Who Is Likely To Go Without Food In The Engineered "Food Crisis"?

nakedcapitalism |  In a new paper, Who is likely to go without food in the looming supply crisis? Markit identifies additional choke points:

Principal supply issues
Not enough labour to harvest the crops. This is partly due to transport problems (see below) and partly because of lockdowns…India has discovered that it is easier to lock people down and get them to return to their home towns and villages than it is to get them out again….
Also, if social distancing is practised, yields go down unless you add many more staff. That, of course, adds to costs.
Primary and further processing has exactly the same problem. At the simplest level, if you space staff on a conveyor belt two metres apart instead of one, you effectively halve your production rate. Either you work extra shifts or you add extra lines, again raising prices….
Meat
US farmers are sending all their herds to early slaughter because the catering market is dead and so, at the most basic level, nobody in the US is going out for steak & eggs or a nice bacon and egg breakfast in a diner. It takes time to rear cattle to ideal slaughter size and age (less time for pigs and poultry) and farmers are unlikely to start rearing until they are certain that there will be a market for the meat when the time comes, so there will be a gap of several months. Frozen meat will make up for some of the shortfall, but beef prices are likely to soar.
Oil
The crude oil price is now negative. In addition, the ethanol market is dead….As nobody’s making ethanol, that means a shortage of animal feed because after fermentation, the mash is dried, pelletised and fed to animals.

The entire (short) piece is worth reading, because it reaches grim conclusions for much of the world,, including food riots in cities with large slum populations.

A less obvious but still important factor in the comparatively pampered US is that more eating at home means different eating patterns. Someone who grabs ethnic fast food for lunch isn’t likely to attempt that in his kitchen. And a lot of people aren’t good at cooking, so Lord only know what they’ll wind up subsisting on.² That’s why ground meat is so popular: it is versatile and fault tolerant.

America's New Negroes Better Start Learning To Love The Taste And Texture Of Bugs

usatoday |   A rash of coronavirus outbreaks at dozens of meatpacking plants across the nation is far more extensive than previously thought, according to an exclusive review of cases by USA TODAY and the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting. 

And it could get worse. More than 150 of America’s largest meat processing plants operate in counties where the rate of coronavirus infection is already among the nation’s highest, based on the media outlets’ analysis of slaughterhouse locations and county-level COVID-19 infection rates.

These facilities represent more than 1 in 3 of the nation’s biggest beef, pork and poultry processing plants. Rates of infection around these plants are higher than those of 75% of other U.S. counties, the analysis found. 

And while experts say the industry has thus far maintained sufficient production despite infections in at least 2,200 workers at 48 plants, there are fears that the number of cases could continue to rise and that meatpacking plants will become the next disaster zones.

"Initially our concern was long-term care facilities," said Gary Anthone, Nebraska's chief medical officer, in a Facebook Live video Sunday. “If there's one thing that might keep me up at night, it's the meat processing plants and the manufacturing plants."

As companies scramble to contain the outbreaks by closing more than a dozen U.S. plants so far – including a Smithfield pork plant in South Dakota that handles 5% of U.S. pork production – the crisis has raised the specter of mass meat shortages.

But experts say there's little risk of a dwindling protein supply because, given the choice between worker safety and keeping meat on grocery shelves, the nation’s slaughterhouses will choose to produce food.

“If this goes on for a long time, there is a reality of a shortage,” said Joshua Specht, an assistant professor of history at the University of Notre Dame who studies the meat industry. “The politics of this could play out that they reopen at enormous risks to workers, rather than face an actual shortage … I wouldn’t bet against that.”

The meatpacking industry already has been notorious for poor working conditions even before the coronavirus pandemic. Meat and poultry employees have among the highest illness rates of all manufacturing employees and are less likely to report injuries and illness than any other type of worker, federal watchdog reports have found. 

And the plants have been called out numerous times for refusing to let their employees use the bathroom, even to wash their hands – one of the biggest ways to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. 

Amplifying the danger is that, in many places, meat processing companies are largely on their own to ensure an outbreak doesn’t spread across their factory floors.

Antibody Testing In NYC Reveals 1-in-5 Infection Rate <.5 Fatality Rate

NYTimes | One of every five New York City residents tested positive for antibodies to the coronavirus, according to preliminary results described by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Thursday that suggested that the virus had spread far more widely than known.

If the pattern holds, the results from random testing of 3,000 people raised the tantalizing prospect that many New Yorkers — as many as 2.7 million, the governor said — who never knew they had been infected had already encountered the virus, and survived. Mr. Cuomo also said that such wide infection might mean that the death rate was far lower than believed.

While the reliability of some early antibody tests has been widely questioned, researchers in New York have worked in recent weeks to develop and validate their own antibody tests, with federal approval. State officials believe that accurate antibody testing is seen as a critical tool to help determine when and how to begin restarting the economy, and sending people back to work.

“The testing also can tell you the infection rate in the population — where it’s higher, where it’s lower — to inform you on a reopening strategy,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Then when you start reopening, you can watch that infection rate to see if it’s going up and if it’s going up, slow down.”

The testing in New York is among several efforts by public health officials around the country to determine how many people may have been already exposed to the virus, beyond those who have tested positive. The results appear to conform with research from Northeastern University that indicated that the coronavirus was circulating by early February in the New York area and other major cities.

In California, a study using antibody testing found rates of exposure as high as 4 percent in Santa Clara County — higher than those indicated by infection tests, though not nearly as high as found in New York. Public health officials recently disclosed that a woman in Santa Clara who died on Feb. 6 was infected with the virus.

In New York City, about 21 percent tested positive for coronavirus antibodies during the state survey. The rate was about 17 percent on Long Island, nearly 12 percent in Westchester and Rockland Counties and less than 4 percent in the rest of the state.

State researchers sampled blood from the approximately 3,000 people they had tested over two days, including about 1,300 in New York City, at grocery and big-box stores. The results were sent to the state’s Wadsworth facility in Albany, a respected public health lab.

Dr. Howard A. Zucker, the state health commissioner, said the lab had set a high bar for determining positive results, that it had been given blanket approval to develop coronavirus tests by the Food and Drug Administration and that state officials discussed this particular antibody test with the agency.

He said that while concerns about some tests on the market were valid, the state’s test was reliable enough to determine immunity — and, possibly, send people back to the office.

America Is The Most Extravagant Cornucopia Of Two-Piece-and-a-Biscuit Diversity EVER!!!

tomdispatch |  Today, more than 38 million people officially live below the federal poverty line and, in truth, that figure should have shocked the nation into action before the coronavirus even arrived here. No such luck and here’s the real story anyway: the official measure of poverty, developed in 1964, doesn’t even take into account household expenses like health care, child care, housing, and transportation, not to speak of other costs that have burgeoned in recent decades. The world has undergone profound economic transformations over the last 66 years and yet this out-of-date measure, based on three times a family’s food budget, continues to shape policymaking at every level of government as well as the contours of the American political and moral imagination.

Two years ago, the Poor People’s Campaign (which I co-chair alongside Reverend William Barber II) and the Institute for Policy Studies released an audit of America. Its centerpiece was a far more realistic assessment of poverty and economic precariousness in this country. Using the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure as a baseline, which, among other things, measures family income after taxes and out-of-pocket expenses for food, clothing, housing, and utilities, there are at least 140 million people who are poor -- or just a $400 emergency from that state. (Of that, there are now untold examples in this pandemic moment.)

As poverty has grown and spread, one of the great political weapons of politicians and the ruling elite over the past decades (only emphasized in the age of Trump) has been to minimize, dismiss, and racialize it. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” coded it into Republican national politics; in the 1980s, in the years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the fabricated image of “the welfare queen” gained symbolic prominence. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s welfare “reforms” enshrined such thinking in the arguments of both parties. Today, given the outright racism and xenophobia that has become the hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency, "poor" has become a curse word.

It is, of course, true that, among the 140 million poor people in the U.S., a disproportionate number are indeed people of color. The inheritance of slavery, Jim Crow, never-ending discrimination, and the mass incarceration of black men in particular, as well as a generational disinvestment in such populations, could have resulted in nothing less. And yet the reality of poverty stretches deep into every community in this country. According to that audit of America, the poor or low-income today consist of 24 million blacks, 38 million Latinos, eight million Asian-Americans, two million Native peoples, and 66 million whites.

Those staggering numbers, already a deadweight for the nation, are likely to prove a grotestque underestimate in the coronaviral world we now inhabit and yet none of this should be a surprise. Although we couldn’t have predicted the exact circumstances of this pandemic, social theorists remind us that conditions were ripe for just this kind of economic dislocation.

Clay and Cass Counties and North Kansas City to Reopen Early

kansascity |  Clay and Cass counties are over this coronavirus shutdown, and so will end their stay-at-home orders on May 3. 

Of course, if their COVID-19 cases spike as a result, it’s Kansas City’s hospitals that will be overwhelmed.

But with Missouri Gov. Mike Parson talking about how nearly every business in the state will hopefully be wide open again as of May 4, the temptation was apparently too much.

That’s a head-spinning reversal for Clay County, where officials who seem to have contempt for their own citizens just last week said they would extend their order until May 15, as Kansas City has.

And Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is right to be irritated. 

“Less than one week ago,” Lucas said in a statement, “every health director in our nine-county bistate region advised our region’s stay-at-home order remain in place until May 15 based on new infections, inadequate testing and insufficient contact tracing capabilities. I’m not sure what has changed.”

Let’s see, it can’t be that new infections are a thing of the past, since the Kansas City metropolitan area’s coronavirus count grew by 69 cases Wednesday. In fact, that was the largest jump the area — which includes Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas — had seen in 10 days.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/article242232561.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/article242232561.html#storylink=cpy

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman Tells The Truth And Shames The Devil

rollingstone |  “What I assume is that everybody is a coronavirus carrier — that 100 percent of our population is asymptomatic, but a carrier.” Goodman continued, “My whole opinion is: Get our people back to work.”

Goodman said that the city needs to protect people’s health while reopening, adding, “Most importantly, take care of our elderly, who are the most susceptible to having a terrible experience or perhaps even dying. And we love our seniors. I happen to be a senior!”

Tur asked how that protection can be preserved when an open and successful Vegas means crowded casinos with smokers, people touching slot machines, and people breathing recycled air, seemingly making them all more susceptible to the coronavirus.

“How do you keep people safe? Do you think it’s possible?” Tur asked.

“Well, absolutely,” Goodman answered. The mayor then rattled off a list of previous epidemics that did not close Vegas without using any context or expressing any knowledge as to why those should compare to the extreme contagion the coronavirus has proven to be.

“We’ve survived the West Nile and SARS, bird flu, E. coli, the swine flu, the Zika virus,” Goodman said.

Tur interjected, saying, “Those were not as contagious, and they did not spread as far as this disease has already done.”

To which Goodman astonishingly replied, “Well, we’ll find out the facts afterward. Unfortunately, we all do better in hindsight.”

“But those are the facts. We have a death toll that proves it,” Tur responded.

As Tur continued to push Goodman, the mayor downplayed the number of cases in Nevada, saying that with more than 3 million citizens, “we have 151, sadly, lost individuals, most of whom had pre-existing conditions.”

If You Don't Follow MSM You Are Uninformed - If You Do Follow MSM You Are Misinformed

off-guardian |  We have been given a very clear narrative about the declared coronavirus pandemic. The UK State has passed legislation, in the form of the Coronavirus Act, to compel people to self isolate and practice social distancing in order to delay the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (SC2). We are told this “lockdown”, a common prison term, is essential. We are also told that SC2 has been clearly identified to be the virus which causes the COVID 19 syndrome.

At the time of writing SC2 is said to have infected 60,733 people with 7,097 people supposedly dying of COVID 19 in the UK. This case fatality ration (CFR) of 11.7% is seemingly one of the worst in the world. Furthermore, with just 135 people recovered, the recovery rate in the UK is inexplicably low.

Some reading this may baulk at use of words like “seemingly” and “alleged” in reference to these statistics. The mainstream media (MSM) have been leading the charge to cast anyone who questions the State’s coronavirus narrative as putting lives at risk. The claim being that questioning what we are told by the State, its officials and the MSM undermines the lockdown. The lockdown is, we are told, essential to save lives.

It is possible both to support the precautionary principle and question the lockdown. Questioning the scientific and statistical evidence base, supposedly justifying the complete removal of our civil liberties, does not mean those doing so care nothing for their fellow citizens. On the contrary, many of us are extremely concerned about the impact of the lockdown on everyone. It is desperately sad to see people blindly support their own house arrest while attacking anyone who questions the necessity for it.

The knee jerk reaction, assuming any questioning of the lockdown demonstrates a cavalier, uncaring disregard is puerile. Grown adults shouldn’t simply believe everything they are told like mindless idiots. Critical thinking and asking questions is never “bad” under any circumstances whatsoever.

Only the State, with the unwavering support of its MSM propaganda operation, enforces unanimity of thought. If a system cannot withstand questioning it suggests it is built upon shaky foundation

is and probably not worth maintaining. Yet perhaps it is what we are not told that is more telling.

Among the many things we are not told is how many lives the lockdown will ruin and end prematurely. Are these lives irrelevant? 

We are not told the evidence for the existence of a virus called SARS-CoV-2 is highly questionable and the tests for it unreliable; we are not told that the numbers of deaths reportedly caused by COVID 19 is statistically vague, seemingly deliberately so; we are not told that these deaths are well within the normal range of excess winter mortality and we are not told that in previous years excess winter deaths have been higher than they are now. 

We didn’t need to destroy the economy in response to those, far worse, periods of loss so why do we need to do so for this?

LA County Replicates Stanford Santa Clara Serology: About As Lethal As Seasonal Flu

LATimes |  Hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles County residents may have been infected with the coronavirus by early April, far outpacing the number of officially confirmed cases, according to a report released Monday.

The initial results from the first large-scale study tracking the spread of the coronavirus in the county found that 4.1% of adults have antibodies to the virus in their blood, an indication of past exposure.

That translates to roughly 221,000 to 442,000 adults who have recovered from an infection, once margin of error is taken into account, according to the researchers conducting the study. The county had reported fewer than 8,000 cases at that time.

The findings suggest the fatality rate may be much lower than previously thought. But although the virus may be more widespread, the infection rate still falls far short of herd immunity that, absent a vaccine, would be key to return to normal life.

Antibody tests, also known as serology testing, have increasingly become a focal point in the response to coronavirus because they can potentially show the true extent of the virus’ reach and therefore can shed light on how close the population is to achieving herd immunity. That occurs when enough people have some degree of immunity to the virus that it becomes difficult for infections to spread.

“Any way you slice the data ... it’s clear that herd immunity in this situation does not apply. It’s still way below that level,” said Natalie Dean, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida.

Such tests can also provide a more accurate picture of how lethal the virus is.

The mortality rate is based on the number of confirmed infections; the higher the number of infections, the lower the fatality rate. Both studies estimated a mortality rate of 0.1% to 0.2%, which is closer to the death rate associated with the seasonal flu.

Controlavirus: Timelines And Narratives And Set-Ups - Oh My!!!

strategic-culture |  There may have been subtle hints of slightly increased activity at clinics in Wuhan in late November and early December. But at the time nobody – Chinese doctors, the government, not to mention U.S. intel – could have possibly known what was really happening.

China could not be “covering up” what was only identified as a new disease on December 30, duly communicated to the WHO. Then, on January 3, the head of the American CDC, Robert Redfield, called the top Chinese CDC official. Chinese doctors sequenced the virus. And only on January 8 it was determined this was Sars-Cov-2 – which provokes Covid-19.

This chain of events reopens, once again, a mighty Pandora’s box. We have the quite timely Event 201; the cozy relationship between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the WHO, as well as the Word Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins galaxy in Baltimore, including the Bloomberg School of Public Health; the ID2020 digital ID/vaccine combo; Dark Winter – which simulated a smallpox bio-attack on the U.S., before the 2001 anthrax attack being blamed on Iraq; U.S. Senators dumping stocks after a CDC briefing; more than 1,300 CEOs abandoning their cushy perches in 2019, “forecasting” total market collapse; the Fed pouring helicopter money already in September 2019 – as part of QE4.

And then, validating the ABC News report, Israel steps in. Israeli intel confirms U.S. intel did in fact warn them in November about a potentially catastrophic pandemic in Wuhan (once again: how could they possibly know that on the second week of November, so early in the game?) And NATO allies were warned – in November – as well.

The bottom line is explosive: the Trump administration as well as the CDC had an advance warning of no less than four months – from November to March – to be properly prepared for Covid-19 hitting the U.S. And they did nothing. The whole “China is a witch!” case is debunked.

Moreover, the Israeli disclosure supports what’s nothing less than extraordinary: U.S. intel already knew about Sars-Cov-2 roughly one month before the first confirmed cases detected by doctors in a Wuhan hospital. Talk about divine intervention.

That could only have happened if U.S. intel knew, for sure, about a previous chain of events that would necessarily lead to the “mysterious outbreak” in Wuhan. And not only that: they knew exactly where to look. Not in Inner Mongolia, not in Beijing, not in Guangdong province.

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?

Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo may have given away the game when he said, on the record, that Covid-19 was a “live exercise”. Adding to the ABC News and Israeli reports, the only possible, logical conclusion is that the Pentagon – and the CIA – knew ahead of time a pandemic would be inevitable.

That’s the smokin’ gun. And now the full weight of the United States government is covering all bases by proactively, and retroactively, blaming China.

Now The Show Me State Tryna Sue China For Reparations

npr  |  The state of Missouri is suing China for that country's handling of the coronavirus outbreak. It's the first such lawsuit brought by a state, and it relies on an unusual interpretation of federal law. 

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, blames China for letting the coronavirus spread. So he's suing China, three government ministries, two local governments, two laboratories and the Chinese Communist Party in U.S. District Court. They all "engaged in misrepresentations, concealment, and retaliation to conceal the gravity and seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak from the rest of the world," according to Schmitt. 

"There's been untold suffering across the globe, including here in Missouri, and we want to hold them accountable for that," Schmitt says.

China, however, is protected by sovereign immunity.

"A sovereign is not supposed to sue a sovereign, and that's what's going on here," says Lea Brilmayer, professor of international law at Yale Law School.

Brilmayer says that the case is highly unusual and that most judges would find that they don't have jurisdiction over a matter between a U.S. state and a sovereign nation.

"This is a last-ditch effort to do something to respond to the political situation," she says.

While Missouri might have a hard time moving forward with a lawsuit against China, Schmitt says there are workarounds. For instance, Schmitt says there's an exception for commercial activity and alleges that labs and hospitals are commercial ventures. He's also counting the Chinese Communist Party as a nonstate actor, which he says fortifies his legal argument.

Brilmayer says that if the case does move forward or if it works its way up the appeals process, the U.S. State Department would normally be expected to weigh in, perhaps with a letter to the judge explaining its position on the case.

In the meantime, other Republicans also are moving to try to hold China — not U.S. officials — accountable for American coronavirus deaths and economic damage. Last week, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley introduced legislation to strip China of its sovereign immunity.

Since THEY Are Just Making Shit Up - What'Choo Think - Was It Subways Or Was It Ubers?

MIT |  The Subways Seeded the Massive Coronavirus Epidemic in New York City

New York City’s multitentacled subway system was a major disseminator – if not the principal transmissionvehicle – of coronavirus infection during the initial takeoff of the massive epidemic that became evidentthroughout the city during March 2020. The near shutoff of subway ridership in Manhattan – downby over 90 percent at the end of March – correlates strongly with the substantial increase in the doublingtime of new cases in this borough. Maps of subway station turnstile entries, superimposed upon zipcode-level maps of reported coronavirus incidence, are strongly consistent with subway-facilitateddisease propagation. Local train lines appear to have a higher propensity to transmit infection thanexpress lines. Reciprocal seeding of infection appears to be the best explanation for the emergenceof a single hotspot in Midtown West in Manhattan. Bus hubs may have served as secondary transmissionroutes out to the periphery of the city.

MarketUrbanism |  Uber Seeded the Massive Coronavirus Epidemic in New York City 

New York City is an epicenter of the global novel coronavirus pandemic. Through April 16, there were 1,458 confirmed cases per 100,000 residents in New York City. Always in the media eye, and larger than any other American city, New York City has become the symbol of the crisis, even as suburban counties nearby suffer higher rates of infection.

In a paper dated April 13, 2020, Jeffrey E. Harris of M.I.T. claims that “New York City’s multitentacled subway system was a major disseminator – if not the principal transmission vehicle – of coronavirus infection during the initial takeoff of the massive epidemic.” Oddly, he does not go on to offer evidence in support of this claim in his paper.

Conversely, as I will show, data show that local infections were negatively correlated with subway use, even when controlling for demographic data. Although this correlation study does not establish causation, it more reliably characterizes the spread of the virus than the intuitions and visual inspections that Harris relies on.

Quarantines Seclude Sick People, Secluding The Healthy Is Something Else...,

statnews |  The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.

At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact.

Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?

Vaccines or affordable treatments take many months (or even years) to develop and test properly. Given such timelines, the consequences of long-term lockdowns are entirely unknown.

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.

This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.

Controlavirus Exhibits Identical Proliferation Patterns No Matter What You Humans Attempt To Do About it

redstate |  Tel Aviv University Professor Isaac Ben-Israel is a prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst, and former general and is considered to be highly credible, but he is not a medical expert.

Tel Aviv University Professor Isaac Ben-Israel is the chair of the school’s Securities Studies program, the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development and also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. He appeared on an Israeli television program (Hebrew) earlier this week to discuss his latest project. The Times of Israel reported on this story.

According to The Times, Ben-Israel plotted the rates of new infections in nearly a dozen countries including: U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, Spain, Singapore, and Taiwan. He concluded the following:

Simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.
Analyzing the growth and decline of new cases in countries around the world, showed repeatedly that “there’s a set pattern” and “the numbers speak for themselves.”

So, Ben-Israel claims that a country that has taken extraordinary measures to contain the virus vs. a nation like Sweden, which has been relatively lax, will follow a fixed pattern. The virus will peak and recede “in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all countries

experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week.”

The following comes from a translation of an interview Ben-Israel gave to Israeli media outlet Mako which was obtained by Townhall’s Marina Medvin:

It is a fixed pattern that is not dependent on freedom or quarantine. There is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures.
Expansion begins exponentially but fades quickly after about eight weeks. I have no explanation. There are is [sic] kinds of speculation: maybe it’s climate-related, maybe the virus has its own life cycle.

When asked about the high morbidity rate in Italy, Ben-Israel replied, “The health system in Italy has its own problems. It has nothing to do with coronavirus. In 2017 it also collapsed because of the flu.”

Contagion and Ideology: Memes Are Like A Virus Hiding From "The Immune System"

NBCNews |  An anti-government movement that advocates for a violent uprising targeting liberal political opponents and law enforcement has moved from the fringes of the internet into the mainstream and surged on social media in recent months, according to a group of researchers that tracks hate groups.

The movement, which says it wants a second Civil War organized around the term "boogaloo," includes groups on mainstream internet platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit, as well as fringe websites including 4chan, according to a report released Tuesday night by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an independent nonprofit of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media.

While calls for organized and targeted violence in the form of a new Civil War have previously circulated among some hate groups, the emergence of the term "boogaloo" appeared to be a new and discrete movement. NCRI researchers who analyzed more than 100 million social media posts and comments found that through the use of memes — inside jokes commonly in the form of images — extremists have pushed anti-government and anti-law enforcement messages across social media platforms. They have also organized online communities with tens of thousands of members, some of whom have assembled at real-world events.

The report "represents a breakthrough case study in the capacity to identify cyber swarms and viral insurgencies in nearly real time as they are developing in plain sight," John Farmer, a former New Jersey attorney general who is director of the Miller Center for Community Protection and Resilience at Rutgers University, wrote in the report's foreword.

Controlavirus Politics And Media On The 25th Anniversary Of The Oklahoma City Bombing

NYTimes |  The bombing’s 25th anniversary arrives on Sunday, and both historians and those who experienced the attack directly worry that the memory is fading even as the violent ideology that inspired Mr. McVeigh grows ever more prevalent.

“In today’s political environment, I hear echoes of the kind of rhetoric that I think inspired the perpetrators of the bombing,” David F. Holt, 41, the mayor of Oklahoma City, said. “I think that we all have an obligation to look at Oklahoma City — to look at that scar we have in our downtown — and remember where this all leads when you call other people your enemy, when you try to foster division and difference.”

Most events marking the anniversary were canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak. The annual reading of the names was prerecorded, along with brief remarks by various political figures. Local television stations planned to broadcast the hourlong remembrance video, which is also available online, on Sunday morning.

Homegrown terrorism is the main factor setting Oklahoma City apart.

“Americans forgot it pretty fast,” said David Neiwert, whose book “Alt-America” chronicles the spread of far-right extremism. “It is a difficult story to tell. It runs up against the whole narrative of American exceptionalism because that was an American terrorist, and Americans like to think that they don’t do that sort of thing, only guys in turbans do that.”

 Convicted of murder and other crimes in federal court in 1997, Mr. McVeigh was executed three months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. McVeigh, 26 at the time of the bombing, grew up a skinny, bullied kid in a typical middle-class home outside Buffalo. He joined the Army at 20, earning a Bronze Star as a gunnery sergeant in the Persian Gulf war.

While in the military, Mr. McVeigh grew increasingly obsessed with guns and hostile toward the U.S. government. Washing out of an audition for the Special Forces set him on the path toward the paramilitary wing of the white power movement.

Lacking a girlfriend or a promising job, he penned bitter letters. “Is a Civil War imminent?” he wrote to one newspaper. “Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it might.”

Basement Dwelling Gamma Ovaryman Birthed A Bellyfull Of Feminized Resentiment

riverfronttimes |  How fucking dare you, Wendy. Last I checked this is America, and my fellow Americans and I have the right to go wherever we want and do whatever we please. Your proposal to restrict my movement in and out of your dumb online group is nothing short of tyranny and will be met with revolution! The Tree of Facebook must, from time to time, be watered with the blood of patriots!

Listen, we could go all day here. The sad fact is these folks have already made up their minds, and their actions are going to get more people sick, and ironically enough are definitely, definitely going to mean that lockdowns will stay in place longer than if you just sat still and chilled the fuck out while the medical professionals get a handle on this thing. You are that group of kids that won't stop talking during a grade-school timeout and thereby keep getting the timeout extended. Fucking stop it!

I get that people are losing their livelihoods. Hell, the RFT itself was near-decimated in the last month as lockdowns cost us our advertisers and forced almost everyone on the editorial side to be laid off. (That whole "this is all a media conspiracy" trope is a pretty dumb one when you actually look at how it actually plays out for newsrooms, isn't it?) I genuinely feel your pain — so many people I know are out of work right now. It's scary as hell.

But your anger is misdirected. Instead of targeting the media organizations that are trying to keep you informed, or the politicians that are trying to keep the death tolls of their constituents down, maybe direct your ire toward the segments of our society that have eroded anything even remotely resembling a robust social safety net over the last 40 years, making us unimaginably vulnerable in a crisis like this while simultaneously funneling all the country's wealth upward to the nation's richest.

And I know this is going to fall on deaf ears, but please know I'm trying to look out for your safety here — not to mention the safety of my nurse fiancée, my 60-plus-year-old parents and my diabetic sister.

Please, just please reconsider this shit and stay home?

Speaking Of Mixing Processes: Nextdoor Got Inflamed Overnight About "Reopen Missouri"

fox4kc |  The stay-at-home orders set to expire next week have now been extended in both Kansas and Missouri until May 3.

And Kansas City, Jackson County and now Clay County have taken it a step further until May 15. 

But there’s a large group of people who say they won’t do it anymore. They want to get back to normal immediately, and they’re planning protests to let local leaders know. 

“I think it’s time to try to start working past the fear and get things reopened,” Jane Shull said. “If not, what are we going to do? Stay closed forever?” 

Shull owns a cleaning company, and her business is down 40-50% due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

She said she’s sick and tired of staying home and reading about businesses failing. 

“If people are afraid to go out or go to businesses, that’s their decision,” Shull said. “But let the people open up their businesses and have people social distance, whatever it takes, but you just cannot keep everything locked down.”

Groups on social media have been popping up, advocating for reopening the economy. 

A group called Reopen Missouri called the stay-at-home order an “inhumane and ineffective policy.” Another group called Reopen Kansas called the order a “severe overreaction to the COVID issue.” 

They’ve planned protests throughout both states next week. Locally, there’s a call to flood the now empty streets of downtown Kansas City on Monday and another protest planned at J.C. Nichols Fountain.

That Mixing Process Called REASSORTMENT Is One Of Two Ways Pandemic Viruses Are Created

ctvnews |  The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.

And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

"At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present," medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.

 "But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau."

The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn't die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.

Public health authorities concerned about what has been described as a "serious error" on Baxter's part have assumed the death of the ferrets meant the H5N1 virus in the product was live. But the company, Baxter International Inc., has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event.

On Friday, the company's director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected.

"It was live," Christopher Bona said in an email.

The contaminated product, which Baxter calls "experimental virus material," was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine -- including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly -- at a facility in the Czech Republic.

People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.

Was Coronavirus A General Use Weapon Sellable To Any High Bidder - No Questions Asked?

nyu |  1.1.  What is a GPT?

So, what are these “fundamental” features of GPTs that would allow us to compare one to another? And more generally, what criteria can one use to distinguish a GPT from other technologies? 

Bresnahan and Trajtenberg (1996)argue that a GPT should havethe following three characteristics: 1.Pervasiveness– The GPT should spread to most sectors.

2.Improvement– The GPT should get better over time and, hence, should keep low-ering the costs of its users.

3.Innovation spawning– The GPT should make it easier to invent and produce new products or processes.

Most technologies possess each of these characteristics to some degree, and thus a GPT cannot differ qualitatively from these other technologies. Note, too, that the third property is, in a sense, a version of the first property if we phrase the latter to say that the GPT should also spread to the innovation sector. Moreover, this list can be expanded to include more subtle features of GPTs, a subject that we consider in Section3.Yet we find these three basic characteristics to be a useful starting point for evaluating and com-paring the impact of various technologies through history. Investigating how Electricity and IT measure up on these three dimensions is the focus of Section2.

Why Did Xi Jinping Deliberately Sicken The World?

thediplomat |  We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest leaders, but People’s Republic of China leader Xi Jinping’s actions have forced us to rethink this assumption. Although the emergence of the novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was probably not due to China’s actions, the emphasis that its authoritarian system places on hiding bad news likely gave the disease a sizable head start infecting the world. But most ominously, China’s obsession with image and Machtpolitik raises serious questions about its lack of moral limits.

At some point the Chinese Communist Party learned of the epidemic and made a decision to hide its existence, hoping it went away. Exposés in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and the Chinese mainland’s Caixin show that the information that did flow out of China early in the crisis did so only because of the courage of individual Chinese people in the face of government repression. People in the Wuhan epicenter, however, began to get wise — and scared (here and here) — by the end of December 2019, forcing their government to say something. The authorities gave the impression of a nontransmissible disease already under containment. We know now this was entirely false, likely designed more to ease civil unrest than protect the people.

The mayor of Wuhan even suggested that the central government prevented him from revealing details about the epidemic until January 20. Considering the first public announcements came out of Wuhan on January 1, we can assume that Xi had a sense of the danger prior to that.

Clearly, downplaying the disease wasn’t working and it was time for the Party to get serious. But how serious? Would it provide full cooperation to the international community? Would being seen as the source of this virus hurt its international image? Beyond these, there was a darker dimension: the more Beijing cooperated, the less the disease stood to affect other countries. This includes countries China sees as a threat to its existence, like the United States. Why should China suffer the effects of a pandemic while others stayed safe — and increased their strength relative to China — based on China’s own costly experience?