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Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?

Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

In the months prior to the most ferocious stock market crash in history and the eruption of the biggest public health crisis of our generation, we witnessed the biggest exodus of corporate CEOs that we have ever seen.  And as you will see below, corporate insiders also sold off billions of dollars worth of shares in their own companies just before the stock market imploded.  In life, timing can be everything, and sometimes people simply get lucky.  But it does seem odd that so many among the corporate elite would be so exceedingly “lucky” all at the same time.  In this article I am not claiming to know the motivations of any of these individuals, but I am pointing out certain patterns that I believe are worth investigating.

One financial publication is using the phrase “the great CEO exodus” to describe the phenomenon that we have been witnessing.  It all started last year when chief executives started resigning in numbers unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  The following was published by NBC News last November…

Chief executives are leaving in record numbers this year, with more than 1,332 stepping aside in the period from January through the end of October, according to new data released on Wednesday. While it’s not unusual to see CEOs fleeing in the middle of a recession, it is noteworthy to see such a rash of executive exits amid robust corporate earnings and record stock market highs.

Last month, 172 chief executives left their jobs, according to executive placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It’s the highest monthly number on record, and the year-to-date total outpaces even the wave of executive exits during the financial crisis.

By the end of the year, an all-time record high 1,480 CEOs had left their posts.

But to most people it seemed like the good times were still rolling at the end of 2019.  Corporate profits were rising and the stock market was setting record high after record high.

Yes, there were lots of signs that the global economy was really slowing down, but most experts were not forecasting an imminent recession.

So why did so many chief executives suddenly decide that it was time to move on?

The following are just a few of the big name CEOs that chose to step down in 2019…

  • Dennis Muilenburg — Boeing

  • United Airlines — Oscar Munoz

  • Alphabet — Larry Page

  • Gap — Art Peck

  • McDonald’s — Steve Easterbrook

  • Wells Fargo — Tim Sloan

  • Under Armour — Kevin Plank

  • PG&E — Geisha Williams

  • Kraft Heinz — Bernardo Hees

  • HP — Dion Weisler

  • Bed, Bath & Beyond — Steven Temares

  • Warner Bros. — Kevin Tsujihara

  • Best Buy — Hubert Joly

  • New York Post — Jesse Angelo

  • Colgate-Palmolive — Ian Cook

  • MetLife — Steven Kandarian

  • eBay — Devin Wenig

  • Nike — Mark Parker

Of course the mass exodus of chief executives did not end there.

In fact, a whopping 219 CEOs stepped down during the month of January 2020 alone.

By then, it was starting to become clear that the coronavirus that was ripping through China could potentially become a major global pandemic, and I certainly can understand why many among the corporate elite would choose to abandon ship at that moment.

Some of these CEOs have made absolutely absurd salaries for many years, and it is much easier to take the money and run than it is to stick around and steer a major corporation through the most difficult global crisis that any of us have ever experienced.

The following are just a few of the well known CEOs that have resigned so far in 2020…

  • Bob Iger, CEO of Disney

  • Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM

  • Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich

  • T-Mobile’s CEO John Legere

  • LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner

  • Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga

  • Keith Block, co-CEO of Salesforce

  • Tidjane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse

  • Hulu CEO Randy Freer

It is important for me to say that I do not have any special insight into the personal motivations of any of these individuals, and every situation is different.

But I do think that it is quite strange that we have seen such an unprecedented corporate exodus at such a critical moment in our history.

Meanwhile, top corporate executives were dumping billions of dollars worth of shares in their own companies just before the market completely cratered.  The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…

Top executives at U.S.-traded companies sold a total of roughly $9.2 billion in shares of their own companies between the start of February and the end of last week, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

The selling saved the executives—including many in the financial industry—potential losses totaling $1.9 billion, according to the analysis, as the S&P 500 stock index plunged about 30% from its peak on Feb. 19 through the close of trading March 20.

In the stock market, you only make money if you get out in time, and many among the corporate elite seem to have impeccable timing.

Perhaps they just got really lucky.  Or perhaps they were reading my articles and understood that COVID-19 was going to cause the global economy to shut down.  In any event, things worked out really well for those that were able to dump their stocks before it was too late.

And it turns out that several members of Congress were also selling stocks just before the market went nuts…

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and three of her Senate colleagues reported selling off stocks worth millions of dollars in the days before the coronavirus outbreak crashed the market, according to reports.

The data is listed on a U.S. Senate website containing financial disclosures from Senate members.

Of course most ordinary Americans were not so “lucky”, and the financial losses for the country as a whole have been absolutely staggering.

The good news is that there was a tremendous rally on Wall Street on Tuesday, and that will provide some temporary relief for investors.

But the number of confirmed coronavirus cases continues to escalate at an exponential rate all over the globe, and this crisis appears to be a long way from over.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 03/25/2020 – 11:00

via ZeroHedge News

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The Dems are the Virus Threatening America

Only in the fevered brain of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could things like forcing the airlines to be carbon neutral, making sure Planned Parenthood qualifies for small business assistance, cancelling the Postal Service’s debt, and requiring nationwide same-day voting be seen as a proper and valid response to the Wuhan Virus crisis that is crushing our economy and killing our people.

People are dying, both from the disease of and the depression and anxiety caused by looming mortgage payments, job loss, and watching their retirement funds built up over a lifetime evaporate. Pelosi wants to make sure boards of corporations assisted in any relief measure are sufficiently diverse and that federal employee unions are given expanded collective bargaining rights. Meanwhile her dawdling increases the death rate from suicide as despair overtakes hope among those who watch their livelihoods and futures slip away. It is likely that more Americans will die from economic anxiety and hardship that from the virus. Poverty kills and so does Nancy Pelosi and her political boy toy Chuck Schumer. Parenthetically, can anyone imagine Harry Reid letting Pelosi telling Senate Democrats what to do?

Americans are dying as we speak because Nancy Pelosi remembers Rahm Emanuel’s adage that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and exploits a global pandemic to achieve her liberal agenda:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s newly announced “relief” proposal, titled the “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act,” cancels the U.S. Postal Service’s $11 billion in debt and gives it $20 billion in cash. It mandates that the head of each federal department or agency “shall submit to Congress a report on the actions taken to increase the use of minority banks and minority credit unions to serve the financial needs of each such department or agency.” It empowers the newly proposed COVID–19 Aid Oversight Panel to collect data on “employee demographics,” “supplier diversity,” “pay equity,” and “corporate board diversity” for any organization that receives federal funds in connection with the coronavirus pandemic….

The Speaker’s “relief” proposal makes early voting available in all 50 states. It mandates that each state must allow same-day voter registration. It has an entire section titled, “Federal employee collective bargaining and official time,” referring to taxpayer-funded unions. It requires that airlines fully offset their carbon emissions. It contains new rules for improving “consumer information regarding release of greenhouse gasses from flights.”…

Early voting? Student loan forgiveness? Offsetting carbon emissions? Bailing out the post office? Policing “corporate board diversity”? These have nothing to do with preventing further economic ruin or COVID-19-related deaths. They are merely items on the Democratic Party’s wish list — issues that excite their left-wing base.

Americans want relief from the Chinese Wuhan virus and Pelosi offers them nothing but Green New Deal pork and carve-outs to key Democratic constituencies. Her goody bag will not cure a single virus patient. It will not resurrect a dying economy. Thank God we elected President Trump, who got our economy going to the point it could survive, at least so far, the impact of this global pandemic. Thank God President Trump imposed a travel ban on a lying and perfidious China while Democrats like Joe Biden were calling him racist and xenophobic. In January, Trump was busying saving American lives while the Democrats were trying to impeach him.

Democrats worry about power and not the American people. They want to control our lives and not save the lives of Americans. Can you imagine what the burden on our tottering health care system would be currently if we had open borders and Medicare for all, including illegal aliens?  Interestingly, Pelosi’s pork-filled pandemic bill, which in includes tax credits for solar panels and wind farms to help fight the virus, also includes some $300 million for foreign refugees under the heading “Department of  State: Migration and Refugee Assistance,” to address  hardships affecting illegal aliens breaking into our country. So much for a bill supposed to protect American citizens, American workers and American lives:

The package calls “for an additional amount for ‘Migration and Refugee Assistance'” of $300 million to “remain available until expended, for necessary expenses to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus: Provided, That such amount is designated by the Congress as being for an emergency requirement pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.”

As Democrats get the recession they prayed for, they want to help it along by burdening the economy with wasteful and expensive junk from their gift bag. They saw an opportunity over the weekend as multiple GOP senators either testing positive for the Chinese virus or were quarantined after possible exposure. Reduced GOP numbers gave Democrats the opportunity to put the squeeze on in pushing their agenda while the economy collapsed and people worried whether they would see tomorrow:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) worked to scupper the phase-three coronavirus relief package on Sunday after Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) told caucus members last week that the bill was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”

Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz observed in response:

The famed quote from Rahm Emanuel, that’s President Obama’s chief of staff: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ Sadly, we’re seeing the embodiment of that cynical approach right now,”… “Because with all the people out of jobs, the Democrats are using this to push — what are they pushing for? Changing the emissions standards on airplanes,” Cruz said. “What the hell do the emissions standards on airplanes have to do with thousands to people dying and millions of people out of work in the coronavirus epidemic?”

It is Pelosi and the Democrats who stand in the way of restoring health to both the American people and the American economy that has provided them the highest standard of living on earth. Democrats are willing to hold our lives hostage and put them at risk to pursue their worthless socialist agenda. They are the pandemic we should fear and fight.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.          

Only in the fevered brain of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could things like forcing the airlines to be carbon neutral, making sure Planned Parenthood qualifies for small business assistance, cancelling the Postal Service’s debt, and requiring nationwide same-day voting be seen as a proper and valid response to the Wuhan Virus crisis that is crushing our economy and killing our people.

People are dying, both from the disease of and the depression and anxiety caused by looming mortgage payments, job loss, and watching their retirement funds built up over a lifetime evaporate. Pelosi wants to make sure boards of corporations assisted in any relief measure are sufficiently diverse and that federal employee unions are given expanded collective bargaining rights. Meanwhile her dawdling increases the death rate from suicide as despair overtakes hope among those who watch their livelihoods and futures slip away. It is likely that more Americans will die from economic anxiety and hardship that from the virus. Poverty kills and so does Nancy Pelosi and her political boy toy Chuck Schumer. Parenthetically, can anyone imagine Harry Reid letting Pelosi telling Senate Democrats what to do?

Americans are dying as we speak because Nancy Pelosi remembers Rahm Emanuel’s adage that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and exploits a global pandemic to achieve her liberal agenda:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s newly announced “relief” proposal, titled the “Take Responsibility for Workers and Families Act,” cancels the U.S. Postal Service’s $11 billion in debt and gives it $20 billion in cash. It mandates that the head of each federal department or agency “shall submit to Congress a report on the actions taken to increase the use of minority banks and minority credit unions to serve the financial needs of each such department or agency.” It empowers the newly proposed COVID–19 Aid Oversight Panel to collect data on “employee demographics,” “supplier diversity,” “pay equity,” and “corporate board diversity” for any organization that receives federal funds in connection with the coronavirus pandemic….

The Speaker’s “relief” proposal makes early voting available in all 50 states. It mandates that each state must allow same-day voter registration. It has an entire section titled, “Federal employee collective bargaining and official time,” referring to taxpayer-funded unions. It requires that airlines fully offset their carbon emissions. It contains new rules for improving “consumer information regarding release of greenhouse gasses from flights.”…

Early voting? Student loan forgiveness? Offsetting carbon emissions? Bailing out the post office? Policing “corporate board diversity”? These have nothing to do with preventing further economic ruin or COVID-19-related deaths. They are merely items on the Democratic Party’s wish list — issues that excite their left-wing base.

Americans want relief from the Chinese Wuhan virus and Pelosi offers them nothing but Green New Deal pork and carve-outs to key Democratic constituencies. Her goody bag will not cure a single virus patient. It will not resurrect a dying economy. Thank God we elected President Trump, who got our economy going to the point it could survive, at least so far, the impact of this global pandemic. Thank God President Trump imposed a travel ban on a lying and perfidious China while Democrats like Joe Biden were calling him racist and xenophobic. In January, Trump was busying saving American lives while the Democrats were trying to impeach him.

Democrats worry about power and not the American people. They want to control our lives and not save the lives of Americans. Can you imagine what the burden on our tottering health care system would be currently if we had open borders and Medicare for all, including illegal aliens?  Interestingly, Pelosi’s pork-filled pandemic bill, which in includes tax credits for solar panels and wind farms to help fight the virus, also includes some $300 million for foreign refugees under the heading “Department of  State: Migration and Refugee Assistance,” to address  hardships affecting illegal aliens breaking into our country. So much for a bill supposed to protect American citizens, American workers and American lives:

The package calls “for an additional amount for ‘Migration and Refugee Assistance'” of $300 million to “remain available until expended, for necessary expenses to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus: Provided, That such amount is designated by the Congress as being for an emergency requirement pursuant to section 251(b)(2)(A)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985.”

As Democrats get the recession they prayed for, they want to help it along by burdening the economy with wasteful and expensive junk from their gift bag. They saw an opportunity over the weekend as multiple GOP senators either testing positive for the Chinese virus or were quarantined after possible exposure. Reduced GOP numbers gave Democrats the opportunity to put the squeeze on in pushing their agenda while the economy collapsed and people worried whether they would see tomorrow:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) worked to scupper the phase-three coronavirus relief package on Sunday after Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) told caucus members last week that the bill was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.”

Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz observed in response:

The famed quote from Rahm Emanuel, that’s President Obama’s chief of staff: ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ Sadly, we’re seeing the embodiment of that cynical approach right now,”… “Because with all the people out of jobs, the Democrats are using this to push — what are they pushing for? Changing the emissions standards on airplanes,” Cruz said. “What the hell do the emissions standards on airplanes have to do with thousands to people dying and millions of people out of work in the coronavirus epidemic?”

It is Pelosi and the Democrats who stand in the way of restoring health to both the American people and the American economy that has provided them the highest standard of living on earth. Democrats are willing to hold our lives hostage and put them at risk to pursue their worthless socialist agenda. They are the pandemic we should fear and fight.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.          

via American Thinker

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More Conservatives Call To Reopen Country as Americans Realize How Much Damage Is Being Done

Is it time to think about reopening the country? Most politicians would say the opposite. In fact, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday that quarantines and business closings to slow the spread of the coronavirus could go on for the better part of a year.

“This is not a short-term situation,” Cuomo said during a news conference in Albany. “This is not a long weekend. This is not a week.

“The timeline — nobody can tell you, it depends on how we handle it — but 40 percent, up to 80 percent of the population will wind up getting this virus, all we’re trying to do is slow the spread. But it will spread. It is that contagious.”

This was, according to Cuomo, “nothing to panic over.”

As former Fox News and NBC News host Megyn Kelly noted, however, this wasn’t something that most New Yorkers were going to countenance.

TRENDING: WHO Updates Statement About Taking Ibuprofen If You Have COVID-19 Symptoms

“New Yorkers are not going to stay quarantined and in shutdown for 9 months. I’ve lived in NY my whole life; I just don’t see that happening,” she tweeted Sunday.

Kelly isn’t alone. Many conservatives are calling for the nation to consider whether it’s time to reopen the nation’s economy.

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On Sunday, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh asked in a tweet why we couldn’t “open the economy up” and “let young and healthy people work and feed themselves and their families,” while quarantining nursing homes and those who are infected and telling “other especially at risk people to remain home for now.”

“The people advocating that we keep these shutdowns going for weeks or months longer simply aren’t grappling with or even acknowledging the human cost of the economic collapse that is certain to follow,” he tweeted Monday.

“They seem to be ignoring that aspect of the issue. And that worries me.”

RELATED: Dems Are Holding the COVID Emergency Relief Bill Hostage for This List of Items – Get Ready To Be Sick

Tom Fitton, head of Judicial Watch, was another who questioned the wisdom of an extended lockdown. Responding Monday to a tweet about Cuomo starting to treat COVID-19 patients with the promising drug combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, he said, “We need to reopen the country.”

In another tweet Monday, responding to news that GOP Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan was ordering nonessential businesses in his state to shutter, Fitton said the order was as problematic as one of the most counterproductive habits we’ve seen in the COVID crisis.

“Shutting down all businesses is the gov’t equivalent of hoarding toilet paper — and far more damaging to the pubic health and welfare,” he wrote.

Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, pointed to a graph of new infections by illness onset from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention as evidence that it was time to reopen the country.

Federalist contributor Jesse Kelly was among the first to bang the drum about the devastating economic damage of the shutdown.

“Dear Politicians,” he tweeted Friday. “As of this moment the public is scared and they’re letting you shut America down. However, we’re about to have unemployment claims in the MILLIONS and their fear is gonna turn to anger. Anger at YOU.

“Let America get back to work. And I mean REALLY soon.”

And then there was the president. In an all-caps tweet Monday, Trump said America “CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”

That said, we’re living through one of the great crises in recent American history. We don’t know the extent of it yet.

However, one of the reasons COVID-19 is one of the great crises is precisely because our economy is frozen in place. Goldman Sachs estimates more unemployment claims were filed last week than at any time on record — 2.25 million, according to CNN.

The government can help us through this time of grave danger. It can also create more danger. We have to carefully balance our priorities here.

Life might not go back to normal immediately, but a timeline needs to be established regarding how we can get back to normalcy as quickly as possible. It doesn’t have to happen all it once — in fact, it almost certainly can’t. Phasing it in needs to be a priority.

Reopening the country right now is almost certainly an overoptimistic proposition. However, on the other end, there’s not any precedent for a nine-month shutdown, nor would Americans countenance it.

If we don’t start talking balance, we could end with a cure that ends up killing us all in other ways.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

via The Western Journal

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Conservative Actor Nick Searcy Rewrites ‘Imagine’ for Self-Righteous Liberal Actors and It’s Epic

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Conservative Actor Nick Searcy Rewrites ‘Imagine’ for Self-Righteous Liberal Actors and It’s Epic

Actor Nick Searcy attends the premiere of FX's "Justified" series finale at ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome on April 13, 2015, in Hollywood, California.Imeh Akpanudosen / Getty ImagesActor Nick Searcy attends the premiere of FX’s “Justified” series finale at ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome on April 13, 2015, in Hollywood, California. (Imeh Akpanudosen / Getty Images)

Imagine being so self-righteous that you think butchering a John Lennon song and posting it on Twitter will make Americans forget your disdain for them during a nationwide self-quarantine.

That’s what a number of Hollywood liberals appeared to do when “Wonder Woman” star Gal Gadot enlisted them for a social media rendition of the 1971 hit “Imagine.”

Thankfully, the left doesn’t have a monopoly on creativity, despite the overwhelming presence of liberals among entertainment’s so-called elite.

It’s obvious they don’t own the rights to talent, either.

Conservative film actor and director Nick Searcy put out his own version of the song on Sunday, slamming his fellow celebrities while simultaneously upstaging their atrocious singing.

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Searcy’s hilarious rendition came days after Gadot posted her video on Instagram last week:

“Hey guys. Day six in self-quarantine. And I’ve got to say that these past few days got me feeling a bit philosophical,” Gadot said.

“You know, this virus has affected the entire world, everyone — doesn’t matter who you are, where you are from, we are all in this together.”

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After saying she was inspired by a video of an Italian musician entertaining his neighbors from the isolation of his balcony, Gadot began the celebrity singalong.

The entire thing was just — really bad.

Even establishment media outlets didn’t quite know what to make of it.

The New York Times described the video as a “multi-celebrity car-crash” that nobody “deserves” to have to listen to.

Being indoors all day can be emotionally taxing, I’ll concede that much to Gadot and her friends.

RELATED: More Conservatives Call To Reopen Country as Americans Realize How Much Damage Is Being Done

But their celebrity serenade missed whatever target it was aiming for by a mile.

Thankfully, Searcy’s “Imagine” rendition is actually worth watching.

The actor plays his own piano, and his lyrics inspire laughter, which is something many people could use at the moment.

“Imagine there no acting, it’s easy if you try. No TV shows or movies, streaming going dry,” Searcy sings. “Imagine all the people reading lots of books.

“Imagine there’s no audience, it isn’t hard to do. You’ve told half of them you hate them, what the hell do you think they’re gonna do?”

“Imagine all the people turning off your show,” Searcy croons.

“You may say I’m a Trumper, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, and go out and buy a gun!”

The “Gosnell” director wrote, “Imagine along with me” in the caption of his Twitter post.

Searcy has proven he is not afraid of taking on Hollywood’s liberal establishment.

In a 2015 interview with The Telegraph, the actor commented on his penchant for pushing the buttons of his fellow actors, simply stating, “I know people have feelings. That’s why I try to hurt them.”

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

via The Western Journal

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Harvard Study Finds COVID-19 Fatality Rate Far Lower Than World Health Org Suggests

A glimmer of hope in the midst of a pandemic that has ground the world to a halt: A new study from Harvard University and University of Hong Kong finds that COVID-19 might have a lower fatality rate than originally suggested.

According to the study published in Nature Medicine last week, only 1.4 percent of people who contracted the novel coronavirus in the epicenter of the disease, Wuhan, died from it.

CNS News reported that the paper was still awaiting peer review.

However, the fatality rate presented by the study was dramatically lower than the World Health Organization’s prediction of a 3.4 percent death rate earlier this month, as well as early predictors of death in Wuhan.

“As of 29 February 2020 there were 79,394 confirmed cases and 2,838 deaths from COVID-19 in mainland China. Of these, 48,557 cases and 2,169 deaths occurred in the epicenter, Wuhan,” the paper’s abstract read.

TRENDING: WHO Updates Statement About Taking Ibuprofen If You Have COVID-19 Symptoms

“A key public health priority during the emergence of a novel pathogen is estimating clinical severity, which requires properly adjusting for the case ascertainment rate and the delay between symptoms onset and death.

“Using public and published information, we estimate that the overall symptomatic case fatality risk (the probability of dying after developing symptoms) of COVID-19 in Wuhan was 1.4% (0.9–2.1%), which is substantially lower than both the corresponding crude or naïve confirmed case fatality risk (2,169/48,557 = 4.5%) and the approximator of deaths/deaths + recoveries (2,169/2,169 + 17,572 = 11%) as of 29 February 2020.”

This is a significant improvement over the numbers predicted by the World Health Organization’s director-general in remarks on March 3.

“While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

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“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected.”

Instead, the researchers from the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that the symptomatic case fatality risk — or sCFR, “the probability of dying after developing symptoms” from the coronavirus — was significantly lower than that.

There weren’t many surprises aside from that, at least if you’ve followed coronavirus science so far.

Older patients, defined in the paper, had an estimated 2.7 percent risk of dying from COVID-19. For those who were between the ages of 15 and 64, estimated risk of death was only 0.5 percent.

For those ages 15-44, low and high estimates were 0.1 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively; those ages 45-64 had estimates of between 0.2 percent and 1.1 percent.

RELATED: Conservative Actor Nick Searcy Rewrites ‘Imagine’ for Self-Righteous Liberal Actors and It’s Epic

The researchers, led by Joseph T. Wu of the University of Hong Kong, noted that since they had “parameterized the model using death rates inferred from projected case numbers (from traveler data) and observed death numbers in Wuhan, the precise fatality risk estimates may not be generalizable to those outside the original epicenter, especially during subsequent phases of the epidemic.

“The experience gained from managing those initial patients and the increasing availability of newer, and potentially better, treatment modalities to more patients would presumably lead to fewer deaths, all else being equal,” the study read.

“Public health control measures widely imposed in China since the Wuhan alert have also kept case numbers down elsewhere, so that their health systems are not nearly as overwhelmed beyond surge capacity, thus again perhaps leading to better outcomes.”

These are all good numbers which provide a glimmer of hope. On the other hand, there’s still a huge gap between death rates in different countries.

For instance, Italy is reporting a death rate of over 9 percent based on a crude confirmed case fatality risk while countries like the United States and Germany are at around 1 percent or lower as of Tuesday morning, according to the numbers from Johns Hopkins University.

Much of this is cultural and some of it has to do with inconsistencies in how deaths are being reported and who’s being tested.

That said, we look for glimmers of hope where we can get them, and this study is certainly one of them.

If the study’s numbers are accurate, it means the death rate for people over the age of 65 in Wuhan was lower than the WHO’s total predicted death rate — 2.7 percent vs. 3.4 percent.

It also means the death rate in total is 2 percentage points lower in Wuhan than what is being predicted for the world.

This isn’t a sign that the coronavirus is less of a problem.

Infection rates are still high and with the variance in death rates around the world, we don’t know where this leads. This is just one city, after all.

Keep indoors.

Keep washing your hands.

Keep a safe distance from people.

However, hope and pray that things aren’t as scary as they seem.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

via The Western Journal

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One of Those Evil Billionaires Bernie Sanders Hates Just Pledged Millions To Help Hospital Workers

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One of Those Evil Billionaires Bernie Sanders Hates Just Pledged Millions To Help Hospital Workers

Bridgewater Associated founder Ray Dalio visits "Mornings with Maria" hosted by Maria Bartiromo at Fox Business Network Studios in New York City on Nov. 30, 2018.Roy Rochlin / Getty ImagesBridgewater Associated founder Ray Dalio and his wife, Barbara, pledged $4 million to help hospital workers pay for child care as well as feed needy families in their home state of Connecticut. (Roy Rochlin / Getty Images)

Choosing billionaires as his villains of choice is a terrible strategy for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, especially now that so many are giving away their fortunes to help those affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

While the Democratic presidential candidate rails against billionaires (it used to be millionaires until he became one) and thinks they shouldn’t even exist, stories about wealthy individuals who are contributing to the cause are popping up every day.

On Monday, the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut, reported another such example as Ray and Barbara Dalio and Dalio Philanthropies pledged $4 million to help hospital workers pay for child care as well as feed needy families in their home state.

The largest portion of the donation will be spent on providing child care for Connecticut health care workers. The $3 million will cover day care expenses for approximately 1,000 children for eight weeks while their parents are at work caring for the sick.

Barbara Dalio said she was moved by the news of hospital workers whose children were suddenly home alone following school closures. “To us, they are heroes. The least we can do is make sure their children are taken care of while they’re on the front lines providing medical care,” she told the Journal Inquirer.

TRENDING: WHO Updates Statement About Taking Ibuprofen If You Have COVID-19 Symptoms

The remaining $1 million will be distributed to Connecticut organizations that will provide enough food for around 35,000 needy residents for 10 weeks.

While Sanders impugns wealthy business leaders as though they somehow cheated the system for a windfall, Ray Dalio is a self-made businessman.

His company, Bridgewater Associates, started in his two-bedroom apartment in New York City shortly after he earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. From those humble beginnings, Dalio built his fortune, which Forbes now pegs at $18 billion.

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Even as the Dalios and their philanthropic organization give millions away, Bridgewater Associates is not immune to the fallout from coronavirus. The company, which is the largest hedge fund firm in the world, was hit hard as its major funds took a tumble along with the markets, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Dalios aren’t the only wealthy philanthropists pitching in to help during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Jack Ma, co-founder of technology giant Alibaba Group, generously donated masks, protective suits and coronavirus testing kits. The first round of donations took off for the United States on March 15.

Business Insider calls Ma the “richest man in China” and reports his net worth at over $38 billion, which is more than enough to raise the ire of the democratic socialist Sanders and his “Bernie Bros.”

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Billionaire Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg also pitched in as he announced Sunday that his company will donate 720,000 respirator masks it had purchased to protect employees during wildfires.

In Italy, where the virus has ravaged the country with nearly 64,000 citizens infected and over 6,000 dead, 20 of the country’s billionaires — including fashion designer Giorgio Armani — have pledged over $44 million to fight coronavirus in their country, according to Forbes.

Billionaires continue to give more than their “fair share” to the effort, compelled not by the government but by their own altruism, giving lie to Sanders’ line of attack.

Bernie’s tired communist theories were already showing signs of wear long before the coronavirus reached American shores, but now Sanders himself has become an anachronism.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

via The Western Journal

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WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Mr. President, Call It Extortion

By Wayne Allyn Root

Remember when Rahm Emanuel let the secret out of the bag, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

Just days ago, South Carolina Democrat Congressman James Clyburn repeated almost the exact same words to his Democrat colleagues.

Clyburn said, “this is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” Meaning he wants to use a life and death Coronavirus pandemic to push through the extreme, radical, socialist agenda of Democrats, while everyone in Washington DC (including President Trump) is desperate and distracted.

How disgusting and disgraceful.

This latest 1400 page bill put together by Nancy Pelosi and Democrats is everything everyday Americans hate about government. It is the very definition of the worst of the DC Swamp. It is filled with totally unrelated pork to pay off Pelosi’s and Democrat’s deep-pocket supporters. It is filled with their socialist wish list that could neverpass under normal circumstances.

But Pelosi and Democrats expect it to pass by holding you and me hostage. They know the US economy is about to collapse- literally. They know we are on the verge of a Great Depression. Actually, worse than a Great Depression. We are on the verge of 30% or higher unemployment.

That’s higher than anything we saw in the depths of the Great Depression.

Democrats know almost every small business in America is on the verge of bankruptcy. They must know many proud small business owners are thinking of suicide. This is a national disaster of epic proportions.

And all Democrats can think of is loading the bill to rescue the US economy with extreme, radical, ultra-liberal poison pills. If it passes, out of desperation and distraction, they get all the DC Swamp pork and payoffs they ever dreamed of. Plus, as a bonus, their socialist agenda. But if it doesn’t pass, they’ll blame President Trump and Republicans.

How cynical can you get?

What’s in Pelosi’s 1400 page bill? Arts funding; free Obamaphones; strict new affirmative action and diversity rules for corporate Boards; disgraceful giveaways to government employee unions; massive new draconian environmental rules; elimination of the Postal Service’s debt; and forcing government to favor banks owned by minorities. Add in nationwide “ballot harvesting” (ie Democrat voter fraud used to steal elections).

What does any of this have to do with a Coronavirus pandemic, or a health crisis, or an economic collapse?

In short, Pelosi’s version of a ”rescue bill” includes every extreme, radical, socialist and far left proposal Democrats have ever dreamed of. Smack dab in the middle of the worst crisis in US history.

Isn’t that called extortion? Democrats are putting a gun to the heads of President Trump, the GOP Senate and every American. Congratulations Ms. Pelosi. The Gambino Crime Family couldn’t have done a better job.

Sadly, the Republicans are either wimps who will just roll-over in fear of the media saying something bad about them, or they are swamp creatures themselves who will add even more pork to the bill.

My advice to President Trump: Call it out. Read every offensive clause to the American people in an emergency national address to the nation. Recite the pork and payoffs. Call it what it is: mafia style extortion and fraud.

Don’t give in to extortion, Mr. President. Call them out by name with every tool and media outlet you’ve got available. Call Pelosi and Democrats exactly what they are: “Swamp Creatures who don’t care about the American people, who want to take advantage of the American people, in a life or death crisis of a lifetime.”

Mr. President, let the American people know you will veto any bill that contains even one piece of pork- from Democrats or Republicans. Let them know that the only bill that is getting past you is one that directly helps the American people, the great American middle class, small business right NOW. Say it loud and say it often.

President Trump, the majority of people are behind you. We saw it during the trade talks when farmers were being hurt. Democrats accused President Trump of abandoning and destroying farmers. Did farmers leave the President? No, they stood strong and proudly supported him. Polls showed the highest support ever from farmers.

The same will be the case now.

Mr. President, go directly to the American people. Ignore the fake news mainstream media, as most Americans already do. Name names, shoot from the hip, let it fly, tell raw truth, take no prisoners. Call this what it is- mafia style extortion and fraud by the DC Swamp. Compare Peolisi and Democrats to the Gambino Crime Family. I know, my apologies for insulting the Gambinos.

The American people will stand behind you, Mr. President.

DRAIN THE SWAMP!

Wayne Allyn Root is the host of “The Wayne Allyn Root Show” on Newsmax TV, nightly at 11 PM ET/8 PM Pacific, found on every cable system in USA, plus DirecTV and Dish,

at https://ift.tt/2zOf79k He is also a nationally syndicated radio host of “Wayne Allyn Root: Raw & Unfiltered” found at https://ift.tt/2g4uzmV

The post WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Mr. President, Call It Extortion appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Despite Dealing With Crisis, Trump Finds Time To Join 700 Pastors To Pray

On Friday, despite the fact that President Trump has to spend all his time dealing with the decisions to be made vis-a-vis the coronavirus, he heard that Vice President Mike Pence was about to join a conference call with 700 pastors and asked to join them so they could pray together.

As Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which arranged the conference call, noted, Pence stated, “When I told the president I was going to be speaking to all of you,  [he was] in the midst of an extraordinarily busy day. [But] he looked at me and said, ‘I have to find time. I need to find time.’” Pence noted, “The prayers of the people on this call mean [everything] to him…”

Perkins stated that Trump began by commenting that tt’s a “wild world,” that the coronavirus “came upon us so suddenly. And we were doing better than we’ve ever done before as a country in terms of the economy — and then, all of the sudden, we got hit with this. So we had to close it down. We’re actually paying a big price to close it down. Never happened before.” But then the president remained optimistic, saying, “I think we’re going to come back stronger than ever before.”

Trump told the pastors, “I want to thank you for praying for our country and for those who are sick. You do such an incredible job. You’re very inspirational people. And I’m with you all the way. You know that you see what we’ve done for right to life and all of the things that we’ve been working so hard together. I’ve been working with many of the people on the call. Many, many of the people. We’ve had tremendous support. But we are going to get over this.”

Perkins asked Trump for suggestions as to what Americans should pray for. Trump responded, “The health of the country; the strength of our country. We were doing something amazing, and then one day, it just ended. So that would be it.” After Perkins prayed for the president, Trump offered, “You know, you mentioned the word ‘stamina.’ We do need stamina. So thank you very much.”

After Trump left the call, Pence stated, “The president and I couldn’t be more inspired by the way communities of faith have been stepping up … You know, the president has said many times that we are going to we’re going to bring the full resources of our of our federal government to bear on this. But by all of you being here today, and by the energies and ministries that you have [used to response] to the coronavirus in your communities, you’re really putting hands and feet on your faith. And you are demonstrating what the president today called ‘the greatness of American character’ …And we want to urge you on. We want a full partnership with you in sharing best practices again.”

Pence encouraged Americans to pray for the experts counseling the administration. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson added, “God is merciful… And we will get through this.” He opined that the crisis Americans face may be an opportunity for God to show His power that will “help us return to Him.” He concluded, “God still has His hand on this nation. And He has His hand on all of us.”

 

via The Daily Wire

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21 Million Chinese Cellphone Users Disappear in Three Months of Pandemic

The opacity of the Chinese Communist government obliges responsible outside observers to look for clues to the truth of the coronavirus epidemic, instead of merely repeating official information without question.

The official count from China is 3,277 fatalities from 81,171 infections as of Tuesday, but the Epoch Times noted the troubling disappearance of some 21 million cell phone accounts in China over the past three months – an unprecedented decline that hints at more fatalities than Beijing is prepared to admit.

It should be stated at the outset that we should not be forced to read tea leaves to figure out what really happened in China, especially in the virus epicenter of Hubei province and the city of Wuhan, where Chinese officials are currently making claims of zero new infections that no one seriously believes. While more responsible governments issue troubling warnings of a second wave of infections, severe enough to prompt the re-imposition of quarantine procedures that were only recently lifted, China claims it has no second wave and all of its new coronavirus cases are imported.

With that in mind, the Epoch Times thought it was a bit odd for 21 million Chinese cell phones to abruptly disappear, given that cell phone usage has been increasing constantly in China for years, and phones have been touted as an important tool for containing the coronavirus epidemic:

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on March 19 the number of phone users in each province in February. Compared with the previous announcement, which was released on Dec. 18, 2019, for November 2019 data, both cellphone and landline users dropped dramatically. In the same period the year before, the number of users increased.

The number of cellphone users decreased from 1.600957 billion to 1.579927 billion, a drop of 21.03 million. The number of landline users decreased from 190.83 million to 189.99 million, a drop of 840,000.

In the previous February, the number increased. According to MIIT, the number of cellphone users increased in February 2019 from 1.5591 billion to 1.5835 billion, which is 24.37 million more. The number of landline users increased from 183.477 million to 190.118 million, which is 6.641 million more.

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s population at the end of 2019 was 4.67 million larger than in 2018, reaching 1.40005 billion.

The article went on to postulate that some of the landlines might have been shut down as a consequence of the coronavirus quarantines, particularly lines used by shuttered business operations, but the sheer magnitude of the cell phone user decline makes it more difficult to explain. China Mobile, the nation’s largest carrier, reported gaining 3.7 million new accounts in December but then losing over 8 million in January and February, months in which it posted gains of 3.5 million users the previous year.

The Epoch Times considered several explanations for the loss of users, such as migrant workers who kept different cell phones for their home and work cities – necessary due to some of China’s regulations on phone service – abandoning the work phone because it was not needed during the quarantine period, or people generally canceling their phone service because they wanted to save money during the hard months.

On the other hand, the government is currently requiring citizens to use their cell phones to generate “health codes” so their movements can be tracked and permission to travel can be restricted to healthy individuals, so as U.S.-based commentator Tang Jiangyuan put it, it is effectively “impossible for a person to cancel his cellphone.”

“Dealing with the government for pensions and social security, buying train tickets, shopping … no matter what people want to do, they are required to use cell phones,” Tang noted.

The New York Times explained just how heavily Chinese authorities are leaning on those cell phones to monitor their population, and not just for coronavirus infections:

The Times’s analysis found that as soon as a user grants the software access to personal data, a piece of the program labeled “reportInfoAndLocationToPolice” sends the person’s location, city name and an identifying code number to a server. The software does not make clear to users its connection to the police. But according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency and an official police social media account, law enforcement authorities were a crucial partner in the system’s development.

While Chinese internet companies often share data with the government, the process is rarely so direct. In the United States, it would be akin to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using apps from Amazon and Facebook to track the coronavirus, then quietly sharing user information with the local sheriff’s office.

The system, which relies on a unit of the immense Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, assigns users a green, yellow, or red “health code” in the style of a traffic light. Predictably, Chinese citizens find the opaque system cryptic and frightening, since the government has not explained exactly how it works.

“In some cities, residents now have to register their phone numbers with an app to take public transportation,” the Times added.

At the beginning of March, the so-called Alipay Health Code system had been launched in the city of Hangzhou, expanded to 200 other cities, and was on its way to a complete nationwide rollout. The rollout ran into some hitches over the following weeks, from technical glitches to confusion caused by local governments adding their own health codes to the already intimidating system. 

A correspondent writing for Bloomberg News on March 18 reported using the system and said it was in the process of being “rolled out nationwide at railway stations, restaurants, pharmacies, and more.” Other reports in China have noted how cell phones are ubiquitous there and are employed for everything from accessing public and commercial resources to telecommuting to school during the coronavirus lockdown.

With this in mind, it might not be completely impossible to get by in Chinese cities without a cell phone at the moment, but it seems unlikely that a huge number of citizens would choose this moment to get rid of their phones.

“Lacking data, the real death toll in China is a mystery. The cancellation of 21 million cellphones provides a data point that suggests the real number may be far higher than the official number,” the Epoch Times concluded.

via Breitbart News

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After Ten Deaths, India Puts 1.3 Billion Citizens Into Lockdown for 21 Days

NEW DELHI (AP) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a “total lockdown” in the country of 1.3 billion people during a televised address Tuesday night, the most extensive stay-at-home order yet in the world’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

The 21-day lockdown was set to begin at midnight.

“To save India and every Indian, there will be a total ban on venturing out of your homes,” Modi said, adding that if the county failed to manage the next 21 days, it would be set back by 21 years.

Indian health officials have reported 469 actives cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 10 deaths.

via Breitbart News

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