In his Foreign Policy article of April 2020, Biden states that he will reverse Trump’s embarrassing foreign policy record by standing up to both China, Russia and other totalitarian nations which represent the three-fold plague of “authoritarianism, nationalism and illiberalism” and “once more have America lead the world”.
Biden went further promising to undo the harm Trump has done to NATO by re-enforcing the military body, extending its influence to the Pacific (which sounds a lot like the Esper/Pompeo doctrine for the Pacific), and even demanded that NATO go harder on Russia stating that “the Kremlin fears a strong NATO, the most effective political military alliance in modern history.”
Considering Biden’s nearly 45 year political record supporting every military intervention in American history, opposing de-segregation, eulogizing pro-KKK Senator Strom Thurmond, passing bills that incarcerated petty drug dealers for life on behalf of the cheap labor prison industrial complex and supported the rampant growth of both Wall Street, Big Pharma and the Big Tech run surveillance state, we should think twice before celebrating this man’s possible entry into the halls of the highest office in the USA.
Biden’s call for renewing the NATO alliance in opposition to Russia and China, his support for reversing Trump’s calls for military reduction in the Middle East and his support for extending NATO in the Pacific mixed with his lifelong track record, forces us to ask if Glen Greenwald was right when he quit the Intercept on November 1 saying:
“If Biden wins, that’s going to be the power structure: A democratic party fully united with neocons, Bush/Cheney operatives, CIA/FBI/NSA Wall Street and Silicon Valley: presenting itself as the only protection against fascism. And much of the left will continue marching behind it.”
As it turns out, Greenwald’s warning was absolutely on point, as the entire intelligence apparatus, Big Tech and mainstream media complex which worked desperately to oust President Trump for 4 years and is currently running a vast voting fraud operation as this is written has given its full backing to the narrative of “an inevitable of a Biden presidency”.
In a Nov. 11 article from Antiwar.com entitled Biden’s Pentagon Transition Team Members Funded by the Arms Industry, journalist Dave DeCamp demonstrates that of the 23 members of Biden’s Pentagon Transition Team, over one third are directly tied to NATO and the Military Industrial Complex.
As facts continue to emerge of the corrupt deep state structure which totally dominates the geriatric hologram known as Joe Biden, it has become obvious that even the few positive remarks Biden made in support of renewing the START treaty with Russia carry little weight.
Ignoring the very real danger of a new civil war due to the fact that either result will be denied its legitimacy by half of the nation, the question must be asked: If Trump is replaced by a Biden Presidency on January 20th, then what will be the effects both on world stability and US-Russia-China relations?
It is good that Biden supports START’s renewal, but an increasing majority of the nations are opting for a multipolar alliance premised on the defense of national sovereignty, the right to use protectionism, and the construction of large scale megaprojects such as the New Silk Road, Polar Silk Road, advanced space exploration and North South Transportation Corridor.
The very protectionist measures which allowed the USA (and every nation of the world for that matter) to build up their industrial base and economic sovereignty are attacked directly by Biden who demands the “taking down of trade barriers and resisting dangerous global slide toward protectionism” (which he goes so far as to assert without evidence “caused the great depression” and “lead to World War II”).
Attacking Trump for being soft on China’s imperial Belt and Road Initiative which Biden states is only an “outsourcer of pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars worth of dirty fossil fuel energy projects”, Biden then asks: “who writes the rules that govern trade?” and answers: “the United States, not China, should be leading that effort.”
Beyond carbon reduction plans, and information technology investments (AI, 5G, Quantum Computing), there is very little in Biden’s “development outlook” that brings the USA into harmony with this multipolar consensus. His program to support cutting America’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 as outlined by the Green New Deal and Great Reset crowd at Davos might appear on the surface to be pro-infrastructure, professing to “create 10 million good new jobs”, but the reality on further inspection is very different.
The sorts of large scale BRI-oriented development projects now transforming more than half of the world which is increasingly operating under a completely different non-US dominated banking paradigm, are based on capital intensive heavy industry, the use of fossil fuels and also nuclear power.
Without these energy sources, then the New Silk Road and its’ sister projects could never work (much like Modi’s anti-BRI OSOWOG doppelganger has proven a total failure both scientifically and economically).
The sort of “green energy revolution” which the Davos technocrats running Biden want to impose onto the world might create short term jobs, but once the solar panels and windmills are built, the quality of energy available to nations stupid enough to walk into this cage will forever suffocate their capacity to sustain their populations and growth potential. In short, it is a green mirage obscuring a very ugly design.
In opposition to this depopulation agenda, Trump’s tendency support for space exploration, reviving protectionism to rebuild America’s lost manufacturing and his supporting large scale infrastructure programs in resolving conflict abroad (including his support for building rail in the Arctic, rail in Serbia and Kosovo, nuclear power in South Africa and Poland etc) is certainly synergistic with the multipolar system led by Russia and China and undeniably brings the USA into harmony with its own better traditions.
Additionally, Trump’s defunding of color revolutionary “civil society” groups in Hong Kong and Belarus won him many enemies from both sides of the pro-Soros isle while supporting the concept of national sovereignty which were major steps towards stability and trust-building with nations of the world who demand their sovereignty be respected as outlined in the UN Charter itself.
Compare this with Biden’s statement that we must “stand with Russian civil society which has bravely stood up time and again against President Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic authoritarian system” and Biden’s call to host “a global summit for democracy” featuring “civil society organizations from around the world that stand on the frontlines of democracy” including “the private sector, technology companies and social media giants.”
These are the same “Big tech, and media giants” that have given their full backing to the imposition of Biden into the Presidency which have also been used to overthrow nationally elected governments in color revolutionary regime change operations for decades. These the same networks that have suppressed all evidence of systemic vote fraud in the American elections of 2020 and are stoking the fires of a potential new civil war and regime change inside the republic itself.
Whatever the case may be, the coming weeks and months will feature fierce battles that will shape the outcome of world history.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3kDzeuP Tyler Durden
Tesla’s Supercharger Network In Australia Officially Costs More Than Filling Your Car With Gas Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/16/2020 – 23:40
Using the Tesla Supercharger network, it is now costlier to recharge your vehicle than it is to gas up at a traditional gas station, according to a new report from Australia-based WhichCar.
The news came as a result of a “recent price increase” to use the Superchargers and – stop us if you’ve heard this one – “incorrect fuel figures on the Tesla website”.
This, of course, puts an end to Tesla’s years long claims that recharging its vehicles offered savings versus traditional internal combustion engine vehicles.
“According to Tesla the cost of charging a Tesla Model 3 is $7 per 100km compared with $12 for a rival petrol car,” WhichCar notes, before revealing the estimate uses “at least three incorrect figures”. The report disputes “how much electricity a Tesla Model 3 uses, the cost of electricity at a Tesla Supercharger and the price of petrol.”
It also notes Tesla’s increase for its Supercharger to 52 cents per kilowatt-hour. The article calculates this recharging “even the most efficient” Model 3 Standard Range would cost $9.78 per 100km using a Supercharger.
It then notes that BMW’s 330i costs $8 per 100km to fuel, assuming the country’s average cost of premium unleaded at $1.38 – a figure sourced from the country’s government. The BMW consumes 5.8 litres per 100km, which is below Tesla’s estimates of 7.0 litres per 100km. This means the BMW is actually 18% cheaper to fuel than a Tesla is to recharge at a Supercharger.
And if one were to run the same calculations with the hybrid-powered Lexus IS300h, the results are even more profound. The Lexus cost winds up about 31% lower than the Tesla charged using a Supercharger.
Recall, Tesla first used its Supercharger network, promising “free” electricity and charging, to lure customers into the idea of an all electric future when the company first surfaced. Gradually, the allure of the idea wore off for the company and they began charging for use of the network.
Like many other promises made by Tesla (solar roof tiles, 1 million robotaxis, full self driving), the concept of the Supercharger network looks like it has just run face first into a much needed reality check.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36K3HCi Tyler Durden
“Yeah, like [in] a church. Church of the Good Hustler.”
– Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in The Hustler
At the end of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, A Doll’s House, Nora, the aggrieved wife, leaves her husband’s house and all the illusions that sustained its marriage of lies. She chooses freedom over fantasy. She will no longer be played with like a doll but will try to become a free woman – a singular one.
“There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself,” she tells her husband Torvald, a man completely incapable of understanding the social programming that has made him society’s slave.
When Nora closes the doll’s house door behind her, the sound is like a hammer blow of freedom. For anyone who has seen the play, even when knowing the outcome in advance, that sound is profound. It keeps echoing. It interrogates one’s conscience.
The echo asks: Do you live inside America’s doll house where a vast tapestry of lies, bad faith, and cheap grace keep you caged in comfort, as you repeat the habits that have been drilled into you?
In this doll’s house of propaganda into which America has been converted, a great many of our basic assumptions are totally illusory.
Americans who voted for either Trump or Biden in the 2020 election are like Torvald clones. They refuse to open that door so they might close it behind them.
They live in the doll’s house – all 146+ million of them. Like Torvald, they are comforted. They are programmed and propagandized, embracing the illusion that the electoral system is not structured and controlled to make sure no significant change can occur, no matter who is president. It is a sad reality promoted as democracy.
They will prattle on and give all sorts of reasons why they voted, and for whom, and how if you don’t vote you have no right to bitch, and how it’s this sacred right to vote that makes democracy great, blah blah blah. It’s all sheer nonsense. For the U.S.A. is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy run by the wealthy for the wealthy.
This is not a big secret. Everybody knows this is true; knows the electoral system is sheer show-business with the presidential extravaganza drawing the big money from corporate lobbyists, investment bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, business and hedge fund executives, Silicon Valley honchos, think tanks, Wall Street gamblers, millionaires, billionaires, et. al. Biden and Trump spent over 3 billion dollars on the election. They are owned by the money people.
Both are old men with long, shameful histories. A quick inquiry will show how the rich have profited immensely from their tenures in office. There is not one hint that they could change and have a miraculous conversion while in future office, like JFK. Neither has the guts or the intelligence. They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he turned against the CIA and the war machine. They join the craven company of Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. They all got the message that was sent from the streets of Dallas in 1963: You don’t want to die, do you?
Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks, its vast intelligence apparatus, increased or decreased in the past half century? Who is winning the battle, the people or the ruling elites? The answer is obvious.
It matters not at all whether the president has been Trump or Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, Barack Obama or George H. W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter. The power of the national security state has grown under them all and everyone is left to moan and groan and wonder why.
All the while, the doll’s house has become more and more sophisticated and powerful. It is now essentially an electronic prison that is being “Built Back Better.” The new Cold War now being waged against Russia and China is a bi-partisan affair, as is the confidence game played by the secret government intended to create a fractured consciousness in the population through their corporate mass-media stenographers. Trump and his followers on one side of the coin; liberal Democrats on the other.
Only those backed by the wealthy power brokers get elected in the U.S.A. Then when elected, it’s payback time. Palms are greased. Everybody knows this is true. It’s called corruption. So why would anyone, who opposes a corrupt political oligarchy, vote, unless they were casting a vote of conscience for a doomed third-party candidate?
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
And yet everybody who voted for the two men backed by the super-rich owners of the country knew what they were doing, unless they live under a rock and come out every four years to vote. Perhaps they were out buying stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey, so they can give thanks for the farce (stuffing: Latin: farcire ).
They have their reasons. Now the Biden people celebrate, just as Trump’s supporters did in 2016. I can hear fireworks going off as I write here in a town where 90% + voted for Biden and hate Trump with a passion more intense than what they ever could work up for a spurned lover or spouse. This is mass psychosis. It’s almost funny.
At least we have gotten rid of Trump, they say. No one can be worse. They think this is logic. Like Torvald, they cannot begin to understand why anyone would want to leave the doll’s house, how anyone could refuse to play a game in which the dice are loaded. They will deny they are in the doll’s house while knowing the dice are loaded and still roll the die, not caring that their choice – whether it’s Tweedledee or Tweedledum – will result in the death and impoverishment of so many, that being the end result of oligarchic rule at home and imperialism abroad.
Orwell called this Doublethink:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them…. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.
And while in Nineteen Eighty-Four Doublethink is learned by all the Party members “and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox,” today in the USA, it has been mastered even by the so-called unintelligent.
To live in the USA is to live in the Church of the Good Hustler.
People often ask: What can we do to make the country better? What is your alternative?
A child could answer that one: Don’t vote if you know that both contenders are backed by the super-rich elites, what some call the Deep State. Which of course they are. Everybody knows.
The so-called left and right argue constantly about whom to support. It’s a pseudo-debate constructed to allow people to think their vote counts; that the game isn’t rigged. It’s hammered into kids’ heads from an early age. Be grateful, give thanks that you live in a democracy where voting is allowed and your choice is as important as a billionaire’s such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Charles Koch. In the voting booth we are all equal.
Myths die hard. This one never does:
Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.”
— Donald Trump, January 20, 2017
With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation. It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.”
— Joe Biden, November 7, 2020
Above all else, the time has come for us to renew our faith in ourselves and in America. In recent years, that faith has been challenged.”
— Richard Nixon, January 20, 1973
Your voice – our faith – it’s time to unite and heal.
Ask the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Afghanis, the Libyans, the Palestinians, et al. They sing a different tune, one not heard In the Church of the Good Hustler.
After campaigning hard for the losing presidential candidate in 1972, I nearly choked when I heard Richard Nixon’s inaugural address in January 1973. Clinging to the American myth the previous year, I had campaigned for a genuine anti-war Democrat, Senator George McGovern.
The war against Vietnam was still raging and Nixon, who had been first elected in 1968 as a “peace candidate,” succeeding the previous “peace candidate” Lyndon Baines Johnson, was nevertheless overwhelmingly elected, despite Watergate allegations appearing in the months preceding the election. Nixon won forty-nine states to McGovern’s one – Massachusetts, where I lived.
It was a landslide. I felt sick, woke up, got up, and left the doll’s house.
“Propaganda is the true remedy for loneliness,” wrote the French sociologist Jacques Ellul in 1965 in Propaganda:
It corresponds to the need to share, to be a member of a community, to lose oneself in a group, to embrace a collective ideology that will end loneliness…. It also corresponds to deep and constant needs, more developed today, perhaps, than ever before: the need to believe and obey, to create and hear fables, to communicate in the language of myths.
In a country where loneliness is widespread, the will to believe and the power of positive thinking are far more powerful than the will to truth. Unlike Nora, who knew that when she left the doll’s house she was choosing the loneliness of the solitary soul, Americans prefer myths that induce them to act out of habit so they can lose themselves in the group.
This is so despite the fact that In the Church of the Good Hustler, when you play the game, you lose. We are all Americans and your vote counts and George Washington never told a lie.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3kCf4kE Tyler Durden
Israel In Talks To Buy Russia’s COVID Vaccine Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/16/2020 – 23:00
In the United States and the West broadly all eyes are on the Moderna and Pfizer coronavirus vaccines, as well as planning for the “logistical nightmare” of mass distribution to the population once fully proven effective. Hours after Moderna on Monday hailed its vaccine as nearly 95% effective the WHO in a press conference said the trial results are “encouraging”.
However, what’s being given far less attention yet is a potentially much more important geopolitical development, is that after the claimed effectiveness of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, which interim trial results showed to be 92% effective (announced last week), Israel is in talks with the Russian government to possibly buy the vaccine.
On Monday afternoon (local time) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters: “About an hour ago I spoke with Russian President Vladmir Putin regarding the possibility of purchasing an option on the vaccine Sputnik-V.”
Image source: Russian Healthcare ministry
Netanyahu added that “We will discuss this in the coming days” in reference to Israeli access to Sputnik V. Netanyahu is also speaking with with American multinational Pfizer in what appears an effort to cast as wide a net as possible for Israel’s large-scale vaccine procurement.
“My goal is to bring as many vaccines from as many sources to as many citizens, as quickly as possible,” Netanyahu said Monday after talking to Putin.
Last week Netanyahu described of talks with Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla, “I am constantly working to bring vaccines to Israel… The entire world wants to receive its drugs. We are conducting negotiations with them.”
Hadassah-University Medical Center has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the country’s sovereign wealth fund, Russian Direct Investment Fund, and the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology, who are collaborating on the production of the vaccine, according to Hadassah head Prof. Zeev Rotstein.
He told The Jerusalem Post that the hospital had submitted the dossier to the Health Ministry to register the vaccine and has signed an MOU for 1.5 million doses of the vaccine candidate.
This doesn’t necessarily mean any decision has been made for large-scale purchase of the Russian vaccine, but pilot programs for presumably multiple vaccines are being readied.
According to further explanation from the Hadassah-University Medical Center director:
“We know that the chances of Israel enjoying vaccines from different countries are unclear,” Rotstein said. “Different governments could decide to vaccinate their people first and only then send vaccines to other countries. We came to the agency early so we could get on the list.”
This comes after Russia has faced months of criticism that its vaccine was being “rushed” amid broader accusations and suspicions when it comes to Russian technology and science.
Russia has lately touted that “The Pfizer vaccine requires storage at minus 70 degrees, whereas Sputnik V can be maintained at minus 18 degrees, making it easier to store and distribute,” according to Sky News.
UK and US reports have further described the international race to be the first country to deliver an effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine as a ‘medical Cold War’ of sorts.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3pDuHfl Tyler Durden
When Gutenberg introduced the printing press in 1440, the world had no idea that things were about to drastically change. Prior to the release and production of the printing press, books were incredibly expensive, rare, mostly written in Latin, and reserved for royalty and clergy.
The spread of information was kept under lock and key.
However, in just a few decades after its spread throughout the world, Gutenberg’s press had rolled out hundreds of millions of books. The operation of a printing press became synonymous with the enterprise of printing and lent its name to a new branch of media, the press.
The world was becoming informed.
Hailed as one of the most important inventions in human history, the printing press helped societies break free from the ignorance and bondage imposed upon them by the keepers of information. Over the next 400 years, those with access to information about peace and freedom began to rise up against their oppressors. Instead of monarchies and dictatorships, republics and democracies were born.
The world was well on its way to becoming a Land of the Free. Unfortunately, however, with information — comes propaganda and censorship.
Not being able to control the dissemination of information, tyrants decided to control the actual information instead. Certain books were burned, banned, and shunned. Only establishment-supporting nationalistic books were promoted which led to entire societies believing their patriotic stories about how their countries ‘played the key role in the development of the modern world’ — up to and including societies like Nazi Germany who were convinced that murdering millions of Jews was the right thing to do.
For decades, the world was tricked by slick establishment propagandists, who wrote their version of heroic history.Tyrants were painted as saviors; mass murderers hailed as great discoverers. The world was slipping back into a dark age of control and manipulation.
Luckily, there were a few voices who resisted mass censorship, the book banners and burners, and the last century has seen incredible growth and freedom of speech. But, like all empires inevitably do, America is increasingly slipping into despotism and, once again, the alleged “arbiters of truth” are attempting to silence information with which they disagree.
One example of this new “book burning” is taking place in California. Schools in Burbank, California have banned multiple books after a handful of parents expressed concern over them. To be clear, these books do not advocate racism, violence, hatred, or anything of the sort. These books have won multiple awards and have achieved literary godliness.
Burbank schools are now being forced to teach other titles because a small group (exactly 4) of offended parents have succeeded in depriving thousands of other children from reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Theodore Taylor’s The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
That’s right, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry— that was written by a black woman about racism in America during the Jim Crow era — was banned because it is supposedly racist. Someone should probably ask Newbery Award-winning author, Mildred DeLois Taylor, how she feels about her book, written about her own life experiences, getting banned for being racist.
To be fair, the parents said their children experienced racism in schools which is unacceptable — but also exceedingly improbable that this racism was derived from a child reading a novel.
As Newsweek reports, Carmenita Helligar said her daughter, Destiny, was approached by a white student in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry while both attended the David Starr Jordan Middle School.
“My family used to own your family and now I want a dollar from each of you for the week,” another boy is said to have told Destiny.
“My daughter was literally traumatized,” Helligar said.
“These books are problematic … you feel helpless because you can’t even protect your child from the hurt that she’s going through.”
While no one wants their child to experience the horrific scenario described above, the idea of a classic book — that is actually anti-racist — turning a child into a racist is absolutely absurd. If someone is so hateful that they are willing to say this to a child in middle school, blaming a book is asinine. This kid was either brought up as a racist or, he made a tone deaf, disgusting attempt at teasing.
Either way, it doesn’t matter what actually transpired as the results are the same — books are banned in the land of the free. Sadly, it is indeed likely that those calling for banning these books, have never even read them. If they did actually read them, they would understand that they are not at all racist and, in fact, inspire kids to do the right thing, well, because it’s the right thing.
Luckily, the banning of these books did not go unnoticed and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) sent a letter to BUSD urging the district to allow teaching of the books while the challenges are under review.
“[W]e believe that the books… have a great pedagogical value and should be retained in the curriculum,” read the letter from the NCAC.
Some of the children are speaking out against the banned books as well. Sungjoo Yoon, 15, a sophomore at Burbank High School, also launched an online petition on Change.org to stop what he called a “ban on antiracist books.”
“In a time where racism has become more transparent than ever, we need to continue to educate students as to the roots of it; to create anti-racist students,” Yoon wrote. “These literatures, of which have been declared ‘Books that Shaped America’ by the Library of Congress, won Newbury Medals, and are some of the most influential pieces, cannot disappear.”
PEN America (an acronym for Poets, Essayists, Novelists) also released a petition calling to reinstate the banned books.
“Each of the books in question deal with difficult subject matter from our country’s complicated and painful history, including systemic racism,” an excerpt from the petition reads.
“Blocking engagement with these important books is also avoiding the important role that schools can and should play in providing context for why these books inspire and challenge us still today.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/35EsgBw Tyler Durden
This Is What Hedge Funds Bought And Sold In Q3: Complete 13F Summary Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/16/2020 – 22:20
While we live in a time when the holdings of the top 20 Robinhood “investors” have far more information value for markets and other traders than a glimpse into what hedge funds are doing, not in the least because retail investors are outperforming both the S&P500 and hedge funds 10-to-1…
… unfortunately there is still no regulatory requirement for even superstar retail investors to disclose their holdings, which is why we have to be satisfied with the quarterly 13-F publication spectacle, which just concluded today, and which revealed that even as tech stocks suffered two correction shakeouts since early September, hedge funds mostly stuck with the “safety” of tech stocks during the third quarter heading into the election, even as some hedge funds trimmed Amazon.com as the dominant e-commerce platform thrived amid a pandemic-fueled surge in online shopping, while others sold Netflix
Courtesy of Bloomberg, below is a snapshot of what some of the most prominent tech stock additions as disclosed by today’s barrage of 13F filings:
Coatue Management doubled its holdings of Tesla in the three months ended Sept. 30, making the electric-vehicle maker its second-biggest publicly disclosed holding. Assuming the fund held on, the bet proved prescient with the stock soaring in late trading Monday after it was announced that Tesla will enter the S&P 500 next month.
Gabe Plotkin’s Melvin Capital Management bought an additional 2.5 million shares of Expedia Group Inc, while Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital added stay-at-home play DocuSign Inc. and snapped up more shares of Shopify Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Netflix Inc.
D1 Capital and Soroban Capital Partners were among funds that increased their holdings in Microsoft.
One recent initial public offering that received a lot of attention from hedge funds was Snowflake Inc. The software company was a top new buy for Berkshire, D1 Capital and Temasek Holdings.
Not everyone added to their tech holdings, with some selling although it was not clear if funds that trimmed tech stocks did so because they’ve soured on the investments or if its part of a portfolio exposure plan to manage risk associated with soaring stocks.
Dan Sundheim’s D1 Capital cut its stake in Netflix by 89% in the third quarter, selling more than 951,000 shares. That’s surprising given Sundheim has long held bullish views of the online-streaming service and last year said the stock could reach $1,000. So far, this has been a prescient move, with Netflix dropping 4.2% in the fourth quarter, as work from home stocks were hammered following vaccine news.
Lone Pine trimmed holdings in Amazon.com Inc. and Zoom and pared its stake in Salesforce.com. Fellow Tiger-cubs Maverick, Viking and Tiger also trimmed their Salesforce holdings. David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management, Viking and D1 either reduced or liquidated their Amazon stakes.
Work from home winner Netflix Inc. was trimmed by several funds, including Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office, Appaloosa and Corvex Management, while Melvin Capital Management exited its stake.
Maverick Capital boosted its exposure to tech by more than 9% in the third quarter. In the last quarter upped its stake in semiconductor equipment company LAM Research Corp. and business-payments company FleetCor Technologies Inc. Even though it sold some Facebook Inc. shares, the tech giant is still Maverick’s biggest U.S. long holding.
As noted earlier, Berkshire Hathaway continued its trend of pulling back on certain financial bets in the quarter, cutting its Wells Fargo stake and JPMorgan Chase & Co. bet. The company also trimmed holdings in PNC and M&T Bank.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund retrenched from its big jump into U.S.-traded stocks battered by the pandemic. The Riyadh-based Public Investment Fund cut its U.S. holdings to $7.0 billion from $10.1 billion during the third quarter, mainly by selling stakes in exchange-traded funds that track the real estate and materials sectors. That left a $2.7 billion stake in Uber Technologies Inc. as its largest U.S. traded holding.
Finally, a quick look at what some of the marquee hedge funds bought and sold in Q3:
ADAGE CAPITAL PARTNERS
Top new buys: BMY, LSPD, SAGE, PH, OXY, TWTR, RKT, WEC, ANNX, CMI
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the clarion call has been to test, test and test some more. However, right from the start, serious questions arose about the tests being used to diagnose this infection, and questions have only multiplied since then.
Positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests have been used as the justification for keeping large portions of the world locked down for the better part of 2020.
This, despite the fact that PCR tests have proven remarkably unreliable with high false result rates, and aren’t designed to be used as a diagnostic tool in the first place as they cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.
Dr. Mike Yeadon, former vice president and scientific director of Pfizer, has even gone on record stating that false positive results from unreliable PCR tests are being used to “manufacture a ‘second wave’ based on ‘new cases,’” when in fact a second wave is highly unlikely.
Understanding PCR Tests
Before his death, the inventor of the PCR test, Kary Mullis, repeatedly yet unsuccessfully stressed that this test should not be used as a diagnostic tool for the simple reason that it’s incapable of diagnosing disease.
A positive test does not actually mean that an active infection is present. As noted in a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention publication on coronavirus and PCR testing dated July 13 2020:
Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms.
The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection.
This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.
So, what does the PCR test actually tell us? The PCR swab collects RNA from your nasal cavity. This RNA is then reverse transcribed into DNA. However, the genetic snippets are so small they must be amplified in order to become discernible. Each round of amplification is called a cycle.
Amplification over 35 cycles is considered unreliable and scientifically unjustified, yet Drosten tests and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to 45 cycles.
What this does is amplify any, even insignificant sequences of viral DNA that might be present to the point that the test reads “positive,” even if the viral load is extremely low or the virus is inactive. As a result of these excessive cycle thresholds, you end up with a far higher number of positive tests than you would otherwise.
We’ve also had problems with faulty and contaminated tests. As soon as the genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2 became available in January 2020, German researchers quickly developed a PCR test for the virus.
In March 2020, The New York Times reported the initial test kits developed by the CDC had been found to be flawed. The Verge also reported that this flawed CDC test in turn became the basis for the WHO’s test, which the CDC ended up refusing to use.
PCR Tests Cannot Detect Infection
Perhaps most importantly of all, the PCR tests cannot distinguish between inactive viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.
What that means is that PCR tests cannot detect infection. Period. It cannot tell you whether you’re currently ill, whether you’ll develop symptoms in the near future, or whether you’re contagious.
The tests may pick up dead debris or inactive viral particles that pose no risk whatsoever to the patient and others. What’s more, the test can pick up the presence of other coronaviruses, so a positive result may simply indicate that you’ve recuperated from a common cold in the past.
An “infection” is when a virus penetrates into a cell and replicates. As the virus multiplies, symptoms set in. A person is only infectious if the virus is actually replicating. As long as the virus is inactive and not replicating, it’s completely harmless both to the host and others.
Chances are, if you have no symptoms, a positive test simply means it has detected inactive viral DNA in your body. This would also mean that you are not contagious and pose no risk to anyone.
For all of these reasons, a number of highly respected scientists around the world are now saying that what we have is not a COVID-19 pandemic but a PCR test pandemic. In his September 20, 2020, article5 “Lies, Damned Lies and Health Statistics — The Deadly Danger of False Positives,” Yeadon explains why basing our pandemic response on positive PCR tests is so problematic.
Artificially Created Justifications for Totalitarian Controls
As reported by The Vaccine Reaction, September 29, 2020:
“The test’s threshold is so high that it detects people with the live virus as well as those with a few genetic fragments left over from a past infection that no longer poses a risk. It’s like finding a hair in a room after a person left it, says Michael Mina, MD, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90% of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The New York Times found…
‘We’ve been using one type of data for everything, and that is just plus or minus — that’s all,’ Dr. Mina said. ‘We’re using that for clinical diagnostics, for public health, for policy decision-making.’
But ‘yes’ or ‘no’ isn’t good enough, he added. It’s the amount of virus that should dictate the infected patient’s next steps. ‘It’s really irresponsible, I think, to forgo the recognition that this is a quantitative issue,’ Dr. Mina said.”
Again, medical experts agree any cycle threshold over 35 cycles makes the test too sensitive, as at that point it starts picking up harmless inactive DNA fragments. Mina believes a more reasonable cutoff would be 30 or less.
According to The New York Times, the CDC’s own calculations show it’s extremely unlikely to detect live viruses in samples that have gone through more than 33 cycles, and research published in April 2020 concluded patients with positive PCR tests that had a cycle threshold above 33 were not contagious and could safely be discharged from the hospital or home isolation.
Importantly, when officials at the New York state laboratory, the Wadsworth Center, reanalyzed testing data at The Times’ request, they found that changing the threshold from 40 cycles to 35 cycles eliminated about 43% of the positive results. Limiting it to 30 cycles eliminated a whopping 63%. The Vaccine Reaction adds:
“In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90% of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles, Dr. Mina said. ‘I would say that none of those people should be contact-traced, not one,’ he said.
‘I’m really shocked that it could be that high — the proportion of people with high CT value results,’ said Ashish Jha, MD, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. ‘Boy, does it really change the way we need to be thinking about testing’…
In late August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first rapid coronavirus test that doesn’t need any special computer equipment. Made by Abbot Laboratories, the 15-minute test [BinaxNOW] will sell for U.S. $5 but still requires a nasal swab to be taken by a health worker.
The Abbot test is the fourth rapid point-of-care test that looks for the presence of antigens rather than the virus’s genetic code as the PCR molecular tests do.“
Massive Waste of Resources
As noted by Dr. Tom Jefferson and professor Carl Henegan in an October 31, 2020, article in the Daily Mail,16 mass PCR testing has been a massive waste or resources, as it doesn’t provide us with the information we actually need to know — who’s infectious, how far is the virus spreading and how fast does it spread?
Instead, it has led to economic devastation from business shutdowns and isolating noninfectious people in their homes for weeks and months on end. Jefferson and Henegan claim they shared their pandemic response plan with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over a month ago, and just presented it to him again. “We urge him to pay attention and embrace it,” they write, adding:
“There are only two things about which we can be certain: first, that lockdowns do not work in the long term… The idea that a month of economic hardship will permit some sort of ‘reset’, allowing us a brighter future, is a myth. What, when it ends, do we think will happen? Meanwhile, ever-increasing restrictions will destroy lives and livelihoods.
The second certainty is this: that we need to find a way out of the mess that does no more damage than the virus itself… Our strategy would be to tackle the four key failings.”
These four areas are:
Addressing the problems in the government’s mass testing program
Addressing “the blight of confused and contradictory statistics”
Protect and isolate the vulnerable — primarily the elderly, but also hospitalized patients in general and staff — while allowing the rest to maintain “some semblance of normal life”
Inform the public about the true and quantifiable costs of lockdown that “kill people just as surely as COVID-19”
“If we do these things, there is real hope that we can learn to live with the virus. That, after all, was supposed to be the plan,” Jefferson and Henegan note. With regard to testing, the pair call “for a national program of testing quality control to ensure that results are accurate, precise and consistent.”
Importantly, we must not rely on positive/negative readings alone. The results must be assessed in relation to other factors, such as the age of the subject and whether they are symptomatic, to determine who actually poses an infectious risk. You can review the full details of their proposed plan at the end of their Daily Mail article.
Lockdown Dangers Have Been Kept Out of Public Discussion
Jefferson and Henegan aren’t the only ones highlighting the fact that the global lockdown strategy is causing more harm and destruction than the virus itself. In a June 16, 2020 article in The Federalist, James Lucas, a New York City attorney, wrote:18
“If we’re going to allow models and modelers to dictate the entire nature of our society, one would hope that the models are as complete as possible. Yet the epidemiological models that have so transformed our world are seriously incomplete, and therefore fundamentally inadequate.
Any medical therapy is supposed to be tested for both efficacy and safety. There have been several studies examining the effectiveness of the lockdowns in combating the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with mixed conclusions.
So far, however, none of these studies or models have analyzed the safety side of the lockdown therapy. In response to questions from physician Sens. Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy, Dr. Anthony Fauci admits this side of the equation has not been accounted for in the models now driving our world.
As noted in an open letter recently signed by more than 600 health-care professionals, the public health costs from the lockdowns — described as a ‘mass casualty incident’ are real and growing.
These models are estimations based on existing research. The constantly changing projections of coronavirus deaths are extrapolations from research on previous epidemics. Yet modelers have no excuse for leaving evaluations of the lockdowns’ massive costs to public health out of their models.”
The Hidden Costs of Lockdowns
How does the “lockdown therapy” affect public safety? In his article, Lucas highlights the following:
Increased chronic disease rates due to unemployment, poverty and putting non-COVID medical care on hold — Research23 by the Veterans Administration has shown delaying cancer treatment for just one month led to a 20% increase in mortality. Another study found each one-month delay in breast cancer diagnosis increased mortality by 10%
Increased rates of mental health problems due to unemployment and isolation
Increased mortality rates from suicide — In one study, being unemployed was associated with a twofold to threefold higher relative risk of suicide. A more recent study estimates “deaths of despair” linked to lockdowns may be around 75,000 in the U.S.
Reduced collective life span — Extended unemployment is also associated with shorter, unhealthier lives. Hannes Schwandt, a health economics researcher at Northwestern University, estimates an extended economic shutdown could shorten the lifespan of 6.4 million Americans entering the job market by an average of about two years. Lucas notes:
“If epidemiologists don’t care to take account of this toll, another profession must. A study28 just released by a group of South African actuaries estimates that the net reduction in lifespan from increased unemployment and poverty due to a national lockdown will exceed the increased lifespan due to lives saved from COVID-19 by the lockdown by a factor of 30 to 1.
In other words, each year of additional life attributable to isolating potential coronavirus victims in the lockdown comes at a cost of 30 years lost due to the negative public health effects of a lockdown…”
Lack of education is also associated with significantly shorter life spans and poorer health. High school drop-outs die on average nine years sooner than college graduates, and school closings disproportionally affect poorer students.
Who Pays the Most?
As noted by Lucas, in addition to calculating the overall costs on society, modelers must also determine “on whom those costs fall,” because the costs are not borne equally by all. The consequences of the lockdowns disproportionally affect those who are already the most vulnerable — financially and health wise — such as those living near the poverty line, the chronically ill, people with mental illness and minorities in general.
“Contrary to the PR slogan, we are NOT all in this together,” Lucas writes. “We need less insipid pro-lockdown propaganda extolling the virtues of the ‘essential’ workers, and more serious analysis of the enormous public health toll the lockdowns are imposing on them. Otherwise, we may come to see the era of coronavirus as simply the time where pro-lockdown elites sacrificed the working class31 to protect themselves.”
A Pandemic of Fearmongering
An October 28, 2020, article featured by the Ron Paul Institute points out that:
“Ever since the alleged pandemic erupted this past March the mainstream media has spewed a non-stop stream of misinformation that appears to be laser focused on generating maximum fear among the citizenry.
But the facts and the science simply don’t support the grave picture painted of a deadly virus sweeping the land. Yes, we do have a pandemic, but it’ a pandemic of ginned up pseudo-science masquerading as unbiased fact.”
Nine facts that can be backed up with data “paints a very different picture from the fear and dread being relentlessly drummed into the brains of unsuspecting citizens,” the article states. In addition to the fact that PCR testing is practically useless, for all the reasons already mentioned, these data-backed facts include:
1. A positive test is NOT a “case” — As explained by Dr. Lee Merritt in her August 2020 Doctors for Disaster Preparedness33 lecture, featured in “How Medical Technocracy Made the Plandemic Possible,” media and public health officials appear to have purposefully conflated “cases” or positive tests with the actual illness.
Medically speaking, a “case” refers to a sick person. It never ever referred to someone who had no symptoms of illness. Now all of a sudden, this well-established medical term, “case,” has been completely and arbitrarily redefined to mean someone who tested positive for the presence of viral RNA. As noted by Merritt, “That is not epidemiology. That’s fraud.”
2. According to the CDC34 and other research data,35 the COVID-19 survival rate is over 99%, and the vast majority of deaths occur in those over 70, which is close to normal life expectancy.
3. CDC analysis reveals 85% of patients testing positive for COVID-19 wore face masks “often” or “always” in the two weeks preceding their positive test. As noted in the Ron Paul article,36 “The only rational conclusion from this study is that cloth face masks offer little if any protection from Covid-19 infection.”
5. The death rate has not risen despite pandemic deaths — Data37,38 show the overall all-cause mortality has remained steady during 2020 and doesn’t veer from the norm. In other words, COVID-19 has not killed off more of the population than would have died in any given year anyway.
As noted in the Ron Paul article, “According to the CDC as of early May 2020 the total number of deaths in the US was 944,251 from January 1 — April 30th. This is actually slightly lower than the number of deaths during the same period in 2017 when 946,067 total deaths were reported.”
15,000 Doctors and Scientists Call for End to Lockdowns
All in all, there are many reasons to suspect that continued lockdowns, social distancing and mask mandates are completely unnecessary and will not significantly alter the course of this pandemic illness, or the final death count.
And, with regard to universal PCR testing where individuals are tested every two weeks or even more frequently, whether they have symptoms or not, this is clearly a pointless effort that yields useless data. It’s just a tool to spread fear, which in turn allows for the rapid implementation of the totalitarian control mechanisms required to pull off The Great Reset. Fortunately, more and more people are now starting to see through this plot.
About 45,000 scientists and doctors worldwide have already signed the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for the end to all lockdowns and implementation of a herd immunity approach to the pandemic, meaning governments should allow people who are not at significant risk of serious COVID-19 illness to go back to normal life, as the lockdown approach is having a devastating effect on public health — far worse than the virus itself. The declaration states:
“Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health…
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to coronavirus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this focused protection.”
The declaration points out that current lockdown policies will result in excess mortality in the future, primarily among younger people and the working class. As of November 5, 2020, The Great Barrington Declaration had been signed by 11,791 medical and public health scientists, 33,903 medical practitioners and 617,685 “concerned citizens.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3f4ofZW Tyler Durden
Iran Blasts Story Of “Al-Qaeda No.2” Killing In Tehran By Israeli Agents As “Psychological Warfare” Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/16/2020 – 21:40
A weekend story in TheWashington Post and others claimed that three months ago the CIA and Israel’s Mossad conducted a successful high-risk operation to kill al-Qaeda’s deputy leader in Tehran who was among the terror group’s founding members, and next in line to take command after Ayman al-Zawahri.
It was no less than the accused mastermind behind the twin bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 224 people and is remembered as al-Qaeda’s first large-scale terror attack on United States targets. The covert assassination reads like a Hollywood script:
Israeli agents acting at the behest of American officials assassinated al-Qaeda’s second-in-command in August, in a brazen drive-by shooting in Iran’s capital, according to a senior U.S. official.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, whose nom de guerre was Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed along with his daughter, Maryam, as they were driving in an upscale Tehran neighborhood, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Curiously in the case of past major terror leader killings which had US involvement, President Trump was quick to make public the information and declare ‘victory’. In the case of any major successful covert op to kill Abu Muhammad al-Masri, Trump would have spiked that football, especially in the middle of his reelection campaign. But instead the world is hearing about it many months after the fact.
Iran is now vehemently denying it. A detailed CNN account of what is known notes that Iranian state media initially said the man killed was a Lebanese academic tied to Hezbollah, but that story didn’t appear to bear out.
Still, even in local media it remained a mystery as to exactly what happened:
On the night of August 7, residents of a middle-class neighborhood in northern Tehran heard shooting. Some of them rushed out to see what had happened.
Slumped in a white Renault was a middle-aged man and a younger woman. Both were dead. At least four shots had been fired at them; another had hit a passing car. The two assailants had been on a motorbike, according to Iranian news agencies.
After being reported in the last days by The New York Times, Washington Post, and AP News, Iran has blasted the story as yet another tactic by neocons in D.C. to tie the Shia Islamic Republic to the Sunni terror group al-Qaeda.
With this latest claim of Masri’s assassination, the central suggestion to the narrative is that Iran was “harboring” him:
Israeli agents kill AQ’s No. 2 on the streets of Tehran at request of the CIA.
Further evidence the regime in Iran has been harboring and aiding al-Qaeda’s leaders responsible for killing Americans. https://t.co/tvcTouybs5
Iran’s foreign ministry on Saturday charged the United States and Israel with falsely trying “to draw a link between Iran and such groups through falsification and the leakage of fabricated information to the media,” according to state media.
Iran’s statement further said it was somewhat routine disinformation tied to Trump and Pompeo’s “maximum pressure” campaign: “Such accusations are undoubtedly part of the full-fledged economic, intelligence and psychological war against the Iranian people, and the media should not act as a tribune for spreading the White House’s purposeful lies about Iran,” according to the official statement.
Indeed one key neocon talking point has long been that somehow Iran was ultimately behind 9/11, despite the growing body of evidence pointing to Saudi state sponsorship.
The geopolitical analysis site Moon of Alabama has issued a partial list of the many times over the past decade the media has hailed the killing of “Al Qaeda’s #2” – strongly suggesting Iran’s denial of the story has merit:
Moon of Alabama had even reported on the slew of similar and “convenient” headlines throughout the mid to late 2000’s:
Twelve years ago we already joked about all the fake “Al-Qaeda No.2 killed” stories which appeared in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.
The Trump White House has lately vowed to slap as many sanctions on the Islamic Republic as possible right up to January 20, when Biden is expected to enter the White House.
The administration has openly touted that it will seek to make it nearly impossible for Biden to lift all sanctions and re-enter the JCPOA nuclear deal brokered under Obama.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3lI2npS Tyler Durden
The New England Journal of Medicine has published a study that goes to the heart of the issue of lockdowns. The question has always been whether and to what extent a lockdown, however extreme, is capable of suppressing the virus. If so, you can make an argument that at least lockdowns, despite their astronomical social and economic costs, achieve something. If not, nations of the world have embarked on a catastrophic experiment that has destroyed billions of lives, and all expectation of human rights and liberties, with no payoff at all.
AIER has long highlighted studies that show no gain in virus management from lockdowns. Even as early as April, a major data scientist said that this virus becomes endemic in 70 days after the first round of infection, regardless of policies. The largest global study of lockdowns compared with deaths as published in The Lancet found no association between coercive stringencies and deaths per million.
To test further might seem superfluous but, for whatever reason, governments all over the world, including in the US, still are under the impression that they can affect viral transmissions through a range of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs) like mandatory masks, forced human separation, stay-at-home orders, bans of gatherings, business and school closures, and extreme travel restrictions. Nothing like this has been tried on this scale in the whole of human history, so one might suppose that policy makers have some basis for their confidence that these measures accomplish something.
A study conducted by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center sought to test lockdowns along with testing and isolation. In May, 3,143 new recruits to the Marines were given the option to participate in a study of frequent testing under extreme quarantine. The study was called CHARM, which stands for COVID-19 Health Action Response for Marines. Of the recruits asked, a total of 1,848 young people agreed to be guinea pigs in this experiment which involved “which included weekly qPCR testing and blood sampling for IgG antibody assessment.” In addition, the CHARM study volunteers who did test positively “on the day of enrollment (day 0) or on day 7 or day 14 were separated from their roommates and were placed in isolation.”
What did the recruits have to do? The study explains, and, as you will see, they faced an even more strict regime that has existed in civilian life in most places. All recruits, even those not in the CHARM group, did the following.
All recruits wore double-layered cloth masks at all times indoors and outdoors, except when sleeping or eating; practiced social distancing of at least 6 feet; were not allowed to leave campus; did not have access to personal electronics and other items that might contribute to surface transmission; and routinely washed their hands. They slept in double-occupancy rooms with sinks, ate in shared dining facilities, and used shared bathrooms. All recruits cleaned their rooms daily, sanitized bathrooms after each use with bleach wipes, and ate preplated meals in a dining hall that was cleaned with bleach after each platoon had eaten.
Most instruction and exercises were conducted outdoors. All movement of recruits was supervised, and unidirectional flow was implemented, with designated building entry and exit points to minimize contact among persons. All recruits, regardless of participation in the study, underwent daily temperature and symptom screening. Six instructors who were assigned to each platoon worked in 8-hour shifts and enforced the quarantine measures. If recruits reported any signs or symptoms consistent with Covid-19, they reported to sick call, underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and were placed in isolation pending the results of testing.
Instructors were also restricted to campus, were required to wear masks, were provided with preplated meals, and underwent daily temperature checks and symptom screening. Instructors who were assigned to a platoon in which a positive case was diagnosed underwent rapid qPCR testing for SARS-CoV-2, and, if the result was positive, the instructor was removed from duty. Recruits and instructors were prohibited from interacting with campus support staff, such as janitorial and food-service personnel. After each class completed quarantine, a deep bleach cleaning of surfaces was performed in the bathrooms, showers, bedrooms, and hallways in the dormitories, and the dormitory remained unoccupied for at least 72 hours before reoccupancy.
The reputation of Marine basic training is that it is tough going but this really does take it to another level. Also, this is an environment where those in charge do not mess around. There was surely close to 100% compliance, as compared with, for example, a typical college campus.
What were the results? The virus still spread, though 90% of those who tested positive were without symptoms. Incredibly, 2% of the CHARM recruits still contracted the virus, even if all but one remained asymptomatic. “Our study showed that in a group of predominantly young male military recruits, approximately 2% became positive for SARS-CoV-2, as determined by qPCR assay, during a 2-week, strictly enforced quarantine.”
And how does this compare to the control group that was not tested and not isolated in the case of a positive case?
Which is to say that the nonparticipants actually contracted the virus at a slightly lower rate than those who were under an extreme regime. Conversely, extreme enforcement of NPIs plus more frequent testing and isolation was associated with a greater degree of infection.
I’m grateful to Don Wolt for drawing my attention to this study, which, so far as I know, has received very little attention from any media source at all, despite having been published in the New England Journal of Medicine on November 11.
Here are four actual media headlines about the study that miss the point entirely:
CNN: “Many military Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, studies show”
SciTech Daily: “Asymptomatic COVID-19 Transmission Revealed Through Study of 2,000 Marine Recruits”
ABC: “Broad study of Marine recruits shows limits of COVID-19 symptom screening”
US Navy: “Navy/Marine Corps COVID-19 Study Findings Published in New England Journal of Medicine”
No national news story that I have found highlighted the most important finding of all: extreme quarantine plus frequent testing and isolation among military recruits did nothing to stop the virus.
The study is important because of the social structure of control here. It’s one thing to observe no effects from national lockdowns. There are countless variables here that could be invoked as cautionary notes: demographics, population density, preexisting immunities, degree of compliance, and so on. But with this Marine study, you have a near homogeneous group based on age, health, and densities of living. And even here, you see confirmed what so many other studies have shown: lockdowns are pointlessly destructive. They do not manage the disease. They crush human liberty and produce astonishing costs, such as 5.53 million years of lost life from the closing of schools alone.
The lockdowners keep telling us to pay attention to the science. That’s what we are doing. When the results contradict their pro-compulsion narrative, they pretend that the studies do not exist and barrel ahead with their scary plans to disable all social functioning in the presence of a virus. Lockdowns are not science. They never have been. They are an experiment in social/political top-down management that is without precedent in cost to life and liberty.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32NdRAP Tyler Durden
Biden Adds UC Irvine Reparations Advocate To Transition Team Tyler Durden
Mon, 11/16/2020 – 21:00
Joe Biden has tapped UC Irvine Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran to help his potential administration “hit the ground running on Day One” as a member of his Treasury Department agency review team.
Notably, Biden and his running-mate Kamala Harrois (D-CA) ignored the topic of reparations throughout the 2020 election to the point where Baradaran called Harris out on it over Twitter, writing “Dear Kamala, Reparations or go home.”
In her 2017 book The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, Baradaran argues that closing the racial wealth gap requires acknowledging past wrongs and providing compensation for damages. “A reparations program could take many forms from simple cash payments or baby bonds to more complex schemes such as subsidized college tuition, basic income, housing vouchers, or subsidized mortgage credit,” she writes. Baradaran’s book inspired Netflix to donate $100 million to organizations that “support Black communities.”
Before joining Biden’s transition team, Baradaran helped Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg on policy proposals to address the racial wealth gap. Biden, who left reparations out of his racial equity plan, said he would study the issue. “[Biden] believes that we should gather the data necessary to have an informed conversation about reparations, but he has not endorsed a specific bill,” a spokeswoman said during the campaign.
Harris has been similarly noncommittal. “When you are talking about the years and years and years of trauma that were experienced because of slavery, because of Jim Crow and because of all that we have seen in terms of institutional and legal discrimination and racism, this is very real and it needs to be studied,” she said during a CNN town hall in April 2019.
* * *
Reparations could carry an estimated $17 trillion price tag, according to a 2019 analysis from the House Judiciary Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36O1dDc Tyler Durden
