These are excerpts of September 2020 articles. For a quick sense of information and faster summary just read the red marked texted.
My primary source is the extremely well researched RFK jr.’s “Children Health Defense” organization. The CHD is suffering some severe censorship on social media because they are exposing government/corporate media inconsistencies, distortions and censored facts about the Covid pandemic!
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2020-09-30 COVID-19, Hunger, and State Violence are on the Rise in Zimbabwe In Zimbabwe, the health ministry reports low levels of the virus, with cumulative reports of 7,400 positive cases and 218 deaths by early September. Yet local sources believe that the infection rate is significantly higher and rising. The country’s coronavirus lockdown and curfew have worsened an already weak economy, and Zimbabwe is facing what the UN calls “desperate levels of hunger” exacerbated by a long-running governance crisis.
The millions of Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s informal economy, however, were ineligible for those benefits. Without work and no ability to access funds, many migrants have returned home, leading some Zimbabweans to believe that the influx of returning residents has increased infections, particularly in rural areas
Anecdotal evidence indicates a high level of COVID-19 community spread and fears of significant undercounting. Families with symptoms are unable to access free testing and are unable to afford testing in private laboratories, which can cost $60 or more. Economic upheaval and the pandemic threaten the global economy, but Zimbabwe was in economic freefall before the virus hit. The country’s health sector is broken, inflation stands at 319 percent, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that drought, crop failures, and economic austerity are a daily challenge. “The delivery of health care, clean water and sanitation, and education has been constrained, and millions of people are facing challenges to access vital services,” the UN warns. Nearly half of the country faces severe food insecurity.
Since Mugabe’s overthrow, opposition parties, trade unions, and social movements have organized, developed policy platforms (for example, the 2019 Citizen’s Manifesto), and held numerous public protests, demanding social and economic justice and adherence to the Zimbabwe Constitution. Following these mass actions, soldiers and police have systematically raided, harassed, detained, and tortured known or perceived leaders. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/30/covid-19-hunger-and-state-violence-are-on-the-rise-in-zimbabwe/
2020-09-18 Balancing Solidarity & Individualism in the COVID-19 Era and Beyond: a View from Vietnam The reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic in both countries provides a partial answer to this question. Vietnam acted quickly and decisively to contain the coronavirus by closing the border with China, prohibiting flights from that and other countries, no longer issuing visas to foreign nationals, contact tracing, quarantines, and a short-lived nationwide shutdown. Government actions would have been diluted, however, if the people had not cooperated by wearing a face mask, observing social distancing and, at one point, only leaving their homes for essentials.
In contrast, the US, led by an incompetent, cruel, and narcissistic leader who politicized a public health issue and essentially did nothing, hoping and saying repeatedly that COVID-19 would magically disappear, and even egging on armed protestors who demanded that their states reopen their economies, all the while not wearing a mask and not following social distancing recommendations, failed to contain the coronavirus and is now paying the ultimate price, both human and economic, with no end in sight.
If there is a recipe, Vietnam already has some of the essential ingredients. It simply needs to maintain the existing balance between individualism and social solidarity. This includes giving young people the necessary encouragement and space to constructively criticize their country in order to improve it. US Senator J. William Fulbright once stated that “to criticize one’s country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing,” a brilliant distillation of the essence of patriotism. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/18/balancing-solidarity-individualism-in-the-covid-19-era-and-beyond-a-view-from-vietnam/
2020-09-17 Corrupted: How Cronyism and Ineptitude Tainted Medical Supply Procurement Before we get a viable COVID-19 vaccine, the most powerful weapons we have to fight the coronavirus are commonsense hygiene practices, personal protective equipment, and medical supplies like ventilators. Yet the federal government’s efforts to secure these crucial supplies have been hampered by waste, politics, and cronyism. Most recently, attention has focused on White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who negotiated a $646.7 million contract for ventilators that’s now under investigation by both Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services.
But the corruption extends beyond that one deal. Many of the administration’s early efforts to secure life-saving supplies were marred by ineptitude and favoritism, which has left those without money, access, and influence struggling to get what they need to keep the virus at bay and treat the ill.
Several years ago, the government contracted with Philips Respironics to make low-cost ventilators for the national stockpile. But the company has yet to fulfill that contract. The Trump administration gave Philips three extensions, pushing back the ventilator delivery from the already-extended deadline of November 2019, to June 2021. Meanwhile, last year the company started selling versions of the ventilator to other customers around the world.
Fast-forward to March 2020. As the pandemic reached the U.S., President Donald Trump put Navarro—an economist and academic with no experience managing logistics in a national health emergency—in charge of procuring supplies under the Defense Production Act. Now at the helm, Navarro finalized a new deal with Philips in April to purchase ventilators, at almost five times the previous price. Navarro negotiated the contract virtually on his own, excluding career contracting officials at the Department of Health and Human Services until the terms of the contract had already been agreed on. This is the kind of fiasco that can happen when the president puts inexperienced loyalists in charge of responding to a national crisis, rather than relying on career civil servants who have years of experience in contracting and disaster preparedness.
Early in the pandemic, Trump put his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner in charge of a task force with a broad mandate to help distribute supplies and equipment, among other responsibilities. The task force would essentially research ways to obtain and distribute personal protective equipment and other critical materials and send leads to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Kushner proceeded to put together a team of advisers, many of whom had extensive conflicts of interest but limited experience in pandemic response strategy and planning.
Unsurprisingly, the corruption has had ripple effects. While Navarro and the Kushner task force were fumbling to obtain equipment and supplies, the administration mostly left the states to fend for themselves. Corruption was pretty much inevitable as hospitals scrambled to stock up. State officials and hospitals with connections in Washington or large financial reserves could get what they needed, leaving everyone else out of luck. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/09/how-cronyism-and-ineptitude-tainted-medical-supply-procurement/
2020-09-09 ONLY 6% WITHOUT COMORBIDITIES? THE TRUTH ABOUT COVID DEATHS Social media is home to many misinterpretations of a recent CDC report on comorbidities and the coronavirus. Epidemiologist Justin Lessler sets things straight.
A recent report from the CDC appears to drill down that point with striking numbers, showing that 94% of US deaths involving COVID-19 since February were also associated with other conditions, or comorbidities. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.”
The most common comorbidities, according to death records, include influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertension, diabetes, and cardiac arrest.
But it’s important to understand that some of the comorbidities listed are actually downstream effects of COVID-19—meaning they are symptoms. For example, respiratory failure. Someone could have on their death certificate that they died of both COVID and respiratory failure, but that probably means that COVID-19 caused the respiratory failure, which caused them to die. It’s impossible for us to know the individual scenarios from death certificates, but the prevalence of respiratory factors [in the CDC findings] are consistent with being downstream conditions.
We can observe trends from the number of deaths reported each year, on a weekly basis. When we see large deviations in the numbers for a time period, we call that excess deaths. Looking at 2020 since March, the raw number of excess deaths is 200,000 more people than a normal year. When we try to understand that, COVID-19 is the most rational and likely explanation. If you don’t believe it’s COVID-19, try to pinpoint why this year has been so different than any other. Why would a new disease that kills people not be the cause?
If you aren’t aware that you have any comorbidities, that doesn’t mean you should treat that as carte blanche to go out, get infected, and not worry about consequences. Comorbidities are frequent in the population, particularly in the US, where tens of millions of people have heart disease and diabetes and other conditions—and many don’t even know it. And again, many of the comorbidities in the CDC data could be downstream effects. Just because you don’t have respiratory problems now doesn’t mean if you get COVID-19 you won’t have respiratory problems. https://www.futurity.org/cdc-covid-19-comorbidities-2436032-2/
2020-09-03 Corrupted: How the Pandemic Ramped Up Corporate Favoritism the administration has also taken a series of seemingly small steps to roll back safety rules and protections for the public. When you add them up, a picture emerges of a government that favors corporate bigwigs and large industries over the health and well-being of the Americans who work for these companies and rely on them as consumers.
In late April, meatpacking plants were seeing significant COVID-19 outbreaks. Meatpacking companies claim the scenario was entirely unpredictable, but for years experts and government officials have been warning them to be prepared for a pandemic with plans for social distancing and protective equipment for workers, as this ProPublica report lays out. By the end of May, there were a total of at least 16,233 cases in 239 facilities and at least 86 deaths, according to the CDC data released in July. These numbers may not be comprehensive, since only 28 states provided data.
With at least 20 facilities shut down due to outbreaks, President Donald Trump declared meatpacking plants essential under the Defense Production Act in late April. This order did not technically force meat-processing companies to keep the plants open, but the message was clear: The federal government was fine with plants remaining open even as they were becoming virus incubators.
In mid-March, the Trump administration issued an emergency declaration suspending rules that limit the hours truck drivers can drive without rest for vehicles carrying items deemed essential during the pandemic.
In July, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) retracted proposed rules that would have placed limits on payday lenders, which issue high interest, short-term loans that can send cash-strapped borrowers further into debt.
In late March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would use its “enforcement discretion” to essentially allow companies to skip some routine testing, laboratory analysis, reporting, and training. The announcement came soon after the oil and gas industry appealed to Trump and the agency to do just that.
The Trump administration and Senate Republicans have backed the push to include liability protections in Congress’s next COVID-19 relief package, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) hard line on the issue has contributed to the stalemate over additional pandemic relief.
Congress should also investigate whether the temporary rollback of safety and environmental rules harmed Americans by increasing accidents on the job and allowing additional pollution, as well as whether these policies actually helped the economy. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/09/corrupted-how-the-pandemic-ramped-up-corporate-favoritism/
2020-09-01 Fact check: CDC’s data on COVID-19 deaths used incorrectly in misleading claims [MEK Note: Fact Check (FC) Is somewhat correct but makes its own misleading statements. FC fails to list chronic heart disease, cancer, lung disease as comorbidities of importance. FC also downplays comorbidities saying, “they are something that people can live with”. 164,000 people die every day while only 7845 will die from association with Covid-19 (5%). Other causes of death: communicable disease (36K), Cancer (22K), Smoking (14K). All Comorbidities negatively affect the immune system that would protect a person from Covid-19. Most all people have comorbidities that die from Covid-19. Covid-19 ( similar to what pneumonia does) is listed on death certificates because it is what pushes people off the ledge! One’s Immunity is a greater factor than age in Covid-19 deaths]
A regular update of data on COVID-19 deaths by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has prompted a groundswell of claims that only a fraction of people have actually died directly from the novel coronavirus.
The misleading and inaccurate conclusions come from recently released statistics on comorbidities data in the CDC’s weekly coronavirus update, with statistics as of Aug. 26. “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,” the report reads.
The CDC defines a comorbidity as when “more than one disease or condition is present in the same person at the same time.” A comorbidity is often a chronic condition that a person can live with, such as arthritis, diabetes or obesity.
When a person dies, the cause and manner of death of death are determined separately from any comorbidities that may have been present. A person who takes his own life, for instance, has suicide listed for a cause of death, with any comorbidities he may have had documented separately.
“These data come from death certificates, and the death certificate is designed to only capture information on causes of death,” Anderson said, explaining that COVID-19 would then not be “an incidental or trivial factor.” “The underlying cause of death is the condition that began the chain of events that ultimately led to the person’s death” “In 92% of all deaths that mention COVID-19, COVID-19 is listed as the underlying cause of death,” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/01/fact-check-cdcs-data-covid-19-deaths-used-misleading-claims/5681686002/
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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index
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