Coronavirus Crisis: Main Thread

[stickdog99]

As to the Precautionary Principle, it's great. But as with the Golden Rule and the Hippocratic Oath, the spirit of the aphorism often gets lost in translation.

[Grizzly]

George Webb

So-called Internet grifter George Webb Sweigert fashions himself as some type of social media investigative reporter. Born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 12, 1960, “George Webb” hails from the same area as Jerome Corsi of New Jersey.

As with other peers and grifters, G. W. Sweigert has a history of alleged alcohol abuse, slander, libel, smear campaigns, public sexual encounters, etc. George Webb has recounted hundreds of fanciful stories for his social media audiences that have placed him in the center of human trafficking rings, “brown stone” sex blackmail operations, viewing video of the President of the United States having sex with under-aged girls, etc.
Image

Much more here:

Bleh... That's just like your opinion, man...* Spoken in my best Big Lebowski voice... that website sucks ass. But that’s just my opinion.

Saying Bill Gates is at the center of this virus/vaccine conspiracy is something everyone agrees on. But from an evidence point of view, it is like saying Dmitiri Alperovich put the missing DNC emails on a Microsoft laptop. "Boil the Ocean" strategies only hype viewers but offer no pathways to success. I have to follow the NATO Couriers that carry the blood pathogen bioweapons, not Bill's plane flying to Haiti to meet Jeff Epstein every month (which I reported over two years ago). Bill Gates Bad is like Orange Man Bad. It is a road to nowhere.

I’ve learned a whole hell of a lot from this guys work. I personally don't believe any of that shit from your Southern District New York low grade website (smear) of this guy.

But we can always agree to disagree.

[liminalOyster]

[quote="JackRiddler » Tue May 19, 2020 2:46 pm""Is the Illuminati behind the Coronavirus? False" -- that "the Illuminati" exists as an identifiable real entity in space and time that could be "behind" the Coronavirus.[/quote]

Think again, Jack. But I have absolute proof that the Illuminati began in 1994.

[kelley]

I prefer the pejorative neologism "Shilluminati"

which I thought might carry an anti-Semitic stink but etymology for "shill" shows no Yiddish derivation

and the origin of the word may be lost

[Sounder]

From the 'fact' checkers at propub

‘It’s very clear this virus was manipulated’

Scientists say it’s not. The genetic structure of the novel coronavirus rules out laboratory manipulation.

A Nature article published March 17 says the genetic makeup of the coronavirus, documented by researchers from several public health organizations, does not indicate it was altered. Instead, scientists have two plausible explanations for the origin of the virus: natural selection in an animal host, or natural selection in humans after the virus jumped from animals.

RELATED: What we know about the source of the coronavirus pandemic

"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," the article reads.

Geez man, don cha know, trust the science, and the models, trust them too, and Nature magazine, I mean it's got Nature in big letters for it's name.

[Iamwhomiam]

Conspiracy theorists, far-right extremists around the world seize on the pandemic

Civil rights advocates have warned for months that the coronavirus could aid recruiting for the most extreme white-supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.



By MARK SCOTT and STEVEN OVERLY

05/12/2020 07:55 PM EDT

Updated: 05/13/2020 09:30 AM EDT


The coronavirus is providing a global rallying cry for conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists on both sides of the Atlantic.

People seizing on the pandemic range from white supremacists and anti-vaxxers in the U.S. to fascist and anti-refugee groups across Europe, according to a POLITICO review of thousands social media posts and interviews with misinformation experts tracking their online activities. They also include far-right populists on both continents who had previously tried to coordinate their efforts after the 2016 American presidential election.

Not all online groups peddling messages on the pandemic have links to the far right, but those extremists have become especially vocal in using the outbreak to push their political agenda at a time of deepening public uncertainty and economic trauma. They are piggybacking on social media to promote coronavirus-related themes drawn from multiple sources — among them, Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns, the Trump administration’s musings about the coronavirus’ origins and anti-Muslim themes from India’s nationalist ruling party.


Online platforms like Telegram have become havens for rumors about the pandemic, such as claims that the U.S. is heading to martial law or that the virus is more benign than the flu.

“Honestly, it’s a dream come true for any and every hate group, snake oil salesman and everything in between,” said Tijana Cvjetićanin, a fact-checker in the Balkans who has watched ultranationalist groups promoting hate-filled messages on social media about the coronavirus, often against Jewish communities.

Civil rights advocates have warned for months that the coronavirus could aid recruiting for the most extreme white-supremacist and neo-Nazi groups — those actively rooting for society’s collapse. Some online researchers say they also worry about the barrage of false messages from extremist groups feeding what the U.N. has dubbed an “infodemic” that makes it hard to separate fact from fiction.

Opponents of government lockdown orders have used online platforms to organize protests across the U.S., including rallies where activists displayed guns inside Michigan’s state capitol. In Europe, rumors linking the coronavirus to 5G wireless technology have led to dozens of arson attacks on telecommunications masts — a phenomenon that now appears to have spread to Canada.

“It's like hitting conspiracy bingo,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, which is tracking coronavirus misinformation.

From 4chan to Facebook

As the world economy craters and the coronavirus’ global death toll ticks past 280,000 people, extremist messages are finding fertile ground on fringe online platforms like 4chan, Telegram and a gamer hangout called Discord. From there, such harmful content can make its way to mainstream sites like Facebook and Google-owned YouTube — each boasting roughly 2 billion users apiece — despite the companies’ attempts to weed out violent or dangerous content.

Facebook said last week that one collection of fake accounts and pages it removed in April — tied to two anti-immigrant websites in the U.S. — had drawn more than 200,000 followers with messages including the hashtag “#ChinaVirus” and a false claim that the coronavirus mainly kills white people. Twitter announced Monday that it would begin more aggressively labeling tweets that contain misleading or harmful coronavirus information.

But plenty of other fake coronavirus content continues to thrive online. That includes a slickly produced online video, called “Plandemic,” that garnered millions of views across YouTube, Twitter and Facebook over the weekend by promoting bogus medical cures and other conspiracy theories tied to the coronavirus. The video remains in wide circulation.

One coronavirus-related term, “Coronachan,” has also exploded on social media, first emerging in January and drawing more than 120,000 shares on Twitter in one week in late April, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that tracks extremist groups. (The term is a play on the name of 4chan, a message board that is a favorite gathering spot for the global far right.) In Germany, Telegram groups where influential extremists and far-right activists attack vulnerable groups have doubled their number of followers, to more than 100,000 participants since February, according to a review by POLITICO of those accounts.

The themes of far-right posts include long-standing grievances, including allegations that migrants spread disease, support for President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall, antagonism toward the EU or opposition to gun control. One online rumor, accusing Microsoft founder Bill Gates of creating the coronavirus, echoes centuries-old conspiracy theories and Anti-Semitic tropes about global elites pulling the world’s strings.

“These aren’t new lines they are spinning,” said Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “They will use anything they can, whether it’s coronavirus or something else, to bring people into their radical world.”

Public figures helping stoke the fires include French nationalist leader Marine Le Pen, whose Facebook account has more than 1.5 million followers, and Trump, who has defended his use of the term “Chinese virus” and [url]pushed the theory[/url] that the disease may have come from a lab in China, despite pushback from his intelligence and defense agencies.

I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the “borders” from China - against the wishes of almost all. Many lives were saved. The Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2020

Some online extremists groups have echoed the rhetoric of political leaders like President Donald Trump, including his attacks on China.

Extremist groups on the two continents have tried before to coordinate their messaging, with middling success.

After Trump’s surprise victory in 2016, far-right online communities sprouted up across the U.S. and Europe, at first using online platforms like Facebook and Google before shifting their focus to smaller, less-regulated networks to share conspiracy theories or organize protests.

Americans like Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, also tried to export U.S.-style online tactics in hopes of uniting European right-wing groups like Italy’s Northern League party and Le Pen’s National Rally in France, though, as POLITICO reported last year, he struggled to win over movements on the Continent.

Now, as the coronavirus gives the far right a new impetus to find audiences, many European activists are wielding the same U.S.-style tactics they have spent years learning to emulate, including the creation of online “meme banks” of photos designed to spread widely. That leaves them less in need of outside help, according to researchers tracking their movements.

“Europe’s far-right no longer needs additional resources from its transatlantic supporters,” said Chloe Colliver, who heads the digital research unit at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Blaming minorities

It does not take much digging through the online platforms to find far-right messages on the health crisis.

In Italy, extremist news outlets have flooded social media with reports blaming that country’s devastating coronavirus outbreak on migrants, including an online attack that singled out a Pakistani employee at a Chinese restaurant in a northern Italian town.

In France, activists called for sending non-white populations back to their “home” countries, while Le Pen, the far-right leader, alleged on Facebook that mosques had have “taken advantage of the confinement orders” by blaring “the muezzin's call to Islamic prayer” on loudspeakers.

Tommy Robinson, the British anti-immigration activist, has promoted the “#GermJihad” hashtag and reposted online messages from members of India’s ruling nationalist BJP party to his more than 36,000 followers on Telegram, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s review of his posts.

Others, on sites like Facebook and Reddit, have alleged that the Chinese created the coronavirus as a bioweapon to attack the U.S. economy, and will reap the windfall if they are not stopped. “China will become even more brazen and take down western economies with more filth in the future,” one Reddit user wrote.


Tommy Robinson, a British anti-immigration activist with more than 36,000 Telegram followers, has promoted hashtags like “#GermJihad” and reposted calls for a “lockdown rebellion.”

Those claims go much further than the recent speculation by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the coronavirus originated in a government lab in Wuhan, China. (The president said this month that he thinks the Chinese “made a horrible mistake and they didn’t want to admit it.”)

While some online far-right users have jumped on Trump’s messages, others had already been promoting anti-China rhetoric before senior U.S. politicians began railing on Beijing, according to a review of social media posts from early February.

Attacking governments

Extremists are also using the coronavirus to call for resistance against their governments.

In Telegram channels with tens of thousands of followers, users mostly in the U.S. urged people to take up arms to protest the lockdowns and protect their civil liberties, sometimes posting photos of themselves dressed in biohazard suits and carrying automatic weapons, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

European far-right groups also have called for national governments to reclaim their power from the EU — a message primarily focused on countries like Greece, Spain and Italy where some people remain bitter about how the bloc treated them during the 2008 financial crisis. Those countries similarly have seen a spike in Russian disinformation campaigns, mostly through Kremlin-backed media outlets, aimed at sowing doubt about Europe’s response to the coronavirus, according to a recent review conducted by EU disinformation officials obtained by POLITICO.


A woman holds up a placard at a coronavirus anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine, anti-5G and pro-freedom protest near Scotland Yard in London on May 2. | Matt Dunham/AP Photo

A far more extreme incident occurred in the U.S. in March, when the FBI shot and killed a Missouri man who agents said had been plotting to blow up a hospital to call attention to his white supremacist beliefs. The man, who had posted anti-Semitic remarks on Telegram hours before being killed, had chosen the target because of "media attention on the health sector" during the pandemic, the bureau said in a statement quoted by NBC News.

Misinformation experts at the Oxford Internet Institute documented Facebook groups across 33 states aimed at instigating opposition to quarantine measures that rob people of their freedoms and ability to earn a living, according to Aliaksandr Herasimenka, a postdoctoral researcher. Some had fewer than 10,000 members, while others had grown much larger.

“The similarity and design of their Facebook groups suggests that many of these protests across individual states are related to each other,” said Herasimenka. It “might be directed, not necessarily managed, but directed or inspired by some centralized lobby groups that we don't know exactly what they are.”

Facebook has removed some of the protests from its network after determining they had violated state orders by encouraging people to take actions that could spread the coronavirus. But the policy hasn’t applied consistently across the social network, and Facebook has been adamant that it is not policing people’s political opinions. The company has often left it to a global network of independent fact-checkers to debunk the worst online offenders or counter misinformation by pointing people to credible sources.

Several of the recently created U.S. Facebook groups have been spearheaded by the Dorr family, brothers who manage a series of aggressively U.S. pro-gun organizations, The Washington Post reported last month. One Dorr-connected private group called Wisconsinites Against Excessive Quarantine attracted 118,000 members; its Pennsylvania affiliate counts 89,000, according to a review of these Facebook groups. The Dorrs did not respond to requests for comment through their advocacy organizations.

“The audience for this stuff isn't the average American news consumer and I'm not even sure the audience is the average person stuck at home sheltering in place,” said Philip Howard, director of the Oxford Internet Institute. “It’s people who are reluctant to take any advice or instructions from the government at any time, whether it's about guidelines on what kinds of guns you can have or whether it's health-related instructions to stay at home.”

'There's only one conversation'

The anti-vaccine movement on both continents has also latched onto the coronavirus pandemic.

Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, found posts within U.S. Facebook groups claiming the pandemic is an effort to force people into accepting vaccines and, perhaps, even a surreptitious plot to inject people with microchips. Similar messages appeared in WhatsApp messages shared widely in Italy, which has a long-standing anti-vaxxer community, while groups in France have called for a boycott of any government-backed coronavirus vaccine program.


Top: Protesters Heidi Munoz Gleisner, center left, and Tara Thornton are removed from a demonstration against California Gov. Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home order. Bottom: Protesters at Scotland Yard. | AP Photo, The Sacramento Bee

U.S. anti-vaccine groups also organized an anti-lockdown rally this month outside California’s state capitol and have taken part in protests in New York, Colorado and Texas, using their opposition to state-ordered shutdowns as part of a broader message about personal “freedom,” The New York Times reported.
Other coronavirus themes emerging online include long-running conspiracy theories blaming the “global elites” for much of the world’s ills, particularly focusing on George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire who has long been a target for right-wing and anti-Semitic groups.

Since late January, attacks against Soros and his fellow billionaire Gates have shifted to accusing the men of either spreading the coronavirus or capitalizing on it to push a pro-vaccine agenda. Some Facebook users in private online groups seen by POLITICO also questioned whether Gates was also Jewish. Gates, who has made global public health a priority of his philanthropic efforts, has drawn their attention because of a 2015 video in which he discussed the dangers of a future global pandemic.

“Diseases have long been used to promote disinformation,” said Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, the social media analysis firm, who has tracked the spread of coronavirus extremist content.

“But right now, there’s only one conversation that everyone is having, and that’s about the coronavirus,” he added. “The disinformation actors know that as well, and they are trying to take advantage.”

Cristiano Lima contributed to this report.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/12/trans-atlantic-conspiracy-coronavirus-251325

[0_0]

Wow, that's a lot of pictures iamwhoiam.

Charlotte Russe
THE ILLUSION OF TRUTH

If no one ever heard about COVID-19 everyone would have just thought this was a particularly aggressive flu season. In the US in 1969 100,000 died from avian flu, so a death rate of 130,000 in 2020 could easily have been attributed to a virulent flu season. That would’ve been the case, if Obama had been president and not Trump. In January, the intelligence agencies along with WHO and other globalist ghouls seized the moment to advance a political agenda using a novel virus.

The Democratic Party leadership, the intelligence agencies, and the state-run mainstream media news are hellbent on removing Trump. These sociopaths would destroy the lives of millions in order to bring down the orange buffoon. For more than three years a ton of shit has been thrown against the mainstream media news walls and nothing sticks. Russiagate climaxed with an appearance from brain dead Mueller, while Ukraine-gate revealed the unscrupulousness of Biden.

The Democratic Party Primaries were in a state of disarray requiring numerous shenanigans to ensure mentally impaired Biden’s installation as the nominee. Without COVID-19 putting a kibosh on the rigged elections and the upcoming convention there’s a real good chance outraged Bernie supporters would’ve staged massive demonstrations in PA. Instead, populations are self-isolating worrying about bills and whether they still have a job. Interestingly enough, COVID-19 put an end to multiple protests in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. However, rage is mounting and it’s only a matter of time before the locked-in are back on the streets.

One thing is for sure, without mainstream media cable news COVID-19 would be much more difficult to exploit. It’s much easier for the security state to politicize a disease when there’s 24 hour cable news coverage. The coronavirus fully revealed the unrestrained power of mainstream media news. Unchallenged commentators, can create a firmly entrenched reality that if contradicted is dismissed by simply saying– conspiracy theory. This is quite a paradox– the security state establishes a fictitious narrative, and then calls those who dispute it a conspiracist. They can only get away with this because news shows present only ONE opinion. The audience hears a monologue rather than a dialogue. If no alternative views are provided the audience believes there’s only one acceptable way to view an issue.

A few years ago, the BBC website published an article by Tom Stafford entitled: “How liars create the ‘illusion of truth.” I guess, a propaganda experts would know how to design political fallacies. In any event, Stafford says: “Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not. Understanding this effect can help you avoid falling for propaganda….he goes on to say: “But part of guarding against the illusion is the obligation it puts on us to stop repeating falsehoods. We live in a world where the facts matter, and should matter. If you repeat things without bothering to check if they are true, you are helping to make a world where lies and truth are easier to confuse. So, please, think before you repeat.” Stafford has described exactly how mainstream media news operates, however, the fraud they commit is intentional and the lies are deliberately disseminated…….

from the comments on the excellent new off-guardian article here: https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/19/10-steps-to-turn-a-pandemic-into-the-brave-new-normal/ which is well worth a read without prejudice

[Project Willow]

Fascinating conclusion from a number of bored biologists tearing apart the Covid-19 genome, from an anonymous blog written by a presumed Chinese citizen:
https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html

RaTG13 – the undeniable evidence that the Wuhan coronavirus is man-made

Can the sequence of such a virus be fabricated? It cannot be any easier. It takes a person less than a day to TYPE such a sequence (less than 30,000 letters) in a word file. And it would be a thousand times easier if you already have a template that is about 96% identical to the one you are trying to create. Once the typing is finished, one can upload the sequence onto the public database. Contrary to general conception, such database does not really have a way to validate the authenticity or correctness of the uploaded sequence. It relies completely upon the scientists themselves – upon their honesty and consciences. Once uploaded and released, such sequence data becomes public and can be used legitimately in scientific analysis and publications.

Read the comment section on his original post that gave rise to the above article:
https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/blog/sc ... s-man-made

Neurobiologist dude on a bike summarizes:

[Project Willow]

I hadn't heard of this doctor before, but I like his synopsis of the social situation, plus I am a bit of an anglophile.

[alwyn]

What the fuck is he even talking about? The Constitution gives the police the power to force a medical treatment—"jab a needle in your arm"—against your will? Could he point to that clause? I don't remember that part of it.

wasn't that outlawed at Nuremburg?

[Joe Hillshoist]

.
And what's always been weird to me about "proper" US medical schools is how little they emphasize trying to get patients to do basic things to keep themselves healthy, such as limiting their intake of refined sugar, getting a little sunlight, sleeping at least 6 hours every night, having a regular exercise routine, and staying hydrated with water that is at least filtered. Anybody who has ever eaten hospital food knows exactly how important diet is to most MDs. But they'll definitely check to make sure you're fully vaccinated.

Public education programs in Australia make all that bolded stuff common knowledge. You don't have to agree or follow it. It's a standard part of public health promotions. Doesn't that happen in the US?

Drs here have to reflect those public health attitudes whatever their corporate proclivities or general shittiness, they can get into trouble if they're shown not to, especially if it makes people sick. It's not rigorously enforced necessarily. Unless something happens or enough people make enough noise.

It is not only not rigorously enforced in the US, it is given the standard, every few election cycles or so, lip-service only when stumping on healthcare reform, e.g. "We need to also consider preventative medicine." And to be honest, how the f does one check to make sure doctors are telling their patients to f-ing eat right and maybe consider exercise? What is being battled here is good ole fashion American GDP: bombs and obesity. The public expenditure is part of the record, untouchable never questioned as far as financing is concerned. For the private part one need only what the adverts during a football game to see what's being pushed: obesity and every pill imaginable. So, no, that does not happen in the US and I challenge anyone to even suggest remotely otherwise.

It's not legal to advertise medications in Australia.

Except paracetamol and ibuprofen based pain killers, very simple non prescription medication, herbal treatments and stuff. It's more complicated than that as well. But you basically can't advertise prescription medications.

It would be considered medical advise and if you aren't.a qualified doctor you can't give it. If you are its on a a patient to patient basis specific to their symptoms. Big Pharma as too much influence still, and drugs play a big part in the whole process inevitably but it's not as outrageoysly mercenary as the US.

[dada]

Did some reading on the precautionary principle. I guess I can see how erring on the side of caution where biological life and the elements that sustain it are concerned could be a good idea. Alhough I imagine that the federal government of the U.S. is generally opposed on ideological grounds.

Anyway, I saw some things in the wikipedia entry that I thought worth mentioning:

1. Potential adverse effects of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, like causing the destruction of the earth by creating a black hole, do not meet the minimum threshhold of plausibility of risk.

2. Some people seem to think there's danger in self-replicating genetic, nano, and robot tech. I think a strong precautionary stance would try to stop innovation in these areas entirely.

This reminds me of the butlerian jihad in Dune. "thou shalt not make a machine in the image of the mind of man." Thousands of years after the jihad, the god emperor Leto II kept up the ban on thinking machines during his reign. But he also allowed the Ixians to innovate in secret. He was a complicated figure, few understand what his motives were to this day. Of course, a couple thousand years after that, the ban on thinking machines was long forgotten, a footnote in history.

3. Nick Bostrom discusses the idea of a future powerful superintelligence, and the risks that we/it face should it attempt to gain atomic level control of matter.

I'm not a fan of this whole trendy outlook. Basically I think it rests on a faulty premise, a total misunderstanding of the way superintelligence moves from the future to the past. Atomic level control of matter is only 'gained' retroactively, therefore perfectly safe.

4. Finally, "Application of the principle modifies the status of innovation and risk assessment: it is not the risk that must be avoided or amended, but a potential risk that must be prevented. Thus, in the case of regulation of scientific research, there is a third party beyond the scientist and the regulator: the consumer."

And where would we be without the consumer.

So that's my thoughts on the precautionary principle. Hope you don't mind, and I apologize if it seems inappropriate. But really, look at this thread. I'll be honest, I can barely understand half of what people are even talking about, half the time.

[alloneword]

I hadn't heard of this doctor before, but I like his synopsis of the social situation, plus I am a bit of an anglophile.

Thank you for that, PW. I read a short book(let) of his about 30 years ago (on 'Why Doctors Do More Harm Than Good') which really opened my eyes. I recall it being well-referenced and persuasive. I had no idea he was still alive.

I loved the typical English understatement demonstrated when he said:

I buggered up my career long ago by speaking out...

[0_0]

Another Colorado coroner — this time in La Plata County — is challenging the way local and state health departments have been attributing deaths to COVID-19. It follows the death of a great-grandfather who had most recently tested “inconclusive” for the virus this month. “I guess we just have a different opinion,” said La Plata County Coroner Jann Smith in an interview with CBS4.

The difference of opinion arose out of the May 9 death of Robert Kujath, 80, who died at his home in southern Colorado after years of declining health. The coroner and Kujath’s family said he had suffered strokes, heart disease and had been limited to a wheelchair for years. In recent weeks, while hospitalized in Durango, Kujath had tested positive for coronavirus although those around him say it was a mild case with no symptoms. After he was released from the hospital and returned home, Kujath was tested for a second time. This time the test came back as inconclusive. Kujath passed away at about the same time that the second test result was returned. Smith says she listed Kujath’s cause of death as congestive heart failure, but also noted on the death certificate the earlier positive COVID-19 test. “He passed away from medical issues, not COVID problems,” said Smith. “He didn’t have a positive when he passed away.” She said her assessment was that COVID-19 played no part in Kujath’s passing, so she was surprised to initially see local health authorities list it differently.

The San Juan Basin Public Health agency had initially listed Kujath’s death as the county’s first coronavirus death on its official website, based on the earlier positive test.

CBS4 contacted the San Juan Basin Public Health agency about why someone who most recently tested inconclusive would qualify as a COVID-19 death. A spokeswoman for the office explained that categorization was in step with Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and federal guidelines that were in effect at the time, however she said the agency’s website was updated on Monday to reflect zero direct deaths from COVID-19 and that Kujath’s death was now listed as a death that occurred “among” people who have had the virus. She said the change was made to align the county website with new state health department definitions that were established Friday. Liane Jollon, Executive Director of San Juan Basin Public Health said, “SJBPH has made changes to its data dashboard to reflect CDPHE’s new death reporting data points and definitions on Monday, 5/18, one business day after CDPHE’s changes.”

https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/05/18/ ... ta-county/

[0_0]

Is Corona a religious cult? An anthropological study. (Or, Corona as virus-centered apocalypse cult; its ascent to state religion; the mass-conversion event to the cult; a study of the cult)