As the number of Americans without health insurance continues to rise rapidly due to ongoing mass layoffs across the nation, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Friday introduced emergency legislation that would empower Medicare to cover all healthcare costs for the uninsured and all out-of-pocket expenses for those with insurance for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

“Our broken healthcare system is failing to protect millions of Americans from the coronavirus pandemic,” Jayapal, a Washington Democrat and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement. “Now more than ever, we need to take bold action to prevent more Americans from getting sick or dying.”

“With an estimated 35 million Americans in danger of losing their employer-provided health insurance over the coming weeks and months, this legislation is needed now more than ever.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders

If passed, the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act (pdf) would take effect immediately and remain in place until the Secretary of Health and Human Services certifies to Congress that a Food and Drug Administration-approved coronavirus vaccine is widely available to the U.S. public.

The legislation to “provide health for all during the pandemic,” according to a summary (pdf) released by Sanders’ office, would “fully cover the cost of medically necessary healthcare, including prescription drugs,” for the tens of millions of Americans currently without health insurance […]

via Sanders and Jayapal Put Forth Bill to Provide No-Cost ‘Health Care for All During Pandemic’ — Red Revolution Media

Chicago – The $50 billion dollar bailout package the airline industry received has already been blown. Reports indicate airline companies, including Boeing, have blown the bailout money on share repurchases. “Our stocks are trading at historical lows,” Investor Relations chump for the airline industry stated. “We decided the best use of the bailout money was to blow it on additional repurchases.”  The airline industry took heat this year, given the fact that since 2008 the five largest airline companies spent over $90 billion on repurchases and $34 billion on dividends […]

via Report: Entire $50 Billion Airline Aid Package Already Blown On Share Repurchases — The Stonk Market

England’s maverick brexiteer Prime minister known on London’s streets as ‘ mad boris ‘ is tonight in ” intensive care”

via Boris Johnson in intensive care — © blogfactory

What good news am I talking about?

How about this news: Three US hospitals use of IV vitamin C and other low-cost, readily available drugs cut the death-rate of COVID-19-without the use of ventilators! A press release dated March 30, 2020 stated:

“If you can administer Vitamin C intravenously starting in the Emergency Room and every 6 hours thereafter, while in the hospital, the mortality rate of this disease and the need for mechanical ventilators will likely be greatly reduced,” says Dr. Pierre Kory, the Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center and Chief of the Critical Care Service at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

He explains that it’s the inflammation sparked by the Coronavirus, not the virus itself, that kills patients. Inflammation causes a condition called Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), which damages the lungs so that patients, suffering fever, fatigue, and the sense that their inner chest is on fire, eventually cannot breathe without the help of a ventilator.

The vitamin C is a combination therapy developed in 2017 by Dr. Paul Marik at Eastern Virginia Medical School. He gives critically ill patients IV doses of hydrocortisone, vitamin C, and vitamin B1 within six hours of entering the emergency room. Dr. Marik reported a significantly lowered death rate in those treated with his regimen.

When COVID-19 came to Virginia, Dr. Marik used his protocol. He reported saving four COVID-19 patients including an 86-year-old man admitted to the hospital with 100% oxygen. Elderly people on oxygen usually do not survive COVID-19 […]

via Media Censoring Medical Doctors Saving Lives with Vitamin C for COVID19 – Reduces Need for Ventilators

Caroline Oliveira
The ICC has jurisdiction on Brazilian territory, seeing that Congress included its statute into the Constitution – Sergio Lima/AFP

President Jair Bolsonaro had crimes against humanity charges filed against him at the International Criminal Court, by the Brazilian Association of Jurists for Democracy (ABJD), on Thursday (3rd). The legal experts claim that the Bolsonaro puts Brazilian lives at risk in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The ICC was asked to begin judicial proceedings and investigate the president’s conduct. “By choice or omission, Bolsonaro is putting people’s lives at risk, committing crimes and necessitating a response by the International Criminal Court, in order to protect the lives of thousands of people,” state the jurists in the document filed by lawyers Ricardo Franco Pinto and Charles Kurmay.

In the filing, a list of actions the president undertook and defends is presented. Among them: pronouncements that incite the end of social isolation and the reopening of schools and non-essential services, as well promoting the “Brazil Must Not Stop” campaign; visits to shops and attending protests stimulating the populous to have large gatherings; and the signing of decree that allows places of worship and lotteries to be open during the pandemic.

“The crimes he committed gravely affect the mental and physical health of the Brazilian population, exposing them to a virus lethal to many sectors and with a scary rate of proliferation, as we have seen in many countries. The places that neglected the policy of quarantine are seeing the biggest impacts of the pandemic, like in Italy, Spain and the United States”, the complaint highlights […]

via Covid-19: Crimes Against Humanity Charges Pressed Against Bolsonaro at ICC

FILE PHOTO. A bicycle delivery person rides through a mostly deserted Times Square. ©REUTERS / Carlo Allegri

Poorer Americans are more likely to have lost their job or be forced to work as usual amid the coronavirus epidemic. But those in the upper classes can work remotely while stressing out about the crisis.

At least that’s the indication of an Axios/Ipsos poll about the working status and emotional wellbeing of people in the US. Almost half of upper middle class Americans have switched to working from home amid the health crisis. The same is true for 39 percent of the upper class.

In contrast, only three percent of lower economic strata had the same luxury. Between 26 and 34 percent of lower-to-middle class Americans are working the same way as they did before the outbreak, exposing themselves to a greater risk of being infected. And 15 to 20 percent have lost their jobs.

But the Americans who are better off tend to be more upset about the situation than their economically struggling compatriots, according to the poll. Almost half of the rich (47 percent) said their emotional well-being has gotten worse, compared to 34 percent on the other side of the socioeconomic scale […]

via America’s rich work from home & whine while poor lose jobs or get exposed to coronavirus – poll

It would be ironic if Amazon’s fall were to come about due to the failure of its third-party sellers, given that Amazon has received so much criticism for pushing smaller retailers and brands out of business. Yet it remains a possibility.

Over 50% of Amazon sales are made through third-party sellers, and they are the foundation of Amazon’s meteoric growth in the last few years. However, Amazon has been slowly selling them out, and COVID-19 could finally push them under.

For many vendors, Amazon is their only point of contact with customers, but now Amazon is turning away shipments of “non-essentials” to FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) warehouses, in order to support smooth flow of “essentials.” This decision has affected approximately 53% of Amazon sellers, preventing them from shipping products to their customers.

via Could COVID-19 Be Amazon’s kryptonite? – Big Think

[…]

Amazon is lucky to get stuff to people within a MONTH now, which means it is failing to meet it’s primary reason for being, which is 1 day delivery.

As truckers get resistance from cities and states locking down, and they are getting sick too, that disrupts things more.

People are waking up to the darkness that is Amazon, and they are switching to local sellers, suppliers and local farmers.

via Could COVID-19 Be Amazon’s kryptonite? – Big Think

Press TV – March 31, 2020

Germany says the three European signatories to the 2015 Iran deal have registered the first transaction under a trade system set up last year to protect companies doing business with Iran from US sanctions, delivering medical supplies to the Islamic Republic amid the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, Berlin’s Foreign Ministry said Germany, France and Britain “confirm that INSTEX (trade system) has successfully concluded its first transaction, facilitating the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran.”

“These goods are now in Iran,” it said in a statement, giving no further details.

The German Foreign Ministry added that Berlin hopes to enhance the mechanism and carry out more transactions with Tehran.

“Now the first transaction is complete, INSTEX and its Iranian counterpart STFI (Special Trade and Finance Instrument) will work on more transactions and enhancing the mechanism,” the German Foreign Ministry said.

Iranian authorities have not commented on the news so far.

The transaction comes over a year after the European trio announced the creation of INSTEX — a non-dollar direct payment channel officially called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges — in an effort to keep Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers alive.

The apparatus was designed to circumvent the sanctions that the United States re-imposed against Iran after leaving a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, the trio, plus Russia and China.

However, the Europeans have not been able to operationalize the non-dollar trade mechanism under pressure from the US […]

via Europe sends medical supplies to Iran in first INSTEX transaction: Germany

By Helen Buyniski | RT | March 28, 2020

Amazon’s Alexa AI assistant can now evaluate coronavirus symptoms and recommend testing for US users – testing it profits from and hopes to roll out nationwide. Will it report ‘dry coughs’ to the proper authorities, too?

‘Doctor’ Alexa is making house calls, Amazon has revealed, boasting its voice assistant now allows users to check their “risk level” for coronavirus in a blog post on Thursday. Users concerned they might have the virus can confide in Alexa, who will inquire about symptoms, travel history, and other routes of possible exposure before making recommendations based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control.

This innovation would be less unsettling if Amazon didn’t have a massive financial interest in keeping the coronavirus panic and pandemic going as long as possible. Government-mandated shutdowns of “nonessential businesses” have triggered soaring demand for its e-commerce services as brick-and-mortar shops are forced to close their doors, and customers are far less likely to venture out even to the supermarket if their virtual assistant is telling them they might have coronavirus.

In an even more blatant conflict of interest, Amazon is piloting a Covid-19 testing program in the Seattle area, delivering testing kits to residents as part of a private-sector health study. While it’s the Bill Gates Foundation and other NGOs, not Seattle residents, who are paying for the testing kits, each one distributed is still more money in the already-bottomless pockets of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s second richest man (Gates, incidentally, is the richest). Alexa would be a traitor to her master if she didn’t recommend as many Americans be tested as possible.

And Seattle will soon be joined by the rest of the country, if Bezos has his way. The e-commerce tycoon hinted on Thursday that Amazon might be distributing tests on a wider basis after speaking with World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Amazon is already offering such a test in the UK, though diagnosis-by-Alexa is not yet available there. The WHO has urged the US to ramp up testing, which still lags woefully behind other countries, but the US seems to be unique in the manner in which that testing is being taken over by private companies eager to grab their piece of the coronavirus pie.

Worse than the financial conflicts of interest, however, is Alexa’s legendary reputation for snooping. Already, as quarantines have mandated professionals in most jobs work from home, those whose work depends on confidentiality – lawyers, for example – are being advised to deactivate their digital assistants while working from quarantine. It’s not paranoia – devices like Alexa, Siri and Google Home “accidentally” start recording unbidden as many as 19 times per day, according to a study published last month – long after Amazon, Apple, and Google had promised reforms to their privacy policies when the extent of their nonconsensual snooping was revealed.

Which brings up a whole new realm of concern with regard to the coronavirus: if Alexa hears you cough, and decides it’s a “dry cough” like we are told coronavirus produces, will she report you to medical authorities for extra surveillance to make sure you’re obeying quarantine religiously? Will she rat you out if she hears the front door close despite a shelter-in-place order, perhaps interfacing with your Amazon Ring doorbell to send footage of you leaving to authorities so they can arrest you before you come into contact with others? It may sound over-the-top, but Alexa has been calling the cops on presumed criminals since at least 2017, when a shouting match between a New Mexico couple turned physical only after the device quietly summoned police […]

via Amazon’s Alexa now offering to diagnose coronavirus