Tag: Covid-19

Virginia now double-counting Wuhan flu cases

5:34 pm

Sure, let’s believe those stats! The Virginia state government this week announced that will count as a new case of the Wuhan flu for every positive test done on a patient, even if that patient had been counted previously from an earlier test.

They claim the goal is merely to get a better count of the number of tests they’ve done, but what this new policy will do is significantly increase, falsely, the total number of coronavirus cases in Virginia, which in turn will serve the corrupt and fascist goals of the governor.

That policy may serve to sharply drive up case numbers, which may in turn significantly delay the re-opening of the state. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has stated that the state will begin its first phase of re-opening only when state officials have logged 14 straight days of declining case numbers and hospitalizations.

The governor last week did allow elective surgeries in the state to resume, though the state’s stay-at-home order, which is set to last until June 10, is still in place.

Virginia has been hit relatively lightly by the coronavirus pandemic compared to many other states. According to Worldometers, it ranks 21st in the country for deaths per one million residents, and 20th for cases. [emphasis mine]

Northam needs some justification for extending his power-grab for as long as possible. Fudging the numbers is certainly one way to get him that justification, even if there really is no justification for the power-grab, under almost any circumstances.

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Experts now admit COVID-19 mortality rate much lower then predicted

11:41 am

According to Dr. Deborah Birx, the U.S. coronavirus response coordinator, the experts who initially claimed that the Wuhan flu was far more deadly than the flu were wrong, and that the death rate appears far less, closer to that of a typical flu.

“I think we underestimated very early on the number of asymptomatic cases,” Dr. Birx said. “And I think we’re really beginning to understand there are people that get infected that those symptoms are so low-grade that they don’t even know that they’re infected.”

Dr. Birx added that many of those dying from coronavirus have other diseases, such as heart disease or problems with their immune systems. “[W]e’re seeing the majority of the people that we’re losing to this disease have those other diseases that you just described,” she said. “And so, I do believe that a lot of the diseases we’re seeing in the hospital right now, yes, they may have preexisting conditions but those preexisting conditions are resulting in them having a much more serious course when they’re infected with this virus.”

In other words, the best way to defeat this virus is to get a lot of young and healthy people infected so they can develop antibodies. Those antibodies then do the job a vaccine might do, squelch the disease, and do it far faster and with almost no cost.

This article provides the evidence for Birx’s statement, outlining the five studies so far that have all confirmed the Wuhan flu death rate to be less than 1%, with four finding the rate exactly comparable to that of the ordinary flu.

I must note, with some anger, that from the very beginning, as soon as we began to collect reliable data outside of China, it was clear that this was where the data was taking us. Did any of our elected politicians or mainstream press do anything to note this fact and thus ease the panic? No. Instead, they went out of their way to pour gasoline on the fire, for their own evil and power-hungry ends.

Americans have got to stop obeying these people, or follow any of their advice. They are taking us down the road to hell.

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A “gallery of snitches, busybodies, and employees who rat out their own neighbors and employers.”

11:21 am

Good: The names and addresses of 900 snitches, who reported “social-distancing violations” in Missouri on neighbors, friends, fellow employees, and their employers, have been revealed publicly, as required by the state’s Sunshine Law.

The quote in the headline was said by the man who requested the information and then posted it online for all to see.

It appears these tipsters thought they make these accusations anonymously, without any consequences. Hah! Think again. Our culture and law requires that the accused can see their accuser, or as the sixth amendment in the Bill of Rights states, “be confronted with the witnesses against him.”

Now they “fear backlash” from those they snitched against. Too bad. In fact, I applaud the guy who requested this information and posted it online.

During this entire Wuhan flu panic, there has been a lot of social pressure imposed on those that dare disagree with accepted wisdom that COVID-19 is going to kill us all and that we must take extreme measures against it, no matter what the cost. It has also been expected that one must be polite in expressing any disagreement, tiptoeing on egg shells in case you might offend them, or be accused of wanting to kill people.

Enough. It is time to stare this petty dictators in the face and tell them that they were wrong, and have caused untold harm to many. And if possible, make them feel a some pain as well for their bad behavior.

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Comparing the Wuhan flu with the 1968 Hong Kong flu

9:20 am

Link here.

The Hong Kong flu killed about twice as many people in the U.S. as COVID-19 has so far, and it did this for a population about a third smaller (200 million vs 328 million), meaning that its deadliness was even worse. Yet:

Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic.

Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.

Essentially, life went on. Except for a few people who took some precautions, mostly in connection with older and already sick individuals, everyone took little notice, recognizing that — just like COVID-19 — the Hong Kong flu was not threat to them, and that the best way to beat it was to allow the young and healthy to get it, recover, and thus develop an immunity that would limit its spread to the old and vulnerable.

The result was that the Hong Kong was a blip to society, hardly remembered today, and never a problem. Sadly the situation today is different. Because we decided to panic, we have essentially destroyed our economy and our future freedom. Behaviors that are simply absurd (wearing masks all the time and never getting closer than six feet to anyone else) are becoming socially required.

And the idea that a government can bankrupt business and harass women and children, at will, has now become acceptable.

It will be a long time before a people will ever be as free as Americans once were.

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NY funeral directors: Government is padding Wuhan flu deaths

9:59 am

According to funeral directors in New York, the government is significantly exaggerating the mortality from the Wuhan flu, assigning it as the cause to practically every death

In conversations with several funeral directors across New York City, O’Keefe [of Project Veritas] uncovered a shocking narrative where, without fail, every director he spoke to expressed his or her concern that coronavirus deaths are being inflated and every death in NYC is being recorded as a COVID death with or without testing to confirm.

“They are putting COVID on a lot of death certificates because people who are going to their hospital with any kind of respiratory distress, respiratory problems, pneumonia, the flu — the flu-like symptoms lead into the COVID-19,” said Joseph Antioco of Schafer Funeral Home. “To me, all you’re doing is padding the statistics. You’re putting people on that have COVID-19 even if they didn’t have it. You’re making the death rate for New York City a lot higher than it should be.”

Such corruption in New York, a Democratically-controlled one party state for decades, is not a surprise. It tells us that we cannot trust the numbers now being issued for coronavirus coming from this state. And since New York accounts for about a third of all deaths in the U.S., the totals for the Wuhan flu in this country are highly suspect.

We are being scammed.

One other aspect of this story: Note that all Project Veritas did was some fundamental journalism. They called funeral directors and asked them what was happening. What a concept. Real journalism. I have embedded the full Project Veritas video below the fold.
» Read more

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Car sales continue crash in April

9:04 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: According to one car industry analysis, the April sales of cars will continue to plummet.

“April auto sales took the biggest hit we’ve seen in decades,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of insights. “These bleak figures aren’t just because consumers are holding back on their purchases — fleet sales are seeing an even more dramatic drop as daily rental business has dried up. Like many other industries, the entire automotive sector is struggling as the coronavirus crisis continues to cripple the economy.”

They hope that the end in May of some of the government shut downs imposed because of the Wuhan flu panic will ease the crash, but recognized that with millions out of work, people may no longer have the crash to buy new cars.

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In-person voting in Wisconsin produced no new Wuhan flu cases

1:26 pm

Surprise! Surprise! Despite many predictions of disaster by our lordly “experts,” the data now shows no increase in Wuhan flu cases at all in Wisconsin following its decision to allow in-person voting during its primary earlier this month.

There is of course uncertainty in this conclusion, but even the “experts” agree with this conclusion.

But then, we shouldn’t be surprised. The normal gathering of people in a sane normal society does not result in wholesale deaths from these kinds of viruses. If anything, it serves to strengthen the population’s immunity to them.

We are unfortunately living in a time of mass hysteria, where such common sense facts are ignored, and panic and fear rule the day.

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Ducey extends Arizona shut down two weeks

6:16 pm

Fascist: Republican Arizona governor Doug Ducey today announced a two week extension of his so-called “shelter-in-place” order, what is really a house arrest for the general population and a shut down of business that is putting one quarter of the population out of work.

Ducey’s new edicts call for some businesses to begin opening sooner, but with many restrictions. Restaurants however will be locked down until May 12. The edict also said that “no county, city, or town may issue orders, rules, or regulations that conflict with the executive order.”

I wonder if there might be some pushback from local authorities in some areas, as has been seen in other states, especially because of this minor detail:

One in four small businesses in Phoenix could be gone for good, according to the city’s economic director. It could take six years to recover all the jobs that have been lost. “Seeing that 20% to 25% of our small businesses won’t be here when this is over is terrifying for me,” said Christine Mackay, Director of Community and Economic Development for the City of Phoenix.

What does Ducey care if one in four people are out of work? He made himself look good, and now can preen himself as a hero.

To me, he looks like a jackbooted thug. May he roast in hell.

And I dare him to send some police storm troopers to my house to arrest me for saying so.

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Fascist America: Brought to you by our elected officials

11:43 am

This week brought another slew of arrests against ordinary Americans, some for daring to protest the house arrest orders imposed nationwide by most state and city elected officials, some for simply going about their lives, their “pursuit of happiness.”

These are just a sampling. If you have been paying any attention at all, you will have seen many many other similar stories.

Meanwhile, these same fascist thugs have been releasing convicted criminals onto the streets, including high risk sex offenders.

This pattern is not new during this madness. The ruling Democratic politicians in both New York and California have made it very clear that they consider freeing such criminals as their goal, even as they ramp up their efforts to arrest innocent citizens for the most innocuous behavior.

Where will this end? Never I fear. The original lie that justified the shut downs was an effort to ease the country into the epidemic so that the healthcare system would not be overwhelmed. This was a lie because the virus was never going to overwhelm the healthcare system, and the evidence since has not only proven this, it has shown that the shut downs actually did significant harm to that healthcare system.

Even so, the shut downs didn’t end when that it was clear the healthcare system could handle the virus. Instead, a new lie was propagated, calling the shut downs an effort to stop the spread of the virus.

This lie is more blatant and disgusting. Not only is it impossible to stop the spread of this virus, the lock downs will have no effect at all. Eventually, the virus will spread through the entire population, with most never even knowing they got it.

This however is a feature, not a bug to the fascist government officials imposing martial law on Americans while nullifying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Because the infection can never be stopped, the justification for the lock downs, the house arrests, the arrests of protesters, the imposition of martial law, will never end. Whoopee!

Unless Americans begin defying these orders, we are faced with a fascist state. And I see no sign that most Americans are really willing to defy these orders. If anything, they support them.

Welcome to fascist America. The dark age is no longer coming. It has arrived.

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US 1st quarter GDP crashes

8:53 am

Are you enraged yet? Due to the government-imposed shutdowns due to the Wuhan panic, the gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 4.8% in the first quarter of 2020, the most since 2008.

Consumer expenditures, which comprise 67% of total GDP, plunged 7.6% in the quarter as all nonessential stores were closed and the cornerstone of the U.S. economy was taken almost completely out of commission. Durable goods spending tumbled 16.1% while expenditures on services were down 10.2%.

Exports dropped 8.7% while imports fell 15.3%, including a 30% drop in services.

The count of all goods and services produced in the U.S. shows that even though the first quarter saw only two weeks of shutdown, the impact was pronounced and set the stage for a second-quarter picture will be the worst in the post-World War II era.

As the article notes, we ain’t seen nothing yet. And it will only get even worse should our all-wise supreme leaders continue to stretch out this shut down, initially imposed under the big lie that it was merely intended to “flatten the curve” during the epidemic’s onset so that the healthcare system would not be overwhelmed.

It was not overwhelmed. In fact, it never would have been overwhelmed. As I said, it was a big lie.

Now the big lie is that these fascist government lock downs must be maintained in order to prevent the spread of the disease, a goal that is infinitely impossible but if accepted by the public will allow these petty dictators to keep their jackboots on our necks for the rest of time.

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Freedom rallies planned nationwide for May 1st

11:18 am

The growing movement to force governors to end their nationwide house arrest of the American citizenry is now coalescing into a swelling number of freedom rallies set for May 1st:

The “drive-in” rallies for freedom encourage participants to head to their state capitol or local government building to protest the nationwide lockdowns and demand independence from China, not allowing the country to “control trade, supply chains, or anything else that affects the daily life, health, happiness of American citizens.”

A schedule shows events slated to pop up in Honolulu, Hawaii; Phoenix, Arizona; Northampton, Massachusetts; Los Angeles, California; Huntington Beach, California; San Diego, California; San Francisco, California; Ventura, California; Louisville, Kentucky; Salem, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; Springfield, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; Morehead City, North Carolina; Smithfield, North Carolina; Brookfield, Wisconsin; Carson City, Nevada; Boise, Idaho; and Limerick, Pennsylvania.

“It shouldn’t need to be said that the US Constitution will not be infringed upon, but it is under attack by local and state government tyrants across the country,” the event’s page reads:

This slate of protests is a warning. Right now the demonstrators are trying to be peaceful and law-abiding, but if the Constitution-nullifying restrictions are not removed soon, we should not be surprised if things turn violent. Americans were raised with the expectation that they will be free to follow their pursuit of happiness, and these fascist shut down orders by state governors are preventing that pursuit.

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The most tragic case of governmental, medical, and media malpractice in the history of the world

8:51 am

Link here. The author takes a blunt look at the Wuhan panic, and finds the actions of our leaders to be very wanting, to put it mildly.

I will keep asking this question until the groupthink-thought-police come to arrest me: “When has it ever been sound medical or governmental practice to sacrifice – and destroy – the economic, mental, and physical well-being of the 99 percent to MAYBE protect and save the one percent…or less? When?”

This same doctor I spoke with also stressed to me that the “experts” our nation and the world relied upon to shut it down, could not answer one simple question. That being: Is COVID-19 less or more lethal than the Hong Kong flu pandemic (H3N2) of 1968? A pandemic that mirrored COVID-19 in that it was highly infectious and was primarily lethal to those over 65 with pre-existing conditions. A pandemic that infected millions of Americans and killed approximately 100,000 out of a then population of about 200 million. A pandemic which worldwide, killed upwards of 4 million people.

He then outlines in detail the corruption of the data in the U.S., which appears strongly to be padding the numbers of deaths from the Wuhan flu for political reasons. Or as he says,

How could we possibly account for one-quarter of all the COVID-19 deaths in the entire world?

Easy, if say, you start counting pianos falling out windows and dropping on people as COVID-19 related deaths.

And we have plenty of evidence that this corrupt practice is exactly what government officials are doing.

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Confirmed: Almost 15% of NY population infected with COVID-19

3:52 pm

Further random testing in New York state has now confirmed that 14.9% of the population has been infected with the Wuhan flu without exhibiting any symptoms.

Cuomo said 14.9% of those tested statewide tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, which is up from the initial 13.9% statewide when a previous sample of 3,000 people was done on April 22. Cuomo said the 1% increase is statistically in the margin of error.

While the bulk of infections is in the densely populated NYC area, the data is more evidence that the Wuhan virus’s mortality rate is much lower than previously estimated, and is actually much closer to that of the flu.

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Arizona Governor Ducey to delay end of lockdown?

3:28 pm

According to this article, Republican governor Doug Ducey is delaying any action relating to ending his “shelter-in-place” order that is bankrupting one quarter of Arizona’s industries and putting that many people out of work.

The reason? He apparently has a financial interest in keeping the emergency going for as long as possible.

Insiders tell NATIONAL FILE that Ducey might not be a trustworthy leader in the cause of re-opening the state economy. Ducey is delaying setting a firm date on re-opening the state, citing safety concerns while testing is underway. Ducey presides over legislature-approved state emergency spending and also a portion of his state’s $1.5 billion from the federal government.

Ducey also…

…sits on the Board of Governors for an institute that is accepting state health department funding to conduct Coronavirus testing in the state of Arizona. That institute happens to be an affiliate of a nonprofit that is working to develop a Coronavirus vaccine that is not expected to begin clinical trials until late 2020.

In other words, as long as the emergency lockdown is maintained, Ducey is in a position to funnel money to this institute that he also is on the Board of Governors.

This is unconscionable, especially because the shut down is bankrupting private businesses across the state. Worse, it is par for the course.

When I called the local Republican office here in Tucson, they told me that Ducey is working closely with Senator Martha McSally (R-Arizona), which might also explain his position. One of the reasons McSally lost to Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema in 2018 is because the two are both pretty liberal. For conservatives there really wasn’t any point in voting for McSally, so many stayed home. This is also why she is presently trailing in polls to Mark Kelly, her Democratic opponent for the 2020 election. McSally doesn’t offer an alternative to the big government, Washington swamp politics that now dominate. She is part of it, as is Kelly and Sinema.

As apparently is Ducey as well. I have made several calls to his office, expressing my outrage over the shut down, all to no avail. They say they will call back, but never do.

And our political class wonders why they got Trump. This is why, and if they don’t change their behavior we will get more, and it will be far worse than Trump ever was.

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Researchers: Miami COVID-19 infections could be 20x higher than estimated

11:44 am

Researchers at the University of Miami now estimate that the number of COVID-19 infections in Miami-Dade County could be twenty times higher than presently estimated, thus driving down the disease’s fatality rate to no different than the flu.

Scientists from the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the university’s Miller School of Medicine revealed in a virtual meeting on Friday that a county-wide COVID-19 survey, which followed 1,400 participants over a two-week period, indicated that at least 4.4 percent, and as much as 7.9 percent of the county, could have already contracted the coronavirus.

That is a substantially larger number than the official data set logged by the state of Florida, which on Saturday afternoon had recorded just over 11,000 infections in Miami-Dade County, far and away the most out of any county in the state. Miami-Dade is the most populous county in Florida, with over 2.6 million residents.

The new numbers would also significantly drive down the county’s COVID-19 fatality rate, which with 295 deaths officially stands at around two percent. At the upper bound of the researchers’ new estimates, the death rate would fall to around 0.1 percent, roughly in line with that of the seasonal flu. [emphasis mine]

In other words, what was clearly obvious more than a month ago, the entire Wuhan flu panic was entirely unnecessary. And even if coronavirus returns next year, it still appears it will be comparable to the flu in its impact.

We have never bankrupted our society and nullified the Bill of Rights for past flu seasons, some of which were far worse than this year’s COVID-19 season. But then, we have never had such a bankrupt, idiotic, and brainless intellectual and political class as we do now. The left is driven by hate, hate of whites, hate of America, hate of Trump, while the right is driven by fear, fear of minorities, fear of the press, fear of themselves. None of them have the courage to be intellectually honest, to follow the facts where they go, and to determine their actions based on reality, not emotion, fear, hate, and passion.

Thus, welcome to the Great Wuhan Depression, brought to you by our elected leaders. I hope you have some financial cushion to weather the storm. And whether you do or not, is it not time to fire them all?

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Of almost 3,300 prisoners infected with COVID-19, 96% have no symptoms

10:05 am

Almost 3,300 prisoners in four state U.S. prison have tested positive for the Wuhan flu, with 96% exhibiting no symptoms at all.

When the first cases of the new coronavirus surfaced in Ohio’s prisons, the director in charge felt like she was fighting a ghost. “We weren’t always able to pinpoint where all the cases were coming from,” said Annette Chambers-Smith, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. As the virus spread, they began mass testing.

They started with the Marion Correctional Institution, which houses 2,500 prisoners in north central Ohio, many of them older with pre-existing health conditions. After testing 2,300 inmates for the coronavirus, they were shocked. Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms. “It was very surprising,” said Chambers-Smith, who oversees the state’s 28 correctional facilities.

As mass coronavirus testing expands in prisons, large numbers of inmates are showing no symptoms. In four state prison systems — Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — 96% of 3,277 inmates who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic, according to interviews with officials and records reviewed by Reuters. That’s out of 4,693 tests that included results on symptoms.

Being a Reuters story, the goal is to spin this result as a terrifying disaster: “We can’t contain it! The disease is everywhere!”

In truth, this result is once again remarkably encouraging. It once again shows that the Wuhan flu is simply no threat to a very large percentage of the population, and that if enough of that population would stop social distancing and allow the infection to spread, they would end up killing it because it would soon have no place to go.

It also lends weight to the hypothesis that death rate from coronavirus is really not much different than the flu. There are almost certainly a vast number of people out there infected with the Wuhan virus who have showed no symptoms, meaning that our present estimates of the death rate are much too high.

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Another 4.4 million are out of work this week

10:08 pm

Are you enraged yet? Another 4.4 million applied for unemployment benefits this week, bringing the total of new unemployed since the Wuhan flu panic began in March to about 26 million, and raising the unemployment rate to about 16%.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that the Wuhan flu is probably no more dangerous that the flu, thus making this entire government-imposed shutdown and resulting Great Wuhan Depression entirely uncalled for.

Worse, that any governor in any state is still refusing to end their lock downs at this point tells us that they goal was never to fight the epidemic, but to acquire unjustified power to rule us like dictators. If the voters don’t fire these people wholesale come November than the voters deserve the hell they are about to get.

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Two NY studies suggest Wuhan flu death rate comparable to the flu

10:02 pm

Are you enraged yet? A just released New York study now suggests that there are large numbers infected with the Wuhan flu with no symptoms, about 13.9% of the population, indicating that the overall death rate is probably quite close to the flu.

The article does not state that conclusion, being CNBC and therefore unwilling to come to any conclusion that might suggest things are not terrible. However, see this analysis of a different New York study, with comparable numbers:

Thinking about that study showing that 13.7% of pregnant women presenting for delivery at NYC hospitals in March-early April tested positive for COVID-19 AT THE TIME of admission. Unless one thinks pregnant women are more likely to have been exposed to the virus than other people in the population, surely must mean that ~15% of NYC has been exposed. (Recall also that the NYC study was only of active infections not of antibodies.) If so, then 10,000 deaths out of 15% of NYC (1.2 million) points to an infection fatality rate around .008, very much in the ballpark of seasonal flu. [emphasis mine]

The first reliable numbers from South Korea and the Diamond Princess had shown death rates of about 0.9% and 1.2% respectively. While about ten times higher than the flu’s death rate of about 0.1%, it was also very clear then that these death rates were grossly high because of very large underestimates of the total number of people infected.

Now we are getting better numbers on the total infection rate — including large numbers of healthy individuals who get the disease and never show symptoms — and the evidence is strongly telling us that the Wuhan flu is not that dangerous, killing mostly older and sick individuals, and doing it at the same rate as the flu.

For this we allowed the press and our power-hungry political class to nullify the Bill of Rights and bankrupt the nation? A lot of heads should roll. And soon.

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What We Should ALL Be Doing Right Now!

10:03 am

I think this video clarifies perfectly the policies of our state and federal governments as well as the advice of all of their experts concerning the Wuhan flu. If we would only do what they tell us, all would be fine!

It also illustrates why we as citizens should simply begin living our lives normally, telling them to go to hell.

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A reasoned look at masks and whether they really work

12:23 am

Link here. Based on my reading, he thinks they can be helpful, but only to a very limited extent, and certainly not to the extent of any government here in the U.S. requiring their use.

The point is: does any of what is out there add up to a watertight case for compelling people to wear masks in public or at work (outside a healthcare setting)? The threshold for compulsion must surely be higher than ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’. [emphasis mine]

We are supposed to be a land of freedom, of personal choice and personal responsibility. Research this, make your own decision, but do not force your choice on others.

Note that if you can’t see the article because they are demanding that you subscribe, refresh and immediately hit the escape key. If you time it right (it’s not hard), you can keep the article text up and block the subscribe screen.

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The real devastation from COVID-19: A destroyed economy imposed by government panic

2:01 pm

While many state governors across the United States dawdle and hesitate about lifting their panic-induced lock downs on their states out of fear it might cause a few more Wuhan virus deaths, the real devastation from their panic is propagating uncontrolled across the landscape, and will in the end kill far far more people.

Their actions have caused the entire economy to collapse, destroyed entire industrial sectors, prevented untold numbers from getting the proper healthcare when needed, and put millions of people out of work. In the end, this government-imposed depression will do far more harm that the Wuhan flu ever could, and do it for a much longer time spell.

Don’t believe me? Well let me count the ways, citing the numerous stories I have posted here on Behind the Black in only the past week.
» Read more

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8 million restaurant workers unemployed due to government-imposed shutdowns

9:41 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: Eight million restaurant workers out of work due to due to Wuhan panic and government-imposed shut downs.

In addition, the restaurant industry is predicting $240 billion (with a “b”) in losses by the end of the year. Moreover,

…roughly 3% of the restaurants in the US — or 30,000 restaurants — have already shuttered. In the early April survey, an additional 5% of operators said they anticipated closing in the next 30 days, meaning that more than 50,000 restaurants could shut down permanently.

In early April, UBS said that up to one in five restaurants in the US could close due to the coronavirus pandemic. Experts say that independent restaurants are particularly at risk, with many small businesses struggling to access PPP loans.

In my own neighborhood, I have already seen one restaurant go out of business, and another apparently destroyed just as it was about to open. Through the winter a new Indian restaurant was being built nearby, with signs saying it would soon open. Unfortunately the house arrest imposed by our fearless leader Governor Doug Ducey prevented them from opening as planned. Though the restaurant had signs up offering take-out this week, when Diane tried to pick up a menu so we could give them some business. the place was shut. I suspect they are out of business, a dream destroyed before it could even be born.

But hey, we can’t risk having anyone die from COVID-19, no matter how many other lives we destroy.

Are you enraged yet?

4 comments

Clean energy industry faces loss of a half million jobs

9:23 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: The clean energy sector faces the loss of a half million jobs due to Wuhan panic and government-imposed shut downs.

The coronavirus crisis is cutting a savage swath through the U.S. clean energy industry – some 106,000 jobs in the sector vanished in the month of March alone as demand evaporated amid nationwide stay-at-home orders Moreover, that one-month job loss was greater than what the industry gained in jobs in all of 2019.

By June of this year, the clean energy sector may lose up to 500,000 jobs – or 15% of the country’s entire clean energy workforce — according to a study by clean energy advocacy group E2 (Environmental Entrepreneurs), in cooperation with the American Council on Renewable Energy, E4TheFuture and BW Research Partnership.

Let me repeat: More jobs vanished in just March than were created in all of last year.

If the states don’t start reopening soon, this will just be the beginning.

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Cancer and heart patients dying because of government-imposed shut downs

9:03 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: Because state governments nationwide have forbid the entire healthcare system from treating anyone for anything that might in a rare instant be considered “non-essential”, cancer and heart patients are dying from lack of treatment.

Two stories from the article:

Although canceling procedures such as elective hernia repairs and knee replacements is relatively straightforward, for many interventions the line between urgent and nonurgent can be drawn only in retrospect. As Brian Kolski, director of the structural heart disease program at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange County, California, told me, “A lot of procedures deemed ‘elective’ are not necessarily elective.” Two patients in his practice whose transthoracic aortic valvular replacements were postponed, for example, died while waiting. “These patients can’t wait 2 months,” Kolski said. “Some of them can’t wait 2 weeks.” Rather than a broad moratorium on elective procedures, Kolski believes we need a more granular approach. “What has been the actual toll on some of these patients?” he asked.

Mr. R., a 75-year-old man with advanced heart failure, is another of Kolski’s patients for whom the toll has been great. Because he had progressive volume overload and delirium, Kolski referred him to a hospital for an LVAD workup in early March. Then, as his wife, Ms. R., told me, “the world went wonky, and everything went down the toilet.” Having begun admitting patients with coronavirus, the hospital told the couple it was kicking everyone else out. “They are telling me my husband has 6 to 12 months to live without this procedure,” Ms. R. said, “and now they are canceling it on us.” They were then quarantined at home — 2 hours away from the hospital — with no plan in place. Mr. R.’s health quickly deteriorated again, but his wife had been advised to keep him out of the hospital. When they finally had a video visit on April 9, he’d become so ill that the heart failure physician didn’t recognize him. Mr. R. was promptly admitted, and the LVAD was placed. Though Ms. R. is relieved, ongoing challenges include her husband’s persistent delirium, a visitor policy that allows her to be at the bedside only intermittently, and the need for nearby lodging that they can’t afford.

There are others. Read it all. I will also bet these doctors then wrote a fraudulent death certificate, claiming the heart patients died of the Wuhan flu.

This reminds me of my experience with my lung specialist. Unlike these people, I would not take no for an answer. How dare these doctors allow a heart patient to die because of a government edict?!

But we can’t let COVID-19 kill anyone, even if it means more people die from other causes!

This is madness, at a very high level.

And are you enraged yet? Or will you sit with folded hands while these tyrants smash their boots into your face?

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Rural hospitals in eastern Washington state face bankruptcy

3:14 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: Because the state government’s panicked reaction to the Wuhan virus resulting in a banning of almost all procedures, rural hospitals in eastern Washington state now face financial collapse, bankruptcy, and possible closure.

With the state’s support, federal aid and advanced Medicare loans, the critical access hospital will be able to stay afloat – for now. But the financial impact of COVID-19 on Washington state’s rural hospitals cannot be understated. “This is unprecedented. There’s no way you could be financially prepared for this,” Jacqueline Barton True, vice president of rural health programs at the Washington State Hospital Association, said. “This sort of financial devastation is not something that we could have prepared for, and I have a lot of concerns about what happens if help doesn’t come soon enough.”

Some rural hospitals have received their first installment of funds from the federal CARES Act. Those payments are about $400,000 to $600,000 on average for smaller hospitals, according to WSHA.

Despite having a robust way for most rural hospitals to access community taxpayer support through the public hospital district model, rural hospitals in Eastern Washington are losing money on a daily basis as they balance pandemic preparations with canceled elective surgeries, primary care or patient therapy.

The article is long, outlining in frightening detail the impending collapse of the entire rural hospital network. The bottom line however remains the same: The state government arbitrarily decided that most medical procedures were “non-essential” and banned them so that the hospital would not be overwhelmed by Wuhan flu patients.

Those patients have never arrived in the feared numbers however. Instead we are looking at a normal flu season, when you combine coronavirus with flu cases. Lacking the revenue stream from all other cases, the hospitals are losing money and face bankruptcy.

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Price of oil crashes, goes negative

1:31 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: Due to the crash in demand due to the government-imposed Wuhan panic shutdowns, oil producers, who can’t turn off their oil wells, have run out of storage space and are now forced to pay others to take the oil off their hands, thus sending the price of oil into negative numbers.

Physical demand for crude has dried up, creating a global supply glut as billions of people stay home to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery fell more than 100% to settle at negative $37.63 per barrel.

Meanwhile, international benchmark, Brent crude, which has already rolled to the June contract, traded 8.9% lower at $25.58 per barrel.

While this crash is indicative of the entire crash of the economy, in the near long term it might be a good thing. If the government ever decides to release us from house arrest and people decide it is time to go back to normal, the low price of oil will help stricken businesses get back on their feet.

Then again, there is a very big “if” in that last sentence. I see no indication that our fascist state governors, especially in states run by Democrat governors, have the slightest interest in ending the shut downs. They like the almost absolute power it has given them over everyone, and that absolute power is corrupting them quite effectively. They might be making noises about “easing” the restrictions, but that is only political dishonesty. The bottom line will remain: They are now in control of everything everyone does, and have the right to give or take, as they please, whenever they please.

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Social distancing and lockdowns killing craft beer industry

10:46 am

The beating will continue until morale improves: The new normal of “social distancing”, combined with the government-imposed lock downs, threatens to bankrupt the craft beer industry nationwide.

As much as 15% of craft breweries expect to close by the end of the month if social distancing remains in place, according to a national survey from the Boulder-based Brewers Association, and more than 60% don’t expect to survive beyond June.

If applied to Colorado — which now counts about 420 breweries — the projections suggest 250 would close by summer. That would represent a huge dent for an industry woven into the state’s identity and one that contributes more than $3 billion a year to the state’s economy.

Our society, our culture, our economy, and even the human race itself cannot survive if we accept the premise that no one can ever be closer than six feet to another. It isn’t practical, and it certainly isn’t sane.

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Study finds COVID-19 infecting homeless in large numbers, with few ill effects

9:25 am

A CDC study that established universal testing for Wuhan virus antibodies at a homeless shelter in Boston has found that almost forty percent of those tested had been infected previously, with no symptoms.

The broad-scale testing took place at the shelter in Boston’s South End a week and a half ago because of a small cluster of cases there. Of the 397 people tested, 146 people tested positive. Not a single one had any symptoms.

“It was like a double knockout punch. The number of positives was shocking, but the fact that 100 percent of the positives had no symptoms was equally shocking,” said Dr. Jim O’Connell, president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, which provides medical care at the city’s shelters. [emphasis mine]

Not only does this reinforce results from previous studies (here and here) suggesting that the mortality of coronavirus is much smaller than so far measured and quite likely comparable to the flu, it shows that it is not a threat to the general population.

Think about it. The homeless population is usually unhealthy, with alcoholism and drug use prevalent. Yet, even here a large number got infected, exhibited no symptoms, and were unbothered by the virus. It is possible that their normal ill health disguised their symptoms, but nonetheless the Wuhan flu did not kill them.

If it couldn’t kill large numbers in this population, it means it certainly will not kill large numbers in the normal population. Which means that the lockdowns, social distancing, and coming economic crash, all imposed by government and media panic, were all unnecessary.

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Massachusetts study finds 1/3 of participants had already been infected with COVID-19, without symptoms

11:39 pm

A Massachusetts study of 200 residents on a single street found that one third already had antibodies for the Wuhan flu and had never known they have been infected.

The Mass. General study took samples from 200 residents on the street in Chelsea, MA. Participants remained anonymous and provided a drop of blood to researchers, who were able to produce a result in ten minutes with a rapid test.

Sixty-four of the participants tested positive – a “sobering” result, according to Thomas Ambrosino, Chelsea’s city manager. “We’ve long thought that the reported numbers are vastly under-counting what the actual infection is,” Ambrosino told the Boston Globe.

The article, and the government officials quoted, all try to make this result terrifying and something to fear, but the truth is that it is most heartening and more wonderful news. It indicates, as did the California study reported on April 17, that the death rate for coronavirus is much lower than presently calculated because we have been under-estimating the total number of people infected.

Moreover, these individuals apparently experienced few if any symptoms after getting infected, suggesting once again that the disease is not a serious threat to the general population. In fact, it suggests again that the more people who can get infected, the fewer hosts will be available for the virus, and it will die out.

That these officials instead tried to install panic over this encouraging data tells us all that we need to know about these officials. They are lying thugs, aimed not at easing the crisis but in using it to bring power to government, at the expense of the general public.

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Disney to furlough 100K employees because of government-imposed shut downs

10:47 pm

The beatings will continue until morale improves: Disney is stopping the salaries of hundred thousand employees this week due to the shut downs imposed upon it by our panicked government over COVID-19.

The company says it will still provide full healthcare benefits for those employees, for the moment.

Once again, the shuttering of the Disney theme parks ripples out into the entire local economy. It isn’t just these employees who are now out of work, it is the hotel, transportation, and restaurant employees whose businesses served the same tourist customers.

Will the theme park entertainment come back? Unknown, I’d say, because the fear being pounded into everyone to “social distance,” to an absurd level, might mean that tourists will no longer feel comfortable visiting such venues.

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