Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro has appeared on MSNBC news to push dangerous anti-Chinese propaganda in a transparent attempt to divert the attention of US citizens away from the latest consequences of Donald Trump’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic – a disaster behind only that of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and, relative to the size of the UK’s population, Boris Johnson.
Navarro launched into an astonishing diatribe in which he claimed the Chinese government had ‘spawned’ the coronavirus before hiding it – and then intentionally sending hundreds of thousands of infected Chinese citizens around the world to ‘seed’ other countries with it:
Navarros may only be following his boss’s line but even aside from the risk of escalating tensions with China, his propaganda will fuel racist attacks around the world on people of Chinese ethnicity – attacks that had already increased massively because of anti-Chinese rhetoric of Trump and others:
Navarro’s claim is not only insanely dangerous, it flies in the face of the latest facts. The presence of the virus in France has been confirmed, at the very latest, in early December. It is believed to have been in Italy in November – and has been found in at least one Spanish waste-water sample dating from March 2019, months before it was recognised in China.
In addition, some in the US and elsewhere suspect that a July 2019 ‘respiratory outbreak‘ in a retirement community in Fairfax, VA – which hospitalised a third of the 54 who fell ill at the same time with “respiratory symptoms ranging from upper respiratory symptoms (cough) to pneumonia” and killed at least two of them – may have been an early manifestation of the virus.
This would be in line with the 800 ‘excess deaths’ a week – accompanied by abnormally high intensive care admissions for pneumonia – reported in the UK last October to December, which some think may have been the real ‘first wave’ of the UK epidemic and went unrecognised or without action by Johnson’s government.
Wherever and whenever the coronavirus in fact arose, Mr Navarro’s comments reflect the desperation of the further end of the US right to divert attention from Trump’s appalling reaction to the pandemic – a desperation that endangers the world.
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The waste water report from Spain on the Mar 2019 sample is what I find hardest to reconcile. Water authorities elsewhere in Spain and in other countries ought to have reported similar findings by now, which would allow the historic spread to be tracked.
Now I’m wondering if maybe CV’s been in populations in a relatively mild (CV18?) form and mutated sometime in late 2019 from that to what we see today I’ve no idea. Whether that might also account for the ‘asymptomatic positive tests’ I don’t know. I don’t know either whether exposure to a milder earlier form would inoculate against the mutated form.
If that were the case finding that earlier form of the virus might be useful.
Useful points David.
I wonder if any follow up investigations has been organised yet , be interesting to see the results.
What a hateful, racist excuse for a man. Fostering racism in his own country in order to divert attention from the farce of Trump’s handling of the Pandemic! Give him an injection of disinfectant!
Has starmer expressed his concurrence this view yet, and if not why not?
It isn’t criticism of israel, so it must get his ok.
As Rudyard Kipling said in a line from his poem IF, “ If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…”. It refreshing to see people who have to deal with Covid19 not losing theirs.
Expert opinions (selection)
Stanford professor John Ioannidis explains in an interview with CNN that Covid19 is a “widespread and mild disease” comparable to influenza (flu) for the general population, while patients in nursing homes and hospitals should receive extra protection.
Stanford professor Scott Atlas explains in an interview with CNN that “the idea of having to stop Covid19 has created a catastrophic health care situation”. Professor Atlas says that the disease is “generally mild” and that irrational fears had been created, adding that there is “absolutely no reason” for extensive testing in the general population, which is only necessary in hospitals and nursing homes.
The British chief medical officer Dr. Chris Whitty explained in a lecture that Covid19 posed “no danger to the vast majority of the population”. Most people do not or only mildly fall ill with it, and even with those who are seriously ill, the chances of recovery are good.
Stanford professor and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Michael Levitt explains in a new article that the lockdowns did not save lives but cost many. A “panic virus” has spread among politicians worldwide, professor Levitt said.
Professor Karel Sikora of the University of Buckingham argued in an interview that ultimately, fear will “kill a lot more people than the virus,” including untreated heart and cancer patients. Schools should be opened quickly and masks should remain an individual decision because their benefits have not been proven. One should go back to an “old normal” and not a “new normal”. (Note: The video with Professor Sikora was temporarily deleted by YouTube and only restored after protests).
Professor Yoram Lass, former director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Health, argues that the lockdown measures have been “totally disproportionate” and are an acute threat to hundreds of millions of people. Covid19 is “comparable to a flu epidemic” and would never have justified such political destruction of livelihoods. People have been intimidated and “brainwashed”.
Leading German virologist Prof. Hendrik Streeck criticized the lockdown and explained that “all experts are returning to the assessment of the early days” that Covid-19 “should not be trivialized, but also should not be dramatized”. The reason for the declining risk assessment was the “enormous number of infections that remained without symptoms”. Streeck does not expect any excess mortality in Germany by the end of the year, as the average age of death is “rather above life expectancy”, and he doesn’t consider “corona apps” and widespread corona tests to be useful. He also criticized the general use of masks, saying that these are a “wonderful breeding ground for bacteria and fungi”. Schools should be reopened as soon.
A senior physician for intensive medicine at the University Hospital Zurich, who cared for critical Covid 19 patients, criticized in a widely shared video the “scaremongering” associated with the disease. For the vast majority of all people there is no significant risk of death, the numbers are comparable overall to earlier flu waves. Risk groups could be protected in a targeted manner, while the lockdown only prevents the immunization of the general population. In addition, people die due to the medical undersupply in other areas. The medical and social damage has long been greater than the benefits. The partially mandatory mouth protection for schoolchildren also has “no medical sense and benefit” and places a heavy burden on the children. The “daily counting” of the cases is nonsensical and only spreads fear. The counterproductive measures must be stopped quickly.Swiss media tried to put pressure on the Zurich University Hospital after the video had been widely distributed. The doctor has since removed the original video.
The Swiss chief physician for infectiology, Dr. Pietro Vernazza, using current case studies as an example, explains that fever measurements and contact tracing are not useful due to the often symptom-free course and easy transmission of Covid19.
The well-known Swiss immunologist Dr. Beda Stadler explains in an article that Covid19 is a “very selective disease” and only poses a real risk for very few people. The media, on the other hand, focused on the few atypical individual cases that exist with every illness. Many scientists had focused too much on their models and too little on reality. The planned contact tracing is medically “senseless” and spreads “only panic”.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
Here is an alternative view from the US.
Florida: Despite being home to many senior citizens, Florida introduced rather few restrictions and even the popular beaches were reopened early, which was heavily criticized by many US media. Nevertheless, Florida did very well compared to other states and recently had around 2300 deaths in a population of 21 million, which corresponds to Germany’s low mortality.
In an interview, the governor explained that contrary to the media, he realized early on based on the figures from South Korea and Italy that Covid19 was only dangerous for a very small risk group and he therefore protected the nursing homes as best as possible. In terms of prevention, nursing homes were even more important than the clinics themselves, and this strategy had proven itself. At the end of May, the governor announced that summer camps and youth activities could be carried out without restrictions.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
I’m not sure the driver of this is simple ‘racism’. It’s (a) diversionary riding on the back of (b) international power politics – in which latter game the PRC is no blithe innocent.
In terms of the Covid myth in this country, a hospital doctor confirms that the Leicester fiasco is based on no evidence worth the name, confirming the picture gleaned from testing data within the hospital environment, which is far more reliable than the spiv data of ‘Pillar 2’. Note that medical staff have been banned from speaking to the press. No wonder. :
“By May, positive cases averaged around 10 a day and deaths were continuing to fall. In late May, we started swabbing every single admission to the hospitals, and this is where things get interesting. I work in a department that isn’t respiratory medicine. This means that the patients who are in our area are there for other health issues that are not caused by COVID-19 (think surgery or mental health). Of those we swabbed, just 1% tested positive and all of them were asymptomatic. That rate has been steady since May 23rd. I believe that our patients are representative of the rate in the UK population and, for what it’s worth, it’s the same story in Manchester, Leeds and Guildford, where I’ve been comparing notes with colleagues. Unpublished data shared on an open forum from Leeds, Manchester, Sussex also confirms this – 1%, all asymptomatic when testing positive. These patients have, almost without exception, not developed any symptoms, although some have had household members with a cough.
The point of “Lockdown” has always been to ‘flatten the curve’ in order to ‘Protect the NHS’. Given we were coping on March 31st, when we had nearly ten times the number of positive cases in hospitals, with relatively little access to testing, we are certainly coping now. The issue and alleged cause of the “Local Lockdown” is our Pillar 2 numbers. These are the community tests outsourced to private companies. There is no guarantee that these tests are all taken from different people (unlike the Pillar 1 data, which is cross checked against a unique patient identifier). In fact, the Government accepts that the number of Pillar 2 cases is not the same as the number of people with COVID-19 because Pillar 2 data includes people who’ve been tested more than once – often because they have to re-test before they’re allowed back to work.”
Note that 1% figure and the definition of what ‘case’ means in real world terms. It confirms what an intelligent appraisal of data would suggest.
Sorry Leicester – Ever been had?
‘The Yellow Peril Returns!’……..& Body-Bag-Bojo ‘seeds’ Care Homes. When will there be an investigation & what will be its terms of reference? The Truth is out there….but will we be told? Come on down ‘Forensic’ Starmer, Opportunity Knocks!
On a 1% rate of virus presence (mainly non-symptomatic and non-lethal) in the community????
As CPS boss he never once took a line that showed him to be attracted to any opportunity to do the right thing, as trilatcomm-invitee boss of Labour why would he change?
He’s a machine politician with dead eyes.
Apparently… you’re not a real virus denier until you’ve burned down a 5G tower … coz they’re related, see? All part of the same Bill Gates plot.
The expert on TV just now was using big words so I wasn’t clear on whether 5G causes coronavirus or coronavirus causes 5G but either way it’s going to kill us all.
Fortunately, there are still some journalists, medical researchers, Professors, virologists etc. who have not bought into fairy tales.
The role of nursing homes
Nursing homes played an absolute key role in the Covid 19 pandemic. In most countries, one to two thirds of all Covid19 deaths occurred in nursing homes, and up to 80% in Canada and some US states. Even in Sweden, which did not impose a lockdown, 75% of deaths occurred in nursing facilities.
It is all the more worrying that some authorities have obliged their nursing homes to admit Covid patients from the clinics, which has almost always resulted in numerous new infections and deaths. This happened in northern Italy, England and the heavily affected US states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
It is also known from northern Italy that the widespread fear of the virus and the announced lockdown of the country led to the flight of the predominantly Eastern European nurses, which further accelerated the breakdown of elderly care.
In the United States, at least 42% of all Covid19 deaths are accounted for by 0.6% of the population living in nursing homes. Nursing homes require targeted protection and do not benefit from a general lockdown of society as a whole.
It is well known that even common corona viruses (cold viruses) can be very dangerous for people in nursing homes. Stanford professor John Ioannidis pointed out already in mid-March that coronaviruses may have a case mortality rate of up to 8% in nursing homes.
In addition, it is often not clear whether these people really died from Covid-19 or from weeks of stress and total isolation. For example, there were approximately 30,000 additional deaths in English nursing homes, but in only 10,000 cases, Covid19 is noted on the death certificate.
In April alone, around 10,000 additional dementia patients without corona infection died in England and Wales due to weeks of isolation. Investigations into the situation in nursing homes have been initiated or requested in several countries.
The role of hospitals
The second central factor regarding infections and deaths, in addition to the nursing homes, are the hospitals themselves. A case study in Wuhan already showed that around 41% of hospitalized Covid patients had in fact contracted Covid in the hospital itself.
Contagion in hospitals also played a decisive role in northern Italy, Spain, England and other regions that were severely affected, meaning that the clinics themselves became the main place of transmission of Covid19 to already weakened people (so-called nosocomial infection) – an issue that had already been observed during the SARS outbreak from 2003.
Based on current knowledge, those countries that managed to avoid outbreaks of infection in nursing homes and hospitals had comparatively few deaths. The general lockdown of society, however, played no role or even a counterproductive role (see below).
An additional factor is the sometimes fatal medical mistreatment of Covid patients with aggressive drugs or invasive ventilation, the risks of which experts have been warning about for months. In the US, for example, there have been questionable financial incentives to connect Covid patients to ventilators, a practice that is now being investigated in several states.
The clinical picture of Covid-19
The well-known Hamburg medical examiner Professor Klaus Püschel presented his study (English) on the first 12 of 190 detailed corona autopsies at a press conference (German).
Professor Püschel again emphasized that Covid-19 “is not nearly as threatening as was initially suspected”. The danger was “too much influenced by media images”. The media had focused on severe individual cases and fueled panic with “completely wrong messages”. Covid-19 is not a “killer virus” and the call for new medicine or vaccines is “driven by fear, not facts.”
The specific cause of death of the examined cases was pneumonia, but in about 50% of the cases there were venous thrombosis in the legs, which can lead to fatal pulmonary embolism. The kidneys and heart muscle were also partially affected. Professor Püschel therefore recommends the preventive administration of blood-thinning medication for serious Covid cases.
With regard to thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, Professor Püschel – like other experts before – emphasized that a “lockdown” with quarantine at home was “exactly the wrong measure”, since the lack of exercise itself promotes thrombosis. Indeed, US specialists have already been warning of this risk after even Covid-negative people developed unexpected thrombosis.
Many media again misinterpreted the autopsy findings and spoke of Covid-19 as a particularly dangerous disease which, unlike influenza, is said to lead to thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. This is not true, however: it has been known for 50 years that even severe influenza can greatly increase the risk of thrombosis and embolism and can affect the heart muscle and other organs. Even the recommendation regarding preventive blood thinner for severe influenza has been around for 50 years already.
Children and schools
Numerous studies have now shown that children hardly get Covid19 and do not or hardly transmit the virus, which was already known from the 2003 SARS outbreak. There was therefore no medical reason for the closure of schools at any time.
Accordingly, all those countries that reopened their schools in May saw no increase in cases of infection. Countries like Sweden, which never closed their primary schools anyway, had no problems with this either.
A preprint study by the German virologist Christian Drosten argued that the risk of infection from children is comparable to adults and schools should therefore remain closed. However, several researchers demonstrated methodological errors in the study. Drosten subsequently withdrew the recommendation regarding school closures.
In some schools, for example in France and Israel, alleged “corona outbreaks” are said to have occurred. However, it is likely that these are transmissions from teachers to schoolchildren that, to their dismay, are regularly tested, although they hardly show any symptoms and are themselves hardly or not at all contagious.
The British Kawasaki Disease Foundation again criticized the dubious and lurid media coverage of Kawasaki disease. In fact, there has been no significant increase in Kawasaki cases and no proven association with Covid-19. General inflammatory reactions in individual children are also known from other viral infections, but the number of cases reported so far is extremely low.
German medical associations have also given the all-clear: Covid-19 is imperceptible or very mild in almost all children. Schools and daycare centers should therefore be opened immediately and without restrictions, ie there is no need for small groups, distance rules or masks.
https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/