Coronavirus epidemic news

[Richard Stanley]

What I'm getting at is that one SOME knew of the coronavirus preparations, and yet, that these people could not control the coronavirus outcome with certainty - apart from the release in Wuhan.

I'm not so sure that they did not have the coronavirus outcome fairly well 'gamed out'. This considering that Trump and NY Gov. Cuomo did just about everything wrong that they could have, and that the virus has all of the attributes that the 'Gain-of-Fucktion' researchers were targeting in their coronavirus research. They likely even tested this on humans beforehand, and I'm betting there is indeed a 'miracle' vaccine just waiting to dramatically come to the rescue. And, we'll all have to be documented a 'patriotically' receiving said vaccine, .... as a precedent for the future.

There is already the claim that one vaccine candidate is working well with monkeys. This can only be the case, as with some of the others, that such was well in the pipeline, and I'm guessing all this is for show, because it's already existing.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Here is the article, excerpted below, that Whitney Webb and Jimmy Dore were referencing:

WASHINGTON DC (The Last American Vagabond) — Last year, a U.S. government body dedicated to examining how artificial intelligence can “address the national security and defense needs of the United States” discussed in detail the “structural” changes that the American economy and society must undergo in order to ensure a technological advantage over China, according to a recent document acquired through an FOIA request. This document suggests that the U.S. follow China’s lead and even surpass them in many aspects related to AI-driven technologies, particularly their use of mass surveillance. This perspective clearly clashes with the public rhetoric of prominent U.S. government officials and politicians on China, who have labeled the Chinese government’s technology investments and export of its surveillance systems and other technologies as a major “threat” to Americans’ “way of life.”​

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In addition, many of the steps for the implementation of such a program in the U.S., as laid out in this newly available document, are currently being promoted and implemented as part of the government’s response to the current coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. This likely due to the fact that many members of this same body have considerable overlap with the taskforces and advisors currently guiding the government’s plans to “re-open the economy” and efforts to use technology to respond to the current crisis.​

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The FOIA document, obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), was produced by a little-known U.S. government organization called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). It was created by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its official purpose is “to consider the methods and means necessary to advance the development of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and associated technologies to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.”​

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The NSCAI is a key part of the government’s response to what is often referred to as the coming “fourth industrial revolution,” which has been described as “a revolution characterized by discontinuous technological development in areas like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, fifth-generation telecommunications networking (5G), nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and quantum computing.”​

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However, their main focus is ensuring that “the United States … maintain a technological advantage in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other associated technologies related to national security and defense.” The vice-chair of NSCAI, Robert Work – former Deputy Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the hawkish Center for a New American Security (CNAS), described the commission’s purpose as determining “how the U.S. national security apparatus should approach artificial intelligence, including a focus on how the government can work with industry to compete with China’s ‘civil-military fusion’ concept.” ...​

https://www.mintpressnews.com/national-security-state-using-coronavirus-push-artificial-intelligence-driven-mass-surveillance/266820/​

As Jimmy Dore pondered in the interview, the command and control economy being pointed to is more than ironic, and yes, it smacks of functional fascism, at least.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Posting some miscellaneous coronavirus news today.

It's been frequently noted that covid-19 is far more likely to be fatal for the elderly or those with serious pre-existing conditions. This has led to some debate about whether these fatalities should be chalked up to the coronavirus, or whether they should be attributed to something else.

Here's a study that attempts to count the number of years of life lost, based on the life expectancy of the victims, adjusted for their pre-existing conditions. The conclusion is that the average years of life lost per fatality is about 12 years, based on data from Italy.

https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75

COVID-19 – exploring the implications of long-term condition type and extent of multimorbidity on years of life lost: a modelling study​

Based on this sort of analysis, we could also look at years of life lost to "deaths of despair". According to various analysis quoted in an article at Childrens' Health Defense, each 1% increase in unemployment sustained over a period of 5 years, results in approximately 58,000 additional deaths. Unemployment is associated with an increase in all-cause mortality of 63%, including increases in suicides, cardiovascular events, homicides, and alcohol related deaths. With unemployment expected to reach 32% or 47 million newly unemployed soon, the "deaths of despair" will be on the increase. With many of these fatalities among much younger people, the average years life lost per fatality will be much greater. Not to dismiss the deaths of the ill and elderly, but the deaths of these younger people deserve to be weighted more heavily. A teenage suicide could cost 70 years of life lost.

On another topic: it's well known that prior to covid-19, there were at least four distinct varieties of the family of coronaviruses circulating in the human population. Those coronaviruses generally produced mild to moderate cold or flu symptoms. It was rarely even worth the trouble to diagnose whether a particular case of cold or flu was caused by a rhinovirus, influenza virus or coronavirus.

So now there's some evidence of cross-immunity against covid-19 caused by exposure to other human coronaviruses. This might be part of the reason why outbreaks of the novel coronavirus almost always spare a significant percentage of the group that was heavily exposed.

https://www.genengnews.com/news/good-news-for-covid-19-vaccine-immune-system-shows-robust-response-to-sars-cov-2/

The teams also looked at the T-cell response in blood samples that had been collected between 2015 and 2018, before SARS-CoV-2 started circulating. They detected SARS-CoV-2-reactive CD4+ T cells in ~50% of unexposed individuals. But everybody has almost certainly seen at least three of the four common cold coronaviruses, which could explain the observed crossreactivity.​

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Any potential for crossreactive immunity from other coronaviruses has been predicted by epidemiologists to have significant implications for the pandemic going forward. Crossreactive T cells are also relevant for vaccine development, as cross-reactive immunity could influence responsiveness to candidate vaccines.​

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Whether this immunity is relevant in influencing clinical outcomes is unknown, tweeted Crotty, but it is tempting to speculate that the crossreactive CD4+ T cells may be of value in protective immunity, based on SARS and flu data.​

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“Given the severity of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, any degree of cross-reactive coronavirus immunity could have a very substantial impact on the overall course of the pandemic and is a key detail to consider for epidemiologists as they try to scope out how severely COVID-19 will affect communities in the coming months,” said Crotty. It may explain why some people or geographical locations are hit harder by COVID-19.​

Last up, and I'm posting here instead of the MMS thread because this seems to be actual clinical evidence. Dr. Kalcker reports that Chlorine Dioxide has cured approx. 100 patients in Ecuador:

https://lbry.tv/@Kalcker:7/100-Recovered-Aememi-1:7

 

[Jerry Russell]

Really good reasoning by Bill Gates !
Thumbs up for him !

I've been thinking about Suchender, and this remark of his. Suchender was referring to a video in which Gates explained that he funded a simulation of a pandemic, and how it would spread throughout the world in a matter of months through modern transportation. So, his pandemic simulation must have specified the properties of the virus involved, and the degree of virulent transmissibility that would be necessary. And, a degree of distance from other pathogens, so that the world population would have only limited cross-immunity.

New flu bugs, and new coronaviruses, are arising by mutation and evolution on a regular basis. Yet there hasn't been a major pandemic since 1918, and that one arguably might only have happened because of desperate circumstances caused by WWII.

So, now that it's becoming increasingly clear that the novel coronavirus did indeed emerge from a lab: it seems reasonable to ask, what sort of parameters was the germ designed to meet, if any? It seems that not just any virus could accomplish what SARS-cov2 has done, in terms of infecting the world.

 

[Richard Stanley]

I think this question has been addressed well on other sites, but I'll crudely give an attempt:

For one, the operating temperature range of the virus was likely changed. Two, the ACE2 receptor homology was modified. And three, whatever controls the incubation period (the furin protein?). More?

JC was commenting the other day about the convenient timing of the Johns Hopkins web site, in how it came online just in time to provide us with such great info on tracking the 'long predicted' pandemic. This was in correlation to the messaging war being waged by Peter Daszak that his cut-out funding efforts could not possibly be connected to the creation of the virus, but rather that thankfully he and his associates have been on guard for us against just such a thing ... and so unfortunate that his funding got cut. What timing ... again?

 

[Richard Stanley]

JC reports on the Alina Chan MIT paper on Rate of Change, which reveals that the Covid19 virus was already mutationally stable when it first became noticed. This should not be the case if it jumped zoonotically out of the Wuhan wet market. The argument is that a natural virus will first undergo a known rate of change where unoptimal mutations are deselected, thus settling into a more stable regime as virus history seems to show.

Such would be compatible with the claims that the virus is a product of "rate of change" research and was sitting on the shelf, waiting to be deployed, likely into the World Military Games held in Wuhan in December.

 

[Ruby Gray]

Posting some miscellaneous coronavirus news today.

It's been frequently noted that covid-19 is far more likely to be fatal for the elderly or those with serious pre-existing conditions. This has led to some debate about whether these fatalities should be chalked up to the coronavirus, or whether they should be attributed to something else.

It's true that mainly the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions make up the COVID-19 fatalities.
But there are also many, many healthy medical workers who have been killed by the virus in various countries.
So I think it safe to say that constant close proximity to the virus, infection overload and the stress of overwork, are factors which favour the virus's lethality.

Let us not forget that however inaccurate the coronavirus death stats may actually be, whether over-reported due to erring on the side of caution on death certificates, or under-reported due to only counting positively tested, institutionalised patients, what we are actually counting is excess mortalities.

That is, the number of deaths per month over and above the average for whatever time of year over many years.

So in New York, last I read, the excess mortality is at least 6 times the expected mortality for the same timeframe over recent years.

Something serious is required to skew the numbers so dramatically, and in the current situation, it really can only be COVID-19!

Keep drinking the CDS!

 

[Jerry Russell]

Something serious is required to skew the numbers so dramatically, and in the current situation, it really can only be COVID-19!

I agree that there's no doubt that something very serious is going down. It's also possible that there are some deaths caused by the lockdown itself: people dying of other medical conditions that couldn't make it to the emergency room, people starving because of extended unemployment (especially the most vulnerable in "third world" victims of colonialism), suicides, homicides. But, hard to believe that this could account for much, in such a relatively short time frame. Guesswork, really.

 

[Richard Stanley]

The following video link was sent to me by a friend, of whom I had just explained the Judy Mikovits situation because she had asked me about it after being sent a video interview of her.

I find this doctor to be making very reasonable arguments covering a gamut of Covid19 issues, and he mentions several aspects that appear to be being made political (such as HCQ and overzealous lockdowns) and hopes that they aren't really politically motivated. But, of course, politicization with these is rampant. The question for me is whether or not the politicization is merely to mask the deeper globalist agenda(s), of which Double Agent Orange is a Deep State Stooge.

Note that this video has been up for almost a week and has garnered about 2.5 million views. YouTube has an automated censorship function and other health professionals have been complaining that their technical discussions have been getting pulled down willy-nilly, with getting letters saying their videos are "dangerous". Dr. Barke's video has been up for a week with all these views, so are we to believe that YouTube's censorship algorithm is running on a 1980's IBM PC or an Apple II? Or, are they letting counter-narratives (true or not) sit out there just long enough to stew before pulling them and gain even more notoriety?

Dr. Barke mentions that immediately after Trump mentioned HCQ that his phone blew up with patients asking about it. To me, this is like the pope back in the 1800's announcing that secret societies like the Freemasons are evil. This became perhaps the best recruitment tool the Freemasons ever had. And, announcing to the electorate that there is a cheap and safe antiviral out there, .... but you can't easily get it because my government funded science whores (and the MSM and the kneejerk social media buffoons) are saying the opposite, is further solidifying the Trump / antiTrump dialectic and distrust in government across the board.

As all this is going on, the opponent of Trump, Sleepy Joe, is telling black people that they aren't black. But anyone telling them to get extra Vitamin D, because they are black, is getting yanked off of YouTube.

And yes, I agree that we should start hosting videos here. I recently tried to navigate Bitchute and it seems way too cluttered with crap in order to find something good. YouTube is bad enough now in this regard.

 

[Jerry Russell]

YouTube has an automated censorship function and other health professionals have been complaining that their technical discussions have been getting pulled down willy-nilly, with getting letters saying their videos are "dangerous". Dr. Barke's video has been up for a week with all these views, so are we to believe that YouTube's censorship algorithm is running on a 1980's IBM PC or an Apple II? Or, are they letting counter-narratives (true or not) sit out there just long enough to stew before pulling them and gain even more notoriety?

While they might have some automated systems, it's hard for me to believe they would be sophisticated enough to detect the "misinformation" in this video. In general, it seems like it takes anywhere from a few days to weeks before videos get deleted. If it was mostly done by an AI robot, I don't see any reason why the videos couldn't be screened more or less at the time they're uploaded.

From time to time, I've seen announcements that one or another of the social media companies is hiring armies of staffers as content monitor/censors. I don't specifically recall such announcements regarding YouTube, but the wack-a-mole aspect leads me to believe that they probably are relying on human screening for the most part.

YouTube has just recently adopted a "covid-19 medical misinformation policy" to supplement their general terms of service. The headline criteria is that they don't allow content that contradicts the WHO or local health authorities' guidance on treatment, prevention, diagnosis or transmission. So that's pretty broad, and they also assume that the WHO and (all?) local health authorities are speaking with one voice. Then it goes on to give specific examples that are much narrower in scope. So I can imagine that if human reviewers are involved in trying to evaluate these guidelines, ther are going to be a wide variety of opinions, and there's going to be some capriciousness in applying the rules.

Besides outright censorship, YouTube has other levels of interference in their toolkit. Some videos get demonetized. Others get shown with banners underneath, providing links to WHO information. Chris Martenson's videos usually get these banners, and he's also been complaining that his subscribers get randomly unsubscribed. And, the algorithms for choosing recommendations and "up next" videos, and for ordering search results, are also obviously open to various manipulations.

It's certainly bizarre and capricious that Ben Truang and MedCram have had their HCQ videos taken down, while Chris Martenson's videos have never been removed. It's possible that this is a secret clue that Martenson is "spooky". But it seems more likely to me, that YouTube has a bunch of employees working on this, and they don't all apply the same standards.

At any rate, the censorship is starting to have some serious costs for YouTube. They just lost one of their biggest draws, Joe Rogan, to Spotify. Alex Jones says that Rogan called him on the phone to say that it's because Rogan was fed up that YouTube wanted to control his MD interviews. Ironically, Jones pulled down his video about this at InfoWars after it appeared there for only a few hours, so now it's only available on YouTube. And I kept a copy, so I can upload it here in case it disappears. "Joe Rogan Declares War on YouTube Censors."

 

[Jerry Russell]

As a result of a new study published in the Lancet, Fauci has officially pronounced that hydroxychloroquine for covid is dead in the water. And the WHO has suspended all its further clinical trials.

But, Didier Raoult and Chris Martenson say that either some strange and very suspect data manipulation has taken place, or else the data in the study is fake. See yesterday's Martenson video at 15:46.

From Martenson's site, one reader linked to an anonymous analysis arguing strongly for the "Fake Data" option.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1264032084944814082.html

The study says that they received data from 600 hospitals up to mid-April, and it was published end-May.​

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This is impossible. If you have ever collected clinical research data you will know how impossible it is. ...​

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Anyway, moving on from the fact that it is absolutely impossible to get all this data from different countries (or even your own) reliably and quickly, then we have the data itself. ....​

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[In the paper, an appendix gives] a breakdown of the data and uses something called "propensity matching". This is a method of matching up similar patients. ​

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So for instance you want to get the same proportions of black/white patients in each group. Same for BMI, smoking, etc ​

Each time you do this for each factor you reduce the pool of patients to compare. So to get the same number of black, non-smoking, BMI 25, hypertensive people in each group is really tough (5 factors)​

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This group did it with 23 factors, all matched up "perfectly".​

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This is pretty much statistically impossible, and they are claiming that they got this matching in 7000 patients out of a pool of 96000 patients for which they received high quality information from 671 hospitals.​

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Nope. Sorry, the data is too "clean".​

 

[Richard Stanley]

Yes, it seems there is a complete capitulation of our institutions to this nonsense, the epitome of politicize science in pursuit of another agenda. France has now disallowed use of HCQ, while interestingly England has launched a study. But is this yet another one designed to fail, the coup de grace?

Fortunately Trump and QAnon will save us.

May be a good time to investigate the Wim Hof methods of building one's immune system.

 

[Jerry Russell]

The Census Bureau conducted a quick survey to assess America's status under covid. The response rate was amazingly poor: 42,000 opted to participate in the survey, out of 1 million contacted. And those that answered, were in a very bad mood.

A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression​

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...Researchers have projected that without intervention, the country is poised to experience a rise in suicides, substance abuse and overdose deaths.​

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"It's understandable given what's happening. It would be strange if you didn't feel anxious and depressed," Oquendo said. "This virus is not like a hurricane or earthquake or even terrorist attack. It's not something you can see or touch, and yet the fear of it is everywhere."...​

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"If you measure a problem, presumably it's because you want to do something about it," said Oquendo, former president of the American Psychiatric Association.​

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Doctors don't diagnose patients with cancer, for instance, only to send them on their way, she said. "Now that the government knows how widely people are suffering, the question is what are they going to do about it."​

 

[Richard Stanley]

The Rising's Krystal Ball discusses MSNBC and CNN hiding such as Gov. Andrew Cuomo's complicity it accelerating deaths in nursing homes by relieving the operators of liability for taking sick patients back from the hospitals too soon. Instead, the city or state could have contracted with empty hotels and such for temporary space. Instead Cuomo, another corporate lackey, is constantly being touted a hero, possibly as an alternative to Sleep Corporate Joe. CNN even allowing the Cuomo brothers to ham it up repeatedly in the face of the pandemic ... all while complaining about Agent Orange's degenerate behaviors.

Other bizarre actions in NYC included the cramming of more people into subway cars by reducing the number of daily runs, when the opposite would have allowed better distancing.

 

[Jerry Russell]

Yes, it seems there is a complete capitulation of our institutions to this nonsense,

Now that the above-mentioned Lancet study has been officially retracted by its authors who couldn't get access to the data, we have the sordid spectacle of Lancet editor Richard Horton begging for mercy on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1268660750618329089

No consequences?? In another tweet, Horton is reminded of his famous quote:

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.​

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Asked if anything has changed in the five years since he wrote that, Horton answered: "Not really".

To further underscore the point, and to clarify where the "flagrant conflicts of interest" are coming from, we have this YouTube video which has somehow survived in spite of violating their covid-19 policy:

May 24, 2020: Philippe Douste-Blazy, Cardiology MD, Former France Health Minister and 2017 candidate for Director at WHO, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, reveals that in a recent 2020 Chattam House closed door meeting, both the editors of the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine stated their concerns about the criminal pressures of BigPharma on their publications. Things are so bad that it is not science any longer. ​

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What are the consequences of this capitulation to "criminal pressure"?? To begin with, we are going to have to admit that the medical culture of the West has utterly failed. The Chinese told us back in February, that chloroquine is an effective treatment for coronavirus. We are going to have to just abandon all our NIH (Not Invented Here) pride, and turn our attention eastward.

 

[Jerry Russell]

The WSWS reports that coronavirus is making a comeback, with 21 states showing "a sharp rise in infections, hospitalizations and death." Their story emphasizes that many of the new cases are related to workplace outbreaks, such as at newly reopened auto factories. With all the layoffs and the implosion of the economy, I don't understand who's going to be buying all those new cars anyhow.

Here in Oregon, the situation is looking especially grim at first glance, although it's possible that the increased rate of new cases is at least partly a result of better contact tracing and testing.



The data is compiled in a dynamically updated graph maintained by Oregon Live.

I still don't want to catch this coronavirus if I can avoid it. One reason being, that it's far from obvious whether its victims ever truly recover. A survey of members of a support group for survivors uncovered some bad news.

https://nltimes.nl/2020/06/12/shocking-nearly-recovered-covid-19-health-issues-months-later

Many recovered coronavirus patients who did not need to be hospitalized are still facing serious health problems months later, according to a study commissioned by the Longfonds. While 94 percent say they do not feel as healthy as they did before the viral infection, some 60 percent of this group said they still have breathing symptoms which make it difficult to take a walk, and nearly half are unable to exercise, Longfonds director Michael Rutgers said in a statement. "We find this really shocking."​

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The Longfonds, treatment center CIRO, and Maastricht University surveyed 1,600 people who reported they had symptoms after recovering from the coronavirus. Rutgers said it was the first time that these patients have really come into the picture, as most were never treated in medical centers. Longfonds and CIRO said 91 percent of respondents were not hospitalized, and 43 percent were never formally tested for Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by this SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.​

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These recovered patients told researchers that they still suffer from symptoms like tightness in the chest, fatigue, headaches, or shortness of breath almost three months after recovering. 85 percent of participants said they were in good health before getting the coronavirus. Only six percent said that their health is back to what it was before their infection. The average age of those surveyed was 53.​

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[Richard Stanley]

What is the timing in relationship to the protests starting after George Floyd's 'provocative' murder?

 

[Jerry Russell]

What is the timing in relationship to the protests starting after George Floyd's 'provocative' murder?

In Oregon, various restrictions on businesses, meetings and social distancing were lifted on May 15. The uptick in new cases started 10 days later, which is just about exactly what you'd expect. It's hard to say whether the protests on and after May 31 resulted in any additional acceleration.

USA Today did some independent research and concluded that the protests were not correlated to the coronavirus surge on a nationwide basis. I normally wouldn't consider USA Today as my go-to source for epidemiological research, but at this point (sadly) they have much more credibility that Lancet, NEJM or JAMA. And furthermore, this is consistent with other sources indicating that outdoor events usually aren't associated with major outbreaks. So, FWIW, here's what USA Today has to say:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/06/19/so-far-george-floyd-protests-not-behind-surges-coronavirus/3226033001/

The United States has seen new cases climb from about 21,000 a day the last week of May to nearly 23,000 a day this week. Positive tests and, in some places, hospitalizations have spiked, too, leading many to wonder if a change in behavior caused outbreaks in states such as California, Arizona and Florida.​

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But neither protests or more people leaving home explain the surge of new COVID-19 cases, a USA TODAY analysis of counties with at least 100 cases has found. Residents of counties with growth of 25% or more over the previous two weeks left their homes at the same rate as people in counties without a surge of new infections, according to cell phone location data compiled by the company SafeGraph.​

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And large protests were as common in counties without outbreaks as in others – although those events could have seeded the virus broadly, and could still lead to outbreaks.​

 

[Seeker]

The WSWS reports that coronavirus is making a comeback,

What do you make of the C. J. Hopkins take on the coronavirus: https://consentfactory.org/2020/05/04/virus-of-mass-destruction/

 

[Jerry Russell]

What do you make of the C. J. Hopkins take

I suppose I should start with where we agree: "...the fact that what we are dealing with is a virus that, yes, is clearly deadly to the old and those with medical conditions, but that is just as clearly not a deadly threat to the majority of the human species."

Now, inasmuch as I'm one of those old people, that's all I need to know when I say I personally don't want to catch it. And it's really no sacrifice at all for me to hunker down at the ranch, which is what I'm continuing to do.

While I agree with the statement that the coronavirus is "not a deadly threat to the majority", that doesn't mean it's totally not a threat. Because I believe it is indeed a lab concocted superbug, and I've seen enough evidence to feel justified in my belief that it can obliterate the lungs, and liquidate all the other major organs, causing possibly chronic illness even for some randomly unfortunate younger victims. So the desire to "cower" doesn't strike me as completely irrational, even for younger folks.

Given the facts about the virus, a rational approach would've been to attempt to contain it using contact tracing, selective quarantining, masks and other public health measures, treat with Raoult or Zelenko protocol, and to allow individuals to make their own choices about the risk levels they're comfortable with. The extent of shut-down of the economy was unnecessary overkill, which public officials turned to in a panic after wasting weeks of time in denial mode.

The draconian "new normal" dystopia that Hopkins described, has now been superseded if not almost totally forgotten. The new "new normal" is that we're arming ourselves to the teeth for the coming civil war. For most people, the virus was last month's problem. Now, it's just another one of those things like death and taxes that you can't do anything about.

Except for those of us who are too old for looting, rioting and armed struggle. For me, what's going on out there is just one more reason to top off my prepper stash and plan to stay home.