Coronavirus Can’t Be Tracked in U.S. without More Testing

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is “NOT currently spreading in the community in the United States,” but that it is an “emerging, rapidly evolving situation.”

“It is impossible to be sure that the virus is not spreading without more extensive testing,” stated Jane M. Orient, M.D., president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. Testing for COVID-19 has been restricted to “persons under suspicion” (PUIs), that is persons with fever, signs of a lower respiratory infection, and a history of travel to China or exposure to a person known to have COVID-19 or travel to China within 14 days of symptom onset.

The CDC has now liberalized the criteria: “For severely ill individuals, testing can be considered when exposure history is equivocal (e.g., uncertain travel or exposure, or no known exposure) and another etiology has not been identified.” The availability of test kits is limited, and “performance issues” were identified in the manufacturing of one of the reagents, so these will need to be replaced.

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Threats for the 2020s

DDP Newsletter November 2019, Vol. XXXV, No. 6

China: Military and Economic Dominance

Celebrating the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule, advanced Chinese weaponry paraded through Tiananmen Square in October 2019. The message to the world is that Beijing has no intention of ceding military leadership to America or any other country.

High-tech innovations, many stolen from the U.S., include stealth combat aerial drones, unmanned underwater vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and the road-mobile DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with a 7,500-mile range. The Pentagon has identified hypersonic missiles and systems to defend against them as among its highest priorities, writes Larry Bell. Lockheed Martin expects to test flight its first prototype missiles in 2020. China has reportedly completed seven successful tests (tinyurl.com/rjg5a9o). These “unstoppable” missiles  are “igniting a new global arms race,” writes R. Jeffrey Smith (New York Times 6/23/19, https://tinyurl.com/y2nberq2).

The Chinese seek to dominate by other means as well. Under the Obama Administration, China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping Holdings signed a 40-year lease with the City of Long Beach in 2012 for control of America’s second largest and most automated container-handling operation. In 2017, the Trump Administration put a national security hold on Cosco’s acquisition of a former U.S. Navy port facility. As of May 2019, the Communists are no longer in control of the Port of Long Beach (https://tinyurl.com/tpqap9z). Still, China operates six of the world’s ten busiest container ports, and the Chinese government has also funded the construction and operations of 43 ports in 35 countries under its “One Belt and One Road” (OBOR) strategy (https://tinyurl.com/yy7akrb5).

The State of California under Governor Jerry Brown and now Gov. Gavin Newsom is partnering with China on “climate change” research, such as battery storage, despite concerns about intellectual property theft (https://tinyurl.com/r82mzlc).

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Pandemic Preparedness

DDP Newsletter, September 2019, Vol. XXXV, No. 5

Of all the potential mass casualty events that could affect the United States, the most devastating cause is biologic. Biologic agents, unlike radioactive fallout, have a  doubling time, not a half-life. Whether the agent comes from a deliberate biologic warfare attack, or the natural emergence of a novel virus, the results could be devastating.

In 1918, more people died in the first 11 months of the influenza pandemic than in 4 years of the Black Death in the 1300s. Yet despite spending $80 billion on a National Biologic Defense, the U.S. is arguably no better prepared than it was in 1918, state Steven Hatfill, M.D., Robert J. Coullahan, and John J. Walsh, Jr., Ph.D., in their new book Three Seconds until Midnight, available on amazon.com.

Because of air travel, more people packed into dense urban areas, and greater dependence on technological infrastructure and just-in-time inventories, the population may be even more vulnerable now. There could be mass casualties even among uninfected people because of lack of essential services.

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Sanity and Democrats’ Climate Policy

After the fifth debate of Democrats contending for the Presidential nomination, physicians should not be venturing to make psychiatric diagnoses. But all Americans should be considering the wisdom of the proposals to “fight climate change.”

If a Democrat is elected and manages to implement the proposals, the planet will not die from climate disruption. Then he or she can claim to be the savior. However, the climate will proceed to follow natural laws and keep changing, no matter what humans do, confounding the latest apocalyptic predictions, as has happened over and over again.

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Democrats Propose Disastrous Energy Policy

On Nov 20, the fifth debate by Democrat Presidential hopefuls devoted considerable attention to “climate change”—that is, predicted catastrophic climate disruptions caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

Tom Steyer claimed that he was the only one to put climate first on his agenda. Bernie Sanders said we only had 8 or 9 years to “get our act together.” No one expressed disagreement with the alleged urgent need to reduce or eliminate the use of “fossil fuels”—coal, oil, and natural gas.

Suggestions included a carbon tax, stopping pipelines, and prosecuting and jailing executives who allegedly lied about evidence purported to show that their product is destroying the planet. Presumably, all we need to do is to transfer “subsidies” for fossil-fuel industries to “clean renewables,” and affordable energy, environmental justice, and millions of “good-paying” jobs will somehow emerge, observes Physicians for Civil Defense president Jane M. Orient, M.D.

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11,000 Scientists Cry “Climate Emergency!” as Trump Begins Withdrawal from Paris Agreement

On Nov 4, President Trump officially notified the UN that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, an action that will become effective in one year.

At the same time, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 nations signed on by internet to an article in BioScience entitled “World Scientists Warning of a Climate Emergency.”

Lead authors William J. Ripple and Christopher Wolf are affiliated with the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University. More than 10 percent of signatories are students or post-doctoral fellows, and less than 10 percent are in fields related to the dynamics of earth’s atmosphere. There is an archaeoentomologist (expert in ancient insects), a student in urban regeneration, a social psychologist, an audiologist, a botany compliance officer—many diverse fields. The  list is inaccessible now while dozens of internet signers such as “Mouse, Mickey” are removed.

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Vaccine Nation

DDP Newsletter July 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 4

As the number of  parents who decline to follow the CDC’s “recommended” schedule of mandatory vaccines creeps upward, the pressure to remove exemptions is growing. More than 100 bills are being pushed in 30 states that would strip out religious, philosophical, and medical exemptions.

California leads the nation in removing all except rare medical exemptions. Until this year, physicians could write medical exemptions at their discretion. However, because a few “rogue” physicians were allegedly writing too many or “illegitimate” exemptions, it is becoming virtually impossible to obtain one, so that parents of children with risk factors will now have the choice of risking a serious adverse reaction or removing their child from public or private school. The full impact of the law will not be seen until it is implemented in 2020, but parents are already receiving messages like this one:

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Drug Dependence

DDP Newsletter May 2019 Vol. XXXV, No. 3

Drug addiction is devastating. Drug dependence may be unavoidable—as with insulin-dependent diabetics. Modern medicine depends on the availability of life-saving drugs. And the U.S. now depends on China for most drugs. The U.S. even lacks the capacity to produce penicillin, as Rosemary Gibson reveals in her book China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Drugs.

In 1988, Oak Ridge National Laboratory published Expedient Antibiotic Production: A Final Report. This includes a how-to guide to build/rebuild antibiotic production facilities if they were damaged or destroyed. It has a map of the location of such production facilities in relation to a possible nuclear attack on industrial or military facilities.

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Bernie’s 20 Million New ‘Green’ Jobs

Bernie Sanders has promised to save the Planet, make money, re-engineer our economy, and create 20 million new good “green” jobs—for a mere $16 trillion, or $800,000 per job. Some details we might want to ask him:

  • What exactly will these workers be doing? Clearing enough land to install solar and wind farms? One estimate is an area greater than the size of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio combined. Another is 80% of the lower 48. Retrofitting all existing buildings for energy efficiency? Turning vehicles with gasoline or diesel engines, and gas appliances into scrap? Digging up and processing 500,000 pounds of raw materials to fabricate each new electric car battery?
  • How many jobs will be lost in coal mining, oil and gas production, and other industries?
  • Where will the money come from? Federal tax revenues are about $3.6 trillion per year. How much will they increase? ($16 trillion is nearly 4 ½ years of current total revenue.) With a federal debt already exceeding $22 trillion, where will we find lenders?
  • What has happened to green jobs in the EU as tax subsidies dry up, and to electricity bills there?
  • What will he do about the hundreds of new coal-fired generating stations in China, India, and elsewhere?

For more information, see “Green New Deal,” Civil Defense Perspectives, January 2019; the Climate Change IQ Test; what the Green New Deal means for medicine.

After the debate…what will they take?

In the Democratic presidential debates, candidates promised to give a lot, but we need to ask: What will they take?

Under a “Green New Deal,” what happens to:

  • Your van or SUV big and powerful enough to carry your kids, groceries, tools of your trade, camping equipment, etc.
  • Your backyard grill—or your backyard in the suburbs
  • Your favorite foods, especially if animal-based
  • Your gas stove, water heater, and furnace
  • Your air conditioner
  • Your third child (and maybe the first and second one too—the population needs to decrease)
  • Your job as an auto mechanic, coal miner, truck driver, petroleum engineer, rancher
  • The trucks that collect garbage, deliver groceries, bring concrete to construction strikes, haul goods of all kinds
  • Your business (service station, car dealership, factory that requires a lot of reliable electricity, restaurant, HVAC installation and maintenance, etc.)
  • Your vacation in Hawaii (or other place not accessible by train)
  • Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars?

Remember, they want zero fossil fuels—which means no internal combustion engines and electricity only from “clean, renewable” (unreliable, expensive) sources.

For more information, see “The Green New Deal: What It Means for Medicine.”