Michael Every's weekly market report at Rabo Bank is a must read as it is both well written and insightful... 

Rabo: The "Roaring 20s" Are Pushing Us Deeper Toward 1929

By Michael Every of Rabobank

The “Roaring 20s” continued to roar yesterday, pushing us deeper towards 1929 even if it is unclear exactly where we sit in the parallel to that unhappy decade. I have repeatedly said the 1920s are a ridiculous analogy for our 20s if that is meant as anything positive. We’ve all had fun dressing up as The Great Gatsby at an office party; and lots of people are having fun dressing up as The Great Gatsby in real life today; but very few dress up as hungry British workers during the General Strike (1926); or Soviet workers carrying out the first 5-year Plan (1928); or recall that The Great Gatsby was published in the same year as Mein Kampf (1925); or that Mussolini’s fascists had taken over Italy two years earlier (1923), and he won a thumping 2/3 general election victory in 1924. Kind of takes away the taste of the champagne a little, doesn’t it?

Regardless, up everything goes, including oil. The bitter freeze in Texas has seen several oil firms declare force majeure. And both freezing and exclamations towards the heavens are evident in the Middle East after a major diplomatic shift that sees the US “recalibrate” its relations with long-time ally Saudi Arabia through King Salman bin Abdulaziz rather than his powerful son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The White House says it will maintain defence ties with Riyadh, "even as we make clear areas where we have disagreements and where we have concerns." As this happened, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, now not terrorists in US eyes, made military gains in the north of Yemen and are close to seizing the oil-rich city of Marib. The White House wants to see an end to the destructive Yemen war the Saudis have been conducting: will it be one with pro-Iranian forces having a strong foothold closer to Saudi oil fields?

It’s no surprise that as oil prices surge, 10-year Treasury yields in the US jump higher in tandem. 10s were up 10bp yesterday to 1.31% and technically Piotr Matys argues that we are not far from a test back to 1.41%, which if we break through then opens a channel all the way back to 2%. On one level we can look at this and scream “Great Reflation!” Or we can look at a chart going back a year and realize that before Covid struck we were trading at nearly 2% - and that was a time when the market prevailing concerns were still about “secular stagnation” and the “new normal” and the lack of power of labor vs. capital. So even with an oil price squeeze and a sugar-high US fiscal stimulus of close to 10% of GDP, we are just getting back to where we were in the already-gloomy pre-virus norm.

Yes, general inflation almost certainly lies ahead of us now that commodities are the new dot com: but call me when general wage inflation is too. (I will be in my usual Gloomy Place.)

Yes, the political environment is changing rapidly too, as it did in the 1920s: but is it changing in a direction that markets will actually like? Do they seriously think any emergent populism is for *them*? If so, they greatly misunderstand political reality. The neoliberal status quo prevailing since the late 1970s has always been for markets: real populism of the fiscal-meets-monetary kind --if we ever get it-- will surely be for the many, not the many asset-holders. Indeed, Markets would arguably NOT want to see the kind of policies that could make The Great Gatsby into The Great Reflation.

For example, one thing that will flatten their champagne is the Democrats unveiling a bill to end the “carried interest loophole” tax break, forcing Wall Street titans to pay income tax and not capital gains tax on what they earn. The American Investment Council, which represents the private-equity industry, of course argues it would be bad for the economy to enact such a bill during a pandemic (or after a pandemic; or before any possible future pandemic - that’s politics, folks). They state: “As workers and local economies continue to struggle…, this would be the worst time for Washington to reverse this responsible policy and punish long term investment that creates jobs and builds businesses in communities across America.” Let’s see if the bill passes or not:

If it does, then politics really is changing in the 20s; theoretically if that tax provides the government with funds to channel money back to consumers most likely to spend or, better, to invest in productive R&D, or in jobs and infrastructure for the long term, then logically perhaps The Great Reflation has legs - though Wall Street will hate it;

If it doesn’t, then Wall Street will keep pretending to be Leonardo DiCaprio, while the sell-off in US Treasuries will ultimately have a ceiling where we were before Covid began, and once the sugar high of this US fiscal package is fully priced in, they will start to drift down again. (For this and other reasons.)

Meanwhile, for now politics is still the same in some key ways: in Myanmar, the financial press report “Myanmar coup removes central bank chief, alarming global financiers”; the same press lauds the installation of former central-bank chief Draghi as Prime Minister of Italy. (Yes, of course one move was illegal and the other both legal and under democratic norms – but you get the underlying point.)

Yet politics *is* changing: and again not necessarily in a 1920’s direction Wall Street will ultimately enjoy. The Political Action Committee “Save America” backed by former President Trump has just released a very Trumpian statement which savages Republican Senate Minority Leader McConnell, including that his: “dedication to business as usual, status quo policies, together with his lack of political insight, wisdom, skill, and personality, has rapidly driven him from Majority Leader to Minority Leader, and it will only get worse….We know our America First agenda is a winner, not McConnell’s Beltway First agenda or Biden’s America Last….Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again….Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First.”

Begun, The Republican Civil Wars have.

More champagne, anyone?

 I do not share some of the ideas of this article but it is nevertheless excellent food for thoughts. Which is unfortunately what we are missing more and more replaced as they are by tweets and soon to be completely eliminated if we accepts the fact that all and any non main stream idea is a conspiracy by definition.

How Conspiracy Theorizing May Soon Get You Labelled A "Domestic Terrorist"

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

If you are starting to feel like forces controlling the governments of the west are out to get you, then it is likely that you are either a paranoid nut job, or a stubborn realist.

Either way, it means that you have some major problems on your hands.

If you don’t happen to find yourself among the tinfoil hat-wearing strata of conspiracy theorists waiting in a bunker for aliens to either strike down or save society from the shape shifting lizard people, but are rather contemplating how, in the 1960s, a shadow government took control of society over the dead bodies of many assassinated patriots, then certain conclusions tend to arise.

Three Elementary Realizations for Thinking People

The first conclusion you would likely arrive at is that the United States government was just put through the first coup in over 58 years (yes, what happened in 1963 was a coup). Although it is becoming a bit prohibitive to speak such words aloud in polite society, Nancy Pelosi’s official biographer Molly Ball, recently penned a scandalous Time Magazine article entitled ‘The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Elections’ which admitted to this conspiracy saying:

“Even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream- a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” (Lest you think that this was a subversion of democracy, Ball informs us that “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”)

Another conclusion you might come to is that many of the political figures whom you believed were serving those who elected them into office, actually serve the interests of a clique of technocrats and billionaires lusting over the deconstruction of western civilization under something called “a Great Reset”. Where this was brushed off as an unfounded conspiracy theory not long ago, even Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister (and neo-Nazi supporting Rhodes Scholar) Chrystia Freeland decided to become a Trustee of the World Economic Forum just weeks ago. In this role, Freeland joins fellow Oxford technocrat Mark Carney in their mutual endeavor to be a part of the new movement to decarbonize civilization and make feudalism cool again.

Lastly, you might notice that your having arrived at these conclusions is itself increasingly becoming a form of thought-crime punishable in a variety of distasteful ways elaborated by a series of unprecedented new emergency regulations that propose extending the definition of “terrorism”. Those implicated under the new definition will be those broad swaths of citizens of western nations who don’t agree with the operating beliefs of the ruling oligarchy.

Already a 60 day review of the U.S. military is underway to purge the armed forces of all such “thought criminals” while McCarthyite legislation has been drafted to cleanse all government jobs of “conspiracy theorists”.

Another startling announcement from the National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin that domestic terrorists include: “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority [and] perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”

While not yet fully codified into law (though it will be if not nipped in the bud soon), you can be sure that things are certainly moving fast as, before our very eyes, the right to free speech is being torn to shreds by means of censorship across social media and the internet, cancelling all opinions deemed unacceptable to the ruling class.

The Conspiracy to Subvert Conspiracy Theorizing

This should not come as a surprise, as Biden’s new addition to the Department of Homeland Security is a bizarre figure named Cass Sunstein who famously described exactly what this was going to look like in his infamous 2008 report ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (co-authored with Harvard Law School’s Adrien Vermeule). In this under-appreciated study, the duo foresaw the greatest threat to the ruling elite took the form of “conspiracy theorizing” within the American population using as examples of this delusion: the idea that the government had anything to do with the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, or the planning and execution of 9-11.

Just to be clear, conspiracy literally means ‘two or more people acting together in accord with an agreed upon idea and intention’.

The fact that Vermeule has made a legal career arguing that laws should be interpreted not by the “intentions” of lawgivers, but rather according to cost-benefit analysis gives us a useful insight into the deranged mind of a technocrat and the delusional reasoning that denies the very thing which has shaped literally ALL of human history.

In their “scholarly” essay, the authors wrote “the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.” 

After establishing his case for the threat of conspiracies, Sunstein says that “the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”.

Not one to simply draw criticisms, the pro-active Sunstein laid out five possible strategies which the social engineers managing the population could deploy to defuse this growing threat saying:

“(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.

(2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.

(3) Government might itself engage in counter speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.

(4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech.

(5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help”.

(I’ll let you think about which of these prescriptions were put into action over the ensuing 12 years.)

Cass Sunstein was particularly sensitive to this danger largely because: 1) he was a part of a very ugly conspiracy himself and 2) he is a world-renowned behaviorist.

The Problem of Reality for Behaviorists

As an economic behaviorist and lawyer arguing that all “human rights” should be extended to animals (blurring the line separating human dynamics from the law of the jungle as any fascist must), Sunstein has spent decades trying to model human behavior with computer simulations in an effort to “scientifically manage” such behavior.

As outlined in his book Nudge (co-authored with Nobel Prize winning behaviorist Richard Thaler), Sunstein “discovered” that people tend to organize their behavioral patterns around certain fundamental drives, such as the pursuit of pleasure, avoidance of pain, and certain Darwinian drives for sex, popularity, desire for conformity, desire for novelty, and greed.

One of the key principles of economic behaviorism which is seen repeated in such popular manuals as Freakonomics, Nudge, Predictably Irrational, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Animal Spirits, is that humans are both biologically determined due to their Darwinian impulses, but, unlike other animals, have the fatal flaw of being fundamentally irrational at their core. Since humans are fundamentally irrational, says the behaviorist, it is requisite that an enlightened elite impose “order” upon society while maintaining the illusion of freedom of choice from below. This is the underlying assumption of Karl Popper’s Open Society doctrine, which was fed to Popper’s protégé George Soros and which animates Soros’ General Theory of Reflexivity and his Oxford-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

This was at the heart of Obama’s science Czar John Holdren’s call for world government in his 1977 Ecoscience (co-written with his mentor Paul Ehrlich) where the young misanthrope envisioned a future utopic world governed by a scientifically managed master-class saying:

“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime- sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable”.

The caveat: If Darwinian impulses mixed with irrational “animal spirits” were truly all that animated those systems which behaviorists wish to map and manipulate (aka: “nudge” with rewards, punishments), then a scientific priesthood would indeed be a viable and perhaps necessary way to organize the world.

Fortunately, reality is a bit more elegant and dignified than behaviorists wish to admit.

Why Computer Modellers Hate Metaphysics

On a closer inspection of history, we find countless instances where people shape their individual and group behavior around sets of ideas that transcend controllable material impulses. When this happens, those individuals or groups tend to resist adapting to environments created for them. This incredible phenomenon is witnessed empirically in the form of the American Revolution, Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings, Civil Rights movements, and even some bold manifestations of anti-lockdown protests now underway around the world.

Among the most troublesome of those variables which upset computer models are: “Conscience”, “Truth”, “Intentions”, “Soul”, “Honor”, “God”, “Justice”, “Patriotism”, “Dignity”, and “Freedom”.

Whenever individuals shape their identities around these very real, though immaterial (aka: “metaphysical”) principles, they cannot be “nudged” towards pre-determined decisions that defy reason and morality. Adherence to these principles also tends to afford thinking people an important additional edge of creative insight necessary to cut through false explanatory narratives that attempt to hide lies behind the appearance of truth (aka: sophistry).

As witnessed on multiple occasions throughout history, such individuals who value the health of their souls over the intimidating (and extremely malleable) force of popular opinion, will often decide to sacrifice personal comfort and even their lives in order to defend those values which their minds and consciences deem important.

These rare, but invaluable outliers will often resist policies that threaten to undo their freedoms or undermine the basis of their society’s capacity to produce food, and energy for their children and grandchildren. What is worse, is that their example is often extremely contagious causing other members of the sheep class to believe that they too are human and endowed with unalienable rights which should be defended.

The Intentions Ordering World History

Perhaps, most “destructive” of all is that these outlier people tend to look for abstract things like “causes” in historical dynamics shaping the context of their present age, as well as their current geopolitical environment.

Whenever this type of thinking is done, carefully crafted narratives fed to the masses by an enlightened elite will often fail in their powers to persuade, since seekers after truth soon come to realize that IDEAS and intentions (aka: conspiracies) shape our past, present and future. When the dominating intentions shaping society’s trajectory is in conformity with Natural Law, humanity tends to improve, freedoms increase, culture matures and evil loses its hold. Inversely, when the intentions animating history are out of conformity with Natural Law, the opposite happens as societies lose their moral and material fitness to survive and slip ever more quickly into dark ages.

While sitting in a jail in Birmingham Alabama in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described this reality eloquently when he said:

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust… One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

From Plato’s organization of his Academy and efforts to shape a Philosopher King to beat the forces of the Persian Empire, to Cicero’s efforts to save the Roman Republic, to Augustine’s battles to save the soul of Christianity all the way to our present age, conspiracies for the good and counter-conspiracies for evil have shaped history. If one were to begin an investigation into history without an understanding that ideas and intentions caused the trajectory of history, as is the standard practice among history professors dominant in todays world, then one would become incapable of understanding anything essential about one’s own reality.

It is irrelevant that behaviorists and other fascists wish their victims to believe that history just happens simply because random short-sighted impulses kinetically drive events on a timeline- the truth of my claim exists for any serious truth seeker to discover it for themselves.

Back to our Present Sad State of Affairs

Now we all know that Sunstein spent the following years working as Obama’s Regulatory Czar alongside an army of fellow behaviorists who took control of all levers of policy making as outlined by Time Magazine’s April 13, 2009 article ‘How Obama is Using the Science of Change’. As the fabric of western civilization, and traditional values of family, gender, and even macro economic concepts like “development” were degraded during this period, the military industrial complex had a field day as Sunstein’s wife Samantha Power worked closely with Susan Rice in the promotion of “humanitarian bombings” of small nations under Soros’ Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

After the Great Reset Agenda was announced in June 2020, Sunstein was recruited to head the propaganda wing of the World Health Organization known as the WHO Technical Advisory Group where his skills in mass behavior modification was put to use in order to counteract the dangerous spread of conspiracy theories that persuaded large chunks of the world population that COVID-19 was part of a larger conspiracy to undermine national sovereignty and impose world government.

The head of WHO described Sunstein’s mandate in the following terms:

“In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are using a range of tools to influence behavior: Information campaigns are one tool, but so are laws, regulations, guidelines and even fines…That’s why behavioral science is so important.”

Today, hundreds of Obama-era behaviorists have streamed back into influential positions of government under the new “scientifically managed”, evidence-based governance coming back to life under Biden promising to undo the dark days of President Trump.

Ideologues who have been on record calling for world government, the elimination of the sick and elderly (see Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emmanuel’s Why I Hope to Die At 75), and population control are streaming back into positions of influence.

If you think that anything they have done to return to power is unlawful, or antithetical to the principles of the Constitution, then these technocrats want you to know that you are a delusional conspiracy theorist and as such, represent a potential threat to yourself and the society of which you are but a part.

If you question World Health Organization narratives on COVID-19, or doubt the use of vaccines produced by organizations like Astra Zeneca due to their ties to eugenics organizations then you are a delusional conspiracy theorist.

If you doubt that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide or that implementing the Paris Climate accords may cause more damage to humanity than climate change ever could, then you must be a conspiracy theorist.

If you believe that the U.S. government just went through a regime change coordinated by something called “the deep state”, then you run the risk of being labelled a delusional threat to “the general welfare” deserving of the sort of treatment dolled out to any typical terrorist.

It appears that the many comforts we have taken for granted over the past 50-year drunken stupor called “globalization” are quickly coming to an end, and thankfully not one but two opposing intentions for what the new operating system will be are actively vying for control. This clash was witnessed in stark terms during the January 2021 Davos Summit, where Xi Jinping and Putin’s call for a new system of win-win cooperation, multipolarity and long-term development offset the unipolar zero-sum ideologues of the west seeking to undo the foundations of industrial civilization.

Either way you look at it, conspiracies for good and for evil do exist now, as they have from time immemorial. The only question is which intention do you want to devote your life towards?

A Doctor’s View About the New mRNA Vaccines

 

Neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne electrocuted a man’s face in the year 1862

150 years ago it was electricity, today it's mRNA but in both case you are the guinea pig.

A Doctor’s View About the New mRNA Vaccines

This is the best explanation, from a physician, as to why one should avoid the vaccine. The antibody dependent enhancement problem with Corona viruses are very real. In cats there is a disorder known as Feline Infectious Peritonitis. It’s caused by guess what, a Corona virus. We still don’t know why but one cat can get this Corona virus and be forever asymptomatic while the next cat will develop a fulminating fatal disease that is primarily caused by an over reaction of the immune system.

The reaction causes damage to the vasculature allowing it to leak serum into the body cavities. They tried a vaccine for this and IMHO it made things worse. I personally am certain of one instance where a cat, which I gave the vaccine, developed FIP shortly thereafter. Needless to say that vaccine is no longer available. All I can say is don’t be a Guinea Pig.

Guest Post by Thomas Silar

It’s important to know both what we know about the new vaccines and what we don’t know.

I’ve practiced for 35 years. I am always honest with my patients, even if conversations are difficult or confrontational. I will also be honest about saying “I don’t know.” This happens when a diagnosis is not readily apparent or when there are limits to the help I can give. With the passage of time, I’ve learned that what we don’t know about medicine outweighs what we do know.

I’ve always been a proponent of older, more established vaccines. However, they are imperfect and, like all medical treatments, can have side effects. Unfortunately, in the conversation about the new COVID-19 vaccines, the tenets of honesty and a willingness to admit ignorance are being compromised.

Operation Warp Speed was remarkable, but it leaves an uncomfortable question: Is it a good thing to rush a vaccine (or medicine) to the public without the usual safeguards? Operation Warp Speed might be a great business objective or military goal, but is it great for a medical treatment?

The pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities, and the media insist the new vaccines are safe and effective. While the initial results are promising, this is not the whole truth. Both honesty and acknowledging ignorance require answering a few questions.

What do we know about the new TYPE of vaccine being given?

Pfizer and Moderna were the first COVID-19 vaccines to be approved. Both use a new technology called mRNA vaccine, which has never been broadly given to a human population to prevent any disease.

Let that sink in for a moment.

All previous vaccines take a weakened virus or a piece of the virus and inject it into humans to induce an immune response sufficient to prevent a disease. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines inject mRNA, which is a protein code that instructs the body to make a part of COVID-19’s spike protein that will then induce an immune response.

Our bodies daily use our own mRNA to carry instructions from DNA to make various proteins the body uses. While this new vaccine science sounds intriguing, it has never been tried in humans in this scope. It may be a breathtaking scientific advancement heralding a new path for all vaccines. It may also be less effective or have currently unknown side effects.

Is the mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 safe?

So far, the limited study of the vaccines approved for emergency use (one major study for each vaccine approved) has shown some short-term side effects. The vaccine is a two-shot series and side effects were prominent after the second shot. Side effects were more common if the recipient was younger than 65 years old.

Side effects 

Pain at the injection site has usually gone away in 4-5 days. The other side effects resolve, on average, in 2-3 days.

Early reports after giving the vaccine have also included allergic reactions ranging from mild to a few cases of anaphylaxis (serious allergic reaction). Allergy may be to mRNA itself or the lipid nanoparticles/PEG vehicle it is housed in. The long-term side effects are not currently known, as the main study length and follow up have only been four months.

Is the mRNA vaccine effective?

In the main study from Pfizer’s vaccine, 8/17,000 patients got symptomatic COVID-19 in the treatment group during the short follow up. In the placebo group, 162/17,000 patients got symptomatic COVID-19 during the study time. There was also a trend towards those getting the vaccine having a less severe disease and needing less hospitalization.

The Moderna study had 30,000 patients split into treatment and placebo arms. In the vaccine group, 11/15,000 patients came down with COVID-19. In the placebo group, 185/15,000 patients came down with COVID-19.

It was hard to ascertain death avoidance in these small studies. However, the two initial studies are favorable and show a 95% efficacy. Now that more information about the studies is known, Peter Doshi, associate editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote an editorial that the true efficacy may be much lower because the study excluded people with COVID-19 symptoms but a negative test and other factors.

How long does immunity last?

This is unknown.  Injected mRNA goes away in days, but it is thought that the immune response will be long lasting. Whether patients will need boosters at some point is not known.

What about mutations in the COVID-19 virus? Will the vaccine still work?

Viruses always mutate and scientists following COVID-19 estimate it mutates, on average, twice a month. Most of these mutations are minor and will likely not change the vaccine effectiveness. These mutations also usually do not make the virus more deadly.

What is antibody dependent enhancement?

COVID-19 is in the family of Coronavirus that causes the common cold. The pharmaceutical industry has been trying without success for the last two decades to make a vaccine against the common cold. A safe vaccine against the common cold would make some company a lot of money!

One problem in the animal studies on coronavirus family vaccines was “antibody dependent enhancement.” When animals were inoculated, they developed a robust immune response, which is a good result.

However, when the animals were later exposed to the coronavirus against which they were vaccinated, their immune system went into overdrive, and they developed an overwhelming, fatal immune response called a “cytokine storm.” Fatal cytokine storms also happened to some COVID-19 patients when their infection was severe.

Human responses do not always correlate to animal responses. So far, there have been no signs that humans have a cytokine storm when exposed to COVID-19 after receiving the vaccine. Obviously, this would be catastrophic for any vaccine.

Should we be concerned about other long term side effects from mRNA vaccines?

A concern that deserves mention is the possibility that a cross-reaction and immunity to other parts of the spike protein could cause auto-immune disease or other problems.

A former Pfizer VP, Dr. Michael Yeadon, who has over 30 years of experience in immunology and drug research, filed a Stay of Action petition with the European Medicine Agency (like our FDA) to halt the trials of mRNA vaccines over concerns it might affect sterility in women.

Yeadon is worried that the mRNA vaccine was coded for a region of the spike protein that was similar to Syncytin-1, which is a protein that is essential for the development of the placenta. If a woman’s body makes antibodies to this protein, she could become sterile when vaccinated for COVID-19. This is a theory, not a proven fact, and no one has studied it. Yeadon’s insistence on more studies to make sure this will not happen seems reasonable.

What to make of all these concerns?

Medicine is always about a risk/benefit analysis, subject to the first maxim of “do no harm.” Usually, new medicines or new vaccines are used only after multiple studies show over long periods of time (for vaccines, at least five years) prove they’re safe and better than the older treatments.

While the new mRNA vaccines have good initial results and may be a breakthrough, they should be viewed as experimental and would best be used in high-risk patients (older patients or those with health conditions raising COVID-19 mortality) until we know more. Patients should receive extensive informed consent to understand the risks and benefits. Patients also need to know that if they have a serious complication, Congress already protected the pharmaceutical companies from litigation around emergency vaccines.

The mantra of “safe and effective” is not only incomplete, but it also ignores other pathways out of the pandemic. For healthy people, early outpatient treatments are being developed to treat COVID-19. These would be a safer option than taking an experimental vaccine. Young people (<60 years old) who have very low mortality from COVID-19 should approach getting the new vaccine as if they were consenting to be in an experimental trial of a new vaccine.

Our history shows there are good reasons why new medicines and vaccines are not rushed into widespread use until we have multiple studies and time to assess the safety and efficacy of the new treatments. If the death rate from COVID-19 were much higher, it might make the risks acceptable to try an experimental vaccine. Given that the COVID-19 death rate is a little higher than a bad flu, my opinion is that younger and healthier people need a more rigorous risk/benefit analysis before taking the mRNA vaccines.

 Due to its global nature, the "reset" is far more advanced than people realize and its consequences will be more profound in developing countries than in the West. The irresponsible printing of money and waste of capital will soon translate in severe food and commodities inflation in poorer and overpopulated countries destabilizing their governments and institutions. If 2020 was the turning point, 2021 will see a very sharp acceleration of the downward trend. By the end of the year, Covid will most probably be little more than a problem... among others!

 

Lockdowns Have Devastated The Global Poor

Authored by Ethan Yang via The American Institute for Economic Research,

In North America and Europe, it has become abundantly clear that Covid-19 and the lockdowns that followed have devastated society. In the United States, unemployment is through the roof and 2020 saw the largest economic contraction in modern history. Social and cultural depression continue to weigh down society as restaurants close, the arts are stunted, and everything that it means to be human is taken from us. 

We have plenty of data to paint a picture of the devastation in countries like the United States but there has been little analysis done in developing countries, more than likely due to lack of infrastructure. We know that many developing countries closed their economies in response to Covid-19 but we are unsure of how they fared. 

In particular, developing countries likely do not have the same support structures be it private or public as countries like the United States do. They cannot simply print trillions of dollars to finance quantitative easing policies to prop up the stock market or send stimulus checks to ailing citizens. They also likely lack the private safety nets created by nonprofits and the general flexibility of an advanced business sector. One can only imagine the damage economic depression would bring upon such communities. 

That was until a team of researchers published a study with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The study provides a glimpse into the extent of the damage caused by the economic contraction in Africa, Asia, and South America. It details how living standards have fallen due to decreased access to basic needs such as food, unemployment, and the likely long-term consequences that will arise. Much like how in the United States there has been a noted correlation between economic shocks and decreases in life expectancies, we can expect similar if not worse consequences in developing countries.

It is worth noting, to be fair to the intent of the authors, that they are not making a judgment that the economic damage they note is in part or fully due to lockdown policies. Either way, it should be abundantly clear to everyone that the economic damage that has been wrought on societies across the world is not simply a minor inconvenience. It is a serious problem that has led to long-term as well as short-term adverse consequences in affluent countries like the United States and likely worse consequences for those who live in developing countries.

The Study 

The methodology for the study made use of a series of household surveys conducted via phone calls in different developing countries. The authors explain,

“We assemble evidence from over 30,000 respondents in 16 original household surveys from nine countries in Africa (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone), Asia (Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines), and Latin America (Colombia).”

They noted that,

“The data paint a consistent picture: The economic shock and attendant disruptions to livelihoods during the early stages of pandemic appear to be large across a range of populations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The scale of the disruption may even exceed the effects that economists have documented in other recent global crises, including the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 2008 Great Recession, and the Ebola outbreak of 2014.”

AIER has frequently noted that large-scale lockdown policies have no precedent in the history of public health policy, which may explain why the economic contraction was so large compared to previous years. I would contend that consciously working to shut down businesses rather than attempting to support them, as would be the case in a normal recession, leads to highly unusual economic damage. 

After analyzing the household data the authors report,

“A full 50 to 80% of sample populations in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone report income losses during the COVID-19 period. If these effects persist, then they risk pushing tens of millions of already vulnerable households into poverty.”

Such income reductions have then led to subsequent food insecurity and even the reduction of net wealth as families are forced to sell off their belongings. On this the authors note,

“By April, many households were already unable to meet basic nutritional needs. For example, 48% of rural Kenyan households, 69% of landless agricultural households in Bangladesh, and 87% of rural households in Sierra Leone were forced to miss meals or reduce portion sizes to cope with the crisis. Comparing to preexisting baseline data verifies that these levels greatly exceed the food insecurity normally experienced at this time of year.”

It was clear before the pandemic that developing countries such as the ones in this study were already dealing with these issues. Now they have only been exacerbated, likely reversing years of hard work to combat poverty and hunger. 

Provided below are graphs from the study detailing the recorded increases in food insecurity in Kenya and Sierra Leone. It is important to note that like all studies there are limits to this data and its accuracy as household surveys can only provide so much information. 

For reference, provided below are the stringency indexes (Our World in Data) for both countries with the United Kingdom as a comparison. The UK is known to have one of the strictest lockdowns and also one of the hardest hit for Covid-19. It seems reported food insecurity in both countries seems to mirror the timeline of the implementation of lockdowns. Of course, there could be a variety of factors at play such as the possible correlation of lockdown severity and the spread of Covid-19 and the individual circumstances unique to each country. 

The study also charts the levels of food insecurity in relation to historical harvest cycles in Nepal and Bangladesh. It notes that there is a clear and unprecedented increase in food insecurity even though the pandemic occurred after the rice harvest periods. It notes that historically food insecurity has always increased in the “lean season” which is the period preceding the rice harvest. However, the pandemic occurred after the harvest so the sharp increase in food insecurity cannot be attributed to the historic patterns of food scarcity. It is clearly a result of Covid-19 and the lockdowns that followed. Provided below are the graphs included in the study. The blue lines represent the most recent cycle which clearly follows historic trends until the March-April period of 2020 which is when most of the world entered strict lockdowns.

Provided above are the stringency indexes for both countries with the United Kingdom for context, again being a country that implemented highly strict lockdowns. The food insecurity spikes were reported during the March-April period in both Nepal and Bangladesh which directly follows the implementation of lockdowns. 

Across all the countries in the study, substantial decreases in standards of living arising from food insecurity, unemployment, income reduction, and a lack of access to markets have had devastating results. The authors warn that,

“The economic crisis precipitated by COVID-19 may become as much a public health and societal disaster as the pandemic itself. The link from severe economic crisis during childhood to subsequent deterioration in adult health, nutrition, education, and earnings capacity has been demonstrated in many contexts.”

As explained earlier and often repeated by AIER, there are serious consequences that come from economic shocks that affect everything from mental health to life expectancies here in America. One can only imagine how much more devastating such economic disruption has been in developing countries that lack the infrastructure and resources to support those in need. 

Key Takeaways

The global poor, especially those living in developing countries, have always suffered from a long list of disadvantages, whether it be lack of social capital, technology, infrastructure, or food insecurity. These problems are only exacerbated when their societies, which are already in poor shape, are abruptly shut down. 

Although the authors of the study do not make a definitive judgment on whether these economic shocks have become as severe as they are because of lockdowns, it is clear that shutting down economies, be it voluntary or involuntary, is a dangerous policy. It affects the global poor as well as the global elite and it seems that the poorer countries have seen a dangerous decline in living standards which will have lasting consequences that are a public crisis in and of themselves. 

Regardless of where one stands on lockdowns, it should now be abundantly clear that economic hardship is not a minor inconvenience and action must be taken to alleviate existing damage and to prevent the further exacerbation of existing calamity.

Biden's "100 Days" Of Masks Transforms Into Masks "Through The Next Year"

 Wasn't it predictable? Covid is forever, just as masks. I am amazed that most people cannot catch up with the meaning of "normal" like "every day" in "New Normal". 

 Joke apart, it says a lot about social psychology, the one our governments have learned to manipulate so efficiently. And we thought we were making no progress...

 

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Joe Biden’s 100 day mask mandate has now transformed into wearing masks ‘through the next year’, according to comments he made Thursday.

In an appearance at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Biden told staff “You know that wearing this mask through the next year here can save lives, a significant number of lives.”

Mumbling through his own mask, Biden also blamed President Trump for the vaccine roll out being delayed.

“While scientists did their job in discovering vaccines in record time, my predecessor – I’ll be very blunt about it – did not do his job in getting ready for the massive challenge of vaccinating hundreds of millions,” Biden said.

Dr. Fauci further confirmed this morning that:

“I think we’re going to be wearing masks for several, several months into the future.”

And other 'experts' suggest COVID restrictions will remain indefinitely as ‘vaccination passports’ become mandatory for travel. Rolling lockdowns are also here to stay. That’s the precedent we’ve allowed to be created.

Lab-Leak Hypothesis Still A Possibility... according to WHO

 If only we still had "news" in 2021!

 The WHO mission changed nothing. No new data was provided by China. The more the country obfuscate, the more circumstantial evidence it gives that the Wuhan Lab WAS the source of the outbreak.

In Major U-Turn, WHO Says Wuhan Lab-Leak Hypothesis Still A Possibility (Zero hedge)

Two days after the WHO team of investigators was marched through the Wuhan Institute of Virology, its members declared that any 'conspiracies' about the origins of COVID-19 were simply untrue - confidently exclaiming that it was "extremely unlikely" the pandemic came from a lab leak.

Once the team returned to Geneva, however, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus did a "screeching U-turn to the lab leak theory" - admitting on Thursday that all theories behind the origin of COVID-19 warranted further investigation.

"Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded. I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study," Dr. Tedros said Thursday, in a moment of self-awareness over the optics of their 'open-and-shut' investigation.

One of the scientists on the trip was Peter Daszak - whose giant conflict of interest wasn't a problem for the WHO. Daszak worked directly with WIV researcher Shi Zhengli ('Batwoman'), who created chimeric coronaviruses via 'gain-of-function' research to make them more transmissible to humans.

Peter Daszak

Daszak is the president of the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, which funneled nearly $600,000 from a U.S. taxpayer-funded grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology between 2014 and 2019 as part of a research project studying coronaviruses from Chinese bats, according to The Wall Street Journal.

And now, he's doing damage control as the lab leak hypothesis continues to gain momentum. Here he is suggesting that 'US intel' was 'increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects.'

Of note, Daszak drafted a February, 2020 statement in The Lancet on behalf of 27 prominent public health scientists which condemned "conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

He's also opined on how easy it was to manipulate bat-based coronaviruses in labs during a podcast interview just weeks before the first known cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan. Proponents of such experiments, also known as gain of function research, say they're a useful tool in creating treatments for future outbreaks, but some virologists say the technique is too risky, because it poses the risk of introducing new viruses into the human population.

 

Curiously (or not) absent from Daszak's investigative process is the fact that deadly viruses have a history of escaping from Chinese laboratories, including, notably, the first SARS virus escaped twice from the Chinese Institute of Virology in Beijing in 2004.

 

And now, if only to avoid an optics nightmare, the WHO has gone against Daszak's confident proclamations that the lab-leak hypothesis is impossible, and is instead leaving the door open - perhaps in order to officially shut it down the road when things have cooled down.

 And here's what really happened:

China "Refuses" To Hand Over Raw Data On Early COVID Cases To WHO Team (Zero hedge)

It came as no surprise that China disingenuously seized on this month's World Health Organization (WHO) trip to try and claim the COVID-19 pandemic actually started abroad, while at the same time a number of global headlines essentially echoed "nothing to see here" - particularly on widespread suspicions the virus originated in a Wuhan military lab.

But now fresh Wall Street Journal reporting strongly suggests this first ever and much-hyped WHO trip to 'get to the bottom' of the virus' origins likely didn't even scratch the surface in terms of a real investigation (did anyone really expect it to?... also coming a full year+ after the fact). In particular the team of scientists and researchers was reportedly blocked by Chinese authorities from accessing crucial data on 174 of the country's earliest cases.

Citing WHO investigators supposedly caught in the middle of what they described as "heated exchanges" over the lack of transparency, Chinese authorities "refused" to provide the team with the necessary "raw, personalized data on early Covid-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China..."