The rate of increase in COVID-19 slowed overnight in Australia. It is too early to tell the right response - there is not enough testing - and it is too early to judge the effectiveness of the global response to COVID-19. It's not too early though to start laying the...

Stephen Lendman at March 28, 2020

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COVID-19 and Economic Duress a Pretext to Enhance Police State Powers?

COVID-19 and Economic Duress a Pretext to Enhance Police State Powers? by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman) Crises are times when ruling authorities […]
 In August 2017, the Trump regime reversed a ban on providing battlefield military weapons and equipment to police departments nationwide.
The action was and remains an effort to harden control in cities and towns nationwide on the phony pretext of protecting public safety.
It comes at the expense of civil liberties. It gives local police more firepower to protect privileged interests at the expense of constitutional rights and public welfare.
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 NT Border Force Guard

 
Australia's Chief Medical Officer describes new restrictions as "radical" but says they are designed to prevent community outbreaks of coronavirus becoming "very hard to control".

Not according to Murdoch Media's Andrew Bolt (ODT)
FAKE NEWS 


  Hannibal Lecter fanatic allegedly carved out and ate student's liver

WE HAVE ONE OF LOWEST DEATH RATES, AND CAN NOW AFFORD TO SWITCH TACTICS

Good news: of all countries with more than 1500 confirmed cases  of coronavirus, only Israel has a lower mortality rate than Australia. This suggests we are doing a lot that's right - but, counterintuitively, also suggests it's now time for an urgent shift to prevent another great suffering.  
Andrew Bolt is pushier than the proverbial fish wife, a pain in the arse. He's the queue jumper on the Titanic not ready to listen to any orders but his own. He's totally his own man, isn't he? Who takes priority over everyone before him. He's his own expert. The ultimate prick you wouldn't want to be standing next to in any emergency. Intent on raising Cane and the level of alarm instead of calming things down.

GOOD NEWS MEANS WE MUST GET BACK TO WORK IN TWO WEEKS

COLUMN Things have changed with this coronavirus panic. Now Australians can be back at work within two weeks.If we keep our blunderbuss approach of closing thousands of business and telling all Australians to stay home, the suffering will be enormous. Here are five reasons why we can now stop forcing millions of fit and young Australians to stay at home. 
You couldn't get more of a Trumpster than Andrew Bolt could you? The two weeks by which we "have" to get back to work coincides with April the 12th the exact deadline laid down by Trump. In the meantime experts in the US predict a death toll of 200,000 is possible across America. Trump-like Bolt also doesn't believe all the equipment needed for the testing, protection and treatment being asked for which we don't have isn't necessary. Well, Trump certainly walked back on that just hours after having realised what he'd said was dumb as. Bolt hasn't.  Bolt's down the rabbit hole in cloud cuckoo land snapping his fingers thinking he's Taiwanese.
To get back to work you'd have to know what the scenario would be if you were wrong, wouldn't you? What would the cost of the risk be?  If Australia was Taiwan, as Bolt believes we are or snaps his fingers and says we could be. We don't have the stockpile of equipment necessary to do the testing he says is required. We don't have the numbers to police the country. For Christ sake, the Mornington Peninsula is currently as crowded as Xmas with 4-6 cars in the driveways. Lorne is the same. In terms of the numbers needed to test police and protect those most vulnerable, we are simply not Taiwan. Yes, Bolt has gone down the rabbit hole and is living in wonderland and at the Hatters tea Party. But then maybe we could snap his fingers and ask China to come in and save us.
It seems Bolt doesn't care about rural or suburban Australia just his neighbourhood and his house in that neighbourhood where he works from home. Yes, not everyone should be like him but should get out there and work as the 13% of medical staff dead taking care of the ill.
Donald Trump trying to push a business as usual agenda. instead of evangelicals standing up and saying, wait a minute, we bought into your candidacy because you’re supposed to be the, quote/unquote, pro-life president,” he continued. “We now have a pro-death president who would rather have his economic numbers go up chasing a 2020 election than save lives.”
Apparently, Murdoch Media is backing him globally, but nobody is listening.

WE'RE NOT ITALY - BUT THE FEAR-MONGERS PANICKED

COLUMN How dangerously quick we were to panic about the coronavirus, particularly after watching Italy. Sure, that was understandable … at first. Italy recorded its first death from the virus on February 21. Just 21 days later, it had 1266 deaths. But nothing like that was happening here. Yet we had terrifying claims of tens of thousands of deaths.
30/03/2020 
Andrew Bolt doesn't pay attention to Greg Hunt or the reality of what's going on. Apparently, the LNP have become the fearmongering enemy not him. Bolt's the voice of reason speaking for the 1% and not the majority of us all. He's fear-mongering no lives, but the Economy institutionalised patterns of behaviour that forge a profit for the elite in Australia that own and control more than the 80% of us put together. Bolt's voice it that of the Plantation owner telling his slaves to get back to work or they will suffer more than the owner. If that's not scaremongering what is. Meanwhile, the workers are begging the owners and their messengers to get their feet off their necks and wait until the conditions were safe.
After it is safe maybe the working conditions will need to change, and the paid media fearmongers like Bolt will be told to simply shut up. 
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MARXISM DOESN'T WORK AND THIS WILL HURT

Don't Australians realise this spending must all be repaid, with interest? "Businesses are expected to be paid a wage subsidy of up to $1,500 per employee...  Scott Morrison [has] an unprecedented $66bn rescue package — including ... giving small businesses new subsidies...  Tenants will be saved from evictions." Our future is being crippled.
32m ago 
More fearmongering by Bolt. Australia is 13th it the world there are 37 countries of 196 that as yet haven't a recorded case of Covid-19. The worst countries affected currently aren't Marxist, and Andrew Bolt's claim "Marxism doesn't work" sounds like desperate unreasoned bullshit, doesn't it? There are countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and many more with a better record. America currently is out of control? Putin's strategy is "make the Oligarchs pay and "sounds promising and more Bernie Sanders than Trump even more Christian Muslim Jewish and Australian, given they too only want the very very rich to step up to the line and pay back what the rest of society allowed them to gain not by competition but systemic structure. This is a time of crisis making the banks, corporations, and Australia's wealthiest pay sounds more the voice of reason, fairness than simply allow winners to continue to use that system to win again. It's patently obvious Marxist influence is more capable. Scott Morrison showed that today.
 Bolt seems to prefer that the debt collectors, the interest takers, the non-taxpayers, the shylocks and the wages thieves be given free rein again to gain for themselves first above all. Australia is the world's nation whose individuals are the most indebted.   Their health education, and welfare services diminished because of our ever-increasing privatisation and user-pays system that protects an established elite. It's why the ACT currently has the highest testing rate in the world.  It certainly pays to be a Pollie hey! Greg Hunt like Trump is saying we are ramping up the production of medical supplies and sometime in the future will have them.



RECORD LOW FOR SPREAD OF CORONAVIRUS

The latest figures show the coronavirus has stopped spreading as fast as it did for the first few weeks. We had daily rates of increase of between 25 and 35 per cent. In the last four days of last week it slowed to between 13 and 15 per cent. In the last 24 hours, even better:  9.1 per cent. UPDATE: It's slowing fast in Italy, too.
30/03/2020
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You can really create "records" that in fact make nonsense unless put int context. This is a Global issue and when Australia is compared to the rest of the world it was running 13th and Bolt is cheering that.