You Won't See This On The Network News

How do Covid cases compare now to the same time last year?

In most places in the United States things seem pretty normal.

You don't hear much about Covid cases on the news.

People are attending sporting events, concerts and congregating at bars and restaurants.

You see some masks when you go out but in most parts of the country they are pretty rare.

The exceptions might be in heavily blue voting areas such as San Francisco.

For example, San Francisco still has a mask mandate requirement for anyone using public transportation.

How much have Covid cases fallen compared to last year?

The fact is that Covid cases are actually four times higher in the United States right now than they were at the same time last year!

New Reported Cases in the U.S.
7-day average
Source: The New York Times

Cases this year are also very likely understated compared to last year since home test kits are much more plentiful and a lot of cases never get recorded in the official totals.

It is pretty incredible that these are the facts and yet it gets almost no news.

It also does not provide much to support the efficacy of the vaccines.

I know many will look at the data and suggest that the reason cases are much higher this year is that mask mandates and Covid restrictions were lifted.

However, wasn't the argument being made last year that the vaccines would allow us to return to life as normal?

We have also seen revisionist history over the last year. It was at this time last year that the argument was being made that if you were vaccinated you would be protected from illness and would not spread the disease.

This was stated by both the CDC Director and Joe Biden last Spring and Summer.

We were also told last summer that it had become a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Eventually the narrative changed to "nobody ever said the vaccines were going to protect you from getting sick but they would prevent severe illness and death".

Do you remember?

It is true that reported deaths nationally are about half of what they were at this time last year.

This might be due to the vaccines.

This could also be due to the fact that the Omicron variant that is prevalent today is much less virulent than what we were seeing last year.

It is also unclear how much of this reduction is due to the fact that a number of states have changed the definition of what is a Covid death. Deaths must be "from" Covid rather than merely be "with" Covid.

Massachusetts is one such state.

Source: https://turnto10.com/news/local/massachusetts-department-public-health-change-diagnosis-redefines-covid-19-death-after-significant-overcount

Let's take a closer look at what is going on in Massachusetts since it is a very blue state with one of the highest vaccination rates in the country.

What about cases, hospitalizations and deaths in that state right now compared to this time last year?

Last year at this time Massachusetts was averaging 472 cases/day (7-day average).

Massachusetts is currently averaging 4,426 cases/day. (9x higher).

Last year Massachusetts had an overall Covid hospitalization rate of 1.8/100,000.

Massachusetts currently has a hospitalization rate of 3.2/100,000. (78% higher).

More troubling is the fact that the hospitalization rate for those age 70+ was 6.1/100,000 last year at this time. It is now 15.6/100,000 for the age demographic most vulnerable to Covid. (156% higher).

New Daily Covid Hospital Admissions Per 100,000 in Massachusetts
Source: The New York Times

Last year at this time Massachusetts was averaging 10 deaths per day (7-day average). Deaths this year are currently averaging 12 per day. (20% higher).

This is in a state with 84% of everyone in the state age 5 and over fully vaccinated.

For those age 65+, 95% are fully vaccinated.

If the vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe illness and death how is it that hospitalizations for those age 70+ are 156% higher now than last year and deaths are also higher?

Massachusetts is not alone.

These are the ten states with the highest average daily Covid cases per 100,000 right now led by Rhode Island which also (coincidentally?) has the highest vaccination rate in the nation.

Source: The New York Times

Rhode Island has almost 7 times the cases they had at this time last year.

Hospitalizations among those age 70+ in the state are 10 times higher than they were at this time last year.

New Daily Covid Hospital Admissions Per 100,000 in Rhode Island
Source: The New York Times

Who can explain this?

95% of this age group are fully vaccinated and a large proportion boosted multiple times.

How are things going in San Francisco that still retains a mask mandate on public transit and undoubtedly has one of the highest mask usage rates in the country?

In addition, 88% of every man, woman and child age 5+ is fully vaccinated.

Cases are 36x higher this year than last year in San Francisco.

San Francisco has gone from a 17 cases per day last year at this time to 617 now.

New Reported Covid Cases in San Francisco- 7 day average
Source: The New York Time

In fact, I found it interesting that San Francisco actually has almost 4 times more people hospitalized with Covid right now (64) than it had cases at this time last year (17).

Source; The New York Times

Wealthy Marin County just outside of San Francisco is the most vaccinated county in the United States.  93% of everyone age 5 and over is fully vaccinated.

Marin County now has more cases than at the Winter 2020/21 peak. Cases are 35x what they were last year at this time. Hospitalizations are 5x what they were last year.

How does any of this support the narrative on the vaccines?

That is why you won't see any of this on the network news.

One more thing you are not going to see on the network news is that Australia has now overtaken the United States in cumulative Covid cases per capita since the pandemic began.

New Zealand is on track to soon surpass the United States as well.

It was not long ago the story on the network news was that these countries were the models to follow for their strict Covid policies and harsh vaccine mandates.

Is it also a coincidence that the cases exploded in these countries at the same time that Covid vaccine booster doses were being administered aggressively to their populations?

Looking at this data I cannot help but think about the warnings of Geert Vanden Bossche on how the mass vaccination effort would inevitably lead to more variants that in the end would be more infectious and more virulent.

I can guarantee you have never heard the name Geert Vanden Bossche on the network news.

A year ago Vanden Bossche stated that we should be careful about believing the pandemic was over as we saw cases decline dramatically.

The tell-tale sign would be that although cases might decline, the likelihood would be that they would not decline below previous lows. They would fall and level off at a higher plateau than before.

He called this a "valley of fitness" in which the virus would be working around the immune pressure from the vaccinations and would ultimately result in viral escape with new variants capable of infecting more people.

Notice in this chart that U.S. cases came down but eventually exploded upwards to levels much higher than was seen before despite the mass vaccination campaign.

Vanden Bossche would argue this was caused by viral escape caused by the immune pressure from the vaccines. In effect, the vaccines are causing the variants and facilitating transmission of the virus.

Notice as well that while cases are down from the highs earlier this year they have not reached the level they were last year. They are persisting at a higher level than last year. ( As stated above, 4x higher than last year at the same time).

This is also consistent with the predictions of Vanden Bossche from over a year ago.

His thesis is that the virus is once again working around the vaccinal antibodies which has been made worse by the additional booster doses.

If he is correct, the next variant will be more infectious and more virulent than Omicron.

Are we already seeing this in the Northeast United States?

I hope not. However, the data is concerning.

I am going to be looking at the Covid data from the Sunbelt closely over the next several  months.

The last two years have seen cases go up dramatically in those states in the summer months.

I am particularly interested in seeing what happens in Florida with its large senior population and a vaccination rate that is higher than any other Sunbelt state.

In fact, cases are already about 3x higher in Florida and hospitalizations for those age 70+ are 45% higher than they were last year at this time.

Are we going to see this strong seasonal pattern repeat itself this year in the Sunbelt states?

That might tell us a lot of where Covid is headed next.

The bigger question is whether the network news will continue to repeat the narrative or will they start asking the tough questions and do some real reporting of why we are seeing what we are seeing over two years into this pandemic.

Beyond Meat, Bitcoin, Boom and Bust

I wrote a blog post three years ago on what was the emerging fad involving fake meat.

A company named Beyond Meat had recently gone public in an IPO.

When I wrote about Beyond Meat it had a total stock market value of $14 billion.

It had $95 million in annual revenue and had a net loss of $27 million in the most recent year.

To put that $14 billion market value in context I pointed out that made Beyond Meat more valuable than two giants in the food industry---Campbell's Soups and Conagra.

These are the brands that Campbell's owns.

These are the major brands that Conagra owns.

Beyond Meat was going to need to convince a lot of people to eat fake meat to justify that valuation.

I wrote at the time that my guess was that this was not going to end well for Beyond Meat shareholders.

 

That ought to give you a perspective on how much money is being bet that you will eat fake meat.

However, will you really eat fake meat?

Count me as someone who is not buying Beyond Meat at $235 per share.

How has Beyond Meat done the last three years in selling fake meat?

How have its shareholders done?

Beyond Meat reported revenues for the first quarter, 2022 of $110 million.

However, the company lost $98 million on those sales.

That amounts to an operating loss of an astounding 92% of sales!

It doesn't get much worse than that.

Source: https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/05/17/how-beyond-meats-losses-hit-a-jarring-92-of-sales/

How have the shareholders of Beyond Meat done?

I wrote that blog post right after Beyond Meat had hit almost $235/share.

Beyond Meat (BYND)

 

The stock is now trading at below $27/share. You are down over 88% if you bought stock in Beyond Meat in July, 2019.

It is down almost 60% just since January 1, 2022.

Ouch!

Of course, there are many other stocks like Beyond Meat which have been annihilated in the current market environment.

Some of these have much better track records and performance than Beyond Meat.

A few examples of big stock losses YTD.

Coinbase Global    -73%

Netflix   -68%

Caesar's Entertainment.   -45%

Intuit   -41%

Tesla    -37%

The stock market has not been the only investment sector that has been hit hard in 2022.

Crypto currencies have also fallen.

One of the arguments given by those who are fans of cryptos such as Bitcoin was that it was a store of value and that it would have little correlation with traditional investment classes making it an ideal asset to protect one's wealth.

Bitcoin is down 36% since the first of the year.

It was as high as $67,000 last November. It is around $30,000 right now.

What is particularly interesting to me, contrary to the argument that Bitcoin has little correlation to other investment classes, is that Bitcoin has fallen almost in lockstep with the NASDAQ index.

In fact, it is a .95 positive correlation.

Bitcoin doesn't look like a store of value right now.

It looks like just another risky asset class.

The New York Times prepared this chart that compared the performance of gold, NASDAQ and Bitcoin thus far this year.

Bitcoin and the stock market did well when interest rates were low and the Federal Reserve was supplying all sorts of liquidity to the markets.

The question is how well will Bitcoin, Beyond Meat and a bunch of other investment do when the Fed is no longer filling up the punch bowl at the party?

The early returns are not encouraging.

In fact, at Bitcoin's current value about 50% of the owners of this crypto are already underwater on their investment.

It has always been true that as interest rate yields get more attractive, riskier asset classes have a harder time attracting buyers.

For more than a decade the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at historically low levels in order to entice more and more people to put their money in riskier asset classes in order "to help the economy".

If we look at the high prices that some investors paid for Beyond Meat, Bitcoin and other names they succeeded in what they set out to do.

The further question is what type of damage did the Fed do to those investors and the economy in the long term?

We will find out together.

In the meantime, Warren Buffet recently made these remarks about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

You can read the entire quote below but the essence is that Buffett would not pay $25 for all the cryptocurrency in the world.

I would not call that a vote of confidence from someone who is arguably the greatest investor of all time.

“If you said … for a 1% interest in all the farmland in the United States, pay our group $25 billion, I’ll write you a check this afternoon,” Buffett said. ”[For] $25 billion I now own 1% of the farmland. [If] you offer me 1% of all the apartment houses in the country and you want another $25 billion, I’ll write you a check, it’s very simple. Now if you told me you own all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25 I wouldn’t take it because what would I do with it? I’d have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything. The apartments are going to produce rent and the farms are going to produce food.”

Beyond Meat might still be a potential investment for Buffett.

You just have to get people to want to eat fake meat.

If things continue as they are right now, we may get to that point much sooner than we want.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/17d7e07f-46c6-4c41-9202-e445928a405a

Sticking To The Facts On Abortion

Most people never hear the real facts on the abortion issue.

That is because the facts are drowned out by a political narrative.

A good example of this were the comments last week by liberal tv host Bill Maher who stated he was shocked to learn several facts about abortion he did not know.

Source: https://www.theblaze.com/video/bill-maher-abortion-laws

“I learned things this week, because this put it on the front page, that are pretty basic things that I did not know about abortion," Maher told guests Michele Tafoya and Paul Begala. "Like in Europe, the modern countries of Europe, [are] way more restrictive than we are, or what they’re even proposing. If you are pro-choice, you would like it a lot less in Germany, and Italy, and France, and Spain, and Switzerland. Did you know that? I didn’t know that.”

“I learned most people who are pro-life are women. Did not know that. ... "

Maher has not become a pro-life advocate but he seems to now understand that the facts often do not match the narrative advanced by the Democrats and most of the mainstream media.

The Democrats in the U.S. Senate held a vote last week on a bill that would have allowed abortion for any reason for up to nine months, until the baby is born.

They claimed it was to codify Roe v. Wade but the fact is that it went far beyond what was permitted under the ruling in that case.

The bill actually did not even get majority support failing with 51 votes against--all 50 Republicans and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia. All other Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

After the vote I thought it was amusing that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was complaining that a minority in the Senate should not have the ability to block things that the majority wants to do.

Warren seems to be poor at math. 51 out of 100 is not a minority. It is the majority.

Warren should also be careful about citing "democracy" on this issue.

A Pew Center poll of voters in March found that only 19% stated they wanted abortion to be legal in all instances as the Democrat bill was written.

I also thought it was interesting that last week we even had Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen weighing in on abortion claiming that eliminating abortion rights would have "very damaging effects on the economy".

Source: https://www.axios.com/2022/05/10/yellen-abortion-women-economy

Yellen's view on this seems to be counter to almost every other economic study in the world which has cited falling birth rates in developed countries as the bigger threat to future economic growth.

An example is this recent report from the the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. 

Lower birth rates are associated with less growth and a more rapidly aging population and, hence, slower economic expansion.

You may recall that Yellen was once Chairman of the Federal Reserve. 

Yellen seemed to be arguing that abortions were good for the economy because it meant fewer "low-income and often black" teenage women did not have babies they were not in a position to care for.

Can you imagine the reaction to this if a Secretary of Treasury in a Republican administration had said the same?

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina had a highly appropriate and personal response to Yellen's comment.

 

Let's put that aside and look at the data on abortions.

Is it primarily, low-income, black, teen age women having abortions?

The Brookings Institution  (a liberal think tank) did a study on abortions by income groups in 2015.

That study found that there were many more abortions by single pregnant women who were earning at least 4X the federal poverty rate ($54,360/ yr in 2022) than those at the poverty level.

32% of the pregnancies in single women making at least $54,000 were aborted compared to only 9% among single women making the federal poverty rate of $13,590 or below.

Source: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/26_class_gaps_unintended_pregnancy.pdf

So much for the low-income argument.

How many total abortions are for teenagers?

The CDC collects data on abortions in 49 states (California refuses to provide its data for the survey) for an annual national urveillance study.

The most recent CDC data is for 2019.

The fact is that only 8.8% of abortions are related to teen pregnancies.

Most abortions are done on the 25-29 age group (29.3%).

So much for the teenager argument.

Another argument made by Democrats is that there should be no abortion restrictions in that many women do not know they are pregnant until after the first trimester so a 9-12 week limit is too restrictive.

However, the CDC data indicates that 43% of all abortions were done in the first six weeks of gestation and another 36% were done in weeks 7-9. 

92% of abortions are done by the 13th week before the end of the first trimester.

We also hear that abortions are not being done as a substitute for contraception. 

However, the CDC data shows that 42% of all abortions involved women that had already undergone a previous abortion.

Finally, a lot is made of the necessity of abortions in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is at risk due to the pregnancy.

The state of Florida requires that a reason must be provided for every abortion performed within its borders.

There are typically more than 70,000 abortions in Florida each year. That is over 10% of the total in the United States so the Florida statistics are probably a good representation for the national numbers.

Those statistics show that rape, incest and the life of the mother do not even account for half of one percent as the reasons for abortions in the state.

Serious fetal abnormalities account for less than 1% of all abortions.

There is no reason for almost all abortions other than the mother did not want the child for social, economic or personal reasons.

Reasons for Abortion, State of Florida, 2020
Source: https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/

Abortion is really not about the life or health of the mother. It is not about rape, incest or fetal health.

As I have written before, it is really involves one fundamental question.

Does a woman have the right to put her rights above the right of the life growing within her?

If so, is there a point at which those rights end and the right to life of her baby take precedence?

Is it at conception? The point at which a fetal heartbeat is heard? The point at which the child would be viable outside the womb? At birth? After birth?

Tough questions involving a very tough issue. It always is when you start balancing "rights".

Just make sure you understand the bias inherent in much of what you see and read on the abortion issue.

And make sure you understand the actual facts about the issue rather than be force-fed a narrative that supports a political agenda.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion on the abortion issue. 

However, you can't have your own facts. Facts are facts.

It is also a fact that there is no national consensus on the abortion issue. There wasn't any 50 years ago and it is even truer today.

That is why I believe that overturning Roe v. Wade is the correct legal decision.

The correct result under the Constitution is that the collective opinion of the American people in each state are in the best position to determine how to balance the rights of mother and child.

If a national consensus forms around one position then a constitutional amendment can be used to enshrine whatever that is and any "right" that should be recognized in the Constitution.

Ukraine Aid in Context

Congress is about to approve $40 billion in additional aid to Ukraine.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1097929509/ukraine-aid-congress-democrats-covid-19-response

$40 billion is a lot of money.

It should be kept in mind that this amount is in addition to billions of dollars in previous aid.

$13.6 billion was previously approved by Congress and signed into law by Biden back in March.

Source: https://theconversation.com/us-aid-to-ukraine-13-6-billion-approved-following-russian-bombardment-marks-sharp-increase-179172

That totals about $54 billion of aid for Ukraine in a little over two months.

Let's put that in context.

The entire military budget of Russia for 2022 according to the Russian news service Tass was budgeted at $51.3 billion.

MOSCOW, October 1. /TASS/. Federal budget expenditures on Russia’s national defense will total around 10 trillion rubles ($154.1 bln), according to the files to the draft budget for 2020 and the planned period of 2021-2022.

"Budgetary provisions for ‘National defense’ will total 3.1 trillion rubles ($47.7 bln) in 2020, 3.24 trillion rubles ($50 bln) in 2021, and 3.3 trillion rubles ($51.3 bln) in 2022. The share of expenditures on ‘National defense’ will stand at 2.4% of GDP in 2020, 2.7% of GDP in 2021, and 2.6% of GDP in 2022," the document said.

In other words, the United States Congress and Biden are about to approve more money to Ukraine within two months than the Russian military was budgeted to spend in 2022 for the entire Russia national defense budget.

Let's also consider that $54 billion in dollars goes a lot further in Ukraine than it does in the United States right now.

The median pay of a worker in Ukraine in 2021 was $775/month or $9,300/year. Median pay in the United States is approximately $52,000.

The entire GDP of Ukraine in 2021 was $195 billion in U.S. dollars.

Another way to look at this is that we are sending aid to Ukraine that is equal to about 28% of its entire annual GDP.

To provide further perspective to the Ukraine aid, consider that Congress approved $4.5 trillion in total Covid relief in 2020 and 2021.

That was equal to about 19% of the $24 trillion in U.S. GDP in 2021.

We know how costly the Covid spending intervention was in the United States. 

We are actually sending more aid to Ukraine relative to its GDP than was spent in the United States on Covid relief.

I think it is also interesting that Congress rebuffed Trump's requests for spending $18 billion to build a wall on the southern border in the 2018 budget, $5.7 billion in 2019 and $8.6 billion in 2020. All of these requests in total do not equal the $40 billion Congress is prepared to provide Ukraine for its national security.

Congress also refused to allocate $3 billion that President Trump requested in March and April , 2020 to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve up to its capacity limits in order to take advantage of the low prices of oil at the time.

The Democrats were opposed because they said it was too costly and would help the oil companies.

Of course, now Biden cannot pull oil out of the SPR fast enough now as he attempts to reduce the price of gasoline at the pump and increase his sinking approval rating.

Over the last year, Biden has already taken almost 100 million barrels of oil (630 million barrels in May, 2021 now reduced to 542 million barrels) out of the SPR.

Has it really made much of a difference? Gas at the pump reached an all-time high this week.

What happens if we have a situation that is not price-centered but involves the actual disruption of oil supplies? That is what the SPR was really intended for.

Another interesting factoid to put that $54 billion in Ukraine aid in context involves the investment of the U.S. in that Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

We have only spent a grand total of $20.7 billion for the crude oil in the SPR since it was first established in 1977.

We are about to spend twice that amount in additional aid to Ukraine if the Biden request is approved by the Senate?

I am all for doing what we can to support Ukraine.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine was indefensible.

However, $40 billion (or $54 billion ), or whatever the amount of the aid will be, is a lot of money when there are so many people hurting in the United States right now.

Money does not grow on trees. Congress has not understood this for a long, long time.

However, trees are necessary to print the money that the Federal Reserve will need to in order to pay for all of this.

It is even more money when you put it in context with what that money would buy in Russia or Ukraine.

This might be a good time for some people in Washington to take a couple of deep breaths and really think about what they are doing.

One guy who thinks a few more people should be taking a deep breath right now is Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Senator Paul stood up in the Senate yesterday and blocked the $40 billion Ukraine aid package from being steamrolled through Congress without much scrutiny.

"We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the U.S, economy."

It will be a short delay. Too many people in Washington, D.C. have Ukraine fever. Spending money we don't have to fight Putin seems to be the only cure.

Is all of that money really necessary to support Ukraine?

How about saving a little bit for some Americans?

In particular for the Millennials and the Gender Z generation which will end up paying the biggest price for all of this in the interest of that debt.

How much are those European countries contributing in aid?

This is the most recent update on that question since I last wrote on this topic.

Source: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/

The next update of this information will be provided May 18.

How about we pass a bill to match anything the Europeans agree to do?

You would think they would be good for at least $20 billion considering the threat Russia poses to all of them. That by itself would cut our cost by half.

Of course, that is a logical and practical approach. Why would that ever be considered?

A Disastrous Decline

On January 20, 2021 I wrote a blog post "It's All Downhill From Here" chronicling many key metrics on where the United States stood as Donald Trump left office and Joe Biden moved into the White House.

I predicted that it was likely to be "all downhill from here".

I wrote that Biden was going to face a lot of challenges including his diminished mental capacities, mollifying the extreme factions in the Democrat party, and allegations of wrongdoing by his son Hunter in addition to the fact that many questioned the legitimacy of his election in the first place.

However, I predicted that Biden's  biggest problem would be that he would inevitably be compared to Donald Trump's record, particularly on issues relating to the economy.

I wrote that it would be an impossible task.

This is what I wrote on that day not 16 months ago.

I wish Joe Biden all the luck in the world to better these (Trump's) measures.

More power to him if he can.

However, most likely it is all downhill from here simply due to the fact that it is hard to imagine anyone bettering these marks. How much better can it get on some of these? We have to be near the top of the hill right now. Trump would almost certainly not have been able to come close to matching them himself if he had remained in office. 

We may see the stock market go higher due to the Fed continuing to print money. Perhaps there is a post-Covid economic explosion to push things ahead for awhile. However, the bubble would seem to have to burst at some point. Can they keep it going for another four years? That seems doubtful right now.

Covid will end at some point but will Biden have anything to do with it? We are already past the 8 month period when most viruses die a natural death. Lockdowns have actually probably extended the life cycle of this virus. The vaccines are also in play now but what did Biden have to do with them?

All of this suggests to me that Biden will struggle in office on a downhill trajectory for a combination of the factors outlined above.

Let's look at a few of those measures as I cited them in that blog post and compare them to where we are now.

It is hard to comprehend how disastrous the decline has been.

                                                                           January 19, 2021              May 10, 2022

Gallon of gasoline (AAA nat'l avg. regular)          $2,39                                  $4.38

Natural gas per cf                                                      $2.48                                   $7.25

10-year Treasury Yield                                            1.094%                                3.0323%

30-year mortgage rate                                                2.87%                                 5.57%

CPI Inflation Rate (last 12 months)                           1.2%                                   8.5%

If you add a few other measures that I did not include in the January, 2021 blog post the decline we are experiencing is even more depressing.

Diesel fuel prices averaged $2.70 nationally for the week ended January 18, 2021. Diesel is now at $5.62.

Diesel Fuel Prices per Gallon
Source: https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_retail_diesel_price

You want to know what is a driver of inflation? Diesel fuel. Those costs are incorporated into almost anything we produce or consume.

No food gets grown nor do any products get delivered without diesel fuel.

The war Biden declared on oil and gas when he took office has inhibited production.

Crude oil production in the United States is 11% lower (1.5 million barrels per day) than what was being produced at the peak during the Trump administration.

Natural gas production in the United States surged 29% during the four years Trump was President. Under Biden, natural gas production has increased less than 2%.

As bad as natural gas prices are in the United States, it is nothing compared to what Europe is experiencing where prices are at least four times as high right now.

Inflation price increases are taking a terrible toll on the American consumer.

Consumer credit balances soared in March as revolving credit (credit cards) increased by $31.4 billion to $52.4 billion. This was double what economists had projected for the month.

This would seem to indicate that the American consumer is under severe distress.

What do people do if they don't have the money? Pull out the plastic and hope.

What is Biden proposing to do about any of this?

He gave a speech yesterday as he tried to blame Putin, the Republicans, Covid and anything else he could think of to deflect responsibility from his own actions (or inactions).

Even CNN saw through his weak effort to deflect blame.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/10/politics/biden-inflation-speech/index.html

When Biden was asked why he was trying to blame the Republicans when Democrats controlled all three branches of government he said this.

"We control all three branches of government -- well, we don't really," Biden said.

The other thing in which there is no control of is what is going on is Biden's mind.

If you can figure out what Biden is saying here you are better than me.

Whhhaaaatt?

A disastrous decline to describe what we are experiencing might actually be too kind.

Who Are We To Believe?

It was less than three months ago that Bill Gates was proclaiming that the world could prevent the next pandemic if every country does what Australia did on Covid.

He said that Australia's was the "gold standard" of Covid responses.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/bill-gates-australia-covid-blueprint-could-help-prevent-next-pandemic.html

Gates said that if every country did what Australia did then you wouldn't be calling the next outbreak a pandemic.

South Korea is another country that many experts claimed was a model for their response to Covid.

This is a headline from last November from DW News extolling the South Korean response to Covid.

 

South Korea has gone its own way in the fight against the Coronavirus. Testing was core to its strategy at the start of the pandemic. People used masks in private homes. An app closely monitored the population, enabling authorities to track infection chains. The vaccination campaign also quickly picked up speed. Now over 40 million people in South Korea have received at least one jab. That means over 80 percent of the population is fully or partially immunised among the highest vaccination rates in the world. Is South Korea a role model for the world? What can other countries learn?

Where do things stand now with these supposed  "best practice models" of Covid response?

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Australia has now had almost the same number of cumulative confirmed cases per capita as the United States. 

South Korea has now had almost 50% more cases than the United States.

It was just months ago we were told that these countries were models of how to control Covid.

They had locked down with authority.

They had masked up.

They had vaccinated almost everyone they could.

Australia and South Korea had also boosted their populations at very high rates. 

It is true that the Omicron variant was a game changer around the world beginning in December, 2021.

However, is it a coincidence that the massive increase in cases in South Korea and Australia exactly coincided with the mass vaccine booster programs in both countries?

It should not be lost on anyone at this point that the experts stated that a mass vaccination program was the only way out of the pandemic.

Many countries went so far as to mandate that unless you were vaccinated you could not travel, eat out, shop, work or go to school in order to attempt to force everyone to get the jabs.

Gibraltar probably has the highest vaccine uptake in the world.

There have been over 3.5 vaccine doses given for every man, woman and child. That is double the rate in the United States.

What about cumulative confirmed cases per capita in Gibraltar vs. the United States?

Despite double the vaccine doses, Gibraltar also has had double the cumulative cases of the United States.

Note again the substantial increase in cases in Gibraltar beginning in December, 2021.

What protection from infection did all of those vaccine doses provide?

What is this data telling us?

It would seem to indicate that the vaccines are having no effect on preventing infection and transmission. Further, it suggests that the vaccines may have actually weakened the innate immune system of those vaccinated such that they are more vulnerable to the virus.

Were there any experts who suggested this would occur as a result of mass vaccinations?

There was one expert I know of.

His name is Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche and I have written about his theories in the past.

I first wrote about him last September where I noted his past predictions had matched what eventually unfolded in the data better than anyone else I had seen.

At that time he was warning about the emergence of a super variant (which turned out to be Omicron) that would infect enormous numbers of people, particularly those who had been vaccinated.

Geert Vanden Bossche is a PhD virologist who is also a DVM. He has spent his entire career working with vaccines, their development and their deployment.

Vanden Bossche is anything but an anti-vaxxer. In fact, at one time he was Senior Program Officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation working on their global health and vaccine initiatives. He also worked for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) as Senior Ebola Program Manager.

Vanden Bossche warned the WHO at the beginning of the vaccination effort that conducting a mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic was a prescription for disaster. The vaccinations were going to lead to "viral immune escape" by which the virus will continue to mutate around the Covid vaccines creating more variants that will be increasingly dangerous to mankind.

His thesis is similar to what we hear about the overuse of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections. The more that they are used (or overused) the greater the chance that the bacterial infections will get stronger and eventually evade all antibiotics.

In his open letter to the WHO, he argued that we were heading to a disastrous situation of our own making if we did not cease the mass vaccination efforts. We could be planting the seeds for a mutant virus that could not be handled by the human immune system. 

This would be of particular danger to those who were vaccinated because their natural immune systems would be compromised by the vaccines. However, new variants would also pose risks to the unvaccinated. Their innate immunity might not be able to defend against multiple variants in short succession.

I watched a video interview of Vanden Bossche this past week where he updated where he thinks we are going next.

Follow this link to the full interview. Vanden Bossche interviews starts at about 1;03 of the video and is a little longer than an hour.

Vanden Bossche does not think the pandemic is over by a long shot.

That is the exact opposite of what Dr. Tony Fauci said recently.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/27/1094997608/fauci-us-pandemic-phase-covid-19

Vanden Bossche says that the  fact that the virus is still under pressure from the masses being vaccinated with a non-sterilizing vaccine that does not precent infection or transmission means that there are no dead ends for the virus. As long as this is the case the virus will work to mutate around the immune pressure from the specific vaccinal antibodies to find a method to survive and infect other hosts.

He believes the vaccine has effectively harmed the innate immune response that exists in the mucosal areas of the body of the vaccinated which has made them more susceptible to Omicron than the unvaccinated are.

Fortunately, Omicron is less virulent but Vanden Bossche believe we are now in a period where the virus is mutating further to be more virulent in addition to more contagious.

The next evolution will be a virus that can compromise the lungs and respiratory system similar to what Omicron has done to the mucosal system. This will be particularly dangerous to the vaccinated who have restricted their innate immune system to identify and fight new Covid variants. Their systems are primed only to recognize a fight the original strain which is now over two years old.

He believes we may see this new variant in the next several months.

What struck me in watching Vanden Bossche in the video is the somber and sullen mood he was in.

He clearly looked like a defeated man. Someone who had tried his best to sound the alarm only to see that no one cared to listen.

I don't know whether to believe what Vanden Bossche is saying. However, his track record to this point has been better than most anyone in matching what the data has revealed over time.

However, everything in me does not want to believe he is correct in that the consequences would be so unthinkable.

When asked how bad he thought it might be, Vanden Bossche did not want to speculate with numbers of how many might be at risk of severe illness of death.

When pressed he would only say "the losses will be unprecedented".

https://twitter.com/DavidLWindt/status/1522673672070250496

I do know I don't believe the narrative promoted by Dr. Fauci, the CDC or the WHO.

They have been wrong on almost every turn if you look at the data.

Who are we to believe?

That is a question we all must ask right now.

 

However, there has never been a time in my lifetime that it is more difficult to answer that question.