DEFIANT, NOW INFECTED: TRUMP IS A MORALITY TALE

By Frank Bruni
Opinion Columnist
Oct. 2, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/opinion/trump-positive-coronavirus.html

It’s a measure of the cynicism that has infected American politics — and, yes, me — that among my initial reactions to the news that President Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus was: Are we sure? Can we trust that? A man who so frequently and flamboyantly plays the victim, and who has been prophylactically compiling ways to explain away or dispute a projected loss to Joe Biden, is now being forced off the campaign trail, which will be a monster of an excuse.

I couldn’t help thinking that, and I soon realized that I was in robust company. On Twitter, on television and everywhere else I turned, doubters noted that Trump had once already suggested that the election be postponed: Was this a fresh tactic along those lines? He had just turned in a repellent performance in the first presidential debate: Was he wriggling out of the second and third debates?

At another time, under a different president, these questions would be callous. At this time, under this president, they were sadly and perfectly understandable.

I couldn’t help thinking, too, about karma, and I immediately felt petty for that. I don’t wish illness upon Trump. I hope he has a prompt and full recovery. But it’s important to note that he has spent much of the past eight months, during which more than 200,000 Americans died of causes related to the coronavirus, downplaying the pandemic, flinging out false reassurances and refusing to abide by the very public health guidelines that officials in his own government were fervently promoting.

He didn’t wear a mask. He encouraged large gatherings — including his big convention speech and, earlier, the Tulsa, Okla., rally that Herman Cain attended before falling sick with the coronavirus and dying — at which hundreds and even thousands of people, many without any facial covering, packed in tight. At the first presidential debate on Tuesday night, he mocked Biden for so often wearing a mask, suggesting that it was a sign of … what? Timidity? Weakness? Voguishness? Moral vanity?

With Trump it can be hard to know, and it’s also hard to know whether his own defiance was a kind of wishful thinking about the coronavirus’s true prevalence, a reflection of his belief in his own physical invincibility, some combination of the two or none of the above.

But it’s easy to identify the morals of this story.

The most obvious is that the coronavirus has not gone away and there is no guarantee, contrary to the president’s sunny prophecies, that it’s going away anytime soon, certainly not if we’re cavalier about it.

Which brings up another moral, also obvious but apparently necessary to articulate: There is real risk in such cavalierness. The president is now the embodiment of that. The first lady, too. Also Hope Hicks, one of his closest advisers, and who knows how many others who have been around him. From the start, there has been a culture of aloofness, indifference and blasé behavior at the White House when it comes to the coronavirus.

That culture was on flabbergasting display during those evening briefings the president used to do, the ones devoted primarily to congratulating himself and his administration on their fantabulous job battling the pandemic. They battled it all the way to America’s exceptional status as the world leader in recorded cases of, and deaths associated with, the coronavirus.

That culture was evident in the rallies that the president arranged and insisted on doing over recent weeks. That culture persisted on Thursday, when, according to an article by Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman in The Times, Kayleigh McEnany, maskless, held a briefing with reporters after Hicks’s infection with the virus was confirmed and after McEnany was on a plane with her and exposed to her.

I read that and I winced and I gasped — and then wondered why in the world I was wincing and gasping when it was par for the course. It was business as usual. It was an explanation for why we are where we are as a country and why Trump is where he is as a president and a patient.

Trump had been around Hicks in the days leading up to her diagnosis and, like McEnany, mingled with other people after it. He flew to his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., on Thursday afternoon for a fund-raising event, where, according to The Times, he “addressed hundreds of supporters both outdoors and indoors.” He did not wear a mask.

Even some White House officials were reportedly baffled and bothered by that, both retrospectively and in real time. They privately marveled at the denialism of it all.

But then the reality-show president has long been determined to live outside reality and was seemingly convinced that he could. I was half convinced myself. He jettisoned truth without consequences. He sailed above the laws of cause and effect when it came to paying taxes, paying off Stormy Daniels, strong-arming the president of Ukraine, playing footsie with the president of Russia and so much more.

But reality is reality. Truth is truth. Science is science, and it alerted all of us — including the president — to the danger of the coronavirus, how it spreads and what we can and should do to protect ourselves and others. There’s no getting around those facts.

There’s also no getting around the centrality of the coronavirus to this presidency and this election. Trump had tried assiduously to push it to the margins, but it was never going to stay there. Now it’s inside him.

It is time, at long last, to learn. To be more conscious and conscientious. To be more considerate. Apparently no one in Trump’s circle reached out, before the news became public, to tell the Biden camp about the president’s positive coronavirus test, even though Biden had shared a debate stage with the president for more than 90 minutes. No one directly informed Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House. This is also the state of America. And it’s not right.

We can’t erase the mistakes made since the coronavirus dawned, but we can correct them going forward. The way to treat Trump’s diagnosis is as a turning point and a new start. This is when we woke up.

The presidency and the president are always national mirrors, in many different ways at once, and that’s another moral. Trump has shown America its resentments. He has modeled its rage. Now he personifies its recklessness.

Late Friday, administration officials were still deliberating how and when he might address Americans about his condition, a decision no doubt contingent on his condition. He was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for tests. People close to him told reporters that he had a low-grade fever, nasal congestion and a cough.

When he does talk about what he’s going through, I hope he reflects on what the entire country has been through, and on what lies ahead. I hope he does it in a civic-minded way, recognizing that his own struggle is part of a much larger picture.

Because I don’t want us to be cynical, no matter how much cause we’ve been given. I want us to be better.

From Adams Economics, Australia:
"🚨 EXCLUSIVE 🚨
Multiple sources within Federal Parliament have confirmed my thesis that the unprecedented COVID-19 economic stimulus is a BACKDOOR BAILOUT for the BANKS!
With record household debt, no stimulus would have led to RECORD DEFAULTS & the BANKS would have COLLAPSED!"

It makes sense. They will always figure out what to do to make money. Meanwhile we the people are paying for it.

This is I believe, the 4th time in the 200 years that the New England Journal of Medicine has been published, that it published an editorial signed by all the editors.

EDITORIAL

DYING IN A LEADERSHIP VACUUM

The Editors

October 8, 2020
N Engl J Med 2020; 383:1479-1480

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing. According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering,1 the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and in deaths due to the disease, far exceeding the numbers in much larger countries, such as China. The death rate in this country is more than double that of Canada, exceeds that of Japan, a country with a vulnerable and elderly population, by a factor of almost 50, and even dwarfs the rates in lower-middle-income countries, such as Vietnam, by a factor of almost 2000. Covid-19 is an overwhelming challenge, and many factors contribute to its severity. But the one we can control is how we behave. And in the United States we have consistently behaved poorly.

We know that we could have done better. China, faced with the first outbreak, chose strict quarantine and isolation after an initial delay. These measures were severe but effective, essentially eliminating transmission at the point where the outbreak began and reducing the death rate to a reported 3 per million, as compared with more than 500 per million in the United States. Countries that had far more exchange with China, such as Singapore and South Korea, began intensive testing early, along with aggressive contact tracing and appropriate isolation, and have had relatively small outbreaks. And New Zealand has used these same measures, together with its geographic advantages, to come close to eliminating the disease, something that has allowed that country to limit the time of closure and to largely reopen society to a prepandemic level. In general, not only have many democracies done better than the United States, but they have also outperformed us by orders of magnitude.

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have.2 Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control.

Although we tend to focus on technology, most of the interventions that have large effects are not complicated. The United States instituted quarantine and isolation measures late and inconsistently, often without any effort to enforce them, after the disease had spread substantially in many communities. Our rules on social distancing have in many places been lackadaisical at best, with loosening of restrictions long before adequate disease control had been achieved. And in much of the country, people simply don’t wear masks, largely because our leaders have stated outright that masks are political tools rather than effective infection control measures. The government has appropriately invested heavily in vaccine development, but its rhetoric has politicized the development process and led to growing public distrust.

The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology and have consistently been able to turn that expertise into new therapies and preventive measures. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.

The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized,3 appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government,4 causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.

Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

The Editors:
1. Lindsey Baden
2. Jehan Chowdhury
3. Ralph D'Agostino
4. Arnold Epstein
5. Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao
6. Constantine Gatsonis
7. Ellen Gravallese
8. Michael Greene
9. Mary Beth Hamel
10. David Harrington
11. David Harrington
12. Joseph Hogan
13. David Hunter
14. Julie Ingelfinger
15. John Jarcho
16. Siri Kadire
17. John Keaney
18. Dan Longo
19. Joseph Loscalzo
20. Debra Malina
21. Stephen Morrissey
22. Sharon-Lise Normand
23. Elizabeth Phimiste
24. Allan Ropper
25. Clifford Rosen
26. Lisa Rosenbaum
27. Carla Rothaus
28. Eric Rubin
29. Chana Sacks
30. Caren Solomon
31. DarrenTaichman
32. Richard Wenzel
33. Gary Wong
34. Rui-Ping Xiao

For those of you who, for one reason or another, cannot read the whole October 8 editorial of the NEJM, we are making it easy for you by posting the last paragraph of this article here. It says it all:

"Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs."

I thought this was a 'Remote viewing' site to discuss RV work! This political BS should not be here!! Sounds like a lot of opinions to me not based on RV work!!

In an early post in this thread, we asked you 3 or 4 months ago to publish your rv work here at Farsight so that we can all see it, analyze it and hopefully enjoy it. We are still waiting!

Meanwhile, while we are waiting for you to show up, we're posting this most important NEJM editorial that is related to a rv topic discussed in this forum. We have been posting other articles related to covid on this thread, so this is nothing new. And we have no problem or issue if you disagree with this editorial. But if what is posted here makes you so unhappy, then perhaps you should uninvite yourself from this thread.

If the Oct 8th NEJM editorial is not well received as shown above by a few disjointed minds; then, we hope that Stevie Wonder will fare better with them because he moves right to the core of the problem that we have in our word now: hatred.

And yes, we are talking about Stevie the blind R&B musician from awhile ago. I grew up listening to his music, and he has more to offer than most of your churches.

Initially I chose not to display the complete lyrics of Stevie Wonder’s song “AS” here. I thought that they would not be appreciated because they are a little bit long. However, the world and specially the US, is going through some horrific dark time where gross hatred, morbid ignorance, and abject stupidity are publicly displayed and glorified by a group of soulless megalomaniac psychopaths and their sycophantic buffoons.

That is why Stevie Wonder’s message of love needs to reverberate NOW from the four corners of this world.

I invite you to listen and appreciate Stevie's words in:

AS (I'LL BE LOVING YOU ALWAYS)

[Verse 1]
As around the sun the earth knows she's revolving
And the rosebuds know to bloom in early May
Just as hate knows love's the cure
You can rest your mind assure
That I'll be loving you always
As now can't reveal the mystery of tomorrow
But in passing will grow older every day
Just as all is born is new
Do know what I say is true
That I'll be loving you always

[Refrain]
Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky (Always)
Until the ocean covers every mountain high (Always)
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea (Always)
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream

[Verse 2]
Did you know that true love asks for nothing
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day
Just as time knew to move on since the beginning
And the seasons know exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame
Know through all your joy and pain
That I'll be loving you always

As today I know I'm living but tomorrow
Could make me the past but that I mustn't fear
For I'll know deep in my mind
The love of me I've left behind
Cause I'll be loving you always

[Refrain]
Until the day is night and night becomes the day (Always)
Until the trees and seas just up and fly away (Always)
Until the day that 8 times 8 times 8 is 4 (Always)
Until the day that is the day that are no more
(Did you know that you're loved by somebody?)
Until the day the earth starts turning right to left (Always)
Until the earth just for the sun denies itself (I'll be loving you forever)
Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through (Always)
Until the day that you are me and I am you (Always)
Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky (Always)
Until the ocean covers every mountain high (Always)

[Bridge]
We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your life times that and twice its double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you're in it but not of it
You're not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called Hell
Change your words into truths and then change that truth into love
And maybe our children's grandchildren
And their great-great grandchildren will tell
I'll be loving you

[Refrain]
Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky (Loving you)
Until the ocean covers every mountain high (Loving you)
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea (Loving you)
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream (Be loving you)
Until the day is night and night becomes the day (Loving you)
Until the trees and seas just up and fly away (Loving you)
Until the day that 8 times 8 times 8 is 4 (Loving you)
Until the day that is the day that are no more (Loving you)
Until the day the earth starts turning right to left (Be loving you)
Until the earth just for the sun denies itself (Loving you)
Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through (Loving you)
Until the day that you are me and I am you (Now ain't that loving you?)
Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky (Ain't that loving you?)
Until the ocean covers every mountain high (And I've got to say always)
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea (Always)
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream-Um (Always)
Until the day is night and night becomes the day (Always)
Until the trees and seas just up and fly away (Always)
Until the day that 8 times 8 times 8 is 4
Until the day that is the day that are no more
Until the day the earth starts turning right to left (Always)
Until the earth just for the sun denies itself
Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through
Until the day that you are me and I am you
Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Until the ocean covers every mountain high
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream
Until the day is night and night becomes the day
Until the trees and seas just up and fly away
Until the day that 8 times 8 times 8 is 4
Until the day that is the day that are no more
Until the day the earth starts turning right to left
Until the earth just for the sun denies itself
Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through
Until the day that you are me and I am you

If you watch some of the investigations that MSM won't show, they fit right in with the fs viewings. Not to repeat the lengthy discussions, the only 2 observations I will make are:

1). You have to wonder by China would be so stupid as to build a BSL-4 in a densely populated city centre?

2). I don't expect to see any more hollywood movies of ETs blasting humanity away with lasers, now it has been shown to all how they could just lob a virus down here and sit back and wait.

Hello Claire,

1. I'm not really sure that in the mid 1950s when China built the Microbiology Institute of Hubei as it used to be called, that the area was densely populated. And even now, the area where the campus is located is sparsely populated. In fact, the campus looks more or less like the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA minus the ocean. The BSL-4 wing is the newest addition to the complex. It is up front, on the left side of the picture, near the lake.

You sort expect some population at a certain distance from a BSL-4 lab because it is expected that people who work in the lab are well trained, and that they are not going to blow up the place. And workers in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were very well trained by the French biotech firm Institut Merieux. But a brand new lab with all brand new equipment blew up! It just doesn't add up.

Underneath is a long link for the WIV facility. Not sure if it works.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/methylbromine/49925360648/in/photolist-2iWEWjQ-2iQwu7G-2iQyd36-2iNdna8-2iLSPEt-2iUt6r3-2iSX58k-2j1YghR-2hPHvb5-2iSUeRS-2ipHhLm-2irQh6p-2ipHiBe-2iSYCKD-2iSYCWq-2iSX4LJ-2itNZFp-2iE5LR9-2itPiME-2iXWHHs-2iLg9Wa-2j4Jwm9-2iRfigp-2iTPJzn-2iJcoAZ.

2. I'm learning that there are a lot of weird and sometime very interesting things that are happening in this world and we have absolutely no clue.

THE SWEDISH COVID-19 RESPONSE IS A DISASTER. IT SHOULDN’T BE A MODEL FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD

This article about the Swedish handling of COVID-19 was recently published on October 14th in TIME.

The Swedish way of handling the COVID-19 pandemic is unique because there was no measure put in place to decrease the spread of the disease; ie, a requirement for wearing mask, lockdown, quarantaine, social distancing... The Swedish health authorities believed that by exposing their country to COVID-19, the population would develop herd immunity. A very interesting logic giving that there is currently no vaccine for COVID-19, herd immunity is usually developed when the population is vaccinated.

In the US, the opposition to measures designed to slow down the spread of COVID-19 suggests the underlying goal of developing herd immunity in the US population for a disease that has no vaccine, at the very high cost of more 214,000 lives lost so far! Consequently, the results and conclusions reached in the handling of COVID-19 in Sweden are very much applicable to the US.

Unfortunately, I was not able to transfer the amazing charts from the TIME article when I copied it here.

Nevertheless, underneath I am reporting some remarkable data from one of these charts where countries are grouped by COVID-19 related deaths per 100,000 people. I’m showing only the countries with the highest (US, Sweden, UK), and lowest mortality rates (Australia, Japan, South Korea). Countries with medium level mortality rates are not reported.

A picture is worth a thousand words! If you are interested in this information, I strongly suggest that you get the published article from the link given below.

COVID-19 related deaths per 100,000 people; countries grouped by their overall mortality rate

HIGH
Since the start of the pandemic - US: 60.3 Sweden: 57.4 UK: 62.6
Since May 10 - US: 36.9 Sweden: 23.5 UK: 16.3
Since June 7 - US: 27.2 Sweden: 10.3 UK: 5.0

LOW
Since the start of the pandemic – Australia: 3.3 Japan: 1.2 S. Korea: 0.7
Since May 10 – Australia: 2.9 Japan: 0.7 S. Korea: 0.2
Since June 7 – Australia: 2.9 Japan: 0.5 S. Korea: 0.2

The authors state that:

“Sweden and the U.S. are unique in their failure to reduce coronavirus mortality rates as the pandemic progressed”.

And they conclude that:

“Countries need to take care before adopting the “Swedish way.” It could have tragic consequences for this pandemic or the next”.

The whole article minus charts and pictures is given below.

Jean-Claude.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

THE SWEDISH COVID-19 RESPONSE IS A DISASTER. IT SHOULDN’T BE A MODEL FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD

BY KELLY BJORKLUND AND ANDREW EWING

OCTOBER 14, 2020 5:00 AM EDT
Kelly Bjorklund is a writer and human rights activist who has worked on public policy and advocacy with elected officials, civil society and media for two decades.

Andrew Ewing is a professor of molecular biology and chemistry at the University of Gothenburg and a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

The Swedish COVID-19 experiment of not implementing early and strong measures to safeguard the population has been hotly debated around the world, but at this point we can predict it is almost certain to result in a net failure in terms of death and suffering. As of Oct. 13, Sweden’s per capita death rate is 58.4 per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University data, 12th highest in the world (not including tiny Andorra and San Marino). But perhaps more striking are the findings of a study published Oct. 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which pointed out that, of the countries the researchers investigated, Sweden and the U.S. essentially make up a category of two: they are the only countries with high overall mortality rates that have failed to rapidly reduce those numbers as the pandemic has progressed.

Yet the architects of the Swedish plan are selling it as a success to the rest of the world. And officials in other countries, including at the top level of the U.S. government, are discussing the strategy as one to emulate—despite the reality that doing so will almost certainly increase the rates of death and misery.

Countries that locked down early and/or used extensive test and tracing—including Denmark, Finland, Norway, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and New Zealand—saved lives and limited damage to their economies. Countries that locked down late, came out of lock down too early, did not effectively test and quarantine, or only used a partial lockdown—including Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Spain, Sweden, the U.S. and the U.K.—have almost uniformly done worse in rates of infection and death.

Despite this, Sweden’s Public Health Agency director Johan Carlson has claimed that “the Swedish situation remains favorable,” and that the country’s response has been “consistent and sustainable.” The data, however, show that the case rate in Sweden, as elsewhere in Europe, is currently increasing.

Average daily cases rose 173% nationwide from Sept. 2-8 to Sept. 30-Oct. 6 and in Stockholm that number increased 405% for the same period. Though some have argued that rising case numbers can be attributed to increased testing, a recent study of Stockholm’s wastewater published Oct. 5 by the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) argues otherwise. An increased concentration of the virus in wastewater, the KTH researchers write, shows a rise of the virus in the population of the greater Stockholm area (where a large proportion of the country’s population live) in a way that is entirely independent of testing. Yet even with this rise in cases, the government is easing the few restrictions it had in place.

From early on, the Swedish government seemed to treat it as a foregone conclusion that many people would die. The country’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on April 3, “We will have to count the dead in thousands. It is just as well that we prepare for it.” In July, as the death count reached 5,500, Löfven said that the “strategy is right, I am completely convinced of that.” In September, Dr. Anders Tegnell, the Public Health Agency epidemiologist in charge of the country’s COVID-19 response reiterated the party line that a growing death count did “not mean that the strategy itself has gone wrong.” There has been a lack of written communication between the Prime Minister and the Public Health Authority: when the authors requested all emails and documents between the Prime Minister’s office and the Public Health Authority for the period Jan. 1—Sept. 14, the Prime Minister’s Registrar replied on Sept. 17 that none existed.

Despite the Public Health Agency’s insistence to the contrary, the core of this strategy is widely understood to have been about building natural “herd immunity”—essentially, letting enough members of a population (the herd) get infected, recover, and then develop an immune system response to the virus that it would ultimately stop spreading. Both the agency and Prime Minister Löfven have characterized the approach as “common sense“ trust-based recommendations rather than strict measures, such as lockdowns, which they say are unsustainable over an extended period of time—and that herd immunity was just a desirable side effect. However, internal government communications suggest otherwise.

Emails obtained by one of the authors through Freedom of Information laws (called offentlighetsprincipen, or “Openness Principle,” in Swedish) between national and regional government agencies, including the Swedish Public Health Authority, as well as those obtained by other journalists, suggest that the goal was all along in fact to develop herd immunity. We have also received information through sources who made similar requests or who corresponded directly with government agencies that back up this conclusion. For the sake of transparency, we created a website where we’ve posted some of these documents.

One example showing clearly that government officials had been thinking about herd immunity from early on is a March 15 email sent from a retired doctor to Tegnell, the epidemiologist and architect of the Swedish plan, which he forwarded to his Finnish counterpart, Mika Salminen. In it, the retired doctor recommended allowing healthy people to be infected in controlled settings as a way to fight the epidemic. “One point would be to keep schools open to reach herd immunity faster,” Tegnell noted at the top of the forwarded email.

Salminen responded that the Finnish Health Agency had considered this but decided against it, because “over time, the children are still going to spread the infection to other age groups.” Furthermore, the Finnish model showed that closing schools would reduce “the attack rate of the disease on the elderly” by 10%. Tegnell responded: “10 percent might be worth it?”

The majority of the rest of Sweden’s policymakers seemed to have agreed: the country never closed daycare or schools for children under the age of 16, and school attendance is mandatory under Swedish law, with no option for distance learning or home schooling, even for family members in high risk groups. Policymakers essentially decided to use children and schools as participants in an experiment to see if herd immunity to a deadly disease could be reached. Multiple outbreaks at schools occurred in both the spring and autumn.

At this point, whether herd immunity was the “goal” or a “byproduct” of the Swedish plan is semantics, because it simply hasn’t worked. In April, the Public Health Agency predicted that 40% of the Stockholm population would have the disease and acquire protective antibodies by May. According to the agency’s own antibody studies published Sept. 3 for samples collected up until late June, the actual figure for random testing of antibodies is only 11.4% for Stockholm, 6.3% for Gothenburg and 7.1% across Sweden. As of mid-August, herd immunity was still “nowhere in sight,” according to a Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine study. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, herd immunity to an infectious disease has never been achieved without a vaccine.

Löfven, his government, and the Public Health Agency all say that the high COVID-19 death rate in Sweden can be attributed to the fact that a large portion of these deaths occurred in nursing homes, due to shortcomings in elderly care.

However, the high infection rate across the country was the underlying factor that led to a high number of those becoming infected in care homes. Many sick elderly were not seen by a doctor because the country’s hospitals were implementing a triage system that, according to a study published July 1 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, appeared to have factored in age and predicted prognosis. “This likely reduced [intensive care unit] load at the cost of more high-risk patients”—like elderly people with confirmed infection—dying outside the ICU.” Only 13% of the elderly residents who died with COVID-19 during the spring received hospital care, according to preliminary statistics from the National Board of Health and Welfare released Aug.

In one case which seems representative of how seniors were treated, patient Reza Sedghi was not seen by a doctor the day he died from COVID-19 at a care home in Stockholm. A nurse told Sedghi’s daughter Lili Perspolisi that her father was given a shot of morphine before he passed away, that no oxygen was administered and staff did not call an ambulance. “No one was there and he died alone,” Perspolisi says.

In order to be admitted for hospital care, patients needed to have breathing problems and even then, many were reportedly denied care. Regional healthcare managers in each of Sweden’s 21 regions, who are responsible for care at hospitals as well as implementing Public Health Agency guidelines, have claimed that no patients were denied care during the pandemic. But internal local government documents from April from some of Sweden’s regions—including those covering the biggest cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö—also show directives for how some patients including those receiving home care, those living at nursing homes and assisted living facilities, and those with special needs could not receive oxygen or hospitalization in some situations. Dagens Nyheter published an investigation on Oct. 13 showing that patients in Stockholm were denied care as a result of these guidelines. Further, a September investigation by Sveriges Radio, Sweden’s national public broadcaster, found that more than 100 people reported to the Swedish Health and Care Inspectorate that their relatives with COVID-19 either did not receive oxygen or nutrient drops or that they were not allowed to come to hospital.

These issues do not only affect the elderly or those who had COVID-19. The National Board of Health and Welfare’s guidelines for intensive care in extraordinary circumstances throughout Sweden state that priority should be given to patients based on biological, not chronological, age. Sörmlands Media, in an investigation published May 13, cited a number of sources saying that, in many parts of the country, the health care system was already operating in a way such that people were being denied the type of inpatient care they would have received in normal times. Regional health agencies were using a Clinical Frailty Scale, an assessment tool designed to predict the need for care in a nursing home or hospital, and the life expectancy of older people by estimating their fragility, to determine whether someone should receive hospital care and was applied to decisions regarding all sorts of treatment, not only for COVID-19. These guidelines led to many people with health care needs unrelated to COVID-19 not getting the care they need, with some even dying as a result—collateral damage of Sweden’s COVID-19 strategy.

Dr. Michael Broomé, the chief physician at Stockholm’s Karolinska Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, says his department’s patient load tripled during the spring. His staff, he says, “have often felt powerless and inadequate. We have lost several young, previously healthy, patients with particularly serious disease courses. We have also repeatedly been forced to say no to patients we would normally have accepted due to a lack of experienced staff, suitable facilities and equipment.”

In June, Dagens Nyheter reported a story of one case showing how disastrous such a scenario can be. Yanina Lucero had been ill for several weeks in March with severe breathing problems, fever and diarrhea, yet COVID-19 tests were not available at the time except for those returning from high risk areas who displayed symptoms, those admitted to the hospital, and those working in health care. Yanina was only 39 years old and had no underlying illnesses. Her husband Cristian brought her to an unnamed hospital in Stockholm, but were told it was full and sent home, where Lucero’s health deteriorated. After several days when she could barely walk, an ambulance arrived and Lucero was taken to Huddinge hospital, where she was sedated and put on a ventilator. She died on April 15 without receiving a COVID-19 test in hospital.

Sweden did try some things to protect citizens from the pandemic. On March 12 the government restricted public gatherings to 500 people and the next day the Public Health Agency issued a press release telling people with possible COVID-19 symptoms to stay home. On March 17, the Public Health Agency asked employers in the Stockholm area to let employees work from home if they could. The government further limited public gatherings to 50 people on March 29. Yet there were no recommendations on private events and the 50-person limit doesn’t apply to schools, libraries, corporate events, swimming pools, shopping malls or many other situations. Starting April 1, the government restricted visits to retirement homes (which reopened to visitors on Oct. 1 without masks recommended for visitors or staff). But all these recommendations came later than in the other Nordic countries. In the interim, institutions were forced to make their own decisions; some high schools and universities changed to on-line teaching and restaurants and bars went to table seating with distance, and some companies instituted rules about wearing masks on site and encouraging employees to work from home.

Meanwhile Sweden built neither the testing nor the contact-tracing capacity that other wealthy European countries did. Until the end of May (and again in August), Sweden tested 20% the number of people per capita compared with Denmark, and less than both Norway and Finland; Sweden has often had among the lowest test rates in Europe. Even with increased testing in the fall, Sweden still only tests only about one-fourth that of Denmark.

Sweden never quarantined those arriving from high-risk areas abroad nor did it close most businesses, including restaurants and bars. Family members of those who test positive for COVID-19 must attend school in person, unlike in many other countries where if one person in a household tests positive the entire family quarantines, usually for 14 days. Employees must also report to work as usual unless they also have symptoms of COVID-19, an agreement with their employer for a leave of absence or a doctor recommends that they isolate at home.

On Oct. 1, the Public Health Authority issued non-binding “rules of conduct” that open the possibility for doctors to be able to recommend that certain individuals stay home for seven days if a household member tests positive for COVID-19. But there are major holes in these rules: they do not apply to children (of all ages, from birth to age 16, the year one starts high school), people in the household who previously have a positive PCR or antibody test or, people with socially important professions, such as health care staff (under certain circumstances).

There is also no date for when the rule would go into effect. “It may not happen right away, Stockholm will start quickly but some regions may need more time to get it all in place,” Tegnell said at a Oct. 1 press conference. Meanwhile, according to current Public Health Agency guidelines issued May 15 and still in place, those who test positive for COVID-19 are expected to attend work and school with mild symptoms so long as they are seven days post-onset of symptoms and fever free for 48 hours.

Sweden actually recommends against masks everywhere except in places where health care workers are treating COVID-19 patients (some regions expand that to health care workers treating suspected patients as well). Autumn corona outbreaks in Dalarna, Jönköping, Luleå, Malmö, Stockholm and Uppsala hospitals are affecting both hospital staff and patients. In an email on April 5, Tegnell wrote to Mike Catchpole, the chief scientist at the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC): “We are quite worried about the statement ECDC has been preparing about masks.” Tegnell attached a document in which he expresses concern that ECDC recommending facemasks would “imply that the spread is airborne which would seriously harm further communication and trust among the population and health care workers” and concludes “we would like to warn against the publication of this advice.” Despite this, on April 8 ECDC recommended masks and on June 8 the World Health Organization updated its stance to recommend masks.

Sweden’s government officials stuck to their party line. Karin Tegmark Wisell of the Public Health Agency said at a press conference on July 14 that “we see around the world that masks are used in a way so that you rather increase the spread of infection.” Two weeks later, Lena Hallengren, the Minister of Health and Social Affairs, spoke about masks at a press conference on July 29 and said, “We don’t have that tradition or culture” and that the government “would not review the Public Health Agency’s decision not to recommend masks.”

All of this creates a situation which leaves teachers, bus drivers, medical workers and care home staff more exposed, without face masks at a time when the rest of the world is clearly endorsing widespread mask wearing.

On Aug. 13, Tegnell said that to recommend masks to the public “quite a lot of resources are required. There is quite a lot of money that would be spent if you are going to have masks.” Indeed, emails between Tegnell and colleagues at the Public Health Agency and Andreas Johansson of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs show that the policy concerns of the health authority were influenced by financial interests, including the commercial concerns of Sweden’s airports.

Swedavia, the owner of the country’s largest airport, Stockholm Arlanda, told employees during the spring and early summer they could not wear masks or gloves to work. One employee told Upsala Nya Tidning newspaper on Aug. 24 “Many of us were sick during the beginning of the pandemic and two colleagues have died due to the virus. I would estimate that 60%-80% of the staff at the security checks have had the infection.”

“Our union representatives fought for us to have masks at work,” the employee said, “but the airport’s response was that we were an authority that would not spread fear, but we would show that the virus was not so dangerous.” Swedavia’s reply was that they had introduced the infection control measures recommended by the authorities. On July 1, the company changed its policy, recommending masks for everyone who comes to Arlanda—that, according to a Swedavia spokesperson, was not as a result of “an infection control measure advocated by Swedish authorities,” but rather, due to a joint European Union Aviation Safety Agency and ECDC recommendation for all of Europe.

As early as January, the Public Health Agency was warning the government about costs. In a Jan. 31 communique, Public Health Agency Director Johan Carlsson (appointed by Löfven) and General Counsel Bitte Bråstad wrote to the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, cautioning the government about costs associated with classifying COVID-19 as a socially dangerous disease: “After a decision on quarantine, costs for it [include] compensation which according to the Act, must be paid to those who, due to the quarantine decision, must refrain from gainful employment. The uncertainty factors are many even when calculating these costs. Society can also suffer a loss of production due to being quarantined [and] prevented from performing gainful employment which they would otherwise have performed.” Sweden never implemented quarantine in society, not even for those returning from travel abroad or family members of those who test positive for COVID-19.

Not only did these lack of measures likely result in more infections and deaths, but it didn’t even help the economy: Sweden has fared worse economically than other Nordic countries throughout the pandemic.

The Swedish way has yielded little but death and misery. And, this situation has not been honestly portrayed to the Swedish people or to the rest of the world.

A Public Health Agency report published July 7 included data for teachers in primary schools working on-site as well as for secondary school teachers who switched to distance instruction online. In the report, they combined the two data sources and compared the result to the general population, stating that teachers were not at greater risk and implying that schools were safe. But in fact, the infection rate of those teaching in classrooms was 60% higher than those teaching online—completely undermining the conclusion of the report.

The report also compares Sweden to Finland for March through the end of May and wrongly concludes that the ”closing of schools had no measurable effect on the number of cases of COVID-19 among children.” As testing among children in Sweden was almost non-existent at that time compared to Finland, these data were misrepresented; a better way to look at it would be to consider the fact that Sweden had seven times as many children per capita treated in the ICU during that time period.

When pressed about discrepancies in the report, Public Health Agency epidemiologist Jerker Jonsson replied on Aug. 21 via email: “The title is a bit misleading. It is not a direct comparison of the situation in Finland to the situation in Sweden. This is just a report and not a peer-reviewed scientific study. This was just a quick situation report and nothing more.” However the Public Health Agency and Minister of Education continue to reference this report as justification to keep schools open, and other countries cite it as an example.

This is not the only case where Swedish officials have misrepresented data in an effort to make the situation seem more under control than it really is. In April, a group of 22 scientists and physicians criticized Sweden’s government for the 105 deaths per day the country was seeing at the time, and Tegnell and the Public Health Agency responded by saying the true number was just 60 deaths per day. Revised government figures now show Tegnell was incorrect and the critics were right. The Public Health Agency says the discrepancy was due to a backlog in accounting for deaths, but they have backlogged deaths throughout the pandemic, making it difficult to track and gauge the actual death toll in real time.

Sweden never went into an official lockdown but an estimated 1.5 million have self-isolated, largely the elderly and those in risk groups. This was probably the largest factor in slowing the spread of the virus in the country in the summer. However, recent data suggest that cases are yet again spiking in the country, and there’s no indication that government policies will adapt.

Health care workers, scientists and private citizens have all voiced concerns about the Swedish approach. But Sweden is a small country, proud of its humanitarian image—so much so that we cannot seem to understand when we have violated it. There is simply no way to justify the magnitude of lost lives, poorer health and putting risk groups into long-term isolation, especially not in an effort to reach an unachievable herd immunity. Countries need to take care before adopting the “Swedish way.” It could have tragic consequences for this pandemic or the next.

The sessions do not prove the origin of any covid pandemic. However, they may prove that the Wuhan lockdown was reaction to some disease caused by radiation which the Chinese interpreted as biological or bacteriological when it wasn't, which is why I suggested or rather asked if remote viewing could be used to verify the current virus theory which many scientists claim is not a valid theory.

The conclusions that you reached about the COVID-19 study from Farsight are subjective to your understanding of the information provided by the rviewers. And it's perfectly fine for different people to reach different conclusions because remote viewing is not a precise science that requires that everyone gets the same results. We are not talking about a calculus or differential equation test.

ADDENDUM: My apology. I think that I did not answer your question about I think, the possibility of using rv to validate the current virus theory. Well, I think that Courtney and people who are versed in rv are better positioned to help answer your question.

Prior to watching the farsight origins of coronavirus series I was paying attention to what uncle clif was saying about the disease, ad what st.clair / nordic asset was saying on twitter about what Nordic ETs were telling him about covid19. I do distinctly remember him tweeting in early January that the Nordics were suggesting the rest of the world suspend all travel from China until after the Chinese New Year celebration to prevent the Wuhan virus from spreading.
https://twitter.com/newmind99

He says the Nordics told him there was a CCP plan to develop the covid19 virus and release it at the Tokyo Olympics causing a much wider global dispersal, (and he's recently said that they told him the virus released in October was not the more refined one they wanted), but that the ETs intervened to cause an accidental release, thus blowing up their bioweapon in their face and releasing it before their full plans were in place.

This narrative accords with Farsights data of a lab accident that releases a bioweapon, but also maintains the hypothesis that this was a 'plandemic' to transition the economy to a new reset and digital globalist system, employing the control and surveillance technologies developed and tested by the CCP since the 90s.

It seems to me there may be two ET groups involved, the one's connected to the Chinese big tech totalitarianism (which are connected by industrial/economic relations with American big tech), and the Nordic ETs. The ETs connected with China and big tech (Gates) developed the virus, and the Nordics watched and then disrupted it to create a different chain of events.

I think there is also a layer of old school evil fucking Nazi humans that are part of it because they are part of the global financial and banking elite, and have century's old contacts to Chinese deep state going back to the Opium War days.

Based on Hitomi and Dick Allgire's remote views in their coronavirus sessions of people spraying cans of bioweapons, and Dick Allgire's statement that: "these people play dirty", I believe that after the original accidental release, there were teams of people that went out and intentionally spread the virus, and perhaps other variants or mutations of it intentionally. -- as if a mid-game strategy change after they were forced to deploy their strategy early.

St.Clair and uncle clif call each other old friends. They have had similar narratives on the covid19 crisis since January.
This information is all in his tweets going back to January. I began following him for his astrological interpretations forecasting earth and human culture changes, but I have come to see him as a gifted psychic contactee as well. St Clair says that the Nordics gave him permission to talk about his transmissions from him re: covid19 on twitter, but not on youtube.

Alex, thank you.

I have to confess that the information that you are providing in your post is very intriguing because in a broad and general sense that's how I understood the rv info on COVID-19 from Farsight... I wrote it after listening to the tape and almost got rid of it because I didn't want to be mistaken for a wacko...

But I honestly I have never heard of St Clair and I don't know who uncle clif is. But I remember someone telling me about a guy named, I think Cliff Hyde. That was many many years ago... Honestly I thought he was not well upstairs... He had developed some type of weirdo vocabulary and language, and that was enough for me. Is is your uncle clif? And the Nordics? Are they supposed to be allied to the nazis or bad guys?