A multimillion-dollar Pentagon project is now under investigation for allegedly sending money to a lab in Wuhan, China. At the heart of the program is a New York-based company, EcoHealth Alliance, that has become caught in another controversial program shut down with the National Institute of Health, and was also working on coronavirus research programs with the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology and Chinese virus scientist Shi Zhengli.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, says the SARS-CoV-2 virus sweeping the U.S. cannot be shut down by simply isolation or social distancing. Instead, the virus will spread until herd imminity kicks in.
“This damn virus is going to keep going until it infects everybody it possibly can,” Osterholm said Monday during a meeting with the USA Today editorial board. “It surely won’t slow down until it hits 60 to 70%” of the population. That’s the number that would create herd immunity and end the spread of the virus, he said.
Herd immunity kicks in when a majority of people have been exposed to a virus and thus built up antibodies, which — for many viruses but not all — means people cannot be reinfected.
Osterholm warned that a second wave could reappear in the fall, just as the flu disappears for the most part during hotter and more humid seasons.
“It’s the big peak that’s really going to do us in,” he said. “As much pain, suffering, death and economic disruption we’ve had, there’s been 5 to 20% of the people infected, … That’s a long ways to get to 60 to 70%.”
But the virus is most dangerous to the elderly. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in it’s latest filing on May 6, put the “provisional death count” at 44,016. The age of death breaks down like this:
And because the coronavirus can be asymptomatic in as many as 50% of those infected, there are likely millions who have already had the virus but didn’t even know.
An antibody study was conducted last month in New York City and found that 1 in 5 (21.2%) of residents have already been infected with the coronavirus. There are 8.5 million people in New York City, so that would mean 1.8 million New Yorkers have had the virus.
At the time of the study, there were 16,249 deaths in the city attributed to COVID-19, which means the death rate in the city was 0.89% at the time — far lower than reports in the U.S. media.
Results of antibody survey last month in Los Angeles also found as many as 442,000 Los Angeles County residents might have already been infected with the coronavirus by early April, a number far higher than the 8,000 cases confirmed at the time. The survey suggested that the death rate from the virus could be as low as 0.18% of COVID-19 patients, which means the actual death rate in the city is far lower than reported.
Meanwhile, professor Michael Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2013, says the lockdowns ordered by state governors were a complete overreaction to COVID-19 and may actually backfire.
Levitt, who teaches structural biology at the Stanford School of Medicine, has been analyzing the COVID-19 outbreak from a statistical perspective ever since January, according to Unherd.com.
He says that despite all the predictions, the data show that the COVID-19 outbreak never actually grew exponentially, which means the draconian lockdown measures were most likely unnecessary.
According to UnHerd:
His observation is a simple one: that in outbreak after outbreak of this disease, a similar mathematical pattern is observable regardless of government interventions. After around a two week exponential growth of cases (and, subsequently, deaths) some kind of break kicks in, and growth starts slowing down. The curve quickly becomes “sub-exponential.”
This may seem like a technical distinction, but its implications are profound. The ‘unmitigated’ scenarios modelled by (among others) Imperial College, and which tilted governments across the world into drastic action, relied on a presumption of continued exponential growth — that with a consistent R number of significantly above 1 and a consistent death rate, very quickly the majority of the population would be infected and huge numbers of deaths would be recorded. But Professor Levitt’s point is that that hasn’t actually happened anywhere, even in countries that have been relatively lax in their responses.
The Chinese regime has launched a new wave of disinformation, this time firing back against potential investigations into the origin of the virus by claiming the United States was warned, the CCP held off the virus, and by using hostile statements while also calling for civility.
With protective measures – social distancing and others – the deaths will have spread out over a longer period of time and will have destroyed our economy, jobs, businesses and wealth. More or less, we end with the same-similar numbers of deaths.
The result are: the dead die poorer and no longer hungry, having left the living much poorer and very hungry.
This too, is based on research conducted at the Wuhan, China, Level IV biolab facility.
The Hong Kong protests are starting again, although social distancing laws are still in place. Authorities recently arrested close to 200 protesters, including a local official, who are continuing their protests against the encroachment of mainland China’s laws and influence.
Despite an order to close and threats to burn the place down, Jesse Arellano decided to keep his restaurant, C&C Breakfast and Korean Kitchen in Castle Rock, open on Monday.
“I had one person call me a Nazi and a white supremacist, and I said well I’m not even white so… I’m Spanish and Korean. We’ve had people say they want to burn the place down and hope we all die from coronavirus,” Arellano told CBS-4 in Denver.
The owner said his restaurant is big enough to allow for social distancing as mandated by the states Democratic governor.
“Look around, look how much space we have here. We have a huge parking lot you know? We’ve got huge parks. We’ve got all this free air and what we’re going to do is carry bacteria in our masks? That doesn’t seem logical to me,” he said.
Over the weekend, Arellano reopened his restaurant, in defiance of a state order that demanded all restaurants close amid the coronavirus pandemic. The restaurant was packed with customers celebrating Mother’s Day, as Arellano condemned “the overreach of our governor in Colorado!!”
“We are standing for America, small businesses, the Constitution and against the overreach of our governor in Colorado!!” the restaurant said in a Twitter post directed to President Trump.
@realDonaldTrump We are standing for America, small businesses, the Constitution and against the overreach of our governor in Colorado!! https://t.co/dfzdR7bKFe
— C&C Coffee and Kitchen (@cccoffeekitchen) May 9, 2020
The owner said Monday, when his restaurant was again packed: “We need to start doing something about this before we all crash and burn. I know there’s a lot of restaurants here shutting their doors. We’re losing a lot of our very small, interesting cultural restaurants. We’re losing all those.”
“You know there’s lies. Dang lies… it’s statistics. The projection said 100,000 people are going to die in April that didn’t happen. The numbers you know, they keep going down and you know, we keep getting more restrictive it seems backwards to me,” Arellano said.
The governor’s office demanded the restaurant be closed. “These restaurants are not only breaking the law, they are endangering the lives of their staff, customers, and community,” deputy press secretary Shelby Wieman said in a statement.
“Under Safer at Home, restaurants, food courts, cafes, coffeehouses, and other similar places of public accommodation offering food or beverage for on-premises consumption are still closed. Delivery and drive-up service is available. Coloradans can contact their local public health department if they believe someone is violating Safer at Home.”
A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment told The Post that violating the state’s order is a misdemeanor that is punishable by a fine of $1,000 or up to a year in jail.
“Authorities also have said restaurants could have their licenses revoked for violating the order. Colorado residents are required to follow the statewide public health order that created guidelines for how businesses can reopen as Colorado enters the ‘safer-at-home’ phase of the state’s response to the novel coronavirus pandemic,” The Denver Post reported.
“Under that order, restaurants, cafes, bars and coffee shops cannot offer dine-in services until at least May 26, but can fill orders for delivery and takeout as long as they follow social-distancing protocols. Polis on Friday said he’d like to see Colorado’s restaurants reopen by the end of May, if not before Memorial Day.”
And at the dead center of it all is Eric Schmidt. Well before Americans understood the threat of Covid-19, Schmidt had been on an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign pushing precisely the “Black Mirror” vision of society that Cuomo has just empowered him to build. At the heart of this vision is seamless integration of government with a handful of Silicon Valley giants — with public schools, hospitals, doctor’s offices, police, and military all outsourcing (at a high cost) many of their core functions to private tech companies.
Each crisis in the 21st century has been aggressively and ruthlessly wielded into a massive wealth and power grab by the American oligarchy and national security state. The big power grab following 9/11 centered around whittling away constitutional rights via mass surveillance in the name of “keeping us safe”, while the money grab after last decade’s financial crisis concentrated wealth and assets into fewer hands while entrenching financial feudalism and making the Federal Reserve and mega banks even more powerful.
Despite the success of this diabolical and intentional concentration of money and power, there’s still too much privacy, freedom and independent wealth around for the imperial oligarchy to feel comfortable. As such, the current pandemic is being used to put the finishing touches on whatever little political and economic freedom remains in these United States.
The lessons learned from prior crises are being rolled out simultaneously this time around while people remain incapacitated at home due to Covid-19. The 2008/09 financial collapse taught those in power they can get away with unprecedented, unaccountable theft during an economic and stock market crash. Similarly, 9/11 demonstrated people will relinquish civil liberties without much protest when immersed in a state of fear.
As such, a new round of society-wide economic pillaging has occurred and is ongoing, while at the same time an equally nefarious agenda to sell you on a completely new way of living — conveniently brought to you by technocratic big tech oligarchs — is in the works.
During moments of heightened confusion and fear, the public is sold and conditioned in subtle ways to accept some new reality they never asked for or wanted. The “smart city” appears to be a key oligarch bucket list item this time around, and I’ve started focusing more attention on it after watching the following exceptionally creepy clip from Reuters.
5G technology could soon become the foundation for greener, safer, more sustainable cities worldwide pic.twitter.com/0eQIEr1qvA
There’s a desperate and deliberate attempt to emphasize how “smart cities” will benefit humanity and solve a plethora of problems, but the video’s creep factor simply cannot be ignored. Significantly, the plan here seems to be to just go ahead and create smart cities without asking permission from the residents who live there. Thanks to governor Andrew Cuomo, it appears New Yorkers will be big tech oligarchs’ first guinea pigs.
NEW: @NYGovCuomo has tapped @Google CEO @ericschmidt to head a new Blue Ribbon Commission reimagining New York State’s current systems of health and education.
Health care and education represent very big areas of human civilization. Who voted for Eric Schmidt to mold and micromanage New York as if it’s his own personal startup?
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who joined the governor’s briefing to announce that he will be heading up a blue-ribbon commission to reimagine New York state’s post-Covid reality, with an emphasis on permanently integrating technology into every aspect of civic life.
“The first priorities of what we’re trying to do,” Schmidt said, “are focused on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband. … We need to look for solutions that can be presented now, and accelerated, and use technology to make things better.” Lest there be any doubt that the former Google chair’s goals were purely benevolent, his video background featured a framed pair of golden angel wings.
Just one day earlier, Cuomo had announced a similar partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop “a smarter education system.” Calling Gates a “visionary,” Cuomo said the pandemic has created “a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates’s] ideas … all these buildings, all these physical classrooms — why with all the technology you have?” he asked, apparently rhetorically.
It has taken some time to gel, but something resembling a coherent Pandemic Shock Doctrine is beginning to emerge. Call it the “Screen New Deal.” Far more high-tech than anything we have seen during previous disasters, the future that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up treats our past weeks of physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives, but as a living laboratory for a permanent — and highly profitable — no-touch future.
So we get a pandemic and suddenly the governor of New York is like yeah let’s just let a couple billionaires and their organizations decide what society needs to look like. It’s as brazen as it is dangerous.
In my last piece, I warned that the imperial oligarchy would try to sell the public on the ludicrous idea we need to become China to defeat China. Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt hasn’t been particularly shy about his apparent desire to recreate China’s surveillance state in the U.S.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center recently got access through a Freedom of Information Act request to a presentation made by Schmidt’s NSCAI one year ago, in May 2019. Its slides make a series of alarmist claims about how China’s relatively lax regulatory infrastructure and its bottomless appetite for surveillance are causing it to pull ahead of the U.S. in a number of fields, including “AI for medical diagnosis,” autonomous vehicles, digital infrastructure, “smart cities,” ride-sharing, and cashless commerce.
The reasons given for China’s competitive edge are myriad, ranging from the sheer volume of consumers who shop online; “the lack of legacy banking systems in China,” which has allowed it to leapfrog over cash and credit cards and unleash “a huge e-commerce and digital services market” using “digital payments”; and a severe doctor shortage, which has led the government to work closely with tech companies like Tencent to use AI for “predictive” medicine. The slides note that in China, tech companies “have the authority to quickly clear regulatory barriers while American initiatives are mired in HIPPA compliance and FDA approval.”
More than any other factor, however, the NSCAI points to China’s willingness to embrace public-private partnerships in mass surveillance and data collection as a reason for its competitive edge.The presentation touts China’s “Explicit government support and involvement e.g. facial recognition deployment.” It argues that “surveillance is one of the ‘first-and-best customers’ for Al” and further, that “mass surveillance is a killer application for deep learning.”
A slide titled “State Datasets: Surveillance = Smart Cities” notes that China, along with Google’s main Chinese competitor, Alibaba, are racing ahead.
As I write this, the American public is being manipulated into accepting a dystopian surveillance technocracy in the name of defeating China and a virus. It’s as evil and insane as it sounds, but they’re absolutely going for it.
While this all sounds inevitable and beyond our control, it’s really not. The ability to do this stuff relies on people being so scared and confused they’ll accept anything. As such, it’s imperative to understand what the agenda is and then refuse to accept it. At the very least, demand a citywide referendum on any proposed “smart city” implementation. The idea that society should suddenly be “reimagined” by a handful of billionaires simply due to a pandemic is the opposite of freedom and self-determination. It is straight up authoritarian oligarchy and as anti-American as you get. Reject this maniacal process with everything you’ve got.
If your entire way of life can be suddenly “reimagined” around you without your consent simply because some governor snaps his fingers, you’re little more than a slave on someone else’s plantation. As described in a recent article, we can’t just object to what the topdown centralizers want for us, we also need an alternative vision. I think that vision should center around ideas of localism and decentralization.
The best way for me to describe 2020 is we’re all walking through some sort of portal. On the other side could be a hellish centralized surveillance slave panopticon, but we could also create a localized, decentralized human renaissance.
If we fail to have our own vision, if we fail to have the courage to stand up and create the world we want via individual action, others will be more than happy to decide the future for us.
As you can see, they’re already working on it.
* * *
Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.
As Michiganders continue to defy her orders, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lashed out at residents on Monday, saying the coronavirus lockdown is “not optional.”
Whitmer was asked about business owners and residents “doubting” her authority to enforce executive orders.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: “These executive orders are not a suggestion. They’re not optional. They’re not helpful hints.” pic.twitter.com/ImffRfwPyb
She claimed to know how “frustrating” the situation is, before cautioning “I expect people to follow the law.
“These executive orders are not a suggestion. They’re not optional. They’re not helpful hints.”
Owosso barber Karl Manke has become a like folk hero in the movement to reopen the state. The 77-year-old Manke has refused to close his shop, despite repeated orders to do so.
“He just wants to work,” Manke’s attorney, David Kallman, said, according to the Lansing State Journal.
“And he wants to do it in a safe and responsible way.”
The Michigan attorney general sought a temporary retraining order against Manke on behalf of Whitmer, but was denied by a Shiawassee County judge.
Circuit Court Judge Matthew Stewart refused to sign the order before a hearing.
Meanwhile, Shiawassee County Sheriff Brian BeGole said his department would not enforce Whitmer’s orders.
The Sheriff of Shiawassee County has publicly announced his department will not enforce the Governor’s current executive orders! This is the county where Karl the Barber Manke’s shop is located. We are going to win this fight.#StandUpMichiganpic.twitter.com/0c7PiOGMbd
“With limited resources, staffing and facilities, our priority focus will be on enforcing duly passed laws for the protection of Shiawassee County citizens,” BeGole wrote in a public letter.
“I have decided, within my authority, that our office cannot and will not divert our primary resources and efforts towards enforcement of the Governor Whitmer’s executive orders.”
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also the host of the syndicated “Kyle Olson Show,” found on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays.Follow him on Twitter andlike him on Facebook.
Report: Nearly 100 Celebrities Who Were Outraged About Kavanaugh Have Gone Silent on Biden Allegations
Albert L. Ortega / Getty ImagesTalk show hosts Ellen Degeneres and Jimmy Kimmel are among the celebrities who have very different stances on the claims about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh compared with the allegations against presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, according to NewsBusters. (Albert L. Ortega / Getty Images)
Nearly 95 celebrities who said that sexual assault victims must be believed during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings have now changed their tune, with many calling presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s accuser a liar.
NewsBusters called this double standard the “death of #MeToo” in its report Monday on the people who have been silent about the sexual assault allegations against Biden.
Lady Gaga, Ellen DeGeneres, Jimmy Kimmel and Jamie Lee Curtis were listed among those who have neither said anything against Biden nor wanted to hear from Tara Reade, Biden’s former Senate staffer who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1993.
Many founding members of the organization Time’s Up — including Jessica Chastain, Brie Larson, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore — have also been silent.
The organization says it “insists upon a world” where no one has to be afraid of sexual harassment or assault at work, and it was quick to support Christine Blasey Ford during Kavanaugh’s hearing.
NewsBusters found that Reese Witherspoon, Kerry Washington and America Ferrera, all members of the organization, also have had nothing to say about Reade’s accusations.
“You should be able to have your voice heard without losing your career and losing your job,” Reade told Fox News in response to the lack of support.
“And that’s what your whole mission is about. Why do I not qualify for your mission? Why, because my perpetrator is the leading Democrat? Why does that exempt me from help?”
Time’s Up Now’s president, Tina Tchen, did address the allegation in a news release on May 1.
Do you think these celebrities should be held accountable for their hypocrisy?
100% (1 Votes)
0% (0 Votes)
“No longer can claims like this go ignored. Vice President Joe Biden needed to address Tara Reade’s allegation today. We call for complete transparency into this claim and the multiple claims against President Donald Trump,” Tchen said.
“As we go forward, American voters are entitled to a full understanding of all allegations of this nature. Women should be heard, treated respectfully, and have their allegations taken seriously.”
Alyssa Milano, a leader of the #MeToo movement, came out in full support of Ford, called Kavanaugh a liar and even sat in the Senate building during the hearings and harrassed Sen. Susan Collins of Maine before the justice was confirmed.
Milano explained her silence on Reade’s allegations in an interview with “Radio Andy” on April 6.
“I just don’t feel comfortable throwing away a decent man that I’ve known for 15 years in this time of complete chaos, without there being a thorough investigation,” she said.
However, in a tweet on April 27, Milano said that she wanted Reade to “have the space to be heard and seen.”
Bette Midler also supported Ford in 2018 but brushed off Reade’s allegations in a tweet asking, “Who is paying to #SWIFTBOAT Joe Biden??”
Some others whom NewsBusters found to be silent on this issue include Debra Messing, James Corden, John Leguizamo, Randi Mayem Singer, Patricia Arquette, Amy Schumer and Emily Ratajkowski.
“Biden hasn’t been held to the same, or any real standard by his friends in Hollywood,” NewsBusters reported.
“It’s clear #MeToo has become a political weapon, not a moral awakening, as these virtue-signaling hypocrites sold it.”
Actress Rose McGowan called out the other #MeToo activists for their hypocrisy in a tweet on April 6 in response to Milano’s radio interview.
“You are a fraud. This is about holding the media accountable. You go after Trump & Kavanaugh saying Believe Victims, you are a lie,” she tweeted.
“You have always been a lie. The corrupt DNC is in on the smear job of Tara Reade, so are you. SHAME.”
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
A multimillion-dollar Pentagon project is now under investigation for allegedly sending money to a lab in Wuhan, China. At the heart of the program is a New York-based company, EcoHealth Alliance, that has become caught in another controversial program shut down with the National Institute of Health, and was also working on coronavirus research programs with the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology and Chinese virus scientist Shi Zhengli.
The Chinese regime has launched a new wave of disinformation, this time firing back against potential investigations into the origin of the virus by claiming the United States was warned, the CCP held off the virus, and by using hostile statements while also calling for civility.
With protective measures – social distancing and others – the deaths will have spread out over a longer period of time and will have destroyed our economy, jobs, businesses and wealth. More or less, we end with the same-similar numbers of deaths. 
The Hong Kong protests are starting again, although social distancing laws are still in place. Authorities recently arrested close to 200 protesters, including a local official, who are continuing their protests against the encroachment of mainland China’s laws and influence.
Just why is it dangerous for US pension funds to be investing heavily in China? How is this endangering US national security? 
