Well, I think it’s safe to say that despite the name, 2020 is a year we sure as hell didn’t see coming.
I have a new acronym – CLAW: the collective efforts of Costco, Loblaws, Amazon and Walmart to rake in pretty much all of the remaining cash that we have.
News stories:
Hrdoxychloroquine effective in inhibiting SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. I try to balance my fear of what’s happening around the world with respect for the science that might dig us out of this mess. This article offers a glimpse of promise into the idea that there is effective treatment for Covid around the corner. Let’s hope it’s not draconian like the next story.
Will Boeing Get a Bailout? I certainly fucking hope not. And business leader Mark Cuban agrees. If Boeing gets public money after wasting so much of what they already received from the public, they should never be able to buy back their shares again. They are ultimately a company that is owned by taxpayers. I would add to Cuban’s thoughts that companies that receive public money of ANY KIND should have to submit to rules about transparency and expenses related to their government business. They should be prevented from giving out bonuses and extra salaries beyond publically-approved limits. In other words, WE the taxpayers get to vote on how much these fuckers get from the public.
New rules. We need new rules.
Did Trump Game the Pandemic? Originally posted by the Disaffected Lib, there’s some suggestion that several of Trump’s closest advisors and peers had what could only be described of as insider information that they used to manipulate the market and maximize their own portfolios.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr unloaded as much as $1.7 million in stock several weeks ago:
Burr and his wife Brooke sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million in publicly traded stocks on Feb. 13 and didn’t buy any new positions, according to a recent financial disclosure filed with the Senate.
Around the time that Burr sold his shares of major corporations, including several hard hit hotel companies, he publicly expressed confidence about the U.S. government’s ability to fight the virus. However in late February, Burr privately warned that the virus is “much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” according to a recording obtained by NPR.
They lied to the public. And stole from the public. Is it because they were told to by other officials to get out or lay low or were they just being so stupid it’s hard to imagine them tying their own shoes?
This points to two things:
- People surrounding Trump are proving themselves again and again to be small and selfish, giving me hope that there’s no possible way that they could be the epicentre of the massive, global detainment program
- Idiots like Burr actually, ironically, make me think we’ll pull out of this because they’re planning for their own cushion to secure their financial future. In a weird, twisted way, there’s hope for the future.
Bill Gates, vaccines and digital certificates. In a Reddit discussion thread about Covid, Bill Gates revealed the following:
A lot of links were made to this thread, questioning the sanity of requiring ALL citizens to allow themselves to be injected with a digital certificate or RFID tag to prove that they’ve been innoculated with a Covid vaccine. Fucking creepy.
Here’s more for thos who want to go down that rabbit hole. It ain’t pretty. Does this mean Bill Gates is the smartest man in the room and will be our new overlord?
If that’s not enough, consider now that Hong Kong will be implementing digital wrist bands that will track citizens in order to enforce quarantine. Still thinking this is a pleasant little break from reality or something bigger? My biggest question I suppose from this is when did they make all of the wrist bands for such an occasion? So far, it seems to be just for citizens who are travelling and arriving in the country, but how long before everyone has to wear one? Fines and imprisonment for up to 6 months are already being imposed on those who falsify information.
China is sitting in the sidelines. Ready to pounce? Or scapegoat for failed foreign policy with Americans and the rest of the world. China has shown strong leadership with the Covid crisis. We certainly don’t know what happened during the weeks that followed the outbreak – hospitals, mass culling of inhabitants, shutting down factories, etc – but we are getting reports (true or not) that China is no longer a cause for concern with Covid. As it recovers, it’s pretty clear that it will be China that digs us out of this mess, not the Americans. Lord only knows what that means.
California on lockdown. 40 million people have been ordered to stay home.
All Californians, nearly 40 million people, have been ordered to stay at home except for when it is absolutely necessary for them to leave “until further notice” to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Covidis is spreading wildly in California, hence the drastic measures.
This is the big one in my mind.
My main questions revolve around simple things that we take for granted: server farms functioning, access to Gmail, posting updates with friends on Facebook. How are we going to pass the time without Netflix and Amazon Prime to keep us mindlessly distracted while the world shuts down around us? If so many tech employees are required to stay home, how are we going to stay with our modern communication conveniences?
I think we should be asking these questions particularly when some experts in Italy are questioning the real number of actual deaths specifically related to Covid. Some say it’s as low as 2. TWO.
From Silvio Brusaferro, President of the Italian Higher Institute of Health:
“There may be only two people who died from coronavirus in Italy, who did not present other pathologies. This is what emerges from the medical records examined so far by the Higher Institute of Health, according to what was reported by the President of the Institute [Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), Italian National Institute of Health], Silvio Brusaferro, during the press conference held today at the Civil Protection in Rome. ‘Positive deceased patients have an average of over 80 years – 80.3 to be exact…The majority of these people are carriers of chronic diseases. Only two people were not presently carriers of [other non-COV] diseases’, but even in these two cases, the examination of the files is not concluded and therefore, causes of death different from Covid-19 could emerge. The president of the ISS has specified that ‘little more than a hundred medical records’ have so far come from hospitals throughout Italy.”
“…At present, in fact, the authorities are unable to distinguish those who died from the virus, from those who, on the other hand, are communicated daily to the public, but who were mostly carriers of other serious diseases and who, therefore, would not have died from Covid-19. In response to a question from ‘Agenzia Nova’, in fact, Brusaferro was unable to indicate the exact number of coronavirus deaths. However, the professor clarified that, according to the data analyzed, the vast majority of the victims ‘had serious [non-COV] pathologies and in some cases the onset of an infection of the respiratory tract can lead more easily to death.’ To clarify this point, and provide real data, ‘as we acquire the folders we will go further. However, the populations most at risk are fragile, carriers of multiple diseases’.”
Italy has the oldest population of the European countries and their culture, up to this date, encourages a certain ‘touchiness’ with their greetings etc. AND their population is nearly twice that of Canada (70 million) crammed into a tiny sliver of land jutting into the Mediterranean.
A new era awaits.
