Category: zerohedge

As it turns out, two “scoops” reported by Axios’ reporter Jonathan Swan over the last few days about President Trump’s intensifying animosity toward the WHO turned out to be correct. Though, given the escalating rhetorical clash between China and the US, it’s really not all that surprising to learn that President Trump’s weekend remarks were a mere momentary lapse – and that the White House is cranking up the pressure on the China-centric NGO as the “blame game” between China and the US continues to escalate.

In a tweet sent late last night, President Trump shared a letter the US had sent to the WHO warning the organization that the US could permanently withdraw funding and cancel its membership if the WHO didn’t meet its demands.

“It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China.”

“My administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste.”

Trump’s political opponents have decried Trump’s aggressive criticisms of the WHO, and accused him of trying to slough off blame for his “poor” handling of the outbreak on China and the WHO. But these same opponents appear unable or unwilling to understand that the WHO issued a glowing report praising China’s handling of the outbreak in the early days, and – even more irresponsibly – stood by China when its scientists declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, even as the numbers in Wuhan had started to balloon.

This is the letter sent to Dr. Tedros of the World Health Organization. It is self-explanatory! pic.twitter.com/pF2kzPUpDv

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2020

Trump listed several specific examples of how the WHO failed in its duty to stop the outbreak from spreading:

• On January 14, 2020, the World Health Organization gratuitously reaffirmed China’s now-debunked claim that the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans, stating: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) identified in Wuhan, China.” This assertion was in direct conflict with censored reports from Wuhan.
• On January 21, 2020, President Xi Jinping of China reportedly pressured you not to declare the corona virus outbreak an emergency. You gave in to this pressure the next day and told the world that the coronavirus did not pose a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Just over one week later, on January 30, 2020, overwhelming evidence to the contrary forced you to reverse course.
• On January 28, 2020, after meeting with President Xi in Beijing, you praised the Chinese government for its “transparency” with respect to the coronavirus, announcing that China had set a “new standard for outbreak control” and “bought the world time.” You did not mention that China had, by then, silenced or punished several doctors for speaking out about the virus and restricted Chinese institutions from publishing information about it.

And here are a few other topics that the letter touches on:

Travel ban double-standard

The letter points out that Tedros “strongly praised China’s strict domestic travel restrictions, but were inexplicably against my closing of the United States border, or the ban, with respect to people coming from China. I put the ban in place regardless of your wishes,” stating that the WHO director’s “political gamesmanship on this issue was deadly, as other governments, relying on your comments, delayed imposing life-saving restrictions on travel to and from China.”

Taiwan

Shortly after Beijing made its initial report to the WHO (via the WHO’s office in Beijing) just before New Year’s, Taiwan followed up by reporting evidence of human-to-human transmission, which Beijing has continued to deny. These warnings were promptly ignored for political reasons. If the world had known the truth just a couple of weeks earlier (when the WHO should have known) action could have been taken to more swiftly shut down travel from China, as vacationers preparing for the Chinese New Year helped spread the virus around the globe.

Trump gets personal

Bringing it home, Trump slams Tedros as incompetent – writing that “Just a few years ago, under the direction of a different Director-General, the World Health Organization showed the world how much it has to offer. In 2003, in response to the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China, Director General Harlem Brundtland boldly declared the World Health Organization’s first emergency travel advisory in 55 years, recommending against travel to and from the disease epicenter in southern China.

“Many lives could have been saved had you followed Dr. Brundtland’s example,” said Trump.

In closing, Trump gave the WHO 30 days to commit to “substantive improvements” or he will make the temporary freeze of US funding to the organization permanent, as well as “reconsider our membership in the organization.”

* * *

Meanwhile, the WHO’s obsequiousness toward China remains a puzzling mystery for many. With the US providing 4x more funding for the organization than China, Dr. Tedros’ apparent fealty to Beijing – despite the fact that President Xi’s government deliberately lied to the WHO multiple times, the director-general still felt it appropriate to invite him to deliver the keynote at the organization’s annual meeting.

Not only has the Trump administration threatened to withdraw from the WHO, it has also opposed a resolution to set aside patent laws to allow impoverished countries to produce their own vaccines and drug companies.

Beijing rebutted Trump’s letter TUesday morning as a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry slammed the move as “futile” and called on the US to stop the “blame game” over who is responsible for the outbreak.

China urged “a few US politicians to stop the blame game” when asked about the letter US President Donald Trump sent to the World Health Organization on Monday.”

“The US letter is full of vagueness, it tries to mislead the public to smear China and shift the blame away from its own incompetent response, currently Covid-19 is still spreading in the US, the most pressing task is solidarity and cooperation to save lives. We urge a few US politicians to stop the blame game and together defeat the virus,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters Tuesday.”

We suspect Dr. Tedros doesn’t see it that way.

Tedros reading this pic.twitter.com/FizdiCbhQ0

— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) May 19, 2020

Read the entire letter below:

The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal. The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself.

By no later than December 30, 2019, the World Health Organization office in Beijing knew that there was a “major public health” concern in Wuhan. Between December 26 and December 30, China’s media highlighted evidence of a new virus emerging from Wuhan, based on patient data sent to multiple Chinese genomics companies. Additionally, during this period, Dr. Zhang Jixian, a doctor from Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, told China’s health authorities that a new coronavirus was causing a novel disease that was, at the time, afflicting approximately 180 patients.

By the next day, Taiwanese authorities had communicated information to the World Health Organization indicating human-to-human transmission of a new virus. Yet the World Health Organization chose not to share any of this critical information with the rest of the world, probably for political reasons.

The International Health Regulations require countries to report the risk of a health emergency within 24 hours. But China did not inform the World Health Organization of Wuhan’s several cases of pneumonia, of unknown origin, until December 31, 2019, even though it likely had knowledge of these cases days or weeks earlier.

According to Dr. Zhang Yongzhen of the Shanghai Public Health Clinic Center, he told Chinese authorities on January 5, 2020, that he had sequenced the genome of the virus. There was no publication of this information until six days later, on January 11, 2020, when Dr. Zhang self-posted it online. The next day, Chinese authorities closed his lab for “rectification.” As even the World Health Organization acknowledged, Dr. Zhang’s posting was a great act of “transparency.” But the World Health Organization has been conspicuously silent both with respect to the closure of Dr. Zhang’s lab and his assertion that he had notified Chinese authorities of his breakthrough six days earlier.

The World Health Organization has repeatedly made claims about the coronavirus that were either grossly inaccurate or misleading.

On January 14, 2020, the World Health Organization gratuitously reaffirmed China’s now-debunked claim that the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans, stating: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) identified in Wuhan, China.” This assertion was in direct conflict with censored reports from Wuhan.


On January 21, 2020, President Xi Jinping of China reportedly pressured you not to declare the corona virus outbreak an emergency. You gave in to this pressure the next day and told the world that the coronavirus did not pose a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Just over one week later, on January 30, 2020, overwhelming evidence to the contrary forced you to reverse course.

On January 28, 2020, after meeting with President Xi in Beijing, you praised the Chinese government for its “transparency” with respect to the coronavirus, announcing that China had set a “new standard for outbreak control” and “bought the world time.” You did not mention that China had, by then, silenced or punished several doctors for speaking out about the virus and restricted Chinese
institutions from publishing information about it.

• Even after you belatedly declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020, you failed to press China for the timely admittance of a World Health Organization team of international medical experts. As a result, this critical team did not arrive in China until two weeks later, on February 16, 2020. And even then, the team was not allowed to visit Wuhan until the final days of their visit. Remarkably, the World Health Organization was silent when China denied the two American members of the team access to Wuhan entirely.

• You also strongly praised China’s strict domestic travel restrictions, but were inexplicably against my closing of the United States border, or the ban, with respect to people coming from China. I put the ban in place regardless of your wishes. Your political gamesmanship on this issue was deadly, as other governments, relying on your comments, delayed imposing life-saving restrictions on travel to and from China. Incredibly, on February 3, 2020, you reinforced your position, opining that because China was doing such a great job protecting the world from the virus, travel restrictions were “causing more harm than good.” Yet by then the world knew that, before locking down Wuhan, Chinese authorities had allowed more than five million people to leave the city and that many of these people were bound for international destinations all over the world.

• As of February 3, 2020, China was strongly pressuring countries to lift or forestall travel restrictions. This pressure campaign was bolstered by your incorrect statements on that day telling the world that the spread of the virus outside of China was “minimal and slow” and that “the chances of getting this going to anywhere outside China [were] very low.”

• On March 3, 2020, the World Health Organization cited official Chinese data to downplay the very serious risk of asymptomatic spread, telling the world that “COVID-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza” and that unlike influenza this disease was not primarily driven by “people who are infected but not yet sick.” China’s evidence, the World Health Organization told the world, “showed that only one percent of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within two days.” Many experts, however, citing data from Japan, South Korea, and elsewhere, vigorously questioned these assertions. It is now clear that China’s assertions, repeated to the world by the World Health Organization, were wildly inaccurate.

• By the time you finally declared the virus a pandemic on March 11, 2020, it had killed more than 4,000 people and infected more than 100,000 people in at least 114 countries around the world.

• On April 11 , 2020, several African Ambassadors wrote to the Chinese Foreign Ministry about the discriminatory treatment of Africans related to the pandemic in Guangzhou and other cities in China. You were aware that Chinese authorities were carrying out a campaign of forced quarantines, evictions, and refusal of services against the nationals of these countries. You have not commented on China’s racially discriminatory actions. You have, however, baselessly labeled as racist Taiwan’s well-founded complaints about your mishandling of this pandemic.

• Throughout this crisis, the World Health Organization has been curiously insistent on praising China for its alleged “transparency.” You have consistently joined in these tributes, notwithstanding that China has been anything but transparent. In early January, for example, China ordered samples of the virus to be destroyed, depriving the world of critical information. Even now, China continues to undermine the International Health Regulations by refusing to share accurate and timely data, viral samples and isolates, and by withholding vital information about the virus and its origins. And, to this day, China continues to deny international access to their scientists and relevant facilities, all while casting blame widely and recklessly and censoring its own experts.

• The World Health Organization has failed to publicly call on China to allow for an independent investigation into the origins of the virus, despite the recent endorsement for doing so by its own Emergency Committee. The World Health Organization’s failure to
do so has prompted World Health Organization member states to adopt the “COYID-19 Response” Resolution at this year’s World Health Assembly, which echoes the call by the United States and so many others for an impartial, independent, and comprehensive review of how the World Health Organization handled the crisis. The resolution also calls for an investigation into the origins of the virus, which is necessary for the world to understand how best to counter the disease.

Perhaps worse than all these failings is that we know that the World Health Organization could have done so much better. Just a few years ago, under the direction of a different Director-General, the World Health Organization showed the world how much it has to offer. In 2003, in response to the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China, Director General Harlem Brundtland boldly declared the World Health Organization’s first emergency travel advisory in 55 years, recommending against travel to and from the disease epicenter in southern China. She also did not hesitate to criticize China for endangering global health by attempting to cover up the outbreak through its usual play book of arresting whistleblowers and censoring media. Many lives could have been saved had you followed Dr. Brundtland’s example.

It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China. My Administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization. But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste. That is why it is my duty, as President of the United States, to inform you that, if the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization. I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A police force in the UK faced humiliation after trying to enlist the public’s help in a manhunt for a trucker who committed the dastardly crime of kissing a woman on the cheek.

“We are appealing for help to identify a man who kissed a woman on the cheek to thank her for helping when his lorry became stuck under a low bridge,” said the tweet from Derbyshire Police, asking potential witnesses if they were in the location when the incident occurred.

Within hours, the tweet was deleted however, with the force explaining, “The post drew a significant number of comments that were counterproductive to the nature of the appeal.”

Respondents had bombarded the tweet threat with jokes and assertions that kissing someone on the cheek wasn’t a crime.

“Giving someone a kiss on the cheek isn’t a crime nor is it sexual assault,” said one.

This was a real tweet from a British police force. pic.twitter.com/2hsu6W1nYf

— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) May 17, 2020

However, the force asserted that the incident was a crime under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and that the female ‘victim’, a woman in her 70’s, was “very distressed, especially at a time when close contact with strangers is to be avoided.”

Despite removing the tweet, police are still inviting members of the public to get in touch if they can help find the dangerous assailant.

It’s a shame similar enthusiasm wasn’t shown by other police forces throughout the UK during the innumerable grooming scandals involving Muslim men and underage girls, some of which were deliberately covered up by authorities for years.

This isn’t the first time Derbyshire Police have been criticized for their draconian approach to law enforcement.

They previously faced heat for bragging about using a surveillance drone to identify and publicly shame dog walkers in remote countryside during the early days of the lockdown.

Derbyshire Police were also ridiculed after they dyed a blue lagoon black in order to deter people from gathering there.

*  *  *

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As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, the media continues to rattle off statistics at full force.

However, as Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross notes, without a frame of reference, numbers such as the death toll can be difficult to interpret. Mortalities attributed to the virus, for example, are often measured in the thousands of people per day globally—but is this number a little or a lot, relative to typical causes of death?

Today’s graphic uses data from Our World in Data to provide context with the total number of worldwide daily deaths. It also outlines how many people who die each day from specific causes.

Worldwide Deaths by Cause

Nearly 150,000 people die per day worldwide, based on the latest comprehensive research published in 2017. Which diseases are the most deadly, and how many lives do they take per day?

Here’s how many people die each day on average, sorted by cause:

Cardiovascular diseases, or diseases of the heart and blood vessels, are the leading cause of death. However, their prominence is not reflected in our perceptions of death nor in the media.

While the death toll for HIV/AIDS peaked in 2004, it still affects many people today. The disease causes over 2,600 daily deaths on average.

Interestingly, terrorism and natural disasters cause very few deaths in relation to other causes. That said, these numbers can vary from day to day—and year to year—depending on the severity of each individual instance.

Total Daily Deaths by Country

On a national level, these statistics vary further. Below are the total deaths from all causes for selected countries, based on 2017 data.

China and India both see more than 25,000 total deaths per day, due to their large populations.

However, with 34.7 daily deaths per million people each day, Russia has the highest deaths proportional to population out of any of these countries.

Keeping Perspective

While these numbers help provide some context for the global scale of COVID-19 deaths, they do not offer a direct comparison.

The fact is that many of the aforementioned death rates are based on much larger and consistent sample sizes of data. On the flipside, since WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, daily confirmed deaths have fallen in a wide range between 272 and 10,520 per day—and there is no telling what could happen in the future.

On top of this variance, data on confirmed COVID-19 deaths has other quirks. For example, testing rates for the virus may vary between jurisdictions, and there have also been disagreements between authorities on how deaths should even be tallied in the first place. This makes getting an accurate picture surprisingly complicated.

While it’s impossible to know the true death toll of COVID-19, it is clear that in some countries daily deaths have reached rates 50% or higher than the historical average for periods of time:

Time, and further analysis, will be required to determine a more accurate COVID-19 death count.

Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

In a pandemic, there is no substitute for immunity, because immunity provides the best protection against reinfection. That’s why Sweden set its sights on immunity from the very beginning. They crafted a policy that was designed to protect the old and vulnerable, prevent the public health system from being overwhelmed, and, most important, allow younger, low-risk people to interact freely so they’d contract the virus and develop the antibodies they’d need to fight future infections. That was the plan and it worked like a charm. Now Sweden is just weeks away from achieving herd immunity (which means that future outbreaks will not be nearly as severe) while the lockdown nations– that are just now easing restrictions– face an excruciating uphill slog that may or may not succeed. Bottom line: Sweden analyzed the problem, figured out what to do, and did it. That’s why they are closing in on the finish line while most of the lockdown states are still stuck at Square 1.

As of this writing, none of the other nations have identified immunity as their primary objective which is why their orientation has been wrong from the get-go. You cannot achieve a goal that you have not identified. The current US strategy focuses on stringent containment procedures (shelter-in-place, self-isolation) most of which have little historical or scientific basis. The truth is, the Trump administration responded precipitously when the number of Covid-positive cases began to increase exponentially in the US. That paved the way for a lockdown policy that’s more the result of groupthink and flawed computer models than data-based analysis and nimble strategic planning. And the results speak for themselves. The 8-week lockdown is probably the biggest policy disaster in US history. Millions of jobs have been lost, thousands of small and mid-sized businesses will now face bankruptcy, and the future prospects for an entire generation of young people have been obliterated. The administration could have detonated multiple nuclear bombs in the country and done less damage than they have with their lunatic lockdown policy.

At present, 24 states have begun the process of reopening their economies. There is no uniform criteria for lifting restrictions, no standardized approach to opening one sector over the other, and no plan for dealing with the inevitable surge of new cases and deaths. It all looks like another disaster in the making but we’ll reserve judgement until the results are in. What we know for certain is that no one in the Trump administration gave the slightest thought to the problems that might arise from eventually lifting the restrictions. We know that because we know that there was no “exit strategy”, just make-it-up-on-the-fly and hope for the best.

In contrast, Sweden won’t need an exit strategy because it never shut down its economy or quarantined its people to begin with. So the transition to normal life and stepped-up economic activity is not going to be as difficult. That’s the benefit of strategic planning, it anticipates the problems one might encounter on the path one’s goal. Here’s a clip from an interview with Swedish an infectious disease clinician, Johan Giesecke, , who served as state epidemiologist of Sweden as well as Chief Scientist at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Giesecke helps explain why the Swedish approach is different. It’s a matter of perception as well as analysis:

“What we are seeing is a rather mild infection spreading around the globe. I think there is relatively little chance of stopping this whatever measures we take. Most people will become infected by this and most people won’t even notice. We have data now from Sweden that between 98 and 99% of the cases have had a very mild infection or didn’t even realize they were infected. So we have the spread of this mild disease around the globe and most of it is happening where we don’t see it because it happens among people who don’t get very sick and , spread it to someone else who doesn’t get very sick… What we looking at (with the official number of cases and deaths) is a thin layer at the top of people who do develop the disease and an even thinner layer of people who go into intensive care and an even thinner layer of people who die. But the real outbreak is happening where we don’t see it.” (“Swedish scientist Johan Giesecke asks Australia how it plans to lift its lockdown without deaths”, you tube…52 second mark to 1:48)

Giesecke’s analysis veers from the conventional view of the virus which explains why the Swedish response has been so different. For example, he says: “I think there is relatively little chance of stopping this whatever measures we take.”

This gets to the root of the Swedish approach. Sweden is not trying to suppress the infection which they see as a force of nature (like a tsunami) that cannot be contained but only mitigated. From the beginning, the Swedish approach has been to “control the spread of the virus”, not to suppress it through containment strategies. There’s a fundamental difference here, and that difference is expressed in the policy.

Second, “We have data now from Sweden that between 98 and 99% of the cases have had a very mild infection or didn’t even realize they were infected.” In other words, this is highly-contagious infection that poses little or no threat to most people. That suggests the economy can be kept open without endangering the lives of low-risk groups. The added benefit of allowing certain businesses to remain open, is that it creates a controlled environment in which the infection can spread rapidly through the healthy population who, in turn, develop the antibodies they need for future outbreaks. This all fits within Sweden’s plan for managing, rather than avoiding, the virus.

Finally, “What we looking at is a thin layer at the top of people who do develop the disease and an even thinner layer of people who go into intensive care and an even thinner layer of people who die.” The vast majority of people who die from Covid are over 65 with multiple underlying conditions. It’s a terrible tragedy that they should die, but destroying the lives and livelihoods of millions of working people in a futile attempt to stop an unstoppable force like Covid, is foolish and unforgivable. The appropriate response is to protect the old and infirm as much as possible, carefully monitor the rise in cases to prevent the public health system from cratering, and keep the economy operating at a lower level. And that’s exactly what Sweden has done.

FAUCI vs. PAUL: Operation “Obfuscate Immunity”

Not surprisingly, the issue of immunity came up during Dr Anthony Fauci’s testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. There was a heated exchange between Fauci and Senator Rand Paul who challenged the infectious disease expert on the misleading information that the WHO has been spreading in the media. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

Senator Rand Paul: “Dr. Fauci, Studies show that the recovering COVID-19 patients from the asymptomatic to the very sick are showing significant antibody response. Studies show that SARS and MERS, also coronaviruses, induce immunity for at least 2 to 3 years, and yet the media continues to report that we have no evidence that patients who survive coronavirus have immunity. I think actually the truth is the opposite. We have no evidence that survivors of coronavirus don’t have immunity and a great deal of evidence to suggest that they do….

You’ve stated publicly that you’d bet it at all that survivors of coronavirus have some form of immunity. Can you help set the record straight that the scientific record, as it is being accumulated, is supportive that infection with coronavirus likely leads to some form of immunity, Dr. Fauci?”

Dr. Anthony Fauci: “Thank you for the question, Senator Paul. Yes, you’re correct that I have said that, given what we know about the recovery from viruses such as coronaviruses in general, or even any infectious disease with very few exceptions, that when you have antibody present it very likely indicates a degree of protection.

I think it’s in the semantics of how this is expressed. When you say has it been formally proven by long-term natural history studies, which is the only way that you can prove, one, is it protective, which I said and will repeat, it’s likely that it is, but also what is the degree or titer of antibody that gives you that critical level of protection and what is the durability. As I’ve often said and again repeat, you can make a reasonable assumption that it would be protective, but natural history studies over a period of months to years will then tell you definitively if that’s the case.” (Real Clear Politics)

This is a critical exchange that helps to underscore what an elusive and calculating political character Fauci really is. You will notice that his answer is completely scripted, completely circuitous and carefully avoids any mention of the word “immunity”.

Rand Paul’s question couldn’t be more straightforward: Do Covid survivors have immunity or not? Yes or no?

And, the answer is: “Yes, they do. Covid survivors do have immunity.”

But Fauci doesn’t deliver that answer, after a long-winded rumination, Fauci finally offers the most opaque response he can conjure up, he says, “you can make a reasonable assumption that it would be protective.” In other words, he carefully avoids a definitive answer. But, of course, that’s understandable since the WHO has been spreading false rumors about herd immunity trying to muddy the science since it doesn’t jibe with their pro-vaccine agenda. That’s what this is all about, bashing natural immunity to clear the way for a vaccine. Check out this clip from an article at Business Insider:

“…leaders at the World Health Organization Monday expressed outrage at the idea that some people might have to die in pursuit of a far-fetched virus-fighting strategy called herd immunity.

“This idea that, ‘well, maybe countries who had lax measures and haven’t done anything will all of a sudden magically reach some herd immunity, and so what if we lose a few old people along the way?’ This is a really dangerous, dangerous calculation,” the WHO’s Executive Director of Health Emergencies Mike Ryan said on a call with reporters.

Ryan didn’t mention any specific countries by name, but it was hard not to think about the high death rate in Swedish nursing homes as he mentioned that “in some countries, over half of the cases have occurred in longterm care facilities,” where people haven’t been “properly shielded.”…

“Humans are not herds,” Ryan said. “I think we need to be really careful when we use terms in this way around natural infections in humans, because it can lead to a very brutal arithmetic which does not put people, and life, and suffering at the center of that equation.”

Ryan was audibly troubled by the idea that the world would accept an infection spreading through a population, and even killing some people, to provide a kind of herd protection, especially one which scientists don’t even know exists. He said that’s not a calculus that any “responsible” country should be willing to take.” (“Humans are not Herds”, Business Insider)

As you can see, the Gates Vaccine Gestapo has launched a propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting, obfuscating and ridiculing other methods for achieving immunity that don’t coincide with their grandiose ambitions to use vaccines as an entry-point for enhanced global tracking, surveillance and social control. Is anyone surprised by this?

But the fact remains that–as Paul says, “recovering COVID-19 patients …show significant antibody response (and will likely have) immunity for at least 2 to 3 years.” Here’s more from Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell who made this comment in an interview last week:

“It is quite certain that immunity does exist…. For all the cases we have had in Sweden, there has not been one single person who had this disease twice. And we have a very strict identification system. So there is no way we would miss a person who had it twice. I haven’t heard any reports from any countries where there has been a certified case who has actually had this twice. There’s been rumors about it. But in the end, they have been disclaimed.” (“Key quotes: Sweden’s top epidemiologist challenges conventional wisdom on COVID-19” ijnet)

Repeat: “there has not been one single person who had this disease twice.”

The science is clear, immunity is real and Sweden is on its way to achieving herd immunity within the month.

Sweden’s public health experts have loosened the grip of a vicious pandemic and delivered the Swedish people to a place of safety and security where they can get on with their lives without fear of contracting a lethal infection.

Hurrah for Sweden!

A post-corona world will be filled with many challenges and surprises. All international travelers who dare step onto an airplane and into another country better take a crash course in each countries’ social distancing rules. Why? Well, you could end up in jail if you don’t wear a mask in certain Middle Eastern countries. 

Anyone who is traveling to Kuwait and Qatar in the near term must really pay attention to the new social distancing rules released on Sunday. Each countries’ health authorities made a very strict rule that no mask-wearing will result in a hefty fine and possibly even jail time, reported Reuters.

If caught with no mask in Kuwait, one could face three months in jail and 5,000 dinars ($16,200) fine. In Qatar, the penalty is a bit harsher, one could face up to three years in jail and 200,000 riyals ($55,000) fine. 

Stricter penalties in both countries come amid a recent rise in COVID-19 cases in the region. Kuwait and Qatar have both extended nationwide lockdowns. Qatar tightened restrictions on commercial activities on Monday and closed all shops through the end of May. 

A surge in virus cases prompted the Saudi government to re-impose a 24-hour curfew during the Eid al-Fitr holiday slated for later this month. 

“A total curfew will be imposed in all cities and regions across the Kingdom,” from 23 May until 27 May, the Saudi Ministry of Interior said in a statement last week. 

On a per-capita basis, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE have some of the highest COVID-19 cases in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. 

JPMorgan’s latest data suggests parts of Asia could be experiencing the beginning phases of the second virus wave. This would suggest other regions of the world could follow later this year. 

Countries entering second wave phase 

Country positioning on the pandemic curve 

While some MENA countries are strict on mask-wearing, other countries in Europe, specifically Sweden, have discouraged citizens from wearing masks. Sweden alleges mask-wearing is useless against the virus. 

Not all countries are equal in mask-wearing — if you’re traveling internationally, it would be good to catch up on each countries’ social distancing rules. 

Authored by Robert Skidelsky via Project-Syndicate,

The COVID-19 pandemic is the first major global crisis in human history to be treated as a mathematical problem, with governments regarding policy as the solution to a set of differential equations. Excluding a few outliers – including, of course, US President Donald Trump – most political leaders have slavishly deferred to “the science” in tackling the virus. The clearest example of this was the UK government’s sudden shift on March 23 to an aggressive lockdown policy, following a nightmarish forecast by Imperial College London researchers of up to 550,000 deaths if nothing was done to combat the pandemic.

Such modeling is the correct scientific approach when the question debars experiment. You can test a new drug by subjecting two groups of lab rats to identical conditions, except for the drug they are given, or by administering it to randomly selected humans in clinical trials.

But you can’t deliberately insert a virus into a human population to test its effects, although some Nazi concentration-camp doctors did just that. Instead, scientists use their knowledge of the infectious pathogen to model a disease’s pattern of contagion, and then work out which policy interventions will modify it.

Predictive modeling was first developed for malaria over a century ago by an almost-forgotten English doctor, Ronald Ross. In a fascinating 2020 book, the mathematician and epidemiologist Adam Kucharski showed how Ross first identified the mosquito as the infectious agent through experiments on birds. From this fact, he developed a predictive model of malaria transmission, which was later generalized as the SIR (Susceptible, Infected, and Recovered) model of contagious-disease epidemics.

The question that interested epidemiologists was not what triggers an epidemic, but what causes it to end. They concluded that epidemics end naturally when enough people have had the disease so that further transmission rates decline. Basically, the virus runs out of hosts in which it can reproduce itself. In today’s jargon, the population develops “herd immunity.”

The science developed from Ross’s original model is almost universally accepted, and has been fruitfully applied in other contexts, like financial contagion. But no policymaker is prepared to allow a killer epidemic to run its natural course, because the potential death toll would be unacceptable.

After all, the 1918-19 Spanish flu killed some 50-100 million people out of a global population of two billion: a death rate between 2.5% and 5%. No one knew for sure what the COVID-19 death rate would have been had the spread of the coronavirus been uncontrolled.

Because there is currently no COVID-19 vaccine, governments have had to find other ways to prevent “excess deaths.” Most have opted for lockdowns, which remove entire populations from the path of the virus and thus deprive it of hosts.

Two months into the European lockdown, however, the evidence suggests that these measures on their own have not had much medical effect. For example, Sweden, with its exceptionally light lockdown, has had fewer COVID-19 deaths relative to its population than tightly locked-down Italy and Spain. And while the United Kingdom and Germany have both been aggressively locked down, Germany has so far reported 96 deaths per million inhabitants, compared to 520 per million in the UK.

The crucial difference between Germany and the UK seems to lie in their respective medical responses. Germany started mass testing, contact-tracing, and isolating the infected and exposed within a few days of confirming its first COVID-19 cases, thus giving itself a head start in slowing the virus’s spread.

The UK, by contrast, is hobbled by incoherence at the center of government and by what former foreign secretary David Owen (himself a medical doctor) has called the “structural vandalism” inflicted on the National Health Service by years of cuts, fragmentation, and centralization. As a result, the country lacked the medical tools for a German-style response.

Science cannot determine what the correct COVID-19 response should have been for each country. A model may be considered validated if its predictions correspond to outcomes in real life. But in epidemiology, we can have confidence that this will happen only if a virus with known properties is allowed to run its natural course in a given population, or if there is a single intervention like a vaccine, the results of which can be accurately predicted.

Too many variables – including, say, medical capacity or cultural characteristics – scrambles the model, and it starts spewing out scenarios and predictions like a demented robot. Today, epidemiologists cannot tell us what the effects of the current COVID-19 policy mix will be. “We will know only in a year or so,” they say.

The outcome will therefore depend on politics. And the politics of COVID-19 are clear enough: governments could not risk the natural spread of infection, and thought it too complicated or politically fraught to try to isolate only those most at risk of severe illness or death, namely the 15-20% of the population aged over 65.

The default policy response has been to slow the spread of natural immunity until a vaccine can be developed. What “flattening the curve” really means is spacing out the number of expected deaths over a period long enough for medical facilities to cope and a vaccine to kick in.

But this strategy has a terrible weakness: governments cannot keep their populations locked down until a vaccine arrives. Apart from anything else, the economic cost would be unthinkable. So, they have to ease the lockdown gradually.

Doing this, however, lifts the cap on non-exposure gained from the lockdown. That is why no government has an explicit exit strategy: what political leaders call the “controlled easing” of lockdowns actually means controlled progress toward herd immunity.

Governments cannot openly avow this, because that would amount to admitting that herd immunity is the objective. And it is not yet even known whether and for how long infection confers immunity.

Much better, then, to pursue this goal silently, under a cloud of obfuscation, and hope that a vaccine arrives before most of the population is infected.

While the auto market has been falling apart, Volkswagen has been crushing it in the EV market.

The automaker’s CEO said on a podcast on Monday morning that many of its EVs are already “sold out far into the second half of the year,” according to Bloomberg. 

The company’s market share for EVs more than doubled to almost 4% and could rise as high as 5% or 6% by the end of 2020 with help from incentives and tax breaks, CEO Herbert Diess said. The company has a longer-term target of EVs accounting for about 40% of deliveries by 2030.

And the target for VW is clear: the company is “very confident” that it “won’t lose sight of Tesla,” Deiss said.

He continued, saying that the company’s “ability to boost technology skills and software operations quickly is more important to compete than leveraging industrial scale.”

Diess expects “very strong” competition from Chinese firms in the future and reiterated his call for economic stimulus in Germany to help the country steer clear of a prolonged recession. 

This targeted move, taking aim at Tesla, shouldn’t be a surprise to Zero Hedge readers, as we recently predicted that Volkswagen would become a major player in the EV market, posing a threat to Tesla. 

Recall, just days ago, we wrote about the Volkswagen ID3, which, with a price point of $33,000 possibly represents the biggest challenge to Tesla’s dominant EV status yet. The vehicle goes on sale in Europe and the UK this summer, despite the coronavirus and offers the same amount of range and storage space as a Tesla Model 3.

The ID3 is going to offer three different battery choices and two power outputs. It has a claimed range of 260 miles.

Volkswagen has been taking pre-orders for the car and more than 35,000 people have placed deposits so far, according to Autocar. Those who placed deposits will be able to buy their cars starting June 17 in Europe. The UK will follow in mid-July due to the time it takes to get approval for right hand drive models.

Volkswagen sales boss Jürgen Stackmann said at the time deliveries are on track and that the ID3 is the company’s sole focus right now: “The focus of the company now is on ID 3. We’re almost ready, and we just need a few more weeks to get the software to where we need it to be. The entire team are working on this topic, and we want to deliver a great quality product on time – and that time is this summer.”

Volkswagen is aiming to build 100,000 ID3s this year and prices in the will start from around £27,500 before the government grant for the entry-level 45kWh version.

The storage capabilities of the ID3 make it a formidable competitor to the Model Y. The ID3 also features two digital dashboard displays and, as Business Insider says “…seems to offer a bit more familiarity” than the Tesla Model 3. 

It also offers adaptive cruise control and lane assist, similar to Tesla’s autopilot. And again, the price point could be the car’s best selling point. Its $33,000 (USD) tag compares to about $48,000 for the Model 3 and $52,990 for the Model Y. 

A video comparison of the ID3 and the Model 3 can be seen here: 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The United Nations has put out a tweet asserting that people shouldn’t use politically incorrect terms like “boyfriend,” “girlfriend,” “husband” and “wife” in order to “help create a more equal world.”

 

“What you say matters. Help create a more equal world by using gender-neutral language if you’re unsure about someone’s gender or are referring to a group,” states the tweet.

It then lists a number of terms alongside their politically correct alternative.

These include mankind, chairman, congressman, policeman, landlord, boyfriend/girlfriend, manpower, maiden name, fireman and husband/wife.

What you say matters.

Help create a more equal world by using gender-neutral language if you’re unsure about someone’s gender or are referring to a group. https://t.co/QQRFPY4VRn #GenerationEquality via@UN_Women pic.twitter.com/koxoAZZuxq

— United Nations (@UN) May 18, 2020

A faceless globalist bureaucracy telling people what sounds are allowed to come out of their mouths surprisingly didn’t go down too well.

“Stop trying to control people’s language. It’s creepy and unnecessary,” said Lucy Harris.

Stop trying to control people’s language. It’s creepy and unnecessary.

— Lucy Harris (@Lugey6) May 18, 2020

“Are we allowed to say son or daughter or will my spouse and I get a visit from a police officer?” asked another.

Are we allowed to say son or daughter or will my spouse and I get a visit from a police officer?

— Wes Butler 🐝 (@WButler77) May 18, 2020

“Are we still allowed to say manhole cover?” joked another.

*  *  *

My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

Authored by Karl Grossman via Counterpunch.org,

The United States is seeking to acquire “volumes of hundreds or even thousands” of nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles that are “stealthy” and can fly undetected at 3,600 miles per hour, five times faster than the speed of sound.

Why so many?

A Pentagon official is quoted in the current issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology as saying “we have to be careful we’re not building boutique weapons. If we build boutique weapons, we won’t—we’ll be very reluctant to—use them.”

The article in the aerospace industry trade journal is headlined: “Hypersonic Mass Production.” A subhead reads: “Pentagon Forms Hypersonic Industry ‘War Room.’”

On March 19, 2020, the U.S. conducted its first hypersonic missile test from its Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii.

“Fast and Furiously Accurate” is the title of an article about hypersonic missiles written by a U.S. Navy officer which appeared last year on a U.S. Naval Institute website.

The piece declares that by “specifically integrating hypersonic weapons with U.S. Navy submarines, the United States may gain an edge in developing the fastest, most precise weapons the world has ever seen.”

“Hypersonic weapons,” explains the article by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Andrea Howard, “travel faster than Mach 5—at least five times the speed of sound, around 3,600 mph, or one mile per second….They are similar to but faster than existing missiles, such as the subsonic U.S. Tomahawk missile, which maxes out around 550 mph.”

“While hypersonic weapons can carry conventional or nuclear warheads, they differ from existing technologies in three critical ways,” writes Howard. “First…a one-kilogram object delivered precisely and traveling multiples of the speed of sound can be more destructive than one kilogram of TNT. Second, the low-altitude path helps mask HCMs [Hypersonic Cruise Missiles] when coupled with the curvature of the Earth” and so “they are mostly invisible to early warning radars. And third…they can maneuver during flight; in contrast with the predictable ballistic-missile descend, they are more difficult to intercept, if even detected.”

“By offering the precision of near-zero-miss weapons, the speed of ballistic missiles, and the maneuverability of cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons are a disruptive technology capable of striking anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” declares the Navy officer.

The article also notes that Russian “President Vladimir Putin unveiled six new” what he called “invincible” hypersonic missiles as part of a March 2018 “state of the nation” speech. “Russia has successfully tested the air-to-ground hypersonic missile” named Kinzhal for dagger, “multiple times using the MIG-31 fighter.” It’s “mounting the Kinzhal on its Tu-22M3 strategic bomber.” The article also says “China, too, is working on hypersonic technologies.”

The piece concludes:

“As the tradition of arms control weakens with the breakdown of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement, it would be naïve to anticipate anything other than full-fledged weapon development by Russia and China in the coming decades….The bottom line is that hypersonic weapons will determine who precisely is ‘prompt’ enough in 21st century conflict.”

The U.S. under President Trump withdrew last year from the INF treaty, a landmark agreement which had banned all land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of from 310 to 3,420 miles. It had been signed in 1987 by President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The treaty “marked the first time the superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals, eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons, and employ extensive on-site inspections for verification,” notes the Arms Control Association.

“Hypersonic missiles may be unstoppable. Is society ready?” was the headline of an article in March in The Christian Science Monitor. This piece notes: “Hypersonic missiles are not just very fast, they are maneuverable and stealthy. This combination of speed and furtiveness means they can surprise an adversary in ways that conventional missiles cannot, while also evading radar detection. And they have injected an additional level of risk and ambiguity into what was already an accelerating arms race between nuclear-armed rivals.”

The article raises the issue of the speed of hypersonic missiles miring military decisions. “For an incoming conventional missile, military commanders may have 30 minutes to detect and respond; a hypersonic missile could arrive at that same destination in 10 minutes.” Thus “artificial intelligence” or “AI” would be utilized.

The Christian Science Monitor article quotes Patrick Lin, a professor of philosophy at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, as noting:

“Technology will always fail. That is the nature of technology.”

And, says the article: “Dr. Lin argues that the benefits of hypersonic weapons compared to the risk they create are ‘widely unclear,’ as well as the benefits of the AI systems that inform them.”

It quotes Dr. Lin as saying, wisely:

“I think it’s important to remember that diplomacy works and policy solutions work…I think another tool in our toolbox isn’t just to invest in more weapons, but it’s also to invest in diplomacy to develop community.”

The Aviation Week & Space Technology article begins: “As the U.S. hypersonic weapons strategy tilts toward valuing a quantity approach, the new focus for top defense planners—even as a four-year battery of flight testing begins—is to create an industrial base that can produce missiles affordably enough that the high-speed weapons can be purchased in volumes of hundreds or even thousands.”

It continues: “To pave the way for an affordable production strategy, the Pentagon’s Research and Engineering division has teamed up with the Acquisition and Sustainment branch to create a ‘war room’ for the hypersonic industrial base, says Mark Lewis, director of research and engineering the modernization.”

The piece then quotes Lewis as saying:

“At the end of the day, we have to be careful we’re not building boutique weapons. If we build boutique weapons, we won’t—we’ll be very reluctant to—use them. And that again factors into our plans for delivering hypersonics at scale.”

The article says that “Air Force and defense officials have been promoting concepts for operating air-launched hypersonic missiles in swarm attacks. The B-1B [bomber], for example, will be modified to carry” six hypersonic missiles.

“I think it’s a poorly posed question to ask about affordability per unit,” the piece quoted Lewis as saying.

“We have to think of it in terms of the affordability of the capability that we’re providing. By that I mean: If I’ve got a hypersonic system that costs twice as much as its subsonic counterpart but is five times more effective, well, clearly, that’s an advantageous cost scenario.”

The hypersonic missiles will indeed likely be “invincible.” And they would be at the ready because of the withdrawal by the Trump administration of the INF treaty and other international arms control agreements, one after another.

With the vast numbers of hypersonic nuclear-capable missiles being sought, the world will have fully returned to the madness in the depths the Cold War—as presented in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Apocalypse will be highly likely. Artificial intelligence is not going to save us. These weapons need to be outlawed, not produced and purchased en masse. And we must, indeed, “invest in diplomacy to develop community”—a global community at peace, not a world of horrific and unstoppable war.

The Argentine newspaper Clarín has published footage highlighting a growing problem for the government and the country’s unique surrounding ecology — illegal fishing. 

Each night multiple hundreds of international fishing vessels descend on an area of ocean not far off Argentina’s coast, often crossing into the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and thus illegally, in order to take advantage of waters seemingly endlessly full of squid and other fish.

New footage shows what the publication dubs “a city of foreign ships” after reporters boarded a recent Argentine military flight to do surveillance on the illegal fishing below.

The video shows ships with bright lights piercing the pitch dark ocean surface for as far as the eye can see, as if one is looking down on mysterious planet from space. 

They fish often using bottom trawlers, and most are after the abundance of squid in these far southern waters, popular especially in East Asia. 

Clarín describes that:

In the 200 miles there is a real city of foreign ships, estimated at between 350 and 400. They come to stay in these remote sectors of the sea for up to two years. They are generally of oriental origin. There are Chinese and Korean ships. But also Russians, Spanish, English and South Africans. They are tangoneros (those that fish only squid) and trawlers (fishing with a net).

‘City of foreign ships’ within 200 miles off Argentina’s coast lit up at night:

“These are factory ships. They freeze and process on board. Then they transfer the product to another that takes them to the ports of their countries or disembarks them in Uruguay,” the report reads.

And separate coverage, showing the ‘city of ships’ from the water’s surface:

“They are true floating freezers. And they are preying on the whole area that is a true sanctuary. Because trawlers don’t make any selections,” an environmental activist was quoted in the Spanish language report as saying.

“In this biological corridor there are orcas, whales, elephants and sea lions and dolphins. They all fall into the nets,” the spokesman added.

The vessels are commonly estimated capable of catching up to a whopping 50 tons a night, especially some of the more massive boats measuring at up to 70 meters.

“The streets are emptied by the coronavirus, but the sea fills with ships, some without a flag to prey on our resources,” a Greenpeace spokesman said ironically.

Prior satellite photo showing the clusters of foreign vessels look like cities from space:

The problem has been ongoing for years, with one publication previously featuring satellite imagery of the fishing boat clusters.

“These ships emit more light into space than almost all Argentine cities, including urban centers such as Córdoba or Rosario,” the publication said.