US coronavirus pandemic deaths heading towards 3,000 per day
Coronavirus deaths in the United States are expected to surpass 3,000 per day this month, with the spread of the virus completely out of control and cases rising rapidly in the aftermath of the Thanksgiving holiday. Wednesday marked a new high with 2,831 recorded deaths, raising the seven-day average to 1,658, while hospitalizations nationwide surged past 100,000.
The case fatality for the US, according to John Hopkins University of Medicine, stands at two percent, though this is likely to rise as hospitals are overwhelmed with patients. The cumulative death toll across the country stands at nearly 280,000 as of this writing, with over 14.3 million total cases.
Speaking before the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation on Wednesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield ominously warned, “We really have a pandemic that is throughout the nation. … right now it is important that we recommit ourselves to this mitigation as we now begin to turn the corner with the vaccine. But the reality is December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation, largely because of the stress it’s going to put on our health care system.”
Pointing to the alarming number of deaths daily in the US, a Bloomberg opinion piece aptly titled “Covid-19 Will Soon Be Like Another 9/11 Every Day” makes the obvious connection between the death rate and the case number. “So of the 140,000 getting sick every day, eventually about 2,800 will die,” the article notes. “That’s nearly as many as on 9/11, for each day that new infections remain at about 140,000—and we’ve already been at that level for 21 days.”
The article also points to those who will experience long term and, in many cases, debilitating symptoms, stating that half or more of hospitalized cases will become long-haulers as evidenced in multiple studies, accounting for 3,300 to 15,000 people per day.
A study published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report explains, “In a multistate telephone survey of symptomatic adults who had a positive outpatient test result for SARS-CoV-2 infection, 35% had not returned to their usual state of health when interviewed 2–3 weeks after testing. Among persons aged 18–34 years with no chronic medical conditions, one in five had not returned to their usual state of health.”
The explosion in cases is a consequence of the criminal “herd immunity” policy pursued by both Democrats and Republicans which has entailed the reopening of schools and nonessential production in order to maintain profit making and ensure a continued rise in the stock market. Both President-elect Joe Biden’s administration and President Donald Trump have repeatedly stated their commitment to oppose lockdowns to control the pandemic no matter the cost in lives.
Contradicting the severity of the virus and basic scientific facts, the CDC has decreased the recommended quarantine time to 10 days for those with symptoms, and seven days without symptoms and a negative test in order to get workers back on the job faster.
In contradiction to the politically motivated revision by the CDC, the WHO in a paper on the criteria for releasing COVID-19 patients from isolation the states that the minimum time for isolation is 13 days.
The change in the CDC’s recommendations will lead to a significant increase in cases and deaths, as employers can force infected workers back on the job and still claim to be following federal guidelines, necessarily leading to an increase in cases as asymptomatic individuals continue to spread the virus at workplaces.
In an exposure of the crass profiteering of US corporations, a recent Reuters investigation revealed that nearly half of the 140,000 ventilators in the US Strategic National Stockpile “don’t meet what medical specialists say are the minimum requirements for ventilators needed to treat Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, the main cause of death among COVID-19 patients, according to a Reuters review of publicly available device specifications and interviews with doctors and industry executives.”
$450 million was handed over to giant corporations like GE, Ford Motor Company and others by the Department of Health and Human Services for the roughly 66,000 sub-par ventilators. These ventilators are acknowledged by health professionals, and even some of the manufacturers themselves, such as Hill-Rom Holdings Inc and ResMed Inc, to be inadequate as per WHO standards set in March for treating COVID-19.
Richard Branson, a professor at University of Cincinnati, speaking on the pNeuton ventilator that GE and Ford manufactured, told Reuters that the sub-par ventilators are “a risk because if they get something they are not expecting and it isn’t capable of meeting the patients’ needs, then that puts the patients at risk” simply stating that without the right equipment “the patient won’t survive.”
According to the investigation, of the half of ventilators considered adequate, only 10 percent are full intensive care unit type ventilators that doctors and ventilator specialists would normally use, while 40 percent are transport ventilators that are not normally used for longer periods for treating ARDS but are “considered sophisticated enough” for patients to recover.
The absolute hostility of the political establishment to any efforts to fight the spread of the virus necessitates action by the working class to stop nonessential production and close schools. This fight must necessarily be organized on a socialist basis, and be politically independent from and irreconcilably opposed to the twin parties of the US financial oligarchy, who are jointly responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in the country from the pandemic. The trillions in bailouts, along with the profits raked in from the pandemic by giant corporations like Ford and General Electric must to be seized in order to pay workers to stay home until a vaccine is freely distributed and the pandemic is brought to an end.
The PPP was created as part of the CARES Act and was sold as a method for paying businesses through forgivable loans in order to keep workers employed through the pandemic. Instead, it has served primarily as a slush fund for big business and a money-printing service for the large banks that service the loans, with previous disclosures revealing millions handed out to major sports teams, multimillionaires and religious institutions, while millions of workers were still laid off.
Bipartisan $908 billion “emergency relief framework” receives support from Democratic congressional leadership
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a joint press conference on Wednesday released a statement signaling their support for a bipartisan $908 billion “emergency relief framework” proposal that was first revealed by Republican and Democratic members of the Problem Solvers Caucus on Monday. The caucus includes Democratic senators Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Mark Warner (Virginia), and Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), and Republican senators Susan Collins (Maine), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Angus King (Maine), and Mitt Romney (Utah).
The proposed four-month “emergency relief package” is another gift to big business and Wall Street and is less than half of the $2.2 trillion package the Democrats had passed before the November election and roughly $800 million less than the $1.7 trillion deal previously offered by the White House. Most important for the ruling class is the bill’s “temporary” liability shield for businesses and other organizations against COVID-19–related lawsuits brought against them by workers or customers who fell ill due to inadequate safety measures.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell however has already poured cold water on the proposal, instead sticking to the $550 billion package he has been pushing for and that has already been agreed upon by President Donald Trump.
“In the spirit of compromise we believe the bipartisan framework introduced by Senators yesterday should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations,” Schumer and Pelosi said in their joint statement Wednesday, signaling their support for the bill.
The announcement of the proposal came Tuesday during testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin before the Senate Banking Committee. Both Powell and Mnuchin expressed support for the proposal, with Powell stating that it “sounds like you’re hitting a lot of the areas that could definitely benefit from the help.” Mnuchin stated he looked “...forward to reviewing with you the overall package. I do think that more fiscal response is needed.”
Five months after both political parties allowed enhanced unemployment benefits and housing protections within the misnamed $2.2 trillion CARES Act to expire, leading to food lines, evictions, and death, and less than four weeks until some 12 million lose federal pandemic benefits, the latest murmurs of a possible agreement that leaves out much-needed aid for millions of workers, while protecting businesses from COVID-19–related lawsuits, epitomizes the bipartisan disdain the ruling class has for the lives and safety of workers and their families.
As with the CARES Act in March, the preliminary details reveal a windfall for the financial oligarchy while a pittance is made available for the majority of the population. The framework does not include another round of $1,200 stimulus checks and reduces the enhanced $600 unemployment benefit, which expired at the end of July, to a miserly $300 week.
Left unmentioned in the proposal is the fate of two key emergency economic relief programs—the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program, which provides benefits to so-called “gig” workers and the self-employed, and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program, which provides benefits to those who have already exhausted their state benefits. Combined, the two programs account for nearly 13 million of the over 20 million people currently receiving some unemployment compensation, and both expire on December 26, the day after Christmas.
The legislation also does not include any renter or mortgage protections, leaving some 30 million people in the US facing eviction in the next two months. The eviction of millions of people and their families with the virus spreading out of control will lead to hundreds of thousands of infections and tens of thousands of additional deaths, with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield already predicting that the US COVID-19 death toll could reach 450,000 by February. Redfield warned that this winter could be “the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation”
Hailing the $908 billion figure as a “good middle ground” that “hits the major elements,” Democratic Illinois Senator Dick Durbin lent his support to the bill while offering mild criticism of the immunity from liability protections included in the bill, before adding that he didn’t want the liability issue to hold up the bill: “I want to make sure that we pass this COVID-19 bill, as the group has brought together, or something like it, for $908 billion, we shouldn’t be delayed or diverted from this effort over a debate for immunity for liability. It’s an important issue but 38 states have already enacted laws related to COVID-19 liability, the others can certainly do it if they wish.”
Of the proposed $908 billion, the bulk of the money in the proposal, $288 billion, is earmarked to the Small Business Administration, primarily to refill the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
The PPP was created as part of the CARES Act and was sold as a method for paying businesses through forgivable loans in order to keep workers employed through the pandemic. Instead, it has served primarily as a slush fund for big business and a money-printing service for the large banks that service the loans, with previous disclosures revealing millions handed out to major sports teams, multimillionaires and religious institutions, while millions of workers were still laid off. For small businesses that attempted to obtain a loan, the shifting guidelines and paperwork proved a hurdle too high for many, unlike major corporations with dedicated teams of lawyers and accountants who were able to navigate the government bureaucracy.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit against the Treasury Department, that of the more than 5 million loans that have been processed so far under the PPP, more than half of the $522 billion allocated went to just 5 percent of the recipients. The top 1 percent of loans accounted for more than a quarter of all the loan value, approximately 28 percent.
The data showed that roughly 600 large companies received the maximum loan amount allowed under the program, $10 million. Some of the companies that received $10 million loans were the parent companies of major restaurant chains such as Uno Pizzeria & Grill, Boston Market and Legal Sea Foods.
Following the nearly $300 billion earmarked for the PPP, the next largest item in the framework is the estimated $180 billion for additional unemployment insurance. Under the current proposal, which is unsettled, the unemployment eligibility window would be increased by 13 weeks, allowing workers to claim through March 31, although it is unclear if they would be able to backdate claims.
The third highest figure—an estimated $160 billion—is reserved for state, local and tribal governments, which have seen their tax revenues evaporate due to pandemic-induced lockdowns and restrictions. The funding is more than $270 billion less than the $436 billion Pelosi had previously demanded in the $2.2 trillion package.
Another notable figure in the bill is the $45 billion set aside for transportation. The pandemic has decimated public transit, leaving several major cities to consider, or already implement, drastic cuts, including the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is threatening to lay off 9,300 workers.
The Chicago Transit Authority is also facing a $375 million budget shortfall in 2021, while Denver’s Regional Transportation District passed a budget in mid-November that included $140 million in spending cuts and the elimination of 400 jobs through layoffs and attrition, along with wage reductions and furloughs.
However, according to Senator Warner’s office, of the $45 billion earmarked for transportation, only $15 billion is for mass transit, with $1 billion for Amtrak and $8 billion for the bus industry, leaving $21 billion for the airlines, which already received $25 billion through the CARES Act and still went ahead with furloughing more than 40,000 aviation industry workers.
REMEMBER WHEN BRIBES SUCKING LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS SAID OL' JOE'S
FINANCES WERE ENTIRELY 'TRANSPARENT'?
This Is How the Left's Power Structure Collapses
Weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh mentioned that the issues
defining the election had not come forward yet. He was
correct. Not entirely, because all the issues coming out right now
have existed. In plain sight.
They just weren't distilled yet.
It's now here, served up on a silver
platter. No, not Hunter Biden. This Hunter Biden laptop
story simply leads us to the issue. The word. One
word that rules them all, and in the darkness binds them.
Corruption.
There it is. That's the
issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family
Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty
years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How
is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did
his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant businessman.
Enter Hunter's laptop. We now know that this is a family
steeped in crime and corruption. Ole Corn Pop
appears to be awash in money kicked back to him by his family members who have
grifted off his reputation for years. Hunter's laptop has betrayed
all this and more. Much like Al Capone's bookkeeper. Who
would have thought Capone would have been destroyed so completely by a set of
crooked books? Such delicious irony. And who would have
known that this would become the October surprise of all October surprises?
Corruption. Full
grown. Oozing its way into America. It's everywhere on
the left. The Biden family. Clintons. The
Democratic Party. The FBI. The CIA. The
mainstream media. The tech giants. It's a full-out
plague, aided and abetted by their demonic philosophy, all of them gone astray.
All of them corrupt.
The New York Post story has been there for about a
week now. The Democrat-media complex has ignored it entirely; the
tech giants went into overdrive removing all evidence from their
platforms. Google. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. The
whole lot of them. Covering up a story that deserved universal
distribution and condemnation. Instead, they covered up the most
damning story to their side, their chosen side. All of them colluded
to bury this mounting evidence of wrongdoing.
How far the mighty have fallen. And are
falling.
What's the word for a media establishment that won't
report this story?
What's the word for the FBI having this laptop for
almost a year, watching dispassionately as the Democrats impeached Trump with
hard evidence in their hands of his innocence and the Bidens' guilt?
What's the word for the above group of bad actors
colluding to forward the Russia lies for almost three years?
What's the word for Director Wray's involvement?
What's the word for CIA director not releasing
documents of the Russia hoax, documents that have been available for a long
time?
What's the all-encompassing word that has been
revealed at the heart of all these colluding to hide the truth from an America
that deserves to know?
Corruption.
This is an issue that won't go away. All
the attempts to deep-six the truth here are failing, and miserably at
that. It's causing a slow-walk of information to drip out to the
American public. First the stories of
Ukraine. Drip-drip-drip. Then the stories of drugs. Then
the sex problems. Then the Chinese stories. The story of
kickbacks to Pop.
It's as if all the smartest people in the world
colluded to destroy themselves. By purposefully and unanimously
excluding all information concerning this story from the American
public. The smartest people in the world actually believe they can
be successful in spiking one of the biggest stories to pop up in any American
election cycle. Their hubris is so advanced, so viral, so awful,
that they can't see what they've done to themselves. They really believe
they are going to keep a cork on this.
The derogatory phrase for the establishment has been
"the swamp." How bad is this, how deep is this, how
criminal is this, how horrifying is it to find out the vast amount of
corruption and collusion in so many of our institutions and corporations?
It's staggering. It's infuriating.
These are the most powerful among
us. All rich. All corrupt. All once respected
by Americans of all stripes. And here, in one fell swoop, they
reveal themselves to the average American. As arrogant bullies, as
deceitful liars, as evil as anything we've seen in our
generation. They have revealed themselves as the cabal of
darkness. Terrible motives, terrible actions, virtually
unforgiveable in what they have done, and yet failed to finish. And
due to the hubris of the cabal, the exposé will be slow-walked until the
election.
Today, Trump had an exchange with reporters, where
he said, "Biden was a criminal."
This shocked the corrupt
media. Reverberations rocked the corrupto-sphere. The
lion had roared. There is no way the corrupto-sphere keeps this lid
on. There is also no way all these corrupt actors go back on their
solemn pledge to one another. They are bound
together. They're stuck with each other. And it will
overwhelm them.
As this careens into the debate, as this careens
into voting, as this careens into Election Day, the ultimate narrative will be
set. The doomsday clock will start. All the corrupt
actors will be pointed out. All of them will rue the day they
couldn't get rid of Donald Trump. He, above most anyone, knows just
how corrupt these people are. He above anyone knows how to handle
them. He, above all, knows what's all coming out in the next weeks.
It's going to be an avalanche of
material. It's going to be a number of fires even Google, Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, the DNC, the Bidens, the media, the corrupt government
officials, the whole shooting match, will not be able to handle. If
they all overtly held emergency meetings with each other, they'd never stop the
flood. When Trump roared, you know he had one of his famous moments,
that moment when he knows how and when to bring this to a
head. Trump the narrative-builder, Trump the destroyer will be
unleashing hell on these people.
Anyone who has seen him operate knows. This
is his time. This is how the beginning of the end of the swamp, or
should I say the sewer, begins. This is the kind of chaos these
smartest people in the world, ever, haven't seen before. Algorithms
will not help them. Censorship will not help them. It
will be a rushing mighty wind, coming to destroy all those who didn't
understand that their corruption could be turned on them.
This is going to be epic. Corruption will
be their end; it's just a matter of time. And Trump will have four
years to finish their corruption.
‘10% Joe’ – From Grandfather to Godfather
By David Isaac
We thought Joe Biden was the grandfather.
It turns out he’s more like the godfather.
It’s the big reveal in the Hunter Biden
story.
Until now, we thought Hunter, the “f—ked
up addict that can’t be trusted” (in his own words) who sent not one but three laptops
full of incriminating material in for repairs – an act so stupid that even
crack can’t be blamed – was the one taking advantage of his father’s position
to enrich himself.
(Compounding the idiocy, despite repeated
notifications, he failed to pay the $85 bill to reclaim the one salvageable
laptop, so that after 90 days it became the legal property of the repair shop.)
What we learn from the laptop is that Joe
(referred to as “the big guy”) was to get a 10% cut of the loot from a deal
with a now defunct Chinese energy company with strong ties to the Chinese
government (the email outlines an equity split including “20 for H” and “10
held by H for the big guy.” That makes “10% Joe” analogous to the Godfather,
the capo dei capi, the boss due his share of the family’s
enterprises.
So Biden is getting “his beak
wet,” as former NYC Mayor and current Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani points out in
a damning video describing the “Biden crime family’s payoff scheme.”
There’s more. Hunter tells his
daughter Naomi in a 2018 text-message exchange: “I hope you all can do what I
did, and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years and it has been
tough. It’s really hard but don’t worry, unlike Pop, I won’t make you give me
half your salary.”
It would take some real mental gymnastics
to convince any normal person – that is, anyone not marinating in Democratic
talking points - that “Pop” wasn’t referring to Joe Biden.
Did Biden really get half? It sounds more
like Hunter is complaining that he had to give his dad anything.
The amount really doesn’t matter. It puts
paid to Joe’s claims that “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas
business dealings.” It should lead to a federal investigation, starting with
subpoenas to Hunter’s banks.
Other emails are equally damning when it
comes to Joe’s claims to know nothing of his son’s business affairs. There’s
the email from Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi thanking Hunter for
setting up a meeting with then Vice President Biden.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to
DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time
together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.
Up to now the worst that was usually said
of Biden is that he wasn’t up to the job. He was a kindly grandfather who was
cognitively slipping. To Trump opponents, it didn’t matter. What was important
was that Biden would return the country to “normalcy.” Peggy Noonan wrote in an
op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 8):
“If Joe Biden
wins big, part of the reason, maybe a big part, will be simply that he is
normal. Not ‘he’s such an accomplished legislator,’ not ‘he’s the man of the
future’ or ‘charismatic’ or ‘warm’ or ‘has such a moving back story.’ No. He is
normal. And people miss normal so much.”
BLOG EDITOR: SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN AND HILLARY CLINTON HAS
MADE VAST WEALTH SERVICING FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
A family business raking in millions for
access to U.S. policy makers is “normal”?
Still less excusable than Noonan’s silly
remarks are those of U.S. Adm. (ret.) William McRaven, who extols Biden in
the Wall Street Journal (Oct. 20), well after the scandal
broke: “We need a leader of integrity whose decency and sense of respect
reflects the values we expect from our president.”
We hope McRaven was a better admiral than
he is a judge of character.
And the response of mainstream media to
the Post’s revelations?
In what may be the most blatant example of
media censorship in U.S. history, the story has been buried by Big Tech and
blackballed/denied by the media giants.
Facebook and Twitter, in the tank for
Biden, both blocked the link to the Post story. Twitter
blocked the Trump campaign’s official account and also that of White House
press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. The major news outlets have rushed in unison
to label the Post scoop “Russian disinformation.” Their
response was so monolithic that John Ratcliffe, the Director of National
Intelligence felt impelled to intervene, assuring there was “no intelligence
that supports that.”
The hard drive is full of pictures of the
Biden family, Hunter (sometimes in compromising positions) and over 11,000
emails, most of them harmless. And why, as Giuliani points out, did Hunter
Biden’s lawyers repeatedly demand his computer be returned (once they realized
the disaster that was brewing)? Seems like a strange approach if you think it’s
all Russian disinformation, and not Hunter’s computer at all.
David Isaac is managing editor of World
Israel News.
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