March  13, 2020

by Doug “Uncola” Lynn:

This is the third Coronavirus article I’ve written in the past month.   The previous piece has become one of my most viewed, perhaps because it took a skeptical view regarding how Coronavirus® had “been reported, coupled with how it’s been handled, its dubious origins, the alleged number of infected and deceased, as well as the age and general health of those who are reported to have died”.

The article, at the same time, allowed for the dangerous reality generated by COVID-19 and, especially, in regards to the reactions the virus has generated. Here are a few examples of those modifiers:

In any event, healthy skepticism is not close-mindedness, per se, because we may one day have a genuine pandemic on our hands.

….However, it could be that everything we’re seeing regarding COVID-19 is real…

… So is COVID-19 real or is it a marketing gimmick?

….Once again, it could be this latest incarnation of coronavirus is a real killer and the mortality rates now being reported are completely bogus.

… to be sure, the public reactions, including within the financial markets, are real.

Although that last article slanted towards my suspicions, it also left some wiggle room if only because COVID-19 is not a hill I’d risk my credibility to die upon. There’s no need and I have nothing personally at stake. Honestly, I’m just an American Nobody playing it like Popeye umpiring a baseball game;

 I y’am what y’am and I calls ’em as I sees ’em.

And be assured that one thing is absolutely certain at this point in time:  COVID-19 has obtained near 100% global psychological saturation.  Admittedly, it has become a very big deal.

As of now, the state where I am currently located has less than a dozen patients quarantined with COVID-19.  Last week, we had zero cases.  And that was when I read an article on “how to make your own hand sanitizer”:

In the past week, demand for hand sanitizer has soared 1,400% with some stores limiting the amount of a customer can purchase at one time and others jacking up prices looking to make a profit off the global panic.

Amazon has banned 10,000 users for price gouging as the panic buying intensifies.

 I have a few jugs of the stuff back home because I realize sanitation can be a big issue in societal breakdowns.  So, just out of curiosity, I visited three big box stores to see if I could find any; including at Walmart. The shelves were completely cleaned out at every location.

Although I didn’t check the first two stores for rubbing alcohol, the last place had some so I also went to see if they had any aloe gel. In that aisle, I asked an employee who was stocking the shelves and she showed me four bottles and said that was all they were going to get for some time. When I asked her about the hand sanitizer she said they received some in on the truck the previous night but it was gone by noon.

Certainly, COVID-19 had the entire nation taking precaution last week; and if shelves were cleaned out in states with zero cases at the time, then that was a pretty telling sign of what we are now experiencing:

Panic.

All over the nation, colleges are closing their campuses and migrating classes online.  The state of Washington has banned gatherings more than 250 people in the Seattle area and airlines are currently running “ghost flights” amid a “coronavirus crisis sales slump”.

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has gone viral (pun intended) – and especially as an economic Black Swan.

Personally, I had reason and opportunity to fly to the Pacific Northwest this week, spur of the moment, but I chose not to, in part, because of the hysteria. Why take the chance? Even if I survived after getting infected, I still could get caught away from home via canceled flights and other potential societal reverberations.

Therefore, if this skeptical blogger has made decisions like that on the basis of COVID-19, then there is no doubt it COULD become the proverbial pin in the economic, and even civilizational, balloon.

Or, it could all blow over by June.

Either way, I won’t gamble with what I can’t afford to lose.

What amazes me about the Kung Flu, however, is how much panic has been generated on the Alternative Internet.  There seems to be a sort of “reverse lottery effect” in effect – like the way people buy tickets because they can’t win if they don’t play and, in so doing, they place their hope in a minuscule percentage of ever winning. Except now with COVID-19, it’s become like: “A 3% mortality rate? That’s still a chance it could happen to me!”

Indeed. The Alternative Internet has generated morbid concern, even especially among the remnant and this should come as no surprise because the Fifth Estate has proven more trustworthy than the corporations comprising the Mainstream Media.  Moreover, it seems we want to believe COVID-19 is an indestructible man-made virus because Wuhan contains biolabs.   And if COVID-19 proves to be the plague of this millennium, then all reporting and the ensuing prohibitive measures will have been justified. However, if Coronavirus® is shown to have been a propagandic psyop, we’ll know it worked because we wanted to believe.

But one thing we do know for sure is this:  Of those who have died so far from COVID-19…, 100% have been quarantined. Think about that. Because that’s one heck of a stat.

As these words were being typed, the following article had top billing at The Drudge Report:

Coronavirus is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu, Trump’s task force immunologist says

But if one clicked the link, they’d have read the following:

At the same time, he [Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] did clarify that 10 times figure actually brings the new coronavirus’ fatality rate lower than official estimates, which hover around 3 percent. The flu has a mortality rate of about 0.1 percent, so, when considering the likelihood that there are many asymptomatic or very mild cases that have gone undiagnosed, Fauci places the new coronavirus’ lethality rate at somewhere around 1 percent.

A “lethality rate at somewhere around 1 percent”? But, still, 10 times more lethal than flu!

That’s like they didn’t shoot the sheriff but they shot the deputy.

To be sure, citing statistics is like looking out your window through a straw. You see what you see and miss the rest.

Of those who have ever died from the flu, did 100% of those deceased have the flu? What percentage of the dead were hospitalized, 80%, 90%, 100%? And was it really the flu that killed them or other underlying factors? Was it flu or pneumonia? Because many of the stats (and articles that we read) conflate these. And how many of those hospitalized with pneumonia, survived?

In the same 100,000 population, anyone can pull stats to tell different stories promote various narratives.

But who do we believe and why? Occam’s Razor? Or is nothing as it seems? These are the questions we should constantly be asking ourselves. Now more than ever. Because if I ruled the world I could set it ablaze tomorrow with this headline (and not be lying; it’s new because the name is new):

New FLUMONIA Kills 20%+ of Those Quarantined or Hospitalized

Even award-winning reporter, Sharyl Attkisson, a former Capitol Hill correspondent for CBS News, has tweeted regarding the frail condition of those who have died from COVID-19 in the United States:

As of this writing, there have been 39 deaths in the U.S.; and with most of the fatalities occurring at a nursing home in Washington State.

And, yet, the entire nation has been closed for business.

The NBA has suspended their season and the NCAA has canceled March Madness.   Broadway has shut down all productions and Madison Square Garden could be closed for months. Presidential primary debate venues have been shuffled, campaign rallies have been canceled, and schools are now closed.

Of course, the stated reason for all of these precautions is to “flatten the curve”:

 …by taking certain steps — canceling large public gatherings, for instance, and encouraging some people to restrict their contact with others — governments have a shot at stamping out new chains of transmission, while also trying to mitigate the damage of the spread that isn’t under control.

The epidemic curve, a statistical chart used to visualize when and at what speed new cases are reported, could be flattened, rather than being allowed to rise exponentially.

This also helps prevent the health-care system from being overrun like Atlanta, Georgia in the first season of the Walking Dead.

Do you remember the H1N1 “Swine Flu” pandemic that took place in 2009-2010?  By March 2010, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated “that about 59 million Americans contracted the H1N1 virus, 265,000 were hospitalized as a result, and 12,000 died.”

But there was no hysteria back then, was there? At least not like we are seeing in today’s headlines.

So why the panic now? Perhaps because much of COVID-19 reeks of sheer politicization.

In my last article, I pointed out how the rise of COVID-19 corresponded exactly with the demise of Trump’s failed impeachment debacle. I also discussed how the virus could insulate Trump from an economic crisis and, yet, not without potential political fallout. Near the end of the article, I questioned whether Coronavirus would be the best thing that happened to Trump or the worst.

Now there have been articles of U.S. congressmen and senators being quarantined and concerns at the White House over the “unique challenge of protecting Trump from coronavirus exposure”.   More recently it’s been revealed that a Brazilian official who met with Trump has tested positive for COVID-19.

What if the virus took out the 74-year-old POTUS? What if it killed Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders after winning the Democratic Party nomination?  Can you imagine the ramifications?

At the very least, what if Trump loses the election in November due to his perceived incompetence in containing COVID-19? So much for making America great again, right?

There have been claims Coronavirus® is a lab-engineered bioweapon and many other speculations by citizen journalists throughout the interwebic blogosphere.  And, I might add, it’s some pretty damn impressive speculations by those citizen journalists.

A doctor and infectious diseases specialist has warned of the “consequences of needless coronavirus panic”:

I’ve been at this for more than 20 years seeing sick patients on a daily basis. I have worked in inner city hospitals and in the poorest slums of Africa. HIV-AIDS, Hepatitis,TB, SARS, Measles, Shingles, Whooping cough, Diphtheria…there is little I haven’t been exposed to in my profession. And with notable exception of SARS, very little has left me feeling vulnerable, overwhelmed or downright scared.

I am not scared of Covid-19. I am concerned about the implications of a novel infectious agent that has spread the world over and continues to find new footholds in different soil. I am rightly concerned for the welfare of those who are elderly, in frail health or disenfranchised who stand to suffer mostly, and disproportionately, at the hands of this new scourge. But I am not scared of Covid-19.

What I am scared about is the loss of reason and wave of fear that has induced the masses of society into a spellbinding spiral of panic…

There have been other speculations as to exactly how COVID-19 was manufactured:

“Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein.”

The above article also referenced the nutrient selenium as a means to ward off COVID-19:

“[t]he only people that can be infected by the 2019-n Coronavirus have less than 98.7 µg/L of Selenium in plasma or serum. Those who have enough Selenium are immune to this and all other enveloped viruses. Selenium can be obtained from Brazil nuts, Selenium pills or Astragalus tea.”

I would strongly suggest you go read this for yourself (and all the linked documentation), and go further to perform a Google search for “coronavirus” and “selenium.” You’ll be amazed at the amount of documentation that comes up… all confirming the original point.

Interestingly enough, the linked attribution even compares the early beginnings of the spread of COVID-19 in China (January, 2020) geographically to areas where there are alleged selenium deficiencies in the soil:

Map of (early) coronavirus deaths in China:

Map of (claimed) selenium deficient soil in China:

True?  I don’t know… but I’d be curious to know the average annual per-person selenium intake in Italy.  I’ve also, personally, stocked up on Brazil Nuts just in case.  And, for those who are interested, here is a ranking of the “200 Foods Highest in Selenium” .

Whether true or false, we’ll likely find out soon.

In the meantime, I’m predicting a parabolic spike of COVID-19 cases is coming in the very near future; potentially even among those showing no symptoms.  This is because “top coronavirus expert” Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the infectious diseases unit at the National Institutes of Health, stated on March 8, 2020, that four million tests should be available by end of the week. Furthermore, a Bill Gates-funded program “will soon offer home-testing kits for new coronavirus”:

Testing for the novel coronavirus in the Seattle area will get a huge boost in the coming weeks as a project funded by Bill Gates and his foundation begins offering home-testing kits that will allow people who fear they may be infected to swab their noses and send the samples back for analysis.

What could go wrong?

In any event, the earlier-referenced article predicted a full global saturation of COVID-19 by “May 17 or May 18, 2020” and advised people to “prepare food supplies for a three-month ‘indoor stay-cation’.

But here is something to consider about that: Have you ever been caught in the rain and drenched to the extent it was no use trying to keep your clothes dry any longer? Because at that point, what difference did it make? Or stated more clearly: if everyone has the virus, then why quarantine? And if things actually progress that far, I suspect that will be the exact attitude of many, if not most, Americans.

This means if COVID-19 is as contagious as they say, and preventative precautions fail, then we will all get the virus; sooner or later.  Perhaps that is why some have estimated 245 million global deaths, or 3% of the global population. Which would make sense with 100% global virus saturation and a reported average mortality rate of around 3% worldwide.

Other major considerations would be how quickly those 245 million people infected with COVID-19 would die along with any other proportionate accelerating / corresponding mortality factors. Because the global grid won’t collapse gracefully.

The question remains whether or not the dire predictions hold true – even unto a potential Mad Max outcome.

So what can we do?

Well, for those so concerned, they may want to review this blogger’s “practical steps” article entitled “BABY STEPS: You’ve Been Woke. Now Exit the Matrix.”.  In summary, these were the considerations of that article in order:  Air, shelter, water, food, energy, medicine, networking, precious metals, bartering, and defense.  Some of the extraneous political referencing may be outdated now, but at least the survival perspectives remain valid.

What else might we do? Here are some ideas:

If the sun is shining in your area, get out under it and take a bicycle ride, or a walk, or a run. Vitamin D is activated in sunlight and, in turn, allows all other nutrition to facilitate the immune system. Eat your fruits and vegetables and set aside your bad habits for a while.

Healthy nutrition, fresh air, and sunshine should be the plan. Drink lots of water (I prefer distilled, myself). Relax. Manage your stress by finding gratitude in the moment. And if you really want to become indestructible, allow your body to harness the circadian rhythm by getting to bed by 9-9:30 PM. The body heals most effectively between the hours of 10PM and 2 AM. Try it and you’ll be amazed – especially in combination with the other suggestions above.

Don’t expect to be saved by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO).  Or the government for that matter. Or even the medical system, when it comes to non-bacterial bugs.

If you get sick, don’t panic. The odds are that you’ll get better.

If COVID-19 is as highly contagious as claimed, and given that it started in China and has a huge head-start there, and given that China is the most populous nation on earth – why has the mortality rate outside China now surpassed the very nation where the virus first started?

How could that be?

Is it because the Chinese have quarantined better? Because the Chinese have a superior health system?  Because the virus is not as contagious, or deadly, as claimed? Or is the testing and reporting all erroneous?

And, at this point in time, do these questions even matter? Evidently not.

So, with that in mind, here are some concluding thoughts:

Over the weekend I was driving back from a meeting on a two-lane paved country road. While bypassing a rural town, I looked upwards to my left and saw a cemetery nestled on a hill.  There was an ancient dark-colored sedan parked inside the fence and standing there was an old woman with white hair. She was a solitary figure staring down at a gravestone and was just far enough away that her face was blurred.  Her snow-white hair was bright in the sun and contrasted with the black and gray stones around her.  Standing there so still, it looked as if she was praying or like someone had placed her there, miniaturized in the distance, as a figurine cake topper with a cotton ball for hair.

I wondered if it was her husband who lay there. Perhaps it was her son or daughter. Or maybe a sibling, or a friend.

Death is personal. It brings fear and suffering and emotional pain to the living. Death comes for us all. But, until then, at any given time, what matters most is what we do next; as long as it’s right.  Some might call it faith.  Others will say it’s hope.  And still others will say it’s love.  Regardless of what it’s called, it’s worth holding onto.

Someone far wiser than me once asked:  “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Peace comes when the mind and body are in the same moment at the same time. There’s awareness there. And answers. In each moment we can only do our best.  That’s where we end and the universe begins.  The outcomes are beyond our control.

So if you’re not having fun, you better be learning something.

Godspeed.

• Uncategorized