lewrockwell--2020-06-20--Lies, Damned Lies, and Covid19

Lies, Damned Lies, and Covid19

Growing up as I did in the Cold War , I still experience a special kind of shudder whenever I come across an anecdote like that of Katya Soldak , whose Soviet nursery school teacher once showed her class a photograph clipped from a Western newspaper , “ depicting skinny [ Russian ] children in striped robes walking in a straight line.
” The capitalists who printed that picture wanted people to think Soviet children were “ treated like prisoners , ” the teacher declared angrily , “ when in reality the kids were on their way to a swimming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a nice story ( thought little Katya ) — except that “ I had never even seen a pool… .
[ T ] hey existed in my mind as does an exotic animal or an unvisited city.
” A time capsule from a remote dystopia ?
Think again .
Staring at me right now from the latest quarterly newsletter of my alma mater , the University of Virginia , is an identical piece of bad-is-good fakery : a photograph of an involuntarily isolated graduate student named Kalea Obermeyer , accompanied by a caption @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seated alone on a trunk in the confines of a cramped dormitory room , clumsily swathed in a surgical mask , “ shelters in place ” in “ her most secure housing during the pandemic.
” Unreported Truths abou ... Berenson , Alex Buy New $ 5.99 Being an honest sort , I have considered whether I ought to write to the editors of my old university ’ s magazine , accusing them of playing toady to democracy-destroying propagandists .
Should I remind these so-called educators of the young that the term “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to air raids , not to “ pandemics , ” and is a cruel hoax when pressed into service to describe what is actually an illegal quarantine ?
That the young woman in the photograph is not “ sheltered ” but confined ?
That pandemics have occurred many times before , and that what ’ s new this time around is not the flu but the police state ?
That the governor ’ s order placing this student ( and the rest of the citizenry ) under virtual house arrest is probably unconstitutional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stuck in her room — for no good reason I can discern — a whole host of local bus drivers , contract workers and university employees , including dining hall service workers who ’ ve labored there for decades , are all out of jobs ?
I ’ d like to write all that , and more , to the purveyors of this bit of fake news .
But I suspect I ’ d be wasting my time .
Mainstream media have recycled so many lies about COVID19 that by now every respectable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the rain knows perfectly well what he or she is supposed to make the rest of us believe .
And heaven help the dissenters !
Thus the once-respectable Atlantic , after months of promoting coronavirus hysteria , has published a kind of palinode that admits virtually every charge made by critics of lockdown policies — but still winds up gloomily insisting on the freedom-haters ’ moral supremacy , facts or no facts .
The authors ( Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer ) grudgingly concede the growing evidence that going outdoors , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a time per lockdown fiats , actually reduces the risk of infection .
They also admit that those who enforce our confinement clearly don ’ t believe their own hype about “ social distancing ” : police are “ crowding protesters together , blasting them with lung and eye irritants , and cramming them into paddy wagons and jails.
” A VOYAGE IN IMAGINATIO ... Holmes , Dr Joel S Buy New $ 9.95 They even point out that the police themselves rarely bother separating from one another .
But ultimately none @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : it ’ s “ obvious ” — evidence be damned — that just “ standing in a crowd for long periods raises the risk of increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2.
” Who says so ?
Why , Anthony Fauci does .
And what about all the evidence that COVID19 , never anywhere near as deadly as officials originally assured us it was , is on the way out ?
Here , too , the Atlantic ’ s paladins admit the facts but refuse to draw the obvious conclusion .
They note that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” the hardest-hit section of the US ; that new cases have leveled off or declined in the great majority of states ; and that “ hundreds of public-health professionals signed a letter this week declining to oppose the protests [ against police brutality ] ‘ as risky for COVID19 transmission.
’ ” They even admit that in Georgia and Florida , two states that enforced lockdowns least and opened up earliest , the numbers of new infections have been “ relatively flat.
” In the face of so much good news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do ?
“ [ T ] he US is not going to beat the coronavirus , ” Madrigal and Meyer groan in unison in the article ’ s key paragraph .
“ Collectively , we slowly seem to be giving up.
” Now there ’ s a specimen of doublethink even Orwell missed : victory is surrender ; lockdown is safety ; hysteria is virtue .
So I ’ m not planning to write to the editors at my alma mater — at least , not about that propagandists ’ playground known as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incarceration is the fashion in the Land of the Free , when lying is good sense and wrecking lives is “ health care , ” my old ideas of rational persuasion start to look like a parasol in a monsoon .
Instead , I am going to do a bit of ranting about words — the elements that lies are made of .
I do this because I am sure the twisting of language to cloak political and economic skullduggery — which I take to be the worst evils of the coronavirus outbreak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mainstream accounts .
And I do it because the politicians who tore up the Bill of Rights and thrust the US and much of the world to the brink of another Great Depression are not likely to change their spots — and unless we insist on calling their actions by their right names , we will be defenseless against their future machinations .
“ Political language , ” Orwell reminded us , “ is designed to make lies sound truthful…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
” Well , here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wind ” that made “ lies sound truthful ” over the past three months : The Chronic Fatigue Sy ... Ortleb , Charles Best Price : $ 16.55 Buy New $ 17.95 Shelter in place .
The fraudulent use of this term stands in synecdoche to all the rest .
“ Shelter in place ” originated in US Civil Defense regulations in the context of a possible nuclear attack ; over the following decades , the term evolved to mean any emergency order to “ take cover until the coast is clear on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never had the slightest connection with disease control .
An order that restricts the movement of someone who is not ill , but who is suspected of contact with someone who is , is called a “ quarantine.
” But there are laws that regulate slapping quarantine orders on people — to say nothing of an entire population — and the governors and mayors who were bent on lockdowns clearly didn ’ t intend to be constrained by anything as pedestrian as the law .
So they dug up this irrelevant phrase and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ huge numbers of citizens — in violation of quarantine statutes , without a court order , and without even a semblance of public debate — hoping nobody would notice the compounding of official malfeasance with verbal fakery .
It ’ s worth taking a moment to imagine how this trick must have been hatched in the bowels of some executive mansion .
I can picture someone like New Jersey governor Phil Murphy ( last seen claiming that the constraints of the Bill of Rights weren ’ t part of his job description ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , there ’ s got to be something to justify locking up the whole state without going through those pesky quarantine procedures !
” And I can see a harried assistant , having rummaged for hours in the archives , jogging into an office with the term “ shelter in place ” and a rather sheepish explanation that , well , it ’ s not about infection control , and doesn ’ t really have anything to do with the present situation , but it does say “ in place ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you know…and anyway , for God ’ s sake , there isn ’ t anything else !
And then it ’ s not hard to imagine the boss ( who knows the media better than his subordinates do ) triumphantly working the words “ shelter in place ” into his next public address , confident that few mainstream reporters will ask him where the phrase came from .
The imagined details are less important than the obvious fact that “ shelter in place ” could not have been sprung on us by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ term had to be found , and the officials who found it would necessarily have known what it meant , and therefore that its use in the context of a viral epidemic would constitute a fraud .
Fauci : The Bernie Mado ... Ortleb , Charles Buy New $ 5.99 Thus , anyone — and I mean anyone — who has employed the phrase “ shelter in place ” over the last three months has been repeating a lie .
It ’ s as simple as that .
Every public health care official @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scoundrel ; every “ journalist ” who has used it is a shameless propagandist ; every politician who has used it is an imposter who , in my view , deserves to be impeached or voted out of office forthwith .
Social distancing .
This one runs “ shelter in place ” a close second .
The phrase was nonexistent , or at best obscure , until rather recently ; when officials of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention used it in a 2007 advisory memorandum , they felt obliged to explain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that this definition does not include keeping people six feet apart , stifling them with surgical masks , or barring them from inviting family members to their apartments .
Evidently , not even the germophobes at the CDC were prepared to contemplate so brutal a disruption of human life just thirteen years ago .
In fact , the same memorandum stressed the importance of “ [ r ] espect for individual autonomy ” and “ each individual ’ s general right to noninterference , ” adding that even in the event the government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to shopping malls , “ [ a ] process should be in place for objections to be heard , restrictions appealed , and for new procedures to be considered prior to implementation ” — something never even remotely attempted during the last three months .
In other words , “ social distancing ” really means whatever the changing whims of our governors would like it to mean , as they continue to exercise “ emergency ” powers in what is clearly not an emergency .
Meanwhile , the use of the term gives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unprecedented government intrusions into the most basic interactions of human life .
The timing of the successive redefinitions of the phrase is itself instructive .
In my own state of New Jersey , masks were not required as a component of “ social distancing ” until mid-April , by which time it was clear that the number of new cases in the region was already leveling off .
( Masks remain mandatory in public as of this writing , even though the infection rate has fallen almost to pre-outbreak levels . )
Allow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment : “ social distancing ” took on a more extreme and divisive definition at just the moment that , by any rational calculation , restrictions should have been reduced , if not removed altogether !
And the most recent fiats from the governor suggest that nothing like ordinary companionship is going to be permitted any time soon — regardless of the facts .

Growing up as I did in the Cold War, I still experience a special kind of shudder whenever I come across an anecdote like that of Katya Soldak, whose Soviet nursery school teacher once showed her class a photograph clipped from a Western newspaper, “depicting skinny [Russian] children in striped robes walking in a straight line.”
The capitalists who printed that picture wanted people to think Soviet children were “treated like prisoners,” the teacher declared angrily, “when in reality the kids were on their way to a swimming pool in their bathrobes.”
Which was a nice story (thought little Katya) — except that “I had never even seen a pool…. [T]hey existed in my mind as does an exotic animal or an unvisited city.”
A time capsule from a remote dystopia? Think again.
Staring at me right now from the latest quarterly newsletter of my alma mater, the University of Virginia, is an identical piece of bad-is-good fakery: a photograph of an involuntarily isolated graduate student named Kalea Obermeyer, accompanied by a caption blandly informing the reader that the woman seated alone on a trunk in the confines of a cramped dormitory room, clumsily swathed in a surgical mask, “shelters in place” in “her most secure housing during the pandemic.” Unreported Truths abou... Berenson, Alex Buy New $5.99 (as of 03:17 UTC - Details)
Welcome to Pravda, COVID19 style.
Being an honest sort, I have considered whether I ought to write to the editors of my old university’s magazine, accusing them of playing toady to democracy-destroying propagandists.
Should I remind these so-called educators of the young that the term “shelter in place” is properly applied to air raids, not to “pandemics,” and is a cruel hoax when pressed into service to describe what is actually an illegal quarantine?
That the young woman in the photograph is not “sheltered” but confined? That pandemics have occurred many times before, and that what’s new this time around is not the flu but the police state? That the governor’s order placing this student (and the rest of the citizenry) under virtual house arrest is probably unconstitutional?
And that while she’s stuck in her room — for no good reason I can discern — a whole host of local bus drivers, contract workers and university employees, including dining hall service workers who’ve labored there for decades, are all out of jobs?
I’d like to write all that, and more, to the purveyors of this bit of fake news. But I suspect I’d be wasting my time.
Mainstream media have recycled so many lies about COVID19 that by now every respectable editor with enough sense to come in out of the rain knows perfectly well what he or she is supposed to make the rest of us believe. And heaven help the dissenters!
Thus the once-respectable Atlantic, after months of promoting coronavirus hysteria, has published a kind of palinode that admits virtually every charge made by critics of lockdown policies — but still winds up gloomily insisting on the freedom-haters’ moral supremacy, facts or no facts.
The authors (Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer) grudgingly concede the growing evidence that going outdoors, instead of being cooped up for months at a time per lockdown fiats, actually reduces the risk of infection.
They also admit that those who enforce our confinement clearly don’t believe their own hype about “social distancing”: police are “crowding protesters together, blasting them with lung and eye irritants, and cramming them into paddy wagons and jails.” A VOYAGE IN IMAGINATIO... Holmes, Dr Joel S Buy New $9.95 (as of 04:21 UTC - Details)
They even point out that the police themselves rarely bother separating from one another. But ultimately none of that matters to the liberal Atlantic: it’s “obvious” — evidence be damned — that just “standing in a crowd for long periods raises the risk of increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2.” Who says so? Why, Anthony Fauci does.
And what about all the evidence that COVID19, never anywhere near as deadly as officials originally assured us it was, is on the way out?
Here, too, the Atlantic’s paladins admit the facts but refuse to draw the obvious conclusion. They note that “the outbreak has eased in the Northeast,” the hardest-hit section of the US; that new cases have leveled off or declined in the great majority of states; and that “hundreds of public-health professionals signed a letter this week declining to oppose the protests [against police brutality] ‘as risky for COVID19 transmission.’”
They even admit that in Georgia and Florida, two states that enforced lockdowns least and opened up earliest, the numbers of new infections have been “relatively flat.”
In the face of so much good news, what are right-thinking police-state enthusiasts to do?
“[T]he US is not going to beat the coronavirus,” Madrigal and Meyer groan in unison in the article’s key paragraph. “Collectively, we slowly seem to be giving up.” Now there’s a specimen of doublethink even Orwell missed: victory is surrender; lockdown is safety; hysteria is virtue.
So I’m not planning to write to the editors at my alma mater — at least, not about that propagandists’ playground known as COVID19. When rights-trampling, economy-busting general incarceration is the fashion in the Land of the Free, when lying is good sense and wrecking lives is “health care,” my old ideas of rational persuasion start to look like a parasol in a monsoon.
Instead, I am going to do a bit of ranting about words — the elements that lies are made of. I do this because I am sure the twisting of language to cloak political and economic skullduggery — which I take to be the worst evils of the coronavirus outbreak — will be glossed over in future mainstream accounts.
And I do it because the politicians who tore up the Bill of Rights and thrust the US and much of the world to the brink of another Great Depression are not likely to change their spots — and unless we insist on calling their actions by their right names, we will be defenseless against their future machinations. “Political language,” Orwell reminded us, “is designed to make lies sound truthful…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Well, here are some choice examples of “pure wind” that made “lies sound truthful” over the past three months: The Chronic Fatigue Sy... Ortleb, Charles Best Price: $16.55 Buy New $17.95 (as of 05:07 UTC - Details)
Shelter in place. The fraudulent use of this term stands in synecdoche to all the rest. “Shelter in place” originated in US Civil Defense regulations in the context of a possible nuclear attack; over the following decades, the term evolved to mean any emergency order to “take cover until the coast is clear on order of officials.” But it has never had the slightest connection with disease control.
An order that restricts the movement of someone who is not ill, but who is suspected of contact with someone who is, is called a “quarantine.” But there are laws that regulate slapping quarantine orders on people — to say nothing of an entire population — and the governors and mayors who were bent on lockdowns clearly didn’t intend to be constrained by anything as pedestrian as the law.
So they dug up this irrelevant phrase and plastered it over their arbitrary confinements of huge numbers of citizens — in violation of quarantine statutes, without a court order, and without even a semblance of public debate — hoping nobody would notice the compounding of official malfeasance with verbal fakery.
It’s worth taking a moment to imagine how this trick must have been hatched in the bowels of some executive mansion.
I can picture someone like New Jersey governor Phil Murphy (last seen claiming that the constraints of the Bill of Rights weren’t part of his job description) barking at his aides, “Damn it, there’s got to be something to justify locking up the whole state without going through those pesky quarantine procedures!”
And I can see a harried assistant, having rummaged for hours in the archives, jogging into an office with the term “shelter in place” and a rather sheepish explanation that, well, it’s not about infection control, and doesn’t really have anything to do with the present situation, but it does say “in place” and, um, “shelter” and, you know…and anyway, for God’s sake, there isn’t anything else!
And then it’s not hard to imagine the boss (who knows the media better than his subordinates do) triumphantly working the words “shelter in place” into his next public address, confident that few mainstream reporters will ask him where the phrase came from.
The imagined details are less important than the obvious fact that “shelter in place” could not have been sprung on us by way of an innocent error. The term had to be found, and the officials who found it would necessarily have known what it meant, and therefore that its use in the context of a viral epidemic would constitute a fraud. Fauci: The Bernie Mado... Ortleb, Charles Buy New $5.99 (as of 02:55 UTC - Details)
Thus, anyone — and I mean anyone — who has employed the phrase “shelter in place” over the last three months has been repeating a lie. It’s as simple as that. Every public health care official who has used the phrase is a scoundrel; every “journalist” who has used it is a shameless propagandist; every politician who has used it is an imposter who, in my view, deserves to be impeached or voted out of office forthwith.
Social distancing. This one runs “shelter in place” a close second. The phrase was nonexistent, or at best obscure, until rather recently; when officials of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention used it in a 2007 advisory memorandum, they felt obliged to explain the term in a footnote:
Social distancing refers to methods for reducing frequency and closeness of contact between people in order to decrease the risk of transmission of disease. Examples of social distancing include cancellation of public events such as concerts, sports events, or movies, closure of office buildings, schools, and other public places, and restriction of access to public places such as shopping malls or other places where people gather.
Note that this definition does not include keeping people six feet apart, stifling them with surgical masks, or barring them from inviting family members to their apartments. Evidently, not even the germophobes at the CDC were prepared to contemplate so brutal a disruption of human life just thirteen years ago.
In fact, the same memorandum stressed the importance of “[r]espect for individual autonomy” and “each individual’s general right to noninterference,” adding that even in the event the government did close office buildings or restrict access to shopping malls, “[a] process should be in place for objections to be heard, restrictions appealed, and for new procedures to be considered prior to implementation” — something never even remotely attempted during the last three months.
In other words, “social distancing” really means whatever the changing whims of our governors would like it to mean, as they continue to exercise “emergency” powers in what is clearly not an emergency. Meanwhile, the use of the term gives a false patina of scientific legitimacy to unprecedented government intrusions into the most basic interactions of human life.
The timing of the successive redefinitions of the phrase is itself instructive. In my own state of New Jersey, masks were not required as a component of “social distancing” until mid-April, by which time it was clear that the number of new cases in the region was already leveling off. (Masks remain mandatory in public as of this writing, even though the infection rate has fallen almost to pre-outbreak levels.)
Allow that point to sink in for a moment: “social distancing” took on a more extreme and divisive definition at just the moment that, by any rational calculation, restrictions should have been reduced, if not removed altogether! And the most recent fiats from the governor suggest that nothing like ordinary companionship is going to be permitted any time soon — regardless of the facts.
Read the Whole Article


lewrockwell--2020-06-20--Floundering NATO Tries To Surface by Confronting China

On June 8 Jens Stoltenberg , the Secretary General of the U.S.-NATO military alliance , gave a speech at NATO ’ s new billion dollar headquarters in Brussels .
It was followed by a selection of patsy questions , but in spite of the trite predictability of Stoltenberg ’ s statements and the eager friendliness of the questioners , enough was said to indicate that NATO is still on the lookout for enemies to attempt to justify its continuing shaky existence .
New on the Stoltenberg list is China , which is a long way from the North Atlantic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rise of China is fundamentally shifting the global balance of power , heating up the race for economic and technological supremacy , multiplying the threats to open societies and individual freedoms and increasing the competition over our values and our way of life.
” He wants NATO to become involved with the U.S. in confronting China which has a population of 1.4 billion , the longest land border in the world ( 22,117 km ) and a coastline of 14,500 km ( the U.S. coastline is 19,924 km ) , which enormous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a large defence force .
NATO ’ s Secret Ar ... Daniele , Ganser Best Price : $ 70.25 Buy New $ 53.31 But he complained that China “ already has the second largest defence budget .
They are investing heavily in modern military capabilities , including missiles that can reach all NATO Allied countries .
They ’ re coming closer to us in cyberspace .
We see them in the Arctic , in Africa .
We see them investing in our critical infrastructure .
And they are working more and more together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a security consequence for NATO Allies .
And therefore , we need to be able to respond to that , to address that.
” This is not altogether consistent with the North Atlantic Treaty which is precise in stating that the members of the military alliance “ undertake , as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations , to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered , and to refrain in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.
” Yet Stoltenberg , with the energetic guidance of Washington , is threatening a “ global approach ” against China .
The fact that Russia and China are “ working more and more together ” is a major factor in Stoltenberg ’ s justification for revving up confrontation , and Washington thoroughly approves of measures that could disrupt mutually beneficial economic cooperation between Beijing and Moscow .
In May 2020 members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee proposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” intended to expand U.S. military deployment in Asia and “ send a strong signal to the Chinese Communist Party that the American people are committed to defending U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.
” Then in early June Senator Tom Cotton ( he who wishes to use armed soldiers to put down protestors in his own country ) introduced legislation titled “ Forging Operational Resistance to Chinese Expansion ( FORCE ) ” with a multi-billion dollar price tag .
It is intended to “ help thwart the Chinese Communist Party ’ s main @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States out of the Western Pacific [ and ] achieving cross-strait unification with Taiwan via military force.
” Gladio , Natou2019s Dag ... Richard Cottrell Best Price : $ 23.33 Buy New $ 23.58 It is not surprising that Stoltenberg has leapt on the anti-China bandwagon , but his reference to Beijing ’ s defence budget being second-largest in the world is somewhat misleading .
He emphasised that NATO countries “ represent 30 members , close to one billion people ” but didn ’ t mention the fact that military spending by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dollars ( USD 1,036,077,000,000 ) in 2019 while China ’ s expenditure was $ 261 billion .
The U.S. on its own spent an awe-inspiring $ 732 billion , indicating that that the rest of NATO shelled out $ 471 billion which is decidedly more than China ’ s outlay .
As Stoltenberg announced on 29 November 2019 , NATO members “ are also investing billions more in new capabilities and contributing to NATO deployments around the world .
So we are on the right track but we can not be complacent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Then there is the matter of nuclear weapons .
According to the Arms Control Association the United States ( which is modifying its F-15E Strike Eagle multirole fighters to deliver B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs ) has “ 1,365 strategic nuclear warheads deployed on 656 intercontinental ballistic missiles , submarine-launched ballistic missiles , and strategic bombers.
” So far as NATO is directly concerned the U.S. has deployed an estimated 150 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs at six NATO bases in five European countries : Aviano and Ghedi in Italy ; Büchel in Germany ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Belgium ; and Volkel in the Netherlands .
These are in addition to the 300 nuclear weapons of France and Britain ’ s 200 .
China has an estimated 290 nuclear weapons , so by no stretch of the imagination could be described as a nuclear-expansionist or global threat .
In fact the reason that China embarked on a nuclear weapons programme in the Fifties was the U.S. nuclear threat , as enunciated by the commander of Strategic Air Command , the near-psychotic General Curtis LeMay who was asked what should be done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were to break down because of Chinese military action and replied “ There are no suitable strategic air targets in Korea .
However , I would drop a few bombs in proper places like China , Manchuria and South-eastern Russia.
” This caused alarm bells to ring in Beijing ( and Moscow ) — and they have been ringing ever since .
Anatomy of the Red Bri ... Orsini , Alessandro Best Price : $ 22.63 Buy New $ 25.00 In addition to overflight of the South China Sea by USAF nuclear bombers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ missile-armed destroyers aimed at provoking action by China in that region , the Pentagon is operating the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group ( CVN 76 ) in the waters near the Philippines , and CVN 71 , the USS Ronald Reagan , is preparing to sail from Guam .
The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet announced on June 8 that the USS Nimitz ( CVN 68 ) and its Strike Group had left San Diego “ in support of global maritime security operations ” , but there is no secret about its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the director of operations at Indo-Pacific Command , Admiral Stephen Koehler , told Associated Press that “ Carriers and carrier strike groups writ large are phenomenal symbols of American naval power .
I really am pretty fired up that we ’ ve got three of them at the moment.
” The picture is one of increasing U.S. military encirclement of China , combined with such economic pressure as it can manage bring to bear in order to weaken its government .
While Stoltenberg ’ s NATO is anxious to join in this campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , its contribution would be insignificant to the point of absurdity .
Stoltenberg claims that “ NATO does not see China as the new enemy or an adversary ” yet wants the alliance to “ address the security consequences of the rise of China ” by joining the Pentagon ’ s antics .
NATO is a disaster and has achieved nothing in its military deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan .
For Stoltenberg to assert that its involvement in the war in Afghanistan has enabled “ the Afghans to fight the terrorism themselves , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ preposterous .
The world as a whole would benefit if NATO quietly disbanded .
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation .

On June 8 Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of the U.S.-NATO military alliance, gave a speech at NATO’s new billion dollar headquarters in Brussels. It was followed by a selection of patsy questions, but in spite of the trite predictability of Stoltenberg’s statements and the eager friendliness of the questioners, enough was said to indicate that NATO is still on the lookout for enemies to attempt to justify its continuing shaky existence.
New on the Stoltenberg list is China, which is a long way from the North Atlantic. He was reported as declaring that “the rise of China is fundamentally shifting the global balance of power, heating up the race for economic and technological supremacy, multiplying the threats to open societies and individual freedoms and increasing the competition over our values and our way of life.” He wants NATO to become involved with the U.S. in confronting China which has a population of 1.4 billion, the longest land border in the world (22,117 km) and a coastline of 14,500 km (the U.S. coastline is 19,924 km), which enormous numbers are ample justification for maintenance of a large defence force. NATO’s Secret Ar... Daniele, Ganser Best Price: $70.25 Buy New $53.31 (as of 03:43 UTC - Details)
But he complained that China “already has the second largest defence budget. They are investing heavily in modern military capabilities, including missiles that can reach all NATO Allied countries. They’re coming closer to us in cyberspace. We see them in the Arctic, in Africa. We see them investing in our critical infrastructure. And they are working more and more together with Russia. All of this has a security consequence for NATO Allies. And therefore, we need to be able to respond to that, to address that.”
This is not altogether consistent with the North Atlantic Treaty which is precise in stating that the members of the military alliance “undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” Yet Stoltenberg, with the energetic guidance of Washington, is threatening a “global approach” against China. The fact that Russia and China are “working more and more together” is a major factor in Stoltenberg’s justification for revving up confrontation, and Washington thoroughly approves of measures that could disrupt mutually beneficial economic cooperation between Beijing and Moscow.
In May 2020 members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee proposed a multibillion dollar “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” intended to expand U.S. military deployment in Asia and “send a strong signal to the Chinese Communist Party that the American people are committed to defending U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.” Then in early June Senator Tom Cotton (he who wishes to use armed soldiers to put down protestors in his own country) introduced legislation titled “Forging Operational Resistance to Chinese Expansion (FORCE)” with a multi-billion dollar price tag. It is intended to “help thwart the Chinese Communist Party’s main geopolitical aim [of] pushing the United States out of the Western Pacific [and] achieving cross-strait unification with Taiwan via military force.” Gladio, Natou2019s Dag... Richard Cottrell Best Price: $23.33 Buy New $23.58 (as of 06:05 UTC - Details)
It is not surprising that Stoltenberg has leapt on the anti-China bandwagon, but his reference to Beijing’s defence budget being second-largest in the world is somewhat misleading. He emphasised that NATO countries “represent 30 members, close to one billion people” but didn’t mention the fact that military spending by all these countries totalled over 1 trillion dollars (USD 1,036,077,000,000) in 2019 while China’s expenditure was $261 billion. The U.S. on its own spent an awe-inspiring $732 billion, indicating that that the rest of NATO shelled out $471 billion which is decidedly more than China’s outlay. As Stoltenberg announced on 29 November 2019, NATO members “are also investing billions more in new capabilities and contributing to NATO deployments around the world. So we are on the right track but we cannot be complacent. We must keep up the momentum.”
Then there is the matter of nuclear weapons. According to the Arms Control Association the United States (which is modifying its F-15E Strike Eagle multirole fighters to deliver B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs) has “1,365 strategic nuclear warheads deployed on 656 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers.” So far as NATO is directly concerned the U.S. has deployed an estimated 150 B-61 nuclear gravity bombs at six NATO bases in five European countries: Aviano and Ghedi in Italy; Büchel in Germany; Incirlik in Turkey; Kleine Brogel in Belgium; and Volkel in the Netherlands. These are in addition to the 300 nuclear weapons of France and Britain’s 200.
China has an estimated 290 nuclear weapons, so by no stretch of the imagination could be described as a nuclear-expansionist or global threat. In fact the reason that China embarked on a nuclear weapons programme in the Fifties was the U.S. nuclear threat, as enunciated by the commander of Strategic Air Command, the near-psychotic General Curtis LeMay who was asked what should be done if the truce in the Korean war were to break down because of Chinese military action and replied “There are no suitable strategic air targets in Korea. However, I would drop a few bombs in proper places like China, Manchuria and South-eastern Russia.” This caused alarm bells to ring in Beijing (and Moscow) — and they have been ringing ever since. Anatomy of the Red Bri... Orsini, Alessandro Best Price: $22.63 Buy New $25.00 (as of 04:20 UTC - Details)
In addition to overflight of the South China Sea by USAF nuclear bombers, and aggressive manoeuvres by U.S. Navy missile-armed destroyers aimed at provoking action by China in that region, the Pentagon is operating the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group (CVN 76) in the waters near the Philippines, and CVN 71, the USS Ronald Reagan, is preparing to sail from Guam. The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet announced on June 8 that the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) and its Strike Group had left San Diego “in support of global maritime security operations”, but there is no secret about its operational commitment, as on 12 June the director of operations at Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Stephen Koehler, told Associated Press that “Carriers and carrier strike groups writ large are phenomenal symbols of American naval power. I really am pretty fired up that we’ve got three of them at the moment.”
The picture is one of increasing U.S. military encirclement of China, combined with such economic pressure as it can manage bring to bear in order to weaken its government. While Stoltenberg’s NATO is anxious to join in this campaign in order to justify its continuing existence, its contribution would be insignificant to the point of absurdity. Stoltenberg claims that “NATO does not see China as the new enemy or an adversary” yet wants the alliance to “address the security consequences of the rise of China” by joining the Pentagon’s antics.
NATO is a disaster and has achieved nothing in its military deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. For Stoltenberg to assert that its involvement in the war in Afghanistan has enabled “the Afghans to fight the terrorism themselves, to stabilise their own country” is preposterous. The world as a whole would benefit if NATO quietly disbanded.
The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.


lewrockwell--2020-06-20--Are We Headed into Year Zero?

Are We Headed into Year Zero?

In TV ’ s The Man in the High Castle , which presents an alternative 1963 America occupied by victorious Axis powers , Nicole Dormer , the Lebensborn siren dispatched to Nazi America to shoot propaganda films à la Leni Riefenstahl , announces to minister of propaganda Billy Turner the project name for Goebbels ’ s latest idea : Nicole : Jahr Null .
Year Zero .
An experiment .
A reset .
A new America .
N : Deprive people of their national consciousness .
Dilute their national pride .
Do not teach their history .
B. : So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
N. : They don ’ t have that much of it anyway .
The Man in the High Ca ... Dick , Philip K. Best Price : $ 5.11 Buy New $ 8.49 It ’ s just a TV show .
But then you change the channel and see the news .
Back in our world , Year Zero ’ s been in progress for decades .
Describing the fallout from Stanford University ’ s decision 30 years ago to banish Western civ , Stanley Kurtz has produced an in-depth report outlining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] cademic history as currently written and taught … is to undermine the public ’ s sense of national or civilizational identity .
With nothing left to kill or die for , the world will presumably ‘ live as one . '
” David Randall at RealClearEducation remarks on the report ’ s stark conclusions that abandoning the study of Western civilization “ was the erasure of a body of knowledge that constituted the American identity .
To remove Western Civ was a body-blow against America ’ s civilizational memory — brain damage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brain damage makes it possible for Americans to be molded by woke tyranny ’ s euphemisms of social justice , multiculturalism , and global citizenship.
” For reasons we ’ ve hardly had a chance to sort out yet , the murder of George Floyd by a police officer turned America ’ s steep downhill skid toward national amnesia into a precipitous free fall .
“ The speed with which protests over the murder of George Floyd morphed into a war on the past has been staggering , ” observes Brendan O ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ BLM/Antifa Cultural Revolution he describes in the U.K. sounds not at all different from ours : Sapiens : A Brief Histo ... Harari , Yuval Noah Best Price : $ 6.40 Buy New $ 13.54 Year Zero .
Whether it ’ s Maoist , Stalinist , or fascist , there ’ s no real difference in tactics if the prize is totalitarian control .
German economics professor Antony Mueller compared the ideologies and shows that Antifa “ call themselves ‘ anti-fascist ’ , when , in fact , more than any other ideology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Both the communists and the Nazis wanted a socialized society , both were atheist , both anti-capitalist , and both justified violence .
Both are anti-Semitic , and so are Antifa and BLM .
In Philadelphia and Los Angeles , they vandalized synagogues and Jewish-owned business .
In LA , “ [ a ] statue of Raoul Wallenberg , the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis , was smeared with anti-Semitic slogans.
” But it was a Nazi idea to reorder the entirety of law and society on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weaponizing the law to no longer “ apply long-held principles of fairness and justice , but to root out the enemies of the state and to express the true racial feeling of the people .
”

In TV’s The Man in the High Castle, which presents an alternative 1963 America occupied by victorious Axis powers, Nicole Dormer, the Lebensborn siren dispatched to Nazi America to shoot propaganda films à la Leni Riefenstahl, announces to minister of propaganda Billy Turner the project name for Goebbels’s latest idea:
Nicole: Jahr Null. Year Zero. An experiment. A reset. A new America. Billy: What’s the angle? N: Deprive people of their national consciousness. Dilute their national pride. Do not teach their history. B.: So the Reichsfuhrer wants to erase American history. N.: They don’t have that much of it anyway. The Man in the High Ca... Dick, Philip K. Best Price: $5.11 Buy New $8.49 (as of 03:54 UTC - Details) B. When do we start?
It’s just a TV show. But then you change the channel and see the news. Back in our world, Year Zero’s been in progress for decades.
Describing the fallout from Stanford University’s decision 30 years ago to banish Western civ, Stanley Kurtz has produced an in-depth report outlining how the goal of “[a]cademic history as currently written and taught … is to undermine the public’s sense of national or civilizational identity. With nothing left to kill or die for, the world will presumably ‘live as one.'”
David Randall at RealClearEducation remarks on the report’s stark conclusions that abandoning the study of Western civilization “was the erasure of a body of knowledge that constituted the American identity. To remove Western Civ was a body-blow against America’s civilizational memory — brain damage deliberately inflicted[.] … This brain damage makes it possible for Americans to be molded by woke tyranny’s euphemisms of social justice, multiculturalism, and global citizenship.”
For reasons we’ve hardly had a chance to sort out yet, the murder of George Floyd by a police officer turned America’s steep downhill skid toward national amnesia into a precipitous free fall. “The speed with which protests over the murder of George Floyd morphed into a war on the past has been staggering,” observes Brendan O’Neill at sp!ked. The BLM/Antifa Cultural Revolution he describes in the U.K. sounds not at all different from ours:
Statues are being tumbled, past art erased, people cancelled. Wide-eyed Woke Guards, heirs to Maoist-style intolerance, are compiling lists of monuments to target and individuals to humiliate. They are remorseless. Nothing old that runs counter to their newthink can be tolerated. Tear it all down.
Sapiens: A Brief Histo... Harari, Yuval Noah Best Price: $6.40 Buy New $13.54 (as of 03:54 UTC - Details) Year Zero.
Whether it’s Maoist, Stalinist, or fascist, there’s no real difference in tactics if the prize is totalitarian control. German economics professor Antony Mueller compared the ideologies and shows that Antifa “call themselves ‘anti-fascist’, when, in fact, more than any other ideology, fascism characterizes their own movement.” Both the communists and the Nazis wanted a socialized society, both were atheist, both anti-capitalist, and both justified violence. Both are anti-Semitic, and so are Antifa and BLM. In Philadelphia and Los Angeles, they vandalized synagogues and Jewish-owned business. In LA, “[a] statue of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, was smeared with anti-Semitic slogans.”
But it was a Nazi idea to reorder the entirety of law and society on a foundation of crackpot racial theories, weaponizing the law to no longer “apply long-held principles of fairness and justice, but to root out the enemies of the state and to express the true racial feeling of the people.”
Read the Whole Article


lewrockwell--2020-06-20--Is There Really Strong Evidence for Wearing Masks?

During the COVID-19 pandemic , there has been conflicting advice about wearing face masks or face coverings , even within the same public health agencies .
For example , some medical organizations claim that wearing a mask only protects others from you if you are carrying the virus , but urge you to wear one if you are in close contact with a COVID-19 patient — which infers that a mask could protect you from an infected person .
The advice raises several questions .
First , many people can be carrying the virus and not know it because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
How would these people know to wear a mask ?
Secondly , if a mask is indicated if you are in close contact with a COVID-19 patient , then that would indicate that a mask does protect you from others and not just others from you .
So , which is the truth ?
There is another element to the conflicting advice .
Some medical experts claim that wearing a face mask is harmful to the wearer .
Not only does it not protect you , they say , but it can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pathogens that you may be carrying back into your airway .
As COVID-19 lockdowns end and people are getting out in the public again , what does the evidence say about wearing masks ?
Advice From WHO and CDC About Face Masks Differs Plague : One Scientist & ... Mikovits , Judy Buy New $ 1.99 The World Health Organization , founded in 1948,1 consists of more than 7,000 people from more than 150 countries.2 Its staff includes medical doctors , public health specialists , scientists , epidemiologists and experts in health statistics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comes to masks for COVID-19 , this body of experts does not cast masks as the panacea .
Originally , the WHO listed these guidelines as to who should wear masks:4 • If you are healthy , you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19 .
• Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing .
• Masks are effective only when used in combination with frequent hand-cleaning with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water .
• If you wear a mask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use it and dispose of it properly .
The WHO changed its mind , though , and modified its recommendations June 5 , 2020,5 to advise the general public to wear a mask in specific situations when social distancing isn ’ t possible .
Otherwise , “ … there is no direct evidence ( from studies on COVID- 19 and in healthy people in the community ) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses , including COVID-19.
” The Centers for Disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s leading health agency , administered under the Department of Health and Human Services .
When it comes to battling COVID-19 , its advice is not the same as WHO ’ s .
Pointing out that people can carry the virus with no symptoms or before symptoms like coughing and sneezing surface , it wrote on its website April 3 , 2020:6 By May 22 , 2020 , the CDC had added a yellow-highlighted banner to its page , saying , “ A cloth face covering may not protect the wearer , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus to others.
” 7 Many medical and political leaders support wearing masks .
Dr. Anthony Fauci , the high-profile medical member of the White House coronavirus task force and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , has endorsed them.8 So has former acting CDC director Dr. Richard Besser.9 Plague of Corruption : ... Mikovits , Judy Buy New $ 17.99 Virginia Gov .
Ralph Northam signed an executive order at the end of May 2020 mandating masks in his state10 and Ohio Gov .
Mike DeWine said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ loving your fellow human being.
” 11 Countries that routinely use face masks have lowered their COVID-19 transmission .
Does that mean those who reject face masks are increasing the risk of transmission to themselves and others ?
Many questions remain .
What Does Research Say About Face Mask Effectiveness ?
Dr. Chris Murray , director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation , has said that face masks represent “ probably a 50 % protection against transmission , ” 12 but other estimates are less reassuring .
For example , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to block COVID-19 , which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus , published by South Korean researchers in the Annals of Internal Medicine in April 2020 , found:13 Contamination was found on the outside of the masks , wrote the researchers:14 Criticism of the study by other researchers was brisk , ranging from questioning the handling of the masks before the experiment , which could have caused the observed contamination , to noting that only a small number of subjects were involved .
Summary of Plague of C ...
Summaries , Quik Buy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ associate professor of industrial engineering , mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh , noted in a letter to the editor that the premise of the research was wrong since masks are not intended to “ shorten the trajectory of droplets emitted during coughing.
” Instead , he wrote:16 Another critic , Ken Lim of CyberMedia Convergence Consulting , wrote that the experiment should have been “ how many viral droplets appeared on another person or surface , ” not on the masks themselves.17 Subsequently , in June , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ readers had called attention to flaws in their work , they said they had offered to correct it “ with new experimental data from additional patients , but the editors requested retraction.
” 18 Research that appeared in April 2020 on medRxiv found that:19 However , Ian Jones , professor of virology at the University of Reading , disagreed with these findings , according to the journal BMJ.20 “ If an aerosol droplet hits the weave of the mask fabric rather than the hole it is clearly arrested … helps to slow the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that masks are not a “ cure ” but are useful in flattening the curve .
Also according to BMJ , Simon Clarke , associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading , saw another problem with widespread wearing of masks .
“ Mass face mask wearing by the public would likely cause shortages among people who genuinely need protective equipment — health care workers on the front line in our hospitals , ” he said .
False Alarm : The Truth ... Siegel , Marc Best Price : $ 12.95 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mayo Clinic , even though masks are useful , the fear of a shortage of them shaped the CDC ’ s original recommendations .
The clinic wrote on its website:21 There was another reason for the CDC ’ s delay in endorsing masks when the pandemic first surfaced , wrote Mayo.22 Another hurdle to a full endorsement of face masks by public health groups was the concern that they could provide a false sense of security .
Experts also feared the masks could lead to more touching of the face23 or contamination if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an unclean surface.24 When it comes to health care workers , they should not work without respiratory protection of some kind , according to the authors of a 2015 study who updated their comments in April 2020:25 Face Masks May Do Harm , Some Experts Say The face mask controversy does not just revolve around whether they are effective or ineffective in preventing infections or whether widespread use would create shortages for health care professionals .
Some medical experts say the masks can cause harm to wearers .
Virus expert Judy Mikovits of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outspoken about the dangers of face masks .
According to Weblyf.com , in social media posts she has written:26 Mikovits is not the only expert warning about face mask dangers .
According to News-Medical.Net , Dr. Jenny Harries , England ’ s deputy chief medical officer , has warned the public against wearing facemasks “ as the virus can get trapped in the material and causes infection when the wearer breathes in.
” 27 Nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock also believes face masks are capable of causing serious harm:28 Face masks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ care workers , wrote Blaylock,29 by causing “ a reduction in blood oxygenation ( hypoxia ) or an elevation in blood CO2 ( hypercapnia ) , ” as well as headaches .
The elderly are at risk , too , he warns : Face Shields May Be More Effective Than Face Masks Face shields , plastic covers over the whole face that function as visors , may look extreme or “ dorky ” but they have some advantages over cloth masks .
First , unlike cloth masks , they can be cleaned with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over and over because they are plastic and won ’ t degrade .
Second , face shields are more comfortable to wear , especially on hot days , since they are not placed directly over your mouth and nose and allow free breathing .
Finally , and most importantly , face shields protect you better than face masks because the mouth and nose are not the only inlets of infection .
According to the National Post , face shields also:30 Face shields , when studied with influenza , protected people from inhaling 96 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cough even when the face shield wearers were only 18 inches of someone coughing , the Post said.31 Clearly , they provide some of the protections of social distancing which may explain why we are increasingly seeing them used by health care practitioners .
If You Do Wear a Face Mask Follow These Guidelines Clearly , there is evidence both for and against wearing face masks during the pandemic .
If you do decide to wear a face mask , here are useful tips from WHO for usage and disposal to make sure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ putting on a mask , ideally clean your hands with soap and water .
• Cover your mouth and nose with the mask and make sure there are no gaps between your face and the mask .
• Avoid touching the mask while using it ; if you do , clean your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water .
• Replace the mask with a new one as soon as it is damp and do not reuse single-use masks .
• To take off the mask : Remove it from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the mask ) ; discard it immediately in a closed bin ; and clean your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water .
The Best of Joseph Mercola

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been conflicting advice about wearing face masks or face coverings, even within the same public health agencies. For example, some medical organizations claim that wearing a mask only protects others from you if you are carrying the virus, but urge you to wear one if you are in close contact with a COVID-19 patient — which infers that a mask could protect you from an infected person.
The advice raises several questions. First, many people can be carrying the virus and not know it because they are asymptomatic and have not been tested. How would these people know to wear a mask? Secondly, if a mask is indicated if you are in close contact with a COVID-19 patient, then that would indicate that a mask does protect you from others and not just others from you. So, which is the truth?
There is another element to the conflicting advice. Some medical experts claim that wearing a face mask is harmful to the wearer. Not only does it not protect you, they say, but it can limit your oxygen and even redirect harmful pathogens that you may be carrying back into your airway. As COVID-19 lockdowns end and people are getting out in the public again, what does the evidence say about wearing masks?

Advice From WHO and CDC About Face Masks Differs
Plague: One Scientist&... Mikovits, Judy Buy New $1.99 (as of 05:16 UTC - Details) The World Health Organization, founded in 1948,1 consists of more than 7,000 people from more than 150 countries.2 Its staff includes medical doctors, public health specialists, scientists, epidemiologists and experts in health statistics, economics and emergency relief.3 When it comes to masks for COVID-19, this body of experts does not cast masks as the panacea. Originally, the WHO listed these guidelines as to who should wear masks:4
If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19.
Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing.
Masks are effective only when used in combination with frequent hand-cleaning with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
If you wear a mask, then you must know how to use it and dispose of it properly.
The WHO changed its mind, though, and modified its recommendations June 5, 2020,5 to advise the general public to wear a mask in specific situations when social distancing isn’t possible. Otherwise, “… there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID- 19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the U.S.’s leading health agency, administered under the Department of Health and Human Services. When it comes to battling COVID-19, its advice is not the same as WHO’s. Pointing out that people can carry the virus with no symptoms or before symptoms like coughing and sneezing surface, it wrote on its website April 3, 2020:6
“This means that the virus can spread between people interacting in close proximity … CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission …
CDC is additionally advising the use of simple cloth face coverings to slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.”
By May 22, 2020, the CDC had added a yellow-highlighted banner to its page, saying, “A cloth face covering may not protect the wearer, but it may keep the wearer from spreading the virus to others.”7
Many medical and political leaders support wearing masks. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the high-profile medical member of the White House coronavirus task force and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has endorsed them.8 So has former acting CDC director Dr. Richard Besser.9
Plague of Corruption: ... Mikovits, Judy Buy New $17.99 (as of 03:22 UTC - Details) Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed an executive order at the end of May 2020 mandating masks in his state10 and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said wearing a mask is an expression of “loving your fellow human being.”11
Countries that routinely use face masks have lowered their COVID-19 transmission. Does that mean those who reject face masks are increasing the risk of transmission to themselves and others? Many questions remain.
What Does Research Say About Face Mask Effectiveness?
Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, has said that face masks represent “probably a 50% protection against transmission,”12 but other estimates are less reassuring. For example, a study on the ability of masks to block COVID-19, which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, published by South Korean researchers in the Annals of Internal Medicine in April 2020, found:13
“Neither surgical nor cotton masks effectively filtered SARS-CoV-2 during coughs by infected patients. Prior evidence that surgical masks effectively filtered influenza virus informed recommendations that patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 should wear face masks to prevent transmission.
However, the size and concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols generated during coughing are unknown.
Oberg and Brousseau demonstrated that surgical masks did not exhibit adequate filter performance against aerosols measuring 0.9, 2.0, and 3.1 μm in diameter … assuming that SARS-CoV-2 has a similar size [to SARS–CoV], surgical masks are unlikely to effectively filter this virus.”
Contamination was found on the outside of the masks, wrote the researchers:14
“Of note, we found greater contamination on the outer than the inner mask surfaces … The mask’s aerodynamic features may explain this finding. A turbulent jet due to air leakage around the mask edge could contaminate the outer surface. Alternatively, the small aerosols of SARS-CoV-2 generated during a high-velocity cough might penetrate the masks.
In conclusion, both surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment and external mask surface.”
Criticism of the study by other researchers was brisk, ranging from questioning the handling of the masks before the experiment, which could have caused the observed contamination, to noting that only a small number of subjects were involved. Summary of Plague of C... Summaries, Quik Buy New $9.49 (as of 05:28 UTC - Details)
Paul W. Leu,15 an associate professor of industrial engineering, mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh, noted in a letter to the editor that the premise of the research was wrong since masks are not intended to “shorten the trajectory of droplets emitted during coughing.” Instead, he wrote:16
“The conclusions of this study … are not only erroneous but misleading … The function of the mask is to reduce how far aerosol droplets travel during breathing, speaking, singing, sneezing, or coughing. This is the same reason one should cover one’s mouth or nose with your forearm, inside of your elbow, or tissue when sneezing.”
Another critic, Ken Lim of CyberMedia Convergence Consulting, wrote that the experiment should have been “how many viral droplets appeared on another person or surface,” not on the masks themselves.17 Subsequently, in June, the authors retracted this study. Acknowledging that readers had called attention to flaws in their work, they said they had offered to correct it “with new experimental data from additional patients, but the editors requested retraction.”18
More Questions About Face Mask Effectiveness
Research that appeared in April 2020 on medRxiv found that:19
“The evidence is not sufficiently strong to support widespread use of facemasks as a protective measure against COVID-19. However, there is enough evidence to support the use of facemasks for short periods of time by particularly vulnerable individuals when in transient higher risk situations.”
However, Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, disagreed with these findings, according to the journal BMJ.20 “If an aerosol droplet hits the weave of the mask fabric rather than the hole it is clearly arrested … helps to slow the epidemic,” he said, stating that masks are not a “cure” but are useful in flattening the curve.
Also according to BMJ, Simon Clarke, associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, saw another problem with widespread wearing of masks. “Mass face mask wearing by the public would likely cause shortages among people who genuinely need protective equipment — health care workers on the front line in our hospitals,” he said.
False Alarm: The Truth... Siegel, Marc Best Price: $12.95 Buy New $12.70 (as of 11:29 UTC - Details) According to the Mayo Clinic, even though masks are useful, the fear of a shortage of them shaped the CDC’s original recommendations. The clinic wrote on its website:21
“The CDC acknowledged this concern when it recommended cloth masks for the public and not the surgical and N95 masks needed by health care providers.”
There was another reason for the CDC’s delay in endorsing masks when the pandemic first surfaced, wrote Mayo.22
“At that time, experts didn’t yet know the extent to which people with COVID-19 could spread the virus before symptoms appeared. Nor was it known that some people have COVID-19 but don’t have any symptoms. Both groups can unknowingly spread the virus to others.
These discoveries led the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to do an about-face on face masks. The CDC updated its guidance to recommend widespread use of simple cloth face coverings to help prevent transmission of the virus by people who have COVID-19 but don’t know it.”
Another hurdle to a full endorsement of face masks by public health groups was the concern that they could provide a false sense of security. Experts also feared the masks could lead to more touching of the face23 or contamination if the wearer puts the mask down on an unclean surface.24
When it comes to health care workers, they should not work without respiratory protection of some kind, according to the authors of a 2015 study who updated their comments in April 2020:25
“There are now numerous reports of health workers wearing home made cloth masks, or re-using disposable mask and respirators, and asking for guidance. If health workers choose to work in these circumstances, guidance should be given around the use.
There have been a number of laboratory studies looking at the effectiveness of different types of cloth materials, single versus multiple layers and about the role that filters can play. However, none have been tested in a clinical trial for efficacy. If health workers choose to work using cloth masks, we suggest that they have at least two and cycle them, so that each one can be washed and dried after daily use.
Sanitizer spray or UV disinfection boxes can be used to clean them during breaks in a single day. These are pragmatic, rather than evidence-based suggestions, given the situation.
Finally for COVID-19, wearing a mask is not enough to protect healthcare workers — use of gloves and goggles are also required as a minimum, as SARS-CoV-2 may infect not only through the respiratory route, but also through contact with contaminated surfaces and self-contamination.”
Face Masks May Do Harm, Some Experts Say
The face mask controversy does not just revolve around whether they are effective or ineffective in preventing infections or whether widespread use would create shortages for health care professionals. Some medical experts say the masks can cause harm to wearers.
Virus expert Judy Mikovits of “Plandemic” fame has been very outspoken about the dangers of face masks. According to Weblyf.com, in social media posts she has written:26
“Do you not know how unhealthy it is to keep inhaling your carbon dioxide and restricting proper oxygen flow? … The body requires AMPLE amounts of oxygen for optimal immune health. Proper oxygenation of your cells and blood is ESSENTIAL for the body to function as it needs to in order to fight off any illness. Masks will hamper oxygen intake.
Unless you are working in a hospital setting, it is NOT necessary … [If] [y]ou want to be healthy … Stop smoking, change your diet, stop consuming alcohol, turn off your wifi and cell phone, stop getting injected with neurotoxins, stop taking toxic medications, stop using so many chemicals … get some sun, drink plenty of (filtered) water [and] sleep well.”
Mikovits is not the only expert warning about face mask dangers. According to News-Medical.Net, Dr. Jenny Harries, England’s deputy chief medical officer, has warned the public against wearing facemasks “as the virus can get trapped in the material and causes infection when the wearer breathes in.”27
Nationally recognized board-certified neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock also believes face masks are capable of causing serious harm:28
“Now that we have established that there is no scientific evidence necessitating the wearing of a face mask for prevention, are there dangers to wearing a face mask, especially for long periods? Several studies have indeed found significant problems with wearing such a mask.
This can vary from headaches, to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications … By wearing a mask, the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain.”
Face masks can also pose a danger to health care workers, wrote Blaylock,29 by causing “a reduction in blood oxygenation (hypoxia) or an elevation in blood CO2 (hypercapnia),” as well as headaches. The elderly are at risk, too, he warns:
“Unfortunately, no one is telling the frail elderly and those with lung diseases, such as COPD, emphysema or pulmonary fibrosis, of these dangers when wearing a facial mask of any kind — which can cause a severe worsening of lung function.
This also includes lung cancer patients and people having had lung surgery, especially with partial resection or even the removal of a whole lung.”
Face Shields May Be More Effective Than Face Masks
Face shields, plastic covers over the whole face that function as visors, may look extreme or “dorky” but they have some advantages over cloth masks. First, unlike cloth masks, they can be cleaned with soap and water or disinfectants and reused over and over because they are plastic and won’t degrade.
Second, face shields are more comfortable to wear, especially on hot days, since they are not placed directly over your mouth and nose and allow free breathing. Finally, and most importantly, face shields protect you better than face masks because the mouth and nose are not the only inlets of infection. According to the National Post, face shields also:30
“… block the virus from entering ‘portals, (mouths, noses and eyes) and ‘reduce the potential for autoinoculation,’ meaning implanting the virus into our own bodies after touching a contaminated surface, by preventing the wearer from touching his or her face …
While SARS-CoV-2 is spread by breathing in tiny liquid virus-containing droplets, there is evidence it can enter the body through mucus membranes, including the mucus membranes on the surface of the eye and inner eye lids.”
Face shields, when studied with influenza, protected people from inhaling 96% of flu-laden droplets produced by a cough even when the face shield wearers were only 18 inches of someone coughing, the Post said.31 Clearly, they provide some of the protections of social distancing which may explain why we are increasingly seeing them used by health care practitioners.
If You Do Wear a Face Mask Follow These Guidelines
Clearly, there is evidence both for and against wearing face masks during the pandemic. If you do decide to wear a face mask, here are useful tips from WHO for usage and disposal to make sure you use your mask safely:32
Before putting on a mask, ideally clean your hands with soap and water.
Cover your mouth and nose with the mask and make sure there are no gaps between your face and the mask.
Avoid touching the mask while using it; if you do, clean your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
Replace the mask with a new one as soon as it is damp and do not reuse single-use masks.
To take off the mask: Remove it from behind (do not touch the front of the mask); discard it immediately in a closed bin; and clean your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
Sources and References
The Best of Dr. Joseph Mercola


lewrockwell--2020-06-22--Fiscal Disaster, Social Unrest, and the Presidential Election

International Man : Recently , massive riots have broken out in many cities across the US .
Despite the unrest—and the economic damage from the shutdowns—the stock market continues to rally .
It seems that markets don ’ t reflect earnings , economic prosperity , or growth .
What is going on here ?
David Stockman : It ’ s quite simple .
The Fed has unleashed the greatest torrent of liquidity ever , and it ’ s finding its way into a relentless , massive bid for risk assets .
Since the eve of the Lockdown Nation disaster on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balance sheet has erupted from $ 4.3 trillion to nearly $ 7.2 trillion .
That ’ s $ 32 billion per day—including weekends , Easter , and nationwide riot days .
Fictitious Capital : Ho ... Durand , Cu00e9dric Best Price : $ 13.50 Buy New $ 18.18 Worse still , at their June meeting , the mad money printers domiciled in the Eccles Building promised to keep printing $ 120 billion per month to buy US Treasuries and other assets for an indefinite period .
That should get us to a $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years ’ time .
What this means , of course , is that honest price discovery in the canyons of Wall Street is deader than a doornail .
We now have a putative capitalist economy in which the most important prices in all of capitalism—the prices of financial assets—are pegged , rigged , and manipulated by the central banking agents of the state .
The result , of course , is speculation and malinvestment on a biblical scale .
As to the former , we are now being treated to the preposterous spectacle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stock of bankrupt Hertz .
Hertz ’ s stock is worthless .
It ’ s pinned under a pile of $ 20 billion of debt—senior debt securities , which are trading at 40 cents on the dollar—and a vastly overvalued fleet of vehicles .
All this is in a world in which airline and business travel has been crushed by more than 80 % from trends and won ’ t be coming back any time soon—so long as Dr. Fauci and the Virus Patrol are stalking the land .
Yet the unhinged millennials—who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money on the Robinhood trading platform—have bid up Hertz ’ s post-chapter 11 stock price by more than 10X , thereby inducing a mainstream investment banking firm to propose underwriting a $ 1 billion stock offering in lieu of a debtor-in-possession ( DIP ) loan !
Never before has it been this crazy .
And , yet , the empty suit who sits in the top chair at the Fed keeps insisting this is all being done for Main Street and the workers , and as Powell said in his June presser , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in mind at all ; it just wants to keep financial markets functioning smoothly .
What hay wagon does this doofus think we fell off from ?
Whether they intend it or not , their massive infusions of liquidity into the financial markets and relentless bid for financial assets funded with fiat credits has redounded to the top 1 % and 10 % who own 53 % and 88 % of equities , respectively , and it ’ s setting up the financial system for the third—and most spectacular—crash of this century , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out what remains of middle-class wealth .
International Man : Over 40 million Americans are unemployed .
Many small and medium-sized businesses will never reopen .
Many must survive not only an extended lockdown but also the most severe riots in decades .
How are the riots and shutdown going to affect Main Street ?
Profiting Without Prod ... Lapavitsas , Costas Best Price : $ 9.99 Buy New $ 25.87 David Stockman : It ’ s a devastating combo and originates in the most senseless , destructive act of the state in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the sweeping quarantine and lockdown orders that caused instant economic heart attacks in vast sectors of the US economy after mid-March .
There is no precedent in history for activity levels in huge industries like airline travel to plunge by more than 95 % virtually overnight , or the restaurant sector , where Open Table reservations dropped by 80 % versus prior year in a matter of days .
Not surprisingly , there have been nearly 50 million unemployment claims ( counting the new federal benefit ) in just 11 weeks—a figure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 158 million employed Americans as of February 2020 .
Indeed , not even the bubble-blowing , crack-up boom antics of the Fed have ever created the kind of depressionary collapse now underway .
Yet its propagators—Dr .
Fauci and the Virus Patrol at the CDC , NIAID , WHO , Big Pharma and the Bill Gates camarilla of foundations , think tanks , NGOs , and vaccine lobbies—have been peddling a Big Lie from day one .
Namely , that COVID-19 is the modern equivalent of the Black Plague and spreads its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all segments of the population—the young , the old , the healthy , the sick , and all variations in between—with equal alacrity .
There are 104 million young people in the USA under 25 years of age , and as of the end of May , the mortality rate with COVID was , well , 0.12 per 100,000 population .
That is , all the schools , bars , gyms , restaurants , movie theaters where they congregate were shut down by orders of the governors and mayors , but it would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to generate just one death attributable to the COVID .
And we emphasize the with COVID part because the CDC changed its coding criteria at the beginning of the pandemic , and now they are coding as “ COVID deaths ” virtually everyone who dies in a hospital—even cases where someone arrives DOA at the emergency room after a traffic accident and tests positive for the coronavirus on a post-mortem basis .
By contrast , there are 6.5 million Americans with an age of 85 or over—representing 2 % of the population—but they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reported deaths of May 30 , and that represented a mortality rate of 450 per 100,000 .
So , the risk of death with COVID for what we call the Great Grandparents Nation is 3,750 times greater than for America ’ s School Age Nation .
Killing the Host : How ... Hudson , Michael Best Price : $ 26.04 Buy New $ 32.95 Yet the mass quarantine orders amount to a one-size-fits-all attack on everyday economic and social life when the obvious thing to do was to keep the schools open and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ treat the grandparents and great grandparents .
In fact , if you take the entire population of 52 million persons 65 years and older , they account for fully 81 % of all COVID deaths—with upwards of 50 % of these fatalities attributable to residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities .
As a matter of reality , residents of the latter do not frequent bars , gyms , movie theaters , offices , bus stations , and factories , essential , nonessential , and otherwise .
The general population never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the core of what we call the Parents and Workers Nation , the 83 million people between 35 and 54 years of age , the with COVID mortality rate is just 7.0 per 100,000 .
That is , for this group , the risk of death from contracting the coronavirus is not much higher than what is incurred in commuting to work and back , day in and day out .
In short , the whole Lockdown Nation fiasco was a mutant exercise in social engineering that will leave Main Street battered and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus completes its infection cycle and succumbs to the summertime sun in most parts of the nation .
And that gets us to the George Floyd uprising , which was overwhelmingly comprised of under-35-somethings breaking out of house arrest and mad as hell about their now dramatically reduced prospects in life—which weren ’ t all that compelling in the first place .
Just consider that the overwhelming share of leisure and hospitality industry workers are in the under-35 age cohort .
Yet the 17 million jobs reported by the BLS in this sector @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 8 million by the end of April .
Even worse , average hours declined , too , so what we had at the end of April was an industry which had shrunk back to October 1979 levels in terms of labor hours actually deployed and paychecks issued .
So , the authorities sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind , but on such a gigantic scale as to make the future fraught like never before .
There are 80 million persons aged 16–34 in the US , and during the long , hot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them will be unemployed .
It doesn ’ t take too much imagination to see that the current , so-called social justice uprising is just developing an explosive head of steam .
International Man : During the COVID lockdown , Trump and Democratic governors were at odds .
We saw a similar dynamic occur with the recent riots .
How do you see this impacting the presidential election ?
David Stockman : It will just exacerbate the red/blue divide like never before .
Socialism Sucks : Two E ... Powell , Benjamin Best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump will posture as the nation ’ s super sheriff and the Dems as the champions of a cavalcade of victims—some real , though mostly politically invented—who deserve help from the heavy hand of the state .
In other words , the upcoming campaign will be a contest between the Trumpian law-and-order form of big government and the liberal-progressive-socialist version of the leviathan state .
And what ’ s going to get crushed by the clash is the Constitution , fiscal solvency , Federalism , free enterprise , and personal liberty .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agenda has any legitimate place in the halls of government .
The identity politics and racialist agenda of the Dems is simply a brazen abuse of the democratic process for the purpose of winning and retaining the perks , pelfs , and powers of public office .
But the Donald ’ s law-and-order demagoguery is just as bad .
The solution to mismanaged riots in the blue state cities and juvenile stunts like the six-block Autonomous Zone in Seattle is Federalism .
That is , law enforcement is a state and local function @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the federal level in the first place .
We should get rid of the FBI , DEA , ATF , and the rest of the law enforcement alphabet of bureaucratic fiefdoms by repealing the War on Drugs and the rest of the nanny state statutes .
There is no reason whatsoever that legitimate law enforcement—protection of the lives and property of the citizenry— can not be handled by the 17,000 law enforcement agencies operative at the state and local level .
And if they are not doing the job , well , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some Bully Boy tweeting from the Oval Office .
And if elections chronically fail in their purpose in certain deep Blue State jurisdictions , there is a solution to that , too , which does not require sending in the Feds from Washington .
To wit , people and businesses will vote with their feet , and eventually , even the likes of Governor Cuomo and Bill De Blasio would get the message .
The Best of David Stockman

International Man: Recently, massive riots have broken out in many cities across the US.
Despite the unrest—and the economic damage from the shutdowns—the stock market continues to rally.
It seems that markets don’t reflect earnings, economic prosperity, or growth. What is going on here?
David Stockman: It’s quite simple. The Fed has unleashed the greatest torrent of liquidity ever, and it’s finding its way into a relentless, massive bid for risk assets.
Since the eve of the Lockdown Nation disaster on March 11, the Fed’s balance sheet has erupted from $4.3 trillion to nearly $7.2 trillion. That’s $32 billion per day—including weekends, Easter, and nationwide riot days. Fictitious Capital: Ho... Durand, Cu00e9dric Best Price: $13.50 Buy New $18.18 (as of 03:43 UTC - Details)
Worse still, at their June meeting, the mad money printers domiciled in the Eccles Building promised to keep printing $120 billion per month to buy US Treasuries and other assets for an indefinite period. That should get us to a $10 trillion balance in less than two years’ time.
What this means, of course, is that honest price discovery in the canyons of Wall Street is deader than a doornail. We now have a putative capitalist economy in which the most important prices in all of capitalism—the prices of financial assets—are pegged, rigged, and manipulated by the central banking agents of the state.
The result, of course, is speculation and malinvestment on a biblical scale.
As to the former, we are now being treated to the preposterous spectacle of an IBO—or Initial Bankruptcy Offer—of the stock of bankrupt Hertz.
Hertz’s stock is worthless. It’s pinned under a pile of $20 billion of debt—senior debt securities, which are trading at 40 cents on the dollar—and a vastly overvalued fleet of vehicles.
All this is in a world in which airline and business travel has been crushed by more than 80% from trends and won’t be coming back any time soon—so long as Dr. Fauci and the Virus Patrol are stalking the land.
Yet the unhinged millennials—who idle their ample time and de minimis money on the Robinhood trading platform—have bid up Hertz’s post-chapter 11 stock price by more than 10X, thereby inducing a mainstream investment banking firm to propose underwriting a $1 billion stock offering in lieu of a debtor-in-possession (DIP) loan!
Never before has it been this crazy.
And, yet, the empty suit who sits in the top chair at the Fed keeps insisting this is all being done for Main Street and the workers, and as Powell said in his June presser, the Fed has no asset price target in mind at all; it just wants to keep financial markets functioning smoothly.
What hay wagon does this doofus think we fell off from?
Whether they intend it or not, their massive infusions of liquidity into the financial markets and relentless bid for financial assets funded with fiat credits has redounded to the top 1% and 10% who own 53% and 88% of equities, respectively, and it’s setting up the financial system for the third—and most spectacular—crash of this century, which, in turn, will wipe out what remains of middle-class wealth.
International Man: Over 40 million Americans are unemployed. Many small and medium-sized businesses will never reopen. Many must survive not only an extended lockdown but also the most severe riots in decades.
How are the riots and shutdown going to affect Main Street? Profiting Without Prod... Lapavitsas, Costas Best Price: $9.99 Buy New $25.87 (as of 03:46 UTC - Details)
David Stockman: It’s a devastating combo and originates in the most senseless, destructive act of the state in modern times—if ever.
We are referring to the sweeping quarantine and lockdown orders that caused instant economic heart attacks in vast sectors of the US economy after mid-March.
There is no precedent in history for activity levels in huge industries like airline travel to plunge by more than 95% virtually overnight, or the restaurant sector, where Open Table reservations dropped by 80% versus prior year in a matter of days.
Not surprisingly, there have been nearly 50 million unemployment claims (counting the new federal benefit) in just 11 weeks—a figure which amounts to nearly 32% of the 158 million employed Americans as of February 2020.
Indeed, not even the bubble-blowing, crack-up boom antics of the Fed have ever created the kind of depressionary collapse now underway.
Yet its propagators—Dr. Fauci and the Virus Patrol at the CDC, NIAID, WHO, Big Pharma and the Bill Gates camarilla of foundations, think tanks, NGOs, and vaccine lobbies—have been peddling a Big Lie from day one.
Namely, that COVID-19 is the modern equivalent of the Black Plague and spreads its deathly pathogens on a random basis to all segments of the population—the young, the old, the healthy, the sick, and all variations in between—with equal alacrity.
That’s not even remotely true.
There are 104 million young people in the USA under 25 years of age, and as of the end of May, the mortality rate with COVID was, well, 0.12 per 100,000 population.
That is, all the schools, bars, gyms, restaurants, movie theaters where they congregate were shut down by orders of the governors and mayors, but it would take a million of these young people to generate just one death attributable to the COVID.
And we emphasize the with COVID part because the CDC changed its coding criteria at the beginning of the pandemic, and now they are coding as “COVID deaths” virtually everyone who dies in a hospital—even cases where someone arrives DOA at the emergency room after a traffic accident and tests positive for the coronavirus on a post-mortem basis.
By contrast, there are 6.5 million Americans with an age of 85 or over—representing 2% of the population—but they accounted for 33% of the CDC reported deaths of May 30, and that represented a mortality rate of 450 per 100,000.
So, the risk of death with COVID for what we call the Great Grandparents Nation is 3,750 times greater than for America’s School Age Nation. Killing the Host: How ... Hudson, Michael Best Price: $26.04 Buy New $32.95 (as of 11:40 UTC - Details)
Yet the mass quarantine orders amount to a one-size-fits-all attack on everyday economic and social life when the obvious thing to do was to keep the schools open and isolate, protect, support, and treat the grandparents and great grandparents.
In fact, if you take the entire population of 52 million persons 65 years and older, they account for fully 81% of all COVID deaths—with upwards of 50% of these fatalities attributable to residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. As a matter of reality, residents of the latter do not frequent bars, gyms, movie theaters, offices, bus stations, and factories, essential, nonessential, and otherwise.
The general population never should have been quarantined.
Even among the core of what we call the Parents and Workers Nation, the 83 million people between 35 and 54 years of age, the with COVID mortality rate is just 7.0 per 100,000. That is, for this group, the risk of death from contracting the coronavirus is not much higher than what is incurred in commuting to work and back, day in and day out.
In short, the whole Lockdown Nation fiasco was a mutant exercise in social engineering that will leave Main Street battered and bruised for years to come—long after the coronavirus completes its infection cycle and succumbs to the summertime sun in most parts of the nation.
And that gets us to the George Floyd uprising, which was overwhelmingly comprised of under-35-somethings breaking out of house arrest and mad as hell about their now dramatically reduced prospects in life—which weren’t all that compelling in the first place.
Just consider that the overwhelming share of leisure and hospitality industry workers are in the under-35 age cohort. Yet the 17 million jobs reported by the BLS in this sector as of February had plunged to hardly 8 million by the end of April.
Even worse, average hours declined, too, so what we had at the end of April was an industry which had shrunk back to October 1979 levels in terms of labor hours actually deployed and paychecks issued.
So, the authorities sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, but on such a gigantic scale as to make the future fraught like never before.
There are 80 million persons aged 16–34 in the US, and during the long, hot summer ahead, an overwhelming share of them will be unemployed. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see that the current, so-called social justice uprising is just developing an explosive head of steam.
International Man: During the COVID lockdown, Trump and Democratic governors were at odds. We saw a similar dynamic occur with the recent riots.
How do you see this impacting the presidential election?
David Stockman: It will just exacerbate the red/blue divide like never before. Socialism Sucks: Two E... Powell, Benjamin Buy New $23.39 (as of 07:10 UTC - Details)
Trump will posture as the nation’s super sheriff and the Dems as the champions of a cavalcade of victims—some real, though mostly politically invented—who deserve help from the heavy hand of the state.
In other words, the upcoming campaign will be a contest between the Trumpian law-and-order form of big government and the liberal-progressive-socialist version of the leviathan state. And what’s going to get crushed by the clash is the Constitution, fiscal solvency, Federalism, free enterprise, and personal liberty.
The fact is, neither party’s agenda has any legitimate place in the halls of government. The identity politics and racialist agenda of the Dems is simply a brazen abuse of the democratic process for the purpose of winning and retaining the perks, pelfs, and powers of public office.
But the Donald’s law-and-order demagoguery is just as bad.
The solution to mismanaged riots in the blue state cities and juvenile stunts like the six-block Autonomous Zone in Seattle is Federalism. That is, law enforcement is a state and local function that should never have been elevated to the federal level in the first place.
We should get rid of the FBI, DEA, ATF, and the rest of the law enforcement alphabet of bureaucratic fiefdoms by repealing the War on Drugs and the rest of the nanny state statutes.
There is no reason whatsoever that legitimate law enforcement—protection of the lives and property of the citizenry—cannot be handled by the 17,000 law enforcement agencies operative at the state and local level.
And if they are not doing the job, well, that is the purpose of elections to remedy—not some Bully Boy tweeting from the Oval Office.
And if elections chronically fail in their purpose in certain deep Blue State jurisdictions, there is a solution to that, too, which does not require sending in the Feds from Washington. To wit, people and businesses will vote with their feet, and eventually, even the likes of Governor Cuomo and Bill De Blasio would get the message.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.
The Best of David Stockman