DISCUSS: Brexit Day, Trump Impeachment, Coronavirus
This is just an open thread to focus discussion on the breaking news of the day. The last day of the first month of 2020 is shaping up to be pretty busy.
Brexit Day
Today is the day. Nearly four years after the referendum, the UK might actually be leaving the European Union. The coverage of this is veering between the nauseating triumphalism of the Leave side, and mawkish sentimentality of Remainers.
28 countries. 23 languages. Far left, far right, christian democrats, centrist dads, even Nigel Farage. It should never have worked. And yet it did. Thank you, friends.pic.twitter.com/pnKFBJqv2E
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) January 29, 2020
It’s a battle between two realities that don’t really exist.
The UK isn’t going to suddenly go back to the Glory Days of the Empire. We won’t have proper fish and chips and those old Hovis adverts and win the world cup again just because we’re out of the EU. The Tories are still in power, and the neoliberal economics that have gutted the country aren’t going anywhere.
But, likewise, Europe isn’t some bulwark of civilisation and progress. We’re not leaving some utopia. Austerity was (and is) an EU policy, and the EU is just as much enslaved to the IMF and World Bank as the UK and US are. The EU defers to the US/NATO on foreign policy just as much as the UK does. The EU still wants censorship, mass surveillance and all manner of authoritarian limitations on individual liberty.
Look at Spain, Greece and France to see how life in the EU is developing. The whole place is a powder keg.
A potential Corbyn-lead socialist government was the only way Brexit could potentially have improved life for ordinary people.
With Johnson in power, and “no deal” off the table, the question isn’t “will Brexit be a success?”. but rather, “Is anything really going to change?”
Impeachment Trial
It’s looking like this may be the final day of the interminable charade that is Trump’s impeachment trial. Just as Russiagate before it, the impeachment seems to be a surface-level attempt to de-legitimise Trump and give the press and Twitterati something to talk about (but also a way to spare Biden’s blushes when it comes to the very real corruption in Ukraine).
The key vote on Friday will be whether or not to allow witnesses to testify. If the Senate votes “no”, then Trump could be formally acquitted by the end of the day.
That’s the opinion of some Republican senators anyway:
The Democrats had their choice, had their time. They could have called — they wanted Bolton. They could have called Bolton back in the House, and they decided not to do it. So, I don’t think we’re going to vote for witnesses, and I think we’ll finish this up tomorrow night.”
If the Senate votes to allow witnesses, we’ll get some more “drama” as John Bolton testifies and further ingratiates himself to “The Resistance”, who will embrace any pro-war lunatic (or “dedicated patriot”), provided they criticise Trump.
If the Impeachment goes the way of Russiagate and falls completely flat, what does that mean for the 2020 Presidential Election?
Are the forces that so obviously switched allegiance from Hillary to Trump is 2016 still behind the President? Does a failed impeachment crush any chance the Democrats have of winning the vote? Seeing as there’s only maybe two democratic candidates with even a pretence of wanting to change things, will it matter?
Coronavirus Update
WHO has officially declared the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak a “global health emergency” (which is good news for Diagnostics Co.).
The first cases have been reported in Italy, Sweden, the UK and Russia. Putting the number of affected countries at over 20, and global cases at ~9,700. The number of fatalities sits at 213 (a death rate of 2.2%, and likely much lower due to infected people who are symptomless or only minorly ill).
For reference sake, since the start of 2020 roughly 1700 people will have died of flu. Every day.
Rather than focus on the realities of the situation – meaning, so far, this is a fairly minor disease outbreak – the Western press are alternating between stoking up panic, and then calling that panic racist.
Is there reason to be concerned about this? Is it a real emergency?
If not, is there an agenda at work? What could it be?
As always, discuss below.
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The Hate Hillary vote brought out many Republican voters in 2016, many who had not bothered to vote for their party’s appointee, excuse me, I mean nominee, in many seasons. They did not throw the election to Mr. Trump, however, I did.
Millions of disgusted citizens, most of whom would have voted Democrat had their nominee been less of a puss bag, stayed home or voted third party. I am proud to have been one of them.
I am not proud of President Trump, but I am delighted that the left and its saner allies among the national electorate determined the outcome of yet another election. And no, I am not unhappy that America finally has a president whose demeanor accurately reflects the inner man.
If Mr. Trump calls a constitutional convention and makes himself President for Life, it won’t change a damn thing about the way most of us are living over here, and it certainly won’t make the electoral process any less responsive to the wishes of the electorate.
When I wrote about the Corona virus being a bio weapon the response was accordingly.
Guess what, I am not the only one that immediately got that idea, or got it now:
Is this Coronavirus a U.S. Bio-Weapon?
With the exception of those who work for the fascists in any way anyways, the down votes my hunch received showed how much in denial the majority still is. Even – or especially – on so called ‘alternative’ sites. In another thread someone also voiced the opinion that it is just an alternative form of denial.
But folks not only live in denial about what the string pullers are capable of – in spite of manifold evidence to the contrary – they also are in denial about the fact that they would never be told what the military is doing, or has in store, since the owners of the military wouldn’t want you to know anything about that for another 10 years.
China has been attacked and you should take notes of the unfolding consequences. If I were Iraq, I would invite Chinese troops to Bhagdad.
Which leads to another oddity: What were U.S. forces doing in China? That article can no longer be found on PressTV. Is PressTV a Fiveye Production now?
Or, people don’t buy the narrative that there is a coronavirus epidemic from which we can only be saved by a) trusting that our government knows best and b) we should all pay for vaccination.
So because plan 1 did not work, they opted for plan 2: say that a bioweapon was developed that, fortunately, is not very deadly (by who? – China of course… but don’t ask for evidence). That scares people shitless which has an effect, ie that they trust that their own government knows best.
Something is coming, and it will be costly too, but I am pretty sure that it isn’t coronavirus. Actually I am pretty sure that TPTB don’t know either, after they came with Russians, deplorables, the alt right, Muslims, communists, socialists, men, Trump, me too, fake news … all memes that do not really stick.
Are we ready for aliens?
We ARE the Aliens.
Alien to reason, consciousness and empathy. Totally alien.
What gets me is the gullibility in regards to how easy it is to spread a virus on your enemy’s territory to disrupt its society and force the government to respond – regardless of the actual outcome of the infection.
If cancerous pharma corporations and their bribed/bought officials mostly in the west, decide to extract as much profit from this event as possible, it is just their nature – it should however never be underestimated how eager these fascist corporations are to assist the machine in the ‘End Lösung’.
So, yes, when it comes to the U.S. regime: it’s always ‘guilty until proven innocent’. What is good for the Ganter has to be good for the Goose. Ganter equals regime, Goose ‘the People’.
Can anybody tell me if corporations are persons outside the U.S. and UK?
You have to look at the cui bono.
The Chinese economy has been damaged and Chinese folk generally demonised.
If the government did not deal with the crisis adequately, it could lead to internal dissent as part of a destabilisation campaign, maybe using Hong Kong as a springboard.
Hong Kong has now been isolated from the rest of the country.
There may well be an agenda behind this.
A bio-weapon, unleashed at Chinese New year to facilitate the countrywide spread, unleashed in Wuhan, a pivotal transport hub, and with a Level 4 virus study laboratory that can be blamed by the racist Sinophobes as the ‘source’ of the outbreak. Wall to wall hate propaganda and LIES, of course, not a little gloating by the MSM vermin, and a long history of US use of germ warfare (eg small-poxed blankets for the Native American, Tuskegee, Korea in the Korean War, African Swine fever and dengue against Cuba in the 70s, and the protection of the Japanese monster Shiro Ishii, he of Unit 731 near Harbin, with its research and use of germ plagues like Yersinia pestis, and live dissection, literal vivisection, of human beings including children etc)and recent extensive and intensive research into bat coronaviruses. And the recent US role in spreading African Swine fever and bird flu in China. If that is not the most preposterous series of innocent ‘coincidences’ in the history of the omniverse, then I’m the Pope.
Correction:
The reported number of fatalities sits at 213 … .
As a great deal presented to us about the coronavirus does not add up in any shape or form, there is no reason to believe anything at all stated about it, unless clear evidence is provided, including numbers of fatalities – and there is no clear or compelling evidence of anything.
Summary of anomalies
1. Absence of any convincing evidence of anything reported about the virus.
2. Two contradictory and equally implausible and unsubstantiated stories about a “coronavirus” hospital being set up (one from an empty building in 48 hours and one from the ground up in 6 days). There is no evidence provided of the finished hospital that was meant to be finished in 6 days.
3. Implausibility of animals reported to spread the virus including Chinese cobras, many-banded kraits, hedgehogs and critically-endangered pangolins. We are shown an image with a pangolin mentioned in the caption, however, the image shows a civet cat which has not been mentioned in relation to the coronavirus but was allegedly a carrier of the SARS virus.
4. Implausibility of a prominent Australian scientist making a denigrative comment about a Chinese research team’s work in the form of, “It’s complete garbage.”
6. The claim of a person lying on the floor in a hospital and a person falling flat on their face representing sufferers of the virus.
7. The remarkable coincidences of the Netflix docuseries on preventing a pandemic and Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise in October last year.
For links and more detail see:
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/blog/coronavirus-hoax-jan-2020
Actually the EU is a utopia compared with other places in the world. It’s very sad that we in the UK now seem to have a political system in hoc to the warmongers of the US rather than the more enlightened policies of Brussels.
One should not use ‘enlightened’ in conjunction with Brussels. Brussels is the global capitol of pedophilia. Enlightened people do not have sex with non-consenting children under 5 years of age. The political cast in Brussels is doing it for a very long time. Dutroux was the tippy tip of the massive iceberg.
Month ago, outrage reigned Deutschland when the tape of a decades old debate in the Bundestag surfaced, because someone had picked the response of a member of the ‘gree/d/n’ party in regards to a movement within the Brussels bureaucracy to introduce legislation that would have made pedophilia a non-punishable act – provided the child had consented to the act.
Is meant to point out the severity of the corruption in Brussels. ‘Consent’ can only be given by a person if it has arrived at reason. That excludes everybody under the age of 18 – at least. And you also see where this is going when you realize that there are U.S. states in which girls under 16 are allowed to be married – to avoid the shame of having obviously breached the religious doctrine that there should be no sex before marriage.
If you allow for 12 year old girls to be gotten married, you still have the premarital sex of an older person with a child going unpunished. But at least the baby will not be born as a bastard, or something like that. Something like that, right?
Like the enlightened non warmonger French/ Italian/ Danish bombing campaign to destroy Libya. Ditto Afghanistan. Ditto Yugoslavia. Ditto Syria.
There have been some disturbing reports from credible public health officials about the virus.
It seems to mutate as it passes from host to host.
“HIV inserts” in the virus would seem to indicate biological engineering.
The source does not now appear to be insanitary public markets, batshit soup, or whatever.
You have to keep an open mind on all this. It could be reading too much into it.
If it is some sort of biological weapon you have to ask what the motive would be and who could be behind it, who would gain from it.
But there are a lot of biological weapons labs dotted around Ukraine, Georgia, the central Asian Stans, and the people who work there have been given diplomatic immunity so they can travel unimpeded.
They were gathering DNA samples with Russia, but I don’t know how creating some kind of ethnic bomb would work to limit the victims to a particular group. Russia has 100 nationalities and ethnic groups.
This corona virus drama is peanuts compared to the coming dollar down fall. Endless QE by the FED has made dollar bills worth less than the paper they are printed on. The big question is this: will it happen before the November 2020 US elections or after? If before Trump will be re elected; if after the election result will become unpredictable. The US Deep state will become even more unpredictable, but without unlimited funds. https://www.keiserreport.com/
The US stock market will fall first, its currency will follow this vapor money…..
When you’re not peddling Zionassty disinfo, you can make sense.
Is there something odd going on with Off-G? The main page isn’t updating the comments and when I check articles I left comments on, sometimes they are there and sometimes not.
Just figured it out. I have to rearrange by “oldest” and then “newest”. Though it’s a bit of a pain. I also have to keep resubmitting my name and email. Which is another pain.
This must be user-system dependent. Unless it causes you memory problems, try keeping O-G open permanently and, when you want to go back to it, just reloading the page.
“This must be user-system dependent.”
Wrong. On reassessment, it seems to be an artifact of Cloudflare’s DDoS CDN.
P.S. I’m fed up with all this wierdo blockquoting shit to indicate a replying-to section, so am reverting to inverted commas (sort of) for that and saving blockquotes for quotes, until either O-G makes it a Community Offence or the editor sprouts traditional angle-bracket sequencing.
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Just refresh the page when it opens. But have the same problem replying to comments however, even if I refresh.
“But have the same problem replying to comments however, even if I refresh.”
ATM you’ve got to be quick. Very aggressive Cloudflare timeout. Compose, copy, refresh, paste, post. You also usually have to wait longer than usual, sometimes a lot longer, for the “posting” graphic (top right corner) to stop dribbling back and forth and the post to appear.
The slime toni blair spotted!
He was sneaked in with the help of The Economist magazine and the “nicotine-peddling, death cult” Philip Morris International. They brought the war criminal in to lecture at Davos’ World Economic Forum about ‘global challenges’.
Probably part of his campaign with the Jewish billionaire Kantor against the “global pandemic of anti Semitism.
A Dr Somebody whose introduction I missed, but he seemed to be an epidemiologist, was on Al Jazeera yesterday, saying that the Wuhan strain of Coronavirus was unlikely to be a big deal in terms of mass termination, but the challenge now was to try to ensure that it did not enter the pool of endemic human viruses. In other words, to drive it back to its snake/fish/bat/rat/monkey origins. That’s an interesting idea, I thought, but then: I’m not an epidemiologist, geddit?
The plan is probably to isolate China, which process is proceeding apace contrary to WHO recommendations, then unleash the real killer variant.’Oh, look, the virus mutated, just as we predicted! Thank God we have China isolated, and this Yellow Fever won’t harm valuable European lives!’.
Interesting use of the word “probably”, which–in dealing with the unknown and when set against “possibly”– is often an indicator of a predetermined mindset.
Yes, I do have a partially pre-determined mindset. Who does not? I am pretty open to new information, I believe, and changing my mind, which is an often exhilarating experience. ‘Probably’, for me means more or less a greater than a 50% chance, or probability.
Another word is quarantine, but either is unexceptionable because whichever is clearly true. When someone has an unknown disease (or even just a possible proclivity) which could turn out to be excessively nasty we have been isolating them since well before Leviticus 13:45-46 or the 1940s US’s Japanese internment camps or the taxi driver who wouldn’t pick you up last Saturday night. Long before because that’s what we’ve always done, including Leviticus’ showing it to the priest for diagnosis, https://youtu.be/rh9PwFvMS0I just to be sure.
“Then unleash the real killer variant.” What, the variant we’ve cooked up when we cooked up the unreal killer variant that has now, clearly been successfully planted in a Wuhang fish market by our man in China? Who’ll unleash the killer variant in a Beijing poultry market, the one that we’ll drone in to him just as soon as we have the second last gap in our isolation wall plugged?
“The plan” is probably (P≥0.5) [quantified yet] to X then to Y so… so as to score a hoax PR victory for home consumption?
A partially predetermined mindset that proposes, with statistical quantification, a multideath, multi$billion, hi-tech conspiracy in order to disparage The Chink?
That’s a partially predetermined mindset that’s moved on to the entirely unhinged. But at least you have two (bird flu finger) upvotes for it so far.
Well, as the excellent Mint News reporter, Whitney Webb, showed recently, the USA has done extensive military research on bat-borne corona viruses from South-East Asia, China and Khazakhstan, and God knows where else. If you think that the rulers of the USA would have any moral qualms in unleashing a deadly pandemic disease, possibly genetically re-engineered in one of the archipelago of Pentagoon bio-warfare laboratories, against China, in order to preserve the God-ordained rule of the semi-divine White European man over the planet, then I reckon you’re mistaken.
I’ve four things to say about Europe:
1. Thanks. You made us become actual Europeans instead of mawkish Britons who ate awful food, sneered at “Dagoes”, “Wops”, “Fritzes” and “Frogs”.
2. We were never, any of us, given the chance to vote on the Maastricht/Lisbon treaty, let alone having implications explained to us.
3. The European expansion, much heralded by Tony Blair, was never what we wanted and should you last that long, acquiring Ukraine will be the death of you, morally and literally.
4. The Euro can’t survive in its present form. It encapsulates all that is wrong with Europe. Applying the same rules across countries with very different economies along with fixed budgets ensures German dominance, with Southern + Ireland client states keeping Germans in jobs and several holidays a year.
5. The only chance, imo, is for a much smaller Europe, maybe the original 6 countries in a federation, but I don’t think France is too keen on that.
………..We got out (sort of) before the shit hit the fan. We’ll still take a huge economic hit when it all comes undone, greater than in 2008. Our defence commitments, to NATO and the European defence force, leaves us locked in an arms race with ever bigger defence budgets, a commitment to never-ending regime change wars, Russia as our implacable enemy and Fascist Ukraine as our partner.
Yes the EU, ‘it worked’ according to the ineffable Ms C. Sure it did. Neoliberalism, low-growth, high unemployment, abolition of borders an end to sovereignty, uncontrolled immigration, the non-stop expansion of NATO and its move right up to Russia’s borders, a largely unelected ruling bureaucracy, ongoing American occupation … what more could we desire? ‘Bliss was it to be alive that very dawn …’ etcetera.
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These liberal journalists appear to inhabit a different universe to the rest of us.
Francis, You know she is taking the piss? Of course you do.
That’s Integrity Iniative Codswallop, yeah?
The Russia baiting, Corbyn hating, SCL arse covering, referendum fixing, brexit delivering…Codswallop of MI6, yeah?
That’s why she is at the top of this piece – another triumphalist joke by the winners. Enjoying a soon to be pyrrhic victory as the now unencumbered EU, can finally make the moves in their own tent without us and the US pissing all over them.
Expect Macron to self destruct, the Eastern and Central Europeans to be told to behave or fuck off and Nato given its marching orders – Legarde too. The Euro will become a reserve currency as the $ finally collapses under its overhyped weight.
Then we will be back in half a generation as revolutionary democracy usurps the fixed elections that gave France, Macron and us brexit and bozo.
I doubt myself that the euro will become a reserve currency.
It’s always been weak and volatile and won’t really replace the dollar.
I tracked it when it came out and it fluctuated wildly over a range of 66-91 pence.
It will probably have to deal with an Italian/ German banking crisis shortly, another good reason to be out of the EU.
Of course the days of the pound as a reserve currency are long gone.
In 2008, it lost 34% of its value, the result of $1 trillion in money printing by the Bank of England to bail out the banksters, and o% interest rates. Though the Brussels Groupies will always blame Brexit for any fall in the £.
The Swiss franc is too small and the Swiss have no interest in running a reserve currency anyway.
The rouble and renimbi and rupee will probably be used more and more by them in their trade transactions, but the Chinese currency is not fully convertible, and like the Swiss they don’t seem all that interested in running a reserve currency.
That could possibly change. China and Russia have been buying large quantities of gold, and there has been speculation about a new gold backed currency. The Swiss franc was previously 40% backed by gold but no longer is.
The proportion of $ in central bank reserves has fallen from over 80% to around 60%. This is likely to fall steadily, or maybe rapidly, as more and more countries seek to avoid US sanctions and trade wars.
In the short run there may even be a flight to the $ with coming crises.
But long term the most likely outcome is a declining role for the dollar without it being actually replaced by another currency, with more and more countries trading in their own currencies.
According to Jon we’re up to 30 Trillion cases which means we’re all dead and actually not having this discussion:
https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/01/31/epidemic-30-trillion-cases-and-thats-a-low-estimate/
Of course the whole senate died and the only one left alive was John Bolton and cock roaches proving that they have the same genetic make up. Meaning that we’ll never know if Trump will be convicted.
Moving across the pond it seems Brexit was accomplished because Boris Johnson survived. Why? I refer to the previous paragraph. According to NYT who miraculously survived as well because of their cock roach DNA they are now sharing an apartment or “flat” according to the Guardian who share the same Genetic code because they feel that two brain cells are better than one.
Speaking from American-occupied and controlled Europe I really wonder what all the fuss is about. Let’s have a look at some figures.
Annual Growth Rates, Year-on-Year. The big four December 2019
UK 1%
France 0.8%
Germany 0.5%
Italy zero
These are depression figures. And don’t even get me started on Bond Yield rates.
Francis.
Yes – look at it.
China is ” disappointing ” at 6.3 % growth year on year.
How the hell the UK and/or the EU is going to grow in the future is almost beyond thought.
Also all economists ( left and right ) agree that a worldwide recession is imminent.
The average Euro growth is 1%.
The US is no longer the lender of last resort – it is the borrower of last resort but no-ne is going to press for payment.
Certainly not China – all the Chinese will do ( barring a war ) is to manage down the US overspending bit by bit.
The West cannot get this into their heads – hence this nationalistic masochism – that the game is up and it’s time for the new kids on the block to take over.
Yes ,they may not like it but like the reality of the UK trying to do deals with the great trading blocs reality will establish itself.
You can have all the slogans and metaphors you want but reality and history will establish itself.
There is no escape.
For a lower power or a higher one.
Europe, like the USA/Canada is now in a period of de-growth like it or not, what the gangsters running the show have yet to figure is how to manage this decline in a equitable manner without frightening the masses – at least the French (bless em) have got a handle on the issue, hence the blowback on the streets, its also worth noting, if given half a chance, the French electorate would follow its UK peers in exiting the Brussels quagmire, well, thats according to no less a figure than Macron, but is backed up by the fact that the French electorate was savvy enough to reject the EU Constitution, only to have it rammed down their throats via the Treaty of Lisbon, which, was just a quick re-wording of the original Constitution document – the EU really don’t like democratic outcomes, much like the UK Labour Party PLP don’t like democratic outcomes.
If we import millions more unassimilable illegal immigrants, there will be a huge increase in welfare gives, and hey presto! with all the spending you have a big boost to the GDP.
Just a quick update on the latest Cornoavirus outbreak down in my neck of the woods, namely Hong Kong SAR, which it would seem the authorities are taking the matter seriously – based on part from our experience from the late 2002 outbreak that lasted until July 2003.
As of 31 January all educational establishments are to remain closed until 2 March, originally it was 17 February, but was extended as new data is presented, this move took me by surprise.
Like many other posters, among them Kit, this poster thought that the original SARS outbreak was a joke, so in real life I down played it in January 2003 and went along with my usual business – such flippancy was wrong when we had an exponential growth in the spread of the pathogen and huge pressures placed on our public health service, which, obviously was already coping with seasonal influenza – you see, flu cases take up beds, particularly if Pneumonia is involved and Hong Kong, like many other advanced economies, only has so many ICU beds available at any given time and staff to man these units, so SARS was a real issue and not something to down play in such a crowded city.
For the benefit of doubters, here’s a 2009 Epidemiology of the outbreak as it impacted HKSAR: https://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/86739/1/content.pdf?accept=1 – please read and digest.
Key points of the above study are that HKSAR had 1755 confirmed cases with 299 deaths, the bulk of these occurring from mid February through to the end of May 2003, nearly 50% of the transmissions occurred in clinics, care homes and hospitals and the mortality rate was 17%, which, is significantly higher than seasonal flu outbreaks.
Other interesting facts are the duration it took for suffers to express symptoms and length of time of hospitalisation, this being 21 days – please remember, folks were already using hospital resources with season flu, so great pressure was put on the health service, which, we were informed after the event would have been in crisis had 2,000 persons presented symptoms within a 21 day timeframe.
Further, and not often discussed, is that many of those who survived SARS, that is those who were hospitalised, many suffered post infection chronic illness as a result of the treatment the health authority utilised, much of which was experimental.
As of today we have 13 known cases of the new Coronavirus in the HKSAR, with the Health Authorities predicting a potential 200 cases in the next few weeks – this is a worse case scenario based on 300,000 persons from China visiting HKSAR or returning back from China after the Chinese New Year – HKSAR has stringent immigration checks for all visitors and all residents.
As it stands, the latest outbreak is not on par with the 2003 outbreak and lessons learned from 2003 are in place, or at least here in the HKSAR. Further, the mortality rate is significantly lower, whilst known cases thus far is significantly higher on the Chinese mainland, who, have taken stringent steps to reduce transmission rates, for which we should be grateful.
Thanks for this update. Since you live in the Hong Kong area, I wondered any protests have been there since coranavirus entered our media. I am quite suspicious that China’s reaction to this virus has something to do with the rioting in Hong Kong. I am not sure, however. My question is: is there a correlation between coronavirus outbreak and less protests in Hong Kong, or are they still protesting in Hong Kong?
I know that correlation doesn’t imply causation, but just want to know if there is a correlation.
I think you need to understand that its Winter now in the HKSAR, so demonstrators have been few and far between since Christmas, that and the fact, given knowledge of the 2003 SARS outbreak, persons are more concerned with the present outbreak, rather than issuing support for Protests sponsored by anti-Chinese forces, who, let me tell you, are no friends to average Joe’s like myself. Oh, and we have a double whammy now of an economic downturn, first we had the alleged pro-Democracy downturn, compounded by the latest health worries – maybe our rents will drop, which is one of the main reasons for anti-SAR government sentiment.
Okay, thanks for the update
Only the idiot CIA and fellow imperialists would demand their frontline schoolkids gather to push the insurrection – the value of having Chinas resources compared to the bs ancient bankers in such an emergency will be plain for all HongKongers now – i expect they will not take kindly to the outsider trouble makers waving unionjacks and stars and stripes.
Have a pracefull month there!
Less terrorist thuggery in Hong Kong signifies reduced money flows from the USA and emigre Chinese fascist billionaires. Nothing to do with corona viruses, just human ones.
“Read and digest”? You’re joking, right? About the only real use that a majority of users around here have for a notional concept of science lies in its antidiety value. Science that has to be learned instantly hits their roundfile.
Incidentally, your initial flippancy was echoed in spades by an associate who pranced in, full of ebullience on his return from China, and was visibly narked by my barely disguised anger at his appearance. Even more so when I told him to fuck off for another three weeks and try not to show his face in public again for the same period of time.
So much promulgation of the precautionary principle, so much misdirected lip-servicing bullshit. Talking of precautions, misdirection and bullshit, I notice that the enddless predictions of widespread post-Brexit food and aspirin rationing are being downplayed already.
Now the australian prime minister and his illiterate extremist cronies have a new reason to be proud and walk tall on the world stage.
Australia is a major donor and exporter of bushfire smoke: We heard the smoke from bushfires have reached New Zealand, and soon after, the smoke reached South America. Now it appears the smoke is completing its round-the-world trip by heading back to Australia.
Not to waste an opportuniy, this is a time for photo op (photograph opportunity) for government officials celebrating the Guiness record for the largest ‘travelling’ bushfire smoke.
Smoko and his coal-loving colleagues clearly hoped that the bush-fires had gone away. No such luck. So it’s time to pretend that ‘replacing’ coal with gas extracted from coal-seams is an improvement. Therefore, Smoko is either so stupid that he does not know that fugitive emissions of methane make this gas actually worse than coal, or he just thinks that the serfs are so dumb that they do not know that. And a good old racist scare campaign over the novel corona virus has now seen all Chinese, ie mostly tourists, banned from Australia. So much for the tourist industry, already reeling from the effects of the fires. If it was not for the incredible suffering, you’d be inclined to talk of Nemesis stalking the country and its vicious, imbecile, hard Right Federal regime.
It’s probably all Putin’s fault.
He tends to be behind any skulduggery that’s going on.
Is Putin a bat by any chance?
If Putin actually is a bat, no doubt of the vampire variety then its most likely he’s responsible for the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak.
And, on a serious note here the first actual scientific paper on the Wuhan outbreak, the likely reservoir of the virus and some options for both treatment and containment: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7_reference.pdf
I don’t know. He could be, He’s usually an octopus or a cyborg on the front page of the Economist.
Jesus Christ. I know, let’s kill all the Palestinians. Fewer Jesus genes. We can worry about liberating the fuckers after they’ve gone.
‘Kill them all, and let God sort them out!’
Re Trump, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention. Back in the Bush 2 Presidency the notion was advanced of the ‘unitary executive’, the idea that the executive branch of government should have primacy over the other two branches. This was seen by many as a direct assault on the Constitution. The idea died down with the Obama presidency because the country was preoccupied with the crashed economy and Obama himself, being a consitutional scholar, very much into playing by the rules. The champions of the unitary executive didn’t go away, though, they just waited for another suitable host to turn up and in Trump they found a beauty. Trump is an egotist of the first order who wants to rule by diktat, not by carefully assembling coalitions by negotiating and horse trading. (which, like it or not, is how things get done in politics). Feeding that ego by forever allowing him to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable might be a good short term strategy for those hungry for power but ultimately it represents a existential threat to our republic. It could even pose a threat to the rest of the world since this focus on wealth and power with a thin veneer of sanctimonious religiousity is seriously weakening us on the world stage. We don’t see this in those terms — we don’t see ourselves weakening but others getting stronger, something that cannot be allowed because We’re Number One, so our response to economic challenges will increasingly involve the use of military force. Since our forces themselves are now overstretched and borderline underresourced we will eventually resort to using more and more powerful weapons to force our will.
To those who would say that the multinationals and international capital won’t let that happen I’d say that it won’t be the first time, especially as they might see business opportunities in conflict. Its just we’re getting really near the edge of uncontrolled disaster. There just has to be a bettery way to organize things.
A lot of the ideological and supposedly legal justification for quasi-dictatorial powers for the President, under Bush II, was borrowed from Carl Schmitt. the leading Nazi legal authority. The Fuhrer-sorry, President-is the ‘exception’ to the law, and may do as he pleases. Schmitt was a long-term friend and correspondent with Leo Strauss, the Judeofascist intellectual who nurtured a cabal of what became known as the ‘neo-conservatives’, those aggressive thugs behind the PNAC, with its remarkably prescient observations that a ‘New Pearl Harbor’, like 9/11, would be needed before the US public could be induced to support a war of terror on Islam. They were nearly all Jewish, many former Trots, and received secret instructions from Strauss the content of which remains a mystery, but one that you can guess at.
Can’t be long now till we all join Earthexit.
As a nuclear weapon was once heard to say:
‘I am, therefore I destroy’
‘I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’.
I stand corrected, Mulga.
Mulga? Really? I thought he’d gone off to harass the ABC.
The ABC no longer allows any comments on its program web-sites-Freedom of Opinion in the Glorious West, doncha know?
Actually the excellent Dark Star (Carpenter before his horror fame)
Thinking bomb had it as ‘i think therfore i am – let there be light’ if memory serves.
So both correct.
OffG is to be lauded to the heavens for hardly even mentioning Brexit today.
“whether or not to allow witnesses to testify . . .”
Sounds sort of wrong, doesn’t it…?
It does indeed sound wrong but consider this. The impeachment proceedings were entirely the offspring of the Dems. Everyone knew they had no chance of success in the Senate. So the process was all about besmirching Trump (who is adept at this himself). So bringing witnesses in a sham exercise would only aid and abet a deeply insincere process. So why should the not-without-sin Republicans collude with that?
Well said.
I was only lamenting the sort of legalese we seem to be stuck with today.
As you rightly imply, the witnesses in such a sham exercise would also be sham, and there is, sadly, hardly anything left of our western systems of jurisprudence which can not be made into a sham version of its original design…
Look what this lovely family, the Sovereign Grant receivers, do for our ‘Entertainment’.
– The duke of Edinburgh prince philip repeatedly advocated for population reduction. In the event he is reincarnated, he said he wishes to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation
– In 2013, his son prince charles has openly expressed support for a recent population study by biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, calling for drastic global efforts to reduce fertility worldwide. The so-called prince wanted that “we act decisively now”
– More recently in 2017 the grandson prince william was complaining that there are just too many people in the world. He uttered those words while his wife was pregnant with their third child
Do taxpayers see good Entertainment value in all this?
Well the Duke of Edinburgh DID return as a virus, yet his family breeds on and on…
Wonderful how they always find ways to exclude themselves from actual solutions to the world’s problems…
Well, Norn, if the human population is not humanely and gradually reduced, it will be slashed, cruelly and rapidly. Surely that is not what you want.
Do you mean, Norn, that because the Windsors say the Earth has a population-overshoot problem, it really hasn’t? I think that’s a non-sequitur. Whatever typically-mediocre ideation the Windsors or Philip Mountbatten utter, the eco-bio-physical fact is that just now the Earth is going through a population-overshoot of humans, and it will be resolved either by the humans having the sense – which other species such as yeast can’t muster – to do something voluntary and effective to reduce our numbers humanely; or Mam Gaia will do it for us in her usual ruthlessly-effective way, as has happened with all previous unbalanced population explosions, of any species. We reduce our numbers ourselves, or Gaia will do it for us. Those are our choices. The burbling of Windsors and dependents are irrelevant.
Note, though, that it needn’t be an apocalyptic process. Seems to me that what’s likeliest is, a) we won’t be arsed as a species to do the necessary; and b) global living conditions generally will thus worsen enough for the human aggregate planetary death-rate to move a couple of percentage points ahead of the birth rate, and will then stay there quietly for a while, until there’s been a useful and salutary decrease in our currently-swarming numbers.
Then – if we remain still as bloody clueless as yeast – rinse and repeat…
(Remember, as a useful rule of thumb, that the dream of a Vulcan super-hitech future across the galaxy, that we’ve all been promised by modern Western science-myths, is now being flushed away by the already-commenced reality of the Long Descent away from hitech industrial ‘civilisation’; so – put not thy faith in super-hitech med-wizardry…)
BTW, for which of the Three Norns do you claim to speak? 🙂
Definitely, we’ve been deceived big time by the myth that science and high-tech will ensure a fluffy future for mankind. Science and high-tech have both been hijacked by the filthy rich and rotten Big Corporates.
Yes, overpopulation can be an ecological problem. But what these characters always have in mind is sinister and will not fix anyhting: They dislike the poor and would like to cull those inferior brown races.
prince philip is lamenting the fact that malaria had been eradicated in Sri Lanka. He considers malaria as a great solution to save the environment in Sri Lanka because it ensures smaller population. He’s content with eliminating 2/3 of of the Sri Lankan population. All while disregarding the reality that one household (one of his rich friends’, especially of the entrepreneurial type) could be creating more damage to the planet in one week than an entire village in poor countries can do in one year.
Did he suggest, malaria should be unleashed on those who are systematically poisoning the Earth and destroying the natural world? No, he didn’t. He, his affspring, and his cohort of racist elitists think the poor should be sterilised!!!! How good is that?
prince philip is any non-exec wanting a bigger cut for helping engineer proportionally bigger cuts for all his wife’s mainland subjects. Proceeding beyond this point→.←indicates your acceptance of the implied terms, conditions and co-culpability. Your here already? Too late, you proceeded.
Yes, yes-the ruling parasites are Evil vermin, but over-population is over-population. We must decrease the population gradually and slowly, or the psychopaths will do it cruelly and rapidly, targeting the ‘useless eaters’ who they hate and fear.
Which, in turn, could mean that Gaia has developed a humanoid brain. Equivocal news. Or even prove to be yet another human artefact. Nietschean confnewsion.
It could mean that, Rob, but it needn’t. It’s well established that the global ecosystem has multiple feedback loops within it which operate the Earth’s – or rather Mam Gaia’s – sophisticated, life-mediated homeostasis processes. These, operating automatically, have proven more than enough to deal with population blooms of particular species. The most obdurate, wilfully-blinkered materialist thinker – Dawkins, for example – could go along with that.
Nor is it necessary for mind – the mind of a living planet, say – to be in any way dependent on the existence of a physical brain. Such Nineteenth Century lumpen-materialist thinking! 🙂 The shortest way to catch up with the superseding new idealist thinking – in physics, the hardest of the hard sciences! – is to study Tom Campbell’s ‘My Big TOE’ website: http://www.my-big-toe.com What Tom says, repeatedly, in so many words, is that unless some sentient being actually opens up a skull and looks inside, there is no brain in there at all, because the rendering engines of Big Mind don’t bother offering data streams when no mind is actually looking to see. Bits of our virtual reality get generated quite economically, just-in-time (about the Planck Time) as and when individual minds playing on the holodeck of physical, material reality, actually need to sense them.
The basic idea – now rising rapidly, again – is that mind is the fundamental ground on which all reality is based; physical, material things being generated by mind to order – *in virtual form* (sic!) – as needed. This would include biological brains and nervous systems, natch. But they seem to be entirely optional for the operation of pure mind. (sic, sic, sic! Get yer imagination round that! 🙂 ) This Kuhnian paradigm-shift is already underway amongst the younger, path-finding generation of professional physicists, and other scientists. Information is becoming, in this new/old way of thinking, the foundational material of which every ‘physical’ thing is made.
It’s entirely possible that Mam Gaia is a real spirit: a real substructure within the overall entity of Big Mind. But as James Lovelock pointed out with his Gaia Hypothesis, even if the Earth’s life system is just a big automatic machine, we may as well treat it as being a great living entity, one of a pantheon of quasi-autonomous gods and goddesses within Big Mind, because – as a whole – it certainly acts like one: Mam Gaia. And how about the Sun, and other stars? Brute, soulless collections of mini-particles plus energy, and no more than that? Or what…?
Which brings us back neatly to epidemics and population-overshoot. Dean Radin – another remarkable real-scientist path-finder in the business of explaining the intractable anomalies in the materialist world-view – has published his latest book just recently, called ‘Real Magic’, which states unequivocally that the paranormal phenomena which he’s made it a life’s-work to study with very high quality experimental science equate pretty exactly to the very ancient, universal ideas about magical function.
And one of the abiding anchors of that world-view is that action in mind – particularly unbending intent – has a real, palpable and *literally measurable* effect on the ‘physical’ world. “The art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with the will”, as Dion Fortune famously defined magic, consciousness being the basis from which all of physical reality springs.
Meaning, amongst many other things, that we don’t have to accept the Earth’s Synergising Global Crises as inescapable fate about which we can do nothing. Just holding the right unbending intents in mind steadfastly, for however long you can, actually has a real, demonstrable effect on the situation – especially when lots of individual minds are doing it in concert. Replication of the experimental work of Dean and others confirms this idea repeatedly. As do all the traditional shamanic/magical traditions, of course.
Just sitting and meditating these things with unbending intent has an effect. Doing that and being an activist as well is even better, naturally. Just thinking beautiful thoughts, and doing buggerall else is a bit of a cop out; but it helps… 🙂
Cadwalladr of the Integrity Iniative as the masthead!
Really?
Brexit day – a damp squib, can’t see many cunterryback celebrating round my way.
—
6:20 am Jan 31
Hubei Province reported 1,220 new cases, 42 deaths and 26 recovered cases of novel coronavirus on Jan 30; total infection number in the province increased to 5,806, with 116 recovered and 204 deaths.
That makes it a 3.5% death rate in the largest single area where the maximum efforts at containment are focused.
—–
Trump was never going to be impeached by the Republican Senate – half of whom will be up for re-election along with Trump – the voters can decide this year.
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This websites contributors show their beige nature again, how the fuck can corbyn be a socialist? Socialism is the workers owning and operating the means of production nothing else it’s not equality it’s not blue haired trannys it’s not mass immigration it’s workers owning and operating the means of production! That’s all! Corbyn made a career out of “being critical” of the middle class neoliberals imperialist party he was always a member of without any Qualms. Fuck him and his delusional supporters
Go and live in your van, and having to use the toilets at Walmarts; or having to crap in the streets, as so many have do do in your wonderful/complete joke society.
The world laughs at you. Do you realise that?
The world laughs at yanks offended by the truth! It’s not blue haired trannys and a million genders! Cope with it
You seem to be confusing socialism with communism. Easy mistake for a thickhead.
I’m looking forward to a nice Sunday roast of hormone-fed beef and taking chlorinated chicken sandwiches on the ferry to Calais (that’ll show ’em). And when I get a bit ill, I’ll also look forward to losing my home to those charming chaps in the US health industry. I voted for Brexit, one of the reasons being that I thought that at least it would shipwreck TTIP. WTF do I know.
Let’s share a chlorinated chicken sandwich.
By the way, are you aware that Trump has removed just about all environmental standards?
Fracking firms are now dumping their waste water quite freely into rivers and streams.
It’s the land of freedom
Americans care about guns & ammo. They never cared for the streams & rivers in the past either. Fracking industry rapes & pillages just like USA NATO does.
Nothing new under the sun.
MOU
All 3 will shortly die a death.
The MSM will have to find other distractions and diversions.
Brexit will subside into a long running bureaucratic muddle of negotiations with Brussels and Washington that could be marketed as a cure for insomnia.
The importance of the EU has always been exaggerated by Brussels Groupies for whom Brussels is the centre of the universe.
Germany will always be successful and Bulgaria will always be poor, regardless of whether the EU exists or not. It can never be more than a bit of icing on the cake one way or another.
The Trump Russiagate/ Ukrainegate/ Whatevergate hoax will shortly run out of steam.
“The Resistance” will then have to come up with something else. Maybe they will decide he is “anti semitic”, like Jezza and now Bernie, or maybe they will discover another Stormy Daniels.
If I was Trump, I’d do everything I could to keep this farce going.
Let the Democrats and their tame hacks in the MSM go charging down rabbit holes to their hearts’ content. Instead of finding a credible candidate with some credible policies. And giving Trump another 4 years by default.
Not that it really matters that much which trained monkey or mediocrity occupies the White House.
The “Yellow Peril” virus will be brought under control in due course, like bird flu and so many scares before it. They will then discover that eating broccoli will give you a heart attack, or beri beri, or something.
The MSM will then have to fall back on Little Greta only having 4 years to save the planet. Until it can come up with something better.
Meanwhile, the billionaires will redouble their wealth and devise new ways of imposing austerity on everybody else. The Debt Bomb will continue ticking away. The Zio Empire will continue to incite new wars and destabilise the planet.
Excellent summation of current events P.
I should add that I’m a Brexiteer (‘those that Brexit, they be the lucky ones’), and I’m a Brit who’s lived in France for the best part of two decades.
I am totally pro Europe.
I have always been totally against the EU, because the EU is a neo-liberal construct. The EU consists of the troika -the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – all of which worship neo-liberalism and enforce it on all EU member states.
The troika is a totally corrupt mafia that will never allow any member states to leave.
Britain is not leaving the EU this evening. What’s happening is a one year ‘transition period’ in which everything will remain exactly the same with regard to Britain in the EU; and perhaps most importantly, during this period Britain will no longer have any representation in the EU Parliament.
This one year transition period can only end at the behest of the EU (ie, it can go on for ever).
The Withdrawal Agreement is the biggest sell-out in British political history.
That’s why the WAB, in it’s various forms, has been voted against numerous times in the UK Parliament; despite the fact that most politicians thesedays are braindead.
I’m trying to time this post for 11pm UK time (midnight in Europe), when the ‘transition period’ officially begins.
I like those three short pieces they get to the point and so much more intelligent than mainstream babble!
Why can we never see anything so coherent and so much to the point from Codswalloper and Co.?
Because, in contrast to this side, they have to fill the pages between advertisements, with other advertisements.
For instance, winning the ‘war’ against coronavirus will be costly, and that is what they are selling.
Today’s virus were yesterday’s Muslims, and last years Bolsheviks, and tomorrow’s aliens or similar kinds of stuff that is costly but doesn’t bring us anything.
We are in desperate need of aliens to unite us and boost our defence spending.
Be careful what you wish for Sir.
If the MSM could transform Corbyn into Hitler and morph the entire British realm into Poland 1939, then they can do anything. So why not aliens? 40 years of neoliberalism have reduced the UK’s public intelligence into that of the average American so we’re all set for a rerun of Orson Wells’ radio Martian outing. They’ve already had a remake of “War of the Worlds” to get everyone in the mood. Next phase: recreation of the Bible Belt in the midlands.
Plus another remake of “The Ten Commandments” – with nine of them left out.
Only “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ox” will remain, since it doesn’t concern our City-dwelling bureaucrats.
Religious fundamentalist fanaticism, as seen in the USA, Australia, Brazil, Bolivia,Israel, India, Saudi Arabia etc, will provide the coup de grace for humanity.
Because that would make them unemployable. What is worse-knowing liars and disinformationists, or robopaths so brainwashed that they ‘believe’ the crap that they excrete?
… and facebook has been find half a billion (less than 30 minutes income) for misusing facialrecognition on its platform – has anyone been sacked …. er, no.
I think it’s fair to say we re doomed – tyrannical, unscrupulous, criminal pigs have won
Bob, for every evil bastard on this planet there’s at least one thousand good people.
Hold that in your heart.
I think that Corbyn and Trump are Chinese manufactured viruses to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
DA DA DAH…
Remember Fu Manchu, and his slitty-eyed attempt to take over the world. DA DA DAH!
Yes, propaganda is boring.
But I will add that Trump’s speech a few days back – it was in Ohio, or wherever – was quite worrying. The Donald was quite obviously ill on stage and looked like he’d had a mini stroke. His words were slurred and even more incoherent than usual.
In the total madhouse we now find ourselves in, this will be taken as normal.
There have actually been headlines like “The Yellow Peril.”
Chinese folk are at risk of being scrubbed down with disinfectant every time they step outdoors.
Although I am opposed to the neo-liberal, Zionist controlled, EU, the sentimental farewell from the Integrity Initiative disinformer, Codswalloper, makes my disdain all the deeper. If Cod is for it, I’m agin it.
“We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1…The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. “
Interesting, and even more so as so totally anonymous.
substantial and draconian limitations on population mobility
going forward
sector by sector grid lock down with individual self isolation compliance adding to a Compartmentalization of the diseased hiv vectors.
Doc-where did you get your info? OK, I pulled me digit out and found the work, by a bunch from the Indian Institute of Technology, in Delhi. The comments were generally not supportive, but were couched in terms far beyond my capacity to evaluate one way ot the other.
CRISPR-Cas9
Researchers create a small piece of RNA with a short “guide” sequence that attaches (binds) to a specific target sequence of DNA in a genome. The RNA also binds to the Cas9 enzyme. As in bacteria, the modified RNA is used to recognize the DNA sequence, and the Cas9 enzyme cuts the DNA at the targeted location. Although Cas9 is the enzyme that is used most often, other enzymes (for example Cpf1) can also be used. Once the DNA is cut, researchers use the cell’s own DNA repair machinery to add or delete pieces of genetic materia in this case HIV1 l, or to make changes to the DNA by replacing an existing segment with a customized DNA sequence.
almost certainly state sponsored i would imagine the chinese and the russians already have located the birth labs of these hiv1 vectored weapons systems
No-deal is off the table? Really? What if Brussels won’t agree to Johnson’s terms? Or is he just going to do a BRINO after all?
If by “forces” you mean voters, well, I personally don’t know of anybody who supported Hellary in the primaries, but switched to Trump in the general. Now, there may have been a few Bernie Sanders people here and there who bolted after Hellary ‘won’ the nomination and went for Trump, but not Hellary supporters.
My thoughts today turn to what Tony Benn might have said had he still been with us. It might have been along the lines off “ cheerio to the EU” whilst lighting his pipe and drinking tea and “why oh why didn’t Corbyn grow a pair”.
I want Johnson and Trump to drop dead. Now.
Gosh, must admit I didn’t have the faintest idea it was Brexit day or might be Impeachment trial closure time. I just assumed both would go on indefinitely.
Just shows how much I know.
They both probably will forever, just in a slightly different guise each time
The first thing which needs to happen with Coronavirus ‘crisis’ is that a bottom-up holding to account of all ‘experts’ take place with consequences for bullshitting liars if their pronouncements turned out to be complete claptrap.
First on the list must be the WHO: a ‘global health emergency’ needs to threaten the lives of 100 million people minimum, as that is around 1% of the world population. Personally, I would put it at 1 billion. That would soon put Coronavirus in context.
Martin Bell is currently fronting adverts on the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, saying up to 12 million people’s lives are at risk. Whether it is 2 million or 20 million, that is hugely more important than Coronavirus bullshit. I want doctors at WHO asked why they think 213 dead in China is more dangerous than starving the majority of Yemeni children to death. If they try and bluster their way out of it, give them the option of resigning or decking them on live prime time TV. Expecting honourable resignations is living in cloud cuckoo land. ‘Incentivise’ them to resign instead.
Second up must be governments funding ‘vaccine programmes’. Why are they wasting the taxpayers’ money and why is the private sector not ‘being entrepreneurial’? Pretty clear reason: there will be no market for the vaccines when the brouhaha dies down. If the market does not invest, and the market always knows best, then investment is clearly junk grade status…..it needs to be called out as such.
Next up should be the Chinese Government. Why are they shutting down the nation for a pathetic little disease? Forget ‘losing face’: they deserve to lose face if they cannot accurately assess dangers in a temperate manner.
After that should be the media stations: a forensic audit of 40 years of media bullshit about similar scaremongering stories. Compare the bullshit with the actuality and hold those media idiots to account. Demand resignations and boycott stations if they refuse. Nothing like telling advertisers you will not watch their adverts no more.
There will probably be a few more.
But accountability is required and it needs to be professional
No letting these people off the hook……