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FTR #1124 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
NB: This description contains material not included in the original broadcast.
Introduction: This program takes stock of some of the remarkable features of the Covid-19 coronavirus, to be seen in the context of a country whose political/intellectual elites have accepted the “Magic Bullet Theory.” (This is discussed in–among other programs–The Guns of November, Part 2.)
It is our considered opinion that the virus is part of the destabilization effort against China and is founded upon research highlighted in, among other programs, FTR #‘s 1119 and 1120.
As highlighted below, all of this must be evaluated in light of the fact that the coordinator of the anti-China effort–former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon–is a fascist.
In addition to reviewing how the Covid-19 virus infects human lung tissue and both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, we note:
- The virus appears to have been a bat virus and the random mutations seen are unlikely to be natural: ” . . . . What are the odds that a random bat virus had exactly the right combination of traits to effectively infect human cells from the get-go, and then jump into an unsuspecting person? ‘Very low,’ [Kristian] Andersen [of the Scripps Research Translational Institute] says . . . . ”
- The ability of this bat virus to infect ACE2 was present from day one. ” . . . . . The closest wild relative of SARS-CoV‑2 is found in bats, which suggests it originated in a bat, then jumped to humans either directly or through another species. . . . When SARS-classic first made this leap, a brief period of mutation was necessary for it to recognize ACE2 well. But SARS-CoV‑2 could do that from day one. ‘It had already found its best way of being a [human] virus,’ says Matthew Frieman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. . . .”
- Indeed, why was this “seventh virus” the one to infect humans “. . . . This family, the coronaviruses, includes just six other members that infect humans. . . . . Why was this seventh coronavirus the one to go pandemic? Suddenly, what we do know about coronaviruses becomes a matter of international concern. . . .”
- Perhaps the most notable observation made about this virus thus far: it doesn’t appear to be mutating in evolutionarily significant ways. Of the 100-plus mutations observed in the virus so far, none has emerged as evolutionarily dominant–unusual for a virus that only recently jumped to humans. and has spread prolifically. It’s as though the virus is already evolutionarily optimized for spreading among humans and there are no ‘gain-of-function’ mutations left for it acquire. As Lisa Gralinski, a coronavirus expert at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, described it, ‘The virus has been remarkably stable given how much transmission we’ve seen . . . . there’s no evolutionary pressure on the virus to transmit better. It’s doing a great job of spreading around the world right now.’ . . .”
- As discussed in other programs–including FTR #‘s 1117 and 1121, the “cytokine storms” that overwhelm the immune system of some Covid-19 victims are symptomatic of other viruses that have undergone either “Gain-of-Function” alteration and/or genetic recovery and recreation–HN1 Avian Flu, SARS, and the 1918 “Spanish Flu” virus: ” . . . . These damaging overreactions are called cytokine storms. They were historically responsible for many deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic, H5N1 bird flu outbreaks, and the 2003 SARS outbreak. . . . .”
In addition, an article in Science Direct characterizes the advent of the furin-like cleavage site as a “gain-of-function” phenomenon. “Gain of Function” is a mechanism of action of an “Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen.” Note the use of the word “strikingly” in this otherwise dry and pedantic academic presentation. It is VERY significant and–we suspect–betokens awareness on the part of the authors that “we aren’t in Kansas, anymore, Toto!” “. . . . STRIKINGLY [caps are ours–D.E.], the 2019-nCoV S‑protein sequence contains 12 additional nucleotides upstream of the single Arg↓ cleavage site 1 (Fig. 1, Fig. 2) leading to a predictively solvent-exposed PRRAR↓SV sequence, which corresponds to a canonical furin-like cleavage site (Braun and Sauter, 2019; Izaguirre, 2019; Seidah and Prat, 2012). This furin-like cleavage site, is supposed to be cleaved during virus egress (Mille and Whittaker, 2014) for S‑protein ‘priming’ and may provide a gain-of-function to the 2019-nCoV for efficient spreading in the human population compared to other lineage b betacoronaviruses. This possibly illustrates a convergent evolution pathway between unrelated CoVs. Interestingly, if this site is not processed, the S‑protein is expected to be cleaved at site 2 during virus endocytosis, as observed for the SARS-CoV. . . .”
The article also notes that the virus differs significantly from other coronaviruses of its type. ” . . . . Based on its genome sequence, 2019-nCoV belongs to lineage b of Betacoronavirus (Fig. 1A), which also includes the SARS-CoV and bat CoV ZXC21, the latter and CoV ZC45 being the closest to 2019-nCoV. . . . Since furin is highly expressed in lungs, an enveloped virus that infects the respiratory tract may successfully exploit this convertase to activate its surface glycoprotein (Bassi et al., 2017; Mbikay et al., 1997). Before the emergence of the 2019-nCoV, this important feature was not observed in the lineage b of betacoronaviruses. . . .”
The features of the virus noted above must be seen in the context of the DARPA research into bat coronaviruses:
- ” . . . . the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spending millions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pentagon-funded studies were conducted at known U.S. military bioweapons labs bordering China and resulted in the discovery of dozens of new coronavirus strains as recently as last April. Furthermore, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biodefense lab to a virology institute in Wuhan, China — where the current outbreak is believed to have begun — have been unreported in English language media thus far. . . . For instance, DARPA spent $10 million on one project in 2018 ‘to unravel the complex causes of bat-borne viruses that have recently made the jump to humans, causing concern among global health officials.’ Another research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Colorado State University examine the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in bats and camels ‘to understand the role of these hosts in transmitting disease to humans.’ . . . For instance, one study conducted in Southern China in 2018 resulted in the discovery of 89 new ‘novel bat coronavirus’ strains that use the same receptor as the coronavirus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). That study was jointly funded by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Science and Technology, USAID — an organization long alleged to be a front for U.S. intelligence, and the U.S. National Institute of Health — which has collaborated with both the CIA and the Pentagonon infectious disease and bioweapons research.. . . .”
- DARPA is doing this work, in part, at biological research facilities ringing both China and Russia. ” . . . . One of those studies focused on ‘Bat-Borne Zoonotic Disease Emergence in Western Asia’ and involved the Lugar Center in Georgia, identified by former Georgian government officials, the Russian governmentand independent, investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva as a covert U.S. bioweapons lab. . . . Another U.S. government-funded study that discovered still more new strains of ‘novel bat coronavirus’ was published just last year. Titled ‘Discovery and Characterization of Novel Bat Coronavirus Lineages from Kazakhstan,’ focused on ‘the bat fauna of central Asia, which link China to eastern Europe’ and the novel bat coronavirus lineages discovered during the study were found to be ‘closely related to bat coronaviruses from China, France, Spain, and South Africa, suggesting that co-circulation of coronaviruses is common in multiple bat species with overlapping geographical distributions.’ In other words, the coronaviruses discovered in this study were identified in bat populations that migrate between China and Kazakhstan, among other countries, and is closely related to bat coronaviruses in several countries, including China. . . .”
The unusual features of the virus must also be seen in the context of the Steve Bannon-led anti-China destabilization effort. It is our opinion that the spreading of the virus is intended to provoke the “Whole-of-society” response. As discussed in FTR #947, the dominant intellectual and political influence on Bannon is the Italian fascist Julius Evola. Originally a supporter of Mussolini, he ultimately decided Mussolini was too moderate and in an ideological “Gain-of-Function” mutation, associated himself with the Nazi SS, who were financing his work by the end of World War II.
Bannon’s assessment of U.S.-China relations amounts to a declaration of “Totaler Krieg–Total War.” ” . . . ‘These are two systems that are incompatible,’ Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China. ‘One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.’ . . . .”
The coronavirus attack we believe was unleashed on the U.S. and the world as a whole (to alienate it from China) and China itself (to inflect economic damage and stir up domestic unrest) is the manifestation of what the head of the FBI expressed: ” . . . . ‘I think it’s going to take a whole-of-society response by us.’ . . .”
Of paramount importance is the fact that statements being issued to the effect that the virus was not made in a laboratory are not just irrelevant, but absurd. ANY virus can be made in a laboratory, from scratch, as is being done for the SARS-CoV‑2 (Covid-19) virus.
The bromides being issued–all too predictably–that the virus could not have been/wasn’t made in a laboratory are the virological equivalent of the Magic Bullet Theory.
We first discussed “Designer Genes” in FTR #282.
Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-function modification on the Horseshoe Bat coronavirus, has been selected to engineer the Covid-19.
” . . . . The remarkable ability to ‘boot up’ viruses from genetic instructions is made possible by companies that manufacture custom DNA molecules, such as Integrated DNA Technology, Twist Bioscience, and Atum. By ordering the right genes, which cost a few thousand dollars, and then stitching them together to create a copy of the coronavirus genome, it’s possible to inject the genetic material into cells and jump-start the virus to life. The ability to make a lethal virus from mail-order DNA was first demonstrated 20 years ago. . . .”
Note what might be termed a “virologic Jurassic Park” manifestation: ” . . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
A key factor spurring our suspicion concerning genetic-engineering of one or more variant of the Covid-19 virus concerns a 2015 Gain-of-Function experiment done by the above Ralph Baric: “Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week (November 9) published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice. . . . The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus—or other coronaviruses found in bat species—may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. ‘If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,’ Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature. . . .”
Exemplifying the “See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil, Speak-No-Evil” myopia of the Mainstream Media, a New York Times article blends editorialization with studied ignorance: “. . . . While conspiracy theories might falsely claim the virus was concocted in a lab, the virus’s genome makes clear that it arose in bats. There are many kinds of coronaviruses, which infect both humans and animals. Dr. Boni and his colleagues found that the genome of the new virus contains a number of mutations in common with strains of coronaviruses that infect bats. The most closely related coronavirus is in a Chinese horseshoe bat, the researchers found. But the new virus has gained some unique mutations since splitting off from that bat virus decades ago. Dr. Boni said that ancestral virus probably gave rise to a number of strains that infected horseshoe bats, and perhaps sometimes other animals. . . .”
With Dr. Baric having genetically manipulated a Chinese horseshoe bat coronavirus to infect human lung tissue, Carl Zimmer–the author of the Times article–cannot honestly make such a statement. ANY virus can be synthesized FROM SCRATCH in a laboratory, as we have seen.
An article published after this program was recorded highlights the VERY unusual aspects of Covid-19. ” . . . . ‘I’ve been studying viruses since 1978,’ Dr. James Hildreth, Meharry Medical College CEO and an infectious disease expert based out of Nashville, told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move this week (video above). ‘And I think it’s fair to say we’ve not encountered a virus quite like this, just because of the broad range of tissue types in our body it infects.’ . . .”
1a. Steve Bannon–one of the luminaries of the “Alt-Right,” and a former key Trump aide is centrally involved in the anti-China effort.
Note Bannon and company’s networking with the Falun Gong cult and “Chinese Muslim Freedom Fighters”–read “Uighurs.’ The destabilization of China is the context in which the Covid-19 epidemic must be evaluated.
“A New Red Scare Is Reshaping Washington” by Ana Swanson; The New York Times; 7/20/2019.
In a ballroom across from the Capitol building, an unlikely group of military hawks, populist crusaders, Chinese Muslim freedom fighters [Uighurs–D.E.] and followers of the Falun Gong has been meeting to warn anyone who will listen that China poses an existential threat to the United States that will not end until the Communist Party is overthrown.
If the warnings sound straight out of the Cold War, they are. The Committee on the Present Danger, a long-defunct group that campaigned against the dangers of the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, has recently been revived with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, to warn against the dangers of China.
Once dismissed as xenophobes and fringe elements, the group’s members are finding their views increasingly embraced in President Trump’s Washington, where skepticism and mistrust of China have taken hold. Fear of China has spread across the government, from the White House to Congress to federal agencies, where Beijing’s rise is unquestioningly viewed as an economic and national security threat and the defining challenge of the 21st century.
“These are two systems that are incompatible,” Mr. Bannon said of the United States and China. “One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose.” . . . .
. . . . Anti-China sentiment has spread quickly, with Republicans and Democrats, labor union leaders, Fox News hosts and others warning that China’s efforts to build up its military and advanced industries threaten America’s global leadership, and that the United States should respond aggressively. Skepticism has seeped into nearly every aspect of China’s interaction with the United States, with officials questioning China’s presence on American stock markets, its construction of American subway cars and its purchase of social media networks. . . .
. . . . At a Senate hearing last year, Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, said the Trump administration was trying to “view the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat,” adding, “I think it’s going to take a whole-of-society response by us.” . . . .
1b. An interesting piece in “The Atlantic” describes how the SARS-CoV‑2 virus that causes COVID-19 differs from other coronaviruses known to infect humans. We present this as supplemental to discussion of DARPA research into bat-borne coronaviruses.
- The virus appears to have been a bat virus and the random mutations seen are unlikely to be natural: ” . . . . What are the odds that a random bat virus had exactly the right combination of traits to effectively infect human cells from the get-go, and then jump into an unsuspecting person? ‘Very low,’ [Kristian] Andersen [of the says . . . . ”
- The ability of this bat virus to infect ACE2 was present from day one. ” . . . . . The closest wild relative of SARS-CoV‑2 is found in bats, which suggests it originated in a bat, then jumped to humans either directly or through another species. (Another coronavirus found in wild pangolins also resembles SARS-CoV‑2, but only in the small part of the spike that recognizes ACE2; the two viruses are otherwise dissimilar, and pangolins are unlikely to be the original reservoir of the new virus.) When SARS-classic first made this leap, a brief period of mutation was necessary for it to recognize ACE2 well. But SARS-CoV‑2 could do that from day one. ‘It had already found its best way of being a [human] virus,’ says Matthew Frieman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. . . .”
- Indeed, why was this “seventh virus” the one to infect humans “. . . . This family, the coronaviruses, includes just six other members that infect humans. . . . . Why was this seventh coronavirus the one to go pandemic? Suddenly, what we do know about coronaviruses becomes a matter of international concern. . . .”
- The SARS-CoV‑2 (Covid-19) virus is unusual in that it infects The ‘spike’ part of the SARS-CoV‑2 virus is unusually good at latching into a protein called ACE2 which is found on the exterior of the cells in human airways. This ability appears to be fundamental to the virus’s ability to infect the upper respiratory tract. The virus appears to infect the upper airways first and then, as cells in them die and are sloughed off, it makes its way down to the lower respiratory tract and lungs where the deadly infections occur. This sequential pattern of infecting the upper respiratory tract prior to making its way down to the lungs enables it to silently spread asymptomatically before turning more lethal in the lower respiratory tract.
- We note that the ACE2 protein appears to manifest more heavily in the lung tissue of East-Asians. As indicated in the Whitney Webb article, genetic modification has been envisioned as applicable to biological warfare to create “ethno-specific” biological weapons.
- Another key feature of the virus’s ability to infect humans concerns a protein bridge connecting two halves of the virus’s spike. Activation of this spike causes the virus injects its nucleic acid into the cell. Activating the spike requires the cleavage of a protein bridge connecting the two halves of the spike. That cleavage is precipitated by the enzyme furin which is ubiquitous in human cells. In contrast, the coronavirus which caused SARS had a protein bridge that was less likely to be cleaved. SARS-CoV‑2 first latches onto to human upper airway cells and, once there, has the protein bridge linking the halves of the spike severed by the furin enzyme.
- Perhaps the most notable observation made about this virus thus far: it doesn’t appear to be mutating in evolutionarily significant ways. Of the 100-plus mutations observed in the virus so far, none has emerged as evolutionarily dominant–unusual for a virus that only recently jumped to humans. and has spread prolifically. It’s as though the virus is already evolutionarily optimized for spreading among humans and there are no ‘gain-of-function’ mutations left for it acquire. As Lisa Gralinski, a coronavirus expert at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, described it, “The virus has been remarkably stable given how much transmission we’ve seen . . . . there’s no evolutionary pressure on the virus to transmit better. It’s doing a great job of spreading around the world right now.”
- Gralinsky works closely with Ralph Baric’s lab. Recall that Baric is the researcher who constructed a chimeric virus out of a SARS virus and horseshoe bat coronavirus in 2015. When Gralinski observes that the virus wouldn’t feel any evolutionary pressure to spread because it’s already doing such a good job that is VERY significant. Evolution doesn’t stop just because the status quo of an organism is already effective. A mutation allowing the virus to spread even more readily would be expected. And normally such an event does happen. But it hasn’t happened so for SARS-CoV‑2 because it is already at something of a “coronavirus evolutionary peak”.
- Note that diseases that are symptomatically similar–the H5N1 avian flu, the 1918 influenza virus and the original SARS virus were all the focal points of genetic manipulation–gain-of-function experiments and/or recovery and recreation maneuvers:” . . . . in extreme cases, the immune system goes berserk, causing more damage than the actual virus. For example, blood vessels might open up to allow defensive cells to reach the site of an infection; that’s great, but if the vessels become tooleaky, the lungs fill even more with fluid. These damaging overreactions are called cytokine storms. They were historically responsible for many deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic, H5N1 bird flu outbreaks, and the 2003 SARS outbreak. . . . .”
“Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful” Ed Yong; The Atlantic; 03/20/2020
One of the few mercies during this crisis is that, by their nature, individual coronaviruses are easily destroyed. Each virus particle consists of a small set of genes, enclosed by a sphere of fatty lipid molecules, and because lipid shells are easily torn apart by soap, 20 seconds of thorough hand-washing can take one down. Lipid shells are also vulnerable to the elements; a recent study shows that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV‑2, survives for no more than a day on cardboard, and about two to three days on steel and plastic. These viruses don’t endure in the world. They need bodies.
But much about coronaviruses is still unclear. Susan Weiss, of the University of Pennsylvania, has been studying them for about 40 years. She says that in the early days, only a few dozen scientists shared her interest—and those numbers swelled only slightly after the SARS epidemic of 2002. “Until then people looked at us as a backward field with not a lot of importance to human health,” she says. But with the emergence of SARS-CoV‑2—the cause of the COVID-19 disease—no one is likely to repeat that mistake again.
To be clear, SARS-CoV‑2 is not the flu. It causes a disease with different symptoms, spreads and kills more readily, and belongs to a completely different family of viruses. This family, the coronaviruses, includes just six other members that infect humans. Four of them—OC43, HKU1, NL63, and 229E—have been gently annoying humans for more than a century, causing a third of common colds. The other two—MERS and SARS (or “SARS-classic,” as some virologists have started calling it)—both cause far more severe disease. Why was this seventh coronavirus the one to go pandemic? Suddenly, what we do know about coronaviruses becomes a matter of international concern.
The structure of the virus provides some clues about its success. In shape, it’s essentially a spiky ball. Those spikes recognize and stick to a protein called ACE2, which is found on the surface of our cells: This is the first step to an infection. The exact contours of SARS-CoV‑2’s spikes allow it to stick far more strongly to ACE2 than SARS-classic did, and “it’s likely that this is really crucial for person-to-person transmission,” says Angela Rasmussen of Columbia University. In general terms, the tighter the bond, the less virus required to start an infection.
There’s another important feature. Coronavirus spikes consist of two connected halves, and the spike activates when those halves are separated; only then can the virus enter a host cell. In SARS-classic, this separation happens with some difficulty. But in SARS-CoV‑2, the bridge that connects the two halves can be easily cut by an enzyme called furin, which is made by human cells and—crucially—is found across many tissues. “This is probably important for some of the really unusual things we see in this virus,” says Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research Translational Institute.
For example, most respiratory viruses tend to infect either the upper or lower airways. In general, an upper-respiratory infection spreads more easily, but tends to be milder, while a lower-respiratory infection is harder to transmit, but is more severe. SARS-CoV‑2 seems to infect both upper and lower airways, perhaps because it can exploit the ubiquitous furin. This double whammy could also conceivably explain why the virus can spread between people before symptoms show up—a trait that has made it so difficult to control. Perhaps it transmits while still confined to the upper airways, before making its way deeper and causing severe symptoms. All of this is plausible but totally hypothetical; the virus was only discovered in January, and most of its biology is still a mystery.
The new virus certainly seems to be effective at infecting humans, despite its animal origins. The closest wild relative of SARS-CoV‑2 is found in bats, which suggests it originated in a bat, then jumped to humans either directly or through another species. (Another coronavirus found in wild pangolins also resembles SARS-CoV‑2, but only in the small part of the spike that recognizes ACE2; the two viruses are otherwise dissimilar, and pangolins are unlikely to be the original reservoir of the new virus.) When SARS-classic first made this leap, a brief period of mutation was necessary for it to recognize ACE2 well. But SARS-CoV‑2 could do that from day one. “It had already found its best way of being a [human] virus,” says Matthew Frieman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
This uncanny fit will doubtlessly encourage conspiracy theorists: What are the odds that a random bat virus had exactly the right combination of traits to effectively infect human cells from the get-go, and then jump into an unsuspecting person? “Very low,” Andersen says, “but there are millions or billions of these viruses out there. These viruses are so prevalent that things that are really unlikely to happen sometimes do.”
Since the start of the pandemic, the virus hasn’t changed in any obviously important ways. It’s mutating in the way that all viruses do. But of the 100-plus mutations that have been documented, none has risen to dominance, which suggests that none is especially important. “The virus has been remarkably stable given how much transmission we’ve seen,” says Lisa Gralinski of the University of North Carolina. “That makes sense, because there’s no evolutionary pressure on the virus to transmit better. It’s doing a great job of spreading around the world right now.”
There’s one possible exception. A few SARS-CoV‑2 viruses that were isolated from Singaporean COVID-19 patients are missing a stretch of genes that also disappeared from SARS-classic during the late stages of its epidemic. This change was thought to make the original virus less virulent, but it’s far too early to know whether the same applies to the new one. Indeed, why some coronaviruses are deadly and some are not is unclear. “There’s really no understanding at all of why SARS or SARS-CoV‑2 are so bad but OC43 just gives you a runny nose,” Frieman says.
Researchers can, however, offer a preliminary account of what the new coronavirus does to the people it infects. Once in the body, it likely attacks the ACE2-bearing cells that line our airways. Dying cells slough away, filling the airways with junk and carrying the virus deeper into the body, down toward the lungs. As the infection progresses, the lungs clog with dead cells and fluid, making breathing more difficult. (The virus might also be able to infect ACE2-bearing cells in other organs, including the gut and blood vessels.)
The immune system fights back and attacks the virus; this is what causes inflammation and fever. But in extreme cases, the immune system goes berserk, causing more damage than the actual virus. For example, blood vessels might open up to allow defensive cells to reach the site of an infection; that’s great, but if the vessels become too leaky, the lungs fill even more with fluid. These damaging overreactions are called cytokine storms. They were historically responsible for many deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic, H5N1 bird flu outbreaks, and the 2003 SARS outbreak. And they’re probably behind the most severe cases of COVID-19. “These viruses need time to adapt to a human host,” says Akiko Iwasaki of the Yale School of Medicine. “When they’re first trying us out, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they tend to elicit these responses.”
During a cytokine storm, the immune system isn’t just going berserk but is also generally off its game, attacking at will without hitting the right targets. When this happens, people become more susceptible to infectious bacteria. The storms can also affect other organs besides the lungs, especially if people already have chronic diseases. This might explain why some COVID-19 patients end up with complications such as heart problems and secondary infections.
But why do some people with COVID-19 get incredibly sick, while others escape with mild or nonexistent symptoms? Age is a factor. Elderly people are at risk of more severe infections possibly because their immune system can’t mount an effective initial defense, while children are less affected because their immune system is less likely to progress to a cytokine storm. But other factors—a person’s genes, the vagaries of their immune system, the amount of virus they’re exposed to, the other microbes in their bodies—might play a role too. In general, “it’s a mystery why some people have mild disease, even within the same age group,” Iwasaki says.
Coronaviruses, much like influenza, tend to be winter viruses. In cold and dry air, the thin layers of liquid that coat our lungs and airways become even thinner, and the beating hairs that rest in those layers struggle to evict viruses and other foreign particles. Dry air also seems to dampen some aspects of the immune response to those trapped viruses. In the heat and humidity of summer, both trends reverse, and respiratory viruses struggle to get a foothold.
Unfortunately, that might not matter for the COVID-19 pandemic. At the moment, the virus is tearing through a world of immunologically naive people, and that vulnerability is likely to swamp any seasonal variations. After all, the new virus is transmitting readily in countries like Singapore (which is in the tropics) and Australia (which is still in summer). And one recent modeling study concluded that “SARS-CoV‑2 can proliferate at any time of year.” “I don’t have an immense amount of confidence that the weather is going to have the effect that people hope it will,” Gralinski says. “It may knock things down a little, but there’s so much person-to-person transmission going on that it may take more than that.” Unless people can slow the spread of the virus by sticking to physical-distancing recommendations, the summer alone won’t save us.
2a. In addition, an article in Science Direct characterizes the advent of the furin-like cleavage site as a “gain-of-function” phenomenon. “Gain of Function” is a mechanism of action of an “Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogen.” “. . . . Strikingly, the 2019-nCoV S‑protein sequence contains 12 additional nucleotides upstream of the single Arg↓ cleavage site 1 (Fig. 1, Fig. 2) leading to a predictively solvent-exposed PRRAR↓SV sequence, which corresponds to a canonical furin-like cleavage site (Braun and Sauter, 2019; Izaguirre, 2019; Seidah and Prat, 2012). This furin-like cleavage site, is supposed to be cleaved during virus egress (Mille and Whittaker, 2014) for S‑protein “priming” and may provide a gain-of-function to the 2019-nCoV for efficient spreading in the human population compared to other lineage b betacoronaviruses. This possibly illustrates a convergent evolution pathway between unrelated CoVs. Interestingly, if this site is not processed, the S‑protein is expected to be cleaved at site 2 during virus endocytosis, as observed for the SARS-CoV. . . .”
. . . . Based on its genome sequence, 2019-nCoV belongs to lineage b of Betacoronavirus (Fig. 1A), which also includes the SARS-CoV and bat CoV ZXC21, the latter and CoV ZC45 being the closest to 2019-nCoV. . . .
. . . . Since furin is highly expressed in lungs, an enveloped virus that infects the respiratory tract may successfully exploit this convertase to activate its surface glycoprotein (Bassi et al., 2017; Mbikay et al., 1997). Before the emergence of the 2019-nCoV, this important feature was not observed in the lineage b of betacoronaviruses. However, it is shared by other CoV (HCoV-OC43, MERS-CoV, MHV-A59) harbouring furin-like cleavage sites in their S‑protein (Fig. 2; Table 1), which were shown to be processed by furin experimentally (Le Coupanec et al., 2015; Mille and Whittaker, 2014.
Strikingly, the 2019-nCoV S‑protein sequence contains 12 additional nucleotides upstream of the single Arg↓ cleavage site 1 (Fig. 1, Fig. 2) leading to a predictively solvent-exposed PRRAR↓SV sequence, which corresponds to a canonical furin-like cleavage site (Braun and Sauter, 2019; Izaguirre, 2019; Seidah and Prat, 2012). This furin-like cleavage site, is supposed to be cleaved during virus egress (Mille and Whittaker, 2014) for S‑protein “priming” and may provide a gain-of-function to the 2019-nCoV for efficient spreading in the human population compared to other lineage b betacoronaviruses. This possibly illustrates a convergent evolution pathway between unrelated CoVs. Interestingly, if this site is not processed, the S‑protein is expected to be cleaved at site 2 during virus endocytosis, as observed for the SARS-CoV. . . .
2b. Of paramount importance is the fact that the statements being issued that the virus was not made in a laboratory is not just irrelevant, but absurd. ANY virus can be made in a laboratory, from scratch as is being done for the SARS-CoV‑2 (Covid-19) virus.
The bromides being issued–all too predictably–that the virus could not have been/wasn’t made in a laboratory are the virological equivalent of the Magic Bullet Theory.
Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-function modification on the Horseshoe Bat coronavirus, has been selected to engineer the Covid-19.
Note what might be termed a “virologic Jurassic Park” manifestation: ” . . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
The world is watching with alarm as China struggles to contain a dangerous new virus, now being called SARS-CoV‑2. It has quarantined entire cities, and the US has put a blanket ban on travellers who’ve been there. Health officials are scrambling to understand how the virus is transmitted and how to treat patients.
But in one University of North Carolina lab, there’s a different race. Researchers are trying to create a copy of the virus. From scratch.
Led by Ralph Baric, an expert in coronaviruses—which get their name from the crown-shaped spike they use to enter human cells—the North Carolina team expects to recreate the virus starting only from computer readouts of its genetic sequence posted online by Chinese labs last month.
The remarkable ability to “boot up” viruses from genetic instructions is made possible by companies that manufacture custom DNA molecules, such as Integrated DNA Technology, Twist Bioscience, and Atum. By ordering the right genes, which cost a few thousand dollars, and then stitching them together to create a copy of the coronavirus genome, it’s possible to inject the genetic material into cells and jump-start the virus to life.
The ability to make a lethal virus from mail-order DNA was first demonstrated 20 years ago. It’s enough of a bioterrorism concern that companies carefully monitor who is ordering which genes. . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
2c. A key factor spurring our suspicion concerning genetic-engineering of one or more variant of the Covid-19 virus concerns a 2015 Gain-of-Function experiment: “Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week (November 9) published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice. . . . The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus—or other coronaviruses found in bat species—may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. ‘If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,’ Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature. . . .”
“Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate” by Jef Akst; The Scientist; 11/16/2015
Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, last week (November 9) published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice. The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the team’s results, which were published in Nature Medicine.
The results demonstrate the ability of the SHC014 surface protein to bind and infect human cells, validating concerns that this virus—or other coronaviruses found in bat species—may be capable of making the leap to people without first evolving in an intermediate host, Nature reported. They also reignite a debate about whether that information justifies the risk of such work, known as gain-of-function research. “If the [new] virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, told Nature. . . .
3. Whitney Webb has provided us with troubling insight into Pentagon research–some of which remains classified:
- DARPA is funding research into bat-borne coronaviruses. ” . . . . the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), began spending millions on such research in 2018 and some of those Pentagon-funded studies were conducted at known U.S. military bioweapons labs bordering China and resulted in the discovery of dozens of new coronavirus strains as recently as last April. Furthermore, the ties of the Pentagon’s main biodefense lab to a virology institute in Wuhan, China — where the current outbreak is believed to have begun — have been unreported in English language media thus far. . . . For instance, DARPA spent $10 million on one project in 2018 ‘to unravel the complex causes of bat-borne viruses that have recently made the jump to humans, causing concern among global health officials.’ Another research project backed by both DARPA and NIH saw researchers at Colorado State University examine the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in bats and camels ‘to understand the role of these hosts in transmitting disease to humans.’ . . . For instance, one study conducted in Southern China in 2018 resulted in the discovery of 89 new ‘novel bat coronavirus’ strains that use the same receptor as the coronavirus known as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). That study was jointly funded by the Chinese government’s Ministry of Science and Technology, USAID — an organization long alleged to be a front for U.S. intelligence, and the U.S. National Institute of Health — which has collaborated with both the CIA and the Pentagonon infectious disease and bioweapons research.. . . .”
- It is doing so at biological research facilities ringing both China and Russia. ” . . . . One of those studies focused on ‘Bat-Borne Zoonotic Disease Emergence in Western Asia’ and involved the Lugar Center in Georgia, identified by former Georgian government officials, the Russian governmentand independent, investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva as a covert U.S. bioweapons lab. . . . Another U.S. government-funded study that discovered still more new strains of ‘novel bat coronavirus’ was published just last year. Titled ‘Discovery and Characterization of Novel Bat Coronavirus Lineages from Kazakhstan,’ focused on ‘the bat fauna of central Asia, which link China to eastern Europe’ and the novel bat coronavirus lineages discovered during the study were found to be ‘closely related to bat coronaviruses from China, France, Spain, and South Africa, suggesting that co-circulation of coronaviruses is common in multiple bat species with overlapping geographical distributions.’ In other words, the coronaviruses discovered in this study were identified in bat populations that migrate between China and Kazakhstan, among other countries, and is closely related to bat coronaviruses in several countries, including China. . . .”
4. An article published after this program was recorded highlights the VERY unusual aspects of Covid-19. ” . . . . ‘I’ve been studying viruses since 1978,’ Dr. James Hildreth, Meharry Medical College CEO and an infectious disease expert based out of Nashville, told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move this week (video above). ‘And I think it’s fair to say we’ve not encountered a virus quite like this, just because of the broad range of tissue types in our body it infects.’ . . .”
The coronavirus pandemic has upended normal life across the world.
There are over 1 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., which is the global leader in case count. Worldwide, there are over 3 million cases. And for many doctors, the coronavirus and its impacts are like nothing they’ve ever seen before.
“I’ve been studying viruses since 1978,” Dr. James Hildreth, Meharry Medical College CEO and an infectious disease expert based out of Nashville, told Yahoo Finance’s On the Move this week (video above). “And I think it’s fair to say we’ve not encountered a virus quite like this, just because of the broad range of tissue types in our body it infects.”
The coronavirus creates the infection known as COVID-19. The virus spreads through viral droplets from a cough or sneeze, which can travel into someone else’s mouth, nose, or eyes. From there, according to WebMD, it travels through the nasal passage to the mucous membranes in your throat and latches on.
Within two to 14 days, a person can start showing symptoms, which include fever, cough, chills, fatigue, and shortness of breath. As the virus moves through the respiratory tract, it can inflame the lungs, causing breathing difficulties and leading to pneumonia.
“So anyone who has a compromised immune system, or their lungs are compromised in any way, they’re going to have really poor outcomes,” Hildreth explained.
The CDC has stated that those over the age of 65 and those with underlying health conditions are most at risk for severe illness from COVID-19.
The people with underlying health conditions at risk can be of any age. Those with asthma, chronic lung disease, heart conditions, obesity, diabetes, liver disease, kidney disease, and those who are otherwise immunocompromised are especially vulnerable.
“It shuts down kidneys,” Hildreth said. “As you’ve heard, it’s starting to cause blood clots in young people in their 30s and 40s who are dying of strokes. It causes really severe lung disease. And it also triggers something called a cytokine storm, in which the immune system gets over exuberant and begins to destroy not just the virus, but the tissues around the virus.”
Blood clotting is a newer complication that doctors have noticed in COVID-19 patients. A 41-year-old Broadway actor named Nick Cordero, who has been in a medically-induced coma for over a month because of the virus, had his leg amputated after developing a clot.
“We do need to find something that can slow the virus down until we have a vaccine,” Hildreth said. “But it’s fair to say that of all the viruses that I’m aware that I’ve studied or been involved with, this one is very different, just in terms of the huge range of things that it does to the body.”
“It really is an extraordinary challenge, and like none we’ve seen before,” he added. “But I’m really heartened by the fact that scientists all over the world have focused their attention on it. And so, I’m confident that we’re going to find some solutions in the coming months.”
Banking with Bin Laden
This next article is concerning. In a time of crisis all Americans should courageously unite to overcome the challenge. The article discusses how Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo plans to send the National Guard will be deployed to knock door-to-door looking for anyone who has evacuated the coronavirus-stricken state and arrived in Rhode Island. Any New Yorkers found will be ordered into a 14-day quarantine and could face fines or jail time if they do not comply. He stated ‘Right now we have a pinpointed risk,’ she said. ‘That risk is called New York City.’
The moves come after White House coronavirus response team doctor Deborah Birx warned that New Yorkers leaving the state could be responsible for the virus spreading to new areas.
The ACLU stated that ‘Under the Fourth Amendment, having a New York state license plate simply does not, and cannot, constitute ‘probable cause’ to allow police to stop a car and interrogate the driver, no matter how laudable the goal of the stop may be,’ Brown added.
Governors in Florida, Maryland, Texas and South Carolina have also issued orders that New Yorkers must stay out of their states or go into a 14-day quarantine, as the rest of the US looks on in horror at the mounting crisis in New York state.
The implication for the “United States” of America are disconcerting.
https://mol.im/a/8162899
The hunt for fleeing New Yorkers: The Hamptons wants to ban coronavirus refugees from the Big Apple and Rhode Island is sending the National Guard to find them as wealthy residents and celebs escape virus epicenter
¥ Local leaders in The Hamptons are calling on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to issue a travel ban from the city, to stop New Yorkers invading their towns
¥ Residents are also calling for anyone who has recently arrived from the city to quarantine for 14 days
¥ Rhode Island is planning to send the National Guard to hunt down any New Yorkers who have fled to the state, said Governor Gina Raimondo
¥ Police have also started pulling over cars with New York state plates looking for any escapees
¥ Dr. Deborah Birx, of the White House coronavirus response team, warned Tuesday that New Yorkers could spread the virus to other areas
¥ An influx of New Yorkers and celebrities have been holing up in the Hamptons and Rhode Island as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread in NYC
¥ Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria have posted Instagram messages from their Hamptons retreat
¥ New York state’s coronavirus death toll reached 603 Friday, an increase of 134 in just one day, as it continues to be the US epicenter for the crisis
¥ Coronavirus symptoms: what are they and should you see a doctor?
By RACHEL SHARP FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 10:06 EDT, 28 March 2020 | UPDATED: 18:16 EDT, 28 March 2020
Coronavirus refugees who are fleeing New York City face a growing crackdown from other states who are using police and the national guard to force them into quarantine.
Locals in the Hamptons want to ban coronavirus refugees coming from the Big Apple and force those that are there to quarantine inside for 14 days.
Rhode Island is sending out the National Guard to hunt down escaping New Yorkers who have fled to its towns, after wealthy residents and celebrities have taken over the areas as they escape the virus epicenter.
Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Maryland also require a mandatory 14-day quarantine for new arrivals from New York.
‘There’s an influx of people we’ve never seen before. This is putting unnecessary stress on local resources and potentially on hospitals out East, which are very well managed, but have a limited supply of equipment,’ he told Page Six.
People with summer homes are still welcome, but people with no connection to the area should stay away, he added: ‘We are not trying to tell those who have summer homes to stay away, this is about the people who really have no attachment to the community.’
Southampton Town supervisor Jay Schneiderman said that local residents are worried there will be an outbreak due to the influx of people and that the area’s three hospitals won’t be able to cope.
The influx has also doubled the population, leaving restaurants and supermarkets buckling under the strain of its new guests, he told the Post.
‘People out here are concerned that our hospitals and supermarkets will not be able to meet the needed demand if our population continues to surge. We are all doing everything we can to reduce new cases of Covid-19, but that is very challenging when new people are constantly entering the community from the NY Metropolitan area, an epicenter for the coronavirus,’ he said.
Celebrities including Alec Baldwin have been holing up in the beachside towns, which become popular havens from the rat race of the city over the summer.
Baldwin and his wife Hilaria Baldwin have both posted Instagram videos from The Hamptons in the last week.
In one heartfelt video from their farmhouse in East Hampton Baldwin encourages his followers to ‘all do the prescribed things for the
next two months’ to help slow the spread of the deadly virus.
He also made light of the fact that he ‘couldn’t get his hair cut anywhere’.
In another snap, the actor seems to be enjoying time outdoors, as he is seen getting friendly with a horse.
Hilaria captioned the post ‘Important meetings’.
The couple have been there for several weeks.
It is not clear if they originally fled there because of the pandemic or were already residing there.
Julie Macklowe has also been taking to social media to document her Hamptons hideaway from the pandemic.
The beauty entrepreneur and socialite posted snaps of her packing up boxes including whiskey to take to her retreat.
One snap showed Amazon boxes and a plastic box filled with medicines and health remedies.
The Hamptons isn’t the only area where residents want to see the back of New Yorkers during the pandemic.
Rhode Island is planning to send the National Guard to hunt down any New Yorkers who have fled to the state.
Governor Gina Raimondo said the National Guard will be deployed to knock door-to-door looking for anyone who has evacuated the coronavirus-stricken state and arrived in Rhode Island.
Police have also started pulling over cars with New York state plates looking for any escapees.
Raimondo said at a press conference Friday that any New Yorkers found will be ordered into a 14-day quarantine and could face fines or jail time if do not comply.
‘Right now we have a pinpointed risk,’ she said. ‘That risk is called New York City.’
Raimondo said the extreme steps are legally permitted under the state’s emergency powers and that they are necessary to protect local residents.
‘I know it’s unusual. I know it’s extreme and I know some people disagree with it,’ she said.
‘If you want to seek refuge in Rhode Island, you must be quarantined.’
The moves come after White House coronavirus response team doctor Deborah Birx warned that New Yorkers leaving the state could be responsible for the virus spreading to new areas.
In a White House press conference Tuesday, Birx said any New Yorkers who have left the city should quarantine for 14 days.
‘Everybody who was in New York [City] should be self-quarantining for the next 14 days to ensure the virus doesn’t spread to others, no matter where they have gone, whether it’s Florida, North Carolina, or out to the far reaches of Long Island.
‘We’re starting to see new cases across Long Island that suggest people have left the city. This will be very critical,’ she said.
But New York Gov Cuomo has blasted the measures some states and areas are taking to keep out the coronavirus refugees, saying he doesn’t like it ‘socially or cuturally’.
‘I don’t like it socially or culturally,’ he said Friday on WAMC.
‘I don’t like what it says about us as one state, one family. Also, I don’t believe it’s medically justified.’
The American Civil Liberties Union has also described the move to stop New York drivers by Rhode Island as ‘ill-advised and unconstitutional.’
‘While the Governor may have the power to suspend some state laws and regulations to address this medical emergency, she cannot suspend the Constitution,’ said Steven Brown, the executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island, in a statement.
‘Under the Fourth Amendment, having a New York state license plate simply does not, and cannot, constitute ‘probable cause’ to allow police to stop a car and interrogate the driver, no matter how laudable the goal of the stop may be,’ Brown added.
Governors in Florida, Maryland, Texas and South Carolina have also issued orders that New Yorkers must stay out of their states or go into a 14-day quarantine, as the rest of the US looks on in horror at the mounting crisis in New York state.
New York state’s coronavirus death toll reached 603 Friday, an increase of 134 in just one day.
There are now more than 44,000 cases of infection in the state of New York. Currently, 6,481 people are hospitalized and 1,583 people are in ICU beds.
In New York City, 365 people had died from the virus by Thursday afternoon — an increase of 177 people in a day.
As of Friday afternoon, there were 25,573 cases of it in the city — 4000 more cases than the previous day.
One additional death was reported in New York City on Friday, bringing the total to 366.
By contrast, Rhode Island had 162 confirmed cases on Friday.
The beachside communities in Long Island have seen a surge in population ever since Cuomo issued a stay-at-home order to help stop the spread of the virus.
Several celebrities have escaped to their retreats there or rented homes as the US struggles to bring the virus under control.
Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker was pictured Saturday stocking up on groceries in the Hamptons, after she and her husband Matthew Broderick and three children have hiding out there since Cuomo’s New York shutdown.
After going into the store, the actress was spotted loading a number of grocery bags into her trunk with a pair of black gloves, as a precaution against the disease.
Earlier this month, Broderick’s sister, Rev. Janet Broderick, tested positive for the coronavirus.
Last week, Anna Wintour shared a snapshot of herself working from her Hamptons home.
The 70-year-old Vogue editor-in-chief shared a photo from the official Vogue Instagram account, showing herself lounging in a chair inside her home.
‘Like so many of you, I have been adjusting to reality during the COVID-19 pandemic. Above all else, I have been doing one simple thing, and I urge everyone to do the same: I have been staying at home,’ she wrote.
This came just days after she announced that this year’s Met Gala is cancelled due to the pandemic.
Actress Scarlett Johansson, 35, and her fiance Colin Jost, 37, were pictured in the area last week, picking up some takeout.
Scarlett and Colin have been in The Hamptons since March 16, after the outbreak has forced his show, SNL, to be put on hiatus.
Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman was also snapped last week after he relocated to his family’s East Hamptons holiday house.
The Wolverine star was seen practicing good social-distancing practices as he got some fresh air in a secluded area around his lavish hideaway, during a dog walk along the beach.
Real estate agents have also seen a rise in demand for rentals that aren’t normally sought after until closer to summer.
Nest Seekers International’s Dylan Eckardt told the Wall Street Journal that one wealthy New Yorker called him on his way out of the city to say he had a blank check and to find him a property to ride out the pandemic.
‘I got this call: ‘I’m on my way, driving out from the city. You’ve got to find me a house south of the highway with nine bedrooms, I want no one around me. I want a pool, a tennis court. I’ve got a blank check. Make it happen’,’ he said.
‘We’re renting stuff that never rents in March. There’s not even a price for it, because it doesn’t happen.’
Supermarket shelves are being cleared by the wealthy visitors, as the panic-buying frenzy extends to the suburbs.
Stockpiling has been taking place all across the US as concerns over quarantines and lockdowns lead people to buy up essential supplies.
However, the new inhabitants of Long and Rhode Island also have the addition of neverending bank balances, meaning the trend has gone to further extremes in these areas.
Joe Gurrera, founder of upscale supermarket chain Citarella, said some shoppers are spending thousands in one go at his Hamptons stores.
‘I had one customer spend $8,000. You know when you see someone with a full shopping cart? Now they have five,’ he told the Post.
‘Instead of asking for one or two steaks on a tray, a customer will buy the whole tray. Then they’ll move on to shrimp, and buy all the shrimp, and then they’ll buy all the salmon steaks.’
How US media dish out their own propaganda on China and Covid-19
Their stereotypical framing of China’s actions against the pandemic verges on parody and caricature, portraying even innocent and uncontroversial measures in the most insidious light possible
Alex Lo
Published: 9:00pm, 12 Apr, 2020
China can do nothing right. It’s either incompetent or evil. As observed by Passage, a Canadian online publication, this is how mainstream American news media have generally been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic and China.
When the death tolls and cases were rising, Beijing was accused of doing nothing and letting people die. When they started to decline, it was lying. Before Wuhan was put under an unprecedented lockdown, China was trying to “save face” by downplaying the health crisis. When the lockdown was imposed, it was a massive violation of human rights and a power grab.
When Chinese citizens and overseas Chinese criticised Beijing, it was proof the central government had lost all legitimacy and trust. But when they celebrated the epidemic being put under control, they were stage actors or brainwashed.
Last week, the White House and Republican politicians rounded on US government-funded Voice of America for spreading “Beijing’s propaganda” by quoting official Chinese coronavirus figures and showing footage of people celebrating the end of Wuhan’s lockdown.
White House accuses US broadcaster of promoting ‘Beijing’s propaganda’
12 Apr 2020
In a study by the non-profit FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), when ordinary Chinese volunteered to help in the fight against the disease, they were described as “neighbourhood busybodies” in “Mao-style mass crusades” (The New York Times, February 15). When Hubei government officials were sacked for withholding information about the coronavirus, CNN (February 13) and Business Insider (February 11) reported they were “purged”.
When foreign governments and global organisations were critical of Beijing’s anti-pandemic efforts, it was proof of Chinese incompetence or maleficence. But when they offered praise, they were either bought off or secretly “communist” sympathisers.
While fighting the epidemic, Beijing was accused of hoarding medical gear. When it offered medical aid to other countries, it was propaganda.
Outside China, few people have heard of Dr Zhang Jixian, who treated several patients with similar symptoms in early December at a Hubei provincial hospital and correctly deduced it was a novel coronavirus. She was officially recognised as the first to alert the authorities, thereby triggering the nationwide epidemic surveillance and saving countless lives.
However, everyone knows about Dr Li Wenliang, who was reprimanded by public security, but was never arrested (as claimed by USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times) or otherwise punished, for inadvertently leaking information based on Dr Zhang’s findings online. He tragically died from the disease at a young age. The “whistle-blower” became a martyr; he was neither.
“Fair and balanced” reporting? Fox News’ style, perhaps.
Source URL: https://scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3079555/how-us-media-dish-out-their-own-propaganda-china-and-covid-19
Links
[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3079468/white-house-accuses-us-broadcaster-voice-america-promoting-beijings
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: How US media dish out their propaganda
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APRIL 9, 2020
US ‘Disinformation’ Claims Do Exactly What Enemies Are Accused of: Distract From Covid-19 Failures
JULIANNE TVETEN
The official Covid-19 death toll in the United States continues to climb, now exceeding 14,000, with at least hundreds of thousands more infected. Under these circumstances, the federal government has found it opportune to reignite the “Fake News” scare, censuring two familiar foes: Russia and China.
Before most in the West began worrying about the coronavirus, Agence France-Presse (2/23/20) asserted, with the US State Department as its sole source, that the Kremlin had been disseminating “anti-Western” information about the pathogen on social media in order to subvert Washington. Shortly after, the Washington Post (3/5/20) declared that “swarms of online, false personas” from Russia peddled “conspiracy theories” about Covid-19 in the US, again citing the State Department. The New York Times (3/28/20) followed with an ostensible bombshell report that Russia and China sought to “sow doubts about the United States’ handling of the crisis and deflect attention from their own struggles with the pandemic.”
Curiously, none of these articles presented proof of such nefarious online activity, instead relying chiefly on commentary and “unreleased reports” from US intelligence officials and neoconservative projects like the Alliance for Securing Democracy. An additional Washington Post story (2/29/20) reported that the State Department had discovered millions of suspicious tweets,
raising the specter that foreign governments or other malicious actors may have deliberately tried to sow fear and discord about the international health emergency—much as Russian agents had done during the 2016 presidential election in the United States.
Yet the Post by its own account found neither evidence nor so much as a mention of Russia in the State Department documents it reviewed—a lack of documentation that, in theory, should have precluded the article’s publication.
While the foreign misinformation in question isn’t clear, the purpose of the domestic narratives surrounding said misinformation is. If these reports are to be believed, the US is an innocent victim of smears by overseas actors who thwart its attempts at beneficence.
February’s Agence France-Presse article, for example, blamed the “disinformation campaign” for instilling suspicion of the West in people in Africa and Asia, thus hindering the US’s ability to effectively respond to Covid-19 outbreaks. The reality, of course, is that the US isn’t exactly known for its history of altruism toward Africa and Asia, and any distrust of the West on those continents existed long before the pandemic’s onset. That, however, hasn’t deterred the State Department, or its media stenographers, in their quest for an easy scapegoat.
Relatedly, the New York Times (3/28/20) contended that China has amplified multiple anti-US conspiracy theories in Africa and the West, and now threatens to betray its potential Covid-related détente with the peace-seeking United States. Yet China hasn’t indicated that it wouldn’t cooperate with the US on Covid-19 containment efforts. Quite the contrary: China has provided New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and other US states with gloves, N95 masks, gowns and other medical supplies, continuing to manufacture healthcare equipment as it recovers from the epidemic (New York Times, 3/29/20).
Russia, too, recently sent ventilators, personal protective equipment and other desperately needed supplies to the US, despite the sanctions imposed on it by the US. Unwilling to accept this as anything other than an opportunistic ploy, CNN (4/2/20) described the delivery as a “propaganda win for the Kremlin” that left the story’s sole sources — former State Department officials and US think-tank top brass—“mystified” and “bemused.”
There’s a patent irony here: The State Department is impugning enemies in order to distract from its own policy failures—exactly what it’s accusing those enemies of.
The US has known of the threat of the virus since at least late December 2019, when the World Health Organization was first informed of a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in China. Soon after, leading Western media reported that a “pneumonia-like” illness had infected residents of the Chinese province of Hubei (Bloomberg, 1/4/20; New York Times, 1/6/20; Washington Post, 1/7/20; NBC News, 1/9/20). In January, China swiftly marshaled government resources to construct dedicated hospitals with isolation units (CGTN, 1/24/20; New York Times, 3/19/20) and developed a regimen of quarantines, travel restrictions and comprehensive testing. As of mid-March, new cases had slowed dramatically, with estimates that its methods prevented cases from increasing by 67-fold (Nature, 3/17/20). On April 7, China reported no new deaths from Covid-19 (BBC, 4/7/20).
Despite the many lessons the US could have learned from China, the US has floundered in its response. The Trump administration has effectively refused to implement Covid-related public-health policies on the federal level, deferring to the sluggish, fragmented and inconsistent mandates of state and municipal governments. Meanwhile, deaths, new cases and unemployment continue to surge; testing is woefully limited; and hospitals are strangulated. Pointing the proverbial finger at Official State Enemies—particularly China, whose approach has garnered acclaim from the World Health Organization, and which is poised to emerge from this crisis economically far stronger than the US—thus serves as a highly necessary distraction.
Given the media’s tenor regarding China’s victories, this might not come as a surprise. With some exceptions (New York Times, 3/4/20, 3/13/20; Bloomberg, 3/11/20), Western media are still largely loath to acknowledge the success of China’s approach, continuing to insist that the country is minimizing its death counts based on “secret” US intelligence reports (Bloomberg, 4/1/20; Foreign Policy, 4/1/20; New York, 4/1/20; see FAIR.org, 4/2/20). Interestingly, none of these articles mentioned that the US’s aforementioned testing deficiencies are most likely rendering a massive undercount of Covid-19 cases and deaths.
Bloomberg and New York, however, made sure to attribute the US’s lack of preparedness in part to China’s alleged undercounts—citing Deborah Birx, an immunologist employed by none other than the US State Department.
Source: https://fair.org/home/us-disinformation-claims-do-exactly-what-enemies-are-accused-of-distract-from-covid-19-failures/
The far right “10th Amendment” movement sort of ended up in the news this week as a consequence of Trump’s latest executive power grab. First, recall how groups like the libertarian Tenth Amendment Center have long pressed to weaken federal law by making a strict interpretation of the 10th Amendment that virtually the only powers the US federal government has are those powers strictly spelled out in the Constitution and all other powers are delegated to the states. Following the “Tenther” logic, states are allowed to “nullify” federal laws if the laws are deemed to be a violation of the 10th Amendment.
The movement has long been used as means of undermining federal regulations. But this week, the issue of the 10th Amendment and the restrictions it places on federal power was back in the news. Not to attack left-wing federal regulations. Instead, we saw a broad bipartisan outcry after President Trump declared that he has the absolute authority as president to order states to shut down or open up their economies in response to the coronavirus pandemic stating that, “When somebody’s president of the United States, the authority is total.” And much of that broad bipartisan outcry focused on the 10th Amendment:
“The president’s unprecedented claim of total power met with immediate pushback from Democrats and Republicans, many of them arguing the U.S. Constitution explicitly refutes his claim to absolute authority.”
Yep, Democrats and Republicans immediately pushed back against Trump’s assertion of “total authority” and did so largely using constitutional arguments, especially with references to the 10th Amendment:
But as Charles Fried — a conservative ‘Never Trumper’ law professor at Harvard — points out, Trump’s power grab isn’t really a 10th Amendment issue. The problem is that Congress hasn’t granted Trump the authority he’s claiming. If Congress wanted to it could grant Trump the authority to wield the powers he claims he already has. As Fried put it, it’s not a 10th Amendment issue. It’s a rule of law issue:
And that’s something that’s going to be crucial to keep in mind if Trump keeps asserting he has these powers and this becomes an ongoing legal debate. You don’t want to accidentally end up promoting a “Tenther” interpretation of the constitution just because Trump is engaging in a power grab. After all, the Tenther Movement is, itself, essentially an indirect power grab by powerful forces like the Kochs who are correctly determined that its easier to bully states on regulations than the federal government.
It’s also worth noting that Trump’s assertion of total authority over the states is happening at the same time Trump has been trying to deflect as much blame for the slow coronavirus response onto the states as possible. So he wants the power, just not the responsibility:
So with all that in mind, here’s the latest article filled with comments from anonymous White House officials warning that Trump really is very intent on beginning the reopening of the US economy some time in early May. Not the entire country at a time. Maybe on a state-by-state basis or more granular county-by-county basis. According to these anonymous aides, it’s a foregone conclusion that Trump is going to try to reopening parts of the US starting in May. And as a consequence, these aides are racing to find ways of redirecting the blame away from Trump if reopened areas end up exacerbating the pandemic. The ideas they’ve come up with appear to revolve around creating a vast call for reopening the economy from a number of leaders in the business community. And Koch-backed groups appear to already be on board with the idea. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is already putting together a “Implementing a National Return to Work Plan” that the White House is reportedly warming up to. And FreedomWorks and the American Legislative Exchange Council are already pushing the idea of have government relax public health restrictions and give businesses liability shields if their employees catch the virus while at work. So the biggest business interests where deep influence over the White House are already behind the plan to reopen the economy and soon. What’s the plan if that turns out to be too soon and a public health blunder? To have so many people behind the plan that if it blows up into a public health catastrophe there will be so many people to blame that no one is to blame. Especially the president with total authority. Definitely don’t blame him:
“Trump said Tuesday night that he plans to ask the governors of all 50 states later this week to implement “a very powerful reopening plan” in their states at whatever time they deem appropriate. He said more than 20 states are in “extremely good shape” and are poised to reopen their economies very soon, “maybe even before the date of May 1.””
So according to Trump, there’s more than 20 states that could effectively reopen their economies within a couple of weeks. That’s pretty aspirational. And while we are told that this May 1st deadline is very fluid, we’re also being told that there’s no longer much of debate with Trump. He wants to reopen at least part of the country by May 1st:
And that means maximum political cover is going to be required. This is a giant public health gamble he’s taking, after all. If that gamble doesn’t pan out he’s going to have to blame someone. And it sounds like the plan is to use business leaders and prominent economists as his political shield. Get so many people calling for this that no one can be blamed. Well, ok, a president with total authority to call for this reopening would be the obvious person to be blamed, especially since he’s the driving force behind this push. But from a political theatrics standpoint the plan is to have as many people to blame as possible. Blame volunteers are needed:
And at least the right-wing think tanks appear to be happy to share in that blame if there’s a renewed public health crisis from prematurely reopening. The US Chamber of Commerce, FreedomWorks, and ALEC are already on board and that means there’s going to be A LOT of right-wing cranks and shills at think-tanks who will be willing to share the blame and fall of their swords if this turns out to be disaster. Giving political cover for bad ideas is their job:
The particular plan the White House appears to be arriving at is something we’ve heard about before: the state or county-level reopening. A plan that basically requires everyone in the country cooperate so no one from the “high” risk areas goes and infects the “low” risk areas after the “low” risk areas are given the green light to reopen:
A plan that hinges on “highly responsible behavior between counties.” That appears to be the partial reopening plan the Trump White House has arrived at. A plan that relies not just on highly responsible behavior between counties but highly responsible behavior of all the people living in those counties. Especially from the most irresponsible people most likely to run around spreading the virus. They better be extra responsible. That’s the plan that Trump appears to be intent on implementing no matter what his aides tell him, hence the need for a backup plan for deflecting the blame after this plan blows up into a new viral outbreak.
But also keep in mind that this plan for partially reopening the country is exactly the kind of situation that could tempt Trump into another power grab. A power grab he’s already hinted at: Trump’s threat to enforce a federal quarantine on New York City at the request of Florida. Calling in the military for federal quarantines. It’s clearly on his mind. And if this partial reopening plan is going to happen, the calls for federally enforced quarantines are only going to grow. Will the upcoming partial reopening involve federally enforced quarantines? We’ll see, but all of the pieces are in place for that to happen, in particular the crucial piece of having a president who thinks he has total authority.
Here’s a pair of articles that relate to growing influence of Silicon Valley Big Data giants as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. They also indirectly relate to the stories of massive fortunes that have been made from the extreme financial market volatility from the global economic shutdown:
It’s no surprise that the Silicon Valley Big Data giants are going to be big winners in terms of getting the government contracts for working out Big Data solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. But here’s an article that’s even less surprising: It turns out Palantir is the firm that’s getting most of the COVID-related contracts from the federal government so far, having received contracts already from multiple US federal agencies and other governments. Surprise!:
“But in terms of Silicon Valley companies, whom many were hoping would rapidly develop coronavirus-fighting tech, it’s Palantir that’s leading, in money terms at least.”
The US government’s favorite Big Data contractor just got another corona-related Big Data contract. It’s only a $17.3 millions with HHS but it’s not the only corona-related US federal contract. The CDC also already signed a contract with Palantir. And then there are the 12 other governments that are already working with Palantir on the corona response:
And it’s that CDC contract that brings us to the part of this story that might end up intersecting with the story of the massive fortunes made from the extreme market volatility caused by the coronavirus: Palantir’s CDC contract is basically a contract to take in anonymized data from hospitals related to the number of patients they have, ventilators available, etc, and made assessments on where resources should be allocated. It’s the kind of use of Big Data that in theory should be very useful in a situation like this where limited resources need to be reallocated in the middle of a dynamic pandemic. And when society starts reopening it’s going to be vital to get early indicators of renewed outbreaks.
Palantir’s CDC contract also includes developing models of the viral outbreak to help the CDD predict how the pandemic will evolve. So predicting new outbreaks is a core part of this contract. And, again, if done by an ethical company or government agency this would be extremely useful for the reopening of society.
But the delicate reopening of society, and possible reclosing of society in response to new outbreaks, is exactly the kind of situation that could result in the kind of extreme market volatility we saw in March that ended up yielding incredible returns for the investors who were betting on a doomsday event. So Palantir is basically being contracted to make take in this massive amount of hospital data and make predictions of when and where the virus is spreading or not spreading. That kind of knowledge is perfect for making educated bets about renewed extreme market volatility. And Palantir, the company run by the fascist Peter Thiel, is going to be the company tasked with making those predictions about renewed viral outbreaks. Might some of those insights about emerging viral outbreaks get used for financial speculation? Palantir employees and owners are presumably barred from using its information for investment decisions but so what? It’s run by a fascist who will do as much as he can get away with.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that if Palantir’s models are used to predict emerging viral outbreaks, that means Palantir could end up largely determining which parts of the US (or other countries) get reopened or reclosed. Palantir won’t just be predicting the emerging viral outbreaks. It will implicitly be determining which areas get are reopened or closed and when that happens.
So we’ll see if any Palantir employees or owners end up miraculously making fortunes on extremely opportune financial bets. Either way, that scenario isn’t limited to Palantir. Any person or entity that gains insights into whether or not there’s going to be renewed viral outbreaks that could re-shutdown the economy will have an opportunity to make a massive fortune as this pandemic plays out. Although Palantir, being run by a fascist, is obviously more a risk for abusing that kind of insider knowledge:
“With the CDC project, it’s avoiding any such controversy, partly because it isn’t ingesting personally-identifiable information, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivities of the government contract. Instead, the sources said the tech, based on its big data gathering and analysis technology called Palantir Foundry, takes in a range of anonymized data from U.S. hospitals and healthcare agencies, including lab test results, emergency department statuses, bed capacity and ventilator supply. Palantir is also developing models for the outbreak of the virus to help CDC predict where resources are required, they added.”
As we can see, Palantir is poised to have the biggest Big Data sandbox of information of probably any entity in the US. Hospital data, health agency data, lab test results, emergency statuses, bed capacity and ventilator supply. That’s a lot of data. Now, technically, Palantir is doing this as a service for the CDC, but Palantir employees are going to have access to this data too. Especially the ones building models for the CDC:
And the CDC isn’t the only government agency Palantir is doing this kind of analysis for. The UK’s NHS also contracted Palantir to take a Big Data approach to hospital information to track coronavirus patients. So Palantir will have an early insight into whether or not the UK will be facing renewed shutdowns too:
And note the hint that Palantir’s Big Data analysis just might end up involving personally-identifiable data on coronavirus projects at some point in the future. So if the US ends up setting up some sort of surveillance regime where the coronavirus status of individuals is tracked for the purpose of contact tracing, it’s going to be Palantir that will probably get that contract:
Now, in fairness, we should acknowledge that the CDC employees working with Palantir on this Big Data information would also obviously be potential risks for using that insider information about renewed pandemics for making educated financial bets on extreme market volatility. Anyone who has access to this aggregated data and analysis could potentially use it to make a fortune. But that’s precisely why Palantir is such a bad company to use for so many of these kinds of services. Because it’s always the case that you have to trust some people with sensitive information. That’s unavoidable. What is highly avoidable is trusting people you have reason to believe are untrustworthy self-dealers who are open fascists who have spent a lifetime advocating for a philosophy where everyone is exclusively out for themselves. In other words, while it’s not outrageous that someone got a contract with the CDC to do this kind of coronavirus work, it’s pretty outrageous that Palantir got the contract but only about as outrageous as all the other government contracts Palantir shouldn’t have received and got anyway.
With multiple state governors now having announce coronavirus reopening plans, including a reopening for Georgia beginning as soon as Friday, the issue of tracking new cases and understanding the dynamics of the pandemic in real-time is suddenly a top priority in order to minimize the risk of reinflaming the pandemic in the US. Trustworthy data and analysis is that won’t be subjected to political whims is an absolute requirement. So with that vital need in mind, here’s a Daily Beast story about how Palantir is being placed at the center of the federal governments coronavirus case tracking/predicting response efforts.
Recall how we’ve already seen how Palantir recently received a $17 million contract with Health and Human Services (HHS) to help process information associated with the coronavirus response as well as a contract with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that involves taking in large amounts of data from hospitals around the country for the purpose of detecting the spread of the virus and assessing the need for medical resources. The following article expands on what we now about the HHS contract. It’s called the “HHS Protect Now” project And based on the way it’s being described, Palantir’s software is going to be the core of the that HHS virus tracking effort. In addition, the information generated by Palantir’s tools are being directly viewed by the top Trump administration officials when making their decisions about how to respond. Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House’s coronavirus response, receives nightly briefings based off data compiled and analyzed on Palantir’s system. President Trump, in turn, relies on Dr. Birx’s presentations of the data to determine when and where businesses can be encouraged to reopen:
“The Daily Beast has confirmed that Palantir will provide a major aspect of the analytics platform. Sources familiar told The Daily Beast that Palantir’s data suites will be a primary contributor to HHS Protect Now, if not the core element of the tool. ”
The core element of HHS Protect Now. That’s the role Palantir in play in this HHS effort. But it’s not just the core element of HHS Protect Now. It appears to be the core element in the White House’s decision-making process because the decisions being made by the White House are being made based on the data and analysis provided by Palantir. According to one document, this HHS Protect Now tool would be “the single source for testing data by April 20.” So this platform really is at the core of the reopening decision-making process because that test-data is what should be driving the reopening:
And note that this tool became operational on April 10, suggesting that it’s Palantir data that drive Trump’s push over the past couple of weeks to reopen states sooner rather than later:
So it’s possible we’re already seeing the impact of Palantir’s HHS Protect Now system in a big way with the reopening processing beginning at the end of this week.
But there’s another aspect of putting Palantir at the center of this effort that could play into reopening process: Since the Trump administration push to reopen sooner rather than later appears to be driven heavily by political concerns — and the economic and ideological concerns of the GOP mega-donor class — the question of how the adminstration is planning on deflecting blame if reopening too soon results in a wave of new infections is going to be a growing question as this reopening process plays out. Will Palantir taking control of the data analysis that will be officially guiding this reopening process provide an opportunity for the Trump administration to engage in CYA if the reopening steps backfire? We’ll see, but the obvious excuse if there’s a renewed wave of infections from reopening too soon is that the decision was made from bad/faulty/inadequate data. It’s probably the best viable excuse the administration will have and Palantir will be in control of that data and analysis the White House will be relying on. So don’t forget that while Palantir is now at the core of the Trump administration’s efforts to control the spread of the virus, that also places Palantir in a position to be at the core of the White House’s political damage control if this backfires and the virus spreads even more. It’ll be a lot easier for the White House to claim “we didn’t know!” when one of Trump’s closest and most amoral political allies is in control of what the White House knew and when it knew it.
@Pterrafractyl–
Although I have not been able to get the already-recorded audio track for FTR #1126 up on the website due to the logistics of the shelter-in-place order, that program highlights Palantir and what they have done.
Best,
Dave