Best of the Web:


Biohazard

Flashback Best of the Web: CDC suddenly shuts down US Army's Fort Detrick bioweapons lab due to 'lapses in safety'

Shawna Williams
The Scientist
Wed, 07 Aug 2019 19:54 UTC

Comment: Was this an emergency containment effort at the US govt's top bioweapons lab last August?

And did it fail?


lab maryland
© FLICKR, MARYLAND GOVPICS
Research on dangerous pathogens has been suspended at an Army lab at Fort Detrick in Maryland after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found biosafety lapses there, the Frederick News-Post reported August 2. A spokesperson for the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) tells the newspaper that no disease-causing materials have been found outside authorized areas at the site.

According to its website, USAMRIID has been the US Department of Defense's lead laboratory for medical biological defense research since 1969. The News-Post reports that the facility has both level 3 and level 4 biosafety labs and has worked on pathogens such as Ebola, Yersinia pestis (plague), and Francisella tularensis (tularemia). Those pathogens are among those considered "select agents and toxins" by the Department of Health and Human Services, which only allows authorized labs to work on them.

Comment: See also:

Why was a US military lab handling high-level disease shut down in July 2019?

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Top Secret

Best of the Web: Why was a US military lab handling high-level disease shut down in July 2019?

Leng Shumei
Global Times
Sun, 15 Mar 2020 22:03 UTC
Fort Detrick Maryland
Fort Detrick, Maryland, actual source of the 'Wuhan' Flu?
Netizens and experts are calling for the US government to release information on the suspension of an infectious disease research lab under the US Army, as a petition on the White House website listed coincident events between the closure and the outbreak of COVID-19, urging the US government to clarify whether the lab was related to the deadly virus.

While the origin of the novel coronavirus is still unknown and conspiracy theories have caused widespread panic, experts said that timely information disclosure to the public would benefit global unity and cooperation against the pandemic, which had infected more than 150,000 people and killed 5,400 around the world as of Saturday.

The Fort Detrick laboratory that handles high-level disease-causing material, such as Ebola, in Fredrick, Maryland was shut after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a cease and desist order to the organization in July, 2019 according to local media.

The suspension was due to multiple causes, including failure to follow local procedures and a lack of periodic recertification training for workers in the biocontainment laboratories. The wastewater decontamination system of the lab also failed to meet standards set by the Federal Select Agent Program, media reported.

Comment: Mandated to cease biological weapon research, labs such as the one at Fort Detrick merely change their official name, re-describe their purpose and continue the same research under a new cover identity. Who makes these decisions? Who do these labs answer to?

If it transpires that bioweapons scientists at Fort Detrick were messing around with viruses in vaccines that mutated and 'went wild', should we call this outbreak 'the American Flu'?

See also:

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Caesar

Best of the Web: Viktor Frankl: Saying Yes to Life in Difficult Times

Michael Cook
Intellectual Takeout
Fri, 20 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl
Man's Search for Meaning is one of the most powerful arguments for human dignity of the 20th Century. The author is Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and a Jew, who spent about three years in concentration camps, including Auschwitz. His father, mother, brother and his pregnant wife all perished in the camps.

Frankl was astonishingly productive and soon after he was released in April 1945, he was back at work. The next year he wrote his memoir of Auschwitz. In German the title of the first edition was Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager, which translates roughly as "In spite of everything, say Yes to life: a psychologist's experience of the concentration camp". Later he added a section reflecting on his experiences and sketching what became the third school of Viennese psychology, logotherapy.

Man's Search for Meaning was an immediate best-seller which made the author famous around the world. By the time of his death in 1997, it had sold more than 10 million copies.

It's astonishingly contemporary, for more than any other book I've read, it speaks to the anxieties of a society in which suffering has no meaning and euthanasia seems like a plausible solution to life's pain.

Comment: See also:

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Chalkboard

Best of the Web: COVID-19: All truth has three stages

Larry Romanoff
Global Research
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 07:47 UTC
coronavirus green


First, it is ignored.

Second, it is widely ridiculed.

Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

With COVID-19, we have now entered Stage 2. At first, the media ignored the claims and the analysis that the virus could have originated in the US. But the spread of information and restatements of evidence from all sides, including in the US itself, has become too intense and now the claims are being openly ridiculed in the Western media.

Briefly, Chinese virologists discovered conclusively that the original source of the virus was not China, nor Wuhan, nor the seafood market, but had been traced to the US, a possible scenario being that the virus might have originated at the US Military's bio-weapons lab at Fort Detrick (which was shut down by the CDC in July, because of outbreaks), and brought to China during the World Military Games in October 2019.

Also, Japanese and Taiwanese virologists arrived independently at the conclusion that the virus could have originated in the US.

The Americans did their best from before the beginning to deflect culpability by crafting tales of bats, snakes, pangolins, the seafood market, the Wuhan University being a bio-weapons facility (which it is not), and the CIA tale leaked through the VOA and Radio Free Asia that the virus leaked from that university. They stated (factually) that Chinese researchers had participated (7 years ago) in similar virus research funded by the US NIH, thus somehow insinuating Chinese culpability, ignoring that the prior research was irrelevant to current events.

Comment: Indeed, the media 'doth protesteth too much' by directly and loudly attacking this particular 'conspiracy theory'.

We like the author's research on this. It's reasonably solid and certainly plausible.

We would like to offer one qualifying remark, however: we do not think anyone in the US intended to do this deliberately to China. Those US soldiers participating in the Military Games in Wuhan last Fall were more likely unwitting carriers of 'COVID-19' after it leaked containment at Fort Detrick in Maryland.

See also:

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Family

Flashback Best of the Web: The flu has already killed 10,000 across US as world frets over coronavirus

Jessica Bursztynsky
CNBC
Wed, 05 Feb 2020 01:20 UTC

Comment: This was reported by the MSM 6 weeks ago, before they ramped up the virus hysteria. How quickly their tune has changed! Interestingly, those numbers weren't enough to shut down global economies and put citizens into lockdown mode. Neither were your neighbours or those around them concerned with 'protecting the vulnerable'. Life went on as usual. The sleight of hand performed on the world by the media and governments to convince us that this coronavirus merits the loss of our freedoms and safety will go down in history as one of the biggest frauds we have ever seen.


influenza, cold virus, sick woman
© Miguel Vidal / Reuters
While the new coronavirus ravages much of China and world leaders rush to close their borders to protect citizens from the outbreak, the flu has quietly killed 10,000 in the U.S. so far this influenza season.

At least 19 million people have come down with the flu in the U.S. with 180,000 ending up in the hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The flu season, which started in September and can run until May, is currently at its peak and poses a greater health threat to the U.S. than the new coronavirus, physicians say. The new virus, which first emerged in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31, has sickened roughly 17,400 and killed 362 people mostly in that country as of Monday morning.

"In the U.S., it's really a fear based on media and this being something new," Dr. Jennifer Lighter, hospital epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health, said of the new coronavirus. "When in reality, people can take measures to protect themselves against the flu, which is here and prevalent and has already killed 10,000 people."

Comment: See also:

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Eye 1

Best of the Web: Never let a crisis go to waste: US lawmakers bask in coronavirus panic while quietly building the police state of their dreams

Helen Buyniski
RT
Fri, 20 Mar 2020 17:01 UTC
Coronavirus checkpoint
© Reuters / Andrew KellyCoronavirus checkpoint
As the coronavirus epidemic monopolizes the attention of the American people, government is taking the opportunity to sneak through all manner of restrictive legislation, including a law that could end the internet as we know it.

Killing the internet... to save the children?

The ominously-named EARN IT Act (short for "Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act") that quietly debuted in the Senate earlier this month is a carefully crafted weapon for crushing encryption without explicitly banning, industry professionals have warned. While this particular bill purports to be all about ending child sexual exploitation, the industry is concerned it will make their business model unsustainable - while doing nothing to protect children. So are independent media producers, who fear their speech would be declared anathema. It would in practice strip section 230 legal immunity - protection from liability for third party content - from any website that failed to comply with a set of "best practices" imposed on a supposedly voluntary basis by a 19-member "commission" run by Attorney General William Barr.
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2 + 2 = 4

Best of the Web: You don't say. 'Coronavirus death rate in Wuhan 65% lower than previously thought'

Pam Belluck
New York Times
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 22:49 UTC
Researchers calculated a 1.4 percent likelihood of dying in the city where the pandemic began. Earlier estimates ranged from 2 percent to 3.4 percent.
Tedros Adhanom
Tedros Adhanom, Director general of the World Health Organization
A new study reports that people who became sick from the coronavirus in the Chinese city where the outbreak began likely had a lower death rate than previously thought.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Medicine, calculated that people with coronavirus symptoms in Wuhan, China, had a 1.4 percent likelihood of dying. Some previous estimates have ranged from 2 percent to 3.4 percent.


Comment: Eh, 3.4%. You ALL were reporting 3.4%. Which is why most people on Earth have spent the last 6 weeks bleating that figure back to each other.


Assessing the risk of death in Wuhan is instructive because it provides a snapshot of the epidemic from the beginning, when doctors were scrambling to treat people with the brand-new virus and hospitals were overwhelmed. Some experts say that such a benchmark — known as the symptomatic case fatality rate — could be lower in countries like the United States if measures like widespread business and school closures and appeals for social distancing have the desired effect of slowing the spread of the disease.

Comment: They're STILL harping on about how 'this is worse than the seasonal flu'.

But the above is only their first revision down of the mortality rate.

Also reported today, 19 March: there are no new cases in Wuhan.

The virus is done there. For this winter season anyway.

So here's what will most likely represent the global mortality rate:

Population of Wuhan = 11 million

COVID-19 deaths in Wuhan = +/-2,200

What percentage of 11 million is 2,200?

0.02%

Which is far less than the season flu mortality rate.

Damn the Fake News Media and the horses of the Apocalypse they rode in on.

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Syringe

Flashback Best of the Web: Swine flu was as elusive as WMD. The real threat is mad scientist syndrome

Simon Jenkins
The Guardian
Sat, 16 Jan 2010 12:39 UTC
Remember the warnings of 65,000 dead? Health chiefs should admit they were wrong - yet again - about a global pandemic
swine flu h1n1 hysteria
The media always hypes these things way out of proportion to their actual threat
Let me recap. Six months ago I reviewed the latest bit of terrorism to emerge from the government's Cobra bunker, courtesy of Alan Johnson, home secretary. Swine flu was allegedly ravaging the nation. The BBC was intoning nightly statistics on what "could" happen as "the deadly virus" took hold. The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, bandied about any figure that came into his head, settling on "65,000 could die", peaking at 350 corpses a day.

Donaldson knew exactly what would happen. The media went berserk. The World Health Organisation declared a "six-level alert" so as to "prepare the world for an imminent attack". The happy-go-lucky virologist, John Oxford, said half the population could be infected, and that his lowest estimate was 6,000 dead.

The "Andromeda strain" was stalking the earth, and its first victims were clearly scientists. Drugs were frantically stockpiled and key workers identified as vital to be saved for humanity's future. Cobra alerted the army. Morgues were told to stand ready. The Green party blamed intensive pig farming. The Guardian listed "the top 10 plague books".
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Light Saber

Flashback Best of the Web: Interview with Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg: H1N1 'Swine Flu pandemic' was one of the greatest medical scandals of the century

Louise Voller & Kristian Villesen
Wodarg.de
Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:24 UTC
Image
© UnknownWolfgang Wodarg
Here is my interview for the Danish 'Information' on the swine-flu pandemic:

"We have had a mild flu - and a false pandemic," says Wolfgang Wodarg, the chair of the Health Committee in The European Council. The German parliamentarian is also an epidemiologist and former health director in Flensburg. For that reason he has followed the H1N1 pandemic closely since June 11 and up to the present. He calls the pandemic "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century", and for that reason he has decided to take the case to the European Council:

"In January, we will arrange an emergency debate about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the WHO, and 47 parliaments all over Europe are going to be informed. Following this, we will initiate an investigation and hearings involving those responsible for the pandemic emergency," says Wolfgang Wodarg.

"The aim is that none of the pharmaceutical companies under any circumstances must be allowed to make their influence felt on pandemic emergencies," he says and adds that rules for patenting also will be checked:
"Vaccines are also an ethical issue. The pharmaceutical industry should not be allowed to get a patent to develop a preparation which is so important for our society."
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Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: Coronavirus and the Gates Foundation

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 18 Mar 2020 02:10 UTC
bill gates
Arguably, no one has been more active in promoting and funding research on vaccines aimed at dealing with coronavirus than Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. From sponsoring a simulation of a coronavirus global pandemic, just weeks before the Wuhan outbreak was announced, to funding numerous corporate efforts to come up with a novel vaccine for the apparently novel virus, the Gates presence is there. What does it actually entail?

We must admit that at the very least Bill Gates is prophetic. He has claimed for years that a global killer pandemic will come and that we are not prepared for it. On March 18, 2015 Gates gave a TED talk on epidemics in Vancouver. That day he wrote on his blog, "I just gave a brief talk on a subject that I've been learning a lot about lately — epidemics. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is a tragedy — as I write this, more than 10,000 people have died." Gates then added, "As awful as this epidemic has been, the next one could be much worse. The world is simply not prepared to deal with a disease — an especially virulent flu, for example — that infects large numbers of people very quickly. Of all the things that could kill 10 million people or more, by far the most likely is an epidemic."
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