Tag: finance

Authored by Lawrence Sellin via WION.com,

To date, no one has stated the urgent universal need to aggressively investigate the true origin of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, better than Karl and Dan Sirotkin in their August 12, 2020 article “Might SARS‐CoV‐2 Have Arisen via Serial Passage through an Animal Host or Cell Culture?”

“Despite claims from prominent scientists that SARS‐CoV‐2 indubitably emerged naturally, the etiology of this novel coronavirus remains a pressing and open question: Without knowing the true nature of a disease, it is impossible for clinicians to appropriately shape their care, for policy‐makers to correctly gauge the nature and extent of the threat, and for the public to appropriately modify their behaviour.”

As the authors correctly note, serial passage, that is, the repeated re-infection within an animal or human population allows a virus to specifically adapt to the infected species.

That process occurs naturally in the wild, but it can be greatly accelerated in the laboratory by deliberate serial passaging of viruses in cell culture systems or animals, potentially leaving few or no traces as to whether the adapted viruses are naturally-occurring or laboratory-manipulated.

That type of “gain of function” experimentation can become particularly dangerous if viruses are adapted for human infection by serial passaging them through cell cultures and animal models that have been genetically-modified to express human receptors.

There are numerous scientific publications describing serial passaging of coronaviruses through “humanised” cell cultures and animal models, thus potentially creating a new coronavirus “pre-adapted” for human infection.

At present, the scientific consensus is that SARS-CoV-2 came from bats, but how it evolved to infect humans remains unknown.

China has claimed that a bat coronavirus named RaTG13 is the closest relative to SARS-CoV-2, but RaTG13 is not actually a virus because no biological samples exist. It is only a genomic sequence of a virus for which there are now serious questions about its accuracy.

In contrast, Dr Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese virologist and whistleblower, has implied that RaTG13 may have been used to divert the world’s attention away from the true source of the COVID-19 pandemic, a novel coronavirus that originated in military laboratories overseen by China’s People’s Liberation Army and created by the manipulation of Zhoushan coronaviruses ZC45 and/or ZXC21.

SARS-CoV-2 has signs of serial passaging and the direct genetic insertion of novel amino acids sequences for which no natural evolutionary pathway has been identified.

Although SARS-CoV-2 appears to have the “backbone” of bat coronaviruses, its spike protein, which is responsible for binding to the human cell and its membrane fusion-driven entry, has sections that do not appear in any closely-related bat coronaviruses.

SARS-CoV-2’s receptor binding domain, the specific element that binds to the human cell, has a ten times greater binding affinity than the first SARS virus that caused the 2002-2003 pandemic.

Furthermore, SARS-CoV-2 appears to be “pre-adapted” for human infection and has not undergone a similar natural mutation process within the human population that was observed during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak.

Those observations plus the inexplicable genetic distance between SARS-CoV-2 and any of its potential bat predecessors suggest an accelerated evolutionary process obtained by laboratory-based serial passaging through genetically-engineered mouse models containing humanised receptors previously developed by China.

The other unique feature of SARS-CoV-2 is a furin polybasic cleavage site that facilitates membrane fusion between the virus and the human cell and widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility, but also is not present in any closely related bat coronaviruses.

There are no readily-available animal models to produce a unique furin polybasic cleavage site by serial passaging, but techniques for the artificial insertion of such furin polybasic cleavage sites by genetic engineering have been used for over ten years.

To paraphrase Karl and Dan Sirotkin, unless the zoonotic hosts necessary for completing a natural jump from animals to humans are identified, the dual‐use gain‐of‐function research practice of viral serial passage and the artificial insertion of unique viral features should be considered viable routes by which SARS-CoV-2 arose and the COVID-19 pandemic was initiated.

*  *  *

Lawrence Sellin, PhD is a retired US Army Reserve colonel. He has previously worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry.

The virus pandemic has led to the closure of many public pools across the country. The latest surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths across Sun Belt states sealed the deal in postponing the reopening of pools. With only a month left of the swimming season, Americans have resorted to an Airbnb-style app that allows them to rent private residential pools. 

Readers living or visiting the Mid-Atlantic or Northeast area have been scorched this summer by absolutely brutal June and July temperatures. Going to the beach has been met with many challenges, especially strict social distancing, and most oceanside restaurants are only open for carryout. The point about going to the beach is being with family and enjoying a delicious meal while watching the sunset. Not this year… 

So given the truly remarkable will of the consumer to shift habits, that is, with beaches under strict social distancing rules, public pools closed and traveling on airplanes to resort towns out of the question, there’s been a massive surge in activity in people not just staying at home but are renting private pools from homeowners using an app described as Airbnb for swimming pools, called Swimply. 

CNBC said the 2-year-old app saw a 2,000% jump in growth this summer, according to its founder.

The process in reserving a pool works on a smartphone app is a  contactless way to rent a pool from residential homeowners on a per hour basis. Prices range from $15 to $300 per hour, all dependent on the pool size, location, and additional amenities. 

Swimply makes money by facilitating the booking and then takes a 15% finders fee. 

“We’ve seen demand skyrocket. We simply cannot keep up,” said Asher Weinberger, co-founder of Swimply.

Weinberger said, “There are people who are now desperate to get out of their homes. They’re working from home. There’s no school. There’s no camp. What are parents supposed to do with their kids?” 

He said some hosts “are making $30,000 to $40,000 in the summer. This is not just — rent out your home for $200 bucks a night — you can make $1,000, $2,000 a day, and that’s real money that’s not just paying for your pool’s upkeep but it’s even paying for your whole mortgage.”

Here are some of the examples of pools for rent on the app: 

Pools in the Miami area ranged from $45 to $60 per hour. 

Pools in San Diego ranged from $45 to $60 per hour.

Pools in Vegas ranged from $15 to $60 per hour.

Swimply’s appears to be launching a new platform called “JoySpace,” where users of the app can rent or share “all kind of unique private spaces from tennis and basketball courts to home gyms and decked out backyard.” 

With much of the country having paused or taken steps to reverse reopenings, Americans have found creative ways to still have fun during a pandemic, even if that means renting a stranger’s pool while public ones are closed. 

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Might as well call it a social experiment. Any other name, like “coup” or “fishing expedition” or “hookers peeing on a bed” or “justice being done” would just inflame “passions” and lead away from what should be the actual topic.

Whatever you call it, the fact remains that Donald Trump has been the first US president to be under continued investigation for the entire 4 years of his first term, and for about a year before it as well. And that should be a cause for alarm for anyone who cares even a little bit about the American political system, including those who abhor Trump.

Because once you do that, it’s no longer about just one president, it’s about all who will follow him, and inevitably about the integrity and validity of the system as a whole.

In principle, there should be no investigations of a sitting president, and not even of a presidential candidate, because this risks endangering 1) the entire electoral process, and 2) the Office of the President (not for once, but for ever). In principle. If there must be an investigation, it must be based on solid evidence available beforehand, it must be short, and the President must be removed. If all of these three things are not guaranteed, no investigation is warranted, and the accusing parties should be “liberated” from the positions they held when they initiated the investigation regardless. Skin in the game.

It gets increasingly harder to write about American politics, or express an opinion in any other way, without being dumped into one of two camps, never to be heard from again in the other (except for ridicule or slander). There is no such thing as a neutral or objective viewpoint anymore. You’re either with us or you’re against us – or them.

Seeing -and projecting- the world in black and white is a tempting proposal for anyone afraid of being confused; it should, however, never be an excuse for the media to not present its viewers and readers with a full color palette. But we can see every single day how that went. Black and white it is. And in that environment, too claustrophobic to be put in a box, I might as well paint the picture as I see it. Yes, in color.

The “social experiment” I see progressing has two parts:

1) can a political party, aided and abetted by the media and intelligence services, unseat an elected president it has just lost an election to?

2) can a presidential candidate be elected while shunning the media, debates, etc., and only appear at times and in forms that have been pre-selected by her/his handlers for maximum effect, while hiding his/her weaknesses?

As for no. 1, it has evidently not succeeded, but that is certainly not for lack of trying. One investigation has followed the other non-stop since 2016, in public and behind the scenes, and they have all come up empty. Of course one side would contest that and still say there was lots of evidence, but if so, it obviously wasn’t very strong, or Trump would have been gone.

People may also claim that the mandate of the Mueller investigation was too narrow, but really, go back and watch the man’s pathetic (sorry, but it was) testimony in Congress after the fact, that should be enough. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler and others have promised solid and inconvertible evidence many times, but we never saw any. Rest assured, whatever Trump may have done wrong, you would have heard about it by now.

Or to put it another way: he probably did many things wrong, but not the things he was accused of. In fact, the entire Putin puppet narrative is so idiotic it’s impossible not to ponder from time to time that it was designed from the get-go to support Trump, not hurt him.

As for no. 2, that looks even more experimental. The approach is helped along “wonderfully” by the pandemic, which provides plenty excuses to keep Biden hidden, but it goes against everything presidential campaigns have been built upon throughout American history: contact with voters. That very few people would believe Biden is his own man, and not a sock puppet, can’t help.

But there is more at stake. Presidential campaigns are one element of a much bigger process, and you can’t separate the two. Both parts of the “social experiment” seem to run afoul of the respect that bigger process, and ultimately the entire political system, necessarily demands from all participants, from an individual voter to a President. And that is much more important than either candidate. You can’t temporarily switch off that respect if and when that might suit your purpose, because you risk for it never to be switched on again.

You may dislike a presidential candidate, perhaps even intensely so, but that should never make you lose sight of the integrity, if not the sacredness, of the election process, of the political system, of the institutions, of the Constitution, and certainly not of the Office of the President of the United States. Because once you do that, you open the door for everyone to do the same in the future. And no, you can’t blame that on the candidate you don’t like, you do it.

When a candidate is selected through the primaries of his/her party, you must respect that, because if you don’t respect the process, you are lost, the system is lost, and there’s no telling when you’ll see it back, if ever. If that candidate is then elected President, a lot of doors that before allowed you to question and criticize him/her, should be closed. The country at that point has either a new President, or a second-term one. A different phase of the political process starts.

The House and the Senate become the critics, empowered by the system to hold the President accountable. But only the House and the Senate. Not the media, whose role it is, other than in the occasional opinion piece, to report on decisions made; not intelligence services, whose role it is to serve the country, and the new President it just elected; and not the opposition party, whose role it is to prepare for the next election, and to provide a degree of counterbalance, depending on how bad their loss was, on Capitol Hill.

The entire picture is crystal clear. So is everybody’s role in it. But now and then people -try to- refuse to accept their roles, obviously believing that they are more important than the integrity of the political system, and ignoring that in doing so they put the whole system at risk.

What was happening first became apparent in late 2015 – early 2016, when the New York Times began running multiple stories every day directed against Donald Trump. Mostly small bits, based on innuendo about his past, with a whiff of truth perhaps, but not more. The word “gratuitous” comes to mind. At a certain point, they did a dozen per day of the stories, it became assembly line work for the writers and editors..

The Washington Post chimed in, and so did CNN, MSNBC and others, including international press. It turned into a feeding frenzy, with all of them completely losing sight, voluntarily or not, of their roles as news providers. They all shape-shifted into opinion-only-makers, confident that their audience would not notice the difference, at least not at first. At that point it became a very Pavlovian thing.

Which is why I was initially going to name this essay “Trump vs Pavlov”. 100+ years ago, Ivan Pavlov “found” that if he rang a bell in front of a dog, and then gave her food, she would start to associate the two. When he increased the time-lapse between first, the bell, and then, the food, the dog would salivate in expectation of food at just the sound of the bell. In the end, all he had to do was ring the bell, with no food around, and the dog would salivate. So he had nothing to offer, no food, no substance, but the reaction was the same.

That is a very accurate description of what a large part of the US media have done -and become-. All they have to do at this point is mention Trump, or just show his picture, and their public will react the same every single time: Orange Man Bad. There doesn’t have to be any substance, any factual journalistic reports of wrongdoing. The “conditioned reflex” as Pavlov described it, has set in.

And their readers and viewers have become addicted to this. How could they not? They’ve been bombarded with 1000s of these bells ringing, and the substance may not be there, but the expectation of it is. If you’re a regular viewer of Rachel Maddow, what are the odds that your opinion is still your own after hearing RussiaRussia a million times? The only way it could be yours is if you switch her off.

I’ve written before that I don’t even think they really set out to do this. Initially, there were probably just some CEOs and owners and editors who didn’t like Trump and/or were affiliated in one way or another with the other party -and later candidate-. Who was counted on to win big anyway, so why not (well, because of the integrity of the political system!).

It was only later that they found out 24/7 anti-Trump “reporting” was a great business model for them. CNN was dying in early 2016, the New York Times was nor far behind, and all of a sudden numbers of viewers and readers and subscribers went through the roof.

Their problem is that if they succeed in making Trump lose in November, they will be back to where they came from before he appeared on the political scene. All of their “reporting” on US politics has devolved into a scheme based on ringing a bell, and on the scandal and anger their non-stop salivating audience have become addicted to, and mistake for substance.

If Joe Biden should win, that scheme is dead. They may hope to last a bit longer on the angry scandal of a possible persecution of Trump if he leaves office, but that would be it, and that’s not a business model. They can’t very well now turn on Biden and his puppeteers.

New York Times writer and editor Bari Weiss said it very well when she left the paper a few weeks ago, she summarized the essence of the MSM problem in just a few words:

“[..] the lessons that ought to have followed the election – lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else”.

Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world?

That’s the media.

Second in line is US intelligence.

Which, there’s no other way to put it, conspired against a presidential candidate and, when he was elected, a sitting president. The Strzok-Page “insurance policy”, the Obama Oval Office conversations where Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Susan Rice were present, plus 1,000 other things, the overall picture doesn’t exactly point to that famous seamless transition, and US Intel played a pivotal, because accommodating, role in that.

The best way to show this is perhaps that US intelligence themselves did not (could not) come up with a report on alleged links between the -prospective- president’s team and Russia, but took a dossier paid for by the president’s opposition and used it to discredit and persecute him and people in his team. The dossier was written by a two-bit MI6 hustler who hadn’t set foot in Russia in at least a decade, and whose main ‘Russian source’ wasn’t there either, but sitting in an office in the US.

That source in turn had contacts with a group of Russians whose very business model it was to make up and embellish whatever stories the highest bidder required, while failing to deal with their own severe drinking problems. That dossier was the entire foundation (or 99% of it) behind Rod Rosenstein appointing Bob Mueller as a Special Counsel. The appointment would never have been made, never have been possible, without the Steele dossier.

How was the dossier vetted by US intelligence, if at all? It’s very clear now what was wrong with it, but the all knowing and very clever intelligence people could not have figured that out 4 years ago, and instead cleared it for Mueller, for further FBI use, for FISA applications? How about their treatment of Michael Flynn, who they had already cleared only to resurrect the dead corpse of their investigation into his talks with Russian ambassador Kislyak? How would you, personally, spell “in good faith”?

We will see in the near future what the Durham investigation into all Russiagate players will come to. Apparently, Durham has just another three weeks to present at least something, because there is a two-month “no-go-zone” before the election, during which he would be accused of tampering with the election. And the premise for the Democrats and their sympathizers is that if Biden wins, all slates will be wiped clean.

They won’t, by the way. America still has a justice system, even if it is oftentimes crippled and grinding(ly) slow. Just watch Michael Flynn attorney Sidney Powell and her team. They have vowed to not only have their client be exonerated, but to fully clear his name, which according to their view has been besmirched by everyone up to and including Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

The third leg of the “creature” is the Democratic party. Who have stepped so far over their boundaries, nobody recognizes anymore that there were any. Or that the political system they are an integral part of, dictates that there are things they cannot do, lest they corrupt that system to the core.

Once you lose a presidential election, you prepare for the next one. You don’t use the next 4 years to try and frustrate the president you just lost to with all you got. The system should not allow it and can not tolerate it. There should be skin in the game for opposition politicians, who when they come with accusations of gross misconduct serious enough to remove a president, should be forced to step down when the accusations don’t lead to the intended result.

It should never be a free for all, in which you can simply try again the next morning. Because the system cannot work if that is possible. It can’t be that if you win a midterm election and get a majority in the House, you can then use that majority to make it impossible for a president to work on the agenda that made millions vote for him/her. That would cause the system to grind to a halt, and the system must always be more important than its temporary participants (even those who “sit” for 40-50 years).

When you look at the speaker’s list for the Democrat -non- convention next week where Joe Biden will be confirmed as their -virtual- candidate, you see that other than AOC, it’s just a long list of the same old people who were already there when they lost in 2016, and co-losers Hillary and Obama still have a very tight grip on the power and the purse strings.

Why they stick with Joe Biden, g-d only knows, and the same goes for whichever highly unpopular black woman they pick as VP who could soon be president. And sorry, but they all are. Kamala Harris was among the first to step down during the primaries because she didn’t get any votes. Susan Rice is not exactly “loved by the people” either, and the rest are no-names, except for Warren, but she’s both too left and much too white.

So you’re thinking: what’s going on there? That’s really the best you can do? But it does seem to be, likely because Barackillary have a small group of confidantes to choose from who they themselves are confident will be willing to cede all actual power to them once elected. And if Harris and Rice don’t get picked as VP, they’ll still exert a lot of power.

As will Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, there’s more new blood at Madame Tussaud’s than at the upper echelons of the Democratic party. Yes, AOC can come in to represent the squad in a cynical move (no power but brings in lots of votes), but that’s it. For the rest it’s still just the broken left wing of the war party. But you’re right, they’re none of them, Trump. And that at the same time is the sole identity they possess.

Anti-Trumpism has become a political religion.

Because Trump is the only topic that attracts clickbait and viewers. The only topic that rings a bell. Joe Biden rings no bells whatsoever. A while back Donald Trump jr tweeted:

Trump is really running against the media, Silicon Valley, the establishment, the swamp, Hollywood and maybe Joe Biden.

While investor GreekFire23 did even better:

Trump is running against himself in this election. The vote will come down to those who love him vs those who hate him. Biden is totally irrelevant and not even campaigning. Biden has no platform, no slogan, no stickers, no signs, no rallies, no followers. It’s Trump vs Trump.

What can still sink Trump is obvious: it’s the economy and the pandemic. America’s problem is that no matter who wins, those will still be its main problems by January 2021. And another problem has been added in the course of 2020: protests and violence in the streets.

Update: I thought I could leave it at that for now, step out for a moment, have a glass of wine, let it all sink in, and write a closing paragraph. But then I was sitting outside in gorgeous Athens and this popped up, which I very obviously can’t leave out:

Senate Chairman Subpoenas FBI Director Wray For Russiagate Records; Puts Bidens On Notice

FBI Director Christopher Wray has been subpoenaed by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to produce “all documents related to the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” which includes “all records provided or made available to the Inspector General” regarding the FISA probe, as well as documents regarding the 2016-2017 presidential transition..

[..] The subpoena was issued by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) as part of his investigation into the origins of Russiagate. It gives Wray until 5 p.m. on Aug. 20 to produce the documents. Johnson also released a lengthy letter on Monday in which he defended his Committee’s investigation and accused Democrats of initiating “a coordinated disinformation campaign and effort to personally attack” himself and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in order to distract from evidence his committee has gathered on Joe and Hunter Biden’s Ukraine dealings.

[..] Johnson’s committee has secured testimony from at least one State Department official who worked in Ukraine, and says the Bidens’ conduct created the appearance of a conflict of interest. “The appearance of family profiteering off of Vice President Biden’s official responsibilities is not unique to the circumstances involving Ukraine and Burisma,” wrote Johnson. “Public reporting has also shown Hunter Biden following his father into China and coincidentally landing lucrative business deals and investments there.

“Additionally, the former vice president’s brothers and sister-in-law, Frank, James and Sara Biden, also are reported to have benefited financially from his work as well.

I can’t let that go because it addresses exactly what my closing paragraph would have been about. Which is the risk of the giant divide that has developed in US society, getting even wider, and potentially leading to utter mayhem. Actually, it’s not even ‘potentially’ anymore, there already has been a lot of violence.

The Democrats think they will win easily on November 3, and then push through all of their their policies, after dumping on Trump for 4 years with their media and intelligence friends, but the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump, and most of their family and friends with them, don’t think so. That’s not a threat, it’s an observation.

They feel cheated out of their 2016 victory. They realize (or should I say “suspect”) that Russiagate and the Mueller probe and the Zelensky-linked impeachment “hearings” were empty vessels directed against the election outcome that they won fair and square, and I guarantee you they won’t take it sitting down.

Which means that no matter who wins, polarization will reach levels America has never seen, and, frankly, should never wish to. Because all of the people involved, bar just a precious few, will have to live together in the same country, and share the same society, streets, highways, stores and resources.

And sometimes I wonder: how are they going to do that?

If Trump should win, how will the entire so-called left react, from the Democrats through the MSM to BLM? Will they just increase the protests and the violence in the streets?

Alternatively, if Joe Biden wins, how will the Conservative side of America react? Will they all go home and wait for what the DNC has in store for them, or will their reaction be pro-active? I know which reaction I would see them lean towards.

You have these two sides in society who appear further apart than even Moses could have hoped to bring back together again, you have the media who thrive on widening that divide even further, it’s a scary picture.

And in the meantime, while everyone’s busy blaming each other, who’s going to take care of the country?

*  *  *

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, your support is now an integral part of the publishing process. Which seems only fair and just.

Readers may recall our earlier notes identifying the mass exodus of folks abandoning US metro areas, fleeing to suburbia and or rural communities, first due to the virus pandemic, then social unrest.

City dwellers began the journey out of metros in late March/early April, at the start of the virus pandemic lockdowns. When late May/early June rolled around, just as the social unrest erupted across major metros, the second exodus round was seen. 

For more color on this evolving trend, and the importance of understanding the exodus, could, at some point, correct metro home prices, Coast to Coast Network, a real estate team of agents affiliated with Compass, is reporting a massive “boom” in the second home real estate market. 

Nicole Blair from the Compass Tahoe team said Bay Area folks are quickly exiting the metro area for Lake Tahoe as they now have the ability to work remotely, reported Tahoe Daily Tribune. 

Blair said this has led to a massive demand surge for the rural area located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

“The Lake Tahoe market has never seen activity like this,” said Blair. “Bay Area residents are flocking to the area as they realize they can work from home and they also want more space around them.”

She said, “for example, in the month of July, our Multiple Listing Service has gone up 4% in new listings, up 60% in sold listings, down 28% in average days on the market, and up 30% on average listing price which is now equated to $1,140,000.”

“The biggest problem realtors are facing right now is too many buyers with not enough inventory,” Blair added. “We would have never predicted this outcome back in March.”

On the East Coast, Joan Witter of Witter & Witter Boston Cape Cod Connection at Compass said the real estate market is on fire:

“The Cape Cod Market is bustling, I have been selling real estate in this market for over 26 years and have never seen anything like this,” said Witter.

And the question every reader has to ask: How long will this exodus from cities last? 

We might have found the answer in our latest piece titled “Real Estate Expert Warns’ Exodus’ From Cities Will Last Two Years.” 

Authored by Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller via HumanEvents.com,

It’s not as simple as snapping your fingers and getting herd immunity…

Here’s a thought experiment: after the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg, it became necessary to allocate seats on the lifeboats; there were only about 700 places for the 2208 passengers. What if seats had been auctioned, with the price determined by supply and demand—i.e., by market forces? Clearly, the wealthiest would have crowded out the others. Instead, the Captain decided that women and children should take precedence. Of course, children had the most life to lose, but why women over men? Chivalry? We will likely never know.

A contemporary example of the limitations of purely free-market distribution models is quickly approaching, as one or more vaccines to prevent infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, come to market.

The situation is exceedingly complex in many ways, and the “solution” will inevitably involve elements of medicine, science, ethics, and politics.

The clinical results from the testing of different vaccines, which have been created using a variety of platforms, will inevitably vary in ways that we cannot foresee, and that will raise many questions. For example, how effective will the vaccines be for different demographic groups—particularly the elderly, who are most vulnerable to severe illness and death, but who mount a less vigorous immune response?

One thing seems clear, however: we have seen no enthusiasm from any quarter for allowing the price of the vaccine (i.e., market forces) to determine who should get priority in obtaining protection from COVID-19. But that still leaves many possible strategies to allocate what will inevitably be a scarce resource for some time—despite attempts to anticipate the conundrum and produce many millions of doses, beginning large-scale production even before safety and effectiveness have been demonstrated to a level acceptable to regulators. 

In several cases, this early production is being subsidized by the U.S. government. Its Operation Warp Speed aims to begin delivery of 300 million doses of an FDA-authorized, safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19 by the end of the year (an admirable but probably overly ambitious goal). As part of that initiative, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Defense (DoD) jointly announced on July 7th a $1.6 billion agreement with Maryland-based Novavax Inc., to demonstrate commercial-scale manufacturing of the company’s COVID-19 investigational vaccine. By funding this manufacturing effort, the federal government will own the 100 million doses of investigational vaccine expected to result from those demonstration projects. On July 22nd, the feds announced a $1.95 billion deal with U.S.-based Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech for large-scale production and delivery of 100 million doses of an FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine. Additional federal funding of COVID-19 vaccine development has gone to Massachusetts-based Moderna (almost half a billion dollars) and to British drugmaker AstraZeneca (more than $1 billion).

These and other similar initiatives are some of the U.S. government’s wisest “corporate welfare” subsidies within memory. They accelerate the realization of remedies to a societal calamity, without which progress would be much slower. Unfortunately, although they might mitigate some of the most difficult vaccine allocation choices, others will remain.

WHO IS “ESSENTIAL” AND WHO IS “MOST VULNERABLE?”

Triaging vaccine distribution raises many possible options concerning whom to prioritize and why.

One obvious priority would be to vaccinate the “most vulnerable” populations.

But how do we define vulnerability? By age and comorbidities, or, perhaps, by occupation or living situation (such as residents of nursing homes, or to people working in tight quarters like meatpacking plants).

Or should “value to society in mitigating the pandemic” trump other considerations, with front-line medical personnel and staff at long-term care facilities going to the head of the line? Those whose work is both essential and hazardous? And how about those involved in keeping the food supply chain intact, such as farmworkers, truck drivers, and food-store workers? (The head of our line is starting to get pretty crowded.)

Still, another question is to what extent the results of clinical trials should affect our priority-setting.

For example, if a trial revealed that subjects with blood type A obtain the greatest benefit, should they get priority for that vaccine? What about various racial, ethnic, or gender groups that have a statistically higher incidence of mortality from COVID-19? For example, should Blacks be considered a higher priority for vaccination because they are dying from COVID-19 at a rate 2.5 times higher than whites? And what about the political considerations: should Americans automatically receive higher priority, simply because our government subsidized the development of the vaccine?

The allocation criteria could theoretically become a complex algorithm, perhaps something analogous to the National Association of EMS physicians SALT Mass Casualty Triage Algorithm, which sorts patients into three categories based on the severity of their condition and determines the interventions they should get and in what order. In the case of vaccination, on the basis of the variables mentioned above, individuals could be placed in a category of the appropriate category, and within the category, would then receive vaccine in random lottery order. Of course, such an approach would not eliminate value judgments or squelch controversy.

We hope that, to the extent possible, these decisions will be made based on medical evidence and plausible rationales rather than political interests. To return to our analogy, imagine if only members of one political party or British citizens were permitted on the Titanic’s lifeboats. (It was a British ship, after all.)

In today’s hyper-partisan times, nothing seems too implausible or cynical.

SCIENCE, NOT PARTISAN PERFORMANCE, SHOULD DETERMINE VACCINE ALLOCATION DECISIONS

In order to muddle through (“resolve” would be too optimistic) these conundrums, the feds will receive formal advice from at least two sources. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins has asked the National Academy of Medicine to develop guidelines for who should get priority for the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine.

A second panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine issues, has also been tasked to formulate guidelines. Last month, the ACIP convened a meeting electronically to discuss “who counts as an essential worker, where teachers should fall in the priority list, vaccinations for pregnant women and whether race and ethnicity should factor into priority considerations.”

It remains to be seen how and who in the administration will reconcile two independently crafted sets of recommendations, and to what extent other parties will be allowed to participate in the process. In the end, the FDA could specify which groups get priority if it grants an emergency use authorization for a vaccine. That would be similar to the FDA’s having directed that Gilead Sciences remdesivir, a COVID-19 drug treatment, be used exclusively for “patients hospitalized with severe disease,” when regulators granted an emergency use authorization.

Questions will also arise about the cost of vaccines to consumers—and the posturing and virtue-signaling by politicians have already begun. In early June, before a vaccine was even on the horizon, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in a statement,

“We can’t allow American families—who are already struggling to make ends meet during this public health emergency—to be squeezed even further by companies out to make a quick buck.”

And Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) echoed her comrade, “We need to have confidence that no one is making billions in a back room somewhere.” These gratuitous broadsides are part of their ongoing disparagement of one of the nation’s most innovative and successful industries. (Thankfully, the major vaccine manufacturers seem to have accepted that the pandemic is not a time for profiteering. The deals vaccine makers have struck with the feds suggest the cost will be modest, in the range of $4-$37 per dose.)

Several things are certain, however.

First, no allocation scheme will please everyone, and despite all the attempts at rational analysis and planning, there will be unintended consequences.

Second, the vaccine debate will re-inflame the passions about drug pricing and drug companies’ profits.

Finally, we can be sure the companies that are working furiously on therapies and vaccines to rescue the world from the throes of the worst pandemic in a century won’t receive any gratitude from progressive politicians.

The bottom line: insofar as it’s possible, the scientific and medical evidence should inform the allocation process.

The late June ‘Russian bounties in Afghanistan’ story lasted no longer than a mere week given that some of the very publications pushing it were forced to walk it back based on not only key claims not bearing out, but a slew of top intel officials and Pentagon generals saying it was baseless. 

And then like many other ‘Russiagate’-inspired narratives (in this case Trump was accused of essentially ‘looking the other way’ while Russians supposedly paid the Taliban to kill US troops), it was memory-holed. 

But this apparently hasn’t stopped the State Department or the Pentagon from using it as leverage while talking to the Russians. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned his counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, that “there will be an enormous price to pay” if the Kremlin did indeed pay Afghan fighters to attack Americans or other Westerners. 

Pompeo revealed the warning in an interview with Radio Free Europe on Wednesday:

“That’s what I shared with Foreign Minister [Sergey] Lavrov,” Pompeo said. “I know our military has talked to their senior leaders as well. We won’t brook that; we won’t tolerate that.”

Russia has of course, denied involvement in any such operation, which many analysts have pointed out would carry major risk of stoking military conflict with the United States but with little positive gain in the region.

Pompeo also said in the interview: “We will do everything we need to do to protect and defend every American soldier and, for that matter, every soldier from the Czech Republic or any other country that’s part of the Resolute Support Mission to make sure that they’re safe.”

Importantly, it marks the first time any US official has broached the Russian bounties story with a Kremlin officials.

But again, it’s somewhat strange given the US administration (and multiple US intelligence agencies) has repeatedly denied that it has any merit. Trump has gone so far as to all it a “hoax”. Thus Pompeo’s message to the Russians appears a pure tactic for achieving leverage.

Or alternately, it could be that Pompeo is just plain undermining Trump on this one.

Authored by Noel Williams via AmericanThinker.com,

Where are the happy socialists?  The socialists I spot are either snarling with anger or shrieking with hubris.  In fact, they seem intent on pursuing unhappiness as their misguided dictums controvert nature — human and physical.  It’s simply hard to be sanguine when going against nature.

For sure, socialism attracts a “fair number of cranks.”  Indubitably, it shackles the human spirit and foments misery.  So what is it about this desperate ideology that’s so disparate to nature, and so antithetical to happiness — besides the fact it creates nothing except poverty?  

There is much wisdom behind the notion that happiness is a journey, not a destination, so enjoy the ride.  An analogy is a ship sailing the seas, seeking temporary refuge in port before embarking on another exciting expedition.  There’s brief allowance for reveling upon attaining a goal, but then there’s another…and another, so don’t get too complacent in port. 

If we obsess about outcomes, about reaching port, satisfaction and lasting happiness remain elusive.  Yet that’s what socialists demand — equality of outcomes.  Rather than embracing the journey by equipping explorers with equality of opportunity, they’re fixated on reaching the port of communism before mutiny festers.  Once there, everyone except the dictator’s sycophants finds equality, all right — all become equally impoverished.  Turns out so-called “equality” is just not everything it’s cracked up to be as the proletariat are dictated to — not in some salubrious transition on the way to utopia, but an indefinite dictatorship in dystopia.  Rather than an abundance mindset, which grows the pie for all thanks to technological advances, it presumes a zero-sum scarcity reminiscent of the dark ages.

While we seek some cooperation as civil society emerges from an unforgiving state of nature, equally powerful are our competitive instincts and our natural desire to excel in exceptional America.  But in addition to human nature, physical nature itself contravenes socialist orthodoxy, which breeds a kind of morass.  In his article “Physics can explain human innovation and enlightenment,” Ephrat Livni points out that “[h]uman ingenuity is simply our way of partaking in a natural flow of life[.]”  But ingenuity sustains in the broad, sunlit uplands of free-market capitalism, not in the squalor of sullied socialism.  For socialists, necessity isn’t the mother of invention; it’s the requirement to hack, spy, and steal intellectual and physical property.

Concocting quotas and oppressive regulations oblivious to market-driven forces, they are like busy-body beavers clogging up the natural flow of things, but not nearly as endearing.  This unhappy state of affairs is not conducive to the flourishing flow of ideas which cascade and splash around in a vibrant, free-market society leading to new products, jobs, and markets.  New wealth begets more wealth as the river of ideas nourishes the plains. 

By contrast, collectivism subdues our essential essence; our very consciousness is quelled.  It destroys human creativity, which is necessary to wrestle prosperity from a state of nature.  You see, individuals thrive when we are free — free — to enjoy the fruits of our labor; governments thrive when baleful bureaucrats coalesce power in order to institute centralized planning.

Socialism is clearly a state of unhappiness floundering in its futile resistance to the imperatives of physical and human nature.  By subjugating the human spirit to the will of the organic state, it also restricts the flow of thoughts in our neuronal networks.  No ingenuity, minimal invention — mostly theft.  Synapses remain dormant, and cortical connections are tenuous and ambiguous; rather than pulses of energy transmitting every which way, socialist brains go dark.  Where socialism prevails, human consciousness is literally repressed, and enlightenment is futile.  Quite simply, the scourge of socialism surely ensures a dark-age mentality.  No wonder all the socialists I know are so dour and dark: socialism, after all, is the pursuit of unhappiness. 

With the government set to stop subsidizing the industry, airlines are <gasp> actually going to have to make operational changes to effectively deal with the lack of demand. Oh, the horror of free market forces actually forcing companies to make business changes!

This starts with American Airlines, who is reportedly preparing to drop two dozen small and medium city flights as federal coronavirus aid is set to end. The aid had previously mandated that airlines were not allowed to cut service approaches. 

Carriers were previously required to maintain minimum levels of service through September 30 as part of a $25 billion aid package, according to CNBC. They were also prohibited from making layoffs. Under the aid package, American Airlines received $5.8 billion.

The purpose of the deal was to provide both payroll assistance and continued air service around the country despite the fact that planes didn’t have any passengers. 

American’s forthcoming cancellations could start showing up in fall schedules that are set to begin next week, the report said. Changes still have not been finalized and the list of cities that could be cut has not been released. Both airlines and their respective unions have continued to push Congress for another $25 billion in support to keep paying workers through the end of next March, when hopefully demand can recover.

Both the Democrats and Republicans seemed to be in favor of such a deal weeks ago, but negotiations have stalled in Congress for the time being. As a result, the Department of Transportation had informed American Airlines that a planned extension of the benefits was not going to happen for the time being.

A DOT spokesperson commented: “The Department did not propose to extend the obligations, but will use the authority in the CARES Act to monitor ongoing access by the traveling public to the national air transportation system. The Department is also prepared to implement any new provisions of law in this area if enacted by Congress.”

United and Delta have not announced changes to their schedule yet. However, one source told CNBC, the “situation is fluid”. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The iconic memorial display in NYC that features two beams of light to honor the victims of 9/11 has been canceled over coronavirus concerns just weeks after Mayor Bill de Blasio allowed a Black Lives Matter mural to be painted outside Trump Tower.

The “Tribute in Light beam won’t shine for the first time in 18 years because health risks posed to the large crew required to oversee it “were far too great,” according to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

The same concerns were completely absent when a similarly large crew was on hand to paint the giant Black Lives Matter mural, a process which De Blasio himself took part in for a photo-op.

The mural was also painted without permission from the city, with de Blasio allowing activists to skip the permit process.

As we previously highlighted, at a time when NYC is experiencing soaring shootings and violent crimes (partly thanks to de Blasio emptying the prisons), the BLM mural also required 27 cops working in shifts to protect it.

Lol government is funny pic.twitter.com/etHGKoD3lM

— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) August 14, 2020

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum also scrapped the in-person reading of 9/11 victims’ names at the annual Ground Zero ceremony over coronavirus concerns.

Similar concerns were not expressed when tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters repeatedly marched through New York City in close proximity.

Twitter respondents expressed their disgust at the double standard.

“This is a slap in the face to America,” said one.

“No permit but yet arrest people for “vandalizing” what they vandalized in the first place!” added another.

“Remember you can’t get corona at a #BLM event but you can at a light show,” said another.

“Could we just call it the George Floyd Lightshow or something? There’s gotta be a way around this,” joked another.

*  *  *

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Nearly a third of Americans for the fourth consecutive month failed to pay rent or mortgage payments in full. Personal finances of millions of folks have quickly deteriorated through summer. Unpaid housing bills are mounting as the virus-induced downturn continues to unleash the worst employment crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

A new survey via Apartment List, an online rental platform, found 32% of renters (and homeowners) entered August with unpaid housing bills. At least 20% of respondents owed more than $1,000. Among renters with back rent due, 49% have renegotiated lease agreements with their landlords or are doing so. 

Here’s the percentage of renters and homeowners with unpaid housing bills. 

Renters and landlords are renegotiating lease agreements over unpaid rent obligations. 

“As the pandemic rages on, missed housing payments are continuing to pile up. For the fourth straight month, we found that roughly one-in-three Americans failed to make their full rent or mortgage payment in the first week of the month,” Apartment List said. 

The website added, “many of the protections and benefits put in place at the outset of the pandemic are now expiring, and the prospects for another round of stimulus remain uncertain. As unpaid housing debt builds, concerns around eviction and foreclosure are mounting. Although landlords and lenders are showing a willingness to negotiate, housing security is currently in jeopardy for an unprecedented number of Americans.” 

The survey (of about 4,000 people) sheds more light on the finances of the average American has rapidly deteriorated over the summer with deep economic scarring realized as depressionary unemployment levels risks derailing the economic recovery. 

Even before the virus-induced recession, the bottom 90% of Americans had insurmountable debts and limited savings. As soon as the mass layoffs hit in late March, tens of millions of folks saw their incomes quickly evaporate, unable to service bills, buy food, or like we’re focusing on this piece, pay rent, or mortgage payments. 

The Trump administration quickly responded to this distress by handing out $600 per week stimulus checks, imposing an eviction moratorium, and allowing homeowners to defer mortgage payments in a forbearance program. 

At the moment, a quarter of all household income is derived from the government. 

So when stimulus checks stopped on July 31, and the eviction moratorium expired a couple of weeks ago, this means millions of Americans are greatly suffering in August. 

With no timeline on the next round of stimulus, and or even if the rent eviction moratorium will be reimposed, the poor financial health of Americans doesn’t lend credibility a V-shaped recovery will be seen this year.