A scientific study which found COVID-19 may have been a "cell-culture" uniquely adapted for transmission to humans (more so than any other animal - including bats), is gaining steam.
Most people are more likely to wind up six feet under because of almost anything else under the sun other than COVID-19.
The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26 percent. Officials estimate a 0.4 percent fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35 percent rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26 percent — almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago.
Until now, we have been ridiculed for thinking the death rate was that low, as opposed to the 3.4 percent estimate of the World Health Organization, which helped drive the panic and the lockdowns. Now the CDC is agreeing to the lower rate in plain ink.
Plus, ultimately we might find out that the IFR is even lower because numerous studies and hard counts of confined populations have shown a much higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. Simply adjusting for a 50 percent asymptomatic rate would drop their fatality rate to 0.2 percent – exactly the rate of fatality Dr. John Ionnidis of Stanford University projected.
More importantly, as I mentioned before, the overall death rate is meaningless because the numbers are so lopsided. Given that at least half of the deaths were in nursing homes, a back-of-the-envelope estimate would show that the infection fatality rate for non-nursing home residents would only be 0.1 percent or 1 in 1,000. And that includes people of all ages and all health statuses outside of nursing homes. Since nearly all of the deaths are those with comorbidities.
The CDC estimates the death rate from COVID-19 for those under 50 is 1 in 5,000 for those with symptoms, which would be 1 in 6,725 overall, but again, almost all those who die have specific comorbidities or underlying conditions. Those without them are more likely to die in a car accident. And schoolchildren, whose lives, mental health, and education we are destroying, are more likely to get struck by lightning.
To put this in perspective, one Twitter commentator juxtaposed the age-separated infection fatality rates in Spain to the average yearly probability of dying of anything for the same age groups, based on data from the Social Security Administration. He used Spain because we don’t have a detailed infection fatality rate estimate for each age group from any survey in the U.S. However, we know that Spain fared worse than almost every other country. This data is actually working with a top-line IFR of 1 percent, roughly four times what the CDC estimates for the U.S., so if anything, the corresponding numbers for the U.S. will be lower.
Being alive means there is a risk that you will die in every year of your life. Normally we don't think about this because the probability is very small.
It turns out that even if you are infected with COVID, your increased risk to die vs normal is not very large at all. pic.twitter.com/lrQnTuHYRS
ORIGINAL LINK "Like It Was Designed To Infect Humans": COVID-19 'Cell Culture' Theory Gains SteamTyler DurdenMon, 05/25/2020 - 12:30
A scientific study which found COVID-19 may have been a "cell-culture" uniquely adapted for transmission to humans (more so than any other animal - including bats), is gaining steam.
The paper, currently under peer review, comes from Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, who has spent over two decades developing vaccines against influenza, Ebola, and animal Sars. He says his findings allow for the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory, according to Sky News.
"The two possibilities which I think are both still open is that it was a chance transmission of a virus from an as yet unidentified animal to human. The other possibility is that it was an accidental release of the virus from a laboratory," said Petrovsky, adding "Certainly we can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment rather than from an animal. They are both open possibilities."
Professor Petrovsky, who is the Chairman and Research Director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, said COVID-19 has genetic elements similar to bat coronaviruses as well as other coronaviruses.
The way coronavirus enters human cells is by binding to a protein on the surface of lung-cells called ACE2. The study showed the virus bound more tightly to human-ACE2 than to any of the other animals they tested.
“It was like it was designed to infect humans,” he said.
“One of the possibilities is that an animal host was infected by two coronaviruses at the same time and COVID-19 is the progeny of that interaction between the two viruses. -Sky News
"The same process can happen in a petri-dish," added Petrovsky. "If you have cells in culture and you have human cells in that culture which the viruses are infecting, then if there are two viruses in that dish, they can swap genetic information and you can accidentally or deliberately create a whole third new virus out of that system."
"In other words COVID-19 could have been created from that recombination event in an animal host or it could have occurred in a cell-culture experiment."
In January, Petrovsky began modeling the virus to try and create a vaccine candidate. According to the report, he then began to explore "what animal species might have been involved in the transmission to humans" in order to better understand the origins of the virus, when he discovered how well it infects humans over other species.
"We found that the COVID-19 virus was particularly well-adapted to bind to human cells and that was far superior to its ability to bind to the cells of any other animal species which is quite unusual because typically when a virus is well-adapted to an animal and then it by chance crosses to a human, typically, you would expect it to have lower-binding to human cells than to the original host animal. We found the opposite so that was a big surprise," he said.
When asked why mainstream scientists are still clinging to the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market, he said that scientists "try not to be political" but that that scientists who support the lab escape theory risk negatively impacting their industry with tighter laboratory controls.
"For instance, if it was to turn out that this virus may have come about because of an accidental lab release that would have implications for how we do viral research in laboratories all around the world which could make doing research much harder," he said, adding "So I think the inclination of virus researchers would be to presume that it came from an animal until proven otherwise because that would have less ramifications for how we are able to do research in the future. The alternative obviously has quite major implications for science and science on viruses, not just obviously political ramifications which we’re all well aware of."
Petrovsky has called for immediate investigation now, and not when the pandemic is over - calling any delay in fact finding a "mistake."
"I’m certainly very much in favour of a scientific investigation. It’s only objective should be to get to the bottom of how did this pandemic happen and how do we prevent a future pandemic…. not to have a witch-hunt."
What “the Resistance” really fears more than anything is General Michael Flynn’s mouth. He’s been under a judicial gag order since his case went before Judge Emmet Sullivan’s federal district court. Understandably, Gen. Flynn wasn’t eager to complicate his unjust plight with a contempt citation. Judge Sullivan’s recent shenanigans have one object: to keep that gag order in force as long as possible. The moment Judge Sullivan confirms the DOJ’s move to dismiss the charges, as he is duty-bound to do, General Flynn will be free to offer his views to the public. That might be inconvenient in an election season.
I’m sure he has a lot to say. Gen. Flynn was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency for two years (2012 – 2014) under Barack Obama, and he knows a ton about every crooked operation Mr. Obama presided over, including the Benghazi fiasco, the Ukraine regime change op, and especially Mr. Obama’s hijacking of the NSA supercomputer surveillance database known as “the Hammer,” which was set up originally to track terrorists and then used by DNI James Clapper and CIA chief John Brennan to spy on Americans, most particularly Mr. Obama’s political adversaries. It’s rumored that Mr. Obama took the database with him when he left the White House, and it is said to contain great gouts of usefully damning information about just about everyone in government, including senators, congressmen, and Supreme Court justices.
Gen. Flynn became an antagonist to Obama & Co. when he objected to the nuclear deal they were cooking up with Iran and when he spoke out against the CIA’s 2013 Timber Sycamore op to arm and give money to Isis terrorists opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Obama canned Gen. Flynn in 2014. What really sealed Gen. Flynn’s fate was when he started publicly complaining about the politicization of John Brennan’s CIA. The New York Times quoted him saying, “They’ve lost sight of who they actually work for. They work for the American people. They don’t work for the president of the United States. Frankly, it’s become a very political organization.”
And a few months later, he jumped on Donald Trump’s campaign bandwagon. When he led the cheer “Lock her up” at the Republican convention, you can imagine how that gave the heebie-jeebies to a whole lot of other Deep State denizens besides She-Whose-Turn-Was-Foiled. And then, Lord have mercy, he was appointed to sit at Mr. Trump’s very elbow in the West Wing as National Security Advisor! Well, you can imagine the tremors that provoked. Gen. Flynn had declared his intention to completely reorganize, partially dismantle, and audit the intel community monster that had spread like a slime mold through the government. Mr. Brennan especially feared the audit part of the deal, since his agency regarded the billions of dollars that flowed in and out of it as just another one of its sacred secrets. Flynn had to be stopped.
So, John Brennan concocted the RussiaGate scam to put over the idea that General Flynn was an errand boy of Vladimir Putin —lock him up! — and for good measure, Mr. Trump probably was, too. Once they embarked on that grand misadventure, and enlisted the foolish James Comey and his FBI zealots to assist, the gang found themselves involved in a dangerous game of sedition, poorly thought out and executed desperately. And finally, by all that’s holy, the improbable Mr. Trump actually won the election, ensuring that he would be privy to every dark secret moldering in the vaults of the US government.
For three years, the whole wicked scheme has been slowly but steadily unspooling. The hapless (and perhaps senile) Robert Mueller was brought in to cap what threatened to become a political nuclear meltdown. We must suppose that Mr. Mueller was just a figurehead, and yet the supposedly brightest gang of Lawfare attorneys he enlisted — Weissmann, Van Grack, Rhee, Zebley, et. al. — absolutely blew it. They came up with zilch on Russian collusion, they muffed the attempt to nail Mr. Trump on an obstruction of justice rap (and watched helplessly as the inept Schiff & Nadler flopped fecklessly at impeachment), and now, having been exposed in the malicious prosecution of Gen. Flynn, they were forced to drop the case against him.
Finally, Judge Sullivan was recruited by The Resistance in a last-ditch effort to keep Gen. Flynn silent for a couple months more by ginning up an amicus circus that would invite a zillion bogus filings of briefs to be meticulously examined and argued, a pointless exercise in sound and fury. In doing so, he contradicted 25 of his own previous rulings against amicus filings by the defendant, and also moved in violation of a Supreme Court decision (Sineneng-Smith, 2020) and a DC Circuit case (Fokker Services 2016), as well as federal court rules against the use of amicus filings in criminal proceedings.
Now he has a few days to answer a mandamus motion from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to cut the shit and do his bound duty in the case. I won’t rehearse the separation-of-powers argument, except to say that Judge Sullivan doesn’t have a leg to stand on, and will be lucky if he is not reprimanded by the higher court. He’s been played by the Lawfare gang and exposed as a useful idiot. They’ve tossed aside his personal honor like a banana skin. Gawd knows what else prompted him to lawyer-up.
The colossal melodrama of a sedition conspiracy is unspooling swiftly now. Before much longer, US Attorney John Durham will weigh in with something, whether it’s a mere report detailing gross abuses of power, or perhaps a string of hard indictments against the seditionists. With bales of evidence of their misdeeds now in the public domain, the various players must be turning on each other viciously now. There’s probably not enough room under the proverbial bus to throw anybody else. They’ll need a train.
Also, comically, FBI Director Christopher Wray opened an “internal investigation” last week to ascertain whether any current members of his agency engaged in any misconduct around the Flynn case. That’s cute. It only took him three years. Of course, most of the major perps have already been fired, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page. Why is Mr. Wray even still in that job, where his main occupation has been obstructing the release of court-ordered and congressionally subpoenaed documents?
You know what would be really a great move? Fire Chris Wray’s ass and replace him with outgoing Acting DNI Richard Grenell. Let Mr. Grenell just be Acting FBI Director for the statutory six months moving toward the election. Don’t even bother to nominate him and go through a senate confirmation. I bet a lot remaining information would get unstuck fast.
Oh, and get ready for Gen. Michael Flynn to speak. He might have a few interesting things to say. Not all of the news media will ignore him, and then those who do will have a lot to answer for about their long-running complicity in the criminal conspiracy to overthrow a president.
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What nobody dares whisper is 'there is no alternative to collapse' because the system is now too fragile and brittle to survive.
TINA--there is no alternative--is throwing an orgy of money-creation, and it's one for the ages: The Federal Reserve has created over $3 trillion out of thin air in a few months and invited all the usual parasites, predators and speculators to the orgy.
You and I, mere taxpayers? We get to watch as our "betters" feast on the Fed's limitless bounty of free money for financiers and other parasites and predators. Of course we don't get a clear view of the proceedings; the orgy is all behind closed doors.
What we see is the threadbare comedy of Fed Chair Jay Powell coming out of the orgy to assure us that the orgy is all for the good of the country--ha-ha-ha. Those gorging on the Fed feast inside are in danger of laughing so hard at Powell's comedy routine they might choke.
Your share of the orgy is a bowl of thin gruel: $1,200. That wasn't distributed out of kindness or generosity; like all federal giveaways, it's real purpose is to give you enough cash to make your loan payments so all the parasites and predators in the Fed's orgy won't experience the terrible suffering caused by debt-serfs defaulting.
The excuse for the orgy is always the same: there is no alternative. We have to bail out the greedy corporations that borrowed billions to buy back their own stocks, the corporations that sold junk debt to finance their bonuses and dividends, the financiers who bought the risky debt, the speculators who front-run the Fed's purchases of assets and on and on in an endless parade of fraud and corruption--because if we don't bail out the speculators and other parasites, the whole financial system will implode and that would be terrible.
Terrible for who? To answer the question, we need to ponder the fundamental nature of the Fed and our financial system, which can be summarized in one line: anything goes, and winners take all.
Anything goes, because money buys political influence and so what was once illegal--buying back your own stock, advertising medications directly to consumers, etc.-- are not just made legal but normalized by constant propaganda in the corporate media that these forms of legalized looting are good for the nation because... well, that doesn't matter, just take our word for it.
When anything goes, the winners take all. This is how we've ended up with a unstable, fragile economy dominated by a handful of corporations in each sector whose sole purpose is to maximize profits by any means available, and it just so happens the most profitable arrangements are monopoly and cartels, and so that's what we have: an economy of high costs, enormous profits, low-quality goods and services for the bottom 95% and an extreme concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the winners.
This dynamic also characterizes the public sector, where anything goes if you can get away with it has generated a few winners-- employees of small school districts getting salaries of $350,000 and pensions to match, and so on--and a multitude of losers as actual services for the public decay even as costs soar. Naturally, questions about this are dismissed with TINA: there is no alternative.
The fragility of such a system is so extreme that the winners' only hope to hold onto their booty is to persuade us that the simulations of open markets and democracy they conjure up are "real" in the sense that we can't really see the Emperor's fine clothing but we accept that this must be a flaw in our own sight, rather than what it really is: self-serving institutionalized delusion: believe us when we assure you that there is no alternative.
So as the greediest and most parasitic few gorge on TINA's orgy, try not to bust a gut laughing at Jay Powell's comedy act justifying the orgy because really, there is no alternative other than a collapse of what deserves to collapse and what will collapse despite (or as a result of) the Fed's manic money-printing.
What nobody dares whisper is there is no alternative to collapse because the system is now too fragile and brittle to survive. TINA may get the last laugh after all.
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On May 12th, Anthony Fauci testified before the Senate that reopening the economy too quickly could lead to “suffering and death that could be avoided [that] could even set you back on the road to…economic recovery.”
On May 23rd, Anthony Fauci appeared to reverse course when he told CNBC that the stay-at-home orders could end up causing “irreparable damage” and “I don’t want people to think that any of us feel that staying locked down for a prolonged period of time is the way to go.”
This about-face triggered tweets of exasperation. Then I saw Amazing Polly’s tweet that what Fauci did was an example of the “Alice in Wonderland Technique”.
I’ve heard of Alice in Wonderland – but a technique by that name? This sent me down a rabbit hole for which I’m grateful, because for the past three years, I’ve been talking about the “psychological civil war” being waged against us, not knowing that the orchestrated gaslighting we’ve been subjected to is a scaled-up version of what was originally developed as an interrogation technique.
In other words, what we’ve been being put through is literally torture and the technique described in “Alice in Wonderland: The Power of Applied Confusion”, a chapter starting on page 129 of a manual entitled, ‘EDUCING INFORMATION – Interrogation: Science and Art’, published by the National Defense Intelligence College in 2006, citing a 1963 torture manual entitled, “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual, Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual,” based on CIA research, much of it conducted through the MK ULTRA program but some of it going all the way back to the 1350s, to the work of Nicholas Eymerich, Inquisitor General of Aragon, Spain.
In this video, Richard Grannon does a good job explaining the details of this torture technique that I feel could help us to cope with the madness of COVID-19. When we know that it’s called Alice in Wonderland and that it incorporates Gregory Bateson’s double-bind theory of Schizophrenia, scaled-up to the level of a global psyop, it can help us release ourselves from its thrall.
Grannon explains:
“You bring the person to be interrogated into the room, and you have the three interrogators immediately to start to badger them…with nonsensical questions. The pitch and the tone and the pacing of their questions will not match the subjects which they’re covering. Often times, the subjects that they’re asking the person being interrogated about are nonsensical. They go nowhere, they mean nothing.
“The purpose stated in the interrogation technique is not just to obliterate the normal. The purpose is also to replace that which is normal, with the mindbogglingly bizarre. So the person goes into a state of deep trauma that is so awful, they would rather give up their secrets and return to a reality that makes sense, than have to continue with more days [of this]. It takes days for them to crack, usually.”
To me, this describes the antics seen in the unrelenting #FakeNews, the Mueller Investigation and the fake impeachment, concomitant with things like #MeToo and the transgender putsch that have become the themes of this era.
Christine Blasey Ford, Jussie Smollett and the media crucifixion of Nick Sandmann were illogical orchestrated psyops designed to badger everyone into agreement, in order to just make it stop.
We’ve known that this was unconventional warfare but knowing that it’s called the Alice in Wonderland technique empowers you to identify it when it’s happening, to help you distance yourself from the fragmentation that it is attempting to induce.
Grannon likens the psyop currently being unleashed upon the global populace (he recorded this last October) to 9/11, which he believes would be much harder to pull off today, with so many people carrying smartphones at all times.
He says, “If you’re going to do something naughty, I don’t think you can get away with it in the same way anymore. So what do you do? You level up. You go meta-, instead of trying to deceive people and work behind their backs, as to what it is you’re really doing, it’s way more efficient to just confuse them about what’s right and what’s wrong. Cognitive dissonance, nobody knows right from wrong. The really clever thing that they’ve done, the evil thing that they’ve done is the slow encroachment of the boundaries.”
Hopefully, these thoughts will help you assert your cognitive boundaries and will help you to insulate yourself to a some degree during the storm.
Did Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey just, sheepishly, issue a 'mea culpa' to all those innocent (mostly conservative) voices he has silenced in the last few years who dared to question the "Russia, Russia, Russia" narrative, the "Biden did nothing wrong" stories, the "Comey is an American hero" facts, and,
(@EthicalSkeptic) May 22, 2020
