Who or What Started the Wuhan Coronavirus Epidemic?

By Professor Anthony Hall | Zero Hedge Friday, March 06, 2020

Leaked Docs Show US Hospitals Preparing For Coronavirus Doomsday Scenario Of 96 Million Infections & Hundreds Of Thousands Dead
Large-scale preparations taking place in government, health and economic sectors


By Infowars.com Saturday, March 07, 2020

US hospitals are preparing for 96 million coronavirus infections and nearly half a million deaths from the coronavirus outbreak, according to leaked documents. Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...F-MILLION-deaths-leaked-papers-show.html

The spread of the deadly COVID-19 could be far worse than the government has let on, with almost 500,000 Americans expected to die from the virus and 4.8 million hospitalized, according to slides shown at an event hosted by The American Hospital Association (AHA) last month.

The slides, presented by Dr. James Lawler, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, suggest that hospitals must ramp up preparations now to reduce the death toll around the U.S.

At the time of the presentation last week, there were more than 80,000 confirmed cases around the globe — there are now over 100,000.

In the US there was around 60 cases and no deaths, but after just one week, US now has about 700 cases and 17 confirmed deaths. (In the United States, more than 380 cases of the virus have been confirmed, and at least 19 people have died, according to a New York Times database.)

The leaked documents appear to contradict President Trump’s assertion that the risk Americans face from the virus is “low.”

The elderly over 80 have about a 15% chance of dying from the disease, and people 60-79 are still at significant risk, according to the slides.

Nebraska Medicine stressed that the slides presented represented Lawler’s views and “his interpretation of the data available.”

“It’s possible that forecast will change as more information becomes available,” they said.

Shocking New Study Concludes That The “Best Case Scenario” For A COVID-19 Pandemic Is 15 Million Dead

Michael Snyder
March 8th, 2020
The Most Important News


Over the past week, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 outside of China more than tripled once again. Hopefully, it is extremely unlikely that such a rapid growth rate will continue, because if it does, there will be more than a million confirmed cases outside of China just a month from now.

I don’t even want to imagine the level of fear that would cause, and needless to say, that would be absolutely devastating for the entire global economy. Of course, if we do get to a million confirmed cases, there won’t be any way to keep it from spreading everywhere on the entire globe, and the ultimate death toll could be unimaginable.

According to the WHO, the current death rate for this outbreak is 3.4 percent, and many experts believe that it will continue to go higher.

That means that a whole lot of people will die if this virus cannot be contained somehow.

Researchers at a major university in Australia modeled seven different scenarios for how a COVID-19 pandemic might go, and in the “best-case scenario” the death toll was 15 million…

New modeling from The Australian National University looks at seven scenarios of how the COVID-19 outbreak might affect the world’s wealth, ranging from low severity to high severity.

Four of the seven scenarios in the paper examine the impact of COVID-19 spreading outside China, ranging from low to high severity. A seventh scenario examines a global impact in which a mild pandemic occurs each year indefinitely.

But even in the low-severity model — or best-case scenario of the seven, which the paper acknowledged were not definitive — ANU researchers estimate a global GDP loss of $2.4 trillion, with an estimated death toll of 15 million.

A pandemic that kills 15 million people would change everything.

I sincerely hope that we don’t see anything like that, but other experts are coming up with similar projections. A Harvard epidemiologist is warning that 40 to 70 percent of the entire global population will eventually catch this virus, and Mike Adams is projecting that more than two million Americans could be dead by July 4th “if domestic travel is not aggressively halted”…

Today I finished tweaking the first draft of a pandemic projection model that simulates the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. The assumptions of the model are explained here, and you will find they are extremely conservative (using R0 value of just 1.82, for example).

The model’s predictions are nothing short of apocalyptic if the virus is allowed to spread without restraint across the United States. According to the model, there will be 2.16 million dead Americans by July 4th if domestic travel is not aggressively halted very soon (see the full projections below). This is not a prediction, since I believe that state governments and the federal government will intervene long before July 4th to declare, essentially, medical martial law.

Let us pray that nothing like this ever happens.

But if we all stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this virus isn’t a major threat, that will just make matters a lot worse.

At this point, the truth is that we don’t really know the true extent of the outbreak in the United States because authorities are just now starting to ramp up testing. Vice-President Pence had hoped to get a million testing kits to local communities this week, but that is simply not going to happen…

Mike Pence admitted Thursday that the administration will not be able to follow meet its promise to deliver one million coronavirus testing kits by the end of the week.

‘We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate the demand going forward,’ Pence said during a visit to a 3M Company plant in Minnesota Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, things are really starting to get weird out there.

The number of confirmed cases in the Seattle area has surged to 70, and authorities have transformed an aging EconoLodge into a “quarantine village”…

The EconoLodge in Kent, which is in the heart of the Seattle–Tacoma metropolitan area, will be America’s first Covid-19 quarantine village. As cases and deaths surge in Washington state, officials aren’t constructing modular hospitals in two weeks like China did last month, but rather buying existing commercial properties, such as motels, and stuffing infected people within.

Markovich said another “Covid-19 quarantine village using modular units now underway at 1100 block of 128th St. in North Seattle. There has been no public announcement about this so far.”

I suppose that such facilities will be able to house a few hundred people, but what are local officials going to do if hundreds of thousands of people get the virus?

Once this virus begins to spread in a community, the number of cases can escalate at a staggering rate. If you have any doubts about this, just look at what is happening in France.

We will probably see that sort of a growth rate in certain communities here in the U.S., and that is truly chilling.

In Iran, the number of confirmed cases has now crossed the 3,500 mark, and it is being reported that “dozens of bodies” are piling up in Iranian morgues…

Dozens of bodies sheathed in black bags line the floor of an Iranian morgue, while workers in protective suits and masks busily walk among them.

It’s unclear which, if any, of the people whose bodies lie in the morgue were infected with the coronavirus gripping the country, in this footage from inside Qom’s Behesht-e Masoumeh morgue.

The official death toll in Iran is only 107 at this point, but many believe that the true number is much, much higher.

As usual, the Iranians are blaming their problems on the United States and Israel. In fact, one Iranian general is publicly claiming that this virus is “a manmade bioweapon” that was purposely deployed against China and Iran…

An Iranian military leader has suggested that the coronavirus is not a naturally occurring disease, and that it is a manmade bioweapon cultivated and released against China and Iran by a ‘hostile state’.

Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, an Iranian officer in charge of the country’s Civil Defense Organization claimed Tuesday that “A study of the consequences of the virus in terms of tolls or the extent of the epidemic and the type of media propaganda over this issue that is aimed at increasing fear and panic among people strengthens the speculations that a biological attack has been launched against China and Iran with economic goals.”

Of course, the truth is that this virus has created a major crisis for the entire planet.

In the UK, there is so much anxiety about this virus that British supermarkets are actually preparing for “food riots”…

British supermarkets are prepared for food riots if panic buying becomes widespread in the worst-cast scenario of a coronavirus pandemic, a retail expert has said.

Former Tesco supply chain director Bruno Monteyne said a major outbreak of the virus would result in ‘panic buying, empty shelves and food riots’ but that at this stage retailers would revert to ‘feed the nation’ status to avoid anyone going hungry.

And all over the western world, fans are already being banned from major sporting events in order to help prevent the spread of this disease.

If this outbreak continues to rapidly escalate, the way that we live our lives is going to be dramatically altered. So let us pray for mercy because we definitely need it.

Sadly, many Americans are not getting prepared for a potential pandemic because they have been told over and over again that this virus is not any more dangerous than the flu.

That is definitely not true. As I explained the other day, the flu usually has a death rate of about 0.1 percent each year, and this virus currently has a death rate of 3.4 percent…

“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing Tuesday. The rate describes the proportion of deaths among confirmed cases. And it was greater than the previous coronavirus CFR estimate (2 percent in China), far higher than the seasonal flu (which kills 0.1 percent of those infected on average), and even worse than the Spanish flu pandemic (which killed 2 to 3 percent of those infected).

Last century, the Spanish Flu pandemic killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people, and this virus currently has an even higher death rate.

Are you starting to understand?

This outbreak has the potential to kill millions upon millions of people, and anyone that is not taking it seriously is not being very wise at all.

I saw a bunch of people at Sam's Club buying hand sanitizers and other prepping supplies yesterday. But they were still eating those little food samples they set out for everyone to try. Figure that one out.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Out Of Time: U.S. Cases Explode As The Coronavirus Pandemic Reaches A Tipping Point

Fighting this virus has been compared to trying to fight the air, because COVID-19 spreads from person to person really easily

By Michael Snyder The Economic Collapse Monday, March 09, 2020

If you thought that we had more time before this coronavirus pandemic exploded out of control in the United States, I am sorry to say that you are out of luck.

In all of the major nations in the western world, the number of confirmed cases escalated dramatically over the past few days.

Here in the U.S., COVID-19 has now reached 33 states, and the number of confirmed cases seems to literally be changing every few minutes as more announcements are made.

Over the weekend, we witnessed another wild round of panic buying as people feverishly stocked up for an extended pandemic, but at least Americans are not throwing punches at each other over toilet paper like we are witnessing elsewhere in the world.

As confirmed cases in China exceed the reported 80,000 mark and Chinese workers are returning back to work which officials say will spread the disease. Meanwhile, airlines and tech companies face a potential financial bailout. The cancellation of major events including the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics add to public anxiety. Unforeseen headaches like cyber attacks on health care systems as those that occurred recently at the University of Kentucky. And as cases continue to double every six days. The United States healthcare system faces an implosion. Zero Hedge reports ” A sobering analysis of how coronavirus is likely to impact the US healthcare system suggests that hospitals will be quickly overwhelmed with patients, and that all available beds will be filled by around May 8th if the virus tracks with Italy’s figures and 10% of patients require an ICU.”

Needless to say, all of this insanity is badly rattling Wall Street. The markets are going absolutely nuts, and it looks like this could be a truly historic week.

Much more importantly, it looks like any hope of containing this virus is now completely dead. In fact, Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the Food and Drug Administration just told the entire nation that we are “past the point of containment” now.

Once this virus gets into an area, it can spread like wildfire. If you doubt this, just look at what is happening in New York.

Just a few days ago there was one confirmed case, and now there is 105. The following comes from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo…

UPDATE: There are 16 additional confirmed cases of #Coronavirus in NYS, bringing total to 105.

Westchester: 82

NYC: 12

Nassau: 5

Rockland: 2

Saratoga: 2

Suffolk: 1

Ulster: 1

We’re testing aggressively & we are seeing the number of confirmed cases go up as expected.

Cuomo also shocked many members of the media when he absolutely lambasted the CDC. The guidelines that the CDC imposed upon the states greatly suppressed the amount of testing up to this point, and Cuomo seems to be among those that believe that this was a huge mistake…

The governor said that officials are working hard to identify new cases but have been greatly hindered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), saying it is ‘outrageous and ludicrous’ that the agency has not authorized private labs to conduct automated tests.

‘CDC, wake up. Let the states test. Let private labs test. Let’s increase as quickly possible our testing capacity so we identify the positive people, so we can isolate them,’ he said.

It would be difficult to overstate the anger that many Americans are feeling toward the CDC right now. So far, South Korea has been able to test more than 140,000 of their citizens for COVID-19, but as of Saturday the CDC had tested fewer than 1,600…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has tested 1,583 people for the coronavirus since the first cases were identified in the U.S. in January, health officials said Saturday.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn told reporters at the White House that figure would increase as more tests are shipped nationwide to address demand. But officials made clear that an individual could be tested only if it was approved by a doctor or public health official, contradicting President Trump’s pervious claims about test availability.

If the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is rising so rapidly with such limited testing, what will happen to the numbers now that testing will really be ramping up?

I think that we all know that answer.

Originally, U.S. officials had hoped to keep any outbreaks inside the United States strictly contained, but now that plan is out the window.

On Sunday, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams openly admitted that we have now shifted to the mitigation phase…

The US response to coronavirus has now shifted from containment to mitigation, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“Initially, we had a posture of containment so that we could give people time to prepare for where we are right now. We’re shifting into a mitigation phase, which means that we’re helping communities understand you’re going to see more cases,” Adams said.

So how many more cases will we ultimately see?

Chillingly, some experts believe that it will be in the millions.

If that turns out to be accurate, can you imagine what that will do to our economy?

Things are really starting to get crazy out there. On Sunday, we learned that even U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has gone into “self-quarantine” because he came into contact with someone that was infected by the virus.

For the moment, our healthcare system will be able to handle the number of cases, but that could soon change.

In fact, it is being estimated that all available hospital beds could be completely filled by May 8th…

A sobering analysis of how coronavirus is likely to impact the US healthcare system suggests that hospitals will be quickly overwhelmed with patients, and that all available beds will be filled by around May 8th if the virus tracks with Italy’s figures and 10% of patients require an ICU.

Of note, the Straits Times reported last week that thousands of people were waiting for hospital beds in South Korea as the disease surges.

Liz Specht, a PhD in biology and the associate director of Science and Technology for the Good Food Institute laid out her concerns in a lengthy Twitter thread on Friday, which you can see here on Twitter, or continue reading below.

So if you get sick after that, you may be out of luck.

Over in Italy, this pandemic has already progressed to an extremely dangerous stage. The Italians now have the highest death toll of anywhere outside of China, and the number of confirmed cases has been escalating at a pace that is difficult to believe.

In a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, the Italian government has locked down “more than a quarter of its population”…

The Italian government is locking down 17 million people—more than a quarter of its population—including in Milan, the surrounding Lombardy region and 14 neighboring provinces, in the most sweeping steps any European country has prepared to take against the coronavirus epidemic.

A decree from the Italian Prime Minister’s office says people living in Lombardy, where Milan is the capital, and the named provinces in Lombardy’s nearby regions must “absolutely avoid any movement into and out of the areas.”

Will that work?

We better hope so, because the progression of this outbreak in Italy has been truly frightening…

#Coronavirus in Italy:

1st Feburary: 2 cases

20th February: 3 cases

22nd Feburary: 62 cases, 2 deaths

28th February: 528 cases, 12 deaths

1st March: 1694 cases, 34 deaths

4th March: 3089 cases, 107 deaths

8th March: 7375 cases, 366 deaths & counting

Terrible.

Of course we will see similar numbers in country after country pretty soon.

In the UK, they appear to be on a very similar track…

Confirmed coronavirus cases, UK:

March 8: 273 people

March 5: 115 people

March 2: 39 people

February 28: 20 people

February 25: 12 people

February 22: 8 people

Fighting this virus has been compared to trying to fight the air, because COVID-19 spreads from person to person really easily.

In fact, one team of scientists is now telling us that it looks like it may “spread through air-conditioning units”…

Traces of the coronavirus found in a hospital air duct has led scientists to believe the disease could be spread through air-conditioning units, making it more contagious than initially thought.

Swab analysis of rooms used by three coronavirus patients by experts at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases in Singapore suggest that the respiratory illness spreads easier than previously thought.

Where will this end?

Is it inevitable that there will be a raging pandemic in every nation on Earth?

If millions die from this virus, global financial markets will utterly collapse, economic conditions will be unimaginable, great civil unrest will erupt all over the planet and our society will be unrecognizable.

So far, this virus has a higher death rate than the Spanish Flu, and the Spanish Flu pandemic killed between 50 million and 100 million people.

This is not a drill. This pandemic is out of control and the dead bodies are really starting to pile up. The months ahead are going to be really challenging, but with God’s help we will find a way to get through this.

The Coronavirus Goes To Washington D.C., And It Is Spreading Fear Like Crazy
The immediate future looks very bleak, and immense fear is spreading all across America

By Michael Snyder | End Of The American Dream Tuesday, March 10, 2020

New coronavirus cases inside the United States are increasingly being announced late in the evening after the financial markets have closed, and I certainly don’t blame officials for trying to minimize the fear that is spreading across the nation like wildfire.

But I have to say that it has been stunning to sit here and watch the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. go from just above 600 to more than 750 in just a couple of hours.

Initially, quite a few of our national politicians attempted to make light of this crisis, but now that confirmed cases are popping up in Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia, this crisis has suddenly become very real for many of them.

In fact, there is now chatter that Congress could soon be completely closed down for a period of time in order “to protect lawmakers”…

Members of Congress are becoming increasingly anxious about coronavirus, and there is growing pressure on leadership to take steps to protect lawmakers — even potentially recessing for a period of weeks — two Democratic congressional sources said Sunday.

It would be nice if they were that concerned about protecting the rest of us, but I can definitely understand their desire for self-preservation.

But just a few days ago, the environment in D.C. was very different. In fact, U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz thought that it would be really funny to wear a gas mask when he voted on a coronavirus bill on March 4th…

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz donned a gas mask on March 4 while he voted on a bill that would dedicate billions of dollars to combating coronavirus as concerns rise over the spread of the disease.

“Reviewing the coronavirus supplemental appropriation and preparing to go vote,” Gaetz tweeted with a picture of himself wearing a gas mask while looking at a piece of paper before the vote.

I have always admired his fighting spirit, but mocking those that were concerned about this virus was completely inappropriate.

And now we have learned that he is one of the members of Congress that has been forced to “self-quarantine”. In fact, this news broke shortly after he took a ride on Air Force One…

Republican Georgia Rep. Doug Collins and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz both announced Monday afternoon that they would be self-quarantining themselves after learning that they interacted with a coronavirus-infected person in late February.

The announcement comes after Collins just spent Friday with President Donald Trump visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Gaetz was reportedly on Air Force One on Monday.

Let us pray that Gaetz is not infected and that he did not expose anyone on board Air Force One to the virus.

If what I just shared with you was not bad enough, now we have learned that Trump’s new chief of staff has also been forced into self-quarantine…

President Donald Trump’s new chief of staff Mark Meadows announced Monday that he will be self-quarantining after possibly meeting the individual who attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) while infected with coronavirus.

Mark Meadows was advised this weekend that he might have come in contact with the individual. Meadows took a precautionary test which came back negative. Meadows’ chief of staff Ben Williamson said: “He’ll be self-quarantined till the 14 day period passes Wednesday.”

It is a good sign that the initial test came back negative, and let us pray that Meadows will be perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, a priest in Washington D.C. has become a confirmed case just a week after he “shook hands with more than 500 worshippers”. The following comes from reporter Sam Sweeney…

BREAKING: A D.C. priest has Coronavirus. He offered communion and shook hands with more than 500 worshippers last week and on February 24th. All worshippers who visited the Christ Church in Georgetown must self-quarantine. Church is cancelled for the first time since the 1800’s

Was he infected when he shook all of those hands?

Let us hope not.

Before too long, hardly anyone is going to want to shake hands anymore. People are deathly afraid of this virus because they are watching what is going on elsewhere in the world.

In Italy, the government has decided to try to quarantine the entire country because the death toll just keeps spiraling higher.

This virus is no laughing matter. It is being reported that some residents of a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington have gone from showing no symptoms at all to dropping dead “in just a matter of hours”…

Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, outside of Seattle, has seen 15 of its residents die after contracting COVID-19, and dozens of its workers haven fallen ill. The center’s remaining 55 residents are going to be tested for the virus, and while only six of them are currently sick, that doesn’t necessarily mean good news, The New York Times reports.

As the Times put it, Life Care “had seen some residents go from no symptoms to death in just a matter of a few hours.” “It was surprising and shocking to us that we have seen that level of escalation from symptoms to death,” said Tim Killian, a spokesperson for the nursing home. Efforts to contain the spread from Life Care aren’t going well either, seeing as 70 of the center’s 180 workers were out sick as of Sunday, but “there weren’t enough test kits yet for them,” the Times reports.

The more that we learn about this virus, the more frightening it becomes.

In New Jersey, the very first confirmed case says that COVID-19 spread very rapidly “to both his lungs”…

The 32-year-old physician’s assistant, a non-smoker with no underlying health conditions, believes he contracted it while attending a medical conference in Times Square last weekend, saying the coronavirus spread quickly to both his lungs.

“The virus is everything. Diarrhea, watery eyes, shortness of breath, chest pain, you name it. High fever,” he said. “Every day is getting worse.”

Does that sound like something you want to catch?

Of course not.

I am still hoping that this outbreak will start to subside before it becomes a horrifying global pandemic that kills millions of people.

But so far all efforts to contain this virus have failed, and local officials are preparing for the worst.

In fact, New York has apparently developed a plan to use convicts “to bury the dead”…

If New York City has a plague year, there’s a plan for its prisoners—not to protect them from infection in their tight quarters, but to use convicts to make New York State branded hand sanitizers and, if it comes to that, prisoners at Rikers to bury the dead.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Monday, citing concerns about profiteers selling overpriced hand sanitizer, announced that CorCraft, a company that uses New York State prison labor paid between 16¢ and $1.14 an hour, would be making 100,000 gallons a week of NY-branded hand sanitizer.

I don’t know about you, but to me those two paragraphs are extremely chilling.

And as this outbreak intensifies, we continue to get more warnings that our already stressed healthcare system will soon be utterly overwhelmed…

Looking at how COVID-19 affected China can provide a preview of what it’ll look like in the U.S. In China, “around 80 percent of those infected with the coronavirus had symptoms of a bad cold and are expected to recover. Another 14 percent became severely ill, and 5 percent became critically ill,” Gupta writes. So according to estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services, that translates to about 200,000 people needing intensive care in the case of a moderate outbreak. That could be a big problem, seeing as the U.S. has less than 100,000 ICU beds.

So what are we going to do?

Will we start setting up temporary “quarantine camps” like they have in China?

If this outbreak continues to escalate, we could soon see things in this country that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago.

The best way to ensure that you never have to deal with this virus is to avoid it completely.

Unfortunately, that is exceedingly difficult to do because scientists are discovering that this virus spreads from person to person incredibly easily…

Aerosolized coronavirus can hang in the air for at least 30 minutes and travel up to 14 feet – approximately twice the “safe distance” recommended by health officials, according to SCMP.

The study, conducted by a team of Chinese government epidemiologists from Hunan province, also found that the virus can survive for days on a surface where respiratory droplets land..

Once this virus is in every community in the United States, how will you avoid it?

Some people will simply decide to stay home for as long as it takes, but for most people that just isn’t possible.

Hopefully we will never get to that point.

Hopefully this outbreak will really begin to fade when winter ends.

But at this moment the immediate future looks very bleak, and immense fear is spreading all across America.

Congress is making plans to close Capitol Hill. But sadly, their "work" will continue via computer.



Onward and upward,
airforce

A good start.

Close the building. Let them work from their district/state offices. And that would mean firing almost all of their staffs. They can vote from home via a variety of secure systems (just not the one the dems used in Iowa).

And in five, or ten years, the buildings can be repurposed - museums, imploded to make parks, etc..

An order from the White House is making federal health official's meeting about coronavirus classified. Why? What we need is more transparency, not more secrecy.



Onward and upward,
airforce

The way some of those idiots leak false information, I can see why they want to keep a lid on their meetings. You can bet they have discussed what their response will be to a worse case scenario. If that was to get out the media would scream "Trump the dictator is planning martial law."

Already, people are pitching a hissy fit when some medical "expert" claims the only way to stop the virus is to lock the entire country down and let it burn itself out. The very mention that we might have to cancel some bullshit ballgame brings howls of indignation from the spoiled babies.

Maybe it's just me, but if the FEMA death trains are coming, I'd like to know about it. I can understand they don't want the public to panic, but keeping something a secret only adds to the fear uncertainty.

Trump is going to speak about it tonight. I'm looking forward to it.

Onward and upward,
airforce

New York has banned gatherings of 500 or more people. Except for children in public schools. They'll keep schools open at all costs.

I have to think that keeping hundreds of children penned up together, day after day, is a little more dangerous than watching a Broadway play.

Onward and upward,
airforce

OK airforce, here come the FEMA Camps.
From https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-coronavirus-national-emergency-federal-funds-1492262
"...Trump declared a national state of emergency on Friday...Making the declaration allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to take a leadership role and assist with the coronavirus response, such as transporting residents and putting up temporary medical facilities. It would also enable states to use additional FEMA resources..."
But I will still vote for Trump.

In Libertarian circles right now, there's quite a discussion about the government banning travel within the U.S., or forcibly moving people. I think it would probably be constitutional for the feds to do it. It would probably be MORE constitutional for the individual States to do it.

Judge Napolitano says that banning travel within the U.S.is unconstitutional. He's a judge I don't normally disagree with, but I think the Constitution DOES give Trump that power, under very limited conditions (such as an epidemic). This is based on case law that goes back about 150 years, so I have no clue how the Supreme Court would rule today.

No one has ever accused me of being a Trump fan, but I honestly can't fault him very much for his handling of this virus. That doesn't mean I'll vote for him. I'll either vote Libertarian, or for no one at all if I don't like the Libertarian candidate.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Get Ready For Your Lifestyle To Change Indefinitely Because Of This Coronavirus Pandemic

March 12, 2020 by Michael Snyder


Fear of the coronavirus is causing shutdowns on a global scale like we have never seen before. Just about every major sporting event that you can think of has been either canceled or postponed, schools and universities are keeping students away, global tourism is absolutely collapsing, churches are being shuttered, conferences and festivals are being taken off the calendar, businesses are asking workers to work from home, and even Disneyland is being closed down. Over the past several days the wave of closings and cancellations has become an avalanche, and all of our lifestyles are going to be dramatically altered for the foreseeable future.

For the first few days, a lot of people are actually going to enjoy this “free vacation”. After all, what kid doesn’t enjoy time off from school, and there are lots of Americans that relish the opportunity to work from home.

But as the weeks drag on and the economy grinds to a standstill, this “free vacation” will start evolving into a horror show.

The more this coronavirus spreads, the more restrictions we will see on human interaction throughout the western world, and that has very serious implications.

Yes, there is much that we can do through the Internet today, but most economic activity still requires at least some actual human interaction. So when authorities restrict human interaction they are actually choking off trade.

I can’t think of too many other things that could trigger an economic collapse faster than a global pandemic could. We had better pray that life will get back to normal in a few weeks, because a complete and utter economic nightmare is ahead if that does not happen.

Unfortunately, life is not likely to get back to normal any time soon. The number of confirmed cases continues to grow at an exponential rate, and those that are getting infected now will be able to infect others for weeks to come…

Researchers looking at cases in China say patients could spread the virus for up to 37 days after they start showing symptoms, according to the study published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

On average, survivors still had the virus in their respiratory system for about 20 days and could presumably continue to spread the disease, researchers found.

So how long will it be before this pandemic is finally over?

Will it be months?

Could it be years?

Don’t forget, the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920.

I think that Wall Street is starting to grasp the reality of what we are potentially facing. On Thursday, we witnessed the largest single day stock market point crash in American history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2,352 points, and that shattered the “old record” of 2,013 points that was just set on Monday. Overall, the Dow was down 9.99 percent, and that was the biggest percentage decline since the nightmarish stock market crash of 1987.

Incredibly, European stocks did even worse on Thursday. In fact, it was the worst day ever for stock markets in Europe.

We have never seen a time when the entire western world has been in the process of literally shutting down simultaneously. The following is how a Slate article described what we are currently witnessing…

Virtually every activity that entails or facilitates in-person human interaction seems to be in the midst of a total meltdown as the coronavirus outbreak erases Americans’ desire to travel. The NBA, NHL, and MLB have suspended their seasons. Austin’s South by Southwest canceled this year’s festival and laid off a third of its staff. Amtrak says bookings are down 50 percent and cancelations are up 300 percent; its CEO is asking workers to take unpaid time off. Hotels in San Francisco are experiencing vacancy rates between 70 and 80 percent. Broadway goes dark on Thursday night. The CEOs of Southwest and JetBlue have both compared the impact of COVID-19 on air travel to 9/11. (That was before President Trump banned air travel from Europe on Wednesday night.) Universities, now emptying their campuses, have never tried online learning on this scale. White-collar companies like Amazon, Apple, and the New York Times (and Slate!) are asking employees to work from home for the foreseeable future.

On top of everything else, March Madness has been canceled for the first time ever…

The NCAA will not crown a men’s or women’s basketball champion in 2020.

Conceding defeat to the COVID-19 virus and a cascade of uncertainty about how bad its ongoing spread might impact public health across the United States, the NCAA announced Thursday all its winter and spring championships have been canceled after a series of moves across multiple sports leagues that foreshadowed the eventual arrival at this decision.

I can’t even imagine the heartbreak that many of those athletes are feeling right now.

They have been training all of their lives to fight for a championship, and now that opportunity has been taken away.

Sadly, just about every major sporting event has either been canceled or will be canceled shortly.

Of course the business world has been thrown into chaos as well. Companies all across America are going to great lengths to minimize human interaction, and all sorts of non-essential activities are being eliminated.

Even a New York seminar entitled “Doing Business Under Coronavirus” has been canceled because of the coronavirus.

In the days ahead, the list of public gatherings that are still happening will probably be much shorter than the list of public gatherings that have been canceled.

All of this is being done to save lives.

But in the process, it is going to absolutely kill the economy.

At this point, President Trump is even thinking about imposing “travel restrictions within the United States”…

REPORTER: Are you considering travel restrictions within the United States, such as to Washington State or California? [Emphasis added]

TRUMP: We haven’t discussed that yet. Is it a possibility? Yes. If somebody gets a little bit out of control, if an area gets too hot. You see what they’re doing in New Rochelle, which is — which is good, frankly. It’s the right thing. But then it’s not enforced, it’s not very strong but people know that they’re being watched … New Rochelle, that’s a hotspot.

Can you imagine the giant temper tantrum that we would see if that actually happened?

Earlier today, the top headline on CNN was “America’s way of life changes indefinitely”, and for once they got it exactly right.

As long as this virus is spreading out of control, decision makers all over the western world are going to be afraid to resume normal activities.

Just think about it. If you are a decision maker and you resume normal operations too quickly, someone could get sick and die. Not only could that cost you your job, but it could also get you sued into oblivion.

In our overly litigious society, the threat of lawsuits is going to play a major factor in this crisis. In fact, I am sure that some people are already in contact with their lawyers.

Hopefully the measures that are being taken will help to reduce the spread of this virus. But as one of my good friends has pointed out, even if the U.S. was totally locked down for 30 days, this virus would just keep coming back into the U.S. from other countries that are not locked down.

So the truth is that we would need the entire globe to be completely locked down for an extended period of time to really defeat this pandemic, and that simply is not going to happen.

Many among the elite can see what is happening, and they are taking off in their private jets to their “holiday homes or specially prepared disaster bunkers”…

Like hundreds of thousands of people across the world, the super-rich are preparing to self-isolate in the face of an escalation in the coronavirus crisis. But their plans extend far beyond stocking up on hand sanitiser and TV boxsets.

The world’s richest people are chartering private jets to set off for holiday homes or specially prepared disaster bunkers in countries that, so far, appear to have avoided the worst of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Of course most of us do not have that option.

Most of us are going to have to ride this thing out right where we are, and that reality is causing a lot of people to completely panic. Just check out what is happening in New York…

Panicked New Yorkers rushed to stock up on essentials forming long lines and clearing shelves of produce as Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency in the city due the coronavirus outbreak.

He made the decision on Thursday afternoon saying the last 24 hours had been ‘very, very sobering’ and that the world had been turned ‘upside down’ in just a day.

The announcement immediately sparked furious panic shopping from New Yorkers as grocery stores across the city saw chaos and frantic stockpiling with residents fearing the worst.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

As things go from bad to worse, we are likely to see fear and panic on a scale that is absolutely unprecedented.

But as I discussed yesterday, now is not a time for fear.

During any major crisis, cool heads and calm hearts are needed. The days ahead are going to be full of challenges, and by God’s grace we shall do our very best to meet those challenges.

The U.S. Response To This Coronavirus Outbreak Has Been Horrifyingly Bad
March 10, 2020 by Michael Snyder


What recourse do we have when our public health officials completely and utterly fail us? I don’t know if we could have prevented COVID-19 from spreading widely in the United States even if everything had been done perfectly, but the truth is that we will never know. When this outbreak first started, visitors from the affected areas were allowed to fly into the United States without being properly screened, and as you will see below this is still happening in many instances. And once the virus started spreading on U.S. soil, we needed to immediately test any suspected cases so that we could isolate them as rapidly as possible. But even though South Korea has managed to test more than 140,000 of their citizens, less than 9,000 Americans have been tested so far…

The CDC revealed on Tuesday that 8,554 Americans have been tested for coronavirus, but the agency’s director says state and local health labs are understaffed and ill-equipped to keep up with crisis.

According to figures published on the CDC’s website on Tuesday, 3,698 tests had been done in its lab, and another 4,856 had been done in public health labs.

Can anyone out there explain why we can’t do at least as good as South Korea is doing?

So far, I haven’t found a single person that can explain this to me.

Even after everything that has transpired, victims at the very epicenter of the outbreak in the Seattle area that are “showing symptoms of the respiratory illness” are still not being tested…

The Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States said on Monday it had no kits to test 65 employees showing symptoms of the respiratory illness that has killed at least 13 patients at the long-term care center.

The staff in question, representing more than a third of the Life Care Center’s 180 employees, are out sick with symptoms consistent with coronavirus, and a federal strike team of nurses and doctors is helping to care for 53 patients remaining in the center.

Are you kidding me?

This is the biggest public health crisis that any of us have ever seen, and the virus has already killed a bunch of residents at that particular nursing home, but we still don’t have enough kits to get those employees tested?

I don’t know if there are words that are strong enough to describe how badly our health officials have dropped the ball.

Do we have to wait until this crisis is over to fire every decision maker at the CDC and completely rebuild it from scratch?

To say that their performance has been “horrifyingly bad” is actually a tremendous understatement.

Of course the CDC is blaming their problems on a lack of funding…

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said state and local public health labs are underequipped and understaffed.

“The truth is we’ve not invested, we’ve underinvested in the public health labs,” Redfield said at a House Appropriations hearing for the 2021 CDC budget.

“There’s not enough equipment, there’s not enough people, there’s not enough internal capacity, there’s no surge capacity,” Redfield added.

Actually, the CDC receives more than 6 billion dollars in federal funding every year, and much of that goes into paying their salaries.

There are “168 key employees at CDC who earn more than $200,000” a year, and those very highly paid experts were supposed to make sure that our country was ready for a pandemic like this.

Now we are at a tipping point. The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has more than doubled over the past 48 hours, and an expert that used to work in the White House is telling us that we are “10 days from our hospitals getting creamed”.

10 days.

And thanks to the devastating impact that this outbreak has had on the Chinese economy, there are 30 different drugs that are already in short supply, and that list will grow with each passing week.

At this juncture, it is going to be nearly impossible to get this virus under control in the United States. In an article that he just posted, Mike Adams outlined the steps that would need to be taken if we were really serious about ending this outbreak…

Block all international flights into the USA from all countries
Close all borders and stop cross-border traffic
Shut down all domestic commercial air travel
Order all public schools, universities, government offices and churches to close
Cancel all public events, including concerts, conferences, etc.
Quarantine all US cities, block all highways in and out
Shut down all public transportation, including subways, buses, taxis and rail
Enact nationwide medical martial law and prevent people from leaving their homes or gathering in groups of any kind

Needless to say, the American people are not about to accept such measures, and Mike Adams acknowledges that it would be “a month of hell”…

These efforts might achieve a 90% suppression factor, which would break the cycle of the coronavirus within 3-4 weeks.

In other words, America would have to endure a month of hell to stop the virus in its tracks.

So this virus will just keep spreading, and the number of confirmed cases will just keep on doubling.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned above, many travelers that are coming into the U.S. from countries where this outbreak is completely out of control are still not being properly screened…

U.S. travelers arriving into John F. Kennedy International Airport from locked-down Italy revealed that many passengers are not having their temperatures taken, despite a widespread coronavirus outbreak in the European country.

In exclusive interviews with DailyMail.com on Tuesday afternoon, American travelers arriving back in the country from Rome said Italians remain ‘unfazed’ by the deadly outbreak and ‘are still out having fun’.

Considering the fact that the entire nation of Italy is now locked down, why are we still allowing flights from Italy to land here in the first place?

There are now more than 1,000 confirmed cases in the United States even though we have done such minimal testing.

As testing expands, the number of confirmed cases will rise rapidly, and that will cause the level of fear to dramatically escalate.

Already, Costco stores all over the country are being raided by desperate consumers when they open each day. Just check out what happened at one Costco store in southern California on Monday morning…

Shoppers were pictured lining up outside a Costco store in Burbank, California, on Monday morning, with a queue of people and their empty shopping karts snaking through the parking lot, waiting to rush in and emergency stockpile goods the second the doors opened.

One eager customer, Jeffrey Schaefer, 45, said the line of shoppers continued all along the side of the huge wholesale store building, through the parking lot and back up the sidewalk.

If our health officials had been on top of things from the very beginning, the outlook for the months ahead could have been very different.

But now we are being told that we are past the “containment” phase and that officials will simply try to do their best to “mitigate” the damage that this outbreak will do from this point forward.

This is a complete and utter nightmare, and it looks like we are still only in the very early chapters of it.

I went to fill buy gas at QuikTrip this morning, and I made a couple changes in this routine. First, I inserted my credit card, rather than pay cash like I usually do. Since I get some cash back, I save about thirty cents this way, So I suppose I should have been doing this all along.

Second, I broke open one of my alcohol swabs I now carry with me, and wiped off both the nozzle and the buttons I have to push. Then, finally, I filled up my gas tank. So far, so good.

Then i thought, what the heck. You only live once.

I went inside the store, bought a Milky Way bar, handed the clerk my cash, and put the change in my pocket. Because I like to live dangerously.

Onward and upward,
airforce

“Where You Stop Is Where You Stay” – Domestic Travel Restrictions Are Being “Considered”
America is on the verge of being locked down, and for many of us it truly will feel like we have been put in prison


By Michael Snyder | End of The American Dream Monday, March 16, 2020

Is the United States on the verge of a complete and total “lockdown” like we have already seen in China, Italy and elsewhere?

As you will see below, the Trump administration has repeatedly brought up the possibility of “domestic travel restrictions”, and that means that this is something that is very seriously being considered.

The first step may be simply banning all non-essential domestic air travel, and that would be a major inconvenience for many Americans.

But beyond that, there is the possibility that we could see restrictions on all travel between states or even draconian restrictions on going out in public at all like we have already seen in China and Italy.

If we get to that point, where you are at that moment is where you will be staying, and I will be sharing more about this below.

Alex Jones reveals how the coronavirus outbreak is the perfect crisis for the globalists to use in order to create a totalitarian prison planet in a very short amount of time.

But first, let’s review what the Trump administration has been telling the public about the possibility of “domestic travel restrictions”. The following comes from a USA Today article that was posted on Saturday…

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday said the government is considering domestic travel restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic and added United Kingdom and Ireland to the Europe travel restrictions that went into effect late Friday.

They did not offer specifics on domestic flight restrictions but Trump said earlier in the week that they would be considered if “an area gets a little bit out of control” in terms of coronavirus cases.

I think that the phrase “is considering domestic travel restrictions” is pretty clear, and it should definitely send a chill up your spine.

Then on Sunday, a member of the administration said that officials are weighing “an outright halt to domestic air travel”…

The Trump administration is weighing “all options” to curb the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., including an outright halt to domestic air travel, a senior official said Sunday.

Such a drastic step hasn’t been taken since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and it would raise questions about U.S. airlines’ chances for survival without government support.

This came directly from acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, and he went on to add that “all options remain on the table”…

“We continue to look at all options and all options remain on the table,” said Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in a press briefing when asked about the possibility. He said the administration is following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

So would “all options” also include banning all travel in and out of states where this pandemic is the worst?

Apparently so, and this is something that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is actually asking for…

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the White House should consider restricting domestic travel from states that are seeing a rapid increase in coronavirus infections, saying the flow of people has made containment difficult.

He made the plea shortly before the state on Saturday announced its fourth death from the disease, a 77-year-old man from Lee County.

Could you imagine getting into your car and driving toward the next state only to be stopped at the border?

It could soon happen.

Hopefully we won’t get to that point, but this outbreak continues to spiral out of control.

And if the numbers just keep going up, it is inevitable that we will see things happen that would have been unthinkable only a few weeks ago.

At this point, even Dr. Anthony Fauci appears to be advocating some sort of a “national lockdown”…

Asked by CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “State of the Union” if he’d like a “national lockdown” where people are being told they need to stay home and out of restaurants and bars, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said he’d “like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see” in those places.

“Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to see,” Fauci added.

As Americans, we don’t like to have our movements restricted.

And hopefully the Trump administration will choose not to go in that direction, but they have already restricted domestic travel for members of the military…

A memo released Friday evening announced a ban on government-funded domestic travel for military members, Department of Defense civilians and their families, according to Stars and Stripes.

The Pentagon says Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist has approved new travel restrictions on service members and Defense Department civilians assigned to military installations and surrounding areas within the United States and its territories.

And similar restrictions have been put into place for federal workers…

As the coronavirus outbreak continues across the U.S., the White House has told federal agencies and executive departments to suspend all work travel unless it is absolutely necessary.

The White House Office of Management and Budget issued new guidance on Saturday telling federal workers that “only mission-critical travel is recommended at this time.”

With all that in mind, I would like for you to watch this video. According to John Grimm, a Republican candidate for Kootenai County Sheriff, it appears quite likely that we could potentially see some sort of travel restrictions in the near future. And if there is eventually some sort of a total lockdown, he is warning that “where you stop is where you stay”…

So I hope that you are already at the place where you plan to ride out this pandemic.

If not, I would get there as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, we continue to see major institutions shut down all over the country.

On Sunday, we learned that all schools in New York City will be shutting down “until at least April 20”…

In a decision he described as “extraordinarily painful,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that he is closing the city’s public schools on Monday until at least April 20.

The mayor said the city would make every attempt to reopen schools at that point, but that it’s possible schools could remain closed for the rest of the school year.

Also, several states announced on Sunday that all restaurants and bars will be forced to shut down for the foreseeable future. Ohio was one of the first to make such an announcement…

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that he will be issuing an order to close all restaurants and bars beginning at 9:00 p.m. Sunday night.

“I’m aware that this will impact many, many good workers,” he said in a tweet. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but we will work to mitigate the suffering. It is our goal to get everyone through this.”

Most restaurants in this country are just barely scraping by financially, and many of those that are now being forced to close down may not ever open back up again.

Illinois is another one of the states that is closing down all restaurants and bars…

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced Sunday afternoon that all restaurants and bars in Illinois will be closed effective at the end of the business day on Monday, continuing through March 30, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I cannot let the gravity of the choices prevent us from taking the actions that the science and the experts say will keep people safe,” Pritzker said.

In areas of the country where this outbreak is already wildly out of control, the restaurants and bars might as well be closed down anyway. Restaurant traffic in New York City and Seattle is down more than 60 percent, and the more this virus spreads the more people are going to be afraid to go out into public to do anything.

Just a few weeks ago our lives seemed so normal, but now our entire country is steadily shutting down from coast to coast.

And life is not going to return to normal any time soon, because the CDC just issued guidelines calling for the cancellation or the postponement of “any events with 50 or more attendees for the next eight weeks”…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging people across the U.S. to cancel or postpone any events with 50 or more attendees for the next eight weeks, the agency said in revised guidance issued Sunday.

The CDC said individuals and organizations should reschedule large events and that gatherings of any size should be reconsidered unless organizers can protect vulnerable populations, ensure proper hand hygiene and social distancing.

In other words, everything that is being shut down right now is going to remain shut down for at least eight weeks.

I cannot even begin to describe how damaging that is going to be to our economy.

And what happens if this pandemic is still raging after eight weeks have passed?

The Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for three entire years. There is no way that authorities could keep us all locked down for that long.

This pandemic is rapidly becoming a national nightmare, and it appears that our freedoms are about to be restricted in ways that most of us never thought possible.

America is on the verge of being locked down, and for many of us it truly will feel like we have been put in prison.

This Chi-Com corona virus bio-weapon spreads 10 times more easily than the flu. If too many people get it at once the hospitals will be over whelmed and not be able to offer any medical help to those who get the life threatening corona viral pneumonia from it and they will likely be detained until they die. Stay home and dig in if you can afford it.

The other option is to be infected with it early before the hospitals are overwhelmed in case you need medical life support but it looks like you would not get any immunity to it and can get it over and over.

Here's what it means to "flatten the curve."



Think of orange as Italy, or China. A lot of cases, all at once, which overwhelms the hospitals and leads to rationing of health care.

In the blue, the total number of cases are probably about the same. But they are more spread out over time, so there is no shortage of ventilators or hospital beds. And, with a little luck, warm weather and humidity will reduce the number of cases on the back end.

Onward and upward,
airforce

The medical system is on the verge of being overwhelmed on a good day.

This is going to be a train wreck.

They claim pneumonia can help be cured with ultra-sonic inhalation of colloidal silver.
see Nebulize Colloidal Silver
https://www.silverlungs.com/breathing.html
but their set up costs way to much and only has mouthpiece not a face mask.

This ultra sonic nebulizer on Amazon is a lot cheaper and has a face mask. You would need one with a face mask to get to the virus in your sinuses too.
See this one for $36.99 on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Atomizing-Vaporiser-Lightweight-Humidifier-Mouthpiece/dp/B0851N2TXM/ref=sr_1_3?crid=30PQHGA1M9V37&keywords=ultrasonic+nebulizer&qid=1584382742&s=home-garden&sprefix=ultrasonic+neb%2Cgarden%2C391&sr=1-3

Unlike antibiotics colloidal silver will kill virus but don't inhale it unless you get really sick and your lungs hurt there are dangers to it.
See this scientific research on it:
Inhalation of Silver Nanomaterials—Seeing the Risks
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/15/12/23936/htm

It's getting serious now. The Wanenmacher Tulsa Gun Show has been cancelled.



Maybe. But I have more faith in the free market than most people and, with the government doing away with a myriad of rules and regulations, the free market is getting more and more able to respond to this virus. (It would be better still if the government would repeal all those "price gouging" laws, but that's not going to happen.

I'm certainly no fan of President Trump, but it's pretty hard to fault him for his handling of this, at least so far. The CDC and FDA were caught flat-footed, but those were problems he inherited. The things he's doing now will flatten the curve. But we're in uncharted territory, we've never done the things we're doing now, and it's just not possible to predict how this will turn out.

Looking at the good side of things, my daughters and grandkids are calling me every day, just to check on me. And on the bad side of things, MY DAUGHTERS AND GRANDKIDS ARE CALLING ME EVERY SINGLE DAY JUST TO CHECK ON ME. Oh. well.

Onward and upward,
airforce

If you haven't subscribed to Michael Yon's YouTube channel, now is a good time to do so.

Onward and upward,
airforce

What Is Our Country Going To Look Like If Millions Of Americans Start Dying From The Coronavirus?
We are talking about the potential for a societal collapse of epic proportions


By Michael Snyder | End of the American Dream Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Experts are warning that hundreds of millions of people around the globe could eventually catch COVID-19, and if that actually happens, millions of people are going to die.

Globally, less than 10,000 people have died during this pandemic so far, and the level of fear we are witnessing is off the charts.

The entire western world is shutting down and people are freaking out like we have never been before.

So what is going to happen if the global death toll soon gets 100 times higher?

According to the CDC, in a “worst-case scenario” more than 200 million people could become infected in the United States alone…

According to The New York Times, a closed-door meeting was held last month among CDC officials and dozens of epidemic experts from around the world.

One of the CDC’s leading epidemiologists presented four scenarios – named A, B, C and D – to show possible ways the virus could spread throughout the US population.

The federal health agency projects that in the worst-case scenario, between 160 million and 214 million people would be sickened.

Do you think that our society is equipped to handle a crisis of that magnitude?

I certainly don’t.

Hopefully the measures that are now being taken will slow the spread of this virus. Because if that does not happen, researchers at Imperial College London are projecting that 2.2 million Americans could die…

The report is also influencing planning by the Trump administration. Deborah Birx, who serves as the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cited the British analysis at a news conference Monday, saying her response team was especially focused on the report’s conclusion that an entire household should self-quarantine for 14 days if one of its members is stricken by the virus.

The Imperial College London group reported that if nothing was done by governments and individuals and the pandemic remained uncontrolled, 510,000 would die in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States over the course of the outbreak.

I really don’t understand why some people out there still refuse to take this pandemic seriously.

Now that this outbreak is completely out of control, it won’t be too long before COVID-19 is virtually everywhere.

According to a new study that was just conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, this virus can remain “in the air for hours” and it can remain on surfaces for days…

The highly contagious novel coronavirus that has exploded into a global pandemic can remain viable and infectious in droplets in the air for hours and on surfaces up to days, according to a new study that should offer guidance to help people avoid contracting the respiratory illness called COVID-19.

So once this virus has spread to every community in the United States, there won’t be any public places that are safe.

It could be on the next surface that you touch, the next hand that you shake or in the next gulp of air that you breathe in.

According to the researchers, COVID-19 could still actually be detected on plastic and steel surfaces “after three days”…

On plastic and stainless steel, viable virus could be detected after three days. On cardboard, the virus was not viable after 24 hours. On copper, it took 4 hours for the virus to become inactivated.

In terms of half-life, the research team found that it takes about 66 minutes for half the virus particles to lose function if they are in an aerosol droplet.

That means that after another hour and six minutes, three quarters of the virus particles will be essentially inactivated but 25% will still be viable.

Some people that get this virus only experience minor symptoms the entire time, and that is definitely good news.

But many others have been hit extremely hard. Some survivors experienced “blinding pain” for weeks, and many felt like they were constantly being suffocated.

And even if you survive after going through all that, there is a good chance that your lungs could be permanently damaged for the rest of your life. In fact, one Belgian doctor says that the lung damage that he has been witnessing is “nothing short of terrifying”…

A Belgian doctor working to battle the coronavirus says he’s treated several seriously ill young patients — and their lung scans were “nothing short of terrifying,” according to reports.

Dr. Ignace Demeyer, who works at a hospital in Aalst, said an increasing number of people between the ages of 30 and 50 have presented with severe symptoms, despite having “blank medical records” that show no underlying conditions that would make them high-risk, the Brussels Times reported.

So please stay at home as much as possible in the coming days.

You do not want this virus.

Just like other countries, it appears that our medical system will soon be overwhelmed. Already, hospitals across America are setting up tents and bringing doctors out of retirement in order to get ready for the expected surge in patients.

But if this virus starts spreading as wildly as it has in Italy, it won’t be nearly enough. Just check out what is currently taking place in one northern Italian city…

Funeral services are overwhelmed in Bergamo, the northern Italian city hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak, with a crematorium operating 24 hours a day, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

There is now a waiting list for burials there, and coffins of the deceased awaiting services have overflowed two hospital morgues and a cemetery morgue, The Post reported.

Many would like to believe that the same thing won’t happen here, but the truth is that the United States is on the exact same trajectory as Italy.

We have maintained a pace that is approximately 10 days behind what is happening over there, and we had better hope that the measures that are being implemented now will alter this trend.

Back on March 5th, Mike Adams of Natural News released a model that projected that this virus will cause more than 2 million deaths in the U.S. by July 4th.

Instead of being too pessimistic, so far the actual numbers are exceeding the projections of his model by as much as 25 percent…

Remember the original pandemic projection model we released on March 5th? That model, with details shown below, projected 2.1 million deaths in the United States by July 4th if aggressive steps weren’t taken to achieve strong social isolation (i.e. halting all domestic air travel, blocking public transport, etc.).

Fortunately for us all, President Trump and local mayors and governors have all taken various forms of action since that day, helping achieve some measure of social isolation. That means the original projection of 2.1 millions deaths is now obsolete, and that President Trump, through his actions, has probably saved many hundreds of thousands of lives.

However, we’re not out of the woods yet. And the number of fatalities being reported right now across America is actually exceeding my original projections by as much as 25%.

Personally, I think that we will see a complete and total national lockdown before the death toll gets to 100,000.

And a complete and total national lockdown would definitely change the trajectory of these numbers.

But for a moment, let’s consider what would happen if the model that Mike Adams released on March 5th continues to be accurate…

By April 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

8,645 actively infected and transmitting on this day
580 cumulative dead since day one, with 58 deaths on this day
5,432 cumulative recovered since day one

By May 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

122,529 actively infected and transmitting on this day
10,432 cumulative dead since day one, with 910 deaths on this day
85,332 cumulative recovered since day one

By June 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

1.7 million actively infected and transmitting on this day
153,000 cumulative dead since day one, with 12,960 deaths on this day
1.2 million cumulative recovered since day one

By July 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

24.3 million actively infected and transmitting on this day
2.16 million cumulative dead since day one, with 183,000 deaths on this day
17.1 million cumulative recovered since day one

I don’t know if I have the words to describe the extreme fear and chaos that we would see if this many Americans really did end up dying in the months ahead.

We are talking about the potential for a societal collapse of epic proportions.

So let us pray for mercy, because right now we desperately need it.

The U.S. Government Is Preparing For An 18 Month Pandemic And “Critical Shortages”
Are you prepared for the nationwide shutdown that is happening now to last for the next 18 months?

By Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse Thursday, March 19, 2020

Are you prepared for the nationwide shutdown that is happening now to last for the next 18 months?

You may not believe that such a thing will happen, but the federal government apparently does.

A 100 page government plan marked “For Official Use Only // Not For Public Distribution or Release” was obtained by the New York Times, and it paints a very bleak picture of what is coming.

If the projections in this document are anywhere close to accurate, large numbers of Americans will die, the U.S. economy will completely implode, and we will see widespread civil unrest.

So let us pray that the assessments in this government plan turn out to be dead wrong.

Owen explores why the guidelines for sheltering in place may be inevitable.

According to the document, this coronavirus pandemic “will last 18 months or longer”…

A federal government plan to combat the coronavirus warned policymakers last week that a pandemic “will last 18 months or longer” and could include “multiple waves,” resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system.

The 100-page plan, dated Friday, the same day President Trump declared a national emergency, laid out a grim prognosis for the spread of the virus and outlined a response that would activate agencies across the government and potentially employ special presidential powers to mobilize the private sector.

I can’t even imagine what our country would look like if current conditions stretched into the middle of 2021.

As a nation, I don’t believe that we would be able to handle it.

The document also envisions that there will be “critical shortages”…

“Shortages of products may occur, impacting health care, emergency services, and other elements of critical infrastructure,” the plan warned. “This includes potentially critical shortages of diagnostics, medical supplies (including PPE and pharmaceuticals), and staffing in some locations.” P.P.E. refers to personal protective equipment.

Of course there are already shortages of some drugs and of many basic consumer products such as toilet paper.

Sadly, things could soon get much worse.

Meanwhile, the overall economy continues to collapse at a staggering pace. A former economic adviser to President Trump is now warning us that the U.S. economy could lose up to a million jobs this month alone…

Kevin Hassett, who served as a top economic adviser to President Trump until last summer, said Monday that the United States economy could shed as many as one million jobs in March alone because of layoffs and hiring freezes related to the coronavirus.

“If you have normal job disruption, and hiring just stops,” Mr. Hassett said, “you’ll have the worst jobs number ever.”

But if this pandemic continues to escalate, a million jobs lost will just be a drop in the bucket.

In fact, the National Restaurant Association is now projecting that their industry will lose “between five and seven million jobs”…

The National Restaurant Association is predicting the unprecedented carnage is only just beginning, on Wednesday writing a letter to the White House and Congress detailing an estimated $225 billion in sales will be wiped out over the next three months, crucially prompting the loss of between five and seven million jobs.

Remember, that is just one industry.

The retail industry is also being completely devastated as well, and we just learned that the largest operator of shopping malls in the United States is shutting them all down…

Simon Property Group, the largest owner of shopping malls in the nation, is closing all of its malls and retail properties because of the coronavirus outbreak.

The closings start at 7 p.m. local time Wednesday and the malls are expected to end March 29, the Indianapolis-based company said in a news release.

Of course they won’t actually open back up on March 29th if this pandemic continues to get worse.

So far, COVID-19 has killed less than 200 Americans.

If our society is being this disrupted now, what will things be like if the death toll becomes 1,000 times larger?

For years, I have warned that our economy was extremely vulnerable, and now that is becoming exceedingly obvious to everyone. It certainly didn’t take too much of a push to burst all the bubbles and send everyone into a severe panic, and now the economy is collapsing at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking.

According to NBC News, state unemployment websites all over the nation are crashing because so many people are suddenly applying for unemployment benefits…

Workers who have suddenly found themselves without a paycheck because of the growing coronavirus pandemic in the United States are now dealing with another frustration — state unemployment websites crashing because of high traffic.

From Oregon to New York and Washington, D.C., officials and Twitter users have highlighted the problem after the mass closing of restaurants, retail stores and other businesses as part of the effort to slow the spread of the virus.

Tomorrow morning most Americans will wake up assuming that their jobs are safe. But right now an increasing number of people are being let go without any advance warning whatsoever. Here is one example…

Eileen Hanley was wrapping up her weekend and getting ready for the week ahead on Sunday evening when an email popped up in her inbox with the subject line “COVID-19 uncertainty.” It was from her boss at the small Manhattan law firm where she worked part time as a receptionist.

“We hope you are feeling well during this time,” the email began. Then it cut to the chase: The firm was losing revenue because of the outbreak, and it would have to eliminate “a number of positions,” including hers, “effective immediately.”

We have never seen anything like this before.

Things were tough during World War II, but it was actually a time when the country geared up and worked extremely hard to defeat the enemy.

But now economic activity all over America is being brought to a screeching halt. In fact, we just learned that the three largest automakers have shut down all of their U.S. factories…

Detroit’s Big Three automakers plan to temporarily close all U.S. factories as the coronavirus sweeps across the country.

The companies bowed to pressure from union leaders and employees who called for protection from the pandemic that’s spread to more than 212,000 people in nearly every country across the globe.

As a nation, we would survive a 30 day shutdown.

But if life doesn’t get back to normal for “18 months”, we are going to witness a societal meltdown of epic proportions.

This week, investor Bill Ackman told CNBC that “hell is coming”, and he warned that unless the entire country is shut down simultaneously for an extended period of time “America will end as we know it”…

“What’s scaring the American people and corporate America now is the gradual rollout,” Ackman told Scott Wapner on “Halftime Report” on Wednesday. “We need to shut it down now. … This is the only answer.”

“America will end as we know it. I’m sorry to say so, unless we take this option,” he said. Ackman added that if Trump saves the country from the coronavirus, he will get reelected in November.

I believe that he makes an excellent point, but I would take it one step further.

If the entire world shut down for 30 days, this pandemic would quickly be brought under control. If only the U.S. shuts down, it is inevitable that the virus would keep coming back into the country as the pandemic continues raging elsewhere on the globe.

Of course we aren’t going to get the entire globe to agree to shut down simultaneously for 30 days.

So this outbreak will continue to spread and the case numbers will continue to grow.

For a long time I have been warning that something would come along that would burst all the bubbles and trigger a horrifying economic meltdown.

Now it is upon us, but now is not a time for fear.

With God’s help, we will get through this.

But life is not going to go back to the way it was before.

Here
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthe...58bec47cad361f/optimized/full.pdf#page=1
leaked by the New York Times is the federal government's plan stamped "UNCLASSIFIED OFFICIAL USE ONLY NOT FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE" to combat the corona virus. It warned policymakers last week that a pandemic “will last 18 months or longer” and could include “multiple waves,” resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system.
This 100-page plan, dated Friday, the same day President Trump declared a national emergency, laid out a grim prognosis for the spread of the virus and outlined a response that would activate agencies across the government and potentially employ special presidential powers to mobilize the private sector.

I just saw Dr. Hahn, the director of the Food and Drug Administration, brag about how his agency was "cutting through the red tape" to get various new drugs and medical devices approved. Drugs that ordinarily took years to be approved, suddenly would take "only" months. He looked really proud of himself.

Color me unimpressed.

Why was all that red tape there in the first place? And why doesn't he do the same for drugs to treat cancer, or Alzheimer's, or ALS, or heart disease, or...?

If anyone asked me which agency is responsible for killing the most Americans, the answer would be simple. The FDA. It's long past time to abolish it.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Sen. Rand Paul has tested positive for the coronavirus. He does not have any symptoms, and is in self quarantine.



Onward and upward,
airforce

Attorney David Lat, who founded the Above the Law blog, is in critical condition and has been placed on a ventilator. It doesn't look good.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Can we trust China's claims they have the Kung Flu under control? Short answer: No.



Read the whole thing at the link.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Hell no you can't trust the Chi-Coms nor the deep state. If you see their lips move then they are lying. They said ..."Last week, Beijing reported that the number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 had dropped to zero..." of course becasue just like in Los Angeles they quit testing and the CDC prevented tests everywhere for weeks. All fights and all US borders should have been shut down 2 months ago and the Chi-Coms should have shut down their borders when it started in November. So it is not a flu it is the globalists plan to kill us with a man made bio-weapon.

Here https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-03-23-coronavirus-case-fatality-rate-usa-72-percent.html
Mike Adams wrote today, "...483 people have died from the coronavirus in the USA, and 187 have recovered… so far, the case fatality rate is 72%..."

America Are Scared To Death Of Being Tested For The Coronavirus…

March 22, 2020 by Michael Snyder


How would you feel if you received a bill for more than $34,000 after being tested and treated for the coronavirus? This pandemic is showing the entire world that the U.S. healthcare system is deeply, deeply broken, and there is no way that we can continue to go on like this. If coronavirus testing is quick, inexpensive and widely available all over the rest of the globe, why can’t that be the case here too? Democrats and Republicans have been fighting about fixing our healthcare system all the way back to the 1990s and they haven’t gotten the job done. Now we have a system that is a complete and utter embarrassment, and it is about to be overwhelmed by the greatest public health crisis that any of us have ever seen.

Even under normal circumstances, most Americans are deathly afraid to go to the hospital because of what it will cost.

I have written about this numerous times before, but not even I would have imagined that getting tested and treated for coronavirus would cost more than $34,000…

A woman in the United States says she was billed $34,927.43 after being tested and treated for the coronavirus, Time magazine reports.

When Danni Askini first came down with the symptoms of the virus — shortness of breath, a fever, a cough and migraines — she was told by a doctor to go to the emergency room. There, she was told she had pneumonia and could go home. She visited the emergency room two more times as her symptoms persisted and worsened before she was finally tested for the coronavirus. Three days later her results showed she had COVID-19.

How in the world is it possible for a bill to get that high?

As Danni pointed out, she now owes the hospital more than she paid for both of her college degrees.

So this story is about my experience with COVID and my final hospital bill: $34,927.23 – an amount that I will never be able to repay and more than I paid to get both my Bachelors and Masters degree. @realDonaldTrump @ewarren @AyannaPressley please help! https://t.co/pJApXMPzcW

— Danni Askini (@danniaskini) March 20, 2020

Sadly, she is going to be far from alone. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, coronavirus victims all over America are going to get hit with extremely high medical bills…

A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the average cost of COVID-19 treatment for someone with employer insurance—and without complications—would be about $9,763. Someone whose treatment has complications may see bills about double that: $20,292. (The researchers came up with those numbers by examining average costs of hospital admissions for people with pneumonia.)

What this means is that if even a single member of your family catches the virus it could instantly wipe you out financially, and this is especially true if you do not have health insurance.

Congress has passed a bill which will now cover the cost of coronavirus testing, but the bad news is that “it doesn’t do anything to address the cost of treatment”…

Public health experts predict that tens of thousands and possibly millions of people across the United States will likely need to be hospitalized for COVID-19 in the foreseeable future. And Congress has yet to address the problem. On March 18, it passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which covers testing costs going forward, but it doesn’t do anything to address the cost of treatment.

For those that catch the virus, and officials are warning that will eventually be most of us, treatment is going to cost far, far more than testing will.

You may think that you will just tough things out at home, but if this virus hits you hard enough you will either go to the hospital or you will die.

For a moment, I would like for you to consider what a medical worker in Louisiana is saying about the patients that he is treating…

“With our coronavirus patients, once they’re on ventilators, most need about the highest settings that we can do. About 90% oxygen, and 16 of PEEP, positive end-expiratory pressure, which keeps the lung inflated. This is nearly as high as I’ve ever seen. The level we’re at means we are running out of options.

“In my experience, this severity of ARDS is usually more typical of someone who has a near drowning experience — they have a bunch of dirty water in their lungs — or people who inhale caustic gas. Especially for it to have such an acute onset like that. I’ve never seen a microorganism or an infectious process cause such acute damage to the lungs so rapidly. That was what really shocked me.”

Many coronavirus victims have described being in a state where they constantly feel like they are drowning.

And this medical worker in Louisiana says that there is a really good reason for that, because the severe cases that he is treating are “essentially drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full”…

“When someone has an infection, I’m used to seeing the normal colors you’d associate with it: greens and yellows. The coronavirus patients with ARDS have been having a lot of secretions that are actually pink because they’re filled with blood cells that are leaking into their airways. They are essentially drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full. So we’re constantly having to suction out the secretions every time we go into their rooms.”

For the moment, there are still enough ventilators in the U.S. for everyone, but we are still in the very early chapters of this pandemic.

Over in Europe, many hospitals are already being completely overwhelmed. In Italy, one doctor is reporting that patients over the age of 60 are now being refused access to artificial respiratory machines…

Peleg said that, from what he sees and hears in the hospital, the instructions are not to offer access to artificial respiratory machines to patients over 60 as such machines are limited in number.

When things get bad enough, doctors are going to have to make choices about who lives and who dies here too.

It is hoped that the measures that are being taken all over the nation will start to slow down the spread of this virus.

But millions of Americans continue to go to work each day, and many of them simply can’t afford not to work.

In fact, it is being reported that many delivery drivers continue reporting for work each day even though they are clearly very sick…

An increasing number of the workers sorting those boxes, loading them into trucks and then transporting and delivering them around the country have fallen sick.

They have coughs, sore throats, aches and fevers — symptoms consistent with the coronavirus. Yet they are still reporting for their shifts in crowded shipping facilities and warehouses and truck depots, fearful of what will happen if they don’t.

So the next time a delivery truck comes to your home, you may want to keep your distance.

We have never seen anything like this before. The entire western world is shutting down simultaneously, and it is being estimated that nearly a billion people are now under lockdown orders…

Close to one billion people worldwide were confined to their homes on Saturday as the global coronavirus death toll shot past 11,000 and US states rolled out lockdown measures already imposed across swathes of Europe.

The pandemic has completely upended lives across the planet, restricting movement, shutting schools and forcing millions to work from home.

Needless to say, this is going to be absolutely devastating for the economy.

If you can believe it, Morgan Stanley is now projecting a 30 percent decline in U.S. GDP on an annualized basis during the second quarter…

We now see 1Q GDP dropping by 2.4% as economic activity has come to a near standstill in March, followed by a record-breaking drop of 30.1% in 2Q. We estimate that March will also mark the first drop in nonfarm payrolls, down 700k. We expect a record-high unemployment rate, averaging 12.8% in 2Q.

We assume sharp declines in areas of consumer discretionary spending like travel, dining out, other services and motor vehicle spending among others. This will leave a large hole in consumer spending in 2Q, when we expect real personal consumption expenditures to contract at a 31% annualized pace.

And the president of the St. Louis Fed is being even more pessimistic…

In an interview with Bloomberg, the president of the St. Louis Fed, predicted that U.S. unemployment rate may hit 30% in the second quarter because of shutdowns to combat the coronavirus, coupled with an unprecedented 50% drop in US GDP. That would be an outcome worse not only than every prior war the US has (officially) waged, but more than twice as dire as the worst days of the Great Depression.

It sure didn’t take much to plunge the U.S. into a horrifying economic depression.

Two months ago, everything seemed just fine to most people.

But now financial markets are crashing, workers are losing jobs at an unprecedented rate, and many of the businesses that are now being closed down will never open again.

Fear of the coronavirus has collapsed “the everything bubble”, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning…

Experts Warn Of A Complete And Utter Economic Meltdown As The Global Coronavirus Death Toll Explodes

As America literally shuts down from coast to coast, the job losses are going to be absolutely staggering

By Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Everyone that tried to tell us that this pandemic would fade away quickly has been proven dead wrong.

Right now, approximately 187 million Americans are under “shelter-in-place” orders as COVID-19 sweeps across the nation like wildfire.

There are now more than 43,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., but by the time many of you read this article that number is likely to be far higher.

But what is even more concerning is what we are seeing with the cases that have come to a final resolution one way or the other.

Of all U.S. cases that have been officially resolved, 553 patients have died and only 295 patients have recovered.

Over time, the number of patients that have officially recovered will eventually surpass the number that have died for a couple of reasons.

Owen talks economy, and the concern we should have for America’s small businesses.

For one, some victims are dying in just a few days while it can take weeks for some patients to fully recover.

Secondly, more widespread testing will start to reveal more mild cases, and most of those mild cases will ultimately recover.

But without a doubt it is starting to appear that the U.S. will have a very high death rate like we are seeing in Italy, Spain and other western European nations.

Monday was the very first time that more than 100 Americans died in a single day, and it looks like the days ahead could be much, much worse.

Overall, the global death toll is rising at a pace that is very alarming. It hit 16,000 on Monday, and that means it only took six days to double from 8,000.

If the death toll keeps doubling like that, we are going to be in very big trouble.

The number of confirmed cases is rising at an exponential rate as well, and on Monday the head of the WHO warned that this pandemic “is accelerating”…

The coronavirus “pandemic is accelerating,” World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned Monday.

Almost every country in the world has reported cases, he announced in a Geneva press conference.

“It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases. Eleven days for the second 100,000 and just four days for the third 100,000,” he said.

As I write this article, there are 260,133 open cases around the world and 118,947 closed cases.

Out of the closed cases, 86 percent of the victims have recovered and 14 percentof the victims have died.

To put that into perspective, the Spanish Flu pandemic that stretched from 1918 to 1920 had a death rate of less than 3 percent.

But even after everything that has transpired, there are still lots of Americans that are not taking this pandemic seriously. I don’t understand this, because all of our medical authorities are warning us that the worst is yet to come. In fact, Surgeon General Jerome Adams just told us that “it’s going to get bad” …

Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned Monday that the coronavirus outbreak will worsen this week and said people across the country are not taking the threat seriously enough.

“I want America to understand this week, it’s going to get bad,” Adams said in an interview on the “TODAY” show.

And as I have been warning for weeks, this pandemic is going to plunge the United States and the entire globe into a horrifying economic nightmare.

At this point, even CNN is using “the d-word”….

A global recession, once unthinkable in 2020, is now a foregone conclusion and some experts warn that the pandemic could drag the world’s economy into a depression. More bad news: The coronavirus outbreak may just be getting started.

Central banks and governments are now unleashing a tsunami of interest rate cuts, loan guarantees and new spending, tapping emergency powers to reassure investors, cushion the shock to companies and workers and preserve the foundations of a functioning economy for the future.

A month ago, most Americans wouldn’t have imagined that such a thing could be possible.

But now “the everything bubble” has burst and we have just witnessed the fastest 30 percent decline for the S&P 500 in all of U.S. history…

Twenty-two days.

That’s all it took for the S&P 500 to fall 30% from its record high, the fastest drop of this magnitude in history.

The second, third and fourth quickest 30% pullbacks all occurred during the Great Depression era in 1934, 1931 and 1929, respectively, according to data from Bank of America Securities.

In the short-term, the good news for investors is that we should see a substantial bounce in stock prices this week, and that could especially be true when Congress finally gets around to passing their “stimulus” package.

But whether the market goes up or down in the short-term, it isn’t going to stop the complete and utter economic meltdown that is now unfolding.

According to billionaire Tom Barrack, the commercial mortgage market is on the precipice of a historic collapse…

Real estate investor Tom Barrack said the U.S. commercial-mortgage market is on the brink of collapse and predicted a “domino effect” of catastrophic economic consequences if banks and government don’t take prompt action to keep borrowers from defaulting.

Barrack, chairman and chief executive officer of Colony Capital Inc., warned in a white paper and in a subsequent interview on Bloomberg Television of a chain reaction of margin calls, mass foreclosures, evictions and, potentially, bank failures due to the coronavirus pandemic and consequent shutdown of much of the U.S. economy.

Sadly, Barrack is 100 percent correct.

All of the dominoes are going to fall, and it is going to be horrifying to watch.

Meanwhile, we could be on the verge of a shutdown “of virtually all passenger flights across the U.S.”…

Major U.S. airlines are drafting plans for a potential voluntary shutdown of virtually all passenger flights across the U.S., according to industry and federal officials, as government agencies also consider ordering such a move and the nation’s air-traffic control system continues to be ravaged by the coronavirus contagion.

No final decisions have been made by the carriers or the White House, these officials said. As airlines struggle to keep aircraft flying with minimal passengers, various options are under consideration, these people said.

To me, this is something that is exceedingly difficult to imagine, but we will see things a lot stranger than this in the days ahead.

As America literally shuts down from coast to coast, the job losses are going to be absolutely staggering. In fact, we are being warned to expect numbers that are unlike anything we have ever seen before…

Upcoming weekly jobless claims will shatter the standards set even during the worst points of the financial crisis and the early-1980s recession, with Bank of America forecasting a total of 3 million when the number is released Thursday. Those figures are expected to be so bad, in fact, that the Trump administration, according to several media reports, has asked state officials to delay releasing precise counts.

If this pandemic stretches on for an extended period of time, we will very quickly surpass the unemployment levels that we witnessed during the Great Recession.

Back then, the unemployment rate didn’t exceed 10 percent, but now the head of the St. Louis Fed is warning that we may see a 30 percent unemployment rate in the second quarter…

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard predicted the U.S. unemployment rate may hit 30% in the second quarter because of shutdowns to combat the coronavirus, with an unprecedented 50% drop in gross domestic product.

Could things actually deteriorate that rapidly?

I sure hope not, because most American families are just barely scraping by…

How long could you sustain your household if you were to stop earning income? If you are like most Americans, the answer is not for long. Only 40 percent of Americans can afford an unexpected $1,000 expense with their savings. In fact, nearly 80 percent of workers are living paycheck to paycheck. It is no surprise that the probability of an economic recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic caused many to worry.

For years, many of us have been begging and pleading with people to get ready. We warned that when things finally broke loose that events would move very quickly. I even co-authored an entire book entitled “Get Prepared Now”, but now it is too late to get prepared in advance because a day of reckoning is now upon us. I really like how Mike Adams of Natural News made this point…

Over the last several days, I’ve been called by many people I haven’t heard from in years. Suddenly they’re interested in what I have to say, even though they ignored everything I said for the last decade. And they want to assure me they’re “fully prepared” with 2-3 weeks of food.

These are the same people who probably have four months’ worth of toilet paper, but only a 3-week supply of food.

I’m not even trying to educate them at this point. That day is long gone. Anyone who thinks “2-3 weeks of food” is going to carry them through a national food supply line collapse, a global consumer goods supply line collapse and a systemic, cascading finance and banking collapses is living in a land of sheer delusion.

A lot of the same people that didn’t listen and didn’t get prepared in advance are now trying to convince us that this crisis will soon be gone.

And it would be wonderful if they are right.

But at this moment the global numbers are rising rapidly with each passing hour, and the global economy is literally imploding all around us.

You know those at-home coronavirus tests? Well, the FDA is stopping the companies from rolling them out. Not only that, the FDA is ordering them to destroy their test kits.



Onward and upward,
airforce

Here Are The Very Alarming Things That Scientists Have Just Discovered About This Coronavirus…

March 24, 2020 by Michael Snyder

The biggest public health crisis of our time just continues to get worse. The global death toll is rapidly approaching 20,000, and approximately a third of the world is currently under some sort of a lockdown order. Needless to say, this is going to be absolutely devastating for the entire global economy. Here in the United States, the spread of this virus continues to track along a trajectory that is very similar to what we witnessed in Italy. If you doubt this, just check out this chart. At this hour, the official death toll in the United States is up to 782, and only 378 victims have officially “recovered”. But of course the vast majority of the 54,867 confirmed cases will not come to a final resolution for quite some time. Sadly, the numbers that I just shared with you are likely to be much higher by the time most of you actually read this article. This is a full-blown national emergency, and a lot of people out there are still not taking this crisis very seriously.

This is no ordinary virus. It moves from person to person with incredible ease, and it is rapidly changing. In fact, it has just been announced that scientists in Iceland “have found 40 mutations of the coronavirus”…

Scientists in Iceland claim they have found 40 mutations of the coronavirus, which has left the world gripped in fear.

The mutations were discovered by analysing swabs of COVID-19 patients in Iceland, where almost 600 cases have been reported so far.

Using genetic sequencing, the researchers identified how many mutations the virus had accumulated.

Those sentences should send a chill up your spine, and this discovery may help to explain why we are seeing far higher death rates in the western world than we have in Asia so far.

Meanwhile, a professor in the United Kingdom is warning that a single person that has the virus can potentially infect “up to 59,000 others”…

An intensive care specialist has described how one person with coronavirus could infect up to 59,000 others – as the virus is more than twice as infectious as flu.

Dr Hugh Montgomery, a professor of intensive care medicine at University College London, explained how the virus could be passed from one person to thousands as he called on Britons to heed advice on social distancing.

Previously, we have been told that someone can spread COVID-19 for many days before they even start exhibiting any symptoms.

That makes this the perfect “stealth virus” to spark a horrifying global pandemic.

And as I have discussed in previous articles, you don’t even have to encounter someone with the virus in order to become infected.

In fact, scientists have now discovered that this virus can linger on surfaces “for up to 17 days”…

Researchers have made the startling discovering that a form of the coronavirus can linger around for more than two weeks.

Traces of new coronavirus were found on the Diamond Princess cruise ship on surfaces in cabins where people who were infected with the virus had stayed, for up to 17 days after they had left, according to a study released Monday along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

I know that this information is hard to take.

But it is absolutely critical that we understand what we are dealing with.

Just like elsewhere, our healthcare system is about to be completely overwhelmed. On his Twitter account, a New York City emergency room doctor named Craig Spencer has described what his shifts are already like each day…

You’re notified of another really sick patient coming in. You rush over. They’re also extremely sick, vomiting. They need to be put on life support as well. You bring them back. Two patients, in rooms right next to each other, both getting a breathing tube. It’s not even 10am yet

For the rest of your shift, nearly every hour, you get paged:

Stat notification: Very sick patient, short of breath, fever. Oxygen 88%.

Stat notification: Low blood pressure, short of breath, low oxygen.

Stat notification: Low oxygen, can’t breath. Fever.

All day…

Sadly, this is what life is going to be like for emergency room doctors all across America for as long as this pandemic lasts.

And it is inevitable that a lot of those doctors will end up catching the virus themselves. In fact, it is already happening…

Healthcare workers across the United States are now testing positive for the coronavirus even as they man the front lines against the rapidly spreading pandemic.

The medical professionals who have tested positive for COVID-19 include two ER physicians at a Chicago suburban hospital, two doctors associated with Washington University, a doctor in Austin, Texas, as well as a doctor at a children’s hospital in Wisconsin.

I know that a lot of you out there are quite eager for life to return to “normal”, but that isn’t going to happen.

So far, the number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths in the United States are both ahead of even the most pessimistic early projections.

We should definitely be hopeful that the “social distancing” measures that have been put in place will help to “flatten the curve”, but even if that happens we still have a very long battle ahead of us.

In some countries that had supposedly “contained” the virus, we are already starting to see a stunning resurgence in cases as people bring the virus back in from other areas.

Expert after expert has assured us that most of the U.S. population will eventually catch COVID-19, and if it hits you really hard it will be a nightmarish ordeal that you will never forget.

Like so many others, I wish that this pandemic had not happened.

But it is here, and we have to deal with it.

According to a survey that was just conducted, 19 percent of Americans think that they might already have the virus. If you are one of those people, please get the medical help that you need, and please reach out to those around you for prayer.

So many people out there have been getting really angry, but this is a time when we need to work together and all pull in the same direction. This is truly a great challenge for this generation, and with God’s help we can get through it.

The Pace At Which The Coronavirus Is Changing Life In America Is Absolutely Breathtaking

March 27, 2020 by Michael Snyder


Fear of COVID-19 has fundamentally transformed our entire country in a matter of weeks, and as long as people are afraid of this virus life is definitely not going to return to normal. In fact, every “shelter-in-place” order in America could be lifted tomorrow and economic activity would not rebound even close to previous levels because a large percentage of the population would still be extremely hesitant to leave their own homes. As coronavirus survivors tell us stories of the hellish ordeals that they have endured, an increasing number of Americans are finally realizing how dangerous this crisis has become. If you have asthma, a history of respiratory problems or other serious underlying health conditions, I strongly recommend that you do everything in your power to avoid catching this virus. The global death toll is more than nine times larger than it was back on March 1st, and you do not want to become a statistic.

Here in the United States, we now have more confirmed cases than anywhere else in the world. If you would have told me at the beginning of this month that the U.S. would be the first nation to 100,000 confirmed cases, I would have laughed at you. And even though about half the country is currently under some sort of a “shelter-in-place” order, the virus just keeps on spreading. In fact, the number of confirmed cases in the United States has doubled in just three days…

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpassed 100,000 Friday, doubling in just three days as the pandemic accelerates and the U.S. rolls out broader testing measures.

Data from Johns Hopkins University showed the total number of coronavirus cases as 101,707 and the total number of deaths in the U.S. as 1,544.

We had better hope that the measures that have already been implemented will start to slow down this rate of growth, because otherwise every healthcare system in America will soon be completely overwhelmed.

Of course this has already happened in New York, and now other hotspots across the country are starting to become major problems.

For example, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is openly admitting that his state is on pace to become “the next New York”…

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has warned that the state ‘doesn’t have long’ to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control, as he admitted the state is on track to become ‘the next New York’.

Speaking at a press conference Friday, Edwards announced that the number of cases in Louisiana had surged in the last 24 hours, rising to 2,746 as of noon – a spike of 441 in a single day.

Sadly, it looks like we will soon be seeing similar numbers virtually everywhere.

The very first coronavirus case in the U.S. was confirmed by the CDC on January 20th. Just a little over two months later, we are in the middle of the biggest economic shutdown in U.S. history and according to one recent survey 11 percent of all Americans personally know someone that has caught the virus.

At first, a lot of Americans were mocking this pandemic, but now people are starting to understand that once you catch this virus you can go from being “perfectly healthy” to dead in just a matter of days…

A “perfectly healthy” father of six from Texas died Thursday from the coronavirus — two days after he received his positive diagnosis, a report said.

Adolph Mendez, known as TJ, was 44-years-old.

Please pray for that family, and hopefully that community will rally and provide what they need now that their father is gone.

But if hundreds of thousands of fathers start dying, who will provide for all of those mourning families?

And millions of Americans all across the country are already trying to figure out how they will provide for themselves now that they have lost their jobs.

On Thursday, we learned that more than 3.2 million workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, and unfortunately next week is going to be really bad as well. The following comes from Wolf Richter…

And it’s going to get worse. The five largest counties of the San Francisco Bay Area were the first major region in the US to go into lockdown on March 17. The State of California followed on March 20, toward the end of the unemployment-claims reporting week (through March 21), and many other states followed within days – and many of those claims were filed after this reporting week had ended.

In all of U.S. history, we have never seen anything like this.

Many experts are projecting that we will shoot past the peak unemployment rate during the last recession very rapidly, and I agree with that assessment.

In the months ahead, we are going to see things that most Americans never imagined were possible. If you can believe it, one new survey has found that 23 percent of U.S. adults say that they are no longer working as a result of this economic downturn…

Twenty-three percent said they have already lost their jobs because of the coronavirus, or that their employer was forced to close and “I no longer go to work, but I am still employed by them.”

Many economists expect the U.S. unemployment rate will surpass the 10% level that the country experienced more than a decade ago during the Great Recession. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said it may rise as high as 30%.

Of course many Americans are already losing patience and are quite eager to get back to work.

If the “shelter-in-place” orders stretch on for months, it is probably inevitable that we will see civil unrest and rioting like we are witnessing in China right now.

Unfortunately, it appears that vast sections of the country will remain shut down for the foreseeable future. On Friday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio openly acknowledged that his city will almost certainly be closed down “through May”…

New Yorkers should be prepared for the city to remain in “pause” due to coronavirus through May even as President Trump gives Americans “false hope” the country will reopen by Easter next month, Mayor de Blasio said Friday.

“We have to be ready for that and I think it’s going to spread in the country,” de Blasio said when asked if the city would be closed through May on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “This idea of Easter is, unfortunately, a false hope. It would be better for the president to be blunt with people that we’ve got a really tough battle ahead.”

I would never suggest that the decisions that our leaders are facing are going to be easy.

On the one hand, if extreme measures are not taken it is likely that millions could die.

On the other hand, shutting everything down is going to take us directly into complete economic collapse and the next Great Depression.

And actually even if they do everything right we might end up with both results anyway.

At a time like this, we need more prayer than ever, but right now churches all over America are being shut down. In fact,Virginia Governor Ralph Northam just made it a crime “for more than 10 people to gather in a church”…

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam issued an executive order on Monday that is aimed at stopping the new coronavirus — and, in the process, makes it a criminal offense to hold a church service attended by more than 10 people.

Yes, his order makes it a crime for more than 10 people to gather in a church.

But meanwhile, the abortion clinics in Virginia just keep humming along.

I think that says a lot about where we are as a society today.

Nobody should really be surprised that the time of “the perfect storm” has arrived. We have been slowly but surely committing national suicide for decades, and now the consequences of our very foolish decisions are rapidly catching up with us.

In the short-term, let us pray that this pandemic will start to subside as quickly as possible and that some sense of normalcy can soon be restored.

But if we just go back to the way that we were doing things, it really won’t matter, because the path that we were on doesn’t lead anywhere good.

West Faces “Social Bomb” As Pandemic Sparks Unrest Among Poorest

Big U.S. cities only have 'a few weeks' until social unrest and riots surface, says Red Cross president

By Zero Hedge Sunday, March 29, 2020

The next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic could be a flare-up of social unrest across major Western cities as millions have lost their jobs, economies have crashed into depressions, and the military is being called up to maintain order.

The Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warned that riots could be imminent in low-income neighborhoods as extreme wealth inequality has left households unprepared and without a cash buffer to weather the economic downturn.

As we’ve noted before, many Western households were already stretched thin before the shutdowns began, with little savings, insurmountable debts, and the lack of access to proper healthcare. Now, these folks, which many have been laid off from gig-economy and service sector jobs, have zero income and could be emotionally motivated to hit the streets and protest.

IFRC president Francesco Rocca warned on Friday during a press conference that social unrest could be imminent in Italy, reported Reuters.

“We have a lot of people who are living very marginalized, in the so-called black hole of society… In the most difficult neighborhoods of the biggest cities, I am afraid that in a few weeks, we will have social problems,” Rocca said.

“This is a social bomb that can explode at any moment, because they don’t have any way to have an income,” he said, whose agency deploys volunteers across Europe, including in Italy, Spain, and France.

He warned that the largest Western cities have only a ‘few weeks’ before social unrest is seen.

As for the US, President Trump has been deploying National Guard units across the country to fight the virus, or a perfect cover to prepare for Martial law-style shutdowns across some areas where the virus is hard-hitting.

President Trump, on Saturday afternoon, said he is considering a quarantine in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area, which would likely be enforced by the military to some degree.

We have noted that National Guard armored vehicles have already been spotted across the country and have suggested that troops are being positioned around major US metros to maintain order if social unrest was seen in low-income neighborhoods.

The Western world is on the brink of turmoil. The dominos are already falling with crashing economies in Europe and the US, triggering massive job losses that could soon lead to the unraveling of social fabric.

Governments offering universal basic income as a solution to keep their citizens content won’t work this time. The West is headed for a period of instability, not just economically, but socially.

And now it all makes sense why Americans are rushing to gun stores…

#Gun stores are considered a non-essential business in #LA County,however, several shops in the area have remained open&are seeing more first-time buyers. Outside a #gunstore in Burbank,Calif.,several gun buyers say they are preparing for“uncertain times.” pic.twitter.com/OgCE1j15aQ

— Jeremy Song (@tezuma75) March 25, 2020

Here’s the line to buy guns at my local gun store the day after CA went on stay at home orders. pic.twitter.com/Vh9WesUjoz

— Some Rando (@realsomerando) March 25, 2020

Gun sales are on the rise and people are stocking up. @FeliciaLawrence brings us along as she visits a gun store pic.twitter.com/XCzLDJt9op

— The Jam (@TheJamTVShow) March 24, 2020

@JohnCarneyDE Why are the gun stores still open? There is a long line of people at the gun store on north route 13 near the 13/40 split. pic.twitter.com/uTI9UGkceH

— 2CHÉ (@shaiandskai) March 21, 2020

Long lines outside a Pasadena gun store. (This is maybe 1/4 of the line, which stretched around the corner.) Folks at the pet shop where I was said it had been like that for a week, with the line forming around 5:30 a.m. pic.twitter.com/DjX7eVbuc1

— Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll) March 21, 2020

The death toll in China may be in the tens of thousands.



Onward and upward,
airforce

As The U.S. Economy Collapses, Authorities Warn That The Unthinkable May Soon Become Reality
It will be very interesting to watch how the American people respond to this nightmare


By Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse Wednesday, April 01, 2020

With each passing day, it seems like the forecasts for the rest of 2020 are just getting worse.

Initially, most of the “economic experts” on television were warning that the coronavirus pandemic may push our country into a recession, but now we are being warned that we could soon see economic numbers that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And initially we were told that the death toll in the United States would probably not be that high, but now that the death toll has already surpassed the number of Americans that died on 9/11 the message has changed.

Short on time, but still want to stay informed? The War Room Highlights covers clips from all 3 hours of the broadcast!

At this point, our national officials are warning us that up to 240,000 Americans could die “by the end of the year”…

Members of President Donald Trump’s administration laid out dire estimates Tuesday to underscore the potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, a grim prediction they said was at the center of the president’s decision to extend strict social distancing guidelines through the end of April.

Federal public health officials said that between 100,000 and 240,000 could succumb to the virus by the end of the year – making it one of the nation’s worst public health crises – said Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator.

As I write this article, the U.S. death toll is closing in on the 4,000 mark.

That means that the number of dead bodies in the U.S. could get almost 60 times higher by the end of 2020.

If that projection is anywhere close to accurate, do you think that there is any possibility that America will “reopen for business” any time soon?

This is a national crisis unlike anything that any of us have ever experienced before, and we all need to work together to try to defeat this virus.

Fortunately, our national health authorities are finally realizing that if everyone was wearing masks that it may greatly reduce the spread of COVID-19. On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that the coronavirus task force is “seriously considering” asking all Americans to wear masks when they are out in public…

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, revealed on Tuesday that the White House coronavirus task force is seriously considering guidance that Americans wear masks to help thwart the rapid spread of COVID-19.

But the country’s top infectious disease expert also acknowledged that such a directive has been complicated by the nationwide dearth of personal protective equipment.

Of course this would represent a 100 percent reversal from earlier this year when our national health leaders and the mainstream media were openly discouraging everyone from wearing masks.

If everyone would have been wearing masks from the beginning, we could have saved a lot of lives, but at least they are finally realizing their mistake.

Yes, having everyone wear a mask would raise the level of fear among the general public, but it would also be a big step in getting this pandemic under control.

Every day we hesitate, the longer this pandemic is likely to persist, and one of China’s top health officials says that the fact that we have waited this long to make a move is a “big mistake”…

A prominent public health leader in China also argues for widespread use of masks in public. The director general of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, George Gao, told Science that the U.S. and Europe are making a “big mistake” with people not wearing masks during this pandemic. Specifically, he said, mask use helps tamp down the risk presented by people who may be infected but aren’t yet showing symptoms.

If those people wear masks, “it can prevent droplets that carry the virus from escaping and infecting others,” Gao told Science.

Without a doubt, wearing masks is inconvenient and they look awkward.

But if everyone is doing it nobody will stand out, and as President Trump has noted, it will hopefully only be “for a short period of time”…

“We are not going to be wearing masks forever, but it could be for a short period of time after we get back into gear. I could see something like that happening for a period of time,” President Trump said during Monday’s White House briefing.

A couple of months ago, it would have been crazy to suggest that most people in America would be wearing masks by the middle of 2020 because of a horrible pandemic, but now we are on the verge of that actually happening.

Of course the big problem with asking everyone to wear masks is that we still have a national shortage. The following comes from Tucker Carlson…

From the beginning of the Chinese coronavirus epidemic, mask shortages have been a major problem. Some people hoarded hundreds or thousands of them. Manufacturers couldn’t keep up.

In some cases, apparently, they were sent overseas. The foreign countries who we outsourced our factories to prudently decided to keep the masks for themselves. Nationalism is real in a crisis. And of course, here in the United States, our own government didn’t have nearly enough mass stockpiled to cope with what has happened.

And even though this mask shortage has now been glaringly apparent for many weeks, the problem still has not been fixed.

In fact, mask shortages are still being reported all over the nation…

But there is still a big concern about mask shortages in the United States. A survey released Friday from the U.S. Conference of Mayors finds that about 92% of 213 cities did not have an adequate supply of face masks for first responders and medical personnel.

At this point, experts emphasize that the general public needs to leave the supply of N95 medical masks to health care workers who are at risk every day when they go to work.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy continues to collapse at a speed that is absolutely breathtaking.

U.S. stocks just closed out their worst first quarter ever. During the months of January, February and March, an all-time record 19.6 trillion dollars of stock market wealth was wiped out, and many believe that the worst is still yet to come.

Currently, approximately 75 percent of the country is under some sort of a “shelter-in-place order” and this has brought economic activity to a crashing halt. The following is how CNN is describing the current state of the U.S. economy…

The economy is cratering deeper than we have seen in our lifetimes. Layoffs are coming so quickly, the state unemployment offices can’t keep up. Banks are flooded with calls about upcoming mortgage and loan payments. Downtowns are deserted, malls are closed, bars are empty, and airplanes are grounded.

When even CNN starts sounding like The Economic Collapse Blog, then you know that things have gotten really, really bad.

All Across America, retailers are boarding up stores, and Bloomberg is reporting that some areas of the nation are seeing a “barter economy” start to emerge…

Barter, the trade system prevalent in the Middle Ages, is back in the time of coronavirus pandemic, with a modern twist. Social networks Facebook and Nextdoor are flooded with posts from neighbors and friends seeking to swap eggs for toilet paper. Small and midsized businesses, whose cash trade has dried up from the economic fallout of shelter-in-place orders, are turning to online barter exchanges.

It is crazy how much things have changed in just a matter of weeks.

At the beginning of the year the mainstream media was full of reports about how well the economy was doing, but now Goldman Sachs is projecting that the U.S. economy will shrink at an annualized rate of 34 percent in the second quarter…

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects the U.S. economy to experience a far deeper slump than previously anticipated as the coronavirus pandemic hammers businesses, causing a wave of mass unemployment.

The world’s largest economy will shrink an annualized 34% in the second quarter, compared with an earlier estimate of 24%, economists led by Jan Hatzius wrote in a report. Unemployment will soar to 15% by mid-year, up from a previous forecast of 9%, they wrote.

Of course many industries will see a decline far greater than 34 percent during the second quarter.

At this point, we are being told that there are “basically no U.S. auto sales right now”…

The coronavirus lockdowns across the nation will also put a damper on April, which is traditionally a good month for auto sales. Ford is all but shutting down and names like Fiat and GM are expected to release extremely weak numbers later this week.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas put it simply: “There are basically no U.S. auto sales right now. Investors have fully embraced the reality that the U.S. auto industry may be shut down for one or two full months. We’re now being asked to run scenarios of six-month or nine-month shutdowns.”

Have you seen the new car commercials where they are promising to take care of your car payments if you lose your job because of the coronavirus?

Well, I hope that they have really big pockets, because millions of Americans are losing their jobs right now.

And just like we have seen during every other economic downturn, some Americans will respond to economic misfortune by taking their own lives…

Wilson police say a man shot his longtime girlfriend and killed himself because he was extremely upset about the coronavirus pandemic and losing his job. Police say 38-year-old Roderick Bliss IV shot his longtime girlfriend in the back before turning the gun on himself.

Police say officers responded to a resident on North 17th Street in Wilson Borough for shots fired and found Bliss unresponsive and not breathing. A semi-automatic pistol was near his body.

This should never happen, and we need to try to get people to understand that there is always hope.

No matter how bad things get, God can take the broken pieces of your life and turn them into a beautiful thing. There is always hope if you know Jesus, and this is a time when we should all be sharing the message of the cross with as many people as we possibly can.

Right now things look really bleak to most people, and we are seeing things that we have never seen before.

For example, the top of the Empire State Building has been made to look like a “spinning” red siren light…

The Empire State Building debuted what appeared to be a spinning red ‘siren’ light atop the iconic structure in what many observers saw as a dystopian sign of the times.

Scientist Rita J. King explained that the light was not actually spinning but was made to look that way.

The @EmpireStateBldg reminding us that the city is in the middle of an emergency. pic.twitter.com/50TjEjOogN

— Rita J. King (@RitaJKing) March 31, 2020

So many people are going to fall into depression and despair in the weeks ahead, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

But it is critical to remember that God knew about all of this in advance, He is in control, and He has a plan to bring us through this.

It is during times of great crisis that we find out who we really are.

The past several weeks have been very challenging, and President Trump is warning that we are heading into “a hell of a bad two weeks”…

President Donald Trump prepared Americans for a coming surge in coronavirus cases, calling COVID-19 a plague and saying the U.S. is facing a “very, very painful two weeks.”

“This could be a hell of a bad two weeks. This is going to be a very bad two, and maybe three weeks. This is going to be three weeks like we’ve never seen before,” Trump said at a White House press conference Tuesday. White House officials are projecting between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in the U.S. with coronavirus fatalities peaking over the next two weeks. “When you look at night, the kind of death that has been caused by this invisible enemy, it’s incredible.”

It will be very interesting to watch how the American people respond to this nightmare.

Will we respond with humility and brokenness, or will we stubbornly remain on the same path that we were going down before this pandemic started?

This is one of the most critical junctures in our history, and nothing will be the same from this point forward.