Here’s How NYC’s Coronavirus Death Toll Is Being Inflated

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Guest Post by Beth Baumann

Project Veritas recently released a new video that included phone calls with multiple funeral directors in the New York City metro area who say patients are being labeled as “coronavirus deaths” even though the person may have never even tested positive for the virus.

“To be honest with you, all of the death certificates, they’re writing COVID on all the death certificate, whether they had a positive test, whether they didn’t,” Michael Lanza, the funeral director at Colonial Funeral Home in Staten Island, told Project Veritas. “So, I think, you know, again, this is my personal opinion, I think that like the mayor in our city, they’re looking for federal funding and, the more they put COVID on the death certificate, the more they can ask for federal funds. So I think it’s political.”

According to Josephine Dimiceli, the President of Dimiceli & Sons Funeral Home, she had a client who is a New York State Supreme Court Justice. She didn’t believe her sister died of the Wuhan coronavirus. According to the justice, the sister had Alzheimer’s and she died because the health care workers failed to “suction her because [she] forget how to swallow.”

“Right away they put down COVID-19 on her death certificate,” Dimiceli said. The justice had an independent autopsy performed and found no signs of the Wuhan coronavirus.

Although people like Lanza can’t prove every single person did not die of the Wuhan coronavirus, he said, “that is my suspicion.” He says he believes people are being labeled as COVID deaths because it “make(s) life easier for them.”

Lanza said the health care system is “overwhelmed and it’s just easier to write COVID on everything. That’s my opinion.”

Another reason the funeral director believes this is happening is because families are coming into his funeral home saying no one in the family – including the deceased – were tested for the virus.

“If the doctor thinks you had COVID, he can write it down,” Lanza said.

Joesph Antioco, the funeral director at Schaefer Funeral Home, said anyone with any kind of “respiratory distress” or “respiratory problems” – like pneumonia or the flu – are immediately being labeled as COVID deaths.

“To me, all you’re doing is padding the statistics,” Antioco said. “You know, you’re putting people on that have COVID-19. If they didn’t have it, you’re making the death rate for New York City a lot higher than it should be.”

Antioco said that many people are dying at home. Usually the medical examiner confers with the treating physician and the death is listed on the death certificate. Because of the Wuhan coronavirus though, the system is so overwhelmed that medical examiners are making the assumption that those who died at home died from the virus. Part of that is because the medical examiners are no longer making house calls.

We knew that there were issues with the way Wuhan coronavirus deaths were being counted. After all, Dr. Deborah Birx said anyone who dies who had the coronavirus – even if they have recovered – would be counted as part of the COVID deaths. This just takes things to a whole new level and brings about the question: just how deadly is the coronavirus?

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The Federal Reserve: More Lethal than Coronavirus

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Guest Post by Ron Paul

Last week the Federal Reserve announced it will keep interest rates at or near zero until the economy recovers from the government-imposed shutdown. Following this announcement, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell urged Congress and the Trump administration to put aside any concerns about the deficit and spend whatever it takes to stimulate the economy and combat coronavirus.

The Federal Reserve previously announced it would make unlimited purchases of Treasury securities, thus encouraging Congress and the president to increase spending and debt. With some members of Congress talking about another multi-trillion-dollar stimulus bill, and with President Trump proposing a two trillion dollars infrastructure plan as a way to get Americans back to work, it is obvious, and not surprising, that Congress and President Trump gleefully agree with Powell’s advice.

Increasing the purchase of federal debt is not the only action the Fed has taken in a desperate attempt to keep the economy afloat. Since the coronavirus lockdowns began in early March, the Fed has greatly expanded its balance sheet. The Federal Reserve has also launched an unprecedented program to “loan” money directly to businesses.

While some states are beginning to end the lockdowns, it may be months or even another year before all the lockdowns are finally ended. It is unlikely that the economy will completely recover after the shutdown ends.

The economy was teetering on the brink of a recession months before anyone heard of coronavirus. Last September, a panicked Fed began emergency infusions of cash into the repurchasing market, which is where banks make short-term loans to each other. The Fed’s balance sheet expansion also began in September. The Fed was also pushing interest rates down before the coronavirus panic, and it will likely keep rates at or even below zero long after the crisis related to the shutdown subsides.

Economic stagnation combined with zero or negative interest rates remove incentive for people to save. This depletes the supply of private capital available to invest in businesses and jobs. The lack of private capital will put pressure on the Federal Reserve to maintain, and even expand, its new lending programs indefinitely.

Each of the Federal Reserve’s responses to the coronavirus shutdown increases the distortions of the market caused by the Federal Reserve’s meddling with the money supply and interest rates. These increased distortions guarantee the inevitable crash will be much more severe than the current downturn. The one upside is that the next meltdown will likely lead to the end of the fiat money system and thus the end of the welfare-warfare state.

The only way to minimize the coming crisis is to begin immediately unwinding the current system. The first step is to end the lockdown and let businesses reopen and people go back to work. Congress must then begin challenging monetary policy by passing the Audit the Fed bill. Congress should also cut spending, starting with ending our hyper-interventionist foreign policy and bringing the troops home. Ending the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system may cause some short-term pain, but that pain will be dwarfed by the long-term gains in liberty, peace, and prosperity.

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And the winner of the next half trillion dollar bailout is…

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At precisely 4pm on Friday October 17, 1975, New York City’s government would have a $453 million in debt to repay.

But literally the night before, the city’s government had only $34 million on hand.

It was the makings of an epic financial crisis: the wealthiest city in the world was about to declare bankruptcy.

New York City’s mayor Abe Beame had called US President Gerald Ford numerous times begging for federal assistance, but Ford refused. The nation had bigger problems to deal with.

New York was desperate.

But with only hours to spare, they managed to convince the powerful Teachers’ Union to use its gigantic pension fund to buy up the bonds and save the day.

The plan worked, and New York City was very narrowly able to escape bankruptcy.

But that wouldn’t happen today; a number of state and local governments are teetering on the edge of default, and public pension funds are in no position to bail them out.

Pensions are actually a huge part of the problem.

New York’s Teachers’ Retirement System– the same union that bailed out the city in 1975, is today technically insolvent.

According to the pension fund’s most recent financial report, the fund is about 40% short of being able to pay out its obligations.

And the numbers are similar across the board for New York’s Fire and Police pension funds as well.

And New York is definitely not the only problem spot.

Public pensions in the State of Illinois are 60% underfunded, on average. And more than 65% in New Jersey.

In fact, only TWO states in the Land of the Free have fully-funded public pensions as of 2019: Wisconsin and South Dakota.

So, most pension funds are in serious trouble and in no position to bail anyone out.

State government are even worse off: Illinois’ debt is rated one level above junk, and the state legislature asked the federal government for a $40 billion bailout.

California, New Jersey, and New York are also lining up for a federal bailout.

And amazingly enough, Congress is actually considering a $1 trillion bailout for state governments.

Plus, last week, the Federal Reserve announced that it will step in and buy $500 billion worth of bonds from states, counties, and municipalities.

So that’s another $1.5 trillion for state and local governments, on top of the trillions of dollars worth of bailouts they’ve already made.

Remember– all of this money is just being conjured out of thin air. These politicians and central bankers believe they can print all the bailout money they need without ever having to make a difficult decision.

But this solution is a ridiculous fantasy: you cannot borrow or print your way to prosperity.

If that were the case, Zimbabwe would have become the wealthiest country in the world long ago.

It’s perfectly fine to remain optimistic and hope that, maybe just maybe, the virus will just magically disappear, everything will go back to normal, and there will never be any consequences from all of this money printing.

And while I’m at it, I can also hope that the Dallas Cowboys decide to make me their starting quarterback next season.

But back here on Planet Earth, it’s far more likely that the virus will be around for a while… that decisions will continue to be made by weak leaders whose greatest fear is not being re-elected… and that all this money printing will eventually become a problem.

Let’s be frank: there are VERY few instances throughout history where so much money has been created without any nasty consequences.

We know the famous stories like hyperinflation in Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic.

Then there are stories from ancient and medieval times, like the insufferable inflation of China’s Jin and Yuan dynasties (both of which used paper currency and printed it freely).

Even in the United States in the 1970s, cheap interest rates and expansion of the money supply led to some of the worst inflation in US economic history.

You really don’t need a PhD in economics to understand that conjuring trillions of dollars out of thin air might hurt the long-term value of the currency.

This is why I keep writing that real assets make so much sense.

There is no sure thing right now. But real assets like productive land, profitable businesses, and precious metals tend to be safe havens at a time when governments and central banks are willing to sacrifice the currency.

Compared to the amount of money that’s being printed right now, precious metals are actually fairly inexpensive.

Gold is undervalued relative to the money supply, and silver is downright cheap relative to gold.

Again, there is no sure thing. And we could see a real roller coaster ride in prices.

But if you believe (as I do) that they’re going to continue printing money to bail everyone out, then there’s a very strong, long-term case to own precious metals right now. And especially silver.

Source

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Professor Neil Ferguson, and the idiot presidents and prime ministers who believe his computer predictions

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Nothing is riding on this except the immediate future of the human race

Ferguson used old failed model to predict COVID deaths

by Jon Rappoport

May 3, 2020

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Buying, for the moment, the official story about the “pandemic,” there were two basic choices:

Let people go about their lives and develop, through contact, natural immunity to the disease; or imprison populations in their homes.

Why was the second choice made?

This is my second article about Neil Ferguson (first article, here), the UK professor whose computer model of COVID-19 changed the world and drove that second choice.

Ferguson’s model predicted a worst-case estimate of 510,000 deaths in the UK, and 2.2 million deaths in the US.

At that point, anybody who was anybody stood up and saluted.

Both heads of government, Trump and Johnson, radically changed course. Instead of allowing people to go about their lives and develop natural immunity, they took the lockdown approach, devastating their economies.

Below, I’ll reprint quotes from my first article, exposing Professor Ferguson’s track record of abysmal and destructive failures in predicting the spread of diseases.

This record was available to anyone—including Trump, Fauci, Deborah Birx, Boris Johnson—but of course these important people have no time to read or think.

Apparently, a key White house conversation went something like this:

FAUCI: Mr. President, we have a new report from the UK. A computer model is predicting the spread of the epidemic. There could be 2 million deaths in the US, if we don’t take drastic action. There must be heavy lockdowns. The state governors will have to carry that ball, but your position on this needs to be unequivocal.

TRUMP: Two million deaths. You’re sure?

FAUCI: Yes, sir. Quite sure.

TRUMP: No way out? Except lockdowns?

FAUCI: That’s right.

TRUMP: Well, then. Okay.

The sheer brilliance in the Oval Office that day must have been blinding.

So, first up, let’s take a peek at a recent article from Nature, the venerable British medical journal. April 2, “Special report: The [computer] simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19”:

“…it’s natural to wonder how reliable any of the [computer] simulations are. Unfortunately, during a pandemic it is hard to get data — such as on infection rates — against which to judge a model’s projections.”

This is called a clue. Computer models predicting the spread of disease may be an interesting academic exercise, but in the real world, where lives and nations are on the line, THE DATA, on which the projections are based, are elusive. Without accurate data, what do you have? How about opinion, bias, and conjecture?

Nature: “’You can project [via computer models] forwards and then compare against what you get. But the problem is that our surveillance systems are pretty rubbish’, says John Edmunds, who is a modeller at the LSHTM [London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine]. ‘The total numbers of cases reported, is that accurate? No. Accurate anywhere? No’.”

I see. Rubbish. Total number of cases—inaccurate everywhere. Bad data. No data. In other words, the computer models are sophisticated tripe.

Nature: “’Forecasts made during an outbreak are rarely investigated during or after the event for their accuracy, and only recently have forecasters begun to make results, code, models and data available for retrospective analysis,’ Edmunds and his team noted last year in a paper that assessed the performance of forecasts made in a 2014–15 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. They found that it was possible to reliably predict the epidemic’s course one or two weeks ahead of time, but no longer, because of the inherent uncertainty and lack of knowledge about the outbreak.”

Computer predictions are rarely investigated for accuracy. Can’t make accurate predictions for more than two weeks ahead. Do you suppose Fauci, who has served as a public health dictator since medieval times, is aware of this, but is ignoring it? That’s a rhetorical question, Your Honor. I withdraw it. The answer is obvious.

Finally, Nature provides us with this startling factoid: “The 16 March simulations that the [Neil Ferguson] team ran to inform the UK government’s COVID-19 response used an agent-based model built in 2005 to see what would happen in Thailand if H5N1 avian flu mutated to a version that could spread easily between people.”

That’s like saying, “This year, the driver in the Indianapolis 500 is sitting in a car built 15 years ago. He’s dusted it off and hopes it works and doesn’t crash into the wall.”

You may think this is an unkind comparison, but we know something about that dusty Ferguson 2005 computer model of avian flu. Here is a quote from the Business insider, 4/25:

“…he [Ferguson] was accused of creating panic by overestimating the potential death toll during the 2005 Bird [avian] Flu outbreak. Ferguson estimated 200 million could die. The real number was in the low hundreds.”

THIS is the basic model Ferguson has now used to project deaths from COVID-19.

Are your eyeballs popping? They should be.

Without further ado, here is the Business Insider, 4/25, reporting Neil Ferguson’s other grotesque prediction failures:

“Michael Thrusfield, a professor of veterinary epidemiology at Edinburgh University, told the paper he had ‘déjà vu’ after reading the [Ferguson] Imperial paper [on COVID], saying Ferguson was responsible for excessive animal culling during the 2001 Foot and Mouth [actually, Mad Cow disease] outbreak.”

“Ferguson warned the government that 150,000 people could die. Six million animals were slaughtered as a precaution, costing the country billions in farming revenue. In the end, 200 people died.”

“In 2009, one of Ferguson’s models predicted 65,000 people could die from the Swine Flu outbreak in the UK — the final figure was below 500.”

Want more? The Business Insider raises the level of shock even higher.

“Ferguson co-founded the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, based at Imperial [College], in 2008. It is the leading body advising national governments on pathogen outbreaks.”

“It gets tens of millions of dollars in annual funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and works with the UK National Health Service, the US Centres for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), and is tasked with supplying the World Health Organization with ‘rapid analysis of urgent infectious disease problems’.”

Getting the picture?

Bill Gates wants a COVID vaccine before planetary lockdowns end. The lockdowns, of course, are already making a wreck of the Earth’s economies.

Bill Gates’ money goes to Ferguson.

Ferguson supplies, to the CDC and WHO, a vastly worthless but frightening computer projection of COVID deaths. Ferguson thus communicates a justification for the Gates global vaccine plan.

The CDC and WHO act, based on what Gates wants, as expressed by Ferguson.

National governments surrender to WHO and CDC. LOCKDOWNS.

What say you, Trump, Johnson, Merkel, Macron, et al? Are you merely clueless idiots, no brighter than some passerby on a street corner who’s handed a sign for a protest, and joins the line, having zero idea what he’s supporting? Are you that stupid, as you point to Ferguson’s farce of a computer model, with eyes glazed?

Are you simply in fear of experts who, on their best day, should be consigned to modelling numbers of cockroaches in motel rooms?

Or are you hostile idiots, who intend to destroy countless lives as economics sink further into ruin, day by day?

P.S. Perhaps you’re thinking, “These governments couldn’t be THAT crazy and stupid and vicious. They couldn’t have acted based on Neil Ferguson’s computer model…”

Business Insider, 4/25: “Ferguson’s team warned Boris Johnson that the quest for ‘herd immunity’ [letting people live their lives out in the open in the UK] could cost 510,000 lives, prompting an abrupt U-turn [massive national lockdown in the UK]…His [Ferguson’s] simulations have been influential in other countries as well, cited by authorities in the US, Germany, and France.”

“On March 23, the UK scrapped ‘herd immunity’ in favor of a suppression strategy, and the country made preparations for weeks of lockdown. Ferguson’s study was responsible.”

“Dr Deborah Birx, coronavirus response coordinator to the Trump administration, told journalists at a March 16 press briefing that the Imperial paper [Ferguson’s computer projection] prompted the CDC’s new advice to work from home and avoid gatherings of 10 or more.”

TO READ ALL MY ARTICLES ON THE COVID LUNACY:

https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/category/covid/

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(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

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Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

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The Real Pandemic Is Insulin Resistance

Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

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Indifference To Illegality Of Illinois' Stay-At-Home Order Is Frightening

Over two thousand years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero devoted his life to a struggle to preserve the best of the Roman Republic – constitutional checks on power, the rule of law and, to a significant degree for the age, democracy and individual rights.

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An ICU Doctor Reports From the Frontline

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I had been out of clinical medicine for a couple of years but felt a calling to return to the intensive care unit (ICU) to help my local area in London cope with the additional burden presented by this pandemic. Like everyone, I had read that the National Health Service (NHS) needed a dramatic increase in capacity to save lives—beds, ventilators, and staff. I was a little scared. Would there be enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)? Would my new colleagues accept me? Would I survive, or become another face on the news of a frontline staff member who had succumbed to the virus? I felt a little deflated when I contacted four local London hospitals to offer my help, my time, possibly my good health, only to have my emails either not replied to or batted around various HR departments. Hospital administrators struggled to process a volunteer who was an ex-intensive care doctor with 11 years’ experience. Classic NHS, I thought. The national institution that all we Brits know: at times loved, at times hated, full of wonderful people, but not always well-run. This was part of the reason I had left my UK clinical work to become a doctor in the global pharmaceutical industry.

I cycled up to the hospital on an unseasonally warm day before the Easter weekend. My first day back. What immediately struck me was that the corridors of the old Victorian hospital were empty. Where was everybody? Where was the pandemic? There seemed to be no patients, no staff, no one about at all. Had this all been media hype? I expected the hospital to be a hive of bustle. The front line. This was where the rubber met the road of tackling COVID-19, I thought.

I was right, but not in the way I expected. COVID-19 had generated huge amounts of demand in the ICU and acute ward but the rest of the hospital had effectively shut down. Hundreds of patients had been discharged from their hospital beds in anticipation of the pandemic. Patients were now not presenting to hospital for routine medical issues. Heart attacks, serious infections, strokes—where were these patients? Perhaps, tragically, they were following too closely the UK government’s advice to “Stay Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives.” Effective, clear messaging: the Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his chief advisor Dominic Cummings are renowned for it. So effective that even our four-year-old repeats it. Will more patients lose their lives for this reason than the lives saved from the lockdown? We know from early Italian reports that their cardiac centres had not had the throughput they usually experience during the COVID-19 peak. Heart attack patients had been staying home. Perhaps it was not communicated clearly enough that people should still seek medical attention if they feel they need it: COVID-19 does not mean suffer in silence.

After a short local induction, I was back on the front line. Very quickly I got a clear picture of the situation. The ICU, which usually had capacity for 10 ventilated patients, had nearly 30 ventilated patients following the requisition of adjacent clinical wards. Theatres and theatre recovery had also been shut down for normal business and were being used as an extension of the ICU. They were stretched, but just about coping, I thought. Doctors and nurses from all around the hospital had been redeployed to the ICU.

All the patients on the ICU were COVID-19 patients, all having followed a very similar clinical trajectory: a period of fevers and feeling unwell followed by worsening breathlessness. The unlucky few, after a period of oxygen therapy on the ward, would become too tired to maintain the additional breathing requirements of COVID-19 to maintain normal oxygen levels in the blood. For these patients, doctors would be required to make a decision—would they benefit from being sedated, intubated, and having their breathing performed by a ventilator on the ICU? This is not such an easy decision. If a patient is selected for this type of medical intervention when they are too frail, they would likely be consigned to a prolonged, uncomfortable, and undignified death in the intensive care unit. Surviving critical illness requires a degree of fitness and conditioning—for patients who don’t have this, intensive care therapy can be unnecessarily distressing and ultimately futile. It is thus crucial that the right patients are chosen for the ICU.

In addition, doctors must consider the challenging, but very real situation of stewarding limited capacity in the face of additional demand: giving an ICU bed to someone today who may not benefit, but who will restrict access for a patient tomorrow that might. These situations are perpetually challenging and put two of the fundamental principles of medical ethics at odds: autonomy and distributive justice. For example, a clinician must uphold the wishes and rights of the individual, while also making sure that the broader population can access the same treatment if they need it. In an ideal world this would not be a problem as we would have unlimited medical resources. But reality, particularly in the NHS, which immediately prior to COVID-19 had one of the lowest numbers of ICU beds per capita in the developed world, dictates that rationing decisions must be made. This is even more acute when demand is as high as it is in the COVID-19 crisis.

Much has been made in the British media of the need for additional ventilators. Mechanical ventilation was invented in the 1920s during the polio pandemic. The ‘Iron Lung’ was a machine that supported the work of breathing to patients who were unable to breathe for themselves via an iron cylinder that contained a polio patient’s body, but not their head. Cyclical negative and positive air pressure in the cylinder generated a gradient to suck air into, and then force air out of, a patient’s lungs. Ventilators are now much more advanced, driving air in and out of a patient’s diseased lungs via a plastic tube that is inserted through the vocal cords into the trachea.

This technological advancement is crucial, as the damage COVID-19 can do to a patient’s lungs is considerable. The lungs of these patients become infiltrated with fluid and scar tissue, limiting the normal function of gaseous exchange while becoming very stiff. As a consequence, many of these patients require ventilators to generate high inflation pressures to fill the lungs modestly. To further manage this problem COVID-19 teams are using a strategy of routinely “proning” patients, a practice used commonly in the ICU I am working in, as well as in others. Proning patients, or turning them on their front, can help redirect oxygen to healthier parts of the lungs and give damaged areas a chance to rest and recover. This is a therapeutic strategy well known to ICU doctors but infrequently used and certainly not deployed on the scale that it is being used now. Proning patients carries risks: It requires a team of seven people to turn the patient, taking great care not to pull out or dislodge any lines or tubes that are providing life-sustaining treatments. Humans are not used to lying face down for 16 hours and thus great care must be taken to protect the body from pressure injuries to the face and other parts of the body.

But the lack of ventilators hasn’t been as much of a concern as many expected. Hospitals can access a lot of ventilators across ICUs and operating theatres, plus simpler ventilators for transporting patients or providing non-invasive breathing support on the wards. More profound shortfalls in capacity during the crisis appear to be manifesting in two forms. The first is ICU nurses, who are simultaneously caring for two or three patients when they would normally only be looking after one. ICU nurses are some of the true heroes of this pandemic.

The second shortage is dialysis machines. These machines are used for patients who experience kidney failure. COVID-19 can trigger an inflammatory process, or ‘cytokine storm’, seven to 10 days into the infection. This can lead to kidney failure—both kidneys cease to perform their usual function of cleaning the blood and eliminating waste products via the urine. As a consequence, many COVID-19 patients require dialysis support, but there are profound shortages of these machines given the additional demand. Dialysis machines are therefore being rotated around COVID-19 patients who require them, rather than being used continuously until the kidneys recover, which is normal practice. This means patients with COVID-19 requiring dialysis are having to endure periods of time where they are not dialysed. Whether this will affect outcomes for these patients has yet to be seen. For patients who become critically ill with COVID-19, the challenges are very great—multiple organs are failing simultaneously requiring many therapies, both pharmacological and mechanical. This produces a complex illness where it is sometimes difficult to work out whether a particularly intervention has helped or harmed a patient.

Most heart-breakingly, families of these seriously ill patients are not allowed to the bedsides of their loved ones to prevent further spread of the virus. As a result, doctors give daily updates to the families regarding the clinical situation by telephone. I have felt the anticipation down the line immediately after I lead with, “Hi this is George, one of the ICU doctors. Can I update you about how your dad is getting on?” Families must wonder if this is the phone call they most dread. Sometimes it is. Our unit is able to provide video calls to families so they can see their loved ones in their final moments, before the machines are turned off, and the patient is allowed to pass away peacefully without the machines and monitors and their accompanying noises. These calls are heart-wrenching, as you might expect. Many of the victims are young—in their 40s or 50s. The doctors and nurses, in full PPE, emotionally hold the hands of these patients as the heart makes its final beat. The commitment and compassion of these frontline staff is overwhelming.

What next? Will there be a second peak if lockdown restrictions are eased in the coming months? What will happen when lockdown ends? Will the clinical trials yield an effective therapy or vaccine? This illness is like no other medics have experienced—we are learning on the hoof. How many will die? How many clinical staff will die? Time will tell, but one thing we have learnt is that there is no shortage of humanity on the wards and ICUs of the UK and beyond.

 

George Godfrey is an ICU doctor at a London hospital.

Feature image: Douris, Lebanon, 7 April 2020. Frontline staff on COVID Ward A at Dar Al Amal University Hospital’s novel coronavirus treatment facility. They are currently caring for five patients, two in the ICU. Elizabeth Fitt/Alamy Live News

The post An ICU Doctor Reports From the Frontline appeared first on Quillette.

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Letter from Thailand

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Guest Post by Thaisleeze

This covid scenario is doing my head in, to use a modern day term. The direction my thoughts are taking these days give me cause for concern for my sanity, or more correctly, would give some others cause to worry.

Hypothetically, if there were a group of world leaders who shared a common philosophy that aimed at a ‘one world order’ with corporations edging national sovereignty aside, this virus is doing a great job of furthering their aims. Again hypothetically, if such a group exists, they have many forums, some secret, to debate and plan. In no particular order there is Davos, Bilderberg, Council of Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission for starters, all of which featured a member of the Rothschild family in their founding.

At the political level there has been the European Community (Macron is a former Rothschild banker) whose policies confound most right thinking folk. Closely aligned with them are the Labour Party of Bliar, the Democrats since Willy Clinton, and most of current Australian, New Zealand and Canadian politics. Add to this countless think tanks and institutions who all seem to have one thing in common; they receive funding from the same sources. Cream on the top, the five eyes intelligence crews. Kissinger as Chairman?

Factually, we see the internet monopolies acting quite shockingly in terms of what opinion and news can be disseminated. Highly qualified medical folk are being blocked and censored at the same time they announce that the WHO are the only group to be believed when they are clearly ineffectual and on the Chinese team. The five eyes legacy media are on board too. Just today my daily check of all their home pages (takes me an hour a day) tells me they are still trying to scare the sh*t out of people and exaggerating the deaths in the UK and USA.

Oregon, a state with more deaths from ingrowing toenails than from covid, is by decree of the Democrat governor, shut down until July 6th. No doubt in my mind there are people in the five eyes countries who want to have a mega economic depression. Curious too how suddenly so many five eyes meat packing plants have to close with a week or two of each other.

Crucially, the virus has kept the Deep State civil war in America out of the news. The intensity of this fight has been growing fast with evidence being dripped out consistently for the past 3 months. Even to the extent that there is now documentary evidence from the Obama administration era that implies Obama himself was directing the efforts to scuttle Trump from the moment he appeared to be a shoe-in for the Republican nomination in 2015.

Such was their confidence in bringing him down and installing Killary they did not start to panic and cover their trails until after the election and even harbored hopes of stopping his inauguration going ahead. The Orange Man team is going to unleash a string of indictments unprecedented in American history. Judicial Watch has had some astounding successes and it seems 90% certain they now have Killary in a position where she will have to give evidence in court, under oath, about her 30,000 missing emails.

Any intelligent human who has taken time to investigate 9/11 now knows that the 3 towers were brought down by controlled thermite demolitions. The Patriot Act that passed into law in response, introduced within 2 weeks of the attack, is proven to have been already written and opened the door to all the programs Snowden exposed. If over 3,000 lives were an acceptable cost in 2001 are the current losses also acceptable, especially as they are predominantly old, poor, colored etc? As an aside, check out the father of Bill Gates, eugenicist extraordinaire.

Pulling it all together I am coming around to the possibility I aired somewhat tongue in cheek when the virus first appeared, that it is a planned Deep State event. They knew a year ago that the financial system was living on borrowed time. They also knew of the plan by Trump and his team to expose their treason.

Yes, he is a fool, but a fool who won by the rules, their rules, and that meant the 8 years they had penciled in for Killary, working in the corporatist camp, went up in smoke. In the meantime they have grabbed powers at all levels that are unlikely to be fully rescinded when the dust settles. Big corporations come out big winners post-virus, much of their smaller competition killed off or handicapped, Virgin Australia being the best example so far but already there are plenty of others.

China was the perfect patsy. Meanwhile Killary is standing by hoping for the call after Joe bows ungracefully out.

All in all we are quite happy here in boring old Thailand (who I now believe to have done a good job and with limited figure fudging), especially as the booze sale ban was lifted today….guess who is tying one on later

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Conservative Candace Owens is suspended from Twitter after challenging tyrannical Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

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Candace was locked out of her Twitter account. The Pro-Trump author, speaker and pundit has over 2.2 million followers on the social media platform! Candace is also one of President Trump's most vocal and popular supporters. Candace wrote The Gateway Pundit and sent us the tweet that infuriated the Twitter elites: "Apparently @GovWhitmer believes she is a duly elected dictator of a socialist country. The people of Michigan need to stand up to her. Open your businesses. Go to work. The police think she's crazy too. They are not going to arrest 10,000,000 people for going to work.

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German Lawyer Sent to Psychiatric Ward for Organizing Protest Against COVID-19 Lockdown

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Resistance to mass house arrest is mental illness.

By Kurt Nimmo

Global Research, May 02, 2020

First published on April 16, 2020

In the Soviet Union, activists were sent to state psychiatric wards. According to the state, any and all opposition to government policy was considered a form of mental illness. 

Stephanie Buck writes about the treatment of the “social parasite” Joseph Brodsky. 

In 1963, Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was seized and sent to a mental institution… Hospital workers pumped him with tranquilizers and repeatedly woke him during the night. He was given cold baths and wrapped in wet canvas that shrank and cut his skin while drying.

It is not likely German lawyer Beate Bahner will be tortured like Brodsky. However, that does not make her arrest and forced confinement in a mental institution any less egregious. 

Welsh hill farmer@FreeWales

It has begun: German medical lawyer Beate Bahner, who has been committed to a psychiatric institution for publicly disagreeing with lockdown.https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/coronavirus-lockdown-german-lawyer-detained-opposition …

Coronavirus lockdown: German lawyer detained for opposition

ukcolumn.org

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2:35 PM – Apr 14, 2020

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“Bahner had become known in the past few days with a call for nationwide demonstrations and an urgent application for the abolition of all corona protective measures,” reports Welt. “The [medical specialist] lawyer from Heidelberg considers the corona rules to be excessive and advocates for them to be abolished.”

Prior to her arrest, which she resisted, Bahner’s website was shut down at the request of the Mannheim police, according to the newspaper. 

World Updates@Rntk____

Hundreds pour onto the streets of Berlin to protest.

Protest to end the lockdown #COVID19

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In America, the state has yet to lock dissidents up in mental institutions, although police have threatened people for attending church services and disobeying social distancing mandates.

In Mississippi, parishioners were fined $500 for attending a drive-in church service. In Massachusetts, the governor and local government control freaks ordered citizens to wear masks. The city of Lynn imposed a mandatory curfew. Authorities in Minneapolis charged twenty-three people with violating stay-at-home orders.

Selected Articles: Racism, Russophobia and the Western Media

In Australia and Britain, police are fining citizens for daring to go outside (doing so in Queensland will result in a $100k fine). The dictator president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has ordered police and the military to shoot and kill all in violation of an iron-fisted lockdown. 

As a nation-wide lockdown and draconian measures destroy business, jobs, and lives, people are beginning to resist.

In Michigan, protesters gathered outside the state capitol to denounce Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s lockdown.

“We do not agree with or consent to our unalienable rights being restricted or rescinded for any reason, including the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Michigan United for Liberty on its Facebook page. 

Alex Berenson

@AlexBerenson

Wow. The Michigan anti-lockdown Facebook group gained another 45,000+ followers yesterday and is now close to 310,000, ~4% of the state’s adult population. Wonder how many will show up for the protest.

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Troy@Yortious

#stopthelockdown #TheRealDonaldTrump
This will only get worse until we reverse course on this lockdown. Which is destroying our economy, everything America stands for around freedom, and peoples livelihood.https://www.foxnews.com/politics/coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders-protests-economy …

Coronavirus stay-at-home orders stir protests nationwide amid fears of economic collapse

At least 15,000 cars and trucks are expected to descend on Michigan’s state capital on Wednesday to protest what they are calling Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s tyrannical new guidelines to slow the spread…

foxnews.com

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In Raleigh, North Carolina the police denounced a protest against lockdown as “non-essential activity,” a direct violation of the First Amendment.

Alex Berenson

@AlexBerenson

I wanted to believe this was a joke or a hoax – @raleighpolice calling a protest a “non-essential activity” and arresting someone for speaking out against the state’s lockdown. But it is as real as Stalin.

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Protesters angry with Gov. Mike DeWine’s lockdown order interrupted a coronavirus briefing at the Ohio Statehouse on Thursday. 

10TV

@10TV

Protesters gather outside Ohio Statehouse during coronavirus briefing https://bit.ly/2K4Yc6x  #10TV

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Officialdom has warned lockdowns may be in place until a vaccine is manufactured, possibly 18 months from now. This is a sure recipe for civil unrest and violence. It is not feasible for millions of people—and billions around the world—to endure lockdown and other authoritarian measures, possibly indefinitely. 

In Germany, the state has moved to declare opposition to the destruction of civilization a mental illness. As more people resist mass house arrest and enforced privation, the state will undoubtedly resort to measures above and beyond locking activists up in mental institutions. 

NORAD and the Pentagon have planned for civil unrest for some time. The military is now engaged in a PR campaign to “reassure the public” that it will use the appropriate protective equipment as it prepares to put down inevitable uprisings. 

Antiwar.com@Antiwarcom

NORAD Wants Photos of Troops to ‘Reassure the Public’
Seeks photos of troops in US wearing proper protective equipment#NORAD #Coronavirus #Covid19https://news.antiwar.com/2020/04/13/norad-wants-photos-of-troops-to-reassure-the-public/ …

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Kurt Nimmo, Global Research, 2020

German Lawyer Sent to Psychiatric Ward for Organizing Protest Against COVID-19 Lockdown

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