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Coronavirus Pandemic Possible, Warns Physicians for Civil Defense

For the first time since 1949, outbound transportation from a provincial capital in China is being shut down, in response to an outbreak of a novel coronavirus infection, reports the Washington Post, in the middle of the busiest travel season of the year. About 400 million people are expected to be in transit before Lunar New Year’s Day.

Human-to-human transmission of this animal virus has now been reported. “Species jumping of zoonotic (animal) diseases is a constant threat, especially when humans live close to animals,” stated Physicians for Civil Defense president Jane M. Orient, M.D. “Mutations and mixing and matching in genetic material of viral strains can produce highly transmissible, lethal strains to which humans have no immunity.”

The report of 800 cases in China, centered in the city of Wuhan, is believed to be a gross underestimate, and a few cases have been reported in Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S., Dr. Orient stated.

At a Wuhan hospital, staff members are reportedly not being allowed to resign or leave the city.

Symptoms include fever, fatigue, and difficulty breathing. Patients may get a severe pneumonia.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—which on Tuesday activated its Emergency Response System—said it had been preparing for the possibility of 2019-nCoV entering the U.S. “for weeks.”

The CDC claims to have made great strides in preparedness since the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis in 2003. Yet despite spending $80 billion on a National Biologic Defense, the U.S. is arguably no better prepared than it was in 1918, when the great influenza pandemic killed more people than the Black Death, according to Steven Hatfill, M.D., and coauthors in their new book Three Seconds until Midnight.

Vaccine and effective antiviral drugs are lacking, and in an epidemic non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) would be key. These include eye protection, N-95 masks, hand sanitizers, and disinfection of surfaces, where infective virus can persist for days, when caring for a sick person, Dr. Orient noted.

Individuals and local authorities must be alert and prepared and not depend on a timely federal response, Dr. Orient stated.

Physicians for Civil Defense distributes information to help to save lives in the event of war or other disaster.

Nuclear Forces Mobilized in Wake of Soleimani’s Death, States Physicians for Civil Defense

According to a report that the Pentagon declines to comment on, six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers have been deployed to Diego Garcia, a British-owned island base in the Indian Ocean. This is beyond the current range of Iranian ballistic missiles.

“Missiles launched from Iran are of course not the only threat in today’s tense world,” comments Jane M. Orient, M.D., president of Physicians for Civil Defense. “General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike, was reportedly involved in planning terrorist strikes. His death does not end those threats.”

According to an October 2019 report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Iran has cultivated relationships with drug-smuggling cartels and has sought to place Quds Force (Iranian-backed terrorist) operatives in Latin America. Americans need to be aware of threats from south of an unsecured border or from sleeper cells, warns Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch.

Iranian General Dead, What’s Next, Asks Physicians for Civil Defense

After Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike, Iran has vowed reprisals. A senior commander of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps claims that up to 35 “vital” US and Israeli targets are within Iran’s reach.

Physicians for Civil Defense observes that in this age of “asymmetric warfare,” civilians here, not just military installations “over there,” are at risk.

Iran’s aspirations of being a nuclear power, with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to America, have apparently not yet been achieved, but other methods of causing mass casualties and disruptions are available, states Jane M. Orient, M.D, president of Physicians for Civil Defense.

Extinction Rebellion

Civil Defense Perspectives 34(6): November 2019 (published December 2019)

Global street theater this year has featured the Extinction Rebellion movement (XR), which began last year in Britain and claims to have chapters in 50 countries and to have held protests in 60 cities in Turkey, Canada, South Africa, Mexico, and elsewhere. Its flag displays a stylized hourglass in a circle. Protests often feature demonstrators wearing white masks and red costumes, and copious amounts of fake blood.

XR is aligned with the school strike movement reportedly inspired by Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Thunberg, after attending a global climate change summit in Madrid, lamented that millions of students “striking” had “achieved nothing.” Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. “The current world leaders are betraying us and we will not let that happen anymore,” Thunberg said in a brief speech to a crowd of 15,000 protesters (https://tinyurl.com/rmj39jj).

Fire and Ice

Civil Defense Perspectives 34(5): September 2019 (published Decembrt 2019)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost, 1920

According to one of his biographers, Robert Frost’s most famous poem, “Fire and Ice,” was inspired by Dante’s Inferno. The structure of the poem with two short last lines evokes the downward funnel of the rings of hell, with sins of passion at the top and the worst offenders, the traitors Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius, at the bottom submerged in ice up to their neck.

Saving the World from CO2 Starvation

Civil Defense Perspectives 34(4): July 2019 (published October 2019)

The carbon cycle on earth involves the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere, and the lithosphere. Today’s panicked schoolchildren crusade for the cause of keeping it (carbon-based “fossil” fuels) in the ground, or for sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and pumping it below ground, purportedly to keep it from frying the planet or acidifying the oceans.

In fact, there is a natural mechanism for sequestering CO₂: living organisms in the ocean. One hundred million billion tons of carbon have been taken up by coccolithophores (phytoplankton), shellfish, corals and foraminifera (zooplankton) over the past 160 million years, according to Patrick Moore, speaking at the 37th annual meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. These organisms incorporate carbon into calcium carbonate plates, scales, or shells. Over the long-term, these become a carbon sink as they fall to the bottom of the ocean and become part of the sediment. The level of atmospheric CO₂ has fallen steadily from about 2,500 ppmv to the current level of less than 400 ppmv over this period—perilously close to the 150 ppmv level that spells the death of plants.

The Great Pacific Plastic Hoax

Civil Defense Perspectives 34(3): May 2019 (published October 2019)

Last summer, Seattle became the first major American city to ban plastic straws. Alaska Airlines also announced a plan to ditch them, followed by the food service company Bon Appétit, American Airlines, and Starbucks (Fast Company [FC] 3/1/19, https://tinyurl.com/y2up6bqy). California became the first state to ban them from restaurant tables.

This gesture is aimed at addressing ocean plastic pollution, one of the newest Greenpeace scare campaigns:

“There is a sea of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

“A new continent ‘Plastic Nation’ has emerged and threatens to kill the oceans in less than 10 years.”

Urgent Questions on Ebola Need Immediate Answers

While public health officials are preoccupied with measles, hundreds of people are coming through our border from the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where thousands have Ebola, notes Physicians for Civil Defense.

In the entire U.S., there are about half a dozen hospital beds equipped for safe treatment of Ebola victims. We were very fortunate to escape a disastrous outbreak here during the epidemic in West Africa. There are two new vaccines that generate antibodies, but we don’t know how protective they would be—if you are one of the few who could get a dose.

Outbreaks

Civil Defense Perspectives 34(2): March 2019

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a disease outbreak is the occurrence of cases of disease in excess of what would normally be expected in a defined community, geographical area, or season. A single case of a communicable disease long absent, or caused by an agent not previously recognized in that area may also be reported as an outbreak.

Although measles was declared eradicated from the U.S. in 2000, there are dozens to hundreds of cases reported every year, generally attributed to travel from abroad. A peak of 667 cases in 2014 was followed by 188 in 2015 and 86 in 2015. In 2019, the 2014 peak has been surpassed. The last death in the U.S. attributed to measles occurred in 2015.

Why the nonstop news coverage? It appears to be related to the nationwide push to do away with exemptions from the nearly 70 injections of mandated school vaccines, except for narrowly defined medical exemptions. There is far less coverage of outbreaks that can’t be blamed on the tiny proportion of vaccine exemptors, or that result from an influx of unhealthy immigrants or from homeless drug addicts defecating in public.

Green New Deal

Civil Defense Perspectives 34(1): January 2019 (published May 2019)

The new date for the Apocalypse has been set for 12 years, unless “we” take immediate drastic action. Schoolchildren are “striking” (skipping school) to urge governments to do something to save their futures.

Former bartender, new Democratic Socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“AOC”) (D-N.Y.) crashed into the new Congress, holding a sit-in in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office even before Congress convened, to advocate the Green New Deal. Many Democrat candidates for President and dozens of congressmen have signed on. It calls for a “national, social, industrial and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II” —with a “near total economic transformation.”

This would require generating 100% of power from “renewable” sources, “upgrading” all buildings for energy efficiency (cost to meet California requirements for an average home, $58,000), and replacing 260 million gasoline-powered cars with all-electric vehicles (or perhaps just junking them).