-19. For those aged 50 to 84, mortality increased less than 20 percent, with over 70 percent of that involving COVID-19. For those even older, mortality jumped about 16 percent, with nearly 90 percent of it involving COVID-19.

  For those under 18, mortality decreased about 0.4 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. In the 12 months ending October 2021, it fell some 3.3 percent compared to the same period in 2018–2019.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 16:30

• Et Tu? Chuck Todd Savages Biden Over Failing Presidency As Liberal Media Cuts Bait
  Et Tu? Chuck Todd Savages Biden Over Failing Presidency As Liberal Media Cuts Bait

  As legacy media continues to distance itself from the Biden administration amid dismal approval ratings (and dismal viewership), MSNBC‘s Chuck Todd delivered perhaps the harshest indictment of a president his network has spent the last three years breathlessly fluffing.

  

  In light of the press’s previously ‘complicit’ relationship with the Biden White House, Todd’s monologue was blistering to say the least.

  “For President Biden, the plan was that Covid would be defeated, the economy would fully recover and he would be able to deliver a return to normalcy. But plans have a way of going sideways. A year into Mr. Biden’s presidency, unemployment is down and wages are up, but inflation is also up to a 40-year high. Infrastructure and Covid relief bills were passed, but Build Back Better is stuck in neutral. And most important, though vaccines are available and effective, Delta and Omicron have dealt a one-two punch to the economy, the supply chain and that promised return to normalcy…

  …And on Thursday the Supreme Court blocked Mr. Biden’s “vaccine or test” mandate for large businesses, perhaps taking away the last effective tool in his Covid toolbox. That same day Mr. Biden’s last-minute push for voting rights bills was dealt a likely fatal blow. Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema said again what she’s been saying for months. She is opposed to changing the filibuster to pass the legislation. So, now what? All of this came just as the president was heading, by the way, to Capitol Hill to lobby fellow Democrats to change the Senate rules. So it was quite the exclamation point on a terrible week.“

  Watch:

  This Sunday morning —

  Every new administration enters office with an agenda of optimism.

  For President Biden, the plan was that Covid would be defeated, the economy would fully recover and he would deliver a return to normalcy.

  But plans have a way of going sideways. pic.twitter.com/ojXCVrNujv

  — Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 16, 2022

  Todd’s comments are the latest in a slew of leftist media outlets jumping ship on the Biden administration.

  By casting his adversaries as enemies, undermining the efficacy of elections, seeking to give the federal gov’t more control over state elections, & pressuring his party to do away with the filibuster, Biden is following in the well-worn path of Trump. https://t.co/HUgHBU3lKE

  — Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) January 14, 2022

  

  

  

  

  Even SNL…

  

  And then there’s this…

  Once again when confronted with the abysmal response to covid (among other things), Psaki tries to be a sarcastic ass rather than show openness to change. She jokes that wanting better is “bunny rabbits and ice cream”.

  Thousands of deaths is not a joke.
  pic.twitter.com/ti2xHgYnUi

  — Héctor E. Alcalá (@Hector_E_Alcala) January 14, 2022

  Maybe Kamala can rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 16:00

• False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory
  False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone,

  In a drastic pivot from typical denunciations of false flag operations as conspiratorial nonsense that don’t exist outside the demented imagination of Alex Jones, the US political/media class is proclaiming with one voice that Russia is currently orchestrating just such an operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

  “As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday.

  “We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine.”

  

  “Without getting into too much detail, we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine,” Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby told the press on Friday.

  “In fact, we have information that they’ve pre-positioned a group of operatives, to conduct what we call a false flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or their people, or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, as an excuse to go in.”

  The US government has substantiated these incendiary claims with the usual amount of evidence, by which I of course mean jack dick nothingballs. The mass media have not been dissuaded from reporting on this issue by the complete absence of any evidence that this Kremlin false flag plot is in fact a real thing that actually happened, their journalistic standards completely satisfied by the fact that their government instructed them to report it. Countless articles and news segments containing the phrase “false flag” have been blaring throughout all the most influential news outlets in the western world without the slightest hint of skepticism.

  This sudden embrace of the idea that governments can stage attacks on their own people to justify their own pre-existing agendas is a sharp pivot from the scoff which such a notion in mainstream liberal circles has typically received. This 2018 article from The New York Times simply dismisses the idea that the 2014 Maidan massacre was a false flag carried out by western-backed opposition fighters in Ukraine to frame the riot police of the government who was ousted in that coup, for example, despite the existence of plenty of evidence that this is indeed what happened. This BBC article dismisses without argument the idea that the alleged 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria could have been a false flag carried out by the Al Qaeda-aligned insurgents on the ground to provoke a western attack on the Syrian government, yet there are mountains of evidence that this was the case.

  Articles denouncing the very idea of “false flag conspiracy theories” surface routinely in the mass media. Snopes has a whole article explaining that false flags are kooky nonsense without any mention of the fact that this is a known tactic we’ve seen intelligence operatives discussing in declassified documents, like when the CIA considered planting bombs in Miami to blame Castro. I myself was once temporarily suspended by Facebook just for posting an article about false flag operations that are publicly acknowledged to have occurred. People who dare to question the many gaping plot holes in the official 9/11 narrative have often been treated with the same disdain and revulsion as neo-Nazis and pedophilia advocates.

  “A US official told CNN” is not a “Scoop” but demonstrates the willingness of ‘journalists’ to stenograph unverifiable government disinformation. https://t.co/wr2u3xKtiI

  — Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 14, 2022

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

  None of this is to say that every theory about any false flag operation is true; many are not. But the way the mass media will instantly embrace an idea to which they’ve heretofore been consistently hostile just because their government told them to to do it says so much about the state of the so-called free press today, and the fact that the rank-and-file public simply accepts this and marches along with it as though talking about false flags has always been normal says so much about the level of Orwellian doublethink that people have been trained to perform in today’s information ecosystem. The way false flag operations were widely considered conspiratorial hogwash until the instant they were reported as real by the media institutions who’ve lied to us about every war is downright creepy.

  The problem with preemptive false flag accusations is of course that the side making the claim can simply launch an unprovoked attack and then say “See? They’re staging a false flag to frame our side, just like we said they would!” And then they can present their subsequent actions as defensive in nature, when in reality they were the aggressors and instigators. We are seeing nothing from the obedient western news media to suggest they’d do anything other than uncritically regurgitate such claims into the minds of their trusting audiences.

  As the Beltway doctrine that US unipolar hegemony must be preserved at all cost crashes headlong into the reality of an emerging multipolar world, the US government is now more dangerous than it has ever been at any point in its history. We need the press to be holding the drivers of empire to account with the light of truth, and we need the public to be opposing and scrutinizing these reckless escalations. Instead, we are getting the exact opposite. God help us all.

  *  *  *

  My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 15:34

• Fully Vaccinated Canadian Soccer Star Alphonso Davies Sidelined With Myocarditis
  Fully Vaccinated Canadian Soccer Star Alphonso Davies Sidelined With Myocarditis

  Another day, another story about a soccer player being sidelined due to sudden-onset heart-related illness. 

  Continuing a disturbing trend of professional soccer players being pulled from games, Canadian star Alphonso Davies, who plays for Bayern Munich, is showing signs of an “inflammation of the heart muscle,” according to CP24. 

  He is only 21 years old.

  Davies has been ruled out of Canada’s three World Cup qualifiers set to take place in Janaury and February.

  His club manager, Julian Nagelsmann, has said that the problem was caught during a follow up COVID examination.

  “He’ll sit out training until further notice. He won’t be available, also in the coming weeks. The ultrasound shows this myocarditis isn’t so dramatic but it’s a sign of myocarditis. Still, it has to heal and that will definitely take some time,” the skipper commented.

  

  He didn’t attribute the inflammation to Covid right away, stating: “There are different reasons, especially viral load or the flu, for instance, that can cause cardiac problems.”

  “That occurred pre-corona to other players. Now the probability is higher if you combine corona and top athleticism, that might cause other problems. But that’s not relevant for us right now. It’s not relevant to the treatment. It doesn’t matter if Alphonso Davies had this from the flu or Omicron-Delta or whatever. That’s not really the decisive factor,” he continued.

  “The situation is that it’s absolutely awful, terrible. What can I say? A bad situation for us.”

  Davies has stopped training and is widely considered one of the best left backs in the world. 

  He is fully vaccinated and got his booster in December, reports says.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 15:00

• "Waste Of Time" To Keep Vaccinating People: Ex-Head Of UK Vaccine Taskforce
  “Waste Of Time” To Keep Vaccinating People: Ex-Head Of UK Vaccine Taskforce

  Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

  It is a “waste of time” to keep vaccinating people against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the former chairman of Britain’s Vaccines Taskforce has said.

  

  Dr. Clive Dix, who played a key role in helping pharmaceutical firms create the COVID-19 vaccines, told LBC radio on Jan. 16: “The Omicron variant is a relatively mild virus. And to just keep vaccinating people and thinking of doing it again to protect the population is, in my view, now a waste of time.”

  Dix said the focus now should be on protecting vulnerable people, such as those over 60, 2 percent of whom remain unvaccinated.

  “We should have a highly-focused approach to get those people vaccinated and anybody else who’s vulnerable,” he said.

  Though he supports the ongoing booster campaign, he said he has been “critical” of boosting everybody as he is not convinced “it was needed or is needed” for younger people.

  Dix said, “I think the thinking of the time was very much to stop infection and transmission where clearly these vaccines don’t do that.”

  He said the government needs to be “very focused” on educating itself for the “future vaccination programme” next winter.

  He suggested that an “immune status study” should be conducted to “understand exactly where everybody’s immunity is,” so that “by next winter, we can really have a policy of vaccination that’s educated, using the right vaccines at the right time for the right people.”

  Dix told The Observer newspaper last week that mass vaccination against COVID-19 should come to an end and the UK should focus on managing it as an endemic disease like flu.

  “We now need to manage disease, not virus spread,” he said.

  “So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.”

  The UK government’s medical advisers have already acknowledged that it is “untenable” to jab the population every three or six months.

  Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, said on Jan. 3 that it is not the government’s “long-term view” to give everyone a booster vaccine every few months.

  Professor Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and chair of the government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), told The Telegraph that it’s “not sustainable or affordable” to “vaccinate the planet every four to six months.”

  On Jan. 7, the UK government’s vaccination advisory committee recommended against giving a fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine to nursing home residents and people over 80.

  The JCVI said the three doses of the vaccines are still providing “very good protection against severe disease,” and an immediate second booster dose to the most vulnerable would “provide only limited additional benefit against severe disease at this time.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 01/16/2022 – 14:32

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