Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[Iamwhomiam]

Police: Albany landlord tied up, 'evicted' sleeping tenants, dumping them in cemetery
Albany man faces kidnapping charges; tenants were bound with zip ties, tape and pillowcases over heads

Brendan J. Lyons
Feb. 23, 2021
Updated: Feb. 23, 2021 6:12 p.m.

ALBANY — An Albany landlord has been charged with kidnapping after allegedly tying up two tenants with zip ties and tape, placing pillowcases over their heads and driving them at gunpoint to a rural cemetery in Columbia County where he dumped them in the snow before dawn on Sunday, according to law enforcement sources and police records.

The landlord, 48-year-old Shawn Douglas, allegedly was armed with a firearm throughout the incident and may have received help from two other suspects, according to police records. No other arrests have been reported. The alleged kidnapping unfolded between and 1 and 8 a.m. on Sunday.

The incident began at the multi-unit Grandview Terrace residence where Douglas and his two tenants have resided in the city's South End. Douglas, who police records indicate has been arrested previously for charges ranging from assault to violating an order of protection, has owned the residence since 2006, according to property records. The tenants were a 21-year-old woman and a 32-year-old man. They could not be reached for comment.

Douglas had apparently grown frustrated because he had been unable to evict the tenants due to COVID-19 restrictions, law enforcement sources said. The tenants were both sleeping at the time that he is accused of attacking and tying them up. The 32-year-old male tenant was allegedly punched and kicked by Douglas and two others before being tied up.

Police reports on the incident do not provide any details on the other suspects.

After the man and woman were bound, Douglas allegedly loaded them into what they told police was a Dodge Durango. With the help of the two other unidentified suspects, they drove the man and woman to a motel that the victims told police may have been in Colonie. From there, they were driven to the isolated cemetery in Ghent, a rural town in Columbia County about 35 miles southeast of Albany.

Police reports indicate Douglas left them tied up in the snow-covered cemetery and drove away. The woman was able to untie herself and walked to a nearby residence to summon help.

By allegedly leaving the pair tied up and abandoning them in the wintry conditions, Douglas "did expose the victims to a risk of serious physical injury," a police report states.

Douglas was arrested Monday afternoon and arraigned on charges of second-degree kidnapping. He was being held at Albany County jail Tuesday afternoon on $50,000 bond.

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Albany-landlord-tied-up-evicted-sleeping-15972981.php

[stickdog99]

This is a great example of why forestalling evictions without addressing any underlying issues has the effect only of forcing small landlords out of business, just as lockdowns for every non-billionaire owned business has the effect of forcing all small business owners out of business. .

[Iamwhomiam]

Well, small landlords really can't be forced out of business as long as they are mandated to forestall evictions. They might burn through their savings, but even a month to month lease binds both parties legally. LLs remain liable for maintaining their property, keeping it up to code, regardless. Longer termed leases - one year or more, have to be honored by both parties. LLs should be all over their representatives asses demanding payment or a new round of guaranteed loans from the feds.

It really disgusting, the lack of concern by those getting $14.5K each month since the first $1K stimulus checks were authorized a year ago, with another $600 coming months later. So each member of congress earned their full salary of $174K while you got $1600 bucks for yourself. I cannot recall how much more married couples with and without children received.

McConnell wanted to wait until after the election before issuing another round of stimulus checks. The election was 4 months ago.

We need legislation to adjust our legislators salaries downward when confronted with such economic times as this. Then we'd see quick action from them.

[Pele'sDaughter]

Sure, but who is going to get that legislation passed? The ones who stand to gain or lose? We need to find a way to crowd source these issues in some way that actually has an effect on what is passed.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

On FAUCI.

https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status ... 86532?s=20

...

Now, let's get to Covid-19

First issue, [Fauci] used the IC model from Ferguson to convince Trump to lockdown

"The steep curve with 2.2 million deaths was not from Dr. Fauci, however, but from Neal Ferguson’s team at Imperial College"
...

Next, together with NIH Director Francis Collins and Larry Corey from FredHutch, they created the US Covid-19 Strategy

They wrote this paper to detail their plan

They convinced Trump to mobilize govt, pharma and academia to go all in on a vaccine

...

But then new information started coming out
-IFR wasn't 2-3%, probably 10X lower
-Most people weren't at risk
-Lots of asymptomatics
-Some people started claiming that cheap drugs like the Drug Which Shall Not Be Named (DWSNBN) work

Time to adjust strategy?

Nope, never!

...

What happens next is remarkable because the Fauci from March/April becomes Gollum from LOTR protecting his precious Vaccine

He goes hard after 'Drug Which Shall Not Be Named':
-trashes any positive study
-declares it doesn't work
-shuts down the most important trial in June

...

Another problem emerges: herd immunity appears to work

Big problem!

Solution:
-New Religion: Masks and lock-downs
-Trash Sweden and herd immunity
-Deny pre-existing immunity

Here we see Gollum Fauci as he's challenged by @RandPaul



...

To really understand what's going on I looked at NIAID funding of projects in 2019 and 2020

[NIAID: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Fauci is the Director]

First I looked at 2019 where $4.9 billion was awarded to 6947 projects

I analyzed the top 200 and was surprised to find 37% of the budget was devoted to HIV/AIDS



...

This is strange

HIV is now treatable

Only 13,000 people die from it

Why is AIDS disproportionately funded vs. actual public health risk it represents?

Maybe Fauci is Captain Ahab and AIDS is his Moby Dick

At 79, is this more about his legacy than public health?

...

And now the bombshells: 2020

NIAID got $700 mil more for COVID

I looked at top 236 projects: 36 C19-related, 200 others

1) 81% of the C19 budget is for vaccines
2) Therapeutics are an afterthought
3) No budget for repurposing existing drugs

All the eggs in vax basket!!!


...

It gets worse!

HIV/AIDS research increased 38% compared to '19

Of the top 200 non-C19 projects, AIDS now accounts for 57% of the budget!?

Remember the Fred Hutchinson Research Center (Seattle, WA)?

11 C19+AIDS FredHutch projects got 24% of the funds of top 236 projects

...

Fauci has lost his way

He is interested in achieving his goals:

-Gollum Fauci wants his Vaccine to save humanity
-Ahab Fauci wants to find a cure or vaccine before he retires

Follow the money and you will see what people's priorities are

...


I mean Ahab Fauci wants to defeat AIDS before he retires

Also NIAID partnered with Moderna on the development of their mRNA vaccine

This is extremely controversial because no human mRNA vaccine has ever succeeded

Many scientists are skeptical

Risk of autoimmunity disease

...

Obviously this doesn’t look great for Fauci

The question is, why have we allowed centralized decision making to dictate science?

Don’t be surprised when you make Fauci King for life and then he starts behaving that way

Why is one small group dictating science priorities?

...

Awarding of science grants needs to become decentralized and transparent

I don’t know if Duesberg was right about HIV not causing AIDS, but he shouldn’t have been blackballed

He was one of the top young scientists then

Settled science is not science

...

I hope this thread will inform people about the need to reform our public health institutions

Allocation of budgets needs to be based on health needs of population, not on bureaucratic ambitions

...

One of the biggest things that bothers me is how NIAID funding is just slightly less than the National Cancer Institute

We have a 40% chance of developing cancer and a 21% chance of dying from cancer

Seems like a bigger priority than AIDS/HIV

[conniption]

RT

‘Stop this child abuse now!’: Washington high school band practice in anti-Covid TENTS gets ridiculed

25 Feb, 2021


Screenshot © Twitter / @thehoffather

A student band at a high school in Wenatchee, Washington was made to practice inside small, enclosed tents. Some ridiculed this protective measure against Covid-19 amid the reopening of schools across the US.

The Wenatchee High School children have been back at school since January 26, however with strict coronavirus measures in place.

Photos posted on Wednesday by local newspaper Wenatchee World showed the young musicians awkwardly confined to their small, green, socially-distanced tents as they tried to play their instruments, prompting many to ridicule the situation. continues...

https://www.rt.com/usa/516544-washingto ... ovid-tent/

[conniption]

Re: Fauci

]The Library of Economics and Liberty

Great Moments in Epidemiology

By David Henderson



In his 1987 book on the AIDS crisis, And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts has a section on a press release put out by the American Medical Association on May 6, 1983. Because of copyright issues, I won’t reproduce all 3 pages of Shilts’s treatment of the issue. Instead I’ll quote the press release in full and then quote selectively from Shilts’s discussion.

AMA News Release

For Release Friday, May 6, 1983

EVIDENCE SUGGESTS HOUSEHOLD CONTACT MAY TRANSMIT AIDS

Chicago—Evidence suggesting that Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) can be transmitted by routine household contact is presented in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

James Oleske, MD, MPH, and colleagues report eight cases of otherwise unexplained immune deficiency syndrome among children from the Newark, N.J., metropolitan area born into families with recognized risks for AIDS.

“Four of these children have died,” the authors report. “Our experience suggests that children living in high-risk households are susceptible to AIDS and that sexual contact, drug abuse or exposure to blood products is not necessary for disease transmission.”

Commenting on the study in an accompanying editorial, Anthony S. Fauci, MD, of the National Institutes of Health, points out, “We are witnessing at the present time the evolution of a new disease process of unknown etiology with a mortality of at least 50 percent and possibly as high as 75 percent to 100 percent with a doubling of the number of patients afflicted every six months.”

At first the disease appeared to be confined only to male homosexuals, he adds. Then it became clear that IV drug users also were susceptible, and after that the disease was found among Haitians and hemophiliacs, the latter apparently exposed through transfusion of blood products.

“The finding of AIDS in infants and children who are household contacts of patients with AIDS or persons with risks for AIDS has enormous implications with regard to ultimate transmissibility of this syndrome,” Fauci says. “If routine close contact can spread the disease, AIDS takes on an entirely new dimension,” he adds.

“Given the fact that incubation period for adults is believed to be longer than one year, the full impact of the syndrome among sexual contacts and recipients of potentially infective transfusions is uncertain at present. If we add to this the possibility that nonsexual, non-blood-borne transmission is possible, the scope of the syndrome may be enormous.”

Shilts then writes:

Arye Rubinstein was astounded that Anthony Fauci could be so stupid as to say that household contact might have anything to do with spreading AIDS. Rubinstein had never been a great admirer of New Jersey’s Dr. Oleske; they had antithetical views of AIDS in children. To Rubinstein, the mode of transmission was fairly obvious and fit quite well with existing epidemiological data on AIDS. The mother obviously infected the child in her womb. The fetus and parent shared blood as surely as an intravenous drug user, hemophiliac, or blood transfusion recipient. The fact that none of the infants in Oleske’s study were over one year old reinforced this notion. In order to interpret this data to mean that “routine household contact” might spread AIDS, an entirely new paradigm for AIDS transmission was needed. Rubinstein’s paper explained it all very easily, though the Journal of the American Medical Associationseemed more enamored with Oleske’s specious analysis. In fact, the journal editor at first returned Rubinstein’s paper with the section on intrauterine transmission crossed out. The paragraphs had only appeared because Rubinstein had insisted that they be retained.

What was Fauci’s problem?

Upon investigation, Rubinstein learned that Anthony Fauci had not bothered to read his paper [I presume Shilts means Rubinstein’s paper] before writing the editorial. Instead, he just read Oleske’s conclusions and started running off at the mouth.

Shilts goes on to point out that Fauci blamed the hysterical media for taking his comments “out of context.” After all, Fauci had used the word “if.” Fauci argued that the chief villain was the AMA’s press office.

Even the New York Times reported the Associated Press version.

Shilts then writes:

Moreover, the report created a lasting impression on the public that would raise the hysteria level around AIDS for years to come. Scientists just aren’t sure how AIDS is spread, the thinking went. Because of the long incubation period, possible transmission routes existed that might not reveal themselves until later—until it was too late. Anthony Fauci had said as much in his ill-considered editorial.

Shilts writes:

All the ways to get AIDS were established by then [1983], and scientists, at least at the CDC, understood precisely how AIDS had spread.

But the damage was done.

https://www.econlib.org/great-moments-in-epidemiology/

_______

AIER

The Abuse of Emergency Powers and Lockdowns
Ethan YangEthan Yang
– February 18, 2021

https://www.aier.org/article/the-abuse- ... lockdowns/

[Iamwhomiam]

RT

‘Stop this child abuse now!’: Washington high school band practice in anti-Covid TENTS gets ridiculed

25 Feb, 2021


Screenshot © Twitter / @thehoffather

A student band at a high school in Wenatchee, Washington was made to practice inside small, enclosed tents. Some ridiculed this protective measure against Covid-19 amid the reopening of schools across the US.

The Wenatchee High School children have been back at school since January 26, however with strict coronavirus measures in place.

Photos posted on Wednesday by local newspaper Wenatchee World showed the young musicians awkwardly confined to their small, green, socially-distanced tents as they tried to play their instruments, prompting many to ridicule the situation. continues...

https://www.rt.com/usa/516544-washingto ... ovid-tent/

"Some ridiculed this protective measure against Covid-19 amid the reopening of schools across the US"

"Some."

Not a single kid or their parents were interviewed to ask how they felt about it.

More fucking RT BS.

Maybe you missed this for your lead: "The stories I hear from them are dark. It’s disturbing and scary,” Noell said."

[Belligerent Savant]

.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/media2.fairhea ... 0Paper.pdf


Change every reference to "COVID-19" below to "LOCKDOWNS and Related Mandates".

The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health

Copyright 2021, FAIR Health, Inc.All rights reserved.

[FAIR HEALTH is a nonprofit that collects data for the largest database of privately billed health insurance claims in the US; these findings assessed 32 billion records and studied those in the 13-18 and 19-22 age ranges]

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly on that of young people. Defining the pediatric population as individuals aged 0-22 years, and focusing on the age groups 13-18 years and 19-22 years, FAIR Health studied the effects of the pandemic on US pediatric mental health. To do so, FAIR Health analyzed data from its database of over 32 billion private healthcare claim records, tracking month-by-month changes from January to November 2020 compared to the same months in 2019. Aspects of pediatric mental health investigated include overall mental health, intentional self-harm, overdoses and substance use disorders, top mental health diagnoses, reasons for emergency room visits and state-by-state variations.

Among the key findings:

Overall Mental Health

•In March and April 2020, mental health claim lines for individuals aged 13-18, as a percentage of all medical claim lines, approximately doubled over the same months in the previous year. All medical claim lines(including mental health claim lines), however, decreased by approximately half. That pattern of increased mental health claim lines and decreased medical claim lines continued through November 2020, though to a lesser extent.

•A similar pattern was seen for individuals aged 19-22, though the changes were smaller.In general, the age group 19-22 had mental health trends similar to but less pronounced than the age group 13-18.

Intentional Self-Harm

•Claim lines for intentional self-harm as a percentage of all medical claim lines in the 13-18 age group increased 90.71 percent in March 2020 compared to March 2019.The increase was even larger when comparing April 2020 to April 2019, nearly doubling (99.83 percent).

•Comparing August 2019 to August 2020 in the Northeast, for the age group 13-18, there was a 333.93 percent increase in intentional self-harm claim lines as a percentage of all medical claim lines, a rate higher than that in any other region in any month studied for that age group.

Overdoses and Substance Use Disorders

•For the age group 13-18, claim lines for overdoses increased 94.91 percent as a percentage of all medical claim lines in March 2020 and 119.31 percent in April 2020 over the same months the year before.Claim lines for substance use disorders also increased as a percentage of all medical claim lines in March (64.64 percent) and April (62.69 percent) 2020as compared to their corresponding months in 2019.

Mental Health Diagnoses

•For the age group 6-12, from spring to November 2020, claim lines for obsessive-compulsive disorder and tic disorders increased as a percentage of all medical claim lines from their levels in the corresponding months of 2019.

•For the age group13-18, in April 2020, claim lines for generalized anxiety disorder increased 93.6 percent as a percentage of all medical claim lines over April 2019, while major depressive disorder claim lines increased 83.9 percent and adjustment disorder claim lines 89.7 percent.

[stickdog99]

So much to unpack here.

Blind partisan-driven faith in the "proven" effectiveness of masks and lockdowns.

Blind worship at the altar of experimental Big Pharma products.

Blind tribalistic hatred and genocidal intent.

This is what a former icon of the US left has been reduced to by highly contagious COVID hysteria while "good liberals" cheer into their masks while wildly clapping their sanitized hands.

[stickdog99]

There have been only 1,739 positive tests for any form of influenza this entire flu season.

That's out of 1,029,736 tests administered. That's a 0.17% positivity rate, which is right around the false positivity rate (0.1%) of our best influenza tests.

[dada]

"Change every reference to "COVID-19" below to "LOCKDOWNS and Related Mandates""

Or you could try changing them to "capitalism."

[JackRiddler]

Of course it's all ultimately to benefit real-existing capitals, but the policies do matter.

Have we done this yet? London School of Economics.

https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news- ... Life-years

COVID-19 policies might result in more life-years lost than saved
TUE 02 FEB 2021
Lockdown policies have had a direct impact on people’s willingness – and ability – to access health and social services.
- Professor Paul Dolan
The life-years saved from Covid-19 deaths that have been averted as a result of lockdown measures may be fewer than the life-years that will be lost from deaths resulting from curable diseases, according to a research paper published by LSE.

“Lockdown policies have had a direct impact on people’s willingness – and ability – to access health and social services, which is likely to lead to a direct increase in morbidity and mortality rates from curable diseases such as cancer and strokes,” say the paper’s authors, Pinar Jenkins, Karol Sikora and Paul Dolan.

The paper, published in the European Journal of Clinical Oncology, states that around three million people in the UK missed cancer diagnostics due to the lockdown. “As little as a four-week delay was associated with an increased mortality in seven cancer types,” it states. “Recent research suggests that a delay in patient presentation and diagnosis for cancer would lead to 25,812 life-years lost if the delay is one-month long and 173,540 life-years lost if the delay is six-months long."

Using these figures, restrictions need to have prevented at least 21,693 deaths from Covid-19 (assuming an average of eight life-years saved per person) to have justified the policy decision in terms of a maximisation of life-years saved.

“The reality is that the number of life-years saved per person will have been far fewer than that,” state the authors. “According to ONS statistics, the majority of deaths from Covid-19 have occurred in older people and people with pre-existing health conditions, and it is expected that deaths in the 85+ age group would have occurred later in the year, saving life months not years.”

Moreover, “cancer deaths represent only one, albeit important, indirect effect of lockdown measures. In considering the impact of any policy, we need to capture all its possible ripple effects and not just the initial splash when the pebble of intervention hits the water.”

The paper in question.
https://www.iomcworld.org/articles/life ... ndemic.pdf

[dada]

"According to ONS statistics, the majority of deaths from Covid-19 have occurred in older people and people with pre-existing health conditions, and it is expected that deaths in the 85+ age group would have occurred later in the year, saving life months not years.”

I would argue that the longer you live, the more valuable your time is. If you make it past eighty-five, I'd say every one of your years is worth about ten times what one life-year is worth to a person half your age, on average.

[mentalgongfu2]

Find an article. Change every reference to "COVID-19" to whatever you want, apparently. Cite data from two months of a year-long adventure. Form a conclusion and only then seek supporting data. Ignore all other potential factors. Write a blog about it. You have now become a "source."

Change every reference to "COVID-19" below to "LOCKDOWNS and Related Mandates".


The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health

Copyright 2021, FAIR Health, Inc.All rights reserved.

[FAIR HEALTH is a nonprofit that collects data for the largest database of privately billed health insurance claims in the US; these findings assessed 32 billion records and studied those in the 13-18 and 19-22 age ranges]

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly on that of young people. Defining the pediatric population as individuals aged 0-22 years, and focusing on the age groups 13-18 years and 19-22 years, FAIR Health studied the effects of the pandemic on US pediatric mental health. To do so, FAIR Health analyzed data from its database of over 32 billion private healthcare claim records, tracking month-by-month changes from January to November 2020 compared to the same months in 2019. Aspects of pediatric mental health investigated include overall mental health, intentional self-harm, overdoses and substance use disorders, top mental health diagnoses, reasons for emergency room visits and state-by-state variations.

Among the key findings:

Overall Mental Health

•In March and April 2020, mental health claim lines for individuals aged 13-18, as a percentage of all medical claim lines, approximately doubled over the same months in the previous year. All medical claim lines(including mental health claim lines), however, decreased by approximately half. That pattern of increased mental health claim lines and decreased medical claim lines continued through November 2020, though to a lesser extent.

•A similar pattern was seen for individuals aged 19-22, though the changes were smaller.In general, the age group 19-22 had mental health trends similar to but less pronounced than the age group 13-18.

Intentional Self-Harm

•Claim lines for intentional self-harm as a percentage of all medical claim lines in the 13-18 age group increased 90.71 percent in March 2020 compared to March 2019.The increase was even larger when comparing April 2020 to April 2019, nearly doubling (99.83 percent).

•Comparing August 2019 to August 2020 in the Northeast, for the age group 13-18, there was a 333.93 percent increase in intentional self-harm claim lines as a percentage of all medical claim lines, a rate higher than that in any other region in any month studied for that age group.

Overdoses and Substance Use Disorders

•For the age group 13-18, claim lines for overdoses increased 94.91 percent as a percentage of all medical claim lines in March 2020 and 119.31 percent in April 2020 over the same months the year before.Claim lines for substance use disorders also increased as a percentage of all medical claim lines in March (64.64 percent) and April (62.69 percent) 2020as compared to their corresponding months in 2019.

Mental Health Diagnoses

•For the age group 6-12, from spring to November 2020, claim lines for obsessive-compulsive disorder and tic disorders increased as a percentage of all medical claim lines from their levels in the corresponding months of 2019.

•For the age group13-18, in April 2020, claim lines for generalized anxiety disorder increased 93.6 percent as a percentage of all medical claim lines over April 2019, while major depressive disorder claim lines increased 83.9 percent and adjustment disorder claim lines 89.7 percent.