France’s Lone Aircraft Carrier Cuts Mission Short Due To 40 Likely COVID-19 Cases
After the American nuclear carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was forced to dock in Guam while in the Western Pacific, unleashing a storm of controversy over what to do with its crew under urgent need of immediate quarantine — and now with at least 230 sailors confirmed for COVID-19 — another carrier’s mission has been cut short, this time belonging to a close US ally.
France’s lone nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, will return home early from deployment in the Atlantic after some 40 sailors have been put under medical observation for coronavirus, the defense ministry said Wednesday.
French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. AFP via Getty
The Charles de Gaulle has also put the suspected cases in isolation, believing them likely sick with COVID-19, the French defense ministry statement continued. However, serious or critical illness aboard the ship has yet to be reported.
“The first cases showed symptoms recently,” the ministry said. “There are no signs of aggravated cases among the patients.”
“As of today, a screening team with test means will be sent aboard the aircraft carrier to investigate the cases that have arisen and to hinder the spread of the virus on board the ship,” the statement said.
“It was decided to bring forward its return to Toulon, initially scheduled for 23 April,” the ministry said.
Via French Navy/US Naval Institute
The ship has a crew of almost 1,800 sailors and recently participated in NATO exercises, after which it was slated to return to the Mediterranean.
Specifically it was to continue France’s Operation Chammal in support of anti-ISIL missions in the Middle East, which has now been cut short.
No doubt enemies of the United States and Europe are taking note of the ease with which this virus took out multi-billion dollar state-of-the-art aircraft carriers, which up to now appeared unbeatable and unable to be thwarted from their missions.
For many residents, the sight is something which they have never witnessed in their entire lives…
For the first time in 30 years, India’s snow-covered Dhauladhar mountain range has become visible to locals as a result of plunging pollution levels resulting from measures taken to check the spread of the novel coronavirus.
For many residents, the sight of the Dhauladhar Range—which translates to “White Range” and forms part of the Himalayas—is something which they have never witnessed in their entire lives, reportsSBS.
Many have been eager to share their feelings about it on social media, including former Indian cricket player Harbhajan Singh, who wrote:
“Never seen Dhauladar range from my home rooftop in Jalandhar. Never could imagine that’s possible. A clear indication of the impact the pollution has done by us to mother earth.”
Never seen Dhauladar range from my home rooftop in Jalandhar..never could imagine that’s possible..clear indication of the impact the pollution has done by us to Mother Earth 🌍.. this is the view pic.twitter.com/laRzP8QsZ9
— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) April 3, 2020
While anti-pollution activist Sant Balbir Singh Seeechewal told SBS:
“We can see the snow-covered mountains clearly from our roofs. And not just that, stars are visible at night. I have never seen anything like this in recent times.”
India, a country with upwards of 1.3 billion residents, has been placed under a strict nationwide lockdown from March 22 until at least April 14. The draconian move limits the movement of the entire population, and has been criticized by rights groups as well as figures from private industry who claim that the measure is arbitrary and damages the country and its economy.
On Tuesday, the Economic Timespublished an opinion piece by auto company executive Rajiv Bajaj arguing that “virtually no country has imposed such a sweeping lockdown as India has; I continue to believe this makes India weak rather than stronger in combating the epidemic.”
However, the lockdown—which shut down factories, marketplaces, small shops, places of worship, most public transportation and construction projects—has also provided a temporary respite from the suffocating pollution levels India is known for. No less than 21 of the world’s 30 most polluted cities are in the South Asian giant.
“Not just normal traffic is off the roads, but most industry is also shut down. This has helped bring the pollution level to unbelievably low levels.”
According to CNN, government data has shown that India’s capital New Delhi has seen a 71 percent plunge of the harmful microscopic particulate matter known as PM 2.5. The particulate matter, which lodges deep into the lungs and passes into vital organs and the bloodstream, causes a number of serious risks to people’s health.
In the meantime, nitrogen dioxide spewed into the air by motor traffic and power plants has also fallen by 71 percent from 52 per cubic meter to 15 in the same period.
Similar drops in air pollutants have been registered in major cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, and Mumbai.
Today’s best news should be that Dhauladar Range,Himachal Pradesh, Himalayas have started to be visible from Jalandhar ( approximately 300 Kms). This has never happened in our lifetime. Loving Views…… pic.twitter.com/D8IBeC4cao
— Shailen Pratap शैलेन्द्र 🇮🇳 (@shailen_pratap) April 4, 2020
Jyoti Pande Lavakare, the co-founder of Indian environmental organization Care for Air, told the network:
“I have not seen such blue skies in Delhi for the past 10 years …It is a silver lining in terms of this awful crisis that we can step outside and breathe.”
India is hardly alone in experiencing a vast improvement of air quality in association with government clampdowns meant to curb the spread of the pandemic.
From China to Europe and even the notoriously smoggy Los Angeles, business shutdowns and restrictions on movement have seen similar falls in nitrogen dioxide concentrations.
Seechewal is floored by the sharp drop in air pollution. He said:
“I had never imagined I would experience such a clean world around me. The unimaginable has happened. It shows nothing is impossible. We must work together to keep it like that.”
Russia Accuses Trump Of Trying To Conquer The Galaxy
President Trump took a giant leap for America this week by signing an executive order outlining US policy on commercial mining in space.
Upon Trump signing the order, entitled “Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources,” which gives Americans the “the right to engage in the commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space,” the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, accused the US of attempting to conquer the galaxy.
Roscosmos said in a statement Tuesday that “Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to de facto seize the territories of other planets will hardly encourage other nations to participate in fruitful cooperation.”
Sergey Savelyev, Roscosmos deputy director responsible for international cooperation, insisted President Trump’s space ambitions were tantamount to space colonialism:
“There have already been examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its own interests and everyone remembers how that turned out,” Savelyev said.
The Kremlin said colonization of space would be “unacceptable.”
This is not the first time Washington has outlined the need to harvest resources from space. In 2015, Congress signed a law permitting companies to extract resources from asteroids and the moon.
After 50 years, NASA has recently released plans of returning to the moon by 2024. On the other hand, Roscosmos has said it will land Russians on Earth’s only natural satellite by 2030. As it appears, both space agencies are locked in a moon race for this decade.
It becomes quite apparent at this point why President Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act in late 2019 to usher in the Space Force — the newest and sixth branch of the military — the first since the last branch, the US Air Force was established in 1947. That is because resource wars on other planets or the moon could be the next domain in warfare.
We are hearing from many that the world after Covid-19 will be different.
The question is: Different in what way? Will it be better or worse?
Elites are working to make it better for them, and worse for the rest of us. About that the evidence is clear. The Big Boys are being bailed out and their debts covered. Everyone else, except those already marginalized and without a recent work record and fixed address, got a month’s rent and extended unemployment benefits.
Big Pharma sees massive profits in the virus, Government sees more power to control
But the disparity in economic benefits is only a part of it. Powerful vested interests, such as Bill Gates and Big Pharma, are determined to vaccinate us all, and to control our movements with an internal passport called “vaccinated, health cleared” or other words to that effect. New tracking procedures and technologies are to be put in operation reminiscent of the “mark of the beast” to police the access of varous categories of people to various areas and benefits.
Experts point out that just as we cannot be vaccinated against the common cold, except perhaps for the past year’s version we cannot be vaccinated against Covid-19 and other mutating viruses, but the experts are already being shouted down. No expert opinion is to be permitted to stand in the way of vaccination profits.
Vaccination has been elevated above cure, as Big Pharma and its shills such as CNN shout down the positive experience doctors report of successful treatments with Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin, and the effectiveness of Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, and Zinc in strengthening the ability of immune systems to fight off the virus. Big Pharma-influenced medical orthodoxy cannot get out of the box it has been put into. When new thinking and experimentation are needed, those capable of thought are hasseled and even blocked by FDA regulations and dogmatism.
The permanent government and its security agencies see in the population’s fear and confusion opportunities to put into place more tyrannical measures, more set-asides of Constitutional Rights, more impairments on free speech. The ability of freedom to resist oppression is ever diminished.
Various descriptions of the expected dystopia are offered on the Internet. But it does not have to turn out this way. It is up to us. Demoralized and fearful, we can accept more government power as we did after 9/11. Instead, we can collectively recognize the massive failure everywhere of Western leadership and construct a more liveable and sustainable society.
The failure of leadership is an opportunity for real change
CNN, the New York Times, and the rest of the controlled media tell us every day that President Trump represents the failure of leadership. But the failure of leadership goes beyond all the leaders of the last 30 years and resides in the system itself. Global, “self-regulating,” greed-driven, financialized, soulless capitalism cannot unite people into a sustainable community.
The failure of leadership resides in the long-term failure of leadership that made Western societies vulnerable by moving high-productivity, high-valued jobs offshore in order to raise corporate profits at the expense of domestic consumer incomes. It means the movement offshore of the ability to produce medicines, N95 masks, and other needed resources for national survival. It means dependency on foreign powers. It means the inability to function without massive imports. However you look at it, globalism is a death sentence. Its only advantage is to the rich, and the advantage comes to them in the form of cheap labor that swells their profits while it shrinks domestic incomes and the purchasing power of the population.
Without incomes to drive the economy, the elites provided loans and expanded credit in order to provide spending power based in personal debt to absorb the offshored production brought home to sell in American markets. The cost of college education soared as its quality declined. Education subsidies were cut and student debt substituted in its place. Inflation was understated in order to deny Social Security pensioners cost-of-living increases. Medicare payments to health care providers were squeezed down. The social safety net was ripped again and again. More and more people fell out, and homeless populations grew providing fertile breeding grounds for Covid-19.
The income and wealth distribution in the US went from fair to extremely unequal in a short time as the rich profited from the Federal Reserve pumping trillions of dollars into the prices of financial assets and from corporations buying back their own stock, thus decapitalizing the corporation while taking the company into debt, all for the temporary benefit of higher bonuses for executives and more capital gains for shareholders. The elites killed the economy for short-run benefits to themselves.
These destructive polices were the work of greed-driven short-term thinkers—people whose only vision was “I want even more.” And it is these unworthy people, not their victims, that Uncle Sam is now rescuing. The massive unpayable debt bubble that already overhung the economy is being blown larger. The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury are in the process of destroying the US dollar in futile efforts to save the super-rich from their own greed-driven misbehavior.
In place of this insane approach to the economic crisis, there is a sane approach. The bailed out corporations and banks are in effect being purchased by the government. Therefore, they should be treated as the nationalized corporations that they are. Once nationalized, the government, unlike the corporations, can create the money to pay the salaries and health premiums. The predicted 30 or 40 percent unemployment can be avoided. It is better to pay salaries than to pay unemployment benefits. The psychological difference alone is worth a vast amount.
The inability of the high-cost American private health care system to cope with the present medical crisis is apparent. A profit-driven health care system is the highest cost system to have.
Profit is built in at every level, which raises costs to levels that private insurance and Medicare refuse to reimburse. The result is shrinkage, not expansion of the system. Just look, for example, at the number of hospitals, especially in rural areas, that have recently closed.
Moreover, the coverage of a private system—and Medicare itself—has massive gaps. The resistance to a nationalized health service is ridiculous, especially as a nationalized service can coexist with a privatized one. Two are clearly better than one.
Nationalization has numerous benefits. It permits the large unwieldly enterprises, created, for example, by the mergers of giant banks like Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan, to be broken up and to reestablish the separation of commercial from investment banking. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws were ignorant policymaking at its worse. Nationalization permits the government to bring home the offshored production of global US corporations and to put the US workforce back to work in middle class jobs. It is win-win for the American people.
Once the giant monopoly corporations are broken up, they can be privatized and returned to private ownership on a fair value basis, not on the giveaway basis of a pennies on the dollar sale. The money the government receives from their sale can be used to retire government debt.
Currently the Federal Reserve is socializing debt without writing it down. This is nonsensical as it bails out debt by expanding it.
In the US there is so much dogmatic prejudice against anything that has a tint of socialism, even as a temporary expedient measure, that thought and sensible action face strong barriers. If we cannot overcome these barriers, we are destined for far more difficult times.
Can community be restored or will nationality degenerate into the clans and tribalism of Identity Politics?
The greatest challenge we face is to restore the concept of community. There was a time when the United States was a community, a unique one as it consisted of a multitude of ethnicities. As each wave of ethnic immigrants arrived, they passed a test on the Constitution, learned the national language, and became assimilated into the American community.
This community has been destroyed by a variety of forces, the latest being Identity Politics. Identity Politics prohibits community by breaking down the population into mutually hostile groups by gender, sexual preference, race, and whatever classification can be invented or imagined. The result is a Tower of Babel. A Tower of Babel is not a community.
Instead of community, the US is a place where hatreds are cultivated with those claiming the status of victims doing the most hating and those assigned the status of victimizer being most hated. Initially, white hetereosexual males were the primary hate objects, but lately we have the transgendered hating the feminists who say that a woman is a woman, not a man who claims to be a woman. The transgendered attacks on well-known feminist leaders are violent in their language and are likely to progress into violent deeds. Various unassimilated immigrant groups battle each other over who controls disputed territory. Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians has enraged Muslim immigrants against Jews. Violent racial attacks on white people are becoming more common.
For decades Women’s Studies have taught hatred of men, and Black Studies have taught hatred of Whites. This taught hatred is now supplemented by the New York Times 1619 Project. In place of assimilation, we now have mutual hatreds. How do we escape from this?
Perhaps the challenge from Covid-19 will force us to come together again in order to prevail over the virus, which in mutated versions might be with us forever. A coming together would be helped by an economic bailout perceived as fair rather than as the one-sided approach that has been taken. A debt jubilee provides the necessary fairness.
The elites by thinking only of their interests are in the way of the opportunity that crisis provides to bring people together. If we can’t be brought back together, we can forget about unity beyond the boundaries of our own victim or identity group. In place of community, we will be organized in clans of separate identities. The absence of unity at home will make us a sitting duck for enemies abroad.
We know what the Dystopian Wish List is. Can we come together with an anti-dystopian wish list as a mutually supportive community or have the elites succeeded in atomizing us into disparate tribal hate groups?
NBA Wants Players To Cut Salaries In Half To Offset $1.2BN In Lost Revenue
Following the March 11 decision by Commissioner Adam Silver to suspend the NBA season, among the first professional sports leagues to take the drastic action after Utah Jazz players began contracting COVID-19, analysts predicted an immediately felt$1.2 billion loss in NBA revenue.
As Bleacher Report broke it down days ago, this translates to a $600 million hit to the players.
League leadership has been under pressure to compensate for the massive losses, first by the controversial question of obtaining returned pay from players, ahead of player contract expiration (or also roll over to the 2020-21 season).
NBA players Andrea Bargnani and Luis Scola file image, Getty.
Amid ongoing negotiations with agents, the NBA is reportedly pushing for a 50% player pay cut to offset losses based on suspending all games this season, The Athletic reports.
The NBA Players Association (NBAP) meanwhile has countered with a 25% pay cut plan, to take effect by mid-May.
Like other sectors across the US, the league quickly felt the severe impact of coronavirus devastation:
The Philadelphia 76ers were one of the first organizations to enforce a 20 percent pay cut across the organization, but the team backtracked after criticism from fans, media, and people within the franchise.
On Friday, the Utah Jazz announced layoffs to non-basketball staff due to the coronavirus. Other employees agreed to reduce their compensation just so they could keep their employment with the team.
This after three weeks of games have been canceled thus far, with Commissioner Silver planning to decide on a season restart by the beginning of May, which could witness games played in strict isolation, only televised.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, via NBA.com
Starting two weeks ago it was announced top NBA executives, including Adam Silver, would take a 20% pay cut.
This also as teams began furloughing much of their staff, especially non-basketball personnel, such as logistics and marketing employees.
Expect (At Least) Another 6.5 Million In Jobless Claims
Two weeks ago it was a record 3.3 million initial claims; last week it was an additional 6.6 million in initial claims for a two-week total of 10 million Americans having just lost their jobs.
Tomorrow, Wall Street consensus expects another 5.5 million in initial claims to have been filed although the truth is that nobody has any idea how to quantify and estimate what is essentially the US economy sliding into an economic depression (supposedly a short one, but again, who knows). For the second week in a row, Pictet analyst Thomas Costerg remains the most bearish with a 7.5 million forecast, which if accurate would mean that approximately 18 million Americans – 11% of the labor force – have filed for unemployment benefits in the past three weeks.
Drilling down into the number we use BofA’s forecast which is inbetween the median and the high at 6.5 million. According to the bank, “local news covering developments in various states point to national claims remaining near record levels” although as the bank notes, “risks are tilted to the upside given Google Trends data and the CARES Act. Seasonal adjustment will be a negative offset.”
Some more details:
After reviewing data from local news reports to gather an assessment by state, BofA thinks that 6.5 million claims is a reasonable forecast. For 16 states, the bank found either specific information or enough to back out an implied number, calculating a total of 2.3mn for the upcoming report which matches the week ending March 28 for these 16 states.
Assuming the other states come in similar to the week prior, we are on track for close to 6.5 million jobless claims.
That said, the risks are clearly tilted to the upside (i.e., a much higher claims print). There were broad signs that state governments were increasing hiring or shifting resources to better process filings for unemployment benefits given the deluge in recent weeks. Some states believed the worst was yet to come. Picking up on our analysis from last week, BofA notes that data from Google Trends reveals further pickup in searches for “unemployment benefits” and “filing for unemployment,” which could argue for upside.
There is one potential negative offset: seasonal adjustment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases seasonal factors in advance and for the week ending April 4 there is a 6.5% positive adjustment to non-seasonally adjusted claims, which is 7.7pp lower than the +14.2% seasonal adjustment in the last report.
To put this in context, combining last week’s non-seasonally adjusted figure of 5.8mn with this week’s lower seasonal factor would result in seasonally adjusted claims of 6.2mn instead of 6.6mn that was actually reported.
That said, the actualy number will likely be even higher due to the bailout itself: as a reminder, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed on March 27, could contribute to new records being reached in coming weeks as it increases eligibility for jobless claims to self-employed and gig workers, extends the maximum number of weeks that one can receive benefits, and provides an additional $600 per week until July 31. A recent WSJ article noted that this has created incentives for some businesses to temporarily furlough their employees, knowing that they will be covered financially as the economy is shutdown. Meanwhile, those making below $50k will generally be made whole and possibly be better off on unemployment benefits.
According to the latest Mortgage Bankers Association Forbearance and Call Volume Survey which highlights the “unprecedented, widespread mortgage forbearance already requested by borrowers affected by the spread of the coronavirus”, the total number of loans in forbearance grew to 2.66% as of April 1; just one month ago, on March 2, the rate was 0.25%, or a 1,064% increase in just one month.
For loans backed by Ginnie Mae, which serves low- and moderate-income borrowers, the surge was much greater, with total loans in forbearance soaring to 4.25% from 0.19% one month ago.
Overall, the MBA reports that total forbearance requests grew by 1,270% between the week of March 2 and the week of March 16, and another 1,896% between the week of March 16 and the week of March 30.
According to Bloomberg, borrowers with relatively low credit scores, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, are most likely to seek relief. Over the past two years, Ginnie Mae has guaranteed $583 billion of 30-year mortgages with FICO scores below 715, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. However, the longer the coronavirus shutdown lasts, the higher the FICO cutoff for those borrowers unable (or unwilling) to make mortgage payments.
“MBA’s survey highlights the immediate relief consumers are seeking as they navigate the economic hardships brought forth by the mitigation efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “The mortgage industry is committed to providing this much-needed forbearance as mandated by law under the CARES Act. It is expected that requests will continue to skyrocket at an unsustainable pace in the coming weeks, putting insurmountable cash flow constraints on many servicers – especially IMBs.”
The surge in nonpayments comes as the U.S. economy has largely shut down to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The government is requiring lenders handling payments on federally backed loans to give borrowers grace periods of as much as six months at a time with no penalties. Predictably, loan servicers have been flooded with borrowers requesting help.
As the tide of requests to stop mortgage payments come in, the MBS reported that according to mortgage servicer call centers, the wait times increased to 17.5 minutes from under two minutes three weeks prior, and the abandonment rates grew to 25% from 5%. It could get worse: as Americans lose jobs by the millions, mortgage companies say they’ll soon get overwhelmed.
Of course, the problem with a solvency crisis is that it creeps up along the financial chain and loan servicers, which are required to pay bondholders whether or not borrowers pay, are themselves facing a liquidity shortfall that could be devastating for some independent mortgage companies. The MBA said that 3.45% of loans held by nonbanks have gone into forbearance. What’s worse is that while it is easy for people to stop paying their mortgage, it will take months if not years to get all those who stopped paying to restart again.
* * *
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. As we reported last week, according to Moody’s Analytics, as much as 30% of homeowners – about 15 million households – could stop paying their mortgages if the U.S. economy remains closed through the summer or beyond.
“This is an unprecedented event,” said Susan Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She also points out another way the current crisis is different from the 2008 GFC: “The great financial crisis happened over a number of years. This is happening in a matter of months – a matter of weeks.”
Meanwhile lenders – like everyone else – are operating in the dark, with no way of predicting the scope or duration of the pandemic or the damage it will wreak on the economy. If the virus recedes soon and the economy roars back to life, then the plan will help borrowers get back on track quickly. But the greater the fallout, the harder and more expensive it will be
Meanwhile lenders – like everyone else – are operating in the dark, with no way of predicting the scope or duration of the pandemic or the damage it will wreak on the economy. If the virus recedes soon and the economy roars back to life, then the plan will help borrowers get back on track quickly. But the greater the fallout, the harder and more expensive it will be to stave off repossessions.
“Nobody has any sense of how long this might last,” said Andrew Jakabovics, a former Department of Housing and Urban Development senior policy adviser who is now at Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit affordable housing group. “The forbearance program allows everybody to press pause on their current circumstances and take a deep breath. Then we can look at what the world might look like in six or 12 months from now and plan for that.”
But if the economic turmoil is long-lasting, the government will have to find a way to prevent foreclosures – which could mean forgiving some debt, said Tendayi Kapfidze, Chief Economist at LendingTree. And with the government now stuck in “bailout everyone mode”, the risk of allowing foreclosures to spiral is just too great because it would damage financial markets and that could reinfect the economy, he explained.
“I expect policy makers to do whatever they can to hold the line on a financial crisis,” Kapfidze said hinting at just a trace of a conflict of interest as his firm may well be next to fold if its borrowers declare a payment moratorium. “And that means preventing foreclosures by any means necessary.”
Take for example Laura Habberstad, a bar manager in Washington, D.C., who got a reprieve from her lender but needs time to catch up. The coronavirus snatched away her income, as it has for millions, and replaced it with uncertainty. The restaurant and beer garden where she works was forced to temporarily shut down. Laura has no idea when she’ll get her job back, nor does she have any idea how to look for a new job. After all, how do you search for another hospitality job during a global pandemic? Now she’s living in Oregon with her mother, whose travel agency was also forced to close.
“I don’t know how I’m going to pay my mortgage and my condo dues and still be able to feed myself,” Habberstad said. “I just hope that, once things open up again, we who are impacted by Covid-19 are given consideration and sufficient time to bring all payments current without penalty and in a manner that does not bring us even more financial hardship.”
Borrowers must contact their lenders to get help and avoid black marks on their credit reports, according to provisions in the stimulus package passed by Congress last week. Bank of America said it has so far allowed 50,000 mortgage customers to defer payments. That includes loans that are not federally backed, so they aren’t covered by the government’s program.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has convened a task force to deal with the potential liquidity shortfall faced by mortgage servicers, which collect payments and are required to compensate bondholders even if homeowners miss them. The group was supposed to make recommendations by March 30.
“If a large percentage of the servicing book – let’s say 20-30% of clients you take care of – don’t have the ability to make a payment for six months, most servicers will not have the capital needed to cover those payments,” QuickenChief Executive Officer Jay Farner said in an interview. But not Quicken, of course.
Quicken, which serves 1.8 million borrowers, and in 2018 surpassed Wells Fargo as the #1 mortgage lender in the US, has a strong enough balance sheet to serve its borrowers while paying holders of bonds backed by its mortgages, Farner said, although something tells us that in 6-8 weeks his view will change dramatically. Until then, the company plans to almost triple its call center workers by May to field the expected onslaught of borrowers seeking support, he said.
Ironically, as Bloomberg concludes, “if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s how quickly everything can change. Just weeks ago, mortgage lenders were predicting the biggest spring in years for home sales and mortgage refinances.” Instead, just a few weeks later the US housing market has fallen into an abyss that could be far worse than the Great Depression.
Symbol Of The Times: Tokyo Olympic Flame ‘Hidden’ Indefinitely To Prevent Crowds
Last month’s news that the Tokyo Olympics has been postponed until 2021 was a big enough blow to athletes, fans and organizers — but this is just as heavy on symbolism in terms of the state of the world, much of it on ‘lockdown’, after months of the coronavirus pandemic:
“The Tokyo Olympic flame has been taken off public display in Japan. And it’s not clear when it will reappear again or where — or under what conditions,” AP reports.
Via AP
The torch had been on display in Fukushima since arriving from Greece late last month. Though it was supposed to remain on display through April, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday issued a state of emergency for the whole country, banning large gatherings and crowds, after COVID-19 cases soared past 4,000 – and approaching 100 deaths.
This prompted officials to essentially hide the flame “in an undisclosed location” to ensure crowds don’t gather in front of it.
“Tokyo 2020 will now keep the flame in an undisclosed location to prevent people from gathering,” Tokyo Olympic organizers told the AP.
Later the International Olympic Committee (IOC) plans to use it as a public symbol of world hope amid the pandemic. “The idea will be to keep this flame burning and showing it to the world,” an IOC official said. “The Olympic flame burning will provide a very powerful inspiration, a bright light as the world goes through these difficult times.”
File image of 2018 torch lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece. Via Reuters
But the flame could remain ‘hidden’ through much of this year, as it’s not expected to resume it’s originally planned torch relay schedule until 2021, just ahead of the now delayed Tokyo Olympics.
The torch ceremony ahead of each modern olympics begins in Olympia, Greece – where the ancient games were held. The practice was revived in modern times for the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, Germany.
A recurring theme among conspiracy theorists is that the elite are just waiting for the right moment to roll out their ‘mark of the beast’ technology to remotely identify and control every single human being on the planet, thus sealing their plans for a one world government. And with many people willing to do just about anything to get back to some sense of normalcy, those fears appear more justified with each passing day.
In the Book of Revelation [13:16-17], there is a passage that has attracted the imagination of believers and disbelievers throughout the ages, and perhaps never more so than right now: “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark…”
Was John of Patmos history’s first conspiracy theorist, or are we merely indulging ourselves today with a case of self-fulfilling prophecy? Whatever the case may be, many people would probably have serious reservations about being branded with an ID code even if it had never been mentioned in Holy Scripture. But that certainly has not stopped Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has been warning about a global pandemic for years, from pushing such controversial technologies on all of us.
In September 2019, just three months before the coronavirus first appeared in China, ID2020, a San Francisco-based biometric company that counts Microsoft as one of its founding members, quietly announced it was undertaking a new project that involves the “exploration of multiple biometric identification technologies for infants” that is based on “infant immunization” and only uses the “most successful approaches”.
In a new interview, Bill Gates authoritatively states that mass public gatherings will not come back “at all” until we have mass vaccination. Who made him king of the world? https://t.co/siW7bZ9yGc … pic.twitter.com/ivaCI8eAEl
For anyone who may be wondering what one of those “most successful approaches” might look like, consider the following top contender for the contract. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed what is essentially a hi-tech ‘tattoo’ that stores data in invisible dye under the skin. The ‘mark’ would be delivered together with a vaccine, most likely administered by Gavi, the global vaccine agency that also falls under the umbrella of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots… emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone,” MIT News reported.
And if the reader scrolls to the very bottom of the article, he will find that this study was funded first and foremost by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Today, with the global service economy shut down to prevent large groups of infectious humans from assembling, it is easier to imagine a day when people are required to have their infrared ID ‘tattoo’ scanned in order to be granted access to any number of public venues. And from there, it requires little stretch of the imagination to see this same tracking nanotechnology being applied broadly across the global economy, where it could be used to eliminate the use of dirty money. After all, if reusable bags are being outlawed over the coronavirus panic-demic, why should reusable cash get special treatment?
Writing earlier this month in these pages, geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar provided a compelling argument that the coronavirus, which is driving the world towards a New Great Depression, is “being used as cover for the advent of a new, digital financial system, complete with a forced vaccine cum nanochip creating a full, individual, digital identity.
As one possible future scenario, Escobar imagined “clusters of smart cities linked by AI, with people monitored full time and duly micro-chipped doing what they need with a unified digital currency…”
Those fears took on greater significance when Bill Gates sat down over the weekend for a breathtaking interview with CBS This Morning. Gates told host Anthony Mason that mass gatherings might have to be prohibited in the age of coronavirus unless and until a wide scale vaccination program is enacted.
“What does ‘opening up’ look like,” Gates asked rhetorically before essentially changing the entire social and cultural makeup of the United States in one fell swoop.
“Which activities, like schools, have such benefit and can be done in a way that the risk of transmission is very low, and which activities, like mass gatherings, maybe, in a certain sense more optional. And so until you’re widely vaccinated those [activities] may not come back at all”
[The interview can be watched in its entirety here].
According to Gates, anything that could be defined as a “mass gathering” – from spectators packed into a stadium for a sporting event, to protesters out on the street in demonstration – would be considered an act of civil disobedience without a vaccine. Little surprise that Gates chose the concept of “mass gathering” to snag all of us, for what is modern democratic society if not one big mass event after another? Indeed, since nobody will want to miss the next big happening, like the Super Bowl, or Comic-Con, or, heaven forbid, Eurovision, millions of people would predictably line up for miles to get their Microsoft-supported inoculation, even if it contains tracking technologies.
MIT is working on a “quantum tattoo” that will mark you with an invisible identifier while also delivering a vaccine. Can you guess who is the premiere donor of the project? https://t.co/ZEWqCUVGwIpic.twitter.com/jFVip4DaqZ
All of this seems like sheer madness when it is remembered that there are other options for defeating the coronavirus than a mandatory global vaccine regime.
Just last month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director, told a Senate Subcommittee that over 80 percent of the people who get infected by the coronavirus “spontaneously recover” without any medical intervention. This makes one wonder why the global lockdown was designed for everyone instead of just the sick and elderly. Meanwhile, the drug hydroxychloroquine, which has been downplayed in the media despite being named as the most effective coronavirus treatment among physicians in a major survey, is starting to get a fresh look.
Just this week, following Nevada’s lead, Michigan just reversed course and is now the second democratic state to request the anti-malarial drug from the Trump administration.
Michigan reverses course, requests anti-malarial drugs from feds to treat coronavirus. Second Democratic governor to change mind this week, following Nevada. https://t.co/TkZyXEqs9l
So now it looks as though we are off to the races to see what will become the approved method of fighting the global pandemic – a hastily developed vaccine that may actually worsen the effects of the disease in those who contract it, or the already proven inexpensive drug hydroxychloroquine.
If the winner turns out to be a global vaccine, possibly one that carries ID nanotechnology, don’t expect the wealthy to be lining up with their kids to be the first to get it. In 2015, The American Journal of Public Heath surveyed some 6,200 schools in California – the epicenter of biometric ID research – and found vaccine exemptions were twice as common among kindergartners enrolled in private institutions.
It seems that the elite are betting heavily on the development of an ID-tracking vaccine that would bring all races and institutions together under one big happy roof, but clearly they will continue living in their own fenced-off neighborhood in this one world government. Whether or not they will get a ‘special pass’ from receiving the new-age mark is another question.
Christine Lagarde urges Eurogroup to work together
EU extends border closure until May 15
Italy reports slight acceleration in cases as deaths, ICU patients fall
Sunak says Johnson “improving”
NJ Gov’s chief counsel tests positive
NYC reportedly has enough ventilators to get through this week
Scientists find evidence some recovered don’t have antibodies
Swss gov’t sees GDP contracting as much as 10.4 % in 2020
LA mayor orders businesses to enforce social distancing
WHO’s Dr. Tedros responds to Trump
WHO again insists lockdowns must stay in effect
Iraq extends border closure with Iran
Indonesia outbreak continues to accelerate
Ethiopia joins growing list of African states by declaring state of emergency
* * *
Update (1900ET): France, Spain and Germany have all reported new numbers over the past couple of hours.
Spain reported 6,278 new cases and 747 new deaths for a total of 148,220 cases and 14,792 deaths.
Germany 5,118 new cases and, 230 new deaths for a total of 112,781 cases and 2,246 deaths. And in France, the health ministry reported 3,881 new cases, and 541 new deaths, for a total of 112,950 new cases and 10,869 deaths.
The data mostly confirm the recent trend, that the outbreak in Continental Europe is ‘peaking’.
Meanwhile, as Christine Lagarde at the ECB called on the Eurogroup to get it together and agree on a sufficiently forceful fiscal response to this crisis, while the European Commission, which just a month ago opposed border closures, announced Wednesday evening that it would extend its closure of the EU outer border until May 15.
In Germany, health officials have reached a new testing milestone: 1.3 million tests have been conducted since the beginning of the outbreak. The country is now testing more than 50k a day, while it’s unclear what the comparable number is in the US (though at the rate new cases are being confirmed, it appears the administration has come a long way in ramping up testing after their initial fumbles).
Meanwhile, the big news out of Wednesday night’s press conference is that pharmacists are now allowed to order coronavirus tests, said DHHS Secretary Alex Azar.
“Giving pharmacists the authorization to order and administer Covid-19 tests to their patients means easier access to testing for Americans who need it,” he said.
In other news, passenger traffic at Europe’s airports fell a staggering 97% at the end of March thanks to the outbreak.
* * *
Update (1730ET): NJ Gov. Phil Murphy’s chief counsel, Matt Platkin, recently tested positive for the virus. He remains asymptomatic, but is isolating at home, according to a statement from the governor’s office.
* * *
Update (1530ET): BNO News reports that the global number of confirmed coronavirus cases has surpassed 1.5 million, while the death toll approaches 90k. BNO’s numbers are slightly higher than Johns Hopkins University, another chronicler of news and information concerning the outbreak. Of the global total, the US, with roughly 419k cases, makes up about 25%.
BREAKING: 1.5 million confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide, death toll approaching 90,000 https://t.co/ACTvkkQ0g2
And with China opening the floodgates in Wuhan, we suspect that number is about to start growing a lot more quickly.
Looking at the global curve, the pace of the acceleration in recent weeks is staggering, and has been driven in large part by the US, which has the largest share of confirmed cases. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, responding to Trump’s criticism, insisted that now isn’t the time to talk about money.
“For God’s sake,” he said, noting the more than 80,000 confirmed deaths so far. “Even one person is precious.” He added, “if you don’t want more body bags, don’t politicize this,” he said.
“If you don’t want many more body bags than you refrain from politicizing it.”
In other words, don’t criticize the obvious conflict of interest involving China, or the price will be bodies.
* * *
Update (1515ET): Johns Hopkins just reported that the number of confirmed cases of the virus is 1,475,976…drawing ever closer to the 1.5 million milestone.
Meanwhile, here’s a clip from Cuomo’s press conference earlier this afternoon.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state saw its highest single-day coronavirus death toll of 779 people. He ordered all flags in New York to be flown at half-mast https://t.co/jvPgtcR2wCpic.twitter.com/t2wNrNZ5ZH
Update (1450ET): American companies including Ford and GE have worked together to rearrange their supply chains to start producing ventilators, the first of which likely won’t be ready until months after they’re needed. Now, GM has joined them.
The $490 million deal will provide the Department of Health and Human Services with another 30k in ventilators, at a price of $17,000 apiece.
Meanwhile, Cali Gov Gavin Newsom’s news briefing for Wednesday is about to begin.
— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) April 8, 2020
* * *
Update (1440ET): The Presidential Palace has just confirmed that President Emmanuel Macron will extend France’s lockdown past April 15.
In other news, the Mnuchin PPP loan-approval ticker continues: A leak that just hit the wires claims Mnuchin told Dems that $98 billion in loans have already been approved, more than a quarter of the total amount allotted by Congress.
We’ll believe it when we see it.
* * *
Update (1245ET): Cuomo on Wednesday reported 779 new COVID-19-linked deaths across the state, another single-day record jump in what has been a mostly rocky few days for the state in terms of new deaths (while reports about potentially temporarily burying bodies in city parks sent a shiver through America’s collective spine).
During the briefing, Cuomo said the state would extend unemployment benefits for workers, and added that the state seems to be well equipped with enough ventilators and even some BPAP machines (which can be modified to work like ventilators). He said that he it appears that cases have continued to plateau, continuing a trend that supposedly began this weekend (though some have raised issues about the way the data is collected, while others have warned about undercounting of deaths).
Though some might consider Cuomo’s interpretation a tad too rosy, the governor insisted that “we’re not out of this yet” and warned people to stay vigilent.
All voters will be allowed to vote by absentee ballot during New York’s June primary, Cuomo said, while ordering flags in the state to be flown at half-staff, following in the footsteps of NJ Gov. Phil Murphy. Cuomo added that objections to this practice are “total nonsense,” despite the fact that voter fraud is more prevalent than many suspect. Finally, Cuomo told viewers that we might see more days with high death tolls like today’s – perhaps even higher – as deaths peak.
Cuomo started his presser with a soliloquy about how “the poorest always pay the highest price” in a crisis, and promised to do everything possible to combat this, including getting money in their pockets faster by giving workers an extra $600 for everyone filing for unemployment. When questioned by a reporter if he was considering closing any more front-line businesses to help protect minorities, Cuomo said it was an issue that he had given some thought to (though if anything, NYC probably should thinking about opening more essential businesses as the government whiffs the bailout and shortages of consumer products like TP persist).
Here’s a breakdown of NY deaths, which shows that older Americans have been dying in the largest numbers, but still 20% of those who died were part of age groups who might be considered ‘still young’.
Later, Cuomo warned that while NYC and Westchester are on the downward slope, he warned that we would “almost certainly” see a jump in cases on Long Island. New York State reported 149,316 total cases statewide, including 10.480 new addigiotns, equivalent to a 7.5% increase, indicating a slight acceleration compared to yesterday. While the state reported 6,268 dead, including 779 deaths (its highest one-day jump yet), that’s larger than the ‘peak’ death number that is supposed to come Wednesday, according to the IMHE model. Then again, these models merely projections, intended to hopefully be close, but likely not exact.
However, as WaPo pointed out earlier, various models have differed dramatically as the unprecedented scale of this outbreak has forced epidemiologists to try and customize their typical coronavirus outbreak model playbook. And especially when it comes to medical equipment, the IMHE (part of the University of Washington) models tend to be significantly rosier than state models, leaving some governors and Washington DC to essentially pray that intubations hem closer to IMHE.
Most importantly, following reports that thousands of ‘home deaths’ have gone uncounted in official statistics, Cuomo said he’s looking at “other models” to help more accurately “adjust” figures to account for those home deaths.
Before we go, it’s worth pointing out: New York reached another important milestone today: It has surpassed Italy in terms of total cases, meaning New York State now has more cases than any single country ex-US.
* * *
Update (1225ET): New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Wednesday press briefing is slated to start at 12:30.
* * *
Update (1208ET): The market is running away with its optimistic view as Dr. Fauci claims new cases being reported in the US will likely start to fall next week and NYC Mayor de Blasio claims the city has enough ventilators on hand to ensure no unnecessary deaths, but more disturbing data has been reported out of the UK that would appear to undermine the narrative of a Europe-wide deceleration.
Once again, the UK reported its largest death toll yet, with 938 new deaths, bringing the total to 7,097. It also reported nearly 8k new cases, bringing the national total to 60,733.
In other news, in the latest update on PM Johnson, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the PM is “improving”. The jump in UK deaths brought the mortality rate to a new high of 11.7%.
Meanwhile, after a 3-day streak of declining new cases, Italy reported a jump on Wednesday, with 3,836 new cases, bringing the country’s total to 139,422. Of these, 53,414 cases were reported in Lombardy.
Though new cases saw a slight acceleration, Italy reported another encouraging drop in deaths, and a drop in ICU patients. Deaths reported were 542, bringing the total to 17,662. Of these, 9,772 were in Lombardy.
Italy’s 🇮🇹 data today is very much in line with yesterday. There are fewer new registered deaths (542 vs 604), and the number of patients in intensive care continues to fall (-2.6%). However, there is a very slight acceleration in total registered cases (+2.8% vs +2.3%). #COVID19
— Ferdinando Giugliano (@FerdiGiugliano) April 8, 2020
* * *
Update (1045ET): Russia reported another record number of new cases on Wednesday, with 1,175 confirmations, bringing its total to 8,672 cases.
Meanwhile, as more cases are reported across East Asia, Hong Kong has extended social distancing measures to April 23 from April 11, while ordering the closure of beauty parlors and massage parlors.
* * *
Update (1020ET): According to prior projections, the’peak’ in NYC’s coronavirus outbreak was supposed to arrive on Thursday. And in keeping with the optimistic turn in the official projections, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said his city now has enough ventilators to “get through this week”, which suggests the city might be able to weather the storm without needing substantially more ventilators.
Join us at City Hall with the latest updates on COVID-19 in New York City. https://t.co/1oJmdWgZ6G
While we’d like to take this as good news, the mayor’s history of playing down the dangers of COVID-19 suggests he could be playing down the risks once again.
Offering a racial breakdown of COVID-19 deaths, de Blasio said 34% of patients who die from the virus are white, 27% black, 28% Hispanic, and 7% Asian, the remaining 4% were a mix of other nationalities.
In LA, meanwhile, Mayor Garcetti has ordered all still-open (ie “essential”) businesses to enforce social distancing for employees and customers, or face civil fines.
Meanwhile, over in Europe, the Swiss government has released its latest projections: it now sees GDP contracting by as much as 10.4% this year according to its worst-case scenario.
* * *
Update (0948ET): As Indonesia becomes the latest East Asian country to report an acceleration in new cases, disturbing new videos purporting to show patients collapsing in public have been shared by the Epoch Times. After resisting a shutdown for weeks, the country’s president, Joko Widodo, has ordered schools shut and other businesses shut in the country’s capital, densely populated Jakarta.
Indonesia reported another 218 new cases of coronavirus on Wednesday, bringing its total to 2,956 cases. The country has also reported 240 deaths, while 222 patients have recovered.
The problem with that 218 number is that Indonesian health authorities in Jakarta are only able to run 240 tests a day at max capacity. That means there’s a chance that everybody, or nearly everybody, tested in Indonesia has tested positive. This is not good, as it signals that the outbreak is almost definitely much larger than the government realizes.
An increase in burials around Jakarta raised alarms in Indonesia, which is the largest Muslim-majority nation in the world, with ~265 million people, as health authorities suddenly realized that the virus had probably been spreading undetected for weeks. This comes after the government has already admitted to lying about positive case numbers, after insisting for weeks that it had zero detected cases.
Update (0830ET): With one hand, Germany’s Department of Health is pushing an app that will rely on cellphone location data to track contacts of people who test positive. Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry is taking action to restrict the use of the conferencing app Zoom over security concerns.
Meanwhile, Zoom just hired Alex Stamos, the former security chief at Facebook who spoke out against his former employer during that whole Internet privacy debacle, as it tries to rebuild its reputation before everybody
Across the US, chatter on social media about the need to get at least some of the shut-down economy back online has intensified in recent days, as political commentary as inspired heated discussions as opponents accuse Republicans and many regular Americans of callously placing the economy and their own self-interest above protecting society’s most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the global case total has surpassed 1.4 million, with 83k+ deaths.
But as JPM projected, and as was the case during SARS and other prior pandemics, even if the novel coronavirus does begin to recede heading into the summer, remember: this is only part one.
At this point, it’s not like anybody is going to snap their fingers and suddenly turn the clock back to Dec. 31, 2019. Many Americans – especially those at high risk – will likely cut down on leisure air travel, as pundits are already talking about the death of the “one-flight meeting”.
But as we begin to weigh the pros and cons, and the Trump Administration reportedly weighs a plan to reactivate parts of the economy and allowing some people to get back to work if they can demonstrate that they’re healthy, the SCMP late last night highlighted some new scientific evidence that is extremely disturbing.
As we explained above, by lifting restrictions on Wuhan, China is potentially unleashing hundreds, maybe even thousands, of asymptomatic carriers on the rest of the country. But scientists believe the ‘herd immunity’ that has supposedly been built up during the first wave should blunt the impact of ensuing waves somewhat. Well, unfortunately, it looks like that thesis needs to be reexamined.
Since the early days of the outbreak, we’ve seen reports about people being reinfected with the virus (though in some cases there were doubts about whether the virus ever really left). Well, now, a team of researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai has discovered that an alarmingly high number of recovered patients whom they’ve tested show low, or no, levels of the virus antibodies in their blood. That means a sizable chunk of those who are infected will be vulnerable to reinfection.
In other words, if these findings are confirmed, the hoped-for “herd immunity” that is supposed to help us get things back to normal in the time between now and however long it takes researchers to mass produce a vaccine simply isn’t going to materialize: Instead of diluting the density and acting as blockers for spread, many will be reinfected, and go on to spread the virus to others, all over again. It’s just the latest reason to worry that the second wave of the virus could be larger than the first.
Some countries are already seeing the first stirrings of a second wave: On Wednesday, Tokyo reported a record 144 new cases on Wednesday as Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s lockdown (which is legally toothless but has inspired most businesses to close nonetheless) took effect in Tokyo and six other districts across Japan. And now that the Tokyo Games have officially been suspended, the Olympic flame has been taken off public display in Japan. And it’s not clear when it will reappear again or where — or under what conditions.
But and China and Japan aren’t the only Asian nations fearful of a full-blown second wave: Hong Kong on Wednesday announced plans for an “unprecedented” $18 billion virus stimulus package to support Hong Kong’s rapid;y deteriorating economy, according to Bloomberg.
As the virus continues its woefully underreported spread across Africa – or so public health experts fear – Ethiopia announced on Wednesday that it’s joining a growing list of African nations – already including Botswana, Congo, Ivory Coast, Senegal, South Africa and others – by declaring a state of emergency over the virus. The country’s 110 million people have been relatively unscathed, reporting just 52 cases so far, though some fear that the country’s close ties to Beijing and commerce between the two nations means many more cases have gone unreported. This comes as the number of confirmed cases across Africa has finally passed 10k.
Iraq also extended the closure of its main border crossing with Iran as the ‘official’ death toll in that country passes 10k. Much to Trump’s delight, the decision will put added economic pressure on Tehran, as it will disrupt trade between the two nations, something upon which Iran’s sanctions-starved government greatly relies.
Certain progressive media outlets in the US will likely never forget that certain conservative pundits and even – to a much lesser degree – President Trump, Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders played down the coronavirus as the first cases were confirmed in the US. While President Trump likes to brag about his decision to shut down travel from China, in reality, that was a half-measure (he should have shut down travel from Europe, as certain senior advisors reportedly urged). And while they’re not wrong, they’re only telling part of the story. A lot of people in positions of power – including, as the Intercept notes, NYC’s Democratic mayor – either underestimated the outbreak, or have changed views on subjects like drugs, whether shutting down schools makes sense, whether a partial shutdown that preserves more of the economy might be a more appropriate response – the list goes on and on.
Going through this list, it appears to us that nobody is more guilty than the WHO, which is partly why President Trump is insisting that the US reexamine the WHO’s funding, and has mocked the WHO for ‘totally blowing it’.
Of course, anybody who has only just started paying attention in the past few weeks (ie most of America) probably doesn’t remember the WHO dragging its feet on the global threat and pandemic designations (those were two separate declarations), while also insisting that travel restrictions and border closures weren’t appropriate at a time when those decisions could have gone a long way toward suppressing the spread.
Because as the White House reportedly prepares a plan to get some healthy people back to work in the not too distant future, the WHO is now urging that countries considering a lifting of their lockdowns should probably reconsider (even as China prepares to send legions of infected Wuhan residents across its own country, and the world).
The WHO said Wednesday that “we have a long way to go” to defeat the pandemic, said Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, adding that now is “not the time to relax [lockdown] measures,” and all countries must “double and triple our collective efforts”. “We still have a long way to go,” he said. “The progress we have made so far in fighting the virus is extremely fragile.” Any relaxation of social distancing measures requires “very careful consideration,” he added. “We need to remain committed.”
His remarks were clearly directed at the West (after all, he was speaking in English), but would the WHO, which has come under fire for refusing to criticize Beijing, say the same about Wuhan?
If you, dear reader, happen to be a billionaire like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, or at least wealthy enough to perhaps be insulated from the vicissitudes of the combined economic and public health crises which have caused the economy to literally grind to a halt, then maybe you really do lack the self-awareness to really compare (after all, the stock market has really bounced back over these last few days). For those who still believe most Americans could survive a ten week total economic shutdown, the OECD would just like you to know: Most of the world is already officially in a deep recession. A leading indicator published by the Paris-based NGO showed its biggest drop on record.
Just in case you weren’t aware, the global economy is a giant dumpster fire right now. And while people with comfortable white collar jobs are shouting at everybody to “stay indoors!!!!”, there are millions of people are this country who are still waking up every day trying to figure out how they’re going to eat, or take care of other essential needs, in the middle of a lockdown. That doesn’t mean people should just flout the lockdown when they feel like it, it’s just a reminder that everybody deserves the benefit of the doubt.
