According to the Anglo news-media, China is facing its greatest crisis since the pandemic began.

For more than a year, China has held SARS-CoV-2 at bay, suffering but a few cases at a time in controllable outbreaks. All of the infections were carried into China from the outside, often by Chinese returning from foreign travel. All visitors arriving in China face two weeks of quarantine — but those rules may have been changing as China's vaccination saturation inched toward the top.

Whenever new infections popped up, or were caught in massive testing sweeps, contract tracers immediately descended on the patient. His path was meticulously retraced using cell-phone location tracking and relevant survellience footage. Face recognition identified everyone the patient encountered or interacted with. In every case, a large sample of mostly strangers were interviewed, tested, and potentially quarantined. The strategy is very aggressive, but it has allowed the rest of China to mingle and socialize and go about their business.

lab-futuristic.jpg

But in Nanjing, the Coronavirus slipped in through an unexpected weakness in their maintenance procedures.

An outbreak of the Delta variant tests China’s zero-tolerance approach to the virus.

July 30, 2021 — For more than a year, Chinese officials have beat back the coronavirus with a tried formula: Strict lockdowns at the sites of outbreaks. Lengthy quarantines for travelers. And citywide testing when new cases appear.

But an outbreak of the fast-spreading Delta variant could challenge China’s zero-tolerance approach toward new infections.

In the outbreak, centered in the eastern city of Nanjing, about 200 cases have been reported as of Friday. But infections have spread rapidly, with patients emerging in at least six Chinese provinces and the capital, Beijing, in just three weeks.

As officials move to contain the spread, the highly infectious Delta variant could prove to be a more difficult foe than the original version of the virus, which China stamped out with harsh efficiency in 2020.

::

The BBC piped up to describe the event with the sinister overtones they reserve for China:

Officials also began city-wide testing amid criticism for their "failure". All 9.3 million of the city's residents - including those visiting - will be tested, said state-controlled Xinhua news.

Posts on social media show long lines of people queuing, and authorities have reportedly urged people to wear masks, stand one metre apart and avoid talking while they wait.

Officials said the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus was behind the infections, adding that cases had spread further because of how busy the airport is.

Ding Jie, a health official in Nanjing, told reporters the cases were linked to cleaners who worked on a flight from Russia that arrived in the city on 10 July.

The cleaners did not follow strict hygiene measures, Xinhua News reported.

The airport management has been rebuked, with a senior disciplinary body of the Communist Party saying it had "problems such as lack of supervision and unprofessional management".

::

The Times pointed out here that most of China’s people are already vaccinated. To them, this means that the emergence of Delta will be the definitive test of China's domestically made vaccines. They failed to point out that the only test would be in the rate of death — and not in the incidence of infection. Unlike the US, China methodically tests the entire population of the cities involved and, so they manage to scoop up the asymptomatic patients that the Delta variant produces. The Times hints that Chinese authorities could trample human rights with the tough steps they take to control the virus.

Got it.

The Times also manages to blame the Chinese outbreak on an unhygienic Russian passenger.

The outbreak in China began when a group of airport workers in Nanjing were sickened around July 10, probably from exposure to an infected person who arrived on a flight from Russia, according to city officials. Two rounds of citywide testing of more than eight million people turned up 184 cases.

To stop the spread, Nanjing has increasingly shut down services, first closing the airport, then restricting indoor gatherings. This week, the city authorities closed parts of the expressway that connects Nanjing with other major cities in Jiangsu Province.

As handfuls of cases connected to Nanjing have popped up in other provinces, the authorities there have moved swiftly to impose restrictions.

In the central city of Zhangjiajie, in Hunan Province, indoor public areas including movie theaters and malls were closed after the authorities said that four people with the virus, all asymptomatic, went to a show in the city. Nearly 200 miles away in the provincial capital of Changsha, the authorities banned indoor gatherings in response to one confirmed case.

In central Sichuan Province, where seven cases were found, the authorities declared parts of the capital, Chengdu, a medium-risk zone. The discovery of three cases in the northern city of Shenyang prompted officials there to begin tracking visitors who had come from other areas with outbreaks.

Perhaps most worrying to officials are two cases that appeared in Beijing, where the government has generally followed stricter prevention policies. Officials said that a husband and wife who traveled from Zhangjiajie had tested positive and that 654 people who had been in close contact with them had been placed in quarantine.

To their credit, the Chinese Communist Authoritarian Dictators didn't say anything about mandatory masking.

::

We are facing that same crisis as a nation. But, for us, I think it looks a lot more frightening: No wonder the State Department was so desperate to pin the blame for this and other fake news on China. But the distraction is not working well at all. There is just too much hard science out there that tells a different story. All the lies and prevarication have consequences.

Consider this news:

• About three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak were fully vaccinated against the coronavirus with four of them ending up in the hospital, according to new data published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new data, published in the U.S. agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also found that fully vaccinated people who get infected carry as much of the virus in their nose as unvaccinated people, and could spread it to other individuals.

• While the delta variant continues to hit unvaccinated people the hardest, some vaccinated people could be carrying higher levels of the virus than previously understood and are potentially transmitting it to others, the CDC's Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters on a call Tuesday. She added the variant behaves “uniquely differently from past strains of the virus.”

Delta, is now in at least 132 countries and is already the dominant form of the disease in the United States. It is more transmissible than the common cold, the 1918 Spanish flu, smallpox, Ebola, MERS and SARS, according to the document. Only measles appears to spread faster than the variant.

.

This late breaking CNBC news piece looks a lot like a Friday night news dump, to me.

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CB's picture

as Nanjing airport coronavirus cluster spreads to 15 cities.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ezldv0RVU]

Nanjing explains how virus was transmitted
2021-07-30

Health authorities in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, confirmed that gene sequences from samples collected from the city's recent COVID-19 patients were consistent with those of an imported case from Russia.

Ding Jie, deputy director of the Nanjing Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the samples were collected from aircraft cabin cleaners at Lukou International Airport, who were among the first to be confirmed with COVID-19 in the latest outbreak.

They had cleaned Flight CA910, which had arrived in Nanjing from Russia on July 10 and carried a passenger who has been confirmed with the coronavirus, she said.

"We have finished sequencing the viruses collected from 52 local transmissions," Ding said at a news conference on Friday. All the infections were confirmed as the Delta variant
...
Nanjing has launched a third round of nucleic acid testing for its 9.3 million residents on Wednesday. Fifteen people have tested positive among the 6.43 million who participated in the tests as of 7 am on Friday.

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snoopydawg's picture

The CDC also said the data has limitations. The agency noted that as population-level vaccination coverage increases, vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of Covid cases. Additionally, asymptomatic breakthrough infections might be underrepresented because of detection bias, the agency said.

The CDC also said the report is “insufficient” to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the authorized vaccines against Covid, including the delta variant, during this outbreak.

Plus this

So rush out to get vaccinated even though they aren’t enough to stop Covid and might be creating the variants? But they aren’t working to stop vaccinated people from getting infected. No wonder people aren’t trusting the ever changing rules. Hospital and clinic workers who have contact with people have never taken off their masks, but even today the people who work support staff aren’t wearing them. A few, but most aren’t. More masks seen at the store today. I think people are just thoroughly confused at this point. No surprise since they keep changing the science to fit their rules. Just watched Fauci telling us that it would be very rare if a vaccinated person contracted Covid so they can take their masks off…even the interviewer wasn’t buying it. I don’t remember what state, but 80 fully vaccinated people died from Rona.

I wish the news out of China would get the owners to change how they are going to address this new situation. Has China tried antivirals? Bueller?

The aspirin news is interesting. Thanks. Twitter is talking about other drugs being tested too. Maybe they will take the muzzle off the people who have other opinions on how to treat it.

One thing to note is that delta didn’t come from the unvaxxed, but from India and too many countries blocked vaccines getting to them before things turned really bad. And still with the new variants coming out they are still refusing to release more vaccines where it’s running rampant. So everyone get vaxxed ASAP, but we’re still not going to get vaccines to every corner of the earth. Got it.

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CB's picture

@snoopydawg
of confirmed cases. One of the factors is they test and treat cases VERY quickly. In the US people are told to stay home and wait to see if their condition improves. But COVID treatment should start from day one to prevent complications. In China they are proactive in getting quick medical treatment right from the instance of diagnosis.

It is apparent that the Chinese are correct when you look at the following figures:

USA 35,677,736 confirmed, 628,929 deaths, 107,112 cases/million, 1,888 deaths/million
China 92,875 confirmed, 4,636 deaths, 65 cases/million, 3 deaths/million

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the treatment of COVID-19 and other viral infections: Efficacies and mechanisms

Abstract

COVID-19 has remained an uncontained, worldwide pandemic. While battling for the disease in China, six Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) recipes have been shown to be remarkably effective for treating patients with COVID-19. The present review discusses principles of TCM in curing infectious disease, and clinical evidence and mechanisms of the 6 most effective TCM recipes used in treating COVID-19 in 92% of all of the confirmed cases in China. Applications of TCM and specific recipes in the treatment of other viral infections, such as those caused by SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, influenza A virus (including H1N1 and H7N9), influenza B, dengue virus as well as Ebola virus, are also discussed.
...

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@CB

I thought that they might have been using every trick they could to keep people alive.

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@snoopydawg

No surprise since they keep changing the science to fit their rules.

The science from day one has been preliminary. iow a lot of guesswork. It's the data that has been changing and that has to be integrated with what given populations have done to address the virus. And much of it has been confounding.

An example: Is the Delta variant more or less contagious and more or less fatal? In Vietnam it's far more contagious and twice as fatal(cfr 2.38% compared to 1.3% prior). In Taiwan more contagious and far more fatal (cfr 5.13%). Both of those countries were hit in early April; however, in the past month the active cases in Taiwan and dropped to a few hundred and in VN they're in excess of a hundred thousand. Not so easy to pinpoint when it hit in the UK because their community spread didn't get low enough; so, guess it hit about a month later, early May. If so, it's more contagious and far less fatal. The pattern is similar in SK. Yet, SK's active cases are now higher than ever; whereas in the UK active cases are half what they were as of 1/31/21.

Yet all of those interpretations may be wrong. The Delta variant may be no more contagious nor more fatal than the original variant. Entirely possible that relaxed vigilance, less social distancing, and less masking only makes the Delta variant appear to be more contagious. The increased fatality in VN and Taiwan may be an artifact of having protected more vulnerable people in the first wave. The worldwide reported active cases are now 15 million, but doubt that is anywhere near accurate.

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CB's picture

@Marie


Delta Variant Grows Rapidly Inside A Person's Respiratory Tract, Study Says

July 22, 2021

A study from China offers clues as to why the delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading so quickly around the world. The highly contagious strain accounts for more than 80% of U.S. COVID-19 cases.

We know now that the highly contagious delta variant now accounts for more than 80% of COVID cases in this country, and it appears to spread about twice as fast as the original strain. NPR's Michaeleen Doucleff looks into the first published study that reveals why.
...
PEI-YONG SHI: They sampled those individuals on daily basis to see, after the exposure, when the virus became detectable in the nasal cavity.

DOUCLEFF: That's Pei-Yong Shi. He's a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He wasn't involved in the study but says the data showed two key results. First, the delta variant grows more rapidly inside people. They likely become contagious sooner than with the original strain. The time between exposure and possible spread to other people?

SHI: It's shortened by two days, and that really indicates, you know, this delta variant is more vigorous.

DOUCLEFF: Second, the delta variant, on average, grows to higher levels inside a person's respiratory tract.

SHI: Virus level is over 1,000 times more than compared with the original virus.

DOUCLEFF: A thousand times more virus particles. So the average person infected today with the delta variant is likely sneezing out much more virus than a person with the original strain last summer. Monica Gandhi is an infectious disease doctor at the University of California, San Francisco. She says the way to think about the delta variant is that it's quicker and there's more of it.

MONICA GANDHI: When you see a study like this one where there's a thousand times higher viral load in the nose, that makes you think, yeah, it is really reproducing more quickly. There's a lot more viral particles, and that is the reason for it being so contagious.
...

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@CB
it's at least consistent with the spread we've been seeing. Except the rate of spread hasn't been even ten times faster than the original.

For over a year, I've been looking for how soon after being infected is one contagious. That was the key to defeating SARS. Symptoms, not vague symptoms but seriously ill, appeared before a person was contagious, but once they were contagious, they were highly contagious. (It's similar in Ebola.) Covid-19 appears to be more like the common cold -- contagious before symptomatic, and as the incubation period for the common cold is only 24 to 72 hours, it's being passed along by a host within a few hours. But at least with a cold, the symptoms are fairly consistent.

Science on the fly is fraught with errors.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

Imagine If They Hadn't Lied To Us For The Last 18 Months

You see, the people who won’t get it are stupid people who hate science because they refuse to trust the people who have spent the last year-and-a-half lying to them.

I don’t blame those folks a bit.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s imagine our ruling class was not as utterly corrupt, dishonest, incompetent and downright stupid as it manifestly is. I know that’s hard, but go with me.

This weird new virus appears and starts spreading. Instead of leveraging it to take down Trump, the Democrats appear with the Republican president and GOP leadership to announce they are working together to solve the problem. Imagine that instead of shaming people, first about wearing masks, then about not wearing masks, then about not wearing two masks, then no masks, then masks again, they went with transparency.

“We are not sure how much, if at all, masks work. We’re running test trials to see and we’ll tell you what we find as soon as we have the data. In the meantime, let’s all wear them just in case.” And then, when they ran the studies, they would tell us the answer.

Have you seen any studies about masks? We get a lot of that fascist gnome and others telling us to wear masks (after initially telling us they were useless – remember that memory-holed narrative?) but where’s the actual science?

See, you have to believe the science, and believe them when they tell you what it is yet won’t show you. Obey!

But trust is earned, and these people act like it is their right to have our trust, that we owe them to take it on faith that whatever these people say is the Gospel. Except they are wrong all the time, and instead of owning up to it, they treat you like some sort of idiot for noticing. When you don’t trust people who are perpetually wrong, that’s not denying science. That is science – you are making observations, and drawing reasonable conclusions. In this case, the observation is that our establishment sucks, and that it can’t be trusted.

They tell us the vaccine is going to make us immune from COVID. Then it turns out you can still get it, just not as bad. Yet when people notice this 180-degree spin, the smart set shrieks like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The establishment has squandered its credibility, which is why its demand that everyone take the shot is getting shriller and the attempts to force people more punitive. Imagine if they had been honest from the beginning. Imagine if they had been held accountable. But to do that, you have to imagine having a ruling class that doesn’t suck. And that’s more imagination than anyone can muster.

681287E2-2DDB-4E84-B808-93D51B5B14B1.jpeg

You’re doing it WRONG! White House Covid-19 spokesman yells at media for quoting CDC documents on Delta variant

The Twitter meltdown caught the attention of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who called it “super interesting” and suggested that “elite institutions” could find time “in between calling ordinary citizens stupid and selfish” to reflect on the “huge messaging failures, inconsistencies and lies that account for much distrust in official [Covid] messaging."

Wakana’s attempts to whip the corporate media into line follows Friday’s announcement by the CDC that claims 74% of people who recently got infected by the Delta variant of the coronavirus in a Cape Cod, Massachusetts resort were fully vaccinated. The Cape Cod study was “pivotal” in informing the decision to recommend indoor masking, said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

That’s not to say that delta hasn’t changed everything, but Fauci did lie about the need for masks at the very beginning of the epidemic. And maybe he actually told the truth back then when he said that regular masks don’t work because the virus is so small they don’t block it. I’m seeing this more and more now that delta is spreading so fast. If the virus is aerosol then they do not work and clothe ones just block facial recognition. They absolutely do not block it unless modified. Pelosi wore a cloth one during the whole time of Covid unless hers was modified. No wonder Covid spread everywhere.

Speaking of the mask debate: let’s look back at how they kept changing their minds on them.

Masks off? Or masks on? A history of the CDC’s consistently inconsistent advice on face coverings

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stayed true to form by deciding that its current mask guidance – not to be confused with its previous and repeatedly revised guidance – needs to be reversed. Again.

It’s a shame so many Americans do not appreciate the new rules concerning the use of face coverings among the fully vaccinated. After all, asking jabbed citizens to mask up after telling them they don’t need to mask up, after suggesting to them that wearing two masks almost all the time would be even better, must be the best possible and most consistent public health policy under the current circumstances.

February 5, 2020

As Covid-19 begins to spread across the globe, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president, receives an email from a former senior US government official asking if she should wear a mask while traveling, as a precautionary measure.

He advises against it: “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out [the] virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.”

February 29, 2020

Americans begin to panic-buy masks, greatly irritating the nation’s top health authorities.

“Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus,” US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweets. He adds that ordinary Americans should focus more on hand-washing and other sanitary measures, and let healthcare workers wear the masks – advice in perfect harmony with years-old CDC guidance. The tweet is later deleted, but the internet never forgets.

March 8, 2020

A month after the Trump administration declares a public health emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak, Fauci says in an interview with 60 Minutes: “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.”

In keeping with longstanding CDC guidance, he stresses that masks should be reserved for healthcare providers and those who are ill.

March 31, 2020

“Because if, in fact, a person who may or may not be infected wants to prevent infecting somebody else, the best way to do that is with a mask. Perhaps that's the way to go,” Fauci declares, in a bold U-turn from his previous position on the matter.

There’s more flip flopping from Fauci.

So I stand by what I said. They have changed their rules when it suited them. No wonder people are so effing confused and aren’t listening to a damn thing they say anymore.

And after Fauci's lying during the AIDS epidemic he should have been retired decades ago! He stayed silent while hundreds of thousands of gay men died horrible deaths. I know first hand after watching my brother die from it. He then stayed silent when Trump was gaslighting the country. How many died from believing him that masks don’t work?!

Telling vaxxed people that they could take their masks off just as delta was exploding everywhere….I could go on.

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@snoopydawg
The true price of all these lies will be incalculable, and the only way forward that offers any hope is facing the terror of the situation, acknowledging our errors and embracing the search for truth wherever it may lead.

This is going to be especially important for those at the top who have led us astray in the service of profit over humanity. It is also, sadly, extremely unlikely.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish!” – Douglas Adams

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@snoopydawg

Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s imagine our ruling class was not as utterly corrupt, dishonest, incompetent and downright stupid as it manifestly is. I know that’s hard, but go with me.

This weird new virus appears and starts spreading. Instead of leveraging it to take down Trump, the Democrats appear with the Republican president and GOP leadership to announce they are working together to solve the problem. Imagine that instead of shaming people, first about wearing masks, then about not wearing masks, then about not wearing two masks, then no masks, then masks again, they went with transparency.

“We are not sure how much, if at all, masks work. We’re running test trials to see and we’ll tell you what we find as soon as we have the data. In the meantime, let’s all wear them just in case.” And then, when they ran the studies, they would tell us the answer.

I weep every time I think about how it could have been this easy.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Reverend Jane Ignatowski

I'm terrified for US families right now. In China, sick family members go to quarantine units (repurposed hotels) to avoid making the entire family sick. In the US, there is no such arrangement. The air in the home will be thoroughly saturated with coronavirus. We have been getting very little news about family devastation in the news, but I am certain that this is a large part of the spread. They should be warned and have a plan in place.

I read a lot of commentary on the internet. I'm curious to know where people have seen Covid information that is accurate. Not that parrots the CDC but that presents info with science-based truth. Any place that you trust to tell consumers the kind of truth that can save their lives?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic

Any place that you trust to tell consumers the kind of truth that can save their lives?

Sadly no. I don't subscribe to anything anymore, but I've been reading a very wide range of materials, foreign and domestic, professional and indie, legitimate and rogue, fact-checking data when possible and safety-checking recommendations as appropriate, mostly guesstimating accuracy, and kinda trying to put all the pieces together in my mind like a puzzle.

The mother of one of my best friends was a physician before she passed and she had a special gift for it, watching her mind work through a diagnosis and then zip through the chemistry of how to treat an illness was a little like watching a wizard. She would treat her patients with a mixture of western medicine, eastern medicine, and the bits and pieces she'd learned from doing workshop style learning with native tribes in the US and South America. So for example, if you were her patient you'd get a prescription for an antibiotic, sure, but you'd also get handed a liver cleanse regimen involving castor oil and a heating pad, a list of supplements and herbs, and instructions to meditate. When she died we had to rent a hall so all her patients could come -- it was a filled auditorium of people she'd cured when other doctors had shrugged them off or shamed them for the problems profit-based medicine couldn't solve.

We still have some of her research and materials and so we are using those too. For whatever it's worth, she was a huge proponent of healthy eating/nutrition and vitamins in general, especially making sure you were getting enough C and D, and she liked to tell us to take N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) as well. It was available over-the-counter for decades. Early on during COVID some people who were hip to NAC started recommending others consider taking it as a daily supplement because there's long been evidence it can be helpful with respect to some breathing/lung problems (unsure of the mechanism but it seems to reduce inflammation and mucus in the lungs), it's known to be safe and tolerated in most people, and then the FDA promptly moved it to the "now you need a prescription for this" category.

If we run across anything else that could help in Dr. Mom's materials I will make sure to post it here at the blog where everyone can find it and evaluate it for themselves.

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@snoopydawg
the RT link that recaps the whole issue of facemasks in the US. This issue predates COVID-19. Public health advice from the CDC has long been biased against the use of facemasks by the general public. That's not science and that pre-existing advice left the public and health care industry highly unprepared for COVID-19 for two reasons: 1) No surplus of facemasks in the supply chain (the just in time supply chain). It couldn't even respond quick enough for the increased need for health care workers. 2) Americans view facemasks as anti-social (criminal) and have no familiarity with their use for health.

Fauci has admitt4ed that he/CDC advised against facemasks early on because there weren't enough available for hospitals and clinics. Total asshole and very bad doctor. Now I understand that the CDC and WHO are cautious in their pronouncements to minimize creating panics. (Americans are vulnerable to panicking because they're generally too ignorant. Hence, runs on plastic sheeting and duct tape after 9/11 and toilet paper early in the pandemic (as if everyone was going to shit more). However, are Americans totally incapable of handling the truth?

What should have been said: a) the US healthcare system screwed up. (and Americans didn't pay any attention to the fine print in CDC advisories that included - if sick you may want to mask up) In spite of all the pandemic games held in the past few years by rich assholes, NGOs, corporations, and US government agencies, the supply of PPE for health care workers was overlooked. Now we must first supply hospitals and clinics (not that the USG and state and local governments have the systems in place to do this and not that we can prevent price gouging by the private sector to fill orders from desperate hospitals and clinics, but that can't be built as fast as China will be back to manufacturing all the PPE we'll need; so, for now we'll keep our fingers cross that shortage is temporary.) b) for now the public is advised to wear bandanas, simple mouth and nose coverings, and socially distance when in enclosed public spaces and crowded outdoor venues. If sick, stay home and always wear a face covering when around others. Be mindful of ventilation and keep windows open as much as possible. CDC advice will be updated as conditions change.

It was a vague memory of photos of Japanese on public transit wearing facemasks that prompted me to begin researching this issue. "If sick, wear a mask" to protect others is a longstanding convention in Japan and HK. Culturally, they are more socially responsible than Americans are; so, at the beginning individuals had at least some facemasks in their medicine cabinet. With only sick people masking up, it bought them some time even as the Japanese public health system wasn't all that proactive. (First cases in the US and Japan were both in January 2020.) By May 1, total cases in Japan were 14,305 and in the US, with 2.6 times the population of Japan, it was up to 1,166,370. (S. Korea, far more proactive, also went with the "if sick, mask up" advice.) Became obvious to me that without a facemask mandate, only an N-95 mask would be protective (and fortunately I was gifted with two).

That early CDC/public health screw-up directly contributed to the need for lockdowns that were also poorly administered -- instead of a scalpel, we used a sledgehammer -- and the people that paid the largest price were low/lower income people.

Safe and effective vaccines are really modern medical miracles. How wonderful is it that we need not worry about smallpox and polio. (I could have done without measles, mumps, and chickenpox, but those vaccines came too late for me.) PHarma and health providers aren't getting wealthy off those vaccines. Are they doing better with the annual flu shots? Would the "wear a mask if sick" advice be as effective as flu shots? (The CDC doesn't collect quality data on flu inflections and deaths.) Is the CDC so wedded to vaccines for public health that it can't get out of its own box when a vaccine doesn't exist? (Wasn't any better in western Europe.) How often and for how long will we need to get jabbed for Covid-19?

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@Marie @Marie

Production chains and supply chains cannot come uncoupled at critical times. This is an important characteristic that all large economies must possess. The current epidemic is a stress test under actual combat conditions.
...
In order to safeguard China's industrial security and national security, we must focus on building production chains and supply chains that are independently controllable, secure and reliable, and strive for important products and supply channels to all have at least one alternative source, forming the necessary industrial backup system.

The entire country is now getting back to work and resuming production. We should not and cannot simply repeat past patterns. Rather, we must work hard to refashion them into new production chains, and increase the levels of S&T innovation and import substitution across the board. This is an important focus for deepening supply-side structural reform, and is key for high-quality development. First, we must build on our advantages, solidify and increase the leading international positions of strong industries, and forge some "assassin's mace"​* technologies. We must sustain and enhance our superiority across the entire production chain in sectors such as high-speed rail, electric power equipment, new energy, and communications equipment, and improve industrial quality; and we must tighten international production chains' dependence on X, forming a powerful countermeasure and deterrent capability against foreigners who would artificially cut off supply [to China]3. Second, we must make up for our shortcomings. That is, in sectors and segments related to national security, we must build a domestic supply system that is independently controllable and secure and reliable, so that self-circulation can be accomplished at critical moments, and ensure that the economy operates normally in extreme situations.

*national defense against a powerful enemy aggressor.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Marie

...without doing harm to another civilization. That entire strategy you quoted is not a solution. It's a video game. Sim Predatory Trade.

The solutions are so simple, they will break your heart. I've seen many terrific proposals this year, by small techs looking for venture money to push them over the malignant FDA hurdle. Invariably, the cheap, simple fool-proof solutions and the really smart medical devices were gobbled up by Bayer and other Big Pharm giants.... and buried.

Here's one life-saver that works: Buy a squeeze bottle of saline nasal spray. Remove 10 percent of the saline. Replace with provident iodine. Shake it up and spray once in each nostril and sniff it up before masking. Reapply when mask is changed or removed. There are scores of studies (with SARS-CoV-2) that will back that up. Want to go state of the art? Dissolve a quarter teaspoon powdered carrageenan into the nasal spray-mixture. Now you have a synergistic electro-chemical shield lining your air-passages. It not absorbed by the body but is deadly and impermeable to coronaviruses, so much so, that regulators classify it as a medical device instead of a pharmaceutical. It's effective for 12 hours. This one even had clinical trials. Scores of solutions and safeguards like these were swept away in the vaccine deluge or 2020.

Let's not fool ourselves. Covid-19 is endemic now. We also have a deadly social pathogen that is endemic, as well: A corrupt public-private health care system in the US that is widely seen as normal.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic
that it had reached the endemic phase.

You guessed wrong on the who's learning question. That was from a speech by Xi. Recall that China was flat-footed on PPE at the beginning. Not enough stored supply and then manufacturers were locked down. That's what he was talking about and extended the unexpected disruption to all sectors of the Chinese economy.

wrt your nasal spray as a prophylactic, that might work. Or considering that a COVID-19 test can now be done with a mouthwash and provide the same results as the gold standard nasal swab, probably should add mouthwash to your prescription. Not sure why J&J didn't think of that because they already manufacture such products.

wrt to one-stop, accurate, and reliable information on COVID-19, it doesn't exist. In a dynamic situation, who wants to set up such a beast and get mega-flak when new data requires correction? (Mega-flack doesn't deter the CDC from continuing with its agenda; vaccines are the answer to all communicable diseases even when they aren't or can't be developed.) So sad to see the crumbling of US institutions that for their time were once very good. (NASA outsourced to Musk makes me want to puke, and Bezos (who is still ticked off about that contract) isn't a solution.)

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Marie

The mouthwash product was developed specifically for SARS-CoV-2 by oral surgeons for sterilizing patients in pre-op. And for sterilizing themselves post-op. I was able to buy a throat spray from another company. I imported the actual nasal spray shield from a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Indonesia. Similar items were in wide use during the Spanish Flu years — along with masks. The mouthwash was particularly effective and was used by the US military. We were less informed a century later.

I can tell you right now that President XI of China never made such a speech. It goes against everything he believes and talks about daily.

It is a strange coincidence, that same propaganda-based fake translation was discussed over at MOA yesterday. It fooled everybody and many journalists that I read. I find this very depressing because the powerful forces of misinformation are already in place — and have already drowning out the truth about China that I am trying to convey. Progressives are a lost cause in the US. Generations of ruined humans will have to die before normal people can even have a conversation about enlightened consensus and evolved global lifestyles. I'll be long dead and will never witness it.

Worth a careful read:

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/07/lost-in-translations-the-dangers-o...

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic
I screwed up on the cut and paste by using b's uncorrected segment instead of either correcting that one line or doing the cut and paste from the source. (edited my comment with the correction). However, mis-translation or not, are you saying that the whole speech is a hoax?

If so, then those that fell for it go much further than b and MOA readers. The WSJ, Yves Smith, a German Trade rep, Bernd Neuner, and CSET at Georgetown University. A hoax crafted in China to make Xi look good?

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CB's picture

@Marie
Very important report on this successful treatment for COVID that is being ignored by the MSM.

Newest MATH+ Protocol
July 31, 2021

Have you heard of the MATH+ protocol to treat COVID-19? One of its creators, Dr. Joseph Varon, who leads the COVID-19 unit at United Memorial Medical Center (UMMC) in Houston, has been trying to get the word out about it since the start of the pandemic. “We have options for patients now. We just need to make those options available,” he said, speaking with broadcast journalist Ivory Hecker.1

Hecker has a story in her own right, as she was fired from FOX 26 Houston in June 2021 after she interrupted a live news segment to tell viewers the station had prohibited her from sharing certain information, adding that she’s “not the only reporter being subjected to this.”2

Censorship is an ongoing problem that’s reached unprecedented levels during the pandemic, and is the reason why you probably haven’t heard of the MATH+ protocol, despite its immense success in saving lives over the last year. Varon has been at the frontlines throughout, marking his 366th consecutive day treating COVID-19 patients on March 20, 2021.3
...
The MATH+ protocol led to high survival rates. Out of more than 100 hospitalized COVID-19 patients treated with the MATH+ protocol as of mid-April 2020, only two died. Both were in their 80s and had advanced chronic medical conditions.6 But according to Varon, despite their unusual successes, reporters weren’t interested in why the patients at his hospital were more likely to survive.7
...
“Had there been an existing known, safe and effective treatment for COVID-19, Emergency Use Authorization of a vaccine for the virus would be prohibited by law. Could that have been part of the motivation for the strange censorship of certain COVID-19 treatments that we witnessed over the past year at news and social media corporations?”

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@CB
last year but never saw any details about the protocol. However, a small sample size in one location without external verification of the results tends not to impress me. In that same time period S. Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam were achieving cfr from 1.04% to 1.66%. Yes, I know cfr is different from hospitalized case death rate, but all those cases in those three countries were under health management.

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CB's picture

@Marie

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snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

PHarma and health providers aren't getting wealthy off those vaccines.

Pharma is definitely getting wealthy off the vaccines. Moderna has made $100 billion from them even though they have never made vaccines before according to what I’ve read. 40 people became billionaires from them, so yeah they are. And they are going to get even richer with their booster shots and who knows how many of them people are going to need to get.

As for the masks debate Trump nor Biden has made quality ones for everyone a priority even though they should be what people should be wearing. They didn’t even rush them for health care workers and we’ve seen photos of them wearing garbage bags instead of the gowns used for infectious patients. If they actually wanted to stop the spread of the virus I would think that would have been a top priority to get them to at least hospital workers, but almost 2 years into the epidemic it’s still not a priority. Fauci did more than admit that he only said it because health care needed them. He stated emphatically that they would not work and he wasn’t alone as noted in the article.

When I worked in hospitals and had to go into an infected patient’s room I had to wear an N-95 because surgical masks were ineffective. Not just masks, but gowns, gloves and eye protection. And then we threw everything away and got new masks that had been measured for each person. But now people think they work for today’s viruses because Fauci told them they would after saying that they wouldn’t which is just out and out lying. There’s a word for that, but can’t pick it out of my brain. Science doesn’t change just to fit their current narrative. If they are ineffective then wouldn’t it stand to reason for why the 'case' numbers are going up? Speaking of this the CDC is not going to use the PCR tests after this year because of too many false positives and there’s suggestions that they aren’t differentiating between the Covid virus and the flu virus. I’m not sure of the site so I won’t link it unless I get further confirmation. I have seen it on a few other sites tho. Unless people want to check themselves…?

As for the vaccines for measles, mumps, ect those vaccines were made before the FDA was captured by them and started toeing their orders. Look at the tweet I posted on Pfizer links and what CB posted about their many, many fines. That list is just a fraction of the drugs that they had to pull off the market because of how dangerous they were. Total immunity for anything they do? Beyond comprehension.

I’m sorry, but that line about childhood vaccines doesn’t apply anymore. When big pharma writes not only the rules, but…oh hell. How do we know that they are still safe? This is the response to so many lies that Fauci has told and that new information on Pfizer’s immunity deals and their making censorship of any possible treatments against their contract. I don’t trust any new drugs coming out because everything has been so thoroughly corrupted. Before I started researching every drug my doctors want me to take, I just went along with taking them because my doctor said I should. I can’t begin to tell you about the bad reactions I had to many of them before my doctor started believing me that I was having side effects. He finally started paying attention to me after seeing them first hand and documented them for the future in case new doctors insisted that I was ‘nuts' or malingering. Big problem with pain management. Get labeled that and who-boy. I had side effects he’d never heard of. I finally have a doctor here that is starting to believe me and we start at low doses and titrate up from there if I can handle them.

the supply of PPE for health care workers was overlooked.

Interesting that Trump did a trial run on an epidemic here in late 2019 and found that they were totally unprepared for one, but what did they do? Nothing. And then blamed it on Obiden’s not restocking the supplies. Too damn many incidents seemed to have had a trial run just before they happened. Lots of convenient coincidences to my taste. Not just overlooked. Deliberately not stocked.

The government has been lying about wars abroad for too damn long, but they now want us to believe that they have our best interests in mind? Sure. That’s why millions are on the brink of eviction during the epidemic as well as the Olympics going on even though last year it was too dangerous to hold them. Groan more lying about them wanting to keep us safe.

As for safe and effective vaccines I agree that the older ones are safe as far as I know, but the current ones need to come with an asterisk because lots of people are being injured by them and many people have died after getting them, but that is being censored from us. One Facebook group that had tens of thousands of people who had serious adverse reactions to them in it was removed without warning. So people looking for answers and support were basically told that the information they were providing was bogus and now they are left out in the cold with no support or answers to help them. Unconscionable this is happening which goes back to the distrust people are having and it’s growing. Bigly. Bad news travels just as quickly as lies do whilst the Truth is stuck pulling its pants on.

As for how many boosters people will need seems to be more and more because of low immunity they offer after injections. Might be yearly like the flu shot that don’t seem to be as effective anymore.

As to the supply chains being inadequate at the start of the epidemic they sure didn’t seem to be a priority for farmers getting theirs to the market and billions of pounds of food was dumped in fields across the country. Meat factories were considered essential, but not the supply chains? Gee if there had only been a group that could have helped if government had wanted them to get where they were needed..but they never did. And since most stuff that is essential for the country has been moved overseas lots of supplies couldn’t get here quickly because of the backlogs and ships stacking up in ports everywhere. Incredibly that includes masks. Unreal and oh so stupid.

One last thing I’ll mention is when I got vaccinated for smallpox I didn’t get it anyway or possibly spread it to others that hadn’t had it yet and they were essential in wiping it out. They can’t say the same with the Covid vax even though they initially told people that they would protect them. If they don’t and are making people more infectious, well that’s a huge problem in my book no matter that they seem to offer protection from serious effects from Covid. And as long as countries refuse to get them everywhere ASAP then Covid is going to continue to mutate. Delta came from India remember?

I do not have the true answers to any of this, but their lies and now coercion is something that they are causing themselves and if they want people to take them seriously they should start telling us the truth. ALL of it.

I’m not trying to be a argumentative with anyone here. I’m just trying to find information that will help us and people are free to make up their own minds about it. I think the mask debate and the Pfizer immunity deal is important, but again…

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@snoopydawg
vaccines I was referring to: those given to infants and children. (As smallpox has been eradicated from the world the vaccine also went bye-bye.) Those aren't big money makers for PHarma. Also included that I don't know how well PHarma does with the annual flu shot.

I'm well aware that PHarma stands to make a killing on the COVID-19 vaccine. A travesty that they accepted federal dollars for development and want big payoffs for succeeding (or succeeding well enough that hundreds of millions have getting jabbed). No more Dr. Salks.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

Apologies if I didn’t read it correctly.

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@snoopydawg @snoopydawg
I've had experiences of going off on a rant before stopping and questioning why X made such a statement when X is generally astute and informed.* How I knew that tidbit about generally accepted vaccines not being very profitable was it explained why PHarma doesn't fund much in the way of vaccine research. The mRNA research have been going on for decades, but was low status and meagerly funded. If it proves to be the major breakthrough in vaccine design that some think it is, there will be a lot of people kicking themselves for not having pursued it. Regardless of proof for this vaccine, there will be more research on mRNA and it will be long time before we know if it is fruitful or fruitless.*

The issue of masks is difficult for most Americans because the general public is unfamiliar with their usage and the protection is counter-intuitive. Simple face coverings or surgical masks protects thee and N-95 protects me. Since Americans are more into me than thee they were screaming for the N-95 masks that were unavailable and surgical masks weren't anymore prevalent. Sewing clubs got busy and made a lot of simple masks for health care workers; so, at least those that were unknowingly contagious didn't infect others. It took a while for the CDC and government health departments to figure out that if everybody is protecting thee then me is also protected.

*b's MOA piece today required some checking. The NYT's left out context, but b didn't get the story right either. Barzargan had been in prison for ten years before he was killed along with the war traitors in 1988. That would mean that he was imprisoned by the Shah's regime and had no involvement in fighting with Iraq against Iran. The new regime had no use for lefty activists either; however, summary execution of him was as unjustified as executing a POW. Were there others in the same status as Barzargan that were also shuffled in and executed with the Iranian traitors? Unless Noury can prove not to have been a participant in signing off on Barzargan's execution or the prosecution's case that he was a participant it weak, he's in trouble.

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snoopydawg's picture

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Pfizer must pay their lawyers quite well as this is quite an agreement.

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CB's picture

@humphrey

Crimes of Covid Vaccine Maker Pfizer Documented
...
Pfizer Corporate Full Rap Sheet

Here’s a brief glimpse of Pfizer’s track record for safety and ethics. This is a short list, by no means inclusive of the company’s entire rap sheet.

  • Pfizer received the biggest fine in U.S. history as part of a $2.3 Billion plea deal with federal prosecutors for mis-promoting medicines (Bextra, Celebrex) and paying kickbacks to compliant doctors. Pfizer pleaded guilty to mis-branding the painkiller Bextra by promoting the drug for uses for which it was not approved.
  • In the 1990s, Pfizer was involved in defective heart valves that lead to the deaths of more than 100 people. Pfizer had deliberately misled regulators about the hazards. The company agreed to pay $10.75 Million to settle justice department charges for misleading regulators.
  • Pfizer paid more than $60 Million to settle a lawsuit over Rezulin, a diabetes medication that caused patients to die from acute liver failure.
  • In the UK, Pfizer has been fined nearly €90 Million for overcharging the NHS, the National Health Service. Pfizxer charged the taxpayer an additional €48 Million per year for what should have cost €2 million per year.
  • Pfizer agreed to pay $430 Million in 2004 to settle criminal charges that it had bribed doctors to prescribe its epilepsy drug Neurontin for indications for which it was not approved.
  • In 2011, a jury found Pfizer committed racketeering fraud in its marketing of the drug Neurontin. Pfizer agreed to pay $142.1 Million to settle the charges.
  • Pfizer disclosed that it had paid nearly nearly 4,500 doctors and other medical professionals some $20 Million for speaking on Pfizer’s behalf.
  • In 2012, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it had reached a $45 Million settlement with Pfizer to resolve charges that its subsidiaries had bribed overseas doctors and other healthcare professionals to increase foreign sales.
  • Pfizer was sued in a U.S. federal court for using Nigerian children as human guinea pigs, without the childrens’ parents’ consent. Pfizer paid $75 Million to settle in Nigerian court for using an experimental antibiotic, Trovan, on the children. The company paid an additional undisclosed amount in the U.S. to settle charges here. Pfizer had violated international law, including the Nuremberg Convention established after WWII, due to Nazi experiments on unwilling prisoners.
  • Amid widespread criticism of gouging poor countries for drugs, Pfizer pledged to give $50 million for an AIDS drug to South Africa. Later, however, Pfizer failed to honor that promise.

Pfizer’s Covid vaccine is being rolled out with nothing but positive press from every mainstream media outlet in the country. Meanwhile, more than half of Americans surveyed have said they will not take a Covid vaccine. The plain fact is that many questions remain unanswered regarding this, or any other, Covid vaccine’s safety and efficacy.

What we do know, from legal history, is that Pfizer’s past transgressions might lead some reasonable people to question whether or not they will submit to any vaccine made by the company.
...

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Bisbonian's picture

and they aren't effective, anyway...and besisdes, you are taking them away from the Health Professionals that DO need them.

That makes sense...

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

@Bisbonian
Clearly. medical professionals feel masks are useful and needed, thus having the rabble use them up is bad. You’ve illustrated perfectly the circular non-reasoning employed by our clueless leader of this pandemic nascent endemic.

People like me need a snark tag. For a moment I thought you were serious.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

snoopydawg's picture

Lots of sarcasm.

2nd tweet related to what’s happening now with Covid.

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Lookout's picture

John Campbell covers this information
delta.png
Showing the Delta variant is much more transmissible (horizontal axis) and slightly more virulent (vertical axis). Data at links under the video above.

I find John open minded and practical in his approach to winding down this endemic pandemic.

Chris Martenson is also a good source of information.
Confusion: Keeping up with shifting lockdown and vaccine narratives (42 min)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68B1gtPnGlA]

And from earlier this week, who died from COVID and why...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccSHUckGSQ (38 min)

As to China, they began Vitamin C IV in March of 2020 for symptomatic people with great success. It is also part of the FLCCC protocol.
Here's Chris and Dr Kory discussing how even Vitamin C data is banned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J9fu3KOTR8 (42 min)

Dr. Kory just bared it all on Joe Rogan. But there’s more from this world famous doctor…
What tips can increase your odds of surviving your next trip to the hospital? And will Vitamin C be the next banned topic?

And speaking of FLCCC, for my 2 cents these practicing ICU doctors are a most reliable source of treatments and procedures from prevention to critical care to long haul and vaccine reactions. I enjoy their weekly updates. Here's this weeks...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsijRWgi6NE&t=3m

From my perspective, the rub about the delta variant is vaccinated people catch it (most being asymptomatic) and spread it with at the same level as unvaccinated folks. Each time there is a likelihood of mutation. This virus has now become endemic as a result.

It is time to educate people about boosting their natural immunity. The US population is unhealthy, obese, and loaded with chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes and so on. Step one, get healthy by eating a proper human diet of real food and get rid of fast food, junk food, and processed crap including most cereal products. Step two, when sysmptomatic treat early, don't send people home with the message to return when they turn blue. Step three, treat people with the synergistic mix of the I-mask protocol developed by practicing critical care doctors from around the world.

Good to see your piece PR, thanks for the work!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”