Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- February 29, 2020

South Carolina: less than one minute after the polls closed in South Carolina, MSNBC declared Joe Biden the winner. Clyburn is the king-maker in South Carolina. Biden got 60% of the black vote in that state. The questions: how big a spread between Biden/Bernie. Did anyone else get any delegates. Since this is the last state that Biden wins, we still get back to brokered convention. Which by the way -- will there be a convention if coronavirus is still a concern? Hillary? Re-calculating; re-calculating; re-calculating.

South Carolina: the big story? Steyer spent his fortune and reputation and what did he get for all that? Zero, zilch, nada, nil delegates.

Farmers: apparently President Trump signed the bill that eliminated the estate tax ("death tax") on small farms, small businesses. I had not heard that. I don't know if that's accurate. I will check that later.

Coronavirus: absolutely fascinating. Re-posting from February 25, 2020 -- this is the third time this has been posted, I believe. It's that interesting. The original post, and two re-postings:

Is this a bio experiment gone awry in Wuhan?

The Chinese physician who first called attention to this died? Is he the only physician that has died of Covid-19? Exactly what were the circumstances of his death? How many other physicians have died? I haven't heard of any others.

How did a "country physician" come up with the cause of this brand new infectious disease, seemingly overnight? Explanations for most unexplained cases like this are preceded by four articles in the Lancet, two articles in The New England Journal of Medicine, and a breakthrough article in Nature. But in this case, no research articles, but simply a "country doctor" discovering the cause. And then he's dead; within days. Shoot, the incubation period is two weeks. Jeffrey Epstein did not hang himself.

Many, many more questions. The questions fall into two categories. The first category is for Sherlock Holmes to answer: where/how/why/when did the virus appear. I think there is enough circumstantial evidence for Sherlock to start working some theories. In fact, my hunch is that Sherlock Holmes would have already sorted this out. It's too bad Richard Feynman is no longer with us. He, too, would have it figured out. Algore, the inventor of the internet and discoverer of global warming -- I'm surprised we haven't heard from him.

Now, this from ZeroHedge today:

Here is a quick recap of what has happened so far in China:

• The deadly Covid-19, i.e., SARS-like coronavirus, originated as a byproduct of banned "gain of function" genetic engineering conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Contrary to the conventionally accepted official narrative, it then spread, presumably by accident, to a nearby food market, where it infected patient zero and the rest is history (in the meantime, anyone who reported that the virus was sourced at the Wuhan Level-4 biolab was ostracized, shunned, threatened, arrested or simply ordered to retract their statement or research). [See below.]

• In the early days of the pandemic, in hopes of avoiding a panic, Beijing actively rounded up any doctors who tried to sound the alarm on the danger that the coronavirus posed. Only three weeks later, around Jan 20, did China start reporting official numbers associated with the disease.

• Just days after it "broke the seal" on the information blackout, Beijing quarantined over 60 million people in major Chinese cities, in hopes of avoiding a further panic, and preventing further spread of the virus. Ultimately, over 700 million people - half of China's population - was put on some form of lock down. Panic had by now spread across the mainland, as virtually nobody in China had any idea what the facts were aside from the government's propaganda.

• As a result of the widespread quarantine, China's economy came to a complete halt and for weeks after the Lunar new year, various high-frequency indicators showed that the economy has failed to reboot. Realizing that an economic paralysis could be just as devastating for its primary objective of preserving social calm and stability, Beijing had a change of heart.

• Faced with a catastrophic dilemma, and forced to choose between either economic collapse due to mass quarantines, or economic collapse due to a frozen economy - with the bulk of China's SMEs which are responsible for 60% of China's GDP, facing insolvency in 2-3 months unless things return to normal - Beijing reversed track and started to openly manipulate the coronavirus data in mid-February to contain the widespread panic and give the impression that it had the pandemic under control, even though periodic reports demonstarting just how Beijing was lying about the real numbers and occasional "changes in definition" which resulted in a surge in "new cases" confirmed to the population how Beijing was purposefully underreporting the full extent of the pandemic. This only made the distrust worse, not helping to contain the rising panic.

And that's just the beginning. Unless I missed it, ZeroHedge does not mention that the Wuhan physician who first identified the cause of that "first death," was said to have died of the disease. As many have said, Jeffrey Epstein didn't hang himself.

In addition, just earlier today, I said that folks would start calling this a pandemic sooner than later. Seasonal flu -- with millions infected in the US, and with tens of thousands of deaths from seasonal flu in the US -- seasonal flu does not meet the definition of epidemic in this country, according to the CDC. 

ZeroHedge is permanently banned from twitter.

Russia had its Chernobyl.

Japan had its Fukushima.

Now, China, Wuhan flu.