Dana Ashlie tells us "What in the World is Actually Going On"
as described in 2010 Rockefeller Foundation Think Tank Paper
The find came courtesy of Greencrow, and I was able to chase down a couple of sites where you still may be able to see it; otherwise, it's down the old bitchute.
"With broad, random tests for antibodies, Germany seeks path out of lockdown" by Katrin Bennhold and Laetitia Vancon New York Times, April 18, 2020
BERLIN — Felix Germann was not expecting anyone when his doorbell rang last week. Outside was a doctor who looked like she had just stepped out of an operating theater, green scrubs, face mask and all — and a policeman.
“I didn’t do it!” Germann said, throwing up his hands, and everybody laughed.
As each and every day passes, the offensiveness of the American pre$$ seems to exponentially grow.
Everybody laughing, huh?
The unusual visitors had come with an unusual proposal: Would he allow them to test his blood for COVID-19 antibodies? Every month? For a year? Starting next week?
He would be helping to further the science that would ultimately allow for a controlled lifting of social and economic restrictions and save lives.
“Of course I said yes,” said Germann, a 41-year-old project manager at a media company. “I want to help. This is a collective crisis. The government is doing what it can. Everyone needs to do their bit.”
OMG!
With that, Germann and his girlfriend joined 3,000 households in Munich chosen at random for an ambitious study whose central aim is to understand how many people — even those with no symptoms — have already had the virus, a key variable to make decisions about public life in a pandemic.
The study is part of an aggressive approach to combat the virus in a comprehensive way that has made Germany a leader among Western nations figuring out how to control the contagion while returning to something resembling normal life.
That didn't work out to well last time, remember?
Other nations, including the United States, are still struggling to test for infections, but Germany is doing that and more. It is aiming to sample the entire population for antibodies in coming months, hoping to gain valuable insight into how deeply the virus has penetrated the society at large, how deadly it really is, and how immunity is evolving.
The government hopes to use the findings to unravel a riddle that will allow Germany to move securely into the next phase of the pandemic: Which of the far-reaching social and economic restrictions that have slowed the virus are most effective and which can be safely lifted?
They put the world on hold and destroyed economies and livelihoods over a riddle and they still don't know how deadly it is?
The same questions are being asked around the world. Other countries like Iceland and South Korea have tested broadly for infections, or combined testing with digital tracking to undercut the spread of the virus, but even the best laid plans can go awry; Singapore attempted to reopen only to have the virus reemerge.
Related: "South Korea’s caseload has been waning in recent weeks since it recorded hundreds of new cases every day between late February and early March, mostly in the southeastern city of Daegu and nearby areas. Despite the recent downward trend, South Korean officials have warned about the possibility of a broader “quiet spread” with people easing up on social distancing....."
You will have to send a note instead.
President Trump is in a hurry to restart the economy in an election year, but experts warn that much wider testing is needed to open societies safely.
Both Britain and the United States, where some of the first tests were flawed, virtually forfeited the notion of widespread testing early in their outbreaks and have since had to ration tests in places as they scramble to catch up. In Italy, one of the worst hit countries in the world, the central government and regional leaders sparred over how widely to test.
Germany, which produces most of its own high-quality test kits, is already testing on a greater scale than most — 120,000 a day and growing in a nation of 83 million.
The Munich antibody study, run by the Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine at Munich University Hospital, and cofinanced by the government of the state of Bavaria, is the biggest of several regional studies being rolled out in various corners of Germany. Still, scientists caution that there is no proof yet that the detection of antibodies signals effective immunity and, even if it does, it is not known how long that immunity might last.
Oh, an "even if."
Nationally, the Robert Koch Institute, the government’s central scientific institution in the field of biomedicine, is testing 5,000 samples from blood banks across the country every two weeks and 2,000 people in four hot spots who are further along in the cycle of the disease.
Its most ambitious project, aiming to test a nationwide random sample of 15,000 people across the country, is scheduled to begin next month.
“In the free world, Germany is the first country looking into the future,” said professor Michael Hoelscher, who heads up the Munich study, noting that a number of countries had already asked him for the protocol to be able to replicate it. “We are leading the thinking of what to do next.”
Hoelscher was coauthor of what has become a widely influential research paper about how the virus can be transmitted before someone develops symptoms.
“There’s no doubt after reading this paper that asymptomatic transmission is occurring,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States, told CNN on Feb. 1, three days after the paper was published. “This study lays the question to rest.”
Asymptomatic transmission is what has made containment so difficult because a large number of infections are not detected.
Measuring the number of hidden infections and getting a sense of the true scale of the disease is key to fine-tuning the gradual loosening of restrictions and minimizing income loss and social isolation, scientists say.
“We will have a better idea of the number of undetected infections once we have done these representative studies,” said Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute, which is conducting a number of the antibody tests. “A lot is being done to measure well.”
Some interim results have already come out.
“The process toward reaching herd immunity has begun,” professor Hendrik Streeck, director of the Institute of Virology at the University Hospital Bonn, who is leading the study, said in an interim report, and even if 15 percent of Gangelt has some degree of immunity, levels of immunity are almost certain to be lower elsewhere in the country.
“We are at a crossroads,” said Hoelscher, the professor who heads the Munich study. “Are we going the route of loosening more and increasing immunity in the summer to slow the spread of this in the winter and gain more freedom to live public life? Or are we going to try to minimize transmissions until we have a vaccine?” he asked.
Always come back to a vaxx!
“This is a question for politicians, not for scientists,” he added, “but politicians need the data to make an informed risk assessment.”
The politicians are the last class I want making these decisions!
They are just front men for their $ick genocidal ma$ters.
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Speaking of antibodies, I must humbly admit that I either missed, misunderstood, didn't recognize, or tiredly dismissed it s more immigrant agenda-pushing, but I got scooped. The story was huge, it happened on my "beat," and it has cast a pall of self-doubt within me. Do I really understand what I am reading?
Therefore, I will let those on the ground and closer to it investigate the unusual occurrence in Nova Scotia and the mixed messages coming from the pre$$ here. I trust they will get to the bottom of things. The timing sure is suspicious given the fast-moving events and lowering of the veil of this monstrous $cam.
Anyway, maybe the Germans can take Africa this time:
"10 African countries have no ventilators. That’s only part of the problem" by Ruth Maclean and Simon Marks New York Times, April 18, 2020
A man is tested for COVID-19 at the Ministry of Health in Juba, South Sudan, this month. Across Africa, people are fearful of outbreaks that could be catastrophic in countries with struggling health systems. (AFP via Getty Images).
DAKAR, Senegal — South Sudan, a nation of 11 million, has more vice presidents (five) than ventilators (four). The Central African Republic has three ventilators for its 5 million people. In Liberia, which is similar in size, there are six working machines — and one of them sits behind the gates of the US Embassy.
In all, fewer than 2,000 working ventilators have to serve hundreds of millions of people in public hospitals across 41 African countries, the World Health Organization says, compared with more than 170,000 in the United States.
Ten countries in Africa have none at all.
Glaring disparities like these are just part of the reason people across Africa are steeling themselves for the coronavirus, fearful of outbreaks that could be catastrophic in countries with struggling health systems.
The gaps are so entrenched that many experts are worried about chronic shortages of much more basic supplies needed to slow the spread of the disease and treat the sick on the continent — things like masks, oxygen, and, even more fundamentally, soap and water.
Clean running water and soap are in such short supply that only 15 percent of sub-Saharan Africans had access to basic hand-washing facilities in 2015, according to the United Nations. In Liberia, it is even worse: 97 percent of homes did not have clean water and soap in 2017, the UN says.
“The things that people need are simple things,” said Kalipso Chalkidou, the director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, a research group. “Not high-tech things.”
The prospect of a devastating pandemic has led many African governments to take serious measures. Some imposed curfews and travel restrictions when only a few dozen cases in their countries had been confirmed, and before officials knew of any confirmed cases, airports in Niger and Mali were taking passengers’ temperatures and contact information in case they needed to be traced. Every morning in Senegal, the health minister gives a live update on Facebook.
The crisis has shown that Africa needs to be self-reliant, said Amy Niang, a lecturer in international relations at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand.
“The brutal withdrawal of the US of its contributions to the WHO, and the management of the crisis more globally, is a stark reminder that Africa’s faith in multilateralism has become untenable,” she said.
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Don't worry, help is on the.... way:
"Medical workers far from struggling homelands yearn to help" by Cara Anna Associated Press,April 18, 2020
Dr. Charmaine Emelife, second from left, on an April 2018 medical mission to Lagos, Nigeria. Due to coronavirus, this year’s trip can’t go on. (AP/Courtesy of Dr. Charmaine Emelife via AP).
JOHANNESBURG — The medical supplies had been shipped. The planning began a year in advance. Then the coronavirus arrived, and Dr. Charmaine Emelife’s heart sank.
The annual trip to Nigeria to provide free medical care — the flagship project of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas — had been set to start Sunday but can’t go on. Now the 4,000-member organization, like diaspora medical groups around the world, is scrambling for other ways to help back home, where it might be more needed than ever before.
The first thought to cross my mind was Nigeria is sitting on a mountain of oil and is close to China.
A global “brain drain” of medical professionals to richer countries has left developing nations in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere without tens of thousands of highly skilled workers. Some 30 percent of doctors in the United States, and one-third of those in the United Kingdom, were foreign-born as of 2016, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
At the same time, sub-Saharan Africa has a painful shortage of medical professionals, with access to just 3 percent of the world’s health workers, according to the World Health Organization. Nigeria has four doctors per 10,000 people. Kenya has just two, but even as some doctors, nurses, and others overseas yearn to return to help with the coronavirus crisis, they face travel restrictions that have slammed shut borders and closed international airports.
“There are said to be no commercial passenger flights going into Nigeria from the US, and the US is not receiving the same flights,” Emelife, the Nigerian association’s president, told the Associated Press. “The issue of going back to Nigeria at this point to help is not a conversation.”
Instead, the association is raising money to buy and ship protective equipment for front-line workers, reaching far beyond its US base for sources.
When the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-16 briefly spread to Nigeria, the association focused on sending “tons and tons” of protective gear, Emelife said, but the task is far more difficult now as the rest of the world competes for the same supplies.
So the association is also exploring telemedicine, Emelife said, in which members can offer long-distance consultations for patients in Nigeria, where some private medical practices have shut down out of caution, further limiting options for care.
“If what is happening in the US or Italy should dare happen in Nigeria, there would be complete, total disorder,” said Dr. Biodun Ogunbo, who closed his private surgery facility in the capital, Abuja, for a month after the country’s first cases were reported.
Nigeria’s cases number nearly 500, but health experts say Africa is just weeks behind Europe and the United States in the pandemic and the worst is yet to come.
“It’s the personnel that matter,” Ogunbo said. “We don’t have the numbers of trained medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists” for the 24-hour care that some virus patients need.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild to moderate symptoms such as fever and cough, but for some, especially older adults and those with other health problems, it can cause pneumonia and death.
The thousands of Nigerian medical workers in the diaspora, Ogunbo said, would “definitely, 100 percent” be welcomed, along with insights into how virus cases are being treated overseas.
Emelife said even such items as soap and clean water are needed in parts of Nigeria. Africa’s most populous nation recently surpassed India with the world’s largest number of people living in extreme poverty.
“We need to help take care of the people at home and we are working on it with this COVID-19 pandemic,” she said. “We love our country.”
Some diaspora groups are appealing to shared culture in this time of isolation.
“Our Filipino values and traits . . . will keep us strong and resilient in this trying time,” the National Organization of Filipino American Physicians wrote in a statement on COVID-19. “We are a people that reaches out to and looks after each other.” The group partners with the Manila-based Philippine Nurses Association for online seminars on the pandemic.
The Association of Pakistani Physicians and Surgeons of the UK asked members this month to consult patients in Pakistan via video conference. “Pakistan needs you more than ever before,” it said.
Last week, Dr. Sefa Ahiaku updated the website of the Ghanaian Doctors and Dentists Association UK with the obituary of a Ghana-based colleague — “Coronavirus is no respecter of who people are,” she said — and a fund-raising appeal to buy protective gear for others in the West African nation.
“For us, the death really brought it close to home,” Ahiaku, the group’s vice president, said.
“We want to help out. That desire is more acute when there’s a crisis.”
Ghana, like Nigeria, has locked down certain high-population areas instead of the entire country. The diaspora group hopes to help rural communities — those “who don’t have the luxury of shutting their doors” — to improve sanitation ahead of the possible spread of the virus.
“I am really encouraged by the doctors I’m speaking to in Ghana who are keeping a level head,” Ahiaku said, as the country’s virus cases near 650.
Her Ghana-based colleague had been talking with the government on ways to streamline the process so medical professionals in the diaspora can come home and offer their services, she said.
She hopes this pandemic might lead governments to invest more in health systems, giving medical workers more incentive to stay at home — or return for good.
In Nigeria, where going overseas for medical treatment is a well-known practice among some government officials, Ogunbo wasn’t so sure.
“I have to say thank God that we don’t have a horrible pandemic” in the country, he said, but it means officials haven’t received the kind of shock that might lead to change.
“They’re not going to come tomorrow and say, ’We need 50,000 doctors, let’s start creating spaces for them, look after them so they’re so comfortable and happy in Nigeria so they won’t go anywhere else,” Ogunbo said.
“They won’t do that.”
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Look who else is allegedly pulling out:
"US military cutting medevac flights for troops in West Africa" by Eric Schmitt New York Times, April 18, 2020
WASHINGTON — The US military is sharply reducing its emergency casualty evacuation services in West Africa, raising concerns that US troops on missions there could be left vulnerable if they run into trouble at a time when violence is surging in that corner of the continent.
The action by the Pentagon’s Africa Command comes shortly after US military advisers accompanied forces in Niger last month on a major counterterrorism operation near Diffa, a small town on the border with Nigeria that has been a hot spot for attacks by the militant group Boko Haram.
It was the first time US forces in Niger had joined a combat mission alongside their local counterparts since 2017, when US commanders imposed strict guidelines on ground forces. Those new restrictions were imposed after an ambush in October that year near the border with Mali left four American soldiers dead.
At issue now is the military’s decision to cancel a $23 million annual contract with Erickson, an aviation services company that flies logistics and casualty evacuation flights for Army Green Berets who have been training and advising Nigerien troops for two years in Arlit, a remote city in northern Niger. The Nigerien troops have been conducting operations to intercept terrorists as they flow in and out of Libya, but that mission has faded. The Green Berets, members of the 20th Special Forces Group from Alabama, are moving some 500 miles southwest of Arlit to carry out a higher-priority mission to help confront a toxic mix of Islamic State and Al Qaeda fighters in the tri-border region of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.
I thought they meant taking on Iran.
The Africa Command says it already has enough medevac support for that area and no longer needs Erickson’s two Bell 214ST helicopters, but some lawmakers and military officials voice concern that the responsibility for handling any casualty evacuation flights will now fall on a single H225 Super Puma helicopter operated from Niamey, Niger’s capital, by another contractor, Berry Aviation. Erickson and Berry currently back up each other if their aircraft cannot fly for mechanical or other reasons.
“A lack of support can have serious results when troops are faced with a hostile and determined foe,” Representative Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican and former Army Green Beret who served in West Africa, said in a letter on March 12 to Pentagon officials, raising questions about the Africa Command’s decision.
Battlefield commanders have described medical aid to troops on the ground as an ethical obligation.
The Defense Department in war zones like Afghanistan and Iraq has followed a “golden-hour standard,” in which the military seeks to whisk wounded US troops from the battlefield within an hour of being wounded to provide access to advanced care and the best chance to save lives, but in Africa, the time frame for evacuating injured US troops is much longer, particularly in the expanse of West Africa’s Sahel region, a vast sub-Saharan scrubland that stretches from Senegal to Sudan. Niger alone is nearly twice the size of Texas.
In the case of the deadly ambush in October 2017 on the Niger-Mali border, it took more than four hours to evacuate the dead and wounded.
The lack of timely help called into question whether the US military is providing enough resources for troops undertaking dangerous missions in Africa.
The large, remote stretches in which US Special Forces operate are inherently dangerous because of their inaccessibility and conduciveness to ambushes.
Colonel Christopher Karns, the chief spokesman for the Africa Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany, said that the Erickson contract was not being renewed because the troops Erickson supported were being repositioned.
How interesting is it that the US Africa Command is in Germany as we are being chased out of there!
“Medical evacuation capacity exists where they are moving, so we assess no increased risk to our forces,” Karns said in response to questions from The New York Times.
“Existing resources can meet the needs of repositioned forces.”
The United States has about 1,200 troops in West Africa, with about 800 of them in Niger.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper is weighing deep cuts to US troops on the continent, closing a new $110 million drone base in Niger, and ending aid to French forces battling militants who are surging in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.
Time for Macron to man-up!
Esper had been expected to make a final decision last month, as part of a global reshuffling of US forces to address new threats from China and Russia, but the coronavirus pandemic and its projected effect on the continent have delayed the process, Pentagon officials said.
Then now is the time for them to strike!
Karns said the decision to end Erickson’s contract in mid-June was made before Esper’s review got underway, and is not related to the secretary’s assessment.
The web version kept the flight on radar:
Kevin Cochie, a vice president for Erickson, which is based in Portland, Ore., declined to comment on details of the contract. “Whether it’s US personnel in need or our partner forces, we have launched and responded in the aftermath of unforeseen situations and contributed to saving life and limb,” said Cochie, a retired Army Special Operations helicopter pilot. “From a business perspective, it’s unfortunate that we are winding down a contract in Africa.”
Erickson’s medevac helicopters were on standby for the US military advisers and the Nigerien forces during the operation in Diffa on March 9-10, but there were no casualties, military officials said.
While Erickson has not been summoned to evacuate wounded American personnel in Niger since late 2017, the company’s helicopters have evacuated Nigerien troops who were wounded in counterterrorism missions, including major operations in December 2019 and January 2020, according to people familiar with the missions.
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Of course, the Asian axis member this time is China:
Hong Kong arrests major pro-democracy figures
I saw the byline and I stopped reading when I saw the New York Times byline, sorry.
We have our own problems with a tyrannical government here at home, and the last thing we need is the war-mongering pre$$ when China is onboard with all of this anyway.
I don't want to get negative but.....
"There are so many coronavirus myths that even Snopes can’t keep up" by Elahe Izadi Washington Post, April 18, 2020
The people wanted to know: Did self-described psychic Sylvia Browne predict the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in her 2008 book “End of Days”? So they turned to the place one goes to find the answers to such questions: Snopes.com.
The Internet’s original myth-busters tackled this query on March 4, and the resulting post became one of the site’s most-read pieces that month, along with a look into whether the Trump administration actually fired the US pandemic response team in 2018 and the one about whether Costco truly issued a toilet paper recall.
They deemed the Browne matter a ‘‘mixture’’ of truth and fiction. Yes, Browne had written more than a decade ago that ‘‘in around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments,’’ but the Snopes team determined that ‘‘it’s unclear whether Browne’s ‘prediction’ was more of a lucky guess, considering the book was written after the SARS outbreak,’’ (Browne also predicted the disease ‘‘will suddenly vanish’’ and then come back in 10 years. Jury is still out on that.) but since then, Snopes, which delves into everything from bizarre urban legends to intricate government policies, has been overwhelmed with so many COVID-19-related questions that the website can’t keep up. The company has done something that seems counterintuitive: It has scaled back operations by publishing fewer stories. There have been no furloughs or layoffs; but Snopes is encouraging employees, whose lives have been turned upside down by the pandemic, to take time off if needed.
It’s a predicament other fact-checkers and journalists are facing: As the novel coronavirus has swept the globe, so has misinformation about the virus. The World Health Organization has referred to the abundance of articles, commentary, and social media postings about this one topic — some accurate, some not — as an ‘‘infodemic’’ which ‘‘makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.’’
Lying pot hollering at clean kettle!
Compared with other big news stories, this pandemic presents a particularly difficult challenge for professional fact-checkers. The multi-headed crisis has its roots in what is essentially a science and medical story, requiring many journalists, not just health reporters, to quickly get up to speed. COVID-19 remains a mystery even to many of the professional scientists who could explain it to a reporter. And the stakes are high: The consequences of promoting a bogus diagnostic technique or false cure could be deadly.
‘‘I wish we could do more, but we just can’t, and that’s because when demand increases, there is no economics that support an increase in production at a fact-checking organization,’’ said Vinny Green, general manager of Snopes.com.
Since the pandemic began, Snopes has looked into questions about whether Pat Robertson blamed oral sex for COVID-19 (not really, but it seems some readers misinterpreted a satirical piece as news); explored a rumor about thieves distributing masks laden with toxic chemicals (false, it turns out); and investigated claims that Ivanka Trump stands to profit from the pandemic because of a trademark on coffins in China, (yes, she holds the trademark, but no, there’s no evidence she’s selling coffins) and Snopes has seen a record amount of traffic to its site since the dawn of the crisis. Green, citing Google Analytics, said the website had 37 million visitors from late February to late March, a jump of 43 percent from the previous 30-day period, but more eyeballs on a website doesn’t always translate to more revenue: Many news outlets are breaking readership records these days but experiencing declines in ad sales. Some are pleading with readers to become paid subscribers; Snopes is selling premium memberships.
Look at the bogus and crap conspiracies the Wa$hington Compost is troweling out to discredit real reporters and truth tellers!
They are PATHETIC, folks!
Snopes managing editor Doreen Marchionni said she became concerned with the morale in her small, remote newsroom. ‘‘Trying to keep up with the rumors and misinformation on COVID was going to drown us and hurt our staff.’’
I know the feeling! I'm just one man trying to keep up!
Readers submitted roughly 10,000 COVID-related queries to Snopes during the last two weeks of March. Rather than try to answer the avalanche of questions, Snopes said it will pick its targets and amplify credible sources, highlighting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO in particular. (They’re also still posting some timely non-coronavirus fact checks, like one about Florida residents allegedly finding porn-filled Easter eggs in their mailboxes.)
The avalanche at Snopes is mirrored in what’s happening globally, especially as information is being spread not just on social media outlets but also platforms like WhatsApp. ‘‘So many organizations are overwhelmed by the number of requests they are receiving from their audiences,’’ said Baybars Örsek, director of the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute.
The network, which includes more than 70 members, started a database of more than 3,000 fact-checks from around the world. It’s ‘‘the largest collaboration among fact-checkers ever, and that by itself is a pretty strong indicator that the amount of misinformation around COVID-19 is unprecedented,’’ said Örsek, who estimates fact-checking organizations worldwide are seeing 10 times the number of requests they usually do.
That was where the print copy quit snoping.
Sharing the work that’s gone into debunking false claims is one approach in the battle against misinformation. Myths about the virus move from country to country as the pandemic does; fact-checkers in Spain, for instance, started seeing the same myths that their Italian counterparts had already debunked, Örsek said. Among the most prevalent conspiracy theories: that COVID-19 is a biological weapon developed in a lab.
Which is why I now believe that is a limited hangout and that there is no COVID-19!
They took seasonal flu deaths and relabeled then COVID!
‘‘Readers around the world are asking us about possible cures, and possible behaviors we might take to keep from getting the virus,’’ Marchionni said. ‘‘We’re also debunking a fair number of comments from the president,’’ such as whether hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are ‘‘game changers’’ in the fight against COVID-19.
Snopes got its start in 1994 as the ‘‘Urban Legends Reference Pages,’’ an early Internet forum that mostly concerned itself with folklore and hoaxes such as whether Charlie Chaplin’s stolen remains were truly held for ransom, or whether ‘‘The Wizard of Oz’’ includes footage of a munchkin committing suicide.
The site never stopped tackling these kinds of questions, but over the years the rebranded ‘‘Snopes’’ turned into a trusted arbiter in sorting through fact and fiction on the Internet. ‘‘Well, Snopes says this is false’’ can be a debate-ender online.
Under normal circumstances, Snopes debunks a variety of weird things, such as whether the quokka is a real animal (yes and it’s very cute) and if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi actually used $15,000 worth of pens to sign the articles of impeachment against President Trump (false).
‘‘When we have a whole bunch of people asking us a question about it, regardless of what it is, we don’t judge the question,’’ Marchionni said. ‘‘We take a look at it and try to provide answers about that thing.’’
These days, Snopes is consumed with a litany of COVID-19 questions. For example:
‘‘Was Charles Lieber arrested for selling the COVID-19 coronavirus to China?’’ Mostly false: The Harvard chemist was arrested but it had nothing to do with COVID-19, nor was the virus ‘‘developed’’ or ‘‘manufactured’’ by anyone, anywhere.
‘‘Did millions of canceled cellphones reveal unreported coronavirus deaths in China?’’ This one Snopes could only call ‘‘unproven.’’
‘‘Did President Trump refer to the coronavirus as a ‘hoax’?’’ True and false: Snopes ruled he did not call the virus itself a hoax and was referring to the Democrats’ response to it, but that he ‘‘muddied the waters’’ by downplaying the scale of the virus in the United States.
In many ways, the pandemic is an unprecedented news event. The closest equivalent for many American journalists was the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which, ‘‘for all its intricacies and profundities, didn’t necessarily involve the kind of scientific and health information that is peculiar to COVID,’’ Marchionni said.
‘‘It has very specific scientific angles to it that make debunking it just that much more difficult, and the sheer volume of it as a global crisis is different than 9/11,’’ she added. ‘‘In my lifetime, I don’t think there’s been anything like this’’ and Sept. 11, 2001, predated social media — now the most prevalent medium for the spread of misinformation. ‘‘The focus [in 2001] was on e-mail listservs and Yahoo groups, and it was still a problem to handle urban legends and conspiracy theories,’’ Örsek said, ‘‘but given the flow of information now, it’s absolutely a different challenge for everyone in this field right now.’’
If you eliminate the ma$$ media, that is, and they really had to do it back then, didn't they?
Had they waited any longer, they would never have gotten away with it.
It’s especially difficult now for fact-checkers to determine the origin of misinformation to see whether something is an innocuous rumor or part of a coordinated campaign by bad actors with an agenda. That’s especially the case with myths that first pop up on Chinese social media platforms, which don’t share data, Örsek said, but even Western platforms can be a challenge. A new study this week from Oxford University researchers found more than half of the debunked misinformation about COVID-19 remains on Twitter without a warning label.
Green also said platforms such as Google and Facebook need to invest more money into paying fact-checkers.
Instead of working on an app for gaming?
‘‘The fact-checking industry is so undervalued and underinvested,’’ he said, ‘‘that even with this traffic boom and the rise in prominence and responsibility at this moment when people are relying so heavily on fact-checkers for credible information, we have no hopes for scaling up our businesses.’’
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Did you notice what was NOT in the article?
Nothing about Bill Gates, Event 201, or the Rockefeller study from 10 years ago that scripted the lockdown to a T! That tells you more than the entire pos article!
Then there is the photo of Gates with Jeffrey Epstein and his twisted history that somehow didn't make the log (very sad to see certain names on that list).
Related:
COVID-19 and the QAnon Psyop
Kurt is right; a scarlet letter will be affixed to all who counter official narratives.
Also related:
"In 1933, the United States went off the gold standard.
The history books told you Nixon did it, but FDR seized your gold at the height of the Depre$$ion.
In 1943, during World War II, tens of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile battle against Nazi forces.
In Poland yesterday sirens wailed and Jewish prayers were said for the heroes of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but the annual memorial observances were scaled down Sunday and moved to the Internet because of the coronavirus pandemic, while more than 2,000 Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv Sunday, demonstrating against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to form an “emergency” government with his rival and accusing him of using the coronavirus crisis to escape prosecution on corruption charges. Demonstrators wore face masks and largely kept their distance from one another, in line with social-distancing rules, as speakers criticized Netanyahu’s possible partnership with rival Benny Gantz. Some held black flags, which have become the symbol of their campaign in recent weeks."
In 1945, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ‘‘Carousel’’ opened on Broadway.
In 1951, General Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his Far East command by President Harry S. Truman, bade farewell in an address to Congress in which he quoted a line from a ballad: ‘‘Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.’’
In 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. (Bomber Timothy McVeigh, who prosecutors said had planned the attack as revenge for the Waco siege of two years earlier, was convicted of federal murder charges and executed in 2001.)
The official story was memorialized again yesterday, and it looks like another storm is coming.
In 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings, was taken into custody after a manhunt that had left the city virtually paralyzed; his older brother and alleged accomplice, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed earlier in a furious attempt to escape police.
In 2015, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died a week after suffering a spinal cord injury in the back of a Baltimore police van while he was handcuffed and shackled. (Six police officers were charged; three were acquitted and the city’s top prosecutor eventually dropped the three remaining cases.)
I'm wondering what history can teach us about fighting the coronavirus, aren't you?
Time to look back at Germany's past and the Real History of World War II.
Before continuing, I would like the reader to understand that I don't care who speaks the truth. It doesn't mean I endorse everything they did or anything they stood for. I was told once, however, by a black African of all people, that everyone holds a piece of the truth. Even the disinformation agents must sow their misinformation with truth, otherwise they lose all credibility.
The flip side of Hitler and the other end of the pole would be this man who said even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth:
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it – always . . . ."
Modern-day India would break Gandhi's heart if he could see it:
"Powered by fear, Indians embrace coronavirus lockdown" by Jeffrey Gettlemanand Suhasini Raj New York Times, April 19, 2020
BHOND, India — People aren’t just dutifully following the law. Many are going above and beyond it. Volunteer virus patrol squads are popping up everywhere, casting an extra net of vigilance over the entire country. Neighborhoods are imposing extra rules and sealing themselves off.
India has reported about 16,000 confirmed infections and 500 deaths, far less per capita than many richer countries, but its testing rates are also lower, and some health experts believe the virus may be lurking here and there, undetected.
Many Indians are falling in line because they fear falling ill in a country with a weak health care system offering treatments they cannot afford, but the popularity of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, explains part of the obedience. For many people here, this is Modi’s lockdown, and what he says goes. His government is India’s most powerful in decades, so many Indians are scared to break his rules.
Praising his countrymen for behaving like a “disciplined soldier,” Modi has tried to cultivate a sense of fraternity under the lockdown. Recently he asked all Indians to stand in their doorways at a certain time and clap and make noise. Likewise for a nationwide candle-lighting ceremony. In both instances, millions obeyed.
Yes, cheer your impoverished imprisonment.
India’s lockdown is nearly a month old, and Modi recently extended it to May 3. As it grinds on, it has won praise but also elicited concerns about overzealous enforcement, especially targeting the poor and minorities.
Lower castes are being shunned more than usual. The term “social distancing” plays straight into centuries of ostracism of certain groups who until recent times were called “untouchable.”
The print copy let go of it there.
Muslims, a large minority in a Hindu-dominated land, are also facing a burst of bigotry and attacks. The Indian government keeps pointing out that an Islamic seminary in New Delhi was responsible for spreading thousands of infections. Now many Indians believe that all Muslims carry a higher risk of spreading the coronavirus.
That's what happens in a supremacist state that cozies up to Israel.
“This is one of the problems of overzealousness,” said Adarsh Shastri, a politician in the Indian National Congress, the leading opposition party. “People get a chance to enforce the laws per their own personal prejudice.”
Gaza. Kashmir.
As in the United States and other countries, the lockdown has snarled the supply chain. Farmers have been cut off from their markets, and hungry people from food.
Some of these problems have been made worse by the way lockdown rules are interpreted. For example, produce trucks are supposed to be allowed to pass through checkpoints, but many Indians now fear truck drivers as virus vectors. Trucks packed with vegetables have been turned back by police officers and volunteer guards.
They are wor$hipped as e$$ential here.
In perhaps an acknowledgment that the lockdown has been especially tight, the government plans to encourage officially on Monday the unshackling of industries such as agriculture, rubber and tea plantations, cargo freight, and water conservation projects — some of which were supposed to be open anyway. The new guidance will cover only areas without many infections.
Indians across the country have followed the instructions to retreat indoors, no matter how cramped their living spaces. One member at a time emerges to get food, which is usually not every day, and always with a mask on.
Still, fear keeps growing. More communities are imposing their own measures to tighten the lockdown further and all but stop the flow of people.
In one case, in Delhi, a son turned in his own father for stepping outside. In another, in West Bengal state, some families who wanted to maintain social distancing asked their loved ones to sleep in trees.
New York City will give you $1,000 bucks for that.
In rural areas, volunteer virus squads patrol the roads day and night. Some carry sticks, sickles, and pockets full of nails for puncturing the tires of cars they deem suspicious.
“You can call us civil defense,” said Monu Manesar, the head protector of his village in Haryana state.
There is nothing like putting your chains on yourself.
Manesar is a district coordinator for Bajrang Dal, a Hindu nationalist group that over the years has been blamed for attacks on non-Hindus. The fact that some of these virus patrol squads include the same people who have targeted minorities in the past may explain recent hate crimes connected to the coronavirus.
Nearly two weeks ago, Sahimuddin, a reserve police officer and a Muslim who, like many in India, goes by one name, was riding his motorcycle on a rural road about 40 miles south of Delhi. A group of farmers protecting a barricade at one village questioned him and then called ahead to the next village to be on the lookout.
As Sahimuddin approached the next village, several Hindu farmers at a barricade threw a noose around his neck and yanked him off his bike. They beat him viciously, nearly crushing his windpipe, Sahimuddin’s family said. Police officers corroborated their account.
He is now in a hospital, voiceless and struggling to breathe."
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The thought of protest is the furthest thing from my pre$$'s mind:
"Global health crisis pits economic against health concerns" by Will Weissert and Jill Colvin Associated Press, April 19, 2020, 6:58 p.m.
WASHINGTON — The global health crisis is taking a nasty political turn with tensions worsening between governments locked down to keep the coronavirus at bay and people yearning to restart stalled economies and forestall fears of a depression.
Protesters worrying about their livelihoods and bucking infringements on their freedom took to the streets in some places. A few countries were acting to ease restrictions, but most of the world remains unified in insisting it’s much too early to take more aggressive steps.
In the United States, there was clear evidence of the mounting pressure. The Trump administration says parts of the country are ready to begin a gradual return to normalcy, yet some state leaders say their response to the pandemic is hindered by a woefully inadequate federal response.
Restrictions have begun to ease in some places, including Germany, which is still enforcing social distancing rules but on Monday intended to begin allowing some small stores, like those selling furniture and baby goods, to reopen.
Authorities in Spain, which had some of Europe’s strictest restrictions and a virus death toll only exceeded by the United States and Italy, said children will be allowed to leave their homes beginning April 27.
Related: "Passengers on a luxury liner’s around-the-world cruise, begun before the globe was gripped by the coronavirus pandemic, are finally approaching the end of their odyssey after 15 weeks at sea. The ship, the Costa Deliziosa, was heading Sunday toward a port in Spain before ending its journey in Italy — both countries devastated by the coronavirus outbreak. Costa Crociere, an Italian cruise company, said that the Deliziosa, which set sail from Venice in early January with 1,831 passengers, had no cases of COVID-19 aboard....."
The death toll in the United States climbed past 41,000 with more than 746,000 confirmed infections, while the global case count has passed 2.38 million, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University of national health reports.
The International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to contract 3 percent this year. That’s a far bigger loss than 2009’s 0.1 percent after the global financial crisis. Still, governments are resisting pressures to relax lockdowns.....
They destroy economies.
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