21 March 2020

Coronavirus Daily Information Update: 20 March 2020

HERE ARE TODAY'S links  to what seem the most reliably informative and therefore (presumably) useful Internet reports on the rapidly spreading Coronavirus pandemic  (a bit late, with apologies, due to the sheer volume of today's news): 

From the Associated Press:

Trump uses daily coronavirus briefing to attack reporter
Predictable. The real question we should be asking is whether the federal union can survive the Trump/Pence Regime's malicious destructiveness.

Trump vs Fauci: President and doctor spar over unproven drug
Donald the Dissembler versus scientific truth-telling. 
Trump contradicts Fauci, slams reporter over drug
Audiovisual report of the preceding story. More of AP's daily exposure of the Regime's innumerable lies.

Parents, police struggle to herd the young in virus outbreak
Cheering the virus as "Boomer Remover," U.S. youth defiantly party-on in the face of global disaster. This is an especially infuriating demonstration of  the carefully-conditioned Ayn Rand moral imbecility and self-obsession imposed to guarantee our Neoliberal Masters that  most USian youth -- robbed from birth of the ability to think logically -- will remain hopelessly subjugated, never able to transcend Neoliberal anti-intellectualism even enough to become effective reformers, much less revolutionaries. (Yes, that's the same sort of propaganda-induced blindness that kept the Germans fanatically faithful to Hitler and the Nazis even as the Red Army overran Berlin.)


The drive-in, relic of yesterday, finds itself suited to now
One of the innumerable examples we are likely to witness in the coming months of the renewed relevance of old technologies.

Returning troops denied water, bathrooms under quarantine
The truth of our Masters' regard for those of us they regard as cannon-fodder.

US virus testing faces new headwind: Lab supply shortages
One of today's many examples of Neoliberalism as genocide. 

Imports of medical supplies plummet as demand in US soars
Another of today's many examples of Neoliberalism as genocide.

Europeans sing health workers' praises nightly from windows
A normal response from civilized people -- with a selflessness unlikely to be found anywhere in the vindictively self-obsessed United States. 

From other sources:


Though this report was censored by WaPo's paywall only minutes after it was posted as part of the publication's free daily virus report, it is re-posted here as more evidence our Neoliberal Masters knew of the coronavirus pandemic well before it happened -- further substantiation (though not conclusive proof) of both the Chinese claim the virus originated from the U.S. war machine and the more general suspicion our Masters are, in keeping with their shock doctrine,  weaponizing the pandemic to rid the empire of its "surplus" Working Families.

Senators use advance coronavirus knowledge to enrich selves; hospitals becoming desperate
Here are most of the damning truths hidden behind the paywalled WaPo report above. 

Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis
Whatever Oberst-Gruppenführer Bezos decrees should be disseminated to us, we the people of the Empire's peasantry and proletariat.


FBI: 300% spike in gun buy checks, huge backlogs, shutdown threatened
Forcible disarmament -- for everybody but our Masters -- by any means possible. 

Homeless. Vulnerable. And no option for 'self isolation'
Homeless camps as preludes to our Neoliberal future.


Shoreline COVID-19 facility rapidly built on school soccer field
But officials say it may NOT serve virus-sufferers.


Tell Congress: Put trains into airline relief package
A petition, posted (with apologies) because the Mainstream Media is suppressing this story and there is no other way to tell it: that -- again in keeping with our Masters' shock doctrine -- their bipartisan Congressional vassals are in fact weaponizing the pandemic to destroy what (little) remains of what was once the planet's finest passenger-rail and public transportation system.


From the civilized world.

Quoth Roman Emperor Honorius c. 407 CE: "the cantons must see to their own defense" -- this after the withdrawal of the Legions from Britannia, as the collapse of the western empire accelerated into free-fall. Note -- as at the beginning -- the implications for the (dissolving) federal union.

Also relevant:


(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)

*****
JUST FOR THE RECORD: I have never in my personal or professional life  witnessed anything even remotely comparable to the global coronavirus emergency; I'll be 80 years old on 30 March and have been in professional journalism since November 1956.

And -- yes --  I am old enough to remember World War II quite vividly: blackouts; food rationing; the green ration stamps and the books in which they were to be pasted; the envelopes of orange coloring used to make lard called "oleomargarine" look like butter; stomping tin cans flat (to keep the lids inside) for the ubiquitous paper-and-scrap-metal drives; German-torpedoed U.S. ships burning within sight of the New York, New Jersey and Florida beaches; beaches closed so the authorities could collect the corpses of sailors (some German, most U.S.) washed ashore from all the sunken ships; the huge hole in the dunes beyond the St. Augustine, Fla. beach where the squad of German saboteurs landed from a U-boat had buried their explosives and radio-transmitters; blackout paint on the headlamps of my father's 1940 Ford; boiling black smoke in the overhead sky and my birthmother's abject terror as she carried me bodily to a bomb shelter after an ammunition ship exploded at the Jacksonville piers, this in late 1943 or early 1944.
 
Among the earliest and most vivid of these memories is the visit my father and I paid the fatally wounded Normandie as she listed badly at her French Line pier in Midtown Manhattan. This could only have happened shortly after dark on 9 February 1942, after the fire had been brought under control the night before she capsized; I was a mere toddler, seven weeks shy of my second birthday but -- despite dyslexia -- already had the memory that would later serve me so well as a journalist and historian. 
 
At the time we were told the Normandie had set sail, had been torpedoed by the Germans off Long Island and had limped, afire, back into port; later we were told she was torched by German saboteurs. The true story -- that this fine ship died as a result of  U.S. Navy stupidity, xenophobia and negligence -- did not emerge until after the war. 

In other words, we see again that in times of crisis our most difficult task is finding the truths hidden in the government's tsunami of lies. 

(Which I do as best I can with these updates even as I learn to cope the fact that deadline-reporting on a computer takes at least four times as long as doing it on a manual typewriter did back when I was considered one of the fastest, most accurate rewrite men in the NYC/North Jersey press corps, this c. 1968-1970.) 
 
Stay healthy; stay alive; have the best weekend possible under these steadily worsening circumstances inflicted on us by our for-profit Masters in a land where effective medicine remains a privilege of wealth and Neoliberalism reins supreme -- even in the face of deadly disaster. 

(For more Dispatches, including portfolios of my photographs, go here.)
  
LB/20 March 2020 23:22 PDT
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19 March 2020

Coronavirus Daily Information Update: 19 March 2020


HERE ARE TODAY'S links  to what seem the most reliably informative and therefore (presumably) useful Internet reports on the rapidly spreading Coronavirus pandemic: 

From the Associated Press:

Most renters will not receive protections under WH proposal
The Trump/Pence Regime again expresses its hatred and contempt of lower-income peoples.

As predicted.


California governor orders statewide stay-at-home order
The virus begins to shut down the entire nation. 


$10 toilet paper? Coronavirus gouging complaints surge in US
See also "panicked Toilet Paper Hoarders," below.

From other sources:
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), head of powerful committee, sold large amount of stocks before sharp declines in market
Additional evidence our Masters knew about the virus pandemic before it happened, which in turn lends credence to China's claim the pandemic is the result of U.S. CBR warfare. (CBR = "Chemical, Biological, Radiological"; don't know if this report will remain part of WaPo's coronavirus coverage or will be quickly censored by a paywall.)
 

Rikers Island inmate has contracted coronavirus: officials
Thus all jail and prison sentences become potential death sentences.

Trump response to pandemic a failing of unimaginable proportions
Note the sixth paragraph: that Trump's hospital-ship promise is but another of his lies. Quoth the U.S. Navy: "“The Comfort and Mercy will not deploy to treat COVID patients, but will be made available to assist with treatment of other patients in coastal locations where local health professionals are necessarily focused on a large number of COVID cases,” the statement says. “Both ships are currently working to complete scheduled maintenance cycles and identify necessary medical staffing to deploy as soon as possible.” 

On the Front Lines of the Coronavirus Pandemic: A Doctor’s View
In the United States -- because of its murderous for-profit health care system -- the pandemic could become truly apocalyptic.  Elsewhere? The only good news is out of China.
 
An ‘Exceptional’ Nation Fails its People as CN’s Editor First Learned 20 Years Ago
The near-impossibility of getting timely responses from a for-profit system based on the moral imbecilic principle that healthcare must forever remain  a privilege of wealth.



Watch: Panicked toilet paper hoarders get in physical fight with another customer who wants just one pack
Predictably, Moron Nation demonstrates the core of its "exceptional" ethos: moral imbecility of Ayn-Rand/Adolf-Hitler intensity.

Also relevant:

Silent streets: Life halts, but not for all workers
Working Families brace for the worst.

Slavoj Zizek: Biggest threat Covid-19 epidemic poses is not our regression to survivalist violence, but BARBARISM with human face
Are the murderous shortages inflicted on us by Capitalist profiteering the beginning of a new Dark Age?


(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)

*****
For more Dispatches, go here.  

Stay healthy; stay alive.

LB/19 March 2020 22:08PDT
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18 March 2020

Coronavirus Daily Information Update: 18 March 2020

HERE ARE TODAY'S links  to what seem the most reliably informative (and therefore presumably useful) Internet reports on the rapidly spreading Coronavirus pandemic: 

From the Associated Press:

The Latest: White House, media to coordinate on virus PSAs
Beware a new era of Josef-Goebbels-type censorship, now that Madison Avenue (the Advertising Council) will be supervising the production of propaganda. Remember: U.S. Mainstream Media is in fact the privately owned, for-profit successor to Goebbels' infamous Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. 

Sick staff fueled outbreak in Seattle-area care centers
Again we see how Neoliberalism is premeditated murder -- this time premeditated mass murder by the intentionally deadly denial of paid sick leave that is vectoring the coronavirus.

Hospitals fear shortage of ventilators for virus patients
Again, Neoliberalism as premeditated mass-murder -- in other words, deliberate genocide. Such is the infinite Evil of our morally imbecilic Masters.

US military's role in response to virus outbreak is growing
Be aware of the probability our Neoliberal Masters will, in keeping with their shock-doctrine opportunism, parlay this pandemic into permanent U.S. dictatorship, complete with forcible civilian disarmament to guarantee a population rendered eternally impotent by its reduction to the same mandatory pacifism (and thus compulsory victimhood) that effectively enslaved most of the peasantry and proletariat of post-Roman Europe for nearly 1400 years -- that is, until the revolutions of 1848. Best defense? Make certain -- whenever you are able -- to read every word of the virus-emergency legislation for just such fine-print horrors.

From other sources:

Useful as always: latest info and propaganda from WaPo.

Posted because Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee is proving himself a national model for prompt and effective coronavirus response -- this despite his ongoing membership in Biden's murderously Neoliberal Democratic (sic) Party. (With additional kudos for anti-virus leadership to Rep. Laurie Jinkins, the Democrat who is deputy director of the Tacoma/Pierce Health Department and the Speaker of the House in the legislature at Olympia.)
 
Wuhan resident: China “nationalized” coronavirus crisis; the West isn’t doing enough
Community-ism  versus Ayn Rand's Neoliberal self-obsession, greed, profiteering and death.
 
London’s Imperial College predicts millions to die from coronavirus pandemic in UK and US
Self-explanatory -- and yet another indictment of  Neoliberalism as mass murder. 

Vital for its clear thinking -- maybe the clearest thinking in the entire U.S.today.

Might this be the purpose behind its timing?

People of color speaking up for all of us in the 99 Percent.

Why socialism is the only viable path to human survival.

China Locked in Hybrid War with US
Let us fervently hope this does not escalate into open warfare -- not the least because no nation that has outsourced its entire industrial capacity in the name of greed is capable of even minimal self-defense without resorting to thermonuclear weapons and the resultant destruction of the planet. 

Also relevant:

Five countries with the world’s biggest gold reserves
Relevant because the flight to gold (and thus its skyrocketing price) is one of the most reliable yardsticks by which to measure our Masters' estimate of the magnitude of the impending collapse. Gold and silver soar in value as global confidence in paper currency declines. Also: given persistent and notably credible rumors
Russian biologists discovered the missing Tsarist gold while exploring the great depths of Lake Baikal, Russia may actually be atop the list.

Corona Chronicles: Telegrams from Gotham
A close-up portrait of why so many Sanders supporters switched their vote to Biden: less news than exceptionally relevant contemplative reading.
 
Striking Truthdig Staff Respond To Allegations By PublisherSee my most-relevant discussion-thread comment.

Added after deadline Monday, retained because of its relevance:

Nine Thoughts On COVID-19 And What’s Coming
An Australian columnist whose views are in many ways similar to my own.  


(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)


*****

I BELIEVE THE other obligations that could make Dispatches as tardy as it was last night are behind me. These are all for-my-beneficiaries tasks, with many yet to complete, but no more that could expand -- as yesterday's did -- from what I estimated would take maybe 30 minutes at the most to the more than seven hours it actually required. (For more Dispatches, go here.)
   
Stay healthy; stay alive.

LB/18 March 2020 22:08PDT
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Coronavirus Daily Information Update: 17 March 2020

HERE ARE TODAY'S links  to what seem the most reliably informative (and therefore presumably useful) Internet reports on the rapidly spreading Coronavirus pandemic (apologetically but unavoidably tardy due to other obligations):  

From the Associated Press:


 
One mask a day for doctors in virus epicenter of Washington
Yet another of the innumerable ways Neoliberalism kills -- and who facilitated that slaughter but the very politicians we the (foolish) people elected because we believed their promises to represent us?
 
Analysis: American attitudes make virus response a hard sell
A relevant example of AP's excellence at sociological reporting -- and a story most of today's U.S. papers will ignore.


From other sources:

 
Indian Country's COVID-19 syllabus
A vital perspective too often ignored. 

FOCUS: Coronavirus Capitalism - and How to Beat It
Information our Masters are loathe to see us share.

Cuban Drug Could Save Thousands of Lives in Coronavirus Pandemic
But would our Masters allow global healing by one tiny island nation's socialist revolution and revolutionary socialist medicine? 

Germany Confirms That Trump Tried to Buy Firm Working on Coronavirus Vaccine
U.S. governance as the lowest sort of political satire -- precisely the sort of thing one might have witnessed on a street corner in Rome during the reign of some emperor who failed to opiate the masses with sufficient breads and circuses. Indeed I am shocked by its impropriety as I have never been shocked before, yet I find I am no more surprised than I would be were I to be awakened not by the news Trump had lost the election but by the far more urgent story describing how he responded by mooning the world from the White House balcony. 


Also relevant:

Covid-19: Islamic State warns members to stay out of Europe
No, this is not from satire central...nor even from the satirical sub-basement. 


Added after deadline Monday, retained because of its relevance:

Nine Thoughts On COVID-19 And What’s Coming
An Australian columnist whose views are in many ways similar to my own. 


(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)

*****

Stay healthy; stay alive.

LB/18 March 2020 01:52PDT
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16 March 2020

Coronavirus Daily Information Update: 16 March 2020

HERE ARE TODAY'S links to what seem the most reliably informative (and therefore presumably useful) Internet reports on the rapidly spreading Coronavirus epidemic: 

From the Associated Press:


The Latest: IRC starts $30M campaign to aid vulnerable areas
More national and international updates. 

US official on virus: 'Every chance that we could be Italy'
How many times must it be said that Neoliberalism is genocide? (Updated w/new head at old URL.)

Exclusive: Coronavirus vaccine test opens with 1st doses
Nonprofit healthcare in humanitarian action. (Disclosure: my Medicare-Advantage insurance, originally through voting membership in the now-dead Group Health Cooperative, is with Kaiser, to which kudos, Big Time.)
   
Hit by virus, US airlines seek aid far exceeding post-9/11
And we know the airlines, like the banks,  will get every penny they demand, even as the rest of us are abandoned to sicken and die; such is Capitalism, the most malignant Evil our species has ever inflicted on itself. 

From AP during the weekend:

Global economic coordination not happening in virus crisis
Might our Neoliberal Masters be deliberately letting the virus run amok?  (Keep this question in mind, as I am assembling the indications both pro and con and have yet to reach a conclusion.)

Arc of Trump's coronavirus comments defies reality on ground
Trump, like his hero Adolf Hitler, lies whenever his sadistic moral imbecility so moves him.


No doubt anticipation of such a disaster spiked our Masters' skyrocketing demands that we of the 99 Percent be forcibly disarmed and thereby reduced to compulsory pacifism and mandatory victimhood. 

Not exactly gloating, stockpiling 'preppers' have a moment
Accurate prophecy and intelligent anticipation unfortunately is too often glibly damned as "politically incorrect" folly.

From other sources:

FOCUS | Naomi Klein: Coronavirus Is the Perfect Disaster for Disaster Capitalism
Why -- depressing as it may be in this most hopeless of all human times -- we must nevertheless be ever more attentive to how our Masters are trying to murder us and enslave the survivors.
  
Will Washington Cause a Revolt?
How Trump is weaponizing the virus to destroy Social Security. 

Big Pharma’s Role: Destruction of Basic Health Care Worldwide, U.S. Sanctions Lead to Global Rise in Coronavirus
Shame on me for not spotting this report and publishing its link when it broke last week -- especially since it's a story you won't find in the WaPo anthology below. 

Coronavirus Updates from The Washington Post
Vital; as always, WaPo staffers nevertheless manages to report some -- though surely not all -- of the day's most pivotal news despite Bezos' imposition of zero-tolerance censorship,

Here’s what coronavirus does to the body
A frightening but vital report I should have already posted. 

Why Covid-19 Is So Dangerous for Older Adults
More on how the virus kills, in somewhat less technical language.

From other sources during the weekend:  
  
There’s a Giant Hole in Pelosi’s Coronavirus Bill
What other ecogenicidal and/or otherwise tyrannical horrors (like universal censorship or gun confiscation) have our Masters  opportunistically  hidden in the Pelosi bill and in the Trump Regime's proclamation of national emergency? (We can be sure there are such outrages and atrocities -- Neoliberal shock doctrine guarantees it -- just as we can be equally certain the U.S. Mainstream Media Propaganda Machine, the world's first privately-owned, for-profit copy of Josef Goebbels' notorious Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, will seldom tell us the whole truth.)

AOC: 'Wealthy and Powerful' Getting Faster Access to Covid-19 Tests
Neoliberalism as genocide (second example of the day.)

Republicans Tried to Sneak Abortion Restrictions Into the Coronavirus Bill
Anything to reduce women back to absolute powerlessness.

The Coronavirus: A Grab Bag of Lesser-Known Facts
Details useful and therefore relevant.

Oil price crash: 50% of US shale could go bankrupt
What obtains when a robber-baron challenges a despot who is a also skillful statesman.

Also relevant:

Jackson Browne - "Before The Deluge"
The first time I heard this (during the back-to-the-land 1970s), I immediately,  with indicative chills and raised hair,  recognized it as genuine prophecy relevant to the eventually arson-censored "Glimpses of a Pale Dancer," for which see the sidebar column to the left of this page.  No biblical lies and patriarchal misogyny in Mr. Browne's great ballad; just our species'
most painful truth conveyed in the most ancient and traditional way: via the Muse and thence to us all through one of her blessed bards.

The American Mask of Death
How Poe eerily foresaw our present-day impasse.


Why Bears Are Coming Out of Hibernation Early
As I know from my own years of deep-country living, there are few creatures on this planet more potentially deadly -- mother bears with cubs included -- than a bear freshly aroused from hibernation.


 Added after deadline because of its relevance:

Nine Thoughts On COVID-19 And What’s Coming
An Australian columnist whose views are similar to my own. 
 
(As always, headlines are reproduced in their original up-style and down-style formats.)

*****

MANY OF US in the Back-to-the-Land Movement, like the Preppers who followed us, saw our efforts as vital to human survival. But too many of us -- just as Jackson Browne said -- surrendered not just our land but all our dreams when we discovered our feathers had grown too worn for stable flight.

(To read more including the sidebar material cited above, go here.) 

Meanwhile stay healthy; stay alive.
LB/16 March 2020 22:00PDT
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