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Scientists must look dispassionately at Covid-19 so they can see what it is, not what they fear: Rushed science can be bad science

Norman Lewis
RT
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 13:40 UTC
graffiti
© Getty Images / Pierre Crom
No one likes uncertainty, especially when it comes to the threat of death posed by the coronavirus. Demanding certainty may be human, but we should be very wary of rushing to quick conclusions driven by fears rather than evidence.

It is inevitable that the "something must be done" demands to stem the coronavirus are placing immense pressure upon governments and scientists. At times like these, there is a tendency to shut down debate, to become increasingly intolerant of different views, disagreements and challenges.

But challenging the experts has become a fundamental part of defeating Covid-19, not a divergence from this fight.
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Bad Guys

Italy's lockdown has been a recipe for disaster

Dominic Standish
Spiked
Fri, 27 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
italy lockdown
© Getty
More than 80,000 people in Italy are known to be infected with Covid-19 and 8,215 have died from it - nearly twice as many as any other country.

Yet despite this dreadful outcome, in a video conference of G7 foreign ministers on 25 March Italy's foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, boasted about Italy's lockdown model. 'In these weeks the other countries have recognised that Italy's approach is the model to follow', said Di Maio. His statement implies that the Italian government's response to coronavirus was based on a rational model and guided by strategic thinking. But the government's key actions prove this is a myth.

First, on 31 January, after two Chinese tourists in Italy tested positive for Covid-19, the government became the first Eurozone country to ban all direct flights between Italy and China. As there are high volumes of business between the countries, it was inevitable people would continue to travel anyway, only indirectly. There are more than 300,000 Chinese people working in Italy and some of them were likely to be travelling back to Italy after Chinese New Year on 25 January.

Comment: From the article Planetary Hysteria: Manufactured COVID-19 'Health Crisis' Pushes Humanity, Global Society to Total Shutdown:
The fabric of societies has been shredded, human interactions have been altered, economies decimated. All based on a manufactured pretext, mass manipulation, and media-inducted mass panic.

Humanity was treated to a similar crippling shock event with false flag event of 9/11, the manufactured global "war on terrorism". But this one dwarfs all previous events, and all previous wars, including the world wars.

The authorities — global, national, regional, local, community by community — have moved in terrifying lockstep. This is the Deep State, out in the open.


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Eye 1

Moscow mayor issues strict Covid-19 pandemic order, stopping short of complete lockdown - UPDATE: Russia extends lockdown to entire country

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 03:01 UTC

Comment: UPDATE 30 March 2020

24 hours later, they're extending it to the whole of Russia.

Govts have apparently been instructed to 'let people down gradually, so as not to shock them too much at once'.


coronavirus
© Sputnik / Anton Denisov
Moscow, where the number of coronavirus cases now exceeds 1,000, has introduced a tough self-isolation regime. From Monday, residents of the Russian capital will be only allowed to leave their homes in cases of absolute necessity.

Under the new rules, Muscovites can go outside if they need urgent medical help or to purchase food or medicine, for which they must use their nearest stores. They may also throw out trash and pet owners will be permitted to walk animals, inside a radius of 100 metres from their buildings.

The decree, issued by Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, applies to all age groups. People can continue to go to work, if they must, and enter or leave the capital. Moscow is Europe's largest city, with a population of over 13 million. The surrounding Moscow region, which has introduced similar restrictions, is home to another 7.5 million, meaning the metropolitan area dwarfs the likes of London and Paris.
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Eye 1

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: Harvard professor exposes Google and Facebook

Dr. Joseph Mercola
Mercola.com
Sat, 28 Mar 2020 00:01 UTC
Shoshana Zuboff

Prof. Shoshana Zuboff
"In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot." ~ Czesław Miłosz1
In recent years, a number of brave individuals have alerted us to the fact that we're all being monitored and manipulated by big data gatherers such as Google and Facebook, and shed light on the depth and breadth of this ongoing surveillance. Among them is social psychologist and Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff.

Her book, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," is one of the best books I have read in the last few years. It's an absolute must-read if you have any interest in this topic and want to understand how Google and Facebook have obtained such massive control of your life.

Comment: It's a brave new world, where everything you say do (even think?) is known and influenced by actors you have no knowledge of. The dystopian future you've been reading about is now.

See also:

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Newspaper

Oil on the verge of dipping below $10 a barrel - UPDATE: Canadian oil now worthless at $6, and still falling

Nick Cunningham
Oil Price
Mon, 23 Mar 2020 20:00 UTC

Comment: UPDATE 30 March 2020

Canadian oil has fallen to just $6.50. That's 6.50 in US dollars...

Canadian analysts say they expect it to drop all the way to zero in the coming weeks.


total oil
The wave of oil industry spending cuts continues, with the majors now announcing significant reductions to spending as oil remains stuck in the $20s. Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday that it would cut spending by 20 percent, or about $5 billion, and also suspend its share buyback plan. French oil giant Total SA and Norway's Equinor announced similar moves.

ExxonMobil and Chevron have suggested they too would be axing their budgets, with Exxon under particular pressure. Goldman Sachs estimates that Chevron needs $50 per barrel in order to cover spending and its dividend. ExxonMobil, on the other hand, needs something like $70.

The majors are relatively more insulated from the downturn than small and medium-sized shale drillers because they have downstream refining and petrochemical assets that have typically performed somewhat better than upstream units when prices fall. Refineries, for instance, spend less on oil during the downturn, and low prices also translate into a boost in sales of refined products.

Comment: See also:

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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/Reuters
About 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.

Comment: See also:

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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/Shutterstock
The 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.

Comment: See also:

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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 Photo
The 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.

See also:

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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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