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Health

Best of the Web: The numbers just don't add up: Nearly 500,000 went to hospital in 2018-19 flu season but today there are not enough hospital beds for coronavirus patients?

hospital beds
Really, What is going on? The data just don't add up.

The MSM and Democrats claim there are not enough hospital beds for the current 85,000 people identified with the coronavirus, many of whom will never even enter a hospital due to their relatively minor condition. Also, in 2018-19 there were plenty of beds for the nearly 500,000 patients that spent time in hospitals, due to the flu.

Via the CDC - there were 490,000 hospitalizations during the 2018-2019 flu season.

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Megaphone

Best of the Web: The propaganda of terror and fear: A lesson from recent history

Bush patriot act
President George W. Bush signs the PATRIOT Act into law, October 26th 2001
The ongoing and unfolding reactions to the Corona Virus look set to have wide-ranging and long-lasting effect on politics, society and economics. The drive to close down all activities is extraordinary as are the measures being promoted to isolate people from each other.

The deep-rooted fear of contagious disease, hardwired into the collective consciousness by historical events such as the 'Black/Bubonic Plague' and maintained through popular culture (e.g. the Hollywood movies Outbreak and Contagion), means that people are without question highly susceptible to accepting extreme emergency measures whether or not such measures are rational or justified. The New York Times called for America to be put on a war footing in order to deal with Corona whilst former Army General Stanley McChrystal has been invoking his 9/11 experience in order to prescribe lessons for today's leaders.

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Blackbox

Best of the Web: Mainstream media starting to ask questions - Laura Ingraham reports on faulty WHO coronavirus mortality rates


Comment: Finally! As we've been saying for a month now...


laura ingraham
On Friday night Laura Ingraham was the first mainstream reporter to question the WHO's suggested mortality rate of the coronavirus of 3.4%.

There are two main organizations behind the global coronavirus panic.

** The first was World Health Organization's Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who claimed in a press conference in early March that the fatality rate for the coronavirus was many multiples that of the fatality rate of the common flu. Ghebreyesus claimed the coronavirus had a 3.4% mortality rate and incorrectly compared this inaccurate number to the annual estimated flu mortality rate of 0.1%.

** And the second organization was the Imperial College study from London that claimed half a million Brits would die in the pandemic and 2 million Americans would perish from COVID-19.

They were both wrong.

Comment: See also: Coulter: How do we flatten the curve on panic?


Chalkboard

Best of the Web: Renowned German mathematician and professor of statistics slams dramatization of Covid-19

Gerd Bosbach
Gerd Bosbach, is a mathematician and an Emeritus Professor of Statistics whose main field of interest and research is statistics on demographics and health care. He is renowned enough in his country that he has a giant German Wikipedia page
The media reports daily the new «number of infected», while everyone involved actually knows that they are far too low.

The next part of the sentence then deals with "death rates", while everyone involved knows that they are far too high.

There is a confusion of terms, and politicians have to make decisions based on highly uncertain assumptions, with serious effects for society. Jens Berger spoke with professor in statistics Gerd Bosbach about definitions, numbers and the lessons that we have not drawn from past crises and hopefully will draw from this crisis in the future.

Jens Berger: Last Friday, the German Society for Epidemiology warned that in one hundred days we will have more than a million patients in Germany who will need intensive care. A horror scenario that was immediately picked up by many media, but was clearly put into proper perspective by the epidemiologists a few hours later. This forecast was made on the basis of assumptions that, let's say politely, are not really scientifically reliable. Can you explain to our readers how such reports come about?

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Cardboard Box

Best of the Web: UK's empty supermarket shelves: Panic is not the problem

Empty shelves
© David Davies/PAEmpty shelves at a Tesco store in Worcester. 'The underlying problem is that a handful of retailers dominate the market.'
Until a couple of weeks ago, the idea of waiting in an Ocado queue of 73,735 shoppers, or of supermarkets rationing milk and baked beans, would have sounded like satire. For too many people in the UK, food scarcity is the norm, with mothers and fathers going hungry to ensure their children are fed. But others have grown used to an absurd abundance: strawberries and peaches in midwinter, or 20 types of mustard alongside three score of pasta. When such bounty overflows, it seems self-evident that supplies are both plentiful and reliable - until suddenly they aren't.


Comment: The government knows this and tried to bury the report exposing the fact that a great many are relying on foodbanks to feed their families.


In fact, warns Tim Lang in his new book, Feeding Britain, our food system is "stretched, open to disruption and far from resilient". It is easy to castigate panic buyers for empty shelves. But while shopping responsibly will help others to get the food they need, only a few people are squirrelling away vast stocks. Research firm Kantar says the average spend per supermarket trip has risen by 16% to £22.13 month on month - not surprising when households realised they were likely to need lunches at home, including for children no longer in school, and could have to self-isolate for a fortnight.

Comment: In short, the massive over-centralization of power in the hands of a few is the problem.

Evidently the UK's food supply is incredibly fragile, and here are a few additional threats that the UK and many other countries face that could quite easily cause food shortages: transport difficulties due to border closures; hard frosts damaging crops; flooded fields preventing them being harvested; droughts, which seem to be a increasing occurrence; plagues of insects, such as the locust swarms decimating crops in the Middle East and Africa; an interruption to Just In Time Delivery caused by a natural disaster (Wikipedia uses an EMP as its example) - and that's just a sample, there are numerous other possibilities and many of them are already happening.

As for solutions, sadly, the vast majority cannot 'do the right thing' and buy local and organic if it's the more expensive option, and the farmers are clearly unable to do much either if their protests all over Europe are anything to go by, because they're already on the brink of going under, and many of them blame the government and it's dictatorial 'green' policies.

See also: Dystopia: UK police using drones to shame the public for going on 'non-essential' walks

And check out SOTT radio's:


Attention

Best of the Web: Covid19: If they lied then, why wouldn't they lie now?

covid-19 coronavirus
In a recent article, I accepted public health stats on ordinary flu and COV, and showed the insane contradictions in numbers and in government containment strategies.

In this article, I take another angle. The CDC has been lying about ordinary flu for decades. So why wouldn't they continue their fine tradition of lying about COV? Why should you believe ANYTHING they say about COV? Why should you accept their case numbers, their ominous warnings, their insistence on lockdowns which wreck economies?

It's simple. If a boy shows up at a grocery store the first six days of the week and steals an apple every time, when he shows up on the seventh day, why wouldn't he steal an apple? And if that boy were the de facto president of the United States — enabling him to impose draconian measures on the population — should you trust him?

The first issue is: how many people in the US die every year from the flu?

The CDC reshuffles its estimates. It used to parrot an annual figure of 36,000. Recently, it claimed 12,000-61,000 deaths per year.

In December of 2005, the British Medical Journal (online) published a shocking report by Peter Doshi, which created tremors through the halls of the CDC.

Here is a quote from Doshi's report, "Are US flu death figures more PR than science?" (BMJ 2005; 331:1412):
"[According to CDC statistics], 'influenza and pneumonia' took 62,034 lives in 2001 — 61,777 of which were attributable to pneumonia and 257 to flu, and in only 18 cases was the flu virus positively identified."
Boom.

You see, the CDC created one overall category that combines both flu and pneumonia deaths. Why do they do this? Because they disingenuously assume the pneumonia deaths are complications stemming from the flu.

Magnify

Best of the Web: The total number of coronavirus deaths to date in the world still less than total number of flu deaths in the US this flu season

coronavirus
The governments around the world have shut down the world economy for two months due to the coronavirus. These efforts which may have economic ramifications for years to come are in response to the Wuhan coronavirus which hasn't yet killed as many people worldwide as the flu killed in America this year.

As we have reported several times now — the Director of the World Health Organization created an international panic when he miscalculated the coronavirus mortality rate at 3.4%.

The controversial Ethiopian politician and Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, claimed in a press conference in early March that the fatality rate for the coronavirus was many multiples that of the fatality rate of the common flu.

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Light Sabers

Best of the Web: The War on Death

death war
OK, I've got some good news and I've got some some bad news. The good news is mainly for authoritarians who missed all the fun during the War on Terror. The news is ... welcome to the War on Death!

Yes, that's right, global capitalism (a/k/a "the world") is now at war with Death ... which is great news for authoritarians! No more bothersome critical thinking. The time for questioning our leaders is over. It's time to shut up and follow orders. We're in a global state of emergency, folks! We're talking lockdowns, soldiers in the streets, abrogation of our constitutional rights, arbitrary arrests, indefinite detentions, round-the-clock media fear-propaganda ... the whole totalitarian megillah!

What, you're probably asking, is the War on Death? Well ... for those who remember the War on Terror, the War on Death is just like that, except this time the evil enemy is Death ... or, all right, maybe not exactly like that, but there are a number of striking similarities.

For one thing, just like the War on Terror, we didn't start it. Death attacked us! There we were, peacefully going about our global capitalist business, quelling a worldwide "populist" rebellion orchestrated by Russian-backed Nazis, when Death attacked us with a coronavirus ... more or less exactly the way that the terrorists attacked us in 2001.

Video

Best of the Web: Many are currently watching Contagion, a pandemic movie that more or less follows the script currently playing out

Contagion movie
The book National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood detailed the authors' "astonishing findings from trawling through thousands of new US military and intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The documents reveal for the first time the vast scale of US government control in Hollywood, including the ability to manipulate scripts or even prevent films too critical of the Pentagon from being made — not to mention influencing some of the most popular film franchises in recent years."

I bring up that important book because of its relevance to one of the most popular movies being streamed now, during the COVID-19 "pandemic." I question whether this eleven year old film on a viral pandemic was itself a co-creation or influenced by direct government control; certainly the creators admit to working with government experts. That film is Contagion, and it is currently undergoing an online viewing resurgence in light of the COVID-19 pandemic as millions are "sheltering in place" at home, without work, confused and afraid.

Bullseye

Best of the Web: 'Models don't match reality': White House coronavirus chief rejects doomsday predictions as US tops Covid-19 case count

don't panic
© REUTERS/Mike Segar
Even as the US overtook China in the official number of Covid-19 cases, the top physician leading the White House effort urged Americans not to panic, as models predicting the death of millions keep being proven wrong everywhere.

"The predictions of the models don't match the reality on the ground in neither China, South Korea nor Italy," Dr. Deborah Birx told reporters on Thursday. She noted that the alarmist statistics about the spread of the virus said Italy would reach 400,000 deaths by now, but the actual death toll was nowhere near that.

Italy, which has been the hardest-hit in terms of deaths from Covid-19, has reported over 80,000 cases with 8,215 fatalities and counting, just as the US surged to first place in the number of confirmed cases (over 83,000), but with far lower mortality of at least 1,200 deaths attributed to the virus so far.

There is "no reality on the ground where we can see that 60-70 percent of Americans are going to get infected in the next 8-12 weeks," Birx said.