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China locks down city of 1.2M after three virus cases

empty street china lockdown
© AFP/Getty ImagesLockdown measures for three cases coronavirus
More than one million people in a city in central China were being confined to their homes on Tuesday after three asymptomatic coronavirus cases were recorded in the country's latest mass lockdown.

Beijing has pursued a "zero COVID" approach with tight border restrictions and targeted lockdowns since the virus first emerged. But the strategy has come under pressure with a series of recent local outbreaks and with just a month to go until the Winter Olympics.

Yuzhou, a city with a population of around 1.17 million people in Henan province, announced that from Monday night all citizens were required to stay home to control the spread of the virus. The announcement was triggered by the discovery of three cases in the last couple of days.

People in the central area "must not go out", according to a statement posted Monday, while all communities will set up "sentinels and gates to strictly implement epidemic prevention and control measures". The city had already announced that it was halting bus and taxi services and closing shopping malls, museums and tourist attractions.

Arrow Down

Manhattan DA closes probe into nursing home deaths without charging Cuomo: attorney

Cuomo
© AP/Richard Drew1Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
The Manhattan district attorney's office is closing its investigation into former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's handling of nursing home COVID-19 deaths without bringing charges against Cuomo, according to the former governor's attorney.

Elkan Abramowitz, a former federal prosecutor who had been hired to represent Cuomo, said Monday:
"I was contacted today by the head of the Elder Care Unit from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office who informed me they have closed its investigation involving the Executive Chamber and nursing homes. I was told that after a thorough investigation — as we have said all along — there was no evidence to suggest that any laws were broken."
The investigation was opened after a report last year by New York Attorney General Letitia James revealed that the state's Department of Health underreported COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%.

Comment: Accountability means there are no 'unclear' roles or denial of responsibilities. Cuomo overstepped his authority, made deadly decisions and lied about them. There should be consequences.


People 2

2022: Public schools continue to shed students as homeschooling surges

mom/boy
© Ted S. Warren/APHome schooling
One of the defining educational issues of 2021 has been the decision by many parents to reevaluate their means of educating their children, and more are opting to remove them from government-run schools in favor of other alternatives, including homeschooling, which has shown a significant surge.

In its December report on data showing a migration of students from public schools, NPR describes the change as "troubling":
We compiled the latest headcount data directly from more than 600 districts in 23 states and Washington, D.C., including statewide data from Massachusetts, Georgia and Alabama. We found that very few districts, especially larger ones, have returned to pre-pandemic numbers. Most are now posting a second straight year of declines.
Among the school districts losing students is New York City, where enrollment dropped by about 38,000 students during the 2020-2021 academic year, with an additional loss of 13,000 in the current school year. In Los Angeles, the data shows the district lost 17,000 in the last academic year, and about 9,000 this year. Chicago Public Schools encountered an enrollment drop of 14,000 in 2020-2021, and an additional 10,000 this year.

Bizarro Earth

Manhattan DA to stop seeking prison sentences in slew of criminal cases

Alvin Bragg
© Craig Ruttle/APAlvin Bragg made clear his mission is to reduce the number of defendants locked up pretrial.
Who needs soft-on-crime judges when the district attorney doesn't even want to lock up the bad guys?

Manhattan's new DA has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies and drug dealing, according to a set of progressive policies made public Tuesday.

In his first memo to staff on Monday, Alvin Bragg said his office "will not seek a carceral sentence" except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption.

"This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim's input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available," the memo reads.

Comment: The results of such kinds of 'criminal justice reform' have been painfully clear.

See:


Mr. Potato

CDC: Omicron now 95 percent of new US COVID-19 cases

Omicron
© CC0 / geralt / PixabayOmicron
The omicron variant accounted for 95.4 percent of U.S. COVID-19 cases diagnosed during the week ending on Jan. 1, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The new data shows how quickly the highly transmissible variant has taken over, displacing the previously dominant delta variant. Just two weeks earlier, in the week ending Dec. 18, omicron accounted for only 38 percent of U.S. cases, the CDC said.

The omicron variant has fueled a massive spike in cases, to over 400,000 per day nationwide, but there is mounting evidence that the variant, on average, causes less severe disease than previous variants.

Comment: What isn't making the round in news as much as it should is that Omicron is actually building natural immunity to other variants. As it passes through populations and we see drops in cases, all such 'success' will likely be given to vaccines and continued boosters rather than the natural immunity boost from Omicron.


Attention

Almost 50% of trans inmates in US federal custody for sex offences

prison inmate
Data obtained from the Bureau of Prisons has revealed that almost 50% of trans-identified male inmates are in custody for sex offences, compared to just 11% of the general male population.

The shocking revelation comes after documents were acquired through a Freedom of Information request filed with the Bureau of Prisons by Amanda Stulman, the Director of the USA branch of Keep Prisons Single Sex. Stulman obtained the documents on December 14, 2021 - several weeks after submitting the request.

The breakdown of trans-identified criminals was sectioned into two categories - one for male-to-female transgenders and one for female-to-male. According to the document, 48.47% of biological male inmates identifying as women are in federal custody for sex offences, compared to just 4.71% of biological females identifying as men, and 11.2% of the non-transgender male population of federal inmates in general.


Sherlock

Key suspect in assassination of Haitian President arrested in Miami

Jovenel Moïse
Jovenel Moïse was killed in an attack on his private home in July last year.
A suspected member of the group involved in the assassination of Haiti's president, Jovenel Moïse, has been arrested by US authorities after he was detained while transiting through Panama following his deportation from Jamaica to Colombia.

Mario Antonio Palacios, 43, a former member of the Colombian military, is accused by Haitian authorities of being part of a mercenary group that tortured and killed Moïse and wounded his wife, Martine, during an attack on Moïse's private home in July.

Palacios has admitted in a media interview being in Moïse's bedroom during the assault in which the president died, but has denied being involved in the killing.

He entered Jamaica illegally and was detained in prison after his arrest in October while the courts considered an application from Haiti for his extradition.

Comment: It's notable that just after the Haitian president was assassinated by foreign mercenaries, the US media began calling for US intervention:


Attention

Australia's meat industry warns food shortages imminent due to lockdown's forced isolation restrictions

meat shop supermarket
© Kilito Chan/Getty ImagesAustralians are being warned there could be meat shortages within two weeks. File image.
Australians are being warned there could be meat shortages within two weeks unless meat workers are being given priority rapid antigen testing.

The meat industry says it's now an emergency, with hundreds of workers forced into COVID isolation.

In some supermarkets, meat shelves are completely bare, emptied by a perfect storm of holiday shortages and the COVID effect.

The big grocery chains such as Woolworths and Coles say the stock is often there - the problem is getting it into stores, because COVID is causing high absentee rates among retail staff and distribution workers.


Comment: It bears repeating: Covid is not responsible, they admit as much, these people isolating aren't even sick, this is solely due to the nonsensical, and tyrannical, government enforced restrictions.


Comment: Similar supply issues and shortages have been looming across much of the planet, and for much the same reason, lockdown restrictions. What has also become clear is that these backlogs have a much greater impact than just immediate food shortages, they ripple through the supply chain causing farmers to go out of business, or scale back operations because healthy animals are culled and sent to the dump, and in turn this means that there's even less to go around the following year.

It's likely that the situation will be much worse than simply '12 months of supply chain issues', because governments are making little effort to resolve the problems - that, less we forget began during the lockdowns of 2020 - and crop failures, livestock outbreaks, inflation and government mismanagement of agriculture have yet to be taken into account: For more on the issue, check out SOTT radio's:



Eye 2

Best of the Web: What if the largest experiment on human beings in history is a failure?

The Garden of Earthly Delights Hieronymous Bosch hell
The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymous Bosch
A seasoned stock analyst colleague texted me a link today, and when I clicked it open, I could hardly believe what I was reading. What a headline. "Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64". This headline is a nuclear truth bomb masquerading as an insurance agent's dry manila envelope full of actuarial tables.

People frequently write to Jill and myself. People we have never met. They call, they arrive at the farm by appointment or unannounced, they fill our email in boxes with their inquiries. They all want something; time, attention, an interview. Many want to tell us about their fear, illness, nightmares, or (what often seems like) outright paranoid conspiracies. And then, over time, these fears and "conspiracies" keep getting confirmed. As Jan Jekielek (a senior editor with The Epoch Times) recently said to me, it is getting harder and harder to tell which ones are mere conspiracy theories and which are true reality.

Comment: Anti-Empire puts some visuals to the horror:
OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers in the state.

Davison said the increase in deaths represents "huge, huge numbers," and that's it's not elderly people who are dying, but "primarily working-age people 18 to 64" who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.

"And what we saw just in third quarter, we're seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic," he said.

"Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic," he said. "So 40% is just unheard of."
excess mortality all causes
© OneAmerica Insurance
mortality z-score age group
© OneAmerica Insurance
He said at the same time, the company is seeing an "uptick" in disability claims, saying at first it was short-term disability claims, and now the increase is in long-term disability claims.

"For OneAmerica, we expect the costs of this are going to be well over $100 million, and this is our smallest business. So it's having a huge impact on that," he said.

At the same news conference where Davison spoke, Brian Tabor, the president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals across the state are being flooded with patients "with many different conditions," saying "unfortunately, the average Hoosiers' health has declined during the pandemic."

In a follow-up call, he said he did not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being hospitalized - for what conditions or ailments. But he said the extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals in the state are seeing.

"What it confirmed for me is it bore out what we're seeing on the front end,..." he said.

The number of hospitalizations in the state is now higher than before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced a year ago, and in fact is higher than it's been in the past five years, Dr. Lindsay Weaver, Indiana's chief medical officer, said at a news conference with Gov. Eric Holcomb on Wednesday.

Just 8.9% of ICU beds are available at hospitals in the state, a low for the year, and lower than at any time during the pandemic. But the majority of ICU beds are not taken up by COVID-19 patients - just 37% are, while 54% of the ICU beds are being occupied by people with other illnesses or conditions.



Syringe

Vaccine mandate protesters beat up hospital boss

France covid protest
© AFP / Christophe ARCHAMBAULT
Healthcare workers protesting against mandatory vaccination for medical staff in the French Caribbean territory of Guadeloupe have beaten up the director of a local hospital and "torn clothes off" his deputy.

According to local media, the incident happened on Tuesday, and involved around 50 members of a healthcare workers' union. Gaby Clavier, general secretary of the trade union section, said they had gathered outside the University Hospital of Guadeloupe to "get their money back." Earlier, medical staff who had failed to comply with the mandate were subjected to pay deductions. Unvaccinated healthcare professionals were also set to be suspended after the December 31 deadline set by authorities.

The hospital issued a statement saying the protesters had blocked the entrance, trapping the medical facility's director and several other personnel inside for a few hours. When they attempted to leave the building with a police escort, protesters reportedly "kicked the director in the ribs," and then delivered a powerful headbutt that "nearly knocked him out." One of his deputies had his clothes torn off.