Tuesday, July 7, 2020

COVID-19 Conundrum

It regards the $cience of protest and the conscience of the $cienti$ts:

"Are protests unsafe? What specialists say may depend on who’s protesting what" by Michael Powell New York Times, July 6, 2020

That's what has put the fraud to this. It's a conundrum for the pre$$ and those who are behind the Great Re$et, etc.

As the pandemic took hold, most epidemiologists have had clear proscriptions in fighting it: No students in classrooms, no in-person religious services, no visits to sick relatives in hospitals, no large public gatherings.

So when conservative anti-lockdown protesters gathered on state capitol steps in places like Columbus, Ohio, and Lansing, Mich., in April and May, epidemiologists scolded them and forecast surging infections. When Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia relaxed restrictions on businesses in late April as testing lagged and infections rose, the talk in public health circles was of that state’s embrace of human sacrifice, and then the brutal killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis on May 25 changed everything.

Pardon me for saying so, but that should have nothing to do with the "science." 

I mean, the pre$$ and authorities have driven $cience as the unquestioned God of our time. It doesn't "change" with social or political events.

Soon the streets nationwide were full of tens of thousands of people in a mass protest movement that continues to this day, with demonstrations and the toppling of statues, and rather than decrying mass gatherings, more than 1,300 public health officials signed a May 30 letter of support, and many joined the protests.

(Blog editor throws hands up! So much for the impartiality of the $cienti$ts)

That reaction, and the contrast with the epidemiologists’ earlier fervent support for the lockdown, gave rise to an uncomfortable question: Was public health advice in a pandemic dependent on whether people approved of the mass gathering in question? To many, the answer seemed to be “yes.”

“The way the public health narrative around coronavirus has reversed itself overnight seems an awful lot like . . . politicizing science,” essayist and journalist Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote in The Guardian last month. “What are we to make of such whiplash-inducing messaging?”

I know what I make of it, and we are approaching Soviet Union territory when it comes to the $cienti$ts.

Of course, there are differences: A distinct majority of Floyd protesters wore masks in many cities, even if they often crowded too close together. By contrast, many anti-lockdown protesters refused to wear masks — and their rallying cry ran directly contrary to public health officials’ instructions, and in practical terms, no team of epidemiologists could have stopped the waves of impassioned protesters, any more than they could have blocked the anti-lockdown protests.

I'm sick of the lecturing hypocrites known as public health officials, how about you?

Still, the divergence in their own reactions left some of the country’s prominent epidemiologists wrestling with deeper questions of morality, responsibility, and risk.

Yeah, still! 

The hypocrisy is so blatant the Times is twisting itself into knots here. 

HA!

Some public health scientists publicly waved off the conflicted feelings of their colleagues, saying the country now confronts a stark moral choice. The letter signed by more than 1,300 epidemiologists and health workers urged Americans to adopt a “consciously anti-racist” stance and framed the difference between the anti-lockdown demonstrators and the protesters in moral, ideological, and racial terms. Those who protested stay-at-home orders were “rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives” the letter stated.

OMG!

The "public health scientists" with no conscience are painting people who care about freedom and liberty with the broad brush of supremacy and racism -- very rich coming from a supremacist Joo paper -- while endorsing the society-destroying, Marxist-Communist subversives tearing down statues and erasing our past.

By contrast, it said, those protesting systemic racism “must be supported.”

“As public health advocates,” they stated, “we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health.”

They just completely discredited themselves without an ounce of embarrassment.

They are the racists!

There is as of yet no firm evidence that protests against police violence led to noticeable spikes in infection rates. A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no overall rise in infections, but could not rule out that infections might have risen in the age demographic of the protesters. Health officials in Houston and Los Angeles have suggested the demonstrations there led to increased infections, but they have not provided data. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has instructed contact tracers not to ask if infected people attended protests.

What more is there to really say?

Yes, we have no data. We have no data, we have no data, we have no data today!

The 10 epidemiologists interviewed for this story said near-daily marches and rallies are nearly certain to result in some transmission. Police use of tear gas and pepper spray, and crowding protesters into police vans and buses, puts people further at risk.

“In all likelihood, some infections occurred at the protests; the question is how much,” said Mark Lurie, a professor of epidemiology at Brown University. “No major new evidence has emerged that suggests the protests were superspreader events.”

Mary Travis Bassett, who is Black, served as the New York City health commissioner and now directs the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. She noted that even before COVID-19, Blacks were sicker and died more than two years earlier, on average, than white Americans, and she noted, police violence has long cast a deep shadow over Blacks. From the auction block to plantations to centuries of lynchings carried out with the complicity of local law enforcement, Blacks have suffered the devastating effects of state power.

It's 2020, dammit. 

That isn't happening now, except by way of pre$$, and before the controlled collapse Blacks were doing better than they ever have. Then there were/are all the affirmative action set-asides and quota-filling the last 50 years since civil rights, etc. 

Of course, local Democratic leaders are in now way to blame at all!

She acknowledged that the current protests are freighted with moral complications, not least the possibility that a young person marching for justice might come home and inadvertently infect a mother, aunt, or grandparent, but she said the opportunity to achieve a breakthrough transcends such worries.

“Racism has been killing people a lot longer than COVID-19,” she said.....

OMG! 

Other stuff has, too, like WARS based on LIES! 

Somehow those MILLIONS of BLACK and BROWN LIVES have not and do not matter to the "movement," nor does any of the black-on-black crime.

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Related:

"Hospitals rapidly approached capacity across the Sun Belt Monday and Miami-area restaurants and gyms were closed again as coronavirus infections surged while the country emerged from a Fourth of July weekend of picnics, pool parties, and beach outings that health officials fear could fuel the outbreak. The seesaw effect — restrictions lifted, then reimposed — has been seen around the country in recent weeks and is expected again after a holiday that saw many people celebrating without masks. Confirmed cases are on the rise in 41 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia, and the percentage of tests coming back positive for the virus is increasing in 39 states. Florida, which recorded 11,400 new cases Saturday, a daily record, has seen its positive test rate reach more than 18 percent. It has been hit especially hard, along with other Sun Belt states such as Arizona, California, and Texas. In Miami-Dade County, population 2.7 million, Mayor Carlos Gimenez ordered the closing of restaurants and certain other indoor places, including vacation rentals, seven weeks after they were allowed to reopen. Beaches will reopen Tuesday after being closed over the weekend, “but if we see crowding and people not following the public health rules, I will be forced to close the beaches again,” he warned. Hospitalizations across the state have been ticking upward....."

Honestly, it reaches the point of ridiculousness as I flip through the pages of the Globe.

"New numbers on the global AIDS epidemic show some big successes, such as fewer deaths and new infections, but there are some tragic failures: Only half the children with HIV, the virus that causes the disease, are getting treatment. “We are making great progress against the HIV epidemic . . . but the bad, bad news is that kids are lagging behind,” said Dr. Shannon Hader, deputy executive director of UNAIDS. The United Nations agency reported last year’s numbers Monday at an international conference. Progress against HIV also is being hurt by another infectious disease: the new coronavirus....."

Yeah, one of the silver linings of this whole $camdemic is the plummeting vaccination rates of the kids. The genocidal mon$ters like Gates thought we would running into their arms, not avoiding them at all costs.

Wouldn't you know the Globe would opine that returning to work doesn’t make sense, or so says Amy K. Glasmeier, a professor of economic geography and regional planning in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning; Thomas C. Goff, a senior associate at Mass Economics; and Zack Avre, a graduate student at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, as we enter the Phase 3 Torture before a “tsunami of infections this fall.”

"Massachusetts reports 15 deaths, 157 new confirmed coronavirus cases" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent, July 6, 2020

The numbers, which showed continued improvement in key indicators related to the virus, came as the state again shifted the way it reports the number of cases it has tracked. Probable cases of coronavirus are no longer being included in the top-line statistics released daily by the state Department of Public Health.

(Blog editor sits here speechless. They are LITERALLY MAKING UP the NUMBERS!)

The state reported six new probable cases in Massachusetts Monday, and no new deaths. Overall, there have been 5,478 cases reported as probable for coronavirus, and 215 deaths among those patients.

The Department of Public Health said it changed the format of its daily COVID-19 update to focus on confirmed cases so the data are easier to interpret and compare to other states.

WTF, and why is this buried on page B2?

Ease of use is important because state-by-state comparisons can help guide public health policy, such as travel restrictions across state lines, the department said.

Many states report only cases that have been confirmed by tests the department said.

Monday’s data also showed that the three-day average of hospitalized COVID-19 patients continued to decline, dropping from 644 to 626. That number includes both confirmed and suspected cases, as it had previously.

The three-day average of deaths dropped from 19 to 16. That number included only confirmed cases, which is the same way it has been calculated in recent days.

Meanwhile.....

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Related:

Passenger injured in ATV crash in New Hampshire

She is a front-line caregiver in the COVID crisis who had been one of three Boston-area medical workers who provided the Globe this spring with a series of first-person accounts of their emotional and often exhausting work during the first, startling surge in COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts, and one can't help but wonder if it is Cosmic Karma for her participating in the colossal COVID fraud.

Maybe God is watching. Must be, in fact.

Starting to work up a $weat:

"Watertown’s Mount Auburn Club to close for good, sell site to lab developers" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, July 6, 2020

Another longstanding local institution said Monday that it won’t reopen after the coronavirus crisis.

The owners of the Mount Auburn Club fitness and tennis center closed last week on a deal to sell their 6.3-acre site on Coolidge Avenue in Watertown to a pair of heavyweight local developers, who plan to build life-sciences lab and office space there.

Of course, per WEF Reset and the Rockefeller/Gates paradigm.

In a letter to members Monday, the club’s owners, the Crowley family, said the coronavirus crisis pushed them to sell and close down the facility they’ve run for nearly a half-century. While gyms in Massachusetts could reopen indoor spaces starting Monday (except in Boston), many are doing so at significantly reduced capacity, unsure of their longer-term prospects for survival.

Another dream and way of life gone. This world they envision will soon suck.

“Like most other athletic clubs, we have struggled with the fallout of the COVID-19 crisis, and even now are unsure of what its long-term effects will be for our industry,” wrote Bill, Paul, and Tanya Crowley. “This uncertainty has made it difficult to be confident in the future direction of the club.”

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a publicly traded lab developer with deep experience in Kendall Square, and Newton-based National Development, which has built a variety of mixed-use projects around the region, teamed up to buy the club. They paid just under $33 million, according to Middlesex County property records, and plan to start meetings with the community soon about what they’ll build there, with an eye to office or lab space.....

I wonder how many tax breaks and subsidies will be thrown at them.

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Related:

"Brett Owens, owner of VIM Fitness in Cambridge, was frustrated that the 14-foot social distancing requirement (if there are no Plexiglas barriers) meant his popular fitness studios, which typically fit 25, could now hold only three customers. “It’s really [the governor] saying, ‘We’re going to let them open, but we’re not going to let them operate,‘ ” Owens said. “It’s really a catch-22.” With cardio equipment roped off, studios closed until the requirements can be met, and equipment spread out, the gym scene looked different on reopening day. “It’s not even close to how many [customers] we typically have,” Owens said, “but we have people come in, and they’re happy to be back.” VIM Fitness has revealed a two-stage plan on its website that notes members are required to have their temperatures checked prior to entering, wear masks while working out (unless unsafe to do so), and remain 14 feet away from other customers where there are no Plexiglas partitions. Steve Sabile, owner of Blink Fitness in Medford and Beverly, said, “People are being very respectful.”

Hey, at least he didn't close you down the night before opening like the summer camps. Better you $low bleed to death.

Time to go somewhere else:

"The hard-hit Australian state of Victoria recorded two deaths and its highest-ever daily increase in virus cases on Monday as authorities prepare to close its border with New South Wales. The deaths of two men, one in his 60s and the other in his 90s, brings the national death toll from COVID-19 to 106. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said of the 127 new cases, 53 were among 3,000 people who have been confined by police to their apartments in nine public housing blocks since Saturday. Andrews said the high number of cases reflected a daily record number of tests exceeding 24,500. Andrews also announced that the state border with New South Wales will be closed from late Tuesday night in an agreement between the two state premiers and Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Morrison had previously opposed states closing their borders. It will be the first time Australia’s two most populous states have closed their border since the pandemic began."

It's an overreaction, of course, and bodes ill for us all. The virus can not be vanquished, even by women in the war zone.

Better off crossing the Indian Ocean:

"India has overtaken Russia to become the third-worst affected nation by the coronavirus after the country reported 24,248 new cases Monday. India has now confirmed 697,413 cases, including 19,693 deaths. Russia has 680,283 cases. Indian authorities late Sunday withdrew a planned reopening of the famed Taj Mahal monument, after new cases were detected in the area. India’s Culture Ministry had decided to reopen all monuments across the country on Monday after more than three months with a cap on the number of visitors and mandatory wearing of face masks. After a nationwide lockdown, India has eased restrictions in most of the country except for the highest-risk areas."

The death totals are the new $ports!

Where they send if you make the DL:

"Troops in Serbia set up an emergency 500-bed field hospital Monday, a day after neighboring Kosovo reimposed a nighttime curfew in four cities, as the Balkans battled to contain a surge in virus infections that underscored the risks of swiftly easing lockdowns. The makeshift hospital in a sports hall in Belgrade is a “precautionary measure” as hospitals in the capital are reaching their capacity because of the outbreak, the city’s deputy mayor, Goran Vesic, said. Serbian infections have returned to levels last seen at the peak of the pandemic in the Balkan country in March and April. Serbia’s rising infections provide a chilling insight into how the virus, while retreating in much of Europe, can roar back if lockdowns are lifted too swiftly. The country went from having some of Europe’s toughest lockdown measures to a near-complete reopening at the beginning of May. Soccer and tennis were played in front of packed stands, resulting in several players testing positive."

Yeah, fine, but here is the thing: I actually watched live basketball over the weekend on ESPN, some Jimmy V charity tournament called The Basketball Tournament. Bunch of never-was players I never heard of, but the event was surreal. Ten guys running around with coaches and officials, no masks, no distancing (obviously) with arena attendants wearing masks strategically placed in the one row of stands in Columbus, Ohio. The ends of the court and wider arena were blocked off with curtains, so I was basically watching guys in gym. F**k that, even if it is pro.

Then I watched some English soccer where they had the bogus fan noise (can be eliminated with the NBC Sports app) with no fans visible at all. It was a low hum except for a few rises in pitch when a shot on goal was made and occasional crowd chanting for a team. I was insulted and didn't;t last long despite the lack of commercials.

Sad to say, but I don't care if $ports ever come back, and even if they do, I am no longer interested -- and I used to love sports!

They took the players to the hospital where they were treated by these nurses:

"At least 12 nurses were arrested in Zimbabwe on Monday when they were demonstrating against their working conditions, complaining that they do not have adequate protective gear to safely treat COVID-19 patients. Thousands of nurses working in public hospitals stopped reporting for work in mid-June, part of frequent work stoppages by health workers who earn less than $50 a month and allege they are forced to work without adequate protective equipment such as gloves and masks. Police have been deployed to stop protests by nurses and doctors in recent months. On Monday, dozens of nurses wearing masks and their white and blue uniforms gathered for protests at some of the country’s biggest hospitals in the capital, Harare, and the second-largest city of Bulawayo. Zimbabwe’s coronavirus cases have been climbing in recent weeks, mostly recorded at centers where people returning to the country mainly from neighboring South Africa are kept in mandatory isolation. The country had recorded about 700 cases of coronavirus infection and eight deaths by Monday."

The Serbians declined medical care, proving they are as racist as their Slavic cousins:

"Tens of thousands of vacation-goers in Russia and Ukraine have descended on Black Sea beaches, paying little heed to public health measures despite the numbers of reported coronavirus cases remaining high in both countries. Desperate for a break from the confinement of months-long lockdowns, few wear masks or try to maintain social distance as they bask in the sun on overcrowded beaches in the Russian city of Sochi and in the Ukrainian seaport of Odessa. While popular vacation destinations in Europe are still closed to visitors from Russia and Ukraine as European nations move carefully to lift restrictions on foreign visitors, Black Sea resorts in Russia and Ukraine are filled to capacity from domestic tourism. Hotel owners are happy about the bonanza, and prices for rooms are soaring."

Hey, they dropped to fourth in cases so time to celebrate with that disinfecting sun, but I'm sure  Putin will $oon tighten the $crews:

"Further tightening the screws on free speech in Russia just days after a national plebiscite effectively entrenched Vladimir Putin as president for life, a Russian military court Monday convicted a freelance journalist on charges of “justifying terrorism” in a 2018 text critical of the security services. Even the Kremlin’s own human rights council had denounced the charges as unwarranted, adding its voice to a chorus of support for journalist Svetlana Prokopyeva, in what became a battle of wills between an impecunious local reporter and Russia’s powerful security apparatus. The case against Prokopyeva revolved around a brief commentary she wrote in 2018 after a Russian teenager, a self-declared anarchist, blew himself up inside a branch of the secret police in Arkhangelsk, near the Arctic Circle. She held the government responsible for the attack, which killed only the 17-year-old bomber, arguing that nonviolent means of protest like street protests had been steadily closed off by often violent security officers....."

The $elf-$erving whining might be more effective were they not cheering on censorship on social media platforms.

That's what men have named them:

"The “Mona Lisa” is back in business. Paris’s Louvre Museum, which houses the world’s most famous portrait, reopened Monday after a four-month coronavirus lockdown and without its usual huge throngs. The reopening of the world’s most-visited museum was a bright spot in what is otherwise shaping up as a grimly quiet start to the summer tourist season in France, with far fewer visitors than was normal. Paris tour guide Katia Besnard Rousseau said she has had no groups to show around since France gradually started coming out of its strict two-month lockdown in May. On Monday, as the Louvre reopened, she and dozens of other guides demonstrated outside, forming a long line and holding up images of the “Mona Lisa” to highlight the hardship afflicting their industry."

What did they expect, and her sly smile reminds me of something?

Also see:

Uighur exiles push for court case accusing China of genocide

The New York Times says the case could bring greater international scrutiny of the Chinese state’s power to impose its will beyond its borders.

Speaking of the devils:

"A South Korean court Monday rejected an extradition request by the United States for a South Korean citizen convicted of running one of the world’s biggest child pornography sites on the dark Web. The court’s decision Monday was a huge letdown for opponents of child pornography in South Korea who had hoped that  Son Jong-woo’s extradition to the United States would help deter sexual crimes in South Korea. Activists in South Korea, who have been outraged by what they see as the local judiciary’s light punishment of Son had also called for his extradition....."

He must be South Korea's version of this:

Ghislaine Maxwell, charged in connection with Jeffrey Epstein scandal, expected to make court appearance Friday in New York

The Globe placed that on page B3, so it appears we are now back to pre-Spotlight days over there.