Coronavirus

[turkeyfoot]

7 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Look who Brit Hume of Fox News is quoting.

The WSJ article is behind a paywall so I won't quote it.

But look at the book Don Luskin wrote a while back:

I Am John Galt: Today's Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It by Donald Luskin and Andrew Greta

Michael

Britt is a bit long in the tooth but up there with the likes of Eric Sevareid and Edwin Newman. He still has the Jack Anderson gravitas. But Luskin likes to sell for more than Ive ever seen a Kindle book in a long while. My gut informed me long ago that if it smells like BS it probably is. Im fond of using my age in this one instance for explaining that Ive never seen anything like it so how could it be a virus is so bad. I have heard a poster child Dr on Tuckers show explain even in 1918 most people who died at the time died of pneumonia not from the pandemic virus. Again maybe they succumed by way of a compromised immune system. So many lies and distortions even prior to '16-'20. 

[Jules Troy]

The 1918 virus killed mostly people in the 20-40 and healthy as a horse range.  Their immune systems fought the virus very aggressively but as a result they then died due to their lungs filling up with fluid from that immune response.   Also...it killed fast often within 4-5 days of contracting it.

Yes covid is contagious, yes it kills people.  Mostly old and immune compromised but it’s got nothing on the 1918 pandemic.

[anthony]

HCQ gets the nod?

Clinical trials show Hydroxychloroquine is 'safe' with no reported toxicity

(Note to Tony: I fixed your link. It was staying on Facebook. btw - Great link.  )

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mario is not having a good day.

 

President Trump is taking Mario and Bill's federal money, too.

And: 

Trump calls for review to cut funding to cities with 'lawless' protests
 

Quote

Trump signed a five-page memo ordering federal agency heads to submit a report to the Office of Management and Budget detailing all federal funds provided to Seattle, Portland, New York City and Washington, D.C. within 14 days. 

“My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump stated according to a copy of the memo shared by the White House. 

“To ensure that Federal funds are neither unduly wasted nor spent in a manner that directly violates our Government’s promise to protect life, liberty, and property, it is imperative that the Federal Government review the use of Federal funds by jurisdictions that permit anarchy, violence, and destruction in America’s cities,” he added.

Attorney General William Barr is also directed to publish on the Department of Justice website a list identifying “anarchist jurisdictions,” defined as state and local jurisdictions “that have permitted violence and the destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract these criminal activities,” according to the memo.

 

Mario was not amused.

Gov. Cuomo says: Trump ‘better have an army’ to protect him if he comes to NYC

Spoken like a true thug.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Andrew Cuomo is about to learn a hard lesson.

You don't openly threaten the President of the United States with bodily harm, especially if you are a Governor of a State. Not even if you are goaded.

Cuomo walked right into this trap.

And (so far):

It's about time, too.

If I know President Trump's processes from studying him for so long, this is called "setting the table." It's usually done in deals, but it's fundamentally the same thing for politics.

There should be some major action coming Cuomo's way as follow-up, maybe from AG Barr, maybe from a specific law enforcement entity.

Regardless, it's not a good time to be him.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

21 hours ago, turkeyfoot said:

I have heard a poster child Dr on Tuckers show explain even in 1918 most people who died at the time died of pneumonia not from the pandemic virus.

That presents a false bifurcation, pneumonia or virus. The pneumonia, which is typically the proximal cause of death, is produced either directly because of the lungs filling with fluid as a result of the body's immune response or indirectly because the body's weakened state allows a secondary pneumonia-producing pathogen to take hold.

Ellen

[william.scherk]

19 hours ago, Jules Troy said:

The 1918 virus killed mostly people in the 20-40 and healthy as a horse range.  Their immune systems fought the virus very aggressively but as a result they then died due to their lungs filling up with fluid from that immune response.   Also...it killed fast often within 4-5 days of contracting it.

Yes covid is contagious, yes it kills people.  Mostly old and immune compromised but it’s got nothing on the 1918 pandemic.

The death toll rolls on in North America, at different ratios in the three nations. The expected death toll by the end of the year will be pertinent, not to the dead, but to the living. 1918 is likely not pertinent to all.

For example, viral myocarditis has hit the news lately, reported in people who have been infected but mostly symptom-free otherwise.

We've done our best to contain the pandemic in BC. I'm glad we have world-class public health officers, clinical expertise, medical research, and the ability to roll out a vaccine ... presumably to front-line healthcare workers and the most vulnerable in our communities.

I'm a member of "Keep the virus away from our eighty-year old family" party.

I am glad that OLers in various higher pre-existing risk groups (like me) have avoided infection. The knock-on effects and cardiac risk are just too unpredictable for us.

I hope to be immunized by my next birthday.

Jules, you've probably sat through thousands of safety briefings on the jobsite. If you are anything like my brother, you've had sAfETy seemingly branded on your cortex. You have my sympathies if you've ever felt like turning on Godzilla in those sessions.

The one brand that stays with me was from the Food Safety Plan discussions with our newly-hired cooks. Getting them to have nightmares about "Critical Control Points" was my main goal.

[Jules Troy]

I’ve been taking all the precautions I can seeing as I am considered an essential service provider.  So I just do my thing and move on.  I’m looking forward to this little sucker being neutralized so things can go back to normal though.  I worry about my mom though as she is 86.

Also Bill there is reinfection.  That one fellow that had mild symptoms with initial infection had to be hospitalized when he caught it the second time and he is 25.

[Brant Gaede]

17 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Mario is not having a good day.

 

President Trump is taking Mario and Bill's federal money, too.

And: 

Trump calls for review to cut funding to cities with 'lawless' protests
 

 

Mario was not amused.

Gov. Cuomo says: Trump ‘better have an army’ to protect him if he comes to NYC

Spoken like a true thug.

Michael

In spite of what Cuomo says, President Ford never told NYC to "drop dead!" That was a famous Daily News headline's estimation.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

He effectively threatened the President. It's like calling on the criminals to take a whack at him implying it wouldn't be a law enforcement matter.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

6 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

He effectively threatened the President. It's like calling on the criminals to take a whack at him implying it wouldn't be a law enforcement matter.

--Brant

Brant,

You been talkin' to Luigi?

Luigi's gotta big mouff...

Tell Luigi to lay low or de men back East might want to have a little chat wiff 'im themselves.

 

Michael

[william.scherk]

On 2/27/2020 at 9:14 AM, Brant Gaede said:

More like a cold than flu, which killed 31,000 in the US last year, it still has hardly gotten out of China.

Bob Woodward's forthcoming book, "Fear," is said to have incorporated material from at least seventeen recorded interviews with President Trump. Prepare for new propaganda/persuasive arts eruptions, because today Woodward allowed some taped material to be released.  In one conversation, in February, Woodward seems to argue that President Trump was well-briefed on the viral menace to America in early February ... but while sharing his COVID-19 knowledge with Woodward, the public facing Trump offered something different.  Easily-explained, perhaps, but this will take over current public discussion space --  folded into the mix of claims and impressions that Trump is incompetent in the face of the pandemic.

"Misleading and downplaying risk" will likely be the line of attack ...

Quote

[...] When Woodward spoke to Trump on February 7, two days after he was acquitted on impeachment charges by the Senate, Woodward expected a lengthy conversation about the trial. He was surprised, however, by the President's focus on the virus. At the same time that Trump and his public health officials were saying the virus was "low risk," Trump divulged to Woodward that the night before he'd spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about the virus. Woodward quotes Trump as saying, "We've got a little bit of an interesting setback with the virus going in China."

 

"It goes through the air," Trump said. "That's always tougher than the touch. You don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus."

 

But Trump spent most of the next month saying that the virus was "very much under control" and that cases in the US would "disappear." Trump said on his trip to India on February 25 that it was "a problem that's going to go away," and the next day he predicted the number of US cases "within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero."
 

[...]

What is a  "strenuous flu"?

Quote

Top Items: 

CNN: 25 minutes ago

‘Play it down’: Trump admits to concealing the true threat of coronavirus in new Woodward book  —  Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed US coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous, airborne, highly contagious and “more deadly …

Discussion:

Justin Baragona / The Daily Beast:   Trump Admitted to Woodward That He Downplayed the Coronavirus. And There Are Tapes.

Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:   Trump admitted downplaying coronavirus dangers in early days of pandemic, new Bob Woodward book says

The Guardian:   Trump admitted coronavirus was ‘deadly’ in February according to Woodward book - live

RELATED:

Washington Post: 25 minutes ago

Woodward book: Trump says he knew coronavirus was ‘deadly’ and worse than the flu while intentionally misleading Americans  —  President Trump's head popped up during his top-secret intelligence briefing in the Oval Office on Jan. 28 when the discussion turned to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China.

Discussion:

Brett Samuels / The Hill:   Trump privately called coronavirus ‘deadly’ while comparing it to flu publicly: Woodward book

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

15 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Bob Woodward's forthcoming book, "Fear," is said to have incorporated material from at least seventeen recorded interviews with President Trump.

William,

yawn...

Hold your horses, twinklefoot. You're a little too eager. 

Rage is Woodward's forthcoming book. Fear was published in 2018.

And wipe that saliva off your chin. It's unseemly.

 

But don't worry. When Rage comes out, let me help you see it. This time Trump will be done for. The walls are closing in. He will have nowhere to hide. His goose will be cooked. They got him. They finally got him.

And you will be able to celebrate the celebration of the angels on earth for helping, in your zeal, to rid the planet of the big bad meanie.

(Dream on... dream on... dream on...)

  

Michael

[Peter]

As reported by Fauci, I see one major vaccine trial has ceased because of side affects. It sounded like he said Astra Zeneca but I am not sure of the spelling. 

[william.scherk]

4 hours ago, william.scherk said:

"Misleading and downplaying risk" will likely be the line of attack ...

As for COVID-19 itself having legs ("Bring out your dead"), and voter impressions of administrative incompetence, the new Trump sound-bites are already being edited into "attack" ads. The "October Surprise" -- if one it to come --  will have to have a lot more oomph than the six-day-old Atlantic story and today's Trump quotes to poke above the churn.

The persuasive implications of the Woodward reveals are hard to assess in my mind.  The amateur and professional dramatics from some Trump opponents have to be seen to be believed.  Histrionics! Or just ordinary American politics?

And yet ... even effective propaganda can be countered, given skills and hard-nosed appreciation of reality's many aspects.

 

Edited September 9, 2020 by william.scherk
Added antidote to the Meidas ad

[william.scherk]

2 hours ago, Peter said:

I see one major vaccine trial has ceased because of side affects

There has been a pause (for safety review). From STAT:

Quote

Exclusive

AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to suspected adverse reaction in participant in the U.K.

By Rebecca Robbins @rebeccadrobbins, Adam Feuerstein @adamfeuerstein, and Helen Branswell @HelenBranswell

September 8, 2020

[...]

Clinical holds are not uncommon, and it’s unclear how long AstraZeneca’s might last. But the progress of the company’s trial — and those of all Covid-19 vaccines in development — are being closely watched given the pressing need for new ways to curb the global pandemic. There are currently nine vaccine candidates in Phase 3 trials. AstraZeneca’s is the first Phase 3 Covid-19 vaccine trial known to have been put on hold.

Researchers running other trials are now looking for similar cases of adverse reactions by combing through databases reviewed by a so-called Data and Safety Monitoring Board, the second person said.

AstraZeneca only began its Phase 3 trial in the U.S. in late August. The U.S. trial is currently taking place at 62 sites across the country, according to clinicaltrials.gov, a government registry, though some have not yet started enrolling participants. Phase 2/3 trials were previously started in the U.K., Brazil, and South Africa.

There are a number of different reactions that can qualify as suspected serious adverse reactions, symptoms that require hospitalization, life-threatening illness and even death. It was also not immediately clear which clinical trial the adverse reaction occurred in, though a clear possibility is the Phase 2/3 trial underway in the U.K.

[..]

Every industrialized country has moved resources to establish safe and effective treatments and vaccines. In Canada, we've got four major trials underway. Canada has also struck deals for production of two prospective vaccines in the latter part of human trials and is building out the programme for a mass vaccination campaign. Emphasis added.

Quote

[...] “Canada is pursuing agreements with a number of international and domestic companies to guarantee a supply base of potential vaccine,” she said. “We owe it to Canadians to explore every options for vaccines.”

She said the government is negotiating secure orders with options to get millions more doses. The government has also placed orders for millions of syringes, alcohol swabs and other equipment for a mass vaccination campaign when a vaccine is ready.

Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines are both in the third and final stage of clinical trials. Assuming those trials are successful, Pfizer, which is partnering with another company called BioNTech said it can produce up to 100 million doses of its vaccine this year and another 1.3 billion in 2021.

Moderna has also entered into a series of partnerships to be able to manufacture one billion doses of its vaccine per year.

Both vaccines are messenger ribonucleic acid or mRNA vaccines, which essentially trick the body into making spike proteins, similar to the spike proteins that allow COVID-19 to infect cells. Once those spike proteins are there, the body’s own immune system can learn to attack them, preventing infection.

Canada is not the first country to strike a deal for one of these vaccines. The U.S. government secured a deal in mid July with Pfizer to provide up to 100 million doses for $1.95 billion, with an option to provide 500 million more doses.

 

[Jules Troy]

Nice tits?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

11 hours ago, william.scherk said:

The persuasive implications of the Woodward reveals are hard to assess in my mind.

William,

I can help with that.

You have to be a master at persuasion to do it well under the pressure of panic. To me, the Democrats are failing at this big time. To me, the persuaders among them are looking more and more like Baghdad Bob.

First point. They are coming out with a whole slew of books, articles, lockstep press "jargon of the day" reports, and a hell of a lot of yapping.

What is the substance in all this? Is there a main message other than Orange Man Bad?

Nope.

They are mixing new stuff with old hoaxes and a huge amount of weird stories they make up. Even "muh Russians" was more effective than all this because it had a theme and a target issue. Right now they are throwing a whole lot of shit indiscriminately up against the wall to see what sticks. And it ain't persuading anyone. The anti-Trump people like it, but even some of them are starting to go into "WTF?" mode.

Second point. This is related, but different. It's about turning a message into noise. It's more about the limitations of humans to process information and emotions than the substance of what is presented.

Scott Adams nailed this point.

So the reason the implications of Woodward's book are hard to pin down for you is that there is no time for the public to process it in any frame other than "Orange Man Bad." And, without making any endorsement re the quality of Woodward's information, the publicity and discussion of the book in the mainstream is, right now, in an environment where it is mixed with actual information, lots of spin and some pure shit that is given more air time.

That means I can pin down the implications. Wanna see?

Brief flash, then part of the noise.

Watch reality and see it it happens this way.

Hell, it will happen this way especially in the fake news mainstream press. Nobody will talk about the book in about a week or so (add another 3 r 4 days since the book will only be released in a week) except for sporadic throw-away mentions. Maybe a filler interview with Woodward where he will discuss the book will happen after the flash, but this will not bleed out to the rest of the culture, meaning nobody will talk about the book. 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 8/20/2020 at 11:50 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I despise Anderson Cooper. I think he's an awful human being.

I said that last month.

It looks like Scott Adams agrees with me this month.

Here is the transcript of the relevant part, which starts at 49:06.

I bolded a part.

Quote

Sometimes you might wonder, are the hosts on CNN good people who sometimes get things wrong? That would be the best case scenario, right? That these CNN hosts are trying as hard as they can to give you the real news? But, like everything some people make mistakes? You get some stuff wrong? That's life? 

Or, are they intentionally lying to you in a way that is awful? 

And I think we got an answer to that because if you see the clip--I also tweeted this today--in which Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta are talking about the virus early on, and they're talking about it as being no more dangerous than the regular flu.

Now, I completely get how it is newsworthy to say the President downplayed this early on and he should have been more concerned about it. But if you're CNN and you did exactly that--exactly that--and it's on video, and we can all look at it--you can look at it today, I just tweeted it--and you see Anderson Cooper talking to Sanjay Gupta... 

Now again, I do not criticize them for being wrong in March because I don't criticize anybody for being wrong early on. Remember, that was my rule and I'm going to stick to it. So Anderson Cooper was not wrong, Sanjay Guptu was not wrong when they said, "Hey. It looks like it's no worse than the flu. We should be more..."

You know, they weren't wrong in the sense of being irresponsible because everybody was guessing. The experts were, I think, genuinely trying their best. You knew that a lot of people were going to get it wrong. I don't hold it against them. 

But, from today's perspective, if they're holding it against... This is the major piece of news on CNN--the biggest piece of news is that they're holding it against the President for telling the public the wrong message early on. It's the same message they told the public early on. The same one. 

If you don't include that in the story, "Yeah, we're criticizing the President, but if we're being honest, man, did we do exactly the same thing. The President really messed up on this just like we did. Here's a video of us making the same mistake. You know, you've got to be transparent. Nobody's perfect. Wish we hadn't done it. In hindsight, it looks like a mistake. At the time, we didn't know any better. Just like the President. Let us show you how nobody knew what was the right answer in March." 

That would have been fine. 

But to simply act like that didn't happen and that the President was the only one who was wrong in March or February, that is just evil. 

You can't say that Anderson Cooper is a good person, a good human being, because that is so clearly a case of despicable moral conduct in public that I could not have less respect for that. Really. 

And again, I would be perfectly okay with them if they were simply wrong, and now they know why it was wrong and they talk about it in context. No problem. Completely forgiven for being wrong. 

But today, you know you were wrong. Today, how about a little transparency? Or else you were just being assholes. Really. It's hard to say it any other way.

I have seen this in Anderson Cooper for ages. Operation Mockingbird and all that...

btw - I hesitate to include the Wikipedia link, but here goes anyway. Operation Mockingbird. It spins hard that Operation Mockingbird is alleged, unconfirmed, blah yada blah yada. And it tries to dissemble by differentiating it from Project Mockingbird. Not once did it mention Richard Helms, the CIA Director before the Church Committee investigations. Richard Helms had a penchant for destroying CIA documents when he thought secrets in them should remain buried.

Here is a better link from The Black Vault that includes some CIA documents that are available to the public. The succinct description is one of the best I've seen for an introduction to the operation, so I'm quoting it.

Operation Mockingbird

Quote

Background

Operation Mockingbird was a secret campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to influence media. Begun in the 1950s, it was initially organized by Cord Meyer and Allen W. Dulles, it was later led by Frank Wisner after Dulles became the head of the CIA.

The organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA’s views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA.

Anderson Cooper studied at Yale University and interned at the CIA in Langley, Virginia in the summers during that time, He claims he did not pursue this. (As we all know, pigs fly and spooks don't lie.)

But notice that CNN no longer needs to hire hidden CIA people. It openly hires the entire goddam upper echelon of the intelligence community as commentators as soon as they leave government service. I think this open spook policy started with President Trump's election. (MSNBC does this, too.) Do ya' think Cooper had a hand in this?

Apropos, here is a list of CNN spooks I got from here: James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Steven Hall, Phil Mudd, Susan Hennessy, Samantha Vinograd, and James Gagliano.

God knows how many covert spooks are hidden in plain sight at CNN (and elsewhere) like Anderson Cooper.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This speaks for itself and promises a very interesting show in the near future.

From the Gateway Pundit:

Chinese Virologist Flees Communist Country…Claims She Has Evidence COVID-19 Was Manmade In Wuhan Lab

And from John Solomon's site:

Chinese virologist says she'll release evidence proving COVID-19 was made in Wuhan laboratory

We are still in fog of war communications (meaning anything goes right now) aggravated by an institutional crisis of massive fake news constantly blasted out by traditional mainstream news companies--in cahoots with each other and in lockstep at that, but from the way President Trump shut down the economy quickly and the disgraceful way China handled the crisis, I believe the virologist. At least until credible information not to appears.

And, like I said, a lot more information is coming.

Michael

[Ellen Stuttle]

The Pincer Plot for the destruction of Western Enlightenment civilization now emerges in its full horribleness.  I've seen this clearly because of the simultaneous running of the basketball "woke" thread.

 

On the young side, we have youth who have already been subjected to an educational system shaped by several generations of progressivist policies now being indoctrinated into "wokeness" which presents Western Enlightenment values as a white-privilege "metanarrative."

 

On the elderly side we have people who were educated when Western Enlightenment values were still the basis of educational policy being killed off by a virus engineered to be easily communicable human-to-human (unlike the standard animal-originating coronavirus).

 

Next step - a further variant on the virus making a strain with increased deadliness range, so that people over about 60 are at as high risk as people over about 75 are with the current strain.

 

This dwindles the population of those with even a memory of Western Enlightenment values as the educational standard.

 

Now I don't think that the Chinese Communists instigated "wokeness."  That's home-grown Western intellectual rot.  But it certainly suits ChiCom purposes.

 

Ellen

[tmj]

So an antidote could be driving the Q message to a younger demographic. Re-instantiating a major font of Enlightenment ideals, a neo christian zeitgeist , one focused on the benevolence of a creator and away from a vengeful retaliatory one. A focus on redemption and a space created for forgiveness.

Through the lens of the Pincer movement , Q type movements can be seen as a metaphoric story, ie the satanic cabal as eating the young, in this sense they would be the future victims in the aftermath of the Pincer strategy's success.  The ones left after the kill off would be the backs on which the future grinds on.

Q's emphasis is always centered on information warfare, digital warriors are called on to keep what ever 'truth' or 'evidence' is destroyed or hidden by the enemies of the light .

[william.scherk]

On 9/3/2020 at 2:26 PM, william.scherk said:

The death toll rolls on in North America, at different ratios in the three nations. The expected death toll by the end of the year will be pertinent, not to the dead, but to the living. 1918 is likely not pertinent to all.

For example, viral myocarditis has hit the news lately, reported in people who have been infected but mostly symptom-free otherwise.

What we believe we know about COVID-19 disease will grow and be pruned over the next months. Here's a minor finding just out that looks at a rarer effect of infection.

How the Coronavirus Attacks the Brain

Quote

Other pathogens — including the Zika virus — are known to infect brain cells. Immune cells then flood the damaged sites, trying to cleanse the brain by destroying infected cells.

The coronavirus is much stealthier: It exploits the brain cells’ machinery to multiply, but doesn’t destroy them. Instead, it chokes off oxygen to adjacent cells, causing them to wither and die.

The researchers didn’t find any evidence of an immune response to remedy this problem. “It’s kind of a silent infection,” Dr. Iwasaki said. “This virus has a lot of evasion mechanisms.”

 

These findings are consistent with other observations in organoids infected with the coronavirus, said Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who has also studied the Zika virus.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

The Pincer Plot...

Ellen is this a thing?

Or is it just a description of how different seemingly unrelated events all work in conjunction to squeeze the same outcome?

I looked it up and could not find much.

If it is a thing, I would like to read about it.

Michael

 

EDIT: I just found something looking up "pincer movement," which is a military attack strategy of hitting an enemy from two sides simultaneously. 

[ThatGuy]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

EDIT: I just found something looking up "pincer movement," which is a military attack strategy of hitting an enemy from two sides simultaneously. 

That's where I know the term from, myself, having come across it while reading about "Operation OVERLORD" from "The D-Day" Invasion of Normandy.