Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Russia expelling tens of thousands of Chinese, China border city in lockdown, expect 2nd wave in China.

 

I just found this out about the family of a teenager I met through work. He's just a good kid. Impossible not to like. His grandmother tested positive for COVID-19 a few days ago and she died from it yesterday. She lived with his family, so he and his little brother had to be there as they were taking the body away.

Between this and my neighbor, I have to admit I'm a little shaken. Mostly I'm pissed. Maybe they both would have died anyway, but this thing didn't need to be this bad. Y'all will have to pardon me a little venting as I resist the urge to throw something or punch a wall.

 

for example:

 

Nothing to pardon, OOP. That's an incredibly hard thing to have to process. My heart goes out to those families.

Hang in there. The board will continue to be here to vent.

 

also:

Notes on Excess Mortality #1: Spain

We’ve now seen the common pattern. A certain region or jurisdiction reports X number of COVID-19 fatalities over a given period. But when the average number of deaths for all causes is compared to these COVID-19 death tolls they are still dramatically higher than the COVID-19 numbers alone can account for. So we see a large number of unexplained deaths that are almost certainly due to the COVID-19 crisis, whether that is people dying of COVID-19 or dying from other causes at higher rates because of the social and medical care disruptions brought in its wake.

 

A Statesboro church’s defiance underscores Kemp’s shutdown dilemma

Don't know whether this is an isolated instance or whether it might be a contributing factor (one of many) to AA communities being disproportionately affected.

 

Yet more "data."

 

Thanks. I texted a friend of mine, someone I'm close enough to that I wanted to share the news about my niece being born yesterday. Once the text conversation turned to those two stories, he called me. He could tell it was getting to me through the texts. It's just strange because that's not usually me, but I'm lucky to have support in many places.

 

That's great you have good friends. But I'm not letting you gloss over the birth of your niece! Congrats!

 

Let’s revisit the key Watergate question again, this time with another updated timeline.

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.

Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.

The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.

"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House.

From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on.” …

"It would be a significant alarm that would have been set off by this," former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Mick Mulroy, now an ABC News contributor, said of the NCMI report. "And it would have been something that would be followed up by literally every intelligence-collection agency."

Mulroy, who previously served as a senior official at the CIA, said NCMI does serious work that senior government leaders do not ignore.

"Medical intelligence takes into account all source information -- imagery intelligence, human intelligence, signals intelligence," Mulroy said. "Then there’s analysis by people who know those specific areas. So for something like this to have come out, it has been reviewed by experts in the field. They’re taking together what those pieces of information mean and then looking at the potential for an international health crisis.”

NCMI is a component of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Together, the agencies’ core responsibilities are to ensure U.S. military forces have the information they need to carry out their missions -- both offensively and defensively. It is a critical priority for the Pentagon to keep American service members healthy on deployments.

Asked about the November warning last Sunday on ABC’s "This Week," Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos, "I can't recall, George. But we have many people who watch this closely. We have the premier infectious disease research institute in America, within the United States Army. So, our people who work these issues directly watch this all the time."

Pressing the secretary, Stephanopoulos asked, "So, you would have known if there was briefed to the National Security Council in December, wouldn't you?"

Esper said, "Yes. I'm not aware of that.”​

What did they know, and when did they know it?

 

Thanks. I'm not glossing over it. I posted about it somewhere yesterday, I think. I'm sharing good news wherever I can because I think we can all use a little life in the middle of this.