Russia and China continue to deploy a campaign of disinformation around the coronavirus outbreak that could have "harmful consequences" for public health around the world, according to a report published by the EU's foreign-policy arm.

The document, published on April 1, was written by the Strategic Communications and Information Analysis Division of the European External Action Service (EEAS).

It says both state and state-backed actors "seek to exploit the public health crisis to advance geopolitical interests, often by directly challenging the credibility of the European Union and its partners."

The campaign poses a danger to effective crisis communication and public health, it says.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks endlessly about helping working Americans, she's quietly making an effort to get millions of dollars for millionaires.

Pelosi is proposing a rollback cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions as part of the next coronavirus stimulus bill.

"A 2019 report from the Joint Committee on Taxation projected that of those who would face lower tax liability from elimination of the cap - which only affects those who itemize tax deductions - 94 percent earn at least $100,000," Fox News reports. "The government would lose out on $77.4 billion in tax dollars, with more than half of that amount being saved by taxpayers earning $1 million or more."

A company specializing in the production and transportation of oil and gas has been set up in Russia, according to the state registry data. The new firm could take over projects in Venezuela after Rosneft sold its assets there.

Roszarubezhneft, which is owned by the Federal Agency for Government Property Management, will have an authorized capital of 322.7 billion rubles (over $4 billion).

A senior Iraqi political analyst warned against a new plot by Washington to deploy the elite forces after evacuating its so-called diplomatic centers and shutting down important military bases such as al-Qayyareh, K1 and Kirkuk.

"The US has started its moves and is trying to bring to power the Washington-backed Adnan al-Zorfi for the post of prime minister in Iraq," Karim al-Khikani said in an exclusive interview with the Arabic-language al-Maloumeh news website.

He noted that the recent movements by the US and reducing the number of its embassy staff in Baghdad and closing some of its military bases in Iraq on the pretext of coronavirus epidemic is merely a political game while pursuing certain goals.

"The US plans to deploy combat forces to Iraq to reoccupy the country by using force and bringing to power its favored candidate for the prime minister's post," al-Khikani added.

He reiterated that the US is trying to impose itself on Iraq by bullying and it may even resort to assassinating other figures following the assassination on January 3 of Iran's top anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of Iraq's PMU, along with their companions.

Dr. Anthony Fauci and two co-authors published an article on March 26, 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Anthony Fauci is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In the article, linked below, he states that COVID-19 may turn out to be comparable to a seasonal flu or similar to two relatively minor flu pandemics in 1957 and 1968. It is estimated that seasonal flu kills about 500,000 people globally every year and the two flu pandemics he cited each are thought to have killed about a million people globally. Below is an excerpt of the article.

Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted

"On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%. In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively."

It is not over yet, but this is much less than what our hysterical media and politicians have led us to believe. In the beginning of this historic, media-fueled panic, it sounded like millions would die in the US alone and tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, globally.

Pssst. You.

Yeah, you.

Are you interested in talking about . . . things? You know, the kind of things that we're not allowed to talk about anymore? You know, since the . . . uhhh . . . "The Event"?

You are? Great. I mean, you might have noticed things are getting a bit hairy out there. As in, you're likely to get your head bitten off for daring to suggest that things may not be totally ok with the "new normal."

It seems all these new social norms and cultural taboos that have arisen in the past few weeks have also created a raft of new thoughtcrimes: Things that must not be spoken for fear of being expelled from polite society . . . or worse.

That's why it's so vitally important for us to speak out about our concerns before these socially-policed thoughtcrimes become literal crimes. As I'm sure you know, if these new social norms are not confronted, voicing dissent will soon become impossible.

So, allow me to voice some thoughtcrimes of my own. But be forewarned: I assure you that you will find at least some of my ideas to be offensive. You will disagree with them strongly. You will become irate.

The real question is: What are you going to do to those voicing opinions you disagree with? Engage in dialogue with them? Or demand that agents of the state scrub their speech from the internet and lock them in a cage for their thoughtcrime?

Well, either way, I've already committed thoughtcrime numerous times in recent weeks, I might as well share them with you. Are you ready? Let's go.

The economic effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic continue to appear: stock exchanges close to collapse, stagnant production, falling expectations for global growth, entire economies broken and an uncertain future for the current system. The fragility of the international financial system can no longer be hidden, it is visible and palpable. To survive the crisis, the West becomes less and less "western", progressively denying its liberal and globalist values ​​of open society, open borders and free markets, promoting increasingly constant and incisive state interventions, closing borders and instituting strong economic protectionism.

To illustrate some of the partial effects of the crisis, we can mention some official data. Federal Reserve System's President James Bullard recently announced that 46 million people are expected to lose their jobs in the United States. The speculation concerns precisely the positions in which employees work interacting with the public. These jobs are suspended indefinitely by the sanitarian rules, which damage the income of millions of people and require a quick government attitude to guarantee a universal basic income.

A few days ago, Dr. Tedros, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) repeated what he said already a few weeks ago, that there are about 20 pharmaceutical laboratories throughout the world that are developing a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, named COVID-19, also called 2019-nCOV, or SARS-CoV-2. For the layman, it is just a stronger mutation of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, that broke out in 2002 / 2003, also in China. To be sure, a mutation made in a laboratory. In a US high-security biological warfare laboratory. In other words, both SARS and COVID-19 - among many other bio-war agents - were made in the US.

And now, the chaotic western-style race of private corporations for a vaccine wanting to outdo one another, has begun.

Who is first to develop a vaccine? - It's a fierce competition to establish a patent, a monopoly - for a possibly multi trillion-dollar business. Its western neoliberal capitalism at its very worst - or best, depending on the angle from where one looks.

There are no words to describe this chaotic fever for profit over human wellbeing. It has nothing to do with health, with healing sick and suffering, possibly dying people. It's all about money. Hundreds of billions, if not trillion of profit for the pharmaceutical oligarch and their associated research laboratories and enterprises. And even more so, if the WHO-declared "pandemic" (sic) will prompt a forced vaccination campaign, enhanced by military and police surveillance.

Let's put COVID-19 in context. As of 23 March 2020 (18:33 GMT), and according to WHO statistics, reported worldwide cases are 372,572; deaths 16,313; recovered 101,373 - a death rate of 4.37%. However, these figures must be considered with caution. In many countries, especially developing economies, accurate testing may be a problem. Test kits are often not available, or not reliable. So, may people who go to the doctor with some flu symptoms are possibly falsely diagnosed as COVID-19 victims, as it serves the publicity hype.

Russophobic pundits and red-baiting blue-checks are gasping in horror and floating bizarre scenarios as Moscow prepares to send a planeload of much-needed medical supplies to the US amid its worsening coronavirus epidemic.

News that a Russian cargo plane laden with medical supplies and personal protection equipment would soon depart for the US, a gift from the Kremlin to its coronavirus-stricken rival, has the usual suspects running around in circles screeching about ulterior motives.

While President Donald Trump's announcement on Monday that "Russia sent us a very, very large planeload of things, medical equipment, which was nice" took many by surprise, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the shipment on Tuesday, explaining that Vladimir Putin had asked Trump if the US needed help and he had accepted. Peskov added that he hoped the US would be able to return the favor if it became necessary.

In the minds of the reds-under-beds crowd, this was an unacceptable "propaganda ploy." How dare Trump allow Russia to supply Americans with lifesaving medical equipment?!

The US State Department magnanimously agreed that opposition politician Juan Guaido may not actually be president of Venezuela, but insisted he still has to be part of a transition government if Caracas wants sanctions relief.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put forth a "democratic transition framework" on Tuesday, under which Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would set up a power-sharing interim government with Guaido, that would arrange for elections in six months to a year.

According to Pompeo, the proposal "protects the interests and equities of all Venezuelan people who desperately seek a resolution to their dire political, economic and humanitarian crisis," and he urged all sides to "carefully and seriously" consider it.