Photo: Reza Estakhrian/Getty Images

As told to Anna Silman@annaesilman

New York Magazine

The number of very sick COVID patients coming in is tremendous. I don’t know if the word is exponentially or logarithmically, but the curve goes up steeply. It’s scary. Mount Sinai Brooklyn is a moderate-sized community hospital. We have 220 beds, we’ve planned a surge of up to 240 to 260. At the current moment I have 135 COVID-positive patients. There are probably another 10 or 15 that just don’t have test results back yet. And they are sick. They are the ones who need to be admitted to the hospital. It’s a few debilitated elderly from nursing homes, but there’s a lot of patients who are between the ages of 40 to 60 who may have some underlying health problems like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure, and their lungs are very inflamed. They go from being moderately sick to crashing and needing to put on ventilators very quickly.

The emergency department is just patient-to-patient lined up and packed in. It’s that awful picture you see of an overcrowded emergency department, just patient upon patient next to each other endlessly […]

via Inside a Brooklyn Hospital During COVID-19

RT | March 26, 2020

The US State Department is dangling millions of dollars in reward money in exchange for information that could be used to arrest Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, his VP, or other senior officials on drug trafficking charges.

The eye-popping reward of up to $15 million is being offered for “information related to Nicolas Maduro Moros” with regard to his alleged involvement in “international narcotics trafficking,” the State Department announced on Thursday, signaling a hard shift in its regime-change policy against the socialist nation.

Tips leading to the narcotrafficking arrest or conviction of National Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello Rondon, retired generals Hugo Carvajal Barrios and Clive Alcala Cordones, or Minister for Industry and National Production Tareck Zaidan El Aissami Maddah can net as much as $10 million, the statement continued.

The rewards were unveiled on the same day as the US Justice Department unsealed indictments against the Venezuelan leaders for the same drug trafficking crimes – suggesting that Washington’s evidence isn’t as solid as Attorney General William Barr has claimed.

Indictments in Miami and New York accuse the officials of participating in a “narco-terrorism conspiracy” with Colombian guerrilla group FARC, to “flood the United States with cocaine.” But if evidence against Maduro and his compatriots is at such a premium that the State Department will pay $15 million for it, the Venezuelans are unlikely to see the inside of a US court anytime soon […]

via US State Dept offers $15 MILLION REWARD for help arresting Venezuela’s Maduro after indictments

Montreal. QC.

Montreal. QC. Poor, unemployed, laid-off, precarious, undocumented, contract and other workers — all of us who live month-to-month — will not be able to pay rent this April 1st.

Originally published by Montreal Counter Information.

11″ x 17″ Poster

8.5″ x 11″ b&w Poster / Bilingual Flyer

Poor, unemployed, laid-off, precarious, undocumented, contract and other workers — all of us who live month-to-month — will not be able to pay rent this April 1st. Many of us were struggling to pay rent before this crisis hit, and are likely already behind. In a perspective of direct action and social solidarity, ALL tenants can refuse to pay rent on April 1st.

Even if you are able to pay your rent, please consider joining the strike to support those who aren’t. If we all go on rent strike together, we’ll make it impossible for the authorities to target everyone who does not pay […]

via #Montreal: Rent Strike – Beginning April 1st, 2020 — Enough 14 –

On second thought, maybe the elites have the right idea…~TS “Nature just hit the reset button.” By Elias Marat | TMU Human civilization has seemingly screeched to a halt for many, with those of us fortunate enough to have our… Read More ›

via As Humans Quarantine Over Virus Fears, the Animal Kingdom Retakes City Streets — The Mad Truther | A Sweet Dose of Reality

THE ROLE OF INFLAMMATORY CYTOKINES AS NEURO-MODULATORS IN THE INFANT MEDULLA HAS BEEN WELL DESCRIBED AND IS LIKELY THE REASON FOR A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF SIDS DEATHS OCCURRING IN CONJUNCTION WITH MILD INFECTION.

13-611V Boatmon vs HHS

“In this case, I have concluded, after review of the evidence, that it is more likely than not that the vaccines played a substantial causal role in the death of J.B. without the effect of which he would not have died. The role of inflammatory cytokines as neuro-modulators in the infant medulla has been well described and is likely the reason for a significant number of SIDS deaths occurring in conjunction with mild infection. I have concluded that it is more likely than not that the vaccine-stimulated cytokines had the same effect in this vulnerable infant during sleep” […]

via COURT RULES VACCINES CONTRIBUTE TO AND CAUSE SIDS Deaths –

By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | March 20, 2020

The coronavirus is spreading here in the United States in an alarming fashion and the government is now moving into crisis mode. Nearly 15,000 people have been tested positive as of today, Friday, and it’s increasing exponentially. So the question becomes what went wrong? The US had plenty of warning on this. The Chinese figured out it was a problem back in January. And at that point, measures could have been taken that would have kept the problem very, very small. And that didn’t happen.

I think we can look at this from a couple of different standpoints. The first, of course, is that the US leadership is completely incompetent and reckless. And from the incompetence standpoint, clearly, Trump has been completely at a loss trying to politicize this thing and blame China without taking the kinds of measures that would protect the American people.

The US healthcare system is a world class joke. We’re the only advanced industrial country that doesn’t have some form of universal health coverage. So nobody in the United States except for a handful of rich and very well insured people is in a position to easily go and get a coronavirus test. And there aren’t any test kits. For some reason, despite the problem being evident in January, no test kits were made for the United States. And so the United States is basically last in the world in responding to this.

So that’s one aspect of the problem. But the other aspect, which is completely blacked out and censored from the corporate-controlled mainstream media here in the West, is that this crisis is a lesson to the entire world that we need to address the problem of biological weapons. This may or may not be a deliberate biological weapon attack; it may or may not be an accidental release of a biological weapon. There are strong arguments for both possibilities. And I think the arguments for it being a deliberate release as an attack on China by the United States to try to use this hybrid fifth generation warfare and economic warfare to prevent China from overtaking the United States as the world’s leading power — previous similar attacks on China using SARS and bird flu and so on and so forth have been ongoing for years, and when SARS was used against China by the United States, it didn’t spread from China —  and it’s very likely that the same people who did that once again hit China with this COVID-19 virus, as part of Trump’s wrapped-up economic fifth generation hybrid war on China.

Likewise, the severity of the outbreak in Iran suggests that the Americans and/or their partners the Israelis, who often play a leading role in these kinds of extreme events, may very well have been in this and they may have deliberately attacked Iran […]

via US must shut down its biowarfare labs to save the world from pandemics

14 elephants broke into Chinese villagers’ wine vats, partied in their tea gardens and then passed out While Chinese villagers were quarantined, a rebel group of elephants broke onto their land in search of food and booze. They ransacked a grain alcohol store and drank 30 liters of corn wine between them, The Daily Mail reports.…

via While Humans are Social Distancing, Elephants are Stealing Their Wine and Partying — Return to Now

by Erin Okuno, columnist

Just a few days ago, Governor Jay Inslee announced schools were closing for weeks to help contain and keep Coronavirus from impacting more of our family and friends. The first thought on many people’s minds was “how would kids get food?” Along with the academic and social-emotional lessons it provides, many students rely upon school for a nutritious breakfast and lunch during the week. As colleagues and friends processed the sudden change in the lives of our students, many started to think about how to keep their kids fed.

The abrupt shutdowns threw most parents outs of sorts. During normal times family support workers, teachers, principals, PTAs, and the community have time to ensure kid’s backpacks are stuffed with extra food, books, and sometimes grocery store gift cards to help families get through a school break. This time school staff didn’t have the luxury of time or the ability to send students home with ample resources.

As schools were rapidly shut down, nonprofits and community based organizations scrambled to meet new needs. Knowing kids would be home, and food is an important part of keeping kids healthy, WA-BLOC (Washington Building Leaders for Change) started organizing.

They quickly determined they could provide two lunches a week to those who need it. Seattle Public Schools is also providing lunches to students at feeding sites across the city. South Seattle distribution sites are Aki Kurose Middle School, Dunlap Elementary, Emerson Elementary, Franklin High School, Mercer Middle School, Rainier Beach High School, and Rainier View Elementary. WA-BLOC’s meals help to supplement these lunches.

WA-BLOC is a community embedded non-profit in the Rainier Valley. They are working to increase educational equity for Black and Brown students with literacy enrichment and leadership development programs at Emerson Elementary and Rainier Beach High School […]

via Local Businesses Band With Organizers to “Feed the Beach” During Shutdowns — South Seattle Emerald

CTH is spending time on this issue because the food distribution sector is the most important sector in all commerce. Having some familiarity with the supply chain might help people to understand the challenges; and possibly help you locate product. The Inversion – Big chain markets; those who spent millions developing their own proprietary ‘just-in-time’ distribution are the least equipped to deal with the level of demand. Meanwhile smaller chains, or mom-and-pops, who rely on third-party brokered distribution are faster to respond […]

via The Retail Supply Chain Has Inverted – Formerly Efficient Operations Now Least Effective – Small Markets Best Supplied… — Evans News Report

The Kansas-based Survival Condo is built to withstand a nuclear attack—but a virus, they believe, can be kept outside too.

 

By Adam Popescu

March 13, 2020

via Inside the Survivalist Bunker Where Some Wealthy People Hope to Ride Out Coronavirus | Vanity Fair