A READER from Michigan writes:

I have been following your posts about coronavirus with interest. It is clear that there is an unbelievable power grab and wealth transfer happening right before our eyes. About that you and I are in agreement.  Thank you for continuing to write about it and bring awareness to this issue.

However, you have been rightly questioning how it is that hospitals could be overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic when so many more people die annually of influenza. I had the same question, so I asked my husband, who is a nurse at University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Michigan is one of the hardest hit states for COVID-19 infections at present. (more…)

https://twitter.com/AlanHibbard/status/1244472500836335619?s=20
(more…)

CHRIS PIRNAK at Know Your Adversary introduces his latest podcast: It doesn’t matter whether this crisis is legitimate or not. This manufactured pandemic has the potential for formulating the largest transfer of wealth in human history. A discussion of how we can successfully navigate these waters. This isn’t a bailout, because that would imply moral hazard behavior at the top. This is a well orchestrated plan. -I am observing that there has not been any let up in the media’s fear campaign. This tells me that the elites intend to maximize their asset grab. Perhaps we may see even more manufactured horror. -There is a complete lockdown on the crisis narrative. Fox fires Trish Regan for minimizing the circumstances. There is a total blackout regarding the objective discussion of effective treatments and cures. The elites want to maximize this story line and political correctness rules. -Many of the +30 million unemployed will never find gainful employment after the crisis concludes. [cont.]  

"ACCORDING to statista.com [3], “Italy has the highest amount of confirmed [COV] cases in Europe with 59,138…” That’s as of March 23. If you multiply by six, to get the annual figure, you arrive at 360,000 cases. You want to blow that up, because of acceleration? Go ahead. How about a million cases for the year? Two million. Three million. "Now let’s look at ordinary flu cases for Italy in a given year. According to sciencedirect.com [4], “In the winter seasons from 2013/14 to 2016/17, an estimated average of 5,290,000 ILI [influenza-like illness] cases occurred in Italy, corresponding to an incidence of 9%.” That’s 5 million plus each year. Not just once. Was a seasonal flu pandemic declared in Italy? Ever? Was the whole country ever locked down as a result? No." --- Jon Rappaport, "Corona, The Case Number Game"  

FROM “An Epidemic of Irrationality,” by C. Griffin Trotter MD, PhD :

Today (March 27, 2020) is kind of a landmark day. The front-page headline in the Seattle Times screams “U.S. has most virus cases: With 1,000-plus deaths, more grim milestones ahead.” But the real milestone is that the stark irrationality of our public response to COVID-19 has become manifest as never before. Today the Times has three front-page articles featuring three radically incompatible claims.

The first article makes the same old claim that has been featured on the front page every day for the last month. It is the claim that Coronavirus is a nearly unprecedented medical catastrophe, destined for “grim milestones” of almost unthinkable proportion.

The second article correctly claims that it is very difficult for patients to get tested for Coronavirus. The policy in Washington state is still to test only sick patients. In fact, even sick patients are still often turned away if they are not sick enough, as several examples cited in this article document.

The third article reports that the death toll from Coronavirus, according to a model from University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, could reach 1,430 by July (at which time the model estimates the seasonal epidemic will be over).

Do these three articles hold together logically? Not even close. Washington’s population of 7.5 million persons makes up about 2.5% of the population of the United States. Even in the extremely unlikely event that every other state eventually gets hit as hard as Washington, the death rate referenced in the third article would translate to 57,000 deaths nationwide. That is substantially less than the death toll from influenza in 2017-18, which the media almost entirely ignored. So if the third article is correct, then the first article is radically incorrect. If the third article is correct, then this is not an unprecedented catastrophe, and in fact it will not even be as bad, mortality wise, as a bad flu season. (more…)

  IF one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.2 "Covid-19 — Navigating the Uncharted" List of authors.Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.,  H. Clifford Lane, M.D., and Robert R. Redfield, M.D. MARCH 26, 2020 New England Journal of Medicine And yet in no previous flu season was the economy deliberately wrecked with millions of people thrown into joblessness. Dr. Fauci, you deserve nothing less than a jail sentence.

FROM Br. Alexis Bugnolo at From Rome (March 21, 2020): In recent days the international press has run stories about this Italian City as ground zero for the Wuhan Virus pandemic. They want desperately that all panic and accept their narrative about the apocalyptic plague which is decimating this city. First, we cannot dismiss or diminish the death of any person let alone of large numbers of them. But, second, we ought not manipulate statistics to make a flu seem like a plague. Bergamo is a city of around 120,000 souls. It is also the chief city in the province of Brescia, which has 1.2 million souls. There are many hospitals in the province, but Bergamo has the principal ones. Not all who are patients at Bergamo are citizens from the city. As being reported, the Mayor of Bergamo says the total deaths of citizens of the city since the outbreak of the Corona Virus is 108 more than normal. He is using 2019, in which the deaths were 56 in the same period, as the basis. But he admits that only 30 some, of all the dead were known victims of the Wuhan virus. However, the press wants you to think that everyone is dying in the city, and that everyone is dying of coronavirus. The Ecco of Bergamo is sounding this kind of alarm. Here is a photo of coffins from a migrant shipwreck in 2013. It has also been used…