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Health

Best of the Web: Stanford U. epidemiologist John Ioannidis lambasts the media for panicking the public over Covid-19

Dr. John Ionnadis
© Stanford UniversityEpidemiologist and professor of medicine John Ionnadis relies on data to challenge misconceptions about the novel coronavirus.
John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health at Stanford University, says he's "perfectly happy" to be under virtual lockdown in California due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And he readily acknowledges the importance of sensitizing the public to following instructions to shelter in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. In addition, Ioannidis recognizes that a large number of people may die from COVID-19.

But in a video posted on YouTube, the codirector of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford said he worries that media outlets are "falling into a trap of sensationalism". And he suggested that this is making the situation worse for people.

"We don't want to get them into panic," Ioannidis said. "This doesn't really help."

As of today, there are more than 100,000 deaths that have been attributed to the novel coronavirus. Leading the list is Italy at 18,849, followed by the United States at 18,016.


Light Sabers

Best of the Web: Global battle erupts as Trump pulls WHO funding over coronavirus response


Comment: Kudos to Trump. Let this be the beginning of some serious PUSHBACK...


World Health Organization
© Reuters / Denis Balibouse
President Trump's decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization amid the coronavirus crisis touched off an international war of words overnight as Democratic lawmakers in Washington as well as international bodies like the European Union condemned the move.

The president announced Tuesday that the United States would immediately halt funding for the health organization, saying it had put "political correctness over lifesaving measures," noting that the U.S. would undertake a 60-to-90 day investigation into why the "China-centric" WHO had caused "so much death" by "severely mismanaging and covering up" the coronavirus spread.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, many of whom have been sharply critical of the World Health Organization and calling for weeks to get tough on the organization for allegedly helping China suppress information about the outbreak in the early stages, cheered the president's decision.

Comment: When this is said and done, the WHO brass needs to be interrogated and charged with crimes against humanity.


Yellow Vest

Best of the Web: Anti-Lockdown Resistance: Protesters gather at Michigan's state capital in 'Operation Gridlock'


Comment: This will grow and spread (please God).


recall whitmer protest
Hundreds of cars, trucks and SUVs descended on Michigan's state capital Wednesday afternoon as part of a noisy protest against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's social-distancing restrictions that critics say have gone too far.

Dubbed "Operation Gridlock" and organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, the protest did just that - creating bumper-to-bumper traffic throughout downtown Lansing as demonstrators blasted their horns, waved Americans flags and hoisted placards deriding Whitmer's orders and demanding that she reopen the state's economy.

The lockdown measures are meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, but Whitmer has gone further than some other governors -- and the backlash in Michigan is among the most heated in the country.


Tornado2

Best of the Web: Reactions to the corona virus hint of a wider agenda

testing
The western world has gone into a phase of unprecedented lockdown. Major airlines have ceased international operations. It is an open question is to whether or not they will be able to resume operations when and if the current draconian restrictions are lifted. In Australia, the Federal government has ceased to sit and the government has announced that this parliamentary closure will extend until at least August.

Quite why such a lockdown is necessary is unclear. No convincing explanation has been offered by the government and it is an extreme step that comparable nations in North America, the United Kingdom and all of Europe have found unnecessary. One of the most alarming consequences of this fundamental attack on the notion of Parliamentary accountability is that the decision was met with acceptance by the official Opposition and muted negative comment, if at all, by the major mainstream media.

Media coverage of the pandemic has been extraordinary. At least half of the nightly main television news bulletins have been devoted to coverage of the pandemic, although whether it actually adds to our degree of knowledge is at best debatable.

Question

Best of the Web: Where is the vigorous debate about our response to Covid-19?

schematic diagram coronavirus
© Wrapp et al. / UT-Austin / NIH via Science / AAASA schematic diagrams of the 'spike' used by the novel coronavirus to force its way into cells.
After a career as a scientist and clinical academic, I have been struck by how often they (we!) have very complicated and exceedingly well-reasoned ways of getting things quite wrong. That's why I have always thought it best for the recommendations of experts to have 'advisory' status only. Experts' roles are to examine the minutiae of a small subject area - with a view to gaining or advancing understanding. It is the job of our politicians and civil servants to develop appropriate policies.

Experts can be guilty of being monomaniacs, interested only in the thing they are studying. That's understandable, of course, because many of these things are hard to comprehend. And having put so much effort into their work, it's also not unexpected, and very human, that most experts put a lot of weight on their conclusions and are convinced of their importance.

That's exactly why, when scientists call for their findings to be implemented by government, we need politicians and civil servants to moderate their enthusiasm, examine contrary views and express appropriate scepticism. And, in short, judiciously weigh all the other factors that come to bear on any given set of conclusions. The Covid-19 crisis took the world by surprise, and the world (Sweden excepted) has reacted in roughly the same way: with lockdowns. In the rush, the usual checks and balances have not been applied.

Comment: It seems Dr. Lee is one of the few rational heads speaking out in the mainstream media. More from Dr. John Lee:


Info

Best of the Web: The elites are already prepared and have a plan for the coming collapse of the dollar bubble

Banking elites
Today, stock market investors are hoping desperately for Weimar-style hyperinflation to boost equities prices to dizzying heights in what some call a "crack-up boom". In terms of money creation, we are not there yet, but such levels of fiat printing could happen within the next year. Unfortunately for investors, this "boom" in stocks may not happen again. In fact, it already happened over the course of the past several years, and now the party is over. In the past few months, the U.S. dollar has entered a massive liquidity crisis, and despite all expectations, the Fed's attempts to compensate with stimulus measures have done little to boost markets back to their previous glory.

In Weimar Germany, stocks did get an epic rally, until it all came crashing down in 1924 and then again in 1927. The notion of the endless fiat-driven bull market is a lie perpetuated by central bankers and their cheerleaders.

As I warned in past articles, when the Fed finally decided to step in to "stall the crash", it was after it was far too late. The Fed has no intention of stopping the crash, they WANT a crash; they created all the conditions necessary for the collapse of the Everything Bubble to happen. Their goal now is only to make it appear as though they "did everything they could" to save the economy while staging the collapse of the final bubble: the U.S. dollar and its global reserve currency status.

Biohazard

Best of the Web: Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex - Pt. 1 Dark Winter

Dark Winter
The leaders of two controversial pandemic simulations that took place just months before the Coronavirus crisis - Event 201 and Crimson Contagion - share a common history, the 2001 biowarfare simulation Dark Winter. Dark Winter not only predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks, but some of its participants had clear foreknowledge of those attacks.

During the presidency of George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, something disturbing unfolded at the U.S.' top biological warfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Specimens of highly contagious and deadly pathogens - anthrax and ebola among them - had disappeared from the lab, at a time when lab workers and rival scientists had been accused of targeted sexual and ethnic harassment and several disgruntled researchers had left as a result.

In addition to missing samples of anthrax, ebola, hanta virus and a variant of AIDS, two of the missing specimens had been labeled "unknown" - "an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret," according to reports. The vast majority of the specimens lost were never found and an Army spokesperson would later claim that it was "likely some were simply thrown out with the trash."

An internal Army inquiry in 1992 would reveal that one employee, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, had been caught on camera secretly entering the lab to conduct "unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax," the Hartford Courant would later report. Despite this, Zack would continue to do infectious disease research for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and would collaborate with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) throughout the 1990s.


Comment: The same governmental organization that Bill Gates-lackey Dr. Anthony Fauci now heads, incidentally.


Sherlock

Flashback Best of the Web: October-December 2019: Strange new 'influenza' kills 56 people in Iran

iran flu hospital
© PressTV File PhotoIran's Health Ministry has said that an ongoing swine flu epidemic in the country has claimed the lives of 56 people.
Iran's Health Ministry has said that an ongoing swine flu epidemic in the country has claimed the lives of 56 people since its outbreak more than two months ago.


Comment: I.e., October 2019, the same time period as Italy first began noticing 'strange flu/pneumonia cases'.


"Due to influenza, 273 individuals have been hospitalized and 19 have lost their lives" in the past week alone, said Alireza Raisi, the Health Deputy of the Iranian Health Ministry.

The health deputy added that all of the disease's victims have so far been among aged individuals or people which had been suffering from underlying disorders.


Comment: Sound familiar?


"As the Health Ministry had previously announced, not all individuals need to be vaccinated for the disease and only people with underlying disorders such as diabetes, lung disease and pregnant women are advised to do so," Raisi said.

"This wave will continue for another two weeks during which it may even become more widespread, but it will diminish afterwards," he added.

People

Best of the Web: The effectiveness of social distancing on pandemic viral transmission

social distancing
Social distancing and self-quarantining are two concepts that the vast majority of people were not aware of prior to the current pandemic. As you will see in this posting, apparently these ideas that are new to us are not particularly new to the academic community. A recent early release Policy Review which is found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website by Min W. Fong et al entitled "Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings - Social Distancing Measures" looks at the evidence-based research into the effectiveness of social distancing measures as a non pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) when battling an influenza pandemic. What I found particularly fascinating about this research is that it took place just prior to the current COVID-19 pandemic and yet it is very pertinent to our current global health situation.

Here is the abstract of the Policy Review that appears in the Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal Volume 26, Number 5 - May 2020:

emerging infectious diseases
The authors open with this:
"Experiences from previous influenza pandemics, in particular the 2009-10 pandemic, have demonstrated that we cannot expect to contain geographically the next influenza pandemic in the location it emerges, nor can we expect to prevent international spread of infection for more than a short period. Vaccines are not expected to be available during the early stage of the next pandemic, and stockpiles of antiviral drugs will be limited, mostly reserved for treating more severe illnesses and for patients at higher risk for influenza complications. Therefore, nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as social distancing, will be heavily relied on by health authorities to slow influenza transmission in the community..."

Comment: See also:


Corona

Best of the Web: COVID-19 lockdown = Auto-genocide? Food shortages likely as US farmers dump MOUNTAINS and LAKES of food


Comment: We are so screwed, it's not even funny.


onions food dumped covid-19
© Joseph Haeberle for The New York TimesA field of onions in Idaho waiting to be buried.
In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil.

After weeks of concern about shortages in grocery stores and mad scrambles to find the last box of pasta or toilet paper roll, many of the nation's largest farms are struggling with another ghastly effect of the pandemic. They are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell.

The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses.

The amount of waste is staggering. The nation's largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week.

Comment: It's even too expensive to be charitable.

Anyone remember all that liberal bourgeois posturing in the media about 'food waste' and what 'people' ought to do to not be so wasteful and thus 'save the planet'?

Do you realize what those same 'intellectuals' have done? They've broken key supply chains in the real economy. Unless there is a sudden end to this corona-spell - like, NOW - there is no 'coming back from this'. Civilization is hosed.

So how about a slow-clap round of applause for the global managers and reality-creators who thought it would be a good idea to capitalize on a virus that is no more fatal than the flu to 'reset the world' to their liking.

Good job guys; you bet the whole farm, and you lost.