Month: December 2020

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have been discussing curious Covid-related offenses this year, but a Wisconsin controversy raises a particularly challenging such question.

Advocate Aurora Health has admitted that an employee intentionally removed 57 vials of the Moderna vaccine from refrigeration.  The intentional act, originally claimed to be accidental, resulted in the destruction of 500 doses of the potentially life-saying vaccine.

Advocate Aurora Health said the employee was fired. However, an intentional destruction of the doses would seem the ultimate product tampering case. Either compromised vaccines would be given patients or 500 people will have to wait longer for the protection from Covid-19.

The FBI is reportedly investigating the incident.  This would seem a serious offense in the midst of a pandemic.

The Justice Department has been investigating fraudulent Covid-19 vaccines or treatments.  This is effective destruction of real vaccine. It is unclear whether it would be investigated as tampering. Section 1365 states:

(a)Whoever, with reckless disregard for the risk that another person will be placed in danger of death or bodily injury and under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to such risk, tampers with any consumer product that affects interstate or foreign commerce, or the labeling of, or container for, any such product, or attempts to do so, shall—

(1) in the case of an attempt, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;

(2) if death of an individual results, be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both;

(3) if serious bodily injury to any individual results, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both; and

(4) in any other case, be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(b) Whoever, with intent to cause serious injury to the business of any person, taints any consumer product or renders materially false or misleading the labeling of, or container for, a consumer product, if such consumer product affects interstate or foreign commerce, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

Both section might apply to this circumstance.

This is a case where criminal prosecution would be the only effective deterrent. It is difficult for individuals to sue such defendants (or the hospital) due to the risk of contracting Covid-19 or even those who did contract the virus while waiting.

One of the issues for the FBI will be whether the individual disclosed the tampering or was willing to have the compromised vaccine administered to patients.  Even with such disclosure, however, there are 500 people who will have to wait longer for a vaccine in the midst of a national pandemic.

As the World Health Organization and other China puppets struggle to assemble a ‘natural origin’ theory for COVID-19, the CCP has been going to great lengths to quash non-sanctioned investigations that may instead point to a lab escape from research facilities which made international headlines in 2015 for dangerous ‘gain-of-function‘ research – by which they were manipulating coronaviruses to better infect humans.

And while mainstream news outlets spent the better part of 2019 flatly rejecting lab-origin evidence as ‘debunked conspiracy theories’ – which earned ZeroHedge a temporary Twitter ban and a plethora of social media warning labels and ‘fact checks’ (including one from a former Wuhan Lab worker) the same mainstream outlets are now finding China’s suppression of COVID-19 origin theories suspicious.

As part of their investigation, AP interviewed dozens of Chinese and foreign scientists and officials, while also reviewing leaked emails, internal data, as well as documents from China’s CDC and cabinet. And what did they find? “A pattern of government secrecy and top-down control that has been evident throughout the pandemic.”

…for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.

A bat research team visiting recently managed to take samples but had them confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said. Specialists in coronaviruses have been ordered not to speak to the press. And a team of Associated Press journalists was tailed by plainclothes police in multiple cars who blocked access to roads and sites in late November.

More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China. –Associated Press

Let’s quickly review the world’s easiest game of connect-the-dots:

• In 2013, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology collected horseshoe bat feces at a cave 1,000 miles away infected with a coronavirus 96.2% identical to the virus which causes COVID-19 (Nature).

• Peng Zhou, Wuhan Institute of Virology’s head of Bat Virus Infection and Immunization, was researching “the molecular mechanism that allows Ebola and SARS-associated coronaviruses to lie dormant for a long time without causing diseases,” while a press release from his lab was titled “How bats carry viruses without getting sick.“

• Zhou’s colleague, Shi Zhengli, has been involved in bioengineering bat coronaviruses – co-authoring a controversial 2015 paper which described the creation of a new virus by combining a coronavirus found in Chinese horseshoe bats with another that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice.

• In 2015, Nature magazine expressed concern over Zhengli’s experiments with bat coronavirus. The same year, the US government suspended funding to the lab  due to their concern over risks of experimenting with bat coronavirus.

• Meanwhile, the US State Department warned over safety standards at the Wuhan lab in a series of cables beginning in 2015, according to the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin.

Add to that China’s active suppression of lab-origin theories while their partners at the World Health Organization continue to hunt for some heretofore non-existent crossover species, and it doesn’t take Matlock to figure out that the official narrative is severely flawed.

The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by the AP. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: The clampdown comes from the top.

As a result, very little has been made public. Authorities are severely limiting information and impeding cooperation with international scientists. –Associated Press

“What did they find?” asks Duke University epidemiologist, Gregory Gray, who oversees a lab in China studying the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to people. “Maybe their data were not conclusive, or maybe they suppressed the data for some political reason. I don’t know … I wish I did.”

Scientists familiar with China’s public health system say the CCP’s standard operating procedure of information control and censorship apply to all aspects of COVID-19 research.

“They only select people they can trust, those that they can control,” said one public health expert who works regularly with China’s CDC. “Military teams and others are working hard on this, but whether it gets published all depends on the outcome.”

According to the report, Beijing worries that investigations will also reveal that they were negligent in the spread of the virus.

Some public health experts warn that China’s refusal to grant further access to international scientists has jeopardized the global collaboration that pinpointed the source of the SARS outbreak nearly two decades ago. Jonna Mazet, a founding executive director of the UC Davis One Health Institute, said the lack of collaboration between Chinese and U.S. scientists was “a disappointment” and the inability of American scientists to work in China “devastating.”

“There’s so much speculation around the origins of this virus,” Mazet said. “We need to step back…and let scientists get the real answer without the finger-pointing.” –Associated Press

Steering the narrative

Now that AP has caught up and corroborated what we’ve been reporting on ad nauseam – albeit via burning their own hand on the stove – they’re also piecing together the enormous disinformation campaign employed by Beijing to try and control the narrative.

After the initial batch of COVID-19 cases were traced to the Hunan Seafood market in Wuhan, authorities began collecting samples for analysis – finding that 33 out of 585 environmental samples tested positive for the virus.

“This corona(virus) is very close to SARS,” wrote Canadian microbiologist Gary Kobinger, a WHO adviser, according to internal China CDC data obtained by AP. “If we put aside an accident … then I would look at the bats in these markets (sold and ‘wild’).“

Then, “As the virus continued spreading rapidly into February, Chinese scientists published a burst of research papers on COVID-19. Then a paper by two Chinese scientists proposed without concrete evidence that the virus could have leaked from a Wuhan laboratory near the market. It was later taken down, but it raised the need for image control.”

Internal documents show that the state soon began requiring all coronavirus studies in China to be approved by high-level government officials — a policy that critics say paralyzed research efforts.

A China CDC lab notice on Feb. 24 put in new approval processes for publication under “important instructions” from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Other notices ordered CDC staff not to share any data, specimens or other information related to the coronavirus with outside institutions or individuals.

Then on March 2, Xi emphasized “coordination” on coronavirus research, state media reported.

The next day, China’s cabinet, the State Council, centralized all COVID-19 publication under a special task force. The notice, obtained by the AP and marked “not to be made public,” was far more sweeping in scope than the earlier CDC notices, applying to all universities, companies and medical and research institutions.

The order said communication and publication of research had to be orchestrated like “a game of chess” under instructions from Xi, and propaganda and public opinion teams were to “guide publication.” It went on to warn that those who publish without permission, “causing serious adverse social impact, shall be held accountable.” –Associated Press

“The regulations are very strict, and they don’t make any sense,” said one former China DCD deputy director on condition of anonymity. “I think it’s political, because people overseas could find things being said there that might contradict what China says, so it’s all being controlled.“

And after thousands of samples were taken from the Hunan Seafood market, no findings were ever made public. Yet, on May 25, CDC chief Gao Fu finally broke the silence – telling China’s Phoenix TV that no animal samples from the market had tested positive, ruling out the market as the likely source of the virus despite its link to the majority of new cases in the region.

China’s government-controlled media used the theory to suggest the original outbreak in Wuhan could have started with seafood imported from abroad — a notion international scientists reject. WHO has said it is very unlikely that people can be infected with COVID-19 via packaged food, and that it is “highly speculative” to suggest COVID-19 did not start in China. Bi did not respond to requests for an interview, and China has not provided enough virus samples for a definitive analysis.

We would be remiss if we didn’t note that the now-destroyed Wet Market was located roughly 900 feet from a China CDC aboratory where they were experimenting on bat coronavirus.

Read the rest of AP‘s report here.

By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,

Is this the end of the mysterious trans-Pacific rate plateau?

The good news for ocean carriers – and bad news for shippers – is that rates are rising yet again. Base spot rates for container shipments from Asia to the U.S. West Coast had been curiously flat since late September. Rates kept to a narrow band at record-high levels of around $3,800-$3,900 per forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU).

The unnatural flatness of the rate trend line during a period when demand was not flat led to speculation that the trans-Pacific rate level was, in fact, not natural.

One theory is that liners declined to charge higher base spot rates after a meeting with Chinese regulators in mid-September. Actual rates continued to increase when including premium charges, with the static base rate meant to assuage regulators — or so the theory goes.

Whether that speculation is true or not, something appears to have budged. Over recent days, spot rates have headed higher.

Rates up to both coasts

According to the Freightos Baltic Daily Index, Asia-West Coast rates rose to a fresh all-time high of $4,189 per FEU on Monday, up 8% from last Friday. Rates are now triple what they were one year ago.

Rates also just jumped on the Asia-East Coast route Spot rates were $5,397 per FEU on Monday, up 9% from last Friday. Rates in this trade lane are now double what they were one year ago.

‘Tacit agreement’ coming to an end?

According to Judah Levine, research lead at the Freightos Group, “Still-surging demand for ocean freight and the resulting global equipment shortage pushed rates up across most of the major ex-Asia lanes this week, after what seemed like a slowing in upward pressure last week.

“Most surprisingly, rates on both trans-Pacific lanes climbed significantly for the first time since mid-September, perhaps signaling that carriers’ tacit agreement with Chinese regulators not to increase prices on these lanes may be coming to an end,” Levine speculated.

No letup in sight

The stage appears set for continued ultra-high rates in January. After adding surcharges in mid-December, a number of carriers are scheduled to implement general rate increases (GRIs) starting Friday, according to notices posted through Distribution Publications.

Jan. 1 Asia-U.S. GRIs of $1,000 per FEU have been announced by CMA CGM, COSCO (for service contracts only), Evergreen, HMM, ONE, Yang Ming and ZIM. In addition, Hapag-Lloyd has a $1,500 per FEU GRI listed for Jan. 1 consisting of previously postponed GRIs.

Southern California pileup

Meanwhile, it’s busy as ever at Southern California ports. 

The Marine Exchange of Southern California reported 24 container ships at anchor in San Pedro Bay on Monday. Five more were due to arrive and four were due to leave anchorage for berths at the ports of Los Angeles or Long Beach. The Marine Exchange reported that regular anchorages are full and several of the contingency anchorages are also occupied.

A map from MarineTraffic using Automated Identification System (ship positioning) data reveals the extent of the container-ship pileup in San Pedro Bay. The situation has not improved over recent weeks — if anything, it appears to have worsened.

It’s the same story on the terminal side of the equation. The Port of Los Angeles provides visibility via its daily data from The Signal. In recent months, this data has shown that congestion appears to be continually pushing significant volumes from one week to the next.

As of Tuesday, the port was projecting imports of 116,501 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) during the current holiday week. Manifest data for the first half of January shows considerably higher volumes topping 150,000 TEUs per week.

If 2020 seems like a blur, it was. Amid the backdrop of a global pandemic, ensuing lockdowns, and an election year, dozens of competing narratives overlapped to provide nothing short of information overload.

To help visualize this roller coaster, Axios is out with their fourth annual Google Trends chart.

“We have never seen a year like this in Google Trends history,” said Google data editor, Simon Rogers.

“These were huge stories that changed how we search.”

Since “coronavirus” and “elections” were the dominant themes, they were omitted from the analysis – and instead far more specific search terms were used such as “masks,” “Anthony Fauci,” “absentee ballots” and “Joe Biden.”

Via Axios:

Between the lines: The chart again reveals how short Americans’ attention span can be, with surges in Google searches often lasting only a week for a given topic.

• You can see this with 2020 topics like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tearing up President Trump’s State of the Union speech, Kobe Bryant’s death and the Beirut explosion.

• But several big topics saw multiple weeks of increased interest this year, such as masks, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s exit from the royal family, the QAnon conspiracy theory, the record-breaking use of absentee ballots because of the pandemic, and the various investigations and conspiracy theories involving Hunter Biden.

When “coronavirus” and “elections” are excluded, the death of Kobe Bryant generated the largest spike in searches of any other single news event – though it garnered just 10% of the search volume of those primary topics. 

According to Rogers, searches related to unemployment, hunger and food were higher than they’ve ever been, while a search for “elections” around November 3 overshadoweed even coronavirus – the latter of which remained of high interest for longer.

See for yourself below:

Source: Axios

Authored by Bryan Preston via PJMedia.com,

With COVID-related hospitalizations on the rise, but with little to no data demonstrating that shutdowns actually help slow the spread of the virus, Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D) has ordered a partial restaurant and bar shutdown across the New Year’s holiday in the city.

.@MayorAdler announces that Austin/Travis County restaurants and bars must stop dine-in food and beverage service from 10:30 p.m.-6 a.m., effective Dec. 31-Jan. 3.

Violation is a criminal offense to not exceed $1,000 fine @KXAN_News https://t.co/jCpkf5WFrR

— John Engel (@EngelsAngle) December 30, 2020

Restaurants don’t appear to be major COVID spread vectors, yet they’re being shuttered (again).

If shutdowns worked, California would be in the COVID catbird seat. It’s one of the nation’s most shut down states, with 47 counties on stay-at-home shutdown. But the San Francisco Chronicle says California has the worst COVID surge in the nation, by far. It’s considering rationing healthcare because its COVID surge is so strong.

Florida, meanwhile, is far more open, and is suffering much less of a COVID surge.

The wisdom of shutdowns is scientifically questionable, and economically ruinous.

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott (R) took to social media to countermand Adler’s order.

“This shutdown order by Austin isn’t allowed. Period. My executive order stops cities like Austin from arbitrarily shutting down businesses. The city has a responsibility to enforce existing orders, not make new ones.”

Cities exist because states allow them to.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) weighed in.

Then, on Wednesday evening, the AG’s Office announced he filed a petition for temporary injunction and temporary restraining order in Travis County to stop the order’s enforcement. In the statement, Paxton said:

“The fact that these two local leaders released their orders at night and on the eve of a major holiday shows how much contempt they have for Texans and local businesses. They think breaking the law is a game of running the clock before anyone can do anything about it.

Texas is a law-and-order state, and these are lives and livelihoods that are at stake.

I’ll continue to defend them against the arbitrariness of the mayor and county judge.”

Making violations a “criminal offense” is an ironic touch. Adler led the defunding of Austin’s police back in August. That led to a demoralization of the police force and a very high rate of attrition from it. More are expected to leave once Adler’s cuts take force in January.

In an interview with KXAN on Wednesday night, Adler responded to Paxton’s filed petition, and he says he’s prepared to defend the city and Travis County in court.

“We’re going to defend it in court. We hope that we win… if we don’t win I want to remind the community that just because the government says you can do things that make the community less safe doesn’t mean you have to do them.”

Adler said he has no plans to rescind the order.

Also, recall that around Thanksgiving, Adler encouraged Austin to just stay home — while he was lounging in luxury in Cabo. Whatever was left of his credibility stayed in Cabo.

Austin, TX Mayor Steve Adler issues instructions to stay home while he vacations in Mexico. Image from social media.

The whole thing is mad. If Adler’s order accomplishes anything, it will have helped created an untold number of New Year’s house parties all over the city, since people can’t go out to bars and restaurants, and Austin remains a college town with a state government jammed into it.

Local radio host Todd Jeffries wondered how Adler even intends to enforce his order.

The Texas Legislature convenes in its 87th session in January. There’s a bill in the works to take the Austin Police Department away from Adler and the city council, and transfer it to the state.

There’s rumbling all over Austin that Adler and the left-wing city council had ruined the city even before the pandemic. Republican Mackenzie Kelly just defeated Democrat and anti-police incumbent Jimmy Flannigan in a city council runoff, indicating danger in the air for other Democrats in the deep blue city. Nationally, after Dr. Fauci has been caught in yet another sleight-of-hand, atop months of extremely arbitrary shutdowns and clampdowns on churches (!) but not riots (!), the shutdown regime has no credibility left whatsoever.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Monday that new unmanned aerial vehicle guidelines would allow drones to operate at night, paving the way for future commercial deliveries. 

The FAA said the new rules would require drones to be embedded with identification technology to be easily be identifiable from the ground. For night operations, the drones must be equipped with anti-collision lights.

“These final rules carefully address safety, security, and privacy concerns while advancing opportunities for innovation and utilization of drone technology,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao.

The news rules are expected to take effect 60 days after publication in the federal register in January. This means all drone manufacturers will have 18 months to abide by the new rules. Operators will have an additional year to start abiding by the new rules. 

The inclusion of drones in the transportation sector, especially for last-mile deliveries, will offer customers even faster delivery times. With more people than ever shopping at home – faster delivery speeds have become a priority and concern – one way to achieve this is through drones that will easily disrupt and change the face of last-mile logistics and delivery networks.

Companies like Amazon, Alphabet, Walmart, and the United Parcel Service are already working on drone technology and how to include them into their logistical networks. 

Authored by Stephen Lendman,

According to the WHO, seasonal flu/influenza practically disappeared this year in the southern hemisphere.

“In tropical South America, there were no influenza detections…”

“Globally… influenza activity remained at lower levels than expected for this time of the year.”

Lower means flu practically didn’t show up this year like always before.

Here’s 2019 Flu…

Source: CDC

And here’s 2020…

Source: CDC

Where have all the flu outbreaks gone?

See below.

Separately, the WHO claimed that “various hygiene (including mask wearing) and physical distancing measures…likely played a role in reducing influenza virus transmission.”

Mask-wearing is ineffective and potentially harmful to health.

Masks are porous. They have to be. Otherwise wearers would suffocate.

Aerosol spores are minuscule. Able to penetrate all masks and concentrate beneath them risks greater harm to wearers than avoiding their use.

Everything ordered or recommended this year for protection did infinitely more harm than good – notably from lost jobs and income during lockdowns and quarantines.

The CDC casually said “(s)easonal influenza activity in the United States remains lower than usual for this time of year.”

It practically disappeared — or did it?

Covid is “seasonal influenza” in disguise — in the US and worldwide.

In its latest weekly reporting period pre-yearend, the CDC said:

“The percentage of respiratory specimens testing positive for influenza at clinical laboratories is” one-10th of 1%.

It’s practically nonexistent.

For the three-month period in the US ending in late December, findings were virtually the same.

There’s almost no seasonal influenza showing up this year because their outbreaks are called covid.

Overall worldwide, seasonal influenza is around 98% lower this year than in earlier flu seasons.

WHO spokesperson Dr. Sylvie Briand recently claimed that “literally there was nearly no flu in the Southern Hemisphere” in 2020, adding:

“We hope that the situation will be the same in the Northern Hemisphere” at end of this flu season.

If the current trend continues as is highly likely, the incidence of seasonal influenza will be minuscule compared to previous years in northern and southern hemispheres. At the same time in the US nationwide and worldwide, high numbers of covid are reported.

If accurately identified, they’d be called influenza that shows up annually in the US and abroad like clockwork.

It’s unaccompanied by fear-mongering mass hysteria, lockdowns, quarantines, mask-wearing, social distancing, and most important: 

No economic collapse occurs that caused the Greatest Main Street Depression in US history this year that’s likely to be protracted to maintain social control and continue transferring unprecedented amounts of wealth from ordinary people to the wealthy.

They’re enjoying a bonanza of riches from what’s going on at the expense of most others.

On December 15, Nature.com noted that “(m)easures meant to tame the coronavirus pandemic are quashing influenza and most other respiratory diseases” – calling what’s going on the “influenza fizzle.”

Claiming “lockdowns stopped flu in its tracks, (outbreaks) plummet(ting) by 98% in the United States” ignored that what’s called covid is seasonal influenza.

The great 2020 disappearing flu passes largely under the mass media’s radar.

Media proliferated mass deception and power of repetition get most people to believe that what’s harmful to health and well-being is beneficial.