COVID Corruption News Articles

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In Wisconsin and Ohio, farmers are dumping thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits. An Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions. And in South Florida, a region that supplies much of the Eastern half of the United States with produce, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil. Many of the nation’s largest farms ... are being forced to destroy tens of millions of pounds of fresh food that they can no longer sell. The closing of restaurants, hotels and schools has left some farmers with no buyers for more than half their crops. And even as retailers see spikes in food sales to Americans who are now eating nearly every meal at home, the increases are not enough to absorb all of the perishable food that was planted weeks ago and intended for schools and businesses. The amount of waste is staggering. The nation’s largest dairy cooperative, Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7 million gallons of milk each day. A single chicken processor is smashing 750,000 unhatched eggs every week. Many farmers say they have donated part of the surplus to food banks. But there is only so much perishable food that charities ... can absorb. And the costs of harvesting, processing and then transporting produce and milk to food banks or other areas of need would put further financial strain on farms that have seen half their paying customers disappear.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption and the coronavirus pandemic from reliable major media sources.

The Netherlands has tried to adopt an "intelligent lockdown", but the infection is spreading rapidly and it has one of the world's highest mortality rates from the pandemic. Having shunned the stricter measures of neighbouring states the government has pursued an "intelligent" or "targeted" lockdown. It wants to cushion the social, economic and psychological costs of social isolation and make the eventual return to normality more manageable. [The] local florist, ironmonger, delicatessen, bakery and toy store are still serving customers. Posters on the door and sticky tape on the floor encourage people to give each other space. Only those businesses that require touching, like hairdressers, beauticians and red light brothels, have been forced to cease trading. Schools, nurseries and universities are closed. Bars, restaurants and cannabis cafes are shut, although they seem to be doing a roaring trade in takeaways. "We think we're cool-headed," explained Dr Louise van Schaik of the Clingendael Institute of International Relations. "We don't want to overreact, to lock up everybody in their houses." People have been advised to stay at home, but you can go out if you are unable to work from home ... as long as you maintain 1.5m (5ft) social distance. It helps that the Dutch appear to be broadly compliant. One survey suggested 99% of people kept their distance. Dutch public health agency RIVM has launched a study to see how far antibodies created when people are exposed remain effective in preventing re-infection. "It's kind of like creating your own internal vaccine, by being exposed to it and then letting your body generate those antibodies naturally," Prof Aura Timen from the RIVM told the BBC.

Note: On 3/28, the Netherlands had over six times as many deaths as California with 639 compared to California's 104. Yet 15 days later (4/12), California had risen 608% to 633, while the Netherlands has gone up only 428% to 2,737. This is quite interesting considering that California has been in lockdown since 3/19.  You can verify this by going to this link  of archived statistics on the virus and clicking on the dates in question. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

In Hungary, the prime minister can now rule by decree. In Britain, ministers have what a critic called “eye-watering” power to detain people and close borders. Israel’s prime minister has shut down courts and begun an intrusive surveillance of citizens. Chile has sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters. Bolivia has postponed elections. As the coronavirus pandemic brings the world to a juddering halt and anxious citizens demand action, leaders across the globe are invoking executive powers and seizing virtually dictatorial authority with scant resistance. Critics say some governments are using the public health crisis as cover to seize new powers that have little to do with the outbreak, with few safeguards to ensure that their new authority will not be abused. The laws are taking swift hold across a broad range of political systems — in authoritarian states like Jordan, faltering democracies like Hungary, and traditional democracies like Britain. And there are few sunset provisions to ensure that the powers will be rescinded once the threat passes. “We could have a parallel epidemic of authoritarian and repressive measures following close if not on the heels of a health epidemic,” said Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights. As the new laws broaden state surveillance, allow governments to detain people indefinitely and infringe on freedoms of assembly and expression, they could also shape civic life, politics and economies for decades to come.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus pandemic and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.

Investment bankers have pressed health care companies on the front lines of fighting the novel coronavirus, including drug firms developing experimental treatments and medical supply firms, to consider ways that they can profit from the crisis. The largest voices in the health care industry stand to gain from billions of dollars in emergency spending on the pandemic, as do the bankers and investors who invest in health care companies. Over the past few weeks, investment bankers have been candid on investor calls and during health care conferences about the opportunity to raise drug prices. Executives joked about using the attention on Covid-19 to dodge public pressure on the opioid crisis. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar previously served as president of the U.S. division of drug giant Eli Lilly and on the board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a drug lobby group. During a congressional hearing ... Azar rejected the notion that any vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 should be set at an affordable price. "We can't control that price because we need the private sector to invest," said Azar. "The priority is to get vaccines and therapeutics. Price controls won't get us there." The initial $8.3 billion coronavirus spending bill passed in early March ... contained a provision that prevents the government from delaying the introduction of any new pharmaceutical to address the crisis over affordability concerns. The legislative text was shaped, according to reports, by industry lobbyists.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus pandemic and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.

The current coronavirus disease [may] be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco. At a time when everyone needs better information ... no countries have reliable data. This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty. Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date ... we don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the [WHO], cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested ... are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. The Diamond Princess cruise ship [had a] case fatality rate [of] 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population. Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data ... the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately, we do not know if these measures work. With lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

Note: John Ioannidis is professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health at Stanford University. To be truly informed, don't miss this entire, very well researched article at the link above. Consider also the research of 12 other experts questioning the coronavirus panic. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus pandemic from reliable major media sources.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading health expert and member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, predicted three years ago that the administration would have to deal with a surprise disease outbreak. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) told a Georgetown University event on pandemic preparedness in January 2017 that there was "no doubt" President Trump's team would face "challenges that their predecessors were faced with" over infectious diseases. He also called for the creation of a "public health emergency fund" aimed at handling situations such as a surprise virus outbreak, adding that waits for funding had been "painful" in the past. Delivering a keynote speech at the Georgetown University Medical Center event, Dr. Fauci said: "If there's one message that I want to leave with you today... is that there is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases. "Both chronic infectious diseases in the sense of already ongoing disease, and we have certainly a large burden of that, but also there will be a surprise outbreak." "And I hope by the end of my relatively short presentation you will understand why history ... will tell the next administration that there's no doubt in anyone's mind that they will be faced with the challenges that their predecessors were faced with." He went on to note that over his career he had advised several president's on a range of emerging infectious diseases.

Note: How could Fauci possibly have known with such certainty back in 2017 that there would be a surprise outbreak? Something is fishy here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus pandemic from reliable major media sources.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden's chief medical adviser, recently revealed he is experiencing a rebound of his Covid-19 infection after taking the antiviral medication Paxlovid. Fauci described the "interesting course" his own infection had taken on Tuesday during an appearance at Foreign Policy's Global Health Forum. "I turned positive about two weeks ago, with very minimal symptoms. When they increased, given my age, I went on Paxlovid for five days," Fauci said. Fauci, 81, credited the drug with keeping him out of the hospital. After five days on the drug, he tested negative. He had three consecutive days of negative tests. On the fourth day he tested positive again. "It was sort of what people are referring to as a Paxlovid rebound," he said. The CDC issued a health alert to doctors on May 24, advising that Covid-19 symptoms sometimes come back, and that may just be how the infection plays out in some people, regardless of whether they're vaccinated or treated with medications like Paxlovid. In Fauci's case, he said his symptoms got worse when they returned after treatment. "Over the next day or so I started to feel really poorly, much worse than in the first go around," he said. His doctors prescribed another course of Paxlovid. "I went back on Paxlovid, and right now I am on my fourth day of a five-day course of my second course of Paxlovid. Fortunately, I feel reasonably good. I mean, I'm not completely without symptoms, but I certainly don't feel acutely ill."

Note: So two Pfizer shots and two boosters couldn't keep Fauci from getting COVID not once, but twice. And he says the reason he managed to avoid the hospital is not because of the four shots, but because of the new antiviral he is promoting. This certainly is an "interesting course" as he himself describes it. So how effective are these many injections so strongly promoted by Fauci, the CDC and others. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

A year ago, just two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine – or even one, in the case of Johnson & Johnson's formulation – were thought to offer sufficient protection against the coronavirus. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded eligibility for boosters to adolescents and backed away from describing anyone as "fully vaccinated" because two shots no longer seem adequate. Instead, one's vaccination status will now be "up to date" – or not. It's no surprise that many Americans are wondering: Where does this end? Are we to roll up our sleeves for booster shots every few months? Scientists are reluctant to predict the future. But in interviews this week, nearly a dozen said that whatever happens, trying to boost the entire population every few months is not realistic. Nor does it make much scientific sense. For starters, persuading people to line up for shots every few months is probably a losing proposition. Just as important, there are no data to support the effectiveness of a fourth dose of the current vaccines. If the coronavirus settles into a flulike seasonal pattern, as it seems possible, "you can imagine a scenario where we simply give boosters before the winter each year," Dr. Hensley said. Lessons from flu season also suggest that frequent vaccination is unlikely to be helpful. Giving the flu vaccine twice a year "has a diminishing return, and so it may not make sense to do vaccination so frequently," said [epidemiologist] Ben Cowling.

Note: Could it be that this is what big Pharma has been hoping for all along - forever boosting? And if it's all free, you won't even see how billions of your tax dollars are flowing into the pockets of the elite. Could this be why the Australian government on their website stated they are securing 195 million doses of COVID vaccine boosters for their population of 25 million? For more, see this revealing article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

More than 500 residents in Oregon have now died of COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated against the virus as health officials continue to report over 2,000 new infections daily. Since the beginning of the pandemic, health authorities in Oregon have recorded a total of 552 breakthrough COVID-19 deaths throughout the state. Of the total number of deaths, 273 people had been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. At least 144 received the Moderna vaccine and 78 were given the Johnson & Johnson shots. The recent report also showed that there were 4,134 new COVID-19 cases recorded between Nov. 21 and Nov. 27. At least 1,186 were breakthrough infections. As of Dec. 2, Oregon reported a total of 45,545 coronavirus infections among the fully vaccinated. The Oregon Health Authority's report comes as the state continues to report high rates of COVID-19 cases. Over the past weekend, health officials recorded 2,041 new infections and 25 additional deaths.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

Ministers have agreed [to] a secrecy clause in any dispute with the drugs manufacturer Pfizer over Britain's Covid vaccine supply. Large portions of the government's contracts with the company over the supply of 189m vaccine doses have been redacted and any arbitration proceedings will be kept secret. The revelation comes as Pfizer is accused by a former senior US health official of "war profiteering'' during the pandemic. Tom Frieden, who was director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Barack Obama, said: "If you're just focusing on maximising your profits and you're a vaccine manufacturer ... you are war profiteering." Zain Rizvi, research director at Public Citizen, a US consumer advocacy organisation which has examined Pfizer's global vaccine contracts, said: "There is a wall of secrecy surrounding these contracts and it's unacceptable, particularly in a public health crisis." Rizvi said the UK needed to explain why it had agreed to secret arbitration proceedings. He said: "It's the only high-income country we have seen that has agreed to this provision. It allows pharmaceutical companies to bypass domestic legal processes." While AstraZeneca agreed to sell its vaccine at cost during the pandemic, Pfizer wanted to secure its profits. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine ... will be one of the most lucrative drugs in pharmaceutical history. One biological engineering expert [claims] the Pfizer vaccine costs just 76p to manufacture for each shot. It is reportedly being sold for Ł22 a dose to the UK government.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

Merck is planning to charge Americans 40 times its cost for a Covid drug whose development was subsidized by the American government. Americans are facing not merely expensive drugs but prices that are examples of outright profiteering. In many cases, the medicines we are being gouged on are those that we the public already paid for. These facts show us that pharma-bankrolled Democrats trying to kill drug pricing measures aren't just bought and paid for in this particular skirmish – they are foot soldiers in the pharmaceutical industry's larger multi-decade campaign to seal off and rig America's alleged "free market". A new Public Citizen analysis shows that the 20 top-selling medicines generated almost twice as much pharmaceutical industry revenue in the United States as in every other country combined. For all the pharmaceutical industry's self-congratulatory rhetoric about its own innovations, the federal government uses your tax dollars to fund a lot of that innovation, research and development. A study from the National Academy of Sciences tells that story: the federal government spent $100bn to subsidize the research on every single one of the 200-plus drugs approved for sale in the United States between 2010 and 2016. We now routinely face immoral situations like last week's news that pharmaceutical giant Merck is planning to charge Americans $712 for a Covid drug that cost only $17.74 to produce and whose development was subsidized by the American government.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.

Massachusetts on Tuesday reported 4,378 more COVID-19 cases among fully vaccinated people since last week, bringing the total since the beginning of the vaccination campaign to 36,723 cases, or 0.8 percent of all fully vaccinated people. The Department of Public Health also reported 37 more COVID-19 deaths among fully vaccinated people, bringing the total to 254 deaths among those fully vaccinated. The department also reported 154 more hospitalizations among fully vaccinated people, for a total of 1,155 hospitalizations. State officials and public health experts have repeatedly stressed that vaccination greatly reduces hospitalization, severe illness, and death as a result of COVID-19. As of Tuesday, 4,619,950 people in Massachusetts have been fully vaccinated, according to the department.

Note: Massachusetts has a population of nearly 7 million, or 1/50th of the U.S. So if it is representative of the entire country, 254 X 50 = 12,200 deaths among fully vaccinated people in the U.S. Indiana, also with a population of about 7 million, reports 229 fully vaccinated citizens have died, again suggesting well over 10,000 fully vaccinated COVID deaths in the U.S. Why isn't this being reported? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

More than 30,000 residents in Indiana have contracted COVID-19 and over 200 have died of the novel coronavirus despite being fully vaccinated against the disease. Indiana health officials have recorded 33,851 breakthrough COVID-19 cases among the state's fully vaccinated individuals since the beginning of the pandemic. The health department's data also showed that 229 fully vaccinated residents have died of COVID-19. Of the 229 deaths, 92% or 210 occurred in patients aged 65 or older. As of Thursday, health officials have also reported 735 breakthrough COVID-19 hospitalizations. Overall, the state has recorded 959,409 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic. Indiana also reported 65 new deaths that occurred between Aug. 25 and Sept. 28, bringing Indiana's total number of COVID-19 deaths to 15,132. Indiana health officials have fully vaccinated 56% of eligible residents, including more than 70% of people aged 60 and older. However, only 3.7% of children between the ages of 12 to 15 have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and only 4.3% of people from the same age group have received their first doses.

Note: Is it just a coincidence that shortly after this became news, the Indiana Department of Health suspended daily COVID-19 case reports? Massachusetts has a population of 6.7 million, or about 1/50th of the U.S. So if it is representative of the entire country, 229 X 50 = 11,450 deaths among fully vaccinated people in the U.S. Massachusetts, also with about 7 million, reports 254 fully vaccinated citizens have died, again suggesting over 10,000 vaccinated COVID deaths. Why isn't this being reported? For more, see summaries of revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines.

Wuhan and US scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show. Just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles and aerosols containing "novel chimeric spike proteins" of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China. They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work. Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce "human-specific cleavage sites" to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells. When Covid-19 was first genetically sequenced, scientists were puzzled about how the virus had evolved such a human-specific adaptation at the cleavage site on the spike protein, which is the reason it is so infectious. The documents were released by Drastic, the web-based investigations team set up by scientists from across the world to look into the origins of Covid-19. In a statement, Drastic said: "Given that we find in this proposal a discussion of the planned introduction of human-specific cleavage sites, a review by the wider scientific community of the plausibility of artificial insertion is warranted."

Note: Read more about the risky research on coronaviruses that took place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

The cost of vaccinating the world against COVID-19 could be at least five times cheaper if pharmaceutical companies weren't profiteering from their monopolies on COVID-19 vaccines, campaigners from the People's Vaccine Alliance said today. New analysis by the Alliance shows that the firms Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are charging governments as much as $41 billion above the estimated cost of production. Colombia, for example, has potentially overpaid by as much as $375 million for its doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, in comparison to the estimated cost price. Despite a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths across the developing world, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have sold over 90 percent of their vaccines so far to rich countries, charging up to 24 times the potential cost of production. Last week Pfizer/BioNTech announced it would licence a South African company to fill and package 100 million doses for use in Africa, but this is a drop in the ocean of need. Neither company have agreed to fully transfer vaccine technology and know-how with any capable producers in developing countries, a move that could increase global supply, drive down prices and save millions of lives. Analysis of production techniques for the leading mRNA type vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna â₏•which were only developed thanks to public funding to the tune of $8.3 billionâ₏• suggest these vaccines could be made for as little as $1.20 a dose.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.

People who believe the coronavirus was manufactured in a lab haven't been allowed to say so on Facebook since February – until Wednesday, that is, when Facebook announced it was lifting the ban. Presumably this has something to do with the wavering elite consensus on lab leaks. This consensus was never as monolithic as proponents claimed. But it did produce a Facebook ban and a lot of journalism dismissing the hypothesis as a well-debunked conspiracy theory. In one light, this is a happy scientific ending. Over time, with study, natural transmission looked less likely, and a lab accident somewhat more so. As the evidence changed, a previously hard-and-fast consensus became more open to other possibilities, as should be the case for any good scientific theory. But in another light, this story is a disaster. How did so many smart people come to believe, not just that a natural origin was much more likely than a lab leak – which is still, to be clear, the opinion of many scientists – but that a lab leak was basically an impossibility? Labs have leaked deadly viruses in the past. And a lab in the same city where the pandemic began happened to study bat coronaviruses and had a sample of this coronavirus's closest known relative, gathered from a cave hundreds of miles away. It's possible, and maybe even probable, that this was pure coincidence. But it is a hell of a coincidence, and it wasn't kooky to say so.

Note: Top officials were told not to explore the possibility that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

The world's 2,365 billionaires enjoyed a $4 trillion boost to their wealth during the first year of the pandemic, increasing their fortunes by 54%, according to a new analysis by the Program on Inequality at the ... Institute for Policy Studies. Between March 18, 2020, and March 18, 2021, the wealth held by the world's billionaires jumped from $8.04 trillion to $12.39 trillion, according to the IPS' analysis of data from Forbes, Bloomberg and Wealth-X. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest person, saw his fortune soar to $178 billion from $113 billion, or 57%, during that time, the study found. All told, the total wealth of the world's billionaire class grew 54% during the pandemic year, IPS reported. The ballooning wealth among the world's richest people is sparking calls for a "wealth tax," or an additional tax that would be added on top of regular income and capital gains taxes. But so far, a wealth tax is proving elusive in Washington, D.C., even as two-thirds of Americans express support for the idea of raising taxes on people earning more than $400,000. Rather than taxing the growing wealth of the nation's billionaires and millionaires, Mr. Biden wants to pay for his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan by boosting the corporate tax rate to 28% from its current 21%. In the meantime, the wealth disparities between the world's richest and poorest citizens have only widened during the pandemic. The number of people living in poverty globally doubled to more than 500 million during the first nine months of the pandemic.

Note: Why is so little media attention given to the greatest transfer of wealth ever since COVID hit? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.

President Joe Biden's administration is being asked to punish Hungary, Colombia, Chile, and other countries for seeking to ramp up the production of Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics without express permission from pharmaceutical companies. The sanctions are being urged by the drug industry, which has filed hundreds of pages of documents to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative outlining the alleged threat posed by any effort to challenge "basic intellectual property protections" in the response to the coronavirus pandemic. The drug industry has sharply criticized any attempt to share vaccine patents or the technological knowledge needed to manufacture them, despite global need. The strident corporate opposition to any intellectual property flexibility has rankled public health advocates, many of whom note that much of the vaccine technology has been financed by the public sector. The Pfizer vaccine, noted Prabhala, was developed in partnership with the European firm BioNTech, which received $445 million from the German government to help accelerate vaccine development and manufacturing. The U.S. government provided about $1 billion for the research and testing by Moderna to create its coronavirus vaccine. Johnson & Johnson received over $1.45 billion in funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for its recently approved Covid-19 vaccine.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.

A study evaluating COVID-19 responses around the world found that mandatory lockdown orders early in the pandemic may not provide significantly more benefits to slowing the spread of the disease than other voluntary measures, such as social distancing or travel reduction. The peer reviewed study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation on January 5, and analyzed coronavirus case growth in 10 countries in early 2020. The study compared cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. – all countries that implemented mandatory lockdown orders and business closures – to South Korea and Sweden, which instituted less severe, voluntary responses. The researchers used a mathematical model to compare countries that did and did not enact more restrictive lockdown orders, and determined that there was "no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country." "We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures," the research said. Mandatory lockdown orders have also been a highly politicized issue across the U.S. Some Republican leaders ... have vehemently opposed state or nationwide closures. In Democratic states, including New York and California, lockdown orders have been a consistent part of the coronavirus response.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

The coronavirus pandemic caused nearly 300,000 deaths in the United States through early October, federal researchers said on Tuesday. The new tally includes not only deaths known to have been directly caused by the coronavirus, but also roughly 100,000 fatalities that are indirectly related and would not have occurred if not for the virus. The study, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is an attempt to measure "excess deaths" – deaths from all causes that statistically exceed those normally occurring in a certain time period. The analysis highlights two disturbing trends. The researchers discovered a high percentage of excess deaths in an unexpected group: young adults in the prime of life. And the coronavirus has greatly raised deaths over all among people of color. Although the pandemic has mostly killed older Americans, the greatest percentage increase in excess deaths has occurred among adults ages 25 to 44, the analysis found. While the number of deaths among adults ages 45 to 64 increased by 15 percent, and by 24 percent among those ages 65 to 74, deaths increased 26.5 percent among those in their mid-20s to mid-40s, a group that includes millennials. People of color also had large percentage increases in excess deaths. Hispanics experienced a 54 percent increase, while Black people saw a 33 percent rise. Deaths were 29 percent above average for American Indians or Alaska Native people, and 37 percent above average for those of Asian descent.

Note: Former U.S. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb voiced his concern that "a good portion of the deaths in that younger cohort were deaths due to despair. We've seen a spike in overdoses." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.