914 replies to this topic

[gamesguru]

That's not a good excuse. The experts could have screamed about masks years ago.

 

Fact is having the weekly production of masks wasn't practical for most large countries at the early stages.  Governors could have—instead of full out lockdowns—made authoritarian call that only those with homemade face coverings or other approved masks may attend social places, but that would have seemed crazy as it ran against the "advice" at the time by the CDC and Trump administration that "masks don't help, just wash your hands".  Wasn't til April they recommended homemade face and cloth coverings.  There would have been no harm—except to hospital supplies and to spook the stock market—in making this recommendation in February.. that everyone just wear a mask if they have one.

 

Japan already wear masks.  This video is published early Spring 2019, long before corona.  It's part of their culture, part of their GDP.  Not fair to compare us to them, nor to expect a similar level of preparedness.

 

 

What are the lessons? The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic took the lives of nearly 500,000 Japanese. (For perspective, the combined death toll after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was 200,000.) Since then, a phenomenon began to emerge: “mask culture.” The wearing of cloth or paper “sickness masks” while healthy and in public has become such a standard practice in Japan that in average years, the nation manufactures 4.3 billion face masks for personal use. The typical Japanese citizen goes through 43 masks per year.

 

Initially a personal public health decision, daily mask wearing became a social etiquette standard and then a fashion accessory. Within the past several years, “sickness masks” have morphed into a trendsetting statement worn by celebrities and fashionistas. Daily public use is ubiquitous.

 

So why insist on a full lockdown or universal masks if other approaches can be less invasive.  Ramping up testing capacity and getting people cozy with contact tracing would have worked wonders too.  I think pushing for public and airport screening in Jan/Feb could have also been a low-cost high-return adjunctive.  The fact is there are multiple avenues the Federal govt failed us on, any one of those avenues could have potentially mitigated things 90%.

[Florin]

Fact is having the weekly production of masks wasn't practical for most large countries at the early stages.  Governors could have—instead of full out lockdowns—made authoritarian call that only those with homemade face coverings or other approved masks may attend social places, but that would have seemed crazy as it ran against the "advice" at the time by the CDC and Trump administration that "masks don't help, just wash your hands".  Wasn't til April they recommended homemade face and cloth coverings.  There would have been no harm—except to hospital supplies and to spook the stock market—in making this recommendation in February.. that everyone just wear a mask if they have one.

I've already address this stuff. See my earlier reply.
 

Japan already wear masks.  This video is published early Spring 2019, long before corona.  It's part of their culture, part of their GDP.  Not fair to compare us to them, nor to expect a similar level of preparedness.

At a surface level, this may seem like a sound argument, but it isn't. Most people have relatively quickly started wearing masks, and if the experts weren't actively trying to convince people not to wear masks and started drilling mask wearing into people years ago, mask wearing would have occured much earlier. And if for whatever reason mask wearing remains low in some places, mask mandates with teeth can fix that problem regardless of culture.

 

So why insist on a full lockdown or universal masks if other approaches can be less invasive.  Ramping up testing capacity and getting people cozy with contact tracing would have worked wonders too.  I think pushing for public and airport screening in Jan/Feb could have also been a low-cost high-return adjunctive.  The fact is there are multiple avenues the Federal govt failed us on, any one of those avenues could have potentially mitigated things 90%.

Because that stuff won't work.

[gamesguru]

Because that stuff won't work.

 

Lol yes it does.. multiple countries agree these factors were part their success.  It's a huge oversimplification thinking "all you need is masks".  Any place without contact tracing or isolation could have Rt > 1.  In Korea they put even asymptomatic cases in hospital, to isolate from society.  Greatly differs from certain American attitudes of entitlement to freedom.  So yes, other factors besides masks matter and that's a huge oversimplification to argue otherwise.  Thank you!

[Daniel Cooper]

Lol yes it does.. multiple countries agree these factors were part their success.  It's a huge oversimplification thinking "all you need is masks".  Any place without contact tracing or isolation could have Rt > 1.  In Korea they put even asymptomatic cases in hospital, to isolate from society.  Greatly differs from certain American attitudes of entitlement to freedom.  So yes, other factors besides masks matter and that's a huge oversimplification to argue otherwise.  Thank you!

 
 
The WHO just released a statement the other day that the transmission rate from asymptomatic patients is very low and isn't a significant disease vector.
 
CNN - Coronavirus spread by asymptomatic people 'appears to be rare,' WHO official says

 

Also, people should not imagine that mask wearing in Asia has anything to do with a "collectivist spirit".  It's purely about self protection.  

 

In fact, in China wearing a mask wasn't historically about limiting disease spread but rather a response to deal with the horribly dirty air created by unregulated industrial pollution.

 

The simple fact is that if people that were showing symptoms stayed at home, you'd make a dramatic cut in the spread of this disease.  No masks, no lock downs, just staying at home when you feel sick.

 

 

 

 

[Florin]

Lol yes it does.. multiple countries agree these factors were part their success.  It's a huge oversimplification thinking "all you need is masks".  Any place without contact tracing or isolation could have Rt > 1.  In Korea they put even asymptomatic cases in hospital, to isolate from society.  Greatly differs from certain American attitudes of entitlement to freedom.  So yes, other factors besides masks matter and that's a huge oversimplification to argue otherwise.  Thank you!

 

Testing and tracing has only worked when there were few cases and nearly always in combination with mask wearing. And Japan has done little T&T.

 

Temp checks don't catch presymptomatics and asymptomatics.

Edited by Florin, 09 June 2020 - 06:21 PM.

[Florin]

The WHO just released a statement the other day that the transmission rate from asymptomatic patients is very low and isn't a significant disease vector.
 
CNN - Coronavirus spread by asymptomatic people 'appears to be rare,' WHO official says

 

The simple fact is that if people that were showing symptoms stayed at home, you'd make a dramatic cut in the spread of this disease.  No masks, no lock downs, just staying at home when you feel sick.

 

Nope, you can't avoid the mask. Presymptomatic transmission occurs often, and there's no way to stop it without mask wearing or lockdowns. And do you really want to stay home if you just have a cold or your allergies are acting up? You can get tested, but no test is 100% accurate. And you'd have to trust that everyone else was as careful as you were.

Edited by Florin, 09 June 2020 - 06:41 PM.

[gamesguru]

 The WHO just released a statement the other day that the transmission rate from asymptomatic patients is very low and isn't a significant disease vector.

 

Derp!

 

The W.H.O. walked back an earlier assertion that asymptomatic transmission is ‘very rare.’

 

The points stands that mandating masks as a monotherapy is an oversimplification, especially the idea it could be solely practical from the start.

[Daniel Cooper]

Derp!
 
The W.H.O. walked back an earlier assertion that asymptomatic transmission is ‘very rare.’
 
The points stands that mandating masks as a monotherapy is an oversimplification, especially the idea it could be solely practical from the start.

 
Well, I got the information from this very knowledgeable poster.  What can I say?

 

Herp?

 

 

 

 

[Florin]

Derp!

 

The W.H.O. walked back an earlier assertion that asymptomatic transmission is ‘very rare.’

 

The points stands that mandating masks as a monotherapy is an oversimplification, especially the idea it could be solely practical from the start.

 

You'll get asymptomatic spread along with symptomatic spread. So, the idea that a pandemic can't be detected ahead of time to nip it in the bud with masks is garbage.

 

Barf!

Edited by Florin, 09 June 2020 - 09:28 PM.

[gamesguru]

Problem is a number of countries, such as Spain, have made masks compulsory but still not quelled the pandemic.  So compared with countries like Vietnam, Mongolia and Korea their response is quite barbaric and inadequate.  There will always be intra-family spread, some people will defy the mask order, and indeed some states even will, and that has very proven consequences on states that are far away even!

 

Need to really think outside the box to solve this one, not just assume telling everyone to mask up will be the magic bullet. Thank you

[Florin]

Problem is a number of countries, such as Spain, have made masks compulsory but still not quelled the pandemic.  So compared with countries like Vietnam, Mongolia and Korea their response is quite barbaric and inadequate.  There will always be intra-family spread, some people will defy the mask order, and indeed some states even will, and that has very proven consequences on states that are far away even!

 

Need to really think outside the box to solve this one, not just assume telling everyone to mask up will be the magic bullet. Thank you

 

Wrong. Spain has quelled the pandemic. Japan never had much quelling to do. Intra-family spread is unlikely if most wear masks and it would be limited to familes anyway. If mask orders are defied by too many people, they just have to learn the hard way.

 

Just wear a mask. You're welcome.

 

 

https://www.euromomo...graphs-and-maps

https://nssac.bii.vi...d-19/dashboard/ (select Spain, All dates, Daily)

Edited by Florin, 10 June 2020 - 12:49 AM.

[pamojja]

Facts about Covid-19 June 2020 Update A. General part Studies of Covid-19 lethality

Stanford professor John Ioannidis published an overview of Covid-19 antibody studies. According to his analysis, the lethality of Covid19 (IFR) is below 0.16% in most countries and regions. Ioannidis found an upper limit of 0.40% for three hotspots.

In its latest report, the US health authority CDC reduced the Covid19 lethality (IFR) to 0.26% (best estimate). Even this value may still be seen as an upper limit, since the CDC conservatively assumes 35% asymptomatic cases, while most studies indicate 50 to 80% asymptomatic cases.

 

At the end of May, however, Swiss immunologists led by Professor Onur Boyman published what is probably the most important study on Covid19 lethality to date. This preprint study comes to the conclusion that the usual antibody tests that measure antibodies in the blood (IgG and IgM) can recognize at most one fifth of all Covid19 infections.

 

The reason for this discrepancy is that in most people the new coronavirus is already neutralized by antibodies on the mucous membrane (IgA) or by cellular immunity (T-cells). In most of these cases, no symptoms or only mild symptoms develop.

This means that the new coronavirus is probably much more common than previously thought and the lethality per infection is up to five times lower than previously assumed. The real lethality could thus be well below 0.1% and hence in the range of strong seasonal influenza.

 

In fact, several studies have now shown that up to 60% of all people already have a certain cellular immunity to Covid-19, which was acquired through contact with previous coronaviruses (common cold viruses). Children in particular often come into contact with such coronaviruses, which could help explain their insensitivity to Covid19.

 

The new Swiss study may also explain why antibody studies even in hotspots like New York or Madrid found infection rates of at most about 20%, as this would correspond to an actual rate of nearly 100%. In many regions, the actual prevalence might already be well over 50% and thus in the range of ​​herd immunity.

 

Should the Swiss study be confirmed, the assessment of Oxford epidemiologist Prof. Sunetra Gupta would apply, who predicted early on that Covid-19 is very widespread and its lethality below 0.1%.

 

Despite the comparatively low lethality of Covid-19 (deaths per infection), the mortality (deaths per population) can still be increased regionally and in the short term if the virus spreads rapidly and reaches high risk groups, especially patients in nursing homes, as indeed happened in several hotspots (see below).

 

Due to its rather low lethality, Covid-19 falls at most into level 2 of the five-level pandemic plan developed by the US health authorities. For this level, only the “voluntary isolation of sick people” is to be applied, while further measures such as face masks, school closings, distance rules, contact tracing, vaccinations and lockdowns of entire societies are not recommended.

Regarding contact tracing, a WHO study on influenza pandemics from 2019 also came to the conclusion that from a medical point of view this is “under no circumstances recommended”, since it is not expedient for easily communicable and generally mild respiratory diseases.

 

It is sometimes argued that the rather low lethality was not known at the beginning of the pandemic. This is not entirely true, as data from South Korea, the cruise ships and even from Italy already showed in March that the risk to the general population is rather low.

 

Many health authorities also knew this, as leaked emails from Denmark in mid-March show: “The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that Covid-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either a usually serious course or a high mortality rate.”

 

However, some media and laypeople continue to calculate an allegedly much higher Covid19 lethality of sometimes over 1% by simply dividing deaths by “infections”. This procedure is of course not meaningful because it does not take into account the age and risk structure of the population, which is absolutely crucial, especially with Covid19.

 

The latest data from the European mortality monitoring Euromomo show that several countries such as France, Italy and Spain are already entering a below-average mortality. The reason for this is that the average age of Covid19 deaths was very high and fewer people than usual are now dying in this age group.

 

See also: Studies on Covid-19 lethality

Example: Death rate per age group in Massachusetts, USA ( source )   The role of nursing homes

Nursing homes played an absolute key role in the Covid 19 pandemic. In most countries, one to two thirds of all Covid19 deaths occurred in nursing homes, and up to 80% in Canada and some US states. Even in Sweden, which did not impose a lockdown, 75% of deaths occurred in nursing homes and nursing flats.

 

It is all the more worrying that some authorities have obliged their nursing homes to admit Covid patients from the clinics, which has almost always resulted in numerous new infections and deaths. This happened in northern Italy, England and the heavily affected US states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

 

It is also known from northern Italy that the widespread fear of the virus and the announced lockdown led to the flight of the predominantly Eastern European nurses, which accelerated the breakdown of elderly care.

 

In the United States, at least 42% of all Covid19 deaths are accounted for by 0.6% of the population living in nursing homes. Nursing homes require targeted protection and do not benefit from a general lockdown of society as a whole.

 

In addition, it is often not clear whether these people really died from Covid-19 or from weeks of stress and total isolation. For example, there were approximately 30,000 additional deaths in English nursing homes, but in only 10,000 cases, Covid19 is noted on the death certificate.

 

In April alone, around 10,000 additional dementia patients without corona infection died in England and Wales due to weeks of isolation. Investigations into the situation in nursing homes have been initiated or requested in several countries.

Nursing home deaths, absolute and percentage ( LTCCovid )   The role of hospitals

The second central factor regarding infections and deaths, in addition to the nursing homes, are the hospitals themselves. A case study in Wuhan already showed that around 41% of hospitalized Covid patients had in fact contracted Covid in the hospital itself.

 

Contagion in hospitals also played a decisive role in northern Italy, Spain, England and other regions that were severely affected, meaning that the clinics themselves became the main place of transmission of Covid19 to already weakened people (so-called nosocomial infection) – an issue that had already been observed during the SARS outbreak from 2003.

 

Based on current knowledge, those countries that managed to avoid outbreaks of infection in nursing homes and hospitals had comparatively few deaths. The general lockdown, however, played no or a even a counterproductive role (see below).

 

It is well known that even common corona viruses (cold viruses) can be very dangerous for people in nursing homes. Stanford professor John Ioannidis pointed out already in mid-March that coronaviruses may have a case mortality rate of up to 8% in nursing homes.

  The clinical picture of Covid-19

The well-known Hamburg medical examiner Professor Klaus Püschel presented his study (English) on the first 12 of 190 detailed corona autopsies at a press conference (German).

 

Professor Püschel again emphasized that Covid-19 “is not nearly as threatening as was initially suspected”. The danger was “too much influenced by media images”. The media had focused on severe individual cases and fueled panic with “completely wrong messages”. Covid-19 is not a “killer virus” and the call for new medicine or vaccines is “driven by fear, not facts.”

 

The specific cause of death of the examined cases was pneumonia, but in about 50% of the cases there were venous thrombosis in the legs, which can lead to fatal pulmonary embolism. The kidneys and heart muscle were also partially affected. Professor Püschel therefore recommends the preventive administration of blood-thinning medication for serious Covid cases.

 

With regard to thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, Professor Püschel – like other experts before – emphasized that a “lockdown” with quarantine at home was “exactly the wrong measure”, since the lack of exercise also promotes thrombosis. Indeed, US specialists have alread been warning of this risk after even Covid-negative people developed unexpected thrombosis.

 

Many media again misinterpreted the autopsy findings and spoke of Covid-19 as a dangerous “multi-organ disease” which, unlike influenza, is said to lead to thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. This is, of course, wrong: it has been known for 50 years that even severe influenza can greatly increase the risk of thrombosis and embolism and can affect the heart muscle and other organs. Even the recommendation regarding preventive blood thinner for severe influenza has been around for 50 years already.

  Children and schools

Numerous studies have now shown that children hardly get Covid19 and do not or hardly transmit the virus, which was already known from the 2003 SARS outbreak. There was therefore no medical reason for the closure of schools at any time.

 

Accordingly, all those countries that reopened their schools in May saw no increase in cases of infection. Countries like Sweden, which never closed their primary schools anyway, had no problems with this either.

 

A preprint study by the German virologist Christian Drosten argued that the risk of infection from children is comparable to adults and schools should therefore remain closed. However, several researchers demonstrated methodological errors in the study. Drosten subsequently withdrew the recommendation regarding school closures.

 

In some schools, for example in France and Israel, alleged “corona outbreaks” are said to have occurred. However, it is likely that these are transmissions from teachers to schoolchildren that, to their dismay, are regularly tested, although they hardly show any symptoms and are themselves hardly or not at all contagious.

 

The British Kawasaki Disease Foundation again criticized the dubious and lurid media coverage of Kawasaki disease. In fact, there has been no significant increase in Kawasaki cases and no proven association with Covid-19. General inflammatory reactions in individual children are also known from other viral infections, but the number of cases reported so far is extremely low.

 

German medical associations have also given the all-clear: Covid-19 is imperceptible or very mild in almost all children. Schools and daycare centers should therefore be opened immediately and without restrictions, ie there is no need for small groups, distance rules or masks.

Schoolchildren in France who have to play in boxes (May 15, 2020, DailyMail )   On the effectiveness of masks

Regardless of the comparatively low lethality of Covid19 in the general population (see above), there is still no scientific evidence for the effectiveness of masks in healthy and asymptomatic people in everyday life.

 

A cross-country study by the University of East Anglia came to the conclusion that a mask requirement was of no benefit and could even increase the risk of infection.

 

Two US professors and experts in respiratory and infection protection from the University of Illinois explain in an essay that respiratory masks have no effect in everyday life, neither as self-protection nor to protect third parties (so-called source control). The widespread use of masks didn’t prevent the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, either.

 

A study from April 2020 in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine came to the conclusion that neither fabric masks nor surgical masks can prevent the spread of the Covid19 virus by coughing.

 

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine from May 2020 also comes to the conclusion that respiratory masks offer little or no protection in everyday life. The call for a mask requirement is described as an “irrational fear reflex”.

 

A May 2020 meta-study on pandemic influenza published by the U.S. CDC also found that respirators had no effect.

 

The WHO moreover declared in June that truly “asymptomatic transmission” is in fact “very rare”, as data from numerous countries showed. Some of the few confirmed cases were due to direct body contact, i.e. shaking hands or kissing.

 

In Austria, the mask requirement in retail and catering will be lifted again from mid-June. A mask requirement was never introduced in Sweden because it “does not offer additional protection for the population”, as the health authority explained.

 

Numerous politicians, media people and police officers have already been caught putting on their respirators in a crowd especially for the television cameras or taking them off immediately when they believed that they were no longer being filmed.

 

In some cases there were brutal police attacks because a person allegedly “did not wear her mask properly”. In other cases, people with a disability who cannot and do not have to wear a mask, are not allowed to enter department stores .

 

Despite this evidence, a group called “masks4all”, which was founded by a “young leader” of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos, is advocating worldwide mask requirements. Several governments and the WHO appear to be responding to this campaign.

 

Many critics suspect that the masks are more likely to have a psychological or political function (“muzzle” or “visible sign of obedience”) and that wearing them frequently might even lead to additional health problems.

  On the origin of the virus

In mid-March, some researchers argued in a letter to the journal Nature Medicine that the Covid19 virus must be of natural origin and not “from a laboratory”. They cited the structure of the virus and the fact that the binding to the human ACE2 cell receptor did not correspond to the theoretical maximum.

 

In the meantime, however, numerous renowned virologists have contradicted this argument. An artificial origin in the context of virological functional research is “at least as plausible” as a natural origin. In fact, coronaviruses of this kind have been intensively researched in several laboratories for almost 20 years (i.e. since the SARS outbreak in 2003), they say.

 

Arguments in favour of an artificial origin include in particular that the binding to the human ACE2 cell receptor is significantly stronger than in all common source animals and that no direct source animal could be identified so far. In addition, the virus contains some striking functional gene sequences that might have been inserted artificially.

 

The initial theory of the animal market in Wuhan has since been rejected because none of the animals there tested positive and a third of the very first patients had no connection to the animal market. The animal market is now seen as a secondary place of transmission.

 

It is known that the virological laboratory in Wuhan, in collaboration with the United States and France, researched coronaviruses and thereby also generated “potentially pandemic pathogens” (PPP) that are particularly easy to transmit and / or particularly dangerous. In addition, there have been several laboratory accidents with virus releases in China and the USA.

 

The unbiased observer must therefore continue to consider several realistic options: a natural origin of the virus (as assumed with SARS 2003), a laboratory accident as part of functional research (probably in Wuhan), or even a targeted release by a geopolitically interested actor in the East or West.

 

Nevertheless, the Covid19 virus is not a “biological weapon” in the classic sense: the virus is very easily transmissible, but not particularly dangerous for the general population. Animal studies have shown that much more deadly corona viruses can be generated.

Comparison of coronavirus amino acid sequences (Yuri Deigin)   Vaccines against Covid-19

Numerous experts have already pointed out that an express vaccine against the new coronavirus is not necessary or useful due to the overall low lethality (see above) and the already declining spread. The protection of risk groups, especially in nursing homes, could be much more targeted.

 

Some experts like the Swiss infectiologist Dr. Pietro Vernazza also pointed out that experience shows that the high-risk group in particular benefits the least from vaccination, since their immune system no longer reacts adequately to the vaccine.

 

Various experts have also pointed out the significant health risks of an express vaccine. In fact, vaccination against the so-called “swine flu” from 2009/2010, for example, led to sometimes severe neurological damage, particularly in children, and to claims for damages in the millions.

 

Nevertheless, several billion dollars of private and public funds have already been collected for the development of a vaccine. An “immunity certificate” for work and travel is still being discussed. However, contrary to most media reports, the two leading vaccine projects had some serious complications.

 

In the case of the Oxford University vaccine, in animal experiments all six rhesus monkeys fell ill with Covid19 despite vaccination and were as infectious as the unvaccinated monkeys. Nevertheless, the vaccine was moved on to the human test phase. However, the project manager explained that the coronavirus had already become so rare in the population that the clinical trial may deliver no result.

 

In the case of the novel RNA vaccine from Moderna, which was unusually tested directly in human experiments, 20% of the participants in the high-dose group had a “serious side effect”, although Moderna only allowed very healthy people to try it.

One of the Moderna participants was then presented and interviewed by CNN as a “hero”. However, it was agreed not to mention that the participant passed out after the vaccination and became “as sick as never before in his life”. Several experts also criticized Moderna for not disclosing their clinical data sufficiently.

 

The director of the US Corona Vaccine Rapid Development Program was himself previously a director at Moderna. President Trump also announced that the vaccine might be distributed nationwide with the U.S. military. Some countries, such as Denmark, have already created the legal basis for mandatory vaccination of the entire population. In Germany, too, various politicians have spoken out in favor of compulsory vaccination.

 

Proponents of compulsory vaccination, such as World Medical President Frank Montgomery, argue that the population must be vaccinated to protect those who cannot be vaccinated for health reasons. In view of the rather low lethality of Covid19 and the already wide prevalence, this argumentation seems rahter questionable, however. In addition, there are the serious vaccine risks outlined above.

 

Nevertheless, the head of the largest European ticket portal Eventim said that “major events may not return until there is a vaccine or a correspondingly effective medication.”

 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who co-chaired the vaccine summit in early June with US billionaire Bill Gates, described the GAVI vaccine alliance as a kind of “health NATO”.

Heads of government at the global vaccine summit on June 4, 2020 ( GAVI )   Medication against Covid-19

The situation regarding helpful medication for severe Covid19 cases remains very unclear. The only consensus is that blood thinners are helpful in preventing life-threatening thrombosis and embolism (as with severe influenza).

 

There have been fierce discussions about the malaria drug hydroxychloroquin (HCQ) for months. The journal Lancet published a study at the end of May according to which HCQ leads to heart problems. The WHO then ceased all of its HCQ studies. Shortly thereafter, however, it became known that the Lancet study was based on a manipulated data set.

 

The Lancet study and another study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) had to be withdrawn, which is one of the biggest medical scandals in recent years. The reason for the manipulated study is not clear, however, the lead author seems to be involved in a study of competing drug Remdesivir at the same time.

 

The use of remdesivir by the pharmaceutical company Gilead came itself under pressure after a first study showed that the drug could not reduce the risk of death. However, many media ignored this and still reported positive about the drug.

 

A former French Minister of Health revealed in an interview that the editors of Lancet and NEJM stated in a confidential discussion panel that the pressure and influence of pharmaceutical companies had become so great that one could no longer speak of science. Both editors are said to have used the term “criminal” to describe the current situation.

 

Various clinics use or study HCQ in Covid19 patients, sometimes in combination with zinc, vitamins or other medications. However, it is known that HCQ can lead to fatal complications in the metabolic peculiarity of favism, which occurs particularly in people from Africa and the Mediterranean region.

 

Unfortunately, it must be assumed that incorrect or too aggressive medication with HCQ, steroids, antibiotics and antiviral agents as well as invasive ventilation during the corona pandemic has led to numerous additional and avoidable deaths.

  Expert opinions (selection)

• The British chief physician Dr. Chris Witty said in a lecture that Covid19 posed “no danger to the majority of the population”. Most people would not or only mildly fall ill with it, and even with those who are seriously ill, the chances of recovery are good.
• Stanford professor and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Michael Levitt explains in a new post that the lockdowns did not save lives but cost many. A “panic virus” has spread among politicians worldwide, professor Levitt said.
• Professor Karel Sikora of the University of Buckingham argued in an interview that ultimately, fear will “kill a lot more people than the virus,” including untreated heart and cancer patients. Schools should be opened quickly and masks should remain an individual decision because their benefits have not been proven. One should go back to an “old normal” and not a “new normal”. (Note: The video with Professor Sikora was temporarily deleted by YouTube and only reactivated after protests).
• Professor Yoram Lass, former director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Health, argues that the lockdown measures have been “totally disproportionate” and are an acute threat to hundreds of millions of people. Covid19 is comparable to a flu epidemic and would never have justified such political destruction of livelihoods. People have been intimidated and “brainwashed”.
• The Oxford professor of epidemiology, Sunetra Gupta, argues in a new interview that the lethality of Covid19 is likely to be below 0.1% and that a large number of people have already come into contact with the virus.
• Leading German virologist Dr. Hendrik Streeck criticized the lockdown and explained that “all experts are returning to the assessment of the early days” that Covid-19 “should not be trivialized, but also should not be dramatized”. The reason for the declining risk assessment was the “enormous number of infections that remained without symptoms”. Streeck does not expect any excess mortality in Germany by the end of the year, as the average age of death is “rather above life expectancy”, and he doesn’t consider “corona apps” and widespread corona tests to be useful. He also criticized the general use of masks, saying that these are a “wonderful breeding ground for bacteria and fungi”. Schools should be reopened as soon as possible.
• An employee of the German Ministry of the Interior, responsible for disaster protection, together with external experts wrote a 100-page analysis paper on corona crisis management, which was leaked to the press at the beginning of May and created strong reactions. In the paper, Covid-19 is described as a “global false alarm” because “there was probably at no time a risk beyond the normal level” for the general population. The collateral damage caused by the lockdown is now significantly higher than the recognizable benefit and far exceeds the risk potential of the corona virus. In March and April alone, over a million operations were not carried out in Germany. The data supplied by the official RKI were “not reliable” as the basis for decision-making. The official was subsequently fired because he had created the paper “without authorization”.
• A group led by Professor Sucharit Bhakdi founded the Association of Physicians and Scientists for Health, Freedom and Democracy (MWGFD), which has already been joined by over 16,000 supporters. At the beginning of June, the group published a call to the federal government and all state governments to immediately and completely lift the Corona measures imposed. Professor Bhakdi’s book, Corona: A False Alarm?, appearing at the end of June, is already an Amazon bestseller solely due to the pre-orders.
• A senior physician for intensive medicine at the University Hospital Zurich, who cared for critical Covid 19 patients, criticized in a widely shared video the “scaremongering” associated with the disease. For the vast majority of all people there is no significant risk of death, the numbers are comparable overall to earlier flu waves. Risk groups could be protected in a targeted manner, while the lockdown only prevents the immunization of the general population. In addition, people die due to the medical undersupply in other areas. The medical and social damage has long been greater than the benefits. The partially mandatory mouth protection for schoolchildren also has “no medical sense and benefit” and places a heavy burden on the children. The “daily counting” of the cases is nonsensical and only spreads fear. The counterproductive measures must be stopped quickly.Swiss media tried to put pressure on the Zurich University Hospital after the video had been widely distributed. The doctor has since removed the original video.
• The Swiss chief physician for infectiology, Dr. Pietro Vernazza, using current case studies as an example, explains that fever measurements and contact tracing are not useful due to the often symptom-free course and easy transmission of Covid19.
• The well-known Swiss immunologist Dr. Beda Stadler explains in an article that Covid19 is a “very selective disease” and only poses a real risk for very few people. The media, on the other hand, focused on the few atypical individual cases that exist with every illness. Many scientists had focused too much on their models and too little on reality. The planned contact tracing is medically “senseless” and spreads “only panic”.
• Overview: 250 worldwide expert voices against corona dogmas (German)

  Success stories

Sweden: Sweden had no lockdown, no mask requirement and no primary school closures, but mainly relied on the personal responsibility and cooperation of the population. This approach worked well and Sweden saw only a low mortality rate in the general population comparable to a strong seasonal flu wave.

Nevertheless, the overall mortality rate was indeed higher than in the neighboring Scandinavian countries or Germany and is comparable to that in England. The real reason for this, however, is that around three quarters of Swedish deaths occurred in nursing homes and nursing flats. The median age of Swedish Covid deaths (86) is probably the highest in the world.

The Swedish government apologized for the insufficient protection of nursing patients and announced an investigation. Many media tried to present this as an alleged “failure of the no-lockdown strategy”, but nursing homes need targeted protection and do not benefit from a general lockdown.

Moreover, even total mortality in Sweden has remained below the strongest seasonal flu waves of the past thirty years. In addition, Sweden may now benefit from a very high natural immunity, especially considering the latest studies on the actual range of antibody tests (see above).

 

Florida: Despite numerous senior citizens, Florida introduced minimal restrictions and no general lockdown, even the popular beaches were reopened early, which was heavily criticized by many US media. Nevertheless, Florida did very well compared to other states and recently had around 2300 deaths in a population of 21 million, which corresponds to Germany’s mortality.

In an interview, the governor explained that contrary to the media, he realized early on based on the figures from South Korea and Italy that Covid19 was only dangerous for a very small risk group and he therefore protected the nursing homes as best as possible. In terms of prevention, nursing homes were even more important than the clinics themselves, and this strategy had proven itself. At the end of May, the governor announced that summer camps and youth activities could be carried out without restrictions.

 

Japan: Japan registered some of the first Covid19 cases outside of China, but did not introduce a lockdown. At the end of March, the Japan Times asked, “Where’s the coronavirus explosion?” Bloomberg now reports that a corona crisis never materialized: there were no restrictions on movement, restaurants and hairdressers remained open, there were no “tracking apps” and no mass tests of the general population. Nevertheless – or because of this – Japan now has by far the least deaths compared to the G7 industrialized countries.

It is sometimes argued that the respirators were decisive for Japan’s success. However, respirators are voluntary in Japan and did not stop the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan, while Sweden, Florida and other successful regions did not use masks in the general population.

 

Belarus: Belarus has probably implemented the least restrictions of all industrialized nations and carried out even major events such as the 75-year celebrations of the end of World War II. Nevertheless, Belarus officially counts fewer than 300 Covid deaths even after more than three months. Long-term President Lukashenko, who has repeatedly referred to Corona as a “psychosis,” said in mid-May that the capital, Minsk, had already passed the peak. The decision to treat Covid19 cases like normal pneumonia was correct. Ultimately, however, only statistics on overall mortality will be able to show whether the Belarusian numbers are really correct.

A Florida beach during the Corona pandemic (NBC)   Additional Notes

• Transmission routes: A new report by the US health agency CDC comes to the conclusion that the virus is transmitted primarily through direct contact with people and “cannot spread easily on surfaces.” The German virologist Hendrik Streeck was already able to demonstrate that the new corona virus does not or hardly spread through objects or through aerosols floating in the air.
•  
• Distance rules: Iceland declared the distance rules optional at the end of May and reopened bars and clubs. Switzerland converted the distance regulations into a voluntary recommendation. A Cochrane study from 2011 already showed that there is so far hardly any evidence for the effectiveness of “social distancing” measures.
•  
• Surgeries: According to an article in the British Journal of Surgery, around 28 million surgeries, including many cancer surgeries, have been canceled or postponed worldwide over 12 weeks due to corona measures.
•  
• Years of life: An evaluation by four US professors comes to the conclusion that the lockdown in the USA will cost about twice as many years of life as Covid-19 and was therefore a very counterproductive measure even from a purely medical point of view.
•  
• Coronavirus season: A new study in the Journal of Infectious Diseases shows that coronaviruses occur “sharply seasonal” between December and April / May.
•  
• Virus test: A German mathematician explains why the low remaining infection numbers in many countries consist largely of false positive results, even with fairly accurate PCR tests, and the pandemic thus “never seems to end”.
•  
• “Second wave”: Studies on a “second wave” sometimes make completely unrealistic assumptions, such as a constant risk of infection and death across all age groups. Nevertheless, the example of the 1968 Hong Kong flu shows that the global spread of pandemics can indeed extend over several seasons.
•  
• Italy: Almost 5% of the population in Milan already had antibodies against Covid19 in mid-February, ie before the outbreak of the epidemic in Italy. This again indicates that the virus was already circulating in Europe earlier than previously thought.
•  
• Unemployment: The International Labor Agency ILO expects that due to the political corona measures, half of the world’s employees or 1.6 billion people are at risk of losing their livelihoods.
•  
• Fact check: 13 misleading and false claims about the corona epidemic (German)
•  
• Review: Why life went on as normal during the global flu pandemics of 1968/1969 (Hong Kong flu, and the Woodstock music festival) and of 1957 (Asian flu).

  The role of the media

Most traditional media, almost all of which are part of elite geopolitical networks, decided to run a campaign of fear during the coronavirus period, a behavior that is usually observed in connection with wars of aggression or alleged terrorist attacks.

 

The risk to the general population was greatly exaggerated, official policies were hardly questioned, the situation in hospitals was dramatized, manipulative images were used, campaigns were staged, and protesters were systematically defamed as “idiots”.

 

It is true that some conservative media criticized the economically harmful lockdown measures. The real question, however, is whether they will also criticize the surveillance measures now planned, such as the extensive societal contact tracing (see below).

 

Most independent media sooner or later realized that the risk of the corona virus was exaggerated and politically exploited. Only a few independent media outlets did not realize this, perhaps because they lacked a medical background or fell for the official campaign of fear.

 

Some analysts compared Covid-19 to a psychological operation that uses the media-induced fear of the virus to bring about political and social change.

 

US platforms such as Google, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter censored corona issues extensively by deleting critical (i.e. non WHO compliant) points of view even from doctors or restricting their distribution, a procedure that has long been the norm for geopolitical issues.

 

However, modern media users have the option of using manipulation-free search engines such as DuckDuckGo and independent video platforms such as Bitchute, as well as generally using an advertising and tracking blocker on certain media sites.

A contrarian interview with Prof. Karel Sikora that was temporarily deleted by Youtube (Unherd)   Political developments

Numerous observers have already drawn attention to the fact that the predominantly politically induced “corona crisis” is or could be instrumentalized for far-reaching social and economic changes.

 

In March, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that governments are using the temporary corona crisis as an occasion or pretext for the permanent expansion of social surveillance and control, thereby establishing an “architecture of oppression”.

 

The measures currently being discussed or already implemented include in particular:

1. The introduction of applications for society-wide contact tracing
2. Building units to enforce tracing and isolation of citizens
3. The introduction of digital biometric ID cards that can be used to control and regulate participation in social and professional activities.
4. The expanded control of travel and payment transactions (e.g. cash abolition).
5. The creation of legal foundations for access to the biological systems of citizens by governments or corporations (through so-called “mandatory vaccinations”).

More than 600 scientists have warned of an “unprecedented surveillance of society” through problematic apps for “contact tracing”. In some countries, such “contact tracing” is already carried out directly by the secret service. In several parts of the world, the population is already being monitored by drones and facing serious police overreach.

 

In May, Apple and Google added a contact tracing interface to the operating systems of three billion cell phones that can now be used by national authorities.

 

This is despite the fact that a recent WHO study on pandemic influenza came to the conclusion that contact tracing is not sensible from a medical point of view and is “not recommended in any circumstances”, as the epidemiological benefits of such apps remain doubtful.

 

It is often argued that the contact tracing applications would remain “voluntary” and “compliant with data protection”. However, in practice, neither is really true.

 

In several countries, the use of the applications is already mandatory for certain activities. Various employers, administrations, landlords and transport companies in India require the tracing app. In Argentina, everyone who is in the “public space” must activate contact tracing.

 

Some German politicians already advocated a preference for app users when traveling or dining out. The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, for his part, spoke of the use of “sensors” for distance control in children.

 

In Singapore, the “voluntary” app was installed by fewer people than expected, which is why the government now wants to make it mandatory for certain public spaces and services. In some parks, the distance control is already monitored by DARPA robots.

 

In Australia, people who do not want to use the contact tracing app are insulted by the media as idiots and a danger to the public, and are thus put under social pressure.

 

The data protection of the supposedly “decentralized” contact tracing is also problematic. The Dutch IT professor Jaap-Henk Hoepmann already explained in April that even supposedly decentralized solutions can very easily be used for monitoring and surveillance.

 

Due to the speed of the introduction, the President of the German Society for Computer Science suspected that the functions “had long been in the devices” and only a little “fine tuning” was required. He sees the apps as a “Trojan horse”.

 

In parallel to the introduction of the applications, many countries have started to set up special units to track contacts and isolate citizens.

 

In the United States a 100 billion-dollar legislation to set up a national “Corona testing and tracing corps” with up to 180,000 members has been proposed. The states of New York and California are already building “contact tracing armies” with up to 20,000 members each. In the state of Washington, the National Guard is to participate and those who do not cooperate “voluntarily” can be forced to do so.

 

Italy has announced the creation of a corps with 60,000 volunteers, and Switzerland and other countries have also started building such units. In Germany there have already been mass tests in residential buildings under the threat of police coercion.

 

The software for society-wide contact tracing in the USA, Great Britain and possibly in other European countries is provided by the CIA-related technology company Palantir of US billionaire Peter Thiel. In Israel, contact tracing software from notorious cyber spy company NSO is used.

 

A whistleblower who took part in a training program for contact tracers in the United States described it in a video interview as “totalitarian” and a “danger to society”.

 

All these measures are taken despite the fact that the epidemiological benefit remains unclear and that the WHO explicitly opposed contact tracing, which is otherwise used mainly for serious sexual diseases or food poisoning, which, unlike common respiratory diseases, are easy to trace.

 

In addition to applications and special units for contact tracing, there are also specific projects or plans for “immunity cards”, which could be used, for example, to control the travel and work activities of the population. In fact, the EU had been planning to introduce such a vaccination certificate since 2018.

 

Such “vaccination cards” are in turn linked to a worldwide “vaccination program”, which is also currently being worked on. For example, US billionaire and vaccine investor Bill Gates called for corona vaccination for “seven billion people”. AstraZeneca is currently preparing to produce two billion doses of the still untested Oxford vaccine.

 

From a strategic point of view, such a global vaccination programme would provide access to the biological systems of the population, in particular the immune and nervous systems and the genetic and reproductive systems.

 

In the economic area, there is a surge in digitization and centralization in favor of a few US technology corporations, as the American National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, demanded in a strategy paper in 2019 to be able to compete with China.

 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos, which together with the Gates Foundation and Johns Hopkins University already ran the well-known coronavirus pandemic exercise “Event 201” in October 2019, called for a global “Great Reset” in order prepare the economic and social structures for the 21st century.

 

Meanwhile, several cardinals and bishops of the Catholic Church warned in an open letter that, under the pretext of the coronavirus, a worldwide panic had been triggered to introduce unacceptable forms of global surveillance and control of the population.

 

The idea that a pandemic can be used to expand global monitoring and control is not new. As early as 2010 the American Rockefeller Foundation described in a working paper on future technological and social developments a “lockstep scenario” in which the present-day developments were anticipated with surprising accuracy (from page 18).

 

But there are also reactions from the population: Spain, Italy and Germany, for example, have seen demonstrations for fundamental rights with thousands or tens of thousands of people.

Creative contributions

• Video: They Live – Coronavirus Edition (Trigger Happy Media)
• Video: Out of Touch – Run for your life (Kevin James)
• Video: What It’s Like to Believe Everything the Media Tells You (JP)

The Landing AI Social Distancing Detector (Youtube)

  B. Countries and regions Scandinavia

• Denmark: In Denmark, leaked emails revealed that, contrary to political statements, the health authority spoke out against a lockdown in March and wrote: “ The Danish health authority continues to believe that Covid-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease because it’s neither normally serious, nor does it have a high mortality rate. ” In addition, a lower reproduction number was not published for political reasons to justify the lockdown. The Danish parliament has now decided to investigate government policy by an expert commission.
•  
• Norway: The Prime Minister of Norway publicly admitted that she panicked in March and that most of the lockdown measures would probably not have been necessary. In Norway, too, it became known that the reproduction number already fell to the stable value of 1 before the lockdown. In the case of a “second wave”, a much softer strategy without lockdown would have to be chosen, the Prime Minister declared.
•  
• Sweden: Despite enormous international pressure, Sweden managed the Corona period well without a lockdown and overall mortality remained in the range of earlier strong flu waves. 75% of deaths occurred in nursing homes, an issue the government promised to investigate. International media tried to portray this as “failure of the Swedish strategy”, which of couse is not correct, as nursing homes need targeted protection and do not benefit from a general societal lockdown.
•  
• Schools: Both Finland and Denmark saw no increase in Corona cases after their schools reopened. Sweden kept its primary schools open to begin with.

  United States

• There were approximately 100,000 test-positive deaths in the United States by the end of May. The overall mortality rate since the beginning of the year was, however, in the range of the strong flu season of 2017/2018 (see chart below).
•  
• At least 42% of deaths occurred in nursing homes, which account for 0.6% of the U.S. population and did not benefit from a general lockdown.
•  
• In the states that did not implement a lockdown or removed it early, there was no increased mortality, according to a study by JP Morgan.
•  
• An evaluation by four US professors comes to the conclusion that the lockdown in the US will cost about twice as many years of life as Covid-19.
•  
• In an open letter, over 600 doctors warned US President Donald Trump of the dangers of an extended lockdown. The lockdown was itself a “mass casualty incident”.
•  
• In another open letter to US Vice President Mike Pence, American doctors are calling for the rapid opening of society. The dangerousness of Covid-19 turned out to be much less than originally assumed. The risk groups are known and can be protected in a targeted manner. A safe immunization of society is also possible without vaccination. The media has terrorized the population unnecessarily, triggering a sharp rise in despair and suicides.
•  
• Most of the U.S. Army’s field hospitals, which were built for a total of $ 660 million, closed again in May without treating even a single patient.
•  
• A California trauma doctor said in a post that there were more suicide attempts in May than usually in a year, and that the suicides far outnumbered the corona deaths in California.
•  
• In the severely affected state of New York, an independent investigation was requested regarding the official order for nursing homes to admit Corona patients. There were over 5000 deaths in New York nursing homes. Such orders were also issued in the heavily affected states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
•  
• New York’s largest hospital association has announced an investigation into the use of invasive ventilators. In April, it was confirmed that US hospitals receive large bonuses when they admit Covid-19 patients and connect them to ventilators, although experts long before warned of the dangers of invasive ventilation. A New York nurse even spoke of a “mass murder”.
•  
• In the state of Washington , the health agency confirmed that even homicide victims were counted as “corona deaths” if they tested positive for the corona virus. The New York Times also listed a murder victim on their front page of alleged “Corona victims”. Even George Floyd , who was killed by a police officer at the end of May, tested positive for Corona.
•  
• By the end of May, over 40 million people had been unemployed in the United States. Estimates predict that around 42% of lost jobs will not be recovered and that the worst recession since World War II is imminent (see chart below). Nevertheless, US billionaires saw corona add $ 434 billion to their wealth.

USA: Gesamtsterblichkeit 2017/18 und 2019/2020 (population adjusted). Source: NCHS/Twitter USA: Job loss in recessions since 1945 ( BLS / CRB )   Great Britain

• In March and April, England and Wales experienced an excess mortality of about 46,000 people. This roughly corresponds to the strong flu waves of 1999 and 2000 (see graphic below). However, the health authority ONS notes that almost 30% of this mortality is not due to the coronavirus.
•  
• For example, by early May, 8,000 more people died at home than usual, and 80% of these deaths, according to death certificates, had nothing to do with the corona virus.
•  
• In British nursing homes alone, there were 30,000 excess deaths by the beginning of May, of which only 10,000 cases noted Covid-19 as the cause on the death certificate, as Cambridge professor David Spiegelhalter explained. In England and Wales, around 10,000 additional dementia patients without corona infection died in April due to weeks of isolation.
•  
• Similar to northern Italy and New York, in England there was a fatal decision to move corona patients from hospitals to nursing homes, and the coronavirus was also spreading rapidly within the healthcare system itself.
•  
• Most of the additional Covid field hospitals that were built remained largely empty.
•  
• The influential epidemiologist Neil Ferguson’s computer model, which predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths, was found to be highly flawed and unrealistic in an independent analysis by software and modeling experts. Ferguson had to resign as a government adviser after breaking the lockdown himself to receive his married lover. His university now claims that the lockdown has “saved three million lives” in Europe.
•  
• Analysis: Who controls the British Government response to Covid-19? (Part 1) and COVID-19: The Big Pharma players behind UK Government lockdown (Part 2)
•  
• UK economic experts predict the biggest economic recession since the Great Frost of 1709 (in the Little Ice Age).
•  
• Positive anecdote: Britain’s oldest tailor survived the corona virus at the age of 96 after not eating for ten days.

Mortality in 2020 compared to the strong flu waves of 1999 and 2000 (adjusted for population growth and 2020 deaths moved to winter). Source: ONS / OffGuardian   Switzerland

Medical aspects:

• After about four weeks of relative excess mortality, since the middle of May Switzerland is already in experiencing below-average mortality. The cumulative mortality rate since the beginning of the year is in the range of a normal flu season and far below the strong flu season of 2015 (see chart below). Around 50% of deaths occurred in nursing homes that did not benefit from a lockdown. The median age of deaths is around 84 years, which is slightly above the average Swiss life expectancy.
•  
• There were a total of 130 test-positive deaths in the Canton of Zurich. More than half of this (78) took place in nursing homes. Again slightly more than half of these deaths (40) took place in two nursing homes that had to take Covid19 patients from hospitals and were sometimes unable to adequately isolate them.
•  
• ETH Zurich has repeatedly rephrased its study that the decline in the spread of Covid19 began before the lockdown, in order not to openly contradict to the Federal Council. But the result remains the same: the lockdown was medically unnecessary and socially counterproductive. The forecasts of the authorities and universities were based on often completely unrealistic assumptions.
•  
• Researchers at ETH Lausanne have presented a study warning of the risk of a “second wave” that could overwhelm Switzerland. The main author of the study, Professor Jacques Fellay, is also a member of the Federal Council’s Corona Task Force and a supporter of a Corona vaccine. An independent analysis of this study, however, showed that it is based on completely unrealistic assumptions and, for example, predicts a constant risk of infection and death for all age groups.
•  
• Medical entrepreneur Stephan Rietiker from Inside-Corona comes to a devastating conclusion with regard to the Corona management of the Federal Council. The Federal Council largely ignored the findings of its own pandemic commission and made grotesquely wrong decisions with serious consequences for the population and the economy. An unsuitable “containment strategy” was pursued in the naive belief that the time until a vaccine could be “bridged”. The planned “contact tracing” will consume tons of money and ultimately “fail miserably”. It is high time to abolish the emergency laws and hold the decision-makers accountable, according to Rietiker.

Media:

• The Aargauer Zeitung reported on the supposedly first child who “died from the coronavirus”. The infant, flown in from Macedonia in an emergency, actually died of meningitis, which is not caused by coronaviruses.
•  
• In May, the NZZ once again spread the false report that Corona had brought the southern canton of Ticino “to the brink of disaster”. In fact, there were no serious problems outside of nursing homes in the canton of Ticino.
•  
• SRF TV editor-in-chief Tristan Brenn defended himself against allegations that SRF was spreading propaganda about Corona. Shortly afterwards, a wheelchair-bound participant in a corona demonstration pointed out how SRF had used him for propaganda.

Political aspects:

• In Switzerland there have been weekly demonstrations for fundamental rights in Bern, Zurich and other cities since April. This led to considerable police violence, see »Corona repression in Switzerland«. The participants in these demonstrations were mostly defamed by the media as dumb or extremist.
•  
• The Federal Council plans to convert the existing emergency ordinances into urgent federal law, whereas an online petition has been launched against this step.
•  
• The Federal Council adopted a legal basis for the “corona-tracing app”, which must be approved by Parliament in the summer session. Apple and Google have now equipped their mobile operating systems with an appropriate interface. The use of the app should remain “voluntary” (see above).
•  
• The canton of Zurich and several other cantons have already set up centers for society-wide contact tracing, consisting of police and health department employees who are to contact potentially “infected” people and instruct them to be quarantined. The experience of March and April had shown that the center would have to be expanded or outsourced in the future.
•  
• A survey by the University of Applied Sciences ZHAW showed that 40% of Swiss fear a stronger monitoring by “Corona apps”. Still, a majority plan to use the contact tracing app.
•  
• In February 2020, US billionaire and vaccine investor Bill Gates donated 900,000 US dollars to the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products Swissmedic for “projects in Africa”.
•  
• Switzerland will support Bill Gates’ global vaccine alliance GAVI with CHF 30 million for the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
•  
• The Corona-critical doctor from Aargau, who was brutally arrested in April by a special police unit and temporarily admitted to the psychiatric center, requested an external administrative investigation into his case, which the government has now initiated. It was previously known that, contrary to what the police had said, the doctor neither threatened relatives nor the authorities nor was he in possession of a loaded weapon.

Cumulative mortality compared to expected value (2010-2020, FSO / Stotz)   Germany and Austria

• Germany and Austria have not had any significant excess mortality since March. In fact, Germany has even seen a slightly below-average level of mortality since the beginning of the year if corrected for population growth.
•  
• Leaked protocols in Austria, as in Denmark and England, have shown that the lockdown was politically motivated and the majority of the health experts spoke out against it, recommending to Chancellor Kurz in March to get away from the message of a “very dangerous virus” because the virus was already widespread and not particularly dangerous for the majority of the population.
•  
• In Germany, almost a million surgeries were canceled due to the corona lockdown by the end of May. German oncologists warn of delays in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer due to the lockdown. Cancer is a “far greater danger than COVID-19,” the medical associations emphasized.
•  
• German pediatricians report massive violence against children due to the lockdown. They see injuries like those after car accidents, including broken bones or shaking trauma. The number of calls to the child protection hotline is rising sharply.
•  
• Berlin medical examiner Professor Michael Tsokos reported “corona suicides” from people who fear or think they may be infected. Professor Tsokos criticized the scaremongering and spread of “horror scenarios” by the media and some virologists. He fears that the “infectious pandemic” will now be followed by a “psycho-social pandemic”. In fact, suicides and suicide attempts in Berlin already “increased dramatically” in the first quarter.
•  
• Economic experts in Germany expect around 10,000 additional bankruptcies by 2021 due to the political corona measures.
•  
• Since April some of the largest fundamental rights demonstrations in Europe have taken place in German cities with up to 25,000 participants. However, there was sometimes serious police violence, for example when arresting vegan celebrity chef Attila Hildmann or 68-year-old former GDR civil rights activist Angelika Barbe. There were also arson attacks and, in some cases, life-threatening attacks on demonstrators and independent media people by mostly black-hooded groups that apparently are not afraid of state persecution.
•  
• Werner Winterstein, the grandson of an Austrian-Jewish Minister of Justice murdered by the Nazis, took part in a fundamental rights demonstration in Vienna and declared that he was “shaken by the silent seizure of power by elements that speak of ‘new normality’ on the margins of the democratic model. ” The corona-related division of citizens into different categories and the creation of a new “snitch culture” are dangerous developments. He observed a lack of civil courage and submission to the authorities. The planned Corona apps are a move “towards a total surveillance state” and should be rejected.

Weekly mortality in Germany, 2017 to 2020 (Destatis/RKI)   South America and Africa

After the spread of corona in Europe and the United States subsided, many media focused on the situation in South America, especially in Brazil. However, the fact is that with 36,000 deaths to date and the curve already flattening, Brazil’s 210 million inhabitants are better off than most European countries including Switzerland.

 

In other Latin American countries such as Ecuador, in addition to the coronavirus, dengue fever also spreads with similar symptoms, which has lead to a double burden on the health system. Nevertheless, in Peru it was found that 80% of confirmed corona cases remain asymptomatic.

 

Some media reported crematoriums running allegedly “around the clock” in Mexico City. A Youtuber living in Mexico then visited the city and the hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums there, all of which had very little activity.

 

In general, there has been a much lower corona mortality rate in countries in South America and Africa than in Europe and the USA, which may be due to the younger population or climatic factors. On the other hand, the World Bank expects up to 60 million victims of poverty due to global political corona measures.

 

C. Global health funding by Bill Gates

US multi-billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the most important private sponsor of the WHO and the vaccine industry and is therefore currently in the spotlight. In the following illustrations his pharmaceutical and media network is graphically represented.

 

See also: Politico (2017): Meet the world’s most powerful doctor: Bill Gates

Global health funding by Bill Gates in the US/UK and Germany (CoroDok)

 

 

[pamojja]

The shocking experiences of a nurse at Elmhurst hospital at the epicenter of the NewYork outbreak:

 

[gamesguru]

Sounds like the Federal and State responses were utterly feeble.  Trump and Cuomo should have been on the phone with China asking for a 10 page briefing on best practices and mistakes they were about to make back in January.  That's what pride gets you guys, tens of thousands of extra deaths thinking you could figure it all yourselves better than China.  Well done.

[Daniel Cooper]

Sounds like the Federal and State responses were utterly feeble.  Trump and Cuomo should have been on the phone with China asking for a 10 page briefing on best practices and mistakes they were about to make back in January.  That's what pride gets you guys, tens of thousands of extra deaths thinking you could figure it all yourselves better than China.  Well done.

 

I'll just remind you that in January China was still saying "no human to human transmission".

[gamesguru]

I'll just remind you that in January China was still saying "no human to human transmission".

 

More of a political statement than anything.  It was obvious to anyone with half a frontal lobe when they fired local health officials and starting builing the Field Hospitals in Wuhan.. something was very, very wrong.

 

There's no evidence the US made any attempt to reach out or inquire as to what should be done.  Compare that to Italy which made repeated attempts to gain intel, often being bitterly rejected, but in early March they were sent assistance from China in the form of medical supplies and dozens of top Chinese doctors.  Arrogant America received diddly squat.

[Daniel Cooper]

More of a political statement than anything.  It was obvious to anyone with half a frontal lobe when they fired local health officials and starting builing the Field Hospitals in Wuhan.. something was very, very wrong.

 

There's no evidence the US made any attempt to reach out or inquire as to what should be done.  Compare that to Italy which made repeated attempts to gain intel, often being bitterly rejected, but in early March they were sent assistance from China in the form of medical supplies and dozens of top Chinese doctors.  Arrogant America received diddly squat.

 

Yes, but you are faulting Trump/Cuomo for not consulting with the Chinese very early on when we know they were still lying.

 

There's no reason to believe that if they had asked for your 10 page summary that what they got back would have been truthful, and many reasons to believe it would have not.

 

Indeed, China saying that there was no human to human transmission was being driven by Chinese politics, but those same political machinations would have driven any response to such an inquiry as well.

[gamesguru]

The point is Italy reached out; we thought we could do better ourselves.  There's no guarantee anything will happen, but you may as well try man.

[Florin]

If fingers are going to be pointed, most of them should be pointed at experts rather than at politicians. Before the pandemic hit, they failed to encourage the public to wear masks and stock up on elastomeric respirators with N95 filters. It's just a matter of time before some mad scientist cooks up a bunch of nasty superviruses in his garage, and lockdowns and the rest of the stuff that the experts are obsessed about today just ain't gonna cut it.

[gamesguru]

Proof that masks don't cut it and the idea "they're good enough on their own" is a mere simplification in the minds of ogres

 

If someone is coughing through a mask, or even talking loudly, there will plenty of particles in the "Diffusion and interception regime".

 

Even places like Hong Kong have plenty of photos of people not wearing masks.  Yet they have practically no cases and no new deaths.. so these two examples just prove that masks are neither necessary nor sufficient.

 

Small particles zigzag due to Brownian motion, and are easily captured. Large particles get strained out, or have too much inertia to turn, and hit a fiber. Mid-size particles follow flowlines and are more likely to get through the filter; the hardest size to filter is 0.3 microns diameter.^[14]

 

Masks Can Reduce Covid Spread By 40%, German Study Suggests

Masks can reduce the growth rate of coronavirus infections by 40%, according to researchers who studied the experience of places in Germany that promoted their use.

After the city of Jena became an early adopter of masks in public transport and shops on April 6, new infections in the municipality of 108,000 almost disappeared. Most of the surrounding state of Thuringia and elsewhere in Germany only adopted mask policies days or weeks later and the outbreak in many of those areas continued to spread, according to a paper from the Institute of Labor Economics in Bonn.

Masks appear to be a very cost-efficient method to curb the coronavirus spread, said the authors, including Klaus Waelde from the University of Mainz. The paper appears to be the first analysis that provides field evidence on the ability of masks to curb the spread of Covid-19, the authors said.

Findings may vary in other countries or when different types of masks are scrutinized, the authors said, calling for more research on the subject. They also said the study included various types of masks as German regions didn’t require a specific type.

 

 

Seems an aggressive contact tracing and isolation program was pivotal to Hong Kong's success, as well as a continued social distancing effort.. and this sort of plays hand in hand with their collectivist culture.

Test and trace: lessons from Hong Kong on avoiding a coronavirus lockdown

Semi-autonomous city followed WHO advice and moved swiftly to stem contagion without rigid curbs on movement

Makeshift partitions separate tables at a restaurant in Hong Kong to stem the spread of Covid-19. Photograph: China News Service/Getty

Governments in Europe and the US can learn from Hong Kong, which has kept infections and deaths from Covid-19 low without resorting to the socially and economically damaging lockdown that the UK and other countries have imposed, scientists say.

Hong Kong, with a population of nearly 7.5 million, had had just 715 confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection, including 94 asymptomatic infections, and four deaths as of March 31, according to a new study published on Friday in the Lancet.

Early in the pandemic, it was thought to be at significant risk because of travellers arriving from mainland China, but since early February the outbreak has appeared to be under control.

The semi-autonomous city took the route that the World Health Organization recommends and embarked on a rigorous programme of testing everyone with symptoms. Those who tested positive were quarantined in hospital. All their contacts over recent days were traced and instructed to self-isolate. In early March, about 400 outpatients and 600 inpatients were being tested every day.

Edited by gamesguru, 12 June 2020 - 02:43 PM.

[Florin]

All of that's irrelevant. If everyone wore N95s, any pandemic would stopped overnight, 110.5% guaranteed.

 

As for less capable kinds of masks, Japan has done little testing and tracing, everyone wears surgical or cloth masks, and it has mostly eliminated the pandemic. The only common element of all of the east Asian countries (including Hong Kong) which have successfully controlled the pandemic is universal mask wearing. Sure, a handful of people might not wear a mask but the vast majority do. There's some social distancing but it's not consistent; in Japan, there's some telecommuting and voluntary business closures but some supermarkets are packed and so is public transit.

 

https://www.nytimes....irus-masks.html

Edited by Florin, 12 June 2020 - 05:49 PM.

[gamesguru]

This isn't some perfect world were people wear n95 masks 24/7 like good little robots.  They have to have cigarette breaks and stuff.  They hang out with friends.  People would rather limit some things if it means a few activities to breathe without that awful cloth compressing their sweaty face.  Not to mention the fact that no country to date has scaled n95 mask production up to civilian use levels, so the practicality of the idea remains fanciful at best.

 

Even if they did wear the masks perfectly, the study clearly shows leakage in the middle regime for all test masks types, including and up to n95.  The n95 is actually less efficient at filtering out^[1], so anyone without a mask would be at greater risk than if everyone was wearing surgical masks instead.

 

I would agree to using masks in public transit, but the idea "masks alone can forgo the need for mass distancing and testing" is mere exaggeration and anyone subscribing to that simplified view of things is terribly aloof amidst a hodgepodge of mental errors.

Edited by gamesguru, 12 June 2020 - 10:13 PM.

[Florin]

If the robot revolution can occur in east Asia, it can occur anywhere.

 

The only time masks need to be worn is in public, not 24/7, and there's no reason not take breaks every hour or whatever.

 

You're confusing the disposable N95 masks with reusable elastomeric masks with N95 filters. Both are fairly comfortable with valves but elastomerics can be even more comfortable due to their elastic liner.

 

It's highly unlikely that N95 filtration is somehow ineffective at eliminating viral transmission as you seem to imply. For the hyper-paranoid types, N100 filters are available; only gases get through those. Valves could be loosely covered with cloth to further reduce the exhalation of viral particles without compromising comfort that much. You can get as close to 0% transmission as you'd like for little cost.

 

Production would have been a non-issue, if everyone got N95s years ago, but today, the only reason that production wouldn't be scaled up is due to sheer stupidity. Elastomerics are one-and-done, and so, only one mask per person is needed, not a gazillion disposable N95s. The stupidity of experts and politicians is longer an excuse, because N95s are fairly easily and quickly DIYed by anyone. And millions of elastomerics are already floating around in residential areas alone.

 

Once everyone has N95s, doing mass-anything besides mass mask wearing would be completely pointless and is probably not all that necessary even with cloth masks as Japan suggests.

Edited by Florin, 13 June 2020 - 01:41 AM.

[pamojja]

An other 15 days later uploaded the spreadsheet actualized to https://docs.google....6wFX38K/pubhtml

 

An other 20 days later the worldwide covid-19 situation compared to the 2017 influenza and flue mortality actualized: https://docs.google....t#gid=585065835

 

 

 

 

[smithx]

An other 20 days later the worldwide covid-19 situation compared to the 2017 influenza and flue mortality actualized: https://docs.google....t#gid=585065835

 

no access allowed

[pamojja]

no access allowed

 

Thanks. Here again the right one: https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing
 

[smithx]

Thanks. Here again the right one: https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing
 

 

Same problem.

[pamojja]

Sorry for the inconvenience:

 

https://docs.google....dit?usp=sharing

[Mind]

If the robot revolution can occur in east Asia, it can occur anywhere.

 

The only time masks need to be worn is in public, not 24/7, and there's no reason not take breaks every hour or whatever.

 

You're confusing the disposable N95 masks with reusable elastomeric masks with N95 filters. Both are fairly comfortable with valves but elastomerics can be even more comfortable due to their elastic liner.

 

It's highly unlikely that N95 filtration is somehow ineffective at eliminating viral transmission as you seem to imply. For the hyper-paranoid types, N100 filters are available; only gases get through those. Valves could be loosely covered with cloth to further reduce the exhalation of viral particles without compromising comfort that much. You can get as close to 0% transmission as you'd like for little cost.

 

Production would have been a non-issue, if everyone got N95s years ago, but today, the only reason that production wouldn't be scaled up is due to sheer stupidity. Elastomerics are one-and-done, and so, only one mask per person is needed, not a gazillion disposable N95s. The stupidity of experts and politicians is longer an excuse, because N95s are fairly easily and quickly DIYed by anyone. And millions of elastomerics are already floating around in residential areas alone.

 

Once everyone has N95s, doing mass-anything besides mass mask wearing would be completely pointless and is probably not all that necessary even with cloth masks as Japan suggests.

 

I am against mask requirements for a disease that has a mortality rate of one quarter of one percent - and even then, the vast majority of fatal cases are among the frail elderly and obese with chronic illnesses. (with ubiquitous cheap testing available, there are better more targeted approaches to protect this vulnerable population)

 

Humans are social. Facial expressions are a key component of effective communication. Large, fun, open public gatherings with hugs and handshakes build strong communities.

 

Wearing masks constantly, strict social distancing, no shared public experiences, etc... will only divide people and cause social instability.

Edited by Mind, 17 June 2020 - 04:52 PM.

[Florin]

I was talking about elastomeric masks with N95 filters, not mask requirements. If most people wore elastomerics voluntarily, there would be no need for social distancing except in certain situations such as at restaurants. Yes, lack of facial expressions is an issue, but they're not critical to getting work done and mask wearing is temporary anyway.

 

Without lockdowns or mask wearing, I doubt testing and tracing alone would work. And I'm still going to assume that the mortality rate would be 1% without doing anything and that 60% of deaths occur outside nursing homes, so mask wearing still makes sense.

 

But what if the mortality rate was much higher like 50% or 99%? That's not inconceivable for future pandemics caused by lab accidents or bioterrorists. So, we better stock up on elastomerics and start getting used to wearing them sooner rather than later.