Whither
Coronavirus? When Will It End and What Will Happen
Along the Way
By Philip
Giraldi
March 29, 2020
"Information
Clearing House"
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The
coronavirus story has generated a number of major
subplots. First is the origin of the virus. Did it
occur naturally or was it created in a Chinese,
American or Israeli weapons lab? If bioengineered,
did it somehow escape or was it deliberately
released? As the governments that might have been
involved in the process have become very tight
lipped and the mainstream media is reluctant to
embrace conspiracy theories, we the public may never
know the answer.
Second is the nature of
the virus itself. There are inevitably skeptics who
choose to compare the affliction to a common head
cold or normal winter flu and are able to cherry
pick so-called experts to support their case. Many
Americans are unwilling to submit to a lockdown or
isolation and are flaunting their willingness to go
out in public and mix freely while others are
claiming that the whole thing is a hoax designed to
create a panic that will benefit certain
constituencies. There are
press reports of
teenagers going to supermarkets and faking a sneeze
or a cough in the produce section to show their
indifference to the infection avoidance guidelines
now being promoted by the media and government. Some
critics have also commented regarding the deaths of
hundreds of Italians daily, suggesting that in
Italy’s health care system old people were
deliberately being allowed to die.
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The fact is that
when critically ill people die in hospitals it
is sometimes
attributable to triage.
Triage arises when there are only limited
resources to treat the sick, as in the case
recently in the Italian Lombard city of Bergamo
where hospitals were overwhelmed. Doctors must
make the decision to treat those who are ill who
are likely to survive as a first priority,
meaning that others will only receive limited
treatment. Italy has roughly the same number of
hospital beds as does the United States per
capita and it has more ventilators capable of
being used to treat the advanced stages of the
virus. It also is receiving assistance from both
China and
Russia on
testing supplies and additional ventilators and
masks. Italy has conducted far more coronavirus
tests than has the U.S. The northern Italian
medical services system was up to European
standards, better than what prevails in the
U.S., but it has been broken by the virus. Spain
is heading the same way and there are similar
concerns about France.
In spite of
all the ideologically driven background clutter,
genuinely knowledgeable medical authorities come
down overwhelmingly promoting the view that the
virus is highly contagious and capable of spreading
rapidly, making it a pandemic, and it can be
exceptionally lethal to certain demographics,
including the elderly and those with weakened immune
systems. The way of combatting it also appears to be
agreed upon by most genuine experts i.e. that
testing must be widespread to determine who is
infected and those individuals should be isolated
from contact with others for at least two weeks to
limit the spread of the contagion. For those whose
conditions worsen, hospitalization and treatment for
possible respiratory failure are warranted.
The third big issue is
the apparently deliberate failure of the Trump
Administration to respond proactively to limit the
spread of the virus. Seeking to protect the stock
market more than the American public, President
Donald Trump initially downplayed the impact of the
virus, even calling it a “hoax” during January and
February when it first appeared on U.S. soil. It
turned out that several institutes affiliated to the
Center for Disease Control to deal with epidemics
had been dismantled by the Administration and, in
spite of the warning provided by what was occurring
in Wuhan, the U.S. made no effort to increase its
supply of testing kits, masks or ventilators.
Meanwhile, congressmen were receiving dire warnings
of what was coming from the intelligence community
in private briefings, leading to a number of
senators
selling their stock
in anticipation of a market collapse. That is
something called insider trading and it is illegal.
It is also a measure of the corruption of America’s
ruling class.
The fourth
major subplot relates to what will come out of the
pandemic once it is over, if it is indeed defeated
at all. Critics rightly observe that the government
response both at federal and state levels might well
be a major overreaction to a health crisis that
could possibly be dealt with using a lighter hand.
Donald Trump has now called himself a “wartime
president,” a particularly odd conceit in that
America’s chief executive officer dodged the Vietnam
war draft. Trump is now providing daily rambling
briefings emphasizing that his administration
deserves a “10 out or 10” for its yeoman’s work
against coronavirus. The real story is that the
president personally inhibited initial efforts to
respond to the disease and he is now attempting to
regain lost ground by supporting draconian measures
to include cash payments to all American residents,
even to people who do not need the money. The money
itself will have to be borrowed or printed, putting
the United States even deeper in debt.
Based on his wartime
status, the president and his cabinet are poised to
exploit Civil War and Korean War legislation to
assume powers over the economy and will likely
arrange bailouts of some industries that will then
acquire the government as a partner. The now
declared “national emergency” will undoubtedly come
to include some forms of martial law to enforce the
isolation of targeted populations and it is also
being reported that
the Justice Department has asked Congress to allow
judges to detain people indefinitely without trial
during the “emergency.” As we have learned from the
Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and the
Authorization to Use Military Force, allegedly
temporary powers acquired by the executive branch
have frequently become permanent. Unrestrained power
in the hands of a Trump or Biden should frighten
anyone who is still interested in voting in
November.
There is some
speculation that Trump might well follow
the example being set
by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Israel has banned foreign visitors, is under 24
hours curfew and is effectively in lockdown. It is
using cell phone intercepts provided by the
intelligence services to track the comings and
goings of Israeli residents. The monitoring is being
justified as a mechanism to create a record of who
is meeting whom and where to support isolation and
lockdown efforts. A similar program is
already active in
the suburbs around Washington. The National Security
Agency (NSA) already has the technical ability in
place that would permit monitoring of the movements
of much of the U.S. population. It would be an
intelligence community dream and would fit quite
nicely with Congress’s recent efforts to
re-authorization certain Patriot Act aspects of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Fifth and
finally, there is the politicization aspect of
coronavirus. The virus is being “blamed” on China, a
global competitor of the United States. As is often
the case, Trump has gotten the ball rolling through
his usual verbal toxicity, calling the virus the
Chinese Virus or Wuhan Virus. Other Republicans have
picked up on the theme, leading to the inevitably
Democratic progressive wing complaints that such
language was “racist.” The fact it, there is no
evidence whatsoever that China in any deliberate way
either created or unleashed the virus.
And, of course, there
is Russia. It would almost seem an old joke that is
no longer amusing to blame something new and
menacing on Moscow and congress has so far largely
refrained from doing so. But that does not mean that
the Deep State establishment is holding the Kremlin
and President Vladimir Putin blameless. The U.S.
intelligence community, through its preferred
propaganda sheet the New York Times, is
now reporting that
Russia is taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis
to spread disinformation through Europe and also in
the U.S. In particular, Putin has escalated a
campaign-by-innuendo to reduce confidence in the
outcome of the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
In any event, the Russians are too late as the
Democratic and Republican parties’ behavior has
already convinced many Americans that voting in
November will be a waste of time.
Philip
Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and
military intelligence officer of the United States
Central Intelligence Agency. -
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