Science: Dr Andrew Kaufman Rejecting CoronaVirus (38 min)

Please, remember that this is a question-everything blog. A thinking blog. A conspiracy blog. If you want confirmation of your beliefs, do go visit the mainstream media. I am still a scientist (social sciences) at heart and I need to know the truth, not the pre-packaged manufactured crap that passes as journalism, etc.

Anyway, If Dr. Kaufman is right, we all have to re-think what is going on. This is starting to look like population control. The old method repeated ad nauseam: Create a problem, wait for the reaction, and come up with the solution, which you had since the beginning. The old propaganda game.

If the virus is a hoax, it is being done at the same time that the entire planet is deploying the 5G infrastructure. That’s antennas every 500 meters in your neighborhood. Something like that. Think about it, if people die because of extra sensitivity to 5G microwave radiation, you can blame COVID-19.

David Icke was deleted on Youtube and (pretentious) Vimeo last week just for making that connection. 5G and COVID.

What’s next? Forced microchipping? Forced vaccinations?

 

C= Certificate

O= Of

V= Vaccination

Id

 

12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic

I don’t know where the truth is right now but I will not stop questioning everything. I will especially question anything that comes from the media or the medical /Big Pharma establishment, as the narratives from both are constructed with fake ideologies and fake statistics. For example, what is the leading cause of death in North America? Wrong. Most will answer heart attacks and cancer. Medical error and overdose deaths from legal drugs are the number cause of death in North America. (See John Rappaport)

By the way, I hope these experts are right and that this is another false flag but I am following the rules of isolation like everyone else. The whole situation scares me. The unknown is the worse. Lou

Below is our list of twelve medical experts whose opinions on the coronavirus outbreak contradict the official narratives of the MSM, and the memes so prevalent on social media.

12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic

off-guardian.org

Dr Sucharit Bhakdi

March 24, 2020

 

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Dr Sucharit Bhakdi is a specialist in microbiology. He was a professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene and one of the most cited research scientists in German history.

What he says:

We are afraid that 1 million infections with the new virus will lead to 30 deaths per day over the next 100 days. But we do not realise that 20, 30, 40 or 100 patients positive for normal coronaviruses are already dying every day.

[The government’s anti-COVID19 measures] are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous […] The life expectancy of millions is being shortened. The horrifying impact on the world economy threatens the existence of countless people. The consequences on medical care are profound. Already services to patients in need are reduced, operations cancelled, practices empty, hospital personnel dwindling. All this will impact profoundly on our whole society.

All these measures are leading to self-destruction and collective suicide based on nothing but a spook.

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Dr Wolfgang Wodarg is a German physician specialising in Pulmonology, politician and former chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In 2009 he called for an inquiry into alleged conflicts of interest surrounding the EU response to the Swine Flu pandemic.

What he says:

Politicians are being courted by scientists…scientists who want to be important to get money for their institutions. Scientists who just swim along in the mainstream and want their part of it […] And what is missing right now is a rational way of looking at things.

We should be asking questions like “How did you find out this virus was dangerous?”, “How was it before?”, “Didn’t we have the same thing last year?”, “Is it even something new?”

That’s missing.

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Dr Joel Kettner s professor of Community Health Sciences and Surgery at Manitoba University, former Chief Public Health Officer for Manitoba province and Medical Director of the International Centre for Infectious Diseases.

What he says:

I have never seen anything like this, anything anywhere near like this. I’m not talking about the pandemic, because I’ve seen 30 of them, one every year. It is called influenza. And other respiratory illness viruses, we don’t always know what they are. But I’ve never seen this reaction, and I’m trying to understand why.

[…]

I worry about the message to the public, about the fear of coming into contact with people, being in the same space as people, shaking their hands, having meetings with people. I worry about many, many consequences related to that.

[…]

In Hubei, in the province of Hubei, where there has been the most cases and deaths by far, the actual number of cases reported is 1 per 1000 people and the actual rate of deaths reported is 1 per 20,000. So maybe that would help to put things into perspective.

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Dr John Ioannidis Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences. He is director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS).

He is also the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Clinical Investigation. He was chairman at the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Ioannina School of Medicine as well as adjunct professor at Tufts University School of Medicine.

As a physician, scientist and author he has made contributions to evidence-based medicine, epidemiology, data science and clinical research. In addition, he pioneered the field of meta-research. He has shown that much of the published research does not meet good scientific standards of evidence.

What he says:

Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.

The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.

[…]

Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes.

[…]

If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average.

– “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data”, Stat News, 17th March 2020

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Dr Yoram Lass is an Israeli physician, politician and former Director General of the Health Ministry. He also worked as Associate Dean of the Tel Aviv University Medical School and during the 1980s presented the science-based television show Tatzpit.

What he says:

Italy is known for its enormous morbidity in respiratory problems, more than three times any other European country. In the US about 40,000 people die in a regular flu season and so far 40-50 people have died of the coronavirus, most of them in a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington.

[…]

In every country, more people die from regular flu compared with those who die from the coronavirus.

[…]

…there is a very good example that we all forget: the swine flu in 2009. That was a virus that reached the world from Mexico and until today there is no vaccination against it. But what? At that time there was no Facebook or there maybe was but it was still in its infancy. The coronavirus, in contrast, is a virus with public relations.

Whoever thinks that governments end viruses is wrong.

– Interview in Globes, March 22nd 2020

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Dr Pietro Vernazza is a Swiss physician specialising Infectious Diseases at the Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen and Professor of Health Policy.

What he says:

We have reliable figures from Italy and a work by epidemiologists, which has been published in the renowned science journal ‹Science›, which examined the spread in China. This makes it clear that around 85 percent of all infections have occurred without anyone noticing the infection. 90 percent of the deceased patients are verifiably over 70 years old, 50 percent over 80 years.

[…]

In Italy, one in ten people diagnosed die, according to the findings of the Science publication, that is statistically one of every 1,000 people infected. Each individual case is tragic, but often – similar to the flu season – it affects people who are at the end of their lives.

[…]

If we close the schools, we will prevent the children from quickly becoming immune.

[…]

We should better integrate the scientific facts into the political decisions.

– Interview in St. Galler Tagblatt, 22nd March 2020

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Frank Ulrich Montgomery is German radiologist, former President of the German Medical Association and Deputy Chairman of the World Medical Association.

What he says:

I’m not a fan of lockdown. Anyone who imposes something like this must also say when and how to pick it up again. Since we have to assume that the virus will be with us for a long time, I wonder when we will return to normal? You can’t keep schools and daycare centers closed until the end of the year. Because it will take at least that long until we have a vaccine. Italy has imposed a lockdown and has the opposite effect. They quickly reached their capacity limits, but did not slow down the virus spread within the lockdown.

– Interview in General Anzeiger, 18th March 2020

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Prof. Hendrik Streeck is a German HIV researcher, epidemiologist and clinical trialist. He is professor of virology, and the director of the Institute of Virology and HIV Research, at Bonn University.

What he says:

The new pathogen is not that dangerous, it is even less dangerous than Sars-1. The special thing is that Sars-CoV-2 replicates in the upper throat area and is therefore much more infectious because the virus jumps from throat to throat, so to speak. But that is also an advantage: Because Sars-1 replicates in the deep lungs, it is not so infectious, but it definitely gets on the lungs, which makes it more dangerous.

[…]

You also have to take into account that the Sars-CoV-2 deaths in Germany were exclusively old people. In Heinsberg, for example, a 78-year-old man with previous illnesses died of heart failure, and that without Sars-2 lung involvement. Since he was infected, he naturally appears in the Covid 19 statistics. But the question is whether he would not have died anyway, even without Sars-2.

– Interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine, 16th March 2020

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Dr Yanis Roussel et. al. – A team of researchers from the Institut Hospitalo-universitaire Méditerranée Infection, Marseille and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille, conducting a peer-reviewed study on Coronavirus mortality for the government of France under the ‘Investments for the Future’ programme.

What they say:

The problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing.

[…]

This study compared the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries (1.3%) with the mortality rate of common coronaviruses identified in AP-HM patients (0.8%) from 1 January 2013 to 2 March 2020. Chi-squared test was performed, and the P-value was 0.11 (not significant).

[…]

…it should be noted that systematic studies of other coronaviruses (but not yet for SARS-CoV-2) have found that the percentage of asymptomatic carriers is equal to or even higher than the percentage of symptomatic patients. The same data for SARS-CoV-2 may soon be available, which will further reduce the relative risk associated with this specific pathology.

– “SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data”, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, 19th March 2020

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Dr. David Katz is an American physician and founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center

What he says:

I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near-total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long-lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.

– “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?”, New York Times 20th March 2020

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Michael T. Osterholm is regents professor and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

What he says:

Consider the effect of shutting down offices, schools, transportation systems, restaurants, hotels, stores, theaters, concert halls, sporting events and other venues indefinitely and leaving all of their workers unemployed and on the public dole. The likely result would be not just a depression but a complete economic breakdown, with countless permanently lost jobs, long before a vaccine is ready or natural immunity takes hold.

[…]

[T]he best alternative will probably entail letting those at low risk for serious disease continue to work, keep business and manufacturing operating, and “run” society, while at the same time advising higher-risk individuals to protect themselves through physical distancing and ramping up our health-care capacity as aggressively as possible. With this battle plan, we could gradually build up immunity without destroying the financial structure on which our lives are based.

– “Facing covid-19 reality: A national lockdown is no cure”, Washington Post 21st March 2020

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Dr Peter Goetzsche is Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen and founder of the Cochrane Medical Collaboration. He has written several books on corruption in the field of medicine and the power of big pharmaceutical companies.

What he says:

Our main problem is that no one will ever get in trouble for measures that are too draconian. They will only get in trouble if they do too little. So, our politicians and those working with public health do much more than they should do.

No such draconian measures were applied during the 2009 influenza pandemic, and they obviously cannot be applied every winter, which is all year round, as it is always winter somewhere. We cannot close down the whole world permanently.

Should it turn out that the epidemic wanes before long, there will be a queue of people wanting to take credit for this. And we can be damned sure draconian measures will be applied again next time. But remember the joke about tigers. “Why do you blow the horn?” “To keep the tigers away.” “But there are no tigers here.” “There you see!”

– “Corona: an epidemic of mass panic”, blog post on Deadly Medicines 21st March 2020

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If you can find any other examples of noteworthy experts deviating from the mainstream narrative, please post them below. As always, this list have been impossible to build without Swiss Propaganda Research. Follow their work and share widely. An indispensable resource.

Researchers look at humidity as a weapon in the fight against airborne viruses

Source

http://www.timescolonist.com

Michelle McQuuigge / The Canadian Press

APRIL 3, 2020

Dr. Samira Mubareka poses in this undated handout photo. The ongoing fight against the COVID-19 pandemic could get a boost if Canadians paid more attention to the relative humidity levels in public and private spaces, according to a growing body of international research. Doctors, scientists and engineers agree that sufficient indoor air moisture levels can have a powerful but little-understood effect on the transmission of airborne diseases. While the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is currently treated as one that’s transmitted through droplet infection rather than the air, research on exactly how it passes between humans is still underway. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO – Sunnybrook Hospital

The ongoing fight against the COVID-19 pandemic could get a boost if Canadians paid more attention to the relative humidity levels in public and private spaces, according to a growing body of international research.

Doctors, scientists and engineers agree that sufficient indoor air moisture levels can have a powerful but little-understood effect on the transmission of airborne diseases. While the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is currently treated as one that’s transmitted through droplet infection rather than the air, research on exactly how it passes between humans is still underway.

Most buildings, however, fall short of the recommended threshold of 40 to 60 per cent relative humidity, particularly in countries with colder, dryer climates such as Canada.

Addressing the issue now, they contend, could confer some immediate short-term benefits and offer a powerful tool for warding off similar epidemics in the future.

“Transmission is greater in dry air, infectivity is higher in dry air, and the ability of a human being to fight infection is impaired,” said Dr. Stephanie Taylor, a graduate of and lecturer at Harvard Medical School. “Any one of those would be important, but all three of them are in play.”

Taylor concedes that the notion may seem counter-intuitive, saying the idea of humidity conjures images of fetid swamps and disease-bearing mosquitoes. But she said a growing body of research has suggested that relative humidity levels that are much more comfortable for humans offer a host of benefits.

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Lies, damned lies….and statistics

Lies, damned lies….and statistics

By Irish Savant

April 1, 2020

Well we haven’t all died yet. In fact my readership has gone up over the last few weeks. So what’s going on? I don’t know but I repeat what I said in an earlier post: A mind-xxxx is underway. So very many things don’t add up, not least the absolutely hysterical reaction. And for sure the figures don’t add up. RT has a particularly good analysis by Irish journalist Peter Andrews. Worth a read.

“You can bet that the institutions of international government, and the “experts” advising them, will try to massage and cherry-pick statistics to present the version of events that most closely matches their worst-case scenarios. The fact is, according to their early predictions, we are already long overdue millions of Covid-19 deaths that have failed to materialise. But even when Covid-19 deaths are recorded, we have seen how it could be that people are dying with coronavirus rather than dying of it.”

On The Spectator website Dr John Lee, a recently retired NHS consultant and professor of pathology said that ‘’we have yet to see any statistical evidence for excess deaths, in any part of the world’’. To check this out, I looked at the British government’s own statistics on total deaths registered weekly across the UK. It shows that in the week ending on the 8th of March 2019, 10,898 people died in total in the UK. This year, in the week ending the 6th of March 2020, the equivalent figure was almost identical: 10,895. Make of that what you will.”

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Evidence and Risk Communication at Cambridge University says that if the deaths are towards the lower end of the current estimates, say at around 20,000 in the UK, Covid-19 will end up having ‘’a minimal impact on overall mortality for 2020’’. He told R4 that his findings showed, to his own professed astonishment, that if someone contracts the coronavirus, they’ve got almost exactly the same chance of dying over the ensuing few weeks as they would normally have of dying over the next year, no matter what their age or background health.”

In Ireland heroic patriot Gemma O’Doherty shows on twitter that “the Dublin Docklands have never been quieter. Nobody is even bothering to man the ‘testing centre’ which is supposed to be overwhelmed while some HSE [Health Service Executive] insiders are quietly admitting Coronavirus is a ‘spook exercise.’”

So there you have it. Now go back into hibernation.

 

With united Europe MIA in its Covid-19 response, worst-hit nations turn to ‘evil’ Russia and China for help

“In Verduno, near Turin in northern Italy, a hospital that has been under construction for 20 years, and is still unfinished, will open as a Covid-19 hospital next week, and will take in its first 60 coronavirus victims.

In comparison, the Italian government will be well aware that China, using 7,000 builders working around the clock,  built a 1000-bed hospital in just 10 days, and that Russia, with parallel ambition, is looking to finish a virus hospital on the outskirts of Moscow within a month.”

Source

http://www.rt.com/op-ed

Damian Wilson

is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.

23 Mar, 2020

Russian servicemen load medical equipment and special disinfection vehicles into cargo planes while sending the supply to Italy, hit by the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at a military airdrome in Moscow region, Russia March 22, 2020 ©  Reuters / Russian Defence Ministry / Alexey Ereshko

Brussels has all but abandoned them to their fates, so is it any wonder that Italy, Spain and other European countries have turned to Moscow and Beijing for meaningful support in terms of expert advice and medical supplies?

When this coronavirus pandemic has passed and the nations of the European Union are counting the cost of decimated populations, shattered public health infrastructures and economic meltdowns, one thing is certain: the dynamics within the bloc will have changed forever.

Before the global outbreak of this killer virus, Russia and China were always the West’s undisputed bogeymen. Troublemakers, always up to mischief, playing dangerous geopolitical games intended to undermine Western democracies and divide allies in the EU and NATO.

Many in the Western mainstream media are addicted to a daily fix of either Russian or Chinese conspiracy, so they probably don’t appreciate the irony here. Because things have changed.

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WATCH Russian Army deliver medical aid at airbase near Rome as Moscow rallies to help coronavirus-ravaged Italy

In a big way.

It’s largely due to the generosity of these two “tricksy” outsider superpowers that some European nations, fully paid-up, long-term members of the EU, have even a remote chance of getting to grips with the immense public health demands caused by the outbreak of the coronavirus.

And thank heavens for that, because if either Italy or Spain had been looking to the EU — or the USA for that matter — for real, on-the-ground assistance that would enable them to simply stop people dying in their thousands in overcrowded hospitals, then they would have found themselves waiting in vain.

Sure, the ECB weighed in only last week, with an unprecedented fiscal bazooka aimed at reducing the economic impact that is being caused by the virus (ar at least by the measures governments are taking to try to stop it). But that’s fighting the virus in one manner only, very much after the fact and certainly not on the frontline.

This significance of that fiscal help will only really be apparent once the health crisis is over and the full, disastrous economic consequences are realized. And the fact that it is far from over right now is what needs immediate attention, like providing more medical staff, personal protection gear, ventilators, hospitals and, obviously, a vaccine.

But the message from Brussels to Italy, Spain and other EU members is clear: in dealing with the pandemic and the thousands of dead citizens it leaves in its wake, you are on your own.

The EU’s abject hopelessness and indifference started to become clear some weeks back in the face of the escalating virus, when the export beyond national borders of facemasks and medical equipment was banned by some EU members, including Germany.

ALSO ON RT.COMRussian military planes with medics & supplies land in coronavirus-hit Italy (VIDEO)It’s unlikely the Italians will forget that. Compare it with the generosity of the Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi which has sent tens of thousands of face masks to Italy at the same time as Beijing has filled planes with medical experts and crucial equipment of which Rome was, and remains, in desperate need.

Compare it too with the help from Moscow sent over the weekend: 100 virus specialists, disinfection trucks and medical equipment. All being sent at the request of Italy.

It seems the close ties the Italian government maintained with Russia over the last few years, particularly at the initiative of former coalition foreign minister Matteo Salvini, have paid off. His refusal to be drawn into the EU’s Kremlin-bashing of recent times, preferring to cultivate a closer friendship of his own, has to be applauded for the dividends it has produced in the Italian hour of need.

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EU spin in the time of coronavirus

And one unintended consequence of that must be that it is driving critics of the controversial Italian populist absolutely nuts.

It also won’t escape the attention of NATO that the aid from Russia is coming via military channels, which must sting those of its members with a more hawkish view towards Moscow. Just so they don’t miss the irony, the supplies bear a “From Russia with Love” label.

What cannot be denied is that actions speak louder than words. The people of those nations being helped from outside the EU will be eternally grateful for that assistance. It’s help that can be seen. It’s brigades of medical experts, boxes of supplies delivered in big planes. It will save the lives of family and friends and it will provide help on the frontline where it is most needed.

In Verduno, near Turin in northern Italy, a hospital that has been under construction for 20 years, and is still unfinished, will open as a Covid-19 hospital next week, and will take in its first 60 coronavirus victims.

In comparison, the Italian government will be well aware that China, using 7,000 builders working around the clock,  built a 1000-bed hospital in just 10 days, and that Russia, with parallel ambition, is looking to finish a virus hospital on the outskirts of Moscow within a month.

It is these sorts of highly visible acts that people need to see. It builds confidence from despair and hope from misery.

Confidence and hope. As millions of terrified Europeans sit confined in their homes today, isolated voluntarily or by law, those are two things in critically short supply.

One-Third Of All Coronavirus Cases Show No Symptoms, Classified China Data Reveals

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Sun, 03/22/2020

China, which has been praising itself for its draconian response in shutting down much of the country for most of February and thus halting the spread of the coronavirus pandemic domestically (at least if one ignores the glaring discrepancies from reports on the ground), may have a new problem on its hands.

According to the South China Morning Post, which cited classified data from the Chinese government, as many as a third of the people who test positive for the coronavirus – also known as “silent carriers” – may show delayed symptoms or none at all.

The data show that 43,000 people in China tested positive by the end of February, but had no actual symptoms, the newspaper reported. They were quarantined and monitored, though as we noted last month, in a radical change in how China is underreporting the severity of the disease, asymptomatic cases aren’t included in China’s tally of those infected with the virus.

“The number of novel coronavirus cases worldwide continues to grow, and the gap between reports from China and statistical estimates of incidence based on cases diagnosed outside China indicates that a substantial number of cases are underdiagnosed,” a group of Japanese experts led by Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist at Hokkaido University, wrote in a letter to the International Journal of Infectious Diseases in February. Based on his research, Nishiura put the proportion of asymptomatic Japanese patients evacuated from Wuhan, ground zero of the outbreak in China, at 30.8 percent – similar to the classified Chinese government data.

Another useful point of reference is the data collected from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was quarantined for weeks in Yokohama, Japan. All of its passengers and crew were tested, with 712 people testing positive – 334 of whom were asymptomatic, according to official Japanese figures.

In Hong Kong, 16 of the 138 confirmed cases as of March 14 were asymptomatic or presymptomatic, according to Ho Pak-leung, a professor with the microbiology department of the University of Hong Kong. All of these numbers point to a significantly higher ratio of asymptomatic cases than indicated by data publicly released by China so far. There were 889 asymptomatic patients among the 44,672 confirmed cases as of February 11, epidemiologists from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention wrote in a paper published online in JAMA Network Open on February 24.

A separate study by scientists from the University of Texas at Austin estimated that people who had not yet developed symptoms transmitted around 10 percent of the 450 cases they studied in 93 Chinese cities. Their findings are awaiting publication in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Ho from the University of Hong Kong said some asymptomatic patients had a viral load similar to those with symptoms.

“Of course it is hard to say if they may be less infectious if they don’t cough. But there are also droplets when you speak,” he said, referring to how the respiratory virus is transmitted.

As Bloomberg notes, the novel virus has been described as “insidious” because many infected people are well enough to go about their daily business, unwittingly spreading it to others as symptoms begin to appear on average five to six days after infection. While scientists have been unable to agree on what role asymptomatic transmission plays in spreading the disease, they do know that the virus appears to cause a mild illness lasting about two weeks in children, adolescents and younger adults in most cases, and potentially more severe disease lasting three to six weeks in older people.

The bottom line is that the propagation of “silent carriers” and high rate of asymptomatic cases can complicate efforts to stop the spread of the disease which has infected more than 280,000 people and killed nearly 13,000 globally because many countries aren’t testing people unless they’re seriously ill, the newspaper reported. It also means that with thousands of asymptomatic carriers roaming around the population, confident they are free of the disease, secondary and tertiary breakouts are virtually guaranteed even for populations which, like China, claim to have defeated the pandemic.

How does the new coronavirus compare with the flu?

Source

http://www.livescience.com

By Rachael Rettner – Senior Writer

Feb 19, 2020

Which one is more worrisome?

The coronavirus particle has a crown of spikes on its surface.

(Image: © Alfred Pasieka/Science Photo Library via Getty Images)

Editor’s note: Updated Feb. 19 with the latest information on COVID-19. 

The new coronavirus outbreak has made headlines in recent weeks, but there’s another viral epidemic hitting countries around the world: flu season. But how do these viruses compare, and which one is really more worrisome?

So far, the new coronavirus, dubbed COVID-19, has led to more than 75,000 illnesses and 2,000 deaths, primarily in mainland China. But that’s nothing compared with the flu, also called influenza. In the U.S. alone, the flu has already caused an estimated 26 million illnesses, 250,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That said, scientists have studied seasonal flu for decades. So, despite the danger of it, we know a lot about flu viruses and what to expect each season. In contrast, very little is known about COVID-19 because it’s so new. This means COVID-19 is something of a wild card in terms of how far it will spread and how many deaths it will cause.

Related: Get live updates on new coronavirus

ALL ABOUT COVID-19

 

—See live updates on the new coronavirus
—How deadly is COVID-19?
—Why are children ‘missing’ from coronavirus outbreak?
—Will a face mask protect you?

“Despite the morbidity and mortality with influenza, there’s a certainty … of seasonal flu,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a White House press conference on Jan. 31. “I can tell you all, guaranteed, that as we get into March and April, the flu cases are going to go down. You could predict pretty accurately what the range of the mortality is and the hospitalizations [will be],” Fauci said. “The issue now with [COVID-19] is that there’s a lot of unknowns.”

Scientists are racing to find out more about COVID-19, and our understanding of the virus that causes it and the threat it poses may change as new information becomes available. Based on what we know so far, here’s how it compares with the flu.

Symptoms and severity

Both seasonal flu viruses (which include influenza A and influenza B viruses) and COVID-19 are contagious viruses that cause respiratory illness.

Typical flu symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, headaches, runny or stuffy nose, fatigue and, sometimes, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the CDC. Flu symptoms often come on suddenly. Most people who get the flu will recover in less than two weeks. But in some people, the flu causes complications, including pneumonia. So far this flu season, about 1% of people in the United States have developed symptoms severe enough to be hospitalized, which is similar to the rate last season, according to data from the CDC.

With COVID-19, doctors are still trying to understand the full picture of disease symptoms and severity. In a small study of about 100 people with the virus, published Jan. 30 in the journal The Lancet, the most common symptoms were fever, cough and shortness of breath. Only about 5% of patients in that study reported sore throat and runny nose, and only 1-2% reported diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.

In a more recent study, considered the largest on COVID-19 cases to date, researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Protection, analyzed 44,672 confirmed cases in China between Dec. 31, 09 and Feb. 11, 2020. Of those cases, 80.9% (or 36,160 cases) were considered mild, 13.8% (6,168 cases) severe and 4.7% (2,087) critical. “Critical cases were those that exhibited respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ dysfunction/failure,” the researchers wrote in the paper published in China CDC Weekly.

It’s important to note that, because respiratory viruses cause similar symptoms, it can be difficult to distinguish different respiratory viruses based on symptoms alone, according to WHO.

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The Majority Of Coronavirus Victims Are Men, And The Virus Is Hitting Adults Far Harder Than It Is Hitting Children

Source

endoftheamericandream.com

by Michael Snyder

February 11, 2020

This coronavirus outbreak just keeps getting weirder.  With each passing day the number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths continue to rise, but not all demographic groups are being affected equally.  That seems very odd, but it may also give researchers important clues about how to fight this very deadly virus.  On Tuesday, global health officials finally gave this mysterious new coronavirus an official name.  From now on they will be calling it “COVID-19”, but I doubt that moniker will really catch on with the general public.  In any event, what everybody can agree on is the fact that this disease has the potential to rapidly spread all over the planet, and let us hope that the extreme measures that are being taken to prevent it from getting out of control will be enough.

One of the things that we have just learned about this virus is that it does not seem to affect men and women equally.

According to two different studies, it appears that men are significantly more likely to get infected than women are…

More men than women seem to contract coronavirus, several recent studies of patients at the heart of the outbreak suggest.

Among the Wuhan University hospital patients documented in one study, 54 percent were men. Another earlier study of hospitalized patients was made up of 68 percent men, Business Insider reported.

Scientists do not currently understand exactly why this is happening.

But researchers have pointed out that there was a similar pattern during the SARS outbreak…

The 2003 outbreak of SARS struck more women among younger adults (20-54), but was more prevalent among men in older ages (55 and up).

When University of Iowa researchers exposed male and female mice to the virus, the males were more likely to contract SARS.

Could there be something about male physiology that makes us more vulnerable to a coronavirus outbreak?

This is something that scientists should investigate further.

Another thing about COVID-19 that seems quite strange is the fact that children seem to be a lot less vulnerable to the disease.  The following comes from CNBC…

The new coronavirus that has already killed more people than the 2003 SARS epidemic appears to be sparing one population group: kids.

Of the more than 43,100 people it’s infected since Dec. 31, World Health Organization officials say the majority are over 40 years old and it’s hitting those with underlying health conditions and the elderly particularly hard.

Some researchers are theorizing that a lot of kids are actually getting infected but that their stronger immune systems are preventing severe symptoms from manifesting…

The apparent lack of children among confirmed coronavirus cases could also be because they are getting infected but developing more mild symptoms and aren’t being reported to local authorities, according to Marc Lipsitch, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. World health officials say they are working to improve surveillance of the disease and expect more mild cases to be reported. It could be a while before we have a clear picture on cases, Lipsitch said.

With any disease, those that have weaker or compromised immune systems are always going to be more vulnerable.

And if this outbreak starts to spiral out of control all over the globe, the number of victims could potentially be absolutely staggering.

In fact, Hong Kong epidemiologist Gabriel Leung is warning that 60 to 80 percent of the entire global population could potentially end up catching this virus if urgent action is not taken…

Prof Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, said the overriding question was to figure out the size and shape of the iceberg. Most experts thought that each person infected would go on to transmit the virus to about 2.5 other people. That gave an “attack rate” of 60-80%.

“Sixty percent of the world’s population is an awfully big number,” Leung told the Guardian in London, en route to an expert meeting at the WHO in Geneva on Tuesday.

The official death rate is still fairly low, but if billions of people end up catching this bug it could result in tens of millions of deaths…

With the global population currently at more than 7 billion (7,577,130,400), that means that the virus has the potential to infect more than 4 billion (4,546,278,240) if Professor Leung is correct and its spread continues to accelerate.

And if one percent of those people die, that means there will be more than 45 million deaths.

A death toll of that magnitude would put this crisis on par with the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.

Once again, I want to stress that there is absolutely no guarantee that such a scenario will actually unfold.  The SARS outbreak in 2003 was eventually brought under control, and my hope is that this outbreak will eventually be brought under control as well.

But even if this outbreak ends tomorrow, life is not going to go back to normal.  In fact, the truth is that our problems are just getting started.

As far as COVID-19 is concerned, we would be in far better shape if the Chinese had locked down the entire city of Wuhan much earlier.  By waiting as long as they did, it allowed five million potential carriers to leave Wuhan for other areas of China…

EXPERTS fear it is too late to stop the deadly spread of coronavirus as FIVE MILLION people left the outbreak epicentre before it was even put on lockdown.

Millions continued to pour out of Wuhan – now dubbed zombieland – long after the first reports about a deadly new virus broke.

Now there are confirmed cases in every single province of China, and we will wait to see if this virus ultimately spreads all over the globe.

Thankfully, world health officials are taking this threat very seriously.  On Tuesday, the head of the WHO warned that “a virus is more powerful in creating political, economic and social upheaval than any terrorist attack”…

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva the vaccine lag meant “we have to do everything today using available weapons” and said the epidemic posed a “very grave threat”.

“To be honest, a virus is more powerful in creating political, economic and social upheaval than any terrorist attack,” Dr Ghebreyesus said.

And he is right.

This virus has the potential to absolutely turn the entire planet upside down.

I am still hoping that does not happen, but I am also encouraging all of my readers to get prepared for the worst.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Canadian Scientist At Center Of Chinese Bio-Espionage Probe Found Dead In Africa?

Source

http://www.zerohedge.com

Sat, 02/08/2020

Frank Plummer was the key to the Chinese Biological Espionage case at Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory.

Update (1135ET): It seems that Mr. Plummer made a habit of getting the biological material he was working on “stolen,” as we found a report from 2009 in the Winnepeg Free Press that details the theft of 22 vials of biological material was “confirmed by scientific director Dr. Frank Plummer.”

Plummer, allegedly, alerted authorities to the missing material on the same day a former vaccine researcher was arrested by FBI special agents after U.S. Customs discovered the vials stuffed in a glove in the trunk of his car at the Manitoba-North Dakota border crossing.

Some of the vials included genes from the deadly Ebola virus, but local scientists say the material is not infectious.

But more than a week after the theft came to light, police said no one from the lab has reported the incident.

Plummer has said the researcher signed a form declaring he did not steal anything from the lab and understood he was not allowed to. The national lab does not conduct searches of staff when they exit the lab and does not routinely take inventory of the thousands of vials containing non-infectious biological substances.

However, court documents allege the former researcher stole the vials on his last day of work at the virology lab in January because “he did not want to start his research over from the beginning when he entered into his next fellowship” with the National Institutes of Health at the Biodefense Research Laboratory in Maryland.

All very curious.

*  *  *

As GreatGameIndia.com detailed earlier, in a very strange turn of events, renowned scientist Frank Plummer who received Saudi SARS Coronavirus sample and was working on Coronavirus (HIV) vaccine in the Winnipeg based Canadian lab from where the virus was smuggled by Chinese Biowarfare agents and weaponized as revealed in GreatGameIndia investigation, has died in mysterious conditions.

Frank Plummer was the key to the Chinese Biological Espionage case at Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory.

• Breaking: India launch investigation against China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology
• Exclusive: Coronavirus Bioweapon – How Chinese agents stole Coronavirus from Canada and weaponized it
• Exclusive Interview: Bioweapons Expert Dr. Francis Boyle on the Origins of Coronavirus (transcript)
• Must read piece published worldwide: Coronavirus – China’s Secret Plan to Weaponize Viruses
• Update: Chinese Biowarfare agents at Harvard University caught smuggling deadly viruses

According to CBC, Plummer, 67, was in Kenya, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the University of Nairobi’s collaborative centre for research and training in HIV/AIDS/STIs.

Dr. Larry Gelmon, who helped set up that meeting, said Plummer collapsed and was taken to hospital in Nairobi, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

No confirmed cause of death has yet been released.

Plummer was born and raised in Winnipeg, where he headed up Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory for several years.

He was also involved in an innovative research partnership between the University of Manitoba and the University of Nairobi, established before the world was very aware of HIV/AIDS.

“He helped to identify a lot of the key factors that are involved in HIV transmission in the early days,” said Keith Fowke, a professor in the medical microbiology and infectious diseases department at the University of Manitoba.

“He was so hopeful that he was on the path that would end with discovery of the HIV vaccine — the road he had started down almost 30 years ago,” said Plummer’s colleague, Dr. Allan Ronald.

What is not mentioned in the CBC report however is that Plummer worked in the same National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, Canada from where Chinese Biowarfare agent Xiangguo Qiu and her colleagues smuggled SARS Coronavirus to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology where it is believed to have been weaponized and leaked.

EXCLUSIVE#Coronavirus Bioweapon Thread

How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponized Ithttps://t.co/tc7W2DrmAA

— GreatGameIndia (@GreatGameIndia) January 27, 2020

Infact, as GreatGameIndia reported in our exclusive report on Coronavirus Bioweapon, as Scientific Director Frank Plummer was the one who acquired the SARS Coronavirus sample of the Saudi patient at the NML Winnipeg Lab from Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands who was sent the virus by Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki who isolated and identified a previously unknown type of Coronavirus from the Saudi patient’s lungs.

Fouchier sequenced the virus from a sample sent by Zaki using a broad-spectrum “pan-coronavirus” real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method to test for distinguishing features of a number of known coronaviruses known to infect humans.

This Coronavirus sample arrived at Canada’s NML Winnipeg facility on May 4, 2013 from the Dutch lab received by Frank Plummer. The Canadian lab grew up stocks of the virus and used it to assess diagnostic tests being used in Canada. Winnipeg scientists worked to see which animal species can be infected with the new virus.

Research was done in conjunction with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s national lab, the National Centre for Foreign Animal Diseases which is housed in the same complex as the National Microbiology Laboratory.

This Winnipeg based Canadian lab was targeted by Chinese agents in what could be termed as Biological Espionage. The viruses was reportedly stolen from the Canadian lab by Chinese Biowarfare agent Xiangguo Qiu and her colleagues and smuggled to none other than the Wuhan Institute of Virology where the virus is believed to be weaponized and leaked.

Further, Frank Plummer was also working on HIV vaccine and interesting recently published study be Indian scientists found HIV-like injections in Wuhan Coronavirus – the key that made the jump to people possible. The Indian Scientists came under massive online criticism by Social Media experts and were  forced to withdraw their study, in retaliation of which now the Indian authorities have opened an investigation against China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Although it should be noted that now China has started using HIV vaccine to cure Coronavirus.

Frank Plummer was the key to the entire investigation on the origins of Coronavirus Bioweapon. But will the Canadian government open an investigation into this matter? Unlike their American counterparts who have charged the Chinese Biowarfare agents trying to smuggle deadly viruses from Harvard University, the deatils of the Canadian investigation on the Winnipeg Biological Espionage case is shrouded in secrecy.

5 Million Potential Coronavirus Carriers Have Already Left Wuhan, Mayor Reveals

ZeroHedge.com 

medicine-today.net

Bruce Wayne

Published on January 30, 2020

 

Meanwhile, Chinese health officials ­warn “there are signs showing the virus is becoming more transmissible.”

Wuhan’s mayor Zhou Xianwang revealed on Sunday during a press conference that about 5 million residents had already left the city before the lockdown because of the coronavirus outbreak and the Spring Festival holiday.

As the SCMP reports, many of Wuhan’s residents had already left the city for the holiday, while others rushed out after the lockdown was announced on Wednesday night.

As a result, only 9 million people were remaining in the city after the lockdown, with roughly a third of the population—including countless cases of coronavirus—having already spread across China.

Global Times

✔@globaltimesnews

Due to the Chinese Lunar New Year and the #WuhanCoronavirus, more than 5 million people left Wuhan and 9 million people remain in the city which is under lockdown: Wuhan mayor

Meanwhile, Chinese health officials ­warned the virus’ ­ability to spread was ­getting ­stronger. Ma Xiaowei, the minister in charge of China’s National Health Commission (NHC), told a press conference that battling the outbreak had become especially complicated, after it was discovered that the new virus could be transmitted even during incubation period, which did not happen with Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

In other words, as many as tens if not hundreds of thousands of Coronavirus carriers quietly fled, and may have infected as many as 3-4 other people each, depending on the R0 of the virus.

From observations, the virus is capable of transmission even during incubation period,” Ma said, adding that the incubation period lasted from one to 14 days. “Some patients have normal temperatures and there are many milder cases. There are hidden carriers,” he said.

As for the piece de resistance, Ma said also that the virus had adapted to humans and appeared to have become more transmissible:

“There are signs showing the virus is becoming more transmissible. These walking ‘contagious agents’ [hidden carriers] make controlling the outbreak a lot more difficult.“

Even China’s authorities sounds like they are giving up: Li Bin, deputy minister of the NHC said the authorities that the severe measures they had taken to control the spread of the virus – such as issuing travel bans and locking down cities – would at least delay the peak and “buy time to combat the next stage of the outbreak”, according to SCMP.

Yes, China is already bracing for “the next stage of the outbreak.”

To help tackle the epidemic, which has closed off 17 cities, Ma said that 2,360 military and civilian doctors and nurses had been sent to Wuhan, the city in which the outbreak was first detected at the end of last month. As the pressure has mounted on the city’s hospitals, the medical system has moved ever closer to collapse.

Many people who developed feverish symptoms were turned away by hospitals earlier in the week because there were not enough beds, local residents said earlier. Medical practitioners are also running seriously short of protective kits and are being forced to recycle goggles and masks. Ma said 2,400 hospital beds had been added in Wuhan, and the government was planning to add 5,000 more over the next three days.

Wang Jiangping, China’s vice-minister of industry and information technology, said China had the capacity to produce a maximum of 30,000 protective outfits per day, but that was less than a third of what was needed in Hubei.

Meanwhile, the hunt for the real source of the pandemic continues. China imposed a nationwide ban on wildlife trade on Sunday, as the outbreak was originally suspected to have originated at a seafood market in Wuhan, which also sold wild animals.

However, that appears to not be the source. A research paper published by the medical journal The Lancet on Saturday said the first confirmed case of the viral infection was a person who had not been to that market.

---

Republished with permission

Important: The information does not replace professional advice or treatment by trained and recognized physicians. The contents of medicine-today.net can not and should not be used to independently diagnose or start treatment.  

Hong Kong Scientist Warns Coronavirus Could Infect 150,000 People Per Day

 

© AP Photo / Ahn Young-joon

Source

sputniknews.com

28.01.2020

A well-known scientist in Hong Kong has warned that the deadly coronavirus rapidly spreading throughout China could infect as many as 150,000 people per day in China’s Chongqing municipality in the next few months.

According to Dr. Gabriel Leung, the chair professor of public health medicine at the University of Hong Kong, the disease could begin infecting 150,000 people per day by April or May this year and could have disastrous effects on the municipality of around 30 million people.

During a Monday press conference, Leung estimated that nearly 26,000 people have been infected in China, which is much higher than the official number of coronavirus cases registered across China as of Monday night: 4,515. Leung also noted that the number of cases could be as high as 44,000 if those who are infected by the virus but are still in the incubation stage are accounted for. The current death toll is at least 107 people, and around 30,000 people are under medical observation, the Asia Times reported.

Leung warned that the epidemic will continue to grow and peak around April or May, affecting many large metropolitan cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Leung also predicts that the epidemic will not begin to die down until June or July, adding that the Chinese government’s current “containment” scheme against the virus may not be enough.

Beijing may need to take additional measures such as large-scale and widespread public hygiene campaigns, decreasing the number of people traveling between cities and canceling school classes and public activities, Leung explained. The Chinese government recently ordered all those who have been in Hubei Province where the virus originated not to enter Hong Kong. According to Leung, the Chinese government ought to extend the ban to additional mainland cities.

On Monday, officials in the Chinese city of Tangshan in Hebei Province announced the suspension of all public transit on Tuesday to prevent the spread of the coronavirus within the city, Reuters reported, citing an official statement. Bus services between Beijing and Hebei have also been suspended, according to Reuters.

In Hubei’s capital city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus first appeared in December, residents have been ordered to wear masks and not to leave the city without good reason.

During a briefing Monday, the Citizens’ Press Conference, a group of Hong Kong political activists, urged the Hong Kong government to ban all mainlanders from coming into the city, noting that many travelers may not tell Hong Kong customs officials if they had been to Hubei. Sophia Chan Siu Chee, Hong Kong’s secretary for food and health, noted that customs officials rely on travelers to be honest about their whereabouts, the Asia Times reported.

Zhong Nanshan, a scientist and the head of the special expert commission of China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), said on Tuesday that the peak of the coronavirus outbreak is expected to take place in seven to 10 days, but there will be no large-scale spread of the infection, Sputnik reported. The NHFPC has also said that the country has all the necessary means and resources to fight the virus.

The virus, which is officially known as 2019-nCoV and is related to the virus that causes sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), first began spreading in Wuhan some time between December 12 and December 29. Some coronavirus cases have also been registered in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Australia, France, Germany, Canada and the United States.

Second person dies from mystery Wuhan virus in China: official

Source

http://www.aljazeera.com

Jan 17, 2020

Authorities say a 69-year-old man from Wuhan died on Wednesday as Thailand reports second case of the virus.

The Wuhan health commission said that 12 people have recovered and were discharged from hospital while five people were in serious condition [Noel Celis/AFP]

A second person has died in China from a mystery virus that has stricken dozens and appeared in two other Asian countries, officials said late on Thursday.

The news comes as Thailand reported on Friday that a second Chinese national has been found to be infected of the mystery virus.

In China, local authorities said a 69-year-old man died on Wednesday in Wuhan, the central Chinese city believed to be the epicentre of the outbreak of the virus traced from the same family as the deadly SARS pathogen.

More:

• Alarms raised in China as pneumonia outbreaks infect dozens

• China reports first death from mysterious outbreak in Wuhan

• Japan confirms first case of coronavirus infection

The outbreak has caused alarm because of the link with SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed 349 people in mainland China and another 299 in Hong Kong in 2002-2003.

At least 41 people have been hit with pneumonia linked to the new virus in China.

The Wuhan health commission said 12 people have recovered and were discharged from hospital while five people were in serious condition.

The man who died had become sick on December 31 and his condition worsened five days later, with pulmonary tuberculosis and multiple organ functions damaged, the commission said.

SARS virus taught scientists new lessons (2:33)

Three other cases were detected in Thailand and Japan with authorities in both countries saying the patients had visited Wuhan prior to their hospitalisations.

The second Chinese patient who was reported to be infected is a 74-year-old woman. She has been quarantined since her arrival in Thailand on Monday, Thailand’s Public Health Ministry said on Friday.

Human-to-human transmission possible?

Last week, a 61-year-old man from Wuhan died from pneumonia which is suspected to be linked to the mysterious virus.

Authorities in Wuhan said a seafood market was the centre of the outbreak. It was closed on January 1.

No human-to-human transmission of the virus behind the Wuhan outbreak has been confirmed so far, but the health commission has said the possibility “cannot be excluded”.

A World Health Organization (WHO) doctor also has said it would not be surprising if there was “some limited human-to-human transmission, especially among families who have close contact with one another”.

The Wuhan health commission said on Wednesday that a man who had been diagnosed worked at Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, but his wife had been diagnosed with the same illness despite reporting “no history of exposure” at the facility.

South Korean quarantine officials use thermal cameras to measure the temperatures of passengers from China at Incheon International Airport [File: Yonhap via EPA]

The woman diagnosed in Thailand had also not reported visiting the seafood market, the WHO said on Tuesday. She was reported to be in stable condition earlier this week.

The patient in Japan, who was released from hospital, had also not visited the market. Japanese officials said it was possible that the man had been in contact with a person infected with the virus while in Wuhan.

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can lead to infections ranging from the common cold to SARS.

Some of the virus types cause less serious disease, while some like the one that causes MERS, are far more severe.

SARS originated in southern China in 2002 and infected more than 8,000 people in 37 countries before it was brought under control. Nearly 800 people died worldwide.

The latest outbreak comes ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, when many of China’s 1.4 billion people will be travelling to their home towns or abroad.

The Chinese government expects passengers to make 440 million trips via rail and another 79 million trips via aeroplanes.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

From Armageddon to Pharmageddon

Source

http://www.greenmedinfo.com

Written By:

Neville Raymond

December 31st 2019

This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2020
Visit our Re-post guidelines

How the use of violence to teach lessons has outlived its authority

For years I had been working on a book on how earth-shattering catastrophes had birthed our religious and political order, and how we can heal our wounded species by reparenting ourselves with our birthright of unconditional love. A year before finishing it, I decided to experiment with Twitter. Trying my hand at various topics, I stumbled on the subject of vaccines and discovered that the mainstream campaign to censor the truth about them left me with a lot to say.

So there I was, caught up in two different strands of thought. The first had to do with a religious and political structure forged in a cauldron of catastrophes, ten or fifteen thousand years ago. It was traditionally designed to be supported by three pillars. A body of laws enforced by punitive judgments. A penal system based on hell and damnation, torture, imprisonment and social death. And an infrastructure of war built for mass murder and mayhem. And then there was the second strand that had to do with one of ‘the great triumphs of modern medicine’ – vaccines.

When I was contacted for an interview by Demand the Truth, I hadn’t quite figured out how, or even if, these disparate strands of thought fit together. In the few days I had to prepare for the interview, I discovered what they have in common. They are both founded on the same teaching principle. And this teaching principle may just help us unravel the mystery of history.

Let’s take it step by step. Vaccines work on the theory of using dead or inactivated viruses – along with neurotoxic adjuvants and preservatives that would make a health inspector blanch – to teach the immune system to protect itself from disease. The problem, as we’ve discovered to our horror, is that vaccines instruct the immune system by catastrophically damaging it. In the course of training the body to fight disease, vaccines wage war on the immune system and wreak havoc on it with a range of afflictions – brain inflammation, cardiac arrest, central nervous system breakdowns, bowel disorders, and of course the very diseases we are being vaccinated for.

All this is not in dispute. Anyone who has studied vaccines will attest to the truth of it. The evil of vaccines can be summed up in two words: toxic teaching. The method of teaching employed by vaccines is to inflict all sorts of toxic violence on the body. Since the formal word for a teaching method is pedagogy, we could say vaccines represent a system of toxic pedagogy.

Toxic pedagogy is nothing new. For millennia the accepted method of teaching children was through violence. Parents hit children in the name of discipling them. Teachers cane children in the name of instructing them. Does all this violence make children better? Not in a million years! It traumatizes them. The scars on their bodies heal in a few days, the damage to their psyches lasts a lifetime. All this is common knowledge. Swiss psychologist Alice Miller helped pioneer the study of toxic pedagogy decades ago. All that remained was to trace its origins to a series of earth-battering catastrophes that decimated life on this planet thousands of years ago.

Anthropological records are abuzz with stories of gods almost annihilating the human race. Geological records abound with evidence of interplanetary comets and asteroids colliding with earth and laying waste to it. The problem is not with falling solar system debris per se. It is with the few who survived and went on to repopulate the species. They were so traumatized that they came to terms with these cataclysmic forces by personifying them as angry gods that passed a sentence of mass death on man. Infernal fire and brimstone from heaven were not the random outcome of astrophysical forces. They were symptomatic of gods of wrath, determined to teach an errant species the lesson of its life. And voila! We have the origin of toxic pedagogy – the grotesque idea that the way to teach man to behave properly is through violence and destruction of a literally cosmic order. Gods modeled this toxic pedagogy for man. Man in turn modeled it for his children. He unleashed thousands of years of violence and aggression against his own flesh and blood under the guise of punishing them, disciplining them, teaching them a lesson.

Now psychologists know how children cope with corporal punishment. Typically, they split off from the victimized part of themselves and learn to identify with their victimizers. Thus the violent things parents did to their children, their children grow up to do to their children. It is how violence cycles from generation to generation. But in the big picture, it is the so-called gods who got the cycle of generational abuse rolling. They are the originators of abuse on a cosmic scale. And so the usual coping mechanism by which the child breaks his sympathetic connection with the victimized self, and goes over to the side of the victimizing parent, is now replayed in a religious dimension between gods and humans. As man disowns his victimized self, he learns to treat human nature as an object of shame, contempt and mortification. And the gods – who are, after all, what we might call doomsday gods – are exalted as objects of reverence and veneration.

Counterintuitive as this seems, it reprises the process by which battered children divorce their abused selves and espouse the cause of their abusers. But when it happens in a collective arena, the consequences are far more extreme than when an abused child grows up to dominate a household as an abusive parent. By framing dreaded gods of destruction as objects of worship and devotion, religion gives birth to a class of institutional guardians who presume to rule over society as the incarnation of Doomsday Gods. These quasi-divine rulers exercise their authority by passing violent judgments on mankind. They gather the reins of power by setting up elaborate penal systems to crack down on man for an endless litany of sins and crimes. From ancient kings to modern commanders-in-chief, the primary function of these leaders is to wage war. To this end, they literally weaponize cosmic fireballs and celestial barrages of fire and brimstone – at least, as far as the state of technology enables them to do from age to age – and then they deploy these super-weapons to inflict death and destruction on errant members of the human race.

This is where we went wrong as a species. Humans are hardwired for unconditional love. Being nurtured and cherished is how we grow and thrive. But now we have a class of rulers that trade in the love that is man’s birthright for the death-dealing wrath of Doomsday Gods. Their function is to maintain social control and serve as bastions of law and order. But their mission is to do so by following in the toxic steps of the Doomsday Gods. They keep humanity in line by handing down a battery of punitive judgments. They correct the transgressions of fellow humans by impersonating Doomsday Gods and hurling doom and perdition from on high. First, as flaming arrows shot from bows and fiery boulders flung from trebuchets. Then, over the course of time, as cannonballs and cluster bombs and ballistic missiles raining down from the heavens.

Thus the arsenals of war are not born of human aggression. They are born of human beings coping with their terror of monster gods as children do, by trying to imitate them and instrumentalize their fiery wrath. The whole system of corporal punishment as a disciplinary tool – of capital punishment and warfare as methods of chastisement and correction – is not inborn in humanity. It is born of a faulty, utterly fallacious interpretation of cosmic catastrophes. Thus the gods did in the beginning. And thus humans (as quasi-gods) do over the course of history.

For millennia we put our health, wealth and welfare in the hands of these psychotic specimens of divinity. Thanks to the better angels of our nature, we are finally coming to our senses. We’re beginning to understand that our trust is completely misplaced in a class of pseudo-divine rulers who are more bound to grandiose delusions of godhead than bonded to the reality of their own flesh and blood. How can we entrust the administration of our laws, the governance of our lives, to those who channel the brute insentient forces of the universe, laboring under a delusion of being doom-dispensing gods? How can we delegate the burden of upholding social order to those who embody the forces responsible for a breakdown of cosmic order. How absurd is that?

Something profound was lost when the human spirit was acculturated to imitate the gods. We lost that loving feeling that is our main reason for being. We lost that integral connection with our inner child that is the mainspring of our empathic identification with the weak and small among us. That is what the Reparenting Movement sets out to recover. Our civilization went off the rails when, under the hammer blows of celestial catastrophes, our leaders split off from their humanity to identify with a syndicate of wrath-crazed gods. A Reparenting Revolution frees us from this mad misalliance. It creates havens of unconditional love where, by reconnecting with the violated self – the innocent victim of childhood abuse – we quit aligning with heavenly and/or earthly Father Figures that cycle and recycle the brute forces of cosmic violence and destruction.

In reparenting, we conjure up the Good Parent – the Loving Mother/Father we were always meant to have. We envision who we would have liked our Good Parent to be. We focus on what we would have liked our Good Parents to say. We call to mind how we would have liked our Good Parent to relate to us as children. We experience the grief, anger and anguish of never being treated that way – and by virtue of experiencing it all, we’re able to get it out of our system.

Deep in our DNA is an infallible blueprint of our birthright of love. Even if the Good Mother or Good Father is conjured up in our minds, our bodies respond as if they are actually present. We get to cry, scream, yell, and rage and do all the things we never got to do with our real parents. By modeling the Good Parent for each other, we deprogram ourselves from a cult of the Bad Parent that enslaved, exploited and exterminated us for ages. We refuse to embrace the various forms of toxic pedagogy that a majority of authority figures still practice to this day.

We are now at a crossroads of history. By realizing that violence against children is bad, we are ready to withdraw our trust from authority figures who have always used violence to teach us a lesson. And nothing brings this lesson home to us like vaccines. It turns out the pedagogy of the Needle is as toxic as that of the Rod. An entire book has been written on how the medical assault on the American brain has spawned an epidemic of social violence and criminality.^[1] The poisoned needle destroys our emotional intelligence, our capacity for prosocial interaction, by creating a raging inferno of inflammation in our brains. And the punitive rod destroys our capacity for fellow feeling, our ability to peacefully cooperate, by stimulating a cauldron of rage and aggression in our psyches. It is no wonder, then, that guardians of public health, armed with the needle, have failed us as miserably as guardians of public order armed with the rod?

It’s about time we come together to declare the age of institutional guardians over. Can we trust guardians of public order to save the world, when under the pretext of safeguarding it, they give ample proof of their compulsion to build up the means to destroy it? No more than we can trust guardians of public health to protect future generations, when under the guise of immunizing them, they give us abundant proof of their obsession to do our children a world of harm.

The thrust of progress from the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment is towards greater autonomy, greater democratization. We abolished the Divine Right of Kings. Next up is to abrogate the Divine Right of Capital. But to truly emerge from our nonage – to genuinely co-create a world that works equally well for us all – we have to undergo two seminal shifts. One is to be disabused of our faith in truncheons and tanks as pedagogical tools to teach a lesson. Two is to realize the religion of power is as much a superstitious cult as the power of religion. Those playing god over us have always derived their power and authority from an irrational, nay, insane misreading of cosmic cataclysms! Because it is so alien to our psychobiology, the cult of authority only succeeds by brainwashing the mind and bulldozing the body. When we come from love, we are all on the same side. Love advocates for us. It empowers us to give voice to what ails the body and assails the soul. By definition, love is not something we fight. That which is imposed from above us can never be congruent with that which rises up within us – which is why it has to be rammed through with coercion and force. You want to stick it to me, better bring a Big Stick.

As it turns out, the sweeping distrust in authority figures caused by the toxic pedagogy of vaccines couldn’t come at a better time in our history. It’s just what the doctor ordered to give us the final push to topple an ideology of dominance and violence. For the idea of gods battering an evil species to death isn’t merely the template for corporal punishment. It is also the template for racism and genocide. Gods cleansing the earth of a polluted race is the model for Kurtz in the novel Heart of Darkness, and his demented clone in the film Apocalypse Now. When they cry, Exterminate all the brutes, they follow in the steps of the Doomsday Gods who did exactly that.

In this sense, it can be said that vaccines are a veiled form of imperialism. The poor immune system is looked on as a benighted entity to be instructed and improved. That’s the excuse for the needle going in to disrupt its intricate workings and ravage it with chronic ills. And that’s the way the body is exploited in perpetuity by the medical industrial complex. Just as there is no appreciation that humans are designed to thrive as a communal body, there is none that the body flourishes from coexisting with trillions of bacteria and viruses. Vaccination is based on a militaristic model of medicine. Viruses are stigmatized as the enemy. Zap the virus, cure the disease. Many biologists don’t even believe in the existence of viruses (which are free-floating bits of RNA). They believe a virus is only able to invade a cell and take it over because the cell is weakened by faulty diet, stress, lack of sleep, lack of exercise and of course, the chronic lack of love.

The same thing is true of the bad guys. There are no human enemies, just unloving attitudes that can be changed. You don’t want flesh-eating bacteria? Fine, just change the biological terrain. You don’t want mean, angry people preying on their kind? Fine, just change the psychosocial environment. Don’t abuse children. Don’t abandon or neglect them. Attend to all their needs, understand and empathize with them, free them to find the joy in existence. That’s the way to rule out antisocial behavior and make it impossible for evildoing to gain any traction.

The bottom line is humans are good. If it weren’t for being terrorized out of their wits by celestial catastrophes, personified as imaginary gods of wrath, humans would be happy to be led by the loving kindness of their nature. Give the body the kind of nourishment it needs, and there is no need for the Needle to protect society from various sorts of pathology. Give the psyche the kind of nurture it needs, and there is no need for all those extension of the Rod – like spears and arrows, assault rifles and missiles – to safeguard society from various forms of psychopathology.

In the end, the iconic image of Napalm Girl, running down the street, flailing outstretched arms, merges into the autistic boy, running around flapping his arms. Both are the casualties of a militaristic mindset, harking back to the brutal absurdity of a war the gods waged on our species. Sooner or later we have to remember our religion and politics still bears the imprint of a Day of Doom when gods destroyed the world to save it. Only then will we no longer be doomed to go on mindlessly destroying the global village to save it – or wrecking the human body to protect it.

---

References

[1] Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality, Harris L. Coulter

Neville Raymond is the author of The Reparenting Revolution – From a Power-Based to a Love Based Society (2018) and The Genesis of Genocide – Breaking Through to the Heart of the Holocaust (2001).  His latest book, The Hand to Heart Book of Reparenting – Co-creating a World where the Human Race Falls in Love with Itself is due out in November 2019.

Over 50,000 Americans die from the flu each year… is it because they got the flu shot first?

Source

http://www.naturalnews.com

by: S.D. Wells

Thursday, January 02, 2020 

(Natural News) Yes, the infamous CDC estimates that 56,000 people die from the flu each year, or at least from “flu-like” illness, but the real statistical information we need is how many of those folks received the influenza vaccine, and how soon afterwards did they croak from it? Science proves that you are most susceptible to getting the flu and spreading it during the first two weeks after you receive the mercury-laced vaccine.

There are two simple and valid explanations for this. One: The CDC guesses at which strains of the flu are “coming around” while combining two or three and genetically modifying them in laboratories. This means those strains don’t even match up with the wild strains anymore, and since your immune system is compromised by the toxic, carcinogenic adjuvants, additives, and preservatives (think thimerosal) in the jab, your chances of contracting the virus INCREASE rather than decrease.

Two: When the influenza vaccine is injected into your muscle tissue, you’re getting a “weakened” version of the virus strains because they’re forced to hibernate in formaldehyde (embalming fluid). This means that even if you don’t contract the flu yourself, you’re able to spread it to those around you by a process called shedding. This is when the vaccine industry blames the unvaccinated for spreading the flu, even though it’s actually the vaccinated who are the culprits. Tricky stuff, but it’s scientifically proven.

Once a flu shot victim or a victim of vaccine shedding comes down with influenza, or even some other “flu-like” sickness (which could be just about anything), hospitals, doctors and the CDC are quick to label it the flu, especially if you die. This helps with national scare tactic propaganda for selling (or giving away for free) the deadly vaccine, which in turn makes the sick care industry billions of dollars. That’s why the flu shot is usually free, because it spreads the flu and funds the industry.

It goes hand in hand: The more that Americans get flu shot injections, the more flu shot death statistics increase

It tells you right on the vaccine insert (warning label) that no clinical trials are run on influenza vaccines to prove they work, but that doesn’t matter to the sheeple, because they’re all scared to death (literally) that if they don’t get the vaccine, they’ll certainly get the flu. There are more than 15 influenza strains that can circulate into America every flu season (which absurdly is listed as running from October through May).

So even if the flu shot works, and you actually do build immunity to the 2 or 3 strains in the vaccine, you’re still susceptible to the other dozen or more deadly strains that can spread, especially from all those people around you that just got the flu shot that contains new combination strains of influenza (think Zika virus also here). The new study out (click the hyperlink above) about this proves it scientifically.

That also means that if you get a strain you weren’t vaccinated against, and you die from it, the CDC will still put you down as a statistic of flu death, even though the vaccine couldn’t have helped you. Again, it’s just more propaganda to “sell” toxic and worthless vaccines to pregnant women, the elderly, children, and every adult who hasn’t read the TRUTH about vaccine damage and dangers.

Herd theory is a hoax, because it’s the “herd” that spreads the flu to the other sheeple

Also, the reason the vaccine industry has a secret court and settles for injuries totaling over $2 billion (that’s 75% of all settlements for vaccine injuries), is because the vaccine manufacturers don’t want those statistics escaping into independent media. If Americans knew the truth about vaccine research being so fraudulent, and vaccine “safety and efficacy” being a total sham, well then, the “herd theory” would be blown out of the water.

Don’t join the herd this year and become a casualty of the sick care industry. Avoid the flu jab at all costs, and seek natural medicine that really is safe and efficient. Elderberry is at the top of that list, along with medicinal mushrooms and vitamin D3. Also look into curcumin, licorice root and cinnamon supplements.

Tune your internet dial to Vaccines.news for updates on flu vaccine deaths and millions of dollars in compensation that are paid out by the secretive vaccine court for those injured by the deadly flu jab yearly.

Sources for this article include: 

Vaccines.news

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

HealthImpactNews.com

TalkNetwork.com

Iran Slams US Sanctions on Access to Medicine as Act of Terrorism and Crime Against Humanity

Source

sputniknews.com

by Tim Korso

Dec 17, 2019

© AFP 2019 / CHRISTOPHE SIMON

Previously, the country’s deputy health minister warned that the US had threatened pharmaceutical companies in order to prevent them from selling medicine and medical equipment to Iran. According to the official, this has created major obstacles for importing crucial drugs, including for patients with special needs.

Chief Justice of Iran Ebrahim Raisi has stated that after failing to pressure the Islamic Republic by orchestrating riots and other means, the US has resorted to “terrorism” by hindering the country’s access to medicine.

“Such measures are not supported by any human or legal right and is a clear sign of economic terrorism and crime against humanity”, Ebrahim Raeisi said.

Raisi urged the international community to remain vigilant about the US actions, which it could use to oppress other the rights of other nations, calling for taking “real action […] against such hawkishness”.

Earlier in December, Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Mohammadreza Shanehsaz warned that supplies of medicine and medical equipment to Iran had been gravely crippled by the US actions.

“[The US] have declared in the letter that they will provide a special line to supply drugs and medical equipment but they use policing methods to threaten the pharmaceutical companies that in case of providing Iran with medicine and medical equipment, they will not be allowed to export to the EU and the US”,  Shanehsaz stated.

US Pressure Campaign Against Iran

The US has been pressuring Iran with economic sanctions ever since Washington withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal that saw the removal of international economic measures against the country. Tehran also accused the US of trying to meddle in its domestic politics in November 2019, when protests against sharp rises in fuel prices erupted across Iran.

© AFP 2019 / BEHROUZ MEHRI

Iran Views US Sanctions Against Mahan Air as Illegal – Foreign Ministry

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has vowed to combat the US actions, namely by introducing a $39 billion draft anti-sanctions budget, which will ensure a reduction of the country’s reliance on oil exports that have been crippled by the US sanctions. Rouhani has also not ruled out negotiating with Washington, but only up to a certain point.

“The government is determined to defeat (the enemy) by bypassing America’s sanctions […] or through various means including talks, but will not cross our red lines”, Rouhani said.

Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda): Every Cancer Patient’s Best Friend

Source

humansarefree.com

Dec 16, 2019

As if it were not humiliating enough for orthodox oncologists to learn that the lowly chemical sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) is important in the treatment of cancer now they have to swallow the research pointing to the fact that bicarbonate can also be used to diagnose cancer in its earliest stages.

Oncologists do understand and know that bicarbonate is necessary to protect their patients from the toxicity and harm done by highly toxic chemicals used in chemotherapy.

They also know it is of extraordinary help to patients receiving radiation treatments protecting as it does the kidneys and other tissues of the body from radioactive damages.

Oncologists should also know that bicarbonate-induced extracellular alkalinization leads to significant improvements in the therapeutic effectiveness of certain chemo agents.

A number of studies have shown that the extracellular pH in cancers is typically lower than that in normal tissue and that an acidic pH promotes invasive tumor growth in primary and metastatic cancers.

The external pH of solid tumors is acidic as a consequence of increased metabolism of glucose and poor perfusion. Acid pH has been shown to stimulate tumor cell invasion and metastasis in vitro and in cells before tail vein injection in vivo.

Researchers have investigated the very reasonable assumption that increased systemic concentrations of pH buffers would lead to reduced intratumoral and peritumoral acidosis and, as a result, inhibit malignant growth. It has been shown that increased serum concentrations of the sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) can be achieved via oral intake.

These researchers found that consequent reduction of tumor acid concentrations significantly reduces tumor growth and invasion without altering the pH of blood or normal tissues.[1]

Oral NaHCO3 selectively increased the pH of tumors and reduced the formation of spontaneous metastases in mouse models of metastatic breast cancer.

NaHCO3 therapy also reduced the rate of lymph node involvement and significantly reduced the formation of hepatic metastases. Acid pH was shown to increase the release of active cathepsin B, an important matrix remodeling protease.[2]

We know that bicarbonate turns to CO2 easily when dissolved in water as it enters the stomach but few know that cancerous tissue turns bicarbonate into carbon dioxide.

A few years ago a United Kingdom Cancer Research team found MRI scans were able to track changes in bicarbonate and therefore identify cancers even in the very early stages.

Sodium Bicarbonate and Cancer Research

All cancer has a lower pH, meaning it is more acidic than surrounding tissue. Working with mice, the researchers boosted the MRI sensitivity more than 20,000 times. Using MRI, they looked to see how much of the tagged bicarbonate was converted into carbon dioxide within the tumor.

In more acidic tumors, more bicarbonate is converted into carbon dioxide.

Lead researcher Professor Kevin Brindle, from Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, said:

“This technique could be used as a highly-sensitive early warning system for the signs of cancer. By exploiting the body’s natural pH balancing system, we have found a potentially safe way of measuring pH to see what’s going on inside patients.

“MRI can pick up on the abnormal pH levels found in cancer and it is possible that this could be used to pinpoint where the disease is present and when it is responding to treatment.”

Special Note: In Sodium Bicarbonate – Rich Man’s Poor Man’s Cancer Treatment it is stressed that sodium bicarbonate cancer treatment is not a standalone single-shot treatment.

It should always be used in conjunction with a full protocol that includes most importantly magnesium chloride, iodine and selenium plus a naturopathic approach to diet, intestinal cleaning, sun exposure and many other helpful things.

Dr. Mark Sircus, Guest author / References:

[1] Cancer Research 69, 2677, March 15, 2009. Published Online First March 10, 2009; doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-08-2394

[2] Cancer Res 2009;69(6):2260–8

Medical Error: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US

Medical error is not included on death certificates or in rankings of cause of death. Martin Makary and Michael Daniel assess its contribution to mortality and call for better reporting

This article was originally published in 2016.

Introduction

“2.6 million people die annually in low-and middle-income countries from medical errors, and that most of those deaths are related to misdiagnosis and administration of pharmaceutical products…Medication errors alone cost an estimated $42 billion (US dollars) annually. Unsafe surgical care procedures cause complications in up to 25% of patients resulting in 1 million deaths during or immediately after surgery annually…Four out of every ten patients are harmed during primary and ambulatory health care. The most detrimental errors are related to diagnosis, prescription and the use of medicines.” — The World Health Organization

Below is a medical online article that concluded that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US. The study, published in 2016 in the British Medical Journal, was authored by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The authors calculated that medical errors accounted for > 250,000 deaths every year in the US, which made iatrogenic (= physician, drug or vaccine-caused) deaths the third leading cause of death in the US, surpassed only by #1 heart disease (647,457) and #2 cancer (599,108) (2018 CDC data). 

It is important to note that medical errors and adverse effects from prescription drugs that have caused deaths or illnesses are rarely listed by physicians on death certificates or in rankings of causes of death or illnesses. The online article calls for better reporting by physicians. 

Also be aware that the study – as has been the case of ALL such studies of causes of death, acute illnesses, chronic illnesses or adverse drug effects – did NOT evaluate vaccine-induced deaths or injuries, mainly because virtually every physician, in every country (where powerful, for-profit pharmaceutical/vaccine corporations control the practice of medicine, most medical school curricula and most major media outlets), consistently fails – or refuses to acknowledge – even the most obvious vaccine injuries or deaths as worthy of being reportable diseases or worthy of being listed in their differential diagnostic impressions, discharge diagnoses or death certifications.

Dr. Gary G. Kohls, December 4, 2019

***

Medical Error: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US

By Martin A Makary and Michael Daniel 

British Medical Journal, May 2016

The annual list of the most common causes of death in the United States, compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), informs public awareness and national research priorities each year. The list is created using death certificates filled out by physicians, funeral directors, medical examiners, and coroners. However, a major limitation of the death certificate is that it relies on assigning an International Classification of Disease (ICD) code to the cause of death.[1] As a result, causes of death not associated with an ICD code, such as human and system factors, are not captured. The science of safety has matured to describe how communication breakdowns, diagnostic errors, poor judgment, and inadequate skill can directly result in patient harm and death. We analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC.[2]

Death from medical care itself

Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its intended outcome,[3] the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning),[4] or a deviation from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the patient.[5] Patient harm from medical error can occur at the individual or system level. The taxonomy of errors is expanding to better categorize preventable factors and events.[6] We focus on preventable lethal events to highlight the scale of potential for improvement.

The role of error can be complex. While many errors are non-consequential, an error can end the life of someone with a long life expectancy or accelerate an imminent death. The case in the box shows how error can contribute to death. Moving away from a requirement that only reasons for death with an ICD code can be used on death certificates could better inform healthcare research and awareness priorities.

How big is the problem?

The most commonly cited estimate of annual deaths from medical error in the US—a 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report[7]—is limited and outdated. The report describes an incidence of 44 000-98 000 deaths annually.[7] This conclusion was not based on primary research conducted by the institute but on the 1984 Harvard Medical Practice Study and the 1992 Utah and Colorado Study.[8][9] But as early as 1993, Leape, a chief investigator in the 1984 Harvard study, published an article arguing that the study’s estimate was too low, contending that 78% rather than 51% of the 180 000 iatrogenic deaths were preventable (some argue that all iatrogenic deaths are preventable).[10] This higher incidence (about 140 400 deaths due to error) has been supported by subsequent studies which suggest that the 1999 IOM report underestimates the magnitude of the problem. A 2004 report of inpatient deaths associated with the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research Patient Safety Indicators in the Medicare population estimated that 575 000 deaths were caused by medical error between 2000 and 2002, which is about 195 000 deaths a year (table 1).[11] Similarly, the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General examining the health records of hospital inpatients in 2008, reported 180 000 deaths due to medical error a year among Medicare beneficiaries alone.[12] Using similar methods, Classen et al described a rate of 1.13%.[13] If this rate is applied to all registered US hospital admissions in 2013[15] it translates to over 400 000 deaths a year, more than four times the IOM estimate.

Similarly, Landrigan et al reported that 0.6% of hospital admissions in a group of North Carolina hospitals over six years (2002-07) resulted in lethal adverse events and conservatively estimated that 63% were due to medical errors.[14] Extrapolated nationally, this would translate into 134 581 inpatient deaths a year from poor inpatient care. Of note, none of the studies captured deaths outside inpatient care—those resulting from errors in care at home or in nursing homes and in outpatient care such as ambulatory surgery centers.

Drug-Induced “Iatrogenic” Disorders: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US and Britain

A literature review by James estimated preventable adverse events using a weighted analysis and described an incidence range of 210 000-400 000 deaths a year associated with medical errors among hospital patients.[16] We calculated a mean rate of death from medical error of 251 454 a year using the studies reported since the 1999 IOM report and extrapolating to the total number of US hospital admissions in 2013. We believe this understates the true incidence of death due to medical error because the studies cited rely on errors extractable in documented health records and include only inpatient deaths. Although the assumptions made in extrapolating study data to the broader US population may limit the accuracy of our figure, the absence of national data highlights the need for systematic measurement of the problem. Comparing our estimate to CDC rankings suggests that medical error is the third most common cause of death in the US (fig 1).[2]

Better data

Human error is inevitable. Although we cannot eliminate human error, we can better measure the problem to design safer systems mitigating its frequency, visibility, and consequences. Strategies to reduce death from medical care should include three steps: making errors more visible when they occur so their effects can be intercepted; having remedies at hand to rescue patients [17]; and making errors less frequent by following principles that take human limitations into account (fig 2). This multitier approach necessitates guidance from reliable data.

Currently, deaths caused by errors are unmeasured and discussions about prevention occur in limited and confidential forums, such as a hospital’s internal root cause analysis committee or a department’s morbidity and mortality conference. These forums review only a fraction of detected adverse events and the lessons learnt are not disseminated beyond the institution or department.

There are several possible strategies to estimate accurate national statistics for death due to medical error. Instead of simply requiring cause of death, death certificates could contain an extra field asking whether a preventable complication stemming from the patient’s medical care contributed to the death. An early experience asking physicians to comment on the potential preventability of inpatient deaths immediately after they occurred resulted in an 89% response rate.[18] Another strategy would be for hospitals to carry out a rapid and efficient independent investigation into deaths to determine the potential contribution of error. A root cause analysis approach would enable local learning while using medicolegal protections to maintain anonymity. Standardized data collection and reporting processes are needed to build up an accurate national picture of the problem. Measuring the consequences of medical care on patient outcomes is an important prerequisite to creating a culture of learning from our mistakes, thereby advancing the science of safety and moving us closer towards the Institute of Medicine’s goal of creating learning health systems.[19]

Health priorities

We have estimated that medical error is the third biggest cause of death in the US and therefore requires greater attention. Medical error leading to patient death is under-recognized in many other countries, including the UK and Canada.[20][21] According to WHO, 117 countries code their mortality statistics using the ICD system as the primary indicator of health status.[22] The ICD-10 coding system has limited ability to capture most types of medical error. At best, there are only a few codes where the role of error can be inferred, such as the code for anticoagulation causing adverse effects and the code for overdose events. When a medical error results in death, both the physiological cause of the death and the related problem with delivery of care should be captured.

To achieve more reliable healthcare systems, the science of improving safety should benefit from sharing data nationally and internationally, in the same way as clinicians share research and innovation about coronary artery disease, melanoma, and influenza. Sound scientific methods, beginning with an assessment of the problem, are critical to approaching any health threat to patients. The problem of medical error should not be exempt from this scientific approach. More appropriate recognition of the role of medical error in patient death could heighten awareness and guide both collaborations and capital investments in research and prevention.

Contributors and sources: MM is the developer of the operating room checklist, the precursor to the WHO surgery checklist. He is a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins and author of Unaccountable, a book about transparency in healthcare. MD is the Rodda patient safety research fellow at Johns Hopkins and is focused on health services research. This article arose from discussions about the paucity of funding available to support quality and safety research relative to other causes of death. Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare that we have no competing interests. Provenance and peer review: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Martin A Makary is a professor, Michael Daniel is a research fellow, Department of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore

Notes

1 Moriyama IM, Loy RM, Robb-Smith AHT, et al. History of the statistical classification of diseases and causes of death. National Center for Health Statistics, 2011.

2 Deaths: final data for 2013. National vital statistics report. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/ leading-causes-of-death.htm.

3 Leape LL. Error in medicine. JAMA 1994;272:1851-7. doi:10.1001/jama.1994. 03520230061039 pmid:7503827.

4 Reason J. Human error. Cambridge University Press, 1990. doi:10.1017/ CBO9781139062367.

5 Reason JT. Understanding adverse events: the human factor. In: Vincent C, ed. Clinical risk management: enhancing patient safety. BMJ, 2001:9-30.

6 Grober ED, Bohnen JM. Defining medical error. Can J Surg 2005;48:39-44.pmid:15757035.

7 Kohn LT, Corrigan JM, Donaldson MS. To err is human: building a safer health system. National Academies Press, 1999.

8 Brennan TA, Leape LL, Laird NM, et al. Incidence of adverse events and negligence in hospitalized patients. Results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study I. N Engl J Med, 1991;324:370-6. doi:10.1056/NEJM199102073240604 pmid:1987460.

9 Thomas EJ, Studdert DM, Newhouse JP, et al. Costs of medical injuries in Utah and Colorado. Inquiry 1999;36:255-64.pmid:10570659.

10 Leape LL, Lawthers AG, Brennan TA, Johnson WG. Preventing medical injury. Qual Rev Bull 1993;19:144-9.pmid:8332330.

11 HealthGrades quality study: patient safety in American hospitals. 2004. http://www.providersedge.com/ehdocs/ehr_articles/Patient_Safety_in_American_Hospitals-2004.pdf.

12 Department of Health and Human Services. Adverse events in hospitals: national incidence among Medicare beneficiaries. 2010. http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-06-09-00090.pdf.

13 Classen D, Resar R, Griffin F, et al. Global “trigger tool” shows that adverse events in hospitals may be ten times greater than previously measured. Health Aff 2011;30:581-9doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0190.

14  Landrigan CP, Parry GJ, Bones CB, Hackbarth AD, Goldmann DA, Sharek PJ. Temporal trends in rates of patient harm resulting from medical care. N Engl J Med2010;363:2124-34. doi:10.1056/NEJMsa1004404 pmid:21105794.

15  American Hospital Association. Fast facts on US hospitals. 2015.http://www.aha.org/ research/rc/stat-studies/fast-facts.shtml.

16  James JTA. A new, evidence-based estimate of patient harms associated with hospital care. J Patient Saf 2013;9:122-8. doi:10.1097/PTS.0b013e3182948a69 pmid:23860193.

17  Ghaferi AA, Birkmeyer JD, Dimick JB. Complications, failure to rescue, and mortality with major inpatient surgery in Medicare patients. Ann Surg 2009;250:1029-34. doi:10.1097/SLA.0b013e3181bef697 pmid:19953723.

18  Provenzano A, Rohan S, Trevejo E, Burdick E, Lipsitz S, Kachalia A. Evaluating inpatient mortality: a new electronic review process that gathers information from front-line providers. BMJ Qual Saf 2015;24:31-7. doi:10.1136/bmjqs-2014-003120 pmid:25332203.

19 Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Continuous improvement and innovation in health and health care. Round table on value and science-driven health care. National Academies Press, 2011.

20 Office for National Statistics’ Death Certification Advisory Group. Guidance for doctors completing medical certificates of cause of death in England and Wales. 2010.

21 Statistics Canada. Canadian vital statistics, death database and population estimates. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/hlth36a-eng.htm.

22 World Health Organization. International classification of diseases.http://www.who.int/ classifications/icd/en/.

The original source of this article is The BMJ

Copyright © Prof. Martin Makary, Michael Daniel, and Dr. Gary G. Kohls, The BMJ, 2019

Medical Error: The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US

US Life Expectancy Drops Third Year in Row Due to Alcoholism, Drugs and Suicide Rates – Report

Source

sputniknews.com

Nov 28, 2019

US life expectancy continued to decline for the third year in a row, while midlife mortality rates increased for all population groups, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported on Tuesday.

According to JAMA, midlife mortality, which is defined as mortality for individuals between the ages of 25 and 64, had increased “across all racial groups” and was caused by “drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases.”

The increase in midlife mortality occurred from 2014 to 2017, which was the last year examined in the study.

“US life expectancy increased for most of the past 60 years, but the rate of increase slowed over time and life expectancy decreased after 2014,” the study concludes. “The implications for public health and the economy are substantial.”

The Ohio Valley, which includes parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Indiana, and northern New England were listed as being among the hardest-hit geographic areas, as they have seen a loss of manufacturing jobs in recent years, and Ohio and West Virginia have been particularly affected by the opioid-addiction epidemic.

Meanwhile, the National Center for Health Statistics said on Wednesday that the US fertility rate declined in 2018 for the fourth straight year. The 2018 fertility rate was 59.1 births for every 1,000 women of childbearing age, a record low. The decline has been ongoing since the 2008 financial crisis, with a slight uptick in 2014. Fertility rates tend to decline in periods of economic distress, but in this instance, the fertility rate has not rebounded even as the economy has recovered.

“It is hard for me to believe that the birthrate just keeps going down,” University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson told the New York Times.

AOC: “I don’t want to hear the term free stuff ever again…”

AOC: “I don’t want to hear the term free stuff ever again…”

The Daily Sheeple | Sean Walton

Published on November 27, 2019

Democrats and liberals, particularly some of the more high profiles ones running for president, tend to like the word “free.” Free tuition, courtesy of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Free health care, courtesy of Elizabeth Warren.

But Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), as the young progressive firebrand she is, is instructing her colleagues and fellow Democrats to start using a new phrase to describe their lofty goals.

“It’s not that we deserve it because it’s a handout,” Ocasio-Cortez explained at a town hall over the weekend. “People like to say, ‘Oh, this is about free stuff.’ This is not about free stuff.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

✔@AOC

Public education, libraries, & infrastructure policies (which we‘ve had before in America and elsewhere in the world!) are not “free stuff.”

They are PUBLIC GOODS.

And they are worth investing in, protecting, & advancing for all society and future generations.

Sincerely,
NY-14 https://twitter.com/freedlander/status/1198760932446539777 …

David Freedlander

✔@freedlander

From yesterday, @aoc had a Green New Deal for public housing townhall in the Bronx. “I don’t want to hear the term free stuff ever again…I am already hearing from some of these neoliberal folks who are trying to flip the script on us.”

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“These are public goods,” she continued. “They’re public goods. So I never want to hear the word or the term ‘free stuff’ ever again … because I’m tired of already hearing some of these neoliberal folks who are trying to, like, flip the script on us.”

She equates Medicare for All and free tuition with libraries and roads, suggesting they should each be easily accessible. In other words, this is just another attempt to push socialism.

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

Sean Walton is a researcher and journalist for The Daily Sheeple. Send tips to sean.walton@thedailysheeple.com.

Americans bankrupted by health care costs: 4 questions answered

Source

theconversation.com

Simon F. Haeder

Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Pennsylvania State University

November 22, 2019

Medical bankruptcy has been a talking point for many Democratic candidates as they make their individual cases for health care reform. This begs a few questions about how widespread these bankruptcies are and what causes them.

1. How big a problem is medical bankruptcy?

Medical bankruptcy, which refers to situations where individuals were forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills, loss of income due to sickness or accident, or both, is widespread in the U.S.

While the exact contribution of medical bills to the number of bankruptcies is difficult to determine, one important study prior to the Affordable Care Act found that medical debt was the single biggest contributor to bankruptcies for well over 60% of Americans.

Even today, while the overall number of bankruptcies has been cut in half over the last decade to roughly 750,000 in 2018, a recent study indicated that two-thirds of bankruptcies are connected to medical bills.

It is interesting to note that the concept of medical bankruptcy is entirely alien to Europeans.

2. How did the Affordable Care Act help?

Individuals have gained coverage via the Medicaid expansion, their parents’ insurance or the insurance marketplaces. Moreover, other ACA insurance regulations have added protections for all Americans with insurance.

3. Who’s still vulnerable?

Close to 30 million Americans remain uninsured. While a significant number are eligible for varying degrees of public support, the refusal by many states to expand their Medicaid programs creates challenges. It is important to note that while the ACA expanded coverage to millions, it did little to reign in the biggest contributor to medical bankruptcy: high medical costs.

Even Americans with insurance are not immune from the specter of medical bills. While the ACA limited deductibles and out-of-pocket payments, many insurance plans still require consumers to pay tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Similarly concerning, many Americans may incur bills ranging in the hundreds of thousands of dollars from so-called surprise bills.

Inaccurate provider directories can compound these problems, misleading patients to believe they seek care from a provider in their network.

Finally, evidence from ACA and commercial plans as well Medicare Advantage has highlighted problems with regard to “artificial local provider deserts,” situations in which providers are located in the area but excluded from the network. These situations might force patients into seeking costly out-of-network care fully aware of the potential financial consequences.

4. How do concerns about medical costs affect Americans beyond medical bankruptcy?

Half of Americans have less than US$1,000 in savings.

This lack of financial security has implications for how Americans access medical care. A study found that costs have kept 64% of Americans from seeking medical care. Millions of Americans are skipping their medications for the same reason.

Avoiding needed medical care often has implications for people’s health and well-being. Of course, it may also ultimately force them to seek care in more expensive settings, like emergency departments or at advanced stages of the disease.