thanks for the links and etc b.. i guess this will be another 500 post thread, lol…. this will be my last post on this thread – saving others the agony, lol…

Posted by: james | Apr 29 2020 17:00 utc | 4

Confusing thoughts are coming like rain. Because some terminally greedy people make tons of $ because of a pandemic, doesn’t make it a global plot. Disaster Capitalism is alive and well.
The discussion should be; Why isn’t there more oversight over global Bio-Weapons labs?
https://breggin.com/us-chinese-scientists-collaborate-on-coronavirus/

Posted by: ben | Apr 29 2020 17:27 utc | 6

“The real threat isn’t the virus that has killed 59,000 Americans. It is a nonexistent vaccine for it.”
There are many valid comments in that post, but…call me crazy…I will not be taking any vaccine that’s been rushed in a few months. Vaccines take quite a while to develop and the consequences of taking a poorly researched one are quite severe. However, I doubt it will come to that, as even the most optimistic vaccine estimate seems to be 18 to 24 months. By which time herd immunity will have happened whether anyone wants it to or not.
Clearly this is much worse than any flu in the past century. But I don’t blame anyone for being suspicious when so many contract the disease either have mild symptoms or none at all.

Posted by: Lysander | Apr 29 2020 17:33 utc | 8

Posted by: Passer by | Apr 29 2020 17:32 utc | 7
>>His WTO attacks are too part of US efforts to take over the organisation.
Read both WHO and WTO.

Posted by: Passer by | Apr 29 2020 17:45 utc | 10

@Billy Swole #11
You tell me.
It isn’t my burden of proof to show that the 15,000 excess deaths is due to non nCOV causes.

Posted by: c1ue | Apr 29 2020 18:00 utc | 12

Maybe some Craig Murray will provide a little perspective on COVid 19 and the ongoing genocide taking place in the ME https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/04/backing-the-wrong-horseman/#respond
“For the purposes of argument, I am going to put an extremely conservative figure of 5 million on the number of people who died as a result of Western military intervention, direct or proxy, in the Middle East.
Now compare that to the worldwide death toll from coronavirus: 220,000. Let me say that again.
Western aggressive wars to coronavirus: 5,000,000 : 220,000.”

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Apr 29 2020 18:02 utc | 14

oldhippie@2
Can you link to that statement/story.
Let’s also remember that Gilead/Rumsfeld were the driving forces with the Avian Flu Hoax (Tamiflu) that resulted in scandals and mass profiting- Rumsfeld himself who was once CEO of Gilead sold his Gilead shares and netted a handsome return.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/bird-flu-a-corporate-bonanza-for-the-biotech-industry/1190
https://constantinereport.com/donald-rumsfeld-gilead-the-bird-flu-hoax/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-rumsfeld-makes-5m-killing-on-bird-flu-drug-6106843.html

Posted by: Allen | Apr 29 2020 18:06 utc | 16

I think the discussion would be based on better grounds if we could have the figures for the number of ppl who got infected in hospitals and medicalized institutions (both staff and patients).
The current lock down practiced in the West are neither quarantines nor lockdowns. Sick people and healthy people mingle (at home or in shops), and the healthy people mingle with other people without any sort of testing or contact tracing made.
The idea of a quarantine is that after 2-3 weeks, you know a place, a building, a house, is virus free and you can focus on the clusters. To achieve that you need home deliveries. I am NOT advocating total house arrest, but just two weeks of real quarantine (separating, of course, the med staff from their families) with deliveries and an organized access to public parks would have got actual results. Now it is too late. The reaction will be violent and that is probably what the PTB want.
Instead of that, we let Bezos and Sanofi make billions and the stocks are open!

Posted by: Mina | Apr 29 2020 18:13 utc | 18

@b
It actually isn’t 100% clear to me that Occidental Dissent is being sarcastic.
The several articles I read, I see as sarcastic but the majority of people commenting don’t seem to think so.

Posted by: c1ue | Apr 29 2020 18:20 utc | 20

@ Posted by: Ric G | Apr 29 2020 16:53 utc | 3
No. The correct metaphor would be if your house’s curtain caught fire, you extinguish it but, in the process, you break your family’s vase. The fact you lost the vase didn’t make extinguishing the fire not economically “profitable”: it’s either lose just the vase, or lose the entire house (with the vase).
There are few infections and even fewer deaths precisely because – willingly, less willingly or not willingly and to their capabilities – all the world governments are implementing some form of restriction of movement. In some cases, restriction already happens by popular initiative – impelling the petit-bourgeoisie to close their businesses themselves.

Posted by: vk | Apr 29 2020 18:42 utc | 22

Ah reckon this is relevant to the cv link topic….corbett Interview 1451 – The Propaganda Report Dissects The Second Wave…pretty much the lessons will continue until they get what they want…or else.
He’s somewhat less strident, and seems grounded in this one.
I can’t really refute his thesis, nor his evidence. Wish I could.

Posted by: Walter | Apr 29 2020 19:10 utc | 24

The dramatic range of effects generated is what I see as most troubling–they’re all over the anatomy and demographically, likely due to its numerous mutations. Personally, I’m rather pleased I’m able to remain mostly isolated and watch daily events pass along while observing behaviors of assorted actors. I’m finding Chinese media to be the most accurate about the virus itself with Russian media best at political-economic analysis. Trump and Pompeo have done an excellent job of isolating the Outlaw US Empire further by their alienation of allies and attempts to deflect their dereliction of duty. Now emerging from the swamp is a creature capable of taking votes from both Biden & Trump–Justin Amash.

Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 29 2020 19:14 utc | 26

here are a number of curious aspects to these theories- often totally contradictory- of the origins (wet markets, bioweapon labs)- and potency- no worse than the flu-of the virus.
One is that those promoting these ideas have no perspective of dealing with the forces supposedly behind them. The discovery that”TPTB” first manufactured and then took advantage of the crisis does not lead to any suggested response on our part.
I have often asked the believers to explain the motives of capitalists in wrecking the capitalist system. What one ought to ask them is “what are you going to do about it?” “What do you want me to do about it?” “What can be done about it?”
And the answer seems to be that I should do as they do and throw a tantrum on the internet- give my approval to anyone uncovering ulterior motives behind shutting down places where people normally gather; and accusing anyone approving quarantine measures as a traitor in the pay of… who precisely?
Our new friend Croatian (!!) “cannot resist the thought that our ‘poor poet'(b) have been finally offered some real money.”
Which raises the question as to who or what Croatian thinks is bribing the blogger. And to what purpose?
If, as Croatian clearly believes, dark forces of immense power are behind the global fraud of exaggerating a seasonal influenza into a pandemic why would they need to enrol the support of “b” or his commenters? Either they are powerful enough to control the world-much more powerful than the USA or any other empire has ever been- or they desperately need to seek out bloggers and bribe them into going along with the fraudulent narrative.
There is a pattern here. We saw the same thing after 9/11. It was not enough to question the official narrative or to point out the ways in which the event was being exploited politically and financially. Only traitors bought by the government or actual agents of imperialism failed to bear witness to the ‘fact’ that the entire operation was planned by and carried out under the direction of the US government. That hundreds of people, contractors and sub-contractors, working over many months had been involved in the successful perpetration of the events. And that to differ from this was an indication either of terminal idiocy or fundamental corruption.
It is interesting that these theories all come with detailed narratives, to every part of which the faithful must subscribe. Thus it is not enough merely to find the Warren Commission unconvincing- any fool can reach that conclusion- it is important also to genuflect before the altar of JFK the President who was about to change everything before he was rubbed out. In fact Kennedy was a particularly nasty warmongering President who had run for office on a programme of increasing military expenditure to ‘catch up'(cue laughter in The Kremlin) with Soviet expenditure on arms. (To understand the poignancy of Eisenhower’s Farewell Address with its warnings against militarism and the corrupting influence of the MIC, it is important to see it in the context of Kennedy’s hawkishness.)
He had not only ordered the invasion of Cuba but authorised dozens of attempts to assassinate Fidel and other key figures in the still very recent revolution. As to Vietnam it was Kennedy who first ordered large numbers of troops into the country, who authorised the assassination of Diem and presided over the build up which his successor (murderer?) LBJ turned into a slow moving genocide.
What is common to all three groups-those who believe that Kennedy was killed to prevent him from making peace and changing the course of Cold War history; those who believe that 9/11 was a false flag operation carried out by agents of the US government; and those who regard the Covid-19 pandemic as a fraud and a smokescreen behind which a raft of new measures designed to reduce humanity to the level of tamed animals is being implemented- is that all of those promoting these ideas seem to believe that the mere publication of the “truth” will lead to fundamental changes.
There is no conception of building a movement consisting of people, no notion of a political party, parliamentary or otherwise, no notion of taking any action-apart from that which comes from right wing militias etc sponsored by the most reactionary elements in society, and approved by Bolsonaro and Trump.
For years it has been a feature of the comment section of this blog that it has brought together critics of The Establishment not only from the left but from the right. And, on the whole, this cross fertilisation has proved fruitful: the left has told the right, what nobody else ever did, that those who rule this society are members of a class which owes its power to its control over the means of production. And that both the media and the educational/indoctrination system are propagandists for a method of exploitation motivated entirely by immediate greed. A system which denies the ability of humanity to control its destiny and worships a god blind to any considerations but the satisfaction of short term desire.
The right, for its part, has told us that this society defies not just those utopian conceptions of the future for which socialists have long been suckers but, more importantly, millennia of traditional societies. Societies grounded in families, clans, communities, with time tested rules of behaviour that deserve to be conserved unless there is very good reason given for changing them.
Instead of the superficial progressivism of the liberal ‘left’- one of whose roots goes back to the crimes of the Jacobins- which sees in the utter corruption of late capitalist/imperialism a model for the rest of the world to emulate- voices from the past have reminded us that capitalism destroyed a great deal, which we ought to be rediscovering, when it wiped out traditional societies from Surrey to Sumatra, from the Great Barrier Reef to the ice caps.
While the liberal ‘left’ has been fascinated by the possibilities of men castrating themselves and women transforming themselves into husbands and other fin de siecle aspects of a bourgeoisie unable to come to grips with realities, the right has reminded us that, for nine tenths of the human race,
economic survival-the next meal- is the cardinal question.
In a sense it has been a neat reversal from the dialogue which preceded it in which the left were proponents of material realities while the right were obsessed with mystical and religious nonsense hypnotising starving masses and preventing them from taking the practical, communal, steps towards self liberation.
As to the current divide. Surely we have now reached the stage at which we can ask what the argument is all about? If there are millions out of work and in danger of actual starvation does it matter why-whether the capitalists wrecked their economy or the economy collapsed because it could not survive a month or two of shut down? The important point is what needs to be done, firstly to bring society back from the brink of disaster and secondly to rebuild in such a way that future generations will be insulated from the perils of one harvest failure, one brief interruption in the economic cycle and, thirdly, to democratise a society in which there is genuine dispute as to who is making the decisions upon which our lives depend.

Posted by: bevin | Apr 29 2020 19:21 utc | 28

c1ue, prev. Agreed – we (none of us) really knows precisely how nCOV works. Only time and research will uncover that. (…) nCOV is a major cause of death above and beyond normal.
For sure. From FT if posted before .. bears posting again. “Free to read” article.
https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c
———————–
For those intererested in stats, see CH, scroll down to ‘number of .. reported by sex and age’, with 3 colors, the pale grey blue represents an equal no. of men and women, and stacked on top of the bar(s) are the extra men (red) and extra women (blue).
The differences are highly statistically significant, and my feeling (can’t call it more than that) is that this pattern is standard for W countries. Of course to detect it one needs reliable numbers, which CH is providing for deaths imho. For cases, it is ppl logged as such : – felt ill – visited doc – tested positive – was hospitalised – was diagnosed as suffering from Cov-19 on any grounds. (Does not correspond to no. of infections, having antibodies, or anything else.)
More women aged 10 to 56 ‘catch’ the virus, are ‘cases’, than men. At all ages 10-56 there is a consequent surplus of women.
More men aged 63 to 93 die as compared to women. For each age there is a hefty number of ‘extra men.’ (except age 83.)
https://www.corona-data.ch
So, trials of estrogen therapy for men!
Temporarily mildly affecting the physiology of non-smokers to turn them into smokers (search: nicotine covid), or men to mimic women, is ludicrous, as long as mechanisms are not explained.
An outcome of slice/n/dice electoral and ‘research’ policies, where different groups are judged to be inherently ‘different’, it follows that such variables are always included and always found to be relevant, made a big deal of, etc. Partly merely because it is easy to do, and by now the public accepts it.
There is a check-list for ‘risk of serious corona’, a check-list for the US ‘no fly list’ (male, muslim, under 40, dark skin, etc.), a check list for ‘pre-crime’ (neighborhood, phone contacts, banking history, previous convictions..)..
When health, med. analysis and measures meld with Orwellian political policies the whole system is bust. (Med. research is terrible in any case, corrupted by big pharma, see Trailer Trash at 18.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8261241/Could-giving-men-estrogen-help-recover-COVID-Female-hormones-prevent-inflammation.html

Posted by: Noirette | Apr 29 2020 19:30 utc | 30

You point at the outlandish idea of all the governments coming into the conspiracy.
-Well, I do not find it so outlandish, all the governments have benefited so far, especially at pensions level.
If according to the real increase in deaths number in this period have died about 50% more people than in previous years´equal period including flu season, you have a 50% increase in mostly elders´death which translates into a 50% more saving in pensions.
To this we should add the deaths of fixed health personel in the public health systems especially in Europe, health system especially aged in their composition, people in their 50s-60s who are not going to get one euro of pension anymore.
-Recall that previous to the Coronavirus pandemic there were some countries trying to go ahead with pensions systems reform, intent which got quite contested by the citizenry, being France of Macron most affected withh almost the whole public sector in the streets on strike plus the Yellow Vests. But there was also Russia, which had to backtrack with the intent so as to stop turmoil amongst citizenry.
-Street demonstrations and strikes, the last and only resort of the working class to protest and put pressure against arbitrariness by their employers and governments got, first demoniced, after the worst of outbreak took place in certain countries just after the Women´s Day demonstrations ( an argument mainly held by the pro-Trump far right in Europe ), then, totally supressed, by the widespread state of exception decreed at various degrees. This freedom will hardly come back soon, with which the economic consequences of the coming crisis will go uncontested. A dream situation especially for countries like Chile, France, the US and so on. Just this past day some unknown snipers killed several people in Chile when they tried to reinstate protests…
-Recall that just in the previous months before the Coronavirus outbreak, there was a Swedish teenager, darling of the Davos Forum and the corporate world, travelling around the world summoning us all on our consumist way of life, especially related to that jerk affiction lately acquired by the working class of going on vacation, especially all over there, meeting other peoples and countries….What´s that? Well, now, you have that all Greta Thunberg´s main vindicated points, stop to air travel, and travel in general, plus a life of austerity, on the grounds of sustainability, got achieved by force all of a sudden, first by inability to travel in the medium to long term, unless at prohibitive prices, since flights will have to sell only 50% of seats. But, then, you have that, after all, as a consequence of the economic meltdown, we will not have anyway spare money even to go to the next province.
Ending travels around the world highly facilitates coming imperialist wars that will be needed to overcome the coming economic crash in the US and satellite countries, since you have a population more prone to hate people who they have never met, as it happens to the US population´s and its unobjected approval of all their country´s unending wars on other nations.
-With the ending of travels, a life of austerity, the impossibility to go shoping or to practice any leisure activity, anywhere in fact, we are spending less and saving more, with which once the economy crashes, the banks and governments will have more money to requisiton from us, in what seems to be the hugest transfer of wealth from the working and middle classes to the wealthy in history.
According to writer and analyst Daniel Estulin, the worst, at economic level, is to start in September, he is saying most of known jobs would be lost anyway in the prospects of fast development of the 6th techonological paradigm, bank deposits and pension funds will evaporate, and to constraint the population in such scenario, you need them enough shocked and enough accustomed to authoritarian rule so that spare you any problem.
If all this is seasoned with a regrowth of the Coronavirus, the governments will have the people voluntarily, or forcibly by law, cloistered in their homes and without the ability to protest while the skies are falling.
The possibility exist that even some could have to go to work, unprotected and risking their very lives, this time without pay….A perfect neoliberal, or medieval, dream…no doubt…From that to serfdom or slavery there is no even a step.
-Related to the real numbers of deaths, it seesm that everybody has counted only deads at hospital, without counting all the elders who died at nursing homes ( a lot indeed ) or at their own homes, or in the streets, that there have been of all.
-With respect to the argued revalorization of the public health services, that will not be so, since telemathic and telephone attention is here to stay, with which a substantious cut to the public health services will, in effect, be done. Lots of jobs will be lost in this sector too, and with the dissapearance of direct sight and examination of patients, an unvaluable help in diagnosis ( which, not for nothing, is called “clinical eye” ) will be lost, with which many diagnosis will not be done, more people will die, and the system will save a lot of money.
A more inhuman and less accesible medicine is this way arriving to stay, from that to be met with robots at the other side of the cable will not be so long. That will for sure end being much more expensive in the end, but, anyway, the governments will claim for whole privatization of all, or at least direct attention, which wil lreamin a possibility only for the rich, as happened in the Middle Ages or not so in the past during fascist dictatorship sustained by the US in Spain.
Mental health problems will increase exponentially, above all amongst the suffered working class. Having already lost the neighborhood grocery on behalf of the great corporate malls, and the habit to go to church out of sheer disbelief in divine justice, the only place left to go crying a bit and share with someone their chronic unrest was the neighborhood clinic, which along with the prvision of health service, served an unvaluable role as presure valve to let free some of proletarian rage´s steem…
Where all this people will go to complain? You will need obviously a more authoritarian system to placate them…for that, we have just had a two months general rehearsal with everything….

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Apr 29 2020 19:45 utc | 32

>So, trials of estrogen therapy for men!
Well, I noticed that in certain societies most of the virus victims have brown hair, so I’m gonna protect myself by bleaching my hair white. According to the media, correlation *IS* causation, so this will work, guaranteed!

Posted by: Trailer Trash | Apr 29 2020 19:53 utc | 34

More women aged 10 to 56 ‘catch’ the virus, are ‘cases’, than men. At all ages 10-56 there is a consequent surplus of women.
Posted by: Noirette | Apr 29 2020 19:30 utc | 30
I was not aware if that, since I became almost exhausted of reading eveything about Covid-19 some weeks ago, out of overdose, but, if your goal is decrease the population and your are planning going into wars of plunder all laong….what you need is less women in fertile age and more men….and less elders and children to save money for the MIC…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Apr 29 2020 20:05 utc | 36

@Allen #19
The mainstream media being a lying machine doesn’t automatically make everything they say wrong.
2 legs bad is no more idiotic applying to liberals as it does to conservatives, or mainstream media vs. alt media.

Posted by: c1ue | Apr 29 2020 20:22 utc | 38

Just sharing a study made on Excess Mortality Estimation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Preliminary Data from Portugal, it’s conclusion:

It is possible to conclude that there is evidence of excess mortality in Portugal between March 1 and April 22, 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown even using the usual baselines (mean, median).
By adopting baselines more consistent with the lockdown, the excess mortality becomes more evident, with estimated 2400 to 4000 potential excess deaths during this period.
The observed excess of mortality is associated with older age groups (over age 65). The reduction of more than 191,000 daily hospital ED visits occurred between March 1 – April 22 may potentially be associated with 1291 or more deaths. Overall, these results point towards an excess mortality that is associated with and that is 3 to 5-fold higher than the official COVID-19 mortality.

(my emphasis, Acta Médica Portuguesa, direct pdf link)
It is interesting that the study chose to compare all-cause mortality but also against a different period of the year in an attempt to reflect the reduced movement under the lockdown more akin to the holiday period. The resulting increased excess-mortality give way for the authors hypothesis that this is explained by the reduction in visits to hospital.
I will comment though that the authors’ estimating method could never be made official for the purposes that those are used, and their assessment of “3 to 5-fold higher than the official COVID-19 mortality” is being on the side of the sensationalistic if they are suggesting that we could replace one with the other. Despite this it is a welcome study.

Posted by: Vasco da Gama | Apr 29 2020 20:26 utc | 40

@Posted by: Ghost Ship | Apr 29 2020 17:58 utc | 11
The same theory could explain why so few heads of government have resulted infected or dead, eventhough many of them igonored the pandemic until it exploited under their very nose…
Miraculous recovering of obese middel aged BoJo..
Just today I have seen a photo of Pence in a Mount Sinai Hospital visit to patients without mask, in spite of hospital directives related to Covid-19…
If that is not hubris and bragging in front of the population, that it is nothing…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Apr 29 2020 20:31 utc | 42

@39cue1
Do not fear. Appears my posts were deleted and further postings blocked. Did not feel was anything incendiary, just different point of view.
Guess differing opinions are not welcome here.

Posted by: JoeS | Apr 29 2020 20:33 utc | 44

Seems to me Covid-19 makes a stellar bioweapon. Unpredictable, extremely contagious, difficult to treat, difficult to prevent via vaccine, dangerous enough to shut down economic activity but not to cause excess deaths, instability, and perhaps all-out war. Considering how insane, nihilistic, and stupid the US’s leaders are, it wouldn’t surprise me if they deployed this virus in China without assuming, or caring about, blowback in the US. As with most big deep state actions, this theoretical bioweapon provides multiple goods to the deep state:
Massive pharma profits
An excuse to reorder the economy to the benefit of the oligarchy
Make workers even more insecure and desperate
Install more surveillance
Work to get rid of physical money
Further devastate enemies under economic sanction
Safely deflate banking/corporate debt bubbles
Shift trillions to the donor 0.1% and corporations

Posted by: NoOneYouKnow | Apr 29 2020 20:41 utc | 46

c1ue | Apr 29 2020 20:31 utc | 41
You said: “Who is starving now (more so than pre-nCOV)?”
The trouble is not now, but next year at this time will be a different story.

Posted by: JasonT | Apr 29 2020 20:55 utc | 48

Judging from some of the responses here, it appears that climate change deniers have moved on to COVID-19. Climate change denial is so 2010.

Posted by: Rob | Apr 29 2020 21:23 utc | 50

I worked in sewage for thirty years. Down into large collectors and shafts, into sewage pumping stations, repairs to benching and pipe, laying sewers, cleaning with jet pumps. I never once got sick and ate my lunch just washing with water, but I am getting rather sick of the inane comments that a cure for this cold virus will save the world. Utter cow paddies and they stink more to boot than sewage. They cannot cure the common cold let alone some fairy tale vaccine for some plandemic item. Take me back to my sewers please, it was cleaner there, even if I had to pick up, move and clean your poop folks to the plant!

Posted by: Taffyboy | Apr 29 2020 21:29 utc | 52

@Posted by: H.Schmatz | Apr 29 2020 21:27 utc | 51
BTW, to make it clear, the selling of public housing at bargain proces ot US hedge funds, like Blackrock, too only place in autonomous communities like Madrid governed by the far right at that time.
These are those who always full their big, corrupted, mouths with patriotism and do not miss opportunity to wave the flag, as if the country was theirs…as indeed they have though during all these decades of plundering…

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Apr 29 2020 21:46 utc | 54

Speaking of information war, one of SST’s regular correspondents asserted the following yesterday:
“Once the virus was spreading in Wuhan, the Chinese shutdown travel to their own major cities. That’s why you’ve seen very few infections there. However, the Chinese, fully aware of the contagion, allowed travelers to go to other parts of the world. Not my opinion, a cold, hard fact.”
This concept had been previously expressed more explicitly by Fox News: i.e. the Chinese committed a deliberate act of biological terrorism by shutting down domestic travel while continuing to allow international travel with the knowing intention of spreading the virus to other countries. Here is a summary:
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/04/16/819473/
This idea seems irresponsible several degrees of magnitude greater than the claim that Putin fixed the 2016 election.
Most all train and air travel features departure and arrival information posted on multiple sites across the internet. If all domestic travel halted from Wuhan while international travel from there continued apace, there would be an obvious information trail demonstrating that. There is no such evidence.
In a piece published early February, the American wire service Associated Press was able to analyze travel patterns from Wuhan in weeks ahead of the lockdown: “The travel patterns broadly track with the early spread of the virus. The majority of confirmed cases and deaths have occurred in China, within Hubei province, followed by high numbers of cases in central China, with pockets of infections in Chongqing, Shanghai and Beijing as well.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/9/millions-left-wuhan-china-coronavirus-quarantine/
Pandemic planning extending back at least two decades has always noted that international air travel would be a likely and predictable source of global spread of an infectious virus. To twist this obvious fact into a dire conspiracy theory is intellectually vapid, which can be expected with Fox News but not necessarily other usually decent venues.

Posted by: jayc | Apr 29 2020 21:50 utc | 56

The articles you link to are very weak in their response. Joining in a chorus of the corona-virus hysteria is a great disservice to your readers. Dr. John Ioannidis has a long history and is well established in debunking the cherished myths and mistakes of the medical industry and the group think of scientists. From a 2010 article in the Atlantic Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science. Your wave of the hand and weak dismissal of his warnings will put your credibility at risk in the coming months. At least there are some people not engaged in the dangerous groupthink you are pushing on this website. Coronavirus response groupthink failures Shanker agrees with you but knows full well the mistakes that have been made in the past and Dr. Ioannidis ultimate success in proving out those mistakes over time. I’ll put his history over yours in this field anytime. I also think it would be a very good idea to go back over to the UK and Wales registered death statistics. Take a close look at the age breakdowns. The 45-49 age group is seeing about 200 more excess deaths over average a week. This increases the further up the age group you go. 90+ year old group has over three thousand excess deaths over average per week. Under 45 the death statistics are on average and this pandemic doesn’t even register a blip over average. That is huge and the idea that people under the age of 45 should be quarantining is insanity at its greatest. Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales I lived through the government response to 9/11 and the disastrous outcomes it generated. The over reaction to the terrorism was driven more by politics than reality. Here we go again. This time the outcome is going to be much much worse. And it is going to affect nearly everyone.

Posted by: goldhoarder | Apr 29 2020 21:56 utc | 58

Pepe Escobar delves into the chain of events that point to foul play by US spooks —

It’s never enough to repeat the question in full: how could U.S. intel have known about a contagion one month before Chinese doctors detected an unknown virus?

Posted by: norecovery | Apr 29 2020 22:35 utc | 60

This is more or a question than a comment. If as it seems like the virus has been circulating in some countries possibly even since late last year, does anyone have a theory as to why we didn’t get the major pandemic outbreak sooner? Does this virus have stages of activity or has it mutated along the way? If it has been active longer than the past few months that is very concerning for future cycles of outbreaks and potential immunity.

Posted by: Kerry | Apr 29 2020 22:42 utc | 62

Posted by: jayc | Apr 29 2020 21:50 utc | 56
The Chinese shut down Wuhan as this is a major transport hub and the outbreak took place in the viccinity of the New Year celebrations and its holiday season. Morevoer took them a while being aware of what kind of “evil” ( as Xi Jinping referred to the virus in a conversation with WHO head…)they were facing. Once aware, they immeditely shut down, even when being the factory of the world…
International travel was not shut down anywhere at the first moments, any conuntry had the ability to do it if they deeemed appropiate, but nobody did it, as all benefit from globaliced business and tourism, see now the loses…In fact, many citizens of many countries got stranded abroad during first weeks of world lockdowns, thus everybody was travelling,
In the first week of March, when already the virus had arrived in UK, still there were British tourists strolling in Benidorm, Spain, and when the virus had already desolated the whole of South Asia, there were still Italian and South Asian customers dinning at luxury restaurants in the Basque Country. A week after that we were all cloistered at home and the economy paraliced.
The US and its minions at SST what they are trying to get is a billionaire rescue from the Chinese, as they are in the need of cash to cover in part the financing of their falling economy and fiat system. Those people at SST, what they live from, after all? From rents coming for shares in the stock market, where they invested their gains coming from the MIC, as mercenaries for US imperialist wars first, and then as “consultants” on the same business. It is this kind of “consultants” who have brought us to this point, that they try hard to continue plundering whoever out there still have cash, do not surprise me in the least. The Russians will be the next, in spite of the placating intends of Putin with Trump. The fact that those at SST oppose the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan has nothing to do with them being any kind of pacifist or good Christians, or “resistants” in any way, but with the fact that they consider those wars a lose of money. That´s all, please awake. The only association one could do of them with any “resistance” movement is with the fake resitance movement of Trump´s supporters.
Tucker Carlson, who seemed so “reasonable”, but after all pro-Trump, until now, what this guy lives from? Spreading the propaganda of the current regime. What the guy will do in face of all falling apart? Try to conserve his way of living by promoting going stealing the source of his income whereever, if needed to China. This people, as exceptional, have not been born to be poor, and that is what they will be if they stop stealing, cheating, lying. Period. Can you imagine Pat Lang being poor? I do not. He will kill, as he did, so as to avoid it.
The theory of the Chinese spreading willingly the pandemic to the world, falls apart when we consider that there are different strains of the virus which appeared almost simultaneously in China, Iran, Italy and Spain. Our first infected patient, in Spain, was a German citizen who returned to La Gomera. Then our patient zero in Madrid was a citizen of Torrejón de Ardoz, where, casually, there is a US Military base, with no connection with any Chinese national or travel to or from China. Should we ask the US or Germany for billionaire reparations? Highly likely. Moreover taking into account how the virus goes with the US Army everyewhere…. and how Germany even denied us ventilators and other PPE when we were hit hard first, forbidding exports ( of which they mainly live in the EU after having dismantled the industry especially in the southern countries ), and was strongly against sharing of loses through Coronabonos…. I even had my doubts with respect Germany as interested actor, when rumours were heard about an almost developed vaccine ( the one Trump wanted to acquire in exclusiveness only for the US… )and taking into account that the Deutsche Bank was already in a very bad shape ( way worse than Spanish banks ) before the pandemic, what better way of saniticing it than by indebting again the PIGS to the neck, and coming into these countries to buy anything of value left at bargain price?

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Apr 29 2020 22:52 utc | 64

jayc @56
Stop acting like such a hysterical, fey, pansy retard. You would have shat your panties with outrage if the Chinese had put yanqui, sLimey, kiweed, or whatnot foreign traveler slobs into quarantine rather than letting them go home. It was your own government, you silly fool, that did not properly take care of these returnees. It wasn’t like it was some big secret that some of them could be infected, so the responsibility lies entirely upon your completely irresponsible shoulders.

Posted by: William Gruff | Apr 29 2020 23:01 utc | 66

Posted by: Kerry | Apr 29 2020 22:42 utc | 62
I think the mutability explains it sufficiently, originally this corona virus could have had a terribly low infectiousness (lower compared to how we can measure it today, keep in mind this is a dynamic figure), still then it would require to pass a certain number of infections to really take off, passing this threshold would really take a long time for epidemiologists to notice it.
It is this thing about exponential progression, it can really start with a microscopic number all the while it is seeding geographically, when it ceases to be microscopic, it is all at once almost everywhere and everyone is already far behind the curve. I am even considering that the infectiousness of the current main mutations, supposedly considered worse than the original ones, may have occurred only after the latter had taken off. But this is me thinking out loud, I do find possible that the virus had already found us earlier last year.
Regarding a second wave being more threatening than the first, our response to it is supposed to be much better informed overall at various levels. If we were induced to rely on mortality figures because of their better reliability during the first wave, we should now be ready to use infection figures with a much better handle at what they really mean during the second wave and for that reason much better able to act pre-emptively, weeks in advance made all the difference for those countries which enjoyed a delayed epidemic attack, we now have protocols for testing implemented almost everywhere, this is a significant advantage for the future.

Posted by: Vasco da Gama | Apr 29 2020 23:19 utc | 68

@ 66 wg.. clearly you didn’t understand jayc’s comment… not sure how i can help you either, other then to point it out… or are you being sarcastic as hell just for fun and i am the dim one, lol?? either way for the usa to be bellyaching about china – and most all the dipshits at sst have swallowed that koolaid fullstop – the responsibility rests on the usa if they thought there was a problem.. but for those who are unwilling to accept responsibility – there is always the trump – usa approach!! they have brought this up to a level of fine art!!

Posted by: james | Apr 29 2020 23:23 utc | 70

@56 jayc Yes, Larry Johnson’s argument is terribly flawed.
Wuhan went into lockdown January 23.
From that date:
a) The residents of Wuhan were not allowed to travel to other parts of China AND were not allowed to fly internationally
b) Everyone else was free to travel around China AND free to fly overseas.
How anyone can find anything sinister in that is beyond me.
It was very sloppy thinking on Johnson’s part.

Posted by: Yeah, Right | Apr 29 2020 23:28 utc | 72

Posted by: H.Schmatz | Apr 29 2020 22:52 utc | 64
“when we consider that there are different strains of the virus which appeared almost simultaneously in China, Iran, Italy and Spain” Febuary. 29, 2020 The first US reported death in Seattle, and earlier Feb. 6 in Santa Clara Country Ca. Dr. Sara Cody reported a death and neither of the cases had a history of travel….
“Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara County’s public health officer. “Those deaths probably represent many, many more infections. And so there had to be chains of transmission that go back much earlier…. People typically die of COVID-19 about a month after they are infected with the coronavirus, suggesting that the person who died Feb. 6 likely was infected in early January. At that time, the virus had been reported only in China ­ the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not yet issued any advisories to Americans about the potential threat.”
The Government Employee Who May Have Saved a Million American Lives
https://www.unz.com/runz/the-government-employee-who-may-have-saved-a-million-american-lives/

Posted by: JC | Apr 29 2020 23:42 utc | 74

The virus is a problem and if you do a general lock down (1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year..) you will create 100 further problems. Now you have 101 problems!
The data is in that the virus, in the general community (not counting hospitals), only kills people over 70 years, or with medical issues.
So quarantine the over 70’s, give them free delivered food, a laptop with Zoom so they can still communicate, and let the rest of the world live their lives. It is insane that two 20 year olds cannot go on a date without being fined, or someone on a rural beach has a chopper land beside them and they are fined. This is not a medical response, this is a psych-ops, that is manipulation of the human psyche on a grand scale. Some would say on a Satanic scale!
Here is what happens when money collapses, when the economy collapses, and in the turmoil some are going to be richer than Midas.
In the past, an inflationary collapse has usually affected currencies in isolation; but the modern tendency for governments to coordinate their inflationary stimulations raises a new factor, of strains between currencies collapsing at the same time but at different rates.
The most notable experience of it in modern times was in several European countries following the First World war. The inflations were individual to the nations, but the cause was the same, and Austria’s inflationary collapse ran ahead of Germany’s. A passage from a man who witnessed it, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, in his autobiographical The World of Yesterday vividly describes the consequences:
Every hotel in Vienna was filled with these vultures [foreign tourists]; they bought everything from toothbrushes to landed estates, they mopped up private collections and antique shop stocks before their owners, in their distress, woke to how they were being plundered. Humble hotel clerks from Switzerland, stenographers from Holland would put up in the deluxe suites of the Ringstrasse hotels. Incredible as it may seem, I can vouch for it as an eyewitness that Salzburg’s first-rate Hotel de l’Europe was occupied for a period by English unemployed, who, because of Britain’s generous dole were able to live more cheaply at that distinguished hostelry than in their slums at home. Whatever was not nailed down disappeared. The tidings of cheap living and cheap goods in Austria spread far and wide; greedy visitors came from Sweden from France; more Italian French Turkish and Romanian was spoken than German in Vienna’s business district.[ii]
Among the Austrians impoverished in their own communities, the law-abiding starved and those prepared to break food rationing laws thrived. Savers, who had patriotically bought government bonds, lost everything. Germans from across the border, whose currency was yet to enter its final collapse, could swill six litres of Austrian beer for one of German, adding to the foreign revelry in Austria’s misery.
In our contemporary fiat collapse, differences in its rate will create similar openings for an unsettling life arbitrage. In business dealings, any vestiges of decency and compassion are early victims as those with an early understanding of the opportunities provided by a monetary collapse profit from the innocence of the ignorant. But Germany was to suffer the inflationary fate of Austria the following year. Again, from Zweig:
A pair of shoe laces cost more than a shoe had once cost, no, more than a fashionable store with two thousand pairs of shoes had cost before; to repair a broken window more than the whole house had formerly cost, a book more than the printers shop with a hundred presses. For $100 one could buy rows of six-storey houses on Kurfürstendamm and factories were to be had for the old equivalent of a wheelbarrow…
…Towering over all of them was the gigantic figure of the super-profiteer Stinnes expanding his credit and in thus exploiting the mark he bought whatever was for sale, coal mines and ships, factories and stocks, castles and country estates, actually for nothing because every payment, every promise became equal to naught. Soon a quarter of Germany was in his hands and, perversely, the masses who in Germany always became intoxicated at a success that they can see with their eyes, cheered him as a genius.
The story of Hugo Stinnes brings us back to our current situation, how markets will evolve and who will profit.

Posted by: Ric G | Apr 29 2020 23:50 utc | 76

One of the more amusing aspects of this whole tragedy is b slowly coming to the realization that large portions of his readership are fucking morons. At least 225,000 corpses now and you muppets are still denying and engaging in conspiracy theories.

Posted by: Benjamin | Apr 30 2020 0:06 utc | 78

Neil Ferguson hasn’t been part of b’s coronavirus narrative, but his bad statistics (he has a history) are key to the whole story. Great opinion piece by R.R. Reno:
“On March 16, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London predicted a coronavirus death toll of more than two million in the United States alone. He arrived at this number by assuming that infection would be nearly universal and the fatality rate would be high—a terrifying prospect. The next day, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis sifted through the data and predicted less widespread infection and a fatality rate of between 0.05 and 1.0 percent—not that different from the common flu. The coronavirus is not the common flu. It has different characteristics, afflicting the old more than the young, men more than women. Nevertheless, all data trends since mid-March show that Ferguson was fantastically wrong and Ioannidis was largely right about its mortal threat. [fairleft: Reno goes too far here: data indicates Covid-19 is worse than the flu for the vulnerable, possibly much worse depending on age and the severity of their vulnerability.]
“But Ferguson’s narrative has triumphed, helped by our incontinent and irresponsible media. …
“Our entire ruling class, which united behind catastrophism and the untested methods of mass shutdown, is implicated in the unfolding fiasco.
“Journalists continue to sustain the pandemic narrative. Ioannidis is still ignored, though the evidence I outlined above has been building for weeks. …”
[[U of Oxford prediction: “Taking account of historical experience, trends in the data, increased number of infections in the population at largest, and potential impact of misclassification of deaths gives a presumed estimate for the COVID-19 IFR somewhere between 0.1% and 0.36%.” All studies so far are flawed and not all are within that range, but here are basically ALL of them, which generally point to the Oxford prediction being about right:
NYC shopping center: 0.6%
Santa Clara County: 0.1 – 0.2%
LA County: 0.1 – 0.3%
Oise, France high school: 0.0%
Gangelt, Germany: 0.37%
Bergamo, Italy: 0.57%
Lombardio, Italy: 0.87%
Iceland: 0.05%
UK: 0.9%
China: 0.66%
Boston homeless shelter: 0.0%
US Navy ship: 0.07% ]]
R.R. Reno concludes:
“We’ve been stampeded into a regime of social control that is unprecedented in our history. Our economy has been shattered…. As unemployment numbers skyrocket and Congress spends trillions, the political stakes rise.
“The experts, professionals, bureaucrats, and public officials who did this to us have tremendous incentives to close ranks and say, ‘It is not wise to tell people that the danger was never grave and now has passed.’ Sustaining the coronavirus narrative will require many lies. It will be up to us to insist on the truth.”

Posted by: fairleft | Apr 30 2020 0:43 utc | 80

vk | Apr 29 2020 23:58 utc | 77
These “smart quarantine” theories abound in the West..
I didn’t read the linked piece so I don’t know if that’s some kind of jargon, but no one I know is advocating any silver bullet, since there is none. I’ve been consistent thruout – take extra precautions at vulnerable sites like hospitals and nursing homes, otherwise roll flexibly and naturally with what’s a done deal anyway: The epidemic is going to complete its cycle to Gaia’s content.
(Whether or not a benevolent despotism, in which so many fair-weather anti-imperialists suddenly invest such faith, could have done better is a moot point, since if such a thing ever could exist, at any rate it certainly does not exist.)
And those armchair physicians are spitting their science fiction on us from the comfort of their fancy homes.
You mean like the kind of reactionary “Marxists” who still haven’t gotten the news that the workers don’t want communism, they want higher wages and better working conditions, that the “proletarian consciousness” only ever may have existed in a handful of times and places, and that otherwise the original anarchist and populist critics like Herzen and Bakunin have been proven abundantly right, that the worker is the aspiring bourgeois?
And to say again, I’m certain that there’s a powerful correlation between support for lockdowns and feeling secure in one’s own financial and social situation.
Lockdownists in general, in every way: “I got mine Jack, screw you.”

Posted by: Russ | Apr 30 2020 0:50 utc | 82

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Apr 30 2020 1:12 utc | 83
Your screen name checks out.

Posted by: Crocophile Dumbdee | Apr 30 2020 1:17 utc | 84

Which groups caused Big Pharma’s biggest sales? Wasn’t that the old and infirm? Exactly the ones dying fast from covid-19.
There is no effective vaccine in sight for the next year. Nobody could for earlier (always naturally mutating) viruses. IF it came up all facilities in the world would produce it, not just one brand.
Why is Big Pharma frequently painted as the big winner in the covid-19 pandemic here?
We know that stock price is their God over patients, but lets keep perspective.

Posted by: Antonym | Apr 30 2020 1:25 utc | 86

karlof1 79
I have found it’s best to be wary of claims by either RT or Sputnik. The study does not support the RT headlines.
From the research paper. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.059576v1.full.pdf
“Following the emergence of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China in December
2019, specific COVID-19 surveillance was launched in France on January 10, 2020. Two weeks
later, the first three imported cases of COVID-19 into Europe were diagnosed in France.”
“The syndromic surveillance allowed to capture one of the earliest representatives of clade G
(HF1463, sampled on February 19th) ..”
“As the earliest representative of clade G (HF1463) had no history of travel or contact with returning travelers, we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February,…”
From that I take it first case from China was detected January 24 and earliest case of clade G on February 19th.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 30 2020 1:32 utc | 88

===> Jen @ 69
Good Post; astute observations
I was in China at the time when this unfolded and note the following:
1: The Chinese cultural mindset is totally different from the Western one, and
the gap much greater than most Westerners realise.
Look at the videos of the 75th Anniversary of Modern China for a few clues
2: As the worlds largest atheist nation, death is considered final, rituals notwithstanding
So they are motivated to survive..( and focus on delicious food to this end)
3: They talk. Incessantly. It is no accident that WeChat has grown exponentially..
What happens in one part of China is pretty quickly spread to other parts
And on the Flipside, there are surveillance cameras everywhere
So when this unfolded, Mid Spring festival when the cities were emptied, the memory
of the SARS epidemic sprang to forefront of the official mind. Xi JingPing appeared
on most TV Channels, making it clear that he was taking responsibility for the government
response. And implicitly, that if he failed, he would be gone, in keeping with the long
tradition of Chinese leadership.
At this point we decided to bail, being prime targets to host the virus. Avoided getting
quarantined in HongKong by 4 hours, and quarantine in Manus Island, Aus by one phone call.
There were 6 temperature checks and 4 police checks on route to HongKong Airport; arriving in
New Zealand expecting some major medical checks. None. Just 2 nurses at a deck asking if we
felt OK – handed a pamphlet and sent on our way. I did try to follow up but given official
discouragement. So NZ was asleep at the wheel for weeks, and just plain lucky.
However, once NZ woke up, the response was excellent; PM Jacinda Adern’s speech was masterful
and the response excellent. We had only two CoVid cases yesterday, as we move into level 3.
There are big problems in economic recovery here, but the alternative scenarios would have been
far worse.
And theres got to be a reason why various luxury private jets are turning up unannounced
and often unmarked at the airports here 🙂

Posted by: David KNZ | Apr 30 2020 1:39 utc | 90

These lockdowns have ended life as we know it, no matter which position you take. I do think it has been a mistake not to quarantine nursing homes, ltc facilities, hospitals, etc.. Including the docs, nurses, workers. Those are the vectors & 50% of covid deaths could have been prevented, esp in NY, like that. At year-end, we can look at all-cause mortalities trends, see how this year stacks up. I hope these measures make sense given the extreme poverty, violence, death they will cause. There will be no permanent vaccine, they’ve been trying w/Coronav’s for a long time. This thing is a fact of life going forward. It will mutate like any other cold or flu. Are we going to shut down & go Orwell every time it pops up? We’re f’ed.

Posted by: BDrizz | Apr 30 2020 2:09 utc | 92

Russ Apr 30 2020 0:50 utc @82
“…You mean like the kind of reactionary “Marxists” who still haven’t gotten the news that the workers don’t want communism, they want higher wages and better working conditions…”
You have hit the nail squarely on the head.
As a union member for over 40 years that is what we are always fighting for – it is a continuous battle between worker & management to improve wages, conditions & job security.
The armchair Marxists like to sit in their fine offices, with all the trappings of the bourgeoisie to which they aspire, endlessly quoting ‘Hudson’, & actually think that they are relevant.
They always make me think of the pigs in Animal Farm.
Quoting ‘Hudson’ never got me a pay rise – strike action, picket lines, overtime bans & work-to-rule is the only thing the bosses understand.

Posted by: ted01 | Apr 30 2020 2:13 utc | 94

One of the more amusing aspects of this whole tragedy is b slowly coming to the realization that large portions of his readership are fucking morons. At least 225,000 corpses now and you muppets are still denying and engaging in conspiracy theories.
Posted by: Benjamin | Apr 30 2020 0:06 utc | 78
Typical worldwide annual deaths from flu/pneumonia/influenza runs about 600,000 deaths. We are born with fluid in our lungs, we die with fluid in our lungs, it is Nature’s way of completing the circle.
225,000 Covid corpses is about 37% of 600,000, and as you are making no allowances for normal flu/pneumonia we can assume that many Covid deaths are just replacements for ‘normal’ deaths.
I suspect that you do not hyper ventilate, every year, about these ‘normal’ deaths?

Posted by: Ric G | Apr 30 2020 2:34 utc | 96

Something on this thread reminded me of 1981, PATCO, and the moderate GOP Pres Ronald Reagan. Quoting Hudson could hardly have been worse. Sorry for any thread drift I’ve contributed to, I’m going back to sleep.

Posted by: spudski | Apr 30 2020 2:37 utc | 98

Posted by: Deltaeus | Apr 30 2020 2:39 utc | 99
I’d be interested if anyone has seen anything countering the view that immunity is not strong, or may not last long. Is there such research?
This Research article relates to SARS not SARS-CoV2 so is indicative for the family of virus but not conclusive. It says you get some immunity for maybe 3 years.
If there is a “herd immunity” commenter who can share contrasting research, it would be most welcome. Frankly, I’d love to find out that we will all become more immune to the virus – but I just don’t have any facts to support that hope at the moment.
I’d be interested if anyone has seen anything countering the view that the epidemic is bound to cycle thruout the population, after it was ranging at large everywhere probably at least for months, and especially given the anti-medical, profit-seeking design of the corporate system. Is there such research?
If there is a lockdownist commenter who can share contrasting research, it would be most welcome. Frankly, I’d love to find out that we will eradicate this virus forever and all conceivable viruses forever and all get ponies and that all the things which people used to care about and which many even now still claim to care about – human well-being, freedom, happiness – will be vibrant or at least continue to exist at all – but I just don’t have any facts to support that hope at the moment.

Posted by: Russ | Apr 30 2020 2:51 utc | 100