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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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Bad Guys

Lockheed Martin promo simulates preemptive strikes on Russian ICBM & S-400


RT
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 02:04 UTC
Lockheed
© YouTube / Lockheed Martin
A screenshot from Lockheed Martin's latest promotional video, simulating preemptive US strikes on Russia.
Apparently chomping at the bit for a major conflict with a nuclear-armed rival, America's top arms dealer Lockheed Martin has released a promotional clip imagining a simulated first strike on Russian positions and weapons systems.

Boasting the superiority of US military tech - much of which appears only in concept and computer-generated graphics - the brief video was unveiled this week by Lockheed's Advanced Development Program, also known as Skunk Works. The troublesome F-35 fighter jet seems to be the only system featured in the video to actually exist at present, however - the rest being prototypes in various stages of development.

While the video's narrator makes no mention of Russia by name, about two-thirds into the clip, it's clear who's playing the role of villain in Lockheed's simulation. The clip shows US strikes on Russia's distinctive S-400 missile defense systems, as well as a Topol-M mobile intercontinental ballistic missile platform, exclusive to Russia's armed forces.

Comment: That this reality exists only in CGI is quite fitting... Although it gives us a hint - as if it was needed - just which entities are eager to stoke tensions with Russia:

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Bulb

Trump waives FDA regulations, opening door for chloroquine and other drugs to be used for coronavirus therapy

Christian Datoc
Daily Caller
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 20:22 UTC
FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn
© Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump listens to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn (R) speak on the latest developments of the coronavirus outbreak, in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House March 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. With Americans testing positive for the coronavirus rising, President Trump is asking Congress for $1 trillion aid package to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has directed Federal Drug Administration commissioner Stephen Hahn to waive "outdated rules and bureaucracies" on the testing of various "anti-viral therapies" to combat coronavirus.

Trump noted that the vaccine pursued by the National Institutes of Health and other medical bodies, "by its nature" requires lengthy testing periods.

"The therapies are something we can move on much faster potentially," he continued, "treatments that will be able to reduce the severity or duration of the symptoms."
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Biohazard

Tucker Carlson drove down to Mar-a-Lago to warn Trump of 'coronavirus threat'

Chris Menahan
Information Liberation
Tue, 17 Mar 2020 17:23 UTC
Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson shared the details of the trip he took to Mar-a-Lago to warn President Trump in person to take the threat of the coronavirus seriously in a must read interview with Vanity Fair released Tuesday.


From Vanity Fair, "'Dishonesty...Is Always an Indicator of Weakness': Tucker Carlson on How He Brought His Coronavirus Message to Mar-a-Lago" (March 17, 2020):
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Bad Guys

Iranian doctors urge neighboring countries to shut down US biological labs amid coronavirus fears


Sputnik
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:34 UTC
laboratory
© Sputnik / Ramil Sitdikov
With over 17,300 cases and 1,135 deaths to date, Iran has been one of the countries hit hardest by COVID-19, with the virus affecting not only the population at large, but a big portion of the political elite as well. Last week, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said there was evidence that the pandemic may have been a "biological attack."

A group of 101 Iranian doctors has penned a letter addressed to the leaders of Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan to take 'immediate action' to destroy "all of the US biological laboratories" in their countries amid fears that the coronavirus pandemic may have been spread deliberately as a form of biological warfare, Press TV has reported, citing the letter.

"We, as a group of Iranian physicians specializing in infectious and pulmonary diseases, asthma and allergy are witnessing that many of our compatriots are infected with the virus, and like all doctors across the world, we are trying day and night to cure and save them," the letter states.
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Stock Down

Part 1: The coronavirus as a global economic reset

sundance
The Last Refuge
Wed, 18 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
coronavirus/Lincoln/$5
© PYMNTS.com
A very big picture discussion requires a considerable baseline.

The stock market is not the U.S. economy; the stock market is an investment instrument that determines valuations of economic activity company-by-company. The valuation is considerably arbitrary, based on the determinations of the arbiters (investors). This is empirically true.

However, that said, how would the multinational underwriters, the multinational financial systems, reset all transactional tables (the bookkeeping systems underneath the valuation) ...if the U.S. stock market was every forced to re-value economic nationalism over multinational globalism?

Enter "Coronavirus".
josh tweet
Four years ago CTH first explained a new way to look at the U.S. economic system and how Main Street was/is disconnected from Wall Street. We presented a metaphor to explain. Before going deeper into the discussion of tomorrow; and at the request of several people who now accept the era of "deglobalization" is upon us, I first present that prior reference & then will use this as the baseline to describe what could come next.
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Pirates

New evidence points to US terrorist ties

Valery Kuliukov
New Eastern Journal
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
ISIS
© unknown
ISIS
The United States has been systematically destroying countries in the Middle East for many years now with only one objective — to get away with plundering their resources while these countries are gripped by crises and wars. This became quite visible after the US intervened in Libya and Syria in 2011.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Washington used the "War on Terror" as an excuse to pursue an expansionist foreign policy and gain control of energy resources in other countries. This was what motivated the decision that was initially taken by the United States and their allies to use al-Qaeda (terrorist organization banned in Russia) in order to destabilize the situation in the region and overthrow the legitimate governments of Iraq, Libya, Syria and a number of other majority-Muslim countries. After that plan failed, Washington created the "Islamic State", also known by its Arabic-language acronym DAESH (banned in Russia), so that Washington could fight the regional governments it did not like, and it gave the Americans a pretext for direct military intervention, in order "to fight terrorists".
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Propaganda

Fake news is a big business. By suing the free press, the Trump campaign could save them

Dianna Berry
The National Pulse
Sun, 08 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
crowd/fake news sign
© AP/Paul Sancya
Trump rally Washington Township, Michigan
The election of President Trump revealed a previously under-appreciated bias throughout the legacy media. The veneer of neutrality in journalism disappeared. Mistrust and division have since flourished, and news outlets appear to be dead set on assisting efforts to undermine and remove the President, instead of simply reporting the facts.

Who will pay the price for this deluge of falsity?

Until recently, the public has borne the cost of fake news - from accusations of being "low information" or "Russian bots", to being hectored online, our free speech curtailed, and of course constantly being referred to as "conspiracy theorists". Now, however, several major media outlets are facing lawsuits charging them with defamation and libel.

The President's re-election campaign recently filed libel suits seeking damages "in the millions of dollars" against the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Last year, "smirking" teenager Nick Sandmann sued the Washington Post alongside CNN, and NBC Universal seeking $800 million in compensation for libel.

CNN settled the case against them in January for an undisclosed amount. Sandmann intends to file several other suits against media outlets who falsely reported on the events at the March for Life 2019.
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Mail

A letter from 'locked down' Lombardy

Rachana Raizada
The Saker
Fri, 13 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Girl,mask,cathedral
© ROPI
A dozen provinces across the north of Italy have been placed on 'cordon sanitaire.'
A few days ago, I walked down the street to the supermarket to buy food past glittering skyscrapers, the seat of Lombardy's regional government. According to an interview in the New York Times [1] with the region's President Attilio Fontana, on the sixth floor, "two dozen epidemiologists and public health experts form the nerve center of the effort to contain a coronavirus outbreak in Italy...They track those whom infected people might have had contact with." Really? A telephone prevents illness? Of course, contract tracing is extremely important. But once you find infected people, what preparations have you made to deal with them? Fontana forgets to mention this minor detail to the NYT.

A man sitting on a bench grumbled: "Why is everything closed?" he demanded angrily. "Do you know anyone who is ill?" Three passersby shook their heads. As we stood (one metre from each other), we agreed that we don't know anyone who is ill, nor does anyone we know know anyone who is ill with Covid-19 (the disease) or who's tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the pathogen). Of course, this charming vignette is no longer possible. Now I can only go out for necessities: food, medicines, work (although all non-essential consumer-facing businesses are shut)...or cigarettes. Before I can go out, I have to download a form, copy it out (because I am not a prepper who stockpiled printer toner), provide proof etc. Just finished listening to a long legal audio explaining what to do if stopped by police. But Italian police are generally friendly. I digress.

Wait! Wasn't it China who's authoritarian? I've been stuck at home since Feb 23 with rules changing at dizzying speed and getting more draconian by the minute and red zones (now "security zones") extending from 11 tiny towns nobody had heard of, to Lombardy and Veneto, to the whole country.

So what is the problem? Why is Italy shut down?
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Star of David

Difficult to oust, Netanyahu utilizes COVID-19 crisis hype while Israel depends on Palestinian medical staff

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Wed, 18 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Netanyahu
© Office of Israeli PM
Netanyahu berates Israelis for frolicking on beaches, when they should be socially distancing one another. Mar 17, 2020.
Last night Benjamin Netanyahu gave another informal speech to his country demanding changes in personal behavior to combat the COVID-19 crisis. He called the pandemic a "plague, not a children's game... a matter of life and death" and railed at the Israelis he sees crowding the beaches in Tel Aviv "frolicking" and touching one another as they pass. "Love is distance," he said, in urging citizens to self-isolate.

Netanyahu's fatherly tone, along with racist attacks on his rivals, and his boasting that Israel is at the "forefront" of global responses to the contagion, has put him right where he wants to be politically: the indispensable Prime Minister, even as his rival Benny Gantz struggles to build a coalition to put him out of office.

"It's going to be virtually-I'm not going to say impossible, but it's going to very, very difficult to oust Netanyahu at this juncture," says Eli Kowaz of the Israel Policy Forum. "For [rival] Benny Gantz to form a minority government, now in the middle of all this- I think it would be controversial within Israel."

Comment: Netanyahu will never let a crisis go to waste - especially if he can utilize it to save himself!

See also:

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