Kyle Rittenhouse—Hero Or Martyr?
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The Scamdemic – WHO: Fake Pandemic for Sickening Vaccines
Covid-19 does NOT Cause Heart Damage, as Blockbuster Study had Basic Errors
By Peter Andrews, Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics.
via RT
FILE PHOTO: Health officials check tomography datas displaying Covid-19 symptoms on lungs and the overall damage of the virus to the body received with radiological testing method at a state hospital in Moscow, Russia on May 22, 2020 © Getty Images / Sefa Karacan / Anadolu Agency
A widely circulated scientific study reported that Covid-19 causes long-term heart problems. Its authors have been forced to issue major corrections after they wildly miscalculated the risk, but the damage has already been done.
The scientific establishment wields a lot of power these days. The emergence of the novel coronavirus has elevated many career scientists and academics to positions of great influence, acting as advisors and commissars to governments on all things Covid-related. Which, it turns out, is everything. That is why it is so important that they conduct rational, unbiased research, and analyse all findings with great scepticism, taking nothing for granted.
Weird science
Alas, that was never going to happen. Unless you follow the right Twitter accounts (such as Alex Berenson who has been indefatigable in his criticism of shoddy Covid-19 ‘science’), you won’t read about this anywhere else. But what should be a pretty big scandal resulting in a major inquiry into publishing practices is currently underway in the field of cardiology.
Just over a month ago, a paper from Germany entitled, ‘Outcomes of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Patients Recently Recovered From Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)’, was published in the journal JAMA Cardiology. It was based on 100 people recently recovered from Covid-19, who underwent MRI scans to find factors associated with damage to their hearts.
The article quickly became a smash hit, going viral, inasmuch as academic research can. It racked up hundreds of thousands of interactions on its Altmetric score, a tool that tracks how much a piece of research is being clicked, shared and talked about online. No doubt, this was owing to the paper’s bombshell conclusions. If Covid-19 was strongly linked to long-lasting heart disease in a significant proportion of those who survive it, that would be a hugely important thing to know.
A comedy of errors
The only problem with the conclusion of the paper is that almost every piece of data given to support it was wrong. As more and more media breathlessly reported that Covid-19 will eventually kill everyone with heart attacks, the mathematically minded on Twitter – including Darrel Francis, a Professor of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute – began topoint out obvious miscalculations and mismatches in the results of the study.
The authors appeared to confuse medians for means, and data points present in the graphs were absent elsewhere. In essence, the paper was riddled with remedial mistakes that the first few hundreds of thousands of people who read it (or scan the last few sentences) failed to notice.
But Professor Francis is still not happy with the reissued article, launching another scathing attack on his Twitter account. He has more than the layman’s knowledge of statistics, but he lays out in no uncertain terms that the authors are still, even after their extraordinary climb down, fudging the numbers. He is adamant that the corrected figures show that while people who have recovered from Covid-19 do show markers of heart disease in their MRI scans, so do people of similar health profiles who have not had the virus. That is, Covid-19 had absolutely nothing to do with the heart damage seen in the people in the study.
The authors of the study, meanwhile, have not taken kindly to the egg on their faces. They have lashed out at Twitter’s dismantling of their less-accredited math skills, (not sure people outside UK will know what these are) griping that a letter to the editor “would indeed be more appropriate.” It only took them a month to correct their substandard article, but by that point the damage was done. Just the other day I actually had someone casually inform me that “Covid causes heart damage.” Clearly the study’s reach has been wide. Whether its debunking will have as wide a reach remains to be seen.
Definitive Eurasian Alliance Is Closer Than You Think
Beijing-Moscow is already on; Berlin-Beijing is a work in progress; the missing but not distant link is Berlin-Moscow
by Pepe Escobar via Asia Times
We have seen how China is meticulously planning all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic moves all the way to 2030 and beyond.
What you are about to read next comes from a series of private, multilateral discussions among intel analysts, and may helpfully design the contours of the Big Picture.
In China, it’s clear the path ahead points to boosting internal demand, and shifting monetary policy towards the creation of credit to consolidate the building of world-class domestic industries.
In parallel, there’s a serious debate in Moscow that Russia should proceed along the same path. As an analyst puts it, “Russia should not import anything but technologies it needs until it can create them themselves and export only the oil and gas that is required to pay for imports that should be severely restricted. China still needs natural resources, which makes Russia and China unique allies. A nation should be as self-sufficient as possible.”
That happens to mirror the exact CCP strategy, as delineated by President Xi in his July 31 Central Committee meeting.
And that also goes right against a hefty neoliberal wing in the CCP – collaborationists? – who would dream of a party conversion into Western-style social democracy, on top of it subservient to the interests of Western capital.
Comparing China’s economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more – Confucianist – social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going.
The hypersonic factor
Meanwhile, on the geopolitical front, the consensus in Moscow – from the Kremlin to the Foreign Ministry – is that the Trump administration is not “agreement-capable”, a diplomatic euphemism that refers to a de facto bunch of liars; and it’s also not “legal-capable”, an euphemism applied, for instance, to lobbying for snapback sanctions when Trump has already ditched the JCPOA.
President Putin has already said in the recent past that negotiating with Team Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon: the demented bird walks all over the chessboard, shits indiscriminately, knocks over pieces, declares victory, then runs away.
In contrast, serious lobbying at the highest levels of the Russian government is invested in consolidating the definitive Eurasian alliance, uniting Germany, Russia and China.
But that would only apply to Germany after Merkel. According to a US analyst, “the only thing holding back Germany is that they can expect to lose their car exports to the US and more, but I tell them that can happen right away because of the dollar-euro exchange rate, with the euro becoming more expensive.”
On the nuclear front, and reaching way beyond the current Belarus drama – as in there will be no Maidan in Minsk – Moscow has made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that any missile attack from NATO will be interpreted as a nuclear attack.
The Russian defensive missile system – including the already tested S-500s, and soon the already designed S-600s – arguably may be 99% effective. That means Russia would still have to absorb some punishment. And this is why Russia has built an extensive network of nuclear bomb shelters in big cities to protect at least 40 million people.
Russian analysts interpret China’s defensive approach along the same lines. Beijing will want to develop – if they have not already done so – a defensive shield, and still retain the ability to strike back against a US attack with nuclear missiles.
The best Russian analysts, such as Andrei Martyanov, know that the three top weapons of a putative next war will be offensive and defensive missiles and submarines combined with cyber warfare capabilities.
The key weapon today – and the Chinese understand it very clearly – is nuclear submarines. Russians are observing how China is building their submarine fleet – carrying hypersonic missiles – faster than the US. Surface fleets are obsolete. A wolf pack of Chinese submarines can easily knock out a carrier task force. Those 11 US carrier task forces are in fact worthless.
So in the – horrifying – event of the seas becoming un-sailable in a war, with the US, Russia and China blocking all commercial traffic, that’s the key strategic reason pushing China to obtain as much of its natural resources overland from Russia.
Even if pipelines are bombed they can be fixed in no time. Thus the supreme importance for China of Power of Siberia – as well as the dizzying array of Gazprom projects.
The Hormuz factor
A closely guarded secret in Moscow is that right after German sanctions imposed in relation to Ukraine, a major global energy operator approached Russia with an offer to divert to China no less than 7 million barrels a day of oil plus natural gas. Whatever happens, the stunning proposal is still sitting on the table of Shmal Gannadiy, a top oil/gas advisor to President Putin.
In the event that would ever happen, it would secure for China all the natural resources they need from Russia. Under this hypothesis, the Russian rationale would be to bypass German sanctions by switching its oil exports to China, which from a Russian point of view is more advanced in consumer technology than Germany.
Of course this all changed with the imminent conclusion of Nord Stream 2 – despite Team Trump taking no prisoners to sanction everyone in sight.
Backdoor intel discussions made it very clear to German industrialists that if Germany would ever lose its Russian source of oil and natural gas, coupled with the Strait of Hormuz shut down by Iran in the event of an American attack, the German economy might simply collapse.
There have been serious cross-country intel discussions about the possibility of a US-sponsored October Surprise involving a false flag to be blamed on Iran. Team Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran has absolutely nothing to do with the JCPOA. What matters is that even indirectly, the Russia-China strategic partnership has made it very clear that Tehran will be protected as a strategic asset – and as a key node of Eurasia integration.
Cross-intel considerations center on a scenario assuming a – quite unlikely – collapse of the government in Tehran. The first thing Washington would do in this case is to pull the switch of the SWIFT clearing system. The target would be to crush the Russian economy. That’s why Russia and China are actively increasing the merger of the Russian Mir and the Chinese CHIPS payment systems, as well as bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trade.
It has already been gamed in Beijing that were that scenario ever to take place, China might lose its two key allies in one move, and then have to face Washington alone, still on a stage of not being able to assure for itself all the necessary natural resources. That would be a real existential threat. And that explains the rationale behind the increasing interconnection of the Russia-China strategic partnership plus the $400 billion, 25-year-long China-Iran deal.
Bismarck is back
Another possible secret deal already discussed at the highest intel levels is the possibility of a Bismarckian Reinsurance Treaty to be established between Germany and Russia. The inevitable consequence would be a de facto Berlin-Moscow-Beijing alliance spanning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), alongside the creation of a new – digital? – Eurasian currency for the whole Eurasian alliance, including important yet peripheral actors such as France and Italy.
Well, Beijing-Moscow is already on. Berlin-Beijing is a work in progress. The missing link is Berlin-Moscow.
That would represent not only the ultimate nightmare for Mackinder-drenched Anglo-American elites, but in fact the definitive passing of the geopolitical torch from maritime empires back to the Eurasian heartland.
It’s not a fiction anymore. It’s on the table.
Adding to it, let’s do some little time traveling and go back to the year 1348.
The Mongols of the Golden Horde are in Crimea, laying siege to Kaffa – a trading port in the Black Sea controlled by the Genoese.
Suddenly, the Mongol army is consumed by bubonic plague.
They start catapulting contaminated corpses over the walls of the Crimean city.
So imagine what happened when ships started sailing again from Kaffa to Genoa.
They transported the plague to Italy.
By 1360, the Black Death was literally all over the place – from Lisbon to Novgorod, from Sicily to Norway. As much as 60% of Europe’s population may have been killed – over 100 million people.
A case can be made that the Renaissance, because of the plague, was delayed by a whole century.
Covid-19 is of course far from a medieval plague. But it’s fair to ask.
What Renaissance could it be possibly delaying?
Well, it might well be actually advancing the Renaissance of Eurasia. It’s happening just as the Hegemon, the former “end of history”, is internally imploding, “distracted from distraction by distraction”, to quote T.S. Eliot. Behind the fog, in prime shadowplay pastures, the vital moves to reorganize the Eurasian land mass are already on.
The modern US war machine kills more like a python than a tiger
By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz
Donald Trump has not started any new shooting wars, sure, but that doesn’t make him a “president of peace.” Instead of openly assaulting the enemies of American hegemony, the US military is now a tool for slowly strangling them.
Forbes has published two back-to-back articles about the analysis of retired Navy captain and political scientist Bradford Dismukes titled ‘To Defeat China In War, Strangle Its Economy‘ and ‘If Russia Invades Europe, NATO Could Sweep The Seas Of Russian Merchant Ships.’
The articles were authored by a man named David Axe, who is my new favorite small-time war propagandist because he’s so desperate to be recognized for his imperialist stenography that he often approaches his spin jobs in an informatively unskillful and ham-fisted way. The best one I’ve found so far is this 2013 piece about the time he spent with the “rebels” of Syria, who he takes great pains to assure us are not terrorists or extremists but brave freedom fighters who’d successfully “liberated” large swathes of Syrian territory.
Each of the two Dismukes articles focus on how the same military strategy can be employed against the first- and second-most powerful nations which have resisted absorption into the US-centralized power alliance, namely China and Russia respectively. They explain how “a coordinated effort by the whole of the US government and its closest allies” can be used to “strangle” those nations economically via blockades which cut them off from trade and resources should the time come for an aggressive confrontation, thus minimizing the need for direct military combat.
“Cutting off China from its trading partners and sources of oil, natural gas and other resources could be the best, and least costly, way for the United States to defeat China in a major war,” Axe explains.
“In wartime, the US and allied fleets could blockade Russian sea trade, putting a choke-hold on the Russian economy that could force Moscow to end the war on terms favorable to Washington and its friends,” he writes.
Unspoken by Axe and Dismukes is the fact that both Russia and China are nuclear-armed nations, so direct hot warfare is something the US power alliance would want to avoid anyway.
Indeed, the articles present a vision for confrontation with Russia and China that is not just realistic but probable, and not just probable but currently underway. This is exactly the reason the empire-like network of allies loosely centralized around the United States has been so forceful about controlling crucial resources like oil on the world stage; it’s not so that the US can use the oil itself, it’s so it can control who will have access to it. It’s also why they’ve been working to surround both China and Russia militarily via military bases and NATO expansionism.
These are the chess pieces that have been put in place during the slow-motion third world war between the US-centralized empire and the governments which haven’t yet been absorbed into it. In order to avoid nuclear conflict the imperialists know they’ve got to be patient and strategic, which they’ve learned can lead them to victory from past experience in the previous Cold War against the Soviet Union. The fact that they’re imperiling the life of every organism on our planet in the meantime is for them mostly a non-issue.
This is how the US-centralized empire prefers to kill now. Not like a tiger, pouncing on its prey with old-school ground invasions and ripping out the jugular, but more like a python: slow, patient strangulation and suffocation.
That’s what you’re seeing with the murderous starvation sanctions that have been placed on Iran and Venezuela. With Yemen, where in addition to deadly blockades the Saudis have been deliberately targeting farms, fishing boats, marketplaces, food storage sites and cholera treatment centers with US-assisted airstrikes. With North Korea, where boats full of dead people have been washing up on Japan’s shores because fishermen get stuck out at sea trying to catch food since they can’t afford enough fuel to get back to shore, which former secretary of state Rex Tillerson attributed to US sanctions. With Gaza, where people are being deprived of an adequate amount of nutrients due to an Israeli blockade designed to “put the Palestinians on a diet.”
It’s a slow, suffocating strategy which only works if you’re the side in power, the side with all the resources and all the time in the world, the side which knows it can just relax and wait for the other side to starve to death. Not with the “shock and awe” invasions of the Bush era, but with sanctions, blockades, coups, psy-ops, CIA-backed uprisings and the arming of opposition forces like David Axe’s “rebel” friends.
This is one of many reasons you can be dismissive of any Trump supporter who defends their president by arguing that he “hasn’t started any new wars.” What they mean is he hasn’t launched any tiger-style, old-school ground invasions. He’s still attacking and killing with python-style sanctions and blockades and imperiling the world with dangerous new cold war escalations. He’s still continuing the slow-motion third world war. And we may be certain that if Biden wins he will do the same.
This is important to be aware of, because it changes what it means to be anti-war. We don’t have to just oppose direct hot war conflicts like the one we were afraid earlier this year might erupt between the US and Iran (which could still happen); we also need to aggressively fight the new strangulation-style warfare that is being increasingly favored by the US-centralized empire.
When it first rose to power with the Bush administration, the neoconservative ideology of doing whatever it takes to ensure continued US unipolar hegemony was widely criticized. Now it’s the bipartisan beltway consensus, and if you question it you’re smeared as freakish and suspicious. You never even hear the word neoconservative or neocon anymore in mainstream US discourse, not because it went away but because it became the normalized default mainstream worldview.
And while all these imperialist psychopaths are waving literal Armageddon weapons around in the name of an imaginary god named unipolarism, we’re also hurtling toward ecosystemic collapse and any number of other potential Armageddon-level events. We’ve got to turn away from this trajectory as a species and begin collaborating with each other and with our ecosystem if we are to turn this disaster around.
American Exceptionalism
“Welcome to America, the Land of Freedom”, read the signs at Washington, DC’s international airport as you line up to have your fingerprints taken and your body cavities searched for mini nuclear devices.
I could have titled this article “Setting the Cat among the Pigeons”. In an attempt to forestall the expected avalanche of disagreement, I confirm my awareness of statistics produced by a wide range of individuals and institutions of widely-varying intent and ideology, and which can “prove” almost anything one cares to prove, GINI coefficients being one easy example. The statistics on which this article is based were not selected carelessly and are not invalidated by a reader’s disaffection.
The United States Is the Best Only at Being the Worst
The US today has the greatest income inequality of all Western nations[1][2], surpassing China and more than a few undeveloped nations as well. From this, it has the lowest social mobility of most nations[3], meaning that improving one’s station in life is becoming increasingly impossible. If your parents are not educated and wealthy, you will never be either, and the American Dream is dead. The US today has the smallest middle class and the largest lower classof all major nations, the middle class having been mostly eviscerated in 2008, that process completing itself today, and will probably never now recover. Americans carry the largest amount of personal debt among all nations[4], including credit card debt and increasingly unrepayable student loans, and the US now leads the world in personal bankruptcies[5]. Since 2008, according to the US government’s own statistics, the US has the lowest percentage of home ownership at 57%[6], ranked 43rd in the world, far below China at 90%[7], and America now has a virtual epidemic of homelessnesscompared to most other nations, with untabulated millions of homeless families with children.
The poverty rate in the US is extraordinary, with official statistics placing this number at 13% but in reality with more than 25% of the population living below the poverty line, in most cases far below[8]. It also has the highest percentage of children living in poverty, and with almost a third of all US citizens dependent on food stamps and other government aid to survive[9]. Unemployment is also extraordinary. According to the government’s own statistics, fully 40% of working-age Americans have no job[10][11], with many of the rest under-employed, working only part-time. It is only American cities or those in the most impoverished of nations that contain such vast areas of urban decay and desperate slums like those of Detroit and Chicago, where half of the areas are violent crime-ridden wastelands where no one goes.
The US has the highest educational costs, and yet the poorest overall quality of education in the developed world and parts of the rest. Read this article[12]. It will open your eyes. A few good schools or universities in an entire nation do not make it a world leader, the proof residing in the highest level of functional illiteracy of all major nations (25%) and a truly legendary level of ignorance[13]. The US is the only country in the world where, in repeated polls for the past 60 years, a full 75% of the adult and student populations cannot find their own country on a map of the world[14]
. Compared to other nations, the US has the highest health care costs by a factor of two to ten, and yet has a surprisingly poor overall quality as well as the highest percentage of a population without health care[15]. The US has the highest infant mortality rate and the shortest life expectancy at birth of all major nations and far below many others[16][17], ranking around 50 in a list of countries. The US has the highest obesity rate of all nations, with nearly half of the population being overweight[18], one of the highest rates of sexually-transmitted diseases[19], of anti-depressant drug use that increased by 65% in only 15 years[20], a national crisis in opioid drug use[21] and of depression. It has the highest teen-age pregnancy and abortion rates of all developed nations[22], and one of the highest divorcerates[23][24]. Note that in many international studies US statistics aren’t collected because, as observers noted “The authors left out the US because the country is “an extreme outlier.” The US also has the largest number of one-person households (about 30%)[25][26], and the largest percentage of fatherless children (about 25%)[27].
America is one of the two most racist countries in the world, where even the random and unprovoked killing of non-whites is not only permissible but usually meets with approval. Americans are gun-crazy, owning more guns than the entire rest of the world combined, and more guns than all the world’s police and military. They carry their guns everywhere, and use them everywhere, the US having the highest rates of gun shootings and murders of any nation, with more than 20 small children and more than 200 adults being sent each day to either the hospital or the cemetery. Many small American cities, like the nation’s capital of Washington DC with only half a million people, or places like Detroit or Chicago, have more murders each year (by an order of magnitude) than does Shanghai with 25 million people. The overall homicide rate for China is 0.6 and for Shanghai 0.2; that for the US is 4.0. The gun death rate for children in the US is 40 times higher than for any other nation in the world[28][29]. The US also has the highest number of crimes committed with firearms each year, a staggering total of a minimum confirmed of 500,000 and an estimated 3 million[30][31], and the highest number of violent raids on private homes, with more than 80,000 instances per year of SWAT teamskicking in someone’s front door in the middle of the night, always terrorising and sometimes killing the occupants, usually without identifying themselves and often attacking the wrong house.[32][33]
The US has the highest rate of cocaine and meth usage of any nation[34], thanks in large part to the CIA’s very successful war on drugs which permits that agency to import cocaine duty-free. The US has the highest rate of gender inequality[35] among industrialised nations, far exceeding egalitarian nations like China (and formerly Iraq and Libya). The US has the highest number of lawyers and lawsuits in the world, by orders of magnitude, a reflection of both natural belligerence and inborn greed, Americans spending twice as much on lawsuits each year as on new cars[36]. Japan has 14,000 lawyers, China 160,000, the US 1.35 million (11 per 100,000 for Japan and China compared to 300 per 100,000 for the US). Americans surpass the entire world in their amount of useless consumption, having long passed the point where it can be deemed pathological. As one measure, that of shopping mall space per capita, Germany has 2.7 sq ft per person, Japan has 3.9 and the UK has 5. For every American shopper there are 24 sq ft of mall. The US has by far the highest level of carbon emissions on a per-capita basis, thanks in no small part to General Motors who has repeatedly committed genocide on electric automobiles.
Wars and violence are defining adjectives of America. The US as a nation is now, and has always been, intensely militaristic, inherently provocative, combative and violent. The US is by far the largest merchant of death in the world, being responsible for about 70% of total world arms sales. For comparison, Russia is second at 17%, while China is at 3%. If we include everything, the US spends about twice as much on its military each year as the entire rest of the world combined, already well-documented by many authors at well in excess of $1 trillion. It also has the world’s largest network of foreign military bases, with more than 1,000 such installations, including many that appear on no map, and the world’s largest number of bio-weapons labs, with more than 400 outside the US. America has launched the most wars of aggression in the history of the world and has been at war for 235 of its 243 years as a nation, all those wars unprovoked and unjustified, and none of which were either wars of ‘liberation’ or ‘to make the world safe for democracy’, but for colonisation and plunder. The US is also outstanding in that it has assassinated more foreign world leaders and other officials (about 150)[37] than even Israel has done, and also operates the largest network of torture prisons that has ever existed in the history of the world. The US also wins first prize for having some of the most bloodthirsty homicidal mass murderers and pathological killers in the history of the world, far exceeding our former heroes Stalin and Hitler. Kissinger, Albright and Curtis LeMay come immediately to mind, but there are more.
The US has by far the highest incarceration rate of all nations, with more than 25% of the world’s prisoners in its jails and with almost 35% of all adult Americans having a criminal record. Alarmingly, the US has by far the highest number of internment camps – prison camps – in the world, all 800 fully-staffed but empty, waiting for Americans to dare launch another Occupy Wall Street or similar protest. The US has the most militarised police forces of any nation, with frighteningly heavy-duty military hardware like MRAPs, APCs, drone aircraft and automatic weapons. The police motto “To protect and serve” that was once plastered on every police car, has been amended. It now reads “To occupy and kill”. The US has by far the highest number of civilians killed each year by police (well over 1,000) of any nation in the world, even including rogue states and axis of evil members. Americans have far more to fear from their local police than from terrorists. Police brutality in America is now legendary, so common as to be one of the nation’s defining adjectives, with beatings, shootings, harassment, false criminal charges reaching epidemic proportions and increasing.
America is the world’s only nation with a website named “Killed by Police.org” to document the epidemic of civilians killed by police, and the only nation where local newspapers have sections devoted to listing the number of daily killings in each neighborhood of the major cities to assist citizens in house purchases. Violent crime rates in the US are at least an order of magnitude above those of China or Japan (and many other nations).
The US also has one of the most corrupt police and judicial systems in the world. No Western country is particularly free of this charge, but America excels. As one example, the US has by far the largest number in the world of citizens falsely convicted by fraudulent testimony, some 40,000 convictions caused by one fraudulent forensics lab alone. And of course, the US has the world’s largest espionage network by orders of magnitude, with an ambition to steal every secret and to record and save every communication by every human on the planet.
It is no longer a secret that American-style democracy has a few flaws, with extreme dysfunction and rampant corruption among the more visible, though looting the public trough would run a close second. The US also has the government most totally over-run with puppet-masters and controlled by parasitic aliens, having entirely lost control to its various lobbies and with all its elected officials having sworn allegiance to the Jews and Israel rather than to America. The US has the highest number and percentage of Presidents, Secretaries of State and Defense Secretaries who were certifiable as criminally insane and who should have been given lobotomies and committed to institutions for life. Too many names to list here. America is the one nation that has more or less institutionalised government corruption at virtually every level, extending deeply into the judiciary, the regulatory bodies and Congress, as well as local and state governments. The US is well-known for compiling the most fraudulent economic statistics of all developed and undeveloped nations, including the hugely fictitious ‘average income’ of $45,000, and is one of the most indebted of all countries in the world today. I strongly suggest everyone read this short article on US economic statistics[38] and cease the rubbish about how China’s numbers can’t be trusted.
Not to be outdone, the US media are in a class by themselves in terms of dishonesty, bias, censorship, and petty opinion-based journalism. American journalists are mostly cut from the same cloth, displaying more or less the same malignancies.
The US has the most complete immunity for elite white-collar crime, prosecuting only its person-companies but never the persons. Americans boast of their transparent and corruption-free financial system, and the US media enjoys trashing China for what appears to be an occasional corporate fraud. But in the long list of the world’s largest corporate bankruptcies due to fraud and corruption, all but one occurred in the US. Ron Unz prepared a list that included Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Adelphia, MF Global, Lehman, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia. The US has also been home to the world’s largest Ponzi schemes like those of Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, that resulted in almost $100 billion in public losses. It is the US, not China, that is the home to corporate fraud and deceit, while all but two of the largest corporate frauds in China in recent decades were committed by American firms, not Chinese.
To end our list of areas in which American Exceptionalism truly shines, the US has for years been deservedly voted the world’s most hated nation, is widely reviled as the world’s greatest bully, and judged by all peoples – including Americans – as the greatest threat to world peace.
Lest anyone think the above list is unfair or exaggerated, you can do a simple test by applying the items to other countries. Germany, for example, or China or Canada. Certainly every nation has some deaths, crime, divorces, military spending and so on, but none of the items in this list can be applied to Germany, China or Canada, nor to any other nation. The US does have the greatest debt, highest military spending, racism, killings, guns, incarceration, torture prisons, initiated wars, and all the rest. The records for inequality, obesity, consumption, personal debt, poverty, cocaine use, murders, all belong to America, with no other nation even in the running. The claim is as demonstrably true for ignorance and hypocrisy as it is for police brutality. As an accusation or an indictment, the list is 100% accurate, a factual description of America as it is today, seen without the propaganda and rose-colored glasses.
A complete list of areas of American Exceptionalism must include one other item: The most traitors. This unfortunate category exists on several levels, the first being the President and White House staff and the US Congress who, as we already know, have pledged allegiance to Israel rather than America. The second is the foreign-owned US FED, criminally pursuing its own agenda while systematically destroying the economic fabric of America. The cadre of elite owners of most large US banks and multinationals fall into this category as well, pursuing their own private advantage while consciously gutting the economy of their own nation.
But there is a third, more pervasive level, a large cadre of educated Americans who are essentially compradors, traitors to most of their values and to their people, embedded in the system and dependent on it, participating fully in the destruction of their own country by acting as lieutenants for the officials of the secret government. These individuals are vital for the success of the transformation of the US to a fascist state, with the elites dependent upon them to execute their policies, yet they also profit from their positions in terms of attractive salaries and protection from much of the law. These are the people who best know of all the crimes and social injustices, being in fact a willing part of their execution process, but least likely to blow the whistle for fear of damaging their careers. It is the middle level of educated executives, lawyers, accountants and managers in government, criminal corporations, Foundations, think tanks, the media, and so many others, who are directly responsible for knowingly inflicting the vast damage on their own people and nation. Like the CEOs of the banks and multinationals, these compradors seek only their own advantage, discarding their human values and blinding themselves to the harm they do.
The following bulleted list is for your ease in reading.
- Greatest Income Inequality of major nations
- Lowest social mobility
- Smallest middle class and largest lower class of all major nations
- Largest amount of personal debt
- Highest percentage of university graduates with massive student-loan debts
- Lowest percentage of home-owners of major nations
- Highest number of homeless of major nations
- Highest percentage of repossessed homes and autos in the world
- Highest Poverty rate of major nations
- Largest number of children in poverty and homeless children in major nations
- Greatest slums and urban decay of any Western nation
- Highest percentage of population receiving government food aid
- Highest level of unemployed, under-employed, and part-time employed
- The highest number of people aged 65 to 75 returning to the workforce to survive
- Only nation with no mandated paid holidays or maternity leave
- Highest educational costs
- Highest functional illiteracy rate of all developed and semi-developed nations
- Highest level of ignorance
- Highest health care costs
- Most people without health care
- The only Western nation with high GM food content
- Highest infant mortality rate
- Highest obesity rate
- Shortest life expectancy at birth
- Highest rate of sexually-transmitted diseases
- Greatest production and access of pornography
- Highest anti-depressant drug use
- Highest teen-age pregnancy and abortion rates among developed countries
- Largest number of one-person households
- Largest percentage of fatherless children
- The most strident nationalism of all nations
- Highest level of racism and race-related violence
- Highest number and percentage of guns
- Highest murder rate
- Highest number of gun shootings
- Largest number of firearms crimes per year
- Highest cocaine and meth usage
- Largest number of lawyers and lawsuits
- Highest carbon emissions
- Highest military spending
- Highest arms sales
- Largest network of foreign military bases (1,000) and foreign bio-weapons labs[400]
- Most wars of aggression of any nation in the history of the world
- Most governments destabilised and overthrown
- Largest number of foreign leaders and officials assassinated
- Longest-lasting genocide in the history of the world
- Largest network of torture prisons – and prison ships – in the history of the world
- Worst human rights record of all nations, possibly excepting Israel
- Highest incarceration rate
- Highest percentage of population with criminal records
- Largest number of civilian internment camps
- Most militarised civilian police force
- Largest number of civilians killed by police
- Highest number in the world of violent SWAT raids on civilian homes
- The only nation with widespread civil forfeiture
- Largest commercial and military espionage network
- The government most over-run by parasitic aliens
- Highest percentage of criminally-insane Presidents and officials in history
- Most institutionalised government corruption
- Most complete immunity for elite white-collar crime
- Most and largest corporate bankruptcies due to fraud
- Most fraudulent economic statistics of any major nation
- Most biased and dishonest media and columnists
- Most hypocritical of all nations
- Most hated nation
- World’s greatest bully
- Greatest threat to world peace
Notes
[1] Income inequality in the United States; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
[2] US income inequality | US news | The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/us-income-inequality
[3] The Decline of Social Mobility in America – The Atlantic; https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-mobility-america/491240
[4] Total US household debt soars to record above $13 trillion; https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/total-us-household-debt-soars-to-record-above-13-trillion.html
[5] https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics
[6] October 29, 2019; https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
[7] China Home Ownership Rate | 2019 | Data | Chart | https://tradingeconomics.com/china/home-ownership-rate
[8] The official U.S. poverty rate; https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/16/official-us-poverty-rate-is-based-hopelessly-out-of-date-metric/
[9] One-Third of US Population Gets Food Subsidies; https://www.newsmax.com/US/food-stamps-assistance-program/2013/07/08/id/513860
[10] The real jobs numbers: 41% of America unemployed, 1 in 3; https://www.rt.com/usa/jobs-us-employment-welfare-749
[11] Shocker: 40% of Workers Now Have ‘Contingent’ Jobs; https://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2015/05/25/shocker-40-of-workers-now-have-contingent-jobs-says-u-s-government/
[12] https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/substandard-education-in-america/
[13] https://www.globalresearch.ca/brief-look-substandard-education/5694267
[14] Ibid
[15] Americans without health insurance; https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/16/americans-without-health-insurance-up-more-than-3-million-under-trump.html
[16] Infant Mortality; http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/InfantMortality.htm
[17] U.S. Infant Mortality Rate 1950-2019; https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/infant-mortality-rate
[18] Adult Obesity Facts; CDC; https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
[19] America’s sexually transmitted disease rates are out of control; https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/americas-sexually-transmitted-disease-rates-are-out-of-control/ar-AAIAW4M
[20] U.S. Antidepressant Use Jumps 65 Percent in 15 Years; https://consumer.healthday.com/mental-health-information-25/antidepressants-news-723/u-s-antidepressant-use-jumps-65-percent-in-15-years-725586.html
[21] Opioid Crisis Statistics | HHS.gov; https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/opioid-crisis-statistics
[22] Teen Pregnancy Rates Declined In Many Countries; https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2015/teen-pregnancy-rates-declined-many-countries-between-mid-1990s-and-2011
[23] Marriage and Divorce; https://www.census.gov/topics/families/marriage-and-divorce.html
[24] “Coming out of the penumbras: World culture and cross-national variation in divorce rates”, December 2018 issue of Social Forces. https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/97/2/675/5055442
[25] U.S.: Number of households 1960-2018; https://www.statista.com/statistics/183635/number-of-households-in-the-us/
[26] Single-person households United States 1960-2018; https://www.statista.com/statistics/242022/number-of-single-person-households-in-the-us/
[27] Fatherless Statistics for the United States; https://fatherhoodfactor.com/us-fatherless-statistics/
[28] Gun Violence in 2018; https://www.thetrace.org/2018/12/gun-violence-facts-statistics-2018
[29] Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence – BBC News; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604
[30] CDC Study: Use of Firearms; https://www.cnsnews.com/…/cdc-study-use-firearms-self-defense-important-crime-deterrent
[31] CDC Asked About Defensive Gun Uses; https://www.forbes.com/…/2018/04/30/that-time-the-cdc-asked-about-defensive-gun-uses
[32] Speaking Truth to Empire: 80,000 Swat Team Raids Per Year; https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/04/28/speaking-truth-to-empire-80000-swat-team-raids-per-year-in-usa-wtf/
[33] The Rutherford Institute :: Are Police in America Now a Military, Occupying Force? John W. Whitehead; August 05, 2013; https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/are_police_in_america_now_a_military_occupying_force
[34] What is the scope of cocaine use in the United States; https://www.drugabuse.gov/…/cocaine/what-scope-cocaine-use-in-united-states
[35] Gender equality stalls in the U.S., Stanford report finds; https://news.stanford.edu/2018/03/16/gender-equality-stalls-u-s-stanford-report-finds
[36] Issues of the Lawyer Population: Japan; http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1614&context=jil
[37] https://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-us-government-assassinations/5693720
[38] https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/us-economic-statistics-unreliable-numbers/
Bill Gates Caught Off Guard When Questioned
Czech Republic: Prague bids farewell to Covid-19
Why Masks are Dangerous
Denis Rancourt, PhD, has published over 100 peer-reviewed studies in his career, but ResearchGate choose to censor and remove this paper because it didn’t fit the narrative of the Great Panic of 2020 over COVID-19. Such censorship proves the existence of an alternative agenda.
Again, this underscores the Technocrat methodology of shaming, ridiculing and censoring anybody that comes forth with real science that refutes their pseudo-science. ⁃ TN Editor
Masks and respirators do not work.
There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles.
Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective dose is smaller than one aerosol particle.
The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.
Review of the Medical Literature
Here are key anchor points to the extensive scientific literature that establishes that wearing surgical masks and respirators (e.g., “N95”) does not reduce the risk of contracting a verified illness:
Jacobs, J. L. et al. (2009) “Use of surgical face masks to reduce the incidence of the common cold among health care workers in Japan: A randomized controlled trial,” American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 37, Issue 5, 417 – 419. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19216002
N95-masked health-care workers (HCW) were significantly more likely to experience headaches. Face mask use in HCW was not demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds.
Cowling, B. et al. (2010) “Face masks to prevent transmission of influenza virus: A systematic review,” Epidemiology and Infection, 138(4), 449-456. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/face-masks-to-prevent-transmission-of-influenza-virus-a-systematic- review/64D368496EBDE0AFCC6639CCC9D8BC05
None of the studies reviewed showed a benefit from wearing a mask, in either HCW or community members in households (H). See summary Tables 1 and 2 therein.
bin-Reza et al. (2012) “The use of masks and respirators to prevent transmission of influenza: a systematic review of the scientific evidence,” Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 6(4), 257–267. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1750-2659.2011.00307.x
“There were 17 eligible studies. … None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”
Smith, J.D. et al. (2016) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks in protecting health care workers from acute respiratory infection: a systematic review and meta-analysis,” CMAJ Mar 2016 https://www.cmaj.ca/content/188/8/567
“We identified six clinical studies … . In the meta-analysis of the clinical studies, we found no significant difference between N95 respirators and surgical masks in associated risk of (a) laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, (b) influenza-like illness, or (c) reported work-place absenteeism.”
Offeddu, V. et al. (2017) “Effectiveness of Masks and Respirators Against Respiratory Infections in Healthcare Workers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 65, Issue 11, 1 December 2017, Pages 1934–1942, https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/11/1934/4068747
Self-reported assessment of clinical outcomes was prone to bias. Evidence of a protective effect of masks or respirators against verified respiratory infection (VRI) was not statistically significant”; as per Fig. 2c therein:
Radonovich, L.J. et al. (2019) “N95 Respirators vs Medical Masks for Preventing Influenza Among Health Care Personnel: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” JAMA. 2019; 322(9): 824–833. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214
“Among 2862 randomized participants, 2371 completed the study and accounted for 5180 HCW-seasons. … Among outpatient health care personnel, N95 respirators vs medical masks as worn by participants in this trial resulted in no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
Long, Y. et al. (2020) “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks against influenza: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” J Evid Based Med. 2020; 1- 9. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jebm.12381
“A total of six RCTs involving 9,171 participants were included. There were no statistically significant differences in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza, laboratory-confirmed respiratory viral infections, laboratory-confirmed respiratory infection, and influenza-like illness using N95 respirators and surgical masks. Meta-analysis indicated a protective effect of N95 respirators against laboratory-confirmed bacterial colonization (RR = 0.58, 95% CI 0.43-0.78). The use of N95 respirators compared with surgical masks is not associated with a lower risk of laboratory-confirmed influenza.”
Conclusion Regarding That Masks Do Not Work
No RCT study with verified outcome shows a benefit for HCW or community members in households to wearing a mask or respirator. There is no such study. There are no exceptions.
Likewise, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public (more on this below).
Furthermore, if there were any benefit to wearing a mask, because of the blocking power against droplets and aerosol particles, then there should be more benefit from wearing a respirator (N95) compared to a surgical mask, yet several large meta-analyses, and all the RCT, prove that there is no such relative benefit.
Masks and respirators do not work.
Precautionary Principle Turned on Its Head with Masks
In light of the medical research, therefore, it is difficult to understand why public-health authorities are not consistently adamant about this established scientific result, since the distributed psychological, economic, and environmental harm from a broad recommendation to wear masks is significant, not to mention the unknown potential harm from concentration and distribution of pathogens on and from used masks. In this case, public authorities would be turning the precautionary principle on its head (see below).
Physics and Biology of Viral Respiratory Disease and of Why Masks Do Not Work
In order to understand why masks cannot possibly work, we must review established knowledge about viral respiratory diseases, the mechanism of seasonal variation of excess deaths from pneumonia and influenza, the aerosol mechanism of infectious disease transmission, the physics and chemistry of aerosols, and the mechanism of the so-called minimum-infective-dose.
In addition to pandemics that can occur anytime, in the temperate latitudes there is an extra burden of respiratory-disease mortality that is seasonal, and that is caused by viruses. For example, see the review of influenza by Paules and Subbarao (2017). This has been known for a long time, and the seasonal pattern is exceedingly regular. (Publisher’s note: All links to source references to studies here forward are found at the end of this article.)
For example, see Figure 1 of Viboud (2010), which has “Weekly time series of the ratio of deaths from pneumonia and influenza to all deaths, based on the 122 cities surveillance in the US (blue line). The red line represents the expected baseline ratio in the absence of influenza activity,” here:
The seasonality of the phenomenon was largely not understood until a decade ago. Until recently, it was debated whether the pattern arose primarily because of seasonal change in virulence of the pathogens, or because of seasonal change in susceptibility of the host (such as from dry air causing tissue irritation, or diminished daylight causing vitamin deficiency or hormonal stress). For example, see Dowell (2001).
In a landmark study, Shaman et al. (2010) showed that the seasonal pattern of extra respiratory-disease mortality can be explained quantitatively on the sole basis of absolute humidity, and its direct controlling impact on transmission of airborne pathogens.
Lowen et al. (2007) demonstrated the phenomenon of humidity-dependent airborne-virus virulence in actual disease transmission between guinea pigs, and discussed potential underlying mechanisms for the measured controlling effect of humidity.
The underlying mechanism is that the pathogen-laden aerosol particles or droplets are neutralized within a half-life that monotonically and significantly decreases with increasing ambient humidity. This is based on the seminal work of Harper (1961). Harper experimentally showed that viral-pathogen-carrying droplets were inactivated within shorter and shorter times, as ambient humidity was increased.
Harper argued that the viruses themselves were made inoperative by the humidity (“viable decay”), however, he admitted that the effect could be from humidity-enhanced physical removal or sedimentation of the droplets (“physical loss”): “Aerosol viabilities reported in this paper are based on the ratio of virus titre to radioactive count in suspension and cloud samples, and can be criticized on the ground that test and tracer materials were not physically identical.”
The latter (“physical loss”) seems more plausible to me, since humidity would have a universal physical effect of causing particle/droplet growth and sedimentation, and all tested viral pathogens have essentially the same humidity-driven “decay.” Furthermore, it is difficult to understand how a virion (of all virus types) in a droplet would be molecularly or structurally attacked or damaged by an increase in ambient humidity. A “virion” is the complete, infective form of a virus outside a host cell, with a core of RNA or DNA and a capsid. The actual mechanism of such humidity-driven intra-droplet “viable decay” of a virion has not been explained or studied.
In any case, the explanation and model of Shaman et al. (2010) is not dependent on the particular mechanism of the humidity-driven decay of virions in aerosol/droplets. Shaman’s quantitatively demonstrated model of seasonal regional viral epidemiology is valid for either mechanism (or combination of mechanisms), whether “viable decay” or “physical loss.”
The breakthrough achieved by Shaman et al. is not merely some academic point. Rather, it has profound health-policy implications, which have been entirely ignored or overlooked in the current coronavirus pandemic.
In particular, Shaman’s work necessarily implies that, rather than being a fixed number (dependent solely on the spatial-temporal structure of social interactions in a completely susceptible population, and on the viral strain), the epidemic’s basic reproduction number (R0) is highly or predominantly dependent on ambient absolute humidity.
For a definition of R0, see HealthKnowlege-UK (2020): R0 is “the average number of secondary infections produced by a typical case of an infection in a population where everyone is susceptible.” The average R0 for influenza is said to be 1.28 (1.19–1.37); see the comprehensive review by Biggerstaff et al. (2014).
In fact, Shaman et al. showed that R0 must be understood to seasonally vary between humid-summer values of just larger than “1” and dry-winter values typically as large as “4” (for example, see their Table 2). In other words, the seasonal infectious viral respiratory diseases that plague temperate latitudes every year go from being intrinsically mildly contagious to virulently contagious, due simply to the bio-physical mode of transmission controlled by atmospheric humidity, irrespective of any other consideration.
Therefore, all the epidemiological mathematical modeling of the benefits of mediating policies (such as social distancing), which assumes humidity-independent R0 values, has a large likelihood of being of little value, on this basis alone. For studies about modeling and regarding mediation effects on the effective reproduction number, see Coburn (2009) and Tracht (2010).
To put it simply, the “second wave” of an epidemic is not a consequence of human sin regarding mask wearing and hand shaking. Rather, the “second wave” is an inescapable consequence of an air-dryness-driven many-fold increase in disease contagiousness, in a population that has not yet attained immunity.
If my view of the mechanism is correct (i.e., “physical loss”), then Shaman’s work further necessarily implies that the dryness-driven high transmissibility (large R0) arises from small aerosol particles fluidly suspended in the air; as opposed to large droplets that are quickly gravitationally removed from the air.
Such small aerosol particles fluidly suspended in air, of biological origin, are of every variety and are everywhere, including down to virion-sizes (Despres, 2012). It is not entirely unlikely that viruses can thereby be physically transported over inter-continental distances (e.g., Hammond, 1989).
More to the point, indoor airborne virus concentrations have been shown to exist (in day-care facilities, health centers, and on-board airplanes) primarily as aerosol particles of diameters smaller than 2.5 μm, such as in the work of Yang et al. (2011):
“Half of the 16 samples were positive, and their total virus −3 concentrations ranged from 5800 to 37 000 genome copies m . On average, 64 per cent of the viral genome copies were associated with fine particles smaller than 2.5 μm, which can remain suspended for hours. Modeling of virus concentrations indoors suggested a source strength of 1.6 ± 1.2 × 105 genome copies m−3 air h−1 and a deposition flux onto surfaces of 13 ± 7 genome copies m−2 h−1 by Brownian motion. Over one hour, the inhalation dose was estimated to be 30 ± 18 median tissue culture infectious dose (TCID50), adequate to induce infection. These results provide quantitative support for the idea that the aerosol route could be an important mode of influenza transmission.”
Such small particles (< 2.5 μm) are part of air fluidity, are not subject to gravitational sedimentation, and would not be stopped by long-range inertial impact. This means that the slightest (even momentary) facial misfit of a mask or respirator renders the design filtration norm of the mask or respirator entirely irrelevant. In any case, the filtration material itself of N95 (average pore size ~0.3−0.5 μm) does not block virion penetration, not to mention surgical masks. For example, see Balazy et al. (2006).
Mask stoppage efficiency and host inhalation are only half of the equation, however, because the minimal infective dose (MID) must also be considered. For example, if a large number of pathogen-laden particles must be delivered to the lung within a certain time for the illness to take hold, then partial blocking by any mask or cloth can be enough to make a significant difference.
On the other hand, if the MID is amply surpassed by the virions carried in a single aerosol particle able to evade mask-capture, then the mask is of no practical utility, which is the case.
Yezli and Otter (2011), in their review of the MID, point out relevant features:
- Most respiratory viruses are as infective in humans as in tissue culture having optimal laboratory susceptibility
- It is believed that a single virion can be enough to induce illness in the host
- The 50-percent probability MID (“TCID50”) has variably been found to be in the range 100−1000 virions
- There are typically 10 to 3rd power − 10 to 7th power virions per aerolized influenza droplet with diameter 1 μm − 10 μm
- The 50-percent probability MID easily fits into a single (one) aerolized droplet
- For further background:
- A classic description of dose-response assessment is provided by Haas (1993).
- Zwart et al. (2009) provided the first laboratory proof, in a virus-insect system, that the action of a single virion can be sufficient to cause disease.
- Baccam et al. (2006) calculated from empirical data that, with influenza A in humans,“we estimate that after a delay of ~6 h, infected cells begin producing influenza virus and continue to do so for ~5 h. The average lifetime of infected cells is ~11 h, and the half-life of free infectious virus is ~3 h. We calculated the [in-body] basic reproductive number, R0, which indicated that a single infected cell could produce ~22 new productive infections.”
- Brooke et al. (2013) showed that, contrary to prior modeling assumptions, although not all influenza-A-infected cells in the human body produce infectious progeny (virions), nonetheless, 90 percent of infected cell are significantly impacted, rather than simply surviving unharmed.
All of this to say that: if anything gets through (and it always does, irrespective of the mask), then you are going to be infected. Masks cannot possibly work. It is not surprising, therefore, that no bias-free study has ever found a benefit from wearing a mask or respirator in this application.
Therefore, the studies that show partial stopping power of masks, or that show that masks can capture many large droplets produced by a sneezing or coughing mask-wearer, in light of the above-described features of the problem, are irrelevant. For example, such studies as these: Leung (2020), Davies (2013), Lai (2012), and Sande (2008).
Why There Can Never Be an Empirical Test of a Nation-Wide Mask-Wearing Policy
As mentioned above, no study exists that shows a benefit from a broad policy to wear masks in public. There is good reason for this. It would be impossible to obtain unambiguous and bias-free results [because]:
- Any benefit from mask-wearing would have to be a small effect, since undetected in controlled experiments, which would be swamped by the larger effects, notably the large effect from changing atmospheric humidity.
- Mask compliance and mask adjustment habits would be unknown.
- Mask-wearing is associated (correlated) with several other health behaviors; see Wada (2012).
- The results would not be transferable, because of differing cultural habits.
- Compliance is achieved by fear, and individuals can habituate to fear-based propaganda, and can have disparate basic responses.
- Monitoring and compliance measurement are near-impossible, and subject to large errors.
- Self-reporting (such as in surveys) is notoriously biased, because individuals have the self-interested belief that their efforts are useful.
- Progression of the epidemic is not verified with reliable tests on large population samples, and generally relies on non-representative hospital visits or admissions.
- Several different pathogens (viruses and strains of viruses) causing respiratory illness generally act together, in the same population and/or in individuals, and are not resolved, while having different epidemiological characteristics.
Unknown Aspects of Mask Wearing
Many potential harms may arise from broad public policies to wear masks, and the following unanswered questions arise:
- Do used and loaded masks become sources of enhanced transmission, for the wearer and others?
- Do masks become collectors and retainers of pathogens that the mask wearer would otherwise avoid when breathing without a mask?
- Are large droplets captured by a mask atomized or aerolized into breathable components? Can virions escape an evaporating droplet stuck to a mask fiber?
- What are the dangers of bacterial growth on a used and loaded mask?
- How do pathogen-laden droplets interact with environmental dust and aerosols captured on the mask?
- What are long-term health effects on HCW, such as headaches, arising from impeded breathing?
- Are there negative social consequences to a masked society?
- Are there negative psychological consequences to wearing a mask, as a fear-based behavioral modification?
- What are the environmental consequences of mask manufacturing and disposal?
- Do the masks shed fibers or substances that are harmful when inhaled?
Conclusion
By making mask-wearing recommendations and policies for the general public, or by expressly condoning the practice, governments have both ignored the scientific evidence and done the opposite of following the precautionary principle.
In an absence of knowledge, governments should not make policies that have a hypothetical potential to cause harm. The government has an onus barrier before it instigates a broad social-engineering intervention, or allows corporations to exploit fear-based sentiments.
Furthermore, individuals should know that there is no known benefit arising from wearing a mask in a viral respiratory illness epidemic, and that scientific studies have shown that any benefit must be residually small, compared to other and determinative factors.
Otherwise, what is the point of publicly funded science?
The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.
Denis G. Rancourt is a researcher at the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA.ca) and is formerly a tenured professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada. This paper was originally published at Rancourt’s account on ResearchGate.net. As of June 5, 2020, this paper was removed from his profile by its administrators at Researchgate.net/profile/D_Rancourt. At Rancourt’s blog ActivistTeacher.blogspot.com, he recounts the notification and responses he received from ResearchGate.net and states, “This is censorship of my scientific work like I have never experienced before.”
The original April 2020 white paper in .pdf format is available here, complete with charts that have not been reprinted in the Reader print or web versions.
Endnotes:
Baccam, P. et al. (2006) “Kinetics of Influenza A Virus Infection in Humans”, Journal of Virology Jul 2006, 80 (15) 7590-7599; DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01623-05 https://jvi.asm.org/content/80/15/7590
Balazy et al. (2006) “Do N95 respirators provide 95% protection level against airborne viruses, and how adequate are surgical masks?”, American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 34, Issue 2, March 2006, Pages 51-57. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2005.08.018 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.488.4644&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Biggerstaff, M. et al. (2014) “Estimates of the reproduction number for seasonal, pandemic, and zoonotic influenza: a systematic review of the literature”, BMC Infect Dis 14, 480 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-480
Brooke, C. B. et al. (2013) “Most Influenza A Virions Fail To Express at Least One Essential Viral Protein”, Journal of Virology Feb 2013, 87 (6) 3155-3162; DOI: 10.1128/JVI.02284-12 https://jvi.asm.org/content/87/6/3155
Coburn, B. J. et al. (2009) “Modeling influenza epidemics and pandemics: insights into the future of swine flu (H1N1)”, BMC Med 7, 30. https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-7-30
Davies, A. et al. (2013) “Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic?”, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, Available on CJO 2013 doi:10.1017/dmp.2013.43 http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1935789313000438
Despres, V. R. et al. (2012) “Primary biological aerosol particles in the atmosphere: a review”, Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 64:1, 15598, DOI: 10.3402/tellusb.v64i0.15598 https://doi.org/10.3402/tellusb.v64i0.15598
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Hammond, G. W. et al. (1989) “Impact of Atmospheric Dispersion and Transport of Viral Aerosols on the Epidemiology of Influenza”, Reviews of Infectious Diseases, Volume 11, Issue 3, May 1989, Pages 494–497, https://doi.org/10.1093/clinids/11.3.494
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Masks are dangerous. A Review Of Science Relevant To COVID-19 …
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Prague bids farewell to Covid-19.
The Storm Is Here: Pelosi Prepares to Be Appointed President – Trump’s Fight Against Total C haos
A plan is underway to install Nancy Pelosi as president. It is not the only plan, but this plan will be worked towards its logical conclusion, whether or not its utility concludes prior to the election itself, now less than 90 days away.
A series of explosions rocked a number of countries, the most significant being Lebanon. In Trump’s televised address in New Jersey in the first week of August, he explained that he would be laying low. Prior to that, in describing storm Isaiah, Trump gave a signal to his base, that the ‘storm’ was now at his back.
On July 21st Nancy Pelosi appears to have explained a large part of the game plan, to MSNBC.
“Well, that’s a loaded question there about coronavirus, what we do about it. But the fact is, whether he knows it yet or not, he will be leaving. Just because he might not want to move out of the White House doesn’t mean we won’t have an inauguration ceremony to inaugurate a duly-elected President of the United States and the – I just – you know, I’m second in line to the Presidency. Just last week I had my regular continuation of government briefing. This might interest you because I say to them, ‘This is never going to happen. God-willing it never will.’ But there is a process. It has nothing to do with the certain occupant of the White House doesn’t feel like moving and has to be fumigated out of there because the presidency is the presidency. It’s not geography or location.”
A General Outline:
- ‘Problems’ with the process and final count in the 2020 presidential election will render no clear winner
- A legal battle will ensue, as both Trump and Biden will maintain they have won
- Congress will move to execute constitutional provision to choose president – Pelosi
- Trump will physically occupy the White House while Pelosi Seeks Inauguration
- More violence and destabilization if Pelosi plan works
Trump’s Projected Victory Means the Deep State Moves for Election Spoilage
The deep state’s plan has worked through contingency plans to oust Trump. This is because a clean election has him 91% likely to win according to the only tested reliable method of evaluating the past century of presidential elections, the Norpoth/Primary Model. That same model had Trump 87% likely to win in 2016, despite push-polls and various other erroneous (but convenient for the DNC) models showing Clinton the likely winner. It is the gold standard. Other models either do not consider all the variables, or have weighted those variables incorrectly, and the Primary Model takes account for voter motivation.
Pelosi – Fauci – Gates
Pelosi and congressional Dems in concert with Fauci and Gates have made – between the forced lockdowns, explosive unemployment, and business closures – the very same mess that they will say is ‘Trump’s Economy’. Dems push divisiveness – blaming other Americans and Trump, while Trump unites all Americans using the xenophobic trope of Red China. On a deeper level, Trump blames Fauci and Gates, and was upset that Event 201 became a live exercise without telling the White House. ‘They should have told us’, he lamented, as Pompeo let the truth slip that ‘this is a live exercise’.
All the while Pelosi simultaneously pushes back against Trump’s moves to end lockdown and re-open the economy.
Animated Trump voters – whose excitement is enough to sway undecided neighbors and friends – are not fooled by this. They are ‘inoculated’ against this plan and they understand that, whatever his motives, Trump needs to improve the situation as much as possible to get re-elected. And because of the executive order, he will.
Trump’s political counter-moves are sure to shore up enough support in swing-states where he might have been flagging. We have seen this already, and will see more of it.
We must take this revealed development from Pelosi alongside this writer’s information directly from SEIU staffers themselves, who have explained what was said on the condition of anonymity as they are still in the employ of that organization. For it is these who are the driving force behind the ‘Our Revolution/Working Families Party’ organization – the wing of the Bernie (for Biden) campaign that also embeds with street activists as a ‘community organizing model’ outfit, and forms the organizational bridge between BLM and ANTIFA on the one hand, and the Biden campaign on the other. In standard SEIU form, the paid staffers coordinate with a network of NGOs backed by charitable trusts and that percent of COPA/COPE (Committee on Political Action/Education) funds from union members themselves that can be used for (in)direct political campaigns.
Some months ago, the SEIU staffers from the management echelon of the inner-party went on a retreat, as is their custom when it’s time to get their story straight. This involved political directors at the locals as well as high-paid managers at the ‘International’. This is often a camping trip or some similar outing over the course of three or four days, that includes the sort of outdoor ‘trust building’ exercises also used in corporate management.
Inside baseball and long-game strategy was discussed, and more to the point, how this can be sold back to the outer-party staffers of SEIU (who in turn must sell this to the rank and file members). Leading this exercise was SEIU’s Rafael Navar (furthest on our left, see photo above), who this writer worked with in SEIU at Local 99 in Los Angeles a decade ago. The issue in question as it pertains to our understanding, was that the DNC convention has been effectively brokered, and Bernie’s delegates were hand-picked by SEIU so as to avoid the grassroots embarrassment dealt to Clinton by Bernie supporters against Bernie’s wishes during the 2016 DNC convention. But what came out of this retreat is of particular interest.
Contrary to how conservative pundits misunderstand the dynamic, the DNC leadership and its SEIU inner-party functionaries are functionally pro-establishment and anti-socialist, who see themselves as anti-establishment socialists.
The outer-party are ‘true believers’ at war with the inner-party, seeing through their lies on the one hand, are fooled into believing that a socialist angle can be teased out of the corporatist DNC agenda nonetheless. The outer-party therefore hates Biden, and was keen on a Sanders campaign and presidency. The ‘socialism’ that conservative Americans oppose is better understood as ‘corporatism’ .
A big crisis that SEIU is aware of, is that Biden is unelectable and cannot win. They do not believe the fake news polls showing Biden leading or even close, because their trained senses and experience in the field, which is loaded with empirical evidence that leaves little room for interpretation, indicates that Trump will win by a landslide. The outer-party knows only a Sanders campaign could have motivated a Democrat victory in November – if we take a clean election for granted. Bear in mind that 40-45% of Americans see themselves as socialists according to several solid polls.
Coming back from this retreat, inner-party middle manager Rafael Navar communicated to recalcitrant outer-party leaders that the rumors to silence Sander’s real support at the convention was a ‘conspiracy theory’, and more that all their concerns should be put to rest. Why?
Because Biden will declare victory regardless of the outcome
It corroborates Pelosi’s interview which reveals that that the DNC plans to hold a parallel presidential inauguration – not for Joe Biden, but for herself – as “2nd in line”. By not conceding, a door is opened for Pelosi’s move. Pelosi explains that even if Trump does not vacate the White House – that is, even if he maintains that he is the president after the election as a legal contest ensues – that the presidency is an institution and not a geographic location.
Fascinating here is that Pelosi reveals the mechanism that would be used: constitutional provisions for the continuation of government, and NSDP 51 signed to act towards the continuation of constitutional government. In the live TV interview, she bragged that she is prepared to assume the presidency if Trump does not concede, and has regularly been briefed on COG (continuation of government) provisions. Simultaneously, BLM/Antifa has called for a protest on September 17th to ‘lay siege’ to the White House. If this goes forward, we should expect the ‘occupy’ tactic of the Color/Spring technology.
Why the revelation?
It is perhaps beside the point to dissect whether she was inebriated or if we can chalk this one to over-confidence, or something else. At this point, all of their communications are monitored, and they are under investigation for both related and unrelated matters. The justice department has substantive predicate for an investigation of all their comms because of Obamagate. Information on this plan if kept a secret would be revealed anyhow because of the fact that they are under investigation. AG Barr would rely upon parallel construction to make that evidence usable if it could not be tied to the initial FISA warrant. Therefore it is probable that they will have two separate (parallel) evidentiary lines to arrive at the same outcome.
To be secretive about this plan may lend it the appearance or even facticity of illegality, or add a layer of illegality (conspiracy) which they would maintain anyhow is not the case. Speaking openly about this plan on live television, even if most were not entirely paying attention, may indeed be a legal requirement. The warning has been given. So we proceed.
‘No one Qualified, No one Chosen’: An inconclusive election to appoint Nancy Pelosi as President
Between contact tracers and other paid ‘volunteers’ working this project within the context of the non-profit industrial complex, an over-burdened postal office using old equipment, and outright violence and disruptions at polling locations, we will have an inconclusive election.
The underlying problem will be the mailed-out ballots combined with Antifa (posing as/alongside BLM) violence. Test cases used already in New York, as Trump has explained in his press briefings, have only on August 5th some six weeks already after the election, declared a winner. Trump has also said that they are suing Nevada over similar. In a number of imaginable scenarios, this already compromised and marred election could be determined in the final instance on the outcome of a state like Nevada.
An inconclusive election without a qualified/chosen elected president, requires a process, and neither Trump nor Biden can be declared the winner or be inaugurated.
Constitutional provisions on the continuation of government then require a vote in the House of Representatives to elect a president, and for the Senate to elect the vice president. This is pursuant to Article XX of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1933, in language generally explained in Sections III and IV.
Masks, Goggles, Gloves – Pandemic Preparedness or Antifa Uniform?
Barr’s federal police force have captured a number of Antifa terrorists caught setting fires to federal property during the opposition planned riots, and they were able to use face recognition technology that only requires eyes to positively ID. Fauci is now talking goggles, and face recognition doesn’t deal well with covered eyes. Media has already ‘lauded’ the violent manifestations because the ‘protestors’ wore masks. Now the media will note how responsible disruptors of the elections were, because they also wore goggles, following Fauci’s recommendations. DNC-Antifa believes this will allow their high profile members to avoid arrest through face recognition. Goggles also protect from tear gas. It may also be why the push for cell-phone contact tracing apps has suddenly been quieted, as the contingency has changed/adapted to the evolving situation. Contact tracing apps can be used by law enforcement to identify terrorism at polling locations, or attacks on mass ballot collection ‘efforts’ that are part of the mass ballot mail-outs. Those following recent Congressional hearings know that Google was just cross-examined on their reluctance to work with law enforcement to hand over GPS information on suspected perps.
Trump is Actively Working Against The Coup Plot
Showing the problematic result of the test of mailed out ballots in New York, legally challenging Nevada’s push to do the same (outcome of which would also effect all other states), pushing to expose Antifa violence and plan to work with contact tracers and similar NGO-sphere employees to ‘stuff ballot boxes’, AG Barr to release Obamagate findings before the election, and managing the messaging and promoting sensible cures for the plandemic, are part of Trump’s moves against this.
Trump’s ability to effectively politicize a sector of his base around the Epstein/Maxwell revelations will bring back the excitement generated by the phenomenon named after the famous Italian fast food, and the FBI’s announcement of investigating Clinton over Weiner’s laptop. If this happens within a week or so of the election, it’s possible that Trump will win 45 states without a further contest over a lesser victory, because of the recency effect in psychology.
These all seem like a lot of different variables to factor. While people talk about strategies, and broad and sweeping generalizations can be communicated conversationally – contemporary strategic planning requires help. We are talking about thousands of plans within thousands of plans, multivariate analysis, and the use of super computers using complex Bayesian statistical models on probabilistic outcomes. Because there are a finite number of possibilities, and Trump has made it to election 2020 so-far, it is likely that Trump already believes he has won. Laplace’s Demon is Trump’s Guardian Angel.