On this day in 1789, George Washington became the first and only president to be unanimously elected by the Electoral College. This was repeated on this same day in 1792. Because of the way the early American voting procedure worked, the electors cast two votes with no distinction for president or vice president. Washington was chosen by all of the electors and is considered to have been unanimously elected. Of the others on the ballots, Adams had the most votes and thus became the vice president.
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I’m now on Day Seven of my flu travail. Since I still haven’t fully recovered, I am omitting Tuesday’s usual News From The American Redoubt column. Thanks for your patience.
SurvivalBlog Writing Contest
Today we present another entry for Round 87 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $10,000 worth of prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
- A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
- A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
- A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
- DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
- Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
- A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
- American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.
Second Prize:
- A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
- A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
- A $300 purchase credit for any of the products from EMPShield.com
- A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
- Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
- An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).
Third Prize:
- Good2GoCo.com is providing a $400 purchase credit at regular prices for the prize winner’s choice of either Wise Foods or Augason long term storage foods, in stackable buckets.
- Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
- A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
- Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
- Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
Round 87 ends on March 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
Here is the latest and excellent videos on the Corona Virus. Take a look at their channels for more of the same. According to these two independent sources, the two different analysis of the death rate for the Corona virus estimate a minimum of 3% to 15%, and growing. Numbers for the Spanish Flu range from 2 to 5%. It will be many weeks before there are significant numbers generated in the U.S that might be useful. In general, the disease is considered by one of these doctors to be more contagious, and more deadly, than ‘plain old flu’.
Even the common variety flu can kill, or make one vulnerable to many possible secondary diseases such as pneumonia, MRSA, and other diseases simultaneously. I would stay away from the hospital and clinics if at all possible as this is where all types of disease, including Corona virus would be present. I’ve lost family as a result of secondary diseases contracted after being admitted for community acquired pneumonia that could have been treated successfully with common antibiotics. No amount of antibiotics and support could save them from the complications of many secondary infections acquired once in the hospital. The cause of death was determined to be congestive heart failure, yet the diseases that caused the condition were not mentioned.
I will self quarantine very soon. Only if it is absolutely necessary to be in public, I would use a face shield, or full face mask to keep spittle out of my eyes and face to reduce the chance that I might habitually touch my face with a gloved hand, and to reduce the odd that the virus will enter through the mucus membranes of the eyes. One slip up and I might infect myself. I am still looking for confirmation that the virus is not airborne, as is measles. A gas mask filter may not be rated for biological hazard, but it can be used as full face mask or shield, and would be a huge improvement over goggles. I would also wear a tyvek suit to keep the virus off the clothing, and of course nitrile gloves, and booties. Always seek His protection and guidance before going into public.
This gas mask filter might be rated for airborne viruses.
https://www.amazon.com/MIRA-Cartridge-Respiratory-Protection-Filter/dp/B07L38TYSF/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=40mm+gas+mask+filter&qid=1580802667&s=electronics&sr=8-1
Explore these channels, and this web sites for more excellent analysis and information:
http://peakprosperity.com/
Videos:
Why The Time To Prepare For The Coronavirus Is *NOW*
https://youtu.be/kuRJD8ZxDLk
Coronavirus Epidemic Update 9: Fecal-Oral Transmission, Recovery vs Death Rate
https://youtu.be/8Hjy3UfaTSc
You are remembered and prayed for! Blessings on your down time.
Feel better, Mr. Rawles.
Sorry brother. Take your time and get well. My whole family went through it and it just takes time.
JWR and family, hope you are all better soon. We also have had flu in the house this year after going without for years. Thank you and keep up the good work.
I wish you a full and speedy recovery. Not wanting to be the bearer of bad news, but it took a couple months for me to be back to “normal” after a bout of flu 3 years ago.
2019–20 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak
Video 8 from John
(YouTube Video)
Dr. John Campbell
Feb 4, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1naDPFio04
Duration – 11:08
John video 9
(YouTube Video)
Dr. John Campbell
Feb 4, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W4zyQ_dqxI
Duration – 31:05
Dr. John Campbell Channel
https://www.youtube.com/user/Campbellteaching/videos
From https://gab.com/Matt_Bracken
Wuhan virus compared to MERS and SARS
(YouTube Video)
Dr. John Campbell
Feb 3, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7D3AoNdp84
Duration – 27:27
Coronavirus, Contagion and Complications
(YouTube Video)
Dr. John Campbell
Feb 2, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z05ZrMfKUDc
Duration – 20:07
Coronavirus, New contagion data
Dr. John Campbell
Feb 1, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQFBUgDgG_k
Duration – 19:45
Fed 4, 2020, Mike Adams starting at 48:00 min. Don’t miss this one.
We do not know what we are dealing with yet. It is plausible that this virus was in development as a bio-weapon to be used in the future against the U.S. China is reportedly attempting preserve strategic infrastructure and populations, as it seems they do not believe it can be contained. and could devastate the unprotected population. I would prepare for the worst.
https://tv.infowars.com/index/display/category/dailyshows/id/10381
There is also rumor that China is now executing new patients, and cremating the bodies with out delay, or services. This is only rumor.
I have read that Adams is controlled opposition… would anyone care to comment…just searching for truth as much as possible…TY
IMO it is highly unlikely this is a biological weapon. It just doesn’t have the characteristics for one thing, and secondly, all the science is pointing to it being highly related to at least 23 different coronaviruses found in bats. Both SARS and MERS moved from bats to humans via another mammal (SARS via palm civets, MERS via camels) and this nCoV almost certainly did the same thing although they don’t know the intermediary mammal yet. In the first 41 patients, 66% of them had a direct connection to a certain market in Wuhan where wild meat is sold and that is the most likely place that intermediary mammal that was carrying the nCoV first came into contact with the first humans to get sick. My guess would be the guy who butchered it?
If you look at Figure 3 of this link, you can see the “pedigree chart” (phylogenetic tree) of this particular cornoavirus showing all the bat relationships. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext
There are a lot of articles right now coming to a lot of wrong conclusions because they are misinterpreting data, or trying to force the data to match their preconceived notions, IMO. One in particular was about how the virus contain HIV fragments, therefore this must be a bioweapon. They have since removed that particular paper after a jury of their peers pointed out the obvious faults in their research showing that those same fragments also show up in thousands of other organisms from plants to viruses.
When you see these types of articles, click on the links and try to read the original publications to get the straight facts, it’s usually more helpful that way.
Another thought, China may be hiding some of the facts but part of the truth is, they just cannot test all the cases quickly enough. I have been watching our own CDC and they have what they call “PUI”, People Under Investigation on their website. That includes people who are definite cases, tested cases who came out negative, and pending cases. Some of those pending cases have been pending forever. I cannot understand how it can take so long. If it takes the grand and glorious US of A so long to test a few dozen cases, how can we expect China to be able to handle tens of thousands of tests? They are totally overwhelmed and if the US had 100,000 cases, we’d be overwhelmed too.
One more ray of hope: One study I read today had a very small sample size, but it indicated that Asian men are way more susceptible than women in general, and more so than white men and African men that were tested because the nCoV uses what is called ACE2 receptor sites to attack human cells. For some reason, the Asian males they tested had a much higher percentage of these receptor sites than others. The sample size was small but if that holds true, that could mean that when this virus spreads to the US, we as a population could be much less susceptible than Asians. Again, they only looked at a few individuals but let’s keep our fingers crossed.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v1.full
St. Funogas,
As I continually remark, we really do not know what this is, but we do know enough about what China is doing in response, and therefore we can see that it is really a big deal. This is a nasty virus. It is no ordinary flu bug. Actions speak louder than words. And then there is the economic ramifications to consider. Even if there were no pandemic, and it was totally contained in China, the disruption will effect the global economy. For example, Hyundai has stopped production as parts from China are not available.
There is a very >untypical response to the Wuhan Coronavirus Flu, in China and elsewhere. … There has been no authoritative ~complete information from America’s CDC. … OUR American medical personnel relies on the CDC information, and responds to it.
An example of America’s response. ~> The Wuhan Flu is still an unknown danger, or >else people are making an educated guess to the possible hazards. =
“The recent global spread of a deadly coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, has led world leaders to invoke an ancient tradition to control the spread of illness: >>quarantine.” …
“In January, Chinese authorities attempted to lock down millions of residents of Wuhan and the surrounding area, to try to keep the new coronavirus from spreading outward. The country’s neighbors are closing borders, airlines are canceling flights, and nations are advising their citizens against traveling to China, a modern instance of the old impulse to restrict people’s movements in order to stop disease transmission.”
“US authorities are holding travelers returning from China in isolation for two weeks as an effort to halt coronavirus’ spread. Always at the center of the policy of quarantine is the tension between individual civil liberties and protection of the public at risk.”
“In the United States, where the Constitution guarantees personal rights, it’s a serious decision to restrict an individual’s freedom of travel and compel medical treatment. And quarantine is not an ironclad way to prevent the spread of disease. But it can be a useful tool for public health officials working to stop the spread of a contagious disease.”
sciencealert 2/4/2020, quoting from The Conversation.
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The verdict from the American Medical Establishment is NOT given yet. So far, it’s a very untypical response to a >Flu virus.
Right now, people reading these comments at SurvivalBlog, should also read several times once again: ~Protecting Your Family From an Influenza Pandemic~> under the Resources heading on SurvivalBlog.
Plus, they need to ensure they have some reasonable preps for themselves, their extended families and their ~neighbors.
China is a communist police state. Who knows with certainty what’s occurring over there. … There are stories that say, “The Smog in Wuhan is terrible, because the government is burning the bodies!” ~ That’s like the Black Death; except back then, they used carts to carry people away to mass graves.
All the stories might be hyped for ratings by the Fake News.
But, there is occurring a serious response by all governments including (Thank-God) the US Government.
MedCram – Medical Lectures Explained CLEARLY
457K subscribers
Coronavirus epidemic update 10 by pulmonologist Dr. Seheult of https://www.MedCram.com
https://youtu.be/gPwfiQgGsFo
This is #10 of 10 videos on the topic. I consider this source to be top notch. However, we really do not know what this virus is, so to discard the possibility that this virus is a bio weapon, as some experts believe, is not a balanced approach. To assert that it is only another flu bug is also not intellectually honest. There is not enough science to properly define it. There is the possibility that this virus, as it is, a bio weapon or not, has the potential to destabilize the global economy, and now fragile banking system.
Stock markets are artificially high, redefining what was once considered “irrational exuberance” (Alan Greenspan). An artificially high market that never fully corrects, maintains a confidence in a system that is no longer marked to market, or reality. Once production falls in Asia, and then the rest of the planet, the stock market may continue up, but the banks will need more cash from the FED to stay liquid. Once the number of banks have liquidity problems, then they can no longer trust each other and the ‘debt system’ aka. the banking system, no longer operates. And if the economy slows significantly before the election, Trump’s popularity will wane. This virus is a big deal any way it is sliced and diced (analyzed), and justifies prudent action.
We still have a few months to see if it will be another Spanish flu or not, but it already will have a serious geo-political, and economic impact. China appears to be imploding, and could take the rest of the planet with it.
Hey Tunnel Rabbit, I agree with most of what you are saying, about the stock markets, the world economy, and the effect this epidemic in China is going to have on the supply chain. When I told some of my kids to stock up on things they need for their business like printer cartridges and such, simple cheap things that they would be totally up the creek without, things they were going to be using anyway, they just laughed.
And this is definitely not just another flu bug. But while I have no way to be positive, I’m having a hard time with the whole bio-weapons angle. For one thing, if this is a bio-weapon, the guy who designed it needs to be canned for incompetence. It’s too slow moving and inefficient for a bio-weapon.
Coronaviruses are common organisms. There are four CoV’s that cause the common cold, people in your county are walking around with them right now. There are other organisms that also cause the common cold that are not CoV’s. This Wuhan CoV just happens to be one that mutated enough to cause a lot of people to get really sick and some of them to die, just like the virus strain that caused the Spanish flu did back in 1918. The Spanish flu wasn’t a bio-weapon, biotechnology didn’t exist back then so we know it was just a chance mutation. All the scientific papers I’ve read in the past two weeks lead me to the same conclusion about this Wuhan CoV, it’s just a chance mutation in a bat coronavirus that moved to another mammal, and then to humans. It’s just my opinion and I could be wrong, but like I said, it just doesn’t fit the profile for a bio-weapon. But that doesn’t sell newspapers or get many clicks on a website.
Here’s a paragraph from Science Daily quoting a paper published January 31st: “Alarmingly, our data predict that a single mutation [at a specific spot in the genome] could significantly enhance [the Wuhan coronavirus’s] ability to bind with human ACE2,” the investigators write. For this reason, Wuhan coronavirus evolution in patients should be closely monitored for the emergence of novel mutations at the 501 position in its genome, and to a lesser extent, the 494 position, in order to predict the possibility of a more serious outbreak than has been seen so far.”
Those are exactly the kinds of things that bio-technologists tweak when they are creating bio-weapons. As I said, if this was a bio-weapon, they should fire the guy who created it for incompetence.
As of last night at 7 PM there were 211 confirmed cases outside of China and that number is growing so we can finally start getting some true mortality rate numbers. That is the number we’ve all been waiting for. That number will tell us everything and how concerned we need to be. In the meantime, as you and GGHD pointed out, better safe than sorry. We can’t be too careful. Hopefully we are looking at something that has a mortality rate closer to the common flu than the Spanish flu, but only time will tell.
I wish our CDC would step it up a notch and report the numbers here daily so we wouldn’t have to look elsewhere for updates.
Hi St. Funogas,
I am aware of the literature and variety of the ‘expert’ opinion. At least half of them will be wrong. From my perspective, because this bug is virulent enough to bring China to it’s knees so quickly, this is a very bad bug.
What it is exactly is not so important. It might be a natural mutation, or it might be a half baked bio-weapon in development that escaped early, it really is not necessary to know, but only interesting. How it behaves is really interesting. Early analysis of it’s ‘kill rate’ suggest it could be as bad or worse as the Spanish Flu of 1918. That is all I really need to know, and how it is spread. How the Spanish Flu, would in today’s world, effect the economy and politics, is also something to consider.
It might to do us and the rest of the world, what it is doing to China. Likely it will. And that is the bottom line. Self quarantine is the best prevention. If I must interact with others, I’ll proceed as if I were back in a microbiology lab. If the lights go out today, I’m already off grid and self sufficient for may years.
Tunnel Rabbit the economic fallout is showing with 2% gains on Dow/Nasdac/S&P from the Chinese dumping billions and the Fed following suit(to paper over last weeks bond crash). Get prepared for roller coaster trading.
“Bulls make money, bears make money and pigs get slaughtered.” ~ Jim Cramer’s statement.
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Traditionally stocks were valued by such things as,: Dividend Rate, Price to Earnings Ratios, and Book Value.
Since Congress enacted the 401k plans, people started investing in the Stock Market, without understanding financial statements. … Many investors with 401k plans expect the Value of their 401k plans to increase. = They then hope to ‘cash out’ their Stock when they retire.
Stocks require buyers and sellers, to determine actual value. ‘Bubbles’ will occur; the gamble is trying to figure, when the ‘Bubble’ pops.
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VT, comment refers to the ‘Roller Coaster’ effect in the stock market, when investors choose to either invest in stocks, or massively sell-off their stock investments.
Make sure the recommended preps are in ‘stock’ at your house. … Stay with SurvivalBlog for good advice.
VT,
Fortunately I quit that rodeo some time a go. One would have to be a very nimble to net a profit at the end of the year. I say, get out alive, and sell at the top if you can.
No need to ask our forgiveness, JWR. Take as long as you need to recover your robust health. Your well-being is a top concern.
Carry on