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COVID Corruption News Articles

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on COVID corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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We are overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations. That's a problem.
2023-01-13, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/13/covid-pandemic-deaths-hosp...

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States is experiencing around 400 covid deaths every day. At that rate, there would be nearly 150,000 deaths a year. But are these Americans dying from covid or with covid? Robin Dretler ... the former president of Georgia's chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with covid are actually in the hospital for some other illness. "Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for covid, many are incidentally positive," he said. A gunshot victim or someone who had a heart attack, for example, could test positive for the virus, but the infection has no bearing on why they sought medical care. If these patients die, covid might get added to their death certificate. But the coronavirus was not the primary contributor to their death and often played no role at all. Earlier in the pandemic, a large proportion of covid-positive hospitalizations were due to covid. But as more people developed some immunity through vaccination or infection, fewer patients were hospitalized because of it. During some days, [infectious-disease physician Shira Doron] said, the proportion of those hospitalized because of covid were as low as 10 percent of the total number reported. Both Dretler and Doron ... want the public to see what they're seeing, because, as Doron says, "overcounting covid deaths undermines people's sense of security and the efficacy of vaccines."

Note: Further explore the troubling inflation of COVID death numbers in this thought-provoking article, which shows how factual information and good science are being labeled as a "conspiracy" within mainstream culture. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


FDA vaccine advisers 'disappointed' and 'angry' that early data about new Covid-19 booster shot wasn't presented for review last year
2023-01-11, CNN News
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/11/health/moderna-bivalent-transparency/index.html

Some vaccine advisers to the federal government say they're "disappointed" and "angry" that government scientists and the pharmaceutical company Moderna didn't present a set of infection data on the company's new Covid-19 booster during meetings last year when the advisers discussed whether the shot should be authorized and made available to the public. That data suggested the possibility that the updated booster might not be any more effective at preventing Covid-19 infections than the original shots. US taxpayers spent nearly $5 billion on the new booster, which has been given to more than 48.2 million people. "I was angry to find out that there was data that was relevant to our decision that we didn't get to see," said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, a group of external advisers that helps the FDA make vaccine decisions. The data that was not presented to the experts looked at actual infections: who caught Covid-19 and who did not. It found that 1.9% of the study participants who received the original booster became infected. Among those who got the updated bivalent vaccine ... a higher percentage, 3.2%, became infected. A 22-page FDA briefing document given to the advisers did not mention this infection data. Dr. Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products at the FDA's Office of Vaccines Research and Review, also did not mention the infection data in his presentation to the advisers.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Women said coronavirus shots affect periods. New study shows they’re right.
2022-09-27, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/27/covid-vaccine-period-late/

Not long after the rollout of coronavirus vaccines last year, women around the country began posting on social media about what they believed was a strange side effect: changes to their periods. Now, new research shows that many of the complaints were valid. A study of nearly 20,000 people around the world shows that getting vaccinated against covid can change the timing of the menstrual cycle. Vaccinated people experienced, on average, about a one-day delay in getting their periods, compared with those who hadn’t been vaccinated. The data for the study, published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, was taken from a popular period-tracking app called Natural Cycles and included people from around the world, but most were from North America, Britain and Europe. The researchers used “de-identified” data from the app to compare menstrual cycles among 14,936 participants who were vaccinated and 4,686 who were not. The data showed that vaccinated people got their periods 0.71 days late, on average, after the first dose of vaccine. However, people who received two vaccinations within one menstrual cycle experienced greater disruptions. In this group, the average increase in cycle length was four days, and 13 percent experienced a delay of eight days or more. Many people on social media have complained of longer, heavier and more-painful periods after getting vaccinated. Preliminary findings from a different study suggest that getting a coronavirus vaccine sometimes may cause heavier periods.

Note: This news article states, "men who contract COVID-19 may experience a temporary reduction in fertility." Yet this Guardian article, titled "No data linking Covid vaccines to menstrual changes, US experts say" quotes an expert claiming, "I suspect the awful people who invented this lie saw the reports of menstrual irregularities post Covid-19 vaccine online and decided to warp it for their campaign of chaos. No, the Covid-19 vaccine is not capable of exerting reproductive control via proxy. Nothing is. This is because it is a vaccine, not a spell."


3 prominent economists slam COVID lockdowns and school closures and say they should never happen again
2022-02-02, Fortune
https://fortune.com/2022/02/02/3-prominent-economists-slam-covid-lockdowns-an...

When the COVID outbreak began in early 2020, a number of studies predicted that government-imposed lockdowns would prove highly effective in preventing deaths. A widely cited epidemiological paper by researchers at Imperial College London predicted that such measures as bans on travel and shelter-in-place mandates would reduce mortality from the virus by 98%. But now, a new analysis by three prominent economists that surveys all empirical data from the academic literature measuring the relationship between death and lockdowns finds that forced restrictions didn’t work. Their conclusion: Lockdowns reduced mortalities by a minuscule 0.2%. The study defines lockdowns as “compulsory non-pharmaceutical interventions,” or what’s commonly known as NPIs. They include restrictions on travel, school closures, bans on international travel, restrictions on movement within a country’s borders, and mask mandates. The authors note that lockdowns were virtually universal. Of the 186 nations followed by the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, all but one - the Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros - imposed at least one NPI by the end of March 2020. The U.S. paid a huge price in lost jobs, businesses that never reopened, and kids deprived of going to school - not to mention the deep malaise that caused a pandemic of suicides. The world’s citizens left to their own devices would have handled the pandemic better, and ... fewer lives would perhaps have been lost with no lockdowns at all.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Controversial study says COVID lockdowns had ‘little to no effect’ on mortality rate, critics disagree
2022-02-02, New York Post
https://nypost.com/2022/02/02/covid-lockdowns-had-very-little-effect-on-morta...

Lockdowns had “little to no effect” on saving lives during the pandemic — and “should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy,” according to a controversial meta-analysis of dozens of studies. A group led by the head of Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics analyzed studies from the first surge of the pandemic to investigate widely pushed claims that stringent restrictions would limit deaths. Instead, the meta-analysis concluded that lockdowns across the US and Europe had only “reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average.” Worse, some of the studies even suggested that limiting gatherings in safe outdoor spots may have been “counterproductive and increased” the death rate, the authors noted in the non-peer-reviewed preprint. “While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the professors wrote in the journal Studies in Applied Economics. In fact, the early lockdowns “have had devastating effects,” the authors insisted. “They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the damning report insisted. “Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the authors said of the “ill-founded” measures.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


27,530 New Breakthrough COVID Cases in Mass.
2022-02-01, NBC News (Boston affiliate)
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/27530-new-breakthrough-covid-cases...

Massachusetts health officials on Tuesday reported ... 290 more deaths in people with breakthrough cases. In the last week, 27,530 new breakthrough cases - infections in people who have been vaccinated - were reported, with 555 more vaccinated people hospitalized over the period. It's a 40% drop in the rate of new breakthrough cases in Massachusetts - the previous week saw 46,092 new COVID infections in vaccinated people. On Tuesday ... there were 127 new deaths reported -- a statistic that includes three days because of the weekend -- bringing the death toll to 21,546. The seven-day average test positivity stands at 7.13%. In December, Massachusetts Department of Public Health officials released a study that found that 97% of breakthrough cases in the state did not become severely ill and rarely led to deaths, especially among young people. Massachusetts' COVID metrics, tracked on the Department of Public Health's interactive coronavirus dashboard, have been trending downward after spiking to heights not seen since previous surges, a peak thought to be driven at least in part by the omicron variant.

Note: As of Jan. 31, 2022, Massachusetts had a total of 21,546 COVID deaths as reported above. Their first COVID death was on Mar. 20, 2020. So over the 97 weeks since the start of the pandemic, they averaged 222 deaths a week. Yet in the last week of January 2022, this NBC article reports 290 breakthrough deaths. So the number of deaths among the vaccinated in that one week was greater than the average weekly number of deaths for the whole pandemic. Weren't these vaccines supposed to be 90% effective or more?


Australia's Two Largest States Trial Facial Recognition Software to Police Pandemic Rules
2021-09-16, U.S. News & World Report/Reuters
https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2021-09-16/australias-two-lar...

Australia's two most populous states are trialling facial recognition software that lets police check people are home during COVID-19 quarantine, expanding trials that have sparked controversy to the vast majority of the country's population. Little-known tech firm Genvis Pty Ltd said on a website for its software that New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, home to Sydney, Melbourne and more than half of Australia's 25 million population, were trialling its facial recognition products. The Perth, Western Australia-based startup developed the software in 2020 with WA state police to help enforce pandemic movement restrictions. South Australia state began trialling a similar, non-Genvis technology last month, sparking warnings from privacy advocates around the world about potential surveillance overreach. The involvement of New South Wales and Victoria, which have not disclosed that they are trialling facial recognition technology, may amplify those concerns. Under the system being trialled, people respond to random check-in requests by taking a 'selfie' at their designated home quarantine address. If the software, which also collects location data, does not verify the image against a "facial signature", police may follow up with a visit to the location to confirm the person's whereabouts. While the recognition technology has been used in countries like China, no other democracy has been reported as considering its use in connection with coronavirus containment procedures.

Note: On Sept. 21st, thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest policies like this in Melbourne alone, as shown in this revealing video. The police are responding almost like they are at war, as show in this video. Yet the major media outside of Australia are largely ignoring all of this, while the Australian press is highly biased against the protesters. Are we moving towards a police state? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


The Flimsy Evidence Behind the CDC's Push to Vaccinate Children
2021-07-19, Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-covid-19-coronavirus-vaccine-side-effects-ho...

A tremendous number of government and private policies affecting kids are based on one number: 335. That is how many children under 18 have died with a Covid diagnosis code in their medical record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn't researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition. Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15. I've written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal. Johns Hopkins worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data. Our report found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition. The National Education Association has been debating whether to urge schools to require vaccination before returning to school in person. How can they or anyone debate the issue without the right data? Meanwhile ... Alameda County, Calif., reduced its Covid death toll by 25%. after state public-health officials insisted that deaths be attributed to Covid only if the virus was a direct or contributing factor.

Note: Alameda County corrected their COVID death figures, but how many other counties throughout the US did not? If you can't access this article on the WSJ website, go to this webpage. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Santa Clara County Revises Official COVID-19 Death Toll Down by 22 Percent
2021-07-02, CBS (San Francisco affiliate)
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/07/02/santa-clara-county-revises-covid...

Santa Clara County health leaders announced a drop in its COVID-19 death toll by nearly a quarter after it refined its approach in reporting the data. The county reported that it had reviewed each COVID-19 fatality and was only counting those whose cause of death was from the virus and not those who tested positive for COVID-19 at the time of death but did not necessarily die from the virus. The new approach meant that the death toll dropped by 22%, specifically from 2,201 to 1,696 deaths. “It is important to go back and do this accounting to see if COVID was actually the cause of death,” said ... Infectious Disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi. “I think that transparent communication is an upside, I mean, in the sense that it’s true that if we did this across the nation, it would bring our death rate lower. A downside of that, could be that people will say, ‘Well, it wasn’t as serious as you said.'” The refined approach in Santa Clara County comes as county officials try to figure out the true impact of the virus on the community. Last month, Alameda County health leaders refined their approach to reporting COVID-19 deaths as well and also registered a drop in that county’s death toll by about a quarter. “In the midst of everything COVID people were sort of putting down that cause of death as COVID,” Gandhi said. “It is important to go back and do this accounting to see if COVID was actually the cause of death.” Gandhi believes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may soon ask all counties to do the same.

Note: Read an informative article showing how COVID numbers have been inflated in many ways. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Are Covid Vaccines Riskier Than Advertised?
2021-06-22, Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-covid-vaccines-riskier-than-advertised-11624...

One remarkable aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic has been how often unpopular scientific ideas, from the lab-leak theory to the efficacy of masks, were initially dismissed, even ridiculed, only to resurface later. Another reversal in thinking may be imminent. Some scientists have raised concerns that the safety risks of Covid-19 vaccines have been underestimated. But the politics of vaccination has relegated their concerns to the outskirts of scientific thinking. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or Vaers ... is a database that allows Americans to document adverse events that occur after receiving a vaccine. Vaers data for Covid-19 vaccines shows an interesting pattern. Among the 310 million Covid-19 vaccines administered, several adverse events are reported at high rates in the days immediately following vaccination, then drop sharply thereafter. The silence around these potential signals of harm reflects the policy surrounding Covid-19 vaccines. The stigma of such concerns is bad for scientific integrity and could harm patients. Four serious adverse events follow this arc, according to data directly from Vaers: low platelet count (thrombocytopenia); non-infectious myocarditis or inflammation of the heart, especially in those under 30; deep vein thrombosis. The implication is that the risks of a Covid-19 vaccine may outweigh the benefits for some low-risk populations, such as children, young adults, and people who have recovered from Covid-19.

Note: This article is also available here. Read a revealing article on how the WHO is flip flopping on the safety of vaccines for children. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


Pfizer Reaps Hundreds of Millions in Profits From Covid Vaccine
2021-05-04, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/business/pfizer-covid-vaccine-profits.html

Last year, racing to develop a vaccine in record time, Pfizer made a big decision: Unlike several rival manufacturers, which vowed to forgo profits on their shots during the Covid-19 pandemic, Pfizer planned to profit on its vaccine. On Tuesday, the company announced just how much money the shot is generating. The vaccine brought in $3.5 billion in revenue in the first three months of this year, nearly a quarter of its total revenue, Pfizer reported. The vaccine was, far and away, Pfizer's biggest source of revenue. The company did not disclose the profits it derived from the vaccine, but it reiterated its previous prediction that its profit margins on the vaccine would be in the high 20 percent range. That would translate into roughly $900 million in pretax vaccine profits in the first quarter. The company's vaccine is disproportionately reaching the world's rich – an outcome, so far at least, at odds with its chief executive's pledge to ensure that poorer countries "have the same access as the rest of the world" to a vaccine that is highly effective at preventing Covid-19. As of mid-April, wealthy countries had secured more than 87 percent of the more than 700 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines dispensed worldwide, while poor countries had received only 0.2 percent. Pfizer has kept the profitability of its vaccine sales opaque. The United States, for example, is paying $19.50 for each Pfizer dose. Israel agreed to pay Pfizer about $30 per dose.

Note: If Pfizer is truly concerned about global health, why are they reaping such huge profits when other companies were willing to forgo profits. And why are they not helping the economically disadvantaged countries? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.


AstraZeneca accused of cherry-picking vaccine study data
2021-03-23, ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/us-astrazeneca-outdated-info-vaccin...

AstraZeneca may have included "outdated information" in touting the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine in a U.S. study, federal health officials said Tuesday in an unusual public rift that could further erode confidence in the shot. In an extraordinary rebuke, just hours after AstraZeneca on Monday announced its vaccine worked well in the U.S. study, an independent panel that oversees the study scolded the company for cherry-picking data, according to a senior administration official. The panel wrote to AstraZeneca and U.S. health leaders that it was concerned the company chose to use data that was outdated and potentially misleading instead of the most recent and complete findings. The NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the incident "really is what you call an unforced error" and that he expects the discrepancy to be straightened out. But that nitty-gritty seldom is seen by the public, something now exposed by the extraordinary microscope being applied to development of the world's COVID-19 vaccines. The vaccine is used widely in Britain, across the European continent and in other countries, but its rollout was troubled by inconsistent study reports about its effectiveness, and then last week a scare about blood clots that had some countries temporarily pausing inoculations. Company executives refused repeated requests from reporters to provide a breakdown of the 141 COVID-19 cases it was using to make the case for the shot's effectiveness.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.


US suffers sharpest rise in poverty rate in more than 50 years
2021-01-26, Chicago Tribune
https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-covid-19-poverty-rate-20210126...

The end of 2020 brought the sharpest rise in the U.S. poverty rate since the 1960s, according to a new study. Economists Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame found that the poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points during the latter half of 2020 as the U.S. continued to suffer the economic impacts of COVID-19. That percentage-point rise is nearly double the largest annual increase in poverty since the 1960s. This means an additional 8 million people nationwide are now considered poor. Moreover, the poverty rate for Black Americans is estimated to have jumped by 5.4 percentage points, or by 2.4 million individuals. The scholars’ findings, released Monday, put the rate at 11.8% in December. While poverty is down from readings of more than 15% a decade earlier, the new estimates suggest that the annual Census Bureau tally due in September will be higher than the last official, pre-pandemic level of 10.5% in 2019. Black Americans were more than twice as likely to be poor than their white counterparts in December — an improvement from the summer months when they were nearly three times more apt to live in poverty — but an increase from before the pandemic, when the differential was under two. Despite improvements in the overall poverty rate since the middle of the 20th century, Black Americans had been about three times as likely to be poor as white Americans for most of the past 60 years.

Note: Meanwhile, as the Washington Post reported on Jan. 1, 2021, "billionaires as a class have added about $1 trillion to their total net worth since the pandemic began." The CDC also reports overdose deaths hit a record high last year. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and income inequality from reliable major media sources.


World’s richest men added billions to their fortunes last year as others struggled
2021-01-01, Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/01/bezos-musk-wealth-pandemic/

The pandemic has forced untold hardships onto many Americans, with tens of millions of families now reporting that they don’t have enough to eat and millions more out of work on account of layoffs and lockdowns. America’s wealthiest, on the other hand, had a very different kind of year: Billionaires as a class have added about $1 trillion to their total net worth since the pandemic began. And roughly one-fifth of that haul flowed into the pockets of just two men: Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon (and owner of The Washington Post), and Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame. Musk has quintupled his net worth since January, according to estimates put together by Bloomberg, adding $132 billion to his wealth and vaulting him to the No. 2 spot among the world’s richest with a fortune of about $159 billion. Bezos’s wealth has grown by roughly $70 billion over the same period, putting his net worth estimate at roughly $186 billion as the year came to an end. Such a rapid accumulation of individual wealth hasn’t happened in the United States since the time of the Rockefellers and Carnegies a century ago, and we as a society are only just beginning to grapple with the ethical implications. What does it mean, for instance, that two men amassed enough wealth this year to end all hunger in America (with a price tag of $25 billion) eight times over? Or that the $200 billion accumulated by Bezos and Musk is greater than the amount of coronavirus relief allocated to state and local governments in the Cares Act?

Note: The new richest man in Asia reached his position partially through making vaccines for the coronavirus. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Tech’s top seven companies added $3.4 trillion in value in 2020
2020-12-31, CNBC News
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/31/techs-top-seven-companies-added-3point4-trill...

Tech’s biggest companies just wrapped up a huge year. The seven most valuable U.S. technology companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia — picked up a combined $3.4 trillion in market cap in 2020, powering through a global pandemic and broader economic crisis. Between continued optimism over iPhone sales, Microsoft’s growing Teams collaboration product, Amazon’s ongoing control of e-commerce and the strength of Google and Facebook’s online ad duopoly, Big Tech was neither slowed by Covid-19 nor the rising number of investigations into its dominance. By far the biggest increase in market cap went to Apple, which jumped by almost $1 trillion in value, thanks to its stock climbing 81%. Amazon, which benefited from growth in its consumer and cloud-computing business, rose by $710 billion. Microsoft picked up $480 billion, while Alphabet gained $268 billion and Facebook $193 billion. The gains are clearly reflected in the ranks of the richest people. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person in the world, followed by Tesla’s Elon Musk and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is fifth. Also in the top 10 are Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Microsoft ex-CEO Steve Ballmer.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


'It is literally horrific': World Food Programme, Nobel Peace Prize winner, fights growing hunger emergency
2020-10-09, ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/International/literally-horrific-world-food-programme-...

David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Programme, knows the existence of his organization is both a blessing and a curse: it helps so many, but that means many are suffering. On Friday, that World Food Programme's fight against hunger ... was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. "[COVID-19] comes on top of what you already thought was a worst-case scenario. It is literally horrific," Beasley told ABC News. At the beginning of this year, 135 million people already faced starvation from manmade conflict and climate extremes, Beasley said. Now, 270 million people are on the brink of starvation. "We've got a vaccine against starvation. It's called food," said Beasley. The award comes with the equivalent of a $1.1 million U.S. cash prize and a gold medal to be handed out at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10. "The economies of the world's strongest nations on Earth are struggling. We are not going to have the money we need next year. And not only are the resources going to go down, but the needs are going to be going up," said Beasley. Established in 1962, the United Nations World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian organization that delivers food assistance in emergencies and works with communities to improve nutrition and resilience, according to the website. The World Food Programme assisted 97 million people in 88 counties in 2019 alone.

Note: As of early October 2020, 1.5 million people had reportedly died from the virus, yet 135 million had been pushed to "the brink of starvation" not by the virus, but by the lockdown measures. Are the consequences of the lockdown policies worse than the consequences of the virus itself? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Sweden's approach to COVID-19 may have something to offer
2020-09-20, MSN
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/swedens-approach-to-covid-19-may-ha...

More states and countries are coming to the conclusion that COVID-19 lockdowns like those in China and New Zealand are overly restrictive and too costly. People in democracies will simply not tolerate them. Sweden has "flattened the curve" of COVID-19 without ordering its citizens to stay inside. It has kept open its shops, schools for those under 16, and restaurants and bars. Its health authorities trusted its citizens to wash their hands and social distance without imposing laws. Anders Tegnell, the Swedish epidemiologist [said,] "We see no point in wearing a face mask." Swedish health authorities ... pride themselves on "following the science" and are highly respected. Sweden made a mistake ... when it, like the state of New York, sent recovering patients back to their nursing homes too soon (in the U.S., nursing home residents [and staff] account for ... 45% of COVID-19 fatalities). [Yet Swedish] schools stayed open with little risk to students. Studies from Sweden and the Netherlands ... have found teachers at no greater risk than the overall population. Sweden is approaching record lows while its European neighbors are seeing increasing rates. Sweden had about 30,000 new cases in June ... and was down to 7,000 new cases in August. During this time, cases took off in Spain, France and Germany. Sweden's current rate of positive tests is lower than those in Norway and Denmark. [Its] economy will contract by about 4.6%. In contrast, the European Union economy is expected to contract 11.9%. The U.S. economy contracted at a 32.9% annual rate between April and June. New Zealand's GDP contracted by 13.8% in the April-June period and has entered a recession, which Sweden has not.

Note: Explore a revealing article in the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) for more on Sweden's unusual success. Read a balanced, informative New York Times article written by a Swede about her experience there. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Neil Ferguson, the scientist who convinced Boris Johnson of UK coronavirus lockdown, criticised in past for flawed research
2020-03-28, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/28/neil-ferguson-scientist-convinced...

Professor Neil Ferguson ... produced a paper predicting that Britain was on course to lose 250,000 people during the coronavirus epidemic. His research is said to have convinced Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors to introduce the lockdown. Ferguson has been criticised in the past for making predictions based on allegedly faulty assumptions which nevertheless shaped government strategies. He was behind disputed research that sparked the mass culling of farm animals during the 2001 epidemic of foot and mouth disease ... which ultimately led to the deaths of more than six million cattle, sheep and pigs. The cost to the economy was later estimated at 10 billion. A 2011 paper ... found that the government ordered the destruction of millions of animals because of "severely flawed" modelling. And separately he also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or 'mad cow disease'). [One] report stated: "The mathematical models were, at best, crude estimations." It also described a febrile atmosphere – reminiscent of recent weeks – and claimed that this allowed mathematical modellers to shape government policy. To date there have been fewer than 200 deaths from the human form of BSE. Scientists warned ... about the dangers in making sweeping political judgments based on mathematical modelling which may be flawed. Michael Thrusfield, professor of veterinary epidemiology ... described his sense of "deja vu" when he read Mr Ferguson's Imperial College paper on coronavirus. Others have directly criticised the methodology employed by Ferguson and his team in their coronavirus study.

Note: This informative article shows predictions of 40,000 dead in Sweden by early May using Ferguson's model were way off. As of May 10th, Sweden had registered 3,225 deaths. A review of his deeply flawed code is available here. This MSN article further reveals that Ferguson blatantly violated his own restrictions by seeing a married lover shortly after the UK lockdown was instituted. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.


Big Pharma Prepares to Profit From the Coronavirus
2020-03-13, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/13/big-pharma-drug-pricing-coronavirus-profits/

As the new Coronavirus spreads illness, death, and catastrophe around the world, virtually no economic sector has been spared from harm. Yet amid the mayhem ... one industry is not only surviving, it is profiting handsomely. “Pharmaceutical companies view Covid-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity,” said Gerald Posner, author of “Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America.” The world needs ... treatments and vaccines and, in the U.S., tests. Dozens of companies are now vying to make them. The ability to make money off of pharmaceuticals is already uniquely large in the U.S., which lacks the basic price controls other countries have, giving drug companies more freedom over setting prices for their products than anywhere else in the world. During the current crisis, pharmaceutical makers may have even more leeway than usual because of language industry lobbyists inserted into an $8.3 billion coronavirus spending package, passed last week, to maximize their profits from the pandemic. Initially, some lawmakers had tried to ensure that the federal government would limit how much pharmaceutical companies could reap from vaccines and treatments for the new coronavirus that they developed with the use of public funding. But many Republicans opposed adding language to the bill that would restrict the industry’s ability to profit, arguing that it would stifle research and innovation. The final aid package not only omitted language that would have limited drug makers’ intellectual property rights, it specifically prohibited the federal government from taking any action if it has concerns that the treatments or vaccines developed with public funds are priced too high.

Note: For glaring examples of how big Pharma and select public officials made money hand over fist during previous virus scares, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the avian and swine flu from reliable major media sources.


Coronavirus Brings China's Surveillance State Out of the Shadows
2020-02-07, New York Times/Reuters
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/02/07/technology/07reuters-china-health-...

When the man from Hangzhou returned home from a business trip, the local police got in touch. They had tracked his car by his license plate in nearby Wenzhou, which has had a spate of coronavirus cases. Stay indoors for two weeks, they requested. After around 12 days, he was bored and went out early. This time, not only did the police contact him, so did his boss. He had been spotted ... by a camera with facial recognition technology, and the authorities had alerted his company as a warning. I was a bit shocked by the ability and efficiency of the mass surveillance network. They can basically trace our movements ... at any time and any place, said the man, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions. Chinese have long been aware that they are tracked by the world's most sophisticated system of electronic surveillance. The coronavirus emergency has brought some of that technology out of the shadows, providing the authorities with a justification for sweeping methods of high tech social control. Artificial intelligence and security camera companies boast that their systems can scan the streets for people with even low-grade fevers, recognize their faces even if they are wearing masks and report them to the authorities. If a coronavirus patient boards a train, the railway's "real name" system can provide a list of people sitting nearby. Mobile phone apps can tell users if they have been on a flight or a train with a known coronavirus carrier, and maps can show them ... where infected patients live.

Note: The New York Times strangely removed this article. Yet it is also available here. Is there something they don't want us to know? Read an excellent article showing how this virus scare is being used to test China's intense surveillance technologies in very disturbing ways. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.


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