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Professor Neil Ferguson, and the idiot presidents and prime ministers who believe his computer predictions

Posted by M. C. on May 6, 2020

This is called a clue. Computer models predicting the spread of disease may be an interesting academic exercise, but in the real world, where lives and nations are on the line, THE DATA, on which the projections are based, are elusive. Without accurate data, what do you have? How about opinion, bias, and conjecture?

Business Insider, 4/25: “Ferguson’s team warned Boris Johnson that the quest for ‘herd immunity’ [letting people live their lives out in the open in the UK] could cost 510,000 lives, prompting an abrupt U-turn [massive national lockdown in the UK]…His [Ferguson’s] simulations have been influential in other countries as well, cited by authorities in the US, Germany, and France.”

“On March 23, the UK scrapped ‘herd immunity’ in favor of a suppression strategy, and the country made preparations for weeks of lockdown. Ferguson’s study was responsible.”

https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/05/04/professor-neil-ferguson-and-the-idiot-presidents/

by Jon Rappoport

Buying, for the moment, the official story about the “pandemic,” there were two basic choices:

Let people go about their lives and develop, through contact, natural immunity to the disease; or imprison populations in their homes.

Why was the second choice made?

This is my second article about Neil Ferguson (first article, here), the UK professor whose computer model of COVID-19 changed the world and drove that second choice.

Ferguson’s model predicted a worst-case estimate of 510,000 deaths in the UK, and 2.2 million deaths in the US.

At that point, anybody who was anybody stood up and saluted.

Both heads of government, Trump and Johnson, radically changed course. Instead of allowing people to go about their lives and develop natural immunity, they took the lockdown approach, devastating their economies.

Below, I’ll reprint quotes from my first article, exposing Professor Ferguson’s track record of abysmal and destructive failures in predicting the spread of diseases.

This record was available to anyone—including Trump, Fauci, Deborah Birx, Boris Johnson—but of course these important people have no time to read or think.

Apparently, a key White house conversation went something like this:

FAUCI: Mr. President, we have a new report from the UK. A computer model is predicting the spread of the epidemic. There could be 2 million deaths in the US, if we don’t take drastic action. There must be heavy lockdowns. The state governors will have to carry that ball, but your position on this needs to be unequivocal.

TRUMP: Two million deaths. You’re sure?

FAUCI: Yes, sir. Quite sure.

TRUMP: No way out? Except lockdowns?

FAUCI: That’s right.

TRUMP: Well, then. Okay.

The sheer brilliance in the Oval Office that day must have been blinding.

So, first up, let’s take a peek at a recent article from Nature, the venerable British medical journal. April 2, “Special report: The [computer] simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19”:

“…it’s natural to wonder how reliable any of the [computer] simulations are. Unfortunately, during a pandemic it is hard to get data — such as on infection rates — against which to judge a model’s projections.”

This is called a clue. Computer models predicting the spread of disease may be an interesting academic exercise, but in the real world, where lives and nations are on the line, THE DATA, on which the projections are based, are elusive. Without accurate data, what do you have? How about opinion, bias, and conjecture?

Nature: “’You can project [via computer models] forwards and then compare against what you get. But the problem is that our surveillance systems are pretty rubbish’, says John Edmunds, who is a modeller at the LSHTM [London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine]. ‘The total numbers of cases reported, is that accurate? No. Accurate anywhere? No’.”

I see. Rubbish. Total number of cases—inaccurate everywhere. Bad data. No data. In other words, the computer models are sophisticated tripe.

Nature: “’Forecasts made during an outbreak are rarely investigated during or after the event for their accuracy, and only recently have forecasters begun to make results, code, models and data available for retrospective analysis,’ Edmunds and his team noted last year in a paper that assessed the performance of forecasts made in a 2014–15 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. They found that it was possible to reliably predict the epidemic’s course one or two weeks ahead of time, but no longer, because of the inherent uncertainty and lack of knowledge about the outbreak.”

Computer predictions are rarely investigated for accuracy. Can’t make accurate predictions for more than two weeks ahead. Do you suppose Fauci, who has served as a public health dictator since medieval times, is aware of this, but is ignoring it? That’s a rhetorical question, Your Honor. I withdraw it. The answer is obvious.

Finally, Nature provides us with this startling factoid: “The 16 March simulations that the [Neil Ferguson] team ran to inform the UK government’s COVID-19 response used an agent-based model built in 2005 to see what would happen in Thailand if H5N1 avian flu mutated to a version that could spread easily between people.”

That’s like saying, “This year, the driver in the Indianapolis 500 is sitting in a car built 15 years ago. He’s dusted it off and hopes it works and doesn’t crash into the wall.”

You may think this is an unkind comparison, but we know something about that dusty Ferguson 2005 computer model of avian flu. Here is a quote from the Business insider, 4/25:

“…he [Ferguson] was accused of creating panic by overestimating the potential death toll during the 2005 Bird [avian] Flu outbreak. Ferguson estimated 200 million could die. The real number was in the low hundreds.”

THIS is the basic model Ferguson has now used to project deaths from COVID-19.

Are your eyeballs popping? They should be.

Without further ado, here is the Business Insider, 4/25, reporting Neil Ferguson’s other grotesque prediction failures:

“Michael Thrusfield, a professor of veterinary epidemiology at Edinburgh University, told the paper he had ‘déjà vu’ after reading the [Ferguson] Imperial paper [on COVID], saying Ferguson was responsible for excessive animal culling during the 2001 Foot and Mouth [actually, Mad Cow disease] outbreak.”

“Ferguson warned the government that 150,000 people could die. Six million animals were slaughtered as a precaution, costing the country billions in farming revenue. In the end, 200 people died.”

“In 2009, one of Ferguson’s models predicted 65,000 people could die from the Swine Flu outbreak in the UK — the final figure was below 500.”

Want more? The Business Insider raises the level of shock even higher.

“Ferguson co-founded the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, based at Imperial [College], in 2008. It is the leading body advising national governments on pathogen outbreaks.”

“It gets tens of millions of dollars in annual funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and works with the UK National Health Service, the US Centres for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), and is tasked with supplying the World Health Organization with ‘rapid analysis of urgent infectious disease problems’.”

Getting the picture?

Bill Gates wants a COVID vaccine before planetary lockdowns end. The lockdowns, of course, are already making a wreck of the Earth’s economies.

Bill Gates’ money goes to Ferguson.

Ferguson supplies, to the CDC and WHO, a vastly worthless but frightening computer projection of COVID deaths. Ferguson thus communicates a justification for the Gates global vaccine plan.

The CDC and WHO act, based on what Gates wants, as expressed by Ferguson.

National governments surrender to WHO and CDC. LOCKDOWNS.

What say you, Trump, Johnson, Merkel, Macron, et al? Are you merely clueless idiots, no brighter than some passerby on a street corner who’s handed a sign for a protest, and joins the line, having zero idea what he’s supporting? Are you that stupid, as you point to Ferguson’s farce of a computer model, with eyes glazed?

Are you simply in fear of experts who, on their best day, should be consigned to modelling numbers of cockroaches in motel rooms?

Or are you hostile idiots, who intend to destroy countless lives as economics sink further into ruin, day by day?

P.S. Perhaps you’re thinking, “These governments couldn’t be THAT crazy and stupid and vicious. They couldn’t have acted based on Neil Ferguson’s computer model…”

Business Insider, 4/25: “Ferguson’s team warned Boris Johnson that the quest for ‘herd immunity’ [letting people live their lives out in the open in the UK] could cost 510,000 lives, prompting an abrupt U-turn [massive national lockdown in the UK]…His [Ferguson’s] simulations have been influential in other countries as well, cited by authorities in the US, Germany, and France.”

“On March 23, the UK scrapped ‘herd immunity’ in favor of a suppression strategy, and the country made preparations for weeks of lockdown. Ferguson’s study was responsible.”

“Dr Deborah Birx, coronavirus response coordinator to the Trump administration, told journalists at a March 16 press briefing that the Imperial paper [Ferguson’s computer projection] prompted the CDC’s new advice to work from home and avoid gatherings of 10 or more.”

Be seeing you

 

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“Don’t Trace Me, Bro” – Just Say No to Contact Tracing – Gold Goats ‘n Guns

Posted by M. C. on April 30, 2020

Unfortunately, we live in a world today where the fearful are empowered by the powerful to mob the non-compliant. COVID-19 isn’t the plague folks. If you think it’s the crisis you should be fearful of I urge you to seek therapy not the false security of a government tracking app.

Matthew Gould also disclosed plans to log the location of whenever two or more people are in close proximity for minutes at a time.

That will disturb privacy campaigners. Very Stalin-esque

https://tomluongo.me/2020/04/28/dont-trace-me-bro-just-say-no-contact-tracing/

Author: Tom Luongo

Contact Tracing? Really? That’s the next big government program to push for total surveillance over our lives. Now the real fallout from the Coronapocalypse comes to light.

The very people who created a fake pandemic out of faulty statistics, media fear-pimping and the rankest of propaganda are now pushing the total surveillance state to protect us (them?) from the next crisis.

James Corbett from the Corbett Report just published an excellent video discussing ‘contact tracing’ as promulgated by (who else?) the Clinton Global Initiative to create an army of new Brown Shirts to assist our wise and benevolent leaders in managing us like livestock.

James is urging us not to use their Orwellian term, and I agree with him. But the best way to do that is to make fun of it and them.

I propose just looking at them and saying, “Don’t Trace Me, Bro.”

As always when they want to herd us towards a terrible idea they first have to come up with a harmless sounding euphemism for it. Either that or just call it a war that we’re going to fight and win together, you know, for kids!

But this was always the plan with this virus. We can speculate as to why this has been done, why it was directed from the commanding heights of our society but, in the end, that speculation is irrelevant.

This is happening, it’s here and they are now working to square the circle. The goal is to finish off the last vestiges of anonymity and individuality started with the destruction of financial privacy during the Clinton Adminstration, which was wrapped in the classic government phrases “Know Your Customer” and “Anti-Money Laundering”

Now those sets of rules which got ramped up after 9/11 dominate the global financial landscape.

But, let’s look at what’s happened with COVID-19 step-by-step.

First, a virus shows up in China which people in the highest levels of our government were briefed about as early as November, if Pepe Escobar’s research is to be believed.

The gold standard remains the ABC News report according to which intel collected in November 2019 by the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), a subsidiary of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was already warning about a new virulent contagion getting out of hand in Wuhan, based on “detailed analysis of intercepted communications and satellite imagery”.

An unnamed source told ABC, “analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event”, adding the intel was “briefed multiple times” to the DIA, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even the White House.

Next China, the gold standard for the Orwellian Panopticon, proceeds to use that Panopticon to prove to the world how effective government can be in containing a deadly plague.

That model, which runs fundamentally counter to billions of years of evolution and basid immunology, is then propagated around the Western world to combat COVID-19, a disease which has a mortality rate similar to the annual flu, to shut down those economies exacerbating a financial crisis already fully underway.

This destroys the lives of hundreds of millions of people. It creates economic dislocations that make the Great Depression look like a mild recession.

In places like Italy, France and Spain where youth unemployment has been in double digits for more than a decade, the lock down was used as a way to tamp down social unrest, as they were hot beds for opposition to inept and increasingly fascistic governments.

In the U.S., a country ruled by old, ideologically-possessed and corrupt Boomers who have been in a heightened state of fear since Donald Trump was elected saw the opportunity to create the worst possible outcome in places like New York and California.

Governors in blue states seized power they didn’t legally have and cried for help they didn’t need.

And the confusion and disinformation about the virus created so much fear people willingly huddled in their homes hoping the angel of death passed them by with nothing more to do than be glued to the death counter in a desperate bid to stay informed about the science.

But there weren’t two million dead in the U.S. There’s around 50,000 and those death statistics are very speicous since the people reporting them have motive, means and opportunity to inflate them to get Federal aid, advance their political agendas now on full display and cover their asses.

So, now ‘contact tracing’ which is just a euphemism for total surveillance. But they are admitting that they can’t do it themselves. They need help. In totalitarian governments like the U.K., they’ll have an app in a couple of weeks.

Matthew Gould also disclosed plans to log the location of whenever two or more people are in close proximity for minutes at a time.

That will disturb privacy campaigners.

Ya think?

Mr Gould told the Science and Technology Committee the app would be “technically ready” for deployment in “two to three weeks” – but made it clear it was only one part of the strategy to emerge from lockdown and would involve a none-too-subtle marketing campaign.

“If you want to protect the NHS and stop it being overwhelmed and, at the same time, want to get the economy moving, then the app is going to be part of an essential part of a strategy for doing that,” he said.

China already has this. All across the enlightened West countries will now recruit tens of thousands of ‘contact tracers’ to go out and build their network for them, just like Gavin Newsome and Andrew Cuomo discussed with Bill Clinton in the video linked above.

And since there are now tens of millions of people out of work desperate for a job of any sort finding recruits will be easy.

See how this works?

First you destroy people’s lives, then you print trillions in funny money to bail out the inept and continue paying the enforcers, ensuring they are fed. And then when desperation reaches its peak you create a new government program and turn people into snitches to ensure compliance.

We’re going to empower the worst busybodies who are already insane with fear to run around collecting data for the government.

All in the name of getting the economy back up and running!

I’m pretty sure when I read The Scarlet Letter in high school we didn’t consider Hester Prynne to be the bad guy. Because the person who is COVID-19 positive will now have a big red “CV” on them which will limit their ability to partake in society.

The next stage will be to force them to lock themselves down in isolation or face the depredations of the State. And even if we begin to ignore such insanity the next step will be to look the other way when the contact tracers become belligerent.

This is all about keeping everyone in a heightened state of fear at all times. The Karens will bee worried about a stupid germ and everyone else will be worried about what the Karens will do.

Because what good is this app if it doesn’t report you to the authorities who know where you are.

So the solution to a virus and the incompetence of our governments is to turn busy bodies into brown shirts and COVID positives into social pariahs.

Do you realize what happens when you don’t pay a parking ticket now? Eventually your licence gets suspended, then your car insurance gets canceled. If you don’t turn your tag in for not having insurance then you are risking jail time when you get stopped by the police. They arrest you for driving on a suspended licence, impound your car, and the entire ordeal becomes a bureaucratic nightmare.

The moral of the story? Pay your parking ticket, obviously.

But not because you were a bad person or committed a heinous crime. But because you broke the rules. If you don’t follow the State’s rules, no matter how petty, no matter how asinine you will be punished to the full extent of the law.

Do you really think this ‘contact tracing’ system won’t end up in the same kind of hell?

Now you’re a documented threat to other people’s lives! You’re an evil spreader, man! Think of the children!

The State is only good at two things. Killing people and creating perverse incentives. And if this isn’t a classic case of creating the perverse incentive of destroying civilization in order to save it I don’t know what is?

This is the real danger of 5G technology. It isn’t China having a backdoor embedded by Huawei, it is the State having the ability to blanket the world in high bandwidth snooping devices everywhere that people congregate.

Their system is failing before our eyes. It’s a system born of corrupt money begetting ever greater institutional corruption. They wouldn’t be pushing for this total surveillance if they weren’t uniquely paranoid about our readiness to throw them overboard.

They want us snitching on each other and suspect of each other. This is the most pernicious form of social control ever devised, to distrust basic human contact and interaction because there are germs in the world.

It’s time to end the mass hallucination that we’ve never dealt with something like this before. The mass branding of this COVID-19 as the plague is laughable and the push for global surveillance is pathetic.

Unfortunately, we live in a world today where the fearful are empowered by the powerful to mob the non-compliant. COVID-19 isn’t the plague folks. If you think it’s the crisis you should be fearful of I urge you to seek therapy not the false security of a government tracking app.

Be seeing you

 

 

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The COVID-19 and ‘Spanish’ Flu Pandemics, A Century Apart – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 30, 2020

Today Americans are becoming increasingly compelled to live under an authoritarian technocracy, as Whitney Webb describes in “Techno-Tyranny: How the US National Security State is Using Coronavirus to Fulfill an Orwellian Vision.

The U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, created by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, cites three “legacy systems” holding back adoption of AI-driven technologies: cash and credit/debit card payments, individual car ownership, and receiving medical attention from a human doctor. In their place would come financial transactions done only with smart phones (and computers), ride-sharing driverless cars, and AI robotic medical care. Plus, authoritarian technocrats would have us stop shopping in stores (many of which are going bankrupt in the lockdown) and buy everything online, enabling them to more easily track our purchases.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/donald-w-miller-jr-md/the-covid-19-and-spanish-flu-pandemics-a-century-apart/

By

My wife and I began the new year completing a two-week holiday cruise to Hawaii on the Star Princess, sister ship to the Diamond Princess, returning to Los Angeles on January 3. Our flight home was uneventful. All seemed well. In February, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high (29,551 on Feb 12). Nothing to worry about.

Then came a virus virologists name “SARS-CoV-2” (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoronaVirus-2) which causes “Covid-19” (Coronavirus disease, beginning in [November?] 2019). On January 20, a man in the Seattle area who had recently returned from visiting family in Wuhan, China had a fever and dry cough and was found to be infected with Covid-19.

Mortality

As of April 28, 2020, in the U.S., 1,011,6000 people have tested positive for Covid-19 (Covid) with 58,343 deaths.

The 1918-1920 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu) killed 675,000 Americans. One of them was my grandmother Mary Ashby Warden Williams. Several weeks before she fell ill and suddenly died, her stepmother, Mary Lyde Hicks Williams (my great grandmother), a professional portrait painter, painted this portrait of Mary Ashby with her 18-month old daughter Charlotte (my mother) standing next to her. Mary Ashby died in January 1920 at the tail end of the pandemic, age 23. Her daughter endures and will be 102 in July.

My wife’s grandmother Agnes Posten, an Irish immigrant, also died in that pandemic, age 26.

More than 30 million Americans had the Spanish Flu in a  population of 105 million and with 675,000 deaths, a 2.3% fatality rate. “Fast forward” to today. The Director-General of the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian politician (and former leader of a terrorist group)—the first non-physician to head this body—declared that Covid-19 has a 3.4% mortality rate. With a rate this high Covid could kill many millions of people worldwide. This spawned a global panic. The Director-General, however, left out people who become infected with this virus, did not get tested and didn’t get sick. Up to 80% of people who test positive for Covid either have no symptoms or only mild ones imitating  a cold. Counting them in the equation, the mortality rate for Covid in Wuhan, China would be closer to 1.4% than 3.4%.

The 1918-20 influenza pandemic killed between 15 and 100 million people worldwide, 0.8% to 5.6% in a population of 1.8 billion (see here). Now, with the population 7.8 billion, one of comparable lethality could kill between 60 to 430 million people.

The “Spanish” flu started in Kansas. It spread in 3 main waves. The first one, from March to June 1918, was relatively mild. Soldiers called it “the 3-day flu.” It was seldom fatal, with a mortality rate near 0.5% (5 deaths in a thousand cases), close to seasonal flu of 0.1%.

The second wave, from August to December, was more lethal. One observer noted, “While the first wave of flu in 1918 was relatively nonlethal, the second made up for it in spades.” Two million American soldiers were shipped to Europe to fight with the Allies (France, Britain, and Russia) in World War I against the Central Powers (Germany and its allies). More soldiers died from the flu than in battle. Laura Spinney, in Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World writes:

“[Flu] Patients would soon be having trouble breathing. Two mahogany spots appeared over their cheekbones, and within a few hours that color had flushed their faces from ear to ear… [If it turned blue] the outlook was bleak indeed. Blue darkened to black. The black first appeared at the extremities—the hands and feet, including the nails—stole up the limbs, and eventually infused the abdomen and torso. As long as you were conscious, therefore, you watched death enter at your fingertips and fill you up.”

The Spanish flu targeted healthy young adults. People between age 20 and 40 were the high-risk group. Their robust immune systems would launch a “cytokine storm”—a cellular (macrophage)-induced severe inflammatory reaction, both against the virus and oneself. Flooding one’s lungs, this “storm” could kill a person within 24 hours after the onset of symptoms.

(The nations fighting in World War I censored any mention of this pandemic, which laid waste to both sides. Spain remained neutral and did not censor its newspapers, thus the name “Spanish flu.”)

Debate continues over Covid’s case mortality rate. The number of Covid deaths is falsely high in jurisdictions where people who die with the virus (test positive for Covid) in actuality die from a pre-existing condition (heart disease, cancer) and get included with people who die from the virus. And there are Covid-positive people who remain asymptomatic that are not counted, which also makes the case mortality rate falsely high. To remedy that everyone in a given population must be tested. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cuomo: Need ‘Hard Look’ at Experts, Organizations, and ‘International Watchdogs’ on Coronavirus

Posted by M. C. on April 24, 2020

Even commies can find the acorn once in a while.

CDC, NIH, NIAID, WHO, NSA, CIA, FIB, Fauci all missed it.

How can they all miss it when it has been known since H1N1 or before than Wuhan was a coronavirus cesspool.

The US even funded the Wuhan research lab.

How could everyone miss this? How indeed…

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/04/23/cuomo-need-hard-look-at-experts-organizations-and-international-watchdogs-on-coronavirus/

by Ian Hanchett

During a town hall on CNN on Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) stated that there has to be a “hard look” at “the experts, the organizations, the international watchdogs” who should have been watching for the coronavirus outbreak “because obviously, we missed it.” Cuomo also stated that banning travel from China was sensible, but came after it was too late.

Cuomo said, “Well, look, global pandemic, the words had been used for many years, doctor, but we’ve never actually lived through it. So, I don’t think that this country was ready for it. I don’t even think our experts were ready for it. You know, in retrospect, it seems so simple, right? China has a virus last November, last December. The virus can get on a plane, can go to Europe, can come to New York, can be anywhere in 24 hours. What made anyone think it was going to stay in China last November and last December? And then, we’re taking actions in March. What happened to January and February? You know, when you look back at it, it seems to be so plain and so obvious. The president has talked — spoken about the World Health Organization and what they should have done, but I think we have to take a hard look. Where were the experts, the organizations, the international watchdogs who should be watching for something like this? Because obviously, we missed it. March — we’re taking actions in March. I have the first case in March, but the data is now saying it may have been here in January. It may have been here in February.”

He added, “Well, in retrospect, close the door on China, yeah that makes sense. But it had already left China.”

Be seeing you

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There Are no Such Things as Constitutional Rights – garydbarnett.com

Posted by M. C. on April 21, 2020

We are born with rights and we die with rights, whether any piece of
paper exists or not. If rights are claimed to exist because of a
constitution , no rights exist at all. The tyranny we face today is
because of the Constitution, not in spite of it.

https://www.garydbarnett.com/there-are-no-such-things-as-constitutional-rights/

By: Gary D. Barnett

A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.”

Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”, p.7

In the midst of this fraudulent pandemic, there has been a renewed call to look to the Constitution for answers. This is a smoke and mirrors solution that does not address the real problem. Constitutional rights do not exist, and if they did, those so-called rights would be worthless. Rights cannot be written into law or claimed due to a political document because they would have no merit.

The rights of man are natural, and all rights stem from the single factor of life itself, for if man has a right to life, all other natural rights are inherent as well. A right to life means that one has a right to defend his life. It means that one has a right to support and sustain his life. This means he has a right to property, the highest form of property being self. It means he has a right to move about freely, to work, to protect others, to speak and congregate in order to protect and defend life. All individual and natural rights are inherent due to humanity, not to any other men or documents drafted by men.

This seems simple enough, but Americans seem to clamor for direction and approval by those that wish to rule over them. Instead of accepting that a right to life is natural, and cannot be bestowed by men, people seek approval by some authoritarian class for clarity concerning the legitimacy of something so obvious. This in and of itself destroys the very core of common rights, because having to put into contract or law the guidelines for what is natural is the acceptance that rights do not exist unless sanctioned by a higher body. This is asinine, and the notion of a constitution to spell out what is inherent weakens any position of strength of the individual.

Some have forgotten, and most have no understanding of the history of the Constitutional Convention. This was a coup completed by Hamilton and his followers to create a strong central governing system, where most all power was given to a federal or national government instead of to the individual and the states. Those attending the convention had claimed their task as only to alter and improve the Articles of Confederation, not to scrap the current Constitution of the United States. But there was never any intention of improving upon the current “law of the land,” but only to set up a new federal state with unlimited power. Keep in mind that the Articles of Confederation did not allow for a president, did not allow the federal government any power whatsoever to tax, so it was extremely restrictive of any executive or federal power whatsoever.

So if freedom were desired, why then would a new constitution that gave immense powers to the federal government over states and individuals be so revered by those calling themselves Constitutionalists? Why do any that have read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the power’s clauses, claim that this document was ever meant to protect the rights of man? How is an unlimited power to tax, to control all commerce, foreign and domestic, to coin and control all money, to provide for the general welfare, to borrow money on the credit of the United States, to declare and prosecute war, to raise and support militaries, and to make all laws necessary to enforce all these powers and more?

The Constitution is a contradiction at every level, as granting these unlimited powers to the federal nationstate, and then at the same time claiming to protect the freedom of the the individual, is not possible. Every single power “granted” in this horrendous document negates any protection of liberty.

So why is this document that was long plotted through conspiracy, that was secretly written and accepted behind locked and closed doors in the dark of night, that erased all protections of liberty then in place in the Articles of Confederation, and that was signed by politicians, many of whom gained much more power in government after its implementation, so revered? Selling the Constitution in the late 18th century was in effect not much different than selling total tyranny over a fake pandemic today.

If the Constitution was meant to protect individual rights and the freedom of Americans, why are the masses of this population being forced into poverty, loneliness, isolation, quarantine and self-imprisonment? Why are medical martial law and martial law being carried out? Why have the businesses of Americans been forcibly closed down? Why have Americans been forced to avoid contact with all others? Why is mass surveillance of everyone the new normal, and constant threats by government of forced vaccination and mandated behavior in place? Why does anyone think this is a free country due the the totalitarian powers authorized in the United States Constitution?

Lysander Spooner explained this perfectly when he said:

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it, In either case, it is unfit to exsist.”

Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

The Constitution is used, administered, and defined by government, it is interpreted by the Supreme Court, which is made up of nine judges appointed for life also by government. In other words, it is simply a political tool of government used and interpreted to give power to the state, not to its people. It was only intended to fool the people into believing that they had freedom and power only due to a piece of paper drafted by politicians. It is worthless and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the natural rights of man, but in fact is detrimental to liberty because of the assumption that only government can define individual rights through parchment secretly drafted in the dark of night 233 years ago.

We are born with rights and we die with rights, whether any piece of paper exists or not. If rights are claimed to exist because of a constitution , no rights exist at all. The tyranny we face today is because of the Constitution, not in spite of it.

As to the Constitution:

“It was a bloodless coup d’état against an unresisting Confederation Congress….The drive was managed by a corps of brilliant members and representatives of the financial and landed oligarchy. These wealthy merchants and large landowners were joined by the urban artisans of the large cities in their drive to create a strong overriding central government – a supreme government with its own absolute power to tax, regulate commerce, and raise armies.”

~ Murray N. Rothbard–Conceived in Liberty, Vol. 5, [306]

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So much is unknown about the pandemic because the government keeps a lid on it

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2020

What the government is worried most about is where YOU go, what YOU do, whether YOU have been around infected people and whether YOUR ID/vaccine implant up to date.

https://news.yahoo.com/much-unknown-pandemic-because-government-120005796.html

Anita Chabria, Jack Dolan, Ben Poston, Matt Hamilton
LA Times

It is a tragedy unfolding in real time. At a skilled nursing facility in the Tulare County town of Visalia, 71 residents and 41 staffers have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Six residents at the 176-bed Redwood Springs Healthcare Center are dead and eight are in acute care, according to Anita Hubbard, the center’s administrator.

But without Hubbard’s details, little would be known about one of California’s worst outbreaks of the deadly virus in a senior facility. Tulare County stopped commenting for five days, during which the numbers of positive cases skyrocketed. Like other cities and counties statewide, California doesn’t require it to release such information, even in the midst of a pandemic.

As the novel coronavirus continues to claim hundreds of lives across California, a secondary victim of the crisis is emerging: government transparency. Much of what we know about COVID-19 in nursing homes and senior facilities did not come from public agencies, but private sources: relatives, staff members and administrators.

“I want updates,” said Christina Valencia, whose grandmother was among the several people testing positive for the disease at a nursing home in Redondo Beach. “You should have a right to know how many residents are positive.”

Californians are in the dark about more than nursing homes.

Information about the availability of personal protective equipment, or PPE, is lacking, upping the anxiety of healthcare workers. Coroners aren’t releasing information about deaths. Until recently, California was not releasing information about the racial breakdown of people who were infected and killed.

Government confusion has undermined public understanding of the crisis, and has potentially compromised California’s response, some health and civil liberties experts argue. But there are few rules for what cities and counties must disclose and little direction from California’s top officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, on what must be communicated in an urgent moment.

Dr. Richard Jackson, who served as California’s state health officer under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said it’s crucial that public health agencies and political leaders keep residents informed by sharing data on local hot spots, infection rates and demographics in their communities.

“As the general principle, the public has a right to important information that would influence their own health,” said Jackson, a professor emeritus at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Such transparency, some experts said, is essential for maintaining public trust amid the catastrophe.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Freedom Still Matters, Even in the Midst of a Virus | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on April 8, 2020

Protecting our lives and our liberty is a responsibility that is not simply delegated to the government—we still retain it. It is important to remind people of the benefits of a free society during and after this pandemic.

https://mises.org/wire/freedom-still-matters-even-midst-virus?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=b2a0e2ec5a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-b2a0e2ec5a-228343965

On Friday, Pope Francis delivered a special sermon to pray for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the depressing scenery of the deserted St. Peter’s Square on the rainy night matched the words of the Holy Father:

Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice in people’s gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost.

The image of the “plague” crucifix added a special gravity to this prayer, as the unusually high mortality rates in Italy and especially Lombardy have made the disease seem like a modern plague. Some of my friends there intentionally did not travel to their home cities in fear of infecting their elderly parents and have spent the last four weeks isolated in their rooms. Regardless of our political views, all of us wish for a quick end to this situation. However, as a lot of us devote most of our attention to the “defeat” of the coronavirus, we pave the way for the unrestrained authoritarian measures of our governments.

There’s Little Public Resistance

Most of our government officials have not enforced these measures on their own initiative against a people that completely rejects the curbing of their civil liberties. On the contrary, some politicians feared that they might be seen as as too weak for not supporting lockdowns enough. Make no mistake, there is widespread public acceptance of the restrictions imposed by government, as, for example, the surging approval ratings of the Bavarian minister president, the first in Germany to impose strict measures, show.

This panic policymaking could easily be the basis for a modern form of unlimited government. As Lord Acton remarked:

Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State…the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute.

Right now, public health, which has already been a popular topic among the modern absolutists, is that single definite object. Politicians and wannabe politicians in the affected Western countries complain about how the health system is not capable of handling this exceptional situation because the government has not spent enough money, and they call for more spending, more taxes, and more debt to fund it. There are more contagious diseases than the novel coronavirus, so why not use the emergency powers to protect against them? The public will be susceptible to these points. COVID-19 might prove to be a similar catchword to “9/11” or “Bataclan,” that can always be invoked to expand the power of the state over the lives of its citizens.

It is important to be aware that the current government interventions are legitimated by the voters. Fear and the desire to abdicate some individual responsibility, which comes with the choice whether to change my lifestyle or not, have been important fuels for this havoc.

Pope Francis framed his sermon around Mark 4:37–41:

And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith? And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

The Holy Father notes that we find ourselves in the situation of the disciples, caught off guard by a disaster. And, naturally, in times of crisis, people look to their leaders. The leader of the disciples was Jesus, whom the wind and the sea obeyed. However, our leaders do not have his divine powers, and forgetting that there are limits to what single men and governments can achieve might create a modern absolutism of governments whose powers are assumed to be godlike. Only individual adaption to this new situation will be able to create a sustainable solution. For that, we need our civil liberties and the freedom to make choices for ourselves. Protecting our lives and our liberty is a responsibility that is not simply delegated to the government—we still retain it. It is important to remind people of the benefits of a free society during and after this pandemic.

 

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All Roads Lead to Dark Winter – TheAltWorld

Posted by M. C. on April 8, 2020

More recently, this past July, the same Fort Detrick lab would be shut down by the CDC, after it was found that researchers “did not maintain an accurate or current inventory” for toxins and “failed to safeguard against unauthorized access to select agents.” The closure of the lab for its numerous breaches of biosafety protocols would be hidden from Congress and the facility would controversially be partially reopened last November before all of the identified biosafety issues were resolved.

http://thealtworld.com/whitney_webb/all-roads-lead-to-dark-winter

The leaders of two controversial pandemic simulations that took place just months before the Coronavirus crisis – Event 201 and Crimson Contagion – share a common history, the 2001 biowarfare simulation Dark Winter. Dark Winter not only predicted the 2001 anthrax attacks, but some of its participants had clear foreknowledge of those attacks.

During the presidency of George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, something disturbing unfolded at the U.S.’ top biological warfare research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Specimens of highly contagious and deadly pathogens – anthrax and ebola among them – had disappeared from the lab, at a time when lab workers and rival scientists had been accused of targeted sexual and ethnic harassment and several disgruntled researchers had left as a result.

In addition to missing samples of anthrax, ebola, hanta virus and a variant of AIDS, two of the missing specimens had been labeled “unknown” – “an Army euphemism for classified research whose subject was secret,” according to reports. The vast majority of the specimens lost were never found and an Army spokesperson would later claim that it was “likely some were simply thrown out with the trash.”

An internal Army inquiry in 1992 would reveal that one employee, Lt. Col. Philip Zack, had been caught on camera secretly entering the lab to conduct “unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax,” the Hartford Courant would later report. Despite this, Zack would continue to do infectious disease research for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and would collaborate with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) throughout the 1990s.

The Courant had also noted that: “A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher [later revealed to be Zack], who left the misspelled label ‘antrax’ in the machine’s electronic memory.” The Courant’s report further detailed the extremely lax security controls and chaotic disorganization that then characterized the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) lab in Fort Detrick.

This same lab would, a decade later, be officially labeled as the source of the anthrax spores responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks, attacks which are also officially said to have been the work of a “deranged” USAMRIID researcher, despite initially having been blamed on Saddam Hussein and Iraq by top government officials and mainstream media. Those attacks killed 5 Americans and sickened 17.

Yet, as the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks unfolded, accusations from major U.S. newspapers soon emerged that the FBI was deliberately sabotaging the probe to protect the Anthrax attacker and that the CIA and U.S. military intelligence had refused to cooperate with the investigation. The FBI did not officially close their investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, nicknamed “Amerithrax,” until 2010 and aspects of that investigation still remain classified.

More recently, this past July, the same Fort Detrick lab would be shut down by the CDC, after it was found that researchers “did not maintain an accurate or current inventory” for toxins and “failed to safeguard against unauthorized access to select agents.” The closure of the lab for its numerous breaches of biosafety protocols would be hidden from Congress and the facility would controversially be partially reopened last November before all of the identified biosafety issues were resolved.

The same day that the lab was controversially allowed to partially reopen, which was the result of heavy lobbying from the Pentagon, local news outlets reported that the lab had suffered “two breaches of containment” last year, though the nature of those breaches and the pathogens involved were redacted in the inspection findings report obtained by the Frederick News Post. Notably, USAMRIID has, since the 1980s, worked closely with virologists and virology labs in Wuhan, China, where the first epicenter of the current novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) cases emerged. The Chinese government has since alleged that the virus had been brought to China by members of the U.S. military, members of which attended the World Military Games in the country last October.

Such similarities among these Fort Detrick lab breaches, from the early 1990s to 2001 to the present, may be nothing more than unfortunate coincidences that are the result of a stubborn federal government and military that have repeatedly refused to enforce the necessary stringent safety precautions on the nation’s top biological warfare laboratory.

Yet, upon examining not only these biosafety incidents at Fort Detrick, but the 2001 Anthrax attacks and the current Covid-19 outbreak, another odd commonality stands out — high-level war games exercise took place in June 2001 that eerily predicted not only the Anthrax attacks, but also the initial government narrative of those attacks and much, much more.

That June 2001 exercise, known as “Dark Winter,” also predicted many aspects of government pandemic response that would later re-emerge in last October’s simulation “Event 201,” which predicted a global pandemic caused by a novel Coronavirus just months before the Covid-19 outbreak. In addition, the U.S. government would lead its own multi-part series of pandemic simulations, called “Crimson Contagion,” that would also predict aspects of the Covid-19 outbreak and government response.

Upon further investigation, key leaders of both Event 201 and Crimson Contagion, not only have deep and longstanding ties to U.S. Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense, they were all previously involved in that same June 2001 exercise, Dark Winter. Some of these same individuals would also play a role in the FBI’s “sabotaged” investigation into the subsequent Anthrax attacks and are now handling major aspects of the U.S. government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. One of those individuals, Robert Kadlec, was recently put in charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) entire Covid-19 response efforts, despite the fact that he was recently and directly responsible for actions that needlessly infected Americans with Covid-19. Read the rest of this entry »

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Coronavirus Is Setting Dangerous Precedents For American’s Civil Rights | The National Interest

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2020

It’s a universal truth that governmental power always expands during periods of perceived crisis.  It also is a universal truth that politicians and bureaucrats seize opportunities to expand their missions and power.  We must keep those dynamics in mind when evaluating government actions with respect to the coronavirus threat.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/coronavirus-setting-dangerous-precedents-americans-civil-rights-140362

by Ted Galen Carpenter

Worries about the threat the coronavirus posed to public health are entirely understandable. The disease spreads easily and has a disturbingly high mortality rate among its victims (especially the elderly).  Nevertheless, some important and potentially dangerous policy precedents are being set without much consideration or reflection. That approach is unwise, since many of the measures being taken to combat the coronavirus epidemic entail major restrictions on liberties that Americans take for granted. A sober discussion of those precedents is needed, or they may come back to haunt our country.

The original reaction in the United States to the corona outbreak was surprisingly casual, but the prevailing attitude and the resulting policy responses in both the private and governmental sectors have changed dramatically over the past two weeks. A deluge of announcements cancelling or postponing major public events, including concerts, plays, the “March Madness” NCAA basketball tournament, and the Masters tournament, has now occurred. Even when there is no outright cancellations or indefinite postponements, barring the public from attending events, such as the scheduled primary debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and upcoming NASCAR races, is increasingly the norm. Schools and businesses around the country are shutting their doors, likely for weeks, with employees and students expected to work or study from home. The economic and social impact of such dislocations is certain to be enormous.

Many of those decisions were by private organizations that concluded that having large numbers of people congregate posed an unacceptable risk of the corona pandemic becoming even more widespread.  However, other closings occurred because of government edicts—including some that seemed highly arbitrary.  Local authorities in Austin, Texas, for example, cancelled the annual South by Southwest music festival at the last minute, blindsiding the festival’s organizers.  Government orders banning “large gatherings” reflected great imprecision about what constituted “large.”  Depending on the jurisdiction, the threshold ranged from 250 to 1,000—and in one case, 2,500–with little or no explanation or justification from authorities for choosing a particular number. Worse, in most cases, event sponsors or other affected parties had no recourse to appeal the decision.  In some cases, they did not even have an opportunity for input regarding the restriction or ban.

The scope of governmental restraints is growing steadily as well.  In late February, President Trump barred entry of foreign travelers coming from China, and he gradually expanded that restriction to other countries, culminating in his March 11 announcement barring non-American travelers from most European nations for 30 days. Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on March 13 gave him extensive additional powers.

Even well-established political rights are now conditional and at potential risk.  On March 13, the Louisiana Secretary of State postponed the state’s April 4 presidential primary election. The Louisiana move is especially troubling.  There have been only a handful of postponed elections in the United States since the end of the Civil War.  A rare recent case was the primary election in New York, which was supposed to be held on September 11, 2001.  The 9-11 terrorist attacks were such a disruptive event that there was little choice but to reschedule the balloting.  But deciding to postpone an election scheduled for three weeks later because of professed fears about a public health issue is far more questionable. That decision illustrates the potential for diktats made in response to the coronavirus outbreak to set worrisome precedents and create opportunities for abuse in less dire situations.

Therein lies a serious concern and the need for a comprehensive public discussion about policies going forward.  It’s a universal truth that governmental power always expands during periods of perceived crisis.  It also is a universal truth that politicians and bureaucrats seize opportunities to expand their missions and power.  We must keep those dynamics in mind when evaluating government actions with respect to the coronavirus threat.

The pervasive assumption is that the coronavirus outbreak is a temporary menace that will be overcome in the next few weeks or months, the current restrictions will be lifted, and life in America will return to normal.  But what if that assumption is wrong?  What do we do if this lethal virus (or one like it) becomes a feature of the annual flu season?  Do we (indeed, can we) lock down the country under such repeated “crisis” conditions?  The economic disruption and damage alone would likely preclude such a response; it doesn’t seem possible to operate a modern economy in a bunkered society.  Taking draconian steps in reaction to a public health problem less severe than the current epidemic would be needlessly destructive to both the economy and to America’s system of liberty.

It’s not too soon for sober reflection and debate about such matters. Unfortunately, the current atmosphere increasingly exhibits the characteristics of a collective panic—and that is always a poor basis for intelligent policy decisions.  Americans must not passively accept government edicts and restrictions without raising pertinent questions, and when necessary, voicing objections.

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How Generals Fueled 1918 Flu Pandemic to Win Their World War | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on April 6, 2020

Just like today, brass and bureaucrats ignored warnings, and sent troops overseas despite the consequences.

It was called the “Spanish flu” only because, while the United States, Britain and France were all censoring news about the spread of the pandemic in their countries to maintain domestic morale, the press in neutralist Spain was reporting freely on influenza cases there. In fact, the first major wave of infections in the United States came in U.S. training camps set up to serve the war.

A good reason to bring troops home, close foreign bases and spend those trillions on actually saving American lives.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-generals-fueled-1918-flu-pandemic-to-win-their-world-war/

An emergency hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas, 1918. (National Archives)
Gareth Porter

The U.S. military has been forced by the coronavirus pandemic to make some serious changes in their operations. But the Pentagon, and especially the Navy, have also displayed a revealing resistance to moves to stand down that were clearly needed to protect troops from the raging virus from the start.

The Army and Marine Corps have shifted from in-person to virtual recruitment meetings. But the Pentagon has reversed an initial Army decision to postpone further training and exercises for at least 30 days, and it has decided to continue sending new recruits from all the services to basic training camps, where they would no doubt be unable to sustain social distancing.

On Thursday, the captain of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, on which the virus was reportedly spreading, was relieved of command. He was blamed by his superiors for the leak of a letter he wrote warning the Navy that failure to act rapidly threatened the health of his 5,000 sailors.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper justified his decision to continue many military activities as usual by declaring these activities are “critical to national security.” But does anyone truly believe there is a military threat on the horizon that the Pentagon must prepare for right now? It is widely understood outside the Pentagon that the only real threat to that security is the coronavirus itself.

Esper’s decisions reflect a deeply ingrained Pentagon habit of protecting its parochial military interests at the expense of the health of American troops. This pattern of behavior recalls the far worse case of the U.S. service chiefs once managing the war in Europe. They acted with even greater callousness toward the troops being called off to war in Europe during the devastating “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918, which killed 50 million people worldwide.

It was called the “Spanish flu” only because, while the United States, Britain and France were all censoring news about the spread of the pandemic in their countries to maintain domestic morale, the press in neutralist Spain was reporting freely on influenza cases there. In fact, the first major wave of infections in the United States came in U.S. training camps set up to serve the war.

Abundant documentary evidence shows that the 1918 pandemic actually began in Haskell County, Kansas, in early 1918, when many residents came down with an unusually severe type of influenza. Some county residents were then sent to the Army’s Camp Funston at Ft. Riley, Kansas, the military’s largest training facility, training 50,000 recruits at a time for the war. Within two weeks, thousands of soldiers at the camp became sick with the new influenza virus, and 38 died.

Recruits at 14 of 32 large military training camps set up across the country to feed the U.S. war in Europe soon reported similar influenza outbreaks, apparently because some troops from Camp Funston had been sent there. By May 1918, hundreds of thousands of troops, many of whom were already infected, began boarding troopships bound for Europe, and the crowding onboard the ships created ideal conditions for the virus to explode further.

In the trenches in France, still more U.S. troops continued to be sickened by the virus, at first with milder illness and relatively few deaths But the war managers simply evacuated the sick and brought in fresh replacements, allowing the virus to adapt and mutate into more virulent and more lethal strains.

The consequences of that approach to the war became evident after the August 27 arrival in Boston harbor, when visitors brought a much more virulent and lethal strain of the virus; it quickly entered Boston itself and by September 8, had appeared at Camp Devens outside the city. Within ten days, the camp had thousands of soldiers sick with the new strain, and some of those infected at the camp boarded troops ships for Europe.

Meanwhile the lethal new strain spread from Camp Devens across the United States through September and October, ravaging one city after another. From September onward, the U.S. command in France, led by Gen. John Pershing, and the war managers in the War Department in Washington, were well aware that both U.S. troops already in Europe and the American public were suffering vast numbers of severe illnesses and death from the pandemic.

Nevertheless, Pershing continued to call for large numbers of the replacements for those stricken at the front lines, as well as for new divisions to launch a major offensive late in the year. In a message to the War Department on September 3, Pershing demanded an additional 179,000 troops.

The internal debate that followed that request, recounted by historian Carol R. Byerly, documents the chilling indifference of Pershing and the military bureaucracy in Washington to the fate of American troops they planned to send to war. After watching the horror of lethally-infected soldiers dying of pneumonia in the infected camps, acting Army Surgeon General Charles Richard strongly advised Army Chief of Staff Peyton March in late September against sending troops from the infected camps to France until the epidemic had been brought under control in the surrounding region, and March agreed.

Richard then asked for stopping the draft calls for young men heading for any camp known to be already infected. March wouldn’t go that far, and although the October draft was called off, it was to resume in November. The War Department acknowledged the heavy toll the pandemic was taking on U.S. troops in October 10, informing Pershing that he would get his troops by November 30, “if we are not stopped on account of Influenza, which has now passed the 200,000 mark.”

Richard then called for troops to be quarantined for a week before being shipped to Europe, and that the troopships carry only half the standard number of troops to reduce crowding. When March rejected those moves, which would have made it impossible for him to meet Pershing’s targets, Richard then recommended that all troop shipments be suspended until the influenza pandemic was brought under control, “except such as are demanded by urgent military necessity.”

But the chief of staff rejected such a radical shift in policy, and went to the White House to get President Woodrow Wilson’s approval for the decision. Wilson, obviously recognizing the implications of going ahead under the circumstances, asked why he refused to stop troop transport during the epidemic. March argued that Germany would be encouraged to fight on if it knew “the American divisions and replacements were no longer arriving.”Wilson then approved his decision, refusing to disturb Pershing’s war plans.

But the decision was not carried out fully. The German Supreme Command had already demanded that the Kaiser accept Wilson’s 14 points, and the armistice was signed on November 11.

The disastrous character of the U.S. elite running the First World War is clearly revealed with the astonishing fact that more American soldiers were killed and hospitalized by influenza (63,114) than in combat (53,402). And an estimated 340,00 American troops were hospitalized with influenza/pneumonia, compared with 227,000 hospitalized by Germans attacks.

The lack of concern of Washington bureaucrats for the well-being of the troops, as they pursue their own war interests, appears to be a common pattern—seen too, in the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Now it has been revealed once again in the stunningly callous response of the Pentagon to the coronavirus pandemic crisis.

In the 1918 war, there was no protest against that cold indifference, but there are now indications that the families of soldiers put being at risk are expressing their anger about it openly to representatives of the military. In a time of socio-political upheaval, and vanishing tolerance for the continuation of endless war, it could be a harbinger of accelerated unraveling of political tolerance for the war state’s overweening power.

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