Society's ChildS


Road Cone

EasyJet grounds fleet, troubled airlines need bailouts, airline staff drafted in to help at hospitals

Jasper Jolly
The Guardian
Mon, 30 Mar 2020 08:43 UTC
easyJet
© Fabrizio Bensch/ReutersAbout 4,000 of easyJet’s 9,000 UK staff will be furloughed for at least two months from 1 April.
EasyJet has grounded its entire fleet of aircraft for at least two months and will seek to reduce £4.5bn in spending, including payments for new planes from Airbus, in response to the collapse in demand for air travel because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The budget airline said it could not put a firm date on restarting commercial flights and 4,000 of its 9,000 UK staff will be furloughed initially for two months from 1 April.


Comment: Interestingly, according to Wiki, the word furlough was officially defined only recently:
The word furlough was first defined officially in the UK on 24 March 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The government announced a new Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to enable businesses to continue paying part of their employees' salary for those that would otherwise have been laid off.[12]



EasyJet also said it would seek to pay less for new aircraft after its founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, threatened to call repeated shareholder meetings to remove directors until the airline reconsidered buying 107 new aircraft from Airbus. The new Airbus planes are a major part of easyJet's planned £4.5bn in capital expenditure up to 2023.

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Microscope 1

Germany will issue coronavirus antibody certificates to allow quarantined to re-enter society

Daniel Wighton and David Chazan
The Telegraph
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 16:59 UTC
coronavirus microscope
© NIAID/NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockThe novel coronavirus SARS-COV-2, which causes the Covid-19 disease.
German researchers plan to introduce coronavirus 'immunity certificates' to facilitate a proper transition into post-lockdown life, as Chancellor Angela Merkel's handling of the crisis has led to a boost in the polls.

The antibodies will indicate that the test participants have had the virus, have healed and are thereby ready to re-enter society and the workforce. The researchers plan to test 100,000 members of the public at a time, issuing documentation to those who have overcome the virus.

The researchers will use the information to determine how to properly end the county's lockdown, including re-opening schools and allowing mass gatherings.

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Health

FDA issues emergency authorization of anti-malaria drug for coronavirus care

Dan Diamond
Politico
Mon, 30 Mar 2020 05:56 UTC
FDA administration building
© Jacquelyn Martin/AP PhotoThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration building.
The Food and Drug Administration on Sunday issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, decades-old malaria drugs championed by President Donald Trump for coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence.


Comment: Politico just can't help being biased in terms of their reporting. "Scant evidence" is in the eye of the beholder. If they were honest, instead of only taking every opportunity to take a shot at Trump, they might say that the drug offers some hope.


The agency allowed for the drugs to be "donated to the Strategic National Stockpile to be distributed and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized teen and adult patients with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible," HHS said in a statement, announcing that Sandoz donated 30 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to the stockpile and Bayer donated 1 million doses of chloroquine.

The move was supported by the White House, part of a larger Trump-backed effort to speed the use of anti-malaria drugs as a potential therapy for a virus that has no proven treatment or cure. FDA already has allowed New York state to test administering the medication to seriously ill patients, and some hospitals have added it to their treatment protocols.

Comment: One has to wonder where the interests of the detractors really lay. If chloroquine proves to be effective against coronavirus, who needs a vaccine? Proven effectiveness of the drug would lead to massive losses for the pharma industry who have been dumping investment into vaccine research. The president could be pulling the rug out from under the vaccine industry, something the industry and their media lapdogs couldn't possibly abide. It's not about sick people, it's about profits.

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Attention

Coronavirus: Pathogen could have been spreading in humans for years, study says

Stephen Chen
South China Morning Post
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 16:30 UTC
coronavirus lab sample
© AP
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 might have been quietly spreading among humans for years or even decades before the sudden outbreak that sparked a global health crisis, according to an investigation by some of the world's top virus hunters.

Researchers from the United States, Britain and Australia looked at piles of data released by scientists around the world for clues about the virus' evolutionary past, and found it might have made the jump from animal to humans long before the first detection in the central China city of Wuhan.

Though there could be other possibilities, the scientists said the coronavirus carried a unique mutation that was not found in suspected animal hosts, but was likely to occur during repeated, small-cluster infections in humans.

Comment: While these authors poo-poo the idea of a lab origin, others have pointed out information about the virus which points to exactly that. One wonders if the possiblity of lab origin is actually unlikely or just unpalatable.

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Network

Yeah, that Zoom app you're trusting with work chatter? It lives with 'vampires feeding on the blood of human data'

Shaun Nichols
The Register
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 21:49 UTC
zoom team meeting
Doc Frown: Searls decries video-conferencing software's 'creepy' closeness with ad tracking

As the global coronavirus pandemic pushes the popularity of videoconferencing app Zoom to new heights, one web veteran has sounded the alarm over its "creepily chummy" relationship with tracking-based advertisers.

Doc Searls, co-author of the influential internet marketing book The Cluetrain Manifesto last century, today warned [cached] Zoom not only has the right to extract data from its users and their meetings, it can work with Google and other ad networks to turn this personal information into targeted ads that follow them across the web.

Comment: It seems, at this point, there are very few services offered on the internet that aren't hoovering up your data to be sold to 'data vampires' for targeted advertising. What is more disturbing is how else your personal data may be used; likely for things not as innocuous as advertising.

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Stock Down

"The scope for pain is immense" - China's consumer default tsunami has started

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 20:15 UTC
One month ago we reported that "China Faces Financial Armageddon With 85% Of Businesses Set To Run Out Of Cash In 3 Months", in which we explained that while China's giant state-owned SOEs will likely have enough of a liquidity lifeblood to last them for 2-3 quarters, it is the country's small businesses that are facing a head on collision with an iceberg, because according to the Nikkei, over 85% of small businesses - which employ 80% of China's population - expect to run out of cash within three months, and a third expect the cash to be all gone within a month.

chinese small business 1
To be sure, the stakes could not be higher: These smaller employers account for 99.8% of registered companies in China and employ 79.4% of workers. They contribute more than 60% of gross domestic product and, for the government, more than 50% of tax revenue. In short: they are the beating heart of China's economy.

inese small business 2
In short, should this default tsunami start, not only will China's economy collapse, but China's $40 trillion financial system will disintegrate, as it is suddenly flooded with trillions in bad loans.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Best of the Web: Covid-19 derangement syndrome: A world gone mad

Percy Carlton
The Saker
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 06:50 UTC
coronavirus
© Pixabay / enriquelopezgarre
The whole world has gone mad with what I call Covid-19 Derangement Syndrome (CDS). I define it as an acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in response to the Covid-19 Corona Virus pandemic. The infection is particularly prevalent among the media and the government officials of the world. Human beings fear what they do not understand and that fear causes them to behave in irrational and destructive ways. The current Covid-19 pandemic is a perfect example of that. I don't need to describe the paranoia and economic destruction to you because you can see it with your own two eyes everywhere you look. Both the media and the world's governments are fueling the panic - the media with their hysterical 24/7 coverage and the governments with their draconian police state actions.

I feel like the man in the following cartoon.

history meme cartoon
I am doomed to helplessly stand by and watch the entire world commit economic suicide for no good reason. At first glance this may seem like a shocking and callous statement but do not mistake this as support for the view that the government should stand back and let the private sector take care of the problem. I have no problem with a strong authoritarian central government response as long as it is reasonable and wise. The current government response is neither.

Comment: See also:

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Health

Not an old person's virus: Russia warns teens & adults they TOO may need ventilators if ill with Covid-19, citing patient data


RT
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 03:34 UTC
hospital bed
© Sputnik / Denis Grishkin
Moscow authorities have sounded the alarm over the ratio of serious Covid-19 cases among younger people, having found that 40 percent of the patients undergoing artificial lung ventilation are under the age of 40.

At least 1,014 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in the Russian capital as of Sunday, and only 15 percent of those are over 65, the authorities said.

Over 33 percent of those infected with the novel coronavirus fell between the ages of 18 and 34, while 46 percent were between 35 and 64, the official data said.

But what's worse, the serious cases requiring artificial lung ventilation units, commonly known as ventilators, did not favor the younger patients, according to the statement.

Comment: There are almost 12 million people who live in Moscow. Out of that, there's just over 1,500 cases. Is that worth shutting an entire city down? Looks like the hysteria has reached Russian leaders. Trump has extended the social distancing guidelines until April 30th, as he said he expects the peak to hit in the next 2 weeks. In Germany, the finance minister in the German state of Hesse, Thomas Schaefer, has committed suicide 'over coronavirus worries'. As we've been pointing out over and over on SOTT, those worries are entirely overhyped by the media. They are responsible for getting people so worked up that they are killing themselves.

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Dollars

Coronavirus being used to scare you away from using cash

Nick Hankoff
Advocates for Self Government
Tue, 24 Mar 2020 03:24 UTC
dollar
Cash has been the target of the banking and financial elites for years. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is being used to frighten the masses into accepting a cashless society. That would mean the death of what's left of our free society.

CBS News, CNN, and other mainstream outlets are fearmongering again. Alarmism is nothing new in the media world, but this time, it's not about triggering panic buying or even pushing a political agenda.

The war on cash is about imposing a new meta-narrative. As economist Joseph Salerno explains, the cashless society forces all payments to be made through the financial system. It doesn't end with monopoly control over transactions, though.
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Red Flag

Great Depression 2.0? US may be headed for HIGHEST UNEMPLOYMENT EVER


RT
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 03:20 UTC
great depression
© Global Look Press / Scherl
The coronavirus pandemic will push the US jobless rate even higher than it was during the Great Depression if all the gloomy forecasts are true, Roger Farmer, an economist at the University of Warwick, believes.

Earlier this week, a US Federal Reserve official predicted that the outbreak will leave 30 percent of Americans jobless while the country's gross domestic product (GDP) will fall by 50 percent. According to James Bullard, president of the St. Louis branch of the US Federal Reserve Bank, that could happen quite soon - in the second quarter of this year.

"If that turns out to be correct it will be the highest ever recorded. The peak unemployment rate in the US was 24 percent in the depth of the Great Depression," Professor Farmer told RT.
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