Puppet Masters
Those against it argue Planet Lockdown not only is not stopping the spread of Covid-19 but also has landed the global economy into a cryogenic state - with unforeseen, dire consequences. Thus quarantine should apply essentially to the population with the greatest risk of death: the elderly.
With Planet Lockdown transfixed by heart-breaking reports from the Covid-19 frontline, there's no question this is an incendiary assertion.
In parallel, a total corporate media takeover is implying that if the numbers do not substantially go down, Planet Lockdown - an euphemism for house arrest - remains, indefinitely.
Michael Levitt, 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry and Stanford biophysicist, was spot on when he calculated that China would get through the worst of Covid-19 way before throngs of health experts believed, and that "What we need is to control the panic".
Let's cross this over with some facts and dissident opinion, in the interest of fostering an informed debate.
"Thank you for your Democrat public relations letter and incorrect sound bites, which are wrong in every way," Trump said in the letter.
In a letter earlier in the day, Schumer wrote to Trump saying that the "national response is far behind where it should be." The letter raised the issue of shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical supplies in New York state and other areas across the United States, and called for the Trump administration to "designate a senior military officer to fix this urgent problem."
Schumer also accused Trump of having dismissed the Defense Production Act (DPA) "as not being needed," and criticized Trump's appointment of White House aide Peter Navarro as the National DPA Policy Coordinator as "woefully unqualified" for solving the PPE and ventilator shortages.
© Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Donald Trump holds up the results of his CCP virus test in the press briefing room with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in Washington on April 2, 2020.
President Donald Trump holds up the results of his CCP virus test in the press briefing room with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in Washington on April 2, 2020.
Around 30 million people in the country lack insurance.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, top administration officials are focused on a plan that would relieve people without insurance from paying for virus testing or treatment. COVID-19 is a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.
"The president has made it clear: we don't want any American to worry about the cost of getting a test or the cost of getting treatment," Vice President Mike Pence, the White House Coronavirus Task Force head, told reporters on Thursday night.
The task force is working on a proposal that would use some of the $100 billion directed toward hospitals in a recent piece of legislation to compensate hospitals directly for any CCP virus treatment they provide to uninsured Americans.
The exact details are still being worked out.
© Getty Images
David Clark ignored his own government's rules to go mountain biking.
David Clark ignored his own government's rules to go mountain biking.
David Clark was spotted parking his van at a car park 2.3km from his home in Dunedin, after the government instructed people to exercise locally amid the coronavirus pandemic.
A Toyota Hiace van, with Mr Clark's face on it, was photographed parked near Signal Hill Lookout this morning.
Comment: Silly New Zealanders! The rules are for the plebs, not the elite!
© Reuters / Jonathan Bachman
There's no business like no business. New Orleans, Louisiana
There's no business like no business. New Orleans, Louisiana
Thousands of banks expected to participate in the Trump administration's coronavirus stimulus loan program for small businesses are getting cold feet at the eleventh hour, representatives from those banks told a handful of media outlets on Thursday. If they pull out, the entire future of the program is uncertain - and with it the future of millions of American small businesses that employ half the country's workforce and are facing utter economic devastation if the lifeline promised by their government doesn't arrive soon.
With applications for the loans due to open at midnight on Friday, time is running out for the Paycheck Protection Program to pull itself together. The $350 billion segment of the $2 trillion coronavirus fiscal stimulus package signed into law last month was designed to give the small and medium-sized enterprises a nice low-interest (0.5 percent) loan to tide them through the crisis. Applicants can ask for as much as 2.5 times their average monthly payroll and won't even have to pay back the money if they use it to keep their business running.
Comment: The situation is the same in the UK, and it's not like governments couldn't have foreseen it happening because it is simply a repeat of 2008: UK banks not lending government backed emergency loans to small businesses, up to a million may go under
Moreover, while global attention is focused on COVID-19, attention has been distracted from the many other ongoing crises - particularly including the vast range of threats that constitute an imminent danger to human existence: see 'Human Extinction Now Imminent and Inevitable? A Report on the State of Planet Earth'- and no doubt other undesirable initiatives being carried out by the global elite outside our view. In addition, activism has been stymied as activists are either themselves distracted by COVID-19 or hindered by the measures (such as 'social distancing' and bans on public gatherings) introduced to supposedly deal with it.
Before and since writing 'Observing Elites Manipulate Our Fear', more evidence has been published pointing at an elite coup with governments around the world introducing draconian measures severely curtailing human rights and freedoms (including those involving the internet) and destroying national economies.
President Alexander Lukashenko took part in a game of ice hockey this weekend
The country - specifically its president - has shrugged off concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak, starkly illustrated on Sunday with the nation's football matches continuing as normal.
As most countries enforce strict measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, fans continued to shuffle into football grounds as they would any other weekend.
Few social distancing measures appear to be in force, but spectators at some grounds did have their temperatures checked before being granted entry.
© Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images
Asset values were priced for perfection.
Asset values were priced for perfection.
A fall in revenue is problematic but manageable without debt. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the 2008 crash, debt levels were increased rather than reduced, encouraged in part by low policy rates and the abundant liquidity engineered by central banks globally. Global debt as a percentage of GDP rose from around 250% in 2007 to 325% in 2019. Current debt levels are triple what they were in 1999. Businesses and households, with declining or no income and high levels of borrowing, now face an existential struggle to meet large financial commitments.
A second problem is that, in the "everything bubble," asset prices were priced for perfection. Policymakers boosted the values of financial assets to increase economic activity via the wealth effect, and to support borrowing to protect financial institutions.
© REUTERS /TOBY MELVILLE
A man in a protective face mask walks past a British government public health campaign advertisement at Victoria underground station.
A man in a protective face mask walks past a British government public health campaign advertisement at Victoria underground station.
Take the arrival of Russian medical aid to the US this week. That was promptly arranged after US President Donald Trump asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a phone call for help in coping with the coronavirus crisis. Even before the Antonov-124 cargo plane touched down at JFK airport certain US media outlets were labelling the gesture of solidarity as a "propaganda gimmick" by the Kremlin.
It was surmised that the Russian response to the US request for aid was "to push efforts for relief from sanctions" imposed by Washington. The cynical inference is that supposed Russian conniving and deceit knows no bounds in the black art of manipulation.
How about just simply acknowledging the evident fact that Russia is sending vital medical help to the US at a time of need motivating by no other sentiment than basic humanitarian compassion? The fact that Russia has been slapped with numerous US sanctions over recent years since the Ukraine crisis as well as stemming from bizarre claims of Moscow meddling in the 2016 US presidential election - only goes to show Russia's capacity for magnanimity. Simple as that folks.
The same pathetic distortion was earlier voiced regarding Russian and Chinese aid to Italy and other European countries stricken with the deadly virus.
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