"As of March 31, Murray predicted the U.S. would need 98,000 hospital beds..."

"...for COVID-19 patients but only 22,000 were hospitalized that day."

Amici,

I know most of you are sick to death of my going on about the virus, etc. but I keep finding the most incredible news. The above quote sums up my absolute frustration with is what is going on. There's a lot of news like this, if you know where to look.

For example, the above tidbit is found here. : 

The paragraph it is excerpted from reads (highlights mine):

And just as happened with the climate change agenda, farfetched models with incomplete, untested data drive public policy decisions. Anyone who disputes the experts or challenges the assumptions must hate the environment or the children or the future. (In the case of COVID-19, you must hate grandma.) Anyone who laments the destruction of the economy is a heartless, greedy money-grubber. “Profits over people!” the detractors are taunted. The goalposts keep moving, doomsday is extended, but harsher and harsher actions are nonetheless demanded from above.

So, what if, as Trump accurately said just a week ago, the cure is worse than the disease? What if Murray’s models are woefully off by a factor of five or even 10 but it’s too late to salvage jobs or small businesses? His data is already way off: As of March 31, Murray predicted the U.S. would need 98,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients but only 22,000 were hospitalized that day.

Will the White House, much like Glacier National Park, just change the message while the agitators escape any accountability?

The author of this piece covers Global Warming, usually. I myself have noted many parallels between Global Warming and this virus mess. The main difference seems to be the time scale: the virus will kill us within weeks or months; Global Warming will take decades to finish us off. (In fact, the state authorities in New York were preparing for catastrophe for the past decade or so, just not for a viral contagion, but for Global Warming! Incredible!) We just screamingly need honest, large-scale and accurate information about both global temperatures and the virus, but we cannot remotely get that on the former, and the latter is only slowly coming forward.

Apparently, park authorities used to have signs up at Glacier National Park in Montana asserting that the glaciers would melt away in 2020, or begin seriously melting away in 2020. They quietly took them down last year, and altered other Global Warming propaganda (pamphlets, etc.). The author of the above piece points out that never do these "bad predictors"? (or "False Prophets"?) of Doom ever get punished, or even have to publicly recant, their bad predictions. But their bad predictions affect the lives of millions.

Neill Ferguson at the Imperial College in London is such a one. His predictions of doom he has now changed to peeps of doom, (I guess I can say peeps). A Democrat operative group in the U.S., "Covid Act Now", spread Ferguson's (and other) false predictions far and wide, profoundly affecting out economic situation.

So, friends, beware. Very much so. The virus is real. China clearly dumped it on us, only beginning to restrict traffic from Wuhan two months after they new they had a problem (and notice they blame the American military for the disease, not the CIA; this might mean they're planning a military strike on us "in retribution".) The virus is contagious and can easily be deadly to older folks (not by any means all of them. And people like me who have "prior conditions". But we can't let it crash the civilization.

There is good news out there, though of course it doesn't get MSM reportage. For example, this news is extremely significant, in which a Dr. Stephen Smith, an infectious disease specialist in Roseland, New Jersey, affiliated with multiple hospitals, has announced test results from 50 patients receiving H-C that mirrors the French study. (Zsofi has a friend whose husband has come down with the virus, so it is around these parts, it seems.) Smith's study is great news in itself, of course: it fits in with a pattern of such research. There has yet to be a proper clinical test for this hypothesis, but such take time to set up and (in normal times) months to carefully evaluate.

Therefore, we must rely on what info we're getting. The Wall Street Journal had an article a while ago (now behind one of their infamous paywalls) about where this facility of H-C via COVID was first noticed: apparently someone reported that at a hospital in Wuhan, doctors noticed that a group of lupus sufferers (lupus killed Flannery O'Connor, btw) were seemingly immune from the virus and its disease. Apparently the French doctor, Didier Raoult, picked the idea up from that report (the Chinese later issued a report on another study -- one called into question for its very small size, and other issues -- that said H-C didn't work, but the cat was out of the bat guano bag).

So, it goes. Bit by bit.

Good news, ominous signs from Communist China, a growing death count that thankfully is not growing as fast as the "prophets" predicted, and the worst unemployment numbers ever recorded: 6.6 million, in fact.  That, my friends, is "not sustainable". 

An Préachán

If you've lost Tucker Carlson... Is the COVID Narrative about to collapse?

Amici,

During the Vietnam War (notice how it is never called the "Kennedy War" or more apropos, "The Lyndon Johnson War"?) Walter Cronkite, the main CBS News evening news anchor (remember this was in the day when the MSM -- MainStream Media -- dominated all the news Americans got), supported the war, till one night Cronkite began to turn against it. Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said, "When you've lost Cronkite, you've lost America."

The same might apply to Tucker Carlson and the "narrative" about SARS COVID-19. Last night, April 2rd, at 16:46 into his broadcast, Carlson interviewed Alex Berenson, a former NY Times reporter and author of the book, Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence, a book that impressed Carlson deeply.

Berenson's not being a scientist or epidemiologist will automatically turn off some. But as Carlson says, Berenson is a very informed layman, a good journalist, and someone who can point that the computer models telling us X-facts are not actually factual. (See further below for some examples of this non-factual info.) "Informed Laymen" reviewing such published facts are not idiots speaking ignorantly; instead, they act as an audit on people who are supposed to audit themselves, via "peer-reviewed" literature and "clinical tests", etc. In a crisis situation, as now, we need all the "audit" we can get.

Now, Berenson's book, Tell Your Children, is described as "An eye-opening report from an award-winning author and former New York Times reporter reveals the link between teenage marijuana use and mental illness, and a hidden epidemic of violence caused by the drug—facts the media have ignored as the United States rushes to legalize cannabis." A quick search online shows endless links just howling bloody murder about how such a proposition is not true. Haha, yeah, right. Making Pot legal is a big movement, lots of money is involved, and of course they'd hide its downsides to the fullest extent they could, just like the tobacco companies hid tobacco's.

Anyway, Carlson's interview and over-all "beginning to question the narrative" is a major "sea-change" event. Carlson has been promoting (over-promoting, some say) the COVID virus for a couple of months. So for him to begin to "question the narrative" is one of those "signs of the times" we need to be on the lookout for.

If interested, at 16:44 on his April 2 interview, Carlson begins interviewing Berenson, after an interview with Dr. Lipkin, who came down with the virus and is now recovering (I wrote about Lipkin earlier; he traveled to China I believe after the outbreak). Lipkin gave a reasonable, calm argument for the standard national lockdown to "bend the curve." The following is a transcript of the first section of Carlson's interview with Berenson.

Berenson:

And unfortunately, what we’re seeing and what we have been seeing for the past couple of weeks, is that the models that predicted really apocalyptic things in places like New York City and nationally and in the UK don’t seem to be matching what’s going on in reality. And in some cases, these epidemiological models are extremely new. They’ve gone extremely “south” in a matter of days and so I think we really have to ask what’s going on here, and whether or not there are strategies that might be less damaging to the economy that would do just as well because we’ve taken huge steps, we’ve put ten million people out of work – more actually, because that’s the official numbers – in just a couple of weeks, we’ve caused real societal real societal harm and disruption, and we’ve done it on the basis of models that don’t seem to line up with reality in real time.”  

This interview, perhaps, will be a turning point. President Trump listens to Carlson. Trump is said to have called off a strike in Syria because of an impassioned Carlson on-air plea. Also, Carlson has been saying -- as have a growing number of others, and the list keeps growing -- that the medical professionals can't be allowed to determine policy. Politics, as the old saying has it, is the art of the possible. We cannot maintain the quickly mounting unemployment and coming economic catastrophe that is looming.

Berenson also points out that the currently popular model is from Washington State, but notes that Oregon has a new model too, and it shows that things would not be much different had more normal protocols been put in place, such as sequestering/quarantining old folks and those with pre-conditions (people like me, for example, with my COPD) rather than locking everyone down.

I'm interested in Sweden. Sweden is not doing a lockdown, and apparently is doing no worse than Denmark, which is under lockdown.

I would be that a week from today, we'll be hearing a LOT more about this, and "President Fauci" & Co. (Fauci seem to say yesterday we can't let up the lockdown until there are no more deaths!) will be out of favor.

Meanwhile, other indicators are significant. This report shows how people most seriously affected by the disease have preconditions, and thus are more targeted approach is both reasonable and necessary.

An excerpt:

Why is this significant?

Two reasons:

1. The government and media campaign to SCARE US ALL TO DEATH is being exposed by the truth. Yes, this is a serious disease. And yes, many people will die. But the average healthy person has A VERY, VERY SMALL CHANCE OF DYING from this coronavirus.

Also, see:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/broken-models-cdc-doctors-screwed-bigly-usns-comfort-ny-harbor-sits-idle-3-patients-usns-mercy-la-15-patients/

This is most interesting, isn't it?

Also:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/imhe-model-coronavirus-white-house-relying-garbage-predicted-121000-americans-hospitalized-yesterday-actual-number-31142/

 (These details are what Berenson was talking about in Carlson's interview.)

IMHE Coronavirus Model the White House is Relying on ... It Predicted 121,000 Americans Hospitalized by Yesterday; Actual Number?... 31,142

The IMHE (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation) model for the Coronavirus the White House is relying on is complete garbage.

The US economy has been virtually shut down, unemployment spiked and small businesses are on the verge of shuttering based on faulty projections.

The IMHE model is using New York and New Jersey data and applying it to the rest of the US.

·        It predicted that over 121,000 Americans would be hospitalized yesterday (Wednesday) over the Coronavirus, Sean Davis of The Federalist said. The actual number? 31,142.

·        For example, the IMHE model predicted 1,716 people in Texas would be hospitalized yesterday from the Coronavirus, but the actual number of Texans hospitalized is 196.

·        In Georgia, the IMHE model predicted that as of yesterday, 2,777 people would have been hospitalized due to the Coronavirus. The actual number of people hospitalized in Georgia? 952.

·        In Virginia, the IMHE model predicted that 607 Virginians would have been hospitalized as of yesterday due to the Coronavirus.

·        In Tennessee, the IMHE model predicted that 2,214 people in Tennessee would have been hospitalized by yesterday due to the Coronavirus. The actual number? 200.

·        In New York, the IMHE model predicted that as of yesterday, 50,962 people would have been hospitalized due to the Coronavirus. The actual number? 18,368.

·        As of Wednesday there were over 200,000 confirmed Coronavirus cases in the US and approximately 4,400 deaths.

Top White House officials scaled back their predictions and said between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans are projected to die from the Coronavirus.

This is down from the 1.7 million American deaths predicted by a key UK scientist which sent the entire country into panic mode.

Millions and millions of Americans are going to lose their jobs, their homes and their savings.

These so-called “experts” owe the American public an explanation and not just ever-changing models to terrify the masses.

And of those 200,000 confirmed cases, we know there's been many, many time that who weren't tested, etc.

On top of all that, and very significantly, mental health issues the quarantine raise is getting ever more attention, as here: 

(My wife is especially keeping track of these sorts of articles.)

I could go on and on, but you get the gist.

Last week, I wrote that it would be very, very interesting to see where we were today, Friday, April 3rd. I note that Hydroxychloroquine is now being "mainstreamed" https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/2/hydroxychloroquine-rated-most-effective-therapy-do/ and see also this:

https://techstartups.com/2020/04/01/hydroxychloroquine-game-changer-beginning-end-coronavirus-pandemic-infectious-disease-specialist-dr-stephen-smith-says/

Anyway, I will be very interested to see where we are next Friday, Good Friday, in fact. At the rate of "narrative collapse cascade" that is showing indications of developing, I wouldn't be surprise if on Easter, President Trump at least announces the end of the national quarantine is in sight, if not imminent.

An Préachán

Some more good Chloroquine news

Amici,

Some GOOD news!

That French doctor/prof who ran a Chloroquine test a couple of weeks ago with 40 patients has now run one with 80, and had the same good results! (Well, one of the 80 died, but he was 86 and pretty far gone when he came in.)

This is FANTASTIC news, my friends. You will be reading more about it in the coming week, I'm sure.

An Préachán

COVID-19 news as of March 25, 2020

Amici,

Today, March 25, has produced a list of interesting articles.

The first is shocking. (As in, "I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling going on in this establishment!")

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus-models-are-panicking-officials-into-ill-advised-lockdowns/

Read it and weep. Why, why, oh why do we let ourselves get bamboozled by Leftist political hacks with an agenda?

An except:

So why is the organization or seemingly innocent online mapping tool using inaccurate algorithms to scaremonger leaders into tanking the economy? Politics, of course.

Founders of the site include Democratic Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and three Silicon Valley tech workers and Democratic activists — Zachary Rosen, Max Henderson, and Igor Kofman — who are all also donors to various Democratic campaigns and political organizations since 2016. Henderson and Kofman donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, while Rosen donated to the Democratic National Committee, recently resigned Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, and other Democratic candidates. Prior to building the COVID Act Now website, Kofman created an online game designed to raise $1 million for the eventual 2020 Democratic candidate and defeat President Trump. The game’s website is now defunct.

Perhaps the goal of COVID Act Now was never to provide accurate information, but to scare citizens and government officials into to implementing rash and draconian measures. The creators even admit as much with the caveat that “this model is designed to drive fast action, not predict the future.”

Countering the lies and hype, yesterday, Dr Birx, on Trump's Coronavirus team, confirmed what a number of people (usually called idiots, hacks, "deniers" and what not) were right.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/03/we-were-right-dr-birx-confirms-who-was-way-off-in-their-3-4-mortality-rate-and-it-will-likely-drop-under-1-as-tgp-predicted/

An except:

On Tuesday Dr. Deborah Birx confirmed our earlier allegations that the WHO was wrong with their coronavirus predictions.
The actual mortality rate will be significantly under 1%.

President Trump: I think the main factor is the mortality rate. We talked about the mortality rate when we first started, people were thinking about 3 and 4 percent and now they’re talking about a much lower number. I think it is a number that will be a lot different than people thought.
Dr. Birx: The mortality rate is driven almost exclusively by what we have been talking about by people with preexisting conditions and older. So that has become from the very beginning that was our emphasis. When we started two or three weeks ago talking with one another our focus has been how do we protect those with preexisting conditions and the elderly…
President Trump: It’s a lot lower than we originally thought. Frankly, it’s a lot lower.
Dr. Birx: Yes, you know the estimate in Wuhan was originally. It was over three percent. When they (Chinese) looked outside of Wuhan it was 0.7%. In South Korea it was 0.7 to 0.8%. That’s like a tyranny of averages. That’s probably missing 50-60% of the data because no one was testing asymptomatics. Remember in every country you had to be symptomatic to get a test. So we’re making case fatality rates when we’re missing a significant part of the data.

The Gateway Pundit was right. And they were first with this news.
The media and medical experts have not yet discovered the absolute irresponsible comparisons coming from the World Health Organization Director that set this global economic panic into motion.

An Préachan again:

For a very detailed analysis of the virus's death rate, and all sorts of related issues, such as how many people will get it, how long it might last, etc., see:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israeli-expert-trump-is-right-about-covid-19-who-is-wrong-1.8691031?v=CDBFACA5662E8174BA824BAD929EA12B

So many amazing bits of info, I can't begin to excerpt anything.

And if you're wondering about Italy, this one should enlighten you:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/24/the-italian-connection/ This one contains not only info about Italia, but also about Korea, for a friend of the author, a friend who resides in Korea, writes a long Comment explaining how Koreans are keeping the virus down.

Meanwhile, in China:

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/communist-quality-control-beijing-sends-150000-wuhan-virus-testing-kits-to-prague-80-fail/

Gee! How could that happen? I thought the Chinese were exemplars at all this medical and CoVid-19 related? Surely this must be "fake news?" /sarc

And wow, if you're Chinese, you had better not be critical, or remotely report the truth:

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/03/24/china-critics-governments-handling-coronavirus-crisis-simply-disappear/

That's right. They just vanish.

And the accounts of tens of thousands -- indeed, apparently millions! -- of cell phones and land lines have been cancelled in China in the Wuhan area. What happened to their owners?

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/24/21-million-chinese-cellphone-users-disappear-in-three-months-of-pandemic/

Also, about the World Health Organization:

https://spectator.us/abolish-world-health-organization/

Since the coronavirus has become a global pandemic, halting the world’s economy in its tracks, Adhanom has taken it upon himself to repeat Chinese state talking points about shifting blame for their own role in the spread of the virus: ‘When fighting an outbreak such as #COVID19, we must be guided by solidarity, not stigma. The greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other. We must stop stigma and hate!’

This has been a familiar refrain from the Chinese state, whose government which runs forced labor and concentration camps. China repeatedly eludes scrutiny by the not only the head of WHO but sectors of the American media as well.

Since his appointment as head of the WHO in 2017, with the full backing of China and its vast financial resources, Adhanom has come under fire for his role in covering up multiple cholera epidemics in Ethiopia. Shortly after his appointment as WHO D-G, Adhanom bestowed the honor of Goodwill Ambassador on late Zimbabwean president and tyrant Robert Mugabe. It was only after a deluge of outrage from human rights groups and WHO members that Adhanom withdrew the honor.

According to a Washington Post report at the time, Adhanom’s decision was based partly on rewarding China for backing his appointment. ‘Some speculate that Tedros’s decision to appoint Mugabe was a pay-off to China, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.’

Oh, and there's this:

https://theweek.com/speedreads/904845/g7-joint-statement-coronavirus-failed-because-insisted-calling-wuhan-virus

How do the Chinese get away with bullying the world? It is just jaw-dropping incredible.

An excerpt:

But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he believes it's important to highlight the fact that the Chinese government didn't warn the rest of the world about its initial outbreak. "We tried, you'll remember, from the opening days to get our scientists, our experts on the ground there so that we begin to assist in the global response to what began there in China, but we weren't able to do that," he said. "The Chinese Communist Party wouldn't permit that to happen."

Pompeo said Beijing's ruling party "poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus clearly has demonstrated."

And so it goes. And it goes so consistently; it is easy to become paranoid.

For some paranoia-building vitamins, check this out:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/the_curious_political_path_of_the_chinese_virus.html

An excerpt:

For those who have observed the incessant effort by the Deep State and the left to destroy the Trump presidency, the events of the past few months fall into a well established pattern.

SARS coronavirus was first identified in 2003 after infecting humans in southern China in 2002.  A microbiology review paper published in 2007 concluded, "Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination, which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks."  With the Chinese cultural practice of wet markets, mixing the viral secretions of multiple exotic wild animals, "[t]he reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories" was a "time bomb," and "the need for preparedness should not be ignored."

The time bomb warning fell on deaf ears.  Or was someone actually listening and preparing?  A time bomb sits idle until activated.  Once the fuse is lit, the bomb will explode at a predetermined time in the future.

An interesting coincidence is that this virus started in Wuhan, China, which just so happens to be the home of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China's only level 4 bio-safety lab.

An Préachan again: Despite all the (to a very large extent, false) bad news, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful because I think the HydroxyChloroquine will either live up to the studies and trials already done with it, or its results will at least be close enough we can all relax a bit.

https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/mike-pence-doctors-are-testing-hcq-all-over-the-country-we-will-know-soon/

Otherwise, we're facing financial/economic Armageddon. We won't have to worry about some "Wuhan Flu" killing us -- starvation and the "law of the jungle" will do that just fine.

And do you notice how few articles there are out there addressing the mental health/suicide issues this incredible lockdown is building up? Silence.

An Préachan

Quarantine, Muslims, Europe, & SARS, plus the numbers of Chinese in Italy

Amici,

First, the latter Italian stats, just for the record: 

An excerpt:

Italy has a tight Chinese connection.... From the South China Morning Post, “The Chinese began migrating to Italy about 30 years ago but numbers have swelled in the past decade, bringing the total population to about 300,000.” A travel website shows 9 inexpensive flight options between China and Italy.

About Quarantine per se, see also:

An excerpt:

Quarantine only works early, before the virus escapes. The University of Southampton has found that the Chinese delay in quarantining Wuhan led to massive increases in the worldwide spread of Wuhan flu. Had they acted even one week earlier, the epidemic would have been reduced by two-thirds. Three weeks earlier, when it became clear that something bad was going on, the worldwide reduction would have been 95%, allowing other areas of quarantine to be beneficial. Once you enter that vertical phase, broad quarantine doesn't work. Even if every person with symptoms was locked up, there would still be three or four others out there with the virus, spreading the infection. It can't be stopped. It's "in the wild."

This is a long article, but worth it.

Here's the University of Southampton link: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2020/03/covid-19-china.page

But whatever about all that, France has an immediate SARS CoVid-19 problem, and it might not be what you would think.

An excerpt:

The heavily migrant-populated Seine-Saint-Denis area is proving to be a tough area for police to enforce the nationwide anti-coronavirus quarantine ordered by French president Emmanuel Macron, with police officers admitting that they are overwhelmed.

A man guarding a local pharmacy told newspaper Le Temps that many of the residents do not even believe the virus is a threat to them at all

“They do not understand anything. Some even say that this virus is a fable of whites to force them to desert the street,” the man said.

Other areas of Seine-Saint-Denis also saw people gathering, including a local shopping centre where a number of minority teenagers chatted with each other, some wearing masks, others not.

Police say that enforcing the law in the area is “impossible” and that if they try to impose the 135 euro fines they would not be able to contain the potential backlash, and that the risk of a crowd forming would only increase the chances of spreading the coronavirus.

“We are not going to give up. But we also know where these people live and how they live. Strict containment, for them, is just impossible,” an officer explained.

On Wednesday it was reported that 10 per cent of all the fines for breaking the quarantine in France were given in Seine-Saint-Denis, per Fabienne Klein-Donati, the public prosecutor of Bobigny.

The quarantine measures were also largely ignored by residents in the highly migrant-populated 18th arrondissement in the north of Paris, with crowds of people walking around the area despite police orders to stay in their homes.

The coronavirus outbreak has also led to pharmacies becoming targets for burglars, as in the city of Colombes just outside of Paris, where a man from Seine-Saint-Denis was arrested for stealing medical face masks and hand sanitiser.

In Seine-et-Marne, meanwhile, drug dealers donned masks and other medical gear and were seen strolling along the streets of the Almont district of Melun, even creating a video for social media advertising that they were still selling drugs, regardless of the quarantine and coronavirus outbreak.

So, you know, it occurs to me that all that talk about the Muslims inundating Europe and destroying it, might turn out to be only too true, but not exactly in the fashion so many have surmised.

An Préachan