Failed past predictions from a COVID-19 “expert”

Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology that has been called the “gold standard” of disease modeling, according to the New York Times and Washington Post, and whose initial predictions that the Wuhan flu would kill more than two million people in the United States and half a million in the UK, has in the past routinely made absurdly wrong and vastly overstated predictions for numerous other diseases.

The article compared Ferguson’s predictions with the real data for the following:

Bird Flu: Ferguson predicted up to 200 million deaths worldwide. So far 455 people have died.

Mad Cow Disease: Ferguson predicted up to 150,000 deaths. So far 178 people have died.

Ferguson’s predictions for coronavirus have been as bad. His initial prediction of 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. is going to be so wrong that every politician and individual that cited it to justify the Wuhan panic should be made to apologize, publicly.

As COVID-19 numbers have come in, Ferguson downgraded his predictions, lowering his UK prediction from 500,000 to only 20,000. At this moment the death toll in the Great Britain is under 9,000. It is very unlikely it will reach Ferguson’s revised number. And even if that number ends up close to accurate, it just illustrates that Ferguson’s ability to predict is garbage. His only accurate number was issued on March 26, when almost anyone could have made a prediction of reasonable accuracy.

So we come to the fundamental question: Why have our press and politicians repeatedly relied on this quack’s predictions? Could it be that his over-the-top cries that the world is about to end might serve their interests, and not the general public’s? Might it be possible that they are using him to convince the pubic to give them more power? Could it?

These are valid questions. And the history of the past two decades justifies asking them, as the track record of our mainstream press and politicians during that time has consistently shown they are not interested in the public’s needs, but their own, exclusively.

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New study suggests lockdowns did nothing to change epidemic growth

A new study produced by researchers at University College London, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard has found that the lockdowns imposed on populations actually accomplished little in slowing the growth of the Wuhan flu epidemic, and that social distancing appears to have been more than sufficient to do the job.

This information comes from the researchers’ twitter feed, and is about to be published. The key quote:

The mean daily case growth rate had _already_ been declining at this point. There was no additional decline in mean daily case growth after implementation of statewide restrictions on internal movement (“lockdowns”)

The researcher then try to make believe the lockdowns were still a good idea, denying their own results, but there it is for all to see. We have risked bankrupting our whole economy and thrown out our Constitution for no reason.

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COVID-19 vs other causes of death

Link here. The article freely admits that a new contagious disease is not the same as something like cancer and snakebites. It also notes the importance of putting this virus in its proper perspective, something unfortunately few are doing.

For example, about 4,700 deaths from the Wuhan flu have been recorded worldwide today. From all accounts we are also very near the peak of this epidemic. Compare this with other death rates:

According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer, there were 9.6 million deaths from cancer in 2018. That works out to around 26,000 deaths a day worldwide.

17.9 million people died from all cardiovascular diseases in 2016 according to the WHO—this works out as 49,000 a day.

Ischaemic heart disease or coronary heart disease specifically was the cause of 9.4 million deaths worldwide in 2016, 25,840 a day.

In 2016 the WHO estimated that 1.6 million people a year die from factors relating directly to diabetes. This is about 4,400 a day. [emphasis mine]

There’s more. Read it all. And remember also that of the 4,700 or so deaths from COVID-19 today, many occurred because the patient was already sick from some other illness and, based on the skewed reporting system being used, might really have died from those illnesses, not the Wuhan flu.

It is very clear that the fears pounded into us by the leftist academic community, working in league with the Washington bureaucracy, are way out of line. As the article concludes:

To sum up where we stand today, April 9: Based on the pretext that we must “limit the spread” of the Wuhan virus, the American economic boom of the past three years has been reversed in a matter of days, millions have lost their jobs, tens of thousands of small businesses have been shuttered and will probably never reopen, and three-quarters of the American population has been subjected to some form of house arrest by state, county and city governments.

All over the country people are being fined or arrested and jailed for violating suddenly imposed restrictions on their every movement and gathering, often with the aid of their neighbors, who turn them in to the police, following instructions on how to be a snitch. Attendance at religious services has been forbidden altogether or limited to ten people, even in vast cathedrals, while “permission” is granted to crowd supermarkets and convenience stores, buy booze, purchase cannabis and have pets groomed.

America’s almost instantaneous transformation into a police state is based on “models” that “predicted” upwards of 2 million deaths from the Wuhan virus without “mitigation” in the form of a preposterous attempt to quarantine 330 million people. And the people have obsequiously bowed to every ridiculous command.

We have been scammed. It is time that the scammers paid, not innocent Americans. It will however take innocent Americans to make that happen, at the voting booth in November.

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Rocket Lab tests 1st stage capture using helicopters

Capitalism in space: In early March, prior to the shutdown of New Zealand due to the Wuhan panic, Rocket Lab successfully completed a test whereby one helicopter dropped a dummy first stage over the ocean, the stage’s parachutes released to slow it down, and then a second helicopter captured it and gently transported and deposited it safely on land.

This test was part of the company’s effort to recovery its first stages so they can be reused. Because of their small size and the difficulty of developing the software, they have decided that a vertical landing is not economical. This test however shows that capturing the stage by parachute is possible. The real trick will be getting the first stage back through the atmosphere to an expected target spot and be able to release its parachutes. Proving that part of the effort will have to wait until the panic is over and New Zealand releases its citizens from house arrest.

I have embedded video of the test below the fold.
» Read more

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IHME lowers its death prediction for Wuhan virus again

In what appears to be becoming an almost twice-weekly event, the scientists who created the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model that the White House has been depending on to deal with the Wuhan flu epidemic have once again lowered their projected total deaths from COVID-19, from about 82,000 to 61,000.

Wednesday’s dramatic reverse in the model’s projection of U.S. deaths was made without a press release from IHME explaining the reasons for the reduction. It marks the second reduction in the model’s U.S. deaths projections since April 1, when it forecast 93,765 U.S. fatalities.

On April 5, the death projections were lowered to 81,766.

Our estimates assume statewide social distancing measures are continuing in states where they have already been enacted, and for those states without such measures in place, it is assumed they will be will be in place within seven days,” IHME director Christopher Murray said on April 5. [emphasis mine]

Murray’s highlighted statement above gives the impression that these new lower numbers are because of the imposed “social distancing measures.” This is a lie. All their predictions, even their highest, always included such measures. Thus, their earlier predictions were simply wrong, and very badly wrong.

In only a week they have dropped their prediction by one third.

I must add that this is the same model that has vastly over-estimated the number of hospitalizations that would occur, to the point of absurdity. Instead of having so many coronavirus patients that hospitals were overwhelmed, hospitals have had numerous empty beds, even in New York.

If the deaths from the Wuhan flu end up around 61,000, that number will match exactly the number of total deaths during the 2017-2018 flu season. Remember how we shut down the entire economy then too? I don’t.

I will also make a prediction. The final numbers will still be far lower than the 61,000 they are now predicting, even though there is clear evidence that many states are exaggerating the number of Wuhan flu deaths, probably in order to justify their panic that has shutdown the country and is bankrupting millions. In the end, even with these overstated numbers, the totals (including the flu) will I bet end up not much more than a somewhat bad flu season, but not one far different than 2017-2018, the worst in many years.

If the voters don’t fire a lot of politicians come November for this disgusting travesty, then we are surely doomed to bankruptcy and tyranny in future years.

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Wuhan panic causes Space Force to delay launch

The Space Force yesterday announced that it is delaying the April launch by SpaceX of a GPS satellite until June, though they say in their announcement that they also still intend to get all three GPS launches off this year, as originally planned.

It seems they decided that since the in-orbit constellation is operating well, with lots of redundancy, they could afford to wait two months to launch this new upgraded GPS satellite.

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Lost freedoms and media lies

The panic over the Wuhan virus is clearly doing irreparable harm to our freedoms. And worse, the loss of those freedoms is being celebrated and supported by the press, the very people who should be acting to protect them, for their own sake if not ours.

Consider for example this article, which documents how four of the ten rights in the Bill of Rights have been tossed out the window during the government imposed lockdowns over the Wuhan flu. It also notes that a more basic right, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, has been cancelled as well.

While this right is not listed in the Bill of Rights and instead appears in the Declaration of Independence, it covers all of our rights in a general sense and should be considered under attack. I have heard from friends who have been stopped at the border of their state and turned back by police; people with out-of-state plates turned away from grocery stores over the border that have supplies they need and can’t get in their own state; and people whose livelihoods are being destroyed by government edicts with no end date in sight. [emphasis mine]

As the author also notes, “anyone who has studied human history knows the ‘temporary’ loss of human rights is rarely temporary.”

The worst part of this article however is the incompleteness of the list of civil rights abuses. Consider these for example:
» Read more

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COVID-19 model predictions continue to be too high

Two stories off the wire today illustrate again the overheated and over-stated predictions of the computer models being used by federal and government officials are simply wrong.

The first prediction resulted in a panic that caused hospitals nationwide to cease all “non-essential” medical procedures out of fear they would overwhelmed with serious Wuhan virus sufferers. Instead, hospitals sit empty with little activity and some have had to cut staff and hours because the loss of the income from those “non-essential” procedures is bankrupting them. And in New York, the worst hit state, the model was four times too high:

The model projected that New York would need 65,400 hospital beds by April 4, but only 15,905 were actually used, according to former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson.

The second story reports that the IHME model that the White House and state governors have been relying on to justify shutting down the entire U.S. economy, bankrupting millions of small businesses, and putting millions of people out of work, has reduced its prediction for deaths from COVID-19 from about 93,000 to about 82,000, a number is still certainly too high based on the actual deaths so far. Earlier they were claiming hundreds of thousands could die.

Meanwhile, policy nationwide has been based on the assumption, clearly stated by Dr. Deborah Birx, head of the White House coronavirus task force, that “No state, no metro area, will be spared.”

The numbers however make this statement seem absurd. This state-by-state analysis today shows that the bulk of the problem is focused in the New York metropolitan area:

Thus, we can ascertain by these numbers that 53% of all U.S. Coronavirus deaths are coming from the two states of New York and New Jersey.

…If you throw out the numbers for the top five and bottom five states, removing the extreme highs and lows – the other 40 U.S. states (including Puerto Rico) will have suffered an average of 70 deaths from Coronavirus.

In other words, we have allowed our politicians to bankrupt us over an illness that has killed so few people in most of the country (most of which were aged and likely very sick already) that the numbers could almost have been considered rounding errors.

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More evidence that U.S. health system is not being overwhelmed by COVID-19

In an article today in the National Review focused on a lot of good coronavirus news the past week, a number stories jumped out at me, mostly focused on the surplus hospital beds available in the states of Florida, New Jersey, Washington, Maryland, Vermont, Ohio, Utah, and in southern Arizona, and in the cities of Dallas, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Orange County.

In other words, my conclusion earlier this week that the U.S. hospital system was not going to be overwhelmed by COVID-19 is proving to be true. Even in New York, which appears to have the biggest problem, they have arranged with twenty hotels to convert rooms for hospital care.

Much of this surplus is unfortunately caused by the forced lockdowns that have forbidden hospitals to do any elective surgeries (with “elective” sometimes defined so broadly that they have caused some hospitals to cut staff and hours) as well as the too-high predictions that have probably caused them to plan for more beds than they will need.

Nonetheless, these surpluses are good news.

Meanwhile, the daily death toll rose significantly today in the U.S., reaching almost 1,500, after several days where it appeared to have stabilized around 1,000. This rise is not unexpected, and further rises will also not be a surprise. The moment of truth however will be when it begins to drop, which should probably happen in less than two weeks. When that happens, we will then finally be able to get a realistic estimate of the total mortality from COVID-19.

I will add that based on the numbers of actual deaths so far in the U.S., it still appears to me that the prediction of between 100,000 to 240,000 U.S. deaths by Trump’s experts is going to be much too high, and very very wrong.

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Shutdowns forcing hospitals to cut staff during Wuhan panic

This makes perfect government sense: The shutdowns that our governments have imposed on people and businesses nationwide due to the Wuhan panic has forced hospitals to cut staff and shorten hours.

The article describes the growing collapse of medical services caused by the state-imposed lockdowns in Ohio, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Connecticut, South Carolina, Tennessee, New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia, and Arizona. That’s only ten states, but it is very likely the remaining states are experiencing the same problems, as described in the article:

The Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is furloughing 400 across its health system as a result of surgeries being delayed, which has caused patient volumes to plummet, resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue, according to the Hartford Courant.

The number of elective cases at Prisma Health in South Carolina has fallen by over 75% in two weeks. CEO Mark O’Halla issued a letter to employees informing them of furloughs, adding that they will be able to file for unemployment and apply for open positions at the hospital.

Two-hundred healthcare workers in Tennessee are being furloughed as a result of “dramatically reduced” hospital visits, which means a loss of revenue, according to the Tennessean.

We need to bankrupt ourselves in order to save us! Thank you government and centralized rule!

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First estimate of the cost of the Wuhan panic shutdown

The estimated lose to the U.S. economy due to the shutdown over the Wuhan panic is now estimated at $32 trillion, more than the entire annual gross national product for the country.

That number is of course preliminary, but for a first guess I think it is probably low, especially because it does not include the following:

  • Lost opportunity cost for businesses
  • Lost opportunity cost for individuals who had to delay dreams, plans, etc.
  • The loss of freedom (priceless)
  • The cost of not educating millions of students and falling further behind in academic standards

It also assumes we get back to work relatively soon. Should the shut down extend through May, I think the Great Depression will appear like a lark in comparison.

Note that the overall social cost of this panic and shutdown cannot be measured, as it is also establishing new social distancing customs that are probably overwrought and counter-productive for a healthy society.

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States begin push to end voting at polls

The rigging of elections begins: As part of the Wuhan panic, state legislators (as well as Joe Biden, the present Democratic Party front runner for president), are now pushing to change election laws to allow more voting by mail, and to even eliminate in-person voting at the polls.

States are weighing measures to change voting rules in November’s presidential election as they struggle with social-distancing orders during the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, according to a report Tuesday. “More people who vote early or vote by mail, means fewer people standing in line on election day,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla told the Axios news website.

But the effort to keep voters from going to the polls in person Nov. 3 faces legislative and financial roadblocks. The price for states to change their methods of voting could pass $2 billion, Axios said.

Of course, they are completely sincere about their desire to protect us from this evil virus. None of them would ever take advantage of an election conducted entirely by mail to rig the results. Never! How could anyone think such a thing?!

I mean, really, these are the same kinds of people who wrote the FISA court legislation, and then administered it perfectly! They are also the same kind of governmental people who run the IRS and never use it to go after people they don’t like, for political reasons. Never!

I await the coming our perfect government-run utopia. All will be well. Just accept it.

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The lack of context during the Wuhan virus panic

Link here.

This editorial tries to remind people that when you look at the whole picture, the coronavirus epidemic simply does not yet justify the fear it has caused, or the over-the-top authoritarian measures politicians have imposed. For example:

On its own, 3,000 fatalities [from COVID-19 as of yesterday] might seem like a tremendously large number. But that’s before you learn that an average of 7,700 people die in the U.S. every single day. Which means that over the past week, when the coronavirus took 2,000 lives, nearly 54,000 people died from other causes. [emphasis in original]

They then list the many other preventable causes of death that each year kill far more people than the coronavirus, and yet pass entirely unnoticed, with no panic, fear, or government-imposed edicts. The mortality numbers for other infectious diseases I find especially revealing:

  • 35,000: antibiotic-resistant bacteria
  • 40,922: blood poisoning resulting from bacteria
  • 55,672: flu and pneumonia

Once again, these are numbers for deaths that occur routinely, each year. I don’t remember the government declaring martial law over these. Do you?

COVID-19 could still be as bad as our panic-stricken leaders say, with predictions of between 100,000 to 200,000 deaths this year. I remain very skeptical. Such numbers would be from two to four times higher than the worse flu epidemic. The data from too many sources suggest this prediction is absurdly high.

And even if it is correct, I suspect these deaths will not be additional mortality, on top of all other causes. Instead, I predict that overall the mortality will be about the same, if not less, because of the imposition of martial law. Unable to go out, there will be fewer traffic accidents and flu infections, for example, causes that routinely kill a lot of people.

Thus, the overall death numbers will not be significantly different than we normally see, a result that will hardly justify the panic that has gripped everyone.

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Total mortality is DOWN in Europe during Wuhan panic

According to the latest weekly report of overall mortality in Europe, the number of deaths during the March 18 to 24 time period had dropped, even though that was the exact period when the panic and alarm over the COVID-19 epidemic began to reach its height.

The article at the link also notes that this particular flu season has so far been relatively mild, which corresponds with the U.S. data I posted on March 26.

Both the article and his source speculate with some puzzlement as to why this is the case. Obviously, the panic shutting down our entire economy and society is probably helping. At the same time, this flu season was already clearly going to be a mild one, long before the Wuhan panic took over.

Regardless, what these numbers once again suggest is that the response to COVID-19 has been way out of line and over the top. While our bankrupt press keeps focusing on specific deaths and coronavirus mortality rates, they are failing to note that the overall death rate is not changing, and is possibly even dropping.

A good example are the wild rumors, widely reported, of a gigantic order of burial urns for China, implying that these urns were needed because of millions of extra COVID-19 deaths, not reported by the Chinese authorities. What nobody asks is how many urns are normally ordered each year? I suspect the numbers would be quite similar.

We are not all going to die from the Wuhan virus, though the extreme measures our government is forcing us to take might very well kill us, in other ways. At a minimum, those extreme measures are destroying what was once a free society.

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New York: Where politicians consider criminals their base and ordinary citizens their enemy

Like the Democrats running California, the reaction of the Democrats running New York to the Wuhan virus has nicely revealed who they consider their base, and who they consider their enemies:

The first story is one of several from New York. Even as the Democrats in charge have moved to place all citizens under house arrest, they also seem to think releasing criminals from jail (the perfect type of quarantine) is a good idea.

No one should harbor any doubts about where the Democrats loyalties lie. They are not really interested in saving lives. They are interested in stamping a jack boot on the face of every decent person. And they know that if their own efforts to impose martial law fail, they know that releasing a lot of violent criminals surely will help.

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Europe’s BepiColumbo mission to Mercury threatened by COVID-19

Because of the strict rules and work suspensions imposed due to the Wuhan virus panic, there will be a reduced workforce during the April 10, 2020 fly-by of Earth by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) BepiColumbo Mercury mission.

The press release tries to make it sound like they are heroically working through the fly-by, but the truth is revealed far down in the text:

The operation, however, will be performed with limited personnel at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, where engineers will have to comply with social distancing rules presently in place all over Europe as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. “The Earth swing-by is a phase where we need daily contact with the spacecraft,” says Elsa Montagnon, BepiColombo Spacecraft Operations Manager at ESA. “This is something that we cannot postpone. The spacecraft will swing by Earth independently in any case.”

The coronavirus threat forces the team to work with minimal face to face interaction while ensuring all steps in the process are properly covered. “During the critical two weeks prior to the closest approach, we need to upload safety commands to prepare the spacecraft for unexpected problems,” says Christoph Steiger, BepiColombo Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager. “For example, we need to prepare the transfer module for the 34 minute-long eclipse when its solar panels will not be exposed to sunlight to prevent battery discharge.”

Operations can still be conducted as planned, he adds, but will require more effort and attention than in a normal situation. [emphasis mine]

I suspect that much of the software work is now being done remotely, but there is no doubt the inability to be present in the control room will prevent any quick fix, should the spacecraft need help during the fly-by.

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Flu deaths appear to be plummeting as COVID-19 arrives

Sarah Hoyt has published a very revealing analysis of the CDC numbers of the on-going 2019-2020 flu season.

The graphs, which are astonishing, show two trends, one somewhat expected, the other completely a surprise. You should definitely go to the link to see.

First, this flu season there is a giant uptick in people seeing their doctor because of flu symptoms. Though the big rise in doctor visits began in December, when COVID-19 first began to make the news, the trend did began well before its appearance, making the uptick somewhat puzzling.

The second trend makes that uptick even more baffling. It appears that in the last four weeks the number of deaths because of flu and pneumonia has plummeted, dropping to far below any numbers for the past five years. As Hoyt notes at the link,

BTW the author and I had several “people who know better than us” look at the charts, and it remains a mystery. No, we don’t know what’s going on. We know it makes no sense.

I suspect the drop in deaths is connected to the high level of concern by the general population, causing them to get treatment earlier so that many who would have died in past seasons don’t. I also suspect that this data also confirms the relatively minor impact so far of COVID-19 overall. As the author notes,

As to conclusions, there isn’t enough data for any concrete conclusion. Looking at this logically, IF there have been COVID-19 cases in the US since December, it doesn’t appear to have been deadly enough to have been very noticeable.

This data is very preliminary, has great uncertainties. Nonetheless, it suggests once again that the panic over the Wuhan flu is way out of line.

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Pork galore in Senate-passed COVID-19 “stimulus” bill

The so-called COVID-19 “stimulus” bill that the Senate passed yesterday is apparently stuffed with billions in hand-outs to friends and buddies of Congress and the Washington bureaucracy, all of which have nothing to do with helping the American public being bankrupted by the forced shutdowns imposed on them by government.

Go to the link for a full list, which includes money for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kennedy Center in DC, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the post office, NASA, and the Department of Education, to name only a few. It also includes a pay raise for Congress, money to sanctuary cities to allow them to continue to flout immigration laws (thereby making it harder to control the virus), and half a billion in foreign aid to Africa. The bill also will force unions on businesses who wish to take any government money.

There’s more of course. It will take a few days for decent people to dig through the entire document [pdf]. By that time however the House, under Democratic Party control, will have added more goodies, the Senate and Trump will have approved, and the bill will be law.

Three cheers for Congress!

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COVID-19 is NOT going to overwhelm our healthcare system

As part of the panic that has been overwhelming the world because of COVID-19, one of the typical lies that is being spread is that the epidemic is going to overwhelm the world’s healthcare systems. This CNN article from yesterday, entitled “‘That’s when all hell broke loose’: Coronavirus patients start to overwhelm US hospitals”, is typical:

“We ended up getting our first positive patients — and that’s when all hell broke loose,” said one New York City doctor.

The doctor, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity out of concern for his job, described a hospital that was woefully unprepared for an influx of Covid-19 patients that started roughly two weeks ago — which has already stretched the hospital’s resources thin and led to severely ill patients outnumbering ventilators.

“We don’t have the machines, we don’t have the beds,” the doctor said.

“To think that we’re in New York City and this is happening,” he added. “It’s like a third-world country type of scenario. It’s mind-blowing.” [emphasis mine]

We’re all gonna die!

Not! To dispell these mainstream media lies, I am going to give my readers an example of what a real journalist does, in comparison to the brainless non-researchers at CNN (and elsewhere) who make believe they are journalists but instead play them, on television and cable each day, in order to push an anti-American and leftist agenda that is downright evil and destructive.

I’m going to do some real research, and provide it to my readers so that they can get some context and a deeper understanding of the fake Wuhan flu “pandemic.”
» Read more

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SpaceX commercial launch for Argentina postponed because of COVID-19

Because of travel restrictions imposed by the worldwide panic over the COVID-19 virus, Argentina’s space agency has postponed the planned March 30, 2020 launch by SpaceX of an Earth observation radar satellite.

“This decision (to postpone the launch) has been made considering the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and that could affect the availability of own resources and foreign third-party resources, necessary not only for a safe insertion into orbit, but also for further operation of the satellite,” CONAE said in a statement.

CONAE said the decision to postpone the launch, which was made in consultation with SpaceX, is the “best decision in these moments of uncertainty … that the whole world suffers because of COVID-19.”

Argentina has halted all flights to and from the United States, impacting the ability of Argentine personnel needed to support the planned launch to travel to the Florida spaceport.

The more I research the Wuhan flu, the more I am convinced that the world’s governments have gone crazy. More on this later today.

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