[Ter]

About that video:

Not a mention of Iran supporting terrorist militias in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
Not a word about Iran developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
Not a mention of Iran threatening to annihilate some regimes in the Region.
Not a word about China claiming all of the seas surrounding other countries in the Region, and stealing the fish of other nations.
Not a word of criticism about China keeping a million Muslims in "re-education camps".
And so on.
A blatantly one-sided view from a notorious fifth columnist, attacking the country she lives in.
(we even have some fifth columnists among us here on Pofo)
It is disgusting.

I fully support the USA to keep sanctions on Iran until they halt their nefarious actions.

[foxdemon]

About that video:

Not a mention of Iran supporting terrorist militias in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
Not a word about Iran developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
Not a mention of Iran threatening to annihilate some regimes in the Region.
Not a word about China claiming all of the seas surrounding other countries in the Region, and stealing the fish of other nations.
Not a word of criticism about China keeping a million Muslims in "re-education camps".
And so on.
A blatantly one-sided view from a notorious fifth columnist, attacking the country she lives in.
(we even have some fifth columnists among us here on Pofo)
It is disgusting.

I fully support the USA to keep sanctions on Iran until they halt their nefarious actions.

I don’t think Abby Martin can really be described as impartial. In fact she had a bit of a reputation as a conspiracy theorist. I understand her current show was initially paid for by Venezuela. It wouldn’t possibly be propaganda, would it?


Some people like beer, others prefer wine.

Some people prefer Alex Jones, others prefer Abby Martin.


Though, to be fair the Alex Jones, at least he isn’t working for his country’s enemies.

[Godstud]

Some news about those drugs that Trump and others were touting.

No Evidence of Rapid Antiviral Clearance or Clinical Benefit with the Combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in Patients with Severe COVID-19 Infection
In summary, despite a reported antiviral activity of chloroquine against COVID-19 in vitro, we
found no evidence of a strong antiviral activity or clinical benefit of the combination of
hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for the treatment of our hospitalized patients with
severe COVID-19. Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide
a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety.
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/b ... angerous-p

[ness31]

I just found out how much money I will receive from my governments stimulus package as an unemployed person and it’s so completely insufficient that I’m almost hysterical.

[Ter]

Ongoing randomized clinical trials with hydroxychloroquine should provide a definitive answer regarding the alleged efficacy of this combination and will assess its safety.

So the jury is still out.
We have to hang on to any hope.
The NHS has placed a huge order for hydroxychloroquine with a pharmaceutical company in Bangladesh.

[colliric]

Some people prefer Alex Jones, others prefer Abby Martin.

Chenk Uyghur is the Alex Jones of the Left. TYT is the democrats Left-wing response to Infowars. Great showdown, hopefully happens again one day.

[Drlee]

Anyone have an opinion about Abby's video?

Well. She is a well known conspiracy theorist and Russia Today drone. That said. All good propaganda has its roots in some kind of truth. In this case I found her attempt to be beyond transparent. I do not find her assertion that the US sees CV19 as an opportunity and even if it did it is about to be overtaken by events as you might say.

I have simply given up on understanding the situation in the Middle East. I don't watch the little news we have about it in the US media so I can't offer any kind of a nuanced observation about that. In general terms I believe that Russia sees the region as an opportunity to act overtly and covertly against US interests. There is plenty of evidence of that.

I do have eyes on the China thing and I think we are making a huge mistake WRT China. Blaming China for the CV debacle in the US is convenient. No doubt about that. But it is wrongheaded. COVID-19 is not the "China Virus" anymore than the seasonal flu, which frequently originates in China, is. Of course there are going to be conspiracy theories about CV being a bungled, or even deliberate, biological warfare event. I am not persuaded of the truth of that. If there was solid evidence of this and the Trump administration decided only to respond with words rather than nukes, I would be even more disgusted. I see the China Virus bullshit as a target of opportunity to persuade Trump's generally uninformed and frequently uneducated followers that he does not bear any responsibility for the federal government's appallingly mishandled response to this disease. We need China to help us fight this disease and they need us as well. I have said for some time on this forum that the refusal of the US to certify Chinese PPE was disgraceful and only in the last couple of days have they quietly relented.

There is no doubt that the US foreign policy under the current administration lacks a moral center. The fact that the US military actions throughout the world are ongoing has little if anything to do with the virus. Would I support a cease-fire in some regions to allow for better treatment for this disease? Why not. But that would not represent a meaningful foreign policy readjustment. Just a delay that some more hawkish friends of mine would allow our "enemies" to further consolidate their position in some areas.

RE Maduro. He is a scumbag, corrupt to the core and dangerous. He is a 1950s style South American dictator. He is wildly unpopular in Venezuela. No sympathy for him at all. He needs to go. I am surprised the military hasn't done away with him yet.

[SolarCross]

In general terms I believe that Russia sees the region as an opportunity to act overtly and covertly against US interests. There is plenty of evidence of that.

Russia, by which of course we mean those stone cold patriots in the Kremlin, sees the region the way a glutton sees a feast. It's liebensraum. Very specifically they want a warm water port with free access to the open ocean. This is why they wanted the Crimea and this is why they courted Syria. Syria has given them a warm water port. After that they want the straights of Bosporus (held by Nato member Turkey) which choke the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. After that they will want Suez and the Straights of Gibraltar. Basically Russia does not care about the US in itself except that the US is in the way of Russian strategic goals. If the US withdrew from the region Russia would soon forget about you. As it is though the US stands between the Bear and his honey and that makes the bear mad.

[Rancid]

Russia, by which of course we mean those stone cold patriots in the Kremlin, sees the region the way a glutton sees a feast. It's liebensraum. Very specifically they want a warm water port with free access to the open ocean. This is why they wanted the Crimea and this is why they courted Syria. Syria has given them a warm water port. After that they want the straights of Bosporus (held by Nato member Turkey) which choke the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. After that they will want Suez and the Straights of Gibraltar. Basically Russia does not care about the US in itself except that the US is in the way of Russian strategic goals. If the US withdrew from the region Russia would soon forget about you. As it is though the US stands between the Bear and his honey and that makes the bear mad.

True, this is how geopolitics have worked since the dawn of humanity. Otherwise alliances would never shift, and as history shows us, alliances always change. Nations that were once enemies and fought wars, have become "friends" and nations that were once "friends "have also become enemies. This is the geopolitics game. In some distant future, where China becomes the dominate hyperpower. It's VERY possible the US and Russia could actually become "friends". There is nothing fundamentally stopping that possibility. The US and Russia are not eternal enemies. No nations are eternal enemies. It's all a game.

Further, of course the US is going to look for opportunities to exploit COVID-19 to advance it's own geopolitical agendas. So has Russia, so has China, etc. etc (they all already have, if you're not paying attention...). This should not be a revelation to anyone, and if it is, you aren't using your brain. This is the game, and it doesn't stop for a virus, a civil war, a nuclear war, a hurricane, a volcano, an earth quake, an alien invasion, etc. etc. etc. The only thing that is naive is to believe that the US is the only nation that will try to exploit COVID-19. The people that can't see this are those who cannot view the world outside of their own bubble of biases, and/or falling for propaganda machines and failing to see the whole story, and/or lack of knowledge in history and political struggle through the annals of history. I'm also a little shocked at many pofoers not seeing/understanding this. This place typically has smarter people than say, facebook/twitter.

Edit:
To my note on propaganda machines above. That's exactly what propaganda of any nation seeks to achieve. Convince people that there is one singular threat/enemy/monster, and that "we" cannot possibly be the bad guys in anything, when the reality is, all governments are genocidal maniacs playing the game. Reality is beyond good and evil, as they say.For some reason, this is hard for people to see.

[Atlantis]

Well. She is a well known conspiracy theorist and Russia Today drone. That said. All good propaganda has its roots in some kind of truth. In this case I found her attempt to be beyond transparent. I do not find her assertion that the US sees CV19 as an opportunity and even if it did it is about to be overtaken by events as you might say.

I have simply given up on understanding the situation in the Middle East. I don't watch the little news we have about it in the US media so I can't offer any kind of a nuanced observation about that. In general terms I believe that Russia sees the region as an opportunity to act overtly and covertly against US interests. There is plenty of evidence of that.

I do have eyes on the China thing and I think we are making a huge mistake WRT China. Blaming China for the CV debacle in the US is convenient. No doubt about that. But it is wrongheaded. COVID-19 is not the "China Virus" anymore than the seasonal flu, which frequently originates in China, is. Of course there are going to be conspiracy theories about CV being a bungled, or even deliberate, biological warfare event. I am not persuaded of the truth of that. If there was solid evidence of this and the Trump administration decided only to respond with words rather than nukes, I would be even more disgusted. I see the China Virus bullshit as a target of opportunity to persuade Trump's generally uninformed and frequently uneducated followers that he does not bear any responsibility for the federal government's appallingly mishandled response to this disease. We need China to help us fight this disease and they need us as well. I have said for some time on this forum that the refusal of the US to certify Chinese PPE was disgraceful and only in the last couple of days have they quietly relented.

There is no doubt that the US foreign policy under the current administration lacks a moral center. The fact that the US military actions throughout the world are ongoing has little if anything to do with the virus. Would I support a cease-fire in some regions to allow for better treatment for this disease? Why not. But that would not represent a meaningful foreign policy readjustment. Just a delay that some more hawkish friends of mine would allow our "enemies" to further consolidate their position in some areas.

RE Maduro. He is a scumbag, corrupt to the core and dangerous. He is a 1950s style South American dictator. He is wildly unpopular in Venezuela. No sympathy for him at all. He needs to go. I am surprised the military hasn't done away with him yet.

Back in Feb., Kudlow said that the virus would damage China and benefit the US. That shows two things:

1. The US will use the pandemic to push its geopolitical objectives no matter how many get killed as a consequence.

2. The Trump admin hasn't got a clue about what is going on. Trump is just flayling about in desperation, getting nastier all the time.

I don't believe Trump wants to attack Iran. They are just going through their daily routine of terrorizing people in the region. The US will probably retreat from the ME as the pandemic spreads through the region. Populations are relatively young there and people are used to death. To protect US assets from infection will become impossible.

To increase the Iran sanctions while Europe is sending humanitarian aid will just make the US look bad.

To block Chinese medical shipments to Cuba is about the foulest thing anybody could do.

China will win the pandemic. That was by no means certain in January. China will win because of a catastrophic leadership failure in the West, especially in the US.

[late]

China will win the pandemic. That was by no means certain in January. China will win because of a catastrophic leadership failure in the West, especially in the US.

This is a superb point. If we had a sentence of the month award, I'd nominate it.

[Rancid]

NY is reporting death rates are dropping, but that it's too early to be sure. Basically, there appears to be a glimmer of hope.

[late]

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.

A widespread lack of access to testing in the early weeks of the U.S. outbreak means people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted, epidemiologists say. Even now, some people who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes are not being tested, according to funeral directors, medical examiners and nursing home representatives.

Postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources..."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html

[Atlantis]

If this is really Wuhan on April 5th, it is a great success.

Meanwhile, the West is sinking into a graveyard silence. I can't imagine the amount of bile gathering in the cold warriors.

[Atlantis]

Biggest electronics market in the world is reopening in Shenzhen.

@JohnRawls, still think the Chinese economy will be hit harder than the West?

[JohnRawls]

Biggest electronics market in the world is reopening in Shenzhen.

@JohnRawls, still think the Chinese economy will be hit harder than the West?

As i said, yes. Majority of consumers live in the west. Production capacity of China is meaningless without our consumption. Also the Chinese lockdown started a lot earlier compared to us. On top of obviously not being fully lifted.

[Atlantis]

As i said, yes. Majority of consumers live in the west. Production capacity of China is meaningless without our consumption. Also the Chinese lockdown started a lot earlier compared to us. On top of obviously not being fully lifted.

China has the biggest domestic market in the world. China produces many goods the world now desperately needs - at any price - like medical supplies. The money is still there, it's just spent differently.

Why would that disadvantage China as compared to other economies that don't have these advantages, or economies that rely on leisure activities like tourism that will be wiped out?

Western hubris and complacency are incomprehensible, especially in non-Westerners.

[Donna]

As i said, yes. Majority of consumers live in the west. Production capacity of China is meaningless without our consumption. Also the Chinese lockdown started a lot earlier compared to us. On top of obviously not being fully lifted.

The Chinese economy will be comparatively fine thanks to domestic consumption.

[Atlantis]

The UK PM, Boris Johnson, has been admitted hospital 10 days after testing positive. He's only 55, but has been far too fat for far too long. Most Covid-19 patients who have to be hospitalized are overweight.

Before testing he went around a hospital without protection to shake hands with nurses and doctors. Let's hope he didn't infect too many of them. He did infect his pregnant partner, though.

Millions may die because of the herd immunity theory pushed by Johnson. Only right that he should get some of his own remedy too. Most of us won't get the VIP treatment, so better not follow his example.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

@Kaiserschmarrn
Australia seems to have been less severely impacted than other places in the world. Why?

Partially due to restricting travel from China early on when everyone else in the western sphere were worrying about not being seen to be racist.

Partially due to dumb luck.

The big threats have been primarily domestic attitudes. Unis trying to keep their international student business going, Oz citizens thinking it is ok to travel in a pandemic (and then complaining when they get quarantined or stuck overseas), and the willfully stupid who went on cruises. Finally, bureaucratic incompetence.

That sounds very much like NZ until very recently.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-03/coronavirus-scott-morrison-national-cabinet-meeting-update/12120584

So apparently our testing has been the best in the world. Yet it has been almost completely focused on all that unwise international travel. The figures now look good, but only because international travel is now banned. With little domestic testing, we don’t really know the local situation. As you can see in the above quote, the CHO admits thus but tries to make it sound like it is all roses.

So it is a bit like an episode of Yes Minister. Perhaps we could call it Yes Health Minister?

I rather suspect your Prime Minister gave Morrison a kick in the balls as the local strategy seemed to improve after talks between them. The SG Prime Minister might have given Morrison a grilling to. Possibly the liberals were starting to think along the ‘herd immunity’ idea that Johnson had been toying with. Now it seems eradication is the ultimate goal. As it should be.

Australia might just get lucky. But the lack lustre leadership and the general small minded selfishness of many is now clear for all to see. Donald Horne wrote a book titled ‘The Lucky Country’ in the 1960s. This has been misinterpreted to mean Australia is somehow exceptional. But what he mean’t, for those who didn’t bother to read his book, was that Australians are complacent and we are “bloody lucky to still be here”.

Nothing has changed, it would seem.

I'm still hoping Australia will end up choosing elimination as well.

This article in the NZ Medical Journal sheds some light on the decision making in NZ (and in passing that of other countries as well):

[...]

What are the strategic options?

Pandemic planning in New Zealand, as in most countries, has been dominated by measures to manage influenza pandemics. For good reason, given experience with the 1918 influenza pandemic. With the rising threat of the COVID-19 pandemic in January, New Zealand used its existing national influenza pandemic plan as a basis for its response.7 This planning is appropriately based on a mitigation model, and focuses on delaying the arrival of influenza, and a range of measures to ‘flatten the curve’ of the pandemic. There is no expectation that any measures can halt an influenza pandemic (short of complete border closures, termed ‘protective sequestration’, which has protected Pacific Islands in the past 8 ).

We are now seeing this mitigation approach being applied in countries across Europe, North America and Australia where the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading widely. A variation of this approach is the suppression strategy, where the curve is flattened to the point where there are relatively few cases. This approach is likely to require a prolonged ‘lockdown’ response which may last for months until an effective vaccine or antivirals are available.9 Attempts at the suppression approach are increasingly replacing mitigation as the pandemic overwhelms healthcare systems.

But COVID-19 is not pandemic influenza.10 The potential to contain it has not been adequately appreciated. This difference is largely a function of the biology and epidemiology of this infection. COVID-19 infection has a longer incubation period (median of 5–6 days) than influenza (1–3 days). This feature provides an opportunity for case identification and isolation and tracing and quarantining of contacts to succeed, but probably only if done swiftly and effectively.11

The strongest evidence that containment, on the path to elimination, works comes from the remarkable success of China in reversing a large pandemic.12 Of particular relevance to New Zealand are the examples of smaller Asian jurisdictions, notably Hong Kong, Singapore,13 South Korea 14 and Taiwan 15.

New Zealand had a brief time-window to refine its plan before the pandemic arrived with the first COVID-19 case on 28 February.16 At the time of writing, there were just over 800 identified cases, almost entirely in people who had recently returned from overseas or their contacts. However, there were several cases of community transmission, which was likely to be more widespread than numbers indicated because the initially limited diagnostic testing capacity was focused on people with a travel history. New Zealand therefore had a major choice. A more familiar mitigation strategy or a more ambitious elimination approach. Technically, elimination is the eradication of an infectious disease at a country or regional level, with the term eradication reserved for global extinction of an organism. Disease elimination has been applied to a wide range of human and animal infectious diseases, though an effective vaccine is often required.17

By mid-March there was growing support for an elimination strategy.18 The Government introduced a four-tier response system on 21 March and the country was placed on ‘level 2’ response (which involved limitations on mass gatherings and encouraging increased physical distancing). The country then escalated rapidly to ‘level 4’ (widely described as a ‘lockdown’ involving closing all schools, non-essential workplaces, social gatherings and severe travel restrictions) which came into force on the evening of 25 March 2020. A national emergency was also declared, giving authorities additional powers to enforce control measures.

This elimination strategy is a major departure from pandemic influenza mitigation. With the mitigation strategy, the response is increased as the pandemic progresses and more demanding interventions such as school closures are introduced later to ‘flatten the curve.’ Elimination partly reverses the order by introducing strong measures at the start in an effort to prevent introduction and local transmission of an exotic pathogen such as COVID-19. This approach has a strong focus on border control, which is obviously easier to apply for island states. It also emphasises case isolation and quarantine of contacts to ‘stamp out’ chains of transmission. If these measures fail and there is evidence of community transmission, it then requires a major response (physical distancing, travel restrictions and potentially mass quarantines or ‘lockdowns’) to extinguish chains of transmission.

[...]

This provides an answer to some questions I've had for some time. It also explains why almost all western countries, including NZ at first, have acted quite similarly. The deviations from the default pandemic plans, which are based on influenza, are to some extent a function of each government's responsiveness to new information.

Of course, as the article points out, if our plan doesn't work, we might still have to go for mitigation/suppression eventually.

At least, we may not be spared more lock down measures in the future, considering Singapore has had to introduce stricter measures a few days ago as well: https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/circuit-breaker-to-minimise-further-spread-of-covid-19