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DAX back above 10,000 points – further gains to come?

DAX back above 10,000 points – further gains to come?

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Economic Event

Source: Economic Events Calendar April 13 – 17, 2020 - Admiral Markets' Forex Calendar

DAX30 CFD

The DAX30 CFD surprised traders with a very bullish performance over the last week of trading, recapturing 10,000 points and has further corrective potential, possibly as high as 11,000 points.

Interestingly enough, after the Easter weekend, the German index also enters a bullish seasonal window: between April 8 - 27, the DAX gained in 16 out of the last 21 years on average 250 points while it dropped in the remaining five years by only 95 points with a max drawdown of 230 points.

That said, bulls could see a short "revival", even though traders should remain cautious in regards to become overly optimistic.

In fact, we are not quite sure about the real driver behind the move higher in Equities, probably we are seeing hope of market participants in regards to the "not-so-bad" impact on the global economy after the "Corona shutdown" comes to an end.

[Note: we are ignoring here the massive announcement from the Fed last Thursday to take additional actions and provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans to support the economy, adding to her already massive Treasury buying program now also elements from the high-yield universe, since most of the gains in the DAX30 were seen already before Thursday in the first half of the week.]

But such high hopes are probably too optimistic, especially after the German IFO institute sees the German economy shrinking by at least 10% in Q2.

That in mind leaves a re-test of the region around 8,000 points as a serious option on table, probably a drop even lower.

Still, in the days to come the picture stays short-term and technically positive as long as the German index holds above 10,100/150 points. A drop below that level again leaves room for an accelerating drop which targets the region around 9,300 respectively 9,150/200 points:

Daily Chart

Source: Admiral Markets MT5 with MT5-SE Add-on DAX30 CFD Daily chart (between December 27, 2018, to April 10, 2020). Accessed: April 10, 2020, at 10:00pm GMT - Please note: Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results, or future performance.

In 2015, the value of the DAX30 CFD increased by 9.56%, in 2016, it increased by 6.87%, in 2017, it increased by 12.51%, in 2018, it fell by 18.26%, in 2019, it increased by 26.44% meaning that after five years, it was up by 34.2%.

Check out Admiral Markets' most competitive conditions on the DAX30 CFD and start trading on the DAX30 CFD with a low 0.8 point spread offering during the main Xetra trading hours!

US Dollar

The picture in the US dollar hasn't changed over the last week of trading, leading into the Easter weekend.

The USD Index Future stabilised around 100.00 points, technically a positive sign since as long as we trade above 99.00 points the mode stays bullish.

This might be especially true if a new wave of de-leveraging, driven by a high demand for the US dollar given the global USD shortage, hits the financial markets, making another stint higher with a target around 105.00 points an option.

Looking at a longer time-span, we are still very cautious and don't see a very bright USD future: this is especially true when looking at the still bearish sequence in 10-year-US-Treasury yields where only recapturing 1.20% would technically brighten the picture, but also the US central bank Fed having pumped her balance sheet to over 6.0 trillion USD and further "pumping" to follow after last Thursday's announcement to take additional actions and provide up to $2.3 trillion in loans to support the economy, adding to her already massive Treasury buying program now also elements from the high-yield universe.

So mid- to long-term, the massive government spending and given the massive monetary stimulus from the Fed, leaves us with massive USD-scepticism and short-engagements in the Greenback should be attractive from a risk-reward perspective.

US Dollar Index

Source: Barchart - U.S Dollar Index - Weekly Nearest OHLC Chart (between January 2017 to April 2020). Accessed: April 10, 2020, at 10:00 PM GMT

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Euro

The mode in the Euro and here especially in the EUR/USD stays choppy, even though volatility stays elevated.

Over the last few days, the currency pair stabilised significantly below 1.1000, but still above its March lows around 1.0630.

While we still consider the short-term picture in EURUSD bearish and see a serious chance of a re-test, probably even a drop below the current yearly lows around 1.0600/30, FX traders should keep a close eye to the developments among Euro member states.

On Thursday, EU finance ministers agreed to a common emergency plan to limit the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the EU, with members having agreed to an emergency response plan of €500 billion.

While no agreement on Euro/Corona bonds was found, the signal of having found an agreement can be considered a signal not just pointing to economic support, but probably also in direction to an intensified European unity and is something we would all in all see Euro bullish.

Still, it seems possible that a next wave of risk-off, driven by the still given shortage of USD liquidity in European markets could result in a next wave of stronger selling pressure in the EUR/USD.

Technically, a break below 1.0600/30 makes a further drop in the EUR/USD as low as 1.0500 and probably even lower a serious option.

A next wave of bullish momentum could drive the EUR/USD probably as high as 1.1200/30, but should be carefully reviewed in terms of sustainability:

Daily Chart

Source: Admiral Markets MT5 with MT5-SE Add-on EUR/USD Daily chart (between February 11, 2019, to April 10, 2020). Accessed: April 10, 2020, at 10:00pm GMT - Please note: Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results, or future performance.

In 2015, the value of the EURUSD fell by 10.2%, in 2016 it fell by 3.2%, in 2017 it increased by 13.92%, 2018 it fell by 4.4%, 2019 it fell by 2.2%, meaning that after five years, it was down by 7.3%.

JPY

After high volatility in Treasury and FX markets over the last month, the picture in the USD/JPY hasn't substantially changed over the last week of trading.

Technically the currency pair made back some of its recent losses after its drop back below 108.50/109.00, with the overall mode staying choppy, but in our opinion an overall bearish touch.

Reason for our "bearishness" is the to be expected pressure on 10-year-US Treasury yields, where technically only recapturing 1.20% would brighten the bearish outlook.

But, while we still consider chances of a next wave of risk-off hitting global financial markets to be high, we don't consider the current market environment as normal.

Under such "normal" circumstances for the USD/JPY, a drop in the currency par towards the region around 105.00 would be likely.

But as pointed out in our USD paragraph above, we consider such a risk of wave going hand in hand with an increasing demand for the US dollar given the global USD shortage where the usage of the re-installed swap lines of the Fed from the BoJ could result in an ongoing squeeze higher.

While we certainly need to wait if such a wave of risk-off really hits the markets and will really result in a strong USD demand, a test, probably even break of the region around 112.00/30 would be an option.

Daily Chart

Source: Admiral Markets MT5 with MT5-SE Add-on USD/JPY Daily chart (between February 18, 2019, to April 10, 2020). Accessed: April 10, 2020, at 10:00pm GMT - Please note: Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results, or future performance.

In 2015, the value of the USD/JPY increased by 0.5%, in 2016, it fell by 2.8%, in 2017, it fell by 3.6%, in 2018, it fell by 2.7%, in 2019, it fell by 0.85%, meaning that after five years, it was down by 9.2%.

Gold

The picture in Gold hasn't changed over the last week. We still consider the situation to be tense, even though chances seem elevated that we'll see a rather sooner than later attack of the current yearly highs around 1,700 USD.

Technically this is true as long as we hold above 1,440/450 USD.

And also fundamentally, especially given the massive monetary stimulus from the Fed over the last weeks (e.g. on March 23, the Fed announced to buy an unlimited amount of US Treasuries and Mortgage-Backed-Securities (MBS)), we find another reason to be mid- to long-term positive for the precious metal.

Still, short-term we consider a next wave of de-leveraging hitting global financial markets as a potential risk event for global financial markets, driven by the given global USD shortage, resulting also in a next wave of aggressive selling in the yellow metal due to liquidity reasons.

In this context we'd like once again to point out the still widened spread between Spot and Future prices due to the massive short-supply in regards to physical Gold, resulting out of feared (Coronavirus) shutdowns of precious metal refineries, especially in Switzerland.

In fact we have to wait if this development can be solved to some extent in the near-term thanks to the arrival of 4.8 million ounces in 400-ounce bars from London in New York on Monday.

Usually these cannot be delivered against Comex's main gold futures, but now can thanks to new Comex Gold Future contracts being launched on Monday with the target to address supply concerns.

Again: technically the key-support can still be found around 1,440/450, above that level another push up to 1,700 USD stays realistic.

Nevertheless, another "liquidation wave" could bring a short-term drop below 1,440/450 USD into play which would technically darken the picture, activating 1,250/260 USD as a first target:

Gold Daily Chart

Source: Admiral Markets MT5 with MT5-SE Add-on Gold Daily chart (between December 21, 2018, to April 10, 2020). Accessed: April 10, 2020, at 10:00pm GMT - Please note: Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results, or future performance.

In 2015, the value of Gold fell by 10.4%, in 2016, it increased by 8.1%, in 2017, it increased by 13.1%, in 2018, it fell by 1.6%, in 2019, it increased by 18.9%, meaning that after five years, it was up by 28%.

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  1. This is a marketing communication. The analysis is published for informative purposes only and are in no way to be construed as investment advice or recommendation. It has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research, and that it is not subject to any prohibition on dealing ahead of the dissemination of investment research.
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When words make you sick

In a new book, experts in a variety of fields explore nocebo effects – how negative expectations concerning health can make a person sick. It is the…

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In a new book, experts in a variety of fields explore nocebo effects – how negative expectations concerning health can make a person sick. It is the first time a book has been written on this subject.

“I think it’s the idea that words really matter. It’s fascinating that how we communicate can affect the outcome. Communication in health care is perhaps more important than the patient recognises,” says Charlotte Blease, who is a researcher at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health at Uppsala University. 
Along with colleagues at Brown University in the United States and the University of Zurich in Switzerland she has written the book “The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick”. Nocebo is sometimes called the placebo’s evil twin. A placebo effect occurs when a patient thinks they feel better because of receiving medicine and part of that perception is due not to the drug but to positive expectations. The concept of the nocebo effect means that harmful things can happen because a person expects it – unconsciously or consciously. This is the first time the phenomenon has been addressed in a scholarly book. Researchers in medicine, history, culture, psychology and philosophy have examined it, each in their own particular area. 

Credit: Catherine Blease

In a new book, experts in a variety of fields explore nocebo effects – how negative expectations concerning health can make a person sick. It is the first time a book has been written on this subject.

“I think it’s the idea that words really matter. It’s fascinating that how we communicate can affect the outcome. Communication in health care is perhaps more important than the patient recognises,” says Charlotte Blease, who is a researcher at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health at Uppsala University. 
Along with colleagues at Brown University in the United States and the University of Zurich in Switzerland she has written the book “The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick”. Nocebo is sometimes called the placebo’s evil twin. A placebo effect occurs when a patient thinks they feel better because of receiving medicine and part of that perception is due not to the drug but to positive expectations. The concept of the nocebo effect means that harmful things can happen because a person expects it – unconsciously or consciously. This is the first time the phenomenon has been addressed in a scholarly book. Researchers in medicine, history, culture, psychology and philosophy have examined it, each in their own particular area. 

“It’s a very new field, an emerging discipline. Even if the nocebo effect is documented far back in history, it perhaps became especially obvious during the coronavirus pandemic,” Blease says.

A previous study of patients during the pandemic (see below) shows that as many as three quarters of the reported side-effects of the coronavirus vaccine may be due to the nocebo effect. The study involved more than 45,000 participants, approximately half of whom were injected with a saline solution instead of the vaccine but despite this still experienced many side-effects such as nausea and headache. In the book, the authors highlight that one issue that disappeared in the discussion of side-effects during the coronavirus pandemic was that many of these were actually due to the nocebo effect.

“Whether this is due to expectations – the nocebo effect – remains to be understood. However, it is curious that so many participants reported side-effects after receiving no vaccine. Regardless, some people may have been put off by what they heard about side-effects,” Blease comments.


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Government

Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

On the off chance you hadn’t noticed,…

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Anti-Semitism As The Harbinger Of Global Chaos

Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness,

On the off chance you hadn’t noticed, the world appears to be at an especially precarious moment presently. Obviously, war continues to rage in Ukraine and Gaza, with no end in sight to either conflict. Great Britain and Japan are currently in recession. Canada’s economy is an absolute disaster, with almost no hope of near-term recovery. Much of continental Europe and China are struggling economically, if not officially contracting. Some experts believe that the global economy more generally is sliding, slowly but surely, into recession. The only economic bright spot in the world is the United States, and even here we have our problems with consumer spending and sentiment, massive credit concerns, and inarguably sticky inflation.

Meanwhile, China is investing in and winning friends, and influencing people in the Global South. U.S.-backed Kurdish leaders are warning that ISIS is resurgent in Syria and Iraq. The Marine general in charge of U.S. Africa Command is warning of Russia’s increasing influence on that continent. Sudan remains mired in civil war. Nigeria is plagued by Islamist terrorism and mass kidnappings. Mexico is in the midst of a full-blown war with the drug cartels, who continue to grow bolder and more militarily sophisticated.

Everywhere one looks, chaos reigns—or, at the very least, bubbles just below the surface.

Perhaps most telling among the signs of disarray is the unnerving rise of antisemitism in the United States, Europe, and throughout the world. Antisemitism, in general, has been intensifying, slowly but surely, over the last decade or so. Over the last few months, however, it has emerged fully into the open, undaunted and unembarrassed. What was once considered shameful and disconcerting is now warmly welcomed as a “rational” response to American foreign policy, Israeli war practices, “colonialism,” and “white privilege.”

All of this is troubling, to put it mildly, both in and of itself and as a harbinger of greater and more deadly global unrest.

Hatred of and anger toward Jews is not the same as other forms of bigotry.  

In many ways, the history of Western anti-Jewish hatred mirrors the history of Western political chaos and collapse.  Or, to put it another way, historically, Jews are not only the perennial scapegoats during periods of social upheaval and displacement, but resurgent anti-Semitism serves as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the rise of revolutionary movements.

In his classic, The Pursuit of the Millennium, the British historian Norman Cohn argues that the Jewish diaspora generally fit comfortably, if tentatively into European society for most of the first thousand years or so A.D., and only became a hated and perpetually persecuted minority with the rise of utopian Millenarianism that accompanied and then outlived the Crusades.  Beginning then and continuing for the next nearly a thousand years, Europeans came to associate Jews with the antichrist and thus to associate hatred and persecution of Jews with preparing the battlespace for the Second Coming.  Many historians, including Hannah Arendt, believed that the anti-Semitism that was such an integral part of the West’s 20th-century collapse into totalitarianism was relatively new and, in any case, distinct from medieval anti-Semitism.  Cohn’s history suggests otherwise, connecting the religious eschatology of medieval Europe to the quasi-religious eschatology of post-Enlightenment Europe, thereby connecting the persistence of Western anti-Semitism as well.

Cohn tells us that millenarian moments and the millenarian movements that capitalize on those moments all share a common group of characteristics. They all appear under certain social and economic conditions. They all appeal to a certain segment of the population at large, who then present themselves as economic, spiritual, and political leaders. They all utilize scapegoats, meaning that they all identify a different, usually much smaller segment of the population on whom they can blame all the world’s ills and then set about to cure those ills through the elimination of the scapegoat. And more often than not, that scapegoat tends to be Jewish.

In the conclusion to the second edition of Pursuit of the Millennium, Cohn notes that the millenarian fervor of the middle ages may have changed, but it never really died, and it maintained its common characteristics even as it became secular or “quasi-religious.” He wrote:

The story told in Pursuit of the Millennium ended some four centuries ago but is not without relevance to our own times. [I have] shown in another work [Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion] how closely the Nazi phantasy of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy of destruction is related to the phantasies that inspired Emico of Leningrad and the Master of Hungary; and how mass disorientation and insecurity have fostered the demonization of the Jew in this as in much earlier centuries. The parallels and indeed the continuity are incontestable.

The parallels between the rise of Nazism and the current global unrest and demonization of the Jewish people are also largely incontestable. The election that brought Hitler to power didn’t happen in a vacuum, after all. It happened in the midst of global chaos, namely the Great Depression. It also followed the decadence and distortion of the Weimer Era. As the New York Fed has shown, even a global pandemic—the 1919 Spanish Flu outbreak—contributed to the sense of discomfort and disconnect among the German population, prompting increased support for Hitler and his Nazis.

The present global chaos doesn’t have to end the same way the chaos of a century ago did. It doesn’t have to result in the ascension of millenarian ideologies and their totalitarian defenders. History has shown that extremism can be short-circuited and radical ideologies undone. The first step in doing so, however, must be to bring an end to the rationalization of the persecution of the world’s Jews. The second step is to end the persecution itself.

Antisemitism is ugly and shameful, and it must be treated as such. For their sake and ours.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/19/2024 - 02:00

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Government

Report Criticizes ‘Catastrophic Errors’ Of COVID Lockdowns, Warns Of Repeat

Report Criticizes ‘Catastrophic Errors’ Of COVID Lockdowns, Warns Of Repeat

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It…

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Report Criticizes 'Catastrophic Errors' Of COVID Lockdowns, Warns Of Repeat

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It was four years ago, in March 2020, that health officials declared COVID-19 a pandemic and America began shutting down schools, closing small businesses, restricting gatherings and travel, and other lockdown measures to “slow the spread” of the virus.

UNICEF unveiled its "Pandemic Classroom," a model made up of 168 empty desks, each seat representing one million children living in countries where schools were almost entirely closed during the COVID pandemic lockdowns, at the U.N. Headquarters in New York City on March 2, 2021. (Chris Farber/UNICEF via Getty Images)

To mark that grim anniversary, a group of medical and policy experts released a report, called “COVID Lessons Learned,” which assesses the government’s response to the pandemic. According to the report, that response included a few notable successes, along with a litany of failures that have taken a severe toll on the population.

During the pandemic, many governments across the globe acted in lockstep to pursue authoritative policies in response to the disease, locking down populations, closing schools, shutting businesses, sealing borders, banning gatherings, and enforcing various mask and vaccine mandates. What were initially imposed as short-term mandates and emergency powers given to presidents, ministers, governors, and health officials soon became extended into a longer-term expansion of official power.

“Even though the initial point of temporary lockdowns was to ’slow the spread,' which meant to allow hospitals to function without being overwhelmed, instead it rapidly turned into stopping COVID cases at all costs,” Dr. Scott Atlas, a physician, former White House Coronavirus Task Force member, and one of the authors of the report, stated at a March 15 press conference.

Published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP), the report was co-authored by Steve Hanke, economics professor and director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics; Casey Mulligan, former chief economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisors; and CTUP President Philip Kerpen. 

According to the report, one of the first errors was the unprecedented authority that public officials took upon themselves to enforce health mandates on Americans. 

Granting public health agencies extraordinary powers was a major error,” Mr. Hanke told The Epoch Times. “It, in effect, granted these agencies a license to deceive the public.”

The authors argue that authoritative measures were largely ineffective in fighting the virus, but often proved highly detrimental to public health. 

The report quantifies the cost of lockdowns, both in terms of economic costs and the number of non-COVID excess deaths that occurred and continue to occur after the pandemic. It estimates that the number of non-COVID excess deaths, defined as deaths in excess of normal rates, at about 100,000 per year in the United States.

‘They Will Try to Do This Again’

“Lockdowns, schools closures, and mandates were catastrophic errors, pushed with remarkable fervor by public health authorities at all levels,” the report states. The authors are skeptical, however, that health authorities will learn from the experience.

“My worry is that if we have another pandemic or another virus, I think that Washington is still going to try to do these failed policies,” said Steve Moore, a CTUP economist. “We’re not here to say ‘this guy got it wrong' or ’that guy or got it wrong,’ but we should learn the lessons from these very, very severe mistakes that will have costs for not just years, but decades to come. 

“I guarantee you, they will try to do this again,” Mr. Moore said. “And what’s really troubling me is the people who made these mistakes still have not really conceded that they were wrong.”

Mr. Hanke was equally pessimistic.

“Unfortunately, the public health establishment is in the authoritarian model of the state,” he said. “Their entire edifice is one in which the state, not the individual, should reign supreme.”

The authors are also critical of what they say was a multifaceted campaign in which public officials, the news media, and social media companies cooperated to frighten the population into compliance with COVID mandates.

During COVID, the public health establishment … intentionally stoked and amplified fear, which overlaid enormous economic, social, educational and health harms on top of the harms of the virus itself,” the report states. 

The authors contrasted the authoritative response of many U.S. states to policies in Sweden, which they say relied more on providing advice and information to the public rather than attempting to force behaviors.

Sweden’s constitution, called the “Regeringsform,” guarantees the liberty of Swedes to move freely within the realm and prohibits severe lockdowns, Mr. Hanke stated.

“By following the Regeringsform during COVID, the Swedes ended up with one of the lowest excess death rates in the world,” he said.  

Because the Swedish government avoided strict mandates and was more forthright in sharing information with its people, many citizens altered their behavior voluntarily to protect themselves.

“A much wiser strategy than issuing lockdown orders would have been to tell the American people the truth, stick to the facts, educate citizens about the balance of risks, and let individuals make their own decisions about whether to keep their businesses open, whether to socially isolate, attend church, send their children to school, and so on,” the report states.

‘A Pretext to Enhance Their Power’

The CTUP report cites a 2021 study on government power and emergencies by economists Christian Bjornskov and Stefan Voigt, which found that the more emergency power a government accumulates during times of crisis, “the higher the number of people killed as a consequence of a natural disaster, controlling for its severity.

As this is an unexpected result, we discuss a number of potential explanations, the most plausible being that governments use natural disasters as a pretext to enhance their power,” the study’s authors state. “Furthermore, the easier it is to call a state of emergency, the larger the negative effects on basic human rights.”

“All the things that people do in their lives … they have purposes,” Mr. Mulligan said. “And for somebody in Washington D.C. to tell them to stop doing all those things, they can’t even begin to comprehend the disruption and the losses.

“We see in the death certificates a big elevation in people dying from heart conditions, diabetes conditions, obesity conditions,” he said, while deaths from alcoholism and drug overdoses “skyrocketed and have not come down.”

The report also challenged the narrative that most hospitals were overrun by the surge of COVID cases.

“Almost any measure of hospital utilization was very low, historically, throughout the pandemic period, even though we had all these headlines that our hospitals were overwhelmed,” Mr. Kerpen stated. “The truth was actually the opposite, and this was likely the result of public health messaging and political orders, canceling medical procedures and intentionally stoking fear, causing people to cancel their appointments.”

The effect of this, the authors argue, was a sharp increase in non-COVID deaths because people were avoiding necessary treatments and screenings. 

“There were actually mass layoffs in this sector at one point,” Mr. Kerpen said, “and even now, total discharges are well below pre-pandemic levels.”

In addition, as health mandates became more draconian, many people became concerned at the expansion of government power and the loss of civil liberties, particularly when government directives—such as banning outdoor church services but allowing mass social-justice protests—often seemed unreasonable or politicized. 

The report also criticized the single-minded focus on vaccines and the failure by the NIH and the FDA to do clinical trials on existing drugs that were known to be safe and could have been effective in treating those infected with COVID-19.

Because so much of the process of approving the vaccines, the risks and benefits, and the reporting of possible side-effects was kept from the public, people were unable to give informed consent to their own health care, Mr. Kerpen said. 

“And when the Biden administration came in and started mandating them, now you had something that was inherently experimental with some questionable data, and instead of saying, ‘Now you have a choice whether you want it or not,’ in the context of a pandemic they tried to mandate them,” he said.

Pandemic Censorship

Tech oligopolies and the corporate media also receive criticism for their collaboration with government to control public messaging and censor dissenting voices. According to the authors, many government and health officials collaborated with tech oligarchs, news media corporations, and even scientific journals to censor critical views on the pandemic.

The Biden administration is currently defending itself before the Supreme Court against charges brought by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, who charged that administration officials pressured tech companies to censor information that contradicted official narratives on COVID-19’s origins, related mandates and treatment, as well as censoring political speech that was critical of President Biden during his 2020 campaign. The case is Murthy v. Missouri.

Mr. Hanke stated that a previous report he co-authored, titled “Did Lockdowns Work?,” which was critical of lockdowns, was refused by medical journals, even when they published op-eds that criticized it and published numerous pro-lockdown reports. 

Dr. Vinay Prasad—a physician, epidemiologist, professor at the University of California at San Francisco’s medical school and author of over 350 academic articles and letters—has made similar allegations of censorship by medical journals.

“Specifically, MedRxiv and SSRN have been reluctant to post articles critical of the CDC, mask and vaccine mandates, and the Biden administration’s health care policies,” Dr. Prasad stated.

Heightening concerns about medical censorship is the “zero-draft” World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic treaty currently being circulated for approval by member states, including the United States. It commits members to jointly seek out and “tackle” what the WHO deems as “misinformation and disinformation.”

One of the enduring consequences of the COVID years is a general loss of public trust in public officials, health experts, and official narratives. 

“Operation Warp Speed was a terrific success with highly unexpected rapidity of development [of vaccines],” Dr. Atlas said. “But the serious flaws centered around not being open with the public about the uncertainties, particularly of the vaccines’ efficacy and safety.” 

“One result of the government’s error-ridden COVID response was that Americans have justifiably lost faith in public health institutions,” the report states. According to the authors, if health officials want to regain the public’s trust, they should begin with an accurate assessment of their actions during the pandemic.

“The best way to restore trust is to admit you were wrong,” Dr. Atlas said. “I think we all know that in our personal lives, but here it’s very important because there has been a massive lack of trust now in institutions, in experts, in data, in science itself.

I think it’s going to be very difficult to restore that without admission of error,” he said.

Recommendations for a Future Pandemic

The CTUP report recommends that Congress and state legislatures set strict limitations on powers conferred to the executive branch, including health officials, and set time limits that would require legislation to be extended. This would give the public a voice in health emergency measures through their elected representatives.

It further recommends that research grants should be independent of policy positions and that NIH funding should be decentralized or block-granted to states to distribute.

Congress should mandate public disclosure of all FDA, CDC, and NIH discussions and decisions, including statements of any persons who provide advice to these agencies. Congress should also make explicit that CDC guidance is advisory and does not constitute laws or mandates. 

The report also recommends that the United States immediately halt negotiations of agreements with the WHO “until satisfactory transparency and accountability is achieved.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/18/2024 - 23:00

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