Friday 29th of March 2024

media froth and COVID-19...

protection

The coronavirus has had a variety of effect on politics and media around the globe. 


In America, the battle between the left and the right is mostly spurred by a disingenuous “liberal” media, still reeling about their girl having lost to the idiot, that hate Trump. Trump’s supporters are defending his response to the infection. Few media expose the facts of these decisions. The art of misleading the public isn’t one-sided and one needs to understand that manipulation of doubts is a profession. 

Science by definition has to doubt itself, in order to be more accurate, especially in the areas of influences where statistics are our only definitions of said influences. For example, sugar can lead to obesity and/or diabetes in a statistically observed way, but not all people will become fat or become diabetic by eating sugar. Statistically, global warming is acknowledged "by 97 per cent of scientists”, but this isn’t the statistic that is important. 

The fact that is important is CO2, Methane and NOx are 100 per cent warming gases. Only idiots would dispute this. Scientists cannot. That is to say that these gases absorb certain electromagnetic waves such as light, infrared, or microwaves — as water does in a microwave oven — and by absorbing/(reacting to) this energy (mostly from the sun) they produce “heat”. Simple. They are not cooling gases. Our problem is to discover what this means in the atmosphere. Statistically, if we add more CO2 in the atmosphere, what is this going to do and by how much?

The same goes with opioids and other drugs like aspirin. How much is too much? Small quantities of poisons in the part per million can have devastating effects, including death. What is the threshold for becoming “addicted”? 

In regard to carbon, we’ve been economically addicted to it in a big way since the “industrial revolution” and we find it hard to let go, despite the evidence and the statistical prognosis that it’s going to warm the planet surface by more than we accept as “comfortable”. 

There is a book, The Triumph of Doubt,  by David Michaels that explains “the art of misleading the public”… or the industry playbook in undermining evidence-based government policies — such as smoking or asbestos only inducing cancers in a certain statistical observed high-rate, thus placing extra-stress on hospitals. But as not everyone is affected in the same way, industries will use the statistics to say that black or white — is greyish. 

In the coronavirus case, having jumped from other animals to humans, it seems to spread easily now with barely any contact between individuals. We must not reject off-hand the possibility of bio-weapon having accidentally escaped or that a natural mutation occurred by adaptation of the virus into a “new host”, while being studied. Or it could have come from wild animals being sold at markets in China. This is the official version so far...

What is coincidental is that Wuhan is the location of such bio-labs. Mind you, there are many bio-labs around the world studying same viruses and bacterias for the purpose of weaponry. 

At this stage it appears that half of the people who have been affected by the coronavirus COVID-19 have recovered fully but could still be contagious. Thus precautions and prevention is “better than cure” at this stage. Meanwhile the art of misleading the public is in full swing…

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Donald Trump sought to shift blame on to the Obama administration for a nationwide coronavirus test kit shortage.

The president on Wednesday blamed a federal agency decision during Barack Obama’s presidency, which Trump said made it harder to quickly roll out testing for the virus.

“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place in a much more accurate and rapid fashion,” he told reporters during a White House meeting with airline executives, whom he had called to discuss the economic effects of the outbreak.


read more:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/04/donald-trump-obama-administration-coronavirus

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'They're rooting for the coronavirus': Trump allies attack Democrats and the media.

The right-wing media have united in defending the president and his response, blaming the left for using the virus for their own agenda.


As the number of coronavirus cases begins to swell in the United States, conservative media outlets have been dedicating hours of airtime to slamming Democrats and mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times and CNN for being critical of Donald Trump and his response to the coronavirus.


For days, Trump’s allies in right-wing media have defended the president and his response to coronavirus, supporting the administration’s narrative that Democrats are using the coronavirus to further their own political agenda by purposefully exaggerating the severity of coronavirus just to blame Trump for it.

Peter Hegseth, a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekends, admonishedDemocrats’ criticism, saying: “They’re rooting for the coronavirus to spread. They’re rooting for it to grow. They’re rooting for the problem to get worse.”


“President Trump has said this a serious matter, and he’s not getting press coverage for that,” Trotter said on Fox News.

Liberal MSNBC host Chris Hayes said: “Really fascinating to watch rightwing media wrestle with coronavirus. The reactionary instinct … is to fearmonger about diseased foreigners, but that might hurt Trump, so they’re trying to tamp down those fears or spin some anti-Trump conspiracy.”


Read more:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/theyre-rooting-for-the-coronavirus-trump-allies-attack-democrats-and-the-media

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Coronavirus, industrial action in Melbourne and a cyber attack have been blamed for delays moving freight in and out of the port of Burnie.

Key points:

• The Maritime Union is locked in a pay dispute with Toll Shipping 
• Coronavirus has caused changes in international shipping schedules
• Tasmanian produce industry is concerned the State's economy will suffer
The backlog is causing stockpiles to build up in Tasmania as exporters struggle to get their produce to the mainland and the rest of the world.

The Maritime Union is locked in a pay dispute with Toll Shipping while the company is still recovering from a ransomware attack from several weeks ago
.
read more:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-03-05/bass-strait-freight-backlog-impacting-tasmanian-exporters/12028598

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VIRAL
Coronavirus Outbreak Reaches Pornhub as Stars Having Sex in Hazmat Suits Rise in Popularity...


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Coronavirus: The Latest Attempt To Prove Trump’s A Chump...

The TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome — Tedious (internet slang) — Totally Deliriously Screwed] press has lost all perspective when it comes to the president and frankly, it's making us all sick.

Everyone settle down. Welcome back to Propaganda and the Death of Media 101. Its, um, March 9, 2024. Now we were discussing the role of propaganda and the media in the re-election of Donald Trump by tying his leadership to a global pandemic. Propaganda in these cases seeks to diminish people’s view of a leader’s competence. The ultimate goal is to influence you to vote him out. The word “influenza” even comes from the Italian word for “influence.”


Okay class, let’s start by contrasting the media-induced panic of 2020 with 2009 under Obama. The first cases of the swine flu, H1N1, appeared in April 2009. By the time Obama finally declared a national emergency that fall, the CDC reported that 50 million Americans, one in six people, had been infected and 10,000 Americans had died.

In the early months of the disease, Obama had no secretary of health and human services or appointees in any of the department’s 19 key posts. No commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, no surgeon general, no CDC director. The vacancy at the CDC was especially important, as in the early days of the crisis, only they could test for the virus; states weren’t allowed until later. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, not a medical doctor, led the federal effort. Sound familiar?

The first real H1N1 cases appeared in Mexico, though Mexicans were never forbidden to enter the U.S. And while the CDC recommended against travel there, the primary danger cited was kidnapping for ransom. Some 66 percent of Americans, supported by the media, thought the president was protecting them even as 4,000 Americans died before a vaccine was even distributed.

The emergency proclamation it took Obama seven months to declare was issued by Trump within 30 days of the coronavirus being found abroad. He announced a temporary suspension of entry into the U.S. of foreign nationals who posed a risk for transmission (CNN warned: “the travel ban could stigmatize countries and ethnicities”). And yes, Trump encouraged everyone to wash their hands.

Anybody here remember the media freaking out over Obama’s initial response, which was also to suggest everyone wash their hands? Anyone find evidence of national panic? No. So why did the media cover essentially an identical story so very differently?


Now let’s turn to the timing in 2020. The crisis arrived when the media decided it was time for a crisis. Though the virus had dominated headlines in Asia since mid-January, American media relegated it to business news. In late February, the main “Trump” story was still Russiagate II, the faux revelation that Russians were meddling in another election. The lackluster Democratic debate at the end of February invoked Putin many times. The virus barely came up.


Then the New York Times sent up the Bat Signal the day after the debate, an article titled “
Let’s Call It Trumpvirus” (subtlety is not required for propaganda). An effort was born to blame Trump for the outbreak and essentially declare his chances of reelection done. The critical change had little to do with the virus itself, simply with the decision by the media to elevate the story from the business section to the front page. Only a handful of Americans had died and about half the known U.S. cases had arrived as evacuees from Japan (should we even have left them go there?). Of course, the numbers quickly went up, but that’s why we say “going viral” when your Instagram blows up.

Read more:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/coronavirus-the-latest-attempt-to-prove-trumps-a-chump/

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So there ...

Officially:

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, Vice President Mike Pence, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield and Surgeon General Jerome Adams look on during a news conference at the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House February 29, 2020 in Washington, DC
(see photo)…

Is this "goodenoof"? Has Trump reacted too slow? Was Obama a Superman working at lightning speed to stop previous “infections”? I'll leave it with you…

The infection from COVID-19 started in China in December (or earlier — we don’t know) and since it was first detected, dozens of million people have travelled to and fro from there. It appears that humans have not yet developed a natural resistance (immunity) to this disease. “Adaptation” is slow, but possible. Some drugs used for HIV seem to be useful... We shall see.

Meanwhile, don’t shake hands with strangers, stock up on loo-paper and tins of tuna, don’t touch anything that the public has been handling. In short don’t liv…...

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GL.

the view from kanbra...

in kanbra

 


panic and buy more toilet paper...

Irresponsible coverage of the coronavirus crisis is contributing to unnecessary fear and panic, according to a journalism expert, with public overreaction potentially a bigger risk to Australia than the virus itself.

Key points:
  • Coronavirus is the "first major disease outbreak to emerge in the era of social media"
  • Irresponsible coverage of the coronavirus is contributing to unnecessary fear and panic, says a journalism expert
  • Professor Karin Wahl-Jorgensen says some media organisations, particularly tabloid newspapers, have also contributed to spreading misinformation

 

Panic buying has resulted in anti-bacterial handwash selling out at outlets country-wide, non-perishable food items being targeted by hoarders and, inexplicably, a rush on toilet rolls that has seen many supermarket shelves stripped bare.

"Given the fact that most people who catch the disease will experience mild symptoms, the outbreak is scary primarily because of the implications for societies as collectives," said Karin Wahl-Jorgensen from Cardiff University's School of Journalism.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-06/sensationalist-coronavirus-media-...

 

 

The global march of the coronavirus has triggered a vigorous appeal from the World Health Organisation for governments to pull out “all the stops” to slow the epidemic.

It comes as the virus drained colour from India’s spring festivities, closed Bethlehem’s Nativity Church and blocked Italians from visiting elderly relatives in nursing homes.

As China, after many arduous weeks, appeared to be winning its epic costly battle against the new virus, the fight was revving up in newly affected areas of the globe, unleashing disruptions that profoundly impacted billions of people.

The UN health agency urged all countries to “push this virus back,” a call to action reinforced by figures showing there are now about 17 times as many new infections outside China as in it.

To date, the virus has infected nearly 97,000 people and killed more than 3,300.

“This is not a drill. This is not the time for giving up. This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the stops,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a daily briefing in Geneva.

“Countries have been planning for scenarios like this for decades. Now is the time to act on those plans.”

 

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2020/03/06/coronavirus-who-update/

 

 

Read also:

the source of our economic troubles: blame bill clinton, ronald reagan, obama, bush senior and junior...

 

looking for cure to statistics...

 

Meanwhile at the WSPH (Wall Street Panic Headquarters):

 


Markets nose-dived as virus outbreaks multiplied.


The stock market has swung wildly in the past week as investors have struggled to get a bead on the economic damage the fast spreading coronavirus might cause, as the number of cases continues to rise and companies step up measures to contain them.


That jarring volatility continued on Thursday, with the S&P 500 falling more than 3 percent. The index has now climbed or fallen more than 3 percent on six different days in the past two weeks, something that had not happened even once in the prior 12 months.


Shares of airlines plunged and industrial, financial and energy stocks also fell sharply. Worry about long-term growth also pushed the yield on 10-year United States Treasury notes to a new low. Because of their relative safety, government bonds are in high demand during bouts of panic over the economy.


After markets closed on Thursday, Starbucks warned that its quarterly sales in China, where it has a huge presence, would fall 50 percent compared to last year, resulting in a $400 million to $430 million hit to its revenue forecast.

News about the coronavirus’s spread has been relentless: A cruise ship being held off the coast of San Francisco has suspected links to two coronavirus cases, one of them fatal. The governor of California declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, and 18 states have infected patients.


Around the world, more than 90,000 cases and 3,000 deaths have been reported.


The jump in the number of cases in the United States has crystallized expectations that the crisis will last longer than earlier predictions suggested. And without the kind of full-court-press efforts that China staged to guard against the virus’s spread, some analysts worried that infections could expand widely.


Economists at the Institute of International Finance slashed their outlook for the global economy on Thursday, downgrading their 2020 forecast for the growth in the United States to 1.3 percent that in China to below 4 percent. The revisions could “conceivably” take global growth to 1 percent, the weakest since 2009, said the chief economist, Robin Brooks, and down from 2.6 percent last year.


“The concern is that almost nothing has been done to stop the spread of the virus in the U.S. and Europe,” said Ilya Feygin, managing director at the institutional brokerage firm WallachBeth.

 

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/stock-market-covid-19.html

 

 

 

A cure for fear...:

 

....

To sum up, according to official estimates, every day for over two weeks, fewer people have the disease, a smaller percentage of people are dying of the disease and MORE people are recovering from the disease.

Nobody in the media is talking about this.

Instead, we constantly see “coronavirus cases reach 95,000” in the headlines, without adding the corollary that 54,000 of those people are already better.

When the media aren’t ignoring the less-than-intimidating statistics, they’re trying to re-purpose them. The Atlantic recently published an article literally headlined Greece, where only 31 people have even been diagnosed (nobody has yet died).

California, ever a panic waiting to happen, is declaring a state of emergency over their 53 cases. One man has died, he was old and had “underlying health issues”. But still…emergency.

There’s money to be made in panic, of course. The IMF and World Bank, ever the harbingers or harmony and not at all opportunistic vultures, are ready to ride in on a white horse:

the International Monetary Fund and World Bank issued a joint statement saying they stood ready to help the worst affected countries by providing “emergency financing, policy advice, and technical assistance”.

Some good old “emergency finance” will help out any country that needs to protect itself from disease. Don’t worry, you’ll have it paid off in a few decades. Maybe.

In America, the same Senate so frequently asking Bernie Sanders how he intends to pay for his healthcare plans, just approved 8 BILLION dollars in emergency spending for the coronavirus. For those of you interested, that’s 56 million dollars per infected US citizen.

From what we know of bloated US government contracts, this money will be filed through lobbyists to medical supply and emergency measures companies, on whose board a surprising number of current and/or former senators sit.

In Italy, 7.5 billion Euros is being “made available” for “families and businesses” affected. The question of how much goes to families, and how much to businesses, is a key one. One the media will probably never answer.

And behind all of that, the authoritarians, mouths watering, drip poison into the public ear:

Harsh measures horrify civil libertarians, but they often save lives, especially when they are imposed in the early days.

That was in the New York Times.

Any coronavirus ‘lockdown’ would initially be voluntary

Adds The Guardian (they don’t say how long this “initial” voluntary period will last).

The Atlantic goes further, laying out plans to mitigate the “worst case scenario” covering information:

A single trusted source should inform the public what we know about COVID-19, what we don’t know, and what we’ll do to find out what we don’t know. 

Emergency powers:

Congress must provide the FDA with the authority needed to prevent and mitigate medical supply-chain disruptions. 

And quarantine:

Social distancing may become the norm, as governments and organizations close schools, halt mass transit, and cancel sports, entertainment, religious, and political gatherings. People could be quarantined in their homes, medical facilities, apartments, or dormitories.

It’s clear a certain type of person is in love with the world this lie-stoked fear will enable them to build. In some ways, they have already won. 

The public is long past accepting social media companies will workinghand-in-hand with the state to block “misinformation” and “boost” official sources.

Further, even if the virus continues to decline, the powers that be – and their talking heads – will simply claim (as many already are) that China’s total authoritarian control saved lives.

That’s the real campaign here. A power play for draconian social control in the name of public health. For now, as the Guardian helpfully reminds us, it’s voluntary. But the implied threat behind that is obvious: As things get more serious, that will change.

After all, this is just a virus – and a comparatively minor one – if we’re happy to see our governments take draconian measures to halt this…what about more significant threats? 

Why don’t we treat the climate crisis with the same urgency as coronavirus?

…asks Owen Jones in today’s Guardian. He is not alone.

Well, maybe one day soon we will Owen. Won’t that be nice.

 

 

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/05/coronavirus-the-only-thing-spreading...

 

 

 

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