These are excerpts of January 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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2020-01-31 Coronavirus: WHO declares international health emergency   https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/coronavirus-who-declares-international-health-emergency

2020-01-30 A man lies dead in the street: the image that captures the Wuhan coronavirus crisis It is an image that captures the chilling reality of the coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan: a grey-haired man wearing a face mask lies dead on the pavement, a plastic shopping bag in one hand, as police and medical staff in full protective suits and masks prepare to take him away.

On what would typically be a crowded street in Wuhan, an industrial city of 11 million people under quarantine, there are only a few passersby – but they dare not go near him. Journalists from Agence France-Presse saw the body on Thursday morning, not long before a vehicle arrived carrying emergency workers. AFP could not determine how the man, who appeared to be aged in his 60s, had died.

But the reaction of the police and medical staff in hazmat suits, as well as some of the bystanders, highlighted the fear pervading the city. A woman standing near the man said she believed he had died from the virus. “It’s terrible,” she said. “These days many people have died.”

Wuhan is the centre of the outbreak of the new coronavirus, which is believed to have been transmitted from wild animals to humans at a city market . The virus, which emerged late last year, has claimed at least 213 lives and infected thousands in China, with at least 159 deaths in Wuhan alone. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/a-man-lies-dead-in-the-street-the-image-that-captures-the-wuhan-coronavirus-crisis

2012-01-01 Yes, we can manage this country without the corporate priesthood–the cooperative movement shows us how While it’s rarely mentioned by the conventional media, completely missing in the political discourse, not considered by economic planners and chambers of commerce, and not known by most of the public, there are 30,000 cooperatives in America (with 73,000 places of business). A 2009 survey by the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives (www.uwcc.wisc.edu) found that these energetic enterprises have 130 million members, registering $653 million in sales, and employing more than two million people.

There are several types of co-ops, including those owned by workers (there are 11,000 of these, with 13 million worker-owners). Also, there are cooperatives owned by consumers, producers, local businesses, artists, and communities, as well as hybrids of those categories. They function in every sector of our economy–manufacturing, health care, transportation, banking, farming and food, media, massage, child care, funeral services, interpreting and translating services, advertising, home building, hightech, engineering, energy… and even a strip club in San Francisco. Co-op businesses do everything that a corporation can do, but with a democratic structure, an equitable sharing of income, and a commitment to the common good of the community and future generations.

You might be surprised to learn that such national brand names as ACE Hardware, Best Western Hotels, Organic Valley, REI, and True Value Hardware are organized as co-ops, rather than as corporations. The strength of the movement, however, is in the limitless number of local cooperatives flowering all across the country. They are highly prized for their unique personalities, human scale, democratic values, and community focus. To help you ponder the possibilities of a cooperatively structured America, Check out some examples of citizen co-ops that are proving day-in and day-out that small can be BIG.  https://hightowerlowdown.org/article/yes-we-can-manage-this-country-without-the-corporate-priesthood-the-cooperative-movement-shows-us-how/

2011-01-00 Virus-Sized Transistors  IMAGINE BEING ABLE to signal an immune cell to generate antibodies that would fight bacteria or even cancer. That fictional possibility is now a step closer to reality with the development of a bio-compatible transistor the size of a virus. Hyman professor of chemistry Charles Lieber and his colleagues used nanowires to create a transistor so small that it can be used to enter and probe cells without disrupting the intracellular machinery. These nanoscale semiconductor switches could even be used to enable two-way communication with individual cells.

Lieber has worked for the past decade on the design and synthesis of nanoscale parts that will enable him to build tiny electronic devices (see “Liquid Computing,” November-December 2001, page 20). Devising a biological interface, in which a nanoscale device can actually communicate with a living organism, has been an explicit goal from the beginning, but has proven tricky. At its simplest, the problem was inserting a transistor constructed on a flat plane (think of the surface of a computer chip) into a three-dimensional object: a cell perhaps 10 microns in size. Merely piercing the cell was not enough, because transistors need a source wire from which electrons flow and a drain wire through which they are discharged.

The key, Lieber says, was figuring out how to introduce two 120-degree bends into a linear wire in order to create a “V” or hairpin configuration, with the transistor near the tip. Getting the entire structure off the surface on which it had been created was easier: Lieber integrated the nano-wire probes with a pair of bimetal, layered interconnects. Joined strips of two different metals that expand at different rates have been used in thermostats for years–when the temperature changes, one metal swells or contracts more than the other, bending the thermostat to the opposite side to accommodate the expansion. Lieber used this principle to lift the transistor up and out of the flat plane on which it was created.  https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2011/01/virus-sized-transistors

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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

These are excerpts of February 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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2020-02-28 Lying about Science Ralph talks to the former head of OSHA, Dr. David Michaels, about how corporations pay scientists to do studies that deceive the public, chronicled in his book, “The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception.” Plus, David and Steve talk with Ralph about the coronavirus and the Democratic primary. https://ralphnaderradiohour.libsyn.com/lying-about-science

2020-02-08 Alan Grayson/Coronavirus Ralph welcomes progressive firebrand and former congressman, Alan Grayson to discuss his book, “High Crimes: The Impeachment of Donald Trump,” where he argues that it is hard to find an impeachable offense Trump did not commit. Then, infectious disease expert, Dr. Michael Osterholm, returns to give us the latest on the coronavirus pandemic and how to protect yourself.” https://ralphnaderradiohour.libsyn.com/alan-graysoncoronavirus

2020-02-05 Coronavirus is a Biowarfare Weapon Developed by The US – Law Professor Claims Law Professor Francis Boyle drafted the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 — signed into law by GHW Bush, revoked by Bush/Cheney on the pretext of rebuilding America’s defenses at a time when the nation’s only enemies are invented. No real ones exist. Boyle believes the potentially deadly coronavirus is a biowarfare weapon, genetically modified for this purpose. China’s Wuhan BSL-4 lab is a WHO-designated research lab, Boyle explaining that the organization is fully aware of what’s happening and how. Boyle’s assessment contradicts claims about the virus originating from a Wuhan seafood market or being connected to coronaviruses found in bats. https://www.albawaba.com/news/coronavirus-biowarfare-weapon-developed-us-law-professor-claims-1337158#:~:text=Law%20Professor%20Francis%20Boyle%20drafted%20the%20US%20Biological,only%20enemies%20are%20invented.%20No%20real%20ones%20exist.

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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

These are excerpts of June 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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2020-06-25 Fact-checking networks fight coronavirus infodemic While physical responses to the ongoing pandemic—stay-at-home orders, social distancing, and lockdowns—have been effective in mitigating the spread of the virus in many countries, misinformation remains rampant online. The World Health Organization calls the situation an infodemic: a deluge of information that people face as they seek reliable guidance about the pandemic. Miracle cures, virus-related false conspiracy theories, and overly optimistic assessments of the pandemic situation have cropped up in seemingly every corner of the globe.

But these days social media users and news consumers in countries ranging from Nepal to Syria to the Democratic Republic of Congo are better equipped to deal with the spread of coronavirus-related misinformation than they otherwise might have been. That’s in part thanks to the growth in recent years of an international network of fact-checking sites like Congo Check . Facebook, for example, collaborates directly with several organizations within the Poynter Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network. 

So what have these fact-checking websites, scattered across the globe, found? Fact-checkers have called out hundreds of these “false” claims since the pandemic began late last year.

Websites devoted to fact-checking are nothing new, of course. Earlier this century, Factcheck.org (established in 2003) and Politifact (2007), were founded to debunk false claims made by political leaders. By making it more costly for politicians to lie, these sites aimed to do nothing less than improve American politics—doing so by equipping the average citizen with the perspectives and tools to make informed decisions within the political system.

Some of the most prominent of these international fact-checking websites are extensions of existing media conglomerates. Subsequent studies, though, have largely shown fact-checking can work. How the corrections are delivered appears to matter a lot; if the checks come from what the subject considers to be a credible source and the misinformation is debunked early, the better.

There is good news when it comes to COVID-19: Claims are easy to debunk once there is enough attention. Scholars and nongovernmental organizations can use the rich base of readily available evidence and compiled data to understand coronavirus misinformation and the evolution of stories. Most importantly, internet platforms and governments can leverage this robust ecosystem of fact-checking websites to moderate, down rank, and discourage sharing of misinformation. The strength of the ecosystem is obvious. We should not forget the broader lesson here; there is a rich grassroots community around the world which values truth, and is working hard to expose misinformation. (MEK Note: Authors assume well financed corporate and government “fact Checkers” would not be biased and wouldn’t eliminate opinions and facts that go against the “government/corporate” story and interests.] https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/fact-checking-networks-fight-coronavirus-infodemic/

2020-06-15 Interview 1554 – James Corbett Documents the Collapse of the COVID-1984 Narrative https://www.corbettreport.com/ interview-1554-james-corbett-documents-the-collapse-of-the-covid-1984-narrative/

2020-06-04 Did the SARS-CoV-2 virus arise from a bat coronavirus research program in a Chinese laboratory? Very possibly. But long before Trump, Pompeo and Co. sought a Chinese scapegoat for the president’s gross and willful incompetence, researchers understood that the possibility of laboratory escape of the pathogen was a plausible, if unproven, possibility. It is most definitely not “a conspiracy theory.”

By way of introduction, there are two virology institutes in Wuhan to consider, not one: The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHCDC) and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Both have conducted large projects on novel bat viruses and maintained large research collections of novel bat viruses, and at least the WIV possessed the virus that is the most closely related known virus in the world to the outbreak virus, bat virus RaTG13. This virus was isolated in 2013 and had its genome published on January 23, 2020. Seven more years of bat coronavirus collection followed the 2013 RaTG13 isolation.

One component of the novel-bat-virus project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology involved infection of laboratory animals with bat viruses. Therefore, the possibility of a lab accident includes scenarios with direct transmission of a bat virus to a lab worker, scenarios with transmission of a bat virus to a laboratory animal and then to a lab worker, and scenarios involving improper disposal of laboratory animals or laboratory waste.

In assessing the possibility of a lab accident, one must take into consideration each of the following eight elements of circumstantial evidence:

1. Official Chinese government recognition early in the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak of biosafety inadequacies in China’s high containment facilities. 

2. Recognition by Zhengli Shi, a renowned scientist who leads a research team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that a laboratory escape was a possibility.

3. Questions surrounding Chinese government attribution of the Wuhan’s Huanan South China Seafood Market as the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

4. Suppression of information and individuals by Chinese authorities.

5. Laboratory accidents and the escape of highly dangerous pathogens from laboratories are frequent occurrences worldwide.

6. There have been laboratory accidents and escapes of highly dangerous pathogens in China in general and biosafety issues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in particular.

7. Under what biosafety conditions was bat coronavirus research carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

8. What is the nature of the research being carried out in Zhengli Shi’s laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?  https://thebulletin.org/2020/06/did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-arise-from-a-bat-coronavirus-research-program-in-a-chinese-laboratory-very-possibly/

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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

These are excerpts of July 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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2020-07-28 COVID-19’s Class War The pandemic is exposing the racial fault lines that divide our society. More African American and Hispanic people are hospitalized than Anglos, and more people of color die from COVID-19 in every age group as a percentage of their respective populations.   https://prospect.org/coronavirus/covid-19-class-war-death-rates-income/

2020-07-18 Did Covid-19 Come From a Lab?  Andrew Kimbrell, founder of the Center for Food Safety, to discuss the dangers of genetically engineered viruses and the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from a lab.   “We can’t stop natural pandemics from happening in nature. That’s going to happen. But we can stop pandemics that originated in the laboratories around the world, because people are deliberately creating them in laboratories.”  https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/did-covid-19-come-from-a-lab/

2020-07-18 Trump and Pence and others, systematically undermining the efforts of our experts to bring the pandemic under control   “Unlike other countries, we are not allowing federal experts in public health and medicine to lead the response. In fact, not only are we not letting them lead the response, we have our leaders, Trump and Pence and others, systematically undermining the efforts of our experts to bring the pandemic under control.”   “There’s a clear need for Trump and Pence to step aside. And turn over the reins of control of the federal response to the pandemic immediately and if that doesn’t happen soon things that are bordering on catastrophic will become catastrophic.”   https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/did-covid-19-come-from-a-lab/

2020-07-16 COVID-19: Why Laos, Vietnam & China Have Beaten the Virus and India, Brazil and the US Have Not  Vijay Prashad explores the differences between the pandemic responses of a few countries with socialist governments and others in the capitalist order.   

But countries like Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and Venezuela face severe challenges, even as they have largely been able to contain the virus. Cuba and Venezuela remain threatened by a callous sanctions program set in place by the United States; they cannot easily get access to medical supplies or easily pay for them. A government official from Laos told me, “We defeated the virus crisis. Now we are going to be defeated by the debt crisis, which we did not create.” This year Laos will have to pay $900 million to service its external debt; its total foreign exchange holdings amount to under $1 billion. The coronavirus recession, absent the universal cancellation of debt, has produced a serious challenge to these socialist governments who have been able to valiantly manage the pandemic. A call for debt cancellation in this context is a matter of life and death. This is why it is a key part of the “Ten-Point Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19.”    https://consortiumnews.com/2020/07/16/covid-19-why-laos-vietnam-china-have-beaten-the-virus-and-india-brazil-and-the-us-have-not/

2020-07-16 Laos Has Tackled COVID-19, But It Is Drowning in Debt to International Finance   On June 11, Laos (Lao People’s Democratic Republic)—a country of 7 million in Southeast Asia—said it had temporarily prevailed over COVID-19.    There were no new cases of COVID-19 in Laos since April 12 (93 days of no new cases as of July 14). There have been no deaths from COVID-19 in Laos.

Laos is a landlocked country, surrounded by the People’s Republic of China, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia. It shares a 423-kilometer border with China, across which traders and tourists routinely travel. Nonetheless, Laos—like its neighbor Vietnam—has had no deaths from COVID-19. Laos has been particular about the possibility of transmission through travelers who have crossed from neighboring countries (which is why they are being held in quarantine centers for two weeks).   

The Vientiane Times credited the lack of cases in Laos to the rigorous scanning and testing done at ports of entry and the quarantines imposed on those who entered the country. Even those who showed no symptoms when they entered Laos were told to go into self-imposed quarantine for two weeks. Showing an abundance of caution, on March 9, the government declared that celebrations of Lao New Year (April 13-15) would be canceled.

“Poverty in Laos will be exacerbated because large numbers of people have been laid off from their jobs.” Her ministry “reported recently that the unemployment rate had surged from the average of 2 percent to 25 percent at present,” according to the Vientiane Times. The World Bank noted that while Laos has “so far avoided a health crisis,” it has not been “immune from the global economic downturn.” Growth rates, which had been estimated before the pandemic to be secure at 7 percent, will collapse to near zero as a consequence of the global coronavirus recession.  Most terrifyingly, this will mean that Laos, which had a relatively stable economy, will slip into debt and chaos. “We defeated the virus crisis,” a government official told me. “Now we are going to be defeated by the debt crisis, which we did not create.”    https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/16/laos-has-tackled-covid-19-but-it-is-drowning-in-debt-to-international-finance/

2020-07-09 Pandemic failure or convenient scapegoat: How did WHO get here?    On April 7, the number of reported deaths in the United States due to COVID-19 reached 12,757—surpassing the CDC’s median estimate of 12,469 deaths from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic, during Barack Obama’s administration. 

That same day, the US president began attacking the World Health Organization for failing to contain the coronavirus pandemic.   A week later, Trump declared a freeze on US funding for WHO, pending a White House investigation into its handling of the outbreak.  On July 7, the Trump administration formally notified the UN that the United States would withdraw from the WHO.

Other WHO members and leading biosecurity experts have called for a more thorough and immediate forensic investigation of the pandemic’s origins.  WHO announced on July 7 that it will send a team of experts to China to begin preparations for a mission to identify how the novel coronavirus made the jump to humans—but did not specify a time frame for that mission.   No matter when an independent forensic investigation gets underway (if that ever happens), the questions of how the pandemic began and why it wasn’t quashed in infancy may take years to answer.

WHO had the job of being the world’s alarm system for the coronavirus outbreak. But WHO was established as and remains an organization whose members are sovereign nations.  when the most powerful of WHO members, the United States of America, sternly turns around and points the finger of blame at WHO—and, in no small regard, at itself?

In addition to recent regulation and structural reforms, new endeavors like WHO’s R&D Blueprint and modern surveillance mechanisms like the Epidemic Intelligence Open Source system (which first alerted WHO to the Wuhan outbreak at the end of December) have helped modernize and accelerate how WHO and the world reacts to emergent threats. But these innovations can do little to overcome the delayed or inadequate action of member states or the funding gaps enforced by those states. https://thebulletin.org/2020/07/pandemic-failure-or-convenient-scapegoat-how-did-who-get-here/

2020-07-07 Trump Owns the COVID-19 Catastrophe    The president and congressional Republicans continue to ramp up the crisis.  The economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of working-age Americans have jobs now, the lowest ratio in over 70 years. What’s roaring back is COVID-19. Until it’s tamed, the economy doesn’t stand a chance.  

The surge is occurring because America reopened before COVID-19 was contained.   Trump was so intent on having a good economy by Election Day that he resisted doing what was necessary to contain the virus. He left everything to governors and local officials, then warned that the “cure” of closing the economy was “worse than the disease.” Trump even called on citizens to “liberate” their states from public health restrictions.   https://prospect.org/coronavirus/trump-owns-covid-19/

2020-07-03 COVID-19 REPORT | Temporary worker at meat processing plant tests positive for Covid-19      “The University of Illinois has conducted weekly environmental sampling throughout the facility. Every sample has been negative for SARS-CoV2. Pre-employment COVID screening has been ongoing since late May, and the preventative measures implemented in April remain in place,” the company statement said. https://www.rantoulpress.com/coronavirus/covid-19-report-temporary-worker-at-meat-processing-plant-tests-positive-for-covid-19/article_39ed23b4-bd7a-11ea-ae5e-fbc85e631673.html

2020-07-01 A pandemic of bad science Compared to public health crises of the recent past, there has been a distinct change in how science is communicated to the public. Experts no longer control the narrative through trusted outlets, and, accurate or not, social media allows anyone to craft their own narrative about science and publish it to an audience of millions. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-07/a-pandemic-of-bad-science/

2020-07-01 Assessing the US government response to the coronavirus   Despite its spread to countries all over the world and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, we are likely still in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The progression of the disease shows little sign that the worst is over. Estimates from a March 2020 study done by the Imperial College of London highlighted that the United States could suffer 2.2 million deaths assuming no interventions.  

 Despite these assessments, the federal response has been tepid and inconsistent; it has deservedly become a target. Consider that early in the outbreak, US companies were selling equipment to China that would be critical for fighting the pandemic. Yet only weeks later, President Donald Trump was invoking the Defense Production Act to control the distribution of vital equipment and compel companies to prioritize the government’s requirements over those of other clients. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-07/assessing-the-us-government-response-to-the-coronavirus/

2020-07-00 What We Need to Combat Pandemics  “Clearly humanity shouldn’t start reacting to a pandemic when it’s already underway. Let’s stop the outbreaks we can’t handle from emerging in the first place.”.

The innovations we need to stop pandemics from emerging in the first place are not to be found in the biomedical sciences but in the social sciences. The only solutions that will allow our long-term survival will require substantial, meaningful, social change in the way we produce and distribute and consume goods and services.  https://againstthecurrent.org/atc207/pandemic-combatting/

2020-07-00 Science, Politics and the Pandemic A whole bunch of these are viruses that affect us. And to get right to the immunology of it and why it affects us, and why it affects mainly older people, is that our immune systems have evolved — that is, in all of the animal species — before trains, planes and cars.

The virus itself appears to first inhabit mainly the nasal passages in the back of what’s called the pharynx: the throat and then going down. It then really becomes lethal when it spreads to the substance of the lungs. It goes not only through the tubes that lead to the lungs, but also to the air passages — tiny places where oxygen gets exchanged and CO2 gets out. It hits those cells with a vengeance, and it starts the infection.  https://againstthecurrent.org/atc207/pandemic-sciencepolitics/

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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

These are excerpts of August 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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2020-08-31 All Luck and No Virtue: Sweden’s Coronavirus Response   Sweden bet on both national character and herd immunity, hoping they would complement each other. Months later, the country has little testing and one of the highest rates of cases.

The result? A disease that was still spreading in Sweden at the end of June, even as it had been contained elsewhere. The country’s seven-day new infection average on June 25 was 1,275 cases per day, compared to forty-two in Denmark and eleven in Norway.

Confronted with this grim picture, Tegnell continued to defend the Swedish approach, conceding only that things went worse than he had “hoped.” This was the very same expert who claimed all along to be basing his policies on scientific evidence and mathematical models. It turned out he just banked on luck—and lost. “If we were to encounter the same disease again, knowing exactly what we know about it today,” he told Swedish Radio on June 3, “I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.” He insisted that the basic strategy was sound, although there was “potential for improvement,” adding that whereas other countries introduced many measures at once, not knowing which of them was going to work, Sweden was right to run its experiment.  [MEK Note:  Sweden was right! 2021-07-22 Daily COVID Deaths in Sweden Hit Zero, as Other Nations Brace for More Lockdowns]https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/all-luck-and-no-virtue-swedens-coronavirus-response

2020-08-30 Here’s the Shockingly Small Number of People Who Died From Only the Coronavirus      The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website disclosed the shockingly small number of people who died from only the Wuhan coronavirus, with no other cause of death mentioned. Hold on to your hat because here it is: out of the 161,392 deaths in the CDC data, just six percent, about 9,700 deaths, were attributed to the coronavirus alone. According to the CDC, the other 94 percent had an average of 2.6 additional conditions or causes of deaths, such as heart disease, diabetes, and sepsis.

Instead of protecting the vulnerable – the elderly in nursing homes and those with comorbidities – health “experts” recommended locking everyone up and prescribing for Americans a wide range of ailments such as depression, suicide, missed early cancer screenings, unemployment, substance abuse, and poverty. Something is driving the liberal media’s morbid obsession with the U.S. death toll. The media is doing everything it can to blame the virus on President Trump, a virus that originated in China and is killing people all over the world. It’s been widely known for months that people with comorbidities and the elderly are at higher risk for severe illness due to COVID-19, so why is the media clamoring for prolonged shutdowns and keeping schools closed? Is it because they see a connection between prolonged shutdowns, a weakened economy and the Democrats’ electoral chances in November?  https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2020/08/30/heres-the-shockingly-small-number-of-people-who-died-from-just-the-coronavirus-n2575306

2020-08-28 US Sanctions Russian Research Institute that Developed COVID-19 Vaccine   Russia won the race to develop the first vaccine against the novel coronavirus. The United States has responded by slapping sanctions on a Russian research facility involved in creating it.

The U.S. government has blacklisted several Russian scientific institutes, including the Russian Defense Ministry’s 48th Central Research Institute, which has worked with other non-military medical centers to develop and test the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine. In the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic and a historic economic crisis, Washington has escalated its global campaign of economic warfare, imposing sanctions on foreign adversaries and announcing new punitive measures on a nearly daily basis.   More than one-fourth of people on Earth live in countries that are suffering from U.S. sanctions.    https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/28/us-sanctions-russian-research-institute-that-developed-covid-19-vaccine/

2020-08-27 Corrupted: Mnuchin’s Pandemic Opportunism   Every disaster brings out opportunists. We’ve seen plenty during this pandemic, both inside and outside of government.    This week, let’s focus on an opportunist in the Trump Cabinet who’s currently in the hot seat: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.   The Treasury secretary seems to have jumped at the chance created by the pandemic to make President Donald Trump’s wishes come true and do the bidding of big business.

As head of the Treasury Department, Mnuchin certainly has an important role in the federal government’s relief efforts. But while working to get the country back on its feet, he has also upended precedent by inserting himself into the operations of two critical government agencies that are supposed to be independent and non-political: the United States Postal Service and the Federal Reserve.

So when the Postal Service, long plagued by financial problems, found itself especially cash-strapped when the pandemic hit, Trump and Mnuchin apparently saw an opening. Rather than come to its immediate rescue, the administration has used the crisis to force the Postal Service to agree to some of the president’s demands.   This spring, Trump opposed direct funding to the Postal Service in a coronavirus relief bill—and has since suggested his reluctance stems from concerns about mail-in voting, which he claims, without evidence, would help the Democrats. Mnuchin delivered the message to lawmakers.   

Mnuchin then tried to use Congress’ $10 billion loan as leverage to gain greater control over the Postal Service and push for a litany of changes he’d also pushed for through the task force.    Between Congress’s approval of the loan in April and the final agreement in July, the administration won another big concession. The Postal Service Board of Governors installed Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor and a major Republican fundraiser, as postmaster general.  

Mnuchin’s actions have raised concerns about inappropriate politicization of the Postal Service. The Treasury secretary does not typically insert himself into the affairs of independent agencies like the Postal Service, so it appears that Mnuchin at the very least is breaking with longstanding norms, even if his actions were within the bounds of the law.

Mnuchin’s interference in the Federal Reserve’s pandemic response has gotten much less attention, but it’s equally troubling.   As the nation’s central bank, the Fed’s mission is to support “maximum employment and stable prices as an independent agency that makes decisions based on the best available evidence and analysis, without taking politics into consideration,”   The Fed was also established as an independent agency insulated from political pressure, and it’s accountable to Congress, not other executive branch officials.

While the Fed can’t legally create emergency lending facilities for specific industries, it was able to rejigger the Main Street Lending facility to allow larger companies with more debt to qualify, giving the oil and gas industry greater opportunity to seek federal pandemic aid.  Meanwhile, the Fed has faced criticism for failing to help struggling state and local governments and midsize companies in other sectors.  

Congress should also pass new requirements for the Fed’s lending programs to ensure that the aid reaches those truly in need.   https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/08/corrupted-mnuchins-pandemic-opportunism/

 2020-08-25 DARPA, Operation Warp Speed, and the Covid-19 Ka-ching Ahead If/When Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca put out a viable Covid-19 solution in October, it won’t come as a surprise to DARPA.

The Department of Defense agency set up the Pandemic Prevention Program (P3) shortly after Donald J. Trump’s presidential inauguration in January 2017. The highly ambitious principle function of P3 is to scramble scientists, pharmacies, and government agencies to combat pandemic outbreaks before they can savage a population. They want to be able to take any virus and come up with “a functionally integrated platform to deliver pandemic prevention treatments in <60 days.”

The P3 has been up and running for more than two years already. Working with partners, such as Lilly, AbCellera, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Genentech, and Amgen, they’ve conducted ‘war games’ against viruses, which are simulations of pandemics with their amped-up responses. Ostensibly, the system would be the solution.

As it turned out, an intergovernmental working group set up by the Department of Health and Human Services was there and ready (for COVID-19). Officers of the DHHS’s Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR) team took the first blood sample obtained from a Washington state patient who recovered from COVID-19 and, on February 25, handed it over to a DARPA partner, the privately held biotech company Abcellera in Vancouver, to immediately “evolve identified antibodies to high potency” in order to “deliver gene-encoded therapeutics.” Abcellera partnered with the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly to deliver the immune-reactive solution to the public. And on June 1, right as they said they could do, Abcellera and Lilly announced a viable stop-gap solution for Covid-19, pending a vaccine. Ta-da!

Describing how it works, Abcellera tells us that “LY-CoV555 is a highly potent, neutralizing IgG1 monoclonal antibody that targets the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Its mechanism of action is designed to block viral attachment and entry into human cells, and to neutralize the virus, potentially preventing and treating COVID-19.” In short, LY-CoV555 creates an immune response that wards off Covid-19 as it tries to latch on. However, according to the government, the trial will not end, and outcomes known, until November 5 — just after the election. Meaning antibody treatments could begin in early November.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/25/darpa-operation-warp-speed-and-the-covid-19-ka-ching-ahead/

2020-08-20 Positive Peer Pressure/The Covid Testing Solution  These tests would essentially do the same thing [as a vaccine] only it wouldn’t be working by eliciting a strong immune response. It’s giving people information about their status so they can stop the transmission willingly by staying home. So, I do believe that within weeks if these could be introduced into any population that that population could get the [corona]virus under control   https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/positive-peer-pressure-the-covid-testing-solution/

2020-08-17 Engineered COVID-19-Infected Mouse Bites Researcher Amid ‘Explosion’ of Risky Coronavirus Research    University researchers genetically engineer a human pandemic virus. They inject the new virus into a laboratory mouse. The infected mouse then bites a researcher…..It is a plot worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster about risky coronavirus research.

But according to newly obtained minutes of the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, these exact events need not be imagined. They occurred for real between April 1st and May 6th this year.    https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/08/17/engineered-covid-19-infected-mouse-bites-researcher-amid-explosion-of-risky-coronavirus-research/

2020-08-15 COVID-19 Coronavirus “Fake” Pandemic: Timeline and Analysis    On January 30th 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) in relation to China’s novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) categorized  as a viral pneumonia.  The virus outbreak was centered in  Wuhan, a city in Eastern China with a population in excess of 11 million.

In the week prior to January 30th decision, the WHO Emergency Committee “expressed divergent views”. There were visible divisions within the Committee. On January 30th, a far-reaching decision was taken without the support of expert opinion at a time when the coronavirus outbreak was limited to Mainland China. 

The WHO did not act to reassure and inform World public opinion. Quite the opposite: A “Fear Pandemic” rather than a genuine Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)  was launched.   Outright panic and uncertainty were sustained through a carefully designed media disinformation campaign.

What is at stake is the alliance of “Big Pharma” and “Big Money”, with the endorsement of the Trump Administration. The decision to launch a fake pandemic under the helm of the WHO on January 30, was taken a week earlier at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). The media operation was there to spread outright panic.

But this was not the first time that the WHO decided to act in this way.  Remember the unusual circumstances surrounding the April 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic.  An atmosphere of fear and intimidation prevailed. The data was manipulated.  The WHO Director General nonetheless predicted with authority that: “as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population.  A  financial windfall for Big Pharma Vaccine Producers including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Merck & Co., Sanofi,  Pfizer. et al.

CORONAVIRUS TIMELINE    See article!

October 18, Event 201. New York. Coronavirus nCoV-2019 Simulation and Emergency Preparedness Task Force, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health Security.  Big Pharma-Big Money Simulation Exercise sponsored by WEF and Gates Foundation.   Private sector initiative. Participation of corporate execs, foundations, financial institutions, Banks, Big Pharma, CIA, CDC, China’s CDC. No health officials (with exception of CDC and China CDC) present on behalf of national governments or the WHO. The simulation exercise was held on the same day as the opening of the CISM World Militaty Sports Games in Wuhan.

January 21-24, 2020: Consultations at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland under auspices of  the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) for development of a vaccine program. CEPI is a WEF-Gates partnership. With support from CIPI, Seattle based Moderna will manufacture an mRNA vaccine against 2019-nCoV, “The Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, collaborated with Moderna to design the vaccine.”

January 30, 2020 The Simulation Exercise Went Live. The same corporate interests and foundations which were involved in the October 18 John Hopkins Simulation Exercise became REAL ACTORS involved in providing their support to the implementation of the WHO Public Health emergency (PHEIC). [MEK Note: This is quite similar to 9/11 event when military exercises, simulating airline hijackings and crashes into buildings, were being conducted while actual attacks were occurring] https://www.globalresearch.ca/ncov-2019-coronavirus-time-line/5705776

2020-08-13 Corrupted: Will Cronyism and Politics Hamper the Vaccine Program?   Americans are hoping for news of an effective vaccine or treatment that enables us to restart the economy, open schools, and get our lives back.  Everything hinges on the federal government’s effort to develop and distribute a vaccine: Will it be an honest, well-managed effort based on sound scientific principles, or will it be a fiasco hampered by corruption, cronyism, and the influence of Big Pharma?

Whistleblower Rick Bright made national headlines earlier this year after he was removed from his position as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Bright alleges leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services pressured him “to ignore expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism.”

We have limited visibility into the administration’s push for a vaccine, now dubbed Operation Warp Speed. But we do know the government has given millions of taxpayer dollars to inexperienced, untested firms, and considerable leeway to the already powerful pharmaceutical industry.

But at least three of the companies that received government funding have never brought a vaccine to market. Let us repeat that: never.

In April, the government committed up to $483 million to Moderna, a young biotech firm that has never produced a vaccine that was approved and has never even conducted a large trial. The government’s collaboration with Moderna has been fraught with delays and disagreements over the development process and the company’s contractual obligations. Even so, the government invested an additional $472 million in Moderna’s vaccine candidate in late July and $1.5 billion this week, pushing the grand total to over $2.4 billion.

In July, the government invested $1.6 billion in biotech firm Novavax, which, as the New York Times noted, has “never brought a vaccine to market in its 33-year history,” and as of last year was in deep financial trouble. Novavax also tapped influential contacts when pursuing a government contract for vaccine development, the Times reported.

The company, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, was not selected to produce vaccines for Operation Warp Speed. But it did receive $71 million in June from the Department of Defense to produce a vaccine injection device. The company’s CEO was also at the White House roundtable, where he touted Inovio’s capabilities directly to the president, claiming that not only had the company developed a COVID vaccine, but it had done so “within three hours.” Like Moderna and Novavax, Inovio has never brought a vaccine to market.

Leading Operation Warp Speed is former GlaxoSmithKline executive Moncef Slaoui. Slaoui, who until May sat on the board of Moderna, has extensive investments in the pharmaceutical industry—which he’ll be allowed to keep, even as he makes decisions about contracts with vaccine developers. Slaoui still owns stock in GlaxoSmithKline, which will receive up to $2.1 billion from the government to develop a vaccine in partnership with Sanofi. What’s more, Slaoui, as a contractor consultant, will not be required to file ethics disclosures officially revealing his potential conflicts of interest.

Top scientists who sit on a committee formed by the National Institutes of Health to help the government run vaccine clinical trials say they were not consulted when the administration chose Moderna and the other firms. the White House, including Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, is pressuring government researchers and regulators to have a vaccine available before the election.

Members of Congress and civil society groups have complained about the lack of transparency in the effort to develop a vaccine. The administration has not explained its process for choosing candidates or how many contracts it has awarded.

What we do know is the government is giving favorable treatment to pharmaceutical companies, which already wield immense power over this country’s healthcare system.  For example, several contracts limit the government’s ability to intervene if the companies ultimately charge unreasonable prices for vaccines. So even if these companies promise to offer fair prices, the government has no recourse if they go back on their word.   With the companies and their executives poised to reap huge profits, the federal government should not be handing them even more power to control prices.

Congress can still combat the pharmaceutical industry’s immense control over drug and vaccine prices. Even without major legislation to address prescription drug pricing, lawmakers can enact bills giving the government more power over the price of vaccines, as well as more transparency over the whole vaccine development effort.   https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/08/corrupted-will-cronyism-and-politics-hamper-the-vaccine-program/

2020-08-07 Kansas governor angered after House Speaker attended meeting, didn’t disclose COVID hospitalization https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/8/7/1967365/-After-COVID-hospitalization-Kansas-Republican-went-to-meeting-with-governor-did-not-disclose?

2020-08-06 Corrupted: How the PPP Loans Favored the Historically Advantaged    Of course, bailouts for thriving defense contractors are only one piece of the corruption puzzle. Big companies that accepted loans meant for small businesses haven’t had to face this kind of public interrogation. They simply took the money and walked away.

The Paycheck Protection Program—intended to rescue struggling small businesses—is a glaring example of how corrupted systems are chugging along amid the pandemic, with precious little oversight to keep them in check.

From the outset, there’s been a steady flow of stories about powerful, wealthy, or undeserving companies and institutions receiving loans through this federal program. Among them: the Los Angeles Lakers, Shake Shack, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House. When the government eventually released data on the largest loans, we saw that those early examples weren’t flukes.

The Paycheck Protection Program doled out loans on what was billed as a first-come, first-served basis. And well-capitalized companies didn’t need to try very hard to get a leg up for these small-business loans.  The program’s structure basically invited line-cutting and abuse. Without crucial safeguards and oversight, the program will keep benefiting those who need help the least at the expense of those who need it the most. 

Instead, in a clear case of corporate favoritism, the Paycheck Protection Program relied on banks to sort through applications and issue loans. Ostensibly, that was to help get the money out more quickly to businesses in need. In practice, that meant some banks processing the loans first served companies that were well-established clients—on the whole, prioritizing the well-banked, well-lawyered, and well-resourced big businesses that had other ways to access cash during the economic slump.

In the CARES Act, which created the program, Congress required the Small Business Administration to direct banks to prioritize underserved markets, including minority- and women-owned businesses, but the agency didn’t follow through.

The Trump administration dragged its feet on releasing loan data, and refuses to disclose the names of companies that received loans of $150,000 or less—which amounts to more than 85% of the loans issued.  We have to ask: What is the administration working so hard to hide?

The administration is also working overtime to hinder oversight of and accountability in other aspects of pandemic relief. Finding a weakness in the CARES Act, the Treasury Department declared the newly created Pandemic Response Accountability Committee—made up of federal agency watchdogs across government—doesn’t have the authority to oversee a significant chunk of the relief funding. And before that, the president announced that he will “be the oversight,” and has since replaced several acting inspectors general who were on the committee when it was formed.  The two other bodies established to oversee relief funds are also in trouble. The Congressional Oversight Commission still has no leader, while the special inspector general for pandemic recovery only recently began hiring staff. That’s like going off to war without a commanding general or troops—for months.

The U.S. could have followed the European model for saving jobs and struggling businesses—reimbursing companies for putting workers on paid furloughs. But it’s hard to imagine American policymakers seriously considering that model given how intertwined our political system is with corporate interests.   https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/08/corrupted-how-the-ppp-loans-favored-the-historically-advantaged/

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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

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

.

Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

These are excerpts of October 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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2020-10-29 My San Quentin Death Row Coronavirus Experience    In late January 2020, President Donald Trump was fully aware of the potential danger and present threat of Coronavirus, even as it would take the WHO until March 11 to declare a pandemic. In that same month, San Quentin prisoners received an administrative notification that one of the guards tested positive.     

San Quentin’s initial flimsy attempt to thwart the virus was to issue face masks, pass out hand sanitizer, cancel all visiting, halt movement except for emergencies, and split the recreational yard in half in an effort to limit the number of prisoners in close contact. These measures would fail completely.

in early days, San Quentin was still relatively free of any Covid-19 cases. Unfortunately, under a court order, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on May 31 transferred 121 prisoners from CIT to an already overcapacity and overcrowded San Quentin.

Several of these transferred prisoners were put in quarantine the moment they stepped off the bus because they exhibited signs of Covid-19! Unsurprisingly, within a matter of days the virus spread wildly, infecting both inmates and guards in high numbers, leading to a lockdown of the prison.

I don’t expect San Quentin to vanquish the virus anytime soon. But I’m glad to be alive and well, along with everyone else in the world who has survived their encounter with this monstrosity.   The coronavirus and Covid-19 remind me exactly how vulnerable I am, along with all the people on earth who live in poor communities without political influence or access to proper medical care. It also reminds me, and should remind everyone, that we are all connected, no matter where we are; we share the same earth and our common humanity should inspire us to preserve it by taking good care of it, and of each other.   https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/29/my-san-quentin-death-row-coronavirus-experience/

2020-10-27 Estonia and WHO to jointly develop digital vaccine certificate to strengthen COVAX WHO and Estonia recently agreed to collaborate on developing a digitally enhanced International Certificate of Vaccination, a “smart yellow card” to help strengthen the effectiveness of the COVAX initiative, established to speed development and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

The agreement signed between His Excellency Jüri Ratas, Prime Minister of Estonia and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General on 5 October 2020, covers working together across a range of digital health projects and innovations in addition to the vaccination card. These include a global framework for health data interoperability, and guidelines for national ePrescription and eDispensing systems as well as the European Roadmap for the Digitalization of National Health Systems. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/estonia-and-who-to-jointly-develop-digital-vaccine-certificate-to-strengthen-covax

2020-10-21 How to Get a Non-Invasive COVID Test for Kids   Brain-tickling nose swabs make testing kids a nightmare. Here are your alternatives.   Spitting into a test tube is more pleasant than getting swabbed in the back of the nose, and recent studies suggest it may be as accurate.   When getting your kids a spit test for COVID-19, make sure they don’t eat or drink for at least a half-hour before the test. They will be asked to spit and drool between one and five milliliters of saliva into a small test tube, which can take up to 12 minutes. The sample is then shipped off to a lab and analyzed for the coronavirus.   https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/covid-testing-for-kids-non-invasive/   

2020-08-20 Corrupted: Those Left Behind   We’re focusing on those who have found it especially difficult to get relief, either because the government’s response has favored corporate interests over individual people’s needs, or because relief programs failed to help businesses in time before they folded. There are leftover relief funds and opportunities for new legislation, but it’s too late for some.    So, while large companies, companies owned by billionaires, and businesses linked to political elites rapidly scooped up billions in relief loans and government contracts, those who were already at a disadvantage before COVID-19—and are enduring the worst of the pandemic’s health and economic fallout—are left scrounging for crumbs.

Jameian Selmon had to permanently shut down her event-planning business early in the pandemic as clients cancelled their weddings. She’s just one of about 440,000 Black business owners who had to close their doors permanently by mid-April. As another Black business owner told the New York Times, “it’s been a consistent rollercoaster trying to get help” weathering the pandemic. “As far as I know, most of the people that are in our area have gotten nothing or the bare minimum, and they’re still waiting,” Juliet Andersen, who owns two businesses in the Bronx, told the Times.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially devastating for Black, Hispanic, and Native Americans due to socioeconomic factors dating back decades and centuries, as well as for all low-income Americans.  

The Trump administration has exacerbated the problem by making it more difficult for certain unemployed Americans to obtain benefits, while giving employers more leeway when applying for exemptions allowed by relief legislation.  For example, gig workers are required to file burdensome paperwork to prove they qualify. By comparison, companies that qualify for an exemption from new paid family leave regulations are not required to file paperwork explaining why they must deny employees that leave.

Adding insult to injury, powerful pro-business advocacy groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable are aggressively lobbying Congress to not extend unemployment benefits in the next relief package, while the groups’ member companies eagerly snap up millions in pandemic relief.

The Paycheck Protection Program was intended to help small businesses retain workers by providing loans, largely for payroll expenses, with the possibility of forgiveness if businesses met certain requirements.  in many cases, the loans were simply not enough to survive on for more than a few months. So the loans were essentially “a Band-Aid on a bullet wound,” as one small-business owner told the Washington Post.

As lawmakers consider additional relief legislation, they need to take a hard look at what’s worked and what hasn’t worked to help those in need. The CARES Act relief bill, passed in late March, was heavily influenced by corporate lobbyists, with special carve-outs and tax breaks favoring large corporations and specific industries.   https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2020/08/corrupted-those-left-behind/

World First Non-invasive Covid-19 Test      https://www.timeshighereducation.com/hub/p/world-first-non-invasive-covid-19-test

2020-10-15 Inside the Fall of the CDC    How the world’s greatest public health organization was brought to its knees by a virus, the president and the capitulation of its own leaders, causing damage that could last much longer than the coronavirus.  

CDC trying to craft guidance to help Americans return safely to worship amid worries that two of its greatest comforts — the chanting of prayers and singing of hymns — could launch a deadly virus into the air with each breath.   a furious call came from the office of the vice president: The White House suggestions were not optional. The CDC’s failure to use them was insubordinate, according to emails at the time.   Fifteen minutes later, one of Butler’s deputies had the agency’s text replaced with the White House version, the emails show. The danger of singing wasn’t mentioned. 

A cataclysmic chain of mistakes and disputes inside the CDC labs making the first U.S. test for COVID-19. A respected lab scientist made a fateful decision to use a process that risked contamination, saw signs of trouble, but sent the tests to public health labs anyway. Many of those tests didn’t work, and the scramble to fix them had serious consequences.

Leading that briefing was Messonnier, the no-nonsense director of the CDC’s powerful immunization and respiratory diseases center, who’d come to prominence during the 2001 anthrax attacks.   Asked by the media team to add a personal touch, Messonnier said she’d told her children they needed to prepare for a significant disruption of their lives. But her words had rocked Wall Street and the White House.   The market’s fall infuriated the president. Trump had privately confessed to author Bob Woodward that he was publicly downplaying the virus to prevent panic. The CDC would pay the price for undercutting that narrative.  The next day, Trump put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of his coronavirus task force and assumed the role of communicator-in-chief. The CDC, which had been the public face of the government during every health crisis in memory, soon became nearly invisible.

In August, the CDC stunned infectious disease doctors everywhere when it recommended that people who had close contact with a COVID patient didn’t necessarily need testing if they didn’t have symptoms.  

Once seen as an apolitical bulwark, the CDC endured meddling on multiple fronts by officials with little or no public health experience, from Trump’s daughter Ivanka to Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s immigration crackdown.

Veteran CDC specialists with global reputations were marginalized, silenced or reassigned — often for simply doing what had always been their job. Some of the agency’s most revered scientists vanished from public view after speaking candidly about the virus.

ProPublica obtained hundreds of emails and other internal government documents and interviewed more than 30 CDC employees, contractors and Trump administration officials who witnessed or were involved in key moments of the crisis. Although news organizations around the world have chronicled the CDC’s stumbles in real time, ProPublica’s reporting affords the most comprehensive inside look at the escalating tensions, paranoia and pained discussions that unfolded behind the walls of CDC’s Atlanta headquarters. And it sheds new light on the botched COVID-19 tests, the unprecedented political interference in public health policy, and the capitulations of some of the world’s top public health leaders.

Senior CDC staff describe waging battles that are as much about protecting science from the White House as protecting the public from COVID-19. It is a war that they have, more often than not, lost.    When the next history of the CDC is written, 2020 will emerge as perhaps the darkest chapter in its 74 years, rivaled only by its involvement in the infamous Tuskegee experiment, in which federal doctors withheld medicine from poor Black men with syphilis, then tracked their descent into blindness, insanity and death.   https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc

2020-10-14 YouTube deletes videos against the WHO Covid “consensus” The way YouTube phrased it in a company blog post on Wednesday is that content about vaccine(s) will be banned if it goes against “consensus” that exists between “local” – i.e., national – healthcare authorities, and the global one, the World Health Organization (WHO). But YouTube is already hard at work, with more than 200,000 videos about “Covid misinformation” removed from the platform.

Specifically, content that expresses suspicion the vaccine might have grave consequences on human health, all the way up to killing people. (Once again, while there is value in not helping spread any kind of unsubstantiated panic, Google/YouTube/WHO at present really have no way of knowing that a future vaccine might not in fact cause harm – this is all yet to be determined.) https://reclaimthenet.org/youtube-to-delete-videos-that-go-against-the-who-coronavirus-vaccines/

2020-10-14 YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation YouTube says it already removes content that disputes the existence or transmission of COVID-19, promotes medically unsubstantiated methods of treatment, discourages people from seeking medical care or explicitly disputes health authorities’ guidance on self-isolation or social distancing. Conspiracy theories and misinformation about the new coronavirus vaccines have proliferated on social media during the pandemic, including through anti-vaccine personalities on YouTube and through viral videos shared across multiple platforms. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-youtube/youtube-bans-coronavirus-vaccine-misinformation-idUSKBN26Z1VD

2020-10-13 Vitamin C Cuts COVID Deaths by Two-Thirds  The world’s first randomized placebo controlled trial designed to test high dose intravenous vitamin C for treatment of COVID-19 has reduced mortality in the most critically ill patients by two thirds. [1] The study, headed by Professor Zhiyong Peng at Wuhan’s Zhongnan University Hospital, started in February and gave every other critically ill COVID-19 patient on ventilators either 12,000 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C twice daily or sterile water in their drip. Neither the patient nor the doctors knew who was getting vitamin C or placebo so the trial was “double blind.” This is the ‘gold standard’ of research design. 

Overall, 5 out 26 people (19%) died in the vitamin C group while 10 out of 28 (36%) receiving the placebo died. That means that vitamin C almost halved the number of deaths. Those on vitamin C were 60% more likely to survive.https://orthomolecular.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=38af86134b65d0f10fe33d30dd76442e.180&s=6b6cc4626fada8f20d5ca92000534ec7

2020-10-05 Why is Trump Not Facing Impeachment Over COVID-19?    If the House of Representatives felt a year ago that Trump’s attempt to use his office for political gain by manipulating Ukraine’s president was worthy of impeachment, then surely abrogating his responsibility to protect people from a predictable and deadly disease is far worse. The evidence of his wrongdoing is all out in the open, and the impact of it is far greater as measured in human lives than anything he has done since 2017. Not impeaching him on this issue in essence lets him off the hook for transgressions too vast to be ignored. Voting him out of office is a good short-term mechanism to stop the crime. But it is neither guaranteed to work nor is it a means by which to hold him accountable for the mass deaths he has overseen. 

Laying out Trump’s criminal negligence of the pandemic is an easy exercise. He has numbed the American people so much to his bluster, rapid-fire lies, gaslighting, unethical deeds and corruption, that we are giving him a pass on the mass deaths he has helped to cause by simply relying on an election to oust him. Just because we are fatigued by his endless criminality does not mean that the ever-increasing death toll from the disease ought to be swept under the rug. The staggering crime is not even over—it continues through to today and racks up more victims daily.  https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/05/why-is-trump-not-facing-impeachment-over-covid-19/

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Coronavirus Covid-19 Research History – Index

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World