Mark Zaid, JFK and Trump

[Douglas Caddy]

The Washington Post published this article by the daughter-in-law of lifelong friend:

Hello from Italy. Your future is grimmer than you think.

Within weeks, our old lives were gone

Cyclists pass closed cafe terraces in Milan last week. Italy has all but put a halt to normal life, paring the economy down to essential services only in a bid to stem the advance of the novel coronavirus. (Alberto Bernasconi/Bloomberg News)

By Ida Garibaldi 

Ida Garibaldi lives in Vicenza, Italy. She was born in Italy, and, for many years, lived in Alexandria, Virginia.

March 17, 2020 at 8:18 p.m. GMT+1

My family lives in the Veneto, in Northern Italy, one of the regions worst hit by the novel coronavirus. We are on lockdown. It’s scary. It’s lonely. It’s uncomfortable. And did I mention scary?

I’ll spare you the statistics and the sermons; both are already abundant. But I do want to make one thing clear: If you think that by stocking up your pantries you have absolved yourself from the responsibility of preparing for this virus, you are mistaken. This is a crisis like none before. Be skeptical of both naysayers and doomsayers; there’s no way of knowing how this will end.

The restrictions came upon us slowly but steadily. Within two weeks, our old lives were gone. First the schools closed, then came social distancing. Then the government locked down the hardest-hit areas: no more going in and out of certain provinces; limited movements within the “red zones.” Then the whole country shut down. Most stores closed their doors. People who could were asked to telework; those who could not, and did not have a job related to the continuation of essential services, were placed on part-time schedules or unpaid leave. When we went out, we had to carry a pass explaining our reasons for being outside to show to the law enforcement officers patrolling the streets. The priority became keeping everyone inside, at all times.

For some people, the gradual rollout made these measures hard to accept: Skeptical observers questioned the seriousness of the disease, given that the restrictions were not draconian from the start. And yet without time to adjust to a progressive loss of freedom, we wouldn’t have accepted it. We might have rebelled. Instead, we rallied, coming together as one — protecting each other’s health, even as we could no longer socialize.

Living under these conditions is difficult to describe. We can only leave the house out of medical necessity or to get food. We can go on short walks but not in groups. We can’t hug, kiss or shake hands with anyone outside of our family. We must stay at least four feet from everyone else, at all times.

My family tries to maintain a routine: In the mornings, I home-school our four children, who range from kindergarten to eighth grade, while my husband teleworks. My eldest son’s school was the best prepared for distance learning and began remote lessons from the first week of the lockdown. He gets live lessons, homework, regular interaction with his teachers — and just as importantly, regular interaction with friends, which lessens his sense of isolation. It’s great, really, but it also requires a dedicated laptop and bandwidth from 8:10 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. daily, limiting what everyone else can do online. My other children’s schools, which shut down at the same time, have only started distance learning this week.

In the afternoon, my husband and I both work as best we can, while the children keep themselves busy. With guitars we had on hand and a drum set they built from scratch, they’re putting together a garage band. (Literally — they have to stay in the garage and can’t practice or perform anywhere else.) For the first time in my life, I’ve come to think that having four children sometimes can be less work than having one or two: They can entertain each other.

Counterintuitively, the days somehow end incredibly fast. We are always doing something: organizing lessons, fighting with a malfunctioning printer or about our overloaded WiFi, tutoring each child one-on-one, getting the kids outside, feeding them, drinking coffee, repeat. When, after two or three days, we can’t take the confinement anymore, one of us makes a run to the grocery store to buy fruits and vegetables and whatever else we need. (The stores, at least, are well stocked.) We go out by bike to get some exercise. That, too, is a challenge, because we are always tired.

My mother and sisters, my little niece, my aunt, and cousins live in Lombardy, the region worst affected by the pandemic. If my mother, who is 81 (or almost 81, as she would point out) catches this virus, she will probably die. I speak to and text them frequently, but I don’t know when, or if, I will be able to see them. It’s bizarre: Everyone is going through the same emotions — fear, anger, exhaustion — no matter where we live or what we do. We don’t need many words to know how the other person feels. We end every call with “Forza!” We must keep going.

Yes, most people who become ill will survive. Yes, people younger than 45 will probably be fine. But right now, doctors across Northern Italy have to choose between who gets the respirator and lives, and who does not and dies. Italy’s health system, for all its shortcomings — the long waits for certain tests, some aging buildings, the sometimes crowded hospital wards — is among the best-performing in the Western world. A 2017 report by the World Health Organization, for example, reported that Italian health care has among the lowest mortality rates in Europe and a strong acute-care sector. And yet this virus has overwhelmed the health system of one of the richest areas of the European Union.

Statistics change daily, as the hospitals scramble to build capacity. On Thursday, there were only 737 intensive-care beds open for new coronavirus patients in Lombardy; the region is home to 10 million people, and as of this writing, 16,220 people have tested positive for the disease there. Depending on how many coronavirus patients go into or out of the hospitals each day, if you have a chronic condition or a heart attack or are in a car crash, you might not be able to access care.

Writing this from Italy, I am also writing to you from your own future. From our state of emergency, we have been watching the crisis unfold in the United States with a terrible sense of foreboding. Please stop waiting for others to tell you what to do; stop blaming the government for doing too much or too little. We all have actions we can take to slow the spread of the disease — and ensuring that your own household has enough canned goods and cleaning supplies is not enough. You can do a lot more. You should do a lot more. Stay away from restaurants, gyms, libraries, movie theaters, bars and cafes, yes. But also: Don’t invite people over for dinner, don’t let your kids go on playdates, don’t take them to the playground, don’t let your teenagers out of your sight. They will sneak out with their friends, they will hold hands, they will share their drinks and food. If this seems too much, consider the following: We are not allowed to hold weddings or funerals. We can’t gather to bury our dead.

For us, it might be too late to avoid an incredible loss of life. But if you decide against taking actions because it seems inconvenient, or because you don’t want to look silly, you can’t say you weren’t warned.

[Douglas Caddy]

Posted by Joseph McBride on Facebook today:

Jan 20: "I know more about viruses than anyone.”
Jan 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

Feb 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
Feb 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”...
Feb 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
Feb 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
Feb 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
Feb 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”
Feb 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Feb 28: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

Mar 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
Mar 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
Mar 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
Mar 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
Mar 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
Mar 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
Mar 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
Mar 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it ... Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
Mar 6: “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”
Mar 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
Mar 9: “This blindsided the world.”
Mar 13: “National emergency, two big words.”

See More

[Douglas Caddy]

Detroit automakers to close all plants over coronavirus fears

 

https://www.axios.com/detroit-automakers-plants-coronavirus-e3722189-180c-4040-9cfe-6f77d87ed0e3.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100&fbclid=IwAR2cMFRhDMYQ3iWV7ZWXGqgMfp8DR-qsE3Jfqw18BPvZlY4LzdAOvGI-l7M

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

I deleted my support about what you said about Obama and 2008 because it sounded redundant.

Notre-Dame de Paris has a series of flying buttresses supporting the walls.  Built-in redundancy saves the day when the roof's on fire.

Edited March 18, 2020 by David Andrews

[Douglas Caddy]

Questions that I would like to see answered:

1) In January a cancer researcher, Zaosong Zheng, was indicted for trying to smuggle 21 vials of biological material out of the US to China and lying about it to federal investigators. Zaosong, 30, whose entry was sponsored by Harvard University, had hidden the vials in a sock before boarding the plane.

Precisely what did the 21 vials contain and was this the first time Zaosong had smuggled biological material or was it one of many times?

2) President Trump keeps publicly taunting China about the virus originating there. Will the Chinese Government retaliate for these gratuitous insults? if it does what actions might China take that would drastically affect American consumers and businesses since China manufactures so many essential products America uses?

[Douglas Caddy]

1 hour ago, David Andrews said:

Notre-Dame de Paris has a series of flying buttresses supporting the walls.  Built-in redundancy saves the day when the roof's on fire.

Your posts easily stand on their own merit for credibility and thus need no redundant support from others. If you disagree, file a lawsuit to force me to retract.

[David Andrews]

43 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Your posts easily stand on their own merit for credibility and thus need no redundant support from others. If you disagree, file a lawsuit to force me to retract.

I say inquisitorial, you say adversarial.

Edited March 19, 2020 by David Andrews

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Questions that I would like to see answered:

1) In January a cancer researcher, Zaosong Zheng, was indicted for trying to smuggle 21 vials of biological material out of the US to China and lying about it to federal investigators. Zaosong, 30, whose entry was sponsored by Harvard University, had hidden the vials in a sock before boarding the plane.

Precisely what did the 21 vials contain and was this the first time Zaosong had smuggled biological material or was it one of many times?

2) President Trump keeps publicly taunting China about the virus originating there. Will the Chinese Government retaliate for these gratuitous insults? if it does what actions might China take that would drastically affect American consumers and businesses since China manufactures so many essential products America uses?

Doug - the DOJ press release you linked yesterday indicates that Zheng did not travel back and forth to China, had been in the US about 15 months, and the “biological samples” were directly related to his cancer-cell research at the Boston facility. All of the charges against him relate to and are limited to his apparent very poor judgment in placing these materials in his luggage and initially misleading officials at the airport. None of the charges relate to possessing classified materials. If China has been running bio-warfare programs out of US cancer research facilities, I highly doubt the fruits of their labor would be smuggled out of the US inside a sock inside luggage facing TSA security at the airport.

Not many people know this, but US national security doctrine about two years ago officially switched the national enemy from terrorism to “great power adversaries” China and Russia. US Defence Secretary Esper stated just last month that the DOD anticipates a “high-intensity” military conflict with China in the near-future. There has been a corresponding information war directed at these adversaries, which has included, in my opinion, Russiagate and DOJ indictments of Chinese nationals, in the interest of influencing domestic public opinion and manufacturing consent for conflict. I would say the US military-industrial-intelligence complex is currently at its highest level (outside of WW2) of domestic power and influence. That Harvard almost instantly threw one of its most prominent faculty members under the bus over charges that might not amount to much at all is certainly an indicator. Also the very muted responses by large US business interests when their bottom line is seriously affected by national security related sanction policies.

Related to that, using pre-existing sanction and embargo measures to deny emergency help  to countries trying to deal with coronavirus issues, as being applied to Iran and Venezuela, is cruel if not despicable.

[Ron Bulman]

4 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

The Washington Post published this article by the daughter-in-law of lifelong friend:

Hello from Italy. Your future is grimmer than you think.

Within weeks, our old lives were gone

Cyclists pass closed cafe terraces in Milan last week. Italy has all but put a halt to normal life, paring the economy down to essential services only in a bid to stem the advance of the novel coronavirus. (Alberto Bernasconi/Bloomberg News)

By Ida Garibaldi 

Ida Garibaldi lives in Vicenza, Italy. She was born in Italy, and, for many years, lived in Alexandria, Virginia.

March 17, 2020 at 8:18 p.m. GMT+1

My family lives in the Veneto, in Northern Italy, one of the regions worst hit by the novel coronavirus. We are on lockdown. It’s scary. It’s lonely. It’s uncomfortable. And did I mention scary?

I’ll spare you the statistics and the sermons; both are already abundant. But I do want to make one thing clear: If you think that by stocking up your pantries you have absolved yourself from the responsibility of preparing for this virus, you are mistaken. This is a crisis like none before. Be skeptical of both naysayers and doomsayers; there’s no way of knowing how this will end.

The restrictions came upon us slowly but steadily. Within two weeks, our old lives were gone. First the schools closed, then came social distancing. Then the government locked down the hardest-hit areas: no more going in and out of certain provinces; limited movements within the “red zones.” Then the whole country shut down. Most stores closed their doors. People who could were asked to telework; those who could not, and did not have a job related to the continuation of essential services, were placed on part-time schedules or unpaid leave. When we went out, we had to carry a pass explaining our reasons for being outside to show to the law enforcement officers patrolling the streets. The priority became keeping everyone inside, at all times.

For some people, the gradual rollout made these measures hard to accept: Skeptical observers questioned the seriousness of the disease, given that the restrictions were not draconian from the start. And yet without time to adjust to a progressive loss of freedom, we wouldn’t have accepted it. We might have rebelled. Instead, we rallied, coming together as one — protecting each other’s health, even as we could no longer socialize.

Living under these conditions is difficult to describe. We can only leave the house out of medical necessity or to get food. We can go on short walks but not in groups. We can’t hug, kiss or shake hands with anyone outside of our family. We must stay at least four feet from everyone else, at all times.

My family tries to maintain a routine: In the mornings, I home-school our four children, who range from kindergarten to eighth grade, while my husband teleworks. My eldest son’s school was the best prepared for distance learning and began remote lessons from the first week of the lockdown. He gets live lessons, homework, regular interaction with his teachers — and just as importantly, regular interaction with friends, which lessens his sense of isolation. It’s great, really, but it also requires a dedicated laptop and bandwidth from 8:10 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. daily, limiting what everyone else can do online. My other children’s schools, which shut down at the same time, have only started distance learning this week.

In the afternoon, my husband and I both work as best we can, while the children keep themselves busy. With guitars we had on hand and a drum set they built from scratch, they’re putting together a garage band. (Literally — they have to stay in the garage and can’t practice or perform anywhere else.) For the first time in my life, I’ve come to think that having four children sometimes can be less work than having one or two: They can entertain each other.

Counterintuitively, the days somehow end incredibly fast. We are always doing something: organizing lessons, fighting with a malfunctioning printer or about our overloaded WiFi, tutoring each child one-on-one, getting the kids outside, feeding them, drinking coffee, repeat. When, after two or three days, we can’t take the confinement anymore, one of us makes a run to the grocery store to buy fruits and vegetables and whatever else we need. (The stores, at least, are well stocked.) We go out by bike to get some exercise. That, too, is a challenge, because we are always tired.

My mother and sisters, my little niece, my aunt, and cousins live in Lombardy, the region worst affected by the pandemic. If my mother, who is 81 (or almost 81, as she would point out) catches this virus, she will probably die. I speak to and text them frequently, but I don’t know when, or if, I will be able to see them. It’s bizarre: Everyone is going through the same emotions — fear, anger, exhaustion — no matter where we live or what we do. We don’t need many words to know how the other person feels. We end every call with “Forza!” We must keep going.

Yes, most people who become ill will survive. Yes, people younger than 45 will probably be fine. But right now, doctors across Northern Italy have to choose between who gets the respirator and lives, and who does not and dies. Italy’s health system, for all its shortcomings — the long waits for certain tests, some aging buildings, the sometimes crowded hospital wards — is among the best-performing in the Western world. A 2017 report by the World Health Organization, for example, reported that Italian health care has among the lowest mortality rates in Europe and a strong acute-care sector. And yet this virus has overwhelmed the health system of one of the richest areas of the European Union.

Statistics change daily, as the hospitals scramble to build capacity. On Thursday, there were only 737 intensive-care beds open for new coronavirus patients in Lombardy; the region is home to 10 million people, and as of this writing, 16,220 people have tested positive for the disease there. Depending on how many coronavirus patients go into or out of the hospitals each day, if you have a chronic condition or a heart attack or are in a car crash, you might not be able to access care.

Writing this from Italy, I am also writing to you from your own future. From our state of emergency, we have been watching the crisis unfold in the United States with a terrible sense of foreboding. Please stop waiting for others to tell you what to do; stop blaming the government for doing too much or too little. We all have actions we can take to slow the spread of the disease — and ensuring that your own household has enough canned goods and cleaning supplies is not enough. You can do a lot more. You should do a lot more. Stay away from restaurants, gyms, libraries, movie theaters, bars and cafes, yes. But also: Don’t invite people over for dinner, don’t let your kids go on playdates, don’t take them to the playground, don’t let your teenagers out of your sight. They will sneak out with their friends, they will hold hands, they will share their drinks and food. If this seems too much, consider the following: We are not allowed to hold weddings or funerals. We can’t gather to bury our dead.

For us, it might be too late to avoid an incredible loss of life. But if you decide against taking actions because it seems inconvenient, or because you don’t want to look silly, you can’t say you weren’t warned.

Bump.

[Andrew Prutsok]

3 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Jan. 31, 2020 - Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus

Feb. 4, 2020 - WHO urges against China travel bans as coronavirus cases soar past 20,000

 

Your Welcome

 

Anybody know how the Google website and Walmart parking lot drive thru clinics are working out?

[W. Niederhut]

Just saw this incisive comment by Caitlin Johnstone...  🙁

    https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/nine-thoughts-on-covid-19-and-whats-coming-65f8ed26b1df

 

  " I think this is going to hit America much harder than other countries, unfortunately. Combine a literal joke of a healthcare system with a president who up until just today has been dismissive of the threat the virus poses, the fact that the majority of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency expense at a time of mounting layoffs while being chronically uninsured or underinsured, an inability to make anything happen without massive corporations voluntarily going against their own profit margins, a culture of rugged individualism with a reflexive distaste for collectivist organization for the good of the whole, and a highly religious population with many preachers telling their underinsured parishioners to demonstrate their faith by gathering at the megachurch and shaking hands with everyone, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster."

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Jeff:

Thank you for the detailed explanation about Zheng. and for our intelligence community's geopolitical outlook on China. Still I think what Trump is doing in essentially smearing China and the Chinese residing in the United States has only negative effects.. Best to let China slumber than arouse it.

[James DiEugenio]

William, can you please highlight your links to they are live and click through?

  The way you have them, one has to copy the URL and place it in the search bar.

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Just saw this incisive comment by Caitlin Johnstone...  🙁

    https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/nine-thoughts-on-covid-19-and-whats-coming-65f8ed26b1df

 

  " I think this is going to hit America much harder than other countries, unfortunately. Combine a literal joke of a healthcare system with a president who up until just today has been dismissive of the threat the virus poses, the fact that the majority of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency expense at a time of mounting layoffs while being chronically uninsured or underinsured, an inability to make anything happen without massive corporations voluntarily going against their own profit margins, a culture of rugged individualism with a reflexive distaste for collectivist organization for the good of the whole, and a highly religious population with many preachers telling their underinsured parishioners to demonstrate their faith by gathering at the megachurch and shaking hands with everyone, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster."

 

This has happened before more than once.  If you quote the post the links then work.

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Ron.

Reading that piece, China did a really creative job with their disinfectant teams and tunnels.

We could learn a lot from them, if we were not so busy smearing them.