Wednesday, April 29, 2020

LA Lakers $tole SBA Loot

Then the ref blew his whistle and called a foul:

"SBA program reopens with new glitches, new scrutiny; NBA team returns loan money" by Aaron Gregg, Renae Merle and Ben Golliver Washington Post, April 27, 2020

WASHINGTON — The government’s small-business loan program received $310 billion in fresh funding last week but came under immediate pressure Monday as many bankers complained about new technology glitches and fresh questions were raised about the mostly anonymous list of beneficiaries.

As bankers expressed fury that the Small Business Administration’s online portal was faltering, the Los Angeles Lakers organization confirmed it had received a taxpayer-backed loan under the program in recent weeks.

That's when my mouth was left agape, and as I turn to page C3 I am greeted with this:

Bob Rivers, CEO of Eastern Bank, said that community banks “are stalled while the very largest banks draw down this limited funding.” 
Bob Rivers, CEO of Eastern Bank, said that community banks “are stalled while the very largest banks draw down this limited funding.” (Blake Nissen/ For The Boston Globe)

The NBA franchise said it was returning the $4.6 million, something several other well-off firms have done after their participation was revealed.

I gue$$ those were the paychecks they were protecting. The $ports world has gone along with the $hutdown, proving that higher forces are at work and that the alleged bailout loot is directed at preserving in$titutions that the elite want to retain going forward after the mass slaughter of humanity. The loot is part of the hu$h money as careers will be resumed in 2022 so enjoy the time off.

One a more trivial note, how did they get the $$$? 

They apply for it at a bank? 

Which bank approved it? 

At this point, the looters can keep their ill-gotten gains and buy everything up as long as they back off and let us resume our miserable lives without inoculations and tracking tracers -- but they won't. We are dealing with sick satanic psychopaths of the highest evil. May God hear our prayers.

The Trump administration has tried to defend the program, which has now received almost $700 billion in congressionally appropriated funds, because it is meant to give taxpayer-backed, forgivable loans to companies if they retain or rehire workers during the pandemic. After more than 26 million Americans filed unemployment claims in less than two months, policy makers are trying to come up with programs to keep people employed, but the program — known as the Paycheck Protection Program and operated by the Small Business Administration — has been overwhelmed, because of a surge in applications and the uneven process by which some companies receive loans and others do not. Within an hour after the SBA reopened its online portal, known as E-Tran, for submissions Monday, banking officials began to complain the system was either not working or was painfully slow.

Are you sick of the goddamn excu$es yet?

Wall $treet got their $6 trillion no problem, no glitches, but saving your $hit entrepreneurial dream is beset with problems and the money has disappeared into the pockets of the bank$ters, the well-connected, and any agenda-pushing concern that be needed in the future. 

The American people have been cheated as $ports teams have been shown to cheat the last few years -- including the beloved Red $awx and Patriots. Did you know they were going to kill your games, or were you $portos duped?

”Massachusetts banks of all sizes were frustrated that more small businesses couldn’t be helped today with PPP 2.  SBA’s loan system was simply overwhelmed,” Daniel Forte, president of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, said.

Eastern Bank submitted close to 5,000 applications in the first round and has another 3,000 for the second round, but on Monday the SBA changed the way it processed loans, making it slower for banks with fewer than 5,000 applications.

Eastern Bank CEO Bob Rivers contended that the change will in effect hurt community banks like his. In an e-mail, he said it took Eastern on Monday at least 30 minutes, on average, per loan to connect to E-Tran. As a result, he said, community banks “are stalled while the very largest banks draw down this limited funding.”

Then why was he smiling.

Malia Lazu at Berkshire Bank said the same about the computer system: “It was freezing up and very slow going.”

Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association, wrote on Twitter that bankers were ‘‘deeply frustrated’’ and that ‘‘we have raised these issues at the highest levels.’’

The Lakers’ decision to return $4.6 million came after the SBA said Monday that more than $2 billion in small-business loans during the first round of funding had been returned or declined by companies. It was unclear if other professional sports franchises got loans.

I wonder which other $ports leagues got bailed out.

At least $500 million went to large publicly held companies, according to a Washington Post analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission records. The program was initially funded with $349 billion, which ran out in less than two weeks.

It has disappeared down a rathole and now Congre$$ wants an investigation and audit.

Experts said they expected the second round of funding to run out within days.

‘‘In the time since the previous round of funding ran out, businesses and banks have used this time to prep and perfect applications,’’ said Juleanna Glover, a Washington public affairs adviser who’s tracking the program.

‘‘Once the application portal reopens, there will be an immediate flood of tens of thousands of applicants,” she said. “Maybe millions. I’d be surprised if this next tranche lasts even 72 hours.’’

Then it's all gone before May 1.

How much more money can these guys print without this place becoming Weimar Germany (actually, we are past that now)?

Lenders said they have thousands of loan applications queued up, and some have developed technology to make it easier to file them in the SBA’s computer systems. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, two of the largest banks, said they have tens of thousands of applications prepared. JPMorgan was the top lender in the first round of loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.

That paragraph sounds great, but where did the fir$t round of money go?

Are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America really the mo$t tru$tworthy di$tributors?

I mean, this whole thing about we are ready to go, ready to roll. Haven't seen a damn thing yet!

The program’s electronic infrastructure has consistently struggled to handle the barrage of applications, in some cases making it hard for small businesses to apply. Banks continued to vet applications after the initial funding ran out, and industry officials warned that demand could quickly overwhelm the SBA’s computer system.

Its press director, Carol Wilkerson, said the SBA had warned small businesses that problems could occur.

‘‘SBA notified lenders yesterday that pacing of applications into the E-Tran system would occur, meaning all lenders would be able to submit at the same rate per hour,’’ Wilkerson said. ‘‘The pacing mechanism prevents any one lender from submitting thousands of loans an hour into the E-Tran system. If a lender goes above the pacing limit they will get timed out.’’

Almost as if the $y$tem was designed to f**k ya', but we all know the bankers would never $crew us all over for some loot. COVID doesn't even touch that cla$$.

The Paycheck Protection Program was a major component of the $2 trillion federal stimulus law meant to combat the economic crisis. The program empowers banks to offer federally subsidized loans at terms unavailable on the private market. Borrowers get an interest rate of just 1 percent and can have the loan forgiven if they keep paying employees through the crisis. Small businesses are allowed to self-certify that they qualify, allowing lenders to bypass much of the paperwork usually required for loans.

The banks wanted to charge 4 percent while the original government plan carried an interest rate of 0% -- and therefore a compromise of 1% usury was reached to keep the ban$ters happy because they needed to make a buckle of this!

Despite glitchy IT systems, a chaotic regulatory process, and a disappointing lack of cooperation from some big banks, the initial rollout succeeded in quickly pumping hundreds of billions into a struggling small-business community.

It couldn’t immediately be learned, though, how many companies rehired workers, as the law had intended. The SBA and the Treasury Department estimated that more than 1.66 million small businesses were helped, supporting over 30 million jobs.

Those last two paragraphs are so goddamn offensive.

Despite all the documented failures over the last month, the program has done so much good.

For a $elect few, I $uppo$e, but that's it.

--more--"

Time to clo$e the barn door after the hor$es are out:

"New panel to oversee relief spending already facing controversy" by Chris Strohm and Laura Davison Bloomberg News, April 27, 2020

An oversight committee created to root out fraud and abuse as trillions of federal dollars are spent to combat the coronavirus launched its website and announced its executive director on Monday, the first public action by a panel already ensnared in controversy.

The independent committee was created to oversee spending under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that Congress approved and President Trump signed into law a month ago. The group, whose mandate has expanded to include almost $500 billion approved Friday, is comprised of independent inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies.

Investigations are already underway into airlines receiving federal support, the validity of tax credits claimed by businesses, the accuracy of economic stimulus payments, and the Health and Human Services Department’s adherence to safety protocols during the outbreak, according to the website.

In other words, it is a f**king me$$ -- as we knew it would be with everyone grabbing loot in the frenzied panic.

Robert A. Westbrooks was named executive director. He “most recently served as the Inspector General for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation where he helped protect the retirement benefits of 35 million American workers and retirees,” according to the statement.

Isn't that fund broke?

The effort to help small businesses retain workers, known as the Paycheck Protection Program, came under fire after big restaurant chains like Potbelly Corp. and Ruth’s Chris Steak House got loans, while many mom-and-pop operations were left stranded. Both businesses have since said they won’t accept the stimulus funding.

Yeah, if you give back the loot you should never have gotten it makes everything all good. That's the mind$et of these $ick f**ks.

Even before the group was fully operating, Trump challenged and undercut the power of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, indicating contentious times ahead to hold agencies accountable for spending and managing a bailout program for small businesses.

On April 7, Trump removed an experienced inspector general, Glenn Fine, who was appointed to chair the committee. Fine had been acting inspector general of the Defense Department, but Trump designated a new acting IG at the Pentagon, thereby demoting Fine and making him ineligible to chair the committee.

Who is Glenn Fine?

Westbrooks, the new executive director, was appointed to the watchdog role at the pension agency during the Obama administration, creating another potential target for Trump, who has criticized inspectors general named under his predecessor as prejudiced against him.

Trump also has sought to undercut oversight powers Congress provided in the CARES Act. In a signing statement accompanying the act, Trump said he doesn’t recognize a mandatory requirement that congressional leaders help select leaders of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee.

Trump also said a newly established inspector general at the Treasury Department to manage investigations of pandemic-related loans doesn’t have the power to issue reports to Congress without presidential supervision.

Trump has repeatedly clashed with independent federal watchdogs, challenging their findings and implying they might have a political agenda. In early April, Trump fired Michael Atkinson, inspector general for the US intelligence agencies. Atkinson had notified Congress about a whistle-blower complaint about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, which eventually led to Trump being impeached.

Atkinson is part of the ma$ter race.

“The recent flurry of presidential actions to undercut and sideline IGs as his administration spends historic amounts of public resources to address the pandemic should give Congress and every American grave concern about whether these resources will be used apolitically and in the public interest,” according to an April 9 article in The Hill written by Stuart Eizenstat, who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations, and Anne Pence, who served in Republican and Democratic administrations.

No relation to Mike?

As for Eizenstat, that just about says it all. He's hardcore Zionist and a lawyer.

--more--"

Oh, $tart me up:

"Startups pursue ‘free money’ with relief funds, prompting backlash" by Erin Griffithand David McCabe New York Times, April 27, 2020

Domio, a startup that offers short-term rentals, has its headquarters in a New York City loft that features beer on tap, a game room, and a wall of house slippers for visitors. The fast-growing and unprofitable company has raised $117 million in venture capital, including $100 million in August.

When the coronavirus pandemic caused Domio’s bookings to dry up last month, it laid off staff but did not ask its investors for more funding. Jay Roberts, Domio’s chief executive, said it had no immediate need to raise more money and most likely had enough cash to last until 2021.

Instead, Domio applied for a federal loan under the Paycheck Protection Program, the $349 billion plan to save jobs at small businesses during the outbreak. It received a loan on April 13. Three days later, the program’s funding ran out, even as hundreds of hard-hit restaurants, hair salons, and shops around the country missed out on the relief.

Questions about whether the funds were disbursed fairly and whether some applicants deserved them have drawn scrutiny to the aid program. Several companies that got millions of dollars in loans, such as the Shake Shack and Kura Sushi restaurant chains, faced criticism and eventually gave the money back. On Friday, President Trump signed legislation approving a fresh $320 billion to replenish the program, which the Small Business Administration is directing.

Now, scrutiny of the program has reached technology startups like Domio. While many of these young companies have been hurt by the pandemic, they are not ailing in the same way that traditional small businesses are. Many mom-and-pop enterprises, which tend to employ hourly workers and operate on razor-thin margins, are shutting down immediately because of economic pain or begging for donations via GoFundMe campaigns, but startups, which last year raised more than $130 billion in funding, have sometimes turned to the government loans not for day-to-day survival but simply to buy useful time. In Silicon Valley parlance, they want to extend their “runway,” or cash on hand, to a year or more. Many are backed by venture capital investors, who have accumulated record sums of capital — $121 billion as of the start of this year — that could be used to keep companies afloat.

It is exactly what I said above, and this is deviously evil!

The startup rush to tap the finite pool of government aid has stirred up a furious debate in Silicon Valley over whether these companies should have applied. “They are doing it because they can,” said Chris Olsen, a venture capitalist with Drive Capital Partners in Columbus, Ohio. “They view it as free money.”

(Blog editor is apoplectic)

Silicon Valley Bank, which serves startups and is one of the lenders offering the SBA loans, said that it had received 5,500 applications and that nearly two-thirds — more than than 3,600 — had been approved.

Most tech startups have fewer than 500 employees, making them eligible for the federal loans. They needed simply to certify that current “economic uncertainty” made the funds necessary to support their “ongoing operations.” The loans can be forgiven if used to cover payroll. The government has not shared a list of recipients.

Why not? 

It's TAXPAYER MONEY, after all. 

Would we get mad?

Maybe break lockdown and lynch those involved?

Justin Field, the senior vice president of government affairs at the National Venture Capital Association, a lobbying group, said startups were justified in seeking the federal aid. “These are potentially some of the most important companies for America’s future competitiveness,” he said.

Meanwhile, your "non-e$$ential" job is not important, nor is your livelihood or life to these $ick f**ks. I'm getting to the point where they can have this planet if this is what they are going to do it it. F**k them! I will see them in hell and feat on their disemboweled innards!!

Some startups said they saw how they had an advantage over traditional small businesses in obtaining the loans. While the application process has been difficult to navigate, many of the startups leaned on their relationships with banks, investors, law firms, and the lobbying group.

That $hit needs to $TOP NOW!

It's all WHO YOU KNOW, huh?

Just as we $u$pected. That's why the list won't be released.

WhereTF is Congre$$ when you really need them?

Jamie Baxter, chief executive of the staffing startup Qwick, said his finance chief worked overtime for two weeks figuring out the loan application process. Qwick, backed by $7 million in venture funding, received a loan for $500,000. It also cut staff by 70 percent and tapped its investors for an additional $1 million, Baxter said.

It's a BIG MONEY GRAB as this country becomes WORSE than the SOVIET UNION!

Field said it was up to individual firms to decide whether they could truthfully tell the government that they required help. “You have to certify need, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “How do you define need is a subjective question that you have to figure out.”

Yeah, they were truthful with them$elves!

--more--"

It's like I said. They want to preserve the things they will need going forward. F**k the rest of us.

So which $tartups in Bo$ton got $ome loot?

"Investors are making tough decisions on startups; IPO option has all but dried up amid pandemic, stock market volatility" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, April 27, 2020

For companies backed by venture capital and private equity, the pandemic has proven to be a particularly tough time to raise cash — even as many firms need a quick infusion of funds more than ever.

Not if you can " lean on relationships with banks, investors, law firms, and a lobbying group."

Investors have considered as an option the federal Paycheck Protection Program, the newly created small business assistance fund that reopened on Monday, but the rules preclude many companies in private equity portfolios (less so in VC) from applying. Meanwhile, the more traditional routes for raising money ― another round of private investments, or a jump into the public markets ― have suddenly become walled off.

A few local businesses managed to land a new round of funds, or have successfully gone public, amid the COVID-19 crisis, but they’re the exception that proves the rule.

Waltham cybersecurity company Randori, for example, said last week that it had raised $20 million in funding from three existing investors, and a new one, Harmony Partners. Chief executive Brian Hazzard said he and cofounder David “Moose” Wolpoff hadn’t expected to raise more capital this soon, but the pandemic hastened the timetable. The goal is to capitalize on a growing demand for cybersecurity, rather than slink into hibernation to ride out the storm. Hazzard said he expects to double the size of the 21-person company in a year, thanks to the new funds.

Paytronix, a loyalty platform provider for restaurants and convenience stores, also successfully turned to a previous financial backer for help after restaurant revenue slowed significantly. In the Newton firm’s case, it was Great Hill Partners to the rescue. The private equity operator helped lead the way for $10 million worth of funding, nearly all of it in equity, in a deal to be announced on Tuesday. Great Hill, which first invested in Paytronix in 2017, wanted to make sure the company could stay largely intact in the coming months. Paytronix chief executive Andrew Robbins said he did lay off about 10 people, but without a new investment, the cuts to his 175-person workforce would have been much greater.

Perhaps the toughest traditional route for a starving startup right now is the initial public offering, because of the stock market’s volatility and the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic’s length. Renaissance Capital, a pre-IPO research provider for institutional investors, reports that only three IPOs took place nationwide this month, with a fourth one, Watertown-based Lyra Therapeutics, scheduled to price on Thursday. All four are biotechs. Matthew Kennedy, a market strategist at Renaissance, said he expects the door to open somewhat to other kinds of firms later this spring, and he noted that startups choosing to merge into an existing publicly traded shell company, such as what Boston-based DraftKings did last week, have had more success during the pandemic.

Going public is a tricky proposition in these times. Startups no longer take their shows on the road for face-to-face meetings with investors; instead, they’re pitching via phone and video conference. That’s what happened to Imara, a 20-person biotech in Boston developing drugs to treat blood disorders. Imara raised $86.5 million in its IPO last month, to cover the costs of two global trials, but not before its physical roadshow turned virtual by the time of the IPO because of coronavirus concerns.

Few startups are this lucky anymore. Siobhan Dullea, chief executive at startup accelerator MassChallenge, said venture capital funding has all but seized up completely. Almost no one is taking even virtual meetings with startups, except for the VC firms that have already invested with them. Some are temporarily pivoting to pandemic-related work, but many others are going into hibernation.

Meanwhile, portfolio managers at VC and PE firms are busier than ever, trying to triage the firms where they have placed investments: Which companies should get more funding now, and which ones should not? John Ayer, partner at law firm Ropes & Gray, said investors want to protect their portfolio companies but are also reluctant to pump more capital into a business that’s likely to end up in bankruptcy now.

Greg Dracon, a general partner at .406 Ventures, said he has participated in more board meetings in the first four weeks of the pandemic than he has over any four-week period in his career. Some startups are told to trim their budgets. Some receive an extra infusion of cash. He said .406 decided to put more money into Randori because of the increasing need for cybersecurity, and its founders’ exceptional skill set.

It will be a time when winners get bigger, and losers fall by the wayside. Nixon Peabody corporate attorney Phil Taub said investors are often having to decide which firms they can let expire, and which ones they should keep going. The life-or-death decisions during this pandemic, it turns out, aren’t limited to the hospital rooms.

That's offensive.

--more--"

Related:

"While prescriptions for antidepressants have climbed in the U.S. in recent years, those for anxiety and insomnia have fallen, a new report shows — but the numbers also suggest the coronavirus pandemic could fuel a rise in the use of medications for all three conditions.

Every time you turn around, Pharma is benefitting from the plannedemic. 

Meanwhile, behind the paywall was this:

Some of the medications -- including, for example, the anti anxiety drug Valium and the anti-insomnia drug Ambien -- can have potentially harmful side effects. "Our analysis signals the potential significant emotional impact of COVID-19 and is something we will continue to watch for the next several months, [and] until life and work get back up to normal, we expect that many Americans will continue to feel the stress that has come from the pandemic," said Glen Stettin, senior vice president and chief innovation officer at Express Scrips."

What if we never get back to "normal?"

Also see:

"The Supreme Court ruled Monday that insurance companies can collect $12 billion from the federal government to cover their losses in the early years of the health care law championed by President Barack Obama. Insurers are entitled to the money under a provision of the “Obamacare” health law that promised the companies a financial cushion for losses they might incur by selling coverage to people in the marketplaces created by the health care law, the justices said by an 8-1 vote. The program only lasted three years, but Congress inserted a provision in the Health and Human Services Department’s spending bills from 2015 to 2017 to limit payments under the “risk corridors” program. Both the Obama and Trump administrations had argued that the provision means the government has no obligation to pay. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her opinion for the court that the congressional action was not sufficient to repeal the government’s commitment to pay."

Everybody gets bailed out except you, American citizen, and $ome greedy entities aren't giving the money back:

"Some businesses won’t return funds despite pressure from Trump administration" by Jeanne Whalenand Aaron Gregg Washington Post, April 28, 2020

WASHINGTON — Several publicly traded companies say they are not planning to return loans received from a small-business rescue program, despite pressure from the Trump administration to repay the funds.

Basically flipping him the finger.

Companies in the hotel, cruise ship, and medical device sectors said they are qualified to receive the money under the Paycheck Protection Program and need the funds to stay in business.

What bu$ine$$? 

Your industry has been destroyed by COVID-19.

Their resistance comes days after the Small Business Administration suggested dozens of publicly held companies should give back money received from the Paycheck Protection Program by May 7.

The agency said public companies with ‘‘substantial market value’’ and the ability to raise money through capital markets were not the intended recipients of the funds, which were meant to help small businesses keep employees battered by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

How did they get the money then?

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin increased the pressure Tuesday morning, saying the government plans to audit all loans over $2 million before it forgives them. The rules call for the government to forgive the loans if companies use them to keep employees on the payroll.

‘‘Anybody that took the money that shouldn’t have taken the money, one, it won’t be forgiven and two, they may be subject to criminal liability, which is a big deal,’’ Mnuchin said in an interview on Fox Business. ‘‘I encourage everybody to look at this and pay back these loans now so we can recycle the money if you made a mistake.’’

He made Harvard back down so anything is po$$ible.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the federal government plans to audit all loans over $2 million before it forgives them.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the federal government plans to audit all loans over $2 million before it forgives them.MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

You better do what he $ays.

Meanwhile, banks trying to submit applications for thousands of small businesses seeking coronavirus relief loans in the second round of funding have hit a bottleneck for a second day at the SBA.

It beggars the question: is the incompetence intentional?

Banking industry groups said Tuesday the SBA’s loan processing system is still unable to handle the volume of loan applications from business owners trying to get aid under the Paychceck Protection Program, part of the government’s $2 trillion coronavirus aid package. The SBA has said the slowdown is due to its attempts to limit the amount of loans any bank can submit at one time, but some banks say they’re not able to get any applications into the system.

When he got there, the fund was dry.

Bank of America, for instance, sent 184,000 applications for rescue loans from Sunday to early Monday morning, according to Bloomberg News.

“Today is just another slow, frustrating slog for getting PPP loans through,” said Paul Merski, a vice president at the Independent Community Bankers of America.

That's when the Globe's printed paper went down.

Some public companies that received funding in the first round have returned the money after public criticism, including Shake Shack, Kura Sushi USA, and Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

Other companies are resisting doing the same. Lindblad Expeditions Holdings, which operates high-end cruises, said it met the criteria for applicants and plans to keep its $6.6 million loan. The company reported having about $137 million in cash as of March 31, shortly after drawing down on a $45 million line of credit. The coronavirus prompted the company to cancel its cruises on March 12, a move it called ‘‘financially devastating.’’ ‘‘Despite this circumstance, Lindblad is the very rare travel company that has not imposed any layoffs, furloughs, or salary reductions to date — because of our access to the PPP,’’ said the company, which employs 461 people in the United States.

For how long are they going to retain these employees, because we are never going back to the way it was before.

A group of hotel companies chaired by Monty Bennett, a Dallas executive and Republican donor, said it also planned to keep the funds. Ashford Hospitality Trust, Braemar Hotels & Resorts, and Ashford were among the biggest recipients of the loans, receiving them through multiple applications, according to federal filings. The companies said they applied for $126 million total. The loan payments to the companies have come under scrutiny, given Bennett’s political donations. Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Bennett has given more than $370,000 to support President Trump and the Republican National Committee, and has given to a slew of other GOP campaigns in the House and Senate, as well as their party committees....

--more--"

Better get some liability in$urance before reopening:

"Businesses seek sweeping shield from pandemic liability before they reopen" by Jim Tankersley and Charlie Savage New York Times, April 28, 2020

WASHINGTON — Business lobbyists and executives are pushing the Trump administration and Congress to shield US companies from a wide range of potential lawsuits related to reopening the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, opening a new legal and political fight over how the nation deals with the fallout from COVID-19.

Why not? 

The vaccine companies already have immunity from law$uits. Why not go whole hog and complete the transition to pure fa$ci$m in the form of corporate totalitariani$m.

Government officials are beginning the slow process of lifting restrictions on economic activity in states and local areas across the country, but lobbyists say retailers, manufacturers, eateries, and other businesses will struggle to start back up if lawmakers do not place temporary limits on legal liability in areas including worker privacy, employment discrimination, and product manufacturing.

OMFG!

So much for being an "e$$ential" hero!

The biggest push, business groups say, is to give companies enhanced protection against lawsuits by customers or employees who contract the virus and accuse the business of being the source of the infection.

Has anyone ever sued for flu before?

WTF?

The effort highlights a core tension for as the economy begins to reopen: how to give businesses the confidence they need to restart operations amid swirling uncertainty over the virus and its effects, while also protecting workers and customers from unsafe practices that could raise the chances of infection.

Yeah, stripping you of your legal rights is protecting you!

FA$CI$M!

Administration officials have said they are examining how they could create some of those shields via regulation or executive order, but lobbyists and lawmakers agree the most effective changes would need to come from Congress — where the effort has run into partisan divisions that could complicate lawmakers’ ability to pass another stimulus package.

Republicans are pushing for the liability limitations as a way of stopping what they say are overzealous trial lawyers and giving business owners the certainty they need to reopen.

Kill all the lawyers.

Leaders of labor unions say limiting business liability will reward companies that are not taking adequate steps to ensure the safety of their workers and consumers.

You are lucky you have a job, so shaddup!

In announcing that the Senate will return May 4, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky, the majority leader, said Monday there was an “urgent need” to enact legislation to shield businesses from pandemic-related legal liability if they reopen, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from California, rejected McConnell’s call. “I don’t think that at this time, with coronavirus, that there’s any interest in having any less protection for our workers,” she said Tuesday.

One wonders how much longer they will have a job.

--more--"

Trump, Scientifically Speaking

He apparently has some sort of hormonal imbalance:

"Trump’s response to virus reflects a long disregard for science:" by Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer New York Times, April 28, 2020

WASHINGTON — At a March visit with doctors and researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the public health agency at the heart of the fight against the coronavirus, President Trump spoke words of praise for the scientific acumen in the building — particularly his own.

It was a striking boast, even amid a grave health crisis in which Trump has repeatedly contradicted medical experts in favor of his own judgment, but a disregard for scientific advice has been a defining characteristic of Trump’s administration.

As the nation confronts one of its worst public health disasters in generations, a moment that demands a leader willing to marshal the full might of the American scientific establishment, the White House is occupied by a president whose administration, critics say, has diminished the conclusions of scientists in formulating policy, who personally harbors a suspicion of expert knowledge, and who often puts his political instincts ahead of the facts.

“Donald Trump is the most anti-science and anti-environment president we’ve ever had,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University.

The president’s actions, he said, have eroded one of the United States’ most enviable assets: the government’s deep scientific expertise, built over decades.

Like a DEEP STATE?

“It’s extraordinarily crazy and reckless,” he said.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said in a statement that Trump’s handling of the outbreak “has put the full power of the federal government to work to slow the spread, save lives, and place this great country on a data-driven path to opening up again.”

Well before winning the presidency, Trump had publicly questioned science by expressing skepticism about vaccines and suggesting that climate change was a hoax.

Well, he's now got his mind right on the damn vaccines!

Once in office, Trump’s administration quickly began work on one of its most far-reaching policies — the systematic downplaying or ignoring of science in order to weaken environmental health and global warming regulations.

More recently, as the coronavirus outbreak engulfed the nation, Trump has repeatedly clashed with his own public health experts.

He was slow to react to early internal warnings to take the outbreak more seriously and has promoted the use of various drugs to fight the virus even as scientists said there was no proof they would be effective. On Thursday, he suggested that injecting disinfectants might help, drawing global condemnation and ridicule, and last week Trump publicly downplayed a warning by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the administration’s most visible medical expert, that the United States still lacked adequate capacity to test for the coronavirus.

Birx said drop it, so drop it!

The president also suggested that the virus might be gone by the fall, a line that was immediately countered by Fauci, who said: “We will have coronavirus in the fall. I am convinced of that.”

Then so am I, whether it's true or not!

Historians and foreign policy experts said the administration’s disregard for scientific expertise — combined with the nation’s broader retreat from international trade agreements and cross-border defense alliances — is diminishing the nation’s status on the world stage.

“America’s friends feel like they don’t even recognize us,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization.....

That is where I quit reading the damn article!

The NYT turned to the AEI's MILITARY ANALYST for "expert" analysis?

--more--"

Speaking of science, I presume the Bo$ton Globe is destroying itself with the Globe Goes over the top undercounts while downplaying the overcounts as they relapse into their deranged state:

"The United States on Tuesday surpassed one million known coronavirus cases, showing how an outbreak that began with a small trickle of cases in January has exploded into a national crisis. The bleak milestone was yet another sign of how the virus has upended life in America, taking lives, destroying families, spreading through meat plants, prisons, and nursing homes, forcing businesses and schools to close, and causing more than 26 million people to lose their jobs in the past five weeks. The true number of infections is much higher. The one million figure does not include untold thousands of Americans who contracted the virus but were not tested, either because they did not show symptoms or because of a persistent national testing shortage. Some disease researchers have estimated that the true number of infections may be about 10 times the known number, and preliminary testing of how many people have antibodies to the virus seems to support that view."

Then we should all be let out because we likely have herd immunity!

Of course, the case levels are going to shoot up since the most recent CDC guidelines added nine other conditions as COVID as they keep massaging and manipulating the numbers. 

"New COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York state are averaging under 1,000 a day for the first time this month, the latest sign of slowly decreasing pressure on the health care system. Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters Tuesday that hospitalizations and deaths from the outbreak were both continuing to tick down. The daily death toll dropped again, with 335 deaths reported Monday — the lowest daily tally recorded in April and the third straight day under 400."

They are at the heart of the red dot -- unlike Baltimore.

"Alabama Governor Kay Ivey says retail stores, beaches, and nonemergency medical procedures can resume later this week with limits. Ivey says a “safer at home” order will take effect 5 p.m. Thursday evening when the current stay-home order expires. The changes do not go as far as Georgia’s aggressive timetable for reopening. Alabama restaurants will remain closed for on-site dining. Hair salons, nail salons, tattoo parlors, and other close-contact services will remain closed, and in Maine the state will begin reopening its economy in phases this week on a schedule that is more ambitious than most of the rest of the hard-hit Northeast. The state will extend its broad stay-at-home order until May 31 but also begin lifting restrictions Friday, said Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat. The first stage will give residents access to personal services like barbers and drive-in churches. Later phases, to spread across the summer, will reopen restaurants, hotels, summer camps, and bars, and in California, schoolchildren could return to their classrooms as early as July though there likely will be modifications. Governor Gavin Newsom has previously said that schools may launch with staggered start times to limit the number of students in the school at one time."

"Vice President Mike Pence chose not to wear a face mask Tuesday during a tour of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, an apparent violation of the world-renowned medical center’s policy requiring them. Video feeds show that Pence did not wear a mask when he met with a Mayo employee who has recovered from COVID-19 and is now donating plasma, even though everyone else in the room appeared to be wearing one, and Pence was the only participant not to wear a mask during a roundtable discussion on Mayo’s coronavirus testing and research programs. Mayo tweeted that it had informed the vice president of its mask policy prior to his arrival. The tweet was later removed. Mayo officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it was removed, or at whose request. The vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why Pence chose not to wear a mask."

Vice President Mike Pence didn’t wear a mask during a visit to the Mayo Clinic Tuesday, in violation of the facility’s rules. (Jim Mone/associated Press)
Vice President Mike Pence didn’t wear a mask during a visit to the Mayo Clinic Tuesday, in violation of the facility’s rules. (Jim Mone/associated Press)Jim Mone/Associated Press

Pence is part of the resistance?

Or he knows something we don't given there is no social distancing!?

"During a question-and-answer session with reporters after an event in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday afternoon, President Trump outlined some of the conditions he would like to see placed on aid to states amid the coronavirus pandemic. Asked whether there might be additional direct payments to Americans, Trump said he supports the idea of payroll tax cuts. He then addressed the issue of aid to states. “The problem with the states is we’re not looking to recover 25 years of bad management,” he said, echoing similar statements made recently by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. Trump added that it was possible to “talk about” money for states if it was “covid-related,” but that he would want to see certain conditions met, “including sanctuary city adjustments.”

He's attaching $trings?

"Can the US economy recover from coronavirus if the budgets of its states are a fiscal disaster?" by Jim Puzzanghera Globe Staff, April 28, 2020

WASHINGTON — The coronavirus pandemic has delivered a devastating, one-two financial blow to state and local governments, forcing them to spend more on health care and assistance for the needy at the same time as stay-at-home restrictions have smothered the flow of incoming sales taxes and other revenues.

Governors, mayors, and local officials are begging for help from Washington after Republican opposition halted attempts in the latest rescue package, enacted last week, to add to the $150 billion in federal money they’ve received so far.

The National Governors Association estimates states need a combined $500 billion in federal aid to close looming budget shortfalls or they’ll be forced to make major cuts. Organizations representing the nation’s cities and counties say they need $250 billion on top of that or will face the same prospect.

Now, as Congress and the White House begin fighting over whether to provide more help — and if so, how much — in the next rescue legislation, the fate of the US economic recovery could be riding in the balance.

Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities, said state and local governments play a huge role in the US economy and estimated they’ll ultimately get $1 trillion in federal assistance, a number that still won’t be enough. “There’s no way the federal government can make up all of this,” he said. “They could help plug the hole. They can’t replace everything that’s been lost. It’s too big.”

“It looks like it’s going to be considerably worse than the Great Recession and it’s happening really fast,” said Elizabeth McNichol, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank focused on reducing poverty and inequality. “That’s going to require laying off workers and imposing really deep budget cuts at exactly the wrong time and it could make this downturn deeper and longer."

That got me thinking, and did you know they are "supported by a number of foundations, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, as well as individual donors, and The Atlantic Philanthropies is a major donor, as is George Soros."

The Ford Foundation is a notorious CIA outfit, and do I even need to comment about the hand of $oro$?

They would be kin to the "left wing think tank," according to the New York Timesthat is funded by none other than JPMorgan Chase, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the US Department of State, and Siemens, among others.

-more--"

Why can't they just shake hands and work together?

More Deep State sabotage of the President of the United States:

"Trump’s aversion to intelligence and details comes into full focus on coronavirus response" by Aaron Blake Washington Post, April 28, 2020

WASHINGTON — Before Donald Trump’s presidency even began, he made clear just how little regard he had for the lengthy President’s Daily Brief that provides the latest US intelligence.

So what?

He is far from alone in that regard. 

I can sum up the reason in two words: Iraqi WMD.

So what I have on page A4 today is a hit 'em high, hit 'em low strategy by the NYT and WaCompo.

‘‘You know I’m, like, a smart person,’’ he said in December 2016. ‘‘I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.’’

Hell, Bush told the briefers they had covered their ass back in August 2001 before he went golfing.

The next month, he told Axios that, ‘‘I like bullet [points] or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page: That I can tell you.’’ Since then, reports have detailed how infrequently Trump has engaged with these reports or even taken the briefings, and now we’re discovering just how much this aversion to intelligence, expertise, and detail might have cost us.

Who is "us," Wa$hington Compo$t?

The Washington Post’s Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima reported that, beginning in early January, more than a dozen PDBs included dire warnings about the potential of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

What we are seeing here is a revisionist backfill set of forgeries to create a false narrative surrounding the president.

The WaCompo has long been known as the CIA's newspaper.

It has previously been reported that the intelligence briefings contained such warnings, but the degree to which they were conveyed and the frequency was not previously known. As Miller and Nakashima reported, ‘‘US officials said it reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts, or other rapidly developing security issues.’’

They go on: ‘‘For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.’’

The timeline here is key. Trump first weighed in on the threat of the coronavirus on Jan. 22, when he dismissed the possibility of it becoming a pandemic. He would eventually issue travel restrictions on China, where the virus is believed to have originated, on Jan. 31, but for a month and half after that, he would not take major action, even as those around him were becoming increasingly alarmed.

One key aspect of the briefings is that they didn’t just offer warnings, but that they also alleged a Chinese coverup. In fact that allegation about China’s lack of transparency was included from the very first briefing at the beginning of January.

Oh, this is also war-monger projection and deflection from the fact that COVID-19 -- if it exists at all -- was most likely loosed from Fort Detrick!

Despite that, Trump would spend weeks praising China’s response to the virus and insisting it had it under control. He even directly praised its ‘‘transparency’’ on Jan. 24 and flatly dismissed the idea that it was covering anything up on Feb. 7. That soft touch troubled US officials at the time. According to the new Post report, he had been advised the opposite as much as a month earlier.

The Deep State was alarmed, huh?

Then the pre$$ ran with this fraud!

A second key point here is that the new revelation suggests Trump might not have been forthcoming about when he was receiving such dire warnings. Facing a bevy of revelations about unheeded, early warning signs, he said this month that he had first learned of the severity of the situation shortly before he issued the China travel restrictions on Jan. 31. ‘‘When I learned about the gravity of it was sometime just before closing the country to China,’’ Trump said.

Well, he didn't tell lies that were blared from the front pages of the piece of $hit that is the Wa$hington Compo$t, leading to the mass murder of millions in Iraq and beyond.

Trump’s statement might have been strictly accurate. He may not have learned himself of the severity of the situation, because he didn’t actually take the briefings (There is some reason to doubt that, given experts told the Post that such developments would likely have been summarized orally for Trump, at the very least), but whether Trump actually consumed the information or not is kind of beside the point. The point was that the warnings were there, and he either didn’t bother to consume the information or was informed and proceeded to cast doubt on all of it.

Beside the point?

That means it is not relevant to the subject that they are discussing (yeah, who gives a damn about the facts when creating a perception for the public?)!

That sounds like an even if (despite the fact) or a to be sure (used to concede the truth of something that conflicts with another point that one wishes to make)!

--more--"

A Tribe member says don’t let the coronavirus failures shake your faith in federalism.

Trump's Hormonal Imbalance

He is trying to regain his equilibrium:

"After weeks of criticism, Trump shifts focus to economy, tries to regain his footing" by Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin and Jonathan Lemire Associated Press, April 27, 2020

WASHINGTON — The White House released new guidelines Monday on coronavirus testing and reopening businesses as President Trump sought to regain his footing after weeks of criticism and detours created in part by his sideshows. Trump appeared reluctant to cede the spotlight, with on-off-on plans for a press conference to capture the flurry of action.

I don't even like the guy that much, and his slavish devotion to that Satanic stain in the Middle East gives me little hope; however, the constant ax-grinding has become sooooo tiresome after 3-1/2 years.

As part of the guidelines effort, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new priorities for virus testing, including people who show no symptoms but are in high-risk settings.

The White House unveiled what it described as a comprehensive overview of its efforts to make enough tests for COVID-19 available so states can sample at least 2.6 percent of their populations each month. Areas that have been harder hit by the virus would be able to test at double that rate, or higher, the White House said. Trump and administration medical experts outlined the plan on a call with governors Monday afternoon, and Trump announced that businesses such as CVS would expand access to tests across the country.

“Testing is not going to be a problem at all,’’ Trump said later in the Rose Garden. Many of the administration’s past pledges and goals on testing have not been met.

Monday’s developments were meant to fill critical gaps in White House plans to begin “reopening” the nation, ramping up testing for the virus while shifting the president’s focus toward recovery from the economic collapse caused by the outbreak.

At one point the White House announced there would be no Trump briefing, but he appeared to have other ideas. His insistence on being the star of the daily briefing came as his greatest asset in the reelection campaign — his ability to dominate headlines with freewheeling performances at his daily briefings — was increasingly being seen as a liability. At the same time, private Republican Party polling shows Trump’s path to a second term depends on the public’s perception of how quickly the economy rebounds from the state-by-state shutdowns meant to slow the spread of the virus.

He is so toxic that he is finished if there is an "election."

Btw, I finally saw a clip of him making that statement and he is constantly turning to Birx and getting her confirmation that the information he is relaying is accurate. She set him up!

Days after he set off a firestorm by publicly musing that scientists should explore the injection of toxic disinfectants as a potential virus cure, Trump said he found little use for his daily task force briefings, at which he has time and again clashed with medical experts and reporters. Trump’s aides had been trying to move the president onto more familiar and, they hope, safer, ground: talking up the economy in more tightly controlled settings, but hours after the White House scrubbed the nightly briefing from the official White House schedule, it reversed course.

I've started to doubt all the palace intrigue as reported by my pre$$, sorry.

Spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said briefings would be held later in the week but “they might have a new look to them, a new focus to them.” “We’re entering a phase of looking to reopen the country and with that, the president will be focusing a lot on the economy,” she said.

On the conference call with governors, Trump suggested that many states should consider reopening schools before the end of the academic year, easing the way for parents to go back to work.

“Some of you might start thinking about school openings because a lot of people are wanting to have the school openings,’’ Trump told the governors. The Associated Press obtained an audio recording of the call.

When the AP says it "obtained" a recording of the call, that means it was leaked to them. The word obtained is a self-serving, self-adulating, self-aggrandizing term that makes it seem like the pre$$titute did some shoe-leather work to ferret out valuable information.

As for the schools reopening, forget it.

Among Monday’s announcements was a new “testing blueprint” for states. It includes a focus on surveillance testing as well as “rapid response” programs to isolate those who test positive and identify those with whom they came in contact. The administration aims to have the market “flooded” with tests for the fall, when COVID-19 is expected to recur alongside the seasonal flu.

This is no longer a test, the WAR is REAL!

They are going to pull the same $**t in the fall and commingle seasonal flu with the mythical COVID-19), so you can forget about football and the baseball playoffs (f**k $ports).

Jeremy Konyndyk, a disaster preparedness expert who helped lead the Obama administration response to Ebola, said the Trump administration’s testing plans are well short of what is needed.

Researchers at Harvard have estimated the country needs to be testing a minimum of 500,000 people per day, and possibly many more. Konyndyk said we should be aiming to be doing 2 million to 3 million tests per day. “Over the past month, we’ve doubled or if you want to be really generous tripled the testing capacity in this country. We need to take where we are now and expand it 10-fold,” Konyndyk said.

Even though the tests are contaminated, wildly inaccurate, and turn up false positives more than 75% of the time.

This is all part and parcel of their sick globalist control grid dystopia. 

F**king EVIL!!!

The White House argues that the limiting factor for the nation’s COVID-19 testing is no longer the test kits or the chemicals and supplies needed to conduct the tests but rather the availability of resulting samples — either because guidelines on who could be tested are too stringent or because there are not enough health workers able to take nasal swabs.

I don't want a painful nasal swab, especially when saliva tests are more accurate and less invasive.

The CDC also has been working on more detailed guidelines on reopening schools, restaurants, and other establishments. Draft guidelines sent by the CDC to Washington include a long list of recommendations for organizations, such closing break rooms at offices, schools spacing desks six feet apart, and restaurants using disposable plates and menus. The draft guidance was obtained by The Associated Press from a federal official who was not authorized to release it.

That's where my printed paper ended the article, and the last agency I want giving out guidelines for anything it is the CDC.

The web version kept on pumping out hormones:

Some states have started to ease closure orders, and Trump is expected to spend coming days highlighting his administration’s efforts to help businesses and employees. Aides said the president would hold more frequent roundtables with CEOs, business owners, and beneficiaries of the trillions of dollars in federal aid already approved by Congress, and begin to outline what he hopes to see in a recovery package.

Have you noticed who is left out of his roundtables and commi$$ions?

By going along with the guidelines and doing what the monied cla$$ wants, the President is exposed as a carnival-barking con man -- as sad as that is to say.

I get it. He is only one man, but I suspect he never meant to drain the $wamp and all the rest. The entire term has been a $hell game, and now he is sheparding in the sick dystopian future the psychopathic and misanthropic elite are demanding. Sad.

Trump last left the White House complex a month ago, and plans are being drawn up for a limited schedule of travel within the next few weeks, aides said. It would be a symbolic show that the nation is beginning to reopen. The shift comes in conjunction with what the White House sees as encouraging signs across the country, with the pace of new infections stabilizing and deaths declining.

Still, medical experts warn that the virus will continue to haunt the country at least until a vaccine is developed, and they say the risk of a severe second wave is high if social distancing measures are relaxed too quickly or if testing and contact tracing schemes aren’t developed before people return to normal behaviors.

EVIL F**KERS!

Worries are growing among Republicans and Trump allies over the president’s increasingly erratic handling of the coronavirus crisis. For weeks, Republicans have grown concerned that Trump’s daily briefings were doing him grievous political damage. Though Trump cherished the TV ratings, the modest polling bump he received in the early days of the pandemic has vanished amid a flurry of misstatements and partisan fights.

Has it?

Has it really?

What is with the ceaseless goddamn contradictions and mixed messages, AP?

--more--"

Related:

"With governments making moves toward letting businesses reopen, stocks rallied worldwide on Monday to kick off a busy week for marketsFrom Rome, Ga., to Rome, Italy, companies are watching as politicians detail plans to ease up on restrictions that were meant to slow the coronavirus pandemic but also erased businesses and jobs. Retail chains, cruise lines, and other businesses whose profits hinge on people leaving their homes jumped to some of Monday’s biggest gains. The S&P 500 climbed 1.5 percent. This week is chockablock with potentially market-moving events, including meetings for several of the world’s largest central banks. Nearly a third of the companies in the S&P 500 are scheduled to report how profitable they were in the first three months of 2020 and, more importantly, perhaps talk about how they see future conditions shaking out. With central banks and governments promising overwhelming amounts of aid for markets, some investors are looking beyond the economic devastation sweeping the world. They’re focusing instead on the potential return of growth as the outbreak levels off in some areas. Treasury yields pushed higher in an indication of less pessimism in the market, but crude tanked again in the latest extreme swing that’s dominated oil markets in recent weeks. Financial companies rose 3.6 percent for the biggest gain among the 11 sectors that make up the S&P 500. They had tumbled earlier on worries about waves of households and businesses defaulting on their loans. The reopening of some businesses in Georgia and other states, along with a slowdown in hospitalizations in the hardest-hit state of New York, helped revive financial stocks. So did a rise in Treasury yields, which mean bigger profits for making loans. The sector is still down 26.9 percent for the year. Retail chains and real-estate investment trusts that own shopping malls also recovered some of their earlier losses as investors looked toward a future where people visit stores again. Even travel-related stocks, which fell before the rest of the market on worries about the coronavirus outbreak, were strong. Stocks of smaller companies jumped more than the rest of the market. With smaller financial buffers, small-cap stocks often get punished more than their bigger rivals when investors are anticipating downturns, but they can also rise faster during rebounds. The Russell 2000 of small-cap stocks rose 4 percent. The market’s big recent gains, though, are built more on hope for improving conditions than on anything certain. Some investors are worried that reopenings of businesses, if done hastily, could lead to a second wave of infections, and many warn that it’s still too uncertain how long this recession will last. “The sense I get is people are not going to be comfortable with life as usual,” said Marc Chaikin, founder of Chaikin Analytics. “It’s a big leap of faith to expect that earnings are going to go back to pre-2020 levels.” Even if the economy is past the worst of its downturn, “it’s going to be a long way back from where we were in 2019,” said Seydl of J.P. Morgan Private Bank....."

Of cour$e, "financial companies had the biggest gain among the 11 sectors that make up the S&P 500"as the u$ury is in full $wing, and why is that Chaikin guy ignoring the mushrooming protests against the tyrannical $hutdown?

Also see:

"Wall Street jostled to a mixed finish Tuesday, as former stalwarts ran out of momentum and some of the market’s most beaten-down stocks turned into winners....."

The lo$ers became winners even as US consumer confidence plunged in April?

Want to get some lunch?

Masks, temperature checks mark ‘new normal’ at restaurants

That article carried a New York Times byline so I sent it back!

"Masks, temperature checks mark 'new normal' at restaurants" by Kate Brumback and Russ Bynum, Associated Press  April 27th 2020

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — With staff wearing masks, checking customers' temperatures and using disposable paper place mats, some of the nation's restaurants reopened for dine-in service Monday as states loosened more coronavirus restrictions, but many eateries remained closed amid safety concerns and community backlash.

Restaurants in Georgia and Tennessee and Anchorage, Alaska, welcomed diners back, albeit for a different dine-in experience than before the pandemic forced restaurants to close or limit their services to take-out and delivery. In Louisiana, the governor said restaurants will be allowed to seat people outside starting Friday, though without wait service at the tables.

In Georgia, dine-in service and movie screenings were allowed to resume a few days after some other businesses, including barbershops, gyms, tattoo shops and nail salons, began seeing customers Friday.

“We’re ecstatic to have them back,” said Chris Heithaus, who manages 87 Waffle House restaurants. “A lot of people, I think, want to get back to the new normal, which will be social distancing and all that, but they will be able to eat inside the restaurant.”

At the popular chain known for hash brown breakfasts and its ability to stay open in the face of natural disasters, the “new normal” included employees wearing masks, booths closed to keep customers apart and traditional plastic place mat menus replaced by paper menus.

The endless repetition of that phrase is a social conditioning effort as the medical surveillance tyranny is advanced.

Gov. Brian Kemp announced last week that he would relax restrictions despite health experts’ warnings of a potential surge in infections and disapproval from President Donald Trump.

Trump approved it before disapproving it, a la John Kerry and the Iraq invasion (he was for it before he was against it).

Anchorage began allowing restaurants, hair salons and other retails locations to open Monday, three days after the rest of Alaska began relaxing restrictions. Seating must be limited to 25 percent of capacity, and only members of the same household can sit at a table.

A log with every customer’s first and last name and contact phone number must be maintained by the restaurant and kept for 30 days in case it’s needed for contact tracing. All employees must wear fabric face masks, and customers are encouraged to wear them unless eating.

I've already lost my appetite.

In Tennessee, state officials allowed restaurants to reopen in 89 of Tennessee’s 95 counties starting Monday. At Tony Gore’s Smoky Mountain BBQ & Grill in Sevierville, only a few tables of dine-in guests had come in by Monday afternoon, and each diner — as well as employees — had to have their temperature checked with an infrared thermometer gun.

“Everybody has really been great about that part of it,” restaurant general manager Keith Carter said of the temperature checks. “We figured we would have some people who would be like, ‘That’s kind of weird.’ I think they see that it’s just a precaution.”

In Madison, a small antebellum town in Georgia about 60 miles from Atlanta, the Madison Chop House Grille took similar cautionary steps. The staff put big blue X marks on certain tables and removed chairs to let patrons know they could not sit there. When employees arrive, they have to take their temperature and record it on a white board that’s visible to customers.

OMFG! 

Why not make 'em wear a Scarlet Letter instead? 

Or a Star of David?!

The restaurant only had about six tables of people for dine-in lunch service, said general manager, Mary Spoto.

“Every customer who’s come in here has thanked us for being open, but unfortunately it was really slow,” Spoto said.

Many other restaurants decided it wasn't yet time to reopen.....

I'm ready to puke anyway, so....

--more--"

The intrepid Jess Bidgood of the Globe Staff enlightens us to the fact that for restaurants, the long-term damage is all but certain as owners say relief has been an ill-fitting band-aid for an industry with an uncertain future.

If you are wondering why there is no meat on the menu, that is because "the US food supply chain “is breaking,” with millions of pounds of meat set to “disappear” as plants close. Illnesses in the meat-processing industry and shifts in demand after restaurants closed have disrupted the supply chain. Dairy farmers are dumping milk that can’t be sold to processors, broiler operations have been breaking eggs to reduce supplies, and some fruit and vegetables are rotting in fields amid labor and distribution disruptions."

Yes, readers, you READ THAT RIGHT!

A PLANNED FAMINE is to be FOISTED on America come THIS FALL, if not WAY SOONER!

Bill Barr will set things right:

"Barr tells prosecutors to ‘be on the lookout’ for state, local coronavirus orders that may violate Constitution" by Matt Zapotosky Washington Post, April 27, 2020

WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr on Monday directed federal prosecutors nationwide to ‘‘be on the lookout’’ for state and local coronavirus-related restrictions that might run afoul of the Constitution and to pursue court action, if necessary.

In two-page memo to US attorneys across the country, Barr wrote that the measures state and local government officials had taken ‘‘have been necessary in order to stop the spread of a deadly disease,’’ but even in times of emergency, the Constitution could not be discounted entirely.

Oh, he is a defender of the Constitution now, is he?

Here is a guy who cleared the criminal Clintons, had Epstein disappear while in federal custody, and what is John Durham up to these days? Remember him?

Barr is there to KEEP the SECRETS!

‘‘Now, I am directing each of our United States Attorneys to also be on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens,’’ Barr wrote, adding later, ‘‘If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court.’’

It's right in front of you, Bill, from the police threatening churches in Mississippi to the tyrannical lockdown orders and advisories across all states that have closed "non-e$$ential" bu$ine$$.

Many states and localities have commanded residents to stay at home, except for essential trips for food and other supplies, and issued other directives meant to stem the spread of COVID-19, the potentially fatal respiratory disease caused by coronavirus. Barr’s memo did not cite specific policies he found objectionable. Justice Department officials have said in recent weeks that Barr is not looking to roll back reasonable restrictions and force the opening of the country, but rather to encourage officials to carefully weigh the necessity of what they are doing.

What a crock!

President Trump has pushed for a rapid reopening of the country — at times unnerving health experts, who fear a rushed resumption of normal life will only lead to more death. He recently tweeted in apparent encouragement of people in Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia protesting those states’ coronavirus-related restrictions, but Trump has also publicly disagreed with Georgia’s recent decision to allow certain businesses to reopen.

After he approved of it, and what wildly inaccurate models are they using this time?!

Barr wrote that Eric Dreiband, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, and Matthew Schneider, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, would oversee the effort.

He compared the directive to a similar decree he issued telling prosecutors to prioritize cases of those trying to profit from the pandemic. That memo sparked a significant push among US attorneys to bring coronavirus-related prosecutions.

There have been a couple of busts in those entrapments, 'er, stings(??).

Barr has previously been outspoken about his wariness of aggressive restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus. He told Fox News earlier this month that he considered some of the measures ‘‘draconian’’ and that he would be ‘‘keeping a careful eye on’’ the situation — particularly as April turned to May, and the federal government updated its social distancing guidelines.

‘‘When this period of time, at the end of April, expires, I think we have to allow people to adapt more than we have, and not just tell people to go home and hide under their bed, but allow them to use other ways — social distancing and other means — to protect themselves,’’ Barr said.

Barr repeated some of those sentiments in a more recent interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, saying that ‘‘the idea that you have to stay in your house is disturbingly close to house arrest’’ and cryptically suggesting the federal government might ‘‘have to address’’ cases in which state governors impinge on civil liberties.

Did he go before or after McConnell?

But in both instances, Barr stressed that states have the authority to restrict Americans’ constitutional rights in cases of emergency, and in the more recent interview with Hewitt, he said the federal government was wisely deferring to state leaders.

That paragraph just shredded the entire premise of the propaganda up to this point.

‘‘That can be a messy business, but at the end of the day, the better approach than trying to dictate everything from Washington,’’ Barr said. Barr said the Justice Department has sought to ‘‘jawbone’’ some local officials who have exceeded their authority, but so far it has intervened in only a single lawsuit over coronavirus restrictions, appearing to back a Greenville, Miss., church which had sued over the city’s efforts to shut down drive-in religious services.

Even in that instance, the department did not unequivocally support Temple Baptist Church in its legal statement of interest, though it said the circumstances the church described ‘‘suggest that the city singled out churches for distinctive treatment,’’ which would be unconstitutional.

Our future will be worse than the Nazis.

The department also stressed in its filing that following state and local restrictions was the ‘‘best path to swiftly ending COVID-19’s profound disruptions to our national life and resuming the normal economic life of our country.’’ The city ultimately backed down in the suit.

With a "new normal," of course.

--more--"

Also see:

"President Trump’s first tweet Sunday came unusually late, popping up a few minutes after noon — hours behind schedule for a president who is often awake and tweeting as the sun rises. ‘‘Happy Birthday to Melania, our great First Lady!’’ Trump tweeted at 12:06 p.m. The celebratory tweet kicked off a long day of tweeting and retweeting that really ramped up at around 2 p.m. when Trump observed, in response to a recent New York Times article, that those who know him regard him as ‘‘the hardest working President in history.’’ Over the next seven hours or so, Trump took aim at everything and anyone he could, unleashing a barrage of more than 30 tweets and retweets that targeted media outlets, high-profile commentators and hosts, and Democrats. He also returned once more to the Russia probe and impeachment, promoting a tweet that accused his political adversaries of ‘‘three failed coup attempts.’’ There tweet went on to suggest that the president's opponents could attempt to "steal the election" by making the novelcoronavirus's impact on human lives seem worse than it really is."

Oh, there is no doubt in my mind that the election will be stolen from him in the mo$t under-handed way, and the tweets are written for him.

"US intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former US officials. The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats. For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences, but the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience even for the oral summary, according to the officials. The advisories came during a period now regarded by many public health officials and other experts as a squandered opportunity to contain the outbreak."

Like they did with W. Bush at his ranch in August 2001, right?

What you are looking at above is an attempt by the Deep State intelligence agencies to rewrite history and tar the President of the United States with a lack of response to crisis.

Of course, when he banned flights from China the same agents called him a racist in the pre$$.

Of course, we are getting distortion after distortion and like after lie as the pre$$ pushes simulated death figures while padding the actual counts.

The previous brief replaced this printed pos:

"A Vallejo city official who was seen tossing a cat, and drinking during an online planning commission meeting has resigned, the Vallejo Times-Herald reports. In a Zoom meeting held on Monday, Planning Commissioner Chris Platzer was seen on the lower left-hand corner of the screen saying, "first I would like to introduce my cat," with the feline making a short appearance before being tossed abruptly to the side. In an email, Platzer told the Vallejo Times-Herald on Saturday that he was stepping down immediately and apologized for his actions. "I did not conduct myself in the Zoom meeting in a manner befitting of a planning commissioner and apologize for any harm I may have inflicted," Platzer wrote to the Times-Herald. "I serve at the pleasure of the council and no longer have that trust and backing. I extend my gratitude to those who have supported me during my tenure. I have always felt that serving Vallejo in a voluntary position is honorable because Vallejo is worth serving. We are all living in uncertain times and I certainly, like many of you, am adjusting to a new normalcy." The Times-Herald also reports the commissioner was drinking beer and was also heard making derogatory remarks after the meeting was over. The city council was planning to take up a resolution to remove Platzer."

Here is something that will throw you off balance:

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has expanded its list of possible symptoms of the coronavirus, a step that reflects the broad variation and unpredictability in the way the illness can affect individual patients. Echoing the observations of doctors treating thousands of patients in the pandemic, the federal health agency changed its website to cite the following symptoms as possible indicators of COVID-19, the infection caused by the coronavirus: chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and new loss of taste or smell. Previously it had listed just three symptoms: fever, cough, and shortness of breath. The CDC added the six symptoms earlier this month after new recommendations were issued by an organization of public health epidemiologists that is responsible for defining which infectious diseases are tracked and reported to the agency. The organization, the Center for State and Territorial Epidemiologists, or CSTE, recommended that COVID-19 be considered a nationally reportable illness and gave guidelines about how cases should be defined and identified. The revised CDC list differs somewhat from the symptoms described by the World Health Organization on its website. The WHO says the most common symptoms are fever, dry cough, and tiredness."

Figures lie and liars figure, and evil misanthropic psychopaths manipulate numbers!

The NorthernTruthSeeker has it correct:

The COVID-19 Bullshit: Criminals Are NOT Getting Their "Numbers" To Classify This As A Pandemic - So They Are Now Arbitrarily Expanding The Definition Of This Disease (!) 

This follows up on the last week where we have seen a number of reports calling into question the official totals as YouTube removes videos from doctors looking at real data.

Related:

"In the early weeks of the coronavirus epidemic, the United States recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths, nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to COVID-19 at the time, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health. The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported. The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides, and motor vehicle accidents, but in any pandemic, higher-than-normal mortality is a starting point for scientists seeking to understand the full impact of the disease. The Yale analysis for the first time estimates excess deaths, both nationally and in each state, in those five weeks."

Time to start silencing the whistleblowers with some wet work:

"A top emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital that treated many coronavirus patients died by suicide Sunday, her father and the police said. Dr. Lorna M. Breen, medical director of the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, died in Charlottesville, Va., where she was staying with family, her father said in an interview. Breen’s father, Dr. Philip C. Breen, said she had described devastating scenes of the toll the coronavirus took on patients. “She tried to do her job, and it killed her,” he said. Philip Breen said his daughter had contracted the coronavirus but had gone back to work after recuperating for about a week and a half. The hospital sent her home again, before her family intervened to bring her to Charlottesville, he said. Lorna Breen, 49, did not have a history of mental illness, her father said, but he said that when he last spoke with her, she seemed detached, and he could tell something was wrong. She had described to him an onslaught of patients who were dying before they could even be taken out of ambulances. “She was truly in the trenches of the front line,” he said. He added: “Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was. She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.” In a statement, NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia used that language to describe Lorna Breen. “Dr. Breen is a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the challenging front lines of the emergency department,” the statement said."

Was she murdered or just paid off to disappear because the family's reaction is awfully strange.

Did they put her on a ventilator?

As for being in the trenches, you need to go HERE.

Turns out she shot herself: 

"The Supreme Court said Monday that it would not decide what would have been its first decision on the scope of the Second Amendment in almost a decade, finding that New York City’s repeal of the gun control regulation under challenge had made the matter moot. When the court agreed to hear the case, the possibility of such a ruling alarmed gun control proponents, who urged New York City officials to repeal the regulation....."

Don’t look to the Supreme Court to protect you:

"The Supreme Court ruled Monday that insurance companies can collect $12 billion from the federal government to cover their losses in the early years of the health care law championed by President Barack Obama. Insurers are entitled to the money under a provision of the “Obamacare” health law that promised the companies a financial cushion for losses they might incur by selling coverage to people in the marketplaces created by the health care law, the justices said by an 8-1 vote. The program only lasted three years, but Congress inserted a provision in the Health and Human Services Department’s spending bills from 2015 to 2017 to limit payments under the “risk corridors” program. Both the Obama and Trump administrations had argued that the provision means the government has no obligation to pay, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her opinion for the court that the congressional action was not sufficient to repeal the government’s commitment to pay."

The Corporate Court comes together on something!

So who was the dissenter and why?

Time to party!

"At least eight of the 800 members of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club have been confirmed to have died of COVID-19, while others may have been killed by the coronavirus, and still more are fighting for their lives, said the club’s board chairman, Jay H. Banks, who also is a New Orleans city councilman. The toll on the club, a mainstay of Mardi Gras parades that was formed more than a century ago in part to provide funeral services to Black people, reflects the outsize impact that the pandemic is having on Blacks, who represent more than 56 percent of Louisiana’s 1,670 coronavirus deaths, the state public health department reported Sunday."

The Jewi$h $upremaci$t pre$$ has begun capitalizing Black (like they do Jewish) while leaving White in lower-case (they think you are subhuman, goyim!).

What about the Women?

"Can estrogen and other sex hormones help men survive COVID-19?" by Roni Caryn Rabin New York Times, April 27, 2020

As the novel coronavirus swept through communities around the world, preying disproportionately on the poor and the vulnerable, one disadvantaged group has demonstrated a remarkable resistance. Women, whether from China, Italy, or the United States, have been less likely to become acutely ill — and far more likely to survive.

Last week, doctors on Long Island started treating COVID-19 patients with estrogen in an effort to increase their immune systems, and next week physicians in Los Angeles will start treating male patients with another hormone that is predominantly found in women, progesterone, which has anti-inflammatory properties and can potentially prevent overreactions of the immune system.

They are LITERALLY attempting to EMASCULATE MEN!

It's the sickening gender confusion agenda attaching itself to COVID-19!

“There’s a striking difference between the number of men and women in the intensive care unit, and men are clearly doing worse,” said Dr. Sara Ghandehari, a pulmonologist and intensive care physician at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles who is the principal investigator for the progesterone study.

She said 75 percent of the hospital’s intensive care patients and those on ventilators are men, and pregnant women, who are usually immunocompromised but have high levels of estrogen and progesterone, tend to have mild courses of the disease.

See: Hyperventilating Over the Sunday Globe

They are literally stealing the air from your lungs!

“So something about being a woman is protective, and something about pregnancy is protective, and that makes us think about hormones,” Ghandehari said.

Oh, Mercy Me!

Let me say that again.

Oh, Mercy Me!

The gender gap in coronavirus survival became apparent early in the pandemic. Reports from China indicated men were dying at higher rates, but the disparity was attributed to higher smoking rates, but the outcomes were consistent in other countries, with men in Italy dying at higher rates than women and men in New York City dying at nearly double the rate of women.

Think about that for a minute.

Up above, the main source of iron and protein for men -- meat -- is being taken away from the American diet, making men -- who offer more physical resistance against the enveloping tyranny -- weaker, leaving the weaker women to defend themselves.

You combine that will the "gender gap" in deaths weighted toward men, and I see an evil, EVIL scheme at hand. 

They are killing off your menfolk, ladies, and you need to fight for them now!

Scientists who study sex differences say that both biological differences in immunity, as well as behavioral factors, are at play. Men smoke more almost everywhere, they say; men also wash their hands less. While women appear to have more robust immune systems, these experts say, the causes are complex and multifactorial, and hormones are only part of the picture.

“We see this bias across the life course,” Klein said. “Older men are still disproportionately affected, and that suggests to me it’s got to be something genetic, or something else, that’s not just hormonal.”

You will forgive me if I don't trust Klein(!!) the $cienti$t.

The Stony Brook estrogen trial is recruiting 110 patients who come to the hospital’s emergency room with symptoms like fever, cough, shortness of breath or pneumonia, and who have either tested positive for COVID-19 or are presumed to have the illness, as long as they do not require intubation.

More PRE$UMPTIONS!

The trial is open to adult men as well as to women ages 55 and older, since they have low levels of estrogen. The Cedars-Sinai study is smaller, with only 40 subjects, all men, half of whom will be a control group. Only hospital inpatients with mild to moderate disease who have tested positive for COVID-19 can participate. (Patients with certain conditions, like a history of blood clots, are excluded for safety reasons.)

The patients will get two shots of progesterone a day for five days. They will be monitored to see if their status is improving, how their needs for oxygen change and whether they go on to require intensive care or mechanical ventilation; their progress will be compared to patients in the control group.

The researchers in Los Angeles are pinning their hopes on progesterone rather than estrogen because research has shown that the hormone reduces pro-inflammatory immune cells and supports those that fight inflammation, Ghandehari said. The hypothesis is that progesterone will prevent or dampen a harmful overreaction of the immune system, called a cytokine storm, and will reduce the likelihood of acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Both hormones are believed to be safe, especially when used for short durations.

Believed to be?

--more--"

The Globe's editorial board is mostly female, and they are hysterically calling to disinfect the White House of quackery by getting rid of RedfieldFauci, and Birx:

Dr. Deborah Birx listens as President Trump speaks about the coronavirus at the White House on April 23.
Dr. Deborah Birx listens as President Trump speaks about the coronavirus at the White House on April 23. (Alex Brandon/Associated Press) 

That evil bitch looks drunk on power if not literally sloshed!

She is a cancer, folks:

"Blood test helped detect cancer before symptoms, study finds" by Marilynn Marchione Associated Press, April 28, 2020

For the first time, a blood test has been shown to help detect many types of cancer in a study of thousands of people with no history or symptoms of the disease.

The test is still experimental. Even its fans say it needs to be improved and that Tuesday’s results are not ideal, yet they show what benefits and drawbacks might come from using these gene-based tests, called liquid biopsies, in routine care — in this case, with PET scans to confirm or rule out suspected tumors.

This whole f**king thing is a Mass Experiment!

“We think that it’s feasible,” said Nickolas Papadopoulos, a Johns Hopkins University scientist who helped develop the test. Using it along with standard screening methods “doubled the cancers that were detected” in the study, he said, but the test also missed many more cancers than it found and raised some false alarms that led to unnecessary follow-up procedures. It was only studied in women 65 to 75 years old and needs to be tried in men, other ages, and more diverse groups.

Johns f**king Hopkins, pfffft!

“This is not at the place where it could be used today,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. “It will need many more studies to demonstrate value,” including whether it improves survival, he said.

Results were published in the journal Science and discussed at an American Association for Cancer Research conference that was held online because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Many companies are working on liquid biopsies, which look for DNA and other things that tumors shed into blood, to try to find cancer at an early stage. This test was invented by Johns Hopkins doctors who formed a company, Thrive Earlier Detection Corp., to develop it with Third Rock Ventures, a biotech finance firm.

Until now, these multi-cancer detection tools have been tested on blood samples from people with and without cancer to estimate their accuracy. The new study was the first “real world” test in routine medical care, following patients through surgery or other treatment to see how they fared.

Martial law under the cover of medicine. 

How brilliant!

Nearly 10,000 women 65 to 75 years old with no history of cancer were recruited through the Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. That’s because some deadly cancers such as ovarian have no screening test now, and women in this age group have a higher risk for cancer yet are young enough to benefit from finding it early, Papadopoulos said.

If J&J knew, would they tell you?

They were encouraged to continue regular screenings such as mammograms and colonoscopies and were given the blood test, which was repeated if findings suggested cancer. If the second test also was suspicious, they were given a whole-body PET-CT scan, an imaging test that costs around $1,000 and can reveal the location of any tumors.

Yeah, don't worry about the radiation that comes with it!

After one year, 96 cancers had been diagnosed. Usual screenings found 24 and the blood test helped find 26 others. The remaining 46 were found because symptoms appeared or the cancer was discovered in other ways, such as an imaging test for a different reason.

Blood testing “made a genuine difference in discovering cancers in a small number of patients,” took seven months on average, and led 1 percent of women to get a PET scan they turned out not to need, Lichtenfeld said.

The blood test helped reveal six ovarian cancers, including one in Rosemary Jemo, 71, a hairdresser and exercise instructor who lives near Hazleton in eastern Pennsylvania.

“I would have never known . . . I didn’t feel anything” before the football-sized tumor was found, she said. Surgeons were able to remove it and she is being monitored now.

Alberto Bardelli, a cancer specialist at the University of Turin in Italy who discussed the study at the conference, called it “extraordinary” and said it shows a way to move liquid biopsies into routine care.

The test still needs to be improved, but “it can become very valuable,” he said.

The research was funded by foundations and government grants. Many study leaders have financial ties to Thrive or other companies related to the work and Johns Hopkins holds some patent rights.

Related:

"Over its six years, Thrive has become a quiet force in venture capital. At its helm is Joshua Kushner, the younger son of a New York-area real estate family — his brother is Jared Kushner, who leads the family business and is the son-in-law of Donald Trump — who has carved his own path. Kushner, who began investing while at Harvard Business School, left Goldman Sachs soon after arriving to focus on his venture endeavor, which became Thrive....."

Also see: Be very wary of Trump’s health surveillance plans

Why would that be, WaCompo?

Looks like the KUSHNERS will be THRIVING like COVID-19, huh?

Some companies may seek to market liquid biopsies under rules that allow certain tests to be sold without federal Food and Drug Administration approval.

The FDA has enough on its plate.

--more--"

Related:

"Boston data security company Rapid7 is making a big move into cloud computing with its $145 million deal to acquire DivvyCloud Corp., a Virginia-based firm that helps companies secure data or applications running on remote computer systems. Rapid7 chief executive Corey Thomas said that his company had been in discussions with DivvyCloud for months, and decided to proceed with the deal despite the economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, Thomas said that the pandemic is likely to accelerate the shift toward cloud computing, and the need for better cloud security....."

Also see:

"The coronavirus pandemic is causing Americans to worry more about their finances than health, according to a study by MetLife Inc., the largest US life insurer. Money was the top concern for 52 percent of full-time US workers, compared with 44 percent who were most anxious about physical and mental health, according to a survey of 2,367 respondents polled in early April. About 29 percent of workers are earning less as a result of the pandemic, while 74 percent said their job status had been affected, or was expected to be."

"The pandemic increased sales of Merck medicines during the first quarter as households around the world stocked up, but the drugmaker expects a significant hit this quarter as the full force of the outbreak lands. Merck & Co. anticipates 2020 prescription drug sales will fall by $1.7 billion because the pandemic is keeping many patients with chronic conditions away from their doctors. About two-thirds of Merck’s medicine sales are for injected drugs administered by a doctor, from its blockbuster Keytruda and its portfolio of vaccines, to birth control implant Implanon and an anesthetic used in surgical procedures. The company lowered its outlook for the year Tuesday despite an 11 percent revenue jump and a profit increase of 10 percent in the most recent quarter. It also expects sales of its veterinary medicines to dip by $400 million."

"Breakfast at home and snacking all day during COVID-19 quarantines helped PepsiCo Inc.’s first-quarter sales beat estimates. Executives said on an analyst call that repeated purchases of Quaker Oats and other products show consumers aren’t just stockpiling, but also eating through their pantries at a higher rate. Snack products are also doing well, with Tostitos the big winner. Frito-Lay and Quaker Foods both saw a 7 percent adjusted sales gain."

Are is your after breakfast smoke:

"The owner of High Times is going to start selling marijuana after championing its use in the pages of its magazine for nearly half a century. Hightimes Holding Corp. said Tuesday is acquiring 13 dispensaries from Harvest Health and Recreation, one of the largest multi-state producers and sellers of cannabis in the United States. Hightimes said the cash and stock deal valued at $80 million makes Tempe, Arizona-based Harvest a “significant” shareholder in Hightimes, which is preparing to make an initial public offering of stock. The sale, which includes dispensaries in Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, represents Hightimes’s first foray into the retail business. The company said it will revamp and rebrand the stores, which will be licensed for regional delivery."