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Assorted Virus News
ABCNews has a sensational report about an alleged epidemic warning report which circulated in November 2019. Some people claim that this proves that there were early cases of the covid-19 disease. There was likely a report but the insinuation that it was connected to covid-19 comes only from ABCnews.
Intelligence report warned of coronavirus crisis as early as November: Sources
As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.
Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.
The NCMI denies that such a report was made. But we can be sure that it would notice when news about a potential epidemic in China circulates. That was indeed the case in mid November. The news was not about the novel corona virus but about a small outbreak of bubonic plague from Inner Mongolia:
Three patients have been diagnosed in Beijing with the most dangerous form of the plague – the medieval disease also known as the Black Death.
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On Tuesday, Beijing authorities announced a municipal hospital had taken in a married couple from Inner Mongolia, a sparsely populated autonomous region in northwest China, seeking treatment for pneumonic plague. One patient is stable while the other is in critical condition but not deteriorating, according to Beijing's health commission.
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On November 16, authorities diagnosed a third case of pneumonic plague. The man, age 55, is also from Inner Mongolia though authorities said his case was not related in any way to the couple medically evacuated to Beijing. Twenty-eight people who were in close contact with the man have been quarantined and none have exhibited symptoms of the plague.
Of the three versions of the disease, pneumonic plague is the only one that can be transmitted from one person to another by coughing, for example. The other variants are typically spread by infected fleas or animals.
Pneumonic plague has symptoms of respiratory failure similar to pneumonia. Left untreated, it is fatal.
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Mongolia, which borders the autonomous region where the infected Chinese couple lives, reported two fatal cases of bubonic plague just this year, after the patients ate raw marmot, a species of wild rodent that often carry the offending bacterium. In Mongolia, eating marmot is thought to be good for health.
The covid-19 disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-19 virus, not by bacteria. The three cases in November were caused by a detectable bacteria. The first SARS-Cov-19 case currently known emerged in Wuhan in mid-late December.
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Religious people continue to undermine epidemic control measures:
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German researchers have used flow analysis experiments to test various household material that can be used to make masks. They conclude that high-quality vacuum cleaner bags are the best material usable for the purpose. On page 20 of their English language report (pdf) they describe and show how to manufacture masks out of them.
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Some people continue to argue that the death rate of covid-19 disease is as low as the death rate of the common flu. We actually do not know the death rate of covid-19 as we do not know how many have had it and how many died from it. Italy, Spain and France have seen more covid-19 death outside of the hospital system than inside. But only the inside numbers are counted in the official tally. There is also increasing concern of long term effects as the recovered patients seem to have a partially reduced lung function. The Case Fatality Rates though, which are the only reliable number we have, are quite high and our decision are based on them.
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Remember this screed from March 12:
Coronavirus burial pits so vast they’re visible from space
Iranian authorities began digging a pair of trenches for victims just days after the government disclosed the initial outbreak.
This picture shows New York City's mass graves on Hart Island. The island has been used as anonymous graveyard for 150 years but will now see a surge of new arrivals.
Mass Burials On Hart Island Increase Fivefold As COVID-19 Death Toll Skyrockets:
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PEPE ESCOBAR: Who Profits from the Pandemic? – Consortium News
Coronavirus now leading cause of death in US – The Hill
China Is Reopening Its Wet Markets. That's Good – Bloomberg
Inside a Real Chinese Wet Market – video
Mandatory vaccination against tuberculosis may help some people and countreis:
Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study – medRxiv
Even at 1%, the COVID-19 is still ten times deadlier than the common flu, so I never understood the “it’s just a strong flu” argument.
Here’s a quick explanation on how risk analysis approach this pandemic:
Lives or livelihoods?
Here is that view: “if funds are not limitless – then we should focus on doing things whereby we can do the most good (save the most lives) for the least possible amount of money. Or use the money we have, to save the most lives.” Health economics measures the cost per QALY. A QALY is a Quality Adjusted Life Year. One added year of the highest quality life would be one QALY. “How much are we willing to pay for one QALY? The current answer, in the UK, is that the NHS will recommend funding medical interventions if they cost less than £30,000/QALY. Anything more than this is considered too expensive and yet the UK’s virus package is £350bn, almost three times the current yearly budget for the entire NHS. Is this a price worth paying?” This expert reckoned that “the cost of saving a COVID victim was more than eleven times the maximum cost that the NHS will approve.” At the same time cancer patients are not being treated, hip replacements are being postponed, heart and diabetes sufferers are not being dealt with.
Tim Harford in the FT took a different view. He points out that the US Environmental Protection Agency values a statistical life at $10m in today’s money, or $10 per micromort (one in a million risk of death) averted. “If we presume that 1 per cent of infections are fatal, then it is a 10,000 micromort condition. On that measure, being infected is 100 times more dangerous than giving birth, or as perilous as travelling two and a half times around the world on a motorbike. For an elderly or vulnerable person, it is much more risky than that. At the EPA’s $10 per micromort, it would be worth spending $100,000 to prevent a single infection with Covid-19. You don’t need a complex epidemiological model to predict that if we take no serious steps to halt the spread of the virus, more than half the world is likely to contract it. That suggests 2m US deaths and 500,000 in Britain — assuming, again, a 1 per cent fatality rate. If an economic lockdown in the US saves most of these lives, and costs less than $20tn, then it would seem to be value for money.” The key point for me here is that this dilemma of ‘costing’ a life would be reduced if there had been proper funding of health systems, sufficient to provide ‘spare capacity’ in case of crises.
It is also a myth that lockdowns lower life expectancy. This is pure money fetichism. Besides the fact that almost nobody dies of hunger in one month, you have to take into account that mortality by violent causes (car accidents, workplace accidents in dangeours jobs, etc.) also fall:
But the Bristol study is just a risk assessment. Proper health studies show that recessions do not increase mortality at all. A recession – a short-term, temporary fall in GDP – need not, and indeed normally does not, reduce life expectancy. Indeed, counterintuitively, the weight of the evidence is that recessions actually lead to people living longer. Suicides do indeed go up, but other causes of death, such as road accidents and alcohol-related disease, fall.
Marxist health economist Dr Jose Tapia (also an author of one of the chapters in our book World in Crisis) has done several studies on the impact of recessions on health. He found that mortality rates in industrial countries tend to rise in economic expansions and fall in economic recessions. Deaths attributed to heart disease, pneumonia, accidents, liver disease, and senility—making up about 41% of total mortality—tend to fluctuate procyclically, increasing in expansions. Suicides, as well as deaths attributable to diabetes and hypertensive disease, make up about 4% of total mortality and fluctuate countercyclically, increasing in recessions. Deaths attributed to other causes, making up about half of total deaths, don’t show a clearly defined relationship with the fluctuations of the economy. “All these effects of economic expansions or recessions on mortality that can be seen, e.g., during the Great Depression or the Great Recession, are tiny if compared with the mortality effects of a pandemic,” said Tapia in an interview.
The food problem (for those who can’t afford, because production was never the problem) can be easily solved by a simple scheme of food banks.
They key, thus, is to avoid healthcare systems collapses. As long as the healthcare system stands, mortality in general should lower – but that’s obviously not the case in many countries, as decades of neoliberalism had a deteriorating effect on them.
The economic impact (fall in GDPs) has a merely geopolitical effect: yes, the West will emerge smaller from this pandemic. But then, it was already degenerating since 2008.
Posted by: vk | Apr 10 2020 16:20 utc | 6
Bill Gates and his evil Foundation have occasionally been discussed as COVID-19 has progressed. Pepe Escobar now takes note at his FB that the Financial Times has video interviewed him, and that RFK Jr. has made a long Instagram post in rebuttal, which follows as posted by Pepe:
“ROBERT F KENNEDY JR DESTROYS
“MESSIANIC” BILL MALTHUS GATES
“Here is his full Instagram post – which has become viral all over. A lot of people told me funny stuff was happening with it – so keep this copy for reference in case it “disappears”.
A condensed review of the vaccine scams by the geek who destroyed Netscape because they had a
better OS.
“MUST READ.”
“Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vac ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control over global health policy—the spear tip of corporate neo-imperialism.
Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems fueled by a messianic conviction that he is ordained to save the world with technology and a god-like willingness to experiment with the lives of lesser humans.
“Promising to eradicate Polio with $1.2 billion, Gates took control of India ‘s National Advisory Board (NAB) and mandated 50 polio vaccines (up from 5) to every child before age 5. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating vaccine-strain polio epidemic that
paralyzed 496,000 children between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian Government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and evicted Gates and his cronies from the NAB. Polio paralysis rates dropped precipitously.
“In 2017, the World Health Organization reluctantly admitted that the global polio explosion is predominantly vaccine strain, meaning it is coming from Gates’ Vaccine Program. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, the Philippines, and Afghanistan are all linked to Gates’ vaccines. By 2018, ¾ of global polio cases were from Gates’ vaccines.
“In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by GSK and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates funded researchers
committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.
“In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a trial of a GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,049 children.
“During Gates 2002 MenAfriVac Campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Between 50-500 children developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for drug makers”
Nelson Mandela’s formar Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philantropic practises as “ruthless” and immoral”.
“In 2010, Gates committed $ 10 billion to the WHO promising to reduce population, in part, through new vaccines. A month later Gates told a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”.
“In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a phony “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found the sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade. Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines.
“A 2017 study (Morgensen et.Al.2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP is killing more African than the disease it pretends to prevent. Vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of unvaccinated children.
“Gates and the WHO refused to recall the lethal vaccine which WHO forces upon millions of African children annually. Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of – hijacking WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases; clean water, hygiene, nutrition and economic development. They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal fetish
– that good health only comes in a syringe.
“In addition to using his philantropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI and PATH, Gates funds private pharmaceutical companies that manufacture vaccines, and a massive network of pharmaceutical -industry front groups that broadcast deceptive propaganda, develop fraudulent
studies, conduct surveillance and psychological operations against vaccine hesitancy and use Gates’ power and money to silence dissent and coerce compliance.
“In this recent nonstop Pharmedia appearances, Gates appears gleeful that the Covid-19 crisis will give him the opportunity to force his third-world vaccine programs on American children.”
Seems to me that Bill Gates and his ilk constitute another layer of parasites that require elimination as the Class War’s dynamics are made clearer by the pandemic.
Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 10 2020 17:15 utc | 23
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