https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-O_UVMqWWA _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Returning to the Covid-19 epidemic and the way governments are reacting to it, Thierry Meyssan stresses that the authoritarian decisions of Italy and France have no medical justification. They contradict the observations of the best infectiologists and the instructions of the World Health Organization.
Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 21 March 2020
The Chinese Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, came to lead the operations in Wuhan and restore the "celestial mandate" on January 27, 2020.
Epidemic outbreak in China
On November 17, 2019, the first case of a person infected with Covid-19 was diagnosed in Hubei Province, China. Initially, doctors tried to communicate the seriousness of the disease, but clashed with regional authorities. It was only when the number of cases increased and the population saw the seriousness of the disease that the central government intervened.
This epidemic is not statistically significant. It kills very few people, although those it does kill experience terrible respiratory distress.
Since ancient times, in Chinese culture, Heaven has given a mandate to the Emperor to govern his subjects [1]. When he withdraws it, a disaster strikes the country: epidemic, earthquake, etc. Although we are in modern times, President XI felt threatened by the mismanagement of the Hubei regional government. The Council of State therefore took matters into its own hands. It forced the population of Hubei’s capital, Wuhan, to remain confined to their homes. Within days, it built hospitals; sent teams to each house to take the temperature of each inhabitant; took all potentially infected people to hospitals for testing; treated those infected with chloroquine phosphate and sent others home; and treated the critically ill with recombinant interferon Alfa 2B (IFNrec) for resuscitation. This vast operation had no public health necessity, other than to prove that the Communist Party still has the heavenly mandate.
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During a press conference on Covid-19, the Iranian Deputy Minister of Health, Iraj Harirchi, appeared contaminated.
Propagation in Iran
The epidemic spreads from China to Iran in mid-February 2020. These two countries have been closely linked since ancient times. They share many common cultural elements. However, the Iranian population is the world’s most lung-weakest. Almost all men over the age of sixty suffer from the after-effects of the US combat gases used by the Iraqi army during the First Gulf War (1980-8, as did the Germans and the French after the First World War. Any traveller to Iran has been struck by the number of serious lung ailments. When air pollution in Tehran increased beyond what they could bear, schools and government offices were closed and half of the families moved to the countryside with their grandparents. This has been happening several times a year for thirty-five years and seems normal. The government and parliament are almost exclusively composed of veterans of the Iraq-Iran war, that is, people who are extremely fragile in relation to Covid-19. So when these groups were infected, many personalities developed the disease.
In view of the US sanctions, no Western bank covers the transport of medicines. Iran found itself unable to treat the infected and care for the sick until the UAE broke the embargo and sent two planes of medical equipment. People who would not suffer in the other country died from the first coughs due to the wounds in their lungs. As usual, the government closed schools. In addition, it deprogrammed several cultural and sporting events, but did not ban pilgrimages. Some areas have closed hotels to prevent the movement of sick people who can no longer find hospitals close to their homes.
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Quarantine in Japan
On February 4, 2020, a passenger on the US cruise ship Diamond Princess was diagnosed ill from the Covid-19 and ten passengers were infected. The Japanese Minister of Health, Katsunobu Kato, then imposed a two-week quarantine on the ship in Yokohama in order to prevent the contagion from spreading to his country. In the end, out of the 3,711 people on board, the vast majority of whom are over 70 years old, there would be 7 deaths.
The Diamond Princess is an Israeli-American ship, owned by Micky Arison, brother of Shari Arison, the richest woman in Israel. The Arisons are turning this incident into a public relations operation. The Trump administration and several other countries airlifted their nationals to be quarantined at home. The international press devoted its headlines to this story. Referring to the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919, it asserts that the epidemic could spread throughout the world and potentially threaten the human species with extinction [2]. This apocalyptic hypothesis, not based on any facts, would nevertheless become the word of the Gospel.
We remember that in 1898, William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, in order to increase the sales of their daily newspapers, published false information in order to deliberately provoke a war between the United States and the Spanish colony of Cuba. This was the beginning of "yellow journalism" (publishing anything to make money). Today it is called "fake news".
It is not known at this time whether tycoons deliberately spread panic about Covid-19, making this vulgar epidemic seem like the "end of the world”. However, one distortion after another, governments have become involved. Of course, it is no longer a question of selling advertising screens by frightening people, but of dominating populations by exploiting this fear.
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For the WHO Director, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, China and South Korea have set an example by generalising screening tests; a way of saying that the Italian and French methods are medical nonsense.
WHO intervention
The World Health Organization (WHO), which monitored the entire operation, noted the spread of the disease outside China. On February 11th and 12th, it organized a global forum on research and innovation on the epidemic in Geneva. At the forum, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called in very measured terms for global collaboration [3].
In all of its messages, the WHO stressed : the low demographic impact of the epidemic; the futility of border closures; the ineffectiveness of wearing gloves, masks (except for health care workers) and certain "barrier measures" (for example, the distance of one metre only makes sense with infected people, but not with healthy people); the need to raise the level of hygiene, including hand washing, water disinfection and increased ventilation of confined spaces. Finally, use disposable tissues or, failing that, sneeze into your elbow.
However, the WHO is not a medical organization, but a United Nations agency dealing with health issues. Its officials, even if they are doctors, are also and above all politicians. It cannot therefore denounce the abuses of certain states. Furthermore, since the controversy over the H1N1 epidemic, the WHO must publicly justify all its recommendations. In 2009, it was accused of having let itself be swayed by the interests of big pharmaceutical companies and of having hastily sounded the alarm in a disproportionate manner [4]. This time it used the word "pandemic" only as a last resort, on March 12th, four months later.
At the Franco-Italian summit in Naples on February 27, the French and Italian presidents, Giuseppe Conte and Emmanuel Macron, announced that they would react together to the pandemic.
Instrumentation in Italy and France
Modern propaganda does not limit itself to publishing false news as the United Kingdom did to convince its people to enter the First World War, it drafts them as Germany did to convince its people to fight in the Second World War. The recipe is always the same: to exert psychological pressure to induce subjects to voluntarily practice acts that they know are useless, but which will lead them to believe and repeat falsehoods [5]. For example, in 2001, it was common knowledge that those accused of hijacking planes on 9/11 were not on the passenger boarding lists. Yet, in shock, most accepted without question the inane accusations made by FBI Director Robert Muller against "19 hijackers". Or, as is well known, President Hussein’s Iraq had only old Soviet Scud launchers with a range of up to 700 kilometers, but many Americans caulked the windows and doors of their homes to protect themselves from the deadly gases with which the evil dictator was going to attack America. This time, in the case of the Covid-19, it is the voluntary confinement in the home that forces the person who accepts it to convince himself of the veracity of the threat.
Let us remember that never in history has the confinement of a healthy population been used to fight a disease. Above all, let us remember that this epidemic has had no significant consequences in terms of mortality.
In Italy, the first step was to isolate the contaminated regions according to the principle of quarantine, and then to isolate all citizens from each other, which follows a different logic.
According to the President of the Italian Council, Giuseppe Conte, and the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the aim of confining the entire population at home is not to overcome the epidemic, but to spread it out over time so that the sick do not arrive at the same time in hospitals and saturate them. In other words, it is not a medical measure, but an exclusively administrative one. It will not reduce the number of infected people, but will postpone it in time.
In order to convince the Italians and the French of the merits of their decision, Presidents Conte and Macron first enlisted the support of committees of scientific experts. While these committees had no objection to people staying at home, they had no objection to people going about their business. Then Chairs Conte and Macron made it mandatory to have an official form to go for a walk. This document on the letterheads of the respective ministries of the interior is drawn up on honour and is not subject to any checks or sanctions.
The two governments panic their populations by distributing unnecessary instructions disavowed by infectious diseases doctors: they encourage people to wear gloves and masks in all circumstances and to keep at least one metre away from any other human being.
Video from February 25, 2020 censored by the French Ministry of Health
The French "reference daily" (sic) Le Monde, Facebook France and the French Ministry of Health undertook to censor a video of Professor Didier Raoult, one of the world’s most renowned infectiologists, because by announcing the existence of a proven drug in China against Covid-19, he highlighted the lack of a medical basis for the measures taken by President Macron [6].
Presentation by Professor Didier Raoult to the General Assembly of the University Hospitals of Marseille, March 16, 2020.
It is too early to say what real goal the Conte and Macron governments are pursuing. The only thing that is certain is that it is not a question of fighting Covid-19.
Thierry Meyssan
Translation
Pete Kimberley
<:ver_imprimer:> Facebook Twitter Delicious Seenthis Digg RSS
[1] The Mandate of Heaven and The Great Ming Code, Jiang Yonglin, University of Washington Press (2011).
[2] Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary, Christos Lynteris, Routledge (2020).
[3] «Nouveau coronavirus : solidarité, collaboration et mesures d’urgence au niveau mondial s’imposent», Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Organisation mondiale de la Santé, 11 février 2020.
[4] Pandemics, Science and Policy. H1N1 and the World Health Organization, Sudeepa Abeysinghe, Plagrave Macmillan (2015).
[5] “The techniques of modern military propaganda”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 18 May 2016.
[6] «"La chloroquine guérit le Covid-19" : Didier Raoult, l’infectiologue qui aurait le remède au coronavirus», Étienne Campion, Marianne, 19 mars 2020.
Thierry Meyssan
Thierry Meyssan Political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network). Latest work in English – Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies: From 9/11 to Donald Trump, Progressive Press, 2019.
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First NATO-ME War Overturns Regional Order
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The world after the pandemic
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Which target after Syria?
Geopolitics
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Western propaganda against Turkey
New epidemiological model shows urgent need for large-scale testing
If the results of the study are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment
Clive Cookson, Science Editor March 25 2020
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The new coronavirus may already have infected far more people in the UK than scientists had previously estimated — perhaps as much as half the population — according to modelling by researchers at the University of Oxford.
If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all.
However, the modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group has been challenged by other scientists. They have pointed out that the study presents possible scenarios — based on assumptions about the nature of the virus, its virulence and its arrival from China — that contradict those supported by most epidemiologists.
The Oxford research suggests that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest and perhaps as early as December. It spread invisibly for a month or more before the first transmissions within the UK were officially recorded at the end of February and the epidemic started to grow exponentially.
“We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing — to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,” Prof Gupta said.
The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta.
However, she was reluctant to criticise the government for shutting down the country to suppress viral spread, because the accuracy of the Oxford model has not yet been confirmed and, even if it is correct, social distancing will reduce the number of people becoming seriously ill and relieve severe pressure on the NHS during the peak of the epidemic.
The Oxford study is based on what is known as a “susceptibility-infected-recovered model” of Covid-19, built up from case and death reports from the UK and Italy. The researchers made what they regard as the most plausible assumptions about the behaviour of the virus.
The modelling brings back into focus “herd immunity”, the idea that the virus will stop spreading when enough people have become resistant to it because they have already been infected. The government abandoned its unofficial herd immunity strategy — allowing controlled spread of infection — after its scientific advisers said this would swamp the National Health Service with critically ill patients.
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But the Oxford results would mean the country had already acquired substantial herd immunity through the unrecognised spread of Covid-19 over more than two months. If the findings are confirmed by testing, then the current restrictions could be removed much sooner than ministers have indicated.
Although some experts have shed doubt on the strength and length of the human immune response to the virus, Prof Gupta said the emerging evidence made her confident that humanity would build up herd immunity against Covid-19.
To provide the necessary evidence, the Oxford group is working with colleagues at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent to start antibody testing on the general population as soon as possible, using specialised “neutralisation assays which provide reliable readout of protective immunity,” Prof Gupta said. They hope to start testing later this week and obtain preliminary results within a few days.
This article has been amended since original publication to clarify the fact that the modelling is controversial and its assumptions have been contested by other scientists.
It's 1990, and worldwide images appear on media platforms accompanied by a story, the images are of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl appearing before a U.S. congressional committee as a first hand eye witness to the 'evil regime' of Saddam Hussain & its dastardly deeds...(and thanks to global media coverage also a witness to the world)...In her testimony stated that she had personally witnessed Iraqi soldiers take 15 babies out of an incubator in a Kuwaiti hospital and leave them on the cold floor to die.
What the world was not told, which was revealed later, that this the girl had never been a nurse, never worked in a Kuwaiti hospital but was, in fact, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States & that she’d been coached by a major U.S. public relations company paid for by the Kuwaiti government.
Despite there not being any other evidence for her story it was repeatedly used in statements by leading politicians of numerous nations as a justification to generate a collective support & acceptance of war among the populace by manipulating the peoples perceptions.
For example, President George H. W. Bush used the dead babies story 10 times in the next 40 days, and seven senators used it in the Senate debate on whether to approve military action. It did.
In 2001, following a series of alleged terrorist attacks on various nations, the representatives of the same two institutions responsible for initiating & instigating Iraq 1, the state & mainstream media, again acted in tandem.
With national leaders+cabinets, leading politicians, etc implementing an agenda titled a WAR ON TERROR (with policies that among other things massively increased state power & massively decreased civil rights) and the state's justification was some shadowy arch villain & his shadowy organisation that they identified as Osama Bin Laden & his gang (that had nothing to do with the alleged terrorist events according to numerous sections of their own intelligence apparatus)
and,
the mainstream media supporting the same agenda by utilising numerous forms of propaganda, tv programming & other techniques of manipulation & perception management.
In 2001, the state immediately used its self bestowed 'war on terror' powers to attack Afghanistan by engaging in an act of, what the nu-speak of their WAT agenda calls 'preemptive self-defence' (a claim propagated by MSM) but what national laws, such as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, & international laws, such as, The Nuremberg laws & The U.N Charter, call a criminal act of aggression & a war crime, a fact not mentioned by MSM. (Hmmm?)
In 2003, national leaders+cabinets & other leading politicians stated they had PROOF that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction & the intent to use them, and,
the mainstream media propagated the information 24/7 across the nation - ('Evil Saddam' was back & more evil than ever!),
and,
perpetrated more criminality with another unlawful act of aggression by invading Iraq.
It was revealed later that it was a blatant lie & an act that was deliberately malicious & designed to deceive.
Libya had long been a target appearing on the list of nations to be invaded in PNAC document produced back in 2000.....oh, have i not mentioned that...we'll come back to it.
In 2011, and awareness of the people rising, a reason to invade Libya beyond "Bin Laden might have stopped there for 1 night a decade ago" was needed....the institution of the media came to the rescue by propagating reports that Gaddafi & Co. were horrifically cracking down on legitimate protesters.
Faster than ya can say "war crimes" the dictators of USA/NATO nations launched a 'humanitarian' mission that upon arrival of NATO's 'rebels' was immediately replaced with the need to overthrow Gadaffi.
Perhaps risk of exposure, spiralling costs, public dissatisfaction, etc were a factor in the wests new tactic of using so called 'rebels'.....General Khalifa Belqasim Hifter was brought in from his home in Virginia by the CIA to lead the rebels, along with other CIA-friendly Libyans.
With no US/NATO troops officially on the ground in Libya the ruling psychopaths perpetrated war crimes from the air by bombing civilian areas.
Next was more of the same with Syria & lies & propaganda about gas attacks.
Before i forget, a document titled 'Rebuilding Americas defenses' produced in 2000 by the 'think tank' known as PNAC, listed 7 nations that needed 'changing' via US military invasions though it foresaw that process would be decades long....[absent some catastrophic & catalysing event like a new pearl harbour].....the brackets indicate a verbatim quote from the actual document.
Coincidentally less than a year later...
For those who are a little confused how invading nations thousands of miles away is rebuilding US defenses....well it isn't, in reality its increasing its probability of being attacked dramatically.....it all makes no sense until one knows that all members of PNAC are ultra-zionists with many holding US/Israeli dual citizenship.
Then all the pieces drop into place and all it takes is replacing one word in the documents title for the finishing touch.
Rebuilding Israels Defences. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Oh yeah I touched that somethin’
I think you understand
Now I need a scrubbin’
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands!
Don’t sneeze next to me
Watch where those droplets land
To freeze this disease
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands!
'Cause if I catch it I’ll feel crappy inside
I even want my latex gloves
Sanitized
Sanitized
Sanitized
Yeah I learned this one thing
The 20-second plan
Now my water’s running
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands!
'Cause if I catch it I’ll feel crappy inside
I even want my latex gloves
Sanitized
Sanitized
Sanitized
Yeah I touched that somethin’
I think you understand
Now I need a scrubbin’
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands!
I gotta wash my hands! _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsExPrHCHbw
Corona-Krise: Offener Brief an die Bundeskanzlerin von Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi
Prof. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi
Published on 29 Mar 2020
Prof. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi, Facharzt für Mikrobiologie und Infektionsepidemiolgie, leitete 22 Jahre das Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Hygiene der Universität Mainz. Er hat einen offenen Brief an die Bundeskanzlerin geschrieben mit 5 Fragen, die nach sofortigen Antworten verlangen, um festzustellen, wie begründet die derzeitigen massiven Einschränkungen unserer Grundrechte sind. Das Video erläutert die Fragen und deren Hintergrund. Der ganze Brief im Wortlaut mit den Fragen, Hintergründen und Referenzen kann hier eingesehen werden:
An Open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel. Professor Bhakdi calls for an urgent reassessment of the response to Covid-19 and asks the Chancellor five crucial questions. The letter is dated March 26. This is an unofficial translation.
Dear Chancellor,
As Emeritus of the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz and longtime director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, I feel obliged to critically question the far-reaching restrictions on public life that we are currently taking on ourselves in order to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
It is expressly not my intention to play down the dangers of the virus or to spread a political message. However, I feel it is my duty to make a scientific contribution to putting the current data and facts into perspective – and, in addition, to ask questions that are in danger of being lost in the heated debate.
The reason for my concern lies above all in the truly unforeseeable socio-economic consequences of the drastic containment measures which are currently being applied in large parts of Europe and which are also already being practiced on a large scale in Germany.
My wish is to discuss critically – and with the necessary foresight – the advantages and disadvantages of restricting public life and the resulting long-term effects.
To this end, I am confronted with five questions which have not been answered sufficiently so far, but which are indispensable for a balanced analysis.
I would like to ask you to comment quickly and, at the same time, appeal to the Federal Government to develop strategies that effectively protect risk groups without restricting public life across the board and sow the seeds for an even more intensive polarization of society than is already taking place.
With the utmost respect,
Prof. em. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi
1. STATISTICS
In infectiology – founded by Robert Koch himself – a traditional distinction is made between infection and disease. An illness requires a clinical manifestation. [1] Therefore, only patients with symptoms such as fever or cough should be included in the statistics as new cases.
In other words, a new infection – as measured by the COVID-19 test – does not necessarily mean that we are dealing with a newly ill patient who needs a hospital bed. However, it is currently assumed that five percent of all infected people become seriously ill and require ventilation. Projections based on this estimate suggest that the healthcare system could be overburdened.
My question: Did the projections make a distinction between symptom-free infected people and actual, sick patients – i.e. people who develop symptoms?
2. DANGEROUSNESS
A number of coronaviruses have been circulating for a long time – largely unnoticed by the media. [2] If it should turn out that the COVID-19 virus should not be ascribed a significantly higher risk potential than the already circulating corona viruses, all countermeasures would obviously become unnecessary.
The internationally recognized International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents will soon publish a paper that addresses exactly this question. Preliminary results of the study can already be seen today and lead to the conclusion that the new virus is NOT different from traditional corona viruses in terms of dangerousness. The authors express this in the title of their paper “SARS-CoV-2: Fear versus Data.” [3]
My question: How does the current workload of intensive care units with patients with diagnosed COVID-19 compare to other coronavirus infections, and to what extent will this data be taken into account in further decision-making by the federal government? In addition: Has the above study been taken into account in the planning so far? Here too, of course, „diagnosed“ means that the virus plays a decisive role in the patient’s state of illness, and not that previous illnesses play a greater role.
3. DISSEMINATION
According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, not even the much-cited Robert Koch Institute knows exactly how much is tested for COVID-19. It is a fact, however, that a rapid increase in the number of cases has recently been observed in Germany as the volume of tests increases. [4]
It is therefore reasonable to suspect that the virus has already spread unnoticed in the healthy population. This would have two consequences: firstly, it would mean that the official death rate – on 26 March 2020, for example, there were 206 deaths from around 37,300 infections, or 0.55 percent [5] – is too high; and secondly, it would mean that it would hardly be possible to prevent the virus from spreading in the healthy population.
My question: Has there already been a random sample of the healthy general population to validate the real spread of the virus, or is this planned in the near future?
4. MORTALITY
The fear of a rise in the death rate in Germany (currently 0.55 percent) is currently the subject of particularly intense media attention. Many people are worried that it could shoot up like in Italy (10 percent) and Spain (7 percent) if action is not taken in time.
At the same time, the mistake is being made worldwide to report virus-related deaths as soon as it is established that the virus was present at the time of death – regardless of other factors. This violates a basic principle of infectiology: only when it is certain that an agent has played a significant role in the disease or death may a diagnosis be made. The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies of Germany expressly writes in its guidelines: „In addition to the cause of death, a causal chain must be stated, with the corresponding underlying disease in third place on the death certificate. Occasionally, four-linked causal chains must also be stated.“ [6]
At present there is no official information on whether, at least in retrospect, more critical analyses of medical records have been undertaken to determine how many deaths were actually caused by the virus.
My question: Has Germany simply followed this trend of a COVID-19 general suspicion? And: is it intended to continue this categorisation uncritically as in other countries? How, then, is a distinction to be made between genuine corona-related deaths and accidental virus presence at the time of death?
5. COMPARABILITY
The appalling situation in Italy is repeatedly used as a reference scenario. However, the true role of the virus in that country is completely unclear for many reasons – not only because points 3 and 4 above also apply here, but also because exceptional external factors exist which make these regions particularly vulnerable.
One of these factors is the increased air pollution in the north of Italy. According to WHO estimates, this situation, even without the virus, led to over 8,000 additional deaths per year in 2006 in the 13 largest cities in Italy alone. [7] The situation has not changed significantly since then. [8] Finally, it has also been shown that air pollution greatly increases the risk of viral lung diseases in very young and elderly people. [9]
Moreover, 27.4 percent of the particularly vulnerable population in this country live with young people, and in Spain as many as 33.5 percent. In Germany, the figure is only seven percent [10]. In addition, according to Prof. Dr. Reinhard Busse, head of the Department of Management in Health Care at the TU Berlin, Germany is significantly better equipped than Italy in terms of intensive care units – by a factor of about 2.5 [11].
My question: What efforts are being made to make the population aware of these elementary differences and to make people understand that scenarios like those in Italy or Spain are not realistic here?
References:
[1] Fachwörterbuch Infektionsschutz und Infektionsepidemiologie. Fachwörter – Definitionen – Interpretationen. Robert Koch-Institut, Berlin 2015. (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
[2] Killerby et al., Human Coronavirus Circulation in the United States 2014–2017. J Clin Virol. 2018, 101, 52-56
[3] Roussel et al. SARS-CoV-2: Fear Versus Data. Int. J. Antimicrob. Agents 2020, 105947
[4] Charisius, H. Covid-19: Wie gut testet Deutschland? Süddeutsche Zeitung. (abgerufen am 27.3.2020)
[6] S1-Leitlinie 054-001, Regeln zur Durchführung der ärztlichen Leichenschau. AWMF Online (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
[7] Martuzzi et al. Health Impact of PM10 and Ozone in 13 Italian Cities. World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. WHOLIS number E88700 2006
[8] European Environment Agency, Air Pollution Country Fact Sheets 2019, (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
[9] Croft et al. The Association between Respiratory Infection and Air Pollution in the Setting of Air Quality Policy and Economic Change. Ann. Am. Thorac. Soc. 2019, 16, 321–330.
[10] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Living Arrangements of Older Persons: A Report on an Expanded International Dataset (ST/ESA/SER.A/407). 2017
[11] Deutsches Ärzteblatt, Überlastung deutscher Krankenhäuser durch COVID-19 laut Experten unwahrscheinlich, (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
OffGuardian has received requests from some readers seeking contact information for Prof Bhakdi, we apologise but we are not able to satisfy those requests. Professor Bhakdi has no affiliation nor contact with OffGuardian, and as such we are not in the position to forward e-mails or share contact information. We would suggest anyone seeking to contact him attempt to do so through his youtube channel, or ResearchGate.
FILED UNDER: CORONAVIRUS, LATEST
TAGGED WITH: ANGELA MERKEL, CORONAVIRUS, GERMANY, ITALY, OPEN LETTER, SPAIN, SUCHARIT BHAKDI
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Antonym
Antonym
The letter is dated March 26.
Way too late, as most Westerners. East Asia worked at lightning speed and won as this WHO expert concluded already on March 3rd.
1-1 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 2:38 AM
JudyJ
JudyJ
I wouldn’t generally ‘double post’ but thought I would post this discussion involving Peter Hitchens on the Sky News podcast. I have also posted it under the previous CV article with a more expansive comment from me. All I’ll say here is that the total lack of awareness among the other panel members of the economic and social impact of the ‘lockdown’ is astounding and frightening (“Everything will return to normal as soon as it’s over.”)
10 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:50 AM
Koba
Koba
An article based on act and read at rationale?! That means most won’t accept its findings until the usual mainstream suspects say it’s ok to do so
40 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:35 AM
clickkid
clickkid
“Yesterday, one of the first deaths of a Virginia resident from COVID-19 was a Christian musical evangelist who, believing the pandemic response to be anti-Trump “mass hysteria,” took his family to New Orleans to “wash it from its Sin and debauchery.”
A Gretna man who had double pneumonia and tested positive for COVID-19 in Concord North Carolina died around 4 a.m. Wednesday, the family reports.
Landon Spradlin, 66, was an accomplished blues musician who pastored several different churches over the years.”
So, a Christian Evangelist who says that covid-19 ist anti-Trump hysteria goes and dies of – allegedly – covid-19. This is then portrayed as – what … irony, poetic justice?
What an amazing coincidence?
Who writes these scripts
4-3 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:04 AM
Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Just watched the latest Propaganda Watch then (health worker applause phenomenon) and as James Corbett said at the end of the clip… ‘The space for dissent is closing’.
Just like 9/11, and it’s aftermath, people everywhere are being force fed fear porn over this virus, courtesy of the revolting presstitute media. Along with alleged progressive and socialist sites, which I now view with deep suspicion.
And many, sadly, are dutifully believing the bs. How far will all this go?
100 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 11:12 PM
clickkid
clickkid
I visited North Korea several years ago.
Just after leaving the hotel one morning in the car we passed a group of women standing on the street corner singing and dancing. I asked my guides why the women were doing that, and was told that the women were housewives and thus could not take part in the 200 days of struggle ordered by Kim Jong-Un, and were therefore singing and dancing to show their solidarity with the workers.
That’s where we now are.
2-3 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 11:43 PM
clickkid
clickkid
“The Wave is based on a true incident that occurred in a high school history class in Palo Alto, California, in 1969.
The powerful forces of group pressure that pervaded many historic movements such as Nazism are recreated in the classroom when history teacher Burt Ross introduces a “new” system to his students. And before long The Wave, with its rules of “strength through discipline, community, and action”, sweeps from the classroom through the entire school. And as most of the students join the movement, Laurie Saunders and David Collins recognize the frightening momentum of The Wave and realize they must stop it before it’s too late.”
30 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 11:48 PM
Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Yes, heard about The Wave years ago.
There was also a documentary about that experiment I believe. As one gets older (57) ones memory gets a bit dimmer. I’m just perplexed that so many are lapping all this up like a cat laps up milk. The power of propaganda C.
North Korea would have been a fascinating place to visit. I’ve never been anywhere in the northern hemisphere, but it would have been quite an eye opener? I hear the people are very courteous and polite.
It’s scary where this is heading…
00 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:15 AM
Koba
Koba
Gezzah most western socialist mid communist groups are financed by the security services especially Trotskyist groups. Only one half decent organisation in Britain is this band of Marxist Leninist party thecommunists.org
20 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:38 AM
no picnic
no picnic
Is there anything they cannot do now that everyone must stay home under the threat of severe penalties or even jail?
Is this the Bin Laden they have always wanted?
It is a Bin Laden that now exists in every street, in every household and every person. We are all potential carriers of the new Bin Laden!
Gee, this new virus really hates our freedom but has no passport this time!
Is there anything they cannot do now?!!!
70 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 10:22 PM
Jim Davies
Jim Davies
Wow! An honest scientist!
40 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 10:09 PM
Dave
Dave
Get hold of a book called Behold a Pale Horse by William Cooper. (free to download) From page 166 in the paper copy.
The virus isn’t the issue in these ‘testing’ times.
10 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 9:48 PM
Koba
Koba
Yeah let’s be honest Bill Cooper called everything’s he didn’t like the socialist new world order! AKA he got near the truth on certain subjects then veers wildly off course
20 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:40 AM
John Pretty
John Pretty
Well the inflated uk death figures have been released – 381, but that now including deaths “in the community”.Interesting to note that the numbers of new cases 1789 are still less than they were for much of last week. No doubt the MSM are wetting themselves with glee at the inflated deaths figure however, meanwhile the rest of us have the prospect of yet more and more “lockdown”.
The numbers are still very small in a country of 66,000,000 people, but it’s just so easy to manipulate people with these figures.
The only really important figure is the excess deaths figure, which would give an accurate picture of the true state of the “pandemic”. I don’t know if anyone has access to that or can say where to go to get it.
I don’t see that the MSM and the government are going to let go of this easily. They are enjoying themselves too much.
9-1 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 9:46 PM
John Pretty
John Pretty
Apology. I think offg has already shown that it is the euromomo.eu website that reports excess mortality. Sorry, it’s all happening so fast, it’s hard to keep track sometimes!
5-1 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 10:25 PM
John Pretty
John Pretty
I though it was gross and I told her so.
0-2 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 9:33 PM
John Pretty
John Pretty
Not sure what this is doing here admin? I was answering a question of clickkid regarding Caitlin Johnstone. If you want to remove it fine. I don’t mind.
2-1 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 10:28 PM
clickkid
clickkid
ok thanks John – I realized the comment got misplaced.
00 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 10:46 PM
Reg
Reg
I like this standalone comment. It made me laugh.
00 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:57 AM
George Mc
George Mc
How about this: tomorrow, Boris and the rest of the government along with Prince Charles and all the media heads all jump up and shout “APRIL FOOL!”
140 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 8:25 PM
Magggie
Magggie
Lol George, this is exactly what I said to husband.
How about this for suspicious? I did the You Gov survey yesterday and they asked me if I took part in the clap for NHS worker??
Checking to see if the British Brainwashing Corporation was hitting the targets?
10 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:07 AM
Gezzah Potts
Gezzah Potts
Jesus bloody wept Maggie. They’re trying to turn nearly everyone into automatons…. The latest Propaganda Watch video looks at that very subject – about clapping and showing support for health care workers.
00 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 3:25 AM
Willem
Willem
Looks like warmer weather is coming in many European countries next week (in NL expect temp >20C). So I would like to make a risky prediction: any country that sees a temperature next week close or over 20C, will see in the 5-7 days after a huge drop in number of new infected Covid-19 cases
Because my hypothesis is that Spring will stop the spread of Covid19 and not the lock-down
I may be wrong, which is why it is a risky prediction.
We’ll see.
9-1 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 8:21 PM
clickkid
clickkid
Just imagine come July in say Madrid, Spain:
You are 23 years old:
No Job,
No prospect of a Job,
Therefore no Money,
No freedom,
Its 40 degrees Celsius.
Half a Million others in your city think just like you
“When people have nothing left to lose, they lose it” – Gerald Celente
120 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 8:31 PM
Koba
Koba
`and enticing as that sounds click it won’t happen especially in Britain! The Roy’s has averaged zero revolutionary potential or zeal and when they lose their jobs commies I’ll get the blame somehow
00 Reply
Apr 1, 2020 12:43 AM
Waldorf
Waldorf
I live in the Mediterranean and April really is spring there, and sometimes even 25 or more centigrade, as opposed to a lingering late winter as it often is in North-Western Europe. Flus often weaken in warmer weather although they do not go away. So fingers crossed that things will improve with this thing.
50 Reply
Mar 31, 2020 9:14 PM
George Mc
George Mc
Off-G, on your twitter feed you link to this article:
It asks how many deaths might be caused not by the virus but by the response to the virus. Admittedly it is written from an American point of view but the concerns apply equally well to the UK e.g.
Beyond lack of coverage, medical services are being reprioritized to respond preferentially to COVID-19, causing less resources to be available for treatment of other medical conditions.
With reference to the UK, this will result in catastrophic damage to the NHS. Once again I refer to this article:
I noted the inevitable sense of impotence and despair for anyone who reads this due to that part of the title: “Why Global Politicians & Business Leaders Must Act Now” – since we know perfectly well that these politicians and business leaders will not even read it far less “act now”. But consider the article itself:
When you’re done reading the article, this is what you’ll take away:
• The coronavirus is coming to you.
• It’s coming at an exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly.
• It’s a matter of days. Maybe a week or two.
• When it does, your healthcare system will be overwhelmed.
• Your fellow citizens will be treated in the hallways.
• Exhausted healthcare workers will break down. Some will die.
• They will have to decide which patient gets the oxygen and which one dies.
• The only way to prevent this is social distancing today. Not tomorrow. Today.
• That means keeping as many people home as possible, starting now.
Now is it just me or is there a sense of a magician giving the game away with that “this is what you’ll take away”? He is telling us in advance how we are going to react. And then he is telling us what WILL happen …UNLESS (the offer you can’t refuse)
But note the doomsday scenario (voiced with a note of sadistic glee). “exponential speed: gradually, and then suddenly….a matter of days. Maybe a week or two ….healthcare system will be overwhelmed …citizens will be treated in the hallways … healthcare workers …break down…. die …which patient gets …which one dies” All this prophesised with Biblical certitude.
So what is this? A preview of a coming feature already filmed? Wishful thinking?
But note the unspoken question: How much of this prophesised catastrophe is due to the virus and how much to the response to the virus?
Note another unspoken question: What will be the ultimate effect of this catastrophe? That one we can answer: the destruction of the health service.
They want to institute global fascist rule.
How they gonna do it?
Phoney-baloney public health-scare.
What’ll be? Virus pandemic.
We’ll tell ’em there’s a “novel” virus out there killin’ people and they must wear masks, keep distance, stay indoors, not gather, get takeaway and other BS to “keep each other safe”.
Loads of people will lose their jobs, businesses will fail, the world will change as we know it – all due to a phoney-baloney health-scare.
A doddle.
Doncha love it? _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Geopolitics & Empire
Published on 9 Nov 2015
Dr. Katherine Albrecht discusses her book Spychips, published almost a decade ago, and reflects on RFID threats today as well as from other technologies. The US Goverment has decided to use the same RFID system being developed by commercial industry which will become ubiquitous by placing both RFID chips and scanners everywhere. She also discusses R.J. Rummel's work on democide and how the very nature of government and corporate surveillance is totalitarian. Dr. Albrecht also gives the history of the private search engine StartPage and the private encrypted Netherlands-based email service StartMail, who she also works with and helped co-found.
1:09 How Dr. Albrecht “crashed” a corporate meeting and discovered plans to chip and track everything
3:25 Spychips, her book published in 2006
3:57 Target has secretly decided to put RFID tags in everything and wil formally roll out the procedure in 2016
4:17 Biggest concerns regarding RFID
5:35 Enhanced Driver’s License part of larger plan
9:55 Federal government is relying on industry to create universal RFID system which the government itself will use
13:11 RFID microchips are already being implanted into people
13:54 How the Bible predicts this precise scenario
16:55 The 1st generation in human history where this scenario is technically possible
19:00 How this system could work worldwide, with internet provided by Facebook and Google internet balloons
21:10 The totalitarian nature of surveillance, also a spiritual issue
23:30 20th century tyranny, George Orwell’s totalitarian world
26:45 People’s apathy toward surveillance and democide (R.J. Rummel)
29:45 The deadliest force on planet earth by a factor of ten is government
31:15 Government and surveillance; Dr. Albrecht being subject to government surveillance
32:30 How the next generation has been deceived by the surveillance system by playing on their narcissism
38:00 How tech companies are making billions by having people give them all their personal information
39:40 Addictive qualities built into video gaming, social networking and similar technology
40:45 The history of StartPage and how to protect yourself from the surveillance state
50:00 The history of StartMail
About the Guest
Dr. Katherine Albrecht is an internationally known privacy researcher, consumer advocate, bestselling author, and nationally syndicated radio host. She is also is a senior executive with the private search engines StartPage and Ixquick, and is on the team behind the new privacy-protecting email program StartMail, to make powerful encryption available to regular people. Katherine holds a Doctorate in Human Development and Consumer Education from Harvard University, has studied at the MIT Media lab, and received a Masters from Harvard in Technology, Innovation, and Education.
Katherine has authored pro-privacy legislation, testified before the Federal Trade Commission and numerous state legislatures, and was appointed as a consumer technology expert by NH Governor John Lynch. She co-authored the bestseller Spychips, has granted over 2,000 media interviews with news outlets around the globe, including CBS, NBC, CNN, NPR, Fox News, Good Morning America, the BBC, Wired Magazine, The New York Times, and hundreds more. Katherine is currently serving as the Associate Editor of the IEEE Technology & Society Magazine, co-authors an online security blog for eHow, and she heads the 18,000 member consumer privacy organization, CASPIAN.
She is the author of a children's Bible book about Revelation titled "I Won't Take the Mark: A Bible Book and Contract for Children."
Katherine Albrecht Books
Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID
I Won't Take the Mark: A Bible Book and Contract for Children
http://www.virtuepress.com _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
The Church of England said it would help families who choose to rearrange ceremonies to a future date. Photograph: Helen King/Corbis/Getty Images
Wedding ceremonies should be restricted to five people because of the coronavirus crisis, the Church of England has said. The bride and groom will be permitted to stand close together, but others present should observe social distancing.
The legal minimum for wedding ceremonies is the person officiating, the couple, and two witnesses.
The numbers attending baptisms should also be limited to single figures, the church said.
Weddings and baptisms need to be “very significantly scaled back to meet the need for social distancing”, according to the new guidance published on Thursday. It said it would help families who choose to rearrange ceremonies to a future date, or proceed now but hold a public blessing at a later date.
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The move came as thousands of couples are being forced to postpone wedding ceremonies, with some facing huge bills if they have not taken out insurance. Wedding venues are facing cancellations for months ahead.
Buckingham Palace announced this week that Princess Beatrice, the Queen’s granddaughter, was “reviewing” her wedding plans. She was due to marry Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace in London, on 29 May.
The couple’s reception in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, hosted by the Queen, has already been cancelled. Mapelli Mozzi comes from the Lombardy region of Italy, where there have been almost 500 deaths from the virus.
A palace spokesperson said: “The couple will carefully consider government advice before deciding whether a private marriage may take place among a small group of family and friends.”
However, the C of E’s new advice puts even such a scaled-back ceremony in doubt. It says: “Where family relatives or friends are unable to attend given the restrictions on numbering, churches will be happy to explore ways to allow others to join the service, either through platforms such as Skype, or recording the service to send at a later date to anyone unable to attend.
“Where no audio link can be achieved, an order of service could be sent either by email or post. Apart from the bride and groom, the physical distance should be observed as far as possible.
“No additional church personnel will attend the service, for example organists, vergers or sound system operator etc.”
Couples cancelling their church wedding would be refunded any fees or deposit in full.
Baptisms should be limited to the candidate, their parents, guardians or carers, plus the godparents and minister, the church said. The priest should not hold the child and the water should be administered with an appropriate implement such as a shell.
David Walker, the bishop of Manchester, said: “Couples and parents, friends and families will have been planning for months, even years for their special moment, whether a wedding or a christening.
“Now it can go ahead – but with only the minimum required in attendance. You may need to cancel or postpone.
“Whatever decision is made, God’s love and blessing will still surround all those who would have been there that day.”
The guidance on weddings and baptisms came a day after the C of E advised that funerals should be limited to immediate family, and livestreamed to others wishing to pay their respects, with those attending in person observing social distancing.
“Those over the age of 70 and those with an underlying health condition are strongly discouraged from attending in the present circumstances,” the guidance said.
“While naturally those present may wish to shake hands or hug, all present should refrain from doing so in light of guidance on physical distancing.”
There should be no wakes or other gatherings after the funeral, it added. “Consider whether a memorial service could be held at some point in the future,” it suggests.
The government has been stung by criticism over its slow response to testing people for the virus and currently lags far behind other countries, such as the US and South Korea. To bridge the gap, Number 10 has ordered thousands of kits from private enterprises, including from a Luxembourg company, Eurofins. On Monday, Eurofins sent an email to government laboratories, warning that a key component known as “probes and primers” had been contaminated with the coronavirus, according to the Daily Telegraph.
It comes as confusion reigned in government circles over just how many people had been tested for COVID-19 over the weekend.
Michael Gove claimed that the government’s goal of carrying out 10,000 tests per day had been reached on Sunday.
However, it turns out that only 8,278 tests were completed in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday morning.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister clarified on Sunday that Mr Gove had been referring to the capacity available, as opposed to the actual number completed.
Experts have questioned why there is such a big discrepancy in testing between Britain and other countries around the world.
As of March 29, the UK has been testing 1,881 people per million citizens, whereas South Korea tests more than 5,200 per million.
The chair of SPI-M, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which advises the Government said that the problem lay in the fact that the UK lacks both the equipment and trained personnel to carry out mass testing.
Professor Graham Medley told the Daily Telegraph: “We might have the brilliant minds but we don’t have the machines or the number of trained people to ramp this up properly.
“We are trying to do things that are beyond any single research laboratory.
“We need more PCR machines which are expensive and need to be maintained.
“We need the people trained to run them, even though in an ideal world they might never be needed.
Coronavirus Symptoms
“South Korea have got warehouses full of testing kits and machines, and lots of people trained and ready to go.
“When Sars and Mers came along, they knew they needed it.”
He added: “Germany just appear to have been better prepared than us.
“It would have been a very difficult political decision to spend that kind of money on things that might never have been needed.”
PHE have recruited an army of volunteers including university students to help plug the gaps and speed up testing.
They have also contracted 11 more labs as well as universities and NHS hospitals to provide testing facilities and services.
--
From South America, where payment must be made with subtlety, the Bormann organization has made a substantial contribution. It has drawn many of the brightest Jewish businessmen into a participatory role in the development of many of its corporations, and many of these Jews share their prosperity most generously with Israel. If their proposals are sound, they are even provided with a specially dispensed venture capital fund. I spoke with one Jewish businessmen in Hartford, Connecticut. He had arrived there quite unknown several years before our conversation, but with Bormann money as his leverage. Today he is more than a millionaire, a quiet leader in the community with a certain share of his profits earmarked as always for his venture capital benefactors. This has taken place in many other instances across America and demonstrates how Bormann’s people operate in the contemporary commercial world, in contrast to the fanciful nonsense with which Nazis are described in so much “literature.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Covid-19’s meant to be a new Black Death, but in Britain no more people are dying than NORMAL. What does this say about the virus?
31 Mar, 2020 09:07 / Updated 1 day ago
By Peter Andrews, Irish science journalist and writer, based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics
Many people are waking up to the fact that the Covid-19 “pandemic” is not turning out as billed. When we finally emerge from it, the big question will be how many people have died from the virus. Here’s the most likely outcome.
You can bet that the institutions of international government, and the “experts” advising them, will try to massage and cherry-pick statistics to present the version of events that most closely matches their worst-case scenarios. The fact is, according to their early predictions, we are already long overdue millions of Covid-19 deaths that have failed to materialise.
But even when Covid-19 deaths are recorded, we have seen how it could be that people are dying with coronavirus rather than dying of it. This concept is easy enough to understand, and it encourages one to take a closer look at the breakdown of deaths across an entire society. The more you follow this rabbit hole down, the more interesting the numbers become. It may be somewhat morbid, but it is nonetheless very important.
The most popular two articles on the website of The Spectator over the weekend were by Dr John Lee, a recently retired NHS consultant and professor of pathology. He remarks that ‘’we have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world’’.
To check this out, I looked at the British government’s own statistics on total deaths registered weekly across the UK. It shows that in the week ending on the 8th of March 2019, 10,898 people died in total in the UK. This year, in the week ending the 6th of March 2020, the equivalent figure was almost identical: 10,895. Make of that what you will. Statistics are currently available up to March 20, and while there is a lag between the spread of the virus and the resulting deaths, so far only about 1 percent of all mortalities bear any relation to coronavirus, and there is no visible spike. If nothing else, it helps to view the extent of the crisis in proportion - thousands of people die each week, and from the long-term view what we are seeing is not a plague, but a blip.
So when all is said and done, will any additional people die of the coronavirus? And what is meant by extra or additional?
Risk of dying
Understanding this requires a bit of lateral thinking, but it helps to remember that everyone on Earth has a terminal disease: being alive. We all have to go sometime.
Recording exactly how and when we do is a big part of the job of statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter. In a recent blog post, he outlined the concept of background risk. This is obtained by recording all of the people dying in any given year, at any given age. At its most simple, this is the percentage chance a person has of not reaching their next birthday, based solely on their age. Of course, that is not to say that if you are a 40-year-old man you have precisely a 0.2% chance of dying this year - the data are based on averages, and do not apply to individuals.
But nonetheless, across a country or given populations, the averages will be right, and it is possible to predict with great accuracy how many people will die in a given year. In the UK, for example, 600,000 people die annually. But wait a minute! A novel, brand-spanking new coronavirus is terrorising us all. Therefore surely we can expect more people to die this year than would in a normal year? And come year’s end we should be able, with simple arithmetic, to count exactly how many more there were.
ALSO ON RT.COM
In 2009 UK government experts wildly over-hyped dangers of swine flu — is history repeating with Covid-19?
Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Evidence and Risk Communication at Cambridge University, won’t say exactly what he does think that figure will be. But he does say that if the deaths are towards the lower end of the current estimates, say at around 20,000 in the UK, Covid-19 will end up having ‘’a minimal impact on overall mortality for 2020’’. He told R4 that his findings showed, to his own professed astonishment, that if someone contracts the coronavirus, they’ve got almost exactly the same chance of dying over the ensuing few weeks as they would normally have of dying over the next year, no matter what their age or background health.
And depending on who you ask, that 20,000 figure might still be an overestimate. In fact, Spiegelhalter says that if extra people die it will likely be as a result of the knock-on effects of the lockdown, such as delayed normal health care, depression and isolation.
American political commentator Candace Owens has been Tweeting consistently about the apparent insignificance of Covid-19 deaths compared to overall trends. She tweeted about this issue in relation to New York City, where meaningless figures are being waved around by the media.
Candace Owens
✔
@RealCandaceO
An article this morning claims NYC is facing a catastrophe because they have had 450 Coronavirus deaths since January & someone is dying every 17 minutes.
So you know—regularly, NYC has 419 deaths every single day & loses a person every 9 minutes.
Just for perspective.
46.4K
2:47 PM - Mar 28, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy
20.5K people are talking about this
Final destination
With all of the numbers being bandied about these days by various universities and governments, one would swear that they knew exactly what they were talking about. Make no mistake: this air of certainty is just a front. It is definitely too early to accurately gauge how many – if any – extra people will die because of coronavirus. It will depend on how four key pieces of information intersect.
These are:
How many people will become infected by Covid-19?
How much does Covid-19 increase the risk of death?
Are deaths being properly recorded? Of those people who die having contracted coronavirus, are they dying from the virus, or just with it?
Of those who died, how many had comorbidities that would have killed them this year anyway?
Since all of this began, the mainstream media have focused almost entirely on the first of these points, and stressing with an onslaught of material how important it is to slow the spread. The most extreme possible measures have been implemented to do that. Meanwhile, the three other points could end up comparing Covid-19 pretty much to the common flu. Only careful consideration by governments of all the key factors will result in the best future decisions.
It is hard to believe that when this all blows over, the damage that will have been done by the shutdown measures – to businesses, to civil liberties, to individual lives and, of course, to the global economy – could have been for nothing. Nonetheless, it seems entirely possible based on the present data. Remember above all to not take the figures the mainstream media throw at you at face value; there are lies, damned lies and statistics.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil traders across the globe are offering cargoes far in advance as rapidly vanishing demand drives key physical crude prices to multi-decade lows, with some U.S. oil valued at roughly $10 a barrel.
The oil market is caught between a collapse in demand due to the coronavirus pandemic and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. Both factors are expected to flood markets with oil.
Refineries worldwide have started to shut units, with some closing outright, while major operators like India’s IOC have declared force majeure on crude purchases as they struggle with the sudden stoppage in demand. Key benchmarks in Canada and Mexico traded at less than $10 per barrel on Monday, less than the cost of production.
Oil futures rallied on Tuesday, on hopes that potential negotiations between U.S. and Russia would end the oil-price war. But the weakness in physical markets shows market participants more focused on the avalanche of coming supply running into a worldwide collapse in demand.
“The gap between physical assessments and futures reflects the differences between the realities on the ground and speculations about efforts to ease that pressure going forward,” JBC Energy consultants wrote Tuesday.
Trafigura on Monday estimated global oil demand will fall by about 30 million bpd, or about one-third of daily world consumption, as lockdowns hammer fuel needs.
Saudi Arabia is due to announce its official selling prices by next week. These typically set the tone for sour barrels and more cuts are expected, adding pressure on traders to get rid of long-term supplies fast.
In a sign of that desperation, traders were offering May cargoes of WTI Midland to Europe, unusually far in advance. Typically, cargoes for May delivery do not surface until at least April.
Commodities merchant Mercuria offered three May cargoes carrying WTI-Midland at dated Brent minus $3.40 for Rotterdam delivery on Monday, while Trafigura offered the same at minus $4.10 a barrel.
JBC Energy consultancy estimated that there would be around 6 million barrels per day (bpd) of homeless crude in April and about 7 million bpd in May.
West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) at Midland, the United States’ flagship crude oil grade priced in the heart of the Permian Basin, fell to about $10 a barrel, its lowest since late 1998, as demand plummeted and tanks filled. That means for March, that grade has dropped 75%, while U.S. futures are down by 52%.
Midland traded as low as $9.75 below the U.S. benchmark, which settled near $20 a barrel on Monday.
The price differential for key North Sea grade Forties fell to a record low at minus $3.25 a barrel versus benchmark dated Brent on Monday. Kazakhstan’s CPC Blend fell to a record low at a $7.65 a barrel discount.
Dated Brent is the physical European benchmark, used to price over half of the world’s crude oil.
Export barrels at the U.S. Gulf were also offered at record discounts to U.S. futures, traders said, another signal of slumping demand.
U.S. pipeline operators have told producers to stop sending barrels without proof of buyers, lest pipelines be stuck with barrels. However, some producers that locked in space on new arteries to the U.S. Gulf are forced to ship those barrels due to long-term shipping agreements - meaning they are now flooding the coast with cheap crude.
Slideshow (2 Images)
WTI at East Houston (MEH) crude, one of the biggest Gulf Coast export grades, traded at $6 below benchmark futures, lowest on record. Mars crude, the U.S. Gulf sour benchmark, weakened to $8 below futures, the lowest since 2008.
Canada’s Western Canadian Select heavy oil for April delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, traded at about $7 per barrel, a discount of $13 to U.S. futures, according to NE2 Canada Inc, though volumes were thin.
Welcome to the EuroMOMO website. We publish weekly bulletins of the all-cause mortality levels in up to 24 European countries or regions of countries. The weekly bulletin is published every Thursday around noon.
Quote:
European mortality bulletin week 12, 2020
Pooled estimates of all-cause mortality show, overall, normal expected levels in the participating countries; however, increased excess mortality is notable in Italy.
Data from 24 participating countries or regions were included in this week’s pooled analysis of all-cause mortality in Europe.
The number of deaths in the recent weeks should be interpreted with caution as adjustments for delayed registrations may be imprecise. Furthermore, results of pooled analyses may vary depending on countries included in the weekly analyses. Pooled analyses are adjusted for variation between the included countries and for differences in the local delay in reporting.
Note concerning COVID-19 related mortality as part of the all-cause mortality figures reported by EuroMOMO
Over the past few days, the EuroMOMO hub has received many questions about the weekly all-cause mortality data and the possible contribution of any COVID-19 related mortality. Some wonder why no increased mortality is observed in the reported mortality figures for the COVID-19 affected countries.
The answer is that increased mortality that may occur primarily at subnational level or within smaller focal areas, and/or concentrated within smaller age groups, may not be detectable at the national level, even more so not in the pooled analysis at European level, given the large total population denominator. Furthermore, there is always a few weeks of delay in death registration and reporting. Hence, the EuroMOMO mortality figures for the most recent weeks must be interpreted with some caution.
Therefore, although increased mortality may not be immediately observable in the EuroMOMO figures, this does not mean that increased mortality does not occur in some areas or in some age groups, including mortality related to COVID-19.
SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus from China, is spreading around the world, causing a huge reaction despite its current low incidence outside China and the Far East. Four common coronaviruses are in current circulation and cause millions of cases worldwide. This article compares the incidence and mortality rates of these four common coronaviruses with those of SARS-COV-2 in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. It is concluded that the problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably being overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsExPrHCHbw
Corona-Krise: Offener Brief an die Bundeskanzlerin von Prof. Sucharit Bhakdi
Prof. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi
Published on 29 Mar 2020
Prof. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi, Facharzt für Mikrobiologie und Infektionsepidemiolgie, leitete 22 Jahre das Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Hygiene der Universität Mainz. Er hat einen offenen Brief an die Bundeskanzlerin geschrieben mit 5 Fragen, die nach sofortigen Antworten verlangen, um festzustellen, wie begründet die derzeitigen massiven Einschränkungen unserer Grundrechte sind. Das Video erläutert die Fragen und deren Hintergrund. Der ganze Brief im Wortlaut mit den Fragen, Hintergründen und Referenzen kann hier eingesehen werden:
An Open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel. Professor Bhakdi calls for an urgent reassessment of the response to Covid-19 and asks the Chancellor five crucial questions. The letter is dated March 26. This is an unofficial translation.
Dear Chancellor,
As Emeritus of the Johannes-Gutenberg-University in Mainz and longtime director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, I feel obliged to critically question the far-reaching restrictions on public life that we are currently taking on ourselves in order to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
It is expressly not my intention to play down the dangers of the virus or to spread a political message. However, I feel it is my duty to make a scientific contribution to putting the current data and facts into perspective – and, in addition, to ask questions that are in danger of being lost in the heated debate.
The reason for my concern lies above all in the truly unforeseeable socio-economic consequences of the drastic containment measures which are currently being applied in large parts of Europe and which are also already being practiced on a large scale in Germany.
My wish is to discuss critically – and with the necessary foresight – the advantages and disadvantages of restricting public life and the resulting long-term effects.
To this end, I am confronted with five questions which have not been answered sufficiently so far, but which are indispensable for a balanced analysis.
I would like to ask you to comment quickly and, at the same time, appeal to the Federal Government to develop strategies that effectively protect risk groups without restricting public life across the board and sow the seeds for an even more intensive polarization of society than is already taking place.
With the utmost respect,
Prof. em. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi
1. STATISTICS
In infectiology – founded by Robert Koch himself – a traditional distinction is made between infection and disease. An illness requires a clinical manifestation. [1] Therefore, only patients with symptoms such as fever or cough should be included in the statistics as new cases.
In other words, a new infection – as measured by the COVID-19 test – does not necessarily mean that we are dealing with a newly ill patient who needs a hospital bed. However, it is currently assumed that five percent of all infected people become seriously ill and require ventilation. Projections based on this estimate suggest that the healthcare system could be overburdened.
My question: Did the projections make a distinction between symptom-free infected people and actual, sick patients – i.e. people who develop symptoms?
2. DANGEROUSNESS
A number of coronaviruses have been circulating for a long time – largely unnoticed by the media. [2] If it should turn out that the COVID-19 virus should not be ascribed a significantly higher risk potential than the already circulating corona viruses, all countermeasures would obviously become unnecessary.
The internationally recognized International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents will soon publish a paper that addresses exactly this question. Preliminary results of the study can already be seen today and lead to the conclusion that the new virus is NOT different from traditional corona viruses in terms of dangerousness. The authors express this in the title of their paper “SARS-CoV-2: Fear versus Data.” [3]
My question: How does the current workload of intensive care units with patients with diagnosed COVID-19 compare to other coronavirus infections, and to what extent will this data be taken into account in further decision-making by the federal government? In addition: Has the above study been taken into account in the planning so far? Here too, of course, „diagnosed“ means that the virus plays a decisive role in the patient’s state of illness, and not that previous illnesses play a greater role.
3. DISSEMINATION
According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, not even the much-cited Robert Koch Institute knows exactly how much is tested for COVID-19. It is a fact, however, that a rapid increase in the number of cases has recently been observed in Germany as the volume of tests increases. [4]
It is therefore reasonable to suspect that the virus has already spread unnoticed in the healthy population. This would have two consequences: firstly, it would mean that the official death rate – on 26 March 2020, for example, there were 206 deaths from around 37,300 infections, or 0.55 percent [5] – is too high; and secondly, it would mean that it would hardly be possible to prevent the virus from spreading in the healthy population.
My question: Has there already been a random sample of the healthy general population to validate the real spread of the virus, or is this planned in the near future?
4. MORTALITY
The fear of a rise in the death rate in Germany (currently 0.55 percent) is currently the subject of particularly intense media attention. Many people are worried that it could shoot up like in Italy (10 percent) and Spain (7 percent) if action is not taken in time.
At the same time, the mistake is being made worldwide to report virus-related deaths as soon as it is established that the virus was present at the time of death – regardless of other factors. This violates a basic principle of infectiology: only when it is certain that an agent has played a significant role in the disease or death may a diagnosis be made. The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies of Germany expressly writes in its guidelines: „In addition to the cause of death, a causal chain must be stated, with the corresponding underlying disease in third place on the death certificate. Occasionally, four-linked causal chains must also be stated.“ [6]
At present there is no official information on whether, at least in retrospect, more critical analyses of medical records have been undertaken to determine how many deaths were actually caused by the virus.
My question: Has Germany simply followed this trend of a COVID-19 general suspicion? And: is it intended to continue this categorisation uncritically as in other countries? How, then, is a distinction to be made between genuine corona-related deaths and accidental virus presence at the time of death?
5. COMPARABILITY
The appalling situation in Italy is repeatedly used as a reference scenario. However, the true role of the virus in that country is completely unclear for many reasons – not only because points 3 and 4 above also apply here, but also because exceptional external factors exist which make these regions particularly vulnerable.
One of these factors is the increased air pollution in the north of Italy. According to WHO estimates, this situation, even without the virus, led to over 8,000 additional deaths per year in 2006 in the 13 largest cities in Italy alone. [7] The situation has not changed significantly since then. [8] Finally, it has also been shown that air pollution greatly increases the risk of viral lung diseases in very young and elderly people. [9]
Moreover, 27.4 percent of the particularly vulnerable population in this country live with young people, and in Spain as many as 33.5 percent. In Germany, the figure is only seven percent [10]. In addition, according to Prof. Dr. Reinhard Busse, head of the Department of Management in Health Care at the TU Berlin, Germany is significantly better equipped than Italy in terms of intensive care units – by a factor of about 2.5 [11].
My question: What efforts are being made to make the population aware of these elementary differences and to make people understand that scenarios like those in Italy or Spain are not realistic here?
References:
[1] Fachwörterbuch Infektionsschutz und Infektionsepidemiologie. Fachwörter – Definitionen – Interpretationen. Robert Koch-Institut, Berlin 2015. (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
[2] Killerby et al., Human Coronavirus Circulation in the United States 2014–2017. J Clin Virol. 2018, 101, 52-56
[3] Roussel et al. SARS-CoV-2: Fear Versus Data. Int. J. Antimicrob. Agents 2020, 105947
[4] Charisius, H. Covid-19: Wie gut testet Deutschland? Süddeutsche Zeitung. (abgerufen am 27.3.2020)
[6] S1-Leitlinie 054-001, Regeln zur Durchführung der ärztlichen Leichenschau. AWMF Online (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
[7] Martuzzi et al. Health Impact of PM10 and Ozone in 13 Italian Cities. World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe. WHOLIS number E88700 2006
[8] European Environment Agency, Air Pollution Country Fact Sheets 2019, (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
[9] Croft et al. The Association between Respiratory Infection and Air Pollution in the Setting of Air Quality Policy and Economic Change. Ann. Am. Thorac. Soc. 2019, 16, 321–330.
[10] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. Living Arrangements of Older Persons: A Report on an Expanded International Dataset (ST/ESA/SER.A/407). 2017
[11] Deutsches Ärzteblatt, Überlastung deutscher Krankenhäuser durch COVID-19 laut Experten unwahrscheinlich, (abgerufen am 26.3.2020)
OffGuardian has received requests from some readers seeking contact information for Prof Bhakdi, we apologise but we are not able to satisfy those requests. Professor Bhakdi has no affiliation nor contact with OffGuardian, and as such we are not in the position to forward e-mails or share contact information. We would suggest anyone seeking to contact him attempt to do so through his youtube channel, or ResearchGate.
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The hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman turned a $27 million position into a $2.6 billion windfall as the coronavirus outbreak dragged stocks to multiyear lows and threatened deep economic recession.
Pershing Square Capital Management turned to credit protection on investment-grade and high-yield bond indexes to bet on an increased risk of corporate default.
The multibillion-dollar profit offset losses elsewhere in Ackman's portfolio and drove a 7.9% gain in March through Tuesday's close for Pershing Square's public fund, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The fund has since used its profits to bolster bets on Berkshire Hathaway, Hilton, Lowe's, Restaurant Brands International, and Agilent.
Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman minted a multibillion-dollar profit as coronavirus fears tanked US stocks.
The hedge-fund billionaire turned a $27 million position into $2.6 billion through defensive hedge bets, a Wednesday letter to investors said. The profit offset losses elsewhere in the firm's portfolio and helped Ackman's public fund land a 7.9% gain in March through Tuesday's close, The Wall Street Journal reported. The S&P 500 slid 17% over the same period.
Pershing Square used credit protection on investment-grade and high-yield bond indexes to land the massive profits. The assets rise in value as the odds of corporate defaults increase. As measures to combat the virus outbreak cut into economic activity, corporate bond ratings tanked, and investors feared the worst.
The fund was able to purchase the investment vehicles about a month ago "at near-all-time tight levels of credit spreads," so the risk of loss was "minimal at the time of purchase," Ackman wrote.
Read more: The world's biggest wealth manager expects the worst of the coronavirus to be over in the US by May — and lists 5 ways investors should prepare for the recovery now
The hedge fund began liquidating its protective bets last week after unprecedented action from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department shifted sentiment toward corporate credit health. Ackman fully exited the position on Monday, the same day the US central bank announced it would begin buying corporate bonds to prop up the battered market.
Ackman has since used the profits to bolster Pershing Square's investments in Berkshire Hathaway, Hilton, Lowe's, Restaurant Brands International, and Agilent. The fund also reestablished a stake in Starbucks after selling its position in January.
The fund founder used Twitter and an appearance on CNBC last week to predict that the coronavirus outbreak would cause economic turmoil if the US didn't institute a 30-day shutdown.
Ackman urged CEOs of his portfolio companies to take precautions as "hell is coming" and said a national stay-at-home order was "the only answer" for saving the economy. Markets slid further through the March 18 session during Ackman's emotional CNBC interview.
Read more: Bill Miller's fund crushed the market for a record 15 straight years. He told us his strategy for the coronavirus meltdown, calling it 'one of the five great buying opportunities of my lifetime'
After commentators accused him of fearmongering and intentionally driving markets lower, the investor said that he was "confident the president will do the right thing."
Ackman said in his Wednesday letter that he still believes a monthlong shutdown is necessary and that the US "can be reopened carefully as China has so far successfully done" once the lockdown is over.
New epidemiological model shows urgent need for large-scale testing
If the results of the study are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment
Clive Cookson, Science Editor March 25 2020
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The new coronavirus may already have infected far more people in the UK than scientists had previously estimated — perhaps as much as half the population — according to modelling by researchers at the University of Oxford.
If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all.
However, the modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group has been challenged by other scientists. They have pointed out that the study presents possible scenarios — based on assumptions about the nature of the virus, its virulence and its arrival from China — that contradict those supported by most epidemiologists.
The Oxford research suggests that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest and perhaps as early as December. It spread invisibly for a month or more before the first transmissions within the UK were officially recorded at the end of February and the epidemic started to grow exponentially.
“We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing — to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,” Prof Gupta said.
The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta.
However, she was reluctant to criticise the government for shutting down the country to suppress viral spread, because the accuracy of the Oxford model has not yet been confirmed and, even if it is correct, social distancing will reduce the number of people becoming seriously ill and relieve severe pressure on the NHS during the peak of the epidemic.
The Oxford study is based on what is known as a “susceptibility-infected-recovered model” of Covid-19, built up from case and death reports from the UK and Italy. The researchers made what they regard as the most plausible assumptions about the behaviour of the virus.
The modelling brings back into focus “herd immunity”, the idea that the virus will stop spreading when enough people have become resistant to it because they have already been infected. The government abandoned its unofficial herd immunity strategy — allowing controlled spread of infection — after its scientific advisers said this would swamp the National Health Service with critically ill patients.
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But the Oxford results would mean the country had already acquired substantial herd immunity through the unrecognised spread of Covid-19 over more than two months. If the findings are confirmed by testing, then the current restrictions could be removed much sooner than ministers have indicated.
Although some experts have shed doubt on the strength and length of the human immune response to the virus, Prof Gupta said the emerging evidence made her confident that humanity would build up herd immunity against Covid-19.
To provide the necessary evidence, the Oxford group is working with colleagues at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent to start antibody testing on the general population as soon as possible, using specialised “neutralisation assays which provide reliable readout of protective immunity,” Prof Gupta said. They hope to start testing later this week and obtain preliminary results within a few days.
This article has been amended since original publication to clarify the fact that the modelling is controversial and its assumptions have been contested by other scientists.
Bhadki - German infectious disease specialist
https://media.urmedium.com/ConvertedVideo/2020/04/02/63721437680049443 5video.mp4 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members.
We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will.
You can read all our coverage of the coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak for free, and also sign up for our coronavirus newsletter. But please consider subscribing to support our nonprofit journalism.
It’s now widely agreed (even by Britain, finally) that every country needs to “flatten the curve”: impose social distancing to slow the spread of the virus so that the number of people sick at once doesn’t cause the health-care system to collapse, as it is threatening to do in Italy right now. That means the pandemic needs to last, at a low level, until either enough people have had Covid-19 to leave most immune (assuming immunity lasts for years, which we don’t know) or there’s a vaccine.
How long would that take, and how draconian do social restrictions need to be? Yesterday President Donald Trump, announcing new guidelines such as a 10-person limit on gatherings, said that “with several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly.” In China, six weeks of lockdown are beginning to ease now that new cases have fallen to a trickle.
But it won’t end there. As long as someone in the world has the virus, breakouts can and will keep recurring without stringent controls to contain them. In a report yesterday (pdf), researchers at Imperial College London proposed a way of doing this: impose more extreme social distancing measures every time admissions to intensive care units (ICUs) start to spike, and relax them each time admissions fall. Here’s how that looks in a graph.
A graph of weekly ICU cases over time.
Periodic bouts of social distancing keep the pandemic in check.
Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team.
The orange line is ICU admissions. Each time they rise above a threshold—say, 100 per week—the country would close all schools and most universities and adopt social distancing. When they drop below 50, those measures would be lifted, but people with symptoms or whose family members have symptoms would still be confined at home.
What counts as “social distancing”? The researchers define it as “All households reduce contact outside household, school or workplace by 75%.” That doesn’t mean you get to go out with your friends once a week instead of four times. It means everyone does everything they can to minimize social contact, and overall, the number of contacts falls by 75%.
Under this model, the researchers conclude, social distancing and school closures would need to be in force some two-thirds of the time—roughly two months on and one month off—until a vaccine is available, which will take at least 18 months (if it works at all). They note that the results are “qualitatively similar for the US.”
Eighteen months!? Surely there must be other solutions. Why not just build more ICUs and treat more people at once, for example?
Well, in the researchers’ model, that didn’t solve the problem. Without social distancing of the whole population, they found, even the best mitigation strategy—which means isolation or quarantine of the sick, the old, and those who have been exposed, plus school closures—would still lead to a surge of critically ill people eight times bigger than the US or UK system can cope with. (That’s the lowest, blue curve in the graph below; the flat red line is the current number of ICU beds.) Even if you set factories to churn out beds and ventilators and all the other facilities and supplies, you’d still need far more nurses and doctors to take care of everyone.
A graph of critical care beds occupied over time.
In all scenarios without widespread social distancing, the number of Covid cases overwhelms the healthcare system.
Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team
How about imposing restrictions for just one batch of five months or so? No good—once measures are lifted, the pandemic breaks out all over again, only this time it’s in winter, the worst time for overstretched health-care systems.
A graph showing critical care beds occupied over time for the suppression scenario.
If full social distancing and other measures are imposed for five months, then lifted, the pandemic comes back.
Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team.
And what if we decided to be brutal: set the threshold number of ICU admissions for triggering social distancing much higher, accepting that many more patients would die? Turns out it makes little difference. Even in the least restrictive of the Imperial College scenarios, we’re shut in more than half the time.
This isn’t a temporary disruption. It’s the start of a completely different way of life.
Living in a state of pandemic
In the short term, this will be hugely damaging to businesses that rely on people coming together in large numbers: restaurants, cafes, bars, nightclubs, gyms, hotels, theaters, cinemas, art galleries, shopping malls, craft fairs, museums, musicians and other performers, sporting venues (and sports teams), conference venues (and conference producers), cruise lines, airlines, public transportation, private schools, day-care centers. That’s to say nothing of the stresses on parents thrust into home-schooling their kids, people trying to care for elderly relatives without exposing them to the virus, people trapped in abusive relationships, and anyone without a financial cushion to deal with swings in income.
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There’ll be some adaptation, of course: gyms could start selling home equipment and online training sessions, for example. We’ll see an explosion of new services in what’s already been dubbed the “shut-in economy.” One can also wax hopeful about the way some habits might change—less carbon-burning travel, more local supply chains, more walking and biking.
But the disruption to many, many businesses and livelihoods will be impossible to manage. And the shut-in lifestyle just isn’t sustainable for such long periods.
So how can we live in this new world? Part of the answer—hopefully—will be better health-care systems, with pandemic response units that can move quickly to identify and contain outbreaks before they start to spread, and the ability to quickly ramp up production of medical equipment, testing kits, and drugs. Those will be too late to stop Covid-19, but they’ll help with future pandemics.
In the near term, we’ll probably find awkward compromises that allow us to retain some semblance of a social life. Maybe movie theaters will take out half their seats, meetings will be held in larger rooms with spaced-out chairs, and gyms will require you to book workouts ahead of time so they don’t get crowded.
Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating—legally—against those who are.
We can see harbingers of this in the measures some countries are taking today. Israel is going to use the cell-phone location data with which its intelligence services track terrorists to trace people who’ve been in touch with known carriers of the virus. Singapore does exhaustive contact tracing and publishes detailed data on each known case, all but identifying people by name.
We don’t know exactly what this new future looks like, of course. But one can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.
We’ll adapt to and accept such measures, much as we’ve adapted to increasingly stringent airport security screenings in the wake of terrorist attacks. The intrusive surveillance will be considered a small price to pay for the basic freedom to be with other people.
As usual, however, the true cost will be borne by the poorest and weakest. People with less access to health care, or who live in more disease-prone areas, will now also be more frequently shut out of places and opportunities open to everyone else. Gig workers—from drivers to plumbers to freelance yoga instructors—will see their jobs become even more precarious. Immigrants, refugees, the undocumented, and ex-convicts will face yet another obstacle to gaining a foothold in society.
Moreover, unless there are strict rules on how someone’s risk for disease is assessed, governments or companies could choose any criteria—you’re high-risk if you earn less than $50,000 a year, are in a family of more than six people, and live in certain parts of the country, for example. That creates scope for algorithmic bias and hidden discrimination, as happened last year with an algorithm used by US health insurers that turned out to inadvertently favor white people.
The world has changed many times, and it is changing again. All of us will have to adapt to a new way of living, working, and forging relationships. But as with all change, there will be some who lose more than most, and they will be the ones who have lost far too much already. The best we can hope for is that the depth of this crisis will finally force countries—the US, in particular—to fix the yawning social inequities that make large swaths of their populations so intensely vulnerable.
It comes as confusion reigned in government circles over just how many people had been tested for COVID-19 over the weekend.
Michael Gove claimed that the government’s goal of carrying out 10,000 tests per day had been reached on Sunday.
However, it turns out that only 8,278 tests were completed in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday morning.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister clarified on Sunday that Mr Gove had been referring to the capacity available, as opposed to the actual number completed.
Experts have questioned why there is such a big discrepancy in testing between Britain and other countries around the world.
As of March 29, the UK has been testing 1,881 people per million citizens, whereas South Korea tests more than 5,200 per million.
The chair of SPI-M, the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which advises the Government said that the problem lay in the fact that the UK lacks both the equipment and trained personnel to carry out mass testing.
Professor Graham Medley told the Daily Telegraph: “We might have the brilliant minds but we don’t have the machines or the number of trained people to ramp this up properly.
“We are trying to do things that are beyond any single research laboratory.
“We need more PCR machines which are expensive and need to be maintained.
“We need the people trained to run them, even though in an ideal world they might never be needed.
Coronavirus Symptoms
“South Korea have got warehouses full of testing kits and machines, and lots of people trained and ready to go.
“When Sars and Mers came along, they knew they needed it.”
He added: “Germany just appear to have been better prepared than us.
“It would have been a very difficult political decision to spend that kind of money on things that might never have been needed.”
PHE have recruited an army of volunteers including university students to help plug the gaps and speed up testing.
They have also contracted 11 more labs as well as universities and NHS hospitals to provide testing facilities and services.
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From South America, where payment must be made with subtlety, the Bormann organization has made a substantial contribution. It has drawn many of the brightest Jewish businessmen into a participatory role in the development of many of its corporations, and many of these Jews share their prosperity most generously with Israel. If their proposals are sound, they are even provided with a specially dispensed venture capital fund. I spoke with one Jewish businessmen in Hartford, Connecticut. He had arrived there quite unknown several years before our conversation, but with Bormann money as his leverage. Today he is more than a millionaire, a quiet leader in the community with a certain share of his profits earmarked as always for his venture capital benefactors. This has taken place in many other instances across America and demonstrates how Bormann’s people operate in the contemporary commercial world, in contrast to the fanciful nonsense with which Nazis are described in so much “literature.”
So much emphasis is placed on select Jewish participation in Bormann companies that when Adolf Eichmann was seized and taken to Tel Aviv to stand trial, it produced a shock wave in the Jewish and German communities of Buenos Aires. Jewish leaders informed the Israeli authorities in no uncertain terms that this must never happen again because a repetition would permanently rupture relations with the Germans of Latin America, as well as with the Bormann organization, and cut off the flow of Jewish money to Israel. It never happened again, and the pursuit of Bormann quieted down at the request of these Jewish leaders. He is residing in an Argentinian safe haven, protected by the most efficient German infrastructure in history as well as by all those whose prosperity depends on his well-being.
http ://spitfirelist.com/books/martin-bormann-nazi-in-exile/
Fed Takes on Role of World’s Central Bank by Pumping Out Dollars
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(Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is acting as central banker to the world by seeking to provide the global financial system with the dollar liquidity it needs to avoid seizing up.
In its latest measure to combat the economic fallout from the coronarvirus pandemic, the Fed said Tuesday it was establishing a temporary repurchase agreement facility to allow foreign central banks to swap any Treasury securities they hold for cash. That’s yet another step beyond the actions it took in the 2008 financial crisis.
“To the Federal Reserve’s credit, it is playing the role of central banker to the world rather than denying it and trying to ward it off,” said former Fed official Ted Truman, who is now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
The Fed is trying to prevent a liquidity squeeze amid a worldwide rush into dollars, as the virus wreaks havoc on a global economy that is heavily dependent on the greenback as its linchpin.
“A lot of borrowing and commerce and investing is done in dollars,” Julia Coronado, founding partner of MacroPolicy Perspectives in New York and a former Fed economist, said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio. “When you have a dollar crunch, it can turn a recession or contraction in activity into a financial crisis very quickly because the dollar shortage can trigger defaults and deleveraging.”
Emerging-market borrowers are especially at risk. Encouraged by low U.S. interest rates, they’ve loaded up on a dollar-denominated debt in recent years. They now face a squeeze as their exports plummet due to economic shutdowns worldwide to combat the coronavirus contagion.
A significantly stronger dollar can also hurt the U.S. by tightening financial conditions and making American exports more expensive on world markets.
Strains Remain
Investors rushed for the currency this month, pushing the premium paid to swap funding exposure from euros into the dollar to multiyear highs. While the shortage of dollars has since eased, strains remain in emerging markets.
Unlike the currency swap lines the Fed already has in place with selected central banks -- and which it employed in the financial crisis -- the new repo facility will be open to most foreign central banks and foreign monetary authorities with an account at the New York Fed.
“Almost every country that holds dollars has an account at the Federal Reserve,” Truman said. “My guess is that $5 trillion is held there.”
The New York Fed says it has over 200 account holders, with the vast majority held by foreign central banks and monetary authorities.
The new facility though does lack something the currency swaps provide. While it allows foreign central banks to liquefy their holdings of Treasuries and obtain dollars, it does not add to their reserves. Rather, it just changes their composition.
Krishna Guha, head of central bank strategy at Evercore ISI, said the the repo program should help smaller emerging markets that need to raise dollars to intervene to prevent freefalls in their currencies.
Selling Pressure
It should also lead to less forced selling of Treasuries by those foreign central banks and thus support the Fed’s efforts to restore some semblance of order to the U.S. government debt market, he said in a note to clients.
The Fed nodded to that reasoning in its statement announcing the new program. The facility “reduces the need for central banks to sell their Treasury securities outright and into illiquid markets,” helping stabilize trading in the world’s most secure and important asset, it said.
There are some doubts though about how widely the program will be used. The Fed is charging 25 basis points over the interest rate on excess reserves -- currently 0.1% -- to buy back U.S. Treasuries. It is hard to know which monetary authorities would opt for the program rather than first trying to sell at market without the extra cost.
The Fed is having to take on the mantle of world central banker because of the dollar’s dominant role in the world economy and the critical importance of the Treasury debt market to the global financial system.
The NHS will have 13.4 billion pounds’ worth of debt written off in a bid to strengthen the system to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street press conference, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Thursday evening: ‘Today, to help NHS trusts to deliver what’s needed without worrying about past finances, I can announce that I am writing off £13.4 billion of historic NHS debt.
‘This landmark step will not only put the NHS in a strong position to be able to respond to this global coronavirus pandemic, but it will ensure that our NHS has stronger foundations for our future too’.
Mr Hancock also announced that £300 million will be made available to fund community pharmacies.
Customers collect their prescriptions outside a pharmacy in Belfast as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, March 18, 2020. REUTERS/Jason Cairnduff
Pharmacies will be given a £300 million cash boost (Picture: Reuters)
For our Coronavirus live blog click here.
He said: ‘These are unprecedented times for our healthcare system and I want to make sure every part of it is supported.
‘I’ve therefore made £300 million available for funding for community pharmacies, who do so much to get vital medicines to people and play such an important part in their communities. They themselves are the NHS front line’.
The health secretary also paid tribute to the frontline workers who have died after contracting the virus and ‘paid the ultimate price of their service’.
He said: ‘I am profoundly moved by the compassion and the commitment that we are seeing from people right across the country, and in the health and care system we have lost colleagues too’.
‘I just want to say this on behalf of all my colleagues in health and social care: I am awed by the dedication of colleagues on the frontline, every single person, who contributes to the running of this diverse and caring institution that our nation holds so dear,’ he added.
Medical staff prepare a ambulance at NHS Nightingale hospital as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, London, Britain, April 2, 2020. REUTERS/John Sibley
The health secretary also paid tribute to frontline workers who had lost their lives (Picture: Reuters)
‘Many of those who have died who are from the NHS, were people who came to this country to make a difference and they did, and they’ve given their lives in sacrifice. We salute them’.
The health secretary’s comments came after the UK death toll jumped by another 569, bringing the total to 2,921.
Mr Hancock came out of isolation early after six days – despite government advice telling people with coronavirus symptoms to isolate for seven – to announce the new developments.
He and Prime Minister Boris Johnson have faced scrutiny for being granted a coronavirus test, when healthcare workers continue to raise concerns that they cannot get one themselves as more continue to self-isolate.
Mr Hancock said the Cabinet ministers were following ‘protocol that’s been set out by the chief medical officer for who should get tests and the decision was that those who are in senior decision-making positions, as well as those who are in the critical jobs on the front line, need to get those tests’.
Mr Hancock said NHS staff will be able to get tested for Covid-19 ‘absolutely before the end of the month’, following public outcry that just 2,000 of 1,300,000 workers had been tested, revealed by the government on Wednesday.
He added: ‘With 5,000 tested since (staff testing) started at the weekend we’ve clearly made significant progress.’
A goal of 100,000 tests by the end of April has been set and will cover all five of his ‘testing pillars’, he said.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock's five pillar strategy:
– Swab testing in Public Health England (PHE) and NHS labs
– Using commercial partners, including universities and private businesses, to establish more swab testing
– Introducing antibody blood tests to determine whether people have had Covid-19
– Surveillance to determine the rate of infection and how it is spreading across the country
– Build an ‘at-scale’ diagnostics industry to reach 100,000 tests by the end of April.
He added that large-scale antibody testing – to see if someone has been infected with the virus and recovered – will only be rolled out when clinicians are confident it is a valid test. Mr Hancock insisted that ‘no test is better than a bad test.’
Mr Hancock said, for all the focus on testing, staying at home remained the best way of stopping the spread of Covid-19.
He said: ‘The number one thing that stops the spread of this virus is social distancing. That is the most important thing.
‘There has been a lot in the news in recent days on testing and I understand how people crave wanting to know their coronavirus status. I get that.
April 3, 20200
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to infect hundreds of thousands in the United States, some average citizens are volunteering to help make personal protective equipment for medical workers,...03:09 _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Back in 1993 I did a BBC piece on the Common Cold Research Centre in Salisbury which was being demolished/redeveloped. The official told me off mic it was not NHS but really an MoD Porton Down & Burroughs Wellcome run unit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4hygOgqR3c _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2020 11:52 pm Post subject:
William Engdahl: The Dystopian Scenario Arising From COVID-19
•31 Mar 2020
Geopolitics & Empire
Strategic risk consultant and best-selling author F. William Engdahl discusses the Coronavirus "pandemic" and how scenarios by the Rockefeller Foundation in their 2010 report and the 2019 "Event 201" Coronavirus pandemic simulation by Microsoft's Bill Gates (in conjunction with pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson, US military, CIA, and the head of Chinese CDC) foretold in detail the events we are experiencing in real-time with the COVID-19 crisis.
He explains how he never could have imagined such a dystopian geopolitical scenario in his wildest dreams. He looks at the economic collapse that is underway and where the globalists are pushing us, including a digital cashless society, and why they need to destroy the United States of America as a functioning sovereign entity.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2020 1:02 am Post subject:
News review, Investigative reports: Friday the 9th of Lockdown - Thursday 27th March was the first day of 'level 4' lockdown in New Zealand. Martin Summers and Tony Gosling analyse the economics and geopolitics of the unprecedented Covid19 virus emergency measures in the UK, New Zealand and the rest of the world.
The leaders of two controversial pandemic simulations that took place just months before the Coronavirus crisis – Event 201 and Crimson Contagion – share a common history, the 2001 biowarfare simulation Dark Winter. Dark Winter not only predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks, but some of its participants had clear foreknowledge of those attacks.
During the presidency of George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, something disturbing unfolded at the U.S.’ top biological warfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Specimens of highly contagious and deadly pathogens – anthrax and ebola among them – had disappeared from the lab, at a time when lab workers and rival scientists had been accused of targeted sexual and ethnic harassment and several disgruntled researchers had left as a result.
In addition to missing samples of anthrax, ebola, hanta virus and a variant of AIDS, two of the missing specimens had been labeled “unknown” – “an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret,” according to reports. The vast majority of the specimens lost were never found and an Army spokesperson would later claim that it was “likely some were simply thrown out with the trash.”
An internal Army inquiry in 1992 would reveal that one employee, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, had been caught on camera secretly entering the lab to conduct “unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax,” the Hartford Courant would later report. Despite this, Zack would continue to do infectious disease research for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and would collaborate with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) throughout the 1990s.
The Courant had also noted that: “A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher [later revealed to be Zack], who left the misspelled label ‘antrax’ in the machine’s electronic memory.” The Courant’s report further detailed the extremely lax security controls and chaotic disorganization that then characterized the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) lab in Fort Detrick.
This same lab would, a decade later, be officially labeled as the source of the anthrax spores responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks, attacks which are also officially said to have been the work of a “deranged” USAMRIID researcher, despite initially having been blamed on Saddam Hussein and Iraq by top government officials and mainstream media. Those attacks killed 5 Americans and sickened 17.
Yet, as the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks unfolded, accusations from major U.S. newspapers soon emerged that the FBI was deliberately sabotaging the probe to protect the Anthrax attacker and that the CIA and U.S. military intelligence had refused to cooperate with the investigation. The FBI did not officially close their investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, nicknamed “Amerithrax,” until 2010 and aspects of that investigation still remain classified.
More recently, this past July, the same Fort Detrick lab would be shut down by the CDC, after it was found that researchers “did not maintain an accurate or current inventory” for toxins and “failed to safeguard against unauthorized access to select agents.” The closure of the lab for its numerous breaches of biosafety protocols would be hidden from Congress and the facility would controversially be partially reopened last November before all of the identified biosafety issues were resolved.
The same day that the lab was controversially allowed to partially reopen, which was the result of heavy lobbying from the Pentagon, local news outlets reported that the lab had suffered “two breaches of containment” last year, though the nature of those breaches and the pathogens involved were redacted in the inspection findings report obtained by the Frederick News Post. Notably, USAMRIID has, since the 1980s, worked closely with virologists and virology labs in Wuhan, China, where the first epicenter of the current novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) cases emerged. The Chinese government has since alleged that the virus had been brought to China by members of the U.S. military, members of which attended the World Military Games in the country last October.
Such similarities among these Fort Detrick lab breaches, from the early 1990s to 2001 to the present, may be nothing more than unfortunate coincidences that are the result of a stubborn federal government and military that have repeatedly refused to enforce the necessary stringent safety precautions on the nation’s top biological warfare laboratory.
Yet, upon examining not only these biosafety incidents at Fort Detrick, but the 2001 Anthrax attacks and the current Covid-19 outbreak, another odd commonality stands out — high-level war games exercise took place in June 2001 that eerily predicted not only the Anthrax attacks, but also the initial government narrative of those attacks and much, much more.
That June 2001 exercise, known as “Dark Winter,” also predicted many aspects of government pandemic response that would later re-emerge in last October’s simulation “Event 201,” which predicted a global pandemic caused by a novel Coronavirus just months before the Covid-19 outbreak. In addition, the U.S. government would lead its own multi-part series of pandemic simulations, called “Crimson Contagion,” that would also predict aspects of the Covid-19 outbreak and government response.
Upon further investigation, key leaders of both Event 201 and Crimson Contagion, not only have deep and longstanding ties to U.S. Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense, they were all previously involved in that same June 2001 exercise, Dark Winter. Some of these same individuals would also play a role in the FBI’s “sabotaged” investigation into the subsequent Anthrax attacks and are now handling major aspects of the U.S. government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. One of those individuals, Robert Kadlec, was recently put in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) entire Covid-19 response efforts, despite the fact that he was recently and directly responsible for actions that needlessly infected Americans with Covid-19.
Other major players in Dark Winter are now key drivers behind the “biodefense” mass surveillance programs currently being promoted as a technological solution to Covid-19’s spread, despite evidence that such programs actually worsen pandemic outbreaks. Others still have close connections to the insider trading that recently occurred among a select group of U.S. Senators regarding the economic impact of Covid-19 and are set to personally profit from lucrative contracts to develop not just one, but the majority, of experimental Covid-19 treatments and vaccines currently under development by U.S. companies.
This investigative series, entitled “Engineering Contagion: Amerithrax, Coronavirus and the Rise of the Biotech-Industrial Complex,” will examine these disturbing parallels between the 2001 anthrax attacks and the current scandals and “solutions” of the Covid-19 crisis as well as the simulations that eerily preceded both events. By tracing key actors in Dark Winter from 2001 to the present, it is also possible to trace the corruption that has lurked behind U.S. “biodefense” and pandemic preparedness efforts for decades and which now is rearing its ugly head as pandemic panic distracts the American and global public from the fundamentally untrustworthy, and frankly dangerous, individuals who are in control of the U.S. government’s and corporate America’s response.
Given their involvement in Dark Winter and, more recently, Event 201 and Crimson Contagion, this series seeks to explore the possibility that, just like the 2001 anthrax attacks, government insiders had foreknowledge of the Covid-19 crisis on a scale that, thus far, has gone unreported and that those same insiders are now manipulating the government’s response and public panic in order to reap record profits and gain unprecedented power for themselves and control over people’s lives.
A DARK WINTER DESCENDS
In late June 2001, the U.S. military was preparing for a “Dark Winter.” At Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland, several Congressmen, a former CIA director, a former FBI director, government insiders and privileged members of the press met to conduct a biowarfare simulation that would precede both the September 11 attacks and the 2001 Anthrax attacks by a matter of months. It specifically simulated the deliberate introduction of smallpox to the American public by a hostile actor.
The simulation was a collaborative effort led by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies (part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) in collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Analytic Services (ANSER) Institute for Homeland Security and the Oklahoma National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. The concept, design and script of the simulation were created by Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center along with Randy Larsen and Mark DeMier of ANSER. The full script of the exercise can be read here.
The name for the exercise derives from a statement made by Robert Kadlec, who participated in the script created for the exercise, when he states that the lack of smallpox vaccines for the U.S. populace means that “it could be a very dark winter for America.” Kadlec, a veteran of the George W. Bush administration and a former lobbyist for military intelligence/intelligence contractors, is now leading HHS’ Covid-19 response and led the Trump administration’s 2019 “Crimson Contagion” exercises, which simulated a crippling pandemic influenza outbreak in the U.S. that had first originated in China. Kadlec’s professional history, his decades-old obsession with apocalyptic bioweapon attack scenarios and the Crimson Contagion exercises themselves are the subject of Part III of this series.
The Dark Winter exercise began with a briefing on the geopolitical context of the exercise, which included intelligence suggesting that China had intentionally introduced Foot and Mouth disease in Taiwan for economic and political advantage; that Al-Qaeda was seeking to purchase biological pathogens once weaponized by the Soviet Union; and that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had recruited former biowarfare specialists from the Soviet Union and was importing materials to create biological weapons. It further notes that a majority of Americans had opposed a planned deployment of U.S. soldiers to the Middle East, which was also opposed by Iraq, China and Russia. The script also asserts that the soldiers were being deployed to counter and potentially engage the Iraqi military. Later, as the exercise unfolds, many of those Americans once skeptical about this troop deployment soon begin calling for “revenge.”
Amid this backdrop, news suddenly breaks that smallpox, a disease long eradicated in the U.S. and globally, appears to have broken out in the state of Oklahoma. The participants in Dark Winter, representing the National Security Council, quickly deduce that smallpox has been deliberately introduced and that this is the result of a “bioterrorist attack on the United States.” The assumption is made that the attack is “related to decisions we may make to deploy troops to the Mid-East.”
Not unlike what is unfolding currently with the Covid-19 crisis, in Dark Winter, there is no means of rapid diagnosis for smallpox, no treatments available and no surge capacity in the healthcare system. The outbreak quickly spreads to numerous other U.S. states and throughout the world. Hospitals in the U.S. soon face “desperate situations” as “tens of thousands of ill or anxious persons seek care.” This is compounded by “grossly inadequate supplies” and “insufficient isolation rooms,” among other complications.
Since this exercise occurred in June 2001, the heavy hinting that Saddam Hussein-led Iraq and Al Qaeda are the main suspects is notable. Indeed, at one point in one of the fictional news reports used in the exercise, the reporter states that “Iraq might have provided the technology behind the attacks to terrorist groups based in Afghanistan.” Such claims that Iraq’s government was linked to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan would re-emerge months later in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, and would be heavily promoted by several Dark Winter participants such as former CIA Director James Woolsey, who would later swear under oath that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. It would, of course, later emerge that Iraq’s connections to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks were nonexistent as well as the fact that Iraq did not possess biological weapons or other “weapons of mass destruction.”
Notably, this insertion into one of the Dark Winter news clips was not the only part of the exercise that sought to link Saddam Hussein and Iraq to biological weapons. For instance, during the exercise, satellite imaging showed that a “suspected bioresearch facility” in Iraq appeared to be expanding an “exclusionary zone” in order to limit civilian activity near the facility as well as a “possible quarantine” area in the same area as this facility. Previously in the exercise, Iraq was one of three countries, along with Iran and North Korea, who were “repeatedly rumored” to have illicitly obtained Soviet smallpox cultures from defecting scientists and Iraq was alleged to have offered employment to a leading smallpox scientist who had worked on the Soviet bioweapons program.
Then, at the end of the exercise, a “prominent Iraqi defector” emerges who claims Iraq had arranged the bioweapons attack “through intermediaries,” which is deemed “highly credible” even though “there is no forensic evidence to support this claim.” Iraq officially denies the accusation, but vows to target the U.S. in “highly damaging ways” if the U.S. “takes action against Iraq.” It is thus unsurprising that, as will be shown later in this report, key participants in Dark Winter would heavily promote the narrative that Iraq was to blame for the 2001 Anthrax attacks. Other participants, including Robert Kadlec, would then become involved in the FBI’s “sabotaged” investigation once the Bureau began to focus on a domestic, as opposed to an international source.
In addition, as part of Dark Winter, mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times and others, were sent anonymous letters that threatened renewed attacks on the U.S., including anthrax attacks, if the U.S. did not withdraw its troops from the Middle East. In this simulation, those letters contained “a genetic fingerprint of the smallpox strain matching the fingerprint of the strain causing the current epidemic.” During the Anthrax attacks that would occur just a few months after Dark Winter, Judith Miller – who participated in Dark Winter – and other U.S. reporters would receive threatening letters with a white powder presumed to be Anthrax. In Miller’s case, the powder turned out to be harmless.
Other aspects of Dark Winter appear more notable now than ever, particularly in light of recent pandemic simulations that were conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (Event 201) and the Trump administration (Crimson Contagion) in 2019, as well as the federal government’s current options for responding to Covid-19.
For instance, Dark Winter warns of “dangerous misinformation” spreading online selling “unverified” cures and making similarly “unverified” claims, all of which are deemed as posing a threat to public safety. Such concerns over online misinformation/disinformation and narrative control have recently surfaced in connection with the current Covid-19 crisis. Notable, however, is the fact that the “Event 201” simulation held last October, which simulated a global pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus, also greatly emphasized concerns about such misinformation/disinformation and suggested increased social media censorship and “limited internet shutdowns” to combat the issue. That simulation was co-hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which is currently led by Dark Winter co-author Thomas Inglesby.
Dark Winter further discusses the suppression and removal of civil liberties, such as the possibility of the President to invoke “The Insurrection Act”, which would allow the military to act as law enforcement upon request by a State governor, as well as the possibility of “martial rule.” The Dark Winter script also discusses how options for martial rule “include, but are not limited to, prohibition of free assembly, national travel ban, quarantine of certain areas, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus [i.e. arrest without due process], and/or military trials in the event that the court system becomes dysfunctional.”
The exercise later includes “credible allegations” that those deemed “suspicious for smallpox” by authorities were illegally arrested or detained and that these arrests largely targeted low income individuals or ethnic minorities. In terms of current events, it is worth pointing out that U.S. Attorney General William Barr and the Department of Justice he leads have recently requested new “emergency powers” that are allegedly related to the current Covid-19 outbreak. That request specifically references the ability to indefinitely detain Americans without right to a free trial.
WEAVING A NARRATIVE
After examining Dark Winter, it then becomes important to examine the events the exercise seemingly predicted, namely the 2001 anthrax attacks. This is particularly crucial for two reasons: first, that the source of the anthrax was later traced to a domestic source, allegedly the USAMRIID lab in Fort Detrick; and second, the mode of attack and the initial narrative of those attacks were straight out of the Dark Winter playbook. Furthermore, key players in the government response to the anthrax attacks, including those with apparent foreknowledge of the attacks, as well as those who sought (falsely) to link those attacks to Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were also participants in Dark Winter.
Weeks before the first Anthrax case would be discovered, on the evening of September 11, 2001, then-Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff was told to start taking injections of the antibiotic Cipro in order to prevent Anthrax infection. In addition, at least one member of the press, journalist Richard Cohen – then at the Washington Post – had also been told to take Cipro soon after September 11 after receiving a tip “in a roundabout way from a high government official.” Who exactly in the Bush administration and in the Beltway began taking Cipro weeks prior to the anthrax attacks and for how long? Unfortunately, the answer to that question remains unanswered. Yet, it has since been revealed that the person who had told these officials to take Cipro was none other than Dark Winter participant Jerome Hauer, who had previously served for nearly 8 years at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC), which oversees the USAMRIID lab at Fort Detrick.
Hauer, on September 11, 2001, was the managing director of Kroll Inc., a private intelligence and security company informally known as the “CIA of Wall Street,” a company that French intelligence had accused of acting as a front for the actual CIA. Kroll Inc., at the time of the attacks was responsible for security at the World Trade Center complex, yet Hauer was conveniently not present at his World Trade Center office on the day of the attacks, instead appearing on cable news. More on the series of “conveniences” that have followed Hauer throughout his career, especially over the course of 2001, and the massive amounts of money he stands to make off of the current Covid-19 epidemic will be discussed in detail in Part II of this series.
Then, on September 12, Donald Kagan of the neoconservative think tank the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose members populated key posts in the Bush administration, made an odd comment (for the time, anyway) about the September 11 attacks and anthrax. Speaking on Washington DC radio, Kagan – after suggesting that the U.S. should invade Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine in retaliation for September 11 – asks “What would have happened if they had anthrax on that plane?” That same day, James Woolsey, himself a PNAC member and also a Dark Winter participant, claimed that Iraq was to blame for September 11 during a cable news interview.
A week later, another PNAC member and advisor to the Bush White House– Richard Perle – told CNN that the next terror attack is likely to involve “chemical or biological weapons.” Soon after, Jerome Hauer re-emerges, claiming that the government now has a “new sense of urgency” regarding bioterrorist threats and asserts that “Osama Bin Laden wants to acquire these [biological] agents and we know he has links to Saddam and Saddam Hussein has them.” Of course, Saddam Hussein did not actually possess these biological weapons, although he did during the fictional Dark Winter exercise in which Hauer had actively participated. Just days after Hauer made these bold claims, ABC News reported that the alleged 9/11 hijackers may have intended to modify crop dusters to disperse Anthrax.
All of this took place several days before the first anthrax victim, photojournalist Bob Stevens, would even begin to show symptoms and over a week before doctors would even begin to suspect that his condition had been caused by anthrax poisoning.
On October 2, as Stevens’ health began to rapidly deteriorate, a new book co-written by journalist Judith Miller of the New York Times was released. Entitled “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War,” the book asserted that the U.S. faced an unprecedented bioterrorism threat from terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. It further alleged that such groups may have teamed up with countries such as Iraq and Russia. Miller, who had participated in Dark Winter months prior, had conducted numerous interviews with senior White House officials for the book, particularly Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Libby, although he had not personally attended Dark Winter, was greatly impacted by the exercise when he learned of it, so much so that he had personally arranged for Cheney to watch the video of the entire Dark Winter exercise on September 20, 2001. Cheney took the contents of Dark Winter to the National Security Council the very next day. It would later be reported in New York magazine that, “a few days after 9/11,” the principal authors of Dark Winter – Randall Larsen, Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby – would personally meet with Cheney and members of the administration’s national security staff about the exercise.
Larsen, who worked closely with Robert Kadlec throughout the 1990s, allegedly smuggled a test tube of weaponized Bacillus globigii, “almost genetically identical to anthrax,” into the meeting, according to that report. It is unclear when this meeting took place in relation to when Cheney had watched the video of the Dark Winter exercise.
The same day that Miller’s “Germs” was released, October 2, another odd occurrence took place. A former scientist at the USAMRIID lab at Fort Detrick, Dr. Ayaad Assaad, received a call from the FBI after someone who intimately knew Assaad’s work history and career in great detail (and who also claimed to have previously worked with Assaad) had anonymously accused him of being a “potential biological terrorist” with a deep-seated hatred of the U.S. government. At the time the letter was received by the FBI, neither the public nor the FBI were aware of any anthrax cases. Assaad, who was then working for the Environmental Protection Agency, told the FBI that he believed he was being framed by former co-workers. The FBI deemed this to be credible and never contacted Assaad in connection with the case again.
It later emerged in the Hartford Courant that Assaad had been the target of extensive harassment by a clique of co-workers at the USAMRIID lab in the early 1990s. One of those co-workers who had harassed Assaad would leave the lab disgruntled as a result of the controversy over Assaad’s harassment allegations. He would later return to the lab to conduct unauthorized, late night research on anthrax and be tied to several missing specimens of anthrax and other pathogens – Lt. Col. Philip Zack.
Zack, in 2001, was working for the U.S. biotechnology company Gilead Sciences. Though he first began working for Gilead in 1999, he was “handpicked” in 2001 to lead the establishment of “a new Project Management Department in conjunction with a complete restructure of R&D [Research and Development].” Donald Rumsfeld, another member of PNAC, became the chairman of Gilead Sciences in 1997 and he served as chairman of that company up until he became George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense in early 2001.
Rumsfeld would later announce on September 10, 2001 that $2.3 trillion had gone “missing” from the Pentagon’s budget. The Pentagon’s accounting office, whose staff was attempting to locate these missing trillions, would be destroyed on September 11, 2001. Though planes being flown into the Pentagon would later be described by government officials as “unimaginable” and “unthinkable” after the attacks, a simulation of planes being flown into the Pentagon had been conducted less than a year prior to September 11.
TERROR REDUX
On October 4, 2001, Bob Stevens’ anthrax poisoning diagnosis was made known to the FBI and CDC and the public was then informed via a press conference. The second anthrax case was declared soon after and was a co-worker of Stevens’, who had worked for the Florida-based newspaper, the Sun.
A day later, White House officials began to immediately pressure then-FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove that the anthrax attacks were linked to Al Qaeda, despite there being no evidence to make such a link. “They really wanted to blame somebody in the Middle East,” a then-senior FBI official would later tell the New York Daily News of the meetings.
Over the next few weeks, suspicious letters containing fine, white powder were sent to well-known American journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw and The New York Times’ Judith Miller, though the powder in the letter addressed to Miller was found to be harmless. Notably, Miller and other New York Times journalists wrote a total of 27 articles specifically about anthrax and its potential use as a bioweapon between September 12, 2001 and the day before Stevens was diagnosed with anthrax poisoning.
Letters containing anthrax were also received by Senators Tom Daschle, Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy, all of whom were – at the time – preventing the US Patriot Act from quickly passing through the Senate and who were resisting administration attempts to ram the legislation through with little to no debate. Several of the letters included the date “9-11-01” and the phrases “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is great” in neatly-printed block letters.
Soon after, a suspicious letter was found in the office of then-Congressman and current Vice President Mike Pence. Media Roots noted the following about Pence’s subsequent press conference in a 2018 podcast that examined the timeline of the 2001 anthrax attacks:
“…Mike Pence, who once hosted an AM talk show describing himself as ‘Rush Limbaugh on decaf,’ conducts a press conference outside the Capitol proclaiming revenge and biblical style justice to whoever conducted the anthrax attacks. His family–with news cameras in tow–gets tested for anthrax at the hospital after it is allegedly found in his office.
No news outlets questioned his grandstanding or odd performance of going to the hospital with his family, and unlike Senators Daschle and Leahy in their press appearances, Mike Pence alluded to the anthrax letters being connected to the larger ‘war on terror.’”
As public panic swelled, more letters continued to be found, not just in the United States but around the world, with anthrax and/or hoax letters being found in Japan, Kenya, Israel, China and Australia, among others. Simultaneously, efforts to link the anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein and Iraq began to emerge and quickly grew in intensity and number.
The media push to link the attacks to Iraq began first with The Guardian and then was followed by U.S. media outlets like The Wall Street Journal. Those early reports cited unnamed “American investigators” and defense officials and largely centered on the false claim that alleged 9/11 mastermind Mohammad Atta had met with an Iraqi diplomat in Prague in late 2000 as well as similarly false allegations that members of Al Qaeda had recently obtained vials of anthrax in the Czech Republic.
A key person in disseminating that false Prague story was Dark Winter participant and PNAC member James Woolsey. It was also revealed in late October 2001 that Woolsey was serving as the personal emissary of Paul Wolfowitz, Iraq War “architect” and then-Deputy Secretary of Defense, in “investigating Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks and anthrax outbreaks.”
Beyond the Pentagon, foreign “experts” soon began to assert that there was a link between the anthrax attacks and Iraq, including former Israeli military intelligence officer Dany Shoham. Shoham recently resurfaced this past January after claiming that Covid-19 was developed by the Chinese government as a bioweapon.
These assertions were soon followed by a report from ABC News’ Brian Ross, who (again falsely) claimed that some of the anthrax used in the attacks had contained bentonite. Ross claimed that bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and that “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.” Ross asserted this information had come from three “well-placed but separate sources,” which later grew to four. Yet, no tests conducted during the Anthrax investigation ever found any bentonite at all, meaning the story was an invention from the very start. ABC and Brian Ross never retracted the story.
Glenn Greenwald, then writing at Salon, would state the following about Ross’ sources in 2008:
“Ross’ allegedly four separate sources had to have some specific knowledge of the tests conducted and, if they were really “well-placed,” one would presume that meant they had some connection to the laboratory where the tests were conducted — Ft. Detrick. That means that the same Government lab where the anthrax attacks themselves came from was the same place where the false reports originated that blamed those attacks on Iraq.
It’s extremely possible — one could say highly likely — that the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain — as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax — is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).”
Soon, media reports began noting the contradictory messaging of the U.S. government with regards to the anthrax attacks, messaging which has striking parallels to the Trump administration’s messaging on Covid-19. In one such report, written by Matthew Engel for The Guardian, states:
“Those in charge have compounded the problems by sending out confused messages. Was the anthrax weapons-grade or not? Should Americans be alarmed or relaxed? Has President Bush himself been tested? The signals keep changing. Mr. Thompson suggested early on that Bob Stevens, the first anthrax victim, might have drunk from an infected stream.”
During the 2001 anthrax attacks, there was no shortage of contradictory actions either, such as the government’s failure to mandate that postal workers take Cipro or even take the simplest precautions even though members of the Bush administration had been taking Cipro weeks before the anthrax attacks were known to the FBI and the public. Even worse, the Bush administration waited an extremely long time to close post offices for anthrax testing, waiting until numerous postal workers had already become infected and some had already died. In addition, Ernesto Blanco – a Florida mail room worker who later recovered from Anthrax poisoning – and his family were left confused about the refusal of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to diagnose him with anthrax poisoning while he was in dire condition. Blanco’s family later claimed that his diagnosis had been kept a secret for political reasons.
BASIS FOR SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL
The contradictory response of the Bush administration to the anthrax attacks and the panic that ensued was also paralleled by an equally contradictory sensor system, one which had been installed just a few months before the anthrax attacks in thirty cities throughout the U.S. despite a dubious record of accuracy.
Just as the fictional scenarios proposed in Dark Winter were being written, American scientists were developing a sensor system for the detection of anthrax and botulinum toxin called BASIS (Biological Aerosol Sentry and Information Systems). Months before anthrax would cause extreme panic and target American Senators, scientists from Los Alamos and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were testing the biological sensing device at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, inside the Special Programs Division of what was once the site of the U.S. biological weapons program and where anthrax samples used at Fort Detrick are often produced.
It is worth noting that Dugway, not unlike Fort Detrick, has a longstanding issues with biosafety lapses that have resulted in numerous mishaps, such as their accidental shipment of live anthrax over 70 times to 86 different labs throughout the world from 2005-2015. Independent analyses conducted after the FBI closed its investigation into the attacks have suggested that Dugway may have been the source of the anthrax used in the attacks, as opposed to Fort Detrick.
Returning to BASIS, the results of the tests conducted on this new sensor system in 2001 showed that it was highly prone to generating false positives and was, therefore, worthless beyond the ability to “induce the very panic and social disruption it is intended to thwart“, according to the Livermore Laboratory, which nevertheless marketed BASIS as a tool to “guard the air we breathe.” Vice President Cheney, following his September 2001 briefing on Dark Winter, decided to install the system in the White House.
Days after Senator Tom Daschle’s press conference that revealed he had been targeted by the anthrax attacker, President Bush was in Shanghai attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit when he received a call from Dick Cheney on Airforce Two. Cheney delivered a chilling message — the President and Secretaries Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, who were with Bush in China, might have been exposed to the ultra-lethal botulinum toxin at the White House.
BASIS had returned two positive results for the deadly neurotoxin and – if the tests held true – three of the U.S.’ highest ranking officials were “toast.” Yet, once again, BASIS had lived up to its reputation as a great panic-inducing mechanism when the supposed botulinum toxin hits were determined to have been false positives. Apparently, this “unintended” feature was a real selling point, as proven by George W. Bush’s subsequent deployment of the system in thirty cities throughout the country under the auspices of the newly-minted Department of Homeland Security as part of a program called Bio-Watch.
Given the events described, it is noteworthy that BASIS relies on the CDC’s Laboratory Response Network (LRN) to identify the biological agents trapped by its sensors. The 150 state and local laboratories that make up the LRN use a polymerase chain reaction (PCR-based) analysis, which is ill-equipped to detect the aforementioned botulinum toxin. In addition, the Bio-Watch program is plagued by bureaucratic and logistical problems, which further undermine any potential public health benefits.
DHS was fully aware of the program’s limitations from the start and issued requests for proposals (RFPs) for the development of autonomous sensor technology that would eliminate the need for manual sample collection. The Bioagent Autonomous Networked Detector (BAND) program was then initiated by HSARPA (Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency) in September of 2003 and, in 2008, awarded a multi-year contract for its development to MicroFluidic Systems, Inc., a company founded by Allen Northrup. Northup is also co-founder of Cepheid, a diagnostic testing company that received FDA approval for a 45-minute Covid-19 test less than two weeks ago.
In tandem with the development of BASIS shortly before 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, DARPA was sponsoring a surveillance program to collect data on U.S. citizens without their knowledge or consent by using their medical records. The ostensible purpose of that program was to develop algorithms that could detect a bioweapons attack based on real-time data input. The Bio-Event Advanced Leading Indicator Recognition Technology, or Bio-ALIRT, is at the heart of what Dark Winter co-author, Dr. Tara O’Toole, calls the “information supply chain.”
“We need to have a disciplined flow of information during epidemics that goes to the people who need to know what they need to know,” O’Toole recently told Ira Pastor in an interview. “That’s different from this cosmic surveillance system, that captures all the possible information all the time and tells us, in advance when an epidemic is coming. We need a supply chain of information to manage the epidemic.” O’Toole, who now works for the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, and her longstanding promotion of mass surveillance in the name of “public health” will be discussed in a subsequent installment of this series.
DARPA’s partners in this Orwellian endeavor were, perhaps unsurprisingly, recurring actors in the arena of biological attack simulations, from Johns Hopkins to the University of Pittsburgh – the Biosecurity centers of which were both previously run by O’Toole – and defense industry giants, General Dynamics and IBM.
Hovering over these draconian innovations floats the overarching narrative, which the 2001 anthrax attacks were supposed to activate in popular consciousness. Though the attacks would be pinned on USAMRIID scientist Bruce Ivins, the highly questionable investigative and prosecutorial methods employed in Ivins’ case, not to mention his timely pre-trial suicide, may instead offer clues regarding a botched false flag operation that had originally been designed to bolster the creation of a new geopolitical chessboard pitting the U.S. against its same perpetual enemies.
COVERING UP THE REAL CONSPIRACY
From its earliest moments, the FBI’s “Amerithrax” investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks was clearly botched, sabotaged and even farcical. For instance, the letter sent to Dr. Ayaad Assaad would obviously have been a clear starting point for any honest investigation, as whoever wrote it had obvious foreknowledge of the attacks, connections to USAMRIID and was attempting to frame someone else for a crime that – at the time it was sent – had yet to be committed. Yet, The Hartford Courant noted in late 2001 that “the FBI is not tracking the source of the anonymous letter, despite its curious timing, coming a matter of days before the existence of anthrax-laced mail became known.” Why would the FBI not be interested in who wrote that letter, when it presents a clear lead on someone who, at the very least, knew a bioterrorism attack would soon take place and that the attacker’s profile would fit that of Assaad (i.e. Muslim and a former USAMRIID scientist).
In addition, in the early days of the investigation on October 12, 2001 – just one week after the attacks had claimed their first victim, the FBI called the University of Iowa and demanded that they destroy their entire database on the Ames strain of anthrax, the strain that would later be revealed to have been the very strain used in the attacks.
Both the FBI and the university officially claimed that the database’s destruction was ordered in order to prevent its potential use by terrorists in the future and was thus a “precaution,” despite greatly hampering the capacity of the investigation to determine the origins of the anthrax used in the attacks. Dr. Francis Boyle, an American law professor who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, later asserted that the FBI’s decision to order the destruction of the Ames strain database was an “obstruction of justice, a federal crime,” adding that “…That collection should have been preserved and protected as evidence. That’s the DNA, the fingerprints right there.”
Can the destruction of the Ames strain database and the decision to not pursue any leads related to the anonymous letter framing Dr. Assaad be written off as merely “missteps” made in the earliest and arguably most crucial days of the investigation? The fact that the Bush administration, as previously mentioned, was strongly pressuring then-FBI Director Robert Mueller to find a connection to “someone in the Middle East” at the same time these decision were made instead suggests that the investigation was highly politicized and manipulated by top government officials from the very beginning.
The FBI investigation continued to be marred by similarly obstructive actions. For instance, the anthrax sample that was in the envelope addressed to Senator Patrick Leahy had been found to contain traces of human DNA, a crucial finding that the FBI laboratory deliberately concealed from the agency’s own investigators. The FBI lab then declined to search for a match to this human DNA sample, despite the fact that doing so would – in all probability – lead to the actual attacker.
Due to all the obstruction and deliberate sabotage that took place, the investigation progressed slowly as crucial clues were ignored or outright discarded, apparently in order to keep FBI investigators off of the real trail. After coming under political and media pressure at least name a suspect, the FBI began to focus on former USAMRIID researcher Stephen Hatfill.
Despite lacking any good reason to pursue Hatfill, the FBI – accompanied by TV crews – raided Hatfill’s apartment in biohazard suits and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft later publicly named him a “person of interest” in the case. The FBI pressured Hatfill’s then-employer to fire him and refused to clear his name years after the Bureau knew full well that he had no connection to the crime. Hatfill first sued the government in 2003 and the Department of Justice settled with Hatfill five years later, paying him $4.6 million in damages.
Though it was eventually settled, Hatfill’s lawsuit initially resulted in some odd claims from FBI investigators, with Richard Lambert – the FBI official in charge of the Amerithrax investigation, claiming that the lawsuit “could jeopardize the probe and expose national secrets related to U.S. bioweapons defense measures.” He also claimed it would “make public the vulnerabilities and capabilities of U.S. government installations to bioweapons attacks and expose sensitive intelligence collection sources and methods.” Lambert would later file a federal whistleblower lawsuit where he accused the Bureau’s Washington field office and FBI headquarters of having “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.”
The Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, would make a similar argument when Maureen Stevens, the wife of the first anthrax victim Bob Stevens, sued the federal government over the lax security measures in place at the USAMRIID lab where the anthrax used in the attacks was alleged to have originated. Stevens’ lawyer said the lawsuit was also filed due to “the government’s stonewalling tactics,” which included “taking months to turn over an autopsy report, denying them access to DNA tests and even denying them money from the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund.” Citing “national security concerns,” federal attorneys sought to delay Stevens’ lawsuit, arguing that the litigation “would pose a significant risk of disclosing classified or sensitive information relating to the acquisition, development and use of weapons of mass destruction such as anthrax.”
In 2008, soon after Hatfill was cleared and the lawsuit with him settled, the FBI began to focus on another USAMRIID researcher, Dr. Bruce E. Ivins. Ivins, who had previously helped the FBI analyze the anthrax used in the letters sent to politicians, journalists and others, was aggressively targeted by the FBI through aggressive surveillance and what can only be described as extreme harassment.
As Glenn Greenwald noted in Salon in 2008, “the FBI investigation was so heavy-handed that it actually entailed showing gruesome photographs of the anthrax victims to Ivins’ adult children, telling them that their father is the one who did that, while trying to entice them to turn on him with promises of a reward.” It was also revealed that addiction counselor Jean Duley, whose restraining order against Ivins was used by the media as “proof” that he was deranged and a likely “lone wolf” terrorist, had actually been egged on by none other than the FBI to seek that very restraining order.
The FBI, as it ramped up its targeting of Ivins, leaked much of its evidence to media outlets, which – for the most part – uncritically reported it. However, it eventually became clear that the case was shoddy and would never hold up in court as it was built on circumstantial evidence and questionable scientific analyses.
It was then announced on July 29, 2008 that Ivins, whose life and career had been left in ruins by the FBI’s aggressive tactics, had committed suicide just as the federal government was set to charge him as the sole culprit behind the Anthrax attacks. Few chose to question the suicide narrative despite there being legitimate reasons to do so, such as the lack of a suicide note at the scene and the fact that no autopsy was ever performed on Ivins’ corpse.
Former FBI agent Richard Lambert’s whistleblower lawsuit would later reveal that the FBI had intentionally withheld a “wealth” of evidence that proved Ivins’ innocence and further charged that the DOJ and FBI had “crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt” that included “press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.”
After Ivins’ suicide, questions continued to arise regarding the FBI’s case against the deceased scientist, with several journalists and even Senator Patrick Leahy – who had been sent an Anthrax letter – insisting that the FBI’s case against Ivins, particularly the charge that he had acted alone, was implausible. A former co-worker of Ivins and one of the country’s top biowarfare experts, Richard Spertzel, asserted in The Wall Street Journal that Ivins couldn’t have been the culprit because Ivins did not know how to make anthrax of the quality used in the attacks as only 4-5 people in the entire country, Spertzel being one of them, knew how to do so. Spertzel asserted that one of those 4-5 people would have needed at least a year as well as a full lab and a staff dedicate to the task in order to produce the Anthrax used.
In an attempt to mollify mounting criticism, Mueller announced in September 2008 that a panel from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) would independently review the FBI’s “smoking gun” scientific analyses that had led them to accuse Ivins. However, the FBI abruptly closed the case in 2010, well before the panel could conclude its review, and stood by its controversial assertion that Ivins had acted as a “lone wolf” and that anthrax from a flask in Ivins’ lab was “conclusively identified as the parent material to the anthrax powder used in the mailings.”
When the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) did release its review of the FBI’s scientific findings a year later in 2011, it found that the Bureau’s “smoking gun” scientific evidence against Ivins was actually very inconclusive and they also identified several still, unresolved issues with the FBI’s analyses for which the Bureau could not provide an explanation.
However, because Ivins had died before the FBI’s scientific case could go to trial, the FBI’s claims would never be challenged in court. David Relman, vice chairman of the National Academy study committee, later told ProPublica that Ivins’ trial would have been the only way the FBI’s claims “could have been weighed and challenged by experts.”
The NAS study was not the only independent report that challenged the FBI’s case against Ivins after his apparent suicide. In 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its own analysis of the FBI investigation and concluded that the FBI’s approach lacked consistency, adequate standards and precision. The GAO report ultimately supported the NAS’ conclusion that the scientific evidence did not definitely prove Ivins to be the culprit.
The conclusions of both the NAS and GAO reports show that the FBI’s “smoking gun” against Ivins – its scientific analyses – were hardly a smoking gun as they were just as circumstantial as the rest of the Bureau’s evidence against the scientist. This, of course, makes the timing of the FBI’s decision to close the case, a year before any independent analysis of its evidence against Ivins could be completed, significant.
A FAMILIAR CAST OF CHARACTERS
Key players in Dark Winter would also end up playing a role in the FBI Amerithrax investigation and Bush administration efforts to link them to a foreign, rather than a domestic, source. For instance, as increasingly desperate efforts were made to link the anthrax attacks to Al Qaeda in early 2002, an “independent” team from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies argued that the anthrax attackers were linked to Al Qaeda, citing a diagnosis made by a Florida doctor in June 2001 that alleged 9/11 hijacker Ahmed al-Haznawi had a skin lesion that was “consistent with cutaneous anthrax.”
Yet, this team from Johns Hopkins was – in reality — far from independent, as it was led by Dark Winter co-authors Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby. However, their association with Dark Winter and their September 2001 meeting with Dick Cheney went unmentioned as media outlets ran with O’Toole and Inglesby’s assertion that al-Haznawi’s allegedly anthrax-related lesion “raises the possibility that the hijackers were handling anthrax and were the perpetrators of the anthrax letter attacks.” Other scientists and analysts as well as the FBI challenged and rejected their claims.
Another Dark Winter figure involved in the Amerithrax case was current Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert Kadlec, who became an adviser on biological warfare to the Rumsfeld-led Pentagon in the days after 9/11. Kadlec’s official biography states that he “contributed to the FBI investigation of the anthrax letter attacks,” though it’s unclear exactly what those contributions were, beyond having met at least once with scientists at Fort Detrick in November 2001. Whatever his contributions were, Kadlec has long been an emphatic supporter of the official narrative regarding Bruce Ivins, who he has referred to as a “deranged scientist” and the sole culprit behind the attacks. Kadlec has also used the official narrative about Ivins to assert that bioweapons have been “democratized,” which he argues means that weaponized pathogens can be wielded by essentially anyone with “a few thousand dollars” and enough time on their hands.
Notably, Kadlec isn’t the only key figure in the current U.S. government response to Covid-19 to have ties to the botched FBI investigation as current HHS Secretary Alex Azar was also involved in the FBI investigation. In addition, Azar stated at a White House press briefing in 2018 that he had been “personally involved in much of managing the response [to the anthrax attacks]” as then-General counsel to HHS.
Yet, given that the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks and the government response to them were so disastrous and heavily criticized by independent and mainstream media alike, it is surprising that Azar and Kadlec would so proudly tout their involvement in that fiasco, especially considering that the scientific analyses used in that investigation were fatally flawed and, by all indications, led to the death of an innocent man.
While such credentials in a “normal” world would be grounds for exclusion from public service, they apparently have the opposite effect when it comes to post-2001 HHS policy and U.S. biodefense policy, which – especially following 2001 – has championed the interests and profits of corporate pharmaceutical companies and the apocalyptic vision of bioweapons held by war hawks and perpetual Cold Warriors. This latter category, of course, includes members of the now-defunct PNAC, who infamously referred to racially-targeted bioweapons as a “politically useful tool” in a now infamous 2001 document, and their ideological descendants.
The U.S. Senate voted 96-0 late yesterday on a massive bailout of Wall Street banks versus a short-term survival plan for American workers thrown out of their jobs – and potentially their homes. The text of the final bill was breathtaking in the breadth of new powers it bestowed on the Federal Reserve, including the Fed’s ability to conduct secret meetings with no minutes provided to the American people. The House of Representatives has yet to vote on the bill.
The bill provides specific sums that can be made as loans or loan guarantees to passenger airlines ($25 billion), cargo airlines ($4 billion), and loans and loan guarantees to businesses necessary to national security ($17 billion). But when it comes to the money going to the Federal Reserve and then out the door to Wall Street, the legislation says only this:
“Not more than the sum of $454,000,000,000…shall be available to make loans and loan guarantees to, and other investments in, programs or facilities established by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for the purpose of providing liquidity to the financial system….”
Why does the Federal Reserve need $454 billion from the U.S. taxpayer to bail out Wall Street when it has the power to create money out of thin air and has already dumped more than $9 trillion cumulatively in revolving loans to prop up Wall Street’s trading houses since September 17, 2019 – long before there was any diagnosis of coronavirus anywhere in the world.
The Fed needs that money to create more Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) — the same device used by Enron to hide its toxic debt off its balance sheet before it went belly up. With the taxpayers’ money taking a 10 percent stake in the various Wall Street bailout programs offered by the Fed, structured as SPVs, the Fed can keep these dark pools off its balance sheet while levering them up 10-fold.
White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow acknowledged plans by the Fed to leverage the money at a White House press briefing this week, stating that the money the Treasury is handing over to the Fed would result in “$4 trillion in Federal Reserve lending power.”
The Fed has already created one of these SPVs. On March 17, the Fed said it was creating a Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) that would work like this:
“The Treasury will provide $10 billion of credit protection to the Federal Reserve in connection with the CPFF from the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). The Federal Reserve will then provide financing to the SPV under the CPFF. Its loans will be secured by all of the assets of the SPV.”
The Fed also used SPVs during the 2007-2010 financial crisis to buy toxic debt from Bear Stearns to facilitate its takeover by JPMorgan Chase and to prop up AIG, a giant insurer that had gorged on Wall Street’s tricked-up derivatives. Those programs became known as Maiden Lane I, II and III.
Adding to the suspicions that the Fed doesn’t want to have to battle Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests (sunshine law requests) again in court, as it did and lost during the last financial crisis to keep its outrageous $29 trillion bailout program to Wall Street a secret from the public, the Senate-approved stimulus bill repeals the sunshine law for the Fed’s meetings until the President says the coronavirus threat is over or the end of this year. That could make any FOIA lawsuits to unleash details of what’s going on next to impossible since it has been codified in a federal law. The bill states the following:
SEC. 4009. TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT IN THE SUNSHINE ACT RELIEF. (a) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in subsection 8 (b), notwithstanding any other provision of law, if the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System determines, in writing, that unusual and exigent circumstances exist, the Board may conduct meetings without regard to the requirements of section 552b of title 5, United States Code, during the period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act and ending on the earlier of— (1) the date on which the national emergency concerning the novel coronavirus disease (COVID–19) outbreak declared by the President on March 13, 2020 under the National Emergencies Act (50 20 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) terminates; or (2) December 31, 2020.
This could mean that the American taxpayer may never learn why it went into debt to the tune of $454 billion if no records are being maintained.
Wall Street’s mega banks and their primary regulator, the Federal Reserve, are no longer just a threat to the safety and soundness of the U.S. banking system — together they are an unparalleled and unprecedented threat to the idea of democracy as we understand it.
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, as did the Germans and the French after the First World War. Any traveller to Iran has been struck by the number of serious lung ailments. When air pollution in Tehran increased beyond what they could bear, schools and government offices were closed and half of the families moved to the countryside with their grandparents. This has been happening several times a year for thirty-five years and seems normal. The government and parliament are almost exclusively composed of veterans of the Iraq-Iran war, that is, people who are extremely fragile in relation to Covid-19. So when these groups were infected, many personalities developed the disease.
