Model numbers draw down DRAMATICALLY. more: Links 1, April 8, 2020

1. Why is Bill Gates picking up the slack where President Trump has realized it has to be created? While Trump suspends funding to the Chinese controlled, communist en extremis, WHO, Gates is stepping up to continue that funding.

2. It becomes increasingly clear why so many writers of dystopian fiction are from the UK

3. Meanwhile, in Canada,

COVID-19: Civil liberties group warns of ‘unfair and arbitrary’ law enforcement as hefty fines across Canada pile up

Police and bylaw officers across Canada have turned unwitting dog walkers into social deviants, sowing confusion over what is acceptable behaviour now

OTTAWA — A civil liberties group is cautioning police and municipal bylaw officers against levelling increasingly draconian fines against people who fail to adhere to social distancing measures, as cities and towns double down on efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19.

 

Police and bylaw officers across Canada have issued hundreds of fines against people who break social distancing rules, turning unwitting dog walkers into social deviants and sowing confusion over what is acceptable behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Municipal law enforcement in Halifax, Montreal and Ottawa in particular have slapped residents with harsh penalties in recent days, according to a review of fines in major cities by the National Post. City officials have fined people who rest in public parks or cross through empty soccer fields, and threatened charges against neighbours who attended a social-distancing birthday party from their cars.

 

“At some point this pandemic, in some jurisdictions, stopped being about public health and started being about public order, because politicians weren’t seeing the behaviour that they wanted out of their constituents,” said Michael Bryant, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

4. China: Critic who called Xi a ‘clown’ over Covid-19 crisis investigated for ‘serious violations’

Ren Zhiqiang, an influential critic of the Chinese Communist party who suggested president Xi Jinping was a “clown” over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, is being investigated for “serious violations of discipline and the law”, Chinese anti-corruption authorities have said.

 

The retired property executive, who remains a well-connected and vocal member of the ruling party, went missing last month after writing a critical essay about the outbreak. In mid-March, Ren’s friends told Reuters they had not been able to contact him, and they were “extremely anxious”.

 

Late on Tuesday, party officials said Ren was accused of violations that are widely used as a euphemism for corruption and graft. The short statement posted online said Ren was undergoing disciplinary review and supervision by the Beijing discipline inspection commission, the top anti-graft commission in the country.

5. Tucker on the numbers of Covid deaths may not be entirely accurate

6. Oh yeah, China knew.

7. Wuhan city now ends quarantine

8. Finland: Chinese face masks fail tests

A consignment of face masks and personal protection equipment (PPE) that arrived in Finland from China on Tuesday are not up to standard, according to the director of Finland’s National Emergency Supply Agency, Tomi Lounema.

 

The equipment was tested at labs in Tampere run by the Technical Research Centre of Finland, VTT.

The Ministry for Health and Social Affairs says that the masks could be used in care homes to prevent staff from passing on coronavirus, but not in hospitals.

Lounema said at a press conference on Wednesday that Finland would receive four more plane loads of PPE from the Far East next week.

 

On Tuesday, it was reported that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health was aiming for better cooperation between municipalities and businesses in the production of lighter fabric face masks for use in places like nursing homes and for home care workers.

 

The extent of the PPE shortage was highlighted when it was reported last week that Finnish hospitals received face masks and equipment marked with use-by dates in 2012.

Related: Surprise: China Sells Huge Batch of Defective Coronavirus Tests to UK, Prompting Refund Demand

9. Judge removes kids from home because mom’s medical work exposes her to COVID-19

STROUD, Oklahoma, April 6, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — A divorced mother has alleged that a judge ordered her children removed from her custody because she works in a medical clinic and might expose them to the coronavirus. 

The woman, Katie Spencer of Stroud, Oklahoma, declared in a March Facebook posting that this is “a heads up to nurses, doctors, firefighters, police officers, and other first responders who have children and sneaky exes.”

 

“Watch your backs!” she added.

“The police showed up on my doorstep at 10 PM and took my kids from me because I WORK IN A CLINIC and a judge signed off on this because of my ‘exposure to the coronavirus,’” explained Spencer.

The story is a little messier than what first meets the eye.

10. Oceans thought to absorb TWICE as much CO2 as previously estimated.

(This article is interesting as the Newatlas commonly pushes anthropogenic global warming in every mail out every day and going from memory, does not allow comments through that question the science of it, and often publish very bad science if its pro-AGW. So this is unusual for them. However, those of us who read available climate literature on CO2 and the ocean know that the data was faked by Al Gore, and that the ocean was actually 50 years AHEAD of atmospheric CO2, Meaning that it absorbs or emits, depending on the temperature, CO2 and is not ahead of temperature as Gore’s movie and graphs mislead us. Either way, man made CO2 has nothing to do with climate in the manner in which the communists at the UN insist it does.)

11. Fox News: Covid may be airborne transmission.

12. Andrew Bostom Tweet on the new numbers:

Thank you M., Wrath of Khan, Richard, MissPiggy, @andrewbostom, Johnny U., Fred M., and so many more who are posting this week and in general to the Reader’s Links post. Please keep it coming.

It is extremely difficult to separate fact from conspiracy hypothesis (Theories are often correct as they have to be tested before they are technically theories) and the more info the better. Especially as nearly all media has opted to become propaganda rather than deal with difficult truths. Was it ABC that scrubbed the Epstein story?