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A University of Pittsburgh researcher working on a coronavirus project was fatally shot on Saturday at his home in Ross Township, while associate Hao Gu, 46, was found dead in a car approximately 100 yards away of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot.

The researcher, 37-year-oild Bing Liu, was found shot multiple times in the head, neck and torso around Noon on Saturday. Nothing was stolen from the townhouse and there was no forced entry, according to the Post Gazette. He worked in the college’s department of computational and systems biology at the Pitt School of Medicine.

“Bing was on the verge of making very significant findings toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that underlie SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cellular basis of the following complications,” the department announced in a written statement, adding “We will make an effort to complete what he started in an effort to pay homage to his scientific excellence.”

Liu’s expertise was developing computational models, simulation and analysis techniques to study the dynamics of biological systems – in some cases using machine learning techniques to understand cellular processes, according to his bio.

He was described as an outstanding teacher and mentor.

“He was a very talented individual, extremely intelligent and hard-working,” said the head of his department, Ivet Bahar. “He has been contributing to several scientific projects, publishing in high-profile journals. He was someone whom we all liked very much, a very gentle, very helpful, kind person, very generous.”

“We are all shocked to learn what happened to him. This was very unexpected,” she added.

…Mr. Liu has co-authored 30-plus publications, including four in 2020. Ms. Behar said he had just begun research on the novel coronavirus.

“He was just starting to obtain interesting results,” she said. “He was sharing with us, trying to understand the mechanism of infection, so we will hopefully continue what he was doing.”’ –Post Gazette

“His loss will be felt throughout the entire scientific community,” said the university in a statement.

The motive in the shooting is unknown and the investigation is ongoing. A formal ruling from the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office regarding the cause and manner of Gu’s death is pending, according to the report.

Authored by Kurt Schlichter via Townhall.com,

The good news is that you might get out of future jury duty, because when you are asked under oath about your own biases during a federal criminal case jury selection you would have to answer honestly by responding, “Your Honor, I don’t trust a damn thing anyone in the FBI says.”

If the heirs of Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., were to go up on the stand and testify, the recent disgraceful revelations about how their bosses tried to frame LTG Mike Flynn mean you would be entirely correct to grant them the same credibility as the dude caught wearing a black cape, a Lone Ranger mask, and a nametag that says “Willie Sutton” while tip-toeing out of First National carrying a big sack with a dollar sign on it as the alarm goes off.

Oh, and if an FBI agent asks if he can ask you some questions, try not to burst into laughter before you reply, “No, I assert my right to remain silent” and call your lawyer.

And this sorry state of affairs is all the FBI’s fault. 

Every bit of it. At one time it was the pride of American law enforcement, a symbol of integrity, honesty and incredible courage under fire. But now when we think of the FBI in “action,” we think of a couple dozen special agents decked out in full Delta Farce chic dragging an elderly gadfly out of bed in his PJs after making sure to tip-off CNN that this high-risk op was about to go down.

Way to go, guys.

The FBI had an incredible legacy of honor and respect and took a giant Schiff on it.

Much like only socialism could make an island full of Cubans poor, or the Golden State a hellhole, only the choice of the liberal FBI leadership to go all in on using the power we entrusted them with to instead do the dirty work of the Democratic establishment could wreck the legacy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Good job. Right now, J. Edgar Hoover is wrapped in a sleek black cocktail dress, turning over in his grave.

It’s all falling apart, the result of the dogged untangling of this abomination by super-lawyer Sidney Powell and a few actual journalists who have pieced together this grotesque conspiracy.

Comey’s FBI decided that they didn’t like the American people’s choice for president so they lied and cheated to spy on him and his campaign, collaborated to spray him and his administration with a golden shower of lies that they knew were lies, and then, when all that failed, decided to try to set-up an innocent man to be fired or tossed in prison for the crime of being in the opposite political camp.

My favorite part is how those bastards were so arrogant that they wrote all this down, like a Bond villain who casually explains his entire plan to 007 because he’s positive that the spy is just moments away from being taken away and killed by his henchmen. And it worked out just as well in real life.

Until Attorney General Barr forced them too, the FBI hid the FBI document that said the FBI was trying to set him up even though the Constitution requires that any potentially exculpatory evidence be turned over to the accused. But hey, I guess laws and rules and stuff only exist to be used against the enemies of the elite and its agents. For the elite, they are mere guidelines. And, of course, when they break them it is no biggie. That looming doofus James Comey handed off classified material to his pals to leak to the media. You’d go to jail, but he gets tongue-bathed by the lib media. Andrew McCabe chooses to lie again and again in an investigation. Oh well, the IG is going to write a stinging report about his naughtiness. That’ll teach him. Telling lies under oath to the FISA court? Don’t do it again *wink wink*.

But those guys are special. You and the people who agree with you politically aren’t. That’s why the FBI leadership conspired to maneuver LTG Flynn into a crime that isn’t a crime – “perjury” is a crime only if the statement is material to an investigation of a crime and here there was admittedly no crime to investigate – and why they insist that he’s got to do time. Who cares if he is a 33-year veteran of our nation’s wars? LTG Flynn should have guaranteed himself immunity by being a skeevy bureaucratic hack or an illegal alien.

And let’s not forget the crimes of the Mueller gang, that team of consummate pros that we were dutifully informed by the rump-bussing media was made up of the bestest and the brightest of American law enforcement. It was not bad enough that they threatened to prosecute of LTG Flynn’s son on false charges to coerce a guilty plea and cooperation again Trump, et. al. No, they then hid the fact that they made this promise to LTG Flynn by not putting it in the plea agreement as mandated by law. That way, as honest ex-prosecutor Andrew McCarthy figured out, they ensured that when they put LTG Flynn up to testify against a someone from Trumpworld, maybe even the president himself, the jury would never know the real reason LTG Flynn pleaded guilty – that he was forced to protect his family from false charges. They did this intending to lie to future juries. 

For us, this would be obstruction of justice and other crimes. For them, it will be nothing. The liberal elite will celebrate their aggressive protection of the elite status quo, the garbage media will nod in approval at their innovative dissident-removal strategy, and they will never, ever be prosecuted.

Sorry folks, none of them will ever see a day in jail. I hope I am wrong. I hope William Barr and John “Mind Flayer” Durham will see that these criminals are prosecuted for these outrageous crimes. But I don’t believe it will happen. Our justice system is really two justice systems, one for them and one for us, which means that we have no justice system at all. 

That’s more than just galling. It’s poisonous. A free society cannot exist like this long and remain a free society. These people, who we trusted with the most solemn of duties, betrayed their oaths and betrayed us for grubby political advantage. This was not done for some higher purpose. It was not some misguided pursuit of justice by frustrated public servants who were willing to bend some rules to right some wrongs. These people were serving only themselves and their self-interest, hoping that when they brought down the Republican administration the American people elected, they would personally benefit from the largesse of the Democratic administration that replaced it. 

They are worse than the gangsters the FBI became famous chasing. These disgraces, who frame political opponents, pretended to be public servants upholding their oaths while their criminal treachery served only their cheesy ambition. At least Willie Sutton was honest enough to admit (perhaps apocryphally) that he robbed banks because “That’s where the money is.” 

Because of its size – both geographically and population-wise, as well as its economic heft – Brazil is often compared to the US. And when it comes to the progression of the coronavirus, it’s probably one of only a handful of countries (one other being perhaps India) where an apples-to-apples comparison might be most relevant.

Fortunately for Americans, President Trump has done a much more effective job at combating the virus in the US than his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro – a former far-right Congressman known to some as “the Tropical Trump”. Bolsonaro has infamously continued to deny the virus’s severity, dismissing it as “a little flu”, while Brazil continues to post some of the lowest testing rates in the world.

This has allowed the virus to explode without much resistance, leading researchers at the University of Sao Paolo to project that more than 1.6 million Brazilians have likely already been infected (out of a population of roughly 209 million). In some of Brazil’s poorest, most remote villages, the outbreak has overwhelmed health-care systems.

Many corpses have been left inside homes for more than a day after death until they could be collected, a scenario that briefly played out in parts of Italy.

An expansive WSJ report published Monday explores the situation in Brazil, and concludes that as all of the country’s biggest cities and many of its wealthier provinces start to reopen, there’s concern that the country could single-handedly reignite the outbreak in the western hemisphere.

The report begins in the state of Manaus, a remote Amazonian province.

In the tiny, stifling home she shared with seven relatives in the Amazon, Maria Portelo de Lima began coughing, started feeling weaker and, over a week, got sicker and sicker.

Her family tried to get the 61-year-old to a hospital in Manaus, a city of 2.2 million in the heart of the rainforest. They were told no ambulances were available or hospital beds free because of a flood of coronavirus patients.

[…]

Ms. de Lima died April 26. With so many other Covid-19 victims in the city, it took 30 hours for an ambulance to pick up her body. She was buried in a mass grave, her identity marked by a wooden cross that cost $22.

In Manaus, Ms. de Lima’s death was among hundreds that have put that Amazon River city at the heart of Brazil’s coronavirus struggle. It is a place with far too few hospital beds and other health-care facilities to cope with such a disease outbreak.

Ms. de Lima’s niece, Rosa Alves, had frantically but unsuccessfully sought aid as her aunt’s condition worsened. “We feel humiliated. We pay taxes and when we need help, we ask for it and help never comes,” Ms. Alves said.

Manaus buried about 140 bodies the day Ms. de Lima died, six times the normal rate, according to its mayor, Arthur Virgilio. The mayor, a 74-year-old who described himself as stoic in the face of past tragedies, has openly wept as he watches his hometown buckle and his people suffer. On a recent night, learning of mass burials in the city, he broke down.

“I am asking for more help from Brasilia, we are at our limits,” Mr. Virgilio said. “We are heading for the peak, we need help from the federal government and the international community.”

The fast spread of the virus in Manaus, which is a hub for jungle safaris by American and European tourists, raises a note of caution for wealthy nations in the Northern Hemisphere. Hopes that coming warm weather will slow the virus clash with the mounting toll in a steamy city where the average April high was around 87 Fahrenheit.

Photos published with the report showed scenes of health-care workers overwhelmed by the profusion of cases in urban “favelas” – poor, densely packed slums offering ideal breeding conditions for the virus.

Per WSJ: “Medical workers check a man with breathing problems in the São Paulo’s favela of Paraisópolis. A scarcity of coronavirus tests in Brazil limits them to health and safety professionals, the very sick and those who died and are suspected of having the virus.”

Per WSJ: “Medical personnel disinfect rooms in a Paraisópolis sports hall used as a place to treat coronavirus patients. The virus is spreading in poor districts such as the favella, where 120,000 live in less than two square miles.”

Per WSJ: “An elderly Covid-19 patient in her house in Paraisopolis.”

In a testament to the virus’s varied effects (depending on the patient, it can be deadly, or extremely mild), Bolsonaro’s continued denials have left many Brazilians confused about who can and can’t catch the virus.

“People think the coronavirus is a rich man’s disease, that only those who travel catch it,” said Claudio Rodrigues Melo, who set up a soup kitchen for needy neighbors in one of São Paulo’s poorest areas.

Echoing Fox News’ initial denounciation of the virus as a “media conspiracy”, many in Brazil believe that it’s just a conspiracy, or only impacts the elderly.

“Or they think it only impacts the elderly, or even that it’s fake news, something made up by the Globo news network to discredit Bolsonaro,” he said.

And many supporters of the president have gathered to protest local lockdown orders at his exhortation, rallies far larger than comparable movements in the US.

Brazil boasts some of the lowest testing rates in the world, with only 1,600 tests per million residents, far below the US’s 33,000 per million rate.

Yet, despite this, Brazil has seen the number of confirmed cases balloon, alongside deaths.

A doctor from Ribeirão Preto Medical School who worked on the study projecting 1.6 million infections in Brazil claimed with little doubt that “Brazil is already the global epicenter of the coronavirus.”

At this point, with states already reopening, turning around and forcing a complete shutdown probably isn’t politically feasible.

The share of people supporting social isolation in a survey taken last week fell to 52% from 60% in the first week of April, according to pollster Datafolha. And among Brazilians with smartphones that can be tracked, only 40% appear to be adhering to stay-home measures, said In Loco, a tech company focused on geolocation data.

Data from Google’s Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports show growing numbers of Brazilians out shopping and going to work in the past two weeks, while Chileans and Colombians stay home.

The state of Santa Catarina in Brazil’s affluent south was the first to reopen, a little more than a week ago. Women and children thronged an upscale shopping center in the city of Blumenau.

The mall laid out a red carpet for the shoppers. Store employees lined up outdoors to greet them, while a saxophonist played Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” All precautions were taken to protect customers, according to the mall’s owner.

But even some of the country’s most populous and economically important states are seeing hospitals being hopelessly overrun. Rio state has so many coronavirus patients that the waiting list for an ICU bed or a respirator is 360 patients long, according to the state’s health secretary Edmar Santos.

“We are on the verge of collapse,” he said. “We will quickly see chaos, not just in Rio de Janeiro, but in all of Brazil.”

Santos himself tested positive for coronavirus in April but has returned to work.

Like in the US, poorer working class workers say that if given the choice between starving and putting themselves at risk, they will gladly choose the latter.

Ryan Cesar Martins, 27, said he couldn’t afford to honor the social-isolation rules imposed by the state’s governor in March. He said a car-painting business he ran that earned him nearly $1,300 in January brought in less than $100 in April. His wife, Keila Evellin, 22, lost her off-the-books job as a saleswoman. They have maxed out their credit cards.

On Thursday, Mr. Martins went to work as an employee of another car-painting shop.

“If it’s a choice between getting the coronavirus and dying of hunger, I prefer not to die of hunger, so I’m going back to work,” Mr. Martins said.

Still, despite these horrible scenes, Brazil’s economy and social fabric have remained mostly intact, although capital flight looks to be accelerating…

When all this is said and done, we suspect Brazil’s response will be an important reference point as the world tries to evaluate the approaches espoused in Europe, the US and elsewhere.

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Congressional Republicans are accusing China of attempting to hinder US coronavirus research by infiltrating US universities and spreading communist propaganda.

Reuters reports that ranking GOP members across seven House committees have delivered a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that warns Beijing is indoctrinating American students.

The letter was signed by Congressman Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight committee, as well as by members on the Homeland Security, Science, Armed Services, Education and Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees.

🚨🚨🚨 NEW: 7 top House committee Republicans announce probe into China’s infiltration of U.S. colleges

“We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple” – @Jim_Jordan

More➡️ https://t.co/GwgpkDFkhn pic.twitter.com/C3JQbJIGyJ

— Oversight Committee Republicans (@GOPoversight) May 4, 2020

The letter requests that DeVos provide more information pertaining to the allegations against China, including all documents related to schools that have accepted funds from China, as well as details of any investigations into colleges and education officials who may have accepted “gifts” from the communist state.

“We write to seek a better understanding of the Department’s efforts to address unreported foreign direct investment into the U.S. higher education system,” the letter reads.

“We have been concerned about the potential for the Chinese government to use its strategic investments to turn American college campuses into indoctrination platforms for American students,” the congressmen further write.

“China has strategically invested in U.S. academia to attempt to steal confidential information and technology from U.S. companies, and even the U.S. government,” the lawmakers state in the letter, pointing to a 2018 report from the Hoover Institution identifying upwards of 110 Confucius Institutes operating on American colleges to facilitate China’s espionage and theft of intellectual property.

They add that “Besides China peddling money for influence in U.S. institutions of higher education (IHE), China is restricting any research regarding the origins of COVID-19 that does not comport with CCP propaganda.”

These actions “bring into question whether U.S. [institutes of higher education] receiving federal taxpayer dollars should be allowed to accept funds from China, the CCP, or other affiliated organizations,” the letter concludes.

Commenting on the letter, Rep. Jim Jordan said “We cannot allow a dangerous communist regime to buy access to our institutions of higher education, plain and simple.”

“The Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up of the early outbreak of the coronavirus immeasurably worsened this disease’s impact on the United States and the world.” Jordan urged, adding that “We owe it to the American people to hold China accountable and to prevent them from doing further harm to our country.”

The suspicions of Chinese infiltration of US higher education pre-dates the coronavirus crisis, with the Department of Education instigating an investigation into several universities last year to determine if they had failed to disclose foreign funding.

In February, the department announced it has uncovered $6.5 billion so far in undisclosed foreign funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China and Russia. The investigation has since been expanded to include Harvard and Yale.

The FBI has previously issued warnings regarding China investing in American higher education to steal sensitive information, primarily via access through federal grants.

In January, the Department of Justice also arrested a professor at Harvard, as well as two Chinese nationals for reportedly acting as foreign agents.

Last year President Donald Trump signed the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act which proposed an ultimatum to universities receiving financial assistance from the Pentagon: close the Chinese propaganda center on campus or lose funding. Since that time, at least 49 schools have closed their Confucius Institute, according to Human Rights Watch.

Now that it is common knowledge that “The Market is Now Just Five Stocks” as we first put it over a month ago, with Goldman clarifying that the five largest S&P 500 stocks  – MSFT, AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, FB – accounted for 20% of index market cap, the highest concentration on record…

… which has led to a fascinating market divergence in which the 5 biggest stocks are up 10% YTD while the remaining 495 S&P500 companies are lower by a collective 13%…

… Credit Suisse’s equity strategist Jonathan Golub decided to drill down some more, and as he writes in a Tuesday morning note, looking at the ever wider disconnect between fundamentals and returns, he “found this month’s return decomposition particularly useful.”

As Golub explains, the analysis breaks down performance into its key components (revenues, margins, multiples, buybacks) for the S&P 500, Russell 1000 Value and Growth, and Russell 2000. It also contains lists of those stocks that have had the largest positive and negative impact on each benchmark. And as the strategist further notes, in a time when momentum is all that matters as fundamentals are now irrelevant, he receives “more special requests on this work than anything else we publish.”

So without further ado, here is the Credit Suisse Return Decomposition Summary:

Total Returns

S&P 500 Return Decomposition – YTD

S&P 500 Return Decomposition – YoY

Russell 1000 Value Return Decomposition – YTD

Russell 1000 Value Return Decomposition – YoY

Russell 1000 Growth Return Decomposition – YTD

Russell 1000 Growth Return Decomposition – YoY

Russell 2000 Return Decomposition – YTD

Russell 2000 Return Decomposition – YoY

Last week we reported that according to the latest TREPP remittance data compiled by Morgan Stanley, a record 66 CMBS loans totaling $1.0bn became newly delinquent in April, which was the greatest month-over-month change on record. In total, 324 loans with a total balance of $4.8bn are currently delinquent, which is also an all time high.

What was more troubling than the plain vanilla surge in delinquencies, is the coming deluge of defaults. Recall that a CMBS loan becomes delinquent after it misses two consecutive payments. Loans that have missed just one month of interest are classified as “late but within grace period” or “late beyond grace period”. It is this measure that spiked a record 600bp MoM to ~8.5%.

Yet it now appears that this data was not only somewhat stale but also dramatically underestimated the full severity of the commercial real state catastrophe over the last weeks of April, because according to Fitch data, borrowers with mortgages representing almost $150 billion in CMBS, accounting for 26% of the outstanding debt, have asked about suspending payments in recent weeks – an unprecedented surge in requests for payment relief on CMBS, and an early sign of the severity of the pandemic-induced real estate crisis. Putting this number in context, after the last financial crisis, delinquencies and foreclosures on the debt peaked at 9% in July 2011. So here we are, barely a month into the corona crisis, and the number is already three times greater!

While not all of the borrowers who have requested forbearance will be delinquent or enter foreclosure, Fitch estimates that the $584 billion industry could near the 2011 peak as soon as the third quarter of this year.

With a deluge of default on deck, the special servicers who handle vulnerable CMBS loans, are bracing for what Bloomberg called  “the worst crash of their careers”, by which of course it meant best, because the more the default, the greater the payday for the special servicers. They’re staffing up following years of downsizing to handle a wave of defaults, modification requests and other workouts, including potential foreclosures.

“Everything is happening at once,” said James Shevlin, president of CWCapital, a unit of private equity firm Fortress Investment Group and one of the largest special servicers. “It’s kind of exciting times. I mean, this is what you live for.”

AS discussed last week, unlike the last financial crisis which was ignited by a surge in residential foreclosures as the housing market was one giant bubble, now commercial real estate is getting hit not because of outsized valuation but because of collapsing cash flows with the economic shutdown shuttering stores and putting travel on ice.

Making matters worse is that unlike residential real estate, there’s no bailout relief plan for commercial real estate, and while bankers usually have leeway to negotiate payment plans on commercial property, options for borrowers and lenders are limited for CMBS and foreclosure is usually a quick end to any delinquency or default.

Meanwhile, as we reported last week, the debt transferred to special servicers from master servicers, mostly banks that handle payment collections, is already swelling. Unpaid principal in workouts jumped to $22 billion in April, up 56% from a month earlier, according to the data firm Trepp.

Similar to the mob, special servicers make money by collecting outstanding debt and charging fees based on the unpaid principal on the loans they manage. Most are units of larger finance companies. Midland Financial, named as special servicer on approximately $200 billion of CMBS debt, is a unit of PNC. Rialto Capital, owned by private equity firm Stone Point Capital, was a named special servicer on about $100 billion of CMBS loans. LNR Partners, which finished 2019 with the largest active special-servicer portfolio, is owned by Starwood Property Trust, a real estate firm founded by Barry Sternlicht.

Quoted by Bloomberg, Sternlicht said during a conference call on Monday that special servicers don’t “get paid a ton money” for granting forbearance.

“Where the servicer begins to make a lot of money is when the loans default,” he said. “They have to work them out and they ultimately have to resolve the loan and sell it or take back the asset.”

In other words, special servicers are about to make a killing.

And again, just like the mob which thrives in times when other sources of funding are scarce, special servicers often play hardball, demanding personal guarantees, coverage of legal costs and complete repayment of deferred installments, according to Ann Hambly, chief executive officer of 1st Service Solutions, which works for about 250 borrowers who’ve sought debt relief in the current crisis.

“They’re at the mercy of this handful of special servicers that are run by hedge funds and, arguably, have an ulterior motive,” said Hambly, who started working for loan servicers in 1985 before switching sides to represent borrowers.

On the other hand, perhaps comparisons to the mafia are a bit exaggerated: fears about self-dealing are overblown according to Fitch’s Adam Fox, whose research after the 2008 crisis concluded most special servicers abide by their obligations to protect the interests of bondholders: “There were some concerns that servicers were pillaging the trust and picking up assets on the cheap,” he said. “We just didn’t find it.”

Maybe Fitch just didn’t look hard enough. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that a rating agency has missed something rather big starting it right in the face.

Mob or not, it’s time for special servicers to party because after nearly a decade of downsizing where anyone could obtain or refi a loan on even cheaper terms, it’s jackpot time. Also unlike the last crisis, this time the spoils will be shared by far fewer: the seven largest firms employed 385 people at the end of 2019, less than half their headcount at the peak of the last crisis.

The good news is that once a debt collected, always a debt collected, and Miami-based LNR, where headcount ended last year down 40% from its 2013 level, is calling back veterans from other duties at Starwood and looking at resumes. CWCapital, which reduced staff by almost 75% from its 2011 peak, is drafting Fortress workers from other duties and recruiting new talent, while relying on technology upgrades to help manage the incoming wave more efficiently.

“It’s going to be a very different crisis,” said Shevlin, who has been in the industry for more than 20 years. And while commercial real estate borrowers are bracing for the “worst crash of their careers”, the special servicers – and other debt collectors – are about to enjoy the biggest bonanza they have ever seen.

Up to 80% of employees at the Bank of Montreal, or about 36,000 of its staff, may shift to flexible arrangements once the COVID-19 pandemic subsides which would blend working from home with time in the office, according to Bloomberg.

The Toronto-based bank has conducted a broad revamp of its workplace policies in light of the outbreak, according to chief HR office Mona Malone, who says that the lender expects between 30% and 80% of employees to continue to work from home at least some of the time.

“We’ve been able to maintain continuity of banking services with far more people working outside the office than we ever thought possible,” Malone said in a Monday interview. “We thought it was critical that we were in the office to make something happen, and what we’ve proven through this is that’s actually not the case.”

According to CEO Darryl White, a “2.0 version” of the workplace may include blended home-office schedules amid a global restructuring of how offices and routines. Malone, meanwhile, says that employees at Canadian and US branches have “by and large” been going into the office during the crisis, along with a “small amount” of IT and operations employees. 95% of those in office towers have been telecommuting.

“It’s a blended approach of thinking about productivity and flexibility and for us not a return to the way it used to be,” said Malone who said the post-pandemic plan calls for more workers at home, and “a ton” of employees with hybrid schedules.

“It’s about an evolution in the way that we work,” she added.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in drastic changes at Canada’s fourth-largest bank – which shifted half of its Canadian call-center agents and 80% of US agents to home offices.

According to Malone, “That’s not a temporary thing.”

“We don’t have to think about contact centers as just these geographical hubs, and we can use this remote way of working,” she said, noting that the ‘new normal’ keeps employees safe – as opposed to crowding workers into offices after taking mass transit and elevators to get there.

“It allows us to look for new talent in locations where maybe we haven’t before, and tap into talent pools across the country,” Malone added.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

YouTube’s Chief Product Officer has insulted his own users as basement-dwellers who deserve to be relegated by the algorithm in favor of “authoritative” mainstream sources.

Neil Mohan made the remarks during an interview with Protocol’s editor at large David Pierce after he was asked if YouTube had to switch its approach to moderating content given the ever changing advice of health authorities in relation to the coronavirus.

Mohan said that this was the reason YouTube was “raising up authoritative voices,” which is a euphemism for suppressing voices that aren’t part of the mainstream media, despite the fact that the public’s trust in the media during the coronavirus pandemic has plummeted even further.

He then went on to insult his own user base as basement-dwelling idiots.

“As opposed to, you know, it’s somebody espousing their opinions about a mask, you know, in their basement,” said Mohan.

“This is coming from an authoritative channel, a news source, a medical professional, and if that’s the case, we think there’s going to be some context that’s provided around the question of masks. And even if that guidance changes, it will be reflected in sort of how an authoritative voice or channel talks about it.”

Mohan then made it clear how non-mainstream channels are algorithmically shadow banned by “removing or reducing views of the videos where that same level of authority hasn’t been established.”

Of course, the only reason why so-called “authoritative” sources are now doing so well on YouTube is because the company rigged its own algorithm to heavily favor them while dumping the very people who helped build YouTube on the trash heap.

Last month, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently said that information which challenged the World Health Organization would be removed, despite the fact that the WHO was directly complicit in helping China cover-up the severity of coronavirus in its early stages and despite the fact the organization gave harmful advice in ordering countries not to close their borders early on.

“Mohan’s comments exemplify how the changes YouTube has made in relation to the coronavirus and news coverage have made it almost impossible for independent creators to cover current events, even when the mainstream media outlets that are being raised up have a track record of getting it wrong,” writes Tom Parker.

*  *  *

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Since the start of state-wide lockdowns after the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, poll after poll has demonstrated that Americans remain by and large deeply distrustful of both politicians and mainstream media reporting on the virus.

And naturally, given the extent of unemployment, economic devastation across various industries, and also simply the radical change in the way people conduct their daily lives, Americans are right to question whether lockdown and social distancing protocols have gone ‘too far’. 

This all hinged on the following question from the start: is the virus as dangerous and deadly as alarming early health reports indicated? A number of studies from the heart of the scientific establishment suggest that no, it’s not as deadly as most believed early on, but still may be more pervasive across society in terms of asymptomatic carriers. 

And yet current deaths from the disease could still be significantly higher than what’s being reported, given a general shortage testing which has been reported by hospitals, clinics, and even institutions of vast means like the US military. As of Tuesday COVID-19 deaths in the United States are nearing 70,000.

From the start, health officials have warned there’s a likelihood of under-reporting of deaths, given that many have died of complications that sprung from the disease. In these cases deaths would then be listed as complications other than COVID-19, unless an autopsy were performed. 

A new Axios-Ipsos poll reflects the growing anxiety among the public of uncounted COVID-19 deaths.

44% of those polled believe people dying from the disease in the US is actually higher than has been officially reported.

Below are the poll results, released Tuesday, in summary break down:

• Only 24 percent of Republicans say the number of coronavirus deaths are more than what has been reported. 36% say it is about the same, while 40% say it is less.
• 63% of Democrats believe the number of deaths is more. 29% say it is about the same, compared to just 7% who say it is less.
• 45% of independents say it is more, compared to 31% who say it is about the same. 24% say it is less.
• 26% say they visited friends or relatives in the last week – up from 19% in a mid-April poll.
• 47% say they’ve canceled summer plans, such as camp or vacation rentals.
• 63% say they’re concerned that the next month could bring food shortages.
• 58% say they are concerned that schools are not going to reopen in the fall.

And yet, even if more Americans believe death numbers could be higher than what’s officially reported, they are still ready and willing to take increased steps to return to normal life and daily routines.

As Axios observes: “At the same time, there’s some softening around how much risk Americans are attaching to various activities and how much risk they’re willing to take.”