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Why massive fatality rates from Italy are misleading

Peter Andrews
RT
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Coronavirus emergency patient Italy
© Reuters / Pool
In Italy, the proportion of infected people dying from the novel coronavirus — 10 percent according to the latest figures — seems through the roof. Unsurprisingly, there is more to this terrifying figure than meets the eye.

You do not need to be an expert to calculate the mortality rate. It is one number divided by another — the number of people who have died from the virus divided by the total number of confirmed cases. In the case of Italy, 7,503 dead divided by 74,386 infected gives a mortality rate of roughly 10 percent. But that does not mean that one in ten people who contract the virus will die, despite what the scaremongering media would have you believe.

The first reason why is that the first, smaller number — the number of deaths from Covid-19 — is impossible to underestimate. People are either alive or dead, and usually as soon as a person dies they will quickly find their way into the national statistics.

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Padlock

Suspending the Constitution: Police State uses crises to expand its lockdown powers

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
police state
"That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on."― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
You can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured.

This coronavirus pandemic is no exception.

Not only are the federal and state governments unraveling the constitutional fabric of the nation with lockdown mandates that are sending the economy into a tailspin and wreaking havoc with our liberties, but they are also rendering the citizenry fully dependent on the government for financial handouts, medical intervention, protection and sustenance.

Unless we find some way to rein in the government's power grabs, the fall-out will be epic.

Everything I have warned about for years — government overreach, invasive surveillance, martial law, abuse of powers, militarized police, weaponized technology used to track and control the citizenry, and so on — has coalesced into this present moment.

The government's shameless exploitation of past national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes pales in comparison to what is presently unfolding.

It's downright Machiavellian.

Comment: One question that the author of this great article seems to be leaving out is whether or not Trump really wants these powers, or, if his hand is being forced by the legion of deep state apparatchiks who are so powerful in Washington.

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USA

The Federal Reserve is contemptuous of non-elites and about to make the financial system much, much worse

Mike Whitney
The Unz Reader
Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
federal reserve
Imagine if the congress approved a measure to form a public-private partnership between the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Can you imagine that?

Now imagine if a panicky and ill-informed Congress gave the Fed a blank check to bail out all of its crooked crony corporate and Wall Street friends, allowing the Fed to provide more than $4.5 trillion to underwater corporations that ripped off Mom and Pop investors by selling them bonds that were used to goose their stock prices so fatcat CEOs could make off like bandits. Imagine if all that red ink from private actors was piled onto the national debt pushing long-term interest rates into the stratosphere while crushing small businesses, households and ordinary working people.

Now try to imagine the impact this would have on the nation's future. Imagine if the Central Bank was given the green-light to devour the Treasury, control the country's "purse strings", and use nation's taxing authority to shore up its trillions in ultra-risky leveraged bets, its opaque financially-engineered ponzi-instruments, and its massive speculative debts that have gone pear-shaped leaving a gaping black hole on its balance sheet?

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Broom

France recalling troops from Iraq over coronavirus as it deploys others to its borders


RT
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 21:06 UTC
french soldiers
© REUTERS/Christophe Ena
FILE PHOTO: French soldiers on the outskirts of the city of Mosul, outside the Kurdish city of Erbil, Iraq, January 2, 2017.
Paris will remove all of its troops currently stationed in Iraq for the time being over concerns about the spread of Covid-19, the French military announced.

"France has taken the decision to repatriate until further notice its personnel deployed in operation Chammal in Iraq," the Armed Forces Ministry said on Wednesday, adding that around 100 troops were in the country, and that air strikes against the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) would continue.

Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told the newspaper Al-Sabah on Wednesday that the French troops have already left Iraq.
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Clipboard

Senate Republicans hold press conference demanding immediate fix to 'life-threatening drafting error' in coronavirus package

Henry Rodgers
Daily Mail
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 02:28 UTC
Senator Graham
Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday held a press conference with a group of Republican Senators to call for an immediate fix to a "life-threatening drafting error" in the coronavirus package.

Graham was joined by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, and Florida Sen. Rick Scott at the press conference to discuss the coronavirus emergency legislation. The presser was first announced in a tweet by Graham, saying they "will discuss a massive drafting error in the current version of the coronavirus relief legislation that could have devastating consequences."

"A massive drafting error in the current version of the coronavirus relief legislation could have devastating consequences: Unless this bill is fixed, there is a strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work," the group said in a statement.

"This isn't an abstract, philosophical point — it's an immediate, real-world problem. If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families' tables," the statement said.
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Biohazard

Analysis finds UK security agencies had ample warnings, yet did 'no planning or intel gathering' on pandemic threats


RT
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 19:58 UTC
london pedestrian facemask coronavirus
© Reuters / Hannah McKay
The risk of a devastating pandemic was repeatedly raised by UK policy-making officials for 15 years, but the threat was never taken seriously or prepared for by British security and intelligence officials, new analysis says.

Systematic planning or intelligence gathering around health crises "does not appear to take place in any UK security agency" despite the fact that their proclaimed roles are to keep the country safe, according to Declassified UK, which conducted the research.

The lack of focus on health crises is not for lack of warnings. The National Risk Register has "regularly concluded" that an influenza pandemic is the "gravest threat" to UK security, and could see potentially 750,000 deaths in a worst-case scenario as well as major supply disruptions without proper precautions.

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Bullseye

Trump outs New Green Deal and the shut-down folly of the US economy

Matthew Ehret
The Canadian Patriot
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Trump/Hemmer
© AP/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump and FOX News host Bill Hemmer during a virtual town hall with members of the coronavirus task force, in the Rose Garden, March 24, 2020.
President Trump has demonstrated a dramatic about-face on his support for a total shutdown of America during a Virtual Town Hall meeting on March 24 which comes in the wake of the President's attacks on Pompeo's State Department (which Trump referred to as Pompeo's "Deep State Department" on March 20).

During his March 24 Virtual Town Hall event, Trump not only called for an end to the economic shutdown which has crippled America's economy, but also described how he was backed into a wall by teams of "experts" who made it impossible for him to avoid declaring a state of emergency on March 13 whereby America effectively ground to a halt, while trillions were issued to bailout failing banks and corporations.

Comment: Is Trump suffering from the flu? His independent thinking has produced too many logical answers for such odd and suspicious dictates!

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Arrow Down

Will $2T fix it? Covid-19 exposes the state of America's economy and society

Scott Ritter
RT
Tue, 24 Mar 2020 18:18 UTC
burnt dollar
© Getty Images/skodonnell
As Congress and the president bicker over a huge financial stimulus package designed to keep the US economy afloat, they must confront the real existential questions facing the country.

Despite all the wrangling, there will be a national economic stimulus package passed by the Congress and signed by the president. Domestic political imperative guarantees as much. The American economy has largely shut down because of the social lockdown mandated by the coronavirus pandemic, and without a stimulus package the entire system would collapse with little hope of ever fully recovering.

The cost of the package will approximate $2 trillion, give or take a few hundred billion. No matter what the final amount is, it will exceed by far the nearly $1.5 trillion combined bailout/stimulus packages approved by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to recover from the 2008 economic crisis. The 2008 package, however, was a one-time deal; the coronavirus stimulus covers a period of approximately one month, after which the economy either gets restarted, or Congress and the president will be looking at the need for a follow-on stimulus package of similar size and scope.

Comment: Many nations are in the same or worse conditions due to coronavirus mandates. All of them will be making hard decisions during recovery. Few leaders will be as quick and financially astute as Trump regarding the need to jump-start national productivity and public well-being. Will it work? Time will tell.

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Health

Maduro: Suspended rent payments, increased wage protections as coronavirus cases reach 77 in Venezuela

Paul Dobson
venezuelanalysis.com
Mon, 23 Mar 2020 05:35 UTC
Maduro
© PrensaPresidencial/Twitter
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro addresses COVID-19 virus measures.
The Venezuelan government announced a series of measures on Sunday in attempts to protect the population from the economic effects of the coronavirus crisis. The economic measures come as the country enters its seventh day of national lockdown.

Speaking on a live televised address, President Nicolas Maduro instructed that all commercial and residential rent, as well as all capital and loan interest payments, are to be suspended for six months.

Public- and private- sector workers will receive a special government bonus, and wages of small and midsize companies will be paid by the state until September. A pre-existing workplace stability decree has also been extended until the end of the year, outlawing job dismissals as a result of the quarantine.

Loan appeals by small and medium businesses are to be fast-tracked, and a special agricultural investment plan will look to guarantee the contents of the subsidised Local Food Production and Provision Committees (CLAP) food boxes for a reported seven million families. Telecommunications companies have also been barred from cutting off customers for six months.

Upon unveiling the measures, Maduro promised to use "all his power and consciousness to protect jobs" and the most vulnerable in society during the quarantine lockdown.

Comment: President Maduro shows a remarkable competency and care for the wellbeing of Venezuelans, belying Western consensus he's an 'evil dictator' out to trash his country!

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Oil Well

Trump reportedly okay with Saudi plan to squeeze Russia out of the oil market


Sputnik
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 19:19 UTC
donald trump
© Drew Angerer / Getty Images / Agence France-Presse
President Donald Trump last week hinted that the US would wade into the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia at the appropriate time, saying low gasoline prices were good for American consumers despite hurting the industry.

US President Donald Trump was quite happy with Saudi Arabia's plans to oust Russia from certain oil markets by hiking oil production, Politico reports citing informed sources.

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