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Heart - Black

Best of the Web: Why have they only just noticed the carnage in care homes?


spiked-online.com
Sun, 17 May 2020 23:23 UTC
care home physician
Care homes are now the epicentre of the Covid-19 epidemic. Figures from the ONS show that 40 per cent of all coronavirus deaths so far occurred in care homes.

Finally, politicians and the press are starting to wake up to the fact that the official guidance on care homes was fundamentally flawed.

In this week's Prime Minister's Questions, Keir Starmer quoted old government advice that suggested that care-home infections were 'very unlikely'. Starmer also quoted a cardiologist:

'We discharged known, suspected and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared with no formal warning that patients were infected, no testing available and no PPE to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable.'

Indeed, NHS guidance made it explicit that patients should be discharged to care homes in order to free up hospital capacity for an anticipated surge in cases.

Comment: Why have they only just noticed what we warned would happen? Because they don't care.

The most vulnerable are always the ones that end up suffering most. It's a tragic but all too natural consequence of leaders making decisions and enacting policy that pay lip service to helping people but are always done with other agendas and goals in mind.

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Sherlock

Best of the Web: Recently-appointed Chinese ambassador to Israel found dead in his bed - 'Cardiac arrest' suspected

Bar Peleg
Haaretz
Sun, 17 May 2020 15:59 UTC
Du Wei China ambassador Israel dead
© ReutersDu Wei, China's ambassador to Israel, is pictured during a news briefing in Kiev, Ukraine on 30 August 2019
Cause of death appears to be a cardiac incident, as the envoy was found dead in his bed by staff at his residence with no signs of violence on his body

Chinese Ambassador to Israel Du Wei was found dead Sunday in his apartment in a Tel Aviv suburb. Police have launched an investigation into his death.

Du, 58, was found dead in his bed and appears to have died in his sleep. He left behind a wife and a son. He was appointed as China's envoy to Israel in February.

Initial reports say that Du was found dead in his bed by staff at his residence, and that no signs of violence were found on his body. The Magen David Adom first aid service said that the cause of death appears to be a cardiac incident.

Comment: Hmmm. And he was China's ambassador to the Ukraine before being recently posted to Israel.

That the US was leaning on Israel regarding China is clear.

The Jerusalem Post led on May 9th with an article criticizing China's participation in constructing an Israeli desalination plant. Four days later the U.S. State Department released a briefing on Pompeo's Jerusalem visit and an interview with a local news outlet where Pompeo attempted to be 'persuasive' about the dangers of dealing with China. Haaretz countered on May 15 with an article regarding the Chinese Embassy's statement of solidarity with their 'Jewish friends' and the hope of a 'win-win' relationship.

Two days later, the Chinese ambassador was found dead.

Could the fact that Pompeo warned Israel off making deals with China have anything to do with this? Ambassadors are not generally targeted, but we live in increasingly interesting times...

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Corona

Best of the Web: Media is bashing Russia for low Covid death rate because it exposes fake numbers in the West


Sputnik
Fri, 15 May 2020 21:05 UTC
hannity fox news covid-19
Aint that the truth!
Having one of the lowest coronavirus-related mortality rates in the world, Russia still lags behind over a dozen countries with near-zero COVID fatality rates. That, however, was good enough to once again land Moscow firmly on the radar of Western mainstream media over its "suspiciously" successful bid to tackle the ongoing pandemic.

"In the past several days there have been news reports in Western media accusing Russia of under-reporting deaths in the country due to the coronavirus epidemic", says Gilbert Doctorow, an independent political analyst based in Brussels. "In particular, I can point to articles in the New York Times and in the Financial Times. With respect to the New York Times, the piquant title given to one respective article pointing to a 'Coronavirus Mystery' - is fully in line with the daily dose of anti-Russian propaganda that this most widely read American newspaper has been carrying on for years now."

Doctorow recollects that "a couple of weeks ago the same paper carried an article by one of its veteran science journalists accusing President Putin of using the coronavirus to undermine American science, and medicine in particular."


Comment: Actually, that is kind of what Putin's Russia has done... and that's a good thing! By reporting Covid-related deaths more accurately, the Russians are exposing the West's fake numbers...


Citing the allegations put forward by the Financial Times that Russian deaths from the virus could be 70% higher than the official number, Doctorow highlights that even if that were true, it does nothing to change the bigger picture.

Comment: Part of the invective against China is due to American complicity in leaking the virus. When the Chinese government in early March began spreading their theory that it leaked from Fort Detrick, the Western media went into overdrive to 'blame China'.

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Yellow Vest

Best of the Web: Delingpole: At the anti-lockdown rally I saw the best - and worst - of Britain

James Delingpole
Breitbart
Sun, 17 May 2020 20:50 UTC
police protest london lockdown
© GettyPolice officers frog-march a protester for not following their 'advice' that she stay at home...
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

That's how it felt at the anti-lockdown rally in Hyde Park, London, yesterday, where I was threatened with a fine and arrest for the crime of doing my job. It's also where I got to see Britain at its best - and worst.

There weren't many protestors but those who were made me proud to be British. We were a very mixed crowd, very representative of the melting pot that London has become - and definitely considerably less white and middle class than the crowd you'd find at an Extinction Rebellion rally.

I met a black working-class couple who were both bus drivers; several smartly dressed, well-spoken elderly people; an American former US diplomat and former Democrat voter; a very distressed French-sounding girl distraught that she'd been harassed by police simply for remaining in the same area for more than 45 minutes; a woman who had grown up in 70s Czechoslavakia and recognised the symptoms of Communism all too easily. There were anti-vaxxers, yes, and people who felt that all the world's current ills could be traced back to Bill Gates, yes. But mostly this was a rally about freedom, where everyone present could not quite believe just how easily so many British people had surrendered willingly to the most flagrant assault on liberty in centuries.

This ought not to be a weird, eccentric thing to want to protest.


Comment: Indeed, we foresee a HUGE wave of protests in the months ahead.

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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: 'My job is to make Syria a quagmire for the Russians' - US envoy to Syria confirms CIA doctrine is official policy

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Wed, 13 May 2020 20:05 UTC
Russian soldiers
© ReutersAt least 100 Russian soldiers have been killed in Syria since September 2015.
Like with the disastrous Iraq quagmire years before the US war machine came to Syria under Obama, Washington's rationale and justification for occupying the Syrian Arab Republic has shifted and changed drastically multiple times over.

When ultimately what started as US covert regime change efforts targeting Assad failed (based ostensibly in "protecting civilians"), the official mission then conveniently switched to 'defeating terrorism' — though of course this meant turning on the very jihadists the US armed and trained in the first place. Then the Kurds became the proxy flavor of the month, which also happened to have control of all the major oil and gas fields in the country's east ("secure the oil!" - Trump has repeatedly echoed of late).

When the Islamic State collapsed and became just another underground insurgency like its al Qaeda cousin, the ever-hawkish national security state establishment argued that Trump must not pull troops out because of 'Iranian expansion'.

Comment: See also:

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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Tucker: America is splitting into 2 hemispheres - free states and those still tightening lockdowns

Tucker Carlson
Fox News
Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00 UTC
Eric Garcetti
Clueless, incompetent, authoritarian and pathologically controlling Mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti

Comment: Considering the generally piss-poor level of reporting we're used to seeing from mainstream news about Covid-19 (or much else) - that the following analysis actually aired is something of a miracle.


The country appears to be splitting into two hemispheres before our eyes: There are those places where public officials are allowing science to guide their decisions; states like that are cautiously beginning to relax their lockdowns and finding no spike in illness as they do it. Those are the free states.

And then there's the other half of the country, the places where you're glad you don't live right now. In those places, power-drunk politicians crow about science but resolutely ignore its findings.

They don't read studies. They don't care what the data say.

Their decisions are driven by ambition, political calculation and the pure animal joy of controlling other people's lives.

Places like that are tightening their lockdowns even now.

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Syringe

Best of the Web: The Dengvaxia Disaster Was Twenty Years in the Making—What Will Happen With a Rushed COVID-19 Vaccine?


childrenshealthdefense.org
Thu, 23 Apr 2020 19:01 UTC
vaccine
Editorial by Lyn Redwood, President, Children's Health Defense

Article that follows by the Children's Health Defense Team

Vaccine development is a topic that is on the minds of everyone as the world grapples with ways to protect our health and the health of our loved ones from coronavirus. The team at Children's Health Defense decided to write an article about Dengue Fever because an important part of medicine's body of knowledge comes from the opportunity to learn from past mistakes.

Dengue fever is a common disease in more that 120 countries and, like Coronavirus, has been the target for a vaccine for many years. The development and licensure of Dengvaxia® vaccine by Sanofi spanned more than 20 years and cost more than 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. But the development of the vaccine turned out to be tricky. Dengue vaccine antibodies can also make the infection worse, especially in infants and children who have never been exposed to the virus. The virus may actually use the antibodies created by the vaccine to spread the virus throughout the body. So an infection with dengue — when your blood already has antibodies in it — can actually enhance the disease resulting in deadly complications.
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Airplane

Flashback Best of the Web: Air travel won't return to pre-crisis levels until 2023, IATA chief warns

Natasha Turak
CNBC
Thu, 14 May 2020 17:57 UTC

Comment: How long is the lockdown to go on for?

This article provides a clue: airlines have apparently been told it won't end for another two-to-three years, which seems to fit with Bill Gates and friends' Global Mandatory Chip/Vaccine plan...


Lufthansa airplanes
© MaxarLufthansa airplanes parked on the runway in Frankfurt, Germany.
The impact on air travel from the coronavirus will be felt for many years to come, according to the International Air Transport Association, which estimates that passenger traffic won't rebound to pre-crisis levels until at least 2023.

The trade association for the world's airlines said that demand for air travel had dropped more than 90% in Europe and the U.S. since the start of the pandemic, and warned that recovery will be even slower if lockdowns and travel restrictions are extended.

"We are asking governments to have a phased approach to restart the industry and to fly again," Alexandre de Juniac, the IATA's director general and CEO, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Thursday. De Juniac is hopeful that some flying will resume by the summer.

"We are aiming at reopening and boosting the domestic market by end of the second quarter, and opening the regional or continental markets — such as Europe, North America or Asia-Pacific — by the third quarter, and intercontinental in the fall," he said.
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V

Best of the Web: Jeremy Corbyn's brother arrested at London lockdown protest: Government measures are a 'pack of lies'


Sputnik
Sat, 16 May 2020 16:21 UTC
lockdown protest london piers corbyn
© Agence France-Presse/Justin TallisPiers Corbyn (C), brother of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, is arrested by police officers at an anti-coronavirus lockdown demonstration in Hyde Park in London on May 16, 2020, following an easing of lockdown rules in England during the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
The UK has been on lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus since 23rd March, with people urged to stay at home as much as possible and many businesses and services shut down temporarily.

The brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been arrested at an anti-lockdown protest in London's Hyde Park.

Photos and videos from the park showed around 40 protesters gathered the morning of 16th May, near world-famous Speaker's Corner at the north-eastern end of the park. Some held banners bearing the slogans "this is not about a virus, this is about control" and "no to the new abnormal".

Comment: Piers is giving voice to the conclusion many are coming to regarding the lockdown. Protecting the public is not the real goal. The death toll bears that out.

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Brick Wall

Best of the Web: Instead of bashing Russia for low COVID death rates West should test more & guess less, scholars say


Sputnik
Fri, 15 May 2020 20:16 UTC
ambulance covid PPE
© Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
Having one of the lowest coronavirus-related mortality rates in the world, Russia still lags behind over a dozen countries with near-zero COVID fatality rates. That, however, was good enough to once again land Moscow firmly on the radar of Western mainstream media over its "suspiciously" successful bid to tackle the ongoing pandemic.

"In the past several days there have been news reports in Western media accusing Russia of under-reporting deaths in the country due to the coronavirus epidemic", says Gilbert Doctorow, an independent political analyst based in Brussels. "In particular, I can point to articles in the New York Times and in the Financial Times. With respect to the New York Times, the piquant title given to one respective article pointing to a 'Coronavirus Mystery' - is fully in line with the daily dose of anti-Russian propaganda that this most widely read American newspaper has been carrying on for years now."

Doctorow recollects that "a couple of weeks ago the same paper carried an article by one of its veteran science journalists accusing President Putin of using the coronavirus to undermine American science, and medicine in particular".

Comment: Note the quote from Sott's own Joe Quinn in the above.

See also:

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