Month: March 2020

Police are breaking up “coronavirus parties” in New Jersey, authorities are hunting down a Florida pastor for violating a ‘health order’ to not hold services, state troopers are enforcing quarantine orders along the Louisiana-Texas border, and yet it’s business as usual for US military recruiting even as calls grow to close boot camps across the United States, especially at hard-hit coronavirus hot spots on the East and West coasts.

“Marine recruiters in the state hit hardest by the novel coronavirus have grave warnings about the military’s decision to continue sending young men and women off to boot camp in the middle of a global pandemic,” reports Military.com. “Marines at New York recruiting stations say it’s only a matter of time before COVID-19, the serious illness caused by the coronavirus, sweeps through one of the service’s two entry-level training depots.”

Efforts have been implemented at Army and Marine recruiting offices to do remote virtual initial recruiting interviews; however, boot camp training grounds which see thousands of young future Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen conduct drills and exercises in close quarters – also sleeping in close quarter barracks – have taken no initiative to halt or alter training. Crowded chow halls and dining facilities are also potential places of rapid outbreak.

Top Pentagon brass has said keeping entry-level recruit training operational is essential to national security, as Military.com notes based on a DoD policy ruling:

The Pentagon has decided that keeping all the services’ entry-level training camps up and running is critical to national security. The decision was reportedly at odds with what some service leaders recommended: a temporary pause on recruit shipping until the threat of the coronavirus lessened.

Defense Department officials overrode the recommendations from senior military leaders to halt training for 30 days, The Washington Post reported March 16.

As of late in the day Monday, the Marine Corps announced it would delay sending new recruits to Parris Island, South Carolina. Yet basic training for the thousands of recruits already there will continue, the statement said.

The Marine Corps are putting a halt on sending recruits to Parris Island, but training for recruits already there will continue, “with continued emphasis on personal and environmental cleanliness and social distancing,” USMC announces.

— paul mcleary (@paulmcleary) March 30, 2020

It may be too-little-too-late, as one Marine interviewed by Military.com said, “Decision-makers are absolutely in denial if they believe high rates of infection and hospitalization will not happen on the depot under close proximity and enclosed spaces.”

The Marine and others interviewed are worried that due to the Pentagon policy it’s only a matter of time before the virus rips through lower enlisted ranks, itself a huge potential  risk to national security and defense readiness.

“How will we … explain to the families that put their trust in the Marine Corps if something does — and it will — happen to the recruit?” the Marine asked. “Why do we always wait until it’s too late before we take action?”

And another said: “We are putting lives in danger en route to [boot camp], and we are taking even a bigger risk by mixing the new recruits with the recruits and permanent personnel on the depot.”

On Monday the Pentagon also announced it currently has 1,087 confirmed coronavirus cases DoD-wide, which includes civilian contractors, up from 600 on Friday.

Authored by Guido Taietti via GreatGameIndia.com,

Five years ago, Italian state owned media Company, Rai – Radiotelevisione Italiana, exposed dark efforts by China on viruses. The video, which was broadcast in November, 2015, showed how Chinese scientists were doing biological experiments on a SARS connected virus believed to be Coronavirus, derived from bats and mice, asking whether it was worth the risk in order to be able to modify the virus for compatibility with human organisms.

Below is a transcription of the Italian broadcast translated in English…

Chinese Biological Experiments

Chinese scientists have created a pulmonary supervirus from bats and mice only for study reasons but there are many questionable aspects to this. Is it worth the risk? It’s an experiment, of course, but it is worrisome. It worries many scientists: It is a group of Chinese researchers attaching a protein taken from bats to the SARS virus, Acute Pneumonia, derived from mice. The output is a super coronavirus that could affect man. It remains closed in laboratories and it is only for study purposes, but is it worth the risk – creating such a great threat only for examination purposes?

The debate about the risks of research is as old as science itself. Like the myth of Icarus, who plunged from the Sky and perished in the sea, having gone too close to the Sun with the wings of wax designed by his father!

Chinese scientists experiment on SARS virus to infect humans. Rai – Radiotelevisione Italiana

Here is an experiment in China, in which a group of scientists has managed to develop a chimera – an organism modified by attaching the surface protein of a coronavirus found in bats of the common species called the Great Horseshoe Bat, to a virus that causes SARS in mice, although in a non-fatal form. It was suspected that the protein could make the chimeric hybrid organism suitable for affecting humans, and the experiment confirmed it.

It is precisely this molecule, called SHCO14, that allows the coronavirus to attach itself to our respiratory cells and to trigger the syndrome. According to researchers, the two organisms, the original and even more so the engineered one, can infect humans directly from bats, without going through an intermediate species like the mouse, and it is this eventuality that raises many controversies.

Just one year ago (this broadcast is of 2015), the U.S. government suspended research funding, which aimed to make viruses more contagious. The moratorium did not stop the work of the Chinese on SARS, which was already in advanced stages and looked relatively harmless.

According to a section of the scientific community, it is in fact not dangerous. The probability that the virus may pass to our species was insignificant compared to the benefits of the virus – an argument that many other experts rejected. First, because the relationship between risk and benefit is difficult to evaluate and second, because especially in these times, it is more prudent to not put into circulation an organism that can escape or be removed from the control of laboratories.

As soon that this broadcast went viral on the Italian social media, journalists and experts began explaining it away saying, that the virus in the video was not COVID-19. Even the British journal Nature, which wrote the very publication this Italian show was based on, clarified that the virus the broadcast talked about was not related to the “Natural” COVID-19.

However, that is beside the point. This is not to say that the viruses are literally the same. This is to say that the information presented in the video is consistent with the information that China is doing a lot of research on bioweapons, and that the impact of the virus in the broadcast has a lot in common with mainstream information about the symptoms of COVID-19.

The central monitor room at China’s National Bio-safety Laboratory. Nature

Moreover, Nature itself had done a piece in February, 2017, on the BSL-4 laboratory in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, raising valid concerns and theories, and wondering out loud whether experimentation with deadly viruses was a good idea.

“BSL-4 is the highest level of bio-containment: its criteria include filtering air and treating water and waste before they leave the laboratory, and stipulating that researchers change clothes and shower before and after using lab facilities. Such labs are often controversial….

Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS, which also doesn’t require a BSL-4 lab, before moving on to Ebola and the West African Lassa virus, which do… Worries surround the Chinese lab… The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times… The plan to expand into a network heightens such concerns. One BSL-4 lab in Harbin is already awaiting accreditation; the next two are expected to be in Beijing and Kunming.”

In January, 2020, Nature then sheepishly added an editor’s note to the top of the article, saying that there is in fact “no evidence” of this lab playing a role in the outbreak of coronavirus and that scientists believe that the source is likely “an animal market.”

Meanwhile, the Italian scientists at Milan University are investigating whether the coronavirus outbreak actually began in Italy in the last quarter of 2019. Milan and Lodi cities of Lombardy administrative region reported a “significant” increase in the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia and flu in October and December of 2019. Meanwhile, amidst worldwide criticism, a $20 trillion lawsuit has been filed against China for waging Biological war using Coronavirus.

Signs of social unrest in major Western cities could be developing over the next few weeks, and as we previously warned last Friday, a global depression with high unemployment could unleash a “social bomb” in European countries and or North America. 

At the moment, Italy is the most high-risk country in the West to experience a potential breakdown in society. The country is suffering from an explosion in COVID-19 cases and deaths, a collapsed hospital system, an economic depression, and high unemployment. Sounds a lot like Venezuela… 

Italy has called up the military in recent weeks to enforce lockdowns across the country. There have also been reports of organized gangs operating in the Southern part of the country that are using social media to plot raids on businesses, reported Bloomberg.

It’s a race against time for Italian officials to prevent social unrest: 

“We need to act fast, more than fast,” Mayor Leoluca Orlando of Palermo, a city of Southern Italy, told daily La Stampa. “Distress could turn into violence.”

Lockdowns in the country have entered the fourth week, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said in a statement on Monday recommending that the government must extend the countrywide lockdown through Easter. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has been injecting stimulus into the economy to prevent a complete economic crash, and the next round could hit as early as mid-April, worth $33 billion.

Italy is the epicenter of COVID-19 in Europe. As of Monday afternoon, 101,739 confirmed cases had been reported, with 11,591 deaths. The growth rates in deaths in Northern Italy is still on an exponential curve. 

“Discomfort and malaise are growing, and we are recording worrying reports of protest and anger that is being exploited by criminals who want to destabilize the system,” said Orlando.

“The more time passes, the more resources are exhausted. The few savings people are running out. This tells us socio-economic issues will erupt.”

The most southern part of the country has the highest unemployment. Stories are already starting to surface of social unrest. People, with no money, are now starting to raid supermarkets.  

#Bread and food riots in South Italy! In #Naples and #Palermo, where countless unemployed people live, supermarkets are being protected by police. The shelves are swept empty, customers carry home heavy shopping bags… that are snatched openly in the street.#coronavirus #Italy pic.twitter.com/MXA7dsPvwc

— peter patti (@peterpatti) March 28, 2020

According to La Repubblica daily, locals in Palermo have been raiding stores – telling cashiers they have no money to eat.

🇮🇹 Ayer se produjo un incidente en Palermo que ha hecho saltar las alarmas en el país. Una veintena de personas trató de sacar varios carros llenos de productos de un supermercado Lidl negándose a pagar. “Basta de estar en casa, no tenemos dinero para pagar, tenemos que comer”. pic.twitter.com/bS2f0I1Fv3

— Descifrando la Guerra (@descifraguerra) March 28, 2020

In other Sicilian towns, locals have intimidated shop owners for free food. The region is home to millions of people that could be weeks away from major social unrest. 

“I am afraid that concerns shared by much of the population — about health, income, the future — will turn into anger and hatred if this crisis continues,” Giuseppe Provenzano, Italy’s minister overseeing southern regions, told La Repubblica.

Italy is further down the line in the outbreak than most other countries and threatens to unleash the next chapter of the crisis, that is, social unrest.

What’s happening in Italy could be coming to America. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A top drug dealer in the UK has revealed that people are “panic buying” cocaine and marijuana to help them get through the coronavirus lockdown.

The drug dealer, who has 20 dealers out on the street and 200 regular customers, told the Guardian, “People are panicking – the amounts of cannabis they’re buying is ridiculous – so we are just dealing to regulars now.”

He says that the price of cocaine is set to surge because there are no new shipments coming in from abroad for at least 6 weeks.

“I’m maintaining the same prices I’ve always charged but I’m concerned that, when stock begins to run low, people higher up the chain will charge more or cut the cocaine and decrease its quality,” said the dealer.

He added that people running out of money due to becoming unemployed as a result of the quarantine remains a primary concern, “but we’ll always have the regular cokeheads who buy most days.”

Dealers are also offering to take bank transfers from regular customers and post drugs through the letterbox to cut down on potentially spreading the coronavirus infection.

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Sweden has taken a slightly different approach to coronavirus than the rest of the world, allowing life to go on as ‘normal’ with a few exceptions.

Unlike neighboring Denmark – which has restricted meetings to 10 people or less, Swedes are still going out to nightclubs, hanging out with friends, and even ‘enjoying ice creams beneath a giant Thor statue in Mariatorget square,’ according to the BBC.

“We who are adults need to be exactly that: adults. Not spread panic or rumors,” said Prime Minister Stefan Löfven in a televised address to the country last weekend.

“No one is alone in this crisis, but each person has a heavy responsibility.“

And while the country has limited gatherings to 50 people as of Sunday, the government is largely leaving decisions over self-isolation and social distancing up to the citizens. BBC notes that almost half of Stockholm residents are working remotely, and that traffic is quieter than usual. Stockholm’s public transport company SL reports 50% fewer riders on subway and commuter trains last week.

Stockholm Business Region, a state-funded company that supports the city’s global business community, estimates that rises to at least 90% in the capital’s largest firms, thanks to a tech-savvy workforce and a business culture that has long promoted flexible and remote working practices.

“Every company that has the possibility to do this, they are doing it, and it works,” says its CEO Staffan Ingvarsson.

His words cut to the heart of the government’s strategy here: self-responsibility. Public health authorities and politicians are still hoping to slow down the spread of the virus without the need for draconian measures. –BBC

According to the report, there are ‘guidelines’ but not strict rules. People are advised to stay home if they’re sick or elderly, wash hands, and avoid non-essential travel whenever possible.

So far the country has had roughly 3,500 cases and 105 deaths.

Demography may also be a relevant factor in the country’s approach. In contrast to the multi-generational homes in Mediterranean countries, more than half of Swedish households are made up of one person, which cuts the risk of the virus spreading within families. –BBC

The BBC also notes that swedes love the outdoors – and officials have said that forcing people to stay inside would be physically and mentally unhealthy.

“We have to combine looking at minimising the health effects of the virus outbreak and the economic impacts of this health crisis,” said Stockholm Chamber of Commerce CEO Andreas Hatzigeorgiou.

“The business community here really thinks that the Swedish government and the Swedish approach is more sensible than in many other countries.“

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

We’ve reached the next stage of the EU’s evolution, whether it will adopt a common bond market or not. It’s been clear for a long time that something had to change if the European Union was to survive its political transformation.

And that issue is the formation of a shared debt structure underpinning the euro, commonly referred to as Eurobonds.

But in light of the current crisis they’ve been given the euphemism, “Coronabonds” and sold that way ad nauseum in the financial press, especially by Bloomberg.

Why? Because that’s the next step that’s been on the docket for a long time; pushing the EU to its breaking point and waiting for just the right moment to bulldozer what’s left of national sovereignty in Europe in the name of saving lives.

It’s truly stunning how inhuman political leaders are in this world. This is not to say I’m surprised but it’s still stunning.

This has zero to do with actually fighting the disease at this point. Just printing money and backing it with shared responsibility bonds is fundamentally no different than printing money locally to do the same thing.

It’s still not addressing the real problem… Europe is broke. Its bond market is non-functional under a negative interest rate regime.

The only way to bring legitimacy to pricing these ‘coronabonds’ is to have the ECB be an unlimited buyer of them.

And how it that supposed to build confidence in them exactly? I guess the EU actually agreeing about anything I suppose is good news?

A teleconference among EU leaders last week ended in apparent white-hot fury as the bloc remains completely split on the issue as it has been for decades.

The map from Bloomberg below hasn’t shifted with the COVID-19 crisis despite the hopes and strong-arm tactics in recent months by ECB President Christine Lagarde and French President Emmanuel Macron.

And with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political capital nearly spent the only position she can take so as to not be thrown out of power is to accede to the domestic fiscal conservatives.

No surprise there. If you are looking for anything resembling leadership from Merkel you need a trip to the eye doctor. Merkel represents stasis and little else. She is committed to that because she can’t do much more.

What’s worse is that she has done everything imaginable to remain in power at a time when decisive action from Germany is needed one way or the other.

Merkel’s classic dithering in the face of difficult choices is just one more source of instability across the EU political and financial landscape giving investors the heebie-jeebies.

She cannot be seen as siding with France, Italy and Spain in bailing them out of their bad choices. But she really wants to. That’s why she pulled so many strings to help the globalist government in Italy led by Giuseppe Conte block Lega’s Matteo Salvini from taking over.

But those countries’ bad choices were born of the structural inequities built into the structure of the euro in the first place. And those structural problems were always leading us to this moment.

Had Salvini forced new elections and took over, by now, he would have made an uncomfortable choice for the EU, which would have been introduce a domestic parallel currency, the mini-BOT, while Italy faced this crisis mostly alone.

The crowd in Europe screaming “moral hazard” over bailouts are absolutely right. But, at the same time, they have to accept responsibility that the debts they are owed need to be written down substantially and the whole idea of a pan-European union chalked up to a bad idea and ended once and for all.

Now, given all of this, what’s fascinating is that even the immediate threat of COVID-19 and the draconian shut down of vast stretches of the European economy hasn’t budged either side from their position.

That doesn’t bode well for the future of the European Union in its current form. The northern bloc has hardened its stance. The U.K. is gone. And with its independence it is showing many countries in the EU what that independence gains them in terms of flexibility and nimbleness in dealing with the virus.

It’s not that the U.K. has made nothing but good choices but it’s far freer to adjust its response to the crisis than any of the EU member states who are trapped in an ossified and unresponsive bureaucracy more interested in virtue signaling about core European values than they are about saving the lives of the people whose values they are supposed to represent.

They keep trying to put a brave face on their disagreements. Read the Bloomberg article I linked to above, there is nothing but downplaying of the contempt these leaders have for each other at this time in there. They are facing real human crises and Emmanuel Macron is worried about the future of the Schengen Treaty and eurobonds.

Well, of course he is. I’m sure he’s also hoping COVID-19 wipes out members of the Gilet Jaunes in greater numbers than those loyal to the French state. But all deaths will be a bailout to the French state pension system, so, it’s all good there too.

The contempt Macron has for humanity is palpable. Honestly, he should really spend more time with Mike Pompeo to compare notes on how to wrap that contempt in a thin veneer of unctuous self-righteousness.

It’d be an improvement, frankly.

Macron is the one driving this virtue signaling, anti-human bus over the cliff. He was chosen for the job. And he chose Lagarde to force the evolution of the ECB.

The problem is the mask has slipped. No one is buying what they are selling in this crisis. To use a true humanitarian crisis for cynical political gain is depraved. And yet, that’s where we are and not just in Europe.

But its effects are most pronounced there because of how fundamentally unbalanced the playing field is between members.

Conte in Italy is in lockstep with Macron to politicize this as much as possible to pressure Merkel into caving in. But in the end he may face the reality that he’s failed. That will spell his end in Italy when the worst of the crisis is over.

For Merkel, I don’t think it will be up to her because the opposition to this stretches beyond her control. And she won’t be able to pull the same trick Helmut Kohl did to unilaterally pull Germany into the euro-zone without a vote.

But don’t think she won’t try.

In a crisis even incredibly unpopular leaders stay in power simply out of a perceived need for stability until it’s over.

That’s why there is this urgency to get this done now. Because Macron and his ilk know the window will close on them quickly if they don’t.

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Despite one of the the world’s largest shipping lines, Maersk, recently suspending all crew changes aboard its container vessels for up to one month in order to shield crew and operations from the coronavirus and keep them “as normal as possible,” this weekend witnessed the first ever confirmed cases aboard a container ship.

In the past days reports have emerged that an entire crew from the Danish-flagged ship Gjertrud Maers have been tested, with some evacuated and hospitalized in Ningbo, China. A Maersk company spokesman later said in a press statement that “a number of our seafarers” on the ship were suspected for the virus.

“As per our established protocols, the seafarers were isolated on the vessel when symptoms appeared and we are providing medical treatment based on input from our medical advisers,” the Maersk statement said.

“The vessel was awaiting phasing into our network and currently idle at the quayside in Ningbo, China,” it added. “Extra precaution measures will be taken for crew replacement and sanitations will be implemented.”

Subsequent reports on Monday via state-run China News Service (CNS) indicate at least five of the crew members have tested positive for Covid-19, after a total of 22 foreign crew members were put in isolation aboard the ship while awaiting testing.

Initially seven crew members were reported as having “abnormal physical condition” over a week ago. Maersk did not immediately confirm the crew tested positive, however.

CEO of Maersk Ocean and Logistics, Vincent Clerc, late last week updated global customers and partners as to how the pandemic will impact shipping volume. He confirmed in a statement that necessary drastic actions taken by governments and companies to contain the spread of the virus will result in an economic slowdown. He added that recent interaction and conversations with customers “confirm our expectation of lower volume demand in the coming weeks.”

Multiple sailors on a @Maersk container ship tested positive for #coronavirus at port of Ningbo-Zhoushan, the busiest port in China, raising fears that #COVID19 may ultimately cripple global seaborne #trade: Chinese media reported. pic.twitter.com/hEJB4kX3aP

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) March 28, 2020

Clerc said further, “We are actively preparing our network to match a reduced demand level. We believe that it is our responsibility to rightsize in order to protect our cost position, both to be able to weather these storms but importantly also to ensure that you have a partner who cares for the integrity of your supply chain as we look to lifting the world out of this crisis.”

Last month the company said it was bracing itself for coronavirus to impact its 2020 earnings hard: 

Maersk said it expects earnings of around $5.5 billion this year, which is about 5% below what analysts had been predicting.

…Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, has warned of a “very weak” start to the year as the coronavirus keeps factories shuttered in China and dents demand for the transport of goods.

The Danish ship operator said Thursday [Feb.20] that it has canceled more than 50 trips to and from Asia since the Lunar New Year holiday was extended because of the outbreak. Shipping rates are expected to decrease as demand slips, the company said in an earnings report.

The company’s forecast for shipping volume growth of less than 1% is “pretty downbeat,” giving it some breathing space if the impact of the coronavirus is worse than expected, said Michael Field, an analyst at Morningstar…

“We estimate factories in China are operating at 50% to 60% of capacity,” CEO Søren Skou said on an earnings call.

Already countries in the West, often over-reliant on manufacturing in East Asia, are feeling the crunch of limited supplies of shipped goods as port activity dries up on significantly lower volumes. This is especially the case when it comes to vital medical supplies, including items as simple as protective medical gear like gowns, masks, and gloves.

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

The Spanish government, comprised of a coalition of Socialists and Communists, is facing legal action for alleged negligence in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The government is accused of putting its narrow ideological interests ahead of the safety and wellbeing of the public, and, in so doing, unnecessarily worsening the humanitarian crisis now gripping Spain, currently the second-worst afflicted country in Europe after Italy.

A class action lawsuit filed on March 19 accuses the Spanish government — highly ideological by any standard, as the Communist coalition partner, Podemos, was founded with seed money from the Venezuelan government — of knowingly endangering public safety by encouraging the public to participate in more than 75 feminist marches, held across Spain on March 8, to mark International Women’s Day.

The nationwide rallies were aimed at protesting the government’s perennial bugbear: the alleged patriarchy of Western civilization.

Hundreds of thousands of people participated in those marches, and several high-profile attendees — including Spain’s deputy prime minister, as well as the prime minister’s wife and mother, and also the wife of the leader of Podemos — have since tested positive for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). It is unknown how many people were infected by the coronavirus as a result of the rallies.

The lawsuit, involving more than 5,000 plaintiffs, accuses Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his representatives in Spain’s 17 autonomous regions of “prevarication” — a Spanish legal term that means lying and deceiving. The government was allegedly so determined to ensure that the feminist marches took place on March 8 that it deliberately downplayed warnings about the pandemic. These warnings include:

• September 2019. The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, an international panel of experts convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), warned of a “very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5% of the world’s economy.

• December 31. China alerted WHO to several cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan, a port city of 11 million people in the central Hubei province. The virus was unknown.

• January 7. China identified the new coronavirus as the cause of a mystery disease in Wuhan.

• January 21. WHO confirmed human-to-human transmission of the virus.

• January 29. Spanish pharmaceutical cooperatives warned that pharmacies were running out of masks due to a surge in demand. Sales of masks surged by 3,000% in January compared to the year before.

• January 30. WHO Director-General declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

• January 31. The first known case of COVID-19 in Spain was confirmed in La Gomera, Canary Islands, where a German tourist tested positive and was admitted to a local hospital.

• February 12. Mobile World Congress, the world’s largest mobile phone trade fair, which draws more than 100,000 participants from 200 countries, was cancelled due to fears of coronavirus. The financial loss to Barcelona and the city’s hospitality industry was estimated to be €500 million ($560 million).

• February 24. More than 1,000 guests and employees at the Costa Adeje Palace hotel in Tenerife, Canary Islands, were quarantined after an Italian citizen tested positive for COVID-19.

• February 27. A 62-year-old man from Seville tested positive for COVID-19. His was the first case of local transmission of the virus in Spain. The man said that he believed he was infected during a banking conference in Malaga, where he sat next to a partner who traveled to the Canary Islands on vacation and had had contact with people from Asia. Doctors said that the diagnosis was of “great importance” because it proved that COVID-19 has been circulating in Spain without detection.

• March 2. The European Center for Disease Control and Prevention advised European countries to cancel mass gatherings of people to prevent the transmission of coronavirus.

• March 2. The Spanish Medical Agency sent a letter to pharmaceutical distributors to restrict the marketing of masks and to block their distribution across Spanish pharmacies. The agency’s objective, on the advice of the Ministry of Health, was to ensure the supply of masks to hospitals and health centers at a time when the number of confirmed cases was beginning to multiply. The measure blocked sales to Spanish pharmacies, as well as sales abroad.

• March 3. The regional health ministry in Valencia announced that the first coronavirus fatality in Spain died on February 13. Health authorities did not know he had the virus until 19 days after his death — an indication that Spanish authorities have been slow to understand the outbreak. Since coronavirus cases that end in death last between two and eight weeks, in addition to a 14-day incubation period, it is possible that the man was infected as early as the beginning of January.

• March 3. Spanish authorities ordered major football and basketball matches to be held behind closed doors with no spectators allowed to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

• March 6. The Spanish Ministry of Health advised: “The precautionary principle must prevail. The emergence of a hitherto unknown virus means that precautionary measures must be taken based on the existing scientific knowledge regarding viruses.”

On March 7, despite these warnings, the Spanish government’s main point man for the coronavirus, Fernando Simón, claimed in a nationwide press conference that there was no risk of attending the rallies on March 8.

“If my son asks me if he can go, I will tell him to do whatever he wants,” he said.

The intrepid, Spain-based journalist Matthew Bennett discovered that the Spanish government failed to report new coronavirus cases between March 6 and March 9, apparently in an effort to downplay the danger to the public of attending the rallies.

On March 9, after the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Madrid doubled in one day, the President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, ordered all schools in the capital to be closed for at least two weeks. The decision by the regional government caught the central government by surprise and effectively forced it to act.

• March 10. Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa, a Catalan philosophy major with no experience in medicine, said: “Today’s situation may be different from yesterday’s, it is changing, and this will continue to be so until we overcome this situation.”

• March 11. The Spanish government acknowledged that it knew on March 8, before the feminist rallies took place, that the coronavirus outbreak in Madrid was out of control.

• March 12. Prime Minister Sánchez, defending himself against criticism that he allowed the marches to go ahead, said that his government was responding to the “dynamic” situation of the coronavirus by “adapting” to the “hourly” recommendations of scientific experts.

• March 14. The central government announced a nationwide state of emergency that effectively placed 46 million people in lockdown for at least 15 days. All non-essential travel has been prohibited and people are confined to their homes except in cases of emergency or to purchase food or medicine. All schools and universities in the country are closed.

• March 29. The lockdown, the strictest in all of Europe, was extended until April 11.

The lawsuit has been forwarded to the Spanish Supreme Court due to the prime minister’s immunity.

Article 404 of the Penal Code establishes a penalty of between nine to 15 years of disqualification for public office for public officials convicted of the crime of prevarication.

Víctor Valladares, a Madrid-based lawyer who is leading the lawsuit, said:

“The result of the calls for these demonstrations and their direct approval by government delegations and by the inaction of the central government chaired by the accused, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, could not be more antagonistic to what the EU indicated in its report. Why was not an order issued to prevent any type of mass event?”

Meanwhile, the Association of Doctors and Medics of Madrid (AMYTS) and the Confederation of Medical Trade Unions (CESM) also filed lawsuits against the government. The complaint demands that the federal and local governments provide hospitals in Madrid with masks, protective glasses and waste containers within 24 hours.

The Spanish blogger Elentir, who operates the blog Contando Estrelas, a politically astute website that is essential to understanding contemporary Spanish politics, wrote:

“As we found out, 16 days late, the first death from coronavirus had occurred in Spain on February 13. Faced with the risk that the massive feminist mobilizations on Sunday, March 8 could be cancelled, Fernando Simón commented: ‘We have no specific recommendation on the suspension of the rally on March 8.’

“On March 9, one day after the feminist marches, Health Minister Salvador Illa expressly recommend that all people with chronic diseases or multiple pathologies do not leave their homes except for emergencies…. He said this immediately after the feminist rallies held on March 8.

“Honestly, it seems to me a joke that the government has waited until today, clearly for political reasons, to make this announcement. The Socialist-Communist government has once again put its political interests above the common good. This gross negligence should lead to resignations.”

Criticism of the Spanish government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has also come from members of the Socialist Party itself. On March 22, Juan Luis Cebrián, a co-founder of the newspaper El País, a notorious mouthpiece of the Socialist Party, wrote:

“The crocodile tears of so many political leaders who claim that no one could have imagined such a thing such as the coronavirus do not make any sense. There were not only those who imagined it: they foresaw it, and they seriously warned about it. There has undoubtedly been negligence on the part of the various health ministers and their bosses, and in France three doctors have already filed a complaint against the government for this reason. The consequence is that most Western nations today are overwhelmed in their abilities to fight the epidemic. They reacted late and erroneously. Lacking is: hospital beds, medical personnel, respirators and transparency in official information.

“On February 24, WHO officially declared the probability that we would be faced with a pandemic. Despite this and knowing the magnitude of the threat, which has already been fully realized in several countries, hardly any measures were taken in most of the potential scenarios for the spread of the virus. In the case of Spain, attendance at gigantic demonstrations was encouraged, the holding of massive popular festivals was promoted, urgent funding for research was delayed, the threat was minimized, and even the official still in charge today of the scientific recommendations dared to say between smiles that there was no risk to the population.

“This is not the time to open a debate on the subject, but it is legitimate to assume that in addition to political responsibilities, citizens… will have the right to demand legal redress if there is guilty negligence.”

Spain is one of the European countries most effected by the virus: As of March 29, more than 80,000 people had been diagnosed with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and more than 6,500 had died as a result. The actual number of people infected may be ten times higher due to the lack of testing of asymptomatic cases. As the pandemic runs its course, Spain is on track soon to overtake Italy as Europe’s hardest-hit country.