SpaceX Competitor OneWeb Goes Bankrupt
March 28th, 2020Via: BBC:
OneWeb, the high-profile London-based satellite start-up, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US.
The firm, which has been building a network to deliver broadband across the globe, blamed the Covid-19 crisis for its inability to secure new investment.
OneWeb issued a statement saying it was laying off most of its staff while it seeks a buyer for the company.
The start-up recently launched the 74th satellite in a constellation planned to total at least 648 spacecraft.
SpaceX Has Won a Big NASA Contract to Fly Cargo to the Moon
March 28th, 2020Via: Ars Technica:
Last summer, NASA put out a call for companies who would be willing to deliver cargo to a proposed station in orbit around the Moon, called the Lunar Gateway. On Friday, NASA announced that the first award under this “Gateway Logistics” contract would go to SpaceX.
The company has proposed using its Falcon Heavy rocket to deliver a modified version of its Dragon spacecraft, called Dragon XL, to the Lunar Gateway. After delivering cargo, experiments and other supplies, the spacecraft would be required to remain docked at the Gateway for a year before “autonomous” disposal.
“This contract award is another critical piece of our plan to return to the Moon sustainably,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a news release. “The Gateway is the cornerstone of the long-term Artemis architecture, and this deep space commercial cargo capability integrates yet another American industry partner into our plans for human exploration at the Moon in preparation for a future mission to Mars.”
Current Estimates About Covid-19 Fatality Rate Orders of Magnitude Too High
March 27th, 2020Via: Stanford:
Stanford Health Policy’s Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya write in this Wall Street Journal editorial that current estimates about the COVID-19 fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude.
“If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.
“Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate — 2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, 2 million to 4 million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.”
“The latter rate is misleading because of selection bias in testing. The degree of bias is uncertain because available data are limited. But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills 2 million. If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases—orders of magnitude larger—then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That’s not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far.”
Gordon Brown Calls for Global Government to Tackle Coronavirus
March 27th, 2020Tell me another one.
Via: Guardian:
Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have executive powers to coordinate the response.
…
“This is not something that can be dealt with in one country,” he said. “There has to be a coordinated global response.”
Prof Who Predicted 500K UK Deaths Now Says Under 20K Will Die, Peak In Two Weeks
March 27th, 2020This is the yellowcake uranium moment of the Covid-19 op.
Via: Zero Hedge:
Imperial College London’s Neil Ferguson – who originally estimated 500,000 deaths in the UK due to Coronavirus, now says that the virus will peak in just two or three weeks, and that UK deaths from the disease are now unlikely to exceed 20,000, according to NewScientist.
Why the change of heart from Ferguson – who himself has contracted COVID-19?
Ferguson – whose ‘Terrifying’ research from just 10 days ago predicted 2.2 million deaths in the US and that the UK would need to be under quarantine for 18 months or more – now says that coronavirus will not overwhelm the UK’s ICU beds, and that over 1/2 of those it will kill would have died by the end of the year anyway because they were so old and sick.
His reasoning is that estimates of the virus’s transmissibility are much higher than previously thought – and that many more people have gotten it than we realize, making it less dangerous overall.
Covid-19: ‘Patient Zero’ at Wuhan Seafood Market Identified
March 27th, 2020This is the Satam al Suqami passport moment of the Covid-19 op.
Via: New Zealand Herald:
The first person from the Wuhan market – where the coronavirus pandemic is believed to have started – to test positive for the virus was a woman selling live shrimps, according to a document leaked to media.
The 57-year-old seafood merchant at Wuhan’s Huanan market, who The Wall Street Journal have identified as a woman named Wei Guixian, first started to feel sick on December 10.
New York Hospitals Treating Coronavirus Patients with Vitamin C
March 26th, 2020I’m genuinely shocked that they are admitting to using IV Vitamin C.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand:
Via: New York Post:
Seriously sick coronavirus patients in New York state’s largest hospital system are being given massive doses of vitamin C — based on promising reports that it’s helped people in hard-hit China, The Post has learned.
Dr. Andrew G. Weber, a pulmonologist and critical-care specialist affiliated with two Northwell Health facilities on Long Island, said his intensive-care patients with the coronavirus immediately receive 1,500 milligrams of intravenous vitamin C.
Identical amounts of the powerful antioxidant are then readministered three or four times a day, he said.
Each dose is more than 16 times the National Institutes of Health’s daily recommended dietary allowance of vitamin C, which is just 90 milligrams for adult men and 75 milligrams for adult women.
The regimen is based on experimental treatments administered to people with the coronavirus in Shanghai, China, Weber said.
“The patients who received vitamin C did significantly better than those who did not get vitamin C,” he said.
More: Hospital-based Intravenous Vitamin C Treatment for Coronavirus and Related Illnesses
U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS: 3.283 MILLION
March 26th, 2020It’s as if the U.S. had been hit with a nuke, minus the mushroom cloud, over what amounts to a scam.
See: 12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic
Whatever this is, it makes 9/11 look like Tiddlywinks.
Via: Yahoo Finance:
The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy, and data released Thursday morning reflected the severe damage being done to the labor market.
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits skyrocketed to a record-breaking 3.283 million for the week ended March 21. Consensus expectations were for 1.64 million claims. The previous record was 695,000 claims filed the week ended October 2, 1982. Initial jobless claims for the week ended March 14 was revised higher to 282,000 from 281,000 and was the largest single-week increase since the Great Recession.
More: “What we are now witnessing is completely unprecedented”
Coronavirus Could Infect Privacy And Civil Liberties Forever
March 26th, 2020Via: Forbes:
From a technological perspective, the coronavirus pandemic is one massive testbed for surveillance capitalism. More specifically, it’s a testbed for new, much more large-scale forms of surveillance. Already, governments in Italy, Germany, Austria, China, South Korea and Taiwan have begun analysing smartphone data so as to determine to what extent populations are really locking themselves down at home. Meanwhile, governments in the UK and the US are very close to rolling out similar surveillance measures, all in the effort to ensure that policies of mass behaviour modification are successful.
British Government: COVID-19 No Longer Considered To Be A High Consequence Infectious Disease In UK
March 25th, 2020This Covid-19 operation is at least as sloppy as 9/11. My greatest concern, at this point, is that they will have to attempt to try to make it real somehow.
How?
Because the effects range from no symptoms to death, I’m wondering: Is this a binary weapon?
Can a kill switch be flipped for a specific demographic and/or geographic area?
Maybe aerosol?
Maybe electromagnetic?
With unknown trillions of dollars taking flight, and system transforming legislation coming off the shelf, my guess is that a far more convincing pile of corpses will need to be shown on infinite loop, or this op will be blown.
Via: gov.uk:
Status of COVID-19
As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.
The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.
The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.
The need to have a national, coordinated response remains, but this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.
Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19, which supersedes all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions about different personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical scenarios.
Definition of HCID
In the UK, a high consequence infectious disease (HCID) is defined according to the following criteria:
acute infectious disease
typically has a high case-fatality rate
may not have effective prophylaxis or treatment
often difficult to recognise and detect rapidly
ability to spread in the community and within healthcare settings
requires an enhanced individual, population and system response to ensure it is managed effectively, efficiently and safely
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12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic
