99% of Italian Covid19 Deaths had Pre-existing Serious Illness Yet Martial Law

off-guardian |  Anything up to 99.2% of all of Italy’s recent Covid19-associated deaths could have been caused by pre-existing chronic conditions, according to a report released by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian Institute of Health, ISS)

The report was translated and sent to us by Swiss Propaganda Research. Their team have been doing some great work collating and translating sources of information on the coronavirus pandemic. Their daily updated thread, here, is a valuable resource to anyone trying to keep up-to-date.

There are some very important facts here, all ignored by the mainstream. 

There’s the epidemiological study done by a Japanese research group that found the case-fatality ratio to potentially be as low as 0.04% (markedly lower even than seasonal flu). 

There’s German and Chinese biologists reporting the unproven nature of Covid test kits and that they can generate “false positives”.

There’s the Italian study finding that up to 75% of positive test patients are entirely symptomless, coupled with warnings from Spanish doctors that panic and systemic overload pose a much greater threat to public health than the coronavirus.

As we said, it’s all very valuable information, and we highly recommend you read the whole thread, and check their daily updates. An excellent piece of research.

…but we mostly want to focus on their most recent update, the translation of the ISS report on the morbidity of coronavirus patients. The statistics are highly interesting. 

According to this report:

• The median age is 80.5 years (79.5 for men, 83.7 for women).
• 10% of the deceased was over 90 years old; 90% of the deceased was over 70 years old.
• Only 0.8% of the deceased had no pre-existing chronic illnesses.
• Approximately 75% of the deceased had two or more pre-existing conditions, 50% had three more pre-existing conditions, in particular heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
• Five of the deceased were between 31 and 39 years old, all of them with serious pre-existing health conditions (e.g. cancer or heart disease).
• The National Health Institute hasn’t yet determined what the patients examined ultimately died of and refers to them in general terms as Covid19-positive deaths.

Consider what these statistics mean, especially the third and final point together, followed to their logical conclusion.

99.2% of Italian Covid19-related deaths were already sick with something else, and the ISS hasn’t actually determined they died of Covid19 at all.

Controlavirus Spread Cannot Be Exponential: Real World Networks Have Limiting Structures

zdnet |  The media regularly refers to "exponential" growth in the number of cases of COVID-19 respiratory disease, and deaths from the disease, but the numbers suggest something else, a "small world" network that might have power law properties. That would be meaningfully different from the exponential growth path for the disease.

Is the spread of the respiratory infection known as COVID-19 happening in an "exponential" fashion?  

That's been the general contention of the media, which, as a public service, have explained at some length the basics of fast-growing quantities, such as disease, to hammer home how something like a virus can double in cases in a matter of days. 

However, the data on COVID-19 has a lot of puts and takes, and one of the factors not entirely considered is the graph of the infection. Graph theory has a lot to say about how phenomena can grow, such as the spread of infectious diseases. There are different graphs, or networks, of relations, and they can affect things such as the rate of propagation.  

One particular recent work calls into question the notion of the exponential growth of the disease. 

Scholars Anna Ziff and Robert Ziff, respectively of Duke University and the University of Michigan, earlier this month posted on the medrXiv pre-print server their curve-fitting exercise for COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths, both in China and in the rest of the world, titled "Fractal kinetics of COVID-19 pandemic." 

As the authors write, "in standard epidemiological analysis, one assumes that the number of cases in diseases like this one grows exponentially, based upon the idea of a fixed reproduction rate."  

But that standard epidemiological view is not born out by the data. They found that while the numbers "display large growth, they do not, in fact, follow exponential behavior." Rather, the authors observed a period of initial exponential growth, followed by what's called a "power law," which is not the same thing. 

De Verdad? ¿Qué sabe México sobre el coronavirus que no conocemos?

slate |  Last weekend, 110,000 people attended the “Vive Latino” music festival in Mexico City, which took place as scheduled despite several confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico’s capital. At the same time, while governments worldwide took drastic measures to slow down the spread of the disease, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, traveled to the south of Mexico and met with adoring crowds, shaking hands and hugging and kissing supporters. During his daily press conferences, AMLO has insisted that his honesty and moral rectitude protect him from the virus and that the threat of COVID-19 is greatly exaggerated. “I have great faith that we will move our dear Mexico forward, that misfortunes and pandemics won’t affect us,” he told reporters at a press conference on Sunday. 

The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Mexico may seem low, but it has grown exponentially over the last week, from eight to 118, and the first death from the disease was reported on Wednesday night. Moreover, Mexico has very limited testing capabilities, and the official statistics are not a reliable indicator of the actual number of cases in the country. Although the government’s position is that Mexico is still in “Phase 1” of the pandemic, meaning all diagnosed cases of COVID-19 are people who caught the virus while traveling abroad, most experts agree the virus is already rapidly spreading within Mexico and that the government’s nonchalance about the situation could have disastrous results. 

“We need political leaders that are properly advised and understand the gravity of the situation,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. “A lot of people in Mexico would die unnecessarily unless the government gets very seriously prepared for this.” Getting seriously prepared means taking drastic measures to curb the spread of the virus, bolstering the hospital system, and helping people cope when the economy grinds to a halt. 

The Mexican government has not yet imposed any travel restrictions nor encouraged people to stay home, and it seems very unlikely that the public health system, which suffered drastic budget cuts and shortages last year, will be prepared for the magnitude of the imminent crisis. 

“The current guidelines are ‘wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and avoid people who are coughing,’ ” said Gordon McCord, a professor at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of California San Diego.

Pelosi, Schiff, An'Em Banking On Controlavirus To Solve Prison And Homeless Problems

Guardian |  Southern California homeless shelter residents say long-running unsanitary and inhumane conditions now put them at severe risk of death amid the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

As California officials this week urged millions of residents to stay inside and avoid physical contact to slow the spread of Covid-19, people living in several overcrowded homeless shelters in Orange county say they continue to sleep in rows of beds within a few feet of each other, and that they often lack basic hygiene supplies and amenities.

The residents report a variety of serious problems, including empty soap dispensers, a lack of toilet paper, no hot water, broken sinks, no working thermometers, blood-stained walls and infrequent cleaning. They worry the shelters are ill-prepared to cope once the spread of the virus intensifies in the US.

“It’s appalling. One person gets a cough and everyone gets it,” said Wendy Powitzky, 49, who has been living at the La Mesa shelter in Anaheim in southern California for months. “We’ve already been passing around a standard cold.”

Some days, the soap containers in the bathroom go empty: “Most people don’t have their own. So I guess everyone else is just washing their hands with water.”

California has the largest homeless population in the US, with more than 40,000 people living in shelters on a given night. Advocates and shelter residents have warned for years that many of the facilities are underregulated and underfunded, and that conditions in some may pose significant health hazards. Amid the coronavirus crisis, they fear, those circumstances could make the spread of the virus in shelters near-inevitable.

Tulsi For Biden - Poor Jimmy Dore, Surprised His Head Didn't Explode

CTH |  Predictably odd, generally sketchy, and Tucker Carlson favorite, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, suspended her campaign for the 2020 democrat presidential nomination today while endorsing Joe Biden.  According to her brother posting on Facebook, Bernie Sanders refused the accept an endorsement.  Go figure.

Announcement – “[T]oday, I’m suspending my presidential campaign, and offering my full support to Vice President Joe Biden in his quest to bring our country together.”

 

I will continue to advocate for a 21st century foreign policy. One based on mutual respect and cooperation instead of confrontation, where we as a community of nations can work together to overcome the challenges that our people face — preventing and stopping pandemics like the coronavirus that is now affecting all of us, tackling climate change, combating terrorism, and removing the existential threat of nuclear war which hangs over the heads of all of us.

[…] “I want to extend my best wishes to my friends Senator Bernie Sanders, his wife Jane, Nina Turner and their many supporters for the work they’ve done. I have a great appreciation for Senator Sanders’ love for our country and the American people and his sincere desire to improve the lives of all Americans.” (link)

There Is Nothing More Political Than A Pandemic

opendemocracy  |  The US Federal Reserve has chosen to pump $1.5tn into Wall Street to reinflate the stock market, while millions of Americans go without insurance or continue to go to work despite sickness, because they can’t afford a day off. That’s a political choice.

The governments of Ireland, Finland and France have chosen to pay out millions to their citizens and to cancel mortgage and rent payments. Those, too, are political choices.

The poor are much more likely to die from COVID-19 than the rich, because they have other illnesses thanks to their poverty. The staggering increase in homelessness rates in the UK means thousands have nowhere safe to go. The failure to tackle domestic violence across the world means that millions of women will be living in fear as they self-isolate. All of these problems are products of the failures of our politics.

Wealth and power will define who is bankrupted and who isn’t, who becomes sick and who doesn’t, who gets the care they need and who suffers, how many of us will live and how many will die. But we will be told that we’re not allowed to talk about these things, because they’re political.

For a decade, progressives across the Western world have been pointing out that our healthcare systems are being torched on the altar of the market. But now we’re all paying the price of that sacrifice, we won’t be allowed to mention it. Because that’s political.

For a generation, the left has developed policy ideas to ensure the protection of everyone in an increasingly precarious economy. But we will be told off for calling for them. Because that’s political.

More broadly, politics is how we negotiate how we live together. And so there is absolutely nothing on earth that is more political than a pandemic, when disagreements over resources and priorities and behaviour define who will live and who will die, not through the slow playing-out of the long symphony of history, but in the coming weeks and months.

Health is always a social affair, and never more so than with infectious diseases. As a species we live in groups. Everybody’s health relies on everybody else’s. The survival of each depends to some extent on support for all. There is no such thing as an isolated individual decision in a pandemic.

There is no doubt that our world will not go back to what it was before, As Naomi Klein pointed out more than a decade ago, big money has long used disasters to advance its agenda of cuts, privatisation and deregulation, securing unpopular policies when people are too overwhelmed to resist.

Controlavirus: Incarceration Nation Will Lockdown Its Prisons and "Sacrifice" Its Prisoners

nakedcapitalism |  JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: Could you summarize some of the prison conditions that facilitate COVID-19 spread?

MICHELE DEITCH: Prisons and jails are so densely populated, and it is impossible for people in custody to keep a social distance from each other. There are usually two or more people in a small, shared cell and oftentimes there are large dormitories. There are shared open toilets and sinks, often part of a single fixture, and often located adjacent to the bunkbeds. The chow hall has shared tables and long lines, with food doled out cafeteria-style by incarcerated workers.  Lines are everywhere inside a facility: the pill line; the commissary line; the line for showers. Work assignments involve close contact with fellow workers. There are lots of group activities: school, vocational training, programs, recreation. In short, unless you are in solitary confinement (which is incredibly harsh and definitely something to be avoided), you are in constant close proximity to lots of other people.

JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: More than 2 million prisoners are incarcerated in the US. Yet prisoners are not the only potential victims of prison spread. COVID-19 will also hurt prison staff, who will further spread infections back into their wider communities. What can you tell us about these risks?

MICHELE DEITCH: Prisons and jails are already facing lots of staffing challenges, with many facilities severely understaffed and with high turnover rates. Staff are usually poorly paid, and many have difficult working conditions.

Of course, COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate between staff and prisoners, and once the virus is in the facility, it will affect everyone regardless of their position.

With this new challenge, we need to make sure that staff are protected as well as people in custody.  And we certainly need to make sure that they are not coming to work if they are sick, because the consequences could be disastrous.

JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: I understand that reducing the prison population is one policy that can mitigate potential COVID-19 consequences, both keeping people from entering the system, and accelerating release of existing prisoners. Please tell me a bit more about this.

MICHELE DEITCH: Prisons and jails are at especially high risk for the spread of COVID-19, because they are so densely populated and there is little ability to implement social distancing strategies. When (not if) the virus hits these facilities, it will spread like wildfire, with disastrous consequences.Thus it is urgent for all places of detention to immediately reduce the number of people who are incarcerated, both to make social distancing a bit easier and also so that incarceration doesn’t mean a death sentence for people in custody who have little ability to protect themselves in these circumstances.

There are two ways to reduce the population. Think of these institutions as bathtubs. First, we have to turn off the spigot, to reduce the number of people entering the facilities; and second, we have to open the drain, to accelerate releases of people who are already incarcerated.

JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: What is being done across the country to reduce the number of people entering the prison system? I know some jurisdictions are increasing pre-trial release, particularly for non-violent offenses and other low-risk prisoners, and Fox reports that Philadelphia is now delaying arrests, Philadelphia police to delay arrests for certain non-violent crimes.

MICHELE DEITCH: Experts and advocates around the country are correctly urging law enforcement officials to limit the number of arrests, and wherever possible, issue citations in lieu of arrest. No one who is medically vulnerable or pregnant should be brought to the jail. People charged with non-violent felonies and misdemeanors should not be brought to the jail’s booking area unless they present a serious risk to public safety. Each person who comes into the jail is a potential vector for transmission of the virus. Beyond that, warrants for minor offenses should be suspended. Probation and parole should not be revoked for technical violations of conditions. And anyone charged with misdemeanors or low-level felonies, and those presenting little risk to the community, should be released on personal bonds. All people sitting in the jail because they can’t raise money for bond should have their cases reviewed immediately.

America Will Arrest More, Not Fewer Citizens Under Its Controlavirus Protocols

reason |  What if we arrested fewer people in the first place, that way we don't have to panic about exposing people behind bars (and the guards who take care of then) to the coronavirus? It's a shift we're beginning to see in some municipalities.

Reason's Zuri Davis has reported on the mechanisms some courts and jails have been using to release prisoners early, particularly those who are being jailed for low-level crimes, in order to stop or reduce the spread of disease among people in jail.

But many cities are also reconsidering whether the police actually need to arrest people for certain minor crimes and bring them to jail for processing in the first place. This is yet another temporary shift in behavior that might be worth considering even when the coronavirus is not such an omnipresent threat.

In Philadelphia, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has set forth new guidelines to stop police officers from arresting people accused of a host of nonviolent misdemeanor crimes. Instead, they'll briefly detain the suspect to confirm identity and fill out arrest warrant paperwork, then release the suspect. The arrest warrant will be served at a later time when the coronavirus risk has faded.

The list of crimes that will no longer lead to people being processed into jail includes prostitution and all narcotics crimes. (We should hope this prompts the city to realize they should have never thrown people in jail for these crimes in the first place.) The list also includes vandalism, several different types of thefts, burglary, and even car theft. So while these aren't violent crimes, they also aren't victimless crimes. This doesn't mean those people won't be held accountable by the justice system eventually and be ordered to make amends to their victims, by they're not going to be tossed in jail for now. Vehicle impoundments are also being suspended.

After making the announcement Tuesday, Outlaw clarified today that an officer "still has the authority to utilize discretion, and take an offender into physical custody for immediate processing, if the officer and supervisor believe the individual poses a threat to public safety."

Arresting fewer people who aren't dangerous is a great way to keep jail populations down and reduce chances for the coronavirus to spread. But it's honestly something that we should have started doing earlier, unprompted by pandemic, because we have too many people in jail who don't really need to be there, and because jail time disrupts many lives in unnecessary ways.

Controlavirus As A Global Economic Reset

CTH | …there had to be a point where the value of the Wall St economy surpassed the value of the Main St economy… Part I Here

We now look forward, and consider the question: How would the multinational underwriters, the multinational financial systems, reset all transactional tables (the bookkeeping systems underneath the valuation) if the U.S. stock market was ever forced to re-value economic nationalism over multinational globalism?

To first answer the “how” question, we must visit the “why” question. Why would the multinational financial underwriters want to reset their valuations?

Obviously, the global financial system does not act altruistically. What would motivate the global wealth valuation authority (various market investment indexes) to want, or need, a reset.

The answer to the “why” question might not be as challenging as it appears.

First, there has been a seismic shift in how the world looks at the economic exploitation of multinational systems, or globalism.  See Bernie Sanders?  See those yellow vests in France?  See what happened with the U.K. Brexit referendum?  See the shrinking EU influence?  See the open/public confrontation and push-back against China? See Trump? All examples are consequences of the rise of economic nationalism.

Secondly, the original Wall Street corporate motive (during decades of mergers and acquisitions) to shift product manufacturing to Southeast Asia (ASEAN nations) was driven by a lower cost of overall business, higher profit margins and greed.

As a direct outcome economic wealth was shifted from the U.S. to ASEAN nations, and particularly China. Low wages, low regulation, cheap operational costs, incentives and subsidies from Asia equals cheap TV’s, sneakers, furniture and durable goods.

Even with high fuel prices and overseas shipping costs, there was a big difference between U.S. and ASEAN manufacturing costs.  As hundreds of U.S. Wall Street multinationals chased profits the rust-belt was created.

Will Controlavirus End Gilet Jaune?

Independent |  France has deployed 100,000 police and set up checkpoints across the country as the country begins a 15-day lockdown to combat the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

The army has also been ordered to assist with efforts, transporting infected patients to alleviate saturated hospitals.

Under the new measures, which went into effect at midday on Tuesday, people are only permitted to leave their homes to buy food or medicine.

Certain workers are also allowed to travel but will need to carry a “sworn statement” detailing their journey and the nature of their work, while exercise is also permitted if done alone.

All “non-essential” public places have also been closed, including shops, restaurants and cafes.

In a televised address on Monday evening, French president Emmanuel Macron said that anyone flouting the regulations would be punished.

“Never before in history has France had to take such exceptional measures in a time of peace,” he said. 

“We are not up against another army or another nation. But the enemy is right there: invisible, elusive, but it is making progress... We are at war.”

Han Elites Poised To Unleash Full Controlavirus On Hong Kong

reuters |  Officers from China’s top internal security force - the People’s Armed Police – joined Hong Kong police on the frontlines to observe anti-government protests that peaked last year, according to a senior foreign diplomat and an opposition politician. 

Hong Kong police took PAP officers to monitor the protesters and their tactics as part of a wider effort by the paramilitary force to deepen its understanding of the Hong Kong situation, they said.

“I’m aware that Hong Kong police officers have taken Chinese security forces to the front during protests, apparently in an observation role,” veteran democratic legislator James To told Reuters.

To said he had reason to believe the Chinese forces included members of locally-based PAP units.

The foreign diplomat, who requested anonymity and declined to be quoted due to sensitivity over commenting on security matters, also said PAP officers accompanied police to the frontlines. 

Responding to questions from Reuters, the Chinese Defence Ministry said the PAP was not stationed in Hong Kong, while a Hong Kong police spokesman said they “stress that there is no such visit or observation by any members of the mainland law enforcement agencies”. 

The State Council Information Office and the Central Government’s Hong Kong Liaison Office did not respond to Reuters’ questions. 

The diplomat and three other foreign envoys, however, estimated that China’s government had ramped up the paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP) presence in Hong Kong to as many as 4,000 personnel - far more than previously known estimates. 

Their assessments were based on intense scrutiny of the security forces’ response to the pro-democracy protests, which began last June, but have ebbed this year amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis. 

Reuters had reported in September that an unknown number of PAP were among a surge in Chinese security forces moved quietly into bases across the city last year as Hong Kong’s government struggled to contain the mounting political unrest. 

The rapidly-modernized PAP is the mainland’s core paramilitary and anti-riot force and operates separately from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).  

Under 2018 reforms, both the PAP and PLA are under the ultimate command of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who sits at the apex of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.

This About Main Core and Controlavirus - Not PROMIS and L'Affaire Epstein....,

salon |  "It's not just the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program,'" agrees Gregory T. Nojeim from the Center for Democracy and Technology, referring to the Bush administration's misleading name for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. "We need a broad investigation on the way all the moving parts fit together. It seems like we're always looking at little chunks and missing the big picture." 

A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores -- without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security. 

According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community." 

Some of the former U.S. officials interviewed, although they have no direct knowledge of the issue, said they believe that Main Core may have been used by the NSA to determine who to spy on in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, the NSA's use of the database, they say, may have triggered the now-famous March 2004 confrontation between the White House and the Justice Department that nearly led Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director William Mueller and other top Justice officials to resign en masse. 

The Justice Department officials who objected to the legal basis for the surveillance program -- former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel -- testified before Congress last year about the 2004 showdown with the White House. Although they refused to discuss the highly classified details behind their concerns, the New York Times later reported that they were objecting to a program that "involved computer searches through massive electronic databases" containing "records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans." 

According to William Hamilton, a former NSA intelligence officer who left the agency in the 1970s, that description sounded a lot like Main Core, which he first heard about in detail in 1992. Hamilton, who is the president of Inslaw Inc., a computer services firm with many clients in government and the private sector, says there are strong indications that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance operations use Main Core. 

Hamilton's company Inslaw is widely respected in the law enforcement community for creating a program called the Prosecutors' Management Information System, or PROMIS. It keeps track of criminal investigations through a powerful search engine that can quickly access all stored data components of a case, from the name of the initial investigators to the telephone numbers of key suspects. PROMIS, also widely used in the insurance industry, can also sort through other databases fast, with results showing up almost instantly. "It operates just like Google," Hamilton told me in an interview in his Washington office in May. 

Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases -- to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions. Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for searching the Main Core database.

Want To See a Coincidence Theory? Check the Posting Date on this Job!

CDC Public Health Advisor Quarantine Program Jobs Listings Dated 11/15/19

nature |  Epidemiologists say China’s mammoth response had one glaring flaw: it started too late. In the initial weeks of the outbreak in December and January, Wuhan authorities were slow to report cases of the mysterious infection, which delayed measures to contain it, says Howard Markel, a public-health researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “The delay of China to act is probably responsible for this world event,” says Markel.

A model simulation¹ by Lai Shengjie and Andrew Tatem, emerging-disease researchers at the University of Southampton, UK, shows that if China had implemented its control measures a week earlier, it could have prevented 67% of all cases there. Implementing the measures 3 weeks earlier, from the beginning of January, would have cut the number of infections to 5% of the total.

SARS-CoV2 Chickens Coming Home To Roost

caitlinjohnstone |   It’s interesting how the virus which might knock down the most powerful government in the world behaves so much like that government: dominating world affairs and killing the most vulnerable members of the populations it attacks. Nations which are being smashed with US sanctions have already been watching their frail and elderly die of inadequate medical care and malnutrition, and now with the coronavirus they’re experiencing those same exact effects squared. Which is why places like Iran are being hit so uniquely hard. America is like if COVID-19 was a country.

Also interesting is watching people react to the way so many of the corporate and government policies which have been causing ordinary human beings to suffer great pains are now simply being canceled all around the world in response to the pandemic. This Slate article documents a number of the changes which have been made just in America, like how for people being thrown in jail for minor offenses, “San Antonio is one of many jurisdictions to announce that, to keep jails from being crowded with sick citizens, they’ll stop doing that. Why were they doing it in the first place?” Or how “Trump has instructed government agencies who administer loans to waive interest accrual for the duration of the crisis. But why on earth is our government charging its own citizens interest anyway?”

We’re seeing immense burdens lifted from people with an easy “Oh, that’s making the pandemic worse? Okay we’ll stop that then.” And we’re seeing people react with fully justified indignation with, “Well why were you doing that to me in the first place??”

And the answer is very simple: because until now, your suffering wasn’t exacerbating a virus which does not discriminate on the basis of class. Politicians and billionaires are just as capable of losing their lives and loved ones to this virus as anyone else, as the CEO of Universal Music Group just learned with his COVID-19 hospitalization. Simply not causing needless human suffering wasn’t enough to get them to stop crushing people; it had to actually show up on their doorstep to make a difference.

Coronavirus Blues: No Matter How Good The Chicken, Cain't Be No Finger Lickin!

nydailynews |  Kentucky Fried Chicken is suspending its signature slogan — for obvious reasons.

On Friday, the fast food chain announced it would suspend an advertising campaign focused on its famous “finger lickin’ good” motto amid the coronavirus crisis.

According to The Independent, Advertising Standards Authority — the self-regulatory agency focused on the British advertising industry — received 163 complaints about the U.K.-based television ads that started running in February.

“Our team in the UK didn’t feel like it was the right time to be airing this particular advertisement, so they’ve decided to pause it for now,” a KFC spokesperson told the Daily News Monday evening.

Weeks ago, the American-headquartered fried chicken giant announced a search for a “professional finger licker” willing to show off their skills with a widespread billboards campaign that went up across Britain.

With health officials all over the world stressing the dire importance for hygiene and hand-washing, the idea of any kind of finger-licking doesn’t quite strike the right tone.

For the time being, there won’t be any ads featuring people licking their fingers after eating the company’s flagship product. The slogan was trademarked by KFC, also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, in 1956,

That Lemony Fresh Stash Of "Finger Lickin Good" Wipes Is Now STRAIGHT MONEY!!!

fox5ny |  One police department in Oregon posted a reminder on their Facebook page, asking the public to not call for an emergency if they run out of toilet paper due to the coronavirus outbreak.

 "It’s hard to believe that we even have to post this," police in Newport, Oregon wrote. "Do not call 9-1-1 just because you ran out of toilet paper. You will survive without our assistance."

The post then pointed out the different methods used throughout history before suggesting other items that could be used in lieu of "your favorite soft, ultra plush two-ply citrus scented tissue."

Among their suggestions: grocery store receipts, newspaper, cloth rags, magazine pages, cotton balls and even leaves.

"Be resourceful. Be patient. There is a TP shortage. This too shall pass. Just don’t call 9-1-1. We cannot bring you toilet paper," the post concluded.

How Long Before Shin Bet Style Surveillance Proposed In the U.S.?

APNews |  Israel has long been known for its use of technology to track the movements of Palestinian militants. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to use similar technology to stop the movement of the coronavirus.

Netanyahu’s Cabinet on Sunday authorized the Shin Bet security agency to use its phone-snooping tactics on coronavirus patients, an official confirmed, despite concerns from civil-liberties advocates that the practice would raise serious privacy issues. The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official announcement.

Netanyahu announced his plan in a televised address late Saturday, telling the nation that the drastic steps would protect the public’s health, though it would also “entail a certain degree of violation of privacy.”

 Israel has identified more than 200 cases of the coronavirus. Based on interviews with these patients about their movements, health officials have put out public advisories ordering tens of thousands of people who may have come into contact with them into protective home quarantine.

The new plan would use mobile-phone tracking technology to give a far more precise history of an infected person’s movements before they were diagnosed and identify people who might have been exposed.

In his address, Netanyahu acknowledged the technology had never been used on civilians. But he said the unprecedented health threat posed by the virus justified its use. For most people, the coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms. But for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness.

"You" Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste

wandtv |  Champaign Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen has issued an executive order declaring an emergency in the city. 

City officials said the emergency is related to the COVID-19, which is anticipated to cause an impact on the health of community members. Champaign Municipal Code allows the mayor to declare an emergency for a limited time. 

Included in the executive order are ordinances that would give the city extraordinary powers to the Mayor. 

• Violating parts of the Open Meetings Act
• Ban sale of firearms and ammunition
• Ban sale of any alcohol
• Closing of all bars, taverns, liquor stores, etc
• Ban sale or giving away of gasoline or other liquid flammable or combustible products in any container other than a gasoline tank permanently fixed to a motor vehicle
• Direct the shutoff of power, water, gas, etc
• Take possession of private property and obtain full title to same
• Prohibit or restrict ingress and egress to and from the City

"The executive order allows the city to be flexible to properly respond to the emergency needs of our community. None of the options will necessarily will be implemented but are available in order to protect the welfare and safety of our community if needed," Jeff Hamilton the City of Champaign's Communications Manger told WAND-TV. 

nbcchicago |  Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared a disaster proclamation Monday over the coronavirus outbreak as an additional four cases were reported in Chicago.

A total of 11 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Illinois while more than 24 deaths and 600 total cases have been reported in the U.S. Along with Illinois, 13 other states have declared states of emergency amid the outbreak, Pritzker said. 

"We will have all the tools at play and rapidly available to deploy," he added.

The disaster declaration announced Monday, Illinois' version of a state of emergency, is the first step toward obtaining federal funding to help with the outbreak. 

At a news conference Monday, Pritzker urged residents to help themselves, their families and communities.

"We are one community here in Illinois, and community members take care of each other," Pritzker said. "Don't let fear replace level-headedness. You have responsibilities during this crisis too, and it's important to live up to them."

Farrakhan Has NEVER Harmed a Jew: Countless Jews Have Exploited and Devastated American Negroes

theatlantic |  On a blustery Baltimore night in the late 1980s, I went to hear Louis Farrakhan speak to a packed crowd at Morgan State University, a historically black college. For more than five decades, the Nation of Islam leader has railed against Jews, variously describing them as “satanic,” “bloodsuckers,” and “termites.” He was at the peak of his influence at the time. As the editor of the weekly Baltimore Jewish Times, I wanted to experience firsthand the impact his hate-filled invective had on audiences.

I went with a fellow editor from the paper, and ours were among a handful of white faces in the large crowd. In one of his long and angry tirades that night, Farrakhan focused his venom on white people, Jews, and the media.

Eliot A. Cohen: Socially acceptable anti-Semitism

Taking notes as surreptitiously as possible, my colleague and I exchanged worried glances, keenly aware that we represented a trifecta of evil in Farrakhan’s world. We sensed some hard stares from those around us, and as the gifted orator ratcheted up his pitch, rousing his listeners, we feared for our safety. A word from the reverend and the crowd might have turned on us. But then, as he neared the end of his rant, his pace slowed, his voice lowered, and he called on his listeners to show their pride and dignity when encountering television reporters outside the auditorium.

Farrakhan’s words had an immediate calming effect. I remember feeling a tug of gratitude for the shift in his tone and message, and noted how quickly a crowd can be stirred up or calmed down.

Amid the terrifying wave of anti-Semitism in the United States of late, I have thought of that scene and wondered what has stirred up such anger against Jews now.

How do we explain Jews being shot to death at Shabbat prayer in their synagogue by hate-filled white nationalists in Pittsburgh and Poway, California; and visibly Orthodox men and women violently attacked in Brooklyn and Monsey, New York, and shot down next door to a synagogue in Jersey City, New Jersey?

These headline-grabbing incidents are part of a broader pattern. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) began tracking anti-Semitic hate crimes four decades ago. This past year brought the third-highest spike on record. Jews make up less than 3 percent of the American population, but the majority of reported religiously based hate crimes target Jewish people or institutions. In a new study by the American Jewish Committee, 35 percent of American Jews said they had experienced anti-Semitism in the past five years, and one-third reported concealing outward indications of their being Jewish.

Judaism As A Group Evolutionary Strategy

nih | MacDonald argues that a suite of genetic and cultural adaptations among Jews constitutes a “group evolutionary strategy.” Their supposed genetic adaptations include, most notably, high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. According to this thesis, several major intellectual and political movements, such as Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and multiculturalism, were consciously or unconsciously designed by Jews to (a) promote collectivism and group continuity among themselves in Israel and the diaspora and (b) undermine the cohesion of gentile populations, thus increasing the competitive advantage of Jews and weakening organized gentile resistance (i.e., anti-Semitism). By developing and promoting these movements, Jews supposedly played a necessary role in the ascendancy of liberalism and multiculturalism in the West. While not achieving widespread acceptance among evolutionary scientists, this theory has been enormously influential in the burgeoning political movement known as the “alt-right.” Examination of MacDonald’s argument suggests that he relies on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts. It is argued here that the evidence favors what is termed the “default hypothesis”: Because of their above-average intelligence and concentration in influential urban areas, Jews in recent history have been overrepresented in all major intellectual and political movements, including conservative movements, that were not overtly anti-Semitic.

Keywords: Jews, Anti-Semitism, Group conflict, Gene-culture coevolution, Kevin MacDonald, Culture of critique

 

In the 1990s, Kevin MacDonald wrote a trilogy of books arguing that Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy,” and the pursuit of this strategy by Jews had far-reaching consequences for world history. In A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (1994) he proposed that, since its inception, Judaism has promoted eugenic practices favoring high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. As a consequence, the contemporary Jewish population (at least the Ashkenazi population) is marked by a high level of these traits, including a mean IQ of 117 (weighted on verbal intelligence). In Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998b) he argued that anti-Semitism is a reaction by gentiles to competition for resources with less populous but more organized and competent Jewish groups. In The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1998a), he argued that post-Enlightenment Jews who abandoned the religion of Judaism invented a substitute: liberal political, intellectual, and scientific movements with the same social and organizational structure as Judaism, and the same ultimate purpose to promote the evolutionary success of Jews.

According to The Culture of Critique, the most influential of these intellectual movements—Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Frankfurt School critical theory—were headed by charismatic and authoritarian leaders (analogous to rabbis), they placed great value on verbal brilliance and internal consistency rather than testability or agreement with external reality (analogous to Talmudic scholarship), and they promoted Jewish group interests at the expense of gentiles. The movements advocated separatism and ethnocentrism for Jews, discouraged ethnic identification among white gentiles (in order to prevent group consciousness among white gentiles that might lead to a sense of competition with Jews and thus anti-Semitism), undermined and destabilized traditional European culture to weaken resistance to Jewish control, “pathologized” anti-Semitism, and denied that Jewish behavior plays a role in anti-Jewish attitudes.

MacDonald argues that Jewish intellectual and political movements were responsible for major trends in twentieth-century scientific, political, and demographic history. These movements, he says, were responsible for the rejection of Darwinian thinking among most mainstream social scientists, and also for large-scale nonwhite immigration to European and European-colonized countries (the United States, Australia, etc.).