Archive for the ‘COVID 19’ Category

COVID Censorship On Social Networks Monopolies To Hurt Trump

October 6, 2020

Twitter removed the following Tweet from Trump:

Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

Twitter removed the tweet and added: This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible. Learn more

Trump is right: a bit of perspective is needed here. According to the World Health Organization, Pneumonia killed more than 808 000 children under the age of 5 in 2017, accounting for 15% of all deaths of children under 5 years. COVID lockdowns disorganize healthcare gravely, to the point that they kill more than the alternative, now that the first surprise is past.

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Twitter and related tech monopolies were fostered to monopoly powers under the Obama administration to manage and spy on We The People. The tech monopolies are anxious to get Trump out of the way. They help, by depicting him as a “misleading and potentially harmful” criminal. So they apply censorship for all to see, in the hope that the fools will thing less of Trump. Now the plutocratic media will say: look Trump is anti-science, they had to remove his misleading, harmful tweet. Tech monopolies have other censorship methods which can’t be seen (but have been applied to me for more than a decade; Tucker Carlson discovered that method the hard way on his show a week ago…).

Hacker who went to college just two years. Hacked a company, and leveraged that into a career. Became a high multibillionaire from stock appreciation caused by Twitter monopoly position (not from profits). Dates models. Knows what viral truth is from being a monopolistic genius. Loved by its sponsor, the Global Deep State.

Closing down countries to fight COVID was justified when the virus was unknown, without therapeutics. But the situation has changed. Lockdowns  have become counterproductive. Twitter thinks it knows science but it probably does not even read Science Magazine (I have a life honorary membership to Science).

Here is from: COVID-19 affects HIV and tuberculosis care. Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Salim S. Abdool Karim. Science 24 Jul 2020, Vol. 369, Issue 6502, pp. 366-368. DOI: 10.1126/science.abd1072.

Access to medical care for non–COVID-19 conditions was limited during the lockdown, with health facilities experiencing declines in the number of TB and HIV patients collecting their medication on schedule. The World Health Organization estimates that a 6-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related illness in 2021 and a reversal of gains made in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (10). In South Africa, 1090 TB patients and 10,950 HIV patients in one province have not collected their medications on schedule since the start of the national lockdown (11). A national survey of 19,330 individuals in South Africa found that 13.2% indicated that their medication for chronic disease was inaccessible during the lockdown (12). Furthermore, hospital admissions for HIV and TB declined as a result of hospitals reducing nonurgent admissions in preparation for a surge of COVID-19 cases and owing to closures to reduce exposure to COVID-19 patients. The potential negative impact on the continuity of care for HIV and TB patients could have substantial repercussions for both treatment and control, including development of drug resistance (6).

One can also consult the World Health Organization:

The cost of inaction: COVID-19-related service disruptions could cause hundreds of thousands of extra deaths from HIV.

At this point, COVID is used politically. Statistics are unreliable: one cannot compare countries to each other, or even to themselves in the fullness of time. There is no universal criterion of when a person died from COVID. If someone with COVID dies in a motorbike crash dies, will that person be counted as a COVID death? It depends. Should it be counted as a COVID death? It depends. The victim could have developed Guillain-Barré syndrome. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of its peripheral nervous system. It seems FDR had it (it was not Polio). COVID patients can develop it, it is not so rare with COVID, days after their other symptoms are gone. 

Twitter and company are censors and mind manipulators. Their behavior is anti-civilizational. Potentially harmful. In their desire to get their way, they use censorship. They have ways which prevent ideas and rebellious authors to spread.

And the tech monopolies can kill because they spread misinformation, perhaps unwittingly, but certainly deliberately. The coronavirus is, basically, airborn. Most masks do not stop it. So people get it from confined spaces. Chinese dictatorship disinformation fostered the belief the coronavirus was spreading mostly from surfaces and masks stopped it. Both assertions seem increasingly false. Meanwhile Brazil is using Sinevac, the Chinse COVID vaccine made in China, and widely distributed there already. Hey, maybe I should be censored for propagating this truth which the Chinese dictatorship loving tech monopolies will surely find misleading? Anything which question the ways and means of the origin of this coronavirus now, is beyond “fringe”: it is potentially “misleading and harmful”.

Tech monopolies are a disaster for the progress of equity, social justice, humanity, mind and science, or even tech: they steal with impunity from all, Obama made it so, thus it should be right. Obama was the puppet with the strongest strings.

Don’t worry: I am censored aplenty already, the truth shall not go far. And enjoy this site while it still exists: unknown forces have tried to take it down since I published: Do Iraqi Lives Matter? I wonder why not.

Patrice Ayme

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Speaking of “fringe”, my friend Roger Penrose was long viewed as “fringe”. Just as yours truly, but more justifiably famously, Penrose believes Quantum Mechanics is coming short. He believes, as I do, in “objective collapse”. My idea is that matter distribution itself causes collapse… creating inertia and Dark Matter, among others things. In any case, Penrose was not well considered among “serious” physicists. However it has become increasingly clear that serious physicists are not serious. Recent physics Nobels have gone to astronomy and Quantum Optics (as they should have). Forty years ago, it would have been unimaginable that Penrose would get the Nobel in physics. In my eyes, he deserved it. But at the time, he was viewed as too “fringe”. Well, he just got the Nobel. So there is a ray of hope that significance arises anew…

Truth without significance has no meaning.

Corochinavirus News: Oil Goes Negative, Countries’ Death Rates All Over The Place…

April 20, 2020

(Boosted a bit April 22 2020). For the first Time Ever the most deflationary shock, ever … Last contract for the month of May, when future becomes real delivery on 4/20/2020: the price of a barrel of oil FELL $55 (fifty-five) dollars today… Becoming -$37… Yes MINUS thirty-seven dollars: they pay you $37 if you take custody of a barrel of oil. UNPRECEDENTED. The poisonous stuff is being produced, but nobody wants it anymore [1]. They pay you to get rid of it… like the pollutant it is. 

How To Explain The Differing Death Rates Among Countries?

Milan, industrial capital of Italy, got infected stealthily, yet massively, thanks to the air bridge from Wuhan, the Corochina virus capital. While China cut all flights from Wuhan and Hubei, the air bridge Wuhan-Milan was not stopped. The virus then got into a pretty old population.

Oil Goes To Hell In A Handbasket, as deserved… Yes these are negative prices…

France, like the rest of Europe, didn’t stop the flights from China. The first cases and deaths were Chinese tourists in France. Also some Brits coming back from Asia, and a mass church of some Christian sect in Mulhouse.

Germany, and other Northern Europeans were infected mostly through a very young population of partying skiers in ski resorts (which were lockdowned too late). So, intrinsically, the population initially hit in Germany was COVID resistant. Germany also tested massively and early, differently from France, Great Britain. Germany is now developing its own antibody test (instead of purchasing dozens from… China, as the US FDA has allowed!)

Germany doesn’t count the nursing homes deaths as well as France does. A running recount by the UK government has shown the number of deaths first announced was 40% what the recount showed. So the death numbers are all over the map. Typically deaths at home are not counted (New York has typically 25 deaths at home a day… recently it has run around 150, six times more…)

In other news, the long term death rate was based on the Diamond Princess… where passengers got first class health care from Japanese hospitals, with maximum care on individual patients. Initially the death rate was reported to be no more than 1%… However two months later what we have from that ship is this: 712 cases, 7 in critical care (ventilation), 13 dead. So we get a morality and morbidity rate close to 3%… 

Otherwise measured, it seems the death care is arguably 21% for those catching the disease. Here are the official numbers 4/20/2020: 815,204 Cases which had an outcome: 645,019 (79%) Recovered / Discharged.

170,185 (21%) DEATHS.

Want more of the same? Countries are massively under-reporting.

As the NYT points out in “28,000 missing deaths: Tracking the true toll of the crisis.

“In the last month, far more people died in these [ELEVEN] countries than in previous years, The New York Times found. The totals include deaths from Covid-19 and those from other causes, potentially including those who could not be treated as hospitals became overwhelmed.

These numbers contradict the notion that many people who have died from the virus might soon have died anyway. In Paris, more than twice the usual number of people have died each day, far more than at the peak of a bad flu season. In New York City, the number is four times the normal amount.”

So what next? Definitely, some individuals relapse, there are well-documented cases all around the world, such unfortunate souls seem to have virus “reservoirs” inside their bodies, and the antibody protection seems far from perfect…. Also the virus attacks the central nervous system in at least a third of the case, and many other organs (and that may cause death directly). It’s known that some viruses can shelter in place inside the central nervous system. Also, in the case of rabies, the immune system counterattack (cytokine storm) ravages the brain… And the same exact mechanism seems at work in some cases of COVID…

Some, many countries have either too much incompetence to count the death properly (say Ecuador), or are outright lying (China). How do we know China’s dictatorship lied? Simple: some cities like Chengdu (capital of Sichuan) were locked down completely, when they had literally 3 cases. All of Hubei was lockdowned, when there were less than 500 cases, worldwide, officially, and 17 deaths… So obviously the Chinese government knew something we didn’t.  

Now this virus has provided us with a demonstration why humanity is not compatible with dictatorship. So China should be encouraged, looking forward, to switch to democracy by being submitted to increasing economic diversification away from itself. For its own good. Like Apartheid South Africa. Apartheid in South Africa killed and oppressed South Africans, but didn’t threaten to kill dozens of millions of people of the world… as Xi’s dictatorship just did.

Patrice Ayme 

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[1] The world has an estimated storage capacity for 6.8 billion barrels, and nearly 60 percent is filled. (That roughly means than the US production would fill it up in around 4 months…) World oil production needs to go down 30% to balance world demand.

Some of the oil glut is evident in Cushing, Okla., a critical storage hub where the oil that trades on the U.S. futures market is delivered. With a capacity to hold 80 million barrels of oil, Cushing has only 21 million barrels of free storage left, or less than two days of American production. As recently as February, Cushing was not even up to 50 percent. Experts say it will be filled to the brim in May.

Monday 20 April, Trump said the government was “looking to put as much as 75 million barrels” into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is used as a buffer during crises (it was created after the 1973-1974 oil embargo). He added he will go ask Congress about it… Some democrats said they will introduce legislation for the cost of putting the oil in the reserve… (At most half a million barrels a day can get in…)

But it gets better than that.

Shutting down oil wells and then restarting them when demand returns requires expensive manpower and equipment. Fields do not always recover their former production (production is a dynamic process, is oil is often actively pushed…). In addition, some oil companies have to keep pumping, even if they are losing money, in order to pay interest on their debts and keep on functioning (oil workers are fickle).

In late 2019, the US produced 13.3 million barrels of oil a day.

 

 

SURVIVAL IS BEST & DEFINES SUPERIOR CIVILIZATION… With A Little Help From The Dark Side (Thus, Cruelty).

April 3, 2020

Centuries Of Continuous Wars, And Apparent “Cruelty” Created What The Franks, Rescuing Civilization, Called “Europe”:

When the empire of the Romans collapsed, their closest Federates, the Franks, took over, conquering Gallia, then Germania, Lombardia, and basically all of Europe, “renovating the Empire of the Romans”, as they put it. Then the Franks pushed away the invading Muslims out of southern France, northern Spain. Later France and her Angevins and Normans conquered England, and freed Italy, Sicily and other islands from the occupying Muslims. Then, for a millennium, the superpowers of Europe were squabbling France and her subsidiary and colony, Britain. For a while, all too Catholic and Inquisition wrecked Spain became all too wealthy and uppity, having conquered the Americas. Spain then fought France (in Italy) and then France and Britain all over, resulting in the creation of the Netherlands.

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Part of The Problem Was That The Concept of Progress Changed:

The fanatical Christians, put in charge by Roman emperor Theodosius I, were of the opinion, as Augustine put it around 410 CE, that collapsing the City of Rome was the key to fostering the City of God. The City of God against the pagans… Latin: Dē cīvitāte Deī contrā pāgānōs. That was a declaration of war against most of the population, as most of the population was “pagan” (which meant “peasant”).

For the Christian bishops in power around 400 CE, “progress” was to outlaw the death penalty (and free, or secular thinking). Thus brigands knew they would not be punished (enough) to stop them. The highways became completely unsafe, and trade collapsed. The army couldn’t be paid anymore. This was the result:

Dark Side failure: Rome proximally collapsed because its Dark, Most Cynical Side collapsed. When superstitious Do-Goodism, known as Christianism took over, in 381 CE, cruelty, the Dark Side and the tough edge to human inquiry were outlawed, under the penalty of death. As it turned out, catastrophic, most cruel calamity followed: CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED. Invasions followed the establishment of the Catholic dictatorship, to the point that the same individuals, for example the Visigoth king Alaric, were in charge. Alaric defeated the secular forces in 394 CE, under Theodosius nominal command. The same Alaric sieged and took the city of Rome in 410 CE.

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Concepts Like “Civilization” and “Progress”, Even “Common Sense” Fell, When The USA Took Over:

So France and Britain ruled for (most of) nine centuries. Then in the Twentieth Century, fascist, uppity Germany made attempts to take over Western Europe by force. The child of France and Britain, the USA, was all too friendly to Germany… in part because not only was there money to be made, but also parents to be replaced. 

The end result is that the USA won the Second World War, even pushing its cynicism to use its dog, Stalin, to watch over half of Europe. US master minds made sure that, in countries such as France, influencers would be on the payroll. Hence an entire generation of European thinkers appeared, who brainwashed We The People that progress, education, instruction, independance, common sense, basic decency were all notions so relative, than “superior” or “inferior”, or even “civilization”, or “better”, were not absolute.

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Kathleen Hawes Watkins And in the absence of consensus on “progress” and “common good” – – we live in a pluralistic/multi-polity reality – – our prime directive is/should always be to avoid cruelty. 

Cruelty is taking pleasure in applying the Dark Side. But the fact is, sometimes, the Dark Side needs to be applied (see the war against Nazi Germany). And it would be difficult, ethologically speaking, to feel inclined to apply it, from duty alone. 

As I explained above, banning cruelty is very close to banning the Dark Side, our main servant to destroy bad tribes like the Nazis, or bad ideas, such as Stalinism or Theodosius’ Catholicism. 

Kathleen gave a link to Aeon, a Pluto financed site (which has blocked some of my comments, and now all comments, apparently): https://aeon.co/essays/discovering-judith-shklars-skeptical-liberalism-of-fear

Shklar defined “liberalism”[0]: something crucial to the established US order, the plutocratic elite in charge for more than a century now. US pseudo-leftists define themselves as “liberal“. 

Shklar is a Harvard professor… Need I say more? That means the establishment established that she was a positive contribution to… the establishment. Indeed Shklar obsesses about something called “liberalism“, defined as no fear (to outrage common sense), no favor (to We The People). “Liberalism” became the ideology of global plutocracy, starting way back with US plutocrats financing and helping Hitler, and blossomed with global plutocrats instrumentalizing the Chinese dictatorship… whose latest export is seen to be a carefully, and secretly nurtured virus..

In Shklar, we are contemplating a buttress of the establishment here, not a thinker throwing light on obscure yet crucial subjects. Comparing her to Montaigne, as some have done, is silly: Montaigne was NOT a university professor. If he had been, he would have had to make a career of only thinking about pleasing the establishment, and thus would not have been Montaigne [1]. That doesn’t mean Montaigne was a saint. Far from it: he was a Catholic… But a Catholic very friendly and tight with two of the greatest thinkers and benefactors of humanity: feminist author and Queen of France Marguerite de Navarre, and her husband, king of Navarre, and, after a while, of France.

So the establishment tells us that the ultimate evil, the summum malum, the sum of mal, is… cruelty? [2] What is cruelty? The pleasure provided by the deliberate infliction of pain and suffering? What is more human? Humanity has been the ultimate predator for millions of years. That means, humanity evolved in an ecology where the greatest danger to a human being was other human beings not in their own tribe. Also, human life, in part as a result of this, but also to bring down cattle and overawe lions was most optimal when tribal. Hence tribalism is part of the inherent mental organization of human, just as much as the love (the tribe)-hate (the other tribe) nature of human ethology.

To bemoan it, while being part of the mighty Harvard tribe, or any other established tribe, is hypocritical. A philosopher, the genuine article, civilization class, is a tribe of one (this dismisses Plato and Aristotle, nota bene, as Plato was Athenian aristocracy and Aristotle Macedonian plutocrat… Not to say Aristotle is not important and not a good historian of science, or good observationalist).

I am always beyond uneasy when I come across Jews who bemoan cruelty and the Dark Side: they understood nothing from The Holocaust. The Holocaust happened precisely because all too many Jews claimed that, to be a fair and decent human being, one had to deny the existence of cruelty and the Dark Side. They exist, instead, and are intrinsic, one may as well deny death… to which they are closely related. Cruelty and the Dark Side are part of the architecture of death, as managed by humanity. Claiming no architecture is needed is denying the essence of humanity.

Watch the civilized doing triage during COVID 19, for further instruction.

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One third of European Jews survived, because starting with the French and followed by the British, bombers were sent over German cities to kill German babies. Among other cruel objectives. The Germans didn’t like that. When the Germans invaded France in May 1940, their army consisted of more than six million soldiers, fueled by Soviet oil. 

Later, when the Nazis invaded and then struggled in the Soviet Union, the attacking army consisted of just three millions. It didn’t work out so well, unsurprisingly: the Nazis had too little oil and soldiers to tackle the USSR. Why so few men attacking the USSR? 

Another million German soldiers were manning the giant German anti-aircraft defence system against British bomber streams coming at night. At some point, defeating Nazi radar, British raid after British raid burned to a crisp in a deliberately set firestorm, the city of Hamburg. The fire storm was made so that civilians in underground shelters would die too.

This is how Auschwitz was liberated, by killing lots of German babies, and this is why not all Jews were not killed. The Soviets, who marched into Auschwitz, profited from absolutely gigantic US aid, given to them, free of charge; so Americans are often under the impression that to fight a war, one just needs to be industrious. No. First, one needs to be cruel. Cruel against oneself, first of all as one goes to destroy evil, la fleur au fusil.

Patrice Ayme

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[0] Judith N. Shklar defining “liberalism” (in other words, Bushism, Reaganism, Clintonism, Obamaism; I put “Bush” first as dynasty founder Prescott Bush served Hitler in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s…):“Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. That belief is the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism.”

It’s of course a lie, Shklar is a liar, or incompetent, or both. Dynasties are all over the USA, especially where Shklar taught… So “favor” rules… And “fear” too: thousands of my comments were banned over the years, I was banned from sites, and even got government threats, just for my cogent discourses, where the guiding light is truth, and nothing but the truth, in full… People banned from academia for not respecting the guideline of respecting the establishment. The establishment even tried to do this to professor Raoult, for daring to say all too many truths about the COVID 19 pandemic.

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[1] So what of Buridan, Rabelais, and Galileo? They were famous thinkers, iconoclasts, and still extremely famous university professors, all with great philosophical dimension? Doesn’t that disprove my theory that, to be a famous philosopher, one needs to be out of the university system? The answer is simple: Buridan, circa 1350 CE was adviser to four French kings, head of the university and lover to the queen, That gave him mental freedom. The situation of Rabelais was somewhat similar: a most famous professor of surgery, top of tops in Paris. And Galileo was childhood friend to the Pope (Galileo’s travails came in part of his bad character and arrogance; he didn’t understand tides, but make sure to tell his friend the Pope that his tide theory was wrong; he also got into astronomical fights with Jesuits)

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[2] “It seems to me that liberal and humane people, of whom there are many among us, would, if they were asked to rank the vices, put cruelty first. Intuitively they would choose cruelty as the worst thing we do.”

Judith N. Shklar wrote.

OK, so what do we get from that? Shklar is cruel: that’s the worst thing she and her kind do. That’s her problem. I would define myself as potentially cruel, but would not say that “cruelty is the worst thing we do”, because, although I have seen cruelty applied to me (like in having my young uncle assassinated, or throwing a bomb or fatwa my way)… I do not know of a case where I exhibited cruelty much greater than smashing mosquitoes or using soap against viruses… But I have no doubt that, to become part of the establishment one has to partake in serious cruelty, so, indeed, Shklar has got to be cruel, as she readily admits. But then how come does she believe she is in position to teach us that we do it too? Who taught her that? Jesus Christ, the hero of Anglo-Saxon “liberalism”.

Patrice Ayme

 

What Democracies Should To Do With COVID Right Now (April 1)

April 1, 2020

But this is not a joke…

Concentrate doctors from other provinces onto the province of Hubei enabled China to jugulate the epidemic. So concentrate doctors from unaffected states of the US into the most affected areas. This has to be done, in combination with very tough confinement to block the Coronavirus from exploding in these (so far) safer states… especially as many of their doctors will be sent away to save lives in tragic, severely affected places such as New York City!

In other words, learn from what worked in China, Korea, Hong Kong. To block the virus, one will need to test all, and track all the contacts of the COVIDs, then reinforce considerably the social distancing of these unfortunate souls (as in Singapore). Meanwhile, social confinement should be toughened up right away, precisely because that can be done right away (within hours). That means a much more restrictive notion of “essential services”.

The testing and tracking will take longer to roll out, especially in the most affected areas… Hence testing and tracking should be deployed, first, paradoxically, in the less affected areas, where it will be easier to deploy, and more crucial to deploy, as doctors will be sent away to deal with the most affected zones. 

Yes, all this is tough. But just aiming at flattening the curve will not work. Only trying to suppress the Coronavirus completely will work.

Beautifully Dreadful Exponentials, Or How Representative Democracy Failed

And remember, the reassuring mortality rate given is unsupported by hard evidence. This below is all the hard evidence we have. Speculating that 90% of the cases are undetected (thus lowering the death rate to 1.9%) is PURE SPECULATION. As Trump said, paraphrasing what he really meant:”I am trying to be optimistic, and thus make people calm, in this war. People need to be calm. However if I tried to be pessimistic, I could be more terrible than you reporters can possibly imagine…

CLOSED CASES: 220,459

Cases which had an outcome: 178,125 (81%)
Recovered / Discharged
DEATHS: 42,334 (19%)
Once again, this 19% is interpreted as less than 1%. That maybe true with a fully functional medical system, just as HIV is no problem with a fully functional immune system. But SARS2 attacks the medical system, just as HIV the immune system…
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Felix Pepper, New Zealand @Patrice Ayme: Yes, yes, yes. These are the lessons of what needs to be done. 

It also needs to be done right now, and its not happening. The earlier the changes the bigger the beneficial effects down the road.

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@Felix Pepper Agreed Felix, thanks. Why it’s not happening is a case of unreasoned belief in the inherent superiority of the “Representative Democracy” system too much by half. All too many “Westerners” feel superior, from their concept of freedom, to all these Asians who, presumably, are perceived as being dismissive of democracy, just because they don’t enjoy the same time-honored vision of freedom at all and any cost. 

However, the cost benefit analysis has not been made as carefully as it should have been made, should one cling to the highest ethics: is the freedom of NOT tracking the viral infection worth hundreds of thousands dead, and as many with scarred lungs and other chronic ailments? This is the choice Europe and the US have made so far, for all to see. Thus this cultural racism may exact an unbearable price for those who hold it. Precisely because it’s unbearable, it is futile. Indeed, in the end,testing, tracking and strictly confining the COVIDs and their contacts will happen: it’s the only way. And then people will say: too little, too late…

The hubris of the system of governance “our” global plutocracy has installed leaves little room for decency or common sense. This is illustrated by the very fact of this pandemic (it would have been avoided by sustained and sustainable research in fundamental biology), and the way we dealt with it (the isle of Taiwan reacted in December, implementing safeguards before the PRC… and the WHO doesn’t want to talk about it, to its eternal shame…).

When people die, when millions could die, the matter is serious. And because it was entirely avoidable, the system should be more than punished. It should be changed. This is what, pushed by the winds of fate, Trump and his frenemies are doing [1]…

Patrice Ayme

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[1] Pelosi and Trump are talking about “Phase 4” stimulus… Another 2 trillion dollars, for infrastructure this time. Stalin and FDR, here we come… and leave you in the dust.

Trump $6.2 TRILLION Fight Against COVID Is Economically Responsible 

March 28, 2020

Finance is a convenient servant to the economy. Finance is not even necessary to the economy, and no economy, no money.  The six trillion dollars signed and negotiated by Trump do two things: 1) and most important, sustain and amplify the essential economy. 2) keep alive the non-essential economy, which would otherwise stop existing (… we can gently ease it out later…) 

The 2.2 Trillion Dollars Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed the US Senate 96 to zero (4 Senators were COVID or quarantined). Two days later the US Congress passed it, and Trump, who had helped to negotiate the details, signed it immediately. There were no hearing: all gt together, including Trump, who agreed to much Democratic ideas…

This was the largest financial intervention act of a state in the history of humanity.

The same day, Trump used the Defense Procurement Act, forcing General Motors to produce respirators. Trump added he may use the FPA again, as “we have a couple of little problem children… two companies which are NOT doing what they said they would be doing.  

Some anti-Trumpers screamed to high heavens that Trump was exploding the national debt, and bringing financial ruin to the US. Critics of the 6.2 trillion dollar intervention do not understand how the economy works. In particular, they do not understand the essence of the economy, which is GOVERNMENTALISM. Let me explain.

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Big US debt procurement during World War Two was highly profitable to the US… and WORLD, economy… Let alone those who wanted to smash Nazism and other fascisms…

National debt, in a sovereign country acts, potentially, like a future tax, on those wealthy enough to have lent the money, or, potentially, as a future tax on those who received the money… I say debt is a “potential tax”, because reimbursement conditions can, and often, will vary. For example, if money is lent, but not reimbursed, it acts as gift, or theft, depending if one is on the receiving, or donating end. Europeans have acted stupid, ever since the EU was founded, as if they didn’t understand that (but the UK understood it, explaining partly its better economic performance.)

Let me add that this is not the case here; the 6.2 trillions are no augmentation of the national debt (explanation another time). 

What Trump is doing is putting the US economy on life support, while providing massive financing for research and development… and health care: 150 billion dollars for hospitals alone.

Here is an example: CDC Dr. Fauci said industrial fabrication of vaccines will be launched, even while one can’t know yet if those vaccines will work, or even if those vaccines do not launch the dreared “IMMUNE ENHANCEMENT”… that is during Phase 2 trials; that will be costly as perhaps two dozen vaccines are being developed (using sometimes extremely different methods: the Pasteur institute is using its usual method to see if its hybrid coronavirus-brucellosis is safe on mice and soon primates… While Sanofi will further push a 2017 “prototype” SARS vaccine using recombinant tech; several RNA vaccines are already in human trials, testing for basic safety…)     

A nominal increase in national debt acts as real free money for now.. And a potential, just potential, tax. I say potential, because, for a country of Argentina and if the money has been lent by foreigners, one may have to pay back part of it… But if one is the USA, one doesn’t have to pay any of one’s debt. Especially to foreigners. If foreigners don’t like it, they should feel happy to have lend so much money to such a superpower

One of the reason the European economy has stagnated is that it has insisted to inflict high taxes on citizens, instead of much more forgiving debt (which growth can erase; so debt enables and incites a sovereign country to grow faster…)

As it is, moreover, Trump’s two trillion is not necessarily a debt. And it’s actually six trillion dollars. 

Japan has a national (“Federal”) debt in excess of 200% of GDP. On March 27, it had only 49 deaths from Coronavirus, out of 1,700 cases, with a (so far) completely flattened curve, and a death rate per million not even one tenth that of the USA. In general the Japanese economy had not been doing badly with that debt… maintaining, for example a first class universal health system…. At a time when the USA is demonstrating, for the whole world to see, that a profit guided health system is a colossal disaster. Indeed, soon the USA may have much more than a million Coronavirus cases, and that will be imputable in part to not have been willing to spend more on healthcare (instead of spending on the billionaires who profit from US healthcare).  

The Federal government created two trillion dollars as direct help with CARES. To this one has to add 4 trillions of the US Federal Reserve at the disposal of banks through leverage (to start with; the Fed has said it will create whatever money is needed). None of this money is really debt. At most it means part of the US economy is getting nationalized (the average citizen becomes a shareholder).

***

Take four cases I personally know of:

Picture a 500 rooms/apartments hotel/resort without any revenue for the rest of the year. It’s a “family business”. It has employees, pays their healthcare 100%. It’s at 7,000 feet, it has large fixed cost in heating, security, maintenance. And revenue is now zero. And will stay so for many months. What to do? A bank loan! But where does the bank get the money from? The Federal Reserve, which lends it at zero interest!

Picture my climbing gym. Actually a company with a dozen climbing gyms, with course setters, maintenance, staff, and paying 100% health care. Same story as the preceding.

Third example: a research institute in AI getting its money from corporations with now zero revenue. They said they were firing all their scientists, effective in June. The Trump administration is stepping in.   

Fourth example: Several science museums I know. There is money for them in the two trillions. Trump himself explained the Kennedy Center for the Arts needed 25 millions to pay salaries, maintenance (the Dems wanted 35 millions initially). 

***

Trump is using MASSIVE GOVERNMENTALISM. Smart.

What is important is that expertise not be lost. OK, a bit of expertise lost in completely useless parts of the economy will be OK… But futuristically essential services should be maintained. For example in teaching, research, industrial base. 

The mightiest states are always living with fiat money. The Inca were using knots on ropes. The very fact a state can impose fiat money is an expression of its power. As it is, there is going to be a hole of one third of GDP, because one third of all transactions in one year will not happen. So the state making it so that it will appear these transactions did happen… Even if they didn’t. 

Debt, left unpaid, means some people with excess capital may be cheated on. But debt, left unpaid, can save an economy. What is it not to like? I always said that Trump, as his chronology and behavior indicates, was truly a real Democrat (aka a “populist”… despised by the haves). TARP, organized by Obama, was truly a Transfer of Assets to Rich People. Whereas CARES has tight oversight, and pays the average family (which TARP didn’t do). CARES is the right thing to do. The alternative was a depression worse than 1929.

This virus crisis is an excellent occasion to find out how the economy works. First, one can see that 90% of the economy, or so, is useless. One can also see that the essential part of the economy, including scientific research, advanced, life saving technology, is underfinanced.

In Italy, some medical workers get paid less than $1,000 a month. Yes, less than a thousand dollars, and now the opportunity to die. But then they were honored by watching on TV brainless muscle guys paid more than one hundred million a year, just to hit a ball with their foot.

Ironically enough, the USA, and the world, is lucky that the US President is a specialist of saving (his won!) value through bankruptcy (ironically yours truly saw this, at the time, as corruption… Meanwhile, though, we have seen much bigger corruption than that…

CARES is bringing in money, as needed. Trump is ordering around General Motors, as, unfortunately, needed. This is a war. War can be good.  Universal health care systems in Europe were created thanks to the shock of World War Two. Coronavirus is the bellicose occasion we needed to reorganize the world economy in a more essential way.

Patrice Ayme 

.

 

Antibiotics: Crucial Against Viral Infections, Be It Covid19 or the Flu

March 22, 2020

CONTRARILY TO ILL CONCEIVED WISDOM… ANTIBIOTICS WORK AGAINST VIRUSES, In Several Ways:

Professor Didier Raoult’s research has demonstrated the antiviral property of the azithromycin antibiotic in the case of SARS2/Covid19. Moreover infections have been involved in a large proportion of COVID 19 deaths. By the way, bacterial co-infections are involved in 75% of influenza infections, according to the latest meta study from NCBI (extensively quoted below). Somehow, many Medical Doctors are unaware of this. (Jump to bottom for personal general conclusions, after all the science extracts…) Before the links, here is the truth, March 22:

CLOSED CASES: 112,174

Cases which had an outcome:

97,574 (87%): Recovered / Discharged

14,600 (13%): THIRTEENTH PERCENT DEATHS

Contrarily to what establishment propaganda is pretending, the death rate of COVID19 is getting worse. On OUTCOMES, the only relevant concept, the death rate is not one percent, as establishment propaganda insists it is, maximally lying, but thirteenth percent (13%). Ask 6,000 dead Italians.

Here are some links:

On antiviral antibiotic:

Novel antiviral properties of azithromycin in cystic fibrosis airway epithelial cells.

Schögler A et al. Eur Respir J. (2015)

Pharmacokinetic changes of antibiotic, antiviral, antituberculosis and antifungal agents during extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in critically ill adult patients.

Hahn J et al. J Clin Pharm Ther. (2017)

Azithromycin, a 15-membered macrolide antibiotic, inhibits influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 virus infection by interfering with virus internalization process.

Tran DH et al. J Antibiot (Tokyo). (2019)

And antibiotics work for influenza too:

There are 75% co-infections with bacteria in the case of flu, a meta-study in Frontiers in Microbiology, 23 June 2017, shows:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5481322/

Here is from the last review paper: 

“Abstract

Lower and upper respiratory infections are the fourth highest cause of global mortality (Lozano et al., 2012). Epidemic and pandemic outbreaks of respiratory infection are a major medical concern, often causing considerable disease and a high death toll, typically over a relatively short period of time. Influenza is a major cause of epidemic and pandemic infection. Bacterial co/secondary infection further increases morbidity and mortality of influenza infection, with Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Staphylococcus aureus reported as the most common causes. With increased antibiotic resistance and vaccine evasion it is important to monitor the epidemiology of pathogens in circulation to inform clinical treatment and development, particularly in the setting of an influenza epidemic/pandemic.

***

Introduction

From the Plague of Athens to the present day, infectious disease has beset mankind throughout history. Medical and socio-economic advances have substantially reduced this burden, the eradication of smallpox in 1979 (World Health Organization, 2017) and the remarkable successes against polio and parasitic Guinea worm disease being three examples of an extensive list. Respiratory tract infections, however, continue to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide (Lozano et al., 2012; Morse et al., 2012; Zumla et al., 2014). When combined, lower and upper respiratory infections are the fourth highest cause of global mortality (Lozano et al., 2012). Epi- and pandemic outbreaks of respiratory infection are a major medical concern, often causing considerable disease and a high death toll, typically over a relatively short period of time. The unpredictable nature of these outbreaks, in terms of their etiology and the reservoirs from which they emerge, the constant emergence of new antigenic variants by mutation, combined with transmission within potentially immunologically naïve populations facilitates the characteristic high proficiency of spread (Morse et al., 2012).

It is well established that both animals and humans can act as reservoirs of infection within which pathogens may adapt and evolve. Examples include Coxiella burnetii which typically causes Q fever in cattle, sheep and goats but can also infect humans (Eldin et al., 2017), the plague causing Yersinia pestis, infamously transmitted to humans by rats via a flea vector (Yang et al., 2016b), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which originated in non-human primates before spreading into the human population (Rupp et al., 2016) and of course the most common example, influenza, which circulates within and between swine, avian and human hosts (amongst others). This cross-species flow can lead to adaptations that result in an increased pathogenicity to susceptible hosts, creating the potential for localized outbreaks or global spread (Murphy, 1998; Karesh et al., 2012; Morse et al., 2012). Important evolutionary modifications can occur during the timespan of an individual infection, permitting new and evolved strains of pathogens to emerge at an increased rate (Karesh et al., 2012). The evolution of pathogens (particularly zoonotic pathogens which account for 60% of human infectious diseases), and development of pandemics and epidemics, can be described in ecological principles whereby changing environmental pressures or opportunities drive a pathogen to exploit new niches or hosts to survive and thrive. This evolution is influenced by a range of anthropogenic factors, which include population expansion, changing land use and habitat destruction, selective pressures of increased antimicrobial usage, vaccination, global trade and travel (Daszak, 2012; Karesh et al., 2012; Morse et al., 2012).

Pandemics are generally viral in cause. This is thought to be due to their high mutation rate, which is particularly true for RNA viruses such as influenza where high nucleotide substitution and poor proof reading leads to the accumulation of errors in newly synthesized RNA strands. Influenza can also undergo re-assortment during mixed infection. These factors can result in divergence of surface antigens, such as haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), producing strains not recognized by the human immune system and not covered by extant vaccines (Holland et al., 1982; Webster et al., 1992; Chen and Holmes, 2006; Hampson and Mackenzie, 2006; Jones et al., 2008; Taubenberger and Morens, 2008; Dormitzer et al., 2011; Morse et al., 2012). For instance, influenza A is now known to have 18 subtypes of HA and 11 subtypes of NA (Li et al., 2012; Tong et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2014). This high mutation rate and the emergence of new strains can also make vaccine development and policy difficult to plan and carry out. Due to viral antigenic shift, yearly influenza vaccines are required so the population is sufficiently protected by the vaccine, however, vaccine composition is determined ∼8 months in advance of administration. This lag may allow new strains to emerge or for antigenic drift to result in a poor match between vaccine and the circulating strain of influenza. Furthermore as seen in the 2009 influenza pandemic, governments and public health departments face considerable difficulties in the production and distribution of vaccines when faced with sudden or unexpected outbreaks of newly emerged strains (Houser and Subbarao, 2015).

A common complication of respiratory viral disease can be secondary bacterial infection. Noting this association is important as it has clear implications for global health, principally because bacterial co/secondary infection is known lead to increased morbidity (Smith and McCullers, 2014). Co/secondary bacterial infection, as the name suggests, is a bacterial infection that occurs during or after an infection from another pathogen, commonly viruses. A number of viral infections (including infection from influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, parainfluenza virus and human metapneumovirus) can be complicated by co/secondary infection by a variety of bacteria including Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Staphylococcus aureus. This association leads to an increased severity of disease and sequela such as pneumonia (Smith and McCullers, 2014). In this review we dwell on influenza pandemics since the late 1800’s, focussing on the associations and complications that arise from secondary bacterial infection

Influenza

Influenza viruses are important zoonotic pathogens as they are highly contagious and one of the most prevalent causes of respiratory infection. Worldwide annual epidemics reportedly cause up to five million cases of severe illness, which result in 250,000–500,000 deaths per year. The majority of deaths caused by influenza occur in young children and people over 65 (World Health Organization, 2016). Reports suggest that each year up to 20% of the United States population may be infected by influenza…

There are three types of influenza virus, types A, B, and C, each differing in host range and pathogenicity (Taubenberger and Morens, 2008). Type A has been isolated from humans, avian, swine, horses, mink, dogs, seals, and ferrets (Jakeman et al., 1994; Taubenberger and Morens, 2008; Parrish et al., 2015), whilst type B has been isolated from humans, seals (Osterhaus et al., 2000) and ferrets (Jakeman et al., 1994), and type C from humans (Matsuzaki et al., 2002), swine and dogs (Youzbashi et al., 1996). Influenza A and B virions contain several structural antigens and three antigenic surface proteins; HA, NA, and M2/BM2 ion channels (Webster et al., 1992; Hampson and Mackenzie, 2006; Racaniello, 2009; Dormitzer et al., 2011). Influenza virus C only expresses one antigenic surface protein, haemagglutinin-esterase-fusion (HEF), and thus stimulates a lesser immune reaction than types A or B (Taubenberger and Morens, 2008; Racaniello, 2009). Influenza A is the fastest to evolve, at a rate 2–3 times faster than B, whilst C is the slowest…

Much is known about the havoc brought by a virus. Most spectacular is the destruction of the immune system within the lungs by the virus itself, which acts like HIV on steroids:

Throughout the past 300 years there have been 12 pandemics caused by influenza A; the most infamous being the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic (Taubenberger and Morens, 2008). In the years between 1933 and 1957 there were nine influenza A (H1N1) epidemics and five influenza B epidemics. The worst of all these epidemics was the 1935–1936 influenza B epidemic that resulted in at least 55,000 deaths. This was closely followed by the 1943–1944 influenza A (H1N1) epidemic which caused 53,000 deaths (Glezen, 1996). Evidently, although influenza B doesn’t cause pandemics, it is still a cause for concern.

During an infection influenza virions attach to and enter host epithelial cells by the binding of viral HA to sialic acid on the host cell which instigates endocytosis and the movement of the virion into the cell within an endosome. The virus then uses/hijacks the host cells ‘machinery’ to replicate and transcribe viral RNA and produce more viral components (Samji, 2009). Progeny virions bud from the host cell, using the host cell membrane as a viral envelope, and go on to infect neighboring host cells (Nayak et al., 2009). As influenza infection develops the virus causes cell damage and death within the host’s airways and up-regulates the production of toxins, causing further destruction. Influenza cytotoxins for example causes necrosis of host cells (Conenello and Palese, 2007; Iverson et al., 2011). Influenza infection, particularly pandemic influenza infection, is known to generate an increased inflammation response within the host, as the body works to rapidly deliver immune cells to the site of infection. This inflammation is a response to the expression of cytokines and chemokines (de Jong et al., 2006; Kash et al., 2006; Kobasa et al., 2007; Rock and Kono, 2008). Virally induced decreased mucociliary activity, the dysfunction of immune cells and the reduction of phagocytosis reduces clearance of the virus from the host airways and the host’s ability to fight the virus (Brundage, 2006; Wu et al., 2011; Cauley and Vella, 2015). In an attempt to limit and control infection, the host immune system kills infected host cells. It does this in several ways, including; the production of perforin by Natural Killer (NK) cells which creates lesions/pores in cell membranes resulting in the induction of apoptosis, apoptosis from tumour necrosis factor (TNF) and FasL and the production of reactive oxygen species from macrophages and neutrophils causing oxidation of cellular lipids, proteins and DNA resulting in cell dysfunction and death (Topham and Hewitt, 2009; Kash et al., 2014; Kash and Taubenberger, 2015). Of course viral infection and/or interference with host processes can cause and direct the pathway of cell death, as is the case for necrosis. Host cell death, whether apoptosis, necrosis or pyroptosis, impacts on the severity and outcome of influenza disease in a variety of ways. Virally induced death of immune cells assist in the evasion of host defenses and hinders the clearance of the virus promoting the development of infection. Studies have shown a 90% reduction of alveolar macrophages in mice within a week of influenza infection, and evidence of necrosis in the remaining macrophages (Robinson et al., 2015). Necrosis and pyroptosis are pro-inflammatory due to their role in the release of cytokines. These cell death pathways allow for the rapid release of intracellular contents, including any viral components, from the infected host cell promoting host inflammatory responses and the formation of a cytokine storm which causes host tissue damage (Cundell et al., 1995; Rock and Kono, 2008; Lamkanfi and Dixit, 2010; Cauley and Vella, 2015). Furthermore infection with some influenza subtypes, for instance H1N1 and H5N1, typically result in lymphopenia, a state of abnormally low levels of lymphocytes, which has been associated with higher viral load. de Jong et al. (2006) found influenza infection caused lower levels of cytotoxic T cell lymphocytes, which would therefore negatively affect acquired immunity (de Jong et al., 2006; Cunha et al., 2009).

Bacterial Co-Infection and Secondary Infections

Laboratory, clinical and epidemiological research has made it abundantly clear that bacterial co/secondary infection can significantly increase the morbidity and mortality of viral infections (Gupta et al., 2008). UP TO 75% OF THOSE INFECTED WITH INFLUENZA THAT GO ON TO ACQUIRE PNEUMONIA, ARE CONFIRMED TO HAVE BACTERIAL CO-INFECTION (Zambon, 2001). Bacterial co/secondary infection of influenza infection appears to occur frequently. Studies have shown that up to 65% of laboratory confirmed cases of influenza infection exhibited bacterial co/secondary infection…

***

INFLUENZA OFTEN OCCURS WITH A BACTERIAL CO-INFECTION, And CONSEQUENCES ARE MOST DREADFUL:

Various studies have shown the impact when H. influenzae co/secondarily infects with influenza, and some suggest a level of synergism. The effect of influenza and H. influenzae co-infection verses individual infection of both pathogens is tellingly different; Shope found that co-infection resulted in severe disease or death when on their own H. influenzae and influenza only caused mild infection or disease (Shope, 1931). More recently, Lee E.H. et al. (2010) undertook a similar study which provided comparable results and evidence that influenza and H. influenzae co-infection produces more epithelial cell destruction than single infection with either pathogen (Lee L.N. et al., 2010). Furthermore, they found individual infection caused mild bronchiolitis within 4 days of initial infection, from which the host lung was able to recover. Conversely, co-infection caused bronchial necrosis, bronchial inflammation and bronchitis within the same time period or less, and led to further complication such as epithelial erosion (Lee L.N. et al., 2010). It is now commonly accepted that co-infection results in more severe morbidity and poorer clinical outcome than infection of influenza or H. influenzae alone.

Synergies also occur during co-infection with other bacteria:

…In an act of synergism, S. aureus infection may actually assist influenza infection by increasing the infectivity of influenza; when the virion is being moved into the host cell within an endosome the low pH in the endosome causes a conformational change to the HA [HA(0)] allowing it to be cleaved by host proteases into two subunits [HA(1) and HA(2)]. This cleaving ‘activates’ the HA, mediating fusion between the virus and endosome membrane, ready for the opening of the M2 ion channel so the vRNP (viral ribonucleoproteins) can be released into the host cell where the viral RNA is replicated and transcribed. Several strains of S. aureus produce proteases that cleaves influenza HA; the more protease that is available, the more HA can be cleaved meaning more vRNP can get into host cells meaning overall more progeny virions (Tashiro et al., 1987; Steinhauer, 1999; Samji, 2009). This aspect contributes to the increased severity of disease caused by co-infection…

HOW DID THE FLU OF 1918 KILL? BACTERIAL PNEUMONIA, 95% CASES!

Historical Evidence of CO/Secondary Bacterial Infection During Major Influenza Pandemics

1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic

The 1918 influenza pandemic was a result of influenza strain A (H1N1). It is considered the most devastating influenza pandemic ever recorded, infecting 50% of the world’s population and resulting in approximately 40–50 million deaths worldwide. India alone suffered 7 million deaths (Potter, 2001; Hilleman, 2002; Brundage, 2006; Michaelis et al., 2009). The main groups of individuals affected by this pandemic were those aged 20–40 years old, in addition to infants and those over 65. Ordinarily only young children and the elderly are the age groups most at risk from influenza, showing how distinctive pandemic strains can be (Potter, 2001). It is suggested that war time efforts meant that influenza easily spread through military camps, allowing the 20–40 years old age range to be more at risk than usual.

There are many published examples of co/secondary bacterial infections during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and pneumonia as a consequence of bacterial infection is estimated to have occurred in up to 95% of deaths during this pandemic (Morens et al., 2008). A majority of those deaths due to secondary S. pneumoniae infection (Brundage and Shanks, 2008; Morens et al., 2008). Many of the examples that detail co/secondary bacterial infection come from outbreaks within army camps…

1957 Asian Influenza Pandemic

This pandemic affected 40–50% of people worldwide. The cause was influenza strain A (H2N2) (Potter, 2001). Although global death toll estimates vary [between 1.5 million (Gatherer, 2009) and 2–4 million (Michaelis et al., 2009)], the death toll in the United States is accurately reported to have been 69, 800 (Klimov et al., 1999; Hilleman, 2002). Post-mortem cultures show evidence of bacterial infection in up to 80% of all severe and fatal cases (Hers et al., 1958; Morens et al., 2008; Gill et al., 2010)… 

Conclusion

Viral infection aids bacterial infection in a number of ways, including unveiling/providing more sites for adhesion, impairing immune responses and causing cell and tissue destruction allowing for the spread of bacteria and development of invasive infection. Bacterial infection is then able to worsen clinical outcome and the severity of disease. Of course viral and bacterial co-infection can be mutually beneficial, further helping viral infection, which is bad news for public health. Although antibiotics can help reduce the impact of co/secondary bacterial infection, we still need to better understand the interactions between viruses, bacteria and their host, and to fully understand all mechanisms of disease. Particularly in light of increased antibiotic resistance and the ability of microbes to adapt and evade vaccine induced immunity.

The aim of this review was to emphasize the historical and continuing threat of influenza and to highlight the risk of bacterial co/secondary infection. Vaccines and antibiotics are readily available, however, with antibiotic resistance at an all-time high, vaccination is becoming even more vital in the fight against influenza epidemics and pandemics and the bacterial co/secondary infections commonly associated. It is important to examine the strains and types of bacteria and viruses being spread amongst and transmitted throughout the general public (or continue to in the case of influenza) to inform clinical treatment and development, particularly in the setting of an influenza epidemic or pandemic. As the threat from influenza is ever changing, we need to ensure we know what strains are circulating, which could cause issue and how they interact with other potential pathogens. This preparation also entails monitoring the changing epidemiology of bacterial pathogens associated with secondary infection, such as capsule switching which help S. pneumoniae evade immunity (Pai et al., 2005a,b).

***

Some of these results above are many decades, even a century old… So why the insistence that antibiotics are useless in the case of flu? Well, in the USA, the food industry uses antibiotics massively, in the feed of animals, every day (this is now unlawful in Europe). But not just that, in the USA, antibiotics are used on plants, even “organic” plants… Refined studies have shown that antibiotics resistant mutations evolved in those food industry settings… 

In other words, in the USA, antibiotics help profits grow everyday… The insistence that antibiotics should be avoided in humans maybe have originated as a coverup…

Patrice Ayme 

 

 

 

Didier Raoult’s CURE (Corona Chronicles II)

March 21, 2020

Infectious disease top world expert, professor Didier Raoult, discoverer of dozens of bacteria, an MD and PhD, leads a very large lab and institute he created in Marseilles [1]. Raoult’s findings are found in thousands of publications. Among many other things, he identified the causative agents of several diseases and discovered giant viruses… plausibly a new form of life, no less. (No doubt, if Raoult was American, or, a fortiori Swedish, he would already be a laureate of the Nobel Prize!)

When French citizens were evacuated from China by military flights, they were put under Raoult’s supervision. 

Very interesting results from France with a treatment combining hydroxychloroquine and a common antibiotic (which has an antiviral, yes, antiviral effect). That compound (and chloroquine itself) have been long known to have effects against some coronaviruses. (Trump himself promoted Raoult’s findings… enabling anti-Trump media to accuse Trump to be “non-scientific”!)

These are the first trial data. Yes this was a small trial, and it was open-label (as people are dying conducting double blind experiments is deeply unethical). However, the results are so striking, these objections can be overridden (larger scale studies have been launched in France).

Coronavirus Marseilles Raoult Work’s show that azithromycin plus hydroxychloroquine cures patients in 5 days. That probably works better, the earlier it’s applied.

26 patients were enrolled in the treatment group, with 16 controls. Six patients dropped out of the treatment group: 3 went to the ICU, one dropped out due to nausea, one left the hospital (apparently recovered?) and one died. No one left the two control groups. 15 male and 21 female patients were treated. 6 of them were asymptomatic, 22 had upper respiratory symptoms, and 8 had lower respiratory tract symptoms (all of those had confirmed COVID19 pneumonia by imaging).

The treatment group got 200mg of hydroxychloroquine sulfate three times a day. Six of those patients were also given 500mg azithromycin in addition. The antibiotic dealt with possible bacterial superinfection. Professor Raoult also uses azithromycin for its antiviral effects

There appears to be an effect of hydroxychloroquine. The effect of the hydroxychloroquine – azithromycin combination is notably stronger effect: down to zero virus as measured by nasal swab, in five (5) days.

These are two inexpensive generic drugs with a long history of use in humans. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine both can have notable side effects, for example, cardiopathy. However, that happens only under chronic usage for cramps (that was discontinued in the USA in the 2000s, for this particular pathology). Brought up in Black Africa, I got malaria more than once, and was given longer treatments of chloroquine. The  treatment of Raoult is only a few days, and should have no adverse effects. Also, as in the case of malaria, chloroquine can be used prophylactically. 

It better work; absent a treatment, COVID19 will be a disaster equal to the “Spanish Flu” of 1918, said, correctly, the Senator head of the Intelligence Committee who admitted to have engaged on insider trading after he was privately briefed. Biden claimed that “Medicare For All, doesn’t work” in Italy. He and his well-heeded PAC and media supporters insisted M4A was the cause of the massacre there. 

However, the USA has, relative to its population, fewer ICU and critical respiratory beds than Italy. Simply, because it blocked (non-US) people coming from China on January 31, the US is delayed by ten days the contagion relative to Italy 9the EU incompetently didn’t block this travel). Expect thousands of Americans to die. And don’t expect the disease to threaten less when it’s warmer: SARS-CoV-2 is progressing in tropical areas… Just as SARS-CoV did.  

Patrice Ayme

***

***

Didier Raoult (born March 13, 1952) is a French biologist. He holds MD and Ph.D. degrees and specializes in infectious diseases. In 1984, Didier Raoult created the Rickettsia Unit at Aix-Marseille University (AMU). He also teaches infectious diseases in the Faculty of Medicine of Aix-Marseille University, and since 1982 has supervised many M.D. and Ph.D. degrees.[1]

Raoult is a world reference for Q fever and Whipple’s disease.[11] 

Since 2008, Raoult has been the director of “URMITE” i.e. the Research Unit in Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases, collaborating with CNRS (National Center for the Scientific Research), IRD (Research for the Development Institute), INSERM (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and the Aix Marseille University, in Marseille. His laboratory employs more than 200 people, including 86 very active researchers who publish between 250 and 350 papers per year and have produced more than 50 patents.[2] Didier Raoult is also involved in the creation of 8 startups to date.

Giant Viruses:

Raoult’s team was the first to discover very large size viruses.

In 2003, Didier Raoult identified with Bernard La Scola a giant amoebic virus, mimivirus,[16] and in 2004 established its genome.[17]

In 2016, this team found in mimivirus a defense mechanism preventing the implantation of virophages in the virus plant (MIMIVIRE).[18] Finally, it has been shown that this virophage could be integrated into the cells in the form of a pro-virophage and that it could be associated with transposon-like structures called transpovirons.[19]

They also discovered Marseilleviruses[20] and Faustoviruses.[21]

The discovery of giant viruses seriously undermines the classification of viruses. Didier Raoult has several times reported that giant viruses are of a different nature than other viruses and that they constitute a 4th branch of microbes known as TRUC for “Things Resisting Uncompleted Classifications”

New bacteria:

Since the 1990s, Raoult and his team have identified and described approximately 96 new pathogenic bacteria[9] and showed their implication in human pathologies. Two bacteria have been named for him: Raoultella planticola and Rickettsia raoultii.

***

[2] ““With all due respect to Medicare for all, you have a single-payer system in Italy,” Biden said to Sanders. It doesn’t work there. It has nothing to do with Medicare for all.

***

[This is the Tenth essay of mine on COVID19. The epidemic is rich in philosophical themes, and first of all, our degenerated civilization, and the need to reevaluate all its values!]

No More Lies, Please! (Reevaluation Of All Values V)

March 14, 2020

The Coronavirus pandemic makes it necessary to reevaluate all our values. Some of these values are very subtle. They are not just about stopping valuing wanton splurging on outrageous goods and services, but how we manage our thinking processes, at the highest level. In particular, we need to reevaluate how we manage our concepts of truth and how expressing truths relate to our comfort zone. We have to redefine what we are comfortable with.

We have unhinged the biosphere, and now it’s falling on us, in part because we lost track of what reality is… We lost truth. Truth doesn’t trust us anymore, and we don’t trust truth. Remember: before even the next pandemic, forests will burn, seas will die, etc. It’s time to change ways, because only that change will prevent extremely nefarious evolutions, such as massive sea level rise and lowering of atmospheric oxygen density.

***

Our societies rest all too much on the implicit religion of lies. In truth, lies are greatly there to protect authorities, the establishment, and their enabling software core, the Leader Principle (Führerprinzip, to use German translation… the core principle of Nazism as it was sold to the German people). The Leader Principle is used obsessively at all levels of society. here is the most elementary example:

Teachers were told at the public school of my fifth grader, as they were sent away with a month of homework, that this was, just in case the school “would” close…. When in truth the decision had already been taken. As I explained to my ten year old daughter, this sounds like an innocent lie. But the idea below that practice, and the emotion attached to it, is that, when in doubt, lie. Oh, some will say, just an innocent lie, so that parents can tell the children themselves. 

No, it’s not innocent to teach children that, when a little lie will make life slightly more comfortable, one should engage in it. It’s the exact opposite which should be taught. What should be taught to children: even if a little lie may make life slightly more uncomfortable, one should relish in the little discomfort caused by an abundance of truth, and the beauty of consecrating oneself to truth.  

Lies are complicated, and even little lies change initial conditions, which can drive differential equations awry with wildly divergent outcomes. Even a little lie, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can bring entire civilizations to lose a sense of reality. 

Why do people still admire Obama after the disaster he visited on the healthcare system… while crowing it was his “signature achievement”? Before accusing me to be a Trumpist, please read the New York Times below (or then you can check US life expectancy, and you can check that smart Obama put an end to its inconsiderate rise).

Any plutocracy is a loss of basic reality. Most civilizations ended as plutocracy: Nazism itself was a plutocracy (evil-rule), consecutive from a loss of reality, itself caused by German society taking for truths, sometimes for centuries, atrocious lies (say that nothing could be more pleasing than torturing Jews, an OCD emotion launched by Saint Louis of France, and then Martin Luther). German much-vaunted literacy contributed to this, as much of what the Germans viewed as most significant, in what they were reading, was conducive to holocausts, reinforced by an all too high opinion of themselves.

A subtle example of lying: Obama gave, what this hysterical monkey and his depraved ilk call a “shout out” (he says) to some celebrities for “giving” money.  Obama celebrates celebrities and collective hysteria. In other words, Obama uses cynically COVID 19 to reinforce the established order, in which he has been so much a part of. Lesser forms shout, higher forms, think.

The established order told us, implicitly, for the longest time, with Obama, that celebrities and “sport figures” are more important than funding research (and treatment!) in medicine… Deep cuts in health departments date from Mr. Obama, the sport figure-would be basketball player president. Obama as health departments cutter in chief? Doesn’t that hurt?

Frustration can cause this, Obama’s personal trainer in high school at Punahou told me, a few years ago: “He couldn’t be a good basketball player, his upper body is too weak”. So then Obama was left to salivate about basketball players… And meanwhile, with his grotesque Obamacare, he cut healthcare. Right wingers with Trump Derangement Syndrome will no doubt say I all make it up, and bother us with their strident ignorance, so here is the New York Times, they very voice of unhinged TDS, which I subscribe to by sheer masochism:

The Coronavirus Swamps Local Health Departments, Already Crippled by Cuts

Many state and municipal health departments saw budget and staffing cuts a decade ago that were never restored.

By Julie Bosman and Richard Fausset, March 14, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

CHICAGO — A widespread failure in the United States to invest in public health has left local and state health departments struggling to respond to the coronavirus outbreak and ill-prepared to face the swelling crisis ahead.

Many health departments are suffering from budget and staffing cuts that date to the Great Recession and have never been fully restored. Public health departments across the country manage a vast but often invisible portfolio of duties, including educating the public about smoking cessation; fighting opioid addictions; convincing the reluctant to vaccinate their babies; and inspecting restaurants and tattoo parlors.

Now, these bare-bones staffs of medical and administrative workers are trying to answer a sudden rush of demands — taking phone calls from frightened residents, quarantining people who may be infected, and tracing the known contacts and whereabouts of the ill — that accompany a public health crisis few have seen before.

Nationwide, local and state health departments have lost nearly a quarter of their work force since 2008, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials. As the nation’s local and state public health officials confront a pandemic that has paralyzed much of the world, many of them have made their situation plain: They are heading into a crisis without the resources they need.

“We’ve had to deal with budget cut after budget cut,” said A. Scott Lockard, director of the Kentucky River District Health Department, which serves seven counties in rural eastern Kentucky. “Our staffing level is much less now than what it was previously. People are wearing several different hats and sharing job responsibilities for things that they were not doing before, so we’re already operating at peak efficiency and we have no capacity when something like this happens.””

A “decade ago”! Get it? A decade ago, that’s Obama the Basketball player, not Trump. 

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Problem With The Leader Principle: Can’t Tell What’s Important

Of course Obama and his ilk behave as if the only important thing is basketball, and other stupid sport spectacles… So most of the stupid population is in agreement having been brainwashed to find basketball, football, and all other balls, including senior prom, most important, as part of their own stupidification program, which they love. 

Here is an extract for the Guardian… a newspaper who banned me, more than ten years ago, and ever since, for being a “Jihadist”, they claimed, “blogging the Quran”… How that jihadism fits with the fatwa from the government of Pakistan for offending Islam is easy: in either case, I offend the powers that be… Be it the plutocrats such as Bill Gates… who injected at least once, 50 million dollars, secretly into The Guardian. By the way, Obamas and Gates roll together in the same through, attributing to each other various goods, services and honors. As long as The Guardian does not publish my comments the pseudo-left shall think the way the plutocracy wants it to think… The idea of the Leader Principle is that the official ideas and emotions, those which reach the public, are compatible with what the leadership has decided reality was (hence the great hatred of the establishment against Trump whose reality about globalization has never fitted what the global plutocracy has decided what reality should be). Here is The Guardian, March 14:

We need more courageous ones like this one. Coronavirus Dr. Ai Fen, director of the emergency at Wuhan Central hospital. Photograph Renwu Handout

Coronavirus: Wuhan doctor speaks out against authorities

Ai Fen says in interview, which censors are trying to erase, how superiors reprimanded her for warning about outbreak

“A doctor in Wuhan has spoken out after seeing several of her colleagues die from the coronavirus, criticising hospital authorities for suppressing early warnings of the outbreak in an interview censors have been trying to erase from the internet.

In an interview with the Chinese magazine, Renwu, or People, Ai Fen, director of the emergency at Wuhan Central hospital, said she was reprimanded after alerting her superiors and colleagues of a Sars-like virus seen in patients in December.

Now that the virus has claimed more than 3,000 lives inside China, including four doctors at her hospital, one of which was the whistleblower ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, Ai has joined other critics risking their jobs, as well as detention, to speak out about conditions in Wuhan: “If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand. I would have fucking talked about it to whoever, where ever I could,” she said in the interview.

Since Tuesday, Ai’s interview has been posted and quickly deleted from Chinese social media sites. Renwu has removed the article and Ai could not be reached over the phone. Internet users have moved quickly to save the article, posting screenshots of it.”

The article was translated into classical Mandarin, pinyin, Morse Code, mostly emojis, Hebrew… To elude censors…

“On 30 December, after seeing several patients with flu-like symptoms and resistant to usual treatment methods, Ai received the lab results of one case, which contained the word: “Sars coronavirus.” Ai, reading the report several times, says she broke out into a cold sweat.

She circled the words Sars, took a photo and sent it to a former medical school classmate, now a doctor at another hospital in Wuhan. By that evening, the photo had spread throughout medical circles in Wuhan, where it was also shared by Li Wenliang, becoming the first piece of evidence of the outbreak.

That night Ai said she received a message from her hospital saying information about this mysterious disease should not be arbitrarily released in order to avoid causing panic. Two days later, she told the magazine, she was summoned by the head of the hospital’s disciplinary inspection committee and reprimanded for “spreading rumours” and “harming stability”.

The staff were forbidden from passing messages or images related to the virus, she said. All Ai could do was ask her staff to wear protective clothing and masks – even as hospital authorities told them not to. She told her department to wear protective jackets under their doctor coats.

“We watched more and more patients come in as the radius of the spread of infection became larger,” she said, as they began to see patients with no connection to the seafood market, believed to be the source of the first cases.

Meanwhile, Chinese officials were still insisting there was no reason to believe the virus was being passed between people. “I knew there must be human to human transmission,” Ai said.”

A lie at this point in the West is the lethality of the virus. 

As it is, March 14: CLOSED CASES: 80,270, Cases which had a Recovered / Discharge Outcome: 74,451 (93%). Deaths: 5,819 (7%).

By saying the death rate is only 1%, authorities make the assumption that, for the 80,000 closed cases, another 500,000 or so cases happened… which were so mild, that they don’t know about them. Now, 20% of the known cases become serious enough for hospitalization, and 8% become critical… Now, right, further massaging of the data, if half of the critical cases are saved, thanks to intact health systems (that is, not overwhelmed as the Wuhan health care system was for a few weeks)… We go down to a 4% death rate…

And The Guardian to conclude:

“On 21 January, the day after Chinese officials finally confirmed there was human to human transmission of the virus, the number of sick residents coming to the emergency room had already reached 1,523 in a day – three times the normal volume.

In the interview, Ai described moments that she will never forget: an elderly man staring blankly at a doctor giving him the death certificate of his 32-year-old son, or a father who was too sick to get out of the car outside of the hospital. By the time she walked to the car, he had died.”

Our pampered leaders, rendered superhumanly powerful by the Leader Principle, are leading us into an Armageddon of their own making. This crisis, and many like it, and worse to come, could be prevented, but one has to work on their prevention in a timely manner. Research on Coronaviruses was cut down two years after the SARS 1 epidemic, in 2003: there was no profit to be made, whereas there are plenty to make in basketball, and thus why Obama and his ilk obsesses about it. Basketball itself is completely uninteresting, but the lemmings out there have been conditioned, by the dozen of millions to wallop on their couches and cry an ocean when a basketball superstar dies flying his private helicopter in total pea soup, because, as a plutocrat, even fog should make way (killing innocent children in the process).

They call that sports, because it’s watched on TV, I call it mental degeneracy and cardiovascular disease, and a moral outcry to watch it on TV as if it were (much more genuinely interesting) coronavirus. So Obama diverted clout from biomedical research and treatment of all diseases, to basketball and the like (stuff he can understand)… But why did he do that so obsessively? To hide the fact, by diverting attention, that he gave 8,000 billion dollars ($8 trillion) to the financial plutocracy (which had lost that in the crash to the other half of the plutocracy). All right, he is no genius, and may not even understand that this is what he was doing. But that’s what he was doing, and still does. 

Some maybe shocked by my scorched earth philosophy (and why don’t I attack Trump as much? [1]). But the Earth is being scorched for real by our idiotic leaders, and they are not just all Putin. Philosophy in the past sometimes used to look very elevated, when all it was doing was to serve the tyrants. Pretty much all of Stoic philosophy is culprit of this. But not only. Aristotle was worse. Here is this leech of the most poisonous type: “Change in all things is sweet.” — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Yes, really? Thus SARS 2/COVID 19 is sweet? Aristotle, you can be quite a fool, but you would say anything to justify the tyranny of your very closest friends, the Macedonians tyrants, Alexander, Antipater, Craterus. So, after all, Aristotle, you are not a fool, just the worst snake.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/aristotle-destroyed-democracy/

The present madness of planetary destruction from wanton human ways, has got to stop, COVID 19 is one more symptom. As people are confined at home, sharing for a few, a few days, with a few significant others, a few fundamental human needs, such as love, conversation and food, life that I consider normal, let them meditate that… And forget the non-creative pursuits that their self-interested leaders told them were most worth it.  

Patrice Ayme

***

***

[1] Trump, long a Democrat. has been president just 3.5 years, and didn’t have an easy task, as he faced the full fury of the plutocratically controlled media and establishment. For example, the Intellectual Property (IP) system, completely wrecked by Barack Obama so as to serve Gates and other monopolists who feed, wine, dine and enrich the Obamas since, has not been changed yet. IP was supposed to be addressed, when the Impeachment hoax was taken up… precisely so that IP will keep on serving the monopolists still in power…. By the way, the servants of plutocracy shouldn’t provoke me, I have a half ready essay on this.

Roughly, Obama didn’t do anything good, besides SpaceX (and I was wrong on that one; Elon Musk surprised me; I didn’t remove my highly critical essays on the subject)… And creating giant wildlife reserves (some of which have been inverted by Trump, something I disapprove of strongly…) In the present crisis, Obamacare is coming short. Apparently Trump and Congress are forcing through a number of emergency measures: under Obamacare, being tested for Coronavirus cost up to $5,000. If the Trump-Pelosi Bill is signed into law after the US Senate deigns to look at it, the test should be free… From Democrat impeacher in chief Adam Shifty Schiff himself: “Coronavirus tests at no cost to all who need them. Paid sick leave, expanded food security, enhanced unemployment insurance and more. We’re all in this together.

High time.

450 Million Dead Possible? Something To Take Seriously, Right Away.

March 9, 2020

COVID 19 Is A BIG ONE. We are under attack by the worst infectious disease since 1918!

Today I will endorse my hat of panicker-in-chief. I will attract attention on a point not mentioned in the media: the potential global lethality of SARS 2/COVID19. The question of the potential global lethality of the Coronavirus is ignored. We hear whining all over about not endangering economic activity, so France and the US have not gone in panic mode yet (what the French call stage3 epidemic). 

Anyway, here are the scary numbers, as of March 8, 2020:

ACTIVE CASES, Currently Infected Patients: 43,975

37,998 (86%) in Mild Condition

5,977 (14%) Serious or Critical

***

CLOSED CASES, Cases which had an outcome: 66,110

62,280 (94%) Recovered / Discharged

3,830 (6%) Deaths

***

Another unexpected exponential strikes!

At first sight this seems to indicate a lethality of 6% [1]. However that maybe an overestimate: lethality has been above  5% in Wuhan, in the first three months of the epidemic there, according to Chinese medical authorities. That high rate is due to the effect of surprise and the medical system being overwhelmed: 2,000 medical personnel got infected. In the rest of China, the death rate has been much lower: a number of treatments are tried and perhaps working. Just providing mechanical oxygen saves half of the patient who would otherwise die. China is now able to try to cure patients by giving them antibodies in serum of recovered patients.

Now it’s cold in China in winter, people gather in warm places. So it remains to be seen whether the virus will spread as effectively in tropical areas. If it does, this means that an expected slowdown after cold winter months will not happen.

During the famous Black Plague of 1348 CE, around half of Europe died… But no nobles: armed with cats, civettes, and knowledge about transmission, European nobles kept the plague bacillus, and its vectors, fleas from rats, at bay. The economic impact and the impact of civilization was, weirdly, neglectable, or even positive: salaries went up. technology accelerated.

We have in some ways a similar situation. First, humanity has no immunity against Corona viruses… except for the few who got SARS 1, MERS, Ebola, and now SARS2 and recovered. This is different from the Flu A, B, C, etc… The Flu is always around, and people can keep, partly a life long immunity. Those exposed to the Avian (?) Flu of  1918 (so-called Spanish Flu which seems to have started in Kansas military camps…) kept a life long immunity against Avian Flus, sort of. Enough to prevent a repeat of 1918, when at least twenty million died.

Because nearly nobody has immunity against SARS 2 aka COVID 19, one may reasonably expect, in the worst case, a worldwide infection. That would be a bit more than 400 million dead.

I am not saying that this will happen. I am saying political leaders worldwide should assume that the death of many millions will happen… If they don’t take extreme measures to augment distanciation between individuals… as the People Republic of China succeed to do. But the case of China is special: a very powerful Communist Party and very advanced science and technology.

I have condemned China for having made the situation worse with its closed society, by keeping the infection secret too long. However now that the catastrophe is upon us, China was able to turn the catastrophe around as very few countries could… Singapore was able to. Singapore is an independent Chinese country, saw its first case January 23. Six weeks later it is barely above 100.

Italy, belatedly copied China sort of, with a country-wide ban on unnecessary travel (under the threat of jail). It remains to see if it works. Other most advanced countries have been too slow: France on 8 march banned gathering of more than 1,000 people: France and all of Europe should have followed Switzerland, which did it a week earlier. Clearly all gatherings should be banned, worldwide, except if absolutely necessary.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1994, recommended basically no air travel and “absolutely no cruise ships“… on Fox News, March 8…

Sometimes, panic is the wisest course. This is one of these times. 

With maximum, aggressive distanciation, a few millions will probably die. Without, several dozen millions dead are guaranteed [2].

As far as the biosphere is concerned, humanity was the ultimate disease. SARS 2-COVID 19 is a first counterattack. As far as humanity is concerned, an interesting twist is that the older people (above 80) get affected around 100 times more than those below 40. Hence an occasion for the young to kill the old. This time. Next time may be different. So are we in this this together? A litmus test is in sight[3].

Patrice Ayme

***

***

[1] Lower estimates of lethality have been obtained through the optimistic, yet erroneous computations where the number of death is divided by the total number of cases… Then getting something like 3.5%. Stupid. A smarter approach is to claim that 2/3 of the cases go undetected: that would give a lethality rate of 2%. To get the rate down to 1%, one would have to assume that the Chinese detected only one case out of six…

***

[2] HIV killed 35 millions… But over decades.

***

[3] One has to change the economy, fiscally and investment-wise: one needs to shrink the billionaire class and augment the carbon free economy and the science based economy. In 2009, Obama just reflated the plutocracy and its banks, and their monopoly powers, say on Intellectual Property; doing nothing, in other words.. Now the viruses have come to roost: the Coronaviruses. SARS, MERS, Ebola, have been warning for more than 20 years… and precious little was done.


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NotPoliticallyCorrect

Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution

Political Reactionary

Dark Enlightenment and Neoreaction

Of Particular Significance

Conversations About Science with Theoretical Physicist Matt Strassler

Rise, Republic, Plutocracy, Degeneracy, Fall And Transmutation Of Rome

Power Exponentiation By A Few Destroyed Greco-Roman Civilization. Are We Next?

SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

Where The Eagles Fly . . . . Art Science Poetry Music & Ideas

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Patterns of Meaning

Exploring the patterns of meaning that shape our world

Sean Carroll

in truth, only atoms and the void

West Hunter

Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat

GrrrGraphics on WordPress

www.grrrgraphics.com

Skulls in the Stars

The intersection of physics, optics, history and pulp fiction

Footnotes to Plato

because all (Western) philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato

Patrice Ayme's Thoughts

Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum

Learning from Dogs

Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.

ianmillerblog

Smile! You’re at the best WordPress.com site ever

NotPoliticallyCorrect

Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution

Political Reactionary

Dark Enlightenment and Neoreaction

Of Particular Significance

Conversations About Science with Theoretical Physicist Matt Strassler

Rise, Republic, Plutocracy, Degeneracy, Fall And Transmutation Of Rome

Power Exponentiation By A Few Destroyed Greco-Roman Civilization. Are We Next?

SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

Where The Eagles Fly . . . . Art Science Poetry Music & Ideas

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Patterns of Meaning

Exploring the patterns of meaning that shape our world

Sean Carroll

in truth, only atoms and the void

West Hunter

Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat

GrrrGraphics on WordPress

www.grrrgraphics.com

Skulls in the Stars

The intersection of physics, optics, history and pulp fiction

Footnotes to Plato

because all (Western) philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato

Patrice Ayme's Thoughts

Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum

Learning from Dogs

Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.

ianmillerblog

Smile! You’re at the best WordPress.com site ever

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