New York Paid $69 Million to a Shady Vendor for Ventilators That Were Never Delivered

New funding and new powers haven't made government bureaucracies more competent.

Neither the sudden demand for new medical equipment nor a flood of new funding to purchase it has magically made government bureaucracies more competent stewards of taxpayer dollars.

Perhaps the best example of this is the New York Department of Health agreeing to purchase ventilators from a Silicon Valley vendor whose only qualification appears to be a Twitter reply to President Donald Trump. The ventilators never showed up.

As BuzzFeed first reported, New York paid Silicon Valley-based electrical engineer Yaron Oren-Pines $69.1 million for 1,450 ventilators, or about three times the pre-crisis, per-unit retail price for a high-end model.

Oren-Pines had replied to a March 27 tweet from Trump urging car manufacturer General Motors to start making ventilators at its "stupidly abandoned" Lordstown, Ohio plant, and for Ford to "GET GOING ON VENTILATORS, FAST!!!" In his reply, Oren-Pines said he could supply needed ventilators and asked that someone call him.

The Health Department inked the $69.1 million contract with him three days later. An anonymous state official told BuzzFeed that the White House's coronavirus taskforce directly recommended Oren-Pines, who reportedly has no background in medical supply, but had worked at a string of Silicon Valley tech companies, including Google.

The White House told BuzzFeed it had no knowledge of the contract.

After receiving none of the ventilators it paid for, New York terminated its contract with Oren-Pines. An official told Buzzfeed that it had recovered "the bulk" of the money it had paid him. Despite projections suggesting otherwise, New York was able to manage its first peak of COVID-19 cases without the ventilators Oren-Pines failed to deliver.

The federal government has also signed questionable deals with suspicious suppliers. Earlier in April, The Wall Street Journal reported on how federal departments have signed a string of contracts for medical supplies with vendors who have little experience in that market, and in at least one case, are being sued for fraud.

Comments

[Fats of Fury]

Have they accounted for the $850,000 Wheezy De Blasio "lost"?

[Fats of Fury]

oops $850,000,000

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Yeah, I was gonna say, $850,000 would be like Wednesday before 9am.

[iyoshio]

Change Your Life Right Now! Work From Comfort Of Your Home And Receive Your First Paycheck Within A Week. No Experience Needed, No Boss Over Your Shoulder... Say Goodbye To Your Old Job! Limited Number Of Spots Open...
Find out how HERE......More here

[Longtobefree]

On the other hand, he delivered all the ventilators they actually needed.

[James K. Polk]

You need to be on his legal team.

[Fist of Etiquette]

When it comes to procurement, never assign as incompetent what could just as easily be corruption.

[Blargrifth]

That's very Hobbesian of you.

[TrickyVic (old school)]

Ferengi rules of acquisition?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Perhaps the best example of this is the New York Department of Health agreeing to purchase ventilators from a Silicon Valley vendor

I found your mistake here. When you want life-saving medical devices, the last fucking place you go is the culture that spawned Elizabeth Holmes and "self driving" cars.

[Brandybuck]

I've worked for several medical companies in Silicon Valley. Legit medical companies. Companies that have saved real lives. One company of which currently makes COVID-19 rapid result tests.

Elizabeth Holmes was not the product of SV culture, she was a scam artist. Yes, there are bad people here in the business of hoodwinking investors. But this is not unique to Silicon Valley. She was quickly discovered and booted. In the meantime legit medical companies exist and are saving lives. So eff off.

As for self driving cars, they work. And you'll be seeing them rolled out in your neck of the woods within the next ten years by my guess. They are a good idea. While cars don't kill as many people as COVID-19 per year, anything that gets human hands off their wheels is going to save lives.

[Fats of Fury]

Until Guccifer III comes along and hacks the software to drive you into a brick wall.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

We're always 10 years away from self driving cars.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I would strongly recommend watching the documentary "Out For Blood". Holmes wasn't quickly discovered and booted. In fact, many pointed to the Silicon Valley culture (and media) as the very thing that enabled her to get as far as she did, and do as much damage as she did before getting caught.

This is not to say that everyone in SV is a "scam artist" (although I think the way the SV startup culture works might suggest a more narrow definition of 'scam artist' is in order to sustain that) however the SV culture has some definite quirks about it that seems to enable them.

In the documentary, there's an excellent quote, and it's long so I'll paraphrase:

"Silicon Valley has historically been very good at social networking apps and putting emojis in emails, but now they're beginning to branch out into areas where human life is at stake. In particular, self-driving cars and healthcare. The [SV] culture's mantra is "move fast and break things", but unfortunately, these technologies require a different mindset."

As for self-driving cars, I'm sure you've read the business news about how all the major automakers are backing off their own predictions about self-driving car technology. It's way harder than anyone thought, and I still stand hard by my prediction that it won't roll out in any significant way until standardized ground-based telemetry is put into place.

[Metazoan]

The [SV] culture’s mantra is “move fast and break things”, but unfortunately, these technologies require a different mindset.”

Depending on what "break things" means, it isn't totally clear to me that even autonomous vehicles and medicine couldn't benefit. To me, at least, "break things" means forgetting about traditional credentialism and the established order and trying a new idea. It doesn't mean throwing caution to the wind.

Of course, you can't (ethically) roll out new therapies or autonomous vehicles without much more extensive testing than a social media app would require; if that's what "break things" means then I agree.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Disagree. "Break things" is the (reasonable) proposition that you learn and grow by taking risks and making mistakes. This is true in the meta. Without question. But when you're talking about a rolling out a specific piece of technology where a human life is at stake, mistakes become much less tolerable. Less tolerable than a Steve Jobs rolling out a NeXT machine, or a Newton device. Those are mistakes of business and market acceptance. When bodies start stacking up... that takes a very different mindset.

[BYODB]

Engineers and Nurses are both credentialed precisely because lives are on the line. Who, exactly, credentialed these computer scientists? Oh, what's that you say? They have a Microsoft certification?

I feel safe.

/joke

[James K. Polk]

"Break things" very simply means bringing products to market before every aspect has been worked out. Get to market quickly, pay careful attention to how, when, and why your stuff breaks, then iterate with the knowledge you've gained.

You might think that model is too dangerous for things that impact human life, but it hasn't stopped NASA since that is precisely the model used by new space companies like SpaceX.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

That's not true. When you compare the early days of NASA vs. the early Soviet SOYUZ projects, NASA was very methodical and safety conscious.

The soviets were very "move fast/break things' in their mentality, and they had a lot of accidents-- pointless ones. Yes, NASA had accidents and killed astronauts, but they were still within reasonable risk standards for the time and mission.

It's also a different thing for NASA to take certain risks with volunteers within a given program with known danger parameters, it's a different thing to expose unsuspecting consumers to it.

SpaceX, for all its wonders and faults, isn't sending civilian passengers into space yet. So a 'break things' attitude is probably fine-- within the parameters of launch safety and ballistic rockets landing in a populated area.

[Rufus The Monocled]

"Yes, NASA had accidents and killed astronauts, but they were still within reasonable risk standards for the time and mission."

Linda Ham is asking you to hold her beer.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I should have read your last paragraph. Yes, that's what the 'break things' mantra is in Silocon Vally. Again, perfectly reasonable in the meta.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Also, one last thing on Holmes, there's some speculation (reasonable in my opinion) that she didn't START as a scam artist. She started as an ambitious SV startup entrepreneur who really believed she could address the problems she set out to solve with technology. It wasn't until the issue she was addressing turned out to be much trickier than she thought, and as things progressed-- and was enabled by a media that was desperate to have a female tech billionaire, that she began to obfuscate her company's shortcomings, believing that at some point down the road, they'd fix the issues in a "2.0 update". Like all small lies that get out of control, it got bigger and bigger until it unfolded into a full blown disaster.

And to be sure, she isn't the only one who's bears responsibility in the whole mess. The pharmacies (I believe Walgreens in particular) also bear some responsibility. They weren't asking the correct questions and... according to the documentary were deliberately looking the other way because they were overly eager to get on board with the new technology, and wanted to beat others to this hot new SV healthcare market. That's the move fast part.

[swillfredo pareto]

here’s some speculation (reasonable in my opinion) that she didn’t START as a scam artist.

She had the Village of the Damned stare perfected before she left Stanford. She would have fit in just as well at Juicero.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

HA! Juicero is the very example I was thinking of when I said one might need to narrow the definition of 'scam artist' to shrink the number of people who might be identified as 'scam artists'. I really believe that a huge part of SV startup culture is to come up with an idea that you don't really believe has any long term chance of succeeding, but dressed up just enough to get venture capital funding, then skate on a salary until the thing collapses. Rinse, repeat.

It's not a 'scam' per se, and the VC firms have only themselves to blame... but it's not the way most people view trying to start a business and succeed.

I actually worked for one of the early Silicon Valley healthcare firms back in the early 2000s. We were a legit, longtime family business that got bought out by an SV VC-funded "rollup" that wanted to do an IPO. it was an unmitigated disaster, and my company, along with dozens of others that fell for the 'rollup' concept folded with a whimper. For years after that, I saw the parent company as stunningly incompetent. And then just a couple years ago I began to realize it was probably all by design. No one at the top actually cared about the success. It was just a vehicle to draw high six-figure salaries and start other ventures by cannibalizing funding through questionable internal 'business loans' that turned out were going on.

Essentially, I now believe that I was attributing stupidity to that which could be adequately explained by malice.

[Cyto]

Venture capital can do that... destroy a legitimate business.

I had that happen to me - at a cost of a lot of money.

We went public and the original investors got a good sized chunk of change. But they wanted more. And there was a roadmap for getting it.... we needed more capital to grow the business, plain and simple. We could easily be worth a billion or two more within 2 years, if we only had access to sufficient capital.

So we did a deal with an investment bank. They took a major stake, taking the company private again and promised to deliver on lines of credit to enable the business to grow. Which they didn't do. Still, we were able to obtain that capital elsewhere and were on our way to another IPO that would have netted somewhere between 1 and 2 billion.

Then the financial crisis happened.

And the investment bank was ordered to liquidate their assets. Quickly. So in about 30 days what was a $1.5 to $2.5 billion company became a $300 million merger deal which quickly became a "lay off everyone and ride it out" disaster. All because they had to liquidate immediately with no plan. They lost $400 million on the deal, and 500 people lost their jobs. All because of the external forces of a hundred billion dollar company that owned a billion dollar company and needed to get out of the investment bank business immediately.

Nothing inherent in our company - we were making plenty of money and had a going concern. But they needed to liquidate immediately, so they took the first check they could get their hands on and dumped the company for pennies on the dollar to someone who only wanted a few assets - and tossed the rest out with the trash. (it took almost 2 years to put the investment bank deal together. It took about 2 weeks to put together the deal to dump it.)

[James K. Polk]

I worked for a much smaller startup that crashed and burned. I could see the CEO start out as a believer, but eventually he did and said anything and everything to keep the business open just one more day. I wouldn't be surprised if that's Elizabeth Holmes in a nutshell.

[Scott Free2016]

Holmes was convinced, like much of SV, that market cap and ability to build tangible items are related. That building a car is like building a website. Yeah, the site crashes every now and then, turn it off, turn it back on. That doesn't work for an actual car going 70 on the freeway. Heck, parked in his garage some percent of Tesla's just burn up...what percent for Chevy Malibu's do that?

Believe this or don't - I'm from Detroit, we tore apart all the existing ventilators and they suck. They don't meet any reasonable tolerances, and can't pass most reasonable tests of durability, functional consistency, etc. We've re-designed several components and the one's that come out of GM will be notably better than the existing. And we'll put them out faster than all the other manufacturers combined about 4 months from someone agreeing to do this project.

Yeah, a bunch of our cars in the 70s and 80s were garbage, and our cost base is high, but today a Silverado rolls of the line every 15 minutes and it'll be safe and strong for 200,000 miles easy.

[BYODB]

I still stand hard by my prediction that it won’t roll out in any significant way until standardized ground-based telemetry is put into place.

Absolutely agree. Instead of trying to teach a car what a person looks like by giving it some sort of machine learning magic, along with developing all the necessarily mimics of human biological function, maybe just teach people that cars don't see them and have them roll along an essentially digital track. It's the same thing functionally, and notably it's possible instead of requiring the invention of massive failure prone electronic devices that don't actually exist.

Trying to invent essentially AI to drive a car is one of the more absurd conceits of modern technologists.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

While not simple, at least in an urban area, it's the only thing that really makes sense. From the ground, infrastructure transmits to the car. Brief, incomplete examples:

There's a light here, it's status is red/green/yellow
There's a crosswalk here, it's status is clear
The intersection is here, and it allows right turn, but only on arrow, or free right turn with yield.
The speed limit in this zone is X miles per hour, currently moving at y mph on average with traffic density of z.

AI will still play a part, because vehicles and pedestrians still won't play by the rules. But it can't be the exclusive domain of the CPU inside the vehicle. It just can't. Not at this time.

[BYODB]

It's definitely not simple. It's definitely not cheap. And it would require the Federal government to spend trillions of dollars on completely revamping the entire U.S. infrastructure with expensive, and again failure prone, equipment that needs to be maintained by pretty credentialed technicians on a regular ongoing basis. So, just about the most expensive thing ever for...what gains exactly? So we can text and drive? Jaysus.

Silicon Valley is only trying the impossible because the possible is just too outlandishly expensive. And all this before we even begin to talk about liability.

[Jerryskids]

because vehicles and pedestrians still won’t play by the rules

The only reasonably short-term answer I can see to solving the complexity of the self-driving car problem is not to make the cars more complex but the problem simpler. It'd be a lot easier to implement this self-driving car system if self-driving cars, all interacting with each other and all following the same rules, were the only thing allowed on the road, wouldn't it? It's them damn humans and their free will and their unpredictability that creates the problem, the solution is to ban that sort of thing.

Considering that self-driving cars could be mandated to be electric to suit the greenies, would be far safer to suit the safety Nazis and the insurance companies, have back doors built into their software systems for the ease and convenience of our overlords to take control of the vehicle in the event that you might be trying to go somewhere you shouldn't or not going where you should, and that the amount of money to be made replacing the entire country's stock of automobiles is the star of a crony capitalist's wet dream, I'm really surprised Congress hasn't yet drafted legislation making it so. Or at least creating a commission to "study" the issue of making it so until the constituency for making it so has all had an opportunity to buy a seat at the negotiating table for the process of making it so.

[markm23]

This! Self-driving cars would work well in dedicated lanes in freeways and major surface streets. You would have to change to manual driving for the first and last part of your commute, but you could drink coffee and surf the web for the bulk of it. Traffic problems would be greatly reduced since all vehicles in these lanes are in constant communication with each other and the road. They could travel bumper to bumper safely at high speed, and give way for entering and exiting cars.

The one problem is with manually-driven cars, pedestrians, bicycles, deer, etc., stupidly crossing into the controlled lane. The self-driving cars would need radar and lidar to detect these - but the rules for decoding the images could be quite simple. If something out front doesn't match what the road says belongs there, all cars STOP and revert to manual control until the way ahead is clear again. The car software doesn't have to identify the possible obstacle, but just stop for everything unknown. It should send a picture of the unknown object to the authorities, so violators of traffic regulations can be ticketed, and false alarms reviewed for causes and sometimes for improved training of the car software.

Once that system is set up and working well in urban commuting areas, there are three ways to improve and extend it.

1) Improve the capacity of the controlled commuting lanes by building separate controlled exits and on-ramps. Such a system with cars running bumper to bumper at 70mph should exceed the capacity of a rail system with several minutes between trains, and end the requirement to stop a train with hundreds of people so a few can get on or off.

2) Extend the controlled lanes between cities, so truckers and travellers can turn the driving over to their vehicles. Except where it's practical to add new lanes, this will require some compromise to coexist with manual traffic. I think the left (fast) lane will become controlled, and to use it for passing vehicles in the right lane, manual drivers will need a device that requests an opening in the controlled traffic and tells them when it is safe to change lanes.

3) Continue improving the image recognition software until it becomes safe to allow limited use of self-driving at low speeds on uncontrolled roads.

[James K. Polk]

Cars have radar that detect obstacles. They've had it for years now. It just doesn't work well *enough*.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Detecting the obstacle is 1% of the battle. Knowing how to interpret it is the other 99%. I was woken up to this fact by an excellent article several years ago in Wired magazine that did a deep dive into the technology, complete with interviews of the tech professionals working in the field.

Detecting 'stopped' objects in front of the vehicle doesn't cut it, because 'stopped objects' are always in front of your vehicle. So vehicles can't simply react to a 'stopped object' otherwise they'd never go. Ground-based telemetry would go a long way in communicating to the vehicles which stopped objects (or at least parameters and constraints) should be paid attention to... or by omission, which shouldn't be ignored.

[markm23]

For example, one experimental self-driving car ran right over and killed a woman who was walking a bicycle across the road at night. The operator of the car was supposed to be watching the road, but appeared to be texting instead, and did not see her in time to stop the car. (That happens all too often with ordinary drivers! But requiring a human to remain alert as a backup to a machine is bound to fail, unless the machine keeps the human alert by messing up very often.)

There was enough light for the car to get a picture, and the car also had radar. But neither system had been trained to recognize the image at the particular angle, and THE SOFTWARE HAD BEEN CHANGED TO IGNORE UNIDENTIFIED IMAGES. The safe and obvious choice is to stop for anything unidentified, but with this setting, the car stopped continuously for something off to the side of the road, or ahead at each curve.

[BYODB]

As for self driving cars, they work. And you’ll be seeing them rolled out in your neck of the woods within the next ten years by my guess

Nevermind that 'experts' have been saying that for ten years. We already invented self driving cars. They're called 'trains'. We just want people to pay for the train cars a little more directly since almost infinite public dollars didn't do the trick.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Missed this comment. She was't discovered quickly. Hello. Her crimes went on precisely because people were being fooled. She was the darling of media and SV. Turtles necks, deep voices and all.

[I'm Not Sure]

"An anonymous state official told BuzzFeed that the White House's coronavirus taskforce directly recommended Oren-Pines..."

Did the White House "recommend" or "forward a potential lead"? Just wondering...

[Jerryskids]

But you believe Buzzfeed actually talked to an anonymous official, right? I'd put Buzzfeed as a reliable source of news somewhere between the National Enquirer and a Ouija board.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

So moving up in your view.

[MoreFreedom]

That anonymous statement smells like a typical made up story about Trump. Consider, New York was the one that paid the guy, not Trump, so this throws the blame on Trump rather than Gov. Cuomo whose administration obviously didn't prepare, nor did their due diligence writing a large check to someone without a history in the business. It's a common practice of Democrats to psychologically project and accuse their political opponents of their own faults. NY asked the feds for a list of ventilator vendors instead of getting it on their own. No surprise Buzzfeed disparages Trump to take the focus off of Cuomo's failures.

[Brett Bellmore]

" nor did their due diligence writing a large check to someone without a history in the business."

Unless the due diligence had to do with confirming that a decent percentage of the check would make it's way back under the table.

[Brett Bellmore]

That was my reaction. On the record, or it didn't happen. Anonymous accounts have all the credibility of Nigerian princes.

[James K. Polk]

I remember after the Asiana crash some TV news outfit called the NTSB looking for some information. The intern who answered the phone at the NTSB decided to fuck with the person who called, giving out the pilot's names as Wee Tu Lo, Ho Lee Fuk, Bang Ding Ow, and Sum Ting Wong. The brainless Ron Burgundy's then put it out on the air, even read the names out loud without flinching. That intern was of course fired. Perhaps he's answering the phone now at the Coronavirus Task Force?

[Wagner]

always the same thing

[BYODB]

Look, if dumping more money into schools raises their teaching ability than obviously dumping more money into government raises their governing ability.

Duh, McFly!

[Strategery]

The classic libertarian trap, a no-win situation for government: either the government moves quickly, and has more crooks and fraudsters committing crimes against the public that the bureaucracy gets blamed for not preventing, or, have a careful approval process to avoid being ripped off, and get blamed for adding cost. The blame should fall on the criminal who is stealing from the public, not a public servant trying to save lives during a national emergency.

It's particularly galling as applied to ventilators, an obvious public good / market failure IRT pandemic preparedness. The market didn't provide it in advance, and aren't gearing up to provide it now without guarantees (Trump won't provide them) because the market could (and has, so far) shrink back "under the curve," and because of supply inelasticities only a motivated government could break through to provide. (Trump was too lazy.) So, if we have a 2nd wave of infections later this year that spikes quicker, we are still vulnerable to thousands of needless deaths.

All thanks to a combination of failed capitalism and Trump sabotaging the competencies of the federal government on purpose through his massive ignorance and corruption. Is the bureaucracy to be blamed for Trump's crimes, too? Of course. If all you have is one answer, it doesn't matter what the question is.

[James K. Polk]

"... Failed capitalism ... Orange Man Bad"

LOL, when you have one answer, it doesn't matter what the question is.

[Barks]

If Trump could get Barr to get the DOJ off goosing ghosts they would have legions of attorneys to put the fraudsters, phonies and grifters in federal prison. It's an application of resources issue.

[Ron]

New York blaming Trump for lack of due diligence on a contract. typical.

I wonder how can I get some of this bread they are throwing around I mean in the millions not the little $1200 i probably wont get since i work

[JohannesDinkle]

In California Governor Newsom seem so be traveling down the same rabbit hole - he paid $1 billion for 200,000,000 masks (which sold for $0.85 pre-coronavirus) from a Chinese electric car manufacturer that has never made one mask before. They have already been paid. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/28/coronavirus-california-receives-3-million-masks-as-part-of-newsoms-big-purchase/

[MatthewSlyfield]

There is one important fact that the article never makes clear, and one way or another, the answer to that makes for a very different article.

NY didn't get their ventilators, but was that because the ventilators they paid for never existed, or because they got confiscated by another government?

[Case of the Mondays]

Huh, Trevor Noah's lame ass show from his boring home says that Cuomo is "crushing it".

I mean maybe he is just attracted to Cuomo, or likes men of power to feel up under his skirt, past his panties and insert their finger in him.

Yeah not so cool when it's not a hot chick but some turd from South Africa.

[Case of the Mondays]

Also to that point, last year when Trump was not credibly accused of sexual assault, Samantha Bee went apeshit when the media didn't really cover it. Now it's Joe Biden's turn, and Ms Bee is completely silent.

I realize both Noah and Bee (and the rest of the Daily Show idiot patrol) are far left prog dumb asses, but even at some point you lose credibility with your audience. I wasn't a fan of Jon Stewart and don't much like Maher either. But at least they would take a poke at the democratic candidate now and then.

[Rufus The Monocled]

Cuomo looks like one of those crooks in the movies who get busted while getting a massage in a Thai brothel.

[tennisbum10]

Crap! He looks just like the guy I bought a truck load of Rolexs from!

[Cyto]

At least this was a legitimate scam. Dude was buying ventilators that didn't exist and might never have existed.

Over in the middle east they are still falling for the psychic scams. A few years ago it was "bomb detectors" based on the ideomotor effect. Those evolved into fake "sniffers" with blinking lights. Now they are apparently selling the governments over there the exact same devices as "Covid-19 test machines" that can detect the virus instantly.

How you can be so unbelievably stupid is beyond me... but they are spending millions on the scams.

[Rufus The Monocled]

A Bill Gates vaccine for a quarter next to the peanut vending machine!

[Rufus The Monocled]

At least they didn't get scammed for a monorail.

Buzzfeed?

[Dustin]

The real scandal is that people were killed by being prematurely put on ventilators for no good reason.

[Dean Michael Jackson]

Since there is no COVID-19, naturally the monies went to corruption, otherwise the monies would have gone to firms that actually manufacture ventilators.

On March 24 (2020) The National Vital Statistics System released new criteria upon which to identify cause of death for COVID-19, where now any death can be certified as caused by COVID-19:

“What happens if the terms reported on the death certificate indicate uncertainty?

If the death certificate reports terms such as “probable COVID-19” or “likely COVID-19,” these terms would be assigned the new ICD code. It Is not likely that NCHS will follow up on these cases. If “pending COVID-19 testing” is reported on the death certificate, this would be considered a pending record. In this scenario, NCHS would expect to receive an updated record, since the code will likely result in R99. In this case, NCHS will ask the states to follow up to verify if test results confirmed that the decedent had COVID-19."

No subsequent COVID-19 tests required, merely the certifier complying with the need to bolster false COVID-19 caused deaths; if COVID-19 existed, naturally a non-Marxist CDC would want and need to know with follow-up tests, but naturally the Marxist establishment isn't interested in follow-up tests because it needs to increase numbers to increase panic and the resulting destruction of the economy.

Since when does a flu bug shut down and destroy a nation? Since Marxists are in control, of course:

“The influential Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model is now predicting 68,841 U.S. coronavirus deaths by August. Even if this latest estimate is accurate for once, that would make for a death rate of about 21 per 100,000, comparable to the 21.4 per 100,000 death rate for diabetes in 2018.”

Let’s take a look at the United States’ flu seasons for 1930 – 1940, where throughout the decade mortality rates spanned 35/100,000 to greater than 150/100,000.

Was the United States’ economy shut down in those years? Of course not! Why would one destroy an economy because people are dying in larger numbers from the flu? A nation doesn’t exist to guarantee life, it exists to guarantee the nation, and no nation can survive the destruction of its economy.

Similar shockingly high mortality rates in previous decades (not including the 1918-1919 pandemic), but, of course, the economy must go on. The Republic must survive.

When did Americans treat each other as lepers because of a virus? Never, because until recently Marxists hadn't turned viral transmission science on its head by telling us that breathing and talking can spread a viral disease. Really? So why is the human race still alive if viruses are spread by mere breathing or talking? Adam and Eve's immune systems would have been immediately overwhelmed by viruses after their separation from the Garden! You get the idea.

Measles is one of the most infectious of viruses known, infecting nine out of ten in close quarters with the infected, but the infected must sneeze or cough to give to others the viral load transmission that causes infection:

"Measles is a highly contagious virus that lives in the nose and throat mucus of an infected person. It can spread to others through coughing and sneezing. Also, measles virus can live for up to two hours in an airspace where the infected person coughed or sneezed.

If other people breathe the contaminated air or touch the infected surface, then touch their eyes, noses, or mouths, they can become infected. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected."

Now you know the West was long ago co-opted by Marxists, which is why, and you should have known, the West conspired to not verify the ‘collapse’ of the USSR, even though the West knew that the Soviet Bloc throughout the 1980s was under counting communist party membership numbers in order to provide the narrative of imploding Soviet Bloc political establishments, the real numbers located in Party Congress literature, where in the case of the USSR, between the 1986 Party Congress and1990 Party Congress, communist party membership increased by 28%. In the case of Yugoslavia, between 1982 - 1991, communist party membership increased by 40%.

[Charles.H.Anziulewicz@wv.]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I've generally found people being more patient, kind, and courteous to one another. UNFORTUNATELY, there will always be those to take advantage of such crises for nothing more than greed.

[Bnnfeed]

It's a horrible News