[Washington Examiner] A new study from India shows men may be more susceptible to the novel coronavirus than women because of their reproductive organs.
Researchers in Mumbai and New York reportedly found that the coronavirus puts men at additional risk by binding with a protein in cells called angiotensin converting enzyme 2, which is found in tissues within the lungs, heart, gastrointestinal tract, and testicles.
The researchers, Dr. Aditi Shastri and Dr. Jayanthi Shastri, hypothesize the virus has an additional entry point in men while simultaneously being protected from the immune system. However, there is not clear evidence yet to support the hypothesis.
Aditi Shastri told the Los Angeles Times that if the virus hides within the testes, it could potentially be sexually transmitted: "I would definitely consider that virus could be secreted into seminal fluid."
[Washington Examiner] MIDDLETOWN, Maryland — There is an argument to be made that the coronavirus pandemic could change the food supply chain for the long term. It may disrupt our across-the-board reliance on distant producers, processing plants, and large chain grocery stores.
In the process, it would connect many of us to local food in the same way our parents and grandparents were.
For months during this pandemic, consumers who used to drive to the supermarket to buy prepackaged food are instead getting direct delivery literally from a farm to their table. People are getting hooked on direct sourcing for their food and are eating healthier because of it.
Farmers, such as Tony Brusco here at South Mountain Creamery, are growing their family farms in the process.
Brusco's farm provides fresh milk, cream, yogurt, eggs, butter, produce, and butchered select cuts of meat — all from his farm and other local family farms that have tilled the soil, grown the grass that feeds their cows, and milked, churned, and prepared everything their family farms deliver.
Demand has been so strong that Brusco brought along other local farms to share in the profits. While the number of unemployed workers nationwide grows sky-high, Brusco is hiring more people.
"We're a second-generation dairy farm family that started back in 2001," he told me. "There’s four of us total that run the operation. My wife and I run the creamery (or the value-added side of our farm), and my brother-in-law and his wife run the farm side of our operation."
[MAIL] The fearsome knock on the door came after nightfall. Outside were two men in hazmat suits who told businessman Fang Bin they had come to take him into medical quarantine. But the textile trader, a gangly man in his early 40s, wasn’t ill and the men outside his Wuhan apartment weren’t doctors. They were police officers confronting a menace the Chinese Communist Party had been grappling with as ferociously as the coronavirus itself — ordinary people who bravely expose the truth about the outbreak and refuse to keep quiet.
Mr Fang’s ’crime’ was to post a video he had filmed of people dying of the virus and the body bags piled up outside a hospital clearly overwhelmed by casualties at a time when China insisted that the virus was under control. It was seen 200,000 times before censors took it down.
When he demanded a search warrant from the officers on the doorstep of his high-rise apartment, they forced their way in and took him away for questioning, ordering him to stop spreading ’rumours’ about the virus before confiscating his computer. He was later released in the early hours of the morning.
[Townhall] South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) is one of the few governors that decided not to issue a stay-at-home order during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Her decision was based on the fact that her state had very few cases and she did not want to trample on South Dakotans' civil liberties.
Critics are now citing an outbreak at the Sioux Falls Smithfield Foods, which had 438 employees test positive for the virus, as a reason to issue a lockdown. Another 107 people who came into contact with the processing plant also tested positive. As of now, the state has 1,311 cases of the Wuhan coronavirus and seven deaths.
Despite that, Noem believes a statewide stay-at-home order is not the answer.
"We have one issue at a pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but outside of that, two-thirds of our state has no cases or one case in an entire county," Noem explained to Fox News' Laura Ingraham. "We're doing really well as a state and addressing the one hot spot that we do have and aggressively testing in that area."
According to the governor, it is important to look at the number of infections and hospital rates when making lockdown decisions. Because South Dakota has had such few cases, businesses have been able to stay open and people can continue to work, something many starts are now grappling with.
#3
It's all concentrated at the Smithfield plant which employs a bunch of Somali immigrants, who because of working indoors plus the season will be low in Vitamin D.
Legal Insurrection via Instapundit
As nations around the world struggle to deal with outbreaks of the Wuhan coronavirus, China is now experiencing the first phase of what could be considered social distancing on an international scale.
To begin with, it is being reported that China suffered its worst economic contraction since the 1970s, with a serious hit to its factory activity.
The world’s second-largest economy shrank 6.8% from a year ago in the three months ending in March after factories, shops and travel were closed to contain the infection, official data showed Friday.
That was stronger than some forecasts that called for a contraction of up to 16% but China’s worst performance since before market-style economic reforms started in 1979.
Some forecasters earlier said China, which led the way into a global shutdown to fight the virus, might rebound as early as this month. But they have been cutting growth forecasts and pushing back recovery timelines as negative trade, retail sales and other data pile up.
"I don’t think we will see a real recovery until the fourth quarter or the end of the year," said economist Zhu Zhenxin at the Rushi Finance Institute in Beijing.
There are now signs that China’s lack of transparency and its failure to contain the spread of the virus internationally is slowing down its economic recovery. It is now apparent that European governments are hardening their positions toward China as they weigh future business activity with the nation.
French President Emmanuel Macron accused Beijing of not being upfront over its handling of the epidemic, while in the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to involve Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co. in the nation’s next-generation mobile network may fall prey to mounting opposition.
The European Union’s position on China has been relatively measured, but leaders are beginning to call for a more thorough examination of its activities amid accusations Beijing has covered up the true scale of the epidemic. American intelligence officials are said to have concluded that China concealed the extent of its outbreak and under-reported the number of cases and deaths.
"Let’s not be so naive as to say it’s been much better at handling this," Macron told the Financial Times in an interview published Thursday, referring to China. "We don’t know — there are clearly things that have happened that we don’t know about."
When you’ve lost Macron . . . .
As global leaders weigh the actions taken by the Chinese Communist Party in the wake of the pandemic, little things like bad test kits and underwear-based masks add up. So it is not surprising that some countries are reassessing their plans to be part of China’s 5G global empire.
The UK is moving to drop Huawei as a vendor for the country’s 5G cellphone network in a major blow to Communist China over poor coronavirus transparency.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, now recovering from COVID-19, gave the Chinese company a role in 5G infrastructure this year, squashing opposition last month by 24 votes in the 650-seat House of Commons.
But now, concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s inaccurate reporting on the coronavirus has lawmakers crafting plans for a retreat.
"We need to devise a proper, realistic exit strategy from relying on Huawei," Conservative Member of Parliament Damian Green told Bloomberg News. "Our telecom providers ... need to know the government is determined to drive down Huawei’s involvement to zero percent over a realistic timescale."
China’s recent, brutal treatment of African nationals living there has raised alarm bells on that continent.
...[The] that decades long quest for influence in Africa was gravely challenged last week when a group of disgruntled African ambassadors in Beijing wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi to complain that citizens from Togo, Nigeria and Benin living in Guangzhou, southern China, were evicted from their homes and made to undergo obligatory testing for Covid-19.
"In some cases, the men were pulled out of their families and quarantined in hotels alone," the note, seen by POLITICO, said.
The incident, which caused widespread discontent both within Africa and among the diaspora after videos posted on social media showed people of African descent being evicted from their homes, resulting in a rare diplomatic showdown between Chinese and African officials.
Finally, Asian nations that are heavily influenced by China are being more open about some important negative aspects about the relationship.
Vietnamese officials say China is intentionally mislabeling its products as "made in Vietnam" to avoid American tariffs, and have ordered offices to more aggressively examine products’ certificates of origin.
Chinese firms first export products to Vietnam, then change the labeling on packages before exporting the goods to the United States, Japan or Europe, they said.
"Dozens" of products have been identified, Hoang Thi Thuy, a Vietnamese Customs Department official, told state-run media, and goods like textiles, fishery products, agricultural products, steel, aluminum, and processed wooden products were most vulnerable to the fraud.
Looking at the trends, and to paraphrase economist Paul Krugman: If the question is when China will recover, a first-pass answer is never.
#1
Was just trying to determine where the major brands of residential circuit breakers are made. The information is not front and center anywhere.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 8:30 Comments ||
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#2
As for computer components, it's not too difficult to source Taiwanese, Indonesian and Singaporean parts in most cases. As soon as you want a laptop or smartphone your choices are much more limited.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 8:32 Comments ||
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#3
I have always laughed about "chemtrails," but maybe it's time we showed the Chinese we can do that.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 8:34 Comments ||
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#4
China must be making money hand over fist on medical and hospital supplies this quarter.
#5
I just examined a Square D OQ type 30 amp breaker I have on my bench; in really teeny, tiny print it says made in Mexico. One data point is not a trend, I know.....
#13
Gee. I thought all this stuff was supposed to be completely transparent now, because that's a magic word and shit...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 10:40 Comments ||
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#14
We impose tariffs on Chicom products so they ship them via Vietnam with phony labels and nobody noticed? We have 17 “intelligence “ agencies that can tell you what kind of booze the politburo drinks but nobody noticed cheating on a major foreign policy action? When did Monty Python infiltrate the IC?
#16
Ref #14: We impose tariffs on Chicom products so they ship them via Vietnam with phony labels and nobody noticed? We have 17 “intelligence “ agencies that can tell you what kind of booze the politburo drinks but nobody noticed cheating on a major foreign policy action? When did Monty Python infiltrate the IC?
Wasn't it the Soetoro regime that coined the term "Selective Enforcement?"
See 9/11 Commission Report for additional readings.
#17
IC's part of the problem, sure, but the fundamental source of the rot is our political-oligarch class. Pelosi, Feinstein, Bush-Clinton, Gates, the lot of em: China whores all.
#20
^ see above. 'Free,' yes: as in free rides for thieving CCP cadres, their spawn and Chinese military-owned firms, and free profits for their American pimps.
[TheDiplomat] We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest leaders, but People's Republic of China leader Xi Jinping's actions have forced us to rethink this assumption. Although the emergence of the novel coronavirus now known as SARS-CoV-2 was probably not due to China's actions, the emphasis that its authoritarian system places on hiding bad news likely gave the disease a sizable head start infecting the world. But most ominously, China's obsession with image and Machtpolitik raises serious questions about its lack of moral limits.
At some point the Chinese Communist Party learned of the epidemic and made a decision to hide its existence, hoping it went away. Exposés in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post and the Chinese mainland's Caixin show that the information that did flow out of China early in the crisis did so only because of the courage of individual Chinese people in the face of government repression. People in the Wuhan epicenter, however, began to get wise ‐ and scared (here and here) ‐ by the end of December 2019, forcing their government to say something. The authorities gave the impression of a nontransmissible disease already under containment. We know now this was entirely false, likely designed more to ease civil unrest than protect the people.
The mayor of Wuhan even suggested that the central government prevented him from revealing details about the epidemic until January 20. Considering the first public announcements came out of Wuhan on January 1, we can assume that Xi had a sense of the danger prior to that.
Continued on Page 49
#3
I don't know that you ever get a definitive smoking gun. But it appears increasingly obvious that somebody, some where along the line decided, 'it's gone way too far now, (intentionally or not) may as well make the most of it'.
The Chinese Communist Party has had a long term goal of world domination. Things were going their way under the previous three presidents as we fecklessly allowed our industrial base to be transferred to China. They were picking our pockets clean. Replacing the US as the dominant world power was the linchpin of this plan. Their strategy was to cripple the US economically which would cascade down to make it impossible for the US to be remain militarily dominant. This was the death of a thousand cuts. What if China were presented the opportunity to deliver a single crippling blow to wreck the American economy as well as that of the rest of the advanced world?
The Chinese delayed telling the world about the seriousness of the virus until they had scoured the world of PPE/medicines. In that time did they conclude that they could ride the virus as an accelerated vehicle for world domination? They had quarantined Wuhan and its province and stopped air travel throughout China while not interrupting international travel. For argument’s sake, let me say that they concluded that by strict domestic measures and the use of the world’s supply of PPE/medicines they could control their domestic outbreak while unleashing the virus on the rest of the world. The virus would spread around the world crippling the world’s economies while China would emerge largely undamaged and internationally ascendant. If so, the Chinese have killed ten times more Americans with this single blow than died on Dec 7, 1941 and Sep 11, 2001 and done more economic damage more precipitously than the Great Depression.
If so, this is a casus belli of the first order.
Gives new meaning to the old term, The Yellow Peril, coined by Kaiser Bill as Das Gelbe Gefahr.
#11
I don't know that you ever get a definitive smoking gun. But it appears increasingly obvious that somebody, some where along the line decided, 'it's gone way too far now, (intentionally or not) may as well make the most of it'.
The Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin means to file a class action lawsuit against China in the upcoming days for its alleged negligence in treating and containing the coronavirus, N12 reported on Sunday.
#15
The waters are muddied by the fact that we funded the research into bat viruses with a $3.5 million grant from NIH. That is awkward. But no doubt they concealed and lied and shut down at home while exporting the virus to everyone else. They knew how contagious it was. We need to methodically disengage with them, as painful as that may be and as long as that may take.
#17
They've pissed off every one of their neighbors. We have a containment strategy staring us in the face. We need to cut off their gulf oil access and peel off Russia. Do that, and bring our supply chains home or near-shore.
#19
#16 It only took 5 years to defeat the Empire of Japan. Reagan crushed the USSR in 8 years. It just depends on how serious we are prepared to be. To do nothing would be to cede leadership to a disgusting evil clique of monsters. In reality, this is not the worst thing the CCP has ever done. They are that evil. I am old. I won't live long enough to see the end game. But I sure don't want the US to become the CCP's bitch.
#20
Speaking of Russian neighbors, some additional what if's, impacts, and predictions:
China was already starting to unravel due to severe demographic and environmental pressures, especially the lack of sufficient drinking water. 70% of China’s drinking water is polluted. 30% of that is toxic. The Chinese have been moving Han Chinese westward in the tens of millions to water sources in Tibet and Central Asia. The lack of water has resulted in China having to close down coal mines (coal mining uses a lot of water) and that has impacted on steel production.
COVID-19 will turn out to be China’s biological Chernobyl. It has accelerated Communist China’s unraveling.
What is the solution? War with Russia to regain Siberia and specifically Lake Baikal – the largest fresh water in the world (by volume). Baikal holds 40 % of Russia’s fresh water.
#23
The lack of political will is the biggest problem we have. We stayed the course in the Cold War with the USSR from 1945 to 1989. But we can't even get started on a Cold War with China because there are too many powerful people and corporations in our country who have vested interests in business as usual. Once we overcome that problem, the war with China should be easy.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/19/2020 16:53 Comments ||
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#24
#22 It's historically Chinese territory, just like Tibet and Italy.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/19/2020 16:54 Comments ||
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#25
I'm ok with blankets and MRE's sent to the Russians.
#26
This one was either deliberate or taking advantage of the situation while still feeling ascendant. But a China that feels deliberately besieged is going to react as Japan did to the cutting off the sale of oil in 1941, to whit, Pearl Harbor.
#30
But a China that feels deliberately besieged is going to react as Japan did to the cutting off the sale of oil in 1941, to whit, Pearl Harbor.
Not unless we have a president who is as much of an idiot as Roosevelt. Maybe I shouldn't say that because the memories of Baraq Obama are still fresh.
But we can't go on the way we've been going. If we have to confront them it's better to do it now than to wait until they suck us dry.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/19/2020 17:46 Comments ||
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#31
Chinese are extremely selfish and chauvinistic, both personally and at a civilizational level. Their actions flow from that.
#32
"The lack of water has resulted in China having to close down coal mines (coal mining uses a lot of water) and that has impacted on steel production."
Without steel,they can't build ships...and would have to swim to our shores...lol
[AL.com] Just because (insert political opponent) says it doesn’t make it false.
Conservative-minded people have inherent tendencies — from a natural resistance to abrupt change to a sometimes-automatic adherence to traditions, even those that could be obsolete.
And progressives have their own — from the willingness to accept radical change based more on hope than history to the dismissal of ancient wisdom simply because it’s ancient.
But the way some of our leaders have reacted to the pandemic, and the way some partisan national media outlets have covered it, are prime examples of a tendency we may all share, no matter our political affiliation.
We tend to reflexively defend anyone or anything our political opponents criticize, as though our dislike of the person doing the criticizing means the criticized couldn’t possibly deserve it.
Such reflexive defensiveness against what we see as bullying means we often choose willful blindness.
#1
People who want to run their lives according to politics are as stupid as people who want to run their lives according to comic books, magic numbers or the utterances of the Kardashians.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 13:27 Comments ||
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#2
How bout a philosophy that says let's make tomorrow as much as possible like the best things that happened yesterday?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 13:29 Comments ||
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#6
The problem with this kind of discussion is the eternal question: "Who gets to define better?"
As an individualist I leave that up to everyone for themselves. However, I recognize the problem that my better and your better might be contradictory.
#7
"People who want to run their lives according to politics are as stupid as people who want to run their lives according to comic books, magic numbers or the utterances of the Kardashians." (#1, above).
Well, if these people don't bother or harm me, it's really none of our business what these people want to do, is it?
#8
Improving germs is better for who? Let's start the discussion there.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 14:18 Comments ||
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#9
“Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” Trump said
Looks like the critics missed the part about "while a review is conducted". Just one more anecdote. For each critic.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/19/2020 14:30 Comments ||
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#10
That review might be a legal review to see if the Trump Administration has that authority. As someone mentioned on the Burg the other day, if Congress appropriated the funds to WHO, then we might be stuck with it. For now.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/19/2020 15:25 Comments ||
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#12
Then Trump shouldn't have any problems unless there's more to it. Makes sense. Just because we put aside x amount of dollars, doesn't been it all has to be spent, I suppose. Someone yesterday mentioned another "impeachable offense". I'm sure they'll figure it all out.
I would also like to see the Dems have to take a stand about funding WHO so, come November, they might have a little egg on their faces.
[Euronews] - Sweden's government has defended its strategy in fighting the COVID-19 outbreak in the country.
The country has recorded a drastic increase in the number of coronavirus-related deaths during the last month, which sparked concerns about its social distancing measures.
Unlike some of its Scandinavian neighbours - like Denmark and Norway - Sweden kept primary and secondary schools open, as well as most businesses, including cafes and restaurants. Per capita deaths: USA = 1.19*10-5, Denmark = 5.96*10-5, Finland = 1.63*10-5, Norway = 3.05*10-5, Sweden = 1.47*10-4
The ratio of recovered to dead: USA = 0.57, Sweden = 0.36
...So far, Sweden has banned gatherings larger than 50 people, closed high-schools and universities, and urged those over 70, or otherwise at greater risk from the virus, to self-isolate.
Sweden's foreign minister, Ann Linde, who spoke alongside Carlson at Friday's briefing in Stockholm, said the idea that life goes on as normal in Sweden is "a myth".
"Many people stay at home and have stopped travelling. Many businesses are collapsing. Unemployment is expected to rise dramatically," Linde said. Quarantine --> economic damages, No quarantine --> bigger economic damages?
#2
But they are so cosmopolitan and sophisticated, not like Murican rubes at all. Why has their vaunted democratic socialism let them down now?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 8:17 Comments ||
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#3
US unemployment, per the St. Louis Federal Reserve, will peak at around 32% this summer.
Swedish unemployment, per the Swedish Labour Ministry, will peak at around 10% this summer.
The latter will likely result in few additional deaths in Sweden beyond the 3,000 or so COVID-related deaths.
US unemployment of 32% = a certainty of at least 100,000 additional, needless American deaths from despair in addition to a much smaller number of COVID-related deaths.
There is no stimulus-- short of another World War-- that can rescue us from an economic catastrophe that is even worse than the Great Depression.
Or is that the plan? Pearl Harbor in reverse, this time setting off a war between us and China?
How else does an economy recover from 32% unemployment?
Was the St Louis Fed lady just pulling the #s out of her hat?
#6
Interesting thing about Sweden: the total number of deaths increases but the total number of recoveries stays the same as in was in the beginning of April. It's like no one recovered in the last couple of weeks.
[JPost] IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman recently told reporters that the corona pandemic had hit hard in some of the region's countries and there was "a decline in hostile activity toward Israel." The severe outbreak of the disease in Iran has reduced the volume of its military activity against Israel as regards the supplying of weapons and financing of terrorism.
The plague hit Lebanon during an ongoing economic crisis. The dire situation of both countries has had a profound effect on Hezbollah, the terrorist organization that is supported by Iran and which is an integral part of the Lebanese government.
In an article published by researchers at the National Security Research Institute, Orna Mizrahi and Yoram Schweitzer state, "In these circumstances there is heightened pressure on Hezbollah, which is responsible for the appointment of the current minister of health."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/19/2020 11:43 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Leb ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... ’s economic reform plan that leaked last week was long awaited. The document caused a gale of criticism across Lebanon, as it proposed, among many things, a restructuring of the Lebanese banks’ debt, and a partial confiscation of the depositors money, or what remains of it.
In 34-pages, the cabinet of Prime Minister Hassan Diab proposes to fix decades of corruption and suicidal government policies, which coupled with Hezbollah hegemony over the Lebanese state, have placed the country in political and economic ruin.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/19/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
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We always knew this. Timelines for upstream discoveries are nothing more than hope until something proves out. It’s the downstream side of things that is predictable. But while a vaccine would be awfully nice, the key is to have workable treatments for those who need them.
[ZeroHedge] With much of the world under some form of lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, and debates rage over when, and how, to reopen the global economy in order to avoid the next great depression, the light at the end of the tunnel has been top-down predictions of a vaccine within 18 months.
JPMorgan, for example, makes a core assumption that "it could take 12-16 months for a vaccine to be under mass production," and that the US will go through cycles of increased distancing measures followed by virus flare-ups, which require more lockdowns.
Yet after bold predictions and vaccines rumored to be 'just around the corner,' Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease who sits on President Trump's coronavirus task force, offered a less enthusiastic view - saying in early March that a vaccine might be available in 12 - 18 months.
"The whole process is going to take a year, a year and a half, at least," said Fauci.
And while Fauci has been accused of fear mongering - relying on wildly-pessimistic models while advising President Trump on lockdown measures, he may have been wise to downplay the vaccine timeline.
According to a new report by Australia's ABC, the creation of a vaccine may be incredibly difficult for several reasons, as this particular coronavirus is 'posing challenges that scientists haven't dealt with before.'
According to Ian Frazer of the University of Queensland - who was involved in the creation of the HPV vaccine, coronaviruses are particularly difficult to create safe vaccines before because the virus infects the upper respiratory tract, which our immune system isn't particularly adept at protecting.
There are several reasons why our upper respiratory tract is a hard area to target a vaccine.
"It's a separate immune system, if you like, which isn't easily accessible by vaccine technology," Professor Frazer told the Health Report.
Despite your upper respiratory tract feeling very much like it's inside your body, it's effectively considered an external surface for the purposes of immunisation.
"It's a bit like trying to get a vaccine to kill a virus on the surface of your skin." -ABC News
In other words, because the upper respiratory tract is effectively "outside" of the body, and the outer layer of (epithelial) cells in the tract is our natural barrier to viruses, it's difficult to produce an immune response which can reach them.
Complicating matters is that if a vaccine causes an immune response that doesn't benefit the target cells, the result could potentially be worse than no vaccine at all.
#5
The people who laugh and rub their hands together when one of Trump's immigration orders is overturned by judicial fiat better get ready for what happens in the courts when a "mandatory" vaccine arrives.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 8:25 Comments ||
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#6
Jumping right ahead here, since it won't be possible to vaccinate 300+ million people all at once, it's going to be interesting to see who gets the vaccine first. Surely our senior civil servants will be willing to go last so that more vulnerable populations can go first. Then again, maybe not.
Posted by: Matt ||
04/19/2020 10:13 Comments ||
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#7
You want to be first to get it? I don't. What will they do, set up internment camps? Bring it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 10:25 Comments ||
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#8
"It's a bit like trying to get a vaccine to
kill a virus on the surface of your skin."
Bad comparison. The upper layer of the human skin consists of dead cells.
Some questions:
The flu is initially a respiratory tract infection. How do flu vaccines overcome the problem stated in in the article?
The China virus sometimes affects the kidneys, the brain and the gastrointestinal tract.
If a vaccine couldn't prevent the upper respiratory tract infection that is similar to the common cold but protect against complications affecting the inner organs wouldn't that be worthwhile as a stopgap measure?
#13
/\ I don't care when it comes out, I'm not taking it.
Nor will I, but for legal purposes.... I'll be adding it to my old yellow 731 (shot record). Morgan & Morgan will need something to add me to the action.
#15
Besoeker, a parade like that would be illegal right now in San Diego. Surfing, swimming and recreational boating is prohibited in public waters all up and down the coast.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/19/2020 17:02 Comments ||
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#16
^ Which makes no sense. Typical overreach by Sheriff Bill "FBI" Gore
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/19/2020 17:16 Comments ||
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#17
At this point there are bug worshippers. The bug is omnipotent, you must comply your life to the bug. Sad what people latch onto when they see nothing bigger than themselves.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 17:54 Comments ||
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[BruceWilds] Hard-working Americans that pay taxes should be more than angry over how little respect the politicians in Washington have for their tax dollars. An article that appeared on MarketWatch details what people that receive an undeserved 1,200 dollar stimulus checks under the CARES Act should do. The answer appears just over halfway down on the page in answer to the following question;
Question: I believe that my adult son received a $1,200 EIP, via automatic deposit to his checking account, that he was not entitled to because he is my tax-return dependent. Will the IRS go into his checking account and debit it to get the money back?
Answer: No. The statutory language in the CARES Act that set the whole EIP scheme in motion says that anybody who gets more money than they are actually entitled to can keep the excess. I endorse that concept: any money that gets into people’s hands is fair game.
In the above case, it appears the fella received the money in error but I have heard, and I'm also under the impression the same issue exists in the case where a check is sent to somebody that is deceased. The article explains the Feds are using our beloved Internal Revenue Service to distribute these so-called Economic Impact Payments (EIPs). The IRS is not currently processing 2019 returns because the agency is swamped with all the new COVID-19-related tasks it has been given.
The article also states the IRS’s data processing systems were notoriously inadequate even before getting overwhelmed with all these new tasks. Apparently to those in our government, 1,200 dollars isn't worth the time it takes to do the administrative job of reclaiming it. From what I understand we are talking about checks that total several billions of dollars. This type of waste is just another example of why people don't like paying taxes.
#1
How confusing. If you spend more money than you take in, then the expenditure above the intake can't be defined as taxes. When Congress authorized this, all the Fed/Treasury did was to 'create' new money that had no tax backing. Later they'll classify it as 'inflation'. In the old days it was known as debasing the currency.
Now if the government takes 10% of your income, that is taxes in one form or another. If the government 'creates' (aka prints a boat load of money without backing) that devalues what you hold by 10% that is referred to as monetary policy.
#3
The only upside (if you could call it that) of the past 20 years of debt expansion is that soon we won't even be able to pretend we are ever planning on paying it back, and we can start cancelling the debts owed to us strategically (if you think this sounds like a bad idea because it would worry investors, I submit that crippling the nation by paying 80% of the national budget into the debt every year would be far worse, and refusing to pay debts owned by investors in specific countries wouldn't hurt the US that badly).
But the whole scheme has been continuous, unsustainable nonsense. At least paying everybody cash I can support. It is our money, after all. It is just that they are also paying hundreds of billions of dollars to so many other, more dubious, sources (and subsidizing unemployment, which is a completely garbage idea).
#4
^ I agree. We can selectively give certain treasury bill holders a good and thorough scalping while simultaneously making future treasury bill purchases a difficult to obtain privilege. It will be necessary to stop spending money willy-nilly as Washington does now, but that's actually possible too.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 10:52 Comments ||
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#5
Lets please remember that lots of t bills held in third world countries were bought on rapine and slave labor. No need to treat those holders like Thurston Howell IV.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 10:55 Comments ||
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#6
Further, telling the rest of the world we are going to proactively shrink the global money supply will get some people's attention.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 10:59 Comments ||
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#7
Imagine t bill holders coming forward to ask "what do we have to do to not be on the shit list?"
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/19/2020 11:00 Comments ||
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#8
I can't believe anybody would purchase any government debt, be it here, Europe, Asia, in the first place.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Washington Examiner] MIDDLETOWN, Maryland — There is an argument to be made that the coronavirus pandemic could change the food supply chain for the long term. It may disrupt our across-the-board reliance on distant producers, processing plants, and large chain grocery stores.
[TheDiplomat] We often ascribe a basic level of humanity to even the cruelest leaders, but People's Republic of China leader Xi Jinping's actions have forced us to rethink this assumption. 
[JPost] IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman recently told reporters that the corona pandemic had hit hard in some of the region's countries and there was "a decline in hostile activity toward Israel." The severe outbreak of the disease in Iran has reduced the volume of its military activity against Israel as regards the supplying of weapons and financing of terrorism. 
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
