Are #Ventilators #Killing More People Than They’re #Saving?

Confucius Is Winning the Covid-19 War

By Pepe Escobar, April 14, 2020

Seoul went for fast mobilization of scientific expertise, immediate massive testing, extensive contact tracing, and social distancing, as well. But, crucially, most of it voluntary, not imposed by the central power. Because these moves were organically integrated, South Korea did not need to restrict movement drastically or to close down airports.

Hong Kong’s success is due in large part to a superb health care system. People in the frontline, with institutional memory of recent epidemics such as SARS, were willing to go on strike if serious measures were not adopted. Success was also due in large part to myriad professional links between Hong Kong’s and Taiwan’s healthcare and public health systems.

 

What Dr. Anthony Fauci Hopes to Never Hear Again: “I’m Shaking It, Boss”

By Edward Curtin, April 14, 2020

Brave and cool-handed doctor that he is, he must be sweating now, wondering if getting so

far out in front will result in unfair attacks on his feeling for flesh and blood human beings. Hand shaking has been around a while, and like hugs and kisses, people seem to like it, so the doctor is entering dangerous territory.

The triple “ever” in his statement seems to have raised some eyebrows with those who believe three is a magic number.  Some say that you can never be too careful with such statements from public officials and you must read them as if they were entrails and you were a haruspex.  I doubt it.

 

Are Ventilators Killing More People Than They’re Saving??

By Mike Whitney, April 14, 2020

“One in seven” is very poor odds. They aren’t the odds a rational person would bet his life on unless he had a death wish or a very serious gambling problem. So what’s going on here, and why is there so much misleading blabber about ventilators?

The root problem seems to be that coronavirus is a relatively new phenomenon and the methods for treating it are still in their early phases. Nothing is set in stone, not yet at least.

 

COVID-19 and the War on Cash: What Is Behind the Push for a Cashless Society?

By John W. Whitehead, April 14, 2020

As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.

Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

 

Hell Is Other People: Pandemic Lifestyles and Domestic Violence

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, April 14, 2020

The global lockdowns and forced hibernations should not just be seen as measures of imposed isolation.  The Pandemic State has done much to kill off that delicate creature of solitude, the routine of tranquil space essential to life.  Privacy does not merely die before the wizardry of heat sensors, drones and state surveillance; it also vanishes in spaces crowded and crammed, even with your intimates.

 

Get Ready for an Unacceptable “New Normal”: Censorship, Extrajudicial Arrests, Is Martial Law the Next Shoe to Drop?

By Stephen Lendman, April 14, 2020

The US military and National Guard are today’s “militia.”

Martial law suspends civil rule, replacing it with military authority under the president as commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces — including the National Guard when activated.

During the Civil War, Lincoln assumed dictatorial powers.

He suspended the Constitution and habeas corpus, forcefully closed courts, arbitrarily ordered arrests, conscripted US citizens without congressional consent, and closed newspapers opposing his policies.

 

The Citizen Is Back

By Prof. Yakov M. Rabkin, April 14, 2020

This view has impacted our world, with the current Covid-19 crisis further highlighting Margaret Thatcher’s words, commonly referred to as the Iron Lady. She was one of the apostles of privatization and the shrinking of the state. She also preached by example and countless have followed. The state has shrunk in most Western countries, and, a few years after she uttered those words, her gospel found true believers in the former socialist countries. On both sides of the demolished Berlin Wall one saw massive transfers of wealth from the public sector to private hands. Tax cuts and privatization resulted in considerably weakened states, poorer financially and logistically than major companies.