☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Tuesday, August 2, 2022 ☙ GETTING KINETIC 🦠

Citizens take back local government; Nancy Pelosi maniacally tries to start WWIII; I debunk a Berenson take on Ukraine Biolabs; and Illinois hops on the monkeypox emergency cash wagon.

Good morning, and Happy Tuesday, C&C! Your roundup today includes: the most encouraging news this summer, about citizens taking back local government, courtesy of the WaPo; Nancy Pelosi and the U.S. government dare the Chinese to start World War III as the loopy antique Speaker’s jet inches closer to Taiwan; I challenge Alex Berenson’s debunking of the Ukraine biolabs story; and Illinois hops on the monkeypox emergency cash wagon.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 The Washington Post ran a moving and incredibly encouraging story yesterday headlined, “Conservatives Skeptical of Coronavirus Vaccines Battle to Lead a Hospital.”

The WaPo didn’t mean it to be encouraging, that was an accident. Remarkably, the article actually praises SOME Republicans, by carefully peeling away “conservatives,” who are described as “activists,” “skeptics,” and “distrustful of vaccines,” from a handful of “moderate Republicans,” who are pedigreed, credentialed and who ALWAYS boost covid vaccines and mandates, like good little doggies.

The article begins with Sarasota conservative Victor Rohe, who got a bad case of covid last September, and decided to rent his own oxygen unit and treat himself instead of taking his chances with remdesivir and the ventilator in Sarasota Hospital, which was the only treatment it offered.

Now he’s doing just fine, and he’s running for the hospital board.

WaPo says there are four cooperating candidates running for the board. They’re challenging long-established incumbents, and “at least three of whom are skeptical of coronavirus vaccine mandates, [all] rallying behind the theme of ‘medical freedom.’”

Sounds good to me, but the WaPo hints darkly that this is a disastrous development.

I have personal experience with Sarasota Hospital. Among others, including top-level hospital staff, last year I spoke with Dr. Stephan Guffanti, a retired ER doctor. He was hospitalized for covid at Sarasota. Guffanti told me that his roommate, an elderly black man, was in distress and was being ignored by staff, until his situation became life threatening. So, Guffanti became his roommate’s patient advocate and began insisting on improved care for him and pointing out the Hospital’s negligence.

Before he knew what had happened to him, Guffanti found himself physically restrained — tied down — in a bed in a room by himself. His roommate died. Guffanti, through what he believes was a miracle, somehow got himself discharged AMA. After Guffanti started loudly and publicly complaining and spoke to media about what had happened, Sarasota Hospital spokeslady Kim Savage accused him of lying for “politically motivated” reasons. Fortunately, he’d videotaped much of his experience and folks helped him put it online. Boom.

It wasn’t Guffanti who was lying.

After unsuccessfully trying to find a legal way to address the problems, Guffanti took personal responsibility for the problem — analogously to how Victor Rohe took personal responsibility for getting his own oxygen and treating his covid at home.

According to the WaPo article, about a month ago Dr. Guffanti recruited a slate of candidates to run for the Hospital board, whose members hold staggered 4-year terms. The WaPo notes the nine current members — four are up for election this year — are all establishment Republicans, described by the WaPo as “relatively moderate GOP candidates” with “extensive backgrounds in medicine or business.”

Mostly business.

For example, Darryl W. Henry, cemented into the hospital board in 2008, worked in DC for the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon and later for a defense contractor. Another incumbent, Joseph J. DeVirgilio,Jr., is a former utility executive from Upstate New York. These gentlemen, along with the rest of the board, should be ashamed of themselves. They should do a lot of soul searching about their roles in the bloody disaster that unfolded in the Sarasota hospital system during the pandemic.

On the other hand, the challengers lack connections with the defense industry or with New York public utilities. They are mostly DOCTORS AND NURSES, which clearly disgusts the highbrow WaPo. What do doctors and nurses know about running a hospital? “It is time demanding and it requires deep intellectual thought and requires you gaining knowledge of the entire medical process, and entire medical financial process,” the article quotes pompous board member Darryl Henry.

Oh no! Running a hospital requires “deep intellectual thought,” like the former defense contractor has. Doctors and nurses can’t think deeply and intellectually. It’s a good thing we have former defense contractors to save us.

The challengers are all running on a “patients first” platform of medical autonomy and the rights of patients to direct their own care, instead of blindly handing their bodies over to faceless bureaucrat non-doctors like elitists Henry and DeVirgilio. For some reason, the challenging candidates seem to think people and their doctors should make choices about care, instead of hospital boards dictating that the only treatment patients will get, like it or not, regardless of their individual conditions, comorbidities, or drug interactions, is remdesivir and the ventilator.

I don’t need to tell you about the well-known problems with THAT unfortunate treatment protocol, do I?

Candidate Victor Rohe told WaPo, “The biggest problem, and it’s not just here, it’s all around the country, is the interruption of the doctor-patient relationship,” adding that one of the reasons he decided to self-treat his own coronavirus infection was hearing about Guffanti’s experience at the hospital. “If you went to a hospital. Would you want your medical decisions made by a bureaucrat? Or by your doctor? … The culture of the hospital has changed.”

Well put.

Folks, THIS is how we do it. I bet most of us never even knew that some hospital systems have elected boards, or that it made a smidgen of difference to anybody who was on those boards. But we just found out — the hard way — that it DOES matter, it makes a BIG difference, a life or death difference.

Many of our friends and relatives paid for our education with their lives.

It wasn’t always this way. But we forgot about service to the community, and were too distracted, too busy serving ourselves, and too focused on chasing our own opportunities and serving our own families and social groups. Parasites infected the social systems while we were looking the other way.

Now, we are going to have to claw back every little beautification board and neighborhood planning committee in our local communities. Let’s follow the great example set by this Sarasota group. So pick something and get to work. Retired C&Cers, this is your call to action.

Since the WaPo refused to link any of the candidates’ websites, I’m doing it: [healthfreedomsrq.com – Health Freedom SRQ](https://healthfreedomsrq.com). If someone can let my office know where to donate, I’d like to give an amount ending in a ‘$2’ to each candidate, and I’ll be happy to include the links in tomorrow’s post as unofficial multipliers.

🔥 Well, it looks like Nancy Pelosi pulled off a $100M insider stock deal in Nvidia Corporation while she was shepherding a massive semiconductor deal through Congress. Perfectly legal, of course. Coincidentally, Nvidia has its largest manufacturing plant in Taiwan, so it would be hard on her portfolio if China invaded or anything. Also coincidentally, according to numerous corporate media sources late yesterday, like CNN, as well as Taiwanese media, Pelosi WILL land on the controversial island sometime this evening.

So many people are tracking flight SPAR19 — Pelosi’s flight — that it shut down FlightAware’s website for a while overnight. Independent reports suggest over half a million people are watching her stupid plane inch around the globe in real time. As of this morning, she’d just left Malaysia, apparently flying East around the South China Sea to approach Taiwan from the South. If she’s going.

Needless to say, there’s a massive military buildup happening in the region.

U.S. Naval Institute @NavalInstitute

Carrier USS Ronald Reagan, Two F-35B Big Decks Operating Near Taiwan as Pelosi Arrives in Singapore; China Renews Threats - USNI News news.usni.org/2022/08/01/car…

For example, China has apparently now staged amphibious tanks across from Taiwan, its Shandong and Liaoning carrier groups have left port, and it is holding constant drills in the region. Taiwan is on “high alert,” has canceled all military leave, and mass mobilization is underway.

A Deniz Engelhardt @cover_up8d

🇨🇳_||~🌊⚓️ The Chinese Navy - aircraft carrier Liaoning leaves its dock from Qingdao to an unknown destination, amid rising tension over #Pelosi's upcoming visit to #تايوان . #Taiwanchina #geopolítics #Asia #AsiaPacific

The U.S. has deployed FOUR carrier groups to the region: USS Ronald Reagan, USS America, USS Tripoli, and the USS Abraham Lincoln. (Technically, the Tripoli is a flight-decked amphibious assault ship, and the Abe Lincoln is somewhere off Hawaii).

The USS Ronald Reagan appears positioned to provide a fighter escort for Pelosi after her plane turns north to approach Taiwan.

Meanwhile, China has test-fired its hypersonic “carrier killer” missile:

Zhang Meifang张美芳 @CGMeifangZhang

China for 1st time revealed video of launch of what resembles DF-17 missile, displaying flexibility of the “aircraft carrier killer” hypersonic weapon that is impossible to intercept amid rising tension of Pelosi’s possible visit to Taiwan: experts @globaltimesnews

Nothing could go wrong with this plan! Hopefully they’ve thought it all through. One question is, how much did this all cost? I hope it’s worth it. Another question is, with this much live hardware in one tiny area right off China’s coast, what are the chances of war starting on ACCIDENT?

And … for the love of humanity … what about the carbon footprint!?!?!? This operation alone will probably raise the sea level six inches.

The only thing I could find suggesting I should endorse this reckless show of force and maniac brinksmanship is that the socialists oppose Pelosi’s trip:

World Socialist Web Site @WSWS_Updates

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will arrive in Taiwan in the next 24 hours, flanked by a US aircraft carrier, a destroyer, a cruiser and dozens of F-35 aircraft in a deliberate effort to provoke an escalation of the US-China conflict.

wsws.orgNancy Pelosi, stay out of Taiwan!Working people around the world must oppose the deliberate provocation by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the US military, which threatens to provoke a military conflict and the loss of countless lives in Taiwan, China, the Asia/Pacific region, and the United States.

That kind of put me in a tough spot. I sort of reflexively support anything the world socialists oppose. Hmm. Well, there’s nothing we can do about it anyway, except watch this literally unbelievable drama play out.

Haha, if I’d told you covid would make THIS happen, even C&Cers would’ve thought I was an unhinged conspiracy theorist.

🔥 I recently ran across a March 11th Substack post by former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson, who has reliably challenged the covid narrative since day one (and still does). In the post, titled “Don’t Be a Useful Idiot,” Berenson attempts to debunk what he characterizes as the “Russian conspiracy theory” that U.S.-supported biolabs in Ukraine contributed somehow to starting the war.

He’s wrong.

First, Berenson credulously accepts the corporate media narrative that the brave Ukrainians fought back harder and longer than the Russians expected, so TAKE THAT! Putin. The truth is Russia would have fully occupied Ukraine months ago except that Russia isn’t fighting Ukraine, it’s fighting Ukraine plus NATO plus the United States. And still, Russia continues to gain ground anyway. I’m not knocking Ukraine or promoting Putin. I’m just saying. Those are the facts.

Berenson’s overly simplistic description of the conflict make suspect the rest of his “simple explanation,” which is that in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States hired a bunch of the communist bioweapons scientists to keep them from going to work for rogue states and terrorists. That part is true; the stated aims for the program were to put the Soviet scientists to work in CIVILIAN jobs. Hammering weapons into plowshares; you know. For the good of humanity and so forth.

Maybe that’s how it started. But now it’s thirty years later. Most of those scientists should be long retired on generous pensions. But for some reason there are more labs now than there were at the beginning. And our government is providing ZERO transparency about them when — if the work really was civilian — a normal government would address the allegations by opening the books. Plus, the government initially lied about whether there were ANY biolabs in Ukraine, before being forced to admit there are OVER FORTY. Why should we believe them now?

Here’s how Berenson sums up his flawed argument:

“Now the Russians need a new excuse for their war and its crimes. It doesn’t have to be a good excuse, it just has to be something they and the Chinese can say that is a little less absurd than /Zelensky drinks the blood of Russian children morning noon and night (/they may yet get there). Thus the talk of biolabs and bioweapons, which forces the media to explain that Ukrainian labs weren’t actually doing… whatever it is the Russians are hinting they were doing.”

To his credit, Berenson admits, as he must after his last two years of reporting, that our government was caught more or less red-handed in its involvement with gain of function research in Wuhan. And he also allows that the media has been lying nonstop for two years about covid so it’s hard to believe their denials about biolabs in Ukraine. But he dismisses all that out of hand. We can trust them NOW.

I disagree. Just because we hired Soviet bio-scientists thirty years ago to keep them off the market does NOT provide a satisfactory explanation of what the Democrats have been up to in Ukraine since helping install the Zelensky regime in 2014, especially in the face of unanswered Russian claims. If we can spend billions to help octogenarian Nancy Pelosi jet over to check out her semiconductor investments in Taiwan, it seems like we could throw a little cash at debunking the Russian claims.

I love Alex, but he’s wrong about ivermectin, he’s wrong about Dr. Malone, and he’s wrong about this one, too.

🔥 The State of Illinois has jumped on the cash wagon, joining New York City and San Fransisco in declaring a state of emergency for monkeypox yesterday. As of yesterday, there were 530 cases in the state, of which most, 330, were in Chicago.

Rotund Governor Pritzer explained, “MPV is a rare, but potentially serious disease that requires the full mobilization of all available public health resources to prevent the spread.” Haha, it’s RARE, and it might be painful and inconvenient, so ALL public health resources in Illinois must be mobilized.

Governor JB Pritzker @GovPritzker

One CBS article reporting the story is headlined, “Gov. Pritzker Declares Monkeypox Virus Outbreak in Illinois a Public Health Emergency.” The article included some very useful information.

Cherry-picked local expert Dr. Karen Krueger (no relation to Freddy that we know of) explained that she hopes the declaration of emergency will help with FUNDING. Oh, and also vaccine access. In other words, sweet, sweet federal cash.

Dr. Krueger, an Illinois physician, admitted, “Thus far, I haven’t really seen community transmission… It’s really been people who have had a very close contact with somebody else.”

Oh. Makes sense to declare a statewide emergency then.

The article cites the CDC that monkeypox is transmitted through “close, personal and often skin-to-skin contact,” and is "spreading primarily among men with same-sex partners.” Okay then.

The article also says cases of monkeypox often resolve after a few weeks without treatment. “The majority of people are able to manage their symptoms at home and kind of just ride through the course,” Krueger admitted.

So, what’s the problem? We’re mobilizing entire governments to prevent people from getting an illness that usually just resolves at home? What do they need all that money for?

The last sentence of the article says the moronic reporter actually asked Dr. Krueger if we need widespread lockdowns to slow the spread. I am not making that up. Fortunately, Dr. Krueger said she doesn’t see that happening.

So.

Have a terrific Tuesday, C&C! I’ll be back tomorrow with another hot steaming news roundup for you.

If you can, I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved-

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