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This age of battling narratives tends to conceal the broken consensus behind it. What’s gone is a broad social agreement that there are certain fundamental realities, and then codes of conduct that follow from them. When anything goes, don’t expect people to do the right thing, or even know what it is.

The Covid-19 debacle presents just such a set of quandaries and puzzles. For many people stewing in quarantine, the virus is just another evil phantom lurking in the permanent twilight zone of television, and even there, among the familiar jabbering figments, there’s little agreement about it. The statistical projections mutate weekly. It’s no worse than any annual fluIt’s a savage illness that attacks every organ in the body, leaves survivors maimed, and you can even catch it againThe lockdowns are imperativethe lockdowns amount to economic suicide…  There’s no sorting it all out, and the uncertainty itself is intolerable.

The only certainty is that most of the people in lockdown are going broke fast. By any ordinary rules, they are wiped out. They can’t even pretend anymore to keep juggling all those monthly payments for rent or mortgages, food, the cars, the medical insurance, the electricity, the cable, and on and on. The $1200 mad money checks promised by Uncle Sam are little consolation for that, and the small business “loans” ­– if you can even jump through the infuriating hoops to get them – just pile on an additional layer of obligation in a lifetime of debt serfdom. You don’t have to leap too many steps ahead mentally to imagine utter personal ruin on that glide path. And so what if millions of others are feeling squashed by the same phantom forces of disease and finance?

One firm reality is this: the global debt system that supported the turbo-charged global economy was disintegrating badly in the early fall of 2019, threatening every financial asset and the markets that affected to manage them ­­– and all the operations of modern daily life that they represented. Nowhere on earth was the debt load more out-of-control than in China, where there were no constraints whatsoever on the banks’ accounting fraud, since they answered solely to the ruling party, which had but one overarching policy: to keep ruling.

And the biggest economic fiction of all was that China could maintain its supernatural growth rates in a world that had actually reached the limits of growth. Mr. Trump’s trade wars sent tremors through the system. A whole lot of bad loans were about to be flushed down the drain. Banks everywhere else felt the vibrations, too, you may be sure. The Wuhan virus was, at least, a very convenient distraction from all that. And then, the darn thing got loose on countless airplane flights around the world.

The Covid-19 corona virus didn’t initiate the financial disorders of the moment in the US and Europe, but it ensured that there would not be another appearance of any “recovery” a la the central bank interventions of 2008-09. What it portends is a fast-track journey to a whole new disposition of things: first, for a while, a harsher, hungrier, angrier society of broken promises and dashed expectations; and then adaptation when a consensus emerges that the set of facts at hand amount to a new reality. In the meantime, we’re living in the meantime, which is not a comfortable place.

Money is not an economy. Money is a medium of exchange within an economy where people grow things, make things, move things, and serve each other in countless ways. We’re not going to replace all those growings, makings, movings, and services by just giving people money. Money may produce more money by the magic of compound interest, but money is not necessarily wealth, it just represents our ideas about wealth, and interest stops compounding anyway when the trend is clearly for reduced growings, makings, movings, and servicings. That’s exactly how and why capital vanishes. The hocus-pocus of Modern Monetary Theory can only pretend to work around that reality.

The world never reached such a pitch of activity up to the blow-ups of 2008, and it went through the motions for a decade after that. Now that it’s stopped, all that’s left is the law of gravity, and it doesn’t get more basic. The “wealth” acquired in the decade since by the so-called “one-percent” was loaded onto a defective aircraft, like a Boeing 737-MAX, and an awful lot of it will fall to earth now on broken wings. Their agents and praetorians on Wall Street are working feverishly to stave off that crash-landing, like a band of magicians casting spells on the ground while that big hunk of juddering metal augers earthward. Wait for it as spring brings new life across the land and things unseen before steal onto the scene.

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James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

460 Responses to “Flight Path”

  1. peakfuture April 17, 2020 at 10:19 am #

    Jim – “a la the central bank interventions of 2009 -09” – 2008-09?

    Yes, thanks. my bad… — JHK Admin

  2. robert magill April 17, 2020 at 10:25 am #

    I liked the reminder that “money is not wealth”. Especially since we have monetized everything on the planet and wealth has gone down the tubes.

  3. shotho April 17, 2020 at 10:28 am #

    I’m not so sure that current interventions won’t work again, at least for a short while. After all, if a people want to be fooled again, they might accept that the powers will work as they seem to have done twelve years ago. It’s really too early to say, but the day of reckoning would only be postponed.

  4. teddyboy46 April 17, 2020 at 10:28 am #

    JHK is making a clear a reality I was trying to ignore. Cash Flow is the life blood of America economy. Even when the lock downs are lifted people are going to be hesitant to go out and start spending again. Even going out for lunch or dinner, or get on a plane and fly somewhere.

    JHK has been right for years. Life is going to get a lot more local. Which I think is a grand idea.

    JHk mentioned Compound interest. i have not seen Compound Interest since 1985.

  5. RB April 17, 2020 at 10:34 am #

    Truck drivers have become more important than neurosurgeons. Farmers are more important than Trump and Pelosi and anyone else who draws a government wage. The person keeping the coffee going at a Pilot truck stop, if it is open, is more important than the CEO of any corporation. And yet…

    Growing food whether on a large farm or in your backyard isn’t simple. The farm to market to dinner table system is complex and brittle. The same is true for the insulin that millions must have. We are accustomed to relatively instant gratification. That is also gone.

    The “center isn’t holding”.

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  6. studejack April 17, 2020 at 10:36 am #

    Is anybody really surprised by this catastrophe? This is what you get when you sell your country’s soul for cheap salad shooters at Walmart. Four family-owned hardware businesses in my hometown lost just in the past fifteen years, one dating from 1839 and still in the same family. But Bernie Marcus (Home Depot) doing just fine. So much for the ownership society. And you can be sure the Chinese will manage to avoid paying for any of it. D.C. now stands for The District of China, and not even Trump, who at least saw what was happening, can summon the courage to blame “my friend President Xi,” although he probably wants to.

  7. Ol' Scratch April 17, 2020 at 10:38 am #

    Money is a medium of exchange within an economy where people grow things, make things, move things, and serve each other in countless ways. We’re not going to replace all those growings, makings, movings, and services by just giving people money. Money may produce more money by the magic of compound interest, but money is not necessarily wealth, it just represents our ideas about wealth, and interest stops compounding anyway when the trend is clearly for reduced growings, makings, movings, and servicings.

    Money is a means to an end. The end being ownership of everything tangible out there that’s worth owning. That’s why financial crashes are such a bonanza for the hyper-rich. They’re well positioned to withstand the actual crash, which they almost certain front ran in the first place, after which they can buy up all the newly distressed assets owned by the lesser mortals, the rest being fobbed off on the great purgatory for janky (love that word!) assets, The Fed. The goal being from the very start ownership of EVERYTHING worth owning, the previous owners being either “liquidated” in fact, or kept of debt-serf life support, should they prove themselves to be of continued use. That’s always been the plan and we’re now entering the foreclosure and liquidation phase right on schedule. We would all be well advised to stop focusing on the stupid virus and start focusing on the well-coordinated end game wall that we’re about to slam into at 100 miles per hour.

  8. MiddlePeninsula April 17, 2020 at 10:39 am #

    Two years ago, I decided to retire in April 2020. I must say the transition to the last chapter of my life has been surreal. I marvel at how lucky my husband and I have been aside from health problems which have been expensively, but successfully treated by modern medicine.

    I feel bad for the folks struggling. It is like lightning striking out of the blue. The termite man is busy at work as I speak. He brought his unemployed friend to help him treat our infestation. He called and asked if he could come and we said, “Absolutely, come on”. We are trying to help keep the local economy moving. Who knows what the future holds?

  9. peakfuture April 17, 2020 at 10:40 am #

    During WW2, heart disease in Norway dropped, as people ate less fat, stopped smoking, and were more physically active. I wonder if this will happen in the US.

    A lot of financial and business scams will become untenable going forward.

  10. SW April 17, 2020 at 10:42 am #

    $1200 in this country? It will keep the roof over your head and the lights on for maybe a month but that’s it. The people lining up in their cars for groceries from a food bank grows longer every day. What happens when the warehouses full of canned goods run out b/c the production of food in the chain has been broken?

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  11. akmofo April 17, 2020 at 10:47 am #

    / The pharma drugs “health” mafia lied and mislead the public
    / The economic shutdown was over nothing
    / Old people die. Always!
    / The entire global shut-in was a conspiracy ruse for multiple agendas
    / These multiple agendas are a classic signature of a professional CIA operation
    / The fat cat CIA mafia scored $10 Trillion on the books
    / The CIA NWO mafia again stole more basic freedoms from the sheeple
    / We’re moved ever further towards the feudal Vatican DARK AGES

  12. Bill7 April 17, 2020 at 10:51 am #

    ‘Can You Beat COVID-19 Without a Lockdown? Sweden Is Trying’:

    “..Instead, Sweden intends to take as loose an approach as possible that still keeps case growth down to nonexponential numbers. “We are not in the containment phase,” said Sweden’s chief state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, last month. “We are in the mitigation phase.”

    What Tegnell means is that the coronavirus is all over the world now, and, without a vaccine or a massive outbreak that brings about herd immunity, you won’t get rid of it. Even if you do what China did and lock down so hard that you eradicate the virus within your borders, it will return as soon as you allow any travel in and out of your country to resume. So Sweden has based its policies on two premises: (1) The coronavirus can only be managed, not suppressed. Short of going full Wuhan on the entire planet, we’ll have to live with it. (2) People won’t tolerate severe lockdown for more than a month or two, since boredom, isolation, and economic desperation will get overwhelming..”

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/can-you-beat-covid-19-without-a-lockdown-sweden-is-trying

  13. Gherry April 17, 2020 at 10:57 am #

    Ok predictably Conspiratorial from a distance

    But a great break down of the behind scenes funding GIVEN
    to the Gates foundation at EVENT 201

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=blJVePv_E_E

  14. Mountain gal April 17, 2020 at 10:58 am #

    As a self-employed person(with one of my businesses being seasonal) I’m not eligible for any “assistance” other than the $1200 check which will hopefully show up. So given that, I’ve restarted my business anyway as it takes place outdoors so that seems to me to be safe enough. I suppose they could always tell me to stop but as long as I’m being careful I think keeping a local business going here is necessary, both for our local economy and my own personal economy given that I’m rather fond of eating and keeping the lights on! At least gas prices have dropped so I can take advantage of that as I need to drive places for my business.

    Keep wondering though when people are going to wake up and realize what a pittance(aka crumbs) they’re handing out to us peons and what the top dogs are raking in? And of course the stock market is going up; I don’t own any stocks so whatever……

  15. peakfuture April 17, 2020 at 11:00 am #

    akmofo – A great deal of ubiquitous high-tech will be swept away when supply chains fail. As much as these huge organizations will “win” in the near-term/short-term, can anyone see a NWO without modern telecommunications or surveillance?

    The WMBH novels had a smidgen of electricity, and my guess is that we might retain a 1920s level of telecommunications. But without cheap fast transport, a lot of that NWO stuff may not be around for long.

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  16. sophia April 17, 2020 at 11:01 am #

    This new format is awful. There is some benefit to having the comments be temporally linear, but the part I dislike the most is that you get punished for posting by having your screen busted back to the beginning of the essay, having to scroll all the way down, click on Newest Comments, and do that several times, just to get back to where you were?

    Or am I doing something wrong?

    Sophia — It’s temporary glitch in the blogging platform, WordPress, My web tech, Duncan, added a note about the problem at the bottom of the blog. It’s not a new format, just a temporary problem. –JHK -Admin

  17. wet dog April 17, 2020 at 11:01 am #

    Just finished re-reading the Grapes of Wrath, and one of the scenes that struck me was when the big producers were slaughtering hogs and burying them, so they wouldn’t go to market and depress the price of meat.

    And Steinbeck wrote of the anger that was growing among the migrants who were starving and watching their children fall dead. They saw these pits being guarded by men with guns so they couldn’t get the food.

    And now we see reports over the last 2 weeks of immense amounts of milk being dumped down the drain, and chickens being slaughtered and buried, and vegetables dumped into pits, because the original buyers have defaulted on the orders, and no one has the brains to re-route the food to the food banks.

    You can’t take all that milk and re-purpose it to cheese? You can’t sell it at a discount to the 1000 cars lined up at a food bank? The milk boards and government don’t want to see the milk price collapse? People aren’t going to forget what the gov’t really thinks of them.

    One guy who has been covering this is “ice age farmer” on youtube. He has some decent videos on all this.

  18. Gherry April 17, 2020 at 11:02 am #

    Really another Life Insurance Bank Bailout

    2.2trillion package-350Billion to Main St and the rest to…..??

  19. michics April 17, 2020 at 11:10 am #

    Since the Treasury just prints money out of thin air untied to any collateral , then is there really debt? Maybe everyone should just stop paying taxes. On top of current bills the unemployed have we are also heading into local property tax season as well. Pay them or go without food should be a valid question.

  20. RB April 17, 2020 at 11:18 am #

    I’ve got a bag of potatoes. You have a bag of money. I’m eating today. What are you going to eat?

    We think we are beyond such a simple scenario. We aren’t. What happens when the food stores in NYC or Chicago don’t get restocked? Wait for the people there to come out of the hoods completely pissed off with nothing to lose.

    Why should this not get far, far worse? I know people who are completely trusting in the government to fix things. How? What miracle fix does the government have? A future vaccine for a virus that will mutate? A virus that you can repeatedly be infected with?

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  21. City_of_76 April 17, 2020 at 11:26 am #

    We don’t know how the pandemic will play out, and that uncertainty is hard, even terrifying, for most of us.

    The disease could stay with us for many months, even years, slowly killing ever-greater numbers, a scourge that we just can’t shake.

    Or we may get a handle on it relatively quickly thanks to advances in DNA work; that seems to be the direction we’re headed in.

    But however this novel coronavirus goes, the environmental stresses of enormous human populations, intent on eating nearly every available animal on the planet, seem to guarantee that new viruses will regularly make the leap into our host bodies.

    The pandemic also highlights another unshakable scourge: the damage done to Earth’s climate and ecology by a couple hundred years of furious fossil fuel combustion.

    Too many Americans, especially older people, view climate change as a distant future problem, something that shouldn’t get in the way of them living life “to the fullest” right now. Stealing from the future to live gluttonous and highly pollutive lives in the present is a hallmark of the “greatest economy in the history of the world,” as the mad President Trump might put it.

    But with their shameless obesity, huge cars and perpetual driving, widescreen televisions always on, and their fat asses sunk in the couch, we stuck with a sickened citizenry having no clue how it will manage in years to come. Of course, they can’t even manage their present, instead making an endless series of bad decisions, fueled by pervasive advertising & celebrity cults, backed up by a degenerate public school system.

    We suffer from our failure to have a cherished common culture that doesn’t involve being addicted to television, heavily armed, overweight while poorly nourished, tattooed, and generally belching a hollow patriotism and cries of “freedom,” all while failing to understand that we were never really free, being as we are all dependent on the continuous flow of cheap (fossil) energy to keep the fragile complexities of our age in gear.

  22. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 11:29 am #

    In order to move on though it seems like we need to know and have a consensus about what happened in order to move forward with a consensus for the future. Or perhaps society will be shattered into many small and separate societies that formulate their own separate consensuses (?) on the nature of reality and human purpose. It seems like you can’t know what your future really is if you have no idea who you are or what your past really was.

  23. akmofo April 17, 2020 at 11:30 am #

    @peakfuture

    The FAANG stocks are almost back at all time highs. So a lot smarter people than you know something that you don’t. They’re doing just fine. We’re a little overbought at the moment, so we can expect a minor pull back, but like I said to MaJelly, aka Asoka, we’ll be back at all time highs by the end of the year. She called me delusional for this. But I don’t suffer the chronic depression and sadist desire for an apocalypse, like she does. So, unlike her, instead of stewing in misery, I actually leveraged $60,000 on my prognosis, which is now $210,000.

  24. FallenHero April 17, 2020 at 11:31 am #

    I was hoping corona would reset the system honestly. Looks like all it did was wipe out the middle class so our elites can get richer and everyone else live in fear.

  25. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 11:35 am #

    Maybe the common culture has been undermined for so long it just collapsed under the weight and pressure of constant attack? The current PC tyranny absolutely does not allow for any common culture other than an absolute dedication to the destruction of the White race and Traditional Western cultures. That is our common culture now.

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  26. sophia April 17, 2020 at 11:38 am #

    City of 76,

    So you despise the lower classes. Ho hum.

  27. RB April 17, 2020 at 11:44 am #

    Perhaps living aboard a boat full time was a good idea assuming you could get fuel and food occasionally. But then you’d likely have law enforcement crawling all over you for whatever reason they ginned up. This mess may well degenerate into the people vs. so called law and order. I recall when the National Guard was shooting people in Detroit and other wonderful urban centers. Cities are not where you want to be in the months ahead.

  28. Pucker April 17, 2020 at 11:49 am #

    I may walk into the forest tomorrow. The natural environment is clearing up dramatically as the economy crashes. The dramatic improvement in the natural environment is really amazing. I’m not sure that we can go back to a “Growth” bubble debt-driven economic model? The Chinese may need to go back to an “Allocation System” ???? “Planned Economy” ???? model rather than a system wherein society’s resources are distributed according to how much money a bloke has?

  29. peakfuture April 17, 2020 at 11:50 am #

    The ‘living on a boat’ thing has advantages; Dmitry Orlov has discussed this at length.

    So long as the food keeps coming, things may stay calm. When the food stops though – all bets are off.

    A quick search turns up some interesting correlations:

    https://slate.com/technology/2014/04/food-riots-and-revolution-grain-prices-predict-political-instability.html

    https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/food-insecurity-and-the-conflict-trap

  30. snagglepuss April 17, 2020 at 11:53 am #

    Maybe the “cure” for all the ‘turbo charged global economy’ can be found in the words expressed by Andrew Mellon in 1931, Treasury Secretary to Herbert Hoover.
    “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.”

    What’s that old expression again? History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme……….

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  31. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 11:56 am #

    You should definitely walk into the forest tomorrow :-)! That is one of the good things about the shutdown. The Earth is much happier each day as the pollution levels and crazy levels of consumption falls off.

  32. capt spaulding April 17, 2020 at 11:58 am #

    The fact of a future pandemic has been around for a long time, and known to scientists in the field. So here it is, and this disruption is what we have, instead of a well thought out plan to deal with it.

    Ironically, there is another group of scientists that people want to ignore. Of course, I’m referring to climate scientists. The irony is that while we listen to the pandemic specialists, people still want to deny climate change. When the full effects hit, staying inside your house won’t help a damn thing.

    I’m guessing that the same people who want to end self isolating right now, are the same ones who don’t believe in climate change either. If you are one of those people, I urge you to invoke your rights under the constitution, and gather in large groups inside of small rooms. The guest speaker, I believe his name is Darwin, will be along shortly to address the crowd. Hope to see you there.

  33. teddyc April 17, 2020 at 12:11 pm #

    What are the forces behind the reaction? A risk averse society, a gerontacracy, capture by the medical field. If a 12 year old is too frail to be in the front seat of a car because of an air bag, how about anyone over 75? Who’s running for president? Gerontacracy. Why does everyone believe doctors? Look at Theranos, people will believe anything they are fed. John Ionnidis showed that 80% of medical studies are wrong and self contradictory. The rot of hubris, money, and believing in collective lies that led to the 737 MAX debacle I’m sure is just as present in American medicine.
    Caronavirus, a great unknown, a more serious flu, or a biblical plague unleashed by God or Gaia? Who knows, but the reaction is a fiasco of an intellectual stampede off a cliff.

  34. Rain Waters April 17, 2020 at 12:11 pm #

    I hope weve got the balls to use public shaming of stupid compliance instead of waiting around to just glass the dumb bastards.

  35. sophia April 17, 2020 at 12:15 pm #

    I’m guessing that the same people who want to end self isolating right now, are the same ones who don’t believe in climate change either.

    Maybe they are less vulnerable to propaganda?

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  36. Pucker April 17, 2020 at 12:15 pm #

    Didn’t Dmitry Orlov once imagine himself in his homemade, custom-made, Water World doomsday raft floating off the US East Coast watching the myriad nuclear power plants built along the coast that had melted down and were horrifying melted contaminated burning hulks of radioactive waste? Presumably, in his dream, he’d be drinking an ice cold Red Strip beer and eating fire grilled hotdogs? Orlov is a big Russian Nationalist…. Orlov was always getting slammed by the American Feminists who would imply that Orlov was a big vodka drinker, which was weird….

  37. stelmosfire April 17, 2020 at 12:21 pm #

    MOFO ” I actually leveraged $60,000 on my prognosis, which is now $210,000.”
    Brother can you spare a dime?

  38. capt spaulding April 17, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

    Dunno why I didn’t think of that sophia.

  39. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 12:42 pm #

    “Maybe they are less vulnerable to propaganda?”

    Nah. You tell them there’s a list of ‘31,000 scientists’ who agree with them and they’re as credulous as their self-regard has made them.

  40. 4014HAMPHEDGE April 17, 2020 at 12:48 pm #

    Nothing this week about 1% adopting ag district rail branch lines…

    A notable aspect of Covid-19 is measurable surge of cases connected with celebratory holiday periods. Chinese New Year; Mardi Gras.

    Ramadan commences April 17….

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  41. jeff2002 April 17, 2020 at 12:49 pm #

    I lost nearly 20% of my retirement savings due to this shutdown. I suppose it could have been worse. And yet, was it even necessary?

    Meanwhile, beyond the issue of our First Amendment right to assembly (currently on leave), it will be interesting to see the civil liberties battle that would ensue if a Covid-19 vaccine becomes mandatory. In other words, will it come down to “Get the shot or stay home”?

    Also worth watching is whether Bill Gates, computer guy turned public health guru, will bring home the “quantum dot tattoo” technology developed for his vax campaigns in the Third World. Vaccinations with this feature would embed a scannable record under the skin that resembles “something like a bar code” according to the bioengineering team at Rice University that developed it. I for one have no interest in being tagged like a farm animal, “crisis” or no crisis.

    Link to source lest there be accusations of conspiracy mongering:

    https://news.rice.edu/2019/12/18/quantum-dot-tattoos-hold-vaccination-record/

  42. xxzzy999 April 17, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

    Biden is UNELECTABLE. Too much baggage/corruption unfolding… Hunter’s involvement in Ukraine and China. Biden’s brother involved in Iraq construction projects. Biden’s deteriorating mental state is visible and very concerning. Biden would be a disaster running against President Trump, and the DNC and Party Elites know this.

    The DNC fix is in, Hillary will be the nominee and is the Democrat’s best candidate to run in 2020 (no matter how much normal Americans despise her… me included). She has enormous power in the party and has the base, funding and DNC support to launch by far the best campaign. I realize this will be hard to stomach… but that is the Democrat Party my friends.

  43. RB April 17, 2020 at 1:07 pm #

    Trump was said to be unelectable. I’d not discount the American electorate stupidity driven by panic, anger, malice, hatred. After all, it is the same gene pool that slaughtered a good hunk of the male population from 1861-1865. Not to mention abandoning Constitutional freedoms; for white people only. Then there’s Nazi Germany where an enlightened, civilized population turned to genocide across Europe. And today, bless our hearts, we have a population armed with serious firepower. Don’t discount the potential for a nationwide bloodbath when the trucks stop running.

  44. Bill7 April 17, 2020 at 1:07 pm #

    “Ol’ Scratch
    April 17, 2020 at 10:38 am #
    Money is a medium of exchange within an economy where people grow things, make things, move things, and serve each other in countless ways. We’re not going to replace all those growings, makings, movings, and services by just giving people money. Money may produce more money by the magic of compound interest, but money is not necessarily wealth, it just represents our ideas about wealth, and interest stops compounding anyway when the trend is clearly for reduced growings, makings, movings, and servicings.

    Money is a means to an end. The end being ownership of everything tangible out there that’s worth owning. That’s why financial crashes are such a bonanza for the hyper-rich. They’re well positioned to withstand the actual crash, which they almost certain front ran in the first place, after which they can buy up all the newly distressed assets owned by the lesser mortals, the rest being fobbed off on the great purgatory for janky (love that word!) assets, The Fed. The goal being from the very start ownership of EVERYTHING worth owning, the previous owners being either “liquidated” in fact, or kept of debt-serf life support, should they prove themselves to be of continued use. That’s always been the plan and we’re now entering the foreclosure and liquidation phase right on schedule. We would all be well advised to stop focusing on the stupid virus and start focusing on the well-coordinated end game wall that we’re about to slam into at 100 miles per hour..”

    Couldn’t reply inline, but Hear, Effing Hear! Good to see your comments again, too, Scratch. This is an economic reset benefiting
    only the Few, under the cover of the Dreaded Pathogen (real, but vastly overblown).

    Bill7

  45. Ron Anselmo April 17, 2020 at 1:18 pm #

    It is a slow day in the small Saskatchewan town of Pumphandle, and streets are deserted.

    Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

    A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

    As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

    The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

    The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Co-op.

    The guy at the Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her “services” on credit.

    The hooker rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

    The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the traveler will not suspect anything.

    At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the $100 bill and leaves.

    No one produced anything. No one earned anything…

    However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.

    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how a Stimulus package works.

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  46. axisboldaslove April 17, 2020 at 1:21 pm #

    Good luck and best wishes to all. The transitions we will go through will be challenging. Scaling back and living more locally will be a fine thing- but the transition will be hugely challenging for many.

  47. Ishabaka April 17, 2020 at 1:22 pm #

    Can I get an “amen” on how racist and xenophobic Trump’s January 31st travel ban was?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDcBFCo8gKU

  48. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 1:22 pm #

    Maybe we should all form a large circle, join hands and sing kumbaya…

  49. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 1:24 pm #

    Shucks I forgot about social distancing…

  50. Pucker April 17, 2020 at 1:28 pm #

    “Pump handle”?

    I bet that Saskatchewan is a very weird place?

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  51. Q. Shtik April 17, 2020 at 1:35 pm #

    “the virus is a just another evil phantom lurking…” – JHK

  52. Sosodef April 17, 2020 at 1:37 pm #

    Here in the Bay Area we had a weird maritime event; the mega-container ship, MSC Ana, docked in the Port of Oakland after barely clearing the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge during low tide. Largest vessel ever in SF Bay. Meanwhile, March port volume is down 7.4% Y/Y, March retail numbers worst ever, April expected to be even more grim. The Ana was loaded up with empty containers- relatively clean Northern California air is our major export to China. I call most of those will never return which is a bummer we could “upcycle” the cans into housing…

    https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/04/16/bay-pilots-will-delicately-steer-massive-freighter-into-the-port-of-oakland/

  53. Q. Shtik April 17, 2020 at 1:38 pm #

    Welcome back Ol’ Scratch. Where the hell ya been?

  54. stelmosfire April 17, 2020 at 1:38 pm #

    Ron Anselmo, well at least the co-op guy got laid.

  55. stelmosfire April 17, 2020 at 1:40 pm #

    The poor butcher only got a pig out of the deal.

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  56. Robert White April 17, 2020 at 1:41 pm #

    I fully agree with every word written today, Jim. Excellent synopsis of where we are heading into next week & beyond. Looking forward and envisioning what is about to transpire is wholly key to figuring out where our futures reside in the whole worldwide mess & obvious ensuing chaos that will most assuredly manifest in due course as this progresses.

    With that said, my hypothesis going forward is simple & basic.

    #1.. nCov-19 is a man made bioweapon with Gain-of-Function process properties engineered into this baked cake.

    #2.. Biocontainment of nCov-19 is theoretically impossible given the synthetic bioengineered Gain-of-Function armed ability once released into a population or accidentally released via industrial accident in a BSL-4 laboratory.

    #3..Viral Reactivation Hypothesis indicates that this gain-of-function will mutate & spread whenever propinquity of people in the population is a factor. Containment probability is zero due to Viral Reactivation potentiality & assured probability.

    #4.. Society as we have known it has been one where people intermix & work daily. Today, post-bioweapon release & biocontainment needs of Tertiary Care Medicine we have no choice but to shelter in place due to spread & vectoring of this deadly pathogen.

    #5.. No vaccine will prevent Viral Reactivation of nCov-19 as it is a synthetic bioengineered weapon built to not stop, ever.

    Sincerely, Robert

  57. fineline April 17, 2020 at 1:41 pm #

    Awesome article

  58. Pucker April 17, 2020 at 1:57 pm #

    “Joe Biden is a rapist and a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. Joe Biden is a good friend of mine.”

    Bernie Sanders

    I wonder if Jeffrey Epstein’s hedge fund will get any of the stimulus bail out money?

  59. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 2:00 pm #

    This new format is awful. There is some benefit to having the comments be temporally linear, but the part I dislike the most is that you get punished for posting by having your screen busted back to the beginning of the essay, having to scroll all the way down, click on Newest Comments, and do that several times, just to get back to where you were?

    Or am I doing something wrong?

    You can certainly do it quicker, although it still remains a PITA.

    Type and submit comment as per normal (I always include a quote in italics so it’s clear what I’m replying to). Then go back to the top of the page (Home key), and then click on Home and then on Jim’s essay title (and today it is Flight Path). It will reload this blog section, with your post displayed.

    Takes a few seconds – much quicker than scrolling through Newer Comments …

  60. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 2:01 pm #

    Nope – they’ve fixed it … my post just above appeared immediately.

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  61. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

    I miss being able to reply to another’s comment directly. It’s actually quite devastating. But I guess in the context of things it isn’t that big of a deal.

    • Duncan Crary April 17, 2020 at 2:09 pm #

      Technical Note: A recent update to Word Press is causing issues with how this blog displays on iPads. We expect WP to issue a software patch soon. In the meantime, we have turned off the “nesting” feature within the comment section. You can still comment on this blog, but the feature that allows you to reply directly beneath a comment is not available at this moment. (Reminder: scroll all the way to the bottom of the comments section to login.)
      Click here to send us your Tech Support & Bug Report issues

  62. zetatai April 17, 2020 at 2:14 pm #

    “living in the meantime”… that pretty much sums it up. Thanks JHK, another epic quote!

  63. teddyc April 17, 2020 at 2:16 pm #

    If you believe that there is income disparity and regressive forces at work on the economic well being of the middle and lower class, shutting down the economy can only make that worse. Why do the democratic governors go along with this gleefully. Do they really not like the people, or do they know something we don’t?

  64. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 2:20 pm #

    “Money may produce more money by the magic of compound interest, but money is not necessarily wealth, it just represents our ideas about wealth…” JHK

    Civilization itself is an idea when you think about. We should not discount the power and potency of an idea. “Mind is the builder” in the words of Edgar Cayce, which is to say the realm of ideas are more primary and causative than their external manifestations. If we don’t like the direction we are moving in perhaps we need to change our idea about the purpose of life and why we are here…

  65. Doc Holliday April 17, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

    Except the hotel owner is out a hundred bucks.

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  66. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

    Thank you for the explanation Duncan. I’m glad to hear that!

  67. Htruth April 17, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

    Steve Mnuchin as Cruella DeVille: https://youtu.be/87_l9GpBPzU

  68. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 2:39 pm #

    SBS, do you think though that some base level of civilization is innate to humans generally?

  69. Pucker April 17, 2020 at 2:50 pm #

    Is Chairman Mao riding in a Cadillac?

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BzGEHHI6eY4

  70. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 2:56 pm #

    The idea that we are nothing more than an “intelligent ape” will not get us very far along the rocky road ahead. It is likely we will have to visualize ourselves as something far beyond this, something with unlimited potential for growth and expansion, something that is at its core indestructible and everlasting. If we are able to tap into this indestructible element that lies at the core of our being we can replace fear with joy and hate with love…It’s time for the inward journey my friends. Time to reclaim our true heritage and destiny…

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  71. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 3:00 pm #

    “SBS, do you think though that some base level of civilization is innate to humans generally?”

    That’s a good question SSL. We are social beings undoubtedly so the answer I would give is a tentative yes…

  72. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 3:18 pm #

    SSL,

    What I was trying to suggest is if we see outward reality as more primary and causative than the inner creative world of mind, soul, and spirit then we are doomed to despair in light of the hard times ahead. However if we upend this idea and believe we are not slaves to causation, but free, creative agents with the inherent potential to determine our destiny in the face of all odds, then we might just pull through…

  73. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 3:42 pm #

    Didn’t Chairman Mao say something like “its luxury all the way baby”?

  74. SoftStarLight April 17, 2020 at 3:46 pm #

    I’m not really sure SBS about that. It seems like sometimes the mandates of outward reality are pretty overwhelming. Though certainly it is the inward drive that can easily result in changes to outward reality. It’s probably a dynamic like most things seem to be.

  75. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 4:03 pm #

    “I’m not really sure SBS about that. It seems like sometimes the mandates of outward reality are pretty overwhelming. Though certainly it is the inward drive that can easily result in changes to outward reality. It’s probably a dynamic like most things seem to be.”

    Sure it’s a dynamic SSL. It just a matter of determining what drives the dynamic, outward reality or the inner drive. Outward reality obviously puts incredible pressure on the inner drive through the challenges we are compelled to address on a daily basis, but it is the inner drive which is the creative agent, that takes lemons and makes lemonade out of them. As the challenges grow more extreme, more pressure is placed on our inner drive and we are forced to dig ever deeper to unlock new levels of potential inherent in our nature as essentially spiritual beings. Without these challenges this inherent potential would remain untapped and we would go through our whole life believing we are nothing more than an intelligent ape…

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  76. Ol' Scratch April 17, 2020 at 4:14 pm #

    Bill7: thanks. As usual, James Corbett is all over this. The only news worth listening to these days:

    https://www.corbettreport.com/corona-world-order/

    Q: Just hangin’ out and chilling these days. Wondering how much longer this whole “internet thang” will remain viable before the information spigot gets turned off for good. How about you, spell checker extraordinaire?

  77. Rodster April 17, 2020 at 4:28 pm #

    While I don’t disagree with anything Jim said, how’s this for some hocus pocus. The Dow closed up 700 points and is only 5,000 away from it’s all time highs.

    The point being, the Banksters and those running the show have a lot of tricks up their sleeves.

  78. thwack April 17, 2020 at 4:30 pm #

    Doc Holliday
    April 17, 2020 at 2:37 pm #
    Except the hotel owner is out a hundred bucks.

    *************

    No Doc, remember?

    The hotel owner was the first to run out the door and pay off a debt?

    The problem is that the hundred dollar bill probably had the Cornebola all over it.

  79. Rain Waters April 17, 2020 at 4:42 pm #

    That presented by Sunburst soldier is in the language of a realized human being. Your eloquence is commendable. A peace officers words which made my day.

  80. Nightowl April 17, 2020 at 4:47 pm #

    “I’m guessing that the same people who want to end self isolating right now, are the same ones who don’t believe in climate change either. If you are one of those people, I urge you to invoke your rights under the constitution, and gather in large groups inside of small rooms. The guest speaker, I believe his name is Darwin, will be along shortly to address the crowd. Hope to see you there.”

    Pro tip: The snark fails when you imply that you will also be at the gathering.

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  81. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 4:53 pm #

    SSL,

    It is my belief the extreme challenges we will be compelled to confront as a consequence of the Long Emergency will, at some point, spark a spiritual awakening unparalleled in human history ( representing the next evolutionary leap forward for humankind), and this will serve as the basis for the emergence of a sustainable civilization or Garden Earth. How far down the path of decline we must go before this happens is yet to be determined. Ekhart Tolle, a modern day bodhisattva, has teaches that most people will need to go through a great deal of suffering before they will relinquish their egotistical hold on reality and allow the spirit to work…

  82. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 4:55 pm #

    Rain Water,

    Thank you my friend. You have made my day as well…

  83. Bill7 April 17, 2020 at 5:05 pm #

    A couple of recent columns from CJ Hopkins, who continues to make sense to me- one of the very few who still does:

    https://consentfactory.org/2020/04/13/brave-new-normal/

    https://consentfactory.org/2020/03/18/covid-19-global-lockdown/

  84. sophia April 17, 2020 at 5:11 pm #

    Green Alba,

    Nah. You tell them there’s a list of ‘31,000 scientists’ who agree with them and they’re as credulous as their self-regard has made them.

    It’s an important topic. We should pursue it with sincerity.

    Some criticisms of the list are that they are not climate scientists. A few hundred are, but the majority have science degrees in various fields, and only about a 3rd have PhDs.

    Now, obviously having a PhD means something, but dismissing ideas because someone isn’t the right kind of expert is in my opinion a form of ad hominem. Credentials are a good starting point, but they sure do not guarantee that one is right.

    It also surprises me that in discussing global warming I have been told by strong adherents that they trust the experts because they cannot possibly understand the information as lay people. But I have also been told that it is simple science, understood for over a hundred years, high school level chemistry and so on. It seems to me that if you cannot penetrate a topic without a PhD, and only the exact PhD at that, then the lay public has no business taking an opinion at all.

    But this is quite untrue, and people with PhDs quite often and in many different fields write books and articles geared toward the interested lay public and do an excellent job of presenting the data. Also, getting overly picky about just which type of science degree a person has is particularly inappropriate to climate change because it is relevant to many different fields of science, and many contribute to the whole planetary cycle of CO2, since everything, but everything, contributes to that cycle.

    https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/30000-scientists-sign-petition-on-global-warming

    https://eraoflight.com/2018/01/13/over-31000-scientists-say-global-warming-is-a-hoax/

    https://www.usapoliticstoday.org/scientists-al-gore-liar-climate-change/

    http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/31000-scientists-say-no-convincing-evidence

    https://www.teaparty247.org/31000-scientists-back-new-research-supporting-a-climate-change-theory-the-left-doesnt-want-you-to-hear/

  85. BackRowHeckler April 17, 2020 at 5:15 pm #

    On a more positive note, filled my truck up with gas today: $1.79 per gallon.

    Capt Spaulding, winter storm warning for tonite, April 17. Is that what you mean by climate change?

    Brh

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  86. Pucker April 17, 2020 at 5:22 pm #

    Do you CFNers wear a plastic face shield and PPE at Archibald’s?

    https://archibalds.com/

  87. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 5:32 pm #

    If you believe that there is income disparity and regressive forces at work on the economic well being of the middle and lower class, shutting down the economy can only make that worse. Why do the democratic governors go along with this gleefully. Do they really not like the people, or do they know something we don’t?

    What a ridiculous nonsensical word – “gleefully”.

    How many flipping times do I (and a few others) have to say this? No-one in the world wants to have a lockdown, no-one wants to have an economic crash, but these steps are far better than letting the virus “rip”, with a resulting body-count that is socially and politically unacceptable.

    It would be suicidal | genocidal to not lockdown – social distancing and self-isolation are critical to mitigating infection rates. Plus we do not know whether recovery from Covid-19 provides immunity, and nor do we know what affects it has on the body of those who “recover”.

    There needs to be some form of lockdown until the new-case rates drop dramatically, or a treatment or vaccine is successfully rolled-out.

    And the relaxation of lockdown needs to be sophisticated and science-led, with lots of testing, lots of health-service reinforcement, and lots of good communication.

    The demonstrators in Michigan are not grass roots it seems … they are being funded or supported by the radical and violent right. Why am I not surprised?

  88. Nightowl April 17, 2020 at 5:48 pm #

    “… no-one wants to have an economic crash”

    Cargill from Media Matters. He’s just a caring guy who wants the best for all of you.

  89. Q. Shtik April 17, 2020 at 6:02 pm #

    Yesterday I rode past the Lukoil gas station in town (one of the more expensive places) and noticed the price for Regular was $1.98 (I am rounding up from $1.979). Under 2 bucks is pretty incredible. Can’t remember the last time……

    So then I wondered what gas was selling for at the REALLY cheap places. That would be at Raceway (our local Central NJ ‘brand X’) or at the Champeen of cheap gas, Costco. So, even though my pickup was 40% full the wife and I decided to blow off the dust, make an ‘outing’, like a mini-date, out of a trip to the Edison Costco a few miles north on Rt 27. Regular was going for $1.75 (again, having rounded up as above).

    But let me flesh out this story which concerns the Law of Supply and Demand: before we donned our rubber gloves and tied on our home made face masks I had been watching the fluctuations of WTI Crude on CNBC. It was bouncing around between $19.70 and $20.00 per barrel. I reminisced back to oil at $145/barrel in 2008 and we were all wondering if we would ever again see oil under $100. The current lack of demand worldwide has caused every oil storage facility to be filled to the gills. Rather than cut off their nose to spite their face Saudi Arabia and Russia seem to have come to terms on production cuts yet the price continues to decline. I just now glanced at the TV and see that WTI Crude is at $18.09, down 8.96%. How would you like to be in the fracking business?

    So anyway, getting back to Edison Costco, they have a gas pumping operation nestled close to Vineyard Rd on a few acres of asphalt while off in the distance is the big box store itself. There are 4 roof-covered islands with 2 pumps each making a total of 8 pumps. There are 8 lines of cars, one on either side of each island. At any given moment there are 16 vehicles being filled except when cars are leaving or entering. The queue of cars in line to get gas I have never seen at less than 5 deep and usually more.

    The operation is one of extreme efficiency. All they do is pump gas. They don’t check your oil, they don’t wash your windshield, and they don’t sell snacks or have restrooms. They don’t accept cash. It is credit card only. You pull up, buzz down your window, hand the pump-jockey your plastic, zip zip he inserts and removes it and hands it back to you. It doesn’t matter if you have pulled up on the wrong side of the pump relative to your gas cap since all the pumps have extra long hoses that can reach across your vehicle. He inserts the pump nozzle and goes to the next vehicle adjacent to you or behind you or ahead of you. When the pump stops pumping he pulls the nozzle, tears off your receipt, hands it to you and wishes you a good day. Rarely does a customer get out of his vehicle.

    This goes on all day from 6 AM till 7 PM (a half hour less on weekends), it never stops. I don’t know how long the gas jockeys’ shifts are but they must be exhausted. I’d love to know how much these guys (some are women) are paid but didn’t have the balls to ask…I’d guess $10 to $15 per hour.

    All of the above described was pre-Corona Virus. Using very conservative criteria I guesstimate they pump 30,000 gals per day and fill 1500 cars. After wages and cost of good sold I figure they net $2,000.00 per day. Maybe half those cars proceed into the parking lot and their drivers enter the Costco store proper.

    With 330M people in America it was inevitable that super cheap and efficient ‘big boxes’ would be invented that would kill ‘main street’ and mom and pop gas stations on every corner. Stop complaining unless you are ready to endure a huge die-off to 1B worldwide and 50M in the US of A.

    When I got gas yesterday there were just 4 gas lines with queues of 1 or 2 vehicles. Later I checked on-line for cheapest gas prices and discovered a Costco in North Brunswick, NJ had regular for $1.57/gal. All this cheap gas and no place to go.

  90. BackRowHeckler April 17, 2020 at 6:08 pm #

    Archibalds?

    Isn’t that where Hunter Biden knocked up one of the strippers? Yes, up on the 3rd level, reserved for high rollers. Then like a cad he denied everything, claiming it wasn’t him. Well, the judge had other ideas and forced him to take a paternity test. It was his little one alright, and now he has to fork over a chunk of that I’ll gotten Ukrainian swag.

    Brh

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  91. Walter B April 17, 2020 at 6:09 pm #

    An economic crash that can be blamed on a virus will have a lot more public acceptance and a lot less public push back then an economic crash that happens on its own. Banksters and politicians will be able to hide behind the little bug a lot better than they could hide when the blazing light of day was shined upon them by a broke, angry public.

    Many of us who understood that an event like this was very possible in the future are in as good a shape to deal with it now as it unfolds. My CERT unit drilled and prepped for such an event for the last 6 years and many of us are assisting with the triage tents set up at our local hospital (mostly traffic control and parking duties). The people that are going to be hardest hit are those in debt with big mortgages and auto/credit card debt. In New Jersey the push has been on in the last couple of years for what they call “affordable housing”. As far as I know these homes are all townhouse and condo complexes, and even before the virus struck, were places where people moved into after the got divorced and when they walked away from their underwater mortgages. I have a feeling that many of these bankrupt families will walk away from there unmaintainable situations and move in rental unit. Some will even be subsidized by the government.

    In any case, when the dust clears and things get better, at least somewhat better, it is all going to be a very, very different place. I hope that most of those who are seriously affected are willing and able to make the transition.

  92. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 6:10 pm #

    4591 Covid-19 deaths in the US in 24 hours.

    Trump is like all dictators … he wants his cult followers to embrace death in order to show their loyalty and love. I wish I were making this up.

  93. BackRowHeckler April 17, 2020 at 6:28 pm #

    So if there was a lefty president there wouldn’t be any Covid 19 deaths? What are you saying exactly? In 1919 when Americans were dying by the hundreds of thousands from the Spanish flu, was it Woodrow Wilson’s fault? I’ve never seen Wilson blamed for the Spanish flu in any Wilson bios that I’ve read. (I’ve only read 1)

    Brh

  94. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 7:05 pm #

    So if there was a lefty president there wouldn’t be any Covid 19 deaths? What are you saying exactly?

    I am saying what every sane and professional person is saying: the push to “re-open” society is a death sentence for many people. This is a dangerous virus – with about 4% death rate, and 15% very sick rate.

    The push to “re-open” is coming mostly from the loopy right and the virus deniers. They don’t care about the deaths, they don’t care that you can’t do it without massive testing and better health facilities.

    They’re like kids in the sandpit.

  95. stelmosfire April 17, 2020 at 7:25 pm #

    During the much deadlier Spanish Flu when 675000 Americans died
    ( mostly young healthy people) the government DID NOT shut down the place.
    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qirdx9wW5m0/Xpc32JM2HhI/AAAAAAAAKAY/dQbwSJ1Ishk6Ytv4u6N8oY9rlt12rHnvgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/ballflu.jpg

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  96. stelmosfire April 17, 2020 at 7:30 pm #

    I personally know some people who have had the Corona and they said not bad at all. They were not sickly old people however. I also was friends with a guy that did die from it. He had been in and out of the Hospital for the past few years. Isn’t that what sickly old people do is DIE?

  97. teddyc April 17, 2020 at 7:38 pm #

    There is no measure or data of the effectiveness of the social distancing. To date, did it save 100 people or 100,000 people? It’s just a guess. But people say, “science” which is actually the exact opposite of what it is. It is fanatical religious belief in a preconceived conclusion.
    So it just boils down to common sense. From the get go, the first things they should have shut down were confined transportation, subways, buses, and aircraft.
    We’ll run the subways, but we can really bend the curve by beaches and golf? OK

  98. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 7:48 pm #

    During the much deadlier Spanish Flu when 675000 Americans died (mostly young healthy people) the government DID NOT shut down the place.

    But had they had lockdown, distancing, and self-isolation, the death toll might have been 67,500 instead.

    There is no measure or data of the effectiveness of the social distancing. To date, did it save 100 people or 100,000 people? It’s just a guess. But people say, “science” which is actually the exact opposite of what it is. It is fanatical religious belief in a preconceived conclusion.

    This is just the same-old, same-old anti-science, anti-expert, anti-medico, anti-government, deep-stater jive. Let’s move on. It’s really heartening to see the layperson knows as much as the extensively trained epidemiologist. But all those “quacks” trained at universities in Moscow or Beijing, I bet …

    However – I do agree the lockdown has to be sensible to be supported. Stopping all recreational activity, even when it’s solo or in pairs, seems pretty over-the-top to me. But such examples aren’t a reason to blast the whole strategy – it undoubtedly works.

  99. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 7:54 pm #

    sophia

    “It’s an important topic. We should pursue it with sincerity.”

    I pursued it with sincerity – around Christmas time, if memory serves. I gave you a thorough, detailed and utterly sincere response listing clearly why the ‘31,000 scientists’ meme was and is dishonest nonsense.

    You could have responded at the time, but for some bizarre reason, perhaps to do with ‘sincerity’ or the lack thereof, you … didn’t.

    Once the nested structure of the blog has been reinstated you are cordially invited to revisit my highly detailed and completely sincere response to your misguided meme. I hope you don’t think I’m going to waste my time reformulating it when you didn’t do me the courtesy of paying the slightest attention to it the first time. How little exactly do you think my time is worth?

    In addition, because you couldn’t get me to move to your false and ideologically motivated view of the science, you addressed the gallery and invited them to consider me a paid troll.

    So please do not presume to weaponise the concept of ‘sincerity’ and aim it in my direction, when it would be so much more usefully aimed in yours.

  100. wpa_ccc April 17, 2020 at 8:03 pm #

    During the much deadlier Spanish Flu when 675000 Americans died

    The death rate for Covid-19 is 3 to 4%. The death rate for the Spanish flu was around 2 percent. We are talking RATES not brute numbers.

    Ipso facto, since 3.5% is greater than 2%, Covid-19 is much much more deadly (almost twice as deadly) than any previous flu.

    The current pandemic ain’t over yet, but so far it is proving more deadly than any previous pandemic.

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  101. stelmosfire April 17, 2020 at 8:10 pm #

    I think this guy sums up this nonsense pretty well:
    http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/index.php?itemid=545

  102. sophia April 17, 2020 at 8:33 pm #

    Green Ala,

    I pursued it with sincerity – around Christmas time, if memory serves. I gave you a thorough, detailed and utterly sincere response listing clearly why the ‘31,000 scientists’ meme was and is dishonest nonsense.

    You could have responded at the time, but for some bizarre reason, perhaps to do with ‘sincerity’ or the lack thereof, you … didn’t.

    Wow, such anger. I never saw it. I don’t recall that I was posting much back then but I do drop in from time to time. If I had seen it I would certainly have responded. A week past Christmas my daughter who lives in Europe came for a visit. Perhaps I got busy. I agree it’s a darned shame to lose a post you’ve put time and thought into. Do you know how to find it?

    I’m genuinely curious – I saw criticisms that the list was of people not adequately qualified, but the list is not a meme. It’s a list.

  103. sophia April 17, 2020 at 8:34 pm #

    wpa-ccc

    A death toll of 4% is not something I have seen anywhere, and I have read quite a lot.

  104. sophia April 17, 2020 at 8:35 pm #

    I do not apologize for suspecting someone is paid to be here. There are a couple of people here that I do suspect exactly that. of

  105. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 8:38 pm #

    “There is no measure or data of the effectiveness of the social distancing. To date, did it save 100 people or 100,000 people? It’s just a guess.”

    Curiously, the social distancing measures, combined with the increase in sanitary measures such as increased handwashing, have resulted in a huge decrease in the number of deaths from non-Covid respiratory diseases in the UK (information provided by a medic whose remit includes the monitoring of deaths due to all respiratory diseases). This might also be of interest to those complaining that the ‘excess deaths’ for the period are not showing the peaks they would like and thus not convincing them that the Covid death statistics are accurate and not rather being made up by the Illuminati, lizard people, or whoever else it is who runs our lives and our health statistics. I’m assuming this effect will not only have been observed in the UK.

    I don’t recall the percentage, but from memory it was either around 50% or 70% fewer deaths from non-Covid respiratory disease (happy to be corrected if my memory is wrong on this). Given that we know Covid to be considerably more contagious than ordinary flu, for example, this might give some inkling as to the effectiveness of social distancing and related measures in the Covid context, albeit not in actual numbers.

    Additionally, those who claim to be concerned about the possibility of Covid deaths being over-reported may be comforted to know that in the UK, the situation is the opposite. There has been considerable under-reporting of Covid deaths, since the statistics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have ignored deaths in care homes and in the community and have only taken account of hospital deaths. So far only Scotland has belatedly begun to include care-home Covid deaths.

    Furthermore, two GP whistleblowers from the south of England have confided that many deaths in the community which doctors are sure were caused by Covid are not being recorded as such on death certificates in the absence of adequate testing and adequate time. Even if the person is tested after they’ve died, the results are not available for two weeks, by which time the certificate (on which the doctor has entered something along the lines of ‘bronchitic pneumonia’ instead) has long been filed. So many Covid deaths will never be recorded.

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  106. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 8:39 pm #

    sophia

    “I do not apologize for suspecting someone is paid to be here. There are a couple of people here that I do suspect exactly that. of”

    Then don’t expect me to waste time on your comments, ma’am.

  107. sophia April 17, 2020 at 8:50 pm #

    Green alba,

    Why in the world didn’t you say something at the time?

  108. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 8:50 pm #

    sophia

    “Wow, such anger. I never saw it.

    I don’t recall that I was posting much back then but I do drop in from time to time.”

    You posted plenty on that particular thread and were frustrated that I could not be moved to your anti-scientific position. Hence you invited everyone to consider that I must be paid to be here. The last refuge…

    The only way to find it would be to search each blog around that time, but I’m not entirely sure when it was. I think it was around Christmas.

    And you did see it, because I said in the post that I wasn’t going to respond to any more of your posts (because of your insult) and you responded to that, as I recall.

    “but the list is not a meme. It’s a list.”

    The list is a list. Which has become a meme in the denier community.

  109. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 8:51 pm #

    “Why in the world didn’t you say something at the time?”

    About what?

  110. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 8:53 pm #

    I do not apologize for suspecting someone is paid to be here. There are a couple of people here that I do suspect exactly that. of

    I guess this fits with a suspicious mind – I wish someone would pay me. BTW – GreenAlba replied with courtesy and thoughttulness – calling it angry is the argument of a five-year-old.

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  111. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 9:00 pm #

    A death toll of 4% is not something I have seen anywhere, and I have read quite a lot.

    From the Worldometer dataset:

    US cases per million: 2144
    US deaths per million: 112

    That is a raw rate of 5.2% – and even with the case rates being substantially under-reported, it’s still a pretty high death rate. Who would drive a car or go swimming, if the chances of dying as a result were one in twenty?

  112. sophia April 17, 2020 at 9:05 pm #

    Cargill,

    The word for how I felt when reading GA’s reply to me is contempt. I was quite shocked at the disparagement, and also, the assumption of the worst. She didn’t think I might have missed it!

    At any rate, it would seem the incompetence of the British govt or NSA is far worse than what you imagine for Trump. Get a load of this, by one of Green alba’s husband’s colleagues:

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/04/17/care-homes-and-covid19/

  113. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 9:21 pm #

    At any rate, it would seem the incompetence of the British govt or NSA is far worse than what you imagine for Trump.

    I think GreenAlba that the NSA generally – and aged-care in particular, have been gutted by Conservative governments for decades.

    Like with the lunar wing of the US Republican Party, some people of a certain bent get up every morning swearing they’re going to end “socialised medicine” that day. They have to deliver to their big donors.

  114. restless94110 April 17, 2020 at 9:25 pm #

    Two questions:

    when you say: “…threatening every financial asset and the markets that affected to manage them ­­– and all…” I don’t understand your use of the word affected.. the dictionary offers the following:

    adjective
    1.
    influenced or touched by an external factor.
    “apply moist heat to the affected area”
    2.
    artificial, pretentious, and designed to impress.
    “the gesture appeared both affected and stagy”

    Your use of the word as a verb does not jibe with either of those definitions, and I have tried to figure if you made a typo what the corrected version might look like,and what you actually meant to say.

    The 2nd question is: I know you don’t like MMT, but MMT is not printing money and giving it to banks and finance. So it has never been tried or employed MMT is posited to increase the velocity of money in the population, not to drive inflation of asset prices.

    At the least, it might be a solution. I don’t know if it is or not, but certainly neither do you, so I don’t really understand your poo-poohing it.

    Yes, I get that you believe firmly that money must be grounded in people doing things, making things, but without some capital that won’t ever happen. MMT posits that printing money and giving it to people will jump start the making of things, the doing of things.

    Again, MMT has nary a thing to do with printing and giving money to the rich,. So either you seriously misunderstand MMT or you seriously don’t think it could ever work. Which is it?

  115. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 9:35 pm #

    “The word for how I felt when reading GA’s reply to me is contempt. I was quite shocked at the disparagement,”

    Poor you. Imagine if I’d just suggested you were a paid troll instead.

    “Get a load of this, by one of Green alba’s husband’s colleagues:”

    He makes exactly the points I made in my post upthread about care homes and deaths in the community.

    You are right that the British government’s response has been appalling. Matt Hancock is a disgrace and everything he says is a lie to cover up the lack of PPE in the NHS and in the care sector. And the only reason we’re the only country where the population isn’t being advised to wear masks in supermarkets and on public transport is because they know there aren’t enough masks. Those nasty mainstream media folks are constantly trying to get the truth out of government ministers and the ministers are finding it more and more difficult to worm their way out of the accusations.

    But I don’t know why you’re complaining – the general view on here seems to be that it’s ‘only old people and they die – so what?’

    The fact remains that the NHS workers on the frontline are still woefully undersupplied with PPE – they’re not stealing it from the care sector – there just isn’t enough all round. Some hospital trusts may not have enough to get through the weekend.

    And not just on the frontline – I’ve had to buy goggles from Amazon for my husband to wear to work because what they’ve been given is a joke.

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  116. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 9:40 pm #

    As civilization begins to wind down and move towards something more sustainable, hopefully this ‘descent’ will unfold in graduated stages, allowing us to adapt to each stage before the next ‘drop’ occurs. This seems to me the only way to minimize the suffering and hardship we are fated to meet in the years to come…

  117. GreenAlba April 17, 2020 at 9:43 pm #

    And the lack of equipment isn’t limited to the UK. I gather 10 nurses in California have been suspended for refusing to work without proper N95 masks. How long will our health service staff put up with this and keep coming to work, especially once the lockdowns are lifted and they’re expected to keep a lid on things for a year or more?

  118. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 9:47 pm #

    restless94110,

    The word ‘affected’ is not a typo in this context…

  119. WayfaringStranger April 17, 2020 at 9:57 pm #

    Robert White (who will not see this)
    Keep in mind that the body seeks balance and the return to its designated state. Regardless. It keeps trying until death overtakes it. Tranny fake-vaginas keep trying to heal, Serotonin re-uptake inhibitors plug the receptors as planned but the body responds by creating MORE receptors to absorb the designated amount of serotonin which then require MORE blocking (and makes withdrawal hell)…..same is true of ACE Inhibitors. Patients who take the ACE inhibitors grow more ACE receptors that need to be blocked which makes those on the medications super-susceptible to the Corona virus because they have SO many ACE receptors now as a direct result of the blocking medication.
    Yeah that’s confusing, I tried to describe it clearly but may have failed. Anyways, this bio-engineered piece of shit with its HIV hooks spliced in is also subject to the laws of Nature/Creation.
    It can do massive destruction for a period, as you described. it canNOT however proceed forever.
    Grafted roses revert to their more natural state, everything does.
    Humans keep trying to Play God but we are not gods and the original rules reassert. Always.
    Frankenstein monsters will always remain monsters, we just are not equipped to be gods. The virus will lose its gained functions at some point. It will go back to being a normal coronavirus. Everyone knows in their hearts this “invisible line” exists, which is why those who want to believe that “science” can change a man to a woman fight so goddam hard and hatefully against those who just speak the obvious truth out loud. And why we are automatically deeply repulsed at people like Dr Mengele and projects like MK-Ultra, chimeras, and the like.
    When humans cross that invisible line in the name of “Science” they are doomed to fail, they are agents of destruction only at that point, not creation.
    In the mean time, this is whole situation and all of its radiating effects is bullshit of the highest magnitude.
    * those who doubt it’s a man made virus need to look up ALL the “gained functions” – hyper virulence, the foot spots, brain stem attacks, etc. It’s a gain-of-function smorgasbord. No virus has ever been that greedy, you need humans for that.

  120. sunburstsoldier April 17, 2020 at 10:01 pm #

    Will the Long Emergency give rise to the totalitarian state? Will people sell their souls to an elite to avoid the hard work of adaptation that comes with a return to something sustainable? The sixties back-to-the-land movement didn’t work out, at least not for most (there are a handful of hardy pioneers still at it), but that was more of a fad than anything else. Those who ‘experimented’ with this lifestyle (I was one) knew they could go back to the comfort of their fossil fuel-heated homes anytime they chose to. Something to think about…

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  121. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 10:08 pm #

    From James’s thoughtful – if very gloomy – essay:

    The Covid-19 corona virus didn’t initiate the financial disorders of the moment in the US and Europe, but it ensured that there would not be another appearance of any “recovery” a la the central bank interventions of 2008-09.

    How long will the Dow Jones keep its buoyancy – it is up for the week and the month. Does the mysterious world of professional investment think (a) the “correction” of 21 Feb – 23 Mar was “enough” to factor in the pandemic, and (b) that there will always be bailouts if the lockdown runs and runs?

    Hard to know.

    What it portends is a fast-track journey to a whole new disposition of things: first, for a while, a harsher, hungrier, angrier society of broken promises and dashed expectations; and then adaptation when a consensus emerges that the set of facts at hand amount to a new reality. In the meantime, we’re living in the meantime, which is not a comfortable place.

    Living in a meantime is a very astute way to describe it. For some of us with fixed retirement incomes and no careers in the balance, it is inconvenient without being a catastrophe.

    I’ve never been a fan of shopping and mad consuming, but there are things I miss: football over the weekends, community activities like markets and park events, maybe a future cruise, flying interstate to favourite places or to see family.

    But even the absence of these is hardly life-wrecking – we’re getting plenty of exercise, doing more gardening, getting lots of neglected paperwork in good order, sorting years of photos, and so on.

    I really feel for two groups:

    1. The genuine working class, who must go to work (because of their jobs – we’re not really in lockdown, since millions are still doing essential jobs everywhere to support the rest of us. Or they must go to work to pay the rent and put food on the table – and the loss of their job is a financial shock in a way that we have essentially never experienced.

    2. The more aspirational middle class – the Gen Y | Millennials aged about 18 to 38 – they have seen the dot.com bomb, 9/11, the Great Recession, and now this. Many of this cohort have spent more than two decades trying to start real careers, start family formation, get into the housing market … to live as they hoped.

    My only positive thought for when this thing ends is that we will actually have a much better world, with a whole new appreciation of what is important and what will really keep us safe and well.

    But I shan’t hold my breath – there are a lot of powerful forces out there that will do everything in their power to get back to the top of the food chain. But resistance isn’t futile.

  122. Robert White April 17, 2020 at 10:20 pm #

    WayfaringStranger,

    nCov-19 has no cure or vaccine. Once a vaccine is manufactured there is no guarantee that it will last season to season. Viral Reactivation is part of the Viral Load conundrum of this bioweapon as the Viral Load is greatest in the asymptomatic phase which allows for stealth spread undetected. Testing the entire population via contact tracing is not going to be achievable.

    This virus is a retro-virus rDNA.

    RW

  123. sophia April 17, 2020 at 10:26 pm #

    US cases per million: 2144
    US deaths per million: 112

    That is a raw rate of 5.2% –

    I don’t think those number will hold up at all. They are an artifact of our very low rate of testing.

  124. tucsonspur April 17, 2020 at 10:42 pm #

    I’m with Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan: “Better to be six feet apart than six feet under”.

    Rather than putting an end to globalism, some are saying that this virus is exactly what the globalists want, and that they will use it in authoritarian, totalitarian fashion to achieve their goal, which is a world populated by a fully controlled, pliable, and compliant people.

    It should be noted that these conditions already exist in a mild, palatable form all across the world by the very nature of government. Governments have to govern, and thus people must be controlled to a certain degree, and it is the extent of this control that becomes an issue.

    The controls that governments are now putting in place because of the Corona virus are to protect the well being of its citizens, and that is certainly the case here in the US, and it’s probably the same case in all the Western democracies. And here, Trump calls for states to ‘liberate’, not surrender. It certainly could be a different story in places like China or Iran, e.g.

    Globalism will be shaken up, stirred, if you like, not ended, as long as our current system of trade, travel, and interdependency remains.
    I wonder if even our almost full reliance on China for our medications will change in any meaningful way.

    The elites have prospered under globalism’s current structure, and it has done so with a somewhat resignedly content populace. Become too oppressive and you have restless, unhappy consumers who may not remain resigned any longer.

    Technology and surveillance and the extent to which they are used is a concern, but I believe that our traditions, values, and awareness of their dangers will limit any stifling, Draconian use of these.

    Globalists want the Covid like they want closed borders. They want the virus as badly as a case of hepatitis.

  125. sophia April 17, 2020 at 10:43 pm #

    Green Alba,

    You posted plenty on that particular thread and were frustrated that I could not be moved to your anti-scientific position. Hence you invited everyone to consider that I must be paid to be here. The last refuge…

    Okay. I was not frustrated that I could not move you to my position. If I get frustrated, it is from seemingly canned responses that never budge no matter the points raised. In other words, you seemed so unreasonable that it didn’t seem quite normal. And that is also the reason I suspected you might be paid. I know plenty of people who cannot be budged from their climate change position. Mostly they cannot be induced to discuss it because they begin to hyperventilate quite quickly. But you seem very calm and yet too sure of yourself.

    you did see it, because I said in the post that I wasn’t going to respond to any more of your posts (because of your insult) and you responded to that, as I recall.

    I don’t consider that an insult. I doubt at this point that you are paid. Cargill I don’t think is paid because I think he is an AI program. But you take certain things personally and impute motive when it is my reaction to something that seems weird to me.

    So now, if I did see it and did not respond, it cannot have contained much that was concrete. Otherwise, I did not see it.

    And I don’t know if you are able to judge that, based on the silly thing you said above, that my position is anti-scientific. What a cheap shot and one of my pet peeve’s. I don’t really believe there is any person on the planet who dislikes science. Such people just don’t exist. What does exist is disagreement about data. And when there is data that is only allowed to be interpreted in one way, with no questions allowed, that is most certainly not science, but it is what your side dearly longs for, and lashes out in frustration when others just don’t agree on their interpretation of data.

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  126. sophia April 17, 2020 at 10:46 pm #

    The list is a list. Which has become a meme in the denier community.

    No, it is a list, and calling it a meme is a way of weaseling out of responding to it. Whereas, the 97% consensus is definitely a meme because, to the best of my understanding, it is quite false. As in fudged, made up.

  127. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 10:48 pm #

    Anyways, this bio-engineered piece of shit with its HIV hooks spliced in is also subject to the laws of Nature/Creation.

    I appreciate this meme is floating around like a virus, but is there any credible evidence that the virus was gene-spliced?

    I don’t think those number will hold up at all. They are an artifact of our very low rate of testing.

    While US testing rates should be a lot higher before there is any plans to “re-open” society, it’s also very likely that deaths from Corvid-19 are way under-reported as well. Plus as has been much-discussed, death rates vary enormously with age and other factors.

    But I don’t understand the right’s enthusiasm for “proving” that the pandemic (and the lockdown) are just a beat-up, or being done for nefarious reasons (including the effort to bring down Trump).

    I actually think every decent person – particularly everyone in the medical industry fighting this thing – would rather defeat Covid-19, even if Trump were re-elected.

  128. sophia April 17, 2020 at 10:58 pm #

    Wayfaring Stranger,

    Thank you, a very clear post and I agree with all of it. I had more or less figured out what you said bout the ACE receptors but you stated it most succinctly. I stopped mine about 3 weeks ago.
    I have wondered if perhaps the real reason for the overreaction of the govts of the world is that they know it is an engineered virus and were not sure how much trouble to expect. Also, if as you say the virus will mutate to an attenuated form, then biding our time will help.

    What foot problems did you mean?

  129. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 11:13 pm #

    Scientists have strong evidence that Covid-19 originated naturally:

    https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists-strong-evidence-coronavirus-originated-naturally/story?id=70207409

  130. Cargill April 17, 2020 at 11:49 pm #

    Cargill I don’t think is paid because I think he is an AI program.

    I can neither confirm nor deny.

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  131. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 12:16 am #

    From the Kaiser Family Institute, via AlterNet:

    [T]here’s reason to believe that red states are likely to be hit hard as the virus spreads: Many of them are leading the country in risk factors for severe illness and death from COVID-19.

    • 17 of the 20 states with the highest rates of smoking are red. Two are swing states and one, North Carolina, has only become blue in the past couple of cycles.

    • Twelve of the 15 states with the highest self-reported rate of diabetes are red. Thirteen of the 15 states with the highest obesity rates are as well.

    • Of the 15 states with the largest share of their populations reporting being in “fair” or “poor” health, one is blue, two are swing states and the rest are solidly Republican.

    • Among the 15 states with the highest rates of death from heart disease, four are swing states but none are blue states.

    • Red states also tend to have long underinvested in public health agencies and have poorer healthcare infrastructure overall. Of the 20 states with the highest rates of uninsured, 16 are safely Republican.

    • These factors explain at least in part why eight of the 10 states with the highest rates of death from pneumonia and influenza in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, were heavily Republican.

    Doesn’t look too promising does it? There could be bad things coming, and yet there is talk about “re-opening” soon.

  132. toktomi April 18, 2020 at 12:50 am #

    @BackRowHeckler

    “On a more positive note, filled my truck up with gas today: $1.79 per gallon.”

    Why would the price of gasoline matter at this point?

    Toto, I have a feeling that your rendition of reality is a bit out of date.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T23jqjlbylg

  133. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 3:48 am #

    President Donald Trump on Friday went on a lengthy Twitter rampage that included calls to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, an open show of support for right-wing demonstrators who are disregarding stay-at-home orders in those states to protest coronavirus social distancing guidelines.

    All you right-wingers, your Dear Leader is a complete and utter psycho and a danger to health and safety.

    Can’t you see that? Can’t you admit that?

  134. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 4:14 am #

    From a Trump Tweet:

    LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!

    He might as well have shouted out Sieg Heil at the end. He is the worst president ever. How do you right-wingers support this destroyer of freedom?

  135. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 4:33 am #

    Is there anyone on this forum who can seriously support the mad fascist donald trump? If you do, you are the worsts of the worst. The man is killing thousands of Americans. Please vote Democrat.

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  136. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 4:57 am #

    LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!

    Is there anyone on here who supports this total idiot? Is there anyone here who believes that the future of their own personal life depends on voting for this fascist idiot?

  137. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 5:06 am #

    sophia

    “No, it is a list, and calling it a meme is a way of weaseling out of responding to it. Whereas, the 97% consensus is definitely a meme because, to the best of my understanding, it is quite false. As in fudged, made up.”

    No. It remains a list but one which is entirely dishonest and therefore meaningless. Therefore, in addition to being a list it becomes a meme, once it has been responded to and proven to be dishonest.

    This ‘list’ is a list, but its significance is ‘quite false. As in fudged, made up’. As I said, dishonest and entirely meaningless. But, since its significance continues to be cited as ‘real’ within the denier community, despite being dishonest, it has also become a meme.

    Note that I did not refer to it as a meme without looking into it properly, which you have signally failed to do.

  138. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 5:22 am #

    sophia

    “So now, if I did see it and did not respond, it cannot have contained much that was concrete.”

    Hilarious. And you talk about me being sure of myself!! I was not discussing something in the realm of your ‘angelic beings’, but real, incontrovertible facts about the context and conduct of this meaningless ‘31,000 scientists’ exercise and the motivation behind it (which is the same as yours).

    Oddly, on a site chock full of climate science deniers, not one other person was able to come up with the slightest refutation of my post either. How odd that they should all be so reticent, in the absence of anything ‘concrete’.

  139. Iananna April 18, 2020 at 5:38 am #

    I rely on JHK for verbal and cerebral precision so am nonplussed by “The Wuhan virus was, at least, a very convenient distraction from all that.“.
    Is that meant to be a sotto voce/wink-nudge claim that it was intentional?

  140. Vinnie the Vintner April 18, 2020 at 6:04 am #

    Restless, you said, “MMT has nary a thing to do with printing and giving money to the rich.”

    MMT is all about printing money. Where it ends up is either the consequence or the benefit of the printing. Seems to me it usually ends up in the fat wallet, but Jim can answer your question. What I see are exponential gains in the deficit (money that was printed) and the gap between the rich and the poor ever-widening.

    Retail sales just posted the largest drop on record. Where is the resulting “hopium” of DEMAND these deficits are supposed to create?
    I hear there is a surplus of plastic Easter eggs this year.

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  141. probbins April 18, 2020 at 7:36 am #

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnW9J9VbqXY

  142. sunburstsoldier April 18, 2020 at 7:55 am #

    The reason the Left will ALWAYS lose is because it doesn’t take God into account…

  143. Majella April 18, 2020 at 8:24 am #

    ‘During the much deadlier Spanish Flu when 675000 Americans died (mostly young healthy people) the government DID NOT shut down the place’

    Precisely why there was such a massive death toll.

    100 years ago, there was very little idea of what the virus was or how to effectively manage it. Wilson got a pass because he wasn’t politicizing it very freaking day!

    Hers the reality of who’s running the joint now.

    https://youtu.be/hB8icFsfJe0

  144. Majella April 18, 2020 at 8:32 am #

    Sophia;
    ‘ A death toll of 4% is not something I have seen anywhere, and I have read quite a lot.’

    It’s a simple equation – Deaths Divided by known Cases x100/1

    Currently, 155,000 deaths /2,267 million cases = 6.83%

  145. BackRowHeckler April 18, 2020 at 8:33 am #

    We had a snowstorm on Dec 1 of last year, and more snow last night, April 17. Its snowing right now. How is this possible? I’ve been hearing about global warming since the 1990s and we are way past the date it was said there’d be palm trees growing in New England and rising sea levels would inundate Cape Cod. Now the dire predictions I notice have been pushed out to the year 2030. I’m starting to think global warming is just a load of political bullsh#t, and when 2030 rolls around and we are still freezing our asses off in NE, goal posts will be moved out again, probably to 2050. Disaster will always be a decade or two away, meanwhile, keep the donations and government research swag coming in.

    Brh

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  146. Pucker April 18, 2020 at 8:36 am #

    Can any of you CFNers recommend a good protein powder for my smoothies? Preferably. something that won’t make me impotent, deranged and psychotic, won’t make me fart really bad, and/ or turn me into a giant flaming Homosexual. And Non-GMO. Thank you

  147. Nightowl April 18, 2020 at 8:38 am #

    “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!

    He might as well have shouted out Sieg Heil at the end. He is the worst president ever. How do you right-wingers support this destroyer of freedom?”

    And the fantasists are back to calling Trump Hitler.

    Hahahahahaha.

  148. BackRowHeckler April 18, 2020 at 8:45 am #

    “Why does the price of gasoline matter at this point.” – Totkomi

    For years the price and availability of oil was one of the main pillars of this blog, and the basis of Jim’s Made by Hand novels. Now suddenly, it’s not important?

    But I know what you mean I think. What does it matter if there is no place to drive to anyway.

    Brh

  149. Nightowl April 18, 2020 at 8:46 am #

    In other news, justice for the Coupsters is coming…

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1129343742748569601

    Bet on it.

  150. BackRowHeckler April 18, 2020 at 8:50 am #

    Hitler was a big gun control guy. He didn’t believe weapons should be in private hands, even amongst party members.

    Well, there it is. Gotta dig out the Wild Turkey, pour myself a shot. Who will join me?

    Brh

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  151. Nightowl April 18, 2020 at 8:58 am #

    Nah, BRH, the better take is this:

    “Trump is Hitler”

    “We must abolish the 2nd Amendment and give our guns to Hitler”

    I am not that concerned with firearms either way, as the government always has bigger guns, but with the McResistance, the jokes write themselves.

  152. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 8:58 am #

    “‘During the much deadlier Spanish Flu when 675000 Americans died (mostly young healthy people) the government DID NOT shut down the place’”

    In addition to Majella’s points, there was the small point of there being a world war on, which makes it difficult to shut down an economy. Huge numbers of military personnel were being sent to Europe and taking the virus with them, then circulating it everywhere else. On top of that, both sides in the war were at great pains to keep the propaganda exercise going that they weren’t being greatly affected by the virus, so as not to give comfort to their enemies. Closing everything down (impossible anyway) would have given the game away somewhat.

    Spain, being neutral, had no requirement to pretend everything was hunky dory, hence people assuming that the virus was principally wreaking havoc in Spain, where there was no censorship, with the resultant misnomer of ‘Spanish flu’.

  153. Majella April 18, 2020 at 9:08 am #

    Lookit that!

    NigIQwl is now presenting the Misleader-in-Chief’s tweets as “evidence” of one of his most favored CTs.

    And we should ‘count on it’ apparently. That’s richly ironic when one examines all the other things this Idiot if a President has said with great veracity, only to be provably wrong on the very face of them, or walked back days -nay, sometimes mere hours – later.

    You just sit back and wallow in your smug self-delusion.

  154. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 9:15 am #

    In the UK the lockdown has been extended for another three weeks, with plans being made (or at least called for, including by the parliamentary opposition) for an ‘exit strategy’. I don’t think any economy could be expected to survive a lockdown of the current intensity for any longer than that. However, many measures will doubtless remain in place – not just because they’re advised or instructed but because people have a care themselves to limit the spread of the disease and to prevent the health services from going into meltdown.

    There is currently an increase in suicides and domestic violence in the community, as well as an increase in deaths due to heart attacks and stroke (as a result of people not wishing to go to hospital, not because they are being prevented from doing so). If frontline healthcare staff are expected to keep up the current level of intensive care for another year or more, their mental (and physical) health -as well as that of their families – will also be at risk. There are no easy answers.

    But the notion of ‘herd immunity’ doesn’t seem to be a goer for now. A recent Dutch study has shown that only about 3% of the population has antibodies to Covid.

  155. wwg1wga April 18, 2020 at 9:18 am #

    He who binds himself to a joy…..
    http://www.got-truth.com/docs/He%20who%20binds%20himself%20to%20a%20joy.pdf

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  156. benr April 18, 2020 at 9:24 am #

    @cartroll

    Yep I support the 2nd amendment as I do the first in fact I swore an oath to defend the Constitution something I believe in to this day and by proxy I support Donald J. Trump.
    The fact you so ridiculously call him a dictator shows just how out of touch with reality you really are I mean seriously get a grip.
    You live in Australia or so you pretend yet you seem way to invested in the communist shit show known as the modern day progressive party ridiculously named the Democrat party.
    Give it a rest ya wanker.

  157. stelmosfire April 18, 2020 at 9:42 am #

    Majella says:
    A death toll of 4% is not something I have seen anywhere, and I have read quite a lot.’

    It’s a simple equation – Deaths Divided by known Cases x100/1

    Currently, 155,000 deaths /2,267 million cases = 6.83%

    All I can say is numbers don’t lie but liars use numbers.

    You could also use the numbers like this. World population 7.6 billion, Number infected as of 4/18 2,215,516 = .03 % or 30 cases per 100,000 people with a death total today of 153,055 which is .002 % or 2 people out of 100,000 people. The USA figures match these almost exactly. There a different set of numbers my Bogan friend.

  158. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 9:57 am #

    “There is currently an increase in suicides and domestic violence in the community, as well as an increase in deaths due to heart attacks and stroke (as a result of people not wishing to go to hospital, not because they are being prevented from doing so). ” – GA

    That increase in deaths has, of course, to be measured against the huge decrease in deaths due to non-Covid respiratory disease, which has been the inadvertent result of the mitigation measures. Just the fact that they can walk along the road without breathing in the same quantity of diesel and plastic particulates from cars will have saved a whole lot of lives (estimated at around 30,000 deaths annually in the UK, just for deaths owing to particulates).

  159. Nightowl April 18, 2020 at 9:57 am #

    Majello in an emotional spiral again.

    Oh, how I am going to laugh at you again.

    Sometimes I wish this site were searchable by poster. You have given us some gems.

  160. Pucker April 18, 2020 at 10:29 am #

    The billion dollar standardized college entrance exam industry is freaking out trying to figure out how they can still compel the abused kids to take the tests online. The colleges meanwhile seem to view the virus lockdown as an opportunity to dump the stupid standardized testing racket.

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  161. Pucker April 18, 2020 at 10:31 am #

    Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who is not a liar, recently remarked that the Indian government kicked Bill Gates out of India because his foundation had pushed a vaccine that paralyzed about half a million Indian kids. Is this true?

  162. Pucker April 18, 2020 at 10:32 am #

    What supplements do you put into your breakfast smoothies to prevent becoming a transgender or a Flaming Homosexual? Iodine? Moringa? Maca Root? Ashwaganda? Birth Control Pills? Fish Oil? CBD Oil?

  163. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 10:42 am #

    “the Indian government kicked Bill Gates out of India because his foundation had pushed a vaccine that paralyzed about half a million Indian kids. Is this true?”

    Does it sound true to you? If you think it doesn’t, your problem is solved. If you think it does, then it’s the least of your problems. 🙂

    https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/health/story/20170306-bill-gates-foundation-vaccines-for-poor-india-health-985853-2017-02-27

    And it raises the biggest question of all: the fate of India’s under-immunised children, half a million of whom die of vaccine-preventable diseases every year.”

    Perhaps those half million, dying of vaccine-preventable disease every year were the ones he was thinking of? It’s an easy mistake to make…

  164. Pucker April 18, 2020 at 10:46 am #

    Have you ever just stood on the window buck naked with disheveled hair staring blankly into the outside world while drinking a cup of gourmet coffee? Not that Folger’s shit…

  165. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 10:48 am #

    “Have you ever just stood on the window buck naked with disheveled hair staring blankly into the outside world while drinking a cup of gourmet coffee? ”

    I didn’t know there was any other way to drink gourmet coffee. Gourmandise oblige.”

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  166. stelmosfire April 18, 2020 at 10:54 am #

    Puck, make it Black Ivory Coffee and put your tusk on.

  167. JohnAZ April 18, 2020 at 11:07 am #

    Watching the debate on the blog is disheartening. Everybody thinks they know the answer to everything, but only from their perspective. Something I have learned from this Coronavirus is the inability of human governance or “intelligence” to do much of anything right. Talk, talk, talk about disease statistics and then trying to bend them to your own political view is stupid and meaningless. The quality of the data taking is so poor that making conclusions that mean anything is fruitless. This AM the word is out that a study says that the mortality rate is “much less” than what has been advertised. Examine this statement against the history of the “scientists”. Already, we know that the amount of carriers, positives is much higher than the cases stated. We know now that carriers are able to pass on the virus from almost the point of contact, and can transmit viruses two to three days prior to symptoms showing up. Upwards to 60% of the 600 or so sailors positive on the Teddy Roosevelt are Asymptomatic. IOW, they have no idea they have the virus and they are happily passing it around. And btw, they have had 1 death. 1/600 = .16%, not 4%. And the forecast total deaths just keep being decreased, by the scientists. This virus could end up being as benign as a bad flu year. In the meantime, we have shut down the best economy in history. Let me think, who was it that wanted the US economy torn down for political purposes? Bill Maher comes to mind, representing our illustrious Left.

    The statistics are BS, the data taking is BS, conclusions, especially political ones are ignorant, as both of our illustrious, NOT, parties are showing now.

    Here are some questions. Do people taking ace inhibitors have an advantage? Why do the drugs being used now, work? Why the occasional young breakthrough deaths? We cannot even get past the world geopolitics to get answers of what started this mess in the first place. IMHO, if it happened that a whistleblower shows up with the real answers of what happened, the Elitist New World Order folks will be in the limelight. Which is why we will probably never hear the real story.

    Here is what I see coming. This virus locks onto us easier and in more places than anything we have seen before. It’s receptor is the ACE2 which is in a lot of different places in the body hence its ability to attack many organs. It is a killing machine for compromised immune systems or decreased lung capacities. One of the things about aging is that we lose significant portions of our lungs to emphysema, Anything else, decreased capacity due to obesity, smoking, pollution, that affects how much good lung space we have affects how we handle the storm. The body in compromised folks, overreacts and tries to kill the little buggers and loses the battle for lung space. The cytokine storm is the indicator that the lungs have lost. I would not even be surprised if there are receptors on some of the immunological cells that are being destroyed.

    All of this is supposition, but educated guessing. The problem again is there is no responsible data taking going on, we do not know squat about this virus. The polity will sweep this under the rug if this SARS disappears like the first one did. The Deep State will go back to its job of not making waves and ignoring everything.

    Trump’s group is doing a good job of trying to make sure all bases are covered without stomping on the states rights. Which is what infuriates the Dems in their quest for Deep State control. They, the Dems, almost have convinced the American public to sit, roll over and beg for government issued treats. Trump wanted to make sure that all bases are covered by the Feds and Cuomo stomped on that incursion to states rights. So Trump backed off, Cuomo now says the states do not have the resources to do the job of controlling the opening of the economy. What a political scam. And by the way, Cuomo is right, the states do not have the resources, or the capital to do a good exit from lock down, but ta da, neither do the Feds. It is just a grab for Fed power with no real obligation to do the job.

    They have safeguards built in to catch outbreaks and put containment efforts back in place before it runs away. Like other countries, if the USA had enforced containment in January, this would have been stopped on the West Coast. Oh no, we decided to entertainment ourselves with partisan politics instead. That is why the people of the US and elsewhere need to take control of their governments back from the elites, to protect ourselves from Evil Empires.

    The Crisis is erupting now. If it lasts, the world is going to emerge into the next High is very different place.

    The Trinamic trio can rant all they want against Trump and what shoulda happened. Their usage of bogus data just displays the Leftist scarcity of ideas and solutions and withdrawal to name calling. Predictable.

  168. JohnAZ April 18, 2020 at 11:19 am #

    Just announced that the Pentagon has extended its travel restrictions until June 30. Hmmmm?

  169. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 11:27 am #

    Corona has to be hoaxy. The drug cartels and ISIS jihadis are curbing their activities to prevent the spread. Makes sense since they are a part of “them”. And because they say corona death is because of racism and structural disadvantages. That’s what they say about everything on God’s green earth. I’m glad they did come out and admit this is just another implementation of the NWO agenda.

  170. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 12:00 pm #

    Did you see ABC’s David Muir interview Bill and Melinda Gates the other day? Melinda wore pants and Bill wore a dress. They are basically lobbyists for the CCP, WHO, and the NWO. Bill had a cheesy smile on his face the whole time while Melinda scowled and angled the left side of her face toward the camera. It was all pretty bizarre and scary. Can you imagine if those people controlled every second of your existence?

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  171. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 12:09 pm #

    Do you think Nancy Pelosi has enough chocolate to last for the duration of the lockdown? The fact that she eats so much chocolate while appearing petite indicates that many of the Elite like her are shape shifting monsters. Not to speak of lack of normal human emotions, empathy, etc.

  172. elysianfield April 18, 2020 at 12:11 pm #

    Well, ladies and germs;

    The other shoe has fallen. South Korea reports that a significant number of “survivors” of the CV have again tested positive for the disease.

    https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/04/18/COVID-19-Survivors-test-positive-again-in-S-Korea-global-deaths-hit-150K/9651587211288/?ls=1

    Sooo…the mild cases are subject to re-occurrence, not just reinfection? Fox news-doctor-in-residence states that if a patient requires hospitalization, and ICU in particular, that major organs are injured…damaged.

    There had to be a reason that this disease promoted such draconian responses from virtually every country in the world. Apparently, you will get it, if you survive, you will get it again…wash, rinse and repeat until you infect everyone around you and suffer the ultimate consequences.

    Johns Hopkins site shows that the morbidity rate averages, currently, at 4%…but the season is young.

    This is going to be a most unusual and exciting summer.

  173. sophia April 18, 2020 at 12:19 pm #

    Green Alba,

    No. It remains a list but one which is entirely dishonest and therefore meaningless. Therefore, in addition to being a list it becomes a meme, once it has been responded to and proven to be dishonest.

    This ‘list’ is a list, but its significance is ‘quite false. As in fudged, made up’. As I said, dishonest and entirely meaningless. But, since its significance continues to be cited as ‘real’ within the denier community, despite being dishonest, it has also become a meme.

    Why is it dishonest? If it is dishonest, I agree that it is a meme.
    And so, what have you done to investigate the source of the 97% meme?

  174. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 12:24 pm #

    EF

    This bit sounds quite hopeful, though?

    “He added that remnants can be there without any live virus present. For example, scientists attempted to incubate the virus in individuals from the same family in which three retested positive after recovering. But they weren’t able to incubate it, which indicated no live virus was present.

    Kwon also said that so far there has been no indication that patients who retest positive are contagious even with 44 percent showing mild symptoms.

    “At the moment, we think there is no danger of further secondary or tertiary transmission,” Kwon said.”

  175. akmofo April 18, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

    Faucist Fauci at Georgetown University and the Vatican‘s Eugenics agenda:

    https://banned.video/watch?id=5e8c9ef7475781009430c49d

    Nothing is coincidence
    Nothing Is by accident
    Everything is planned

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  176. sophia April 18, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

    Green Alba,

    If your reply to me last December had substance, I would have responded because it interests me. Therefore, I didn’t see it.

  177. sophia April 18, 2020 at 12:35 pm #

    Pucker,

    “Can any of you CFNers recommend a good protein powder for my smoothies?”

    Why would you take in artificial crap like that? Isn’t food good enough for you? There are so many good smoothies you could make. No one in the first world is short of protein.

  178. sophia April 18, 2020 at 12:43 pm #

    There is currently an increase in suicides and domestic violence in the community, as well as an increase in deaths due to heart attacks and stroke

    Which is what I have been saying would happen. And it is only beginning. Especially with prolonged lockdown.

    So – it will take a while to play out but the deaths, not to mention misery, will be in the millions. Worldwide, millions upon millions.

    Will we be getting apologies from the “the big three” when that happens?

    Yeah, right, tough choices. And our leaders have chosen more deaths, not less. There was NOT a perfect choice, nor a good one.

    As to the Dutch, did they lock down before the virus took much hold? Lockdown is not the way to herd immunity, you know.

  179. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 12:45 pm #

    sophia

    “Why is it dishonest?”

    Fully explained in my nested post to which I have already referred you.

    It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that I put it all together again, but it’s not going to be now. Hopefully the nesting structure will return – the post is very fully explained and I’m happy with my explanation of the time. I wouldn’t want to do it all again and miss something out. 🙂

    Re the 97% ‘meme’ I’ve looked into it several times, and I don’t recall using it as a argument anyway.

    But here ya go…

    https://askepticalhuman.com/science/2018/11/6/debunking-the-97-global-warming-consensus-is-a-lie-its-actually-52

  180. sophia April 18, 2020 at 12:45 pm #

    wwg1wga-

    Thanks.

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  181. sophia April 18, 2020 at 12:50 pm #

    Nightowl,

    Sometimes I wish this site were searchable by poster.

    Have you tried the CTRL F feature?

  182. sophia April 18, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

    Pucker,

    What supplements do you put into your breakfast smoothies to prevent becoming a transgender or a Flaming Homosexual? Iodine? Moringa? Maca Root? Ashwaganda? Birth Control Pills? Fish Oil? CBD Oil?

    All but the birth control pills, my friend.

  183. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 12:57 pm #

    “Which is what I have been saying would happen. And it is only beginning. Especially with prolonged lockdown.”

    Until you come up with some actual figures (that include the drop in deaths from other factors that the mitigating strategies have inadvertently brought about, you’re just giving me an opinion. And since you don’t know how many deaths there would be without lockdown, ditto.

    “So – it will take a while to play out but the deaths, not to mention misery, will be in the millions. Worldwide, millions upon millions.”

    Again, you’re not giving any details. It’s only just starting in Africa and India. I don’t know how many deaths there you are willing to countenance in order to prove your point, but I’m not arguing black or white anyway.

    I don’t know who the big three are, sorry. How do you feel about what Russia is doing?

    “Yeah, right, tough choices. And our leaders have chosen more deaths, not less.”

    Again, you do not have the figures for this claim any more than anyone else is likely to have for some considerable time.

    “As to the Dutch, did they lock down before the virus took much hold? Lockdown is not the way to herd immunity, you know.”

    I do know, thank you. But it’s the same in California, apparently. And no-one yet has the slightest evidence that herd immunity is a valid concept with this virus or how long any hypothetical immunity would last if it were shown to exist.

    You have a fixed view on this. I don’t – I’m just listening to what everyone is saying. The NHS is running out of PPE now with the lockdown in place. YMMV, but you still have nurses suspended for refusing to work without adequate PPE. Your choices as a country do not affect ours. So you don’t need to argue your point with me, because I’m not stopping you do anything.

  184. GreenAlba April 18, 2020 at 1:09 pm #

    sophia

    “If your reply to me last December had substance, I would have responded because it interests me. Therefore, I didn’t see it.”

    FIne. Let’s hope you pay more attention next time. 🙂

    You continued to pursue me on the very next thread, as I recall, which was slightly annoying since I’d said I owed you no responses as a result of your calumnies regarding my presence here, so you certainly weren’t incommunicado.

    And you don’t actually owe anyone the courtesy of a response to their posts once they’ve used bullying tactics by addressing the gallery to insist everyone accept that you’re a paid troll just because they don’t like facts being repeated.

  185. teddyc April 18, 2020 at 1:26 pm #

    Looking at worldometer for the USA, it shows the breakdown by state. I don’t know that one can draw to many conclusions (as to what the reason is for the numbers) as there are many variables. Social distancing? What about population density? Texas looks alright. What about latitude? The numbers seem high to the north. What about age demographics? Why haven’t Florida and AZ seem higher numbers like NY? It looks like density and latitude are significant. But then there is timing, maybe it just hasn’t got there yet.
    Will the entire world follow NY with 1000 deaths per million? At a world population of 7,7 billion, that is 7.7 million deaths.

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  186. sunburstsoldier April 18, 2020 at 2:12 pm #

    benr,

    Take my advice, don’t read Carguile’s comments anymore. You already know what he will say. Then, at least for you, he will dry up and blow away…

    How do you like that? I made a rhyme…

  187. sophia April 18, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

    Green Alba,

    I’m having a look at your linked article. At least he puts it down to 84% off the bat.

    Until you come up with some actual figures (that include the drop in deaths from other factors that the mitigating strategies have inadvertently brought about, you’re just giving me an opinion. And since you don’t know how many deaths there would be without lockdown, ditto.

    See, these are kind of mean tactics that show me you only want to score points. I find that tiresome. I want to find truth as best I can, difficult as that is. I don’t care that much if I’m wrong. Of course nether I nor anyone has those numbers, and we never will. But it was your post which said that the suicides and heart attacks are going up.

    As to proof, there are entire books out about the deaths caused by despair, mostly from economics. There are many articles and videos and interviews about this. Including Dr. Kendrick in Scotland. And this is not new or unexpected. It isn’t breaking news.

    Now, your point about a reduction deaths from other causes, mostly repsiratory illness is interesting because it seems like it ought to be true. I have also seen that some epidemiologists say that there is no evidence that widespread quarantine will do anything positive. I’m open to hear it but it certainly seems like human to human transfer is how things usually spread.

    I read an interesting book recently, because such things interest me. There was a guy who back in early 70s or 80s just dropped out of the world. He had a car and he simply ditched it. I don’t know how he could do it to his parents, and he didn’t seem to have been triggered by much. He was young, about 22, working, bought his first car. He ditched the car and went walking and found a camping and vacation area on a lake in Maine, where he lived. He hid out in a secluded spot he found for something like 30 years. And there were arrest warrants out for him because he would go to the summer homes and raid them for food. But they could never catch him. He was obsessed with not being found. He lived through the winters at 40 below and suffered a lot but would not build a fire because that might get him found. When he was finally caught a question he was asked is how in the world could you handle it when you got sick? and he said he had never once been sick. He had absolutely no human contact in those 28 years.

    Perhaps people will change and always be more cautious in the future, but nothing about how he lived entices me whatsoever.

    Did we decrease deaths from flu and other colds? Perhaps. But like corona, they almost always take those who are in their last months and maybe year or two of life.

    I don’t know who the big three are, sorry. How do you feel about what Russia is doing?

    Apparently not you! Evelyn, Majella and Cargill.
    Russia – do you mean the subway experiment? Or letting people go to church on Easter? In the Orthodox Churches, Easter carries the power of just about all the rest of year together. They spent about 13 weeks on Easter.
    The subway – well first it is going to be interesting to watch the toucomes, both short term and long term, of those few countries who have not gone with the program. The data will be invaluable. Second, I note that they have more freedom than we do! If we had such a program, many would sign up for it. And they would be dong the world and society a favor. Because are you thinking that lockdown will make the virus go away? It won’t and we will have prolonged misery ahead, like inching into cold water instead of a dive. I get the curve thing, but I think that has been accomplished Prolonged lockdown – it isn’t a matter of lives versus money. It is lives versus lives.
    The same in California? You mean a low percentage have antibodies? I think they locked down pretty early too.
    And no-one yet has the slightest evidence that herd immunity is a valid concept with this virus or how long any hypothetical immunity would last if it were shown to exist.

    Perhaps so, but if that is the case, life on earth is over. We will lock down forever, letting a few people grow food, but slowly supply and delivery will break down. And life won’t be worth living anyway.

    You have a fixed view on this. I don’t – I’m just listening to what everyone is saying

    I don’t really have a fixed view. My view has changed back and forth. There is good reason to be highly suspicious about it all, and good reason to fear the virus. But I do think lockdown is probably a mistake and the lockdown has been mismanaged. I might excuse a period of 2 weeks in which they over reacted, but lack of medical care is now starting to kick in. Our leaders are stuck and need to be a little more flexible. Hysteria reigns. And the hysterics are very much bullies.

    The NHS running out of PPE – a definite problem and they lie about it. I am concerned that by now the hospitals in the UK probably have tons of PPE,but they are not sharing with the care homes, who actually have patients!

    And you don’t actually owe anyone the courtesy of a response to their posts once they’ve used bullying tactics by addressing the gallery to insist everyone accept that you’re a paid troll just because they don’t like facts being repeated.

    I don’t consider it a bullying tactic. I guess it is upsetting. Someone said it about me and I didn’t like it, but partially because it seemed obvious that no one would pay for the types of things I say.

    The posts of the big three, on the other hand, if they are not being paid they are giving away valuable propaganda for free and why should they?

  188. elysianfield April 18, 2020 at 2:36 pm #

    “EF

    This bit sounds quite hopeful, though?

    “He added that remnants can be there without any live virus present. For example, scientists attempted to incubate the virus in individuals from the same family in which three retested positive after recovering. But they weren’t able to incubate it, which indicated no live virus was presentKwon also said that so far there has been no indication that patients who retest positive are contagious even with 44 percent showing mild symptoms.

    “At the moment, we think there is no danger of further secondary or tertiary transmission,” Kwon said.”

    Alba,
    Well, they used similar qualifiers when the disease first appeared, no? A very cautious assessment by their people. I understand that, and expect to see further revelations as the weeks progress. There were NO absolutes as reasons given, as it is currently not proper to do so given the incomplete understanding of the CV.

    Just another blip on the radar….

  189. teddyc April 18, 2020 at 2:39 pm #

    “Skepticism, not cleanliness, is next to godliness. Skepticism is the father of freedom. It is like the pry that holds open the door for truth to slip in.” -Gerry Spence
    So excuse me while I don’t take Fauci as gospel. While the medical field is good, they did bring the opioid crisis. It wasn’t just one company, it takes a lot of people towing the party line to produce that. And I believe Covid will be another case of lack of skepticism and independent thought.

  190. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 2:44 pm #

    And also look at who is doing well in the midst of the crisis. Wall Street thrives and sucks the life out of Mainstreet. Maybe this is it for Mainstreet? They certainly don’t care. They’ll flourish in their getaways and hideouts.

    https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/stimulus-intended-to-help-coronavirus-ravaged-small-businesses-instead-rewarding-hedge-funds-brokerages

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  191. Nightowl April 18, 2020 at 2:58 pm #

    Sophia,

    I am talking about a search function that covers the comments section for all comments in all of the weekly blog entries, not just the current entry.

    Muh’Jello is no doubt very glad this doesn’t exist.

  192. Majella April 18, 2020 at 3:27 pm #

    SSL
    ‘Did you see ABC’s David Muir interview Bill and Melinda Gates the other day? Melinda wore pants and Bill wore a dress. They are basically lobbyists for the CCP, WHO, and the NWO. Bill had a cheesy smile on his face the whole time while Melinda scowled and angled the left side of her face toward the camera. It was all pretty bizarre and scary. Can you imagine if those people controlled every second of your existence?‘

    HEY – heads up!pucker has somehow compromised your login! This reads like the hilarious parody for which he is famous! that the only logical explanation for a post that is so ridiculously inaccurate.

  193. Majella April 18, 2020 at 3:40 pm #

    Sophia says:
    ‘ I don’t consider it a bullying tactic. I guess it is upsetting. Someone said it about me and I didn’t like it, but partially because it seemed obvious that no one would pay for the types of things I say.

    The posts of the big three, on the other hand, if they are not being paid they are giving away valuable propaganda for free and why should they?’

    FUCKING HILARIOUS!

  194. Majella April 18, 2020 at 3:44 pm #

    NigIQwl

    You’re also hilarious, in your own quaint way.

  195. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 4:05 pm #

    And how frightening it is that you believe Bill and Melinda Gates. That says so much about you. You poor thing. I feel for you.

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  196. malthuss April 18, 2020 at 4:10 pm #

    Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who is not a liar, recently remarked that the Indian government kicked Bill Gates out of India because his foundation had pushed a vaccine that paralyzed about half a million Indian kids. Is this true?

    I read that 50? children were paralyzed. not 500,000.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-health-bmgf-idUSKBN15N13K

  197. Majella April 18, 2020 at 4:31 pm #

    Don’t be frightened for ME, SSL. You’re the one with a problem. Your credibility in that post was wiped out when you referred to Melinda wearing pants & Bill a skirt. I’m assuming it was intended to be metaphorical, but it simply spoke to your warped perception of reality.

  198. BackRowHeckler April 18, 2020 at 4:40 pm #

    I was checking out the Covid-19 World-O-Meter; lot of good information there.

    The sun’s declination is 11° 30′ N today as it makes its inexorable run to 23° 26′, the mythical ‘Tropic of Cancer’, bringing us the glorious Summer Solstice.

    This virus thrives in confined spaces and raw miserable weather, but can it survive in direct overhead summer sunlight in a population fortified with copious amounts of Screwdriver Smoothies? I’m betting no, and I’m laying down plans to bust out of this lockdown within the month.

    One hopeful sign is my Jamaican friends tell me there have been only a handful of Covid-19 deaths on the island thus far, despite being full up with Chinese construction workers, restaurants, shop owners, and a regular stream of Chinese coming into the country via Venezuela (so they say) Covid-19 doesn’t stand a chance under that hot Caribbean sun, IMHO.

    Brh

  199. sunburstsoldier April 18, 2020 at 4:49 pm #

    “I daresay the general theme out there is a belief that the problems with our current arrangements can be “fixed” if we just elect the right leaders, apply the right “policy tools,” guarantee equal outcomes, have faith in technological innovation, recycle more trash, and “celebrate diversity.” …The much more likely scenario ahead is that we will have to make very different arrangements for everyday life in a disorderly, impromptu, and emergent process, and that many of the comforts, conveniences, and certainties of past times will no longer be there for us.” JHK; Living in the Long Emergency.

    Jim nails it here. We need to set aside the pre-collapse mentality and start considering seriously what will be demanded of us post-collapse. I don’t necessarily mean this in a practical sense, we still have bills to pay and families to raise. What I think we need is more along the lines of an attitude adjustment. Are we mentally prepared for life post-collapse? Do we have what it takes to rise above whatever the future might throw at us? Most importantly, the post-collapse era will need leaders, grassroots leaders who serve as a beacon of hope, faith, and inspiration to others, especially younger generations. Can we fill this role? Such leadership will be desperately needed. Something to think about…

  200. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 4:56 pm #

    LOL ok. Look at the body language of both and the way they are positioned for the camera. Melinda looks twice as big as Bill. Why are you troubled that I noticed?

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  201. Majella April 18, 2020 at 5:05 pm #

    Stelmosfire said:

    ‘ Majella says:
    A death toll of 4% is not something I have seen anywhere, and I have read quite a lot.’

    It’s a simple equation – Deaths Divided by known Cases x100/1

    Currently, 155,000 deaths /2,267 million cases = 6.83%

    All I can say is numbers don’t lie but liars use numbers.

    You could also use the numbers like this. World population 7.6 billion, Number infected as of 4/18 2,215,516 = .03 % or 30 cases per 100,000 people with a death total today of 153,055 which is .002 % or 2 people out of 100,000 people. The USA figures match these almost exactly. There a different set of numbers my Bogan friend’

    So, I’m a liar? Surely arriving at a death rate -being known deaths as a percentage of known infections, globally – is among the least complicated of measures! Sorry it wasn’t clear enough for you. Maybe I’m being simplistic, but that IS what a mortality rate is to me, in my simple ignorance.

    By your measure; US Rate – 38,000 deaths /330,000,000 = 0.0118%

    By my measure: US Rate – 38,000 / 754,000 infections = 5.27%, close to the global average.

    And BTW you clearly don’t have the first clue as to what a ‘Bogan’ is.

  202. stelmosfire April 18, 2020 at 5:09 pm #

    And there’s this : 397 tested, 146 (36%) positive, 0 sick. What’s that mean? We’re all walking around with this shit and don’t know it? I guess there were no 85 year olds with heart conditions in that homeless crew.
    https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/14/coronavirus-boston-homeless-testing

  203. akmofo April 18, 2020 at 5:18 pm #

    ‘A new study from Stanford University, which was released Friday and has yet to be peer reviewed, tested samples from 3,330 people in Santa Clara county and found the virus was 50 to 85 times more common than official figures indicated.’

    Corona virus death rates are complete bullshit nonsense.

  204. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 5:51 pm #

    Majella how can you have faith in those numbers. Show us the overwhelmed hospitals we were supposed to have everywhere. You are so quick to tell everyone they aren’t credible. But that burden is on you as well.

  205. SoftStarLight April 18, 2020 at 5:56 pm #

    And the warrioress for the little guy had nothing to say about the Wall Street parasites? Whatever.

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  206. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 6:05 pm #

    I rely on JHK for verbal and cerebral precision so am nonplussed by “The Wuhan virus was, at least, a very convenient distraction from all that.“.

    Is that meant to be a sotto voce/wink-nudge claim that it was intentional?

    I picked that up too, and meant to comment but it went through to the catcher. Hopefully James hasn’t been “twanged” (his word) by his more execrable readers, into believing it was a deliberate act by the CCP against the Chinese people. Surely no-one believes that.

    The next level down – it was a CIA operation, using bioweapons from Fort Detrick smuggled in and dispersed via a visiting US Army sports team – is even more plausible than that.

    Then we can discuss whether it was an accidental leak from a Wuhan secure lab, and if so whether it was a non-military research virus, or a gene-spliced weapon.

    Or what most scientists believe, that it crossed over naturally via bats and pangolins.

  207. sunburstsoldier April 18, 2020 at 6:12 pm #

    The people I wrote about are..early adapters. They share some cardinal virtues: self-reliance, grit, a clear sense of purpose, ingenuity, an array of skills, resilience, and, most of all, an allergy to conventional thinking. They’re intellectuals in the broad sense of being engaged with ideas, but they are primarily concerned with getting things done in their lives, with taking action. These are characteristics that have enabled human beings to survive and thrive through all the ups and downs of civilization. In the late techno-industrial age, though, it’s been possible for people to thrive by doing as little as just showing up—for an unsatisfying job, or an appearance at the social services office, or picking up a dividend check in the mailbox. It required very little initiative to stay in the game. ” JHK; Living in the Long Emergency.

    Another key point. The techno-industrial age, under whose ephemeral umbrella we have lived our lives, has not been conducive to the development of individuals capable of adapting in a post-collapse environment. Quite the opposite. After all, obesity, laziness, and stupidity are not exactly characteristics or features beneficial to a survivalist lifestyle. Thus there is a real need for us to toughen up, mentally and physically. Will we wait until the last moment or will we begin now to train for the future? Will we too be early adapters or will we be the stragglers, the ones who fall behind along the arduous trek towards a sustainable world?

  208. Q. Shtik April 18, 2020 at 6:22 pm #

    There’s this sentence in Jim’s blog essay that begins “The $1200 mad money checks promised by Uncle Sam are little consolation…” and I was wondering if the average commenter here knows the original meaning for the term mad money. If you Google it, up will pop a whole bunch of stuff about the CNBC show segment of that name performed by Jim Cramer.

    You would have to probe a bit deeper to discover what my mother explained to me when I was a kid: that mad money is a small sum of money carried by a woman on a date to enable her to reach home alone in case she and her escort quarrel and separate.

    Is this common knowledge here?

    Jim’s point, of course, is that the $1,200 amount is about as consequential as cab fare.

  209. liber8tor April 18, 2020 at 6:33 pm #

    Strange that the Consulting Committee to re-open the economy consists of banks , hedge funds and military contractors. Not one “medical professional” on the committee? A medical emergency with no medical consultant…h-m-m-m- strange. ?

  210. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 6:34 pm #

    All I can say is numbers don’t lie but liars use numbers.

    You could also use the numbers like this. World population 7.6 billion, Number infected as of 4/18 2,215,516 = .03 % or 30 cases per 100,000 people with a death total today of 153,055 which is .002 % or 2 people out of 100,000 people. The USA figures match these almost exactly.

    I’ve seen this on other conservative forums. In any epidemiological discussion, the “death rate” is the ratio between known deaths and known cases. Always. The figures might be wildly inaccurate until much later, but that is the way it is done.

    Your position (the impact of the virus is not a reason to close the economy) is illogical – if you do not have near-lockdown, the number of cases (and deaths) rises and rises … because there is no vaccine, no cure, no antibody treatment, no proven immunity, no surety of never getting it again, and lots of evidence to suggest it does bad stuff to the body of those infected.

    How many people should die or be seriously hurt in order to keep airlines and baseball going?

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  211. stelmosfire April 18, 2020 at 7:07 pm #

    “Sorry it wasn’t clear enough for you. Maybe I’m being simplistic”
    Right again as usual Maj. For the life of me I still can’t figure how you are right all the time.

  212. stelmosfire April 18, 2020 at 7:12 pm #

    Lies, Damn lies, and Stastics, now take your mad money and go home

  213. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 7:24 pm #

    Is this common knowledge here?

    No – thanks for that. I knew the term from the Jim Cramer show, but didn’t know its deeper roots.

    Back in the day, my sister (and I guess her friends) used to take five penny coins with them – one for a pay toilet, and four to make a call home from a phone-booth.

    Our pennies were clunky too – made of copper and bigger and heavier than the US quarter. But in the Australia of the 1950s, you could actually buy things with just one.

  214. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 8:05 pm #

    And BTW you clearly don’t have the first clue as to what a ‘Bogan’ is.

    Hahahaha … I noticed that too.

    One of the funnier sides of inhabiting a Seppo-Heavy Forum (and probably more accurately, a Heavy Seppo Forum) is that they often try to demean and insult Australian posters, by using what they think are Aussie words, imagery and stereotypes. They invariably make a mess of it.

    Examples are “funnel spiders”, flip-flops for thongs,and Fosters Beer (which has been vanishingly rare in Aussie culture since the 1960s). And now with “Bogan” LOL.

    Aussie Bogans at the Tennis Open:

    https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/wp-content/uploads/h_51749821.jpg

  215. BackRowHeckler April 18, 2020 at 8:35 pm #

    Isn’t ‘Seppo’ a term of derision?

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  216. sophia April 18, 2020 at 8:55 pm #

    Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who is not a liar, recently remarked that the Indian government kicked Bill Gates out of India because his foundation had pushed a vaccine that paralyzed about half a million Indian kids. Is this true?

    Would India take him to court and kick him out for 50 injuries?

    How many people should die or be seriously hurt in order to keep airlines and baseball going?

    Very funny. But a deep worldwide depression is more than baseball. It will consume many lives.

    You think someone says flip flops to use an Aussie expression? It probably is just that they naturally used the American one.

  217. RocketDoc April 18, 2020 at 8:58 pm #

    As a 67yo nearing retirement dentist, I am conscious of the marked phase shift that “Normality” is currently experiencing. March 17th was our last day of work by order of the Governor. My staff of $35/hr and $20/hr employees is currently unemployed but has been promised their semi-monthly paychecks through April 30th. After that, I have told them they are on their own. We “may” re-open May 4th.

    My situation is not optimal but I personally am not in any financial bind. But I have a large degree of contempt for the entire “small business rescue package” ginned up by the Government. The connected people have received their free money and my poor employees were not well served by my careful bank. If it makes sense to work on May 4th, then all’s well that ends well but if not….

    My thoughts though are about managing patient and staff interactions in the future. Is dentistry important enough to risk a more serious disease than flu? Obviously, if the patient has an infected tooth but what about a non-hurting broken restoration? We have always used Universal Precautions for Infection Control–are they sufficient for COVID-19? They may not be. I would be reluctant to treat an Ebola patient for a toothache with just mask, gloves, and gown.

    Young dentists with practice loans and student loans have been just slammed. Alabama’s unemployment payment of $125/week for 14 weeks will not pay a $10,000/month office note.

    And what really comes next? We spend 45 minutes 16 inches from patients. If my 24 year old assistant is asymptomatic positive after a weekend with friends and infects 78 year old Mrs. Smith, am I liable? Or what about the reverse–the unintentional patient infects my hygienist? The flu was always less consequential.

    The future of dentistry is more open ended than one might expect and a lot of other businesses have their own flight plan alterations to consider.

  218. Majella April 18, 2020 at 10:06 pm #

    “Isn’t ‘Seppo’ a term of derision?”

    I don’t know, Marlin – what do YOU think?

    Aussie rhyming slang: “seppo” is short for “septic tank” = “Yank”

  219. Q. Shtik April 18, 2020 at 10:08 pm #

    So let’s continue to look at Jim’s blog post sentence that contained the words ‘mad money.’

    “The $1200 mad money checks promised by Uncle Sam are little consolation for that, and the small business “loans” ­– if you can even jump through the infuriating hoops to get them – just pile on an additional layer of obligation in a lifetime of debt serfdom.”

    One might get the impression that Jim himself has experienced the infuriating hoops but I seriously doubt that. More likely Jim has read that others are enduring a bureaucratic nightmare. We CFNers would prefer to imagine that Jim is sitting at an antique oak desk made by some sawdust covered artisan a couple of centuries ago in New England and slitting open a fresh batch of fat book sales royalty checks.

  220. Q. Shtik April 18, 2020 at 10:20 pm #

    Jim wrote: “You don’t have to leap too many steps ahead mentally to imagine utter personal ruin on that glide path.” and yet the title of the essay is Flight Path. Glide vs Flight, why the difference? Hmm?

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  221. Majella April 18, 2020 at 10:24 pm #

    …further. SSL, I have never pointed to ‘overwhelmed hospitals’ – probably because the lockdown & social distancing policies have worked well.

    Why do all you right-sided freaks bemoan the fact that projections have NOT come to pass? That’s GREAT news, isn’t it? Well??? Oh, right…there’s that one festering sore you try desperately to ignore – Himself and his “we have it completely under control” spiel early on. How embarrassing.

    Anyway, SSL. This particular discussion was about how one measures ‘A’ mortality rate. It’s perfectly clear there are many ways to use the numbers. My point is deaths/known infections = %age mortality rate. Simple enough.

    As Cargil posted above:
    “I’ve seen this on other conservative forums. In any epidemiological discussion, the “death rate” is the ratio between known deaths and known cases. Always. The figures might be wildly inaccurate until much later, but that is the way it is done.”

    Regardless stelmosfire makes vague reference to some unattributed test that shows a huge infection rate with the vast majority being asymptomatic, from which he then extrapolates that we must ALL have it, I’ll just stick with known facts & leave the nutjob speculation to you and your ilk.

  222. Majella April 18, 2020 at 10:29 pm #

    MOre sophistry from sophia:

    “”Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who is not a liar, recently remarked that the Indian government kicked Bill Gates out of India because his foundation had pushed a vaccine that paralyzed about half a million Indian kids. Is this true?

    Would India take him to court and kick him out for 50 injuries?”

    I addressed this a couple of blog rolls ago.

    Read for yourself:

    https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/health/story/20170306-bill-gates-foundation-vaccines-for-poor-india-health-985853-2017-02-27

  223. CancelMyCard April 18, 2020 at 10:35 pm #

    Everybody,

    It’s time to face reality.

    Most of you here won’t.
    Too bad.

    You are all going to die, sooner or later.

    Like the story about Winston Churchill, who, upon meeting an attractive young woman asked her if she would go to bed with her for 10 pounds.

    She was aghast and said, “I’d want at least 1 million pounds, what kind of woman do you think I am?!”

    To which he replied “We’ve already established what kind of woman you are,

    we’re just now negotiating about the price.”

  224. DJ in RuralWNC April 18, 2020 at 10:39 pm #

    Jim,
    I can’t go on readings comments they just don’t seem to get it – I’m sure some do but it’s hard getting through the junk to hear the folks that understand.

    This IS the big one and I don’t get why most don’t seem to get it.
    Give it a few more weeks and that reality will set in and start to expose itself.

    I feel really good living on 50 acres in the rural mountains of North Carolina, guilty in a strange sort of way.
    PEACE

  225. Majella April 18, 2020 at 10:44 pm #

    akmofo

    As always, seeking to have your prejudices justified, huh:

    You posted:

    “‘A new study from Stanford University, which was released Friday and has yet to be peer reviewed, tested samples from 3,330 people in Santa Clara county and found the virus was 50 to 85 times more common than official figures indicated.’
    Corona virus death rates are complete bullshit nonsense.”

    However, I actually read the article – you know, beyond the opening paragraph? (did you? If yes, you’re intellectually dishonest [no surprises there] or if no, you’re just intellectually lazy [same]).

    Here’s how the article concludes:

    “UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford raised another concern: The team used a test that is already outdated, he said. And they didn’t take a random sample, although they tried to statistically adjust for that.

    “It’s a little too high,” he said of the number of infections Stanford estimated. “We’ll get a closer estimate. Tests are getting better all the time. But, right now, that’s too high.”

    Here’s the article you referenced but didn’t bother linking to

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/17/coronavirus-2-5-to-4-2-of-santa-clara-county-residents-infected-stanford-estimates/

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  226. teddyc April 18, 2020 at 11:03 pm #

    DJ,
    “This is the big one”
    Yes, this may be enough of a catalyst that the economic shock is unwindable. The trucks are still moving food to the people, but the economic house of cards just collapsed big time.

  227. Majella April 18, 2020 at 11:07 pm #

    akmofo:

    “Nothing is coincidence
    Nothing Is by accident
    Everything is planned”

    You’re SO right! Here’s the evidence, though it is somewhat puzzling…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TriaOVgwc1Y

  228. Majella April 18, 2020 at 11:13 pm #

    JHK – please, bring back the nesting!

  229. Cargill April 18, 2020 at 11:15 pm #

    Isn’t ‘Seppo’ a term of derision?

    Not really – not for Australian users at least. It’s like Pom for the English, Frogs for the French, and Krauts for the Germans (now outdated).

    They are slang, without being offensive – you will still see seppo, pom, and frog in tabloid newspapers.

    Aussies use short-hand and slang (and quite a bit of rhyming slang) for just about everything, and most of the really bad (sexist | racist) ones have now been dropped in this PC world.

    Occasionally you’ll hear an older bloke use some pretty dubious ones, but that’s pretty rare. And some well-established ones have been dropped – like a “Chinaman” was a term for a type of concealed curve-ball bowled by a left-handed cricketer.

  230. Majella April 18, 2020 at 11:19 pm #

    “NigIQwl:

    “Majello in an emotional spiral again.”

    When *I* laugh at *you*, I’m in an emotinal spiral? Your lack of self-awareness is astounding

    “Oh, how I am going to laugh at you again.”

    You’re such a fecking wanker. You have nothing to contribute but your fetid snark.

    “Sometimes I wish this site were searchable by poster. You have given us some gems.”

    You know full well it is, though by individual blogs. If you REALLY give that much of a fuck about it, use your lazy-arsed time searching for these ‘gems’.

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  231. Q. Shtik April 18, 2020 at 11:20 pm #

    My favorite sentence in the blog essay is the following:

    “Their agents and praetorians on Wall Street are working feverishly to stave off that crash-landing, like a band of magicians casting spells on the ground while that big hunk of juddering metal augers earthward.”

    It must be read and understood in the context of the rest of the final essay paragraph of which it is a part. The imagery is perfect.

    I thought Jim must have invented the word ‘juddering’ but nope, it’s an actual word.

  232. teddyc April 18, 2020 at 11:58 pm #

    News articles that states may need 1/2 trillion from the feds to cover their budgets. The small business fund was used up in five minutes and they may need 18 trillion. Well that seems a bit high, but shows the gravity of the situation.

  233. Majella April 19, 2020 at 12:16 am #

    akmofo said:

    “I said to MaJelly, aka Asoka, we’ll be back at all time highs by the end of the year. She called me delusional for this. But I don’t suffer the chronic depression and sadist desire for an apocalypse, like she does. So, unlike her, instead of stewing in misery, I actually leveraged $60,000 on my prognosis, which is now $210,000.”

    Hahaha….! Just making stuff up again, huh?

    1) I’m not ‘Asoka’ (I was around here contemporaneously with him/her);

    2) I’ve called you delusional about MANY things but never in relation to what the share marlets may or may not do – the markets are insane and not connected to reality;

    3) Why would you accuse me of jonesing for the apocalypse?

    4) How could you conclude that I’m ‘stewing in misery’? It’s YOUR posts that are replete with raving nut-job conspiracy theories that leave you believing everything & everybody is out to get you…;

    5) You can claim all the success you like on the sharemarket, arsehole. A 250% gain in a matter of weeks? Sure, sure.

    But you don’t explain yourself at all – ‘I leveraged my $60,000 to $210,000″. This might (and probably does) mean you simply borrowed $150k on the original $60k (real or imagined) and now you have $210k in the market. You’re simply gambling with other people’s money. Best of luck!

    If you can get it all ‘out’ and into a fungible asset you can hide under your mattress, well done.

  234. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 3:29 am #

    4) How could you conclude that I’m ‘stewing in misery’? It’s YOUR posts that are replete with raving nut-job conspiracy theories that leave you believing everything & everybody is out to get you …

    May I humbly suggest Majella (and I would say the same to GA), that you let all the RWNJ comments go through to the keeper? They are without merit, and they are merely robotically repeating the rubbish they get from Fox | Breitbart | Infowars.

    As we used to say as kids, “Shit splatters, so I’m not going to hit you”.

    Leave it be I reckon – and those of us who are at least sentient human beings who believe in science and facts can have a decent conversion among the miasma of shit drizzle.

  235. Nightowl April 19, 2020 at 4:02 am #

    Treason … sabotage …

    Get ready, folks!

    https://twitter.com/rexxurection/status/1251259331183472640

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  236. Majella April 19, 2020 at 4:26 am #

    Talk about Jonesing, NigIQwl. It’s been such a long wait for you & the CT nutjobs you reference via Twitter. I just hope you’re correct and it DOES come down as you expect, or your mental melt-down will be incandescent!

    Then again, like waiting for the Return of Jesus, if it doesn’t actually happen, you can just console yourself that it just hasn’t happened …YET.

    Best of luck.

  237. david higham April 19, 2020 at 4:28 am #

    Interesting that I have to read a U.S. blog comments to find out about Australian slang. I’m 65 years old,lived in Australia all my life,and have
    never heard the word ‘Seppo’ used. I’m pleased that Cargill explained it to us. Not doubting you,Cargill. It certainly isn’t used widely. (Highly valuable trivial information for all you seppos)

  238. Majella April 19, 2020 at 4:35 am #

    Hey, Cargill

    You’re right, of course. But I don’t put a lot of energy into the push-backs. In fact, I can assure you I, like you no doubt, laugh quite heartily when I’m accused of being a paid shill for Who-The-Fuck-Knows, or of having a ‘low IQ’.

    The likes of Sophia & akmofo are just shining examples of how un-self-aware these self-righteous nutjobs are. I love it. NigIQwl is the most pathetically amusing of them all, especially as he can’t let the likes of this go by. However, all he has is snark & pomposity, two of the most common and least useful traits of the human race.

    On another point:

    As I write this, I see above me that this Blog Installment has been re-titled at the Daily Pundit to ‘Narratives in a Time of Cognitive Dissonance’. How appropriate!

  239. Majella April 19, 2020 at 4:38 am #

    david higham

    I’m a Kiwi and a Royal New Zealand Navy uncle (who married a ‘Strine sheila from Murwillumbah) introduced me to that term (and a few choice others) in the 1960s.

  240. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 4:39 am #

    Their agents and praetorians on Wall Street are working feverishly to stave off that crash-landing

    I think this is right. I have never bought JHK’s conspiracy bulldust that the “Deep State” was out to get Trump – the “Deep State” is inherently conservative and Republican, and if anything Comey and McCabe and all the rest were all about a conservative outcome … whether it was Trump or Clinton didn’t matter much – all they want is someone they can easily control.

    They have had a very long line of pussy lapdogs – Reagan, GWH Bush, Clinton, GW Bush. Obama … they were all easy push-overs. They could finish work about 1 pm, and hit the bars soon after.

    The coronavirus has got them working a bit harder, but not too much – they think it will be rapacious BAU in a few months when it blows over … LOL.

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  241. david higham April 19, 2020 at 4:49 am #

    Thanks,Majella. I scrolled back,and it was you who explained the term,
    not Cargill. When did you last hear it used? Seems strange that I haven’t heard it before.

  242. Majella April 19, 2020 at 5:02 am #

    The last time I ‘heard’ it used was here, by Cargill.

    Crikey, Blue! He’s such an old die-hard digger!

  243. Majella April 19, 2020 at 5:04 am #

    david higham

    “Seems strange that I haven’t heard it before.”

    Do you have any ‘bogan credentials’ in your gene pool, or did your ancestors arrive with luggage? 🙂

  244. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 5:07 am #

    Interesting that I have to read a U.S. blog comments to find out about Australian slang. I’m 65 years old,lived in Australia all my life,and have never heard the word ‘Seppo’ used.

    I’m sorry “Mr David Higham”, but if you really are a 65 yo Australian and have never heard the term “Seppo” – then I am calling complete and utter bullshit. Everyone of your age has heard of it.

    Please demonstrate somehow that you really are one of us. What was outstanding about the 1980 NRL Grand Final, for example?

  245. david higham April 19, 2020 at 5:28 am #

    Cargill,do you think every Australian follows the football ? I guess I could google the correct answer,but why would I be bothered? Maybe I heard it when I was at school,and have forgotten.
    I have already said that I am not doubting you. I stand by the statement that it is not widely used. Most of my life in Qld. Maybe it is used more
    by the Mexicans. There you go,Cargill. If I was from another country,
    would I know what Mexicans mean in the Australian context? As if I have to answer to an interrogation from you. All the best to you.

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  246. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 6:11 am #

    I thought this was a neat paragraph from the Daily Beast today:

    Donald Trump’s conduct in a week when Wednesday’s record number of coronavirus deaths doubled next day to a new record of 4,591 can only be understood if you realize that the president is not a 73-year-old man with the experience and maturity that suggests.

    Trump is actually a 10-year-old having aged in reverse dog years. He has the crimped emotions and empathy of a deluded superhero (“only I can fix it”), the limitations of a C-student, and the work ethic of a pre-teen who resents any challenge to his fragile ego and responds positively only to praise. All he does now is try to make to reality disappear.

    And I must try out this Media Matters – haven’t found the time yet!

  247. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 6:15 am #

    Maybe it is used more by the Mexicans. There you go,Cargill. If I was from another country, would I know what Mexicans mean in the Australian context?

    Fair enough … I’ll buy that. What part of Queensland are you from? Be precise – I know it very well!

  248. Majella April 19, 2020 at 6:28 am #

    Do Banana Benders speak a different lingo, you guys?

  249. Majella April 19, 2020 at 6:34 am #

    I’ve heard of Sandgropers, Cabbage Patchers, Gum Suckers & Top-Enders, but what’s an Australian Mexican? I’m guessing it may be Kiwis…

  250. david higham April 19, 2020 at 6:41 am #

    Are you from the army,Cargill? Not sure I like the abrupt ordering manner you have. I don’t take orders from you or anyone. However,
    I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you mean it in a friendly manner. Atherton Tablelands, Cargill. Moved here in 77,built
    a 9x 12 metre cabin on a forest block,still going strong. Where do you live?

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  251. david higham April 19, 2020 at 6:46 am #

    Queenslander use it in a friendly manner towards other east-coast
    Australians south of the Qld border,Majella
    “South of the border,down Mexico way”

  252. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 6:54 am #

    I’ve heard of Sandgropers, Cabbage Patchers, Gum Suckers & Top-Enders, but what’s an Australian Mexican? I’m guessing it may be Kiwis…

    We have Sandgropers (WA), Crow Eaters (SA), Top Enders (NT), Cockroaches (NSW), Cane Toads or Banana Benders (Qld), and yes, Mexicans (us from Victoria – south of the Murray River).

    I live in Essendon David, near Windy Hill, but did live in Yorkeys Knob north of Cairns for about a year – a fair while ago. Have a place in Broadbeach.

  253. Pucker April 19, 2020 at 7:05 am #

    This experience with the virus is a bit weird. All that they have to do is to get people to wear face masks in public and to change a few behaviors and then the problem is solved. But it doesn’t look like that is going to happen? You can tell them a hundred times, but most people won’t change. Tragic…. Herd behavior….

    The US government seems a bit feckless. Trump is very bombastic with firm talk, but it doesn’t look like he can implement anything and that the government bureaucracy just gives Trump “The Finger”? They may have basically privatized government functions so much that now there may not be a government, but rather just a bunch of government contractors that answer to private corporations?

    The billion dollar private “College Board” testing industry is trying to figure out how to get all of the abused kids to take those absurd standardized tests at home on the computer. We spend a billion bucks on that BS every year, and it doesn’t deliver one iota of “Education”. It makes people dumber. It’s just a racket.

  254. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 7:10 am #

    “I am concerned that by now the hospitals in the UK probably have tons of PPE,but they are not sharing with the care homes, who actually have patients!”

    I ploughed through your post, rather pointlessly. But when I got to this sentence I realise you are truly not worth wasting my time on.

  255. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 7:22 am #

    And the article on the other subject said 93% for top climate scientists, not 84%. Like I said, your posts are truly not worth responding too. It is a fact noted by all honest commenters on the subject that the more experienced the climate scientists, the higher the percentage who accept AGW.

    And I don’t care whether you call it bullying tactics or not to address yourself to the gallery and invite everyone to consider a person a troll because they won’t fall in with your unscientific views. I continue to consider that you deserve no respect because of your pathetic tactics. And because of utterly idiotic remarks like the one above. You are not only a fool, but an evil fool, in my humble opinion.

    You should stick to angelic beings – no-one is going to bother to argue with you on that.

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  256. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 7:26 am #

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/17/nhs-medics-told-reuse-ppe-wear-aprons-gowns-not-available-stocks/

    That’s the Torygraph, not the feckin’ Guardian.

    Your calumnies remain obnoxious.

  257. Pucker April 19, 2020 at 7:35 am #

    Is Bill Gates still trying to sell his anti-Infidel, anti-Feminism, and anti-Homosexual vaccines in Muslim countries? Isn’t it much cheaper to use traditional treatments for these disorders, such as water boarding, public stoning, and witch burnings? Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who is not a liar, recently remarked that Bill Gates and his philanthropic Foundation got booted out of India after one of his vaccines ended up paralyzing half a million Indian kids. Is this true?

  258. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 7:58 am #

    Pucker, you’re a bright guy. You asked this already. Just look it up.

  259. Pucker April 19, 2020 at 8:10 am #

    “The Enema of my Enemy, is my Friend.”

    Ancient A-rab proverb

  260. Majella April 19, 2020 at 8:14 am #

    Cargill, I have a brother living in Fern Tree Gully, which is a tad East of Melbourne, I think?

    And Broadbeach was our go-to Gold Cost holiday spot back a few years. Even then it was overrun by ex-pat Kiwis.

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  261. Pucker April 19, 2020 at 8:20 am #

    Has anyone ever done a comprehensive research study of Homosexuality in Australia? I understand that in the early days of the Botany Bay colony that male convict settlers outnumbered females by 10-to-one and that it cost 10 quid to buy a woman off of one of the ships from England.

  262. Majella April 19, 2020 at 8:23 am #

    GA – Sophia is precisely what you describe – an evil fool.

    I would add that she’s a troll whose sole purpose is to spread ridiculous misinformation like a fecking virus, because she’s so infected with self-righteous indignation and RWNJ conspiracy fantasies, she just can’t help herself.

    You’re also right to point out her comments are more usefully ignored, but you don’t seem to be able to rake your own advice! Me neither….

  263. Majella April 19, 2020 at 8:25 am #

    Pucker, like everything else, Strines do it bigger & better!

    https://www.mardigras.org.au/

  264. Majella April 19, 2020 at 8:30 am #

    How to emigrate to ‘Straya 1970s style:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PfDro1UGUo

  265. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 9:03 am #

    Majella

    “You’re also right to point out her comments are more usefully ignored, but you don’t seem to be able to rake your own advice! Me neither….”

    I don’t recall that I’ve ever presumed to know how equipment procurement works in either for-profit or non-profit hospitals in the US. Nor have I ever presumed to know what the relationship is (although I assume it is probably non-existent) between hospitals and care homes and those responsible for procurement in their respective entities.

    And people on here – (although the traffic was on one random day shown to be only 51% American and 49% non-American – complain when someone from outwith their borders presumes to comment on their systems. So you’d think if a person hadn’t the slightest clue about either NHS Trust procurement or private care home procurement, or local authority care home procurement, or the relationship between those entities (none whatsoever) that they’d have the decency to keep their mouth shut on the matter.

    She doesn’t even know that NHS hospital trusts have, in some cases cases, bought the entire capacity of local private hospitals for the duration of this crisis, so that their surgical operations may be carried out more safely there, to protect their vulnerable patients from the risk of viral infection in the NHS hospital, where, with the best will in the world, no-one can guarantee to keep the virus out of non-Covid wards. Why would she know? Why would she want to know?

    And she has no clue that this, in addition to the reluctance of patients to go to hospital and risk infection, is a major reason why non-Covid wards are emptier than usual (leaving aside that a quarter of NHS staff are off sick or in isolation, and a hospital bed, if it doesn’t not have nursing staff attached, might as well be a bar stool). And yet she continues to spout evil, uninformed drivel. Ignorance by itself is not blameworthy. Ignorance that mistakes itself for insight is an unpleasant thing indeed.

    And yes, I have allowed her to make me angry. I only need to think of the dozens of NHS staff who have already died trying to keep other people alive, now increasingly without adequate protection, and her evil ignorance makes my blood boil on their behalf.

    I shouldn’t let her get to me – such people are not worth one’s tranquillity. We are losing around 900 people a day to this virus just in Covid wards and this nincompoop thinks no-one is in hospital.

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  266. Pucker April 19, 2020 at 9:26 am #

    Dr. Cosby is 80 years old, and he is not a danger to society.

    Free Bill Cosby!

  267. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 9:32 am #

    “Free Bill Cosby!”

    Indeed. They’re looking for shelf-stackers in supermarkets for sickness cover – let him do something useful instead of eating up tax dollars.

  268. Pucker April 19, 2020 at 10:01 am #

    Dr. Cosby was railroaded by the MeToo Movement. Biden is a sexual predator but the media won’t discuss the story.

  269. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 10:05 am #

    Biden can stack shelves too. Although both creeps would probably spend their days on the low shelves upskirting.

  270. malthuss April 19, 2020 at 10:26 am #

    He had absolutely no human contact in those 28 years.

    Actually he spoke to one person, when he was at a lake. 1x.

    I saw pix of his lair, there were rocks or trees that served as a windbreak, he holed up there. Not sure how he protected himself from snow. Maybe he lived in cabins during winter?

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  271. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 11:14 am #

    Elysianfield

    “Well, they used similar qualifiers when the disease first appeared, no? A very cautious assessment by their people. I understand that, and expect to see further revelations as the weeks progress. There were NO absolutes as reasons given, as it is currently not proper to do so given the incomplete understanding of the CV.”

    I agree, EF. There is so much we don’t know. And it’s hardly surprising that we don’t know everything, given how little time has actually passed (it seems like far more months than it actually has been) and how incomplete is the infection and recovery cycle in so many people.

    I am currently keeping my fingers tightly crossed for the team at Oxford University (in co-operation with other teams) who are hoping to have a vaccine working by September for staff in hospitals and care homes, police officers, bus drivers and so on, and for the rest of the public maybe 6 weeks later. It’s still a gamble, given that they’re trying to save time by setting up production before it’s approved (it won’t actually be used before it’s approved) but as risks go it’s one worth taking.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-oxford/uk-scientists-to-make-a-million-potential-covid-19-vaccines-before-proof-idUSKBN21Z25M

    In addition, I’m pleased to see that the UK is also the home of the biggest trial of drugs for treatment of the disease, with results hoped for within weeks.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/world-biggest-drug-trial-covid-19-uk

  272. SoftStarLight April 19, 2020 at 11:49 am #

    I wonder how much Lady Gaga was paid to praise the WHO? When is her date with Xi and what is she planning to wear? Will Alyssa and Uncle Joe accompany? Uncle Joe sure does love China with all his heart you know.

  273. SoftStarLight April 19, 2020 at 12:28 pm #

    Patton Oswalt, the has-been actor from that sitcom King of Queens said that the unemployed and furloughed protestors that want the economy open are just whiners. Since Anne Frank lived in an attic for two years we should all be able to sit home for a month or two and play video games and watch Netflix. I know. What the hades does Anne Frank have to do with the price of rice in China? But yeah, he went there. And he claimed that people are risking viral death just to open Fuddruckers. I guess when your net worth is 14 million you can stay home for months and play video games and become one with your couch. Could the economic inequalities in our society be on greater display than they are now?

  274. elysianfield April 19, 2020 at 1:14 pm #

    Assembled readers;

    We all know that tomorrow, April 20, is usually spent in quiet contemplation, a remembrance of Hitler’s birthday. But today is awards day! A day of celebration…for today, we are honoring one of our serial posters, bringer of enlightenment and straight-shootin’ truth. We will be awarding the Lon Horiuchi Memorial Trophy to none other than the Puckerman! Congratulations!!! You have been neck in neck with BRH in the scoring, the deciding factor being BRH’s incomprehensible (even reprehensible?) choice of the Model 19 S&W over those models obviously favored by the true alpha males…such errors in judgment do not go unnoticed.

    Puck’s award recognizes the long shots, occasional missed targets, and certainly the humor that can be found in any situation, collateral damage be damned!

    Our foreign award, of course, goes to Cargill, who’s observations about life in the USA usually miss their mark…but targeted with the best of intentions, as this is what the Lon Horiuchi award is all about.

    All other posters, of course, will receive an award for participation….

  275. BackRowHeckler April 19, 2020 at 1:33 pm #

    Darn it, E!

    “There are no second place winners.”
    – book title by Bill Jordan, appropriate here.

    I will say in my own defense I stand by the S&W Model 19; after about a 20 year hiatus they are being made once again, but who knows for how long. This may be my last chance.

    Even tho it looks like it cost me a decoration.

    You and you wife … stay well, my friend.

    Brh

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  276. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 1:39 pm #

    “The trade-off for some of these poorer places (developing countries) is that everyday life there is still relatively primitive compared to life in, say, the Houston suburbs. Hyper-complexity itself is a comparative disadvantage when reality is sending you a strong message to simplify and downscale whatever you’re doing. In short, people living at the core—the “developed” or “advanced” nations—could fall faster and harder than the people in the undeveloped places where life, however arduous, is already simple. So, it may be more accurate to view this as a leveling process.” JHK; Living in the Long Emergency.

    As Jim says, the forced return to sustainability will be much more difficult for those at the apex of our tech-heavy civilization than those on the margins where sustainability is already the status quo, whether it be desired or not. At the same time, those at the apex are obviously less prepared and conditioned for living in a sustainable world. The learning curve will be much sharper for us, but, having faith in humanity’s amazing powers of adaptation, I know we will pull through. It’s even possible we will thrive, not in a material sense of course, but in terms of enhancing the quality of our life response. There’s nothing like having your back to the wall to make one feel alive.

    I might also point out in the post-collapse era politics as it is practiced now will go largely out the window. There won’t be anymore left-wing and right-wing, just a bunch of people trying to survive…

  277. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 1:47 pm #

    fungible asset
    ==

    Thanks, Jelly. Always intriguing to receive financial advice from a US welfare recipient living in a tin hut in the pilippines. Sorry to disappoint, o’ wise one, but them assets were already cashed for the most fungible asset of all, the US dollar. I’m now waiting for some more sales to materialize. So what are you doing with your time o’ wise one? Did you at least rustproof your roof?

  278. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 1:54 pm #

    This pandemic has been for me a wake-up call. I’m taking Jim’s forecasts (prophecies?) more seriously now. I am going to make a concerted effort to prepare mentally for what lies ahead, and try harder to wean myself from dependency to the pre-collapse way of life. In a practical sense there is not much I can do. I have been practicing a more minimalist, low carbon lifestyle for a long time now. I could take it to the next step and build a lean-to in the backyard to live in. My wife might have a problem with that however… LOL!

  279. BackRowHeckler April 19, 2020 at 1:56 pm #

    The word is out on my Screwdriver Smoothie concept (Vodka to annihilate the virus, OJ to boost the immune system). How do I know? Local package store sold out of Tito’s Handmade Vodka, corn based. I had to settle for Bukoff, at about 1/3 of the cost. Oh well, it’ll have to do. OJ and other ingredients are plentiful, thank God. I’m happy to report this tonic is just what the doctor ordered as nobody here has any Covi-19 symptoms or any kind of symptoms. The only thing we have to worry about now is Cabin Fever setting in. I’m keeping a close eye out for any signs, even in myself.

    Brh

  280. GreenAlba April 19, 2020 at 2:18 pm #

    SSL

    Actors, on the whole, should stick to acting.

    We all know the lockdowns will have to be lifted soon. We’re in the first week of a three-week extension here, and I’d imagine after that we’ll see a staged return to activity. But even if businesses and venues are reopened people themselves will doubtless be discriminating about which ones they use and how. I’m a regular cinema-goer, but the friend I go with is asthmatic, so while she’s younger than I am, I don’t imagine either of us plans to go near the cinema until there’s an effective vaccine. Before the lockdown, I heard cinemas were selling seats three apart.

    Restaurants may have to settle for more widely spaced tables if they want to get customers at all, unless they’re catering mostly for the young, who will generally (but not always) be fine. Bus drivers have died here, with the lockdown in place, so they will be even more exposed than most of us when the lockdown is lifted. Thinking of RocketDoc’s post (but not because of it!), I will likely be postponing my August dental check-up and hygienist appointments until that vaccine is available. And goodness only knows how badly I’ll need a haircut but that’s hardly critical, so again will have to wait.

    In the meantime we’ll just have to keep making those home-made masks – you must be able to churn them out in minutes. 🙂 A friend of mine is making scrubs for the NHS – and she was a mere economics lecturer.

    You could make a fortune on Etsy – most of the (social grade, not medical grade) masks on there seem to be made in the US of A, if they’re not from Eastern Europe!

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  281. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 2:23 pm #

    We still have to remain vigilant however in regards to the emergence of the totalitarian state, even if it is only a local affair. It will be tempting for many to accept the leadership of a religious zealot or medieval baron (as portrayed in World Made by Hand) in exchange for security and protection. The rights and freedoms we have enjoyed here in America over the last couple of centuries may be sharply curtailed. Is this unavoidable? Perhaps. It’s important to remember however for the individual to formulate creative responses to the challenges inherent in the post-collapse era, a certain degree of self-sufficiency and self-reliance is essential…

  282. SoftStarLight April 19, 2020 at 2:27 pm #

    That’s interesting SBS. I imagined that you had been a bit of a prepper type for a while. How are you practicing a minimalist, low carbon lifestyle if you don’t mind me asking? I’ve always believed the world as we know it would end at some point. So his prophecies always made sense to me.

  283. sleek111 April 19, 2020 at 2:41 pm #

    The “Corona Virus Pandemic” could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. One of the more important items to be discerned is NOT if it was manufactured or naturally occurring, but if it was purposely spread amongst the populations of the world or not.

    You see, the 1/10th of 1% who own this planet’s resources and governments do in fact have an agenda. And number ONE on their agenda is to REMAIN in control, WHATEVER the cost, especially IF the cost is to be paid by someone other then them.

    And they will do WHATEVER it takes to make sure they remain in control.

    The real threat to the world population is, that seeing this pandemic has, or will cause more economic destruction then planned, the controllers will determine that most of us are incapable of continuing to make any meaningful contribution to THEIR bank accounts. Worse still, they may make the calculation that it is just too expensive to do what it takes to keep us alive much longer. Compare it to the hog farmer who no longer has a market for his herds, and facing complete bankruptcy if he continues to care and feed them, decides instead to perform a CULLING.

    That is what appears to be up ahead for a good portion of the world’s population. And it’s just as well they don’t know a damn thing about it, as otherwise, all hell could indeed break loose.

  284. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 2:44 pm #

    By being poor SSL. See my comment just upthread from the one you are referring to.

  285. SoftStarLight April 19, 2020 at 2:47 pm #

    How are you so sure we know when the lockdowns will end Alba? There doesn’t seem to be certainty about that from what I see. Meanwhile that leaves many people with an uncertain future including many small businesses and restaurants that probably aren’t going to make it at this point.

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  286. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 2:47 pm #

    sleek111,

    What will the controllers control if civilization goes down the tubes?

  287. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 2:50 pm #

    SSL,

    Prepper type? What is that, another term for over-educated ass?

  288. SoftStarLight April 19, 2020 at 2:57 pm #

    Lol no SBS. Well not necessarily though I’m sure there are some. Prepper to me is anyone who is actively preparing for a major disruption to society where everything is going to change. Potentially the entire modern way of life including loss of the grid. All types of people are “prepper types”.

  289. Nightowl April 19, 2020 at 2:59 pm #

    “I wonder how much Lady Gaga was paid to praise the WHO?”

    Saw that. Think it was her mother though. Still funny. Particularly as they made Tom Hanks the face of their Corona Virus.

  290. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 3:10 pm #

    SSL,

    That’s very insightful. You are right. I have been prepping, or it may be more honest to say, I have been prepped my whole life for what lies ahead. I believe it may be my destiny to be one of the (grassroots) leaders of the future. Someone who can provide inspiration and ‘internal’ guidance to others less prepped then myself when everyday life has become tumultuous and uncertain…

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  291. BackRowHeckler April 19, 2020 at 3:18 pm #

    Search parties have been sent out in search of Joe Biden … they’re scouring the entire United States, looking in every nook and cranny … have any of you CFNers seen him? I suggest they look in Martha’s Vineyard, once a Yankee fishing village, now a stronghold for Big Lefty Pols, Billionaire Populists like Jamie Dimon and Mike Bloomberg, and NY media honchos. Brave souls, they’re convinced sea level rise is real (so they say) yet invest $20-30 million on mansions with backdoors 100′ from the raging North Atlantic.

    Look for Biden on the Vineyard … a little early in the season, yes, but that’s where his kind congregate.

    Brh

  292. malthuss April 19, 2020 at 3:19 pm #

    Janos

    “According to the Paiutes, the Si-Te-Cah were a red-haired band of cannibalistic giants. The Si-Te-Cah and the Paiutes were at war, and after a long struggle a coalition of tribes trapped the remaining Si-Te-Cah in Lovelock Cave. When they refused to come out, the Indians piled brush before the cave mouth and set it aflame. The Si-Te-Cah were annihilated.

    Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, daughter of Paiute Chief Winnemucca, wrote about what she described as “a small tribe of barbarians” who ate her people in her book Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims – she wrote that “after my people had killed them all, the people round us called us Say-do-carah. It means conqueror; it also means “enemy.” “My people say that the tribe we exterminated had reddish hair. I have some of their hair, which has been handed down from father to son. I have a dress which has been in our family a great many years, trimmed with the reddish hair.”

  293. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

    Brh,

    They got him on ice somewhere so he doesn’t start to smell…

  294. JohnAZ April 19, 2020 at 3:25 pm #

    Hiya gang.

    The effects of the Coronavirus are going to be binary. The US carrier and now the French carrier are similar although the French carrier has twice as many cases. Both have very few sailors hospitalized and only one death on the US carrier. The CPO was 42 who died.

    This is probably the best measure I have seen of the impact on youth as the vast majority of these sailors are in their twenties and thirties.

    Youth is going to go back to work fast as the virus is not much of a threat to them.

    Not so much with the elderly. If you are over 70, maybe even sixty, the virus has a moderate chance of killing you. The effects of this are enormous. I acknowledge that my life will be very different from now on, especially over the cooler months. What I am experiencing right now, re isolation may become the norm. Until testing is completed 100%, or a vaccine that works is in place, I cannot be near younger people who may be carrying the virus and not even know it. We are talking a year or more.

    Unless it disappears like SARS did.

    I cannot imagine being the resident of a nursing home right now, they are killing grounds.

    You younger members of CFN remember that you are addressing two very different groups of folks when discussing the virus.

  295. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 3:33 pm #

    SSL,

    Jim refers to the prepper type as an ‘early adapter ‘…

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  296. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 3:52 pm #

    I am a boy scout SSL. Forthright and honest. I don’t practice deception to advance my agenda unlike one or two others who haunt this forum…

  297. stelmosfire April 19, 2020 at 4:34 pm #

    Hey Backrow, I heard that Sleepy Joe is Spending the “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

  298. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 4:43 pm #

    The learning curve will be much sharper for us, – sunburst

    ===========

    A week or two ago I advised everyone here to never ever mention learning curves because no one understands them.

    But let me give you a shot at describing exactly what you mean when you say The learning curve will be much sharper for us.

    This should be good. You’re on.

  299. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 4:57 pm #

    Q. Shtik,

    By ‘sharper’ I meant to say more challenging or more difficult. It will be more difficult and more challenging for those at the apex to return to a condition of sustainability, as compared to those undeveloped countries where the way of life is traditional or pre-industrial, and thus by default more sustainable…

  300. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 4:58 pm #

    Sorry I missed your memo…

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  301. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 4:59 pm #

    Cargill, I have a brother living in Fern Tree Gully, which is a tad East of Melbourne, I think?

    And Broadbeach was our go-to Gold Coast holiday spot back a few years. Even then it was overrun by ex-pat Kiwis

    Yes Ferntree Gully is an eastern outer suburb, about 45 km from my inner-north suburb. Still lots of Kiwis on the Gold Coast – why not, it’s beautiful.

    I lived in Wellington during the era of Piggy Muldoon, who was an awful prime minister. He did have one funny line though, “Every time a Kiwi moves to Australia, it raises the average IQ of both countries.”.

  302. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 5:05 pm #

    JohnAz,

    At least we ‘elderly’ folk have already had our day in the sun. In certain Eastern traditions once a man or woman pass the age of sixty it is expected for them to turn away from the world and set out on the inward journey to attain a state of wakefulness or living in the present moment…

  303. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 5:10 pm #

    What I am experiencing right now, re isolation may become the norm. Until testing is completed 100%, or a vaccine that works is in place, I cannot be near younger people who may be carrying the virus and not even know it. We are talking a year or more.

    Unless it disappears like SARS did.

    I cannot imagine being the resident of a nursing home right now, they are killing grounds.

    You younger members of CFN remember that you are addressing two very different groups of folks when discussing the virus.

    I agree fully – those of us over 65 have to be sensible and sit it out. Thank goodness we are pretty comfortable financially, and live in a pleasant walkable area.

    So it is worth respecting the age differences when parading “data” about the death rates, and how it’s all a political ploy to get Trump, or shock horror, just another NWO chess-move by the elite cabal. LOL!

  304. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 5:14 pm #

    Somewhere (I can’t seem to locate it) Akmofo said instead of stewing in misery, I actually leveraged $60,000 on my prognosis, which is now $210,000 and a few people here scoffed. But it is entirely possible if one has gigantic balls and a willingness to bet $60K in the face of utter disaster.

    My questions for akmo would be: was your speculation in equities, options, commodities, or something else? What about timing? I could envision a fortune being made in a short period of time if, for example, you bought certain call options late in the trading day on March 23rd. Share with us some details that demonstrate your brilliance.

  305. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 5:15 pm #

    At least we ‘elderly’ folk have already had our day in the sun. In certain Eastern traditions once a man or woman pass the age of sixty it is expected for them to turn away from the world and set out on the inward journey to attain a state of wakefulness or living in the present moment…

    In the civilised parts of the world we just go on cruises, and make sure you include the beverage package! Just to attain a state of wakefulness, you understand.

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  306. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 5:29 pm #

    Cargill,

    You wouldn’t understand about attaining wakefulness, you’re just an intelligent ape. What’s going to happen to your civilized world post-collapse, or have you deluded yourself into thinking it won’t happen?

  307. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 5:33 pm #

    Going on a cruise is just about the most boring thing I can think of, but go ahead, knock yourself out. Assuming of course cruise ships are still in business…

  308. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 5:48 pm #

    No, not brilliance. Just correct perception, contrarian thinking, personal initiative and pluckiness. That’s all the detail you’ll be getting, Q.

    So, yeah, nothing ventured nothing gained. Something to think about for the happy crew here.

  309. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 5:50 pm #

    I don’t want to brag and jinx myself but I am taking this lockdown and sequestering very well. Probably because I am a bit of a loner to start with.

    For one thing I haven’t felt this healthy in a long time. I had had over the past 5 years or so what seemed like a perpetual ‘cold’ and a respiratory problem centered right beneath my breastbone. In bed at night my nose was always clogged up. I am now sleeping so much better.

    I am thinking that when this Covid thing finally blows over I may continue my newly formed habits: bump elbows instead of shaking hands, no more kissing my wife’s girlfriends on the cheek as a greeting, and avoiding crowds, in general.

    I didn’t have to be told to wash my hands frequently because I am a compulsive washer of dishes. If a dirty dish appears in the kitchen sink I will wash it.

  310. sophia April 19, 2020 at 5:55 pm #

    Green Alba,

    It is probably too late but I will bring this forward if I remember tomorrow.

    “I am concerned that by now the hospitals in the UK probably have tons of PPE,but they are not sharing with the care homes, who actually have patients!”

    I ploughed through your post, rather pointlessly. But when I got to this sentence I realise you are truly not worth wasting my time on.

    It is fine if you feel that way, but I am truly, truly surprised. And I got this from Dr. Kendricks essay. So – here and abroad (Europe) hospitals are empty but their supplies are finally catching up. Meanwhile, the care homes, as you mention, are full of actual covid patients and hard working carers who lack PPE?

    I am just not sure what you think I meant or why that is outrageous?

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  311. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 5:57 pm #

    That’s all the detail you’ll be getting, Q. – akmofo

    ===========

    I thought as much.

  312. sophia April 19, 2020 at 6:02 pm #

    Green Alba,

    “And I don’t care whether you call it bullying tactics or not to address yourself to the gallery and invite everyone to consider a person a troll because they won’t fall in with your unscientific views. ”

    Stop imputing motives to me. Your reaction to the fact that we don’t know others on line is over the top. Is it because you are a woman that you can’t refrain from losing it? I am sorry, truly, that it offends you so much, but I consider it a legitimate question or concern. Methinks thou dost protest too much, eh?

    What bothers me in the debate is when the other person seems impervious to any argument and won’t budge even when they might concede a point. That was the reason for my suspicion and this is the second time I am telling you. Now, when you impute motives to the other person that is nasty and unpleasant and I nicely explained what my true motives are. So stop it.

    And it is also a logical fallacy to use ad hominem. What I want is to discuss facts as we see them not engage in lots of personal drama. Imputing motives and calling my position unscientific is an unfair debating tactic as well as being ad hominem. You don’t get to declare that you are right because you are right! And so do you see why I consider that frustrating and not really worthy?

    Oh, and you just called me evil.

  313. BackRowHeckler April 19, 2020 at 6:02 pm #

    Speaking of cruise ships, True Crime program on the tube ‘Killer Cruises’, happy voyagers end up shot, stabbed, raped, poisoned, stuffed into engine compartments, and thrown overboard. Women especially, but occassionally some dumb ass dude gets tossed over the side too.

    It’s the wild west out there. The sea is a hostile environment, yet people are in the middle of it getting drunk off their asses and hooking up with strangers like they’re iin the friendly neighborhood bar.

    Even in the best of time sometimes everyone aboard those behemoths get sick and the cruise has to be ended.

    Brh

  314. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 6:11 pm #

    Going on a cruise is just about the most boring thing I can think of, but go ahead, knock yourself out. Assuming of course cruise ships are still in business…

    Then your imagination is very limited – there are a million things more boring than cruises.

    I appreciate that cruises aren’t for everyone, however they have very strong attractions:

    • you travel on a ship over blue water – it’s beautiful
    • transport, accommodation, meals, drinks -in one package
    • for what you get it’s very inexpensive
    • you only unpack and pack once
    • they can be very social if you want – people make lifelong friends

    And perhaps most importantly, you visit a wide range of places that you otherwise would probably not go to via land transport. And some places like Hubbard Glacier in Alaska, or Milford Sound in New Zealand, you can only visit by ship.

    Ships are very good for the spirit – you come home relaxed. And it’s easy to avoid all the nonsense aspects if you want to.

  315. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 6:21 pm #

    No hard feelings, Q.

    You’ll just have to go to your atheist Vatican grave wondering how do these Joooooos do it. What makes them Joooooos so special. Do they not bleed like you do? How do they write Shakespeare and create miracles, and you not.

    I’ll give you a hint, Q. Them Joooooos don’t sit in da basement spying on goys with Vatican binoculars and now with Vatican iPhones. And they don’t compose black satire about goys out of malice and envy, only out of revenge.

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  316. Majella April 19, 2020 at 6:25 pm #

    Cargill

    I had the amazing experience of working my passage on a German container ship from Dunedin to Philadelphia (as an uberarbeiter on a Columbus vessel) in 1989.

    It’s true – the sense of travel-time is unique in this modern age (24 days go-to-whoa, with 18 days without seeing a anything but water) and the ‘deep blue’ ocean is an awesome sight.

    Commercial cruising, though, is a different sort of experience and not all is as it seems. Check out this expose from a Netflix series (Patriot Act):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCT8h8gO1g

    Also, BTW, it’s possible to drive to Milford Sound – State Highway 94 from Te Anau

    https://www.google.com/maps/place/Milford+Sound/@-44.5486858,167.7377047,11z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0xa9d5e04dba4b49e1:0x2a00ef86ab64de00!8m2!3d-44.6414024!4d167.8973801

  317. Majella April 19, 2020 at 6:28 pm #

    akmofo

    You must be an unusually unpleasant person to be around.

  318. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 6:30 pm #

    Jelly, are you ever right about anything? I mean anything at all?

  319. Walter B April 19, 2020 at 6:37 pm #

    Perhaps they should disarm the Canadians:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/police-at-least-10-killed-in-shooting-rampage-in-canada/ar-BB12Sq7P?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

    Let’s hope that Elrond is OK.

  320. BackRowHeckler April 19, 2020 at 6:46 pm #

    “It’s easy to avoid all the nonsense aspects you want to”.- Cargill

    In 99% of the shipboard tragedies it seems general stupidity combined with too much alcohol is the main culprit.

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  321. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 6:46 pm #

    Also, BTW, it’s possible to drive to Milford Sound – State Highway 94 from Te Anau

    Yes – I concede Milford Sound was a poor example – it is accessible by road (and having done it twice myself). But to experience the Sound itself you have to be on a vessel (phew – there’s my escape clause).

    A better example are islands – whether in the Mediterranean (Malta, Crete, Rhodes, Corfu, etc), or in the Caribbean – a whole range of places that were diverse and interesting, but I would only go there via a cruise.

  322. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 6:56 pm #

    Fascinating conversation you’re having with yourself asoka. But the more you try the more you give yourself away. It’s a classic tell of liars and criminals. Better you tell us about your favourite pilippino island.

  323. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 7:00 pm #

    People get ready there’s some rain a comin’;

    It won’t be too easy but we’ll see it through.

    People get ready there’s a new world dawnin’;

    For good or for bad it’s up to me and you.

  324. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 7:01 pm #

    akmofo

    You must be an unusually unpleasant person to be around.

    Being an anti-semitic and anti-catholic bigot must make him really good fun at dinner parties. LOL!

    BTW comrade ak, Shakespeare was neither Jewish nor Catholic.

    And BTW comrade, corrupting the username of other posters – either for the purpose of your own amusement, or to disparage – is one of the most infantile habits on the Internet. Grow up sunshine, if possible.

  325. Elrond Hubbard April 19, 2020 at 7:02 pm #

    Elrond is fine, Walter B. Horrid events like this are thankfully rare in Canada, as they should be everywhere. Your concern is appreciated.

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  326. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 7:06 pm #

    So sailor, Cargill, what’s the best whore house in the pilippines? Oh geez, me forgets, youz a she. Silly me, I should be asking youz about cats!

  327. stelmosfire April 19, 2020 at 7:09 pm #

    Well Mofo ol’ Maj certainly wasn’t right about this. I thought she was always right. A disappointment to say the least. From Reuters more fake news.

    “What you can safely say is that if you divide the number of reported deaths by the number of reported cases, you will almost certainly get the wrong answer,” said John Edmunds, a professor at the center for mathematical modeling of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

    That’s why World Health Organization (WHO) officials – who said last week that 3.4% of the people worldwide confirmed as having been infected with the new coronavirus had died – were careful not to describe that as a mortality rate or death rate.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-mortality-idUSKBN20Z281

  328. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 7:22 pm #

    Yup, like I’ve said earlier, these are all bullshit numbers taken by bullshit artists using bullshit criteria for bullshit political and economic agenda like overpopulation, global warming, and world government.

    We’re now “discovering” the virus is as common as the cold. The whole thing has been staged.

  329. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 7:28 pm #

    “And BTW comrade, corrupting the username of other posters – either for the purpose of your own amusement, or to disparage – is one of the most infantile habits on the Internet. Grow up sunshine, if possible.”

    Coming from the man who spends the bulk of his time on this forum mocking and belittling others because they don’t share his leftist world view. Carguile is a good name for you because you are full of guile and deceit….

  330. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 7:28 pm #

    Making the obvious connections the MSM Vatican propaganda outlets deliberately hide:

    https://banned.video/watch?id=5e90f64db6024f0088761911
    https://banned.video/watch?id=5e8c9ef7475781009430c49d

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  331. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 7:32 pm #

    That’s why World Health Organization (WHO) officials – who said last week that 3.4% of the people worldwide confirmed as having been infected with the new coronavirus had died – were careful not to describe that as a mortality rate or death rate.

    What is it then if it’s not the death rate? LOL weasel words.

    For the average person, there are only two stats that matter:

    (1) What are my chances of catching it (how widespread, how contagious is it)?
    (2) What are my chances of dying if I catch it – what is the death rate???

    The number of deaths per 100,000 population might be good for comparisons, but it needs a strong qualifier – time … obviously there are more pey year than per month.

    And it still isn’t a meaningful definition of the “death rate” of the disease; most people they want to know the Case Fatality Rate (CFR). But I am not an epidemiologist.

  332. JohnAZ April 19, 2020 at 7:36 pm #

    Well, here is a result from the economic shutdown side.

    Neumann Marcus is declaring bankruptcy with many debts unpaid. Reuter’s says JCPenney is going under this week. Macy’s and Nordstrom’s are trying to get credit to continue business.

    Retail apocalypse is here?

  333. stelmosfire April 19, 2020 at 7:45 pm #

    The WHO’s weasel words, not mine. This Covid is not going away. I don’t care how long we try to hide. Unless it pulls a vanishing act like the original SARS. This vaccine pipedream is not likely. They never found one for SARS or HIV. The Covid is a fancy pants kickass highly contagious cold virus. I still have not seen an example of someone under 50 who wasn’t already compromised die from it.

  334. JohnAZ April 19, 2020 at 7:49 pm #

    Cargill

    Statistics aside, something is different about the 19. People are really frightened by this SARS virus. Globally. Maybe because of the anonymity of transmission or it’s ease. I was working in the hospital for both the SARS, H1N1, and HIV Epidemics and there was not the fear I see today. Certainly not enough to shut down the world.

    The mortality rates for the two carriers with 5000 sailors aboard, a good Petri dish for the young set, was one dead a 42 year old. I do not remember the number hospitalized but it was very small. .02% MR.

    I think maybe a good response to this might have been to force all 60+ yr olds to retire and isolate themselves at home and waiver the Medicare and social security requirements for them. It is eventually going to happen anyway as they are the targets for this disease. If it becomes seasonal, as it appears, every year this age group is going to have to duck and take cover.

  335. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 7:52 pm #

    stelmosfire,

    So what should we do? Roll up in a ball, or crawl under a bed and hide?

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  336. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 7:57 pm #

    I suggest we establish monasteries for the elderly to retire to when the need arises so they can pursue enlightenment…

  337. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 7:59 pm #

    Or Christ-Consciousness if you prefer…

  338. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 8:00 pm #

    I think maybe a good response to this might have been to force all 60+ yr olds to retire and isolate themselves at home and waiver the Medicare and social security requirements for them.

    It is eventually going to happen anyway as they are the targets for this disease. If it becomes seasonal, as it appears, every year this age group is going to have to duck and take cover.

    I have a lot of sympathy with this view.

    And in some ways this is happening – almost all my and my wife’s cohort are in this category, and many of them have stopped working. In schools where a skeleton staff is required to teach the kids who can’t do classes online (maybe 5%), all teachers over 50 are excused from this role.

    I agree that the economy can’t be on pause indefinitely – governments can only provide stimulus money and increased unemployment benefits for so long.

    And there is some agitation here for low-risk activities to be re-opened – golf, boating, hiking, the beach, heading to their holiday homes … there are a number of things that the 60+ cohort can do without unduly endangering themselves.

  339. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 8:04 pm #

    Sunny,

    Leave the monasteries to the Vatican sodomites.

    The seasonal flu is not seasonal. It’s always with you. If you eat fruits year round and take Vit-D when not in the sun, you’ll be fine. Like everything in life, if you want to know anything, learn it for yourself. You want to be healthy, learn about health! The certified pharma tools are only going to put you deeper in the ground.

  340. stelmosfire April 19, 2020 at 8:09 pm #

    So what should we do? Roll up in a ball, or crawl under a bed and hide? Be like Peter Pan, Never grow old! Besides that, take care of yourself. Don’t smoke, don’t be a couch potato. watch your diet all that shit you’ve known for years..Keep your immune system strong. Wash your hands and don’t pick up hookers when your on shore leave.

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  341. Walter B April 19, 2020 at 8:25 pm #

    Thank you for checking in Elrond. I cannot say that I like you, nor can I say that I dislike you, but you and I are certainly very different in the ways that we are not the same. I can honestly admit that I am glad that everyone does not think or act as I do or this planet would surely be doomed. I suppose that it may be said that I “embrace diversity”. Be well EH, be safe.

  342. Majella April 19, 2020 at 9:10 pm #

    Stemlo

    Thanks for that article. It was very interesting and I understand what the medical expert is saying. I stand corrected.

    However, if you look more closely, you’ll see that, according to his thinking, the mortality measure is a moving target on two fronts:

    1) Because the number of undetected cases – if that number could ever be known – would skew the mortality rate downwards. That makes sense, but until we have an accurate number of total infections (impossible), then it’s sound enough to use the KNOWN infection rate as the numerator.

    2) Because of the lag between infection & death is as much as several weeks, he also states that the equation now needs to compare the mortality rate to the number of cases SOME WEEKS BEFOREHAND. This would inflate the number significantly, and points to the burgeoning FUTURE death toll – e.g. there are currently more than 13,000 cases iin the USA lsited as ‘serious, critical’.

    So, you’re right – statistics are slippery. I believe I admitted to having been potentially simplistic in the earlier post. I clearly was. If this gives you jollies in having something to bash me with, go for your life.

    From your article:

    “In an unfolding epidemic, it can be misleading to look at the naïve estimate of deaths so far divided by cases so far,” said Christl Donnelly, a disease specialist at Oxford University and Imperial College London. “This is due to the delay from the time it takes for individuals to progress from being diagnosed as cases to dying.”

    With COVID-19 – the infection caused by the new coronavirus – the time between onset of disease and death is fairly significant, at around two to three weeks or more.

    So the sum involved would need to compare the number of deaths at a given point with the actual case numbers from some weeks beforehand.”

  343. Majella April 19, 2020 at 9:18 pm #

    Stelmo:

    “I still have not seen an example of someone under 50 who wasn’t already compromised die from it.”

    Does “I still have not seen…” mean you, personally? Like, in your circle of known people? If so, then that is quite probable. However, there’s plenty of reported deaths occuring to people under 50 with no underlying conditions. Or are tehse dismissed as ‘fake news’?

    “For the very young — people under the age of 20 — death is extremely rare in the current pandemic. But it happens: The Post identified nine such cases.

    The risk appears to rise with every decade of age. The Post found at least 45 deaths among people in their 20s, at least 190 deaths among people in their 30s, and at least 413 deaths among people in their 40s.

    Determining a precise number for each category is difficult because of the divergent ways states present age groups. But The Post found at least 102 other deaths that occurred among people younger than 50.

    The true number of deaths among young people is probably even higher. Not all states provide data on coronavirus deaths sorted by age group. Some, like New Jersey and Texas, provided figures after being approached by The Post, while others, like California, did not. As a result, the figures above do not include data from some states, including several with sizable outbreaks.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/08/young-people-coronavirus-deaths/

  344. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 9:42 pm #

    It took a lot of balls to put Chapter 14 in your book Jim. I say that not because it is not the truth but because it is. However by doing so you no doubt alienated a good portion of your base. Most would have left it out…

  345. sunburstsoldier April 19, 2020 at 9:55 pm #

    akmofo,

    Not all monasteries in this world have Vatican Sodomites in them. I personally consider monasteries a fundamental institution representing the final stage of our planetary existence. It is in this final stage where we begin to withdraw from the things from the world and prepare ourselves for the next stage of our journey. I would much rather live out the final years of my life in a monastic environment than in a rest home…

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  346. akmofo April 19, 2020 at 10:15 pm #

    Them are heartbreaking words, Sunny. You shouldn’t be talking like this. Nothing positive comes from such negative thoughts. You have to change your environment. I know it’s easier said than done, but you must. If you want to find God, you must go where God is. He’s not in monasteries. Those are satanic places where great evil, cold, and emptiness resides. Go where the sun is. Go where the kids are. That’s where god is: https://youtu.be/z3pNYU_Mb1U

  347. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 10:20 pm #

    Speaking of cruise ships……..

    I was devastated in 2008 when my favorite author, David Foster Wallace, committed suicide. He was sort of a mad genius…the author of Infinite Jest and much more.

    DFW was hired by someone or some entity like maybe Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker Magazine, or some such to take a cruise at their expense and write about it. The result is summarized on-line as follows:

    In “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” Wallace describes the experience of embarking on a seven-day luxury Caribbean cruise. As his fellow passengers engage in what they presumably consider fun and relaxing activities, Wallace finds himself driven to introspection and despair.

    The writing is not only brilliant but hilarious.

  348. Majella April 19, 2020 at 10:29 pm #

    JohnAZ:

    “Well, here is a result from the economic shutdown side.

    Neumann Marcus is declaring bankruptcy with many debts unpaid. Reuter’s says JCPenney is going under this week. Macy’s and Nordstrom’s are trying to get credit to continue business.

    Retail apocalypse is here?”

    John,. wasn’t this already well underway? Perhaps the lockdown only accelerated an inevitable process?

  349. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 10:39 pm #

    Retail apocalypse is here? – JohnAZ

    ==============

    As regards the expensive retailer, Neiman Marcus, not so affectionately referred to as “Needless Markups,” a Google search stated the following: “Neiman Marcus could file for bankruptcy as soon as this week.”

  350. BackRowHeckler April 19, 2020 at 10:40 pm #

    “Eat fruits year round and take Vit D when not in the sun”- Akfomo

    “Go where the sun is, go where the kids are. That’s where God is” -Akfomo

    As good advice as I’ve heard since this whole thing started.

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  351. JohnAZ April 19, 2020 at 10:46 pm #

    Majella

    Agreed. However, the credit availability that has enabled retailers to stay afloat is rapidly drying up. Banks under pressure to hold of on mortgage and rent payments do not have the capital to fund risky customers if this keeps up. The mall anchors going down are going to take the malls with them.

    Just like frackers??

  352. sophia April 19, 2020 at 10:49 pm #

    I apologize in advance that in my evilness I repeated information on the situation in the UK, written by a doctor in the UK, and for thinking that I should perhaps take him at his word.

    UK doctor, April 17:

    What was the government’s strategy for dealing with nursing homes?  It has been, up until the last couple of days, to make things even worse. The instructions from the Dept of Health have been to send patients diagnosed with COVID out of hospital, and back into care homes, with instructions to “barrier nurse” them, a term for a set of stringent infection control techniques.  Care homes were informed that they could not refuse to take the residents back.
    All of which means that the staff end up attempting to barrier nurse COVID positive patients with flimsy surgical masks, no eye protection, no gowns and gloves that, in my case, disintegrate rapidly and are almost completely useless. Until very recently, nursing home staff, in many homes, were told not to wear masks, and this was true even when there were COVID positive patients in the home.
    The focus, the entire focus, has been to clear patients out of hospitals, waiting for the deluge of patients. This has been so effective that, in my area of Cheshire, the local hospitals have never been so empty.
    There are wards with no patients in them. The shiny new Nightingale hospital in London, with four thousand beds, apparently had, so I am informed, just nineteen patients in it last weekend. Yet still the pressure still comes down: get patients out of hospital and back into care homes.
    At the same time, all the effective personal protective equipment (PPE) has been directed to hospitals and hospital wards. Care homes have been almost unable to access anything.I scavenge what I can before I visit. I keep being told that things have improved. By those who haven’t seen a patient – or the inside of a care home – for years.

    I have also watched patients go down very rapidly and die. COVID is a strange disease that kills people in a way that I have never witnessed before. In some cases, very quickly. I have tried to suggest that hospitals are the best place to look after potentially infectious people, not care homes. No-one has been interested.

  353. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 10:50 pm #

    Well, here is a result from the economic shutdown side.

    Neumann (SIC) Marcus is declaring bankruptcy with many debts unpaid. – JohnAZ

    ===========

    I’m sure NM was sucking wind long before but the coronavirus is credited as the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  354. sophia April 19, 2020 at 10:51 pm #

    Why did the bold feature not work?

    At the same time, all the effective personal protective equipment (PPE) has been directed to hospitals and hospital wards. Care homes have been almost unable to access anything.I scavenge what I can before I visit.

  355. sophia April 19, 2020 at 10:51 pm #

    The focus, the entire focus, has been to clear patients out of hospitals, waiting for the deluge of patients. This has been so effective that, in my area of Cheshire, the local hospitals have never been so empty.
    There are wards with no patients in them. The shiny new Nightingale hospital in London, with four thousand beds, apparently had, so I am informed, just nineteen patients in it last weekend.

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  356. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 11:09 pm #

    DFW was hired by someone or some entity like maybe Atlantic Monthly, New Yorker Magazine, or some such to take a cruise at their expense and write about it. The result is summarized on-line as follows:

    The writing is not only brilliant but hilarious.

    It is brilliantly dark, and darkly humorous. It was no surprise when I heard that he’d killed himself. It was so good I’ve kept a copy of the original … it’s stored around here someplace.

    To be a little fairer to cruising (as I always am), a seven-dayer in the Caribbean is the lowest of the low-rent options – a trailer-park on the water.

    A 24 day swan around the Mediterranean, visiting some of the highest culture and deepest history the planet offers, on something not called “Carnival”, is a different creature altogether.

  357. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 11:20 pm #

    Why on earth are you bolding whole passages? Just looks like you’re shouting at people. Better to leave it in plain type, and bold the odd word if it’s really necessary (and mostly it isn’t).

    I also don’t understand why you’re continuing with this agenda – are you trying to prove that a national health scheme is bad because it’s commie … or something? That if you demonstrate that the UK mucked it up, then Trump gets a free pass?

    Doesn’t work like that. Roll on 3 November

  358. Cargill April 19, 2020 at 11:28 pm #

    I suggest we establish monasteries for the elderly to retire to when the need arises so they can pursue enlightenment…

    Or Christ-Consciousness if you prefer…

    Perhaps hit the pause-button on all the proselytising and evangelicalism. You might be born-again, but the proper place for religion is in the privacy of your own home and your own mind.

    I had a good workmate who was a regular sort of Anglican, and his wife – a teacher – a regular sort of Catholic. But one day she found a happy-clapper group and changed – and radically. She couldn’t stop talking about how she had found Jesus.

    I sat and had a coffee with he one day, and she immediately launched into a re-telling of the Road to Damascus fable … I couldn’t believe it. She was like an infant.

    Her loyal husband lived in despair, their three lovely daughters left home the minute they could. It was all tragic.

  359. Q. Shtik April 19, 2020 at 11:35 pm #

    To be a little fairer to cruising (as I always am), a seven-dayer in the Caribbean is the lowest of the low-rent options – a trailer-park on the water. – Cargill

    ===========

    If DFW had taken a 24 day swan around the Mediterranean I don’t think he would have waited until 2008 to kill himself.

  360. sophia April 19, 2020 at 11:42 pm #

    Why on earth are you bolding whole passages? Just looks like you’re shouting at people. Better to leave it in plain type, and bold the odd word if it’s really necessary (and mostly it isn’t).

    I also don’t understand why you’re continuing with this agenda – are you trying to prove that a national health scheme is bad because it’s commie … or something? That if you demonstrate that the UK mucked it up, then Trump gets a free pass?

    I attempted to use the bold feature in the lnog quote by Dr. Kendrick so I must have messed it up. Bolding is not shouting, it is emphasis. Shouting is using all caps.

    I bolded the most relevant parts of the passage as I was roundly excoriated for – I am not exactly sure – but apparently daring to speak about the UK or speaking of the US (which I wasn’t) as if it is the same as the UK, and for that I am a very evil person. Apparently what I said was utterly wrong, and therefore beyond ignorant and calumnious.

    I was expressing sympathy for such mismanagement that the workers in care homes have lots of sick and dying patients, inadequate facilities and PPE to care for them, and that hospitals might share, since they are standing empty except for the few hot spots. And I think the care home workers deserve PPE just as much as nurses in hospitals.

    The bold should have been done in the first post.

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  361. Elrond Hubbard April 20, 2020 at 12:27 am #

    Cheers, Walter B. Keep doing good for the people where you live.

  362. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 12:32 am #

    I attempted to use the bold feature in the long quote by Dr. Kendrick so I must have messed it up. Bolding is not shouting, it is emphasis. Shouting is using all caps.

    It still looks like shouting to me … but anyway if you bold an entire sentence or paragraph then any emphasis is lost because it’s all emphasised.

  363. SoftStarLight April 20, 2020 at 12:40 am #

    Demons and devils are always tormented when the name of Christ is mentioned.

  364. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 12:41 am #

    If DFW had taken a 24 day swan around the Mediterranean I don’t think he would have waited until 2008 to kill himself.

    Yeah well … there is a huge difference between a Holland-America into the most beautiful parts of Italy, Spain, and Greece, compared to the Carnival Dream straight outta Fort Lauderdale … I can assure you!

  365. Majella April 20, 2020 at 12:43 am #

    Yep. Italics or ” ” are more effective in pointing out what are not your words.

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  366. Majella April 20, 2020 at 12:43 am #

    Jeez, Cargill! Why is the not closing off the italics?

  367. Majella April 20, 2020 at 12:45 am #

    Q. Schtik

    “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”

    I just grabbed that form Kindle. The first chapter has me enthralled already. Thanks for that!.

  368. SoftStarLight April 20, 2020 at 1:53 am #

    Thank you for calming the waters my Lord and bringing them to heel.

  369. SoftStarLight April 20, 2020 at 1:56 am #

    They’ll perform miracles like the Watchers did in the days of Enoch. With their technology they will be able to resurrect life. And he will convince many, even the elect, that he is worthy of worship. For all the people will see that he was wounded mortally but lived. And so the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the free and the slave will take his mark. The mark of the beast. And for the brief time he is given authority it will be over the whole Earth. The realization of this global order for which those who live in secret have been preparing for, for centuries, if not millenia draws nigh. Let he who has eyes see.

  370. aibohphobia April 20, 2020 at 2:08 am #

    While we won’t have a very accurate idea of the mortality rate for COVID until the pandemic has run its course, we can get an estimate of it from existing data–
    First, pick a data set from a country you trust (ie., probably not China). There will be data on the number of people who have died, and the number of people who have caught the virus and recovered. In either case, these folks have completed their COVID adventure, and we can use them as a not-very-random sample to estimate the mortality;

    For example, If there is a small country that has had 9000 people recover from COVID and 1000 people die, the estimated death rate is 10% (ie., 1000/(1000+9000)). It is probably a high estimate because there are some people who catch it and recover at home without being registered as having the disease, but it gives you an idea of what the upper boundary of the mortality rate looks like.

    So in Germany, for example, with 4642 deaths and 88000 known to recover, the upper end of the Mortality rate is something like 5% (4642/92642).

    OTOH in Italy, its 23660/70715 = 33.4%

    Here’s a link;

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?#countries

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  371. wpa_ccc April 20, 2020 at 2:44 am #

    “Most of the public mocked and ridiculed President Jimmy Carter for his televised “Spiritual Malaise” address, given in Annapolis in 1979—a speech that now appears prescient in its condemnation of uncontrolled consumerism, unabashed selfishness, and the stunning inability of the nation to observe its own behavior.”

  372. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 2:59 am #

    Jeez, Cargill! Why is the not closing off the italics?

    I’ll try it with the characters, then in words after:

    To start italics: but no spaces (and bold is a “b”)
    To end italics:
    but no spaces (and unbold is a “b”)

    They can be easy to mistype.

    To start italics: less than, “i”, greater than (and bold is a “b”)
    To end italics: less than, fwd slash, “i”, greater than (and unbold is a “b”)

    I trust one of those works.

  373. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 3:04 am #

    Obviously leaving spaces in the markdown code didn’t stop them being effective! Maybe a backslash (\) might do the job.

    To start italics: \ but drop the three backslashes.

  374. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 3:05 am #

    I’ll quit while I’m behind 🙂

  375. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 3:09 am #

    “Most of the public mocked and ridiculed President Jimmy Carter for his televised “Spiritual Malaise” address, given in Annapolis in 1979—a speech that now appears prescient in its condemnation of uncontrolled consumerism, unabashed selfishness, and the stunning inability of the nation to observe its own behavior.”

    And when President Eisenhower stepped out the door he said

    “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” – no-one listened to him either.

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  376. Majella April 20, 2020 at 3:40 am #

    Thanks aibohphobia

    But what about the cases still infected & NOT recovered? So, they’re still ‘in the mill’ as it were? Not statistically relevant until resolved either way? If that’s it, I get it, and thank you.

  377. Majella April 20, 2020 at 3:42 am #

    Cargill

    Ah-ha. I was doing to close “less that, ‘i’, front slash, greater than’. I read that instruction as putting the front slash BEFORE the ‘i'(or ‘b’) – right?

  378. Majella April 20, 2020 at 3:47 am #

    However, that calculation puts the US ‘mortality rate’ at present, at 36.19% but there remain 652,000 active cases and 13,000-odd considered ‘serious’.

    I guess overall, it’s too soon to get an accurate grip on it (not that it matters..if you get it and it kills you, your personal mortality rate is 100%).

  379. Majella April 20, 2020 at 4:13 am #

    Re: Carter –

    “Most of the public mocked and ridiculed President Jimmy Carter for his televised “Spiritual Malaise” address, given in Annapolis in 1979—a speech that now appears prescient in its condemnation of uncontrolled consumerism, unabashed selfishness, and the stunning inability of the nation to observe its own behavior.”

    And here Jimmy Peanuts is, at 95, still going strong and still building houses for the Ignored Classes, and not just organizing it, but on the fecking tools, no less.

    A man who walks the talk…it’s a pity he hit the 1970s oil crisis, the resulting runaway inflation, Paul Volcker FIXING that with screamingly painful interest rates, and the neo-con insurgency – all at the same time. He was overwhelmed by a perfect shit-storm. It was a presidency that could have made real fundamental changes in the way Americans think about stuff.

    But being right / telling the truth does NOT get you a pass in American politics, not if that truth is not what “the ‘Murican People” (exceptional all) want to hear.

    Reagan sold them, almost literally, ‘rainbows & unicorns’. What a have!

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  380. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 5:05 am #

    Ah-ha. I was doing to close “less that, ‘i’, front slash, greater than’. I read that instruction as putting the front slash BEFORE the ‘i'(or ‘b’) – right?

    Yes the forward slash (“/”) must be before the “i” (or “b”) and then the closing “>”.

  381. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 5:13 am #

    Jimmy Carter is the last truly good American president … Obama had his moments but he proved fairly lightweight – I argue he was too young when he took it on. Bill Clinton was a true sleaze, and conservative enough to be a Republican – a blue-dog Democrat for sure.

    Prior to Carter, the good presidents were LBJ (who was screwed by the Vietnam War and the hawks he had in his cabinet), and before that FDR and Woodrow Wilson.

    All the Republicans from Teddy Roosevelt onwards until today, were crooks, duds, or disasters. Or all three.

  382. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 5:28 am #

    SSL

    “How are you so sure we know when the lockdowns will end Alba? There doesn’t seem to be certainty about that from what I see. Meanwhile that leaves many people with an uncertain future including many small businesses and restaurants that probably aren’t going to make it at this point.”

    I didn’t say I was sure. I told you what I ‘imagined’ would happen in the UK, but I still think it’s obvious the lockdowns have to end ‘soon’, however you exactly define ‘soon’, since such a huge drop in economic activity isn’t sustainable. And if it’s not sustainable it can’t be sustained. But I don’t have a crystal ball. We can’t hide from the virus forever, and I have to suppose that we will have a hobbled economy for some time, because there are simply a lot of things that people who feel at risk won’t do, whatever the formal instructions are. And I don’t mean just the old and vulnerable. A whole lot of ordinary people feel vulnerable when they see children (no matter how few) dying, as well as numerous nurses and doctors in their 30s and 40s.

    People will gradually return to work, but they may not go to places they don’t need to go to, which will affect other people’s businesses. It’s hard enough to keep a restaurant going in normal times – if you can only have a third of the number of tables (to satisfy the customers, not the government) it’s going to be an enormous challenge, unless customers are willing to pay a lot more to for the privilege of enjoying your safer set-up. And that’s unlikely since they’ll all have taken an economic hit already.

    Also, we’ve had single ‘peaks’ so far, and countries like Italy have seen their health service overwhelmed. Others have avoided that through mass testing/tracing or strict lockdowns, or both. Many people think we may see multiple peaks, once lockdowns are lifted. Japan is currently experiencing a resurgence of the virus.

    Personally I think it would be reasonable for us in the UK to have an exit strategy that involves relaxing the lockdown when this three-week extension ends, but some measures will continue, voluntarily or otherwise, because infections will continue and may threaten to overwhelm health services. And people seem to forget that the government is also acting on its impression of public pressure and support for the lockdown measures. We aren’t seeing demonstrations here against the lockdown.

  383. Majella April 20, 2020 at 6:21 am #

    Here’s an article (Bloomberg) on NZ’s Covid-19 plan and experience to date, with an update of Australis’s process & success too.

    Smaller, homogenous societies (and by homogenous, I DON’T mean racially homogenous, Janos & SSL, but fairer and more inclusive societies) can achieve astounding things.

    Granted, it’s early days but when you look at NZ’s infection tally of under 1,500 with only 12 deaths to date with a population of 5 million, the percentages are pretty convincing…so far.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-16/new-zealand-seeks-to-wipe-out-virus-after-early-lockdown-success

    https://covid19.govt.nz/?gclid=CjwKCAjwkPX0BRBKEiwA7THxiBIklO4JSNuDTVyf-aeGIHZ0gr353KPJaV7ttgIIjfU2_Jwy1oThVhoCdSMQAvD_BwE

    It was announced today that there will be one more week of “Alert Level 4”, then exiting that to “Level 3” next Tuesday for 2 further weeks.

    With any luck, NZers can be back to having bars & restaurants open by mid-May. Meanwhile, the tourism sector is wiped out, with so many small private entrepreneurs about to go broke and mum-and-dad motel owners similarly toasted. Cargill, there won’t be much traffic on Milford Sound for a while!

  384. Majella April 20, 2020 at 6:26 am #

    Cargill:

    “Prior to Carter, the good presidents were LBJ (who was screwed by the Vietnam War and the hawks he had in his cabinet), and before that FDR and Woodrow Wilson.”

    Come on, Cargill! ou’re being extremely generous to Johnson. He was an utter arsehole, but he was effective in getting things done, like escalating Vietnam (on the one hand) and the Voting Rights Act on the other.

    As a Texan, he was really only one generation (or maybe NONE in fact!) removed from when the local KKK selected the Democratic candidates for Congress & the Senate.

    Nixon’s brilliant ‘Southern Strategy’ took those guys over while selling out old-timey Republican principles, and that was that…and now we’re here.

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  385. Majella April 20, 2020 at 6:29 am #

    Cargill:

    “All the Republicans from Teddy Roosevelt onwards until today, were crooks, duds, or disasters. Or all three.”

    What’s you’re beef with Eisenhower? A non-politician who (unlike the current incumbent) worked out pretty well.

  386. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 6:48 am #

    What’s your beef with Eisenhower? A non-politician who (unlike the current incumbent) worked out pretty well.

    Perhaps he wasn’t a dud or a disaster, but there again, he hardly had any major dramas to contend with. The US and the USSR had their head-fake cold war, and he built the interstate road system.

    A great president at that time might have realised that Happy Days (with burbs and cars) was not the answer – and we’re paying for the direction set then dearly 60 years on.

  387. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 6:56 am #

    With any luck, NZers can be back to having bars & restaurants open by mid-May. Meanwhile, the tourism sector is wiped out, with so many small private entrepreneurs about to go broke and mum-and-dad motel owners similarly toasted. Cargill, there won’t be much traffic on Milford Sound for a while!

    Personally I would open schools, universities, all agriculture, all food processing, all manufacturing, all infrastructure, plus all those internet, finance, and media jobs that can mostly be done from home.

    Everyone 60+ stays home or goes to the beach or for hikes – and all young people go to work. But do not open the bars, restaurants, gyms, casinos, football grounds – those parts of the economy are sacrificed for the greater good.

    Tourism is screwed too, sadly, it’s a fabulous country NZ. Even with a silent Milford Sound.

  388. BackRowHeckler April 20, 2020 at 6:57 am #

    As of this morning, oil is $13 per barrel.

    Let that sink in.

  389. sunburstsoldier April 20, 2020 at 8:06 am #

    You folks are still chatting about politics as if it matters. When will you wake up and smell the coffee?The end times are here. Civilization is beginning its long slide to sustainability. It’s time for a serious attitude adjustment. Forget the Left vs. Right bullshit as it doesn’t matter anymore…

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  390. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 8:07 am #

    Sophia

    “What bothers me in the debate is when the other person seems impervious to any argument and won’t budge even when they might concede a point. That was the reason for my suspicion and this is the second time I am telling you.“

    You have taken a view on climate change that is wrong and unscientific and you want people who take the scientific view, because they’ve spent 20 years following the science, to concede that you are right. And your view is politically and ideologically motivated. And when they do not, but supply you with actual facts instead (which you will not glean from the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank which shills for the fossil fuel industry), you call them a paid troll. So stop pretending you’re doing something else.

  391. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 8:07 am #

    Italics were only meant to cover your quote at the top, sorry.

  392. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 8:20 am #

    “And I got this from Dr. Kendricks essay. So – here and abroad (Europe) hospitals are empty but their supplies are finally catching up. Meanwhile, the care homes, as you mention, are full of actual covid patients and hard working carers who lack PPE?”

    Hard-working care workers do lack PPE. But you did not get from Dr Kendrick’s essay that NHS hospitals have tons of PPE and are refusing to share it with care homes. You made up that revolting lie entirely by yourself.

    And your assertion that hospitals are ‘empty’ is completely ridiculous. What the heck does empty look like when ICUs are at capacity in many hospitals? The Nightingale hospital you specifically cite is a field hospital, as have been built in other countries, in preparation for potential overflow from hospital ICUs. If Trump had ordered one to be built outside NYC you’d be praising him to the skies. There’s one just outside Glasgow too, since the highest number of cases, like the greatest population, are in the Strathclyde region. This field hospital is sitting empty (staff, should they be needed, would be either moved from existing hospitals or recruited from volunteer returners) but the officially stated hope is that it will never be used.. Is this a concept you find difficult? The Nightingale hospital in London is full of beds, ventilators and other ICU equipment on standby in case they are needed (which they may be after the lockdown). I have no reason to think there’s a nurse at the end of every currently empty bed twiddling his or her thumbs while sporting full PPE.

    The earlier instruction to send recovering Covid patients back to care homes (only those who came from care homes in the first place, presumably) came from the Department of Health (a government department), NOT from the NHS, which is a healthcare provider. The Health Secretary, whom I have already described as a disgrace in a post to you, has been roundly condemned for this misguided instruction, as for the lack of tests which would have made the situation both more transparent and more manageable. And the lack of adequate PPE for care homes has nothing whatever to do with the NHS, where dozens of health care trusts are running out of vital protection as we speak, while dozens of their staff have already died in service.

    Hospitals are not empty. My neighbour starts his month of radiotherapy today. The non-Covid parts of them are quieter than they were for reasons I’ve taken trouble to explain to you more than once. Vital surgery and other therapies are still going on. A number of private hospitals have had their entire capacity bought by local NHS trusts so that care can be provided for their patient in a safer environment. Why did you not mention this in the context of ‘empty’ hospitals? Let me guess – because your new guru, Dr Kendrick, didn’t mention it. He probably doesn’t know either. You latch on to one person’s blog and suddenly you know everything about a health service of which you have no experience.

    Let me remind you of what you actually said, the assertion to which I responded:

    “I am concerned that by now the hospitals in the UK probably have tons of PPE, but they are not sharing with the care homes, who actually have patients!”

    Both parts of that sentence remain repulsive calumnies, as well as the inference that hospitals have no patients. It is specifically repulsive because of all the doctors and nurses in the NHS who have already died while trying to save patients, over 16,000 of whom have died in the hospitals you think are empty. There are currently 103,663 active Covid cases – God knows where you think those people are while the hospitals are empty.

    Btw, 54% of Covid deaths in hospital are happening outside of ICUs, in normal wards (within the Covid sections of hospitals). A consultant interviewed a few days ago insisted that no patients in his service had so far been refused an ICU bed because of a lack of ICU beds, and that he used the same criteria as before the pandemic to decide who would get an ICU bed, i.e. according to a clinical assessment of whether the patient would be likely to benefit from intensive care. His ICU nevertheless remains at capacity, but not yet overwhelmed (watch this space when the lockdown is lifted).

    In the meantime you might as well accuse the NHS of depriving bus drivers, teachers, police or shop workers of PPE – people from all these sectors have died because of their unavoidable (and not specifically known) contact with carriers even during the lockdown and more will die post-lockdown.

    That you have no idea of the difference between an NHS hospital trust and a department of government is a bit of forgivable ignorance. But your lies immediately above remain repulsive. And my husband works for the NHS and has exactly the same flimsy PPE as the care workers here. Perhaps you think he should see patients entirely unprotected and donate what he gets to a nearby deserving care worker.

    You may have missed that the pandemic is global and the shortage of equipment to fight it is global. Look out for it getting worse – in Africa and India, it’s only just starting. In Italy patients from Lombardy had to be moved by helicopter to other parts of Italy and then other parts of Europe, because ICUs were overflowing (and over 100 doctors died). That could have happened anywhere – and still could when lockdowns are lifted. And you sit in your armchair wittering about empty hospitals as if the concept of ‘precaution’ was entirely alien to you.

  393. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 8:29 am #

    You have taken a view on climate change that is wrong and unscientific and you want people who take the scientific view, because they’ve spent 20 years following the science, to concede that you are right.
    ==

    There is no “scientific view”. The temperature measurements were shown to be bogus and fraudulent, and the computer models on which this whole nonsense rests are a complete joke and have NEVER been right. They can’t even predict the weather 2 wks ahead.

    You cannot cloak any argument in this debate as “scientific”. To use that word is the either the height of ignorance or deceit. Furthermore, the MOST dominant factor BY FAR in this debate in the sun. The sun operate as a light bulb receiving cosmic electric current from the universe. We don’t know what how this current will fluctuate in the future and thus its effect on the sun’s radiation and subsequent effect on our climate.

    The only thing we do know is that there are multiple nefarious political agendas working here, and therefore whole debate is extremely suspect from start to end.

  394. sunburstsoldier April 20, 2020 at 8:34 am #

    “Just as the caterpillar becomes dysfunctional shortly before it undergoes its metamorphosis into a butterfly, the egoic state of consciousness…will likely become increasingly dysfunctional and cause a growing number of acute crises affecting many parts of the planet, as well as turmoil and breakdown. To some extent, this is already happening. This is nothing to be afraid of. If you stay present and do not succumb to fear, if you do not believe the media when they tell you that you should be afraid, these things will not affect you deeply. Acute crises and dysfunction always precede or coincide with any evolutionary advancement or gain in consciousness. All life-forms need obstacles and challenges in order to evolve.” –Ekhart Tolle; A New Earth.

    Fear is our greatest enemy. Death is but a doorway, a portal which opens up to the next stage of our eternal journey. Learn to live in the moment and peace will be yours whatever the outcome. Remember we are not alone, the Forces of Light are all around us, urging us forward on the evolutionary path to cosmic consciousness…

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  395. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 8:38 am #

    akmofo

    When I decide it’s useful to take scientific advice from someone who doesn’t know why the sea is salty and freshwater lakes and rivers aren’t, you’ll be the first to know.

  396. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 8:38 am #

    As of this morning, oil is $13 per barrel.
    ==

    $11

  397. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 8:48 am #

    When I decide it’s useful to take scientific advice from someone who doesn’t know why the sea is salty and freshwater lakes and rivers aren’t, you’ll be the first to know.
    ==

    I know exactly why the seas are salty. It is you who cannot explain it in any scientific way because the current the “scientific” explanation is completely bogus. It is a false theory that has no real evidence to support it. When I’ve asked you to produce any scientific evidence to support the conventional “scientific” assertion, none were produced. You are a political hack. The only thing you’re capable of is aping mainstream propaganda. The second I asked you to backup any of your nonsense you couldn’t, because there’s nothing there. It’s all an appeal to authority. Well, that authority has been totally disgraced and discredited. It is nothing but corrupt political propaganda.

  398. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 8:50 am #

    ” It is a false theory that has no real evidence to support it. ”

    It’s not remotely a scientific theory. It’s an observable fact that a 12-year-old geography pupil could explain to you.

    Without going anywhere near the Vatican.

  399. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 8:55 am #

    “Furthermore, the MOST dominant factor BY FAR in this debate in the sun.”

    That will be why it’s the lower atmosphere that’s warming most and not the upper atmosphere. Yeah…

    https://history.aip.org/climate/solar.htm

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/why-the-sun-is-not-responsible-for-recent-climate-change

    And I’m not wasting any more time explaining climate issues to you. You are responsible for your own wilful ignorance and don’t seem short of time to educate yourself (which is not the same thing as reading misinformation).

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  400. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 9:02 am #

    It’s an observable fact that a 12-year-old geography pupil could explain to you.
    ==

    A 12-year-old could also explain why the earth is flat. And they did as did the Vatican for thousands of years based of their reverence for the authority of the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

    I’ve asked you, on multiple occasions to produce measurements and calculations of salt content inside rocks on dry land and compare those to the salt content in the seas. My guess is that you’ll need a 1,000,000,000 earths to leach out the salt content in the seas. The sodium chloride salt inside rocks is simply not there.

  401. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 9:07 am #

    Guess away – you seem to have time on your hands.

  402. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 9:24 am #

    And I’m not wasting any more time explaining climate issues to you.
    ==

    First of all, you’re don’t explain anything. And you never have, because you can’t! You’re a political hack repeating MSM propaganda lies and appeal to “authority”. We get plenty of that everywhere else, so yet another mindless dumb ass Vatican parrot is tiresome, and frankly bordering on the unbearable. You bring no critical thinking to ANY issue. All I get from you is the same boring uncritical mindless BBC propaganda drone. If I wanted BBC propaganda I’d tune in to their shit. Nobody cares for their shit! If it wasn’t for gov mafia paying them scum’s salaries at people’s tax expense, they’d be long out of work.

  403. sunburstsoldier April 20, 2020 at 9:25 am #

    Only the strong survive, but what is strength? The kind of invincible strength which can lift us over every obstacle and crisis can only come through an understanding of the true purpose and origin of the cosmos. The truth is out there and if we are sincere and unyielding in our quest we will find it. Time to stop living in the past. The world will soon need early adapters, those who are prepared for what comes post-collapse. Will you be an early adapter or a straggler, one of those who fall behind along the arduous trek to a sustainable world?

  404. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 9:30 am #

    akmofo

    Like I said. And if you think people tune in to the BBC as the main means of educating themselves on scientific matters, you are an even sadder case then I thought. And it’s not 1950. The BBC is one provider among many (and yet, bizarrely, not a scientific institute or an entity with any pretensions to be one). You can tune into Fox News or Alex Jones for your scientific information if you so choose, even from the UK. And I’m sure there are some fruit loops who do.

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  405. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 9:32 am #

    you seem to have time on your hands
    ==

    It doesn’t take any time to put you in your box. You’re completely vapid. Even your “medical” connections are sad joke. The whole profession is completely rife with corruption, and yet you shill for it like a dumb ass that you are.

  406. sunburstsoldier April 20, 2020 at 9:36 am #

    “The confusion at even the most refined layers of the intellectual class is so great now, so vitiated by wishful thinking, public relations bullshit, and political opportunism, that the responsibility weighs extra heavily on individuals to think for themselves through the fog of yammer. ” –JHK; Living in the Long Emergency.

    As Jim suggests here, those who best adapt to post-collapse realities will be those who learn to think for themselves. Mindless sheep will be ruthlessly sheared…

  407. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 9:47 am #

    You can tune into Fox News or Alex Jones
    ==

    No you can’t. They are deliberately censored, de-platformed, and vilified by your commie Vatican mafia. You have a gazillion commie propaganda outlets that nobody watches and nobody cares for, and they can’t even suffer tone or two independent operators to exist. Instead, they target them in a political campaign of vilification, marginalization, censorship, and economic assassination. And it’s the commie Vatican mafia scum that you regard as “good authority” which is responsible for this Inquisition.

  408. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 9:48 am #

    You are quite hilarious, Mr Mofo, the way you fling out ludicrous assertions and think you’ve proved something. You’re only a legend in your own head.

  409. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 9:52 am #

    “No you can’t. They are deliberately censored”

    Fox News is available on my television, as well as a number of internet devices. Sorry to disappoint you.

    “You have a gazillion commie propaganda outlets that nobody watches”

    Nobody watches them and yet they’ve managed to brainwash everyone by osmosis. Of course. 🙂

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  410. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 10:03 am #

    Nobody watches them and yet they’ve managed to brainwash everyone by osmosis.
    ==

    Is that what you call your function here, osmosis propaganda? You make sure we get our daily fill of regurgitated propaganda BBC nonsense. No one is to escape you commie shits, even if they tried.

  411. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 10:04 am #

    And most of the world is ‘shilling’ for their health workers at the moment.
    And their care workers, bus drivers, teachers, shop workers and everyone else in public-facing jobs and with the highest risk of infection.

  412. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 10:05 am #

    “No one is to escape you commie shits, even if they tried.”

    Relax, Mr Mofo. Tinfoil is not yet on the list of things disappearing from the shelves.

  413. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 10:08 am #

    You told JohnAZ that you held nurses in the highest esteem. You are a ridiculous hypocrite into the bargain. Who do you think is manning the ICU beds all day long and sometimes dying of Covid as a result?

  414. sophia April 20, 2020 at 10:21 am #

    Hard-working care workers do lack PPE. But you did not get from Dr Kendrick’s essay that NHS hospitals have tons of PPE and are refusing to share it with care homes. You made up that revolting lie entirely by yourself.

    At the same time, all the effective personal protective equipment (PPE) has been directed to hospitals and hospital wards. Care homes have been almost unable to access anything. I scavenge what I can before I visit.

    That you have no idea of the difference between an NHS hospital trust and a department of government is a bit of forgivable ignorance.

    You’ve gone to great length on this sort of fine detail. But I never claimed who was responsible, just that things were mismanaged, and care homes lost in the fray.

    The focus, the entire focus, has been to clear patients out of hospitals, waiting for the deluge of patients. This has been so effective that, in my area of Cheshire, the local hospitals have never been so empty.

    This is a problem, so far as I can see, world wide. My local hospitals are empty as well. I never denied there are hot spots. Hundreds of nurses are on furlough in larger hospital complexes across the US. My point was to balance things out. Very calumnious. Dr. Kenrick was upset that he sent two elderly and sick patients off to the hospital for expected admittance. They were immediately sent home and shortly died. Yet there is no spike there, hospital stands empty for weeks now. Is there anything wrong with this picture? Well, it would be a calumnious lie to suggest such a thing.

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  415. sophia April 20, 2020 at 10:22 am #

    Oh, shoot, that entire last paragraph is me, and should not have been in bold.

  416. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 10:27 am #

    Fox News is available on my television
    ==

    Why isn’t Alex Jones available for all? Why did they shut him down?

    Fox News is only there because of Trump. If they didn’t have the explicit support of the President, FoxNews too would be shutdown. They’re already trying to take it over with commie agents. FoxNews is too “extreme”.

  417. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 10:45 am #

    Relax, Mr Mofo. Tinfoil is not yet on the list of things disappearing from the shelves.
    ==

    ???

    So that’s your retort? The same tired pathetic retort the gov mafia has been using for decades. Yeah, nothing to see here folks. Focus instead on our staged Joooooooooish oppression of our newly invented wonderful Jihadists, the Palis.

    And if thousands and hundreds of thousands of you gather to protest the gov mafia and you think you’ll get any TV coverage or any coverage at all, well, think again. We’ll be busy showing you the evil Israeli soldiers guarding entry points from Jihadist mass murderers, because that’s the real news that concerns you!

  418. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 10:57 am #

    “Focus instead on our staged Joooooooooish oppression of our newly invented wonderful Jihadists, the Palis.”

    I’ve spent more time on here combating antisemitism than most, and been vilified for it. And it wasn’t done for you. It doesn’t mean that the Israeli government has to get a free pass for everything.

    And you don’t know what news concerns me so don’t be any more of an ignoramus than you need be.

  419. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 11:14 am #

    “You’ve gone to great length on this sort of fine detail. But I never claimed who was responsible, just that things were mismanaged, and care homes lost in the fray.”

    Yes you did. You said the NHS was hoarding PPE it didn’t need (while it was actually running out), and refusing to share it with care homes. The NHS has no more connection with care homes than it does with bus depots. Sixty NHS trusts (that’s a lot of towns and cities, not a ‘few hot spots’) were running out before the weekend, i.e. had less than two days’ supply. Last I heard a promised batch from Turkey hadn’t turned up on the day it was expected. Let’s hope it has now.

    And I thought you said Dr Kendrick was a Scottish ‘colleague of GA’s husband’? Now he’s in Cheshire, which is in a completely different country?

    “Hundreds of nurses are on furlough in larger hospital complexes across the US.”

    Well they aren’t here, so perhaps stick to the system you know and heap your criticism on there instead?

    My point was to balance things out. Very calumnious.

    No, calumnious referred to your very specific lie that the NHS was hoarding tons of PPE and refusing to share it with care homes, when NHS trusts are actually running out of vital protective equipment. How you’d expect the head of an NHS trust to know what PPE care homes had at the earlier stage remains a mystery to me, but the calumny was very particular, so stop trying to blame me for your misguided assertions made without checking facts.

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  420. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 11:16 am #

    And you don’t know what news concerns me so don’t be any more of an ignoramus than you need be.
    ==

    So some kid that’s been paid by the commie nazi agent Mahmoud Abbas, who gets his money from the EU to stage a false scene for the cameras, THAT’S NEWS, right? That’s honest NEWS to 24/7/365 fill the space that’s not being used to cover the dissatisfaction with the commie gov mafia in Europe, or the deliberate mayhem and destruction that Jihadist migrants are causing in Europe. Are you honestly that stupid?

  421. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 11:26 am #

    “So some kid that’s been paid by the commie nazi agent Mahmoud Abbas, who gets his money from the EU to stage a false scene for the cameras, THAT’S NEWS, right? ”

    I wouldn’t know, having never seen commie nazi agent Mahmoud Abbas. I wouldn’t know him if he fell in my soup. Goodness, I must have missed some vital government commie Vatican mafia news.

  422. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 11:27 am #

    “or the deliberate mayhem and destruction that Jihadist migrants are causing in Europe. ”

    Your rightwing buddies on here insist it’s a Jooooooooish conspiracy. Gosh, it’s so hard to keep up with you guys.

  423. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 11:35 am #

    From your BBC:

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ‘was KGB agent’
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37305953

  424. GreenAlba April 20, 2020 at 11:41 am #

    It’s not my BBC. I worked for a private publishing company. And I don’t take responsibility for everything they did either.

    And, although I read it quickly, your article seems to be describing two sides in an argument, which is what a news source is expected to do.

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  425. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 11:41 am #

    Your rightwing buddies on here insist it’s a Jooooooooish conspiracy.
    ==

    The facts, ma’am, don’t change. The facts remain. And the fact are this is a very under-reported and deliberately downplayed issue in the MSM.

  426. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 11:46 am #

    There are two sides to being a paid foreign agent and receiving all your financing from foreign entities like the EU? There are two sides to not holding election in 15 years and outlawing and torturing all political opposition? Please explain them two sides to me!

  427. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 11:56 am #

    Good grief GreenAlba, you deserve a fucking medal for taking on two extremely paranoid suspicious RWNJ types … you’ll never change their minds, but at least you challenge their ludicrous assertions, and equally important, the nonsense sources for so much of their misinformation.

    That lunatic Janos creature, with their white supremacist jive … it’s a disgrace and I don’t let that go unchallenged.

    I had a sister-in-law who went from being a bright Aussie clear-thinking person (graduate in Pharmacy) to a complete gibbering idiot. She married a CIA operative, went to live in Maryland, and became addicted to Fox News and other extremists.

    She became so right-wing it was scary – one night (after too many red wines) they were haranguing me – almost yelling – that Obama wasn’t born in the US, and all manner of similar guff. I grabbed my wife, we left immediately, and have never been back. Lunatics.

    And I just love the fact that your Vatican commie mafia guy didn’t get your tinfoil joke … that is just so hilarious, on a couple of levels.

  428. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 12:11 pm #

    I wouldn’t know
    ==

    The point is that EVERYONE involved know it’s staged. The cameramen know it’s staged, the breathless lying reporters know it’s staged, the editors back in the office know it’s staged, the owners of the commie propaganda outlets know it’s staged.

    And frankly, YOU TOO know it’s staged! So why do you give these lying scum a pass?!!! Why would you believe ANYTHING they say about ANYTHING?

  429. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

    Your rightwing buddies on here insist it’s a Jooooooooish conspiracy. Gosh, it’s so hard to keep up with you guys.

    That’s just so true! They all throw so much lunacy around I can never tell whether it’s the crazy fascists, the deranged commies, the whirling Taliban, the Jewish bankers, or the pox-throwing Chinese, who are the enemy du jure.

    Maybe it’s just “them” … shhh … that ‘elite cabal’ … LOL! Talk about jumpin’ at fricken shadows.

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  430. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 1:03 pm #

    The point is that EVERYONE involved know it’s staged. The cameramen know it’s staged, the breathless lying reporters know it’s staged, the editors back in the office know it’s staged, the owners of the commie propaganda outlets know it’s staged.

    Have you ever worked in a TV or press newsroom? Do you know how hard those people work to get the story, to beat the competition? When you’ve done a few years of this really hard stuff, come back again and tell us again how it’s all made up.

    Meanwhile you’re talkin’ complete shit, like you always do.

  431. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 1:17 pm #

    Cargill,

    This has been happening repeatedly for years and multiple decades. We are talking about hundreds of glaringly obvious staged incidents. EVERYONE knows and EVERYONE goes along with it. The whole NEWS industry knows and is complicit in these repeated lies. They don’t care. Joooooos is News!

    They’re scum. That’s all there is to say about it. They are worthy of ZERO respect, and command ZERO credibility!

  432. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 4:26 pm #

    I simply can’t take such raving lunacy seriously … would you like to provide some specific examples of made-up stuff that everybody knows about, everybody knows is made-up, and everybody accepts as true anyway.

    This could be interesting … everything from Dallas in 63, the moon landing, 9/11 and Barack Obama being a Kenyan. LOL!

  433. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 4:42 pm #

    Just google Paliwood. There are a thousand and one examples of such staged lying propaganda. EVERYONE knows about this, including you. So don’t play stupid with me. EVERYONE knows, and they’re silent about it and play along. That’s what I call scum. And that’s what you and your commie mafia are. Pure scum!

  434. Cargill April 20, 2020 at 4:55 pm #

    I know about Paliwood comrade.

    I’ve got a soft spot for the old PLO, and good ole Yasser Arafat – not the best-looking dude to lead a people, and the tablecloth he wore didn’t help, but he was cool.

    The Palestinians have had a very very rough deal – you can understand why the Israelis are paranoid, but a proper two-party state is necessary.

    Anyway – got any specific examples that everyone – including me – knows all about? Just one for starters would do.

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  435. akmofo April 20, 2020 at 5:21 pm #

    They have a state. They are have 22 of them, including Jordan and Egypt and Syria and Lebanon from where they infiltrated our land as work migrants and from where they still hold travel passports and nationality cards. Their whole narrative is a lie from start to end.

  436. annashetty August 26, 2021 at 4:19 am #

    There are many examples for such problem, I have read a lot about it because of my work, but still there is no concrete solution. bubble shooter

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