Mar 05

Today’s News 5th March 2020

  • Erdogan Or Erdo-gone In Turkey?
    Erdogan Or Erdo-gone In Turkey?

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad”

    – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “Prometheus”

    It looks like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is headed for the political gallows a lot quicker than I ever thought.

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    His offensive in Idlib has bogged down. And a day before he’s scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Erdogan Turkish parliament degrades quickly as opposition speaks out against his Syria campaign.

    This prompted a fistfight.

    Now, apparently fistfights in Turkish parliament aren’t that uncommon since one took place back in 2016 over the controversial changes to the constitution Erdogan rammed through back then.

    It’s clear Erdogan’s support at home is deteriorating quickly. And his push into Syria is a grave miscalculation as I’ve noted in other posts (here and here).

    I spoke with Sputnik Radio’s newest show, Political Misfits, on this making the point that Erdogan is still convinced he can fill the vacuum left by a retreating U.S. to become the regional overlord in a new Middle East.

    Yes, really, he’s that delusional.

    The noises coming out of Moscow for today’s meeting is that not only will Erdogan not get any of Idlib from Putin, he’ll lose everything else in the process.

    Remember, Russia holds a lot of sway over the Turkish economy and, as such, controls a fair amount of Erdogan’s political capital hostage. No matter how he tries to spin this, he’s the aggressor here and Putin knows he’s an unreliable partner.

    The Russian Ministry of Defense isn’t playing games. In the same way that they systematically revealed the real narrative of U.S. support of the Syrian Civil War during the early stages of their military intervention it is now doing the same thing to Erdogan’s betrayal of the 2018 Sochi agreement.

    In all of this the Russians have been a source of the closest thing we get to real information from Syria. That this is never reported here in the West is criminal, but then again so is the campaign to destroy Syria.

    It’s been Russia that has consistently uncovered and disseminated early warnings of chemical weapons false flags, helping us to prove what our instincts tell us is true.

    And the standing of international organizations like the OPCW have suffered greatly. With the latest report of a failed chemical weapons attack by Turkish-backed jihadists in Saraqib, Putin now has more than enough ammo to use against Erdogan at the U.N. Security Council.

    And I expect that threat should be on the table when the two sit down to talk tomorrow.

    Since their rapprochement after Turkey shot down a Russian SU-24, Putin has willing to give Erodgan cover for his past crimes if his behavior dovetailed with Putin’s ultimate goal of restoring the territorial boundaries of Syria.

    Putin’s done this multiple times in order to keep the fighting to a minimum and find ways to get the situation resolved. But until Erdogan is defanged in Idlib there is no possibility of an end to the Syrian conflict.

    He’s the key, because without his acting as the tip of NATO’s spear, there is no appetite for taking this further.

    So now, with Erdogan’s behavior is in clear conflict with this the end is in sight. As I said in my last article, Putin may have misjudged Erdogan’s ambitions but he could have also been giving him just enough rope to hang himself with.

    And I believe Putin is near the point of seeing Erdogan as “Not Agreement Capable,” which is where he is with the United States.

    He, frankly, doesn’t have any other choice. This is likely Erdogan’s last of his nine political lives. Tomorrow’s meeting will tell the tale.

    Elijah Magnier is reporting a possible cease fire agreement but only if Turkey yields the entire M4 highway. In my opinion, that would be the equivalent of surrender terms.

    Autocracy is, at best, a meta-stable form of government. And Erdogan’s moves to concentrate power in his hands have pushed things in Turkey dangerously in that direction.

    Failure at this level of international high stakes poker usually ends badly for the guy who bets the farm on a bluff.

    *  *  *

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    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 03/05/2020 – 02:00

  • Who Or What Started The Wuhan Coronavirus Epidemic?
    Who Or What Started The Wuhan Coronavirus Epidemic?

    Authored by Professor Anthony Hall via AHTribune.com,

    On the Condemnation of “Conspiracy Theories” as a Device for Protecting Officialdom’s Lies, Disinformation, and Obfuscation.

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    The Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic of 2019-20 is moving many markers where life merges into death, where truth merges into lies. At age 34, Dr. Li Wenliang drew attention in Wuhan to these moving markers. The disease Dr. Li sought to warn against ended up taking his life as the epidemic gained fatal traction.

    Before going down himself in the line of duty, Dr. Li faced a harsh reprimand from representatives of the Chinese Communist Party. Dr. Li was accused of spreading rumors and illegally threatening the social order with his tweets and posts and personal interventions. Nevertheless, Dr. Li was soon vindicated in calling attention to the coming plague.

    It did not take long before the appalling force of the illness demonstrated that Dr. Li was anything but a wayward conspiracy theorist. Instead, the evidence proved him right even as it proved his powerful detractors were both wrong and negligent in the face of a genuine menace.

    Dr. Li Wenliang is a martyr. It remains to be seen, however, how far the shadow of Dr. Li’s martyrdom will be cast.

    The Novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, is cutting a broad and deep swath though epidemiological history with uncertain impact on the viability of many families, communities, institutions, economies, and even countries starting with the most heavily populated nation on earth. Many fates are hanging in the balance, not the least of which is that of the communist government that has ruled China since the Maoist Revolution brought it to power in 1949.

    The new strain of Coronavirus has added novel genetic features to the same family of pathogens that brought the world the SARS crisis in 2002-3 and, a decade later, the less lethal MERS outbreak. This Novel Coronavirus strain, COVID-19, is showing itself to be much more contagious and lethal than was SARS and MERS.

    Some have anticipated that, if not dramatically countered, the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic could be headed in the direction of the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918. This prediction flows from the assessment of, for instance, Prof. Gabriel Leung, Chair of Public Health Medicine at Hong King University. Looking at the very fast rate of COVID-19’s spread from human to human through the air, Dr. Leung challenged any residual sense of complacency. He anticipated a possible 60 per cent infection rate of the world’s entire population with deaths numbering in the many tens of millions.

    The so-called Spanish flu has set the bar for how severe and widespread a contagious plague can become. The pandemic of 1918 took more lives in one year than all deaths due to World War II. The Spanish flu of 1918 engendered more mortality in one year than the four peak years of the notorious Black Death Bubonic Plague that decimated Europe in the middle years of the fourteenth century. The worldwide pandemic of 1918 infected over a quarter of all people on earth. About 65 million people died from the illness.

    News reports from the ground zero area of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic demonstrate that the effects of the viral infection cut far and wide. Every facet of Chinese society is being challenged to the limit by a fast-spreading plague disseminating germs of destruction disrupting many biological, political, economic, and knowledge systems simultaneously.

    Questions about how to interpret the epidemic and how to explain to the public what is known or not known are quickly coming into focus. Who should be believed? Who is credible and who is not credible as the epidemic unfolds. What should be the role of social media and of whistle blowers in the process of deciding how to respond? What happens when genuine whistle blowers like Dr. Li are too quickly dismissed and reprimanded by ruling authorities as “conspiracy theorists”?

    An essential task that must be faced in this initial phase of this crisis is to develop an accurate explanation of where contagion came from and how the first victims of the Novel Coronavirus came to be infected. The need for some degree of certainty about the origins of the virus and its subsequent genesis is absolutely essential to the development of sound and appropriate responses. It would be highly irresponsible to rush ahead with the development of an overall strategy for dealing with the plague without making an honest attempt to get at the truth of how the contagion first came into existence.

    The importance of getting to the factual roots of what happened to put humanity on this epidemiological trajectory should be especially clear after the debacle of September 11, 2001. Without any sustained investigation of the 9/11 crimes, Americans were rushed into cycles of seemingly perpetual warfare abroad, police state and surveillance state interventions at home. This cycle of fast responses began within a month of 9/11 with a full-fledge military invasion of Afghanistan, an invasion that continues yet.

    When two US Senators, Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle, sought to slow the rush of the US executive into emergency measures and war, they and the US Congress they served were hit hard by a military grade bioweapon, anthrax. The violent tactic of the saboteurs proved effective in easing aside close scrutiny that might have slowed down the fast approval by the end of October of Congress’s massive Patriot Act. 

    Since then a seemingly endless cycle of military invasions has been pushed forward in the Middle East and Eurasia. The emergency measure powers claimed by the executive branch of the US government extended to widespread illegal torture, domestic spying, media censorship and a meteoric rise in extrajudicial murders especially by drones. This list is far from complete.

    All of these crimes against humanity were justified on the basis of an unproven official explanation of 9/11.  Subsequent scholarly investigations have demonstrated unequivocally for the attentive that officialdom’s explanations of what transpired on the fateful day in September were wrong, severely wrong. The initial interpretations are strongly at variance with the evidentiary record available on the public record.

    We must not allow ourselves to be hoodwinked in the same manner once again. The stakes are too large, maybe even larger than was the case in 2001. The misinterpreted and misrepresented events of 9/11 were exploited in conformity with the “Shock Doctrine,” a strategy for instituting litanies of invasive state actions that the public would not otherwise have accepted.

    The conscientious portion of humanity, many of whose members have done independent homework of their own on the events of 9/11, will well understand the importance of identifying the actual originating source of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic. 

    No less than in the wake of the 9/11 debacle, there are grave dangers entailed in being too quick or too naïve or too trustful in immediately accepting as gospel fact the Chinese government’s initial explanations of the COVID-19 outbreak. Why not take the time to investigate and test the current interpretations of the authorities that proved themselves to be so wrong in their decision to reprimand Dr. Li?

    Especially when the stakes are extremely high, the need is great for objective, third-party adjudication to establish what really happened irrespective of official interpretations. History provides abundant evidence to demonstrate that official interpretations of transformative events often veer away from the truth in order to serve and protect the interests of entrenched power.

    All semblance of due process and the rule of law can quickly evaporate when powerful institutions advance interpretations of catastrophic events used to justify their own open-ended invocation of unlimited emergency measure powers. The well-documented examples of the misrepresentation and exploitation of the 9/11 debacle demonstrate well the severity of the current danger. The origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic have yet to be adequately addressed and explained by a panel of genuinely independent investigators.

    The Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, acknowledged on Feb. 9 on CBS’s Face the Nation that there is no certainty about the origins of COVID-19. When asked by CBS’s Margaret Brennan where the virus came from, the Chinese Ambassador responded, “We still don’t know yet.”

    Although media giants like the Washington Post have run interference to justify the claims of established authority in this fiasco, there is still a high level of uncertainty about what COVID-19 is, where it came from, and why it spread so quickly. What factors resulted in the genetic modifications determining the biological structure of the new Coronavirus strain? What happened in the biological journey from the SARS Coronavirus to the Coronavirus strain that triggered the epidemiological bombshell starting in Wuhan?

    Did the Chinese communist government have a role in creating COVID-19 either purposely or inadvertently? What did the Chinese government know when did its leadership know it? Such basic questions have yet to be objectively considered by a panel of genuinely independent experts not beholden to any centers of established authority, funding, publicity and political networking. 

    The need to transcend all conflict of interest in the formal investigation of this matter must somehow be realized if objectivity is to prevail in the process of unearthing, organizing and assessing the evidence. The primary objective of this process must be to bring out the truth, no matter how embarrassing such illuminations might be to the interests of entrenched power. A process must be initiated without any pandering to the political biases of institutions and individuals with much to protect, with major interests in determining the outcome of the investigations.

    One version of events is that the contagion began when some mutated viral disease strain jumped from a bat or a snake into the biological workings of one of more humans. This animal to human leap is supposed to have taken place in the precincts of Wuhan’s open-air traditional food market where bats, snakes, cats, raccoons, fish, possums and the like can be bought and sold.

    A growing perception of disbelief is developing in the face of the idea that all this mayhem started with a few people chomping down on some fatally infected critters purchased an open-air market. In fact, this explanation is becoming the subject of much satire and ridicule even as the horrifying nature of the unfolding of events is intensifying.  

    Another possible source of the contagion is the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, one of China’s most high-tech installations designed for biological research into the most deadly forms of viruses known to humankind. This research facility, with top level 4 containment capacities, emerged from the expansion and elaboration of an older agency known as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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    *(Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory)

    As shall be demonstrated, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is thought by some experts, including a prestigious group at the South China Technological University in Guangzhou, to be the probable source of the contaminant. As shall be demonstrated below, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its outgrowth, The National Biosafety Laboratory, are thought by some to be integrated with more secretive sites where the military operations of China’s alleged biological warfare program are centered.

    A focus on the kind of procedures that take place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology begs the question of whether an accidental viral escape from this agency forms the primary origin of the epidemic. Another possibility is that some sort of power play within China’s ruling elite might have led to the decision to create and release a bioweapon in the heart of one of the most heavily populated zones on earth.

    Yet another possibility is that the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic is part of some agenda of “hybrid warfare” by the US government against China. Speculation surrounding this scenario emphasizes that hundreds of US soldiers were in Wuhan in late October of 2019 for the World Military Games.

    As Mark Episkopos has argued in The National Interest, the theory that the US government is behind the spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus has been well reported in some mainstream media venues in Russia. This “rumor” is also one that Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, specifically referred on CBS’s Face the Nation when he fended off the allegation that China’s biological warfare program was somehow implicated in the epidemic’s origins.

    One of those interviewed on the subject is Igor Nikulin. Mr Nikulin has argued, “Wuhan was chosen for the attack [by US military officials] because the local presence of the Wuhun Institute of Virology offers the Pentagon and CIA a convenient cover story about bio-experiments gone awry.”

    If it turns out the source of the Novel Coronavirus epidemic is a biological warfare weapon, yet another question concerns whether the attack germ is genetically engineered to target a specific ethnic group. Drawing on his observations of US biological research in some of the former republics of the Soviet Union, Nikulin remarked,

    the supposedly Pentagon-funded U.S. laboratories in Eurasia have been collecting and treating genetic material from Russian and Chinese populations to allegedly create an “ethnically specific” virus that only targets certain peoples.

    Episkopos adds that Nikulin’s observation are consistent with the position of Russian military expert, Viktor Baranets. Baranets has affirmed that biological warfare has become a new weapon “in the American fight for global supremacy against its main adversaries.” There is much evidence to indicate that one of the main thrusts of genetic research in biological warfare has long involved efforts to target specific ethnic groups for sickness and death. There are obvious reasons why those engaged in the development of biological weaponry would want to narrow their aim to envisaged enemies rather than breed germs to kill indiscriminately all humans in their path whether friend or foe.

    Lance Welton covers some supposedly unmentionable yet nevertheless contested topics in an article entitled, “Asians Far More Susceptible to Coronavirus Than Other Races, More Likely to Die.”

    Welton leaves aside the question of why it is that the COVID-19 seems to pack a much more virulent and lethal punch when it comes to the targeting of people sharing Chinese-Asian ancestry. The other side of the same coin is people of predominately European ancestry seem statistically to be much less at risk when it comes to succumbing to the epidemiological force of COVID-19.

    Welton has observed how difficult it is has become in the Occident even to raise issues publicly concerning the different vulnerabilities of different ethnic groups to certain diseases. He cites anecdotal evidence that, so far at least, all the deaths outside China have mostly taken the lives of ethnic Chinese people. From this observation Welton concludes that racial characteristics are a significant factor in determining vulnerability to COVID-19-inflicted disease.

    The fact that this subject is being so assiduously ignored by those engaged in the quest for political correctness leads Welton to comment,

    “It only goes to show how pathological our taboo on “race” has become. Race denial is so strong that possible race differences in the incidence of a disease cannot be mentioned, or even suggested.”

    Establishing New Domains of Hybrid Warfare

    The Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic of 2020 is causing the once-firm ground beneath many established institutions to shake uncontrollably. One of those institutions, the Chinese communist government, is encountering its Chernobyl moment.

    There are many consequences and implications of the epidemic that are already extending beyond China to the whole world. The epidemic is having significant implications for, for instance, the state of the Chinese and global economy, the future of the transportation industry, the future of tourism, the conditions of international relations, the state of censorship, the interaction between academic and military research, as well as the ongoing breakdown of trust in government. This list is far from complete.

    The remainder of this 6 part essay highlights the implications of the COVID-19 crisis for communicative interactions, especially in the public sphere. The issues to be addressed extend across social media and mainstream media. They touch on public education and different conceptions of the public interest.

    The analysis of the breakdown in public health raises questions about law enforcement. It raises related questions about the governance of professional associations, academic institutions as well as the public and private agencies with significant responsibilities in the arenas of certification and scientific publication.

    One of the primary areas of professional contention arising from the COVID-19 crisis involves the close connections between biological research aimed at finding preventions and cures for diseases and research aimed at creating biological weapons. Biological weapons can be designed with the goal of bringing about indiscriminate mass murder. They can also be used to bring about the targeted murder of specific human populations sharing common genetic attributes.

    Gradually a portion of the public is becoming aware that a conflict of interests exists between the military and public health applications of the microbiology field within the so-called life sciences. How many practitioners of the so-called life sciences are really devoting themselves to the death sciences? The public has reason to question, for instance, the procedures involved in the production of vaccines by an industry with one foot in the health care field and another foot in military research.

    Why should the public not fear that some practitioners in the field of microbiology might confuse their dual responsibilities in projects aimed at both saving and killing people? What is to be said of the development of vaccines, in some cases by the same people involved in genetically engineering the very diseases that vaccines are meant to protect against?

    Similarly, why should the public trust that we are being well served by systems of research primarily driven by the quest for lucrative patents to enrich their owners? Why shouldn’t the public suspect that we are being used as guinea pigs in experiments on human beings that continue to be perpetuated in the course of applied medical research regardless of the prohibitions that have been enacted? Did the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic begin as an experiment on human subjects that got out of control?

    How many times can the public trust be betrayed before the habit ceases of giving possible professional offenders, including those in white lab coats, the benefit of the doubt? Where does the protection of the public interest and the common good fit into this complex and internally contradictory picture? 

    Where is there genuine accountability to a public required to support with our tax dollars scientific research that can result in both good and bad outcomes? Why does the financial return on this public investment so often end up in corporate and private hands whereas the liabilities and collateral damages accrued are expected to be absorbed by the public?  

    The fact that ground zero of the Novel Coronavirus is Wuhan, home of China’s newest and most sophisticated microbiology laboratory, naturally casts a shadow of doubt over narratives minimizing the role of human agency in creating the new strain of Coronavirus. Wuhan’s important role as a major Chinese research center, much of it secret and covert, has to be taken into account. Moreover, Wuhan just happens also to be the medical headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army.

    The possible bioweapon was originally labeled 2019-nCoV. Then the UN’s World Health Organization changed the formal name to COVID-19. Is the World Health Organization a PR adjunct of Big Pharma? How tight is the relationship between the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party?

    In an era of proliferating genetic engineering, how are governments and their Big Pharma partners dividing up the field of microbiology? How are they handling the divide between initiatives done in the name of public health and initiatives done to produce biological weapons for national governments including those of the United States, China, and Israel? How are the partners handling the apportionment of new wealth derived from securing patents?

    These issues are finding expressions in the many legitimate questions that are coming to light in the course of the Novel Coronavirus emergency. Some of these questions arise because of a history of largely unexplained relations between the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada (NML). It has been well reported that both institutions share the same top-level 4 certification assigned to containment facilities in research labs where staff can pursue high-level studies of the most dangerous pathogens known to humankind.

    Built with French assistance between 2015 and 2017, the Wuhan facility at ground zero of the current epidemic is one of the premier pathogen research facilities in a country that is thought by some to be developing significant capacities for biological warfare. Similarly, the federal research facility in Winnipeg may well have an attending or indirect role in military research to advance capacities for biological warfare in collaboration with Canada’s two main allies, Israel and the United States.

    Immunologist and Medical Doctor, Xiangguo Qiu, is the principal professional link at the nexus of relations between the Wuhan and Winnipeg facilities. Until recently Dr. Qiu was the head of the Vaccine Development and Antiviral Therapies Section of the Special Pathogens Programme of the NML. The NML in Winnipeg is administered by Canada’s federal Public Health Agency.

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    *(Qiu Xiangguo was one of the first scientists to develop a treatment for Ebola. Credit: Handout) 

    Dr. Qiu received her medical degree in China. In 1996 she moved from the Taijin area of China to the United States while already being subsidized as participant in China’s Thousand Talents Program. She soon moved to Canada from the US continuing her graduate work at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Qiu continued her professional life in both Canada and China, apparently visiting the Wuhan Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Science at least five times, each for two-week periods in 2017 and 2018. In each case an undisclosed Chinese entity paid her travel expenses.

    After 2006 Dr. Qiu’s research specialty became the study of a variety of Ebola wild strains. The most virulent of these strains has an 80% death rate for those that contract the virus. An outbreak of Ebola from 2013 to 2016 took the lives of over 11,000 people in West Africa. Along with Dr. Gary Kobinger, Dr. Qui was said to be instrumental in developing the ZMapp treatment for Ebola using a cocktail of antibodies. In 2018 the duo received an Innovation Award from the Governor General of Canada for developing treatments for those infected with Ebola virus.

    In March of 2019, Dr. Qiu and her research team sent off to China via Air Canada a package of deadly virus strains said to include Ebola and Nipah organisms. The shipment is said to have triggered an unexplained negative response from officials in China. The flagged problem probably involved an alleged failure to follow proper procedures in the transfer of materials that can be used for the manufacturing of bioweapons as well as in the making of vaccines to prevent the spread of infection.

    The episode led to the decision of Canada’s Public Health Agency to call in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to investigate. This investigation was directed at Dr. Qiu and her husband, Cheng Keding, who is also an acknowledged expert in the field of virology.

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    *(Chinese bacterial thief Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Chen Keding.)

    As a result of these developments an episode occurred that was reported on July 14 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC. In her CBC article, Karen Pauls reported,

    A researcher with ties to China was recently escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab (NML) in Winnipeg amid an RCMP investigation into what’s being described as a possible “policy breach.” Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and an unknown number of her students from China were removed from Canada’s only level-4 lab on July 5.

    The CBC acted pretty much as a stenographer of official sources whose clear mission was to keep a lid on the potentially explosive story. The story would become even more explosive with the inception in December of 2019 of the Coronavirus crisis in China. Rather than trying to go around the official platitudes by engaging in some independent sleuthing known as investigative journalism, CBC did what most mainstream venues do these days. CBC acted as a xerox machine to relay the tepid pronouncements of a timid and ill-guided bureaucracy.

    Paul cited, for instance, an official in Canada’s Public Health Agency referring to the removal of Dr. Qiu, her husband and her research team as an “administrative matter” that will be “resolved expeditiously.” Several officials including a RCMP spokesman, indicated, “There is no threat to public safety at this time.”

    A federal media relations officer continued the effort of deflection by trying to make a really unusual, complex and many-faceted story seem unremarkable. The commentator affirmed, “the work of the NML continues in support of the health and safety of all Canadians.” Leah West, an International Affairs Professor at Carlton University of Ottawa, went as far as venturing that “national security” issues might be involved. This statement calls for explanations that Canadian reporters have so far not seriously attempted.

    Lt. Colonel Dr. Dany Shoham is one of the most attentive figures outside Canada who responded especially quickly and skeptically to the perplexing questions raised by Dr. Qiu’s activities. Dr. Shoham is a reserve member of the IDF. He continues his military responsibilities in the fields of biological and chemical warfare as a senior researcher in the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Israel.

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    *(Dr. Dany Shoham. Credit: Wiki/ Shalom magazine.)

    In 2014 Dr. Shoham was a visiting scholar at the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA). There he collaborated professionally with the IDSA’s Deputy Director, Brigadier Rumel Dahiya. Dr. Shoham devoted much of his time in India to studying what he refers to as China’s Biological Warfare Programme.

    Dr. Shoham published his findings in 2015 in an “integrative study” where he commented at significant length on the makeup and structure of China’s secretive military R and D initiatives in the alleged development of bioweapons. He maintains that these secretive military operations have been blended into the operations of “ostensibly civilian facilities” where public health initiatives in disease prevention and treatment are often highlighted

    Dr. Shoham notes that the government of China became a signatory in 1984 to UN’s Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. The Israeli academic alleges, however, that China, a target of US biological war in the Korean War in the early 1950s, opted to secretly retain some continuing capacities in this military field.

    Dr. Shoham has cast himself as an insistent whistle blower calling attention to the provocative circumstances attending the shipment from Canada to China of virulent pathogens. Dr. Shoham indicated that Dr. Qiu’s research has been conducted not only on behalf of the governments of Canada and China. Dr. Qui has also collaborated with three scientists from the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland. Much of her success, however, is connected to her obtaining many grants from China, all on the “national level.” 

    In the July-December 2019 issue of the IDSA Journal, Dr. Shoman explained.

    But the collateral Chinese plexus cannot be ignored. Married to a Chinese scientist – Dr. Keding Cheng, also affiliated with the NML (specifically the “Science and Technology Core”), and primarily a bacteriologist who shifted to virology – Dr. Qiu frequently visited and maintained tight bonds with China, generally speaking, and many Chinese students joined her works in the NML during the recent decade, coming from a notable range of Chinese scientific facilities. Nonetheless, among the latter there are four facilities that have been regarded to possess parts of the Chinese biological weapons alignment, namely

    • Institute of Military Veterinary, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Changchun.

    • Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu Military Region.

    • Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hubei.

    • Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

    All of the four mentioned facilities collaborated with Dr. Qiu within the context of Ebola virus, yet the Institute of Military Veterinary joined a study on the Rift Valley fever virus, while the Institute of Microbiology joined a study on Marburg virus too. Noticeably, the drug used in the latter study – Favipiravir – has been earlier tested successfully by the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, with the designation JK-05 (originally a Japanese patent registered in China already in 2006), against Ebola and additional viruses.

    However, the studies by Dr. Qiu are considerably more advanced and fruitful, in certain aspects. They are apparently vital for the Chinese biological weapons developing, in case Ebola, Nipah, Marburg or Rift Valley fever viruses are included therein, which is a plausible postulation; let alone the wild type viruses in themselves. And it is of note that only Nipah virus is naturally found in China or neighboring countries. Collectively, then, the interface between Dr. Qiu and China has a priori been highly suspicious. On top of it, the shipment of the two viruses from NML to China apparently generated an alarm, beyond its seeming inappropriateness. And an unavoidable question is whether previous shipments to China of other viruses or other essential preparations, took place from 2006 to 2018, one way or another.

    It has not gone unnoticed that this episode at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg may be intertwined with the mounting diplomatic tension between the governments of Canada and China. The controversy is unfolding in a way that adds new uncertainty to the controversy instigated in December of 2018 with the Canadian government’s decision to arrest, detain and put on trial the Huawei cell phone company’s executive, Meng Wanzhou. Many have questioned the dubious nature of the decision to arrest the Huawei official in Vancouver for allegedly violating US law pertaining to sanctions against Iran.

    The future role of the Huawei system for 5G wireless communications, a frightening and largely untested public health hazard in its own right, has emerged as a core issue in the conflict between the United States and China. To conceive of this conflict as a trade war alone is to underestimate the full scope of the antagonisms. These antagonisms over the future of wireless communications extend, for instance, far into the shape and form of future international espionage. Since the era began nearly 20 years ago of the 9/11 psychological operation, much international espionage has taken place by means of backdoor spying on digital flows of information. Israel has become especially closely identified with this type of digital spying throughout the Internet.

    The Chinese strategy for achieving traction in this competitive milieu is to apply breakthroughs in digital computation and communications. The strategy is to integrate innovations in Artificial Intelligence, AI, with cutting edge developments in biotechnology. This methodology is understood by some Chinese students of geopolitics as integral to the military process of “preparing a new domain for warfare.”

    In this digital and biological theatre of rivalry, the new gene splicing capacities of CRISPR technology constitute a formidable new tool for major and irreversible interventions into life’s most fundamental cycles of death and renewal. The ability to alter the genetic makeup of organisms, including human organisms, is thereby becoming a key facet in establishing new domains for warfare, including various forms of hybrid warfare.

    More elements in China’s geopolitical strategy have come to light as the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic gathers momentum especially in the ground zero region. The decision of Canadian federal officials, including federal police, to intervene by removing Dr. Qiu and her research team from the NML was to some extent mirrored in the United States.

    In January of 2020 police in the United States arrested Prof. Charles Lieber, Chairman of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department. Dr. Lieber has been placed on indefinite administrative leave and charged under US criminal law with lying to officials in the Defense Department and in the National Institutes of Health. These agencies funded Dr. Lieber’s research at Harvard in the field of nanoscience to the tune of $15,000,000 in grants.

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    *(Prof. Charles Lieber, former Chairman of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department.)

    Dr. Lieber is alleged to have misled federal officials and Harvard officials about the extent of his contractual relations with several Chinese entities including, most prominently, the Wuhan Technological University. Among the allegations pointed his way are those that accuse Dr. Lieber of failing to reveal his participation in China’s controversial Thousand Talents program.

    According to the FBI, “China’s talent recruitment plans, such as the Thousand Talents Program, offer competitive salaries, state-of-the-art research facilities, and honorific titles, luring both Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts alike to bring their knowledge and experience to China, even if that means stealing proprietary information or violating export controls to do so.” The Chinese-Canadian researcher, Dr. Qiu, is reported to be, like Harvard’s Dr. Lieber, a participant in China’s Thousand Talents program.

    In its report on the case, Bloomberg News described the work at Dr. Lieber’s Harvard lab as being dependent on “a pipeline of China’s brightest Ph.D. students and postdocs, often more than a dozen at a time, to produce prize-winning research.”

    The North American research activities of Dr. Lieber and Dr. Qui seem to have been similarly dependent on China’s financial backing, collaboration and constant supply of promising young practitioners of scientific research. Both Dr. Lieber and Dr. Qiu clearly ran into a major sea change in the conditions of their work with major ramifications for the conduct of national security, international relations, law enforcement and academic governance.

    No doubt administrators have been sent reeling behind-the-scenes at Harvard University, at the University of Manitoba and at institutions of higher learning throughout the world. These institutions depend heavily on international networks of academic collaboration. Suddenly the viability of many of these academic networks has been called into question though interventions by the criminal justice system in Canada and the United States.

    Indeed, the sudden global spotlight on anything that might help shed light on the still-shady background of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic must be given its due. The startling developments associated with a major plague quite possibly cultivated in stages in both test tubes and animal hosts calls into question many things. It calls for explanations about the role of many corporations, government agencies and philanthropic foundations. The rules seem to be changing fast for entities that regularly sponsor scholarly research even as they participate in the process of applying research findings to technological innovations.

    The arrest of Dr. Lieber followed the arrest in mid-December of 20019 of Zaosong Zheng at Logan International Airport in Boston for trying to smuggle to Beijing 21 vials of biological material. The vials were taken from Harvard University’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre where Zaosong Zheng was a visiting graduate student in pathology.

    Commenting on his ongoing investigation of the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Benjamin Tolkoff remarked, “Zeng’s theft and attempt to smuggle biological specimens out of the U.S. was not an isolated incident. Rather it appears to have been a coordinated crime, with likely involvement by the Chinese government.”

    Ideology and Investigative Journalism

    A tight set of right-wing activists and agencies with deep-rooted antipathies to Chinese communism have provided a particular genre of criticism in the course of the current debacle. These agencies include Radio Free Asia, a former CIA-backed outlet now governed by a federally-funded Board of Governors answerable directly to the current Secretary of State and former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo. The criticisms of Radio Free Asia have been integrated into a matrix of criticism of the Chinese government highlighted especially in the Washington Times and The Epoch Times.

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    The Epoch Times emerges from an international group of newspapers published in several languages. It has a strong focus on China and on Chinese people globally. The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by John Tang with a group of Chinese Americans associated with Falun Gong.

    The Falun Gong organization is in the grips of an antagonistic relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. Falun Gong combines Taoism, Buddhism and meditation. It became so independently influential in China that in 1999 the Communist government declared it a heretical organization. The antagonism between Falun Gong and the Chinese government quite likely involves covert infiltration by the US CIA and related US agencies.

    Whatever is happening behind the scenes, The Epoch Times has been running an unrelenting critique of the Chinese government’s handling of the Novel Coronavirus crisis. The journalistic coverage of the crisis is often been incisive and bold. The consistent message is that the Chinese government is not reporting on the epidemic honestly. Nor is The Epoch Times holding back from criticizing the Chinese government for secretly engaging in the violent repression of Chinese citizens especially in the most hard-hit regions.

    Some managers of the dominant cartels’ media thought police try to ridicule and harass those publicly posing essential questions. The Epoch Times, however, has no hesitation in asking, “Is the Coronavirus a Bioweapon?” In explaining the position of those opposed to open debate on the geopolitics of biological warfare, The Epoch Times Steven W. Mosher has commented, “Much ink has been spilled by The Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets to try to convince us that the deadly coronavirus is a product of nature rather than nefariousness, and that anyone who says otherwise is an unhinged conspiracy theorist.”

    Like The Epoch Times, the Washington Times is rooted in the politics of anti-communism. One of the primary journalists at the venue is the national security correspondent, Bill Gertz. Gertz is a career China expert who is sometimes invited to lecture for the FBI and CIA.

    The Washington Times grew out of the controversial career of the Korean-American, Sun Myung Moon. Moon is founder of the Unification Church sometimes dubbed “the Moonies” by its detractors. The Washington Examiner is also known for its related right-wing orientation to news coverage. One of the lead authorities frequently highlighted in the output of this genre of anti-communist reporting is Dr. Dany Shoham. Recall that Dr. Shoham was one of the most insistent critics of the Wuhan-Winnipeg axis revealed in the summer of 2019.

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    *(Rev. Sun Myung Moon speaking in Las Vegas, NV, USA on April 4, 2010.)

    Dr. Shoham was quoted, for instance, in the 26 January edition of the Washington Times asserting “Certain laboratories in the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese Biological Weapons alignment.”

    Elsewhere Dr. Shoham, who is sometimes described as “a former Israel intelligence officer,” asserted his understanding that “China had intentionally leaked the new coronavirus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

    Tom Cotton, Republican Party Senator for Arkansas, has emerged as another significant voice criticizing the role of the Chinese government in the Novel Coronavirus epidemic. In introducing the Senator’s position to its readership, Newsweek reported on 16 February, “Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Sunday accused China of lying about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak and suggested that the new disease may have originated from a biosafety super laboratory in Wuhan.”

    Senator Cotton has praised US President Donald Trump for his decision to temporarily cancel flights between China and USA. This cancellation, however, was seemingly contradicted by records revealing the continuation of much air traffic between China and USA in spite of the presidential pronouncement.

    Senator Cotton referred to evidence pointing to the fact that some of the early victims of the disease had no contact whatsoever with the Wuhan open-air food market. The deadly virus, Senator Cotton insists, “went into the food market before it came out.”

    Senator Cotton has unwaveringly underlined his contention that the Chinese authorities have from its inception withheld the truth about the crisis. According to the Senator, Chinese officials have been especially deceptive about the extent of the illnesses and mortality. “They’re still lying today,” he was reported as telling Newsweek. The young Arkansas politician has insisted on the need for some kind of reckoning on the part of the Chinese government leading to a full and proper investigation with full disclosure.

    Newsweek’s interpretive angle is similar to that of other media survivors of the Mockingbird era of US propaganda. Most Big Media venues including Newsweek employed writers and editors who happily accepted extra money from the CIA to tell the US government’s side of the story during the Cold War.

    The common denominator in much of the dinosaur-style of reporting that characterizes a discredited old guard is to describe any interpretation that challenges established conventions and interests as “conspiracy theories.” As Lance DeHaven-Smith has demonstrated in his book of the same name, the CIA led the way in the conceptual tweeking of the term, “conspiracy theories,” with the goal of discrediting interpretations considered menacing to established interests.

    Again and again the media conglomerates most deeply integrated into dominant matrixes of power deploy the weaponized terminology with the goal of limiting public discourse. They invoke the boogeyman of “conspiracy theories” as a meme to flippantly discredit skeptical journalism questioning the honesty of official sources.

    Newsweek reported,

    Cotton’s remarks came amid the proliferation of various conspiracy theories surrounding coronavirus’ origins, one of which suggests it may have come from a laboratory tied to Beijing’s biowarfare program. In response, Facebook and other social media platforms have cracked down on the reach of posts that perpetuate these unsubstantiated allegations.

    There is much irony in Newsweek’s supportive account of Facebook’s intervention aimed at blocking open exchange on a major undecided topic. The irony occurs because of the propensity of some MSM venues to condemn the Chinese government for their imposition of censorship including the blocking of their critics on social media.

    The heavy-handed crackdown in the Occident on the increasingly vandalized domain of violated free expression on the Internet is quite comparable to communist crackdowns on dissident news and views especially during the peak of the Cold War.

    The US claim to be the heartland of the “free world” has long since become ludicrous in the extreme given many factors including the ailing superpower’s generation of an unrelenting flood of power-serving disinformation. Part of this agenda is to control the narrative no matter how deceptive. It is to engage in digital vandalism aimed at discrediting or altogether silencing dissident voices on the Internet.

    One of the targets of Internet censorship on the Wuhan Coronavirus story is the web site, Zero Hedge. Zero Hedge was permanently deplatformed by the corporate censors at Twitter for reporting on interpretations that might be characterized as consistent with Senator Cotton’s skeptical critique of officialspeak on many aspects of the current Coronavirus debacle. One of the thought police agencies behind the attack Zero Hedge is the Internet venue, BuzzFeed News.

    Twitter’s decision to deplatform Zero Hedge came in the wake of its 29 January post that included the following comments by Tyler Durden:

    ..the official theory for the spread of the Coronavirus epidemic, namely because someone ate bat soup at a Wuhan seafood and animal market… … is a fabricated farce, and that the real reason behind the viral spread [of the disease] is because a weaponized version of the coronavirus (one which may have originally been obtained from Canada), was released by Wuhan’s Institute of Virology (accidentally or not), a top, level-4 biohazard lab which was studying “the world’s most dangerous pathogens.”

    The Military-Medical-Propaganda Complex and COVID-19

    India, and especially India’s capital of New Delhi, have been important bases where challenging interpretations of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic have been formulated and distributed. In some circles in India there is a high level of attentiveness and concern about China’s interest in biological warfare. This concern was expressed in Tehelka, an important English-language publication based in New Delhi.

    Tehelka reported on 18 Feb. that

    China’s national strategy of military-civil fusion has highlighted biology as a priority, and the People’s Liberation Army – PLA could be at the forefront of expanding and exploiting this knowledge… China’s Biological Warfare Programme is believed to be in an advanced stage that includes research and development, production and weaponization capabilities. Its current inventory is believed to include the full range of traditional chemical and biological agents with a wide variety of delivery systems including artillery rockets, aerial bombs, sprayers, and short-range ballistic missiles.

    As we have seen, New Delhi’s Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis hosted Dr. Shoham during a study leave in 2014. During his time in India, the Israeli intelligence officer devoted his study leave with the approval of his Indian hosts to investigating China’s alleged biological warfare program. 

    Not surprisingly, Indian scientists were especially fast off the mark in trying to understand the nature of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic. Some in India well remember that the Chinese government was slow in releasing information on the SARS infection of 2002-3. Some, including Dr. Dany Shoham, believe this delay had to do with the importance of SARS in the Chinese program of bioweapon research. Dr. Shoham has maintained that Coronaviruses, but particularly SARS, have been studied in the Wuhan Institute of Viriology. He adds, “SARS is included in the Chinese Bioweapons program, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.”

    During January of 2020 a team of nine high-level researchers at the University of Delhi’s Kusuma School of Biological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology investigated the RNA side of the genetic blueprint of the COVID-19 virus. These Indian researchers collaborated in the analysis of the organism that some have taken to calling the Wuhan supervirus.

    The initial findings of the researchers have been published on line in a paper entitled, “Uncanny Similarity of Unique Inserts in the 2019-nCoV Spike Protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag.” At the time of writing this essay, the University of Delhi’s much-smeared contribution to COVID-19 research  continues to be available on the line even though it is still making its way through the process of peer review with possible future revisions.

    The main finding of the study so far is that the genetic structure of the virus has “4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV [COVID-19] and are not present in other coronaviruses.” These “4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag.” This finding “sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus.”

    The authors of the paper find that the genetic inserts into the virus “have identity/similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1.” These characteristics are “unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.” This key phrase indicates that in the opinion of the researchers the presence of HIV genes in COVID-19 was not the result of some process of random mutation in nature. Instead, the insertion of the HIV genes into the new coronavirus probably took place through an engineered intervention by experts in microbiology.

    The finding that HIV genes are integral to the genetic structure of COVID-19 has not been seriously challenged. The fact that HIV treatments are being widely used to ease the symptoms of those suffering the effects of the new infection is highly suggestive. It implies that some of the analysis of the Kusuma School of microbiologists was quickly seized upon and applied in clinical situations.

    The main subjects of the controversy that has been generated so far arise mostly from the question of whether or not the insertion of the HIV genes could have occurred without human intervention, without genetic engineering. That issue is bound to attract much scientific attention in the weeks and months ahead.

    The work of the Kusuma microbiologists at the University of Delhi has become important in the interpretation of the epidemic advanced by Zero Hedge. The size of the group following Zero Hedge’s coverage of the Coronavirus crisis of 2020 only became larger after the censorious thought police at BuzzFeed and Twitter intervened. The public is not taking well to corporate intervention aimed at dictating what can or cannot be communicated, viewed, considered or debated.

    The hysteria aroused by the “Uncanny Resemblance” paper captured the attention of a site called GreatGameIndia. This operation publishes a regular “Journal of Geopolitics and International Relations.” The co-founders and editors of GreatGameIndia, an especially lively and edgy publishing venue, are Raja Sekhar and Shelly Kasli.

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    The interpretive bent of this venue begins with the surprising observation that the English East India Company was the most influential and large-scale business venture in all of history. According to Raja Sekhar, this history established patterns of Western kleptocracy in Asia that continue to this day.

    The publication of GreatGameIndia on the background of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic has attracted positive attention from Tehelka and from many other publications throughout the world. The venue, unfortunately, is not always completely transparent. For instance the names of specific authors of specific essays are sometimes not published.

    GreatGameIndia describes itself as “India’s one-of-a kind portal on international affairs providing global intelligence… in a geopolitical and historical framework to better understand international developments and the world around us. Experts in the field of Geopolitics and International Relations, we bring in fresh perspective to the otherwise redundant academic approach. We are read, recommended and published by decision makers, renowned personalities and organisations around the world.”

    GreatGameIndia did indeed bring “fresh perspective” in highlighting a possible role for Canada in China’s alleged military program to develop bioweapons. This story was developed in a rapid-fire series of articles, most of which appeared in January and February of 2020. These items brought together intertwined news on the possible roles of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory in the genesis of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic.

    This juxtaposition of the two institutions highlights the work of Israeli intelligence expert, Dr. Dany Shoham. It seems he may have had some role in shaping the overall narrative. Dr. Shoham’s oft’ republished essay highlighting the role of Dr. Xiangguo in the Winnipeg-Wuhan axis of biotechnology was republished by GreatGameIndia.

    A number of issues are raised by Dr. Shoham’s possible involvement in the genesis of the stories run by GreatGameIndia and by other related venues on the Wuhan Coronavirus crisis. Is Dr. Shoham to be understood as an agent of Israel in the discussions and debates? Is his consistently critical stance on China’s alleged bioweapons program together with his relative silence on similar US programs a significant sign of an Israel-US or an Israel-US-India alignment on this issue? 

    One could legitimately ask, for instance, if the series of narratives highlighting the Chinese-Canadian connection might have been meant as a diversion? Might such a diversion have been mounted to point attention away from the possibility that a germ warfare attack was covertly mounted in Wuhan by US soldiers taking part in the 7th World Military Games? Over 300 US military personnel took part in this event organized in Wuhan from October18-27, 2019.

    In an interview with Jeff Brown, a veteran of US special operations in China, “Uriah Heep,” aka “Metallicman,” has speculated about the possibility that the US government was responsible for a biological attack resulting in the COVID-19 epidemic.

    The GreatGameIndia essays are premised on a very harsh picture assessment of the Chinese government’s intentions as directed especially at North America. J. R. Nyquist is the author of the article in GreatGameIndia outlining the historical background of China’s emphasis on biotechnology, including the development of the means to conduct biological warfare.

    A version of Nyquist’s GreatGameIndia essay also appeared in the Falun Gong-backed Epoch Times. Nyquist writes frequently for The Epoch Times. Many of his essays emphasize very critical assessments of communism in a variety of contemporary and historical settings.

    The heart of the essay introducing readers to the genesis of China’s biological warfare capacities highlights a speech given in 2005 by Chi Hoatian, an important General in the People’s Liberation Army. Between 1993 and 2003 General Chi was also China’s Minister of National Defence. The full text of the speech is available here.

    The essence of the presentation is based on the premise that by 2005 China had become severely overpopulated, a problem that entailed a growing degradation of the national environment. The solution to this problem, General Chi decided, was to colonize a portion of the globe as a second China. Chi observed that the region neighboring China was already densely populated. He added, “only countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization.”

    General Chi indicated that is was Deng Xioping who was the most instrumental figure in the decision to build up his country’s arsenal of biological weapons in spite of China’s formal adherence to the Biological Weapons Convention. Deng is best known as the Chinese leader who oversaw the dramatic transformation of the Chinese economy beginning in the 1980s.  Said General Chi

    When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focused instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country. Biological weapons are unprecedented in their ruthlessness, but if Americans do not die then Chinese have to die. If the Chinese people remain strapped to the present land, a total societal collapse is bound to take place.

    As General Chi saw it, from the Chinese perspective biological weapons have advantages over nuclear weapons. According to his way of seeing things,’ “only by using non-destructive weapons that kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves.”

    GreatGameIndia did little to explain how average people in China have responded to General Chi’s surprising explanation of a perceived need to colonize a portion of the world for a second China.  How seriously were General Chi’s words received in China? How many in China today consider General Chi’s analysis to be still relevant?

    The account by GreatGameIndia of the strange viral infection starting in Wuhan depends on some documented evidence mixed in with speculative accounts of things that might have taken place. The essence of the scenario presented to the public is identified by the title of the core essay in the series. Published on 26 January, 2020 this title is “Coronavirus Bioweapon: How China Stole Coronavirus from Canada and Weaponized It.”

    This essay was widely republished including by Zero Hedge.

    The authors mix sheer conjecture with an evidence-based chronicle of certain events. The aim seems to be to stimulate thinking about what is known to be happening while encouraging concurrently reflections on what might be taking place or what might be about to take place.

    Hence the overall nature of the narrative outlined by GreatGameIndia can best be described as an SOS about quickly deteriorating developments containing warnings about possible unseen factors or possible dangers up ahead. The GreatGameIndia project can be conceived, therefore, as a psychological operation meant to shift and enliven public attitudes, behavior and actions. Psychological operations, sometimes innocuously identified as PR campaigns, are very prominent in the media coverage of many events and topics these days.

    What is actually known about the condition of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory during the period when Dr. Qiu’s team of China’s researchers conducted themselves in ways that led to the removal of their security passes, followed by their physical removal from the facility? Recent media reports in Winnipeg have painted a picture of the breakdown of decorum at the NML. In September of 2019 the Winnipeg Free Press reported,

    The lab, known as NML, is a source of pride for its role in creating the Ebola vaccine. It’s one of the few facilities in the world accredited to handle the most deadly pathogens. It officially opened in 1999 to much fanfare, after political wrangling had it ultimately placed in Winnipeg.

    Yet numerous people who work there have told the Free Press of a workplace rife with intimidation, alcohol abuse and clashes between officials in Winnipeg and Ottawa, which was partially revealed this summer in an administrative breach that has the RCMP investigating a shipment of dangerous substances to China.

    “The sad thing is, they do world-class science, but internally they’re almost self-destructing, in terms of how they treat their employees,” said Todd Panas, national president of the Union of Health and Environment Workers.

    “The collateral damage to get that science is pretty remarkable.”

    As far as the specifics of the RCMP investigation into the much highlighted shipment of deadly viruses from Winnipeg to China, all that has been reported in MSM is that it may have had something to do with “rules around copyright, patents and published works.”

    The reporter, Dylan Robertson, went further, indicating, “multiple sources who spoke with the Free Press on the condition of anonymity, say the shipment lacked an agreement spelling out intellectual property rights, which is critical for protecting scientific research.” According to Robertson, the RCMP still will not say if its investigation is going forward in the organizational realm of either national security, or organized crime, or forensics.”

    The GreatGameIndia essays highlight the role of Frank Plummer, a former Scientific Director of the Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory and a leading researcher on HIV-AIDS. Prof. Plummer conducted much of his primary HIV research in Kenya. He focused especially on the heterosexual spread of AIDS in Africa, developing in the process a joint project between the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi.

    GreatGameIndia included in their lineup of intertwined stories one describing Frank Plummer as the “key to the coronavirus investigation” who “was assassinated in Africa.” There is nothing but conjecture behind the assertion that Dr. Plummer was assassinated. It was widely reported in MSM that Prof. Plummer died quickly of an unexpected heart attack in Nairobi on 4 February of 2020 just as coverage on the Wuhan epidemic was reaching a point of critical mass.

    The conjecture of assassination gave the story a contemporary resonance that captured considerable attention. This twist invested the larger narrative with sensationalist connotations. It strongly implied that some malevolent group of saboteurs had eliminated Dr. Plummer so he could not bear witness to what had apparently happened at the NML in Winnipeg to pour oil on the inflamed crisis in China.

    No proof is offered that Dr. Plummer did not die of natural causes. The spotlight put on his career by GreatGameIndia, however, does call attention to the rather exotic career of a significant Canadian involved in many original types of genetic study and alteration totally new to medical and military science. The report serves to stimulate reflections on the types of intrigue that would probably arise on a regular basis in Dr. Plummer’s unusual line of work.

    The account by GreatGameIndia of the Canadian connection to the Wuhan plague stresses the role of Dr. Plummer in the process that is said to have brought into Winnipeg’s level 4 pathogen lab a particular SARS strain that initially came from Saudi Arabia. Before arriving in Winnipeg, the strain of SARS said to be investigated by Dr. Plummer passed along a chain of custody involving collaboration with colleagues in Jeddah, Egypt and Rotterdam.

    We learn from the narrative that the NML has a “long history of offering comprehensive testing services for Coronaviruses”; that it “isolated and provided the first genome sequence of the SARS Coronavirus and identified another Coronavirus as NL63 in 2004.” We learn that the “Canadian lab grew up stocks of the virus [originating in respiratory illnesses infecting Saudi Arabian victims] and used it to assess diagnostic tests being used in Canada. Winnipeg scientists worked to see which animal species can be infected with the new virus.”

    The article uses provocative language calling Dr. Qui “a Chinese Bio-Warfare Agent.” After referring to Dr. Shoham, whose comments appear consistently throughout a wide array of reports critical of the alleged biowarfare program run by the Chines government, a reference is made to James Giordano. a is identified as a neurology professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow in Biowarfare at the U.S. Special Operations Command. Prof. Giordano is reported to have commented,

    China’s growing investment in bio-science, looser ethics around gene-editing and other cutting-edge technology and integration between government and academia raise the spectre of such pathogens being weaponized. 

    That could mean an offensive agent, or a modified germ let loose by proxies, for which only China has the treatment or vaccine. “This is not warfare, per se,” he said. “But what it’s doing is leveraging the capability to act as global saviour, which then creates various levels of macro and micro economic and bio-power dependencies.” 

    The authors of the GreatGameIndia series on the possible Canadian connection to the Wuhan Institute of Virology speculate that the shipments of viruses from the NML to China included the specific strain of Coronavirus that originated in Saudi Arabia. This conjecture caused me to speculate about why it is that the Israeli specialist in biological and chemical warfare, Dr. Dany Shoman, took such an active interest in the Winnipeg biolab. I have seen no evidence Dr. Shoham ever visited the Winnipeg lab but for some unexplained reason he seems well informed about its activities.

    My own speculations cause me to wonder if Dr. Shoham might have come in contact with Dr. Plummer because of the latter’s reported work in doing the genetic sequencing of the virus causing the Saudi-based outbreak of a version of SARS. This speculation arises because of a serious report in London England highlighting the interests of Israeli biological warfare experts in an “ethnic bomb” that would specifically target Arabs.

    The existence of such a program was outlined on 15 November, 1998 in a London Sunday Times story entitled, “Israel Planning ‘Ethnic Bomb’ as Saddam Caves In.” The story’s authors, Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Cohen, explain the existence of such a clandestine research project on ethnic-specific bioweapons at Ness Ziona Israel near Tel Aviv. The Israeli research project, which still continues, apparently drew earlier on investigations on ethnically-targeted biological weaponry that took place in South Africa during the era of apartheid.

    The Times article reported that

    Israel, using research obtained from South Africa, was developing an “ethno bomb; In developing their “ethno-bomb”, Israeli scientists are trying to exploit medical advances by identifying a distinctive gene carried by some Arabs, then create a genetically modified bacterium or virus… The scientists are trying to engineer deadly micro-organisms that attack only those bearing the distinctive genes.

    As an Israeli military and medical expert in the field of biological and chemical warfare, Dr. Shoham must have had some awareness of the founding and genesis of Ness Ziona “ethno-bomb” project.

    What is the past or current relationship of Dr. Shoham to the Ness Ziona Institute for Biological Research? Did Dr. Shoham have professional interactions with Dr. Plummer following the reported cultivation and genetic sequencing by the Winnipeg scientist of the Saudi-derived strain of SARS. This strain came to be known as MERS. Was Dr. Plummers’s involvement in a strain of Coronavirus that initially targeted Arabs a factor in attracting Dr. Shoham’s interest to Winnipeg’s NML.

    GreatGameIndia has published a rich and detailed academic paper presenting a chronicle and an assessment of the spread of the SARS strain that struck down Arab victims initially in Qatar and Jordan as well as Saudi Arabia. Some of the victims also spread the illness to family members in London and Pakistan. The labeling of this strain of infection as MERS comes from the name, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

    Prof. Gufaraz Kahn is the author of the paper published on 28 February of 2013 in Vol. 10 (no. 66) of Virology Journal. Dr. Kahn’s professional base is the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at United Arab Emirates University. 

    Dr. Kahn’s rich and erudite academic account of the early stages of the MERS infections in Virology Journal would almost certainly have drawn the attention of Israeli agents involved in the country’s alleged biological and chemical warfare program. This attraction would have been especially enticing for any Israeli military officials still seeking to target Arab victims with genetically-engineered viruses.

    Did Dr. Plummer knowingly or inadvertently help Dr. Shoham with his research work based in Israel? How does the staff of the NHL navigate the inevitable military side of their research with its applications in Canada, in the US and internationally?

    If Dr. Plummer did in some way collaborate with Dr. Shoham and with other Israeli researchers in biotechnology, might this activity have been a factor in the decision of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to grant Dr. Plummer the Scopus Award? What level of accountability is owed by the managers of the NML in Winnipeg to the citizens who fund the research facility? Shouldn’t these managers and their supervisors in administrative and elected office make a commitment not to hide research for biological warfare behind veneers of public health research?

    In the last year of his life Dr. Plummer agreed to the insertion of a surgically inserted implant in his brain meant to help the scientist cope with a severe case of alcoholism that plagued his life beginning in the 1980s. Dr. Plummer agreed to be a test case in this new biomedical therapy after he suffered a liver failure followed by a liver transplant in 2012.

    The case was widely publicized by the BBC and many other media venues in the weeks and days before the death of Dr. Plummer by heart failure in Nairobi. It is legitimate to ask whether Dr. Plummer’s longstanding problem with alcoholism contributed to the breakdown of orderly procedures and civility reported to have overtaken the culture of scientific work at the Winnipeg’s NML?

    The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Masks Its Own Ineptitude by Attacking ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ and ‘Vigilantes’

    On 27 January of 2020 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responded to the boisterous response created on the Internet to the GreatGameIndian series of articles. The CBC article was written by Karen Pauls and Jeff Yates. As we have seen, some elements of GreatGameIndia series drew on news conveyed through Karen Paul’s earlier CBC reports written during the spring and summer of 2019.

    The CBC reporting on the factual lapses in the alleged Winnipeg-Wuhan axis of microbiology failed to deal with many germane subjects including the role of Dr. Dany Shoham. The stories featuring comments by Dr. Shoham have tended to develop storylines that the CBC report deems deceptive.

    Dr. Shoham’s media interventions have been influential in creating the imagery of Chinese government malfeasance in the handling the COVID-19 crisis. This critical orientation to the CCP has become common in coverage generated by many venues. Prominent among them are The Epoch Times, the Washington Times, Steve Bannon’s and Miles Guo’s coverage on War Room: Pandemic, and Simone Gao’s Taiwan-based coverage on Zooming In.

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    Another very significant source of honest news reporting on the COVID-19 crisis has been Trunews, an evangelical Christian broadcasting operation hosted by Rick Wiles. Rev. Wiles and those who join him on-air emerged as pioneers in the in-depth coverage of of China in epidemiological crisis. They conducted their own independent research, crawled down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, and emerged with some excellent coverage that really does qualify as Trunews. In the course of their coverage the webcast was removed from the You Tube/ADL platform. The background of the deplatforming has to do with the fact that Rev. Wiles is a self-declared Born Again Christian who is highly critical of the preoccupations and ethics of Christian Zionists.

    The CBC intervention labeled as “Fake” a screen shot of a tweet by a Dallas-based hedge fund manager named Kyle Bass. Citing CBC News, Bass tweeted that “a husband and wife Chinese spy team were recently removed from a level 4 Disease facility for sending pathogens to the Wuhan facility.” CBC reported that this tweet, one that combines documented facts with speculative supposition, was shared 12,000 times.

    The CBC did not attempt to add background and context to the use made of its own stories formulated months before the inception of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic. There was no specific reference in the CBC “Fake News” diatribe to the GreatGameIndia series of articles. As noted, when taken together the GreatGameIndia publications created a fairly elaborate narrative by mixing straight reporting of well-documented facts with speculative interludes.

    Bear in mind that this speculation was delivered pretty much into the vacuum created by the unwillingness or inability of many mainstream media venues to deal with the complexities of a fast-moving emergency spreading from China to the world. The genesis of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic provides an important window into a whole range of issues that are in many respects quite different from anything previously faced by humanity.

    The recent introduction of the tools of genetic engineering into the production of food, vaccines, or bioweaponry is not an easy or familiar subject for many people. When it comes to introducing audiences to the wide array of new issues involving technologies integral to the COVID-19 epidemic, the media still has many big jobs of public education to mount. This public education is the necessary gateway to well-informed public discourse on the complex array of issues, some of them life-and-death in nature, that is fast bearing down upon us all. 

    Instead of conscientiously reporting on the situation, the CBC’s reporters tend like so many others in their position to fall back on what is becoming an old canard. Rather than evaluate all the gaping holes and omissions and silences in their own news coverage, they attribute all problems to some imagined tribe of malicious know nothings smeared collectively as “conspiracy theorists.”

    By and large, most MSM reporters equate the concept of “conspiracy theorists” with kooks and losers who exist in some wayward zone well outside the charmed inner circle of “authoritative sources”? How are we to interpret what Pauls and Yates mean when they subjectively refer to a “conspiracy blog,” or to “conspiracy theory blogs” without giving any explanations, proofs or definitions of what they mean. Where is the trusted agency that is qualified and empowered to decide without bias or self-interest what is or is not a “conspiracy blog”? Is any interpretation that runs counter to the CBC’s often-vapid interpretation of events a “conspiracy theory”?

    Doesn’t the MSM’s serial abuse of the “conspiracy theory” meme provide a license for lazy, groupthink-inclined stenographers of power to continue a policy of serving the continued reign of the status quo?

    How often does it happen that whistle blowers who provide conscientious critiques of official narratives in many fields are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists”? Wasn’t Wuhan Medical Doctor, Li Wenliang, initially dismissed by Chinese authorities as a conspiracy theorist? How often does it happen that those who fall back on the conspiracy theory meme to discredit their detractors are in fact apologists and gate keepers for corrupt, self-serving lobbies?

    The CBC story presents a screen shot that attributes to Zero Hedge the asking of the question, “Did China Steal the Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponize It?” No effort is made by the CBC reporters to put in context the important story of the attack on Zero Hedge by Twitter in order to protect the problematic official narrative of the COVID-19 epidemic. No effort has been made by CBC to identify GreatGameIndia as the source of the story on the alleged Canadian connection to COVID-19. No effort is made to assess the background, understanding and possible motivations of the creators of the GreatGameIndia essays.

     If the CBC had held back its attack on Coronavirus “conspiracy theorists” one day longer, its reporters would have had before them the story of the arrest of Dr. Charles Lieber, the Chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Dr. Lieber is facing serious criminal charges for his failure to communicate to US authorities the full extent of his commitments in China, including his role at the Wuhan University of Technology. 

    The nature of the allegations against the activities of Dr. Lieber cast an important light on the case of Dr. Xiangguo Qui, her husband Keding Cheng, and on her many Chinese graduate students often afforded favorable treatment at the NML and the University of Manitoba. The clear and detailed explanations given by some US officials describing the content and broader implications of the Lieber case help clarify what is not being reported in Canada.

    What and who was behind the attempt to identify and explain a significant Canadian connection to the COVID-19 crisis? What is the position of the federal government and the University of Manitoba on the case in Winnipeg that, in general terms, is seemingly being replicated by some aspects of the scandal that has opened up the Chemistry Department at Harvard University to considerable skeptical public scrutiny?

    The reporting on the Lieber case helps clarify the nature information blackout imposed on Canadians by, for instance, by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, by the federal Public Health Agency, by the RCMP, and by the Crown’s public broadcaster known as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

    In setting themselves up as virtue-seeking critics of “conspiracy theorists,” CBC reporters professionally roughed up an array of writers whose work they probably haven’t read, let alone considered in a careful and thoughtful way. In creating stereotypical accounts about a body of work they probably have not evaluated on a case-by-case basis, the CBC journalists resort to forms of blanket generalizations that have much in common with the racist caricaturing of ethnic groups. 

    Hence the CBC reporters continue down the road of incitement by demonizing interpretations that in many instances do not conform to their own way of viewing events. Part of this incitement is expressed in the decision to highlight the comments of Prof. Fuyuki Kurasawa. Kurasawa is a sociologist and Director of the Global Digital Citizenship Lab at York University. Kurasawa condemns “conspiracy theories” and “rumours” for “washing out factual information being reported on line.”

    How can genuine “factual information” be credibly determined without providing space and time for open debate among proponents of competing interpretations? If the pursuit of truth by means of open debate is being spurned even by faculty members at academic institutions (which tragically is often the case these days), where else in society can such rituals of informed and civil disagreement take place in humanity’s quest for knowledge?

    Kurasawa is one of those academic careerists who has decided to swim along professionally with a broad array of discredited assumptions underlying the Global War on Terror.

    Kurasawa’s complicity in the war on terror’s culture of caricature shows up in his convoluted account how the Coronavirus “vigilantes” of his imagination  might think and act. He imagines a subgroup of “conspiracy theorists” who

    will take it on themselves to become vigilantes, where they’ll try to spot someone who supposedly is either holding the truth about some hidden truth about the coronavirus or a person who may be a carrier or supposed carrier of the virus because they appear to have certain symptoms, and then they’ll ask the general public to take matters into own hands.

    Life Sciences or Death Sciences?

    Spiro Skouras, former executive producer at Newsbud, has emerged as one of the more engaging and erudite of the young investigative journalists who have been delving into the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic. Skouras has documented the position of many prominent figures that have questioned the dubious claim that the source of COVID-19 infection was a diseased animal in Wuhan’s open-air food market.

    Skouras has argued it would be “negligent” for researchers to refrain from investigating “the full array of possibilities” on how the contagion originated and how it spread.

    Among the first figures, Skouras interviewed on the crisis was Francis Boyle, the renowned professor of international law at the University of Illinois. Prof. Boyle drafted the Biological Weapons and Terrorism Act, legislation that enabled US ratification of the UN’s Biological Warfare Convention in 1990.

    Prof. Boyle indicated in his interview with Skouras that COVID-19 is most likely a genetically-engineered pathogen that escaped from the so-called Biosafety Laboratory in Wuhan. Prof. Boyle indicated,

    It’s clear to me [the coronavirus] leaked out of the Wuhan Biosafety Level 4 Facility set up by the Chinese government that is working on every type of dangerous biological warfare agent you can consider.

    Prof. Boyle points to the fact that the SARS virus leaked out from a Beijing lab in 2004. He describes as “propaganda” the widely promulgated opinion that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan’s exotic, open-air food market. Prof. Boyle expanded some of his interpretations in a subsequent interview published by GreatGameIndia.

    Skouras specifically asked Dr. Boyle about his relationship with mainstream media given his record as one of the foremost academic experts on international law and military culture concerning the development of bioweaponry in the United States. Dr. Boyle responded that he was pretty much blacklisted from commenting on the subject of biological warfare ever since he publicly shared his interpretation of the anthrax attacks on two US Senators in October of 2001.

    There has been considerable scholarly scrutiny of the anthrax attacks targeting the US Congress and some media organizations in early October of 2001.  The anthrax attacks constitute the most serious assault ever on the operations of the US Congress, the primary interface between law and politics in the United States.

    These attacks have come to be understood as an integral part of the large body of crimes committed in Manhattan and Washington DC on 9/11. The anthrax attacks killed five people including two postal workers. Seventeen people were injured and Congress was shut down for a few days.

    Anthrax-laden letter attacks were specifically directed at two Democratic Party Senators, Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle. When they received the contaminated letters both lawmakers were engaged in questioning provisions of the post-9/11 emergency measures legislation known as the Patriot Act. Both Senators Leahy and Daschle were hesitant to rubber stamp the enactment that was seemingly instantly drafted and put before Congress within three weeks of the 9/11 debacle.

    The anthrax attacks took place just as the US Armed Forces began invading Afghanistan where the culprits of the 9/11 crimes were supposed to be hiding out. The perpetrators of the anthrax attack, who we were supposed to imagine at the time as al-Qaeda terrorists, succeeded in easing aside the major locus of opposition to the Patriot Act’s speedy passage in late October. Why, one might legitimately ask, ask, would Islamic jihadists want the Patriot Act to be rushed through Congress. In early October the US Armed Forces invaded Afghanistan at the same time that the US executive branch was seeking with the Patriot a license to kill and torture and steal without any checks of accountability.

    Once the US Armed Forces went to war with Afghanistan on the basis of a fraudulent explanation of 9/11’s genesis, there was basically no chance that a genuine and legitimate evidence-based investigation of the September 11 crimes would ever take place. To this day the Global War on Terror continues to unfold on a foundation of lies and illusions that have had devastating consequences for the quality of life for average people throughout the United States and the world.

    In his 2005 book, Biowarfare and Terrorism, Prof. Boyle’s analysis pointed to major problems in the FBI’s investigation of the anthrax attacks including the agency’s destruction of relevant evidence. To Prof. Boyle, the highly refined military-grade quality of the anthrax made it almost certain that the anthrax bioweapon was produced within the US Armed Forces at the lab in Fort Detrick Maryland. Anthrax, or Bacillus anthracis, is a rod-shaped bacteria found naturally in soil.

    Looking back at the episode Dr. Boyle observed, “The Pentagon and the C.I.A. are ready, willing, and able to launch biowarfare when it suits their interests. They already attacked the American People and Congress and disabled our Republic with super-weapons-grade anthrax in October 2001.”

    Prof. Boyle’s interpretation was later verified and expanded upon in a book by Canadian Prof. Graeme MacQueen. Prof. Boyle acknowledges the veracity of Prof. MacQueen’s study of the anthrax deception as part of a “domestic conspiracy.” He sees The 2001 Anthrax Deception as the most advanced finding of academic research on the topic so far.

    Prof. MacQueen is prominent among a very large group of academics and public officials who condemn the official narrative of 9/11 for its dramatic inconsistencies with the available evidence. Those who share this understanding include former Italian Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga, former German Defence Minister Andreas von Bülow, former UK Minister of the Environment Michael Meacher, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury Paul Craig Roberts, former Director of the US Star Wars Missile Defense Program Lt. Col. Bob Bowman, Princeton International Law Professor Richard Falk, and the author of ten academic books on different aspects of the 9/11 debacle, Claremont Graduate University Professor David Ray Griffin.

    Prof. Francis Boyle shared the 9/11 skepticism of many when he asked,

    Could the real culprits behind the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, and the immediately-following terrorist anthrax attacks upon Congress ultimately prove to be the same people?  Could it truly be coincidental that two of the primary intended victims of the terrorist anthrax attacks – Senators Daschle and Leahy – were holding up the speedy passage of the pre-planned USA Patriot Act … an act which provided the federal government with unprecedented powers in relation to US citizens and institutions?

    In his coverage of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic, Spiro Skouras highlighted the proceedings known as Event 201. Event 201 brought together in New York on October 18, 2019 an assembly of delegates hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The gathering anticipated the COVID-19 crisis by just a few weeks. I retrospect it is almost as if Event 201 announced many of the controversies about to arise with the outbreak of the real epidemic in Wuhan China. Event 201 performed functions similar to those of the drills that frequently mimic the engineered scenarios animating false flag terror events but especially those of 9/11.

    A major subject of the meeting highlighted the perceived need to control communications during an epidemic. Levan Thiru of the Monetary Authority of Singapore went as far as to call for “a step up on the part of governments to take action against Fake News.” Thiru called for recriminatory litigation aimed at criminalizing “bad actors.” Cautioning against this kind of censorship, Skouras asked, Who is going to decide what constitutes “Fake News”? If fact checkers are to be employed, “who will fact check the fact checkers”?

    Hasti Taghi, a media executive with NBC Universal in New York, was especially outspoken in condemning the activities of “conspiracy theorists” that have organized themselves to question the motives and methods of the complex of agencies involved in developing and disseminating vaccines. She frequently condemned the role of “conspiracy theories” in energizing public distrust of the role of pharmaceutical companies and media conglomerates in their interactions with government.

    Tom Ingelsby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security injected an interesting twist into the discussion. He asked, “How much control of information should there be? By whom should control of information be exercised? How can false information be effectively challenged?” Ingelsby then added, “What happens if the false information is coming from companies and governments?”

    This final question encapsulates a major problem for conscientious citizens trying to find their way through the corruption and disinformation that often permeates our key institutions. Those that try to counter the problem that governments and corporations sometimes peddle false information can pretty much expect to face accusations that they are “conspiracy theorists.” Too often the calculations involved in deciding whom or what is credible (or not) depends primarily on simple arithmetic favouring the preponderance of wealth and power.

    Spiro Skouras gives careful consideration to the possibility that the United States instigated the COVID-19 epidemic starting in Wuhan China.

    He notes the precedent set in 1945 on the atomic attacks by the US government on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Skouras points out that there is proof that since the Second World War, the US government has conducted at least 239 experiments, secretly deploying toxic chemical and biological agents against portions of its own population.

    On the history of US involvement in biological warfare see here, here and here.

    Skouras highlights the window presented for a covert US bioweapon attack at the World Military Games in Wuhan China in the second half of October of 2019. He notes that 300 US soldiers participated as athletes in the Wuhan Military Games together with a large contingent of American support personnel. The timing and the circumstances of the event were more or less ideal to open up a new pathogenic front in the US government’s informal “hybrid war” against China.

    On Feb. 15 at the Munich Security Conference, US Defence Secretary, Mark T. Esper, developed a highly critical characterization of Chinese wrongdoing in order to seemingly justify recriminatory actions. Esper asserted, “China’s growth over the years has been remarkable, but in many ways it is fuelled by theft, coercion, and exploitation of free market economies, private companies, and colleges and universities… Huawei and 5G are today’s poster child for this nefarious activity.

    The US antagonism to Huawei’s leadership in the design and worldwide dissemination of 5 G technology might well be a factor in the scandal generated by the Chinese connection to intertwined research in microbiology at the level 4 labs in Winnipeg and Wuhan.

    Back in 2000 the notorious report entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses, a publication brought forward by the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), proposed that the US government should refurbish and invoke its capacity to wage biological warfare. PNAC was the think tank that anticipated the events of September 11, 2001 by outlining a strategic scheme that could only be realized by mobilizing American public opinion with “a catalytic event like a New Pearl Harbor.”

    After 9/11, the PNAC Team of related neoconservative activists and Zionist organizations pretty much took over the governance of the United States along with the build up and deployment of its formidable war machine. PNAC called for the invocation of “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes.” In this fashion “biological warfare might be transformed into a politically useful tool.”

    The relationship of this pandemic to internal disagreements within China has been put on full display in Steve Bannon’s coverage of the crisis entitled War Room: Pandemic. A prominent member of US President Donald Trump’s inner circle, Steve Bannon is often accompanied on the daily show by Chinese billionaire dissident, Miles Guo (aka Guo Wengui, Miles Haoyun, Miles Kwok).

    Guo is an outspoken Chinese refugee. He is a persistent critic of virtually every facet of the policies and actions of the Chinese Communist Party.

    Guo regularly condemns those who dominate China’s one-party system, a system run by an elite who, he alleges, are corrupt, incompetent and inveterate liars. Guo regularly asserts that all of the Chinese government’s numbers on the pandemic, including death rates and infection rates, can probably be multiplied by 10X or even 100X  to get closer to accuracy.

    [On the 10X guestimate of mortality and infection see this.]

    Clearly Bannon and Guo would like to see the emergency conditions created by the pandemic as a wedge of division, protest and regime change within China. One of the subjects they regularly raise, as do others who accuse the Chinese government of systematic lying and deception, is that the crematoriums in Wuhan and nearby Chongqing are burning corpses of dead people at a rate far higher than official death figures. Some reports indicated that portable incinerators were being brought into the most infected core of the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic.

    It is troubling, to say the least, that some reports indicate dead people are being cremated far faster and at far higher rates than the Chinese government and the World Health Organization are reporting. Some reckoning with the apparent disparity between reported and actual deaths has led to widespread suspicions about what is actually going in the scenes of violent and angry exchanges between people in the Wuhan area.

    Many of these videos show brutal confrontations between Chinese civilians and Chinese security police. The displays of desperation by some of those trying to escape apprehensions by uniformed officials seem sometimes to suggest the severity of a life or death struggle. It is made to seem that those seeking to escape the grip of authorities are aware that their failure to do so might lead to a quick death and a quick exit by incineration. These reflections are, of course, speculative rather than definitive.

    Questions concerning who we are supposed to believe or not in this crisis are becoming ever more pressing and volatile. One of the emerging themes in the discourse developed at War Room: Pandemic is the propensity of some of the core agencies of mainstream media in the United States to accept at face value the reports they receive from official media outlets answering to the Chinese Communist Party. To Banning and Guo this pattern makes media organizations like the New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN essentially propaganda extensions of the Chinese government.

    The Chinese people themselves are clearly grappling in new ways with the problem of how to understand the information and directives given them by the governing apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party. Clearly the Party initially failed the people by not intervening early and decisively enough after the first cases of Coronavirus illness began to show up. The exit from Wuhan of almost five million people in prior to the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations had huge implications for spreading the contagion.  

    As noted in the introduction, the death in Wuhan of Dr. Li Wenliang on 7 February has become a flash point for popular criticism of the Chinese Communist Party led by General Secretary Xi Jinping. Dr. Li wrote to members of his medical school alumnus group suggesting that some significant action should be taken in response to the appearance of SARS-like symptoms that suddenly afflicted his patients.

    For sending out this unauthorized communication, Dr. Li was summoned along with seven other supposed offenders to the Public Security Bureau. There he was warned by police to stop “making false statements.” He was ordered to cease and desist “spreading rumors,” and “acting illegally to disturb social order.”

    Dr. Li signed a form indicating he would refrain from continuing to do what he had been accused of doing. The chastised professional returned to his medical practice. He took his own advice and began treating patients exhibiting signs of the new illness. He himself soon died from COVID-19 when it was still known as 19-nCoV.

    Is Twitter’s permanent deplatforming of the Zero Hedge web site a North American version of the police intervention in China with the goal of silencing Dr. Li? Is the censorship of the Internet in the name of opposing “conspiracy theorists” repeating the Chinese Communist Party’s effort to silence Dr. Li?

    Is Dr. Li to be appropriately understood as a Chinese version of a “conspiracy theorist”? How different was his treatment for allegedly “spreading rumours” and “acting illegally to disturb social order” from the treatment of those in the Occident who have been deplatformed, smeared and professionally defrocked for attempting to speak truth to power?

    I have developed responses to these incursions based on hard-won experiences facing the propaganda blows of an especially powerful political lobby able to seize control of the governing board of my university. These professional lobbyists seek to discredit academic analysis of their own violations of law, ethics and civility by labelling critics of their zealotry as “conspiracy theorists” or worse.

    More recently I have been grappling against a variation on this process in trying to counter the censorious attacks on the American Herald Tribune. These assaults on free expression and open debate began with the machinations of military hawks whose hit job instructions were passed along to the disinformation specialists at CNN and the Washington Post. 

    No one can say for sure where the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic is taking the world. Wherever we are headed, however, we are leaving behind an era that can never be recreated. Whatever happened to originate the contagion, this crisis is forcing us to take stock of the framework of biological warfare as it has been developing in China, Russia, Israel and probably many other countries.

    Nowhere, however, is biological warfare being more expansively and expensively developed and probably deployed than by the US Armed Forces. The death and destruction that humanity is presently experiencing should signal to us that it is time to get much more serious about inspecting military facilities and enforcing the terms of the Biological Warfare Convention of 1972. It is, in fact, time to get much more serious about enforcing all aspects of international criminal law in balanced ways that transcend the biases of Victors’ Justice. 

    It is time to throw off the weight of the pseudo-laws introduced after 9/11 through abhorrent tactics like the inside-job military anthrax attack on Congress. Most certainly, it is time to draw a clear distinction between research in the field of public health and research in the development of lethal bioweapons. Better yet, we should work towards putting an end altogether to militarization through the massive expansion of the “death sciences.” The vile activities of fallen practitioners of the endangered life sciences are, for starters, undermining the integrity of our besieged institutions of higher learning.


    Tyler Durden

    Thu, 03/05/2020 – 00:05

  • Mapping Every Object In Our Solar System
    Mapping Every Object In Our Solar System

    The path through the solar system is a rocky road.

    Asteroids, comets, planets and moons and all kinds of small bodies of rock, metals, minerals and ice are continually moving as they orbit the sun. As Visual Capitalist’s Nicholas LePan points out, in contrast to the simple diagrams we’re used to seeing, our solar system is a surprisingly crowded place.

    In this stunning visualization, biologist Eleanor Lutz painstakingly mapped out every known object in Earth’s solar system (>10km in diameter), hopefully helping you on your next journey through space.

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    Data-Driven Solar System

    This particular visualization combines five different data sets from NASA:

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    Source: Tabletop Whale

    From this data, Lutz mapped all the orbits of over 18,000 asteroids in the solar system, including 10,000 that were at least 10km in diameter, and about 8,000 objects of unknown size.

    This map shows each asteroid’s position on New Year’s Eve 1999.

    The Pull of Gravity

    When plotting the objects, Lutz observed that the solar system is not arranged in linear distances. Rather, it is logarithmic, with exponentially more objects situated close to the sun. Lutz made use of this observation to space out their various orbits of the 18,000 objects in her map.

    What she is visualizing is the pull of the sun, as the majority of objects tend to gravitate towards the inner part of the solar system. This is the same observation Sir Isaac Newton used to develop the concept of gravity, positing that heavier objects produce a bigger gravitational pull than lighter ones. Since the sun is the largest object in our solar system, it has the strongest gravitational pull.

    If the sun is continually pulling at the planets, why don’t they all fall into the sun? It’s because the planets are moving sideways at the same time.

    Without that sideways motion, the objects would fall to the center – and without the pull toward the center, it would go flying off in a straight line.

    This explains the clustering of patterns in solar systems, and why the farther you travel through the solar system, the bigger the distance and the fewer the objects.

    The Top Ten Non-Planets in the Solar System

    We all know that the sun and the planets are the largest objects in our corner of the universe, but there are many noteworthy objects as well.

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    Source: Ourplnt.com

    While the map only shows objects greater than 10 kilometers in diameter, there are plenty of smaller objects to watch out for as well.

    An Atlas of Space

    This map is one among many of Lutz’s space related visualizations. She is also in the process of creating an Atlas of Space to showcase her work.

    As we reach further and further beyond the boundaries of earth, her work may come in handy the next time you make a wrong turn at Mars and find yourself lost in an asteroid belt.

    “I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque!”


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 23:45

  • Airbnb Gives Renters Secret Risk Assessments And Personality Tests
    Airbnb Gives Renters Secret Risk Assessments And Personality Tests

    Via Mass Private I blog,

    What does the Church of Scientology and Airbnb have in common? If you answered secret risk assessments and personality tests, then give yourself a gold star. If you have rented an Airbnb in the past six years, the odds are pretty high that you have been given a secret risk assessment and personality score.

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    According to an Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) complaint, Airbnb’s secret renter risk assessments are just as specious as the Church of Scientology’s personality tests.

    This complaint concerns Airbnb’s deployment of a risk assessment technique that assigns secret ratings to prospective renters, based on behavior traits using an opaque, proprietary algorithm. Airbnb has failed to show that its technique meets the fairness, transparency, and explainability standards for AI-based decision-making set out in the OECD AI Principles and the Universal Guidelines for AI.

    According to EPIC, Airbnb uses a secret algorithm to generate renter “risk scores.”

    Airbnb generates a risk assessment score for consumers before their reservations are confirmed.As the company explains on their website: Risk scoring. Every Airbnb reservation is scored for risk before it’s confirmed. We use predictive analytics and machine learning to instantly evaluate hundreds of signals that help us flag and investigate suspicious activity before it happens.

    For six years, Airbnb has been using its “determining trustworthiness and compatibility of a person” algorithm to create risk scores of every renter.

    Airbnb also uses its secret algorithm to rate renters’ personalities.

    Personality comprises the emotional and cognitive characteristic of a person. Behavior is how a person acts or reacts, sometimes toward another person, in a certain situation. A person with positive personality or behavior traits such as conscientiousness and openness, for example, is often perceived as more reliable and trustworthy. A person with negative personality or behavior traits such as neuroticism and involvement in crimes, for example, is often perceived as untrustworthy.

    Airbnb does not want people who are “shy, anxious or depressed” to rent their apartments, condominiums or homes because those types of people are likely to leave negative comments.

    But Airbnb will rent to people with a “high trustworthiness score” because they are more likely to leave positive comments.

    Airbnb uses its secret algorithm to check renters’ social network profiles, email address, telephone number, geographic location, date of birth, social connections, employment history, education history, driver’s license number, financial account information, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and device identifier.

    EPIC’s complaint claims Airbnb uses its algorithm to score a renters’ trustworthiness based on their social media profiles.

    According to the patent application, machine learning inputs include personal data collected from web pages, information from databases, posts on the person’s social network account, posts on a blog or a microblog account of the person, a comment made by the person on a website, or a directory listing for a company or association.

    Airbnb’s algorithm is also used to identify renters with Machiavellianism and negative personalities.

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    A particular personality trait can be badness, anti-social tendencies, goodness, conscientiousness, openness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, narcissism, Machiavellianism, or psychopathy or is involved in pornography, has authored online content with negative language, or has interests that indicate negative personality or behavior traits.

    By identifying the so-called negative personality or behavior traits of their renters, Airbnb has essentially turned property owners into untrained psychiatric and behavioral therapists.

    Airbnb also reviews renters’ emails, phone conversations and in-person encounters with owners and adds them to their secret risk assessment.

    The method provides the behavior trait metrics and the personality trait metrics of the first person and corresponding metrics for a second person as input to a scoring system and obtaining as output from the system a compatibility score between the two persons.

    Airbnb’s algorithm considers derogatory or angry words an anti-social personality trait. This is horrifying, everything a renter says and does go towards their personal risk assessment.

    Airbnb’s risk assessments and personality tests are about as accurate as the Church of Scientology’s E-Meter which purport’s to identify a person’s negative traits using “a box; a needle; one battery; two cans; and a bunch of copper wire.”

    Airbnb has one more trick up their sleeve so to speak:  they are also checking renters’ names against secret U.S. government watchlists.

    Airbnb has turned a once innocuous thing like renting an apartment, condominium or home into a corporate surveillance nightmare replete with secret risk assessments and anti-social personality scores.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 23:25

  • China Car Sales Crash 80% As Virus Paralyzes Auto Industry
    China Car Sales Crash 80% As Virus Paralyzes Auto Industry

    Car sales in China fell 80% YoY in February, the sharpest monthly decline in nearly two decades amid the Covid-19 epidemic kept consumers away from dealerships, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

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    The outbreak of the virus has had a significant impact on China’s automobile industry as it has been cycling down for the last two years. Global automakers have been pouring money into China, such as Tesla, to capture a robust consumer. Still, it could be seen as the wrong move at the moment, due in part to a collapse in consumption starting in mid-January. 

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    A twin shock has plagued the automobile industry in China, one where a supply shock has hit manufacturers, who can’t produce automobiles at full capacity because of labor shortages and lockdowns, along with a demand shock that has kept people away from dealerships. While supply woes could be resolved with near term factory restarts, demand woes are expected to linger through the first half of the year.

    To illustrate the plunge in business activity, Caixin China Composite Output Index plunged to 27.5 in February from 51.9 in the previous month, one of the quickest drops on record. The virus outbreak has led to company closures and travel restrictions that have ground China’s economy to a halt. 

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    As we’ve noted on several prior occasions, China’s “alternative,” high-frequency indicators have demonstrated traffic congestion across 100 major cities in the country is significantly below trend since the virus outbreak began, suggesting overall trade and commerce is at a standstill.  

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    Since China is the world’s leading car producer and one of the top markets for sales, a continue plunge of such magnitude will not only be felt around the world, but could very well tip the global automaker recession into an outright depression.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 23:05

  • The Multipolar Alliance Induces Rumpelstiltskin's Self-Destruction
    The Multipolar Alliance Induces Rumpelstiltskin’s Self-Destruction

    Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    There are several versions of the old German folk tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

    The story begins with greedy king who is told by a foolish old miller that a young girl (the miller’s daughter) had the ability to spin hay into gold. When the poor girl is locked into a tower with bales of straw, a loom and orders to transform it all into gold under threat of death, a magical imp appears out of thin air and they reach an agreement: He will use his magic to spin the hay into gold on the condition that the girl gives the imp her first born child. The greedy king is pleased with the wealth that appeared from thin air, and the daughter’s neck is saved. Sadly the day eventually arrives for her to give up a child, and the imp in sadistic glee responds to her pleading tears by giving her three chances annul the contract. All she has to do is guess his name.

    To make a long story short, his name is discovered and Rumpelstiltskin literally tears himself to pieces in a fit of mad rage.

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    I think this story exemplifies the self-cannibalization of the deep state over the past several years quite nicely.

    It appeared for quite some time that the oligarchy managing the world’s financial system and military-intelligence community from above was able to do magic.

    If they wanted a nation overthrown, or a troublesome elected official killed, a mere snap of the fingers was all it took. Gold from straw? They could do that too! Just look at the mass of $1.5 quadrillion dollars of derivatives claims which appeared as though out of thin air in the mere space of 30 years! Seriously, back in 1990, these fictitious assets (forms of bets on insurance on securitized debts) amounted to little more than $2 trillion and 10 years before that, had barely any existence whatsoever. NOW… they amount to over twenty times the world’s GDP! How was this possible when the real economy (agro-industrial/infrastructure capital which supports real life) was permitted to atrophy during that same space of time? Magic!

    Such are the powers of today’s Rumpelstiltskin.

    There were no shortage of idiot kings in our modern story either. A cleptocracy rose to prominence in the west in a scale unseen in human history. Billionaire speculators, hedge fund managers and other useless nouveau rich devoid of any actual productive skill rose to positions of power and prestige under this new system of globalization and used their wealth and influence to become enforces of the system that gave them their money and status. The Bloombergs of this world were more than happy to unquestioningly accept the idea that they “earned” their billions, and happily became thugs and mini tyrants for the machine. It was all magic… mixed with a good dose of arrogance of course.

    But then one day, the magic stopped working.

    The banking system started rupturing and the magic wands had to be used more often. More bailouts, more overnight repo loans for bankrupt speculators (today clocking in at $100 billion/night), more money printing out of thin air and more debt to carry over till next quarter with no thought of paying it off. Soon after the straw stopped turning into gold, the god-like powers of regime change also stopped working. Libya worked fine of course when it was magically thrown back into the stone age joining Iraq and Afghanistan… but Ukraine was harder, and Syria followed by Venezuela were harder still. Why did the magic formula stop working?

    The answer in short: Russia and China both guessed the name.

    Once the name was said aloud, the empire was increasingly exposed for all to see as the bluff masquerading as a God which it always was. Calling the name of the empire was like a spiritual ointment for many who feared the unknown, un-nameable creatures of the dark shadows. Like any shadow confronted with the light, this imp ceased to exert the influence it wished to hold onto the minds and hearts of its victims… and the image of omnipotence it worked so hard to project onto the world turned out to be just that… a projection and nothing more.

    President Putin demonstrated how it is possible with one tenth of the expenses of the US military to destroy ISIS in Syria by the simple application of an intention to actually do it. This intention was always absent from the minds of western geopoliticians who actually preferred to have a growing network of terrorists spread across the Middle East and Africa. Terrorists not only destabilized troublesome nation states as a form of asymmetric warfare, but also provided a convenient excuse to bomb governments targeted for regime change.

    China followed suit by investing massively into the development sector- just as the west had done for years- but with one very big difference: INTENTION. China animated its investments into Africa, Asia, the Middle East and beyond with the intention to actually create prosperity, infrastructure and economic independence in those countries receiving loans. They didn’t use this with magic, but simply by ensuring their money would be invested into genuine nation building projects disconnected from any usurious conditionalities.

    With the important ingredient of intention to actually end terrorism, hunger, disease and poverty infused into global policy-making by Russia and China, the Rumpelstilskins lost more of their power. The empire always relied on the illusion of noble ends but never the substance or means to carry them out. This substance is located entirely in the domain of intention.

    In the west, the shadow creature was given a name (deep state), and with that name, an identity, and modus operandi was identified.

    With that identification, a resistance began to organically emerge as nations found the courage to take a stand- preferring to work with honest partners like Russia, China and the Belt and Road Initiative rather than cling onto the Titanic of the sinking western system.

    Within America, Rumpelstiltskin spasmed in rage and moved in desperation to defend himself when a leader surprisingly came to power extolling friendly relations with Russia and China. This was done first with the sloppy manufacture of Russia-Gate and then the sloppier manufacture of Ukraine-gate… but that also didn’t work. Whether it took the form of left wing socialists or capitalist orange nationalists, the magic once used to easily destroy such troublesome expressions of patriotism in America stopped working as fast as had their bailout powers, or regime change hocus pocus.

    When you watch today’s democratic primary debates and laugh at the fanatic sloppiness of Rumpelstiltskin’s left wing champions cannibalize each other (and themselves) in the process, or as you listen to right wing Rumpelstilskins froth in rage at China’s tyrannical Belt and Road Initiative “empire”, keep in mind that the game, as they say, is really up. The name has been called out, the imp is busy tearing himself to pieces and to the surprise of many who had lost all hope just a few years ago, this story may actually have a happy ending after all.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 22:45

  • IMF Head Announces $50 Billion Aid Program For Covid-19 Relief
    IMF Head Announces $50 Billion Aid Program For Covid-19 Relief

    IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told CNBC’s “Squawk Ally” Wednesday that it would launch a $50 billion aid package “immediately” dedicated to combating Covid-19 outbreaks in emerging market countries. This announcement comes after the World Bank said it would fund a $12 billion program on Tuesday to fight the virus that threatens to plunge the global economy into recession. 

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    Georgieva told CNBC’s Sara Eisen that the aid program would be interest-free and for countries that don’t have a pre-existing program with the IMF.

    “The $40 billion is for countries that are middle income, and they can approach us and receive the funding immediately. More important is the $10 billion that are accessible for low-income countries. Because most of this money is interest-free. We have signaled to the membership and what we are doing right now is reviewing country by country what are the financial needs and engaging with these countries to make sure that they are aware of this resource and we can immediately respond to them. So, we are in an early stage of engagement. But I can assure you that we will attack very quickly as requests come. What the countries would use the money for, we would like very much to see them prioritizing first and foremost, urgently beefing up their health service capacity so lives are saved, and suffering is reduced. And secondly, to use it for fiscal measures that are well targeted to households, businesses that are most directly impacted by the crisis,” Georgieva said. 

    Eisen asked the managing director if fiscal measures, such as stimulus, would be needed in the US to combat virus impacts on the economy. Georgieva responded: 

    “We believe that all countries should look seriously into the urgency to beef up health systems response. And, yes, that would be money very well spent everywhere. And we also think it is now the time to put in place precautionary measures should the outbreak become more severe. In other words, do we have credit lines for SMEs? Are we thinking of funding workers that cannot go to work because their kids are at home? And these are not measures that we should come with later, we should be prepared now.” 

    Eisen referenced an earlier interview Georgieva had with reporters on Wednesday, where she said global growth in 2020 looks to be weaker than 2019. She asked the managing director: “How deep will this go?” Here’s how Georgieva responded: 

    “Well, what we look at are a more benign scenario and a more adverse scenario. In a more benign scenario, the outbreak would be relatively short lived, and the impact would be felt primarily first quarter, second quarter, followed by recovery. In a more adverse scenario, the outbreak would be a more profound. It would go beyond the countries today. We have 75 countries impacted. It would become truly global. There would be more retrenchment, and in a country the impact would look more like China than not. So, where we would lend between those two scenarios, we are looking very carefully at the data, and of course, listening to the epidemiologists to get a handle on what projection we should make. But there are so many things in between those to the more benign and really adverse, in which we would have a longer drop in growth and a slower recovery, versus a shorter drop and a faster recovery. We do need to exercise some — and accumulate enough bottom-up data from countries, and, source more information from the experts, from the health community. Meanwhile, though, preparedness and action are absolutely critical. It’s better to do more than not enough. And the focus has to be on people.” 

    As far as China’s factory restart, Georgieva had this to say: 

    “Well, there is some good news coming from China in that regard. Capacity is up to around 60%. We heard today from the Governor Yi Gang that they are aiming by the end of the month to go up to 90%. Of course, we have to caveat that, subject to no revival of the epidemic as factories reopen. But at this point, the news from China is, there is a stepping up in production. There will be a negative impact on this year’s growth for China. The leadership there knows it. It is in our expectation. But a stepping up in China, good for China, good for the rest of the world.” 

    Eisen asked if the fast-spreading virus could tilt the US economy into recession if an outbreak develops here; Georgieva responded: 

    “At this point, what we see are two pieces of relatively comforting news. One, the financial system is holding. We are not seeing a major risk. So, all the investment we’ve done over the last ten years is paying off. And, two, there is quite substantial gearing up on measures so we can slow down the impact and reduce it. And that is, I think, our eyes have to be on what can we do to prevent a more adverse impact. And a big part of it is actually confidence building by communicating clearly where we are, what we know, what we don’t know. And act on that basis. Lean forward.”

    On Monday, the OECD urged governments to act “swiftly and forcefully” with coordinated fiscal stimulus to counter ‘severe’ economic impacts that have developed from the unraveling of complex supply chains in Asia and abroad. 

    On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve was spooked into a 50bps emergency rate cut. Rate traders aren’t satisfied with the cut – are now demanding at least another 25bps cut this month. Other central banks on Tuesday followed suit with cuts of their own. 

    So far this week, central banks, NGOs, and governments have deployed a mix of monetary and fiscal stimulus to rescue the global economy from a collapse in growth.

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    One thing that is clear: All this stimulus, or the hope of stimulus, has pumped E-Mini S&P500 back above its daily 200EMA. Mission accomplished? 


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 22:25

  • Covid-19 Vs. The Mass Surveillance State: Which Poses The Greater Threat?
    Covid-19 Vs. The Mass Surveillance State: Which Poses The Greater Threat?

    Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.”—Philip K. Dick

    Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expands its powers.

    The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.

    It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be – civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters” – as long as it allows the government to justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

    Now we find ourselves on the brink of a possible coronavirus contagion.

    I’ll leave the media and the medical community to speculate about the impact the coronavirus will have on the nation’s health, but how will the government’s War on the Coronavirus impact our freedoms?

    For a hint of what’s in store, you can look to China—our role model for all things dystopian—where the contagion started.

    In an attempt to fight the epidemic, the government has given its surveillance state apparatus—which boasts the most expansive and sophisticated surveillance system in the world—free rein. Thermal scanners using artificial intelligence (AI) have been installed at train stations in major cities to assess body temperatures and identify anyone with a fever. Facial recognition cameras and cell phone carriers track people’s movements constantly, reporting in real time to data centers that can be accessed by government agents and employers alike. And coded color alerts (red, yellow and green) sort people into health categories that correspond to the amount of freedom of movement they’re allowed: “Green code, travel freely. Red or yellow, report immediately.”

    Mind you, prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese surveillance state had already been hard at work tracking its citizens through the use of some 200 million security cameras installed nationwide. Equipped with facial recognition technology, the cameras allow authorities to track so-called criminal acts, such as jaywalking, which factor into a person’s social credit score.

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    Social media credit scores assigned to Chinese individuals and businesses categorize them on whether or not they are “good” citizens. A real-name system—which requires people to use government-issued ID cards to buy mobile sims, obtain social media accounts, take a train, board a plane, or even buy groceries—coupled with social media credit scores ensures that those blacklisted as “unworthy” are banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train. Among the activities that can get you labeled unworthy are taking reserved seats on trains or causing trouble in hospitals.

    That same social credit score technology used to identify, track and segregate citizens is now one of China’s chief weapons in its fight to contain the coronavirus from spreading. However, it is far from infallible and a prime example of the difficulties involved in navigating an autonomous system where disembodied AI systems call the shots. For instance, one woman, who has no symptoms of the virus but was assigned a red code based on a visit to her hometown, has been blocked from returning to her home and job until her color code changes. She has been stuck in this state of limbo for weeks with no means of challenging the color code or knowing exactly why she’s been assigned a red code.

    Fighting the coronavirus epidemic has given China the perfect excuse for unleashing the full force of its surveillance and data collection powers. The problem, as Eamon Barrett acknowledges in Fortune magazine, is what happens after: “Once the outbreak is controlled, it’s unclear whether the government will retract its new powers.”

    The lesson for the ages: once any government is allowed to expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to pull back.

    Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the government thus far has limited its coronavirus preparations to missives advising the public to stay calm, wash their hands, and cover their mouths when they cough and sneeze.

    Don’t go underestimating the government’s ability to lock the nation down if the coronavirus turns into a pandemic, however. After all, the government has been planning and preparing for such a crisis for years now.

    The building blocks are already in place for such an eventuality: the surveillance networks, fusion centers and government contractors that already share information in real time; the government’s massive biometric databases that can identify individuals based on genetic and biological markers; the militarized police, working in conjunction with federal agencies, ready and able to coordinate with the federal government when it’s time to round up the targeted individuals; the courts that will sanction the government’s methods, no matter how unlawful, as long as it’s done in the name of national security; and the detention facilities, whether private prisons or FEMA internment camps, that have been built and are waiting to be filled.

    Now all of this may sound far-fetched to you now, but we’ve already arrived at the dystopian futures prophesied by George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report.

    It won’t take much more to push us over the edge into Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium, in which the majority of humanity is relegated to an overpopulated, diseased, warring planet where the government employs technologies such as drones, tasers and biometric scanners to track, target and control the populace.

    Mind you, while these technologies are already in use today and being hailed for their potentially life-saving, cost-saving, time-saving benefits, it won’t be long before the drawbacks to having a government equipped with technology that makes it all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful——helped along by the citizenry—far outdistance the benefits.

    On a daily basis, Americans are relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

    Consider all the ways you continue to be tracked, hunted, hounded, and stalked by the government and its dubious agents:

    Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.

    Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.

    Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

    The ramifications of a government—any government—having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.

    Imagine what a totalitarian regime such as Nazi Germany could have done with this kind of unadulterated power.

    Imagine what the next police state to follow in Germany’s footsteps will do with this kind of power. Society is rapidly moving in that direction.

    We’ve made it so easy for the government to watch us.

    Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

    Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

    Chances are, as the Washington Post has reported, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat assessment score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

    In other words, you’re most likely already flagged in a government database somewhere.

    The government has the know-how.

    Indeed, for years now, the FBI and Justice Department have conspired to acquire near-limitless power and control over biometric information collected on law-abiding individuals, millions of whom have never been accused of a crime.

    Going far beyond the scope of those with criminal backgrounds, the FBI’s Next Generation Identification database (NGID), a billion dollar boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government’s ID database from a fingerprint system to a vast data storehouse of iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.

    Launched in 2008, the NGID is a massive biometric database that contains more than 100 million fingerprints and 45 million facial photos gathered from a variety of sources ranging from criminal suspects and convicts to daycare workers and visa applicants, including millions of people who have never committed or even been accused of a crime.

    In other words, innocent American citizens are now automatically placed in a suspect database.

    For a long time, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone’s biometrics and DNA and use it against them.

    That is no longer the case.

    The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation. The nation’s courts are also doing their part to “build” the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. And of course Corporate America (including Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) has made it so easy to use one’s biometrics to access everything from bank accounts to cell phones.

    We’ve made it so easy for the government to target, identify and track us.

    Add pre-crime programs into the mix with government agencies and corporations working in tandem to determine who is a potential danger and spin a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies, and you having the makings for a perfect dystopian nightmare.

    This is the kind of oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick.

    Remember, even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.

    In the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.

    Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence.

    This is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, probation officer, Big Brother and Father Knows Best all rolled into one.

    It turns out that we are Soylent Green.

    The 1973 film of the same name, starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, is set in 2022 in an overpopulated, polluted, starving New York City whose inhabitants depend on synthetic foods manufactured by the Soylent Corporation for survival.

    Heston plays a policeman investigating a murder, who discovers the grisly truth about the primary ingredient in the wafer, soylent green, which is the principal source of nourishment for a starved population. “It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people,” declares Heston’s character. “They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food.”

    Oh, how right he was.

    Soylent Green is indeed people or, in our case, Soylent Green is our own personal data, repossessed, repackaged and used by corporations and the government to entrap us.

    Without constitutional protections in place to guard against encroachments on our rights when power, technology and militaristic governance converge, it won’t be long before we find ourselves, much like Edward G. Robinson’s character in Soylent Green, looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted, and go where we wanted without those thoughts, words and movements being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.

    We’re not quite there yet. But that moment of reckoning is getting closer by the minute.

    In the meantime, we’ve got an epidemic to survive, so go ahead and wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. And stock up on whatever you might need to survive this virus if it spreads to your community.

    We are indeed at our most vulnerable right now, but as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s the American Surveillance State—not the coronavirus—that poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 22:05

  • Berkshire Says Its Annual Meeting Is A Go For May 2, Despite Coronavirus Outbreak
    Berkshire Says Its Annual Meeting Is A Go For May 2, Despite Coronavirus Outbreak

    Berkshire’s Warren Buffett has said that the company’s annual shareholder meeting, scheduled for May 2, is going to take place as planned, despite the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.

    Some of the surrounding events around the meeting may wind up being curtailed, however. 

    Berkshire posted a brief announcement on its website early this week that simply says:

    The Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting will be held on May 2, 2020 irrespective of conditions at that time. The scope of the meeting and associated activities may be modified by circumstances at the time, but we have no present plans to do so.

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    Buffett’s shareholder meeting is one of the largest corporate gatherings in America, according to Reuters. And what better way to show your “buy stocks forever” and “America (and its Central Bankers) will prevail” sentiment than to ignore the science behind the coronavirus and get 40,000 or more people into the same meeting rooms and events in Omaha over a three day weekend. 

    The events include not only the meeting, but a picnic, a 5K run and even a dinner for select attendees at a nearby steakhouse.

    For those not interested in contracting coronavirus, the meeting will also be livestreamed by Yahoo Finance, who will allow viewers to watch Buffett’s top lieutenant, Charlie Munger, field incoming questions for hours. 

    Buffett’s recommendation flies in the face of many U.S. companies that are now restricting travel for employees in response to the outbreak. Buffett said that he “expected” that many of the Chinese visitors who typically make their way to Omaha won’t attend this year.

    He’d better hope so…


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 21:45

  • A Beijing Hospital Confirms Covid-19 Attacks Central Nervous System
    A Beijing Hospital Confirms Covid-19 Attacks Central Nervous System

    Via CNTechPost.com,

    Beijing Ditan Hospital affiliated to the Capital Medical University said on March 4 that the first patient with novel coronavirus pneumonia complicated with encephalitis was discharged from the hospital on February 25.

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    Liu Jingyuan, director of the ICU at the Hospital, presided over the treatment of the patient. He reminded that patients with conscious disturbances must consider the possibility that the virus may attack the central nervous system.

    At present, patients with new type of coronavirus pneumonia can be combined with multiple organ damages such as severe respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), myocardial damage, abnormal coagulation function, kidney damage, liver damage, etc. However, no central nervous system involvement has been reported. The case report is the first in the world.

    Previous studies on SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) have also shown that the coronaviruses that cause these two diseases also cause cases of central nervous system damage.

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    According to the introduction of Beijing Ditan Hospital, two suspected cases of new-type coronavirus pneumonia have been treated since January 12 this year (confirmed on January 20). As of 7:00 on March 4, the hospital has accumulatively received 150 patients with new-type coronavirus pneumonia, of which the above patient is the only patient with new type of coronavirus pneumonia and encephalitis.

    The 56-year-old patient was admitted to the hospital on January 24 with new coronavirus pneumonia, critical illness, and respiratory failure. After admission, he was given a combination of interferon nebulization, antiviral treatment, prevention of bacterial infection, and TCM syndrome differentiation. No improvement, high fever, fatigue, and dyspnea gradually increased.

    On January 27 (10th day of onset), a chest CT showed that the range of ground-glass density in both lungs was enlarged, and some of them were consolidating. Short-term nasal high-flow oxygen inhalation, no relief in breathing distress, irritability, breathing 50 breaths per minute, partial oxygen pressure of 85%, intubation in the ICU, mechanical ventilation in accordance with the principle of ARDS breathing ventilation.

    After 96 hours of treatment (day 14 of the onset), the patient developed frequent twitching of the maxillofacial and mouth angles with persistent hiccups.

    On examination, the doctor found positive neck resistance, bilateral pupils and other large contours, sluggish light reflection, increased limb muscle tension, bilateral knee reflexes, bilateral Pap sign and ankle clonus, and no intracranial CT scan. Abnormal, the cerebrospinal fluid pressure was greater than 330mmH2O, the appearance of the cerebrospinal fluid was colorless and clear, and the biochemical test was normal.

    Beijing Ditan Hospital’s Department of Critical Medicine, Laboratory Medicine, and the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Infectious Diseases Joint Working Group performed metagenome second-generation sequencing of the collected cerebrospinal fluid specimens and identified possible infectious pathogens. Other pathogens were excluded and a new coronavirus was obtained. Genomic sequence.

    Gene sequencing confirmed the existence of a new coronavirus in the cerebrospinal fluid and clinical diagnosis of viral encephalitis.

    Subsequently, the medical staff treated the patients with viral encephalitis after 14 days of mechanical ventilation and mannitol to control intracranial pressure, midazolam to control convulsions, gamma globulin, and methylprednisolone anti-inflammatory treatment, and observed the patient’s lung disease imaging gradually. Improved, neurological symptoms disappeared.

    On February 10 (day 24 of the onset of illness), the trachea was intubated and the nasal cannula was given oxygen after fully assessing the patient’s respiratory and neural function. On February 18 (the 32nd day after the onset of illness), he was transferred out of the intensive care unit and continued to receive treatment in the new coronavirus ward.

    Liu Jingyuan reminded that in clinical observation, there were many cases of cervical resistance, positive pathological signs, sudden disturbance of consciousness and even coma.

    He said that in the face of such patients, it is necessary to be vigilant to the new type of coronavirus infection that can affect the central nervous system, timely conduct relevant examinations such as cerebrospinal fluid, and improve the work on SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid and gene sequencing of cerebrospinal fluid in order to better understand COVID-19. Explore and actively deal with related neurological complications, thereby further reducing the mortality of critically ill patients.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 21:25

  • Operations Suspended At F-35 Stealth Jet Factory In Japan Due To Virus Fears
    Operations Suspended At F-35 Stealth Jet Factory In Japan Due To Virus Fears

    America’s F-35 stealth aircraft factory in Japan shuttered operations for a week due to new concerns over the Covid-19 outbreak, reported Defense News.

    The closure of the F-35 stealth factory comes as Covid-19 infections in Japan rose above 1,000 on Wednesday, most of which are from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship.

    This prompted the closure of the F-35 factory in Japan, Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters on Wednesday. She said the F-35’s global supply chain has yet to be impacted by the virus.

    “In Japan, I believe they shut down the Final Assembly and Check-Out (FACO) for a week,” Lord said.

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    While much of the F-35 is produced at Lockheed Martin’s factory in Ft. Worth, Texas, Japan has managed to become integrated into the production of the fifth-generation jet.

    Still, “right now, it doesn’t look like it is affecting deliveries” of the F-35, Lord said. “Right now, we have not seen any effects.”

    With the virus spreading worldwide, South Korea, Italy, Iran, and other countries in Europe, have been hard hit by the virus. Another F-35 factory in Italy has taken precautions to minimize virus spreading, she added. 

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    She said at the F-35 plant in Italy, “Lockheed has directed their employees to work from home.”

    Lord said the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security has been monitoring the global supply chain of the F-35 and potential virus impacts, including “scenario planning” of supply chain disruptions.

    Defense News notes the F-35 program is “the most globally integrated supply chain in military equipment history.”

    “Combating the Coronavirus remains a top priority for the department, and Secretary Esper meets weekly with senior leaders to discuss how we’re taking care of our men and women in uniform around the world,” said DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Andrews. “The department remains fully engaged with the defense industrial base on all programs, including the F-35, and stands ready to respond when needed.”


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 21:05

  • Fauci Warns Outbreak Could Overwhelm US Health-Care System, Cali Declares State Of Emergency: Live Updates
    Fauci Warns Outbreak Could Overwhelm US Health-Care System, Cali Declares State Of Emergency: Live Updates

    Summary:

    • LAX screener tests positive

    • New York has reported another 5 case, raising the total to 11.

    • Dr. Fauci says up to 20% of Covid-19 cases could require hospitalization

    • Trump confirms he’ll sign emergency virus package

    • Cali reports 1st death, bringing US toll to 11

    • South Korea reports 438 new cases, deaths climb to 35

    • Pence says US death toll has climbed to 10

    • The US House has passed an $8.3 billion to fight the virus.

    • Italy finally confirms school closure

    • Italy will ban public events, and close cinemas and theaters even though the government denied an earlier ANSA report that the country would also close schools & universities momentarily

    • Fla reports 4th case

    • CDC investigating cruise ship ‘Grand Princess’ linked to cluster of cases in NorCal

    • Italy urges elderly people to stay indoors if possible

    • Irag confirms 3rd death

    • Slovenia confirms 1st case

    • Brazil records 3rd case

    • Ecuador confirms 3 new cases, raising total to 10

    • Pence confirms after meeting airline execs that travelers from Italy & SK would be tested multiple times

    • German finance minister declares outbreak “a global pandemic”

    • Cali joins Washington & Florida in declaring state of emergency

    • Russia blames “enemies” for spreading fake news about outbreak

    • Israel urges people to stop shaking hands, will quarantine travelers from most of Europe

    • EU reports a second coronavirus case at its headquarters in Brussels

    • France has reported 28 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 285

    • UK cases surge by 34 to a total of 85 – a 66% surge.

    • China reported 119 additional coronavirus cases and 38 additional deaths

    • South Korea reported 809 additional coronavirus cases and 4 additional deaths; has carried out 136,000 tests

    • Israel quarantines group of soccer fans

    • “Official” Iranian death toll hits 92

    • Saudi suspends Umra pilgrimage

    • Japan confirms 3 more cases from Osaka

    * * *
    Update (2040ET): Yonhap reports that South Korea has reported 438 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the national total to 5,766. Most of the new cases were identified in the southeastern Daegu, a city of 2.5 million and the epicenter of the outbreak.

    As of Thursday morning in Seoul, the death toll had climbed to 35, mostly elderly patients with underlying illnesses.

    So far, roughly 60% of SK cases have been linked to a branch of the Shincheonji church in Daegu.

    * * *

    Update (1930ET): China reported another drop in cases on Wednesday: 139 additional cases of coronavirus and 31 additional deaths on March 4 compared to the day prior, when the gov’t reported 119 additional cases and 38 additional deaths. The total number of cases in mainland China has risen to 80,409, and the death toll has hit 3,012  

    * * *

    Update (1915ET): Cali Gov. Gavin Newsom has followed the lead of the governors of Florida and Washington State by declaring a state-wide ‘State of Emergency’. He also promised that the state would “monitor” price gouging.

    Watch the rest of his briefing with state officials here:

    Oh and three new cases reported in Santa Clara:

    • SANTA CLARA COUNTY CA REPORTS 3 NEW CASES OF COVID-19 TOTAL NOW 14 IN THE COUNTY – KTVU

    * * *

    Update (1850ET): Now that the latest White House task force press conference is over, we’d like to highlight one comment that seems to have attracted a lot of attention this evening: Dr. Fauci’s “estimate” that “15-20%” of those infected with the virus will require hospitalization.

    That’s much higher than the hospitalization rate for the flu, which, according to the CDC is a tiny fraction of a percentage point (though, of course, there’s a vaccine for the flu).

    As Ted Lieu notes above, just think of all the hospital resources that this could consume.

    Also, check out the mainstream press’s latest stunt to make the administration look bad (Trump already said they’re working on a plan to make sure cost isn’t an obstacle to people getting tested).

    As we wait for the Senate to pass the $8.3 billion emergency spending bill, President Trump has confirmed that he plans to sign it.

    Which is good, because we’lre going to need that money to slap together a few hospitals once the symptoms really start hitting.

    * * *

    Update (1740ET): In his latest press conference, VP Pence revealed that there are at least 100 active coronavirus cases, but that the risk to the American public remains low. The official total is actually 154 if we count the 48 evacuees.

    In the middle of the task force update, NBC News dropped a bombshell: A CDC contractor who screened arriving passengers for the virus at LAX just tested positive.

    The worker reportedly wore the appropriate protective gear while screening passengers — it was not immediately clear whether they contracted the virus through contact with an infected passenger, or if it was a case of community transmission.

    According to DHS, the health worker is self-quarantining at home under “medical supervision.” They are experiencing only mild symptoms, similar to a cold. The worker’s family members are also under home quarantine.

    The emailed statement also said these screeners are predominantly assigned to the CDC in-transit lounge and a few support jetway screening on direct flights from China.”

    The agency added that the “highly trained” individual began experiencing symptoms on Saturday.

    Here’s the statement:

    “Late last night, DHS headquarters was alerted to a situation where one of our contracted medical professionals conducting screenings at LAX international airport had tested positive for COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus. This individual is currently under self-quarantine at home with mild symptoms and under medical supervision. Their immediate family is also under home quarantine.”

    “DHS is happy to report that this individual was highly trained and did everything right both on the job and when they began to feel sick. We are told the individual wore all the correct protective equipment and took necessary protections on the job. Additionally, as soon as the individual began to feel sick, they self-quarantined, saw a physician, and reported to the appropriate authorities and officials.”

    * * *

    Update (1650ET): The House passed a roughly $8.3 billion emergency spending package for combating the coronavirus outbreak, sending the legislation to the Senate as lawmakers raced to respond to the quickly spreading disease.

    As The Wasll Street Journal reports, the bill provides more than $3 billion for developing treatments for the disease and allocates $2.2 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to contain the disease, among other measures. Under the legislation, which the Senate will also likely pass this week, more than $1 billion will go overseas, while $20 million will be made available to fund administrative expenses for loans to U.S. small businesses.

    The final deal includes $300 million for the government to purchase the vaccine and other therapeutics and make them available to the public.

    It calls on Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to use currently available authority to ensure the price is “affordable in the commercial market,” while additionally stating that he shouldn’t delay the drug’s development.

    The legislation, crafted by top Republicans and Democrats, caps less than two weeks of negotiations that began when the White House said it planned to spend roughly $2.5 billion on fighting the disease, an amount lawmakers said was too low. President Trump has subsequently said he would sign whatever package Congress approves.

    * * *

    Update (1615ET): Slovenia has joined Hungary in confirming its first case of coronavirus.

    The Balkan nation is best-known to Americans as the birth country of First Lady Melania Trump.

    Meanwhile, here’s a smattering of other corona-related news:

    • STUDENT IN DUBAI INFECTED WITH CORONAVIRUS: ARABIYA
    • UNITED AIRLINES TO REDUCE FLIGHTS, FREEZE HIRING ON CORONAVIRUS
    • AIRBUS IS SAID TO WEIGH A330 OUTPUT CUT AS VIRUS HITS CUSTOMERS
    • CORONAVIRUS CAUSING RECONSIDERATION OF AIR TRAVEL: DOT’S SZABAT
    • GLOBAL AIR PASSENGERS MAY FALL 6%, SZABAT SAYS CITING ANALYSTS
    • ABOUT 15K AIR PASSENGERS CAME FROM CHINA/DAY BEFORE VIRUS: DOT
    • FEWER THAN 1K AIR PASSENGERS TO U.S. FROM CHINA PER DAY: DOT
    • CDC’S ESTIMATED COVID-19 FATALITY RATE IS .05%-1.0%, REDD SAYS
    • CORONAVIRUS CAN SURVIVE ON SURFACES FOR UP TO 1 DAY: CDC’S REDD
    • APPLE HAS RE-OPENED 38 OF 42 RETAIL STORES IN MAINLAND CHINA

    * * *

    Update (1545ET): New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirmed 5 more cases in Westchester, raising the state’s total to 11, during his third press conference on the outbreak in less than 24 hours.

    Last time we checked, the family members of infected Westchester lawyer Lawrence Garbuz had also all tested positive. Now, it appears a friend of Garbuz, and that friend’s whole family, have also tested positive. This second infected family is also situated in Westchester County.

    * * *

    Update (1535ET): Brazil reports a third case, a 46-year-old Colombian national.

    * * *

    Update (1530ET): Health officials in Baghdad have reported their second death in the capital city; it marks the first death in Iraq as a whole (a death was also reported in the town of Sulaimanyah).

    As readers can see, the number of cases in the country has more than doubled in recent days as the virus seeps across the border…

    * * *

    Update (1440ET): Italy has ordered sporting events to continue without fans until April 3, the AP reports.

    As we head toward the Euro 2020, get ready to see more of this.

    And the UAE just barred people from attending soccer games.

    And now that Japan has started the conversation about a possible delay of the Olympics…it’s looking increasingly likely that it will be delayed, if not cancelled outright.

    Back in Seattle, NYT has more information about the latest rash of cases:

    A high school in the Seattle suburbs was closed on Wednesday through the end of the week, after a student tested positive for the virus. The Renton School District said it had learned of the test result for a student at Hazen High School late on Tuesday and had closed the school on the advice of county health officials.

    The student was at home recovering, the district said. County health officials were tracing all those who had come into contact with the student in recent days.

    Also on Tuesday, Amazon emailed its staff in the Seattle area saying that it had learned that an employee in one of its buildings in the South Lake Union neighborhood had tested positive. The employee had not been to work since Feb. 25, the email said.

    US lawmakers have reportedly reached a deal on $8.3 billion in emergency coronavirus spending bill, which includes nearly $8 billion in funding for agencies fighting the virus, and $500 million to allow Medicare providers to administer tele-health services better suited to the elderly.

    Racing to confront a growing public health threat, key lawmakers in the House and Senate reached a deal on Wednesday to provide $8.3 billion in emergency aid to combat the novel coronavirus, and the House planned a vote later Wednesday to approve it, according to three officials familiar with the negotiations.

    The bipartisan package, which includes nearly $7.8 billion for agencies dealing with the virus and came together after days of rapid negotiations, is substantially larger than what the White House initially proposed in late February.

    It also authorizes roughly $500 million to allow Medicare providers to administer tele-health services so that more elderly patients, who are at greater risk from the virus, can receive care at home, according to two of the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of a formal announcement.

    Meanwhile, some more information about Cali’s first death: The elderly patient had tested positive Tuesday and was in “critically ill” condition at Kaiser Permanente in Roseville.

    * * *

    Update (1425ET): Minutes after Washington confirmed US death No. 10, California has reported its first coronavirus-linked death, the 11th in the country.

    The death was reported in Placer County, which had reported two cases, including an older adult who was “critically ill” late Tuesday.

    According to the Sacramento Bee, Placer County reported that the critically ill patient was in isolation at a local hospital, becoming that county’s second reported case of the virus, while Contra Costa Health Services said it confirmed the first locally originating case of COVID-19 involving a resident of the East Bay Area county. Both were “presumptive” positives as of last night.

    Placer County officials said the critically ill patient was likely exposed to the virus while on a Grand Princess cruise ship that traveled from San Francisco to Mexico between Feb. 11 and Feb. 22. Another case linked to the cruise ship was reported by Sonoma County health officials earlier.

    So, it’s possible that Cali’s first virus-linked death caught the virus aboard the Grand Princess.

    Meanwhile, up in Washington, the number of cases in the two counties in suburban Seattle that have reported all of Washington State’s cases has risen to 39, along with 10 deaths, up from 27 and 9 deaths.

    * * *

    Update (1420ET): The New York Times reports that roughly 100 households in and around New Rochelle, a small city in New York’s Westchester County, are under self-quarantine after five of the state’s six confirmed cases involved a local family.

    * * *

    Update (1400ET): Washington State officials have reported another death, though it’s unclear if this is the same death that VP Pence was referring to when he said earlier that the US death toll had climbed to 10.

    Algeria has reported nine new cases, according to the health ministry.

    * * *

    Update (1340ET): France reports another 28 cases, raising its national total to 285. Deaths remained steady at 8.

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    Officials in Iraq are reporting a death in Baghdad; it’s unclear if this is the same case from earlier, or a different case.

    * * *

    Update (1325ET): The US CDC has investigated “small clusters” of coronavirus cases linked to previous journey of the Grand Princess cruise ship. The cruise ship is skipping a planned stop in Mexico and will return to SF on Thursday. All passengers who have been aboard the ship since Feb. 21 have been asked to stay in their rooms.

    The small cluster of cases in NorCal has been linked to ship.

    Here’s the statement from the company to guests:

    Dear Princess Guest:

    I wish to advise you that today we have been notified by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that they are investigating a small cluster of COVID-19 (coronavirus) cases in Northern California connected to our previous Grand Princess voyage that sailed roundtrip San Francisco from February 11 to February 21. We are working closely with our CDC partners and are following their recommendations.

    For those guests who sailed with us on our previous voyage and may have been exposed, in an abundance of caution, the CDC requires you to remain in your stateroom until you have been contacted and cleared by our medical staff. A member of our medical team will be calling you between the hours of 8:00 AM and 11:00 AM this morning. You may order room service while you wait for the medical screening to be completed, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

    Here we go again…

    * * *

    Update (1300ET): As the White House coronavirus meeting in front of a bevy of TV cameras continues, VP Pence has just confirmed that the death toll in the US has climbed to the US, though he didn’t say where the new death has been counted.

    The latest total case count in the US is 137, according to BNO. Of those, 48 were repatriated during the evacuations of Wuhan and the Diamond Princess. Only 89 were diagnosed in the US.

    This would suggest a mortality rate of roughly 10% if you only count the domestic cases. Since the WHO yesterday confirmed that the latest data would put the rate at 3.4%, this would suggest that thousands of cases haven’t yet been identified in the US.

    Over in Europe, Hungary has just confirmed its first case of the virus, becoming the latest country to confirm the virus. Meanwhile, here’s the latest breakdown for Italy.

    In South Korea, government officials have carried out 136,000 tests.

    * * *

    Update (1240ET): Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis has confirmed that a fourth person has tested positive for the novel coronavirus in his state.

    * * *

    Update (1220ET): Italian public health officials have confirmed plans to keep schools closed until March 15.

    Italy, the epicenter of the outbreak in Europe, is reportedly preparing to take restrictions to the next level and close all schools and universities in the country for at least two weeks. This comes as the total case count has climbed above 3k, while the death toll has climbed to 107, according to health officials.

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    Over in the US, reports from Capitol Hill claim the bill to approve emergency coronavirus funding might be ready for a vote Wednesday evening. Reports yesterday claimed the vote wouldn’t come until next week.

    * * *

    Update (1140ET): During a press conference that they announced last night, LA County public health officials have reported another rash of cases, and declared a local emergency, according to media reports. Meanwhile, the CDC said 40 cases are under investigation.

    Watch live below:

    LA County declared its first case back in January, but that case has since recovered. With the six new cases, the total in the county has risen to seven. One person is hospitalized, but the other six are being isolated and closely monitored at home.

    Here’s more on the announcement, courtesy of ABC 7:

     Los Angeles County officials on Wednesday declared a state of emergency as they confirmed six new cases of novel coronavirus in the county.

    The county Board of Supervisors and Department of Public Health made the announcement alongside L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and public health officials from Long Beach and Pasadena, which both have their own public health department.

    County Supervisors and the Los Angeles City Council are both expected to hear reports during their Wednesday meetings about the status of the illness locally.

    The county’s second case of COVID-19 was confirmed on Tuesday by Kaiser Permanente who is overseeing the care of the patient, currently in self-isolation and being treated as an outpatient, a spokesperson said. Additional details regarding the case were not available.

    In Orange County, two people tested positive for the novel coronavirus, though the diagnoses were described as “presumptive positive,” pending final confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    County health officer Dr. Nichole Quick said the county recently improved its ability to perform COVID-19 testing and therefore “we expect to see more cases here in Orange County.”

    None of the new cases are of unknown origin: Three of the six recently returned from northern Italy, two were exposed to infected family members in a different county, and another worked in an environment that brought him into contact with travelers.

    Over in Washington, a damning insider report from Stat News, it appears that researchers in Washington State have managed to start uncovering the true extent of the outbreak until local officials found a way to get around the CDC.

    As the Trump-Pence-CDC presser continues, Trump hinted at a possible quarantine by saying the US might “close up” areas that become a “problem.” Trump also said that airlines hadn’t yet asked for any financial aid.

    • TRUMP: AS CERTAIN AREAS BECOME A PROBLEM, WE MIGHT CLOSE THEM UP
    • TRUMP SAYS AIRLINES HAVE NOT ASKED FOR ANY U.S. FINANCIAL SUPPORT, HAVEN’T DISCUSSED THAT YET
    • WHITE HOUSE MEETING ON CORONAVIRUS EXPECTED TO INCLUDE AIRLINE REPRESENTATIVES FROM SOUTHWEST, ALASKA AIR, UNITED, JETBLUE, REPUBLIC AIRWAYS, HAWAIIAN

    Meanwhile, after Jim Bullard said during an interview that he feels monetary policy is “in the right place,” S&P Global cut its GDP forecast for the eurozone to 0.5% from 1%, and 0.8% for the UK, down  from 1%.

    * * *

    Update (1130ET): During a press conference on Wednesday following a meeting between President Trump and VP Pence and the leaders of the airline industry, Pence confirmed earlier reports that travelers from Italy and SK would be subjected to multiple tests before boarding a plane to the US, and multiple times after landing.

    Pence also praised the FDA’s decision to expand testing to university labs and other state labs. Trump blamed the Obama Administration for a vague ‘decision’ that Trump blamed for slowing down testing. Trump has now undone that decision.

    Here are some of the headlines from the presser:

    • AIRLINE CEOS TELL TRUMP THEY STEPPED UP CLEANING EFFORTS
    • PENCE: NEW PRIORITIES ON INSPECTIONS TO BE RELEASED TODAY
    • PENCE SAYS ALL PASSENGERS FROM ITALY, SOUTH KOREA ARE BEING SCREENED MULTIPLE TIMES FOR CORONAVIRUS

    Earlier, HHS Secretary Azar told Fox News during an interview that the administration is working with the private sector to develop a better coronavirus test.

    • U.S. HEALTH SECRETARY AZAR SAYS ADMINISTRATION IS WORKING WITH PRIVATE SECTOR SO THEY DEVELOP CORONAVIRUS TEST WITHOUT FDA APPROVAL -FOX NEWS INTERVIEW
    • SEC. AZAR SAYS 12-18 MONTHS BEFORE POSSIBLE VACCINE: FOX NEWS

    In Italy, government officials are still weighing whether to close all schools, while also shutting all events, sports games and cinemas.

    * * *

    Update (1120ET): This video of Chinese doctors and patients “square dancing” at a “shelter hospital” in Wuhan is going viral on the Chinese Internet.

    * * *

    Update (1110ET): The WHO is running a live Q&A session at the moment. Check it out below:

    * * *

    Update (1050ET): It appears the tables have turned – or at least that’s what we imagine members of the #resistance will say when they see this headline.

    According to the Guardian, Russia has been targeted by “enemies” spreading fake news about the coronavirus to sow panic and discord across the country, President Vladimir Putin said.

    His remarks came as Russia’s communications regulator said it had shut down access to some social media posts containing falsehoods about the virus outbreak.

    “The Federal Security Service reports that they (the fakes) are mainly being organised from abroad. But unfortunately this always happens to us,” Putin said on Wednesday, in televised remarks at a government meeting.

    “The purpose of such fakes is clear: to sow panic among the population.”

    Reuters reports that a Russian cyber security company, Group-IB, on Monday identified what it said were thousands of fake news posts on messaging services and social networks such as Russia’s VK alleging that thousands of Muscovites have caught the virus.

    In other news, the Irish Times reports that the Chinese ambassador to Ireland He Xiangdong advised the government to make a speedy decision about banning mass gatherings as the number of coronavirus cases climbs (health officials reported the country’s second case last night).

    In other news: Twitter said Wednesday that it will block advertisers from using the coronavirus outbreak to send inappropriate advertisements to its users.

    Twitter has said it will stop any attempt by advertisers to use the coronavirus outbreak to send inappropriate advertisements to its users.

    And more cases have been confirmed in the UK as the two people who traveled to Italy are currently isolating themselves at home.

    To be sure, the latest numbers out of the UK, where the total number of cases has jumped to 85, does not suggest the country is past the stage where the containment approach is no longer valuable, according to a senior microbiology expert.

    * * *

    Update (1040ET): As deaths mount in Iran and Italy, Al Jazeera reminds us that Poland, Morocco, Andorra, Armenia and Argentina have all confirmed their first cases of the virus over the last 24 hours.

    Ecuador has just confirmed three new cases, bringing its total to 10.

    * * *

    (Update 0950ET): A Yeshiva University student who is the son of the Westchester County man infected by the coronavirus, has also been diagnosed with the illness, the school announced Wednesday. “We have unfortunately received news this morning that out student has tested positive for COVID-19. Our thoughts are with him and his family as well as to all those affected,” Yeshiva said in a statement. “We are taking every precaution by canceling all classes on Wilf Campus in Washington Heights. This includes all in-person graduate courses on that campus as wall as the boys’ high school,” it added.

    The student’s father, attorney Lawrence Garbuz, 50, runs a boutique law firm with his wife that also employs one of their four kids as a paralegal, according to information posted online. The seven-lawyer practice, Lewis & Garbuz, is located across the street from Grand Central Terminal.

    In addition to the son. Garbuz’s wife and daughter, as well as a neighbor who drove the man to the hospital, are among the new cases confirmed in the state.

    According to Governor Cuomo, this means that there are now 6 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York State.

    * * *

    (Update 0940ET): PM Netanyahu has told Israelis that while it is not openly spoken of as such, the coronavirus epidemic is a global-scale pandemic and it could “possibly be among the worst diseases in this century.”

    He asked Israelis to avoid handshakes and suggested greeting one another using the Indian greeting of namaste while keeping one’s hand clasped together.

    Additionally, all travelers will be quarantined from these nations: France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Switzerland

    * * *

    (Update 0935ET): France has reported 45 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total to 257.

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    * * *

    (Update 0920ET): In addition to general de-socialization across Italy, the new decree urges elderly people to stay indoors if possible. It seems Italy is resorting to China’s strategy to stall the exponential spread of the virus.

    * * *

    (Update 0917ET): UK health authorities have just announced that the number of virus cases soared overnight, jumping by 34 to 85 total cases (16,659 people have been tested)

    * * *

    (Update 0905ET): While we wait to see if Italy will close all schools and universities as the country’s coronavirus pandemic gets worse, Reuters reported that the country is now planning a decree banning public events as well as close cinemas and theaters across the country.

    Meanwhile, AFP reported that there has been a second case of coronavirus found at the EU office in Brussles.

    * * *

    Update (0835ET): The outbreak in Osaka is expanding: Kyodo just reported three more confirmed cases from a concert that also sickened a McDonald’s worker mentioned below. The total from the concert is now 14.

    * * *

    Update (0820ET): The Italian education ministry said Wednesday morning that “no decision has yet been made” regarding whether to close schools, or not. The decision has apparently been delayed for a few hours, the minister added. The headline about the school closures took a little bit of the momentum out of markets earlier, but stock futures in the US have rallied back.

    * * *

    Update (0800ET): Italian newswire ANSA reports that the Italian government will move ahead with plans to close all schools and colleges in the country for two weeks.

    Until now, only schools in Italy’s virus-plagued northern region had been closed due to the outbreak, even as the death toll from the virus nears 80. France has also closed some 120 primary and secondary schools near Paris as cases in France have surged, a decision that’s impacting about 35,000 kids.

    Meanwhile, the Global Times can’t help but gloat…

    …Even as school closures in China will enter their 7th week next week.

    In other news, the Israeli government has quarantined a group of soccer fans who attended a match last week in Tel Aviv after a teenager in the crowd tested positive for the virus. He’s believed to have contracted the virus from the manager of a toy store who recently visited Italy, according to the BBC.

    In other news, after religious authorities in Saudi Arabia banned foreigners from traveling to the holy land last week, the Saudi government said Wednesday that it would temporarily suspend a lesser Muslim pilgrimage called the Umra for both foreigners and citizens, the BBC reports.

    The Umra is an optional pilgrimage that includes some of the rituals of the most important pilgrimage, the Hajj, though they are shortened and there are fewer rituals.

    * * *

    Update (0740ET): German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has been pushing for Germany to defy its constitutional “debt break” and bolster spending. Now, he’s taking his rhetoric up a notch and defying the WHO to declare the coronavirus outbreak a “global pandemic.”

    • GERMAN FINANCE MINISTER SCHOLZ TELLS LAWMAKER GERMANY WOULD HAVE “ALL THE STRENGTH” TO COUNTER IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS IF EPIDEMIC PLUNGED WORLD ECONOMY INTO CRISIS – SOURCES
    • GERMANY’S SCHOLZ TELLS LAWMAKERS GOV’T IS PREPARED AND READY TO ACT DECISIVELY TO COUNTER CORONAVIRUS – SOURCES
    • GERMANY’S SCHOLZ TELLS LAWMAKERS ANY FISCAL MEASURES TO COUNTER CORONAVIRUS IMPACT WOULD BE “TIMELY, TARGETED, TEMPORARY” – SOURCES

    The FinMin has encountered resistance from within the ruling coalition, and if he’s going to succeed in delivering the fiscal stimulus that Europe so desperately needs, he’s going to need to outmaneuver his rivals.

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    * * *

    Update (0722ET): Japan has confirmed 9 more cases in Osaka.

    * * *

    As we reported last night, Tuesday marked a major shift in the coronavirus outbreak: For the first time, more deaths were reported outside China than inside. And already on Wednesday, we’ve seen some unfortunate firsts: Iraq reported its first death after the virus leaked across the border from Iran.

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    The EU’s decision not to close borders and impose travel restrictions has come back to bite it: Just a few minutes ago, the European Union confirmed the first case of the virus at EU offices in Brussels. It appears to be tied to the European Defense Agency.

    Brussels only confirmed its first case in the city a couple of days ago.

    Last night, China reported 119 additional coronavirus cases and 38 additional deaths for March 3. That’s compared with 125 additional cases and 31 new deaths the previous day. The new cases bring the total number of mainland cases to 80,270 and death toll at 2,871.

    South Korea reported 809 additional coronavirus cases and 4 additional deaths, bringing its total cases to 5,621 and death toll to 32, while Italy’s total cases rose to 2,502 from 2036, and its death toll increased to 79, up from 52 earlier in the day on Tuesday.

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    Meanwhile, over in Japan, a part-time worker at a McDonald’s in Kyoto has tested positive, prompting the restaurant to close. The cashier attended music events in Osaka on Feb. 15 and Feb. 16, where investigators believe he may have been infected.

    Last night, Japanese officials raised the possibility of delaying the Olympics. NTV reports Wednesday morning in the US that Japan would scale back Olympic Torch relay events.

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    Unsurprisingly, an a global Ipsos poll highlighted by the Guardian showed that a majority of Italians would accept quarantines of cities and towns, though that number climbed to 74% for the UK and 91% for Vietnam.

    As we reported yesterday, Ireland has recorded a second case of coronavirus. However, officials are still planning to go ahead with St. Patrick’s Day festivities when the holiday arrives in a couple of weeks.

    While the WHO has embraced alternative greetings, Public Health England, the agency in charge of the UK outbreak, said that while it might recommend people stop shaking hands, “we’re not there yet.

    Over in Iran, the health ministry said the coronavirus had killed 92 people, up from 77 the day before, while the number of infections rose to 2,922, Al Jazeera reports. To be sure, reports last week claimed the true death toll had surpassed 200 – and that was a week ago.

    Elsewhere in Europe, Bloomberg reports that Italy’s government is weighing a closure of all schools nationwide to contain the coronavirus outbreak. A closure could last 15 days and start this coming Monday, or the Monday following. This comes after officials reportedly considered cancelling all sports games in the country for a month.

    Over at the ECB, the central bank has cancelled travel for all members of the Christine Lagarde-led executive board, as well as other employees judged to be non-essential, until 20 April 2020, at which time the central bank will reassess the situation.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 20:50

  • "It's Getting 'The Ugly'" – What Can We Really Do About Covid-19?
    “It’s Getting ‘The Ugly'” – What Can We Really Do About Covid-19?

    Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank

    Summary

    • Covid-19 has broken out of China and become a key global concern: most countries are now preparing for a serious virus epidemic.

    • All governments are faced with a series of unpalatable options over their next steps – yet all end with serious economic damage.

    • As a counterweight, we will see a reliance on several types of fiscal and monetary policy response: the conventional, the unconventional, and the ‘unconversational’ – steps that would not even have been talked about until very recently.

    • “The Conventional” response is already well underway with the RBA cutting rates 25bp to 0.50% and the Fed making an emergency cut of 50bp to takes Fed Funds to 1.25%: this was the first 50bp cut and the first out-of-meeting move since the Global Financial Crisis.

    • However, conventional policy is arguably of little impact, as initial reactions to the Fed surprise show – and the same is just as true for unconventional policy.

    • This takes us rapidly towards market conversations about the ‘unconversational’.

    It’s getting “The Ugly”

    A few weeks ago we published a special report on Covid-19 which projected four scenarios for the virus’s economic and market impact: “The Bad”, “The Worse”, “The Ugly”, and “The Unthinkable”.

    “The Bad” scenario was based on the assumption that there would be virus containment within a few weeks within China, with limited spread to other countries. This was already seen as nastier than the market was pricing for, with Chinese 2020 GDP growth reduced by -0.5% to -1.0%, and global GDP by -0.2 percentage points. This was our base case at the time.

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    Source: @jodigraphics15

    “The Worse” scenario envisaged an ongoing Chinese lockdown and the virus spreading to parts of ASEAN. This would have a larger regional and global impact. Chinese GDP growth was seen grinding to a halt, with a severe slowdown in ASEAN too, and significant global supply-chain disruptions meaning a global recession closer to the likes of 2008/09.

    “The Ugly” scenario envisaged that the US, UK, and Europe were infected too. Naturally, this implied a deep global recession.

    “The Unthinkable” was a real-life version of a Hollywood movie.

    At time of writing, major virus outbreaks in South Korea, Iran, and Italy, as well official warnings from the rest of Europe, the UK, the US, and Australia, show us that we risk entering into “The Ugly” scenario and that a deep global recession may be inevitable. (See Figure 1.)

    What is to be done?

    As a result, attention is rightly turning to that old Leninist question: what is to be done? Most developed economies have now set up government virus crisis teams (COBRA in the UK, a new unit under Vice-President Pence in the US, for example). The question is, what can they do? The answers are unpalatable. Although the messaging and rhetoric varies in each location, there are logically only three basic options:

    Do nothing and tell people all is well.

    This option was tried at first in most Western countries – as evidenced by the lack of serious virus preparation until recently. However, Iran–where the total death toll is unclear but the virus appears to have taken a terrible toll already–is a graphic illustration that telling people all is well is not an effective strategy. The Iranian economy, already struggling under sanctions, has understandably suffered another huge blow as people panic and stay at home. As we noted in our previous report, both supply and demand have collapsed in tandem.

    Allow business as usual while telling people to prepare

    For now this is still the option being pursued by Western countries, with normal movement still allowed – indeed, encouraged. Yes, there are some restrictions in place–France has banned indoor gatherings of more than 5,000 people–but generally people and businesses are free to operate as usual. The problem is that even so many people are nonetheless reacting with fear, cancelling holidays, stopping travel and having meals out, and/or panic buying and hoarding essentials such as pasta and toilet rolls, as well as hand sanitizer and face masks. In short, the economy is already taking a major virus hit anyway – look at airlines as an indicator.

    Institute China-style lockdowns.

    So far these steps have only been taken in specific virus hotspots in developed economies, for example Northern Italy. However, they are clearly ready to be more widely used if needed. Indeed, on 3 March the UK stated draconian action could be seen in its official worst-case scenario involving 1 in 5 of the population being infected and ill, requiring major cities to be locked down, public transport to be stopped, schools to close, workers to be told to work from home, the army on the streets, and the police told only to deal with serious crimes. Naturally, the impact on the economy of such a lockdown would be dramatic – as has been seen in the collapse in the Chinese manufacturing and services PMIs in February, the first real chance we have had to look at relevant official data since Covid-19 broke out. (See Figure 2.) However, there is broad recognition that the steps China took have played a key role in sharply reducing the number of new virus infections being seen in recent weeks. In other words, lockdowns do seem to work – and without them, this would already be a truly global pandemic.

    The other key thing to note, however, is that whichever of the three options a government takes, the outcome is major damage to the economy.

    Do nothing, and the economy is hit by the virus; act incrementally and a virus outbreak is likely to be larger – and the public to panic anyway, hitting the economy; lockdown the economy and be *guaranteed* a deep downturn.

    Moreover, even if the last option were chosen, such action still needs to be coordinated between countries to be effective – yet effective international coordination can be very difficult to achieve, seeing countries resort to unilateral action instead.

    For example, there is no use locking down one’s own economy, as in China’s case, if arrivals from another country that has not been taking virus precautions, like Iran, are free to enter and spread infection once again. Tellingly, China, the origin of Covid-19, is now putting travel restrictions in place for visitors from some other countries, such as Iran, after vociferously complaining that its own citizens were discriminated against by other states when it was still seeing the heaviest phase of the virus impact.

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    Slow burn not V-shape?

    One other thing needs to be made clear, but which not many are expressing: at this stage, and regardless of the strategy pursued, there is a real risk that the virus will spread globally. In which case, the best that even quarantine measures can realistically hope to achieve is to spread out the impact of the virus so that not everyone gets sick at once, so reducing the strain on healthcare systems as well as economies. Yet this also means that this cannot be a quickly-resolved “V-shape” issue, but rather a slower burn with longer-lasting economic effects. The British government is now transparently assuming that this will be at least as 12-week cycle, hopefully beginning to be under control properly by June.

    It is hard to square such thoughts with Bank of England Governor Carney’s recent message that in the UK Covid-19 will cause economic “disruption and not destruction”. For one, we have to stress that hysteresis is as important as hysteria: the longer the crisis lingers, either because of government actions or regardless of them, the deeper the economic damage that will be done on many fronts: how will many millions of the self-employed and small businesses owners, mortgage holders and credit-card borrowers survive for three months with little or no income. The impact of this crisis, even if managed well, may last well beyond what cynics would usually assume when dismissing panic-filled newspaper headlines.

    Moreover, three months is an estimate. Even as UK (and US and European) summer eventually arrives, hopefully reducing the virus’s impact, it will be winter in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, all of whom have virus cases already, and the first two of which may not be in a positon to properly monitor or control going forwards. As such, unless economic connectivity between the northern and southern hemispheres is severed, doing even more damage, the risk is that there will be a fresh avenue of potential Covid-19 infection awaiting when summer turns back into autumn again. This is exactly what happened with the Spanish Flu in 1918-19, as we showed in another recent virus special report (“Fear and Trembling”). Slow-burn, not V-shape once again.

    Of course, the nearest-term concern is with China as it tries to get hundreds of millions of workers back to work again without seeing a V-shape in virus infections too. Can this be done, or will it illustrate the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t nature of this crisis?

    So what IS to be done then?

    The above is the key question and has been made all the more timely by the fact that 3 March saw an unprecedented gathering of the G7 and major central banks to discuss Covid-19 and the possible coordinated policy response. Expectations were high given how rare such meetings are: the outcome was pure disappointment, with the brief press release stating:

    “We, G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, are closely monitoring the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its impact on markets and economic conditions.

    Given the potential impacts of COVID-19 on global growth, we reaffirm our commitment to use all appropriate policy tools to achieve strong, sustainable growth and safeguard against downside risks. Alongside strengthening efforts to expand health services, G7 finance ministers are ready to take actions, including fiscal measures where appropriate, to aid in the response to the virus and support the economy during this phase. G7 central banks will continue to fulfill their mandates, thus supporting price stability and economic growth while maintaining the resilience of the financial system.

    We welcome that the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international financial institutions stand ready to help member countries address the human tragedy and economic challenge posed by COVID-19 through the use of their available instruments to the fullest extent possible.

    G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors stand ready to cooperate further on timely and effective measures.”

    Measure for measures

    So what can the G7 actually do? Arguably, their possible “effective measures” above and beyond direct virus-fighting steps again come down to three broad areas: The Conventional; The Unconventional; and The “Unconversational” – things that were simply unspeakable in official circles until recently. Yet these three options all still sit within the normal axis of fiscal and monetary policy options.

    Frisky Fiscal

    The G7 statement openly mentioned “fiscal measures, where appropriate”. This suggests that there is no broad agreement on the need for fiscal stimulus right now. The US, with its past Trump tax cuts, and the UK, with its recent shift to a “leveling up” infrastructure budget, have already moved decisively towards larger fiscal deficits – but this can actually limit the extent to which further stimulus can be introduced above and beyond the automatic stabilizer effect that will naturally occur as the economy and tax-take decline in tandem. Moreover, in the Eurozone the room for fiscal maneuver is far more constrained by treaty, in Japan’s case by the government’s insistence on trying to reduce the fiscal deficit (given Covid-19, the timing of Japan’s last sales tax hike could not have been worse!), and in Australia’s case the fiscal constraint is also strong, even if it is entirely self-imposed.

    However, there is a more general criticism of fiscal policy: it is slow to take effect, and in the case of the virus is unlikely to be of much short-term use. If consumers are locked away at home, what good does it do to start to build a new railway like High Speed 2 in the UK, for example? In some cases, one can make direct transfers to households or firms, such as the Trump tax cuts – but these would need to be better targeted at lower and middle-income groups and/or SMEs than the tax cuts seen to date in the US. At the same time, if one is bunkered away in fear of a virus, will a few extra dollars in one’s pocket incentivize going out to spend? Unlikely. That said, a liquidity-constrained SME could be hugely grateful for an emergency cash injection, especially if this can be used to pay salaries and prevent a domino effect of unemployment and/or demand destruction.

    Naturally, China is taking the lead fiscally. It has already introduced tax cuts to try to offset the effects of Covid-19, and its semi-official Global Times has stated Beijing may be forced to embark on a major stimulus package larger than the CNY4 trillion (USD574bn) infrastructure stimulus package seen back in the 2008 financial crisis–“despite the side effects”–should the economic damage from Covid-19 prove too great. Understand that back in 2008 China’s GDP was USD4.7 trillion vs. USD14.3 trillion today, so if they imply a stimulus package larger as a percentage of GDP, which is not clear, then we are potentially talking about USD2.0 trillion stimulus package.

    For China, that kind of thinking, incredibly, is still taken as within the conventional. In developed economies, it would be totally unconventional, as it implies a war-time level of fiscal deficit – but that does not mean that the political winds will not blow in that direction too; healthcare may take precedence over bombs, or over infrastructure, but the economic impact of massive deficit spending would be just as positive for developed economies.

    Naturally, when talking of large-scale fiscal packages when public debt and/or fiscal deficits are already very high, we go beyond what was once the conventional and even the unconventional; we enter the realm of the ‘unconversational’, and of fiscal-monetary policy cooperation, or Modern Monetary Theory. We have discussed this several times in recent years (see here for example): might Covid-19 prove the political launch-pad for it outside China?

    Mainly Monetary

    Mainly Monetary
    Central bank governors of course “stand ready”, a message that the Fed, ECB, BOE, and the PBOC, have already made clear to the public and markets. Conventionally, this first means rate cuts, even allowing for the very low level of rates to start with. These are already arriving:

    The PBOC got in first, reducing their new benchmark 1-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) by 10bp to 4.05%, while the fall in 3-month SHIBOR has been even steeper;

    Other Asian central banks have been cutting for some time already, with Malaysia cutting 25bp on 3 March, for example. That said, the Bank of Korea (BOK) opted not to cut 25bp as expected last week, even though Korea has been very badly hit by Covid-19, as it did not see lower rates as an effective instrument to fight a virus (a point we shall return to);

    The RBA were developed market trend-setters in cutting their overnight cash rate 25bp at their March meeting, taking the OCR to a new record low of just 0.50% – overtly over concerns about the supposedly short-term impact of Covid-19 on the services sector; and

    this was then eclipsed by the Fed cutting rates 50bp at an inter-meeting move for the first time since the Global Financial Crisis (See Figure 3.)

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    With the Fed action in particular, the rates flood gates have now opened even if rates are already close to zero, or below: the BOC, BOE and BOJ, to say nothing of other smaller global central banks, are certain to follow rapidly. Yet as with tax cuts, what use is a lower cost of borrowing if there is no supply and no demand? If you afraid to go and eat in a restaurant for fear of infection and possible illness or even death, then a slightly cheaper mortgage-loan rate will not really change your mind. This is the same fundamental problem that we already see with ultra-low rates and business investment: it’s ultra-cheap to borrow, but why risk it when there is no demand? Tellingly, the immediate market reaction to the Fed’s “bazooka” 50bp cut was to see both equities and yields drop sharply – and at both ends of the curve, with 10-year yields now decisively lower than the psychological and unprecedented 1% level.

    So what then? At this point, the conventional must become unconventional. We already know what this “emergency” policy toolkit looks like: central bank asset purchases (i.e., QE) and asset swaps (reverse repos). Both of these are already in large-scale use, and both of them are likely to see even greater escalation in scale and geographical breadth: Australia will join the QE club, for example.

    Of course, as we have argued repeatedly in various reports for years, even in a ‘healthy’–if structurally distorted–economy, QE has failed to generate sustainable, equitable growth or inflation. In an economy about to suffer from Covid-19, it will be even less effective. Reverse repo is also just papering over cracks in asset quality rather than addressing fundamentals.

    Yet if new QE goes into government bond purchases to fund productive fiscal spending that boosts the economy, so much the better; however, that takes us from the unconventional to the ‘unconversational’.

    Purely political

    Apart from the fiscal and the monetary, one needs to recall that all governments have a third channel for policy measures that can also be considered very “unconversational” – the Purely Political. We tend to think of real power sitting with central banks and little with our elected officials: this overlooks the fact that the elected officials gave their power away – and can take it back again.

    The struggle against Covid-19 is, quite naturally, already being portrayed as a ‘battle’ or a ‘war’, and during wars politics always takes precedence over business (and markets) as usual. If that kind of ‘kitchen sink’ strategy was available for GFC 2008-09, why should it not be with Covid-19?

    We have already seen the state impose lockdowns in various regions of various countries, and/or international travel bans totally at odd with traditional freedom of movement: more seem very likely.

    In France the government has requisitioned protective masks, and the US is contemplating using Korean-war era legislation to compel the production of anti-virus equipment: again, this is completely normal in present circumstances – and completely opposite to what the Western political-economy trend has been for decades. If the virus outbreak gets worse, one could easily imagine the government acting even more significantly via price controls or rationing of key goods, or by compelling companies to act in certain ways. Temporary nationalizations may even be required. These steps would no doubt be widely supported by the public if it helps prevent profiteering and better health outcomes.

    Financially, given the huge blow that airlines and other service-sector firms are likely to suffer, we are also certain to see state aid and/or bailouts to key firms, even if this is technically illegal in some countries currently. We might we also face some temporary quasi-nationalisations once again, as during 2008-09.

    Meanwhile, companies will be told to keep paying workers regardless of their cash-flow. In turn, banks will be leaned on to maintain credit lines to businesses and households, or to even extend debt facilities despite it running contrary to usual risk metrics. China is already leading the way here. Indeed, as in China we could also see a possible suspension of mark-to-market pricing for some financial assets or, copying their experience of 2015, a ban on short selling of stocks to try to ensure that this crisis does not become a full-blown financial calamity. It cannot be ruled out.

    In short, almost every key part of the economy could, in the worst case, be subject to some form of state interference and prevention of price discovery. That is exactly what happens during wars – which as Von Clausewitz infamously quipped, are an extension of politics by other means.

    Again this would likely be popular with much of the public, no doubt, and perhaps even with markets if it saves them from any major downside risks. Yet some will also quote pithy US journalist H L Mencken: “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” Extricating the state from markets after the virus has passed may prove difficult, especially when the pre-virus economy already had so many pressing socio-economic imbalances to deal with.

    But that’s an “unconversation” for another day. Let’s get through Covid-19 safely first.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 20:45

  • Apple Issues Warning Over iPhone Replacement Shortage
    Apple Issues Warning Over iPhone Replacement Shortage

    Apple has warned their retail employees that there may be a shortage of replacement iPhones, in yet another example of a supply chain affected by the coronavirus.

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    According to Bloomberg, the company recently told tech support staff that heavily damaged devices might not be able to be replaced for as long as two to four weeks, Apple Store employees have said.

    The workers, known as Geniuses, were advised in a memo that they can offer to mail replacement iPhones to customers and provide loaner devices to ease delays.

    Some Apple stores have also noticed a shortage of individual parts, according to the employees, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. An Apple spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. –Bloomberg

    The warning applies to iPhone owners who bring in devices that are too damaged to repair in-store (beyond repair) – which are typically resolved by replacing the entire phone.

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    Apple’s supply chain woes extend beyond just iPhones, as the company has also experienced shortages of key components for the iPad Pro. Meanwhile, the supply of iPhone 11 models has began to tighten a bit internationally.

    Apple has prohibited employees from traveling to China, South Korea and Italy, and has asked that sick employees take leave. It has also encouraged telecommuting whenever possible.

    Despite the ongoing virus threat, the company has been re-opening stores in China after temporarily closing all 42 locations. As of Wedensday, 38 locations were open again according to their retail website.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 20:25

  • DNC Scrambles To Change Debate Threshold After Gabbard Qualifies
    DNC Scrambles To Change Debate Threshold After Gabbard Qualifies

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    On a CNN panel on Monday, host John King spoke with Politico reporter Alex Thompson about the possibility of Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard qualifying on Super Tuesday for the party’s primary debate in Phoenix later this month.

    “I will note this, she’s from Hawaii,” King said of Gabbard.

    “She’s a congresswoman from Hawaii; American Samoa votes on Super Tuesday. The rules as they now stand, if you get a delegate, you’re back in the debates. As of now. Correct?”

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    “Yeah, they haven’t, I mean, that’s been the rule for every single debate,” Thompson replied.

    “And the DNC has not released their official guidance for the March 15 debate in Phoenix, but it would be very obvious that they are trying to cancel Tulsi, who they’re scared of a third party run, if they then change the rules to prevent her to rejoin the debate stage.”

    And indeed, as the smoke clears from the Super Tuesday frenzy, this is precisely what appears to have transpired.

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

    “The Gabbard campaign said it was informed that it would net two delegates from the caucuses in American Samoa, which will allocate a total of six pledged delegates,” The Hill reports today. “However, a report from CNN said that the candidate will receive only one delegate from the territory on Tuesday evening.”

    “Tulsi Gabbard may have just qualified for the next Democratic debate thanks to American Samoa,” reads a fresh Business Insider headline. “Under the most recent rules, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii may have qualified for the next televised debate by snagging a delegate in American Samoa’s primary.”

    “If Tulsi Gabbard gets a delegate out of American Samoa, as it appears she has done, she will likely qualify for the next Democratic debate,” tweeted Washington Post’s Dave Weigel. “We don’t have new debate rules yet, but party has been inviting any candidate who gets a delegate.”

    Rank-and-file supporters of the Hawaii congresswoman enjoyed a brief celebration on social media, before having their hopes dashed minutes later by an announcement from the DNC’s Communications Director Xochitl Hinojosa that “the threshold will go up”.

    “We have two more debates — of course the threshold will go up,” tweeted Hinojosa literally minutes after Gabbard was awarded the delegate. “By the time we have the March debate, almost 2,000 delegates will be allocated. The threshold will reflect where we are in the race, as it always has.”

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

    “DNC wastes no time in announcing they will rig the next debates to exclude Tulsi,” journalist Michael Tracey tweeted in response.

    This outcome surprised nobody, least of all Gabbard supporters. The blackout on the Tulsi 2020 campaign has reached such extreme heights this year that you now routinely see pundits saying things like there are no more people of color in the race, or that Elizabeth Warren is the only woman remaining in the primary. They’re not just ignoring her, they’re actually erasing her. They’re weaving a whole alternative reality out of narrative in which she is literally, officially, no longer in the race.

    After Gabbard announced her presidential candidacy in January of last year I wrote an article explaining that I was excited about her campaign because she would severely disrupt establishment narratives, and, for the remainder of 2019, that’s exactly what she did. She spoke unauthorized truths about Syria, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, she drew attention to the plight of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and said she’d drop all charges against both men if elected, she destroyed the hawkish, jingoistic positions of fellow candidates on the debate stage and arguably single-handedly destroyed Kamala Harris’ run.

    The narrative managers had their hands full with her. The Russia smears were relentless, the fact that she met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was brought up at every possible opportunity in every debate and interview, and she was scoffed at and derided at every turn.

    Now, in 2020, none of that is happening. There’s a near-total media blackout on the Gabbard campaign, such that I now routinely encounter rank-and-file liberals on social media who tell me they honestly had no idea she’s still running. She’s been completely redacted out of the narrative matrix.

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

    So it’s unsurprising that the DNC felt comfortable striding forward and openly announcing a change in the debate threshold literally the very moment Gabbard crossed it. These people understand narrative control, and they know full well that they have secured enough of it on the Tulsi Problem that they’ll be able to brazenly rig her right off the stage without suffering any meaningful consequences.

    The establishment narrative warfare against Gabbard’s campaign dwarfs anything we’ve seen against Sanders, and the loathing and dismissal they’ve been able to generate have severely hamstrung her run. It turns out that a presidential candidate can get away with talking about economic justice and plutocracy when it comes to domestic policy, and some light dissent on matters of foreign policy will be tolerated, but aggressively attacking the heart of the actual bipartisan foreign policy consensus will get you shut down, smeared and shunned like nothing else. This is partly because US presidents have a lot more authority over foreign affairs than domestic, and it’s also because endless war is the glue which holds the empire together.

    And now they’re working to install a corrupt, right-wing warmongering dementia patient as the party’s nominee. And from the looks of the numbers I’ve seen from Super Tuesday so far, it looks entirely likely that those manipulations will prove successful.

    All this means is that the machine is exposing its mechanics to the view of the mainstream public. Both the Gabbard campaign and the Sanders campaign have been useful primarily in this way; not because the establishment would ever let them actually become president, but because they force the unelected manipulators who really run things in the most powerful government on earth to show the public their box of dirty tricks.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 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.

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    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 20:05

  • Jet Fuel Prices Dive Amid Stalling Aviation Industry; Global Tourism Bust Imminent
    Jet Fuel Prices Dive Amid Stalling Aviation Industry; Global Tourism Bust Imminent

    Airlines have canceled more than 200,000 flights as Covid-19 is nearing pandemic status.

    More than 92,300 people have been infected by the virus, which has killed about 3,100 people. Many of the cases are in China, but recent cases ex-China have been surging, especially in South Korea, Iran, Italy, Japan, and in many other countries across Europe.  

    Airlines have spent the last month canceling flights to China – American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines have suspended service to mainland China and Hong Kong. Reuters provides a full list of canceled flights across the world.

    Flights to and from China crashed 80% YoY in February, according to Cirium travel industry data. Global air travel has plunged for the first time since the 2008/09 financial crisis, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) recently said.  

    Plunging air traffic across the world has resulted in a steep decline in jet fuel. Singapore jet fuel prices have fallen 30% since the start of 2020 and contributed to a 50% collapse in jet fuel crack spreads, now at 2009 lows, Refinitiv data shows.

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    “The coronavirus outbreak has hampered jet fuel demand in Asia and the impact is expected to linger for a few more months,” said Sri Paravaikkarasu, director for Asia oil at consultancy FGE.

    “It’s indeed an unprecedented fall since the global financial crisis… Jet fuel cracks have fallen to about $8 per barrel and we think it will stabilize around these levels in the next few months before seeing a recovery in the third quarter,” Paravaikkarasu said. 

    Jet fuel demand will likely remain in a slump for the next several quarters because virus fears will drive a plunge in tourism around the world, eliminate the need for air travel demand as long as the virus spreads. This could suggest the airline industry is headed for turbulence.

    “We do see the virus eroding jet fuel demand to some extent in the Western Hemisphere. If the demand erosion develops faster, East-West flows will come under pressure,” Paravaikkarasu said.

    Sukrit Vijayakar, director of Indian energy consultancy Trifecta, said people tend to plan their vacations far in advance. This could mean air travel remains depressed for the first half of the year. 

    The air travel slump suggests immense pain is headed for the global travel and tourism industry, employs roughly 320 million jobs across the world; Restaurants, travel agencies, hotels, amusement parks, casinos, and shopping malls, could be the most heavily impacted businesses to experience job losses if the virus crisis persists.  


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 19:45

  • Globalization And Our Precarious Medical Supply Chains
    Globalization And Our Precarious Medical Supply Chains

    Authored by F. William Engdahl via New Eastern Outlook,

    The grave risks and dangers in the process of worldwide out-sourcing and so-called globalization of the past 30 years or so are becoming starkly clear as the ongoing health emergency across China threatens vital world supply chains from China to the rest of the world. While much attention is focused on the risks to smartphone components or auto manufacture via supplies of key parts from China or to the breakdown of oil deliveries in the last weeks, there is a danger that will soon become alarmingly clear in terms of global health care system.

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    If the forced shutdown of China manufacture continues for many weeks longer, the world, could begin to experience shortages or lack of vital medicines and medical supplies. The reason is that over the past two decades much of the production of medicines and medical supplies such as surgical masks have been outsourced to China or simply made in China by Chinese companies at far cheaper prices, forcing Western companies out of business.

    Sole source China

    According to research and US Congressional hearings, something like 80% of present medicines consumed in the United States are produced in China. This includes Chinese companies and foreign drug companies that have outsourced their drug manufacture in joint ventures with Chinese partners. According to Rosemary Gibson of the Hastings Center bioethics research institute, who authored a book in 2018 on the theme, the dependency is more than alarming.

    Gibson cites medical newsletters giving the estimate that today some 80% of all pharmaceutical active ingredients in the USA are made in China.

    “It’s not just the ingredients. It’s also the chemical precursors, the chemical building blocks used to make the active ingredients. We are dependent on China for the chemical building blocks to make a whole category of antibiotics… known as cephalosporins. They are used in the United States thousands of times every day for people with very serious infections.”

    The made in China drugs today include most antibiotics, birth control pills, blood pressure medicines such as valsartan, blood thinners such as heparin, and various cancer drugs. It includes such common medicines as penicillin, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), and aspirin. The list also includes medications to treat HIV, Alzheimer’s disease, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, cancer, depression, epilepsy, among others. A recent Department of Commerce study found that 97 percent of all antibiotics in the United States came from China.

    Few of these drugs are labeled “made in China” as drug companies in the USA are not required to reveal their sourcing. Rosemary Gibson states that the dependency on China for medicines and other health products is so great that, “…if China shut the door tomorrow, within a couple of months, hospitals in the United States would cease to function.” That may not be so far off.

    At the time the outsourcing of US and European drug manufacture to China began no one could imagine the present health catastrophe growing out of Wuhan in a matter of days. The massive China quarantine since late January has shut some 75-80% of all Chinese factories and created an unprecedented domestic China demand for every kind of medical product since the WHO declaration of medical emergency around the coronavirus or COVID-19 events at the end of January. It is unclear how badly deliveries of vital pharmaceuticals including essential antibiotics from China to the USA or Europe or other countries will be affected though anecdotal reports of hospitals beginning to experience delivery problems are surfacing. Even the idea to turn to India, another major global pharmaceutical supplier, only finds that most Indian manufacturers are dependent on China for their active drug ingredients.

    Clinton and Outsourcing

    The emergence of China in recent years as the global giant in terms of pharmaceutical drugs and products is embedded in the Made in China-2025 national plan as one of the ten priority areas for China to gain world leadership. It has not been simply a random chance development. This in turn, as the present COVID-19 crisis makes starkly clear, is a huge vulnerability for the rest of the world.

    How did such a one-sided situation develop? We have to go back to the role of the Clinton Presidency in what was then dubbed globalization, the Davos model of outsourcing any and everything from advanced industrial countries like the USA or Germany to especially China after 2000.

    In May 2000 in one of the most far-reaching actions of his Presidency, Bill Clinton, with the strong backing of US multinational companies, succeeded, over the strong objections and warnings of many trade unions, to get Congressional passage of a permanent “most-favored nation” trade status for China and US support for China entry into the World Trade Organization. That gave the green light to corporate America for a flood of overseas investment in cheaper China manufacture known as “out-sourcing.” Major US drug makers were among them. Within two years of the passage of the US free trade agreement with China the US shut its last penicillin fermentation plant in New York State as a result of severe Chinese low-price competition.

    In 2008, the Chinese government designated pharmaceutical production as a “high-value-added industry” and bolstered the industry through subsidies and export tax rebates to encourage pharmaceutical companies to export their products. By 2019 China had become by far the world’s largest source for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

    The Achilles Heel of this globalization and sole dependency for vital medicines on one country now becomes alarmingly clear as the future of China as a reliable supplier of needed drugs and other medical supplies has suddenly become a matter of grave concern to the entire world.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 19:25

  • Scientists Discover More Aggressive Strain Of Coronavirus Responsible For 70% Of Current Infections
    Scientists Discover More Aggressive Strain Of Coronavirus Responsible For 70% Of Current Infections

    Chinese scientists studying the new coronavirus have found two new primary strains of the disease – one of which appears to be far more aggressive.

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    The researchers, from Peking University’s School of Life Sciences, discovered a milder “S-type” strain, and an “L-type” which is highly infectious and currently accounts for around 70% of cases, according to The Telegraph. The researchers cautioned that their preliminary findings looked at a limited number of cases (103), and that follow-up studies with larger data sets are needed to better understand the virus’s evolution.

    A genetic analysis of the coronavirus found in a man who tested positive in the United States on January 21 also showed that it’s possible to be infected with both strains.

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    Via the Daily Mail

    Coronavirus, which was first detected in December 2018 in Wuhan, China, has infected at least 94,000 people – officially, and killed more than 3,200 as of this writing.

    And while there are now two major strains identified, scientist Trevor Bedford of Nextstrain has been tracking 161 strains of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in patients across the globe.

    Bedford writes in a March 2 blog post that “The novel coronavirus which is responsible for the emerging COVID-19 pandemic mutates at an average of about two mutations per month.“

    Here is his latest situation report, and thread on the virus which provides a detailed analysis of what mutations have been found, and where (click the tweet to jump into the thread):

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


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 19:05

  • Can The Fed Save Us From Climate Change?
    Can The Fed Save Us From Climate Change?

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & prosperity,

    The 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act requires the Federal Reserve to “promote” stable prices and full employment. Of course, the Fed’s steady erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power has made prices anything but stable, while the boom-and-bust cycle created by the Fed ensures that periods of low unemployment will not last for long. Despite the difficulties the Fed faces fulfilling its “dual mandate,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently announced a new Fed mandate: to protect the financial system from being destabilized by climate change.

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    Powell appears to have bought into the propaganda that “the science is settled” regarding the existence, causes, and effects of climate change. But the statement “the science is settled” is itself unscientific. Science is rarely settled as today’s new discoveries disprove yesterday’s consensus. In the case of climate change, many scientists dispute the claim that absent massive expansion of government power a climate apocalypse will soon be at hand.

    So far, the Fed’s actions regarding climate change include holding a conference and Chairman Powell indicating the Fed is likely to join the Network for Greening the Financial System. This network is composed in part of central banks from around the world that are attempting to work together to assess the risks of, and plan possible responses to, climate change.

    While Powell has not given details regarding other actions the Fed might take to protect the financial system from climate change, there are a number of actions that the Fed could take.

    For starters, Powell could signal that the Fed would be willing to increase its purchase of government debt if Congress passes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. The Fed, since its creation, has been monetizing federal debt, and thus enabling the growth of the welfare-warfare state.

    The Fed could implement “Green Quantitative Easing” by purchasing bonds of green energy and other companies whose products fit the environmentalist agenda.

    The Fed could also use its monetary and regulatory authority to “encourage” financial institutions to support “environmentally-friendly” businesses.

    Whatever policies the Fed adopts to protect the financial system from climate change, the result will be further erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power, increased government control over the economy, lower economic growth, increased crony capitalism, and a reduction in liberty and prosperity.

    Ironically, the Fed’s plans to address climate change will harm the environment. History shows that the most effective way to protect the environment is via a system of private property rights and free markets. Private property owners are better stewards of the environment than are government bureaucrats because private property owners have greater incentives to maintain the value of their property. This is why the greatest pollution in history was in the communist countries of the 20th century.

    The Fed’s failure to provide any details on how it will carry out its self-imposed climate change mandate is another reason why Congress must rein in the secretive, rogue central bank. A step in restoring a monetary policy that truly promotes prosperity is to pass the Audit the Fed bill so Congress and the people can at last learn the full truth about the Federal Reserve.


    Tyler Durden

    Wed, 03/04/2020 – 18:45

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