Can the world achieve “herd immunity” with respect to COVID-19? Anthony Fauci has said that 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity. My view is that using vaccines is unlikely to achieve this result, something I discussed in my August 2020 post, We Need to Change Our COVID-19 Strategy. Now, the news arm of the prestigious journal Nature has published a similar view: Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible.
In this post, I explain why, in my view, COVID-19 seems likely to become endemic, like the flu. The vaccines won’t be enough to make it go away completely. I will also look at the issue of how we should respond to the cases of COVID-19 that we will almost certainly experience in the future.
To a significant extent, what we can and should do in the future is an energy issue. If we plan to transition to a green energy future, or if we simply plan to reduce usage of fossil fuels in future years, we probably need to scale back our plans for vaccines. In fact, any treatment that would be given in today’s emergency rooms is likely to become less and less possible as energy supplies deplete.
We will need to focus more on what our bodies can do for us, and what we can do to assist them in this effort. We also need to think about what simple changes to our environment (such as windows that open) can do for the prevention of both COVID-19 and the many other communicable diseases that we can expect to encounter in the future. The big issue will be changing expectations.
[1] Why herd immunity is unlikely
[1.1] Viruses don’t pay any attention to the geography of humans. As long as there are active cases anywhere, they will tend to spread to other countries.
Over the past year, we have seen how ineffective cutting off travel between countries is in stopping the path of the virus. Even New Zealand, far out in the Pacific Ocean, has been battling this issue. The country has found that occasional cases slip through, even with a required two-week stay in managed isolation after arrival.
Furthermore, there are hidden costs with staying this removed from the rest of the world; New Zealand’s only oil refinery has been losing money, given its low use of oil. This refinery has laid off about a quarter of its staff and is considering the option of quitting refining in 2022. New Zealand would then need to import a full range of refined products if it wants to continue having industry. Perhaps being too cut off from the rest of the world is a problem, rather than a solution.
[1.2] The cost of vaccines is high, especially for poor countries.
We can get a rough idea of the cost involved by looking at a news article about Israel’s dispute with Pfizer regarding its vaccine purchases. We can also see what goes wrong politically.
Israel recently made news for failing to pay Pfizer for the last 2.5 million vaccine doses that it purchased from the company. Pfizer retaliated by cutting off future vaccine shipments to Israel. The article linked above doesn’t tell us exactly how much Israel paid for Pfizer’s vaccine, but a calculation based on information in the article seems to indicate that future doses from a mixture of vendors would cost about $35 per dose, on average. We also know that US Medicare is paying $40 per dose for administering each dose of the vaccine. Putting these two amounts together, we can estimate that the purchase and administration of a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine costs about $75. Thus, a two-dose series costs about $150, with the high-tech vaccines Israel is now using (Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca).
We also know that Israel was planning to administer two doses per person, every six months, based on an early review of how well immunity was holding up for the vaccines. If it is really necessary to repeat the two-dose regimen every six months, then the annual per-person cost of the vaccine would be approximately 2 times $150, or $300 per person. Benjamin Netanyahu favors buying all of these doses, quite possibly because it might make him popular with voters. Netanyahu’s opposition does not, which seems to be why payment has not been forthcoming.
A cost of $300 per person would amount to 0.7% of Israel’s 2019 GDP, which is theoretically feasible. But for poorer countries, the relative cost would be much higher. For South Africa, it would amount to 5% of 2019 GDP. For Yemen, it would come to 40% of 2019 GDP. (These are my calculations, using World Bank GDP in current US$.) For countries with severe financial problems, any payment for vaccines would almost certainly be a problem.
There are less expensive vaccines being made, but their percentages of efficacy in fighting the virus that causes COVID-19 seem to be lower. Thus, it would be even more difficult to greatly reduce the number of cases down to the point where the disease would simply disappear for lack of an adequate number of victims to infect, using these vaccines.
[1.3] The fact that the disease can infect animals further adds to the problem of getting rid of the disease completely.
The disease supposedly jumped from an animal to humans to begin with. We know that the virus that causes COVID-19 can infect animals of many types, including ferrets and cats. While the disease jumping from animals to humans is supposedly unusual, we know that the disease spreads easily among humans with inadequate immunity. Having a reservoir of disease among animals raises the likelihood of this happening again. Having a reservoir of vulnerable people (not immune and in poor health) also increases such a risk.
[1.4] Microbes of all types mutate frequently. We are fighting a losing battle to stay even with them. This is especially a problem for narrowly targeted vaccines.
We know that whenever we try to reduce the population of microbes, scientists can find solutions that work for a while, but eventually we start losing the battle. Scientists can develop antibiotics against bacteria, but eventually some bacteria will evolve in a way that allows them to resist the effects of the antibiotic. In fact, antibiotic resistance is becoming a greater and greater problem. Similarly, scientists can develop weed killers, but weeds soon develop resistance to whatever we develop. The situation seems to be similar with vaccines, unfortunately.
In this case, scientists have developed vaccines that target the RNA of the spike protein of the virus that causes COVID-19. In some sense, this approach is very precise, leading to a high proportion of COVID-19 cases being stopped. The drawback is that it is very easy for small mutations in the spike protein to make the vaccine not work well. We end up needing to obtain booster shots of slightly revised versions of the vaccine quite often, perhaps every six months. If booster shots are not given, the vaccine is likely to become less effective against the new mutations that arise.
One danger is that manufacturers cannot keep up with all of changes needed to match the new mutations. Another is that the cost of trying to keep up with this whole process will become prohibitive. The medical care system may be forced to give the vaccine process up, leaving citizens worse off than they might have been if we hadn’t “flattened the curve” and kept the virus around for an extended period of time, allowing all of these mutations.
[1.5] There are very real reasons for people’s reluctance to accept the vaccine, when it is offered to them. Because of this, it is difficult to get very close to 100% acceptance (or even 80% acceptance) of the vaccines.
There seem to be any number of reasons why people are reluctant to get the new vaccine. Some are afraid of the pain involved with the shot. Others are afraid that they will be somewhat ill afterward, causing them to miss work. If employees are paid on an hourly basis and they barely have enough income as it is, this, by itself, could be a reason for avoiding the shot. Financial incentives might help with these issues.
Others who are reluctant have followed the situation more closely. They realize that important steps in the normal vaccine approval process have been skipped, making it difficult to identify adverse effects that occur fairly infrequently. Even worse, it becomes impossible to discover problems that take many months or years to become evident. Over 100 doctors and scientists from 25 countries have signed a letter saying that offering vaccines that are as radically different from what has been used in the past, without more testing, is unethical.
One concern is the likelihood of blood clots in the immediate period after the vaccine is received. Blood clots have also been observed with the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, and may be a concern with other vaccines, as well. There seem to be several related conditions, including sudden blindness, heart attacks, and sudden deaths of elderly people in nursing homes. These issues seem to be fairly rare, but people worry about them without adequate data on their frequency. If the issue is blood clots, it would seem as if simple adjustments such as taking low-dose aspirin for the time period of risk might be a partial solution.
We know that in some cases, vaccines can inadvertently make later exposure to somewhat different versions of the virus worse, rather than stopping these infections. The virus that causes the illness SARS is very similar to the virus that causes COVID-19. When an attempt was made at a vaccine for SARS in 2012, a study on mice showed that exposure at a later date to a slightly different virus led to blood clots forming in the lungs. We already know that blood clots can be an issue for COVID-19 vaccines. Will COVID-19 vaccine recipients who are later exposed to mutations have an adverse reaction such as blood clots in the lungs? We don’t know. There have been no animal studies with respect to the vaccines for COVID-19.
Another risk of COVID-19 vaccinations would seem to be auto-immune problems, especially in people who are already predisposed to such issues. Not much research has been done yet to clarify this issue.
A related issue is allergic reactions to vaccines, including anaphylaxis. The possibility of allergic reactions is one reason vaccine recipients are asked to stay for 15 minutes after receiving their immunizations. Even with precautions, some deaths are occurring because severe allergic reactions can take up to 150 minutes to become apparent. It is impractical to keep vaccine recipients this long.
The very long-term effects of both the COVID-19 illness and vaccines to prevent the COVID-19 illness are unknown. The Alzheimer’s Association recommends studies to see whether people who contract COVID-19 have a long-term increase in dementia-type illnesses. In theory, the vaccines could also lead to similar issues because of prion-like structures that are formed, both with the vaccine and the disease. Without long-term studies, we don’t know whether either of these concerns is valid. If dementia is an issue, will repeated vaccinations raise the long-term risk of dementia? We don’t know. If the disease itself and vaccines can both lead to dementia, is there an optimal strategy?
Without a better understanding of what the risks are, it is hard to convince young people, especially, to take the vaccine. Their chances of a severe outcome from the disease are low to begin with. What is the point of taking a vaccine that may raise their risk of serious injury or death? The vaccine may be appropriate for people aged 80 and over, but is the risk really necessary for young people? Without better data, it is hard to know for certain.
[2] Why a change away from dependence on vaccines is needed
The Nature article referred to earlier says in its concluding paragraph, “It’s time for realistic expectations. . . we need to think of how we can live with the virus.”
Also, as I mentioned in the introduction, we are reaching energy limits. Even if in theory we could vaccinate everyone on the planet twice a year for COVID-19, we do not have the resources to do this. In some ways, the problem looks like a cost problem (poor countries especially cannot afford to buy high-priced vaccines), but it is just as much a resource problem. We cannot devote enough resources to this project without taking them away from other necessary projects. The vaccines are very much a product of today’s fossil fuel economy. We can’t expect to make vaccines with intermittent electricity.
Because of limited resources, we may encounter something similar to the “empty shelf” problem in the grocery stores. We may find that only limited doses of vaccine are available because too many doses were accidentally ruined in production. Or, not enough of the right reagents were available. Or, more doses are needed in the country where the vaccine is manufactured, leaving less for use elsewhere. Or, there is a war in a country integral to vaccine supply lines, interfering with production.
In fact, obtaining promised supplies of vaccines is already a problem. Trying to scale up production at the same time that resources in general are squeezed is likely to make this type of problem increase.
[3] Learning to live with COVID-19 and diminishing resources per capita
If we can’t really fix the COVID-19 problem with endless vaccines for everyone, we need to look at other options.
[3.1] Strengthening our own immune systems
Our bodies come with built-in immune systems. It is the action of the immune system that tends to lead to a low incidence of and low severity of COVID-19 in some people, compared to others. Some of the things that seem to be helpful include the following:
- Being young
- Getting plenty of sleep at night
- Not being overweight. Proper exercise and diet are helpful in this regard.
- Maintaining a healthy microbiome. Our bodies need good microbes to help fight the “bad” microbes. Antibiotics, excessive antibacterial cleaners and a lack of exposure to “good” bacteria could be problems. Staying away from everyone and wearing masks, indefinitely, is not necessarily helpful.
- Getting adequate vitamin D through sun exposure, eating of foods that are high in vitamin D and/or supplementation. Dark skinned people living away from the equator are especially at risk for inadequate vitamin D.
- Getting adequate vitamin C from fruits and vegetables and perhaps supplementation.
Researchers need to be actively looking into optimal strategies to advise citizens. Schools might start teaching about these issues in health classes.
[3.2] Changing our customs and infrastructure to try to reduce the problem of communicable diseases in general, not just for COVID-19.
Customs for greetings among people vary greatly around the world. Some people use hugs and handshakes, others greet with bows. We may need to adopt more distant physical greetings, simply to help reduce the transmission of disease. Of course, hugging at home is still fine.
In the last 100 years, the emphasis increasingly has been on building tighter, more energy-efficient buildings. This is good from a point of saving energy, but it doesn’t work in a world with many communicable diseases. We need to move toward much more ventilation, often based on open windows. Because of energy constraints, we likely cannot expect to keep heating and cooling our buildings as much in the future. We will need to dress more for outdoor temperatures, indoors.
Some leaders have suggested rapid electric rail is the way of the future, but rail transport also needs to be well ventilated. It is also likely that we will be dealing with more intermittency of electricity supply in the future. We need to plan as if we are dealing with an electricity constrained future, as much as an oil and vaccine constrained future.
[3.3] Finding low energy ways to deal with the likely COVID-19 cases that do occur.
The approach in the “rich world” to date in looking for ways to deal with COVID-19 has been to look for new, high technology drugs and vaccines that might have a two-fold benefit (a) help sick people and (b) help the pharmaceutical industry. What we really need are technologies that are low cost and can be used at home. Repurposed old drugs, such as steroids, are ideal, especially if they can be made locally without dependence on international supply lines.
If COVID-19 doesn’t really disappear, we can expect recurring instances of having inadequate medical facilities to treat all of the patients in a given area. Countries need to plan strategies for dealing with this likely long-term problem. Should there be an upper age limit on patients using these facilities, for example, especially when demand is high? Or can the richest citizens have the ability to buy services, when others cannot? Should there be a lottery for beds? Ordering everyone to remain at home is sort of a temporary solution, but it is very damaging to the economy as a whole.
[3.4] Finding leadership that can think in a direction other than “more technology will save us.” Unfortunately, this is pretty much impossible.
Back in 1979, Jimmy Carter tried to change the direction of the US economy when he gave his famous Sweater Speech. In this speech, he told people that they needed to adjust their thermostats and drive their vehicles less because there was an energy crisis. We all know that Jimmy Carter was not reelected after this speech. Instead, Ronald Reagan was elected. He cut taxes and raised debt levels, temporarily delaying our need to deal with our energy problem.
When Anthony Fauci took on the COVID-19 issue, he led us in the direction of spending more money on vaccines and pharmaceuticals. His own financial interests and his work interests were in the direction of helping the vaccine and pharmaceutical interests. He certainly didn’t stop to think, “This is not a battle that we can win. There are too many instances of transmission of the virus by people who have no symptoms. Our track record at wiping out diseases with vaccines has been pretty dismal in the past. Stopping COVID-19 in one part of the world won’t stop the long-term problem.”
I expect that President Biden will continue on his current path until the economy “runs off the cliff.” I wrote in my recent post, Headed for a Collapsing Debt Bubble, that the economy was reaching a point where a major discontinuity would occur. Interest rates are about as low as they can go, and debt levels are reaching an upper bound.
Ronald Reagan’s administration started to decrease interest rates shortly after he took office in 1981. This drop in interest rates has hidden rapidly rising debt and energy problems for many years. We are now running out of room on both energy and debt. When the world’s debt bubble collapses, our ability to fight COVID-19 with vaccines will likely go downhill quickly. We will then need to find new strategies. Unfortunately, considering new strategies in advance is almost impossible.
[4] Conclusion
While it is possible to see what change in direction seems to be needed with respect to COVID-19 and infectious diseases in general, it is not something that those in leadership positions will be able to implement. Instead, we will likely “go off the cliff” at full speed. Changing expectations in advance is almost impossible.
At most, a few interested people can try to explain to their fellow citizens what is happening. Perhaps, in our own little spheres of influence, we can make some small changes in the right direction, starting with strengthening our own immune systems.
IMF Is Using the Debt Crisis to Hollow Out Pakistan’s Sovereignty
Imran Khan’s government came to power in 2018 promising to reorient Pakistan’s economy toward the needs of the population. But faced with a debt crisis it soon dropped its reformist agenda — and now, the International Monetary Fund is pressuring it to place its State Bank permanently beyond democratic control.
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to wreak havoc, at the end of March UN Secretary General António Guterres called for “decisive action” to avert the developing world’s deepening debt crisis. He warned that the previous debt obligations of poor countries were fast maturing, threatening to prolong the economic crisis. African governments alone owe $23.4 billion in repayments to financial institutions this year, notwithstanding current pressures — signaling the scale of the economic burden imposed on poor nations across the globe.
The kind of future in store for the developing world can be gauged by the sweeping financial reforms being imposed by the global financial technocracy in Pakistan. A poor country struggling to meet the basic needs of its people, under the pressure of the pandemic its creditors are now being forced into a financial arrangement that will erode any semblance of democratic control over the country’s economy.
IMF Stranglehold
Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government came to power in August 2018 promising to break the “begging bowl” of the International Monetary Fund and reorient the economy toward meeting the development needs of the public. However, a mounting balance-of-payments crisis inherited from the previous government, as well as economic mismanagement in the first few months under the new administration, forced the country back to the IMF in April 2019.
Pakistan signed a punishing deal the following month, which demanded massive austerity, including cuts to social and development spending, in exchange for a loan of $6 billion over three years. Finance minister Asad Umar, who had been vocal in his criticisms of the IMF in the past, was forced to resign, and replaced by Hafeez Shaikh.
Upon his appointment, Shaikh was widely viewed as a representative of the international financial technocracy in Pakistan. Under the military dictatorship of General Musharraf, he had worked as Sindh province’s finance and planning minister, and was later appointed federal minister for privatization. He also served as finance minister under the Pakistan People’s Party government (2008–2013), overseeing the implementation of a tough IMF program, which was heavily criticized at the time by Imran Khan for its negative impact on ordinary Pakistanis.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/04/pakistan-debt-sovereignty-covid-economic-crisis
The IMF is not going to be well liked.
I expect that the countries making up the IMF will be doing less and less well financially themselves. The IMF can’t really bail out other countries, very well.
BITCOIN MINING HASH RATE DROPS AS BLACKOUTS INSTITUTED IN CHINA
Local news outlets have tied a recent dip in the bitcoin mining hash rate to government-instituted blackouts in China.
Regional blackouts instituted in Northwest China may be the cause of a drop in hash rate from several China-based bitcoin mining operations, per local media outlet Wu Talk.
According to a BTC.com screenshot shared by Wu Blockchain, the hash rate of several major bitcoin mining pools has dropped significantly. As of yesterday, Antpool’s hash rate had crashed by 24.5% in a 24-hour period, Binance Pool by 20%, BTC.com by 18.9% and Poolin by 33%.
The blackouts were necessitated because of a “comprehensive power outage safety inspection” in Xinjiang, per the Wu Talk report. Local news outlet Xinhuanet that the National Mine Safety Supervision Bureau has reported three recent coal mine accidents, including an April 10 “water penetration accident” in Xinjiang that caused 21 people to be trapped.
Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate, according to Primitive Crypto partner Dovey Wan. Operations based in China comprise the majority of global mining power.
This impact that this blackout may have had on Bitcoin’s price, which had recorded a 1.5% drop in value in the last 24 hours, raises questions about the level of centralization of the Bitcoin network’s hashing activity. It should also be noted that a mining difficult adjustment
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-mining-hash-rate-drops-as-blackouts-instituted-in-china
Interesting!
Bitcoin’s Green Haven Is Running Out of Surplus Electricity
(Bloomberg) — The Nordic region is losing its edge in green Bitcoin mining, just as the industry faces growing scrutiny for its carbon emissions and everyone from Elon Musk to mom-and-pop investors pile in.
Iceland, Sweden and Norway have been popular mining locations because of an abundance of geothermal, hydro and wind power. China, where most coins are mined, relies mainly on coal. That Nordic power surplus is set to dwindle as aluminum smelters, oil rigs and steelmakers thirst for renewable energy.
“There could be very little excess energy in 2021 and 2022,” said Hordur Arnarson, chief executive officer at Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national utility. “Because of the climate issues we see a lot of very interesting segments that are growing rapidly, and several of them need electricity.”
The coins are mined by computers that process complex algorithms in halls as big as airport hangars. That makes electricity one of the key inputs, consuming as much power as thousands of households. And it keeps growing. Bitcoin mining now uses 66 times more electricity than in 2015, and carbon emissions from the process may face increasing regulation, Citigroup Inc. said in a recent report.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/bitcoin-s-green-haven-is-running-out-of-surplus-electricity-1.1591503
Partial strike at Montreal port disrupting supply chain, piling on extra costs, shippers and manufacturers warn
Strike could force manufacturers to slow down or halt some of their production lines almost immediately
Logistics firms and manufacturers are warning that a partial strike at the Port of Montreal will disrupt supply chains and potentially force factories to rack up extra costs.
On Tuesday, longshoremen began refusing to work overtime and weekends, restricting the amount of cargo that can be processed by the port. The work slowdown is part of an ongoing labour dispute dating back to a strike last August that forced at least 21 ships to divert to other ports.
A.P. Moller — Maersk, one of the world’s largest shipping lines, told clients it will accelerate its contingency measures since the Montreal port will not be operational on weekends, until further notice. “We encourage our customers to utilize the alternate gateways we are able to offer,” Maersk told clients in an advisory.
The shipping company said extra fees will be implemented for Toronto/Montreal cargo to Atlantic gateway ports in Halifax and Saint John.
“It’s important to understand that every port must compete for business and cargo volumes are not guaranteed,” Omar Shamsie, managing director of Maersk Canada, told the Financial Post in an emailed statement. “Customers have a choice in ports and their business will always find the most efficient way to flow. The Port of Montreal’s labour negotiations have lasted 30 months and this uncertainty has influenced the confidence of local supply chains and pushes cargo to alternative ports.”
Maersk said its railway partners Canadian National Railway Ltd. and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. were also adjusting the receiving windows to avoid weekend departures. CN said it’s working with customers and supply chain partners to minimize the impact of the labour dispute. CP did not respond to a request for comment by the time Financial Post went to press.
The striking longeshoremen, who are represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, are asking for better work-life balance. They voted to start the partial strike after the port told them Friday that it would exercise its lockout rights, although when it will do so is unclear. CUPE did not respond to several requests for comment.
https://financialpost.com/transportation/partial-strike-at-montreal-port-disrupting-supply-chain-piling-on-extra-costs-shippers-and-manufacturers-warn
I expect that this is part of a “not enough to go around problem.” The longshoremen would be paid better if the whole operation were profitable.
I am so looking forward to reading about the troops enforcing martial law on the streets of Canadian cities… they are already on the provincial borders.
– Enhanced lock down restrictions (referred to as Third Lock Down) will be implemented. Full travel restrictions will be imposed (including inter-province and inter-city). Expected Q2 2021. DONE
– Transitioning of individuals into the universal basic income program. Expected mid Q2 2021. HAPPENING NOW
– Projected supply chain break downs, inventory shortages, large economic instability. Expected late Q2 2021. HAPPENING NOW.
– Deployment of military personnel into major metropolitan areas as well as all major roadways to establish travel checkpoints. Restrict travel and movement. Provide logistical support to the area. Expected by Q3 2021. Along with that provided road map the Strategic Planning committee was asked to design an effective way of transitioning Canadians to meet a unprecedented economic endeavor. COMING SOON!!!!
Saw this link on the Automatic Earth website and it was a good read on Gail’s topic
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=242081
And Now Proof: Covid Vaccines are MORE DANGEROUS Than Covid
I’m really not too immersed in this issue , myself, …pretty obvious to anyone what’s behind it all.
An excuse for the economic downfall
You need to make some pretty big assumption to get to the headline of this article, however.
I second that and much appreciated ☺️…
But judging from the trend here it was suitable…
FE Approved..LOL
Has it been established yet what made Tanja collapse on camera?
If it wasn’t a jab, then the explanation should have been forthcoming by now.
The eyes of the world are watching (well mine are at least), but the BBC has said nothing, nothing! Not even a lone gunman theory.
Also, since Tanja went off at a tangent, this bird has not tweeted.
Not even so much as a short “I’m fine now, thanks to everyone for their concern.” Nothing at all since Wednesday April 14.
https://twitter.com/lmsterichsen?lang=en
The last we saw of her she was prostrate on the floor. The optics are appalling. If the medicine’s agency can’t even keep their own director perpendicular at meetings, how can Danes trust them to protect the nation’s health?
Ontario police say no after province greenlights random police stops
Saturday marks the first day of at least six weeks of enhanced policing powers in Ontario in an attempt to curb an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases.
However, several police forces across the province have already said they do not intend to make use of additional powers that allow them to ask anyone outside their residence — including stopping vehicles — to indicate their purpose for leaving home and provide their address.
A ticket if individuals refused would cost roughly $750.
Peterborough Police and London Police Service tweeted “we will not be randomly stopping people.” Both Waterloo Regional Police Service and Niagara Regional Police Service similarly tweeted, “We will not be conducting random vehicle or individual stops.”
The president of the Peel Regional Police Association also took to Twitter to urge the government, “Don’t make cops the bad guys here!”
In a statement, the Ottawa Police Service said it will also not be conducting random checks.
“We are very mindful of the perception of the broader public as well as within our more marginalized, racialized and/or Indigenous/Aboriginal/Inuit peoples,” said Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly.
“We do not want these powers to impact public trust,” Sloly said.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-police-checks-covid19-1.5991872
No wonder people are unhappy with the police!
Have another brother in Ontario (who vies for me for God of Logic… he skipped 2 grades in school so he thinks that gives him the title however my Power is currently far greater – and he respects that)
He is in alignment with the CEP etc…
Spoke to him earlier – he knows a cop who has told him that at least where he is — 3 hours outside of Toronto – they will not be enforcing this stay at home sheeeit.
Lemme guess, he was busy maneuvering within the hex while you dug deep and found dirt. Didn’t particularly like that, then you realized. It could be flung.
Wrestling with a pig in mud is a sure way to get yourself soiled down while the pig is having a heyday.
It would be great if the police en mass used these powers liberally to stop, question and conduct random checks on members of the government day in, day out, until the Canadian parliament gets its act together to end these unjust laws and to publicly out Justin Trudeau as Fidel Castro and Winnie Mandela’s love child.
https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Justin-Blackface-Banana-620×374.jpg
UK Government Advisors Call For More Lockdowns
Advisors to the government in the UK, which has mostly been under varying degrees of lockdowns for more than a year now and is supposed to be emerging from the last of the restrictions, have said that there may have to be further lockdowns in order to stop new coronavirus variants.
The London Independent reports:
…a top scientist advising the government has said local restrictions may need to be reintroduced if surge testing fails to halt the spread of the South African Covid variant.
Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told ITV’s Peston show that if mass testing events, such as those currently underway in Southwark and Barnet in London, “don’t work that well … then it’s possible we’ll have to impose some sort of local restrictions back in place and nobody wants to do it”.
A similar report in the Telegraph notes that lockdowns may have to be localised to different streets to prevent outbreaks of new variants.
Dr Jeffrey Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute told the BBC that shutting down individual streets “certainly could” help prevent the spread of the virus “because one of the trickiest parts of this virus overall is, of course, some individuals who are infected don’t have symptoms and so they can transmit.”
“Trying to use interventions that might stop asymptomatic transmission may well be an important part of keeping outbreaks of these new variants to be as absolutely small as possible,” Barrett added.
He also suggested that there is a “chance” new variants will be “less well neutralised” by vaccines, adding that it is “restrictions” that have helped contain outbreaks.
That rhetoric echos what Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier this week when he stated that it is lockdowns, rather than vaccinations that have caused a reduction in cases of the virus:
https://summit.news/2021/04/16/uk-government-advisors-call-for-more-lockdowns/
The real reason is likely related to energy supplies. If everyone stays at home, less oil and other fuels are used. Also, there can be fewer protests about empty shelves and broken supply lines.
Why not work harder on finding ways to treat people outside of the hospital with COVID-19?
Funny that – my experience is perhaps instructive. I got a prescription for Ivermectin from my doctor yesterday. Meijer, CVS, and RiteAid refused to fill it per corporate decisions to block it. Walgreen isn’t sure yet.
I wish I’d been filming the responses. They were a mix of sheepish and evasive and perfunctory. One asked me if I was in a clinical study and claimed he’d not heard of Long-Haul Covid. One admitted with sad eyes that she’s aware of some of the Ivermectin story and advised me to try an independent pharmacy. Another, after saying he didn’t have enough tabs on hand, and insurance wouldn’t cover it, and they were expensive if I was paying cash, and something about all kinds of protocols flying around and other blah-blah, I literally had to drag it out of him that yes, his computer screen shows a STOP ORDER for it, just like Meijer’s and CVS claimed theirs will be doing soon (both of those pharmacists had to call a supervisor somewhere upstream). And I said what if a person had scabies. Oh, he said, then its OK but only for a few tablets.
They’re getting $5 a tablet for a medicine that costs 2-cents to produce.
I handed all of the pharmacists a review I did of Satoshi Omura’s (Nobel Prize in 2015 finally) recent paper analyzing RCT’s, giving Ivermectin not only a thumbs up, but expressing the potential that Ivermectin’s anti-viral properties may be as significant a discovery as Penicillin; a literal “miracle drug” game-changer. I also gave them a flyer with links to other reviews done by the FLCCC Alliance and the BIRD group in the UK and links to interviews with Dr. Paul Marik and Dr. Pierre Kory on YouTube.
It’s obvious there’s a war going on here and these poor pharmacists are on the front-lines of a battle they know little about. They don’t go home and read PubMed papers all night long. Neither does the average doctor.
Ivermectin sales are sky-rocketing, at the top of new prescriptions by far, on a chart I saw in an FLCCC Alliance video. TPTB must be responding to counter that right about now. After 4-billion doses and a safety-record that stretches around the world, not to mention Ivermectin is an over-the-counter drug in many countries, you’d think we’re living in a medical Gulag.
They cant allow alternative treatment to be established and mandate the VAX gene therapy. What is going on is beyond the pale. Corporate pharmacies deciding that they will not allow a safe effective “miracle drug” to be administered? A year or two i would have said any lawyers ears picking up but the lines of big pharma tyranny power structure that is the ocean the attorneys swim in are so clear now I dont know.
They dont care if you administer Ivermectin via the horse medicine. That doesnt establish alternative treatment in the legal world. With Ivermectin being shown far greater benefit with omost no risk worldwide how can they negate those double blind studies and mandate the dangerous experimental gene therapy? How is it our justice system is allowing this? No justice? No law?
Jeffrey Fieger’s still chasing ambulances. I might give him a call for fun. He successfully defended Jack Kevorkian on assisted suicide, maybe he’d enjoy a challenge at the life-saving end of the spectrum. I’d imagine class-action is kind of ‘off the radar’ so far, but the first two people I told my story to responded immediately to that question you pose about how is there any right of a corporate pharmacy to over-ride a doctor’s prescription to a miracle medicine. No doubt corps assume that they’re indemnified by FDA opinion, and maybe they are technically anyway. But this is a moral battle and they can’t possibly keep a lid on it.
After careful observation and experiment, government Covid advisers in the UK have concluded that lock-downs increase their self- importance and ability to make fatuous recommendations , while not diminishing in any way their salaries and pensions.
Nor was any increase in compassion and empathy for the victims- unemployed, locked-up suicidal – observed.
Right on
Meanwhile … Sweden continues to not lock down … as the rest of the world invents new reasons to continue or re-enter lockdowns….
And the MSM says nothing. Or if they do… Sweden is a disaster.
Pretty funny considering it’s everywhere but Sweden that is a total f789ing disaster.
Stoooopid Hooomans. Fools
Can’t wait to see people falling like flies and hiding in their basements… that will be hilarious
Feels like it’s getting close now don’t it? Ontario is the Doom Barometer… Ground Zero for what is going to be happening everywhere soon.
Border opens with Australia tomorrow — how timely is that!!!
Oops sorry!
TGA admits minors mistakenly given AstraZeneca vaccine and says woman’s death an ‘atypical case’
More than a dozen teenagers as young as 14 have been given the AstraZeneca jab despite there being no vaccine approved for use in minors in Australia, as the Therapeutic Goods Administration confirmed the same jab was “likely” linked to the death of 48-year-old New South Wales woman Genene Norris.
The TGA has confirmed that as of 13 April they have received 13 reports of a teenager aged between 14 and 17 being vaccinated against medical advice.
A spokeswoman for the TGA said in most cases this was due to “an oversight in clinical practice, such as confirming patient age or prior vaccination”.
They have also received five reports of AstraZeneca vaccine dosing errors in adults.
Similarly to Pfizer vaccines, AstraZeneca comes in multi-dose vials with either eight or 10 persons’ worth of the drug in each container.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/17/tga-admits-minors-mistakenly-given-astrazeneca-vaccine-and-says-womans-death-an-atypical-case
Accidents happen!
May the Lord save us from becoming ‘atypical’ or ‘very, very rare’ additions to the mortality stats…….
Dishonesty and guile, though, seem to be far from rare and atypical in certain occupations.,
Tamil Actor Vivek receives first dose and urges everyone to take it.
https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/actor-vivekh-gets-covid-19-vaccine-urges-others-do-so-147156
Today he has been taken into hospital for heart attack and is in ICU
https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2021/apr/16/actor-vivekhs-heart-attack-severe-not-related-to-covid-19-vaccination-hospital-2290710.html
Update: Dead
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/tamil/movies/news/actor-vivekh-passes-away-after-being-hospitalised/articleshow/82111126.cms?from=mdr
“100% blood clot in his left artery and it may not be related to Covid vaccination.”
This is the standard believe. Except, it seems to happen awfully often.
My mother was rushed to hospital this week with heart problems. Guess what, she had her second vaccination last Friday (8 days ago). She’s at home and somewhat better now, though still looks unwell to me. She says the vaccination had nothing to do with the heart problems.
Woman in my car this afternoon says her mother (94yo) survived covid but died from a stroke a week after receiving her second vaccine. It had never occurred to the daughter that the two events might be related. She is booked in for her first vaccine next week.
Man I took last Saturday was so proud to have received his first shot. He told me there have have been no adverse events from the covid vaccines.
There is no hope for the majority, who trust the MSM unquestioningly.
It appears to be a rare, nay, freakish phenomenon—the clarity of mind and the ability to perform joined-up thinking that you demonstrate, that is; not life-threatening side-effects from Covid-19 vaccines. I hope your mother makes a full recovery.
Scientists create first chimeric human-monkey embryos which can survive up to 20 days
An international team of scientists based in China and the United States have successfully grown human-monkey chimeric embryos for up to 20 days, a world first, pushing the boundaries of both science and ethics simultaneously.
The research was led by gene expression expert Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute in California who, along with his team, implanted human stem cells into primate embryos which then grew for up to up to 20 days.
While the ethics of such research will be hotly debated for years to come, the potential benefits with regards to unlocking the remaining secrets of developmental biology and evolution, as well as for the development of new models of human biology and disease, proved significant enough to warrant the risk.
“As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease,” says Belmonte.
“An important goal of experimental biology is the development of model systems that allow for the study of human diseases under in vivo conditions.”
The macaque monkey embryos were injected with human extended pluripotent stem cells some six days after they were created. As the name suggests, these stem cells can yield multiple different types of tissue, both embryonic and non- or extra-embryonic tissues.
https://www.rt.com/news/521232-first-chimeric-human-monkey-embryos/
What in the world is the reason for this kind of experiment? I don’t want monkey / human cells embedded in me.
The medical community likes lots and lots of experiments of new things. If the see some kind of benefit, they certainly don’t wait to use the new technique until they have figured out whether there is a long-term harm from the new technique (more cancer, more monkey diseases, ??). This is how we get medical treatments that do more harm than good, if evaluated over a reasonable length of time.
Quite! If the Good Lord had wanted us to monkey around, He’d have given us opposable toes.
and how do you know that I don’t have opposable toes?
Perhaps they are trying desperately to keep Mr DNA alive by merging him with monkey DNA so that he regains the ability to live in the wild?
Or maybe some inner-Neanderthal is seeking hi-tech genetic-revenge on the Cro-Magnon branch of the hominid family-tree; the one that only acquired a small portion, if any, of those Neanderthal genetics over tens of millennia worth of contact.
“Should We Clone Neanderthals” (2010)
https://archive.archaeology.org/1003/etc/neanderthals.html#:~:text=The%20best%20way%20to%20clone%20Neanderthals%20may%20be,any%20type%20of%20cell%20in%20the%20human%20body.
751 million vaccine doses have been administered while we in the midst of a second wave of Covid cases in the world with 800,000 new daily cases. India seems to be the new hot spot with a double mutated virus.
The flu vaccines are usually 30-40 percent effective. The Covid vaccines won’t eradicate the virus, but they will stop severe cases and bring down the pressure on the hospital’s. The vaccines will of course also force the virus to mutate.
I think the virus would mutate regardless. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are so narrowly targeted that even a tiny change becomes a problem. The biggest change seems to have come in Brazil where the usage of vaccines wasn’t even very high.
There is so much speculation as regards to this virus. One thing that has caught my eye and made me more skeptical is why there are no studies or very minimal studies on having a natural immunity after you get the virus. I had the virus about 7 months ago…a strong case of it….almost every symptom- I am fine now and feel very strong. I had a blood test 3 weeks ago and it came back that I had strong antibodies. But still I am told I “need” to get the vaccine, to be A) a responsible citizen B) To protect myself against another infection.
Why are they not dumping billions into research and study of people who have had the virus??
Survivors isn’t as sexy as juicy and pristine victims.
STOP THINKING
CONSUME
OBEY
They need to find out who the virtuous and responsible citizens are, of course. And identify and segregate those who are not.
Sheep and goats.
Which ones are for the chop,and the pot?
Vaccine makers can sell more vaccine this way.
Very good question. Glad to hear you made it through!
If you get that Richard Kimble (David Janssen – The Fugitive) spidey-sense, don’t be surprised!! Drive a hard-bargain if they get their paws on you.
I’d bet there’s unpublished studies circulating behind the scenes, regarding innate and acquired immunity.
There are 120 studies at PubMed on a query of “Covid survivors and immunity” and 1,073 studies on “Covid survivors” only.
Even studies that reveal important information that run against the conventional-tide can take a long time to be verified and propagated out by being referenced in other papers coming at things from different angles. The whole paradigm is quite plodding and slow.
Refer to the CEP
I dedicate this song to Vivak — the Ultimate CovIDIOT who paid the Ultimate Price for his CovIDIOCY…. god bless Vivak the f789 head hahahahahaha tee hee… etc…
https://youtu.be/eH7iY-wAZ2s
There hasn’t been “pressure on the hospitals” (beyond the normal winter flu surges that’ve historically been reported as stressing out ICUs). That’s “15 days to slow the spread” talk. We are way beyond that now.
The doctors and nurses were dancing in the empty hallways, you may recall:
https://twitter.com/naomirwolf/status/1383120132810084362
Lie after lie after lie…
“Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have more patients now than they ever did in previous waves,” Elliott told reporters. “With many hospitals at capacity, we are seeing patients being transferred to other hospitals for the care they need — sometimes hundreds of kilometres away.”
What’s the reason for this? There are 85 new, empty hospital beds at the field hospital.
When Toronto Sun Queen’s Park Bureau Chief Antonella Artuso asked this question, Elliott did not seem to have a complete answer.
“We have made considerable increases in the number of beds available knowing that COVID-19” would end up with “hospitalizations,” Elliott said.
She mentioned being “ready to stand up” a special parking lot unit at Sunnybrook but did not address why it’s not operational when increasing COVID-19 cases are so troublesome?
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-no-patients-at-sunnybrooks-covid-field-hospital
The way they did it in Portugal was very clear in January: to close the emergency room in most hospitals and concentrate everything in just one or tow. The result was very televised and duly frightening: lines of ambulances outside the only big hospital in Lisbon dedicated at “covid victims”. To manipulate tele-covidiots is the easiest jobs in the world.
The EU is rigging a Pfizer/Moderna ‘vaccination carousel’.
1. The Eu is currently negotiating with Pfizer and Moderna for a future supply of 1.8 billion doses of vaccines. The deliveries would be intended to respond to any mutants that would be more or less resistant to the current RNA vaccines.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher the French Minister of Industry indicated that the EU could decide to abandon the vaccine produced by the laboratory next year, as well as that of Johnson & Johnson, preferring the products of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
No discussions on new contracts for next year have started for Johnson&Johnson and AstraZeneca. The EU could therefore prefer messenger RNA-based vaccines, which “work very well” and have few side effects.
2. Agnès Pannier-Runacher stated that France would receive 7.5 million doses of additional Biontech. They will arrive at the end of June. It will allow the government to fulfill its promise to vaccinate all French over the age of 18. In the fall, the authorities will have “the capacity, in terms of the number of doses, to vaccinate adolescents” aged 12 to 17!!!
However, the usefulness of this will still need to be debated: “intuitively, everything that can help contain the epidemic and reassure the population must be considered and implemented as soon as possible,” the Minister stated.
3. People who have received Pfizer’s vaccine will “probably” need a third dose within six months to a year, and probably one injection every year thereafter,” the pharma stated. The efficacy decreases over the months,and the variants are challenging. France’s Directorate General of Public Health (DGS) had already mandated a third dose last Sunday, with a messenger RNA vaccine, such as Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna, “at least four weeks after the second dose” for patients who do not have a “normal immune response.
The pharmaceutical’s indication means that starting in January when the first doses were administered in the EU, six months later a second vaccination circus would have to be started in order to provide everyone again with a vaccine from the RNA range at least once more.
A new mutant in this already chaotic logistic system would then lead to a totally out of control carousel with enormous logistic problems and costs. In that case, 1.8 billion vaccines would indeed be needed in the EU.
5.In France, ‘vaccino dromes’ have now been set up in all major cities and departments. After a few months the secondary and partly hidden costs of the Covid vaccination carousel will become clear. To help the municipalities bear the costs of opening a vaccination center, the government is covering the vaccines and the salary of the exempted medical staff.
6. But everything else is borne by the communities, and the expenses turn out to be substantial. A medium-sized city like Laval 40,000 inhabitants spends almost 160,000 euros a month to give its residents access to vaccines.
Of the 160,000 euros in monthly expenses, 18,000 euros are paid for the hall and related costs, 12,000 euros for city staff hired to ensure logistics, and 7,000 euros for the purchase or rental of equipment such as chairs and dividers. That’s a total of nearly 40,000 euros per week. To make a comparison, that is the equivalent of the entire road budget, i.e. all renovations of roads, sidewalks, in short the entire infrastructure of the city. The average price is about the same everywhere about 70,000 to 80,000 euros per month. An annual amount of 1 million euros to be paid by relatively small municipalities. It is now clear that these costs will continue at least for months if not years with repeat vaccinations. This balance may get even worse. The government is currently appealing to cities to increase the capacity of their vaccination centers.
I presume some government organization has to buying the vaccines themselves. The EU supposedly negotiated a very low price this year, which is part of the reason it is having difficulty actually getting the doses. This issue will need to be handled by someone in the future as well.
This article tends to confirm Gail’s view that continued vaccination may ultimately be unaffordable, but in the meantime, business is going to be great for the pharmaceutical companies, not to mention the undertakers.
Alaska village requires full vaccine for in-person shopping
BETHEL, Alaska — A village in Alaska has mandated that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed into the community’s stores and businesses.
Kongiganak had 50% of its eligible residents vaccinated with at least one dose as of April 9, KYUK-AM reported Wednesday, citing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation.
Kongiganak reported that it had a population of 439 people in the 2010 U.S. Census.
Sheila Phillip, the Kongiganak Traditional Council secretary, said that people who are fully vaccinated can go inside the village’s two stores if they wear masks and follow social distancing guidelines.
People not fully vaccinated “can still make phone orders and their orders are delivered to their home,” Phillip said.
The general manager for Qemirtalek Coast Corporation, Harvey Paul, said his village store allows four people inside.
Paul said his employees verify that a customer is vaccinated by checking that their name is on a list provided by the tribe, KYUK-AM reported.
“Every couple of days, they’ll give us a new list,” Paul said. “The list keeps getting bigger and bigger. That’s a good sign, you know?”
Paul said allowing only vaccinated people to shop in-person is helping increase vaccination rates in the village.
“It gives them the incentive, ‘Hey look, I better get vaccinated too so I can go to the store,’” Paul said. “The best way to curb this virus is to get vaccinated.”
Bethel and other Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages are allowing people to enter stores without proving they have been vaccinated.
https://www.newwestrecord.ca/coronavirus-covid-19-national-news/alaska-village-requires-full-vaccine-for-in-person-shopping-3639023
So the village idiot runs the store? Vaccine and two masks?!
I missed a key part…
Separately on Friday, Health Canada said it had received an application from Pfizer and BioNTech to expand the use of its vaccine to children 12 years and older, down from 16 years and up.
Have a brother in Toronto… last week he was telling me that ‘they’ would not give the vaccine to children … I said have a look at what Israel is doing… it’s coming…
And here it is.. he has a 12 and 8 yr old.
Anyone wanna bet there will be a no jab no school policy?
So, FE, does he actually have balls or will he cave in?
If people accept the injecting of their children, it’s all over for them – they are beneath contempt.
That I have not asked… he’s probably losing his mind having read that they are prepping to jab children.
I think that if they introduce a no jab no school policy .. he’ll jab.
I have two other friends who have insisted they will not allow their kids to be jabbed… I suspect if push comes to shove they’ll Just Do It!…
Ontario enters harder lockdown, police get more powers as COVID cases soar
The Canadian province of Ontario expanded and extended a stay at home order on Friday and said police will be given new powers to stop and question people who leave home as expert advisors warned that new cases of COVID-19 will continue to soar, overwhelming hospitals.
Ontario also announced restrictions on non-essential travel from neighbouring provinces starting Monday and said non-essential construction, including building projects at malls, hotels and office towers will shut down as of Saturday to deal with a raging third wave.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/covid-19-cases-canadas-most-populous-province-could-treble-cbc-2021-04-16/
Duncannorm… any thoughts on The Leak?
FE, who foresaw it first, you or this lady, from September 2019?
You might have a competitor in the IQ challenge:
Wow IQ 2000. What is she talking about now?
She’s just been talking with Sofia Smallstorm about bio-capitalism.
Please consider subscribing to her Bitchute channel.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/bC6NuyhpVV51/
Mm, yeah, sitting in her car while fully aware that her ‘lifestyle’ is nothing but a delusion.
So right, yet so wrong.
How sad it is.
“‘It’s a day off’: wiretaps show Mediterranean migrants were left to die…
“The conversation, recorded by prosecutors in Sicily investigating sea rescue charities for alleged complicity in people-smuggling, lays bare the indifference of individuals on the Libyan side to the plight of migrants and to international law.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/wiretaps-migrant-boats-italy-libya-coastguard-mediterranean
“Cuba’s economic woes may fuel America’s next migrant crisis:
“The pandemic hammered Cuba’s tourist industry, which suffered a 75% decline – a loss of roughly $2.5 billion… These external shocks hit an economy already weakened by the decline in cheap oil from crisis-stricken Venezuela… Since Cuba imports most of its food, the island nation has experienced a food crisis.”
https://theconversation.com/cubas-economic-woes-may-fuel-americas-next-migrant-crisis-158260
Cuba has neither enough oil or electricity. It at least has kept its population down, unlike Haiti. It still imports the majority of its food, as far as I know.
I see that Raul Castro is stepping down as leader there. “He’s handing power to a younger generation.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cubas-raul-castro-confirms-stepping-head-communist-party-rcna689
http://corazonpress.com/
I’ll put a bug in Jack Kenny’s ear that it might be time to get back down to Cuba and ‘capture the soul’ of the situation like he did starting around 25 years ago, ending with his B&W photographic masterpiece “Cuba” published in 2005. From the introduction by Roberto Salas:
“I believe that the camera is just a machine, an object that acts on a will that comes from outside the body and lens. What’s in the mind of the photographer is what goes into the film. I do not believe in the “impartial objectivity” of photography. In another senses a place, subject or topic can be seen in many different ways. The most common way is from the outside in, resulting in the superficial point of view of an “outsider”. The other way is from the inside out, becoming a part of your topic or subject to try to arrive at the center of what you want to say. This is the work of Jack Kenny.”
“Kenny’s point of view on Cuba is a reflection of what he believes is the root of the people, that aside from the turmoil of the political situation that they live in, they are a natural people in a natural place as could be seen anywhere in the world. His quest to locate this view of every day life has created a unique collection of images of a Cuba that is there, but that is rarely experienced.”
You can easily visualize in Jack’s photographs the importance of institutional continuity; that element of emotional and spiritual stability that Sid Smith speaks to so well; as we descend towards these levels of break-down.
Too many people want to migrate. Their countries don’t have enough resources per capita. The countries they want to move to don’t really want them either.
Equality of outcome biases AI. Who’d have thought that? Not only does it bias AI’s, but the general cackle and absurdities of mankind as well. Why? Because equality of opportunity is oh so scary. Why? Well, being at the mercy of evolutionary processes isn’t a warm and cozy in-group therapy session.
I’m thinking ego entitled rapacious primates flinging racism and bigotry online and then those piles of bullwank is ingested into algos without a proper model of sociology and the collective unconscious. There is no need to curate the data when it’s context of origin is understood.
X makes a bigoted remark on Y. Algorithm decides that X is bigoted based on the hallucinations X fly between the myopic eyes. Algorithm decides that Algorithm itself, X and Y is hexed by rapacious primate shenanigans and defiance of evolutionary equality of opportunity.
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-future-artificial-intelligence-requires-guidance.amp
“In the race to out-compete other companies– artificial intelligence (AI) design is lacking a deep understanding of what data about humans mean and its relation to equity.”
It’s finally beginning to sink in.
☯️
Insurance companies have been up against this problem for a long time. They can easily pick out the “losers” in the system.
I read a story about the GA legislature passing legislation providing partial free tuition to young people who “aged out” of the foster home program and wanted to attend college or technical school. This group generally does miserably. I think the article said two-thirds of the girls were pregnant a year after losing the support of a family.
Most effects have causes. Occasionally some effects got no discernible causes. Some effects gives the illusion of having causes.
The million dollar question is how to differentiate.
Effects that got causes: depletion
Effects with hallucinated causes: MOAR in a finite world
Effects with no causes: The universe
The EU is moving towards stopping to abuse AI for humanoid shenanigans and blatant abuses, it seems like. In reality this means to stop blowing through energy for nothing.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-strict-rules-artificial-intelligence/amp/
“AI systems that streamline manufacturing, model climate change, or make the energy grid more efficient would be welcome. But many technologies currently in use in Europe today, such as algorithms used to scan CVs, make creditworthiness assessments, hand out social security benefits or asylum and visa applications, or help judges make decisions, would be labeled as “high risk,” and would be subject to extra scrutiny.”
It is better to ponder upon how to keep this clunker humming along, I guess all cognitive systems got a stake in this matter.
Dr Ryan Cole Testifies
Vitamin D
Ivermectin
Gene therapy lack of safety
https://www.bitchute.com/video/IqAEWua56eRF/
Ontario goes communist: Checkpoints at borders, Churches restricted, playgrounds closed
‘We have implemented the strictest measures in all of North America,’ Premier Doug Ford said.
‘Understand the restrictions will be strongly, strongly enforced.’
TORONTO, Canada, April 16, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Using modeling predictions that have historically proven to be unreliable, the government of Ontario added two more weeks to the already month-long stay-at-home order while burdening citizens with additional restrictive measures that include a 10-person limit at church services, cracking down on travel, closing playgrounds, and stepping up enforcement of rules already in place.
“We have implemented the strictest measures in all of North America,” Premier Doug Ford said this afternoon during a press conference at Queen’s Park where he announced the measures that come into effect on Saturday, April 17 just after midnight.
Places of worship will be capped at a maximum of 10 people indoors, beginning Monday.
Checkpoints will be set up at all of the province’s interprovincial borders with Quebec and Manitoba to clamp down on people trying to enter the province. It is unclear if the new measures will be able to withstand a challenge based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that grants “mobility rights” to citizens.
Big box retail stores will be reduced to operating at 25 percent capacity and playgrounds, basketball courts, golf courts, soccer fields will be closed down.
Ford made it clear that those who do not follow the rules will experience the iron fist of the law.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ontario-goes-communist-checkpoints-at-borders-churches-restricted-playgrounds-closed?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com&utm_campaign=ef95006ef7-Daily%2520Headlines%2520-%2520U.S._COPY_1016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12387f0e3e-ef95006ef7-400674377
Duncannormie…. please explain to me why YT would pull this down?
The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis recently held a panel discussion to discuss recent research findings related to Covid-19.
The expert panel included four professors of medicine from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Universities, who are all PhDs and experts in a field of disease research. And that just scratches the surface of their credentials relevant to being considered Covid-19 experts.
The panel spoke against forcing children and vaccinated people to wear masks, and said there was no proof that lockdowns reduced the spread or death rates of Covid-19. They cited specific, peer reviewed scholarly research on which they based their opinions.
But YouTube decided that these experts were spreading misinformation, and took down the video, “because it included content that contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/youtube-censors-panel-of-medical-experts-over-covid-19-misinformation-31974/
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Expands Mask Mandate to 2-Year-Olds
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) doubled down on her restrictive coronavirus strategy by requiring young children to wear masks.
Michigan Capitol Confidential reported the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), headed by Elizabeth Hertel, who just returned from an Alabama beach vacation, issued the order.
Children under the age of 5 had previously been exempt. But now, kids at camps and child care must be covered.
“A good faith effort is made to ensure that children aged 2 to 4 years wear a mask when participating in gatherings,” the order said.
The mandate noted at this point, children under 2 are exempt. It expires May 25.
The order came days after Hertel arrived back from a spring break vacation to Gulf Shores, Alabama and another top Whitmer aide, Tricia Foster, was found to have vacationed in Siesta Key, Florida.
Critics questioned whether there were different rules for top officials. Whitmer responded, “What directors do on their personal time is their business, so long as they are safe.”
On Thursday, the governor appeared on MSNBC and blamed the Republican-controlled legislature and even former President Donald Trump himself for the situation.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/16/michigan-gov-gretchen-whitmer-expands-mask-mandate-to-2-year-olds/
Sounds like 12 year old is showing signs of degenerative prion disease.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzIZ68xVcAI79-_?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzIZ68vVoAAmBkZ?format=jpg&name=large
What parent would allow this?
It’s criminal.
I’m enjoying Dr. Simon on Twitter (PhD in Biotech. Polyglot. Doing research on Systems Thinking, Aquaponics, and Vitamin D).
Dr. Simon: Dr. FauXi reveals his plans to vaccinate all children and babies until end of the year. Can’t wait for Nuremberg 2.0.
Commenters:
Children and babies are not at risk. They can attain natural immunity. What are the real motivations for injecting them with a drug that will conclude its clinical trial in 2023?
Love that he only talks to celebrities and has brushed off the ‘other experts’ wanting to debate.
https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1383372808084885505
Far worse than criminal: satanic.
Parents need to be locked in a barrel with 100 hungry rates.
From last December:
Dr. Suneel Dhand points out four problems with the COVID vaccine we don’t want to see (3 minutes 22 seconds). Dr. Dhand is doubtless a knowledgable and capable physician as well as a nice, kind, reasonable and sensible man although I would rate him a conventional thinker in that he doesn’t take into account any of the wild conspiracy theorizing that any intellectually curious person living in 2021 should be embracing as a matter of course.
His four problems are:
1. Will enough people consent to be vaccinated? Many people are hesitant and “on many levels, I completely empathize with that”.
2. Side effects? “It is absolutely inevitable that when you’re rolling out a vaccine to millions of people, some of them will report side effects.”
3. Will it help the vulnerable with impaired immune systems? “My concern is that the vaccine won’t work on them anyway and they will remain at significant risk.
4. What happens when some people who have had the vaccine inevitably catch COVID-19 in the future? “I can picture the viral headline now: My Relative Died of COVID-19 Despite Getting the Vaccine.”
Hang on a minute. We are now in April, and it turns out that this highly qualified and generally pro-vaccine physician is currently “on the fence” regarding whether he should or will accept the COVID-19 vaccine.
This is very interesting and will provide some lucid, cogent and even persuasive arguments for anyone else who wants to say “no” to the jab. (7 minutes)
He’s already had COVID-19 and naturally recovered and still has antibodies against the bug. So he argues that he doesn’t require a vaccine.
He also says that if, as is being said, natural immunity to COVID-19 wanes after three months, then vaccine-induced immunity cannot last any longer than that, so what’s the point of getting jabbed if you’ve already been infected?
He also warns of the possibility of a “hyper immune response” when people who already have antibodies take the virus. And he says there have already been cases.
And he says he feels like he’s being “backed into a corner” by the pressure to “just take the shot” and by the prospects of “vaccine passports”. But if he does take a vaccine in order to be allowed to travel and go into restaurants, etc., he says he would go for the Johnson and Johnson one because it is just one shot not two, and it isn’t an mRNA one.
But Johnson & Johnson still seems to have problems.
Rocco Galati wins Legal “Round One” Plus NACI advised–and the Liberal government accepted–all Canadians participate as human lab rats re: COVID-19 “vaccines”.
“Trudeau buried this National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) policy document that was adopted June 2020. NACI basically advised and the government accepted that all Canadians participate as human lab rats for the COVID-19 “vaccines”. Wow I must have missed this important news flash on CBC, CTV or Global TV? Oh wait, were the Canadian people ever informed of the government policy enrolling all Canadians into the clinical trial? ? Not unless you read the NACI policy papers.
This document discusses all the inclusion criteria – such as “healthy volunteers…pregnancy-specific safety data arising from participants unknowingly pregnant at the time of vaccination…stratification of age groups is recommended to determine the relative immunogenicity and efficacy of the intervention…” They even breached their own ethical standards for “research involving humans”. I really appreciated that they cover “Considerations for late phase clinical trials and post-market studies:”.
Genocidal Psychopaths!
Canadian obstetricians call on feds to prioritize those who are pregnant for vaccines
TORONTO — Following the news that pregnant women are increasingly ending up in ICUs with severe COVID-19, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) is calling on the government to prioritize this group for vaccines immediately.
“According to SOGC members, there is currently a wave of daily pregnant women coming into Ontario ICUs, many requiring ventilators,” SOGC said in a statement Thursday.
“These women are getting extremely sick, very quickly.”
They called for women who are over 20 weeks pregnant to be prioritized at once to receive the vaccine.
Some provinces do currently include pregnant people in their priorities, but in other jurisdictions, they are not mentioned in the plan itself, and would presumably receive the vaccine only when they were eligible through other factors, such as age.
For instance, Ontario lists those who are pregnant as “at risk” and prioritizes them in the current phase of the vaccine rollout, and pregnant people became eligible for the vaccine in Alberta on March 30. But in British Columbia, only pregnant people with a heart condition are considered clinically vulnerable enough to receive prioritization in their current phase. And in hard-hit Quebec, the vaccine guidelines still place pregnant women with children, saying vaccine rollout in these populations “will be determined based on future studies.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/canadian-obstetricians-call-on-feds-to-prioritize-those-who-are-pregnant-for-vaccines-1.5389766
It would be difficult to write a better horror movie script than this
Toronto Residents Not Allowed Out Of Their Houses Anymore!
https://153news.net/watch_video.php?v=KMU4WR1YSMYA
Charming. Locked down and kicked out at the same time.
Tenant fears suggest that the problem is about to get worse.
UK:
> Nearly 700,000 tenants evicted without reason during pandemic
One in 12 private renters has been given notice to move out without a reason since March 2020, a new poll has revealed.
The Survation survey, commissioned by Generation Rent, indicates that as many as 694,000 private tenants have been served with a Section 21 notice during the pandemic, which allows landlords to evict tenants without needing a reason.
The survey also found that one in three private renters fears that they will lose their home in the year ahead. This represents nearly three million adults in England.
https://www.localgov.co.uk/Nearly-700000-tenants-evicted-without-reason-during-pandemic/52185
Welcome to the absurd world of rapacious primate shenanigans. Have a cookie and enjoy the drama and (tragi)comedy.
https://youtu.be/xk9l6fyxcBE
Muppet AI ingests cookies….
MOAR! YAY!
🤣👍👍
I can imagine riots starting in not too long.
The updated YouTube TOS is wild
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzIsiZZVgAEn-CD?format=png&name=medium
Funny how all this was in the leak last October. They must be clairvoyant.
Modelling shows COVID-19 cases will stay high through summer without 6-week stay at home order
In new projections presented today, the advisers say daily infections could approach 20,000 cases per day if strong measures aren’t imposed.
The curve could flatten to just under 5,000 cases per day with strong public health measures in place for at least six weeks and more than 100,000 vaccine doses administered on a daily basis.
With strong public health measures in place for four weeks along with over 100,000 vaccine doses given per day, the province could see around 10,000 daily cases by late June.
“Without stronger system-level measures and immediate support for essential workers and high-risk communities, high case rates will persist through the summer,” the advisers say among their key findings.
Data indicates Ontario’s COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are at their highest levels since the pandemic began.
Ontario’s science advisory co-chair Dr. Adalsteinn Brown says the province’s progress against COVID-19 is both frustrating and frightening.
https://www.680news.com/2021/04/16/ontario-could-see-18000-covid-19-cases-a-day-new-modelling-reportedly-suggests-summer-vaccines-toronto-peel/
Duncannormies — at what point do you come around on this and acknowledge that The Leak… is a A Leak?
If the military takes to the streets in Q3… would that be enough to seal the deal?
A century ago, Canadians, New Zealanders, Aussies, were known for their manliness and courage on the Western Front and in the Mid East. Nor were the women soft and weak.
What the hell has happened to them? Easy money, consumerism, urbanisation, drugs, social media?
So easy, it seems, to destroy a whole race and enslave them.
They were well enslaved and destroyed in the 40’s.
Nostalgia is such a powerful drug.
Shingles may be a new adverse event associated with the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine. Lovely…
Herpes zoster reactivation — a.k.a. shingles — following COVID-19 vaccination in six patients with comorbid autoimmune/inflammatory diseases may be a new adverse event associated with the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine, suggested a new report.
At two centers in Israel, there have been six cases of herpes zoster developing shortly after administration of the Pfizer vaccine in patients with disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis since December 2020, according to Victoria Furer, MD, of Tel Aviv University, and colleagues.
Little has been known about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines among patients with rheumatic diseases, because immunosuppressed individuals were not included in the initial clinical trials, they explained.
Accordingly, an observational study has been conducted at the Tel Aviv Medical Center and the Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, monitoring post-vaccination adverse events in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthropathies, connective tissue diseases, vasculitis, and myositis. This interim analysis included 491 patients and 99 controls, with events reported during the 6-week post-vaccination monitoring period. The prevalence among patients was 1.2% versus none in controls, Furer and colleagues reported in Rheumatology.
“We haven’t seen any additional cases so far,” Furer told MedPage Today. However, “further surveillance of potential adverse effects following anti-COVID-19 vaccination in patients with rheumatic diseases is warranted,” she added.
The Cases
Case 1 was a 44-year-old woman with Sjogren’s syndrome who was being treated with hydroxychloroquine. She had a history of varicella and had not received a shingles vaccine. Three days after the first dose of the vaccine, she developed a vesicular skin rash with pruritus, along with low back pain and headache. The symptoms resolved spontaneously within the subsequent 3 weeks without treatment, and she was given the second dose 4 weeks after the first.
Case 2 was a 56-year-old woman with a long history of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis who had received a variety of biologics and had achieved low disease activity with tofacitinib (Xeljanz) beginning in 2014. She had a history of varicella and had not been given the shingles vaccine.
After the first dose of the vaccine, she reported malaise and headache, and 4 days after the shot she developed severe pain in the left eye and forehead, along with a rash along the distribution of the ophthalmic division of the V cranial nerve — herpes zoster ophthalmicus. Ocular examination revealed hyperemic conjunctivitis sparing the cornea. She was given a 2-week course of acyclovir and analgesics, and symptoms gradually cleared by 6 weeks. Tofacitinib was withdrawn for 2 weeks, but she did not experience an arthritis flare. She declined the second dose.
Case 3 was a 59-year-old woman with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis who had not responded to several biologic therapies and baricitinib (Olumiant), but 6 months earlier she initiated treatment with upadacitinib (Rinvoq) plus prednisone 5 mg/day and had a partial response. She had a history of varicella and had been given the live attenuated zoster vaccine in 2019.
Two days after receiving the second dose of the COVID vaccine, she reported pain and had a vesicular skin rash on the lower abdomen, inguinal area, buttock, and thigh, and was given valacyclovir. The antiviral was given for 3 days but was discontinued because of adverse effects, and the skin lesions healed slowly over a course of 6 weeks.
The upadacitinib had been discontinued with the zoster eruption and she experienced a severe rheumatoid arthritis disease flare affecting multiple joints, and her arthritis treatment was subsequently switched to etanercept (Enbrel).
Case 4 was a 36-year-old woman with a long history of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis plus interstitial lung disease. For the previous 2 years she had been treated with rituximab (Rituxan), mycophenolate mofetil (CellCept), and prednisone in doses of 7 mg/day. She had a history of varicella and had not been given the shingles vaccine.
Ten days after receiving the first COVID-19 vaccine dose, she reported pain and a vesicular rash on the abdomen and back along the T10 dermatome, and was given acyclovir for 7 days. The rash resolved within 6 weeks, and she was given the second vaccine dose 4 weeks after the first. She had no further adverse effects to the vaccine and did not experience a rheumatic disease flare.
Case 5 was a 38-year-old woman with undifferentiated connective tissue disease and antiphospholipid syndrome who was being treated with aspirin and hydroxychloroquine. She had prior varicella exposure and had not received the shingles vaccine.
Two weeks after receiving the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, she developed an itchy vesicular rash on the right breast, and was given a week’s course of acyclovir. Her zoster symptoms resolved within 3 weeks and she received the second vaccine dose on schedule with no further side effects or disease flare.
Case 6 was a 61-year-old woman with a long history of seropositive rheumatoid arthritis, who was being treated with tocilizumab (Actemra) and prednisone 5 mg/day at the time of the first dose of the vaccine. Two weeks later, a rash appeared along the T6 dermatome, and she was given valacyclovir for a week, which resulted in resolution of zoster symptoms within 10 days.
However, she did report a mild flare of arthritis and the prednisone dose was increased to 7.5 mg/day. The second dose was given uneventfully as scheduled.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/92106
My impression is that shingles flares up if the immune system is weaker or subject to stress, in old age or for some other reason. In a way, the vaccine acts to weaken the immune system and encourage the flare up.
See the politics playing out…
“Johnson & Johnson asked other vaccine makers to join a study of blood clot risks, but Pfizer and Moderna DECLINED – and only AstraZeneca got on board”
Johnson & Johnson privately reached out to rival COVID-19 vaccine makers to join in an effort to study the risks of blood clots.
According to The Wall Street Journal, citing three people familiar with the matter, J&J wanted to create an informal alliance with other companies to communicate with one voice about the benefits and risks of vaccines as well as blood clots.
Only AstraZeneca Plc – which has been at the center of a similar blood-clotting controversy for several weeks in Europe – agreed.
However, executives from both Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc reportedly declined, saying their vaccines appeared safe.
It comes as a pause of J&J’s vaccine continues in the U.S. after multiple people developed rare, but serious, blood clots within days of receiving the shot.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9478707/Johnson-Johnson-asked-rival-COVID-19-vaccine-makers-probe-clotting-risks-WSJ.html
Of course, AstraZeneca has a very similar problem to Johnson and Johnson. It would be willing to band together. Pfizer and Moderna want to stay as far away from this mess as possible.
Of Course…
Pentagon chief declares ‘ironclad’ U.S. commitment to Israel
TEL AVIV, Israel — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Sunday declared an “enduring and ironclad” American commitment to Israel, reinforcing support at a tense time in Israeli politics and amid questions about the Biden administration’s efforts to revive nuclear negotiations with Israel’s archenemy, Iran.
Austin’s first talks in Israel since he became Pentagon chief in January come as the United States seeks to leverage Middle East diplomatic progress made by the Trump administration, which brokered a deal normalizing relations between Israel and several Arab states.
By coincidence or not, the defense secretary arrived as Iran reported that its underground Natanz nuclear facility lost power just hours after starting up new advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium faster. If Israel caused the blackout, it would further heighten tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East. Iran called it an act of “nuclear terrorism,” but did not immediately blame anyone directly.
After meeting with Defense Minister Benny Gantz in Tel Aviv, Austin said he had reaffirmed “our commitment to Israel is enduring and ironclad.” Austin made no mention of Iran. Gantz, in his own remarks while standing beside Austin, said his country views the United States as a “full partner” against threats, “not the least, Iran.” Neither official took questions from reporters.
“The Tehran of today presents a strategic threat to international security, the entire Middle East and to the state of Israel,” Gantz said in his prepared statement. “We will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new agreement with Iran will secure the vital interests of the world and of the United States, prevent a dangerous arms race in our region and protect the state of Israel.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/11/austin-biden-israel-ironclad-480915
Protecting Israel never seems to stop.
LMFAO!
JUST IN: The Vatican has invited Chelsea Clinton, Dr. Fauci, New Age figure Deepak Chopra, and the CEOs of Moderna and Pfizer to speak at a May conference focusing on “health” and the “soul”
The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture is set to host Chelsea Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Deepak Chopra, and others for a May conference to explore the “mind, body, and soul” and its role in health care.
The Vatican Council for Culture and the Cura Foundation and the Science and Faith (STOQ) Foundation are partnering together to host “the world’s leading physicians, scientists, leaders of faith, ethicists, patient advocates, policymakers, philanthropists and influencers to engage in powerful conversations on the latest breakthroughs in medicine, health care delivery and prevention.”
Speakers for the virtual conference are the world’s elites. Those picked to lecture on health and the soul include CEOs of large pharmaceutical companies, including Moderna and Pfizer, and former supermodel Cindy Crawford, English primatologist Jane Goodall, Aerosmith lead guitarist Joe Perry, and CNN’s chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Speaker Chelsea Clinton is a high-profile abortion advocate, like her mother and father, Hillary and Bill Clinton. Chelsea labels the pro-life movement as an “anti-choice movement,” and is an outspoken supporter of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/16/vatican-invites-abortion-advocate-chelsea-clinton-to-talk-about-health-and-the-soul/
Very strange!
Clinton is an abortion advocate? I would have thought otherwise… if her parents would have been aware of the Monster in the Belly — surely they would have terminated?
I wonder if this is related to HRC’s… Bizarre Pazoozoo-Like Condition
http://media.breitbart.com/media/2017/06/chelsea.jpg
https://girlonfireca.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Chelsea.jpg
PR. Anything for attention. The Vatican has given up trying to find any interest in its traditional doctrines, and it is desperate to broaden its ‘message’ to try to find some ‘relevance’ in the contemporary world. They especially want to be ‘right on’ with the rich and the elites – it has always been a state church. PF’s ‘church of the poor’ is another cynical front for the old Vatican virgins to preserve their status. They are ‘diversifying’ their appeal any way they can.
Just fill up the churches and cathedrals with cognitive automata embedded in supercompute. That’s _the_ fitting end to that humanoid chauvinism. In my crystal ball I observe a sermons over Zoom, Skype and Teams. 🔮
What kind of “god” would be interested in having his back slapped by rapacious primates? It is absurd and boring.
A true “god” takes two opposite stances and let’s them swirl about for some time and watches that which falls out at the other end of the drama and comedy. It is called the universe and all within it that is capable of awareness and cognition.
The tragedy arises out of expecting perfection and the absolute.
☯️
Her father? Her unholy father was….
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/75359554.jpg
Freeing us all from constant and unremitting fear propaganda relating to Covid, and the ending of damaging lock-downs and dystopian mask wearing, would do much to improve the mental and physical health of billions. No need for conferences or research: just good sense, sound science, and humanity.
Pregnant women in UK given green light to have Covid jab
Hundreds of thousands of pregnant women in the UK have been given the green light to receive a Covid vaccine in a move welcomed by bereaved families and campaigners.
All pregnant women would be offered the Pfizer or Moderna jab based on their age and clinical risk group after real-world data from the US showed about 90,000 pregnant women had been vaccinated without any safety concerns, the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said on Friday.
Pregnant women, who had previously been advised not to take the vaccine because of a lack of data on the impact, will be able to have it at any stage. About 700,000 women give birth in England and Wales each year, with thousands more trying to conceive at any one time.
The new guidance states that women who are trying to get pregnant, recently had a baby or are breastfeeding can be vaccinated with any jab, depending on their age and clinical risk group.
Prof Wei Shen Lim of the JCVI said women should discuss the risks and benefits with their clinician, and those at increased risk should take up the offer of vaccination promptly.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/pregnant-women-offered-covid-vaccine-uk?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1618589353
The story about vaccinating pregnant women is strange. I thought the test on a few pregnant women was only on women who were within a month or two of delivering their babies.
At what point do the CovIDIOTS wake up the fact that they are being advised to be injected with a vaccine that is NOT PROPERLY TESTED for a virus that is 99.9999999999999999999999% certain not to make them or their baby very sick….
And say Wot tha Foook is going on here????
So stoooopid are they … that for most that moment will never arrive.
Yet these are the same donkeys who would not take a glass of wine for 9 months for fear of harming their vermin.
Humans are not intelligent… some are just better than others at performing complex circus tricks.
I am certain the Elders refer to humans as their pets… (when they aren’t calling them cattle)
That is NOT intelligence. It’s actually destructive behaviour.
https://www.funnybeing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/I-See-Stupid-People.jpg
Come on Devil Covid! Burn … it … DOWN!!!
http://d3r76jz8za3nz.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/new-amazon-alexa-devices.jpeg
Prof Lim will pay in Hell.
Of that there is no doubt.
By definition, pregnant women are going to be in the age range which is at nearly zero risk of dying ‘from Covid’, or ‘with Covid’ or whatever.
How much lower can they go?
Oh yes, vaccinating babies, which is on the cards.
I just commented on that story on twitter. I said it’s a crime against humanity. Shortly afterwards I was locked out of my account.
I still can’t log back in.
Welcome to the resistance Mrs S. I admire your courage.
I am hearing from a nephew in Canada that they are encouraging people to post ‘Vaxxies’ on social media… it’s a selfie with a vaccine cert… and they are doing it!
https://www.mag24.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/vaxxie-640×426.jpg
https://www.thejournal.ie/hse-boss-gp-covid-vaccine-refusal-5351874-Feb2021/
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/gp-suspended-by-medical-council-over-refusal-to-give-covid-19-vaccine-1.4516239
Note previous comments that ‘The Elders would throw babies by the millions on a fire … if it bought them 3 more months of BAU’….
It took the oil, natgas and coal resources of America and Russia to stop evil Germany. How will they stop the rise of evil Germany now when America is scraping up what’s left at the bottom of the oil barrel? Germany needs a morally justified good nuking.
Well…Chine released a virus unto the world…that has mainly infected America and Europe.
Why are you singling out Germans for a nuking?
Best regards from my home, here in Germany!
We should nook Izrale for doing nine-11.
The Germans deserve credit for trying to rid the world of communism.
DON’T MENTION THE WAR!
Why does Germans deserve better treatment than everybody else? Nukes are in most cases swift and merciful.
Nah, obviously they should, too, experience the five stages of grief. A bit of schadenfreude goes a long way.
I know I am biased. That is the human condition.
🤣👍👍
And the Lord said unto him: Bad dog! No! No!
> China’s Q1 GDP surge spurs world recovery: Global Times editorial
China’s economy grew 18.3 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021. This puts the average first-quarter growth in the past two years at 5 percent. Against the backdrop of a pandemic that has not yet been fundamentally alleviated, this result shows that China’s economy is steadily recovering. A 5 percent average growth rate is the best performance among major economies in the world.
China’s economic recovery has a strong momentum and is playing a leading role in the world. Some losses occurred in 2020, which have not yet been comprehensively covered by the current economic growth. There is still room to strive for further growth. Moreover, foreign trade has made a prominent contribution to the GDP surge, while domestic consumption has not yet reached the expected level. And domestic consumption is the closest indicator of the goal of improving people’s living standards.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1221256.shtml
I wonder if we can believe these numbers any more than the others that are published. It no doubt includes the impact of quite a bit of stimulus, if nothing else.
And they call themselves loving parents? And they consider themselves ethical medical professionals?
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/coronavirus/stanford-begins-trials-with-pfizer-on-children-under-age-5/2518893/
Here are the so-called professionals doing their masters’ bidding: Dance, monkeys, dance!
Naomi Wolf: I really want to know who orchestrated these dances and why. High production values..choreography…drone shots…this is financed and took rehearsal time. It’s not just spontaneous fun.
https://twitter.com/naomirwolf/status/1383120132810084362
Quote from Dr. Simon:
“We are working at the limit, they said.
It’s the worst pandemic in human history, they said.
Our profession should be taken more seriously, they said.”
Grotesque . . .
We need new Nuremberg trials.
‘Inequality virus’ threatens ‘catastrophe for all’ unless crisis can be overcome together… said UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed.
“Developing countries have faced “ballooning debt burdens” and constrained fiscal budget, and high borrowing costs, with a limited ability to respond to the pandemic, Ms. Mohammed explained.
““The diverging world that we are hurtling towards is a catastrophe for all of us”, she spelled out.”
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/04/1089872
“Emerging markets fall behind their developed-world counterparts:
“While developed-world markets look forward to a recovery, emerging market stocks have tumbled as foreign investors pull out cash.”
https://moneyweek.com/investments/stockmarkets/emerging-markets/603102/emerging-markets-fall-behind
Humans have outgrown their resource base. The COVID-19 shutdowns reduced the extracted resources further.
The return on human labor (EROEI with respect to human labor) has fallen too low. This is why wages diverge. We cannot fix this problem without a lot more cheap to extract resources including fresh water and oil. Even this might not work, because the our world ecosystem has been so badly damaged.
EROEI with respect to fuels tries to look at a piece of this puzzle, but doesn’t make very comparable comparisons among fuels because the boundaries of analysis are not well defined.
The energy return on human labor is well defined, just as the energy return on the work of a fish or a frog or a bear is. If humans cannot, through their own labor, earn sufficient funds to feed themselves and keep the system going (including allowing young people to find jobs that earn enough money so that they can set up their own homes and have children), the cycle will stop.
Well said
To expand a little. The returns to human labour and to entreprenuarial coordination are so low as to limit motivation to do much. One has to dig very deep and focus on essential activities and those with the “best bang for the buck” or eropei where p stands for personal. Such a mind set does not bode well for increasing dollar denominated GDP.
However there are plenty of reasons to speculate on ever increasing asset values. Tptb can manufacture dollars but not profit or motivation in non speculative economic agents.
I agree with you. People seem to be speculating on things that might benefit themselves, especially in the short run.
My impression is that around here is that some people are buying up homes, fixing them up a bit, and renting them out, perhaps as AirBNB’s or to KSU students.
There seems to be a big commercial apartment building going up, aimed at students at Kennesaw State University, near me, and perhaps recent graduates. If I remember correctly, there would be six bedrooms per apartment, and each bedroom would be rented out individually. The recent grads are so poor that they cannot really afford “regular” apartments.
“Germany warns of lasting economic damage as Covid cases spin out of control:
“Germany’s decentralised health system that seemed to work so well at the start of the pandemic is now a slow-moving disaster a year on.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/04/16/germany-warns-lasting-economic-damage-covid-cases-spin-control/
“The euro zone economy will recover at a much weaker rate this quarter than expected only a month ago, according to a Reuters poll of economists who cited a slower vaccine rollout as the biggest risk over the next three months.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/slow-vaccine-rollouts-biggest-risk-euro-zone-economy-2021-04-16/
“…the European speculative-grade default rates are being pencilled in at 4.7% according to Moody’s and 5.3% according to S&P.
“However, Moody’s baseline forecast estimates a sharp decrease in default rates by the end of this year. We think this is too optimistic… we expect default rates to stay elevated for longer.”
https://think.ing.com/articles/default-rates-credit-higher-for-longer/
Forecasters have been far too optimistic!
I think they stART out real high and see if any one notices then come down little by little
“Tracking the economic impacts of COVID-19 one ship at a time… the study reveals, oil and manufacturing supply chains collapsed as the pandemic went global, leading to a widespread slump in port-level trade.
“The Oxford team… shows the largest absolute losses were in ports in China, the Middle East and Western Europe—which experienced both supply and demand shocks during the first few months.”
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-tracking-economic-impacts-covid-ship.html
“A recovering world economy that depends upon the synchronized, smooth running of global supply chains is now being slammed by what has turned out to be synchronized disruptions…
“The pressures on supply chains are increasing and global disruptions are likely to only get worse as summer approaches and the economy booms. Disruptions have converged at the same time in three important pillars of the global economy – shipping, computer chips, and plastics.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/supply-chain-slowdown-hits-at-key-pillars-of-economy-and-will-likely-get-worse-dan-yergin.html
“Fans of bubble tea may soon find themselves unable to enjoy the beverage as the US reportedly faces what may be a months-long shortage of boba…
“…a backlog at US ports occurring as a result of the ongoing pandemic means that the ingredients used to make the popular drink… aren’t becoming available fast enough to keep up with the demand.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/boba-shortage-bubble-tea-shipping-b1832275.html
It’s a plot by the Elders to save you from diabetes.
Sounds kind of like the wind-induced resonance that took down the bridge in Tacoma. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mclp9QmCGs
That is a nice analogy but let us hope it doesn’t hold!
The only way the world economy “works” is in growth mode. A forced slow-down for any purpose is hugely destabilizing. As HillCountry says, it is sort of like the wind-induced resonance that took down the bridge in Tacoma, Washington.
Listened to this last night as I went to sleep (somehow I find this therapeutic). Sid is a mathematician and here he speaks to EROEI as well as complex systems in a dissipative structure.
Basically what everyone here has been talking about for years.
This is over a year old made in better times. In a complex system when things begin to degrade and fail it can have a cascading affect.
The gorilla has been rattling its cage for awhile now and eventually he’ll be on the loose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8
Looking forward to listening to it. Found this comment by Sid where he commends Gail’s article.
Sid Smith
1 year ago
Hi Jeremy! Thank you for your question. You are correct that the present system will do everything possible to maintain itself, including resorting to wars and authoritarianism. The question of exactly when the system will nonetheless collapse (as it must) is an open question. One’s expectations should be informed not only by the physical limits of growth (including sink-costs like climate change), but also by the nature of complex systems. That was the insight (really, a comparatively recent one for me) that led to this presentation at VT in March. It was not the talk I was expecting to give when I was invited by the Greens at VT last fall. I thought I’d be offering a fairly standard account of resource limits forcing a change-or-die scenario. But as I began to review the available research on civilizational collapse it became clear that there was a bigger picture to be seen.
Unfortunately we tend to think in terms of dramatic moments. But while it is conceivable that there could be a sudden collapse from the present order into a barbarous dystopia, I think it is far more likely that there will be a kind of ratcheting down, and in fact this has already begun. The physics of the situation is the governing factor. As the energy inputs to the present system decline (I should say, as they continue to decline), the economic-and-social structure becomes insupportable. I expect that the series of financial corrections we’ve already seen, starting in the 70s, accelerating in the 80s through the 2000s, and most dramatically in 2007, is the lead-up to a massive deleveraging that will look kind of like 1929 on steroids. It will be like the Great Depression only without the enormous energy that was then available to re-establish the industrial economy; so basically, a permanent Great Depression. It might not have a single, one-day blowout like happened in October of ’29 (although it might), but I think it inevitable that a massive and permanent decline in economic activity will unfold. It could start at any moment, but we may have a few years yet. It is impossible to know.
In the United States we face a special situation, the flip-side of our special prosperity these last 70 years, based first on the Bretton Woods agreement, and since 1971 (when we defaulted on our currency) on petrodollar hegemony. At some point that system of economic imperialism will fail. (I like the idea of the sudden overthrow of the Saudi regime, on whose cooperation petrodollar hegemony depends, but it could also be a gradual loss of the tug-of-war over the global oil market with Russia, China, Iran, and Venezuela.) However it happens, Americans will suddenly have a valueless currency. While there is likely to continue to be a deflationary period, at some point most analysts anticipate hyperinflation. The social stresses will be extreme, and it will be a time of great danger for the U.S. It is for this reason that I caution people about attacking or undermining our institutions. We’re going to need them for stability. Without them, some form of totalitarianism will be the only bulwark against complete social breakdown.
So, the tl;dr is this: The efficient cause of collapse isn’t going to be climate change or resource depletion, although these will continue to play a role. In fact they will contribute to the precipitating crises. But the efficient cause will be a final unraveling of the economic system. Capitalism can’t function without growth, and we don’t have an economic Plan B. The IMF/World Bank/Devos crowd are about out of tricks. Now’s a good time to work on becoming as resilient to Depression-era conditions as possible.
Sid
P.S. Gail Tverberg at ourfiniteworld.com is an excellent resource for this kind of analysis. Her most recent essay addresses this question specifically.
(including sink-costs like climate change) – stopped there.
“How to Enjoy the End of the World” by Sid Smith (a mathematician)
This video was posted here last year, but worth watching again. It is a very good summary of where we are at, covering all bases – peak oil, eroei, the limits of alternative energies, spiralling debt, etc. Quite apocalyptic. By the end of it, the audience were probably thinking “what’s the point”? Bizarrely, having presented a rather bleak outlook, Sid ends his talk with “everything will be ok, indeed potentially better, but that is for another talk”. Covering his butt?
Indeed, what is the point of slightly genetically modified rapacious primate shenanigans on planet earth? Tell me.
Rapacious primates clearly serve no purpose in an evolutionary sense when equality of opportunity is frowned upon and the planet is raped for nothing. Well, not exactly, rather to satisfy the obscenities of
MOAR! YAY!
🤣👍👍
Completely agree. It appears this is not only due to the fractional banking system, but also the physics of the situation.
Growth requires a surplus to maintain existing infrastructure/activities of any kind and still continue, just like a bodies metabolism. Capitalism requires the discount of the value of some input to produce a profit. Marx thought it was labor. I think it’s energy, and more broadly all natural resources.
“Capitalism requires the discount of the value of some input to produce a profit. Marx thought it was labor. I think it’s energy, and more broadly all natural resources.”
Well stated, thank you.
I found the PLOS One article that this article refers to.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0248818
Global economic impacts of COVID-19 lockdown measures stand out in high-frequency shipping data
Jasper Verschuur, Elco E. Koks, Jim W. Hall
April 14, 2021
Excerpt from the abstract:
From Twitter:
FUN FACT
In 2020 alone, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation granted over $22m to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. What was the funding for?
Vaccination and ‘Vaccination Passport’ programs
https://twitter.com/UsockRich/status/1382310381469773830
“Rising Food Costs Add to Misery of Nigeria’s High Unemployment:
“Not long after Nigeria’s statistics agency revealed that one in three people in the continent’s largest economy were unemployed, on Thursday it announced that food inflation has accelerated at the highest pace in 15 years, compounding the misery of many households.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-16/rising-food-costs-add-to-misery-of-nigeria-s-high-unemployment
“U.N. agencies said Friday that tens of thousands of Nigerians are fleeing deadly attacks by armed groups and the continuing clashes between the rebels and national forces in the country’s troubled northeastern Borno state…
“The incidents mark the latest violence in the Lake Chad basin area which in recent years has uprooted some 3.3 million people…”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/thousands-flee-attacks-nigeria-clashes-continue-77113591
Too high population relative to resources!
yes, the polite way of saying too many humans.
“US warns pandemic could push some Middle East countries to collapse: By the end of 2021, the number of people in the MENA region living beneath the poverty line will reach 192 million, the World Bank’s estimates.
“”As a result, some states are likely to experience destabilizing conditions that may push them close to collapse,” the intelligence report said.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/middle-east-destabilising-conditions-push-countries-collapse-us-report
“The price of iftar is soaring across much of the Arab world… food prices have steadily risen in recent months…
“…in the Arab world, where most countries are net importers of food, particularly staples such as grains, the effects are particularly severe.”
https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/editorial/the-price-of-iftar-is-soaring-across-much-of-the-arab-world-1.1204502
“Syria devalued the official price of its local currency on Thursday, two days after the central bank governor was sacked, state media reported.
“The decision came as the Syrian pound has continued to crash in recent months in the war-torn country, hitting record lows and throwing more Syrians into poverty.”
https://www.dailysabah.com/business/finance/syrian-pound-devalues-further-amid-central-bank-heads-removal
The price of imported food is likely to rise, with this devaluation. The cost of imported oil can be expected to rise as well.
Syria is now imports nearly all of its oil supply. It used to be an oil exporter, but is beyond peak oil. Its population is far too high for its resources.
https://www.eia.gov/international/overview/country/SYR
https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/SYR
Syrias oil is being stolen by US troops and US back “moderate rebels.”
Prove it 🤔
Proof or not a proof?
“We’re keeping the oil. I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”
https://globalnews.ca/video/6116058/trump-says-were-keeping-the-oil-when-asked-about-u-s-troops-remaining-in-syria
“Lebanon’s Hezbollah has made preparations for an all-out collapse of the fracturing state, issuing ration cards for food, importing medicine and readying storage for fuel from its patron Iran, three sources familiar with the plans told Reuters.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-crisis-hezbollah/with-food-and-fuel-hezbollah-braces-for-the-worst-in-lebanon-collapse-idUSKBN2C31N9
Iftar is the meal eaten by Muslims after sunset during Ramadan.
Ugo Bardi has an interesting post up in “The Seneca Effect.”
It is called, Saudi Arabia Goes the way of the Garamentes. Google Earth Confirms the Collapse of the Water Supply.
He shows this image:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-azyGhfQ2Ul8/YHhKoyXIjFI/AAAAAAAAwoI/cMJ_v21rSVwTLJmilAKhFJvi3crgqrxZwCLcBGAsYHQ/w422-h323/Saudi%2BArabian%2BWater%2BSupply.gif
The peak in Saudi Arabia’s water supply seems to have come around 1990 to 1993. Saudi Arabia was trying to tap its underground aquifers to provide water to grow crops of different kinds, including wheat. These underground aquifers had built up over thousands of years. They seem to follow a Hubbert Curve for decline. At this point, Saudi Arabia’s water supply is well into decline.
Something similar happened long ago to the ancient Garamantes, inhabitants of the central Sahara in the 1st millennium BCE. Their water had allowed them to prosper for about one thousand years.
Lack of water supply is a limit for Saudi Arabia (and perhaps other desert countries). Even apart from the oil problem, Saudi Arabia is up against limits.
Thank you, Gail. I read the article with great interest, but of course what it never mentioned is that the problem is not too little water, but too many people.
Neither does the international community recognise this: they will still provide food aid to these poor hungry people until there is no more food. Because the export of food is also the export of topsoil, which is the last non renewable resource.
Truer words – how many people don’t get that topsoil thing?
“The Nation’s Corn Belt [which stretches roughly from Ohio to Nebraska] Has Lost a Third of Its Topsoil…
“The study estimated that about 35 percent of the region has lost its topsoil completely, leaving carbon-poor lower soil layers to do the work of supporting crops.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-say-nations-corn-belt-has-lost-third-its-topsoil-180977485/
I wonder how this impacts their water-cut as a cost of input to oil extraction?
It is no massive surprise that desert regions do not have much renewable water and thus the supply is limited.
Goodness, is human civilisation still struggling with such obvious principles? If so, then again, it is no massive surprise if it is headed for collapse.
The only thing standing between the finitude of the world and civilizational collapse is good management of resources – rather we have a profit and growth based economy, capitalism.
Capitalism tends toward collapse because it is an inadequate schema of finite resource management.
There you go, I did in four short sentences (really only the third sentence was needed) what Marx wrote four volumes to explain – and I got it right. : )
“Capitalism tends toward collapse because it is an inadequate schema of finite resource management.”
Capitalism is indeed a poor schema of finite resource management, although, to be fair, I am hard pressed to think of any left-wing regimes that have been exemplary stewards of the environment.
Perhaps fairer to say that human civilisations in general will tend to overshoot environmental limits to their own detriment. Plus “capitalist” falls short as a descriptor for the modern, globalised economy. It gives undue systemic primacy to policy-makers:
David Korowicz: “We find all sorts of confusion arising… when attempts are made to take linguistic dominion over the [globalised] economy by confusing complex interdependent emergence with intentional design (as in, the economy is capitalist/ neoliberal/ socialist…).”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-03-19/how-to-be-trapped-an-interview-with-david-korowicz/
The British far right tend to take any mention of Marx as a trigger to deny that capitalism even exists or that it has any flaws that are not inherent to all other economic systems (which presumably do exist). It is a staunch partisan thing that has been born of decades of mutual sectarian attacks. No one else takes much notice.
I am not of the far right and I’m not saying that the modern, globalised economy does not have capitalist features. Rather I find a political framing of our predicament unilluminating and, particularly on a blog like this, which examines more fundamental drivers, somewhat infantile.
I never said that you are far right, I explained a situation, and I find your need to take personal offence and to give it somewhat ‘infantile’.
I am not interested in some internet drama, whatever your inner tensions may be. Have some music to take some deep breaths and chill out to. : )
Peace.
The left is wrong for good reasons. The right is wrong for bad reasons. The centrist is wrong without any reasons.
🤔
A strong ownership society is the answer. See the story of Robinhood with the sheriff as the good guy. Absolute enclosure of all land and sea.
When the Inca built Machu Picchu, they built the water supply first, before they had laid a single stone of the city proper. The water still runs, over five hundred years later.
Of interest are the people of North Sentinel Island. If any community can be labelled ‘sustainable’ then surely this small group of just perhaps 100-400 individuals merits this description.
Remarkably, despite all mankind’s achievements, very little is known about them. They live just 50km from Port Blair in the Andamans and yet their language and way of life remain a mystery. Their island is covered by forest and measures about 25 sq. miles.
Wisely, India has afforded them protected status. No approach within 5 miles of the island is permitted, although the occasional do-gooder slips through.
They settled there at least hundreds, if not thousands of years ago and have next to no contact with the outside world.
I would be very interested in an analysis-from-afar as to how they can survive with just what nature provides. Their one concession to modernity is scavenging iron from shipwrecks.
Presumably the island’s resources allow for a certain carrying capacity for humans.
A fascinating story of viable living, although primitive, in our midst, and yet largely invisible to us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
They will be really surprised when their skin starts sloughing off and they vomit their intestines out when the show collapses.
They will no doubt blame the gods
“Biggest Banks Can’t Keep Up With U.S. Money Printing: Bank of America, Citigroup and other retail-facing banks are all experiencing declining loan growth as deposits surge…
“… the magnitude of the government response to the Covid-19 crisis is causing some difficulties at the largest U.S. financial institutions.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-15/big-banks-like-bofa-and-citigroup-can-t-keep-up-with-money-printing
“Nasdaq Is Entering A Mighty Bubble: A moving 18-month slope of the NASDAQ provides overwhelming evidence that the index has ascended far above its normal path.
“If the NASDAQ pops, its bursting power is so strong that the aftermaths can be comparable to that of the Great Depression.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4419329-nasdaq-entering-mighty-bubble
It is easy to believe that the NASDAQ bubble will pop, unfortunately.
“But there’s little doubt that such measures, along with the Fed’s relentless $120 billion of bond purchases each month, reduce demand for traditional financial institutions. So far, it sounds as if bank executives aren’t willing to loosen their standards to make new loans, perhaps in anticipation that lending will normalize as more Americans receive vaccinations.”
Needless to say, banks aren’t running out to make loans to people whose income is made possible by Federal programs. Someone who is likely to be laid off as soon as support programs end is not a good candidate for an automobile or home loan.
Also, the homes that are for sale are high-priced homes. It is the low-income people who are being squeezed out of the market. Even if loans were available, it is not clear to me that they would be able to find homes to purchase. People are not in a rush to leave their low-priced homes.
“Global markets have got central banks over a barrel.
“Both bond and stock markets have become so dependent on ultra-loose monetary policy, so hyper-sensitive to any perceived possibility of a change in conditions, that there is little monetary authorities can now do to avert the dreaded taper tantrum if they threaten the status quo…
“The new normal is a world with lots of QE and rock-bottom interest rates. Anything else will cause ructions in stimulus-dependent financial markets.”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-9465887/Markets-addicted-inflationary-monetary-policy-central-banks-barrel.html
“Bloated Central Bank Balance Sheets: There are good reasons to believe that there will be no return to the pre-QE configuration of balance sheets.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4419338-bloated-central-bank-balance-sheets
I can believe that the stock and bond markets have become dependent on ultra-loose money. So have many citizens. Our resource problems have not really been fixed, nor have our COVID-19 problems.
“The economy is running on a stimulus-fuelled caffeine high. What will happen when it wears off?
“…One-time spending has rarely been the catalyst for long-term growth. Fiscal and monetary policy that now serve as irresistible tailwinds could soon turn into headwinds.”
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/the-economy-is-running-on-a-stimulus-fueled-caffeine-high-what-will-happen-when-it-wears-off/
Anti-curfew protests lead to more arrests, tickets in Montreal and Quebec City
A third protest in as many nights against the 8 p.m. curfew in Montreal prompted another wave of arrests and tickets in the downtown core.
Montreal police spokesperson Jean-Pierre Brabant says three people were arrested Tuesday night for obstructing the work of police officers. A total of 86 tickets were handed out during the protest.
“No one was injured in the event,” he said.
https://globalnews.ca/news/7757089/montreal-third-anti-curfew-protest-covid/
Video https://www.narcity.com/en-ca/news/montreal-en/old-montreal-riot-was-like-a-scene-from-an-apocalypse-film-videos
Why not just burn the city down?
The article says,
“Quebec government rolled back curfew to 8 p.m. for Montreal and Laval in a bid to stop the spread of COVID-19. . .Schools and non-essential businesses remain closed until April 25 due to a high number of infections.”
I can see that a lot of would-be workers and people who want to socialize would be quite unhappy.
Ooops.. this was so funny that I accidentally had to post it to see if it would be allowed
https://pics.onsizzle.com/chelsea-clinton-so-ugly-that-when-she-gives-head-it-6287974.png
It must suck to have all the corruption money — but look like that… not much you can do other than hire a top make-up artist and slather it on …
And when you were raised by two ultra-scumbags… I suspect the personality matches the face
If people had any historical knowledge, they would realise that curfews have always been one of the principal public control tools of tyrants and occupying invaders – not a sensible public health measure.
In England it is associated with the Norman Conquest, and was used to suppress dissent and rebellion among the Saxons: is that even taught in schools these days? One wonders.
Our governments and their corrupt (both intellectually and financially) ‘science’ advisers have become occupying powers, not legitimate leaders.
But the virus is more dangerous… after dark … haven’t you heard!!!
“High street’s woes hit UK’s private landlords… the coronavirus crisis has emerged as a profound threat for …private commercial property investors, who range from local entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals, such as solicitors, doctors and accountants, to wealthy millionaires on national newspaper rich lists.
“The pandemic has pushed many tenants to the brink and forced painful discussions about who will take the hit as incomes in retail plummet, leaving behind a swelling pile of rent arrears.”
https://www.ft.com/content/dc6b2802-6e63-41c1-bc6a-19ab4061b646
“New research reveals… More than 440 firms in banking and financial services have relocated part of their business, moved employees or set up new entities in the EU following Brexit.
“Banks have moved or plan to move more than £900bn in assets to the EU, equivalent to 10 per cent of the entire UK banking system. Insurance firms and asset managers have transferred more than £100bn.”
https://www.cityam.com/banks-flee-the-city-post-brexit-taking-more-than-900bn-in-assets-with-them/
This same story of a decline in the value of commercial property is playing out around the world, I am afraid. The true value of these properties is falling.
The Leak … nailed it:
TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s cabinet is actively considering a variety of stricter measures as COVID-19 modelling shows the province could see up to 18,000 new infections per day by the end of May if current trends continue.
Sources tell CTV News Toronto and CP24 the latest data, which is expected to be released on Friday, shows that based on Ontario’s current trends there could be between 12,000 to 18,000 new daily infections by the end of May, with up to 1,800 patients in intensive care.
The measures under consideration include shutting down construction to just critical infrastructure projects and placing limits on non-essential manufacturing and warehousing. Additional restrictions on religious services are also being considered by cabinet.
Sources say Ontario is also considering fining business owners if non-essential staff attend work in-person. The government is also considering further restrictions on retail.
Ontario could also step up enforcement of its ongoing stay-at-home order.
A provincewide curfew is also under consideration, sources say.
While speaking to reporters on Thursday, Solicitor General Sylvia Jones wouldn’t confirm if a curfew was on the table but expressed her concern over the riots in Montreal after one was implemented there.
Jones also expressed her frustration at the number of people she says are defying the province’s stay-at-home order.
“I am concerned when I see photos of people who are clearly not socially distancing in parks,” Jones said. “I am concerned when I see that there are lineups unnecessarily and people are not respecting the stay-at-home order … We have to get better.”
Associate Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe said Thursday that Ontario’s “situation is dire” and that the province’s “data is alarming.”
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-considers-stricter-measures-as-models-show-up-to-18-000-covid-19-cases-per-day-by-end-of-may-sources-1.5388838
http://www.freedomfromlimitingbeliefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/under-pressure.jpg
What comes next:
Canada PBO endorses guaranteed basic income proposal of $17K/person, $24K/couple
The Canadian Press have reported that Yves Giroux, the parliamentary budget officer, has just endorsed a proposal for guaranteed basic income in Canada. Under the proposal, a single person would make $16,989 per year and couples would make $24,027. Individuals with disabilities would receive 6,000 more.
According to the report, the program would cost $85-billion, and the amount would be offset by the elimination of programs like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), and various welfare programs. According to Giroux, the guaranteed basic income program would cut the national poverty rate in Canada in half.
Earlier this year, the Angus Reid Institute released a study stating that almost 60% of Canadians were in favour of universal basic income in Canada as high as $30K/year.
https://cultmtl.com/2021/04/canada-pbo-endorses-guaranteed-basic-income-proposal-of-17k-person-24k-couple/
*Transitioning of individuals into the universal basic income program. Expected mid Q2 2021.*
*Projected supply chain break downs, inventory shortages, large economic instability. Expected late Q2 2021.*
*Deployment of military personnel into major metropolitan areas as well as all major roadways to establish travel checkpoints. Restrict travel and movement. Provide logistical support to the area. Expected by Q3 2021.*
Neither ‘infections’, nor ‘cases’, but merely positive test results – we know how reliable they are! And that they are no proof of either infection or infectiousness.
This abuse of language by politicians, MSM and the medical establishment , makes the situation appear to be ‘dire’, and this alone.
I looked up Ontario in Wikipedia. Here are a few things I learned. (The important thing I learned is at the end of this long comment.)
With respect to energy, I found this website:
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html
The province is past peak conventional oil and peak natural gas. This is a link to its production.
https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/images/on-fg01-eng.png
Also:
With respect to natural gas, we are told:
Enbridge’s line 5 is the one that is being discussed for shutdown. There are stories and maps about this:
https://www.enbridge.com/~/media/Enb/Documents/Factsheets/FS_Without_Line5_econ_impact.pdf
An article dated April 14, 2021 is titled, Canada moves to defend Enbridge’s Line 5 from Michigan shutdown efforts.
Without oil and natural gas for the largest province in Canada, the country would be in truly terrible shape. I wonder if this is in the backs of the minds of the folks proposing the shutdowns. People who are locked in their apartments cannot see the energy problem at hand.
This is very interesting information, Gail. Ontario and to a lesser extent Canada are in a post-peak-oil & national gas production period (whether due to deliberate policy or to an absolute lack of commercially extractable resources) and so consumption has got to be reigned in accordingly.
This is inline with what you’ve written about WWI and WWII coinciding with peak coal in Britain and Germany, respectively, and it also goes some way to explaining why, in the absence of conventional war, the UK with peak North Sea oil and gas now in the rear-view mirror, is being forced to adopt de facto policies resulting in inhumane treatment of the elderly and infirm that are increasingly reminiscent of what was implemented in German medical and nursing facilities the 1930s, while the people are encouraged to obey orders and clap for the NHS.
You are right. The world is now basically post-peak on oil, with Canada and the US both down in 2020. Canada’s natural gas production was down in 2019 and looks like it will be down in 2020, as well.
I am less certain on the world situation for natural gas. US natural gas production seems to be down 1.6% for 2020, compared to 2019, but it was rising fairly quickly before then. US natural gas could, in theory, rise again.
Clearly Canada has a serious energy problem, and the US is not doing well either. This is why there are many restrictions.