Coronavirus: Thread

[grarpamp]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/drug-and-alcohol-abuse-slowing-labor-force-recovery-fed-finds
Drug and alcohol abuse are starting to negatively effect the labor
force participation rate, according to a new study by Federal Reserve
Bank of Atlanta researcher Karen Kopecky, Jeremy Greenwood of the
University of Pennsylvania and Nezih Guner of the Universitat Autonoma
de Barcelona.
What it found was that between 9% and 26% of the decline in prime-age
labor-force participation between February 2020 and June 2021 was due
to "increased substance abuse".



Your lockdown, and the rest of the world's, was rotten,
corrupt, power grab, just like China's...



Something Is Rotten In The State Of Shanghai's Latest COVID Lockdowns

by QTR's Fringe Finance

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1512599857223114759/pu/vid/480x852/oeNOD4BsWAzC7M2o.mp4
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1511558805997645828/pu/vid/480x852/3UZlQbxYt7PtOvTB.mp4

Make no doubt about it, there’s something seriously disturbing about
the state of the recent Covid lockdowns taking place in Shanghai. Even
for China.

Here is what the outbreak looks like, if we are to believe the numbers
coming out of China. You’ll have to excuse me for being frank, but I
simply don’t believe them. China has lied about nearly everything
since the beginning of the pandemic, and they certainly don’t have the
rest of the world’s best interest in mind now that they are allying
with Russia economically.


Source: NY Times

Rather, I believe the numbers are likely being exaggerated one way or
the other (just as I believe China does with their macroeconomic
data), in order to meet the needs of whatever agenda the CCP is trying
to push.

Here we are, two years into Covid, with ample time behind us to have
studied the virus, developed vaccines, boosters and therapeutics and
allowed for natural immunity to spread – and China is locking down the
city of 26.3 million people at the first sign of a couple cases of
Covid.

Photo: NBC News

The actions China has taken to implement this round of lockdowns have
been dystopian and Orwellian, to say the least.

For example, according to the NY Times:

    all international flights to and from Shanghai have been halted

    many roads to the city’s two airports have also been closed

    the government performed P.C.R. tests on 25.67 million people

    the government has not allowed residents to go to grocery stores

    the government has put together tens of thousands of cots in two
convention centers as quarantine centers - but they don’t have
showering facilities

China is also, once again, sealing people in their homes. Videos on
social media “show trapped residents howling and screaming from inside
high-rise buildings at night,” The Independent wrote this week.



According to social media posts, the city is even using drones to try
and calm the nerves of angry residents.

“Please comply [with] covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire
for freedom. Do not open the window or sing,” this drone is reported
to be saying.

There are a innumerable disturbing things about the dystopian way this
alleged outbreak is being handled, but none more pressing is the
question of why it is being handled the way it is.

It felt like, heading into the spring, the world was over the idea of
Covid. Mask mandates and vaccine mandates were being lifted,
businesses were starting to recover and we were heading into the
warmth of summer with the attitude that we now knew the risks of Covid
and that it was time for every person to take care of themselves.

So, why such a drastic overreaction by China? Why continue the
country’s completely irrational and inane “Covid Zero” policy at this
point?

It’s simply doesn’t make any sense – even for China. In fact, the
country’s extremely dramatic and overzealous response feels so
abnormal that it made me wonder yesterday whether China was simply
using it as a tool for a state sponsored power grab that it had long
planned.

I also wondered if the drastic measures - similar to the measures we
saw at the beginning of Covid from China - were a sign that the
country knows something about the virus that the rest of the world
still doesn’t.

Certainly, nobody thinking reasonably believes such a drastic reaction
to this virus, which has already wreaked its first round of global
havoc but has settled down and become a way of life in places like
Florida and the Nordic states where they’ve allowed herd immunity to
run rampant, is warranted.

Yesterday, on Twitter, those were the only two alternate explanations
I could conceive of for China’s actions.

But a third wild idea popped into my head yesterday afternoon that I
wanted to also bring up.

What if China is purposely shutting down its country to wreak havoc on
the global supply chain even further and to exert its power over the
quality of lives of the western world?

I’ve talked about why I think China and Russia are going to be
breaking off of the current monetary system and essentially starting a
new economy.

I’ve written about how backing the ruble and potentially backing be
digital Yuan with gold could be one way for these countries to exert
their influence and stand alone on a global stage economically.

I’ve also warned about the pitfalls of the United States not having
enough productive capacity and relying on importing from China too
much. Don’t think China doesn’t understand the dynamics of this
relationship, either.

What if China wants to not only exert its influence by backing its
currency, but also by keeping its production means on a tighter leash:
more for the benefit of its own people, and less for the benefits of
Americans exporting dollars. How would China show the rest of the
world in a passive, non-confrontational way, exactly just how much
power they have over our quality of life?

At this point it appears that China isn’t reserving its productive
capacity for its own citizens. After all, reports of food shortages
and riots breaking out in Shanghai have been ubiquitous.

Photo: MarketWatch

But there’s a non-zero chance that this may be propaganda or
collateral damage that the country has to let happen in order to make
the rest of the world think that its people are suffering alongside of
them, when they cauterize supply chains for products heading elsewhere
in the world.

And if you immediately write off such game theory as conspiratorial
and harebrained, you may be right. But you’re also likely
underestimating the Chinese Communist Party.

No matter what the explanation, China is overshooting the mark with
this latest round of lockdowns, even for “Covid Zero” standards.

Videos leaking onto social media appear worse and more dire than the
ones during the original lockdowns of 2020.

Is it really going to be the long-term ongoing policy of the CCP to
try and keep zero Covid cases in a country with 1.4 billion people?
Even for an unreasonable unilateral dictatorship, that’s a bit much.

Photo: Reuters

If I had to bet it all today on why China is locking down the way that
it is, I would take one of these three scenarios over actual
implementation of the world’s most irrational health policy:

    The CCP is simply trying to usurp more power

    There’s something about Covid that China knows that the rest of
the world still doesn’t know

    China is looking for an excuse to slow its production to put
pressure on the Western world at a time when it is trying to separate
further, economically, from the West

Either way, the more I see out of the country with every passing day,
the more it becomes clear to me that something is rotten in the state
of Shanghai’s latest Covid lockdowns.