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Jun 28 2020

JUST THE FACTS has updated their March 31st Analysis of the Wuhan Virus!


Crucial Facts About Covid-19

By James D. Agresti
March 31, 2020
Updated 6/27/20

Given the spread of misinformation about Covid-19, Just Facts is providing a trove of rigorously documented facts about this disease and its impacts. These include some vital facts that have been absent or misreported in much of the media’s coverage of this issue.

This research also includes a groundbreaking study to determine the lethality of Covid-19 based on the most comprehensive available measure: the total years of life that it will rob from all people. This accords with the CDC’s tenet that “the allocation of health resources must consider not only the number of deaths by cause but also” the “years of potential life lost.”

The CDC emphasizes that the Covid-19 pandemic “is a rapidly evolving situation,” and as such, the emboldened figures in this article will be updated each weekday as the CDC publishes new data.

On one hand, the facts show that:

  • the death rate for people who contract Covid-19 is uncertain but is probably closer to that of the seasonal flu than figures commonly reported by the press.
  • the average years of life lost from each Covid-19 death are significantly fewer than from common causes of untimely death like accidents and suicides.
  • the virus that causes Covid-19 is “very vulnerable to antibody neutralization” and has limited ability to mutate, which means it is very unlikely to take masses of lives year after year like the flu and other recurring scourges.
  • if 240,000 Covid-19 deaths ultimately occur in the United States, the virus will rob about 2.9 million years of life from all Americans who were alive at the outset of 2020, while the flu will rob them of about 35 million years, suicides will rob them of 132 million years, and accidents will rob them of 409 million years.

Years of Life Lost Over the Lifetimes of All Americans Who Were Alive at the Outset of 2020

(Source Data)

On the other hand, elderly people and those with chronic ailments are extremely vulnerable to Covid-19. Furthermore, the disease is highly transmissible, which means it could spread like wildfire and overwhelm hospitals without extraordinary measures to contain it. This would greatly increase its death toll.

However, such precautionary measures often have economic and other impacts that can cost lives, and overreacting can ultimately kill more people than are saved.

Likelihood of Exposure

Per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 2,459,472 people in the United States have been diagnosed with Covid-19 as of 4:00 PM EST on June 26, 2020. The U.S. population is 330 million people, which means that one out of every 134 people has been diagnosed with Covid-19. The disease is not equally dispersed throughout the nation, so this figure is much higher in some areas and much lower in others.

Reported cases don’t include people who may have Covid-19 but have not yet been diagnosed. Because its incubation periodis 2–14 days, the number of people who have been infected could substantially exceed the number who have been diagnosed.

Also, the vast majority of people who contract Covid-19 experience only mild or no symptoms, and many of them may never be diagnosed. This means that the count of reported cases further understates the actual number of people who have been infected. A February 2020 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association based on data from China found that 81% of reported Covid-19 cases are “mild.” The true portion of such cases is even higher than this, for as the paper explains, there are “inherent difficulties in identifying and counting mild and asymptomatic cases.”

A rare case in which asymptomatic cases can be counted is the Diamond Princess cruise ship, since all passengers were tested for Covid-19. Among those who tested positive, 51% didn’t have symptoms when they were tested. The number of these people who later developed symptoms is currently unavailable.

In another such rare case, the New England Journal of Medicine reported in mid-April that universal Covid-19 testing of pregnant women at two New York City hospitals found that 88% of the women who tested positive for the disease were asymptomatic.

Conversely, the number of people who have ever been infected may greatly exceed the number who are still infected. Growing numbers of people who were once diagnosed with Covid-19 have recovered, and the count of those who were unknowingly infected and had fast recoveries could be enormous. A March 2020 paper in the journal Microbes and Infection notes that “most infected individuals … appear to be able to recover with little to no medical intervention.”

Moreover, a March 2020 paper in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal states: “Preliminary evidence suggests children are just as likely as adults” to contract Covid-19, but they are “less likely to be symptomatic,” and even those with diagnosed infections typically “recover 1–2 weeks after the onset of symptoms.”

The upshot of all this is that the number of people who are actively infected and contagious is lower than the total of reported and undiagnosed cases.

A March 2020 paper in the journal Science condenses the factors above into a single number. It estimates that 86% of all Covid-19 infections in Wuhan, China “were undocumented” before the government implemented travel restrictions. This means that the number of people who were infected was six times the number of documented infections. This figure declines as social distancing measures are adopted and as diagnoses and recoveries rise as time passes.

Under that worst-case scenario from Wuhan, if the number of people with contagious Covid-19 infections in the U.S. is actually six times the number of people who have been diagnosed with it, the average American would have to come in contact with 22 people to be exposed to one person who has it.

Numbers of Deaths

According to the CDC’s counts of “confirmed and probable” fatalities from Covid-19, a total of 124,976 U.S. residents have died from the disease as of 4:00 PM on June 26, 2020. To put this figure in perspective:

  • Covid-19 has killed about one out of every 2,638 Americans, whereas one out of every 116 Americans die every year.
  • roughly 12,469 people in the U.S. died from the swine flu from April 12, 2009 to April 10, 2010. Unlike Covid-19, which mainly kills older people with preexisting health problems, 87% of people killed by the swine flu were under the age of 65.
  • an average of 37,000 people in the U.S. have died from influenza (“the flu”) each year over the past nine years.
  • around 170,000 people per year in the U.S. die from accidents.

In other words, deaths from Covid-19 are now 60.3% of the annual fatalities from the flu and accidents. Although Covid-19 is a new disease and took its first reported life in the U.S. during late February, this comparison may substantially overstate the relative deadliness of Covid-19 because fatalities from accidents and the flu occur in droves every year, and this is unlikely for Covid-19.

The primary reason why the flu takes tens of thousands of lives every year is because the viruses that cause it mutate in ways that prevent people from becoming immune to them. Per the Journal of Infectious Diseases, “All viruses mutate, but influenza remains highly unusual among infectious diseases” because it mutates very rapidly, and thus, “new vaccines are needed almost every year” to protect against it. While much remains to be seen about the mutations of the virus that causes Covid-19, the early indications are that it will not mutate rapidly and become an ongoing scourge.

As detailed in a March 2020 paper in a molecular biology journal that cites Michael Farzan, co-chair of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, once a vaccine for Covid-19 is developed, it “would not need regular updates, unlike seasonal influenza vaccines” because the part of the virus that the vaccine targets “is protected against mutation” by a feature of its genetic material, or RNA.

The same point applies to naturally acquired immunity. People who get Covid-19 develop natural antibodies that protect against future infections of it. The physiology textbook The Human Body in Health and Illness explains that such immunity, which is called “active immunity,” is “generally long lasting.” The same applies to diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, and polio. If someone contracts these diseases, they rarely get them again, and furthermore, they are very unlikely to transmit them to others. Thus, these people become firewalls against the spread of these contagions.

Media outlets like The Atlantic, Vox, and Forbes have turned the truth of this matter on its head by confusing the general nature of coronaviruses with that of Covid-19. The habit of calling Covid-19 “the coronavirus” can be very misleading because there are different types of coronaviruses, and Covid-19 is caused by just one of them. Coronaviruses are a family of RNA viruses that includes some common cold viruses. These viruses tend to mutate rapidly, but Covid-19 does not share that trait. Per the same March 2020 paper cited just above, the virus that causes Covid-19 “does not mutate rapidly for an RNA virus because, unusually for this category, it has a proof-reading function” in its genetics.

Likewise, a February 19th editorial in the British Medical Journal about Covid-19 reports that the “genome data available so far show no unexpected mutation rate or signs of adaptation….”

Put simply, Covid-19 does not mutate nearly as much as the flu, and thus, it is far less likely to take lives regardless of acquired immunity and vaccines. If this proves true in the long run, as current evidence suggests it will, the lifetime risk of dying from Covid-19 is greatly overstated by comparing its ultimate death toll to yearly fatalities from the flu, accidents, suicides, and other frequent causes of death.

Years of Lost Life

Beyond raw numbers of deaths, another crucial factor in measuring the deadliness of a public health threat is the ages of its victims. In the words of the CDC, “the allocation of health resources must consider not only the number of deaths by cause but also by age.” Hence, the “years of potential life lost” has “become a mainstay in the evaluation of the impact of injuries on public health.”

In this respect, Covid-19 is much less lethal than common causes of untimely death, such as accidents. The precise average age of death for Covid-19 fatalities is still unknown, but the vast majority of victims are elderly or have one or more chronic illnesses, as is the case with deaths from the flu and pneumonia.

Based on the CDC’s latest data for the age distribution of deaths, the average age of death for accidents is about 53.3 years, while for the flu and pneumonia, it is about 77.4 years. Using flu and pneumonia as a rough proxy for Covid-19, this disease robs an average of 12.0 years of life from each of its victims, as compared to 30.6 years of lost life for each accident. And again, accidents kill around 170,000 Americans per year, while Covid-19 is unlikely to have an ongoing high death toll because of its limited prospects for mutation.

In a March 29th comment that generated headlines in virtually every major media outlet, renowned immunologist Anthony Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper that “looking at what we’re seeing now, I would say between 100,000 and 200,000” Americans will die from Covid-19, but “I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection when it’s such a moving target that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people.” The next day, Dr. Fauci emphasized that those figures are based on a model, and “a model is as good as the assumptions that you put into” it.

A day later at a White House press conference, Dr. Deborah Birx, another world-renowned immunologist, presented a slide of model results based upon “five or six international and domestic modelers from Harvard, from Columbia, from Northeastern, from Imperial who helped us tremendously.” The model projects that 100,000 to 240,000 deaths will occur if Americans follow social distancing and hygiene guidelines. She added that “we really believe and hope every day that we can do a lot better than that because that’s not assuming 100% of every American does everything that they’re supposed to be doing, but I think that’s possible.”

If the high-end of that range comes to pass, and 240,000 U.S. residents die from Covid-19, this disease will rob 2.9 millionyears of life from all Americans who were alive at the outset of 2020. In comparison, the flu will rob them of about 35 million years and accidents will rob them of 409 million years.

These figures reveal that accidents are about 140 times more lethal to Americans than this worst-case scenario for Covid-19 given mitigation. Likewise, the flu is 12 times as lethal. This is a substantially more comprehensive measure of deadliness than the tally of lives lost during a year—or any other random unit of time—because it accounts for the entirety of people’s lives and the total years of life that they lose.

While not diminishing the value of any life, these facts speak to the efforts that society takes to save some lives versus others.

Death Rates

Initial media reports of a 2–3% mortality rate for Covid-19 are inflated, and the actual figure may be closer to that of the flu, which has averaged about 0.15% over the past nine years in the United States. A large degree of uncertainty surrounds this issue due to the same factor that prevents accurate counts of infections: unreported cases.

As explained by Dr. Brett Giroir—who has authored nearly 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and serves as the Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services—the Covid-19 death rate is “lower than you heard probably in many reports” because the bulk of people who contract coronavirus don’t get seriously ill, and thus, many of them never get tested.

Giroir calls this a “denominator problem” because if you’re “not very ill, as most people are not, they do not get tested. They do not get counted in the denominator.” Giroir’s best estimate is that the mortality rate is probably “somewhere between 0.1% and 1%.” This “is likely more severe in its mortality rate than the typical flu” rate of 0.1% to 0.15%, “but it’s certainly within the range.”

Giroir’s estimate accords with a February 2020 commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine by Fauci and others:

If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.

A prime example of how journalists misreport on this issue is a March 12th article in Business Insider by Andy Kiersz. In this piece, he compares the “death rates” of Covid-19 from the South Korean CDC to that of the flu from the United States CDC. Based on these numbers, he reports that “South Korea—which has reported some of the lowest coronavirus death rates of any country—still has a COVID-19 death rate more than eight times higher than that of the flu.”

What Kiersz and his editors fail to understand is that the denominator for the Korean rate is the number of “confirmed cases,” while the denominator for the U.S. rate is based on a “mathematical model.” The CDC clarifies how the model works by citing a study on swine flu, which multiplies “43,677 laboratory-confirmed cases” of the disease by 41 to 131 times to calculate the denominator for the death rate. In the authors’ words, they do this because confirmed cases are:

likely a substantial underestimate of the true number. Correcting for under-ascertainment using a multiplier model, we estimate that 1.8 million–5.7 million cases occurred, including 9,000–21,000 hospitalizations.

Put simply, Covid-19 death rates that are based upon reported or confirmed infections grossly undercount the number of people with the disease. This, in turn, makes the death rate seem substantially higher than reality.

Social Media Amplification

The famous maxim that “there are six degrees of separation between everyone in the world” has changed in recent years due to social media. A 2014 paper in the journal Computers in Human Behavior finds that the “average number of acquaintances separating any two people” has declined from six to 3.9.

A 2011 paper in the American Journal of Sociology estimates that each American knows an average of 550 people. If 150 of these are mutual connections who already know each other, each American has about 220,000 friends of friends—and 88 million friends of friends of friends.

Thus, if everyone is sharing on social media about people they know who have been infected or killed by Covid-19, it can seem like the world is coming to an end. Yet, if people did the same for other deaths, each person would hear every yearabout an average of:

  • 1,905 deaths among their friends of friends, and 761,844 deaths among their friends of friends of friends.
  • 38 deaths from the flu and pneumonia among their friends of friends, and 15,075 such deaths among their friends of friends of friends.
  • 6 deaths of people under the age of 65 from the flu and pneumonia among their friends of friends, and 2,385 such deaths among their friends of friends of friends.

In addition to social media, the press acts as another megaphone of Covid-19’s impacts. Because the U.S. is the third-most populous nation in the world, it is easy for journalists to create misleading impressions by focusing on certain events and ignoring the broader context of facts that surround them. This kind of crucial context is missing from much of the media’s coverage of Covid-19 and practically every other public policy issue.

Transmissibility

Another important factor in weighing the risks posed by Covid-19 is its transmissibility, or how contagious it is. In this respect, Covid-19 is much more dangerous than the seasonal flu because it spreads very quickly and can overwhelm hospitals.

Scientists measure the contagiousness of diseases with a basic reproduction number, which is the average number of people who tend to catch a disease from each person who has it. This measure is an innate characteristic of the disease because it doesn’t account for actions that people take to prevent it. A February 2020 paper published in the Journal of Travel Medicine explains that any disease with a basic reproduction number above 1.0 is likely to multiply over time.

The same paper evaluates 12 studies of the basic reproduction number of Covid-19 in various nations and finds that they “ranged from 1.4 to 6.49,” with an average of 3.28 and a median of 2.79. Based on their analysis of these studies, the authors conclude that the basic reproduction number of Covid-19 will likely prove to be “around 2–3” after “more data are accumulated.”

In contrast, a 2014 paper in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases analyzes 24 studies of the seasonal flu and finds that the median result for the basic reproduction number is 1.28. The authors stress that the seemingly small difference between 1.28 and higher figures like 1.80 “represent the difference between epidemics that are controllable and cause moderate illness and those causing a significant number of illnesses and requiring intensive mitigation strategies to control.”

In other words, if the transmissibility of Covid-19 is as high as currently estimated, the aggressive measures that some governments, organizations, and individuals have taken to limit large gatherings and travel from areas with outbreaks will save many more lives than doing the same for common diseases like the flu. Because Covid-19 spreads so quickly, it can easily overwhelm hospitals and thereby prevent people from getting the care they would otherwise receive under normal circumstances.

Overreactions

There are, however, mortal dangers in overreacting because measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 often have economic impacts that can cost lives. As detailed in the textbook Macroeconomics for Today, countries with low economic growth“are less able to satisfy basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, education, and health.” These hazards can manifest quickly and over extended periods of time.

If certain industries adopted the social distancing extremes that many people have embraced, this would shut down food production and distribution, health care, utilities, and other life-sustaining services. Even under far more moderate scenarios where people who are not in these industries shun work, all of those necessities and many more aspects of modern life depend on the general strength of the economy. Thus, overreacting can ultimately kill more people than are saved.

The same applies to people who are flooding supermarkets to stockpile food, toilet paper, and other supplies. In doing so, they have often stood in close proximity to each other and touched the same items, which opens avenues to spread the disease. Panic buying also creates shortages that deprive typical consumers of provisions.

Likewise, panic can fuel suicides, which snuff out about 47,000 lives per year in the U.S. at an average age of 46 years old. Over a lifetime, that amounts to 132 million lost years of life—or 46 times the loss from Covid-19 if it ultimately kills 240,000 people.

The implications of overreacting to Covid-19 or any other potential hazard are aptly summarized in a teaching guidepublished by the American Society for Microbiology. This book explains why “the factors driving your concept of risk—emotion or fact—may or may not seem particularly important to you, yet they are” because “there are risks in misperceiving risks.”

The Path Forward

Aggressive social distancing can extend the timeframe over which Covid-19 patients are infected and hospitalized, but it cannot by itself reduce those outcomes in the long run. This is because Covid-19 is so contagious that another outbreak will begin and quickly proliferate as soon as the distancing measures cease.

Hence, the Imperial College’s March 16th report on Covid-19 states that in order to “avoid a rebound in transmission,” policies of “population-wide social distancing combined with home isolation of cases and school and university closure” must “be maintained until large stocks of vaccine are available to immunize the population—which could be 18 months or more.”

Moreover, the report notes that the “more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.” A 2012 paper in the journal PLoS One about “Immunity in Society” underscores the importance of that point by noting that:

when a sufficiently high proportion of individuals within a population becomes immune (either through prior exposure or through mass vaccination), community or “herd” immunity emerges, whereby individuals that are poorly immunized are protected by the collective “immune firewall” provided by immunized neighbors. In humans and other vertebrate communities … responses to a previously encountered pathogen are faster and stronger than those to a novel pathogen, and thus individuals are better at blocking its spread. [Emphasis added.]

Equally, if very few people are immune to a disease, they can transmit it to others instead of blocking it. Without a vaccine, the only way people can become immune to Covid-19 is by catching it and recovering. This means that too much social distancing may cause more deaths because young, healthy people—who would otherwise catch the disease, recover quickly, and become firewalls—remain as potential carriers.

However, social distancing can keep hospitalizations at reasonable levels so that victims receive proper care, and it can also buy time to discover and mass-produce effective treatments. This is a distinct possibility in the short term, for as Michael Farzan, co‐chair of the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, has stated, the same physical feature of the virus that makes it so contagious also makes it:

very vulnerable to antibody neutralization, and thus it is a relatively easy virus to protect against. I refer to it as “stupid” on a spectrum where HIV, which lives in the face of an active immune system for years, is a “genius.”

President Trump has touted a small French study showing that treatment with a combination of two drugs, hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, “is significantly associated with viral load reduction/disappearance in COVID-19 patients….” The study was published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, and the 18 scholars who authored it wrote that the “results are promising” and “we recommend that Covid-19 patients be treated with” these drugs “to cure their infection and to limit the transmission of the virus to other people.” Nonetheless, media outlets have covered this matter by reporting that Trump “is not a doctor” and that he shouldn’t hype “unproven” and “untested” treatments or give people “false hope.”

Theatrics aside, the FDA has issued an Emergency Use Authorization that allows doctors to treat certain hospitalized Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine “when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.” The authors of the French study make clear that their “study has some limitations including a small sample size, limited long-term outcome follow-up, and dropout of six patients from the study, however in the current context, we believe that our results should be shared with the scientific community.”

During a March 14th press conference, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams asserted that “this situation will last longer, and more people will be hurt” if “we are complacent, selfish, uninformed,” and if “we spread fear, distrust, and misinformation.” Conversely, he said that “we will overcome this situation” if we “pitch in” and “share the facts.”

The vital facts above confirm the wisdom of his words.

Jun 25 2020

Eugenics is now Climate Change but Still Racist


Armstrong Economics Blog/Conspiracy

Re-Posted Jun 25, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Good morning,

I remember reading back in the day that global warming was the greatest threat to the world. I also saw old articles where before that it was global cooling. Since they couldn’t seem to get it straight and global warming had started to get a bad name among some scientists and some of the people, they decided to switch the terminology to climate change, which you well know. And like you said, they are using this platform for population reduction.

Well, the same thing can be said about eugenics and bioethics. Once eugenics got a bad name, they renamed the study and agenda to bioethics, to advance their eugenic goals and desires under the guise of “ethical” decision making on who lives and who dies, even coming down to who gets to reproduce and who doesn’t in the near future. I’m taking a wild guess here, but I think the likes of Gates will have that “privilege” but not the likes of the poor or what they define as the “unfit”. After all, being allowed to live and reproduce will be a privilege and not a right.

It’s funny how a common theme and agenda, of all these different branches or roots of this huge tree, is population reduction. It’s the common thread that runs through planned parenthood, global warming, climate change, eugenics, bioethics, vaccinations, Agenda 21, earth worship, communism, Marxism, socialism, food production control….

No matter what government is in control, this has persisted through the years. Through ups and downs and slow bumps, it still persists.

Best,
E

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REPLY: This is the biggest plot against civilization ever to hatch. They are the Marxists coming back and Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum of Davos have taken a front-row seat in trying to use its influence to compel governments to install their agenda without any democratic process. Schwab has declared Bill Gates the man of two centuries — 20th & 21st. Al Gore is a trustee of the World Economic Forum and they ushered in Greta Thurnberg for their 50th-anniversary film. The World Economic Forum is all about socialism. They reject that a corporation is for shareholders. Schwab believes its first duty is to the world, with investors second. The World Economic Forum is taking a lead role in trying to destroy the world economy, and in the typical arrogant academic manner, they think they can rebuild it in their own image precisely as did Karl Marx. This will be the source of great bloodshed and its arrogant philosophy will, at last, be exposed.
Jun 25 2020

The 2020 Election – The Most Corrupt in American History


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

Re-Posted Jun 25, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

The polls will be manipulated to show Trump will lose. While our computer shows he should win, caution is necessary because we are also showing this will be the most corrupt election in American history. The computer had also projected that Gore would have won but the Supreme Court handed that to Bush, and later the evidence showed that Gore should have won on the recount. We could face the same thing this time. Neither side will accept a loss and the civil unrest will rise sharply over the next two years into 2022.

If Trump wins, the capital will flow to the USA and we should expect a high into 2022. If Trump loses, we would expect a 2022 low. The fact that the NASDAQ is making new highs at this time and with such volatile patterns is not a good sign long-term.

If the Democrats win, they will adopt the Thomas Piketty social justice system and will be raising taxes substantially. They want a 70% tax rate on $200,000 or more. This is going to result in violence on the streets and a lot of bloodshed. We may see an outright civil war in the United States come in 2027. Expect a rise in violence in the USA come 2021. We have had four very close elections in the Electoral College and twice a loser won in 1924 and 2000. In the 1924 case, it was Congress that overruled the popular vote and in 2000 it was the Supreme Court.

We are running our models on each state and will have the results soon for a special report. The HAWKS like Bill Krystal and Bolton will support the Democrats because they will always wage wars. They will look at their military objectives and ignore the economics behind this entire movement. There are so many people with their hands out from the Gates Consortium; all they look at is how much money they get and the hell with the country or the world. So this elections is going to be so corrupt, it looks like the Roman election of 53 BC where there was so much bribery going on that interest rates doubled!

Panic 53bc rome

The Roman Republic elections of 53 BC illustrate just how corrupt elections can become. The elections of 53 BC effectively degenerated into a bidding war between the various factions. Under the pretense of helping candidates with their expenses, the bottom line was simple bribery. We know from various contemporary authors of the time that the intense bribery caused interest rates to jump from 4% to 8% during those elections. This bidding war was so serious that the Senate of Rome was forced to act because it became so public.

Pompey (106-48BC) professed to be shocked at the entire affair, which was highly unlikely given his part in the dealings. The Senate was forced to announce prosecutions against all concerned, and the offices of Consul were given to other parties following a confession by one candidate, Memmius. Political contribution scandals are still taking place today as they did thousands of years ago.

So buckle up. The election of 2020 is going to be the most corrupt, manipulated, and outright fraudulent election in American history. There is a lot at stake. This is a major effort by Marxists to take control. The election of 53 BC was the precursor to civil unrest which began just four years later when Julius Caesar (100-44BC) crossed the Rubicon on January 10-11, 49 BC. Interestingly enough, it will be four years to the peak of this Economic Confidence Model – 2024.

Jun 25 2020

Political Corruption at Trump Rally


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics

Re-Posted Jun 25, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

 By the way. BOK

stands for Bank of Oklahoma.

Here is how a corrupt convention center management team kills attendance at a Trump Rally. I was there and saw most of it first hand, followed by others tonight that never got past the temperature screeners.

1. BOK Center holds at least 19,000. The area outside the convention center set up by the Secret Service and Tulsa PD had a U-shaped squeeze shoot to funnel the crowd down to an area about. 50 feet wide and 600 feet long with an outdoor stage adjacent to the BOK entrance.Trump was supposed to be able to speak to the overflow group from this stage.

2. Entry to the “Secure Area” NOT the BOK center was about 5 blocks away where you had to pass “screeners” who took your temperature, made you put on a face mask and gave you a green band to proceed to Secret Service Security.

3. If the temperature screeners left their post- the entire entry to the BOK Trump rally was shut down.

4. And that is EXACTLY what happened today about an hour after we got through security.

5. The BOK center just before the doors opened had block off every other seat in the arena so the arena could only hold about 9500 people.

6. After continued back and forth with the trump campaign, something happened to allow more people in (in groups of just 100 at a time). We had to wait about 30 minutes each time for them to let just 100 of us trickle into the building. I am not talking about their security- we had already passed through metal detectors and everything. You could actually run into the building each time they would let just 100 of us in at a time, but that was just just wrong and corrupt on BOK management’s part. They removed the stickers/rule on every other seat – that is true, but only after they shut down all entry to the “event location”.

7. I looked over at the screening area and told my wife- something fishy is gong on- 2 hours before the rally – the screeners have left. I told her- no one can get to the stage/overflow area or the BOK center with the “temperature screeners” gone. It is like the people that collect tickets say- I am done we are leaving.

8. They left their posts and from what I am learning- thousands could not get in to the first checkpoint because the temperature screeners had to put green wrist band on you to gain access to the Secret Service security checkpoint. No green band— no entry to the security check point.

9. I think the BOK management told the screeners – we have reached the capacity for what we are letting into the BOK center, so shut down- do not allow the other Trump supporters to get a temperature check and no more green wrist bands. Do not issue green wrist bands so they can get into the holding area to see the stage for the outdoor Trump Rally.

10. It was all a setup to make it look like the crowds did not show up. The crowds DID show up and after 5pm,- 2 hours before the event- no one was there to let them get to security.

11. With only about 3/4 of the building full, and no overflow crowd-then. CNN boasts that the rally was a flop. The only thing that was a flop was BOK temperature screeners turned away thousands of attendees that never got to be near the rally.

This is pure political corruption at it’s finest. I was there- the super high energy crowd was there. they need to fire the BOK manager that oversaw this disaster. President Trump- we as the crowed tried, but with corrupt BOK management your crowd was downsized. We need a re-do without a crooked BOK building manager. On top of all that, even Uber was not accepting payments for any rides to the downtown area for the event. I hope this backfires on all the crooks.

Jun 24 2020

Today’s Dystopian Healthcare When You Have Covid Even When You Don’t


This nation was designed to protect and defend commerce, unrestricted speech and religious pursuits, never to suppress liberty

A. Dru Kristenev image

Re-posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—June 23, 2020

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Today's Dystopian Healthcare When You Have Covid Even When You Don't

The line has been crossed. Government guidelines have overtaken and undermined the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. Medical professionals need to read it again.

We knew it was coming when the institution of the fascist Obamacare – the Affordable Healthcare Act went far beyond its socialist boundaries – compelled medical personnel to make impertinent and unrelated lifestyle queries, gun ownership among them.

The overblown response to the WuFlu coronavirus has ushered in another chapter of data collection and regulation

The overblown response to the WuFlu coronavirus has ushered in another chapter of data collection and regulation that is being used to restrict the rights of citizens, and it’s infected even the most conservative states.

Weaponizing emergency, urgent care and hospital policy was a major step. Entrance into these facilities requires mandatory temperature reading, donning a facemask (proven to be useless against the spread of the disease) before an employee will tend to the visitor.

Recent events have shown that the CDC has pressured doctors and nurses to view every potential patient as a Covid-19 carrier, disregarding the individual’s complaint as superfluous. Personnel are armed with a sketchy list of possible WuFlu symptoms that could describe seasonal allergies to heartburn, and the first thing done by healthcare workers is insist that the patient be tested, which they are still free to refuse. Refusal, however, is close to becoming a black listing. Don’t be surprised when rejecting a test will brand the individual as a danger to society. Dictatorial states like Washington have already implemented contact tracing, where “trained interviewers” knock on doors and take names.

The objective behind pressuring individuals to be tested is to boost case numbers in order to validate the overreaching regulations being implemented by government agencies. Should the individual refuse to be tested? That’s hardly an obstacle. Medical professionals are being directed to report “probable” infections based on the catchall list of symptoms.

Personal encounters with individuals who have been victimized by these policies have occurred twice in the last week.1 Visits to urgent care for already diagnosed problems unrelated to Covid-19 resulted in nurses and doctors disregarding the complaints of the patients and redefining the symptoms as probable WuFlu cases without hearing or considering the patient’s history or actual complaint.

In one instance, the patient entered the care facility to receive attention for obvious sinus blockage related to annual pollen allergies. She had passed the temperature roadblock by not exhibiting a fever, yet the nurse practitioner (NP) on duty refused to hear the patient’s complaint, telling her that she showed signs of Covid-19, completely disallowing even a cursory medical history that would have quickly revealed the cause for her stuffy nose.

It was a nonsensical determination since the woman had been at home with her disabled husband for the last few months having little contact with the public. The facts did not deter the nurse practitioner from insisting the patient was a likely Covid case.

The patient’s husband had just been admitted into the hospital for atrial fibrillation (AFib), and it was necessary that she stay with him as the only one who could interpret his needs after a stroke had impaired his ability to communicate. On the grounds that just being tested for the coronavirus would prevent her from entering the hospital for three days to assist her husband, she refused a test. She was at urgent care to receive a remedy for post-nasal drip, not an upper respiratory ailment.

That did not stop the NP from overstepping her bounds by completely disregarding the actual symptoms of the patient and reporting the woman to the hospital as a potential Covid case.

What this medical employee did, and this is not the only report received of irresponsible behavior by healthcare workers, was create undue emotional distress and hardship for the couple by attempting to bar the woman from attending her sick husband who had no other advocate. That NP and the policies of the hospital placed his life in danger because the healthcare workers on staff weren’t able to fully understand him. If the woman had not managed to get herself up to his room before the NP called in the unsubstantiated report to the nurses station, the woman would have been refused entry, preventing proper care for her husband. In fact, the nurse supervisor attempted to eject the woman from the hospital at 12:30 a.m. The supervisor was unsuccessful because the wife did not have transportation available at that late hour but the hospital did boot her from her husband’s room the next day and has since denied her re-entry. (Update: the husband was just diagnosed with cancer and she is still being locked out of the hospital for suffering seasonal allergies.)

Rush to restrict free movement of individuals

Situations like this are becoming commonplace amid the rush to restrict free movement of individuals, unless they happen to be participating in Antifa protests spawning murder and destruction as in Seattle’s “CHOP.”

It’s become imperative for individuals to arm themselves with the real facts about Covid-19: that the mortality rate is .1% of cases diagnosed; that testing positive is not indicative of resultant illness nor does it require vaccination; that the virus is not that easily spread and that the vast number of false positives and reports of probable cases is far beyond the actual numbers. Dr. Deborah Birx said publicly that the numbers are inflated by approximately 25%.

What is true is that the pandemic is an epidemic of government repression focusing on tracking individuals in their activities (if they tend toward freedom of conservative speech and religious expression) and confine them to living separate, censored lives. This is the only way the progressive agenda can press ahead. Inexcusably, too many republican officials and administrators accept the propaganda, ignoring their constitutional duty and becoming accessories to creeping tyranny.

Recommendation? Refuse testing for the virus. The vast number of false positive results make it of no use. Refuse vaccination when it is finally offered for being ineffective. Vaccines have proven to infect individuals more often than protect them against viruses. Do not relent from speaking out against ineffective, vain regulations being forced upon individuals under the guise of seeking a cure.

The only cure available to a free society is to adamantly maintain our mobility and freedom to conduct business without social limits, gather with friends in public and worship without constraints.

This nation was designed to protect and defend commerce, unrestricted speech and religious pursuits, never to suppress liberty.

  1. Names will not be divulged as formal complaints are in the process of being filed.
Jun 24 2020

A Black Man’s Letter to Black Lives Matter


I am tired of our Nation cowering, appeasing, acquiescing, and surrendering to this absurd organization calling itself Black Lives Matter (BLM)

Lt. Col. Allen West image

Re-Posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—June 23, 2020

Allen West, A Black Man’s Letter to Black Lives Matter

In the aftermath of the George Floyd incident, everyone seems to want to have a conversation about race in America.

Just recently, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, asserted that if you couldn’t decide whether to vote for him or President Trump, “you ain’t black.”

”So, let me clarify something: I was born in February 1961 in a “Blacks only” hospital, Hughes Spalding, in Atlanta, Georgia. I was raised by a proud Black man, Herman West Sr. and woman, Elizabeth Thomas West in the historic Old Fourth Ward neighborhood in Atlanta. My Mom and Dad are buried, together, in Marietta National Cemetery because of their service to our Nation.

BLM is just another leftist organization created by the same ilk of progressive socialists who created the NAACP

The Old Fourth Ward is the same neighborhood that produced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and where the American civil rights movement emanated, “Sweet Auburn Avenue.”

There is a high possibility that I have forgotten more black history than some may ever learn — or certainly know. I just authored a book titled, “We Can Overcome, An American Black Conservative Manifesto.”

I do not need to “qualify” my being Black based upon some pre-determined ideological agenda. I was raised to believe that I was an individual who could think and believe as I determined. I was taught that America is a place where regardless of where you were born, where you came from, there was an equality of opportunity.

That equality of opportunity has enabled me to attain immense success for myself and set the conditions for the success of my two daughters. My wife Angela, an accomplished former marketing professor and financial adviser, and I now teach our daughters about the perils of equality of outcomes, and those who cleverly disguise that intent within the cries of social justice.

With this being stated, I am tired of our Nation cowering, appeasing, acquiescing, and surrendering to this absurd organization calling itself Black Lives Matter (BLM). There is nothing true or sincere about this ideologically aligned progressive socialist, cultural Marxist organization.

BLM is just another leftist organization created by the same ilk of progressive socialists who created the NAACP. When one reviews the goals and objectives of BLM, they have nothing to do with the real issues facing the Black community in America. The focus of BLM is to cleverly advance the leftist ideological agenda under the guise of a witty name that forces people into guilt, shame.

I am tired of these businesses and corporations being shaken down by BLM

I do not need any white person in America to kneel before me, apologize, wash my feet, or as the insidious comment of Chick-fil-A CEO, Dan Cathy, shine my shoes. I did a doggone good job of shining my own boots during my career in the US Army — that was my individual responsibility, in which I took great pride.

I am tired of these businesses and corporations being shaken down by BLM to the tune of some $464M, $50M right here in my home of Texas. Why?

Black Lives Matter does not support the critical civil rights issue of this day. The major civil rights issue in America today is educational freedom. How many young black kids are relegated to failing public schools in failing neighborhoods? Where does BLM stand on that issue? They stand with the progressive socialist left and the teachers unions. Ask yourself, has BLM ever condemned the action of Barack Obama in April 2009 to cancel the DC school voucher program?

Yesterday was Father’s Day. How many young black kids are growing up without a father in the house, a strong positive role model, like my Dad, US Army Corporal Herman West Sr.? The policies of the progressive socialist left decimated the traditional two parent household in the black community. What does BLM say about the traditional, nuclear, two parent (man and woman) household? They say that is a tool of white supremacy.

If there is to be a conversation about the rule of law in America and the black community, let’s have that honest conversation. However, BLM wants us to believe that there is some focused, dedicated, intentional genocide being enacted against the Black community by law enforcement.

In 2019, there were a total of nine white law enforcement officer shootings of unarmed black men. Yet, how many blacks have taken to the streets to kill other blacks? And where is the outrage from BLM?

I have never heard Black Lives Matter speak up, speak out, or speak against Planned Parenthood. Why?

But, even worse, since 1973 there have been over 20 million unborn black babies murdered in the wombs of Black mothers. The organization mostly responsible for the industry of murdering unborn babies is Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood was founded by a known white supremacist, racist, a woman who spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies — Margaret Sanger. Planned Parenthood has over 70 percent of their “clinics” located in black communities across America.

I have never heard Black Lives Matter speak up, speak out, or speak against Planned Parenthood. Why? Simple, the white progressive socialist masters who fund, resource, and enable Black Lives Matter don’t give a darn about the lives of Black children.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. Black Lives Matter is an oxymoronic and disingenuous organization. As a proud American Black Man, I find Black Lives Matter an offensive and condescending organization whose hypocrisy is blatantly evident. Yet, thanks to the lucrative support of the white progressive socialist collective elitists, it survives, and extorts financial support from the useful idiots in our corporate structure.

All lives matter, but this radical organization, Black Lives Matter, is the ultimate Trojan Horse. The consistent purveyors of systemic racism in America is the Democrat Party. They have smartly devised this organization to enable their ends, the proliferation of the 21st century economic plantation. Black Lives Matter serves as overseers on this plantation, stoking the irrational emotionalism and angst to support their agenda, their purpose.

What is the purpose? Simple. The new plantation of the left is not about producing cotton. It is about creating victims who will be dependent, and produce the new crop — votes.

Allen West is a member of the Citizens Commission on National Security.

This column was originally published at CNSNews

Jun 24 2020

Gates’ Dream of Controlling the World is Hitting a Brick Wall


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jun 24, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

Bill Gates and Microsoft have been banned in Russia. This is seriously preventing Bill Gates’ dream of vaccinating the entire world so he can track everyone. Russia is going to add Bill Gates to the blacklist along with George Soros and Jacob Rothschild.

The entire scheme of Microsoft and the others is to take everything that we do, create profiles, and then sell that to companies to endlessly market stuff to us. If I am paying for a program like Windows, I do not want endless updates that are really phishing for everything I do. They are not satisfied with paying for a product. They much destroy all privacy for a buck.

It is ironic that perhaps the only free countries will be China and Russia since the West has chosen to run into the arms of Gates and his consortium. Russia and China collapsed under Marxism in 1989. We are now faced with the second wave of Marxists determined to create a Marxist world despite the fact it has never worked. Guess what — they are right on time. The collapse of Communism was 1989.95; add 31.4 years, and we arrive at 2021.35 perfectly as we head into the Monetary Crisis Cycle.

Putin is at least protecting the Russian people against the manufactured pandemic. There are far about 9.5 million people who die every year from cancer compared to Bill Gates’ virus of fewer than 500,000 deaths worldwide. About 645,000 die of heart attacks annually. There are about 15.2 milliondeaths annually from various diseases. We do not hear about that every night on CNN delivering a daily death count. If they did, it would probably also change behavior. In comparison, Gates’ virus is overly exaggerated for the sole purpose of terrorizing people into complying with his agenda.

Jun 22 2020

Fauci’s Wife & Conflicts of interest with Gates’ Vaccines


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption

Re-Posted Jun 22, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Why is no one talking about Anthony Fauci being married to Christine Grady?

She heads ethics on covid vaccine!! Christine Grady is a longtime nurse and the current chief of the department of bioethics with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She graduated with a B.S. in nursing and biology from Georgetown University, a M.S.N. in community health nursing from Boston College, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Georgetown.

She is also a senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and was elected as a Fellow at both the American Academy of Nursing and the Hastings Center. Dr. Grady is a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

She has previously served as a consultant to UNAIDS and the Pan American Health Organization and as a staff member to the President’s Commission on HIV Infection. Dr. Grady has authored more than 100 papers in bioethics, HIV disease, and nursing, and has authored or edited several books.

SD

ANSWER: The level of corruption that I believe Bill Gates has funded in health and energy is simply beyond description. But he also controls much of the media right down to the BBC in London, which accepts money from him to cover health. There is NOBODY in the media willing to investigate this consortium. They are signing their own death warrants, but for now, they enjoy the free money and never look past the end of their nose.

We desperately need a real free press that does not accept money from people like Gates. This is just so corrupt, it reminds me of some of the very worst tyrants in Roman History. It is a sad time in history to sit by and watch these people destroy all our freedoms for their personal greed and ego.

That said, Christine Grady is Anthony Fauci’s wife. Her role seems to be to preside over the ethical questions of testing vaccines. This may present a conflict of interest. It does not inspire confidence given the questions surrounding Fauci and his involvement with the Wuhan lab.

Jun 22 2020

2010 Arab Spring Common Connections to the 2020 Black Lives Matter Movement…


Posted originally on The Conservative Tree House on June 22, 2020 by 

It’s an interesting comparison to note.  The ideological interests behind the 2010 “Arab Spring” uprising are the exact same ideological interests behind the 2020 “Black Lives Matter” protests/uprising.  Not merely similar people, but the exact same people.

The exact same group of U.S. people who were promoting the mid-east Arab Spring in 2010 are the same people now promoting the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.   The same politicians; the same media voices; the same newspapers; the same social media activists. Almost every participant, and their support for the uprising ’10 -vs- ’20 is identical.

In the background of the Arab Spring, the root control organization was The Muslim Brotherhood.  Considering all of the connective similarities; and considering the U.S. advocates for the brotherhood are the same voices advocating for BLM; does it not stand to reason the BLM movement is an extension of the same overarching ideology.

It is not an esoteric intellectual exercise to compare the two movements because we’re not only talking about a similar level of protest, we’re seeing an identical set of actions in both groups.  Not only are the advocates the same voices; but their purposeful action, the behavior to remove and destroy common cultural connection/heritage is the same.

The Brotherhood is essentially the umbrella organization for a multitude of Islamic factions.  In essence, the Muslim Brotherhood represents political Islam. Similarly if you look at the structure of Black Lives Matter they too represent an umbrella-type structure for a network of individual political grievance groups.  Both groups represent a cultural revolution by the results of their activity.

In 2010 the Brotherhood had al-Qaeda and militant factions within ISIS.  In 2020 BLM has New Black Panthers and militant factions within Antifa.

In 2010 the Brotherhood tore down statues and symbols they identified as culturally oppressive to their political views.  In 2020 BLM tears down statues and symbols they identify as oppressive to their political views.

In 2010 the Brotherhood burned books, destroyed history and removed their cultural opposition by force.  In 2020 BLM promotes burning books, destroying history and cancelling their cultural opposition by force.

In 2010 the Brotherhood used social media to organize their political activity and Big Tech facilitated even by setting up local networks for protest.  In 2020 BLM uses social media to organize their political media and Big Tech facilitates by deploying all local networks to assist.

In 2010 the Brotherhood attacked the police and framed their Islamist movement as oppressed by law enforcement.  In 2020 BLM attacks the police and frames their movement as oppressed by law enforcement.

In 2010 the Brotherhood destroyed the notions of secularism and viciously attacked any form of Christianity.  In 2020 BLM advocates against secularism and viciously attacks Christianity, while conspicuously never criticizing any element of Islam.

In 2010 the Brotherhood was very strategic as they hoodwinked moderate Islamic supporters into voting them into power.  Once in power they removed all of the institutional systems, government offices, judges, constitutional balances, local elections, and anything that would impede their ultimate stranglehold on power.  Sharia Law replaced common legislative law.   As a result, the ordinary population was brutalized, property was taken by force; businesses were taken by force and the Islamic regime now controlled every element of their lives.

In 2020 the approach of the BLM movement appears very strategic as they hoodwink a multitude of supporters by defining their victim class and role.  Much like the 2010 Brotherhood approach grievances are made personal.   Bonds between families and friends are severed by force and demands to adhere to the movement’s ideology.

It will be interesting to see if BLM supporters recognize the deception in 2020; because the Brotherhood supporters in 2010 did not recognize it until it was too late.

There are many similarities.

(Pictured) one other thing they have in common