Trump asks medical supply firm 3M to stop selling N95 respirators to Canada
Some "cheerful" news for my region, it seems that authorities in nearby city of Osijek (eastern Croatia) really want to show how advanced they are, by starting drone aerial surveillance of citizens to fight "corona threat", soon to be expanded on more cities and surroundings in the region as they said. Other specialness of this city is that it will be the first city in Croatia with 5G Network in the second half of the year: Just Why Was Osijek Chosen as First Croatian 5G City?
Way to go!
On March 1, 2020 in Kassel, Germany's Attention 5G initiative will launch the launch of a European Citizens' Initiative aimed at a 5G moratorium at European Union level and the establishment of a European legal framework to protect citizens and the environment from the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation.
Donnelly said the time frame of 18 months to two years is in line with other credible models about the pandemic, which account for the possibility of secondary or tertiary waves.
It doesn't appear to ever be close enough for it to encompass the planet. It could present quite a show, however.
The secret head of the WHO is Bill Gates
The most important organization of world health, the WHO, has a problem: it is broke and therefore dependent on donations. Is it losing its independence as a result?
Curbing parasites such as malaria, viruses such as Ebola or bacteria such as the pathogens that cause tuberculosis worldwide, coordinating the global fight against epidemics and improving health care in poor countries - these are gigantic tasks that the World Health Organization, or WHO for short, is to tackle on behalf of the member states of the United Nations. But the most important institution of world health is broke. Because its members do not pay in enough, the WHO needs more and more money from private foundations and industry - and is in danger of losing its independence.
But who exactly influences the highest authority on world health? How? And what needs to change for this to stop? Filmmakers Jutta Pinzler and Tatjana Mischke spent a year researching these questions. The results can be seen in a 90-minute documentary on ARTE on 4 April at 8.15 pm: Die WHO – Im Griff der Lobbyisten?
(The WHO - In the grip of the lobbyists?)
Until the first excitement the spectator has to be patient. It revolves around a question that has been controversially discussed throughout Europe for months: How dangerous is the pesticide glyphosate? And did the company Monsanto, which was the first to market the pesticide in the 1970s, influence the WHO in its assessment of its harmfulness? After all, even after the patent on the pesticide has expired, Monsanto still earns good money by selling it in packages with genetically modified plants - soya or corn, for example - that are resistant to it.
According to the film's authors, various lobby organisations of the genetic engineering industry are said to have paid large sums of money to the WHO in the 1990s. In 1994, the WHO, together with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), raised the limits for glyphosate residues in genetically modified soybeans 200-fold. This, the filmmakers argue, was very much in Monsanto's interest. The filmmakers argue that this was in Monsanto's best interests because it allowed the company to sell more glyphosate and soybeans to match.
Although experts from the company's own International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) assessed it differently, the WHO officially concluded in 2016 that glyphosate was not proven to be carcinogenic. The panel that determined this was comprised of two WHO officials who also worked for a lobbying organization (TIME ONLINE reported), which in turn is said to have received substantial sums from Monsanto. Although the ARTE documentary reopens all of this, it does not really offer new research on the glyphosate case.
Would the WHO get along without Gates' money?
Nevertheless, it is the entanglements between corporations and the WHO that make the film exciting - and it has more to offer. For example, when David McCoy, one of the leading experts on world health, says that the WHO's agenda is increasingly determined by private donors, especially Bill Gates. If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stopped sending millions of US dollars to Geneva every year, the WHO would possibly collapse. The billionaire has a correspondingly great influence on the content of the programme.
In the film, the spokesman for the foundation denies any influence. But de facto, as the film shows, there is overlap in personnel between the WHO and the Gates Foundation. And the WHO does indeed concentrate conspicuously strongly on what Bill Gates wants: vaccination, for example.
Now vaccinations are undisputedly an extremely effective form of health care. Polio, for example, has become increasingly rare in recent years thanks to comprehensive vaccination programmes. In 2016, there were only 42 confirmed cases worldwide, compared with 350,000 in 1988. This is just one of many positive examples.
But vaccinations alone do not keep people healthy. Much more important is that a country's health care system functions well and that the environment in which people live does not make them ill - documentation within the WHO puts its finger on this wound. Every day, for example, almost 1,500 people die from contaminated drinking water. Critics say that more lives could be saved with clean water and nutrition programmes than with vaccinations. In truth, both would be necessary.
Even with less costly measures, such as anti-drug campaigns, the WHO has saved many lives in the course of its history. It seems, however, that it is now less involved in such areas. Something that health scientists have been criticizing for some time.
The filmmakers say clearly: This could be due to the Gates Foundation, because it may have other interests. The reason: the foundation invests its money with companies whose actions endanger the health of many people. The more profit these companies make, the more profit there is. The Gates portfolio includes major alcohol and food manufacturers such as Nestlé and the oil company Shell.
The film describes this conflict of interest using the Niger Delta as an example: In 2008, at least 500,000 barrels of oil leaked from two of the company's pipelines. This deprived farmers and fishermen of their livelihoods. The local residents can only live for a few years on the compensation paid by Shell (ZEIT ONLINE reported). But even today large areas are still polluted.
Are the consequences of reactor accidents played down?
And then there is this agreement between the WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which promotes nuclear energy worldwide. According to Pinzler and Mischke, it prevents the United Nations health authority from providing neutral information about the extent to which radioactivity endangers people's health. After the accident at Chernobyl in 1986, the WHO played down the death toll, and even after the earthquake and the tsunami in Fukushima in 2011, the WHO had been conspicuously reticent: WHO officials did not arrive at the site of the accident until days after the reactor disaster. In such cases, an emergency plan is supposed to take effect much earlier, for example by providing for radiation measurements directly after the accident.
Even today, the WHO relies too much on information from the IAEA in the Fukushima case, the film criticizes. In addition, the staff of both organisations overlaps considerably: seven IAEA staff members took part in the WHO report on Fukushima. This does not sound particularly independent.
But it is precisely their independence that has led to the WHO achieving so much in its history, including the eradication of smallpox, the drastic reduction in cases of polio and the worldwide decrease in smoking through strict anti-tobacco regulations. And it is precisely this independence that it now threatens to lose: Whereas in 1970 it received four-fifths of its funding from the member states without being tied to projects, today it receives only one-fifth. The remainder comes from private donors, foundations or from member states that give money voluntarily but are tied to projects. All these donors have different and conflicting interests and want to help shape the global health watchdog agenda. The discussion that Pinzler and Mischke want to initiate must therefore be conducted urgently: How must the WHO change so that it can continue to fulfil its tasks in the future?
There are plenty of proposals: accept only donations where the WHO itself decides what to do with them; adopt statutes that rule out personnel overlaps with institutions such as the IAEA or lobbying organisations, but also the Gates Foundation; do not play any further part in projects such as the Gavi Global Impact Alliance, whose money comes largely from the Gates Foundation and whose board includes pharmaceutical companies. All this would be possible. In order to become more independent again, however, the WHO would need one thing above all: more freely available money from the member states. If they continue to rely on billionaires to do what they are supposed to do, the most important institution in the world of global health could lose its credibility for good.
So much for people waking up. They don't care. You show them they're completely wrong, which changes the whole situation, and they just shrug like it makes no difference. Is the flu 3 times worse than covid, or is covid 60 times worse than the flu? Who cares. Let's lock everything down.I asked him how many die from flu each year, he said around 7000. Told him 650,000 he shrugged his shoulders.
Let's hope she does.Let's hope she doesn't fall out.
How much clearer do people need "Police state" to be spelled out?Now it is forbidden to sit in public. Neither on a bank nor on the green. Not even alone.
Who makes this shit up? This requires a really twisted mind to come up with.only sports are alowed that involve a moving forward, sports where you stay at one place more or less are forbidden now.
...and they didn't have a bunker. See? That's why the US military will coordinate things from a bunker, so that they don't end up like in this hospital.The whole thing began because they needed to coordinate things
OK people, brace yourselves for a long lockdown.
Most ICU beds full
The number of available intensive care beds in certain parts of the Greater Toronto Area is rapidly shrinking as the number of COVID-19 patients surges higher, according to data obtained by CBC News.
Just 13 critical care beds remain available among the 153 ICU beds in the hospitals of the Central Local Health Integration Network, which includes Mackenzie Richmond Hill, Markham Stouffville, Southlake, Humber River, and North York General hospitals.
“Emergency volumes have plummeted all over the country,” said Dr. Daniel Kalla, the head of the emergency department at St. Paul’s Hospital, in downtown Vancouver. “People are so fearful of hospitals, understandably,” he said. They just aren’t coming in.
OpenPetition Germany
has launched a petition on Thursday, March 2nd.
It is directed to the German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Over 58.000 people have already signed (target 100.000)
"My name is Viviane Fischer, I am a mother of two small children and an attorney at law in Berlin, Germany.
I am worried about the corona virus. However, I am also worried about the future economic and social development both for myself and for all of us. And I truly fear for our democracy.
Lately, a growing number of renowned experts have come forward stating that Covid-19 is not significantly more aggressive than influenza. They also opine that the lockdown is senseless and might even be very harmful.
For instance, the below scientists have argued this way:
The database on which the lockdown decision has been made is incorrect.
- Professor Dr. Bhakdi, Germany’s most referrenced microbiologist (1)
- Professor Ioannidis, Chair of Health Research, Biomedical Data Science and Statistics at Stanford University (2)
- Professor Dr. Mölling, former Director of the Institute for Medical Virology at the University of Zurich (3)
- Professor Dr. Stefan Hockertz, immunologist and toxicologist (4)
- Dr. Wodarg, internist, lung specialist and former medical officer (5)
- Prof. Dr. Scheller, Virologist, University of Würzburg(6)
According to the WHO, COVID-19 presymptomatic transmission is not a major driver of transmission. (9) In mild cases, the test subjects also test positive weeks after the symptoms have faded. (10)
- The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) includes all corona-positive deceased in its corona statistics, regardless of the specific cause of death. (7) However, many of them have had serious pre-existing conditions. There were no tests performed for other viruses like influenza.
- Only people with corona symptoms are currently tested, i.e. infected sick patients. The probably very high dark figure of already immunized is not taken into account. This inflates the death rate. Nevertheless, the currently estimated death rate is as low as 0.3-0.4 percent of the infected patients with symptoms. The real overall mortality rate is probably in the per thousand range. (8)
2.500 people die in Germany every day, this is our normal death rate. With less than 200 statistical corona deaths in 18 days there is absolutely no excess mortality."
Read on at: We finally need reliable Corona data
The signing procedure is available in 20 European languages... ✍