Coronavirus (COVID-19) General News Collection & Resources

[zanderthunder]

"This virus may never go away," WHO says

 

GENEVA (Reuters) - The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 could become endemic like HIV, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, warning against any attempt to predict how long it would keep circulating and calling for a "massive effort" to counter it.

 

"It is important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away," WHO emergencies expert Mike Ryan told an online briefing.

 

"I think it is important we are realistic and I don't think anyone can predict when this disease will disappear," he added. "I think there are no promises in this and there are no dates. This disease may settle into a long problem, or it may not be."

 

However, he said the world had some control over how it coped with the disease, although this would take a "massive effort" even if a vaccine was found -- a prospect he described as a "massive moonshot".

 

More than 100 potential vaccines are being developed, including several in clinical trials, but experts have underscored the difficulties of finding vaccines that are effective against coronaviruses.

 

Ryan noted that vaccines exist for other illnesses, such as measles, that have not been eliminated.

 

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus added: "The trajectory is in our hands, and it's everybody's business, and we should all contribute to stop this pandemic."

 

Ryan said "very significant control" of the virus was required in order to lower the assessment of risk, which he said remained high at the "national, regional and global levels".

 

Governments around the world are struggling with the question of how to reopen their economies while still containing the virus, which has infected almost 4.3 million people, according to a Reuters tally, and led to over 291,000 deaths.

 

The European Union pushed on Wednesday for a gradual reopening of borders within the bloc that have been shut by the pandemic, saying it was not too late to salvage some of the summer tourist season while still keeping people safe.

 

But public health experts say extreme caution is needed to avoid new outbreaks. Ryan said opening land borders was less risky than easing air travel, which was a "different challenge".

 

"We need to get into the mindset that it is going to take some time to come out of this pandemic," WHO epidemiologist Maria van Kerkhove told the briefing.

 

Source: "This virus may never go away," WHO says (via TheStar Online)

[dufus]

5 hours ago, zanderthunder said:

"We need to get into the mindset that it is going to take some time to come out of this pandemic,"

 

until we can nail you all with a vaccine !

[dufus]

March 2, 2014 14:40 GMT

 

Brain-Damaged UK Victims of Swine Flu Vaccine to Get £60 Million Compensation

Patients who suffered brain damage as a result of taking a swine flu vaccine are to receive multi-million-pound payouts from the UK government.

 

The government is expected to receive a bill of approximately £60 million, with each of the 60 victims expected to receive about £1 million each.

 

Peter Todd, a lawyer who represented many of the claimants, told the Sunday Times: "There has never been a case like this before. The victims of this vaccine have an incurable and lifelong condition and will require extensive medication."

 

Following the swine flu outbreak of 2009, about 60 million people, most of them children, received the vaccine.

 

It was subsequently revealed that the vaccine, Pandemrix, can cause narcolepsy and cataplexy in about one in 16,000 people, and many more are expected to come forward with the symptoms.

 

Across Europe, more than 800 children are so far known to have been made ill by the vaccine.

 

Narcolepsy affects a person's sleeping cycle, leaving them unable to sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time, and causing them to fall unconscious during the day. The condition damages mental function and memory, and can lead to hallucinations and mental illness.

 

Cataplexy causes a person to lose consciousness when they are experiencing heightened emotion, including when they are laughing.

 

The Pandemrix vaccine was manufactured by pharmaceuticals giant Glaxo Smith Kline, which refused to supply governments unless it was indemnified against any claim for damage caused. The company will pay the bill, and claim the money back from the government.

 

"There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in children in some countries - and probably in most countries," Emmanuelle Mignot, a specialist in sleep disorder at Stanford University in the United States told Reuters.

 

Mignot has been paid by GSK to research the effects of the drug.

 

Among those affected are NHS medical staff, many of whom are now unable to do their jobs because of the symptoms brought on by the vaccine. They will be suing the government for millions in lost earnings.

 

However, the vast majority of patients affected - around 80% - are children.

 

Among them is Josh Hadfield, 8, from Somerset, who is on anti-narcolepsy drugs costing £15,000 a year to help him stay awake during the school day.

 

"If you make him laugh, he collapses. His memory is shot. There is no cure. He says he wishes he hadn't been born. I feel incredibly guilty about letting him have the vaccine," said his mother Caroline Hadfield, 43.

 

Despite a 2011 warning from the European Medicines Agency against using the vaccine on those under 20 and a study indicating a 13-fold heightened risk of narcolepsy in vaccinated children, GSK has refused to acknowledge a link.

 

"Further research is needed to confirm what role the vaccine may have played in the development of narcolepsy in those affected," the company said in a statement.

source

 

The UK Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance      Glaxo Smith Kline

[dufus]

Bill Gates offered House of Reps $10m bribe for speedy passage of compulsory vaccine bill – CUPP alleges

 

The Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), on Monday, alleged that it has intercepted a human intelligence report that the Nigeria House of Representatives leadership was poised to forcefully pass the compulsory vaccine bill without subjecting it to the traditions of legislative proceedings.

 

In a statement issued and signed by the spokesperson of the opposition political parties, Barrister Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere and sent to DAILY POST in Abuja on Monday, the body urged lawmakers in the lower chamber to rise against impunity.

 

The body in the statement alleged that a sum of $10 million was offered by the American Computer Czar, Bill Gates to influence the speedy passage of the bill without recourse to legislative public hearing, a development they averted as anachronistic, adding that the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila should be impeached if he forces the bill on members.

 

The statement read:

 

“Opposition Coalition (CUPP) has intercepted very credible intelligence and hereby alerts Nigerians of plans by the leadership of the House of Representatives led by Femi Gbajabiamila to forcefully and without adherence to the rules of lawmaking to pass the Control of Infectious Diseases Bill 2020 otherwise known as the Compulsory Vaccination Bill which is proposing a compulsory vaccination of all Nigerians even when the vaccines have not been discovered.

 

“This intelligence is coupled with the information of the alleged receipt, from sources outside the country but very interested in the Bill, of the sum of $10 million by the sponsors and promoters of the Bill to distribute among lawmakers to ensure a smooth passage of the Bill.

 

“This will manifest in a wishy-washy public hearing which the promoters still insist on cancelling under the pretext of containment of the spread of the coronavirus. The intelligence is that the House will under whatever guise pass the Bill tomorrow 5th May, 2020 upon resumption.

 

“The Nigeria opposition rejects the Bill and urges opposition lawmakers in the House of Representatives to confront the Speaker of the House with these facts tomorrow at plenary and resist every plan to illegally pass the Bill.

 

“We have been informed that the alleged deal on the passage of the Bill was struck during a trip to Austria a few months back while the financial support for the promotion of the Bill was allegedly received last week to mobilize for a push leading to the hurried attempt to pass the Bill by any means necessary.

 

“Nigerians are reminded that at present, there is no discovered/approved vaccine anywhere in the world and one now begins to wonder why the hurry to pass a Bill for a compulsory vaccine when there is none.

 

“What if the world eventually does not find a vaccine or cure for coronavirus just like it has not found a cure for HIV AIDS? What is the hurry in passing a Bill based on speculation or is there anything else the leadership of the House would want to tell Nigerians? Is this bill what will stop the mass deaths and infections rising in Lagos, Kano, Abuja, Gombe, Borno, Kaduna, Ogun, Bauchi and indeed all over the country?

 

“Is this Bill going to revive and grow the economy and reduce hunger and give us more testing kits or bed spaces? Is this Bill going to stop the stealing of palliatives meant for poor and vulnerable Nigerians? Is it true that all these noises for the Bill is all for the alleged $10 million?

 

“The leadership of the House needs to start speaking now on why the hurry when there are a lot of urgent Bills to be passed which are not being attended to.

 

“Where is the Bill to make the wearing of face masks compulsory now that the Federal Government has against all wisdom insisted on easing the lockdown and the people have trooped out already without obeying the health regulations that will make them safe?

 

“Where are the economic revival Bills to protect jobs and vulnerable Nigerian workers whose livelihoods are threatened daily by this pandemic? Where are the Bills to compel the Federal Government to look inwards and encourage emergency research for the manufacture of essentials like test kits, ventilators, Personal Protective Equipment, vaccines, drugs, masks, sanitizers etc

 

“All opposition lawmakers should prove they are not part of the evil or partakers of the financial inducement and confront Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila to come clean.

 

“Let all parliamentary rules be dropped and opposition members should turn the House upside down using their parliamentary privileges if that is what it takes to stop this foreign-sponsored Bill.

 

“Why make a law for a vaccine that has not been discovered? Does it mean that Femi Gbajabiamila and the promoters have an idea of the vaccine and when it will be ready? When nations like Madagascar are making local remedies which is working, APC is making a law to compulsorily inject Nigerians with vaccines our former slave masters have not yet discovered.

 

“The plan to push the passing of the bill is evil

 

“The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC did not make any contributions to the drafting of the Bill and has even told Femi Gbajabiamila to suspend the Bill as the timing is very wrong but Mr. Gbajabiamila believes he can secure the silence and acquiescence of the NCDC with all the illegal powers been provided for the NCDC in the Bill hence he still wants to push ahead with it the passage.

 

“Like we told the Federal Government before, do not bring Chinese doctors, shut our external borders, do not ease the lockdown, do not relax Kano lockdown and they refused to heed to wise counsel preferring to play myopic politics with the lives of Nigerians, today the community transmission is getting worse and it has almost been confirmed that the so called strange deaths in Kano of hundreds of citizens is a result of the COVID-19.

 

“We are saying loudly again and calling on House of Representatives to suspend this Control of Infectious Diseases Bill and await for proper input and scrutiny after the pandemic and charge all efforts towards giving the needed support to reduce the spread and find a homegrown solution.”

 

source

 

Bill Gates spends $1.6bn in Nigeria  

Gbajabiamila denies involvement of Bill Gates in infectious disease bill

[Karlston]

Why Has Covid-19 Hit Seniors So Hard?

It’s not one thing, it’s everything. Older people are more likely to catch the disease, to suffer from it more severely, and to have a tougher recovery.

Photograph: David Ramos/Getty Images

 

 

It took six weeks, several long, frustrating phone calls, and a consultation with Apple Care before Laurie Jacobs got her 89-year-old father up and running on FaceTime. Jacobs, who is a geriatrician by training and is now the chair of the Department of Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, was worried about how her parents were coping during the pandemic. They live in a long-term care community, but they felt isolated and lonely. Over the phone, Jacobs couldn’t tell how her mother, who has some cognitive decline, was feeling or if she was walking comfortably. “The communication at a distance is very difficult,” she says. “You don’t always get the whole picture with an older adult on the telephone.”

 

And, like so many other Americans in quarantine, her parents were running out of things to do. “They seemed bored and somewhat depressed by the lack of stimulation, so further ways for them to interact was very important,” says Jacobs.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic presents a doubly complicated situation for older people: Not only are they at higher risk of contracting the disease, and more likely to develop severe infections and die from it, but they are also the most likely to struggle with—and suffer from— the consequences of prevention strategies like social distancing. For people with dementia, Alzheimer's disease, or severely reduced mobility, social-distancing guidelines can be impractical and nearly impossible to follow, making prevention and treatment even more complicated.

 

Seniors, especially those above age 80, have been hard hit by the virus. That’s in part because they often have comorbidities like diabetes and hypertension, which make them more likely to be hospitalized. Doctors aren’t sure why those conditions make the effects of the virus worse, but both conditions are associated with greater expression of the ACE2 receptor, a protein on human cells that the coronavirus latches onto to start replicating.

 

Many older adults also have chronic, low-grade inflammation, a state called “inflammaging,” in which the body is unable to control the release of cytokines, small proteins that are supposed to help modulate the body’s immune response. This dysregulation could put seniors at great risk of “cytokine storms,” a condition reported in severe Covid-19 cases during which a patient’s immune system spins out of control and starts damaging healthy organs.

 

Seniors are also more vulnerable because of immunosenescence, a slow deterioration of the immune system that is a normal part of aging. When people are young, the immune system has a big reservoir of T-cells and B-cells ready to fight infections. These are called “naive cells,” meaning they haven’t encountered any bacteria, viruses, or other pathogens yet. When those naive cells encounter an infection, some of them learn to recognize that pathogen and become ready to fight it off if the body gets exposed to it again. “As we age, we lose that reservoir of T-cells and B-cells,” says Wayne McCormick, head of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Washington. “It’s hard for us to make new ones, although some people seem to retain that capacity better than others.” That means the person’s body may mount a less robust immune system response than it would have done when they were younger.

 

Immunosenescence also means that diseases present differently in seniors, which may make it difficult for their doctors or caretakers to recognize a Covid-19 infection. While many Covid-19 cases include fever, for example, in seniors the symptoms might also include confusion, delirium, sleepiness, or loss of appetite. That may be because the virus has reached important organs like the brain, kidneys, or digestive system. “As one gets older, the virus can invade without being resisted as much, and then some really bad things begin to happen,” says William Greenough, clinical chief of the ventilator rehabilitation unit at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. “Particularly in older people, we’re seeing clogging of blood vessels in the brain and kidneys.”

 

There’s still a lot scientists and doctors don’t understand about the new coronavirus, but Greenough says the virus appears to be much more complicated, and to affect more parts of the body, than previously thought. Recent reports of “Covid toe,” stroke, and blood clots suggest the virus affects the vascular system in addition to the respiratory system. For older adults who have more wear and tear on their blood vessels, or who may have constricted vessels, this could be particularly destructive.

 

Not only are seniors more biologically susceptible, but many of them live in situations that make catching the virus more likely because they interact daily with other people, many of whom are themselves more likely to catch the virus. Some seniors live in their own homes and get assistance from health aides who may take public transit, serve multiple clients, and—like many other essential workers—are unable to shelter in place while doing their job. “They were subject to getting Covid early in the epidemic and brought it home,” says Jacobs.

 

The situation is analogous to what has happened in some long-term care facilities, where the coronavirus has spread like wildfire between staff and residents, Jacobs continues. Even though seniors are more likely to develop a severe infection, many are instead asymptomatic carriers, making it hard to catch the virus without testing an entire facility. One of the worst early outbreaks happened at a long-term care facility in Kirkland, Washington, and by mid-April half of the state’s Covid-19 deaths occurred in such facilities. Other serious outbreaks have happened at senior homes in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maine, due in part to dense living conditions, understaffing, and a lack of personal protective equipment. And recently, health authorities have realized that the virus is spreading rapidly in work communities where employees are housed in crowded conditions, share long commutes on shuttles, or cannot easily socially distance, like meat packing or farmwork.

 

Whether they live in a long-term care facility, nursing home, or in a family home, many seniors have unique needs that make it impossible for them to socially distance. Some need help eating, washing, going to the bathroom, or moving around. “You can’t do that using Facetime,” says Eric Widera, a professor at the University of California San Francisco who specializes in geriatric and palliative medicine.

 

Yet for older adults living in their homes, social distancing can cause isolation and loneliness. Most of the places people would go to socialize—senior centers, libraries, churches, temples, or synagogues—are closed. Families are discouraged from visiting. “We’re worried it’s going to cause a wave of true loneliness,” says Widera, which can lead to serious health problems including worse cognitive function, higher blood pressure, and heart disease.

 

While older adults are the most likely to catch Covid-19, they also may be less likely to benefit from a vaccine. Because seniors don’t raise the same immune response that younger adults and children do, they generally don’t respond as well to vaccines. They also aren’t always included in clinical trials. “If you look at the last many decades of research, the vast majority of randomized control trials do not include older adults. And if they do, they don’t include frail older adults, who are at risk for this,” says Widera. “That’s one of our worries: That we’ll be looking at potential treatments, vaccines, but not actually testing it on the people who are at the most risk of developing this disease.”

 

For people with dementia or other kinds of cognitive decline, things get even more complicated. Widera points out that people with dementia may not remember they need to wash their hands more often or refrain from touching their face. And dementia patients often wander. In communal living or care facilities, they might walk in and out of other patients’ rooms, down the hall, or into common living areas, all of which increase the likelihood of catching and transmitting the disease. Diagnosing Covid-19 in those patients could be even harder, too. “People with cognitive impairment may not be able to report their symptoms very well,” says McCormick. “Even if they had a cough an hour ago, they may not remember that they did.”

 

Patients with dementia also have unique challenges if they end up in the hospital. Covid-19 symptoms can worsen their confusion and delirium, as can being in an unfamiliar setting like a hospital room. These patients may be terrified when they’re separated from their family or their usual caregivers and are being tended to by staff covered head-to-toe in protective gowns and masks. With nurses trying to limit patient interactions to reduce the need for this protective gear, patients are often isolated for much of the day.

 

Martine Sanon, a professor of geriatric and palliative medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, says that usually they encourage family members to be part of the care team and to help orient and comfort their loved ones, but with limited protective equipment, and with fears about spreading the virus, those options aren’t available. “The families have been tremendously wonderful,” she says, often using FaceTime to play favorite music in the background or to call patients by a familiar nickname. “That does help.”

 

At Hackensack University Medical Center, Jacobs says usually they try to use non-pharmacological methods to help soothe distressed and confused patients. “The way we manage that usually in the hospital is basically staff sitting with a patient, reorienting them, using music, using touch,” she says. But with Covid-19, it’s too dangerous to have someone sit with a contagious patient all day. Instead, the hospital now relies on medication to calm patients down.

 

While mortality rates are higher for older adults with Covid-19, many do survive. What recovery looks like for them is more complicated. “That’s the other shoe to drop,” says William Greenough of Johns Hopkins. Older adults are likely to be weaker and to recover more slowly after a hospitalization, he says. With so many hospital gyms, rehab, and physical therapy facilities closed, that’s going to make their progress even more difficult.

 

None of these issues—loneliness, immunosenescence, difficulty recovering from hospital stays—are new problems, and none are unique to the virus. But the novel coronavirus exacerbates the many challenges older patients already face. “Covid-19 intensifies and complicates everything,” says Greenough.

 

---

 

WIRED is providing free access to stories about public health and how to protect yourself during the coronavirus pandemic. Sign up for our Coronavirus Update newsletter for the latest updates, and subscribe to support our journalism.

 

 

Source: Why Has Covid-19 Hit Seniors So Hard? (Wired)

[dufus]

Italian MP Sara Cunial Speaks the Truth About Covid-19

 

video

 

english subtitled not auto generated

 

if any italian speaking members could confirm the translation to be accurate ,  it would be very much appreciated ..

Edited May 15, 2020 by dufus

[Karlston]

COVID-19 linked to 30-fold increase in rare childhood inflammatory disease

The condition is rare, but it could help explain mysteries of COVID-19.

Enlarge / Boston Medical Center Child Life Specialist Karlie Bittrich sees to a baby while in a pediatrics tent set up outside of Boston Medical Center in Boston on April 29, 2020.

Getty | Boston Globe

201 with 63 posters participating

Evidence is stacking up to support a link between COVID-19 and a rare, mysterious inflammatory disease in children, which can be life-threatening.

 

Though reports of the new disease have trickled in from several countries, many of them have been anecdotal to this point. Now, doctors in an area of Italy hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic have published detailed data on a cluster of 10 children who experienced an unusual inflammatory disease amid the outbreak, lending solid support for the link. Their report appeared Wednesday in The Lancet.

 

The doctors describe the condition they saw as “Kawasaki-like,” referring to a rare disease in children that causes inflammation of blood vessels. Kawasaki disease—identified in Japan in 1967 by Tomisaku Kawasaki—is typically marked by sustained fever, rash, swelling of hands and feet, and swollen lymph nodes in the neck. In the worst cases, it can lead to heart problems and aneurysms.

 

Despite being identified decades ago, Kawasaki’s cause still remains unclear. Researchers have widely hypothesized that infectious agents—like viruses—trigger berserk immune responses in certain children with genetic predispositions. But no single germy culprit or genetic factors have been firmly nailed down. As such, it’s still unclear who will end up afflicted by the condition. Researchers have only determined that Kawasaki primarily strikes children younger than five, often boys, and often people of Asian and Pacific Island descent.

 

Since the pandemic began, there have been scattered reports of an uptick in cases of a disease similar to Kawasaki in children. The cases seem linked to outbreaks of COVID-19. However, they don’t always fit the “classic” definitions of Kawasaki.

 

In the new Lancet study, the Italian doctors offer a clear connection between infection with SARS-CoV-2 and the Kawasaki-like disease. They also lay out in detail how the cases they saw differ from the classic forms of the disease, laying the groundwork for a COVID-19-specific form of the disease.

Surprising spike

To do that, the doctors reviewed medical records of children who were diagnosed with Kawasaki disease between January 1, 2015 and April 20, 2020 at a hospital in Bergamo, Italy. At the time of the study, the city of Bergamo had the highest rate of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Italy, which was ravaged by the pandemic.

 

The doctors identified only 29 cases in that time frame, 19 of which were diagnosed between January 1, 2015 and Feb 17, 2020. The other 10 were identified between March 17 and April 14, 2020, as the COVID-19 outbreak raged. That spike during the outbreak represents a thirtyfold increase in incidence of the inflammatory condition.

 

The doctors suspected that all 10 of the Kawasaki cases during the outbreak had been infected with the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. But only eight of the children tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, which are Y-shaped proteins made by the immune system to fight off the virus. The presence of the antibodies means that the children had been infected. The doctors suspect that the other two children were false negatives. One, for instance, had received a treatment of immunoglobulin, which may have interfered with the antibody test.

 

They also noted that previous studies done in 2005 and 2014 had also linked coronaviruses—in these cases, ones that cause seasonal colds—to Kawasaki disease. Though other studies failed to find such a link, the authors argued that, together, “this suggests that the coronavirus family might represent one of the triggers of Kawasaki disease, SARS-CoV-2 being a particularly virulent strain able to elicit a powerful immune response in the host.”

 

The presence of the virus in nearly all of the cases during the outbreak and the fact that the spike in inflammatory cases “has a clear starting point after the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in our area,” convinced the doctors.

 

“All these results and considerations support the hypothesis that the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for a Kawasaki-like disease in susceptible patients,” they concluded.

Mounting mysteries

But the doctors noted that the inflammatory disease was slightly different from the cases seen in the past. The children afflicted during the outbreak tended to be older, with an average age of 7.5, compared with the 19 pre-COVID cases, which had an average age of 3.

 

The outbreak cases also had more severe diseases. Six of the 10 had heart complications, compared with just two of the 19 cases from the pre-COVID era. Two outbreak cases had signs of toxic shock, which was not seen in any of the earlier cases. Finally, eight of the outbreak cases needed additional steroid treatments to recover, which was only needed in three of the pre-COVID cases.

 

Ultimately, the doctors were careful to call the cases seen during the outbreak a “Kawasaki-like” disease.

 

In an accompanying editorial, Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics, and Elizabeth Whittaker, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Imperial College London, tried to tease this apart. They write: “These differences raise the question as to whether this cluster is Kawasaki disease with SARS-CoV-2 as the triggering agent, or represents an emerging Kawasaki-like disease characterised by multisystem inflammation.”

 

Like the Italian doctors, they highlight that—however frightening—this inflammatory disease is still rare, likely affecting no more than one in 1,000 children infected with SARS-CoV-2. Parents and doctors should be aware of it but also keep in mind that children are minimally affected by COVID-19 overall.

 

But, Viner and Whittaker note, that insight into what’s going on with immune responses in this rare condition could help explain other mysteries of the illness.

Understanding this inflammatory phenomenon in children might provide vital information about immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 and possible correlates of immune protection that might have relevance both for adults and children. In particular, if this is an antibody-mediated phenomenon, there might be implications for vaccine studies, and this might also explain why some children become very ill with COVID-19, while the majority are unaffected or asymptomatic.

 

Source: COVID-19 linked to 30-fold increase in rare childhood inflammatory disease (Ars Technica) 

[dufus]

White House 'Operation Warp Speed' to look for Covid jab

 

US President Donald Trump has vowed to deliver a coronavirus jab by year's end as he launched a White House vaccine initiative, dubbed "Operation Warp Speed".

 

The effort will begin with studies on 14 promising vaccine candidates for accelerated research and approval.

 

Progress is moving at "record speed", but the US must be prepared to reopen "vaccine or no vaccine", Mr Trump said.

 

Experts have cast doubt on the White House timelines for a jab.

 

What did Trump say?

 

Announcing 'Warp Speed' at a White House Rose Garden news conference on Friday, Mr Trump named an Army general and a former healthcare executive to lead the operation, a partnership between the government and private sector to find and distribute a vaccine.

 

Moncef Slaoui, who had previously headed the vaccines division at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, will lead the mission, while Gen Gustave Perna, who oversees distribution for the US Army, is to serve as chief operating officer.

 

Speaking after Mr Trump, Mr Slaoui said he was "confident" that a "few hundred million doses of vaccine" will be delivered by the end of 2020.

 

However, Mr Trump made clear that even without a vaccine, Americans must begin to return to their lives as normal.

 

"I don't want people to think this is all dependent on a vaccine," he said. "Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back. And we're starting the process."

 

"In many cases they don't have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes and you fight through it," he added. "Other things have never had a vaccine and they go away."

 

Many experts say a vaccine is the only thing that will give Americans the confidence to fully reopen the economy in the absence of widespread testing.

 

"I think the schools should be back in the fall," Mr Trump added.

 

What other government coronavirus efforts are there?

 

'Warp Speed' is the latest of several Covid response projects Washington has undertaken.

 

In March, the White House launched a testing initiative, enlisting major pharmacy retailers like CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid to set up drive-through testing sites throughout the country. Such partnerships have stalled, however, and the US has faced continued criticism for its lags in testing.

 

In recent weeks, the White House announced further efforts and has helped ramp up testing to nearly 10 million as of 15 May, according to the Our World in Data database.

 

Besides the new White House jab initiative, the Food and Drug Administration is also evaluating vaccine candidates for possible human trials.

 

On Friday, the US House of Representatives will vote on a coronavirus rescue package worth more than $3tn (£2.5) that allocates funds to local governments, expanded testing and another round of direct payments to Americans. The bill - which would be the largest aid package in US history - has already faced Republican opposition, with

 

Mr Trump declaring the bill "dead on arrival".

 

Some health experts have remained sceptical about the rapid timeline for development and distribution proposed by the White House.

 

"I don't understand how that happens," said Dr Peter Hotez co-director of the Medicine Coronavirus Vaccine Team at Baylor College on CNN after Mr Trump's announcement.

 

While a vaccine could be manufactured in the coming months, "I just don't see" how there will be enough safety data for a general use vaccine, he said. "I don't see a path by which any vaccine is licensed for emergency use or otherwise till the third quarter of 2021."

 

Mr Slaoui acknowledged in an earlier interview with the New York Times that the timeline was ambitious, but said he "would not have committed unless I thought it was achievable".

source

 

us  " Moncef Slaoui, who had previously headed the vaccines division at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline,  "   gsk keeps popping up  !

 

uk    sir richard vallance   gsk

 

"As chief of vaccines at GSK, Slaoui oversaw the development of the disastrous Pandemrix vaccine for swine flu, a shot that was rushed to market without proper testing in the midst of a 2009 epidemic, "   source

Edited May 16, 2020 by dufus

[dufus]

U.S. COVID-19 vaccine revelation debunks Washington's lies

 

President Donald Trump's latest remark that scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Health began developing a COVID-19 vaccine on January 11 has stunned the world. It means that the genome sequence was shared by China in a timely manner and was concealed from the public by Washington, who vilified China after claiming it had not been transparent in sharing the information.

 

Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said at a recent Congress hearing that the CDC was in contact with its Chinese counterpart and discussed the novel coronavirus issue on January 2. Ten days later, Beijing shared the genome sequence of the virus with the World Health Organization.

 

"Scientists at the NIH began developing the first vaccine candidate on January 11—think of that—within hours of the virus's genetic code being posted online," said the U.S. president at a press conference on Friday. However, his remarks contradict his previous claim that he didn't know about the virus until late in January. Which statement is true?

 

His statement means that the government waited two months before declaring a national emergency on March 13, squandering precious time to save lives. It also fuels suspicion concerning the timeline of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., since an increasing number of people now knew that it was spreading across the country long before the date announced by the government.

 

New Jersey mayor Michael Melham stated last month that he believed he contracted the new coronavirus back in November. The public health department in Santa Clara also identified an individual who had no known history of travel and died of COVID-19 at home on February 6, three weeks ahead of the first fatality confirmed earlier by the federal government.

 

U.S. media have since reported that 171 people, none of whom had a history of traveling to regions affected by COVID-19, were infected in Florida two months before officials announced it had hit the state. Patients had reported symptoms of the virus as early as on January 1, but the information was removed from the state's official website on May 4 without any given reason.

 

The Lancet medical journal published an editorial on Saturday entitled "Reviving the US CDC". It notes that the nation's health protection agency "has seen its role minimized and become an ineffective and nominal adviser in the response to contain the spread of the virus."

 

Concealing information, suppressing science, protecting private interests, evading questions and falsely accusing others have been at the heart of Washington's actions when handling the pandemic. They are also the root causes behind the COVID-19 tragedy currently ravaging the United States and it all begs the question: what are the authorities trying to hide?

 

source

 

and round again ...

[dufus]

 

[Jogs]

This paper is based on Dr. Aditya Kasariyans (a medical doctor and a member of Iraninan Homeopathic Association) work, who is working in Iran. She has been guided by Dr. Rajan Sankaran from India.

Part 1 – By Dr Aditya Kasariyans, Iran

Here in Iran, I have been involved in corona virus patients’ treatment since 22^nd  Feb 2020, directly or indirectly (through the accounts of other colleagues, from different parts of the country or the world).

None of the patients who were already on antiviral medications were/ will be persuaded to stop their antivirals. The intention is to hasten the recovery in a smoother way with the least side effects and to help improve quality of life in the patients affected and their families, in a more natural way. Hence, to contribute to shortening the disease and decreasing the probability of person to person transmission.

 

More  here -

https://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/homeopathy-for-coronavirus-covid-19-infection/

[Jogs]

ROYAL REMEDY

How the Queen relies on homeopathic remedies to keep her well during the coronavirus outbreak

 

THE Queen is known as one of the hardier members of the royal family, having only cancelled royal engagements due to ill health on a handful of occasions.

And according to insiders Her Majesty may have alternative medicine to thank for her good health

 

More here -

https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/11271075/queen-homeopathic-medicine-keep-well/

[dufus]

May 30, 2018 at 1:25 p.m. GMT+1

This mock pandemic killed 150 million people. Next time it might not be a drill.

 

video

 

A novel virus, moderately contagious and moderately lethal, has surfaced and is spreading rapidly around the globe. Outbreaks first appear in Frankfurt, Germany, and Caracas, Venezuela. The virus is transmitted person-to-person, primarily by coughing. There are no effective antivirals or vaccines. U.S. troops stationed abroad are infected.

 

Now the first case to reach the United States had been identified on a small college campus in Massachusetts.

 

So began a recent day-long exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The simulation mixed details of past disasters with fictional elements to force government officials and experts to make the kinds of key decisions they could face in a real pandemic.

 

It was a tense day. The exercise was inspired in part by the troubled response to the Ebola epidemic of 2014, and everyone involved was acutely aware of the very real and ongoing Ebola outbreak spreading in Congo.

 

In the simulation, a bipartisan group of current and former high-ranking U.S. government officials played a team of presidential advisers faced with a host of real-world policy, political and ethical dilemmas. The actors included former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who played the Senate majority leader, and Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.), who played herself. They had to react as the outbreak unfolded according to a script provided by Johns Hopkins, with no advance knowledge about how the mock disaster would play out.

 

They faced difficult questions throughout the exercise: Should the United States impose an entry ban on flights from Germany and Venezuela? If not, they faced the problem of explaining that decision to the American public and Congress in the face of political pressure to act. Should the United States send troops to Jordan, where a major outbreak has occurred and the key Middle East ally is requesting assistance? Once a vaccine is developed, who should get it first? Should priority go to officials, to ensure continuity of government, or to children and pregnant women? Or should there be a lottery?

 

There were no easy answers. That was the point of the day-long exercise, held in a darkened hotel ballroom before a rapt invitation-only audience of about 150 people and live-streamed on Facebook. There were experts from academia and think tanks, and officials from across the U.S. government, including the White House, defense and intelligence communities, health and security agencies and Congress.

 

Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins center, said the purpose of the exercise was to “provide experiential learning” for new decision-makers in the Trump administration. But many of the hard issues have remained unresolved for several administrations.

 

“There are a lot of moving pieces in the world of pandemic preparedness at the moment,” he said. Chief among those issues, he said, are questions about the extent of U.S. support for global health issues and the role of the national security community.

 

Even though many players in the scenario had decades of experience in health security and national and global policy and law, “there were still so many unanswered questions and capability gaps,” said Beth Cameron, formerly senior director for global health security and biodefense at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama. Cameron, who was in the audience, is vice president for global biological policy at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

 

If the fictional outbreak, or one even less deadly, emerged tomorrow, she said, “we would be facing the scenario with a new Cabinet untested by a major outbreak.”

 

Unlike Ebola, which spreads through direct contact and bodily fluids, the “Clade X” virus in the Johns Hopkins simulation was a flulike respiratory virus, which would spread far more easily from person to person through coughing and sneezing. That’s how the 1918 influenza pandemic spread. It killed more than 50 million people and is the deadliest pandemic in history. (If you ask infectious disease experts what they fear most, without fail they answer: “pandemic influenza.”)

 

The fictional outbreak kept getting worse. It had a 10 percent fatality rate, about the same as the SARS virus that traveled around the world in 2002-2003. Because the virus in the drill was new, no one had previous immunity to it, and it spread quickly in large cities. As it killed more than 100 million people globally, health-care systems collapsed, panic spread, the U.S. stock market crashed, and the president, members of Congress and the Supreme Court were incapacitated.

 

“We didn’t want to have a Disney ending,” Inglesby said. “We wanted to have a plausible scenario. We did know it would be jarring.”

 

Over the course of the day, the 10 experts played the roles of U.S. officials in simulated National Security Council-convened meetings. They acted the parts of a national security adviser, the secretaries of health and human services, state, homeland security and defense, attorney general and the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were also two members of Congress. Inglesby played the national security adviser.

 

The advisers were asked to give recommendations to a fictional president (who remained offstage). They received briefings and news reports as the exercise progressed. Their consensus advice was repeatedly ignored and overridden by the president for short-term political reasons.

 

In real life, NSC meetings would not include members of Congress. But the political leaders consistently highlighted the political pressures and the need to communicate tough policy decisions effectively, in the judgment of health security experts who watched the exercise.

 

The fictional outbreak was revealed to be a virus engineered in a Swiss lab by a terrorist group. In another grabbed-from-the-headlines twist, the terrorists had inserted deadly genes from the Nipah virus, a rare brain-damaging virus. In real life, a Nipah outbreak in southern India has killed at least 13 people this month. In the exercise, schools closed, the demand for surgical masks and respirators far exceeded supply, and hospitals in the United States were quickly overwhelmed — just as many were by a bad flu season this year.

 

When the players were informed that the virus has spread to Bethesda, Md., part of the terrorists’ plan to sabotage the National Institutes of Health, there was an audible groan from the audience.

 

There was universal agreement among the players on the need for a single senior official to coordinate federal agencies’ responses and weigh the sometimes competing interests of health security, politics and foreign policy. The person needed to be above the agencies and have the ear of the president.

 

As panic spread and riots took place, Brooks, the Indiana congresswoman, said: “We have to have someone working on this day in and day out. ... I have advocacy groups lining up and coming in one after another. They want vaccines to be prioritized. ... They do not understand what’s going on.”

 

The Johns Hopkins pandemic exercise, as some of the audience members noted, took place one week after the top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic left the administration and the global health security team he oversaw was disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton.

 

By the end of the exercise, failure to develop a vaccine within 20 months had led to 150 million deaths globally, or about 2 percent of the world’s population. Players underscored the need for the United States to “go from bug to drug" faster, said Jim Talent, a former Republican senator from Missouri who played the defense secretary.

Added Tara O’Toole, a former top Homeland Security Department official who played the homeland security secretary: “We are in an age of epidemics, but we aren’t treating them like the national security issues that they are.”

 

One aspect that deserved more attention, participants and experts said, was the need for officials to be proactive on social media to counter misinformation.

 

“With social media and 24-hour cable and an environment in which experts and the value of science is increasingly questioned, we just can’t assume in a crisis that we can get up and talk to the American people,” said Margaret Hamburg, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who played the health and human services secretary. Otherwise, she said, “it’s an environment where one thing that goes out in the media can suddenly mushroom, and before you know it, everything you’re doing in the most scientific way can be derailed.”

source

 

 👅

[dufus]

 

UK Government Deploys Coercion, Psy-Ops on Public

[dufus]

Boris Johnson discusses crucial coronavirus detail in phone call with Bill Gates

May 20   

 PRIME Minister Boris Johnson has spoken with Bill and Melinda Gates to discuss vaccine development and other coronavirus-related work.  

 

 Mr Gates, a philanthropist and billionaire co-founder of software giant Microsoft, has been a prominent non-governmental figure in the Covid-19 pandemic. Along with his wife, Mr Gates founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation twenty years ago. It has claimed to have committed $250 million to the Covid-19 response – predominantly to vulnerable communities.

 

The three were also joined in the call by Kate Bingham, Chair of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce.

In a statement, the Government said: “The Prime Minister spoke to Bill and Melinda Gates today via video call. He was joined by Kate Bingham, Chair of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce.

 

“They discussed the UK’s contribution to helping countries around the world tackle coronavirus and the important work of the Gates Foundation in this area.

 

“Both parties expressed their hope that a viable vaccine will be found as soon as possible.

 

“They also shared their commitment to the vital work of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and looked forward to the upcoming UK-hosted Global Vaccine Summit on June 4.”

 

The Global Vaccine Summit – a conference run by Gavi – will be an entirely virtual event this year as part of a scheme to immunise 300 million children with vaccines worldwide.

 

Gavi, an international vaccine-supplying organisation, has secured billions in financial support from national governments around the world.

 

In addition to hosting its virtual global summit, the UK has pledged £330 million in annual support for the organisation.

 

Other donors include Norway, which has pledged $1 billion USD over a certain period of time, as well as Canada, Spain, and Japan.

 

Commenting on hosting the summit, the UK government said in a statement: “The summit is an important milestone to secure support for Gavi’s five-year strategy, which will immunise 300 million children and save up to 8 million live by 2025, and for Gavi’s vital work to strengthen health systems around the world and help tackle coronavirus in some of the world’s poorest countries.

 

“This will help stop future waves of infection spreading globally, including coming to the UK.

 

“The UK government and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, are working with partners to finalise plans for the Summit programme and format, which will be shared with partners in due course.”

 

Meanwhile, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been supporting the Covid-19 response in the US.

 

The Gates Foundation said in March that it was providing technical assistance to the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network (SCAN), which aims to track the local spread of Covid-19.

 

But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently suspended the SCAN project, with SCAN saying that the FDA had “tightened guidelines to require emergency approval first”, regarding the testing of patient samples collected at home, Reuters reports.

 

But SCAN noted that the FDA “has not raised any concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of SCAN’s test”.

 

Mr Gates has previously warned against the emergence of global pandemics years before the spread of Covid-19.

 

In a 2017 blog post, he wrote: “We don’t know when the next pathogen will emerge, what it will be, how it will spread, or who will be affected, but we do know that the world is not prepared to deal with it.”

 

Mr Gates also backed the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which he said would help develop vaccines for future outbreaks.

 

His work has reportedly given rise to a number of conspiracy theories, which led to one Italian politician, Sara Cunial, calling for his arrest, according to Snopes.

source

 

 

" His work has reportedly given rise to a number of conspiracy theories, which led to one Italian politician, Sara Cunial, calling for his arrest, according to Snopes."

 

snopes  ?            

 

this is an accurate translation 

 

[dufus]

REPORT: EU Planning “Vaccination Passport” Since 2018

“Roadmap on Vaccination” outlines 3 year plan for boosting “vaccine confidence” and advancing “electronic tracking”

 

Areport published by the European Commission in late 2019 reveals that the EU has been looking to increase the scope and power of vaccination programmes since well before the current “pandemic”.

 

The endpoint of the Roadmap is, among many other things, to introduce a “common vaccination card/passport” for all EU citizens.

 

This proposal will be appearing before the commission in 2022, with a “feasibility study” set to run from 2019 through 2021 (meaning, as of now, it’s about halfway through).

 

To underline the point: The “vaccination roadmap” is not an improvised response to the Covid19 pandemic, but rather an ongoing plan with roots going back to 2018, when the EU released a survey of the public’s attitude toward vaccines titled “2018 State of Vaccine Confidence”

 

On the back of this research, the EU then commissioned a technical report titled “Designing and implementing an immunisation information system”, on – among other things – the plausibility of an EU-wide vaccination monitoring system.

 

In the 3rd quarter of 2019 these reports were all combined into the latest version of the the “Vaccination Roadmap”, a long-term policy plan to spread vaccine “awareness and understanding” whilst counteracting “vaccine myths” and combatting “vaccine hesitancy”.

 

You can read the entire report here, but below are some of the more concerning highlights [emphasis throughout is ours]:

 

“Examine the feasibility of developing a common vaccinationcard/passport for EU citizens“

 

“Develop EU guidance for establishing comprehensive electronic immunization information systems for effective monitoring of immunization programmes.”

 

“overcome the legal and technical barriers impeding the interoperability of national immunisation information systems”

 

On the 12th September 2019, at the joint EU-WHO “Global Vaccination Summit”, they announced the “10 Actions Towards Vaccination for All”, which cover much of the same ground.

 

One month later, in October 2019, Event 201 was held.

 

For those who don’t know, Event 201 was a simulated pandemic exercise focusing on a zoonotic novel coronavirus originating in bats. It was sponsored by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

 

The result of the simulation was seven key suggestions.

 

In November of 2019, these suggestions were published as a “call to action”.

 

One month later, China reported the first cases of Covid19.

 

To be clear here (and forestall any below-the-line arguments): this is not about vaccines, their effectiveness, safety or lack thereof.

 

The point is that proposed COVID countermeasures, which have been presented to the public as emergency measures thought up on the fly by panicking institutions, have in fact existed since before the emergence the disease.

 

They already wanted to monitor your vaccination records and tie that to your passport, introduce mandatory vaccinations and clampdown on “misinformation”. They just didn’t have a reason yet.

 

This was a situation which required a crisis and, fortuitously, it got one.

 

The exact ratio of contrivance to happenstance will never be known. What we DO know, at this point, is that Sars-Cov-2 is nothing like the threat originally reported, they admit as much themselves.

 

We also know they keep churning out the fear anyway.

 

And, thanks to documents like this, maybe now we’re starting to see why.

 

source

[dufus]

video

 

 

[dufus]

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested in Apple, Amazon, and Google last quarter

 

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust placed big bets on technology titans in the first quarter, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

 

The trust, which manages the assets of the world's largest private foundation, revealed new positions in Apple, Amazon, Google-parent Alphabet, Alibaba, and Twitter. Its stakes in the first four were valued between $100 million and $130 million each on March 31, while its Twitter holdings were worth about $7 million.

 

The trust also revealed a $301 million stake in Schrodinger following the drug-discovery software group's public debut in February. The only other change to its portfolio was the sale of five million Berkshire Hathaway shares, representing 10% of its stake in Warren Buffett's conglomerate.

 

The cut to its biggest holding is no surprise: Buffett is a close friend of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, and gifts shares to their foundation each year to help finance its philanthropy.

 

The trust's flurry of purchases did little to soften the blow from the coronavirus sell-off. Its portfolio shrunk in value by 19% to about $17.4 billion, as FedEx, UPS, Liberty Global, Walmart, and other holdings suffered share-price declines.

 

Gates has emerged as a leading commentator on the COVID-19 outbreak due to his deep experience in fighting diseases and vaccinating populations, and his warning of a pandemic back in 2015.

 

The philanthropist recently said his foundation is giving "total attention" to the pandemic, and expects to spend billions constructing vaccine factories.

source

 

just in time !    COVI PASS

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by dufus

[dufus]

The American Genie – Engineering a Catastrophe

The first signs that something terrible had gone wrong with the security at the Fort Detrick bio-defence facility fifty miles north-west of Washington DC were when cases of a previously unknown and serious respiratory illness appeared at a retirement village on the western outskirts of the capital in July 2019.  The first cases were noted on June 30th amongst the 260 residents of the Greenspring Assisted Living unit, with the infectious disease later affecting 19 staff and taking the lives of some older residents.

 

“The notice that went out on July 10 from Donna L. Epps, an administrator at Greenspring, said several residents had been having symptoms of respiratory illness, including fever, coughing and body aches. Epps’s notice, which says the symptoms recede in about five to seven days with treatment but have caused pneumonia, also announced limits on visitors, enhanced sanitation measures and other steps.”

 

The story was rapidly picked up, and statements issued to ease concerns:

 

“-- the two patients who died in the outbreak had been hospitalized with pneumonia but were "older individuals with complex medical problems."

"One of the things about skilled nursing facilities and assisted living facilities is that when you have a lot of people in close proximity, who have underlying medical conditions, there is an increased risk for outbreaks," he said. "Seeing a respiratory outbreak in a long-term care facility is not odd. ... One thing that's different about this outbreak is just that it's occurring in the summer when, usually, we don't have a lot of respiratory disease."

 

The Centre for Disease Control was alerted on July 8th and took samples but “was unable to identify the organism responsible”. As if. Perhaps it was just a sensible precaution to close down the Fort Detrick research facility two weeks later, where infection control mechanisms had previously been suspect.

 

“The statement said the Center for Disease Control and Prevention decided to issue a “cease and desist order” last month to halt the research at Fort Detrick because the center did not have “sufficient systems in place to decontaminate wastewater” from its highest-security labs.”

 

While the organisms Fort Detrick conducted research on and with included such lethal ones as Ebola, concerns had been raised back in 2015 about their research on genetically engineered and mutant viruses that posed an unacceptable risk to humans should they escape. This research, known as “gain of function” or GOF had been banned in 2014 by the Obama administration, but some programs appear to have continued, and in November 2015 caused scientists to issue a warning. While this warning has been widely publicised, as well as used to support the theory that SARS-CoV-2 came from a lab and not from nature, the GOF research it referred to, published a little earlier in Nature medicine has had little attention.

 

This research was a collaborative project between the scientists at the University of Carolina and a team led by “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While the research is complex and the motives obscure, there is little doubt that the researchers successfully engineered a “chimaera” which combined a lethal coronavirus from a bat with one capable of easily infecting human cells, and proved its “gain of function” both in vitro and in vivo.

 

Further information has now come to light on evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered following a detailed scientific study into the genome of the virus.

 

Ironically perhaps, the focus of the anonymous analyst seems to have been to incriminate the Chinese government “communist party” and its research lab in Wuhan.  As explained by “GM Watch”, despite this political angle and the suspect anonymity of the unpublished research, the science it presents is very persuasive. Significantly however, they question the analyst’s view that the synthetic virus was designed as a bioweapon, “though it may have been”. They conclude:

 

“In our view, the evidence presented above shows that there is an urgent need for a credible and independent international investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the roles played by Shi Zhengli, the Chinese government, and the US bodies that helped fund the virus research at the WIV, including the National Institutes of Health and the EcoHealth Alliance.”

 

It may be a surprise for some to learn of US involvement in research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but it should be a shock to learn how this collaboration came about and who was involved. As recently revealed in the mainstream publication Newsweek, America’s high-profile scientific expert Dr Anthony Fauci strongly supported GOF research, and following the ban in the US was involved in funding a similar project in Wuhan. That five-year project ended in 2019 and was extended:

 

“A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.”

 

Newsweek notes that Dr. Fauci also did not respond to their requests, and other media didn’t pick up the story. But:

 

“according to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.

 

Ebright, along with many other scientists, has been a vocal opponent of gain-of-function research because of the risk it presents of creating a pandemic through accidental release from a lab.”

 

As well as supporting GOF research, for reasons described by Newsweek, Dr. Fauci was renowned for his work on HIV, and more recently on bird flu viruses. He also was involved in the development of Remdesevir, which he has recently promoted as a treatment for COVID-19 cases despite little evidence for its efficacy, in contrast to the widely used Hydroxychloroquine favored by the US President – and many others around the world.

 

But the treatment or consequences of the release of this novel Coronavirus are not my concern at this crucial junction point – or rather disjunction point – in history.

Having concluded some time ago that the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was most probably the bio-insecure facility at Fort Detrick, the one question that remained unanswered was how and why it appeared in Wuhan, and what happened in the months before it was first identified there.

 

A number of impossibly unlikely coincidences led to that conclusion, in particular the first detected appearance of the virus in the hotel where US soldiers stayed during the World Military Games, held between October 18th and 27th 2019 in Wuhan. Coincidentally and indicatively also, a “novel Coronavirus” pandemic simulation exercise was held in New York on the very day the games began, sponsored by and involving some key actors in the health and pharmaceutical industry, as well as significant international experts.

 

The apparent suppression of reporting on “Event 201” in the mainstream media has led observers to interpret this pandemic rehearsal in the way that other coincidental exercises exercises have been – as further evidence of “conspiracy”. The involvement of CEPI director Jane Halton in Event 201 is the most indicative of these coincidences, given the role Australia is playing in pushing for an “inquiry” targeting China, and Halton’s role in the National Coronavirus Coordination committee.

 

It is instructive to read the recommendations issued following the Event 201 exercise, particularly on the development of public-private partnerships and on the control of false information in the media, as this is reflected in the control of the “COVID-19 Pandemic” narrative here in Australia.

 

Although there is a divergence of opinion on how to treat the escalating conflict with China, particularly following the Chinese Government’s actions on food imports from Australia, no-one in the Government, Opposition, think tanks or media is saying that China is not to blame for the pandemic, in some way or another. Influential commentators, as well as union leaders, are portraying the dispute as a choice between taking China’s money or protecting our sovereignty, a position that is both idiotic and mistaken, ignoring the reality of our dependence on Chinese exports and imports.

 

Australians may not be able to see it, but for the Chinese foreign ministry it is crystal clear – that Australia’s proposals and actions are in no-ones interest, except America’s.

 

Until now the situation appeared paradoxical. Concluding that the US had intentionally introduced the novel Coronavirus into Wuhan made little sense, given the inevitable blowback. Four months on it is the US which has suffered worst from the Coronavirus Pandemic, while China is restarting its temporarily disabled economy after successfully suppressing the epidemic in Wuhan. Barring some of the wilder conspiracy theories that might see a benefit for some elites and vested interests in health and security in the chaos induced by the lock-downs, the question of “cui bono” remained unanswered, until now.

 

Some of the US soldiers in the team sent to Wuhan for the games reportedly fell ill and even went to hospital, but it now appears that athletes in teams from other countries were infected by contact with them. Two French athletes recently reported having suffered a strange respiratory illness after returning home from Wuhan, which they now realize was very probably CV19. Apparently similar cases have been reported in athletes from other teams who participated in the Wuhan games, with Luxemburg and Sweden cited in this report. A more recent but still early appearance of a distinct strain of the virus in France suggests an origin in those early cases from Wuhan. The distinct and early outbreaks in Italy and Iran may well have also originated similarly from returning athletes.

 

So now the possibility arises that far from the Wuhan Military Games being the point where the novel Coronavirus was introduced into China, they were the point from which the infection fanned out across the world, potentially to all the countries participating in the Games. Except for one.

 

As with Italy and France, they were early reports of an unusually severe pneumonia occurring in the US in December and November, but with cases mistaken for influenza at that time of year, except by the CDC, which recognized the infection as “COVID 19” but kept quiet about it until questioned in senate hearings. Unsurprisingly, China picked up on this admission from the CDC, asking the question to which we now have the answer – “where was your patient zero?”.

 

Perhaps they may also be considering a new “conspiracy theory” following the revelation of the July outbreak at Greensprings retirement village. This would be my suggestion:

 

To say that the escape of the Coronavirus Genie from Fort Detrick was a monumental disaster looming for the US health system and for the economy is a gross understatement. As we can see from the way the world has been turned upside down by the chaotic response to the pandemic, being held responsible for this long predicted catastrophe could bring the world down on you. So rather than admit to the viral Genie’s escape and the total failure of the Centre for Disease Control to control this unknown and deadly disease, they had to come up with a plan.

 

Because of the collaboration with Wuhan on GOF research and the presence of similar or identical viruses at the WIV, a scheme might be devised to plant the infection in the centre of the city and lay the blame for the subsequent predicted pandemic on China. When the virus later reached the US, its already established presence there would be effectively concealed, at least from the public. Concealing such things from epidemiologists and virologists is clearly harder, and it has been noted that while cases in Washington State are closely related to the Wuhan strain, those in New York are not. (It has also been reported that Italy has requested the exhumation of bodies in the US following suspicions on the origins of the Italian outbreak; the US has so far refused.)

 

I propose that the scheme devised in desperation last summer for this “diversionary tactic”, was to send the Fort Detrick Virus with the soldiers set to compete at the Wuhan games in three months’ time, while trying to keep a lid on the domestic epidemic until the new year, and a lock on the inquisitive media. Rehearsing for the subsequent global pandemic called for “Event 201” to prepare participants for what they might have to face, and bring their organizational and media responses into line.

 

Shi Zhengli’s presence in Wuhan also looks to be an important part of this US operation, with stories about her work with Horseshoe Bats, and her recent insistence on the natural origins of the Virus playing a vital role in the cyber-warfare side of the operation. Given Zhengli’s role in the controversial genetic engineering research project in 2015, those stories are clearly vital disinformation.

 

Whether this theory is the correct one may not yet be proven, but it does provide an explanation to the conundrum of the genie that was accidentally released from the bottle but intentionally released from Wuhan. And we must all now suffer the consequences of that US “culpable manslaughter” as we learn to live with their engineered Genie. Just don’t take it out on China.

sourcve

[dufus]

“It’s all Bullsh*t” – 3 Leaks that Sink the Covid Narrative

In recent days a series of leaks across the globe have further shown the “official line” on coronavirus does not hold water

 

 

The science of the coronavirus is not disputed. It is well documented and openly admitted:

 

Most people won’t get the virus.
Most of the people who get it won’t display symptoms.
Most of the people who display symptoms will only be mildly sick.
Most of the people with severe symptoms will never be critically ill.
And most of the people who get critically ill will survive.

 

This is borne out by the numerous serological studies which show, again and again, that the infection fatality ratio is on par with flu.

 

There is no science – and increasingly little rational discussion – to justify the lockdown measures and overall sense of global panic.

 

Nevertheless, it’s always good to get official acknowledgement of the truth, even if it has to be leaked.

 

Here are three leaks showing that those in power know that the coronavirus poses no threat, and in no way justifies the lockdown that is going to destroy the livelihoods of so many.

 

1. “IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!”

 

On May 26th Dr Alexander Myasnikov, Russia’s head of coronavirus information, gave an interview to former-Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak in which he apparently let slip his true feelings.

 

Believing the interview over, and the camera turned off, Myasnikov said:

 

It’s all bullshit […] It’s all exaggerated. It’s an acute respiratory disease with minimal mortality […] Why has the whole world been destroyed? That I don’t know,”

 

2. “COVID-19 CANNOT BE DESCRIBED AS A GENERALLY DANGEROUS DISEASE”

 

According to an e-mail leaked to Danish newspaper Politiken, the Danish Health Authority disagree with their government’s approach to the coronavirus. They cover it in two articles here and here (For those who don’t speak Danish, thelocal.dk have covered the story too).

 

There’s a lot of interesting information there, not least of which is the clear implication that politicians appear to be pressing the scientific advisors to overstate the danger (they did the same thing in the UK), along with the decision of some civil servants to withhold data from the public until after the lockdown had been extended.

 

But by far the most important quote is from a March 15th e-mail [our emphasis]:

 

" The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that covid-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either a usually serious course or a high mortality rate,”

 

On March 12th the Danish parliament passed an emergency law which – among many other things – decreased the power of the Danish Health Authority, demoting it from a “regulatory authority” to just an “advisory” one.

 

3. “A GLOBAL FALSE ALARM”

 

Earlier this month, on May 9th, a report was leaked to the German alternate media magazine Tichys Einblick titled “Analysis of the Crisis Management”.

 

The report was commissioned by the German department of the interior, but then its findings were ignored, prompting one of the authors to release it through non-official channels.

The fall out of that, including attacks on the authors and minimising of the report’s findings, is all very fascinating and we highly recommend this detailed report on Strategic Culture  (or read the full report here in German).

 

We’re going to focus on just the reports conclusions, including [our emphasis]:

 

The dangerousness of Covid-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.

 

The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.

 

During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of Fake News.

 

After being attacked in the press, and suspended from his job, the leaker and other authors of the report released a joint statement, calling on the government to respond to their findings.

 

If the current crisis was being approached rationally by all parties, these leaks would seal the debate.

 

Evidence is piling up that the people in charge knew, from the very beginning, that the virus was not dangerous.

 

The question remaining is: Why are these leaks happening now?

source

 

[dufus]

 

[steven36]

Amazon is sued over warehouses after New York worker brings coronavirus home, cousin dies

 

FILE PHOTO: Amazon.com trucks are seen at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island in New York City, New York, U.S., March 30, 2020.

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has been sued for allegedly fostering the spread of the coronavirus by mandating unsafe working conditions, causing at least one employee to contract COVID-19, bring it home, and see her cousin die.

 

The complaint was filed on Wednesday in the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, by three employees of the JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island, and by family members.

 

One employee, Barbara Chandler, said she tested positive for COVID-19 in March and later saw several household members become sick, including a cousin who died on April 7.

The lawsuit said Amazon has made JFK8, which employs about 5,000, a “place of danger” by impeding efforts to stop the coronavirus spreading, boosting productivity at the expense of safety.

 

It said Amazon forces employees to work at “dizzying speeds, even if doing so prevents them from socially distancing, washing their hands, and sanitizing their work spaces.”

 

Amazon did not comment on the lawsuit, but said it has always followed guidance from health authorities and its workplace safety experts since the coronavirus pandemic began.

 

The Seattle-based company has benefited as the pandemic forced many consumers unable to visit physical stores to shop online more.

 

Unions, elected officials and some employees have faulted Amazon’s treatment of workers, including the firing of some critical of warehouse conditions.

 

Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said last week that Amazon has not fired people for such criticism.

 

Amazon is spending more than $800 million on coronavirus safety in this year’s first half, including cleaning, temperature checks and face masks.

 

At least 800 workers in U.S. distribution centers have tested positive for COVID-19, according to an employee’s unofficial tally.

 

Amazon ended 2019 with 798,000 full- and part-time employees.

 

The lawsuit seeks an injunction requiring that Amazon comply with worker safety and public nuisance laws, and not punish employees who develop COVID-19 symptoms or are quarantined.

 

The case is Palmer et al v Amazon.com Inc., U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 20-02468.

 

Source

[zanderthunder]

Movement Control Order extended until 31 Aug, Malaysia enters RMCO phase

 

 

Malaysia’s Movement Control Order (MCO) has been extended until 31st August 2020 and it is now entering the recovery phase which is now called the Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) or Perintah Kawalan Pergerakan Pemulihan (PKPP). The announcement was made by Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin this afternoon during his address to the nation.

 

Malaysia has been placed under a movement control order (MCO) for 82 days since 18th March 2020. Restrictions were gradually lifted under the CMCO with the reopening of selected sectors on 4th May 2020. The current CMCO will end on 9th June and replaced by the RMCO.

 

Beginning 10th June, the government is lifting several restrictions as the country moves into a recovery phase, as part of its exit strategy for the MCO. This includes lifting restrictions on interstate travel and more economic sectors will be allowed to resume operations. Pubs, clubs, reflexology, karaoke, religious gathering, theme parks and open houses are still not permitted.

Interstate travel permitted

The government is lifting all interstate movement and domestic tourism activities will be permitted during the RMCO except for areas that are placed under the Enhanced Movement Control order (EMCO). Families may go on a domestic holiday but they must adhere to the new normal practices. International travel is still not permitted as our borders are still closed.

Permitted business activities

During the RMCO, most social, education, religious and business activities will be reopened in stages with strict SOP. As announced yesterday, barbershops and hair salons will be permitted to reopen. Open markets, pasar pagi, pasar malam, pasar tamu, food courts, food trucks and food stalls will be allowed to reopen.

 

Commercial activities involving sales and marketing at non-business premises will be allowed as well. This includes museum visits, indoor busking, self-service laundry, recreational fishing and photography. Office meetings and workshops are allowed as long as it complies with health protocols and space requirements.

 

The PM said that businesses may resume normal hours after getting used to the required SOP in the new normal. He reminded everyone to wear a face mask, ensure social distancing and frequently wash their hands with soap or use hand sanitisers.

Sports and recreational activities

Several sports and recreational activities will be permitted with SOP. This includes team training for sports, and activities that does not involve contact such as bowling, badminton, archery, shooting and more. Group outdoor activities such as cycling and motorcycle convoys are allowed. The government is still prohibiting competitions and sport activities that involves large gathering of fans and spectators such as at stadium, swimming pool and other contact sports such as rugby, boxing, football, basketball and hockey.

Schools to be reopened in stages

Muhyiddin Yassin is aware that parents have been asking when schools can resume. He also shared that schools will be reopened gradually during the RMCO in stages after consultation with the Ministry of Health. The Education Ministry will make an announcement in due time.

Government hopes to enter normalisation phase after 31 Aug

The Prime Minister hopes everyone will continue to be disciplined and if God willing, the COVID-19 pandemic can continue to be in control and Malaysia can enter the normalisation phase after 31st August 2020 until a vaccine is found. He reminded that if there’s a surge of COVID-19 cases during the RMCO, the government will not hesitate to impose EMCO at affected locations. He hopes that everyone will cooperate to help to contain the spread of the disease.

 

He also urged everyone to install the MySejahtera app which can be used to assess your health and well-being. He also said the app will also help health authorities to take faster and efficient action to inform close contacts in the event of an infection.

 

Malaysia currently has a total of 8,303 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 117 deaths. There are 37 new cases reported yesterday that consists of 8 imported cases. Among the 29 local cases, 10 are Malaysians while 19 are foreigners. 79.91% of cases have recovered and the mortality rate is at 1.41%.

 

At the moment, there are only 5 red zones (more than 40 active cases) remaining in the country located at Hulu Langat, Cheras, Lembah Pantai, Sepang and Rembau. The states of Pulau Pinang, Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu are fully green with 0 active cases.

 

Source: Movement Control Order extended until 31 Aug, Malaysia enters RMCO phase (via SoyaCincau)

[dufus]

Is the Coronavirus Scare a Psychological Operation?

 

Governments have used psychological warfare throughout history to manipulate public opinion, gain political advantage, and generate profits. Western governments have engaged in such tactics in the war on terrorism as well as in its predecessor, the war on communism.

 

In both cases, state-sponsored terrorism and propaganda were used to distort the public’s perception of the threats, leading to increased governmental control of society and huge financial benefits for corporations.

 

It appears that the same kinds of effects are being seen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Many of the features and outcomes seen in the war on terrorism and the war on communism are evident in this new “war on death.”

 

Therefore, it’s reasonable to wonder if the extreme response to COVID-19, and its associated virus SARS-COV-2, could be another psychological operation against the public.

 

Considering facts about the disease and the disproportionate response emphasizes the possibility.

 

If COVID-19 has been co-opted for manipulation of the public, through hyping the threat and pushing exploitive solutions, who is behind it and who benefits?

 

Let’s first review what features and outcomes the “coronavirus scare’ shares in common with the “red scare” that drove the perceived threat of communism and the “Muslim scare” behind the perceived threat of terrorism. Here are a dozen characteristics that these perceived threats share.

 

Fear-based and globally directed

 

Media saturation with bias toward fear

 

Data manipulation and propaganda

 

Censorship of opposing views

 

Intelligence agency control of information

 

Preceded by exercises mimicking the threat

 

Series of claims made that are later proven false

 

Response threatens democracy

 

Large increase in wealth and power for a few; increase in social inequality

 

Increased government control of the public and reduced individual freedoms

 

Response kills far more than the original threat

 

Evidence for manufactured events (see below)

 

There are also differences between the COVID-19 pandemic response and the “wars” on communism and terrorism. One difference is that, for the virus, agencies dedicated to public health have taken the lead. Although the central characters that hyped the communism threat and the terrorism threat were sometimes the same people, they tended to represent military, diplomatic, or intelligence agencies.

 

The primary actors driving the coronavirus lockdowns and associated control mechanisms are political leaders. However, the directives being acted upon come from the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations ostensibly responsible for international public health.

 

Others controlling the coronavirus scare are national health agencies, most notably the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS).

 

Are these agencies acting solely in the interest of public health?

 

THE WHO

 

The common impression is that the entire matter began in reaction to events in China but even that is not clear. For example, the virus is said to have originated in the city of Wuhan and the first, limited, lockdown occurred in that area from January to March.

 

China has since said that it warned the WHO about the virus during the first week of January. However, it is known that U.S. intelligence agencies were aware of the potential outbreak even before that, in November 2019. A Chinese spokesman later suggested that the U.S. military might have brought the virus to Wuhan during the military games held there in October.

 

The first instance of an entire country being locked down for the coronavirus was in Italy. This occurred on March 9th based on advice from the Italian government’s coronavirus adviser Walter Ricciardi, who said, “The situation risks going out of control and these measures are necessary to keep the spread at bay.”

 

Ricciardi, a WHO committee member, later admitted that Italy had inflated the death counts from the virus, stating:

 

“The way in which we code deaths in our country is very generous in the sense that all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus.”

 

Many have noted the inordinate influence of billionaire Bill Gates on the activities and direction of the WHO. As of 2017, this influence was seen as troubling, with health advocates

 

" because the Gates Foundation’s money comes from investments in big business, it could serve as a Trojan horse for corporate interests to undermine WHO’s role in setting standards and shaping health policies.”

 

Despite engaging in a costly “public charm offensive,” Gates is seen by many as a predatory and monopolistic opportunist hiding behind a false front of philanthropy. With regard to the coronavirus scare and Gates’ stated goal of vaccinating the entire world population, however, people should be most concerned that he has worked diligently on mechanisms of population control.

 

Of course, no one person controls the world yet so who is supposed to be running WHO, apart from Bill Gates? The face of the WHO is Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the organization. Tedros has a poor history of ethics in leadership, with many accusations having been made against him including that he covered-up epidemics in the past.

 

Alarms about Tedros began to go off immediately after his appointment in 2017, when he named Robert Mugabe, the former dictator of Zimbabwe, as a goodwill ambassador to the WHO. Mugabe’s rule over Zimbabwe was dominated by “murder, bloodshed, torture, persecution of political opponents, intimidation and vote-rigging on a grand scale.” This appointment indicated that Tedros’ judgment of goodwill was dubious at best.

 

A letter from a group of American doctors that same year described why Tedros has become known as “Dr. Cover Up.”

 

They wrote:

 

“Your silence about what is clearly a massive cholera epidemic in Sudan daily becomes more reprehensible. The inevitable history that will be written of this cholera epidemic will surely cast you in an unforgiving light.”

 

They added that Tedros was “fully complicit in the terrible suffering and dying that continues to spread in East Africa.”

 

Problems at WHO didn’t start with Tedros, however.

 

After the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, evidence came to light that the WHO had exaggerated the danger and had spread fear and confusion rather than helpful information.

 

It was later learned that “Italy, Germany, France and the U.K. made secret agreements with pharmaceutical companies” that “obliged the countries to buy vaccinations only if the WHO raised the pandemic to a level 6.”

 

The WHO then proceeded to change its guidelines for defining a pandemic in order to accommodate those contracts, thereby increasing the public’s fear despite the fact that the pandemic never became a serious threat.

 

Although WHO has been praised for its work to reduce some illnesses like polio, it has also been found that drugs and vaccines recommended by WHO have been “found to be harmful and without significant clinical effect.”

 

A comprehensive view suggests that the WHO is more of a corporate interest agency than an organization committed to preserving public health. That’s not surprising due to the fact that 80% of WHO’s funding comes from “voluntary contributions” provided by private donors including pharmaceutical companies and industry groups like Bill Gates’ Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).

 

And since the worldwide response to COVID-19 has been directed and coordinated by an organization that works on behalf of multi-national corporations that stand to benefit, the idea that the coronavirus scare could be a psychological operation seems plausible.

 

THE CDC

 

In the US, the CDC is also heavily influenced by corporate and political interests. This became clear when, in 2016, a group of senior scientists within the CDC filed an ethics complaint against the agency making that exact claim. They wrote:

 

It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests.”

 

The scientists noted that, in order to pursue political objectives, “definitions were changed and data cooked” at CDC, even to the point of misrepresenting data to Congress.

 

The scientists noted that, in order to pursue political objectives, “definitions were changed and data cooked” at CDC, even to the point of misrepresenting data to Congress.

 

Like the WHO, the CDC has a history of pushing harmful vaccines. An example was covered in a 60 Minutes episode exposing the harm done by the Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 and CDC’s urging that all Americans be injected with that harmful vaccine. The report revealed that the illness was hyped based on very questionable data and the vaccine caused neurological damage.

 

The current Director of CDC is retired US Army doctor Robert Redfield, who is known for having led the Pentagon’s disastrous response to HIV-AIDS in the 1980s.

 

A devout catholic, Redfield saw AIDS as the product of an immoral society. For many years, he championed a much-hyped remedy that was discredited in tests. That

 

debacle led to his removal from the job in 1994.”

 

Public health reporter Laurie Garrett remarked:

 

“Redfield is about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time. He lets his prejudices interfere with the science, which you cannot afford during a pandemic.”

 

The CDC is an agency within the department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Alex Azar, a lawyer and former pharmaceutical company executive, was appointed as Secretary of HHS in 2017. Azar has deep connections to the pharmaceutical industry and is known for having engaged in price gouging with his former employer.

 

Azar is also known for leading the HHS response to the anthrax scare of 2001, the first known bioterrorism attack on the United States. The anthrax attacks were targeted against members of Congress and the media that were dissenting voices in the national discussion about the Patriot Act, the oppressive legislation introduced immediately after the 9/11 attacks.

 

Although Muslims were first blamed through highly questionable evidence, it was ultimately found that the weaponized anthrax came from U.S. military laboratories.

 

Azar was instrumental in defining the National Biodefense Strategy in 2018, working closely with John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor. Bolton, a neocon and member of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), has a long history of pushing authoritarian policies and war.

 

In the US the person most visibly in charge of the COVID-19 response is Anthony Fauci, who is the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Like Redfield, Dr. Fauci is a Catholic and has said that values he learned in his Jesuit education continue to guide him.

 

After weeks of Fauci having led the coronavirus response in the US, it was learned that his NIAID had funded “gain of function” research at the Wuhan laboratory where the SARS-COV-2 virus is suspected of having originated.

 

Fauci’s response to questions about that inexplicable coincidence was simply to denounce “conspiracy theories” rather than addressing the questions directly, much as others did when questioned about 9/11 foreknowledge.

 

Whether SARS-COV-2 was genetically engineered in a laboratory, like the NIAID-funded Wuhan lab, is a subject that has become of interest to many scientists.

 

The Wuhan laboratory is not the only place the US supports work like this, however, as the Pentagon funds such labs in 25 countries across the world. Located in places such as Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia, and Africa, these labs isolate and manipulate viruses like the bat coronaviruses from which SARS-COV-2 originated. This bat-research program is further coordinated by a group called EcoHealth Alliance.

 

The manipulation of viruses for gain of function at US funded labs is, like the origin of the weaponized anthrax at US labs, evidence that bioterrorism and pandemics can be manufactured events. This is another way in which the coronavirus scare could reflect the war on terrorism and war on communism, both of which were driven by manufactured terrorist events.

 

It is remarkable that Fauci funded work to manipulate coronaviruses then became the voice of the coronavirus pandemic response while also working closely with Bill Gates’ GAVI initiative. Fauci has boasted that NIAID and GAVI work together to push vaccines with “outright collaboration between us in setting the standard of what is needed.”

 

This makes it easier to see that a new pattern of hyped pandemics resulting in increased population control and global vaccinations is not only possible but would be a very lucrative business model.

 

THE NHS AND CORPORATE NATIONS

 

By now it’s well known that the initial projections for deaths due to COVID-19 were massively overestimated and one academic paper was responsible for the panic. The lead author of that paper, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, has since resigned in disgrace from his government advisory position. Much like the US government’s explanation for destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, his estimates were based on computer models that cannot be shared with the public.

 

As in the US, UK intelligence agencies have taken a leading role in managing the coronavirus scare. The terrorism expert who is expected to be the next chief of MI6 was selected to lead a new “biosecurity centre” to evaluate the coronavirus threat and “enable rapid intervention.”

 

Additionally, the UK intelligence agency known as Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) was granted powers over the NHS’s computer systems. GCHQ is known for engaging in illegal activities related to population control mechanisms such as mass surveillance.

 

Totalitarian outcomes are further enabled with billionaire Peter Thiel’s CIA-initiated company Palantir managing the databases used by both the CDC and UK’s NHS that drive COVID-19 decision making.

 

For perspective, in 2009, Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” providing another clue that public health and awareness are not the main priorities behind the coronavirus scare.

 

The data behind the COVID-19 pandemic was never reliable, with test kits being inaccurate, government policies inflating the death counts, and the media focusing solely on fear-based predictions that are repeatedly proven false.

 

Recently, scientists and government leaders from other countries, including Russia, Germany and Denmark, have begun speaking out about how the coronavirus threat has been exaggerated.

 

The outcomes of the coronavirus scare have included huge windfalls for billionaires, financial institutions, and corporations. Legislation being passed in response to COVID-19 is largely beneficial to corporate interests. The outcomes for everyone else have been fear, unemployment, poverty, loss of freedoms, grave risks to democracy, and death.

 

How this is possible is related to the fact that governments, and the nations they represent, are no longer what they were. In many ways, corporations have replaced governments as the drivers of public policy and, as with Peter Thiel’s Palantir, the public’s interest is not their concern. Meanwhile, over two dozen companies have become larger and more powerful than many national governments.

 

As a result, governments are now false fronts for corporations and the decisions they make, for example to lockdown citizens and remake their economies, are driven by profit-based strategies indifferent to public interests.

 

In summary, the features and outcomes of the coronavirus scare reflect those of previous psychological operations including the war on terrorism and its predecessor, the war on communism.

 

The people and agencies driving the coronavirus scare have a history of unethical behaviors, including hyping pandemics to push vaccines, and appear to seek long-term profits through implementation of a highly controlled society. Therefore, the response to COVID-19, if not the virus itself, can be seen as a psychological operation used to drive those outcomes.

source

[zanderthunder]

Covid-19: Malaysia’s response can be a lesson to US, says American assoc prof

 

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia's nationwide response can be a model for other countries to help flatten the curve of the Covid-19 pandemic, says an American academic, Jason Hassenstab.

 

Hassenstab, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University, Missouri, acknowledged that his was a poorly-timed trip to Malaysia, but praised the nation’s response to the virus and suggested that the United States could emulate these measures.

 

“I noticed some stark contrasts between Malaysia and the US. In Malaysia, we went to four cities – Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu, Lahad Datu and Sandakan.

 

“The enforcement was evident everywhere, even in the remote rainforest where we were staying.

 

“Mobile carriers send a message about social distancing every day. The carrier ID at the top of my phone that normally says Sprint said 'Stay Home' instead,” he said in a series of posts on Twitter.

 

Hassenstab gave a few other examples, noting the scenes at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) with security guards enforcing social distancing.

 

“Information banners with written and visual guidance were everywhere, printed by (the Health Ministry).

 

“The seats in the airport were taped off so that there would be an empty seat between each open one,” he said.

 

All airport employees, said Hassenstab, were wearing face masks while hand sanitisers were at “virtually every counter”.

 

“The Malaysian government has a totally consistent message – Stay Home, Keep Your Distance, Clean Your Hands – and the entire country is doing it,” he said.

 

He compared KLIA with other busy airports including at Atlanta where he said only 5% of customs and border control personnel had masks and gloves.

 

“No hand sanitisers other than some bathrooms. Shops and stores were open, business as usual. People were jamming together, no distance enforcement,” he said.

 

Hassenstab added that he and his family had flown via Tokyo, Japan, and a passenger three seats away was having high fever, vomiting and experiencing body aches.

 

“The paramedics came with the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) personnel at the gate and attended to her. But the rest of the passengers went through Customs like nothing had happened.

 

“Margaret, my boys and I had our temperatures checked because we reported coming from Malaysia and Singapore, but that was it,” he said.

 

Hassenstab said he knew five people who had come down with Covid-19, and the matter was not a joke.

 

“People will die on a massive scale unless extreme measures are taken. It is the best argument for a strong public health system and for a strong federal response.

 

“We need a clear and consistent message to truly #FlattenTheCurve, and it speaks volumes about our leadership that we need to model our nationwide response after other countries like Malaysia,” he said.

 

Source: Covid-19: Malaysia’s response can be a lesson to US, says American assoc prof (via TheStar Online)