Plagues
S


Attention

'Worst is yet to come' - Biosecurity Theatre

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Sat, 15 Aug 2020 19:18 UTC
Biosecurity Threat
© Corbett Report
You know about "security theatre," right? That's the kind of take-off-your-shoes-and-belt nonsense that was instituted at the airport post-9/11 to give passengers the feeling that the government was protecting them from those dastardly Al-CIA-da terrorists.

Of course, these measures do nothing to actually prevent terrorism. Even the MSM mouthpiece media was forced to admit that the TSA never caught a single terrorist with such practices.

But that's not the point. These procedures are only there to give the impression that agencies like the TSA are actually keeping the public safe.

Well, guess what? As we transition from the post-9/11 "homeland security" paradigm to the post-Covid "biosecurity" paradigm, there is now an equivalent to the security theatre phenomenon taking shape: biosecurity theatre.

I know you've noticed it already. The stickers on the floor at the supermarket telling you exactly where to stand when lining up at the cash register. The "one-way aisles" telling you which way to walk as you do your shopping. The infrared thermometer guns pointed suggestively at your head before you enter a public building, as if such a device could actually detect a fever within a fraction of a second of "scanning."

Of course these gadgets and procedures are not meant to stop the spread of any infectious pathogen. They are merely there to make the public feel better.
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Bug

France's sugar beet harvest ravaged by insects, government lifts ban on pesticide blamed for harming bees


Reuters
Thu, 06 Aug 2020 13:50 UTC
sugar beet
France to ease pesticide ban for sugar beet to curb crop losses
The French government will propose lifting a ban on certain pesticides blamed for harming bees to protect sugar beet crops that have been ravaged by insects this year, the agriculture ministry said on Thursday.

The government plans to support a legislative amendment in parliament later this year to exempt sugar beet for up to three years from a general ban on neonicotinoids, the ministry said in a statement following a meeting with sugar industry representatives.

Sugar beet growers blame the ban on the neonicotinoid group of crop chemicals for insect attacks that could decimate yields this year and say this further threatens the French sugar sector after a price slump in recent years already led to factory closures.

Comment: See also:

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Question

The best way to measure rates of COVID immunity?

Sebastian Rushworth M.D.
SebastianRushworth.com
Sat, 08 Aug 2020 01:07 UTC
World Mask
© Sebastian Rushworth.com
In my previous post on the covid pandemic I mentioned that the body's main defence against viruses is T-cells, not antibodies, and that the only reason we test for antibodies instead in clinicial practice is because it is easier and cheaper. I also ventured a hypothesis that the levels of population immunity are much higher than is being found in the antibody tests, and that this is because lots of people who don't have antibodies do have covid specific T-cells. It turns out that this hypothesis is supported by new evidence.

A study carried out at Karolinska Institutet (where I went to medical school), which is still awaiting publication, looked at the presence of both antibody-based and T-cell specific immunity to covid among people in Stockholm. The data was collected during May. The first covid fatality in Sweden was in mid-March, so at that point covid had been raging for about two months.

The study was funded by Karolinska Institutet, the Swedish Research Council, and a number of private foundations and charities. The authors reported no conflicts of interest.

Study participants were recruited in to five distinct cohorts, with a total of around 200 individuals:
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Biohazard

New virus passed via tick bites emerges in China, seven killed so far


Global Times
Wed, 05 Aug 2020 19:27 UTC
mosquito
© gmw.cnSuper mosquito with 20-times bigger body compared with common ones
A new type of virus, which is likely to be passed to be infected after bite by ticks, is emerging in China, with more than 60 people infected and killed at least seven.

According to media reports, more than 37 people in East China's Jiangsu Province have contracted with the virus - SFTS Virus in the first half of the year; and later 23 people was found infected in East China's Anhui Province.

Wang, a woman in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu who suffered from the virus showed onset of symptoms such like fever, coughing and doctors found decline of leukocyte, blood platelet inside of her body.

Comment: RT provides more details:
The current case fatality rate of the re-emerging disease is between approximately 16 and 30 percent, according to the China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention.

While the infection is primarily transmitted through tick bites, transition between humans cannot be excluded, Sheng Jifang, a doctor from a hospital under Zhejiang University, told the Global Times, explaining that it could be passed through blood or mucous.

A 2015 outbreak of the same virus in Japan and South Korea had a mortality rate of more than 30 percent in both countries. The virus is known to be particularly harmful for older or immunocompromised people.

The doctors also warn that tick bites are a major transmission route not only for SFTS, but other infections as well. They say there is no reason to panic, however, if people exercise caution.

In 2018, the World Health Organization included SFTS on its list of the diseases prioritized for research together with the likes of Ebola, SARS and Zika. Those viruses were singled out due to their high potential to cause a public health emergency and lack of efficacious drugs or vaccines against them.
See also:

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Arrow Down

Sudden oak death has reached epidemic proportions on U.S. West Coast

Kate Wheeling
EOS Org
Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:47 UTC
Tree Disease Outbreak
© Hemhem20X6An outbreak of the tree disease sudden oak death is affecting large forested areas along the U.S. West Coast, including on this hillside in California’s Big Sur.

Nearly half of forest ecosystems around the world face "stand-replacing disturbances" — hazards that threaten to kill all of the trees in a localized region, such as fires, extreme weather, and disease. The spread of nonnative insects and pathogens has also reshaped North American forests, and today, a disease outbreak is sweeping along the U.S. West Coast.

Sudden oak death, caused by the plant pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, has reached epidemic proportions in California and Oregon since it first arrived in the San Francisco Bay area in about 1990. But the regional extent of both the disease and related tree mortality is not clear, hampering forest managers' responses to the epidemic and to other threats, as die-offs can increase fuel loads and fire severity, reduce forest productivity, and convert forests from carbon sinks into carbon sources.

Cobb et al. modeled the infection and mortality rate in forests facing P. ramorum invasions by combining observations from plot networks on the ground, geospatial data, and existing data sets describing tree cover and pathogen distribution. The pathogen can infect the leaves and stems of more than 130 species of trees, shrubs, and ferns, but in the new study, the authors focus on the four most affected tree species: California bay laurel, tanoak, coast live oak, and California black oak.
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Attention

Coronavirus contact tracing App made mandatory in Qatar

Megha Rajagopalan
BuzzFeed News
Thu, 21 May 2020 13:49 UTC
Workers in Doha
© Karim Jaafar / Getty ImagesWorkers wearing protective masks walk on a street in Qatar's capital, Doha, May 17.
London — On May 18, Qatar became the latest country to make downloading a coronavirus contact tracing app mandatory for citizens and residents, raising privacy concerns because the app can access photos, videos, and location data on the user's phone.

The government launched the app, called Ehteraz — which means "precaution" — in late April, but authorities said this week the app had to be installed when "leaving the house for any reason," starting on May 22.

Qatari health officials have maintained that there is no cause for concern over privacy, saying personal data would be kept for no more than two months before being "deleted forever."
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Arrow Up

The Agora is Growing! Rejoice!

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Sat, 01 Aug 2020 19:24 UTC
Agora is Growing
© Corbett Report
Have you entered a store without the mandated mask affixed to your face?

Visited a friend in violation of a lockdown order?

Frequented a New York bar that didn't offer "substantive" food to go with your beer?

Congratulations! You're a thought criminal!

And here's the best part: There are more thought criminals being born every day!

What am I talking about? The counter-economy, that's what!

As you'll no doubt remember from my previous writing on the subject, counter-economics is not what the Pentagon does to cook its books each year. No, it's both an idea and a practice that was pioneered by Samuel Edward Konkin III, everyone's second favourite Canadian emigre anarchist.

In An Agorist Primer, Konkin explains that "All (non-coercive) human action committed in defiance of the State constitutes the Counter-Economy." That's a deceptively simple definition, so let's tease out some of the nuance here:
  • "Non-coercive" is important because murder, theft, assault, fraud, extortion and other forms of coercion are not part of the counter-economy, but, as Konkin notes, are simply "other forms of statism."
  • "Human action" is important because, as Konkin was at pains to stress, counter-economics is not a dry, dusty theory to be discussed in a philosophy classroom, but an idea that can only be realized in practice.
  • And "in defiance of the State" is important because the purpose of counter-economics is to undermine, and, eventually, shrink the state out of existence.
So, you walk into a store without a mask in defiance of your city's ordinances? Congratulations! You're a practicing counter-economist.
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Pills

Best of the Web: The disturbing push to discredit HCQ

Tony Heller
Real Climate Science
Sat, 01 Aug 2020 00:12 UTC
I have no position on the effectiveness of any drug. But the censorship surrounding HCQ is very disturbing. Seven years ago, Dr. Fauci supported experimental medicines to fight a deadly novel coronavirus.
Coronavirus Article
© USA TodayScientists fight deadly new coronavirus
Fifteen years ago, Fauci's NIH said HCQ was a potent inhibitor or coronaviruses.
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Attention

#ExposeBillGates Day of Action 2

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Wed, 29 Jul 2020 05:19 UTC
Bill Gates
© The Last American Vagabond
On June 13, 2020, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world participated in the first ever #ExposeBillGates Day of Action. The event was a success with #ExposeBillGates trending all day on Twitter, information about Bill Gates' agenda being translated in several languages, hundreds of protests and outreach events, and mainstream outlets taking notice. Now, it's time to do it again.


Watch this video on BitChute / LBRY / Minds.com / YouTube or Download the mp4
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Attention

USA - A nation under house arrest

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Wed, 29 Jul 2020 19:13 UTC
"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle." — James Madison
House Arrest
© Premium Times Opinion
We have become one nation under house arrest.

You think we're any different from the Kentucky couple fitted out with ankle monitoring bracelets and forced to quarantine at home?

We're not

Consider what happened to Elizabeth and Isaiah Linscott.

Elizabeth took a precautionary diagnostic COVID-19 test before traveling to visit her parents and grandparents in Michigan. It came back positive: Elizabeth was asymptomatic for the novel coronavirus but had no symptoms. Her husband and infant daughter tested negative for the virus.

Now in a country where freedom actually means something, the Linscotts would have the right to determine for themselves how to proceed responsibly, but in the American Police State, we've only got as much freedom as the government allows.

That's not saying much.

Indeed, it's a dangerous time for anyone who still clings to the idea that freedom means the right to think for yourself and act responsibly according to your best judgment.

In that regard, the Linscotts are a little old-school in their thinking. When Elizabeth was asked to sign a self-quarantine order agreeing to check in daily with the health department and not to travel anywhere without prior approval, she refused.

"I shouldn't have to ask for consent because I'm an adult who can make that decision. And as a citizen of the United States of America, that is my right to make that decision without having to disclose that to somebody else," said Elizabeth. "So, no, I wouldn't wear a mask. I would do everything that I could to make sure that I wouldn't come in contact with other people because of the fear that's spreading with this. But no, I would have just stayed home, take care of my child."
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