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Summary:

• Dr. Fauci says 100k-200k Americans may die from COVID-19
• Trump extends guidelines to April 30
• Spain case total passes China
• South Korea reports worrying rebound in cases around Seoul
• Russia expands Moscow lockdown throughout country
• NYC remains undisputed center of US outbreak
• Seattle area reports optimistic slowdown in new cases, deaths
• New York surpasses 1k deaths
• Indian migrant workers ‘washed’ with disinfectant
• JNJ announces encouraging progress on vaccine
• Chinese press publishes photo of Xi standing in public without mask
• Australia launches worker subsidy program

*   *   *

Hours after Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” yesterday and declared that the current modeling projects between 100k and 200k deaths in the US alone, President Trump stood up at last night’s Rose Garden press conference and declared that the White House would extend its current guidelines – which call for Americans to avoid gatherings of 10 or more, along with a host of other commandments intended to help “flatten the curve” – through the end of April.

Trump added that the “peak” in new cases & deaths should arrive in two weeks, but by June 1, everything should be fine. This, as New York City hospitals have been transformed into “war zones”, while the number of confirmed cases globally closes in on 1 million. Mayors are cracking down, giving police the authority to hand out fines to anybody who isn’t obeying the terms of the crackdown.

The biggest headline overnight: Spain has surpassed China in the total number of confirmed coronavirus infections (joining Italy and the US) as the number of cases rose from 78,797 on Sunday to 85,195 on Monday, with Spain’s death toll rose by 812 to 7,340, according to the Spanish Health Ministry.

Spanish authorities reported more than 6,000 new cases within 24 hours again on Monday. Among those testing positive: Fernando Simon, the leader of the country’s coronavirus task force.

In the US, New York City remains the undisputed epicenter of the national outbreak as the number of new cases out of the Seattle area has noticeably declined. An area that produced 37 of the first 50 fatalities in the US has seen deaths drop off markedly, while hospitals have been mercifully underwhelmed. While each infected person was spreading the virus to an average of 2.7 other people earlier in March, that number appears to have dropped, with one projection suggesting that it was now down to 1.4, according to the New York Times.

That’s largely thanks to strict measures implemented early on by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. While NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was still encouraging New Yorkers to go out and have a good time in late February, Inslee was barring gatherings of more than 250 people and cautioning Washingtonians to stay home and be careful.

New York, meanwhile, surpassed 1k deaths from COVID-19 over the weekend.

As of Monday morning, the US had reported 143,055 cases, according to Johns Hopkins, roughly 1 in 5 global cases (the global case total was 732,000). Projections claim that the global case total should surpass 1 million by the end of the week.

As Tokyo health officials recorded another surprising jump in mostly travel-related cases as of Monday, officials in South Korea warned that they were recording a “sustained increase” in new cases, suggesting new clusters forming around Seoul. Meanwhile, EasyJet, one of Europe’s largest airlines, said it would ground its entire fleet as demand for personal travel collapses.

Across India, migrant workers have struggled with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sudden lockdown, which left millions of Indians with only hours to prepare. The PM apologized yesterday, and now, news organizations are reporting on some of the draconian steps that local governments are taking to “disinfect” poor migrant workers returning home.

Who r u trying to kill, Corona or humans? Migrant labourers and their families were forced to take bath in chemical solution upon their entry in Bareilly. @Uppolice@bareillytraffic @Benarasiyaa @shaileshNBT pic.twitter.com/JVGSvGqONm

— Kanwardeep singh (@KanwardeepsTOI) March 30, 2020

Back in Europe, the border closures across the Schengen Area have shuttered borders that haven’t been closed since the fall of the Soviet Union. Here’s a guide produced by a non-profit in the region, which recently noted how many Europeans are now meeting loved ones at borders to share a kiss or a quick hello.

Our analysts have come up with a very useful map to track the temporary restrictions put in place throughout the EU, Schengen Area and the UK to deal with #COVID19 #stayathome pic.twitter.com/3D5kCPYAt4

— Frontex (@Frontex) March 26, 2020

As the Russian capital commenced a mandatory self-isolation regime Monday, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin called on regional governors to extend the system across the country to control the coronavirus.

Now that world leaders expect the virus to last for most of the year, Australia’s government planned to subsidize the wages of private-sector employees for up to six months to help businesses and workers struggling with the impact of the coronavirus shutdown: “We will pay employers to pay their employees,” said Prime Minister Scott Morrison as he announced what he dubbed a “job keeper” program. “Our government has made a decision today…that no government has made before in Australia,” according to the Washington Post.

The program is part of an $80 billion package.

In Spain, the number of new cases has surpassed China’s “official” total in the number of confirmed coronavirus infections, as the number of cases rose from 78,797 on Sunday to 85,195 on Monday. The death toll rose by 812 to 7,340.

The Chinese press on Sunday published a photo of President Xi standing out in public without a facemask, a notable development as China continues to report no or almost zero new home-grown cases of COVID-19.

In a photo released by Xinhua on Sun, President #XiJinping was seen, for the first time, inspecting a public place without a face mask since the onset of the outbreak. He was seen adhering to health protocols by maintaining a distance from others on a dock. pic.twitter.com/Q7DrRIkUFS

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) March 30, 2020

JNJ meanwhile reported Monday that it has produced a “lead candidate” in its trials for a new COVID-19 vaccine. However, it likely won’t be available until 2021, though it’s certainly a reassuring headline for those who fear the pandemic could continue for 18 months.

Finally, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said Monday that a new bank lending program passed as part of the $2 trillion stimulus bill late last week will be ready by Friday, and he encouraged every business to apply because the loans will be “forgivable” for companies that hire back workers and retain them.

Authored by James Fite via LibertyNation.com,

To the great consternation of many a left-leaning Americans, the latest polls from Gallup, Reuters/Ipsos, and Economist/YouGov all show the president’s job approval at 49%, crushing the dreams of those who hoped Coronavirus would finish what the Russia and Ukraine investigations never could.

Claims of misinformation aside, could this be the real reason biased news outlets have decided to stop covering Trump’s briefings?

No Love From The Left

Love him or hate him, there’s no denying the man is a ratings goldmine. According to Nielsen, 12.2 million people watched the president’s Monday briefing on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC – that’s up there with Monday Night Football. And that doesn’t cover the millions more who watched via ABC, CBS, NBC, or online streaming sites. But is that a good enough reason for media outlets to cover him? That’s the question The New York Times asked recently – a question answered by a Seattle area NPR affiliate, KUOW, with a resounding “no.”

The Washington radio station cited “a pattern of false or misleading information provided that cannot be fact checked in real time” as the reason to dump Trump. And they’re not alone. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple calls the decision wise, hinting at Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC that they could learn a thing or two if only they would pay attention. MSNBC and CNN, it seems, took the hint, as staffers of both networks have argued the case against airing Trump’s pressers, saying it likely amplifies the spread of misinformation. The president’s son, Eric, took to Twitter to bemoan the trend:

NBC, CNN and others say they will likely stop broadcasting @realDonaldTrump virus briefings. This is truly sick in the time of national emergency and once again tells you everything you need to know about the #MSM. #JournalismIsDead

— Eric Trump (@EricTrump) March 26, 2020

Buying Into The Bias

While the media outlets claim this is all in the name of furthering the truth, the timing is suspicious. The president – who, you may recall, is in the middle of a re-election campaign – is enjoying impressive approval numbers, including amongst many Democrats. He has garnered bipartisan support from both houses of Congress in his handling of the Coronavirus crisis. Even Joe Biden – the man who launched his presidential campaign from the platform that Trump is terrible for the country and must be removed at all costs – has said the president is doing a good job during the emergency and expressed hope for his continued success.

The track record of these outlets was already disappointing, thanks to their backfired attempts to bury Trump in negative coverage from the moment he first announced his candidacy. They couldn’t stop him from being elected, they couldn’t get him impeached, and now it seems they can’t get him blamed for COVID-19. How else can they prevent his re-election? Well, if nonstop negative coverage helped Trump win the White House in 2016, perhaps refusing to publish his pressers will cost him the win in 2020. These regular updates have been called by many in the media little more than Trump campaign events, so this move should come as no surprise.

What about the claim that the briefings are chock full of lies? The Associated Press took it upon themselves to fact check the president, to once and for all prove either that Trump is a liar or that the anti-Trump media is simply biased. You can likely guess how they ruled on this issue.

Thankfully, Liberty Nation’s newest contributor, Dave Patterson, decided to fact check the fact-checkers – and found them woefully wanting.

“AP introduced inaccuracy when the writers conflated two quotations, losing precision and making the single quotation wrong,” he wrote.

“Additionally, they did not put President Trump’s statements in context and created an inaccurate perception for the reader of what the president said.”

When Dave lined up what the AP attributed to the president beside what Trump actually said and the historical data that backs up his claim, the discrepancies – and the AP’s bias – became glaringly clear.

Why are these media outlets really pushing back against covering the president? Either to try to oust him from the White House in November or perhaps out of pure spite, it would seem.

Setting aside the increasingly common conflict of profits vs political bias, isn’t there a far more compelling reason for the press to report the actions and words of Donald Trump than whether or not they think he’s honest or what kind of ratings he can draw?

He is the president of the United States, and almost everything he says and does – certainly anything said during a media briefing – is a matter of national history.

What does it say about our press that they would refuse to report on the president during a time of national emergency?

Researchers from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health published a study titled “Social distancing strategies for curbing the COVID-19 epidemic,” Tuesday (March 24) on the medRxive pre-print server for health sciences, detailing how a single prolonged widespread lockdown of the country is not the best strategy to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the study calls for “intermittent” lockdowns and “widespread surveillance” to mitigate the spread and prevent hospital systems from being overwhelmed.

The study’s authors Stephen Iissler, Christine Tedijanto, Marc Lipsitch, and Yonatan Grad of the Chan School said that “a single period of social distancing will not be sufficient.” They said without repeated intervals of distancing, “there was a resurgence of infection when the simulated social distancing measures were lifted” in the computer model scenarios. 

Keep in mind, as per ZDNet’s Tiernan Ray, the study is not yet peer-reviewed, suggesting other scientists have not vetted the computer models of “intermittent” social distancing to solve the virus crisis. 

However, the computer models are based on other pandemics and already show that one prolonged lockdown of the country is not the best solution because the virus will return in waves. 

The study says some parts of the country where virus cases are low can remain open for business. While other parts that are hard-hit can enforce trict “stay-at-home” public health orders to mitigate the risks of overwhelming hospital systems. 

“The SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID-19] pandemic is straining healthcare resources worldwide, prompting social distancing measures to reduce transmission intensity,” read the study. “The amount of social distancing needed to curb the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in the context of seasonally varying transmission remains unclear.”

The study said the pandemic would likely hit in waves, with the virus subsiding this summer, but could return this fall. 

“Using a mathematical model, we assessed that one-time interventions will be insufficient to maintain COVID-19 prevalence within the critical care capacity of the United States. Seasonal variation in transmission will facilitate epidemic control during the summer months but could lead to an intense resurgence in the autumn.” 

The study concludes by saying, “intermittent distancing measures” on 20-week intervals for specific geographical regions could be turned on and off like a water spigot through 2022. 

“Intermittent distancing measures can maintain control of the epidemic, but without other interventions, these measures may be necessary into 2022. Increasing critical care capacity could reduce the duration of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic while ensuring that critically ill patients receive appropriate care.”

As for what determines if an area should be locked down for a 20-week interval is if cases exceed 37.5 cases of the disease per 10,000 adult people in the population. This threshold, the researchers note, would allow health care systems in those regions to maintain an adequate number of hospital beds and ICU-level treatments.

We noted on Friday that governments and corporations are partnering as a collaborative force to employ big data and “widespread surveillance” to monitor if civilians are abiding by social distancing rules. The authors of the study also agreed that surveillance tools are required to monitor the spread and make sure critical care capacity is not being overwhelmed in certain regions. 

To sum up, “intermittent” social distancing could become a reality, embraced by the Trump administration to avoid a prolonged depression in the US as much of the economy is shut down at the moment. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Scientific advisors to the British government have reportedly told the Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China is covering up the full extent of the coronavirus pandemic, and that things could be 40 times worse there than the communist state admits.

The Daily Mail reports that “Mr Johnson has been warned by scientific advisers that China’s officially declared statistics on the number of cases of coronavirus could be ‘downplayed by a factor of 15 to 40 times.’”

“There is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable,” an anonymous government source told The Mail.

“They [the Chinese government] know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it they are spreading lies.”

“It is going to be back to the diplomatic drawing board after this. Rethink is an understatement,” another government source said, with a further source adding that “There has to be a reckoning when this is over.”

The British government also “believes China is seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with ‘predatory offers of help’ [to] countries around the world.’” the report continues.

China has been delivering hundreds of thousands of testing kits and masks to nations around the world. One problem, however, is that they don’t work.

“In Spain, which currently has the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, the government purchased 640,000 rapid test kits from China and South Korea as it fights the pandemic,” The Free Beacon reported this week.

“Experts soon discovered, however, that the tests it purchased from Chinese company Bioeasy were only correctly identifying coronavirus cases 30 percent of the time, according to Spain’s El Pais.” the report notes.

“The Czech Republic also purchased 150,000 rapid test kits from China, and have likewise found problems.” the report continues, adding that  “One doctor using the tests found that 80 percent of the kits were faulty and has reverted back to the conventional lab tests, which are significantly slower to process.”

Other countries such as Turkey and Georgia, as well as Holland have reported problems with the tests and the masks.

Ever since the outbreak began in December, it has been acknowledged that China has been lying about the true numbers.

A scientific study out of the University of Southampton in the UK  found that had China acted sooner to combat their coronavirus, then the further spread could have been almost entirely avoided, and it would not have become a global pandemic.

It has become clear that the first cases of the Chinese virus were reported in mid-late November and early December, with scientists even estimating that the first jump of the virus from animals to humans probably occurred in October in the city of Wuhan.

Instead of acting immediately, the Chinese government waited until January 23rd before issuing quarantine orders to the 11 million people living in Wuhan.

The communist state was also actively working to suppress and punish doctors and scientists who tried to get warnings out, and  lied to the world by claiming there was “no evidence” of human-to-human transmission.

“Chinese laboratories identified a mystery virus as a highly infectious new pathogen by late December last year, but they were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples and suppress the news.”

U.S. media: Stop being mean to China!https://t.co/wj0VyMdmZJ

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 19, 2020

China lied to the world 2 months ago in claiming there was “no evidence” of human-to-human transmission.

Media: It’s not China’s fault, stop being mean to China. https://t.co/9RNGyopjy4

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 19, 2020

“Dropping the ball.”

They covered it up for a over month, brutally silenced whistleblowers, lied to the rest of the world and facilitated a geographic spread that would have been reduced by 95% if they’d been honest.

That’s quite the ball drop. https://t.co/NQEmJ3SYyE

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) March 19, 2020

As the communist state relaxed lockdown orders and opened up again this week, further questions were raised. It has been reported that thousands of urns at funeral homes in Wuhan, along with cremation statistics, do not tally with numbers of new cases and deaths being logged by the Chinese government.

China has a previous track record of lying about health crises. In 2003, The New York Times reported that China admitted to under-reporting the total number of SARS cases.

Among countless other unprecedented changes and transformation, the coronavirus pandemic has unveiled an odd divergence within global cultures: the definition of what’s deemed “essential” for people across the world, and what things we really can’t do without, even though we might not need most of them for survival.

As AP reports, in its attempt to slow the spread of the virus, authorities in many places are determining what shops and services can remain open. They’re also restricting citizens from leaving their homes. Stay-at-home orders or guidance are affecting more than one-fifth of the world’s population. This has left many contemplating an existential question: What, really, is essential?

Whether it is in Asia, Europe, Africa or the United States, there’s general agreement: Health care workers, law enforcement, utility workers, food production and communications are generally exempt from lockdowns. But some lists of exempted activities reflect a national identity, or the efforts of lobbyists.

In some U.S. states, golf, guns and ganja have been ruled essential, raising eyebrows and — in the case of guns — a good deal of ire.  In many places, booze is also on the list of essentials. Britain at first kept liquor stores off its list of businesses allowed to remain open, but after reports of supermarkets running out of beer, wine and spirits, the government quickly added them.

“Recent events clearly demonstrate that the process of designating ‘essential services’ is as much about culture as any legal-political reality about what is necessary to keep society functioning,” said Christopher McKnight Nichols, associate professor of history at Oregon State University.

Countries including India and U.S. states are listing the information technology sector as essential. The world’s dependency on the internet has become even more apparent as countless people confined to their homes communicate, stream movies and play games online to stave off cabin fever.

Several states where marijuana is legal, such as California and Washington, deemed pot shops and workers in the market’s supply chain essential. For some, the emphasis is on medicinal uses, not enabling cooped-up people to get stoned.

“Cannabis is a safe and effective treatment that millions of Americans rely on to maintain productive daily lives while suffering from diseases and ailments,” Erik Altieri, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an email. “It is the very definition of essential that these individuals can still access their medicine at this time.”

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont added gun shops to his list of essential businesses, generating shock and dismay among families of gun violence victims. His spokesman Max Reiss said Lamont is trying not to overly disrupt commerce or interfere with legal rights.

Newtown Action Alliance, a group formed after a gunman killed 26 people in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, urged Lamont to reconsider, noting a recent surge in gun and ammunition purchases. The group predicted an “increased number of deaths due to unintentional shootings, homicides and suicides.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a legal opinion Friday saying emergency orders in his state can’t restrict gun sales. “If you have a break down in society, well then our first line to defend ourselves is ourselves, so I think having a weapon … is very important for your personal safety,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told a radio interviewer.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday quietly allowed gun shops to reopen, but only by appointment during limited hours if customers and employees comply with social distancing and other protective measures.

* * *

There is a lot of variation across the United States because a national stay-at-home order has not been issued, said Benjamin Clark, associate professor of planning, public policy and management at the University of Oregon.

“We end up with places making up the rules that are culturally or geographically specific,” Clark said. “This is why we see so much variation, and potential risk.”

In Europe, the current epicenter of the pandemic, Italy has the most stringent rules, with only essential businesses such as food shops and pharmacies remaining open. The manufacturing sector was ordered shut down on Thursday, though factories that make needed products like medical supplies will continue to operate after making conditions safer for employees.

Britain, which was initially reluctant to shut down business, has issued orders to close nonessential operations. Restaurants and eateries must be shut, but Britons can still get fish and chips and other meals, as long as they’re carry-out.

In France, shops specializing in pastry, wine and cheese have been declared essential businesses.

In a nod to Israel’s vibrant religious life, people can gather for outdoor prayers — with a maximum of 10 worshipers standing 2 meters (2 yards) apart. Demonstrations — also allowed — have occurred outside parliament and the Supreme Court, with participants maintaining social distance.

“In times of uncertainty, institutions and practices that are central to the cultural identities can become really important touchstones — material markers of certainty, comfort, and mechanisms to persist,” said Aimee Huff, marketing professor at Oregon State University, specializing in consumer culture.

In China, authorities closed most businesses and public facilities beginning in late January but kept open hospitals, supermarkets and pharmacies. Truck drivers delivering food, disinfectant and medical supplies to locked-down cities were hailed as heroes. Now, the ruling Communist Party is relaxing restrictions to revive the economy after declaring victory over the outbreak.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing conditions, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. In the United States, lobbyists have been trying to influence what gets on lists of essential services, so their clients’ businesses can remain open.

“They were absolutely earning their pay” in Connecticut, said Reiss, the governor’s spokesman. He noted lobbyists for manufacturers and the golf course industry were particularly active.

Despite their efforts, golf wasn’t deemed essential in Connecticut. But Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey included golf courses on his list. Officials in Phoenix encouraged the city’s 1.7 million residents to “get outside, get exercise and practice responsible social distancing” in golf courses, parks and trails.

Mayors of five other Arizona cities pushed back, telling Ducey that including golf courses and payday lenders was taking the definition of essential too far.

In California, construction executives and others lobbied state officials to get construction exempted from the stay-at-home mandate, the Sacramento Bee reported. State health officials responded by including all construction as essential.

If construction in America’s most populous state stalls — as it it did during the Great Recession — it would be difficult to restart, said Erika Bjork of the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which advocated for the industry.
“We need to keep this engine humming, so when we come out of this we have housing,” Bjork said.

Like Britain, some U.S. states allowed liquor stores to remain open, including New Mexico, which routinely ranks first in alcohol-related deaths per capita.

State health officials were concerned that shutting them down would result in people with alcoholism seeking emergency medical attention, taking resources away from the coronavirus, said Tripp Stelnicki, a spokesman for New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu said flower shops are among the essentials. Asked why, spokesman Ben Vihstadt said they provide essential services for funeral homes.

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Signs, especially in the United States, are that the post-coronavirus-plagued world will have even more inequality of wealth, within each nation, than existed prior to the plague. Billionaires are demanding to be included in the bailouts by their governments; and, because billionaires financed the careers of the successful politicians who won seats in their country’s legislature, those demands are almost certain to be complied with. Only the least-corrupt nations will be able to recover fully from the current plague.

In the United States, one Party, the Republicans, doesn’t even pretend to be concerned about the growth of wealth-inequality after 1980; but the other Party, the Democrats, do make that pretense; and so a deal was worked out in the U.S. Congress that both Parties tout as being a ‘balanced’ bailout bill, because it will bail out both the megacorporations that the billionaires own and control, and the public — their workers (especially the ones that those billionaires are now laying off). Because of the enormous give-aways to the billionaires, deficit-spending by the government will be soaring out of control, and ultimately paper money will plunge in value, which will bring on a global depression that will be even worse than 1929. Some governments will find ways to nationalize the wealth of billionaires and perhaps also of centi-millionaires in order to fund the continuing needs of the public, and there will be a scramble by many of those super-rich to relocate to countries where they still will be able to bribe enough government officials so as to provide safe haven for their accumulated wealth. Graduated exit-taxes will be instituted by any of the industrialized countries that aren’t totally corrupt, but the most extremely corrupt industrialized countries will experience massive capital-flight and a future as a “third world” nation, under extended martial law.

On March 22nd, Zero Hedge headlined “‘Stop The Coronavirus Corporate Coup’: Here Is A List Of Everyone Demanding A Bail Out” and Matt Stoller listed the many different categories of mega-corporate lobbyists who were urging the Senators and Representatives, whose campaigns they fund, to bail out their respective industries. The few other news-sites that republished or linked to that list were other alternative-news sites, not any of the mainstream ones. This was a major news-report, which deserved to become a top topic of public conversation, but that didn’t happen; and here is an example of what it said (and which the rest of the press were hiding):

Mitch McConnell wants big business to rule, so he’s playing a trick. He is refusing aid to workers. Democrats are negotiating with him to try to get unemployment assistance and social welfare. McConnell knows Dems won’t pay attention to corporate bailouts if he takes the public hostage, and Democrats know that they can hand out favors to big business if they just talk about how they got larger checks for workers.

So McConnell will put a bill down in front of Nancy Pelosi, with some good stuff like unemployment insurance, but also the really ugly stuff to hand over America to big business. The corporatists in the Democratic Party will tell her “Pass the corporate coup bill, after all we have to do something right now!” And because she doesn’t have the votes from within her own caucus because of these corporatists, and because she doesn’t particularly care if America is sold off to big business, she will do that.

It’s a song-and-dance routine, performed by the two “good cop, bad cop” political Parties, in order to satisfy not only the audience (the voters) but the producers (the billionaires).

On March 21st, I headlined “Triage Starts in Government Bailouts: Who will get the money?” at Strategic Culture, and submitted that news-report to all U.S. major news-media and most of the minor ones. 24 hours later, it was picked-up by only a few minor, very courageous, ones: The 21st Century, The Duran, Free World Economic Report, The Russophile, and Verity Weekly. The corruption is so pervasive that all of the news-media that 99.99% of the public rely upon for their ‘news’ were filtering out the news of the impending massive public subsidies to America’s billionaires by America’s ‘public representatives’ — shoveling the public’s money to the billionaires as bailouts.

Stoller was obviously correct that the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, “is refusing aid to workers” and (though Stoller — being himself a Democrat — didn’t use nearly such direct language to say) the Democratic Party’s leader in the House was trying to wrangle enough of the desperately needed funds for the American public (all sorts of workers, and, here, especially the most important ones, such as nurses, police, etc.) so that congressional Democrats will be able to give the billionaires what they demand, while still getting enough aid out to everybody else in order for congressional Democrats to be able to hold their congressional seats after November 3rd. (In America, keeping the poor away from the voting-booths, and undercounting the votes that they do cast, are usually insufficient in themselves so as to prevent a Republican landslide, and so as to supply the bumper-sticker benefits to non-billionaires that will be needed if Congress isn’t to become 100% Republican.)

In a profoundly corrupt country, over 99% of the press will filter-out such basic details of the true extent of the corruption, because, otherwise, the revolution that results will be against the aristocracy, instead of against the public itself (and producing martial law), and a revolution like that could produce actual democracy, which the few people who fund politicians’ careers fear the most. They much prefer, if a revolution is coming, that it be clearly against the public (and result in martial law, which will protect only themselves), not against themselves. In fact, such a country has a government almost solely in order to protect the aristocrats from the public, and almost not at all in order to protect the public from the aristocracy.

Interestingly, the very next day, on March 22nd, my headlined news-report was “Coronavirus Cases Soaring Much Faster in U.S. Than in Other Countries” and even that report had no takers in America’s major ‘news’ media, despite its being merely a presentation of the statistical data, which discredited the U.S. Government in comparison with almost all of the other governments in the world. (Only Turkey and Luxembourg had even worse figures at that time, but they were just beginning to count their coronavirus cases.)

On March 25th, I headlined “Coronavirus: Why Russians Are Lucky to Be Led by Putin”, and wrote that “within just three more days, America will have the world’s largest total number of cases, if Italy won’t. And after yet another day, the U.S. will almost certainly have the world’s largest total number of cases.” Both statements came to pass. On March 26th, America’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation published their projection of the rise and subsiding of the coronavirus-19 in the U.S., and predicted that this country would end up with 460,000 cases and 81,114 deaths from the disease, and that America’s epidemic would virtually end by July 1st. I headlined about that, on March 28th, “Projection: U.S. Coronavirus Deaths to = China’s Total Coronavirus Cases”.

Though all of these news-reports are major, and deal with the news-event that is currently obsessing all of the world’s news-media — which is the coronavirus plague — the news-media that are owned or otherwise controlled by America’s billionaires rejected them all and are doing everything else that they possibly can to delay, if not to block entirely, the crucial information from reaching America’s voters, and this is happening during an election year. The Jeff-Bezos-owned liberal neoconservative Washington Post reliably reported on March 28th that “in private discussions, the president has been driven much more by economic concerns, according to people involved in internal debates or briefed on them. Trump has long viewed the stock market as a barometer for his own reelection hopes.” Safety of the American people is a secondary concern for him. That was being reported by a Democratic Party billionaire against Republican Party billionaires, but what it actually indicates is America’s being controlled by its billionaires, of both Parties. The public, here, actually don’t count.

Under conditions such as this, one can easily understand — with this type of information, which is being hidden from the public — only politicians who satisfy the wants of the nation’s billionaires stand even so much as a chance to win seats in Congress or other high elective office. The public are so misinformed that they are like horses with blinders on and which are being driven by a master to whom they are expendable and replaceable, not objects of authentic and caring concern for their welfare. Everything has a price to such a master, who will grab at any chance to replace any of the public by a cheaper alternative, so long as “the job gets done” — to satisfy their own unlimited greed. The deception of the public is so extreme that America’s Establishment are so brazen as to blame China and Russia for the “disinformation” about the cornoavirus-19 pandemic. The U.S. regime is utterly shameless.

These bailouts of billionaires will destroy what little was left of a democratic future for America — and for any other nation that happens to be nearly as corrupt.

Is this to be the long-term impact of coronavirus-19? Is there an alternative likely scenario? Perhaps the coronavirus plague won’t spread as uncontrollably as is feared, but even if that is the case, what justification exists for bailing out any of the super-rich, in response to an emergency that is causing widespread suffering? And yet, America is doing that.