Fauci: ‘No doubt’ Trump will face surprise infectious disease outbreak

Archive January 11, 2017

Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is “no doubt” Donald J. Trump will be confronted with a surprise infectious disease outbreak during his presidency.

Fauci has led the NIAID for more than 3 decades, advising the past five United States presidents on global health threats from the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s through to the current Zika virus outbreak.

During a forum on pandemic preparedness at Georgetown University, Fauci said the Trump administration will not only be challenged by ongoing global health threats such as influenza and HIV, but also a surprise disease outbreak.

“The history of the last 32 years that I have been the director of the NIAID will tell the next administration that there is no doubt they will be faced with the challenges their predecessors were faced with,” he said.

While observers have speculated since his election about how Trump will respond to such challenges, Fauci and other health experts said Tuesday that preventing disease pandemics often starts overseas and that a proper response means collaboration between not only the U.S. and other countries, but also the public and private health sectors.

“We will definitely get surprised in the next few years,” he said.

Anthony Fauci background: 

Fauci was born December 24, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York, to Stephen A. Fauci and Eugenia A. Fauci, owners of a pharmacy, where his father worked as the pharmacist, his mother and sister worked the register, and Fauci delivered prescriptions.^[2] The pharmacy was located in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn.

Fauci's paternal grandparents, Antonino Fauci and Calogera Guardino, were from Sciacca, Italy. His maternal grandmother, Raffaella Trematerra, from Naples, Italy, was a seamstress. His maternal grandfather, Giovanni Abys, was born in Switzerland and was an artist, noted for landscape and portrait painting, magazine illustrations (Italy) as well graphic design for commercial labels, including olive oil cans. His great-grandparents emigrated to the US in the late 19th century. Fauci grew up Catholic.^[2][3][4]

Fauci attended Regis High School in New York City where he graduated in 1958. He then enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross where he received a BS in classics in 1962. Fauci then went on to attend Cornell University Medical College where he graduated first in his class with an MD in 1966.^[2] He then completed an internship and residency at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.^[5]

^{1) Regis High School: is a private Jesuit university-preparatory school for Roman Catholic young men located on Manhattan's Upper East Side.[4] Annual class enrollment is limited to approximately 135 male students from the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut tri-state area. The school is ranked as both the best Catholic high school in the United States and the best all-boys school in New York.}

2) College of the Holy Cross:  is a private Jesuit liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1843, Holy Cross is the oldest Catholic college in New England and one of the oldest in the United States. Opened as a school for boys under the auspices of the Society of Jesus, it was the first Jesuit college in New England. Today, Holy Cross is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) and is part of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium (COWC).

People who intentionally spread the coronavirus could face criminal charges under federal terrorism laws

Politico 03/24/2020

People who intentionally spread the coronavirus could face criminal charges under federal terrorism laws, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official said Tuesday.

In a memo to top Justice Department leaders, law enforcement agency chiefs and U.S. Attorneys across the country, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said prosecutors and investigators could come across cases of “purposeful exposure and infection of others with COVID-19.”

“Because Coronavirus appears to meet the statutory definition of a ‘biological agent’… such acts potentially could implicate the Nation’s terrorism-related statutes,” Rosen wrote. “Threats or attempts to use COVID-19 as a weapon against Americans will not be tolerated.”

Ex-PM calls for global government to tackle coronavirus

The Guardian 26 Mar 2020 

Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have executive powers to coordinate the response.

A virtual meeting of the G20 group of developed and developing countries, chaired by Saudi Arabia, will be held on Thursday, but Brown said it would have been preferable to have also included the UN security council.

Rhode Island Door Knocks in Search of Fleeing New Yorkers

US News March 28, 2020
WESTERLY, RI (AP) — The Rhode Island National Guard started going door to door on Saturday in coastal areas to inform any New Yorkers who may have come to the state that they must self-quarantine for 14 days while Gov. Gina Raimondo expanded the mandatory self-quarantine to anyone visiting the state.

Raimondo also ordered residents to stay at home, with exceptions for getting food, medicines or going to the doctor, and ordered nonessential retail businesses to close Monday until April 13 to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. She also directed realtors and hotel operators to include new requirements that any out-of-state residents must quarantine for 14 days in their purchase agreements.

State Police set up a checkpoint on I-95 in Hope Valley on Friday where drivers with New York license plates must stop and provide contact information and were told to self-quarantine for two weeks, WPRI.com reported.

Could we quarantine the constitution?

RT  22 Mar, 2020

 Do we really think “it can’t happen here” in America? Could we quarantine the constitution? Are we doing it already?

Panics from pandemics unleash unchecked governmental power. The very premise of popular films like V for Vendetta reveal this: a group uses a virus to seize power and create a totalitarian society. Anyone could witness this from far-off lands, watching the news about China locking people up in their own homes and then removing them screaming from those homes whenever the state wanted. World War I and the Great Depression birthed virulent forms of governments with leaders like Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and Stalin.

Governments across America already used the pandemic, and the media-stoked panic around the pandemic particularly, to limit, restrict or remove First Amendment freedoms of speech and free association, with officials complaining about the potential restraints the freedom of religion imposed upon them. Others denied or declared the right to deny Second Amendment rights of gun purchase for personal safety (at a time governments are issuing no-arrest and no-detention orders for a wide range of crimes in their community while publicly freeing inmates from jails and prisons). They want to coordinate with tech companies to surveil and spy on your everyday movements and activities, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and potentially waive, unilaterally, your medical right to privacy in multiple contexts. Stay-at-home orders deprive you of your profession, occupation, business and property, without any due process of law at all beyond an executive fiat in violation of the Fifth Amendment right to due process. Governments request the authority to involuntarily imprison any American on mere fear of infection without any probable cause of crime or clear and present danger of harm by that person’s volitional conduct, deny access to personal counsel in an unsupervised, un-surveilled manner in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and act as judge, jury and executioner in violation of the Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury, as jury trials themselves get suspended around the country in the nation’s quieted courts and fear-muted public.

The real pandemic threat is here. It’s the panic that will quarantine our Constitution.

Global Lord’s Prayer “united for humanity”

Oikumene 24 March 2020

World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit invites all member churches for a joint prayer, saying the Lord’s Prayer together on Wednesday 25 March at noon.

Pope Francis has extended an invitation to all Christian leaders, including the World Council of Churches (WCC), to join in praying the Lord’s Prayer simultaneously on 25 March at noon Rome time, or noon local time at any location across the world.

In a letter of invitation, Cardinal Kurt Koch expressed his hope that all will join “this initiative in which all Christians invoking together the graces from heaven, will ask for the end of this pandemic, trusting in the power of God.”

WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit welcomed the invitation and the opportunity for so many people to participate in a united prayer for all of humanity as the world faces the pandemic of COVID-19.

“As people across the globe are in their scattered working places at home, we will have the opportunity to unite our voices in praying to God with the words that our Lord Jesus Christ taught us” said Tveit. “At this challenging time, prayerful activities that unite us are a reminder that we are one human family.”

UN Chief Calls For 'Global Ceasefire' To Unite Against COVID-19

Abplive 24 Mar 2020

United Nations: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has made an emotional plea to put all "armed conflicts on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives" against coronavirus.

Calling for a "global ceasefire," he said at a news conference on Monday, "The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world."

He was overcome by emotions as he started to speak and broke off and gathered himself to start again to speak to a world where conflicts rage even as it is engulfed by coronavirus.

In keeping with the UN headquarters directives and New York City regulations against gatherings, Guterres held the news conference via interactive teleconferencing.

Guterres also appealed for a coordinated international response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We need a much stronger coordination, coordination in suppression of the disease, coordination in making sure that not only the developed countries can respond effectively to the disease but that there is massive support to the developing world not to let the disease spread like wildfire in the developing world," he said.

Where on earth were all the penguins?

Science Magazine Mar. 19, 2020

Where on Earth, wondered Henri Weimerskirch, were all the penguins? It was early 2017. Colleagues had sent the seabird ecologist aerial photos of Île aux Cochons, a barren volcanic island halfway between Madagascar and Antarctica that humans rarely visit. The images revealed vast areas of bare rock that, just a few decades before, had been crowded with some 500,000 pairs of nesting king penguins and their chicks. It appeared that the colony—the world’s largest king penguin aggregation and the second biggest colony of any of the 18 penguin species—had shrunk by 90%. Nearly 900,000 of the regal, meter-high, black, white, and orange birds had disappeared without a trace. “It was really incredible, completely unexpected,” recalls Weimerskirch, who works at the French national research agency CNRS.

Soon, he and other scientists were planning an expedition to the island—the first in 37 years, and only the third ever—to search for explanations. “We had to go see for ourselves,” says CNRS ecologist Charles Bost.

As the researchers prepared for the journey, they had to grapple with the logistical, political, and scientific challenges that have long bedeviled biologists trying to understand Antarctica’s remote ecosystems. The vast distances, rough weather, and rugged terrain make travel difficult and expensive. They needed a ship—and a helicopter, because frigid seas and rocky shores make for perilous boat landings on Antarctic islands. Complying with the tough permitting and biosecurity rules governing the French-controlled island—meant to prevent researchers from disturbing fragile ecosystems—required careful planning and paperwork that took months to complete. And once they arrived, they would have precious little time: just 5 days to investigate a multitude of suspects in the disappearance, including disease, predators, and a warming Southern Ocean.

This I Believe

Bill Gates always seems to know when it’s time to go

Computer World   Mar 16, 2020

Bill Gates resigned from Microsoft’s board of directors last week, pretty much ending his official ties to the company he co-founded. He says he’s still available as a technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders, but otherwise he’s devoting himself completely to his other pursuits, like philanthropy.

Gates and the company he started very nearly 45 years ago with Paul Allen transformed the computing landscape. Throughout the period of Microsoft’s early growth and maturation, Gates was at the helm as CEO, demonstrating business leadership and competitiveness that, even more than technology, were keys to the company’s success.

The competitiveness eventually led to Microsoft’s antitrust issues. The technology world was changing (I’ll go through some of that history in a bit), and the leader who had made Microsoft a tech giant was perhaps no longer tuned in to the changes as he once had been. That happens a lot with founders. What rarely happens is that the founder sees the writing on the wall and takes a step back. But Gates did. He resigned as CEO, staying on as chairman of the board.

Not everything Gates did was brilliant. By the time the internet had become a force in the tech world, Gates and Microsoft had made a series of missteps that almost made the company irrelevant. And in resigning as CEO, Gates left Steve Ballmer in charge. Ballmer clearly had earned the right to lead Microsoft as CEO, but he wasn’t right for the job, and Gates eventually had to remove him. The men had always been close, and it couldn’t have been easy to do it, but he did.

Founder power

This is the third step back from Microsoft that Gates has taken. He dropped his day-to-day duties as CEO in 2006, and gave up ultimate oversight as chairman of the board in 2014. Now he has relinquished his seat on the board.

This is actually a remarkable record. Founders have extraordinary power at a company, and they often don’t know when to step down, sometimes doing the company so much harm in their later years that the firm doesn’t recover. Even if they step away from day-to-day activity, they often step in and exert their influence at critical times, undermining the sitting CEO and setting the company up for failure. As chairman, Gates seemed to have refrained from that sort of thing, until the day came when Ballmer had to go.

The China That Emerges After Coronavirus Will Be A Cashless Society

Wealth Advisor  

Freezing cross-province transfers and replacing $86 billion in paper yuan is only consolidating a process of surveillance where Beijing can monitor all transactions.

It’s still getting bad in China, where reported coronavirus cases are doubling every 7-10 days. Until that exponential contagion curve flattens out, we just don’t know how far the outbreak spreads or how fast the government will ultimately be able to contain it.

The society that emerges is going to play by different rules. And it starts with Beijing locking down even more of the second-biggest economy in history. 

Cash was already going away in China. Now it turns out that the virus shows up on old paper money and can live there for days.

Every time every one of those infected yuan notes moves from hand to hand, it’s another infection vector. If you handle the wrong money, you’re literally carrying the plague.

Naturally that makes people much less eager to accept cash. Luckily there are payment apps to keep everything clean and digital.

But coincidentally enough, the big apps from Alibaba and We Chat already work hand in glove with the central bank. There’s no privacy there. The transactions are open to surveillance.

And with true crypto driven deep underground, cash was the best way left to operate in the country without leaving a transparent digital trail. 

Is it any wonder Beijing has started impounding yuan notes in the quarantine zone while stopping transfers between provinces? 

Old currency just isn’t getting replaced. Instead it’s being withdrawn from circulation so it can be sterilized. In theory, new money will take its place.

Actress Julia Roberts Shares Poem on Shabbat Observance

Algemeiner March 16, 2020

Amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis, US actress Julia Roberts posted on Instagram on Sunday a poem about quarantining and social distancing that begins by discussing Shabbat.

“What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath — the most sacred of times?” the poem by Lynn Unger asked. “Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different that it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down.”

Unger wrote the three-paragraph poem, titled “Pandemic,” last week. She said thinking about the “restrictions” observant Jews face during Shabbat helped her form her poem.

“We generally think of restrictions as being a negative,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “But the idea of the Sabbath is that accepting these restrictions — you can’t exchange money, drive a car, work — can be a spiritual discipline that is a source of beauty, a source of the holy, as opposed to just being a pain in the ass.”

Is this the event leading to the big event?