Asking What Happened,
One thing I have been seeing in clinic since last summer, a minor thing, usually brought home by the kids, is a cold that may give a fever for the first 2 days, which are the worst days for feeling achy and bad and so on, but then there is a cough and maybe sniffles for another 5 days. A “regular cold”.
The more interesting thing that I saw all last summer, fall and early winter, and might still be out there, but differently interpreted, is “the cold that lasts 3-4 weeks”. My wife is an elementary school librarian. Jenny and I both had it in September/October. I had already been seeing it for several months. People would come in during week 3 of symptoms, which always included rawness deeper down in the central chest, saying, “something’s wrong, I never stay sick this long. I think I need antibiotics or something”.
In late November or early December I had a patient get hospitalized for some-bad-something that affected his lungs, heart, whole body, and got him every test the residents and attending faculty could think of. He was diagnosed with viral pneumonia, caused by coronavirus. That was completely novel, but I remembered it, because I did not get those hospital records until January, and questions were already rolling about in my mind.
Was this the same coronavirus as in China?
Was this a milder, but similar coronavirus, released in the US ahead of the pandemic wave as a vaccination to the population?
I still have those same questions. I’m not “plagued” by them, because I’m ok with having unanswered questions. Wrong answers are preferred by many, but I have always detested that shite (Please excuse my Irish!)
It is now in the discourse, protested mightily by Trump, Pompeo and friends, that this virus (always pretending there is only one version) originated in the US, Ft. Detrick, and got spread to US soldiers, accidentally or purposefully (like Lyme probably did, and the 1975-1976 Swine Flu). You can never tell if Ft Detrick meant to do stuff. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Anyway, they got shut down for “breaches-but-no-harm-done” last July and opened back up for business in November. (Do scroll http://www.johndayblog.com for those stories, if curious).
We can’t tell, because nobody is reporting RNA sequences openly for comparison any more, what versions of this viral family popped up when and where. It sure looks military. The viral sequences of L-strain and S-strain described in China show that the attack-sites are the same spike-protein-and-binding-sequence, but “neutral” segments of the genome are as much as 17% different. I likened that to mounting Texas Longhorn regalia on the front of a Ford and a Chevy. They look like the same car after that, but they started different.
I am hopeful that when the blood testing for antibodies eventually becomes available to me, in Austin, and I seem to be the only one at clinic who has heard of it, that it will show different immunogenic bands, for the 5 endemic coronavirus types in the US, and the important newcomer(s).
I can’t hold my breath waiting…
Things don't work at my clinic now. You can't get a urine dipped to see if there is infection without 30 minute lab-only appointment. There are none to be had any time soon. Urine infections can spread to the kidneys and then to the blood. Treating early prevents that. Treating blindly with antibiotics causes so very many public health problems. Dipping the urine with a quick, cheap test, solves most of that. This is only one example of how things are broken. It is pervasive.
Caitlin Johnstone:
Weaponizing a virus is the thing that biological warfare is. The US government might not have deliberately released the virus (also not a settled question), but they are using the virus as a weapon aimed at toppling vulnerable targeted governments. The use of biological warfare, or germ warfare, is prohibited by international law, though in typical fashion the US is skirting the parameters of those laws in this case by weaponizing a virus that was already spreading. Which is not to say that the US is above deliberately infecting a population using biological weaponry as well; they used them extensively during the Korean War.
Thousands of Iranians have already died of this virus due to the difficulties US sanctions create in obtaining medicine, equipment and resources, and it’s possible that orders of magnitude more dead may follow. This is not accidental, this is deliberate. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has gone on record to say that the objective is to make Iranian civilians so miserable and desperate that they overthrow their own government, and it is clear that this virus is being employed toward this purpose.
This same imperial war machine is actively attempting to inflict this same fate upon Venezuela, where tens of thousands have already died of malnutrition and inability to access medicine because of the Trump administration’s brutal economic warfare. The DC-based International Monetary Fund has denied Venezuela a loan it says it needs to fight the pandemic citing dispute over the legitimacy of the Maduro government, a dispute the US itself created out of thin air and narrative spin. On top of all this the Trump administration is now offering a $15 million bribe to anyone who will help them arrest Maduro on ridiculous drug trafficking and terrorism charges.
Who would benefit from a disease-ravaged nation not having a government? Certainly not the Venezuelan people.
Moon of Alabama on turning the knife in the wounds of Iran and Venezuela:
Philip Giraldi:
Based on his wartime status, the president and his cabinet are poised to exploit Civil War and Korean War legislation to assume powers over the economy and will likely arrange bailouts of some industries that will then acquire the government as a partner. The now declared “national emergency” will undoubtedly come to include some forms of martial law to enforce the isolation of targeted populations and it is also being reported that the Justice Department has asked Congress to allow judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during the “emergency.” As we have learned from the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and the Authorization to Use Military Force, allegedly temporary powers acquired by the executive branch have frequently become permanent. Unrestrained power in the hands of a Trump or Biden should frighten anyone who is still interested in voting in November. There is some speculation that Trump might well follow the example being set by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Israel has banned foreign visitors, is under 24 hours curfew and is effectively in lockdown. It is using cell phone intercepts provided by the intelligence services to track the comings and goings of Israeli residents.
Apart from modest belated efforts at mitigation, the existing national security state is about as pertinent to addressing such threats as President Trump’s cheery expectations that the coronavirus will simply evaporate once warmer weather appears. Terror has indeed arrived on our shores and it has nothing to do with al-Qaeda or ISIS or Iranian-backed militias. Americans are terrorized because it has now become apparent that our government, whether out of negligence or stupidity, has left them exposed to dangers that truly put life and liberty at risk. As it happens, all these years in which the national security state has been preoccupied with projecting hard power abroad have left us naked and vulnerable right here at home.
Protecting Americans where they live ought to be the national security priority of our time. The existing national security state is incapable of fulfilling that imperative, while its leaders, fixated on waging distant wars, have yet to even accept that they have a responsibility to do so.
Worst of all, even in this election year, no one on the national political scene appears to recognize the danger now fully at hand.
Protecting Americans where they live ought to be the national security priority of our time. The existing national security state is incapable of fulfilling that imperative, while its leaders, fixated on waging distant wars, have yet to even accept that they have a responsibility to do so.
Worst of all, even in this election year, no one on the national political scene appears to recognize the danger now fully at hand.
Residents of Hubei Province were released from quarantine, but they were not allowed to cross the river to return to work. Hubei citizens and Hubei police battled Jiangxi police for a strategic bridge.
Regimes change when enforcers change sides. Masters know this. It worries them. It happens in a flash.
Residents of Hubei province in China teamed up with their local police force to battle the police from neighboring Jiangxi province - who set up a roadblock on the Yangtze River Bridge to prevent the people of Hubei from crossing and returning to work.
Trump gives the Pentagon authority to call up retired troops. These are the troops that already know the lies and evil. What side will they take?
Power elites maintain their power through "ownership" of factories, productive farmland, railroads, fleets of trucks, and control of working people by holding them in debt servitude, with the threat of economic banishment and eviction from their homes.
This requires enforcement by enforcers. At home it is police and alphabet-soup agencies like CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. Abroad enforcement-of-ownership is military, the US banking system, and some of those alphabet-soup agencies.
If you were a military reservist, or retired soldier, called back to duty, what would you be willing to do to Americans, in order to enforce "ownership" by the elites?
Just askin'...
Matt Stoller has an article about the $6 trillion (and counting) bill to save the owners just before the collapse, so they can keep owning everything, and modestly expand their holdings.
Congress is going to pass a bill with a lot of important stuff for workers, hospitals, cities and small business, and to address the pandemic. That's inevitable. And the bill on the table includes some of this. The question though is what else the bill includes, and that’s where we get into trouble. Because while we have to deal with the pandemic and crisis, we do not have to fundamentally eliminate the economic rights of all of us in the process.
We might be able to do a lot more testing soon.
That is the door to the loooong hallway to the other side of this snake-pit.
Trying To Help
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