Covid-19: Some Links and Quotes

Yahoo.com: Scientists say a now-dominant strain of the coronavirus appears to be more contagious than original
Washington Times: Coronavirus hype biggest political hoax in history

Matt Taibi: The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis Is Here

The Spectator: Covid-19 update: Sweden tames its ‘R number’ without lockdowne above chart shows Imperial's assumptions: that Sweden's actions (the distancing, etc) would have a tiny effect. Only lockdown would do. Its modelling envisaged Sweden paying a heavy price for its rejection of lockdown, with 40,000 Covid deaths by 1 May and almost 100,000 by June.

The above chart (not shown) shows Imperial's assumptions: that Sweden's actions (the distancing, etc) would have a tiny effect. Only lockdown would do. Its modelling envisaged Sweden paying a heavy price for its rejection of lockdown, with 40,000 Covid deaths by 1 May and almost 100,000 by June.

The latest figure for Sweden is 2,680 deaths, with daily deaths peaking a fortnight ago. So Imperial College’s modelling – the same modelling used to inform the UK response – was wrong, by an order of magnitude. Sweden has now published its own graph, saying its R was never near the 4 that Imperial imagined. More importantly, its all-important R level (all-important to the UK anyway – it has never much featured in the Swedish discussion) has in fact been below the safe level of 1 for the last few weeks.

Coronavirus Defeated By Experimental Antibody That Targets Spike Protein

Coronavirus updates: COVID-19 was present in Europe in December, doctor claims

Virus was present in Europe in late December, doctor claims

The novel coronavirus may have reached Europe much earlier than originally thought.

Dr. Yves Cohen, an intensive care chief in Paris, told French news channel BFMTV during a live interview Sunday that they had retrospectively identified a positive case at Jean-Verdier Hospital in the northeastern Paris suburb of Bondy on Dec. 27. Doctors reanalyzed samples from molecular diagnostic tests of 24 patients in December and January who were suffering from pneumonia-like illness but had tested negative, Cohen said. Tests for COVID-19 were not being offered at that time.

One of the patient's samples tested positive for COVID-19. Doctors even tested the sample twice to be sure, Cohen said.

Saudi Officials Say Whopping 70% Of Mecca's Population Likely Infected With COVID-19

(But no indication that they're not all dead, so getting to herd immunity can't be such a bad thing.)

Massachusetts Walmart Ravaged By COVID, 21% Of Employees Infected, Store Closed

(Twenty-one percent. Wow! That's less that the rate for the entire 1.4 million residents of the Bronx. Yep, 27% of the population of the Bronx have antibodies for Covid-19, as do 21% of the whole of NY City. So it's most likely that the Massachusetts Walmart is no more "Ravaged by COVID" that the rest of Massachusetts. (But headline writers gotta keep you wound up and reading the bilge they've got to sell.) 

Why Sweden Has Already Won The Debate On COVID-19 "Lockdown" Policy

As Europe and North America continue suffering their steady economic and social decline as a direct result of imposing "lockdown" on their populations, other countries have taken a different approach to dealing with the coronavirus threat. You wouldn’t know it by listening to western politicians or mainstream media stenographers, there are also non-lockdown countries. They are led by Sweden, Iceland, Belarus, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Surprisingly to some, their results have been as good or better than the lockdown countries, but without having to endure the socio-economic chaos we are now witnessing across the world. For this reason alone, Sweden and others like them, have already won the policy debate, as well as the scientific one too.

CDC Websites Give Vastly Different Coronavirus Death Tolls

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website for the coronavirus lists the total deaths from COVID-19 – the disease caused by the virus – as 37,308 in the United States. That’s a much lower number than what has been reported in the media or by other coronavirus trackers. For example, the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker, lists the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. at 65,645.

Even more confusing, a separate CDC website – dedicated exclusively to the novel coronavirus – lists the total COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. as 64,283. The NCHS website was updated on May 1, while the CDC’s coronavirus-specific website says it was updated on May 2.

Pennsylvania Takes Hundreds of 'Probable' COVID Deaths Off Books After Coroners Come Forward

Pennsylvania has removed hundreds of COVID-19 deaths from the official death count after coroners pointed out the state’s health department numbers did not match their own.

Millionaire college administrators worry coronavirus might expose their scam

450 free Ivy League university courses you can take online

(While waiting for house arrest to end, why not get a zero-cost PhD in virology, public health administration, or epidemiology -- you won't do any worse at it than the morons calling the shots on the US/Canada/UK/etc. Covid-19 response.)

Nolte: They Told Us Lockdowns Were About Flattening the Curve. They Lied

In order to flatten the curve of the coronavirus, the politicians told us we must lockdown and be quarantined while our economy collapsed. They told us we had to flatten the curve to ensure our health care system was not overwhelmed by the sick and dying. They told us that if the health care system was overwhelmed, people would die who could otherwise be saved. They told us losing people who can be saved is intolerable, and America agreed…

And now we know we were suckers…

Now we know the politicians lied to us.

This was never about saving the healthcare system from crashing, because we have saved the system from crashing, and most of us are still in these goddamned lockdowns.

They lied.

Not all the politicians lied. But most of the politicians lied, most especially Democrat governors….

My Democrat governor, Roy Cooper, just canceled school for the rest of the year and extended our ludicrous, pointless, statewide, one-size-fits-all lockdown to May 8.

Why?

There’s no good answer.

Among others, all of California, Michigan, Hawaii, and Wisconsin are locked down through the end of May. Oregon is locked down until July 6!
Why?
There’s no good answer.
There is no threat the healthcare system’s going to crash in any of those states. You might be able to convince me there’s a small risk in some urban areas — in Detroit or Los Angeles or Milwaukee, but 95 percent of those states are completely out of the woods. But these Democrat governors refuse to open any part of their state.

My North Carolina county is completely out of the woods…
We had nine cases here and no deaths.
Nine cases.

Zero deaths.

We’re still locked down, even though there’s a full-blown medical center in my county.

In my five county area we’ve had fewer than 100 cases and one death. Each of those counties has a hospital. There is no chance these health systems will crash. None. So why are we still locked down?

Even in our most densely populated area, Charlotte, there have been only 1651 cases and 49 deaths.

The curve here in North Carolina, and the curve in 95 percent of the country is not just bent, it’s crushed, decimated, destroyed — and let’s now take this opportunity to go ahead and say the following out loud: in much of the country there was never any real danger of overwhelming the health care system.

The experts were wrong.

(We're supposed to believe that politicians lied without reason? Just out of dumbness? Come on, they're not that dumb.)

New York City: The Bronx Tests 27% Positive for Covid-19, And That's Good News, Not Bad

Breaking down the New York City report, Cuomo noted that the Bronx had the highest infection rate of the five boroughs, with a staggering 27.1% of respondents having COVID-19 antibodies. ...  “That number remains obnoxiously and terrifyingly high,” Cuomo said. “It’s not where we want it to be.” Source

There is a pernicious idea that the media, politicians and public health officials in the US, Canada and elsewhere seek to encourage, namely, that the spread of Covid19 is a bad thing. Actually, it's a good thing: here's why.

Epidemics don't end with everyone in quarantine, because life cannot be sustained by a population in perpetual quarantine. Eventually, a quarantined population must get back to work. then people will have to come face to face once again, and the disease will resume it's spread.

So how do epidemics end? They end when the number of people with immunity to the disease rises to the point that the number of people each infected person infects falls below one. At that point, disease spread slows and dies.*

And what determines who has immunity? There are two key factors. One is the acquisition of immunity among those who have been infected and survived the disease. The other is the process of natural selection. Those who lack the necessary immune system genes to fend off the disease die, so that a higher proportion of the residual population has the genes that provide either immunity to infection, or the capacity for recovery from infection.

The seasonal flu is an example of a non-lethal disease that induces immunity in those infected. The plague, or black death, is a an example of a more or less lethal disease that kills many but not all that it infects, leaving a more resistant population more or less immune to the disease.

And, in the worst case, are diseases against which an entire population is vulnerable, and in that case the entire population dies, as was the fate of many Amerindian communities afflicted by diseases brought by explorers and colonists from Europe to the New World.

Covid-19, fortunately, is a relatively mild disease for most who are infected by it, leaving them with protective antibodies that reduce susceptibility to future infection. The Covid epidemics working theirs way through the nations of the world seem to be killing no more than 30 to 40 people per thousand of those infected (at least in the developed world), these being mainly the elderly with existing heart or respiratory diseases**.

The end to the Covid-19 pandemic will thus occur when the virus has gone through every population causing an increased level of immunity that halts the disease's spread.

What proportion of the population must have immunity before the rate of recovery from the disease exceeds the rate of infection is not something that can be exactly predicted, since it depends on the way people in each community interact. In a nation of hermits, the disease would never spread and there could be no epidemic. Otherwise, the particular features of specific communities, in particular the way in which people interact with one another, but also many other factors such as age distribution, air quality, nutrition, etc., determine the infection rate that must be attained before an epidemic dies.

What that means is that although lock-downs, quarantines, social distancing and face masks can slow the spread of disease, they have no effect on the incidence of the disease at which disease spread slows and ultimately stops.

So well done The Bronx. With 27% of the population reported to have antibodies for Covid19, they  may not be there quite yet, but they are well on the way to the condition of so-called herd immunity, when immunity to the pathogen is sufficiently widespread to cause its spread to slow and die even after a return to normal life.

Despite what crackpots such as Ron Unz of the Unz Review, New York State Governor Cuomo and the political class generally, plus most public health officials tell you, the spread of Covid19 and hence of immunity to Covid19 is good news that heralds the return to normality. But don't expect to hear that from the gerontological medical experts, the politicians and the vendors of patent medicines and vaccines now in the limelight and positioned to profit by the present panic.

______
* In New York City, the hardest hit place in North America if not the world, the number of new infections reported daily is down to about one third of the peak rate, indicating that, under present conditions of restricted social mobility, herd immunity has been achieved and the epidemic is dying. An end to the lock-downs in NY City may increase the infection rate if the percentage of the population with immunity is insufficiently high for herd immunity under the changed social dynamics. Certainly, an end to the lock-downs will cause a temporary increase in the infection rate, but a new downward trend leading to extinction of the virus will resume within a reasonably short time.

What percentage of the population must have immunity to achieve herd immunity is impossible to model accurately since people do not interact randomly, but in many distinctive ways according to factors such as age, profession, the need to commute, etc. Certainly, the percentage of infected people needed for herd immunity will be less than the theoretical 67% (assuming an R nought of 3.0), and quite possibly less than half that number.

** In the Bronx, with 27% having Covid-19 antibodies, the number infected is around 382,000 people, of whom 1,700 have died for an infection-specific mortality rate of 0.44%. Of those who have died, 545 were resident of nursing homes or adult care facilities, and most had other serious medical conditions. For the remainder of the population the infection-specific mortality rate has been 0.3%. (Source: Riverdale Press).

Related:
Off Guardian: How the UK’s testing policy makes their Covid19 numbers meaningless
Off Guardian: LOKIN-20: The Lockdown Regime Causes Increasing Health Concerns
The Irish Savant: How can they possibly explain this away?
Tucker Carlson: How Some Elderly Power-Drunk Epidemiologist Wiped Away the US Constitution:

Here's a Weird Thing About the Unz Review and Google Search

Here's the title of a post I made yesterday here on Google's Blogger:

Covid-19, and the Weird World of Ron Unz

Now you might think, if only because Google is the publisher of that post, that Google's search engine would have been able to locate the post right away in response to a search on the exact title.

But if you were inclined to think that, you'd be wrong.

Here's the search query:

Covid-19, and the Weird World of Ron Unz

And wadderyer get?

Two and a half pages of contents of Ron Unz's Unz Review.

The only slightly relevant link is on the third page of results:

The curious case of Ron Unz

The former publisher of The American Conservative is a case study in contrarianism gone haywire

That's an interesting result, but it's not the the post I published on Google's blogger with the exact title as the search string.

And you cannot read the American Conservative article unless you're a subscriber to the American Conservative magazine (though they may allow you a month's access for free. Try it and see. Essentially, the article on Unz paints him, not as a devious propagandist for some unacceptable cause but merely a nutter. I'm not so sure. What the Am. Con. article does make clear is that although Unz is so vehemently anti-Semitic (though himself of Jewish origin), he firmly supports the Jewish plan for the European majority nations: extinction of the European peoples of traditional Christian faith and their replacement by people from elsewhere. That's pretty much Google's plan too.)

Odd though, innit -- the difficulty of finding content hosted by Google in a Google search. Maybe even worth thinking about.

Britain's Holy National Heath Service Lying About Universal House Arrest and How Epidemics End

Here's a video put out by Britain's most wonderful institution, the National Health Service.

With one and a half million employees available to assemble the facts clearly and honestly, here's the NHS's explanation of how the Covid-19 epidemic is spreading and will die.



The explanation offered is that curbing the spread of the virus depends entirely on the social distancing and quarantine measures implemented by the government.

That is a lie.

The virus spreads readily at first BECAUSE NO ONE HAS IMMUNITY TO IT. 

But those who have been infected by the virus and have then recovered continue to have antibodies to the virus, which protect them from subsequent infection. Thus, as the number of those who have been infected and then recovered increases, the number of susceptible people that each infected person comes into contact with, and thus can infect, decreases.

Yes, it's true that changing the social dynamics by lock-downs, quarantines, and social distancing slows the spread of the disease, but it won't stop it, and it won't reduce the number eventually infected once such measures are abandoned.

So all that wrecking the economy through lock-downs has achieved is to prevent the possibility that hospitals will be overwhelmed by severe cases.

That this small benefit, which could have been achieved much more cheaply in other ways, for example by setting up temporary Covid-19 treatment centers, is not mentioned in this NHS video.

Which means that the video is propaganda.

The video is intended to fool the public into thinking that government did the right thing when it clearly did the wrong thing in responding to the Covid-19 epidemic.

But in shutting down the economy, were governments dealing with something quite different from Covid19?

That's a question for another post.

Covid-19, and the Weird World of Ron Unz

Ron Unz, publisher of the Unz Review, a web-based collection of articles -- many by odd-ball Hitler admirers, anti-Semites, and advocates of Communism -- has run a series of posts concerning Covid-19 in which it is asserted (a) that Covid-19 is a biowarfare agent directed by the US at China, and (b) that Covid-19 is a truly terrifying disease, and that those who compare it with the seasonal flu are hoaxers. Furthermore, comments of said hoaxers are mostly, if not always, deleted from Ron's Review.

Thus, on finding a statement in an article at Zero Hedge asserting, on reliable authority, that the Covid-19 death toll has been comparable to that of the seasonal flu, I was overcome by an irresistible impulse to post it at the Unz Review, as a comment on an article by Ron himself:

Here's a quote that Ron Unz will have to delete, unless, that is, he's an honest man: "... researchers at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University estimate Covid-19 to have an infection fatality rate (IFR) of between 0.1% and 0.36%. Similar to seasonal flu. Source

Did Ron approve it?

Nah!

Here's another comment I attempted to make at Ron's Review, in response to a comment referring to a WHO tweet that was subsequently deleted:

"There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from #COVID19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection." First, to say that there is no evidence of X is no evidence of of not X. But in any case the tweet [by the WHO] was deleted, so it would appear that their claim (the WHO's claim, that is) was either unsupported by evidence or known to be false. Second, to claim, as you do, that antibodies for Covid19 are short-lived is not the same as saying they are non-existent. Third, if antibodies to Covid19 exist -- as they must or immunological tests for the disease would be impossible -- and as even the WHO now acknowledges, that implies a degree of immunity in those who have been infected. And remember, without an immune system response, every case of Covid19 would be fatal. The fact is, Covid19, like the flu, a virus of the same family*, is a relatively mild disease except in a minority of cases (chiefly the elderly afflicted by one or several other serious diseases). The usual mildness of the disease is evident from the fact that although a substantial proportion of the population where serological surveys have been conducted have been shown to have been infected, the death rate as a proportion of those with antibodies is low, in the order of no more than about 0.3%. However, the antibody tests are not known to be highly reliable and the actual death rate is likely much lower. So far, the reported US death toll is just over 60,000 of 328 million Americans, and with the daily totals trending down, the total is thus unlikely to exceed 120,000. If so, the disease will prove considerably less lethal than both the Asian flu of 1957/58 that killed 70,000 of 149 million Americans, or the 1968 Hong Kong flu (H3N2 virus) that killed about 100,000 out of 200 million Americans.

Does that sound like the comment of a hoaxer, or does it sound like the sort of comment that a hoaxer might delete in order to suppress the truth?

 Yes, the Unz Review is a weird world, which deserves further scrutiny.

Related:
Vox Popoli: Facebook bans The Unz Review

Ron Unz, has said he believes the reason for his being banned on Facebook is " 

Facebook’s plans to crack down on misinformation related to our ongoing Covid-19 epidemic."

Having been banned by Ron Unz for what I assume he considered to be "misinformation related to our ongoing Covid-19 epidemic," I am inclined to think that justice has in some way been served -- not that I would consider Facebook a reliable guide to what I personally should or should not read.

Headline of the Day: April 29, 2020

The Corona virus response will go down as one of the world’s most shamefully overblown, overhyped, overly & irrationally inflated & outright deceptively flawed responses to a health matter in world history Source

These are the facts: COVID-19 is a real disease that sickens some, proves fatal to others, mostly those with comorbidities, — and does nothing to the vast majority.

Thats it.

That, in a nutshell, is it.

Or, in the words of Dan Erickson and Artin Massih, doctors and co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield, California: Let’s get the country reopened — and now.

“Do we need to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no. Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. … [T]he data is showing it’s time to lift,” Erickson said, in a recent interview.

He’s right. They’re right.

The data to keep America closed and Americans closed in simply doesn’t exist.

If truth be told, it’s questionable it ever did.

The scientists leading the coronavirus shutdown charge predicted in March that in America, between 100,000 and 250,000 would die. They based those estimates on computer modeling.

But at the same time they were basing those estimates on computer modeling, they were acknowledging that computer modeling is inaccurate and errs on the side of hype.

“I’ve never seen a model of the diseases I’ve dealt with where the worst-case actually came out,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of President Donald Trump’s White House coronavirus task force, during a CNN interview in March. “They always overshoot.”

Catch that? Fauci’s message: Computer models are flawed and inaccurate and always overestimate the problem.

But from these faulty overinflated computer figures came all the constitutionally questionable actions by government anyway — from ordering businesses closed to quarantining-slash-house arresting American citizens to doing some quick and pitiful and economically painful income redistribution schemes via stimulus funds’ legislation.

Since, about 56,000 have died in America due to coronavirus — or have they? Again, the facts are flimsy.

Decarbonizing Energy: BP's Solar Investment -- One Small Step

The British-based company, BP, has for many years sought to transition from being primarily a producer of oil to a producer of low or zero-carbon energy.

Initially the focus was on increasing the production and distribution of natural gas, a fuel that, on combustion, yields about a third more energy per unit of carbon dioxide emitted than does oil. Furthermore, due to higher plant efficiency, replacement of natural gas for coal in electricity generation lowers by half the amount of carbon emitted per unit of power generated.

In addition, BP has invested in most areas of alternative energy including wind, solar, ethanol, carbon-free hydrogen and landfill methane. Among these investments, the most promising results thus far have been in the field of solar power. Through a 50% stake in Lightsource BP, BP now has a stake in two gigawatts of solar power generating capacity, with something like another half gigawatt to be installed this year -- that's about 5% of the World's total capacity.

A simple way to understand the significance of BP's solar investments is to translate installed solar capacity to power production measured in barrels of oil equivalent. Then the solar power business can be directly compared with BP's original business of oil production.

Although we do not know the power output per unit of installed capacity for Lightsource BP, we know that worldwide, the average year-round electrical energy production per kilowatt of installed solar capacity is around 1200 kilowatt hours. Applying that value to Lightsource BP's plant indicates that electrical production by the end of this year will be at a yearly rate of around 3000 gigawatt hours. One gigawatt hour is equivalent in energy to 588 barrels of oil. Therefore, the solar power generated by BP's share in Lightsource BP amounts to around 1.75 million barrels of oil per year.

How does that compare with BP's oil and gas production?

Its about 12 hours worth.

So, yes, BP is looking in the right direction, but for their solar investments to change the world is gonna take a while.

Covid-19: Are You Scared Yet?

"Canada Warns Against the Folly of Herd Immunity," blares the top story at Bourque.org, with a link to an article on, where else, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's website.

The CBC article, titled more informatively: "Canada's top doctor warns against relying on herd immunity to reopen economy," suggests that the powers that be in Canada want the population to remain cowed and fearful over the novel Corona virus for a while yet.

The CBC article quotes, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer saying: "The idea of ... generating natural immunity is actually not something that should be undertaken," which leaves little room for confidence in the scientific competence of Canada's top public health official. 

The CBC article does helpfully -- sort of, explain the concept of "herd immunity," saying:

Herd immunity is conferred when enough people in a given population have been infected with a virus, marking them immune to reinfection and slowing down the rate at which the virus spreads on its own.

which is almost right, but not quite, making it quite wrong. Herd immunity is achieved when enough people have immunity that the average number of people each infected person infects is less than one. It's at that point that the number of new infections begins to fall, and to fall at an accelerating rate until it reaches zero, at which point the epidemic is over. 

Europe's Covid-19 death toll as of April 26, 2020.
Image source: Zero Hedge

In most jurisdictions in Europe and North America, infection rates are declining, indicating that herd immunity has been achieved. However, the proportion of the population with immunity that is required to achieve herd immunity depends on social dynamics. That is, it depends on the number of people each infected person comes into contact with and may, therefore, infect. Furthermore, social dynamics in most countries have been radically modified by quarantines, lock-downs, school and business shut-downs and other social distancing measures. 

What that means is that a return to normality will increase the number of people without immunity that each infected person contacts. In turn, that means that a return to normality will reverse the achievement of herd immunity that obtained under the conditions of controlled social interaction. As a consequence, the rate of new infections will increase until the number of people with immunity rises to the point at which herd immunity is regained.

 So, yes, attainment of herd immunity under near universal house arrest does not mean everything can return to normal without a cost in terms of an increased rate of new infections. But herd immunity must be reached or the disease will rage on until everyone has been infected. 

And, yes, there are different ways of getting to herd immunity, not all of which have the same outcome. If you "take it on the chin," to use Boris Johnson's term for the idea of going for herd immunity without modifying social arrangements, hospitals will be overloaded with severe cases, mortuaries will be unable to deal with the piles of bodies that accumulate, and there will be general panic and despair. 

But if you delay the achievement of herd immunity by shutting the economy for too long, there will be many bad consequences too, including the loss of economic output, the loss of schooling, and for some people, probably, the loss of their sanity.

The best course, therefore, now that declining new infection rates indicate that herd immunity has been achieved, is a progressive return to normality. Schools opening first, perhaps, then a staged return to work by other sectors, with massive Covid-19 testing being conducted to ensure that the return to work does not drive the rate of new infections to the point of creating chaos.

Meantime, creating panic and fear seems to be the mandate of the global medical establishment. Thus, on Friday, the World health Organization (WHO) announced that there is "currently no evidence" that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.

Well anything is possible and perhaps we are all doomed to get Covid19 over and over again until civilization collapses and Greta Thunberg is fulfilled, as the smog abates and carbon dioxide concentrations subside to pre-human levels. But what the WHOOO-HOOOO said is bunk as confirmed when it later issued a clarification to the effect that most people infected would end up with "some level of protection."

So, yes, Covid19 is a nasty disease that, in New York City, one of the worst hit places, is killing around 0.35% of those infected, but it won't kill us all. What's more, if you are under 65, your risk of death from Covid19 is probably less than that of being killed driving to the office, or so it has been calculated by the distinguished epidemiologist, John Ioannides of Standford University's Medical Faculty.

Related: 
Off Guardian: Why are so many healthcare workers dying from Covid-19? Answer: They're not.
Zero Hedge: WHO Deletes Tweet About Reinfection As 'Immunity Passports' Being Debated
The Hill: Chinese scientists predict coronavirus won't be eradicated
TechStartUps: UV technology developed by Columbia University to fight the spread of coronavirus
WSJ: The Bats Behind the Pandemic
Great Game India: Dutch Virologist Ron Fouchier – Another Key To COVID-19 Investigation
Great Game India: How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponized It
Great Game India: Dr Fauci Funded Wuhan Virus Experiments – Former NY Mayor
Great Game India: Secret US Cable That Saw Coronavirus Crisis Coming

Michael Moore/Jeff Gibbs: Planet of the Humans

This video has three themes:

(1) the logic underlying bioenergy is the grotesque self-contradiction that burning down the world's forests and converting the Amazon forest to sugar plantations to support the ethanol-as-motor-fuel industry will save the planet.

(2) alt-energy schemes are for the most part scams run by rich humbugs such as Al Gore and the Koch brothers intent on adding billions to their already enormous wealth.

(3) solar and wind power depend on a vast range of mining and fossil-fuel-dependent industrial processes and achieve little if anything in terms of energy return on energy invested.

A reviewer at Gizmodo contends that Point 3 is an outdated view based on the state of technology a decade ago. That may be so, but it remains to be seen whether wind and solar have the potential to displace fossil fuels on a global scale. There is, however, no question that large scale investment in bioenergy is a total insanity and a monstrous crime against humanity and all other life on Earth.

Overall, an important story, well presented, with a fine musical accompaniment.

How the Covid-19 Epidemic Spreads and How It Will Die

Epidemics result when each person infected by a disease infects more than one other person. Then the number of persons infected grows day by day. But if those who are infected survive to become immune to the disease, then, as disease spreads through the population, the number of persons that each infected person infects must fall, ultimately falling below one. At that point the population is said to have achieved herd immunity. From there on, the number of persons infected daily declines until the spread of disease is entirely extinguished.

Because infectious diseases have an incubation period during which an infected person remains in apparent good health, observable or reported infections follow actual infections by the duration of the incubation period. In the case of Covid-19, the incubation period is usually between one and two weeks. Thus the occurrence of Covid-19 herd immunity precedes the peak of observable infections by one or two weeks and the peak in reported deaths by as much as a month.

Many communities in North America and elsewhere, are reporting declining daily totals of new  Covid-19 infections. That means that herd immunity has been achieved and the epidemic is dying. In New York City, herd immunity is reported to have been achieved with just 21% of the population having been infected.

The spread of the disease depends, however, on social dynamics and other measures to control disease spread. Currently, social dynamics in most communities have been radically altered by so-called social distancing in public places, lock-downs, and quarantines. The use of face masks and the use of disinfectant both indoors and out have also affected disease spread. Once such measures are relaxed or eliminated, disease spread among those still susceptible will occur more readily and the number of persons infected by each newly infected person will rise.

Relaxing or ending measures to control social dynamics thus raises the number of persons that each newly infected person infects to a number greater than one. As a result herd immunity is temporarily lost and the rate at which new infections occur will increase. However, the continued rise in the number of those infected will increase the proportion of the population with immunity, so that herd immunity will be regained, but with a higher proportion of the population infected.

The rise in the proportion of the population infected that occurs during transition from a period of controlled social interaction to a new period of normality is unavoidable. Adverse consequences of the transition to normality from the current period of controlled social interaction can be limited in two important ways.

First, by a progressive transition that prevents a spike in new infections that overloads hospital capacity to treat those who suffer serious adverse reaction to the disease.

Second, measures to to protect those most likely to suffer severe illness or death as a result of infection. Mostly, that means protecting the elderly, who account for the vast majority of those killed by Covid-19.

Also in need of special protection are those with conditions such as a respiratory disease, obesity or diabetes who may suffer particularly adverse reactions to the disease and should, therefore, be held in quarantine for their own protection until the epidemic ends.

Currently, the death rate due to Covid-19 in North America is probably close to 0.3% of those infected. Of those who have died, almost half in the United States, Canada, Italy and probably most other countries are elderly people suffering multiple other diseases and resident in a care home.

The future death toll due to Covid-19 could therefore be greatly reduced by better protecting the elderly, particularly those in care homes, from infection. The most important measure to achieve this would be repeated testing of care home workers and residents for Covid-19 infection to insure infected individuals are promptly quarantined.

Related:
David Stockman: "The Ripple-Effects Of The Government Lockdown Are Only Starting To Take Shape..."

Has New York City Achieved Covid19 Herd Immunity?

New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo announced today that random surveys indicatd that 14% of New York State residents now have antibodies to Covid19, and in New York City, the number is 21%.

Assuming that being antibody positive means Covid19 immunity, that is immunity from re-infection, has New York achieved so-called herd immunity, which is to say immunity to the Covid19 virus that is sufficiently widespread to prevent each newly infected individual from, on average, passing the virus to more than one other person?

If herd immunity has been achieved, then the decline in reported deaths should continue even if the present measures of quarantine and lock-down are abandoned.

Unfortunately, there is no clear guide as to the infection frequency required for herd immunity. Assuming a reproduction number of more than three, which is to say the average number of people each infected person infects before the development of any population immunity, then an infection rate of over 60% of thereabouts would be needed to end the epidemic, assuming that people interact and spread the disease in a random fashion. However, people do not interact in a random fashion. Some are much more effective as disease spreaders than others. Children, for example, are excellent spreaders, both among themselves and among family members and family friends. Old folks, however, tend to live relatively isolated lives and are therefore extremely poor spreaders. It is not implausible, therefore, to suppose that an immunity rate of 21, as in New York City, or even as low as 14% for New York State as a whole, is sufficient to cause the epidemic to die.

As the various jurisdictions dealing with the epidemic make decision on ending lock-downs and other quarantine measures, and as more surveys of population immunity are reported, we will soon know.

Related:
YDN: R nought in New York City is less than one: Herd immunity achieved
The Hill: The results are in — stop the panic and end the total isolation
The Irish Savant: Heads I win, tails you lose
DC Whispers: Sweden Kept Economy Open, Yet Has A Mortality Rate Similar To America’s
Pepe Escobar: What Did U.S. Intel Really Know About the ‘Chinese’ Virus?
Post News: 94% of All NYC Coronavirus Patients Have Underlying Health Problems

the Corona Virus Response: A Media Induced Panic For What Reason?

Here's a comment from an actual expert on viral respiratory diseases:

Dr. John Oxford, virologist, Professor at Queen Mary College, University of London, and a leading expert on influenza, including bird flu and the 1918 Spanish Influenza, and HIV/AIDS.

What he says:

Personally, I would say the best advice is to spend less time watching TV news which is sensational and not very good. Personally, I view this Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over 65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic! Source

So why the continued lock-down?

Many unofficial reports are now emerging that reveal Covid19 infection rates in the general population that are huge multiples of officially reported rates.

 That means that infection rates in many communities are pretty certainly past the point necessary to achieve herd immunity, which is to say the point at which the disease spreads with ever increasing difficulty before dying out entirely.

Yet no government has reported a survey of the general public to determine whether herd immunity has been achieved.

Why not?

Presumably, because governments do not want the public to know.

And that presumably, is because governments want the lock-downs to continue for reasons quite other than those stated.

What are those ulterior and unstated motives?

Interesting question that:

To drive up unemployment while destroying small businesses that are the chief employers of low-wage labor?

Why would governments want this?

Many reasons come to mind. Here are a couple:

1. By creating a much larger pool of the unemployed, a desperate and docile pool of cheap labor is made available to the corporate giants that own the government.

2. While thousands upon thousands of small business that have been forcibly closed -- shops, restaurants, a multiplicity of service enterprises -- the big boys, Amazon, Star Bucks, Tim Hortons, Crispy Kreme will have been planning how to take over the space newly created for their own expansion.

3. Or is the objective simply to create widespread poverty on a permanent basis?

Is it the idea that living standards for the majority having been crushed, they are to remain crushed?

What, after all, is the point of so many people stuffing their faces with junk food, pissing away energy and other resources on  hedonistic cruise vacations, trips to Vegas and stuffing themselves with toxic, obesity- and diabetes-inducing  grease- and sugar- loaded junk food.

Welcome to the new peonage.

Other possibilities? Suggestions welcome!

And here's one obvious alternative: a Deep State plot to get rid of Trump.

Related:
LA Times: Hundreds of thousands in L.A. County may have been infected with coronavirus
Perspective on the Pandemic: Interview with Prof. John Ioannides

Thierry Meyssan: Covid-19: Neil Ferguson, the Liberal Lyssenko
Ron Paul: What If The Lockdown Was A Giant Mistake?
Jim Fedako: Exactly How Many Deaths To Justify Giving Government's Control Of Everything?
ZH: Why The Shutdown Must End

Professor Luc Montagnier, Discoverer of the AIDS virus, Nobel Prize Winner, Backs Indian Researchers' Claim that Covid19 is man-made

Contrary to to the Chinese Communist Party apologists over at the Unz Review and elsewhere, Professor Luc Montagnier, who won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the HIV or AIDS virus, believes that Covid 19, aka SARS-CoV-2, is a man-made entity accidentally released from China's only Level 4 biohazard (i.e., biowarfare) lab, which is located in Wuhan, China.

Professor Montagnier is reported by Zero Hedge to have stated that the laboratory in Wuhan is known for its work on coronaviruses and tried to use one of these viruses as a vector for HIV in the search for an AIDS vaccine.

Further, Prof. Montagnier stated that, with a colleague, the biomathematician jean-Claude Perez, he had "carefully analyzed the description of the genome of this RNA virus" and concluded that it contained sequences from the HIV (AIDS) virus. Moreover, he said:

Indian researchers have already tried to publish the results of the analyses that showed that this coronavirus genome contained sequences of another virus, … the HIV virus (AIDS virus), but they were forced to withdraw their findings as the pressure from the mainstream was too great.

Questioned as to whether the Covid19 virus may have come from a patient who is otherwise infected with HIV, Dr. Montagnier replied:

No,in order to insert an HIV sequence into this genome, molecular tools are needed, and that can only be done in a laboratory..

The full text of the retracted paper by Indian researchers that Prof. Montagnier referred to is currently available here.

Meantime:
The CBC (Canada' State Broadcaster): Instructs Kids on How to Shut Down Your Parents’ “Conspiracy Theories” About the Origins of the novel Corona virus

Conspiracy theories, the CBC warns, can be “just as dangerous as a virus.” they then suggest:

“Maybe send [your conspiracy theorist Dad] an article from a legitimate source quoting credible scientists on why the virus wasn’t manufactured.”

Almost needless to say, the suggested article comes from the CBC and is entitled ‘No, the new coronavirus wasn’t created in a lab, scientists say.”

However, as Fox News has just reported, quite apart from the Nobel Prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier, it is now believed by a number of those in a position to make an informed assessment that Covid19 did indeed leak from a laboratory in Wuhan.

Related: 
American Spectator: Stanford study suggests coronavirus is more widespread than realized
FoxNews: One third of folks on the street in Massachusetts town have Covid19 antibodies.
NY Times: They’re Death Pits’: Virus Claims at Least 7,000 Lives in U.S. Nursing Homes
Fort Rus: From COP-21 To COVID-19: The Collapse Of ‘Predictive Models’ And The Return To Actual Thinking
YDN: US will see an ‘exponential explosion’ in COVID-19 cases if it relaxes lockdown measures too early - sparking a second wave of infections, MIT model predicts
True Pundit: EXCLUSIVE: Robert F Kennedy Jr. Drops Bombshells on Dr. Fauci For Medical Cover Ups and Fraud; Fauci “Poisoned an Entire Generation of Americans”
Daily Star: Coronavirus began months earlier and not in Wuhan, bombshell UK report claims
BBC: Coronavirus: Is there any evidence for lab release theory?
San Francisco Chron.: Stanford study suggests far more [Covid] infections than reported
The Irish Savant: Vaccines and Bill Gates, The Taker

Nssim Taleb: The Only Man With a Clue About Covid19?

A post by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at the Automatic Earth blog begins with the following words:

Today, I’m going to try to show you how and why we know that in the case of a pandemic like the one we’re in, surrounded by doubts and uncertainties, there are still a series of measures that we can and, more importantly, must take. But also, how these measures are hardly ever taken, and if they are, not in the correct fashion. This has to date led us into a ton of preventable misery and death. If only we would listen. And there’s still more we can do to prevent more mayhem, there is at every step of the process.

What follows is an exposition of the risk to humanity of a viral pandemic made years ago the financial analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb, together with Taleb's conclusions as the the steps that must be taken to avoid catastrophe.

Needless as it is to say to those with any understanding of the way governments function, or more generally fail to function, Taleb's analysis and recommendations have been generally ignored with catastrophic consequences for those afflicted by Covid19, and for all who have been or will in the future be affected by the economic consequences of the Covid pandemic.

Rather than copy and paste the article from the Automatic Earth for those wanting to better understand the challenge of Covid19, here is a link to the original article:

The Only Man Who Has a Clue.

The Nature of Physical Reality, Part I: Time

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
...
William Shakespeare

The moving finger writes,

and, having writ, moves on.

Nor all thy piety nor wit,

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line. 

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

...
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by

Edward Marlborough FitzGerald

Time is not an illusion: it is a record of change in an evolving system, whether that be the unfolding of the universe, the progression of the seasons, or the vibration of the crystal at the heart of a quartz clock.

Before the creation of the universe there was no time. But after the Big Bang, stuff happened: first a fireball of quarks and photons exploding; then particles from the expanding plasma condensing; these, upon further cooling, cohering as atoms, mostly hydrogen plus a little helium; the clouds of gas collapsing under their own gravitation; the atoms fusing to heavier elements and heating the first stars to incandescence; the stars forming into gravity-bound spiral galaxies; the galaxies separating from one another in an ever expanding universe; the stars, their fuel of light elements exhausted, imploding violently to create the heaviest elements and spewing the remnants into space; stellar ashes aggregating into meteors and planets, some to be captured in orbit around new stars, our sun included; the process of universal evolution continuing, so far as can be told, without end. Thus the universe is the ultimate clock, its multifarious transformations marking the hours in the life of the world.

As the universe unfolds, so also do its components. Galaxies and stars evolve, as do planets, the latter both geologically and climatically. Planets may also acquire life, the evolution of which may result in the emergence of intelligent creatures able to fashion clocks and calendars providing measures of date and time more convenient for the regulation of life than natural processes, astronomical or geological.

The notion of events as the measure of time, seems odd to those conditioned by a scientific culture to view time as the measure of events. The notion of time outside of the world of events and having a reality of its own is reinforced by the subjective notion of time: our sense of the ongoing present, and receding past. But the subjective notion of time results from the workings of the mind, which constitute a process in evolution. The conscious mind, flowing continuously from idea to idea, as influenced both by internal processes and sensory input, serves as its own clock.

That it is the stream of consciousness which provides our sense of the passage of time is evident from the fact that when unconscious, for example, between the time  — as instructed by the anesthetist — to begin counting, and reaching perhaps to the number two or three, until the time consciousness returns amid the seeming chaos of a dimly lit and crowded recovery room, there is no sense whatever of the lapse of time.

The common use of language, according to which clocks measure time, further reinforces the misconception that time has a reality independent of events. But, in fact, clocks do not measure time, of which there is no known means of sensing, but only the evolution of their own internal workings: the swinging of a pendulum; the unwinding of a spring; the vibrations of a crystal.

A mistaken belief about the reality of time may also arise from the notion that time forms part of the ultimate fabric of the universe. So far as we understand it, reality consists in a succession of events in a three dimensional space. Thus to identify a particular event it is necessary to specify a point along the three spatial dimensions. But because what happens at every point throughout the universe evolves, identification of a specific event requires that it be time stamped. Thus time is often referred to as the fourth dimension in a space–time continuum. But time has no more reality than the spatial dimensions, fore and aft, left and right, up and down, none of which have a reality in the absence of the events that they map.

The Block Universe: Image source. In the block universe, 

each of our moments are not forever"changing place with that which 

goes before," neither does the Moving finger of Omar Khayyam move, 

but both remain  forever fixed like the frames of a movie on a reel of 

celluloid. Only in perception, do our moments "in sequent toil all forwards 

do contend."

A curious consequence of the notion of time as the fourth dimension, is the idea that just as every event located in space at a particular point on the temporal axis, co-occurs, so every event located at a particular point in three-dimensional space must co-occur at every point on the temporal axis. Hence has arisen the concept of the "block universe," a world in which there is no future and no past, but where everything conceived to be past, present or future has always existed, and always will exist, in all its exquisite detail.

Perhaps this view is correct, but if so, it contradicts Ocham's razor, the principle that, among alternatives, the simplest theory is the one that should be preferred. And it does not merely contradict Ocham's razor, it makes an utter mockery of it, for what it asserts is that for everything that ever happened, that is, for every microscopic event, and every nanoscopic, or picoscopic event that has ever occurred, or will ever occur, there exists a complete copy of the entire universe, to which a time traveler could transport himself. Worse still, time travelers, by showing up in the past or the future, would necessitate countless more copies of the world: giving rise to an infinity of infinitely many worlds.

Something else the theory of the block universe implies is that the creator is a practical joker, for whereas the universe has every appearance, from the microwave background radiation to the fossil record, of being a system in continual transformation, everything in a block universe, from the big bang to the evolution of the big brain and onward to eternity, has always existed and always will exist in a world where absolutely nothing has happened or ever will.

The evidence for evolution, according to this view, whether cosmic or organic, is a matter of appearance created by the juxtaposition of events preserved eternally in aspic but seemingly related to one another as cause and effect in accordance with temporal scientific laws. Morally, this notion seems odious. It means that for all that a person may strive, he will achieve nothing, good or bad, that is not  already cut in stone.

Contrary to the view presented here, Isaac Newton held time to be

absolute, true, and mathematical ... in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly... 

Newton's great contemporary Gottfried Leibniz, on the contrary, held time to be, not the reason for, but a consequence of, the linkage of events in accordance with strict laws of cause and effect, a view also held by Einstein's mentor, Ernst Mach,* who wrote.

Time is an abstraction, at which we arrive by means of changes of things. 

Clockwork Time by Fractamonium

Taking the Newtonian view, Julian Barbour has argued that the structure of the universe is such that events are interconnected as if driven by gears in a gigantic clockwork mechanism.*

There is, however, a serious problem with the Newton–Barbour view of time, which is that time is not, as Newton believed, "absolute, true and mathematical," or uniformly flowing as would be required within Barbour's clockwork cosmology. Rather, time, as measured by the best clocks known, the oscillations of a photonic wave, or the vibrations of a quartz crystal, flows at different rates according to circumstance, as observation of clocks moving relative to one another or subject to a difference in gravitational field reveals.

Thus, although Einstein's Theory of Relativity is widely believed to prove the existence of a space-time continuum underlying physical reality, Einstein was not without doubts, remarking that:*

Perhaps, ... we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum. It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path."

With that intuition, Einstein seems to have come down on the side of Leibniz and Shakespeare, seeing time as a record of the succession of events in an evolving universe. On that view, the universe exists only in the present, not in any past or future states, which means that time travel is impossible since there is no past or future world existent to which one might travel.

————
* Quoted by George Musser in "Spooky Action at a Distance." Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2015.

Related:
CanSpeccy: The Nature of Physical Reality, Part II: Space
CanSpeccy: More about time
Thibault Damour: Time and Relativity

First published November 26, 2015

German Survey Proves Corona Virus Poses No Existential Threat to the Nation

To know how deadly Corvid19 is, one must know how many of those who are infected will die. 

This, governments have thus far failed to determine, which is remarkable since any competent epidemiological research group furnished with a modest research grant could easily find out. The task is simple. The number of deaths due to the disease is known. Thus what remains to be determined is the proportion of the population that has been infected. For this purpose, a small random sample of the population, a thousand or two at most, needs to be tested for current or past infection. For this purpose  there are blood tests that assess the presence of the virus (indicating current infection), the so-call reverse transcriptase PCR tests, and there are blood tests that assess the presence of antibodies to the virus (indicating past infection), namely immunological or serological tests. 

To hear government spokespersons talk about such testing, one might assume it necessary to test every human on the face of the planet to come to any useful conclusion. Thus, for example, President Trump's medical expert on Covid19, Dr. Fauci is reported to have said:

‘Obviously’ I Would Like to Test Whole Country for Coronavirus Antibody... [But] “We’re not going to have testing for everybody in the country tomorrow. It’s going to be a gradual process. We are starting when the next week or two, we’ll be able to scale-up the kind of antibody testing to give you a good feel for what the penetrance of the infection is.”

Clearly the man is an idiot or someone who thinks that Americans are idiots.

To get "a good feel for what the penetrance of the infection is," if one must talk in such ridiculously stilted language, it’s not necessary to test the whole goddam population, all you need is a random survey of a few hundred people.

And thanks to the fact that Germans, if no one else, are not entirely stupid, we now have the results of one such survey:

A team at the University of Bonn has tested a randomized sample of 1,000 residents of the town of Gangelt in the north-west of the country, one of the epicenters of the outbreak in Germany. The study found that two percent of the population currently had the virus and that 14 percent were carrying antibodies suggesting that they had already been infected — whether or not they experienced any symptoms. Eliminating an overlap between the two groups, the team concluded that 15 percent of the town have been infected with the virus.

This work needs to be replicated on a nationally representative sample population of several thousand people in total, but if the result for the town of Gangelt is indicative of the rate of Covid19 infection nationally, it indicates that around 12 million Germans have already been infected. With 2763 deaths to date, the implied death rate is of 2736 per 12 million infections (i.e., 15% of the national population), or 0.0023%.

No doubt the virus is still spreading in Germany, and the national death toll could mount six or seven times higher if the infection were to spread to the entire population. But that is not possible, since herd immunity would stop the epidemic beyond the 50 to 60% infection rate. Thus total deaths in Germany due to Covid19 are unlikely to exceed 10,000, or about three times the annual motor accident death toll. So yes, the cost of the novel Corona virus is high. But note that most virus deaths will be among the over 65's, many of them at the point of death due to other conditions, whereas car crashes kill mainly the young and healthy.

But the German death toll due to Covid19 will certainly not reach anything like 10,000 if the German Government takes the most simple-minded steps to limit the death toll, most importantly by advising the elderly to stay in quarantine, while the rest of the population goes back to work.

So the proper virus response is simple really. But give the likes of Trump and Trudeau, Merkel and Micron the opportunity to grab totalitarian powers, and they will not give them up unless those powers are torn from their hands by an enraged populace and an effective government opposition.

Related:
ZH: COVID-19 and Annual Flu Mortality Compared
NewsPunch: Bill Gates’ Instagram Page Flooded With People Calling For His Arrest For ‘Crimes Against Humanity’
YDN: Coronavirus has been in California since December
ZH: Robert F Kennedy Jr. Exposes Bill Gates' Vaccine Agenda In Scathing Report
YDN: More than 3,600 elderly people have died from coronavirus in nursing homes across the US - but the government does not count them
ZH: South Korea Says Nearly 100 Recovered COVID-19 Patients Tested Positive Again
Jonathan Geach, MD: Eight Reasons to End the Lockdowns As Soon as Possible
The BL: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. answers Bill Gates on the dangers of a mandatory CCP Virus vaccineJohn Vibes: Governments Using Pandemic to Build “Architecture of Oppression”
ZH: China Begins Mass Deletion Of Online Research On Coronavirus Origins
From Harvard to the Big House: The COVID-19 pandemic and serial passage gain-of-function research
WSJ: Coronavirus Strikes at Least 2,100 Senior Facilities Across U.S., Killing 2,300 People
Fort Russ: Vaccine ‘Mark Of The Beast?’: It’s Time To Stop Bill Gates
NewsPunch: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Slams Bill Gates’ ‘God-like Willingness To Experiment With Lives of Lesser Humans’
IW: US Hospitals Get Paid More to List Patients as COVID-19 and Three Times as Much if the Patient Goes on Ventilator
SW: UK hunger crisis: 1.5m people go whole day without food
ZH: British Suicide Rate Soars To Record High
ZH: Whistleblower: How CDC Is Manipulating The COVID-19 Death-Toll

The Corona Virus and Care Homes That Kill

Of Canada's 5 million plus over 65's, only six or seven percent are in care facilities, yet those in care facilities account for almost half of Canada's Covid19 deaths.

So if you want to be rid of Granny in a hurry, put her in a care home.

Since viruses are not spontaneously created, we can infer that Covid19 is killing so many in Canada because a small proportion of the nation's old people are incarcerated in care facilities and nursing homes where the staff bring the corona virus to work with them.

Among other things, this suggests that national differences in covid19 deaths likely depend in large part on differences in quality of care home management. Where, as in Canada, many care home workers are part-timers, on minimum wage and without fringe benefits, home inmates are exposed to an unnecessarily large number of employees, some of whom work part-time at more than one care home. Such conditions minimize professionalism among workers while maximizing the risk of infection being introduced to care homes from the outside community and being transmitted from one home to another.

Almost certainly better regulation of care homes and better working conditions for care home workers would have spared Canada a large proportion of virus deaths. Instead of shedding crocodile tears for the elderly dead while imposing lock-downs on the entire community and thereby destroying the economy, government ministers should be acting to bring about reform in the care home industry.

Related:
WSJ: Coronavirus Strikes at Least 2,100 Senior Facilities Across U.S., Killing 2,300 People
NBC News: 2,500 Long-term care facilities in 36 US states are battling coronavirus cases
Ryan McMaken: In March, US Deaths From COVID-19 Totaled Less Than 2% Of All Deaths
The Spectator: How deadly is the coronavirus? It’s still far from clear
CBC: As many as 34,000 Ottawans could have COVID-19
Zero Hedge: "No Hope": Canada's Nursing Homes Prepare For Mass Death
Station Gossip: Three major nursing home companies are DENIED tests for residents - despite spate of deaths from suspected outbreaks

Understanding the Reproduction Number, Lock-downs and Herd Immunity

During a disease epidemic, lock-downs cut the reproduction number -- that is the number of people infected by each infected person -- by reducing opportunities for viral spread. This can be seen in the Canadian data, which show that the number of newly reported cases turned down within two week of the onset of a national lock-down (see figure 2). As the incubation period for the disease is approximately two weeks, that indicates that the lock-down had a more or less immediate effect in reducing the spread of the virus.

Figure 2. New reported COVID-19 cases (n=5,590

Footnote1) in Canada by episode dateFootnote2 as of April 1, 2020, 11 am EDT

When R0 is less than one, the epidemic dies down and is ultimately extinguished. Problem is, if R0 is driven down by means of a lock-down, any remaining cases or new cases from whatever source are likely to re-ignite the epidemic when the lock-down ends. That is the danger China now faces. China is dealing with this risk by testing people entering the country so that imported cases can be quarantined, and so that contacts of new cases of any source, can be tracked down and quarantined.

In time, if the proportion of the population that has been infected rises high enough, R0 will fall below 1 without a lock-down because most people are immune and cannot therefore be (re-)infected. That is why, in Britain, epidemiologists are now conducting surveys to determine how many people have already acquired immunity. If the proportion is high enough, probably over 60%, herd immunity will have been achieved. That means that even without control over human interactions, R0 will be less than 1 and the virus will be unable to spread. At that point, any new outbreak will die out spontaneously and the national lock-down can be ended.

A further consequence of making a reliable estimate of the population-wide infection rate is that it will provide a basis for an accurate estimate of the mortality rate for the disease. At present, mortality rate estimates are hopelessly skewed because the infection rate includes only those with disease symptoms who are known to medical authorities. Those who suffer the illness without reporting to a doctor, or who are infected without experiencing disease symptoms, are currently excluded from mortality rate estimates, thus elevating the apparent death rate, probably many times in excess of the actual rate.

Related:
James Corbett: The Things You CANNOT Say About Coronavirus
Spectator USA: No lockdown, please, we’re Swedish
Guido Fawkes: China Faking Corona Virus Stats?

How Trump Will Take Over the Monetary Printing Press to Juice Markets for the Election

For all those in the alt-news world who rail against America's privately owned central bank, the Federal Reserve, with its power to print money without limit, here's an alternative that looks much worse: a President with the power to spend without limit and force the Fed to print the money to cover the cost. And that President is Donald J. Trump.

How has Trump acquired such power? As a reporter explains it, this outcome has been achieved through the creation of an:

alphabet soup of new programs that deserve special consideration, as they could have profound long-term consequences for the functioning of the Fed and the allocation of capital in financial markets. Specifically, these are: CPFF (Commercial Paper Funding Facility) – buying commercial paper from the issuer. PMCCF (Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility) – buying corporate bonds from the issuer. TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility) – funding backstop for asset-backed securities. SMCCF (Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility) – buying corporate bonds and bond ETFs in the secondary market. MSBLP (Main Street Business Lending Program) – Details are to come, but it will lend to eligible small and medium-size businesses, complementing efforts by the Small Business Association. To put it bluntly, the Fed isn’t allowed to do any of this. The central bank is only allowed to purchase or lend against securities that have government guarantee. This includes Treasury securities, agency mortgage-backed securities and the debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. An argument can be made that can also include municipal securities, but nothing in the laundry list above. So how can they do this? The Fed will finance a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for each acronym to conduct these operations. The Treasury, using the Exchange Stabilization Fund, will make an equity investment in each SPV and be in a “first loss” position. What does this mean? In essence, the Treasury, not the Fed, is buying all these securities and backstopping of loans; the Fed is acting as banker and providing financing. The Fed hired BlackRock Inc. to purchase these securities and handle the administration of the SPVs on behalf of the owner, the Treasury. In other words, the federal government is nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets. The Fed is providing the money to do it. BlackRock will be doing the trades. This scheme essentially merges the Fed and Treasury into one organization. So, meet your new Fed chairman, Donald J. Trump.

So Corona virus and global pandemic, mass unemployment and the Greatest Depression, even if the worst that could happen happens, Trump is now in a position to buy a stock market recovery by November 2020, which means that the US is surely headed for the biggest stock market manipulation in the history of fixed markets and financial rackets.