25% Of US Restaurants Will Never Reopen: Opentable
A quarter of US restaurants will go out of business due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a forecast by OpenTable, which reported that total restaurant reservations and walk-in customers have fallen 95% over the previous year ending May 13.
Susan Upton, 53, works on her computer at Mambo’s, her family restaurant, in Glendale Calif., on March 18, 2020. Mambo’s was forced to close after 32 years in the midst of the global pandemic. (Lucy Nicholson—Reuters)
The company tracks over 54,000 restaurants on its reservation site, which offers the ability to make online, walk-in, and phone reservations – but does not track data for take-out and deliveries, according to Bloomberg.
The company’s data shows that there are growing signs that patrons are willing to dine out again in states like Arizona and Texas where it’s allowed, though the numbers are still far below where they were last year.
Scottsdale showed the greatest improvement. It had zero reservations almost every day since March 21, but on May 13 this eased to a down 72% from reservations on the same day in 2019. The next most significant recoveries were in Houston and Phoenix. –Bloomberg
At the state-level, Florida showed the greatest statewide gain, with foot traffic only down 83% y/y after launching a phased reopening May 4 during which restaurants were allowed to operate at one-quarter capacity.
Indiana, which is now in phase two – allowing restaurants to operate at 50% of capacity – has come in second. The state is planning on a full reopening by the Fourth of July.
“Restaurants are complicated beasts,” said Steve Hafner, CEO of OpenTable parent company, Booking Holdings. “You have to order food and supplies. You have to make sure you’ve prepped the kitchen and service areas to be easily disinfected.”
According to Hafner, state unemployment benefits with the federal booster is one reason why restaurants have struggled to hire help. “A lot of people are making $1,200 a week doing nothing. That’s good pay.”
Meanwhile, restaurateur Danny Meyer – who shut down all of his 19 New York restaurants on March 13, says his dining rooms will stay closed for the foreseeable future, according to Bloomberg.
“We won’t be welcoming guests into our full-service restaurants for a very long time—probably not until there’s a vaccine,” he said, adding “There is no interest or excitement on my part to having a half-full dining room while everyone is getting their temperature taken and wearing masks, for not much money
“It’s very frustrating, but it’s the only safe way to go,” he added.
It’s a caution shared by fellow restaurateur Daniel Humm, who said he may not re-open Eleven Madison Park at all, and by David Chang who just announced the closing of his Chelsea restaurant Nishi and his Washington, DC, Momofuku location.
Meyer, in the meantime, is taking the first steps back into business by opening his café Daily Provisions for take out service as early as next week. The storefront, which is next to Union Square Café on East 19th St., was designed for grab-and-go coffee, breakfast sandwiches, and signature crullers. Initially, it will open for curbside pickup of breakfast items, with an expanded menu expected to follow. –Bloomberg
Meyer will likely open his Flatiron District pizza restaurant, Marta, for takeout – saying “We had been on the cusp of takeout at Daily Provisions, Marta, and Blue Smoke [the company’s barbecue spot] when we closed. It makes sense now.”
“I would think about anything that is safe and profitable. If it’s not safe, we won’t do it, we all lose,” he said, adding “Profitable matters, as well. The only way we can responsibly get back in the business of employing people is to not go out of business. It’s already incredibly hard to survive.”
“We have met the moment and we have prevailed,” said President Donald Trump Monday, as he supported the opening of the U.S. economy before the shutdown plunges us into a deep and lasting depression.
Tuesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, made clear to a Senate committee his contradictory views.
“If states reopen their economies too soon, there is a real risk that you may trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control,” said Fauci.
“My concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks of the disease (and) the inevitable return of infections.”
Fauci is talking of the real possibility of a second and even more severe wave of the pandemic this summer and fall, if we open too soon.
There is evidence to justify the fears of Fauci and Dr. Robert Redfield of the Centers for Disease Control, who told the same Senate committee, “We are not out of the woods yet.”
Yet, there is a case to be made for the risks that Trump and red state governors are taking in opening up sooner.
The Washington Post daily graph of new deaths nationally has been showing a curve sloping downward for a month from April’s more than 2,000 a day. On no day yet this week did the U.S. record 2,000 dead from the virus. On some days, there were fewer than 1,000.
The graph for new coronavirus cases, which was showing more than 30,000 a day in April, is now closer to 25,000.
Also, hospitalizations and ICU occupancies are not as high as they were. Hospitals put up in Central Park and the Javits Center seem not to have been needed. There was and is no shortage of ventilators. The Navy hospital ships Comfort and Mercy are returning to their home ports.
Also, not all states are suffering equally, nor are all communities in the hardest-hit states. There have been three times as many COVID-19 cases in New Jersey as in Texas, though New Jersey is a fraction of the size and has a fraction of the population of Texas.
There are twice as many cases in Massachusetts as in Florida, the nation’s third-most populous state with one of its highest percentages of retirees and elderly. There have been five times as many cases in New York as in California.
It is the nursing homes filled with the elderly and ill that have proven to be the real killing fields of this virus.
According to The New York Times, one-third of all deaths from COVID-19 have come among residents and staff of nursing homes. Beyond these are the meatpacking plants and the prisons where social distancing is almost nonexistent.
Moreover, while Fauci and Redfield are specialists in epidemics, Trump’s portfolio goes far beyond that.
He is chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, responsible for the security and defense of the nation. His portfolio is broader and deeper than those of Fauci and Redfield.
In the first hours of the Normandy invasion, General Eisenhower must have been rightly alarmed about the high U.S. casualties on Omaha Beach. But he also had to concern himself with the failure to capture the Port of Caen to bring ashore the armor to stop any German counterattack that might turn D-Day into another Anzio.
Ike could not worry about casualties alone.
According to The Washington Post, economists already project that 100,000 small businesses have shuttered, never to reopen.
“(D)eeper and longer recessions can leave behind lasting damage to the productive capacity of the economy,” warned Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday.
“Avoidable household and business insolvencies can weigh on growth for years to come.”
Ultimately, Fauci is not “The Decider” here. Trump is.
It is he who is accountable to the nation for weighing the losses, both human and material, due to his decisions.
Fauci may be the best at what he does, but he is still only an adviser.
As John F. Kennedy said after the Bay of Pigs, it is the president who ultimately bears responsibility for what he does and fails to do, while “the advisers may move on to new advice.”
Believing he can do no more than his White House is now doing to contain the incidence of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, Trump has decided his primary job is to prevent the nation from a catastrophic economic collapse from which it might take years to recover.
The country is slowly moving in Trump’s direction, slowly opening. And he will be responsible for whether the policy succeeds or opens the floodgates to a second and worse wave, should it come.
As Abraham Lincoln put his situation: “I mean to keep going. If the end brings me out all right, then what is said against me won’t matter. If I’m wrong, ten angels swearing I was right won’t make a difference.”
Dr. Mikovits joined NIH in 1980 as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Molecular Virology at the National Cancer Institute and began a 20-year collaboration with Frank Ruscetti, a pioneer in the field of human retro virology. She helped Dr Russetti isolate the HIV virus and link it to #AIDS in 1983. Her NIH boss Anthony Fauci delayed publication of that critical paper for 6 months to let his protégé Robert Gallo replicate, publish and claim credit. The delay in mass HIV testing let AIDS further spread around the globe and helped Fauci win promotion to director NIAID.
In 2006, Dr Mikovits became director of Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease and collaborated with Dr Ruscetti searching for the cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which suddenly became epidemic in the 1980s. The male dominated medical community dismissed CFS as psychosomatic “yuppie flu” caused when fragile females cracked in corporate jobs.
Dr. Mikovits discovered that 67% of affected women carried a virus—called Xenotropic Murine Leukemia related Virus—that appeared in healthy women only 4% of the time.
XMRV is also associated with prostate, breast, ovarian cancers, leukemia, and multiple myeloma. Many women with XMRV bore children with autism.
In 2009, Drs. Mikovits and Ruscetti published their explosive findings in the journal Science. But the question remained: how was XMRV getting into people?
Dr Fauci ordered Mikovits to keep her mouth shut. When she refused, he illegally confiscated her work books and hard drives, drove her from government work and blackballed her from receiving NIH grants ending her science career. XMRV remains in American vaccines.
Video Transcript
The Truth About Fauci, featuring Judy Mikovits, Joint PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, George Washington University; Postdoctoral Scholar in Molecular Virology National Cancer Institute; Research Director of Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease and target of Anthony Fauci—Twice.
In Washington DC Fauci’s tactics are an open secret. Intimidation. Bullying. And reckless disregard for the health and safety of the American people.
Dr. Judy Mikovits was one of the most skilled scientists of her generation. She had a 20-year collaboration with Frank Ruscetti, a pioneer in the field of human retro virology.
The first Fauci episode:
Mikovits: I took a job at the National Cancer Institute. I was under the direction of Frank Ruscetti. I isolated HIV from blood and saliva confirming Dr. Luc Montagnier’s earlier isolation and description of HIV as a possible causative agent of AIDS. I refused to do that because it’s unethical.
And then, Anthony Fauci intervened.
Mikovits: When Frank Ruscetti was out of town, I received a call from Dr. Fauci and he demanded that I give him our manuscript on the isolation and confirmation of HIV, while it was still in press. I refused to do that because it’s unethical. These manuscripts are confidential and only authors can give him a copy.
Dr. Mikovits’ standards of ethics and moral courage are unparalleled.
Mikovits: He threatened to fire me for insubordination but still I refused. It’s unethical.
Mikovits: When Frank Ruscetti returned a few weeks later, he gave the manuscript to Dr. Fauci, and Dr. Fauci purposely delayed the publication of our manuscript in order that his crony, Dr. Robert Gallo, could copy our work and submit a competing manuscript and get it into press before ours.
On May 4, 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo famously published a series of papers demonstrating that a retrovirus he’d isolated was the cause of AIDS.
Appropriating her work wasn’t the worst of it. This delayed the development of testing and spread the HIV epidemic through the world, killing millions.
Driven by greed and cronyism, Anthony Fauci—”America’s Doctor”—is directly responsible for the further spread of HIV throughout the world.
Rather than being punished for his actions, six months later he was appointed Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases–a position he still holds today.
The second Fauci episode:
Mikovits: In 2006 I co-founded and developed the first neuroimmune disease institute to study the cause and treatments of chronic fatigue syndrome.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome became epidemic in the 1980s. Doctors dismissed the ailment as psychosomatic “yuppie flu.” CFS primarily struck women. The medical community assumed they were physically and emotionally fragile and cracked under the pressure of corporate jobs.
Dr. Mikovits discovered that 67% of women affected with CFS carried a mouse virus–called XMRV– Xenotropic Murine Leukemia related Virus–that appeared in healthy women only 4% of the time. XMRV is also associated with cancers like prostate, breast, ovarian, leukemia, and multiple myeloma. Many women with XMRV go on to have children with autism.
In 2009, Drs. Mikovits and Ruscetti published their explosive findings in the journal Science. But the question remained: how was XMRV getting into people?
Mikovits: Then in 2011, our research strongly suggested that it entered the human virome through a contaminated blood supply and vaccines.
The dangers of mouse brain derived vaccines are now widely acknowledged.
“… mouse brain derived vaccine has been associated with serious allergic and neurologic adverse events.” –American Academy of Pediatrics
Mikovits: We recognized that this mouse retrovirus was causing an alarming national health crisis. That is if the blood supply and vaccines were heavily contaminated with mouse retroviruses of many strains.
As Dr. Mikovits and her team prepared to sound the alarm, Dr. Fauci used his power to silence her.
Mikovits: What Tony Fauci, Ian Lipkin and Harold Varmus did was pressure me to be silent and withdraw our manuscript. I refused again.
Anthony Fauci gave his own career and the vaccine program priority above the health and safety of all Americans.
Mikovits: When I refused to be silent, Dr. Fauci stepped in and ordered that my computers and notebooks be confiscated and orchestrated the retraction of our science paper.
Dr. Fauci abused his power and misused his office.
Mikovits: He then removed all of my funding and prevented me from getting a job in government research from 2012 forward.
Hundreds of millions of Americans may have received vaccines contaminated with XMRV.
While everyone’s been following the Fauci(rhymes with Grouchy)-Lieber-Wuhan virus plandemic narrative, something has been going on “up there” that’s worth noting. Indeed, part of me thinks that one objective of this whole plandemic exercise (Secretary of State Pompeio’s word, not mine) was to function as a gigantic distraction while “they” get other pieces in place. One of those “pieces” the Trump administration is trying to put into place are the so-called Artemis accords, which essentially would allow private interests to mine the Moon and keep as property whatever they recover there.
If your suspicion meter is already in the red zone with that one, then join the club, because mine is too, and it was also way beyond the red zone and into the purple zone for G.B., who shared this article, and also some very intriguing high octane speculations which I want to pass along to you:
As the title of the article makes clear, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, Mr. Dmitry Rogozin, is comparing the effect of the Artemis accords to the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan:
Earlier in the week, reports emerged that the Trump administration is working on a new international pact under the name ‘Artemis Accords’, which will allegedly provide a framework under international law for companies to own the resources they extract from the moon.
The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, lambasted alleged US plans on “moon mining” and creating “safety zones” on Earth’s only natural satellite, comparing the situation with the US presence in Iraq and saying that the “invasion method” remains the same. He described the method as creating a “coalition of volunteers” and “heading to the goal” no matter who may be against it.
The tweet reads: “The principle of invasion is the same, whether it be the Moon or Iraq: the creation of a “coalition of consonants” is initiated (as an option – a “coalition of willing”), and then, bypassing the UN and even NATO, if anyone doubts there, forward to the goal. However, it is only Iraq or Afghanistan that can come out of this”.
Mr. Rogozin’s observation is worth pondering, for like it or not, he may be “on” to something: the American invasions of those two countries were, as many regular readers of this blog are probably aware, were designed to accomplish a multitude of goals; the invasions functioned as bridgeheads not only in the war on terror, but also for coalitions of the participating governments and their “most favored corporations.” Some have made the case – in my opinion a strong one – that those invasions were principally for corporate enrichment, and that the war on terror was merely a narrative designed to sell the venture to the public. Add to this the drug trade tied to Afghanistan, the pipeline ventures tied to the region, and one has a powerful motivation for the establishment of such coalitions deliberately designed to create enough weight to bypass international law or major geopolitical players like Russia or China (considerably weaker as they were back then).
But there’s a hidden implication to Mr. Rogozin’s speculations, and it’s a very intriguing one to ponder, and this is where G.B.’s own high octane speculations come in. In drawing the analogy to Iraq and Afganistan, Mr. Rogozin is hardly unaware of the fact that the analogy breaks down between the Moon and those two countries. To be sure, all three are “desolate,” but the Moon, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, is uninhabited. There is no one there to protest any such corporate invasion…
…or, perhaps, that is Mr. Rogozin’s point: maybe there is someone there, or someone at least watching it in order to make sure the hairless monkeys on the parent planet don’t get too “uppity.” Normally, I’d dismiss such speculations as being too high octane even for this website, except there’s one thing hovering uneasily in the background, and it can hardly be coincidental: President Trump’s “Space Force.” I mention this because recently the “Space Force” began running recruitment videos, videos which emphasize an “off-planet career.” And let’s not forget the army general a few years ago who mentioned that the future soldier would have to fight “little green men.”
Now here’s where G.B.’s high octane speculation comes in, and I consider it important enough to pass along: Mr. Rogozin, he reasons, can hardly have selected his analogy of the “American method of invading” between the Moon, Iraq, and Afghanistan by accident. One of my own high octane speculations with respect to the invasion of Iraq in particular, was that a very hidden motivation for doing so was to physically occupy and plunder its archaeological sites. By “plunder” I don’t necessarily mean exclusively taking physical items and not returning them. I mean also taking measurements, photographing cuneiform tablets, and so on. We were told by Schrubb junior’s administration that the invasion was to deny Saddam Hussein the acquisition of “weapons of mass destruction,” and I advanced at the time in various interviews and in books that this was not, as many believe, a complete lie, but merely a lie covering a truth: the search was for weapons of mass destruction, but of the “ancient” kind as described in old Mesopotamian texts, not the modern atomic, biological, or chemical kind. To this end, I’ve speculated in various books that the Baghdad museum looting was perhaps a part of this operation, and Saddam himself certainly wasn’t helping matters by sponsoring archaeological digs all over the country, and letting it be known that he viewed himself as the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar. Whoever did rob the museum knew what they were doing and exactly what they were looking for, and I remain unconvinced to this day that (1) it was an American operation exclusively, and (2) that all of what was stolen was recovered and returned to Iraq (which is the public narrative). We know, for example, that some cuneiform tablets are simply missing, and other artifacts made their way into private collections (such as Hobby Lobby’s).
All this brings us to G.B.’s speculation: What if Rogozin, knowing all this, is really trying to warn people that under the cloak of “keeping whatever private corporations may recover on the Moon” includes archaeological artifacts, recovered under the cloak of, and during, normal mining operations.
After all, one way to make sure things stay secret, is to make them proprietary… and Space Force + private mining corporations + museum lootings do, as Rogozin points out, fit the “American pattern” of invasions.
A counselor takes calls from the Montgomery County Hotline, including from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, from her home office in Chevy Chase, Maryland on March 18, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in calls to mental health and suicide prevention hotlines. Katherine Frey / The Washington Post via Getty Images
The growing unemployment crisis, the stress of self-isolation and the fear of contracting the novel coronavirus are likely to lead to as many as 75,000 deaths due to drug or alcohol misuse and suicide, according to an analysis conducted by the national public health group Well Being Trust and reported on by CNN.
Not knowing when a sense of normalcy will return may lead to an increase in what the group calls “deaths of despair.” Federal agencies and experts warn that a crisis in mental health problems is on the horizon: depression, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide, according to The Washington Post.
“Unless we get comprehensive federal, state, and local resources behind improving access to high quality mental health treatments and community supports, I worry we’re likely to see things get far worse when it comes to substance misuse and suicide,” Well Being Trust’s chief strategy officer Dr. Benjamin F. Miller told CNN.
Miller emphasized that the numbers are just a projection and could easily change with a bit of intervention.
“We can change the numbers — the deaths have not happened yet. However, it is on us to take action now,” Miller said to CNN.
Already, communities across the country have seen an increase in overdoses. In Jacksonville, Florida, the fire and rescue department reported a 20 percent increase in overdose emergency calls in March. There were similar spikes in Columbus, Ohio and in at least four counties in New York State, according to ABC News.
“I think we need to consider the role that social isolation coupled with non-stop reporting on the pandemic may have on the feelings of desperation and hopelessness among those struggling with substance abuse,” U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York James Kennedy Jr. said in a statement, as ABC News reported. “Amidst the current crisis, we need to remember that substance abuse existed long before COVID-19, and it will likely remain long after we have wiped out the virus.”
Similar to the way hospitals were caught unprepared for a pandemic, the U.S. mental health system, which is underfunded, stigmatized and difficult to access, is less prepared to handle a mounting crisis.
“That’s what is keeping me up at night,” said Susan Borja, who leads the traumatic stress research program at the National Institute of Mental Health, to The Washington Post. “I worry about the people the system just won’t absorb or won’t reach. I worry about the suffering that’s going to go untreated on such a large scale.”
The Well Being Trust looked at the impact unemployment, isolation and uncertainty had in certain areas to create a detailed map of where it expects to see spikes in suicide and overdose-related deaths for the next decade. They used historical data to make their predictions, noting that overdoses and suicides increased in tandem with the unemployment rate during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, as CNN reported.
Well Being Trust predicts the most deaths per capita will occur in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, West Virginia, Rhode Island and Delaware, according to CNN.
The group said that federal, state and local authorities should try to find opportunity within the crisis. For instance, people could be hired for contact tracing. They also said that more leeway should be granted to telemedicine for mental health to increase access to services.
“This screams for an opportunity to examine what wasn’t working about mental health delivery prior to COVID and examine new strategies to create a new and more integrated approach to mental health post-COVID,” said Miller, as CNN reported.
More people are seeking help. Talkspace, an online therapy company, has seen a 65 percent increase in clients since mid-February.
“People are really afraid,” Talkspace co-founder and CEO Oren Frank said to The Washington Post. The increasing demand for services, he said, follows almost exactly the geographic march of the virus across the U.S. “What’s shocking to me is how little leaders are talking about this. There are no White House briefings about it. There is no plan.”
Well Being Trust believes the rising issue of mental health issues could be addressed and mitigated.
“The models we have created rely on the way it happened before. When our communities were faced with rising unemployment, social isolation and individual uncertainty the people suffered and that led to increased deaths of despair. It might be different,” they said in their report, according to CNN.
“By taking stock of the current crisis, predicting the potential loss of life, and creatively deploying local community solutions, it may be possible to prevent the impending deaths of despair. We should not sit idly by, waiting for 75,000 more deaths of despair.”
European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers are astonished to find the closest black hole from Earth. The researchers are saying if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, you can observe this black hole with the naked eye at night. The reason one can so easily view it is that it is only a thousand light-years away from us!
Petr Hadrava is the co-author of the paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, which discusses this black hole. He is a scientist at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague. He explains how the team was surprised to realize that they had found the first stellar system with a black hole that can be observed from Earth unaided.
This relatively dark black hole was rather difficult to spot for the scientists. Black holes are known to flare up when they feed on their companion stars’ matter, which reveals their location to the astronomers. But this particular one did not exhibit such behavior. So it had to be spotted only by tracking its gravitational effect on 2 nearby stars. ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile found this black hole with its 2.2-meter telescope.
The researchers were initially observing this HR 6819 system for its 2 very closely spaced stars. One of those stars was orbiting a black every 40 Earth days. So the researchers studied its trajectory to conclude that the black hole was quite big.
“An invisible object with a mass at least 4 times that of the Sun can only be a black hole,” Thomas Rivinius, lead author and ESO scientist, said in the statement.
The handful of black holes discovered in our Milky Way were all discovered with the help of the bright flashes of X-rays they gave away when they were interacting with their environment. But the way our closest black hole was discovered, by studying its gravitational effects, means there are many more such black holes we can now find with this method.
Astronomers are trailing another system LB-1 which they believe also has 3 bodies like the HR 6819. LB-1 is further from Earth than HR 6819 but still relatively close, said another co-author of the paper, Marianne Heida.
The pursuit of truth requires the ability to see beyond the appearance of things to the meaning and substance behind the forms. In no field of study and research is this more essential than that of UFOlogy, a field beset by mystery, partial information, misinformation and deliberate disinformation. And, alas, in no field is there so great a deficiency of this very quality.
Take, for example, the present climate where every rumor, fantasy and observation is given a spin to fit into the preconceived framework of “alien” sinister designs and manipulations. From abductions, to animal “mutilations” to secret goings-on at US military bases, all are described in the “sinister aliens” mold. Their pervasive, if unspoken, status quo is to place all such events, real or imaginary, in the same dark and rather frightening shadows. To depart from this conventional wisdom, this unofficial party line, is to incur the derision of those self-appointed experts who, after all, know best.
It would appear that the UFO hysteria pendulum has swung full cycle: If the 1950s were the era of the gorgeous Venusians, space gods and saviors from the galactic federation, the past decade has brought us to the age of sinister “aliens” snatching mother and child alike from their bedrooms, harvesting cattle, cats, dogs and even fetuses for obviously nefarious purposes, and the collaboration of military fascists and “aliens” in a plan to dominate the Earth! For the most part, those who claim to be objective UFO “abduction” researchers, as well as UFO journalists and authors, have been swept up in this hysteria, this harvest of fear.
Even those who sincerely intend to “just describe the facts” are affected by the dominant milieu of fear, negativity and hysteria. Words such as victim, abducted, alien, mutilation, rape, sinister, disturbing, alarming, deception, controlling, manipulative, evil, and so on are accepted as automatic members of the UFO lexicon at once mandatory and unquestioned. There is an abundance of automatic interpretations and a real lack of deep analysis, which leaves us with nearly unquestioned – and unchallenged – conclusions, which are uniformly negative. Rather than objectively collecting facts, analyzing trends and making intelligent plans for future research and UFO-human interactions, there exists an increasingly powerful machine of hysteria bringing forth a harvest of fear. And facts which do not fit into this fear and negativity paradigm are either ignored or deliberately debunked as “alien” screen memories and deception.
The real victim in all this, of course: Truth.
Truth is hard to discern amid the din of hysteria and the clouds of fear currently holding sway over the UFO community. Events are prone to misinterpretation and even censure in this environment, and those facts which do survive intact are nonetheless presented with a patina of fear and paranoia. The danger in all of this is that we may perpetuate a trend which, while initially false, may create its own reality – and its own future conflicts. We must give serious thought and much reflection to this matter, for to do otherwise may result in serious and potentially catastrophic consequences for not only humanity as a whole, but for individual observers of the UFO phenomenon as well. Indeed, we do create our own reality, and we must contemplate deeply what reality may be.
Beyond those other sweeping if not abstract concerns, there is the more immediate and ethical question of what all of this hysteria is doing to the numerous innocent percipients of the UFO phenomenon. Aside from the fact that the trust is being continuously if not unintentionally distorted, those individuals who have had close interactions (a.k.a. “abductees” and “contactees”) with UFOs and their occupants are being forced, at times cruelly, to deny any positive or edifying aspects of their encounters, and are left to dwell only on the frightening and negative aspects of the experience. Is this common? Exceedingly so! We have interviewed several individuals who have stated that so called “abduction researchers” not only enforced a certain negative and fear-engendering interpretation of their experiences, but go further and actually “throw out” any aspects of the experience which do not fit this preconceived “fear paradigm”. That is, positive, loving, healing and edifying experiences with ET beings are either ignored or deemed screen memories which only constitute a further sinister deception by the ETs. Objectively, open – mindedness – and the truth – are cast away so that these experiences may be fit into a framework of preconceived (if unstated) negative conclusions. On the one hand these researchers will go to great lengths to establish the credibility and veracity of their subjects, only to turn around and ignore or actively debunk those aspects of the experience which do not fit the researchers’ own paradigm.
If we are to pick and choose among the facts of these cases, could we not just as well contend that the negative experiences are the “screen memories” triggered by the individual’s own internal fears and insecurities while the edifying and spiritual memories are the “true” ones? If we are to pick and choose among the facts, why not just take the happy alternative? Indeed, one alternative is just as dishonest and dangerous as the other, and both should be avoided. It is imperative that we accept – and report – all the facts, and then analyze their meaning in a calm and non-hysterical manner. With the information and experiences we collectively possess thus far, we can neither proclaim the ET beings to be sinister Darth Vader space conquerors, nor can we assert that they are perfect space gods. Our polarization on this question is one of the chief manifestations of a collective hysteria which is at once pervasive and unproductive. And the greatest task facing us is the elimination of this hysteria and the transcendence of our own fear.
From:
“Extraterrestrial Contact: The Evidence and Implications” by Steven M. Greer, MD
(NOTE: The whole issue of discerning truth in an environment with a strong agenda towards engendering fear is larger than just the question of Extraterrestrials. Take a look at the news today. Do your research!)
As health officials and the public have worked hard to sort fact from fiction during an emerging and new health crisis, it has become clear that they — and we — do not always have accurate information at hand.
There are three big reasons for this.
The first one is not that anybody is necessarily trying to mislead. But the nature of health information, not to mention information in general, is that it frequently changes as we learn more.
What we think we know today will often change tomorrow. The government recommended against the general public wearing a masks — before it recommended they do so. Predictions of coronavirus deaths, how many, when, and where were wildly off the mark compared to the ultimate result (to date). It could be that the models were wrong or that we managed to change our fate. In any event, what we thought we knew at one point in time proved later to be untrue.
The second reason we do not always have accurate information at hand is a bit more sinister. It is because certain corporate or political interests are working hard — often spending a lot of money on their efforts — to control a certain narrative.
They liaison with the media, quasi-news media, health officials, government, and politicians. They publicize “studies” or “scientific reports” that are little more than slanted works designed to convince the public to believe something.
The final reason why factual information is often out of our reach is because it is simply censored, hidden or disappeared.
The influences who seek to control narratives in order to gain power or make money can reach with their tentacles into Facebook and make sure certain facts are labelled “false” and removed. They can do the same with Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia. They can commission a misleading “fact check” from any of a number of “fact checking” groups, designed to controversialize a set of true facts, the scientists unearthing them, or journalists reporting them.
For all of these reasons, it has become increasingly difficult to rely firmly on what we read and hear. And those controlling the narratives pretend it is we who are off base when we ask questions or address this reality. The wise information consumer knows better.
Now here’s one for the “what next?” category, if we had one. It was spotted by W.M. who kindly sent it along, and I received it just as I was scheduling blogs for the coming week. Normally I do that on Sundays, when I go through all that previous week’s assorted emails and articles, gradually narrowing things down to what I want to blog about. Well, this one bumped my originally-planned Wednesday blog to the “honorable mentions”, and jumped right to the top.
It seems that Tanzania’s President John Magufili pulled a fast one on the World Health Organization:
Now, to be sure, the Zero Hedge folks are urging some caution with the story, for Magufili is not without his own questionable actions:
Magufuli has garnered plenty of controversy himself over the past few weeks. He recently requested stockpiles of an ‘herbal tea’ that has been falsely branded as a COVID-19 cure, and has launched investigations impacting domestic labs and even frontline medical workers as he’s claimed the number of positive tests in his country is too high. The reality is that Tanzania doesn’t have much of a outbreak: It has recorded only 503 cases and 21 deaths. Though its mortality rate of 4% would suggest that the true number of cases likely numbers in the thousands.
Following the results, Magufuli fired the head of Tanzania’s national lab, sparking a political firestorm. Of course, though Magufuli has been criticized for trying to play down the impact of the virus, the government has so far refused to answer questions about where its test kits were manufactured, as Al Jazeera points out. On Thursday, the head of the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention rejected claims of faulty tests by Tanzania’s president.
The unreliability of COVID-19 tests manufactured in China has been a major problem for the US, and for Europe, as countries and states have been forced to discard PPE purchased in China – often after purchasing it at inflated prices – because only one-third of the masks actually work, and many of the tests have been found to produce positive and negative results more or less at random.
With that on the record, however, here’s what Magufili allegedly did:
He played what the local press described as “a trick” on the organization: He sent the WHO samples of a goat, a papaya and a quail for testing.
All three samples reportedly tested positive. When the president heard the news, he reportedly confronted the WHO, then kicked the organization out of the country. Though, to be sure, the WHO has yet to comment on the situation.
That would suggest one of two conclusions: either the strain of SARS-CoV-2 running amok in Tanzania is much, much more infectious than scientists understand, or the WHO has been reporting incorrect results either on purpose (as an attempt to bolster its credibility in the face of President Trump’s attacks) or via error (yet another indication that the WHO truly is “badly brokem” – as Vox described it back in 2015).
Most rational people would probably accept the latter scenario as the most accurate one.
Well, you can count me as one of those who thinks WHO is badly broken. The sad news there is, the U.S. Senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Grahamcracker, thinks it would function a whole lot better with Bill Gates at the helm….
…no, quit laughing! He really said that!
Anyway, I for one think the story is probably true, and that Magufili may be sensing a whole lot more than he’s letting on, because it strikes me that there’s a not-so-subtle eugenics aspect to the whole Fauci-Lieber-Wuhan virus story, namely, that it seems to have a higher infection and mortality rate among blacks than other populations. And let’s face it, with China’s influence at the WHO, and with them perhaps therefore providing a great deal of the WHO’s tests, and given that China’s tests – like pretty much everything else the Chinese Communist party does – are not to be trusted, it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.
And let’s hope that other African leaders have sent similar samples to the WHO, and are willing to catch them out. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised either, if they already had.
