Sunday, May 31, 2020

Showdown On The Titanic

Dueling With Narratives,

Paul Craig Roberts on coronavirus as a sort of probe into the political realities of the USA in 2020. 
​  ​At a time when accurate information is essential, the waters are instead muddied by disinformation in the service of political, ideological, and profit agendas.  The irresponsibility of those putting their self-interests first is extraordinary.  It indicates that the social bond between people that made America a country has been dissolved by greed, multiculturalism, and Identity Politics.  America has become a country without a common interest. It is a narcissistic state.
​  ​This article is limited to the campaign against HCQ.  HCQ—hydroxychloroquine—has been in use for 65 years for the prevention or treatment of malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis.  It is officially labeled a safe drug.  Many doctors treating Covid patients have found and reported HCQ, when used early enough together with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin to be an effective and safe treatment.
  I have reported and made available many of the reports of HCQ’s efficacy and safety.  See for example:


​  ​MYSTERY surrounds why an anti-malaria drug is not being tested as a Covid-19 treatment in combination with zinc, which doctors say is crucial for efficacy.
​  ​As we reported recently, President Trump revealed he was taking hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) alongside zinc after reports that many doctors are doing the same to help ward off Covid-19.
​  ​Criticism of the President rose sharply after a non-randomised study published in the Lancet said that HCQ provided no benefit to hospitalised Covid-19 patients while being linked to increased deaths.
​  ​What the mainstream media did not point out is that the Lancet study failed to test HCQ with zinc. Other experts have found zinc to be vital for efficacy in this context.
​  ​Zinc, available as an over-the-counter supplement, has long been seen as an immune-system booster that helps develop immune cells, or antibodies, and can strengthen the body’s response to a virus.
​  ​American infectious disease specialist Joseph Rahimian explained that, in relation to Covid-19, zinc ‘does the heavy lifting and is the primary substance attacking the pathogen’. HCQ is said to work as a delivery system​ ​for zinc in fighting coronavirus.

https://conservativewoman.co.uk/malaria-drug-and-zinc-the-missing-link/  

​Charles Hugh Smith: Social Media's Plantation of the Mind (explains PCR's observations above, maybe?)
In the classic Plantation, everything is managed by those in charge to benefit the owners. Workers are forced to buy their necessities at The Company Store, and since the entire town and plantation is owned by the corporation, there's no private ownership of land or housing; everyone is a serf, beholden to the owners, and since costs are artificially high at The Company Store (due to the lack of competition), the serfs have to go into debt to survive: they become debt-serfs...
To perfect this colonization of the mind, social media has persuaded users that they no longer need unfettered access to the entire World Wide Web/Internet: we'll give you everything you want right here on our Plantation of the Mind... 
Once you control the politics of experience, the user isn't even aware that what they now consider "obvious" has been molded by the plantation owners to maximize their private profits. In social media's Plantation of the Mind, users are assured they have complete access to everything that is "fact" and "safe," when in reality everything they see has been filtered to the benefit of the Plantation owners and their political allies in the state hierarchy.  
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay20/social-media-plantation5-20.html  

​Indian Punchline looks at the effects of coronavirus on a crumbling global empire, which is losing face. Thanks Eleni.
​  ​The sluice gates have opened, as it were, on world politics after the ‘timeout’ through the past 2-3 months due to Covid-19. The spectacle of America’s epic war with Covid-19 under President Donald Trump’s watch creates a range of emotions in the world community — ranging from sympathy and pity to horror and derison
This will have consequences.
​  ​The pandemic has accelerated the main currents of international politics: the US’ national security strategy vis-a-vis Russia and China, the two ‘revisionist’ powers in Washington’s crosshairs; the Russia-China entente that has become an increasingly significant factor in global politics; the steady unraveling of the transatlantic alliance; and, most important, the decline of the US as a hegemonic superpower.
​  ​The most dramatic template is, unsurprisingly, the US-Russia-China triangle. The US-China tensions have increased and so is Washington’s prolonged standoff with Russia. This is driving Moscow and Beijing toward each other.​..
​  Clearly, against the backdrop of the reset of the Franco-German axis lately and taking into account Germany’s traditionally strong relations with China, the French move to harmonise with China over Hong Kong can be seen as a calculated move to differentiate Europe’s policies vis-a-vis rising China from those of the US.

​  ​Imposing this law means creating the structural basis for the national authorities to undertake unprecedented control and surveillance in Hong Kong. It will effectively eliminate the guaranteed rights and freedoms of Hong Kong’s more than seven million citizens. The fact that the central government in Beijing is now forcing through a law that legally should go through Hong Kong’s own legislative processes makes a full reversal of the decision virtually impossible. In 2019, a law on extradition to the mainland prompted millions to take to the streets, and was proposed by Hong Kong’s own authorities, which were eventually forced to completely withdraw it. A similar process is hard to imagine now, even with massive international support for protestors. Beijing has upped the ante – and seems to be calling the West’s bluff.  

 BEIJING (Reuters) - The head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Friday that “one country, two systems” and “peaceful reunification” is the best way to bring China and Taiwan together.
​  ​Outside attempts by foreign forces to interfere in “reunification” will fail, Liu Jieyi told an event at the Great Hall of the People marking 15 years since China signed into law its Anti-Secession Law.
Beijing passed the law in 2005 which authorises the use of force against Taiwan if China judges it to have seceded.

China will attack Taiwan if there is no other way of stopping it from becoming independent, one of the country’s most senior generals said on Friday​.

China Proposes A Law Allowing Citizens To Sue US For Starting Coronavirus Pandemic

​  ​The US has slammed what it's dubbed the "distraction" of five Iranian fuel tankers delivering gasoline to Maduro's Venezuela, after four total tankers have successfully reached the sanctions-hit country, with a fifth soon to follow.
​  ​A US State Department spokesman downplayed the whole ordeal, which included large Venezuelan military escorts of warships and fighter alongside the tankers for the final 200 miles to the coast, as an orchestrated distraction which will not stop Washington from continuing to "press for the restoration of Venezuelan democracy."
Whose idea was this, really?
  BRITAIN is seeking an international alliance to supply Brits with 5G internet and break China's monopoly over the network.
  The Government is driving forward plans for 10 democratic countries to work together and find a new provider for the superfast internet.
 
Ministers want the UK to form a club of nations, dubbed the ‘D10’, to fund technology companies and find a 5G supplier to replace Huawei.
​  ​The PM approved plans for the Chinese company to build part of the UK’s new internet network in January, despite pressure from MPs and the US government.
​  ​The D10 club would see G7 nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US – join forces with Australia, South Korea and India to find another company to build the 5G network.
​  ​The UK has already approached Washington with the plan, the Times has reported.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/11734343/britain-seeking-alliance-10-democracies-break-chinas-5g-monopoly/ 

​Sister Caitlin in Oz:
Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, And Police Infiltration Of US Protests
​  ​A video has been circulating of a white man casually smashing the windows of a Minneapolis shop with a hammer during protests against the police murder of George Floyd. The man is clearly trying to hide his identity by wearing a gas mask, carrying a large umbrella, and wearing full-length black clothing.
​  ​Protesters can be seen intervening to stop his destructive behavior in the video.
“Are you a fucking cop?” one asks.
​  ​An officer with the Saint Paul Police Department has been publicly named by someone identified as the officer’s ex-wife, who said his voice, walk and gas mask made her “90% sure” it was him. The Saint Paul Police Department has denied this.
​  ​Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it is a very safe bet that it’s a law enforcement officer of some kind. Disruptive police infiltration of protest movements is a historical constant in America, after all. It is the norm, not the exception.

​  ​Former presidential contender Tulsi Gabbard dropped her defamation lawsuit against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, saying the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 presidential election are more important than her legal claims. In court papers filed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday, Gabbard wrote that, while her claims have merit, it’s better to “focus their time and attention on other priorities, including defeating Donald Trump in 2020, rather than righting the wrongs here.” (Excuses)​ ​Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii, sued Clinton in January, claiming the former first lady defamed her by calling her a “Russian asset” during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. 

​  ​Mysterious pallets of bricks have been filmed throughout major riot hotspots across the country, in what appears to be more evidence that organized groups are using the George Floyd protests to incite chaos and terrorism throughout the US. 
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-setup-mysteriously-staged-bricks-appear-throughout-major-protest-cities 

 MINNEAPOLISCalling for a more measured way to express opposition to police brutality, critics slammed demonstrators Thursday for recklessly looting businesses without forming a private equity firm first. “Look, we all have the right to protest, but that doesn’t mean you can just rush in and destroy any business without gathering a group of clandestine investors to purchase it at a severely reduced price and slowly bleed it to death,”...   It’s disgusting to put workers at risk by looting. You do it by chipping away at their health benefits and eventually laying them off. There’s a right way and wrong way to do this.” At press time, critics recommended that protestors hold law enforcement accountable by simply purchasing the Minneapolis police department from taxpayers.​ (The Onion)

​Injuring The Insulted​

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Nothing To Trust

Considering Economy,

The "Political Economy" is our human life-support ecosystem within the larger life support system of global life.
The political economy is based on the harness of one way flows from higher to lower energy and order, like burning oil and coal, to power further extraction of fuel and ore from this fair planet. This particular iteration of political economy is the most successful ever and is eating up all the good stuff, which is now terminally depleted, while it fouls air and water that life forms need to survive. This needs to be redirected without killing us all. 
The directors are willing to sacrifice some of us, as they always do, but they are not willing to resign as directors, and give up their unique advantages as such.
It's an impasse. What would make them give up hope, capitulate, and let different people work out a different system that would not destroy all life, while supporting human lives?
Loss of the internet has come to mind, but that can never happen, right?

Yanis Varoufakis set out to write a chronicle of the decade of the 2020s, as if looking back. 
He didn't get very far yet, but it's started.
​  ​By June 2020, as lockdowns began to ease, left-wing optimism that the pandemic would revive state power on behalf of the powerless remained, leading friends to fantasize about a renaissance of the commons and a capacious definition of public goods. Margaret Thatcher, I would remind them, left the British state larger, more powerful, and more concentrated than she had found it. An authoritarian state was necessary to support markets controlled by corporations and banks. Those in authority have never hesitated to harness massive government intervention to the preservation of oligarchic power. Why should a pandemic change that?  

​From the "right" side of the aisle, it's not really a different view, just different focal points.
​  Rubino explains, “Sooner or later you’ve got to pay your bills, and if you don’t have anybody paying your bills to you, then you go bankrupt. Commercial real estate could just be a blood bath, which take us back to all the bailouts. You can’t let a big sector go bust in this world because suddenly everything is too big to fail. There is not a major sector out there that can be allowed to go bust. Not the airlines, not commercial real estate, certainly not the banks, you name it and it has to be bailed out. That’s where the really crazy stuff starts. When people figure out we are basically bailing out everybody from home owners to student loan holders, to car loan holders and right down the line, and then we get state and local governments with this gigantic multi-trillion dollar problem . . . and the amount of debt is off the charts to bail all of these guys out, that is when the real fun starts.”
  How long will the bailouts go on? Rubino says, “We are heading into a Presidential election, which means we cannot let anything major fail. If you are the Trump Administration and Congress, you can’t let something big fail because it’s a crisis right before you need to get re-elected. So, you’ve got to bail people out. That’s what California, Illinois and Chicago, New York, Kentucky and all the bankrupt and badly run states have been hoping for all along. They have been hoping there would be a big crisis that would bail them out of their horrendous mismanagement of the past 20 or 30 years. There was no way that Illinois was not going to go bankrupt in normal times . . . or Chicago. . . . Now, they can go to the federal government and say we need a trillion dollars right now or we are going to lay off all the cops and all the teachers, and they think they have a pretty good chance of getting the bailout because the alternative is poison for the people running for office . . . . If you are the Trump Administration or Congress, I don’t see how you stop bailing people out before the election.”

Across the pond, Brexit talks are back from COVID lockdown, but no different, as the UK now plays hardball with a tremendously weakened EU that really needs the British contribution to the budget.
Time is getting short, too. What will the Eurocrats give up for the funding they must have?

Here is the story that the DNC are afraid of a V-shaped recovery that will re-elect Trump. 
(I think they should be more afraid of Joe Biden, and they probably have no real intention of running him.)

India is using hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis for medical personnel. This is not the use that The Lancet looked at, giving it to sick hospital patients, already compromised by a disease that causes multi-organ failure, strokes and heart attacks.
The data is good for it's efficacy in prophylaxis. India has done a very large prospective study. That is how President Donald is using it, and he has been professionally advised in that course. 
Coronavirus: India invites scepticism as it sticks by hydroxychloroquine, Covid treatment backed by Trump
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3086389/coronavirus-india-invites-scepticism-it-sticks  

Meanwhile, The Lancet "study", claiming more cardiac deaths with hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients, can't show where it got it's numbers, who the contributing doctors were, and can't explain why nobody heard of the company that did the study, including the Australian hospitals, whose data it claims to use, but which does not match. 

  Everybody has a predictive model of how the novel-coronavirus is going to spread, sicken and kill people. It's almost as if political interests can go to a model-store and pick the model which supports the actions that their backers want to happen. This model says that the COVID is well on it's way to saturating the UK population, so it's ok to just head back to the pubs and so on. Reminds me of Dirty Harry, "You've got to ask yourself, do I feel lucky, well, Do ya?"

See how much virus shows up in the sewers. If you have the right kind of testing, this could be a pretty good real time measure of viral load in a city, and could guide the herd on it's way to herd immunity, without an excess of excess deaths. It's bound to get plenty of funding.

The US has a special trade relationship with Hong Kong, dating back to it being a UK colony. The State Department is declaring that Hong Kong is no longer "autonomous", leaving the White House with a very wide spectrum of trade war weapons to use against China. It's lot's of ammo for deal-making Donald. China really is cracking down on Hong Kong.

Taiwan, which really IS independant of China, unless it gets invaded, lays out specific programs to welcome (well to do) Hong Kong residents and business to Taiwan as they flee Communist oppression. Good for business..

Nobody is talking about the death of the Chinese ambassador to Israel, of "natural causes", right after Mike Pompeo visited there to put a stop to Israeli big deals with China for 5g, Port of Haifa, and desalination plant project. 
The desalination contract has gone to an Israeli company. What about those 2 bigger issues?

Russia is being very careful about Americans in and around Syria, like they don't trust us.
​  ​Asked why the American public should tolerate US involvement in Syria, Special Envoy James Jeffrey points out the small US footprint in the fight against ISIS. "This isn't Afghanistan. This isn't Vietnam. This isn't a quagmire. My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians."  
 
Watching "Partners"

Yoakum avocado orchard and workshop projects pictured below with blogger

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Perspective

Understanding Empire,

I'm opening with a perspective piece about the short and tortured life of George Orwell. He was a British imperial officer in colonized Burma, apparently good at it, and they employed torture routinely there. Thanks Eleni.
​  ​The truth clearly was that Orwell never forgave himself for what he did as a young agent of empire in Burma. Even his literally suicidal decision to go to the most primitive, cold, wet and poverty-stricken corner of creation in a remote island off Scotland to finish “1984” in isolation before he died was consistent with the merciless punishments he had inflicted on himself all his life since leaving Burma.
​  ​The conclusion is clear: For all the intensity of George Orwell’s experiences in Spain, his passion for truth and integrity, his hatred of the abuse of power did not originate from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. They all flowed directly from his own actions as an agent of the British Empire in Burma in the 1920s: Just as his creation of the Ministry of Truth flowed directly from his experience of working in the Belly of the Beast of the BBC in the early 1940s.
​  ​George Orwell spent more than 20 years slowly committing suicide because of the terrible crimes he committed as a torturer for the British Empire in Burma.


US Senate Quietly Approves $38 Billion for Israel Amid Historic Economic Downturn
S.3176 was passed without being named, debated, or even discussed, even though it would set into law the largest such aid package in US history.


​Michael Hudson points out the pivotal change which must be embraced for survival of human civilization:
​  Western civilization distinguishes itself from its predecessors in the way it has responded to “acts of God” disrupting the means of support and leaving debts in their wake.
  The great question always has been who will lose under such conditions. Will it be debtors and renters at the bottom of the economic scale, or creditors and landlords at the top?
This age-old confrontation between creditors and debtors, landlords and tenants over how to deal with the unpaid debts and back rents is at the economic heart of today’s 2020 coronavirus pandemic that has left large and small businesses, farms, restaurants and neighborhood stores – along with their employees who have been laid off – unable to pay the rents, mortgages, other debt service and taxes that have accrued.
  For thousands of years ancient economies operated on credit during the crop year, with payment falling due when the harvest was in – typically on the threshing floor. Normally this cycle provided a flow of crops and corvée labor to the palace and covered the cultivator’s spending during the crop year, with interest owed only when payment was late. But bad harvests, military conflict or simply the normal hardships of life occasionally prevented this buildup of debt from being paid, threatening citizens with bondage to their creditors or loss of their land rights.
  Mesopotamian palaces had to decide who would bear the loss when drought, flooding, infestation, disease or military attack disrupted economic activity and prevented the settlement of debts, rents and taxes. Recognizing that this was an unavoidable fact of life, rulers proclaimed amnesties for taxes and the various debts that were incurred during the crop year. These acts saved smallholders from having to work off their debts by personal bondage and ultimately to lose their land.
  Classical antiquity, and indeed subsequent Western civilization, rejected such Clean Slates to restore social balance. Since Roman times it has become normal for creditors to use social misfortune as an opportunity to gain property and income at the expense of families falling into debt. In the absence of kings or democratic civic regimes protecting debtor rights and liberty, pro-creditor laws obliged debtors to lose their land or other means of livelihood to foreclosing creditors, sell it under distress conditions and fall into bondage to work off their debts, becoming clients or quasi-serfs to their creditors without hope of recovering their former free status.

Time for a Selective Debt Jubilee​  , Willem H. Buiter​ 
(Buiter works for global banking, so he does not go far enough.)​
​  ​Debt is a dangerous instrument. For far too long, the world has used it to avoid awkward but unavoidable decisions. In the midst of an unprecedented global crisis, something will have to give.

​The SARS-CoV-2 virus pulls a concealment trick, removing the Major Histocompatibility Complex markers from the surface of human cells it has infected, so the white blood cells of the immune system leave those cells, teeming with virus they are producing, intact, to later release it into the body.​ 
This is what HIV does, too. 
It was forbidden information, scrubbed from social media platforms, that SARS-CoV-2 shared genetic homology with HIV in some important sections. 
"Racist". (Just how would a section of HIV viral code get inserted, functionally intact into a coronavirus?) 
The South China Morning Post has this story.

Medcram Covid-19 update 75 looks at pathological findings on autopsy of lungs of people dying from COVID, Influenza-linked-ARDS, and unrelated causes. The significant finding is high levels of inflammation of viral infected cells lining the tiny arteries and capillaries, and that many of these critical little capillaries are clotted off by the inflammatory response to the viral attack. This response is unique to the COVID infected lungs. 
The blood vessel lining, "endothelium", is the significant area of attack that determines the patterns of disease, distress and death which we are seeing. 

In Brazil and other poor countries, lots of young and previously "healthy" people are dying from COVID. The factors leading to this are presumed in this article. I really want to know, myself, precisely what is happening in those people's bodies, and how to prevent and counter it. (What are their vitamin-D levels, please? For starters.)

India completely bucks the WHO, which has just told Malyasia to stop using hydroxychloroquine, even though Malaysia started early and has used it tremendously for the past months. Zinc is not mentioned, yet again...
​  ​India will continue using hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a preventative measure against COVID-19, after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) declared on Tuesday that the drug was found to be very effective with minimal side effects for prophylaxis.
​  ​The ICMR's decision was based on three studies they conducted, which resulted in a Friday advisory to expand the drug's use, according to ThePrint.
​  ​Speaking at a Tuesday press conference, ICMR Director General Dr. Balram Bhargava said "COVID-19 is an evolving field. We don’t know which medicines are working and which are not. There are lots of drugs that have been repurposed for use in COVID whether prophylaxis or as treatment. HCQ is a very old anti-malarial drug that was being widely used and it continues to be widely used. It is safer."


​Remdesivir does not appear to "save lives", but may shorten hospital course by a few days in a subset of moderately ill patients who need oxygen​. It does not appear to reduce viral load. It does not reduce case fatality rate.
DESPITE THE HYPE, GILEAD’S REMDESIVIR WILL DO NOTHING TO END THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC  

​Taking Vitamin-D 5000 Units per day​
(pictured popping a sungold cherry tomato a couple of mornings ago at Yoakum garden)


Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Origins Of COVID

Academically Free,

​  
I'm borrowing too much of this article, but It's all I can do.
This is excellent, and we get lied to so much. 
If I'm being disobedient, then at least I'm being civil about it. 
This is the NOT LIES.
​  ​On December 9, 2019, long before the world knew anything about it, a video interview took place with one of the key players in the COVID-19 drama, Dr Peter Daszak, President of the EcoHealth Alliance, who inadvertently may have provided indications of its true origin.
​  ​Much of that discussion centred around the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS) epidemic of 2002-2004, which was believed to have originated in bats, although civets may have acted as an intermediate host.
​  ​While circulating in animals, the SARS virus mutated, acquiring the ability to infect humans, which it was assumed to have done so, infecting workers in a Guangdong, China animal market.
​  ​That explanation became the narrative now being promoted by the Chinese Communist Party, the media and some Western scientists to convince the world that COVID-19 was a naturally-occurring outbreak.
​  ​Beginning at 27:49, Dr Daszak explains the basis of the naturally-occurring narrative and the collection of over one hundred bat coronaviruses capable of infecting humans, but untreatable with drugs or vaccines. Those coronaviruses are presumed to be stored in Chinese laboratories.
​  ​“So, we did a couple of things with it. So, one is around SARS. We focused on SARS coronavirus emerged from a wildlife market. And whilst the first pandemic of this century. So, it’s big event. And, so we started to trace back from the wildlife market, which species carried the virus, that came into those markets. We found that it was bats, not civets, was the original idea. So, we started looking where did they come from. And we went out to southern China. And did surveillance of bats across southern China. And we’ve now found, after six or seven years of doing this, over one hundred new SARS-related coronaviruses, very close to SARS. Some of them get into human cells in the lab. And some of them can cause SARS disease in humanized mouse models. And are untreatable with therapeutic monoclonals [antibodies] and you can’t vaccinate against them with a vaccine.”
​  ​At 29:51, Dr Daszak describes bioengineering of those viruses by inserting components of one coronavirus into another.
​  ​“Well, I think, coronavirus is a pretty good, I mean, you’re a virologist [the interviewer], you know all this stuff, but the, you can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily. Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus, zoonotic risk. So, you can get the sequence, you can build the protein, and we work with Ralph Baric at UNC [University of North Carolina] to do this. Insert it into a backbone of another virus, and do some work in the lab. So, you can get more predictive, when you find the sequence. You have this diversity. Now, the logical progression for vaccines is, if you are going to develop a vaccine for SARS, people are going to use pandemic SARS, but let’s try to insert these other related and get a better vaccine.”
​  ​In 2015, Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina and Zheng-Li Shi, the “bat woman” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology jointly published a scientific article describing the combination of the receptor-binding spike protein from a newly isolated coronavirus (SHC014) and the “backbone” from SARS-CoV, the coronavirus responsible for the 2002-2003 pandemic.
​  ​That experiment produced a novel virus, chimera SHC014-MA15, which showed “robust viral replication both in vitro [cell cultures] and in vivo [animals],” using models adapted to test human infectivity.
​  ​The scientific consensus claims that COVID-19, like SARS, originated in bats.
​  ​There is conclusive scientific evidence, however, that COVID-19’s receptor binding domain within the spike protein is structurally closest to that of pangolins (scaly anteaters), not bats, and it was the result of a recombination, not convergent evolution.
Yet, pangolins have been ruled out as the intermediate host for COVID-19.
​  ​Even Dr Ralph Baric in a March 15, 2020 interview, beginning at the 27:40 time point, stated unequivocally, that pangolins were not the source of COVID-19:
​  ​“Pangolins have over 3,000 nucleotide changes - no way they are the reservoir species [for COVID-19], absolutely no chance.”
​  ​It is, therefore, logical to conclude that the recombinant event resulting in a pangolin receptor binding domain within a bat coronavirus backbone must have occurred in a laboratory, in a manner similar to the experiment conducted by Ralph Baric and Zheng-Li Shi in 2015.
​  ​Furthermore, COVID-19’s S1/S2 furin polybasic cleavage site, a distinctive feature widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility in coronaviruses, does not appear in any of 45 bat, 5 human SARS, 2 civet, 1 pangolin and 1 racoon dog coronaviruses, that have S1/S2 junction structures otherwise identical or nearly identical to COVID-19.
​  ​There is no credible scientific evidence that the furin polybasic cleavage site evolved naturally, although the methods for artificially inserting such cleavage sites are well-established.
https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/tracing-the-origins-of-covid-19-300766  

​Kunstler: When Giants Fall​
​  ​Despite all the fake-heroic blather from the Federal Reserve, from Nancy Pelosi, from Mr. Trump and Mr. Mnuchin – from everybody in charge, to be really fair – and in the immortal words of another recent president — this sucker is going down. Specifically, what’s going down is the aggregate of transactions we call “the economy.”
​  ​[..] As in any extinction event, it will be the smaller organisms that survive and eventually thrive and that’s how it will go in the next edition of America, whether we remain states united or find ourselves organized differently. Accordingly, the giants must fall. When the communities of America rebuild, it will be the thousands of small activities that matter, because they will entail the rebuilding of social capital as well as exchanges that amount to business. Social capital is exactly what Walmart and things like it killed in every community from sea to shining sea. People stopped doing business with their neighbors. It took a cataclysm for them to finally notice.


Is This Controlled Demolition all over Again?​  Gilad Atzmon​
​  ​For years Eco-Enthusiasts, both activists and scientists, have been telling us that the ‘party’ will come to an end. The planet we are stuck on can’t take it for much longer, it is getting too crowded and unbearably warm. Most people didn’t take any real notice of the situation and for a reason. This planet, we tend to think, isn’t really ‘ours,’ we were thrown onto it and for a limited time. Once we grasp the true meaning of our  temporality, we begin to acknowledge our terminality.  ‘Being in the world’ as such is often the attempt to make our ‘life-time’ into a meaningful event.
​  ​It occurs to me that what we may be seeing is a controlled demolition all over again. This time it isn’t a building in NYC. It isn’t the destruction of a single industry or even a single class as we have seen before. This time,  our understanding of Being as a productive and meaningful adventure is embattled. As things stand, our entire sense of livelihood  is at risk.​..​
 ​  ​It doesn’t take a financial expert to realise that in the last few years the world economy in general and western economies in particular have become a fat bubble ready to burst. When economic bubbles burst the outcome is unexpected even though often the culprit or  trigger for the crash can be identified. What is unique in the current controlled demolition is the willingness  of our compromised political class, the media and in particular  Left/Progressive networks to participate in the destruction.
​  ​The alliance is wide and inclusive. The WHO, greatly funded by Bill Gates, sets the measures by which we are locked down, the Left and the Progressives fuel the apocalyptic phantasies to keep us  hiding in our global attics, Dershowitz tries to rewrite the constitution , big Pharma’s agenda shapes our future and we also hear that Moderna and its leading Israeli doctor  is ready to “fix” our genes.  Meanwhile we  learn that  our governments are gearing up to stick a needle in our arms...
​  ​I believe that it was me who ten years ago coined the popular adage  “We Are all Palestinians” - like the Palestinians, I thought at the time,  we aren’t even allowed to name our oppressor

The Net Worth Of America's 600-Plus Billionaires Has Increased By More Than $400 Billion During The Pandemic

CAUGHT RED-HANDED
​  ​Ukrainian lawmaker Andrei Derkach released audio recordings that he claims to have received from journalists which convincingly sound as though they’re truly of former President Poroshenko’s numerous conversations with former Vice President and current Democrat front-runner Biden.
​  ​The content of their chats concerns the latter’s efforts to pressure the then-Ukrainian leader to remove General Prosecutor Shokin, which Trump and many of his surrogates have claimed was undertaken in an attempt to cover up his son Hunter’s corruption at the Burisma gas company where he was employed and which was the subject of an investigation by Shokin.


Biden Should Be Named in Criminal Probe in Ukraine, Judge Rules
Former U.S. vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden should be named as an alleged perpetrator in a criminal investigation in Ukraine over the firing of the country’s prosecutor general, a judge has ruled​.

​Looking for the "L-shaped Recovery" after coronavirus pandemic (aka: "bumping along the bottom"):
  Many analysts and economists are trying to predict the shape of the economic recovery post-Covid 19. To understand how the recovery may look like, we need to look at past recoveries and at the history of pandemics.
  Starting with the pandemic, we know a few thing
First, there has never been a vaccine for any of the previous 18 Covid types.
Second, there has never been a pandemic without a second wave before a treatment existed...
​  ​Jerome Powell has also signaled that the U.S. recovery will not start until the end of 2021 and, like investment banks, if we have learnt anything from the Federal Reserve is that their estimates tend to be diplomatic and generally optimistic. Investors cannot assume that Fed and investment bank predictions are too negative because history proves the opposite is true.  
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/l-shaped-recovery-not-anomaly-it-norm  
 
​This article addresses the dominant narrative of a COVID vaccine as a perfect thing, which it would probably not be. 
Firstly, there has never been a working coronavirus vaccine for humans (they kill too many rats to try on humans). Secondly, because this is an RNA virus, with a significant mutation rate, it would tend to require vaccine updates, which would have various success and lack of success, like flu vaccines.

​Medcram Update on COVID-19: Vitamin D (and internet) "Academic Censorship" 
(Medcram has been repeatedly YouTube censored for discussing medical research papers on treatment trials including unapproved "unproven" treatments, and finding that there is actually good data to analyze. All their other lectures remain, though.)
https://www.medcram.com/courses/take/coronavirus-outbreak-symptoms-treatment/lessons/13092783-update-74-vitamin-d-covid-19-academic-censorship  
 
U​niversity​ of L​ethbridge​ scientists develop new medical cannabis cultivars that show promise in combatting COVID-19 virus​  (Some cannabidiol might help a bit​. A​ppears harmless, too)

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Sunny Months

Casting Light,​

​ As we enter the 2 sunniest months of the year, vitamin-D levels will rise for people who let the sun shine on their skin. It's good to avoid burns, so start modestly, maybe 15 minutes per side, even less if you are very fair and it is midday.​
How much sun equals 5000 units of vitamin-D? That's a question that pops up, and it sure depends on a lot of factors of your skin, overcast, sun angle, time of day, how much skin is getting the sun and how long each session. Almost every American or US resident I test is low unless supplementing or working outdoors every day.
I have gotten some more vitamin-D vs viral illness articles, some redundant, with links and excerpts, to share around.

Low vitamin D levels could explain why African Americans and even African immigrants in Sweden appear to be disproportionately hard-hit by the coronavirus, regardless of socio-economic factors, researchers have suggested.
Vitamin D can protect against getting a severe case of COVID-19, a group of Swedish researchers and doctors have suggested in an article in the medical magazine Läkartidningen.

 British Medical Journal, BMJ had this in April, speculating that vitamin-D supplementation “could be a game changer”.

To reduce the risk of infection, it is recommended that people at risk of influenza and/or COVID-19 consider taking 10,000 IU/d of vitamin D3 for a few weeks to rapidly raise 25(OH)D concentrations, followed by 5000 IU/d. The goal should be to raise 25(OH)D concentrations above 40–60 ng/mL (100–150 nmol/L). For treatment of people who become infected with COVID-19, higher vitamin D3 doses might be useful. Randomized controlled trials and large population studies should be conducted to evaluate these recommendations. 

The NIH had this out last month, with the same dosing advice:
Evidence supporting the role of vitamin D in reducing risk of COVID-19 includes that the outbreak occurred in winter, a time when 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations are lowest; that the number of cases in the Southern Hemisphere near the end of summer are low; that vitamin D deficiency has been found to contribute to acute respiratory distress syndrome; and that case-fatality rates increase with age and with chronic disease comorbidity, both of which are associated with lower 25(OH)D concentration. To reduce the risk of infection, it is recommended that people at risk of influenza and/or COVID-19 consider taking 10,000 IU/d of vitamin D3 for a few weeks to rapidly raise 25(OH)D concentrations, followed by 5000 IU/d. The goal should be to raise 25(OH)D concentrations above 40-60 ng/mL (100-150 nmol/L). For treatment of people who become infected with COVID-19, higher vitamin D3 doses might be useful. 

 A researcher from the University of Southeastern Philippines evaluated the vitamin D blood levels of 212 people diagnosed with COVID-19 and found the blood level of vitamin D was lowest in those in critical condition and highest in those with a milder infection. The conclusion of his paper, not peer-reviewed, is that supplements ''could possibly improve clinical outcomes of patients infected with COVID-19."
[Of the 212 cases of COVID-19, majority had ordinary clinical outcome. Mean serum 25(OH)D level was 23.8 ng/ml. Serum 25(OH)D level was lowest in critical cases, but highest in mild cases. Serum 25(OH)D levels were statistically significant among clinical outcomes. Majority had insufficient Vitamin D status, most of them were not severe. Vitamin D status is significantly associated with clinical outcomes. A multinomial logistic regression analysis reported that for each standard deviation increase in serum 25(OH)D, the odds of having a mild clinical outcome rather than a severe outcome were approximately 7.94 times (OR=0.126, p<0.001) while interestingly, the odds of having a mild clinical outcome rather than a critical outcome were approximately 19.61 times (OR=0.051, p<0.001). The results suggest that an increase in serum 25(OH)D level in the body could either improve clinical outcomes or mitigate worst (severe to critical) outcomes, while a decrease in serum 25(OH)D level in the body could worsen clinical outcomes of COVID-2019 patients.] 

Researchers from the U.K. evaluated the average vitamin D levels and the number of COVID-19 cases, as well as the death rates, across 20 European countries. Countries with low average vitamin D blood levels in the population had higher numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, says study leader Petre Cristian Ilie, MD, PhD, research and innovation director at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation Trust in King's Lynn, U.K.   

 Irish researchers analyzed European population studies and vitamin D levels, finding countries with high rates of vitamin D deficiency also had higher death rates from COVID-19. Those researchers asked the government to raise the vitamin D recommendations.    

This WebMD article has some of the above summaries and links:
​Sweden, with voluntary social distancing, had the highest per-capita death rate this past week, edging out the UK.
Will this be good in the long term, letting the virus spread in the sunny summer months, instead of the dark winter?
Will Sweden have a lower final per-capita death rate when this is all over in 2-3 years?
There's not much to do but wait, take vitamin-D and eat fresh fruits and vegetables, is there?​

​There has been mass censorship of medical education and discussion of human clinical trial data about hydroxychloroquine. 4 out of 73 of the COVID-19 updates on MedCram,  have been banned from YouTube for analysis of Forbidden-Medical-Knowledge targeted specifically to doctors and med students.​
YouTube censors video in which medical doctors said hydroxychloroquine might help treat COVID-19
The company said the video was 'dangerous' before putting it back up again.
​  ​One of the doctors interviewed in the video, William O'Neill, tells Attkisson, also a Just the News contributor, that there is "some value" to hydroxychloroquine and "it has to be tested."
​  ​O'Neill, a cardiologist in Detroit, has prescribed the drug to multiple patients and "saw improvement in all of them," Attkisson reported.
 ​  ​At the Henry Ford Health System, where O'Neill works, officials are working with hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir. The doctor said the media campaign against the drug, which began around the time President Trump first started touting it, has left patients "scared to use the drug without any scientifically valid concern."
​  ​"We've talked with our colleagues at the University of Minnesota who are doing a similar study, and at the University of Washington," he said. "We've treated 400 patients and haven't seen a single adverse event. And what's happening is because of this fake news and fake science, the true scientific efforts are being harmed because people now are so worried that they don't want to enroll in the trials."  

570 Workers Test Positive For COVID At Tyson Plant In North Carolina  
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/570-workers-test-positive-covid-tyson-plant-north-carolina  

Permanent job losses are likely to be a feature of the eventual U.S. recovery, according to University of Chicago research, which estimates that 42% of recently unemployed workers will not return to their jobs amid the “profound” shock stemming from coronavirus lockdowns.

Another Bank Bailout Under Cover of a Virus​ , Ellen Brown
​  ​When the Dodd Frank Act was passed in 2010, President Obama triumphantly declared, “No more bailouts!” But what the Act actually said was that the next time the banks failed, they would be subject to “bail ins” – the funds of their creditors, including their large depositors, would be tapped to cover their bad loans.
But bail-ins were tried in Europe, and the results were disastrous. ​ 
​  Many economists in the US and Europe argued that the next time the banks failed, they should be nationalized – taken over by the government as public utilities. But that opportunity was lost when, in September 2019 and again in March 2020, Wall Street banks were quietly bailed out from a liquidity crisis in the repo market that could otherwise have bankrupted them.​..
​  “The justification of private profit,” said President Franklin Roosevelt in a 1938 address, “is private risk.” Banking has now been made virtually risk-free, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States and its people. The American people are therefore entitled to share in the benefits and the profits. Banking needs to be made a public utility.​..
​...​During the Great Depression, more than one-third of all private US banks were closed due to bank runs.
​  ​But President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who took office in 1933, was skeptical about insuring bank deposits. He warned, “We do not wish to make the United States Government liable for the mistakes and errors of individual banks, and put a premium on unsound banking in the future.” 
​  ​The government had a viable public alternative, a US postal banking system established in 1911. Postal banks became especially popular during the Depression, because they were backed by the US government.​..
...by March the Fed was making $1 trillion per day available in overnight loans. The central bank was backstopping the whole repo market, including the hedge funds, an untenable situation.
​  ​In March 2020, under cover of a national crisis, the Fed therefore flung the doors open to its discount window, where only banks could borrow. Previously, banks were reluctant to apply there because the interest was at a penalty rate and carried a stigma, signaling that the bank must be in distress. But that concern was eliminated when the Fed announced in a March 15 press release that the interest rate had been dropped to 0.25% (virtually zero). The reserve requirement was also eliminated, the capital requirement was relaxed, and all banks in good standing were offered loans of up to 90 days, “renewable on a daily basis.” The loans could be continually rolled over, and no strings were attached to this interest-free money – no obligation to lend to small businesses, reduce credit card rates, or write down underwater mortgages.​..
 US banks did not share this windfall with the public. Canadian interest rates were cut by half, from 21% to 11%; but US credit card rates dropped in April only by half a percentage point, to 20.15%.​...
​  ​State and local governments could make cheap credit available to their communities, but today they too are second class citizens when it comes to borrowing. Unlike the banks, which can borrow virtually interest-free with no strings attached, states can sell their bonds to the Fed only at market rates of 3% or 4% or more plus a penalty...
 How can states get parity with the banks? If Congress won’t address that need, states can borrow interest-free at the Fed’s discount window by forming their own publicly-owned banks.

​Can the US pressure Israel to cancel contract with China to manage the Port of Haifa? That would be something new.
"Polite Deflection Will No Longer Cut It" - US Pressures Israel To Sever Economic Ties With China

US Outrages China With $180M Torpedoes-For-Taiwan Deal On Same Day President Sworn In
“Supplying Taiwan with these torpedoes serves the economic and security interests of the United States by helping (Taiwan) modernize its armed forces and maintaining a reliable defense capability.”  
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-unveils-sale-180m-worth-torpedoes-taiwan-same-day-president-sworn  

​Geopolitical strategic weapon...
​  ​It may well be the case that the U.S. shale sector has cut over US$50 billion from its planned spending this year, the number of operating rigs has fallen by 40 per cent in the past four weeks, and output has fallen by nearly one million barrels per day (bpd) over the same period. It is equally true, though, that what all these reports overlook is that the shale oil (and gas) sector is too important from a geopolitical and economic perspective to the world standing of the U.S. for it to be allowed to fail, and all other considerations are secondary.

Venezuela To 'Protect' 5 Inbound Iranian Tankers With Ships & Planes Military Escort
...​we've been closely following the saga of Iran's provocatively sending five fuel-laden tankers to gasoline-starved Venezuela, despite repeat and growing threats of US intervention against the brazen sanctions-busting mission.
​  ​And now surely escalating matters from Washington's point of view, the Maduro government has vowed it will provide navy ships and military aircraft to escort the inbound Iranian fuel tankers.

 Pompeo Accuses China Of Helping Iran's 'Gas For Gold' Sanctions-Busting In Venezuela
​  ​Currently there are five Iranian-flagged tankers transporting fuel to Venezuela across the Atlantic Ocean, with plans to break the American blockade on the Latin American country. Iran has warned that any US attempt at intercepting its fuel tankers "would have serious repercussions for the Trump administration ahead of the November elections."
​  ​But Washington appears ready to do just that, also as the growing number of Iranian supply flights to Caracas via Iran's US-sanctioned Mahan Air is gaining attention. To get Venezuela's derelict refineries up and running to meet domestic gas consumption, vital parts are needed — a role that Tehran has stepped up to fill. But in a new twist to the imminent geopolitical showdown, the US has freshly accused China of being part of the Iranian sanctions-busting scheme in Latin America.

 What on Earth Is the US Doing by Bombing Somalia?
https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2020/05/15/what-on-earth-is-the-us-doing-by-bombing-somalia/  

T​he US military is cooking something up that can't be looked at...
​ ​"President Trump has decided to withdraw from another major arms control accord, according to senior administration officials, and will inform Russia on Friday that the United States is pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty," reports The New York Times.
The post Cold War treaty, initiated in 1992 and then ratified in 2002, allows its now 35 member states to conduct short-notice, unarmed observation flights to monitor other countries' military operations in mutual verification of arms-control agreements.  

F​riendly Skies​

Blogger and Mexican avocado trees in Yoakum recently

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Maintaining The Crisis

Politely Calling Bullshit,

  This post is from a 31 year old Internal Medicine doctor in San Antonio, the first to take on the "COVID cases" at her county hospital  a few months ago. (I feel the same way about this public ass-kissing, if I may be so indelicate.)
Happy Birthday, "Doc Holly Day".
​  ​I have a confession. The thank-you cards from schoolkids, and the heartfelt "God bless you's" over the phone from my patients' families, mean the world to me. 
​  ​But there is an angry little demon in me that bursts into flames and stamps around, every time I see a corporate ad or corporate-funded demonstration of "support for our healthcare heroes." ​  ​  
​  ​Frankly, I don't need free meals from fast food restaurants - I need you to give your workers health insurance and paid sick leave so that they don't go to work sick and infect the rest of your staff and half the customers. 
​  ​I need you to treat your essential employees like human beings, and give them the resources to stay safe and out of my hospital. 
​  ​Free fried chicken means nothing to me. But I will kiss the feet of the person who saves me from having to make another phone call to a young woman's mother, to talk about the decisions she will need to be ready to make if her daughter's respiratory failure gets worse.
​  ​American PEOPLE are mostly wonderful, and they are who I show up for every day. But our corporations and our political leaders have been pillaging the middle class and robbing workers for decades. They are relentless and without shame, even in this crisis.

That Moderna "vaccine" news blurb is bullshit to goose their stock prices for a quick profit.
They got that. Some suckers bought what the insiders sold.​ 
It's actually worse than this story in other ways. It actually injects genetic information into your body, targeting white blood cells, to commandeer them to produce what it codes for, which is about what a virus does, but this is supposed to be permanently implanted genetic information, "genetic engineering". It seems to have "taken" in 8 of 45 human subjects. What about the other 37? No word yet. 
​The big fact not discussed is that coronavirus vaccines have ALWAYS killed too many of the test animals, not right away, but when they are exposed to the coronavirus. 
The vaccine "works", but some patients always die...​

​Reopen Ukrainegate:
​  ​Ukraine judge orders Joe Biden be listed as alleged perpetrator of crime in prosecutor’s firing
Latest twist in Ukraine impeachment drama could stretch into Biden's fall campaign as fired prosecutor seeks legal remedy in courts.​..
​  In Kiev late last month, District Court Judge S. V. Vovk ordered the country’s law enforcement services to formally list the fired prosecutor, Victor Shokin, as the victim of an alleged crime by the former U.S. vice president.

 The phone calls where Joe Biden demanded Petro Poroshenko fire the prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden's illegal dealings with Burisma were recorded. 
Yep, Biden actually remembered what he said pretty well a few years ago. 
He did blackmail Poroshenko to fire that prosecutor. 
Poroshenko kept the recordings for posterity.
Who will the DNC pick to run this fall?

This is what we get instead of vitamin-D, free testing, and quick treatment.
The elite power struggle will continue, so the crisis needs to continue, too.
Maybe dousing the swamp with gasoline and torching it will be as good as draining it...
Senate GOP Compile Massive Subpoena List For FBI Abuse Probe; Demand Unredacted Susan Rice Letter
​  ​In the wake of bombshell evidence that shows the Obama DOJ inappropriately targeted the 2016 Trump campaign, Senate Republicans have compiled a list of 53 individuals they want to interview as part of their own comprehensive probe into the matter, separate of the Trump DOJ's separate criminal investigation headed up by US Attorney John Durham...
 ​ ​[former FBI Director] James Comey, [former FBI Deputy Director] Andrew McCabe, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Deputy Attorney General] Sally Yates.
​  ​We note that the names of both President Obama and his VP Joe Biden are conspicuously absent, despite the fact that both of them were in a January 5, 2017 meeting in which Obama gave Comey the nod to conceal information from the incoming Trump administration.

CO2 emissions are directly proportional to economy in the modern world, despite sightings of rainbow unicorns.
Look what "20% down" means.
Carbon emissions down nearly 20% since lockdowns began
Possibly the largest drop in human history


Our Fate Is Sealed, Vaccines Won't Matter: Four Long Cycles Align
​Charles Hugh Smith​
​  ​A Covid-19 vaccine, or lack thereof, will have zero effect in terms of reversing these cycles. Call it Fate, call it karma, call it what you will, but the cycles have aligned and nothing can stop the unraveling of all that was foolishly presumed to be permanent.
​  ​We like to think we're in charge and that technology conquers all, but history moves in cycles that are larger than any person, corporation, elite or (gasp) technology. My first version of the chart below was drawn in 2008, when the Global Financial Meltdown revealed the cracks in the happy-story facade of permanent wonderfulness based on the amazing magic of borrowing / printing ever greater sums of currency, a.k.a. "money."​...​
​  In effect, the study of cycles is the study of human nature as it plays out in long-term social, political and economic dynamics.

The four cycles depicted are:
1. The cycle of credit expansion and contraction, which is now in the final blow-off stage of unsustainable credit expansion (bubble) which will inevitably lead to renunciation of debt (credit collapse) and global depression.
2. The generational cycle (4 generations or approximately 80 years) of American history which leads to nation-changing social, political and economic upheaval (The American Revolution: 1781 +80 years = Civil War, 1861 +80 years = 1941, World War II + 80 years = 2021) as described in the book The Fourth Turning.
3. The 100+ year cycle of price inflation and stagnation of wages' purchasing-power which began around 1901 is now reaching the final stage of widespread turmoil, shortages, famine, conflict and crisis. (This can be viewed as aligned with Turchin's cycle of social disorder and disintegration.)
4. The demographic cycle: the workforce stops expanding and starts shrinking while the population of dependent elderly explodes higher, triggering a decline in earnings and the tax base just as taxes must increase to pay for the care of the rising population of elderly. (This is one dynamic in Turchin's deterioration in central state finances.)


​  ​Western Civ’s most infamous encounter with pandemic disease, so far, was the big first wave of the Black Death that had a marathon run from 1346 to 1353. That bug was the real deal. It killed folks left and right, every age group, every social station, and it killed them ugly. Few who caught it survived. Up to half the population of Europe perished, along with a lot of their social and economic ways.
​  ​The cause of the Black Death was subject to every possible explanation except the actual one, Yersina pestis, a bacterium associated with rats and their insect parasites, fleas and lice, who also enjoyed an association with humans living in the generally squalid conditions of the day ­— the ancient Roman habit of bathing long forgotten.​..

​  ​ On the plus side, as modern interpolators might say, the bubonic plague winnowed down Europe’s population to a scale more congenial with its resource base. After that big first wave of the disease, land was cheaper and human labor better rewarded. Eventually, more food got around.​..
  ​ Covid-19 seems rather a punk-ass illness compared to the Black Death...
​  ​Spooky as it’s been, the Covid-19 virus has also been a great cover-story for the natural collapse of a severely unbalanced, ecologically unsound, and dishonestly represented set of arrangements that are now unspooling at horrifying speed.​..
 ​The big question about the Great Opening-up is when the recognition of all that turns to raw emotion. Covid-19 may still be with us then, but it will be the least of our problems. The masks will come off. The dance will commence.

  [..] a study from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that patients who test positive for COVID-19 after recovering from the illness appear to be shedding dead copies of the virus. That would suggest that these patients are not infectious, the scientists said, which helped dispel fears that some patients can remain infectious for months after being infected. While the study doesn’t answer every question about the virus’s longevity – such as patients who almost appear to have developed a “chronic” form of the illness because their symptoms have persisted for so long.​..
 The results mean health authorities in South Korea will no longer consider people infectious after recovering from the illness. Research last month showed that so-called PCR tests for the coronavirus’s nucleic acid can’t distinguish between dead and viable virus particles, potentially giving the wrong impression that someone who tests positive for the virus remains infectious.  

Must Sustain Crisis...​ 
(Please add vitamin-D today, and take zinc with hydroxychloroquine when needed.)
​  ​Doctors around the globe report that the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine seems the most effective treatment they've tried for coronavirus patients - but less than half as many doctors are prescribing it in the US as in other hard-hit countries like Spain.
​  ​A survey of 6,200 doctors around the globe reveals that while few corners of the world are untouched by the virus, the pandemic is being handled very differently from country-to-country.
​  ​And in some measures, the US continues to fall behind other nations' responses.
​  ​For example, an American waits an average of four to five days to get results back after being tested for COVID-19. Half of doctors in Europe and most in China get the test results back within 24-hours.


​Nancy Knows Best:
​  ​Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that it's "not a good idea" for President Trump to be taking hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus.
​  ​"I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group, morbidly obese, they say," Pelosi said during an appearance on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."
​  ​"So, I think that it's not a good idea​,​"​  ​

​  ​The White House later Monday released a memo from the president's physician saying the two discussed the use of hydroxychloroquine and determined "the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks."  
​  "In consultation with our inter-agency partners and subject matter experts around the country, I continue to monitor the myriad studies investigating potential COVID-19 therapies, and I anticipate employing the same shared medical decision making based on the evidence at hand in the future," presidential physician Sean Conley wrote.
  According to the results of his medical exam released last year, Trump, 73, qualifies as obese with a listed height of 6 feet, 3 inches and a weight of 243 pounds.

This man and his wife could have benefited from quick testing and early treatment.
​  ​A Florida man who said he initially thought the coronavirus pandemic was “a fake crisis” has issued a stark warning for others and both he and his wife contracted the virus and landed in the hospital, where his wife remains sedated on a ventilator.  

​Understanding Better​