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The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-43
Young White Men Abuse George Floyd Protests For Violence And Looting
Last night at times violent protests took place in some 30 U.S. cities.
The escalation of the protests is not being driven by people of color whose grievance about systemic police brutality and institutionalized racism is driving the original, and in most cases peaceful protests.
There are clear signs that other groups have joined and abuse the original protests for their own purpose:
Mayor Jacob Frey said the people who are coming to Minneapolis to protest are not residents and are "coming in largely from outside the city."
"Our Minneapolis residents are scared and rightfully so. We've seen longterm institutional businesses overridden. We've seen community institutions set on fire. And I want to be very, very clear. The people that are doing this are not Minneapolis residents," he said at a news briefing on Saturday.
He said the protests earlier this week that were mostly peaceful and were largely attended by those who lived in the city, but "the dynamic has changed."
"Gradually that shift was made and we saw more and more people coming from outside of the city. We saw more and more people looking to cause violence in our communities, and I have to say, it is not acceptable," Frey said.
"This is no longer about verbal expression. This is about violence and we need to make sure that it stops," he added.
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said everyone who was arrested in his city last night was from outside the state.
"What we are seeing right now is a group of people who are not from here," he said.
UPDATE: The mayor has since walked back that claim. END-UPDATE
Detroit has seen the same phenomenon:
Cont. reading: Young White Men Abuse George Floyd Protests For Violence And Looting
Begun The Civil Wars Of 2020 Have
Two days ago a policeman in Minnesota, who was well known for his brutality, murdered a black man, George Floyd, by suffocating him during an arrest for allegedly paying with a fake $20 bill. (video, longer version) It was one of many such murders.
Spontaneous peaceful protests against the regime ensued.
Yesterday afternoon the regime sent in its provocateurs. One of allegedly six was a white man in black clothes, masked with a professional gas mask and carrying a black umbrella. He was filmed as he started to smash shop windows even while protesters told him not do do that. (video). When people got suspicious of him the man walked away, his umbrella still up. (video). He was later identified as a member of the St. Paul police department.
Into the night the protests grew and took on a socialist tone when people started to communalize the goods offered at a local Target market known for its extensive surveillance. Later the local McDonald’s restaurant was also liberated by fire.
The regime gave up. Police fled from the 3rd Precinct in a large convoy (video, video). Soon after that the precinct was set on fire. (video)
These are not race riots. Many of the protesters are young people of white color. (video, video)
Throughout the night more buildings were set on fire.
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The local regime governor order his national guard to intervene.
The president threatened to kill the unarmed protesters:
…These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!
Trump’s wordplay had an historically racist undertone:
“When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” is a threat coined by Miami Police Chief Walter Headley, who promised violent reprisals on black protesters in 1967. He also said: “We don’t mind being accused of police brutality. They haven’t seen anything yet.”
Twitter marked the president’s tweet as ‘glorifying violence’ but did not remove it.
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Early this morning Minnesota State Police had come back to the scene. It arrested a dark skinned CNN reporter in front of the running camera (vid). The reporter had asked the police where they wanted his crew to setup. He did not get a response. No reason for his arrest was given. Another CNN reporter, this one of white color, was also approached by police but was permitted to stay:
CNN’s Josh Campell, who also was in the area but not standing with the on-air crew, said he, too, was approached by police, but was allowed to remain.
“I identified myself … they said, ‘OK, you’re permitted to be in the area,'” recounted Campbell, who is white. “I was treated much differently than (Jimenez) was.”
Jimenez is black and Latino.
After CNN called on the governor the reporter and his crew were released. Here he explained what happened. The police did not apologize to him.
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The British government protested against the arrest of the journalists.
There are now public calls for further protests in many more cities. Those are likely to escalate.
Calls for President Xi of China to provide the American rebels with the means to defend themselves against the regime have not yet been answered.
How Cluster Cases Drive The Covid Pandemic
One of the many mysteries of the Covid-19 pandemic is how the disease actually spreads. We were told to wash hands and about the dangers of droplets in one to one contacts. But newer evidence continues to point in another direction.
There are more and more reports about cases where the infections seems to have spread by aerosol, droplets smaller than 5μm in diameter, instead of by bigger droplets or fomites like surfaces and objects. Lambert Strether has collected reports of cluster cases in restaurants, buses, ships and a callcenter where aerosol transmission was the most likely cause:
There’s mounting evidence that airborne transmission indoors is a key — perhaps the main — pathway to SARS-COV-2 transmission. In this post I want to look at why that’s so, give examples, and suggest a simple heuristic to stay safe.
But a recent report about a South African study of a hospital cluster where 119 patients and staff caught the disease claims that most infections must have come through fomites transmission:
[O]n the whole, patients infected few other patients directly. Instead staff members spread the disease from patient to patient and from department to department—perhaps sometimes without becoming infected themselves. “We think in the main it’s likely to have been from [staff] hands and shared patient care items like thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and stethoscopes,” says Richard Lessells, an infectious disease specialist at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform and one of the study leaders. He and the other authors found no evidence that aerosol transmission contributed to the outbreak.
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A look into the very detailed and otherwise excellent original study shows why the researchers found no evidence for aerosol transmission. They never looked for any. The words 'air conditioning', 'HVAC' or similar do not appear in the 37 pages. That is because right at the start of the study the researchers excluded the possibility that aerosols may play a role:
Cont. reading: How Cluster Cases Drive The Covid Pandemic
Open Thread 2020-42
NYT Writeup Of U.S. War On Afghanistan Ignores U.S. Atrocities
The New York Times has a 4,000 words long piece about the war on Afghanistan. It tries to explain why the Taliban won the war.
How the Taliban Outlasted a Superpower: Tenacity and Carnage
It is also a remarkable attempt to ignore the factual history:
[The Taliban] have outlasted a superpower through nearly 19 years of grinding war. And dozens of interviews with Taliban officials and fighters in three countries, as well as with Afghan and Western officials, illuminated the melding of old and new approaches and generations that helped them do it.
After 2001, the Taliban reorganized as a decentralized network of fighters and low-level commanders empowered to recruit and find resources locally while the senior leadership remained sheltered in neighboring Pakistan.
That is simply wrong. Between the end of 2001 and 2007 there were no Taliban. The movement had dissolved.
The author later acknowledges that there were no Taliban activity throughout those years. But the narrative is again skewed:
Many Taliban commanders interviewed for this article said that in the initial months after the invasion, they could scarcely even dream of a day they might be able to fight off the U.S. military. But that changed once their leadership regrouped in safe havens provided by Pakistan’s military — even as the Pakistanis were receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid.
From that safety, the Taliban planned a longer war of attrition against U.S. and NATO troops. Starting with more serious territorial assaults in 2007, the insurgents revived and refined an old blueprint the United States had funded against the Soviets in the same mountains and terrain — but now it was deployed against the American military.
Even before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan the Taliban had recognized that they lacked the capability to run a country. They had managed to make Afghanistan somewhat secure. The warlords who had fought each other after the Soviet draw down were suppressed and the streets were again safe. But there was no development, no real education or health system and no money to create them.
When the U.S. invaded the Taliban dispersed. On December 5 2001 Taliban leader Mullah Omar resigned and went into hiding within Afghanistan. For one day the Taliban defense minister Mullah Obaidullah became the new leader. From the The Secret Life of Mullah Omar by Bette Dam:
Cont. reading: NYT Writeup Of U.S. War On Afghanistan Ignores U.S. Atrocities
Britain: Johnson’s Pandemic Management Is Trashing His Authority
Britain seems to have a meltdown of trust in the government over its handling of the novel coronavirus epidemic.
While other European countries have reopened Britain is still under lockdown and has still some 2,400 new Covid-19 cases per day. The numbers must go down much further to safely reopen the country. But after several missteps it is now unlikely that the people will continue to follow the government's advice.
First Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not take the issue seriously and even boasted of shaking hands with coronavirus patients. He then caught the disease himself and nearly died from it. He has since been a bit more cautious.
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Britain has had the second highest number of deaths from Covid-19 so far, 36.875 according to the current count. But its government still seem to be unserious about fighting the pandemic. Marketing seems to have priority over getting things done.
For months the government has been fudging its testing numbers. First it added tests it had sent out to the number of tests processed at any day. The mailed out tests may have never been taken or processed. This falsely increased the real number of tests processed per day by up to 25%.
Now the government has admitted that taking saliva and nasal samples from one person had been counted as two tests.
Cont. reading: Britain: Johnson’s Pandemic Management Is Trashing His Authority
The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-41
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> In Brazil, 15 percent of deaths have been people under 50 — a rate more than 10 times greater than in Italy or Spain. In Mexico, the trend is even more stark: Nearly one-fourth of the dead have been between 25 and 49. In India, officials reported this month that nearly half of the dead were younger than 60. In Rio de Janeiro state, more than two-thirds of hospitalizations are for people younger than 49.
…
“It all points to social economic status and poverty,” Gray Molina said. <
> Let's see what the Washington-backed Hong Kong democracy really looks like. The man beaten in the video is a lawyer named Chan Tze-chin. He was attacked by the rioters because he did not support them on the street today. Hong Kong must rebuild the rule of law. < (video)
> The Hong Kong rioters vandalised a shop and steal a tee shirt from inside at causeway bay today < (video)
> Absolutely sickening. The West's beloved "freedom fighters" in Hong Kong stalk, surround and beat a defenceless young woman. While the West denounces China's new national security law, they are silent on the countless acts of such brutal violence. < (video)
Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-41
U.S. Threatens New Nuclear Tests To Push China Into A Treaty It Does Not Want
The Trump administration is hostile to any agreement that restricts its abilities to build, test and deploy nuclear weapons.
It left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement which limited nuclear missile deployments in Europe. It did so after accusing Russia of deploying missiles that exceed the range the INF treaty allowed. It has never shown evidence that the assertion was true.
Recently the administration announced that it will leave the Treaty on Open Skies which allowed for mutual reconnaissance flights for its 34 country members. It accused Russia of having limited U.S. requests for such flights over certain Russian areas. The Russian government rejected those claims.
The Trump administration is intentionally running out of time to renew the New START Treaty which limits the strategic nuclear platforms deployed by the U.S. and Russia. The treaty will expire on February 5 2021. Russia has offered to renew it for five years without any conditions. The U.S. rejected that. It says that China must be integrated into the treaty even as that makes no sense at all.
On top of all that Trump is now thinking about breaking the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty which the U.S. has signed but not ratified:
The Trump administration has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992 in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions, said a senior administration official and two former officials familiar with the deliberations.
The matter came up at a meeting of senior officials representing the top national security agencies May 15, following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests — an assertion that has not been substantiated by publicly available evidence and that both countries have denied.
The claims that Russia and China conducted low yield testing is almost certainly false and only an excuse to avoid the ratification of the test ban treaty.
The big joke though is that the the administration claims that it may need to again test nuclear devices to help with the renewing of the New START Treaty:
Cont. reading: U.S. Threatens New Nuclear Tests To Push China Into A Treaty It Does Not Want
China’s Move In Hong Kong Illustrates The End Of U.S. Superiority
Blaming China for the Covid-19 pandemic is false. But the U.S. will continue to do so as a part of its larger anti-China strategy.
As the U.S. is busy countering the epidemic at home China has already defeated it within its borders. It now uses the moment to remove an issue the U.S. has long used to harass it. Hong Kong will finally be liberated from its U.S. supported racists disguised as liberals.
In late 1984 Britain and China signed a formal agreement which approved the 1997 release of Britain's colony Hong Kong to China. Britain had to agree to the pact because it had lost the capability to defend the colony. The Sino British Joint Declaration stipulated that China would create a formal law that would allow Hong Kong to largely govern itself.
The 'Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China' is the de facto constitution of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. But it is a national law of China adopted by the Chinese National People's Congress in 1990 and introduced in Hong Kong in 1997 after the British rule ran out. If necessary the law can be changed.
Chapter II of the Basic Law regulates the relationship between the Central Authorities and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Article 23 of the Basic Law stipulated that Hong Kong will have to implement certain measures for internal security:
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People's Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies.
Hong Kong has failed to create any of the laws demanded by Article 23. Each time its government tried to even partially implement such laws, in 2003, 2014 and 2019, protests and large scale riots in the streets of Hong Kong prevented it.
China was always concerned about the foreign directed unrest in Hong Kong but it did not press the issue while it was still depending on Hong Kong for access to money and markets.
Cont. reading: China’s Move In Hong Kong Illustrates The End Of U.S. Superiority
Tapes Prove Biden’s Intervention In Ukraine But Not His Motive
A few days ago Andrii Derkach, a longtime member of the Ukrainian parliament, held a press conference (vid) during which he published recordings of phone calls between then Vice President Joe Biden, then Secretary of State John Kerry and then President of the Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.
Unfortunately there is no big scoop in the published material:
They discussed, particularly, the resignation of Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin. It was the issue of the recording of the talk of Poroshenko and Kerry dated December 3, 2015.
“Would like to urge to consider the possibility of solving the problem of replacing Prosecutor General Shokin because, to my opinion, he blocked the reform of clearance of Prosecutor General’s Office,” Kerry said.
Besides, he referred to the ‘concern’ of Vice President Joe Biden.
Then, the recording of the talk of Biden and Poroshenko on March 22, 2016, was played. It took place four days before Shokin’s dismissal in the parliament.
“In case that you have a new government and a new prosecutor general, I am prepared to do a public signing of the commitments on 1 billion dollars,” Biden said.
“Extremely strong motivation. One of the possible candidates for this position is the leader of my faction Lutsenko,” Poroshenko responded. “If you think that a politically motivated figure could be not very good, from your point of view, I recall this proposal. Cause nobody knows that I am going to propose Lutsenko,” the president explained.
The Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which paid Joe Biden's son Hunter absurd sums for little work, is not mentioned in the now published calls.
Biden did intervene in the Ukraine to get then Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin fired soon after the prosecutor office had confiscated the villas of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. Biden himself had admitted that he held back a $1 billion credit line for the Ukraine to remove Shokin but claimed that the move had nothing to do with his son's benefactor.
The timeline of Biden's intervention looks awfully suspicious and there is no evidence that Shokin was, as Biden claimed, corrupt.
But the now published calls only confirm Biden's version of the story. They will not harm him. For now it is only Poroshenko who will have additional trouble from them:
Cont. reading: Tapes Prove Biden’s Intervention In Ukraine But Not His Motive
Open Thread 2020-40
Non-Coronavirus news & views …
This Illusion Is Alive And Well
Cross Immunity, Nicotine Patches And Other New Covid-19 Science
Good news!
There is some cross immunity between a viral common cold and Covid-19.
T cells found in COVID-19 patients ‘bode well’ for long-term immunity – Science
Immune warriors known as T cells help us fight some viruses, but their importance for battling SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been unclear. Now, two studies reveal infected people harbor T cells that target the virus—and may help them recover. Both studies also found some people never infected with SARS-CoV-2 have these cellular defenses, most likely because they were previously infected with other coronaviruses.
The last half sentence is really, really good news. People who previously had an infection caused by one of the four known common cold coronaviruses have developed some capability to also fight the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. This must have already changed the way the pandemic developed. Had there not been this protection in parts of the population there would have been more Covid-19 cases and likely many more severe ones.
That some people already had some grade of immunity might also explain the two limited outbreaks on cruise ships that only hit a third to half of the passengers and crew. Without partial previous immunity more people on those ships would likely have fallen ill.
The two studies mentioned in the Science report are:
Targets of T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in humans with COVID-19 disease and unexposed individuals
– Cell
Importantly, we detected SARS-CoV-2−reactive CD4+ T cells in ∼40-60% of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.
and
Presence of SARS-CoV-2 reactive T cells in COVID-19 patients and healthy donors – medRxiv
We demonstrate the presence of S-reactive CD4+ T cells in 83% of COVID-19 patients, as well as in 34% of SARS-CoV-2 seronegative healthy donors, albeit at lower frequencies.
The T-cells generated during a Covid-19 infection are more specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus than the T-cells generated to fight off a normal virus common cold. But a human who has recently had a virus induced common cold will have an immediate but imperfect immune reaction to a SARS-CoV-2 attack while those without such protection will lose critical time as they must build up the immune reaction from scratch while the viruses continue to multiply.
Since the Science report appeared a third study was published that detected a similar result for antibodies:
Cont. reading: Cross Immunity, Nicotine Patches And Other New Covid-19 Science
The MoA Week In Review – Open Thread 2020-39
Chinese Ambassador To Israel Found Dead In His Home – A Timeline
Jerusalem Post, May 9 2020
US: Israel should re-think China's participation in desalination plant
The US government sent a warning to Israel regarding a Chinese company bidding to construct the world’s largest desalination plant, which will be in Kibbutz Palmachim and cost more than NIS 5 b., Channel 13 reported, citing Israeli officials. The Trump administration has looked into the company and the Finance Ministry is expected to announce its findings on May 24.
"The Americans have been delivering messages gently and politely but obviously they want us to re-examine the participation of the Chinese company in the tender,” an Israeli official told Channel 13.
…
Top Israeli officials told Channel 13 that US officials, including US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, contacted the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office to ask questions regarding the participation of the Israeli Hutchinson Company, an affiliate of the Chinese Hutchinson Company based in Hong Kong.
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State Department, May 13
Travels With the Secretary of State – Travel to Israel
Briefing with Senior State Department Officials On Secretary Pompeo’s Travel to Jerusalem, Israel
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: — and how we can cooperate on the things we can do regionally together and further areas of cooperation. That was a topic of conversation. But it also sort of led to a conversation about China’s role.
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QUESTION: So, I mean, I guess the question to both of you and just the uniformity of this message of – I know that the Huawei and 5G has been a huge thing, but now this – would you say that since COVID it has become more a part of the Secretary’s portfolio of saying hey, have your trade relationship with China, but when you get into sensitive stuff, or was even – did that precede it?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: I’ll speak from the perspective of having – until all this started, being lucky enough to travel over a year and around the world with him and being in not every but most of his meetings. He’s been talking about this almost – I can’t think of a specific meeting that I was in with him where he didn’t bring this up. It’s been something that he’s been building, saying, for a long time. I think that because of the – because the CCP made the decision during COVID to use their officials to be so overt with the disinformation, that we have – we have seen I think the world pay much more attention to the stuff that you guys were asking me about and the three of us were paying attention to – Huawei, 5G, Hikvision – remember, we were talking about that last year at the podium, and I think that all of that is – it’s just now the world is paying attention to what he’s been saying for almost two years as Secretary of State.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Special attention for high-tech.
QUESTION: Yeah.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Et cetera. They don’t – in addition to unfair trade practices, other types of exploitations, predatory loaning. You have just total disregard for intellectual property, right. So all of these go together and – but I think we really have to think about that. I mean, you should take a look, I did a whole interview on this with Globes, an Israeli publication, when I was in Israel last in, like, January or February. So we’ve been talking about it, but yeah, it’s separate.
QUESTION: Do you think you’re having success? Are you being persuasive with this?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Well, I think we have a – we are – we’ve been allies with Israel for a long time. Our strategic relationship is getting closer every day, whether this is economically, whether this is in terms of military, intelligence sharing, across the board. It’s getting – and we have a relationship that’s mature enough to talk about difficult subjects, so I think the message is getting through.
Cont. reading: Chinese Ambassador To Israel Found Dead In His Home – A Timeline
How Can Trump Still Win The Election?
Yesterday the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet lambasted Trump and called on Americans to not reelect him:
The Trump administration's further erosion of the CDC will harm global cooperation in science and public health, as it is trying to do by defunding WHO. A strong CDC is needed to respond to public health threats, both domestic and international, and to help prevent the next inevitable pandemic. Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics.
Today the Financial Times adds to the onslaught. Its not paywalled page 1 report on Trump's reaction to the pandemic is pretty devastating and adds some juicy details:
Again and again, the story that emerged is of a president who ignored increasingly urgent intelligence warnings from January, dismisses anyone who claims to know more than him and trusts no one outside a tiny coterie, led by his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner – the property developer who Trump has empowered to sideline the best-funded disaster response bureaucracy in the world.
…
“Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it,” says a Trump confidant who speaks to the president frequently. “That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying. He thinks they always exaggerate.”
…
It was Trump who chose Robert Redfield to head the CDC in spite of widespread warnings about the former military officer’s controversial record. Redfield led the Pentagon’s response to HIV-Aids in the 1980s. It involved isolating suspected soldiers in so-called HIV Hotels. Many who tested positive were dishonourably discharged. Some committed suicide.
A devout catholic, Redfield saw Aids as the product of an immoral society. For many years, he championed a much-hyped remedy that was discredited in tests. That debacle led to his removal from the job in 1994.
“Redfield is about the worst person you could think of to be heading the CDC at this time,” says Laurie Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist who has reported on epidemics. “He lets his prejudices interfere with the science, which you cannot afford during a pandemic.”
One of the CDC’s constraints was to insist on developing its own test rather than import a foreign one. Dr Anthony Fauci – the infectious disease expert and now household name – is widely known to loathe Redfield, and vice versa. That meant the CDC and Fauci’s National Institutes of Health were not on the same page.
Besides the insider fighting there is the question if and how Trump might manage to win a reelection. It's all about the economy one might say but there will also be other factors. Trump will certainly follow Steve Bannon's advice and blame everything bad that has happened on China:
Cont. reading: How Can Trump Still Win The Election?
Cats, Aerosols And Life Years Lost – Some New Covid-19 Science
A few useful studies and reports related to the novel Coronavirus pandemic have recently appeared.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)has a correspondence about cats:
Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Domestic Cats
Cats can get infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and do replicate it strongly in their respiratory system. But the cats do not get sick and show no symptoms. During the study three infected cats were each put into the same cage as a not-infected cat. They transmitted the disease to the previously non-infected ones. The researchers tested if the viruses the cats produce are still able to grow on human tissues. Unfortunately they are.
This means that a cat which went out of the house and met a cat who's owner has Covid-19 might come back home and infect its own human servant. Household cats may also play a role in the infection chain between household members. Any cat owner who goes into lockdown or is quarantined at home must also quarantine the cat.
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The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) with a Brief Report about speaking and aerosols:
Cont. reading: Cats, Aerosols And Life Years Lost – Some New Covid-19 Science
NYT Falsely Blames Russia For Cyberattack Committed By British Hacker
The New York Times continues its anti-Russia campaign with a report about an old cyberattack on German parliament which also targeted the parliament office of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel Is ‘Outraged’ by Russian Hack but Struggling to Respond
Patience with President Vladimir Putin is running thin in Berlin. But Germany needs Russia’s help on several geopolitical fronts from Syria to Ukraine.
NYT Berlin correspondent Katrin Bennhold writes:
Chancellor Angela Merkel used strong words on Wednesday condemning an “outrageous” cyberattack by Russia’s foreign intelligence service on the German Parliament, her personal email account included. Russia, she said, was pursuing “a strategy of hybrid warfare.”
But asked how Berlin intended to deal with recent revelations implicating the Russians, Ms. Merkel was less forthcoming.
“We always reserve the right to take measures,” she said in Parliament, then immediately added, “Nevertheless, I will continue to strive for a good relationship with Russia, because I believe that there is every reason to always continue these diplomatic efforts.”
That alleged attack happened in 2015. The attribution to Russia is as shoddy as all attributions of cyberattacks are.
Intelligence officials had long suspected Russian operatives were behind the attack, but they took five years to collect the evidence, which was presented in a report given to Ms. Merkel’s office just last week.
Officials say the report traced the attack to the same Russian hacker group that targeted the Democratic Party during the U.S. presidential election campaign in 2016.
This is really funny because we recently learned that the company which investigated the alleged DNC intrusion, CrowdStrike, had found no evidence, as in zero, that a Russian hacker group had targeted the DNC or that DNC emails were exfiltrated over the Internet:
Cont. reading: NYT Falsely Blames Russia For Cyberattack Committed By British Hacker
How The Trump Administration Inserts ‘Blame China’ Propaganda Into Main Stream Media
Throughout the last month there have been a number of reports with headlines like:
All the above and many more hark back to a Washington Post opinion piece by Josh Rogin published on April 14 and headlined:
State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses.
Josh Rogin is a neo-conservative hack who carries water for the Trump administration. That administration has launched a 'blame China' campaign to distract from its failure to contain the epidemic outbreak in the United States. To that purpose they handed Rogin an old diplomatic cable and told him how to 'interpret' it. Rogin dutifully does as he is told.
He begins:
Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge.
That sets the frame for describing the one cable that was given to Rogin. But when one extracts the facts from his reporting while eliminating the propaganda this picture arises:
Cont. reading: How The Trump Administration Inserts ‘Blame China’ Propaganda Into Main Stream Media
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