Displaying posts published in

April 2020

UK’s concern for Boris Johnson overrides politics Opinion by Julia Hobsbawm

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/opinions/uks-concern-for-boris-johnson-overrides-politics/index.html

Something extraordinary is happening in the middle of this extraordinary crisis. While the physical health of the world is in peril, a new kind of health is emerging in which the emotional connections between people start to strengthen along new, fresh lines. I call this social hfealth.

This can be seen most clearly in the world of politics where old borders and enmities are dissolving. For evidence of this, look no further than my home country, Britain, and the response to the hospitalization due to complications from coronavirus of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

I have known Boris for 30 years, from when he was editor of The Spectator, the famous conservative magazine. I was briefly in charge of high-value donor fundraising for the Labour Party and am the daughter of a man so left wing that Bernie Sanders flew over to the UK to give the “Eric Hobsbawm” lecture at the famous Hay Festival.
Boris doesn’t do boundaries. If he likes you, he likes you. If you are not of his political persuasion, no matter. This underscores both his popularity with the public — he won a landslide in the general election in December — and the response to his medical predicament.

When “Boris” (we refer to our leader by his first name, unlike Americans, who seem to refer to theirs by his surname) was taken into St. Thomas’ Hospital opposite the Houses of Parliament last Sunday evening and then moved on Monday night into intensive care, you could almost hear the collective gasp of grief and concern.

In the Daily Telegraph, house Bible of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party and where he was a popular columnist for many years, you would expect the kind of sentiment expressed by Allison Pearson who wrote: “the health of Boris Johnson is the health of the body politic, and by extension, the health of the nation itself. All 66 million of us are metaphorically pacing the hospital corridor, desperate for news.”

Trump to convene council focused on reopening the country By Brett Samuels –

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/492247-trump-to-convene-council-focused-on-reopening-the-country

President Trump on Friday confirmed he plans to convene a new council of business and medical leaders intended to guide his administration toward reopening the U.S. economy.

Trump teased the new group at a White House news briefing, saying he would dub it the “Opening Our Country Council.” The members would be announced Tuesday, he said.

“We’re also setting up a council of very, very great doctors and businesspeople,” he said, saying the group’s focus would be “beyond economic.”

Trump suggested the group would be bipartisan and be diverse in terms of geography because of the way the coronavirus has impacted certain parts of the country differently.

The formation of the group was expected, with reported members including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump’s daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump, as well as private-sector figures.

The president and his top aides have in recent days been pushing to reopen parts of the economy as early as the start of May as unemployment skyrockets and businesses across the country remain shuttered due to the virus outbreak.

After Four Years of Democrat Treachery, I Smell a Corona Virus Rat – Joan Swirsky

https://canadafreepress.com/article/after-four-years-of-democrat-treachery-i-smell-a-corona-virus-rat
Test time boys and girls. Hint…there is only one right answer––if you don’t get it right, you flunk! And so does America!
Which person, foreign or American, predicted three years ago, in 2017, that President Trump would be challenged by a “surprise global-disease outbreak”?
o Enemy of Trump Cong. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
o Enemy of Trump House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
o Crazed enemy of Trump Hillary Clinton
Answer: None of the above. It was Dr. Anthony Fauci!
Which person, foreign or American, said that the collapse of the American capitalist system as a result of the corona virus plague would be “inconvenient”?
 American adversary Xi Jing Ping, President of China
 American adversary Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
 American adversary Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey
Answer: None of the above. It was Dr. Anthony Fauci!

Which person, foreign or American, said on January 21, 2020, that the corona virus “was not a major threat to the United States” and on January 23rd downplayed the virus’ potential impact on the U.S?
 U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams
 TV host Dr. Mehmet Oz
 The entire staff of the NY Times

When Iran Welcomed Jewish Refugees In the middle of World War II, Tehran became a haven for both Jewish and Catholic Polish refugees who were welcomed as they arrived from Soviet Central Asia. Mikhal Dekel

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/when-iran-welcomed-jewish-refugees?utm_source=pocket-newtab

In the summer of 1942, Bandar Pahlavi, a sleepy Iranian port town on the Caspian Sea, became a city of refugees. On its shores were clusters of tents, a quarantine area for typhoid patients, and a large area for distributing food. Outside the tented area, local peddlers hung baskets of sweet cakes and sewing thread, disappearing periodically when club-wielding policemen appeared. 

The refugees were Polish citizens who three years prior, with the outbreak of World War II, had fled into the Soviet Union and now, having journeyed nearly 5,000 miles, sailed from Soviet Turkmenistan to northern Iran. More than 43,000 refugees arrived in Bandar Pahlavi in March 1942.

A second wave of almost 70,000 came with the August transports, and a third group of nearly 2,700 was transferred by land from Turkmenistan to Mashhad in eastern Iran. Of these, roughly 75,000 were soldiers, cadets, and officers of what was known as Anders’ Army, a Polish army in exile that had assembled in the Soviet Union under the command of Gen. Wladyslaw Anders.

The rest were mothers and babies, elderly men and women, and unaccompanied children. Three thousand, perhaps more, were Jewish, including four rabbis and nearly 1,000 unaccompanied children who were taken from Polish orphanages in the Soviet Union. There were also several hundred Polish Jewish stowaways, recent converts to Catholicism, women who pretended to be married to Polish officers, and the like. 

From the vantage point of the world we live in today—a world of turmoil in the Middle East and peace in Europe, a world of refugees fleeing the Middle East into Europe, a world in which Iran and Israel are locked in a seemingly eternal conflict—it is hard to imagine that another world existed. 

In that world, refugees fled war-torn Europe into Iran, Turkey, and Mandatory Palestine, and they lived there in relative peace for the duration of the war. 

Pharmaceuticals and the Coronavirus Pandemic By Avik Roy

A primer

‘When can we end social distancing and get back to normal life?” It’s the question on everyone’s mind, and one without a clear answer at this time. Here’s what we do know: An effective treatment against the novel coronavirus would make a big difference in getting us there.

Remember the old adage, “There’s no cure for the common cold”? Well, the common cold is caused by a mild strain of coronavirus. The version of coronavirus we’re dealing with here is far more dangerous — but possibly just as difficult to treat.

In order to talk about therapies, it’s important to distinguish between the virus itself — the infectious agent — and the disease caused by the virus. (Think of HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus that causes the illness known as acquired immune-deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.) In our present case, the World Health Organization has named the novel coronavirus “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2,” or SARS-CoV-2. The WHO calls the illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 “COVID-19.” (“COVID” stands for “coronavirus disease”; “19” comes from the fact that the disease was first identified in Wuhan in late 2019.) To repeat: Virus, SARS-CoV-2; disease, COVID-19. 

There are two broad categories of ongoing clinical development related to the pandemic. Vaccines, which help people achieve immunity to the virus, are the farthest off. A vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 won’t be ready until late 2021 at the earliest. That’s because vaccines need to be painstakingly tested in clinical trials to ensure that they make patients better, not worse. Flawed vaccines can lead to dangerous overstimulation of the immune system, or can make someone even more sensitive to coronavirus exposure. And since you can’t ethically expose someone to coronavirus, you have to give the vaccine to hundreds or even thousands of people and wait to see evidence of whether the vaccine achieves a statistically significant reduction in the number of people who get infected. Furthermore, coronaviruses mutate frequently, meaning that a vaccine developed in one year would likely be less robust, or even completely ineffective, in future years.

Recognize Taiwan to Punish China for the Novel Coronavirus Roger L. Simon

https://www.theepochtimes.com/recognize-taiwan-to-punish-china-for-the-novel-coronavirus_3306719.html

As we move cautiously to the post-virus phase, many are necessarily considering how to do so. Most obviously, how to revive the economy without jeopardizing our people or, worse, rekindling the pandemic.

Of almost equal importance is how to deal with the country that instigated the world wide epidemic in the first place—Communist China—how to impress upon them that next time they have a viral outbreak they have to be honest, indeed totally transparent about what occurred, even if that means revealing information that is embarrassing to the regime.

We don’t want another disaster with thousands or even millions of deaths across the globe, not to mention enormous financial dislocation in almost every country on Earth.

This would strike at the heart of the CCP’s self-image, humiliating and weakening them in the eyes of the world. It would, in essence, put Communist China in its place and likely even have economic ramifications, making their “Belt-and-Road” initiative less attractive to nations around the globe.

The People’s Republic has always insisted on being the sole representative of China, brow-beating other nations to going along with them with the implication that one day they would either invade or subsume Taiwan anyway.

FRIDAY APRIL 10, 2020

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8209161/More-18-000-Americans-dead-coronavirus.html?ito=push-notification&ci=12687&si=5381410

More than 18,000 Americans now dead from coronavirus as the infection number increases to 490,000 – as updated projections show TODAY will be peak death day with an estimated 1,900 fatalities
The death had increased to more than 18,000 by Friday with 1,322 death recorded in 24 hours 
There are now more than 490,000 confirmed coronavirus infections across the country after cases increase by nearly 21,000 overnight
Updated projections show Friday will be the peak day for coronavirus deaths 
The new estimates brought forward the peak day of deaths by two days to April 10 with 1,983 people predicted to die from the coronavirus 
The projections were released on Friday by forecasters at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation 
Peak resource use for hospitals is predicted to occur on Saturday where an estimated 86,379 beds, 17,707 ICU beds and 15,414 ventilators will be needed 
Learn more about how to help people impacted by COVID

‘Why Have We Shut Down The Country?’ Ex-New York Times Reporter Challenges The Dire Coronavirus Models Joseph Curl

www.dailywire.com/news/why-have-we-shut-down-the-country-ex-new-york-times-reporter-challenges-the-dire-coronavirus-models

The models keep changing.  

 A coronavirus model that the White House has heavily relied upon has again dropped the number of projected deaths and hospitalizations. Last week, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington projected 93,531 deaths. On Sunday, the IMHE lowered its estimated to 81,766 deaths. Then on Wednesday, the projection dropped the estimated total deaths to 60,415.

So, what does it all mean?

The U.S. has the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the world, with more than 435,000 cases and nearly 15,000 deaths. But projections from White House officials just a week ago – heavily covered by the mainstream media – put the death toll at 100,000 to 240,000 (a far cry from the 60,000 or so projected by the IMHE).

Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter who worked for “the paper of record” from 1999 to 2010, has been doing his own analysis of the ever-changing models and offered some thoughts in a  Fox News interview. 

Berenson has been questioning the numbers for some time. He first challenged the model from the Imperial College in London, which initially said 500,000 Britons would die. The authors of the model later pushed the projection all the way down to 20,000 (right now there are fewer than 8,000 deaths).

“That was March 22 or 23, and ever since then I’ve been paying incredibly close attention to the modeling and trying to figure out whether it lines up with what we’re seeing in reality – and the answer is, it hasn’t lined up at all,” he said.    Berenson recently focused his attention on the IMHE model. 

Dr. Fauci Cuts COVID-19 Death Projection Almost in Half From Just 10 Days Ago By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/dr-fauci-cuts-death-projection-almost-in-half-from-just-10-days-ago/

On March 31, the White House coordinator for the coronavirus task force gave a somber projection of between 100,00 and 240,000 dead Americans as a result of the pandemic.

Dr. Deborah Birx said that even with strict social distancing and a shuttered economy, the best we could hope for is 100,000 fatal cases of the coronavirus.

But today, Dr. Anthony Fauci revised that estimate considerably downward. Fauci now believes — based on two respected models — that the U.S. death toll will be around 60,000.

Bloomberg:

At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Birx said that two prominent models for U.S. mortality from the Covid-19 pandemic — Covid Act Now and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington — had both lowered their fatality projections based on widespread social distancing efforts.

Trump didn’t endorse social distancing until March 16, after many ordinary Americans had already taken up the practices themselves out of fear for the virus. It isn’t clear that the country will obey him if he urges Americans to abandon the behaviors before the outbreak has abated.

“The country” will go back to work if Trump gives the all-clear. It’s not a question of “obeying” or disobeying the president. For most, it’s a matter of survival.

That said, in an interview with CBS, Dr. Fauci was considerably more optimistic than he has been in the past.

Separately, Fauci said in a CBS News interview on Thursday that he sees the U.S. making progress toward a return to normal life in the near future. Federal social-distancing recommendations extend to April 30.

“Hopefully, by the time we get to the summer, we will have taken many steps in that direction,” he said. But he cautioned that different areas of the U.S. may see the outbreak peak at different times, which may require a range of timetables.

Fauci was asked if he can envision Americans returning to beaches, celebrations, and other normal seasonal activities in the summer.

“Yes,” he said, “if we do the things that we need to do to prevent the resurgence.”

European Disunion: Italy’s PM Says ‘Risk is Real’ the Coronavirus Could Break Up the EU By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/italys-prime-minister-says-the-risk-is-real-that-the-eu-could-break-over-coronavirus-pandemic/

The European Union is undergoing unprecedented stress as a result of differences over how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

EU finance ministers have been unable to come to an agreement over how to distribute the debt burden among bloc nations. Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte warns that the risk to European unity as a result of the lack of agreement is real.

Guardian:

“It’s a big challenge to the existence of Europe,” Conte told the BBC. “If  Europe fails to come up with a monetary and financial policy adequate for the biggest challenge since world war two, not only Italians but European citizens will be deeply disappointed.”

Speaking shortly before the ministers started their discussions, Mário Centeno, the former Portuguese minister who is president of the Eurozone group, said the EU needed to build a financial safety net as Europe “dipped into recession” with “all in lockdown, casualties rising by the hour and with no end in sight”.

“We either sink or swim together”, Centeno said as he called on ministers to show the “necessary spirit of compromise”.