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@Singularity
Trump has not told people to drink bleach or fish cleaner or anything like that.
A
From a White House daily press conference regarding Federal Coronavirus response:
"And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that."
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said he takes no responsibility for a jump in calls to poison control centers concerning the misuse of disinfectants after he wondered aloud last week about possibly injecting them as a treatment for coronavirus.
When asked Monday about reports of an increase in people misusing disinfectants, Trump answered: "I can't imagine why."
When pressed about whether he takes any responsibility, Trump said, "No, I don't.
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@ILikePie5
I enjoyed the movie tremendously although it can't hold a candle to book. The book is mostly short snappy political treatise from a classic post-War consensus point of view. A lot of critics reject the ideals as fascist but Heinlein was writing about how nations (planets) survive, not democratic ideals. He was writing as a military man about citizenship, colonization, WMDs, and future tech. There's not as much plot as the movie- it is a lot of battle vignettes and flashbacks to a Moral Philosophy class taught by Sgt. Zim. The relationship between Rico and Zim is more central to the book than the movie.
Paul Verhoeven has stated that he intended for the movie to satirize the more exceptionalist aspects of the book but people who love the movie never love it as a satire so I'd call that aspect unsuccessful.
Importantly, the marines in the book fight in huge armored suits. They attack in long line formations spread across hundreds of miles, launching little nukes from their forearms as they make little 10 and 20 mile jumps across the continents. In the books, the bugs (and other enemy civilizations) are barely described- they are just distant enemies dying by the millions.
This book was a primary influence on the whole powered suit idea. Edge of Tomorrow, Iron Man, Anime- a lot of those ideas started with reading this book. Orson Scott Card's Ender series and Joe Haldeman's Forever series are direct replies to Heinlein's Troopers.
Haldeman's Forever War is a masterpiece of conservative reaction to the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution.
I would really like to see to see a movie that follows the book more closely but then I think everything Heinlein wrote should be made into a movie.
Heinlein was living in Colorado Springs when he wrote the book and I get a kick out of the idea of spaceships launching from a rail gun built up Pikes Peak.
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This is what actual censorship looks like:
Trump says Fauci will be too busy doing his job but National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was created by Congressional act in 1930- testifying before Congress is literally in Fauci' s job description while standing behind Trump on TV for a couple of hours each day while Trump runs campaign videos and encourages folks to drink bleach is definitely not within Congress' mandate.
Why isn't Fauci allowed to testify to my representatives in Congress? How can the Legislative branch check the power of the executive branch if the executive branch constantly denies the legislature's legitimacy in oversight? Why does Trump prevent his health experts from speaking to unapproved news sources?
Why are people complaining about censorship of a video any American can access in seconds while ignoring the fact that the experts regarding this pandemic are muzzled and mis-corrected?
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@Singularity
If it causes the complete destruction of the west, I am fine with it....I would take dangerous freedom over a peaceful slave existence.
But it is not as if you are assessing the threats to freedom and taking a calculated risk. You advocate for increased threats to freedom (ISIS, pandemic) and call that love, which it ain't. The practical difficulty of anarchy is that the day after the government falls, the anarchists are always the first to swing from the gibbets leaving the management of affairs to Proud Boys and pirates.
Besides, if the point is that you are howling against YouTube censorship, then isn't the most relevant fact that YouTube is literally publishing tens of thousands of copy of the document you pretend is banned. YouTube is where you saw the doctors speak. YouTube supports the link in the OP to the press conference. YouTube actually spends resources to preserve the thousands of videos complaining about YouTube's censorship of the document that each troll copied from YouTube and now republishes on YouTube, so committed to believing what Tucker Carlson tells them to believe this week that they have forgotten to notice that they haven't been censored.
YouTube has been censoring videos that contradict what the world health organization says.
This is a lie even Singularity does not believe. Singularity must provide some evidence that some anti-WHO video has been censored. The video linked to several times in this topic (the Dr's disinformational presser) is not censored on YouTube.
Adding danger does not increase your freedom. Killing peace does not make you less a slave.
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@Stephen
-> @oromagiWhy were they banned?They weren't. No actions have been taken by YouTube vs either doctor.
Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
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This is the last post I'll make re: GP's diversionary tactic. Let's talk about the lies of the two greedy doctors or get a new topic.
--> @oromagiPreliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities,” it said, “have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”No clear evidence means not there yet or not guilty in a court of law.
That's right. So why does GP think this tweet should be banned? Why does Trump blame this for his total inaction when his own threat assessment team had already told Trump that the virus was coming and it was going to be bad 11 days earlier than this tweet? Trump knew SARS2 was infectious on Jan 3rd so why is he pretending to pay any attention to a WHO tweet on Jan 14th saying "we just don't know yet? " Scientists had to take a couple of weeks to establish inter-human transmission on a molecular basis but the CIA can see Wuhan closing hospitals and digging graves on satellite. Unlike scientists, the spies told Trump the trouble was coming, maybe even before Xi knew trouble was coming. Why is GP buying Trump's lie?
You’re arguing semantics with a predisposed bias against Trump.
Yes. SEMANTICS is "a branch of linguistics studying the meaning of words." I am evaluating what you say and responding. If you are not also arguing semantics you are on the wrong website.
ARGUING SEMANTICS is "a derogatory term used by one party in an argument to resist the other party's attempt to question the terms and language used in the argument. This is generally done because the current terms favor his / her position.
In this situation the first party will often feign impatience -- "Come on, let's stop quibbling about semantics and get on with things!"
In this situation the first party will often feign impatience -- "Come on, let's stop quibbling about semantics and get on with things!"
all predisposition is bias, all bias presdispotion
Yes, I consider Trump the second worst peril in American history, less than secession but worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11 or assassinations, depressions or Nixon. All alert and loyal Americans have a hard predisposition towards Trump these days. Trump doesn't take second place in loyalty to anyone or anything, even maybe especially America.
You can argue that your way of interpreting something is true, but that doesn’t take away my interpretation that there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest it was transmissible through humans from the World Health Organization composed of arguable the finest doctors in the world.
or we could just tell the truth.
- The US intelligence community was warning President Donald Trump about an impending pandemic as early as January 3, The Washington Post reported.
- Officials were giving Trump classified briefings on the matter at the same time the president was publicly downplaying the risk of the novel coronavirus and insisting the US was well prepared to handle the outbreak.
- "The system was blinking red," a US official told The Post. "Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn't get him to do anything about it."
Something along the lines of what your interpretation states in my realm would look like: “It’s possible that human to human transmission is possible so be careful; we are still investigating.
It was a careful diplomatic tweet by an international diplomatic team but the only point you need to understand is that tweet had no influence on Trump's decision making.
"In a report to the director of national intelligence, the State Department’s epidemiologist wrote in early January that the virus was likely to spread across the globe, and warned that the coronavirus could develop into a pandemic. Working independently, a small outpost of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Center for Medical Intelligence, came to the same conclusion. Within weeks after getting initial information about the virus early in the year, biodefense experts inside the National Security Council, looking at what was happening in Wuhan, started urging officials to think about what would be needed to quarantine a city the size of Chicago." NY Times, April 11th
By the time WHO sent that tweet out Jan 14, America's top Bio-defense experts were laying out quarantine plans on the Resolute Desk. Do you really think the USFG was waiting around for the WHO to officially declare human to human transmission?
No, Trump was fully apprised of the coming global pandemic well before Jan 14th. The National Security Council was providing Trump daily reports beginning Jan 3rd. We know of nothing that suggests Trump gave any orders, made inquiries for weeks. Let's remember Trump was deep in Impeachment and does anybody sincerely doubt that Trump was more focused on Impeachment than Coronavirus? Given the political pressure Trump's virus inaction is perhaps understandable but hardly forgivable given the hundreds of thousands of American deaths we must now endure for Trump's interests.
Remember when Bush was told that America was under attack and he took that six minute breather ?
"Mr. Bush has not said why he lingered in the room for another six minutes, but it was a testament to either his calm or his acting ability. But at 9:12, he abruptly retreated, speaking to Mr. Cheney and New York officials.
Hurriedly Mr. Bush wrote a statement on a yellow pad with a black felt-tip pen. At 9:30, he appeared in a large media room, where charts about the education budget had been whisked away. With children, teachers and Florida Republicans jammed into the room, he faced the cameras, noticeably shaken.
''Today we had a national tragedy,'' he said. ''Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.''
Then, lapsing into some informal language, he vowed ''to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand.'' He said he was returning to Washington immediately.
But as he spoke, panic had spread in the White House.
multiply Bush's dumbshit by 10 and you get 60 minutes by 10 again and you get 10 hours by 10 again you get one hundred hours.
Once advised that American was under attack by the deadliest virus in a century, Trump took a couple hundred hours of breather before he started making some calls. Alas, the good any of that time did for any of us.... Trump included.
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One might assume from Trump's 4/14 tweet that he was misled by WHO's report of Jan 14- that he took no action because the WHO was telling him (via tweet) that China had not yet verified human to human transmission. But Trump is forgetting or covering up the fact that his own National Security Council advised him of a very high risk of pandemic (human to human transmission) on Jan 3rd. Trump's daily intel also advised the president that China was lying about how fast the virus was spreading. Even if Trump was making decisions based on his faulty comprehension of WHO tweets on Jan 14, he can't pretend that the White House hadn't been flashing daily pandemic warnings for at least ten days prior.
The POTUS has access to the finest intelligence gathering in human history. Xi Jinping showed no sign of knowing about the epidemic until Jan 9 (who knows for sure), suggesting that it is at least possible that Trump had better intel on coronavirus than Xi that first week of January.
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The trouble with always believing everything Trump claims is that Trump is the most prolific liar in human history. Everything Trump believes today is subject to present need and will likely change tomorrow.
One of Trump’s key claims is that the WHO misled the world about the virus’ ability to spread from person to person.
Trump, April 14: The WHO failed to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts. There was credible information to suspect human-to-human transmission in December 2019, which should have spurred the WHO to investigate, and investigate immediately. Through the middle of January, it parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary.
Trump later stated that the WHO said the virus “was not communicable.”
While there is a debate about what was known when — and it seems clear that China knew more than what it reported — the WHO never said the virus was not communicable. Instead, the agency always considered the possibility, even if it also shared information from China that found no evidence of such transmission.
Trump’s mention of mid-January is likely a reference to an early morning Jan. 14 tweet from the WHO. “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities,” it said, “have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”
Lack of evidence, especially of “preliminary” results, does not mean the WHO was saying the novel coronavirus could not be spread between people.
The same day as the tweet, the WHO cautioned that there might be some human-to-human transmission of the virus among family members in China.
“From the information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the acting head of WHO’s emerging diseases unit, in a Jan. 14 news briefing. “But it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission.”
According to a timeline of events, Van Kerkhove, who is also the WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 response, also said that human-to-human transmission wouldn’t be unexpected, since that is what occurs with SARS and MERS, which are also coronaviruses.
Knowledge about those other viruses was also the basis for the WHO to recommend in its Jan. 10 technical guidance that health workers take precautions to avoid transfer of the virus from patients.
The day before, the WHO did report information it received from China about the virus, saying in a Jan. 9 statement, “According to Chinese authorities, the virus in question can cause severe illness in some patients and does not transmit readily between people.” But the organization also said “more comprehensive information is required to understand the current status and epidemiology of the outbreak,” and that “[f]urther investigations” were also needed to determine “modes of transmission.”
By Jan. 19, the WHO was more definitive, saying in a tweet that there was “some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts.”
And on Jan. 20, the WHO’s Western Pacific Region iterated the point. “It is now very clear from the latest information that there is at least some human-to-human transmission of #nCoV2019,” a tweet explained. “Infections among health care workers strengthen the evidence for this.”
A follow-up tweet also indicated the possibility of viral transmission that continues, rather than dying out in a small group of people. “In addition, info about newly reported #nCoV2019 infections suggests there may now be sustained human-to-human transmission,” the WHO’s Western Pacific Region said. “But more information and analysis are needed on this new virus to understand the full extent of human-to-human transmission and other important details.”
After a WHO delegation visited Wuhan on Jan. 20 and 21, the organization also issued a statement, saying that “[d]ata collected through detailed epidemiological investigation and through the deployment of the new test kit nationally suggests that human-to-human transmission is taking place in Wuhan.”
China publicly confirmed human-to-human transmission on Jan. 20, which included transfer between family members and to health care workers.
It is now obvious that the novel coronavirus spreads quite well in humans. But should the WHO have known that sooner? That’s exceedingly difficult to know, and as we explained earlier, the agency is dependent on countries to give it accurate information.
We can, however, provide some insight into Trump’s more specific claim that there was “credible information” to suggest human-to-human transmission in December 2019. That’s difficult to reconcile with the calendar because the WHO wasn’t notified about the cluster of unusual pneumonia cases in Wuhan until the last day of the month. The agency requested more information from China on Jan. 1.
It has since come out that Taiwan, which is not a WHO member country because it is not recognized by China, claims it sent an email to the WHO asking about human-to-human transfer on Dec. 31.
As an April 11 Reuters report explains, Taiwan wrote to the WHO because it was concerned about news reports on seven cases that indicated China was keeping patients in isolation. Even though it did not use the words “human-to-human transmission” in its email — which the WHO has noted — the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control has said that the language still should have been clear.
“Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease,” the group said in a statement. “However, because at the time there were as yet no cases of the disease in Taiwan, we could not state directly and conclusively that there had been human-to-human transmission.”
Given that the WHO had just learned about the outbreak, and had no solid information to go on either, there’s nothing to support Trump’s claim that there was “credible evidence” that early on.
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@ILikePie5
Why were they banned?
They weren't. No actions have been taken by YouTube vs either doctor.
The original vid was posted by 23ABC News and that specific video was removed as a violation of YouTube's Community Guidelines which 23ABC promised not to do when they started a channel on YouTube and signed a contract agreeing to abide by the rules. 23ABC's channel is still available to the public and no other videos have been taken down.
Any other copies of the press conference can remain on YouTube and of course they are out there by the thousands. The distinction is between random people saying "hey, why is this happening?" vs. an accredited local News channel promulgating false data specific to a local public health emergency. YouTube doesn't want people who depend on YouTube for their local news to mistake these doctors' willful deception for public health officials or even professional doctors who prioritize public safety.
YouTube's press statement says,
“We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance," said the statement. "However, content that provides sufficient educational, documentary, scientific or artistic (EDSA) context is allowed -- for example, news coverage of this interview with additional context. From the very beginning of the pandemic, we’ve had clear policies against COVID-19 misinformation and are committed to continue providing timely and helpful information at this critical time.”
Doctors can have different opinions.
Sure. But any doctor certified by a State medical board is required to follow specific guidelines when disseminating research in his professional capacity. Every MD in America, is under some specific professional obligations toward public safety and telling the complete truth. These jokers may lose their medical license but it sure looks like they are going to lose their Accelerate Urgent Care franchise and almost certainly their malpractice insurance (which generally means the end of any career as a doctor).
Should separate opinions be censored?
The doctors opinions have nothing to do with YouTube's decision. The problem was that 23abc ran the press conference as if it was a news report, which gullible people might mistake as factual, non-harmful, vetted information, which this wasn't. You can watch a thousand videos of what these doctors said but YouTube perceives real harm in mistaking what they say for the truth.
Let's pretend that there is an active shooter in Times Square. Every public safety official is telling people to avoid the Times Square area but NBC is interviewing two security guards dressed like cops who are telling everybody that Times Square is where the public should take shelter and that everybody in mid-town should run to Times Square as fast as possible. When NBC posts that video on YouTube, does YouTube have an ethical obligation to remove that video and at least point out that information will get people killed? or does Freedom of Speech mandate that those New Yorkers must be lured to slaughter while YouTube broadcasts disinformation without comment?
The ethical dilemma here is a little less dramatic but the number of potential deaths and magnitude of these doctor's irresponsibility is essentially the same.
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@Stephen
OK, so, when most of professional medicine is saying one thing and two doctors are saying the opposite, we have to vet the doctors a little first.
In this case, the Drs motivations are highly corrupt- they together own a chain of businesses in Bakersfield that are tanking due to the coronavirus- these two doctors are losing a lot of money because they don't have the ventilators, surgical capacity, etc to treat coronavirus patients and people who don't have coronavirus are staying away from ERs as much as they can. While these two doctors have the right to express any opinion they wish they do have certain professional and ethical obligations that they are clearly violating here. Even if these drs were 100% honest in their findings, they would still be obligated to to submit their data for professional review, especially since they have a financial stake in the results. Instead, they're publicizing on youtube and FOX and not disclosing their money interests when they do. That failure alone makes any results they publicize highly suspect.
Here is the opinion of these drs colleages- the two main prof organization of ER doctors condemning Erickson and Massihi with as strong language as you might get from a group like this:
These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.
I rather doubt whether either of these youtube personalities well ever be allowed to work in a real ER again.
Joint Statement issued on April 27, 2020:
The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) jointly and emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.COVID-19 misinformation is widespread and dangerous. Members of ACEP and AAEM are first-hand witnesses to the human toll that COVID-19 is taking on our communities. ACEP and AAEM strongly advise against using any statements of Drs. Erickson and Massihi as a basis for policy and decision making.
Additional Information
While ACEP believes strongly that practicing emergency physicians have valuable insight into the COVID-19 pandemic, specialists in Immunology, Infectious Disease, and Epidemiology, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, are the most qualified at interpreting this data and making representations.
The data cited by Drs. Erickson and Massihi is extrapolated from a small population to the state of California, resulting in misleading conclusions regarding the mortality of COVID-19. Their data is flawed and represents selection bias. In order for data to be extrapolated to a population, the investigator must assure that the populations are homogeneous, and in this case they are not.
For example, it is stated in the video that in one area of California, there is a 12 percent positive test rate. That is then erroneously used to conclude that there are almost 4.7 million cases in the entire state of California. But that framing only looks at the 12 percent of people who had access to a test. California is a large, diverse state, and it is unlikely that any one area will be representative of the state at large. As testing nationally is limited, there likely is a larger pool of people who have yet to receive a test but have a high probability of having the disease or who are asymptomatic and potentially contagious. What we do know is that the number of cases in most states is growing. The same extrapolation was used in his New York example, when again, the only people tested were those who were symptomatic. Because of the limited availability of testing and the as yet unknown sensitivity and specificity of the various tests, we cannot use this data to extrapolate to larger populations.
The speaker discusses the fatality rate in New York and states that there are 19,000 deaths out of 19 million people in New York, so New York has a fatality rate of 0.1 percent. However, he is concluding a fatality rate based on the total population—both symptomatic and healthy, which is a contradiction to how he calculated the fatality rate in California. Further there are a large number of patients who have yet to recover, and many of them whom remain on life support or are likely to die.
Another concerning misuse of data include comparisons to the flu despite different methodology for calculating deaths. Comparing flu deaths and COVID-19 deaths are apples and oranges until the same methodology of calculating flu deaths is applied to COVID-19 deaths. Additionally, final flu data is calculated after the season is over. The physician in the video is comparing two months of COVID-19 data, which again at this point is incomplete. It is not scientifically valid to make a comparison to the completed six-month flu season.
There are other faulty data issues in their video, including basic scientific errors that call the conclusions into question (e.g., they call the flu and COVID-19 “DNA” viruses when COVID-19 and flu are both RNA viruses).
Most concerning for ACEP, they used their “emergency physician” titles to provide credence to their opinions. In any statement that proports to be based on science, data need to be carefully analyzed and the conclusions limited by the data source and integrity. By presenting themselves as authorities, and without fully disclosing their conflict of interest, they were misleading the public.
This is not to say that individuals should not have their own opinions, or that their opinions will not turn out to be true. Emergency physicians should speak those opinions in controversies such as this. However, in doing so, we must be careful not to overstate our qualifications, particularly when we are in domains outside of medicine. As emergency physicians, we should be all too familiar with other specialties and providers who feel qualified to practice in our domain without our level of education. Opinions vary on one’s experience; emergency physicians in New York City are likely to feel differently.
ACEP feels strongly the traction and popularity of these dangerous conclusions had the potential to lead to bad policy decisions and public health outcomes.
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@Vader
THIS is the 4000th TOPIC on the SITE
Wooooooo
DEFINITIONS
THIS [adverb] is this (plural thir)
- this
- Doric form of thir (“these”)This plants is deid.
IS is "what the meaning depends on"
Some one is wizzing on this deid plants?
4000 is "the last year of the 4th millennium, a leap year starting on Saturday"
TOPIC is " an external local application or remedy, such as a plaster, a blister, etc."
Did supadudz forget to change his topic?
SITE is "the place where anything is fixed; situation; local position"
The HALL of FAME is the site for supadudz: put supadudz in the HALL of FAME
BURDEN of POOF
Wikipedia advises:
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i am the poodle
poop grouped up on the stoop's droop:
super soupy poo
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@Vader
spam is a violation of the coc and spam gets removed
i violated the coc with spam once.
....had to go to the hospital to get it removed
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@ludofl3x
Melcharez & I were touching on this the other day. Obviously, Paul's encouragement to assemble did not take into account later tech like phones and video, etc. What proof can anybody provide that the apostles would have failed to see a zoom conference as an assembly?
I notice that both of the megachurch pastors who have been charged with endangering their parishioners made youtube videos of Sunday service and many other assemblies and had no problem with people watching their services remotely before the pandemic. Only once an opportunity arose to get publicity by forcing an arrest for preaching did either preacher suddenly have a problem with live streaming. My study of history suggests that most martyrs have to go well out of their way to force authorities to act..
Let's recall that lepers in the time of Jesus and Paul were not permitted to even enter the city much less attend Christian assemblies. St. Francis may have kissed a leper but he never suggested that one should be permitted in church.
I think its a silly concern that arises from overly an overly concretized interpretation of fairly abstract concepts (faithfulness and spiritual intercourse)
Jesus made no specific architectural demands for correct worship. Quite the opposite: the church is for
- receiving new believers
- restoring the faith of backsliders, and
- reconciliation of brethren
None of which requires a building or personal contact- only communication
Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Matthew 18
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@WaterPhoenix
are you confirmed as alternate?
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@Barney
I am not particularly religious but I was raised Catholic and Feminist. Women have always been the blood and bone of every church I've ever been in. I see no bar against women in the priesthood and would consider any God who would exclude women unworthy of worship.
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@warren42
@WaterPhoenix
I'll give it a shot!
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@Singularity
What do you have to say about ragnar's video that sides with precisely what I am saying?
I say that ham pairs well with the egg on your face. I love how your conspiracy theorist is triumphing in his observational "discovery" of a mannequin proving cover-up. He's carefully doing freeze frames and close-ups "if you can't see that this is a doll then there is nothing I can do for you" " slam-dunk, 110%" while failing to observe the word MANNEQUIN printed above the doll's head. I suppose everything must seem like a conspiracy theory to those who don't read signs.- all those mysterious lizard sheeple who receive secret government instructions about when to yield and which off-ramp to take to the airport.
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@blamonkey
I did not think you were asking sincerely because your question was very nearly haiku format- 5/6/5
What is a haiku?
Is it a form of poem?
I really don't know
The classic Japanese haiku has more formal requirements- a seasonal reference, a shift in perspective in the final line, imagism, etc
If I remember correctly, Ezra Pound popularized the form in English and I think of his "In a station of the Metro" as the template (although I think a traditionalist would frown on adding a title with so much content)
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition
of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
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The government is bailing out empty hospitals with your taxes.
GP links to an opinion piece by the CEO of a healthcare staffing company who confirms that the pandemic is not a lie
"The coronavirus will continue to spread throughout the United States, but our ability to treat and prevent its transmission will be severely constrained if as-yet-unaffected hospitals resort to mass layoffs. We need to sustain robust staffing in every corner of this country—and prohibiting elective surgeries outright is wildly counterproductive."
Not reporting and not particularly relevant.
That's why the Constitution was made to keep the government from taking this much control
I guess GP is mad because the USFG is trying to prevent the collapse of rural hospitals? Damn federal government prioritizing hospitals over what--- Wall St? Defense contracts?
And an analysis from ProPublica and the Harvard Global Health Institute found that even in a "moderate case" scenario — where 40% of the adult population contracts the disease over the course of a year — the country would need to more than double available hospital beds by freeing up existing beds or adding new ones.
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@Singularity
You seen all the articles about empty hospitals backed up by the united states Navy and we even have texas hospitals with layoffs because the hospitals are so empty. Now here is CNN directly tryi g to imply all hospitals are overloaded and that the pandemic is real contradicting nearly every medical professional in the country. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/us/brooklyn-hospital-coronavirus-patients-deaths/index.html
We''ve seen the US Navy confirm thousands of active service members impacted by the pandemic.
"directly trying to imply" is gobbledygook. Either CNN is directly stating that all US hospitals are overloaded or CNN is indirectly implying that all US hospitals are overloaded.
Of course, Singularity is counting on folks not reading the link because the CNN article focuses on a hospital with a 300 bed capacity struggling to support a hundred COVID cases in late March..
The closest CNN comes to Singularity's false assertion is "As is the case with many other hospitals across the country, Brookdale Hospital is struggling to keep up with the demand for resources as more patients come in."
Which even on Mar 30 was nothing less than quite true.
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@Singularity
People are literally dying of heart attacks because fascists are spreading rumor that we have a pandemic and people are afraid of having hospitals so busy they won't be treated. Every heart attack death that would have been prevented is the fault of people like oromagi spreading fake news
P1: Fascists like oromagi are spreading rumors of pandemic
P2: People are dying of heart attacks because they are afraid of ER volume
C1: Therefore, fascists like oromagi are responsible for untreated heart attack victims
P1: Singularity's own sources confirm the devastating extent of coronavirus pandemic. Therefore major premise's assertion of "rumors' is shown to be false.
P2: I don't think it can be correctly said that people are staying away from ERs due to inaccurate fears about patient volume. Rather, people are staying away from ERs due to accurate fears of contagion. Singularity's minor premise is probably wrong but certainly unproven.
C1:Singularity's wrong conclusion stems from a false major premise and an unproven minor premise.
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@Singularity
I watched CNN the other day and they were reporting all hospitals are overwhelmed.
ok
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@Singularity
New y9rk city hospitals are dead. https://www.businessinsider.com/why-nycs-largest-emergency-hospital-javits-center-pretty-much-empty-2020-4The place with the worst of the "pandemic" outbreak has occurred
Singularity claims "New y9rk [sic] hospital are dead"
then he cites an article in which the first line is "The coronavirus has led to jam-packed hospitals across New York City."
Both can't be true: Shall we believe Singularity or his sources?
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@Singularity
This source unequivocably confirms the devastation of the coronavirus in the UK
"In the week ending 10 April there were around 18,500 deaths in England and Wales – about 8,000 more than could be expected at this time of the year. Only 6,200 of those deaths has been attributed to Covid-19. So what of the rest? Some could be due to undiagnosed infection, a theory that marries well with the fact that Britain has failed to implement widespread testing, but there are corollaries to any outbreak and we are beginning, in this tumbleweed-week, to sense their cost."
Singularity's source states that the pandemic is killing tens of thousands in England in direct opposition to Singularity's claim that the "pandemic is a lie"
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@Singularity
Is the navy lying about empty hospitals https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/23/navy-comfort-westchester-county-center-coronavirus/3010754001/
Let's recall that the USS Comfort went to NY as backup for non-coronavirus patients. Since most non-virus patients chose to stay away from hospitals entirely, the backup capacity was underutilized. For example, I am aware of two cases here in Denver- a sprained wrist and an asthma attack that would have been treated in an ER under normal circumstance but instead those afflicted chose to tough it out at home rather than risk exposure.
The fact that worst-case scenario did not play out in NYC should not be misconstrued as evidence that the "pandemic is a lie." Quite the opposite. The over-response likely prevented tens of thousands of additional deaths.
Since you accept the US Navy as an accurate source let's note that as of last Wednesday the Pentagon reports 3,578 US service members have tested positive for the virus with the caveat that the military considers accurate force availability numbers a State secret. The Navy reports that 40 ships have seen at least one case. Let's also note that the US Navy's top admiral now recommends reinstating the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt who was fired for blowing the whistle on the top brass's non-response to a rapidly blooming pandemic that threatened the integrity of his ship. That is, the Navy's current position is that the Secretary of the Navy under-reacted to the virus and that Capt. Crozier's public appeal was an appropriate if unapproved response.
Clearly the US Navy does not support Singularity's claim that "the pandemic is a lie"
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@Singularity
--> @oromagiI want to screen shot the posts from the facebook group, but don't want any back lash towards these nurses as it is a private group.
That's okay. I've certainly interacted enough with you to know that you can't be trusted as a reliable source of information. Here is what you said about your own reliability just last weekend:
"Why do you think I believe anything I say? ""sometimes I just argue the opposite of what I believe so some schlub will do my research for me"
So an admitted disinformationist reports that he knows a person who knows some people who made a report anonymously on a social media website so unreliable that it failed to report its awareness of large illegal Russian media buys prior to the 2016 election. My default position is that the opposite of any assertion made under such circumstance is more likely true.
Quick question though. Do you think our trusted medical professionals are lying? Do you trust a sensationalist media over medical professionals?
I try not to trust sensationalist media full stop. I suspect our definitions of sensationalist are quite different however. For example, I would not call the NY Times or the Washington Post particularly sensationalist while you might if only because you sometimes argue the opposite of what you believe is true.
Why would all the nurses in that facebook group be lying?
Maybe they are just IRC posters with a mission to maximize the threat to Americans during a pandemic. Maybe they are old Pakistanis with a fetish for nurses. Facebook has made it clear that it does not validate the authenticity of groups.
I also have cousins that are nurses. I will text them later to see if hospitals are significantly over crowded right now.
My mom is a retired nurse whose perspectives on nursing were featured in two textbooks on nursing. She mentored hundreds of nurses and remains close to the the nursing community here. I have a sister who is a cop in Boston. I have cousins who are surgeons in Chicago. One of my closest friends is head nurse for a large retirement community in Albuquerque. Another friend is a pharmaceutical VP in San Francisco My next door neighbor is an ER nurse at CU Anschutz. Two neighbors across the street are nurses at Denver Presbyterian and St Josephs. My brother's next door neighbor is an ER nurse at Denver Health. The people I know are reporting unprecedented volumes of illness and death to me. I am not relying on Facebook for facts.
I live in the hospital district of downtown Denver with 3 major hospitals less than 5 blocks from my house so my neighborhood is chock full of nurses and other health professionals. For six weeks I have listened to the near constant wail of ambulances rushing past my house at easily ten times normal rates. I have watched as Denver Pres put a giant white tent up in the parking lot with a sign EMERGENCY ROOM PATIENTS ENTER HERE.
Worst of all, I live on the same block as one of the oldest mortuaries in the Denver Black community. I have watched as the 2 or 3 funerals per day have become 10 fast and tiny funerals each day and I can't help but wonder what's in the new refrigerated truck behind the building.
I don't need to know some random dude on the internet's feelings about what his wife's facebook page says. This plague is a daily reality for me and my family and friends.
I know six people who have died and none have a funeral scheduled yet and 8 others who have been sick and a fair number of "not really sures" and a surprising number of people whose status is unknown. I am a first hand witness to the worst American plague in a century and I can say without fear of contradiction that Singularity is full of shit.
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You put cocaine on the road? It also falls from the sky?
that is how we do in Denver- could be coke, could be we're just downwind from the citadel of ash.
What do you think CAUTION BUMP AHEAD means?
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@Vader
ah, so....it's a metaphor for cocaine then
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supadudz smoking
KOOL menthols on the back porch
citadel of ash
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@Dr.Franklin
Maybe in America, companies will go to india and Central Asia, over a billion and a half people to serve
- not likely
- Population of Asia including India is 4.6 billion
- Demand for coal in Asia decreased 6% in 2019 (experts had anticipated an increase) and April 2020 demand is now down 40% from April 2019
- Coal is state controlled in most of Asia- no outside companies are welcome
- India is a net exporter of coal although it must import steel quality coal
- Both China and India have publicly acknowledged that when you factor in health impacts of coal fired plants, coal is far more expensive than any other energy source. Coal could be free and it still would not be worthwhile to burn
- At 2019 production levels, China has a 30 year internal supply
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To report that the lawsuit was thrown out implies that the ICJ actually reviewed the suit for standing which it didn't. Of course, the ICJ only accepts complaints from sovereign states and not individuals such as publicity starved lawyers. Let's note that since the lawyer discovered in 2013 that he was wasting his time, the headline has been revived in 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2020 even though there has been no change in legal status for any aspect of the case. Clearly, the only point of the "news" story is to reprint the headline. Breaking News=Francisco Franco is still dead
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@Singularity
My wife's facebook friends tell her that Wylted gets paid 25 rubles every time he posts "The pandemic is a lie" on an English language website.
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after the all night rain
beneath the sun's corona
masked men digging graves
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As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner
Coyotes, pumas and goats are wandering around cities, while air across the world is becoming less polluted
Coyotes, pumas and goats are wandering around cities, while air across the world is becoming less polluted
By
SETH BORENSTEIN
April 21, 2020, 11:35 PM
An unplanned grand experiment is changing Earth.As people across the globe stay home to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the air has cleaned up, albeit temporarily. Smog stopped choking New Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world, and India’s getting views of sights not visible in decades. Nitrogen dioxide pollution in the n ortheastern United States is down 30%. Rome air pollution levels from mid-March to mid-April were down 49% from a year ago. Stars seems more visible at night.People are also noticing animals in places and at times they don't usually. Coyotes have meandered along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. A puma roamed the streets of Santiago, Chile. Goats took over a town in Wales. In India, already daring wildlife has become bolder with hungry monkeys entering homes and opening refrigerators to look for food.When people stay home, Earth becomes cleaner and wilder.“It is giving us this quite extraordinary insight into just how much of a mess we humans are making of our beautiful planet,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm of Duke University. “This is giving us an opportunity to magically see how much better it can be.”Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, assembled scientists to assess the ecological changes happening with so much of humanity housebound. Scientists, stuck at home like the rest of us, say they are eager to explore unexpected changes in weeds, insects, weather patterns, noise and light pollution. Italy's government is working on an ocean expedition to explore sea changes from the lack of people.“In many ways we kind of whacked the Earth system with a sledgehammer and now we see what Earth’s response is,” Field says.Researchers are tracking dramatic drops in traditional air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide, smog and tiny particles. These types of pollution kill up to 7 million people a year worldwide, according to Health Effects Institute president Dan Greenbaum.The air from Boston to Washington is its cleanest since a NASA satellite started measuring nitrogen dioxide,in 2005, says NASA atmospheric scientist Barry Lefer. Largely caused by burning of fossil fuels, this pollution is short-lived, so the air gets cleaner quickly.Compared to the previous five years, March air pollution is down 46% in Paris, 35% in Bengaluru, India, 38% in Sydney, 29% in Los Angeles, 26% in Rio de Janeiro and 9% in Durban, South Africa, NASA measurements show.“We’re getting a glimpse of what might happen if we start switching to non-polluting cars,” Lefer says.Cleaner air has been most noticeable in India and China. On April 3, residents of Jalandhar, a city in north India’s Punjab, woke up to a view not seen for decades: snow-capped Himalayan peaks more than 100 miles away.Cleaner air means stronger lungs for asthmatics, especially children, says Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at the Stanford University School of Medicine. And she notes early studies also link coronavirus severity to people with bad lungs and those in more polluted areas, though it’s too early to tell which factor is stronger.The greenhouse gases that trap heat and cause climate change stay in the atmosphere for 100 years or more, so the pandemic shutdown is unlikely to affect global warming, says Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather. Carbon dioxide levels are still rising, but not as fast as last year.Aerosol pollution, which doesn’t stay airborne long, is also dropping. But aerosols cool the planet so NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt is investigating whether their falling levels may be warming local temperatures for now.Stanford’s Field says he’s most intrigued by increased urban sightings of coyotes, pumas and other wildlife that are becoming video social media staples. Boar-like javelinas congregated outside of a Arizona shopping center. Even New York City birds seem hungrier and bolder.In Adelaide, Australia, police shared a video of a kangaroo hoping around a mostly empty downtown, and a pack of jackals occupied an urban park in Tel Aviv, Israel.We’re not being invaded. The wildlife has always been there, but many animals are shy, Duke’s Pimm says. They come out when humans stay home.For sea turtles across the globe, humans have made it difficult to nest on sandy beaches. The turtles need to be undisturbed and emerging hatchlings get confused by beachfront lights, says David Godfrey, executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy.But with lights and people away, this year’s sea turtle nesting so far seems much better from India to Costa Rica to Florida, Godfrey says.“There’s some silver lining for wildlife in what otherwise is a fairly catastrophic time for humans,” he says.
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@Barney
@warren42
I don't know anything about the championship- time commitment, software req'd, etc. If drafterman's in the running, then I'd say he's the best choice. If speedrace is willing, I'd call him 2nd choice. I wouldn't call myself better or worse than the rest of this list. I've never played the game elsewhere so I don't really know what to expect or if my style would translate as well as a more laid back player like GP.
So I'm not my first choice but I'm game and appreciate the nominations.
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@bmdrocks21
I don't think the Republican Party is likely to produce a candidate moderate enough to catch my vote so long as the dominating Trump faction holds majority. In fact, I think Joe Biden should be naming Condaleeza Rice or Mitt Romney as his Secretary of State now if they would serve- start building a bi-partisan, "return to normal" block.
I would have voted for Colin Powell against a democrat I didn't like, in spite of his part in the fake yellowcake causus belli. I might have voted for John McCain if Biden had taken the bid in 2008. I'd consider a competent technocrat like Bloomberg- who is certainly more Republican than Trump by any meaningful standard. My sister works for Charlie Baker, Gov. of Massachusetts and she considers him quite competent. I'd be willing to give a candidate like Baker a listen but I would probably need to have serious problem with the Democratic candidate to vote for him.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
How many millions of starvations are attributable to Trump by Borisov's method, I wonder?
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@Singularity
So we are destined for another great depression because of this?
At least, nearly as bad in the short term. Food lines are already bigger per capita than Great Depression. 2008 was nearly as bad as the Great Depression and we came out of that fairly quickly. We need to make smart decisions now.
Which will definitely hold back technological progress
Again why? The 1930s was an incredible decade for American inventions:
- Scotch tape
- Frozen food
- neoprene.
- analog computers
- jet engines
- electron microscope
- zoom lens
- poloroids
- parking meters
- radio telescope
- FM Radio
- Stereo records
- Drive in Movies
- tape recorders
- reflectors
- Monopoly
- nylons
- canned beer
- radar
- photo copier
- ballpoint pen
- LSD
- Teflon
- Freeze dried coffee
- Helicopters
Isn't necessity the mother of invention? Perhaps we could use a little more necessity.
pushing back a technological singularity that may provide some sort of method to achieve radical life extension. 100s of millions die globally every year.
Trading Russians in for Basilisks in not a credibility upgrade, in my book
If this shut down pushes back the singularity by just 2 years that is 200 million unnecessary deaths.
but now your argument has replaced a rusky seven million with a sci-fi 200 millioon. How does replacing one fake statistic with a different fake statistic help your argument?
I don't think saving 100,000 boomers or even 1 million boomers is worth letting 200 million people die
In fact, one or two million will probably die in the near term. Nobody can offer saving them because we don't have a vaccine. Which means most of us will get at some point and some small percentage, maybe half of 1% will die. That's million of Americans. The trick is how do we process a million deaths without shutting down hospitals and morgues. How do we pretend to go back to normal while everybody has somebody dying. How do people resume normality when everybody knows somebody who had died from a bug that's everywhere and has no cure?
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‘Cartels are scrambling’: Virus snarls global drug trade
By JIM MUSTIAN and JAKE BLEIBERG
April 19, 2020 GMT
NEW YORK (AP) — Coronavirus is dealing a gut punch to the illegal drug trade, paralyzing economies, closing borders and severing supply chains in China that traffickers rely on for the chemicals to make such profitable drugs as methamphetamine and fentanyl.
One of the main suppliers that shut down is in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak.
Associated Press interviews with nearly two dozen law enforcement officials and trafficking experts found Mexican and Colombian cartels are still plying their trade as evidenced by recent drug seizures but the lockdowns that have turned cities into ghost towns are disrupting everything from production to transport to sales.
Along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border through which the vast majority of illegal drugs cross, the normally bustling vehicle traffic that smugglers use for cover has slowed to a trickle. Bars, nightclubs and motels across the country that are ordinarily fertile marketplaces for drug dealers have shuttered. And prices for drugs in short supply have soared to gouging levels.
“They are facing a supply problem and a demand problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official with CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency. “Once you get them to the market, who are you going to sell to?”
Virtually every illicit drug has been impacted, with supply chain disruptions at both the wholesale and retail level. Traffickers are stockpiling narcotics and cash along the border, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration even reports a decrease in money laundering and online drug sales on the so-called dark web.
“The godfathers of the cartels are scrambling,” said Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center.
Cocaine prices are up 20 percent or more in some cities. Heroin has become harder to find in Denver and Chicago, while supplies of fentanyl are falling in Houston and Philadelphia. In Los Angeles, the price of methamphetamine has more than doubled in recent weeks to $1,800 per pound.
“You have shortages but also some greedy bastards who see an opportunity to make more money,” said Jack Riley, the former deputy administrator of the DEA. “The bad guys frequently use situations that affect the national conscience to raise prices.”
Synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl have been among the most affected, in large part because they rely on precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China, cook into drugs on an industrial scale and then ship to the U.S.
“This is something we would use as a lesson learned for us,” the head of the DEA, Uttam Dhillon, told AP. “If the disruption is that significant, we need to continue to work with our global partners to ensure that, once we come out of the pandemic, those precursor chemicals are not available to these drug-trafficking organizations.”
Cartels are increasingly shifting away from drugs that require planting and growing seasons, like heroin and marijuana, in favor of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which can be cooked 24/7 throughout the year, are up to 50 times more powerful than heroin and produce a greater profit margin.
Though some clandestine labs that make fentanyl from scratch have popped up sporadically in Mexico, cartels are still very much reliant upon Chinese companies to get the precursor drugs.
Huge amounts of these mail-order components can be traced to a single, state-subsidized company in Wuhan that shut down after the outbreak earlier this year, said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, which monitors Chinese websites selling fentanyl.
“The quarantine of Wuhan and all the chaos there definitely affected the fentanyl trade, particularly between China and Mexico,” said Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl, Inc.”
“The main reason China has been the main supplier is the main reason China is the supplier of everything — it does it so cheaply,” Westhoff said. “There was really no cost incentive for the cartels to develop this themselves.”
But costs have been rising and, as in many legitimate industries, the coronavirus is bringing about changes.
Advertised prices across China for precursors of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cutting agents have risen between 25% and 400% since late February, said Logan Pauley, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based security research nonprofit. So even as drug precursor plants in China are slowly reopening after the worst of the coronavirus crisis there, some cartels have been taking steps to decrease their reliance on overseas suppliers by enlisting scientists to make their own precursor chemicals.
“Because of the coronavirus they’re starting to do it in house,” added Westhoff.
Some Chinese companies that once pushed precursors are now advertising drugs like hydroxychloroquine, which President Donald Trump has promoted as potential treatment for COVID-19, as well as personal protective gear such as face masks and hand sanitizers.
Meanwhile, the gummed up situation on the U.S.-Mexico border resembles a stalled chess match where nobody, especially the traffickers, wants to make a wrong move, said Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso field division.
“They’re in a pause right now,” Williamson said. “They don’t want to get sloppy and take a lot of risks.”
Some Mexican drug cartels are even holding back existing methamphetamine supplies to manipulate the market, recognizing that “no good crisis should be wasted,” said Joseph Brown, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas.
“Some cartels have given direct orders to members of their organization that anyone caught selling methamphetamine during this time will be killed,” said Brown, whose sprawling jurisdiction stretches from the suburbs of Dallas to Beaumont.
To be sure, narcotics are still making their way into the U.S., as evidenced by a bust last month in which nearly $30 million worth of street drugs were seized in a new smuggling tunnel connecting a warehouse in Tijuana to southern San Diego. Shelley said that bust was notable in that only about 2 pounds of fentanyl was recovered, “much lower than usual shipments.”
Trump announced earlier this month that Navy ships were being moved toward Venezuela as part of a bid to beef up counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean following a U.S. drug indictment against Nicolás Maduro.
But the pandemic also has limited law enforcement’s effectiveness, as departments cope with drug investigators working remotely, falling ill and navigating a new landscape in which their own activities have become more conspicuous. In Los Angeles County, half of the narcotics detectives have been put on patrol duty, potentially imperiling long-term investigations.
Nonetheless, Capt. Chris Sandoval, who oversees special investigations for the Houston-based Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said there’s a new saying among his detectives: “Not even the dope dealers can hide from the coronavirus.”
___
Bleiberg reported from Dallas. AP writers Erika Kinetz in Rieti, Italy, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
One of the main suppliers that shut down is in Wuhan, the epicenter of the global outbreak.
Associated Press interviews with nearly two dozen law enforcement officials and trafficking experts found Mexican and Colombian cartels are still plying their trade as evidenced by recent drug seizures but the lockdowns that have turned cities into ghost towns are disrupting everything from production to transport to sales.
“They are facing a supply problem and a demand problem,” said Alejandro Hope, a security analyst and former official with CISEN, the Mexican intelligence agency. “Once you get them to the market, who are you going to sell to?”
Virtually every illicit drug has been impacted, with supply chain disruptions at both the wholesale and retail level. Traffickers are stockpiling narcotics and cash along the border, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration even reports a decrease in money laundering and online drug sales on the so-called dark web.
Cocaine prices are up 20 percent or more in some cities. Heroin has become harder to find in Denver and Chicago, while supplies of fentanyl are falling in Houston and Philadelphia. In Los Angeles, the price of methamphetamine has more than doubled in recent weeks to $1,800 per pound.
“You have shortages but also some greedy bastards who see an opportunity to make more money,” said Jack Riley, the former deputy administrator of the DEA. “The bad guys frequently use situations that affect the national conscience to raise prices.”
Synthetic drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl have been among the most affected, in large part because they rely on precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels import from China, cook into drugs on an industrial scale and then ship to the U.S.
“This is something we would use as a lesson learned for us,” the head of the DEA, Uttam Dhillon, told AP. “If the disruption is that significant, we need to continue to work with our global partners to ensure that, once we come out of the pandemic, those precursor chemicals are not available to these drug-trafficking organizations.”
Though some clandestine labs that make fentanyl from scratch have popped up sporadically in Mexico, cartels are still very much reliant upon Chinese companies to get the precursor drugs.
Huge amounts of these mail-order components can be traced to a single, state-subsidized company in Wuhan that shut down after the outbreak earlier this year, said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University, which monitors Chinese websites selling fentanyl.
“The main reason China has been the main supplier is the main reason China is the supplier of everything — it does it so cheaply,” Westhoff said. “There was really no cost incentive for the cartels to develop this themselves.”
But costs have been rising and, as in many legitimate industries, the coronavirus is bringing about changes.
Advertised prices across China for precursors of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cutting agents have risen between 25% and 400% since late February, said Logan Pauley, an analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington-based security research nonprofit. So even as drug precursor plants in China are slowly reopening after the worst of the coronavirus crisis there, some cartels have been taking steps to decrease their reliance on overseas suppliers by enlisting scientists to make their own precursor chemicals.
“Because of the coronavirus they’re starting to do it in house,” added Westhoff.
Meanwhile, the gummed up situation on the U.S.-Mexico border resembles a stalled chess match where nobody, especially the traffickers, wants to make a wrong move, said Kyle Williamson, special agent in charge of the DEA’s El Paso field division.
“They’re in a pause right now,” Williamson said. “They don’t want to get sloppy and take a lot of risks.”
Some Mexican drug cartels are even holding back existing methamphetamine supplies to manipulate the market, recognizing that “no good crisis should be wasted,” said Joseph Brown, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Texas.
“Some cartels have given direct orders to members of their organization that anyone caught selling methamphetamine during this time will be killed,” said Brown, whose sprawling jurisdiction stretches from the suburbs of Dallas to Beaumont.
To be sure, narcotics are still making their way into the U.S., as evidenced by a bust last month in which nearly $30 million worth of street drugs were seized in a new smuggling tunnel connecting a warehouse in Tijuana to southern San Diego. Shelley said that bust was notable in that only about 2 pounds of fentanyl was recovered, “much lower than usual shipments.”
But the pandemic also has limited law enforcement’s effectiveness, as departments cope with drug investigators working remotely, falling ill and navigating a new landscape in which their own activities have become more conspicuous. In Los Angeles County, half of the narcotics detectives have been put on patrol duty, potentially imperiling long-term investigations.
Nonetheless, Capt. Chris Sandoval, who oversees special investigations for the Houston-based Harris County Sheriff’s Office, said there’s a new saying among his detectives: “Not even the dope dealers can hide from the coronavirus.”
___
Bleiberg reported from Dallas. AP writers Erika Kinetz in Rieti, Italy, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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@Singularity
you blindly trust authority
you blindly trust authority more. I just showed you your stat is foreign government propaganda and I'll bet you still quote that 7 million stat tomorrow and not give af.
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@Singularity
No economist has guaranteed it won't result in a depression which worries me
In fact, the economists expect the worst hit since the Great Depression, at least.
Going back to work tomorrow is not going to fix that. One in four hotels in New York are expected to fold. Economists predict 60% of small brewpubs to bankrupt by June. Right now, we are only just overtaxing our healthcare capacity, if we start popping up those numbers the death increase will likely be exponential as healthcare systems are effectively jammed with people taking forty days to die leaving little capacity for broken bones or burst appendixes or mental health crises. Businesses don't like it when the hospitals don't work. Wuhan is back open and people are going to work and the store but they aren't really going out to dinner or a movie anymore Unless we can greatly increase the confidence of the general populace in the safety of outside, the economy is going to go through a massive shift to digital work, digital provision. That means short and long-term uncertainty and that means downturn.
Going back to work tomorrow is short sited. Let's get a good test widely distributed now, in the next few weeks, test ourselves, get an accurate assessment of the extent of infection. Then we start going to work slowly. If we can get kids back to school in the fall, normality and slow recovery will likely follow. If we crash the hospitals and the morgues, kids aren't going back to school. Colleges and schools aren't going to take back kids when access to healthcare is uncertain. Pushing too fast for normal is very likely to end with the end of normal and the beginning of something new.
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@Singularity
I think you guys are beneath understanding my philosophy
hey no- thank u for thinking of us at all
sometimes I just argue the opposite of what I believe
yeah- how could u do otherwise?
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@Singularity
I believe it is true if memory serves correct
This is an improvement to the extent you are no longer asserting a fake as fact. We can assume you originally believed it was true because you did not check the reliability of the information or you were fine with Pravda as a source of reliable information. The question is why do you continue to believe it is true after being shown that the data is false? Are you permitted to believe otherwise?
The problem is records in urban areas were better kept than perhaps poor areas like the Appalachians
Perhaps. I think it is fine to distrust the Govt. record to some extent. But people from the 1930s are still with us. I know pretty well the stories of friends and relatives who lived then. I've read Steinbeck and John Dos Passos, Faulkner and Wright and Buck. The witnesses I've read and talked to say nothing of this mass starvation which you choose to believe without evidence and won't say why. I understand why that false belief is valuable to Russian propagandists but I don't think it serves any value to Americans when trying to assess when best to go back to work. Let's ask American economists and American health professionals for their honest assessments and set the Russian lies aside.
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