Category: Coronavirus
My generation grew up without vaccines and without all of the associated illnesses associated with vaccines among the over-vaccinated youth of today. Today vaccinations begin at birth and increase into high numbers. Does the natural immune system ever develop?
That is an irrelevant question. The driving force behind vaccination is profit, not health. If we want a health system instead of a death system, Big Pharma must be nationalized and run by scientists on salaries without patent rights and “performance bonuses.”
What scientists might learn from such studies, like the new contact-tracing one in Massachusetts, remains to be seen, but surely one inescapable conclusion is that this virus is smarter, more agile, and faster on its feet than any of its associates we’ve met before or, for that matter, than most of our public officials, from a failed president on down. And for any readers who believe in politics more than science, let me just say that without science, you won’t even know what hit you.
I Left Norway’s Lockdown for the US. The Difference Is Shocking. | The Nation
The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to ensure that America’s meatpackers, immigrant and native-born alike, continue to work during the coronavirus pandemic at considerable risk to themselves, their families, and the entire public. “It’s genocide against the working class,” the leader of Teamsters Local 238, which represents meatpackers in Iowa, told the Guardian. And while the unions that continue to represent these workers are pushing back, their actual power is a shadow of what it was fifty years ago.
So workers crowd in refrigerated facilities as a deadly virus makes its way down the disassembly line — all so the grocery store shelves will remain stocked for consumers and voters, and the Beef Trust will stay in the black. Modern meatpacking may not be the unsanitary industry of The Jungle, but in the absence of strong worker organization, the nauseating disregard for human well-being remains.
via Conditions in US Meatpacking Plants Today Aren’t Much Better Than They Were in The Jungle
Australian intelligence agencies have grown increasingly concerned about the Trump administration’s efforts to link the virus to a Wuhan laboratory, saying it is hampering the push to eliminate dangerous wildlife wet markets.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said the Australian government did not have strong evidence linking the Wuhan lab to the virus.
Related Article
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly poses with the COVIDSafe app downloaded to his mobile phone.
Coronavirus pandemic
Coronavirus updates LIVE: COVIDSafe downloads continue to rise, global COVID-19 cases top 3.6 million as Australian death toll stands at 97US President Donald Trump last week said he had seen evidence that gives him a “high degree of confidence” that the virus began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
But the US government’s top infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, has dismissed the idea, saying all the scientific evidence suggests the virus began in bats and then spread to humans.
These very labs were refunded by Trump in 2017 after Obama had stopped. Doesn’t anybody find it odd Trump fails to mention that? Pompeo is publicising Australia’s support of American suspicions whe the opposite is true. Let’s not forget American Intel ia an Oxymoron. Iraq proved that with the lies spread by Bush/Rumsfeld and Cheney. (ODT)
For weeks the Australian government had been growing concerned about the Trump administration’s promotion of the theory that experiments on bats at a Wuhan laboratory had unleashed COVID-19. This week that anxiety peaked.
Multiple diplomatic and political sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age the suggestions by our biggest ally that Chinese lab experiments on bats had unleashed the new coronavirus would undermine Australia’s calls to ban the sale of exotic live animals at wet markets around the world.
“We can’t repeat the mistakes of the past. The WMDs fiasco was not that long ago,” one former security official said, referring to the incorrect intelligence claims of huge Iraqi weapon stockpiles that formed the basis for the Iraq War in 2003.
It is impossible to pinpoint the exact moment concerns within local security and intelligence circles morphed into genuine anxiety, but an April 14 article in The Washington Post is regarded by some as a turning point. The article quoted leaked diplomatic cables detailing how US officials had in March 2018 raised concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology “conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats”. Shortly afterwards President Donald Trump began raising the “lab theory” during his press briefings.
via Coronavirus Australia: COVID-19 origin theory about Wuhan lab tests relationship with US
“On numerous cruise ships where thousands of people onboard were infected, many of the infections occurred after passengers had to isolate in their cabins even though hand hygiene was implemented,” she said.
“Therefore, the ventilation system could have spread the airborne virus between the cabins. We know that Covid-19’s predecessor, Sars.CoV-1, did spread in the air in the 2003 outbreak. Several studies have retrospectively explained this pathway of transmission in Hong Kong’s Prince of Wales Hospital as well as in healthcare facilities in Toronto, Canada.”
We have more evidence now and we must take it on board
Lidia Morawska
Watching the Four Corners program (ABC 04/05/20), I was struck by the extent of the potential mental and physical health damage that will have been suffered by so many of the medical personnel who were interviewed.
And there were other groups which were not included in those interviews – cleaners in those hospitals, and low-paid staff in the many Aged Care facilities, where protecting the elderly from infection has not always succeeded.
Throw the net wider, and and there will be many in the community both citizens and visa holders alike, whose loss of work and income has left them destitute and often homeless.
For the sake of the exercise, let all these people register in what, for convenience, we will call the Pandemic Victims group, which will entitle them to assistance, and maybe it would be best situated in the Future Fund.
via Caring for the carers and others in distress – » The Australian Independent Media Network
That is the outcome being demanded by the “reopen” protesters who menaced Michigan’s state capitol with confederate flags, Nazi paraphernalia, and assault weapons. They are a tiny group and should not be given too much attention, especially since some of the protests are astroturfed by the super wealthy, such as the DeVos’s in Michigan. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer denounced the racism and Nazism.
via Neo-Nazi “Reopeners” would Kill nearly as many Americans as died in All US Wars
Others tauting the “open” Swedish model ignore that according to the Swedish Riksbank de facto the Swedish economy is closed. Sweden has experienced a sharper drop in first quarter GDP than the US, with the Swedish economy down 11%. The Riksbank’s estimates are a 70 percent decline in restaurants and cafes, a 90% decline in cinema, sports, and other crowd events. a 40% decline in car sales, a 23% fall in exports, a 30% decline in shoes and clothes purchases, a 75% drop in Swedish recreational travel.
The “open” Swedish model is a bet on herd immunity which at our present state of knowledge is merely an assumption.
President Trump and the neoconservatives are determined to blame China for manufacturing the virus in the Wuhan laboratory despite the fact that the US knew about the research and contributed to its financing, which was approved by Dr. Fauci himself. So when Trump and the warmonger neocons point at China the finger also points at the US.
Sweden Is Not The Model, by Paul Craig Roberts – The Unz Review
Maximum Of 60,000 Deaths
‘We’ve Tested More Than Every Country Combined.’
There’s Plenty Of PPE For Health Care Workers
A Coronavirus Vaccine Is ‘Very Close’
via Promises Made, Promises Broken: Four Trump Doozies On COVID-19 Response | HuffPost Australia
We have been subjected to much nonsensical disinformation that Sweden has kept its economy open and is faring no worse in infections than countries with closed economies and without the economic consequences of closed-downed economies. The fact of the matter is that de facto Sweden’s economy is closed and is doing no better than anyone’s else’s, and its infection rate is still rising.
Sweden closed universities and high schools, banned gatherings of large groups, asked people to avoid non-essential travel, and advised those ill and over 70 to stay at home. Sweden did not require restaurants, bars, and gyms to close, but business is down by 70% as people have avoided the risk. That decline could be larger than in the US where restaurants are permitted to provide takeouts. In Sweden the hotel occupancy rate has dropped from 60% to 10%. Sweden’s economy is “open” only in words.
via In Effect Sweden’s Economy Is Also Closed, by Paul Craig Roberts – The Unz Review
Where one stands on the closedown depends on where one stands on other issues. If you are a libertarian, you oppose the closedown because it interferes with your freedom and keeps useless old people alive who cost you payroll tax dollars. It you are a Trump-hater like the New York Times you blame trump for understating the threat and not closing down soon enough. If you are a Trump supporter you blame China and expect China to pay for it by forfeiting their trillion dollar holding of US government bonds.
Those decrying the closedown are unaware of the mischief they are making. They have set it up for the elites, who have taken us for another “bailout the one percent ride,” to blame the resulting economic depression on the closedown. The US economy has been in a long-term recession. Growth in income and wealth has accrued to the top few percent who own the majority of stocks and bonds driven up in price by the Fed’s money printing. The rest of the population has been hurt by the offshoring of their jobs and by the financialization of the economy that leaves them little or no discretionary income after they pay their rent or mortgage, car payment, credit card payment and student debt.
via The Real Economic Problem Is Not The Closedown, by Paul Craig Roberts – The Unz Review
The five places in the U.S. with the highest daily growth rate of Covid-19 cases are all linked to meatpacking plants with active outbreaks. Requiring meat plants to stay open would likely not only put workers at risk, but surrounding communities, too.
Is this the “work” News Corp is demanding workers to go back to? I doubt it. They don’t seem to define what jobs they calling for a return to 60 News Corp papers without advertisers? (ODT)
via Coronavirus Australia: A retail property apocalypse is unfolding – and it’s going to be unpleasant
In the week ending April 17, 22,351 people died in England and Wales – double the five-year average for that time of year and the highest weekly death toll since comparable records began in 1993.
Of the 11,854 deaths above the five-year average, 8758 were related to coronavirus. This leaves 3096 unexplained ‘excess’ deaths. Experts warned these deaths could be the result of people being reluctant to seek treatment in hospital for conditions unrelated to COVID-19.
Coronavirus: Britain’s true death toll 40 per cent higher than official figures
How did Japan get to this point? The country had initially been held up as having one of the more effective responses to the coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic. Yet, its curve has not even started to flatten like those of its neighbours, South Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
We should exit the pandemic and the economic chaos of these months with less inequality, not a further entrenched oligarchy.
via U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surges as Covid-19 Pandemic Worsens | The Smirking Chimp
This isn’t a “will snub” this is a REAL Snub unlike all the ” We will promises” Trump makes daily that never occur (ODT)
Ordinary folks can make bad decisions in extraordinary times. But there are those who should know better who don’t do better
Australians are social distancers by design. Londoners, NewYorkers, don’t have that luxury. However, it doesn’t mean we can stop social distancing until we have sufficient testing and quarantine stations available. The problem is exacerbated with the flu season coming on. However, Murdoch Media insists it’s time to lift bans and get back to work their generalising of that call offer no specifics or how a global economy can be stopped from crashing. Their call for a drop in bans and self-reliance is not only counter to expert advice but grossly irresponsible. (ODT)
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EU is what the USA isn’t (ODT)
America’s COVID Experimental Laboratories ICE and Prisons keep them there and let’s see what happens (ODT
How long before News Corp takes up this line on COVID as well? (ODT)
We may defeat the Covid-19 virus in the months ahead, but it will take much longer to defeat the disease that is Islamophobia.
India, where the spread of the virus has been dubbed a “corona jihad” by supporters of the far-right BJP government; they claim the pandemic is a conspiracy by Muslims to infect and poison Hindus
“Muslims have now seen their businesses across India boycotted, volunteers distributing rations called ‘coronavirus terrorists’, and others accused of spitting in food and infecting water supplies with the virus.
Did members of the Tablighi Jamaat behave recklessly? Yes. Do all of India’s 200 million Muslims bear responsibility for their behavior? No. “Virtually overnight,” wrote investigative journalist Rana Ayyub in the Washington Post, “Muslims became the sole culprits responsible for the spread of the coronavirus in India.”Again, as in India, it isn’t only far-right figures using the pandemic to fan the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry but also mainstream media outlets.
Democratic Socialism practices trust in Individuals (ODT)
What the Swedish experiment demonstrates, is that there’s a way to navigate these unprecedented public health challenges without recklessly imposing police state policies and without doing irreparable harm to the economy. And, yes, the results of this experiment are not yet known, but what we do know is that most nations cannot simply print-up trillions of dollars to counter the knock-on effects of bringing the economy to a screeching halt. These countries must dip into their reserves or take out loans from the IMF in order to recover from the lack of production and activity. That means they’re going to face years of slow growth and high unemployment to dig out from the mess their leaders created for them.
via Sweden Is Right. The economy should be left open, by Mike Whitney – The Unz Review
Nature works in mysterious ways. COVID-19 is its way now. It could be COVID-## in the future as it was H1N1 and H5N1 in the past. Enough with your conspiracies, please. We are doomed now because of our own actions and current deficient immune system.
Changing our ways, our own thoughts, our practices and looking after our health and each other is the way we can ensure that Nature Stands With Us and Not Against Us.
via Paying the price – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Other Billionaires are bailed out (ODT)
Bezos Gains $24 Billion in 2020 While World Battles Pandemic – Bloomberg
There is little evidence showing that Sweden’s approach is effective, and in fact, indicators suggest that it’s likely backfiring. Sweden has seemingly embraced the idea of “herd immunity,” As a result, Sweden’s fatality rate from coronavirus is significantly higher than those of the neighbouring countries and of the United States, at 7.68% as of April 8 compared to 1.46% in Norway, 3.85% in Denmark, and 3.21% in the U.S.
Conservatives want that approach here. History has shown that pandemics come in ever-increasing waves. So if your prepared to stand up and say that those that die are expendable and shrug for the sake of the “Economy” be prepared what you wish for as social sacrifice is never equal. News Corp and Sky News pundits are parroting the head office Fox line (ODT)
Trump claims he saved lives. His chief Medical adviser said
“Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Sunday that the nation likely “could have saved lives” by acting earlier on the coronavirus outbreak.”
Trump can’t sack him (ODT)
via Anthony Fauci: We “Could Have Saved Lives” by Acting Earlier on the Coronavirus – Mother Jones
Nearly all children in the UK catch chickenpox by the age of 10, and it is considered a fairly benign virus for most. However, once you have cleared chickenpox, it remains inactive in your nerve tissue, and in one in three adults it reactivates to cause shingles, a condition resulting in a painful rash.
While we cannot rule out reactivation as a possibility yet, it still seems more probable that these 91 cases were either due to the levels of the virus dipping below a detectable level, allowing symptoms to improve, but then surging again, or that there were flaws with the tests, where the clearance samples were false negatives. The tests are not perfect and, from the data received from China, the most commonly used type of test showed up to a 30 percent false-negative rate.
As South Korea investigates this further and other countries are able to offer their own findings, we are likely to understand more about the way this virus summons an immune response and, hopefully, determine for sure whether reactivation or reinfection are possibilities.
![While our immune systems are able to clear most pathogens, there are some that lie hidden in our cells [Getty Images]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/4/12/6c59bf163daf468ab447546d0e5fd29f_18.jpg "Doctor's Note: Can the coronavirus reactivate?")
Doctor’s Note: Can the coronavirus reactivate? | Doctor’s Note | Al Jazeera
United States – 503,594 cases, 19,701 deaths
Spain – 161,852 cases, 16,353 deaths
Italy – 147,577 cases, 19,468 deaths
France – 125,942 cases, 13,216 deaths
Germany – 122,855 cases, 2,736 deaths
China – 83,014 cases, 3,343 deaths
The total includes 44 cases in Macau and 765 cases – four deaths – in Hong Kong.
United Kingdom – 79,841 cases, 9,891 deaths
Iran – 70,029 cases, 4,357 deaths
Turkey – 47,029 cases, 1,006 deaths
Belgium – 28,018 cases, 3,346 deaths
Switzerland – 24,900 cases, 1,015 deaths
Netherlands – 24,565 cases, 2,652 deaths
via Coronavirus: Which countries have confirmed cases? | News | Al Jazeera
Professor Ih-Jen Su began annual rehearsals of a possible pandemic from China almost two decades ago after SARS killed more than 20 per cent of people it infected in Taiwan.
via Coronavirus: Taiwan has population the same as Australia’s but a fraction of the cases
It’s what China understands and turns to offer global assistance and what the US and Australian ultra conservatives ignore with their early calls of back to work while they social distance (ODT)
While the politicians offer reassurance, the scientists urge vigilance. And it is worth heeding the science. The medical experts who advise the government expect this threat to continue in waves for years.
Even if we eradicate the disease in Australia, says James McCaw of the Doherty Institute and the University of Melbourne, the virus will spread around the world and easily return.
“That epidemic in some places may also go locally extinct after a small or a large wave,” he says. “But it’s almost implausible to imagine this virus going extinct globally, which means that it will be here to stay. It will become a part of our everyday life and the transition to it not being a huge driver of complete societal change is a very difficult thing to work through.”
via Coronavirus Australia: This virus could change the way we live for years, not months
key points:
Medical experts said influenza spikes, which occurred this year in NSW, would strain hospitals
Both the flu and COVID-19 shared identical symptoms and would frustrate data-collection for both
Evidence from China and Italy showed lockdowns needed to be enforced for several monthsNews Corp says otherwise demanding we go back to work( ODT)
As millions of believers in the religions of The Book prepare to celebrate a sanctified time, many among their ranks ignore the pandemic’s potency.
Despite a ban on driving beyond one’s home, a certain prince of the Catholic Church George Pell embarks on a road trip which crosses the New South Wales border from Victoria, to take up residence in palatial accommodation on Sydney’s outskirts.
And as Ultra-Orthodox Jews fail to observe social distancing rules in Israel, Muslims around the world come to terms with the need to cremate their mounting dead.
In the United States of America hundreds of thousands of devout Christians switch on televangelists in a vain attempt to ward off the ravages of their nation’s catastrophic response to the worst outbreak of illness since the incubation of the Spanish Flu in Kansas.
And as the Arts mourn the loss of many from its ranks, the actions of a buffoonish NSW Minister for the Arts diminishes the efficacy of art in a time of crisis.
And so the last words of my Easter story come with an apology to my favourite artist and poet, T.S. Eliot:
“This is the way the world ends, not with bang but a” virus.
via A not so Good Friday – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today’s social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism’s failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today’s social agenda.
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via COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism | The Smirking Chimp
Give me a break.
I agree with Kissinger that the post-Covid world order will be significantly different from the world that preceded it, but that’s as far as I’ll go. In truth, the US-dominated system is unraveling because the people of the world don’t want to ruled by force, because US leaders are incompetent bunglers who cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and because Washington’s arrogant go-it-alone policy-making has turned vast areas of the Middle East and Central Asia into uninhabitable wastelands.
Let’s face it, the United States had a chance to show the world it could be a reliable steward of global security, and they blew it. Nothing Kissinger says is going to change that.
Henry Kissinger calls for a New Post-Covid World Order, by Mike Whitney – The Unz Review
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