The deal is valued at $4.7 billion, Blackstone said in a statement Wednesday. It’s the first acquisition by Blackstone’s largest ever private equity fund. Silver Lake and Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund GIC Pte have been the majority owners since 2016. After the deal closes, Blackstone will own about 75% and GIC will still hold about 25% of Ancestry.com, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
New York-based Blackstone is flush with cash as investors continue to bet big on the firm amid the uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Executives have in recent months touted success in navigating the 2008 financial crisis to show that the business, which has $156 billion in dry powder, will be well positioned to benefit from the current upheavals.
Many of the firm’s recent investments have been in growth companies and businesses likely to benefit from shifts in consumer behavior. Last month, the group announced it was investing in Oatly AB — a plant-based drink that’s been rapidly growing in popularity — with partners including Oprah Winfrey. Blackstone also owns a majority stake in MagicLab, the owner of dating app Bumble.
Deal talks regarding Ancestry.com started a few months ago, when much of the world was still at home and looking for things to do, said the people with knowledge of discussions.
Based in Lehi, Utah, Ancestry.com has more than 3 million paying subscribers and more than 18 million people in its DNA network. It sells at-home DNA testing kits to customers, competing with 23andMe Inc.
Ancestry.com first went public in 2009, raising $100 million. It was taken private in 2012 in a $1.6 billion buyout led by private equity firm Permira, and on at least two occasions since has considered going public again, though it never got the valuation it was seeking.
Silver Lake and GIC acquired their majority stake four years ago in a deal that valued the company at $2.6 billion. Prior owners, including management, Permira and Spectrum Equity, currently have a minority interest in the business.
Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager with $564 billion in assets, is also focused on growing its life sciences group. It has spent more than $1 billion this year investing in drugs that target high cholesterol, kidney disease in children and devices for diabetes patients.
Early in 2020, the firm bought $11 billion of public equities and liquid debt as values sank and markets became more volatile. It also took stakes in companies including 21Vianet, a Chinese data center business, and a portfolio of Hollywood film studios.
This is really important information for EVERYONE to pay attention to. It is time for everyone to wake up because all of our lives are at stake, and it is not because of some virus . It is because of the manipulators behind the curtain:
Pam Barker | Director of TLB Europe Reloaded Project
It seems you can’t fix stupid. Nor puppet governments.
Here, we present 3 graphs and their sources to show, as clearly as anything can, that, yes, viruses are still seasonal – they still die off or lose potency in high humidity. And whatever else might be going on out there (pockets of flare-ups? sudden mass testing that picks up meaningless trace amounts of some coronavirus or other?), the danger has well and truly passed.
Your daily reminder that the virus has dwindled away to almost nothing. This graph shows daily triage calls for 19-69 year-olds. Note no uptick during the Hyde Park BLM protests or during the “major incident” on Bournemouth Beach. (Hat tip Alistair Haimes.)
ER Editor: Of course, these claims cannot be verified given the anonymous nature of the source. Yet, it all has a ring of truth. Trump’s revealed he’s using hydroxychloroquine prophylactically (kudos – was he dropping us a hint?), so why would doctors, such as those hired for an American president no less, not be giving the same advice to other notables? Anything else makes little sense.
Note how this person calls COVID-19 a ‘bioweapon’ in ‘unrelenting launches of the COVID-19 bioweapon’ and ‘coronavirus cluster explosions will be detonated’. We only hope that herd immunity may short-circuit his/her predictions. The hypothesis that ‘Covid-19’ is in fact a bioweapon is something we’ve published on at length.
********
Anonymous D.C. Insider Exposes Ultra-Secret Covid Conspiracy Inside the Beltway
STATE OF THE NATION
Submitted by an Anonymous D.C. Insider
Big Pharma and the WHO have known all along about the HCQ cure for COVID-19.
Everyone at the CDC, NIH and FDA knows that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is the silver bullet for the coronavirus.
They also know that, when combined with azithromycin and zinc, the 3-in-1 protocol provides the magic formula for almost anyone with coronavirus disease.
However, what Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx and Robert Redfield are not telling anyone is that practically every VIP in Washington, D.C. is using HCQ prophylactically.
Everyone knows that Trump has been using it as a preventative as he publicly stated so on multiple occasions. But no one has revealed that virtually everyone inside the Beltway is also using it. That’s why they were all shown so often in groups with no masks and not adhering to the recommended social distancing guidelines during the regular coronavirus briefings. And, they did many of those dog and pony shows right in the middle of the Covid spikes during the first wave.
The real scandal here is that leading politicians, government officials, corporate CEOs and UN administrators all know about the efficacy of HCQ, and yet they have collaborated to deprive the American people of its use. All the while they, themselves, are secretly taking HCQ prophylactically.
When so many countries around the globe have used Hydroxychloroquine with great success, why is the U.S. fiercely resisting it?
Because the world’s most zealous vaccine salesman — Bill Gates — is determined to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market. Word on the street (K Street) is that Gates is also taking HCQ as a preventive.In fact, he has taken HCQ as a precautionary measure to avoid malaria for many years during his travels to the Third World nations that were subjected to his endless vaccine pitches and vaccination programs.
If Americans knew that India was successfully using HCQ nationwide, how would they react? New Delhi has even made the decision to make HCQ available as a prophylactic, so inexpensive is it.
“India is estimated to produce 70% of the world’s hydroxychloroquine, with Ipca Labs and Zydus Cadila the two largest producers of the drug in the country.[1]
Key government officials, medical authorities and elected representatives throughout the USA are aware of every single fact stated in this exposé. Nevertheless, they are pushing untested remedies and dangerous protocols that have actually killed many COVID-19 patients in all 50 states.
This situation is completely unacceptable. Especially when the leaders of the national coronavirus response are taking HCQ and other effective prophylactics to keep the coronavirus at bay. The same goes for many in the mainstream media; they will never tell anyone either that they’re taking HCQ. Nor will the Sultans of Silicon Valley or Wall Street banksters or Corporate America moguls ever let on to this “ultra-secret conspiracy”. Which is why the Hamptons Concert With Goldman CEO, ‘Chainsmokers’ Faces N.Y. Probe. Goldman Sachs Chairman of the Board David Solomon obviously felt immune to catching Covid even at a concert where he was the star of the show.
But what’s the real scandal here?
The HCQ-Azithromycin-Zinc protocol is being deliberately withheld from the American people so that a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine can be foisted on the country.
And, the proof of such a criminal conspiratorial plot: there will be never-ending seasonal Covid spikes, with each wave being bigger and more intense than the previous one. When those start to ebb, coronavirus cluster explosions will be detonated in the major metro areas, particularly the sanctuary cities.
Then, when the blue states have had enough, the Democrat governors will collude with their Democrat legislatures to mandate an annual Covid vaccination (just like California recently passed draconian legislation requiring yearly compliance with childhood vaccination schedules). The unrelenting launches of the COVID-19 bioweapon in conservative territory will eventually compel the Republican governors to do the same in the red states.
— An Anonymous D.C. Insider
SOTN Editor’s Note: The end result of this phase of OPERATION COVID-19 is the undeclared state of medical martial law. Next will begin the initial stages of the Orwellian takeover scheme COVID-1984, which has been greatly advanced via the staged race riots and growing buzz about an impending race war. However, only if the American people allow them to will these treasonous plans gain any meaningful traction.
Hunting dogs use more than their noses to find their way back to their owners hundreds or even thousands of feet away, researchers have found. Turns out, these four-legged navigators may sense Earth’s magnetic field and use it as a compass, scientists are now reporting.
This ability, called magnetoreception, is common in many animals, including some whale species, dolphins and sea turtles, among others. Now, a new study carried out in the Czech Republic and detailed in the journal eLife, suggests adding at least some hunting dogs to this list.
“This ‘sense’ is beyond our own human perception and it is, therefore, very hard to understand its meaning for animals,” study researcher Kateřina Benediktová, at Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, told Live Science. Benediktová is a graduate student in the lab of Hynek Burda, another study author.
This work builds on previous research by Benediktová and Burda, along with a team of scientists, who found that several breeds of dog preferred to poop with their body aligned along the magnetic north-south axis. The researchers speculated that behavior could help the dogs map their location relative to other spots, such as their starting point, they said in their study published in 2013 in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, as reported by Science magazine.
In the new study, Benediktová and her colleagues looked specifically at hunting dogs because this group of dogs has astonishing homing abilities that are not fully understood. They have been bred over generations to seek out game and if they don’t find any, they navigate back to their owners over long distances, often using novel routes back. How these dogs pinpoint their owner’s location in densely forested areas is perplexing.
Between September 2014 and December 2017, Benediktová’s team equipped 27 hunting dogs of 10 different breeds, including fox terriers and miniature dachshunds, with GPS trackers. These dogs were allowed to roam in forested areas away from buildings, roads and powerlines. Dogs ran individually and returned on their own. Trips took between 30 and 90 minutes. Owners hid close to the location where the dog was released. The GPS data, from a total of 622 excursions in 62 different locations in the Czech Republic, were then compiled and analyzed.
What researchers found was that the dogs mostly followed their own scent to take the same route back as they did on the outbound trek — a method called “tracking.” In 223 of the excursions, however, the dogs took a novel route back using a method referred to as “scouting.” The researchers looked more closely at the GPS data from these “scouting” treks to investigate how those dogs found their way back. A majority of the scouting dogs began their return with a short run along Earth‘s north-south axis. The researchers noticed that this “compass run” occurred regardless of the dog’s actual return direction.
“We propose that this [compass] run is instrumental for bringing the mental map into register with the magnetic compass and to establish the heading of the animal,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
Those scouting dogs also returned faster to their owners than the dogs using the tracking method, in which they just came back the same way they went out.
“We were absolutely excited “when we found an unexpected magnetic behavior in the dogs’ scouting return strategy,” Benediktová said. “Hunting dogs roam over large distances. A human would most probably get lost without a compass and a map if roaming over comparable distances in unfamiliar forested areas. In addition, after the north-south compass run, dogs were able to run more directly to the owner.”
Kathleen Cullen, a neuroscience professor at The John Hopkins University who was not involved in the research, said the findings are exciting, “Overall, I think that the authors’ unexpected discovery that hunting dogs will often perform a ‘compass run’ before returning home is exciting — these results will certainly motivate further exploration of how exactly the mammalian brain encodes magnetic cues and then uses this information to achieve accurate navigation.”
Cullen added, “It is also interesting “that these results build on previous findings showing that other animals, such as migratory birds, also sense the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate back to their homes.”
When asked what motivated this study, Benediktová said that “the connection between navigation, homing and magnetoreception could be very close.” In addition, “its role in the orientation of dogs has not been studied as thoroughly as in migratory birds, turtles or subterranean mole rats.”
The researchers also tried to rule out other explanations besides the compass run for how the dogs found their way back to their owners. GPS data from scouting dogs showed no significant performance difference between dogs of different sexes, and dogs navigated back equally well in both familiar and unfamiliar terrain. They also determined that the position of the sun had little influence on the dog’s navigation ability, because most days were overcast. Dogs probably weren’t using distant landmarks to navigate because researchers saw no significant difference in homing abilities of tall and short dogs even though short dogs would be less able to see through the dense foliage. And the team ruled out the possibility of dogs using scent to navigate home because only 10% of the runs had winds blowing in the direction from owner to dog and scouting runs were nearly 100 feet (30 meters) from outbound runs.
In WWI, dogs delivered messages while under fire and they helped locate wounded soldiers and carried first aid kits to be used in the field. The amazing abilities have long been a source of amazement and curiosity. For every generation, there is a heartwarming movie like “Lassie Come Home,” about a dog who can travel long distances. This current Czech study may provide a clue to dogs’ phenomenal abilities.
“The magnetic field,” the researchers wrote in their paper, “may provide dogs with a ‘universal’ reference frame, which is essential for long-distance navigation, and arguably, the most important component that is ‘missing’ from our current understanding of mammalian special behavior and cognition.”
Cullen cautioned that the study needs to be replicated to make a stronger case for the conclusions, but if it is verified, the findings “suggest that a neural strategy in which magnetoreception contributes to the brain’s ‘internal GPS’ is likely to be more common than previously thought.”
Last month, it was discovered that the COVID-19 death counts in nursing homes were greatly over-counted after the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) required 15,000 nursing homes to report COVID-19 detailed data retroactively and the data became scrambled. For example, the Dellridge Health & Rehabilitation Center in New Jersey, a 96-bed facility, had 753 COVID-19 deaths, the most in the US, but the nursing home itself only reported 16 COVID-19 deaths.
When the administrator of the Saugus Rehab and Nursing Center in Saugus, Massachusetts, heard that a new Medicare website reported her facility had 794 confirmed cases of COVID-19 — the second highest in the country — and 281 cases among staff, she gasped.
“Oh my God. Where are they getting those numbers from?” said Josephine Ajayi. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Those weren’t the numbers that her facility reported to the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network, under new rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), she said.
Ajayi said her 80-bed facility actually reported 45 residents have tested positive and five residents died, although the CMS website showed no Saugus deaths. About 19 staff members tested positive for the virus, and most have returned to work, she said.
Officials at skilled nursing facilities around the country said Monday they were shocked to see their data reported inaccurately — wildly so in some cases, as at the Saugus home — on the new CMS public website launched Thursday. The numbers are scaring families, harming their reputations, and in some cases are physically impossible, given the number of beds or staff in their facilities, they said.
CMS approved an interim final rule May 1 requiring more than 15,000 nursing homes receiving Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement to report COVID data by May 31, and weekly going forward.
The data fill 56 columns detailing COVID-19 infected residents, staff, testing, and equipment, going back to at least May 1. As of Thursday, CMS said 88% of the nursing homes in the country had reported. Going forward after a grace period ended June 7, they risk fines of $1,000 and up for every week they fail to update their data.
But in many cases, nursing home officials said their data were somehow scrambled, either because nursing home personnel reported in the wrong columns, or the numbers were loaded incorrectly somewhere between the CDC and CMS.
For example, Southern Pointe Living Center in Colbert, Oklahoma, with 95 beds, was reported to have had 339 residents die of COVID-19, yet no confirmed or suspected cases.
“We have not lost anyone nor have we had a [COVID-19] case in the building,” said a woman identifying herself as an assistant at Southern Pointe but who declined to give her full name. The day after CMS released the data, on Friday, she said someone from the CDC called the facility to ask if their numbers were correct as reported, “and we told them no.”
She added, “I don’t know how that happened but that is an error on their end.” As of Tuesday morning, the posted data had not been corrected.
“Insanely wrong”
MedPage Today first learned of the inaccuracies shortly after publishing an article Friday on the new public database. In that article was a list (since removed) of “outliers” — those with the highest numbers of cases and deaths among residents and staff — that included Dellridge Health and Rehabilitation Center in Paramus, New Jersey. The CMS data indicated it had the most COVID-19 deaths of any nursing home in the country at 753.
That number is “insanely wrong,” Jonathan Mechaly, Dellridge’s marketing director, wrote in a frantic email. “We are a 90-bed center and have had less than 20 deaths!! How do you report such inaccurate numbers?”
After a download of the data, a quick sort of the columns easily reveals extreme totals in various categories. But no one called those nursing homes before the data were released to doublecheck, for example, when 100-bed Smith Village in Chicago was shown to have 1,105 confirmed COVID-19 cases among residents and 955 confirmed COVID-19 cases among staff, the most in the country.
“We apparently misread the instructions, which were not very clear,” Yahaira Ramirez, Smith Village’s director of clinical operations told MedPage Today. The facility has had only 38 positive cases among residents and 14 deaths, and among staff, 37 positive or suspected cases but no deaths, she said. But instead of showing up as a total, those numbers somehow appeared as if there were additional cases every day in May. No one caught the error.
It would have been helpful if someone from either agency had at least checked on the highest outliers before publishing, Ramirez said. “We’ve been trying to abide by a lot of the guidelines (from) CMS and CDC, but it’s been challenging. You talk to different people and you get a different answer. Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that they haven’t reached out.”
Asked why there appeared to be so many errors in the data, a CMS spokesman emailed this response:
“As with any new reporting program, there can be data submission errors in the beginning. In an effort to be transparent, CMS made the data collected by the CDC public as quickly as possible balancing transparency and speed against the potential of initial data errors.”
“CMS is advising nursing homes when their submitted data has not passed certain quality checks so they can review the CDC submission instructions and their data submission for accuracy. As CMS continues to analyze the data going forward we expect fewer errors as nursing home staff get used to these requirements and CMS has more time to quality check the data.”
Asked why CMS, at the very least, did not contact the highest outliers, for whom such large numbers of COVID-19 cases or deaths were highly unlikely because of their size, the spokesman did not respond.
It’s also true that CMS Administrator Seema Verma, in announcing the database’s launch, told reporters on a phone call that it would probably include inaccurate data.
The full article is here: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/86967
According to the New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize laureate, you know what would end the economic slump in 18 months? Aliens.
Paul Krugman probably feels like an alien himself these days, considering Washington is completely ignoring his unwavering arguments for more fiscal stimulus as President Obama and Congressional Republicans try to out-deficit-reduce each other. So maybe that’s why Krugman has aliens on the brain.
While talking off the cuff on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS program (Zakaria is also a TIME Magazine contributor), Krugman conjectured about what would happen if aliens landed on earth and attacked us.
“If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack, and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months,” Krugman says, referencing an episode of The Twilight Show in which an alien threat was manufactured to bring about world peace.
While Krugman is obviously using the idea as a provocative thought experiment, there’s a serious argument behind it, which boils down to the government gaining the incentive to raise taxes so it could build war-fighting materials, much like the U.S. did during World War II when tax rates were astronomical. The war was the single biggest factor in finally helping the U.S. dig out of the Great Depression, largely because it generated jobs and exports.
But the way most people seem to feel these days, aliens have been in Washington for some time. They just don’t appear to be helping matters much.
Astrology can be a controversial subject, with fervent followers and equally fervent detractors. As an astrologer, you quickly get used to people dismissing your subject out of hand. After all, it’s all made up nonsense, right? And there are 13 signs, anyway, not 12. And it’s ridiculous to claim that planets millions or even billions of miles away are causing us to act in a certain way. And they say the sun is a planet when it isn’t. And they say our fate is predetermined, with no free will. And they tell you the earth is at the center of the universe. And anyway the signs don’t even line up with where they used to be. And I’m a Leo but I hate drama. And I’m married to a Gemini and they say that Leo and Gemini aren’t a good match. And why in the world would one twelfth of the whole world’s population be going to have a bad day next Thursday?
Actually, neither I nor any astrologer I have ever dealt with has said or believes these kinds of things, all of which are based on fundamental misunderstandings of what astrology is and what it claims to do. I make no effort to convince anyone that astrology can be a useful psychological and spiritual tool; that’s up to each of us to discern for ourselves. If you’re cautiously interested in astrology, though, but have been put off by some of these myths and misunderstandings, here’s a rundown of the top five astrology myths – debunked. Understanding where astrologers are coming from may help you better decide whether this is something you’d like to pursue or not.
1 – There are 13 Signs, not 12 and I’m Now an Ophiuchus Not a Scorpio!
No, there aren’t, and no, you’re not. This myth periodically resurfaces and is usually attributed to NASA having ‘discovered’ a new constellation and thereby created or discovered a new zodiac sign. The last time this did the rounds on social media was only a couple of weeks ago.
NASA have not discovered a new constellation, or a new zodiac sign. Astrology signs are NOT, repeat NOT, the same as astronomical constellations. Ophiuchus is a very large constellation which has been visible for thousands of years. It does sit between the astronomical constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius, but that does not mean it was missed out of the zodiac – did you know that there are actually 88 officially recognized constellations in the night sky? It’s not like astrologers just accidentally missed out Ophiuchus, silly astrologers! For this myth to make any sense at all, NASA would had to have discovered 76 new ‘zodiac signs’ and rewritten the history of astrology altogether. Which they, um, didn’t.
Astrology signs, zodiac signs, sun signs – call them what you will – are effectively units of measurement which were named after a selection of constellation, but have nothing more concrete than that to do with the constellations of the same name. Each astrology sign measures 30 degrees of the ecliptic. We may say that Mars is currently at 12 degrees Leo – but this is just a shorthand, symbolic way of saying that Mars is currently at 132 degrees of the ecliptic. The signs could really have been named anything, they’re just measuring/marking these twelve 30 degree sectors. The ‘discovery’ (not) of a new astronomical constellation is therefore completely irrelevant.
2 – The Astrology Signs Don’t Match Up with the Constellations Anyway
This is actually true – but the corresponding assertion that ‘therefore astrology is nonsense’ has no basis. The truth behind this misunderstanding is quite complex. It’s partly to do with the fact we covered above, that astrology signs are NOT the same as constellations. It’s also to do with something called the precession of the equinoxes. This is an astronomical phenomena which has been known since at least 300BC. When the sun rises on the morning of the vernal equinox in March each year, astrologers say that this marks 0 degrees Aries, and the start of an astrological new year. This is the point from which we start to count those 30 degree sectors in the sky. Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, the sun would indeed have risen at this time in front of the astronomical constellation called Aries.
However, due to a wobble in the earth’s axis (the precession of the equinoxes), the point at which the sun rises on the vernal equinox gradually shifts, over the course of 25,800 years, against the background of different astronomical constellations. In this modern age, when the sun rises on the vernal equinox, it is against the backdrop of the astronomical constellation of Pisces, not Aries. Here’s a short video explaining how it works:
What does this tell us about astrology? Nothing much. Because, remember, the astrological signs are shorthand for those 30 degree sectors around the ecliptic. These sectors always begin at the point of the vernal equinox, with the first 30 degree named Aries, the second 30 degrees named Taurus, and so on. That the vernal equinox now takes place aligned with the astronomical constellation of Pisces is interesting, but not broadly relevant.
Then only way the precession of the equinoxes is relevant to astrology is in the concept of astrological ‘ages’. Because the vernal equinox point is now against the backdrop of Pisces, we say we are in the astrological age of Pisces. Thousands of years ago, it was the astrological age of Aries. At some point, it will become the much talked-about astrological age of Aquarius – but astrologers cannot agree on when this will happen, or if it has already happened, because it depends on where you define the boundaries of the astronomical constellations. In his book World Horoscopes, respected astrological researcher Nick Campion lists six pages worth of suggested dates collated from the research of other astrologers, ranging from as long ago as 1447 through 2012 to as far ahead as 3597! Besides, not all astrologers even agree that astrological ‘ages’ are a thing, so….
3 – Astrologers Believe that Planets Somehow Cause Things to Happen on Earth
Nope. We don’t. No astrologer I’ve ever dealt with believes that there is a cause and effect at play here. The astrologer’s creed is ‘as above, so below’. Astrology is a symbolic language, above all else, and the basic concept is that the dance of the planets (and yes, we do know that neither the Sun nor the Moon are actually planets) and the complex angles they create between one another symbolically REFLECTS the prevailing energy on earth.
In other words, astrology works on the principle that there is a relationship between celestial events and events on earth, but it is not a cause and effect relationship. Nothing to do with gravity or electromagnetism or any other physical effect.
4 – Astrology Claims to Predict the Future (Thereby Negating Free Will)
No, it doesn’t. Astrology cannot predict the future, because each of us has free will and can shape our own future. However, because we can predict the exact movements of the planets, which are believed to reflect the energies co-occurring at time on earth, we can and do try to predict what kinds of energies might be at play at any given point in the future.
My old astrology tutor used to liken it to a weather forecast. We can tell you whether it’s likely to be raining in the middle of next week. But whether you choose to hunker down at home, swearing and brooding, or whether you choose to go out and dance in the rain – that is free will. That is up to you.
But what about horoscopes, telling you that next Thursday you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger? Of course, it’s not realistic to say that one twelfth of all humanity will experience the same thing on any given day – which is why sun sign horoscopes, as entertaining as they may be, are of extremely limited use. They’re popular, and if well written with proper astrological insight they can sometimes be revealing, but typically only for people whose sun sign is very strong and who were also born in roughly the middle of that sun sign period (because of the way most horoscopes are calculated). Horoscopes are popular, which is why astrologers keep writing them, but no astrologer I know would pretend that they are 100% accurate for everyone, or anything more than a well-meant generalization.
5 – Astrology is Only About Sun Signs – But I Don’t Feel Like a Gemini
No, no, no. Astrology does not classify the whole of humanity into twelve classes which define your whole life. At the time you were born, every planet was somewhere in the sky above you. Depending on the date and time and place of your birth, we create a map of the planetary locations for that time and place. This is your birth chart. Your birth chart has every planet in it, somewhere. And for a proper astrology reading, the birth chart as a whole must be considered, and the nuanced interplay of dozens of different positions, angles and movements must be carefully synthesized and interpreted.
The sun is indeed considered to be a powerful part of a birth chart, but far from the only part. The Ascendant is also important – the sign rising in the east at the moment of your birth. So is the midheaven – the sign directly overhead. So are the positions of the moon and all of the other planets, and in particular the angles they form between one another. In many charts, the sun is in the end not even the most dominant or powerful force in a chart; in many others, its importance is heavily mitigated by other factors.
If you’re ‘a Gemini’, that just means that the sun was in Gemini when you were born. If you don’t think you act or feel or behave like ‘a typical Gemini’, you’re probably right, and there are umpteen potential reasons for that, depending which other factors are stronger in your individual chart.
It’s for this reason, by the way, that all of the ‘Gemini goes well with Virgo but not with Leo’ stuff in relationship guides must be taken with an enormous pinch of salt. Because we are all unique, diverse individuals, each with our own blessings and faults, the truth is that any sun sign may go well with any other sun sign – or not. Human relationships are far too complex to be reduced to sun signs. Relationship astrology – synastry – can do a good job of analyzing a given relationship and finding ways to help it thrive, but that is done via detailed comparison of both individuals’ whole birth charts, and of the astrological factors affecting both of them in that time period.
If you feel that astrology doesn’t resonate with you, then of course that’s fine, nobody compels you to find it interesting or useful. However, I hope to have at least cleared up some of the most common reasons people give for dismissing astrology; it is a far more complex and nuanced art than most of its detractors understand, and it does not actually make most of the claims for which its critics so despise it.
About the author:
Nikki Harper is a spiritualist writer, astrologer, and Wake Up World’s editor.
Sweden Close to Reaching Herd Immunity Countrywide
In the U.S., even as the COVID-19 curve appears to have flattened, and death rates for some groups have fallen to almost zero,1 dire warnings about an ominous “second wave” continue.
Likewise, Sweden, a country that has handled the pandemic differently than most of the globe, is being chided for its looser restrictions and lack of lockdowns, even as data suggest their refusal to implement a full shutdown of their society may have been the best approach after all.
While most other countries instituted stay-at-home orders and shuttered schools and businesses, Sweden did not.
While high schools and universities closed and gatherings of more than 50 people were banned, elementary and middle schools, shops and restaurants have remained open during the pandemic.2
Now, news outlets are trying to use Sweden as an example of what not to do to fight COVID-19, citing a high death toll.
“The country’s mortality rate from the coronavirus is now 30% higher than that of the United States when adjusted for population size,” CBS News reported,3 but this doesn’t tell the full picture of how Swedes have fared in comparison to the rest of the world.
Sweden May Be Close to Reaching Herd Immunity
If a novel virus is introduced to a population, eventually enough people acquire natural immunity so that the number of susceptible people declines. When the number susceptible is low enough to prevent epidemic growth, the herd immunity threshold, or HIT, has been reached.
With SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, some estimates have suggested that 60% to 70% of the population must be immune before HIT will be reached, but researchers from Oxford, Virginia Tech, and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine4 found that when individual variations in susceptibility and exposure are taken into account, the HIT declines to less than 10%.5
Independent news source Off-Guardian6 cited data from Stockholm County, Sweden that showed an HIT of 17%,7 as well as an essay by Brown University Professor Dr. Andrew Bostom, who explained:8
“… [A] respected team of infectious disease epidemiologists from the U.K. and U.S. have concluded: ‘Naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 may place populations over the herd immunity threshold once as few as 10-20% of its individuals are immune.’”
And, as pointed out in Conservative Review:9
“… Naturally acquired herd immunity to COVID-19 combined with earnest protection of the vulnerable elderly — especially nursing home and assisted living facility residents — is an eminently reasonable and practical alternative to the dubious panacea of mass compulsory vaccination against the virus.
“This strategy was successfully implemented in Malmo, Sweden, which had few COVID-19 deaths by assiduously protecting its elder care homes, while ‘schools remained open, residents carried on drinking in bars and cafes, and the doors of hairdressers and gyms were open throughout.’”
Off-Guardian continues with Stanford’s Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt, who is among those in support of Sweden’s lighter restrictions.
Levitt successfully predicted the trajectory of COVID-19 deaths in China, including when the deaths would slow, and has stated that the pandemic would not be as dire as many have predicted.
Have Sweden’s COVID-19 Deaths Peaked?
What’s more, in an interview with The Stanford Daily, Levitt stated in May 2020, “If Sweden stops at about 5,000 or 6,000 deaths, we will know that they’ve reached herd immunity, and we didn’t need to do any kind of lockdown.”10
As of July 17, 2020, there were 5,619 deaths in Sweden due to COVID-19,11 and in a study released by Levitt and colleagues June 30, 2020, which analyzes COVID-19 outbreaks at 3,546 locations worldwide, it’s predicted that Sweden’s total COVID-19 deaths will plateau at about 6,000.12
So far, Levitt is spot-on, and it appears, indeed, that Sweden’s COVID-19 deaths have slowed, peaking at more than 100 deaths per day and now, midsummer, tallying in the low teens.
The intensive care unit at Stockholm’s Sodertalje Hospital has also cleared out, housing 77 cases during the pandemic’s peak and only four cases as of July 17, 2020.13
Sweden’s Epidemiologist Calls Lockdowns ‘Madness’
Sweden continues to stand by their handling of the pandemic, despite heavy criticism.
The country’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, even described the rest of the world’s lockdowns as “madness,” considering the steep side effects they ultimately cause.
Levitt suggested that not only did lockdowns not save lives, but likely cost lives due to social damage, domestic abuse, divorces, alcoholism and other health conditions that were not treated.14 Bloomberg reported:15
“‘It was as if the world had gone mad, and everything we had discussed was forgotten,’ Tegnell said in a podcast with Swedish Radio … ‘The cases became too many and the political pressure got too strong. And then Sweden stood there rather alone.’”
Tegnell stated that shutting down schools was also unnecessary during the pandemic, and scientists from the Institut Pasteur in France indeed found that there was no significant transmission of COVID-19 in primary schools, either among the students or from students to teachers.16
“The study also confirmed that younger children infected by the novel coronavirus generally do not develop symptoms or present with minor symptoms that may result in a failure to diagnose the virus,” study author Bruno Hoen added.17
Meanwhile, while Sweden has encouraged its citizens to engage in social distancing, mask usage is another story, and Tegnell has stated that there’s little evidence for wearing face masks.18
Stanford Expert Slams Lockdowns
Outside of Sweden, other experts, including epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis of Stanford University, have also spoken out against statewide lockdown measures in response to COVID-19.
Ioannidis suggests that 150 million to 300 million people may have already been infected globally and may have developed antibodies to the virus, and the median infection fatality rate has remained low at about 0.25%.19
As continues to be demonstrated, the elderly and those with underlying health problems appear to be most vulnerable, and protecting such populations should have been a priority. But lockdowns for young, healthy people are far more questionable.
Speaking with Greek Reporter, Ioannidis said:20
“The death rate in a given country depends a lot on the age-structure, who are the people infected, and how they are managed. For people younger than 45, the infection fatality rate is almost 0%. For 45 to 70, it is probably about 0.05-0.3%.
For those above 70, it escalates substantially, to 1% or higher for those over 85. For frail, debilitated elderly people with multiple health problems who are infected in nursing homes, it can go up to 25% during major outbreaks in these facilities.”
Overall, Ioannidis said the mathematical models that predicted hospitals would be overrun by COVID-19 patients were “astronomically wrong,” and although a handful of U.S. hospitals did become stressed, no health systems were overrun.
“Conversely,” he said, “the health care system was severely damaged in many places because of the [lockdown] measures taken,” while lockdown measures have also significantly increased the number of people at risk of starvation while leading to financial crisis, unrest and civil strife.21
What’s more, one study even found that 81% of people not exposed to SARS-CoV-2 were still able to mount an immune response against it, which “suggests at least some built-in immune protection from SARS-CoV-2 …”22
US Surgeon General Opposes Mask Mandate
With mask usage becoming an increasingly polarized debate, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams encouraged mask usage but spoke out against making them mandatory due to concerns that it could lead to rebellion.23
In my interview with Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., a former full professor of physics, and a researcher with the Ontario Civil Liberties Association in Canada, we also discussed the controversial topic of masks.
Rancourt did a thorough study of the scientific literature on masks, concentrating on evidence showing masks can reduce infection risk, especially viral respiratory diseases.
If there was any significant advantage to wearing a mask to reduce infection risk to either the wearer or others in the vicinity, then it would have been detected in at least one of these trials, yet there’s no sign of such a benefit.
He said in our interview:
“It makes no difference if everybody in your team is wearing a mask; it makes no difference if one is and others aren’t. Wearing a mask or being in an environment where masks are being worn or not worn, there’s no difference in terms of your risk of being infected by the viral respiratory disease.
“There’s no reduction, period. There are no exceptions. All the studies that have been tabulated, looked at, published, I was not able to find any exceptions, if you constrain yourself to verified outcomes.”
This is another area where Sweden has stayed ahead of the curve, as they’ve resisted asking the public to wear masks based on lack of evidence of effectiveness and the risk that they offer wearers a false sense of security.
Tegnell did state that officials are considering whether to recommend masks during use of public transportation, but stressed masks “definitely won’t become an optimal solution in any way.”24
Sweden Speaks Out Against WHO Warning
In late June 2020, the World Health Organization counted Sweden among European countries at risk of seeing a resurgence of COVID-19.
The warning was based on WHO data showing Sweden had 155 infections for every 100,000 inhabitants in the past 14 days, a higher rate than in most of Europe.25
Tegnell, however, said that this was a “total misinterpretation of the data” and WHO was confusing Sweden with countries just at the outset of their epidemics.
Instead, any rise in infections is likely due to increases in testing, Tegnell said, adding,
“They didn’t call to ask us. The number of admissions to intensive care is at a very low level and even deaths are starting to go down.”26
Time will tell whether Sweden’s strategy, which avoided lockdowns and widespread mask usage, turns out to be the right one after all, but some believe the writing is already on the wall.27
“Dr. Michael Levitt and Sweden have been right all along,” Off-Guardian reported.
“The only way through COVID-19 is by achieving the modest (10-20%) Herd Immunity Threshold required to have the virus snuff itself out.
“The sooner politicians — and the press — start talking about HIT and stop talking about new confirmed cases, the better off we will all be.
“Either way, it’s likely weeks, not months, before the data of new daily deaths will be so low that the press will have to find something new to scare everyone. It’s over.”
From the author: The existing medical establishment is responsible for killing and permanently injuring millions of Americans, but the surging numbers of visitors to Mercola.com since I began the site in 1997 – we are now routinely among the top 10 health sites on the Internet – convinces me that you, too, are fed up with their deception. You want practical health solutions without the hype, and that’s what I offer.
Corporate Controlled Mainstream Media (MSM) Exists to Demoralize the Public
It has become increasingly obvious that the corporate controlled mainstream media exists to demoralize the public by cherry-picking stories that favor a narrative that promotes victimization.
Incidents that are in the minority are amplified and with purposeful repetitive selection to give the impression that the conditions and circumstances surrounding a particular narrative are in the majority.
I have observed the effect that mainstream narratives have on both the collective and individual level, and the ferocious intensity with which people are convinced that the world that they read about has a one-to-one correspondence with a reality that they believe exists right outside their front door.
One need not look any further than the ocean of mask wearing individuals walking about in public, convinced that the breath of their neighbor or fellow pedestrian is a weapon of mass destruction.
The media has purposefully promoted the concept that those who do not wear a mask are an existential threat to you and your family.
According to them, you are a victim to their callous behavior; that ultimately freedom loving people who refuse to wear a mask are a threat to society.
This is intentional, for as you have been victimized you will willingly forgo any of your freedoms for a guarantee of safety.
Oh, and for good measure, the media will add that they are probably Trump supporters and thus COVID-19 deniers, a tactic sure to enrage the reader even further and a blatant effort to steer the reader politically.
While the fake pandemic is a great example of the media’s role in victimizing its audience, this tactic has been deployed for long before then, primarily for the promotion of a political, racial, and gender divide as part of the effort by those at the top to divide and rule over the population.
As the attention span of the average reader has shrunk, the media has focused its energy on manufacturing loaded headlines.
For the most part, it is the headline exchanged between people who do not have the time to read the content but want to lend credence to their own perspective on an issue.
A heavy emotionalized headline will do just that, and using technology you can fire that headline in every direction like a machine gun.
These headlines are thusly shared rapidly via text messaging or as a post to timelines on the various social medias.
As the world is currently filled with an army of social justice warriors (SJW), so too are their timelines filled with selective headlines that emotionally emphasize the severity of the issues they feel they are valiantly fighting for or against.
Reading through the cherry-picked and heavily manipulated headlines on mainstream media news websites, we can see the reoccurrence of common themes: everyone is a racist, everyone desires to keep women and minorities down, members of the LGBT+ community are in danger, and COVID-19 is killing everyone, everywhere, at every moment.
Victimization. Demoralization.
Also manipulated are the pictures that accompany the stories. Normally, these are selected in ways that will further the psychological impact of that which the article is trying to convey.
A story about Joe Biden making gaffes will be accompanied by a picture of Joe Biden looking confused. A story about COVID-19 will show covered gurneys surrounded by people in hazmat suits.
A story about racism will show pictures that emphasize the narrative, such as a picture of people in robes typically worn by the Klu Klux Klan.
I have even seen stock photography of young white men holding torches, mouths open as if yelling, with a headline suggesting they were white supremacist Trump supporters.
With these elements combined tactically, it should be quite obvious that we are not confronted with organizations that seek to inform us but instead to propagandize us along a divide, and within that divide they seek to victimize and demoralize us.
The divides are many, from political to race right down into gender with there being radical subdivisions as we have been introduced to various complexities related to gender and further complicated by what we are told is a biological misunderstanding, with a narrative that is going so far as to try and alter our own perceptions of our own gender biology.
J. K. Rowling has been incessantly attacked for a seemingly innocent defense of what she considers to be the definition of a biological female, something that she has lived and identified with her entire life.
Those attacking her feel some level of injustice has been bestowed upon them, that somehow they are being denied their own identity. Some go so far to claim that these grievances are no less destructive than a physical attack.
How did they reach these conclusions? Victimization.
Certainly we all experience discrimination at some point in our lives but the truth is it happens in perpetuity when one reads the headlines and stories promoted by the mainstream media.
There is a definitive psychological impact and the people behind the engineering of these divides understand this.
You do not have a black vs. white, man vs. woman, gender biology vs. gender fluidity, religion vs. religion, woke vs. unwoke, without the victimization of one or the other.
There is no better place than to engineer this divide by promoting victimization than through the corporate mainstream media elements most consumed by a majority of the population: television news, news papers, magazines, and websites; an effort done most intentionally in order to manipulate large swaths of society into divided positions much like on a chess board.
It is the narratives that they build in our minds that allows them to control us emotionally, for we forgo any semblance of emotional control when we allow ourselves to become victims.
We are segmented into like-minded collections, played against each other across the board in whichever way is politically, financially, and/or socially expedient to the corporate media masters for reasons that they seek to benefit from.
The majority of humanity, the 99%, are thus relegated to the role of simple pawns in a much larger game whose existence they may never even be aware of.
