When George W. Bush launched the Iraq War in 2003, the Pressitutes passionately quoted, and the vast majority of the American public bought, his “Shock and Awe” strategy, which would wipe out Saddam Hussein, destroy his fictional weapons of mass destruction, and bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people.
The Shock and Awe strategy was to launch an attack so massive and quickly that the enemy would be stunned, confused, overwhelmed, and paralyzed.
As with the 2003 Iraq War and so, too, with the 2020 COVID War… a war launched by world leaders who locked down their citizens and shut down the global economy with such stunning speed, it left billions shocked and awed… impotent, helpless, hopeless… like never before in history.
Then and Now
In 2003, when some 80 percent of Americans believed the Iraq War was justified (despite not one shred of evidence of WMDs).
Today, the vast majority of Americans are in support of the COVID-19 War despite scientific evidence to the contrary as amply reported in the Trends Journal. Some 80 percent of Americans support draconian shelter-in-place and non-essential business lockdowns ordered by politicians.
And, back then, just as the Presstitutes sold “shock and awe” to a sound-bite buying public (in the week the war began, more than 600 news reports around the world endlessly referred to “shock and awe,” according to the Washington Post)… in 2020, as detailed in the Trends Journal, knowing it would boost their ratings, the media have been the prime sellers of the COVID War.
Just as George W. Bush’s rating was boosted in the polls when he launched his wars, with Andrew Cuomo, America’s COVID War Hero, who, with a favorability rating of just 43 percent as recently as February 2019, has now spiked to a 87 percent favorable rating:
“Andrew Cuomo may be the single most popular politician in America right now.” – CNN, 1 May 2020
Facts Don’t Matter
Bragging for months about the success of his shelter-in-place order that he propagandized with the less-draconian lockdown language of “NY ON PAUSE,” last Wednesday, he extended his dictatorial powers “until further notice.” In speaking about the majority of New Yorkers reporting to hospitals had been following his stay-at-home orders, Cuomo stated:
“A lot of people have been arguing where they come from and where we should be focusing… But if you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us.”
Indeed, with two thirds of those going to the hospital having obeyed his restrictions, the evidence contradicts his 13 April proclamation that “…if you isolate, if you take the precautions, your family won’t get infected.”
They did “isolate;” they did get “infected.”
In one of his now-popular daily press briefings, Cuomo repeated:
“We thought maybe they were taking public transportation and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation. But actually no, because these people were literally at home. 2% of car services, 9 percent were driving their own vehicle. Only 4% were taking public transportation, 2 percent walking.”
Were they working? No, they were retired or they were unemployed. Only 17 percent working. So that says they’re not working, they’re not traveling. They’re predominantly downstate, predominantly minority [particularly African American and Hispanic], predominantly older, predominantly nonessential employees.”
TRENDPOST: No, they were not “working” because most of New York State’s businesses have been deemed non-essential. Liquor stores, deemed essential (and which bring in high tax revenue) are booming as people are locked down at home.
Also unnoted by the media is that if isolation were a key factor in bringing down the COVID numbers, the non-socially distanced, out-in-the-street homeless would be flooding the hospitals. In fact, the homeless that are victims are from tightly cramped, non-sanitary homeless shelters.
TRENDPOST: As for King Cuomo’s divine wisdom stay-at-home orders, Dr. Josip Car, an authority on population and global health at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, stated, “People living indoors within enclosed environments may promote virus recirculation, increasing the chance of contracting the disease.”
TRENDPOST: There is increasing evidence that suggests locking people up in their homes spreads COVID-19 more than being outdoors.
A study in China that measured 318 outbreaks of three or more cases across different parts of the country found the majority of transmissions took place inside the home or when riding public transport, while there was “only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment.”
Japanese researchers found “the odds of a primary case transmitted COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment.”
TRENDPOST: At none of his popular daily press briefings has the governor or the mainstream media focused on the dire consequences of forced shutdowns:
- According to the New York City Independent Budget Office, close to 500,000 jobs could be gone by March of next year. This estimate includes 100,000 lost jobs in retail, 86,000 in restaurants and hotels, and over 25,000 out of work in arts and entertainment. This is just the in NYC. Over 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment nationwide as of 23 April.
- The New York City Comptroller, Scott Stringer, another loud mouthed, power-hungry political freak, was in full bloom on 15 March declaring to the peasants of Slavelandia, “That is why today, out of an abundance of caution, I am calling for a city shutdown.”
But on 5 May, Stringer was singing a different tune, warning that the unemployment rate for New York City was expected to reach 22 percent by June. The hotel and food services industry will lose 184,300 jobs, 178,000 in retail, and 159,700 in health care and social assistance. “This is something we have never seen in our lifetime. We have an economy that has literally shut down,” he said.
TRENDPOST: Totally absent in the media coverage is any mention that Stringer is the same bureaucrat who helped create the reality of “something we have never seen in our lifetime,” and that he was championing to “have an economy that has literally shut down.”
And, rather than taking responsibility for his role in helping to shut it down, he now demands that the “federal government must step up and deliver relief to New York.”
More Damage
- The economic consequences of the shutdowns will lead to other devastating health concerns. Research from Oxford University shows that suicide rates increase around 1 percent for every point rise in job losses. Lead researcher Aaron Reeves point out, “There is a good chance we could see twice as many suicides over the next 24 months than we saw during the early part of the last recession.” This will lead to about 20,000 additional suicides across the country this year.
- As property and sales taxes rapidly fall, health departments will suffer significant budget cuts due to the shutdown. Following the 2008 recession, local health agencies in the U.S. saw 23,000 jobs cut. Adriane Casalotti, Chief of Government and Public Affairs at the National Association of County and City Health Officials, has recently warned, “What are you going to do when you have no tax base to pull from?”