Month: April 2020

Update (0400ET): Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s prime minister, said today that after taking a "flexible" approach to restricting movements within its borders, the country’s coronavirus measures were "not good enough."

Lofven, who has been PM since 2014 as part of a various coalitions, said previous governments and parties were responsible for the lack of equipment.

"All parties have a responsibility in that, because [civil defence] was something that was phased out gradually after the Cold War, so that’s three decades we’re talking about. Since then, many governments have contributed to this."

A spokesman for the prime minister said last week:

"We want measures that work in the long run, since this pandemic likely will continue for months."

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Authored by Rob Slane via TheBlogMire.com,

So far as I am aware, Sweden remains the only major Western country that has not imposed a strict lockdown on its citizens to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak. Other than a ban on gatherings of 50 or more people, and advice such as over-70s being urged to stay at home, Swedish schools, shops, restaurants and pubs all remain open. It almost seems to me that the Government there has decided to treat grown adults like they are … well grown adults.

However, despite being a sovereign nation, with the right to set its own policy, it appears that this is not acceptable to the “international community”, and the Swedish Government is coming under huge pressure to change course. The World Health Organization (WHO), for instance, recently called for the nation to impose more restrictions, saying that it is “imperative” that Sweden:

“increase measures to control spread of the virus, prepare and increase capacity of the health system to cope, ensure physical distancing and communicate the why and how of all measures to the population.”

Donald Trump also felt the need to give his two cents as well:

“Sweden did that, the herd, they call it the herd. Sweden’s suffering very, very badly.”

But is Sweden really suffering very, very badly in comparison to other countries that have imposed severe restrictions? Is it really imperative that they change course and fall in line with what most other countries have done? Or do these calls proceed from a different motive entirely: a fear that Sweden’s comparatively measured approach of dealing with Covid-19 without introducing the most draconian civil restrictions ever seen and without crashing its economy might actually work and in so doing show the response of other countries to have been wildly disproportionate?

This is not something we should leave to a matter of opinion, so let’s instead look at what the data tells us. Below are four charts comparing the UK, which went into lockdown on 23rd March, with Sweden and its far more relaxed approach. All the data on these charts comes from the official reports from both countries up to and including 11th April (here and here). It comes with the caveats that of course this is by no means final and the situation may well change to produce a very different picture in the coming weeks, nor is it possible to know with any certainty whether both countries are counting their cases and deaths in a way that is consistent with one another. Nevertheless, since it is from official data sources, it is the best guide we currently have to what is happening in both countries.

(Note: Charts 1 and 3 compare cases and deaths in absolute terms. Charts 2 and 4 take into account the relative population sizes (UK = 67.9 million; Sweden = 10.10 million) by looking at the number of cases per million people).

Chart 1

Chart 2

Chart 3

Chart 4

(Note: In terms of timelines, Sweden reported its first Covid-cases eight days before the UK (15 on 3rd March, compared with 77 on 11th March in the UK), whilst the UK recorded its first deaths two days before Sweden (10 on 14th March, compared with 4 for Sweden on 16th March)).

Looking at these charts, particularly charts 2 and 4 which are a like-for-like comparison, as at 11th April, I think we can say the following:

1. In terms of reported cases, the data shows no evidence that the UK lockdown approach has been any more successful than the Swedish approach. In fact, per million people, Sweden has had fewer cases than the UK.

2. In terms of recorded deaths, again there is no evidence so far that the UK lockdown approach has been any more successful than the Swedish approach. In fact, per million people, Sweden has had fewer deaths than the UK.

As I say, the situation may well change as the days and weeks go by, but so far, according to the official data from both countries, the approach taken in the UK of keeping people in their homes and closing down huge swathes of the economy, has not had any more positive effect on reducing Covid-19 cases or deaths than the Swedish approach. Yet it will put millions out of work, it will destroy thousands of businesses, it will lead to a massive deterioration of mental health, it will lead to an increase in suicides, it will lead to old people dying on their own without their carers, and it already has led to an increase of state power on a scale never seen before. There is that!

Update (1620ET): According to Defense One editor Kevin Baron, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that the DoD has looked into the theory that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan laboratory.

"There’s a lot of rumor and speculation in a wide variety of media, blog sites, etc.," said Milley. "It should be no surprise to you that we have taken a keen interest in that, and we have had a lot of intelligence take a hard look at that."

"At this point it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, but we do not know for sure," Milley added.

Those words are going to fuel a lifetime of additional conspiracy theories and speculation. But the tone of his voice was pretty dismissive of the idea, and he stressed that they’ve looked hard. "Hard." And "the weight of evidence leans towards natural."

— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) April 14, 2020

Keep in mind that several theories are floating around with varying degrees of evidence to support them.

COVID-19 is a natural bat coronavirus which was studied in Wuhan and accidentally leaked from the biolab.

COVID-19 is an engineered bioweapon which either escaped or was released on purpose from the Wuhan laboratory. 

COVID-19 was created in the US at Ft. Detrick (USAMRIID) and the deep state released it last October to frame China and derail the global economy.

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The US State Department received two cables from US Embassy officials in 2018 warning of inadequate safety at a Wuhan, China biolab conducting ‘risky studies’ on bat coronaviruses, according to the Washington Post, which notes that the cables have "fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus."

A US delegation led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health took the unusual step of repeatedly visiting the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) – which had become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (BSL-4) in 2015. The last of the visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018, was documented on WIV’s website and subsequently scrubbed (archive).

US officials were so concerned by what they saw that they warned of a potential pandemic stemming from the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses.

"During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory," reads a January, 2018 cable drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with scientists from the WIV.

Interestingly, the Chinese researchers were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, however the Chinese had requested additional help. Consequently, the cables warned that the US should give the WIV additional support because of how dangerous the research on bat coronaviruses was.

"Most importantly," the cable warns, "the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention."

Shi and other researchers have strongly denied that the new virus known as 2019-nCoV came from WIV, after her team was the first to publicly report it.

According to the report, the bat coronavirus research was aimed at preventing the next SARS-like pandemic "by anticipating how it might emerge," however according to the report "even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks."

In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments.

WaPo is careful to note that ‘many‘ have said there’s no evidence that COVID-19 was engineered, and that concensus is that it came from animals, "that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from a lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals," according to Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at UC Berkeley.

"The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected," he said.

Meanwhile, similar concerns remain about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention Lab – a level 2 biosecurity facility, while the Chinese government refuses to say whether either lab was involved.

Notably, the Wuhan CDC is located roughly 900 feet from the wet market which accounted for roughly half of the new COVID-19 cases late last year.

That said, the report notes that the wet market didn’t sell bats – and the first known patient had no known connection to the market. That said, there’s nothing to say that an employee from the Chinese CDC didn’t accidentally infect themselves and go shopping for meat during the virus’s well known asymptomatic incubation period.

According to WaPo, citing sources familiar with the cables, the US embassy wanted to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, "especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses."

"The cable was a warning shot," said one US official. "They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on."

Next, WaPo moves on to the ‘blame the Trump admin’ phase of the report, noting that "no extra assistance to the labs was provided by the US government in response to the cables" which "began to circulate again inside the administration over the past two months as officials debated whether the lab could be the origin of the pandemic and what the implications would be for the U.S. pandemic response and relations with China."

Of note, the Obama administration ‘paused’ funding to the WIV, which was lifted a year into Trump’s presidency according to the National Review.

"The idea that is was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side," said one WaPo source.

Meanwhile, the CCP has put a complete lockdown on information related to the origins of the virus – refusing to provide US experts with samples collected from the earliest cases, and quickly shutting down the Shanghai lab which published COVID-19’s genome on January 11th for "rectification."

As WaPo notes, "Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared."

And now – considering the source of the report, the bat’s out of the bag and the official narrative has been set – which we were called conspiracy theorists for positing three months ago.