Barack Obama Suggests Donald Trump ‘Denied’ Coronavirus Warnings

By Charlie Spiering – 31 Mar 2020

**Former President Barack Obama suggested on Twitter on Tuesday that President Donald Trump “denied” warnings of the coronavirus pandemic.**

“We’ve seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic,” Obama wrote.

The former president shared an article on Twitter about Trump rolling back fuel economy standards, and also accused the president of “climate denial.”

“We can’t afford any more consequences of climate denial,” he wrote. “All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall.”

Last week, the former president shared an article of “likely scenarios” of how to manage the virus.

“So much depends on our ability to make good decisions going forward along with our ability to remain resilient,” he wrote on Twitter after Trump said he was hopeful that he could loosen restrictions by Easter Sunday.

Obama continues speaking up to criticize or challenge Trump’s response to the coronavirus, despite the president’s best efforts to fight and contain it.

He also said that attacks on Obamacare were taking place “right when we need care the most.”

Ten years ago today, I signed the Affordable Care Act into law. It protected preexisting conditions, cut the uninsured rate in half, and lots more. But it's still under political attack right when we need care the most. We have to protect it, build on it, until we cover everyone. pic.twitter.com/zz2v3DzMgq

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 23, 2020

March 31, 2020 0

O’Keefe Investigation: Army National Guardsman Says Coronavirus Media Coverage Overblown (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila – March 31, 2020

James O’Keefe spoke to an army national guardsman in Glen Island Park, New Rochelle, New York about the media’s coverage on the Coronavirus.

The soldier told Project Veritas that the media coverage on the Coronavirus pandemic is way overblown.

“Is it as bad as everyone, the media is saying — the whole pandemic?” O’Keefe asked the guardsman.

The guardsman responded, “Oh, no. It’s just, it’s the flu. It’s the flu. It’s the flu.”

“Is the media accurately reporting accurately?” O’Keefe asked. “The media is making it out bigger? And it’s not as bad as the media is saying?”

“No, I’m in the tents with them,” the soldier said.

BREAKING VIDEO: Army National Guardsman tells @Project_Veritas #COVID19 Media Coverage Overblown: “It’s the flu! It’s the flu!… I’m in the tents with them!

Insiders send tips: veritastips@protonmail.com#BeBrave pic.twitter.com/mASpv5sgqw

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) March 31, 2020

New York is currently the US epicenter for Coronavirus cases and deaths.

As of Tuesday it was reported New York has 67,384 confirmed cases of Coronavirus and 1,342 deaths.

Democrat lawmakers however are using the virus to shut down businesses.

On Monday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti shut down farmer’s markets after 44 Coronavirus deaths were confirmed in the city, or 0.000011% of LA’s population of 4 million.

KKK-Blackface Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced a shelter-in-place for his state until June.

President Trump extended his Coronavirus social distancing guidelines through the end of April.

If lockdowns continue, the cure will be far worse than the virus and the economy will be destroyed.

March 31, 2020 0

Covid-19’s meant to be a new Black Death, but in Britain no more people are dying than NORMAL. What does this say about the virus?

By Peter Andrews 3/31/2020

Many people are waking up to the fact that the Covid-19 “pandemic” is not turning out as billed. When we finally emerge from it, the big question will be how many people have died from the virus. Here’s the most likely outcome.

You can bet that the institutions of international government, and the “experts” advising them, will try to massage and cherry-pick statistics to present the version of events that most closely matches their worst-case scenarios. The fact is, according to their early predictions, we are already long overdue millions of Covid-19 deaths that have failed to materialise.

But even when Covid-19 deaths are recorded, we have seen how it could be that people are dying with coronavirus rather than dying of it. This concept is easy enough to understand, and it encourages one to take a closer look at the breakdown of deaths across an entire society. The more you follow this rabbit hole down, the more interesting the numbers become. It may be somewhat morbid, but it is nonetheless very important.

The most popular two articles on the website of The Spectator over the weekend were by Dr John Lee, a recently retired NHS consultant and professor of pathology. He remarks that ‘’we have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world’’.

How lethal is Covid-19 REALLY? Why massive fatality rates from Italy are MISLEADING

To check this out, I looked at the British government’s own statistics on total deaths registered weekly across the UK. It shows that in the week ending on the 8th of March 2019, 10,898 people died in total in the UK. This year, in the week ending the 6th of March 2020, the equivalent figure was almost identical: 10,895. Make of that what you will. Statistics are currently available up to March 20, and while there is a lag between the spread of the virus and the resulting deaths, so far only about 1 percent of all mortalities bear any relation to coronavirus, and there is no visible spike. If nothing else, it helps to view the extent of the crisis in proportion – thousands of people die each week, and from the long-term view what we are seeing is not a plague, but a blip.

So when all is said and done, will any additional people die of the coronavirus? And what is meant by extra or additional?

Risk of dying

Understanding this requires a bit of lateral thinking, but it helps to remember that everyone on Earth has a terminal disease: being alive. We all have to go sometime.

Recording exactly how and when we do is a big part of the job of statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter. In a recent blog post, he outlined the concept of background risk. This is obtained by recording all of the people dying in any given year, at any given age. At its most simple, this is the percentage chance a person has of not reaching their next birthday, based solely on their age. Of course, that is not to say that if you are a 40-year-old man you have precisely a 0.2% chance of dying this year – the data are based on averages, and do not apply to individuals.

But nonetheless, across a country or given populations, the averages will be right, and it is possible to predict with great accuracy how many people will die in a given year. In the UK, for example, 600,000 people die annually. But wait a minute! A novel, brand-spanking new coronavirus is terrorising us all. Therefore surely we can expect more people to die this year than would in a normal year? And come year’s end we should be able, with simple arithmetic, to count exactly how many more there were.

In 2009 UK government experts wildly over-hyped dangers of swine flu — is history repeating with Covid-19?

Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Evidence and Risk Communication at Cambridge University, won’t say exactly what he does think that figure will be. But he does say that if the deaths are towards the lower end of the current estimates, say at around 20,000 in the UK, Covid-19 will end up having ‘’a minimal impact on overall mortality for 2020’’. He told R4 that his findings showed, to his own professed astonishment, that if someone contracts the coronavirus, they’ve got almost exactly the same chance of dying over the ensuing few weeks as they would normally have of dying over the next year, no matter what their age or background health.

And depending on who you ask, that 20,000 figure might still be an overestimate. In fact, Spiegelhalter says that if extra people die it will likely be as a result of the knock-on effects of the lockdown, such as delayed normal health care, depression and isolation.

American political commentator Candace Owens has been Tweeting consistently about the apparent insignificance of Covid-19 deaths compared to overall trends. She tweeted about this issue in relation to New York City, where meaningless figures are being waved around by the media.

Final destination

With all of the numbers being bandied about these days by various universities and governments, one would swear that they knew exactly what they were talking about. Make no mistake: this air of certainty is just a front. It is definitely too early to accurately gauge how many – if any – extra people will die because of coronavirus. It will depend on how four key pieces of information intersect.

These are:

How many people will become infected by Covid-19?
How much does Covid-19 increase the risk of death?
Are deaths being properly recorded? Of those people who die having contracted coronavirus, are they dying from the virus, or just with it?
Of those who died, how many had comorbidities that would have killed them this year anyway?

Since all of this began, the mainstream media have focused almost entirely on the first of these points, and stressing with an onslaught of material how important it is to slow the spread. The most extreme possible measures have been implemented to do that. Meanwhile, the three other points could end up comparing Covid-19 pretty much to the common flu. Only careful consideration by governments of all the key factors will result in the best future decisions.

It is hard to believe that when this all blows over, the damage that will have been done by the shutdown measures – to businesses, to civil liberties, to individual lives and, of course, to the global economy – could have been for nothing. Nonetheless, it seems entirely possible based on the present data. Remember above all to not take the figures the mainstream media throw at you at face value; there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

March 31, 2020 0

RETAILERS PREPARE FOR CIVIL UNREST; BOARDED-UP STORES SEEN FROM SOHO TO BEVERLY HILLS

In Beverly Hills, the Pottery Barn and West Elm stores near Rodeo Drive were spotted with boards across the windows

By Tyler Durden – 03/31/2020

High-end stores across the country have been boarding up their stores in anticipation of civil unrest due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

In Beverly Hills, the Pottery Barn and West Elm stores near Rodeo Drive were spotted with boards across the windows according to TMZ.

Meanwhile, stores in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Paris, Vancouver and elsewhere were similarly boarded up.

Pausing Luxury | NY SoHo boutiques boarded up as #COVID19 cases surge

MORE: https://t.co/IxojbpzbvY pic.twitter.com/8YzStWFzyQ

— RT (@RT_com) March 29, 2020

Thanks, China.

March 31, 2020 0

FLASHBACK: Pelosi Asked People To Join Her In Chinatown

3/31/2020

March 31, 2020 0

‘INCINERATORS HAVE BEEN WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK’: WUHAN RESIDENTS SAY OFFICIAL CORONAVIRUS DEATH TOLL FAKE

Communist Party reportedly paying off bereaved families to keep silent about true death count

By Jamie White – March 30, 2020

Residents in Wuhan, China are reportedly skeptical of the Chinese Communist Party’s official coronavirus death count of 2,500 in the city, with most believing the actual number is over 40,000.

“It can’t be right…because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a Wuhan resident surnamed Zhang told Radio Free Asia on Friday.

“They started distributing ashes and starting interment ceremonies on Monday,” he said.

Over the last week, seven funeral homes in Wuhan have been distributing cremated remains of 500 people every day, according to a source close to the provincial civil affairs bureau.

“Every funeral home reports data on cremations directly to the authorities twice daily,” the source said. “This means that each funeral home only knows how many cremations it has conducted, but not the situation at the other funeral homes.”

In the fourth quarter of 2019 alone, Wuhan saw 56,007 cremations, according to data released by the Wuhan civil affairs agency.

Additionally, photos out of Wuhan show pallets of urns delivered in trucks, with one mortuary receiving over 5,000 urns in a two-day period.

“Maybe the authorities are gradually releasing the real figures, intentionally or unintentionally, so that people will gradually come to accept the reality,” a Wuhan resident named Mao told RFA.

The Communist Party is reportedly paying families 3,000 yuan for “funeral allowances” in exchange for their silence.

“There have been a lot of funerals in the past few days, and the authorities are handing out 3,000 yuan in hush money to families who get their loved ones’ remains laid to rest ahead of Qing Ming,” Wuhan resident Chen Yaohui said, referring to the traditional grave tending festival on April 5.

“During the epidemic, they transferred cremation workers from around China to Wuhan keep cremate bodies around the clock,” he added.

China claimed Sunday that Wuhan had only 1 new case of coronavirus in the last 10 days.

Since the coronavirus outbreak went global earlier this year, China launched a massive propaganda campaign to deflect blame, mitigate the fallout of its global reputation, and hide the true scale of the coronavirus devastation it unleashed.

‘Incinerators Have Been Working Around the Clock’: Wuhan Residents Say Official Coronavirus Death Toll Fake

March 30, 2020 0

Italy Risks Losing Grip in South With Fear of Looting, Riots

By John Follain – 3/30/2020

As Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte fights to hold Italian society together through a crippling nationwide lockdown, the depressed south is turning into a powder keg.

Police have been deployed on the streets of Sicily’s capital, Palermo, amid reports gangs are using social media to plot attacks on stores. A bankrupt ferry company halted service to the island, including vital supplies of food and medicines. As the state creaks under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic, officials worry the mafia may be preparing to step in.

Preventing unrest in the so-called Mezzogiorno, the underdeveloped southern region that’s long lagged behind the wealthy north, has become the government’s top priority, according to Italian officials who asked not to be named discussing the administration’s strategy.

With the European Union’s most dangerously indebted state already fighting the Germans over the terms of the financial aid it needs, the fallout may reach far beyond Rome if Conte fails.

“We need to act fast, more than fast,” Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando told daily La Stampa. “Distress could turn into violence.”

As the lockdown enters its fourth week, Conte is set to extend containment measures that have shuttered all but essential businesses until April 18 at the earliest, the officials said. He’s also working on a new stimulus package for mid-April worth at least 30 billion euros ($33 billion), following initial measures worth 25 billion euros, they said.

Italy has the highest death toll from the virus, with more than 11,000 fatalities, and almost 102,000 confirmed cases, second only to the U.S. It reported the smallest number of new coronavirus infections in almost two weeks on Monday.

Read More: Italy Reports Fewest New Coronavirus Cases in Almost 2 Weeks

Calls for Help

Within the aid he’s already announced, Conte is trying to channel funds toward the South. Over the weekend he advanced 4.3 billion euros from a solidarity fund for municipalities and added 400 million euros to mayors that can be converted into coupons for groceries. “No one will be left behind,” the premier said in a televised address.

Still, southern leaders are clamoring for more. They say that cash from the solidarity fund was already due to them and the economic damage from the lockdown has brought their region to the verge of a breakdown.

That opens another front for Conte, who is already struggling to stop the Italian health system from collapsing and fighting the European Union for joint debt issuance to help relieve the financial pressure on his government. Italy’s economic output is set to shrink by 6.5% in 2020, according to research group Prometeia.

The lockdown has hit the 3.7 million Italians working in the underground economy particularly hard since they don’t receive a regular salary and have difficulty accessing unemployment benefits. Many of them are concentrated in the South.

In the South, “many people live day-to-day, doing odd jobs, like unloading trucks at markets, and they are in trouble,” Stefano Paoloni, a police union leader, said by phone. “We need to be on the alert to see whether there’s organized crime behind social unrest.”

Criminal Gangs

Police have been stationed outside supermarkets in Palermo after at least one group of angry residents refused to pay for their purchases. The private Facebook group National Revolution, which has about 2,600 members, is urging others to stage such raids, according to newspaper la Repubblica. Other social media outlets, including WhatsApp chats, are being monitored, the newspaper said.

Adding to the sense of things breaking down, ferry company Tirrenia CIN on Monday decided to halt all its connections with Sicily, Sardinia and other minor islands because of financial difficulties. The government said in a statement it will ensure that vital goods are delivered.

Giuseppe Provenzano, who is in charge of the south in Conte’s cabinet, said an emergency handout should also be given to those in the illegal economy. The risk is that organized crime gangs will step in to provide assistance to those in need, filling the gap left by the state.

The government needs to move “without hesitation,” said Graziano Delrio, leader of lower-house lawmakers from the Democratic Party, the second-biggest group in Conte’s coalition. Rome needs “to do whatever’s necessary for the essential needs of families,” he said in an interview.

(Updates with new cases in seventh paragraph.)

March 30, 2020 0

People who brand China a ‘dictatorship’ are jealous that Beijing beat the pandemic, embassy claims

Commentators refusing to give China credit for containing the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan and citing ‘Asian democracies’ as better examples simply envy Beijing’s efficiency, the Chinese embassy in France has said.

China, from which the coronavirus spread throughout the world, has largely succeeded in containing the disease, according to official updates. Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, has recorded no new cases in a week and has been lifting the restrictions that helped quash the pandemic.

Beijing sees the outcome as a success story and finds it irritating when commentators in countries currently overwhelmed by the virus insist they have nothing to learn from the Chinese experience. At least that’s what’s suggested in an article published this week by the Chinese embassy in France, where the Covid-19 death toll may soon exceed China’s.

Negative commenters “envy the efficiency of our political system and hate the inability of their own nations to perform as well. So they try to stick the ‘dictatorship’ label on China,” the embassy said.

Instead, detractors praise ‘Asian democracies’ like South Korea, Japan and Singapore, which have been more successful than Western nations in containing the pandemic. However, China, which resorted to more drastic quarantine measures than those countries, has a much bigger population. So its task in fighting the disease was far more difficult, the article argued. Ultimately, the virus doesn’t care whether it is ravaging a ‘democracy’ or an ‘autocracy.’

With the threat of coronavirus diminishing at home, Beijing has been busy building goodwill and sharing expertise with other nations affected by the pandemic, sending doctors and aid supplies to those in need.

Serbian PM: ‘Fake news’ that we don’t appreciate EU help, but Covid-19 aid came from China

This ‘mask diplomacy,’ as some commentators call it, has drawn quite a lot of negative feedback on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Critics say the help comes with political strings attached, undermines European solidarity, and damages targeted nations’ relations with the United States.

There is also a popular narrative claiming that China has massively misreported the human cost of containing the pandemic. The latest item to fuel it is the reported delivery of about 2,500 urns to a funeral home in Wuhan.

Links to the urns story inevitably popped up in comments to the Chinese embassy’s Twitter feed, after it published excerpts from the article.

March 30, 2020 0

Abbott Laboratories Launches 5-Minute Wuhan Virus Test for Use in Nearly All Locations

By Jose Nino – Mar 30, 2020

According to Reuters, Abbott Laboratories recently unveiled a Wuhan virus test that can detect if someone is infected in as few as five minutes.

Additionally, it is small and portable enough to be used in practically all health-care settings.

The medical device manufacturer plans to bring 50,000 test kits to the market starting on April 1, 2020 according to a statement from John Frels, vice president of research and development at Abbott Diagnostics.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Abbott emergency use authorization “for use by authorized laboratories and patient care settings,” according to a company announcement on March 27, 2020.

The U.S. has had problems to supply sufficient amounts of tests to detect the virus, even as the outbreak is straining hospital resources in California, New York, Washington, and other regions.

“This is really going to provide a tremendous opportunity for front-line caregivers, those having to diagnose a lot of infections, to close the gap with our testing,” Frels stated. “A clinic will be able to turn that result around quickly, while the patient is waiting.”

The technology expands upon Illinois-based Abbott’s ID Now platform, the most common point-of-care test currently available in America. The platform has more than 18,000 units spread across the country. It is generally used to detect influenza, strep throat, and respiratory syncytial virus, a common ailment that generally causes cold-like symptoms.

The equipment can generally be used anywhere, but the company is working with its customers and the Trump administration to guarantee that the first cartridges used to carry out the tests are sent to locations where they are most needed. The prime spots include hospital emergency rooms, urgent-care clinics, and doctors’ offices.

March 30, 2020 0

Michigan ER Nurse: ‘It’s Going to Be Just like Italy’

By Hannah Bleau – 27 Mar 2020

A Michigan emergency room nurse on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic issued a dire warning and chilling update on the reality of the virus and the strain it is having on hospitals, begging people to stay home and warning that “it’s getting to the point now that it’s going to be just like Italy.”

Mary MacDonald, who works for the Ascension Health System, posted a viral update on Instagram this week, detailing her experience after working at the Southfield location to assist with an influx of patients.

“I’ll have to admit, in being totally transparent, if you had asked me ten-plus days ago if I thought this was going to get as bad as it was, I would have told you no,” she said in the video:

“I mean, you heard the rumors. You saw the trends. But until you see if first hand, you just have no idea what it’s like — what’s it’s going to be like. And it’s truly frightening,” she continued, explaining that they are now seeing double — even triple — the number of patients coming in, many of whom are not getting tested.

Coming into the hospital, she said, does not serve to benefit a person unless he or she is experiencing “respiratory distress,” and even then, the hospitals are quickly running low on vital supplies to treat those patients — from ventilators to Tylenol.

“It’s getting to the point now that it’s going to be just like Italy. We intubated, from 10:00 p.m. last night to this morning, we intubated two of my patients within a half hour. And upwards of ten patients were put on ventilators. My patient took the last ventilator available in the hospital,” she said, further detailing the chilling new reality.

“Resources are very slim. We have no medications to keep these patients even ventilated, let alone ventilators,” she said. “Medications like fentanyl or propofol that would keep a patient sedated while they’re intubated we’re out of. … We’re out of Tylenol.”

“And that’s not even going back to the fact that we don’t have any ventilators to put these patients on, so we’re going to start making life or death decisions in regards to people’s care,” she said.

“So you’re going to come in and you’re going to get tagged whether you deem necessary to even get intubated, or are you being sent home to die,” she added:

Normally, if a patient was to pass away, it would be because we tried everything that we could, we did everything that we could, we had all the resources and all the people that we needed to help save this patient’s life, and it was just their time. And now, we aren’t giving the patient the time to choose whether it’s their time or not. We’re choosing for them.

“I never wanted to go into a career where I wasn’t able to save everyone,” the nurse said.

“This is truly scary, and nobody is taking it seriously,” she continued, noting the pictures on social media of spring breakers partying on beaches and others not practicing proper social distancing.

Hospitals are also running out of gloves, and medical professionals are forced to reuse masks “because we are completely out of resources,” MacDonald continued.

“There are no masks. There are no gowns. They’re running low on gloves because everyone has panicked and stockpiled this so that medical staff doesn’t have it,” she said, showing the camera the brown paper bag she uses to transport her mask to and from work.

“We cannot stay safe, and we cannot care for all of these people that are coming in because no one is taking this seriously. And I am being super transparent. I was one of those people that wasn’t taking it seriously,” she said.

“But I’m here to tell you that you need to. We are literally making life and death decisions for people,” MacDonald added, begging people to heed her advice and stay home.

“Stay home with your loved ones. Don’t go out. Don’t go to the grocery store. Don’t go through the drive-thrus. Don’t do anything that could put you at risk to have to see me at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “I’m telling you it’s not worth it. And I don’t know what I can do to save people anymore, and that is something I’ve never wanted to say in my entire career.”

Her warning comes as Michigan emerges as one of the United States’ latest coronavirus hotspots, with nearly 3,000 confirmed cases and 60 related deaths, including a Detroit mother of four.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has issued stringent stay-at-home orders, which prohibit “all public and private gatherings of any number of people occurring among persons outside a single household.”

March 27, 2020 0