- Spitfire List - https://spitfirelist.com -

FTR #1127 Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse Now, Part 3–The Eugenic Virus

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE [1].

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE [2].

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE [2].

You can sub­scribe to the com­ments made on pro­grams and posts–an excel­lent source of infor­ma­tion in, and of, itself, HERE [3].

Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more (to KFJC). Click Here to obtain Dav­e’s 40+ years’ work. [4]

Please con­sid­er sup­port­ing THE WORK DAVE EMORY DOES [5].

FTR #1127 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment. [6]

 

NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­i­al not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal broad­cast.

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram exam­ines one of the mul­ti-lay­ered effects of the Covid-19 “bio-psy-op.” We stress that the demar­ca­tion of these lay­ers is for cog­ni­tive purposes–to enhance under­stand­ing. The lay­ers are part of a uni­fied whole.

In this broad­cast, we focus on the eugenic effects of the virus. We have cov­ered eugen­ics in many broad­casts over the decades. A few of those: FTR #‘s 1075 [7], 1029 [8], 908 [9], 909 [10], 32 [11], 1013 [12]. FTR #1013 [12] is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance, as Trump has used the Covid-19 out­break to halt immi­gra­tion into the U.S.

Before delv­ing into the eugen­ics man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Covid-19 out­break, we high­light some of the recent devel­op­ments in the pan­dem­ic:

  1. A recent report [13], based on ran­dom test­ing, indi­cat­ed that up to one fifth of New York­ers may have been infect­ed by the virus. If accu­rate, this is an impor­tant piece of infor­ma­tion, indi­cat­ing that, from an epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stand­point, the virus did NOT orig­i­nate in Chi­na.
  2. We strong­ly sus­pect that New York was delib­er­ate­ly vec­tored by fas­cist ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion at one lev­el, and the Under­ground Reich at anoth­er. This  method­ol­o­gy would not be unprece­dent­ed [14]“. . . . In the sum­mer of 1965, Spe­cial Oper­a­tions men walked into three New York City sub­way sta­tions and tossed light­bulbs filled with Bacil­lus sub­tilis, a benign bac­te­ria, onto the tracks. The sub­way trains pushed the germs through the entire sys­tem and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly killed over a mil­lion pas­sen­gers. . . .
  3. We note increased fin­ger-point­ing [15] at, scape­goat­ing of, Chi­na for the pan­dem­ic, on the part of Britain, Ger­many and France, in addi­tion to Trump and ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty: ” . . . .Wash­ing­ton is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly spread­ing delib­er­ate rumors that the virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry. Where­as, sci­en­tists vehe­ment­ly refute the alle­ga­tions, Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Heiko Maas declared, he ‘does not want to exclude’ that the WHO will have to deal with these issues. On Mon­day, Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel called on Bei­jing to show ‘trans­paren­cy’ on the issue. . . . At the same time delib­er­ate rumors are being spread in the Unit­ed States that the Covid-19 virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry — pos­si­bly in bioweapons lab. The US gov­ern­ment indi­cat­ed that it does not rule out this pos­si­bil­i­ty; US intel­li­gence ser­vices are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the issue. . . Lead­ing British and French politi­cians have expressed sim­i­lar views. British For­eign Min­is­ter Dominic Raab has repeat­ed­ly declared that Chi­na will be held respon­si­ble for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron has now joined the cam­paign. Regard­ing the pan­demic’s alleged ori­gin, he declared, ‘there are clear­ly things that have hap­pened’ in Chi­na ‘that we don’t know about.’ . . . . ”
  4. [16]We also note a dis­turb­ing aspect of the symp­toms of a cross-vec­tored, genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered virus that is the pre­cip­i­tat­ing event for the Nazi takover in the US in Ser­pen­t’s Walk [17]: ” . . . . Pacov‑1 pro­duces only a mild, flu-like infec­tion that dis­ap­pears with­in a day or two. Pub­lic health author­i­ties would over­look it, nev­er con­sid­er it a seri­ous epi­dem­ic, and even if they did they’d have to look care­ful­ly to iso­late it. Once a vic­tim is over the ‘flu,’ Pacov‑1 becomes dor­mant and almost unde­tectable. A month or two lat­er, you send in the sec­ond stage: Pacov‑2 is also a virus, just as con­ta­gious as the first, and just as harm­less by itself. It reacts with Pacov‑1 to pro­duce a pow­er­ful coag­u­lant. . . . you die with­in three min­utes. . . .”
  5. The coag­u­lat­ing pathol­o­gy pro­duced by Pacov‑1 and Pacov‑2 in Ser­pen­t’s Walk is unnerv­ing­ly sim­i­lar to one of the many symp­toms [18] of Covid-19 infec­tion: ” . . . . Doc­tors in hot spots across the globe have begun to report an unex­pect­ed preva­lence of blood clot­ting among COVID cas­es, in what could pose a per­fect storm of poten­tial­ly fatal risk fac­tors. . . . . . . It’s grow­ing so com­mon with severe COVID cas­es, doc­tors are rec­og­niz­ing it as a new pat­tern of clot­ting called COVID-19-asso­ci­at­ed coag­u­lopa­thy, or CAC [19], which is notably asso­ci­at­ed with high inflam­ma­to­ry mark­ers in the blood, like D‑dimer and fib­rino­gen. . . . ‘In the begin­ning of the out­break, we start­ed only giv­ing them med­i­cine to pre­vent clots. We saw that it was­n’t enough,’ Dr. Cristi­na Abad, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist at Hos­pi­tal Clínicos San Car­los in Madrid, told ABC News. ‘They start­ed hav­ing pul­monary embolisms, so we start­ed [full] anti­co­ag­u­la­tion on every­one.’ . . .”

Eugen­ics [20], in its prac­tice, might best be described as a pseu­do-sci­en­tif­ic doc­trine attribut­ing fea­tures of racial, eth­nic and socio-eco­nom­ic prej­u­dice to empir­i­cal sci­en­tif­ic fact. ” . . . Eugen­ics is a set of beliefs and prac­tices that aim to improve the genet­ic [21] qual­i­ty of a human pop­u­la­tion [22],[4] [23][5] [24] typ­i­cal­ly by exclud­ing peo­ple and groups judged to be infe­ri­or, and pro­mot­ing those judged to be supe­ri­or. . . . Many coun­tries enact­ed[49] [25] var­i­ous eugen­ics poli­cies, includ­ing: genet­ic screen­ings, birth con­trol [26], pro­mot­ing dif­fer­en­tial birth rates, mar­riage restric­tions [27], seg­re­ga­tion (both racial seg­re­ga­tion [28] and seques­ter­ing the men­tal­ly ill), com­pul­so­ry ster­il­iza­tion [29]forced abor­tions [30] or forced preg­nan­cies [31], ulti­mate­ly cul­mi­nat­ing in geno­cide [32]. . . .”

Dis­cus­sion of the eugenic aspects of the Covid-19 phe­nom­e­non include:

  1. De fac­to rationing of health care dur­ing the pan­dem­ic in such a way [33] as to poten­tial­ly lethal­ly dis­crim­i­nate [34] against those with dis­abil­i­ties.
  2. Infec­tion and death rates dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high among pop­u­la­tions endur­ing the eco­nom­ic and phys­i­o­log­i­cal afflic­tion deriv­ing from prej­u­dice and social dar­win­is­tic doc­trine: African-Amer­i­cans [35], peo­ple who work in low-pay­ing jobs that require close human con­tact and liv­ing in con­di­tions that do not per­mit social dis­tanc­ing [36].
  3. The eco­nom­i­cal­ly degrad­ing effect of GOP fis­cal pol­i­cy with regard to pub­lic trans­porta­tion [37] dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.
  4. New York City has been stig­ma­tized dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, as has New York State [38].  With large Jew­ish, African-Amer­i­can and Lati­no pop­u­la­tions, a tra­di­tion of lib­er­al pol­i­tics, gen­er­ous munic­i­pal union con­tracts, a free city uni­ver­si­ty pro­gram, New York has long been viewed as “Jew York City” by fas­cist ele­ments. Gov­er­nors, as well as Trump him­self, have pro­posed quar­an­ti­ning New York City and New Jer­sey. This fur­ther under­scores the above spec­u­la­tion con­cern­ing the rate of infec­tion in New York City. ” . . . . As Pres­i­dent Trump put it [39] in his short-lived bid to ‘QUARANTINE’ New York, New Jer­sey and Con­necti­cut, ‘Some peo­ple would like to see New York quar­an­tined because it’s a hot spot’ — the impli­ca­tion being that if New York­ers could only be kept where they are, with check­points and guards if need be, Covid-19 could be stopped from spread­ing else­where in the coun­try. Gov. Ron DeSan­tis of Flori­da set up [40] check­points to stop cars with New York or Louisiana license plates, so that state troop­ers can warn dri­vers to self-quar­an­tine or face 60 days in jail — even as he hes­i­tat­ed to put any social dis­tanc­ing in place or close the beach­es for spring break. Instead of admit­ting the dan­ger of com­mu­ni­ty spread in Flori­da, the gov­er­nor framed the prob­lem as one of out­siders bring­ing germs in. Gov­er­nors in Mary­land and oth­er states warned [41] any­one arriv­ing from the New York City area to iso­late them­selves. On Twit­ter, Covid-19 has tak­en on a new sobri­quet: the ‘Cuo­movirus.’ . . .”

The broad­cast con­cludes with an overview of New York Times head­lines, illus­trat­ing var­i­ous aspects of the socio-eco­nom­ic fall­out of the Covid-19 out­break, vic­tim­iz­ing low­er income peo­ple, reduc­ing income and earn­ing abil­i­ty, edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty, adverse­ly affect­ing access to food and augur­ing cat­a­stro­phe for Third World pop­u­la­tions:

  1. “Col­leges Run­ning Out of Cash Wor­ry Stu­dents Will Van­ish, Too” by Anemona Har­to­col­lis; The New York Times; 4/16/2020; pp. A1-A-15 [West­ern Edi­tion].
  2.  “Out­break Strains States’ Finances” by Mary Williams Walsh; The New York Times; 4/16/2020; pp. B1-B6 [West­ern Edi­tion].
  3.  ” ‘This Is Going to Kill Small-Town Amer­i­ca’ ” by David Gelles: The New York Times; 4/16/2020; pp. B1-B5 [West­ern Edi­tion].
  4.  The New York Times [West­ern Edi­tion] head­line for 4/16/2020 said it all, as far as the for­tunes of retail out­lets. “Sales at U.S. Stores Hit ‘Cat­a­stroph­ic’ Depths” by Sap­na Mahesh­wari and Ben Cas­sel­man; The New York Times; 4/16/2020. [42]
  5.  “Evi­dence of Virus Effect on Econ­o­my Grows More Omi­nous” [AP]; The New York Times; 4/15/2020. [43]
  6.  “135 Mil­lion Face Star­va­tion. That Could Dou­ble” by Abdi Latif Dahir; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; pp. A1-A6; [West­ern Edi­tion].
  7.  “This Pan­dem­ic Is Bring­ing Anoth­er” by Nicholas Kristof; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A23 [Op-ed–Western Edi­tion].
  8.  “Covid-19 Threat­ens Glob­al Safe­ty Net” Edi­to­r­i­al; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A22 [West­ern Edi­tion].
  9. “How Gov­ern­ment ‘Failed the Elder­ly’ ” Let­ter to the Edi­tor; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A22 [West­ern Edi­tion].
  10.  “A Lim­it on Trump’s Immi­gra­tion Pow­er” by Jen­nifer M. Cha­con and Erwin Cher­merin­sky; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A23 [op-ed–Western Edi­tion].
  11.  ” ‘The Food Sup­ply Chain Is Break­ing.’ Tyson Foods Warns of Meat Short­age as Plants Close Due to Covid-19” by Sanya Man­soor [Time] Yahoo News; 4/26/2020. [44]

As not­ed in the pro­gram, the eugenic aspects of the pan­dem­ic and effects on the eco­nom­i­cal­ly and social­ly dis­ad­van­taged inside and out­side of the U.S. are inex­tri­ca­ble with the weal-con­cen­trat­ing aspects of the pan­dem­ic. This will be the focus of our next pro­gram:

  1. “Banks Steered Rich­est Clients To Fed­er­al Aid” by Emi­ly Flit­ter and Sta­cy Cow­ley; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; pp. A1-A14 [West­ern Edi­tion].
  2. “Mil­lions In Relief For Backer Of Resorts” by Jean­na Smi­alek, Jim Tanker­s­ley and Alan Rappe­port; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; pp. B1-B5 [West­ern Edi­tion].
[45]

Herr Schauble?

Crit­i­cal obser­va­tions [46] by Wolf­gang Schauble, the German/EU “Aus­ter­i­ty Czar” who wrought so much suf­fer­ing fol­low­ing the 2008 eco­nom­ic col­lapse has clear­ly enun­ci­at­ed the func­tion­al and philo­soph­i­cal essence of “cor­po­ratist” and eugenic doc­trine. 

This, too, is reflect­ed in the Trumpian “LIBERATE MICHIGAN etc.”

Some back­ground on Schauble’s out­look: ” . . . . Hard­ly a Ger­man gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive is more noto­ri­ous than Wolf­gang Schäu­ble — world­wide. Dur­ing the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial cri­sis, when Schäu­ble was Ger­many’s Min­is­ter of Finance, his EU coun­ter­parts trem­bled: Schäu­ble want­ed to force them to adapt harsh aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures. Because the fore­see­able social con­se­quences would cost lives, Schäuble’s tac­tics seemed to scare Europe with ‘trau­mat­ic effects’ and gave it a les­son in Ger­man eco­nom­ic ethics: Teu­ton­ic bru­tal­i­ty and at all costs. ‘Ter­ri­fy­ing,’ was the assess­ment the US Trea­sury Sec­re­tary made fol­low­ing his con­ver­sa­tion with Schäu­ble. Paris and Madrid were also appre­hen­sive; Athens called Schäu­ble an ‘arson­ist,’ on a ram­page through Europe. Schäu­ble has since climbed high­er on the gov­ern­ment lad­der. Schäu­ble now ranks sec­ond, after the Pres­i­dent, in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many’s pro­to­co­lary sys­tem. . . . .”

After the onset of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, he has redou­bled his “Teu­ton­ic bru­tal­i­ty:” ” . . . . In the midst of the Coro­na cri­sis, Schäu­ble ini­ti­at­ed an inter­view, con­sid­ered to be an unof­fi­cial guide­line for the Ger­man state’s life and death deci­sions. Its tenor deserves atten­tion, even beyond Ger­many’s bor­ders.

Should peo­ple have to die, because they are deprived of state resources, essen­tial for the eco­nom­ic cycle, such as cur­rent­ly dur­ing the Coro­na cri­sis? Does the pro­tec­tion of human life have absolute pri­or­i­ty in state pol­i­cy? In the inter­view, Schäu­ble has elab­o­rat­ed in 2020 on what he had already made clear in 2012, dur­ing the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial cri­sis: ‘If I hear that every­thing else must take a back seat to the preser­va­tion of life, I must say that this, in such unequiv­o­cal­ness, is not right.’ Pro­tec­tion of human life does not have an ‘absolute pri­or­i­ty in our Basic Law.’ Death is com­ing soon­er or lat­er any­way. ‘We are all going to die.’ (April 26, 2020)

Schäuble’s state­ments are exem­plary and are of ‘nation­al sig­nif­i­cance’ declared the Ger­man Ethics Coun­cil. The coun­cil is gov­ern­ment financed and pri­or­i­tizes ‘eco­nom­ic rights.’ They should ‘not be uncon­di­tion­al­ly sub­or­di­nat­ed’ to the pro­tec­tion of human life. There is a sort of rival­ry of val­ues. If the val­ue of life would have pri­or­i­ty, ‘free­dom’ would suf­fer, accord­ing to the unan­i­mous judg­ment of the ethics depart­ment of the Ger­man Eco­nom­ic Insti­tute (IW). From the stand­point of Ger­man con­sti­tu­tion­al law, accord­ing to a for­mer judge on the con­sti­tu­tion­al court, ‘the state’s effi­cien­cy’ would encounter its lim­its, if life were giv­en top pri­or­i­ty, where ‘every­thing else must lag arbi­trar­i­ly far behind.’

In fact, the gov­ern­men­t’s oblig­a­tion to the con­sti­tu­tion’s high­est val­ue — the pro­tec­tion of life — must be rel­a­tivized, just as Schäu­ble is doing, con­firm the major­i­ty of Ger­many’s gov­ern­ment lead­ers. Promi­nent voic­es from the par­lia­men­tary oppo­si­tion par­ties are also in agree­ment that the pro­tec­tion of human life, as the pri­ma­ry legit­imized duty of the state is a ‘ques­tion of assess­ment.’ From this the FDP draws the con­clu­sion: ‘there­fore, please reopen the busi­ness­es.’ ‘Enable pro­duc­tion.’ In har­mo­ny with Ger­many’s export econ­o­my lob­by­ists and the Pres­i­dent of the Bun­destag, the chair of the Greens is also one of the rel­a­tiviz­ers. He finds him­self in an alleged ‘dilem­ma,’ when he thinks of the pro­tec­tion of life dur­ing the Coro­na cri­sis, while a fel­low Green munic­i­pal politi­cian speaks in plain oper­a­tional terms; ‘Let me tell you quite blunt­ly: We may be sav­ing peo­ple in Ger­many, who, because of their age or seri­ous pre­vi­ous med­ical con­di­tions, may, be dead any­way in a half a year.’ . . . .”

1a. A recent dis­clo­sure that up to one-fifth of peo­ple in New York City have been infect­ed sug­gests that the virus did not orig­i­nate in Chi­na.

“1 in 5 New York­ers May Have had Covid-19, Anti­body Tests Sug­gest” by J. David Good­man and Michael Roth­feld; The New York Times; 4/23/2020. [13]

One of every five New York City res­i­dents test­ed pos­i­tive for anti­bod­ies to the coro­n­avirus, accord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary results described by Gov. Andrew M. Cuo­mo on Thurs­day that sug­gest­ed that the virus had spread far more wide­ly than known.

If the pat­tern holds, the results from ran­dom test­ing of 3,000 peo­ple raised the tan­ta­liz­ing prospect that many New York­ers — as many as 2.7 mil­lion, the gov­er­nor said — who nev­er knew they had been infect­ed had already encoun­tered the virus, and sur­vived. Mr. Cuo­mo also said that such wide infec­tion might mean that the death rate was far low­er than believed. . . .

1b. We con­clude with dis­cus­sion of the super­vi­sion of Ft. Det­rick per­son­nel by Dr. Kurt Blome, the Deputy Sur­geon Gen­er­al of the Third Reich and anoth­er indi­vid­ual incor­po­rat­ed into the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare estab­lish­ment.

We have dis­cussed Blome in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR # 1012 [47] and AFA #39 [48].

Both Blome and Traub report­ed direct­ly to Reichs­fuhrer SS Hein­rich Himm­ler dur­ing World War II.

Note the 1966 tests on the New York City sub­way sys­tem.

Lab 257: the Dis­turb­ing Sto­ry of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Lab­o­ra­to­ry; by Michael Christo­pher Car­roll; Copy­right 2004 by Michael Christo­pher Car­roll; Harper­Collins [HC]; p. 14. [14]

. . . . Fort Detrick’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Divi­sion ran ‘vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty tests’ in which oper­a­tives walked around Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and San Fran­cis­co with suit­cas­es hold­ing Ser­ra­tia marcescens—a bac­te­ria rec­om­mend­ed to Fort Det­rick by Traub’s nom­i­nal super­vi­sor, Nazi germ czar and Nurem­berg defen­dant Dr. Kurt Blome. Tiny per­fo­ra­tions allowed the germs’ release so they could trace the flow of the germs through air­ports and bus ter­mi­nals. Short­ly there­after, eleven elder­ly men and women checked into hos­pi­tals with nev­er-before-seen Ser­ra­tia marcescens infec­tions. One patient died. Decades lat­er when the germ tests were dis­closed, the Army denied respon­si­bil­i­ty. . . . In the sum­mer of 1965, Spe­cial Oper­a­tions men walked into three New York City sub­way sta­tions and tossed light­bulbs filled Bacil­lus sub­tilis, a benign bac­te­ria, onto the tracks. The sub­way trains pushed the germs through the entire sys­tem and the­o­ret­i­cal­ly killed over a mil­lion pas­sen­gers. . . .

1c. In FTR #1126 [49], we exam­ined the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and GOP’s exploita­tion of the Covid-19 out­break as a cam­paign tac­tic and right-wing hints that the virus escaped from a Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Now, Ger­many, France and Britain are join­ing with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the GOP in hint­ing that the coro­n­avirus escaped from a Chi­nese bio­log­i­cal war­fare lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Amer­i­can media voic­es from (pre­dictably) Fox News [50] to (also pre­dictably) The New York Times [51] are orgias­ti­cal­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ing the fresh fer­til­iz­er, act­ing in con­junc­tion with intel­li­gence offi­cers. 

Note that the linked sto­ry about Fox News describes state­ments by right-wing jour­nal­ists, act­ing in con­cert with ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, inti­mat­ing that offi­cials of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty are in bed with Chi­nese intel­li­gence.

This reeks of McCarthy­ism and may well hand Trump vic­to­ry in the fall and, even­tu­al­ly, lead to war.

In fact, there is a high-secu­ri­ty bio­log­i­cal research facil­i­ty in Wuhan at which Chi­nese sci­en­tists, along with Amer­i­can peers, have been study­ing coronaviruses–a source of inter­mit­tent dis­ease trans­mis­sion in Chi­na. This facil­i­ty involves joint research [52] fund­ed, in part, by the Pen­ta­gon.

Sug­ges­tions that the virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese bioweapons lab are curi­ous­ly blind to events in the Unit­ed States. In ear­ly August of 2019 [53], short­ly before the record­ed start of the out­break in Wuhan, Chi­na, the U.S. Army Med­ical Research Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­eases at that facil­i­ty was closed down by the CDC due to mul­ti­ple safe­ty vio­la­tions. “All research at a Fort Det­rick lab­o­ra­to­ry that han­dles high-lev­el dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al, such as Ebo­la, is on hold indef­i­nite­ly after the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion found the orga­ni­za­tion failed to meet biosafe­ty stan­dards. . . . The CDC sent a cease and desist order in July. After USAMRIID received the order from the CDC, its reg­is­tra­tion with the Fed­er­al Select Agent Pro­gram, which over­sees dis­ease-caus­ing mate­r­i­al use and pos­ses­sion, was sus­pend­ed. That sus­pen­sion effec­tive­ly halt­ed all bio­log­i­cal select agents and tox­in research at USAMRIID . . . .”

As the Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy [15] arti­cle notes, the tone of both Amer­i­can and Ger­man rhetoric con­cern­ing Covid-19 is rem­i­nis­cent of the delib­er­ate dis­in­for­ma­tion that led to the Amer­i­can inva­sion of Iraq in 2002.

 . . . . Last week­end, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump warned the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic that it should face con­se­quences if it was “know­ing­ly respon­si­ble” for the spread of the pan­dem­ic. Wash­ing­ton is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly spread­ing delib­er­ate rumors that the virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry. Where­as, sci­en­tists vehe­ment­ly refute the alle­ga­tions, Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Heiko Maas declared, he ‘does not want to exclude’ that the WHO will have to deal with these issues. On Mon­day, Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel called on Bei­jing to show ‘trans­paren­cy’ on the issue. . . .

 . . . . At the same time delib­er­ate rumors are being spread in the Unit­ed States that the Covid-19 virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry — pos­si­bly in bioweapons lab. The US gov­ern­ment indi­cat­ed that it does not rule out this pos­si­bil­i­ty; US intel­li­gence ser­vices are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the issue. Par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the lie about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruc­tion, such an alle­ga­tion must be per­ceived as a threat to lend legit­i­ma­cy to new aggres­sions. . . .

 . . . . Already last week, Ger­man media organs have increas­ing­ly been call­ing Chi­na the “cul­prit” behind the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic out­break. Under the head­line “what Chi­na already owes us,” Ger­many’s Springer press even called for “repa­ra­tions.” (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[5]) Lead­ing British and French politi­cians have expressed sim­i­lar views. British For­eign Min­is­ter Dominic Raab has repeat­ed­ly declared that Chi­na will be held respon­si­ble for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron has now joined the cam­paign. Regard­ing the pan­demic’s alleged ori­gin, he declared, “there are clear­ly things that have hap­pened” in Chi­na “that we don’t know about.”[6] It is not clear how Macron can know some­thing exists that he does not know about. It is how­ev­er clear that he seeks to impli­cate Bei­jing. . . .

 “The Sus­pi­cion Cam­paign;” Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy; 4/21/2020. [15]

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is join­ing the US cam­paign of alle­ga­tions against Chi­na regard­ing the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic out­break. Last week­end, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump warned the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic that it should face con­se­quences if it was “know­ing­ly respon­si­ble” for the spread of the pan­dem­ic. Wash­ing­ton is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly spread­ing delib­er­ate rumors that the virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry. Where­as, sci­en­tists vehe­ment­ly refute the alle­ga­tions, Ger­man For­eign Min­is­ter Heiko Maas declared, he “does not want to exclude” that the WHO will have to deal with these issues. On Mon­day, Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel called on Bei­jing to show “trans­paren­cy” on the issue. Senior Ger­man mil­i­tary offi­cials have recent­ly been demand­ing that the EU adopt “a joint polit­i­cal-strate­gic response” to Chi­na’s grow­ing strength, because in the Coro­na cri­sis, Bei­jing is gain­ing con­sid­er­able influ­ence. Accord­ing to a recent poll, more than half of the Ital­ian pop­u­la­tion sees Chi­na as a “friend,” while near­ly half see Ger­many as an “ene­my.”

Delib­er­ate Rumors

The Ger­man gov­ern­ment is join­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s new cam­paign against Chi­na, albeit atten­u­at­ed. On the week­end, Pres­i­dent Trump claimed that the virus “could have been stopped in Chi­na” and warned that the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic “should face con­se­quences” if it was “know­ing­ly respon­si­ble” for the spread.[1] At the same time delib­er­ate rumors are being spread in the Unit­ed States that the Covid-19 virus could have orig­i­nat­ed in a Chi­nese lab­o­ra­to­ry — pos­si­bly in bioweapons lab. The US gov­ern­ment indi­cat­ed that it does not rule out this pos­si­bil­i­ty; US intel­li­gence ser­vices are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the issue. Par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the lie about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruc­tion, such an alle­ga­tion must be per­ceived as a threat to lend legit­i­ma­cy to new aggres­sions. There is no proof that the virus orig­i­nat­ed in a lab­o­ra­to­ry. Sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies clear­ly con­clude that it was trans­mit­ted from wild ani­mals to humans.[2]

Open to Sus­pi­cion

Berlin is open to entire­ly unfound­ed sus­pi­cions. For­eign Min­is­ter Heiko Maas is quot­ed say­ing he “does­n’t want to exclude” that “the WHO will have to deal with these issues.”[3] The Min­is­ter of Devel­op­ment Gerd Müller declared that the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic must dis­play “com­plete open­ness” — “par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing the ori­gin of the virus.”[4] Already last week, Ger­man media organs have increas­ing­ly been call­ing Chi­na the “cul­prit” behind the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic out­break. Under the head­line “what Chi­na already owes us,” Ger­many’s Springer press even called for “repa­ra­tions.” (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[5]) Lead­ing British and French politi­cians have expressed sim­i­lar views. British For­eign Min­is­ter Dominic Raab has repeat­ed­ly declared that Chi­na will be held respon­si­ble for the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron has now joined the cam­paign. Regard­ing the pan­demic’s alleged ori­gin, he declared, “there are clear­ly things that have hap­pened” in Chi­na “that we don’t know about.”[6] It is not clear how Macron can know some­thing exists that he does not know about. It is how­ev­er clear that he seeks to impli­cate Bei­jing.

“A Dev­as­tat­ing Impres­sion”

Insight into the Ger­man-Euro­pean involve­ment in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s new cam­paign against Chi­na is pro­vid­ed by Ger­man mil­i­tary offi­cials’ recent state­ments. A new work­ing paper by the Fed­er­al Acad­e­my for Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy (BAKS), for exam­ple, exam­ines the Covid-19 pan­demic’s poten­tial glob­al polit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions. The author, Ret. Brig.Gen. Armin Staigis, BAKS Vice-Pres­i­dent (2013 — 2015) today’s Chair of BAKS “Asso­ci­a­tion of Friends” points out that the USA, “up to now the EU’s most impor­tant part­ner” is “erod­ing in the glob­al con­text.” Chi­na, on the oth­er hand, is emerg­ing more and more “on the world stage.” “With its eco­nom­ic pow­er, it is reach­ing the Euro­pean con­ti­nent and is thus ... also becom­ing a polit­i­cal rival.”[7] The EU should “not become a pawn” in the hands of states like Rus­sia (“revan­chists”), the USA (“off course ego­centrics”) or Chi­na (“hun­gry up-starts”). The EU “still has to for­mu­late a joint polit­i­cal strate­gic answer” par­tic­u­lar­ly to the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic’s grow­ing strength. This is all the more impor­tant in light of the polit­i­cal devel­op­ment in the Coro­na cri­sis: “There is a pub­lic per­cep­tion that Chi­na is pro­vid­ing faster and more help­ful sup­port in Europe than the EU and its mem­ber states among them­selves.” This, how­ev­er, is a “dev­as­tat­ing impres­sion.”

Race between the Global Economic Powers

Late last week, Gen­er­al Staff Offi­cer Col. Matthias Rogg, a mem­ber of the board of the Ger­man Insti­tute for Defense and Strate­gic Stud­ies (GIDS), a Bun­deswehr think tank (found­ed in 2018) made a sim­i­lar obser­va­tion. Rogg assumes that in the course of the Coro­na cri­sis, Chi­na will sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhance its inter­na­tion­al influ­ence. “That per­tains to the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment in coun­tries, for exam­ple in the Mid­dle East or even in Africa, which are not vis­i­bly affect­ed by the epi­dem­ic, but will sure­ly also be seri­ous­ly affect­ed by Coro­na, either direct­ly or indirectly.”[8] There, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na will be able to secure new influ­ence “through finan­cial, and mate­r­i­al assis­tance.” It should “not be for­got­ten” that it is com­plete­ly uncer­tain “how the USA will eco­nom­i­cal­ly evolve from this cri­sis.” “That means that in the race between the glob­al eco­nom­ic pow­ers, one can assume that Chi­na ... will have a head start and wind up among the win­ners of the cri­sis.” That is grave — after all, with Chi­na, which, for exam­ple, has “offered imme­di­ate assis­tance” to Italy, we are “de fac­to deal­ing with a coun­try from a rival sys­tem.”

Enemy Number One

A cur­rent sur­vey made in Italy shows the prob­lems Ger­man pow­er strate­gists are con­fronting. The Ital­ian sur­vey sug­gests that the sus­pi­cion cam­paign against Chi­na is also aimed at affect­ing Europe. In mid-March it had indi­cat­ed that around two-thirds of the Ital­ians felt EU mem­ber­ship was dis­ad­van­ta­geous to their coun­try. Only four per­cent felt that the Union was pro­vid­ing suf­fi­cient sup­port to Italy dur­ing the Coro­na crisis.[9] Now, since Chi­na’s most recent Covid-19 assis­tance deliv­ery, 52 per­cent of the Ital­ian pop­u­la­tion see Chi­na as a “friend” of Italy; 32 per­cent con­sid­er Rus­sia, who is also pro­vid­ing assis­tance, a “friend,” and only 17 per­cent place the Unit­ed States in this cat­e­go­ry. Among the coun­tries in the sur­vey con­sid­ered an “ene­my” of Italy, first place, with an impres­sive 45 per­cent, went to Germany.[10]

 [1] Trump dro­ht Chi­na mit “Kon­se­quen­zen”. tagesschau.de 19.04.2020.

[2] Vgl. etwa: Kris­t­ian G. Ander­sen, Andrew Ram­baut, W. Ian Lip­kin, Edward C. Holmes, Robert F. Gar­ry: The prox­i­mal ori­gin of SARS-CoV­‑2. Nature Med­i­cine 26 (2020). S. 450–452.

[3] Nils Met­zger: Neue Argu­mente für Labor-The­o­rie? zdf.de 17.04.2020.

[4] Darum nimmt die Kri­tik an Pekings Umgang mit der Coro­n­avirus-Krise zu. tagesspiegel.de 20.04.2020.

[5] See also Bat­tle of Nar­ra­tives [54].

[6] Vic­tor Mal­let, Roula Kha­laf: FT Inter­view: Emmanuel Macron says it is time to think the unthink­able. ft.com 16.04.2020.

[7] Armin Staigis: Ern­st­fall Europa — Jet­zt! Bun­de­sakademie für Sicher­heit­spoli­tik: Arbeitspa­pi­er 2/20. Berlin, April 2020.

[8] “Chi­na dürfte am Ende zu den Krisen­gewin­nern gehören”. cicero.de 17.04.2020.

[9] See also Ger­many First (II) [55].

[10] Mas­si­m­il­ia

2a. This post is a pre­view of an upcom­ing show in the “Bio-Psy-Op Apoc­a­lypse Now” series. As Mr. Emory has stressed, the pre­sen­ta­tion of these pro­grams in con­cep­tu­al­ly sep­a­rate pack­ages is for pur­pos­es of cog­ni­tive grasp. The con­sum­mate­ly bril­liant, con­sum­mate­ly evil “bio-psy-op” is an exam­ple of six or sev­en dimen­sion­al chess. It oper­ates on a num­ber of dif­fer­ent, over­lap­ping lev­els simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Note that the Nazi takeover in Ser­pen­t’s Walk occurs after the coun­try is attacked with genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapons. Although the nature of the infec­tion is dif­fer­ent, the over­all par­a­digm is iden­ti­cal. “Pacov” might be under­stood in a con­tem­po­rary con­text as stand­ing for “Pan­dem­ic Coro­n­aVirus.”

In Ser­pen­t’s Walk–which we have dis­cussed [56] for decades–the SS go under­ground (which they did) [57], buy into the opin­ion-form­ing media (which they did) [58] and, infil­trate the mil­i­tary (which they have done) [59], and, after a ter­ror­ist attack by genet­i­cal­ly-engi­neered virus­es dec­i­mates large parts of the Unit­ed States, mar­tial law is declared and the Nazis take over. NB: we do not know if “cross-vec­tor­ing” is occur­ring with the Covid-19 virus, how­ev­er that is some­thing to be con­tem­plat­ed and researched.

 Ser­pen­t’s Walk by “Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall;” Copy­right 1991 [SC]; Nation­al Van­guard Books; 0–937944-05‑X; p. 89. [17]

. . . . “Yes. Well. ‘Pacov’ stands for ‘Pan­dem­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Virus,’ one of the ugli­er results of mil­i­tary exper­i­men­ta­tion with recom­bi­nant DNA. Do you know what that is?” . . .

. . . . “Very well, let me tell you in layman’s terms.” Mul­der extend­ed a hand to shush Wrench, who had start­ed to speak. “Pacov con­sists of two sep­a­rate re-work­ings of two DNA chains of exist­ing virus­es. It’s a pig­gy-back weapon, a two-stage oper­a­tion. You send in the first stage. The vec­tors . . . agents of trans­mis­sion . . . for Pacov‑1 are exten­sive. It trav­els through the air, the water, or direct­ly from per­son-to-per­son and is high­ly con­ta­gious. It spreads for hun­dreds of miles, if con­di­tions are opti­mal.  Pacov‑1 pro­duces only a mild, flu-like infec­tion that dis­ap­pears with­in a day or two. Pub­lic health author­i­ties would over­look it, nev­er con­sid­er it a seri­ous epi­dem­ic, and even if they did they’d have to look care­ful­ly to iso­late it. Once a vic­tim is over the ‘flu,’ Pacov‑1 becomes dor­mant and almost unde­tectable. A month or two lat­er, you send in the sec­ond stage: Pacov‑2 is also a virus, just as con­ta­gious as the first, and just as harm­less by itself. It reacts with Pacov‑1 to pro­duce a pow­er­ful coag­u­lant. . . . you die with­in three min­utes. No warn­ing, no vac­cine, no cure. Those not exposed to both stages remain unharmed. . . . Pacov‑2 goes inert, like Pacov‑1 with­in a week or two. Then you get your victim’s coun­try, all his prop­er­ty, in undam­aged con­di­tion. . . . and a lot of corpses to bury.” . . . .    

2b. We note that, although a “coag­u­lant” is not caus­ing the phe­nom­e­non, blood clots are indeed one of the many symp­toms of the Covid-19: ” . . . . Doc­tors in hot spots across the globe have begun to report an unex­pect­ed preva­lence of blood clot­ting among COVID cas­es, in what could pose a per­fect storm of poten­tial­ly fatal risk fac­tors. . . . . . . It’s grow­ing so com­mon with severe COVID cas­es, doc­tors are rec­og­niz­ing it as a new pat­tern of clot­ting called COVID-19-asso­ci­at­ed coag­u­lopa­thy, or CAC [19], which is notably asso­ci­at­ed with high inflam­ma­to­ry mark­ers in the blood, like D‑dimer and fib­rino­gen. . . . ‘In the begin­ning of the out­break, we start­ed only giv­ing them med­i­cine to pre­vent clots. We saw that it was­n’t enough,’ Dr. Cristi­na Abad, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist at Hos­pi­tal Clínicos San Car­los in Madrid, told ABC News. ‘They start­ed hav­ing pul­monary embolisms, so we start­ed [full] anti­co­ag­u­la­tion on every­one.’ . . .”

“Why Are So Many Covid-19 Patients Also See­ing Blood Clots?” by Sasha Pezenik and Dr. L. Ned­da Dast­malchi; Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca; 4/20/2020. [18]

As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic [60] rav­ages a world still grap­pling with vast uncer­tain­ty over the virus, a new and unnerv­ing pat­tern has emerged in some patients.

Though nov­el coro­n­avirus [61] symp­toms thus far have pre­sent­ed chiefly with­in the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem, the infec­tion is swift­ly show­ing to be an all-out, sys­tem-wide assault that reach­es far past the lungs. Doc­tors in hot spots across the globe have begun to report an unex­pect­ed preva­lence of blood clot­ting among COVID cas­es, in what could pose a per­fect storm of poten­tial­ly fatal risk fac­tors.

In New Orleans [62], a man in his 30s was admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal a week into treat­ment for the flu, severe­ly sick. Devel­op­ing short­ness of breath, chest pain and an abnor­mal­ly rapid heart rate — he was test­ed for coro­n­avirus — doc­tors real­ized those symp­toms also are typ­i­cal of a pul­monary embolism: a poten­tial­ly dead­ly blood clot that can move from the legs to the lungs and dam­age the heart.

The man’s blood work already showed heart dam­age, though he had no known under­ly­ing med­ical con­di­tions, no recent trav­el, no recent surg­eries. His chest scans, shown first to ABC News, revealed a mas­sive clot. Termed a “sad­dle embo­lus” because it hooks over branch­es of both pul­monary arter­ies, it was severe­ly stress­ing the right side of the heart, unable to push blood against the clot already in its strained state.

“Thank­ful­ly, we were able to find this and treat this ear­ly, oth­er­wise it prob­a­bly would have killed him,” Dr. Siyab Pan­hwar, a car­dio­vas­cu­lar con­sult for the patient, told ABC News. . . .

. . . It’s grow­ing so com­mon with severe COVID cas­es, doc­tors are rec­og­niz­ing it as a new pat­tern of clot­ting called COVID-19-asso­ci­at­ed coag­u­lopa­thy, or CAC [19], which is notably asso­ci­at­ed with high inflam­ma­to­ry mark­ers in the blood, like D‑dimer and fib­rino­gen. . . .

. . . . In Spain, among the hard­est-hit nations [63], clot­ting cas­es have become so preva­lent in nov­el coro­n­avirus patients that doc­tors have begun rou­tine­ly treat­ing indi­vid­u­als with ther­a­peu­tic dos­es of anti­co­ag­u­la­tion med­ica­tion.

“In the begin­ning of the out­break, we start­ed only giv­ing them med­i­cine to pre­vent clots. We saw that it was­n’t enough,” Dr. Cristi­na Abad, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist at Hos­pi­tal Clínicos San Car­los in Madrid, told ABC News. “They start­ed hav­ing pul­monary embolisms, so we start­ed [full] anti­co­ag­u­la­tion on every­one.” . . .

3. The Bio-Psy-Op is man­i­fest­ing eugen­ics application–a bio-psy-op T4 pro­gram, if you will.

“Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties Are Afraid They Will Be Dis­crim­i­nat­ed Against Because of Coro­n­avirus” by Rick Jer­vais; USA Today; 3/26/2020. [33]

. . . . Peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and chron­ic health con­di­tions are some of the most vul­ner­a­ble groups dur­ing the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, though often over­looked in the nation­al debate, accord­ing to advo­cates. The virus has infect­ed more than 69,000 Amer­i­cans and led to near­ly more than 1,000 U.S. deaths, accord­ing to a site run by Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty [64]

On Wednes­day, 27 U.S. rep­re­sen­ta­tives and five sen­a­tors sent a let­ter  [65]to the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, or HHS, and U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr, urg­ing them to issue guid­ance to state agen­cies to pro­tect peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties from being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against dur­ing the out­break. U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R‑NJ, led the effort. . . .

. . . . One of the con­cerns is whether peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties will be side­lined for health­care as med­ical equip­ment such as ven­ti­la­tors and hos­pi­tal beds become increas­ing­ly scarce, said Ari Ne’eman, vis­it­ing schol­ar at the Lurie Insti­tute for Dis­abil­i­ty Pol­i­cy at Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty in Mass­a­chu­setts.

 A num­ber of states, includ­ing Utah, Ten­nessee and Alaba­ma, have emer­gency con­tin­gency plans that direct hos­pi­tals not to pro­vide med­ical equip­ment, such as ven­ti­la­tors, to peo­ple with cer­tain intel­lec­tu­al and cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties, should that equip­ment become scarce, he said. . . .

4. The “Use­less Bread Gob­blers” are los­ing out.

“Who Should Be Saved First? Experts Offer Med­ical Guid­ance” by Austin Frakt; The New York Times; 3/24/2020. [34]

How do doc­tors and hos­pi­tals decide who gets poten­tial­ly life­sav­ing treat­ment and who doesn’t?

A lot of thought has been giv­en to just such a predica­ment, well before crit­i­cal short­ages from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

“It would be irre­spon­si­ble at this point not to get ready to make trag­ic deci­sions about who lives and who dies,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Bioethics and Human­i­ties at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado.

Fac­ing this dilem­ma recent­ly — who gets a ven­ti­la­tor or a hos­pi­tal bed — Ital­ian doc­tors sought eth­i­cal coun­sel and were told [66] to con­sid­er an approach that draws on util­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ples.

In layman’s terms, a util­i­tar­i­an­ism approach would max­i­mize over­all health by direct­ing care toward those most like­ly to ben­e­fit the most from it. If you had only one ven­ti­la­tor, it would go to some­one more like­ly to sur­vive instead of some­one deemed unlike­ly to do so. . . .

5. It is, on the one hand unsur­pris­ing that African Amer­i­cans are con­tract­ing and dying of coro­n­avirus at a high­er rate and, on the oth­er, com­plete­ly in keep­ing with the Far Right agen­da of Trump, Ban­non et al.

“Ear­ly Data Shows African Amer­i­cans Con­tract­ing and Dying of Coro­n­avirus at an Alarm­ing Rate” by Aki­lah John­son and Talia Buford; ProP­ub­li­ca; 4/3/2020. [35]

The coro­n­avirus entered Mil­wau­kee from a white, afflu­ent sub­urb. Then it took root in the city’s black com­mu­ni­ty and erupt­ed.

As pub­lic health offi­cials watched cas­es rise in March, too many in the com­mu­ni­ty shrugged off warn­ings. Rumors and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pro­lif­er­at­ed on social media, push­ing the bogus idea that black peo­ple are some­how immune to the dis­ease [67]. And much of the ini­tial focus was on inter­na­tion­al trav­el, so those who knew no one return­ing from Asia or Europe were quick to dis­miss the risk.

Then, when the shel­ter-in-place order came, there was a nat­ur­al push­back among those who recalled oth­er painful gov­ern­ment restric­tions — includ­ing seg­re­ga­tion and mass incar­cer­a­tion — on where black peo­ple could walk and gath­er.

“We’re like, ‘We have to wake peo­ple up,’” said Mil­wau­kee Health Com­mis­sion­er Jeanette Kowa­lik.

As the dis­ease spread at a high­er rate in the black com­mu­ni­ty, it made an even deep­er cut. Envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal fac­tors have com­pound­ed for gen­er­a­tions, putting black peo­ple at high­er risk of chron­ic con­di­tions that leave lungs weak and immune sys­tems vul­ner­a­ble: asth­ma, heart dis­ease, hyper­ten­sion and dia­betes. In Mil­wau­kee, sim­ply being black means your life expectan­cy is 14 years short­er, on aver­age, than some­one white.

As of Fri­day morn­ing, African Amer­i­cans made up almost half of Mil­wau­kee County’s 945 cas­es and 81% of its 27 deaths in a coun­ty whose pop­u­la­tion is 26% black. Mil­wau­kee is one of the few places in the Unit­ed States that is track­ing the racial break­down of peo­ple who have been infect­ed by the nov­el coro­n­avirus, offer­ing a glimpse at the dis­pro­por­tion­ate destruc­tion it is inflict­ing on black com­mu­ni­ties nation­wide.

In Michi­gan, where the state’s pop­u­la­tion is 14% black, African Amer­i­cans made up 35% of cas­es and 40% of deaths as of Fri­day morn­ing. Detroit, where a major­i­ty of res­i­dents are black, has emerged [68] as a hot spot with a high death toll. As has New Orleans. Louisiana has not pub­lished case break­downs by race, but 40% of the state’s deaths have hap­pened [69] in Orleans Parish, where the major­i­ty of res­i­dents are black.

Illi­nois [70] and North Car­oli­na [71] are two of the few areas pub­lish­ing sta­tis­tics on COVID-19 cas­es by race, and their data shows a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of African Amer­i­cans were infect­ed.

“It will be unimag­in­able pret­ty soon,” said Dr. Celia J. Maxwell, an infec­tious dis­ease physi­cian and asso­ciate dean at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine, a school and hos­pi­tal in Wash­ing­ton ded­i­cat­ed to the edu­ca­tion and care of the black com­mu­ni­ty. “And any­thing that comes around is going to be worse in our patients. Peri­od. Many of our patients have so many prob­lems, but this is kind of like the nail in the cof­fin.”

The U.S. Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion tracks vir­u­lent out­breaks and typ­i­cal­ly releas­es detailed data that includes infor­ma­tion about the age, race and loca­tion of the peo­ple affect­ed. For the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the CDC has released loca­tion [72] and age data, but it has been silent on race. The CDC did not respond to ProPublica’s request for race data relat­ed to the coro­n­avirus or answer ques­tions about whether they were col­lect­ing it at all.

Experts say that the nation’s unwill­ing­ness to pub­licly track the virus by race could obscure a cru­cial under­ly­ing real­i­ty: It’s quite like­ly that a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of those who die of coro­n­avirus will be black.

The rea­sons for this are the same rea­sons that African Amer­i­cans have dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high rates of mater­nal death, low lev­els of access to med­ical care and high­er rates of asth­ma, said Dr. Cama­ra Jones, a fam­i­ly physi­cian, epi­demi­ol­o­gist and vis­it­ing fel­low [73] at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.

“COVID is just unmask­ing the deep dis­in­vest­ment in our com­mu­ni­ties, the his­tor­i­cal injus­tices and the impact of res­i­den­tial seg­re­ga­tion,” said Jones, who spent 13 years at the CDC, focused on iden­ti­fy­ing, mea­sur­ing and address­ing racial bias with­in the med­ical sys­tem. “This is the time to name racism as the cause of all of those things. The over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of peo­ple of col­or in pover­ty and white peo­ple in wealth is not just a hap­pen­stance. … It’s because we’re not val­ued.”

Five con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats wrote to Health and Human Ser­vices Sec­re­tary Alex Azar, whose depart­ment encom­pass­es the CDC, last week demand­ing [74] the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment col­lect and release the break­down of coro­n­avirus cas­es by race and eth­nic­i­ty.

With­out demo­graph­ic data, the mem­bers of Con­gress wrote, health offi­cials and law­mak­ers won’t be able to address inequities in health out­comes and test­ing that may emerge: “We urge you not to delay col­lect­ing this vital infor­ma­tion, and to take any addi­tion­al nec­es­sary steps to ensure that all Amer­i­cans have the access they need to COVID-19 test­ing and treat­ment.”

Mil­wau­kee, one of the few places already track­ing coro­n­avirus cas­es and deaths by race, pro­vides an ear­ly indi­ca­tion of what would sur­face nation­al­ly if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment actu­al­ly did this, or local­ly if oth­er cities and states took its lead.

Mil­wau­kee, both the city and coun­ty, passed res­o­lu­tions last sum­mer that were seen as impor­tant steps in address­ing decades of race-based inequal­i­ty.

“We declared racism as a pub­lic health issue,” said Kowa­lik, the city’s health com­mis­sion­er. “It frames not only how we do our work but how trans­par­ent we are about how things are going. It impacts how we man­age an out­break.”

Mil­wau­kee is try­ing to be pur­pose­ful in how it com­mu­ni­cates infor­ma­tion about the best way to slow the pan­dem­ic. It is address­ing eco­nom­ic and logis­ti­cal road­blocks that stand in the way of safe­ty. And it’s being trans­par­ent about who is infect­ed, who is dying and how the virus spread in the first place.

Kowa­lik described watch­ing the virus spread into the city, with­out enough infor­ma­tion, because of lim­it­ed test­ing, to be able to take ear­ly action to con­tain it.

At the begin­ning of March, Wis­con­sin had one case. State pub­lic health offi­cials still con­sid­ered the risk from the coro­n­avirus “low.” Test­ing cri­te­ria was extreme­ly strict, as it was in many places across the coun­try: You had to have symp­toms and have trav­eled to Chi­na, Iran, South Korea or Italy with­in 14 days or have had con­tact with some­one who had a con­firmed case of COVID-19.

So, she said, she wait­ed, won­der­ing: “When are we going to be able to test for this to see if it is in our com­mu­ni­ty?”

About two weeks lat­er, Mil­wau­kee had its first case.

The city’s patient zero had been in con­tact with a per­son from a neigh­bor­ing, pre­dom­i­nate­ly white and afflu­ent sub­urb who had test­ed pos­i­tive. Giv­en how much com­mut­ing occurs in and out of Mil­wau­kee, with some mak­ing a 180-mile round trip to Chica­go, Kowa­lik said she knew it would only be a mat­ter of time before the virus spread into the city.

A day lat­er came the city’s sec­ond case, some­one who con­tract­ed the virus while in Atlanta. Kowa­lik said she start­ed ques­tion­ing the rigid­ness of the test­ing guide­lines. Why didn’t they include domes­tic trav­el?

By the fourth case, she said, “we deter­mined com­mu­ni­ty spread. … It hap­pened so quick­ly.”

With­in the span of a week, Mil­wau­kee went from hav­ing one case to near­ly 40. Most of the sick peo­ple were mid­dle-aged, African Amer­i­can men. By week two, the city had over 350 cas­es. And now, there are more than 945 cas­es coun­ty­wide, with the bulk in the city of Mil­wau­kee, where the pop­u­la­tion is 39% black. Peo­ple of all ages have con­tract­ed the virus and about half are African Amer­i­can.

The county’s online dash­board [75] of coro­n­avirus cas­es keeps up-to-date infor­ma­tion on the racial break­down of those who have test­ed pos­i­tive. As of Thurs­day morn­ing, 19 peo­ple had died of ill­ness relat­ed to COVID-19 in Mil­wau­kee Coun­ty. All but four were black, accord­ing to the coun­ty med­ical examiner’s office. Records show that at least 11 of the deceased had dia­betes, eight had hyper­ten­sion and 15 had a mix­ture of chron­ic health con­di­tions that includ­ed heart and lung dis­ease.

Because of dis­crim­i­na­tion and gen­er­a­tional income inequal­i­ty, black house­holds in the coun­ty earned only 50% as much as white ones in 2018, accord­ing to cen­sus sta­tis­tics. Black peo­ple are far less like­ly to own homes than white peo­ple in Mil­wau­kee and far more like­ly to rent, putting black renters at the mer­cy of land­lords who can kick them out if they can’t pay dur­ing an eco­nom­ic cri­sis, at the same time as peo­ple are being told to stay home. And when it comes to health insur­ance, black peo­ple are more like­ly to be unin­sured than their white coun­ter­parts.

African Amer­i­cans have grav­i­tat­ed to jobs in sec­tors viewed as reli­able paths to the mid­dle class — health care, trans­porta­tion, gov­ern­ment, food sup­ply — which are now deemed “essen­tial,” ren­der­ing them unable to stay home. In places like New York City, the virus’ epi­cen­ter, black peo­ple are among the only ones still rid­ing the sub­way [76].

“And let’s be clear, this is not because peo­ple want to live in those con­di­tions,” said Gor­don Fran­cis Good­win, who works for Gov­ern­ment Alliance on Race and Equi­ty [77], a nation­al racial equi­ty orga­ni­za­tion that worked with Mil­wau­kee [78] on its health and equi­ty frame­work. “This is a mat­ter of tak­ing a look at how our his­to­ry kept peo­ple from actu­al­ly being ful­ly includ­ed.”

Fred Roy­al, head of the Mil­wau­kee branch of the NAACP, knows three peo­ple who have died from the virus, includ­ing 69-year-old Lenard Wells [79], a for­mer Mil­wau­kee police lieu­tenant and a men­tor to oth­ers in the black com­mu­ni­ty. Royal’s 38-year-old cousin died from the virus last week in Atlanta. His body was returned home Tues­day.

Roy­al is hear­ing that peo­ple aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly being hos­pi­tal­ized but are being sent home instead and “told to self-med­icate.”

“What is alarm­ing about that,” he said, “is that a num­ber of those indi­vid­u­als were sent home with symp­toms and died before the con­fir­ma­tion of their test came back.”

Health Com­mis­sion­er Kowa­lik said that there have been delays of up to two weeks in get­ting results back from some pri­vate labs, but near­ly all of those who died have done so at hos­pi­tals or while in hos­pice. Still, Kowa­lik said she under­stood why some mem­bers in the black com­mu­ni­ty dis­trust­ed the care they might receive in a hos­pi­tal.

In Jan­u­ary, a 25-year-old day care teacher named Tashon­na Ward died [80] after staff at Froedtert Hos­pi­tal failed to check her vital signs. Fed­er­al offi­cials exam­ined 20 patient records and found sev­en patients, includ­ing Ward, didn’t receive prop­er care. The report didn’t reveal the race of those whose records it exam­ined at the hos­pi­tal, which pre­dom­i­nant­ly serves black patients. Froedtert Hos­pi­tal declined [81] to speak to issues raised in the report, accord­ing to a Feb­ru­ary arti­cle from the Mil­wau­kee Jour­nal Sen­tinel, and it had not sub­mit­ted any cor­rec­tive actions to fed­er­al offi­cials.

“What black folks are accus­tomed to in Mil­wau­kee and any­where in the coun­try, real­ly, is pain not being acknowl­edged and con­stant inequities that hap­pen in health care deliv­ery,” Kowa­lik said.

The health com­mis­sion­er her­self, a black woman who grew up in Mil­wau­kee, said she’s all too famil­iar with the city’s endur­ing strug­gles with seg­re­ga­tion and racism. Her moth­er is black and her father Pol­ish, and she remem­bers the sto­ries they shared about try­ing to buy a house as a young inter­ra­cial cou­ple in Sher­man Park, a neigh­bor­hood once off-lim­its to blacks.

“My father couldn’t get a mort­gage for the house. He had to go to the bank with­out my mom,” Kowa­lik said.

It is the same neigh­bor­hood [82] where fury and frus­tra­tion sparked protests that, at times, roiled into riots in 2016 when a Mil­wau­kee police offi­cer fatal­ly shot Sylville Smith, a 23-year-old black man.

And it is the same neigh­bor­hood that has a con­cen­tra­tion of poor health out­comes when you over­lay a heat map of con­di­tions, be it lead poi­son­ing, infant mor­tal­i­ty — and now, she said, COVID-19.

Know­ing which com­mu­ni­ties are most impact­ed allows pub­lic health offi­cials to tai­lor their mes­sag­ing to over­come the dis­trust of black res­i­dents.

“We’ve been told so much mis­in­for­ma­tion over the years about the con­di­tion of our com­mu­ni­ty,” Roy­al, of the NAACP, said. “I believe a lot of peo­ple don’t trust what the gov­ern­ment says.”

Kowa­lik has met — vir­tu­al­ly — with trust­ed and influ­en­tial com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to dis­cuss out­reach efforts to ensure every­one is on the same page about the impor­tance of stay­ing home and keep­ing 6 feet away from oth­ers if they must go out.

Police and inspec­tors are respond­ing to com­plaints received about “non­com­pli­ant” busi­ness­es forc­ing staff to come to work or not prac­tic­ing social dis­tanc­ing in the work­place. Vio­la­tors could face fines.

“Who are we get­ting these com­plaints from?” she asked. “Many peo­ple of col­or.”

Res­i­dents have been urged to call 211 if they need help with any­thing from find­ing some­thing to eat or a place to stay. And the state has set up two vol­un­tary iso­la­tion facil­i­ties for peo­ple with COVID-19 symp­toms whose liv­ing sit­u­a­tions are unten­able, includ­ing a Super 8 motel in Mil­wau­kee.

Despite the work being done in Mil­wau­kee, experts like Lin­da Sprague Mar­tinez, a com­mu­ni­ty health researcher at Boston University’s School of Social Work, wor­ry that the gov­ern­ment is not pay­ing close enough atten­tion to race, and as the dis­ease spreads, will do too lit­tle to blunt its toll.

“When COVID-19 pass­es and we see the loss­es … it will be deeply tied to the sto­ry of post-World War II poli­cies that left com­mu­ni­ties mar­gin­al­ized,” Sprague said. “Its impact is going to be tied to our his­to­ry and lega­cy of racial inequities. It’s going to be tied to the fact that we live in two very dif­fer­ent worlds.”

6. The out­break is finan­cial­ly hand­i­cap­ping mass tran­sit, fur­ther strain­ing the mean of low-income peo­ple.

“Covid-19 Push­ing Mass Tran­sit to Brink & Low-Income Rid­ers Will Pay The Price” by Ramya Vijaya; Con­sor­tium News; 4/22/2020. [37]

Low-income Amer­i­cans have borne the brunt [83] of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. They may also get left behind in the recov­ery.

Steep declines in rid­er­ship dur­ing the cri­sis have pushed pub­lic tran­sit sys­tems across the U.S. into deep finan­cial dis­tress [84]. Though Con­gress includ­ed allo­ca­tions for tran­sit in the CARES Act [85]cities said [86] it won’t be near­ly enough [87]. Even major sys­tems in large metro areas like New York City and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., have seri­ous con­cerns about long-term sur­vival with­out more sus­tained sup­port.

Fail­ure of tran­sit sys­tems would be a dis­as­ter for the large pro­por­tion of low income house­holds that depend on bus­es and trains to get to work and else­where – not only in urban areas, but in rur­al ones too.

I’m cur­rent­ly [88] in the mid­dle of a two-year study of trans­port inequal­i­ty in the U.S. One of my ear­ly find­ings is that about 20 per­cent of the poor­est house­holds don’t own a vehi­cle. That would make them entire­ly reliant on pub­lic trans­porta­tion, com­pared with 6 per­cent for all house­holds. . . .

7. Charles Blow ampli­fies the mes­sage in the Politi­co arti­cle above.

“Social Dis­tanc­ing Is A Priv­i­lege” by Charles Blow; The New York Times [36]; 4/5/2020. [36]

Peo­ple like to say that the coro­n­avirus is no respecter of race, class or coun­try, that the dis­ease Covid-19 [89] is mind­less and will infect any­body it can.

In the­o­ry, that is true. But, in prac­tice, in the real world, this virus behaves like oth­ers, screech­ing like a heat-seek­ing mis­sile toward the most vul­ner­a­ble in soci­ety. And this hap­pens not because it prefers them, but because they are more exposed, more frag­ile and more ill.

What the vul­ner­a­ble por­tion of soci­ety looks like varies from coun­try to coun­try, but in Amer­i­ca, that vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is high­ly inter­sect­ed with race and pover­ty.

Ear­ly evi­dence from cities and states already shows that black peo­ple are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by the virus in dev­as­tat­ing ways. As ProP­ub­li­ca report­ed [90], in Mil­wau­kee Coun­ty, Wis., as of Fri­day morn­ing, 81 per­cent of the deaths were black peo­ple. Black peo­ple make up only 26 per­cent of that coun­ty.

As for Chica­go, WBEZ report­ed [91] Sun­day that “70 per­cent of Covid-19 deaths are black,” and point­ed out about sur­round­ing Cook Coun­ty, “While black res­i­dents make up only 23 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion in the coun­ty, they account for 58 per­cent of the Covid-19 deaths.”

The Detroit News report­ed last week [92], “At least 40 per­cent of those killed by the nov­el coro­n­avirus in Michi­gan so far are black, a per­cent­age that far exceeds the pro­por­tion of African-Amer­i­cans in the Detroit region and state.”

If this pat­tern holds true across oth­er states and cities, this virus could have a cat­a­stroph­ic impact on black peo­ple in this coun­try.

And yet, we are still not see­ing an abun­dance of news cov­er­age or nation­al gov­ern­men­tal response that cen­ter on these racial dis­par­i­ties. Many states haven’t even released race-spe­cif­ic data on cas­es and deaths. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment hasn’t either.

Part­ly for this rea­son, we are left with decep­tive and dead­ly mis­in­for­ma­tion. The per­cep­tion that this is a jet-set­ters’ dis­ease, or a spring break­ers’ dis­ease, or a “Chi­nese virus” as Pres­i­dent Trump likes to say, must be laid to rest. The idea that this virus is an equal-oppor­tu­ni­ty killer must itself be killed.

And, we must dis­pense with the cal­lous mes­sage that the best defense we have against the dis­ease is some­thing that each of us can con­trol: We can all just stay home and keep social dis­tance [89].

As a report last month by the Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute point­ed out [93], “less than one in five black work­ers and rough­ly one in six His­pan­ic work­ers are able to work from home.”

As the report point­ed out, “Only 9.2 per­cent of work­ers in the low­est quar­tile of the wage dis­tri­b­u­tion can tele­work, com­pared with 61.5 per­cent of work­ers in the high­est quar­tile.”

If you touch peo­ple for a liv­ing, in elder care or child care, if you cut or fix their hair, if you clean their spaces or cook their food, if you dri­ve their cars or build their hous­es, you can’t do that from home.

Stay­ing at home is a priv­i­lege. Social dis­tanc­ing is a priv­i­lege.

The peo­ple who can’t must make ter­ri­ble choic­es: Stay home and risk star­va­tion or go to work and risk con­ta­gion.

And, this isn’t just hap­pen­ing here, it is hap­pen­ing with poor peo­ple around the world, from New Del­hi to Mex­i­co City.

8a. New York City has long been a focal point of right-wing/­fas­cist hatred. With large non-white pop­u­la­tions, a large Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion, a strong lib­er­al polit­i­cal tra­di­tion and the epi­cen­ter of the finan­cial indus­try (viewed by Nazis and their ilk as “Jew­ish”), New York would be a tar­get for vec­tor­ing by Under­ground Reich ele­ments.

The right has been call­ing the virus as the “Cuo­movirus.”

“Scape­goat­ing New York Means Ignor­ing Its Des­per­ate Need” by Kim Phillips-Fein; The New York Times [38]; 4/5/2020. [38]

The anx­ious notes have been arriv­ing in my inbox from peo­ple all over the coun­try: “Watch­ing reports and want­ed to check in.”

I know why they are con­cerned. New York City has emerged as the epi­cen­ter of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in the Unit­ed States. For those of us in the city — even if we are stay­ing in our apart­ments almost all day, press­ing ele­va­tor but­tons with our elbows or gloved hands when return­ing from a once-a-week jour­ney to the gro­cery store — we are well aware that we are liv­ing at the heart of the storm.

Almost as alarm­ing as the health data, though, is the sug­ges­tion cir­cu­lat­ing in some polit­i­cal cor­ners that New York and New York­ers are to blame for spread­ing for the coro­n­avirus, as though the city helped to cre­ate a health threat now endan­ger­ing the good peo­ple of the South and Mid­west. Once it was the “Chi­nese virus”; now it also belongs to New York.

As Pres­i­dent Trump put it [39] in his short-lived bid to “QUARANTINE” New York, New Jer­sey and Con­necti­cut, “Some peo­ple would like to see New York quar­an­tined because it’s a hot spot” — the impli­ca­tion being that if New York­ers could only be kept where they are, with check­points and guards if need be, Covid-19 could be stopped from spread­ing else­where in the coun­try.

Gov. Ron DeSan­tis of Flori­da set up [40] check­points to stop cars with New York or Louisiana license plates, so that state troop­ers can warn dri­vers to self-quar­an­tine or face 60 days in jail — even as he hes­i­tat­ed to put any social dis­tanc­ing in place or close the beach­es for spring break. Instead of admit­ting the dan­ger of com­mu­ni­ty spread in Flori­da, the gov­er­nor framed the prob­lem as one of out­siders bring­ing germs in. Gov­er­nors in Mary­land and oth­er states warned [41] any­one arriv­ing from the New York City area to iso­late them­selves.

On Twit­ter, Covid-19 has tak­en on a new sobri­quet: the “Cuo­movirus.”

There’s a long his­to­ry of scape­goat­ing New York City for prob­lems that have their roots far beyond the Hud­son. In the 1970s, the Ford admin­is­tra­tion blamed New York’s lib­er­al pol­i­tics, gen­er­ous social safe­ty net and strong pub­lic sec­tor unions for the fis­cal cri­sis that almost brought the city to bank­rupt­cy — even though that cri­sis arose when the coun­try as a whole was mired in reces­sion, at a moment when fed­er­al poli­cies encour­aged sub­ur­ban flight and the depar­ture of fac­to­ries from cities like New York.

Despite the nation­al con­text for the city’s dif­fi­cul­ties, Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford warned [94] that there could be no fed­er­al aid for the country’s largest metrop­o­lis because it had brought its prob­lems on itself. As his press sec­re­tary Ron Nessen put it: “This is not a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter or an act of God. It is a self-inflict­ed act by the peo­ple who have been run­ning New York for a long time.”

Under­ly­ing Ford’s puni­tive atti­tude was a deep­er con­ser­v­a­tive cri­tique of the city. Its his­to­ry of left­ist pol­i­tics, its tuition-free city uni­ver­si­ty [95] and its net­work of pub­lic hos­pi­tals (sev­er­al of which were closed in the fis­cal cri­sis) all made New York sus­pect, as did its rep­u­ta­tion as a cen­ter for the gay rights move­ment and fem­i­nism.

The vision of New York as moral­ly sus­pect, a city of sex­u­al promis­cu­ity and lib­er­tine mores, also helped shape the fed­er­al response to the AIDS epi­dem­ic of the 1980s. The Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion failed so dis­mal­ly in address­ing the health cri­sis, not even men­tion­ing it pub­licly for years after it had emerged, as it raged in part because AIDS was viewed as a dis­ease of the cities, espe­cial­ly of gay men and IV drug users, not as a prob­lem of the heart­land.

But while some aspects of New York’s sit­u­a­tion in the 1970s and beyond were unique, the larg­er prob­lems the city faced were those con­fronting the entire coun­try. And the AIDS epi­dem­ic, too, spread through­out the nation. Blam­ing New York was a way to let the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment off the hook.

Today, the scape­goat­ing of the city could have con­se­quences even more pro­found than dur­ing the 1970s. It could mean the city not get­ting the fed­er­al mon­ey it needs or a suf­fi­cient sup­ply of ven­ti­la­tors and masks and enough sup­port for health care work­ers.

What is more, the sug­ges­tion that New York is unique­ly sus­cep­ti­ble can sup­port the dan­ger­ous illu­sion that allowed the coro­n­avirus to gain trac­tion here in the first place: that we are able to cor­don our­selves off from one anoth­er, that one region of the coun­try — or the world — can be sep­a­rat­ed from the rest. Act­ing on this fan­ta­sy would be the real dan­ger to states like Flori­da, Ver­mont and Ten­nessee.

At the same time, paint­ing a pic­ture of the entire city as equal­ly at risk may make it hard­er to address the like­li­hood that the coro­n­avirus will prob­a­bly have the most dev­as­tat­ing impact on work­ing-class and poor peo­ple — who are less like­ly to have good access to health care, whose under­ly­ing health may be worse to begin with and for whom the eco­nom­ic penal­ties of social dis­tanc­ing are more pro­found.

The dense urban spaces of New York City are emp­ty now — the libraries and pub­lic schools closed, the play­grounds and streets notably qui­et. But the social sol­i­dar­i­ty that they nur­ture still has the capac­i­ty to offer lessons that might help the rest of the coun­try.

I’ve seen this even in my own apart­ment build­ing, where peo­ple have mobi­lized in sup­port of the most at-risk res­i­dents — all from a dis­tance of six feet. High school stu­dents are offer­ing vir­tu­al tutor­ing to home­bound ele­men­tary school kids, younger ten­ants are pick­ing up gro­ceries for elder­ly peo­ple for whom a trip to the store might be more dan­ger­ous, the most orga­nized among us are keep­ing phone lists so that ten­ants can call one anoth­er if any of us get sick and need help.

And as is hap­pen­ing in places around the world, every night at 7 peo­ple come to the win­dows and the bal­conies of my apart­ment com­plex to cheer for the hero­ism and ded­i­ca­tion of the city’s health care work­ers — the E.M.T.s, ambu­lance dri­vers, physi­cian assis­tants, jan­i­tors, cooks, order­lies, doc­tors and nurs­es. As we chant and clap, we can see one anoth­er from the win­dows and across the court­yard, and even in this moment of dev­as­ta­tion, the col­lec­tive life of our city offers sus­te­nance and hope.

8b. Crit­i­cal obser­va­tions [46] by Wolf­gang Schauble, the German/EU “Aus­ter­i­ty Czar” who wrought so much suf­fer­ing fol­low­ing the 2008 eco­nom­ic col­lapse has clear­ly enun­ci­at­ed the func­tion­al and philo­soph­i­cal essence of “cor­po­ratist” and eugenic doc­trine. 

This, too, is reflect­ed in the Trumpian “LIBERATE MICHIGAN etc.”

“Ger­many Threat­ens” by Rudi­ger Minow; Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy; 5/01/2020. [46]

Hard­ly a Ger­man gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive is more noto­ri­ous than Wolf­gang Schäu­ble — world­wide. Dur­ing the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial cri­sis, when Schäu­ble was Ger­many’s Min­is­ter of Finance, his EU coun­ter­parts trem­bled: Schäu­ble want­ed to force them to adapt harsh aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures. Because the fore­see­able social con­se­quences would cost lives, Schäuble’s tac­tics seemed to scare Europe with “trau­mat­ic effects” and gave it a les­son in Ger­man eco­nom­ic ethics: Teu­ton­ic bru­tal­i­ty and at all costs. “Ter­ri­fy­ing,” was the assess­ment the US Trea­sury Sec­re­tary made fol­low­ing his con­ver­sa­tion with Schäu­ble. Paris and Madrid were also appre­hen­sive; Athens called Schäu­ble an “arson­ist,” on a ram­page through Europe. Schäu­ble has since climbed high­er on the gov­ern­ment lad­der. Schäu­ble now ranks sec­ond, after the Pres­i­dent, in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many’s pro­to­co­lary sys­tem. What­ev­er he says car­ries weight. And he uses this posi­tion. In the midst of the Coro­na cri­sis, Schäu­ble ini­ti­at­ed an inter­view, con­sid­ered to be an unof­fi­cial guide­line for the Ger­man state’s life and death deci­sions. Its tenor deserves atten­tion, even beyond Ger­many’s bor­ders.

Death Is Com­ing Any­way

Should peo­ple have to die, because they are deprived of state resources, essen­tial for the eco­nom­ic cycle, such as cur­rent­ly dur­ing the Coro­na cri­sis? Does the pro­tec­tion of human life have absolute pri­or­i­ty in state pol­i­cy? In the inter­view, Schäu­ble has elab­o­rat­ed in 2020 on what he had already made clear in 2012, dur­ing the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial cri­sis: “If I hear that every­thing else must take a back seat to the preser­va­tion of life, I must say that this, in such unequiv­o­cal­ness, is not right.” Pro­tec­tion of human life does not have an “absolute pri­or­i­ty in our Basic Law.” Death is com­ing soon­er or lat­er any­way. “We are all going to die.” (April 26, 2020)

Rival­ry of Val­ues

Schäuble’s state­ments are exem­plary and are of “nation­al sig­nif­i­cance” declared the Ger­man Ethics Coun­cil. The coun­cil is gov­ern­ment financed and pri­or­i­tizes “eco­nom­ic rights.” They should “not be uncon­di­tion­al­ly sub­or­di­nat­ed” to the pro­tec­tion of human life. There is a sort of rival­ry of val­ues. If the val­ue of life would have pri­or­i­ty, “free­dom” would suf­fer, accord­ing to the unan­i­mous judg­ment of the ethics depart­ment of the Ger­man Eco­nom­ic Insti­tute (IW). From the stand­point of Ger­man con­sti­tu­tion­al law, accord­ing to a for­mer judge on the con­sti­tu­tion­al court, “the state’s effi­cien­cy” would encounter its lim­its, if life were giv­en top pri­or­i­ty, where “every­thing else must lag arbi­trar­i­ly far behind.”

Enable Pro­duc­tion

In fact, the gov­ern­men­t’s oblig­a­tion to the con­sti­tu­tion’s high­est val­ue — the pro­tec­tion of life — must be rel­a­tivized, just as Schäu­ble is doing, con­firm the major­i­ty of Ger­many’s gov­ern­ment lead­ers. Promi­nent voic­es from the par­lia­men­tary oppo­si­tion par­ties are also in agree­ment that the pro­tec­tion of human life, as the pri­ma­ry legit­imized duty of the state is a “ques­tion of assess­ment.” From this the FDP draws the con­clu­sion: “there­fore, please reopen the busi­ness­es.” “Enable pro­duc­tion.” In har­mo­ny with Ger­many’s export econ­o­my lob­by­ists and the Pres­i­dent of the Bun­destag, the chair of the Greens is also one of the rel­a­tiviz­ers. He finds him­self in an alleged “dilem­ma,” when he thinks of the pro­tec­tion of life dur­ing the Coro­na cri­sis, while a fel­low Green munic­i­pal politi­cian speaks in plain oper­a­tional terms; “Let me tell you quite blunt­ly: We may be sav­ing peo­ple in Ger­many, who, because of their age or seri­ous pre­vi­ous med­ical con­di­tions, may, be dead any­way in a half a year.”

Neglect

Delib­er­ate­ly blunt or ratio­nal­iz­ing inhib­it­ed, deci­sive group­ings with­in Ger­man polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy are dis­play­ing clear signs of an eth­i­cal dete­ri­o­ra­tion, where­in the preser­va­tion of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty is being coun­ter­poised to the preser­va­tion of human life — offen­sive­ly, by seek­ing to depict life as a rival­ing com­mod­i­ty of exis­tence. How­ev­er, prac­ti­cal eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty is no rival to main­tain­ing human life, it trans­forms nature into the prac­ti­cal mate­r­i­al that sus­tains and sat­is­fies life — as long as eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty sup­ports life. How­ev­er, a “dilem­ma” aris­es, when con­crete indi­vid­ual lives must be sac­ri­ficed, because the prac­ti­cal resources of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty are unavail­able, although the state’s pri­ma­cy for mak­ing, first and fore­most, pro­vi­sions for human life was rea­son­able but neglect­ed. The greater the neglect, the greater are the “ques­tions of assess­ment.”

Escapism

In the cur­rent cri­sis, it is obvi­ous that the prac­ti­cal resources that eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty could have pro­duced for the preser­va­tion of human life, were not or insuf­fi­cient­ly avail­able before death could no longer be avoid­ed. By not pro­vid­ing even the sim­plest means of pro­tec­tion, the offi­cials have shift­ed respon­si­bil­i­ty for life and death “ques­tions of assess­ment” to the hos­pi­tals. This escapism has cost addi­tion­al lives or over­whelmed the lives of many nurs­es and doc­tors.

Bar­bar­ians

Pro­tec­tive means that are now being sup­plied are sub­ject­ed to usu­ri­ous trade; sur­vival machines for inten­sive-care med­i­cine are incit­ing stock mar­ket spec­u­la­tors, bet­ting on com­pa­ny shares of the man­u­fac­tur­ers, increas­ing their wealth. The poor are dying in rest homes and the sub­urbs. As long as the state allows this sit­u­a­tion to con­tin­ue, the preser­va­tion of human life and preser­va­tion of the eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty are indeed in oppo­si­tion to one anoth­er — how­ev­er not as the advo­cates of val­ue rival­ry are intend­ing. A state that relin­quish­es the preser­va­tion of human life, to that of eco­nom­ic free­dom has either giv­en up its exis­tence or become bar­bar­ian.

Fail­ure

It is not sole­ly a Ger­man pecu­liar­i­ty to not draw bound­aries between civ­i­liza­tion and biol­o­gy in the event of state fail­ure. The ide­ol­o­gy of fail­ure adores the dull stench of preda­tor dens, where the stronger ani­mals feed on the weak­er. There, archa­ic instinct makes the preser­va­tion of life super­flu­ous. The preda­tor archa­ic and its eco­nom­ic ide­al — social Dar­win­ism — deter­mine phas­es of Ger­man his­to­ry, where­in the state can no longer con­trol its eco­nom­ic poten­cy; it must be cat­a­pult­ed beyond its bor­ders or col­lapse. Then it will be doubt­ful, whether every­thing else will recede, if the preser­va­tion of life pro­hibits every­thing else, name­ly death. Then a threat can be heard from Ger­many.

Upheaval

How­ev­er, if with death, the high­est oblig­a­tion for the state, the pro­tec­tion of human life, falls, then the state’s right to the monop­oly on the use of force to pro­tect human life against any oth­er claim, falls as well. If the monop­oly on the use of force falls, the state falls into its con­di­tion that rel­a­tivized human life and forces to ele­vate human life again to its per­ma­nent right.

9. “Col­leges Run­ning Out of Cash Wor­ry Stu­dents Will Van­ish, Too” by Anemona Har­to­col­lis; The New York Times; 4/16/2020; pp. A1-A-15 [West­ern Edi­tion].

10. “Out­break Strains States’ Finances” by Mary Williams Walsh; The New York Times; 4/16/2020; pp. B1-B6 [West­ern Edi­tion].

11. ” ‘This Is Going to Kill Small-Town Amer­i­ca’ ” by David Gelles: The New York Times; 4/16/2020; pp. B1-B5 [West­ern Edi­tion].

12. The New York Times [West­ern Edi­tion] head­line for 4/16/2020 said it all, as far as the for­tunes of retail out­lets.

“Sales at U.S. Stores Hit ‘Cat­a­stroph­ic’ Depths” by Sap­na Mahesh­wari and Ben Cas­sel­man; The New York Times; 4/16/2020. [42]

. . . . Total sales, which include retail pur­chas­es in stores and online as well as mon­ey spent at bars and restau­rants, fell 8.7 per­cent from the pre­vi­ous month, the Com­merce Depart­ment said Wednes­day. The decline was by far the largest in the near­ly three decades the gov­ern­ment has tracked the data.

Even that bleak fig­ure does­n’t cap­ture the full impact of the sud­den eco­nom­ic freeze on the retail indus­try. Most states did­n’t shut down nonessen­tial busi­ness­es until late March or ear­ly April, mean­ing data for the cur­rent month could be worse still. . . .

13.  “Evi­dence of Virus Effect on Econ­o­my Grows More Omi­nous” [AP]; The New York Times; 4/15/2020. [43]

14. “135 Mil­lion Face Star­va­tion. That Could Dou­ble” by Abdi Latif Dahir; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; pp. A1-A6; [West­ern Edi­tion].

15. “This Pan­dem­ic Is Bring­ing Anoth­er” by Nicholas Kristof; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A23 [Op-ed–Western Edi­tion].

16. “Covid-19 Threat­ens Glob­al Safe­ty Net” Edi­to­r­i­al; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A22 [West­ern Edi­tion].

17. “How Gov­ern­ment ‘Failed the Elder­ly’ ” Let­ter to the Edi­tor; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A22 [West­ern Edi­tion].

Re “Death Toll Spikes at Nurs­ing Homes as Defens­es Crack’ (front page, April 18).

18a. “A Lim­it on Trump’s Immi­gra­tion Pow­er” by Jen­nifer M. Cha­con and Erwin Cher­merin­sky; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; p. A23 [op-ed–Western Edi­tion].

18b. ” ‘The Food Sup­ply Chain Is Break­ing.’ Tyson Foods Warns of Meat Short­age as Plants Close Due to Covid-19” by Sanya Man­soor [Time] Yahoo News; 4/26/2020. [44]

Tyson Foods, one of the U.S.’s biggest meat proces­sors, didn’t mince words in a full page New York Times spread that ran Sun­day, in which they warned, “the food sup­ply chain is break­ing.”

“As pork, beef and chick­en plants are being forced to close, even for short peri­ods of time, mil­lions of pounds of meat will dis­ap­pear from the sup­ply chain,” John Tyson, Chair­man of the Board of Tyson Foods, wrote in a let­ter pub­lished as an adver­tise­ment. “As a result, there will be lim­it­ed sup­ply of our prod­ucts avail­able in gro­cery stores until we are able to reopen our facil­i­ties that are cur­rent­ly closed.” . . .

19. “Banks Steered Rich­est Clients To Fed­er­al Aid” by Emi­ly Flit­ter and Sta­cy Cow­ley; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; pp. A1-A14 [West­ern Edi­tion].

20. “Mil­lions In Relief For Backer Of Resorts” by Jean­na Smi­alek, Jim Tanker­s­ley and Alan Rappe­port; The New York Times; 4/23/2020; pp. B1-B5 [West­ern Edi­tion].