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Fri, 15 Oct 2021
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WHO condemns idea of herd immunity for Covid-19 as 'dangerous'

The WHO
© Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
The World Health Organisation has condemned the "dangerous" concept of herd immunity for managing the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO's health emergencies programme said it was wrong to think that countries can "magically" make their populations immune to Covid-19.

It was reported in March that the UK government was hoping to achieve herd immunity by allowing the virus to make its way through the population. Health secretary Matt Hancock denied it was ever part of government strategy.

Dr Ryan told a press briefing in Geneva: "Humans are not herds, and, as such, the concept of herd immunity is generally reserved for calculating how many people will need to be vaccinated and the population in order to generate that effect."


Comment: Funny. Huge centralization of power, mass surveillance, police state tactics, enforced lockdowns - sounds like the behavior of people who view humans as herds to us!


The WHO director added: "So I do think this idea that 'maybe countries who had lax measures and haven't done anything will all of a sudden magically reach some herd immunity, and so what if we lose a few old people along the way?' This is a really dangerous, dangerous calculation."


Comment: It may sound cynical, but it's common sense, and it's this kind of mental math that people do every single day of the year. Practically every death of other causes is an "acceptable loss". Car accidents cause many deaths each year, yet we still drive. Same with electricity, sports, and common viruses leading to illness. The WHO may not like it, but death is a part of life. Sometimes you have to take a cold hard look at reality and decide to have a certain number of deaths from this, to avoid a certain number of deaths from that.


Calculator

US runs $737 billion April budget deficit - Treasury

Gallatin
© Bloomberg
A statue of Albert Gallatin, former U.S. Treasury secretary, stands outside the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C.
Federal spending totaled $980 billion in April as government rushed assistance to those hurt by the economy's shutdown to fight the coronavirus A statue of Albert Gallatin, former U.S. Treasury secretary, stands outside the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, D.C. Bloomberg

The numbers

The federal government ran a budget deficit of $737.9 billion in April, up from $160 billion in the same month last year, the U.S. Treasury Department said Tuesday. This brought the fiscal year-to-date deficit to $1.48 billion up from $530.9 billion in the same period last year. The deficit in April was in line with estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

What happened

Government spending for April was $979.7 billion. That's an increase of $604 billion over April 2019. Economic impact payments to consumers were $217 billion last month. States and local governments received $142 billion. Unemployment benefits totaled $46 billion.

Stock Down

Leaked doc reveals UK gov plans to raise taxes, freeze wages and pensions, to pay for £300 billion lockdown costs

uk gov
© Telegraph
Treasury blueprint to raise taxes and freeze wages to pay for £300bn coronavirus bill share It is estimated that the coronavirus crisis will cost the Exchequer almost £300 billion this year
A confidential Treasury assessment of the coronavirus crisis estimates that it will cost the Exchequer almost £300 billion this year and could require measures including an increase in income tax, the end of the triple lock on state pension increases and a two-year public sector pay freeze.

The Telegraph can reveal that a Treasury document drawn up for Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, sets out a proposed "policy package" of tax increases and spending reductions which may have to be announced within weeks in order to "enhance credibility and boost investor confidence" in the British economy.

The document, dated May 5 and marked "Official - market sensitive", reveals that the "base case scenario" now forecasts that Britain will have a £337 billion budget deficit this year, compared to the forecast £55 billion in March's Budget.

Comment: See also:


Yoda

Rand Paul calls out Fauci over Covid-19 : 'You don't get to decide for all of us', lockdown is based on 'one wrong prediction after another'

rand Paul Fauci
© Reuters / Pool / Handout
Seantor Rand Paul (L), Dr. Anthony Fauci (R)
Republican Senator Rand Paul has challenged National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr Anthony Fauci on the nation's Covid-19 policy, suggesting the US is waiting too long to reopen.

Paul, who also has a medical degree, called for "a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what's best for our economy," questioning Fauci's support for a prolonged economic shutdown during a Senate hearing on the government's coronavirus response on Tuesday.

Comment: Fauci better be cautious of showing his face outside the Democrat DC cocoon.


Bad Guys

Joe Biden 'not ready to run': Ex-NBC Executive Tom Rogers

joe biden dementia

Joe Biden
Former NBC executive Tom Rogers revealed his fears that 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden is not "ready for prime time election season," Monday, calling his performances to date "very unsatisfying" and his messages on the coronavirus not "very convincing."

Rogers — currently editor at large with Newsweek — appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe to discuss his latest column: "Words Matter. And Joe Biden Needs to Use His Better."

"Trump has been dominating the media as we all know and Biden has not been in the spotlight, but that is going to shift, and when it shifts Biden needs to perform," declared Rogers, adding, "The bottom line is the candidate needs to able to articulate a clear and convincing message and particularly when it comes to the pandemic, what my piece says is he's not there yet."

Comment: Joe Biden, beside being a decrepit, corrupt, vile Swamp creature, is mentally and morally unfit to be running an ice cream stand, let alone a country.


Biohazard

Viruses are the new terrorists: British PM introduces five-tier 'coronavirus alert system'

5 tier chart
Boris Johnson has announced a five-tier alert system to rank the threat from coronavirus - although experts said it was not immediately clear how independent or effective the scheme would be.

The current threat level of the pandemic will be categorised on a scale of one to five in different parts of the country, based on assessments by a new "joint biosecurity centre".

The system is designed to mirror the independent terror alert system, which ranks the threat to the public from "low" to "critical" and helps decide what protective measures are required.

The prime minister said in his broadcast to the nation that the alert system would help the country "avoid going back to square one". Alert levels, he added, would be determined by the number of cases and the R number, or transmission rate, of the virus.



Comment: Quite the polished sales pitch from Boris! He needs everyone to believe...


Comment: They want us to believe authorities always know best. They have developed new and improved tracking systems (with bonus future adaptability) to prove it. They're here for us...in our time of need.
Britain mulls implementing a 'quarantine' at the end of May or early June for incoming visitors, speculating 14 days might just do it. With Macron's persuasion, France temporarily received 'a pass', responding that "any measures on either side would be taken in a concerted and reciprocal manner."
Heathrow
© Reuters/Toby Melville
Socially-distanced seating at Heathrow Airport, London, Britain, May 10, 2020.


Airlines chimed in, saying:

"We will be asking for assurances that this decision has been led by the science and that government has a credible exit plan, with weekly reviews to ensure the restrictions are working and still required," the trade body, Airlines UK, said on Saturday.

Karen Dee, the chief executive of the Airport Operators Association warned the move will "not only have a devastating impact on the UK aviation industry, but also on the wider economy" altogether.

Michelle, a stickler for clarification, has come up with the most logical answer to this whole global fiasco:



Footprints

Russia in lockstep: Putin 'eases coronavirus lockdown restrictions' (despite official numbers of Covid-19 cases increasing)

Putin
© bne INTELLINEWS
Russian President Vladimir Putin during lockdown
Russian President Vladimir Putin has lifted many of Russia's coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown restrictions, but the number of those infected continues to rise to new daily record highs.

"Starting from tomorrow, May 12, the national period of non-working days will be over for all sectors of the economy," Putin said.

Russia had a total of 221,344 coronavirus cases and 2,009 deaths as of May 11. While many European countries are now seeing their curves flatten and the daily tally of confirmed new cases starting to fall, in Russia the spread of the infection is still accelerating, with 11,656 new cases reported on May 11 - a new daily record.

However, countries around the world are desperate to lift restrictions and put their populations back to work. Russia's economy has already shrunk by a third since the double whammy of an oil price collapse and the coronavirus related lockdown delivered a body blow to the economy. The previous crisis in 2014 cost Russia around $150mn a week and wiped some half a trillion dollars off the value of the country's economy.


Vader

Soros: 'I do not think anybody knows how capitalism will evolve' given the coronavirus pandemic


Comment: Let's tune in what Emperor Palpatine Soros makes of all this...


Soros, Schmitz
© YouTube
George Soros • Gregor Peter Schmitz
The investor talks about COVID-19, the possible breakup of the European Union and the weakened power of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Gregor Peter Schmitz: You have seen many crises. Is the COVID-19 pandemic comparable to any previous one?

George Soros: No. This is the crisis of my lifetime. Even before the pandemic hit, I realized that we were in a revolutionary moment where what would be impossible or even inconceivable in normal times had become not only possible, but probably absolutely necessary. And then came COVID-19, which has totally disrupted people's lives and required very different behavior. It is an unprecedented event that probably has never occurred in this combination. And it really endangers the survival of our civilization.

GPS: Could this crisis have been prevented if governments had been better prepared?

SOROS: We have had infectious disease pandemics ever since the bubonic plague. They were quite frequent in the nineteenth century, and then we had the Spanish flu at the end of World War I, which actually occurred in three waves, with the second wave being the deadliest. Millions of people died. And we have had other serious outbreaks, such as the swine flu just a decade ago. So it's amazing how unprepared countries were for something like this.

Comment: Soros ackowledges only the reality he wishes to see.

The real 'pessimism' his class don't acknowledge is that the game's up - for everyone.


Arrow Up

Trump confirms ObamaGate is real

Trump
© Unknown
US President Donald Trump
At a press briefing just moments ago, U.S President Donald Trump confirmed that Obama Gate (#ObamaGate) is real. On Mother's Day, Trump sent out a series of tweets, creating a twitter storm over the hashtag Obama Gate, which later Twitter openly suppressed.

Regarding the Twitter suppression of #ObamaGate - this alone raises significant legal questions for Twitter, which has been under fire for its policy of extreme political censorship. Trump has previously stated in plain English, on the Twitter platform, that he uses Twitter as his primary mode of communication to the public, various department officials, and to other world leaders: he has given a form of legal notice to that effect. Therefore, suppressing his messages amounts to a serious crime of sabotaging or otherwise interfering with the communications, orders, and diplomatic initiatives of an American president. See chart below.

Trump reaffirmed his Mother's Day tweets that Obama had committed the worst crime that a president could. This was a reference to the charges against former U.S President Richard Nixon, who was accused of using the authority of the Oval Office to spy on a political opponent. Trump has alleged that Obama did the same, and recent revelations surrounding leaked notes and a phone call, appear to affirm these accusations.

Comment: See also:


Oil Well

Why have oil prices not collapsed currency into freefall? Thank Russia's levitating ruble

money
© putnik/Aleksey Sukhorukov
While low prices for 'black gold' keep shaking the world's economies, and major oil-exporting nations are trying to weather the trend, the Russian national currency has proven it still has an ace up its sleeve.

The collapse of oil prices at the start of March, after Russia withdrew from the OPEC+ deal, was a disaster for Moscow which remains heavily reliant on oil exports to fund the budget.

But then an odd thing happened: the price of oil lost 56 percent of its value in the year-to-date, as of May 7, but the ruble is down by only 19 percent over the same period. Like some Tibetan monetary monk, the ruble's value has managed to levitate and stay up, even as the oil-price ground fell away from underneath it.

The ruble's value has long been tied to the price of oil and the two used to move in lockstep. That changed when the Russian Ministry of Finance introduced the so-called budget rule (aka the financial rule), which automatically siphons off any excess oil-export revenue to the National Welfare Fund (NWF) for all revenues earned from oil prices over US$42.

That rule led to the buildup of the reserve fund, which held 12 trillion rubles, or 11 percent of GDP as of April 1, and helped bring down inflation to post-Soviet lows, but, most importantly, largely broke the tie between the ruble's value and the price of oil.