Category: THE UNITED NATIONS

WHO Turns On China, Demands To Know How Nearly 2,000 Doctors Were Infected With COVID-19

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by Tyler Durden – 2/14/2020

Summary:

  • China says 1,716 medical workers have been infected

  • WHO demands to know more about sick doctors, insists group of 12 virus experts will reach Beijing over the weekend

  • Singapore reports largest daily jump in cases amid increased human-to-human transmission

  • Hong Kong reports 3 new cases

  • Hubei’s new party boss orders quarantine tightened

  • President Xi touts new “biosecurity law”

  • Hong Kong Disney land offers space for quarantine

  • Chinese company says blood plasma of recovered patients useful in combating the virus

  • US mulling new travel restrictions

  • Japan reports 4 new cases; one patient recently returned from Hawaii.

  • CDC Director: Virus is “Coming” to the US.

Update (1040ET): The WHO has just wrapped up its now-daily presser for Friday, and it appeared to focus on imminent plans to send a group of a dozen scientists and researchers to Beijing to figure out exactly what the hell is going on.

Much fuss has been made over the past week over China’s continued refusals to allow Americans, or any other foreigners, for that matter, to offer assistance with the virus response. It’s almost as if they’re…hiding something…

Even after yesterday’s big reveal about the change in their ‘pro forma accounting standards’ to reflect a higher death toll and number of confirmed cases (the jump alarmed global investors and prompted a selloff on equity markets), China still won’t let Americans participate in a WHO-sponsored team of 12 researchers who are traveling to the mainland.

It was a big deal earlier this week when Beijing said it would reluctantly accept the team, ending weeks of suspiciously standoffish behavior (though the WHO bigwigs did travel to Beijing for meetings). But as one analyst said earlier on CNBC: ‘We want to see foreign boots on the ground before we simply take the Chinese at their word’.

It’s also notable how the WHO, initially a purveyor of what seemed like propaganda hot off the presses in Beijing, seems to have turned completely against its benefactor, now treating it with public suspicion.

  • WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION TEDROS SAYS WE NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT INFECTION OF 1,760 CHINESE HEALTH WORKERS, INCLUDING TIME PERIOD AND CIRCUMSTANCES

  • WHO BOSS TEDROS SAYS HE EXPECTS FULL TEAM OF WHO-LED INTERNATIONAL HEALTH EXPERTS TO TOUCH DOWN IN CHINA OVER WEEKEND TO HELP PROBE CORONAVIRUS

  • WHO MISSION TO CHINA WILL FOCUS ON UNDERSTANDING TRANSMISSION OF CORONAVIRUS, SEVERITY OF DISEASE AND IMPACT OF ONGOING RESPONSE MEASURES – WHO CHIEF TEDROS SAYS

  • WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION TEDROS SAYS WE NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT INFECTION OF 1,760 CHINESE HEALTH WORKERS, INCLUDING TIME PERIOD AND CIRCUMSTANCES

But after today’s WHO press conference, we were left with the distinct impression that it’s almost as if China doesn’t…want the team to come.

Why else would they have waited to reveal the figures about all the sick doctors and health-care workers until Friday morning in the US and Europe? Just a thought.

Back in the US, a team of American expertss is prepared to travel to China to investigate the outbreak on a moments notice, should they ever receive clearance from a government official, according to Secretary Azar.

As he said (and we noted) earlier, the US is bracing for the possibility that the warm weather doesn’t kill the virus, as President Trump expects.

Anyway, moving away from China, we’ve seen unconfirmed reports of four patients in St. Petersburg escaping a COVID-19 quarantine. Earlier in the week, two women escaped quarantines in Siberia.

* * *

Update (1000ET): China is turning the quarantine nob up to ’11’.

After imposing strict lockdown conditions on nearly a third of the country, Beijing’s is kicking off its shift to ‘wartime measures’ by adopting even more strikingly draconian measures on the residents of its capital city.

From Feb. 14 on, all people returning to the city will be advised to quarantine for 14 days.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that hundreds of conference atendees in London have been contacted by health officials after one of them was later diagnosed with the virus.

The person, who has not been identified, attended the UK Bus Summit at the QEII Conference Centre last week. Two Labour MPs who attended the conference said they’re cancelling public events until Feb. 20, just in case.

So far, nine people in the UK have been confirmed to have the virus.

* * *

Update (0915ET): Japan has reported 4 new cases of the virus, including one man who recently returned from the US state of Hawaii, and another who helped transfer an infected patient diagnosed aboard “the Diamond Princess”, the cruise ship that has been quarantined in Yokohama for 10 days.

Meanwhile, over in the US, this interview of the director of the CDC warning that the virus could become widespread in the US ‘beyond 2020’.

* * *

Update (0850ET): Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said during an interview on Friday morning that more travel restrictions are “on the table,” suggesting that the US might apply similar restrictions to Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and other Asian countries that have reported rising numbers of cases.

Earlier this month, the State Department raised its travel alert for China to ‘4’, and the US imposed restrictions on foreigners who have recently traveled to China and re-routing Americans who have been to viral hotspots to certain US airports for screening on arrival. These travel restrictions have infuriated Beijing, and prompted a government spokesperson to accuse the US of spreading hysteria.

Even if the virus does “go away” in April, as President Trump has insisted…

…At this point, Q1 GDP is going to be a disaster anyway, so the US might as well kitchen-sink it.

And it’s not like investors have anything to worry about – bad news is still good news, after all, and the market will simply go to pricing in ~1 Fed rate hike in 2020 to ~2.

* * *

Update (0810ET): Earlier this morning, Hong Kong confirmed three more coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of cases in the city to 56.

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Here’s more information on the new cases from SCMP:

  • The Centre for Health Protection said one of the three cases involved a man in critical condition after suffering shortness of breath for more than 10 days. He had to be intubated in Princess Margaret Hospital. He lives in Shek Lei Estate in Kwai Chung, and passed through the Lok Ma Chau border crossing on January 22.

  • Another person who tested positive for the virus, which causes the disease known as Covid-19, was the cousin of a previously infected case. Both attended a family gathering of 29 at a restaurant in North Point on January 26. At least six other members at that gathering have been infected with the new deadly virus, while at least two are still in quarantine pending test results.

  • The third case is a worker in a dim sum restaurant in Sheung Wan, whose husband visited their son in Xinhui, Guangdong province, from January 23 to January 28. Her husband and son are not infected.

Unlike most of the countries that have reported cases of the virus, both Singapore and Hong Kong have confirmed human-to-human transmission within their own borders, meaning the outbreak has already started to spread past the 2nd and 3rd generations of the infected.

Though Singapore is still ahead in terms of number of cases, Hong Kong is giving it a run for its month (though, as we’ve said before, it’s an outbreak, not a race).

* * *

Following Chinese health officials’ claim last night that it “double-counted” some deaths (while crematoriums in the country have been working 24/7 as the outbreak has worsened over the last few weeks), the good people at China’s NHC have disclosed for the first time that 1,716 medical workers have been infected across the country.

Does this figure seem a little underwhelming? Officials put the infected medical worker total at 3.8% of 60k+ total cases on the mainland, and added that six medical workers – including the martyr Dr. Li – have died as of Friday. Of course, even if they’re all wearing protective gear (which we know many aren’t especially in the hardest hit areas like Hubei) this number would still seem low for such an infectious disease, given that more than 65,000 cases have been confirmed across the world.

One expert who spoke to the New York Times said the number of infected medical workers is “concerning.”

“I think it’s quite concerning,” said Benjamin Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong. “Healthcare workers face the challenge of caring for a substantial number of patients in Wuhan. It’s worrying to discover that a number of them have been infected.”

From what we’ve heard and read, it seems that shortages of supplies like facemasks, gloves, goggles and other protective gear have persisted, even in Hubei, according to the NYT. During the SARS outbreak, 961 medical workers were infected, representing some 18% of all infections. Since COVID-19 is even more contagious than SARS, we’d expect the number of medical workers infected to be even higher.

After expressing skepticism about Beijing’s response to the virus earlier in the week, it looks like the WHO is back to shilling for the Communist Party, claiming overnight that the jump in cases in China shouldn’t be characterized as a “spike,” and that it’s normal to change how cases are defined.

Across the mainland, the Chinese people, who have been frustrated by the government’s dissembling, have come up with jokes like this one.

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Given everything we’ve learned about the virus, and all the reports about shortages of medical supplies like facemasks across the country, but especially in Hubei Province, we suspect that the real number is much, much larger. It’s just the latest evidence that Beijing hasn’t given up on doctoring its disease stats, even after its big non-admission on Thursday that its methods for confirming virus-linked cases and deaths hadn’t been sufficiently inclusive.

As we first pointed out yesterday, party officials said yesterday that the country would use “wartime measures” – a kind of public emergency declaration – to fight the virus, suggesting that the lockdowns will become even more widespread.

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China Has Ground To A Halt: “On The Ground” Indicators Confirm Worst-Case Scenario

by Tyler Durden

Back on Monday, when analysts and investors were desperately seeking clues whether China has managed to reboot its economy from the 2-week long hiatus following the Lunar New Year/Coronavirus pandemic amid the information blackout unleashed by the communist party in the already opaque country, we pointed out some alternative ways to keep tabs of what is really taking place “on the ground” in China, where Xi Jinping has been urging local businesses and workers to reopen and resume output, while ignoring the risk the viral pandemic poses to them (with potentially catastrophic consequences).

Specifically, Morgan Stanley suggested that real time measurements of Chinese pollution levels would provide a “quick and dirty” (no pun intended) way of observing if any of China’s major metropolises had returned back to normal. What it found was that among some of the top Chinese cities including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chengdu, a clear pattern was evident – air pollution was only 20-50% of the historical average. As Morgan Stanley concluded, “This could imply that human activities such as traffic and industrial production within/close to those cities are running 50-80% below their potential capacity.”

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As a reminder, all this is (or technically, isn’t) taking place as President Xi Jinping on Wednesday sought to send a message that progress had been made in bringing the coronavirus outbreak under control and, for most parts of the country, the focus should be on getting back to business.

According to state television, Xi chaired a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s supreme political body, on the latest developments on the crisis and future policy responses, concluding that there had been “positive changes” with “positive results”.

Xi also reiterated that all levels of local government and Communist Party committees must strive to achieve China’s social and development goals this year, indicating that he did not want the public health crisis to hinder progress.

Most importantly, Xi urged local authorities to refrain from taking excessive measures to curb contagion, and yet clip after clip from China…

… shows that the measures being taken are far beyond merely “excessive” when it comes to limiting the potential spread of the virus, which probably makes sense considering the unexpected surge in infected cases in Wuhan, which have sent the total for China just shy of 60,000.

Add to this the ongoing uncertainty that Beijing is far behind the curve in containing the virus, and one can see why most businesses are reluctant to “get back to normal.”

In the latest confirmation of just that, several other indicators have emerged showing that despite Xi’s stark demands for 1.4 billion Chinese to ignore the global pandemic which may very well have been started by one of China’s own experimental labs…

… virtually all of China – and all those critical supply chains that keep companies across the globe humming and stocked with critical inventory – remain on lockdown.

As confirmation, while we wait for an update from Morgan Stanley on the latest Chinese pollution data (at least until Beijing’s definition of “pollution” is also revised) here is JPMorgan showing that while traditionally daily coal consumption – the primary commodity used to keep China electrified – rebounds in the days following the Lunar New Year collapse when China hibernates for one week, this year there hasn’t been even a modest uptick higher, indicating that so far there hasn’t been even a modest uptick in output.

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Yet electricity is just one core indicator of real-time economic activity. Perhaps an even more critical one is human transit across the 1.4 billion person strong nation. Conveniently there is a way to track rudimentary traffic patterns across some of China’s key metro areas, and they show that – in a confirmation of the worst-case scenario – activity, as measured by travel, across most of China appears to have ground to a halt.

The charts below show TomTom’s traffic congestion data across key Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan as compared to the average measurement for 2019. What they show is that virtually nobody appears to be driving in China!

Here is Beijing’s congestion level over the past 48 hours (a 7 day average is also available) compared to 2019. The data indicates that travel is about 70% below its 2019 peak.

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Amazingly, the industrial hub of Guanghzhou also appears to have ground to a crawl:

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By comparison, here is what Los Angeles traffic looks like over the past 48 hours vs 2019 average.

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While not perfect, and certainly not a comprehensive view of what is really taking place “on the ground”, the above data is a useful real-time indicator of how the people in China perceive the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, and one thing is abundantly clear: as the pandemic spreads further without containment, and as the charts above flatline, so will China’s economy, which means that while Goldman’s draconian view of what happens to Q1 GDP is spot on, the expectation for a V-shaped recovery in Q2 and onward will vaporize faster than a vial of ultra-biohazardaous viruses in a Wuhan virology lab.

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WHO Gives Coronavirus a New Name to Prevent ‘Stigmatization’

Because hurt feelings are important when dealing with a potential global pandemic.

 

The World Health Organization has given coronavirus a new name in order to prevent people feeling ‘stigmatized’.

Yes, because the first thing a global health authority tasked with preventing a mass deadly virus outbreak should be concerned about is political correctness.

The coronavirus has been officially named ‘COVID-19’ because according to the WHO, “We had to find a name that did not refer to a geographical location, an animal, an individual or group of people.”

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“Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing,” the organization added.

The name change is in line with the WHO’s official statement when they first declared coronavirus to be a global emergency, which warned countries against any actions that would “promote stigma or discrimination” and asserted that maintaining the “international traffic” of people was essential and should not be interfered with.

Respondents to the name change on Twitter weren’t impressed.

“Damn, I was going to name ChinamanNastyVirus-20,” commented one.

“Wait so avoiding stigma is more important than saving lives??” asked another.

“At this age, people are just gonna refer to it as coronavirus or that virus from China bcos they kept eating the fvcking bats,” remarked another user.

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CHINESE PROPAGANDA VIDEO SHOWS CORONAVIRUS VICTIMS IN DETAINMENT FACILITY DANCING

Chinese Propaganda Video Shows Coronavirus Victims in Detainment Facility Dancing

“Don’t worry. Things will get better.”

  – FEBRUARY 11, 2020

Apparently keen to offset video footage of screaming Chinese people being abducted from their homes and taken to detention camps, the ruling Communist Party put out a video showing “mild” coronavirus victims housed in a “temporary hospital” being directed to dance by workers in hazmat suits.

The video was published by People’s Daily, the largest newspaper in the country and the official news organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

It shows what are purported to be “infected patients with mild syndromes” dancing to Chinese music. Some of them appear to be less enthusiastic than others and one is reminded of the mandatory exercise sessions in George Orwell’s 1984.

“Virus can’t put out the passion for life!” states the tweet accompanying the video.

Another clip shows a medic in a hazmat suit performing “Chinese traditional Qigong outside a quarantine chamber” as a way of telling the patients, “Don’t worry. Things will get better.”

The two videos are in contrast to plenty of other video footage which shows alleged coronavirus victims being chased down by authorities and dragged kicking and screaming to internment camps.

As we highlighted yesterday, another video clip shows a woman trying to scale down a building to escape quarantine. She loses her grip and falls to her death.

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Months Before Coronavirus Rocked the World, Cambridge University Warned of Race-Specific Bioweapons

This is no conspiracy theory.

By Shane Trejo – 2/10/2020

Just months before the coronavirus pandemic hit the world, scientists at Cambridge University warned of the reality of race-specific bioweapons.

Cambridge University’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk released their report last summer to tell world governments that they urgently need to prepare for this threat, or otherwise they would potentially deal with its lethal ramifications after it’s already too late.

They called for independent groups to be formed to study technology and how it can be used as a weapon to target populations, and come up with ways to solve them through rules, regulations and other protocols.

“The technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated at ever cheaper prices, democratizing the ability to harm more quickly and lethally,” the authors of the report wrote. “In a particularly bad case, a bio-weapon could be built to target a specific ethnic group based on its genomic profile.”

The coronavirus pandemic may signal that the worst fears of these researchers has come to life. Although globalist authority figures, Chinese communist tyrants, and social media commissars want to mute the concerns, whistleblowers have sounded the alarm about coronavirus strain possibly being a bioweapon.

ZeroHedge posted a report regarding a study by Indian scientists which indicated that “HIV” insertions appeared in the coronavirus, and they were quickly removed from Twitter after releasing the information.

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“To our surprise, these sequence insertions were not only absent in S protein of SARS but were also not observed in any other member of the Coronaviridae family (Supplementary figure). This is startling as it is quite unlikely for a virus to have acquired such unique insertions naturally in a short duration of time,” the Indian scientists determined.

However, following a panic from the globalists, the Indian scientists disavowed their report under the pressure.

Harvard public health scientist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding made the announcement on Twitter and deleted all of his analysis about the report from the Indian scientists.

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In addition, University of Illinois College of Law professor Dr. Francis Boyle, the man who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, has stated on the record that he believes coronavirus is the bioweapon.

An in-depth interview with Boyle discussing his expert opinion can be seen here:

 

Big League Politics has also reported about how a controversial research facility into some of the world’s dangerous pathogens was opened in Wuhan, China shortly before the coronavirus pandemic started out of that city.

The Orwellian world of race-specific bioweapons has arrived, and the coronavirus pandemic may be the start of a dangerous trend that could result in an unspeakably deadly age of chemical warfare.

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BREAKING: CHINA TO QUARANTINE CITY OF SHENZHEN IN GUANGDONG PROVINCE, CAUSING “MAD RUSH” TO HONG KONG

BREAKING: China to Quarantine City of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, Causing “Mad Rush” to Hong Kong

Infected citizens now fleeing to other nations

Mike Adams | Natural News – FEBRUARY 7, 2020

This is a breaking news update from Natural News, translated from the Chinese language Liberty Times Net website, which has produced some of the best reporting on the coronavirus pandemic outbreak.

According to the report, the communist Chinese government has just announced the imminent quarantine of the city of Shenzhen in the Guangdong Province, causing a “mad rush” of Chinese citizens fleeing to Hong Kong to try to escape the quarantines before the international community blocks all flights from Hong Kong. This effort will, of course, only serve to accelerate the spread of the virus internationally.

There are roughly 25 million people in the greater Shenzhen municipal area, so this is a significant increase in the number of Chinese citizens who will soon be living under military-enforced quarantine. (Currently over 50 million, soon to be at least 75 million and growing…)

Here’s the translated text that explains this. Just remember, automated machine translations from Chinese to English are very difficult, so the English appears quite broken:

Shenzhen News Network reported that the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government said on the 7th, all communities will be 100% closed management, if there are confirmed cases of residential “hard isolation” for 14 days, and organize “regulatory service team” to do key ethnic groups tracking, where there is a history of close contact with the case 100% of the implementation of centralized isolation, households also want to take temperature and other measures.

According to Hong Kong’s “Position News” reported that Shenzhen city from the 8th began to seal the city after the announcement of the news, 7 days from the emergence of a large number of people want to pour into Hong Kong, from the scene film can be seen at 10:28 p.m., shenzhen port before the appearance of long lines of taxis, are to load the people of Shenzhen into Hong Kong, long car long about 1 km.

The same story also reports that the hard quarantine of Shenzhen begins on Feb. 8th (tomorrow), which is why people are panic fleeing today, while they can still get out: (another important reminder to always have a bugout bag)

Comprehensive Chinese media reports, the Shenzhen Municipal Government announced that from February 8 on the city’s people’s vehicles fully implement control, in the “vehicle epidemic control checkpoint” vehicle control, and foreign vehicles to sacrifice “advance declaration measures”, the first time the public driving through the “vehicle epidemic prevention checkpoint”, must be at least 1 day in advance of the Internet registration declaration, approval before passing.

https://www.brighteon.com/440295cb-ff15-4c57-a9dd-8b207652113a

THE WUHAN QUARANTINE HAS BEEN BREACHED… “HONG KONG IS FINISHED”

Shenzhen, in Southern China, is very close to Hong Kong. This explains why Shenzhen residents are fleeing to Hong Kong, no doubt bringing more infections with them. Many residents will attempt to take flights out of Hong Kong in order to escape the draconian quarantine, which means of course that some of these people will be inadvertently spreading the coronavirus pandemic to yet more countries, including the United States, which still accepts flights from Hong Kong and China.

According to the Liberty Times Net story, observers in Taiwan are now saying, “Hong Kong is finished” and are demanding that flights from Hong Kong be cut off in order to protect Taiwan and other Asian countries from the exploding pandemic. Some of the quotes in the story include, “”The people of Hong Kong are dead, Taiwan will soon be cut off…” and “next week becomes the crazy influx of Hong Kong people into Taiwan.”

We pray for the people of Hong Kong in this desperate time. They are good people, and they don’t deserve this madness from communist China.

CHINA’S QUARANTINE EFFORTS NOW ACCELERATING THE SPREAD OF THE PANDEMIC

It brings up an important point in all this. As China is chasing the outbreak with ever-expanding quarantines, the citizens who live in those areas are attempting to flee before the quarantine, causing a mass exodus of infected individuals who would have otherwise probably just stayed home if not for the draconian quarantine measures enacted by the Chinese government. In effect, the quarantines are accelerating the spread of the virus to other countries due to this “fleeing” effect.

Much of this likely stems from the fact that China is now running door-to-door roundups of citizens, medically kidnapping them and throwing them into “quarantine prison camps” with bars on the windows of each room. Nobody wants to end up a prisoner in one of these “death hospitals.”

The coronavirus pandemic is currently spreading at the rate of roughly a 20% increase per day, achieving sustained, exponential growth that has spread to three cruise ships, dozens of countries and an ever-expanding list of mainland Chinese cities.

The initial attempt to quarantine the Wuhan region in order to stop the coronavirus has clearly failed. Yet the WHO, the CDC and the totally discredited mainstream media are still lying to the public, falsely claiming this outbreak is “under control” and “poses no risk to America.” Those claims are malicious, dangerous lies that even the CDC’s own scientists are contradicting in their public statements.

In addition, multiple health experts are now on the record confirming this pandemic has broken containment and will spread globally.

Any media source saying this is “no big deal” is actually trying to make the pandemic worse by keeping people uninformed and unprepared.

https://www.brighteon.com/0208e343-0c03-45b7-a4fe-eb84836571a3

 

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Pope Francis endorses wealth redistribution, calls for an end to tax cuts for the ‘richest people’

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Pope Francis blasted the practice of tax cuts for the rich as part of a “structure of sin” and lamented the fact that “billions of dollars” end up in “tax haven accounts” instead of funding “healthcare and education.”

Speaking at the seminar set up by the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences  the Pope criticized “the richest people” for receiving “repeated tax cuts” in the name of “investment and development.” These “tax haven accounts” impede “the possibility of the dignified and sustained development of all social agents,” claims the Pope.

He added that “the poor increase around us” as poverty is rising around the world. This poverty can be ended if the wealthiest gave more.

“The 50 richest people in the world have an equity equivalent to 2.2 billion dollars. Those fifty people alone could finance the medical care and education of every poor child in the world, whether through taxes, philanthropic initiatives or both. Those fifty people could save millions of lives every year,” the Pope said.

Though Pope Francis believes poverty is a major current issue, something he has spoken about before, he tried to remain hopeful by saying the world’s problems today are “solvable.”

“The main message of hope I want to share with you is precisely this: these are solvable problems, not ones from a lack of resources. There is no determinism that condemns us to universal inequity. Let me repeat: we are not condemned to universal inequity,” he said.

Though the Pope spoke of the dangers of “extreme poverty” in his economic speech, reports suggest that extreme poverty is falling every year around the globe.

Still, a higher tax rate for wealthier individuals is a popular idea with some parties in both the US and UK, and the gap between rich and poor is certainly widening. A recent Oxfam report indicated the richest one percent of the world’s population has twice as much wealth as the remaining 90 percent, or 6.9 billion people.

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