☕️ NEW CHINA FLU ☙ Saturday, November 25, 2023 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Flying bomb car probably not terrorists; why the new China flu probably isn't the 'big one'; Bill Maher and Oliver Stone talk Ukraine bio-labs; Pfizer picks the wrong fight; and 13 hostages are home.

Good morning, C&C, welcome to the Weekend Edition! Thanksgiving being safely out of the way, the Childers family obtained its Christmas tree yesterday. Then the stand, pulled down from attic storage, promptly broke two of its oversized set screws, and so we contributed to the economy by going back out shopping for a replacement one at the local hardware store.

And that was all the Black Friday shopping that happened around here.

As we shift into the Part Two of this year’s holiday season, your Weekend Edition roundup includes: terrorists did not attack the Niagara border station after all; China’s mystery infection isn’t a new pandemic after all; Bill Maher - Oliver Stone interview hits some covid and vaccine high points; Pfizer picks a fight with Poland over vaccines; and the Israel-Hamas cease fire holds another day.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 Sometimes the real news is about what the news isn’t about. We have two of those stories today. The first one was a dramatic exploding car at the Niagara Falls crossing on the US-Canadian border. The news broke on Wednesday around 11:30am, immediately prompting dark speculation about terrorists and trunk bombs.

C&C did not cover the story, because it was all hot takes and no data. But yesterday, after watching turnstile security video of an out-of-control luxury sedan racing up a high curb or retaining wall and literally launching itself into the air, I predicted on Twitter that the crash will ultimately be blamed on a “medical emergency.”

Yesterday more information oozed out and the wreck looks even less like a bombing. The Canadian Broadcast Company ran its take on the story yesterday headlined, “Married New York couple were in car that crashed, exploded at Rainbow Bridge, Niagara Falls police say.”

According to a Niagara Falls Police Department report and a statement by the family, Kurt and Monica Villani, both 53,  from Grand Island, New York — about 10 miles from the site of the crash — were heading to Toronto to see KISS in concert. Ironically, they were traveling in their $300,000 2022 Bentley Flying Spur. The Villanis were well-liked in the area, owning a popular family business, Gui Lumber, and were known to be very active in local charities. “They were extremely generous and kind,” said Chuck Meyer, who lives near the couple and was quoted for the story.

Contradicting all the social media rumors, the Villanis weren’t exactly terrorist types.

The car and both occupants were completely incinerated in the crash. Officials said the fire burned so hot that nothing is left but the engine. No explosive residue was found in or near the wreckage, according to FBI officials in Buffalo.

Granted, the explosion and incineration are weird elements. But I still like my medical emergency hypothesis, even though there’s a competing theory. The Flying Spur has a 542-hp engine and accelerates 0 to 60 in four seconds. In other words, it was probably going fast. Back in summer of 2021, Bentley recalled some of its European Flying Spurs, over stuck accelerators. According to the recall notice, a trim piece over the fuse box could sometimes stick out and press onto the accelerator, causing the luxury car to “continue to accelerate, even when the driver's foot is removed from the accelerator pedal.”

But maybe most damning, auto collision experts pointed to the smoke streaming from the back of the airborne car (pictured above), which could be evidence the driver was desperately smashing the brakes.

Bentley told the New York Times it had only recalled European models (with the reversed steering) manufactured between 2018 and 2021. You’d expect Bentley would have fixed its 2022 models and removed any dangerous trim defects, which are features that luxury buyers normally do not prefer.

It’s still possible the driver experienced a medical emergency, and involuntarily mashed down on both the accelerator and the brake pedals, but 2021’s recall supports the hypothesis of a mechanical failure. We may never know, since the engine block isn’t saying, and there isn’t any other evidence left. But because of that smoke trail, I’ll predict the family gets a couple million from Bentley in a quiet out-of-court settlement with no admission of wrongdoing.

But either way, it almost certainly wasn’t terrorists. The doombloggers were wrong.

🦠 The next non-story was the new 2023 ‘China flu.’ They all covered it, but Reuters’ version of the story yesterday was headlined, “China grapples with respiratory illness spike, WHO says no unusual pathogen found.” Note Reuters’ restrained headline. It didn’t use words like “worry,” “experts,” “overwhelmed,” or even “mysterious.” And it even included a reassuring word from the WHO in the headline.

But, where corporate media failed to fearmonger, the social media doombloggers took over. Here’s one example:

Now it’s the opposite of 2020. Back then, media spread the fear, and the independent bloggers tried to defuse the panic. Now the bloggers are panicking.

Corporate media’s stories about the outbreaks of pediatric bacterial pneumonia in two Chinese cities have, if anything, been understated and reassuring. Nor has the WHO or the CDC declared any kind of emergency, or even designated the bacteria as a “variant of interest.” The first two paragraphs of the Reuters article are a typical example:

China called for vigilance on Friday as a surge of respiratory illness hit schools and hospitals and the World Health Organization, which has asked the government for disease data, said no unusual or novel pathogens had been detected.

China is grappling with a spike in respiratory illnesses as it enters its first full winter season since it lifted strict COVID-19 restrictions in December, with cases among children appearing especially high in northern areas like Beijing and Liaoning province where hospitals are warning of long waits.

The key phrase was “since it lifted strict covid-19 restrictions.” Reuters was hinting the outbreaks are the fruit of lockdown-induced immune deficits. But in spite of the media’s delicate, hands-off approach, the outbreak story has triggered a giant wave of urgent hot takes on social media. It’s the big one! Here we go again, just like in 2020! It’s in the same country as Wuhan!

From all available evidence, this is not the “big one.” Bacterial outbreaks are usually localized and can often be traced to a single source like poop-fertilized produce or septic-tainted water. Bacteria are bad candidates for pandemics, mainly because they’re too big to go airborne, and normally must be transmitted through food or water.

Comparatively, if a tiny airborne virus is like a mosquito, a bacteria is like an elephant. It’s a totally different scale, and bacteria, like elephants, are too fat to fly.

But the doomblogging drums beat on. Here is another example, which even used the tiresome word “overwhelmed,” and invoked a scary “mystery,” even though corporate media hasn’t used either term.

Ugh. Nothing like that has happened yet. No deaths have yet been reported. No schools have yet been closed. No travel has been shut down. No hospitals have imploded. Given the popularity of these kinds of posts, sometimes I think there must be a lot of people out there who enjoy darkly fantasizing about remote, worst-case scenarios.

Doomblogging gets clicks and more followers. But the reality here is only — so far — that the Chinese are dealing with a couple bacterial outbreaks, and there is no evidence yet of any threat of a new pandemic. I do find it curious, even a little weird, how cautiously the media is approaching the subject, given how much they usually love a good disease story. But maybe the lagging world economy has them spooked.

Bottom line: I’ll happily debunk some over-hyped non-stories! It’s so much lighter than covering more exciting topics like real pandemics or war news.

💉 There were so many great moments it was hard to decide which clip to include in today’s post from a recent podcast with Bill Maher and Oliver Stone. I chose this short excerpt where the two media heavyweights discussed shady U.S. biolabs in Ukraine. Maher seemed genuinely shocked to hear there were U.S. biolabs in Ukraine, and Stone was just as shocked that Maher hadn’t heard about the labs, or about Viktoria Nuland, for that matter.

Maher promised to research the Ukraine biolab story, and it sounded like he meant it.

CLIP: Bill Maher and Oliver Stone discuss Ukraine biolabs (4:47).

Bill Maher is a perfect sample of what the intellectual left is thinking these days. Although he often expresses conservative thoughts, Maher is not a conservative. In the full interview, for example, while he conceded that Biden’s vaccine mandates were totalitarian, he insisted that Trump would be much worse — arguing, non sequitur, that Trump never conceded losing the 2020 election. (Stone scoffed at that and asked Maher to show evidence that Trump lost, in a delightful turnaround of the Left’s “no evidence” gag.).

But Maher — already opposed to mandates — is coming even further around about the vaccines, again suggesting that vaccine skepticism is no longer a partisan issue. The whitecoats wish it were a partisan issue.

And get this: both men admitted they took Ivermectin for their breakthrough, post-vaccination covid infections. Haha, nobody trusts the FDA.

In the linked clip, holding his hands out wide to demonstrate the two extremes, Maher explained, “If Fauci’s here and Bobby Kennedy’s here, I’m closer to Bobby Kennedy.” First, by using Fauci as one extreme, Maher basically called the human cockroach a jab-happy nutjob. Later in the interview (not in this clip), Maher called gain of function research “stupid” and “not worth the risk,” but — get this — said it was “pushed by Fauci.”

Saying Fauci was pushing gain of function research is almost calling him a genocidal maniac. Which he is, of course, but I digress. Maher’s evolution is progress. We don’t need to persuade everyone. We only need to reach the tipping point.

It was an interesting podcast with plenty more discussion about covid, the pandemic, and the vaccines. Here’s the link to the full two-hour interview: Oliver Stone | Club Random with Bill Maher.

💉 Politico EU ran a story yesterday headlined, “Pfizer is suing Poland over vaccines. This is how we got here.” The sub-headline explained, “The court case is the latest fallout from Ursula von der Leyen’s massive COVID-19 vaccine contract.” I would represent Attila the Hun long before I’d ever consider representing Pfizer, but if I did, I would tell the pharma giant it is making a huge mistake.

Pfizer claims Poland refuses to pay for sixty million doses of Pfizer’s defective mRNA genetic shot. Poland says it doesn’t need them, never wanted them, and isn’t paying for them. But since Poland is in the European Union, it is legally bound to a jab contract signed by the EU’s president in Brussels. You’re welcome, Polish people.

In April 2022, Poland’s Health Minister announced the country was not taking delivery of any more covid vaccines. Poland invoked a force majeure (“Acts of God”) clause in the contract, citing economic disruption caused by Ukraine war refugees (war), and that evolving variants caused less need for vaccines (disease).

Then once they saw Poland getting away with it, other EU countries started complaining too.

To respond to the complaints, earlier this year in May the EU and Pfizer quietly announced a “substantial renegotiation” of the oversized original deal. The new agreement reduced the number of doses required to be purchased — by some unspecified amount — and stretched out the delivery and payment dates into 2026.

If only four percent of eligible adults took this year’s booster, who’ll want covid jabs in 2026?

Anyway, Poland smartly refused to sign the revised deal. So Pfizer intends to hold it to the original deal. But Poland will probably win this fight. Pfizer has a lot to lose if certain information obtained in discovery were somehow to be leaked. And if I were Poland’s lawyer, I would suggest responding to the lawsuit by arguing not only force majeure, but also  that Pfizer fraudulently deceived Poland into the deal in the first place, by falsely representing that its crappy, defective product was safe and effective.

If Poland does it right, Pfizer is going to regret picking this fight.

🔥 In cautious good news, the cease-fire in Israel appears to be holding. Yesterday, after 49 days of captivity, Hamas returned thirteen hostages to Israel. All but one were female, all but one were from the same Israeli settlement, and they ranged in age from six to 85 years old. In exchange, Hamas got another day to regroup and work on its defensive plans, 39 released terrorists, tens of millions of dollars, and hundreds of trucks packed with fuel and supplies.

From an uneducated outsider’s perspective, it seems a little bit like Hamas better negotiators. I’m not saying I could do better. I’m just saying.

Below are nice pictures of the thirteen released hostages. It is a blessing that they are now receiving medical attention and will soon be headed back to their families, after what must have been an unimaginably horrifying ordeal.

Thirteen more Israeli hostages are supposed to be released today. Though it remains a long shot, maybe this glimmer of cooperation will spark into a consensual resolution of the crisis instead of more war. I’ll keep you posted.

Have a wonderful weekend! C&C will be back on Monday morning to help you get your week started right. See you then.

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