The ABC should be our center for information and instruction (ODT)
The other lessons of the Spanish flu for Australia? One is that social distancing is essential and must be enforced “because it’s probably the only weapon we have got” for the time being, at least.
Rait says: “We will lose control of the virus if we don’t take social distancing seriously, and that’s how Italy got to where it is today.”
Author: peterimrich
![China billionaire Jack Ma stepped down as chairman of Alibaba Group last year to focus on... [+] philanthropy.Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg](https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fdam%2Fimageserve%2F43869982%2F960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale)
Trump’s a Billionaire what has his contribution been? Jack Ma’s donation called Trump’s newfound stockpile (ODT)
via Jack Ma, Alibaba Donate More Masks As High-Profile China Philanthropic Push Continues
“Mr. President, stop lying and start acting. Use the full extent of your authorities, now, to ensure that we are producing all essential goods and delivering them where they need to go.”
“President Trump’s dithering on preparing us for this global pandemic and his lies about his response to this dangerous crisis is one of the most unjustifiable failures of presidential leadership in American history.”
The Trump regime will likely take full advantage of spreading COVID-19 outbreaks for hardened police state rule — instead of prioritizing public health and economic justice actions for ordinary Americans.
It’s not unseeable that Trump could call a National Emergency and cancel the election. (ODT)
Not a word of the donations from China that Jack Ma has sent to America and possibly already arrived 1 million masks and 500,000 testing kits. Not a single thanks from Trump.(ODT)
“What we’re seeing, on a purely voluntary basis, based on the leadership of this administration, we’re seeing the greatest mobilization of the industrial base since World War II,” Navarro said at the presser.
via Trump Says He’s Mobilizing the National Guard in New York, California, and Washington – VICE
This will ensure the elderly will die a lot faster I’ve had a drop of 33% in my investment and I’m 74 my wife 72 self-funded retirees (ODT)
How many phone calls can Trump make in a day while Tweeting and watching Fox? What he claims he makes and expects us to believe is living a dream and really showing disrespect for his audience. The fact is Trump is behind in the polls never seen since 1948 and Truman’s election year. 42/53 (ODT)
Rachel Maddow Warns Networks Of The Dangers Of Airing Trump Pressers Live
Trump’s press conferences aren’t informative, and they aren’t newsworthy. They’re rallies, and they are putting us all at risk.
via Rachel Maddow Warns Networks Of The Dangers Of Airing Trump Pressers Live | Crooks and Liars
Repeating the I’m not responsible claim coupled with the “amazing number of tests” and supplies are coming as if they are here. Snake oil (ODT)
Trump also blamed the previous administration for the current shortage of tests and supplies.
“We inherited an obsolete broken system,” the president said. “When you hear the number of tests that we will be providing, and are now, it’s incredible. And I’ve heard a lot of governors saying the same thing.”
via White House Won’t Say When More Masks Will Be Available To Health Care Workers | HuffPost Australia
Yet another Global virus hit 144 different countries (ODT)
via What Are US Forces Doing Abroad? We Don’t Necessarily Know. | The Nation
While America Sanctions, Cuba Assists (ODT)
China is helping 89 other countries Trump meanwhile is helping himself (ODT)
Unfortunately like Climate Change this requires Global Unity and Cooperation otherwise it too is doomed to fail. (ODT)
Endgame C: ‘stop then restart’
Endgame C is to “stop then restart”. This means minimising activity and interactions, and sealing the borders to passenger traffic including citizens (although not trade), until infections are driven down to zero.
Only essential services would be maintained (particularly the food supply chain and utilities such as electricity, water and the internet).
There is no point trying to finesse which strategies work best; instead the imperative would be to implement as many as possible at once, including closing schools, universities, colleges, public transport and non-essential retail, and confining people to their homes as much as possible.
Police should visibly enforce the lockdown, and all confirmed cases should be housed in government-controlled facilities. This might seem unimaginable, but it is exactly what has already happened in China, South Korea and Italy.
Read more: Coronavirus and COVID-19: your questions answered by virus experts
Once infections are at zero, and stay there for a fortnight or so to ensure there are no asymptomatic cases, economic and social activity can restart sequentially, although international borders would have to remain closed to passenger traffic until there is a vaccine.
via The case for Endgame C: stop almost everything, restart when coronavirus is gone
Irresponsible lending created the GFC (ODT)
The Morrison Government’s emergency measures to protect the economy are another massive subsidy from embattled taxpayers to Australia’s largest corporations. They are a failure of government to govern. Michael West reports.
Question: why would a bank lend money to a business with no customers?
Answer: it wouldn’t.
Question: who will benefit from the Reserve Bank’s massive loan and money-printing program?
Answer: banks, bond traders and corporate customers.
Rupert Murdoch Country (ODT)
And all of this followed a string of black eyes for elite troops in recent years, including allegations of massacres, unjustified killings, murder, prisoner abuse, child rape, child sexual abuse, mutilations, and other crimes, as well as drug trafficking and the theft of government property by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Air Force special operators, and Marine Raiders.
Despite this startling record of malfeasance, SOCOM’s Comprehensive Review came to an unstartling conclusion. The review team (whose members were almost exclusively connected to the Special Operations community) largely absolved the command and its commandos of responsibility for much of anything. The team claimed that special operators had only been involved in “several” incidents of misconduct and unethical behavior instead of a laundry list of criminality.
America’s Commandos Deployed to 141 Countries | The Smirking Chimp
via
Insider Trading that will not be prosecuted ” While Warning Donors But Reassuring Public, GOP Intel Chair Unloaded Personal Stocks Before Covid-19 Smashed Markets(ODT)
ProPublica first reported Thursday that Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, offloaded between $628,000 and $1.72 million worth of holdings in 33 transactions on Feb. 13, shortly after he publicly assured Americans the government was prepared to deal with the novel coronavirus that has since been declared a pandemic. A week after the sales, the stock market began to precipitously fall, erasing about 30% of its value.
Just hours later, the Daily Beast first reported that Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) began selling stocks jointly owned with her husband on Jan. 24, the day the Senate Health Committee held a private, all-chamber briefing from top American officials about COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. In a series of 29 transactions ending in mid-February, documented in Senate financial disclosures, Loeffler and her husband sold between $1,275,000 and $3,100,000 in stock.
The Georgia senator also made two purchases, including one in a company that owns teleworking software, the Beast noted. Loeffler’s husband is Jeffrey Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. The pair are worth an estimated $500 million.
via At Least 2 GOP Senators Dumped Millions In Stock After Coronavirus Briefings | HuffPost Australia
Controlling the media and the message the White House moderates everything (ODT)
Trump Uses Briefing on Coronavirus to Attack Critics
and
Bad press.
Reuters reports that the death toll in Iran from Covid-19 has risen to 1,284, and infections to 18,407. The country’s ministry of health spokesman, Kianush Jahanpur, is quoted as saying that another person dies there every 10 minutes now and every hour sees 50 people infected.
Researchers at Sharif University of Technology have modeled likely deaths and say Iran could be stricken with as many as 3.5 million dead.
Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo just announced that the US would actually tighten its economic and financial blockade on Iran. Iranians are already saying that US Treasury Department restrictions on bank transfers have made it impossible for them to buy needed medicines, tests and medical supplies. The US does not prevent medicine from going to Iran, it just makes it impossible for Iranians to afford them or for the international banking system to handle the money exchanges necessary to buy them.
via Trump Spared Iran from Bombing, but his Sanctions Fed Pandemic in which 1 dies every 10 Minutes
No it’s what Trump has said to Americans the virus doesn’t differentiate (ODT)
In his most recent punt, Trump told governors not to wait for federal assistance when it comes to acquiring necessary ventilators, but “try getting it yourselves.”
Get it yourselves. That kind of message is grimly appropriate in a country without national health care. With a message like that coming from the top, it’s no wonder that Americans are stocking up on rice and toilet paper, like people around the world — but more pointedly, guns and body armor as well. If it’s “all for one and one for all” in other countries, in Trump’s America, it’s “all against all.”
This is what happens when you run on a platform devoted to the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” as Steve Bannon put it so colorfully. First you get deconstruction when Trump takes office. Then you get destruction, when Trump’s minions go to work.
Finally, when all the competent people have been escorted out of government, you get uh-oh. In this sense, the coronavirus is nothing new. Americans have been living in the uh-oh stage ever since November 8, 2016.
Fox & Trump are a tag team when it comes to media wrestling (ODT)
Fox News spent crucial weeks minimizing the danger posed by the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in order to protect President Donald Trump, and recent polls show that the network’s viewers are less likely to be concerned about it than other major media audiences. Top Trump administration officials are now praising the network for its coverage, even as Fox comes under fire from other outlets for endangering the public by actively spreading misinformation about the virus.
Celebrities, politicians and professional athletes faced a backlash this week as many revealed that they had been tested for the coronavirus, even when they didn’t have a fever or other tell-tale symptoms.
via Coronavirus: celebrities get tests easily, raising concerns of inequality
Trump isn’t taking the same tack on German Measles is he as he claimed to be German. Taiwan Singapore. and South Korea applied the China Cure but it seems Trump is trying but not very effectively he’s exporting it instead and being locked out (ODT)
With Americans settling into social distancing and self-quarantines and the economy grinding to a halt, right-wing media can no longer deny concerns about the coronavirus pandemic as a “hoax” pushed by critics of President Donald Trump. Coverage of the crisis from Fox News and other right-wing media outlets is now settling into familiar territory: racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. We can expect more of it all as the pandemic worsens.
Before the coronavirus, property market pundits were tipping their usual, regulation, 10% rise in house prices. They have been quiet in recent days. Callum Foote reports on the impact of the virus on an already weak economy, racking up the present crisis against the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Australians are unprepared. The ratio of household debt to household disposable income is now at an all-time high, suggesting the risk to property is also at an all time high.
via Debt, House Prices and the Virus: How prepared are Australians really? – Michael West
Capitalism and the Pandemic, (ODT)
In recent weeks, investment bankers have pressed health care companies on the front lines of fighting the novel coronavirus, including drug firms developing experimental treatments and medical supply firms, to consider ways that they can profit from the crisis.
The media has mostly focused on individuals who have taken advantage of the market for now-scarce medical and hygiene supplies to hoard masks and hand sanitizer and resell them at higher prices. But the largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic, as do the bankers and investors who invest in health care companies.
via Banks Pressure Health Care Firms to Raise Prices Amid Coronavirus Crisis
The Danish government will pay workers 75% of their salaries while British employees face financial ruin
At just after 5pm on Monday, my phone rang. I missed the call – I was in one of Copenhagen’s supermarkets, buying groceries and toilet paper and soap and things I still do not need to think twice about getting hold of. Danes aren’t panic-buying, or at least not in a way that resembles anything like the videos I’ve seen on social media from my home country, the UK. When I looked down at my phone, I saw a string of messages from a close family member.
As never before, coronavirus will bring into focus the depraved inefficiency of this system – the model of profit-driven health care, of market forces that look out for the short-term interests of business, not the long-term interests of us all.
There are alternatives. Right now, Americans are being offered a choice between a democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, who champions health care as a right because it is a common good, and a Democratic party boss, Joe Biden, who champions the business lobbies he depends on for funding and his political success. One is being marginalised and vilified as a threat to the American way of life by a handful of corporations that own the US media, while the other is being propelled towards the Democratic nomination by those same corporations.
Coronavirus has an important, urgent lesson to teach us. The question is: are we ready yet to listen?
via A lesson coronavirus is about to teach the world, by Jonathan Cook – The Unz Review
Trump preparing for the 2020 election (ODT)
The current pandemic expands the argument: capitalist globalization now appears to be biologically unsustainable in the absence of a truly international public health infrastructure. But such an infrastructure will never exist until peoples’ movements break the power of Big Pharma and for-profit health care.
olddogthoughts 
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