If Joe Biden taking the lead in Michigan and Wisconsin was the moment the dynamic of the Presidential race changed, this may be the moment the dynamic changes again.
A Joe Biden presidency means a “return to normality” simply because it means a return of the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
In 2008, Barack Obama received the names of his entire future cabinet already one month prior to his election by CFR Senior Fellow (and Citigroup banker) Michael Froman, as a Wikileaks email later revealed. Consequently, the key posts in Obama’s cabinet were filled almost exclusively by CFR members, as was the case in most cabinets since World War II. To be sure, Obama’s 2008 Republican opponent, the late John McCain, was a CFR member, too. Michael Froman later negotiated the TPP and TTIP international trade agreements, before returning to the CFR as a Distinguished Fellow.
In 2017, CFR nightmare President Donald Trump immediately canceled these trade agreements – because he viewed them as detrimental to US domestic industry – which allowed China to conclude its own, recently announced RCEP free-trade area, encompassing 14 countries and a third of global trade. Trump also canceled other CFR achievements, like the multinational Iran nuclear deal and the UN climate and migration agreements, and he tried, but largely failed, to withdraw US troops from East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa, thus seriously endangering the global US empire built over decades by the CFR and its 5000 elite members.
Unsurprisingly, most of the US media, whose owners and editors are themselves members of the CFR, didn’t like President Trump. This was also true for most of the European media, whose owners and editors are members of international CFR affiliates like the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission, founded by CFR directors after the conquest of Europe during World War II. Moreover, it was none other than the CFR which in 1996 advocated a closer cooperation between the CIA and the media, i.e. a restart of the famous CIA Operation Mockingbird. Historically, OSS and CIA directors since William Donovan and Allen Dulles have always been CFR members.
This is the case for Anthony Blinken (State), Alejandro Mayorkas (Homeland Security), Janet Yellen (Treasury), Michele Flournoy and Jeh Johnson (candidates for Defense), Linda Thomas-Greenfield (Ambassador to the UN), Richard Stengel (US Agency for Global Media; Stengel famously called propaganda “a good thing” at a 2018 CFR session), John Kerry (Special Envoy for Climate), Nelson Cunningham (candidate for Trade), and Thomas Donilon (candidate for CIA Director).
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, is not (yet) a CFR member, but Sullivan has been a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (a think tank “promoting active international engagement by the United States”) and a member of the US German Marshall Fund’s “Alliance For Securing Democracy” (a major promoter of the “Russiagate” disinformation campaign to restrain the Trump presidency), both of which are run by senior CFR members.
Most of Biden’s CFR-vetted nominees supported recent US wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen as well as the 2014 regime change in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, neoconservative Max Boot, the CFR Senior Fellow in National Security Studies and one of the most vocal opponents of the Trump administration, has called Biden’s future cabinet “America’s A-Team”.
Thus, after four years of “populism” and “isolationism”, a Biden presidency will mean the return of the Council on Foreign Relations and the continuation of a tradition of more than 70 years. Indeed, the CFR was founded in 1921 in response to the “trauma of 1920”, when US President Warren Harding and the US Senate turned isolationist and renounced US global leadership after World War I. In 2016, Donald Trump’s “America First” campaign reactivated this 100 year old foreign policy trauma.
Was the 2020 presidential election “stolen”, as some allege? There are certainly indications of significant statistical anomalies in key Democrat-run swing states. Whether these were decisive for the election outcome may be up to courts to decide. At any rate, Joe Biden may well be the first US President known to be involved in international corruption before even entering office.
Why are most US and international media hardly interested in this? Well, why should they?
Last week, the Solomon Islands government approved a temporary block of social media website Facebook across the tiny island nation of 650,000, a move that top government officials said would protect people from cyberbullying and online defamation, according to Australian ABC.
By Monday, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare doubled-down on his government's temporary measure to block the social media website, "as it was a necessity to preserve national unity." He said Facebook undermines social cohesion.
"Cyberbullying on Facebook is widespread, people have been defamed by users who use fake names, and people's reputations that have been built up over the years [are destroyed] in a matter of minutes.
"We have [a] duty to cultivate national unity and the happy coexistence of our people … [Facebook] is undermining efforts to unite this country," he said.
Australian ABC notes the ban has yet to go into effect, though the prospect of the ban has caused an uproar among younger people. Sogavare stands by the new measure, saying it was aimed at protecting the youth from "vile abusive language" and not a way to silence them.
It's still unclear how the temporary ban will be enforced. The government still needs to determine whether it will use a firewall or utilize some other technique to block Facebook.
The move to ban the social media website comes as reports began to spread on the platform, accusing the government of misappropriating virus pandemic funds for social programs - prompting calls for an audit of the virus pandemic relief program.
This isn't the first time a Pacific government has mulled over the idea of blocking Facebook - leaders in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Samoa have all considered similar options.
Besides Facebook, governments in Asia are also blocking Pornhub. Thailand's government banned more than 190 porn sites, including Pornhub, earlier this month, prompting outrage among the younger generation.
In my entire lifetime, there has never been a Thanksgiving like this. 39 million Americans don’t have enough to eat right now, more than 70 million claims for unemployment benefits have been filed so far during this calendar year, and people are waiting in line for hours at food banks all over the nation just for some Thanksgiving handouts. If you and your family have plenty of turkey to eat, you should be very thankful, because many Americans can no longer even take Thanksgiving dinner for granted these days. On Tuesday, vehicles were lined up for hours in New Jersey as people waited to receive prepackaged Thanksgiving meals at a local food bank…
Video obtained by CNN on Tuesday from the Meadowlands entertainment complex in New Jersey showed residents waiting for several hours to obtain prepackaged boxes of meals for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“If it wasn’t for this place, we wouldn’t know where we would get our food,” one distraught woman told CNN of the food bank in East Rutherford, N.J.
Food bank officials in Dallas, Texas, have also noticed a staggering increase in demand for food assistance. North Texas Food Bank representatives told the Dallas Morning News that they handed out roughly 8,500 meals to local families during a giveaway on Saturday that in years past has seen fewer than 1,000 show up for donations.
You can see a stunning photograph of vehicles lined up for that food distribution event right here.
There are a lot of really nice vehicles in that picture. Many of those individuals are probably accustomed to living comfortable middle class lifestyles, but just like I warned in my new book they are “suddenly” in need of food because this economic downturn has turned their worlds completely upside down.
Yes, there have always been hungry people in America, but what we are witnessing now is hard to fathom. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 12 percent of all Americans did not have enough food to eat between October 28th and November 9th…
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to surge, more Americans are reporting going hungry, a Washington Post analysis found.
In data collected by the Census Bureau between Oct. 28 and Nov. 9, around 12 percent of all American adults reported not having enough food to eat, a figure higher than at any other point since the pandemic began earlier this year.
It is estimated that the current population of the United States is 328 million.
If you take 12 percent of 328 million, you get more than 39 million Americans that are going hungry right now.
And this is just the beginning. Thanks to the new lockdowns that are being instituted all over the country, the number of Americans that are filing for unemployment benefits is starting to rise again…
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to 778,000, evidence that the U.S. economy and job market remain under strain as coronavirus cases surge and colder weather heighten the risks.
The Labor Department’s report Wednesday said jobless claims climbed from 748,000 the week before. Before the virus struck hard in mid-March, weekly claims typically amounted to roughly 225,000.
Overall, more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed in 2020.
As I discussed yesterday, we have never seen anything like this before in all of U.S. history.
At this point, even Hollywood is conducting mass layoffs. More job loss announcements just keep rolling in with each passing day, and I expect that to continue all throughout the very dark winter ahead.
The data firm Womply says that 21% of small businesses were shuttered at the start of this month, reflecting a steady increase from June’s 16% rate. Consumer spending at local businesses is down 27% this month from a year ago, marking a deterioration from a 20% year-over-year drop in October, Womply found.
If you think that anyone is going to be able to wave a magic wand and fix this mess, you are just being delusional.
“I’ve exhausted all of my unemployment benefits. I’ve had to resort to food stamps and [California’s Medicaid program] for the first time in my life. I’m backdated on my rent and my credit has been ruined,” said 38-year-old Andrew Lee, who lives in a suburb of Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
Lee lost his job as a business development director several months before the pandemic. But once it hit, it became that much harder to find work. And he didn’t initially qualify for any pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
His car has been repossessed and his wife’s car has also been repossessed.
So even if they could find jobs, how are they supposed to get to work?
Lee is just like so many other hurting Americans. First he ran through all of his savings, and then he started relying on his credit cards.
Now that his unemployment benefits have been exhausted, he is out of options, and his family is a step or two from becoming homeless.
In the months ahead, tens of millions of others will find themselves facing similar scenarios.
This is what an economic collapse looks like. The United States hasn’t had to face anything like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and what we have experienced so far is just the start.
In 2019, I received quite a bit of criticism because the economy was relatively stable and to many people it seemed like an “economic collapse” was not even remotely a possibility.
But now an economic collapse has officially arrived, and all of the things that I have been warning about are starting to happen one right after the other.
The “perfect storm” is upon us, and most Americans still do not understand the horrors that lie ahead.
***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***
About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.
Belgians have been told that they can expect a knock on the door from police at Christmas if they are not properly following COVID-19 rules.
Yes, really.
Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden warned citizens that their Christmas parties will be interrupted by authorities if they make too much noise.
“If necessary, if there is a lot of noise, for example, the police will knock on doors,” she said.
Verlinden stopped short of saying police would be allowed to enter homes, but Belgians have been put on notice that they are being watched.
As we previously highlighted, police in the UK also said they wouldn’t hesitate to break up Christmas family gatherings if they thought corona restrictions were being violated.
“If we think there’s large groups of people gathering where they shouldn’t be, then police will have to intervene,” said West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson.
“If, again, there’s flagrant breaking of the rules, then the police would have to enforce.”
The statement was made despite the fact that under UK law, police can’t enter a home without a warrant.
The only exception is if they see someone behaving as if they are infected with COVID, in which case they can enter and have that person removed.
As we highlighted yesterday, the CDC is also warning Americans not to drink alcohol or engage in singing during their Thanksgiving celebrations.
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The once-innocent question of what students did over their Thanksgiving break will take on a new meaning in Vermont, according to Republican Gov. Phil Scott.
Vermont is among the states that have laid the blame for a rise in coronavirus cases on small gatherings that have flown under the radar of bans on larger groups getting together.
As such, state officials have told residents not to have traditional Thanksgiving dinners that can include multiple generations or families.
In an effort to crack down on anyone celebrating the traditional way, Scott said students will be asked to inform on their families.
"Unfortunately, we know some will still get together and schools have asked for help. [The Vermont Agency of Education] will direct schools to ask students or parents if they were part of multi-family gatherings and if the answer is yes, they'll need to go remote for 14 days or 7 days and a test," he tweeted Tuesday.
"We also advise businesses to consider asking employees to quarantine if they don't adhere to gathering restrictions. This isn't a way around the ban or an excuse to get together. The more we adhere to this policy, the faster we’ll lower case counts & ease up on restrictions," Scott added.
We also advise businesses to consider asking employees to quarantine if they don't adhere to gathering restrictions. This isn't a way around the ban or an excuse to get together. The more we adhere to this policy, the faster we’ll lower case counts & ease up on restrictions. 10/
As part of his Twitter thread, Scott said every person carries the seeds of potential disaster.
"[Y]ou never know if you’re going to be the domino that leads to a nursing home outbreak or pushes an entire school to remote learning," he tweeted.
When asked about putting students in a position to inform on their parents, Scott on Tuesday defended his edict, according to the Vermont Daily Chronicle.
“This is fair warning. If you’re planning on having gatherings outside your households, if you don’t want to have your kids in remote learning and quarantine for a seven-day period, maybe you should make other plans. I’m not sure it’s ‘tattling’ on anyone," he told reporters.
Some pushed back against Scott.
Using government institutions to convince children to rat out their parents. Where have we seen this happen before?
Vermont schools will grill students on their Thanksgiving celebrations, governor announceshttps://t.co/QJenAGRhB2
This where this is all head. Govt using our children to spy & report back to “authority” figures. The Nazis at least were honest about their nefarious behavior.
Maybe VT could use some of your expertise, as they ask CHILDREN to snitch on their parents/families. As a child of the "iron curtain", where neighbors and family members betrayed each other, I wish I'd had a trigger warning before reading this. https://t.co/6lwzp3LPWx
Other Vermont officials painted Thanksgiving as a potential catastrophe for the state.
"The fact is, Thanksgiving can make things a lot worse for us here in Vermont. The virus doesn't operate any differently just because we want to keep up traditions," Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine said, according to NECN.
"As soon as we travel, get together with friends, let down our guard, we actually do risk reopening the floodgates even wider at a time when we really need to keep them closed."
Financial Regulation Commissioner Mike Pieciak noted that nationally, 38 percent of Americans plan to have holiday events that bring together 10 or more people.
If that were to happen in Vermont, he said, there could be as many as 3,800 new coronavirus cases leading to up to 50 hospitalizations.
"These are certainly numbers that are quite stark and quite disturbing," Pieciak said. "This is not a projection. This is not an estimate. This is really a worst-case scenario, and we really need Vermonters to respond so that we don't experience anything like the numbers we just mentioned."
YouTube temporarily suspended the One America News Network from its platform, apparently for posting a report about the successful treatment of COVID-19 patients with the highly politicized drug hydroxychloroquine.
YouTube said Tuesday that OAN violated its "misinformation" policy barring users from posting videos that claim the coronavirus can be "cured."
OAN, which has been touted by President Trump as an alternative to Fox News, was previously warned about violating the policy, Axios reported. And two more violations would result in termination of the account. The network will need to reapply to the YouTube Partner Program to resume making money off its videos.
OAN issued a statement saying the offending video was "unlisted" and viewable only by OAN staff.
The network said it will abide by YouTube's policies with future videos "but will not let YouTube's arbitrary rules infringe upon our First Amendment editorial rights to inform the public," reported City News Service.
"We believe that the opinions of frontline doctors should be heard, regardless if their views agree or differ from the CDC," the statement said. "YouTube requires a warning label if interviewed medical experts deviate from the CDC’s latest thinking, which is frequently subject to change. However, these are actual, practicing doctors who went to medical school and are highly qualified to make medical decisions — much more so than the moderators at YouTube."
City News Service noted OAN claims it has interviewed more than 50 doctors and healthcare professionals who have successfully treated more than 6,000 COVID-19 patients. The channel said it has "highlighted therapeutics — including hydroxychloroquine — recommended by these doctors and that showed evidence of success."
In July, a study conducted by the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan found that patients treated with hydroxychloroquine were more likely to survive COVID-19.
Last Thursday, as WND reported, leading epidemiologists who have found hydroxychloroquine to be an effective treatment for COVID-19 and decry its politicization testified to the Senate's Homeland Security Committee.
Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at Yale University, emphasized the drug is "exceedingly safe," having been prescribed for more than 65 years to "hundreds of millions of people" in "10s of billions of doses."
He said there are seven studies on the use of hydroxychloroquine in high-risk patients, and every one has shown reductions of 50% or more in the risk of hospitalization and mortality.
Dr. George Fareed, medical director at Pioneers Health Center in the Imperial Valley in California, told the Senate panel he treated successfully more than 1,000 high-risk patients with a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc, which was developed by Dr. Zev Zelenko, who told WND in April of his 100% success treating 350 coronavirus patients.
An outspoken proponent of hydroxychloroquine, Dr. Steven Smith of East Orange, New Jersey, expressed in an interview with WND in May his frustration with the politicization of hydroxychloroquine.
He said establishment media and politicians are "basically fighting a propaganda war against the medical facts" that is shaping not only how the population views the drug, but doctors as well."
Risch said he's received "hostile remarks" from doctors who say that "all the evidence is bad for it."
"And in fact, that's not true at all. And it's easy to show that the evidence – all the evidence is actually good for it when it's used in outpatient uses," he said. "Nevertheless, the only people who actually see that are a whole pile of doctors who are actually on the frontlines treating those patients across the country. And they are the ones who are at risk of being forced not to do it."
In a guest column for Newsweek, Risch, who has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and currently hold senior positions on the editorial boards of several leading journals, argued hydroxychloroquine is the key to containing the virus.
In May, he published an article in the the world's leading epidemiology journal, the American Journal of Epidemiology, that analyzed five studies "demonstrating clear-cut and significant benefits" to treating patients with hydroxychloroquine along with other very large studies that demonstrated its safety.
"Physicians who have been using these medications in the face of widespread skepticism have been truly heroic," he wrote in the Newsweek column. "They have done what the science shows is best for their patients, often at great personal risk. I myself know of two doctors who have saved the lives of hundreds of patients with these medications, but are now fighting state medical boards to save their licenses and reputations. The cases against them are completely without scientific merit."
Smith, who briefed President Trump in April on the safety and effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, pointed out the World Health Organization temporarily halted studying hydroxychloroquine in response to a widely reported observational study published in the medical journal The Lancet that concluded seriously ill COVID-19 patients who were treated with hydroxychloroquine were more likely to die.
Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech. It is hall-monitor tattletale whining masquerading as journalism: petulantly complaining that tech platforms are permitting speech that, in their view, ought instead be silenced.
In Tuesday’s New York Times, three of those censorious tech reporters — Kevin Roose, Mike Isaac, and Sheera Frenkel — published an article on Facebook’s post-election deliberations over how to alter its algorithms to prevent the spread of what they deem “misinformation” regarding the election. The most consequential change they implemented, The New York Times explained, was one in which “hyperpartisan pages” are repressed in favor of promoting “a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR” — a change the Paper of Record heralded as having fostered “a calmer, less divisive Facebook.”
More alarmingly, the NYT suggested (i.e., prayed) that these changes, designed by Facebook as an election-related emergency measure, would instead become permanent. Marvel at these two paragraphs and all of tenuous and self-serving assumptions buried in them:
The conceit that outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NPR are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is one you would be eager to believe, or at least want to induce others to believe, if you were a tech reporter at The New York Times, furious and hurt that millions upon millions of people would rather hear other voices than your own, and simply do not trust what you tell them. Inducing Facebook to manipulate the algorithmic underbelly of social media to artificially force your content down the throats of citizens who prefer to avoid it, while rendering your critics’ speech invisible — all in the name of reducing “hyper-partisanship,” “divisiveness,” and “misinformation” — is of course a highly desirable outcome for mainstream outlets like the NYT.
The problem with this claim is that it’s a complete and utter fraud, one that is easily demonstrated as such. There are few sites more “hyper-partisan” than the three outlets which the NYT applauded Facebook for promoting. In the 2020 election, over 70 million Americans — close to half of the voting population — voted for Donald Trump, yet not one of them is employed by the op-ed page of the “non-partisan” New York Times and are almost never heard on NPR or CNN. That’s because those news outlets, by design, are pro-Democratic-Party organs, who speak overwhelmingly to Democratic readers and viewers.
It is hard to get more partisan than the news outlets which the NYT tech reporters, and apparently Facebook, consider to be the alternatives to “hyper-partisan” discourse. In April, Pew Research asked Americans which outlet is their primary source of news, and the polling firm found that the audiences of NPR, CNN and especially The New York Times are overwhelmingly Democrats, in some cases almost entirely so:
As Pew put it: “about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%).” These outlets speak to Democrats, are built for Democrats, and produce news content designed to be pleasing and affirming to Democrats — so they keep watching and buying. One can say many things about these news outlets, but the idea that they are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is the exact opposite of the truth: it is difficult to find more hyper-partisan organs than these.
Then there is the question of who does and does not spread “misinformation.” It is rather astonishing that the news outlets that did more than anyone to convince Americans to believe the most destructive misinformation of this generation: that Saddam had WMDs and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda — The New York Times, The Atlantic, NBC and The New Yorker — have the audacity to prance around as the bulwarks against misinformation rather than what they are: the primary purveyors of it.
Over the last four years, they devoted themselves to the ultimate deranged, mangled conspiracy theory: that the Kremlin had infiltrated the U.S. and was clandestinely controlling the levers of American power through some combination of sexual and financial blackmail. The endless pursuit of that twisted conspiracy led them to produce one article after the next that spread utter falsehoods, embraced reckless journalism and fostered humiliating debacles. The only thing more absurd than these hyper-partisan, reckless outlets posturing as the alternatives to hyper-partisanship is them insisting that they’re the only safeguards against misinformation.
Note how insidiously creepy is TheNew York Times’ description of a censored, regulated internet. They call it “a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like,” and claim an unnamed Facebook employee described it as “a nicer news feed.”
Yes, discourse that is centralized and regulated, where no dissent is tolerated, where alternative voices are silenced, is always “calmer” and “less divisive.” That’s always the core goal of censorsing speech and ideas: to eliminate “divisiveness” and to pacify the population (“calmer” and “nicer”). That is always the result when orthodoxies imposed downward from the most powerful institutions of authority can no longer be meaningfully challenged.
The censorious mentality being peddled with increasing aggression is always chilling and dangerous. That it is media outlets — which ought to be the most vocal champions of free discourse — instead taking the lead in begging and pressuring Silicon Valley to censure the internet more and more is warped beyond belief. The internet should be free and left alone, especially by those with their record of deceit and propaganda.
Indeed, if we are to have it an internet controlled from above by unseen tech overlords in the name of eliminating “hyper-partisanship” and “disinformation” and fostering a “calmer” and “nicer” population, the sites now being artificially and manipulatively promoted are the absolute last ones who can credibly claim entitlement to that benefit.
This game of hunt-and-kill Covid cases has reached peak absurdity, especially in media culture...
Take a look at Supermarkets are the most common place to catch Covid, new data reveals. It’s a story on a “study” assembled by Public Health England (PHE) from the NHS Test and Trace App. Here is the conclusion. In the six days of November studied, “of those who tested positive, it was found that 18.3 per cent had visited a supermarket.”
Now, if the alarm bells don’t go off with that one, you didn’t pay attention to 7th grade science. If the app had also included showering, eating, and breathing, it might have found a 100% correlation. Yes, the people who tested positive probably did shop, as do most people. That doesn’t mean that shopping gives you Covid and it certainly doesn’t mean that shopping kills you.
Even if shopping is a way to get Covid, this is a very widespread and mostly mild virus for 99.8% percent of the population with an infection fatality rate as low as 0.05% for those under 70. Competent infectious disease experts have said multiple times that test, track, and isolate strategies are nearly useless for controlling viruses such as this.
This story/study was so poor and so absurd that it was too much even for Isabel Oliver, Director of the National Infection Service at Public Health England. She sent out the following note:
Thank you. One down, a thousand to go.
The New York Times pulled a mighty fast one with this piece: “States That Imposed Few Restrictions Now Have the Worst Outbreaks.” This would be huge news if true because it would imply not only that lockdowns save lives (which no serious study has thus far been able to document) but also that granting people basic freedoms are the reason for bad health outcomes, an astonishing claim on its own.
The piece, put together by two graphic artists and seemingly very science-like, speaks of “outbreaks,” which vaguely sounds terrible: packed with mortality. It’s odd because anyone can look at the data and see that New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut lead the way with deaths per million, mostly owing to the fatalities in long-term care facilities. These were the states that locked down the hardest and longest. Indeed they are locking down again! Deaths per million in states like South Dakota are still low on the list.
How in the world can the NYT claim that states that did not lock down have the worst outbreaks? The claim hinges entirely on a trivial discovery. Some clever someone discovered that if you reflow data by cases per million instead of deaths per million, you get an opposite result. The reasons: 1) when the Northeast experienced the height of the pandemic, there was very little testing going on, so the “outbreak” was not documented even as deaths grew and grew, 2) by the time the virus reached the Midwest, tests were widely available, 3) the testing mania grew and grew to the point that the non-vulnerable are being tested like crazy, generating high positives in small-population areas.
By focusing on the word “outbreak,” the Times can cleverly obscure the difference between a positive PCR result (including many false positive and perhaps half or more asymptomatic cases) and a severe outcome from catching the virus. In other words, the Times has documented an “outbreak” of mostly non-sick people in low-population areas.
There are hundreds of ways to look at Covid-19 data. The Times picked the one metric – the least valuable one for actually discerning whether and to what extent people are sick – in order to generate the result that they wanted, namely that open states look as bad as possible. The result is a chart that massively misrepresents any existing reality. It makes the worst states look great and the best ones look terrible. The visual alone is constructed to make it looks as if open states are bleeding uncontrollably.
How many readers will even know this? Very few, I suspect. What’s more amazing is that the Times itself already debunked the entire “casedemic” back in September:
Some of the nation’s leading public health experts are raising a new concern in the endless debate over coronavirus testing in the United States: The standard tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus.
Most of these people are not likely to be contagious, and identifying them may contribute to bottlenecks that prevent those who are contagious from being found in time….
In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.
All of which makes one wonder what precisely is going on in this relationship between cases and severe outcomes. The Covid Tracking Project generates the following chart. Cases are in blue while deaths are in red.
Despite this story and these data, the graphic artists at the Times got to work generating a highly misleading presentation that leads to one conclusion: more lockdowns.
(My colleague Phil Magness has noted further methodological problems even within the framework that the Times uses but I will let him write about that later.)
Let’s finally deal with Salon’s attack on Great Barrington Declaration co-creator Jayanta Bhattacharya. Here is a piece that made the following claim of the infection fatality rate: “the accepted figure of 2-3 percent or higher.” That’s an astonishing number, and basically nuts: 10 million people will die in the US alone.
Here is what the CDC says concerning the wildly disparate risk factors based on age:
These data are not inconsistent with the World Health Organization’s suggestion that the infection fatality rate for people under 70 years of age is closer to 0.05%.
The article further claims that “herd immunity may not even be possible for COVID-19 given that infection appears to only confer transient immunity.” And yet, the New York Times just wrote that:
How long might immunity to the coronavirus last? Years, maybe even decades, according to a new study — the most hopeful answer yet to a question that has shadowed plans for widespread vaccination.
Eight months after infection, most people who have recovered still have enough immune cells to fend off the virus and prevent illness, the new data show. A slow rate of decline in the short term suggests, happily, that these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time to come.
How is it possible for people to make rational decisions with this kind of journalism going on? Truly, sometimes it seems like the world has been driven insane by an astonishing blizzard of false information. Just last week, an entire state in Australia shut down completely – putting all its citizens under house arrest – due to a false report of a case in a pizza restaurant. One person lied and the whole world fell apart.
Meanwhile, serious science is appearing daily showing that there is no relationship at all, and never has been, between lockdowns and lives saved. This study looks at all factors related to Covid death and finds plenty of relationship between age and health but absolutely none with lockdown stringency. “Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate,” says the study, echoing a conclusion of dozens of other studies since as early as March.
It’s all become too much. The world is being seriously misled by major media organs. The politicians are continuing to panic and impose draconian controls, fully nine months into this, despite mountains of evidence of the real harm the lockdowns are causing everyone. If you haven’t lost faith in politicians and major media at this point, you have paid no attention to what they have been doing for the better part of this catastrophic year.
"The invitation is lost in the lingering threat," wrote Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University.
The Hill reported Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel waws responding on Twitter to former state Republican state Sen. Patrick Colbeck discussing allegations of vote fraud during a Michigan Board of State Canvassers meeting that ended with the state’s election results being certified.
Colbeck was asked at the meeting whether he had brought his allegations to the state attorney general.
The report said Nessel claimed Colbeck has never made a complaint of election fraud to her office.
Nessel tweeted, "Colbeck’s assertions aside, intentionally making a false claim of criminal activity to law enforcement is itself a crime."
Turley noted Nessel has been threatening people who post videos on alleged vote fraud.
"These threats are coercive and abusive, particularly when targeting opponents of your party who are challenging the victory of your candidate for president," he wrote.
"Yet, as shown by a congressman seeking to disbar dozens of Trump lawyers, such threats are popular in today’s rage-filled politics. So, Nessel continued her threats of prosecution on Monday in warning that a former state senator could be prosecuted for alleging possible voter fraud at a meeting of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers. So, raising voting fraud at the board overseeing voting is now a possible basis for prosecution in Michigan."
Turley noted Colbeck said he had submitted affidavits to lawyers who were moving the allegations up the chain to the attorney general's office.
"Of course, many Republicans in the state may be a tad reluctant to reach out to Nessel given her threats of prosecution against citizens and legislators alike," Turley explained. "As if to fulfill that view, Nessel immediately responded with yet another threat of prosecution."
Turley said Nessel's threat "is directed not just at Colbeck but those who signed these affidavits."
"In other words, you must submit your allegations of fraud to me but I may prosecute you if you submit your allegations of fraud to me. Hardly an inviting prospect," he said.
"I tend to view these stories from the perspective of a criminal defense attorney. These citizens are coming forward to allege what they believe were instances of voter fraud. They may be wrong in what they perceived or what they believe is fraud. However, we want voters to feel free to come forward. Affidavits are signed on penalty of perjury. There are cases of such perjury cases or false police reports that are prosecuted. However, one would think that Nessel would be encouraging submissions of such complaints to her office, not threatening those who may do so," he wrote.
Turley observed that while "the Democrats and the media continue to raise threats against democracy, they are entirely oblivious to the implications Nessel’s use of the criminal code to threat those who question the victory of Joe Biden."
"They are equally silent (as is Biden himself) on a campaign of threats and intimidation against both lawyers and legislators questioning the election. It is part of a toxic atmosphere where Democratic members are calling for blacklists and others denounce any questioning of the Biden victory as akin to 'Holocaust denial,'" he said.
"Nessel adds a particularly menacing element to this campaign in her use of her office to threaten prosecution against those who post videos on voting fraud, legislators who raise objections to the certification, or even voters who allege improprieties. Yet, she cannot understand why anyone would fail to contact her with allegations of voting irregularities," he wrote.
Just days earlier, the report said, Nessel had threatened to look into whether bribery and perjury criminal investigations should be launched into state GOP leaders.
Their possible offense? Planning to meet with President Trump to review the vote certification process and determine whether there was evidence of fraud.
Experts cited by the website said there needed to be evidence for Nessel to proceed.
UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh said: "Well, bribery is a crime, so if someone was bribed, that warrants a criminal prosecution – but is there any actual evidence? Perjury is a crime, so if someone perjured himself, that warrants a criminal prosecution – but is there any actual evidence? Rescinding one’s vote, of course, isn’t a crime."
Volokh described Nessel's comments as "saber-rattling."
Michigan is one of several states swing states in which witnesses have come forward with sworn statements alleging fraud in the presidential election. The statements form the basis of Trump campaign lawsuits challenging the results in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia.
Exactly 400 years ago, 102 Pilgrims were staring down what promised to be a brutal winter, after first coming to shore, and setting up a tiny village in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The industrious, God-fearing Pilgrims decided to pull together and pool their resources and efforts to better survive winter. They created a commune, and elected a Governor to call the shots.
By the spring of 1621, half of the Pilgrims had died from starvation, disease, and exposure.
One of the Pilgrims, William Bradford, explained in his journal that communal living “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.”
Young single men found it unjust that they had to do all the hard work, but received no more reward for it. And wives “deemed it a kind of slavery” to be forced to do chores for men besides their husbands.
Clearly, this little experiment in collectivizing society had failed. So they reversed course, and tried something new; every man for himself.
This might sound harsh, or even counterproductive. But on the contrary, Bradford explained:
This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use… The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
400 years later, it seems leaders have forgotten the lesson.
We are entering winter grappling with COVID-19, a lockdown-stunted economy, and as I noted Monday, millions of hungry Americans relying on food banks to survive.
And tyrannical governments seem to be doing everything they can to stop us from responding to these problems as we see fit.
We’ve been told to abandon any sense of reason, trust the experts, and “listen to the scientists”.
But this month, New England Journal of Medicine published the results of a study to test the theory that extreme lockdowns are effective at controlling the spread of COVID-19.
The study, which enforced a strict quarantine and social distancing regimen on Marine recruits, found there is no correlation between strict lockdowns and reduced COVID-19 transmission.
In fact the control group, which went about life as normal, had a lower percentage of COVID infections (1.7%) compared to the test group under strict lockdown (2%).
So, will Governors “listen to the scientists”?
Hardly. Several states are going so far as to attempt to cancel Thanksgiving– or at least place a strict limit on the number of family members you can invite to your own home to share a meal.
Oregon recently decriminalized hard drugs– invite five people over to smoke crack, and you’re all good. But if you are caught sharing a Thanksgiving meal with seven family members, you could face 30 days in jail and a $1,250 fine.
California says you can host no more than two other families, but everyone must stay outside, with guests seated six feet apart, in all directions.
The state of California will graciously allow your houseguests to enter your home… but only to use the bathroom.
(Meanwhile, the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, was caught dining out maskless with about a dozen friends for a lobbyist’s birthday party.)
But these are just the latest authoritarian escalations, which should surprise no one.
Since March, Governors have simply been ruling by decree to shut down businesses, define who is an essential employee, and stop people from earning a living, even though courts have deemed these lockdowns unconstitutional.
But governors are ignoring the courts and imposing lockdowns anyway.
And we see the results– 11 million out of work, record consumer debt, corporate debt, and government debt, and a pandemic that has still not been controlled, despite the restrictions.
It took a 50% death rate from disease and hunger in Plymouth in the winter of 1620 to convince the Pilgrims that controlling people wasn’t saving lives, or creating prosperity.
But individual liberty accomplished what authoritarianism and communism could not.
Now more than ever people need the freedom to make their own decisions, to decide for themselves if they want to open their businesses, earn a living, and have family over to share a Thanksgiving meal.
And if those basic freedoms which we all took for granted just one year ago seem out of reach, take one more lesson from the Pilgrims.
They hopped in a tiny wooden boat, and crossed the Atlantic at great personal risk just to have a shot at building a free life by their own design.
Today, it is not nearly as dangerous or difficult to find greener pastures.
Just removing yourself from a city goes a long way, as does settling amongst neighbors who aren’t ready to turn you in to the Gestapo for celebrating Thanksgiving.
But also, don’t be afraid to look overseas.
When people think that your personal liberty is a threat to them, it makes sense to at least consider the possibility that at some point, your home country may no longer be right for you.
